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THE

NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW

EDITED BY GEORGE HARVEY

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VOL. CCVII

Tro* Tyriuaque mihi nullo discrimine agetur

NEW YORK
171 MADISON AVENUE

1918

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AUGUSTS RODIN
1840-1917

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rimine a

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

JANUARY, 1918

TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS

Beginning with the new year, in response to many re
quests for more frequent and timely editorial utterances
during the war, we shall issue from Washington, as an ad
junct of this journal —

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEWS
WAR WEEKLY

It is not a commercial undertaking. The cost of pro
duction will exceed the subscription price, and no revenue
will be derived from advertisements.

It cannot be offered for sale by separate subscription or
at newsstands because of the present prohibitive costs of
manufacture and distribution.

It will be published solely and exclusively for subscribers
to THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW and will be sent post
paid to subscribers only for —

ONE DOLLAR A YEAR.

A sample copy of the WAR WEEKLY or of THE REVIEW
will be sent free, upon request, to any address.

SUBSCRIPTION PRICES

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW: Four Dollars a Year.

THE REVIEW and the WAR WEEKLY: Five Dollars a Year.

Subscriptions accepted by any newsdealer or at the publication office,
No. 171 Madison Avenue, New York City.

Make check or postal order to the order of THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW or, if a subscriber, simply mail, at our risk, a one-dollar bill.

2 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

' ' THANK GOD FOR WILSON ' '

THE PRESIDENT AT HIS BEST

BY THE EDITOR

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against prin
cipalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness
of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that
ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done
all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth,
and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel
of peace;

Above all, taking the shield of faith * * *

This was the resolute adjuration addressed by the great
Apostle to the distracted Ephesians nearly two thousand
years ago, and this is the unflinching message of our own
chosen leader upon the eve of the most crucial year in the
history of our country and of the world. The die is cast
irrevocably and there is no middle course. The powers of
light must prevail over, or succumb to, the rulers of dark
ness. " Only a miracle can bring peace," declares Maximilian
Harden; " either Germany must be crushed or her enemies
must be defeated; there is no alternative." And Harden
speaks the truth, — as we speak the truth when we repeat
what we said last month: that at no time since the battle
of the Marne has the outlook been as black as it is today.
Advantages gained in sporadic battles, such as that of Gen
eral Byng, only to be lost immediately in full or in large
part, avail nothing. Not only in the East, where Russia
and Roumania are releasing millions of trained German
soldiers for service elsewhere, but on the decisive Western
front, the situation is bad, bad, bad.

Cheering assurances we receive without number from hon
est but incompetent observers, but they have small basis
in fact. The allied forces are not in condition to withstand
with surety or confidence the terrific onslaught which Ger
many is bound to make within six months. As we have said
over and over again, America must win the war, and there
is not a month, not a week, not a day, not an hour, to be lost.

' THANK GOD FOR WILSON ' 3

The great crisis may come at any moment between January
and July.

It is a fearful responsibility that Fate has put upon the
President, and he has the sympathies and the prayers of mil
lions, but it is none the less maddening that he should persist
in attempting to bear the whole burden alone. Again we im
plore him to abolish the latest makeshift for a War Council,
comprising overworked heads of departments, charged to
meet once a week, and draw to his aid the five biggest minds
in the country — men of the calibre of Chief Justice Edward
D. White and Elihu Root — and hold them at work every day
and every hour that may be within the range of physical pos
sibilities. Surely if, as the President plainly warned our
Allies, unified direction is essential abroad, it is no less a requi
site at home.

Readers of this REVIEW need not be reminded that, within
a month after war was declared, we directed the attention of
the President to the fact that every Power in conflict had
been " driven to this recourse " and depicted as " the over
powering and pressing need " such a " concentration of direc
tion of manifold divergent forces " as would constitute " a com
bined sieve and buffer " and enable him to achieve effective
co-ordination. Now, after six long months, we read limply
in the Washington dispatches that " as the war has pro
gressed the need of a more effective co-ordination of effort has
become increasingly evident," that " heads of departments
have looked at problems only with the idea in mind of solving
their special difficulties/' and that " this lack of teamwork,
with its resultant reduction in efficiency, is responsible for the
decision to establish a new War Council," consisting of the
six members of the old Board of National Defense and five
additional supernumeraries.

Bitter experience enforced reluctant and belated admis
sion of the necessity, but, alas, the change is not for better, but
for worse. The larger the body, of course, the less useful it is
bound to be. In point of fact, the new Council is not a Coun
cil at all ; it is a weekly town meeting " held every Monday
morning," when of all times each member should be at his desk.
Nobody possessed of a grain of common sense can fail to
realize that such a contrivance is useless as of the present and
hopeless for the future ; — a doubly discouraging circumstance
because —

What this Government needs is vision.

4 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

No whit less vital than the present urgency is heed to the
future. Of what avail are " all the resources of the civilized
world " if those resources are not utilized? Our Allies are
dragging into service every conceivable aid in Europe and
India and Africa, but they look perforce to the United States
to muster South America and Japan, and even perhaps China.
The President must realize that ; he has vision, splendid, wide
and far-reaching; but how can that vision be brought into
action while smothered, as now it surely is, in a mass of
details?

It is only fair, moreover, to warn the Government that
the remark is becoming far too common that everything
this Administration does is " partisan, petty and personal."
Denying, as we do with indignation, all such accusations, we
nevertheless cannot fail to recognize the wisdom, even the
necessity, of taking most scrupulous care to lend no color to
such aspersions. In a time like this, when feelings are tense
and hearts are being wrung, when political ambitions and
personal jealousies are rife and when even the flimsiest of
excuses are sought by the wilfully discontented, every act
of a great leader should not only be but luminously and un
mistakably appear to be disinterested and noble. In no
other way can a great people be kept as wholly united as the
President believes this Nation now to be.

Needless to remark, these reflections pertain only to acts
having to do with the practical prosecution of the war which
are susceptible of wilful misinterpretation or of unwarranted
inference. In power and lucidity of expression the President
stands today without a peer, — a fact universally acclaimed
in appreciation of his latest declaration and overshadowed
only by his amazing ability, unsurpassed since Jefferson, of
voicing the inmost aspirations of the American people. To
them, of course, in a technical sense, through their Congress,
the great Message of December 4th was spoken, but none
the less, in reality, it was addressed to the whole world, to our
Allies and to our enemies alike. While its chief significance
lay in the serving of notice upon the foes of civilization that
the Scotch-Irish, American, Presbyterian heel is rooted in
the ground, it breathed a spirit of magnanimity for which,
in like circumstances, one may search history in vain for a
precedent. Humanity was its foundation and democracy
its keystone. It was directed " not against flesh and blood

"THANK GOD FOR WILSON' 5

but against principalities " and " the rulers of darkness."
Therein we find the underlying and most vital distinction
between the thoughts and purposes of the English Marquis
and the American President. Lord Lansdowne would treat
with the German autocracy, Mr. Wilson with the German
people ; the one, as the undisputed leader of the British aris
tocracy, would recognize as an equal only a governing class
corresponding to his own ; the other, pre-eminent as the head
of the greatest Republic, can hear only " the voices of human
ity that come from the hearts of men everywhere." To im
pute unworthy motives to the most experienced statesman
of England, backed not only by his own powerful class which
has contributed its all in men and money to the great cause
but also by the foremost minds of the Liberal party, headed
by Mr. Asquith and Mr. Gilbert Murray, is the height of
absurdity. Not lack of patriotism, but the effect of tradition,
the point of view, quite likely in no small degree apprehen-"
sion of the menace to aristocracy signified by the outburst in
Russia, constituted the root of Lord Lansdowne's proposal
on behalf of a group which would be the last but one in the
world to fight to " make the world safe for democracy."

In point of fact, Lord Lansdowne's suggestion of a re
statement of war aims as a matter of policy differed in no
respect, upon its face, from the actual proposal from Russia
which the President's personal representative supported in
conference; it was the hidden meaning, the covert assault
upon the dashing element now in political control that
brought down upon his head the objurgations of Northcliffe
and Lloyd George. To our mind the incident, slight as it
may seem, presages in England, simultaneously with the re
turn of the millions of soldiers, a fresh outbreak of the unend
ing and irrepressible conflict between classes and masses, be
tween ancient, rooted aristocracy and modern, eager democ
racy, — a strife from which even an inoffensive and impotent
royalty can hardly escape unscathed.

Far more surprising to us than his call for a declaration
of war upon Austria, an inevitable happening sooner or later,
was the President's thinly veiled threat of economic ostracism
of Germany to follow a military settlement. When the fact
became known, some two years ago, that a similar programme
had been adopted at a secret conference of the British and
French in Paris, the outcry against it as unduly and unwisely
vindictive was so strongly intensified by the marked disap-

6 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

proval of the American Government that Mr. Asquith and
Sir Edward Grey hastily abandoned the idea, and it has
never since been heard of. We can picture the amazement
of the original sponsors at the revival of the proposition by
the President himself in foreseeing " untoward circum
stances " which might render impossible the admission of
Germany " to the free economic intercourse which must in
evitably spring out of the other partnerships of a real peace."

That was going far but, even so, hardly farther than what
has been generally interpreted as a demand for the overthrow
of both the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs as a sine qua
non of negotiations. No ultimatum such as that has ever
been presented or even hinted at by either Britain, France
or Italy; it seems, moreover, to be negatived by the Presi
dent's plain assertions that " we intend no interference in
the internal affairs " of Germany and that "we do not wish
in any way to impair or to re-arrange the Austro-Hungarian
empire." It is a nice point at best and one so vital as bearing
upon our fundamental traditions, no less than upon our fu
ture attitude, that we wish the President might have spoken
with such definiteness as would have rendered misconstruc
tion impossible. We are convinced, however, that all he
meant to convey was that the United States could have no
dealings with a Government whose pledges are worthless or
with a vassal of such a Government. There he stands upon
solid ground; further he could not go without violating un
broken American policy. How the peoples of the two coun
tries shall remedy the existing defects, whether by deposing
or by controlling their present rulers, " is no affair of ours " ;
the only " ultimatum " is that it must be done before they can
resume their places in the family of self-respecting nations.
That is all.

Not the least of the many merits of the great paper are its
noticeable omissions. A less sagacious and wide-reaching
mind, striving for popular approval, would have been sorely
tempted to pile Ossia upon Pelion by recounting at length
the specific grievances of individual States. The President
did none of this. While depicting clearly a true conception
of the inherent right of every well-defined community, great
or small, to life and liberty and pursuit of happiness and
while voicing sympathy with those who have suffered most
and whose opportunities for natural development are un
fairly restricted, he did not pretend by even the faintest sug-

" THANK GOD FOR WILSON ' 7

gestion that America would have gone to war to avenge either
Serbia or Belgium, to restore Alsace-Lorraine, to give
Trieste to Italy, to re-establish Poland, to save France or to
protect England, — he knew full well that the American peo
ple would never have held any one or two or three of these
objects to constitute adequate cause for intervention.

He did not even recur, except by vaguest indirection, to
an assumed obligation upon our part to " make the world
free for democracy," having doubtless, upon reflection,
reached the correct conclusion that, in setting an example of
free government at its best and in affording a refuge for all
oppressed human beings, America performs her full and most
effective part in the service of mankind. Nor did he even
refer to the rapacity of Germany in seeking to acquire the
railroad from Berlin to Bagdad — a doubtful grievance which
clearly outgrew its proper perspective in the Buffalo speech,
— possibly because he imagined the smile that would illumine
the face of Uncle Samuel if, by chance, some day, we should
decide to build a road through Mexico into South America,
and Germany or Britain should protest against our reaching
out for unlimited power in the Western hemisphere.

Brushing all incidentals aside, with a wide sweep and a
bold brush the President portrayed the great issue of Human
Freedom versus Human Slavery as it has never been pre
sented before. From the imperishable document which has
issued from his mind and heart nothing should be taken away
and to it nothing need be added. The case is made for all
the world and is complete.

" Our present and immediate task is to win the war, and
nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is accomplished."

ff Stand therefore * * * taking the shield of faith'9

Those querulous persons who constantly bemoan as un
fortunate the President's acknowledged habit of depriving
himself of valuable information, which they would be only
too happy to convey, by communing chiefly with himself
must have waked up when their eyes lit upon this spirited
utterance in the famous Message to Congress:

I hear the voices of dissent — who does not? I hear the criticism
and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and troublesome. I also
see men here and there fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against
the calm, indomitable power of the nation. I hear men debate peace
who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may

8 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

attain it, with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that
none of these speaks for the nation. They do not touch the heart
of anything. They may safely be left to strut about their uneasy
hour and be forgotten.

That is to say that, without claiming to possess the
amazing agility which enables Mr. Bryan to " hold both
ears to the ground," the President would have it under
stood that he is not deaf and that, even though the windows
be shut and fastened, he can hear, possibly through the cat-
hole in the back door, what is going on outside. Whom, if any
body, in particular, we wonder, had he in mind? Those
who " here and there fling themselves in impotent disloy
alty " against " calm, indomitable power " might readily be
identified with the notorious " little group of wilful men "
and we can easily visualize the revered Doctor Eliot, hap
pily not now an ambassador, as one whose peace debates
can be viewed serenely " with uplifted eyes and unbroken
spirits." The badger lafollette, too, appears luminously
upon the political horizon at the head of the restless beings
who " strut about their uneasy hour " and who, in common
with the President, we hope, with less assurance than we
should like to feel, may soon " be forgotten."

But whence issues " the criticism and the clamor of the
noisily thoughtless and troublesome," — or should it have
been the thoughtlessly noisy? That is what puzzles us. We
cannot recall any noticeably strident outbursts; indeed, all
things considered, we should say that folks generally have
kept pretty quiet. Can it be that the President was think
ing of our best beloved Colonel? It is possible. Although
never quite what you would call noisy, the Colonel is no
pussyfooter in walk or in speech; in fact, we can think of
few sounds so penetrating as his sibilant whisper. He may
be a bit troublesome, too, at times; he certainly tries to be;
but thoughtless? oh, no; as between Presidents, we should
hardly say that. And yet, as we canvass the names of
offenders to whom the term might have been applied in a
moment of petulance and resort to the trustworthy process
of elimination, we find nobody else left, as he himself would
remark, in the ring. We guess the Colonel is the man.

Well, seriously, it is too bad. The time is not far distant
when the Government will need all the help it can get from
every intelligent and patriotic leader of men and from none
more than from Mr. Roosevelt, whose personal following is

' THANK GOD FOR WILSON ' 9

still the greatest and most devoted in the country. We
wonder sometimes whether the President appreciates how
many hundreds of thousands of loyal citizens feel a sense
of personal tragedy in the shelving of one who must be re
garded as the most generally recognized, if not actually the
foremost, patriot in the land, in this hour of the Nation's
greatest peril. Because the country acquiesced in the Presi
dent's correct judgment that only professional soldiers
should be entrusted with high commands in France, it does
not follow and it is not the fact that the country is pleased
to have Mr. Roosevelt ignored or is unaware of the value
of the unique service which he might render.

While deprecating, as we do, speculation as to " what
might have been," it is folly to disregard the lessons of ex
perience in seeking true guidance for the future. The Root
Mission to Russia was doomed to failure from the start,
partly through the socialistic propaganda from this country,
aided and abetted by the racial activities of Mr. Samuel
Untermyer, known then to be an intimate counsellor and
now, in fact, a member of the Administration, and partly
through Russian ignorance which visualized our foremost
statesman as a representative of capitalism. Whether Mr.
Roosevelt, who was immune to all such accusations and is
the only American whose name is familiar to any consider
able number of peasants and workingmen, could have saved
the situation is perhaps a question, but there can be no doubt
whatever that his great fame and powerful personality
would have enhanced the possibility enormously. And,
strictly between ourselves, we doubt if he would have ever
come back, to become " noisily troublesome " as either a
critic or a candidate.

But let that pass. As matters now stand, we have paid
out, " on acct. Russia," nearly two hundred million dollars,
to no effective purpose whatever, and are " holding up "
a hundred and fifty millions more, already allotted but not
likely to be delivered until some basis for the rosy hopes
and " faith in the Russian people " intermittently heralded
by the State Department shall put in an appearance. So
far as one can perceive, we are waiting, Micawber-like and
quite impotently, for " something to turn up." Is that wise?
Can nothing be done or even attempted? Too late! Non
sense! It is never too late to try. Some thought and still
think that we were somewhat slow in entering the great war

10 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

for civilization and in preparing to do so effectively, but
if the President is right, as we trust he may be, in his assur
ance that now " as a Nation we are united in spirit and
intention," surely it was " better late than never."

May it not be so in this case? Consider! We have just
reversed our traditional Eastern policy to accommodate
Japan; we have acknowledged the rightfulness of her claim
to special privileges in China, without consulting China and
against China's protest; surely Japan cannot be ungrateful
for the one great concession which she has sought in vain
for years. Japan, moreover, is our ally — or should we say
co-belligerent? — and occupies a position more like to our
own than any other nation ; Japan claims to be eager to do
more than she is doing in the war; Japan has an army of
millions of trained soldiers, a large portion of whom are
in Manchuria; Japan is pleading constantly, through her
visiting Missions, for an opportunity to co-operate along all
lines with the United States.

Why not give her the chance? Why not send to Tokio
immediately a competent Mission to devise ways and means
by which the two nations may jointly strive to serve the
great cause by inducing and helping Russia to strike Ger
many in the East, — if not this year or the next, in the year
following or in the year following that? It is wholly prac
ticable. What one country lacks in material or men the
other possesses, and both can build ships to traverse the
open Pacific highway. The sole requisite is the inspiration,
leadership and driving force of a Theodore Roosevelt, a
former President, as the head of a Mission, whose mere
arrival in Japan, testifying recognition as an equal and the
friendship of a sister State, would be celebrated as no event
has been acclaimed since the triumphant return of Togo.
It would be much to ask of him at this late day, we confess,
but he would go. He may not have the technical qualifica
tions of a corps commander, but Our Colonel is a true sol
dier; neither slacker nor quitter, and a patriot from top to
toe; as he has given all four of his sons, so would he give
himself without a murmur.

But if, for some diplomatic reason which we cannot con
jecture, Japan's proffered co-operation must be rejected and
Russia is to be left to the tender mercies of two American
attaches, whose conflicting declarations necessitate repudia-

" THANK GOD FOR WILSON ' 11

tion at frequent intervals by the State Department, what of
South America as a field for effective endeavor by one of
Mr. Roosevelt's great prestige? Surely, if given time and
encouragement, the twelve Latin- American countries which
have severed relations with Germany could accord invaluable
assistance to the Allies in supplies and even in men. Brazil
alone has increased her army of 35,000 soldiers to 200,000
and has many more available in reserve, fully equipped with
artillery and rifles and lacking only machinery for the manu
facture of ammunition which this country could furnish.
Thanks to the sagacity and influence of Ambassador da
Gama, moreover, her fidelity to the common cause is unques
tioned. Argentina, with her vast productive capacity, still
quivers in the balance, but no nation has better cause for
war upon the ruthless Huns who would leave " no trace "
of her ships and men, and one cannot doubt the spirit of the
people when a great popular journal like El Diario, com
menting upon the latest Message to Congress, acclaims the
President " the evangelist of democracy " and adds :

With men such as this at its head the great Nation of the North
can march to glory unimpeded. Modern democracy has found its
prophet. The message clearly shows that peace will be the task of
the people, not of the governments, and that the war is purely one
against imperialism. President Wilson's words must resound through
out the world, and in no place more than in the Americas.

The danger lies in the neglect and inattention of " the
great Nation of the North," to which these countries look
for inspiration and leadership. Months ago Director Gen
eral John Barrett of the Pan-American Union warned the
Government of the urgent need of counteracting the effect
of German propaganda throughout South America, pro
duced evidence of the activities of a swarm of German agents
whose efforts might " completely nullify all the apparent
advantages of Pan-American co-operation and support in
the war " and pleaded for the dispatch of a Mission to
co-ordinate the work of the twelve belligerents and to com
bat the enemy in the eight remaining neutral countries.
The Cologne V 'olkszeitung bears out Mr. Barrett's assertion
by insisting that no efforts be spared to intensify and in
crease the existing " dislike of Americans " by convincing
the people of Argentina and Brazil that the United States
" has not gone into the field purely for commercial reasons
but for political ones."

12 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Again we ask: Is there not here an opportunity for
Mr. Roosevelt, as the head of a Mission fully supported
by the Government, to render immense service to the coun
try, not only during but, in its continuing effect, after
the war?

Again, too, as before, we inquire: If, for some inex
plicable reason, South America, like Russia and Japan, is
a prohibited zone, is there not work to be done at home
which nobody can do as well as our best beloved Colonel?
Just at present we are not only in the honeymoon of the
war but in a flush of enthusiasm over the President's
thrilling declaration. But that condition cannot continue.
There will come lulls in America as there have come lulls
in England and in France. It is not going to be a simple
or easy task to maintain a high pitch of patriotic fervor
throughout a vast country containing a hundred millions of
diverse and partly hostile nationalities. People grow weary
and listless as they become accustomed to changed and none
too agreeable circumstances. Abroad, where this natural
feeling has appeared as a positive menace more than once,
despite the proximity and imminence of peril, recourse
has been had to popular leaders, — to men sure of great
audiences who could go straight to the masses and arouse
them by the magic of voice and personality to a degree
impossible of achievement through the printed word. Who
better than Mr. Roosevelt could be found to draft for such
service as the head of a group of famous speakers like Sen
ator Borah, Mr. Beveridge, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Lenroot,
Mr. Beck, Mr. Littleton, Mr. Herrick, Mr. Malone, Mr.
Mitchel and scores of others who would gladly respond to
the call? We might even say a few words ourselves.

These, of course, are mere suggestions, submitted with
due faithfulness as component parts of counsel besought
but hardly common, in response to the President's sound
declaration that, if we are to win the war at all, we must
all " stand together night and day until the job is finished,"
regardless presumably of past differences and heedful of
the fact that " we are all of the same clay and spirit and
can get together if we desire to get together." The one
point we would make is that in Theodore Roosevelt the
country has a great asset which the Government is not
utilizing to full or even partial advantage and that, if the
President would hardily put aside his preference for " dif-

" THANK GOD FOR WILSON ' 13

fering radically with a man when he isn't in the room "
because " when he is in the room the awkward thing is that
he can [and probably would] come back at me and answer
what I say," and summon his predecessor for a frank con
ference, he would go far to achieve the unity which he truly
pronounces essential to success. Our Colonel himself opened
the way when he enthusiastically endorsed the great Mes
sage as " a solemn pledge " and insisted that " the American
people must devote themselves with grim resolution and
wholehearted purpose to the effective translation of this
pledge into action," — which is, above all else, of course,
what the President most ardently desires.

We have only to add that Colonel House himself could
not be more disinterested in this matter than we are — a fact
which should be apparent when in candor we confess that
we had reserved for Our Colonel a cell adjoining our own
on the second floor or tier, or whatever you call it, back,
in Burleson Gaol, and we shall miss him terribly.

We infer from desultory reports from abroad that, when
these words appear in print, the Colonel White House Mis
sion to Europe will either be on its billowy way home or
safely discharged at an American port formerly known as
New York; so, at any rate, we hope and shall pray tonight.
It was hardly a visit; rather a call, following the precedent
established by Mr. Root and his associates, who took one
look around Petrograd and skidded back as rapidly as a
Siberian locomotive could point the way. Consideration of
the actual achievements of the European party must await
necessarily an official revelation from Mr. Creel, but a fairly
consecutive account of the pilgrimage can be pieced out from
scrappy cablegrams to the public prints.

Our recollection is that, in our record last month, we
left our representatives in segregated taxi-cabs scurrying
about London for conferences with fellow under-secretaries,
but we were not then aware that Colonel House himself
had moved into the apartment in Chesterfield House in
South Audley street formerly occupied by Mrs. Nicholas
Longworth — a coincidence of some historical political sig
nificance — and that upon the verge of retirement he issued
the following excellent statement of plan and scope:

One hundred and forty-one years ago the makers of our nation
laid down the doctrine that governments derive their just powers

14 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

from the consent of the governed, and are instituted among men to
give security to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We intend
to live and develop under this doctrine which is now at stake, and
we feel that our being would not be justified if at this critical hour
we failed the other democracies who share with us in this lofty and
just conception of the dignity of man.

Since 141 from 1917 leaves 1776, a somewhat memo
rable year in the annals of this Republic, and since the
declaration referred to was addressed most particularly to
the nation whose guest he was, we thought at first that the
Colonel had mislaid his abundant store of tact, but realizing
upon reflection that the forefathers on both sides are long
dead and buried we could find in the allusion only a gentle
reminder of continuing independence, which doubtless served
a useful service without necessarily imputing the actuating
motives of George the Third to George the Fifth, with whom
the Colonel was about to dine in peace and harmony. What
he said was so, anyhow.

The welcome extended to the Mission by the London
press was all that could have been desired. The Times, in
particular, was most enthusiastic over the timely arrival of
Colonel House and his " chosen band of distinguished men,"
all of whose biographies, barring that of Mr. Auchincloss,
which apparently was not quickly available, it printed for
the information of its readers and, in some respects, we have
to confess, to our own enlightenment. It also commended
highly Secretary Lansing's " very direct and pointed state
ment that the conference which Colonel House will attend
as a full member will be anything but a Peace conference,"
for which " it was known some weeks ago Colonel House
was collecting data," — thus shrewdly forestalling the pos
sible misapprehension to which we made passing allusion
last month.

Later in the week, according to the special correspond
ent of the World, the Missionaries were " entertained at
luncheon by the King «nd Queen at Buckingham Palace,"
after having been introduced by Walter Hines Page, " the
Ambassador here." Meanwhile Colonel and Mrs. House
had dined en famille with their Majesties. " It was," notes
the Boston Evening Transcript, " their first meeting since
the Lusitania was sunk." The Colonel was in London at
the time and had an engagement for dinner at the Palace
when the news came ; whereupon, the Transcript continues :

Colonel House cut short his visit. He sent his apologies to the

" THANK GOD FOR WILSON ' 15

King with the message that, " This means war," and the promise to
write him a letter on his arrival in America, and sailed for home on
the next ship. That was in 1915. When the King was sending a
Mission to America in 1917, the story goes that he charged one of
the members to look up Colonel House and tell him that the King
of England was still waiting for that letter.

It is not probable that the matter was referred to even
jocosely at the dinner in the presence of the ladies.

The first meeting of the conferees was a notable affair.
It took place in the famous council chamber in Downing
street, where English history has been made for centuries,
around the table at which the draft of a certain Stamp
Act, with which our forefathers were familiar, was approved.
The British Empire was represented in a political way by
the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, Mr.
Bonar Law, Earl Derby, Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Milner,
Lord Curzon, Viscounts Reading and Northcliffe, Lord
Rhondda, Sir Edward Carson, Mr. Walter Long and Mr.
Austen Chamberlain. In the absence of Colonel House, —
it being matinee day, — the United States was represented
by Son-in-law Gordon Auchincloss, Esq., of No. 61 Broad
way, just south of Rector street, who thought at first of
sending his stenographer but finally decided to attend in
person. As became his rank, he sat directly beneath the
famous portrait of Sir Francis Bacon, the only one in the
room, under which Benjamin Franklin had pleaded and
protested and Adams and Jay had negotiated. The only
speech reported was the Premier's, but a pleasant occasion
was reported by all.

The departure of the Mission was celebrated with mutual
felicitations. The Americans, according to the Times, not
only proved themselves to be " specialists of exceptional
ability and distinction," but in return of compliment, accord
ing to Sir Edward Carson, they were " lost in astonishment
and amazement at the organization and effort put forward
by the British Empire," — discoveries upon both sides as
gratifying as they seem to have been surprising. Before
leaving, moreover, Colonel House himself, " virtually for
this purpose," in the words of the Times, " the Government
of the United States," expressed his official pleasure and
personal satisfaction.

The trip to Paris was made in record time and all
arrived in excellent condition. Promptly on the following
morning, Mr. Grasty cabled to the Times, Colonel House

16 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

" called all the Americans together to agree on a pro
cedure " and, there being no open dissent, his plan was
adopted. From that day forward the accounts are vague.
There seem to have been conferences, some " allied " and
some " inter-allied," but reporters were not admitted and
we shall have to await as patiently as may be Mr. Creel's
elaborated version in the Official Bulletin. All we really
know now is that Colonel House's very sensible suggestion
to the other Premiers that all speeches be barred except
one little one by Monsieur Clemenceau at the beginning of
the session was adopted and the prospective flow of oratory
was effectually dammed until the close of the conference
when, in response to a polite request from Monsieur Cle
menceau himself, cordially supported by the others, Colonel
House spoke as follows:

M. Clemenceau, the president of the French Council, in welcoming
the delegates to this conference declared that we had met to work.
His words were prophetic. There has been co-ordination and a unity
of purpose which promise great results for the future. It is my
deep conviction that by this unity and by concentrated effort we shall
be able to arrive at the goal which we have set out to reach.

In behalf of my colleagues I want to avail myself of this occasion
to thank the officials of the French Government, and through them
the French people, for the warm welcome and great consideration
they have shown us. In coming to France we have felt that we were
coming to the house of our friends. Ever since our Government was
founded there has been a bond of interest and sympathy between
us — a sympathy which this war has fanned into a passionate admira
tion. The history of France is a history of courage and sacrifice.
Therefore, the great deeds which have illuminated the last three years
have come as no surprise to us of America. We knew that when
called upon France would rise to a splendid achievement and would
add lustre to her name.

America salutes France and her heroic sons and feels honored to
fight by the side of so gallant a comrade.

As graceful a little speech as we have read in many a
day and, so far as we know, the first the Colonel ever made
in French.

Precisely what was accomplished is yet to be revealed.
" Except for standardization of airplanes," Mr. Lowell
Mellett cables to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, " it was
not made known what decision had been reached at the meet
ings." One proposal of no slight importance, according to
the same authority, was rejected. "Ambassador Makla-
koff, of Russia," Mr. Mellett informs us, " urged the allied

A BENEVOLENT DESPOTISM 17

statesmen to make a restatement of war aims " and " Colo
nel House joined with Maklakoff in this request," having
already " impressed upon all leaders President Wilson's
view that a joint, frank and full statement of exactly what
the Allies are fighting for would be a ' military measure '
of supreme importance," but the Council adhered strictly
to the limitation fixed by Secretary Lansing and " post
poned the war aims discussion," — a fortunate decision, to
our mind, in view of the fact that since then the President
himself has outlined the great purposes of the war so much
better than the Council could possibly have done that com
parison would be invidious.

Mr. Crosby, Secretary McAdoo's most capable assistant,
we understand, is to remain in London, as he should, and
as we wish Mr. Bainbridge Colby, the most observant and
imaginative member of the Mission might; but the others
will soon be home and we shall be glad to hear what they
have to say to our suspicion of last month that our Allies
propose to accept our essential aid without according us
directive participation — a programme which, we declare
flatly, as the Jacksonian Democrat of Tennessee remarked
of infant damnation, " the people won't stand for."

Pending their arrival, it is but fair to assume that, unless
it should transpire that Colonel House, while in London,
secretly connived at Lord Lansdowne's hurling of a monkey
wrench into the political machinery at a most inopportune
moment, no harm can result from the pilgrimage; and, of
course, much good may ensue. Let us hope so.

Meanwhile, may not this beginning of our most crucial
year be regarded as a fitting time to revive the famous shib
boleth of the Democratic text-book of 1914:

" War in the East," — our war now.

ff Peace in the West'9 — Mexico notwithstanding.

" Thank God for Wilson" — with his Scotch-Irish, Amer
ican Presbyterian heel rooted in the ground.

Make it so!

ARE WE TO HAVE A BENEVOLENT
DESPOTISM?

THE question may be asked in all seriousness : Are we,
as a by-product of the war, to have a benevolent despotism?

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 746 2

18 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

There is a familiar saying, that that is the best possible form
of government ; the truth of which we do not concede, though
we cite it for reminder's sake. There is also a strong tradi
tion in favor of such a system in war, as Macaulay makes the
Elder Consul, " an aged man and wise," remind the Con
script Fathers; and it is upon that principle that we have
invested the President, and under and through him various
Boards and Commissioners, with extraordinary and auto
cratic powers, and that we have acquiesced in and even
applauded such dictatorial acts as never before would have
been tolerated for a moment. In the Civil War the Na
tional Government was charged — chiefly by Copperheads,
the People's Council and Pacifists of that time — with vio
lating the constitutional rights of the people. But its most
extreme measures were mild and trifling compared with what
is now being done every day without demur or comment —
save from a few Bolshevik Pacifists, the Copperheads of this
time. In the crucial days of John Adams's administration,
Alien and Sedition laws were enacted which then were, and
ever since have been, regarded as odiously oppressive and
dangerous to liberty. Yet they were innocuous by the
side of what is now in force; to which all the people, save the
Bolsheviki, say, Amen!

Now, we are not protesting against these things. On
the contrary, we heartily approve them. We invoke the
strictest enforcement of these laws, strenuous as they are;
and if we were to offer any criticism it would probably be,
that some of the laws are not strenuous enough, and that
they were not enacted, or being enacted were not enforced,
as promptly and as unsparingly as they should have been.
We try to be cool and self -restrained, but we confess that it
filled us with indignation to see enemy aliens left free to
prowl at will around our docks and shipping and munitions
plants and elsewhere, and then to hear of important informa
tion being betrayed to the enemy, and of fires on ships and
explosions in factories. " A little more grape, Captain
Bragg! " said a General who knew his business, at a decisive
moment. A little " shooting at sunrise " would have rid us
of a few German spies, and would have saved many good
American lives.

We are not discussing, however, the ^propriety of dicta
torial war measures. The question of interest, which it is by
no means too early even now to raise, is the extent to which

A BENEVOLENT DESPOTISM 19

the system thus established in war will be retained and per
petuated after the return of peace. We do not mean that
there is any danger of its arbitrary and forcible retention,
its imposition upon the people against their will. That is
simply unthinkable. But will the results of this war-time
dictatorship be so beneficient, and so manifestly applicable
to times of peace, that the nation will desire its retention?
Frankly, while we wish for the greatest possible success and
beneficence of the war measures, as war measures, we most
earnestly hope that there will be no desire, and no occasion
for a desire, for their retention after the war. But we serve
notice here and now that it rests with the American people to
determine whether that shall be the case or not, and that if
they do not want both a desire and a demand for the " benevo
lent despotism " to arise, they had better bestir themselves to
head off such a calamity.

The whole question turns upon the point of efficiency.
We have learned, or we are learning quite rapidly, the need
of such efficiency as before the war we never so much as
dreamed of. We are attaining such efficiency, and are going
to attain it in a very high degree. And having attained it,
we shall, let u$ devoutly trust, insist upon retaining it. But
how? Must it be kept by the same methods by which it was
won? If the dictatorship teaches us efficiency, must we retain
the teacher in order to keep up the practice of the lesson?

Here is an example: Before the war we did a tre
mendous lot of talking about rehabilitation of the American
commercial marine, but we did very little actual rehabili
tating. The war — our entry into it — brought things to a
crisis, and the . Government jumped in as the autocrat, dic
tator, despot, of the shipping world. The result is that our
commercial marine is being rehabilitated by the proverbial
leaps and bounds, and at the end of the war may be the big
gest in the world. Now, in order to maintain that marine,
will it be necessary for the Government to continue in owner
ship and control, or will private enterprise prove sufficient to
keep it going at the standard which the Government shall
have set?

Another case: The railroads. They have been so monk
eyed with and whipsawed that we don't wonder at their not
having exhibited a super-millennial degree of perfection;
though in the circumstances we think that they have done
amazingly well. But, see : A little while ago, for the sup-

20 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

positious sake of efficiency, the Government insisted upon
" unscrambling " them. All " pools " and combinations were
broken up. Systems were dissolved. No two roads within
a hundred and eighty degrees of latitude or longitude of each
other were permitted to be under the same management or
to be managed in concert. The result was — well, never
mind. But, anyway, under the stress of war and its require
ments of the most efficient transportation, the Government
was quickly led to contemplate the very extensive
" scrambling " of the roads, and the "pooling " of them on a
scale never before attempted by even the most daring
" Napoleon of Finance." Of course, the Government pur
posed itself to be the boss of the " pool." Now, suppose that
the pooling of the railroads proves to be undeniably in
the interest of efficiency and economy, as we have no doubt
it will, what next? After the war, are we going back to
the old futile methods and inefficiency? If not, and we don't
think we are, how will the war-time efficiency be maintained?
By perpetuating the Government-controlled pool? Or by
letting private management maintain a rational degree of
pooling?

We might raise similar questions concerning other mat
ters — the control of the wheat market, food conservation, the
coal supply, and what not. The Government is taking hold
of them all, like a benevolent despot, for our good. More
power to it ! What we want now is to win this war, no matter
how many pet theories of political economy are laid upon
the shelf. It is to be hoped that the people will not only
acquiesce in but also will loyally and energetically co-operate
in the new system, until that end is gained. But it is with
equal earnestness to be hoped that both Government and
people will regard these extraordinary measures as war meas
ures, which ought to lapse with the war and to be replaced
with a private control which will be just as honest, just as
economical and just as efficient as that of the Government.
We should regard it as stultifying to say that that is impos
sible. We do not believe that there is any such virtue in a
name or a system as to make it possible for men associated in
a " government " to do things which it is impossible for men
associated in " business " to do.

Two things are necessary to relieve us of the necessity of
continuing a benevolent despotism. One is, for business men
to recognize, to accept and to practice the lessons which the

RODIN 21

Government is presenting to them. They must act upon the
principle that whatever the Government can do, they can do;
and that in the new era which we are entering it is necessary
for them to do it, if they are to remain in business at all. The
other is, for the Government to give them a fair chance to do
this. It would be intolerable for the Government to handicap
any industry with vexatious conditions until its efficiency was
badly impaired, and then take control of it itself and, by
abolishing those vexatious conditions, make easy its restora
tion to efficiency, and then make that a pretext for perpetu
ating its control. Men and corporations must have the same
chance to succeed that the Government has ; the same freedom
from hampering and oppressive conditions.

We confess to cherishing old-fashioned individualistic
notions to so great a degree that we prefer a Government
which confines itself to governing, to one which undertakes
to run all the businesses of the land. It is, in our view, the
province of the Government to see to it that businesses are
conducted honestly, and in a way compatible with good
morals and the public welfare. Within such limits and under
such control, business is best left to private initiative. But
the Government must set bounds and fix rules within which
business success will be possible, and business men must learn
that success is possible within those bounds. It will be one of
the greatest of all the by-products of the war to have both
those lessons so fully learned that with the return of peace we
shall return from Government administration to private man
agement without the slightest impairment of efficiency or in
tegrity. It can be done, of course.

RODIN

So dizzying is the speed with which new conceptions
in art, new aesthetic movements, succeed each other in our
febrile age, that he who today makes kindling-wood of the
sacrosanct structure of tradition, tomorrow finds himself
sorrowfully collecting the disrupted timbers of his own
once revolutionary edifice, whilst the younger generation
contemptuously turns its back upon him as a mere archi
tect of reaction. Thus today the young lions of art dismiss
Claude Monet, that once distrusted iconoclast, as what our
French allies call " old hat " ; even among the Ladies' Art-
Study Clubs of Ohio and Nebraska, Monet is doubtless

22 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

considered as tame and academic as Gerome or Bouguereau.
Yet many of us who carry a walking-stick for adornment
rather than support can remember when Monet was an
" issue." Where, too, are the " Wagnerites " of the later
eighties, now that Gotterdammerung is fed to school-girls
along with Little Women and a subscription to St. Nicholas?
And today we are witnessing the easy assimilation of those
once formidable Bolsheviki of contemporary letters, the
Vers-librists, and their kindred in the domains of music and
painting and sculpture, the fire-eating Futurists. As for
Richard Strauss and his once blood-chilling Zarathustra and
Heldenleben and Elektra — why, they have long since been
taken to our bosoms along with Papa Haydn and Mozart,
and tomorrow will be arranged for the farm-house phono
graph, where they will contribute to the simple bucolic joys
already enlarged by gasoline and neighborly telephone
gossip.

It need not, therefore, surprise us to know that before
his death Auguste Rodin had come to be looked upon with
tolerance by the young radicals of contemporary sculpture
as antiquated, conventional, academic. Yet in his own day
of dawning glory, how splendid an apparition was Rodin, as3
in the early years of this century, his audacious and per
turbing genius broke upon the art-world of Europe and
America !

When, in 1895, a monument of Victor Hugo was ordered
from Rodin for the Pantheon, and Rodin responded with his
great statue of the poet, seated, nude, on a rock under the
partially concealing folds of a cloak, what an uproar arose!
The administrative staff of the Department of Fine Arts
were unspeakably shocked. They had expected, as Judith
Cladel relates in her sympathetic Life of the sculptor, a
solemn and respectable Victor Hugo in the frock-coat of
an Academician. Why this semi-naked parody of a revered
national figure? But today the once outrageous statue
stands in the garden of the Palais Royal, and students and
art-lovers make pious pilgrimages from afar to look upon
it. And then, soon after, came the furious war over the
amazing Balzac. It became a " case " — the affaire de Bal
zac. For months the cafe-concerts and music-halls spilled
their gutter wit upon the " scandalous " statue and its maker;
peddlers sold ribald plaster replicas of it, caricaturing the
strange brooding figure, cloaked in mysterious majesty, as

RODIN 23

a seal or a heap of snow. Today this work of profound
and intrepid genius is acclaimed as one of the supreme pro
jections of the creative imagination.

Two years after the disclosure of the Balzac to the hor
rified public of Paris, Rodin's show at the Exposition of
1900 initiated the world-wide recognition that came to him
swiftly thenceforth, and for more than a decade he knew
what it was to be a Personage. He died last month one
of the towering spiritual figures of his time, and the greatest
sculptor since Michelangelo. He was not, of course, the
isolated revolutionist that casual commentators have assumed
him to be. He came of a long line of sculptors who had
endeavored to relate their work more intimately to human
life and emotion, who sought to make bronze and marble
more richly expressive. Rodin owed much to Puget, Fal
conet, Rude, Barye, Carpeaux. He has been uncritically
regarded as a wondrous " sport " (in the botanical sense) ;
but he was far from that. He was the result of a natural
and inevitable progression, an inspired son of his time. He
was one of the stormy romanticists of the last century. Born
a generation later than Wagner, he had much of the ex-
pressional intensity of that Promethean exponent of the
romantic impulse. And he had Wagner's range, as well as
his intensity, of expression. He could swing largely and
easily from the violence and terror of the tremendous Gate
of Hell to the lyric sweetness of Spring and Adolescence.
His chief contribution to the art of sculpture was that he
made it almost articulate. He conferred upon it not only
an added eloquence, but a new kind of eloquence. He made
it sing and rhapsodize and lament: he made it canorous, an
instrument of lyric and tragical speech. He is as intimately
akin to Wagner and Schubert, Blake and Rossetti and
Whitman, as he is to Donatello and Michelangelo. He was
a simple and sincere attendant upon the secret ways of
Nature, a life-long disciple of classic art; yet he was
able to exhibit to his time its restless, passionate soul. He
is still (despite the supercilious Futurists) as modern as
tomorrow's sunrise, and as immortal, probably, as sorrow
and beauty.

24 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

JERUSALEM THE GOLDEN

Jerusalem the golden,

With milk and honey blest,
Beneath thy contemplation

Sink heart and voice opprest.
I know not, oh, I know not

What joys await us there,
What radiancy of glory,

What bliss beyond compare.

They stand, those halls of Sion,

All jubilant with song,
And bright with many an Angel

And all the Martyr throng;
The Prince is ever in them,

The daylight is serene,
The pastures of the blessed

Are deck'd in glorious sheen.

There is the throng of David ;

And there, from care released,
The shout of them that triumph,

The song of them that feast;
And they, who with their Leader

Have conquer'd in the fight,
For ever and for ever

Are clad in robes of white.

O sweet and blessed country,

The home of God's elect!
O sweet and blessed country

That eager hearts expect !
Jesu, in mercy bring us

To that dear land of rest ;
Who art, with God the Father

And Spirit, ever Blest. Amen.

A ROUMANIAN DIARY

BY LADY KENNARD

[The following extracts from Lady Kennard's diary and letters which
are to be published shortly in book form in this country present a
vivid picture of Roumania's entrance into and participation in the war.
Lady Kennard is the daughter of the British Minister to Roumania.]

August, 1916. — War is really coming. Our street to
day looks quite martial; there is a remount office at the end
of it, and streams of men go in and out there all the time.
We have been warned that all the telegraph wires to Aus
tria-Hungary will be cut tomorrow. Of this the enemy
envoys, apparently, know nothing. There is to be a Crown
Council tomorrow night to deal with final private affairs,
though it is hoped that the Germans will regard it as the
terrified result of a haughty ultimatum which they sent
Roumania this week. The attack is planned for tomorrow.
Things are getting exciting, but one still hesitates to credit
that the moment has come at last.

It is said that our first taste of warfare will be an aerial
bombardment. I have ordered water to be kept in all the
bathtubs from today forward, and am having a tap connec
tion provided between the garden hose and the pantry. All
the blankets are piled in the front hall. Perhaps in this
manner we can ensure a slight protection against fire.

The Roumanians are not over-confident. In fact, they
don't expect to begin by winning. They say there will be
reverses, losses near the Danube towns; this because the
Russians have not yet arrived and may come rather late.

Later. — Hurrah! the die is cast. All the telephone wires
have been cut, the enemy envoys are to be packed off this
evening, and mobilization for active service begins at mid
night. We have already been declared " under martial
law." War will be declared in Vienna, a little bit late, by
the Roumanian minister. I met the German minister here

26 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

walking towards his Legation this morning, and wanted to
make a face at him. That is the way one feels.

Later. — Well! the passes are half taken, wounded are
coming in, also prisoners. It is really war, and I am really
in it!!!

Bucarest is quite calm. Orders have come round to ex
tinguish all the lights in view of the Zeppelin raids which
have actually begun. I had only one little green light burn
ing in my house last night when the first one was signalled,
and the police came and told me to put it out. I was so
snubbed that I did not attempt a candle, and sat through
the raid in the dark.

All the church bells rang wildly when the signal came
through, and the guns were infernal, popping like mad. I
counted twelve searchlights and tried to believe in the actu
ality of the happening, but honestly, if I had not hurt myself
by bumping into a tin trunk in the dark, I should feel today
as if I had dreamt the whole thing. One thing, however,
struck me forcibly, and will remain as a humorous recollec
tion until I die: in this quiet town, lying peacefully under
a starlit heaven with no sound of traffic to spoil the silence,
the sound that deafened us was not the shooting, but the
dogs ! !

September, 1916. — All is still safe and quiet; so far we
have not even had food difficulties. Zepps crossed the Dan
ube last night and were signalled here, but there was too
much wind for them, presumably, for they never arrived.

I have fallen into regular hospital routine, and have
been given charge of one of the pavilions into which our
own institution is divided.

Everybody is in the highest spirits; the Roumanian ad
vance is almost brilliant, and one can hardly credit the
communiques that come in, they are so splendid.

Later. — It has been a wild twenty- four hours! Today,
at three o'clock on a sunny afternoon, I drove back to my
hospital. In the open market-place, which is the half-way
house, I noticed all the people looking up and gesticulating,
and then for half an hour I was really in the war, for there
were six Taubes overhead all dropping bombs.

As we neared the hospital shrapnel began to fall. The
bombs, of course, fell all round. I picked up one man
wounded and unconscious and took him on with me in the
car. A woman was killed at the gate of the hospital and

A ROUMANIAN DIARY 27

one man died on the doorstep. There are barracks just
near by, and all the soldiers got out of hand and fired their
rifles madly in all directions. Two men wounded by their
own comrades were carried in to us afterwards. We set
tled down to work, and had three operations between four
and sevenv Just as we were preparing to go home stretchers
began to come in from different parts of the town where
bombs had fallen. I wired home not to expect me till they
saw me, and we worked on till 9 :30, when all the operations
were over. The wounded were all over the town, and all
the other hospitals filled up too. The casualties were thirty
dead and over a hundred wounded, for the streets were
crowded when the Taubes came. The beasts flew round and
round, thus hardly a quarter of the town escaped. All our
airmen had gone to the front. I suspect spies of having
informed the enemy; there was nothing to stop them and
they did just what they liked. They flew very, very low,
and I saw the pilot's face in one quite plainly as he turned.
I got home to find that five large pieces of shrapnel had
fallen in the garden. Apparently the confusion in the town
whilst the actual raid was going on was terrific. The troops
lost their heads and fired quite aimlessly, killing men and
women before they could be stopped.

One couldn't be excited in the hospital, there was no
time. If a doctor is cutting off things and calls out ff pause-
ment " or " aquce lacta " like a pistol-shot at you, you some
how find it even if you don't know what it is. One just
works without the faintest understanding of what one is
doing. After it was all over we collapsed, and sat in the
model hospital kitchen with a petrol cooking-lamp for our
only light (the electric light had been turned off at the main
and we operated by candle illumination only), and drank
hot tea and Zwicka and tried to recover. . . .

On the way home I drove past a house where live some
friends of mine. They had a most wonderful escape in the
night; fortunately all were alive, no one knows why. Three
bombs must have hit their house, which was all dropping
to bits, and all the windows were blown into the rooms, and
one wooden bed looked like a sort of fancy pincushion as a
result. Every single thing except the four people who lived
there were shattered, a huge hole gaped in each bedroom,
and there were apertures in the walls made by bits of the
pavement forced in from outside.

28 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

It had ceased to be surprising this afternoon when those
devils flew back to us again just after we had got to the
hospital after lunch and were well started on an operation!
But this time we nearly had a panic with the wounded. I
stayed on in the ward with the helpless cases, for they said:
" If you will stay with us, we are not afraid." The lightly
wounded were sent to the cellar.

As I write it is about 6:30, and, according to the time
the Taubes take to reload, they should be back by seven.
I worked out the ethics of one's feelings towards them today
at lunch and came to the conclusion that : ( 1 ) if one is killed
one does not mind; (2) if one is wounded one only minds
for a time; and (3) if one is neither one minds less. But
something from outside should be done to help us, for this
has become a bombarded town and is defenceless. Our own
aeroplanes are needed at the front, but some French avia
tors are expected today, which will make us feel a little
safer. The hospital, standing as it does in the center of
a military quarter, is an objective for the raids, and I must
honestly confess that I don't like going back there a bit.
But we now have a dozen really serious cases which require
hard nursing, and one knows that if one did not go perhaps
no one else would. . . .

It is all so wonderful to me! To see the big muscles
cut away and through, to see a horrible wound grow daily
less painful instead of a life lost through gangrene. A man
pumping blood three days ago from a main artery is today
eating heartily and getting well. Contrary to all existing
regulations, I have procured permission to give hot tea and
a cigarette after the operations when the men ask for it
themselves and no active injury can result. It saves their
morale and quiets their nerves. They have the wonderful
recuperative power of undeveloped nervous systems, and
many can stand almost anything without anaesthetics.

Curious! A month ago I felt faint when I saw blood
or smelt a nasty smell. . . .

Later. — I went round to the hospital to find that a pa
tient had been killed in his bed in pavilion number three.
The men there are clamoring to be moved, and if this sort
of thing goes on the whole place will have to be evacuated,
though there is no alternative site where greater safety can
be provided. But a panic would be fatal. It would spread
to the town and bring about a rush for the trains.

A ROUMANIAN DIARY 29

October, 1916. — I have not had the heart to keep this
diary for the last few weeks, the situation has so completely
changed. Our air-raid excitements (which, by the way, have
completely stopped) seem to have faded into absolute insig
nificance and into a very distant past when one still had a
sense of humor.

But it was all too true. The Germans were just — wait
ing. Waiting their own time, and that time came. We
hardly know ourselves what has happened or how far and
fast our army has retreated, but we know that things are
very serious from the complete absence of reliable news.

We are told that French and British officers are coming.
They may save us yet, but they must come soon. Some of
the Roumanians were splendid. These are the peasant sons
of peasant warriors who fought and won through in the days
when war was war, not massacre. They are uncivilized
enough to remember the fighting science taught them in
folk-songs: "Strike — strike hard!"

The arrival of a French command may still save the
capital, but one doubts it, for the passes are obviously fall
ing with incredible rapidity, and the wounded are coming
in in hundreds.

We now have thirty-five cases in each of our wards,
planned to hold fifteen. They are packed like herrings,
poor wretches, and lying two in a bed. We keep one room
for gangrene cases; but what is one room? And there is no
real operating-hall. Still one does the best one can. And
the doctor is a hero. ...

We all had champagne tonight for dinner. Stocks are
low, but if the Germans are really invading us — well, we
certainly don't intend to leave anything worth having. We
had a great discussion as to the rival merits of flight in a
possible train or in our own visible motor. And we voted
against the motor, for we shall have two hundred miles at
least to travel, and the motor is weak. It is possible that
spies may blow up the only railway line when the last mo
ment comes. A Roumanian general came to tea and said:
"We shall leave by night." I said: "Where to?" He
answered: "God knows!" — which was encouraging!

We are assured that if the army can hold the remaining
passes for a fortnight, we shall be all right, for by that
time Russian reinforcements will have arrived, also the
French officers. But then we are told such a lot— that the

80 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Germans are already here, for instance. Anyway, the net
result of this scare is quite unnecessary discomfort. If I
pack as I am urged to do, why, then I want to start. To
pack and stay is silly.

At present preparations are in full swing to expedite
us in two days' time, at dead of night, in a darkened train,
so as to fool German aeroplanes, who are certain to follow
the train and bomb it. The banks are packing, and, as far
as I can judge, that train will contain seething crowds of
humans, innumerable tea-baskets, and millions of money,
besides the Government officials. They are now planning
to pick us up in a round of motor-lorry loads, luggage
included, at 1 A. M. It will be a sort of modern Noah's
Ark. If the Germans succeed in cutting the only railway
line, we shall have to run their bombardment at Constanza
and go off in a Russian man-of-war to Odessa. Whatever
transpires, we shall not know until we have passed Ploesti
where we are going; we start "destination unknown" — if
we start. . . .

Later. — The news is bad again, and a second fiat has
gone forth : we are to be deprived of our luggage, as evacua
tion is really imminent.

I have never spent an odder day. We packed jam and
sugar and all available soap into every spare corner. We
all frankly forgot our lunch until past two and then found
nothing in the house, so went without. We were told that
we had twelve hours to finish up in and that the boxes would
be called for at midnight. Of all the many terrible pack
ings that I have done on Eastern caravan journeys, this has
been infinitely the worst. I know that I will wish that I
had sent none of the things which now seem indispensable
and that I will need all which I left behind. I have racked
my brains to think of a place for three precious bottles of
champagne, and have decided to stow them in a hold-all
with the family eiderdowns. The linen-trunk is stuffed with
jam — jam that came from England, and possibly the last
that I shall ever eat. I get occasional attacks of maudlin
sentiment over small possessions which I am obliged to leave ;
on the other hand, am abandoning articles of considerable
value without a qualm. Not a bed has been made in the
whole house, and, once the luggage has gone, we shall have
to camp out on sofas.

I went to the kitchen to try and get a little tea, and

A ROUMANIAN DIARY 31

when I came back found a large party of friends with their
servants, luggage and children in the drawing-room, assert
ing cheerfully that they had come as they thought " it would
be nicer for us all to go together." I'm in the state of
mind where I would say " Yes " to anything until the mo
ment arrived when I said " NO," then, if the person argued,
I would shoot it — I mean her — him. All the luggage is
stacked in the drawing-room — train luggage, house luggage,
friends' luggage, servants' luggage. It is pandemonium.

Now I am lying down waiting for tea. Every bone in
my body, every nerve in my mind aches with excitement.
Of the military situation the English papers could tell us
more than we know ourselves, for we hear not one blessed
thing. Except that the luggage goes tonight and we tomor
row — if only we knew where to!!

Besides, the only certain thing is that the luggage goes
tonight. For all we know the plans may have changed by
tomorrow, and we shall be sitting here without one single
practical belonging in the world.

November, 1916. — Half my prophecy came true: we are
still sitting quite solidly in Bucarest. Luckily, however, our
luggage never left us, for the panic quieted with incred
ible rapidity and we were told that all danger was over.
The Germans were repulsed at the frontier during the days
that we got no news and have not advanced since. The
French General Staff has arrived and installed itself in a
manner which gives us confidence most disproportionate to
the small amount which reason tells us that it is humanly
capable of accomplishing. A British aviator flew over in
his aeroplane from Salonika, and this gives us the cheerful
feeling that we are in touch with our own army. This
despite the fact that a conquered Serbia lies between. The
only direct consequence of the panic is that innumerable
people seem to be lost, and the general mix-up is indescrib
able. I myself simply cannot understand why the Germans
are not already here.

The youngest son of the Queen has died after terrible
suffering. At such a moment it seems almost more than
a woman should be asked to bear. Nevertheless his mother
still works at the hospitals, and her soldiers love to see her.

Later. — The news is bad again, and the advancing Ger
mans are reported to be in the plains and well over the
Austrian frontier. Up to the present moment there are no

32 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

signs of panic, and it is possible now that there will not be
another even if we do have to leave in a hurry. For the
population has not only learnt a lesson during the first scare,
but also it has had time to get used to the idea that the
loss of a capital does not necessarily mean the loss of a
country. I fancy that a great proportion of the society
people who have nothing to do with the Court or with the
Government will not attempt to leave the capital even if
the Germans arrive. What would be the object? They are
non-combatants and can do the Germans no possible harm,
and it will serve the Roumanian cause better to leave every
facility for those who have to go and " carry on " in what
ever place they may finally land in, which place will be the
less overcrowded for each individual who stays behind.

The warning has once again gone round to all who will
have to leave when the moment comes for them to hold them
selves in readiness for an immediate start, and I believe that,
at the slightest further enemy advance, we shall really be
off at last. The Queen has sent her children to the country,
where they are supposed to be out of the immediate danger
of air raids. She herself intends to remain here until the
last minute, and is wonderfully plucky and calm.

Later. — Quite an excitement!!! All the whistles are
blowing madly and all the bells are ringing. This heralds
another big raid. I wonder if it will really come off; we
have not had a serious one for weeks, and one has begun
fa mistrust all these warnings which so often culminate in
nothing.

Yes, here they come. The big new guns do make a noise
compared to the miserable little pops we used to hear. Blast
as I have grown, this is unusually thrilling, and I am going
out to see what is happening.

Later. — Well, that was the worst attack we have ever
had. It lasted well over an hour. Bombs fell near the Bank
and the Post Office; and, of course, in the vicinity of every
hospital. The town dies away nowadays at the first alarm,
the streets empty as if by magic, consequently few people
are killed. Apparently thirteen bombs exploded in the gar
den of the country house where the Royal children were
sent last week, but nobody was hurt, although the house
was hit. Even the fires which started were safely extin
guished. It must have been a narrow escape, and proves
how well informed are the Germans of all current events.

A ROUMANIAN DIARY 33

Now that the excitement is over, we have other and more
important things to think about, for the order has come to
start, and to start as soon as possible, for Jassy.

December, 1916, JASSY. — Well, we have reached Jassy,
and have not yet recovered from the surprise of having actu
ally got somewhere and being able to sit down.

This country town which has so suddenly been called
upon to turn into a capital is by no means fitted for the
part. Situated as it is close to the big oil-fields, it was
already overcrowded before the war broke out, and the build
ers have been trying vainly for the last two years to keep
pace with the steadily growing importance of the place. It
is exactly like seeing a country bumpkin dressed up in eve
ning clothes as one finds them parodied on the musical com
edy stage. Stone palaces built in modern Russian style brush
the mud walls of peasant huts. The streets straggle about
without aim or object and lead nowhere; there are hardly
any shops. There is, or rather was, one restaurant near the
station. I say was, because there will soon be nothing left
of it. People literally besiege its doors, and the walls shake
from the influx of the crowd.

I believe that the Court got here this morning, but has
not been seen. One presumes that the Royal Family at
least will be given a roof to cover it. I tremble to think
what would have happened to us had not these dear people
taken pity on our plight. Dozens of our fellow-travelers
are still wandering forlornly about in a despairing search
for rooms. Our arrival was totally unexpected, as Jassy
had been without news from the capital for two days. No
one knows what is happening in Bucarest, or how near the
Germans are, or whether those left behind will still have
time to get away.

I possess two boxes of English soap, which have to be
guarded as if they contained the Crown Jewels. We allow
ourselves a soap wash once a day, and even then the cake
dwindles visibly. We have not had a bath since we started,
and see no prospect of ever having another. The men de
cided to visit the public baths which exist, it appears, in the
town, but one of the newly arrived English doctors flew
round on a bicycle warning them each in turn not to go
because there was an epidemic of mange amongst the poor
who patronized the establishments. Nice place, Jassy ! And
we have got to live here now until the war is over!

VOL. ccvii. — NO. 746 3 , '•"-**

34 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Later. — The situation, from a state of things chaotic,
but directly traceable, has become completely and abso
lutely obscure. An ominous silence broods over us, not a
telegram has come through for a week, and we are in the
blackest ignorance of everything except Jassy. I have un
packed nothing. For all that we know, the Germans may
be advancing upon us rapidly.

As far as any news is concerned, we hear only the fan
tastic stories told by arriving refugees. And most of them
are disinclined to talk of anything but their own immediate
physical discomfort and fright. The only thing that we
definitely know is that the Germans are in Bucarestl

I had not thought that we could possibly enter into a
new phase of horror, but it was born on Boxing Day, when
the first whispers reached us of the destruction of the oil
fields. Frankly, we had, each and every one of us, com
pletely forgotten the oil! A man, a friend of ours, drove
up in a motor, streaked with grime, weary and dead to the
world. After lunch he started to tell his story, fortified
by a big cigar.

He had been one of a party who went out alone to the
petrol city to destroy. No one would give them help, and
he told us wonderful accounts of the scenes which he had
witnessed. The first step had been to capture every single
mail and boy who knew anything about the petrol plants
and deport them bodily to Moldavia, so that the Germans
should find no skilled workmen to brutalize to their own
profit. And then a few pairs of hands sufficed to crumble
and lay in ashes what many hundreds of brains had worked
to build. First they broke up all the machinery — the how
of the happening is immaterial; the most primitive and bru
tal weapons served them best. Then they poured benzine
from the roofs of factories down their walls and set them
alight, they dug trenches round the vats and started blazing
channels of flame towards the reservoirs. These blew up
each in turn, and soot and fumes made of what had been
sunlight an eternal night where the Fire King went mad.
Town by town saw the destroyers come to let hell loose,
and factory after factory writhed in a death agony of twisted
iron to send jets of poison fumes after the four small flying
motor-cars. The devastation left by a retreating army lay
before them, turmoil of an enemy drunk with success stirred
in the wind-gusts that fed the flames from the south. Twice

A ROUMANIAN DIARY 35

did the destroyers miscalculate the time at their disposal,
and they were badly hurried in one place. The enemy
arrived sooner than was expected, and there was no time to
dig the trenches — just one little match sufficed to start a
burning inundation from unskilfully burst vats. Some one
shouted, " Bun! " just before the explosions began.

The man who told us the story ended each sentence with
the words: " It was the fact that it was daylight — and never
theless dark — which made everything so much worse."

One can hardly credit the fact that those few little men
have so effectually accomplished what they set out to do
that it will be six months before the Germans can squeeze
a drop of petrol from the saturated earth, and yet that is
what they affirm so quietly that one can but accept the state
ment — and be grateful. We are told today that a German
wireless message has been intercepted from Berlin which
sends the conquerors orders to send at once to Germany
all the petrol that they can manage to expedite. And this
has reconciled us to the despair which imagination taught
us to catch in the evening breeze tonight when we motored
back a little way with the teller of the story along the road
that he had traveled.

It is part of the general contradiction of things that
this destruction of the oil-fields, which is the most impor
tant happening of our corner of the war, should remain the
one which has, locally, at least, made the smallest stir.

Later. — We have suddenly realized today that we have
got back to the frame of mind in which we spent our last
weeks in Bucarest. And this is discouraging. In other
words, we are back in a sort of cul-de-sac which has, never
theless, one small outlet, wofully inadequate, in the shape
of that blessed single line to Russia. According to all the
various contradictory information we get, the Germans are
not going to sit still and are moving forward rapidly.

The only defense that lies between us and them is the
famous Sereth line, which the Roumanians and Russians
alike believe to be impregnable. But one cannot tell if it
is going to hold until it has been tested — and if it is tested
and gives way — why, they will be here. That's all!!

January, 1917. — Letters from England arrived on New
Year's Day, and have done much towards restoring us to a
normal state of British phlegm. I must honestly confess
that these letters, written just at the moment of our worst

36 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

plight when we were flying from Bucarest with all known
things unpleasant, and all things unknown subject for seri
ous dread, seem to show an apparent indifference to our
possible sufferings which has brought acute annoyance to
us. I think that one amongst fifteen newspapers mentioned
Roumania — just that and no more. It made us all rather
angry at first to realize that we must appear so utterly unim
portant, but afterwards we lost ourselves to all actuality
in reading the stories of fighting in France. People at home
are "in a war." Here we can only produce a melee.

The situation grows daily more complicated and there
is every element of trouble. There is some friction between
the Roumanians and the Russians on every possible point,
from fighting policy to military etiquette. The last ques
tion, which has bubbled over, is the one as to which of the
two nationalities is to run the hospitals, the few there are.
The Russians say that, as they have taken over the whole
of the front lines and allowed the Roumanian army to retire
for a well-earned spell of rest, there will be no Roumanian
wounded, and they want all the hospitals emptied of their
Roumanian staffs and turned over, together with all avail
able supplies, to the Russian Red Cross. The Roumanians,
one and all, are naturally wild at the idea and definitely
decline to comply.

Meanwhile we have even been allowed to receive reliable
news from Bucarest. The German administration is appar
ently allowing individuals to leave for Jassy without the
formality of a passport. This is such a surprising fact
that we credit them with all sorts of evil and mysterious
motives for what is probably only an oversight soon to be
rectified. The fact remains that a Roumanian officer arrived
in Jassy today after spending three days in Bucarest wear
ing mufti quite unmolested. Apparently he just got on his
bicycle when he was bored and rode away from the town !

He tells us that the new king is proclaimed and that
all is quiet and well ordered. A small army of pro-Germans
— we have known them well by name and sight for over a
year — met the German General Staff at the gates of the
city, and tendered bouquets. It is hard not to be instantly
furnished with an obvious adjective, but it is only fair to
insist upon the fact that individuals who hold systematically
to one idea and to one party cannot be termed traitors for
the simple reason that the party may not be one's own.

A ROUMANIAN DIARY 37

My doctor arrived from Roman, distant an hour's nor
mal train journey. It took him twelve, hanging on to an
engine together with fifty other men. Some dropped off
quite quietly into the snow-drifts when they grew tired. On
every skyline, he added, and in every valley, they saw horses
with broken legs, left to die, turning and turning in endless
circles of pain, and he heard them screaming despite the
uproar of machinery which drowned most hearing.

In our English hospital there is a man who has had his
foot amputated. He lay pinned under a burning car. A
hatchet was brought by a doctor to a French officer stand
ing near, and the doctor said: " Do it if you can; I have no
instruments and feel paralyzed." The Frenchman did the
thing in the whole horror of the sunlight, whilst the Russian
privates who were his charge took advantage of the oppor
tunity and pillaged private passenger luggage on the train!

Later. — I think that it can be definitely assumed now
that all danger of our being obliged to leave Jassy in the
immediate future is over. Russians and Roumanians alike
are standing on the Sereth, and the Germans do not seem
to be particularly anxious to cross. A little success does
much to restore balance, and we have already voiced the
somewhat ambitious dream of seeing the enemy driven back
in the spring. I ask for only one reward for all that we
are going through, and that to drive down behind them in
my motor! It would be worth anything to go back like
that — into our own house. . . .

But disease is coming, and that was a horror which we
had forgotten. There is a terrible shortage of wood, and,
in the absence of all other material, fire is the only reliable
disinfectant. Lice overrun the hospitals and we are unable
to combat them, for we have no serums and no disinfectants.
Petrol, which might serve our purpose at a pinch, is also
lacking now. The doctors are reduced to vinegar.

March, 1917. — The Russian coup d'etat has come and
the Government here is having some anxious moments. It
is unlikely, however, that anything serious will transpire.
The Royal Family is very popular and is faithfully served
by the administration. All Russians, of course, are in a
ferment, but it is reassuring to notice that they have not
lost sight of the common ideals of the war.

Telegraphic news from America is palpitating, and
brings the end of the wa.r within sight, at any rate, of our

38 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

own generation. Unfortunately everything worth doing
takes an immense amount of time in this world, and one
cannot hope for things to begin to happen for a long time.
It is rather discouraging that the crisis in Russia should
have come to a head at this moment, speaking, naturally,
from our own point of view, which is the only one that
appears, through force of circumstances, important. The
Roumanians and Russians were just learning to stand up to
their three-legged race, and now all the knots have had to
be loosened to give the latter a chance to stretch cramped
knees. We had begun to talk of a big spring offensive,
and now the only thing that is obvious is that waiting will
be our indefinite lot.

Later. — The war situation has come to a complete
standstill: it is hard to believe that anything more can ever
happen here.

Seven hundred thousand Russians are said to be on our
front, who could, undoubtedly, just sweep across the coun
try, driving all before them, and lead us back into Bucarest.
But their very numbers make them a difficult army to equip
and feed. At present they lack munitions, fodder, guns and
railways, so it all looks pretty hopeless, and one can but
be thankful for them as a definite, solid buffer which will
require a lot of moving. There are very few enemy divi
sions in front of them, and we are told that these consist
principally of Turks and Bulgarians. It makes one rather
ill to think how easy complete victory could be and how
unlikely it is.

May, 1917. — We are told that we stand upon the brink
of action. Certain it is that at no time since she entered
the war has Roumania stood to the fight so well prepared
as now. In retrospect, it is wonderful to realize all that
has been accomplished despite inexperience and shortage of
material. The word " starvation " makes us smile nowa
days, for we are almost surfeited by the luxury of supplies
brought by regular transport systems from Russia. Fur
ther, the whole undulating surroundings of Jassy are cloaked
green with growing corn.

It has been interesting to discover what solace can be
found in days of the most anxious uncertainty by contact
with things young and care-free. All the English children
were sent home months ago, and we miss their atmosphere
so horribly that anything small and happy finds welcome

A ROUMANIAN DIARY 39

here. I have noticed that Roumanians who took but the
most cursory interest in a nursery world before they went
to war have become almost ostentatiously parental lately.
The whole aspect of Jassy has lost the impression it used
to give of having been a most ill-chosen picnic site where
it had very lately and copiously rained. We can almost flat
ter ourselves that we live in a flourishing military center.
French blue and gray and English khaki almost predomi
nate about the streets now that the Russian units have moved
into scattered canvas cities.

Needless to say, there is much that still remains to be
done. The army no longer starves for the necessities, such
as ammunition and sanitary supplies, but it hungers for
delicacies and details. These will all come, in time, I sup
pose, just as the other and more immediate requirements
came ; but it would be a tragic mistake to launch forth again
without them. The Roumanians, luckily, realize the danger
of such action, and their leaders are too clever to stumble
into the pitfall of foolhardiness which always lurks for those
who have lately escaped from danger. But the army, as a
whole, is straining to take the offensive, and it is so won
derful that the men should feel thus after all that they
have suffered that it seems almost cruel to tie their hands.
English and French officers alike agree that a capital fight
ing force has grown up, no one quite knows how, out of the
demoralization of the last few months, and it is impossible
to give a sufficiency of credit to the leaders who have built
it up.

June, 1917, — I have been wondering whether any one
would care to read this diary. Roumania is deserving of
notice and appreciation. She has proved herself, and in
the greatest manner which does not savor of ostentation.
All that has been lately accomplished spells silent work and
no small devotion to what has grown in this our century
to be the greatest cause. Strangers who had knowledge and
experience, who came to put machinery in motion, remain
here, it is true. But they stay to work, and are no longer
required to lead. The army trusts its officers, the nation
appreciates its King. And we outsiders feel that we want
to go home and tell the family of Allies that our little
brother Roumania has grown into a man of whom we have
reason to be very proud.

THE FRENCH KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM

BY ALFRED EMERSON

No less than three spokesmen of high position in and
under the British Government have abandoned the reserve
which combatant nations commonly and rightly maintain
about their intended disposals of their conquests as long as
a fight is on, with reference to Palestine. In the words of
the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Balfour, " the Government
views with favor the establishment of Palestine as a national
home for the Jewish people, and will use its best efforts for
the facilitation of this object." Now, the British Govern
ment is not given to quixotic fireworks. It means what it
says. And it must have given the amplest consideration to
the problem of what it ought to do, could do and would do,
why, how, where and when, with the support of its own
people and of its Allies reasonably assured, before reaching
this momentous decision. It must be extraordinarily con
fident not only of the complete victory of its armed forces
in that quarter of the world, but of an early triumph in
the heart of Judea, to publish its purpose thus broadcast
when its troops only stood at the gates of Palestine.

At this writing the advance of a British army from
Egypt across the repellent Sinai peninsula, and its succes
sive occupations of Gaza, Ascalon and Joppa have brought
General Allenby's outposts to within four miles of Jerusa
lem, where they have halted to bring up their reinforcements
and a siege-train. Already the press mouthpieces of the
German Government are laying all the stress they can on
the poor fortification of Jerusalem, and upon its very insig
nificant strategic and economic value. But even they cannot
gainsay the prodigious retentissement that England's prob-

THE FRENCH KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM 41

able early seizure of the Holy City is bound to have in the
Moslem, Jewish and Christian world, whether a Christian
Te Deum be sung in the mosque of Omar on Christmas
Day, 1917, or not. Certainly the native population of Judea
and Syria, Arab, Syrian, Greek, Jew and Roman Catholic,
has nothing but the harshest oppression to thank its Ottoman
rulers and their German advisers for, and will quickly learn
to regard the surrender of county by county to the Franks
as a happy deliverance.

Altogether, the present moment would be a unique one
for America to launch a naval and military expedition at
Antioch and the contiguous region of north Syria. Failing
this decisive secondage, England's unaided and fairly rapid
successes in Palestine foreshadow the slower Allied conquest
of all Syria even so, before which no serious campaign across
Anatolia overland can be contemplated after Russia's mili
tary collapse. In any case, the impending fall of Jerusalem
lifts England's two fronts in Asia Minor into sharp promi
nence, and it will inevitably lend much force to the long un
accountably disfavored plan of hitting the enemy hardest
wherever he is the weakest. In other words, their victory at
Jerusalem may persuade the western nations to conduct
their offensives in eastern Europe and in Asia Minor in
earnest. Their contrary course heretofore is responsible for
their worst collective disasters both east and west.

We are widely familiar with the story and the glory of
Solomon's capital in ancient times ; not so with its fortunes
under the Roman Empires West and East, under its Moslem
caliphs and sultans, and under their western adversaries the
Crusaders. My discussion of the last phase of its medieval
history is suggested by the reflection that no chapter of the
Holy Land's experience is fraught with better lessons for
public men observing its wretched present and solicitous for
its happier future to remember than Europe's former great
effort to embody Syria in the family of Christendom.

The great dream of the Crusaders found its earthly
embodiment in the Christian principalities of the Near East.
And it remains a live tradition to this day on account of
them.

Have a Venetian boatman sail you to the Armenian
island monastery of San Lazzaro in the lagoon, and a poly
glot monk will show you the sword of Leo V de Lusignan,
" our last king," among its historic relics. And likely enough

42 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

a flash of his dark eyes, under their quiet lids, will betray
his undying hope that Armenia shall yet obey a king of her
own again. Who shall say that living memories play a
weaker part than the pronunciamentos of a Lloyd George
and a Prince Lvoff, to quicken the pulses of the Christian
Orient?

The political ideals of the Levantine Jew and Christian
are retrospective. What does the downtrodden rayah of
Hither Asia know of Westminster and Washington, or of
the Russian Duma? Nothing at all. His thought is for
the yield of his few stony acres and of his sunsmitten olive
orchard. If any other picture haunts his hour of rest at
the unyoking of his dwarfed oxen, it carries a vision of the
splendor of Solomon's court, or some regretful notion of the
age when the ruined shrine on the headland, where his wife
lights a nightly flame to St. Simeon and St. Nicholas, was
undismantled.

Of the First Crusade, most of us remember little more
than Peter the Hermit's magnetic appeals for the rescue of
the Holy Sepulcher and the taking of the cross by the
chivalry of the West, followed by the surrender of Antioch
and Jerusalem to the Latin armies under Godfrey of
Bouillon in 1098-9. Next, we recall Saladin's reconquest
of the Holy City ninety years later, and maybe his trial
of swords with King Richard, to dismiss the topic with some
indefinite notion of the Templars' tussle with a king of
France at Paris, about A. D. 1300. Yet it was surely no
small achievement on the front of the Frankish Crusaders
to establish and organize the principality of Antioch and
two great earldoms of Edessa and Tripoli in Syria all in a
single year, adding a Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem the
next, and to complete this coordinated political edifice about
one century later with two further semi-French kingdoms
of Cyprus and of Lesser Armenia, in the same section of
the Near East.

Gregory VII had made an imaginary appeal for 50,000
Christian knights to deliver the Holy Sepulcher. Urban
II, a French pope, attacked the problem in earnest with the
Council of Clermont in the heart of France, in 1095. The
eloquent monk of Picardy who led a hare-brained vanguard
of inadequate semi-combatants to perish along the roads of
Asia Minor in the spring of 1096, before feudal France
had emerged from " the conversational stage " of arming as

THE FRENCH KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM 43

to war, is a mere incident of the campaign. The king of
France's brother Hugh and Robert of Normandy headed
the real army. Other langue d'oil princes like Baldwin of
Flanders and his brother Godfrey, duke of Lower Lorraine,
had German followers mixed with French. Two Norman
princes of southern Italy, Bohemund and Tancred, crossed
the Adriatic with a corps part Norman and part native
Italian.

Both Latin and Norman knights-errant subscribed to
England's motto, The meek shall inherit the earth; we are
the meek, long before modern spreaders of Britain's empire
made it theirs. And the Crusaders were out to establish
the kingdom of God upon earth, with themselves in the role
of His vice-gerents. The army of the Crusaders reached
Syria 300,000 strong.1 Bohemund was acknowledged heredi
tary prince of Antioch after the fall of that stronghold, and
Baldwin of Flanders ensconced himself Count of Edessa in
the Syrian hinterland ; his territory straddled the Euphrates.
Not to be utterly outshone by these practical northlings,
Raymond of Provence, the gentle mystic, occupied and
maintained a vast earldom of Tripoli, with its seat of gov
ernment fronted on the sea, between the borders of Antioch
and Judea. All this before Jerusalem was even assailed!

The geographical and political advantages of Antioch
indubitably fitted that city to become a seat of empire once
more, far better than Jerusalem. But the glamor that hovers
on Mount Zion drew the ranks of the Crusaders to Canaan
like a pillar of cloud and fire. Siege was laid to the city of
David soon after the reduction of Antioch. The Saracens
defended it fiercely. But Godfrey of Bouillon, that true
Christian knight, stormed its ramparts on July 15th, 1099, at
the head of twenty thousand. Its conquerors waded lanes
of blood that splashed to their horses' knees, to kneel in trans
ports of devotion at the tomb of the Redeemer —

Whose sad face on the cross sees only this,
After the passion of a thousand years.

A Christian successor of King David must now be
crowned in the Mosque of Omar on Mount Zion, the edifice
in which the simple faith of the times hastened to recognize

1 Seven rallies from the west in a century, and other recruits, more than
compensate the subsequent shrinkage of this initial force.

44 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the authentic temple of Solomon. We may catch a glimpse
of its cupola, revamped alia romana, in the Sposalizios of
Perugino and Raphael.

The only valid obstacles to the election of Godfrey were
political. Rome's panacea for the Holy Land was a papal
vice-royalty in the form of a temporal and spiritual
patriarchate. There must be no king where Christ trod.
On the other hand, all the chiefs of the First Crusade
had done homage to the Greek Emperor at Constanti
nople, who wanted no regnum in regno. Under these condi
tions, the casting vote rested with the Frankish barons and
chivalry who were Godfrey's rivals. A species of feudal re
public with a weak overlord was more to their mind than a
compact monarchy; and they got it. Their diet elected God
frey of Lorraine Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher and cap
tain of its armies, with the scantiest other prerogatives and
advantages of presidency. One may cite his wilfully un-
heraldic arms among them: argent, a cross or. Metal on
metal is contrary to the rules of blazonry, so that anyone
noticing this irregular escutcheon was compelled to inquire
who bore it.

Moreover, none of the Defender's vassals owed their fiefs
to his favor. Every first-comer strong enough to seize and
hold one had already helped himself to a county or a barony,
or to a potential manor, during the advance southward.
Thus, the Holy City and its suburbs must perforce be its
ruler's only direct domain, with a refractory commons and
clergy to abridge even that!

Godfrey enjoyed his precarious precedence only one
year. His deathbed indication of his brother Baldwin of
Edessa as the best man to succeed him prevailed, and Bald
win, an ambitious, masterful spirit, was no sooner elected
king instead of Advocate, than he had himself anointed and
claimed the homage of his fellow-princes of Syria! The
notion of heredity, the idea of a monarchy by the grace of
God, and a new title of overlordship from the southern slopes
of Mount Taurus north of Antioch to Mount Sinai and the
Red Sea had already vitiated the original plan of an elective
lord-protectorate. The exception swiftly becomes a rule:
Baldwin II was able to pass the crown of Jerusalem to his
daughter Melisenda, who leaves it to a child of seven sum
mers. William of Tyre writes of this third Baldwin's coro
nation in 1 1 44. how " they had a knight carry him to the

THE FRENCH KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM 45

Temple in his arms because he was little, but would be no
lower than they; the knight was a big man and tall."

The Frankish kingdom remained a loose federation fully
sixty years from its erection in 1100. The crown could not
pass an assize, or coerce a great nobleman, without the sanc
tion of an oligarchical high court composed of four major
and twelve minor vassals.1 The Frankish war-lord was,
however, the real captain of a fighting outpost of Christen
dom, whose very law of being comported no enduring peace
with the infidel. The atabegs of Damascus and Mosul, and
the caliphs of Bagdad and Cairo were little minded to brook
the pretensions of an aggressive United States of the Levant.
Their armies broke into the Holy Land once and again.
Baldwin I added the old Phoenician seaports St. John
d'Acre, Sidon and Beirut to his realm by conquest, and
attempted an invasion of Egypt. King Amaury I con
quered Ascalon; but the County of Edessa went under.
Saladin of Damascus was to overrun the French kingdom
and retake Jerusalem itself in 1187. Sultan Bibars the
Mameluke worsted the Christian army at Gaza with a
slaughter of ten thousand in 1244. One hundred thousand
Christians perished in a massacre at Sidon, quite worthy
of our own century.

What manner of army did king and constable command?

Antioch and Tripoli were bound to support the royal
host, as it was called, by an instant mobilization of one hun
dred knights bannerets each. The County of Edessa, while
it lasted, owed five hundred lances. The noble fiefs of Judea
furnished 577 knights, with their retinues, and its churches
and townspeople had to produce 5,025 sergeants with their
pelotons. Add the voluntary levies of the militant orders of
the Hospital of St. John and of the Temple, whose grand
masters ended by housing up to one thousand seasoned and
well-disciplined troopers in a single fort.2 The Teutonic
Knights, whose Castle Montf ort towers in Galilee like a stone
sentry from the Rhine, were a later development. Recourse
was had also to native and foreign mercenaries, who received
good pay. The native element thus added to the host
includes the Christian populations of Syria, and the admi
rable infantry that could be made of the toil-stout Armenians
of the north-east country. The foreign embraces Greeks of

1 Madelin, La Syrle Franque. Revue des Deux Mondes, March, 1917.
' Rey, Etude sur I'architecture militaire des Croiste. Paris, 1871.

46 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the diaspora, Italian archers, and a motley crew of Euro
pean adventurers. Thus recruited, the united host of the
Holy Sepulcher might reach 40,000 men-at-arms.

If the prestige of the crown remained insufficient after
Amaury's conversion of his oligarchical high court into some
thing like a real parliament, we must lay the fault to the
narrow limits of its direct dominion, to the arid climate and
the spare soil of Palestine. Even within the kingdom, Jeru
salem might reasonably envy sea-faring Tripoli its forests
on Mount Lebanon, and Antioch's signal advantages. For
a sturdier native race and a shrewder breed of conquerors
made the enterprise of state-building a safer gamble in that
quarter than any prince of Jerusalem ever found it, to say
nothing of Antioch's ample area and other resources. Our
modern magicians of empire will do well to remember this.

Did I say shrewder breed? Your Norman is a realist.
There were soap factories at Antioch. So a modern painter
of the historical scenes that our nineteenth century parents
loved would be no arrant falsifier, if he painted a knot of
hard-headed Antiochene monks and squires trading meadows,
horses and cattle over cups of hard cider at a heavy deal
table, under the cross-vaulting of a Gothic cloister, with
nothing but a Californian flora in the yard to betray the
southern latitude of Capharda or of Maira-La Maire. Not
to be outdone by their Norman allies, the Franks were build
ing breweries at Jerusalem. But in the long run the East
gave more than it took. The same Frankish enterprise
established sugar refineries at Tyre, and coaxed golden vin
tages of Cyprus to ripen on shoots brought from Jericho.
We know that the culture of the peach and the apricot, of
the almond, of the lemon-tree, the citrus and the orange, of
the carnation and the garden rose reached Europe by way
of Syria.

The Norman and Frankish junkers and clergy left the
secondary industries and trades to the colonial bourgeoisie
and to the native element. The presence of three bodies of
natives occupying an inferior position, Jews, Moslems and
Christians, and of many varieties of aliens, did much, in
Syria, to soften the antagonisms between the nobles and the
commons. And there was another social bridge. Many men
of low rank fought their way up to knighthood in Palestine,
just as their betters fought and intrigued their advancement
to prouder privileges. Syria and Palestine became, in fact,

THE FRENCH KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM 47

the promised land of medieval Europe, much as portions
of America became the old world's Eldorado four centuries
later.

For the rest, if one might measure a commonwealth's
activity by the conspicuousness and bustle of its trade, in
stead of its raw volume, any medieval center of industry
must have looked livelier than one of our own ports or
factory towns, and infinitely more human. Think of one
hundred galleons dropping anchor at Joppa in a single
day, as compared to one Messageries steamship. What
are twelve twenty-ton freight cars to twelve hundred camels?
The spirit of Ruskin would have revelled in Franco- Syria's
steamless handicrafts. Four thousand looms at Tripoli pro
duced plain, watered and pattern silks. Five hundred Jew
ish families conducted its famous dye-works. Show me the
western dyes that will endure like the yellow and crimson
of a couple of saddle-blankets I once found in an Arab
bazar, and let hang three years on curtain rods, exposed to
fierce afternoon suns, without being able to distinguish any
fade on either side of them.

The rapid passing of religious fanaticism with the rulers
of the Christian East deserves attention. The pogrom
spirit had been rampant enough at first. Peter the Hermit
and the author of the Chanson d'Antioche held a soldier of
the Cross in poor esteem if he was not a glutton for " meat
of Turks." But the sons and nephews of their ogreish
heroes mated with schismatic Greek and Armenian prin
cesses, and some of their grandsons resisted the long dark
lashes of an infidel daughter of Arabia very feebly or not
at all! Presently, too, like all good colony builders from
Rameses the Great to our own War Department, the
Christian princes of the East bethought themselves to enroll
the very natives they came to massacre in their own army,
by creating a turbaned Moslem cavalry and infantry. These
infidels battled for the Cross like tigers on many a hard
field. Worse and worse, Latin princes and knights began
to strut in the flowing muslins and silks of the Orient, wear
ing jewelled scimitars of Damascus steel, aigretted turbans
and turn-up shoes of Cordovan morocco. A coin of Antioch
displays the usual Byzantine bust of Christ with a halo.
. . . Reverse, a bearded prince in flowing Syrian dress,
with the Greek legend The great emir Tankredos! For
all that, the foundations of the new culture remained French,

48 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

not eastern. Tyre has a Gothic cathedral. Extant Gothic
arcades still struggle to frame the old market square at Jeru
salem. Strongholds of western design like Castles Beau
fort and Montreal on the slopes of cedared Lebanon, and
Chateau Blanche- Garde, commanding the roads to Egypt
between Jerusalem and Ascalon, studded Palestine by
hundreds.

The transmission of the Christian thrones of the Levant
in the female line adds a touch of romance to the genealogies
of Outre-Mer.1 King Amaury's two daughters Sibyl and
Isabel were queens of Jerusalem in their own right, and
were able to convey its elective crown to four husbands.
Queen Isabel's daughter Mary, a child of twelve, reigns
alone until at seventeen she weds John of Brienne, who
becomes king of Jerusalem and, later, emperor-regent of
the Roman Empire East. Their daughter Isabel, another
child-queen, bestowed her hand and her sadly impaired king
dom on that picturesque west-easterly dreamer Frederick
II of the Hohenstaufens, King of Sicily and Emperor of
the West. We know by an imperial lip that his kingly
spirit has often walked with Kaiser Wilhelm of the Hohen-
zollerns, beckoning him ever and anon, no doubt, to perform
that fateful pilgrimage of his to Jerusalem.

Frederick's eastern exploit was rather neat for a royal
crusader laboring under the handicap of a papal excommuni
cation: he persuaded the sultan of Egypt to retrocede the
Holy Cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Nazareth to
himself and God and Isabel, planted his feet in shining
armor on Mount Zion, proclaimed Judea a free country, and
returned to Europe. His wife's subjects had the spirit to
declare the Emperor escheat of the crown which he had
lifted from the altar in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
without benefit of clergy, in favor of Alice of Cyprus, whose
great-grandsons John and Henry II de Lusignan will be
the last heirs to both kingdoms.

The dying Latin state of the mainland loses its last foot
hold at Tyre on the 13th of July, A. D. 1291. The only
aggressive Crusaders we shall descry henceforth are the
German Knights of the Sword and of the Teutonic Order,
whose bloody conquest of Slavonic Prussia has brought
Europe unto this last.

1 Mas-Latrie, TrSsor de chronologie, etc. Paris, 1889. Du Cange, Les families
d'Outre-Mer. Paris, 1869. Encycl. Britannica, s. v. Crusades.

THE FRENCH KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM 49

Instead of echoing the lament of Christendom at
Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem city and citadel, one hun
dred years before their definitive surrender to Islam — as
Walter Mapes found words to voice it in his diary of the
smart set's club meetings at the court of King Henry II
of England, promoter of the Third Crusade — let us take
a brave, soldierly look at the world's present stress and
storm, and the way out. For its political problem in the
Near East is going to be the same that confronted the
Crusaders.

Is there to be a criminal slump to that contemptible
pis-aller of helpless diplomats, the status quo ante bellum?
No national rescues, no penalties of folly paid, no recon
struction, no revivals, no births of new freedom, no ventures
in statecraft? There is one heroic, war-transfigured nation
that will endure no such cowardice, thank God! The voice
of twenty empires and republics has already proclaimed the
verdict of history. The sentence on Germany's case, or
rather on its dearth of a case, can safely be left to the justice
and mercy of regenerate France.

The righteous reconstruction of the Crusaders' empire
presents a knottier problem, on account of its badly shuf
fled creeds, languages and nationalities. Let them be un-
shuffled, then. A solution that ignores these vital realities,
or the fearful economic, political and social backwardness
of the whole Levant, after its three and a half to six centuries
of Turkish misrule, can only prove harmful and sterile.

Here the big lesson of history seems to be the lesson
of the Crusader kingdoms: not a formulist liberty that is a
sister-german to anarchy, but a reign of justice; not a sense
less equality, but a liberal coordination of live factors; not
a vaporous, unreal fraternity of the human species male and
female, but a marshalling of clans and creeds; and above
all a vitalization of resources under Occidental tutelage.
Nor is it in vain that all the governments the Orient has
given birth to have worn a feudal or a dynastic color, com
monly both. Egypt under British control is a re-organized
Pharaonic kingdom, and rightly so. You cannot make
republicans of bees. Napoleon, who knew his Orient, would
have dismissed the internationalization of Palestine (a plan
which the Allies are said to have been discussing in deadly
earnest) as rank imbecility.

Otherwise, the fair sorting out on the map of five occu-

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 746 4

50 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

pant nationalities is no desperate enterprise; for any race
will cluster where land, labor, a fair deal and a flag of its
own beckon. Lord Bryce admits in a recent letter that
London has determined to oust the Ottoman tyranny from
Mount Sinai to the slopes of Mount Taurus north of Alex-
andretta. General Murray, the captain of Britain's legions
in Judea, has acknowledged his conversion to the Zionist
idea on geographical grounds. Mr. Lloyd George is not
far from espousing it constructively. Who builds Utopias
with heads of their caliber is no dilettante. East and West
do meet in the Beni-Israel, whose name is legion. The
Hebrews deserve more than a refuge in Palestine. Princess
lolanda of Savoy would make them a pretty queen. I mean
this suggestion seriously. And albeit no larger than Ver
mont and New Hampshire, the storied lands from Sinai to
Hermon are an enviable kingdom, with room for a score
of earldoms. King Solomon himself in all his glory did not
rule Tyre and Sidon.

From this north, a revived kingdom of Syria should per
haps include both Tripoli and inland Antioch, once the chief
city of the eastern world. Let Mohammedan emirs at
Edessa, Aleppo and Horns be persuaded to bow to the
suzerainty of a French house reigning at Antioch, with a
duke of Tripoli. Palmyra the unforgotten, and white
Damascus of the million date-palms, bear a kindred rela
tion to the proposed kingdom of Palestine, where sites like
Tyre and Sidon also fairly prompt not only their costly
material improvement, but their political erection into free
ports and city-republics, those best nurses of civic liberty.

The spacious vilayet of Adana with its mountain rear-
barrier, over against Cyprus, is practically identical with
the Lusignan kingdom of Lesser Armenia. Its restoration
would provide a happy outlet for Armenian enterprise, and
the princely house of Lusignan is not extinct.

Lastly, memories of the Latin rulers who governed the
island for close upon four hundred years carry the tourist's
mind and heart back to Middle Age and Renaissance glories
of Cyprus, wherever he roams on that pearl of the Midland
Sea, from his landfalls at Famagosta and Limasol up to
The Queen's Garden at gusty Buffavento. Wasn't it there
that Desdemona let fall her fated handkerchief? Unless
England forgets her present devotion to the rights of small
nations, it is the destiny of Cyprus to revert to Greece.

THE FRENCH KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM 51

In the matter of federation, the political future of the
Levant ought to be largely modelled on the Swiss and North
American republics, leaving other features of a progressive
regional self-government to be perfected hereafter without
violating the gradualness of natural evolutions everywhere
and always. But it is wholly unnecessary to inflict all the
queer blossoms of our modern democratic statecraft on popu
lations whose ideas still find their more natural expression
in terms of a fairytale.

ALFRED EMERSON.

PROBLEMS OF MILITARY
TRANSPORTATION

BY MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM HARDING CARTER, U. S. A.

WE have stood at the threshold of war for nearly three
years without the nation itself having formulated any very
definite ideas as to what course we would pursue in event
of being drawn into the maelstrom in Europe. This neg
lect is quite pardonable when viewed in the light of our
past history, because up to the present period no American
authority ever contemplated for a moment any conditions
of world war which would draw our troops to the field of
battle in Europe. Our course for three-quarters of a cen
tury has been to attend quite strictly to our own affairs,
relying upon the Monroe doctrine to protect us from foreign
aggression on this continent and upon our common sense,
good will and righteous intention to save us from war upon
any other continent.

The American forces now being prepared for service
in France comprise the regular army, the national guard of
the States, and the drafted men who are to compose the new
national army. The mobilization and movement of all these
forces to their stations for training before embarkation to
the theatre of war in France constitutes a remarkable tribute
to the efficiency of our railway systems, which have never
been run as parts of the military organization, as is the prac
tice in Europe. It is a matter of grave doubt whether Gov
ernment-owned railroads on this continent would have solved
the problems of transportation any better, if as well, as has
been done by the corporations themselves.

Previous to the declaration of war with Germany, and
its announcement by the President, Congress had decided
that the regular army was not large enough to carry on its
duties in time of peace, including the operations which, for

MILITARY TRANSPORTATION 53

the last five or six years, have demanded so large a force
along the Mexican border, and authorized a considerable
increase of the army to be added in five annual increments.
Only one of these had been added when war was declared.
The entire increase was then ordered at once. This reor
ganization of the army, with all its attendant breaking-up
of old organizations and creation of new regiments from
skeleton battalions, has had to go on at the same time that
the national guard was being mobilized in camps in the sev
eral States.

The provisions for the calling out of the drafted army
necessarily took some time. Meanwhile the movement to
assemble the regulars and national guard in convenient
organizations for the preliminary training for foreign ser
vice was begun. The transportation of these troops from
their home stations to the division camps and the transporta
tion of the drafted men to their cantonments, at some of
which as many as 40,000 men are to be quartered, required
different treatment from anything within the recent experi
ence of our railroads in the matter of troop transportation.

It had been recognized early in the summer, after war
was declared, that some more definite and centralized con
trol of railroad systems would be necessary if the troops
and supplies essential to war on the part of ourselves and
the Allies were to be transported without interruption to
their several destinations. In this emergency the railroad
organizations were called into conference and there was
established at Washington a committee with a highly trained
presiding officer to control and direct all the operations of
the railroads in so far as necessary to insure a free move
ment of troops and supplies without congestion in any part
of the great systems.

It is a matter of history that five days after the declara
tion of war against Germany the presidents of the American
railroads met at the national capitol and agreed that during
the war they would subordinate every other interest to
help win the war; that they would eliminate all competi
tive rivalry and merge their interests under the direction of
the American Railway Association's special committee on
national defense.

Since that date the operation of all the railroads of the
country has been under the direct jurisdiction of an execu
tive committee of five, located at Washington. Under that

54 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

committee is a general committee in charge of the details.
For the purpose of cooperating with the War Department,
its territorial or department divisions of the United States
were adopted by the railroads and a committee of railway
officials was appointed for each department.

To every army department headquarters was assigned
an expert in railway operation, with a corps of assistants
placed at railroad centers, on whom rests the responsibility
for the movement by rail of troops, munitions and supplies
as desired by the military authorities. The experience and
efficiency of this railway official, with the authority over all
roads vested in him, proved of inestimable value to the War
Department.

Various periods were set aside for the use of the rail
roads with a view to as little interference as possible with
the regular passenger and freight traffic. The movement
of drafted men of the new national army involved more
men, but the movement of the widely scattered national
guard was a much more difficult problem for the railroads.
The War Department had determined that during the move
ment of the drafted men of the national army there should
be no movement of the national guard. Among the periods
allotted for the use of the railroads that between September
24 and October 1 was designated as available for the move
ment of national guard organizations of the Central Depart
ment. The carrying out of this movement affords an illus
tration of what can be done when all are working to a com
mon, patriotic purpose.

To prevent congestion at the concentration camps or on
the railroads it was necessary to perfect a plan covering
every detail. This plan showed the location of every national
guard unit, the exact time for its entrainment, the railway
route to be used, the speed schedule to be followed, and the
time of arrival at destination. From five to twelve days in
advance of the movement of the national guard every rail
road participating in it knew exactly what service it would
have to perform. The movement was started on the evening
of September 24 and completed on October 1. The railway
equipment required 750 sleeping cars, 1,500 coaches and
baggage cars, not including freight cars.

How well the plans were made is shown by the fact that
the movement was carried out in such a manner that there
was not more than one regiment on any one railroad on

MILITARY TRANSPORTATION 55

any one day, and that not more than one regiment arrived
at any camp on the same day. During this period eighty-
two organizations, in fourteen States, were moved to their
new stations. The transportation involved 2,571 officers,
83,751 enlisted men, with baggage, tents, wagons and
animals.

Without an accident to a single man, without delay at
point of origin, en route, or at destination, without a hitch
in the arrangements as originally planned, the officers and
men of the national guard scattered in fourteen States were
transported by rail in one week to the distant cantonments
designated by the War Department. That is a record of
which every American has a right to be proud. It is more
remarkable in view of the fact that it was made at a time
when the railways were handling the heaviest commercial
traffic, both freight and passenger, ever known. Just two
things made that record possible — organization and coopera
tion; the organization of our army, the organization of our
entire transportation lines into practically a single system;
and the hearty cooperation of these two highly developed
organizations.

The whole movement of the national guard in the very
short time allotted, without causing congestion on the rail
roads or at the camp destinations, could not have been
effected but for the unification of the railroads agreed upon
by their presidents and carried out through what is com
monly called the railroads' war board. The railway equip
ment necessary was provided regardless of ownership. Many
railroads which were required to furnish cars for the move
ment did not haul any of the troops. That is practical
patriotism which the country should appreciate.

While the preference would have been given by the rail
roads to this military traffic in any event, the fact that it
was not necessary to change the regularly scheduled passen
ger trains proves that the interests of the traveling public
were also carefully considered when the plans were made
for the national guard movement. The facts most clearly
demonstrated are the advantages to the Government of close
cooperation between the military authorities and the rail
roads, and that heavy military movements can be made
without drawing on the resources of the railroads to an
extent that interferes to an appreciable degree with regular
commercial traffic.

56 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Among the things which must not be discussed now are
the embarkation and sailing for foreign ports of the army
which is to bear our flag on the European battle fields, nor
is it deemed appropriate to announce the routes or move
ments of organizations on their way to mobilization camps
or ports of embarkation.

When the war with Spain began we were entirely with
out any deep sea transportation service, nor had we had any
experience to indicate to us what course we should pursue
in creating one. Our subsequent experience was remarkable
indeed when we consider the very small losses sustained dur
ing nearly twenty years' operation of the army transport
service. When one searches the register of commercial ships
and observes the number lost at sea during the period of
nearly twenty years that the army has been operating its
deep sea transportation we must come to the conclusion that
our freedom from accident and loss arises not from mere good
fortune but from careful preparation and the maintenance
of very high standards upon all our Government vessels.

The number of soldiers conveyed back and forth across
the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, long since passed
above the million mark, practically without loss, constitutes
one of the most remarkable stories of military experience.
Not only have the troops been conveyed in perfect safety
but thousands upon thousands of public animals have also
been carried on our ships, and all in such comfort that they
have generally been deemed ready for immediate service
upon disembarkation on the opposite side of the world. We
are now confronted with the necessity for transporting even
larger numbers than has been heretofore within our experi
ence to the scene of warfare in Europe.

The small fleet of army transports will cut an insignifi
cant figure in this movement, but we shall base all our opera
tions in that line on the splendid experience which has come
to us since the war with Spain and the occupation of the
distant Philippine Islands. That the problems to be encoun
tered in this great movement will be met by the army in the
same manner in which it has met and solved so many other
problems may be accepted as certain in the light of our past
history.

WILLIAM HARDING CARTER.

THE TARIFF COMMISSION AND ITS

WORK

BY WILLIAM S. CULBERTSON

HENRY GEORGE used to say that the way to solve the
tariff problem was to abolish the customs houses. He
thought that a tariff for revenue was only a degree less
obnoxious than a tariff for protection. But the tariff
problem is not — shall we say unfortunately? — so simple of
solution. The abolition of the customs houses, or even the
abandonment of a general tariff, is not regarded by any
influential group of men as practicable or desirable for this
country. It is now generally agreed that the tariff in some
form has become a permanent part of the fiscal and indus
trial policy of the United States.

Just what form the tariff shall take, and upon what prin
ciples it shall be formulated, will continue in this country
to be matters of political controversy. That group of public
men which regards revenue as the primary purpose of the
tariff will be set against that which regards its primary pur
pose to be the protection of American industries, and the
final arbiter between them will always be the American
people.

The growing desire in this country, however, that tariff
making should be more scientific, and that Congress should
have a permanent and reliable source of tariff information
at its disposal, has led to the advocacy of a tariff commis
sion. All the political parties have urged the creation of
such a commission, and from time to time many bills have
been introduced into Congress providing for its establish
ment. Even before any of them became law the country
received the services of a tariff board, through the action of
President Taft. President Taft was authorized by the
Tariff Act of 1909 "to employ such persons as may be
required " to assist him in carrying into effect certain pro-

58 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

visions of that Act. He appointed three Republicans, and
this board became the nucleus about which grew up the first
genuine, although temporary, tariff commission this country
ever had. Their first work was the administration of the
maximum and minimum clause of the Payne- Aldrich Act.
They then began the preparation of what Mr. Taft called
the " glossary or encyclopedia of the existing tariff so as to
render its terms intelligible to the ordinary reader." It also
undertook the study of industrial conditions and the costs
of production at home and abroad. In March, 1911, the
board was increased by the addition of two Democratic mem
bers. Congress appropriated substantial sums for its work,
and in a comparatively short time it published reports on
chemicals, news-print paper, Canadian reciprocity, raw wool,
manufactures of wool, and manufactures of cotton. In many
ways the work of this board revealed the value and the need
for a permanent tariff commission. Its investigations were
conducted scientifically, and its experiences furnish many
valuable suggestions for the new tariff commission in its
work of organization and investigation.

The present Tariff Commission, established by an Act
of Congress approved September 8, 1916, is the first perma
nent government body in this country whose sole purpose
is the scientific examination of the tariff question. Its six
members were appointed by the President in March, 1917,
and it was organized for business on April 1, 1917.1

It is not the policy of the Tariff Commission to bolster
up any particular tariff theory. It is strictly non-partisan.
Its aim is to secure data which may be utilized both by the
advocates of tariff for revenue and by the protectionists, but
as a commission it advocates the policy of neither. It pro
poses to examine the effects of tariff rates from every angle.
Its duties include the study of the fiscal effect of the customs
laws and their relation to the Federal revenue. Customs
duties have always been an important source of Federal
revenue and, for this reason, the Commission may be expected
not only to assist Congress in studying the revenue produc
ing power of the tariff but also in suggesting how the income
and expenditures of the Government may be properly
correlated.

JThe members of the United States Tariff Commission on the date of its
organization were: F. W. Taussig, Chairman; Daniel C. Roper, Vice Chairman;
David J. Lewis; William Kent; William S. Culbertson; and Edward P. Costigan.

THE TARIFF COMMISSION AND ITS WORK 59

No phase of the tariff is more a subject of controversy
than its effect on prices. Since very little concrete informa
tion exists on the subject the discussion has been largely
confined to theoretical deductions either to prove or to dis
prove that a tariff on imports increases prices. As a help
to our theorizing we need a full examination of the facts.
Only a governmental body with power to demand informa
tion and facilities to cover a wide field can make an investi
gation that will be of value. There is every reason to think
that the Tariff Commission can throw real light on this dark
corner of the tariff controversy.

Another phase of the tariff which the Commission is to
investigate is its industrial effect both on the manufacturer
and the laborer. The relation of tariff duties to competitive
conditions has been of supreme importance in American
tariff controversies. In their platform of 1908 the Repub
licans declared that " In all protective legislation the true
principle of protection is best maintained by the imposition
of such duties as will equal the difference between the cost
of production at home and abroad, together with a reason
able profit to American industries." " We believe," the
Progressive platform of 1912 says, "in a protective tariff
which shall equalize conditions of competition between the
United States and foreign countries." The Democrats, in
framing the Tariff Act of 1913, claimed to have been guided
by the principle of a " competitive tariff." These three
declarations are merely different ways of stating the same
principle. They show how very important competitive con
ditions are in the enactment of tariff legislation. In addi
tion to its plenary power to get information in this country
the Tariff Commission has power to investigate conditions,
causes, and effects relating to competition of foreign indus
tries with those of the United States, including dumping and
cost of production.

Still another phase of the Tariff Commission's work, to
which the war has given far-reaching importance, is its power
to investigate the tariff relations between the United States
and foreign countries, commercial treaties, preferential pro
visions, such as bargaining tariffs, bounties, and economic
alliances. In the past the tariff laws of the United States
have been framed chiefly with domestic conditions in mind,
and reciprocity and bargaining features have been tacked on
as afterthoughts. Commercial treaties and the bargaining

60 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

aspect of the tariff will be of supreme importance after the
war. This country has taken a leading and permanent place
in international affairs. By giving the Commission compre
hensive powers to investigate treaty and foreign tariff prob
lems, Congress recognized the necessity of information which
will enable this country to meet the new international prob
lems which will confront it.

The Tariff Commission has an important part in the
current work of government. Less than three weeks after
its organization it submitted to Congress its first report,
which recommended the enactment of a so-called " padlock
law " for the purpose of conserving revenue from customs
duties and internal taxation during the time a revenue bill
is being debated in Congress.

In order to simplify the administration of the customs it
has drafted a revision and codification of our customs admin
istrative laws. Existing statutes — many of them antiquated
and confusing — and the new code will be submitted to Con
gress in parallel columns for consideration. If enacted into
law, this revision will make customs administration fairer
and add to the revenues of the Government.

The Commission and its members have also been called
upon by Congress for assistance and advice in framing war
revenue legislation.

Business men have brought to the Commission their war
time problems. An interesting case was that of the pro
ducers of ocean pearl and fresh water pearl buttons, who
claimed that their industries are being seriously affected by
the rapidly increasing imports of pearl buttons from Japan.
The sugar interests of the country are furnishing the Com
mission with data which bring up to date existing reports.
The producers of glass, pottery, textiles, and, above all,
chemicals, have been in touch with the Commission.

The chemical industries are of the greatest importance
in modern warfare. Remarkable advances have been made
in this country in the production of explosives and of such
related products as nitric, picric, and sulphuric acids, benzol,
toluol, and acetone. The most striking progress has been
in the production of intermediates and dyes. While the
investigation of the Tariff Commission on chemicals is gen
eral, it is placing particular emphasis upon coal tar products.
The intermediates, from which dyes are made, are also the
raw materials for explosives. Factories which produce dyes,

THE TARIFF COMMISSION AND ITS WORK 61

can with comparative ease turn a part of their plant to the
production of explosives.

War disturbances in industry and trade are being con
sidered by the Commission in order to assist both in mobiliz
ing our economic forces against our common enemy and in
enabling the country to meet more intelligently the problems
which will arise after the war. By means of hearings and
field work information is being obtained from representa
tives of industry, foreign trade and labor. Among the ques
tions considered are the interruption of supplies of raw
materials, substitutes adopted, present conditions and tend
encies in industries, expansion of industrial plants due to
war conditions and their plans for readjustment to normal
times again, the effect of the war on labor conditions, and
the development of our foreign trade during the war.

This brings us to the most important aspect of the work
of the Tariff Commission. The Commission was created as
a part of a program of preparedness for peace. The Euro
pean War had been in progress more than two years when
Congress, in September, 1916, passed the Act creating the
Commission. World conditions were not changed essentially
between that time and April 6, 1917, when Congress declared
a state of war to exist between this country and Germany.
The effect of the war on the economic life of our nation was
evident to Congressmen. It must be so to every other
thoughtful student of our times. Now is the time for
observation. War is modifying our views of labor, of dis
tribution, of public finance and production. In fact, it is
shaking the whole traditional structure of our economic life.

The Tariff Commission is fully aware of this situation.
It is now directing a large part of its energies to the con
sideration of after-the-war problems. No industries have
been more profoundly revolutionized by the war than those
relating to chemistry. Peace will bring with it for them
serious problems of readjustment. Under war demands
such stable industries as those which produce caustic soda
and bleaching powder have increased their production. So
with the electro-chemical industries. New supplies of potash
have been developed. Congress, in the same Act by which
it created the Tariff Commission, enacted increased pro
tective duties on coal tar products. Our supply of coal tar
dyes, which before the war came almost wholly from Ger
many, is now largely produced in this country and we are

62 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

receiving from abroad today more money for dyes exported
than we sent abroad to pay for dyes before the war. Such
almost magical changes in our industrial life require careful
consideration, both by manufacturers and the Government.
By field and research work the Tariff Commission is bring
ing together the information upon which Congress may base
a sound policy toward our chemical industries.

Dumping is a form of unfair competition. In the law
of September 8, 1916, it was defined to be the systematic
importation of an article into the United States at a price
substantially less than the actual market value in the for
eign market plus certain charges, with the intent of destroy
ing, injuring or preventing the establishment of an industry
in the United States, or of restraining the trade in this coun
try in such an article. Before the war the German dye
industry used dumping, as here defined, and other forms
of unfair competition to maintain its international monopoly.
In England, Japan, and France, as well as in the United
States, competing industries have been established during
the war. The German industry with its great financial and
technical strength may be expected to go to any lengths to
regain its lost markets. In anticipation of difficulties in this
and other lines, the Tariff Commission is investigating the
operation of the dumping laws of other countries, particu
larly Canada, and taking other steps to bring together all
pertinent information which will assist in the formulation
of an effective method for handling dumping cases.

The Tariff Commission is not a report manufactory. It
does from time to time give out the results of its work in
printed form, but its files and technical staff are to be organ
ized to give assistance immediately, both to the committees
and members of Congress and the President upon any sub
ject touching its jurisdiction. The most conspicuous exam
ple of this part of its activity is its tariff information catalog.
A mere glance through any tariff act impresses the observer
with the multitude and diversity of articles affected, and this
complexity is only emphasized by a more detailed examina
tion. The tariff information catalog is in the nature of an
unpublished, up-to-date encyclopedia, intended to cover
every important article affected by the tariff law. Here
may be found information, not only on well-known articles
of commerce, but on such articles as agates, acetic acid, zaffer,
argol, beauxite, decalcomanias and degras. The information

THE TARIFF COMMISSION AND ITS WORK 68

collected will be confined to facts that are significant for
tariff purposes. It will include statistics of imports, exports,
and foreign and domestic production, rates of duty and the
amount of revenue they produce, prices, a description of
processes of manufacture, raw materials used, and general
data on competitive conditions, markets, and trade.

The preparation of such an all-inclusive catalog requires
time. As it develops it will be of real value to Congress in
framing scientific legislation. Its establishment is a definite
step away from the traditional practice in this country of
conducting a tariff investigation only under the excitement
of a tariff revision.

The work of the Tariff Commission extends not only to
the domestic but to the foreign aspect of the tariff and its
administration. In recognition of the growing importance
to this country of foreign trade, it is making an inquiry into
the experiences of other countries with free zones or ports
and the desirability of them on our Atlantic, Gulf, and
Pacific coasts.

In addition to its general power to investigate commer
cial treaties, preferential provisions, and alliances, the Tariff
Commission was specifically empowered to investigate " the
Paris Economy Pact and similar organizations and arrange
ments in Europe." Into the subject of treaties, international
tariffs, and economic alliances, the Commission is going in
the greatest detail. The varying interpretations of the most-
favored-nation clause in commercial treaties; the commer
cial treaties of the United States, many of which will need
revision in the light of modern conditions; the reciprocity
experiences of the United States under the Tariff Acts of
1890 and 1897, and with Cuba, Canada, and Brazil; the
bargaining tariffs and commercial treaty systems of Euro
pean countries, including the general and conventional tariff
of Germany and the maximum and minimum tariff of
France; existing and proposed preferential arrangements
within the British Empire; the commercial treaties of Latin
America; the tariff and treaty problems of the Far East —
these are the main topics to be covered in the Commission's
forthcoming report on treaties, bargaining tariffs and com
mercial policy.

As soon as conditions abroad warrant it, some members
of the Commission will make a trip to foreign countries
for the purpose of obtaining information on developments

64 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

during the war which will supplement and complete the inves
tigation now being made in this country.

The years following the war will see more treaty making
and tariff adjustments than any other period in the world's
history. Congress has empowered the Tariff Commission
to assist in preparing this country for the part it must inevi
tably play in the work of international reconstruction. If
the world is to have permanent peace, if our commercial
policies are to be reared on lasting foundations, if trade wars
and commercial antagonisms are to be avoided, we must
understand every phase of the commercial policies of the
nations of the world; we must be prepared to enter the Peace
Conference with facts and principles upon which may be
founded an economic as well as a political peace.

Other nations are preparing for peace in time of war.
In October, 1916, Germany created a new division in the
Imperial Ministry to look after so-called " transition eco
nomics " or to prepare for trade immediately after the war.
Austrian and German chambers of commerce have held at
least three conferences for the purpose of bringing about a
closer economic union of the two empires. At the one in
Vienna, in November, 1915, it was agreed that in negotiating
commercial treaties, the Allied Central Powers should act
together, and that they should reciprocally grant preferen
tial treatment to each other's products, and that other states
should be added only by mutual consent. Great Britain has
created a Minister of Reconstruction, who is responsible
to the House of Commons. His work is " to consider and
advise upon the problems which may arise after the termina
tion of the present war." A Commercial Intelligence De
partment has also been created, under the control of a new
parliamentary secretary. Its work will be the unifying of
the work of the Commercial Attaches and Consuls. The
Dominions Royal Commission submitted its final report in
February, 1917, on natural resources, trade and legislation
of the Dominions. Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand,
South Africa, Newfoundland and India were represented
at an Imperial Conference in March and April, 1917. One
of the resolutions adopted declared in favor of imperial pref
erence. The Committee of the House of Commons on com
mercial and industrial policy announced on February 2,
1917: " We, therefore, recommend that H. M. Government
should now declare their adherence to the principle that pref-

THE TARIFF COMMISSION AND ITS WORK 65

erence should be accorded to the products and manufactures
of the British Overseas Dominions in respect to any customs
duties now or hereafter to be imposed on imports into the
United Kingdom."

In March and September, 1916, the Scandinavian coun
tries held economic conferences for the purpose of consider
ing measures to conserve the rights of neutrals and to
safeguard the independence of the Scandinavian countries
in the economic struggle which may follow the war. The
best known of these activities in foreign countries, of which
those already mentioned are merely conspicuous examples,
is the Paris Economic Conference, which met in June, 1916.
The recommendations of this Conference included measures
for the war period, transitory measures for the period of
commercial and industrial reconstruction of the Allied coun
tries, and permanent measures of mutual assistance among
the Allies.

Apart from the particular measures considered abroad,
with which we are not directly concerned here, the activity
of foreign countries in the study of the problems of recon
struction is alone a sufficient justification for similar work
in this country. It is proper that we should regard the win
ning of the war as the supreme duty of the moment. But
we can not wait until the end of the war to consider the
complex problems which will then confront us. The impera
tive need of economic preparedness now will be as evident
when hostilities cease and trade and industry attempt to
return to the normal conditions of peace as military prepar
edness is today.

WILLIAM S. CULBERTSON.

VOL. ccvu.— NO. 746

BEN BUTLER AND THE
"STOLEN SPOONS

) 9

THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE, FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED
" PRIVATE AND OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE "

BY WILLIAM DANA OECUTT

IT is a tribute to the personality of any man to have so
impressed himself upon his generation that the mere men
tion of his name twenty-five years after his death revives
the animosities of his period and stimulates antagonistic com
ment on the part of a later generation which has known him
only by hearsay.

I was walking past the State House in Boston with a
friend, and glancing from the anti-climax of the gilded
dome to the grotesque statue of General Banks I innocently
remarked: " They never succeeded in getting a statue of
Butler erected there, did they? "

" Why should they? " my friend demanded, assuming a
controversial attitude.

" Why shouldn't they? " I insisted, interested to draw
him out.

" A statue to that thief and rascal 1 " he exclaimed hotly.
" It would be a disgrace to Massachusetts."

" What did he steal? " I continued my interrogations.

" Why, everything in sight — down at New Orleans."

" Do you know that he actually stole anything? "

" Every one knows that," he replied with conviction.

" Just what does ' every one ' know that he stole in New
Orleans? " I insisted, to see if I could pin him down.

"Why — silver spoons, for one thing; they caught him
with the goods."

I am frank to say that my friend expressed an opinion
of General Butler which I myself had shared until a few
weeks previous to this conversation. I, too, had been brought

BEN BUTLER AND THE " STOLEN SPOONS " 67

up with an idea that he was a " thief and a rascal." I had
read the impassioned attack made on Butler in 1914 by
Colonel F. S. Hesseltine, not realizing that this was the
aftermath of an order issued by General Butler in 1862 to
place Colonel Hesseltine under arrest as a " discontented,
unfaithful, and cowardly officer." I had read the comment
made by James Ford Rhodes: " This then is Butler: a gen
eral without capacity, a man without character." It is true
that in his history Rhodes qualifies his estimate by admitting
that " the charges against Butler can never be proved," but
it had not occurred to me that an historian would state as
facts anything based merely on hearsay, however general or
popular that hearsay might have become.

These, and many other statements, had resulted in enroll
ing me among those who believed that Butler was a " thief
and a rascal," and when the opportunity came for me to
peruse and study the mass of Butler's unpublished private
and official correspondence, I approached it with no expecta
tion other than of having my preconceived opinion abso
lutely confirmed. To my intense surprise, I found the basis
of the various charges to rest principally upon two vital
characteristics of the man: Butler antagonized by his man
ner; he laid himself open to attack by his disregard of red
tape. The actual charges made against him for incapacity
as a general, substantiated by partial quotations from Gen
eral Grant, were made ridiculous when the full and complete
statements came to be examined. Grant himself realized this
when he said to John Russell Young, afterwards United
States Minister to China, " Butler is a man it is a fashion
to abuse, but he is a man who has done to the country great
service and who is worthy of its gratitude." x

Out of the mass of Butler's unpublished letters I have
selected those which tell the story of the " silver spoons,"
which my friend assured me " every one " knew were " sto
len." Here are the letters. They tell their own story with
little editorial comment:

[Translation}

204 St. Charles Street,

New Orleans, December 17th, 1862.
To MAJOR GENERAL BUTLER, in the City.

^General: On the 9th of August, 1862, Mrs. Ferguson, furnished

the World with General Grant, volume II, p. 304.

68 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

with a regular pass from Head Quarters, set out to rejoin her hus
band and children in the interior of Louisiana, whereat landing at the
Stock Ferry Landing she was arrested by police officers, stationed
there by your orders, and brought back to the city under the charge
of smuggling. After undergoing an investigation, Mrs. Ferguson had
her person and baggage searched, and the result of these searches
was to show that among the effects of this lady were two bundles of
newspapers consisting of New Orleans and New York journals, all
circulating freely in the city and in Louisiana with your approbation,
and one bundle of silverware and spoons, which three bundles had
been confided to her by Mr. Gillis. One of these bundles of news
papers was addressed to Mr. John Gillis, a French citizen and a perfect
foreign neutral, residing at Woodside, La. The other bundle of news
papers and the bundle containing the silverware and spoons were
addressed to Mrs. M. Gillis, residing at that time at Bayou Goula,
La., 35 miles below the city of Baton Rouge, which then formed the
extreme limit of your military lines.

The pass of Mrs. Ferguson, it is true, stated that this lady could
carry with her her own apparel only, and the fact of her having in
charge those bundles which Mr. Gillis had confided to her subjected
her to reproach, as constituting on her part the offence of smuggling.
The truth is, General, that Mrs. Ferguson, not knowing in her womanly
simplicity the real meaning or indeed even the existence of the restric
tion stated on her pass, and not conceiving, moreover, that the innocent
contents of those three bundles could even be considered as articles
contraband of War, had not even an idea that she was thus contra
vening the provisions of the iron code which is here called Martial
Law. Mrs. Ferguson in vain protested her good faith and her inex
perience : she was nevertheless cast into prison to wait until she could
be banished to Ship Island.

On the day after the arrest of Mrs. Ferguson, Mr. M. Gillis was
ordered before you, and after some brief examinations, in the course
of which he pleaded in vain his loyalty and good faith, he was held
a prisoner at the Custom House, and three days afterwards he was
banished to Ship Island without any other form of procedure.

Mr. Gillis was detained at Ship Island for 75 days, thus expiating
by 82 days of actual captivity his simplicity in believing that the
evidence of his good and loyal intentions might in strictness excuse
the slight imprudence of which he had been guilty.

Mrs. Ferguson was set at liberty 3 or 4 days after her incarcera
tion, and she was authorized to claim the effects of her personal prop
erty which had been seized at the moment of her arrest. Those effects,
as well as the bundle of silverware and spoons destined for Mrs. M.
Gillis, had been transferred from the Custom House to the house
occupied by Col. Stafford on Canal Street.

Thither Mrs. Ferguson went to get back her effects, and there
saw the bundle of silverware and spoons destined for Mrs. Gillis. The
personal effects of Mrs. Ferguson were restored to that lady, but the
bundle of silverware and spoons remained in the hands of Col.
Stafford.

This bundle of silverware and spoons is my personal property, as

BEN BUTLER AND THE " STOLEN SPOONS " 69

will appear from the bill of sale and of lease, dated the 31st of Decem
ber, 1860, and an instrument of which I produced the original and
delivered a literal copy to Provost Marshal Kilburn, No. 177 Canal
Street, on the occasion of an attempt made by that officer in the month
of September last, to seize the house which I occupy in this city, No.
204 St. Charles Street, and to expel me from the place by main
force. I will add by the way that after a ten or twelve days of faithful
discussion, during which I had to undergo unjustifiable molestations,
Provost Marshal Kilburn, on seeing my voucher and other proofs
which I exhibited to him, deemed it prudent to give up his project of
seizing my house by main force and of expelling me from my house.
This being said by the way, and returning to what forms the subject
of my letter, I must admit to you, General, that it was through regard
only and consideration for Mrs. M. Gillis that I lent to her husband
this silverware, which however, was useless to me, in order that he
might place it at the disposal of his wife who wanted it. This will
explain to you why and how this silverware, which is my personal
property, should be in the hands of Mrs. Ferguson at this time of her
arrest. After the arrest of Mrs. M. Gillis, I was waiting for a regular
process in due form to be instituted against Mrs. Ferguson and Mr.
M. Gillis, in order that I might myself intervene in the dispute and
claim my property: for Bayou Goula being situated, as I before ob
served, this side of and within your lines, the sending of this bundle
of silverware and spoons to Mrs. Gillis at that place no more consti
tuted the offence of smuggling, were it looked at through a magnifying
glass, than would the sending of the same bundle from my house to
that of my neighbor.

That bundle circulated in the interior of the country occupied by
you and subject to your jurisdiction, within the enceinte of even your
lines, and consequently it is impossible to find in the particular case
the slightest character of smuggling.

Mr. Gillis, having been released quite recently, and all ideas of
regular and legal prosecution against him and against Mrs. Ferguson
appearing to have been abandoned, and moreover learning today from
your own official organ, the Delta, that you have resigned the command
of the Department of the Gulf, I have the honor to write to you,
General, in order to claim of your justice that you will be pleased to
direct that bundle of silverware and spoons be returned to me by Col.
Stafford, or by any other person who may have them in his possession
at this time.

I am confident, General, that my claim will be received by you,
and that justice will be rendered to it in a short time, and while the
officers of your administration and Staff have not yet left the city,
which will enable you to see the matter in a clear light. I venture even
to believe that you will be pleased with me for thus furnishing you
with an opportunity to repair an injustice, or at least to correct a
serious irregularity, the responsibility for which will weigh fatally on
the persons of whom your Head Quarters consist.

Deign to honor me with an answer. I have the honor to be with
respect, General, your very humble and obedient servant,

A. VILLENEUVE, French Citizen.

70 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

List of Articles contained in the bundle of silverware addressed to
Mr. Gillis at Bayou Goula, Louisiana, and which is my legitimate
property, whose restitution I claim: 10 large Silver spoons, 8 large
Silver forks, 10 large breakf 't spoons, 10 large breakf 't forks. Value
of the whole lot from 175 to 200 dollars in coin. A. V.

This letter was received by General Butler just at the
time when he was turning over his New Orleans command
to General Banks. He declined to treat with M. Villeneuve,
so the plaintiff turns his attention to the new commander:

[Translation]

New Orleans, December 20th, 1862.

To MAJOR GENERAL BANKS, Commander in Chief of the Department
of the Gulf.

General: I have the honor to transmit to you herewith a literal
copy of a letter which I addressed on the 17th instant to Major Gen
eral Butler, claiming the restoration of 38 pieces of silverware (silver
ware and spoons) which are my personal property, and which in
consequence of seizure in third hands have been since the month of
August last in possession of Col. Stafford of the (Native Guards).
General Butler having declined to give effect to my request, I make
application to you, General, soliciting from your justice the restitution
to which I am entitled.

The high reputation for integrity and honor which has already
preceded you in this city is to me a sure guaranty that you will deign
to receive my reclamation, and give the necessary orders with a view
that justice may be done to it.

My letter to General Butler, of which I transmit you a copy, con
tains a succinct and correct summary of the circumstances of the case,
and the mere perusal thereof will certainly and entirely convince you
in regard to the subject. In case, General, you should deem it proper
to have an investigation made, it is desirable that such investigation
should take place within a brief time, and especially before the officers
of the administration of Gen. Butler put on trial shall have left New
Orleans, their presence here being indispensable for the elucidation of
the question.

Mrs. S. G. Ferguson, who was deprived of her buggy and horses
at the same time that I was of my silverware, and to whom Col. Staf
ford has promised that they should be restored to her, but always in
vain, proposes also in her distress to make appeal to your benevolent
justice, in order to obtain the reparation which is due to her.

I have the honor to be, General, with the most profound respect,
your very humble and very obedient servant,

A. VILLENEUVE, French Citizen.

General Banks failed to be deeply impressed with M.
Villeneuve's appeal, and did not give to it the attention to
which the aggrieved owner felt himself entitled. The next

BEN BUTLER AND THE " STOLEN SPOONS " 71

step was obviously to refer the matter to the Military
Governor:

New Orleans, 6th of January, 1863.
His EXCELLENCY GENERAL SHEPLEY, Military Governor of Louisana.

General: On the 9th of August, 1862, Mrs. S. G. Ferguson pro
vided with a regular pass from the Headquarters was leaving the city
to meet her husband and children in the country, when she was arrested
on her way up and brought back here under the charge of smuggling.

Mrs. Ferguson was searched as well as her baggage, and the result
was that among her personal effects were found two bundles of news
papers and another bundle of silverware, this last directed to Mrs. M.
Gillis, of this city, living then at Bayou Goula, Louisiana, thirty-five
miles below Baton Rouge, which was the extreme limit of Gen. Butler's
military lines. Those three bundles had been remitted to her by M.
Gillis, Esq., of this city.

After three days of imprisonment, Mrs. Ferguson was released,
and allowed to claim the baggage which together with the bundle of
silverware had been carried away from the Headquarters to Col. Staf
ford's house on Canal Street.

On leaving that place, where she had been confined, Mrs. Ferguson
took with her her personal apparel only.

But her buggy and horses and also the bundle of silverware were
retained by Col. Stafford, and have not so far been accounted for.
That bundle of silverware belongs to the undersigned, Adolph Vil-
leneuve, French Subject, who lent it to M. Gillis to be put by the
latter at the disposal of his wife who was in want of such things.

But Mrs. Ferguson having been released with no trial at all, and
M. Gillis likewise some time since, moreover, as any idea of a judicial
prosecution against both of them seems to be given up, I have the
honor to call to your Excellency and solicit of your justice, to order
that said bundle of silverware be returned to me without any further
delay by Colonel Stafford, or any other person who may be at present
the holder of it. With this hope, General, I have the honor to be, of
your Excellency, the most humble and obedient servant,

A. VILLENEUVE, French Subject,

204 St. Charles Street.

List of pieces contained in the bundle of silverware above mentioned.
10 large Silver Table Spoons.

8 large Silver Table Forks.
10 large Breakfast Table Spoons.

Value of the whole lot from 175
to 200 dollars in gold.

10 large Breakfast Table Forks.

J A. V.

Governor Shepley was stirred to go through certain per
functory motions:

State of Louisiana, New Orleans, Jan. 7th, 1863.
COL. S. H. STAFFORD, Commanding ist Regt. Louisiana Native Guards.
Colonel: I am directed by Gen. Shepley, Military Governor of

72 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Louisiana, to forward you copy of letter of A. Villeneuve, herewith
enclosed, with request that you will report to him the facts of the case.

Yours respectfully,
JAMES C. SHEPLEY, Military Secretary.

January 26th, 1863.

Endorsed: Respectfully returned with information that this sub
ject has been investigated by the Commdg. General, and my report
to him pronounced satisfactory.

S. H. STAFFORD, Col. U. S. V.

Endorsed: Col. Stafford says that this silverware was delivered to
Mr. Field, the financial agent of Maj. Gen. Butler.

J. C. SHEPLEY, Military Secretary.

Convinced by this time that he had uncovered sufficient
irregularity to make it possible to recover from some one
the two hundred dollars at which value he placed his " stolen
spoons," M. Villeneuve determines to lay his case before
the French Government:

[Translation]

New Orleans, March 6th, 1863.
To the CONSUL OF FRANCE at New Orleans.

Mr. Consul: On the 20th of December last I had the honor to write
to you, transmitting to you for the purpose of deposit a literal copy of
two letters dated the 1/th and 20th of the same month, addressed by
me, the former to General Butler and the latter to General Banks,
for the purpose of obtaining the restitution from Col. Stafford of thirty-
eight pieces of silverware which were seized in the hands of third part
ies, and which are my personal property.

My applications to those two Generals having been ineffectual, I
had recourse to General Shepley, Military Governor of Louisiana, in
his benevolent justice, directing Colonel Stafford to make explanation
in regard to my claim.

Paying deference to this order of his superior, Colonel Stafford
alleged that he delivered the silverware to Mr. Field, the financial
clerk of General Butler. This answer of the Colonel is shown in
writing, the document which I have the honor to transmit to you
herewith.

However this may be, and admitting that the declaration of Col.
Stafford is true, it is none the less true that on the records of the
Quartermaster which have been examined with care, there is no men
tion and no trace of this silverware : from which the natural inference
is that if it was really delivered by Col. Stafford to Mr. Field, the
latter must have carried it away with him when he left this city in
December last in the train of General Butler. In this state of affairs,
I have no longer any other resource than that of claiming the support
of the French Government, under the protection of which I have
already placed all my furniture, effects, documents and movable value

BEN BUTLER AND THE " STOLEN SPOONS " 73

generally ; and, therefore, I have the honor to request you, Mr. Consul,
to be pleased to draw up an official certificate of my reclamation, and
to add it to those of a similar character which are prosecuted at this
time against the American Government at Washington, which is civilly
responsible for the acts and doings of its agents. In my preceding
letter of the 20th of December last is an enumeration of the 38 pieces
of silverware, with an estimate of their intrinsic value made on as
moderate a basis as possible. In case this silverware cannot be restored
to me in kind, I ask that its estimated value, say two hundred dollars,
be paid to me, not in paper money but in hard cash, either in gold or
silver. For with the frightful depreciation which all kind of paper
currency is undergoing in this country, it would be impossible for me
to replace this silverware by paying for it in paper currency of a like
amount. Herewith you will find, 1st, the copy of my letter to General
Shepley, Military Governor of Louisiana; 2nd, the original letter
addressed by Gen. Shepley to Col. Stafford, on the back of which the
allegations of Col. Stafford are written and signed with his own hand,
and the other written and signed by Capt. Shepley, Secretary to the
General and Governor.

Making, moreover, all reparations for the costs, expenses and dam
ages to which my reclamation may give rise, in order to repeat them,
and to make the most of them, whensoever there may be occasion and
against whomsoever it may concern.

I have the honor to be, Mr. Consul, with the highest consideration,
your very humble and obedient servant,

A. VILLENEUVE, French Citizen,

Endorsed

204 St. Charles Street.

List of letters and documents furnished by Mr. Adolph Villeneuve
in support of his reclamation :

1st. Copy of his letter to General Butler, dated 17th of December,
1862.

2nd. Copy of his letter to General Banks, dated 20th of December,
1862.

3rd. Copy of his letter to General Shepley, dated 6th of January,
1863.

4th. Original letter addressed to Col. Stafford by Gen. Shepley,
dated 7th of January, 1863, on the back of which is in writing the allega
tion of Col. Stafford, one of these allegations written and signed by the
hand of the Colonel and the other written and signed by Capt. J. C.
Shepley, Secretary of the General and Governor.

The French Consul at New Orleans, Count Mejan,1 had
already come into open rupture with General Butler because
he had treasonably concealed Confederate gold in his Con
sulate under the protection of the French flag, so his suc
cessor thought he saw an opportunity to square accounts.

United States Government finally demanded the exequator of Count Mejan, and he
wag recalled by his Government

74 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The Villeneuve documents, therefore, were forwarded to the
French Minister in Washington, who, in turn, submitted the
case to the Secretary of State :

[Translation]

Legation of France, in the United States,

Washington, November 18th, 1863.
HONORABLE WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

Sir: A lot of silverware belonging to Mr. A. Villeneuve, a French
subject residing at New Orleans, has been seized in that city by order
of the Federal Officers. All the steps which have been taken with a
view of having this silverware restored to the possession of the legiti
mate owner have up to this time been unsuccessful, and in transmitting
to your Excellency all the documents relating thereto, I take the liberty
of invoking your friendly attention to this affair.

Be pleased to accept, Sir, the assurance of my high consideration.

HENRI MERCIER.

The Secretary of State turns the matter over to the Sec
retary of War, and the following documents show the various
stages of its progress:

Department of State, Washington, D. C, Dec. 4th, 1863.
HON. E. M. STANTON, Sec. of War.

Sir: I have the honor to invite your attention to the enclosed trans
lation of a communication of the 18th ultimo, addressed to this Depart
ment by Mr. Mercier relative to the restoration of a lot of silverware
belonging to Mr. A. Villeneuve, an alleged French subject residing
in New Orleans, which was -seized in that city by order of Federal
Officers. I have the honor to be, very respectfully,

Yr. Obdt. Servt,

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
War Dept, Dec. 5th, 1863.

Endorsed: Respectfully referred to Maj. Gen. Banks, Commdg.
Dept. of the Gulf, for investigation and report.
By order of the Secretary of War.

ED. R. S. CANBY, Brig. Gen. & A. A. Gen.

A. G. Office, December llth, 1863.

Endorsed: Respectfully referred to Maj. General Banks, Command
ing Dept. of the Gulf, for investigating and reporting (to be returned).
By order of the Secretary of War.

A. A. NICHOLS, Asst. Adjt. Genl.

Headquarters, Department of the Gulf,

New Orleans, Dec. 22nd, 1863.

Endorsed: Respectfully referred to Brig. Gen. James Bowen,
Provost Marshal General.

By command of Maj. Gen. Banks.

GNAMAN LUBER, Maj. and A. A. A. G.

BEN BUTLER AND THE " STOLEN SPOONS " 75

State of Louisiana, Executive Department,
New Orleans, Dec. 29th, 1863.

General: I do not know where Col. Stafford is. The Adjt. General
at Dept. Headquarters would be likely to know, as he is or was Colonel
of 1st La. Native Guards (Colored).

Mr. Field, " Financial Clerk " of Gen. Butler, left the Dept. about
the time Gen. Butler left. I have never heard of him since, and do not
know where he resides. The assets in his hands were turned over to
Colonel Holabird, Chief Quartermaster. Very respectfully,

Your obdt. servt,
G. SHEPLEY, Military Governor of La.

Office of Pro. Mar. General, Dept. of the Gulf,
208 Carondelet Street, New Orleans, 30th Dec., 1863.
COL. HOLABIRD, Chief Quartermaster.

Colonel: I respectfully enquire if there were turned over to you by
Gen. Butler the following silverware:

10 Large Spoons 10 Small Spoons

8 Large Forks 10 Small Forks

The property of A. Villeneuve, a French citizen.

Respectfully,
JAMES Bo WEN, Brig. Gen. & Pro. Mar. Gen.

Endorsed: It was never in my possession.

JOHN W. MCCLURE, Capt & A. Q. M.

It is important to note here that Captain McClure states
definitely that the silver was never in his possession. Later,
it will be observed, the fact appears that General Butler
holds his receipt for the property.

Headquarters, Pro. Marshal General, Dept. of the Gulf,
208 Carondelet Street, New Orleans/January, 25th, 1864.
BRIG. GENERAL C. P. STONE, Chief of Staff.

General: In the case of A. Villeneuve, claimant for certain silver
ware, alleged to have been taken by Col. Stafford, I have the honor to
report, that the silverware is not in possession of the Quartermaster,
that Col. Stafford was dismissed from the service of this Department
but is now, I understand, in service in another military Department,
but which I cannot ascertain.

Of Mr. Field, the financial agent of Maj. Gen. Butler, I can learn
nothing except that he is not in this Department. I am, General, with
great respect,

Yr. obdt. servt.,

JAMES BOWEN, Brig. Gen. Pro. Mar. Gen.

76 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Office Provost Marshal General, Dept. of the Gulf,

New Orleans, January 25th, 1864.

Endorsed: Respectfully returned to Department Headquarters, with
the accompanying report.

JAMES BOWEN, Brig. Gen.
Pro. Mar. Gen., Dept. of the Gulf.

Headquarters, Department of the Gulf, New Orleans,

Jan. 25th, 1864.

Endorsed: Respectfully returned to the Adj. Gen. of the Army
with report of Pro. Marshal General enclosed.

N. P. BANKS, Maj. Gen. Commdg.

A. G. O., Feb. 8th, 1864.

Endorsed: Respectfully returned to the War Department with a
report in the case.

A. A. NICHOLS, Asst. Adjt. Gen.

Endorsed: Respectfully referred to Maj. Gen. Butler, Commdg.
Dept. Va. and N. C, with the request that he direct Mr. Field to report
to this Department on the subject of the property claimed by Mr.
Villeneuve.

War Department, Washington City, February llth, 1864.
MAJ. GEN. BENJAMIN F. BUTLER.

General: The Secretary of War instructs me to request that, if
within your knowledge, you will furnish the Department with the pres
ent address of Mr. Field, your financial agent at New Orleans, during
your command of the Department of the Gulf. Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

E. R. S. CANBY, Brig. Gen. A. A. G.

The case is now put squarely up to General Butler for.
the first time, and he makes the following report :

Headquarters, Department of Va. and N. C., Fort Monroe,

March 12th, 1864.
HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of certain papers
referred to me by your order of the twenty-third of February last
past, in regard to a lot of silverware said to belong to Mr. A. Vil
leneuve, an alleged French subject residing in New Orleans, which
was seized in that city by order of Federal Officers, and have the
honor to report thereon.

There are two classes of papers in this reference. One; a complaint
by Mr. Villeneuve, through the French Minister, for the detention
of his property as alleged ; and the other the report of the present
Commanding General of the Gulf and his subordinate as to the where
abouts of that property.

BEN BUTLER AND THE " STOLEN SPOONS " 77

The natural order of the consideration of these subjects will be
to take the last first, because, if the property cannot be found, and
if, as is alleged in the report of that officer, it still remained in the
hands of my financial agent, I am responsible for it; and, therefore,
should be under great inducement to make a case against M. Villeneuve
in order not to be called to an account for the property. But if the
property is still in the hands of the present Commander of the Dept.
of the Gulf, then I shall stand as a disinterested witness on behalf
of the United States, and the facts and circumstances that I report
will be entitled to the credit due to such witness.

I have more than a common interest in the first branch of this
inquiry, because this is not the first time I have been called upon, as
well in public prints as by official papers, to account for the articles
of property of great value which were left by me for the benefit of the
United States (with those) who were sent by the War Department
of the United States to relieve me in the command of the Dept. of the
Gulf. A notable instance of this sort of accusation was an attack made
in the Senate of the United States by Senator Davis of Kentucky,
alleging that I had retained for my own use, and embezzled for my
own benefit, the silverplate of Alexander Brother, a rebel of La., who
forfeited both plate and life to an injured Government, and both
should have been taken away, when at the same time I held the
receipt of the proper accounting officer of that Dept. under Gen. Banks
for the property, which it was alleged I had taken away. And again
in this case, this plate of M. Villeneuve, which John W. McClure, Capt.
and Asst. Quartermaster, has endorsed upon the report was never in
his possession, was in fact on or about the 21st of December, 1862,
turned over to him by my Financial Agent, David C. G. Field, Esq.,
and McClure's receipt as Quartermaster taken therefor by order of
Gen. Banks, which receipt I now have; so that if McClure has not
accounted to the proper officer for that plate, it is because he has
embezzled the same, and I desire and respectfully but earnestly demand
that the matter may be investigated by the proper officers.

I beg leave upon this matter to enclose the sworn report of my
Financial Agent, D. C. G. Field, as part of the evidence submitted.
Having now ascertained where the silverplate in question is, or at
least which of the officers of the United States is responsible therefor,
either to the United States or to the claimant, I have the honor to
report upon the second branch of the subject, whether the plate in
question ought to be given up to M. Villeneuve.

When in New Orleans I had examined this question with care
upon complaint made to me, and determined upon the evidence that
the plate was liable to confiscation, and had then, and have now no
doubt, of the propriety of the decision.

The facts are briefly these: A Mrs. Ferguson had called upon
the proper officer of the Department for a pass to go through the
lines of the Union Army. It was granted, upon the express condi
tion appearing upon the face of the pass, and explained to her, that
she should take with her nothing but the ordinary articles of wearing
apparel for a woman.

M. Villeneuve, who, although probably born a Frenchman, has about

78 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the same claim to protection from the French Government that Lafitte
the pirate had, resided at this time within the rebel lines, and was
acting with them. Some of his property when he fled from New
Orleans was left in this Mrs. Ferguson's care, for when she attempted
to pass our picket this silverware was found concealed in the bottom
of her buggy in which she was traveling.

She was taken before the Provost Marshal, and after a full hearing
she was convicted of the attempt to smuggle it, and the property was
forfeited, and ought long since to have been sold and the proceeds
appropriated to the use of the United States, which certainly would
have been done under a proper administration in the Department
of the Gulf.

To the allegation of Mr. Villeneuve that this woman was simple,
and, therefore, undertook to carry away his plate, a single observation
may be made. She was a strong-minded, high-cheek-boned, and rather
brazen-faced Scotch woman, who had every other attribute that might
belong to a woman rather than simplicity; and the only exhibition of
weakness of intellect which she showed was in entertaining the idea
that she could pass the pickets with her plunder without being caught.

These facts and circumstances are very fresh in my mind, because
I had very considerable trouble with the woman, for this plate was not
the only property which she had.

Trusting that such investigation will be made as will require this
property either to have to be paid to the United States, where it ought
to go, or be given to M. Villeneuve, where it ought not to go, and that
it may not be kept by McClure, who has still less right to it, I have the
honor to be, very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

B. F. BUTLER, Maj. Gen. Commdg.

Clerk Field makes the following affidavit:

Fortress Monroe, Va., March 12th, 1864.
MAJ. GEN. B. F. BUTLER, Commanding Dept. Va. and N. C.
Sir: If John W. McClure, Capt. and A. A. Q. M., who makes the
endorsement on the papers, " It was never in my possession," will
examine an invoice which I gave him on or about the 21st of Dec.,
1862, and will let his memory serve him as to a receipt he gave to Maj.
Gen. B. F. Butler, he will find that the said silverware has been in
his possession. Very respectfully,

D. C. G. FIELD, late Financial Clerk, Dept. of Gulf.

Fortress Monroe, Va., March 12th, 1864.

The said D. C. G. Field personally appeared and made oath that
the foregoing report by him made was true, before me.

P. H. HAGGERTY, Maj. & Act. Judge Advocate.

By this time, General Butler feels that he is entitled to
be suspicious on his own account, so he writes the following
letter to the postmaster at New Orleans:

BEN BUTLER AND THE " STOLEN SPOONS " 7d

Private. Headquarters Dept. Va. and N. C,

Fort Monroe, Va., March 13th, 1864.
MR. J. M. G. PARKER, Postmaster, New Orleans.

Dear Parker: When I was in New Orleans, Stafford took from a
Mrs. Ferguson thirty-eight pieces of silverplate, forks, spoons, etc.,
which were by Field turned over to Mr. McClure, the Quartermaster.
Mr. McClure has reported to the War Department that he has not
got them. I have his receipt for them. I believe that the same silver
is doing duty on Banks' table to-day. I wish you would quietly have
a careful examination made, and if that turns out to be true let me
know. I suppose the plate is marked, but do not know what the mark
is. Of course, you will not say anything about this to anybody, but take
such measures as to make sure that it is there. I think the plate is
not marked in Villeneuve's name, but in some other person's name
(say Gillis). Write me as soon as you can learn anything about it.
1 have the honor to be,

Your obed. servant,

B. F. BUTLER, Maj. Gen. Commdg.

Realizing that his enemies would make the greatest pos
sible capital out of the publicity given to the case, whatever
the facts disclosed, General Butler asks permission from the
Secretary of War to publish his report:

Headquarters, Department of Va. and N. C.,

Fort Monroe, March 12, 1864.
BRIG. GEN. E. CANBY, Asst. Adjt. General, Washington, D. C.

General: You will do me a personal favor if you will cause the
report to be read, or to be brought to the notice of the Secretary of
War. I have suffered so much and so often from the denials of the
receipt of articles by the officers who succeeded me and mine in the
Department of the Gulf, which have left me open to unjust accusa
tions, that I have strong feelings on the subject, and at least wish to
be fully justified in the minds of my immediate superiors. I also desire
that you would make a personal request to him for leave to publish
this report in my own vindication. Believe me,

Most truly yours,
B. F. BUTLER, Maj. Gen. Commdg.

In view of General Banks' reports, and for the " good
of the service," his request was denied, even though " the
explanation is entirely satisfactory."

War Department, Washington City, March 20th, 1864.

Sir: Agreeably to your wish, as expressed in your communication
of the 12th instant, I submitted this morning to the Secretary of War
your statement in relation to the claim of Mr. A. Villeneuve, of New
Orleans, who, it is alleged, lost certain silverware in consequence of
its seizure by Union Officers.

In reply, I am instructed to inform you that, while the explanation

80 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

offered by your financial agent is entirely satisfactory, the Secretary
does not deem it expedient at present to grant permission for the pub
lication of your report. I am Sir, very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,
E. R. S. CANBY, Brig. Gen. A. A. G.

The end of the episode is chronicled in a letter from
Clerk Field to General Butler:

New Orleans, La., April 29th, 1864.

Dear General: Maj. McKee has not arrived from Red River, con
sequently I cannot leave here tomorrow as I had anticipated. It will
take me but a very short time, however, to finish up after his arrival.
I have seen McClure, who now says the Villeneuve silverware " has
been in his possession," and that he sold it and accounted for it in his
" abstract." He says that he made his endorsement owing to its
having been marked " Gillis " instead of " Villeneuve." The Twiggs'
plate, so he says, has been sold for " pure silver."

Many of your old officers here expressed a desire to be transferred
to your Department.

It is stated here that Dudley, staff, and his command, ran at the
first fire in the late action, Lee and Dudley have both been relieved, and
are in town.

There is nothing from Red River for several days. At last accounts
Banks was getting back to Alexandria. The whole thing seems to have
fallen through.

You can hardly have an idea of the intense feeling for your return
here, that is prevalent in New Orleans. Your reception would be such
a one as must be highly gratifying to you.

All here send kindest regards to you and wish to be remembered.

Very truly yours,

D. C. G. FIELD.

This is the real story, told by the documents themselves,
of the struggle to recover two hundred dollars' worth of
silverware, which covered a period of seventeen months, in
volved the martial Government of New Orleans and Louisi
ana, the Consul and the Minister of France, the United
States Departments of State and War, and the outcome of
which amounted simply to an unwarranted besmirching for a
generation of the reputation of one of the foremost generals
in the United States Army. " Every one knows that Butler
stole spoons in New Orleans," for " they caught him with
the goods " 1 my friend claimed with confidence. In view
of the facts, one feels inclined to quote from Disraeli in
referring to each one who has written against Butler: " He
had but one idea, — and that was wrong."

WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT.

THE MOTHER

BY ISOBEL HUME FISHER

FROM mother's breast to mother's breast men go:
From the warm arms of love that cling and hold

They speed with the one gift youth may bestow;
Then in her patient bosom, deep and cold,
Greatness and littleness,

Earth folds them in her ancient quietness.

We are impatient for their joy, we weep

For every sorrow their young hearts sustain,

Yet she alone can give the alms of sleep

The guerdon of all toil — surcease from pain;
And only on her breast

They sleep forgetfully and undistressed.

To this old mother all her sons come home:
Of all their loves she has the last embrace.

From age to age, for hearts that bide or roam,
She is the shelter and the resting place;
Our sons who fall today

Are cradled where their wild forefathers lay.

She grudges none possession or delight,

She wears her beauty as of old she did,
And woos men's hearts with each spring's gold and white;

Yet in her bosom all her babes lie hid;

There, weary of the sun,
We go to find our children, one by one.

Now, in the crash and horror of our days

She wraps herself in immemorial peace,
And waits the certain end of all man's ways:
He will lie down at length and all wars cease,

When in a fold of green
Lies all the glory that the world has seen.

ISOBEL HUME FISHER.

VOL. ccvii.— NO. 746 6

A POET'S WISDOM

BY GERTRUDE SLAUGHTER

" 'WE are sons of yesterday, not of the morning. The
past is our mortal mother, no dead thing. And if you have
not the habit of taking counsel with her you are but an
instrument in her hands.' "

" I thought we had given up that way of looking at
things since the war began," said the other. " I don't know
what you are quoting, but three years ago when I was in
college we were taking counsel of the past with all our might.
And what good came of it? Everything went to smash just
the same. It seems to me that Wells is right; that we don't
think of the world as derived from the past any more but
as ' gathering itself adventurously for the future.' I remem
ber the words because they seem to hit the nail on the head."

" Is there no such thing as progress, then?"

Arthur Templeton, journalist, historian, and man of
affairs, unfolded his arms and turned to look down at the
younger man beside him. They stood amid-ships on an
ocean steamer looking across a shimmering sea. Gordon
Flint, the young American who was following this tall, slow-
spoken Englishman across the ocean to join his hospital
unit in the mountains of Gorizia, was a youth of quick move
ments and energetic mind, full of animal spirits, genuine
and open as a book. He had used his brains more than most
boys of his age.

" I can't see that progress means much," he went on,
" when the very things we counted on have turned against
us. Everything we hoped for went down in the smash.
There is nothing left — nothing! "

The sea, for five days out from New York, had been
calm and unruffled. " There wasn't a thing to do," Gordon
had said, " but think about life and watch for a periscope."

A POET'S WISDOM \V 83

The smoothness of the long rollers was wracking the nervSs - •
of the passengers, who would have welcomed a storm, a fog,
an iceberg — anything to relieve the slow menace of that
calm. But these two had forgotten under-sea treacheries
in their talks together. The limitations of shipboard which
had made Gordon sigh in mid-ocean for a mountain to climb
had set his mind unusually free. And for Templeton, who
understood the boy's mood, the zest of leadership in the game
of mental give and take was tempered by the knowledge
that since middle-age was pitted against youth their posi
tions might at any moment be reversed.

When Gordon had demolished the order of the universe,
Templeton replied : " My dear Gordon, I think you are
mistaken. An amazing number of people are making the
same mistake today, and I believe it is a dangerous mistake.
One hears on all sides that the hopes of our generation must
go — have gone, in fact. Then one of two things follows:
either we break altogether with the past and rush blindly
— adventurously, if you will — toward the future, or we re
turn to the ideas our generation had rejected. We give
up our patient search, with our plans for improving life by
slow degrees. We curse the world in true mediaeval fashion
and look for happiness in heaven. We think of the war as
a wild leap backward and so we fancy we must take another
leap — not forward, for the word has no meaning in such
a view of things."

" It seems to me we have been hurled over a precipice
and that we can't think about what to do next till we see
where we land."

" But none of us in England want to go back to the time
before the war" -

" I guess you don't! " exclaimed Gordon. " There was
too much of the Victorian era left in England. I suppose
the war has cleared that away. Did you read this bully
thing? " Gordon pulled a New Republic out of his pocket
and the two men walked over to their steamer chairs. " Hear
what this man calls the Victorians : ' Galahads with mufflers
and cough-drops,' ' figures in the fog with an umbrella.'
And he says about us : ' No longer pensioners of Provi
dence, made to be coddled, petted and amused, but charged
with the same creative energy that set the planets whirling,
the young men of 1917 are condemned to earn their peace
of mind by unceasing struggle.' "

84 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

" ' Charged with the same creative energy that set the
planets whirling.' ' Templeton repeated the words and
added:

,The fire is in them whereof we are born,
The music of their motion may be ours.

" That's great! " Gordon folded up his paper. " Who
said it? "

" The poet who called us the sons of the past." Tem
pleton in his turn went into his pocket and pulled out a
red leather book. " A poet who lived through the Victorian
era and believed in progress ; yet I think that more than any
other English poet he is the one for us today. He speaks
to the present hour. And God knows we need to listen to
our poets 1 And by the way, Gordon — waiving our opinions
about the Victorians — do you think we were really taking
counsel of the past with all our might, as you say, before
the war? Do you fancy that the English Government or
the people behind them were taking counsel of the past?
Do you know how often this poet warned them that what
had happened of old would happen again, that strength
would conquer weakness, that the ' vulture wings of Ger
many ' would swoop down on her at the slightest excuse
and that if England were not ready — if we were impious to
the Lord of Hosts, we should be compelled to fling our sons
like dice? It sounds like a prophecy of the Dardanelles.
He told us over and over again that we were sunk in ' ventral
dreams of peace ', and trusting overmuch to our God Nep
tune, our sea power of which another poet sang us more
flattering songs."

A smile flitted over Gordon's face. " Where did I
hear," he pondered, " that self-effacement was England's
chief fault, and that for the last thirty years Kipling was
the only man of prominence who had stood up for her
greatness? "

" Self-effacement! " Templeton smiled sadly. " Kip
ling's poetry is the typical expression of our fatal over-
confidence. He became the popular idol while the poet
who gave warning was never heeded, although he was the
acknowledged leader of English letters and the * oracle of
Box Hill.' He had followers, like John Morley."

" I can see that England ought to have listened to his

A POET'S WISDOM 85

warnings. But why should we now, in the war, listen to
any poet? They always preach peace, don't they?"

" This poet " — Templeton held the book unopened in his
hand — " believes in peace as firmly as any Quaker, like my
self, — in one kind of peace, that is; not selfish, stagnant
peace, but peace that means liberty. He said that the one
hope of his age was that people refused a happiness that
could not be made a common music for the multitude. That
is not mid- Victorian peace, you see, but the kind you and
I believe in. He stood for peace but he stood also for the
warrior heart. A world in arms seemed better to him than
an idle, self-indulgent world. He saw that there must
always be contention to ' drive deep furrows for good seed,'
but he looked forward to the day when contention should
be transferred to spiritual ground. Before that day, he con
ceived, men would be dragged backward, shamed by their
failures, thrown again into brutishness many times ; and yet,
foreseeing that, foreseeing even this very war, though not
in half its horror, he kept his faith in progress ; his * rapture
of the forward view.' '

"Meredith!" Gordon exclaimed, reaching out his hand
for the book. " Father was saying the other day that people
talk less about his novels than they used to and more about
his poems. Do you think so? We read some of the poems
in English 7 and I have glanced through them. But, Mr.
Templeton, you don't really think we ought to read all that
queer stuff, do you? Not for pleasure, surely? "

Templeton laughed. " I know jolly well that his poems
won't bear glancing through. I've worked on them and I
know. They hardly bear talking about, either, because one
can't generalize about them. They have all the qualities,
good and bad; and of course any poet with fire in him is
bound to leave some ashes behind."

" Eccentric sparks, too, I suppose," quickly added Gor
don. " I remember that our professor called Meredith the
greatest nature poet in English literature but I didn't believe
him. Besides, what is poetry of nature good for now? Who
cares anything for * enchanted woods ' at such a time as
this?"

Templeton opened the book and read:

I say but that this love of Earth reveals
A soul beside our own to quicken, quell,
Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.

86 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Turning the pages, he opened to the lines on Shakespere:

The greatest knew thee, Mother Earth, unsoured
He knew thy sons. He probed from hell to hell
Of human passions, but of love deflowered
His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well.

Gordon listened, shaking his head thoughtfully. Tem-
pleton read again:

And have we wept,

And have we quailed with fears,

Or shrunk with horrors — sure reward

We have whom knowledge crowns;

Who see in mould the rose unfold,

The soul through blood and tears.

" Those are fine words," Gordon admitted. " But hon
estly they seem to me to belong to a past age. They are
just words now. Greater words than those have lost their
meaning to me. Last Sunday in church Mother looked at
me when they read: * He that dwelleth in the secret place
of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the
Almighty.' I think Mother was trying to take comfort in
that when she looked at me. No, there's nothing to cling
to. It's just grit your teeth and fight on and don't hope
for anything in this messy world. Myl but I wish I could
fight in the ranks. There's plenty of chance that I'll be
killed where I'm going, anyway. Do you really think a
poet can help ? And wouldn't it be Isaiah ? Or the Greeks ? "

" By all means," responded Templeton. " I was think
ing of a more immediate, not a greater need, — of something
to clear the mind in this blinding storm. That is a service
which no poet of other times than our own can perform,
nor one who speaks out of the present turmoil. It must be
one who belongs to that recent past of which you are so
skeptical, one who re-interprets life according to modern
thought. He must be the product and the prophet of our
times. He must not say, ' Your knowledge is vain, your
science foolishness; come with me and I will show you a
better way.' He must accept in all humility the partial
truths we have discovered while he looks through and beyond
them with his deeper vision. Now the central fact of our
lives, it's quite clear to all of us, is that Germany has been
building on a false idea and that the only hope of the world

A POET'S WISDOM 87

is to build on right ideas. Both foundations, however, the
true and the false, existed before the war. There has been
no cataclysm of ideas." Gordon looked incredulous but
Templeton went on: "Now this is the important point. Out
of the same ideas which Treitschke and his kind contorted
into the philosophy of the Arch Fiend, making the Will to
Power a law of selfish brutality, the poet Meredith created a
doctrine of sacrifice, a faith in the power of the spirit, a
religion of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

" His words meet the crisis. That is why I say he speaks
to the present hour. To listen to him is to hold by the
knowledge we have won, to accept what science has proved
knowing it to be little, to believe in human nature with a
new intensity. It is to strip our souls naked and test them
by something the very opposite of material efficiency, for
the right of the fittest to survive, he says, is 'solved in spirit.'

" Our intellects are awake today. Almost everywhere
it is so. You were telling me how freely your friends discuss
things they never mentioned before. And we need poetry
that does something more than repeat the roles of music and
painting. Meredith's poetry has the rare power of trans
mitting a mood. It creates the courage while it supplies the
hope we need."

"More than Browning's?" asked Gordon. "And
doesn't Swinburne believe just as much in liberty? "

" Browning's individualism will not satisfy us just now.
And Swinburne's idea of liberty is quite different from
Meredith's and ours. It is nearer to Wordsworth's. Swin
burne demands this and that for the fullness of life, while
Meredith lays the stress on growth, the growth of reason
and love, by suffering and sacrifice and struggle. He glori
fies the giving of oneself. Could Swinburne have said that
mankind needs a scourge and hence acclaims the crucifix of
Nazareth?"

" Well, Meredith's poetry doesn't go in much for beauty.
That's in its favor," commented Gordon. " Beautiful things
seem out of place in 1917. Heavens! I wish a gale would
strike that sea."

* I know of no such rich cadences and strange, haunting
melodies anywhere ! " Templeton declared. " I agree with
you that we care for the sterner aspects now, but certainly
we shall not accept any poetry unless its power of beauty
sustains its import. Let us see." As he read from Phoebus

88 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

with Admetus and The Day of the Daughter of Hades and
the Hymn to Colour, Gordon watched his face, and it seemed
to him that the smile lighting his strong features was like
the flowers that grow on the edge of a mountain glacier.

" They tell us," he talked on musingly — Gordon liked
him best when he was speaking to his own thoughts — " of
how men creep out of the trenches at dawn and cross the
fields under shell fire to hear the birds sing in the woods.
I have seen things of the sort myself. And that little girl
I read about in the paper the other day, a mere baby
she was! The house was blown to pieces and nobody else
escaped, and as she ran away from the heap of ruins crying
for her mother she stopped to pick all the flowers in the
garden. She filled her little arms with tulips and hyacinths
and ran down the village street clutching them tight."

" Poor little object! " muttered Gordon. .

" She did exactly what we all do. There at the front,
where ' there is no God/ many a soldier has found Him in
the benediction of nature — like the young painter in Cham
pagne who ' plucked flowers in the mud.' One of the boys
in the American ambulance writes that, when everything else
has failed, ' beautiful Nature ' consoles and satisfies him.
. . . No, the horrors of war cannot kill our love of beauty.
As it has been since the world began, suffering will bridge
the gulf between truth and beauty. For at the end of the
rough trail they are surely one."

Looking off into space, he went on thinking aloud.
"Yes, the things we counted on have turned against us.
The powers of Light have been put in the service of the
powers of Darkness. We have to fight an unimagined
monster. But we shall chain him by our strength and the
mind of man will learn to tame him in good time.

More gardens will they win than any lost

The vile plucked out of them, the unlovely slain.

Not forfeiting the beast with which they are crossed

To stature of the gods will they attain.

They shall uplift their Earth to meet her Lord,

Themselves the attuning chord.

" I suppose that means that we must make a heaven of
this earth," interrupted Gordon. " But how? It doesn't
look much like it just now, does it? "

" By being gladly either * sword or block,' the poet says,

to serve mankind. Has anyone ever shown a better way? "

" Nobody has ever shown a way that works. That old

A POET'S WISDOM 89

slow way doesn't work, surely — everybody thinking his own
scheme right, everybody crossing everybody else. It won't
do. I suppose the Leninites think they are saving the world.
How can we know what will make the world better and
what will only make it worse? "

"Ah I Gordon, there you hit the weak spot in every
humanitarian philosophy. But Meredith went beyond that.
He went beyond his own earlier conception. If he hadn't,
if the philosophy of Earth and Man, for instance, were
all, I should not be offering you his wisdom. By his own
experience, in his darkest hour, he learned something about
spiritual values which he may have dimly divined but never
realized before. He touched the larger truth which I believe
the nations of the world will learn by the suffering of this
war — if not, then on again to the day when they shall learn
it in some other war! — the truth that the life of the spirit
is eternal, that nothing is lost, that the soul is born of blood
and tears when the demon Self is overthrown.

Our lives are but a little holding lent
To do a mighty labour. We are one
With heaven and the stars if it is spent
To do God's aim, else die we with the sun.

" Does he throw any light on the real difficulty? " ques
tioned Gordon, " on what God's aim is? "

" I think he does, both for individuals and nations. See
what you think. Templeton read in his deep voice The Test
of Manhood and the Ode to France, 1870, after which they
fell to discussing the poet's ideas of internationalism, the
application of his theories to national life, and his insight
into the character of France. Gordon wondered why every
one was not reading the great Ode. " Why, it's the last
word!" he exclaimed. "Everybody must read it."

To make clear what he had said of Meredith, Templeton
read A Faith on Trial with frequent comments. As the
afternoon wore away they read on and on, entering more
and more into the poet's enthusiasm for the spirit of life
and falling under his " mastery of hearts." " Will you go
back," asked Gordon in a pause, " to that definition of the
human spirit? "

" ' Tis reason herself," quoted Templeton.

' Tis reason herself, tip-toe

At the ultimate bound of her wit,

On the verges of night and day.

90 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

" When our men go into battle, then," mused Gordon,
" they go beyond the bound of reason perhaps, and if they
have no high motive it is madness, and if they go for the
sake of others, for liberty and justice, then it is divine. You
have given me a new vision, Mr. Templeton. You know,
ever so many of the fellows say they can't see any principle
at stake in this war. They are just going because some
body has to go and they don't want to be slackers. And
I have felt all along that when I saw the wounded men
come into our hospital I should think they had wasted them
selves. I thought the dead and maimed were wasted because
the German war-lord was a criminal; and the innocence of
the German war-lord wouldn't fit into my scheme. Woe
unto him by whom the offence cometh. But the victims —
1 shall think of them now as on the verges of night and day."

" Then you see," said Templeton, " that this war may
mean progress and that it depends upon us whether we are
dashed over a precipice, or hold tight, and press forward? "

" Yes, I do," Gordon answered warmly. " And I see
what you mean by taking counsel of the past. The Ger
mans built wrong and we were building wrong in a less
degree. And the future depends upon what we do with
this war. We haven't got to lie awake nights wishing it had
never happened. While the soldier gives his life we have
all got to think hard about what to make out of the sacrifice.
It's a big responsibility."

The sun dropped below the sky-line as Gordon added:
" I'll confess to you that I've worried a good deal about
immortality. One of my friends said he couldn't enlist unless
he believed in immortality. But I can see that it would be
a finer thing, if we could bring ourselves to it, not to perplex
ourselves over our chance of individual permanence, as Mere
dith says, but just to know that the spirit is eternal and that
all of me that is worth while, and all of the other fellow,
too, is a part of that spirit. It does straighten you up,
doesn't it?"

, " And if a submarine hits us," said Templeton, " morn
ing will come just the same. Morning will come."

GERTRUDE SLAUGHTER.

DO WE SPEAK ENGLISH?

BY C. JEFFERSON WEBER

A BRITISH traveler, after making a careful and observ
ant tour in the United States, remarked that Great Britain
and America had practically everything in common except
their language.

Every one who enters the United States of America is
required to furnish certain information to the Immigration
Authorities. One of the questions asked is: From what
race are you descended? and a list of races is supplied for
consultation. No such thing as an " American " race is found
in this list. There are a great many Americans whose ances
tors for five generations or more have been native Americans,
yet they are not allowed to say, in answer to this question,
that they are descended from " the American race."

The same thing is true of the language spoken in Amer
ica. Perhaps ten generations have been speaking a language
which is yearly becoming more and more unlike English,
and yet Americans cannot say they speak the American
language, but have to make vain pretensions to speaking
English! The result is that all their peculiarities of speech,
instead of being regarded by foreigners as picturesque idioms
of the language, are discouraged in England and elsewhere
by the application to them of the name of " Americanisms,"
or are recognized to provide amusement for those who speak
the King's uncontaminated English! Very few persons in
the United States know that they are making constant use
of these Americanisms; it takes a trip to the mother coun
try to open their eyes to the fact that they do not speak
" English."

Americanisms are far more numerous than most unin
formed persons might imagine, and weighty volumes of

92 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

them have already been collected. They are of various sorts
and may be arranged in the following classes of words:

1. Archaisms, i. e., old English words, obsolete, or nearly so, in
England, but retained in use in the United States.

2. English words used in a different sense than in England.
These include many names of natural objects differently ap
plied, to which no further reference will be made.

3. Words which have retained their original meaning in the United
States, although not in England.

4. English provincialisms adopted into general use in America.

5. Newly coined words, which owe their origin to the produc
tions or to the circumstances of the new country.

6. Words borrowed in America from European languages, espe
cially the French, Spanish, Dutch, and German.

7. Indian words.

8. Negroisms.

9. Peculiarities of pronunciation.

Let us consider these classes of Americanisms in order.

First, there are those words still in more or less com
mon use in the United States, but obsolete in England.
One may still hear the Elizabethan participle " gotten " in
use almost anywhere in the United States, and " beau," in
the sense of lover or sweetheart, is still known in America,
though it seems to have entirely disappeared in England.
In Shakespeare we find " bob-tail " and " bob-wig," but the
word " bob," meaning to cut short, is unknown today in
Shakespeare's country; yet in America people still "bob"
the hair. " To peek " is today a quite common variation in
America of " to peep," and " peke " is found in Skelton's
Colin Clout e and in Gascoigne. The verb " to progress " is
used by Shakespeare, —

Let me wipe off this honorable dew

That silvery doth progress on thy cheeks.

Ford used the same word in The Broken Heart. In the
eighteenth century the word became obsolete in England,
but was retained in America. By the time the word was
revived in England, the accent had shifted in America: the
Penny Cyclopaedia remarks that " the old verb progress,
which Americans use very often and pronounce progress,
is now beginning to be again adopted in its native country,
though we think we could do very well without it."

One of the most interesting words now regarded as an
Americanism but originating in England and becoming

DO WE SPEAK ENGLISH? 93

obsolete there is the word " sophomore." Throughout the
United States the second-year class at college is called the
Sophomore class. This word " sophomore " (putting aside
the question of its meaning and derivation) has generally
been considered an American barbarism, but according to
Professor Goodrich, in Webster's Dictionary, it

was probably introduced into our country at a very early period from
the University of Cambridge, England. Among the cant terms at that
University, we find Soph-Mor as the next distinctive appellation to
Freshman. The term thus applied seems to have passed at a very
early period from Cambridge in England to Cambridge in America,
and thus to have been attached to the second of the four classes in
our American colleges, while it has now almost ceased to be known,
even as a cant word, at the parent institution in England from whence
it came.

The explanation of the origin of this class of Amer
icanisms is doubtless the same as that of the rise of any
dialect — namely, separation. The Atlantic Ocean is such
an effectual barrier to free intercourse between the two
English-speaking nations that forces which cause the obso
lescence of a word in one country are not active in the other*
So also forces which tend to suppress undesirable words
or expressions on one side of the ocean do not reach the
other side.

This use in American speech of words which are obso
lete in England naturally leads to the use of such words
in print. The result is that, to English eyes, American
writers often express themselves in an artificial, antiquated,
and sometimes unintelligible language. One of the reasons
why words are less likely to become obsolete in America
is that Americans are much given to consulting so-called
" authorities." Being cut off from standard speech in Great
Britain and having no universally recognized standard in
America, people consult the dictionary instead. Now the
dictionary is always a conservative factor, and follows, rather
than leads, usage; the result is that Americans, in spite of
their skill in inventing words and in twisting a word into
a new meaning, are much more conservative, philologically
speaking, than are their English cousins.

The second class of Americanisms includes those English
words which are used in America in a different sense than
in England. Maize, or Indian corn, throughout the United
States is called simply "corn"; in England the term

94 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

" corn " is applied generically to wheat, barley, and other
small grains. For this the Americans use the term " grain."
" Biscuit " is another word which is differently used in the
two countries: in England a biscuit is a kind of unraised
bread, formed into flat cakes and baked hard; this is called
a " cracker " in the United States, — a word which may have
come from Yorkshire. " Biscuit " in the American sense
means a small cake of bread, raised and shortened, or made
light and fluffy with soda or baking powder. A "billion "
in America means a thousand millions; in England, a mil
lion millions. " Fixed," to an American, usually means
" repaired "; to an Englishman, " fastened " or " attached."

The list of this class of Americanisms would be a long
one. There are a great number of common words, such as
"punt," "smart," "clever," "cunning," "track," "gey
ser," "stud," "shop," "chemist," "ice," "public school,"
etc., which have different meanings on the two sides of the
ocean. Some of these are the result of gradual develop
ment; the slow accretion of secondary meanings finally pro
duces a word of quite different sense from that with which it
began. The natural tendency of settlers in a strange country
to apply already familiar names and terms to new objects in
nature, to new phenomena, etc., leads to a confusion in the
meaning of such names ; the outcome of this practice is that
the same word is used in America and Great Britain for
different things — different trees, plants, animals, fruits, etc.
In like manner the names of many domestic articles have
become confused. Whenever a new object needed a name,
the American of the early days usually tried to find a
genuine English word to serve the purpose.

The third class of Americanisms is composed of words
which have retained their original meaning in the United
States, although not in England. In other terms, these
words have not become obsolete in England, but have
changed their meaning. In America, the original meaning
remains, largely preserved by the conservatism already men
tioned as characteristic of the United States, at least in
regard to linguistic matters. The dictionary is always a
factor opposed to word-changes, and the Americans have
shown their fondness for the lexicographic art in many ways.

One of the most prominent and familiar words in this
class of Americanisms is the word " guess." " Guess,"
meaning to suppose, to imagine, to believe, as used by

DO WE SPEAK ENGLISH? 95

Chaucer, and by Shakespeare (e.g., in the first scene of
Coriolanus), is one of the most common words in America
today. " I guess so " would be translated into English, " I
suppose so "; "I guess I'll stay at home today " means no
more than, " I think I'll remain at home today." Instead
of the modern English words " jug " and " basin," the
American says " pitcher " and " bowl." These last two
words are of long standing in the language, but have
changed their meaning in Great Britain, and are now applied
to different objects. In Boswell's Life of Johnson I have
noticed the word " shoestrings." Since Boswell's day, this
word has not changed in the United States, and Americans
still ask for shoestrings when the Englishman requires boot
laces. The word " gentleman " evidently meant nothing
more originally than a gentle man, and the word is retained
in America in practically this same sense; although there
is a limited but growing use of the word in the English
meaning, which denotes a member of a certain social class,
rather than a certain type of individual. The word " sick "
was originally used as in Shakespeare or in the Prayer Book,
in reference to all disease or lack of health, and the word
is still so used in America. In England, however, " sick "
has been restricted to the single disorder of seasickness, " ill "
being used in its place, except in the compound " sick-list."
An Englishman who is well acquainted with the history of
his native tongue may often be surprised to hear spoken in
America good eighteenth-century or even pure Elizabethan
English.

The fourth division of Americanisms consists of English
provincialisms which have been adopted into more or less
general use in the United States. It is interesting, for
example, to find in the English Dialect Dictionary that the
strange expression " spitten image " is (or was) known in
Cumberland and Westmoreland, used as in the sentence,
" He's t' spitten image ov his f adder." Now this expres
sion is not uncommon in the United States, especially in the
South, where some explain it as a corruption of " spirit
and image." It would be interesting to be able to prove
that some emigrants from Cumberland and Westmoreland
settled in the southern part of the United States and
brought this curious expression with them. Not long ago,
it appeared in print in one of the New York magazines.

The verb " to crock," meaning in Norfolk and Suffolk

96 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to black with soot, is sufficiently well known in the United
States to find a place in the dictionary. In Hallamshire,
" to mush " means to crush or pound very small, from which
may be derived the American word " mush," a favorite dish
of corn-meal boiled with water, and eaten with milk or
molasses. " Spunky/' which Forby mentions as provincial
in Norfolk, meaning spirited, vivacious, and the correspond
ing noun " spunk," which Brockett says is a colloquial word,
considered in England extremely vulgar, are both well known
and often used in the United States. " Wilt," meaning to
droop or wither, is a very common word in America, and
provincial in Great Britain.

There are doubtless a very great number of these provin
cialisms which have fallen upon good ground in America
and flourished, but among the many modern Americanisms,
it is somewhat hard to point out all the original dialectal
sources. This is a task not yet completed, but it will no
doubt be found true in the end that many American words
and phrases which strike the English ear as peculiar will be
found to have originated in some dialect in Great Britain.

Fifthly, there are those words which have been coined
in the United States, — entirely new words, derived from
nowhere else, — pure American inventions. There are quite
a large number of these " barbarisms." A " scallawag " is
a scamp. " Kerchunk " is a word often used to describe
the fall of a heavy body. American inventions have led to
the introduction of a great many words peculiar to the
United States. Take, for example, terms connected with
steam transportation. The Englishman says " railway," the
American " railroad." The one speaks of the " goods van "
or the " luggage compartment " ; the other, of " freight cars "
and " baggage cars." So for " carriage," " line," " shunt,"
" guard," " driver," " corridor," etc., there are used in
America "car," "track," "switch," "conductor," "engi
neer," and " aisle." " Checkers " is the name, probably
invented in America, for the game of draughts. In like man
ner, " Fall " is the American word for Autumn. " Poker "
is an American addition to the number of card-games.
" Pop -corn " is the name invented for the kind of Indian
corn which " pops " or bursts open, when roasted. " Punk "
was the name first applied to rotten wood; then it came to
be used as an adjective for anything rotten, or poor in qual
ity, or unpleasing: today in unelegant colloquial talk in

DO WE SPEAK ENGLISH? 97

America, one will hear of a pink tennis-ball, a punk the
atrical performance, or a punk musician. " Rag- time " is
the curious name invented to describe that variety of music
of which the United States is the chief source, in which
syncopated rhythm is the characteristic feature.

Some of these Americanisms have been welcomed into
England, so that their origin tends to be forgotten. For
instance, the word " lengthy " met with great opposition
a century ago, but it made headway in America; from it,
President Jefferson is credited with having formed the word
" lengthily " at which no offense is taken in England today.
The word " loafer " was originally an American slang inven
tion to describe a habitual lounger, but (as was prophesied
almost a century ago) " it is a good word, one much needed
in the language, and will, in time, establish itself in the most
refined dictionaries." Some American word-inventions be
come so thoroughly at home in England that it is often hard
to establish their origin. No one in Great Britain today
feels the word "telegram" to be an Americanism; yet it
was first suggested in April, 1852, by an American living
in Rochester, N. Y., and its use in America subsequently
attracted English attention. Previous to that time, people
had spoken of telegraphic despatches, telegraphic communi
cations, and the like ; the innovation was an evident improve
ment. In England, no use of the word had been claimed
prior to 1853, so that the American may justly receive credit
for having coined this useful word.

In this connection may be mentioned an American habit
closely allied to that of coining words, namely that of coin
ing new meanings for words already known. Take, for
example, the current slang use of that much-used word
" some." What a wealth of meaning and insinuation the
American has invented for the word! " Some " as an ad
verb may be heard in many places. For instance, in the
Teign Valley district of Devon, the natives may say, " It
did rain zum yesterday." But the American would use the
word as an adjective and say, " That was some rain yes
terday." This use is hard to define. In the middle of the
last century, " some," meaning considerable, or notable, was
called " a modern slang word." Today " some " is almost
limitless in its capacity for application. It implies approval,
enthusiasm, sarcasm, wonder, admiration, disgust — or amuse
ment. The seeds may have been sown in Cornwall, in Devon,
VOL. ccvii. — NO. 746 7

98 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

or in Lancashire, but I seriously doubt if a native of any
of these counties would ever say enthusiastically, " We had
some fun last night," or sarcastically, " This is some book "!
Another word to which Americans have given a new mean
ing is the verb " raise." In England, men raise crops ; in
America, they also raise children.

The sixth class of Americanisms is formed of words
which have been borrowed in America from European lan
guages. From the French come " calaboose " (the jail, or,
a I' anglalse , the gaol), " department " and " departmental "
(referring to divisions of the government, corresponding to
the English use of the word " office ") , " grade " (instead of
the English words " rank," " gradient," or " form," as in
"the sixth form at school"), "prairie," and "barbecue,"
supposed to be a corruption of barbe-a-queue, an expres
sion after the pattern of cap-a-pieds. Barbe-a-queue means
from snout to tail, and barbecue is the term used today in
the Southern States for dressing a hog whole. The animal
is split " from snout to tail," and roasted over a charcoal fire.

From the Spanish the Americans have taken the words
"corral," "fandango" (a dance), "mustang," "picka
ninny " (a negro child, or colloquially, a " nigger-baby,"
a corruption of the Spanish pequeno nino, a little child),
"picayune" (small, a trifle, as in the sentence, "I don't
care a picayune about the matter ") .

To the Dutch settlers in America are due the American
words "cookey" (a little cake, from the Dutch koekje),
"stoop" (door-steps, or small porch), and "spook" (a
ghost). These words are the survivals of a great number
once in use in New York, when it was called New Amster
dam. Most of the Dutch words have died out, but " cookey,"
" spook," and others have spread all over the country. The
English in South Africa have also learned the word " spook "
from the Dutch, and the word is known in Yorkshire, per
haps from the Flemish weavers who at one time immigrated
there. " Spook " is also known in Low German, and the
old German colony in Pennsylvania aided in spreading the
use of the word. The tragedy of Hamlet was once trans
lated into Pennsylvania German, and the speech, " I am
thy father's ghost " was rendered, " Ich bin dein daddy sein
spook "I

This seems to be a suitable place to make a few observa
tions on the future of the language. The question has often

DO WE SPEAK ENGLISH? 99

been asked by people on both sides of the Atlantic whether
the time will ever come when the language of the two nations
will have drifted so far apart that they will be able no longer
easily to understand one another. It is hardly probable that
the literary language of the two countries will ever be greatly
dissimilar, and we can feel pretty confident that books writ
ten and printed on one side of the ocean will always ( except,
perhaps, for a word here and there) be intelligible on the
other side. With the spoken language it is different. The
vast watery barrier so effectually prevents free intercourse
of speech that the day may easily come when an American
may find himself unable to make himself understood in
England, and the same with an Englishman in America.
This possibility is due, not only to the ever-changing pro
nunciation of vowel-sounds and consonants, to the shifting
of accent, and to the slow but effective changes of articula
tion and emphasis, but also to those forces which we have
just been discussing, namely, the introduction of new words
into the language from other sources. The same conditions
do not exist in the two countries; a new word is needed in
the one when it is not needed in the other; in one country
there is present a foreign element ready to supply the needed
word, in the other there is no such element. Already
Englishmen find themselves totally ignorant of hundreds
of words which are in daily use in the United States. The
same is true in South Africa and Australia. Gradually a
colloquial vocabulary is being built up in each place peculiar
to that locality and the conditions thereof ; without abundant
communication — an impossibility when oceans lie between —
these vocabularies must in time become more or less unintel
ligible outside the regions where they are spoken. We must,
then, be prepared to except the day, no doubt far distant as
yet, but none the less probably coming, when the Englishman
and the American can no longer freely converse, each speak
ing his native tongue. This does not mean that conversation
between the two will be impossible, but it may become so
difficult that one or the other of them will have to learn the
other's language. The two tongues will remain so much
alike in grammar, syntax, and everything apart from pro
nunciation, accent, and vocabulary, that it will not be dif
ficult for a native of one side of the Atlantic to learn
to speak intelligently the language of a native of the other
side; but nevertheless, when the speech of the two nations

100 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

has drifted far enough apart, some actual effort will be
required to carry on a conversation.

The seventh class of Americanisms includes those words
which have come into the language from the original inhabi
tants of the country. Some of these Indian words have
been domesticated in England, e. g., " hammock," " hur
ricane," " pemmican," and " tobacco." From the Mexican
Indians come the words "chili " (as in " chili-sauce "), and
" tomato." Others, however, are still known only in Amer
ica — such as " pow-wow." To these words must be added
those which are connected with Indian life, and which are
not used except in reference to the Indians and their affairs :
tomahawk, wigwam, papoose, squaw, wampum, and the like.

For the eighth division of Americanisms the negro is
responsible. A small number of words are supposed to have
been introduced into English by the slaves brought from
Africa. " Banjo," the name of a favorite musical instru
ment with the negroes, is probably of negro origin. Another
word, much used in the Southern States where the great
mass of American negroes still live, is " to tote," meaning
to carry. Southerners speak of " toting " wood, " toting "
a child, " toting " water, etc. The word is probably of Afri
can origin.

The negroes are not as active in the introduction of new
words as they are in the metamorphosis of old ones. In their
mouths, many common English words take on new sounds,
until they are almost unrecognizable. Final and medial con
sonants are. dropped, prefixes are suppressed, vowels are
changed, one consonant is substituted for another; and the
final result is a very picturesque dialect of the American
variety of English.

The ninth and last class of Americanisms which I shall
have occasion to mention consists of peculiarities of pro-
nunication. A word of .caution is here necessary. The
American and the Englishman have both noticed peculiari
ties in the word-sounds of the other. There are differences
of stress accent, there are differences of intonation, and
there are numerous other differences which the careful ob
server will discover. But these are often local peculiarities.
A man of Stratford-on-Avon does not speak like a man of
Exeter; a Bostonian speaks differently from a man of New
Orleans. To be deserving of the name of an Americanism,
a peculiarity of pronunication should be sufficiently national

DO WE SPEAK ENGLISH? 101

to make its use accurately mark tHe nationality of the speaker.
There are not a few such peculiarities in American speech.
I shall mention only three of them. Americans often give
the vowel a the short sound where the English pronounce
it broadly. The pronunciation of the words " France,"
"b'anana," "half," "rather," "past," "cast," "dance,"
" blast," " ask," and the like, will usually serve in speech
to distinguish the American. Another Americanism is
found in the -oo pronunciation of the words " new," " duke,"
" Tuesday," " neutral," " due,"" true," " blew," etc. The
Englishman pronounces them with the sound as in the word
" few." A third Americanism is found in the pronuncia
tion of words like " military." The Briton says milit'ry ;
the American sounds all the syllables. This peculiarity of
pronunciation is found in many words, e. g.} stationery,
literary, millinery, sanctuary, secretary, and laboratory.

This paper does not pretend to be exhaustive. Many
other points of difference might be cited — differences of
spelling, variations of proverbs, changes in idioms, differ
ences of grammar, punctuation, and construction; but we
have confined ourselves largely to the question of vocabulary
alone. Here the differences are not large, when the great
mass of the English vocabulary is considered; but the changes
are increasing from year to year, and in time will probably
demand more recognition. At some future date, the Amer
ican school-boy may have as great difficulty in reading
Kipling and Bernard Shaw as the college student today
experiences in reading Beowulf*

C. JEFFERSON WEBER,

FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE

BY ANNE C. E. ALLINSON

" BETRAYED by false friends, reviled by enemies, the lot
of the sincere pacifist is hard " — so such an one writes to
me. " Every cause has its Gethsemane and this is ours.
Does my suffering bring no conviction to you? " Thus am
I asked again to accept a faith because its adherents are
willing to be martyrs. The argument is a very old one and
of continued efficacy. In great and little concerns alike the
supporters of a cause welcome and its opponents regret the
appearance of a victim. But today I find that the argu
ment begets questions in my mind: What is the relation
of the martyr to his faith? Is it his suffering or his belief
which ensures ethical validity? Let us marshal our thoughts
on this subject of martyrdom.

The appeal of the martyr is almost irresistible to those
of us who count most fortunate in history the men and women
who have been allowed to die for their faiths. Devotion to
principle may, indeed, bring a fuller measure of life and
honor; the exaltation of many to power and fame has been
caused by their fidelity to ideas which transcend the world's
emoluments. And yet about the final proof of fidelity, the
laying down of life, there is a glory withheld from any other
form of human service. Socrates without the hemlock, Joan
of Arc without the flames — ah, how different might be our
reading of their stories !

There seems to be in the race a strange instinct for
martyrdom. The cynic sometimes seems not unjustified in
attributing it to a desire for notoriety. But the desire for
sacrifice is more primitive. When the philosopher Pere-
grinus had himself burned alive at one of the Olympic festi
vals, so that the crowds, collected from all over Greece, might
fix their attention on him, he was sophisticated in comparison

FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE 103

with the rude votary of a savage religion offering his life as
a sacrifice to the tribal God. We have come to associate
the word martyr more specifically with Christianity because
no other faith has produced martyrs in such profusion and
because their blood has been the seed of a civilization within
which we ourselves live and move and have our being. With
these Christian martyrs, then, it may repay us to become
more intimate.

Among them a primitive instinct was lifted into a pas
sionate desire to share the sufferings of the author of their
faith. The directness of this emotion seems utterly to have
escaped Bernard Shaw in Androcles and the Lion. The play
is a piece of amusing fooling with the Christian martyrs,*
who were ridiculous enough to their contemporaries and are
here again served up to make an English holiday. In the
one passage which injects dignity into the theme Mr. Shaw
misreads his own fools. He makes Lavinia, better educated
than the other prisoners, explain to the captain of the Roman
guard that, in the face of death, all her faith in the Christian
dreams and stories is oozing, fading away into nothing, and
yet she means to die. The dialogue goes on :

" Captain: Are you, then, going to die for nothing?
"Lavinia: Yes, that is the wonderful thing. It is since all the
stories and dreams have gone that I have now no doubt that I must die
for something greater than dreams or stories.

"Captain: But for what?

"Lavinia: I don't know. If it were anything small enough to know,
it would be too small to die for."

CJest mangifique — but it is not the truth. Shavians may
consent to die, only for something too abstract to know. But
the Christians who faced the beasts in the Roman arena did
it because they knew and loved Jesus Christ. Christianity*
like every other religion, uses creeds and dogmas, even stories
and dreams, to bulwark its existence. But when it was
new-born into the mighty pagan world, only one of several
religions which preached sacrifice and atonement, salvation
and brotherhood, it had a single, unique instrument of vic
tory : the personal love which its followers bore to a personal
master who so exemplified his own preaching as to become
their Way and Truth. If Androcles and his like had not
been willing to die for a person, Mithras might have
conquered Christ. An intense, impelling love. for Jesus of
Nazareth widened out from the little group of his life-time

104 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

disciples and flooded, at last, the shores of history. Since
Jesus had been killed for his faith, his immediate followers
passionately wished to die in the same way. Peter, espe
cially, welcomed crucifixion, because in the hour of this tor
ture he could obliterate the memory of that other hour, in
the cowardly dawn, just before the cock crew, when he had
denied his friend and master. Love like this spread to a
group a little further away. Stephen, as the angry Jews
in the synagogue surged toward him, looked up steadfastly
into heaven and saw, not an Unknown, but Jesus, his Lord.
When they cast him out of the city and stoned him, he died
calling upon his Lord by name. In the crowd was a hostile
young Jew, aiding and abetting the murderous attack. This
same youth later — such is the drama of Christianity — by his
dynamic personality and power of language spread far and
wide the amazing emotion, the consuming love which had
made Stephen's face like an angel's and which was to trans
form the pagan world. Paul endured dangers by land and
sea, hunger and thirst and nakedness and buffeting, for the
sake of preaching Christ crucified ; and then welcomed execu
tion outside the gates of Rome. In death he found at last
a certain dwelling-place.

From Stephen and Paul the impulse to* find joy in mar
tyrdom rippled out to those obscurer men and women of the
first few centuries who endured a violent death for love of
one who had been crucified. " I have never suffered and
now that I begin I begin to be a disciple of our Lord Jesus
Christ "; — so one Phileas, unknown to other fame, expressed
himself when he was condemned to die. Old Bishop Pothinus
of Lyons, so weak at ninety that he could scarcely draw
breath, was renewed to strength by the " ardor of his soul
and eager desire for martyrdom." Perpetua, the young
matron of Carthage, facing her torture, remarked with a
woman's sweet audacity, "I have always been gay, I shall
be more gay in another world." From the authentic accounts
— -discarding the dreams and stories — of these martyrdoms
might be constructed a series of dramas more picturesque
than Mr. Shaw's. For example, in the story of Fructuosus,
an early bishop of Rome, characters, scenes, homely details
and great emotions lie at the playwright's hand. On a night
in January the bishop is in bed, when he hears the footsteps
of soldiers coming toward his room. He jumps up and
meets them on the threshold, tranquilly receiving their an-

FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE 105

nouncement that he and his deacons are arrested. He only
asks if he may take time to put on his shoes, and they tell
him to suit himself about that. The next scene is in the
trial room to which the criminals are brought from prison.
There they are all condemned to be burned alive and Fructu-
osus " exults at the thought of the crown which is offered
him." Next, the bishop and his deacons are taken to the
amphitheatre through crowds of onlookers. The bishop is
loved by all who know him, and so the pagans as well as the
Christians shower pity upon him. But the Christians say
less than the pagans, because, " thinking of the glory which
awaits him, they are more inclined to joy than sadness."
The drama culminates in the amphitheatre scene. As the
victims begin to undress, Fructuosus' reader, with tears in
his eyes, begs the privilege of taking off his shoes. But the
bishop, " tranquil, joyous," says gently to him: " Go away,
my child. I will take off my shoes myself." The fires are
lit. The sacrifice is consummated. As a finale we are taken
into a gathering of the faithful. They are sorrowful, uneasi
ness oppresses them all. " But they do not pity Fructuosus ;
on the contrary, they envy him."

With such a devotion impelling men and women of all
kinds it is no wonder that in the first Christian centuries
martyrdom threatened to run wild. Doubtless most modern
intellectuals would have agreed with Marcus Aurelius in
his contempt for Christian fanaticism. ' The soul," he said,
" should be ready at any moment to be separated from the
body; but this readiness must come from a man's own calm
judgment, not from mere obstinacy and with a tragic show
as with the Christians." But in reality the early Church
itself, to its infinite credit, insisted upon judgment and rea
sonableness, refusing to set its seal upon all kinds of mar
tyrdom. A Christian, for instance, who was arrested and
punished for wantonly destroying the " idols " of unoffend
ing pagan neighbors was not a martyr but a criminal. Suf
fering in itself was not a sacrament. This was pointed out
over and over by the leaders to the more ignorant. Once,
during a plague in Carthage, some Christians lamented that
they would have to die on sick-beds instead of as martyrs,
and their bishop -explained to them: " It is one thing for
the spirit to be wanting for martyrdom and another for mar
tyrdom to have been wanting for the spirit. For God does
not ask for our blood, but for our faith."

106 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Marcus Aurelius, on the throne of the Roman Empire
and within the citadel of Stoic thought, was too remote from
the religion of an obscure sect to understand its remarkable
combination of emotion and reason. Before his time, in the
period of our classical intimates, Trajan and Pliny and
Tacitus, this union was revealed in a man of whom aristo
crats and scholars may never have heard, but whose ideas
were destined to spread farther and live longer than their
own. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch — said to be third in
succession from Peter — was summoned to Rome to be killed
by beasts in the amphitheatre. The Roman Christians
started a movement to save him. Hearing of this he sent
to them, from a stopping-place in his westward journey, an
impassioned appeal to be permitted to be a martyr. The
emotion in his letter rises like a flood: " Grant me nothing
more than that I be poured out to God, while an altar is still
ready. . . . God has vouchsafed that the bishop of Syria
shall be found at the setting of the sun, having fetched him
from the sun's rising. It is good to set to the world towards
God that I may rise to him." But this emotion is merely a
by-product of his profound conviction that through his death
more efficaciously than through his life the truth will speak*
Living, he will be but a cry; martyred, he will become a
voice of God. The reason for this belief he gives in a superb
sentence which would have been foolishness to the intelli
gentsia of the day, but which has been confirmed by two
millennia: " Christianity is not the work of persuasiveness,
but of greatness when it is hated by the world."

Doubtless without emotion the dictates of reason would
far more rarely have been obeyed in this matter of martyr
dom. At the behest of " calm judgment " enough blood
would not have been spilled to nourish the roots of Christi
anity. The cool motive for sacrifice offered by the Stoics
had but left the pagan world and eager seeker after any
religion which would fill the place left void when reason
retreated. Among all the Oriental faiths which promised
salvation in spite of the defeat of man's will Christianity
supplied the emotion of self -surrender to a Person who had
died for others; and so won the case before the jury of
human hearts. The persuasiveness of logic would not have
kept this religion alive. To feed and nurture it greatness
was repeatedly called upon to suffer. Its continued exist
ence depended upon the same mysterious law as its birth.

FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE 107

We are brought back to the birth-pangs of the Christian
martyr's faith. Here at Golgotha is the supreme martyrdom
of the race. Now it is an amazing fact that before the cross
of Jesus of Nazareth we find ourselves persuaded to thoughts
which bear almost no resemblance to the thoughts of Peter
and Stephen, Paul and Ignatius, Phileas and Perpetua.
Here not even a Stoic could have found any tragic show.
Here is neither obstinacy nor intense emotion. The founder
of Christianity had no more irresistible leaning toward mar
tyrdom than had Socrates, the pagan. And his physical
recoil was greater, because he was young and full of life
and faced bodily humiliation and suffering as well as death.
The Athenian was seventy years old and doubtless had
already relaxed his hold on life. He was to incur death —
such was capital punishment in Athens— by a free act, with
out the outrage of personal violence. His martyrdom, for
all the shame it heaped upon the law courts of his day, was
in its details characteristic of the humaneness and the beau
tiful dignity of Athenian civilization. The prisoner and his
friends had talked for hours about the soul's eternal life, and
when the sun set and the hour of his bodily death arrived
silence fell upon one of the immortal conversations of his
tory. Then the jailor, reluctantly and respectfully, brought
in the cup of poison. Socrates took it into his own hand,
drained it, and lay down to die, without torment, in reverent
peace. Contrast the fate of the Nazarene at the hands of
Jews and Romans, scourged and buffeted, fainting under
the heavy instrument of torture laid upon him, suffering
from terrible thirst in the midst of agony, slowly dying before
the jeering crowds! Those who came after him were sus
tained by the memory of his suffering and by the ardor of
love which that suffering created. In the hour of martyrdom
they " saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right
hand of God." But for himself, upon the cross, there
was the sense of having failed with men and been forsaken
by God.

Nor was this hour of despair a reaction from exaltation.
During the latter months of his life, as he foresaw the failure
of his work and the enmity of the authorities, he dreaded
the end to which devotion was leading him. The strength
of the temptation to avoid it may be measured by the severity
of his reproof to Peter — "Get thee behind me, Satan " — for
suggesting the possibility of escape. When an alternative

108 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

seemed to present itself, his mind, as if not obstinately set
on martyrdom, became troubled. This was when Andrew
and Philip told him that some Greeks wanted to see him.
There was probably reason for believing that they wished to
invite him to go back to Greece with them; and Jesus had
a swift thought of what it might mean to preach to such a
people. Would it not, indeed, be better to flee Jerusalem
and seek Athens, to live and win, rather than to die and
lose? The account of his strange, disconnected answer to the
disciples who ask if he will see the Greeks, must reproduce
the perplexity of his spirit. " Now is my soul troubled,"
he exclaimed, " what shall I say? Father save me from
this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour." And
yet " calm judgment " conquered. For he was assured of
a truth which he poured out in burning words to Andrew
and Philip : " Verily, verily I say unto you, except a corn
of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone, but
if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." Emotionally he
dreaded crucifixion, but reasonably he believed that if he was
lifted up he would draw all men unto him. None can deny
that his judgment has been confirmed. No other martyrdom
has generated such continuous results. No other seed buried
in the ground has brought forth such abundant fruit. The
mysterious law of creation received its sublimest confirmation
at Golgotha.

Small wonder that with this mystery in possession of our
consciousness we should sometimes forget to look beyond
pain to the life which it brings forth. But the martyr of
Golgotha did not forget. The generative power of suffering
never obscured for him the supremacy of the truth for which
he suffered. He judged the efficacy of the buried seed by
the goodness of the fruit it was to bear. Blessed are they
which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, was one of his
sayings to the multitude. Indeed, our own rough and ready
judgment of certain martyrs proves our unconscious agree
ment with this. If we really believed that martyrdom in
itself ensured the crown, then it would make no difference to
us whether Socrates died for the freedom or for the enslave
ment of human reason. And Saul of Tarsus, killed by a
hot-head while he was breathing out threatenings and slaugh
ter against the innocent, would have claimed our reverence
as surely as Paul executed by the government for his acts
of love and brotherhood. But this is not true. Our estimate

FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE 109

of both the pagan and the Christian involves an estimate of
his cause. We revere the martyrdom of each because it was
his final and most fructifying contribution to ideas which we
accept as true.

By their fruits ye shall know them. This is a hard say
ing, for it sweeps away many defences. To mean well is
not enough. Even to suffer is not enough. Because truth
can be brought to birth only through suffering, we must not
argue that everything born of suffering is truth. The terms
are not convertible. Our sympathy inevitably goes out to
the man who surrenders life or comfort or happiness for a
belief. But sympathy must not mislead us into accepting
his sacrifice as a proof of the truth of his belief, nor into
absolving him, if he be in error. Ignorance is no excuse.
The terrible responsibility is laid upon us to know the truth.
This has been taught by all our spiritual masters. Socrates
even identified virtue with knowledge. And the most pierc
ing words in the New Testament are those which Jesus
directed against the permanently self -deceived : " Not every
one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in heaven. . . . Depart from me, ye that work
iniquity."

In these troubled times is it not necessary to bring our
selves back to this teaching, in all its severity? Suffering is
rife in the world. We look to it for purification. But we
must remember that its efficacy will depend upon the kind of
life which fructifies from it. The warning is two- fold, touch
ing both our judgment of others and our hope for ourselves.

We see our enemies suffering to the uttermost, offering
themselves as willing martyrs for their faith. We may pay
our tribute to their courage and devotion; but to dally with
their faith, to be gentle with their doctrine is moral chaos.
Those who choose to judge them by their suffering, rather
than by the ideas for which they suffer, by their " Lord,
Lord " rather than by the iniquity which they work cannot
run to shelter behind Christianity. The Crucified bars
the way.

But more swift and searching must be the application to
ourselves. We long to bear our share of suffering at this
time. The passion of thousands of Americans has been re
cently expressed in these beautiful words: " In a dull and
blunted sense, we feel that longing the disciples felt when

110 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

they beheld the Master on the tree, and longed to hang there
by his side. Our hearts and minds are sick with fever which
only the letting of our blood may heal." But unless our
blood is let for truth our sacrifice will be in vain. With our
willingness to be martyrs let us join a scrutiny of our cause.
Will our buried seed bring forth good fruit? If it be evil,
we shall be hewn down and cast into the fire. But if by our
dying we give life to freedom and to goodwill and to peace,
then we shall become trees of righteousness, the planting of
the Lord.

ANNE C. E. ALLINSON*

THE GOTHIC IN FRANCE

BY AUGUSTS RODIN

ONE of the first among foreigners to understand the
ancient cathedrals and churches of France was Ruskin, as
was Victor Hugo among his fellow-countrymen. Hugo had
made no special study of the subject; but he understood
through his great genius: he understood as a poet; for
cathedrals are vast poems.

At the time he wrote, the Gothic art was considered in
France as something barbarian; in fact, the epithet was
applied to all that was Gothic. This error antedates the
eighteenth century. Even in the reign of Louis XIV,
Fenelon, and those with him who speak of the Gothic archi
tecture, referred to it in disparaging language. What was
more admired in the age of the great Louis and his successor
was a town-hall of the style then modern. Many cathedrals
and churches were roughly treated during those years, and
the French Revolution did no more than carry on the work
of destruction already begun.

If some one in authority begins to say that a thing is
ugly, nearly everybody follows his example; and it needs
a strong intelligence to uphold the contrary. Victor Hugo
related to me that, when the Rue de Rivoli was being cut,
that part of it which is beyond the arcades, between the
Louvre and the Rue Saint- Antoine, had been originally
designed to have .another course, commencing opposite the
colonnade of the Louvre and running from there in a straight
line as far as the Place du Trone. Had this plan been car
ried out, the Tour Saint- Jacques, a fine specimen of Gothic
sculpture, would have been demolished. Victor Hugo pro-

1 Reprinted from THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, February, 1905.

112 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tested with such good effect that the original plan was modi
fied, and the Tower was preserved.

I cannot say that, as a boy, though born in Paris, I paid
much attention to the architecture of Notre Dame. Chil
dren do not know how to see. I remarked its great size,
and that was all. Only when I was in full possession of
myself, at the age of about twenty-five, did I begin to make
a special study of its beauty, which was generally decried.
To some extent, indeed, before I was twenty, my eyes had
been opened while I was working for a sculptor named Bies,
who had a good deal to do with the so-called " restoring "
of Notre Dame. It was to him that Violet-le-Duc once
said : " Forget all you know, and you will execute something
Gothic." The expression had its hidden meaning. Pro
found knowledge is needed to produce the real Gothic — a
form which today exists only in the monuments of the past.

As I grew older and rid myself of the prejudices of
my environment, I acquired more assurance and dared to
see for myself. Whenever I travelled, I made it a rule to
visit all the cathedrals I could. Even in a small town there
is often a real cathedral. I used to awaken early in the
morning, and hasten to visit what for me were the chief
objects of interest. And I remember that the spires and
the various parts of these churches gave me an exquisite
joy. I would linger and walk round them until I was thor
oughly tired out.

No architect or sculptor has ever been able properly
to restore a Gothic church or cathedral. Those who have
tried, essayed a task as vain as if one were to attempt com
pleting a chapter of Rabelais in which a part was wanting.
The new portion would not be like the old. Formerly, when
Greek or Roman statues were discovered, the custom was to
restore them. Today, the custom has fallen into desuetude,
and nothing is lost by it. The Italians it is true continue to
repair their ancient monuments; but they only touch the
parts that are falling to ruin; whereas, when we repair, we
insist on restoring, and spoil the old in order to harmonize
it with the new. In Italy, the old is still extant; and,
notwithstanding the repairing, we are able to enjoy the
admirable beauty of the whole.

It is difficult to explain the Gothic ; there is always some
thing that escapes definition. Consequently, ordinary ideas
on the subject are erroneous or incomplete. Many people

THE GOTHIC IN FRANCE 113

talk of the Gothic as if it were nothing but the predominance
of the ideal over the material, or again of the idea over form.
I consider the matter rather from the point of view of the
execution. Another opinion is that the ogive constitutes
the Gothic. This is also inexact. We might have Gothic
architecture without the ogive. This style results from a
long and careful experimentation on the effects of light and
shade, and from the faculty thus acquired of giving to archi
tecture a living, moving appearance. When I speak of light
and shade, it is without reference to painting; I mean the
rendering visible and perceptible certain geometrical points
that make the planes of sculpture.

In order to have such effects of light and shade, there
must be strongly projecting surfaces, arranged with due
regard to their position in foreground and background.
These were achieved with infinite art in the old Gothic cathe
drals and churches, whose every part invariably stands out
or recedes with a fine chiaroscuro. In the modern Gothic,
however good the general design may be in outline, there is
a lack of location in foreground and background, and the
reliefs are shallow, holding no shadow, so that the details
seem poor and cold. The superiority of the old will be at
once apparent, if an ancient church porch is examined. It
looks like a grotto or a cavern — architecturally constructed,
of course. Certain of the figures that have been carved within
it are bathed in light, others are shrouded in darkness, and
others again show half -tints of chiaroscuro. Throughout the
day, there is a continual change. While there are never more
than a few figures in full view at the same instant, and the
rest are either partially seen or divined, the sun's procession
transports the effects from one side to the other, transposing
them gradually between morning and evening in an animated
panorama. Inside the edifice, there is the same impression
of light playing amid deep recesses, but here we have candles
replacing the sun's rays. Much more than the ogive, the
grotto, the cavern, is essential to the Gothic, since by its aid
is obtained a unique trituration of light, which comes back to
the eyes with mysterious softness after penetrating into the
abyss. Not that the architects of the Middle Ages neces
sarily wrought with a desire to produce something mys
terious. This, like the other effects, was derived from the
manner of their working, a manner present architectural
sculpture is ignorant of or ignores. There is plenty of re-

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 746 8

114 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

lief in the modern style, but the relief has no life. Whether
the building be church, chapel or synagogue, it is ugly and
cold to look at.

The good Gothic style appears in churches and cathedrals
built during the four and five hundred years that lie between
the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Indeed, it can hardly
be said to terminate with the Renascence; for our Renascence
is still a Gothic style, which we wrongly call Renascence,
and is, in reality, a marriage of the Gothic with the Greek —
virtually, all is Gothic, but the details are finished in the
Greek manner. Nearly all Renascence churches are good
examples of this mingling of the two styles. In Paris, for
instance, there are Saint-Eustache and Saint-Etienne du
Mont. The latter, which is both fine and beautiful, is a
Renascence of Henry the Fourth's period. Tonerre also
possesses two Renascence churches, one of which has been
restored and spoilt, while the other remains as it was first
designed. Under the Revolution it was damaged; but the
plan is, nevertheless, intact.

Among the purely Gothic edifices it is difficult to assign
a preference, except on the score of some particularity. And
they are full of such. No two are alike. At Chartres, the
cathedral has two spires ; one of them soars straight up with
out mouldings; the other is ornamented; and the contrast is
a piece of admirable artistic effect.

In fact art exists only by oppositions, Gothic art espe
cially. That is to say, if you have something ornamental,
you must have beside it, as a foil, something simple. In
Gothic churches, this is always the case. Notice the towers;
in the lower portions they are huge masses of stone, whereas,
above, they flower like plants. If Notre Dame at Paris is
looked at sideways from the proper standpoints, this can be
easily verified. In the environs of Paris, there are numbers
of old churches that illustrate the Gothic, the Abbey of Saint-
Denis for one. It has been restored; but the grand outlines
have not been touched ; and, at the distance permitting them
to be appreciated, they stand out splendidly. The whole
structure is like a child's drawing, a simple yet beautiful
drawing of the kind some children know how to make. It
is a house with a steeple at the side. At Pontoise, the church
has some exquisite details. In the midst of the portal, there
is a small edicule of the Greek Renascence order ; it is charm
ing. At Etampes, Dreux, Evreux, Caen, there are edifices

THE GOTHIC IN FRANCE 115

equally remarkable. The finest church at Caen has been re
stored. It was Renascence Gothic. Now it is heavy. The
churches at Troyes were superb ; but, since their restoration,
the beauty has disappeared. At Sens, there is an exceed
ingly fine specimen of the Gothic. At Nevers, too, the
churches are remarkable.

Our French cathedrals are superior to the English and
German ones by the greater sculptural expression displayed
in them. In this respect, they are second to nothing outside
antique Greek architecture. The German Gothic is char
acteristically hard. The cathedrals at Strasburg and Cologne
exhibit this defect, but, like that at Milan, more on the ex
terior than in the interior. The interior of the Cologne
edifice is very fine, and yet the structure as a whole does not
possess that supreme art for lack of which the largest cathe
dral appears smaller than a small church which has it. Ant
werp Cathedral is very beautiful, more beautiful than Col
ogne. Its spire is a veritable crown ; soaring, as it does, into
the air, it is glorious to behold. At Malines, the church is
likewise beautiful; its ornamentation, however, is somewhat
poor, the depth of its relief not being sufficient.

One vantage-point from which to behold a Gothic cathe
dral is, at a distance from it — two or three kilometres from
the town. At this distance it seems enormous, magnificent,
imposing; all the other buildings of the town shrink into
nothingness. The mass of the structure is in straight lines,
but so ornamented that the straight line seems to bulge and
fill out, which gives to the whole flexibility and richness.

The architects who raised these edifices were endowed
with a consummate knowledge of effect. They would ap
pear, indeed, by the works they have left to have been ac
quainted with every science. It is the greatness of them all,
perhaps, which has prevented their names from coming down
to posterity. There are, of course, legends about them.
Scholars claim to have discovered the identity of some. But,
in fact, while handing on to us the purest and best of them
selves, they remain anonymous. At most, we may presume
that, in the figures they have carved, there are portraits of
many designers and workers. It was only at the Renascence
that names began to be attached to the masterpieces of sculp
ture. At that time, Philibert Delorme, Jean Goujon, Jean
Cousin and others succeeded in perpetuating their fame.
At present, if any one travels in France and sees a fine figure

116 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

carved somewhere — on a tomb, may be — he is told that Jean
Goujon or Jean Cousin carved it, simply because nobody
knows who carved it; and as the artist's name has perished,
it is these later sculptors who get the credit.

In commencing to study the Gothic it matters little where
the starting point is. The chief thing is to humble one's
self and become a little child, to be content not to master
all at once, to be obedient to what Nature can teach, and to
be patient through years and years. The study grows easy
enough in time. ,At first, of course, the comprehension is
embryonic; you visit one and another edifice; you divine a
part of their value, and with each new experience, the com
prehension increases. A mind capable of analyzing and co
ordinating will ultimately succeed in understanding. If
today there is such a lack in this respect, the cause lies in the
neglect of those great qualities of art that are more than
originality, and are born from the love which inspires the
work.

In one direction the Gothic sculptors surpass the Greek.
The Greek temple is the same everywhere, and similarity,
identity, is not a culminating quality of art. Life is made
up of strength and grace most variously mingled, and the
Gothic gives us this. No one church resembles another. Be
tween the churches of the one part of France and another,
differences exist on a very large scale. The cathedrals of
Champagne contrast with those of Burgundy, those of the
North still more with those of the West.

To explain why these differences are found is difficult.
The race and soil are probably a partial factor. The sky
may also have had its influence. The Romanesque style
which immediately precedes the Gothic is ordinarily sombre;
and yet, if one goes to the banks of the Loire, it will be seen
to be as luminous as that of the Renascence. The sombre
note prevails most on the north of France, but it is felt also
in the south. This Romanesque is the style of the first kings
in the sixth and seventh centuries, and persists to a consider
ably later period. The mixed Renascence and Gothic, which
at Rouen is rather hard as well as rather dark, assumes in the
Loire Valley an infinite splendor. At Chambord the Castle,
which I saw before it was restored, was then a structure of
marvellous grace and full of light.

In the natural transformation of the Gothic, whatever
changes were made took place under the twofold dominating

THE GOTHIC IN FRANCE 117

preoccupation of subordinating every detail to the whole
effect, and of giving to* each detail a depth of finish that pro
duces softness in the mass. This principle is carried out in
the smallest thing as well as in the greatest. The tiniest
leaf is perfectly chiselled and has its own importance as well
as its proper place in the mass. In the Flamboyant style,
for instance, — a development that came about during the
sixteenth century, — there is none the less simplicity on ac
count of these qualities. Wherever a cathedral strikes the
eye as being cold and hard, there is lack of seriation in the
details. They stand out by themselves too much on the same
plane; and then, even though the values are equal, they do
not contribute what they should to the effect of the whole.

The Gothic style itself is a natural outgrowth of the
Roman. It is the Roman raised and magnified. When once
adopted, it spread throughout Western Europe, the result
being an architectural aggregate, the like of which had never
been seen before, and perhaps will never be seen again. And
the terrible thing is that our restoring of cathedrals is a
quick way of destroying these masterpieces. If the Greeks,
or afterwards the Romans, in their decadence, had destroyed
the Parthenon, we should have known nothing of the veri
table grandeur of its builders. In France, there are a con
siderable number of Gothic churches which have been left
alone, because they were not marked on the list, money not
being forthcoming for the work of restoration. One of the
churches at Tonnerre is an example; the cathedral at Beau-
vais is another, and one of the finest. This cathedral has no
steeple. At a distance from the town the back of the struc
ture can be seen, looking like a living giant.

It is worth noting that the architects of the Middle Ages
did not aim at regularity in their edifices, which are often
dissymmetric. Sometimes, even, the nave is not in the axis.
And yet the entire building is beautiful by the very opposi
tion of its values. The fashion now is to speak slightingly of
such productions, to apply to them the term " naive." The
word so used indicates inability to grasp the perfection of
their execution. A similar affectation is that which asserts
Greek art has no life in it. On the contrary, for those who
have eyes to see, Greek art is all life, but so naturally ex
pressed that ordinary intelligence is apt to pass it by unheed-
ingly. In art we are becoming more and more ignorant, — in
a century, too, which thinks it possesses great critical power.

118 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The material out of which the ancient Gothic cathedrals
and churches were built was a stone curiously small-hewn.
Its color varies a little in the different provinces of France,
but it is largely gray, or grayish-white. Burgundy stone
shows rather more gray, Alsace more tendency to red. In
Auvergne rows of black stones are mingled with the gray
mass, which is a practice also existing in Italy. It is possible
that the kind and color of the stone exercised a certain in
fluence upon the construction; but, in general Gothic archi
tecture does not seek effects of light by mingling varieties of
stone. More exactly, one might say that in the Gothic every
thing is added for the sake of the monument. In fact, we
return to the chiaroscuro previously mentioned — the sculp
tural expression being the structural expression.

The real home of the French Gothic is the center and
the north of France. It reigns besides in the east, in Bur
gundy ; and it may claim to take in Belgium and even a little
of Holland. The Gothic of the south never advancecd far
beyond the Romanesque. That of Brittany is a trifle heavy
and not so fine. In the direction of Poitiers and Angouleme,
the style has mostly remained Romanesque, but of a special
and admirable kind. I might, indeed, say that it is more
Oriental and almost Byzantine. To tell the truth, the
Romanesque, lying as it does between the Roman and the
Gothic, frequently has in it something of one or the other;
and, in particular, there is a period in which it is difficult to
say whether the style is Romanesque or Early Gothic. What
is easier is to distinguish between the Greek and the Gothic.
Both possess to a superlative degree that peculiar reflection
of light and shade, due to the sculptural planes, of which I
have spoken above. But in the Greek there is more tritura-
tion of the light ; in the Gothic, more trituration of the shade ;
or, again, one might put it, the Greek models light, and the
Gothic models shade.

It would require a series of photographs or designs to
make these distinctions quite evident. I have them all
photographed in my memory, a method which is not very
convenient for reproduction. A few notes and drawings
are my only graphic representations; but as I have never
learned perspective, my drawings often wobble. This defect
in my education often troubles me in my architectural de
signs, for perspective is a useful science, albeit landscape-
painters sometimes neglect it. In sculpture there is less need

THE GOTHIC IN FRANCE 119

for it, unless in making bas-reliefs with a distinct back-

? round. What I know of perspective is by instinct. When
was young, I had an antipathy to geometry, believing it
was a cold science that hindered enthusiasm. I have had
perforce to acquaint myself with it, since all I do is based
on geometry. Life itself is geometrical, a truth I only came
to recognize later. The geometry I practice, however, is a
geometry of my own, — which is, no doubt, pretty close to
the other. I am like the peasant that does not know arith
metic. He reckons in a way peculiar to himself.

To say what has been my own progress in the study and
comprehension of the Gothic would be in detail impossible
for me. The study has unquestionably influenced my sculp
ture, giving me more flexibility, more depth, more life in
my modelling. This can be seen in my figures, which have
become more mysterious, owing to the more perfect chiaro
scuro. Not that I could point in particular to one or another
of my productions as an instance of the modification. The
influence has entered into my blood, and has grown into
my being.

The Gothic is not the Gothic because of the period in
which it was developed, but because of the manner of see
ing of the period. You enter a cathedral. You find it full
of the mysterious life of the forest; and the reason of it is
•that it reproduces that life by artistic compression, so that
the rock, the tree — Nature, in fine — is there; an epitome of
Nature. It is a mistake to imagine that the religious con
ceptions of the time were able to bring forth these master
pieces, any more than the religious conceptions of today
are responsible for the ugliness of our modern structures.
The ancient edifices gained their beauty through the faithful
study of Nature practised by the Gothic sculptors. Their
only ideal was the vision they had of her; quite as much as
the Greeks they drew from her all their power; and, in like
manner, I find my inspiration in my model. The charm
of the subject comes from that. I am opposed to the doc
trine which holds that the idea leads, that it ennobles the
work. I believe rather that it is the strength resulting from
labor which adds to the idea. Of itself, our idea is poor.
This theory may seem commonplace; but, at any rate, it
better explains the hundreds and hundreds of splendidly
artistic buildings — churches and abbeys as well as cathedrals
— that came into existence during the Gothic period, many

120 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

of them hidden away in country nooks which need exploring
for these treasures to be discovered. Compared with similar
Italian edifices they are much superior. In fact, the Gothic
in Italy is less developed, too, as regards the number of its
buildings. There, painting and sculpture have been more
separated from architecture, and exist more for themselves;
especially worthy of mention are the painted windows and
tapestry. In France, also, there is no lack of beautiful win
dows and tapestry; and what adds to the value of them is
their being really part of the Gothic interior they adorn.
Ruskin has written well on these things; I believe it was
his book which brought so many English-speaking people
to visit them. We have writers of our own today, Huysmans
among others, who introduce descriptions of them into their
literature; but one does not get much benefit by reading
them. A visit to the church is more profitable, or, failing
this, to a museum like the Trocadero, where plaster repro
ductions of some fine specimens of Gothic architecture may
be seen. The stained-glass windows painted in recent times
make little or no impression on us, because the tones are
false. Those of the Gothic period raise one to the heavens.
They are copies from the flowers of the field, not from
imagination; and the men that painted them pored over the
tints and shades of the plants and blossoms they had under
their eyes, until they had succeeded in reproducing them
exactly as they saw them. I insist on this point, for it is
Nature that is celestial. They who give us windows now
proceed in another way.

In order to reform our present stereotyped methods of
art, we want a second Renascence. For a long time I hoped
that in a near future this might be ; but I have ceased hoping
today. It would require a catastrophe capable of overturn
ing and changing everything. Of course, I am speaking
of what is likely to happen in the next twenty-five or fifty
years. Life is eternal ; and, sooner or later, things must alter
for the better. But so far, in our modern architecture, I see
nothing that gives encouragement. We have intelligent men
who are sufficiently educated. They copy everything; they
ferret out the style of Nineveh, as well as the styles of Louis
XIV and Louis XV ; but what they produce is without soul,
without art, and is insignificant. They repeat, but only as
the parrot does. For long years, we have done nothing but
turn out from our colleges young men stuffed with useless

THE GOTHIC IN FRANCE 121

scientific lumber; and they very quickly lose it all, and there
is nothing to take its place. This is not to be wondered at
when throughout Europe there is such a neglect of art in
our education. It may be replied to me that the inventions
of science compensate for the deficiency ; but these inventions
are almost exclusively, if not quite, a mere increase in the
power of the bodily senses and faculties; the telegraph in
that of the tongue, the telephone in that of the ear, the rail
way in that of the legs, the photographic science in that of
the eye; and these inventions leave in ignorance the more
intellectual part of the individual. Your portrait can be
taken, ypur voice boxed up; this is extraordinary; but the
soul which commands, the god which is in the head, is
forgotten.

And yet the means for altering this state of things is
near at hand, is beneath our eyes. We have still the same
Nature that inspired those anonymous sculptors to give us
the Gothic; we still have a sufficient number of Gothic mas
terpieces intact — so many epitomes of Nature, as I have
said — to show what can be done by the man who starts with
his vision open to her teaching. ^

I make no fetish of the Gothic sculpture. I do not claim
for it what it does not possess. A contrast to the Greek, —
a complement of it, — inferior to it in some respects, superior
to it in others, it is one of the most wonderful phenomena
that the genius of our race has manifested. And if we are
to advance in art beyond the stationary position we occupy
at this moment, we shall only do so by a thorough compre
hension and appreciation of the beauties and qualities that
are peculiar to it.1

AUGUSTS RODIN.

1 Dictated by M. Rodin to a stenographic reporter, and translated from the
French by Frederick Lawton, M.A., author of the Life and Works of Auguste
Rodin.

DRAMA AND MUSIC

A NEW FRENCH THEATRE IN NEW YORK.— THE MUSIC
OF ERNEST BLOCK

BY LAWRENCE OILMAN

IT is not every showman from foreign parts who comes
to us trailing such clouds of glory as have brightened the
passage of M. Jacques Copeau from Le Theatre du Vieux
Colombier, in Paris, to West Thirty-fifth Street, New York.
They are clouds heavy with incense. M. Paul Claudel
deposes that the Theatre du Vieux Colombier " is what the
theatre should be " — namely, " a few boards thrown across
two trestles, as in the time of Moliere, with superb indif
ference to effect " (M. Claudel has no doubt decided in his
own mind how one would adapt Ghosts or The Weavers or
Chantecler or The Pigeon to such a care-free and exiguous
theatre). M. Henri Bergson testifies that he has witnessed
at M. Copeau's theatre a " resurrection of the simplicity and
fervor of bygone days." M. Claude Debussy " cannot re
member ever having spent a dull evening " at the Theatre du
Vieux Colombier. To Emil Verhaeren, M. Copeau's theatre
is " the theatre of today " (a phrase, to be sure, not necessarily
complimentary — though we shall let that pass). These are
shining names: it is not a small thing thus to have pleased
such fine spirits as Claudel and Debussy, Bergson and
Verhaeren; and such others as Vincent d'Indy and Igor
Stravinsky (who also precipitate their own clouds of glory
upon M. Copeau's prospectuses and programmes).

It would not have been a small thing if M. Copeau had
accomplished only half — only a quarter — of the aims which
his reputation justified us in believing that he had accom
plished in Paris. For listen to his calm declaration of
principles :

DRAMA AND MUSIC 123

" The artistic programme of the Theatre du Vieux Co-
lombier can be described in a few words: modesty, sincerity
in arduous research, continuous novelty, absolute refusal of
compromise toward commercialism or cabotinage; fighting
in the name of true tradition against the academic, against
aesthetic virtuosity and every affectation of the mind, and
this in the name of sensibility, culture, and taste. In the
interpretation of its repertoire, the Theatre du Vieux Colom-
bier tries to put in the first place and in full light the work
itself, in its truth, in its exact style; and through the action,
the staging, and the play of the actors, to release the spirit
of the poet from the text of the play." In other words, all
M. Copeau aims at its artistic honesty, artistic fidelity, artistic
intelligence; a fresh and sensitive attitude toward his subject-
matter; and an unwearying aesthetic curiosity. Well, these,
after all, are merely the aims of all those who are directing
the new and revivifying forces to which the modern theatre
is everywhere responding: in Chicago and Detroit and New
York, in the English provinces, as well as in Dublin and
Moscow and Berlin (if so gentle a thing as dramatic idealism
still survives in those troubled centres). As for Paris, M.
Copeau has there been almost a voice crying in the wilder
ness; for, oddly enough, the French have been less curious
and less alert to experiment in these new ways of the theatre
than even, for example, the despised bourgeoisie of our own
Middle West.

M. Copeau will therefore, perhaps, forgive us for saying
that his new theatrical evangel is neither so new nor so
strange to us as he perhaps supposes. A nation of theatre
goers and play-readers and subscribers to courses in The
Modern Drama, a nation that long ago exhausted Granville
Barker and Reinhardt and Gordon Craig as dinner-table
topics, is bound to listen without dangerous excitement when
M. Copeau says to it, in his ardent Gallic way: " We offer
you sincerity, color, the movement of life, beauty on the stage
in all its forms, — drama, tragedy, comedy, farce, pantomime.
Our love is for poetry, gayety, fantasy. We turn away from
what is artificial, vulgar, or pedantic." That has a promis
ing and delightful sound; but it does not thrill by reason of
novelty or surprise. The point is strictly and simply this:
what do M. Copeau's admirable generalities mean in the
coldly concrete terms of West Thirty-fifth Street and the
intelligently responsive New York playgoer?

124 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

M. Copeau has said, more particularly, that he aims to
establish here a center of French culture : that this, " the
youngest and most vital of the theatres of France ", en
deavors to represent to us " the spirit of France ". The
purpose of its founders was " to create an entirely free and
disinterested French stage, devoted to the masterpieces of the
past and at the same time open to the coming men." It is
at once an instrument of contemporary French aspiration
and endeavor, and a vehicle for tradition, " seeking to give a
new interpretation to the classical repertoire." It wishes
" to center the attention of the public on the actual drama
and acting, on the beauty of attitudes," and it assumes
the necessity for " a simplification of scenery " — even, " in
many cases," its elimination. It undertakes the abolition of
" stars," and seeks for homogeneity under a single controlling
spirit; and, as a subsidiary purpose, it undertakes to train
actors from their youth, establishing wholesomeness and
flexibility through gymnastics and outdoor living.

It must be a dull soul indeed that will not respond to the
elevation and sweet reasonableness of a theatrical idealism
such as that. It is a pleasant unction for some of us to
remember that M. Copeau, who dreamed this fair vision of
a theatre at once honest and gay, uncompromising and flex
ible, reverent and audacious, in love with adventure yet sen
sitively aware of classic backgrounds — it is pleasant, we say,
for some of us to remember that M. Copeau was a critic of
letters and art and the drama before he became an innovating
practitioner in the theatre. An aesthetic liberal, restless and
experimental, he founded the Theatre du Vieux Colombier
at Paris in October, 1913. Until his enterprise was inter
rupted by the War, he dealt with a repertoire that ranged
from Thomas Heywood to Dostoievski, from Moliere to
Claudel — thus fulfilling his announced plan of assembling
" ce que les oeuvres du pass6 presentent de plus vivant"
Disrupted by the War, the Theatre du Vieux Colombier is
now re-established after an interval of three years, not in the
Street of the Old Dovecote, Paris, but in what was once the
Garrick Theatre, and before that was the abode of the im
mortal Harrigan, in West Thirty-fifth Street, New York.
Here M. Copeau initiated last month his gallant enterprise,
which he modestly and most tactfully commends to our
indulgence as " worthy of our culture " ; here he is to present

DRAMA AND MUSIC 125

" to the judgment of the American public " twenty-five
plays, for which " the interpretation and staging will be in
harmony with the tendencies of modern dramatic art."

We have already witnessed the first of these productions '
a bill offering as its chief feature a performance of Moliere's
Les Fourberies de Scapin, introduced by an expository piece
modelled upon the Impromptu de Versailles (which pro
vides M. Copeau, as it provided Moliere, with an ingeni
ous vehicle for expounding his philosophy of the treatre),
and finished off with a ceremonial pageant in honor of
Moliere. Of these activities, only the performance of Mo
liere's farce was both interesting and consequential; for the
expository skit was an unjustifiable use of time and labor
which might better have been devoted to the performance of
another of the plays in M. Copeau's repertoire (and why,
anyway, go to the trouble of explaining your aims to your
audience while press agents and Sunday newspapers are still
abroad in the land?) ; while the Ceremonie du Couronnement
de Moliere was an equally ungratifying substitute for, say,
half an hour of UAnnonce fait a Marie.

As for Les Fourberies de Scapin, if it had to be done at all,
it is impossible to imagine a more persuasive way of doing
it than the way of the Theatre du Vieux Colombier. Les
Fourberies de Scapin is not, of course, a thing to be taken
with any seriousness — although we think Mr. Chatfield-
Taylor is too sever with Moliere when he denies " char
acterization " to this farce, in which, he complains, Moliere
" sacrificed upon the altar of his public . . . the ele
ments which make his plays so peerless." The piece is, to be
sure, comedy of a crass and boisterous and wholly external
kind— little more, as Mr. Chatfield-Taylor observes, than an
Italian imbroglio, with which Moliere relapsed upon the
meretricious ways of his youth. But it is scarcely true that
Les Fourberies de Scapin is barren of characterization. The
figure of Geronte is shrewdly and saliently projected — he is
much more than a mere puppet of farce: he has an ines
capable reality. So, too, has the rogue Scapin, despite his
traditional type. He exists, " in the round " ; he has indi
vidual tang and savor. Yet, after one has said the best that
one can for it, the fact remains that this piece is hardly worthy
of Moliere's genius. It scarcely hints at his finer traits.
And so one cannot but wish that M. Capeau had spared the
pains he has lavished upon it, and had expended them, in-

126 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

stead, upon one of Moliere's authentic masterpieces. Per
haps his choice of so light-waisted and easily assimilable an
offering betrays some lingering misgivings on his part as to
the robustness and staying-quality of that American " cul
ture " to which he has so graciously referred.

But if anything could make this Moliere farce a joy
forever, if not quite a thing of beauty, it is the beguiling
manner in which M. Capeau exposes it. He employs a re
lentlessly " simplified " and happily conventionalized stage.
Most of the action is focused upon a small rectangular plat
form, with steps on all sides and a bench facing the audience.
At the rear of the main stage is a gallery, its windows draped
with colored hangings. Upon and about the centered plat
form, Scapin and his dupes enact their riotous adventures.
No one whose acquaintance with Les Fourb erics de Scapin
is confined to its printed text can imagine the abundance and
vitality of comic effect which M. Capeau and the best of his
associates extract from it. Most of these players possess
that natural eloquence with which a too-partial God has
endowed the French. These Gallic players have not the
congenital self-consciousness and ridigity of the Anglo-
Saxon to overcome. Their fluidity and freedom of expres
sion are endlessly surprising. As for M. Capeau himself, he
gives, as Scapin, a fascinating exhibition. An amazing vir
tuoso in his mastery of comic denotement, he fills the crude
and hard outlines of the role with a richness and variety of
comic life, an unflagging vividness, an imaginative intensity
of indication, that furnish a dazzling object-lesson in the re
creative potency of histrionism at its most accomplished.

What M. Capeau can achieve in dealing with more pro
found and delicate material we are unable to say -at this
writing; but as a producer and interpreter of broad comedy
he would be hard to surpass. At least he has offered us, as
he said he would, color and gayety, if he has not yet shown
us beauty, poetry, or the movement of life. But as to these,
his season is full of promise.

IN that deeply touching revelation of a Jewish soul which
appeared in the REVIEW last month, it was memorably said
that " though the Jew go through fire a hundred times and
die a thousand deaths, and the thing of wonder be hidden for
generations within a ruin, yet will the Jew who tears open his
own breast find it there without mark or blemish, perfect as

DRAMA AND MUSIC 127

on the first day." That thing of wonder, that dark mystery,
is the Jewish spirit. " It may be that He had no need to
clothe us in robes of state for the eyes of the world, having
made it clear to us that the world itself is but a garment;
having ordained that we should pass through Time as easily
as our fathers passed through the Red Sea in the day of
Moses, and that Space should set up no barriers to our pas
sage." That this Jewish spirit still lives, incarnate in those
who wander through the world as though on a secret errand :
that the spirit of ancient Israel, of the eternal Jew, still
lives — the spirit that flamed in the prophets and the patri
archs, the poets and singers of Israel : that this unconquerable
thing survives, is a truth that has lately demonstrated itself
to those who care for the creative things of the spirit.

The world of music has become increasingly aware, within
the past year, of the art of one who writes as a Jew, but not as
the traditional Jew of music. Those who come to the music
of Mr. Ernest Bloch expecting to find within it the racial
traits that characterize and bind together the music of, for
instance, Meyerbeer and Goldmark: the sensuousness always
a little meretricious, the pomp always a little strutting and
blatant, the passion of which one easily wearies, the opulence
that glitters and is cheap instead of the opulence that is glow
ing and jewelled — those, we say, who come with such prepos
sessions to the music of Bloch, will find it necessary to revise
a number of ancient aesthetic summaries concerning the Jew
ish note in music.

Mr. Bloch, a Swiss Jew who is still under forty, came to
America a few years ago with a Parisian reputation of
moderate extent, but known by name in this country to only
a few. At the close of last spring's concert season a group
of his larger works was brought into public view at Carnegie
Hall under the auspices of that inveterately enterprising
and admirably curious body of artistic enthusiasts, The
Society of the Friends of Music. It was at once perceived
that Mr. Bloch was a music-maker who could thenceforth
not be ignored. There are living today four composers who
wear imperial robes: men who are transforming musical
speech as certainly as in an earlier day it was transformed
by Bach and Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt and Wagner.
We shall not say that Mr. Bloch seems as yet to belong
among this sovereign company of our own time (who are
sure, by the way, not to be officially crowned until at least

128 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

a quarter of a century hence) ; but he has traits which make
it unwise to be too confident of his eventual inferiority.

Mr. Bloch is not that supreme aesthetic bore, an artist
with a conscious mission. He is a poet in tones, held by the
beauty and awe and terror of the human pageant and the
wonder and loveliness of its earthly setting: a poet — yet,
paramountly, a Jewish poet. He has spoken of his enthrall-
ment by the ancient Jewish soul — the " complex, glowing,
agitated soul " that he feels vibrating through the Bible. He
is himself a manifestation of that soul reborn. In his Trois
Poemes Jwfs, in Ms settings of the Psalms, in his symphony,
Israel, he has touched to new life, in music of extraordinary
power and sincerity, the slumbering spirit of those rhapso-
dists and poets, those prophets and patriarchs, those great
lovers and great dreamers, who laid a spell of imperishable
beauty and splendor upon the recorded memories of their
meditations and dreams and aspirations. It is impossible not
to recognize that Mr. Bloch has inherited the authentic spirit
of this imaginative and emotional tradition. He has spoken
— lovingly, as speaks the son of a great past — of " the sorrow
and immensity of the Book of Job ; the sensuality of the Song
of Songs; the freshness and naivete of the Patriarchs; the
despair of the Preacher in Jerusalem." These things have
been recaptured by him in his own musical speech. They are
native to it, implicit in the very heart of it. They are elo
quent in every accent that it commands: in its concentrated
intensity; in its sombre brooding; in its opulence that is never
vulgarized, its gorgeousness that is woven of fine and costly
stuffs ; in its range and flexibility of passionate speech — now
of an exalted solemnity, now of a wild lyric ecstasy, now of
such a ferocity and abandonment of lamentation as our more
reticent Occidental music scarcely knows.

But as Mr. Bloch has rightly said for himself, he is first
a musician; then a specially initiated poet of Jewry: and so
we find him, in the Poemes d'Automne for voice and orches
tra (to verse by Beatrix Rodes) that the Society of the
Friends of music enabled us to hear a few weeks ago, using
a more generalized musical tongue — speaking with beauty
and subtlety and a singularly constant poignancy of the emo
tional cycle of woman's life. And here, too, — no less than in
what we must at present feel to be his unique and uninvaded
territory of racial eloquence, — we pay tribute to a musical
temperament so deeply sincere, so distinguished, so richly

DRAMA AND MUSIC 129

articulate, that all who love music as a living and motile art
must hold their heads a little higher because of him. In these
temples and on these hills and pastures there are to be heard,
from time to time, the echoes of other songs than his. It
would be a miracle if this were not true — as, indeed, it has
been true of the pilgrim gods themselves. The worth of his
gifts is perceived when one realizes that his most eloquent
discourses are his alone.

LAWRENCE GILMAN.

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 746

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH

HENRY JAMES IN REVERIE1

BY LAWRENCE OILMAN

IT is not easy to think of Henry James enjoying him
self hugely in Mid- Victorian London, until you remember
that he was then scarcely out of his twenties. That was the
London — as he himself has called it — of " a whiskered age."
It was the London of Browning, of Tennyson, of Lowell's
ministry; and Mr. James had begun to set down in detail
his memories of it shortly before he died. He has left
us only a fragment — only a hundred and nineteen pages
— of what was to be a volume of autobiographical rem
iniscences. It was intended as a supplement to Notes
of a Son and Brother, and was to have run to about the
same length. He had dictated seven chapters during the
first autumn of the War, but these were put aside for other
work, and were never continued. A little more than a year
later he was dead. Mr. Percy Lubbock, who has edited
these chapters (they had been left unrevised), tells us
that in dictating them Henry James used no notes; that
there is no indication of the course which the recollections
would have followed, nor of the precise period they were
intended to cover. So far as we possess them, they relate
only to the first few years of Mr. James's long residence in
his adored London, which began in the spring of 1869, and
they implicate no year later than the early 'eighties. After
many decades, Mr. James could still dwell, with his expan
sive and inundating affection, upon performances of Robert
son's comedies at the " dear little old " Prince of Wales's

lThe Middle Years, by Henry James. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 131

Theatre in Tottenham Court Road; upon Irving's " Shake
spearean splendors" at the Lyceum; upon the great cab-
rank of " delightful hansoms " that stretched along Picca
dilly from the top of the Green Park unendingly down;
upon the youth of " the aesthetic era ", and the " last words "
of the raffine " that were chanted and crooned in the damask-
hung temple of the Grosvenor Gallery."

He must have enjoyed the recovery of these memories
(to which he has adequately if a little economically given
the title of one of the short stories in Terminations) . Quite
clearly they exercised a spell upon him, as they breathed to
him across the age (he says) " the note of a London world
that we have left far behind " — in consequence of which,
he confesses, " I the more yearningly steal back to it, as on
sneaking tip -toe, and shut myself up there without interfer
ence. It is embalmed in disconnections, in differences, that
I cultivate a free fancy for pronouncing advantageous to it.
. . . My inspiration is in touching as many as possible
of the points of- the other tradition, retracing as many as
possible of the features of the old face, eventually to be
blurred again even before my own eyes . . . ' He had
to leave this delectable retracing, only a hundred pages fur
ther on, in the middle of a sentence — a sentence, charac
teristically, in which, to the very end almost, we find him
talking about color and design and beauty.

Someone who met him in those days told Miss Rebecca
West that, with his long silky black beard, he looked like " an
Elizabethan sea captain." He must have had, then, a singu
lar and (to the prejudice of Victorian London) an un-Amer
ican distinction and charm, with his extraordinary courtesy
and responsiveness and sensibility. Even the growl of the
Laureate was softened, apparently, and made to yield " pure
romance " and " enormities of pleasure " to the young Amer
ican in the confession of a liking for a short story of James
that Tennyson had read — " and not only read but admired,
not only admired but understandingly referred to its actually
patent author," who could scarce believe his ears on hearing
the thing superlatively commended.

You get a sense of the man's incorruptible fineness of
sympathy and tact in an earlier episode — the unforgettable
incident of the visit to George Eliot and Lewes at North
Bank, in company with Mrs. Greville, at the close of which
Lewes entreated him to " take them away, please, away,

132 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

away! those books!" — "those books " being the two vol
umes of James's own " precious last," presented by him to
Mrs. Greville, and by that devoted lady unloaded, " with
the best conscience in the world," upon the Lewes household
— " out of which it had jumped with violence, under the
touch of accident, straight up again into my own exposed
face." Lewes had not, of course, connected book with author,
or author with visitor, or visitor with anything but the con
venience of that departing visitor's ridding the household of
an unconsidered trifle. ' The vivid demonstration of one's
failure to penetrate there had been in the sweep of Lewes 's
gesture, which could scarce have been betterd by his actu
ally wielding a broom." It is Henry James's wholly typical
reflection that he " had been served right enough in all con
science, but the pity was that Mrs. Greville had been. This
I never wanted for her . . . ' "I think nothing passed
between us in the brougham," he observes quite simply, " on
revelation of the identity of the offered treat so emphatically
declined — I see that I couldn't have laughed at it to the
confusion of my gentle neighbor." It is in recalling an
earlier visit to North Bank that he has left us an imperishable
picture of his own gravely dignified self kneeling beside
a son of Lewes who lay stretched upon the floor, the young
man having succumbed to a seizure of pain which came upon
him as the heritage of an attack by an angry bull, who had
tossed or otherwise mauled the youth and left him, says Mr.
James with inspired delicacy, " considerably compromised."
For an even more marvellous deftness of indication, we have
his unmatchable account of that luncheon at Tennyson's dur
ing which the Laureate expatiated upon the connotations
brought to his mind by the gentle Mrs. Greville's innocent
reference to one of her French relatives, a " Mile, de Sade."
It was " the homeliest, frankest, most domestic passage,"
recalls Mr. James, " and most remarkable for leaving none
of us save myself in the least embarrassed or bewildered;
largely, I think, because of the failure ... of all measure,
on the part of auditors and speaker alike, of what might be
intended or understood, of what, in fine, the latter was talk
ing about .... He struck me, in truth, as neither knowing
nor communicating knowledge." Indeed, Mr. James's con
cluding word upon Tennyson is of an intimation of " glory
without history ... of the poetic character more worn
than paid for." This verdict came gradually into Mr.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 133

James's mind " during the friendly analysis of the reputa
tion of M. de Sade." Was he not present, he considers, " at
some undreamed-of demonstration of the absence of the
remoter real, the real other than immediate and exquisite,
other than guaranteed and enclosed, in landscape, friend
ship, fame, above all in consciousness of awaited and admired
and self -consistent inspiration? " — To arrive at so choice a
diagnosis of the Tennysonian lacunce by way of the Marquis
de Sade is a feat that would have been possible only to Henry
James.

That is typical of these Reminiscences at their most genu
inely assuring — typical of a book that will always recall, to
those who hold him dear, the power that Henry James had
of setting in motion a rich multiplicity of unexpected vibra
tions. There is an instrument known to students of the
orchestral apparatus under its ancient name of ff viola
dfamore" Its tone-quality, of a unique and haunting timbre,
derives from its possession of a supplementary set of strings
beneath the fingerboard, which vibrate sympathetically with
the strings actually engaged by the bow. This richly shad
owed and astral quality of utterance has always stood to
us as a fantastic symbolization of the unparalleled expres-
sional power of Henry James at his best. It is obvious that
his art is essentially an art of overtones: of the shadows of
shadows, of dreams within dreams, of mirrored intricacies of
communication. It can accomplish — it has accomplished —
registrations for which there are no analogues in English writ
ing: effects of a beauty and subtlety so supreme, so perfect,
that to praise them is almost an impertinence. There are
such miracles of intimation and registration in this auto
biographic fragment, that yet is steeped in a strange pathos —
a pathos due to its clear revelation of a profound defect in
Henry James's art.

We cannot conceive it possible to read these last rem
iniscent pages of his without a growing confirmation of
one's old persuasion that that amazing brain had little sense
of relative significance. For Henry James, — in his latter
years particularly, — every experience, every encounter, was
more than (in his own fond term) "a case": it was an
adventure, always thrilling, often momentous. There was
something inextricably naive and childlike about his attitude
toward experience. He was probably the most responsive
soul who ever lived. His first meeting with an English

134 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

muffin impresses one as having had for him almost the de
lightful tenseness and excitement of a child opening its
Christmas stocking. He was capable of writing about the
fall of a sparrow as if it were as portentous an event as the
betrayal of a soul. His lust for what must seem, even to
minds not utterly gross, the infinitely trifling, his passionate
curiosity about and absorption in the infinitesimal, goes joy
fully hand in hand with his megaphonic tendency. He
cannot announce his reaction to his first English muffin in
the tone of voice that is naturally appropriate to discourse
upon muffins : he must announce it with orotund portentous-
ness, as if he were proclaiming the loss of a kingdom or the
advent of a new savior: with an expansion and enlargement
of emphasis that is often saved from infantine absurdity by
the fact that the victim of this strange mania is unmistakably
a gentle and potentially humorous soul prodigiously inter
ested in his own reactions.

His infinitely elaborate concern with mental and emo
tional subtleties is often so exquisitely rewarding in the
quality of its revelations that one is tempted to forget the
many times when it yields merely garrulous trivialities. He
had, bluntly, an almost grotesque blindness to relative values.
An imcomp arable artist in manipulation, he yet lacked the
artist's indispensable respect for the comparative precious-
ness of material. His abnormal readiness of response led
him time and again into a kind of voluptuous saturnalia
of variation upon a theme whose inherent consequence was
distorted out of all relation to its true place in his design —
a voluptuous dalliance with the ghosts of sensation which,
to minds possessing a hardier sense of relative validities,
suggests on his part an incomprehensible and incurable
obtuseness.

Marvellous in penetration and exhibition, he lacked just
ness of appraisal. We should not say that he was too inquisi
tive and too curious, but that he was not inquisitive nor
curious enough. He behaved toward a subtlety of appre
hension as if it were not obligatory upon him to " place " it
in relation to other subtleties. He did not see the difference
between significant and insignificant subtleties ; the fact that
they were subtleties filled his mind to the exclusion of all
sense of the need to discriminate them. Life is not long
enough nor spacious enough nor empty enough to justify one
in entertaining all the psychic muffins which Mr. James

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 135

offers to us in the course of the voluminous certifications
of experience which constitute his writings. His exorbitant,
his preposterous demand upon us is not amiably to be
allowed when you remember — as you must so often in his
later phases — that he is as naively indiscriminate as a baby
who will cherish a ruined hairpin as tenderly as if it were a
French doll.

And yet what does it matter, after all, in comparison
with what he did have and did give? To feel as he could
feel, to tell as he could tell — who would not yield up any
quotidian and philistine hold on proportion in exchange for
the possession of so noble a heart, so miraculous a wizardry
of evocation? We choose to regard as an unconscious por
trait of the artist himself that picture he has left us of one of
the rarest among the fine souls he loved to paint, and to say
that he, too, " spent half his time in thinking of beauty, and
bravery, and magnanimity"; that he "thought it would
be detestable to be afraid or ashamed." Thus he moved
through life: inexhaustibly ardent, compassionate, gentle;
in love with loveliness,

LAWRENCE GILMAN.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

JOHN KEATS. By Sidney Colvin. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1917.

The result of Sidney Colvin's effort to produce a book " giving a
full and connected account of Keats's life and poetry together, in the
light of all the available material," is a volume that will prove deeply
satisfying to every student of literature and to every lover of the poet.
In the first place Keats as a human being is set forth in this work
with a simplicity, a naturalness, a sober and convincing reality, that
simply annul the effect of all false estimates or idle prepossessions,
and that hold that wayward imagination, which in appreciative readers
is so apt to blur the biographic page by the very facility of its coopera
tion, strictly to the contemplation of truth. In the second place, the
critical portions of the work are not only light-shedding in the impor
tant, but minor, way of revealing sources and tracing developments,
but are splendidly interpretative, adding to the reader's capacity for
enjoyment.

Keats, of course, cannot be understood apart from his friendships.
In dealing with the friends of Keats and with their influence upon
the poet, Mr. Colvin brings into use a power of fair and full but
decisive and pointed characterization that clears the emotional mists
and glamours once for all from the atmosphere of Keats's circle and
shows its members as they truly were. Leigh Hunt, Haydon, Brown,
Cowden Clarke, and the rest — even persons less closely in touch, like
Christopher North and Lockhart — are estimated with a sureness and
authority that adds immensely to the reality and worth of the whole
narrative. In all this, one never loses contact with the poet himself,
nor does one think either of him or of his friends as bundles of
abstract qualities; one perceives flesh and blood and character in all
of them.

Through analysis, patient research, and comparison the author has
been able to illuminate in the most interesting and profitable manner
the nature of Keats's mental processes. He has, for example, wonder
fully explained and illustrated that method of " evocation," as distinct
from the method of exposition, upon which the poet was so dependent
for the clearness and continuity of his thought. He has also, without
attempting to explain the inexplainable, gone as far as a wise man
could go, or as a lover of poetry would wish to go, in determining
the sources, or rather the suggestions, that gave rise to some of the

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 137

poet's noblest passages. The exegesis upon the Ode on a Grecian Urn
is accompanied by a reproduction of the figures upon the Sosibios
Vase, which closely correspond to the imagery of the poem. An
" old and deep impression " received from Claude's noble picture, the
" Sacrifice to Apollo," is shown to have had its effect in shaping this
as well as other poetic visions. Even the famous " magic casements "
lines in the Ode to a Nightingale may be plausibly connected with
another picture of Claude's, " The Enchanted Castle." To follow
clues of this kind under Mr. Colvin's guidance is extremely profitable,
especially since the guide never forgets the essential marvelousness
of the process by which impressions derived from other arts or from
nature were suddenly and gloriously transmuted into poetry in the
mind of Keats.

Lessons in appreciation, too, of the soundest and most helpful
kind are the author's discussion of the poet's characteristic manner
of vivifying even dead and senseless things, of giving them life instead
of merely describing them, and of the success with which Keats applied
his own principle — the principle that " the excellence of every art is
its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their
being in close relation with beauty and truth."

Turning to a more technical feature of the work, one may say
that seldom has a learned discussion of changing methods in the use
of a metre been made to serve so good a purpose as does Mr. Colvin's
account of the heroic couplet from its use by Chaucer to its use by
Keats; for through this precise and scholarly discussion one is made
better able to understand the difficulty of the work which Keats per
formed, to perceive the nature and cause of some of his faults, and
hence to prize his excellences all the higher.

But the feature of the work for which the general reader will
feel most grateful is its interpretation of meanings — especically the
interpretation of Endymion as a parable of the experiences of a poet's
soul in its quest after beauty. The author's justification of his analysis
of this baffling and tantalizing poem is so sound and so eloquent — it
so rightly upholds the value of poetry as a form of thought — that it
may be regarded as perhaps the most important single passage in the
book. " But why take all this trouble, the reader may well have
asked before now," writes Mr. Colvin, " to follow the argument and
track the wanderings of Endymion book by book, when every one
knows that the poem is only admirable for its incidental beauties, and
is neither read nor well readable for its story? The answer is that
the intricacy and obscurity of the narrative is such as to tire the
patience of many readers in their search for beautiful passages and
to dull their enjoyment of them when found; but once the inner and
symbolic meanings of the poem are recognized, even in gleams, their
recognition gives it a quite new hold upon the attention. And in
order to trace these meanings and disengage them with any clearness
a fairly close examination and detailed argument are necessary. It
is not with the simple matters of personification, of the putting of
initial capitals to abstract qualities, that we have to deal, nor yet with
any obvious or deliberately thought-out allegory; still less is it with
one purposely made riddling and obscure; it is with a vital, subtly
involved, and passionately tentative spiritual parable, the parable of

138 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the experiences of the poetic soul of man seeking communion with
the spirit of essential beauty in the world, invented and related, in the
still uncertain dawn of his powers by one of the finest natural born
and intuitively gifted poets who ever lived."

Mr. Colvin has been kind to common readers; he explains the
more recondite parts of his subject with patient care, but with no
lack of zest. He quotes freely for illustration, and thus when he
remarks for example upon that " vein of airy and genteel vulgarity "
into which Leigh Hunt was notoriously prone to slip in his verses,
no one need be in any doubt as to his precise meaning. Throughout
his book, he employs a method of treatment as serviceable as it is
sincere and honest. Scholars will welcome his work not only because
of its fulness and unity but for its interesting and authoritative discus
sions of obscure and difficult points.

MADAME ADAM. By Winifred Stephens. New York: E. P.
Button & Company, 1917.

The life of Madame Adam, which has stretched from 1836 to
1917, is so rich in historic and spiritual values that no amount of
literary labor and skill could well be wasted in recording and inter
preting it. This remarkable woman, happily named " la grande Fran-
qaise" has lived through the Revolution of 1848, the coup d'etat of
1851, the heartache and misery of the siege of Paris, and two invasions
of her beloved country. Politically, as mistress of a leading salon,
as founder and editor of La Nouvelle Revue, as for many years the
intimate friend of Gambetta, of Thiers, and of other French ministers
as well as of many representatives of foreign nations, she has been
a power. In the sphere of literature, her intimate acquaintance with
such eminent writers as George Sand, Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Alphonse
Daudet, Pierre Loti, Paul Bourget, and Maurice Barres, has given her
that initiation which is almost essential for the full and prosperous
development of a great personality.

Intellectually brilliant, gifted with tact and personal magnetism,
and with rare beauty, Madame Adam was always able to exert an
immediate influence upon those about her. Deeply emotional, passion
ately sincere, moved by strongly felt moral convictions, she has experi
enced in their fulness and helped to guide some of the most significant
tendencies of her time. At the age of twenty-two, three years before
John Stuart Mill began to write his Subjection of Women, Madame
Adam (then Juliette Lamessine) wrote an answer to Proudhon's attack
upon women in his work La Justice dans la Revolution ct dans I'&glise
— an answer which presents, says the biographer, " a bird's-eye view
of the whole field of feminist reform." She was one of the earliest
French women to see and welcome the possibility, realized in the
present war, that women might do the work of men. During her
whole life, through all vicissitudes, and in spite of her changes of
opinion upon other matters, she has been a passionate believer in
sel f -government.

Thus her life so far as the greater issues are concerned has been
guided by a moral intuition which has made her at once clear-sighted
and enthusiastic, a woman of the world and a prophetess. But there

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 139

is another side to her temperament — a side not so easy to appreciate.

Juliette Lamber (the future Madame Adam) was born in a period
of great social and political unrest. She was brought up in an atmos
phere of emotional stress, of family quarrels, of contending creeds
and theories, of dramatic scenes, revolutionary enthusiasms, dogmatic
scoffings, spiritual excesses of all kinds. In those days, where cynicism
did not prevail, the light of the ideal was over everything. Emotions
were cultivated; fervors were encouraged. Romance — that tendency
to put feeling in the place of moral intuition and to seek happiness
by insisting upon seeing things as they are not — was at its height.
By virtue of a strong constitution and a sound mind, Madame Adam
fell a prey neither to nervous prostration nor to romantic fatuity ; but
she was a woman of her time, and without a thorough understanding
of the conditions surrounding her early life it is not easy either to
understand her point of view or properly to appreciate her greatness.

To do either with the sole help of the present life-story requires
an undue effort. For while the biographer has striven earnestly to
put in an adequate background and to explain motives with accuracy
and rapport, the fact would seem to be that the best performance of
this task requires rather more literary skill than she possesses. One
ought after reading this biography to be able completely to sympathize
with that frame of mind which led Madame Adam, though she did
not desire an aggressive war upon Germany, to goad Gambetta con
tinually toward the idea of revanche; with the motive which made
her hostile to England and blind to the advantages of English rule
in Egypt, with that strange contradiction by which her passion for
revenge carried her, after many years of skepticism, " toward a
religion whose Founder had refused to countenance such a sentiment."
As it is, one cannot help feeling that such predominances of emotion
over reason are out of character in a woman undoubtedly of great
intellect.

A certain indefiniteness, too, in regard to some of the principal
personages with whom Madame Adam had to do leaves the account
of her life rather painfully unfinished. " To write Madame Adam's
biography," declares the biographer in her preface, " is also to write
one of the most momentous chapters in French history." This being
the case, it is unfortunate that any reader should be left in serious
doubt as to what opinion he should hold, for example, of Gambetta.
" An opportunist " surely — but a great man or a little ? a really large
personality or a poseur? Some new light on his character really
ought to be shed by this rather intimate record. Perhaps enlighten
ment on this point is to be had from the book, but it taxes the reader's
powers of inference to find it.

Doubtless every one who turns from this volume to Madame
Adam's own writings will find fulfillment of his expectation that the
latter, through their brilliance, their charm, and their earnestness,
will very largely interpret themselves. The biography may serve a
good purpose in directing the attention of English-speaking readers
to these volumes of reminiscences, and it may prove valuable also as
an intelligent and readable summary of material not elsewhere gath
ered together and unified. As a piece of biographical writing, however,
it falls somewhat short of being a masterpiece.

140 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS. Arranged with comment by Albert
Bigelow Paine. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1917.

The chief interest of Mark Twain's letters is not, of course, an
informational interest, but a literary interest. For a clear, connected,
and fully adequate story of Mark Twain's life, with a sufficient flavor
of his own style and his own opinions, one would turn of course to
the admirable biography by Mr. Paine.

Lovers of Mark Twain need not be told that every line that he
ever wrote is stamped with the mark of his mind, that characteristic
quality of style that simply in itself gives joy by its vigor, its humor,
and its poetry. In one of the earliest letters of his that has been
preserved, one finds him describing a number of men whose clothing
had become coated with ice as resembling " rock candy statuary."
Much later in an equally striking phrase he declares that when he
chose the artist Beard to illustrate A Connecticut Yankee at King
Arthur's Court he had "gone netting for lightning bugs and caught
a meteor." It is idle to pile up examples of this verbal felicity, essen
tially poetic but with the unanalyzable element of humor added. It is
enough to say that instances of it abound in the letters, and that in
consequence one at least of Mark Twain's literary qualities is as fully
available in these as in anything he ever wrote.

But, always admitting that we may get sufficiently acquainted with
the man through his biography, what reason is there, if any, for put
ting the letters of Mark Twain on a level with the best of what he
wrote for publication? Mark Twain, it has been said, was a better
artist than philosopher, and a better philosopher than thinker. If, then,
he was not a profound thinker, why should his letters deserve more
than the amount of interest which affection for the man as revealed
in his formal works can inspire? For surely letters are inferior as
works of art to narratives, tales, and essays.

To this there can be but one reply. Every true lover of Mark
Twain's writings is ready to maintain that in a very true sense this
great humorist and story teller was a profound thinker. It may
be safely admitted, perhaps, that he was not a great logician or a
great scholar. But he was profound, as poets are profound. He
expressed fundamental things in human terms ; he was elemental.
Thus, in his mind, moods, fancies, intuitions, affections, opinions and
those guesses that we call convictions, attained a clearness, an adequacy
of expression, and a signficance which most of us yearn for but are
helpless to acquire.

If the chief business of life is the transmutation of experience
into character, then the precisely analogous process in literature — that
of transforming memories into phrases expressive of one's inmost
character — is of similar importance. In novels, or in poetry, too
often, this process is but dimly perceptible. In the familiar writings
of such a man as Samuel Clemens it is seen plainly at work.

It is wonderful in reading these letters to see how all manner
of things — things commonplace, things tragic, things irritating, things
obscure, are transformed and refined and made to contribute to the
merriment or to the spiritual value of life by the magic of Mark
Twain's point of view. How the homely words, flying straight to

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 141

the point, stimulate and reconcile, and emphasize the burden and the
privilege of living!

Mark Twain's letters seem to contain experience and emotion and
thought enough to fill several ordinary lifetimes. Through them one
gets the oddest, the most varied glimpses of the spectacle of human
life. Through them one is able to share in more events and situa
tions than the most generously planned novel could well be made to
contain.

But of Mark Twain in his letters, as in his books, we never weary.
His personality never loses its hold upon us, because it is always at
work doing for us what it is the chief office of a great personality in
literature to do — making life more livable for us by communicating
to us its sense of humor and its sense of tragedy.

And so it involves no disparagement of Mark Twain as an artist
to place the volumes containing his collected letters among his greatest
works.

ADVENTURES AND LETTERS OF RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. Edited
by Charles Belmont Davis. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917.

The presumption that a man so variously experienced, so widely
acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men, so keenly observing,
as was Richard Harding Davis, must have had much more to tell
than he actually did tell in any of his writings intended for the public,
is doubtless strong enough in itself to awaken anticipatory interest in
his posthumously published letters. But there are not a few who
will be drawn to the perusal of Davis's letters by something more
than the promise of " adventures " in the title of the volume which
contains them. The creator of " Van Bibber " and of "McWilliams "
certainly endeared himself to a large public — and especially, perhaps,
to that portion of his original public which is now approaching forty
years of age. One does not envy the man — if such there is — who in
youth could not grow sentimental over Phroso or who did not believe,
for a time at least, that Soldiers of Fortune was the best story ever
written. Never to have relished the full flavor of the Van Bibber
stories, with their sophistication and their chivalrous sentiment, is to
have missed something out of one's life. Romance has a way of
fading, to be sure, and perhaps it is inevitable that even those earlier
tales of Davis's should lose their freshness — though Gallagher turns
out, upon re-reading, to be as wonderful a short-story as it originally
seemed. At all events, those who fell in love with " Hope Langham "
or grinned over " McWilliams " in their teens received an emotional
stimulus very nearly as wholesome as it was pleasurable — an experi
ence that is to be remembered with gratitude.

And so a great many persons who had no acquaintance with Davis
will approach the reading of his letters with friendly interest.

Richard Harding Davis as a boy longed to become a writer, and
he hardly thought of any other profession than authorship. " He
never," his brother tells us, " even wanted to go to sea, or be a bare
back rider in a circus." He planned his career. After his graduation
from Lehigh University he prepared for his life-work by taking
special studies in Johns Hopkins, and as soon as his academic training
was over he set zestfully about the accumulation of literary material
and the acquirement of journalistic experience. In 1886, when he

142 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

was twenty-two, he took his first trip to Cuba, with which country he
promptly fell in love. After his return to the States he entered news
paper work in Philadelphia, the city of his birth, being employed first
by the Record and afterwards by the Press. Becoming acquainted, in
London, with Arthur Brisbane he received from him and accepted the
offer of a position upon the Evening Sun, and in this paper, during his
connection with it, his Van Bibber stories were first printed. In 1890
he left the Sun to become managing editor of Harper's Weekly.
By a special arrangement with the Harpers he spent part of his time
in editing the Weekly and part in traveling and writing special articles.
His first trip as a special correspondent was a journey to Texas in
1892, made for the purpose of accompanying the expedition that was
looking for the revolutionist Garza, who was supposed to be hiding
on this side of the border. This was the beginning of that successful
and adventurous career which furnished Davis the materials out of
which he wove his brilliant stories of fact and fancy. The letters are
rich in the qualities that gave savor to all this author's books. They
abound in varied scenes, adventures, types of character, all graphically
and familiarly sketched, all touched with humor and with the glow
of romance.

Finley Peter Dunne has said that Davis " probably knew more
waiters, generals, actors, and princes than any other man who ever
lived." In point of fact, he was as fortunate in knowing people of
genius as he was happy in his faculty for touch-and-go contact with
people of a less permanently desirable type. Among the friends of
his father's family, when Richard was a boy, were Mrs. Frances
Hodgson Burnett, Mrs. John Drew, Mrs. Barrymore, the Joseph
Jeffersons. Booth and Boucicault were frequent visitors at his home.
In Davis's early letters " Old Dr. Holmes " figures more than once.
Among the persons well known to this promising youth were Henry
Irving, Ada Rehan, Ellen Terry, and Augustin Daly — friends who
might well do more than stimulate a precocious interest in the stage.
As for the interesting people Davis knew in later years — celebrities,
tramps, people of rare gifts or merely of picturesque personalities — a
list of them would fill pages.

It is pleasant to find the agreeable personal impressions of an
author that one has drawn from his writings confirmed by the closer
knowledge that his familiar correspondence gives: the discovery that
literary quality springs from personality is always freshly satisfying.
In Davis's letters one finds the bravely humorous attitude toward life,
the generous and chivalric disposition, the immense capacity for enjoy
ment, and the unstated love of adventure, that his books evince. One
learns, too, that his sentiment sprang from the heart of a genuinely
" home-loving and family-loving " American.

It cannot truly be^ said, however, that these letters are of equal
value with the author's best stories either of fiction or of fact. Davis
profited by the restraint of form and the reserve which is imposed
upon an author. Freed from this, he was witty, imaginative, amusing,
but superficial, gossippy, somewhat too facile. Some of his letters
rather conspicuously fail to attain that unconscious distinction which
sometimes imparts a higher quality to unstudied notes than to formal
compositions.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 143

FIGHTING FOR PEACE. By Henry van Dyke. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1917.

In these trying days we read with gladness every clear and per
sonally assuring utterance concerning the war, especially when such
utterances come from persons eminent in mind and character. Indeed
a sort of duty rests upon all those to whom we are accustomed in
any way to look up, an obligation to say what they can, to express
what is in their hearts.

This duty has been performed by Henry van Dyke in his recently
published book, Fighting for Peace. Among other things, this volume
is, of course, a record of a diplomatist's experiences. It contains a
good deal of fresh and interesting writing about the abortive efforts
toward a Hague conference just before the storm broke upon Europe,
about the attitude of Holland in the earlier period of the war, and
about the important relief work carried on in that country. But most
of all it is, like many " war books " of today, an attempt to clarify
opinion and to concentrate feeling upon the right points.

So far as these objects are concerned, Dr. Van Dyke has been
eminently successful. As the work of an idealist and peace-lover, of
a man slow to think evil and not quick to anger, the book will have
more than double the effect that could be produced by any impassioned
tirade. Moreover, as the work of a true, albeit a very modest, literary
artist — one skilled to stir feeling and at the same time to keep it
within bounds, able to sublimate emotions of horror and indignation
into high motives, capable of communicating to others his own steady
faith and sane optimism — this little treatise, partly narrative, partly
apologue, partly exposition, makes a peculiarly direct and wholesome
appeal to readers of all classes. In decisive, well-measured phrases,
the author shows how every peace-lover can and ought to reconcile
love of humanity with patriotic zeal for a victory over the German
war machine. In notably clear, homely, and inspiring language, he tells
just what kind of peace it is that America is fighting for.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY

(November 14 — December 4)

THE change in publication date of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
rendered necessary by the difficulties of distribution encountered under
war conditions, makes our ninth monthly review of "Our War with
Germany" coincide with the close of the eighth calendar month of
American participation in the great struggle. It has been a month
of steady progress in the chief task before this country, that of prepa
ration for the real field work that is yet to come, but there has been no
announcement of any conspicuous achievement by American forces
in that period. Just at its close official publication was permitted of the
news which had been whispered about among the knowing insiders for
several weeks that the so-called " Rainbow division " of National Guard
troops was safe in France. This division is composed of men from
practically every State in the Union — hence its name. It was trans
ported across the Atlantic without the loss of a man, and without any
untoward experience. Announcement of its arrival was withheld by
the authorities in this country until the news was passed by Gen.
Pershing's censor.

The outstanding events of immediate importance in the war during
this review period occurred chiefly in other lands, and with slight, if
any, American participation. One, the result of which cannot yet be
measured even in estimation, was the complete collapse of government
under responsible authority in Russia, and the triumph of unre
strained radicalism under the pro-German Bolshevik leaders Lenine
and Trotzky. Kerensky, in flight or in hiding, seems definitely out of
the reckoning as a factor in Russia's future, although in the maze of
conflicting reports from that troubled land there continue to come
some which indicate the possibility of a revival of his influence. There
are reports also that General Kaledines, the leader of the Cossacks, is
coming to Moscow with an army that aims at the overthrow of the
Bolshevists and the restoration of responsibility in the government.

Meantime Lenine and Trotzky, having thrown all of Russia's
engagements with her allies to the winds, and having published the con
fidential papers in the Foreign Office files, have offered an armistice to
Germany and are proceeding, at this writing, to enter upon negotia
tions with the* German representatives. Germany approaches the
desired negotiation with a certain caution and reserve, which seems
well grounded in view of Trotzky's announcement that every word of
the negotiations is to be taken down and published, and that Germany
is to be asked to answer certain interesting questions. They are not

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 145

specified, but if they conform to the record of Lenine and Trotzky it
can be well understood that it will be exceedingly difficult for the
German representatives to answer them satisfactorily to the Russians
and at the same time retain their influence in Berlin. It would be an
extraordinary thing if this Russian collapse should yet prove to be a
factor in fomenting disturbance in Germany.

News from the Italian front has been cheering as that from Russia
has been discouraging. The Italian army that was so hard pressed
when it reached the line of the Piave as to make it almost touch and go
whether that line could be held or not seems now to have definitely
mastered the situation. It has recovered its self-confidence and made
good its stand on that river, so that the official reports from Berlin and
Vienna tell of Italian rather than of German offensive actions. And
just as this is written the announcement is made that the British and
French reinforcements are in position along the river, and that danger
of further advance by the Teutonic forces is minimized.

This news from Italy comports with the reports from the British
front in France, where Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng genuinely
surprised the Germans, in the latter part of November, and threw them
back something more than six miles, in front of Cambrai, and made
gains along a thirty-two mile section of his line. General Byng com
manded the Canadians in their great victory at Vimy ridge last spring.
For this attack he gave the Germans no warning by way of artillery
preparation. He relied on the tanks, and the dash of his men, to get
through the wire entanglements and over the obstructions, and his calcu
lations were right. Starting with a rush, and without preliminary and
warning fire, on a misty morning, his men were on top of the Germans
before they had an inkling of what was coming. It took the surprised
Germans some time to recover, and before they got reinforcements and
stiffened their defenses their lines had been badly broken, many thou
sands of prisoners and some hundreds of guns taken.

There have been reports that General Byng got the suggestion for
his change in methods from a remark by General Pershing, soon after
he went to France, to the effect that no substantial gain was likely to be
attained on either side except by the adoption of new tactics. But there
is no confirmation for this. There are reports which seem authentic,
however, that in some of the furious fighting which has been going on
in that sector since Byng's surprise attack detachments of American
troops have borne themselves with conspicuous gallantry.

America's chief part in the war — outside the routine of preparation
at home and in France — has been the participation in the Allied War
Council in Paris. The fight on Lloyd George which was precipitated
by his announcement in Paris, when on his way back from Rome, of
the formation of this council, came to its crisis just as Colonel House
and his colleagues reached London. Lloyd George met it squarely in a
speech in the Commons. A singularly felicitous coincidence was the
receipt by Colonel House of a telegram from President Wilson saying
that the United States Government considered unity of plan and control
between all the Allies essential to the achievement of a just and per
manent peace.

The French Government which took the initial steps toward this

VOL. CCVII. — NO. GDF 10

146 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Allied Council having fallen on one of those questions of the propriety
of the conduct of a member of the Chamber which have upset so many
French cabinets, Clemenceau the "Tiger" became Prime Minister just
in time to head the French delegation in the Allied Council.

The Council met at Versailles on November 29. Colonel House
having deftly suggested in advance that the Council was organized for
work, not for oratory, speeches were omitted, and its deliberations were
over and the members on their way home in three days. The first
reports are that much of substantial benefit was accomplished, although
no particulars were announced, except that an agreement had been
reached for standardization of aeroplanes for allied service.

The reception to the Americans in London and Paris demonstrated
again the enthusiasm in Britain and France over American participa
tion in the war, and the readiness to receive American suggestion shows
that appreciation of what our part may ultimately be.

Naval participation, in the way of convoying ships and hunting sub
marines, has continued in the same quiet, effective way, and although
there has been a little increase in submarine sinkings in the latter weeks
as compared with the first of the month, the total for the period was
encouragingly low. One stirring tale of American activity was per
mitted to sift through the censorship. It recounted how two destroyers
sighted a submarine, and first one and then the other dashed across its
trail, dropping depth charges, some of which were successful. The
submarine was forced to the surface, and when its crew surrendered
the destroyer men endeavored to tow the submarine to port. They got
a line to it, but the Germans had opened the sea cocks and the
prize sunk.

Army preparation at home has seen the cantonments and camps
brought nearer to completion, and the belated supplies of clothing for
the men brought to such a stage that issues of woolens could be
increased, especially in camps where colds and pneumonia were becom
ing unpleasantly frequent. Toward the close of November Surgeon-
general Gorgas published the fact that septic pneumonia was prevalent
in some of the camps, following an epidemic of measles. The shortage
of equipment has been felt only in the camps in this country. All the
men who had gone "over there" have been fully supplied, and full
supplies of everything are in reserve in France to meet all possible
requirements.

The ever present and ever pressing problem of labor has continued
throughout the month to furnish the greatest anxiety to those who are
charged with responsibility for carrying out the Government program
of production. The situation is one of extreme difficulty on both sides.
In some lines of employment wages have either not increased at all or
the increases have not been at all commensurate with the increased
costs of all the necessities of life that the men and their families must
buy. With costs of living what they are, and with wages generally so
high, and especially with employers often endeavoring to hire men away
from one another by voluntarily increasing wages already very high,
it is not surprising that there should be unrest and dissatisfaction
among many of the men. The leaders of organized labor, as a rule,
have worked in close co-operation with the Government to prevent any

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 147

curtailment of production through stoppages of work. They have had
some difficulty in securing compliance with their instructions by their
followers. Disturbances on the part of shipyard workers on both
coasts have threatened constantly, but thus far all but rather minor
troubles have been prevented. The railroad brotherhoods, who secured
the enactment of the so-called eight-hour law during the Presidential
campaign of last year, have now submitted a demand for wage increases
for the men on the eastern roads which would aggregate about
$109,000,000 a year.

In a letter to Judge Chambers, Commissioner of Mediation and
Arbitration, President Wilson, discussing the railroad labor situation,
intimated that the Government might be forced to take over the run
ning of the roads. Of the implied threat on the part of the brotherhood
men to strike the President said : "It is inconceivable to me that patri
otic men should now for a moment contemplate the interruption of the
transportation which is so absolutely necessary to the safety of the
nation, and its success in arms, as well as to its industrial life. . . .
The last thing I would wish to contemplate would be the possibility of
being obliged to take any unusual measures to operate the railways."

Judge Chambers continued to exert himself to effect a settlement,
but every day brought only conflicting reports of what the men and
the roads would agree to do. Finally, on November 19, Fairfax Har
rison, chairman of the Railways War Board, wrote to Judge Chambers
saying : " As no interruption of continual railroad operation can be
tolerated under war conditions, we are ready, should any crisis now
arise, unreservedly to place our interests in the hands of the President
for protection and for disposition as he may determine is necessary in
the public interests."

On November 20 the convention of the American Federation of
Labor voted unswerving loyalty to the country, and a determination to
stand behind the Administration until peace comes.

Two days later the four brotherhood chiefs had a two hour con
ference with the President at the White House. At its close they issued
a statement saying: " If a situation should arise which would threaten
the interruption of transportation the men would be more than willing
to discuss and consider any solution of the difficulty which presented
itself, doing so in the spirit of patriotic co-operation, and would
undoubtedly co-operate with the Government to the utmost extent in
arriving at a just, equitable as well as patriotic conclusion."

The White House also issued a statement saying that the Presi
dent got from the conference " exactly the impression conveyed by the
statement of the heads of the brotherhoods, namely, that the men whom
they represented were not inclined to contend for anything which they
did not deem necessary to their own maintenance and the maintenance
of their families."

Meanwhile both operating and financial conditions with the roads
have become well nigh desperate. Traffic congestion has become such
that the Railways War Board has seriously considered the curtailment
of non-essential industries. A list of 450 non-essential commodities
was prepared, to which there were added 75 other commodities ship
ment of which might be dispensed with or postponed until the con-

148 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

gestion is relieved. The board prepared a statement showing the
enormous increase of traffic caused by the war. In the first five months
of our participation in the war the traffic was 16 per cent higher than
in the corresponding period of 1916; 50 per cent greater than in the
same months of 1915, and greater than the total traffic of any year prior
to 1904. Coal movements were 18 per cent greater than in the corre
sponding period of last year. There were 150,000 more cars of anthra
cite and 751,000 more cars of bituminous coal than last year, and still
there are complaints of coal shortage. The railroads have moved
116,000 carloads of freight to army cantonments and National Guard
camps, and 17,000 cars for the Shipping Board. The passenger traffic
has been the largest ever known, and in addition to that the roads have
carried 1,200,000 soldiers to camps, cantonments and ports. The move
ment of troops has involved the use of 2750 special trains, and the
camps are taking 75,000 cars of supplies every month.

On November 23 the Railways War Board moved to secure relief
without waiting for action by the Interstate Commerce Commission or
Congress. A number of suggestions were made, including abandon
ment of competing passenger service and the pooling of all roads east of
Chicago. The next day it was announced that the Board had given
directions covering these suggestions, after consultation with govern
ment officials. The operating vice-presidents of the eastern lines met
in Washington on November 26 to work out pooling plans. They
encountered many difficulties which will demand legislative relief.
They resolved on pooling all available facilities and appointed a com
mittee of seven to take charge of the pool. This is another of the
numerous violations of the Sherman law which the war has proved to
be absolutely necessary, and to which the Government is a party. These
war experiences may well bring to a climax the demand for the amend
ment or repeal of the Sherman law which began in a Presidential mes
sage to Congress twelve years ago.

In a speech at Baltimore about the middle of November Secretary
McAdoo made public the startling information that the ordinary ex
penditures of the Government were running about $325,000,000 a
month, instead of the billion a month that had been estimated. The
expenditures of the War Department, for instance, had been about
50 per cent of what had been estimated. This was perhaps only another
way of admitting that the margin between what we had been doing in
the way of production of supplies for our Allies and the total of our
productive capacity was not as great as had been estimated. We could
not spend as much per month has had been figured because we could
not make as much more than we had been making as we estimated
we could. Loans to our Allies aggregate more than three billions.
Actual credits to them by the Treasury run $500,000,000 per month,
but cash disbursements against these credits were considerably less,
and of these a very large part was for purchases in this country, so that
these transactions involved chiefly shifting of credits. On November
1 the United States held one-third of the world's total stock of gold.

Congress met for the regular session on December 3, and received
the estimates from the different departments for the fiscal year 1918.
They aggregate something more than thirteen billions without counting

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 149

any loans to our Allies. Of this incomprehensible sum the War Depart
ment asks for about ten billions.

Throughout the month Dr. Garfield, the Fuel Administrator, has
been in trouble over the prices and the supply of coal. Price adjust
ments have been made in some cases, always up, with a view to increas
ing production and permitting wage increases. An increase of 35 cents
a ton on anthracite was made to cover a demand for more wages. Labor
troubles have threatened throughout the month, and there has been
much difficulty about priority of shipments in order to prevent hard
ship. Coal production is far ahead of last year, but consumption has
increased also so greatly that there is an actual shortage of about
50,000,000 tons. Preference in shipment has been ordered generally
now, covering Government orders, railway fuel, domestic requirements,
public utilities and munition plants.

On November 23 the producers of bituminous coal in Ohio, West
Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Tennessee pooled
their output, with the sanction of the Government. It was another case
of war necessity and never mind the Sherman law. The Government
is the only one that can prosecute for violation of that law, and the
Government is a partner in the violation.

November saw another reorganization in the Shipping Board,
caused this time by the ill health of Admiral Capps, general manager of
the Emergency Fleet Corporation. He was not in good health when
he undertook the task, and the overwork to which he subjected himself
increased his illness so that he had to ask for relief. Rear Admiral
Harris, chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks of the Navy Depart
ment, was appointed to succeed him, Mr. Hurley, chairman of the
Shipping Board, having asked for the appointment of an officer of
Admiral Capps's corps to succeed him. An announcement of the con
struction program of the Shipping Board shows that it has in prospect
1409 vessels of an aggregate deadweight tonnage of 8,363,808.

At this writing, President Wilson is about to deliver his eagerly
awaited address to Congress.

[This record is as of December 4 and is to be continued.]

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES

THE TRIAL BY FIRE
(From the Boston Evening Transcript}

" We are still in the honeymoon stage of our war," remarked an
American the other day, anent the attitude of the people and press of the
United States ever since the Government declared war against Germany,
nearly seven months ago. The significance of the observation was not
weakened by its source, for the observer was a citizen whose leadership
has added a distinguished, perhaps a lasting, contribution to the states
manship of the world. The desire of the people and their press to let
bygones be bygones and to overlook every blunder once the willingness
to correct it became apparent, was born of a wholehearted determination
to unite the nation as completely and as quickly as possible and mass its
might behind the Government, to the end that the war may be won, not
next month, nor next year, nor the year after, but as soon as possible.

But the honeymoon is coming to an end. The supersensitiveness to
criticism will soon slough off. When the war began Colonel George
Harvey set up a standard for course and comment to which the press
and public of the nation rallied at the time and to which they have for
the most part adhered: "Fair play for the Government; whole truth
for the people." In the last number of the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,
Colonel Harvey has strengthened that rule of conduct by the addition
of five words — " and nothing but the truth." It was well enough while
the war was still in " the honeymoon stage " to accept the substitution
of pleasant generalities for unpleasant specifications in respect of the
conduct of the war, but the day is at hand when in return for fair play
for the Government there must be " whole truth for the people and nothing
but the truth." That is one lesson of the second Liberty Loan campaign.
It has helped to bring home to the people the nationality of the war.
They are beginning to see now that they are preparing to fight as their
fathers fought in the sixties, not in pursuit of some dim, distant phantom,
but in defence of a principle as clear to their eyes as it is near to their
hearts. They have entered upon this war to defend the security of their
own freedom, and they are coming more and more to realize that whether
"we shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth " will
depend upon whether we win or lose this war.

Thinking on these things they cannot but recall and they will be more
than ever careful in the future to keep before them this warning of
Abraham Lincoln upon another occasion. " No personal significance or

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 151

insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through
which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest
generation."

A TRUMPET CALL
(From the Rochester Post-Express)

Colonel George Harvey's patriotic article, entitled " E-y-e-s Front!"
in the October number of the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, is like a trumpet
call, summoning the embattled strength of our people to smite and conquer
the foes of democracy.

He uses strong language, but not by any means too strong. He says :
' The Divine Right of Kings ' is played out." That is the meaning, as
he interprets it, of President Wilson's reply to the Pope. As Colonel
Harvey forcibly puts it, " the United States of America serves notice upon
the world that it will have no more dealings with the Divine Right of
Kings, or with a government based upon that blasphemous and inhuman
principle ; and all the Allied Powers, republic, kingdom and empire alike,
respond, ' We, too ! ' '

The German " reptile press " has lyingly pretended, Colonel Harvey
goes on to say, that the President is trying to meddle in the domestic
affairs of Germany and to "dictate its form of government." Of course,
Germany has a right to say who shall rule over her. But America has
an equal right to say whether she will recognize the government chosen
by Germany. We cannot trust a government that started the war on " the
pretext of a lie " and that has treated a solemn treaty as a " scrap of
paper." The Cologne Gazette maintains that the entire German people
will stand by the Kaiser. If this be so, the German people must, in
Colonel Harvey's vigorous words, " recognize and accept the conse
quences, and these consequences must inevitably be that we shall have
to treat them as we are now treating their government."

Another thing said by Colonel Harvey is that " treason must be made
odious." The phrase was used by Andrew Johnson, " one of the least
remembered of our presidents." It is well to recall it now. Treason
against the United States consists in levying war against it or giving aid
and comfort to its enemies. The traitors in our midst must beware of
the penalty they incur by assisting the enemies of the United States.
Finally Colonel Harvey insists on the thorough Americanization of
America and quotes the words of Washington addressed to his countrymen :
" The name of America which belongs to you in your national capacity
must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation
derived from local discrimination."

In this great struggle against autocracy the alien who settles in the
United States must be "in heart and soul American."

TO AMERICAN MOTHERS

(From the Sioux Falls Press)

We call attention to an important article from the NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW which we print this morning on this page in the columns given

152 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to comments from other newspapers and magazines. The facts and
figures presented by the writer of the article should go far to relieve
the current apprehension as to the perils of modern warfare. Perilous
though war by its nature must always be, it is a fact demonstrable by
records that the death and other casualty rate is less in this war than in
any great wars which have preceded it. This gratifying truth is well
presented by the article to which we refer.

We would not for a moment seek to minimize the sacrifices made by
the men who go to war, and by the parents who give their sons to the
nation's need. It is necessary to appreciate the serious side of it. But
it is not necessary, and it is wrong, to exaggerate the danger. The cheer
ing phases of the subject should by all means be emphasized when the
facts justify.

One of the elements that have contributed to a prevalent opinion that
the chances are all against the enlisted man surviving the conflict is the
flood of narratives of personal experiences or personal observations in
isolated instances of great slaughter. The more ghastly the word-picture
the more vividly it becomes fixed on the reader's mind. We do not stop to
think that these are the exception, and far from being the rule. And
when we learn of hundreds or thousands being killed or wounded in a
campaign we do not always consider that millions were engaged. But
probably the factor that has gone farthest to excite extreme fear is the
insidious propaganda of the pacifists and the agents of pro-Germanism.
Constantly they strive to picture men sent to Europe as being poured
into a veritable hopper of death.

Mother's heart is wrenched severely when her boy leaves home to go
to war. Realizing that she may never see him again she is, at the moment
of parting, almost certain she has lost him forever. It is a way of
mothers the world over, and it will always be the same. But let us make
sure she is not needlessly tortured all the time he is absent. Let us show
her, by straightforward calculations based on honest figures, that he will
probably come back.

We urge mothers to read the article from the NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW, and to clip it out to show to other mothers. The facts and figures
presented were regarded by Senator Sterling as of sufficient importance to
justify him in having the clerk of the United States Senate read it to that
body while the soldiers' and sailors' insurance bill was under consideration,
as a basis for calculating the insurer's risk.

BATTLEDORE AND SHUTTLECOCK

(From the Tacoma News)

Gloom pervades a picture drawn by Colonel George Harvey in the
current NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW of our next steps into the world war.
Danger lurks, he believes, in the pinch of paying the war taxes needed
to provide the huge war budget so patriotically voted; there is a menace
in food control and price fixing, even when in the hands of an idealized
Hoover, he thinks; conscription, a masterly stroke, cleverly put over by
the President at the peak of war enthusiasm, is doomed to a reaction, and
the Colonel has us doddering within months talking to ourselves, trying
to figure out why we went to war, anyway.

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 153

Possibly it will hurt to pay the war taxes, discriminations will occur
in food control and price fixing, often neither consumer nor producer will
be satisfied, both will feel aggrieved; the selective draft measure may not
continue to have smooth sailing, but with our new troubles there will
come additional fortitude and when we do awaken to " our peril and the
need that confronts " us, we will meet them with determination and
decision. One thing can help us immeasurably in this. That is to get
at the facts as to the progress of the war.

Already there has been too much of this thing of men in positions of
authority setting themselves up as master minds, assuming a competency
to decide what the people should know and what they should not know,
themselves changing their own minds about it two or three times a week,
or, as Colonel Harvey says : " Upon a Monday decide that, as a matter
of policy, the country should be reassured, forthwith it is done; upon a
Friday conclude that it is the part of wisdom to alarm the people; the
task is easy; revised reports, previously misapprehended, presage unex
pected danger, perhaps disaster. In each instance the facts revealed
confirm all that the facts concealed refuted."

It is " a bad, a viciously bad system of political battledore and shuttle
cock certain only to fetch dismay to one's own and to bear cheer to one's
enemy ! " continues Colonel Harvey. " It has worked ill in England ; it
must not be attempted in America. The whole truth for the whole
people ! "

WHAT, INDEED?
(From the Hartford Courant)

Among the matters editorially discussed in the NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW in Colonel Harvey's lively manner is " The Case of La Follette."
After carefully weighing La Follette's specific offense, he has the courage
to say that " there is no ground for a charge of treason," and utters a
warning against " building precedents likely to crumble fundamentals and
to plague posterity." The only question is: Ought the Senate to purge
itself by expelling La Follette? The only precedents that bear upon
this ease "do not warrant the drastic action proposed." The conclusion to
which Colonel Harvey comes is that for the present La Follette should be
endured as any other pest. To enable him to pose as a " a martyr " would
be bad policy.

After indicating the fundamentally objectionable features of the war
revenue act, Colonel Harvey raises the question, "Must we go to jail? "
and discusses the espionage act with a refreshing frankness, saying, " It
is only a question of time when this ' REVIEW ' will be stopped and we shall
be sent as far along the road to jail as the courts will permit." Heaven
forbid ! And yet why not? It is all very well for Colonel Harvey to make
merry with Mr. Roosevelt and with "Senator Brandegee's nutmeg fac
tory," but when he rips and rends the sacred revenue act, criticizes
Congress, and even dares to speak disrespectfully of Mr. Claude Kitchin,
who hails " from that great industrial and commercial center, Scotland
Neck, North Carolina," especially when he ventures to question Mr.
Burleson's right or fitness to superintend the public press of the country,
and declares the espionage act to be a "wicked, vicious, tyrannous thing

154 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

that ought never to have been enacted," ought he not go to jail? We
tremble for him. We foresee him imprisoned, and are only consoled by
the hope that, like Bunyan in Bedford jail, he may be inspired to write
another immortal allegory, " The Political Pilgrim's Progress ! "

Alas ! what shall we do when the NORTH AMERICAN is suppressed and
Colonel Harvey is in jail?

APATHY DISAPPEARING

(From the Beaumont Enterprise)

Colonel George Harvey, in the current issue of the NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW, asserts that America is too apathetic about the war. He thinks
the predominant spirit is of loyalty to the government rather than to the
cause. " Our country, right or wrong," seems, to the mind of this able
editor, the compelling force animating the nation, rather than a sober and
solid appreciation of what we are fighting for.

Perhaps Colonel Harvey is right. But the situation which he describes
can not exist much longer. We may be apathetic now, so far as exterior
appearances go, but that apathy will give way to energetic thought and
feeling as soon as our troops get into action, or as soon as our ships engage
in a naval battle. At heart the American people are for the war. Really
they appreciate the dangers we are facing. They are silently, but none
the less determinedly, making preparations to go the route, to stay until
the game is over.

Apathy is dangerous, as the editor of the REVIEW says, but apathy
of the kind that now exists loses its dangerous possibilities when we
consider that it is but temporary. We fail in proper realization of the
magnitude of the task before us merely because we have not yet gotten
it in true perspective. The first casualty lists will give us that perspective,
and we shall then see the nation wake up with a degree of energy quite
different from the present indifferent condition. The American mind will
then perceive actualities, and with that perception will come the resolve
for action, and action that will mean the speedy end of the war.

Apathetic we are, perhaps, but give us a bit of time. What time will
bring in lieu of apathy is the thing the Kaiser must fear most.

THEY WILL NOT BUDGE

(From the Albany Knickerbocker Press)

Colonel Harvey in his latest article on the war quotes James Russell
Lowell as saying that "the ten commandments will not budge." And the
Colonel adds that Germany has violated " openly, brazenly, defiantly and
shamelessly " every one of the lot. He says further that Germany must
pay in full.

The ten commandments are, after all, the backbone of society. It
would do the present generation much good to be more familiar with them.
Human experience does not present an instance in which they have been
broken without punishment. The new dispensation of the New Testament
was able to add to them a commandment or two which have softened human

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 155

manners, but it was not able to relieve a jot of the weight which the old
commandments carried.

Let those who shudder at the punishment justly due the Hohenzollerns
and their dupes read over again the ten commandments. Does anyone
suppose they were uttered idly or without purpose? It makes no difference
what they think — " the ten commandments will not budge."

PUNGENT READING

(From the Bookseller)

To read the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW is to be cognizant of the
present-day political and biographical affairs written with a keen appre
ciation of essentials, and a broadness of vision that recommend the famous
veteran among the standard magazine to the discriminating and cultured
reader. One turns to the editorial article for confirmation or opposition
to one's opinion; and whether one agrees or not there is a brilliancy of
touch and comprehensiveness that makes it always pungent reading. Its
book department, always worth attention, contains in the present issue
a review of special note. It is on Wells's God the Invisible King, which
occupies eight pages, which attests to the importance of the book.
Although its caption is " The Book of the Month," we venture to predict
that its literary life will exceed thirty days. It is a review of unusual
literary distinction, and the reviewer, Lawrence Gilman, has felt the power
of Wells's savage sincerity. The exceptions that Mr. Gilman has taken to
its weaknesses will do much toward bringing the book to the attention of
other keen thinkers. In spite of the ridicule he has enjoyed indulging
in, no man of the critic's analytical discernment would give so much space
to a book of casual interest.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

ALSACE-LORRAINE AND " ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM "

SIR, — In the November number of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
was printed an article entitled " The Problem of Alsace-Lorraine," by
Mr. Sydney Brooks. Although a very scholarly presentation of a much
mooted subject, presenting economic arguments infrequently heard, yet
the conclusions and the motives which inspire its writing are greatly to
be deplored.

Mr. Brooks's argument is substantially this: Give back Alsace-Lor
raine to France largely because it contains the richest iron field in
Europe. Deprive Germany of this great resource, for she will then be
unable to rebuild a militarism which will again menace the world's peace ;
and which will, although Mr. Brooks very wisely minimizes its signifi
cance, also destroy Germany's trade and commercial prosperity. Further
than this, German coal must be kept out of the iron fields of Alsace-
Lorraine to prevent the securing of these products through the medium
of exchange. And to counteract this possibility, England must supply
France with the necessary coke to operate these fields; while he implies
that Germany must be absolutely excluded by a tariff wall from any
such trade whatever.

This argument, thoroughly sound in its conclusion, provided its prem
ises are just, is a very fine re-enunciation of that economic imperialism
which has, in part at least, brought about not only the present war, but
all the great wars of modern history. An economic imperialism caused
the scramble for concessions in China in 1898 and 1899, partly check
mated by Secretary Hay's two notes proclaiming the policy of the Open
Door; brought about the clash between Russia and Japan in the
Orient in 1904; and apparently moved Japan in the present war to
occupy Tsingtau and to enforce upon China her famous Twenty-one
Demands. The same motives caused France to quarrel with Germany
at Algeciras and Agadir over the economic penetration of Morocco. It
has been the desire of Germany and Russia to mutually exclude each
other from the markets of the Balkans which culminated in the murder
at Serajevo. It has been the Drang nach Osten which led to the Teutonic
visualization of a Mitteleuropa extending from the Baltic to the Persian
Gulf; which led to an unholy alliance with the Turk, and attempted the
construction of the Bagdad railroad: all in a scramble for protected
markets, trade concessions, and economic monopolies.

Now Germany has committeed all the crimes known to God and
man in the present war; and this in itself is sufficient justification for
America's entrance into it. But Mr. Brooks would extend the repre-

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 157

hensible principles of the past into the settlements of the future. He
would deprive a state of her natural rights to trade and development
for fear that she will again use any such advantages for imperialistic
purposes. While, on the contrary, he would give to a neighboring nation,
France, the same privileges which he would deny Germany on the ground
that the former is, by some unknown logic, more able to trustworthily
exercise them than the latter. In other words, he would institute a trade
war; he would prolongate the present struggle for blood into one for
subsistence. Such principles were bespoken by the Allies' Economic
Conference at Paris in the summer of 1916; and they brought forth a
well-deserved condemnation not only from the general world of public
opinion, but from President Wilson himself in his answer to the Pope's
peace proposal of last August.

Every nation has a right to develop its resources, extend its trade,
and provide for the welfare of its people so long as it does it legitimately.
German philosophers and rulers have led their people to believe that
this was impossible because of the " encircling policy " of the enemies
about them. Hence they won a common assent to the present war. The
only way to change this attitude of the German masses is to give them
a normal, legitimate opportunity for trade and colonial expansion. This
cannot be done by the " establishment of selfish and exclusive leagues "
or by the erection of tariff walls such as Mr. Brooks suggests for Alsace-
Lorraine. If Mr. Brooks would destroy German military power by
depriving her of Alsatian iron, he might a fortiori advocate the partition
of the German Empire itself, a reductio ad absurdum to which even Mr.
Brooks is not likely to accede.

The United States has demanded that any peace Germany enters into
must be guaranteed. This can be done by the democratization of the
German Government, the limitation of all armaments, Allied and Teu
tonic, and the establishment of a League to Enforce Peace. Along with
these methods might be added another: that of freedom of trade, the
destruction of protected markets, which have proven the cause of so much
illicit rivalry and sinister suspicions.

Now I am no Democrat. If the world is to be governed on the same
basis as it has been in the past, protection is a logical necessity to the
independence of nations desiring military power. But if a new era of
international good-will is to be ushered in, it must be on a new economic
basis which will include the right of reciprocal trading between nations,
without any artificial restriction.

No one can honestly desire the retention of Alsace-Lorraine by Ger
many. Many, however, are dubious of France's right to these provinces.
Louis XIV, in the minds of many, was just as wrong in wrenching them
from Germany as was Bismarck in retaking them in 1870. Whatever
form the settlement may take, Germany is entitled, by all canons of right
and expediency, to exchange her coal and coke for the iron and steel
of these two provinces. In fact, she has just as much right to trade
with them as she will have to send her manufactures to America after
the war is over. If Germany is democratized, as she inevitably will be,
and if armaments are universally limited, the nations of the world have
no right to fear that the new Germany will prostitute her trade in such
products for dynastic lusts.

158 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The entrance of America into the war brings with it the optimistic
hope that she will be able to inculcate into the warring Powers new
principles of internationalism which will prevent rather than accentuate
the insensate ambitions of the past.

OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE, RAYMOND L. BUELL.

Los ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.

VIEWING DR. FLEXNER WITH ALARM

Sir, — It is not without painful and justifiable alarm that we read of
Dr. Abraham Flexner's plan to open a modern school at Teachers' College
of Columbia University, the curriculum of which will discard " uncon
genial and obsolete classics " " in favor of those studies for which an affir
mative case may be made out."

That such a man as Dr. Flexner would consider offering an anti-
cultural curriculum is incredible; that he sets at naught those subjects
which have through the ages contributed to the softening of barbaric ten
dencies is appalling; that he has the prestige of a great university is
almost criminal. (Were it not a platitude, we would say that Germany
is a fair example of the Utilitarian Idea raised to the tenth power.)

If Dr. Flexner's efforts could be limited to a private clientele which, in
pitiable ignorance of the higher purposes of education, was willing to
accept a base metal for gold, his influence would not be a national menace.
Certainly the deficiencies of our present school system are not due to a
preponderance of cultural studies that is " damaging good taste," as he
would have us believe, but rather to the lamentable groping with
" methods."

Dr. Flexner's idea is not new; it has been followed, probably not in
theory, for many years, in a large section of this country, with the resultant
crudeness of society delighting in cheap amusements, inflaming literature,
and a loathing of dignified repose at all times. In your December 1916
issue a most convincing article by Margaret Sherwood anent the ques
tion of culture sounded a note of warning which evidently was not
sufficiently loud.

Perhaps you Easterners chuckled at Dr. Flexner's daring, and
straightaway forgot him, but to us who send to Columbia hundreds of
teachers who regard as gospel all they hear, it is not a movement to be
ignored.

Can't you publish something that will awaken a widespread revolt
against such fallacies?

ORANGE, TEX. MARY S. HEMSON.

OUR SOLDIERS " WITHOUT A COUNTRY "

SIR, — This country contains a special group of citizens numbering
some ten or twelve millions. They are, almost without exception, native-
born. A large proportion of them have a longer American pedigree than
either Colonel Roosevelt or President Wilson. Fifty thousand of their
fathers and grandfathers fought as volunteers in the United States Army
between 1861 and 1865. Many of their youths today are in the army.
Many more are eager to enter it. In General Carter's article, printed in
your November issue, he gives a list of the number of the workers in a

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 159

Western establishment, classified according to the nations they represent.
The list is headed " Nationality," and begins thus: " Americans, 1,522."
This is followed by such proper designations of people belonging to thirty-
two different nationalities as " Armenians," " Welsh," etc. Then comes
just an adjective, not a national name, for the thirty-third group; " Col
ored," with its number in service, " 433." After that the list resumes its
proper method and gives correct national titles to three other sets of
workers, even where only a single person represents his particular nation,
as " Finlander."

Why should nationality be tacitly denied to any group of American
citizens? Is it likely to stimulate patriotism to be thus left drifting
" without a country " by a General of the United States Army, with an
adjective tossed at them to hold on to? If for any reason in General
Carter's argument it was, as it may well have been, desirable to indicate
racial difference, the part of a patriot and a great official should have been
to make that indication respectfully. His list should have been worded:

"White Americans, 1522."
"Colored Americans, 443."

NEWTONVILLE, MASS. LILLIE BUFFUM CHACE WYMAN.

SEND T. R. TO RUSSIA

SIR, — I have read with much interest "The Problem of our Colonel "
in the current issue of the REVIEW, and, in my opinion, the problem could
easily be solved if the President would sink his personal feeling against
him and adopt the suggestion of Mr. Snodgrass, our Counsul-General at
Moscow.

You may recall that the latter, upon his return from Russia, in an
interview as to the conditions prevailing in that country, concluded by
saying that there was just one man who could offset the German propa
ganda and convince the Russian people that we were with them heart and
soul in their struggle, and that man was Colonel Roosevelt.

The Root Commission was well enough in its way, but the members
were not known to the mass of the people, and more than this, they (the
people) were not in a condition to appreciate cold logic and be told in
stately phrases what we proposed to do, because they were afire with their
new-found power and needed some one like themselves to weld the differ
ing classes into a harmonious whole — someone who was known to them as
a man of action and sincerity. In this connection I will venture the asser
tion that there is not a Vilayet in Russia where the name and fame of
Colonel Roosevelt are not known, and where he would not be received
with enthusiasm.

Thousands of Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, feel that
the President is playing pretty small politics in studiously ignoring the
Colonel, and they naturally resent it for practical as well as patriotic
reasons.

NEW YORK CITY. O. T. ROBERTS.

YOUTH AS AMERICA

SIR, — In reading Mrs. Bishop's letter in a recent issue of THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW on the "American look," it has occurred to me that

160 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the figure of Uncle Sam no longer symbolizes, if indeed it ever wholly
did symbolize, the American spirit and character.

We cannot think of any phase of America's development in terms of
gray-headed age — nor is shrewdness the main or only attribute of Ameri
can character — though humor, we trust, always may be.

It would be gratifying if some of our well known artists could portray
a better type of American manhood than that represented by Uncle Sam,
embodying some of those traits that seem so essentially American: youth
— "slim and nervous"; interest unsatisfied; humor; vision — keen and
unafraid.

AMSTERDAM, N. Y. E. SANFORD.

FROM A LAD OF EIGHTY-EIGHT

SIR, — I am now 88, but several friends lately have told me I look as
young as I did twenty years ago. I have had a stake set to live 'till 90,
but now I have pulled it up and set it at 100. If I live so long, I will want
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW all the time. Continue same address.

SAN JOSE, CAL. J. H. McCoLLouoH.

OUR WAR NUMBERS

SIR, — Please send the October and November copies of the REVIEW
and the December and January numbers when they appear. I greatly
appreciated the war numbers, and regret I cannot now buy a lot to
distribute.

SENECA, SOUTH DAKOTA R. HILL.

Tros Tyriu

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

FEBRUARY, 1918
WE MUST KILL TO SAVE

FOE three years and a half Europe has been drenched in
blood. For three years and a half the manhood of Europe —
youth in the glory of its gallantry, in the splendor of its
promise — has been fed to the furnace of war. Europe is a
temple of sorrow, and Rachel mourns for her children because
they are not.

Soon, all too soon, France, hitherto the playground of the
western world, will be sacred soil to Americans. There our
dead will rest. Rude wooden crosses will dot the shell scarred
battlefields, each simple cross marking the grave of an Ameri
can soldier who died in France in defence of the America
he loved and those dear to him. America has yet to suffer
her spiritual agony, but she cannot be spared. She, like
Europe, must toil painfully the weary road to Calvary.

Has not the time come for America to take stock, to ask
itself if it knows the meaning of this war, to face facts instead
of feeding on illusion? Millions of men have been slaught
ered, more millions have gone forth in the pride of their
strength to come back broken. Shall America swell the ever-
mounting toll, giving and yet giving the youth on whom its
future centres, or shall the guiding hand of America lead the
world to peace?

Rhetoric is a spiritual stimulant, and like its grosser
counterpart often valuable when a sudden burst of moral or
physical energy is required, but after the effect wears off
there comes reaction, exaltation gives way to depression,
reality takes the place of imagination, and truth is grim. It
is unfortunate that the American people entered this war with
two alluring rhetorical phrases ringing in their ears, — unfor-

162 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tunate because it has obscured the real meaning of the war
and diminished its importance to them.

We were told that we went to war to make the world safe
for Democracy. If this were all there is of it, clearly in
the long catalogue of immoral and wanton wars that black
ens the page of history there would be no war more immoral
or more wanton than this. We believe in Democracy, we
know its blessings, in the strength of our conviction we see
that through Democracy the world marches to progress, but
if we should try by force of arms to make peoples embrace
Democracy who are wedded to autocracy, morally we should
be as guilty as Louis XVI, who slew his thousands in the
name of the gentle Christ who taught charity and love. It
is what every bigot and zealot has done. Believing with
sincerity that there was only one way to gain salvation, that
every other way led to eternal damnation, with clear con
science and the frenzy of the fanatic he consigned to the
rack and the stake the misguided, because better for them
death or torture than torment without end. Our boasted
civilization is back in the middle ages if in this enlightened
day we are willing to make war to spread the political system
of which we approve.

But, as we have said over and over again, what we are
fighting for is not to make the world safe for Democracy but
to make the world safe for us. Forced into war by Germany,
who violated our rights as ruthlessly as she did those of Bel
gium, we are fighting a war of self defense. We are today in
peril. To avert that peril we have taken up arms. We are
fighting to defend our wives and children from the defiling
hand of the German. We are fighting to protect our homes
from a beast who knows no mercy, a beast whose lust is de
struction ; we are fighting to preserve the institutions we love,
the liberty we cherish, the freedom dear to us. We are fight
ing in France because it is there we can strike the enemy, but
if we are defeated in France we shall be conquered in
America; no longer shall we be freemen but the slaves of the
most merciless and brutal taskmaster the world has known.
Our danger is great, and only our courage and our determina
tion can avert it.

Nor is it true, rhetoric again to the contrary, that we are
fighting not the German people but only the German Em
peror and the German Government, and for the German
people we have no feeling of hate. You can no more separate

WE MUST KILL TO SAVE 163

the German Government from the German people than you
can separate the bite of the mad dog from his blood. The
wickedness and infamy of the German people is in their
blood ; it is the corruption and poison of their blood that have
made the German people — not a small class or a caste, not
their rulers alone, but the whole people — a nation of savages.
Nor is it true that the Prussian alone is guilty. The brutal
ity of the Prussian cannot be exceeded, for that were im
possible, by Bavarian or Saxon, but in the refinement of
their cruelty, their beastliness, their inhumanity, between
North and South German there is little choice.

With this premise established our duty lies clear before us.

Our duty is to kill Germans. To the killing of Germans
we must bend all our energies. We must think in terms of
German dead, killed by rifles in American hands, by bombs
thrown by American youths, by shells fired by American
gunners. The more Germans we kill, the fewer American
graves there will be in France; the more Germans we kill, the
less danger to our wives and daughters; the more Germans
we kill, the sooner we shall welcome home our gallant lads.
Nothing else now counts. There is no thought other than
this, no activity apart from the duty forced upon us by Ger
many. The most highly civilized nations are united as they
never were before, actuated by the same impulse. In En
gland, France and Italy, among the English speaking
peoples of the new world, under the southern cross and on
the torrid plains, they like us see their duty clear. It is, we
repeat, to kill Germans.

We have no apologies to make, no excuses to offer, no re
gret for having unclothed the masquerade of rhetoric and put
the case in stark and naked words. Doubtless we shall offend
the over nice sensibilities of those well meaning but unbal
anced persons who waste their sympathies over the sufferings
of the lobster as his complexion turns from dirty blue into
delicate pink while they are unmoved by the knowledge of the
misery and distress of the poor and unfortunate. We hope
so. We are endeavoring to arouse the millions of easy going,
complacent Americans, unctuously flattering themselves they
are good Christians because they feel no hate, to whom the
war has as yet no meaning, to a realization of what this war
means, not only to them but also to their men ; that it is the
lives of their men against the lives of Germans.

We do not know how many Germans we have yet to kill,

164 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

whether it is 500,000 or 5,000,000, but we do know that when
the necessary number has been killed, when the German peo
ple lose heart and rebel against being led to the slaughter, this
war will end, but that is the only way it will end. We may
play at war and pay the cost in the toll of blood, or we can
make war with courage, resolution and intelligence and our
reward shall be fewer of those pathetic crosses on the wayside
of France.

Recognizing the bravery of our Allies — and in all history
there has been nothing more superb than the heroism of that
" contemptible little British Army " fighting with bare hands
against the onrushing German legions armed with machine
guns and heavy artillery, who day after day were forced back
and fiercely contested every foot with never a thought of sur
render and then at last turned and defeated the enemy; or
the French fighting and feinting until they were in position
to stop Kluck and save Paris from the barbarian; or the
Italians inch by inch scaling the snow-capped mountains ; or
the Russians mowed down by thousands, stolidly waiting to
take from the dead a rifle, in the end to be betrayed by their
leaders — knowing what they have suffered, the sacrifices they
have made, the misery they have endured ; knowing, what we
have yet to know in this country, the devotion of their women,
who have offered their lives and sacrificed their health and
abandoned their comfort as generously as their men, we are
forced to ask ourselves, in view of this will to win among the
peoples of the Allied nations, and the resolution with which
that will has made itself felt, why it is that the war has not
yet been won, and why after three and a half years of sangui
nary warfare no decision has been reached.

For now with half of the fourth year of combat spent not
only have the Allies not won but, surveying the great theatre
of war as a whole, we are no nearer victory than we were in
the first month of hostilities ; and, what is more disheartening,
Germany is today the victor. Unwelcome as it is to be forced
to make that admission we should be guilty of the same crass
folly against which we have warned our readers were we to
blink the truth and find comfort in the delusion of fatuous
optimism. At the beginning of the new year Germany is
stronger than she was twelve months earlier. Then, encircled
by her enemies, she was fighting on two fronts, today the ring
is broken and only one front has to be defended. Russia has
ceased to be a menace to Germany, and the vast Russian

WE MUST KILL TO SAVE 165

grain supplies will flow into Germany as soon as her engineers
put the railways in service. Germany has conquered Bel
gium and Northern France ; she has her foot firmly planted
on Italian soil; she has destroyed Serbia and Roumania; she
has reduced Austria and Bulgaria and Turkey to the status
of vassal States. Against this we (we link ourselves with the
men who have braved danger while America has stood idle,
because while we have not yet fought, in spirit we are their
brothers in arms) have wrested from Germany her colonies,
great spaces on the map but which she would gladly sacrifice
for the gain of that little strip of Belgian coast she holds so
tenaciously; and we occupy Jerusalem. The success of the
Palestine campaign, Mr. Lloyd George told the House of
Commons a few days ago, would have a permanent effect on
the history of the world. We are willing to believe this, but
that will not win the war. The war will be won in France
and Flanders ; it is only when the Germans are driven out of
France and their hold on Belgium is broken that Germany
will be defeated and compelled to accept the terms we shall
impose. Everything else is merely a side-show.

The war ought to have been won by Germany before the
close of the year 1914. While France was hastily organizing
and England was recruiting, Germany, organized as no na
tion has ever been, recruited to the last man, swept forward.
Those first months were the crucial period of the war. Had
the French wavered or the English faltered, had the Germans
possessed a little greater military skill or a trifle more resolu
tion — so evenly did fate poise the scale — Germany would
have won. She did not. Unable to win then she cannot win
now; but she has not yet been defeated. Can we win?

When we speak of winning the war we do not mean a
stalemate peace. We can have peace tomorrow on the basis
of the map of August 1, 1914, but that would be no real peace,
it would be simply a temporary truce; it would be a breathing
spell to enable the exhausted belligerents to recuperate and
feverishly prepare for a renewal of hostilities on an even
greater scale; and in reality it would be a German victory.
Peace, a perdurable peace, will come only when the fangs of
the mad beast of Europe have been drawn, when the military
power of Germany is broken ; when the German people are
under the harrow, sweating to pay the indemnity that is the
price of their crime, in their poverty and suffering made to
realize the suffering they have brought to the world.

166 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

To the fighting men of Britain, France and Italy we have
borne our tribute, to their men and women — the women espe
cially — behind the lines, who have taxed themselves beyond
their strength, who have uncomplainingly suffered, who have
sent forth husband and son with a smile on their lips, although
their hearts were breaking, and in mortal anguish have smiled
to encourage their sisters whose hour of trial was yet to come
— before these women we stand mute in our admiration.

The great mass of the people of the Allied countries are
sound to the core. They have been asked to make sacrifices
and they have nobly responded, but a small number of men,
in numbers small but wielding great influence, who by their
station and position ought to have set the finest example, have
made this war a football of politics, they have looked at the
war from the standpoint of party advantage, they have en
deavored to use it for partisan profit. In England and
France and Italy Prime Ministers have fallen and Ministries
have been displaced and Governments hold office on preca
rious tenure, for no one knows from day to day how soon the
nominal parliamentary majority may revolt and demand a
new leader. It is idle to pretend that Mr. Lloyd George can
manage the war with his full energy if part of that energy
must be dissipated in fighting his political opponents, or that
the fear of arousing political opposition will not tend to ham
per his usefulness.

Germany has still further profited by the policy of indi
vidualism. It is perhaps inevitable that each nation should
profoundly believe in itself, that each should be convinced it
is the mainstay of the Alliance, that its campaign is the most
important, but this leads to division when unity is essential,
and it makes each nation think in terms of its own campaign
when, as a matter of fact, there is only one campaign and one
front, and that is wherever there are Germans to be killed.
Jealousies, rivalries, divergent aims have been worth far more
to Germany than twenty new divisions of the Prussian
Guards or the strategy of the German General Staff. " Let
us admit," the military expert of the London Times recently
said, " that Germany's success in war has been far more due
to the internal weakness of her enemies than her own
strength," but recognizing this he argues that the " internal
weakness " cannot be overcome. " It must be accepted as an
axiom in this war that not a single one of the Allies is pre
pared to accept a position of subordination. This may be

WE MUST KILL TO SAVE 167

weakness and may be sectionalism, but it is a fact." This we
should call less an admission than a confession of the impeni
tent.

The necessity of an Allied Generalissimo has long been
apparent and after the Italian disaster could no longer be
dodged. Mr. Lloyd George had the courage to say so and,
to use his own words, with " brutal frankness," told of the
Allied mistakes, for which he was savagely attacked by his
political opponents, who believed it was their opportunity to
unhorse him and ride into power. It was clearly the inten
tion of the Prime Minister to propose to his Allies the crea
tion of a Supreme Commander in Chief assisted by an Allied
General Staff, but the fear of political opposition compelled
him to accept a compromise, a wretched makeshift, and to
consent to the creation of an Allied War Council, which has
no authority, is merely advisory and will delay rather than
facilitate military operations. This is a typical illustration
of the injury that has been done by the politicians whose mis
erable selfishness makes them play into Germany's hands.

In calling attention to at least two of the causes that have
saved Germany from defeat we speak in no pharisaical spirit
and with no affectation of superior virtue, but rather with the
hope that America, pledged to contribute to the common
cause its men and money and resources, valuable as these
things are, may make a further contribution of perhaps even
greater value.

Circumstances have conspired to exalt the President of
the United States. Without his own seeking leadership has
been forced upon him. The war has reduced the man power
of all the belligerents, depleted their resources, placed them
under a staggering load of debt, weakened their moral re
sistance. The United States has as yet made no large draft
on its manhood, its resources were never so great, its financial
position never so strong, it has experienced none of the agony
that induces spiritual depression.

The position of the United States is unique. When Wood-
row Wilson speaks not only must the world listen but it must
give heed to his words. Never in history has any ruler, spir
itual or temporal, any monarch or pontiff, been invested with
such far reaching power or been able to influence so widely
the destinies of mankind. This influence, resting on force,
is fortified by the moral disinterestedness which is the political
no less than the social principle governing the United States.

168 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Making common cause with Europe, it is aloof from Europe.
Fighting in defence of the civilization of Europe, of which
America is a part, it is unvexed by thought of gain, by petty
intrigue, by the hope of power which colors European
thought. Serene in the knowledge that it seeks nothing, that
no advantage can accrue to it, that only a huge burden of
debt and sorrow will be its portion, the United States can, if
it but has the resolution and the intelligence to act wisely,
weld its Allies into unity, disperse their unworthy jealousies,
lead them to a perfect understanding, and make them a force
so irresistible that before it Germany will collapse.

We think the time has come — and it is a duty laid upon
him — for Mr. Wilson to say to the Governments of England
and France and Italy, and through them to their peoples, that
with their affairs we have no concern, it is for them — and for
them alone — to choose their leaders, to determine their poli
cies, to adopt their methods, but having arranged these things
we must insist — our own safety demands it — that their efforts
shall no longer be weakened by the rivalries of politicians or
the machinations of place hunters; that national jealousy
must be subordinated to national security ; that on the battle
field and on the sea and in the council chamber there must be
unity of action; that he who thinks of himself as an English
man or Frenchman or Italian or American instead of as a
servant of the brotherhood that the war has called into ex
istence is recreant to the common cause.

There is another obligation imposed upon us equally
solemn. It pledges Mr. Wilson to treat with greater gener
osity and more frankness the men who are nominally his po
litical opponents, who, on their part, must banish politics and
rise to the loftier heights of patriotism. Already we hear
members of Congress talking about the Congressional elec
tion of next November, of possible "issues," of candidates
and chances. By everything that men hold sacred to the
memory of those who have died for us and those whose lives
must yet be offered, in the face of the misery that has fallen
upon the world, dare men talk of their petty " issues " or
think of themselves; are they so lost to shame, so willing to
palter with their honor, that for the price of a seat in Con
gress or momentary party triumph they would sacrifice na
tional welfare?

They little know the American people who think the
American people are dumb and patient. Up to a certain

WE MUST KILL TO SAVE 169

point they are very patient ; their sense of justice, their love of
fair play, makes them tolerant, makes them willing to con
done much, to take on trust what is difficult for common sense
to reconcile, to be generous, to give every man a fair chance
to prove himself; but they will not tamely accept incom
petence, stubborn pride, palpable inefficiency; they are too in
telligent to muddle through; it is not in their temperament to
be treated like little children and have their righteous anger
appeased with the small cake of honeyed words. Our Allies
asked for men and money, and they had only to ask to be
given. We shall continue to give in the same spirit, to give
so long as we know our men are being wisely used and our
money expended so as to bring results, but we shall not give
our men to be slaughtered nor our money to be wasted. We
shall ask something more than praise from Europe or flam
boyant statements of our own authorities telling of the won
derful things that are going to be done sometime in the fu
ture; always in the future but never in the present. As a
nation we have perhaps more than our full share of national
pride, of conceit, not to mince words; of belief in ourselves;
but we also have a fair share of intelligence and a habit of soul
searching. The American people have not questioned be
cause they accepted on faith, but the time has now come
when the spirit moves them to demand that faith be justified
by works.

What good will all this investigating do? is the question
most often heard in Washington. What is the use of prov
ing that the War Department has failed lamentably in arm
ing and equipping the soldiers whom this country has called
to its service? Will Baker go? If a Department of Muni
tions is created, what of it, since the confusion and lack of
organization will remain?

It is impossible to say whether Mr. Baker will go or not.
Something vastly more important than Mr. Baker will go
or indeed has already gone. It is difficult to call by name
this thing which is going or has already gone, but it is that
state of mind which has made it impossible to tell the nation
the truth and equally has made it impossible for the nation
to accept or believe the truth. Some people explain by a
sort of herd psychology; when the herd is threatened it in
sists upon the unanimous and unquestioning acceptance of
the leadership of the head of the herd. Others have ex
plained it as springing from our national optimism; we were

170 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

unwilling to listen to anything but cheerful tidings of our
war preparations. Whatever its origin it has been a real
and powerful influence. Men come to Washington and say,
" If it were not for the censorship what things would be told
about the way things are going on down here ! " But the
censorship is not in Washington. It is not Mr. Creel who
has kept the truth from being known. It is not the heavy
hand of Mr. Gregory that has lain upon Congress and held
it silent all these months. The censorship is back home; it
is in the hearts of the people who read the newspapers and
who elect and send men to Congress. It is the people who
have imposed the silence. " Our readers don't want knock
ing,'* the editors have said. Mr. Wilson himself felt so sure
criticism was unwelcome to the country, only a few weeks
ago, that he ventured to hope all critics might be " exported."
It was a part of the war psychology of the nation that men
felt they were only fully loyal when they accepted what
was done by their leaders in an unquestioning spirit. They
were " doing their bit " when they found no fault and turned
a deaf ear to fault finders. They yielded their minds in
stinctively to a kind of military discipline, and found merit
in doing so. The origin of this way of thinking lies in the
remote history of the race. Because men from some early
acquired habits feel that they must use their minds inde
pendently when there is a common danger the censorship
has lain upon us. It has been one imposed by readers and
voters, not by officials. It has been termed voluntary. It
has been involuntary. It has been instinctive. It has been
oppressive, more oppressive than if enforced with the threat
of firing squads.

In many ways this exaggerated sense of the requirements
of loyalty has been a fine thing. It has served a good end
in unifying the nation. Had it not been for this virtual
conscription of thought, real disloyalty and division might
have masked itself as legitimate criticism. But that period
is passed. There is real need now for intelligent and fair-
minded criticism. We shall get no further by the unques
tioning acceptance of everything that the Administration
does. President Wilson is entitled to the sympathy and
support of the country in the performance of his difficult
task. But the public is entitled to ask for results. It has
made and is making great sacrifices. It has consented with
out murmur to the conscription of its sons. It has given

WE MUST KILL TO SAVE 171

cheerfully of its wealth. It has undergone needless hard
ships without complaint, believing it was " doing its bit "
toward the winning of the war. It is just now going short
of coal in the severest weather known in thirty years, and
laying the responsibility upon the war, whereas the real
responsibility rests upon the Administration, for its failure
to act promptly with regard to the railroads.

Well, then, the one big gain from getting out the truth
is that the truth is out. The truth will make us free. Hence
forth there will be reasonable criticism. The time when it
was unpatriotic to say that the ordnance bureau or the quar
termaster's bureau of the army was making a failure is past.
A different spirit will prevail among the people. Shut eyes
will no longer be accepted as full evidence of loyalty. Mr.
Wilson's subordinates will have to justify themselves to a
people who already know that grievous blunders have been
made in equipping the army with machine guns, supplying
it with clothing and housing it in sanitary quarters.

Congress once more becomes an important part of the
Government. A few months ago Congress was afraid even
to investigate Mr. Creel, for fear the nation would feel that
it was nagging at the President when he was oppressed with
the burdens of war. Today Congress is feeling its way
carefully, but it is proving itself capable of independent
action. Mr. Wilson might force Congress back into its old
self-effacing role by boldly reorganizing his Cabinet and
creating an efficient war machine. But Mr. Wilson, being
what he is, is not likely to do anything of the sort, at least
not at once. So Congress will remain, like public opinion,
once more restored to its function, a constant spur to action.

We enter upon a new stage of the war. The revelations
of the Senate Military Affairs Committee prove that we
could not have gone on as we were going. In this war for
democracy we became once more in fact a democracy, not
a nation undergoing some strange reversion to an earlier
group psychology. The censorship as we have come to know
its manifestations without understanding its reasons for
existence is gone, and that is a more vital fact than would
be the going of Mr. Baker, with all his smug cocksureness
and detestable flippancy in the midst of this most awful of
tragedies the world has ever known.

172 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
THE LESSON TO THE NATION

UNTIL we know more about the winter uniforms of our
soldiers than we yet do it will be impossible to say whether
or not there is a scandal in the clothing of the army in this
war equal to the scandal in the feeding of the army in the
Spanish War. Will rags figure as largely in this war as
embalmed beef did in that one? There is a saying that you
must look for the profits of business in the by-products.
Apparently you must look for the scandal, too, in the
by-products. Canned beef twenty years ago was only a
by-product of the slaughtering industry. Wool waste is a
by-product of the clothing industry.

We know little about the winter uniforms. The soldiers
received them in this country only a few weeks ago. In
France they have had them longer. And now comes the
word from France that General Pershing will equip his
men with uniforms made in England. WTiy? Because he
needs a reserve supply and cannot get it from home, is
officially suggested — only suggested, for there is not posi
tive information as to why the American commander wishes
British clothing. Is it because the uniforms supplied to him
by the War Department have proved unsatisfactory ? They
are known to be light, nearly 30 per cent lighter than the
British and French uniforms. Are they heavy enough? Are
they warm enough? It is common gossip in army circles in
Washington that great dissatisfaction with the uniforms
exists in the camps in this country. They are said to split
and tear readily when men are ordered to throw themselves
on the ground in field drills. After a little use they become
shaggy and then it is said that when they become wet in a
rain the rough, furry surface " dissolves." How did the
troops stand the recent bitter cold in them? We shall know
in a few weeks whether or not a terrible blunder has been
made, and whether or not to the list of sicknesses and deaths
due to slowness in delivering uniforms must be added an
other long list of losses due to the poor clothing that was
furnished when at last a supply was available. It is sin
cerely to be hoped that no mistake was made and that the
present clothing of the army will both keep the men warm
and wear well, for a new supply of heavier and better gar
ments cannot be created until after the present winter
months are past.

STRAINING THE SINEWS OF WAR 173

If a debate rages about apparel of the soldiers it will
center upon shoddy. Now " shoddy " is not a word Amer
icans like. It has most unpleasant associations. In its
figurative sense it stands for something pretentious that does
not wear. We are assured in Washington that in thinking
as we do about shoddy we are doing injustice to a most
honorable institution. If you may believe Washington,
shoddy is entitled to great respect. Clothes are warmer for
having shoddy in them. Clothes wear better for having
shoddy in them. It is difficult to trace this new confidence
in shoddy. It is a part of the war psychology. We might
speak of it as the symbol of our national optimism. Shoddy
has been adopted by the wise men in Washington — therefore
shoddy. Why have we done injustice to this noble and most
American thing before?

General Crozier is right, in one respect. We must plead
guilty to his charge that the nation itself is in a large degree
responsible for our condition of unpreparedness. We re
member, painfully well, how military appropriations were
resisted in favor of " pork " ; how we were lulled with the
specious assurance that the Government was not unmindful
of its duties and that our state of preparation was immeasur
ably better than the public imagined; and how not merely
" pork " seeking Congressmen but their multitudinous con
stituents as well acclaimed the conception of a fools' paradise
in which there was no need for us to have soldiers or forts
or guns, for we should certainly never be involved in any
serious war, while if we were thus involved, all the President
would have to do would be to call for a million men in the
morning, and in the evening he would have them all ready
to march against the foe. Upon such egregious folly the
nation did indeed feed itself for years; and of that, this
wretched inefficiency of which General Crozier is one of the
scapegoats is a quite logical outcome. The present question
is, therefore, not whether we are going to censure or to excul
pate General Crozier and General Sharpe and the rest, but
whether the nation itself is going to learn the lesson which it
has thus brought upon itself and act upon that learning.

STRAINING THE SINEWS OF WAR

MONEY is the sinews of war. Bion said it, Cicero and
Plutarch confirmed it, and innumerable writers and orators

174 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

since have repeated it. We shall not challenge it, but rather
observe that, since that is so, those sinews should be used
with the utmost possible efficiency ; neither permitted to relax
nor strained to the breaking-point. Our fortunes should be
employed in the service of the state commensurately with
our lives ; whether in million dollar bond subscriptions or in
twenty-five cent Thrift Stamps.

There is a prospect that this will be done. Talk now pre
vails of war expenditures amounting to twenty billions, and
it is not improbable that it will be realized. But what will
that mean in comparison with the expenditure of human lives ?
Recent reports of exceptional authenticity tell us that thus
far in this war Germany has lost in killed, permanently dis
abled and prisoners no fewer than four million men. Now
the economic value of an able-bodied man to the community
and the state is commonly estimated at $5,000. On that
basis, then, Germany has suffered in men a loss equivalent
to twenty billion dollars. In view of that, we shall not grudge
the expenditure of the latter sum for the defeat and destruc
tion of the infernal system which has brought this incom
parable catastrophe upon us and upon the world.

So far as the amount of prospective expenditure is con
cerned, there is no occasion to worry over it or to talk of
impending bankruptcy. It would take several times twenty
billions, vast as that sum is, to bankrupt or even to embarrass
this nation ; provided always that the affairs of the nation are
directed with business common sense. Twenty billions is a
large sum, but it is not overwhelming. It is actually not as
large, relatively, as some former expenditures and indebt
edness.

Thus in the four years of the Civil War we spent in round
numbers four billion dollars. Our total national wealth was
then probably less than twenty billions ; at the beginning of
the war it was officially computed at less than seventeen bil
lions. Reckoning expenditures at four and wealth at twenty
billions, we spent one-fifth of all we had. Now our national
wealth is officially computed to be more than two hundred
billions ; wherefore if we spend in this war as much as twenty
billions, we shall spend only one-tenth of what we have, or,
proportionately, only half as much as we spent in the Civil
War.

Again: Let us suppose, by way of going to an extreme,
that we should incur a bonded indebtedness of as much as

STRAINING TPIE SINEWS OF WAR 175

twenty billions, over and above the vast expenditures which
we meet from current taxation. That would be a tremendous
debt, far surpassing any public debt of any other nation
before the war — indeed, surpassing any three or four of them
put together. Yet after all it would not be as large, relatively,
as the debt with which we found ourselves burdened at the
close of the Civil War ; and under which we rose up manfully
and cheerfully, with nothing but contemptuous execration
for the traitorous weaklings who whined about bankruptcy
and repudiation. In 1865 our debt was more than two and
a half billions, and our wealth was twenty billions. There
fore we were owing more than 12.5 per cent of all our posses
sions; and still were entirely solvent and quite prosperous,
thank you! Now our wealth is more than two hundred bil
lions, so that a debt of twenty billions would be scarcely ten
per cent of it, or 2.5 per cent less than our debt of fifty-two
years ago. Of course the same ratio holds good in computing
the per capita liabilities and assets. A debt of twenty bil
lions would mean an average of $200 a head; but the average
wealth is $2,000 a head. Neither the state which owes twenty
billions and has two hundred billions, nor the individual who
owes two hundred and has two thousand, can reasonably be
considered insolvent or even pecuniarily embarrassed.

Still, the service of such a debt would entail a heavy an
nual burden upon us and upon posterity, men say. Yes. A
debt of twenty billions bearing interest at four per cent
would call for no less than eight hundred millions a year.
"Prodeegious !" exclaimed Dominie Sampson. Yet it really
does not seem so formidable, after all, when we consider that
our national income is forty-five billions a year. The charges
for the service of the debt would thus be less than two per
cent of our income. Or if we apply it to the individual instead
of to the state, the yearly charge would be an average of eight
dollars a head. But the average income is $450 a head, so
that the individual would be paying an income tax of only
1.78 per cent. We certainly cannot consider such a charge
as that oppressive, as payment for the war which is to save
this nation from Hunnish spoliation and make the whole
world safe for Democracy; particularly when we remember
that, with the debt practically all held at home, we should
simply be paying that service to ourselves.

These facts and features of the case demand attention,
not at all as incitenTeiit to extravagance, but as reassurance

176 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and encouragement to provide or to employ our "sinews of
war" fully and courageously, so as to bring the war to a
victorious conclusion at the earliest possible date and to
make the victory in the highest possible degree complete.
They unerringly denote that, while it would be a crime to
expend a single dollar profligately or dishonestly, it would
be a folly worse than any mere crime to haggle over and
delay the appropriation of billions when they are needed for
the most efficient and expeditious prosecution of the war.
As a matter of fact it is certain that the longer the war lasts
the more it will cost in money as well as in lives. But if
such a contradiction were possible as that a billion or two
dollars could be saved by prolonging the war for two years
instead of ending it in one, we should cry, In God's name,
no! Spend the extra billion or two, and end the war!

We submit in all confidence, then, that there is no occa
sion for worrying over the magnitude of the debt which we
have thus far incurred, or that which we are likely to be
required to incur, in this war. We might, of course, with
perfect propriety argue that we should and must incur any
debt which may be found necessary, even though it amounted
not merely to ten per cent but to fifty per cent or even
one hundred per cent of our available wealth. It would
be better to bankrupt ourselves in defending ourselves
against the Huns than to be bankrupted by the looting
and the ransom which the victorious Huns would impose
upon us. We have not outlived nor repudiated Pinckney's
heroic words: " Millions for defence, but not one cent for
tribute!"

But there will be no bankrupting ourselves, nor any
danger of it, in successful defence and in going so far beyond
mere immediate defence as to crush the Huns and make
the world safe for Democracy, thus assuring security for
the future as well as for the present. In colonial days, men
thought in terms of hundreds, or perhaps thousands. In
the early years of the Republic, they thought in terms of
hundreds of thousands, growing into millions. In Civil Wai-
times they thought in terms of tens and hundreds of mil
lions. We must now think in terms of billions. Thomas
B. Reed suggested a profound truth when, to the complaint
that Congress, by the size of its appropriations, had become
" a billion dollar Congress," he replied, " Yes, and this is a
billion dollar country! "

STRAINING THE SINEWS OF WAR 177

Let us not be afraid because our second Liberty Loan
has swelled the volume of our war financiering to something
approximating a score of billions. We are a ten score
billion country. If a third Liberty Loan be needed,
of seven or eleven and a half billions more, and if then a
fourth and a fifth be needed, the money will be forthcom
ing. Let no man say that it was not needed to do this,
that if we had minded our own business we should not have
been attacked nor involved in the war. We did mind our
own business, and while scrupulously doing so we were
treacherously attacked. In view of recent indisputable
revelations, only a fool can deny or doubt that Germany
intended, after conquering Europe, to attack and conquer
America. She actually did attack us, while we were at
peace and on friendly relations with her, by commissioning
her Ambassador here to organize law-breaking campaigns
of violence upon our soil. And five years before she made
her attack upon the nations of Western Europe she pre
pared at once to weaken them and to make us the more
vulnerable to her subsequent attack, by seeking, with money
surreptitiously used here, to foment trouble and alienation
between America and Great Britain.

No, there was no escape. The war was forced upon
us, and we must fight it through to a triumphant finish, no
matter how great may be the cost in treasure and in lives.
By no act of our own, but by the deliberate, wanton act
of our arch-enemy, we have been forced into a position where
everything is at stake:

For all we have and are,

For all our children's fate,
Stand up and meet the war, —

The Hun is at the gate!

And we are not going to be content with merely driving
him from the gate, but we shall track the Blond Beast to
his lair and so manhandle him that he shall never again be
able to approach our gate or the gate of any other democ
racy in the world.

They are responding to every call that is made upon
them in Flanders and in France, those gallant Allies of
ours who for three years have been protecting us from the
ravening Huns. They are responding by going " over the
top " with wave after wave of steel, and blood, and human
lives. It is impossible that we should ever be so base, so

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 747 12

178 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

recreant, so unworthy of our Allies, as to falter for a mo
ment in responding to whatever call is made upon us, or
in going " over the top " with wave after wave of gold.
Think in billions! Give in billions! And whenever there
is a call for giving, — which after all is not giving, but merely
loaning at a profit and on the amplest security in the world,
— remember that he gives doubly who gives quickly. The
Hun sends millions against us. Let us answer him with
our billions!

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE FOR THE

WORLD

THE world must be made safe for Democracy. That
has become axiomatic. It is the battle call of the great
war. We are insisting, we shall resolutely continue to insist
until the end is victoriously attained, that Autocracy shall
no more be permitted to oppress and to menace Democracy,
and that the right of even the smallest nationality to live its
own life in its own way, so long as it is not a nuisance to
its neighbors, shall be as respected and as secure as that
of the most powerful empire. The world must be and shall
be made safe for Democracy.

But what of the converse? " Quis custodes ipsos cus-
todiet? " demanded Juvenal. If at so great a cost we make
the world safe for Democracy, who will make Democracy
safe for the world? Perhaps we should say not Democracy
but the things which pose in the name of Democracy. For
of the intrinsic safety of true Democracy we have no doubt.
A spurious Democracy on the other hand may be one of
the most dangerous things in the world.

Note, for example, Russia. How many crimes are there
committed in the name of Democracy ! In that ill-used name
things have been done which have imperilled the cause of
real Democracy the world around. Bolsheviki, Maximalist,
and who not else, have paralyzed the arm of real Democracy
and have hobnobbed with Autocracy, all in the name of
the people. Partly it was done in ignorance, partly in un
governable frenzy, partly through the corruption of the foe.
But whatever the cause, it made Democracy seem a menace
to the world. It would be not merely a menace but actual
destruction if it prevailed. And who shall restrain it from

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 179

thus prevailing? Who shall make Democracy safe for the
world?

But Russian Democracy, say some, does not count. It
is not the real thing. Russia has so long been kept in the
darkness of despotism that she knows no better than to
indulge in these mad excesses. We must look elsewhere
for genuine Democracy, even to ourselves. We are the
people. With that we cannot by any means agree. For
the leaders of the most dangerous madness in Russia are
not ignorant men. They are men who are learned with the
learning of the schools, who have for years been students of
government, who have, some of them, lived in America and
observed our Democracy at close quarters and at first hand.
But let that pass, and let us look to ourselves. We vaunt
ourselves as the Simon-pure Democrats of the world. Is
our own brand of it always altogether safe?

We have seen things done, or attempted to be done, here
in the name of Democracy which are a menace and would
if they succeeded be destructive to the world. La Follette
professes Democracy. The People's Council professes
Democracy. The Friends of Peace are ardent Democrats,
in their own esteem. The I. W. W. clamor vehemently for
the rule of the people. Every slacker, every pacifist, every
advocate of an immediate — which means a German — peace,
everyone who in vicious activity or in passive inertia seeks
to hamper the Government in its prosecution of the war
and to defeat its aims, flaunts over himself the ill-used name
of Democrat. All the indifference — and God knows how
much of it there still is all over the land ! — and all the poten
tial or actual treason that ferments and intrigues among us,
take to themselves the name of Democracy. Who shall make
it safe for the world?

We are not pessimistic. We know that those whom we
have described are not the majority, but a very small
minority of the nation. They are few. But then, Benedict
Arnold was only one; yet he was not tolerated or ignored
as a negligible factor. We know, too, that traitors and the
disaffected are not peculiar to democracies. They exist,
even more numerously, in monarchies. Yes; but that is dif
ferent. In a despotism treason is often patriotism. " Rebel
lion to tyrants is obedience to God." But in a Democracy
treason is treason against the people. That is why it is a
so much more odious thing.

180 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The world, we say, must be made safe for Democracy.
One of the surest ways of doing that, and one of the abso
lutely essential requisites, is to make Democracy safe for the
world. We said much earlier in the war that democrats
were on trial. It was to be seen whether the citizens of a
republic could be as devoted and as efficient in war as the
subjects of a monarchy. Now it is further to be seen whether
they can be as constant in purpose, and as loyal to their
aims and pledges, as is a monarch himself, alone. The one
sovereign, like Frederick, or Napoleon, sticks to his course
inflexibly, year after year, and never falters or wavers in
his self-seeking. Can the million or the many million sov
ereigns of a Democracy do the same?

That is the question which is to be answered. It is for
this country to answer it, and to answer it both for itself
and for others. It is for us to purge ourselves of treason,
to cast off indifference, and to make our Democracy a thing
under the control of which the best interests of the world
would be secure. It is for us, too, to bring to that standard
the Democracy of other lands which are as dependent upon
us morally as they are physically. Russia looks to us for
money, for munitions, for engineering, and we have hastened
— after long delay — to give them to her. It is no less incum
bent and it is certainly no less essential and imperative for
us also to impart to her in some way the spirit of a Democ
racy which will be safe for the world.

This war is casting the nations into a melting-pot, and
the coming of peace will pour them forth into a new mould.
It is for Democracy to dominate the process, and to give
to the new form which the world is to assume a character,
a tone, a quality, which will be safe for humanity. That,
as we see it, is the supreme duty, privilege, labor, of the
United States. That is paramount even to the task of win
ning the war, because that duty is to be performed both
while we are carrying the war on to victory and when we
are settling the terms of peace. It is paramount to every
thing else, because no matter what else is or is not achieved,
victory in this war will be vanity of vanities if it does not
make the world safe for Democracy; and for the world to
be safe for Democracy, Democracy must be safe for the
world.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 181
TOWN MEETING DIPLOMACY

FOK " Town Meeting " read " Bolshevik!/ ' or vice versa.
The Russian ructionists have been putting into practice the
doctrine which the " People's Council " and other theorizers,
good, bad and indifferent, have been preaching. That is,
that there shall be no confidential negotiations and agree
ments among governments through their diplomatic agents,
but everything shall be done openly, in town meeting, with
brass band accompaniment, and nothing shall be really effec
tive or valid until approved by a plebiscite. To emphasize
this counsel of perfection, and sternly to rebuke the former
practice of diplomacy by diplomats, Lenine and Trotsky
break the seals, open the books, and betray the confidences of
the world.

It is an interesting and illuminating display of revolu
tionary ethics, the logical and appropriate complement of
which would be a repudiation of the national debt which was
incurred before Lenine and Trotsky looted the government.
Why not? Fiscal obligations are no more sacred than dip
lomatic. If it is right to repudiate the former government's
pledge of confidence or secrecy, it is equally right to repu
diate its pledge to repay the money which it borrowed. By
all means let us be logical and carry principles to their rea
sonable conclusion. Perhaps some of our domestic Bolshe-
viki, who call themselves Pacifists, will favor us with their
counsel in the matter. Here they see the practical applica
tion of their pet principle. Are they prepared to advocate
its extension to other things than treaties?

For us, we confess to an old fashioned persistence in keep
ing faith. Also, we believe in the indissoluble connection
between power and responsibility. When one government
succeeds another, by revolution or otherwise, it assumes all
the powers of its predecessor, and it should — in our anti
quated view, it must — equally incur all its predecessor's re
sponsibilities, diplomatic and pecuniary. Perhaps the Bol-
sheviki and People's Council have hit upon a better practice ;
but we are somewhat set in our view. There may be ground
for questioning whether this quite unprecedented breach of
faith and decency was spontaneous with the People's Council
of Russia, commonly called Bolsheviki for short, or was done
at the incitement or dictation of Germany, using Lenine and
Trotsky as Hunnish puppets.

182 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

It was stipulated, we are told, that a promise was made
to Italy that if she would join the Allies, she should have
Italia Irredenta restored to her. Well, what of that? Is
there anybody in the world so jolly green as to have imagined
for a moment that Italy entered the war without the fixed
intention of regaining her own from the thievish Tedesci?
As well suppose that France has no thought of retaking
Alsace-Lorraine. In like manner other " secret treaties "
were nothing in the world but agreements to do what the
whole world has unhesitatingly assumed the Powers have
from the outset meant to do.

The making of these disclosures, at the expense of the
indelible disgrace of those who have made them, will there
fore not discredit nor embarrass the governments concerning
which they are made; the treacherous trick will not profit
Germany, in whose interest apparently, and at whose incite
ment possibly, it was performed. That would be so because
alone of the character of the revelations. It is so with addi
tional emphasis because of Germany's own record in secret
diplomacy. Of that a single example will suffice, which
appeals with direct force to the United States. While osten
sibly maintaining friendly relations with this country, and
making for it high profession of friendship, that Power
undertook to make secret compacts with two other Powers,
which also were on friendly relations with us, for their con
certed invasion of and partitioning of the United States.

This same consideration, moreover, suggests the insuper
able objection to town-meeting diplomacy, that in it you are
laying your cards upon the table before an opponent who
keeps his carefully concealed from you. There may be those
who think that we should not play cards at all. Very well.
We can understand though we do not agree with them. But
even they must see that so long as we do play, we must play
on equal terms. If our opponents conceal their hands from
us, we must in lawful self defence conceal ours from them.
If the Central Powers make secret treaties against the Allies,
the Allies must make secret treaties against the Central
Powers. That is elementary common sense and justice. To
say that Germany and her allies were to be free to conspire for
the spoliation of Belgium and Serbia, the crippling of France
and England, and the partitioning of America, and that
France and Italy were not in return to take measures for the
redemption of Alsace-Lorraine and Italia Irredenta from the

KILL SPIES 183

Teuton yoke, would be to affront high Heaven with the
clamor of fools.

Nor are we ready for one moment to concede that the con
ducting of diplomatic negotiations under the seal of confi
dence is identical with the Unpardonable Sin. The circum
stance of privacy or publicity is a matter of expediency, not
of morals. A bad treaty is bad, though it be made by pleb
iscite and blazoned from the housetops, and a good treaty is
good though it be sealed with seven times seven seals of
golden solence. In war no general but a madman announces
his strategy in advance. In commerce and in industry men
who succeed keep their own counsel. The jury which deter
mines the guilt or innocence of the man on trial for his life
does not conduct its deliberations with speaking trumpets in
the market-place. We know of no reason in sense or logic or
good morals why there should be an exception in favor of
enforced publicity in the case of international transactions
of sovereign states.

But, as Rabelais suggested, retournons a nos moutons.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the test of the
town-meeting system of diplomacy is in the practice of it.
In such practice the Russian People's Council has committed
an act of gratuitous treachery, the baseness of which is not
lessened by its futility. As for the efficiency of the town
meeting which the Bolsheviki organized at Brest-Litovsk,
we need not dwell upon that. It is our impression that no
old-fashioned diplomacy ever made a more egregious holy
show of itself than that.

KILL SPIES

A NATURALIZED German has been arrested for wilfully
tampering with the machinery of torpedoes. He is charged
with treason, the penalty for which, in time of war, is death.
This man will be tried before a civil court, his ingenious
lawyers will befog the minds of the not over intelligent
jurors, the trial will be the same solemn farce that has made
law a disgrace in this country, and the man who has fore
sworn his allegiance and betrayed his country to the enemy
will, in all probability, escape by the payment of a fine, paid
by the German Government, or a short term of imprison
ment; if he has the luck of Captain Hans Tauscher, who
offered to plead guilty to the charge of directing a con-

184 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

spiracy to blow up the Welland canal but was declared inno
cent because prominent army officers testified to his high
character and social graces, a sentimental or corrupt jury
will acquit him and he will go scot-free, with full liberty to
be the means of sending American soldiers to their death.

How long before the sentimentalists in control in Wash
ington will awaken to the fact that we are at war? How
long must the people endure the silly chatter of the Secre
tary of the Navy who preaches the doctrine of love the
German as thyself, or the Secretary of War spouting Sun
day school platitudes, or the polished periods of the Presi
dent reiterating the fallacy that we are not at war with the
German people? How many more lives must be sacrificed
before the people do justice? We are at war. The Ger
man people, whom we have been implored not to hate, with
devilish cunning are daily committing murder and arson,
impeding military preparation by crippling factories and
machinery, killing men and women without compunction.
The time for sentiment has passed, the time for action has
come. The spy knows the penalty when he is caught, that
penalty should be swift and certain; he should be sent not
before a civil court, where justice is uncertain and legal
technicalities govern, but placed on trial before a court-
martial, where justice and not chicanery rules; and no
politico-sentimentalist should have the power to set aside the
sentence. " The sword of justice has no scabbard." Unless
we keep the blade keen and let it fall remorselessly it will
be turned against ourselves. A single spy shot will deter
a score, but one spy cast loose because the web of justice
cannot hold is the encouragement to a hundred more.

And yet — can anybody picture Newton D. Baker sign
ing a death warrant?

RUSSIA ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS

BY CHARLES JOHNSTON

THE Russian kaleidoscope continues to gyrate with dis
concerting rapidity. One day we read, in glaring headlines,
that Lenin and Trotsky, denouncing the " unconscionable
lies " of the German peace negotiators, have broken off
relations with them; that a "red" army of three millions
is ready to re-enter the war; that England and France are
about to recognize the Lenin-Trotsky group as the de facto
Government of Russia. On the next day, we learn that
Trotsky and his colleagues are once more on their way to
Brest-Litovsk, the German Eastern Headquarters, to resume
negotiations ; that a separate peace is practically certain.

I think we shall be wise to await the outcome before
waxing enthusiastic over the war gestures of the Bolshevik
adventurers; they may be simply a part of "the haggling
of the market." We shall be wise to see that, in the face
of the Bolsheviki, Germany's position is overwhelmingly
strong. The Bolsheviki have hardly more than a choice
between ignominious surrender and a resumption of war
with an army hopelessly weak, absolutely demoralized by
their own propaganda, without officers, predestined to dis
aster. It is true that the defeat of the Bolsheviki might
have one fortunate outcome : it might give one more oppor
tunity to the sane and constructive forces in Russia, if such
forces still exist, to control the energies of the nation. In
this event, we might possibly see Russia, after many months,
re-enter the war on the side of justice and liberty. Mean
while, we shall be wise to look the facts in the face; to see
exactly what is involved by the widespread Russian desire
for a separate peace, to take a clear view of the moral and
spiritual principles involved.

It is not only that Russia, which was so eloquent, a little
while ago, concerning German perfidy, has turned her agree-

186 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ment with the Allies to seek no separate peace into a scrap
of paper. Her betrayal is far worse than that, far more de
serving of condemnation. Without doubt, Germany and her
Kaiser "willed this war," all hypocrisy notwithstanding.
But the actual cause of the war was the determination — the
wise and noble determination — of the Russian Imperial Gov
ernment not to allow Austria to crush and humiliate Serbia,
as Austria planned to, when she sent her outrageous ulti
matum. An invasion of Serbia by Austria, ending with an
occupation of Belgrade, while dealing a deadly blow at Ser
bia's national sovereignty, would, after all, have been a local
question. It would not have involved the whole world in
universal war. But Russia would not consent to this foul
violation of the rights of nations. Russia determined to go
to war. And, because she was bound by treaty to Russia,
France was by this step inevitably drawn into the war. This
precipitated the German plan, completely developed and
prepared a decade earlier, and carried out with a parade of
cynical lying, to violate Belgian neutrality, and thus Eng
land, too, was brought into the war.

Russia's determination, Russia's act, thus drew down
upon Belgium, France and England this appalling catas
trophe, and they have, with unflinching loyalty and heroism,
with a high, untarnishable sense of honor, carried out their
obligation to the uttermost farthing. And now, Russia " is
tired of the war," and is taking steps to save her skin, or
what remains of it, by betraying the Allies whom she involved
in war. This, she calls " saving the fruits of the revolution."

But base and cowardly as Russia's action towards the
Western Allies is, I think that her procedure towards a
group of nations much closer to her, geographically, is incom
parably worse. Let us begin with Poland: Poland, the
larger part of which, by no wish of its own, was tied to Rus
sia's chariot wheels, bound and fettered to the destiny of Rus
sia. The Poles of Russia, with rare heroism and self-
abnegation, threw themselves wholeheartedly on Russia's
side from the moment war was declared. They forgot their
many and real grievances against Russia, forgot for the time
their own national existence even, and, with a self-sacrifice
which should put certain other nations with " grievances "
to lasting shame, they offered themselves, soul and body,
on the altar of human liberty, giving their all to the great,
universal cause of righteousness.

RUSSIA ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS 187

The development of the war on the Eastern front drew
down on the head of Poland the abominable horrors and
outrages which Belgium suffered in the West; and the tor
tures of Poland were worse, because they were more remote,
more hidden, less comprehended and less mitigated by the
world's pitying ministrations. Poland has suffered horribly,
as a result of her connection with Russia. It was the clear
view of the inevitableness of this suffering, a deep and
grateful recognition of Poland's loyalty to Russia and to
righteousness that inspired, we may believe, the proclama
tion of the Grand Duke Nicholas, on August 5, 1914, be
ginning with the stirring words : " Poles ! the hour has
sounded when the sacred dream of your fathers and your
forefathers may be realized." That proclamation pledged
Russia to the establishment of a free, united and autonomous
Poland; practically to the detachment from Germany and
Austria of the dismembered parts of Poland in Posen and
Galicia and their union with Russian Poland as a free nation.
And, inspired not so much by this pledge as by their own
splendid loyalty and self-sacrifice, the Poles unflinchingly
endured horrors of cruelty and outrage at the hands of Rus
sia's bestial foes. And now, to " preserve the fruits of the
revolution," Russia is coldly and heartlessly betraying Po
land and the whole Polish nation, in effect giving them over
to Teuton despotism, thinly veiled by a travesty of autonomy.
And this, in the name of " Russia's finer inspiration of
humanity."

Take Serbia next. The Serbian race, closely akin to
the Russians in blood and tongue and faith, had, in their
long fight for national resurrection, been aided from the out
set by imperial Russia, this aid culminating in the campaign
of 1877, under " Alexander the Liberator." The name was
earned by a threefold act of liberation: the freeing of the
serfs, in 1861, two years before Lincoln's proclamation
freed from slavery millions of Americans ; the freeing of the
Balkan nations, and in particular of Bulgaria and Serbia,
from age-long Turkish rapine; and, tliirdly, the political lib
eration of the Russian people, planned, but not consummated
by Alexander II — because, on the eve of signing the already
prepared Russian Constitution, he was foully assassinated
by the Terrorists, the " revolutionary Socialists " of that day.
It is true that the blundering stupidity of General Kaul-
bars, a German in Russian service, later alienated from Rus-

188 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

sia not only Bulgaria, but Roumania also, which had been
Russia's gallant and effective ally in the war against Turkey ;
but the debt of the Balkan nations to imperial Russia was,
nevertheless, immense. And with Serbia, Russia's relations
and sympathies remained peculiarly close. It is probable that
if, in July, 1914, Russia had flatly declared to Serbia that
Russia would under no circumstances go to war to defend
Serbia against Austria, we should have had no world war —
at least at that time. That would have been an ignoble act
on Russia's part but she chose the nobler part, and drew the
sword for Serbia, thus inevitably plunging all Europe into
the horrors of war. This championship of that small, gallant
nation against her oppressors was a chivalrous act. But it
also created a very sacred obligation: the obligation to
continue all needed efforts and sacrifices until Serbia's cause
should be triumphant. And this peculiarly sacred obligation,
" free Russia " now repudiates, with a brutal selfishness that
is appalling. The blood of Serbia is upon Russia's head —
and not on the head of imperial Russia, which did strive to
redeem the obligation of loyalty, but on the head of the Rus
sian Socialists who "through baseness, make the great
betrayal."

There is then Roumania: Roumania, whose case is pe
culiarly tragical. Drawn into the war on the side of the
Allies, Roumania was, in the first instance, betrayed by
broken promises of munitions and material help by Premier
Stuermer; though it is the fact that a considerable Russian
army did enter Roumania and fight gallantly in the north
ward ridge of the Carpathians; betrayed, now, by " free Rus
sia," and forced, by this betrayal, to throw herself on the
mercy of an implacable enemy. The blood of the Roumanian
nation, like the blood of Serbia and of Poland, is upon Rus
sia's head.

It is not necessary to say much concerning Italy; the
Italian armies, the people of the occupied Venetian plain, will
know exactly what they owe to Russia and to Russian faith.
And if there should be further national withdrawal in north
ern Italy, further national suffering and sorrow, that will
make the account heavier, but in no wise clearer. As to the
immediate result to ourselves of Russia's desertion in the
face of the foe, one need say even less. Those who among us
wear mourning, because of the vastly heavier contribution
of blood and sacrifice we shall be compelled to make, will

RUSSIA ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS 189

know to whose cowardice they owe their bereavement. Yet
our sacrifices, even thus entailed, will bring their great re
ward.

This, then, is the indictment against Russia. Let us try
to fix, so far as may be, the responsibility.

To accuse Russia's present Socialist masters, who are
actually engineering the shameful pact with Germany, to
call them traitors, would be both futile and unjust. On the
contrary, they are carrying out the principles they have
from the first professed.

Nor can the Russian Socialists be justly blamed. It is
high time that we should understand that this is precisely the
kind of thing that Socialism is ; that these professional " In
ternationalists " are the predestined betrayers of nations ;
they are so by the very terms of their faith; as they are in
evitably pro- German, because Socialism is so .essentially
German, in its origin and in its spirit : its bigotry, its tyranny,
its unceasing " hymn of hate " sung in the name of brother
hood and humanity.

On the contrary, we owe a debt of gratitude to these
Petrograd Socialists for stripping the mask from the face
of Socialist Internationalism, and showing it for the greedy,
base and treacherous travesty it is. We are forewarned
now ; there is yet time for us to protect ourselves from exactly
the same danger, the same betrayal. I do not believe, there
fore, that the Lenin-Trotsky gang can be held responsible
for the loss of Russia's honor, if only for the reason that they
repudiate the very principle of national honor.

But, when we come to the Provisional Government, the
case is altogether different. Their responsibility would seem
to be heavy and absolutely clear. And I am convinced that,
in the name of honesty and good faith, we shall serve Rus
sia best by the most unswerving analysis of that responsibil
ity.

When the revolution was carried through, last March,
we were told that it was made necessary and right by two
things : first, because the Russian ministry was secretly work
ing for a separate peace with Germany and her allies, with
Protopopoff, Minister of the Interior, as protagonist of the
plot. If that was true, it was unspeakably base. If Nich
olas II was party to such a plot, he was guilty of a treason
able act. But what real evidence has ever been given to the
world demonstrating that Nicholas II ever held that design?

190 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

What is the fact? That for two and a half years Nicholas
fought loyally for the cause of the Allies — and that the day
of his abdication marked the practical withdrawal of Russia
from the war and the Allies' cause. If he was so completely
pro-German, as his successors in the government of Russia
declare, why, in the name of common sense, did he go to
war with Germany? No; we have heard the assertions of his
enemies, assertions unbacked so far by any genuine evidence.
But we have not yet heard the side of Nicholas himself. The
primal requisite of justice has not yet, in his case, been ful
filled.

As for Protopopoff, the problem is a difficult one. He
was a man who stood high, an able parliamentarian, a close
friend of Rodzianko and Gutchkoff, for some time Vice-
President of the Duma, one of the trusted Duma leaders;
and, as a Duma leader, he visited France and England with
the Duma Committee in the summer of 1916. More than
that: while in Stockholm on his way back to Russia with the
Duma Committee, he was approached by a German diplo
mat who urged him to persuade Russia to make a separate
peace, Russia to have, among her rewards, possession of
Constantinople — at the cost, of course, of Germany's ally,
Turkey. And the noteworthy thing is, that it was Proto
popoff himself who revealed and denounced these intrigues
in the Duma, with Rodzianko standing sponsor for him. I
confess I cannot understand exactly by what process the
corruption of Protopopoff, his conversion from patriot to
traitor, was brought about between the Autumn of 1916 and
the Spring of 1917 — if it was brought about. But this fact
is abundantly clear: Protopopoff was thrown into prison,
in the first days of the revolution and has, seemingly, been
kept there ever since. Why, then, if he was guilty, was he
not put on trial? If there was clear evidence convicting
him of treason — or of planning the treason which Russia
is now carrying out — why was he not put on trial, convicted
and shot? Elementary justice demands his trial; wisdom
demands that he should have been tried, with the fullest pub
licity and without delay. It was found possible to try, con
vict and condemn Sukhomlinoff; why was it not equally
possible to try Protopopoff?

The second reason alleged for bringing about the revo
lution was that the Tsar, or, if you wish, the Minister of the

RUSSIA ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS 191

Interior, had prorogued the Duma. Yes; we remember
that there was once a Duma. . . . Its present status is ob
scure. Is the Duma still in being? Has it been dissolved —
by the present government of usurpers, who have not a shred
of legal authority, either to make or mar? Or did the Duma
simply fade away into innocuous desuetude? Well, was it
worth while creating a revolution for the sake of that anemic
wraith? After the Tsar's abdication, all legal power in
Russia was in the hands of the Duma. One would be in
clined to ask the Duma to render an account of its steward
ship — if the Duma could be found.

It seems to me that there was a certain insubstantiality
in both these revolutionary pleas — a certain lack of candor
also. For the fact is, that the Duma leaders had determined
to bring about a revolution months before: long before
Protopopoff could have plotted to make a separate peace;
before Protopopoff was appointed Minister; long before
the Duma was prorogued. These were not the causes of
the Russian Revolution; they were merely pretexts, ex
cuses before international opinion. The truth seems to be,
that the Duma leaders wanted to become Ministers them
selves — as they did in fact become Ministers — perhaps be
cause they felt certain that they could do infinitely better
than the old imperial ministry which was, they said, honey
combed with pro- German feeling and grossly incompetent.
Well, the world can now judge which of the two was more
competent, more formidable to the enemy.

But at this point, I shall probably find myself in conflict
with American feeling and American opinion, which holds
that a revolution against Tsardom is so inherently right and
necessary, that no justification is needed; which holds that
it was magnificent of the " Russian people " to rise in their
might and throw off the hated yoke; which applauded en
thusiastically the arrival of "the world's youngest democ
racy," " the new republic of the Slavs."

Yes; an overwhelming section of American opinion held
that view — in part, I think, from a natural ignorance of real
conditions in Russia. We forgot, those of us who exulted
in the Russian Revolution, that their case was worlds away
from ours. In 1776, the year called to our minds by the word
Revolution, the thirteen American States had been
schooled in constitutional government for generations; their

192 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

representative institutions were an immediate outgrowth,
nay, a living part of the great tree of representative govern
ment which is England's lasting contribution to the organi
zation of mankind. They were saturated with English con
stitutional law and practice ; and it was precisely in the name
of English constitutional law that they raised the standard
of revolution.

But the Russian people have had no such training. The
communistic meetings of their village Mirs bear no analogy
to the constitutional organization and training of the thirteen
American colonies. It was, therefore, a piece of large
credulity, to say the least, to credit them with an inherent
and full-grown aptitude for the very complicated and diffi
cult task of constitutional government. They already had a
beginning of representative government, in the young and
still inexperienced Duma; they had, what we have not yet
in the United States, the beginnings of ministerial responsi
bility. They had a dynasty, established by the national will,
in a great Constituent Assembly in which were represented
all the living elements of Russia, three hundred years before ;
a dynasty, with whose growth Russia had grown great, push
ing north-westward to the Baltic, south-westward to the
Black Sea, eastward, across the vast untouched spaces of
Siberia to the Pacific, and even across Bering Straits to in
clude Alaska. With the Romanoffs, Russia had grown
great; already, with the lapse of the dynasty, Russia is fall
ing to pieces. Unquestionably, the old regime- had its faults,
many and grave ; but it had this supreme virtue : it was able
to call, and to call successfully, on the Russian army for im
mense sacrifices and heroic devotion, as against the gross
motions of selfishness which seem to be the highest ideal
of " free Russia."

But the Russian People, I shall be told, threw off a des
potism. Let us for the moment say that they did. But they
have now fallen under a far worse despotism, whether it be
that of paid agents of the German tyranny or — still worse —
the despotism of all that is basest in themselves.

But the plain truth is that the Russian people did not
throw off a despotism, nor did they carry through a revolu
tion. The mass of the Russian People — if there be a Rus
sian People, and not a mere conglomerate of self -centered
villagers — had as small a part in the " Russian Revolution "

RUSSIA ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS 193

as had the highlanders of Tibet. Nor have the Russian Peo
ple had any chance to express an opinion as to the revolution.
After nearly a year, that elementary step has not been taken ;
no Constituent Assembly has been called — for the packed
Congress of Socialists being got together under that name
is a fraudulent pretence.

But to return to the Provisional Government and their
responsibility. Trotsky, with a fine sense of honorable obli
gation, has been publishing secret treaties, with the deliber
ate purpose, of course, of damaging the Allies and helping
Germany, though he has quite failed to throw discredit on
the Allies. But there are two secret treaties which he has
not published yet, and is not likely to publish: first, the
treaty which the Petrograd Socialists made with the Kaiser,
the operation of which we are now witnessing; and, second,
the treaty which the Duma leaders made with the Socialists
of the Sovyet — the operation of which has been Russia's
shame and humiliation since the early Spring. The fact is
that, already at the end of April, the Provisional Govern
ment was tied hand and foot, supine before the Sovyet, tim
idly obeying the Sovyet's behests. And the supreme proof
of their subjection was, and is, the anarchic demoralization
of the Russian army. And the plain truth is that, for the
promulgation of this ghastly piece of folly Alexander Ker-
ensky is absolutely responsible. There was, if you wish, an
element of idealism in urging self-government on an army,
on the battle-line. But there was more of folly and yet more
of vanity. Folly, because even a little common sense would
have told him that an army is not a debating society, but a
stern instrument of war, formed for work that, at the best,
is terribly dangerous, work on whose efficiency depends the
liberty, nay, the very existence of nations ; an army can win
only if moved by a single will, carrying out a single plan;
and, even on this condition, it is far from certain to win. But,
without this condition, it is absolutely and fatally certain
to lose.

There was much of folly here, but even more of vanity.
These Russian leaders, green and untried in practical tasks,
were self -persuaded that they were going to set up a new
standard, teach a new lesson of human perfection, to the
whole world — and notably to " effete " France and England,,
which still insist on real discipline in their armies. Kerensky
did not see, and did not want to see, that to turn an army

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 747 13

194 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

into a debating society is about as wise as going to sea in
an apartment house; the foundering of one is as certain as
the disaster awaiting the other. And he did not see this, I
am persuaded, largely because of his overweening vanity. I
doubt whether he sees it even now.

But, in the last analysis, responsibility rests with the
manhood of the Russian army. We have heard a part — a
very small part — of the truth regarding the assassination
of Russian officers by men in the ranks. That was condoned,
if not actually counselled, by the members of the Provisional
Government, who gave to the soldiers lists of officers " faith
ful to the revolution," and who were, therefore, not to be
shot. I suppose they did not say so openly; but it is pretty
plain that they expected all officers not thus franked to be
assassinated. At any rate, large numbers of officers were so
assassinated, both by the soldiers and the sailors. Among
these officers murdered was Commander Butakoff, for years
Russian military attache to the United States, a man as
kindly and gentle as he was loyal. And he was butchered,
and hundreds like him. And the gentlemen of the Pro
visional Government did not raise a finger to stop it. They
simply franked their own favorites. This, in the name of
" the new liberty."

So they made their fatal bargain with the Socialists, and
now the mortgage has fallen due.

But their acquiescence in murder in no way exonerates
the soldiers and sailors who did the butchering. Their guilt
is their own. And the guilt of Russia's base betrayal is theirs
also. It is mere intellectual levity to think that the Germanic
Socialists at Petrograd, even if " advised," as we are told,
by members of the German General Staff, are delivering
an unwilling army, bound and helpless, to treachery and
dishonor. There are still brave men and men of honor in
the rank and file in the Russian army ; but their helplessness
in the ghastly collapse in the fighting* last July, shows that
the cowards are in the majority. As for the officers, as
General Alexeieff said at Moscow, many of them are mar
tyrs, tragically alive to the disgrace that is being brought
upon them. We should give these officers our heart-felt
sympathy now — even if we made no protest when their
fellow-officers were being murdered.

There is, perhaps, one ray of hope for Russia: that Gen
eral Kaledin may be completely successful, and may estab-

RUSSIA ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS 195

lish a government founded on loyalty, on devotion, on obedi
ence, on good faith. From the scattered fragments of the
" Provisional Government," I am convinced that we need
hope for nothing. I think they have shown themselves de
void not only of the rudiments of statesmanship, but, what
is a greater matter, pretty completely devoid of moral prin
ciple. Their pact with the Socialists sufficiently demon
strates that.

For Russia, I am quite convinced, the only right govern
ment is a monarchy, one in which the mainspring will be
loyalty and devotion, not the grossest selfishness and self-
seeking. If there should be any possibility of the establish
ment of such a government, whether through General Kale-
din, or by any other means — except German intervention —
let us learn from our mistakes ; let us not only not criticise
or oppose such a government, with a narrowness which can
see no good in any institutions but our own; let us, on the
contraiy, welcome and strengthen it. Let us clear our minds
of shadows and the superstition of names, and see things as
they really are. We have optimistically — and somewhat
credulously — called Russia free, a republic, a democracy.
Russia has not, for a single day, been either a republic, a
democracy, or free. Under a monarchy which makes the high
appeal of loyalty, she may be really free, and may have some
thing of genuine democracy also. But we must, I think,
remember that, if it be necessary to make the world safe for
democracy, it is even more necessary to make the world safe
for honor and justice.

It is with deep shame and a sense of personal humiliation
that a life-long friend of Russia writes of Russia as I have
felt compelled to write. Yet not without hope also. For in
the Russia the world has known, in the Russians one has
known, there was so much that was fine, honorable, inspir
ing, that there is yet room for hope. It may be that, even
at the eleventh hour, all the forces in Russia that make for
righteousness, and they are many, may find the unity and
strength to bring Russia back to the path of loyalty and
honor, justifying all that her friends have hoped of her, of
nobility and justice and genuine humanity.

CHARLES JOHNSTON.

BRITISH RAILWAYS DURING AND
AFTER THE WAR

BY SYDNEY BROOKS

FEW things have been more completely satisfactory to an
Englishman in our conduct of this war than the management
of the British railways. It was one of the problems we had
really thought out, with the result that plans laid down in
times of peace were carried out with a flawless efficiency
when the hour struck for their application. As long ago as
1871 the Regulation of the Forces Act was passed, em
powering the Government to take control, whenever neces
sary, of the railways of the country. Ever since then official
dom and the heads of the different companies have worked
in the closest co-operation, devising their programme of
mobilization, agreeing on the best points of concentration,
mapping out the most convenient routings, computing the
amount of stock that would be available at various centres
for the transportation of troops and material, arranging not
the terms but the principles of the financial agreement be
tween the State and the railways, drawing up elaborate
time-tables, choosing from among the managers of the com
panies the men who would be best qualified to take command
at a crisis, studying, in short, in detail and as a whole, the
infinitely difficult task of converting to war uses a railway
system not one mile of which had been built with an eye to
strategic considerations.

For over forty years the wort had been going on, each
year, of course, seeing some addition to or variation of parti
cular points in the scheme of operation, but probably no
change at all in its general character. From the very first
the objects to be aimed at were clear: First, to run the rail
ways as a complete unit, a single system; secondly, to place
their management in the hands of an executive committee
composed of the best men from the principal companies; and,
thirdly, to compensate the railways so that the shareholders,

BRITISH RAILWAYS 197

even if they gained nothing, would lose nothing by having
come under national control.

War was declared on August 4th, 1914. On the same
day the Government took over the railways, and the mobiliza
tion scheme came into force. A fortnight or so later the
whole of the original Expeditionary Force, about 120,000
strong, had been landed in France without anyone in Ger
many and very few people in Great Britain knowing any
thing about it. Southampton, which was closed to all but
military traffic, was the port of embarkation. Eighty trains
a day converged upon it. Each train ran to its fixed sched
ule. Each train was made up of the precise equipment as
signed to it. And each carried precisely the troops which
the scheme had allotted to it.

There was not, I believe, a single case in which the men
of the Expeditionary Force had to wait for their trains.
They were entrained, detrained, embarked, disembarked,
without hitch or accident or the loss of a minute of time or
a pound of equipment. The mobilization order called for
1,500 trains and the conveyance of 60,000 horses in 9,000
trucks. On one day 213 special troop trains were in motion
in different parts of the country. On another the railways
ran 104 trains, carrying 25,000 troops, over 6,000 horses and
1,000 tons of baggage. They were scheduled to reach South
ampton at intervals of twelve minutes during the sixteen
hours from dawn to dark. A special instruction provided
that if any train was as much as twelve minutes late it was
to be regarded as having missed its turn. It was to be side
tracked at any convenient spot, and the transport was to
leave without waiting for it. The instruction was not neces
sary. No single train during the whole embarkation period
failed to fall into and to keep its appointed place in the
procession.

What began so brilliantly has been as brilliantly sus
tained. Since the outbreak of the war the British railways
must have carried to and from the different ports of embarka
tion and shipment, for purely military purposes, not less
than 13,000,000 persons, about 2,000,000 horses and mules,
at least 70,000,000 gallons of petrol, 1,500 tons a week of
mail matter, and something like 25,000,000 tons of explosives
and material. But that ha's been only part,"and by no means
the most complex part, of their services. An immense amount
of traffic, unprecedented in character, volume, origin and des-

198 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tination, has devolved upon them throughout the country.
Huge factories have sprung up where no factories existed
before the war. Little wayside stations have become the
centres of vast encampments. Half a dozen important ports
have been taken up wholly by naval needs and their normal
traffic diverted elsewhere. Small and unconsidered lines
have grown to be vital arteries. The munitions industry,
which necessitates the manufacture of components at widely
separated factories to such an extent that four or five works
at four or five different places may each have contributed to
the completed shell, has 'likewise involved the railways in
colossal readjustments.

And with all this, with an extra burden of traffic and an
abnormal wear and tear and endless dislocations of their
established routine, the railways have had to get along with
a greatly depleted staff. Of the 640,000 men and boys who
were in the service of the companies before the war nearly
170,000 have joined the Colors; and their places have been
only partially and inadequately filled by the 60,000 women
who have taken up railway work. Not only, however, have
the companies throughout a period of unexampled stress
been short-handed; not only have they had to do with
out one man in every four of the rank and file ; but renewals
and repairs have fallen necessarily into arrears. Shops that
should have been building new engines or overhauling old
ones have been given up to making shells and aeroplanes
and motor lorries. Steel that should have been rolled into
new rails has been commandeered for ship plates and muni
tions. All the British railways are now being worked on
the narrowest margin of safety known in their history.

But they have done much else besides transporting troops
and material and keeping the internal trade of the country
alive and handling and distributing an inordinate volume of
imports. Before the war they had spent some £50,000,000
on docks and harbors. These they at once turned over to
the Government. They had spent a further £6,000,000 or so
on steamers and tugs, and practically the whole of their fleet
has been requisitioned by the Admiralty. Some of their
shops have been turned into munition factories ; others have
specialized in turning out transport wagons, telephone equip
ment, and a variety of special velticles for armament traffic.
The vast works at Crewe, Swindon, Doncaster and Gorton
have been busier on Government than on railway work.

BRITISH RAILWAYS 199

The companies, again, have converted some of their
steamers into hospital ships. Several of their convalescent
homes are now homes of rest for wounded soldiers. At not
a few of their shops repairs and construction for the Navy
have been undertaken. They have furnished the Army with
the most perfectly equipped ambulance and commissariat
trains in existence. Special corps of railway men have
helped to rebuild the shattered bridges and tracks of France
and to restore, maintain and develop that wonderful system
of railway communications behind the British Front which
is one of the biggest achievements of the war. Taking all
the theatres of war together, British railwaymen and engi
neers have laid down not less than 4,000 miles of track.
And in handling the wounded, in stretcher-bearing and in
all kinds of ambulance work the railwaymen, thanks to their
training in first aid, have been invaluable.

I need not say that the companies have done everything
in their power to provide for the comfort and refreshment
of travelling soldiers and sailors or that they have been
splendid subscribers to the War Loans or that they have
generously supplemented the Government allowances to the
dependents of their own employees who have joined up, or
that, as large landowners, they have heartily seconded the
national efforts to increase the production of food. One
takes all that as a matter of course. But it is worth empha
sizing that the British railways, the target in other years
of much bitter and ignorant criticism, their efficiency ques
tioned and their public-spiritedness denied, have, in this
war, by a supreme effort of cooperation that has extended
from top to bottom of the profession and among all the
companies alike, rendered the nation and the national cause,
at home and at the Front, inestimable services. It would
be difficult to say to what body of men we o*we more than
to the railwaymen or whose claim on the gratitude and
admiration of their countrymen could well exceed that of
Sir Guy Granet and the members of the Railway Execu
tive Committee.

Naturally, the railways have not been able to perform
their overriding functions as an integral part of the war
machine without a considerable derangement of the ordi
nary traffic schedules. Since the war began they have closed
some 500 stations in Great Britain. They have discontinued
more than that number of trains. Passenger fares have

200 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

been increased by fifty per cent in order to discourage
travelling. Breakfast, luncheon, tea and dining cars have
been almost universally discontinued. Excursion trains
and cheap fare facilities, with but a few exceptions, were
withdrawn before the war was eight months old. The reser
vation of seats and compartments, saloons for private parties,
through coaches, the conveyance of motor-cars and carriages
on passenger trains, the collection and delivery of travellers'
luggage in advance, and many other conveniences of peace
have been abandoned; and the amount of free luggage that
a passenger may take with him is now limited to one hun
dred pounds. Many miles of track have been torn up and
the ordinary time-tables and services have undergone a
drastic and progressive curtailment, the purpose of all these
restrictions and readjustments being to relieve congestion,
to keep the way clear for military traffic, to promote econ
omy, and to release as many men and as much equipment
and rolling-stock as possible for the Front. With the simul
taneous reduction in the supply of petrol and of available
horses, there must today be parts of Great Britain where
movement is hardly freer than it was one hundred and fifty
years ago.

But what, above everything else, has enabled the rail
ways to rise to the full height of the national crisis is the
system on which, from the first moment of the war, they
have been administered. Competition between the compa
nies has utterly ceased. For the past forty months the
British railways have been worked as a single interde
pendent system, with the facilities of each company at the
service of them all. The agreement that was at once entered
into with the State provided that all Government traffic
should have priority and be carried free; that the Govern
ment should take all receipts from ordinary traffic, pay all
operating expenses, and guarantee to the proprietors of the
railways the same net revenue as they had earned in 1913.
And, subject to minor adjustments, this agreement has been
adhered to ever since. If, after the working expenses and
the guaranteed net revenues of all the railways have been
met, there is a surplus, the Government takes it. If there
is a deficit, the Government finds the money to meet it.

The arrangement has probably been a good one both
for the railways and the State, but there are no published
figures that show in detail how it has worked. The speeches

BRITISH RAILWAYS 201

of the companies' chairmen at the annual meetings, never
very illuminating orations, have since the war been merely
a tissue of amiable generalities. The companies' accounts
have been issued only in skeleton form. The Board of
Trade Returns have shrunk to a single page of meaningless
totals. A writer in the Edinburgh Review for January of
this year estimated that during the first five months of the
war, when trade was bad, the Treasury must have had to
meet a considerable deficit; that throughout 1915, when
business was booming, the Government had the better of
the bargain; but that the balance has again been shifted by
the three rises in railwaymen's wages, and that " there can
be little doubt that for the latter months of 1916, and thence
forward indefinitely for at least as long as the war lasts,
the Treasury will have to meet a substantial deficit."

But even so, the financial results of the arrangement
cannot be judged until we know the amount of Govern
ment traffic that has been carried free of charge and what
the charges for it would have been at pre-war rates. Both
sides so far appear to be well satisfied with things as they
are. Mr. Bonar Law in December, 1916, assured the House
of Commons that the State had made " a very good bargain,"
and that in spite of the successive bonuses, there was " every
reason to believe there will be no financial loss, but probably
some financial gain " as the result of the arrangement with
the railways. The companies and the shareholders, for their
part, seem equally pleased. They feel they have been fairly
treated. With very few exceptions they have been enabled
to maintain their 1913 dividends, and if some of them can
reflect that they would have been a good deal better off
without the agreement, others are equally conscious that it
has saved them from something like collapse.

When the Government took over the control of the rail
ways it left their management undisturbed. It vested their
operation in an Executive Committee composed of the
general managers of the thirteen principal lines, with the
President of the Board of Trade as their official chairman,
but with the acting chairman, who is one of the general
managers, exercising the real power and direction. To the
ordinary trader and passenger there is nothing to indicate
that the most revolutionary change in the history of British
railways, or, indeed, any change at all, has taken place. The
companies retain their distinctive names; they are operated

202 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

by the same general manager, with the same, though a
smaller, staff as before ; they hold the usual annual meetings
and are apparently governed by the familiar Boards of
Directors; the fact that the supreme control is really in the
hands of the Executive Committee, whose function it is to
insure that all the companies work together as a harmonious
whole, and whose orders and recommendations have behind
them the full power of the Government, is not a fact that
is obtruded on the public. But the general managers of
the different companies never have much chance of forget
ting it. They can hardly have received since the war began
much less than 1,000 circulars from the Executive Com
mittee necessitating vast inquiries and rearrangements,
ordering innovations here, suggesting the abandonment of
customary practices there, covering and transforming pretty
nearly all the multifarious details as well as the accepted
principles of railway management. The Government de
cides what it wants done; the Executive Committee deter
mine how it is to be done; the individual companies do it.
There could scarcely be a smoother or more effective system
of co-operation towards a common and comprehensive end.
It has become progressively clearer and clearer that the
railways cannot, when the war is over, go back to their old
positions and their old methods. Finance alone forbids it.
The railwaymen have received in the past three years three
successive additions of five shillings a week to their wages.
They have been disguised under the name of war bonuses,
but nobody that I know of expects them to disappear with
the war. On the conclusion of peace the companies will
find themselves faced with an increase of considerably over
£20,000,000 a year in their wages bill. This sum exceeds
by several millions the amount, some «£l 7,000,000, paid out
in 1913 as dividend on the Ordinary stock. But that is
not all. The cost of material has risen by about sixty per
cent, the increase is not likely to be scaled down for many
years to come, and another huge item is thus added to the
working expenses. Moreover, all the companies are behind
hand with renewals and repairs; their goodwill, the creation
of decades of assiduous labor, has been profoundly affected
by a war that has played havoc with the normal channels
of trade; some lines have been involuntarily advanced to a
position of unwonted importance; others, through no fault
of their own, have had to yield ground; and the State,

BRITISH RAILWAYS 203

which is responsible for these upheavals, cannot, when peace
returns, wash its hands of the immense problems of recon
struction they will bequeath.

Were the Government to follow any such course, were
it to terminate its contract on the conclusion of peace and
to leave the railways to work out their own salvation, the
result would be, first, that the companies as a whole would
be hard put to it to pay any dividends at all on their Guar
anteed and Preference stocks; secondly, that the dividends
on the Ordinary stock, representing nearly £500,000,000 of
paid-up capital, would be wiped out; and, thirdly, that. the
directors would all but inevitably be driven to raise their
rates just at a time when the national chances of recovering
from the devastation of the war and of competing success
fully in international trade would largely depend on cheap
transportation. The consequences of such a solution have
only to be faced to put it out of court as impossible.

There remain, therefore, two alternatives. One is that
the Government should itself acquire the railways by pur
chase and operate them as it operates the Post Office; in
other words, that the railway system of the United Kingdom
should be nationalized. The other is that some such plan
as has been found admirably effective in time of war should
be continued into the years of peace, and that in return
for a financial guarantee the State should assume control
of general railway policy, should insist on the companies
being worked together as they are now being worked to
gether, and should require the adoption of the reforms, the
almost innumerable reforms, that the companies have too
long resisted and that the pressure of the war has forced
upon them. The choice will be between Government owner
ship and operation on the one hand, and a far more thor
oughgoing and rational system of State regulation and
control and of State responsibility on the other.

Of the two, nationalization is unquestionably the simpler
solution. And just because of its simplicity those who have
mastered the fallacy of the short cut in politics will incline
to suspect it. The easy solution is usually the wrong solu
tion; and nothing can be easier or apparently more final
than to get rid of the problems propounded by the private
ownership of the railways by abolishing private ownership
altogether. There is a completeness in such a plan that
appeals to the type of reformer who likes all his remedies

204 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to be annihilating, and who has not yet educated himself
above the notion of a political cure-all. It is a plan, too,
that a Government, confronted as ours will be in the daj^s
of reconstruction by a hundred gigantic questions, with no
time to think anything out, and yet bound to do some
thing, will naturally incline to.

And undoubtedly many interests will favor its adoption.
People sometimes forget that by the Railways Act of 1844
Parliament, on giving three months' notice, already has the
legal right to buy up all the British railways built after that
date at twenty-five years' purchase of the average profits
for the three years preceding the exercise of its powers. A
considerable and variegated body of opinion would like to
see those powers turned to the fullest account the moment
the war is over. Many shareholders, for instance, would
welcome it. They have seen an enormous shrinkage in the
value of railway securities during the past twenty years;
they have seen expenses mounting up without any corre
sponding increase of receipts; they have seen dividends
diminish until they now represent a return of no more than
31/2 per cent on the investment; they are well aware that
the State purchase of private property in Great Britain
rarely turns out to the disadvantage of the expropriated
owner; and they would jump at a chance of exchanging
their company certificates for State scrip on reasonable
terms.

Nor would the railway managers and officials be likely
to oppose the transaction. They must long since have recog
nized that along their present lines they are fighting an
almost hopeless fight; that they have inherited a redundant
and waterlogged system; that they will never again be able
to raise money on the old easy terms; that the growth on
the one hand of motor and tramway competition, of local
taxation, of the cost of labor and raw material, and of Gov
ernmental insistence upon shorter hours, more provisions for
safety, and cast-iron rates, and, on the other hand, the oppo
sition that is always stirred up in and out of Parliament
to any scheme of consolidation of interests among the com
panies which might offset some of the handicaps under^
which they are laboring, have gradually produced an impos-"
sible situation ; and that as State officials, with a comfortable
pension to look forward to, and able in the meanwhile to
give all their time and thought to scientific railroading

BRITISH RAILWAYS 205

instead of wasting much of their energy on squabbles with
their employees, or groups of traders or factions in Parlia
ment, their position would be at once freer and more satis
factory than it has been for the past two decades or is ever
likely to be again.

Shippers in general would approve of nationalization in
the confident hope that it would mean lower rates and even
uniform rates, if not for all classes of freight, at least for
the whole country. The public would be for it. On all
such questions it has come to entertain a hazy presumption
in favor of the State. It believes that there is a great deal
of waste under the present system of company ownerships,
It has a feeling that the labor problem would be more easily
handled if the Government owned and operated the railways,
and that the country would be less exposed to the menace
of a general strike. It has heard of the profit of nearly
£40,000,000 made in one year by the Prussian State rail
ways, and it sees visions of a similar sum being devoted
" to the relief of taxation." But by all odds the strongest
influence that is propelling us towards nationalization is that
of the railway employees. They count upon it as a sure
stepping-stone towards higher wages or fewer hours, and
most probably towards both desiderata simultaneously; and,
being a compact electoral and Parliamentary force and an
important wing of the Labor Party, which is more and more
governing our politics, their views on the future of railway
policy are likely to be decisive.

Now, there cannot be much doubt that nationalization
or any scheme which brought the British railways under a
single unified control would find an ample field for economy
and improvements. No one pretends that the 250 different
companies which work the 24,000 miles of line and the
56,000 miles of track in the United Kingdom are the last
word in railway administration or that our transportation
system is a model of what such a system should be. It grew
up in the usual spasmodic, haphazard fashion of all private
enterprises; it was overloaded from its infant days with
abnormally heavy expenses for land, lawyers and material
—no railways in the world carry such a burden of capital
per mile of line as our own; it never evolved from its own
ranks or encountered in Parliament any man with a real
sense of railway statesmanship ; it passed through one phase
of wild-cat finance and another, and later a phase of cut-

206 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

throat competition; and it finds itself today weighed down
by duplicating services, extravagant and extraneous under
takings, a faulty technique, the jealousies of Parliament,
the restlessness of Labor, the importunity of traders, and a
suspicious, if not a hostile, attitude of the public mind.

Assuredly in all this there is scope enough for enormous
savings. The British railway managers in the past would
seem to have committed two fundamental errors. First, in
stead of concentrating on their main business of furnishing
cheap, safe and rapid transportation, they have branched
out into a variety of side-shows, such as the collection and
delivery of goods, hotels, steamers, docks, engine works, car
and locomotive shops, and so on, and have thus involved
themselves in great expenditure on the provision of facili
ties that are accessory, but not essential to their central
functions as carriers. Secondly, they have handled their
business in a retail and not a wholesale fashion. The full
wagonload and the full trainload are of the essence of sound
railway operation. But the curse, the fatal weakness, the
irredeemable fault, of British railway operation has been
half-loaded wagons and half-empty trains. The average
American freight car carries a load of about 22 tons; the
ordinary Prussian car of 12 tons is always loaded up to
seventy-five per cent of its capacity; the British truck is
supposed to hold 10 tons, but probably carries on an average
somewhere less than three.

There is the root evil of our railway system. British
managers in aiming at small consignments and rapid deliv
ery have had to pile up an immense amount of rolling-stock
that is practically never employed to anything like its full
capacity, and have scattered traffic over the largest number
of points instead of concentrating it at the fewest. Rates
can never be as low in Great Britain as in America or France
or Germany because of the comparative shortness of the
haul. But they might be considerably lower than they are
— and nothing else can effectively and permanently reduce
them — if the full wagonload and the full trainload, such as
we have today under pressure of the war, were to become
the rule and not the exception of British railway practice.
How little our managers have made these two essentials the
object of their policy may be proved from the fact which
Mr. W. M. Acworth has repeatedly emphasized that our
British methods of railway accounting do not show what is

BRITISH RAILWAYS 207

the average rate charged for carrying a passenger or a ton
of goods a mile; what is the average weight of goods con
veyed in a truck or in a train ; or what is the volume of traffic
carried over a given line.

I cannot see that nationalization is likely to advance the
introduction of these two radical reforms, which would revo
lutionize the goods traffic and the passenger traffic of the
kingdom. On the other hand, there is little chance of get
ting them introduced at all unless the supreme authority of
the State in some form or other stands over the separate
companies and insists upon their compliance and co-opera
tion. Whether Governmental ownership and operation is
the only method of bringing the companies into a working
unison is precisely the point that has to be determined. The
difficulties and the dangers of any such solution are grave
and manifold. It would mean a vast issue of Government
stock at a time when our national finances are already suf
ficiently precarious. It would bring the State with a rush
into the field of private enterprise as hotel proprietor, engine
builder, steamboat owner, and so on. It would throw back
upon the ratepayers throughout the kingdom the amounts
now contributed by the railway companies for local taxa
tion; and there is no conceivable possibility that it would
satisfy all the interests concerned or fulfil all the expecta
tions that its advocates hold out. The State, in other words,
even after reaping the benefits of a more centralized and
therefore theoretically a more economical administration,
will be as impotent as the companies themselves to reduce
rates, increase facilities, shorten hours of labor, and raise
wages at one and the same time.

As a matter of fact, foreign experience and one's
own knowledge of the British character and of British
institutions forbid one to be excessively optimistic as to
the advantages of nationalization. It has meant abroad
(1) the exalting of red tape, (2) abnormally large and
ill-disciplined staffs, who are not allowed to form labor
unions or to go out on strike, and who enjoy few or none
of the privileges and supplementary benefits furnished by
the British companies to their employees as a matter both
of generosity and of justice; (3) a lack of initiative and
responsibility among the heads of the various departments ;
(4) a standard of rolling-stock, train service and station
building rather decidedly inferior to our own ; (5) rates fixed

208 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

by the arbitrary will of the administration and on a prin
ciple of uniformity that makes adjustment to particular
conditions and requirements impossible; (6) a slower and
less dependable transport of freight and very inadequate
compensation for lost, damaged or delayed goods; (7) a
startling enhancement of the ratio of expenditure for re
ceipts, or else a severe limitation of the sums paid out in
extensions and improvements; and (8) advancement and
promotion determined by political " pull," and the whole
administration of the roads and the whole course of railway
policy saturated by politics.

There is no reason to think that we in Great Britain
would be immune from the ill-effects of adding some 600,000
electors to the Government pay-roll or from the paralyzing
influence which 'bureaucratic control seems everywhere to
exercise on enterprise, invention, and the higher kinds of
directing ability. On the other hand, it is a clear necessity
of the situation that the State after the war should act far
more helpfully and thoroughly than hitherto as a general
superintendent of the British railways, with a financial
stake in their prosperity. Our old system of State control
from the outside has admittedly broken down. The alterna
tive of State purchase and of State management is one that
is as attractive to the unthinking as it is likely, in the special
circumstances of Great Britain, to be disastrous in practice.
Is there no scheme of State partnership that can be devised,
one that will bring in the State as the majority stockholder
in all the companies, that will place its decisive power at
the service of the directors, that will enable it to exert the
necessary influence to effect otherwise unobtainable reforms,
that will give it a financial interest in the results, and that
will thus combine Government direction and responsibility
with private initiative and experience? Arrangements of
this general character are not unknown, and have worked
remarkably well in the case of minor public utilities such as
gas and tramway undertakings. There is no intrinsic reason
why some such plan, infinitely preferable to the bald solution
of Government ownership and involving no great change in
the present wartime relations between the companies and
the State, should not be applied to the problem of the
British railways.

SYDNEY BROOKS.

THE VICE OF SECRET
DIPLOMACY

BY A. MAURICE LOW

No greater contribution to political morality and
national security has ever been made than that of the
framers of the Constitution of the United States when
they wrote the Sixth Article in these words :

" This Constitution, and the laws of the United States
which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all Treaties
made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the
United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land."

It was a blow struck at that mass of intrigue, deceit
and dishonesty which for centuries the world had known
as secret diplomacy, the most vicious, immoral and danger
ous power seized by a ruler in defiance of the rights of his
subjects. Diplomacy was the royal prerogative. It was
one of the divine attributes of kings. They it was who
made war, contracted alliances, bartered territory, sacri
ficed liberty for a whim or superstitious fear. Even when
the people began to exert their power, to assert their right
to some control over their own affairs, to raise taxes and
to determine how they should be spent, the king was still
the sole authority in foreign relations. Diplomacy was sup
posed to be beyond the comprehension of the common mor
tal. It had to be conducted with much mystery and always
great secrecy. The people knew nothing until they were
plunged into war because in the exercise of his royal pre
rogative their sovereign had made a secret alliance, and the
nation was committed to a costly campaign involving great
sacrifices.

The framers of the Constitution determined this should
be impossible in America. When they wrote into the com
pact of the States that treaties should have the same force
as laws, they deprived a weak, ambitious or unscrupulous
President of the power to contract a secret alliance. A law

VOL. ccvn.— NO. 747 14

210 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to be observed must be made public, for no man can know
what the law is unless it has been published. As a treaty
was placed on the same footing as the law and had the
same force and effect as a law, like the law it must be made
public for its terms to be respected.

We have seen within the last few years the evils of secret
diplomacy, that is the power of sovereigns to enter into
agreements without the knowledge or acquiescence of their
subjects; and the history of Europe, from the time that its
history first began to assume concrete form and diplomacy
was established as a principle, is largely the record of this
unrestrained power. It is responsible for the endless in
trigue and cabal so dear to the Minister without conscience
or willing to barter his honor for gain. The people, the
victims of the system, who had to pay for it, were always
in a state of fear, never knowing when they were next to
be dragged into the army and forced to fight for a shadowy
cause about which they were ignorant and cared nothing.
Yet while the world has seen nothing so disastrous as secret
diplomacy, it has seen nothing so foolish, more befitting the
idle moments of schoolboys, than the serious work of states
men to whom the world ascribes genius.

Every nation in turn has sought to secure advantage by
means of a secret alliance, and every treaty of alliance sol
emnly entered into, declaring on the faith of kings that it
would be loyally observed, invoking the name of the Most
High or the Trinity, in the stilted language of diplomacy
as witness to the sincerity of the high contracting parties,
has been merely a scrap of paper, made for the advantage
of the moment and broken without a qualm of conscience
when a greater advantage was to be obtained. That is the
stupendous folly of this diplomacy. Similar to the Bour
bons who learned nothing and forgot nothing, the necro
mancers who practised the black art of secret diplomacy
forgot everything and profited nothing by experience, other
wise how can one explain that king succeeded king, and
minister followed minister, and yet this wretched farce went
on, not for a period, not for years, but for centuries, and
the tradition has been handed down to our own times; for
have we not seen the Autocrat of Prussia and the Autocrat of
all the Russias writing to each other in the language of
schoolboys and secretly intriguing against the peace of their
neighbors?

THE VICE OF SECRET DIPLOMACY 211

Bismarck, the most cynical but also the most astute man
of his times, defended his immorality by asserting that when
he entered into a secret agreement intended to nullify a
public convention he was simply taking out a policy of rein
surance. The phrase was his, but the principle was as old
as diplomacy itself, and as mistaken. Instead of the secret
treaty being a policy of reinsurance, that is a measure of
protection, it was, on the contrary, always a measure of
danger. Sovereigns were too well versed in the dishonesty
of kings to put faith in the royal promise, and while treaties
might be kept secret from their subjects they became known
to the governments against whom they were directed, who
on their part took out a policy of reinsurance against the
treachery of a nominal ally by making a counter alliance.
That has been one of the evils of the vice of secret diplo
macy. It has never protected, it has never prevented war,
it has never curbed the ambition of a conscienceless ruler,
but it has provoked other and more dangerous combina
tions, arid the allies confident of their strength have treach
erously forced war or struck at the security of nations at
peace.

It would require too much space merely to catalogue
the long list of secret alliances and their consequences, but
a few taken at random may be offered to show they never
exercised the slightest restraint upon their signatories, and
they were shamelessly broken almost as soon as they were
concluded.

In 1516 Henry VIII of England entered into negotia
tions with Charles V of Spain directed against Francis I
of France, whereupon Charles made a secret treaty with
Francis. Later when both were rivals they sought the sup
port of the King of England, and both bribed his chancellor,
Cardinal Wolsey.

In 1668 England and the Netherlands made a secret
treaty to force Louis XIV of France to make peace with
Spain, but he heard the news with indifference. The fore
handed Louis had already made a secret treaty with the
Emperor of Austria by which they were to divide the Span
ish dominions on the death of the then king.

Charles II of England, who was chronically hard up,
secretly sold Dunkirk to France.

Richelieu was always making and breaking secret agree
ments.

212 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The secret family compact of the Bourbons, France and
Spain, in 1733, was one of the causes of the French and
English war in America.

Napoleon detached Russia from the Allied cause and
made her an enemy of England by the treaty of Tilsit.
That treaty was made public, but the terms of a secret
agreement made at the same time were kept secret.

In 1815, after Napoleon had been banished to Elba, the
Allies met in Congress at Vienna to readjust the map,
France having a voice. While the Congress was sitting
England, France and Austria entered into a secret treaty
directed against Russia and Prussia, their putative allies.
The secret was so little a secret that the Czar knew of it
immediately after the treaty was signed.

Napoleon III, walking in the footsteps of his illustrious
uncle, secretly proposed to Bismarck that France should be
given Belgium and Luxemburg as the price of his friend
ship to the new German Confederation.

In the discussion of secret diplomacy a confusion exists
between negotiation and consummation. Secret negotiation
is not only proper, but, in many cases, absolutely essential;
it is so necessary that if negotiations were not kept secret
few treaties could be concluded and the negotiators would
always be hampered. If the political or commercial inter
ests of the United States require it to obtain a strip of
territory to construct a canal, or a group of islands having
strategic value, it would be unwise in the extreme for the
United States publicly to proclaim what it was after. It
might get it, but it would be forced to pay an extravagant
price, it might even fail because of the opposition of a rival.
The essence of a good bargain — and a treaty, it must always
be remembered, is only another name for a bargain — is
secrecy and a certain skill in affecting indifference.

Secrecy, therefore, in the early stages of negotiation is
perfectly proper and was so recognized by the men who
made the Constitution, and they were good judges of how
far it was wise to entrust authority. In explanation of the
power given to the President to negotiate treaties, but not
to conclude them, Jay wrote:

" It seldom happens in the negotiation of treaties, of
whatever nature, but that perfect secrecy and immediate
dispatch are sometimes requisite. There are cases where the
most useful intelligence may be obtained, if the persons pos-

THE VICE OF SECRET DIPLOMACY 213

sessing it can be relieved from the apprehension of discov
ery." He adds " there are many persons who would rely
on the secrecy of the President, but who would not confide
in that of the Senate," therefore, "the convention has done
well " in so arranging that although the President must act
by the advice and consent of the Senate, " yet he will be
able to manage the business of intelligence in such a manner
as prudence may suggest."

This is an arrangement as nearly perfect as human intel
ligence can devise. It combines the prime requisites of
secrecy in negotiation, which is all essential; counsel after
the negotiations have been concluded, and publicity when
the Council of State, the Senate, has assented. The United
States is the one great nation that has written into its Con
stitution the equality of laws and treaties, but the example
set by the United States, its morality and advantages, is
beginning to make the peoples of other countries ask whether
it would not be wiser for them to have a share in the making
of treaties instead of surrendering their authority to a few
persons: the sovereign in an autocratic government; in a
democratic monarchy, as in England, where by a legal fiction
the treaty runs in the name of the king, actually it is the
Prime Minister and his Cabinet, the real Government of
England, that negotiates and concludes.

Recently Mr. Balfour, the Secretary of State for For
eign Affairs, found it necessary to attempt to stem the grow
ing demand for the democratization of European diplomacy.
" I think there is in the public mind a profound illusion as
to this so-called secret diplomacy," he told the House of
Commons. Governments, he said, could no more conduct
their affairs in the open than individuals reveal their do
mestic difficulties, so the business of diplomacy had to be
conducted in secret, and the less light that was let in on
" the mysterious intricacies of foreign diplomacy," the better
it was for the peace of mind of all concerned. A member
suggested that the creation of a Parliamentary Foreign
Relations Committee, to have practically the same functions
as those of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate,
would be an improvement. Mr. Balfour did not agree with
him. The present system worked well enough, and " to
reveal from day to day what is ultimately revealed with all
due precaution in the Blue Book would really be insanity."

No sane man proposes that the day to day conversa-

214 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tions between the Minister and an Ambassador shall be
revealed, but between that reticence and the unlimited power
to commit the nation to a policy that involves thousands
of lives and millions of treasure is quite another thing.
What was the arrangement existing between Germany and
Austria in the closing days of July, 1914? No one knew,
for that was a secret between the two Emperors. How
far was Germany prepared to go in the support of Austria
in reducing Serbia to terms? Again that question remained
unanswered, because while the two Emperors knew their
subjects did not. What understanding existed between
England and France? The British people did not know,
the British Parliament did not know, neither the German
Emperor nor the Austrian Emperor knew. Sir Edward
Grey, the then Foreign Secretary, converted a somewhat
loose entente, the terms of which even to this day no one
knows, into a formal alliance, and then went down to the
House of Commons and told what he had done. Parliament
naturally had to stand behind the Government, what other
course was possible?, but it simply ratified an executive act,
after the act was committed, instead of delegating to the
Executive authority to act, as the American Congress does,
thanks to the foresight of the Fathers.

"Diplomacy with its shoes of felt" clings to secrecy
because even in an age of progress diplomacy remains
faithful to tradition. It resists innovation, and it stands
triumphant as the one perfect institution devised by the
perverted ingenuity of man. The professional diplomatic
service of Europe is a trade union, very jealous of its
membership, but, similar to other trade unions, while the
members quarrel and intrigue against each other, they are
always ready to forget their differences when in danger
from outside attack. A Foreign Minister may know of the
incompetence of his Ambassador, but the code of profes
sional ethics and loyalty to the trade union stay his dis
missal, because that would be a reflection upon the service.
The interests of a nation may be put in jeopardy, but the
feelings of a diplomat must never be hurt.

In the speech I have quoted Mr. Balfour said the busi
ness of a diplomat " is entirely directed not to making
quarrels, but to healing quarrels; not to creating difficulty
but to preventing difficulty; not to provoking war but to
stopping war " ; but when a member of the House of Com-

THE VICE OF SECRET DIPLOMACY 215

mons suggested that if the House had been taken into the
confidence of the Government, the war would not have burst
upon the country as an unexpected thunderbolt, Mr. Balfour
said, " I do not believe that the Government, in June, 1914,
had the slightest notion that there was any danger ahead."
It was a cynic who described a doctor as saying to a patient,
" I haven't as yet made the diagnosis, but do riot alarm
yourself needlessly, for we will be able to discover every
thing at the autopsy " ; and Mr. Balfour's admission that
sixty days before the greatest war the world has known the
British Government had no suspicion of what was coming,
suggests the happy indifference of the physician, who atones
for his lack of diagnostic skill by his ability in making the
post mortem, which satisfies the laudable curiosity of the
practitioner but does not exactly compensate the patient.
If it were not for the coroner fewer medical mistakes would
go unrecognized, and the diplomat, shrouded from public
gaze, can blunder until war or history, usually written long
after the event, reveals his ineptitude, and then it is too
late for the damage to be repaired. Lord Salisbury traded
Heligoland for a shadowy German claim in Africa. Im
agine the amiable Mr. Bryan, with his deep love of humanity
and his horror of war, by virtue of his office as Secretary
of State, offering to Germany Key West in consideration
of Germany signing an arbitration treaty, convinced that
Key West was of little value to the United States but its
transfer to Germany would forever render impossible any
danger of war between Germany and the United States, and
then when the treaty was duly sealed, signed and delivered
calmly announcing to the country his latest diplomatic
triumph !

That brilliant Frenchman, Andre Cheradame, says:

The typical professional diplomat lives in a world of his own.
Either his information comes from the office or it is second-hand;
it rarely is reached by direct observation of people or facts. The
secretaries of the Embassies divide their time between office work,
copying documents in copper plate hand, or social functions, pleasant
enough but confined to a particular and narrow set. Few of the
secretaries know the language of the country in which they reside,
fewer still travel in the interior of the land in order to study it.

It is necessary, he adds, to dispel the false notion the
man in the street has of diplomacy. He fondly thinks that
diplomats, while preparing clever and mysterious combina-

216 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tions, fashion history, but experience shows that they merely
chronicle history and do not make it; " diplomats are his
tory's attorneys," is his epigrammatic description. " Unfor
tunately," he points out, " it does not seem that fortune has
endowed -any of our Allied countries, either before or since
the war, with a head capable of leading, on grand lines, the
diplomatic affairs of the Entente. The latter therefore has
been only served by those diplomats who are mere officials,
and who as such await instructions from higher quarters,
and these instructions are very often found wanting."

No one, I think, will question the fairness of these ob
servations. This war has torn away a lot of the tarnished
trappings of conventional civilization, but nothing stands so
thoroughly discredited as professional diplomacy, " folly in
a coat that looks like sagacity." Between the assassination
of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and the Austrian ulti
matum to Serbia twenty- five days elapsed. In those twenty-
five days the world's fate was being decided, yet not a single
Entente Ambassador nor a single Minister for Foreign
Affairs had the slightest knowledge of what was going on,
and so little was the gravity of the crisis appreciated that
at the time of the delivery of the ultimatum some of the
Ambassadors of the Great Powers were away from their
posts on holiday. In London, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere
Excellencies, with high sounding titles and numerous dec
orations, sat, in Crabbe's phrase, " dexterously writing
despatches, and having the honor to be," but knowing noth
ing; blind themselves blissfully leading the blind, and look
ing forward with certitude to their invaluable services being
rewarded with another Grand Cordon. The diplomacy
developed by the war, and the diplomats who have made
reputations, are those of the United States, which an
Englishman may say without being accused of undue par
tiality. Gerard, Herrick, Francis, Van Dyke, Brand Whit-
lock, Maurice Egan, Penfield, and the two Pages, with no
professional training and only the most perfunctory instruc
tion, lawyers, bankers, men of letters, passing from their
customary vocations to their new posts, have done extraor
dinarily well; in trying situations they have kept their heads
and shown the same shrewdness, grasp of affairs and quick
comprehension that won them their place in law, commerce
and literature.

" The American Ambassador," a London newspaper

THE VICE OF SECRET DIPLOMACY 217

recently remarked, " owns none of that rather absurd diplo
matic sentiment which sets the Diplomatic Service in a class
apart; he has no superstitious awe of Chancelleries; and the
portentous words Ballplatz and Wilhelmstrasse, Quai
d'Orsay and Downing Street, which were used as a kind
of incantation by the older school of professors of interna
tional politics, simply bore him. He wears neither star nor
any other decoration. When he has something to say, he
says it in plain United States." The newspaper quoted is
the London Morning Post, the leading conservative journal
of England, and a supporter and defender of the established
order rather than an admirer of experiment. When it rec
ognizes the absurdity of the frippery of modern diplomacy,
or the sorry figure cut by Excellencies " who have the honor
to be," and is impressed by the straightforwardness and
directness of the American Ambassador speaking "in plain
United States," there is hope that Europe will sweep out
a ridiculous institution and the world will be freed from the
" seething diplomacies and monstrous mendacities, horribly
wicked and despicably unwise," in the language of Carlyle,
who never minced his words.

European diplomacy is a survival for which there is little
justification at the present time. It is an attempt to link
the stage coach with the telephone, an unworkable combina
tion; and it is about as sensible as it would be were our
khaki clad girls to drive an ambulance in the crinolines of
their Victorian grandmothers. Three or four hundred years
ago the Ambassador really was the personal representative
of his sovereign, in Sir Henry Wotton's classical phrase
he was " an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of
his country " ; and it was a seventeenth century commentator
who advised that no matter what his religion, it was an
Ambassador's duty to invent falsehoods and to go about
making society believe them. In short, as Paschalius sug
gested, while an Ambassador should study to speak the
truth, he was not debarred from the " official lie," and, on
occasion, he should be splendide mendax. He was naturally
deep in the confidence of his king, he was compelled to act
almost entirely on his own judgment and initiative, because
communication was slow and uncertain, and the great game
in which sovereigns were engaged could be so easily upset
by an Ambassador more adroit, whose wits were more nimble
or who was more unscrupulous, who knew the right minister

218 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to bribe or the woman to make love to; and it was an
Empress of Russia who advised Frederick of Prussia to
replace his elderly Ambassador with a young and handsome
man having a good complexion. In those days youth, looks
and a good complexion counted for much, and if in addition
the royal representative was rich, a grand seigneur, able
to turn a neat phrase, well versed in the classics, careful
in his religious observances and yet sufficiently immoral to
excite a flutter in the breasts of dowagers and anticipation
in the hearts of the reigning beauties, then this Admirable
Crichton would be a success as an Ambassador and either
win for his master an empire or lose him his crown.

But we have changed all that, and the pulchritude of
an Ambassador is no longer considered when he is about
to be appointed, nor is it necessary that his complexion shall
be the envy of a boarding school miss. He need not neces
sarily be old, but he will certainly not be young, for wisdom
and not fascination is his recommendation, and yet how
terribly unwise so many Ambassadors have proved them
selves to be. He still remains that fictional character the
personal representative of royalty, actually he is the agent
of the Foreign Office, which keeps a very tight rein on him.
In modern times, no Ambassador has latitude of action or
is given a free hand, and every move he makes must be
immediately reported to the Foreign Office.

In a period of profound peace, when the most cordial
relations exist between two countries, it becomes necessary
to adjust a minor shipping or trade matter, which has to
be done by treaty. The Minister for Foreign Affairs makes
the suggestion to the Ambassador, who undertakes to com
municate with his Government, because that is the extent
of his authority. He has no power to agree to anything,
not even by inference. If the Minister for Foreign Affairs
consents, he gives the Ambassador authority to enter into
negotiations, and indicates the line to be followed. The
negotiations proceed smoothly and a draft is prepared, which
is submitted to the Foreign Office, where it is subjected
to rigid scrutiny, passed upon by legal and other experts,
perhaps a few changes made in form or phraseology. If
the other side is willing to accept the changes the Ambas
sador must notify the Foreign Office; if counter proposals
are made, even although they are trivial and do not affect
the substance, the Ambassador must ask instructions. An

THE VICE OF SECRET DIPLOMACY 219

agreement having been reached the treaty is written on
parchment in both languages in parallel columns, and even
in an Anglo-American treaty the same form is observed, be
cause of the difference in spelling certain words in England
and America. Still the Ambassador can not sign until he
has received specific authority and has exhibited to the
Minister for Foreign Affairs what is technically known as
" full powers," but really is the national power of attorney.

This is the routine followed in the most trivial nego
tiation. This close supervision, a supervision that would
suggest the Foreign Minister has no confidence in his
Ambassador, and dare not accord him the discretion the
ordinary man gives his agent, is met by the paradox of the
almost unlimited importance attached to the opinions, im
pressions and deductions of the Ambassador. Few Foreign
Ministers have more than a superficial acquaintance of for
eign countries, most of them know absolutely nothing of
their people, their institutions or their politics. The For
eign Minister therefore is compelled to rely on the Ambas
sador, who, often ignorant of the language of the country,
unable to read the vernacular press, because of his exalted
position debarred from mixing freely with the people, and
living in a narrow circle whose members are only too fre
quently misrepresentative of public opinion, is supposed to
be able to keep his Foreign Minister correctly informed of
the state of affairs, the currents of politics and the national
sentiment. Is it any wonder that diplomats, now that we
are getting some insight into their confidential correspond
ence, should have so woefully misled their Governments or
proved how little they really understood the people to whom
they were accredited? Yet so implacable is the diplomatic
tradition, so firmly convinced is every Foreign Office in its
own inerrancy, that the same Foreign Minister who will not
trust his Ambassador to sign a petty treaty without the
closest scrutiny, simply because custom does not ordain it,
will unhesitatingly accept the information conveyed to him
by the same Ambassador which may influence a policy lead
ing to war.

Some time, one hopes that time may be near but dreads to
think it may yet be far, but some time the greatest war man
kind has known must be brought to a close by the signatures
of the plenipotentiaries to the most momentous treaty of
peace in the world's history. That treaty will, it can be

220 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

safely assumed, contain many radical and startling articles
as befitting the climax to the titanic struggle, and may not
America again serve the world by ridding it of secret diplo
macy? By insisting that there shall be written in the treaty
an article that in every country treaties shall like laws con
stitute the supreme law of the land, and must be ratified
by Parliaments, the immorality of the secret agreement
would no longer be possible. It would appeal to the democ
racies of England, France, Italy and Russia, and it would
be championed by the enlightened republics of South Amer
ica, whose constitutions have been so closely modelled on
that of the United States. It would do more to keep the
world safe for democracy than any one other thing. It
would be a greater protection against a repetition of the
horrors of the last three years than paper disarmaments,
theoretical freedom of the seas, leagues of peace, or economic
alliances. It would not bring Utopia, but it would make
diplomacy honest, straightforward, clean; it would make
almost impossible the chicanery, fraud, intrigue that for cen
turies have deluged Europe in blood and brought misery
to its people, and there would be little further opportunity
for a Hohenzollern or a Hapsburg, a Ferdinand or a Coii-
stantine, to make alliances for war unless with the authority
and consent of their subjects.

A. MAURICE Low.

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE

BY ARTHUR HUNT CHUTE

TOWARD the close of a sombre afternoon, in rain and
mist, I stood before the Estaminet de Commerce in the city
of Lillers. The melancholy autumn season had come, and
the spectre of approaching winter in the trenches loomed
before us.

It was a mournful throng of soldiers and civilians that
stood there waiting and silently shivering, or stamping wet
feet on the pave of the Grand Place. The spirit of the
throng, and the funereal aspect of the day itself, were sadly
in keeping with the occasion which had brought us together.

Through the Grand Place with arms reversed, to the
wailing music of the Dead March from Saul, came a col
umn of marching troops. Over the pave rattled a gun-
carriage, bearing a box entwined with the Union Jack.
Lieutenant- General Sir Thomson Capper was being borne
to his grave. The far-famed and gallant General of the
Iron Division had fallen two days before in the awful fight
ing at Loos, and now his comrades were giving him the
soldier's last farewell.

Many times I had encountered the Seventh or Iron
Division. Sir Thomson Capper was a name to conjure with
along the western front. Only a short time before one
of his own Northumberland Hussars had held forth to me
on the deeds of the Iron Division, from their belated arrival
at Antwerp, to their historic stand at Ypres. " And it's
all because of our General, it is," declared the trooper.
" He's the fightin'est General on the line."

On Sunday afternoon Sir Thomson Capper stood direct
ing his men in a frightful and bloody encounter. This was
nothing new to him, or to his Iron Division. Ever since
the autumn of 1914, they had been winning their name by
ceaseless fightings in such battles. On that fateful Sunday

222 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

afternoon General Capper was shot through the lungs. He
was carried to the rear, and died in hospital next day.
" We are here to do the impossible," was the fiery watch
word which he left with his troops.

And now on that Tuesday evening in September, all
that was mortal of our " fightin'est General " went by on
a gun-carriage. His career of lustre and renown was ended.
The keeping up of the resplendent glories of the Iron Divi
sion had fallen into other hands. As the cortege passed the
place where we were standing, our irregular shifting mass
suddenly became rigid as every soldier came to the salute,
a salute that bespoke the soldier's deepest feeling.

Half an hour after the General's funeral, I saw many
of the faces lately darkened by sorrow again radiant and
fair. Whatever clouds might be without, true soldiers never
suffer them long within.

Last night was a restless and tumultuous one. This
evening there is a momentary lull. It is the lull in the
storm. The nerves are tensely waiting for the thunders that
shall break again, and meanwhile in that gay foregathering
of the Estaminet de Commerce there is no place for sad
repining.

At home in the good old world of peace, we speak of
the Angel of Death. His rare but tragic visitations are
cataclysms in our home. " Over There " it is no longer the
Angel of Death. We must say Angels of Death, " Over
There," for they fly in legions. ,One is ever dwelling be
neath the shadow of their withering wings. On the right
and left comrades are always falling, until what was cata
clysmic in our homes becomes incidental in our trenches.

A loud rapping is heard from without, and in explo
sive notes of alarm a voice cries forth, "SOS! Battery
action!" Up under the scintillant flare of the star-shells
there is a sudden burst of hectic light and a muffled roar.
Up there beneath that flare some of our boys are dying,
and others in frantic tones cry forth for us to save them.
We read their cries in trailing rockets through the night.
" Forgetting the things which are behind," we, the servants-
of-the-guns, must leap to action and give back our thunders
in answer to that cry.

Now and again, as I have moved up and down behind
the various portions of our line, in France or Flanders, I

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE 223

have paused for contemplation in one of our great and ever
growing cemeteries. Everywhere behind the lines one en
counters these tragic yet soul-enkindling plots of ground,
that have been forever hallowed by the bones of our brave.

Who can regard the grave of a man who died for his
country without experiencing emotions that lie too deep for
words? On such spots one enters into the inner meaning
of the sacrifice of Calvary. " For what greater thing can
a man do than to lay down his life for a friend? "

In front of Westminster Abbey there is a column
erected to the dead heroes of Westminster School. Many
a time as a lad I have stood in front of that column, and
read in solemn silence its inscription:

To those Boys educated at Westminster School, who died in the
Russian and Indian Wars, Anno Domini 1854 to 1857, some in early
youth, some full of years and honor, some on the field of battle, some
from wounds and sickness, but who all alike gave their lives for their
country.

This column is erected by their old school fellows, at Westminstei
School, with the hope that it may inspire in their successors the same
courage and self-devotion.

On the reverse side of the column I read the long list
of names, from Field Marshal Lord Raglan, the Com-
mander-in- Chief, to the youngest cornet and middy who
had died. From the school Quadrangle came the merry
laughter of Westminster boys at play, and standing there,
there came upon my soul the first dawning of that sacrifice
which soldiers make when they lay down their lives for their
country.

During the armistice between the first and second
Balkan War I was in Egypt. Traveling one day across
the desert, I alighted at a station called Tel-el-Kebir. Here
Wolseley won his victory over Arabi in 1882. On the
January day of 1913 I found a single building, serving as
a railroad station, and beside it a cemetery, with its rows
of crosses drawn up in as orderly a fashion as a company
on parade.

I entered the cemetery, and the first name I read was
that of Lachlan MacTavish of a certain Scottish regiment.
The burr of his Highland name sounded like the rush of a
mountain tairn in his far-off Highland home. For the
moment I seemed to feel the freshness from the moorlands

224 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and the heather, then my eye caught the pathetic little cross
that stood amidst the shifting of the desert sands. There
as never before I realized the sacrifice of those who laid
'down their lives on a foreign soil in the service of their flag.

A yet profounder realization of this sacrifice was borne
upon me one evening in June, 1915. That night I entered
the trenches beyond Givenchy town for the first time.

At twilight I turned in from the La Basse Canal,
crossed a field to the main street of Givenchy, and pro
ceeded down into the town. The place was completely
abandoned, and had been badly ruined by shell-fire. In
that twilight hour the streets were full of haunted houses,
instinct with ghosts and memories. A solitary dog leaping
across a wrecked bridge, that hung by a single trestle,
appeared like a ghoulish creature. I was oppressed by these
haunting shadows in what had once been Givenchy homes,
far more than I was by the frequent note of shells passing
over the town. In one quaint house, whose wall had been
crashed in, I saw a little cradle ; what eloquence of tragedy
was there!

In a saddened mood I approached the distillery. In
one of the houses opposite, a grand piano still remained
intact. The Fifth Royal Highlanders of Canada were com
ing out of the trenches that night. The first company was
already out, and one of their musicians was playing To You,
Beautiful Lady in Pink, upon the inharmonious and strident
instrument. Up and down in the rooms of the adjacent
houses the Highlanders were cake-walking, some with their
packs still on their backs. The bursting of several shells in
a side street only served to accentuate the comedy of the
scene. Whatever else happened, this battalion was going
out, so the musician pounded the keys in ecstasy and the
boys cake-walked with equal glee.

Through the shadowy distillery I wended my way with
a higher spirit from the contagious merriment of the High
landers. Beyond the distillery was another open field, and
a farm-yard with the buildings long since razed to the
ground. Hardly a stone was left standing in this spot.
The enemy's shells had surely reaped good harvest here.
Beside the ruined farm was the witness of a still sadder
harvest. A cemetery with its row on row of little wooden
crosses stretched out toward the communicating trenches.
The night was falling fast, and there in the gathering

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE 225

gloom I waited for over an hour for the last company com
ing in. In the darkness I was especially touched by the
meaning of those little crosses. In fitful light beneath the
star-shells, these crosses loomed before me in momentary
flashes, then faded in the night.

How profound was the peace that lingered round that
spot! In front of me I could see the white glare that
marked the firing line, from whence came now and then
the rattle of musketry, the popping of machine-guns, or
the krump of bursting shells. Behind me in Givenchy town
the artist was still performing on the grand piano. The
Pink Lady was the limit of his repertoire, but the Irrepres
sibles still danced on. Between the grim firing line on the
one hand and the revelry of the Highlanders on the other,
stretched those little wooden crosses. In their quiet plot
the Brave slept well that night, for they had done their duty.

Their work was finished, and well might they sleep on,
knowing that those comrades whom they left behind would
carry on in their stead, and that even as they, their com
rades behind would be faithful unto death.

From our line the rattle of rifles told me that England
was busy, and that our troops up there were keeping their
faith with their pals who had died.

"I've copped it, mate, swat ' em one for me," were the
dying words of a game little Cockney.

"Go about your duty," was the last speech of the
stricken Colonel MacLean of the Sixth Gordons, to those
who paused in the fighting to attend to him.

What all these dead required was that the living should
fight on, and thus keep faith with them. Up and down
that bivouac of the dead I seemed to feel their unseen Sen
try walking. Where they had pitched their silent tents,
they too had set their silent picket. That night, above those
shadowy graves, the Sentry of the Dead paused and listened.
From the line came the sound of fighting. From behind
came the voice of revelry and song. And this was as it should
be. Not in repining, but in gladness, must the soldier spend
his resting hours. Soon perchance that Highlander who
was pounding out The Pink Lady, and all his jolly dancers,
would join these dead in their narrow beds. But there they
were playing their part as true soldiers.

I seemed to hear the Sentry of the Dead cry out that
night, " All's Well!— All's Well! " The Brave might sleep

VOL. ccvn.— NO. 747 15

226 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

their sleep in peace, because their comrades behind were
doing their duty.

In France one encounters soldiers' graves in all kinds
of unlikely places. Right in the Front Line trenches, be
fore Hill 60, there was a little wooden cross with the name
of a French soldier painted on it. The soldier fell away
back in the first months of the war, when everything was
fluid and the tide of war was shifting back and forth. Soon
after that our lines locked and froze, and ever since he has
been sleeping in that frightful place known as Our Front.

For months that little cross had stood there, while land
marks all about had been wiped out, while the tower of
the Cloth Hall had been pulverized, and the Verbranden
Windmill splintered to kindling-wood. I have often paused
up there on the Front Line, after a nasty strafe from Fritz,
and regarded with awe that immortal wooden cross. With
parapets crumped in in many places, and the ground about
pocked with shell-holes, amid all this wild havoc, the simple
memorial to the dead French soldier seemed to bear a charm.

At home we have a cemetery in a place of rustic peace,
on a secluded hillside, looking down upon the harbor where
the ships go out to sea. There in their snug haven the dead
forget their storms. But under the wooden cross, up there
in the Front Line trench, the fallen French soldier slept
just as soundly as they. Mines might be sprung around his
grave, and months of storms and thunders roll across his
resting-place, but the inviolate cross remained, an emblem
of his peace unbroken.

One day on the Somme, while moving over a fresh battle
field, looking for a new position for our guns, I chanced
upon the grave of a Corporal of the East Surrey Regiment.
He had been hastily buried, just where he fell upon the
field of battle. There had been no time for ceremony or
for the planting of a cross. His rifle had been thrust into
the ground to mark the grave, and his soldier's cap was
placed upon the mound of turf to serve as a memorial.
That little weatherbeaten khaki cap was unobserved by
many, but to those who saw, it was a memorial as eloquent
as costly marble. As I bent over to examine the grave, I
saw a shingle, on which some rough hand had scribbled a
short text with an indelible pencil. The rains had washed
blue streaks across the writing. One could just decipher
the text. It was : " Thou art forever with the Lord."

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE 227

The rough soldier's epitaph brought to mind a visit
which I had made to the Catacomb of St. Calixtus. There
on the tomb of a baby girl, I read in Greek, " Dearest Cleo,
sweetest child, thou art forever with the Lord."

To encounter such evidences of faith on the battlefield
of the Somme, or in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, was to
feel instinctively that there at last was the real thing. Mat
ters of faith were dark enough on the Somme, but to read
the hope of that Tommy was like the bursting forth from
darkness of some serene and shining star.

I was in the Ypres salient in April, 1915, and back
there again in the spring of 1916. That bloody and awful
salient is a vast graveyard of Canada's fairest and best.

A young Canadian officer, who was a comrade of mine,
told me how that in the summer of 1913 he left the City of
Ypres, a cameo of priceless beauty, with the splendor of
its Cloth Hall and its Cathedral and its guilds, and took
the tram-line out to Kruystraesthenk Corner. Alighting
there, he and his sister crossed the fields where the daisies
and anemones were growing, and regaled themselves in the
wondrous charm of that Flemish landscape. Now on those
same fields that officer is sleeping, and in summers to come
the flowers that spring up there shall wave about his grave.

On fine mornings in June, as I have been coming in or
going out from our battery position, I have passed through
the grounds of Bedford House, a Belgian chateau, and I
have marveled at what must have been the exceeding beauty
of that place in times of peace. A wistful loveliness still
lingers round the ruins. If in the past light hearts have
journeyed there for scenes of beauty, in years to come a
host of deeper hearts will journey there as to a shrine.

If where an Englishman is buried on a foreign soil is
called " a little bit of England," then we may call the Ypres
salient a mighty bit of Canada. If anyone were to inquire
what is the most important city of Canada, we might answer
unhesitatingly, " The City of Ypres." The hosts of our
young men who have fallen in battles round that city have
hallowed the name for all Canadian hearts, and rendered
the place ours in the deepest sense.

Montreal, and Halifax, and Vancouver are among our
lesser cities, but Ypres, where so many of our Brave are
buried, shall remain for us the city of our everlasting pos
sessions. In years to come, the touchstone for the Maple

228 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Leaf will not be " Queenstown's Heights and Lundy's
Lane," but " Ypres and Lagemark."

I stood one night on a certain hill that commands the
firing-line in an almost boundless panorama. Beside me
was an officer of the Second Canadian Division, who had
just come out. There that night, by its white trail of
iridescent light, we could trace the course of the firing-line
for many miles through France and Flanders.

Just to our left the line of light jutted far out, like a
lone cape into the sea. * What is that jutting-out place? "
my friend inquired.

" That," I answered, " is the Ypres salient, the bloody
angle of the British line."

To mention the name of Ypres is to have one's memory
awakened with a veritable kaleidoscope of pictures. That
trail of light that jutted out into the night looked like a
cape, and an iron cape it has been through months and years
of war. But the holding of that cape has been at an awful
cost, and there was not an inch along that trailing line of
light that had not cost its trailing line of blood.

Just after the first gas attack in April, 1915, the whole
countryside was in a panic. The roads were filled with
civilians in alarm, fleeing down country, and with limbers
and marching troops hastening up. I was passing through
the town of Vlamerthigne, which is situated two miles
beyond Ypres. In a field at the side of the road I saw a
funeral party. It consisted of several pioneers, serving as
grave-diggers, a gray-headed Scottish Major, and a Cor
poral's Guard to act as firing-party.

I learned that this inconspicuous group were burying
the last original officer of a battalion of the Cameron High
landers. The dead officer was a young subaltern, and the
gray-haired old Major was his father, who had come from
another regiment to attend the funeral of his son.

As they were lowering the body, wrapped in a gray
blanket, into a grave, the old Major remonstrated: " No,
not there, not there! He fought with his men in life, and
he shall be buried with them in death."

So, over in a great deep trench, where a number of the
rank and file of the fallen Camerons were already laid, the
body of their dead subaltern was placed. As I saw the
officer and his men of the bonnie Highland regiment thus
laid to rest together, I thought of the requiem of Saul and

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE 229

David: "They were beautiful in their lives, and in their
deaths they were not divided."

As the rifles rang out in a volley for the last farewell,
a passing squadron of the Bengal Lancers, crack cavalry
from the Khyber Pass, halted suddenly and came to the
salute. Thus troopers from the Highlands of India paid
their last respects to a fallen comrade from the Highlands
of Scotland.

I was out of the trenches in hospital at the time that
my dearest friend in France was killed. On first returning
to the Front, I did not have the courage to visit his grave.
I sent some of my men to plant flowers there, and after a
time I went myself. That was my most poignant moment
in France.

The flowers had sprung up and were blooming on his
grave, and a little white cross stood there with the name
of my beloved pal upon it. Near by stood another cross,
bearing the name of his brother. I thought of what they
two had done for their country, and of what their widowed
mother had given, and beside those two white crosses, all
that we living ones call sacrifice seemed to grow pale and
fade into insignificance.

Verbranden Moulin, Hill 60, and Mount Sorrel are
three hills to the left of Ypres. For Flanders in the sum
mer of 1914 they were points in a landscape of beauty.
For Canada today they are triple landmarks of glory and
sorrow.

One morning in August, 1916, our Brigade of Artil
lery said " goodbye " to " Wipers." With mingled feelings
I turned back in my saddle, and gazed long and intently
at the tragic place that had cost us so much of our precious
blood. The towers of the Cloth Hall and the Cathedral
were in ruins. The high steeple of the Poperinghe church
still stood. I was glad to bid these landmarks all goodbye,
but in those fields and hills beyond I left my heart with
many a fallen comrade. Often since my heart has jour
neyed back there to those same tragic fields in which they
sleep. But I know that they are sleeping well, in the repose
of those whose work is nobly done.

I think that some of our American allies, who are new
to the sacrifice of this war, have not yet entered into its
deeper and hidden meaning. As the long lists of inevitable
American casualties appear in the newspapers, we must not

230 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

get into a panic of the soul, we must not pity the men who
have fallen. They need no pity, and could they speak they
would repudiate such maudlin sentiment. If the fallen
Brave could talk to us, we know that it would be to tell us
to envy them, and not to pity them, because their lives have
found so glorious an ending.

Idealism wanes in prosperity and waxes in adversity.
England has become a new England out of the adversities
of this war, and in the same struggle a new America will
be born.

I met a certain woman at dinner not long ago, a repre
sentative of that prosperous type of female referred to by
the prophet Amos as the " Kine of Bashan." She waved
her hands and deplored the fact that " poor dear General
Pershing had to go to France! "

I said to her, " Madam, what are soldiers for? "

She replied, " Oh yes, but we may lose him."

I answered, " Did your country lose Stonewall Jackson
when he died gloriously fighting at Chancellorsville? Did
you lose any of your brave who have died for their country? "

Corporal Fisher was a college boy in Canada in the
spring of 1914. In the spring of 1915 he was the bastion
of the British line at Ypres. Only a schoolboy yesterday,
but today, with the gray waves of Germans rolling towards
him, he and his machine-gun were the rock on which the
whole line held or broke.

Corporal Fisher was young in years, but he stuck to his
post of duty, and died in the fullness of honor. In time
to come schoolboys of our great Dominion will hear how
Corporal Fisher won the Victoria Cross in his passing. His
career so short, and yet so bright, will remain one of Can
ada's shining and everlasting possessions.

America is tiptoeing along the threshold of such new
possessions. A galaxy of new names are about to burst
forth in the pages of American history. We must not then
forget the glory which is woven with our sorrow. Our dead
who have fallen in battle shall sleep well in an alien land,
and we who still remain must not withhold from them the
pride which is their due.

ARTHUR HUNT CHUTE.

PROHIBITION AND THE STATES

BY FABIAN FRANKLIN

IT is now for the State Legislatures to decide whether
the amendment proposed by Congress, which decrees bone-
dry prohibition throughout the Union, shall become an
integral part of the Constitution of the United States.
Whether the proposal will receive the kind of consideration
and discussion which its importance calls for, remains to be
seen. If there is to be any chance of such consideration
and discussion, one condition, above all others, must be ful
filled — there must be a clear realization of what it is that is
being done. In the brief debate that preceded the taking
of the vote in the House of Representatives, such realization
was conspicuously absent; a natural result, perhaps, of the
short time-limit. And there is one point, in particular,
which, so far as I have been able to find, was passed over
altogether in the debate, and which it is of the first impor
tance that the State Legislatures, and the constituencies
which elect them, should have placed clearly before their eyes.

If this amendment shall be adopted, it will bring about
a state of things which is in several respects absolutely un
precedented. It will be the first instance of a deliberate
imposing upon the people of one State of the will of other
States, in a matter affecting the ordinary daily life of the
people of the State; it will be the first instance of prohibi
tion decreed for the population of any great city in the
world; but what I here wish particularly to direct attention
to is that it will decree prohibition in a manner essentially
different from that which has obtained even in the States
and parts of States in which prohibition has existed. I do
not refer to any circumstances concerning the effectiveness
of its enforcement; what I have in mind is the character of
the decree itself — the way in which it is riveted down. There
is no substantial analogy between an enactment put into a

232 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

State Constitution and one that is made part of the Consti
tution of the United States. In nearly all of our States the
Constitution can be changed by a process that is not much
more formidable than the passing of an ordinary law; in
none is the process comparable in difficulty to that of amend
ing the Constitution of the United States. If the people
of any State desire to repeal or modify the act by which
they inserted prohibition into their State Constitution, that
desire has only to be made clearly manifest in order to be
accomplished. But once imbed such a provision in the Con
stitution of the United States, and it will not only be impos
sible for the people of a single State to repeal or in any
way modify it, but it will be next to impossible for the
people of the United States to do so.

The question has widely different aspects for various
sections of the country, and its character in States that have
no large cities is utterly dissimilar from what it is in States
with large urban and metropolitan populations. It will
accordingly be almost hopeless to bring home to the people
of the former class of States the objections found against
it in the latter class. And yet so long as thirteen States,
however small, however remote from the great centers of
population, hold out against repeal, the bone-dry prohibi
tion of the Federal Constitution will stand, and everyone
of the forty-eight States must live under it. It will be pos
sible, in this state of things, for thirteen States whose aggre
gate population in the census of 1910 was less than five
million to keep prohibition riveted upon all the rest of the
hundred million people of the United States. In other
words, we are asked not only to decree prohibition, but to
decree it in such a manner as virtually to take away our
power ever to annul the decree.

If the nature of the proposed act, as thus indicated,
should be brought clearly home to the minds of the people
and the legislators of the various States, it ought to be
within the bounds of practical possibility that even some of
the States which have enacted prohibition for themselves
will decline to impose it upon other States. Millions of
Americans have favored local prohibition within the State
— under " local option " laws — but have been opposed to
State-wide prohibition. They have recognized that what
was desirable for certain parts of the State, and especially
for certain fairly homogeneous communities, was not desir-

PROHIBITION AND THE STATES 233

able for the entire population of the State. But the
argument against nation-wide prohibition and in favor of
State control is infinitely stronger than the argument
against State-wide prohibition and in favor of local option.
It would be so even were there not in the case that
element of hopeless rigidity which has just been dwelt
upon.

The man who votes for State prohibition in Georgia or
Vermont votes for it on the basis of the conditions he knows
to exist in his own State; and besides the circumstance of
those conditions being radically different in New York or
Pennsylvania, the Georgian or Vermonter may — and if he
is a good American should — feel that the question is one
which the people of New York or Pennsylvania are compe
tent to decide for themselves, and upon which it is not his
business to coerce them. There would therefore be no incon
sistency whatever in a State which would adopt prohibition
for itself refusing to take a hand in forcing it upon others.
Moreover, it should not be forgotten that when a State has
adopted prohibition for itself, it has not deprived itself of
the right to change its decision whenever it may change its
mind on the subject. When Vermont or Georgia votes for
prohibition within its own borders, it leaves future genera
tions of Vermonters or Georgians free to deal with the ques
tion as they may see fit; when it votes for a prohibition
amendment to the United States Constitution it votes not
only to coerce other States, but to abdicate for all time its
own control of the subject within its own borders. In view
of all this, the rejection of national prohibition by a State
that had adopted prohibition for itself ought to be regarded
not as a freak, but as an evidence of political sense and
moral courage.

Especially is this true of the Southern States, and for
more reasons than one. Not only are the States of the South
peculiarly interested in the preservation of the principle of
control of State concerns by State authorities, but in this
particular matter of prohibition they were moved to take the
action they did by considerations inseparably connected with
their own special conditions. Had it not been for the ques
tion of the effect of liquor on the negroes, it is inconceivable
that State after State of the South should have been swept
into the prohibition camp in such rapid succession; but even
apart from the negro element, the evil of drink has been

234 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

far more pervasive in the South than in New York or Mas
sachusetts or Ohio, while the better side of drinking — its
contribution to rational enjoyment, relaxation and refresh
ment — has been far less of a factor. If the Southern States,
simply because they desire prohibition for themselves, are
going to cast their weight upon the scales to fasten prohibi
tion upon those States — be they few or many — that do not
wish to live under that regime, they will remove the last
vestige of support for any protest that they may hereafter
wish to set up against Federal encroachment upon their
control of their own affairs.

And such encroachment, it must be remembered, need
not by any means take the shape of an amendment to the
Constitution. The crucial instance in the past was the
famous "Force Bill," which was designed to place elections
under the control of the Federal Government. The bill had
behind it an abundant majority in both houses of Congress,
and was undoubtedly regarded as just in its aims by an
overwhelming majority of the people outside the South. Its
defeat was accomplished by resolute obstruction; but there
can be no doubt that this obstruction would have broken
down had it not had behind it the moral force of the prin
ciple of local self-government. Rightful as the people of
the North regarded the intent of the measure to be — :the
safeguarding of the suffrage conferred on the negroes by
the Fifteenth Amendment — they were not indignant at the
determination of the South to prevent its enactment. They
approved the end, but they realized the force of the objec
tion to the means. Not even to secure the carrying out of
what had already been ordained by a war-bought amendment
to the Constitution, were they disposed to insist on the adop
tion of this measure of centralization in the face of the
determined opposition of the Southern States. And once
defeated, the project has never been revived; the forlorn-
hope fight of the anti-force bill obstructionists resulted not
only in victory but in the permanent settlement of the ques
tion at issue.

Who knows when an issue of the same moment may
arise in the future, or what shape it may take? Who
knows what dissension, what bitterness or discontent, may
be produced by the decision of such an issue in the opposite
sense — a decision in favor of central domination and against
self-government in the States? And if this prohibition prece-

PROHIBITION AND THE STATES 235

dent is now set, what bulwark will remain to hinder such a
decision?

The issue thus involved is not that of any abstract or
legalistic doctrine of State rights. It concerns not a juristic
or technical interpretation of the Constitution. The prin
ciple at stake is, indeed, inseparably associated with the letter
and spirit of that instrument, and with its historic origin;
but it is more than that. It has formed an essential part of
the American tradition, it has been a life-giving element in
our whole political history. Take away the sense that each
State has a right to order its purely internal affairs according
to its own desires, and you condemn to inevitable decay, slow
perhaps but sure, the public life of every one of them. One
encroachment will succeed another; and it will not take many
to reduce the boundary lines of the States to little more
political significance than attaches to parallels of latitude
or meridians of longitude.

This language would be too strong if the prohibition
question were not one that belongs so emphatically to
the class of questions of purely internal concern. Of course,
there is nothing in the world that is literally and abso
lutely of " purely internal concern " ; the interests of
Alabama or Kansas cannot fail to be affected in some
degree by anything that affects conditions in New York
or Illinois. But except in this unreasonable sense, it is
no concern of the people of Alabama what action the peo
ple of New York may take in regard to the drink ques
tion; and except in an extremely minor and feeble way,
no pretense has been made that the prohibition amend
ment is to be passed because it is a matter of inter- State
concern. The ground upon which it has been urged is that,
in the opinion of those who back it, it is intrinsically right,
beneficial, desirable; and some States are to be compelled
to live under it simply because other States think they
ought to.

Obviously, there is no assignable limit to the range
which coercion of this kind may take; and if the prohibi
tion amendment is adopted, no excuse or apology will here
after have to be made for the exercise of such coercion. If
the regulation of drinking is not a question over which
the separate States can assert their separate jurisdiction,
nothing is.

I trust that enough has been said to show that the ques-

236 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tion of national prohibition by Constitutional amendment
demands the gravest possible consideration even by the peo
ple of those States which have adopted prohibition for them
selves. But in the drive that is about to be made by the
Anti- Saloon League to bring about the adoption of the pro
hibition amendment, we may be sure that it will not only
be assumed that the twenty-seven " dry " States will vote
for ratification as a matter of course, but every one of the
other States will be urged to get on the prohibition " band
wagon " with a rush — to accept the inevitable rather than
attempt any resistance. But if resistance is a duty in the
case of legislators who, while favoring prohibition at home,
realize the grave objections to forcing it upon communities
of a totally different character, and the deep injury to the
whole character of American life which is to be apprehended
from the establishment of such a precedent, much more is
resistance a duty on the part of those who are opposed to
prohibition in their own States.

Every State that wants to preserve personal liberty
within its own borders upon the subject of drink should
feel doubly and trebly bound to fight with all its strength
a proposal which would not only impose prohibition upon
its own people, but impose it through Federal coercion,
impose it upon all other States regardless of their separate
will, and impose it in a form that, humanly speaking, makes
any reconsideration forever impossible.

During the agitation for national prohibition by Consti
tutional amendment carried on by the Anti- Saloon League,
William H. Anderson, one of the foremost, and probably
altogether the most energetic and effective of its directing
heads, thus stated the position of that powerful organization :

The Anti-Saloon League is not asking any member of Congress to
declare that he is in favor of national prohibition, but simply that he
shall not become an avowed exponent and protector of the liquor traffic
by refusing to vote to allow the people of the nation, by States, through
their representatives, to determine this question in the manner provided
therefor by the framers of the Constitution.

False as this view is, obviously as it is at variance with
the intent of the Constitution and with any sound under
standing of the responsibility resting upon Congress, there
can be no doubt that it exercised a great influence among
the members of that body. It chimed in only too well with

PROHIBITION AND THE STATES 237

the disposition so widely prevalent to vote on such an issue
not in the way dictated by one's own conviction, but in the
way that is supposed likely to incur the least odium in any
important quarter. At least one of the speakers in the final
debate avowed that he was simply passing the question on
to the States. How many of the votes were cast in this
spirit, it is impossible to say. But surely it is not extrava
gant to assume that more than nine of the 282 votes cast
for the proposal may be thus accounted for; and a change
of nine votes from yea to nay would have sufficed to defeat
the amendment.

Neither Congress nor any State should shirk its respon
sibility; the very essence of the process of adopting a
Constitutional amendment lies in its subjection to the
bona fide judgment both of Congress and of the States —
its ability to command the approval, first, of two-thirds
of each house of Congress, and secondly, of the Legis
latures of three-fourths of the States. The Anti-Saloon
League endeavored — with how much success no one can tell
— to take the life out of the first part of this requirement
on the plea that only the second part ought to be considered
as involving any real responsibility; let it not now be per
mitted, upon any plea whatsoever, to reduce the second
part — the question of ratification by the States — to a similar
condition of nervelessness. In every State in which there
is any considerable opposition to this revolutionary, and yet
irreversible, innovation, this unprecedented attempt to stand
ardize the habits of life of all the people of a great nation,
that opposition should be asserted with an energy and per
sistence commensurate with the importance of the issue.

It may perhaps be thought by some that the emphasis
placed in this article upon the character of the coercion
which this amendment proposes to put upon the States, the
contrast between its nature and that of other provisions of
the Constitution, is somewhat greater than the facts justify.
If so, a little reflection will, I believe, suffice to remove that
feeling.

The Fifteenth Amendment does forbid the denial by
any State of the right of suffrage on the ground of race,
color or previous condition of servitude; and the original
instrument provides that no State shall pass any law impair
ing the obligation of contracts. But whatever objection may,
from the standpoint of State autonomy, be made against

238 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

either of these provisions, it is at least clear that their object
is the preservation of rights regarded by its framers as fun
damental. Their intent is, broadly speaking, of the same
nature as that of the provision in the original instrument
by which the United States is required to " guarantee to
every State in this Union a republican form of govern
ment." Infinitely different from anything of this kind
would be the imbedding in the Constitution of an act of
legislative control over the mode of life which may be per
mitted to the inhabitants of the various States. Nothing
in the least degree resembling such restraint is contained
in any existing provision of the Constitution.

Finally, apart from all questions of self-government for
the States, and all questions of personal liberty for the indi
vidual, the insertion of the prohibition amendment into the
Constitution of the United States would constitute a deplor
able degradation of its character. The Constitution is not
perfect; it has been amended to its advantage, and will need
to be amended in the future. But there is a noble simplicity
about it, which is an incalculable factor in its strength. It
does not undertake to lay down prescriptions about the mul
tifarious matters which belong to the domain of ordinary
legislation. Its injunctions, whether positive or negative,
relate to fundamentals, and are the embodiment of broad
and deep political convictions. To introduce into it the
decision of a special question like that of the control of
drink, however strong the wave of public feeling that may
seem to be behind that decision, is to lower the level and
weaken the authority of the whole instrument. The Con
stitution has often been criticized as being too difficult of
amendment; the criticism will gain infinitely in force if
instead of being, as it now is, simply an instrument for safe
guarding the fundamentals of government in a Federal
Republic, the Constitution is to become a recourse for those
who, having at any given time gained the favor of the people
for some alluring propaganda, seek to amalgamate their
special project with the enduring structure of the great
instrument which embodies the organic law of the nation.

FABIAN FRANKLIN.

AN INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENT OF
"STUDENT ACTIVITIES "

BY CHAELES F. THWING

PRESIDENT OF WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

" STUDENT activities " is one of the charming paradoxes
of the academic life and lingo. The phrase stands for
those doings which college men plan and manage by and
for themselves. In its classification is included all athletic
sports, dramatic clubs, musical societies, debating teams,
class contests of many sorts, fraternities, Young Men's
Christian Associations, and fun and sport of all kinds and
conditions. The common characteristic of all these affairs
is found in their origin and continuation in the students
themselves, without specific or particular reference to col
lege regulations or guardianship. Their executive relation,
and not their intellectual, their communal fellowship, stand
ing for cooperation of certain or all parts of the student
body, represent the essential element. Initiative and cre-
ativeness, voluntariness and happy freedom, are parts of
this undergraduate process. Comprehensively, ff This" the
fellows say, " is college life." It is a microcosm of life
extramural. It is declared to be " the real thing! " " Latin
— what have we to do with Horace's Odes or Cicero's
Letters? No one writes like either of them today! " " Phi
losophy — what is that? Knowing nothing about nothing,
and saying less!" "Greek — who cares for such an out
landish and antique thing as that? It is deader than a
door-nail! " This life, it may be added, is really doing on
a small field and by identical methods, in somewhat differ
ent materials and under unlike conditions, what one will do
in the life subsequent to the academic days and years.

The attitude of the students themselves to these activi
ties is most interesting and significant. For the majority
it is an attitude of approbation, or participation, and of
much happiness. To the formal scholar, the studious stu-

240 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

dent, they may not be of interest. But the formal scholar
and the studious student is no longer the most general rep
resentative of the academic body. He is indeed the still
small voice, the tender of the lamp, the priest at the altar
of learning. But his devotion fails to command the respect,
or to quicken the commendation, or to arouse the enthusi
asm, once willingly given. One wishes that such were not
the condition. One could, and does, desire that every stu
dent were a tender of the lamp, a priest at the altar, a
prophet of scholarship. Perhaps some day a college may
be founded which shall gather in such alien spirits.

The comprehensive question I wish to ask is, therefore:
Can the interest which students now give to their own self-
originating, self -administrative activities, be carried over to
what the teachers of these students are still inclined to
regard as their chief business? The question is rather seri
ous. For, with full appreciation of the worth of the minor
elements of a college education, the higher education can
not, will not, and ought not, to survive with these minor
elements made major, and the major made minor.

The suggestion which I wish to offer in answer to the
question is based upon the using of the creative and execu
tive element in character — that element in fact which is
most conspicuous and fundamental in the " activities " — as
a more constant and formative method for reaching the
mind of the student and for quickening that mind unto
hard working. My meaning I can make clear by its appli
cation to specific studies. Let me apply my suggestion at
once to that subject which possibly is of all subjects the
least popular, to wit, mathematics. If it is the least popu
lar, it is in certain respects the most important, not only
because of the severity of its discipline, but also because of its
relation to most scientific subjects. It is unpopular both be
cause it demands profound and accurate thinking and also
because it is by many regarded as utterly unpractical. It is
said that mathematics has no relationship to what the student
is going to do in life. Most of the mathematics taught in the
undergraduate college is pure. My point is this, Can this
pure mathematics be made applied? Can trigonometry, for
instance, which, under a required system, is usually taken in
the Freshmen year and which is hated by most members of
that class, be at once applied to the problem of surveying
fields, or of sailing ships ? I have known Freshmen to study

" STUDENT ACTIVITIES " 241

trigonometry for eighteen weeks and to have no more idea of
the purpose of sine, cosine, and logarithms, than they have of
the weather fourteen years ahead. They might just as well
have been learning Chinese characters as a means for quick
ening interest or securing power. If actual ships cannot be
sailed — as they usually cannot — can certain actual lands be
measured? Of course the lands can be measured, and the
campus surveyed!

English, too, is a subject quite as common as mathematics
in the Freshman year. The dislike of it is less deep and less
general than of the severer subject. But it is so taught in
that year as seldom to arouse enthusiasm. Cannot it be made
to have the interest of the creative processes? There are
three things which all graduates do. First, they talk con
stantly. Second, they write letters frequently. Third, they
make an interpretation in writing of some force or method
or event occasionally. These three things are pretty intimate
to their life. Can teachers make courses in what are called
" oral English " quickening to intellectual taste, formative of
judgment, enlarging to sympathies? Can teachers so teach
the writing of letters, either business for their succinctness or
absolute clearness, or friendly for their charm, as to make
these men believe that to write letters is one of the most
precious results of education? Can teachers so oblige men
to describe a football game, or a fire, or a chemical experi
ment, or the building or equipment of a biological laboratory,
as to cause the undergraduate intellect to know and to feel
that the power of interpretation is really worth gaining?
One does not ask for letters like Byron's, nor for interpreta
tions like Huxley's. But one does ask for writing just as
good as this youth of nineteen can give.

Writing is taught in college altogether too much like
Hegel's philosophy, as a pistol shot out of pure space. It is
so taught that it has little interest and small relationship. If
the content were interesting and inspiring, the writing which
embodies the content would be made also interesting and in
spiring. Most students really have nothing to write, and,
therefore, they write this nothing unto nothingness. If they
had ideas, they would write these ideas with clearness and
force, even if not with some sense of beauty. Therefore, our
writing should be taught less by and for itself. It should be
taught more and more as a part of every course in the col
lege. It would be well to submit all papers in every other de-

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 747 16

242 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

partment to the English teachers for judgment and for
criticism.

History, too, is a subject which has been made more in
teresting in recent years. Yet to many men it still seems re
mote and unrelated to present conditions and forces. The
problem is, Can history be made to have the interest which
the undergraduate activities possess? In answering this
question one of my associates says:

"I believe in practical work for college students in his
tory. But whatever I write now I write with fear and hesi
tation lest my suggestions should be exaggerated or misun
derstood. ... I have lived long enough to distrust radi
cal reforms and to know that methods of teaching must take
into account existing conditions, traditions and prejudices. It
has seemed to me college authorities have it within their power
to start a back-fire, so to speak, against the popular student
activities which leave too little room for the real work of the
college student. I think I can see why such activities are
popular. They set the student to work in a practical way. He
earns recognition from his fellows. In my view the problem
of the college teacher, particularly of history, is to put the
students to work in such a way that they will earn recognition
by work as well as by play. Our handicap is that it takes
longer to train a student to be a skilled worker in history than
a successful athlete or manager of a student activity. The
task is to harness and employ the energies and ambitions of
students along practical and, wherever possible, productive
lines, supplementary to the process of acquiring information.
Red-blooded students unconsciously weary of merely listen
ing and absorbing. The process is a prolonged one in these
days of four-year high schools, almost colleges in methods and
ideals. It would perhaps be treason to my profession to ad
mit to the students that they had any business growing weary
of learning. I fear they do.

" My suggestion is that ways be found to set them to work
collecting sources of local history, assembling the sources for
the study of special problems and exercises, and later in
using these sources in arriving at conclusions, and still later
in writing up these conclusions from the study of the sources
into essays. Some of these essays may be selected for publi
cation in the local periodicals. Probably only a few students
would succeed in dealing successfully with the sources in the
later stages, but such ones would have a recognition and a

" STUDENT ACTIVITIES " 243

satisfaction in having their work published. This plan seeks
to combine three methods — the ripened views of the lecturer
in the formal lecture, the reading of selected authorities, and,
finally, the student practical exercises. . . I see no reason
why the plan will not be workable. However, it requires time
to elaborate a technique and secure the means and equip
ment." Thus, with wisdom and inspiration born of experi
ence, writes Professor Benton.

"I shall not apply my proposal to every department of the
college. But I may be suffered to seek to adjust it at least to
one other field, and that is the field of the social sciences. In
the great domain of government, of economics, of sociology,
would it be possible for the heads of these departments to
seek to make of the college an ideal commonwealth? A com
monwealth republican, with bodies for legislative, judicial
and executive functions, a state under which all forms and
processes of government should be made plain, impressive,
and quickening to the student-citizen. Would it be feasible
for the principles and the methods, the conditions and the
forces, the difficulties, the causes and the results, which gov
ernment stands for, to be made a part of his studies and of
his life? Of course, such an intimation represents a big and
complex job. It is a job, however, most worthy of pro
longed and profound consideration."

Regarding the proposition to which I thus give a bare
outline, I wish to make two remarks in conclusion. First,
this suggestion is not designed to serve that select group of
students whose primary interests are already intellectual.
They can be, and are, approached directly and immediately
through their minds. It is designed to serve that large body
whose primary interests are not intellectual, but whose minds
should be quickened and enlarged in great human relation
ships. If, for the select group, the will and character are
approached through the intellect, for the larger number the
intellect is to be approached through the will. My second
remark is that the application of this method would lay un
tried methods and conditions upon many teachers. In the
use of such methods and conditions, teachers would need to
exercise great patience with themselves and with their stu
dents, and possibly their students, too, would not be entirely
free from the need of exercising a similar virtue and grace
toward their teachers.

CHARLES F. THWING.

244

MADONNA OF THE EVENING FLOWERS

BY AMY LOWELL

All day long I have been working,

Now I am tired.

I caU: " Where are you? "

But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.

The house is very quiet,

The sun shines in on your books,

On your scissors and thimble just put down,

But you are not there.

Suddenly I am lonely:

Where are you?

I go about searching.

Then I see you,

Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,

With a basket of roses on your arm.

You are cool, like silver,

And you smile.

I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.

You tell me that the peonies need spraying,

That the columbines have overrun all bounds,

That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.

You tell me these things.

But I look at you, heart of silver,

White heart-flame of polished silver,

Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur.

And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,

While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the

Canterbury bells.

AMY LOWELL.

245

COMMUNION

BY WINIFRED WELLES

With delicate, white hands the priest has laid
His usual blessing on the wine and bread,
And to each broken figure, each bent head
The symbol brought, the silver cup conveyed.
The candles peer, uneasy and afraid,
Like small, grey faces of the mournful dead,
And up and down the aisles the organ's dread
And doubt and grief and gravity have strayed.

Softly the stained glass windows split apart,
Their ineffectual angels pine and pass —
I am upright and proud. Whom I seek now
Sudden and sure as dawn breaks in my heart-
And I tread stars as intimately as grass,
Touch light as though it were a golden bough.

LIFETIME

I am the river, I have been immense
With hope, great as the inner heart of spring —
The reeds have heard my husky whispering
Through fiery noontides heavy with suspense.
Between the ruins of magnificence,
Stained and autumnal, one last dirge I sing,
And then among my white beards muttering
Grow old and sleep into indifference.
I have no returning, onward is best,
Close to the dark, sweet earth in every place,
But there's the sky's mark hidden in my breast,
And a star's shadow falling on my face.
Where shining spaces wait to fill with me,
Death is the beautiful and bitter sea.

WINIFBED WELLES.

DOSTOIEVSKY'S MYSTICAL TERROR

BY CHARLES GRAY SHAW

IT is a terrible tiling to fall into the hands of the living
God, but that is what happened to Fydor Dostoievsky. It
was not Russia, vast, fantastic, terrible, but real existence
as such which wrung from his soul his tales of self -inquisi
tion. " Reality has caught me upon a hook " ; this chance
expression in one of his romances of reality is the confessed
secret of the anguished author. Dostoievsky is Russia, and
" the Russian soul is a dark place." Having said this of
his own land, Dostoievsky, without playing upon Amiel's
pretty epigram, " the landscape is a state of the soul," pro
ceeds to show us how the outer darkness pervades his own
soul. He knows not why, but at dusk there comes over
him an oppressive and agonizing state of mind difficult to
define, but recognizable in the form of " mystical terror."
Because of his pessimistic realism, Dostoievsky is not to be
understood by any attempt to force his stubborn thought
into the pens of conventional literature; " standard authors "
afford us no analogies, so that it is only by relating the
Russian to Job, Ezekiel, and the author of the Apocalypse
that we are able to make headway in reading Dostoievsky.
Hoffmann, Poe, and Baudelaire played with the terrible as
a boy plays with toy spiders and snakes; but their soul-
states knew no Siberias, their mental hides escaped the
hooks of reality.

With the several volumes of Dostoievsky weighing one's
book-shelves down or with the ponderous pages spread
out before perplexed eyes, the reader cannot comprehend
Dostoievsky as artist unless the reader is prepared to look
upon art as absolute. Style is swallowed up in significance,
technique surrenders to subject; for the story is something,
not about something. As architecture and music are arts
which refuse to represent something other than themselves,

DOSTOIEVSKY'S MYSTICAL TERROR 247

but are real and representative together, so the art of
Dostoievsky, instead of being pictorial and imitative, is so
much reality spread out before one's gaze. The idea be
comes fact, the mental solidifies, and that which is said is
no more, no less, than that which took place. The story
is a stream which carries river-bank and river-bed along
with it, while huge cakes of reality float upon the surface.
Some of this Russian realism Dostoievsky learned from
Gogol, and, like many another ardent Slav, he beheld the
troika of Russia speeding its nocturnal way like a thunder
bolt from Heaven upon some mad mission of God. But
Dostoievsky had no one to guide him when in his Slavonic
demonism he turned " Russian " into an adjective capable
of qualifying things most absolute. In this spirit, he speaks
of " Russian sympathy " as if to suggest that the human
heart has resources of compassion which man outside Russia
has not been permitted to feel. Only the Russian nation
is " god-bearing " ; in such a land alone may one say, " an
atheist can't be a Russian." In his egregious zeal for the
Slavonic mood, Dostoievsky goes so far as to speak of " the
Russian God," who, he admits, is in danger of being over
come by cheap vodka.

It is imperative to consider Dostoievsky's art from an
intensive standpoint as so much psychology, but a psychol
ogy which would strain one of our modern laboratories,
while its Russian aspects would disconcert what is popu
larly known as " sociology." The Russian writer chooses
to style it " double-edged psychology," whose methods of
analysis are so painful to the subject that he cries out,
" Don't rummage in my soul; cursed be all those who pry
into the human heart." Dostoievsky's fascinating fear of
psychology was probably due to the fact that his most
precious moments of introspection were enjoyed in connec
tion with his experiences as an epileptic. In the midst of
his mystical terror, the spirit rends his soul, while he
screams as though another person were crying out within
his own soul. Nevertheless, this epileptic experience has its
heights of transfiguration, since the sufferer with his " spe
cial, sudden idea " is able to behold the " highest synthesis
of life." Entering in true Russian fashion, without knock
ing, Reality informs him that such an exalted moment
is worth one's whole life, while it further conveys the tidings
that, after all, the whole world is lovely, like trees, flowers,

248 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and children. Reduced to exact formulation, as though a
moral maxim were concealed in that which is epileptic and
existential, this real moment persuades the sufferer that
" compassion is the only law of human existence," just as
it gives him apocalyptical assurance that time shall be no
more. This eternal love of All comes in blinding flashes,
but from the tangled light-rays he weaves a web of moral
and religious meaning.

However vague and disconnected the soul-states of
Dostoievsky may appear, it is doubtful whether his readers
can deny that they are wholly free from such " special,
sudden ideas." In practically every mind, no matter how
much common sense there may be, there are occasional
whirlpools and explosions which show how untamed are
human ideas and impulses. At heart, all tend to feel some
what of Dostoievsky's mystic terror, even when they have
the mystical tendencies and their better natures pretty well
under control. As an exceptional psychologist of the dark
Russian soul, Dostoievsky is fond of rearing unexpected
islands in the stream of consciousness. Every plan for the
murder carefully made, Raskolnikov, the hero in Crime and
Punishment, lies down to wait for the coming of the neces
sary darkness. The resolution to kill his victim has been
forged; the hatchet is by his side. Now, in this moment
of waiting, he is as it were in Egypt on some palm-dotted
oasis; camel and caravan rest quietly, man and beast drink
alike from the murmuring stream as it flows over the many-
colored stones and golden spangles of the sandy bottom.
Between the idea of diabolical preparation and the impulse
which leads to the bloody execution of his plan does this
remote and charming picture pass in the mind of the mur
derer. Another example of unexpected abstraction occurs
in The Idiot, where Lebedev, the money lender, who is just
bereft of his wife, spends the night upon his knees, but
praying for the repose of the Countess Du Barry's soul.
Dmitri Karamazov, about to leap from the darkness and
murder his father, notes with great care how the light from
the window of the paternal mansion intensifies the red of
the berries upon the near-by bush; in the criminal court
where he undergoes searching examination, he is fascinated
by the amethyst in the prosecutor's ring. Instead of follow
ing a scientific psychology, which would make the soul-state
a mere appendage to the event in nature, Dostoievsky is

DOSTOIEVSKY'S MYSTICAL TERROR 249

persuaded that consciousness has tides which rise and fall
in response to an unearthly influence.

Two general principles seem to guide Dostoievsky's
contemplation of life: one is anthropological in its attempt
to define man and place him in a habitat; the other is racial,
and seeks to analyze the Russian soul. As an anthropolo
gist, Dostoievsky refuses to subsume man under the genus
homo, just as he is unwilling to assign him to earth as his
home. " Man," said Pascal, " is neither beast nor angel —
ni bete, ni ange" According to Dostoievsky's calculation,
man is either beast or angel, since he is never merely man;
or, to use his own language, man is a " diamond set in the
dirty background of life." Wholly wanting in Laodicean
conceptions of life, the artist prefers to regard man in
Gadarean fashion, a beast demonized from without. " It
has always been a mystery to me," says he, " and I have
marvelled a thousand times at that faculty in man (and
in the Russian, I believe, more especially) of cherishing
in his soul his loftiest ideal side by side with the most abject
baseness, and all quite sincerely." In his mystic intuition
of life, Dostoievsky could behold nothing between the black,
barren earth and the endless shining of the sky; from which
follows the fact that, as he says, " the man with the ideal
of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the
Madonna." The climax of this crass view occurs in the
clever but unhappy twist given to the words of the Latin
humanist: Satan sum et nihil humani me alienum puto.

The anthropology which makes of man a beast-angel
is accompanied by an exalted sociology which makes of
Russia a peculiar blending of Tartar and Buddhist. With
the Russian, there is no such thing as mere living; man
must either assert or deny the will to live. For this reason,
the interpretation of Dostoievsky must be carried on in the
courts of a super-psychology and a major morality; if the
reader clings to his traditional ideas of man as a creature
of common consciousness and proper morality, he will soon
be floundering in the flotsam of Dostoievsky's turbid soul-
stuff. Schiller, whom he admired, looked upon man as a
chemical combination of sense and reason finely synthesized
through aesthetic education; but Dostoievsky himself can
concoct no plan suitable for uniting the Tartar beast with
the Buddhist angel; hence, he says of his Russian, ' Grattez
le russe et vous verrez le tartare' Catalogue the characters

250 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

which move about in the romances of this Slavonic apostle,
and you will find, never a human being, but always an
animal or an angel. Out of such a social appreciation of
his own race, he extracts an opposed pair of moral cate
gories wholly distinct from the ethical presumptions of
extra-Russian moralists; they are those of strength and
weakness, of super-strength which makes man worse than
bad, of victorious weakness which makes the man better
than the good.

Enthralled by the idea of a super-strong consciousness
which turns human blood to lava or moulten iron, Dostoi
evsky makes Milton's Satan and Nietzsche's blond beast
appear quite amateurish and unconvincing; the strong Slav
is a reality in the artistic experience of the writer. " Strong
natures," says he, " often find it difficult to bear the burden
of their strength." Prominent among these strong ones is
Raskolnikov, who raises his nervous will to the nth power
of human volition; strictly speaking, Raskolnikov has no
will, but a volition-channel through which the vicious asser-
tiveness of the Tartar rushes like a spring freshet. The
most systematic treatment of undue strength is found in
The Brothers Karamazov, which celebrates the " primitive
force of the Karamazovs, a crude, unbridled earth-force, a
thirst for life regardless of everything." Other nations, he
tells us, may have their Hamlets, but the Russians have
their Karamazovs. Dostoievsky's strong one turns to crime
to cleanse his soul of the sense of power whose superabun
dance has become a burden to him. In this spirit, Rogozhin,
in The Idiot, with a garden-knife slays a family of six for
the sake of killing them, from which act of disinterested
deviltry he turns to the murder of his beautiful bride.
Prince Harry, in The Possessed, that Gadarean swine story,
bites off the ear of the old count who in his deafness is
trying to hear what the youth has to say. Famous among
Dostoievsky's tales of terror is that of the two peasants
who go to bed in the same room, whereupon one cuts the
other's throat because of the silver watch which his friend
carries, although the murderer has neither need of nor desire
for the time-piece. To make the matter still more unearthly,
the artist assures us that the foul act was accompanied by
a fervid prayer on the part of the bloodthirsty man, who
ejaculates, " God, forgive me for Christ's sake." Again, a
young girl reads the story of a Jew who, having cut off

DOSTOIEVSKY'S MYSTICAL TERROR 251

the fingers of a child, crucifies it with no regret save that
the Golgothan period of the child's suffering was limited to
a paltry four hours. Not content with absorbing this touch
of Sadism, the fair maid often imagines that she herself is
the Jew, while she adds a personal touch to the story by
expressing the idea that, had she done the deed, she should
want to sit by the cross " eating pineapple compote."
According to Dostoievsky's amiable psychology of strength,
everybody loves crime, just as everybody in the Karamazov
community loved Dmitri, who was believed to have killed
his father. To such a murderous major premise, the artist
adds a minor one to the effect that, as a matter of fact,
one always wants to kill one's father. Astounded as one
may well be by such tales and such interpretations, one
should consider that the news which keeps journalism alive
is habitually pessimistic, since it is made up of columns of
human sin and human sorrow, just as one may recall the
further fact that the Man of the Evangel warned His dis
ciples that out of the heart of man come such things as
wickedness, deceit, foolishness, murder.

Side by side with such frank frightfulness, for which
even the German U-boat fleet can hardly prepare us,
Dostoievsky loves to place accompanying tales of excessive
want and extravagant self-abasement. From tropic to poles
his art passes without literary inconsistency. In his hands,
the story shifts from the Slavonic to the Sanskrit, while a
word from him turns the Cossack into a Buddhist. Mean
while, we are kept wondering just when man in the Euro
pean and American sense will make his appearance. The
underlying philosophy of Dostoievsky puzzles the eyes of
reading-room and magazine-people, because this philosophy
puts the negation of life upon a par with life-assertion.
" The law of self-preservation and the law of self-destruc
tion," says he, " are equally strong in humanity." Thus
the Hindu becomes the match for the Tartar, while the
Buddhist hypnotizes the Cossack. Walking side by side
with the ferocious characters and enjoying their crimson
confidence too are so many gentle souls whose sense of want
and whose capacity for compassion make them strange bed
fellows. Prominent among these amateur angels appear
Vanya, in Injured and Insulted, Prince Myshkin, the
"idiot," and Alesha, of the family Karamazov. With
such, the need of negation and the nostalgia for the Nought

252 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

expresses itself quite frankly in connection with suicide as
a fine art. Self-destruction is not at all uncommon; fear
of dishonor, disappointed love, and even the high cost of
living instruct the coroner in his search for causes. How
ever, Shakespeare and Schopenhauer have indulged in the
casuistry of self-destruction, so that suicide is a topic about
which we are, as it were, pretty well informed. But,
according to Dostoievsky, no one has a right to take his life
for a cause; if there must be suicide, it must be for no
reason at all. In this manner, Kraft, in Injured and
Insulted, takes his own precious and promising life, because
the science of craniology and anthropology have led him
to the conclusion that the Russians are a second-rate race,
so that to live as a Russian is not worth while. The young
consumptive in The Idiot contemplates but does not con
summate suicide, not because of his malady, but simply
because the spectacle of life appears in itself repulsive.
Stavrogin, in The Possessed, is perfectly willing to slip the
noose about his neck, but fears that such a display of cour
age may create the impression of a soul-greatness which
he did not possess. Kirollov, the practical and successful
man of affairs, is anxious to take his useful life simply
because he has no reason for so doing. "The highest point
of self-will," so he argues, "is to kill myself with my own
hands. To do this without any cause at all I shall be the
only one." For himself, Dostoievsky concludes that life is
at its best when its tides are at their lowest ebb, its colors
of an infra-red tint. The best man is the least of men, a
kind of idiot who possesses just enough volition and ideation
to continue diplomatic relations with life. Good and bad,
life and death are one; at the same time, all souls are open
to the one world; the endless publicity of Siberian existence
had taught Dostoievsky that bitter lesson. " In truth," he
says, " we are each responsible for all, and it's only men
who don't know this. If they did, the earth would be a
paradise at once." This oneness of human life on earth is
the source of the artist's sympathism ; all may be walled in,
but there are no separating partitions. Sorrow is sacred,
hence the monk, in The Brothers Karamazov, bows in rev
erence before the suffering in store for the young villain.
More striking and better known than this episode is the
incident in Crime and Punishment where Raskolnikov
kisses the feet of the despised street-girl, and says, " I do

DOSTOIEVSKY'S MYSTICAL TERROR 253

not bow down to you personally, but to suffering humanity
in your person." Such a text is the essence of the Russian
novel.

Dostoievsky's theology is neither the latitudinarianism
of Berlin nor the anthropomorphism of the Kaiser. Instead
of accepting the idea of God, he finds no possible way of
rejecting the notion. The Psalmist admitted that the fool
might say, non est deus, even when he did not think it; but
Dostoievsky cannot admit the possibility of the atheistic
diocit. The atheist, he thinks, " will always be talking about
something else." Like his favorite character, Alesha
Karamazov, Dostoievsky seems to say, " I am not rebelling
against God; I simply don't accept his world." Dostoi
evsky's rejection of the world is due to the pessimistic per
ception that the planet is the place of disorder, which fact
makes possible the art of the Russian, even when his aesthetic
capitalization of the cosmic chaos is not quite the same as
that of the munition-maker's. That which gave Dostoievsky
his deepest wound was the thought that, when the Man
appeared, the earth had no place for Him except Golgotha.
It was indeed for the sake of the Man that all things were
made, and without Him all were madness; yet the fact that
the laws of the planet did not spare Him proves that " the
very laws of the planet are a lie, and the vaudeville of
Devils." There are places in the art of Thomas Hardy
where the condemnation of the planet is no less strident;
but Hardy proceeds to his bitter conclusions in a spirit less
tender and less evangelical. Of the Russian it may be said
that this is perhaps the only place in his aesthetic system
where the mystic becomes malicious; even here his indigna
tion assumes no more threatening an aspect than that of
the " suffering smile."

If atheists are always talking about something else than
the Deity whose existence they would deny, Dostoievsky
showed his willingness to listen to their rash utterances; it
was as a mere listener at Fourier meetings that he was con
demned and exiled. These atheists who pour henbane into
the ear seem to have reduced the cosmic proportions of the
Deity until God became little more than a magnified Man,
and as such an undesirable citizen. Much of this fervent
anthropomorphism may be traced to the Hegelianism of
Feuerbach and others whom nihilists like Turgeniev had
studied in Germany ; some of it was elaborated upon a quasi-

254 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

political basis, as if God were a sort of Czar. This " god,"
so Dostoievsky hears, is to be deposed and exiled; "then
they will divide history into two parts: from the gorilla to
the annihilation of God, and from the annihilation of God
to the transformation of the earth and of man." Convinced
that atheism cannot be fact, thought, or even word, Dostoi
evsky further has compassion for " God," as for all other
unfortunates. In this spirit, he makes the convict say, " If
they drive God from earth, we will shelter Him under
ground; and then we men underground will sing from the
bowels of earth a glorious hymn to God." In general,
Dostoievsky's art is a subterranean song, his religion the
bowels of cosmic compassion. God torments him with inner
calamities as He used to torment the patriarch Job, but
Dostoievsky still trusts; the world seems like the Devil's
vaudeville, yet he stoops to kiss the black earth. Man is
naked and a beggar rejected by both heaven and earth, but
man may walk in the light, and while he is nothing he may
see everything.

It was Dostoievsky's fate to be possessed of a primitive
and patriarchal spirit and be called upon to display this in
an age of industry. Place him in the world when creation
was fresh and when the newest winds of Heaven fanned
faces not yet furrowed by doubt and care, and your Dostoi
evsky had been fit and ready to join Enoch as he walked
with" God. But, finding himself in a world where economic
systems have become superior to things and men, Dostoi
evsky could not help invoking the spirit of nihilism, even
when he repudiated nihilistic politics as such. Confronted
by the spectacle of his Russia engaged in industrial activity,
Dostoievsky can only condemn business and rejoice in the
fact that there are so few practical men in Russia. In the
midst of an animated discussion on the subject of railways
as the saviours of Russia, Dostoievsky allows his ' idiot '
to lisp something to this effect: " I believe that beauty will
save the world."

Along with this spiritual nihilism which condemns the
railway as a soteriological principle goes Dostoievsky's
repudiation of science. He feels that science is selfish and
tends to forbid pity, whence it will be folly to put one's
trust in its princes, just as Gorky admitted that science
was a divine beverage, but that up to the present time it
resembled Russian vodka, in that its ultimate yield was noth-

DOSTOIEVSKY'S MYSTICAL TERROR 255

ing but headache. " Science," says Dostoievsky, " has ever
given the solution by the fist. This is particularly char
acteristic of the half-truths of science, the most terrible
scourge of humanity, unknown until the last (eighteenth)
century, and worse than plague, famine, or war." Science,
he believes, could not exist were it not for beauty, while the
contrast between the aesthetical and the scientific makes it
possible for one to conclude that " Shakespeare is better
than boots, Raphael greater than petroleum, the Sistine
Madonna finer than a pencil." The Russian God may have
survived the emancipation of the serfs, but it is a question
whether He can stand out against the railways.

Such epileptic exaggerations are more likely to occasion
a smile than to cause wrath, but it cannot be denied that
there is in them the implicit criticism of a philosophy which
the thoughtful and semi-thoughtful person of the day car
ries around with him. All such philosophers are interested
in the exterior perfection of humanity as this is to be found
in the proper assembling and organizing of the sons of men,
just as they are mildly concerned about the elaboration of
an inner and intensive humanism as this is to appear in
their own individual hearts. This is, of course, bourgeois,
but better than nothing; it sprouts up in labor-unions, in
charity organizations here, in free libraries and women's
clubs there. Now, can we deny that our creeds begin with,
' I believe in railways '? Our freight-rebates and eight -
hour-per-day strikes may distill some doubt about our new
god, but the Apostles worried along with the bag-holding
Judas, and we ought to be able to pull through in spite of
our modern men from Kerioth. Adam Smith and Herbert
Spencer have formulated our new creeds for us, so that
we are beginning to feel quite at home in our new temples,
which like some new railway stations resemble the old
Dorics and Gothics. Dostoievsky may not have found the
integrating principle which shall not only bring men to
gether, but persuade them that they belong together, but
he has been of some service in showing us that our hope
in horses and chariots, in steel cars and automobiles, is a
vain and far-fetched consolation.

As to the terrified mystic himself, the reader of his
unique works may close the several volumes with the convic
tion that, no matter what science may say about him, no
matter what society may do to him, man exists. There must

256 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

be some better way of describing the freedom of man in
the world than to do as Dostoievsky and Gorky do when
they liken the present aimlessness of human life to the
meanderings of a " cockroach." There must be some su
perior way of evincing the spiritual character of man's inner
self, so that one will no longer need to follow Dostoievsky
through all the perturbed ramifications of the stricken soul.
While this philosophy of man is being elaborated, we may
keep in mind Dostoievsky's idea that man, far from being
a brick in the industrial wall or a cell in the social organism,
is an inner world-order, fantastic, terrible, yet beautiful.
. . . According to the words of the apostle Jude, " Of
some have compassion, making a difference." Dostoievsky
was " different."

CHARLES GRAY SHAW.

NEW VERSE AND NEW PROSE

BY WILLIAM MORRISON PATTERSON

There was a man
Who made his living
By painting roses
Upon silk.

He thought only of roses

And silk.

When he could get no more silk

He stopped painting

And only thought

Of roses.

So chants Amy Lowell, with the vigorous sense of
" swing " which is one of her undeniable gifts. On an occa
sion when she recited aloud these phrases from her poem,
The Painter on Silk, in the course of a psychological experi
ment at Columbia University, it was part of the listener's
reaction that from one chief accent to another — from " man "
to " living," from " living " to " roses," from " roses " to
" silk," and so on — the intervals of time gave a satisfying
impression of swinging equality. By " swinging " we mean
such compensative retarding and hastening of tempo, intui
tively manipulated, as is familiar in the performance of any
musician. The " equality " of these time-intervals, there
fore, is not the dead, mechanical equality of time between the
ticks of a metronome, but the elastic, " live " equality which
the musician instinctively achieves.

A sang

Ihc schal you singe

Of Murry

The king.

So bounces into our ears from older days the hurrying
rhythm of King Horn. We have taken the liberty of spac-

VOL. ccvii.— NO. 747 17

258 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ing the units separately, for purposes of emphasis. The
same sort of tumbling tune, jerking itself up with a shorter
interval between accents at the end, is in part of Langland's
Piers Plowman:

What this mountain
Bemeneth
And this derke
Dale.

From the still more ancient generation of the " Beowulf "
sagas, we hear — that is, some of us hear — a similar accelerat
ing group of time-units, marked by chief accents :

Ofsloh tha
Act thaere saecce
Tha me sael
Ageald.

Beowulf is speaking of the house-guards, whom he

Slew then
In the conflict
When the chance
Was given.

What is this " verse "? Or is it verse at all — this " un-
metrical " chant of our ancestors, which, scholars like Sievers
and Schipper insist, quite contrary to the opinion of the
present writer, was delivered in the manner of free recita
tion — "nicht taktierend" — "without beating of time"?
How strange, too, that we find it emerging as one form of
vers libre in the hands of our imagist contemporary 1 Is this
a genre, then, really native to the genius of our language
— since it lorded over all our known primeval efforts — which
we have mistakenly neglected, but which now springs up
from its forgotten dust with the dramatic irony of Cgesar's
ghost?

To answer these questions we must return to the for
bidding confines of the laboratory, where any discussion of
rhythm involves a discussion of time and our sense of it.
Contracting and relaxing muscles, especially those connected
with recurrent automatic movements, such as those of the
heart and lungs, are the usual clocks by which we measure
the length of temporal intervals. A certain comfortable
sensory reaction tells us that the rate of our heart-beats or

NEW VERSE AND NEW PROSE 259

of our breathing is close to normal. Segments of breath-
waves, each segment marked by a slight reinforcement in
the flow of air, and measured, in turn, by so many concomi
tant heart-beats — when these are consciously felt — may easily
register for us our mental seconds. It is only by such mental
time-beats or " unitary pulses " that we are able to make
anything like accurate judgments of time. Suppressed
articulation usually assists us in counting; our memory
images record the numbers. "While I was taking three
comfortable breaths the butterfly floated slowly past my
window." During two painful gasps on the part of a help
less spectator the villain engaged in rapid measures to stab
the hero.

It is interesting, accordingly, to note that whatever
physiologically developed time-sense, manifested by ease in
evoking " unitary pulses'' resided in Miss Lowell's listener,
on the occasion of the experiment with this particular exam
ple of her vers libre, was easily adjusted to a predominating
coincidence with the chief accents in her delivery of the lines.
This predominating coincidence stamps the experience psy
chologically as verse, regardless of the absence of metrical
pattern in the consciousness of the listener. The opposite
of coincidence is syncopation. If sounds do not hit together
they are bound to hit apart. Whenever a listener's time-
beats occur just before or just after the chief accents of a
spoken passage, the syncopating tune thus arising from the
combination of accents and pulses falls inevitably into the
rhythm of prose.

Verse, through its predominating coincidence with a
series of mental drum-beats, has, in its most typical forms,
a bounding, marching, community-singing effect, always
characterized by a certain simplicity, and so not difficult to
analyze. On the other hand, the tunes of prose, though often
of amazing intricacy, are nevertheless easily recognized by
our intuitive processes, without needing to be analyzed^ and
can, in fact, be readily tapped off with our fingers from
memory. The only questions to be asked are: First, is the
rhythmic tune beautiful or haunting in itself? Second, is
it appropriate in its movement to the mood of the passage?

There are those who do not seem able to hear these com
pound tunes for the simple reason that they lack the regu
lating unitary beats without which the outline of the music
is merely a tantalizing shadow. The " aggressively rhythmic

260 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

timer " lives, as it were, in unitary spurts of " Life! Life!
Life! I'm alive! I'm tremendously alive!" The hap
hazard world jiggles by his ears and gets tangled up with
his life-song. The resulting compound tune is sometimes
prose and sometimes verse, but in either case the world's big
and little waves of sound are regulated by the timer's internal
waves of living. It is this hypnotizing inner surge that is
externalized in the dynamic "boom! boom! boom!" of the
Indian's tom-tom, the "plunk! plunk!" of our ancestral
harpists, or the unitary drone of the mediaeval monks, intoxi
cated with the swing of their Gregorian chants.

The intuitive response to complicated syncopation, pos
sessed by savages, and lost to so many of us through the
inhibiting influences of sedentary life, is surely requisite to
rhythmical technique in writing prose and verse. Any at
tempts, however, to regain this instinctive response must
include a resort to physical means. The gift seems to reside
not in our minds, as such, but in our bodies. Since time is
measured by muscular contractions, let us remember that
our muscles of varying length, when they work simultane
ously, are capable of unconsciously performing the most
complicated types of syncopation. The trick is to become
intuitively conscious of the time-values involved. But values
demand a standard, and a standard means units. We must
learn to evoke time-beats out of the general depths of our
muscular sense. We can put a finger on our pulse or a hand
over our heart, and thus measure our breathing and its seg
ments. Then with our breath we can measure our walking-
step, and so to the end of the game, when the units, if we
win, must come to us without effort.

In the meantime, let us visit the Zoo and watch a polar
bear in the midst of his side-stepping at some restive moment.
His cage is just so long; his legs are just so long; the muscles
of his neck, his tail, his tongue, his eyelids, are just so long
and just so elastic; but these " just so long's " are not the
same. They form an irregular series of elements. At the
moment in question the bear's elan vital demands a certain
amount of physical action. What is the result? A beau
tiful case of utterly naive compound syncopating motion —
with spontaneous tail-flips, eye-winkings, and lip-lickings,
irregularly overlapping in their intervals ponderous neck-
sways, all harmoniously but intricately regulated by the
incessant unitary "flap! flap! flap!" of those great white

NEW VERSE AND NEW PROSE 261

feet. We are actually seeing the rhythm of prose! There
is no more mystery about it!

Provided thus with a physiological and psychological
basis for a clear distinction between prose and verse experi
ence, we are ready to investigate the genres of each. Verse
experience, we discover, falls into two main types, unitary
verse and metrical verse. In " unitary verse " predominantly
coincident experience is produced by language whose chief
accents mark off impressions of equal time-intervals, regard
less of the number of syllables in between. The typical
march-like movement of all verse is there, but it is not the
march of a two-legged being. It is the stately unitary pro
gression of a measuring- worm, whose legs we have forgotten
to count.

In " metrical verse " the basic time condition is very
much the same — virtual equality of interval from accent to
accent — but upon this foundation is superimposed a succes
sion of stress-patterns, such as our so-called " iambs," " tro
chees," and " anapaests." These stress-patterns are quickly
recognized, and, together with tone-color patterns — rhyme,
assonance, and alliteration — produce in " metrical verse " a
genre that favors memorization. " Haunting lines " are
likely to be easily scanned. What we must constantly re
member is that as soon as we depart from these strict patterns
of " metrical verse " and write in " unitary verse," for in
stance, a notation of some sort seems to be demanded in
order to preserve the integrity of the intended genre. The
Old English poets marked their chief accents, as a rule,
with alliteration, which is quite equivalent to drawing a red
line around the syllables. The spacing of unit phrases on
separate lines, which we find in contemporary verse, is also
helpful as a form of notation, except in such cases where
too much rhythmic emphasis is put upon weak words. On
the other hand, as soon as we see two or more units printed
on one line the value of the spacing as notation is largely
lost. The Painter on Silk by Amy Lowell begins with such
spacing of the separate units, which, at any rate, prepares
us for the swing of unitary verse which she consistently
maintains in her delivery of the poem to the end.

Oread by "H. D.", as delivered in the laboratory by
Miss Lowell and registered with the sound-photographing
apparatus, showed a striking predominance of virtually equal
time-intervals between chief accents.

262 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Whirl up sea —

Whirl your pointed pines.

Splash your great pines

On our rocks.

Hurl your green over us —

Cover us with your pools of fir.

We have preserved " H. D.'s " spacing. In connection
with her poem it is interesting to find in the Songs of Selma
by Ossian a passage, printed as prose, the rhythm of which
suggests Oread, and, consequently, " unitary verse." In
giving it we have adopted a spacing somewhat similar to
that of its kindred composition.

Arise, winds of autumn, arise;

Blow along the heath !

Streams of the mountains, roar!

Roar, tempests,

In the groves of my oaks!

But all vers libre is not " unitary verse," by any means.
The vast majority of it falls into what we may term " spaced
prose," " mosaics," and, occasionally, "blends." " Spaced
prose," such as Miss Lowell's Reaping, produces predom
inantly syncopating experience, and differs from normal or
" fluid prose " in that the printing of prose phrases on sep
arate lines, or their delivery with correspondingly marked
pauses, focuses our attention upon the rhythm as rhythm —
especially the broader rhythmical balance of the phrases
against each other. As an artistic form, " spaced prose "
is acceptable — in oratory or in reading aloud or in the printed
guise of vers libre — when the dominating thought or mood
of a passage has been so clearly established that emphasis
upon the rhythm as rhythm is welcomed.

Oratorical examples of " spaced prose " occur in the
vigorously punctuated speeches of Colonel Roosevelt, such
as the one made recently at a dinner given by the Pennsyl
vania Society. The established subject of the passage we
are taking is France and her heroism. The hearer is quite
ready, therefore, for rhythmic emphasis in the " peroration."
Once familiar with the characteristics of Colonel Roosevelt's
delivery we unconsciously " space," even in our reading of
the speech, such phrases as the following:

For three and a half terrible years
She has walked high of heart
Through the valley of the shadow.

NEW VERSE AND NEW PROSE 263

In order to achieve some form of notation for " spaced
prose," we prefer to make the spacing consist of fairly long
lines, as opposed to the separate spacing of unit-phrases,
which if carried out more frequently would be of great assist
ance in preserving the integrity of " unitary verse." Of
course, in certain instances of the latter genre the chief ac
cents may be so obvious that separate spacing is quite
unnecessary. This is largely true of Oread, to which we
have already referred.

The second type of " spaced prose " is purely mental
and the result, not of oratorical suggestions, but of reading
aloud the rhythmical development of any well-confirmed
theme. We again take an example from Colonel Roose
velt, because he, like Miss Lowell, has, quite of his own free
will, taken an interest in the present discussion of genre,
and made himself accessible to investigation. In experi
menting with the following passage from his Booklover's
Holidays in the Open, in which the dominating mood of each
chapter is soon established, we find ourselves again giving
emphasis to the phrase rhythm for its own sake. We may
read the phrases thus:

Lions roared and elephants trumpeted,

And in the papyrus beds,

Beneath the low bluffs on which our tents stood,

Hippopotamus bellowed and blew

Like the exhaust-pipes of huge steam-engines.

But it would be an error to print the passage in this self-
conscious way.

The third form of " spaced prose " is one of the prevail
ing types of current vers libre. An indication of the form
is announced at once, on the part of the author, by the
notation of spaced phrases. Naturally, with writers who
have not as yet made obvious distinctions in their practice
between " unitary verse," " spaced prose," and " mosaics,"
this notation is not very impelling. A moving example of
" spaced prose," big in its human touch, occurs in Miss
Lowell's Reaping.

An* don't make any mistake about one thing,

When I married yer I loved yer.

Why, your voice 'ud make

Me go hot and cold all over.

An' your kisses most stopped my heart from beatin'.

264 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Lord ! I was a silly fool.
But that's the way 'twas.
Well, I married yer
An' thought Heav'n was comin'
To set on the door-step.
Heav'n didn't do no settin'.

It is significant to note that in one reading of this pas
sage, when the chief syllabic accents in the rhythmic tune
were felt to occur where they are marked, the unitary pulses
of the reader were syncopating to such an extent that in
no single case did they coincide with the chief accents. They
seemed to occur consistently somewhere between these accents
or at the end of a line. In no case were there more than
two such pulses to a line. Vague muscular sensations local
ized the pulses in the region of the head. The tempo of the
reading as a whole seemed rather fast. The tempo of the
pulses themselves seemed rather slow.

" Mosaics " form a genre — coordinate with " spaced
prose " — in which verse and prose, or the several kinds of
verse and prose, alternate successively. Much of the prose
of Robert Ingersoll gives us the impression of a mosaic of
bits of metrical verse, the metre being changed at every
breath, as if it were a conscious trick on the part of the
author. Quite different are the mosaics in the vers libre of
Edgar Lee Masters, where bits of unitary verse, metrical
verse, spaced prose, and normal prose joggle up against each
other constantly. Walt Whitman, the most vigorous Amer
ican poet, expresses himself at times with the same uncer
tainty of genre. Long stretches of Whitman are quite
tamely metrical — other stretches have a splendid free swing
with sudden drops into rather futile regularity. It is only
natural that we should resent in so big a personality both
his paddling and his spluttering moments. We expect of
him the swimming of a strong man. To what an extent
" mosaics," successful and unsuccessful, occur in Masters we
leave the reader to judge from the following portion of
Father Malloy, parts of which are great " poetry " :

You are over there, Father Malloy,

Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,

Not here with us on the hill —

Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision

And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.

You were so human, Father Malloy,

NEW VERSE AND NEW PROSE 265

Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,

Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River

From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.

You were like a traveller who brings a little box of sand

From the wastes about the pyramids

And makes them real and Egypt real.

" Mosaics " of verse and prose such as are found in the
writings of Paul Fort can hardly be discussed here, since
the French language presents at once new problems. Its
stress-patterns are dimmer than ours, and its chief accents
are quite differently disposed. French does not tumble back
and forth, from slow to rapid, with the athletic alacrity that
is displayed in English. Hence our vers libre seems to be
much more " free " than theirs, and so more likely to depart
from the integrity of its particular genre.

" Blends," finally, are those types of writing in which
effects not commonly found together are superimposed. For
instance in the " polyphonic prose " of Amy Lowell and of
John Gould Fletcher tone-color patterns — chains of rhyme
and assonance and alliteration — are added to a medium
which, from the point of view of rhythm alone, would be
classified as a " mosaic." The addition of rhyme and pro
nounced " return " of thoughts and images to a passage of
syncopating experience would undoubtedly affect the final
rhythmic impression, with a probable reduction of syncopat
ing coordination between the chief accents and our inner
time-beats. The " gadya " prose of Sanskrit offers similar
effects. So, in a way, does the Old English prose of Aelfric
and later that of Richard Rolle. More recently Gertrude
Stein's experiments in suggestion have been couched in what
is rhythmically " mosaics," with much of the " blend " ma
chinery. The following striking passage from Amy Lowell's
Night and Sleep is a good example of her " polyphonic
prose":

" I leave the city with speed. Wheels whirl to take me
back to my trees and my quietness. The breeze which blows
with me is fresh-washed and clean, it has come but recently
from the Jiigh sky. There are no flowers in bloom yet, but
the earth of my garden smells of tulips and narcissus."

The most signal example of a " blend," however, in which
verse rather than prose forms predominate, is the poem called
Patterns, singularly irritating to some but singularly beau
tiful to others. Its admirers are increasing. Here we have

266 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

a frank mosaic of metrical verse, unitary verse, and spaced
prose, in which rhyme is superimposed on some of the synco
pating spots. The poem, as a whole, seems to be held
together by a preponderating movement of unitary verse,
with patches of metre and rhyme blossoming out where the
emotion appears to demand it. In other words, there is
evidence of a sense of artistic propriety in whatever rhythmic
vagaries occur in Patterns that is quite different from what
we meant by the many weak lapses into metre found in
Whitman. The first stanza is an adequate example of the
complicated texture Miss Lowell has essayed:

I walk down the garden paths,

And all the daffodils

Are blooming, and the bright blue squills,

I walk down the patterned garden paths

In my stiff brocaded gown.

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,

I, too, am a rare

Pattern. As I wander down

The garden path.

Shall we call this " polyphonic verse "?

Unitary verse, the elastic swing of which furnishes a key
both to Miss Lowell's Painter on Silk and to the disputed
rhythm of " Beowulf," our most ancient epic; metrical verse,
in which our later poets did their singing and conjuring;
spaced prose, the oratorical and " embroidering " form of
syncopating experience that characterizes so much current
vers libre; and, finally, fluid or normal prose, such as we
find, for example, in Addison, in Macaulay, and, with sin
gular perfection, in Newman — these are the four major
genres. Mosaics and blends, polyphonic prose and poly
phonic verse — these are their permutations and combina
tions. It is the discussion of vers libre, however, that has
led us to our attempts at an analysis which we hope possesses
some practical value for literary artists. Our heart is with
all poets — metrical and free ; but we are particularly indebted
just now to those of our contemporaries who have instinc
tively composed in these genres and thus helped us so materi
ally to hear, or to think we hear, not only the music of
everyday language — the rhythm of its prose — but also its
ancestral cadence, the forgotten swing of " unitary verse."

This lost child of our House of Rhythm, after so long
wandering unrecognized through the " mosaic " paths of

NEW VERSE AND NEW PROSE 267

the King James Version, of William Blake, of Walt Whit
man, of Synge, and of Tagore's translations, is worth being
rescued and presented in proper integrity. The final word
as to this lies with the poets, not the critics. You have our
affection — however we may glare at you in the precincts of
our dungeon-laboratories. Your generation is proving its
gift of fire. On the other hand, they say in France that you
lack " technique " and " concentration." Isn't this partly
true? Perhaps, then, you will be among the first to
realize that you should feel your genres a little more dis
tinctly, and having felt them help the rest of us, as the
musical composer helps us, and as Miss Lowell in several
instances has helped us, by employing a clearer notation,
such as long lines for spaced prose and shorter lines for
unitary verse, or any other device that will keep us straight
as to our rhythmical whereabouts when we read you. If, in
addition to this, both you and your friends of more strictly
metrical persuasion — you of the flaming hearts, you to whom
things magically " come " — will wait at times just a bit
longer for the " one right word," be assured that D'Annun-
zio's " virgins vowed to St. Apollinaris " will " burn not with
such an ardor in their heavens of gold " as we, your humble
worshippers, shall burn in response to you. We believe in
you younger poets, particularly, and in your future; for,
apart from our impressions of your vigor and sincerity,
surely it is a significant thing if, in your newest songs, we
hear, quite suddenly, the harp of our ancestors!

WILLIAM MORRISON PATTERSON.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

BY ADA CAMBRIDGE

This mortal house

Which we are born into, is haunted by
The ghosts of the dead passions of dead men,
And these take flesh again with our own flesh
And bring us to confusion.

EVEN in a Tennysonian setting the fact is too common
place for words. But one must have a text, a starting-point.

Also, although facts be as obvious as it is possible for
them to be, their bearings are not. Their meanings to our
various minds, the ideas that roll and surge about them, in
which thought may grope for ever without sounding bottom,
are to them as fathomless seas to the ships they carry —
ships that are perfect products of their day, to become
imperfect tomorrow and obsolete the day after. Also again,
like these in their buffetings with elements unknown, the
most indisputable statements are apt to prove disputable
in time, to give way to strain, to succumb to wear and tear,
to be modified, discredited, superseded by new truths that
are but the offspring in another likeness of the old. Any
way, it is useless to tell us to take things as we find them.
Above all is it impossible to leave things alone. We cannot
do it, and live.

This mortal house that we are born into — indubitably our
own, our very self, and yet pre-empted by a horde of an
cestral shades that invisibly dispute possession with us at
every turn — if there be one thing more than another that
is of perpetual personal concern to us, it is that. These
" ghosts of the dead passions of dead men " which we are
born not to be governed by but to govern — this mystery of
heredity that is all one with the mystery of the Universe
which nobody can reasonably ask to understand, but which
we are bound to explore as far as we can go — herein is
inexhaustible matter for philosophic thought, and the last
word will not be said while a tongue can speak or a pen

THE HAUNTED HOUSE 269

write. This pen, however, indites no treatise on the subject,
but merely gives utterance to one of those little reveries
to which the elderly are addicted when they become on
lookers at the game of life, the onlookers who are proverbi
ally able to see more of it than they did when they were
down in the arena taking an active part themselves.

The War, which is at the bottom of all our thinking nowa
days, suggests the theme. The moral earthquake which has
shocked open so many closed doors in our house of life,
which has let light into so many unsuspected or long-for
gotten hiding-places, reveals the character of some of the
inmates we have been harboring and what their claim to
board and lodging and a position of high authority over us
amounts to.

There, dragged into the open at last, in the forefront of
them all, is the figure of that mediaeval swashbuckler, sur
vivor from the days before men had learnt the rudiments
of loyalty to their race, who has terrified us out of our very
wits for a generation at least — a shape of horror indescrib
able. Why has he been "walking " all this time as if the
world belonged to him, and we have not had the sense to
see what he was made of? We are like the simple citizens
in the old Spanish story of the Cid. When the Cid was
dead and it was desired that the people should not know it,
his corpse was set on horseback, propped between boards
that were hidden under his gorgeous apparel, and led through
the applauding streets; the people had only to see the
familiar robes and trappings to take a living body within
them for granted. So have we been imposed upon by the
splendid clang of the regimental band and the magnificent
spectacle of the March Past, by the power of immemorial
traditions, the might of the revered dead hand. " What
should we do with our younger sons if we had not the Army
and Navy to put them into?" the ghost of the aristocrat
of feudal times admonishes us. " Take away those schools
of discipline and valor, which have turned out heroes
innumerable, and what semblance of a manly life is left to
them? " It sounds a posing question, if you can forget
that armies and navies are not maintained for the benefit
of younger sons. And you must forget something. Opinions
are not formed by continually moving round and round
an argument in the endeavor to look at all sides at once.
And the direction easiest to follow is laid down by those

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ghosts of the Past who, entrenched in our house while
the Modern Spirit they oppose is still an outsider, are in
a position to gull or cow us. And they say War is an
integral part of civilized life — always was and therefore
always must and will be — and never mind if it does devote
the bulk and best resources of civilization to the perpetua
tion of savagery, in other words to the systematic defeat
of its own ends. Logic and ethics cannot plead against
unalterable facts.

They are all leagued together, these ghosts of the dead
passions of dead men, to bring us to confusion. Who has
been persuading us that younger sons of one set of human
beings cannot work with their hands and earn their bread
by the sweat of their brow like the younger sons of other
sets, and still be heroes if the heroic seed be in them? Why
should a whole body of potentially fine young men, elder
sons and younger, the former class cursed with too much,
the latter with relatively too little, be tethered in unwhole
some conventions and beset by subtle evil influences from
which their happier fellows of the common herd are free?
There are heads of " good " families who inherit with their
estates a consciousness of high responsibility and labor to
administer them for the benefit of others beside themselves ;
on the other hand there are very many who do not; and
for one decent fellow provided with this job there are dozens
and scores who have no job at all (outside the Army and
Navy and in a rapidly lessening degree the Church) ex
cept to marry for money and enjoy themselves if they can.
Suppose the " Services " closed to them, there remain as
outlets for healthy activities but polo and steeplechasing,
mountaineering and exploration, yachting, hunting — in short,
a life of games.

And a life of games is really the life of the large bulk of
the " leisured " classes (I am speaking of my own country,
England), or it was so before the war; and the ghost-ridden
sociologist has accepted the arrangement as part of the
Constitution. But what a fine old ghost it is, apart from its
high respectability, the ringleader of the spirits of dead-and-
gone British sportsmen who stand for " the good old times "
we are so prone to hark back to instead of attending to the
times that it is our business to make better! I was myself
brought up to revere the whole tradition of the Hunt. Father
and mother both rode to hounds, and all my memories of

THE HAUNTED HOUSE 271

the Field — the pack, the horn, the red coats flashing through
the naked trees and lighting up the winter landscape — have
the heroic glamor on them. But in cold fact what a cruel
and childlike business! In the gallant fox-hunter rides the
ghost of the primeval savage who had to defend himself
from fierce animals and ran down his daily dinner, the lust
of the chase surviving by centuries and centuries the need
and justification for the relentless pursuit and the kill. I
am sure that many a kind fellow who joys to see the poor
little red beast fighting his unequal battle and being torn
to pieces at the end would lift a fly out of the milk- jug rather
than see it drown. As for the pleasure and benefit to the
horse, of which so much is made in the defence of fox
hunting — there is another dead and dusty plea. It may
tend to improve his quality for the benefit of his owners,
and he may enjoy it, but solicitude for his personal ad
vantage is not a motive to lay stress upon. We see what
we have done for the horse through the ages of his association
and service with us when today, with his physical strength
and powers of endurance, he is above all else a bundle of
panic nervousness, always in terror of what is going to
happen next and with no independent idea in his head ex
cept to run away. The ghost of the uncivilized human brute
is his master still, and the S. P. C. A. allows it. I do not
remember ever to have seen a hunter whose tail had not been
cut off almost to the base.

For the first time within living memory there was no
hunting season in the winter of 1914-15, as there was no
Henley regatta in August and no Oxford and Cambridge
boat-race in the following March. Tremendous changes 1
And the Masters of Hounds with their grooms, and the
landlords with their tenants, and the elder sons with the
younger, all the castes that have been so careful of their
boundary-lines mixed up together in the mud-filled trenches
and on the blood-drenched battlefields — they are fighting for
elemental Right and the Liberties of the World, and in that
business the best soldier is the best man, even as regards
social status. New standards of values have come in with
these terrific circumstances, to the confusion of the ghosts
that have done the confusing for so long.

Is their reign over? Oh, pray Heaven we are seeing at
least the beginning of the end of it! Pray God we remain
brothers in peace that are now brothers in arms and sink

272 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

in that brotherhood all considerations of rank and race,
creed and color — especially color, which represents one of
the most mildewed and poisonous prejudices in the whole
of our rotten stock. Why have we, right into these enlight
ened days, lumped together all the non-white peoples as
" inferior races " without regard to any merit that is more
than skin-deep? No reason can be found or invented except
that it has been our habit to do so from time immemorial.
How, we might ask ourselves, does our most conspicuous
apostle of kultur compare with the Indian prince who,
from the highest motives that can animate human action,
offered unasked to the nation that had conquered him not
only all his possessions but himself, to (with his traditions!)
serve in the ranks with his own subjects? The Japanese
man is a gentleman, tried and proved, and some whites of
that rank who have been admitted into the " exclusive cir
cles " of China have found their equals there also. All
those peoples, we are apt to forget, had been civilized or
at any rate highly cultivated, for ages upon ages, at a time
when our forefathers were hairy savages in woods ; and how
have they not reproached us for our ill-breeding and our
religion of words without deeds by their dignified patience
under insult and the sincerity of their worship at the shrines
that are their own! Whereas we have been calling them
heathen and sending missionaries to them, and objecting
to the tint of skins that in one case at least are the
cleanest in the world. Of course, the idea of social and
especially sexual intermixture with them horrifies us beyond
words, although we freely admit that the science of eugenics
is in its infancy as yet; but, amusingly enough, it never
for a moment occurs to us that it may, with perhaps even
better reason, be abhorrent to them. A Japanese gentle
man provides his European guests with curtains, carpets,
arm-chairs, all the stuffy things he thinks they like, but in
quarters sufficiently detached from his own house to pre
serve the latter from contamination. With his fastidious
regard for personal purity he feels that if he once admitted
a relatively dirty white man into his private rooms he would
never get them sweet again. A friend who has often been
in large crowds of Japanese of the lower orders has told
me that in closest contact they emit no odor of flesh or
clothes, not to speak of their abstention from pushing and
elbowing and the use of abusive language. I had myself

THE HAUNTED HOUSE 273

at one time a considerable acquaintance with the persons
and manners of Japanese naval men, on their ships and
ashore; high or low, and without an individual exception,
they were physical health and fine courtesy incarnate. To
watch the politely quiet bearing of a group of their "com
mon " sailors on a crowded tram where white roughs of
an equivalent class hustled and made fun of them was to
feel very strongly that it would be well to leave off send
ing missionaries to the heathen and to see if we could not
learn a little something from them instead. Mouldy prece
dents apart, the best men of the world are entitled to share
and share with the best, irrespective of the color of their
skins as of the color of their hair.

All the old thrones of Privilege, built for men who are
now but ghosts, have been shaken to their foundations
by this wild wind of destiny. They will have to be re-set,
where not altogether rebuilt or altogether swept away —
yes, from the bottom to the top, even to the topmost of
them all. Of that, however, not much need be said. Mon
archy has already (if unconsciously) come to rest on merit,
except in an instance which not only proves this new-formed
rule but is inevitably establishing it for all time. The out
look for the warring nations may be dark and dubious in
many aspects, but if there is one clear point visible it is
that no one man by virtue of a crown and sceptre will ever
have the chance to make hay of the world's vital interests
again. It is just a matter of words — the words that are
the ghosts of things. Call King George President of the
British Republic, and nothing whatever would be altered
from what it is now, though we love the old name best be
cause we are used to it. Let the Belgians, restored to their
national life again, elect King Albert President of their new
born State; no title of honor could make him less honorable
or more. The dignity of the one he wears is what he con
fers on it and not what it confers on him. When, soon or
late, the World Council draws up its new Constitution (from
which war is to be eliminated), it will be taken for granted
that divine-right kingship is no more. The subject will be
tacitly ignored as having no bearing on the deliberations.
That ghost, at any rate, is " laid. "

How we are governed by empty words ! — thought-forms
that once held something no longer there, but which we do
not see is no longer there because the outside looks the same
TOL. ccvii.— NO. 747 18

274 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and the outside is what matters to the unthinking mass
of men. Take the subtlest, the most powerful, the most
tenacious of these imposters — what we call " Christi
anity " — Christianity, that we are so anxious to convert the
heathen to, because we say they cannot be saved without
it — Christianity, that after two thousand years has brought
the Christian world to this! Oh, poor Christianity, that
preached brotherhood and meekness, what dastard crimes are
committed in thy name! Here indeed is a ghost that does
worse than lag superfluous.

When Christianity was the lovely ideal and inspiration
of the peoples it came to, it meant Religion — Religion with
the full significance of the capital R. Christianity was its
habitation as well as its name. Christianity today is like a
bottle corking up the perfume of a flower that has seeded
into other fruit and other flowers ; or like a pupa-case formed
to last for ever on the theory that live things last for ever
also without growth or change, instead of bursting out in
new forms to increase and multiply. The contents have
gone, but they are not lost, only elsewhere. Precious knowl
edge it is to the " so few " who, as Frederic Harrison puts
it, " will listen to a religion that is not up in the sky," that
we have Religion still, renewed, revitalised. No longer " up
in the sky," whence its effect on the affairs of men has
been worse than fruitless, but down on our poor diseased
and blood-soaked earth itself, where it is needed and can
be felt, a new Spirit of the Times moving on the face of
the polluted waters, unwelcome as all new things that dis
turb the customary old, but here to stay and spread and
work changes incalculable. The professional religionist, but
tressed in his powerful traditions, does not see it or wish
to see it, but it has been quietly busy under his nose this
long time. It does not echo the prayers and precepts of
Hebrew prophets and mediaeval monks; it has no special
caste; it knows no arbitrary "sacred" and "secular"; no
hard-and-fast rules and regulations, no orthodoxy and het
erodoxy, no thousand sects fighting one against the other,
each one right and all the others wrong; no burning ques
tions of high and low, Catholic and Protestant, this vestment
or that; no consciousness of a " call " to the seat of judg
ment. It worships in deeds, not words; it devotes its en
ergies and resources to the urgent business at hand — to
raising the ideals of citizenship and the standards of munici-

THE HAUNTED HOUSE 275

pal, national, and international life, to increasing the com
mon store of knowledge and developing the common intel
ligence to make worthy use of it, to bettering the condi
tions and character of mankind. In short, Religion is what
it always has been and will be — unselfish goodness — which
is not the same thing as the religion of church-going.
Church-going in theory is the most direct incentive to good
ness, but in practical result I have not found that it has
the slightest effect upon conduct, while its effects on charac
ter seem often harmful, narrowing the mind and blunting
the moral sense. As a clergyman's wife for over forty years
I have had exceptional opportunities for observation, ancj
I can honestly assert that this conclusion has been forced
upon me quite against my will. However, it only means
that Religion has outgrown the " Establishment," that it
has come to another stage in its existence as a vital force
to uplift the human race, as a child whose school-days are
over comes to the serious business of its adult life. Certainly
it does not mean that the Religion of sincerity and truth
is not as substantial a fact as ever. The War itself is mak
ing proof of it. The good conscience of mankind has been
called out by the shame and agony as a phoenix from flames.
What we are seeing, let us hope, is a vast Spring-clean
ing, a thorough sweep-up of the dust of ages, a thorough
turn-out of the holes and corners where our pernicious bogies
have lurked unseen. Ghosts never " walk " in the fresh air
and the open — everybody knows that; they are what doctors
say tuberculosis is, essentially a house-disease. It is no use
to inquire how they came into houses, flesh or stone; the
origin of life itself would fall short of the ultimate, since
there is no perceptible boundary line between living matter
and the non-living from which it is derived; besides, all that
was their business. Their own houses were their own. It
is why they remain in ours, outstaying their day and use
fulness, which is the question for us to consider. The doc
tors tell us, and we quite believe them, that the White
Plague would vanish in a generation if we all took to living
out of doors; so that it is quite our own fault if we keep
it going. A few of us have come as near to profiting by
the implied advice as irresistible adverse circumstances
allowed, but in the main science has preached that gospel
to deaf ears — those deafest of deaf ears that do not choose
to hear (for a multitude of ghost-suggested reasons). We

276 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

go on building our material homes on the principle of the
primitive tent, instead of covering them with a roof like a
ship's deck, from which rain-water could run off just as
well; where, with suitable parapets and weather screens,
we could largely live by day and sleep by night in light
and freedom and untainted air, with the precious additional
advantages of family privacy and immunity from trespassers.
We continue to dwell with the microbes in unventilated
rooms, and to get ill and die before our time, for no reason
in the world save that it is the custom so to do — the custom
as laid down by the ancestral ghosts. As houses of brick
and stone last a long time, and open ground space is limited
and costly and liable to the incursions of midnight cats and
tramps, Heaven knows when tuberculosis will be stamped
out.

Besides, there is the furniture. Has anyone fully realized
how we are enslaved by our domestic equipment — also or
ganized on the lines approved by the shadowy oracle? " So
sorry," we plead regretfully, in response to attractive in
vitations, " but nobody else being at home I cannot leave
the house;" and the invitors recognize an insuperable dif
ficulty and say' no more except to echo the regrets. What
bodily and mental and spiritual profit in healthful outings,
in free and happy hours, are eternally lost because we have
to stay in to take care of the spoons. But there — you must
have the " proper " things, and make a " proper " use of
them. You must live like a gentleman, like a lady (meaning
the sacred prototypes). Should one demur with a "Must
you really? " the unanswerable reply is ready: " Oh, well,
you know, you have to."

Yes, yes — we know. And you have to pay formal calls
in the proper manner, although each caller tells the other,
who perfectly and as a matter of course agrees with her,
that it is a horrid bore. And give proper dinner parties at
great labor and expense, and go to them wearily, all fine
clothes and artificial smiles, when your natural impulse is
to slip on a loose gown (or coat) and spend the evening with
a book at your own fireside. And dress in the fashion, which
with all its vagaries never forgets to make you uncomfort
able in some way or another. And generally fritter away
your brief time and trifle with your one opportunity, and
wrong not yourself only but your family and your country
and the world and the race in a thousand ways that it is

THE HAUNTED HOUSE 277

impossible to touch upon. All at the instigation of a power
you know to be in itself powerless, and yet yield to because
others do — the others doing so because you do.

But a new day, please God, is dawning. A new era is
emerging out of the hideous storm-welter of the blackest
night in human history; a new world is in making for us.
The darkest hour cannot shake our faith that Right is Might
when all is said and done, and that precious blood poured
out in its defence is never shed in vain. Liberty is going
to be crowned afresh, invested with new power and authority ;
the enslaved nations are to be free as they never were before.
We cannot doubt it — we dare not. So now is our time to
break the little shackles with the big — now, or perhaps never.
It is indeed the chance of our lives — of generations of lives —
to Spring-clean our house, turn out the old tenants whose
leases have so long expired, sweep up after them, and enter
into full possession and enjoyment of what is nobody's but
our own, this dear home of the soul, that should be content
even if it is never to know another. So easy it would be if
we all turned to, or if only enough of us would make the
start! No wild exertions are called for. No violent revo
lutions are necessary. We have but to open doors and
windows wide and let the clean fresh wind and clear light of
day — our day — flow through. Ghosts are things of darkness
and airless places; they vanish automatically when those
shelters are taken from them.

At the least and worst, if we try to oust them and fail,
we lose nothing. And who knows when he fails who only
sees the beginnings of things and never the ends? While
we are making our individual effort we are uplifting our
selves above puerilities, and that is half the battle. The
mere contemplation of " higher things " takes our eyes off
the lower. And no one can look away from these without
arousing curiosity in the bystanders to discover what his
object is. And so their eyes go upward too.

ADA CAMBBIDGE.

DRAMA AND MUSIC

MR. JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS AMPLIFIES SHAW. A NEW

FRENCH OPERA AT THE METROPOLITAN

BY LAWRENCE OILMAN

WE wish that Mr. Jesse Lynch Williams had not seen
fit to disillusion us about Bernard Shaw when introducing to
New York, with a journalistic preamble, his comedy Why
Marry? One can understand Mr. Williams' anxiety to make
quite clear and unmistakable to us the difference between his
own outlook as a dramatist and the outlook of Mr. Shaw.
This was a valuable service, and Mr. Williams, obviously em
barrassed in the performance of an awkward duty, has man
fully accomplished it. But we wish he had not deemed it
necessary to be so frank about Mr. Shaw. Poor dear Mr.
Shaw ! Can he not be left to the fireside peace of his autumnal
years, and cannot we who so long have affectionately com
panioned him be left in tranquility by such grim icono
clasts as. Mr. Williams? One had supposed that even the last
faint smoke-cloud of the great battle of Shaw contra mundum
had vanished. Yet here is the ruthless Mr. Williams, indif
ferent to the appealing spectacle of the venerable Celt at ease
in his armchair, telling us that Mr. Shaw " illustrates the
limitations of the scientific attitude in his sophomoric refusal
to acknowledge the existence of the things that cannot be seen
and felt and demonstrated and tabulated. . . . He intel-
lectualizes everything. . . . There is nothing in Shaw to
show that he knows much of anything about the things of
the spirit, the things which science has not succeeded in card-
cataloguing." These deficiencies, we may infer, are sup
plied in Mr. Williams' own performances as a dramatist,
wherein, presumably, Shaw is taken several steps further —
spiritualized, humanized, made sensitively intuitive.

It is well to have these matters set in a clear light. But
Mr. Williams proves too much. He should have been con
tent to indicate thus helpfully his own depth and breadth

DRAMA AND MUSIC 279

of view, without interning Mr. Shaw in the chilly company
of " scientific " intellectualizers. Where, anyway, did Mr.
Williams get the quaint notion that Shaw is exclusively
cerebral? That is a hoary superstition akin to that other
one which Mr. Williams is shrewd enough to ridicule: that
Shaw is a " farceur," " a clever self -advertising buffoon."
But Shaw " sophomoric," Shaw a victim of " the scientific
attitude " 1 Come, come, Mr. Williams — shoot if you must
" the scientific attitude," but spare that old gray head nodding
by the fire, that fine gray head that has held more poetry and
more romantic idealism than that of any English dramatist
of his generation. Shaw an addict of " science " ! Why, bless
your guileless heart, Mr. Williams, Shaw is as romantic as
Colonel Roosevelt and as visionary as Blake. He is an irre
claimable emotionalist, one of the great rhapsodists of the
theatre, and an incorrigible poet — a poet tortured by incom
parable honesty of vision. As for Mr. Williams' assurance
that Shaw knows little about " the things of the spirit," that,
too, is an old wives' tale unbecoming in so determined a
modernist as Mr. Williams. Shaw has the mystical temper,
and he has the priceless gift of ecstasy. So far from his hav
ing little flair for the things of the spirit, nothing else really
interests him profoundly. Those passages of startling apo
calyptic beauty that flame out in his dialogue from time to
time would long since have betrayed him to everyone, were
it not for the fact that beauty spoken in the modern theatre
has as much chance of reaching its mark as a pea-shooter in
an air-raid.

If Mr. Williams does not believe these obvious truths —
which ought to be stale to him, but seemingly are not — he
need only ask the youngest Vassar undergradute he knows,
who will at once confirm our assertion that Mr. Shaw is now
perceived to be as sentimental as Dickens, as indefatigable
a student of the human heart as a Congressman up for re
election, and as flagrant a mystic as Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

We dare say the reader may wonder why we are discuss
ing at any length Mr. Williams' opinion of Bernard Shaw.
Because his views as to Mr. Shaw's deficiencies throw a help
ful light upon Mr. Williams' own ideals and practices as a
dramatist. Mr. Williams regrets that Shaw leaves us thirst
ing for a realized sense of spiritual things; he regrets that
" there is nothing in Shaw to show that he knows what it
queans for a man and a woman to want each other." But Mr.

280 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Williams, clearly enough, does know these things, and is com
petent to exhibit them. He knows the secret language of the
heart, he has heard the beatings of the spirit's wings. And
what are they like, as he overhears and reports them?

Mr. Williams has written a play about marriage, a play
that exhibits marriage as the various kinds of failure it is
likely to be. Marriage as degrading sensual bondage; mar
riage as a barter of commercial and social values; marriage
as respectable wretchedness for the indigent, ordered but not
paid for by society ; marriage as our old friend, " legalized
prostitution " ; marriage as a penalty ; marriage as a mandate
dictated but not read: marriage, briefly, as the institution
which, so Mr. Nat Goodwin says in the play, is doomed, un
less we all get together and do something about it.

As Mr. Williams exposes and discusses these things, they
seem as true and detestable and absurd as possible. Mr.
Williams is admirably untrammeled, and he has a surgical
wit. His play says much that is sage and justly pondered;
much that, even today, is courageous. There is an abun
dance of comedic efficiency in his writing; if this is an exten
sion of " the new satire," it is, as Bill Nye said of himself,
" pleasant to be thrown amongst."

But if Mr. Williams is strong in the language of satire, he
is weak in the language of feeling. In the handling of senti
ment, of emotion, of those " things of the spirit " in
respect of which he finds Bernard Shaw so defective, Mr.
Williams will give joy, one fears, to whatever discerning
enemies he may have been unfortunate enough to incur. The
young lover in Why Marry? — scientist, free-thinker, radical,
— discovers one evening that his Girl miraculously returns
his passion; and the next morning, over a Sunday breakfast,
he tells the clergyman of the play that though he had never
believed in Heaven, he knows now what it is (yes, Mr.
Williams really makes him say this, with impassioned so
briety). Later on, this entrapped young radical, whom the
other characters regard as a " highbrow," tells his sweet
heart that when she is in his arms he fears nothing from Hell
and wants nothing from Heaven. Still later, in a moment of
dramatic emergency, you hear him say that he " came at the
call of his mate." In short, he sounds, as most of Mr. Wil
liams' characters sound in moments of emotional exaltation,
amazingly like a novel by Laura Jean Libbey. " There is
nothing in Shaw," Mr. Williams has told us, " to show that he

DRAMA AND MUSIC 281

knows what it means for a man and a woman to want each
other." What it means to Mr. Williams is not easy to de
termine with certainty, because his report of it in his most
serious dramatic moments is conveyed to us, with dis-
affecting frequency, in the romantic cliches of shop-girl
fiction. It is a pity that anyone who can at times recall
the wit of Mr. Shaw should revel at other times in what
Lady Dunstane called " the plush of speech." It is a pity,
because, if he had been as scrupulous and vigilant in
his expression of feeling as he is shrewd and delightful in his
manipulation of comedy, Mr. Williams might have given us,
if not (as we have been told) "the most intelligent and
searching satire on social institutions ever written by an
American," at least a satire of uncommon point and distinc
tion.

Why should a thin-blooded creative artist, whose imagi
native quality is as unluscious as shredded wheat, try to evoke
the Orient? Few composers, for example, are as wise as
Beethoven, who, knowing that it was impossible for him to
be musically sensuous, never attempted to express volup
tuous emotion.

M. Henri Rabaud, contemporary Parisian, is less saga
cious than Beethoven. Clearly destined by Heaven to be
one of those who should avoid the Orient as unswervingly as
Mr. Bryan avoids the bacchanalian, he has recklessly sought
entrance into that spell-bound world of sultry enchantments,
of violence and languor, of blazing shrillness and drowsy in
sinuation, of Romance under its scented aphrodisian veil.
Holding carefully under his arm the bag of tonal tricks that
every modem musical Frenchman can conjure with almost
as skillfully as the man of genius from whom they are de
rived, our adventurous Parisian has boldly penetrated the
walled garden of the Arabian Nights and has sought to make
himself at home there. His opera, Marouf, the Cobbler of
Cairo,, is the record of his adventures there. It has recently
been set before us by Mr. Gatti-Casazza at the Metropolitan.

Wagner, said Mr. George Moore, reminded him of " a
Turk lying amid the houris promised by the Prophet to the
Faithful — eyes incensed by kohl, lips and almond nails in
carnadine, . . . and all around subdued color, embroid
ered stuffs, bronze lamps traced with inscrutable designs,
. . . minarets and the dome reflected in the tide, and in a

282 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

sullen sky, reaching almost to the earth, the dome and behind
the dome a yellow moon — a carven moon . . . mysteri
ously marked, a moon like a Creole, her hand upon the circle
of her breast, and through that twilight the sound of foun
tains, like flutes far away." Now that, of course, is Mr.
George Moore exulting in his virtuosity, rather than a life
like picture of Wagner (the Wagner, say, of Siegfried or
Meistersinger) ; but it is a life-like picture of the things we
should be reminded of by any composer intended by Nature
to feel at home in the midst of the Arabian Nights. M.
Rabaud, as we have intimated, was not born to feel at home
in such surroundings. He seems, indeed, as ill at ease and
self-conscious there, as flagrantly anachronistic, as a Watteau
shepherdess at a clam-bake. It would be hard, indeed, to
think of any composer now writing who is less adapted to
comport himself comfortably in the East of the Thousand
and One Nights; for he is not only thin-blooded, but he is
what Arthur Symons once inadequately called Strauss:
un cerebral.

M. Rabaud is one of that numerous brood of contem
porary French music-makers who have looked too lovingly
upon the enticing wine of Claude Debussy's art, and who
have sought to extract its equivalent from their own inferior
vineyards. It is sometimes said that Debussy has founded no
school, as it has been repeatedly said of Wagner that he did
not. Both dicta are absurd, except in the very limited sense
that neither the old romanticist nor the new deliberately
sought to create a body of disciples. In a larger sense the
assertion is nonsense. The music of the two decades follow
ing Wagner's death is as redolent of Wagnerism as a sea-
wind is of brine; and the music that the younger men in
France and England and Russia and America have produced
since Pelleas et Melisande emerged on the stage of the Opera
Comique in 1902 has been steeped in Debussyism. The more
potent among these epigones— men like Ravel and Dukas
and Stravinsky — have contributed some ingredients of their
own; but imagine, nevertheless, the Pavane pour une Infante
Defunte or Daphnis et Chloe, imagine LSOiseau de Feu,
without their groundwork of Debussyism: they become as
destitute as the men of the late nineteenth century would
have been without Tristan and Parsifal.

M. Rabaud, however, is not of the breed of such gifted
fabricators as Ravel and Stravinsky, who, at their best, have

DRAMA AND MUSIC 283

something to say on their own account. He is one of the
horde of under-nourished Lilliputians who flock about the
seductive board of Debussy, and greedily make off with his
leavings. And they not only glean from Debussy's own leav
ings, but they glean from the leavings of those disciples who
themselves are Debussy's beneficiaries. They are an anaemic
and a rather contemptible crew, these little hangers-on in the
banquet-hall of a genius. They are adroit and appreciative
and extraordinarily clever, extraordinarily adept at making
over their pilf erings into ingenious substitutes for the authen
tic. Their expert rehashings of the substance of master-
works are quite marvellous triumphs of aesthetic gastronomy.

Take Marouf, for instance : here is a wing from M. Dukas'
plate, here a feather from Stravinsky's Bird of Fire ; and here
is a bit of Melisande's heart. And, of course, this being an
Arabian Nights opera, we get also much second-hand exotic
ism — the conventionally Eastern flavors and spices that
every competent tonal chef keeps in stock on his shelves : the
characteristic scales and intervals and rhythms and instru
mental garnishings that are to be found on the shelf marked
" Local Color," in the jar labelled " Oriental."

The result is agreeable and in its way admirable. M.
Rabaud is an exceedingly accomplished chef, and his taste
will seem to you above reproach — except in those occasional
moments when you come upon some over-sweetened bon-bon
from the bourgeois table of Massenet or Gounod, the presence
of which, should you indiscreetly reveal it to M. Rabaud,
would mortify him deeply. For, alas, one suspects long be
fore one comes to the end of Marouf that M. Rabaud's deft
modernity is as inorganic as an actor's makeup.

LAWRENCE GILMAN.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH

MAY SINCLAIR'S NEW WAR NOVEL1

BY LAWRENCE OILMAN

THE children of Frances Harrison delighted her because
their slender bodies were " clear and hard." Clearness and
hardness: these qualities are dear to Miss May Sinclair,
devoted biographer of the Harrison clan. They haunt her
mind as the word " dim " used to haunt the mind of William
Butler Yeats before he began to turn a suspicious eye upon
all misty and shadowed loveliness.

Miss Sinclair is obviously, these days, a spiritual Imagist,
adoring clearness and hardness, clean surfaces and definite
edges. Her preoccupation is as plain to the eye of even the
casual analyst as is the reading of neuroses to the dauntless
Freudians of the tea-table. On page sixteen of The Tree of
Heaven it is the slender bodies and the hair of Frances Har
rison's four children, Dorothy and Nicholas and Michael and
John, that are "clear and hard." On page one hundred and
twenty-four it is Dorothy, now a young radical fearful of
being drawn into the Feminist Vortex, who would keep
the "clearness and hardness" of her soul — for she shuddered
before the tremor and the surge of collective feeling: she
loathed the gestures and movements of the collective soul.
On page one hundred and eighty-five it is Michael, making
experiments in " live verse," who seeks " the clear hard
Reality," fearing to collapse into " the soft heap of con
temporary rottenness." Page two hundred and twenty-five
sees Dorothy resisting the emotionalism of the suffrage pro
cession, and discovering that she is now victoriously "clear
and hard." On the very next page Michael again has his
turn, when weariness and disgust of the herd-soul have
caused his face to set "clear and hard." Twenty pages fur-

lTht Tree of Heaven, by May Sinclair. New York: The Macmfflan Co., 1918.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 285

ther on, Michael, horrified this time by the terrible unanimity
of the collective soul as he perceives it in the Futuristic
Vortex, thinks of himself as standing free from it — "clear
and hard in the clean air." In the brain of Nickey arise, on
page two hundred and eighty, "clear, vivid images with hard
outlines." Dorothy's mind is once more exposed to us, on the
three hundredth page, as "clear and hard," and again as
"clear and hard" on page three hundred and sixteen; and
on page three hundred and seventy-three " the clear, hard,
unbreakable thing " is, this time, Michael's mind.

This passionate clinging to sharpness of definition is of
course, with Miss Sinclair, merely a symptom of the genuine
mystic's hatred of blurred contours. For it is here that the
mystic and the Imagist, formally arrayed against each other,
find themselves clasping hands; and so it is possible to dis
cover Miss Sinclair, a flagrant mystic if ever there was one,
fraternizing with mysticism's dearest foes.

Her writing is full of pictures extraordinary for their
clear and luminous beauty:

Of Vera, whose hair " shone like copper-beech leaves,"
who was easily recognized by her forehead that looked so
broad because her eyebrows and her eyes were so long, by
"her fine, unfinished, passionate mouth, her pointed chin;
her eyes, spread wide apart under her wide forehead like
dark moth's wings; they hovered, rested, flickering, vibrat
ing to the fine tips of their corners."

Of Veronica, with her incredible maturity, " her eyes
shining in her dead-white face, far back through deep crys
tal, . . . the sense one got of her soul poised, steady and
still, with wings vibrating " ; so that Michael thought, as he
watched her, " Of course Veronica's soul will come down
like a wild pigeon into the ash-tree in our garden, and she
will think that our ash-tree is a tree of Heaven."

Of Stephen, Irish poet, playwright, essayist, "whose
black hair hung forward in two masses, smooth and straight
and square " ; who had " sorrowful, bitter eyes, and a bitter,
sorrowful mouth, the long Irish upper lip fine and hard-
drawn, while the lower lip quivered incongruously, pouted
and protested and recanted, was skeptical and sensitive and
tender " ; whose " short, high nose had wide yet fastidious
nostrils " (which may lead you, for comparison, back to Mr.
George Moore's Evelyn Innes and the portrait therein of
the same illustrious dreamer.)

286 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

And there was Frances herself, sitting in her terraced
garden under the tree of Heaven, with the view over the
Heath: Frances, who kept her mouth shut when she smiled,
yet whose smile " mocked other people's solemnities " : who
believed in permanence because, in secret, she abhorred the
thought of change, since at thirty-three she had got all
the things she wanted. " Her happiness was a solid, tan
gible thing. She knew where it resided, and what it was
made of, and what terms she held it on. There was no
illusion about it."

Whenever Frances looked at her children, her mouth
tightened itself so as to undo " the ruinous adoration of her
eyes. . . . The bright solidity of their forms helped her to
her adored illusion, the illusion of her childhood as going on,
lasting for ever and ever." It was her four children who
were the center of her world — chiefly her boys, Michael the
poet and solitary, Nickey the subtle bright indomitable,
who was always " top dog " in any encounter, and young
John, whose hair was white gold. And all the time she
knew that the awful thing about your children was that
they were forever dying. The baby Nickey was dead, and
the child Dorothy was dead, and in their places were
strangers, aliens to that unique past which you would have
brought back if you could. She wanted to have all their
lives about her, without mutation, all going on at the same
time.

You meet Frances and Anthony her husband and their
four children, and certain aunts and uncles and brothers-
in-law, and the adulterous Vera, and Veronica, for whom
the walls of other souls were like gossamer veils — you meet
them all under the tree of Heaven at Anthony's place in
Hampstead. You meet them in 1895, and follow them
through the time of the Boer War, and through the time
of the Suffrage Vortex, and the time of the Home Rule-
Ulster Vortex, and the time of the Aesthetic Vortex, up to
and into the time of the Agony. Here is another novel of
the War, but one with a longer background, a more deliber
ate prologuing, than anyone else has attempted. For elab
orateness of preparation its closest analogue is Mr. Ervine's
Changing Winds. In its concern with spiritual con
flicts and precipitations it recalls inevitably Mr. Britling.
With these two it constitutes the most deeply pondered re
port we have had of the behavior of the British soul since

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 287

the Terror began to stalk the world in the summer of 1914.

The special feature of this history is its impaling of a
whole family upon the spit of the War. Its psychic unit
is the Harrison family. Miss Sinclair has wrought as a
polyphonist; her narrative is a true internal history, conduct
ing simultaneously a many-colored web of spiritual adven
tures. Particularly, it studies the emotional and intellectual
soil upon which the stupendous eruption poured its flaming
rain. It exhibits the younger generation of Englishmen—
the generation that came of age in the first decade of the
new century — as they lived in those swirling, restless, semi
nal, ante-bellum days: those days of germinating social con
frontations and crises, of emerging and dissolving intellectual
vistas, those days of unexampled ferment, of immense self-
consciousness. It was a generation that has been stupidly
called " neurotic." It was less " neurotic," of course, than
it was eager and curious and unappeased, incorrigibly chal
lenging and experimental.

It has a restless, avid life in Miss Sinclair's electric writ
ing. Michael and Dorothy, with their fear of the herd and
its monstrous dominating soul, drawn inextricably into the
Vortex — in his case, the convulsion of the new aesthetic
revolt, which sucked him in although he resented its enmity
to his solitary, fugitive, private soul; in Dorothy's case, the
Feminist upheaval, which, though its " swaying and heaving
and rushing forward of the many as one, the tremor and
surge of collective feeling," repelled and sickened her, at the
same time held her fascinated on the edge of the whirlpool.
Nickey, with his subtle, Puck-like temperament, his riant
stoicism. Veronica, with her abiding, frail mysteriousness,
her fourth-dimensional soul: Miss Sinclair denotes and dis
criminates them all with triumphant lucidity, and assembles
them with sacrificial tenderness for the Thunderbolt. These
preparatory chapters (they absorb two-thirds of the book)
are remarkable — remarkable for their probing and sensitive
comprehension, their veracity and charm, their fineness and
elasticity of texture, their recurrent loveliness of mood and
indication.

But Miss Sinclair disappoints in what should have been
(in the convenient speech of the theatre) her Big Act. Her
manipulation of the War is conventional and formularistic.
One had suspected her of nursing for her Big Act a precious
opportunity: the chance to exhibit the inadequacy of " soli-

288 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tary, fugitive, private souls " in the light of a spreading
communal awareness. The larger human and social com
mitments of the War — the vast emancipations and renova
tions that, God willing, are the smouldering dawn behind
its appalling night: these implications concern her, at the
climacteric moment of her history, not at all, though earlier
you had seemed to feel her groping toward them. Instead,
she writes with her mind wholly engaged and exalted by the
spectacle of private sublimations — almost you fancy that you
hear the voice of Mrs. Humphry Ward.

Almost — but not quite. For the essential distinction of
this book, that comes near to yielding compensation for its
restricted humanism, is its saturation in spiritual beauty —
its continued response to a sense of exquisite certitudes that
haunt it like remembered music.

LAWRENCE GILMAN.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF EDWARD EVERETT HALE. By Edward E.
Hale, Jr. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1917.

Humanity, wholesomeness of mind, the joyousness of right living
— these are the qualities that most appeal to one in the letters of Ed
ward Everett Hale.

With the adequate connective narrative supplied by the editor, the
letters fill two large volumes. They are, from the purely literary
point of view, a trifle disappointing. Considering Dr. Kale's effective
ness as a preacher and his rare gift as a fictionist, the letters con
tain fewer suggestive views or entertaining discoveries, or penetrating
appreciations of men and things, than one might anticipate. They
are, for the most part, simple, unceremonious accounts of the writer's
activities and interests.

But if one misses in these pages the art of the epistolary essayist or
critic, this fact only serves to call attention to something more impor
tant — the strong impression produced by the record as a whole. The
two volumes of the Life and Letters preserve as fully as may be Dr.
Hale's character and example, and they supply the best possible equiva
lent for personal knowledge of him.

His personality is diffused through the narrative and letters — the
personality of a man who learned in good time how to live, how to rule
and coordinate the impulses of a complex nature, how to free himself
from the littleness and hypocrisy and unreality of ordinary living —
how to be (ambiguous term!) " sincere." The significance of the nar
rative is felt as a continual demonstration of the fact that liberal
Christianity, in the manifold relations, both private and public, of a life
not narrowly ministerial, does, in the pragmatic sense, really " work."

Even the accounts given of Dr. Hale's literary tastes and methods
confirm this impression. His stories always had a rather definite
human meaning; they were frequently based upon a fantastic idea,
capable of the most entertaining developments; they were invariably
worked out with a Defoe-like verisimilitude that testified to the
author's love for "transforming machinery into life."

The ethical motive in his fiction, to be sure, can be stressed too
much. To suppose that Dr. Hale wrote his stories as a moralist or
sermonizer, would be to miss the very point of his life — his success,
that is, in making life religious and religion vital, that concreteness
and actuality of his which saved him from self-consciousness and
formalism in every thing that he said or did. No more than O. Henry,
who, like him, used to breathe the breath of life into whimsical plots

VOL. ccvii.— NO. 747 19

290 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

based on sound ideas, was he a moralist disguised as a fiction-writer.

Beyond pointing out the cumulative effect of personality which
the letters convey, it seems scarcely profitable to attempt to charac
terize the story told in the Life and Letters. It is a story variously
interesting, of course, zestful in its record of manifold achievements,
appealing in the kindliness, the liberality of thought, the practical ideal
ism that are everywhere displayed in it. But it is not a story the quali
ties of which can be justly displayed by quotation of particular pass
ages or by a bare recital of deeds. In the main, the impression con
veyed is simply one of unity of character, resulting in personal ef
fectiveness ; but there are indications, too, of the " elements " out of
which, as the saying is, the man's character was " formed," and these
bits of analysis, or of material for analysis, must in some sort be sum
marized as being not the least interesting features of the work, serv
ing, indeed, to enhance the meaning of Dr. Male's life.

In the first place, then, one notes that Edward Everett Hale in
youth showed no powerful bent toward the kind of life that he after
wards led. Before becoming a minister and a leader of men, he was
simply a normal, level-headed young man of scholarly and literary
tastes and of winning personality. He " thought Mr. Emerson half
crazy; disliked abolition, doubted as to total abstinence, and in gen
eral, followed the advice of [his] Cambridge teachers, who were from
the President down to janitor, all a hundred years behind their time."
He was not especially interested in the anti-slavery movement, though
he greatly admired one of its leaders, Dr. John G. Palfrey. Even of
the ministry he had at first no very exalted conception, thinking of it
simply as an occupation that afforded an excellent opportunity for a
man of intelligence to indulge scholarly and literary tastes while at the
same time helping and advising others.

Needless to say, his ideas were in later life greatly enlarged.
Before he had been long the pastor of the Church of the Unity at
Worcester he had formed in his mind the ideal, toward which he ever
afterwards strove, of the church as an active social factor in Amer
ican life. In a speech delivered at some religious anniversary in
Worcester he is reported to have said that he " knew very little about
the negative side of Unitarianism and never succeeded in understand
ing it or explaining it. Its positive side gave him more to do than he
ever did and suggested all he had to say at the meeting. The business
of the church was positive." When, in 1856, he accepted the call to
Boston, he already felt that the work of a minister should not be
confined to the pulpit or the parish. " I soon saw," he wrote in 1865,
" that the man who meant to move the community by moral agencies
for its good, needed a wider base for his operations than any deference
given to the pulpit, even in its best successes, would give him. My
theory is that the pulpit gives a man the influence which he must use
in other walks and spheres, than the pulpit alone." How his activities
widened, how he employed every faculty of his versatile mind, includ
ing his literary gift, in the service to which he felt himself called, how
he became a pioneer in social work and an effective worker for what
he called " the New Civilization," need not here be told.

The significant thing in all this is not that the man's nature was

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 291

transformed, but rather that it was unified and coordinated. Dr.
Kale's tastes and talents, his interests and enjoyments, remained vari
ous. He continued to be in a certain sense conservative. No more
than in college days was he, in any strict sense, a Transcendentalist.
Far from being subdued to what he worked in, he seems to have lived
a richer and more intense personal life than ever. His usefulness,
therefore, was built upon a broad foundation of normal humanity.
In other words, one may say that in him the natural all-around man,
rational in thought and virtuously epicurean in tastes, was reconciled
with the religious enthusiast.

This reconciliation was one of two important adjustments which
seem to have taken place in him. The second of these was the recon
ciliation of the individualist with the altruist. Individualism he came
by honestly from his New England ancestry. In youth it was one
of his prominent characteristics and it continued to be so in his mature
life. Though Dr. Hale was a great organizer, organization as such
did not especially appeal to him, because organization is machinery
and machinery cramps individual initiative. The ideas that we now
name "efficiency" or "scientific management" did not attract him.
What he liked to do was to " transform machinery into life." Among
his writings, if The Man Without a Country presents the claims of
the life in common, My Double and How He Undid Me urges, though
with a humor that is the sign of reconcilement, the claims of the indi
vidual life. Thus Dr. Kale's ideal of service did not destroy, but
simply controlled, his independent personality. In his nature, the indi
vidualist and the altruist both had elbow-room.

The summing-up of these considerations, though rather obvious,
is perhaps worth making. Dr. Hale, admittedly a man of rare gifts,
was the reverse of what we ordinarily call a genius — that is, he did
not, as the genius does, follow an inward impulse of a special kind
without knowing how or why. Nor was he, except in one way, a
profound thinker: he was not one of those who continually grope, as
some must do, for hidden meanings, who create for themselves prob
lems, or who find that their ideals are " bitter gods to follow." But
he was one of the wisest of men in that he settled with himself the
great essential questions of living, letting the more abstruse questions
go ; and he was one of the best of men because he lived, consistently,
energetically, and with an unobstructed will, according to his faith.
His way of life, though not imitable in its special features by men of
smaller minds and weaker powers, seems in principle so much the
best way for most of us that his Life and Letters are as good as a
philosophy.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOHN FISKE. By John Spencer Clark.
Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917.

The life of John Fiske was contemporary with a tremendous for
ward movement in human thought. The rapidity of this advance is
strikingly indicated by the experience of Fiske himself, first as a
student and then as a lecturer in Harvard College. In 1861, when
he was a junior in the college, young Fiske was threatened by President

292 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Felton with expulsion if he should be found guilty of disseminating
Positive or Evolutionary ideas among the students. Later, on the
invitation of President Eliot, he delivered at Harvard a notably suc
cessful series of lectures upon the once forbidden theme. In the
University there had occurred within a period of eight years a com
plete revolution; and although in the world outside prejudice against
the new philosophy as irreligious continued for a long time to be
formidable, the battle for freedom of thought was in effect already won.
The full liberalizing influence of the new movement, John Fiske
understood and interpreted better, perhaps, than any other man of his
time; and his life and letters are of the greatest interest not only
because they show the progress of the Evolutionary idea, but also
because they enable one to understand those qualities of mind and
heart that made John Fiske so able a mediator between science and
religion.

As an interpreter and popularizer of liberal philosophic thought,
Fiske may be not improperly compared with Emerson, whose order
of ideas seemed to Fiske old-fashioned, and with William James, who
in Fiske's own time was introducing a newer fashion in philosophy.
All three men preached a kind of lay gospel; all three lifted bur
dens from men's minds and thus earned the affectionate regard of
their readers; all three possessed a remarkable individual power of
expression.

It is as the principal expounder of the religious implications of
Evolution that John Fiske joins hands with Emerson. In 1838 Emer
son had written in his diary an account of his idea of God which Fiske
afterwards endorsed as expressing exactly that conception which he
had himself endeavored to set forth in his writings, and which, so far
as its temper and style is concerned, might readily be mistaken for
a passage from one of Fiske's own letters. But Emerson belongs to
the pre-scientific period of philosophy, and in Evolution as a theory
supported by scientific evidence he appears to have had no interest.

It is as a scientific philosopher that Fiske comes into comparison
with James. The two men had much in common. But James went
in speculation far beyond the scope of the Cosmic Philosophy and
indeed came in time to reject a part at least of what Emerson had
never troubled himself to understand. His strictures upon the Evolu
tionary philosophy are well known.

The work of John Fiske, if far less original, appears to be more
firmly based, and if the Cosmic Philosophy, even more conspicuously
than Pragmatism, fails to say the last word about metaphysical prob
lems, it remains nevertheless valuable in its entirety as a formulation
and development of the widest and most fertile generalization that
has been made in modern times.

From youth onward, John Fiske had a singularly prosperous mental
development. He was always, as De Quincey said of himself, an
" intellectual creature " — and as healthy-minded as he was intellectual.
His boyish letters zestfully trace his mental progress, reflecting the
character of "a boy who loved knowledge and his mother in about
equal proportions." At the age of eleven he was studying geometry
and logic, and had read four books of Caesar, eight books of Virgil,

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 293

four orations of Cicero, and a considerable amount of Greek. His
appetite for knowledge was voracious; yet when one of his masters
forbade him to study during play time he was boy enough to turn
with delight to the pleasure of outdoor life.

Naturally thorough and systematic in everything he did, young
Fiske before entering college received, in a limited number of subjects,
a training that would now be considered inordinately severe, while
his own interest led him to do a large amount of reading in history,
philosophy, and the then neglected sciences. Yet he seems never to
have become sated, and, unlike J. S. Mill, he experienced no unpleasant
reaction in after life.

That power of simple and lucid expression which afterward won
him so much admiration from men like Darwin and Huxley, as well
as from the general public, was evident in him even in youth. Letters
of his, written as early as his thirteenth year, are perfectly correct
and coherent in style — though by no means stiff or priggish — and
except for the simplicity of the subject-matter show no signs of the
writer's immaturity.

When at the age of eighteen John Fiske entered Harvard as a
Sophomore, he already possessed a thoroughly trained mind. His
regular college studies he found rather easy, and although he never
unduly slighted these, he devoted no small part of his energy to the
enlargement of his knowledge and the settling of his convictions
through independent reading and thought. He was not long in find
ing himself. Before he was twenty-two, he had entered upon what
proved to be his career by writing those essays upon Buckle's historical
theories and upon the evolution of language which so impressed Pro
fessor Youmans that he searched the young author out and induced
him to open correspondence with Herbert Spencer.

It was one of Fiske's great merits as a writer upon philosophy
that without undue simplification of his ideas he was always able to
make his meaning wonderfully clear and interesting even to those
who had little previous acquaintance with the subjects of his discourse.
Unlike Spencer, he was an artist in words and not a mere logic-
grinder. As regards this matter a passage in a letter written to Fiske
by Darwin, who had just been reading the Cosmic Philosophy, is
illuminating. " With the exception of special points," wrote the modest
founder of the theory of evolution, " I did not even understand H.
Spencer's general doctrine, for his style is too hard work for me.
I never in my life read so lucid an expositor (and therefore thinker)
as you are; and I think I understand nearly the whole — perhaps less
clearly about Cosmic Theism and Causation than other parts."

Expository skill and logical clearness, however, could not alone
have given Fiske his strong appeal. His power lay quite as much in
the fact that he felt the need, and saw the possibility, of reconciling
religion with science.

Here again he differed from Spencer, who seems to have been
quite indifferent as to the effect of his doctrine of " the Unknowable "
upon religious belief. Apropos of this difference, it is amusing to
observe how warily Spencer in some of his earlier letters to Fiske
avoided committing himself as to the religious implications of his

294 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

friend's ideas. That he did finally endorse these implications is a
high tribute to Fiske, and the endorsement is in itself worth quoting,
not only because it is characteristic in form, but also because it is
perhaps the warmest utterance ever reported to have fallen from the
lips of a man whose temperament seems to have been as frigid and
dry as a winter's day in the Northland. At the close of his visit in
America, Spencer was given a farewell dinner at which Fiske delivered
an address upon the philosophic relation of the doctrine of Evolution
to religion. " Fiske," cried Spencer, when the speaker had finished,
" should you develop to the fullest the ideas you have expressed here
this evening, I should regard it as a fitting supplement to my life-work."

To do the work that Fiske did a man was needed who was at the
same time sternly scientific in mind and deeply religious in tempera
ment. It was by reconciling the differences in his own nature that
Fiske became able to cheer and elevate the minds of many to whom
the antagonism between religion and science seemed unutterably de
pressing. How deep and sensitive his nature really was one cannot
fully understand without reading in the Life and Letters the story of
his religious experience and the account of his inner struggle to free
himself from dogma while preserving faith. Moreover, his artistic
temperament — which revealed itself in a love of music that led him
to study the art of musical composition, and which made itself ap
parent in many poetic passages of his writings — is seen to have been
a considerable if not indispensable element of his greatness.

Besides setting forth with great fulness and coherence a wealth
of interesting facts regarding Fiske's ancestry, the course of his life,
his habits and modes of thought, the Life and Letters is richly reward
ing in the familiar delineations it gives of such notable men as Darwin,
Spencer, Huxley, and Lewes. Mr. Clark has done thorough and
thoughtful work. His narrative is not merely a setting for Fiske's
letters, but a well considered biography broadly and variously
interesting.

THE COMING DEMOCRACY. By Hermann Fernau. New York:
E. P. Duttpn & Co., 1917.

Except for the frequent employment of the phrase "We Ger
mans," the earlier chapters of The Coming Democracy read almost
as if they had been written by an American or by an Englishman:
they have indeed precisely the same tone of righteous indignation,
precisely the same overwhelming argumentative massiveness, which
have become familiar to Americans in a multitude of " war books."
They are even a trifle tedious to a reader already well versed in the
literature of the subject with which they deal. For the unfortunate
fact is that within the space of a few years Prussian bad faith and
Prussian medievalism have become almost outworn subjects for dis
course — though by no means outworn motives for action. It is scarcely
more possible to write anything fresh or startling upon these subjects
than it would be to compose an original and moving address upon the
atrocities of Nero. The issues between Imperial Germany and the

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 295

democratic Allies, have passed beyond the sphere of judicial discus
sions. Our minds are now made up, and what we heed most now
are encouragements and aids to effective action. Thus, so long as
Mr. Fernau speaks from the point of view of the enemies of Germany
— so long as he confines himself to demonstrating the responsibility
of the Imperial Government for the world war, to piercing the shallow-
ness and inconsistency of German pretexts and justifications, to expos
ing the spirit of the German dynasty and of the German military
class, — we approve him, indeed, because he, as a German citizen, sees
and courageously expresses what we as American citizens have for a
long time seen and expressed without hesitation ; but we are not greatly
enlightened or thrilled.

Books which go more deeply into these matters are available to
all readers — treatises which fully and dispassionately refute German
claims by analyzing diplomatic correspondence and historic facts,
studies of German social and political life which reveal with clearness
the German conception of the State and the superficial character of
German liberties and German social reforms. Upon some questions,
moreover, the author deliberately, and perhaps wisely, refrains from
touching more than incidentally. He says nothing, for example, about
the Prussian Constitution, the Prussian franchise and Upper House,
the privileged position of the Junkers in the Prussian political system,
or the Prussian policy in Poland. On these features of the German
system the controversialist will find more facts unfavorable to the
Imperial Government even in Prince von Buelow's Imperial Germany
than in this book of Mr. Fernau's.

Furthermore, the author is obviously too sincere, too hopeful, a
German patriot ever to be quite happy when he writes from the stand
point of J'accuse. His moral indignation lacks the point of stinging
satire or the probing penetration of intellectual contempt.

But when Mr. Fernau begins to write as in some sort the spokes
man of a section of the German people, when his voice seems to become
the voice of that truer Germany which we hope exists, when he adopts
the point of view expressed in the title of his earlier book, Because I
Am a German, then he interests and moves us in the highest degree.

Two things are firmly believed by perhaps a majority of the Ger
man people today. The first is the theory of the Imperial Govern
ment, — a theory supported by sophistical reasoning and fabricated
evidence, — that the war is from the German point of view a defensive
war. The second is that German progress and prosperity has been
absolutely dependent upon the successful carrying out of the policies
of the German Imperial Government.

Neither of these beliefs is indicative of a hopeless perversion of
character. When a people in which the fear of invasion is deeply
ingrained is assured that it has been attacked and is immediately there
after mobilized; when patriotic citizens have been worked up to the
highest pitch of enthusiastic self-sacrifice over a "holy defensive
war," what likelihood is there that, after the struggle has begun and
while the enemy is doing his utmost in the way of apparent aggression,
the rank and file will coolly reconsider their views? And since the
unification of Germany through the warlike policy of Bismarck, and

296 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

through the militarism and centralization of the nation after his time,
has seemed even to foreign observers so indisputably to account for
German success in various fields, how can one expect Germans them
selves to take a contrary attitude ? Could they possibly see that " if
Bismarck had welded the German races into national unity without
any war, the national prosperity of Germany would, thanks to the
genius of the German merchant and technologist, have developed just
as brilliantly . . . as it did through Bismarck's annexation and arma
ment policy" ?

Such questions are powerfully suggested by Mr. Fernau's discus
sion and they are certainly not altogether wanting in pertinence. Much
more to the point, however, are certain passages which go far toward
convincing the reader that much of what is advanced as gospel truth
by the Imperial Government and that is officially taught and promul
gated, is not believed by the German people as a whole. Though the
people of Germany are grievously mistaken about many things, they
are not, according to Mr. Fernau, by any means insane.

" The simple German instinctively felt that a danger and a reaction
were concealed in the events of the past forty years, but he could
not and dared not realize the secret opposition which necessarily arose
in a feudal military state like Prusso-Germany between dynastic rights
and privileges and nineteenth-century notions of civil law." Repres
sion both kept him in ignorance and enforced a sometimes unwilling
outward conformity to the official view. Consequently, that concep
tion of law, civil and international, which in most civilized countries
has passed into political practise, " remained in Prusso-Germany pun
ishable, even as a theory/'

Repression and arbitrary direction, too, very largely explain that
rigidity of form and that repellent spirit of force-worship which prevails
in most phases of German art and culture. This art, this culture is,
in fact, not true Germanism, but " merely the will-to-power of the
dynasty expressed in scientific and artistic forms." The unfortunate
result has been that " almost everything that has been said about
German culture in France, England, and Italy, since the beginning
of the war, is false; because it is impossible for the people of those
countries to conceive that the national idea of right and of culture can
be a dictate from above and consequently they believe that it emanates
from the people."

Nevertheless, despite the official dictation and the official falsifica
tion, despite the natural disposition of the average German to rever
ence the wisdom of his political rulers, to accept the teachings of the
learned as gospel truth, to bow humbly to the expert in all departments
of knowledge, freedom of thought and of conscience in Germany,
declares Mr. Fernau, is by no means dead. " The fact is," he writes,
"that we Germans for the last hundred years have not dared to be
what we actually are and would like to show ourselves; namely, the
descendants and the upholders of the classical Germanism of Leibnitz,
Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Humboldt, Uhland." Among private
individuals, sitting at their firesides, this older Germanism, we are
told, still prevails; public expression of it is cut off by the dread of
certain paragraphs in the penal code. Thus, when Germans begin

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 297

to speak or write for the public, they "execute veritable egg-dances
in order to avoid the necessity of speaking the truth."

But perhaps this love of older and better ideals represents only
a feeble and flickering sentiment, while the real convictions of the
people do in fact, as they seem to do, support the policy of the dynasty.
To such a supposition Mr. Fernau would reply, first, that, according
to his own personal knowledge, " two-thirds of the German electorate
have a horror of a war of conquest, secretly condemn the crimes
committed against Belgium, and can only conceive the world-war as
the result of Cossack invasions, bombs dropped by aviators, and ' actual
attacks ' " ; secondly, that there is in Germany no large party which
desires the monarchy for its own sake ; thirdly, that on every occasion
on which the majority of the people has been allowed to express its
views upon vital questions it has disapproved the policy of the Govern
ment ; finally, that if in 1914 Germany had had a responsible parliament,
truly representing the people, there can be no manner of doubt that
the military class would have been unable to commit the country to war.

It is not without reason, perhaps, that Americans during the last
year or so have become somewhat less receptive to the message of
Mr. Fernau's book than they would have been at the time when the
author began to write. " Make no mistake," we have been exhorted ;
" we are fighting the whole German people, and they are heart and
soul against us." Still, we may hope; still, we may retain a certain
faith in human nature; still we may feel encouraged to believe that
the coming of democracy in Germany will find a majority of the
German people far more ready to accept it than we had hitherto sup
posed. Moreover, Mr. Fernau's right-minded and fervent, if perhaps
too optimistic, vindication of the soul of the German people, fits in
admirably with that distinction which President Wilson as the spokes
man of America drew between the German people and the rulers of
Germany.

CANON SHEEHAN OF DONERAILE. By Herman J. Heuser, D.D.
New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1917.

In this puzzling world there are few intellectual experiences that
are more enjoyable and beneficial than acquaintance with a man whose
personal qualities enable one, not to forget, but to transcend, differ
ences of creed. A most religious man, a sincere Catholic, Canon
Sheehan impresses the non-Catholic reader of his books as a great
human being, and the more so for being a Catholic, for his religion is
an inseparable part of him. To Protestants as well as to Catholics,
therefore, his life-story should prove appealing and profitable.

Patrick Sheehan was born in the year 1852, in County Cork. At
the age of fourteen he was sent to St. Colman's College, a preparatory
training school in the diocese of Cloyne, in which school he was fitted
for entrance to the philosophical department of the Theological Semi
nary at Maynooth.

After completing his studies, he was appointed to the English
mission. He went first to the Plymouth diocese and then as curate

298 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to the Church of the Sacred Heart at Exeter. For a time he was
administrator in Exeter Parish. In 1887 he returned to Ireland to
take up the duties of a village curate. In 1881 he was called to the
Cathedral in Queenstown, but later, after an illness, he was sent back
to his native parish. From 1895 to the day of his death he was Parish
Priest of Doneraile. Towards the close of his life he received from
the Pope the degree of Doctor of Divinity and from the Bishop of his
own diocese an appointment as Canon of Cloyne Chapter.

A man of learning and of finely tempered culture, Canon Sheehan
was first and always a priest. Just what being a priest meant to him,
may best be told in his own words : the vocation to the priesthood he
summarized as "the virtue of loving men and the talent of making
them know it." His character — so largely the expression of this
thought — is beautifully portrayed in his letters and in Doctor Heuser's
narrative.

What this thoughtful and fine-spirited man wrote on general ques
tions may be read with pleasure and advantage by those of another
faith and a different point of view. His somewhat critical discus
sions, for example, of Catholic education, and of emigration from
Ireland to America as seen from the viewpoint of the Church, are
thought-provoking.

In all his writings, — letters, essays, and novels, — an idealistic and
poetic spirit makes its influence felt in pleasant and seemly ways ; and
his fiction is really remarkable — almost sui generis — in its happy delin
eations of priestly life and in its shrewd and sympathetic delineations
especially of Irish peasant character. " The supernatural shines vividly
through almost every character," wrote one critic concerning My New
Curate; "nevertheless, there is not a goody-goody line in it." Of the
same novel, Joel Chandler Harris wrote to his daughter : "I am glad
your teacher enoyed the book, My New Curate. It is a piece of real
literature, and is the finest book I have read in many a day."

Canon Sheehan's breadth of thought may be indicated with approxi
mate fairness by quoting some passages from a letter he wrote to
his intimate friend, Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes : " Would
you be surprised to hear that in what you say about intellect you
come very near the dogmatic teaching of the Church, especially as
revealed in the late Papal Encyclical against ' Modernism/ ... It
is a condemnation of ' emotionalism ' or ' intuitionalism/ as the sole
motive of faith. The Church takes its stand upon reason as the solid
foundation on which Faith rests. . . . But, as you say, intellect has
its limitations, which we are all painfully conscious of ; and therefore
if we are to reach the Truth, there must be some other avenue. This
we call faith. . . . If we accept * intellect ' alone as the norm and
standard of truth, we drift at once into the belief that all knowledge
is relative, and there is no absolute truth. This won't do ! The Abso
lute Mind alone can discern absolute Truth. The moment you speak
of limitations, or say ' we cannot know/ you admit that. Therefore,
what we can know about the Universe is just what reason verifies
and what Absolute Truth has chosen to reveal." The whole letter is.
profoundly interesting.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY

(December 4 — January 3)

THE ninth month of American participation in the World War
opened with a technical extension of our responsibilities through a
formal declaration of war against "the Imperial and Royal Austro-
Hungarian Government," upon the ground that it " has committed
repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the
United States." The joint resolution making this declaration passed
the Senate on the afternoon of December 7, after a very brief debate,
by a unanimous vote. Several Senators who opposed the declaration
of war against Germany voted for this resolution. Senator La Follette
left the Senate chamber while the debate was proceeding and returned
just after the vote had been taken. He explained then that he had
gone to his office to draft an amendment to the resolution, embodying
a declaration that the United States would not agree to depriving
Austria-Hungary of any territory which it held on August 1, 1914.
If that amendment had been accepted he would have voted for the
resolution, otherwise he would have voted against it.

In accordance with the recommendations of the message of the
President the declaration was confined to Austria-Hungary, and did
not include Bulgaria and Turkey, although there was strong sentiment
in both Senate and House for such inclusion. In the Senate the vote
was 74 ayes and no nays. In the House, which voted a few minutes
after the Senate did, there were 365 ayes, including the lady from
Montana, Miss Rankin. One negative vote was recorded in the House,
that of Meyer London, Socialist, of New York.

While the United States was thus extending the range of its
war activities, and making new efforts toward the effective organiza
tion of its war resources, the peace talk that has accompanied all
operations in Europe for many months took on more volume and a
little more possible direction than ever before. This was due, in chief
part, to the Russian collapse and the attempts of the Germans to secure
the largest and most immediate advantage from that situation. The
peace conference, preparations for which occupied a considerable share
of public attention the world over for several weeks, met formally at
Brest-Litovsk on December 22. It was attended by delegations from
Germany, headed by von Kuehlmann, the Foreign Minister; Austria-
Hungary, headed by Count Czernin; Bulgaria, Turkey and Russia.
The Russians submitted terms including: 1. No annexations, and
prompt evacuation of occupied territory. 2. Restoration of political
independence to nations that have lost it during the war. 3. Right of

800 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

self-definition for non-independent national groups. 4. Defense of
rights of minorities in mixed nationalities through educational freedom
and administrative autonomy where possible. 5. No contributions.
Private losses to be indemnified from general fund contributed by
all belligerents. 6. No economic boycotts. Self-determination for
colonies.

Pending the reply of the Teutonic delegates to these proposals the
Kaiser addressed the second German army, on the French front, say
ing : "If the enemy does not want peace then we must bring peace
to the world by battering in with the iron fist and shining sword the
doors of those who will not have peace."

On Christmas day Count Czernin, for the Teutonic allies, submitted
a response to the Russian statement purporting to accept the principle
of no annexations and no indemnities, but declaring that the Russian
proposals " could be realized only in case all the Powers participating
in the war obligate themselves scrupulously to adhere to the terms, in
common with all peoples." Political independence to be restored to
those nations which lost it during the war, but self-definition of non-
independent peoples "must be solved by each Government, together
with its peoples, in a manner established by the Constitution." Fur
thermore, " the protection of the rights of minorities constitutes an
essential component part of the constitutional rights of peoples to
self-determination." The Teutons were ready to renounce indemnifica
tion for war costs and war damages, but each belligerent must pay
the expenses for maintenance of its war prisoners " as well as for
damage done in its own territory by illegal acts of force committed
against civilian nationals belonging to the enemy." This last clause
was apparently laying a foundation for use in the case of settlement
for Belgium.

As to the last clause of the Russian terms, covering colonies, Ger
many, being the only one of the Teutonic allies possessing colonies,
replied alone, with the assertion that " the return of colonial territories
forcibly seized during the war constitutes an essential part of German
demands, which Germany cannot renounce under any circumstances."
Germany also declared that the right of self-determination, as far as
her colonies were concerned, " is at present practically impossible."
The Russian principles of economic relations were approved wholly
and claimed as their own by the Teutons.

The submission of this statement by the Teutonic allies caused the
Russians to ask for a ten days recess of the conference in order that
they might submit the proposal to their allies. As this is written the
cable reports that the Russian delegates have broken off negotiations
and returned to Petrograd because of German insistence on holding
strategic points in Poland and elsewhere.

Not a ripple was produced in Washington by this German peace
move. The only opinion expressed by public officials and prominent
men generally was that it was best to follow the leadership of the
President. The White House maintained absolute silence on the sub
ject. It was obvious that the essential requirement for peace laid down
in the President's reply to the Pope, when he declined to treat with the
present German Government because it is not to be trusted, is not

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 301

attempted to be met by the Brest-Litovsk proposal. Our European
allies, having accepted the President's leadership and statement of war
aims on previous occasions, seem disposed again to await his response
to the invitation from Brest-Litovsk.

While our enemies are mancevering to obtain the utmost possible
advantage, by peace or otherwise, from the collapse of Russia, our
own preparations for effective war making are progressing with
materially increased speed. The close of the month was signalized
by the issuance of a proclamation by the President, on December 26,
putting all the railroads of the country under Government control for
the period of the war, and appointing William G. McAdoo, Secretary
of the Treasury, to be Director General of Railroads. This action
was taken under authority of the act of August 29, 1916, — the army
appropriation act — which empowers the President, " in time of war
... to take possession and assume control of any system or systems
of transportation, or any part thereof, and to utilize the same, to the
exclusion, as far as may be necessary, of all other traffic thereon, for
the transfer or transportation of troops, war material and equipment,
or for such other purposes connected with the emergency as may be
needful or desirable."

The Director General was empowered by the President to perform
the duties laid on him through the directors and other officials of the
railroad systems, and except as the Director General's orders provide
the roads remain subject to existing laws and the regulations of the
Interstate Commerce Commission, and to the orders of the regulating
commissions of the various States. But the orders of the Director
General are specifically made paramount.

Of utmost importance to the roads themselves was the paragraph
of the proclamation providing that the Director shall negotiate with
the roads for " just and reasonable compensation for the possession,
use and control of the respective properties on the basis of an annual
guaranteed compensation above accruing depreciation and the main
tenance of their properties, equivalent, as nearly as may be, to the
average of the net operating income thereof for the three year period
ending June 30, 1917."

Director General McAdoo assumed control of the roads under
this proclamation at noon on December 28, but for the purposes of
accounting the Government control did not begin until midnight of
December 31.

It had been apparent throughout the month that something of this
kind was soon to come. On December 5 the Interstate Commerce
Commission submitted a special report to Congress pointing out the
necessity of operating the railroads of the country in a unified system
in order to solve the perplexing problem of furnishing adequate trans
portation during the war. Two alternatives were suggested by the
Commission. One involved special legislation permitting conjoint
operation under the existing management of the roads. This necessi
tated the repeal or suspension of the anti-trust and anti-pooling laws
so far as they applied to combinations of railroads, for both Federal
and State laws stand in the way of such a combination of railroads as
is necessary to carry out the plan. The other suggestion was for the

802 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

President to take over control of the roads under the act of August
29, 1916. The Commerce Commission suggested that if this were done
Congress should provide ample return to the roads for upkeep, better
ments and use while under Government operation.

The Commission advised Congress in this report that if the roads
were to continue to operate under their own control it would still be
necessary for the Government to assist in financing them, because of
heavily increased expenses, and because of Government occupation of
the securities market with bond sales for war expenses and for loans
to allies. Even if the fifteen per cent increase of freight rates asked
by the roads were granted by the Commission they would find difficulty
in providing adequate war service.

The railroads had been operating under a voluntary cooperative
agreement effected early in April. The Railways War Board, consist
ing of a committee of railroad executives selected by the roads, under
the chairmanship of Fairfax Harrison, head of the Southern Railway,
believed that the voluntary system of unification was adequate to secure
maximum efficiency. Mr. Harrison pointed out that no interest had
declined, for selfish reasons, to respond to the requirements of the
cooperative organization. He declared that the roads needed a Gov
ernment traffic manager, to represent all Government departments and
secure the prompt and orderly transportation of Government traffic
and avoid the excessive, wasteful and hampering issuance of prefer
ence orders, which had been the chief cause of congestion and delay
in transportation. The roads also needed supplies and equipment which
had been ordered and which they were ready to pay for. But priority
orders were needed to obtain the 3,800 locomotives and 33,000 cars
under order. Also 2,000 additional locomotives and 150,000 cars would
be needed for 1918. An increase in rates was needed to meet the
increase in operating expenses, but Government aid was needed also in
providing new capital for equipment.

The necessity of operating the railroads of the country in a unified
system was emphasized by the inability of the Fuel Administration to
prevent coal shortage and famine in different sections, despite all that
could be done through priority orders and through such efforts as
could be exerted in the absence of complete control. Dr. Garfield, the
Fuel Administrator, told the Senate committee which was investi
gating the coal situation that the policy of competition which had been
adopted by the United States had made impossible the employment of
the railroads in one combined system, but that such employment of
the roads was essential to the relief of the fuel shortage.

The first order of Director McAdoo was a telegram to all railroad
presidents and directors requesting them to " move traffic by the most
convenient and expeditious routes." Thus the pooling of the railroads
was made effective. Mr. McAdoo asked the Railways War Board
and all the cooperating committees formed under it to remain in service
" for the present." Three days later, however, he accepted the resigna
tions of the Board and appointed an Advisory Committee headed by
John Skelton Williams, Comptroller of the Currency, with whom are
associated Hale Holden, president of the Burlington, a member of the
old Railways War Board ; Henry Walters of the Atlantic Coast Line ;

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 303

and Edward Chambers and Walker D. Hines of the Santa Fe. He
also appointed A. H. Smith, president of the New York Central, to
be supervisor of the trunk lines in the East and North, and Mr.
Smith issued his first orders aimed at clearing up all congestion.

Mr. McAdoo accompanied these moves by orders annuling all
previously issued priority orders and abolishing the authority of army
and navy officers in supply and other bureaus to " blue tag " Govern
ment shipments and demand priority for them. He prescribed also
the abandonment, as far as practicable, of long-haul passenger trains
to and from New York which interfere with freight traffic; the com
mon use of Pennsylvania tracks, tunnels and station in New York, for
freight traffic, and the common use of railroad owned water carriers
at New York and New Jersey freight terminals.

The immediate purpose of these orders was to relieve the freight
congestion and put an end to the coal shortage that was nearing the
famine point in and about New York City. As Mr. McAdoo was
issuing these orders, C. C. McChord, a member of the Interstate
Commerce Commission, was testifying before the Senate railroad
investigating committee that the priority order system had increased
railway congestion instead of relieving it. He said that more than
half the shipments were under priority orders, and that they tended
to disorganize the whole transportation system. He told of a naval
officer who issued a priority order on a shipment of anchors to a
shipyard before work on the ships was started. The Priority Board,
the War and Navy Departments, the Food Administration, the Fuel
Administration, the Car Service Commission and the Interstate Com
merce Commission had all been issuing priority orders. The multi
plicity of them was not only congesting the railroads, it was interfering
with the industries of the country and directly menacing the success
of future Liberty Loans.

Mr. McAdoo opened the New Year with an order giving coal for
New York City right of way over passenger service through the
Pennsylvania tunnels and terminal in the city. Drastic interference
with passenger service all over the country resulted from the efforts
to relieve freight congestion. Railroad officials and Government
authorities joined in impressing it upon the public that unnecessary
travel was discouraged. In many ways accommodations were cur
tailed — by the withdrawal of chair and sleeping cars, dining and
buffet cars and the reduction or withdrawal of special service of all
kinds. Commutation service into New York was reduced by several
roads, both in number of trains and in time of transit.

The reassembling of Congress was accompanied by the submission
of the estimates of expenditures from the different departments and
bureaus of the Government for the fiscal year of 1919, appropriations
for which must be made at this session. These estimates aggregate
thirteen and a half billion dollars. But they do not include any loans
to our allies, which have been authorized to the extent of seven billions
for this fiscal year. If loans to allies reach a similar sum in the next
year the total of estimated appropriations will be twenty and a half
billions as against $18,788,961,437 thus far this year. That figure
represents the appropriations made up to date. But there is an Urgent

804 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Deficiency bill pending that carries about a billion and a half, which
will bring the total for 1918 over twenty billions. Moreover the
expenditures of several supply bureaus are still considerably below
the estimates, owing to delays at factories. Production generally will
soon be at full speed, however, and then daily expenditure will increase
accordingly.

Estimates for the War Department absorb more than ten of the
thirteen billions needed for 1919. One billion is asked for pay of the
men, and two billions for quartermaster's supplies — clothing, certain
kinds of equipment, and transportation. The Surgeon-General wants
$157,000,000 for hospitals and medicines, and the Engineers ask $135,-
000,000 for the equipment of engineer troops and $892,000,000 for
the expenses of their field operations. The Ordnance Bureau asks
$2,672,000,000 for ammunition and guns, exclusive of $237,000,000
for machine guns. The army aviators ask $1,032,294,260 as against
appropriations for this year of $739,067,766.

The Navy asks for a total of $1,047,914,027 as compared with
appropriations for 1918 aggregating $1,596,936,455, with some de
ficiencies yet to be cared for. The Snipping Board wants nearly
$900,000,000 more to carry on its great programme and the Food and
Fuel Administrations need about double what they have had this year.
Their requirements, however, are mere small change compared with
those of the fighting organizations. The army estimates for pay cover
62,000 line and 25,578 staff officers and 1,208,300 enlisted men of
the line and 398,053 enlisted men of staff departments, a total force
of 1,693,931 officers and men.

Congress quickly took cognizance of complaints of inefficient work
in both army and navy organizations and began investigations covering
both those departments and the Fuel and Food Administrations and
Shipping Board as well. At this writing the army investigation has
gone into the Ordnance Bureau and Quartermaster-General's office, and
has developed a long and unpleasant story of delays and of failure
to secure ordnance and other supplies with the promptness and in the
quantities which the public desired and expected. The hampering
effect of red tape has had a new demonstration. It developed that
our men abroad are equipped with French instead of American artil
lery, and that we are using British rifles because we could not make
our own fast enough. Our men in camps and cantonments at various
places in this country are not fully supplied with rifles, have no machine
guns and are short of artillery. They are not fully supplied with
proper clothing, and Surgeon-General Gorgas reported that at camps
which he personally inspected there was disease and suffering due to
insufficient clothing. Army officers, contractors and members of com
mittees of the Council of National Defense, all of whom have been
involved in the unhappy revelations, have spent much time trying to
shift blame to other shoulders. Secretary Baker, upon whom General
Crozier, Chief of Ordnance, laid part of the blame for army lack of
equipment, defended the army in a public speech with the remark
that there were " two ways to look at the nation's war progress, what
we have done and what we have not done."

" The activities of the Government departments doing war work

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 305

had to be multiplied three thousand fold," said Mr. Baker. " We had
to undertake new problems on a colossal scale. These were things
which the country was not prepared to do."

The investigation disclosed the fact that an enormous amount had
been accomplished in the equipment of the army, and in preparation
for the organization and equipment of additional forces. The story
is by no means wholly dismal and many besides Secretary Baker will
find satisfaction in contemplating what has been done, although it is
not all that might have been accomplished.

The inquiry into naval conditions found a much pleasanter situa
tion. The annual report of Secretary Daniels showed that the great
guns for the batteries of the new battleships are in place and the new
sixteen inch gun is ready for testing. The destroyers in European
waters are kept supplied with all requirements. The navy has placed
orders for all explosives needed and the projectile problem has been
met, more plants bidding for contracts than were needed. This is
in marked contrast to the army situation.

In mid-December Mr. Daniels announced the formation of an inter
allied naval council " to insure complete cooperation between the allied
fleets." England, France, Italy, Japan and the United States are
represented. Mr. Daniels told the Congressional investigating com
mittee that several hundred ships had been added to the fleet since
we entered the war, and that contracts had been let for hundreds
more, including superdreadnaughts, battle cruisers, destroyers and
every class of naval vessel. There are 424 ships in course of con
struction, not including 350 submarine chasers. The navy has over
a thousand vessels in commission against less than 300 two years ago.
The personnel numbers 280,000 as compared with 64,680 men and
4,376 officers when we entered the war.

On December 15 Secretary Baker, after a long conference with
President Wilson, announced the formation of a new War Council,
composed of himself, the Assistant Secretary of War, General Bliss,
the Chief of Staff; General Crozier, the Chief of Ordnance; General
Sharpe, the Quartermaster-General; General Weaver, the Chief of
Artillery; and General Crowder, the Judge Advocate General and
Provost Marshal General. The announcement said that the new
council was " to oversee and coordinate all matters of supply of our
field armies and the military relations between the armies in the field
and the War Department." Skeptical Washington was inclined, how
ever, to consider this as a promotion out of responsible work for some
of the new council members, and to recall several cases among our
allies where distinguished officers have been promoted similarly to
posts of less arduous and important duty. A few days after this
announcement Mr. Baker announced that General George W. Goethals
had been recalled to active duty and assigned as acting Quartermaster-
General, and that acting chiefs of ordnance and artillery had been
appointed.

The investigation of the Shipping Board disclosed a situation so
satisfactory that at the close of the examination of Chairman Hurley
the committee frankly asked him how it could help in the work he
was doing. Mr. Hurley had said that the programme is moving steadily

VOL. ccvii.— NO. 747 20

306 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and surely forward to successful completion. There had been some
delays, as was well known, but the new organization of the Emer
gency Fleet Corporation for the first time gave the chairman of the
Board the proper authority and fixed the responsibility where it
belonged. When he joined the Board on July 27 there were 840,900
tons of wooden ships, 207,000 tons composite and 587,000 tons of steel
ships under contract. Since then contracts for 3,378,200 tons of addi
tional steel ships have been let, together with 504,000 tons additional
wooden vessels. Also the Fleet Corporation has rendered financial
aid to forty-two yards. This was superimposed upon a programme of
naval construction equal to 2,500,000 tons of merchant shipping.

The coal investigation developed a situation of railroad congestion
that prevented deliveries, although production for 1917 was much
greater than in 1916. This situation, as has been shown, was the first
one tackled by the new Director General of Railroads.

The investigation of the Food Administration promptly developed
into a personal assault upon Mr. Hoover, the Food Administrator,
by Claus Spreckels of the Federal Sugar Refining Company, who
accused the Food Administration of working with the sugar trust and
of bringing on the sugar shortage. Mr. Hoover retorted that Spreckels
was resentful because his profits had been interfered with. The Senate
Committee, headed by Senator Reed, who had opposed Mr. Hoover's
appointment, declined to permit Mr. Hoover to testify immediately
in response to Mr. Spreckels, or to print a statement by Hoover.
Thereupon President Wilson took a hand and published the statement
through the Committee on Public Information. The strong flow of
charges and counter charges indicated that an old rivalry was getting
a new airing.

The month heard the usual reports of German intrigue, with
another chapter of the Lansing serial exposure of Count Luxburg,
the German Minister to Argentina. And, as usual, it saw no serious
punishment for sedition or treason, or spy work. But we hope we are
getting on.

[This record is as of January 3 and is to be continued.]

CONTEMPORARYiECHOES

FOR A WAR COUNCIL
(From the Houston Post)

Nothing will come before the session of Congress of greater importance
than the question of war finance. The reports indicate a palpable dif
ference of opinion between groups of congressmen with respect to the
relative merits of additional taxes and further bond issues, or with re
spect to what proportion of revenues shall come from the one and what
shall come from the other.

Up to the present time there has been no difficulty in making appro
priations for war measures, but the revenue measures have been diffi
cult to agree upon, and the revenue measures of the last session do not
seem to have settled the question of revenues to meet the Government's
requirements up to the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 1918.

This question of finance is one of tremendous difficulty because of the
many elements which enter into it.

It is a scientific question which is easily beyond the congressional
layman's comprehension.

It is one that invites the agitation of individual theories, which are
seldom based upon solid information.

Even the treasury experts, headed by Secretary McAdoo, realize how
tremendously difficult a problem which has to be approached from so many
angles is bound to be.

In the presence of such a difficulty, it seems to The Post that Presi
dent Wilson and Congress as well would find Colonel George Harvey's
oft-reiterated suggestion of a board of counsellors of great service at
such a time.

Unquestionably a board of financial advisers composed of distinguished
financiers could render much aid in the solving of the financial problem.

Admittedly, one imperative necessity is to avoid the depreciation of
any form of money in circulation. The redeemability of all issues in gold
must be maintained.

It is likewise imperative to determine just what the bond assimilat
ing capacity of the nation is, and in what proportions the money needed
must be raised from loans and taxes.

Only the greatest and wisest financiers are able to solve such problems
and surely their advice would be of incalculable aid to Congress.

Secretary McAdoo has already recognized the importance of such
counsel in securing the services of Mr. Vanderlip, but even Mr. Vanderlip
would welcome the counsel of other financiers.

The banks must handle the loans. They are the custodians of the

308 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

people's money. They ought to be consulted. It will not be with them
a matter of profit, but a matter of conserving the credit of the country
and keeping the war on a solid financial basis.

The war has reached the point where the counsel of the greatest states
men and greatest financiers ought to be readily at the disposal of the Presi
dent. He can not carry the burden alone, and his cabinet ministers are
naturally absorbed in the work of their several departments.

The greatest minds of the country are at the disposal of the President
for the asking, and, regardless of party affiliations, they could be sum
moned to the country's service — most of them without money and without
price — just as Judge Lovett, Mr. Vanderlip and numerous other citizens
have answered calls upon them.

And if there are those who require their expenses to be paid it would
be money well expended.

Colonel George Harvey, who suggested this plan, has offered an idea
of which the President has already availed himself partially. But surely
Congress, with but little opportunity to know and comprehend the great
questions entering into war finance and wanting to do what is best and
safest, might find such a board of counsellors of much assistance in the
work of formulating a financial policy adequate for all the country's needs.

There should be no further haphazard financial legislation. Congress
should move upon known ground.

MORE STEAM CALLED FOR
(From the Burlington Free Press}

Colonel George Harvey asks in the current NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,
"Are we losing the war ?" That is a startling query for America. As we
look at the subsidence of Russia, with the consequent probability that
Roumania, cut off from all Allies, will also be forced out of the war,
we echo the query. As we realize that every great military movement
outside of France has been a German gain up to the present drive in
Italy, we must concede there is ground for Colonel Harvey's startling
question.

If, in spite of the tremendous expenditure of money by Americans,
we are helping to lose the war, then manifestly, instead of blocking the
wheels of the Wilson Administration in any way, we should insist that it
put on more steam. That policy was found to be necessary in both En
gland and France, as well as in Italy, to promote war efficiency. We are
probably no exception to the rule.

After showing that all is not as easy as it would have been a year or
six months ago, before Russia and Italy weakened, and that we are now in
the darkest moment since the battle of the Marne, Colonel Harvey con
cludes : " But we do not despair ; we are not even dismayed. Our mental
gaze cannot pierce the cloud, but our moral vision tells us that its lining
is of silver; it must be; and we shall find it, never fear. Are we losing
the war? No. But we are not winning it — and we have far, very far,
to go."

Those are timely words and pertinent, as Congress resumes its work.
We have not only far to go, but there is much to do on the way. Congress
must see to it first of all that our boys sent to training camps are not

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 309

made victims of pneumonia because of necessity of wearing summer khaki
in winter owing to lack of material. If the Germans had shot as many
of our boys as have died of pneumonia, the whole nation would now be
up in arms. These and all other necessities at home must be attended
to at once, instead of waiting. We must all put our shoulders to the
military machine and help push it along. Otherwise we may be as late
in reinforcing our own troops now in France as were the Allies in succor
ing Serbia, Roumania and Italy. In short, we must begin at once to work
every possible weapon, military and naval, as well as political, if we
would win this war decisively.

DIGNITY DEMANDED
{From the Union Township Dispatch)

Colonel George Harvey, who rendered the civilized world a great
service when he unearthed Woodrow Wilson at Princeton ten years ago
and brought him forth as a Presidential possibility, is still working might
and main to undo his great service.

His latest grievance against the President is the sending of Colonel
House to Europe to participate in the great Allied conference as the rep
resentative of President Wilson. Colonel Harvey does „ not feel that
Colonel House measures up to the importance of the conference, and the
Camden Courier, one of those typically partisan Republican newspapers
of South Jersey, agrees thoroughly.

According to the Courier, it seems that the fact that President Wilson
and Colonel House are chums disqualifies the latter for the important
mission upon which he has been sent. While Colonel Harvey proved
himself to be a good picker when he saw Presidential timber in the former
Princeton chief, President Wilson has had a good deal of experience as
a picker himself in recent years.

There are bigger men and more experienced statesmen in America
than Colonel House, but he is evidently a man who is better able to grasp
the Wilson viewpoint than some others, and the man who can carry out a
Wilson plan is a more serviceable man than some who might suit Colonel
Harvey. When Mr. Wilson chose Elihu Root to head the mission to
Russia he showed that his selections were not controlled either by personal
friendship or partisanship.

The country, and the entire world, should appreciate Colonel Harvey's
great service in bringing Woodrow Wilson to the attention of his country
at the time when the world needed just such a man, but, having done that,
he should not permit personal grievances and disappointments to interfere
with a full appreciation of what the President is doing. He should be
big enough to make the best of it, and at least act with dignity.

THE POWER OF FAITH
(From the Columbia State)

In a recent article in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, reprinted in the
Boston Transcript, Colonel Harvey, in his own inimitable style, unbosoms
himself of a credit and a debit column. He considers that the Executive

310 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

could have made a more brilliant choice than House for his pre-eminent
position, but on the other hand he might have done worse. Putting " one's
House in order " is always a ticklish job. He holds Lloyd George cor
rect in all his criticisms, except in the absence of the one which he
neglected to launch against his own " negligence in failing Italy in her
hour of need."

He is sure that the cause of the Allies is worse off than ever before,
except just after the Marne, but that there is as yet no reason for despair.
He believes that the war will last for five years longer, but by that time
we shall be able to fight in a more workmanlike manner. He sees the
necessity of a generalissimo, but suspects that " there ain't no sich
animile " available. Finally, he asserts what sounds like a confession of
faith: " But we do not despair; we are not even dismayed. Our mental
gaze cannot pierce the cloud, but our moral vision tells us that its lining
is of silver; it must be; and we shall find it, never fear!" In plain
English, he puts his trust in Providence.

It is always interesting to see the authoritative person bowing to a
higher authority. If that pregnant little " it must be" means anything,
it means that, like the rest of us, Colonel Harvey is daring the Universe
to act in flagrant defiance of good and justice; — which is but a different
way of trusting it to be on the side of righteousness. He is calling on
that mysterious Something which, throughout history, from Babel and
Marathon to the Marne, has put out a manifest command, " So far and
no farther." But think of Colonel Harvey in the devotional attitude!
What a triumph for the Unseen!

UNSOUND AND FAULTY
(From the Philadelphia North American)

That is the situation today — Germany reinforced by hordes of fresh
troops and ready to launch a tremendous assault against her last power
ful antagonists, Great Britain and France; among her people new confi
dence and strength of will, among the others the beginning of a feeling
of weariness and uncertainty, manifested in profitless wrangling over
"war aims" and unconcealed dependence upon American aid; and in this
country a backwardness in preparation which is ominously suggested in
the revelations now being made by the Congressional inquiry into our
military affairs.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW offers a plausible theory to account
for the last-mentioned condition. " The whole difficulty," it suggests, " is
to be found in the secret hope, even anticipation, both in Washington and
in London, that when this country, with its 'boundless resources/ should
have been in the war long enough to make a tremendous showing by
way of preparation, Germany would 'crumple' and the war would come
to an end."

If that was the design it was not only unsound in principle but
lamentably faulty in execution ; for the showing which seems to us prodigi
ous is still so far from being complete that it does not discourage Ger
many's effort nor mitigate its force in the remotest degree, and conceivably
may be too late to counteract its effects and avert the world disaster of
a Prussian peace.

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 311

COMPREHENSIVE AND FEARLESS
(From the Bookseller)

The war numbers of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW have increased
the sales of the magazine to a remarkable extent. It is read by the dis
criminating reader, who wants a calm statement of fact and accurate
information about the subjects discussed. Various world conditions and
problems are commented upon in a way to illuminate, and the papers
are written by the authors of note, experts, as it were, in their various
fields. Not only does one get a broad survey of world events, home
politics and biographical matter, but the literary output also comes in
for its share of criticism and comment. It is one of the standard monthlies
of the day, having maintained its position as the veteran periodical among
the literary magazines of the times. The editor's articles are always
dynamic in force and popular in appeal for Colonel Harvey hits from the
shoulder and what he says about Americanizing America — in the current
issue — merits a careful reading, for his ideas are as comprehensive as his
English is fearless.

A CONSTRUCTIVE INDICTMENT
(From the Financial News)

If you want to know the real cause of the " mysterious liquidation "
which has demoralized investment confidence you will find it in the
brilliant editorial of the December issue of THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW, headed "Are We Losing the War? "

Every patriot should read and pass it along.

Colonel George Harvey has completely " kicked over the traces " of
censorship and, in a powerful, merciless and constructive indictment, has
exposed incompetence, heretofore concealed by the cloak of secrecy, that
has been responsible to a large extent for the failure of the Allied con
duct of the war.

It is a patriotic, exhaustive and constructive arraignment of the
highest type, combined with a clarion call to Americans to substitute
instant action for wordy delay, if we hope to avoid defeat.

Great powers lie behind it.

BROADWAY AND FLANDERS
(From the Churchman)

In the death last week of Walter Dorsey Davidge, who for twelve
years had been head usher at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in
New York City, we are reminded of the needless toll of human life exacted
every year from reckless driving of automobiles. Mr. Davidge was run
over while crossing a street. In New York City alone over eight hundred
persons were killed last year in this way. Mr. Harvey, in the October
number of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, may have been indulging in
rhetorical exaggeration when in reviewing percentages of deaths among
the soldiers at the front he said that it was more perilous to cross Broad
way than to face the enemy. The utter indifference and callousness of

312 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the American public regarding accidents is one of the weak spots in our
national easy-going temperament that will need eradicating before our
democracy can be made safe for its citizens.

AN ENGLISH VIEW
(From the London Shipping World)

Colonel Harvey's essays in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW are ora
tions, and Mr. Asquith's orations are essays. In both cases the literary
products are powerful, timely, convincing. Colonel Harvey opens our
eyes, we admit, in respect of the toll of death in the present War. The
truth is, he says, that the death toll exacted by modern warfare is im
measurably smaller than ever before in history, and has decreased steadily
since the fighting began. He deals with such scheming, insincere men as
La Follette, who is fouling his own nest, without gloves; and very prop
erly speaks of pacifists as traitors. Indeed, they are the meanest, the
most objectionable class of traitors to be encountered in the world, and
Britain has more than her share of these enemies of their country.

MORE LIGHT WANTED

(From the St. Louis Mirror)

Without undue alarm a more unsuspected supporter of the President
than Colonel George Harvey may agree in all loyalty that, as he says in
the current NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, " this is the darkest moment since
the battle of the Marne." There is no occasion for panic. But there is
occasion that the people should be told more than they have been told about
the situation. It is time to disabuse their minds of the idea that when
we went in the war was all over. When the people realize the truth they
will come to the support of the Government in a spirit that will assure
limitless sacrifice of things they are as yet loth to forego.

ENTERTAINMENT FOR DR. CLARK
(From the Hartford Courant)

The appearance of George Harvey's NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW is
always an event. Its outside papers are thoughtful, and the contributions
by its editor are brilliant and audacious and, of course, finely written and
thoroughly entertaining.

" TONE "

(From the Johnstown Democrat)

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW may yet be obliged to follow the
Masses and the Call. Neither of these has been worse in " tone " than
Colonel Harvey's great monthly.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

RE-EDUCATION FOR CRIPPLED SOLDIERS

SIR, — Magazine and other statements on the re-education of wounded
soldiers usually describe or picture mechanical and human miracles.
How many times have we seen the picture of the man without arms
or legs standing on a ladder painting a house! These presentations of
the subject cause us to think that there is an enormous task ahead of
us in making, by mechanical means, whole men out of little more than
remnants. This is not so. There may be a dozen such cases, there may
be a hundred, but to take this as indicative of the problem of re-educa
tion is to warp the judgment and misdirect the general endeavor. In
this respect it is camouflage.

Canada is understood to have about three quarters of a million men
in the field. She has been at war three years. The number of men
returned who have undergone amputation are less than 900. The total
number of blinded is thirty-two. Ninety per cent of all returned wounded
go back to their old jobs, leaving only ten per cent to be re-educated.
In France ninety-nine per cent of the wounded return to their previous
occupations. We may expect the same percentage in Canada, where until
now, however, " only the more seriously disabled have been returned."

The Province of Ontario has sent 400,000, or half of the entire
Canadian contingent, into the field. Up to October, 8,910, or two per
cent, had returned incapacitated for service by wounds of the severer
sort. Of these only 101 have lost one arm. Only one lost both hands.
Only four were blinded. Seventy-two lost one eye. Thirteen lost one
hand. Twelve lost one foot. Six lost both legs. Only three are " totally
disabled."

In one factory in the United States famous for its efficiency and high
wages are 1,585 defective men whose listed defects are singularly like
those of the 8,910 in the Ontario list except for the cases just noted.
Its force is never thought of as deficient in any respect, but the reverse.
Its employees number one tenth of the Ontario soldiery, and its defective
men are twice as many.

Undoubtedly many more men are injured annually in American indus
tries than we may expect in years of war.

Seventy per cent of all wounded men never had a trade. Conse
quently the teaching of any trade or any kind of machine operations
to any of this seventy per cent gives them better incomes and easier
work than their former occupations.

To take typical examples : A brick-layer and mason was shot through
the shoulder. He cannot raise his right hand above his shoulder, cannot
plaster overhead or high up. He has an eight grade schooling. He is
apt. He becomes an exceptionally good draftsman. A machine shop

314 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

fitter used to handling heavy pieces was struck across the abdomen.
The muscles are so weakened that he cannot lift much. He is quickly
taught enough of the machinist trade to give him good work and wages.
A man with one leg is taught a sedentary job. A man without a trade
and not especially apt is taught to operate one or two rather simple
machines at better wages than he formerly enjoyed.

Thus re-education to the extent of from ninety-seven per cent to
ninety-nine per cent is nothing else than ordinary industrial education —
simply a matter of " sawing wood " in established industrial schools,
in day continuation, and night classes, and in factories where the crip
pled man is so nearly competent to do the proposed work that the
employer can properly put him to work, supervised by some one in the
establishment under direction of the responsible public authority.

It is a relief to get away from the discussions upon this subject
in the States and witness the practical, everyday doing of this work in
Canada. There it is directed jointly by two bodies, one, the Military
Hospital Commission which has military direction of injured men until
they are ready to re-enter civil life, and the other the Provincial authori
ties for Industrial Education.

Judging from a joint meeting of these two bodies (or was it their
special committees?), in furtherance of their work three fourths of the
Military Hospitals Commission are returned, wounded officers, engineers
by profession. The remainder are medical and other men. Who better
could understand and further the vocational needs of the rank and file?
The members of the training force are the Director of Vocational Train
ing for the Province and the regular or especially appointed Directors
of Vocational Training in the several districts and cities.

To see these bodies at work in everyday fashion, with the spectacular
eliminated, and no flitting questionnaire or blue-sky conjecturing, is to
wish that the whole matter in the States may be left to the authorities
in industrial education who know how to train ordinary folk in the ordi
nary occupations, with a cooperating Military, or quasi-military, Hospi
tals Commission like Canada's, and with the same kind of personnel.

Canada has found no place for the spectacular. Some of her regi
ments have been decimated. Her soldiers have gone the limit, and she
is going the limit in care of the injured. Until now, however, and
apparently in prospect also, re-education means, and can mean, only the
kind of industrial training that is always given in educationally intelli
gent countries to all workers who need it, with only a little more intensive
personal consideration of the capacities and limitations of the pupil.

From the startling pictures we commonly see it may be judged that
the Federal Government may well secure one or more of each of the
mechanical contrivances that have been developed in Europe to replace
lost members, and that some institution may well be prepared to use
these and other contrivances for the exceedingly few who may need them.

It is said that a man who loses both legs almost never recovers.
Also that a man whose face is badly " mussed up " soon dies of poison.
A world of sympathy and help will be given to those who are extremely
crippled. This is done in peace times. But these cases do not in any
sense constitute the problem of re-education. They are few, special and
apart, if we can judge from Canada and from what she tells us of the
European experience.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 315

The Canadian wounded are now coming back from base hospitals
abroad in much greater numbers than heretofore, so that the figures here
given will be largely increased, but it is not expected that the problem
will be different. Existing facilities for industrial training may need to
be greatly increased because of returning soldiers, but they need to be
increased anyway, because America has only begun to provide facilities
for the industrial training of her working people. The extension of
existing facilities along the usual lines will enable these extensions to
serve perfectly in later peace times.

There is apparently no need of special institutions, which would be
of little use in later years, or of large numbers of instructors set apart
for this particular problem. It commonly takes six months or less to
train a disabled soldier, and that training enriches the experience and
develops the abilities of the industrial instructors in the regular work.

We have most excellent institutions for the lame, the blind, and all
other defectives. Why not simply and quietly further strengthen the
masterful directors of these institutions, and send our worst injured
to them?

It is hoped that the statements here made will not be taken as an
attempt to do more than state broadly the main features of the situa
tion. They are based upon the Report of the Work of the Military
Hospitals Commission of Canada, May, 1917, and attendance upon a
recent meeting of the controlling authorities of the Province of Ontario.

WASHINGTON, D. C. H. E. MILES,

(Chairman, Section on Industrial
Training for the War Emergency.)

A PLEA TO THE PRESIDENT

SIR, — I have read with a mingled sense of admiration and pain your
editorial, " Thank God for Wilson," in the January number of THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Admiration, because of the brilliant ability
and justice with which you have characterized a great and critical situa
tion. Pain, because, at this supreme crisis of national and world interests,
there should exist the conditions which compel the criticism.

Politically I am a Republican who patriotically and intensely wishes
the largest and broadest success for Mr. Wilson's Administration. I
earnestly covet for him not only the promptings of highest patriotism,
but also that statesmanlike breadth and wisdom which the present so
supremely demands. If his future shall demonstrate this, I could easily
forget that he was ever a political partizan.

To a multitude of studious observers of public men and events, it is
not altogether easy to obliterate the memories, and the fears which such
memories engender, of both words and acts recorded in the first term
of Mr. Wilson's Administration, which, taken together, were frequently
at cross-purposes, not only failing to give clue to large, clear, heroic,
and consistent national policies, but which in the thought of millions of
the best-thinking Americans seemed partizan rather than patriotic, vacil
lating rather than firm, exhibiting more of calculation in the interests of
political issues than of unselfish concern for momentous and over-shadow
ing world-interests.

316 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

But since the great and well nigh peerless state paper issued April
second last, Mr. Wilson has traveled measureless distances toward instat
ing himself in the confidence of patriotic America. He is a man of
transcendent intellectuality. In his higher moods, if he would only
always dwell upon these upper planes, he has great vision. The sincerity
of his patriotism is not to be questioned. The real interrogation concern
ing him is, as to whether he has a sustained ability to dwell habitually
upon the plane of his own best thinking; or, as to whether, in choosing
his official advisers, he has the best discernment of fitting men ; or, whether
he is not too saturninely confident of his own ability, irrespective of
advisers, to meet the herculean requirements of the hour; or, finally,
whether he is not under the obsessing lure that, in this time of world-
emergency, when every ounce of patriotic strength throughout the land
needs to be called into requisition, the Democratic party alone should
rightfully assume autocratic and exclusive control of the nation's affairs.

In alignment with your own editorial, it is a matter of great regret
as well as of grave concern, with multitudes in the nation, that Mr.
Wilson seems either to lack disposition or capacity to extend a more
elastic reach in the selection of men for patriotic service; that, among
his pre-eminent gifts, the art of exercising the non-partizan spirit, even
for the country's supreme good, does not seem to be in him so well
developed.

Lincoln lives, and will forever live, as one of the most illustrious of
historic characters. But when the nation was rocked in the seeming
throes of dissolution, when his own political future might seem to be jeop
ardized, he had the sagacity, the statesmanship, the superb unselfish
devotion to the national welfare, to choose as his advisers men of known
and transcendent ability, even though they were his personal rivals. In
time of war, he finally selected as the War Secretary a Democrat, Edwin
M. Stanton, but a man whose blood was richly charged with iron.

There are at least two positions in the present Cabinet which should
be filled, irrespective of the partizan antecedents, by men of the largest
ability and experience to be found in the nation — the War and the Naval
Secretaryships. It will prove a source of discreditable weakness, and
it might be of infinite disaster, if in any Cabinet position of today any
man or men, charged with prodigious and grave responsibilities, should
be so narrow-visaged as in any measure to divert themselves in the attempt
to build up their own political fences for the future. Mere political
partizanship in America in these days is not only small: it is contemptible.
Among men in positions of high administrative responsibility it borders
either on incapacity or criminality.

To very many good, loyal, and discerning Americans, it appears as
nothing less indeed than a tragedy of short-sightedness — or something
else as fully discreditable — that at this time of supreme crisis, when the
nation's needs rise on every hand to Alpinous heights, no place
equal to his conspicuous, available, and well nigh unequalled abilities
can be found for the patriotic services of Theodore Roosevelt. It seems
to very many others an unexplained misfortune that a man with the
unquestioned patriotism, the exceptional experience, and acknowledged
abilities, of General Leonard Wood should in times like these be remanded
to a comparatively useless desuetude.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 317

With all my heart I say with you: " God bless Wilson." For the
sake of a world-humanity, for the sake of untold Americans yet unborn,
I devoutly pray that he may be inspired for adequate leadership of this
greatest nation on the globe, and for all the coming days of immeasurable
and most critical needs.

HARRISBURG, PA. GEORGE P. MAINS.

HUMORING THE BEAST

SIR, — Thanks for " The Sinners and the Sin " in the November
number. I believe it represents the conclusions and belief of those who
have prescience enough to see what must be done to end this war, and
thereby possibly all future wars. The " dawning consciousness " will
soon become the fully illuminated conviction of even those who, like
myself (a former member of the American Peace Society), are opposed
to war and militarism, but who are unable to comprehend more than
one way of dealing with a mad dog retaining diabolical intelligence
and efficiency.

One of the strangest things connected with the conflict is, that our
Government so easily falls into ways for making the path of the mad
dog easier. For example, it is an old principle of the law of this and
all other countries, that an alien enemy cannot sue in the courts thereof
during the continuance of war. His right is suspended until peace is
declared. Yet Congress, in the very Trading with the Enemy Act,
approved October 6, 1917, provides, in substance, that:

(1.) A citizen of the United States may apply for a license under a
patent owned by a German, provided he deposits a trust fund with the
alien enemy custodian as security for the German, against a recovery by
a suit to be brought after the close of the war. Or,

(2.) If he refuses to take a license under such terms, he may now
be sued for infringement by the German patent owner at war with us,
by means of a power of attorney given to some attorney in this country
so unpatriotic as to plead in our courts the cause of an enemy alien
seeking to destroy us.

Within three weeks after this became a law, the representatives
of at least one alien enemy took advantage of it.

The alleged reasons for the law are, that it is desired to preserve
reciprocal relations with Germany with respect to patent rights, and
to give citizens of this country the " right " to make and sell articles
controlled by patents owned in Germany.

The folly of this is apparent when it is considered:

1. That a citizen of this country already has the privilege of making
and selling such articles, subject of course to suit after the war for
infringement, if a court should find such exists, and the payment of
damages for such infringement.

2. That a citizen of this country cannot bring a suit in a German
court during the war (Save the mark!), and

3. That most German patents owned by American citizens are already
void under the German law, because of the inability to pay the yearly
taxes thereon required by the German law to keep the patents alive.

In return for nothing except the alleged good will of the Beast, we
have therefore given him the right to require United States manufac-

318 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

turers to put up a trust fund for him, to pay damages in advance to a
trustee, and have opened our courts to him against our own citizens.

Although opposed by the Patent Law Association, and stricken out
in the Senate, the law was restored in conference. The ways of the
Beast are past finding out. If we had commandeered German patents,
as we have German ships, and as Germany has (in effect) commandeered
our patents; or if we had let the old law stand, leaving the German to
establish his rights, if any, after the war, justice would have been
served; but now we may yet see the spectacle of a United States court
asked to grant an injunction against the maker or user of some of our
airplanes or other engines of war, in favor of a German patent owner.
And the court would evidently have to grant it, unless the maker or
user took out a license or deposited a trust fund against a day of trial
and settlement.

1 do not advocate " stealing " patents owned by Germans ; but surely
we should not have permitted ourselves to grant them or their agents
a right heretofore unknown in the law, and put it in their power to tie
up our manufacturers in litigation based on some real or doubtful charge
of infringement. Our courts should be closed to them, absolutely, until
after the war, as has always been the case, in all countries, since laws
were established.

WASHINGTON, D. C. GEORGE E. TEW.

JEWISH PATRIOTISM

SIR, — For many years I have been a reader of the great REVIEW,
and am always keenly anxious for the next number. The December
number is exceedingly interesting. Your resume of war conditions serves
two purposes: to tell the truth and to arouse the American people to
the gravity of the situation. Ever since the war commenced, although
optimistic all my life, and now in my eighty-second year, I have had
but one feeling in regard to the outcome — that it would take at least
five, if not ten years, unless a miracle took place, to win the war, and
that the burden of it would finally fall upon the United States; that
fifty billions, if not seventy-five of our money, would be needed, and
five million of troops, provided we could get men across. The Germans
are not superhuman, but they have had forty-five years of preparation,
with the most wonderful military machinery, but even that would have
counted for naught had it not been, and was it not, for the fact that the
Allies have blundered from the start up to this moment, and the United
States seems to be a good second. Instead of declaring war at once
against the Central Powers, we are nibbling, and now have simply
declared war against Austria, leaving the spies of Turkey and Bulgaria
to roam at large. What other possible reason can there be, outside of
fearing a massacre of missionaries, is to me a mystery — but were it not
better that a thousand or even ten thousand missionaries, Jews, and
Christians should be sacrificed to the moloch of hate, than to incur the
danger of sacrificing a million of people, who in consequence of the non-
declaration of war may be slaughtered?

But this letter was not written on a subject that must be stale to
you, but simply to say that I have read the article entitled "I am a
Jew." It is a curious coincidence that this article should appear in

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 319

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. In 1891, in the December number,
there appeared a scurrilous letter from a person named Rogers, who
assailed the patriotism of the Jews in the United States, claiming that
none of them participated in the Civil War. I took up the challenge,
and after three years' hard work, issued the book entitled The American
Jew, as Soldier, Patriot and Citizen, a six hundred-page book wherein
I conclusively showed that American citizens of Jewish faith had, from
the earliest days of the Republic up to that date, and of course since,
done their duty, and to a large extent, compared to their number, have
done more than those of any other faith in the country.

WASHINGTON, D. C. SIMON WOLF.

A QUESTION FOR SECRETARY BAKER

SIR, — On the 5th of this month appeared in our local daily a com
munication purporting to be from Washington, D. C., which stated that
it cost this Government 14.3 times as much to maintain a soldier as it
does the Imperial German Government. After meditating about the
matter, I telephoned the Editor, who informed me that the facts were
obtained from the Bureau of Information at Washington.

If Germany, shut in as she is from the commerce of the world, can
maintain 14.3 soldiers at their present standard of efficiency for what
it costs us to maintain one, it occurs to me that this means either
retrenchment, bankruptcy, or defeat — perhaps all three; for German
success in this war means our bankruptcy, and bankruptcy means enforced
retrenchment.

With but eight per cent of the money appropriated for our army
expended for purposes requisite to health, comfort and efficiency, and
ninety-two per cent for purposes bearing no relation thereto; and with
the continuation of our present liberal pension system, bankruptcy seems
to me inevitable should the war be prolonged.

This matter, Mr. Editor, seems to me of such prime import that I trust
you will pardon me for asking that you give it your attention in one of
those pungent editorials which I have found so pregnant with the essen
tials of forcible English, viz.: smoothness of construction, clarity of
expression and accuracy of conclusion.

CRAWFORDSVILLE, IND. L. J. COPPAGE.

COLONEL WHITE HOUSE AGAIN

SIR, — Nothing has given me greater satisfaction and pleasure for a
long time than your editorial in the December number of THE NORTH
AMERICAN.

Nothing have I resented more than that my country should be repre
sented — if one may misuse the word — by the man who is but a voice
and " nothing else," unelected, appointed to no recognized function, and
responsible to the country in no way. You have voiced my thoughts
so that the whole country may hear, if it will only listen, and I thank
you sincerely. In slight measure of appreciation I am sending you by
separate cover something I have written on war subjects, a small book

320 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

called Hillsboro in the War. I doubt if it has or if it would couie within
your sphere of notice, but in view of what you have written, I feel that
what I have written may serve to amuse and perhaps interest you in some
one of your less occupied hours.

AMHERST, N. H. RICHARD D. WARE.

[We acknowledge with thanks receipt of the captivating little book
of verse referred to. — EDITOR.]

THE BEST NONE TOO GOOD FOR HIM

SIR, — I wish to say that I regard THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
as the best -magazine published. Please continue my subscription. I
would not be without it.

The masterly articles by Colonel Harvey are a necessity in times
like these, and should be put in pamphlet form and sent broadcast
throughout the country.

NEW YORK CITY. CHARLES W. CARPENTER.

A LITTLE HISTORY LESSON

SIR, — The attached sheet came out of your magazine [containing a
reference to "the War of the Rebellion"].

Please advise me when the war underlined on this sheet took place.
I have read the History of the United States and can find no such war.

SAVANNAH, GA. MURRAY STEWART.

[Try 1861 to 1865. — EDITOR.]

HIS PRESCRIPTION.

SIR, — When I want to enjoy myself a hundred per cent, I get a
good, comfortable chair and curl up to read the latest one of your
reviews of current political and national events, in THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW. Then I'm happy from crown to sole.

With all good wishes, I remain,

WASHINGTON, D. C. EDWARD D. BALDWIN.

A WISE BULL MOOSE

SIR, — Enclosed find cheque for $4 to renew my subscription to THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for the year 1918. I would not think of doing
without this illuminating magazine even in the days of Hooverism, and
even though I am the worst of Bull Moose and Republicans !

BRISTOL, TENN. S. H. THOMPSON.

(0 Clinedinst

MAJOR-GENERAL PEYTON C. MARCH. U. S. A.

Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

MARCH, 1918

WANTED: A LEADER

CAN PACIFISTS WIN THE WAR?

A PLEA TO THE PRESIDENT

BY THE EDITOR

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his
spots? — Jeremiah 13: 23.

Or, as we Americans might now fitly and with no little
dread in our hearts inquire, Can ingrained Pacifists wage
war successfully? Is it within the range of their tranquil
and philosophical natures to fetch into ruthless action the
requisite fighting spirit and indomitable soul? Does human
psychology constitute an insuperable barrier? Can the stern
necessities of the moment crush out of being the cheery opti
mism of a lifetime? These are the most vital questions which
now confront us as a Nation — questions which must be
answered soon and cannot be answered too soon if we would
avert appalling cost to a certainty and irretrievable disaster
as a possibility.

The military situation abroad is not hopeless. It is by
no means probable that Hindenburg " will be in Paris " on
April fool's day. Even though he should make good his
boast, he will not have won the war; he will only have com
pelled a truce or prolonged the struggle, with increasing
slaughter. But whatever may happen in the immediate
future, we cannot ignore the bitter truth that it is the enemy
and the enemy alone, whose next move is awaited, — awaited

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 748 21

322 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

with confidence, to be sure, but with confidence tinged with
trepidation. Nobody is wondering what the Allies have in
contemplation; everybody knows; it is neither more nor less
than to strive desperately to hold the long, thin line from
Flanders to Switzerland and the hazardous position in north
ern Italy. The programme is purely defensive, promising
little gain and leading nowhere. Presumably the Allies are
waiting, in simple hope and mild expectancy, to hurl back
an advancing horde with such vigor and destructive force
as to convince him of the futility of further assaults; that
is all. r |W^

Assuming, as we trust in God we may with assured
ness, effective resistance, what then? A great drive in re
turn by the weakened Allied forces? Not at all. Failure
of the augmented and reinvigorated German army to " break
through " would serve only to show the utter hopelessness
of a like attempt by the French and British against vastly
stronger fortified intrenchments. Indeed, if specific evidence
of this fact be required, it can be found in the ghastly fail
ure — far more ghastly than this country ever imagined — of
Byng's highly lauded battle before Cambrai.

We are assured by the foremost living military expert
in the United States and we do believe that " it has been
overwhelmingly demonstrated that no frontal attack by
either side against the intrenched lines of the other can break
through; nor can this long intrenched line be turned, since
the neutral country of Switzerland is at one end and the
neutral country of Holland is at the other; the result is a
military stalemate." For this very reason, but for the posi
tive certainty of our exceptionally versed Secretary of War,
one might be disposed to doubt the reality of the enemy's
widely advertised intention to pitch its mighty assault upon
a strongly defended position, while another infinitely weaker
is scarcely less available for attack.

But it is not the enemy, whose ways are his own, who
most concerns us. It is the Allies. And, so far as the world
is informed, the Allies have no plans. Their Supreme War
Council was summoned into being with a flourish of trum
pets but quickly ended its first session with the sapient
announcement that " unity of action " had been agreed upon.
The United States was not represented officially, but
Colonel Edward M. House attended as a personal friend of
the President and subsequently published a memorandum to

WANTED: A LEADER 323

the effect in general that England and France were pledged
to cooperate with this country in transporting troops and
supplies across the Atlantic. There seems to have been con
siderable talk about winning the war but none as to how
it might be won. In fact, the entire list of distinguished
statesmen and commanding generals present did not contain
the name of a single strategist of note. The second session
was quite brief and produced only an expression of opinion
that the so-called peace proposals of the Chancellors of
Germany and Austria were unworthy of consideration.

Whether America shall be represented adequately or
at all in future conferences is yet to be determined by the
President. Why she should not be or has not been while
her all is staked upon the outcome of the great event cannot
even be surmised, except upon the almost incredible assump
tion of deliberate evasion of responsibility such as charac
terized the Administration's policy of unpreparedness, for
which our Pacifist Secretary of War fervently thanked
God — " I delight in the fact," were his words — even after
we had been drawn into the conflict.

There was no misapprehension of the situation on the
part of Mr. Baker. Speaking in Richmond on December
5, 1917, he said plainly:

From the moment the Lusitania was sent to a watery grave by the
hand of the assassin, the United States had only two choices. The
United States could have crawled on its knees to the Hohenzollerns,
crying out that their frightfulness and military efficiency were too
great, that we submit and become their vassals, or as an alternative we
could fight. We chose to fight.

The Lusitania was sunk on May 7, 1915. Two months
later the Field Secretary of the National Security League
reported that Mr. Baker, who was then Mayor of Cleveland,
" refused absolutely to cooperate with the League because he
said he was a pacifist and opposed to the agitation for pre
paredness," in point of fact, " of all the Mayors I interviewed
Mr. Baker was the most pronounced opponent of prepared
ness." Clearly, at that time, with full understanding, he
preferred that his country should become a vassal of the
Hohenzollerns rather than fight. Not only, moreover, did
he revel in the part of a craven, but he disdained to equip the
nation for acceptance of the only alternative open to a brave
and self-respecting people.

" Scorning," he declared in New York on December 28,

324 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

1917, " to be armed to the teeth in times of peace, ready to
leap at any one in her path, this nation has shown that in
time of war a peace-loving, progress-making people, when
the time came had but to touch the magnet of its spirit to
defend itself."

Unctuous satisfaction with the results of his own ignorant
and inefficient direction, soon to be revealed with startling
force by the Senate's investigation — truly a replica, faint, but
clear, of his beloved Bryan's vision of a million hayseeds leap
ing to the rusty shotguns of their grandfathers! A gentle
egotist commissioned as the vice regent of Mars. Pacifism
twirling its thumbs while hellish Mars was wrecking the uni
verse. Murder, rapine and sudden death, horror piled upon
horror, the world feverishly burnishing its armor while a
lamb-like little gentleman, serene in his certitude of the tri
umph of morality, sat like a monk in his cell, unvexed by
gross passions, rubricating the golden rule ! A man with no
experience in big business — that once derided term of in
famy — suddenly put in charge of the greatest business
establishment in America 1

We may admire the President for that consistency which
refuses to acknowledge a mistake and we should concede
much to a laudable endeavor to live down a reputation for
restricted gratefulness of spirit; but this is a time of war,
grim and deadly, when the whole truth must be spoken with
out mincing of words and with scant heed to personal feelings.

We say bluntly, then, that, while the Secretary of War
must necessarily be held to account for the wretched blunder
ing and the fatal negligence of his department, it is not Mr.
Baker who is responsible for Mr. Baker; it is the President
himself who must answer to the people for the perpetuation
of a concededly second-class Cabinet in the day of the nation's
gravest peril — a performance for which, strive as we may
earnestly and considerately, we can find little excuse. When
Mr. Wilson dipped his hands into the dusky Democratic
grab-bag and drew out the names of those who constituted his
original Cabinet, he took chances necessarily, and, all things
considered, he did not so badly. There have been stronger
Cabinets, many of them, and weaker, a few. Taken as a
whole, the group of politicians picked to serve as head clerks
to their master was about as good as the Democratic party
could produce; and it is but fair to say that their respective
capacities and incapacities during the first term balanced
fairly well, unless, of course, there be allotted to them a share

WANTED: A LEADER 325

in the great crime of unpreparedness. In any case, the
President should not be held too sharply to account for the
consequences of his enforced groping for satisfactory aids.

But when Mr. Wilson was inaugurated a second time the
situation was wholly changed. He knew then the calibre of
his secretaries, collectively and individually ; he had wintered
and summered with them; their points of strength and of
weakness were patent to his discerning mind. That they
suited and served sufficiently well his purposes in a time of
peace we can readily understand. But when Mr. Wilson
took his second oath of office war was certain. Germany had
made impossible the continuance of neutral relations; the
Ambassadors had been recalled; there was no escape for a
self-respecting nation upon any conceivable grounds ; and the
inevitable happened precisely one month later, when the
President appeared before the Congress and asked that the
existence of " a state of war" with Germany be heralded to
the world.

Nothing could have been more plain or more certain that
March 4, 1917, was the day upon which a new Cabinet, de
signed primarily to conduct effective warfare upon the most
powerful military nation in the world, should have been pro
claimed. It was, moreover, the natural, fitting and tra
ditional time. Precisely as Mr. Wilson's term of office had
expired and he was required to take a new oath, so had the
terms of the members of his Cabinet expired, and the names
of their successors should have been sent to the Senate for
confirmation, as provided by the Constitution. The circum
stance that no changes were to be made did not alter the case.
The plain intent of our fundamental law is that Cabinet offi
cers shall be confirmed by the Senate existing at the time of
their nomination, since the Senate itself, although a continu
ing body, undergoes material change in personnel during
every four years. Beginning with George Washington,
every reflected President without exception observed this re
quirement and submitted his appointments accordingly. In
many instances there were changes, in some there was none ;
it made no difference ; the spirit and design of the law were
heeded scrupulously, and the example set by Washington
became the usage of the country.

President Wilson violated both the intent of the law and
the custom. He sent no nominations to the Senate, and none
of the secretaries has been confirmed in office by the existing
bodv. Even the Postmaster General, whose term is re-

326 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

stricted explicitly by statute to thirty days after four years
of service, was continued without reappointment, and exer
cised full authority without warrant of any kind whatsoever
for nearly seven months, till a few weeks ago, when the
blunder was discovered and admitted, and he was renamed.
Whether the other members of the Cabinet are now or have
been for nearly a year de jure officials of the Government is
perhaps a question, in view of the various statutes, but the
best legal minds we have been able to consult concur in the
judgment that they are serving in purely de facto capacities.

We note this peculiar state of affairs in passing only. The
point we would make is that the President deliberately dis
regarded established usage and probably violated technical
law at a time when, without injuring the amour propre of any
one of his pacifist associates, he might have constructed a real
War Cabinet of big minds and fighting souls. It is to this
lack of vision, accentuated by either excessive obduracy or
wilful evasiveness, that the pitiable plight of the half -armed
forces of this mighty nation, at the beginning of the second
year of our war, must in no small degree be attributed.

It is not " the system," so politely and considerately con
demned by cautious Senators, that is at fault. It is the men
who have proved incapable of applying existing methods on a
large scale. The army system may not have been the best;
quite likely it was not ; but it was a system, a working system ;
and there is little reason to doubt that if the established divi
sions, bureaus and branches had been kept intact, expanded
and strengthened by the injection of new blood and fresh
vigor and supplemented by expert business experience instead
of being supplemented bv a crazy quilt of meddlesome mud
dling, the whole machinery would now be running as
smoothly as that of the navy, whose unchanged " system "
has been adapted readily by Admirals Taylor, McGowan,
Earle and Palmer to enlarged and highly effective service.
While it makes the heart sick to hear that the keel of the first
new destroyer is yet to be laid, there is this at least to be said
of Secretary Daniels: that he was shrewd enough to step
aside when actual fighting began and give the trained profes
sionals their heads.

Mr. Baker, on the other hand, fussed and fiddled, making
one superannuated General Chief of Staff for a few weeks
and then another, only to supplant him in turn by successive
" acting chiefs," until now, at last, after a lapse of a full year,
a real soldier in his prime is coming home to attempt a re-

WANTED: A LEADER 327

organization which should have been begun and ended long
ago. So it is that we are still commencing to prepare to get
ready to " speed up " to go to war.

But that is not the worst of it. Trying as these unneces
sary delays have been, and are likely to continue to be, they
are far less apt to prove fatal than a false point of view.
There it is that we are weak, weak as dishwater. Invariably,
in their innumerable speeches, both the Secretary of War and
the Secretary of the Navy blandly assume that the war is
already won, and they ramble fatuously along about how ten
derly we must regard our enemies, so soon to become our
friends, and by our contrasting example point out to them in
delicate and unoffending fashion the error of their ways. It
is " the new world to come " fulfilment of the flabby " ideals "
of Bryanism, and the " heroic tasks " to be done " after the
treaty of peace has been signed," that engrosses the minds of
these, our kindly warriors. As to the outcome of the war
itself Mr. Baker continues, " it would be irreligious to
doubt," and forthwith, to the disgust of General Crowder
and without consultation with the energetic Provost Marshal,
he sends to Congress a bill releasing from service all men who
have reached the age of thirty-one since they were called, and
in common with the President, declares his opposition to uni
versal military training. And the Secretary does not stand
alone. The President himself writes to the farmers that
" the culminating crisis of the struggle has come, the achieve
ments of this year on the one side or the other must deter
mine the issue."

If so, God help us! Consider what the achievements
" on the one side or the other " have been since the above
words were written on January 30 : On the part of the Allies,
successful defense — always defense — of the Italian position
on the Piave; on the part of the Central Powers, a negotiated
peace opening up for their use the rich mines and vast wheat
fields of Ukrainia, demobilization of the Russian army, re
leasing for service elsewhere one hundred and forty-seven
divisions of German soldiers on the Eastern front and 1,500,-
000 trained men hitherto held as prisoners, and, finally, as we
write, a strong probability of the capitulation of Roumania,
with her great oil and grain production, to say nothing of the
disquieting rumors that Holland, against her will, is being
driven by our embargo upon the necessaries of life into the
arms of the enemy.

What wonder that, by strange coincidence, on the very

328 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

day when the President was holding forth the olive branch to
Austria, the Kaiser was shouting defiantly in Hamburg,
" We want peace and shall seek it, but the victory of German
arms must first be recognized !" and that Ambassador Gerard,
who has yet to be consulted, except perfunctorily upon his
arrival, by his own Government, was saying, " There is no
chance of starving Germany, and there is no chance of win
ning through a revolution in that country ; Germany can feed
all except her old people, whom she leaves to die; before they
would starve themselves they would starve 10,000,000 Poles,
5,000,OCO Frenchmen, 2,000,000 Belgians and 2,000,000
prisoners of war; the only peace she would adhere to would
be a peace that really gave her victory !"

This is not pessimism; it is the stark, naked truth, in the
face of which we are making actual preparations for hardly
more than a year of conflict and are hoping against hope, like
true pacifists obsessed with optimism and given to opportun
ism, for the working of a miracle through moral suasion and
suave diplomacy. " It means peace within a year," said
Representative Flood, of the President's speech; " a drive for
peace," interpreted Mr. Mann; " a hint that peace is nearer
than any of us dream," said Mr. Pou; "a conclusion that
peace is very near," echoed Mr. Slayden; " his goal is peace
and he is driving to it," added Mr. Garrett; " it brings us near
an honorable peace," thought Mr. Sims; " a step in the direc
tion of peace," remarked Senator McKellar; " a modification
of the President's war aims address'' bluntly declared Sena
tor Johnson.

Peace — peace " without victory " for us, peace with vic
tory for the Huns 1 Is that what it all portends?

We cannot, we will not believe it. Black as the outlook
is and black as we should frankly recognize it to be, ultimate
triumph is as certain as that there is a God in Heaven if we
will but clear our vision and press on and on, be it for one
year or for ten. What the mighty forces of civilization need
and all they need is a leader. Our war-worn but indomitable
Allies know this and admit it; and they recognize the man
— Woodrow Wilson, whom above all others they would pre
fer to have in person at the head of the great council, and
whom, even as merely but suitably represented, they stand
ready and glad to heed and to follow. But the President
himself holds back; he keeps aloof as a " co-belligerent;" he
outlines programmes without consultation with accredited
representatives of the associate nations ; he consults only one

COORDINATION AT THE TOP 329

elderly and amiable, though estimable, gentleman; he is sur
rounded and supported almost exclusively by professional
pacifists; he addresses the Congress, the country and the
world, not as the leader of God's children, fighting, bleeding
and dying by the million in the great cause of human freedom,
but as a judge between all nations, powers of darkness and
evil no less than peoples of light and good.

This cannot go on. We must win. Our Allies are drift
ing, drifting from lack of direction, aggression and inspira
tion, which Woodrow Wilson alone can give. We beseech
him to sever the bonds which now hold him fast, to delegate
to others, better trained for the purpose than himself, the
work of organizations and reorganizations, to slough off the
infinitely distracting details of management, to charge re
sponsible political leaders with the shaping of domestic legis
lation and the execution of the laws, to rid himself of pander
ing, palavering Pacifists, to call to his aid and counsel the
fighting souls of America ; in a word, to take a fresh perspec
tive and then apply the full power of that remarkable
intellectual force and indomitable will which have constituted
him the natural, inevitable and universally recognized spokes
man of civilization and leader of the world in the greatest
crisis the world has ever known.

God grant that he, this son of Destiny, may see the light
and fail not!

COORDINATION AT THE TOP

WHY not coordinate the President and Congress?
Since, like " that blessed word, Mesopotamia," coordination
is to be the magic talisman of victory, why not apply it at
the top as well as at the bottom, or half way down?

The question is suggested by the recent manifestations
of friction, to employ no harsher term, between the Execu
tive and Legislative branches of the Government, and par
ticularly between the War Department and the Senate
Committee on Military Affairs. We have faith to believe
that this friction will be abated, and that ultimately, per
haps, good may follow it. But just because overruling
Providence brings good out of evil, the evil remains no less
evil still. We are told that the controversy has delayed
some of the most urgent war operations of the Government,
which might have been nothing short of disastrous. It was
assuredly not edifying to have the President of the United

330 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

States calling one of the foremost members of the Senate
constructively a liar and a traitor; for that, translated into
Our Colonel's " shorter and uglier " words, is what his re
tort upon Mr. Chamberlain was equivalent to. Nor can
we think that the moral effect of the incident, upon our own
citizenship at large and upon the observing world, was
favorable, of having democracy, in the midst of a great war
for its vindication and confirmation, thus rent with dissen
sions and at loggerheads with itself. Surely now is the time
of all times in human history for a democratic government
to display harmony and efficiency instead of bickering and
helplessness.

This regrettable state of affairs is, we are compelled to
believe, chiefly to be charged to two sources ; neither of them,
however, intentionally mischievous. One of them was, the
President's persistence in a policy, or in the practice of a
theory, which was enunciated by him long ago, before his
accession to the Presidency, and to which he has long been
known to be passionately attached, but which has never been
regarded with any considerable degree of popular favor.
The other was, somewhat paradoxically, the President's
abandonment and repudiation of a policy to which in his
earlier career he expressed the strongest possible attachment,
and which the public unquestionably approves and indeed
demands.

If only he had done precisely the opposite, and had
abandoned the policy to which he has clung, and had main
tained that which he has repudiated!

The first of these policies was correctly referred to by
Senator Hitchcock when he said that " The President be
longs to the school of political philosophers who adhere to
the belief that all important legislation should originate with
and be proposed .by the Executive to the Legislative body."
That is, we believe, exactly true, according not only to Mr.
Wilson's present practice but also to his former very delib
erate and thoughtful utterances. Years ago he described
the Presidential chair as having originally been — by impli
cation, having been intended by the framers of the Consti
tution to be — " the true centre of the Federal structure,
the real Throne of Administration, and the frequent source
of politics." In these later years, however, it " has fallen
from its first estate of dignity, because its power has
waned " ; and he explained, in what seemed unmistakably

COORDINATION AT THE TOP 331

to be a tone of regret and reproof, that " its power has waned
because the power of Congress has become predominant."
Again translated into the brief, terse phrases of the Man
in the Street, the President used to be and ought to be the
ruler of the nation, but his place has now been usurped by
Congress.

From what the President received that impression of the
original estate of the Presidency, we cannot venture to sug
gest. Certainly we do not find in the records of the early
Presidents and their administrations any warrant for it.
We do not think that Washington or John Adams or Jef
ferson sought to exalt himself above the representatives of
the people. Neither do we find authority for it in the Con
stitution, the very first words of which, following the
Preamble, are: " All legislative powers herein granted shall
be vested in a Congress of the United States." It is true
that the British system affords an example of the initiation
of legislation by the executive administration, but that is
manifestly inapplicable to this country, because of the radi
cal difference between a Ministry responsible to the Legis
lature and dependent upon it for tenure of office, and a
President and Cabinet not thus responsible and not thus
dependent.

We are quite in accord with Senator Hitchcock in think
ing that the enforcement of the President's views upon
Congress has generally had good results. But we are equally
in accord with his addendum, that to this rule there must
now and then be exception; and we cannot help thinking
that an exception or two must be made in these recent cases.
We have been informed, without contradiction, that the
President did not wish a committee of the Senate to report
to that body a bill for the creation of a War Cabinet, and
that he objected to any discussion of the subject in the Sen
ate. Now it may be that the bill as originally proposed
was in some respects inadvisable and even improper. We
rather think that it was. But those were faults to be cor
rected through discussion and conference. It is simply
impossible to admit for a moment the proposition that the
President is qualified to dictate to Congress what legislation
it shall and shall not propose, and what subjects it shall and
shall not discuss, and any attempt at or inclination toward
the exercise of such dictation is inevitably calculated to pro
duce precisely such friction as that which we have all been

332 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

deploring. The Presidential chair is not and never was
meant to be a " throne " of any kind, and the less frequently
it is the " source of politics " the better it will be.

The other source of friction to which we have referred
is to be discerned in the increasing inclination of the Presi
dent toward secretiveness. This, as we have said, is an aban
donment of his former and more commendable policy. We
all remember his admirable denunciations of " secret govern
ment " and his high professions of devotion to transparent
openness. " My hobby," he declared, " is the hobby of pub
licity. I cannot imagine any portion of the public business
which can be privately and confidentially dealt with. The
root of all evil in politics is privacy and concealment." Yet
there has of late in his administration been a conduct of
affairs with a degree of secrecy unprecedented in American
history. Of this, two examples will be sufficiently illumina
ting. Senator Chamberlain made some strong charges con
cerning what he regarded as the inefficiency of the Admin
istration, particularly in the War Department ; and the reply
of the Administration, made through the Secretary of War,
was that Mr. Chamberlain was uninformed of the really
great achievements of that Department — in brief, did not
know what the Administration was doing. (The Presi
dent's personal reply we have already cited.)

Now the obvious rejoinder, not for Mr. Chamberlain
but for the nation to make, is that the Senator and his
colleagues ought to have known all about it, and the Admin
istration should have seen to it that they were kept constantly
informed to the fullest degree of the work that was being
done. It may be that it is desirable to keep a great many
facts secret, concerning our preparations for the prosecution
of the war. With that we are fully agreed; though we do
think that American citizens are entitled to know as much
about their own affairs as their enemies across the sea are
permitted to know about them. But it is an indescribable
anomaly for some of the most important details of admin
istration to be kept secret from the very Chairman of that
Committee of the Senate which is charged with the duty
and responsibility of devising ways and means for the prose
cution of the work. Of what profit is it to have a Senate
Committee on Military Affairs if it is not to know what the
War Department is doing? Would not a rubber stamp
do as well? We should think that one of the first, most

COORDINATION AT THE TOP 333

important and certainly most welcome duties of the Secre
tary of War should be to keep constantly and intimately in
touch with the committees of both Houses on Military
Affairs. In no other way could the prompt and ungrudg
ing support of Congress be so certainly assured.

Again, strongly resenting the proposal of Congress to

Erovide for a reorganization of the Executive departments
y the creation of a War Cabinet and a Secretaryship of
Munitions, the President sent to Congress as the alternative
an omnibus, blank check bill, giving him autocratic author
ity to make any changes he pleased in the Executive depart
ments, without in the least indicating what the changes were
to be. Under the bill as drafted he could have combined
the Treasury Department and the Labor Department in
one, and could have made the Navy Department a bureau
of the Department of Agriculture. Now, we have no idea
that any such extravagant excursions were contemplated by
the President, and we are quite confident that some con
siderable reorganization of departments and bureaus, for the
elimination of red tape and the consolidation of responsi
bility, is highly desirable. But we must regard it as extraor
dinary for even the President, occupying what he esteems
to be the " Throne of Administration," to ask to be invested
with so sweeping powers without the slightest intimation as
to the extent to which and the direction in which they are
to be exercised. For the President to object to Congress's
so much as considering a change in the organization of the
Executive departments, and in the next breath to ask it to
give him autocratic power to do anything with them that
he wishes, is certainly apt to give rise to regrettable friction.
It was observed that as soon as, a few days later, some
explanations and assurances concerning the proposed reor
ganizations were forthcoming, the opposition to such a
measure began to abate. There was no opposition to reor
ganization, per se. All recognized that it was desirable. But
there was a very strong conviction that sweeping changes
in the Executive department of the Government ought not
to be authorized without the legislative representatives of
the people having some inkling of what they were to be.
Had the President's executive reorganization bill been pre
pared and introduced in that spirit of publicity which the
President himself formerly so much commended and boasted,
it might have been enacted, nem. con., within three days.

334 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

When the President went before Congress and frankly
disclosed the course and condition of our relations with Ger
many, there was an instantaneous and most favorable
response to his proposal of a suspension of diplomatic inter
course. When he similarly made known the necessity for
accepting Germany's arrogant gage of war, there was a
similar response, as prompt, as ungrudging and as unani
mous as even he could have wished. Such, indeed, has been
the case on every occasion when, with his unsurpassed powers
of elucidation and persuasive argument, he has sought
coordination and cooperation of the Executive and Legis
lative departments. And what has been done can be done
again. All that is needed to abate friction — all that was
needed to avoid it — is the renewal and maintenance of that
frank policy of confidence and cooperation.

Congress must recognize that the President is bearing,
like the Weary Titan, " the load well nigh not to be borne,"
and must be helpful to him and not add to his embarrass
ments. The President, too, needs to realize that Congress
is just as much concerned as he in the successful prosecu
tion of the war, and that it is seeking to aid and not to
hinder him. The two must confide in each other. They
must be coordinated. We are fighting for Democracy. It
would be lamentable at such a time for Democrats to fight
among themselves; or show Democracy to be inefficient; or
to compel Democracy to be transformed, even temporarily,
into Autocracy.

THE HUNNISHNESS OF THE HUN

IT is now and then worth while to recall a bit of history,
to point a present moral. We now and then meet with some
one, " good, easy man,'* who is so forgetful of the not distant
past that he regards the present perversity of Germany as

Sdte a new thing, and the moral degeneracy of William the
amned as an unprecedented phenomenon; and without
being unduly pessimistic we are inclined to fear that a great
many of our complacent and more or less oblivious fellow
citizens cherish that same delusion; the fact being that the tur
pitude of the Kaiser and his Huns in our day is nothing but
the logical and consistent culmination of a policy which had
its origin at least as far back as that Great Frederick who,

THE HUNNISHNESS OF THE HUN 335

with his grandfather and himself, constitutes the trinity of the
Kaiser's adoration, and which was especially emphasized, re-
adopted and developed in the circumstances and ways and
means of the creation of the present Prussianized empire.

Mr. James Brown Scott, in his monumental work on In
ternational Relations Between the United States and Ger
many, August 1, 19 14- April 6^ 1917, reminds us of many
pertinent facts of history to this effect; of which space will
permit us to cite no more than two. These remind us of the
almost incredible moral turpitude with which the creation of
the present German Empire was marked. It is unpleasant to
believe such things of Bismarck, who despite his crimes was
one of the world's greatest constructive statesmen, and we
could not do so had he not himself confirmed them, with
cynical exultation in their efficiency.

One is, of course, the familiar incident of Bismarck's
deliberately falsifying the Ems telegraphic dispatch, for the
direct purpose of provoking France into a declaration of
war. He had long before determined upon a war, as a means
of unifying Germany under Prussian suzerainty, of crushing
Germany's only continental rival, of enriching the German
treasury with a huge cash indemnity, and of securing a slice
of French territory which Germany needed for the mineral
wealth which it contained. But in order to assure the first
aim, German unity, and also in order to win the sympathy, or
at least assure the neutrality, of other Powers, it was highly
desirable that France should declare the war and make the
attack, so that Germany could pose before the world as being
on the defensive and could thus with the better grace demand
an indemnity at the end.

Try as hard as he could, however, Bismarck was unable
to provoke France into a quarrel, until the dispatch in ques
tion presented an opportunity. Had he transmitted it hon
estly, as it was written, peace would have remained unbroken.
But by maliciously falsifying it, by garbling its contents and
suppressing an essential portion of them, he made it a certain
provocation to immediate war, at a time when he knew that
France was quite unprepared while Germany was fully pre
pared. He kept the monstrous falsification, of course, a pro
found secret until after the war, when it was too late to undo
its effects. It was only because of that falsification, it was
only because they were deceived into believing that France
was really the aggressor, that Bavaria and other German

336 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

States were prevailed upon to ally themselves with Prussia
in what they mistakenly supposed to be a war of defence
against French aggression.

That was in 1870. Just forty- four years later came a sin
gularly close parallel. William the Damned had decided
upon war with France, in order again to crush her and rob
her and steal some more of her rich soil. But in order to
obey the German Constitution, and in order to command the
support of his ally, Austria-Hungary, it was necessary to
make it appear that France had begun the war and that Ger
many was on the defensive. Not having the subtlety of Bis
marck, and not having a chance to forge or garble a telegram,
he simply lied. He declared that France had begun the war
by an unprovoked and hostile military invasion of Germany
and the commission therein of overt acts of war. Afterward
it was officially confessed that there was not a word of truth
in this. But it was " a good enough Morgan until after elec
tion." It served its purpose, and the war of 1914 was
founded on a lie, as that of 1870 had been founded on a forg
ery. There was nothing extraordinary in the later crime.
It was simply the logical successor of the former one. Will
iam the Damned showed himself an apt pupil of the Pilot
whom he had dropped.

The other incident which Mr. Scott recalls to mind pre
ceded this by a few years, but was a part of the same infernal
intrigue ; and it was nothing less than the Prussian Govern
ment's practical connivance at an attempt to assassinate the
Czar of Russia. This was on the occasion of Alexander's
visit to Paris, along with the other European sovereigns, at
the international exhibition of 1867. Already Bismarck was
planning for war against France, and was scheming to pre
vent any other country from coming to the aid of that power
when the might of united Germany should be crushing it.
Above all he was solicitous concerning the attitude and
course of Russia, and he feared that during the visit to
Paris the Czar might become too friendly with Napoleon III,
who was then at the zenith of his reign.

When, therefore, one of Bismarck's innumerable spies
brought word that a young Pole was preparing to assassinate
the Czar in the streets of Paris, the Prussian statesman hailed
it as a godsend. He saw in it an opportunity at once to
alienate Alexander from France and to win his grateful
friendship for Prussia. He therefore gave orders to his

THE HUNNISHNESS OF THE HUN 337

spies that the matter should not be disclosed to the French
police, but that the would-be assassin should be permitted to
proceed with his murderous attempt; but that a Prussian spy
should be at hand to interfere at the last moment so as to
deflect the shot from the imperial target. Thus, Bismarck
reckoned, the Czar would be led to think that Napoleon had
not sufficiently safeguarded him, and would in consequence
be estranged from France; while at the same time he would
be grateful to Prussia because a Prussian had saved his life.

The very day before the commission of the crime one of
Bismarck's jackals reported the matter to him, saying i

" I have, of course, been very careful not to put the as
sassin under arrest; but I have given orders to one of my best
agents to follow him step by step and not to leave him."

To this, Bismarck replied:

" Well done ; . . and one of your agents, without
doing anything to prevent the shooting, will take hold of the
arm of the assassin and deflect the mortal shot. . . . Thus
while the crime will be averted, the attempt will remain.
. . . Realizing that the French police were not able to
protect him, Czar Alexander will leave France with the most
unfavorable impression."

Next day at Longchamps the shot was fired, as Bismarck
intended it to be ; the assassin's arm was struck at the moment
and the shot went wild; and the neutrality of Russia was
assured in the coming war. That is to say, in order to gain a
diplomatic point Bismarck deliberately compounded a felony.
He permitted the Czar to be made the target of an assassin's
bullet, trusting to the good luck and quick act of a bystander
to disturb the aim at the very moment when the trigger was
being pulled. If the bullet had found its mark and the Czar
had been killed, Bismarck would have been a party to the
murder, as guilty as the actual slayer himself. We should
doubt if the modern history of the world contains another
equally atrocious example of cold-blooded villainy — unless it
be that, as many have charged on very plausible grounds, the
murder of the Austrian Heir Presumptive and his wife at
Sarajevo was planned and ordered by the Austrian court at
German instigation, in order to provide a pretext for the
present war.

This happened, it is true, half a century ago. But it is
of present pertinence as a reminder of the moral principles
upon which the Hohenzollern German Empire was founded,

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 748 22

338 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and which were inculcated in his youth into the mind of the
perverted criminal who now occupies the German throne.
These two incidents afford, moreover, so striking a precedent
parallel to the suspected circumstances and known facts of
the present war as to provoke a certain wonder at the poverty
of German ingenuity. In 1867 and 1870 the modus operandi
was first to connive at attempted murder, and then to lie.
In 1914 it was, first to connive at actual murder, and then to
lie. Can the much vaunted inventive genius of Germany
devise no other method of starting a great war, that it is
content with such repetition?

These things are profitable to recall, too, because they in
form us of the character of the foe with which we have to
deal, and give to the world the amplest vindication that could
be desired of the President's demand that in the making of
peace we shall have some more reputable and trustworthy
government to deal with than that of the perjured and mur
derous Hohenzollerns. It would be nothing short of insult
ing to ask self-respecting peoples to enter into negotiations
with a government whose ordinary methods of diplomacy
comprise forgery and assassination. We have spoken of the
principles which prevailed at the founding of the German
Empire. They were Prussian principles, enunciated and
adopted by the founder of Prussia's power. " Know once
and for all," said Frederick the Great, " that in the matter
of kingcraft we take when we can, and that we are never
wrong unless we have to give back what we have taken." That
is the spirit of the Hohenzollern Hun. Any theft — of Po
land, of Schleswig-Holstein, of Alsace-Lorraine — is to be
approved so long as it is successful. The only evil is, to be
compelled to relinquish the loot.

Upon such a basis as that, this country cannot stand, nor
can it maintain relations of friendship and confidence with
any power that does so. Such principles and practices as
those of the Hohenzollerns are an offence and a menace to
civilization and to democracy. They are no more to be com
promised with than is a mad dog or a pestilence. The only
way to deal with them is to destroy them, and to destroy all
who persist in them. Those who renounce them, and replace
them with the principles of civilized States, may be welcomed
back into the fellowship of peace-loving and law-abiding
nations. But for those who cling to practices of perjury
and assassination, there is nothing left but the application

BRAZIL'S INTEREST IN THE WAR 839

of the inexorable rule, They that take the sword shall perish
by the sword.

BRAZIL'S INTEREST IN THE WAR

BRAZIL'S entry into the war is "abundantly explicable
and justifiable on several grounds. We are not inclined so
greatly to vaunt ourselves as to attribute it chiefly to Brazil's
friendship for the United States and her desire to follow our
example and to give us support, though we have good reason
for believing that those motives were by no means without
force. Another powerful reason is found in Brazil's prompt
and comprehensive recognition of Germany's violation of in
ternational law and of the obligation incumbent upon every
law-abiding State to resent such action and to suppress it if
need be with force and arms.

A third reason, from the purely selfish point of view the
strongest of all, was supplied by Germany's scarcely dissem
bled intention some day to dismember Brazil and to plant
upon some of its fragments a German colonial empire. It
was with that end in view that German settlers flocked by
thousands into those five southern States of Brazil, the
climate and other conditions of which were most favorable
for their residence. It was for that purpose that those set
tlers remained German in language and customs, and saw
to it that their children and children's children did the same.
Years ago a German traveler and publicist, Dr. Leyser,
writing in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,, blurted out the
truth:

" Nowhere are our colonies, those loyal offshoots from the
mother root, so promising as here. To-day in these provinces
over thirty per cent, of the inhabitants are Germans, or of
German descent, and the ratio of their natural increase far
exceeds that of the Portuguese. Surely to us belongs this
part of the world, and the key to it all is Santa Catharina,
stretching from the harbor of San Francisco far into the
interior, with its hitherto undeveloped, hardly suspected
wealth. Here, indeed, in Southern Brazil, is a rich and
healthy land, where the German immigrant may retain his
nationality, where for all that is comprised in the word ' Ger-
manismus ' a glorious future smiles."

That and some other utterances of the same tenor were

340 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

regarded as indiscreet, and the Wilhelmstrasse hastened to
counteract them with camouflage. Under instructions from
his Imperial Master the German Ambassador at Washing
ton, Speck von Sternburg, wrote to THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW denying that Germany had any thought of seizing a
part of South America, and arguing that there was no
ulterior significance whatever in the German colonization of
Southern Brazil.

The speciousness and insincerity of his representations
and arguments were, however, readily recognizable, and they
were recognized by all well informed and thoughtful men,
both here and in Brazil. It was doubtless true, as the Wil
helmstrasse represented, that many, perhaps most, of the
German settlers in Brazil became naturalized Brazilian citi
zens. But that meant nothing, seeing that Germany, alone
of all nations, maintained a system of dual allegiance, under
which a German subject could swear allegiance to a foreign
country and become a citizen of it without forfeiting his Ger
man nationality and allegiance; his explicit renunciation of
all allegiance to Germany in his naturalization oath being
regarded as merely so much camouflage, uttered with a con
venient " mental reservation."

Moreover, it was actually to Germany's interest, it was a
part of the plot, to have these colonists become Brazilian citi
zens. That was the means by which a German conquest of
Brazil, perhaps of all South America, was to be effected
without violating the Monroe Doctrine or giving the United
States cause for intervention. It was recognized that this
country would not for a moment permit aliens to overthrow
the Brazilian Government or to seize Brazilian territory.
But it was also perceived that the United States was strongly
committed to the principle of self-determination, and to that,
also, of non-intervention in civil strife or even in intra- Amer
ican conflicts. It did not intervene when a revolution over
threw one government and set up another; when a part of a
South American republic revolted and seceded, or when one
South American State went to war with another and an
nexed some of its territory as spoils of victory.

It was upon the basis of these principles that Germany
looked for conquest in Brazil. Said a distinguished German
diplomat to the writer of these lines : " You concede the right
of people to determine their own form of government, do you
not; and, therefore, the right of revolution? Yes; because

BRAZIL'S INTEREST IN THE WAR 841

your own government was founded upon that principle.
Then if "the citizens — the citizens, mind you — of some of the
Brazilian States become dissatisfied with the government of
that country, and decided to set up an independent govern
ment of their own, you could not object; no? Very well.
You also concede the right of independent American States
to go to war with each other, and even to annex each other's
land by way of indemnity or otherwise; do you not? Yes; I
remember that you did not intervene when Chili went to war
with Bolivia and Peru, and when she annexed as spoils of
war some of their most valuable territory, depriving Bolivia
altogether of her frontage upon the sea. So; I assume that
if the new States formed of former States of Brazil were in
time to find cause for war with the remnant of Brazil, you
would not forbid it, nor would you intervene if as a result of
that war the new States took some more Brazilian territory.
Or, if in time this new State became involved in war with
some other South American republic, and whipped it, and
took some of its territory, would you consider that a violation
of the Doctrine of Monroe? I think not, and so I think that
you will some day find it difficult, at least on the ground of
Monroeism, to check the development of Germanismus in the
Western Hemisphere."

So Albrecht Wirth, in his Folkstum und Weltmacht in
der Geschichte, ten years before the war, declared: " If we
do not soon acquire new territory, a frightful catastrophe is
inevitable. It signifies little whether it be in Brazil, in
Siberia, in Anatolia or in South Africa."

These German designs upon Brazil, and through her upon
all South America, have been perfectly well known in that
country. It was realized there, long before our own short
sighted and happy-go-lucky pacifists perceived it, that Amer
ica would have in the near future to defend itself against a
hostile Germany, just as a century ago it had to defend itself
against the menace of the German-inspired Holy Alliance.
At Rio de Janeiro no secret was made of the fact, no matter
how much it may have been ignored or pooh-poohed here,
that it was for protection against Germany that the two great
dreadnoughts, Minas Geraes and Sao Paulo, were built ten
years ago, and that at the same time a universal military
service law was enacted.

The apprehensions of that time are now realized, and Bra
zil is not as unready as we to meet them. That is why she

342 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

has entered the war so promptly and with so much potential
efficiency. It is a war for which she has been preparing, and
which she recognizes to be a war for the preservation of her
own integrity as well as for the vindication of international
law and the safeguarding of democracy throughout the
world.

LOSS OF TRADE AND NEED OF SHIPS

IT may seem strange to speak of the decline in foreign
trade which we are suffering, seeing that the much-quoted
figures for last year show a substantial increase in both ex
ports and imports over those for 1916 and of course for
any preceding year. It must be remembered, however, that
these figures express values and not volumes. There has
been an increase in the gross value of our commerce in both
directions, but there has also been an increase in the prices
of most commodities, and there is reason to suspect that the
latter increase has been the greater of the two, in which case
we must conclude that there has been an actual decrease in
the quantities of goods shipped.

Thus there was in 1917 over 1916 an increase of some
thing more than 13 per cent in the total value of exports,
and of 23 per cent in that of imports. But at the same time
there was, it is estimated, an increase of at least 30 per cent
on the average prices of the commodities dealt in. If that
estimate be correct, there was a considerable diminution of
the volume of trade. A further analysis of the figures show
us where the chief loss occurred, and suggests graphically
the effect of war conditions upon commerce and the increas
ing urgency of the needs of our Allies.

It seems probable that the only countries of Europe to
which we sent as much volume in 1917 as in 1916 were Italy
and Spain. To them our total exports increased respectively
38 and 44 per cent; or somewhat more than the average
rise in prices. To several other countries there was a smaller
increase, not so great as that in prices. To France, for
example, the total increase was less than 10 per cent; to
Russia in Europe it was less than 2 per cent; and to the
United Kingdom it was less than 7 per cent. Such small
increases, against a rise in prices of from three to fifteen
times as much can mean only one thing, that those coun-

LOSS OF TRADE AND NEED OF SHIPS 348

tries received a much less quantity of goods from us last
year than the year before. Seeing that their own capacity
for production — of food, at any rate — was less, as was also
their ability to procure supplies elsewhere, we can begin to
understand how serious a scarcity now besets them, and can
understand both the strict rationing system which has been
adopted in Great Britain and France, and the eager and
urgent desire which those countries have for our long-prom
ised expansion of our merchant marine.

The other European countries have, of course, fared still
worse, seeing that there has been a decrease in the total value
of their receipts from us. Our exports to Belgium declined
26 per cent, to Denmark 25 per cent, to the Netherlands
25 per cent, to Greece 75 per cent, to Norway 6 per cent,
and to Sweden 57 per cent. Take into account with these
figures the 30 per cent increase in prices, and the shrinkage
of the volume of their receipts is realized to have been
enormous.

So far as the Scandinavian countries and the Nether
lands are concerned, the diminution of trade might be
attributed largely to the embargo which was directed against
them on account of their diversion of goods to Germany.
In the cases of our Allies, however, it must be attributed
in part to the ravages of the U-boats against cargo shipping,
and partly to the use of shipping for the transportation of
our troops and their supplies to France and therefore the
diversion of it from the work of supplying our Allies.

These conditions are further emphasized by the contrast
between our trade witli Europe and that with other parts
of the world. Thus to Canada our exports, not by ship but
by land routes, were 37 per cent more than in 1916, mean
ing some increase in volume ; and to Mexico the increase was
no less than 105 per cent, or more than to any other country,
an indication of improving relations with that country and
improving conditions within it. To Brazil and to Argen
tina there was an increase of 40 per cent each, and to Chili
of 72 per cent. Of course in our commerce with those coun
tries there is no trouble from U-boats. To Cuba and to
Central America the increase was only 19 and 13 per cent
respectively, presumably indicating a decrease in volume.

Exports to China increased 29 per cent, and to the
British East Indies 26 per cent, showing a slight loss in
quantity; and to British South Africa 21 per cent, showing

844 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

a larger loss. To Russia in Asia there was an actual loss
in values of 22 per cent, with of course a very large decline
in volume. To Australia and New Zealand there was a
decrease of 6 per cent in value, and a loss of volume. But
to Japan, perhaps largely because she sent her own ships
for the goods, there was an increase in values of no less than
70 per cent, while our own Philippines again showed their
commercial worth to us with an increase of 73 per cent.

These figures may be disappointing to some, who
imagined from the statistics of total values that our for
eign trade was enormously increasing in volume and that
we were abundantly supplying the needs of our Allies.
They should serve as a potent stimulus to all thoughtful
Americans to do with increased energy and efficiency two
things of capital importance. One is, to increase our pro
duction of foodstuffs of all kinds, so as to meet our own
needs and the needs of our Allies, without, if possible, the
strict rationing which now is necessary. The other is, to
build ships, to build ships, and yet again to build ships,
with all the energy that ever has been credited to our much-
boasted American enterprise.

The bald, bare facts of the case are that while the needs
of our Allies have been increasing, our supplies to them
have been diminishing, and that with the increasing number
of men whom, Mr. Baker says, we are to send across the ocean
in the near future, our capacity to supply our Allies will be
still further lessened unless at the same time we increase
greatly our cargo-carrying tonnage. That is why one of
the supreme duties and necessities of the time is to think
ships, to talk ships, to plan ships, to build ships, to place
in commission ships, ships, SHIPS!

THE GREAT ILLUSION ABOUT
GERMANY

BY F. V. KEYS

Or all the features of the Great War that make it a
war without precedent and without parallel in history, none
is so fraught with incalculable consequences to the future of
civilization as the fact that this is literally a war not of
armies, nor of governments, but of entire peoples. There
is no other feature of the struggle which it is of such supreme
and present importance for all who hope for a stable peace
to bear in mind and attempt to understand. For at this hour
the Power that precipitated war at the moment of her own
choosing is attempting to precipitate peace, also at the
moment of her choice.

Now this Power is the very one that is responsible for
the fact that this is a war of whole nations — this Power
which, at the very outset of hostilities, mobilized not only
every human and every material resource of her people, but
also every inherited ideal and loyalty, every future hope
and aspiration, of the nation; which deliberately, for the
first time in history, has made a by-word of culture, by
betraying it into the service of ferocious military aggression.
The solidarity of the German nation, first in evolving and
next in maintaining this condition of affairs, is such as to
have succeeded in imposing a similar solidarity on each suc
cessive opponent as these entered the field against her. But
there is the gravest danger of the democratic peoples forget
ting that the organization they uneasily submit to, as a neces
sary measure in a moment of national peril, represents the
settled habit and accepted mode of German thought and
action throughout the whole of the histoiy of the German
Empire, and for centuries m the case of the dominant part
ner in that empire, Prussia.

Just as we see ourselves approaching an external resem-

846 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

blance to the German people, in that we too are perforce
assuming the aspect of an armed camp, there is the danger
that we shall project into our view of German mentality
some of the rooted aspects of our own : the taking for granted
that government expresses the will of the people, that it is
responsible to the people; our incapacity to consider whole
classes of our fellows as compounded of different clay, as
by birth endued with social and political privileges beyond
ourselves; our oblivion of the existence of a State Church
and the enormous weight of its combined ecclesiastical and
political prestige in enforcing its policies in the education
of youth and in controlling the political and social fortunes
of individuals. No consideration of the German nation that
fails to face the enormous gulf that separates them from
modern democracies in the only province that counts here,
the province of political thinking, will serve any purposes
save those of the modern scientific feudalism entrenched less
strongly in the soil of its opponents than in the brain and
the very blood of its own people, whether they belong to the
class that issues or the mass that takes orders. It is in the
interest of these latter, as it is in the interest, finally, of
even the former, that we who have evolved another philos
ophy and another practice of government, should see the
German people as they really are politically — not as our
ignorance, or a shallow idealism, or self-delusion, would wish
them to be.

Every appeal to the German people over the heads of
its leaders, every attempt to impress it with the good faith
and disinterestedness of its opponents in this war, every
assurance that we are fighting, not for the extermination of
the German people but for their right to develop their great
virtues and manifest genius in the humane forms ensured
alone under the influence of free institutions, pre-supposes
in Germany the existence of at least a kernel of the sort of
thought which we describe by the phrase "public opinion."
But no one who has been long and intimately familiar with
the inside of German institutions, with the ways of thinking
in typical German circles, whether liberal or conservative
so-called, with the whole political atmosphere breathed by
radical or reactionary within the borders of the German
Empire, can hesitate to say that there never has been in
Germany any such thing as public opinion.

In the summer of 1912 I happened to hear an address

THE ILLUSION ABOUT GERMANY 347

made before the Fraueninteressenverein of Munich by a
German who had just returned from a visit to this country.
He was representative of the most liberal thought in the
intellectual and artistic circles of South Germany, and a
vein of Anglo-Saxon blood in his descent made him an
excellent observer. His hosts and guides in his journey
across this continent were among the leaders of progressive
ideas in various fields of American social endeavor. In re
porting his impressions of America, he said that, to a Ger
man, the most striking and novel thing in this country was
the element which invariably entered into all discussion, and
which people called " public opinion." He had asked at first
what party it represented. He was told it represented no
one party; that it was outside of all parties, that it consti
tuted, in fact, the court of appeal from party. Everywhere
he went, among all kinds of people, he heard the phrase, and
everywhere it was used unquestioningly as indicating that
which, in the last analysis, everything must be referred to,
and, in the last decision, judged by. It could not be likened
or even compared to any German arbiter of opinion, to any
of the existing German hierarchies, whether military or
courtly or ecclesiastical or political. For while remaining
always unidentified with party opinion, this public opinion
on occasion drew on the ranks of all parties, who appeared
to meet on a plane of thought and purpose where party
lines disappeared and where the broader distinctions of right
and wrong divided men into opposing groups. In other
words, what was recognized by Americans as the sovereign
power in all matters of debate, was apparently none other
than the judging power lodged in the moral responsibility
of the people at large, a judging power invoked to decide
public questions and pass sentence on public officers on a
basis of the plain human issues involved, and in the large
interests of humanity itself. Now this, he said, it was almost
impossible to make a German audience understand. For it
meant a national psychology different not so much in degree
as in kind. For in Germany, there were always just two
bodies of opinion on any and every matter: there was the
Government, and there was the opposition. No one really
got outside of these two categories.

The truth of this presentation of the case, on the Ger
man side, the events of the war have proved almost past
belief. We have seen that the group of men which in every

348 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

country is assumed to be vowed to a strict observance of
ascertained fact, the scientists, in Germany distinguished
themselves by issuing to the world a document denying
flagrant facts on the sole authority of their word, so that
the famous Es 1st Nicht Wahr throws into the shade all
the prerogatives claimed by the bulls issued over the signa
ture of papal infallibility. Meanwhile, the intellectual lead
ers of all schools, not excluding those that had coquetted
with the political " left " and had sedulously followed the
lead of aesthetic and literary innovators in Paris and London,
closed up their ranks with the Government, and left nothing
unsaid that would fan the belief of the masses that this was
a holy war in defense of German culture itself. And the
opposition? It did precisely the same.

The reason for this is plain, and of the utmost moment
for us in America to bear in mind whenever and wherever
the idea of a negotiated peace with Germany, as she now
stands, is put forward.

Why is it so impossible for the German mind to appre
hend and understand that which we mean by " public opin
ion "? For the reason that the German nation has always
been, psychologically, on a war footing. Her mentality has
been, in a quite literal sense, the mentality of an army. And
an army is the one place where there can be no public opin
ion. An army, indeed, is alfewed its recreation, when off
duty. Nor is the censorship strict in regard to the range
and license permitted to those who furnish its recreation,
provided these do not infringe upon the authority of the
army discipline. Many foreigners, especially Anglo-Saxons,
were misled into believing in the emancipated political state
of German opinion by the extreme freedom with which the
German novel and particularly the German stage treated
all social traditions and conventions, especially those pertain
ing to sex. The grossness of the extremely clever German
caricaturists was indicative of a public graduated, in the
highest as in the meanest of its members, from the barracks.
Not alone the military barracks, but the educational ones,
where during a long and rigidly enforced attendance the
German mind was trained in the two essentials of an army,
absolute reliance on the officers and unremitting apprehen
sion of the near presence and treachery of the foe. The
discipline of the class-room was in no way behind that of
the army, for which it prepared and shaped the whole youth

THE ILLUSION ABOUT GERMANY 340

of the country. And from the authority of the schoolmaster
there was as little appeal as from the authority of the com
manding officer.

Nothing speaks so eloquently of the intolerable inter
locking of parental and school authority in Germany as the
steadily rising toll of child suicide, expected and occurring
yearly with the return of the Easter promotions in the
schools. Where the results of an examination were respon
sible for making or unmaking a career, the burden upon the
pupil was beyond the strength of all those not capable of
assimilating an army drill, and caught between the school
and a parent trained to know better than to connive by
sympathy at the undermining of authority. The German
gymnasiast, of an age corresponding to that of our high-
school boys, presented a compound of solid learning and
extraordinary academic maturity, with a feudal political
mentality that could be described intelligibly to an Anglo-
Saxon only by the term " arrested political development."
But the same youth might show, if living in one of the larger
centers, a literary and dramatic and artistic taste formed on
the best classics and the most advanced modern works in
these provinces. And for that side of him, too, the Govern
ment was responsible, tightening its grip on his loyalty by
its insistence in making him a creature of a masterful power
and efficiency in every domain, and never letting him stray
for a moment beyond its watchful attentiveness to his needs.
Every schoolboy in Germany was made to feel himself the
future defender of not only the boundaries but of the genius
of his country against an obviously inferior and covertly
jealous world. How deeply the German nature took the
mould thus imposed, the world has seen.

And what of the " opposition " ? What, under the dis
guise of mere name, of mere profession, and of merely
domestic policies, does the " opposition " in the German
nation signify today to the enemies of autocracy and the
friends of democracy in the ranks of the Allies? Are they
justified by the history and temper of that " opposition "
in regarding it as a possible purchase on the German people
in the interest of an internal revolutionary movement against
the present German Government?

First, as to its history. There are here two capital
points to be noted. They can only be indicated, but their
far-reaching effects will occur to every student or thinker

350 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

on the subject of those practical politics that make, and do
not only criticise, history. The first point is, the essentially
exclusive pre-occupation of the German Socialists in the
Reichstag with questions and measures of purely domestic
policy, the pouring of their whole energy into the attempt
to push forward the enfranchisement of the laboring classes,
the re-distribution of electoral districts, nationalization or
municipalization of transport and commodities, and the gen
eral insurance measures for the workers. In all this, neither
the dangers nor the responsibilities attaching to foreign poli
cies were in the minds of the Socialist leaders, still less on
their programme for the education of the masses. This was
to a certain extent inevitable. The German nation as a
whole was absorbed, until Bismarck fell, in consolidating the
newly raised structure of the German Empire, itself the
creature of a military annexationist policy, which crowned
its Emperor at Versailles, and proceeded to build itself up
internally by turning into its commerce and industry the
proceeds of the enormous indemnity imposed on France, by
exploiting scientifically the two rich annexed provinces and
expropriating their French inhabitants to make room for
German colonists.

It was under this regime that the present Reichstag
Socialist party was born. The master of this regime, Bis
marck, was the parliamentary trainer of the first and greatest
of the Socialist leaders, August Bebel, who applauds, in his
Memoirs, the openness with which the Chancellor conducted
his side of the argument. But the fight Bebel fought with
Bismarck was a fight within the Empire only. That the
German masses should be satisfied with this as the one and
only necessary struggle, was merely the natural result of
their complete inexperience in all government, as it was
also the foregone conclusion from the very nature of the
Reichstag itself, permitted to exist only as a place where
the measures designed by the Government might previously
be submitted to public debate, and thus furnish to the Gov
ernment reliable proof of the condition of parties, by which
it could be safely guided as to time and occasion for further
ing its own ends. But for us at the present time it is
momentous to remember that during the period when the
German Socialist party was still virgin — as yet unwedded
to Blacks or Blues for the purpose of obtaining its own
domestic ends — it was breathing an air infected with the

THE ILLUSION ABOUT GERMANY 351

triumph of aggressive military imperialism. Its leaders had
so little inborn political consciousness as practically to ignore
the whole question of German foreign policy in their political
education of their rank and file, contenting themselves with
repeating the party slogan that all armies were merely the
weapon of capitalism against the home laboring class. These
leaders, nevertheless, had in their own lifetime seen the Ger
man army used as the effective tool of territorial expansion
against Denmark in 1864, against Austria in 1866, against
France in 1870. The territorial gains in the Austrian War
were slight, but the psychological gains to Prussian imperi
alism were enormous. The victory of Sadowa eliminated
Austria as a possible leader of the already projected Ger
man Empire, and left Prussia, on the strength of her vic
torious arms, the undisputed head of that federation, to be
shaped according to the ideal of an undiluted Teutonic race.
And during the long period following the War of 1870, these
same Socialist leaders saw that the tool which determined
and achieved the aims of German foreign policy, the army,
was being steadily increased in respect of size, specialization
of arms, and the utmost scientific efficiency; and to this
army, after the Emperor had launched a new world policy
of imperialism in his declaration that " the future of Ger
many lies upon the seas," there was added a navy that set
out to surpass that of the Power whose navy was her sole
arm. Far from making it their main concern to warn the
German masses against the avowed uses to which these
preparations pointed, the Socialists used the Government's
policy of military and naval expansion as a means of bar
gaining with it for certain domestic reforms of their own.
Politically in their nonage, bred up not on political experi
ence but on a political theory that dismissed all questions of
foreign policy as negligible, as superseded by a policy pro
fessing to align mankind on other than national lines, the
German Socialist party constituted an absolutely unreliable
factor in determining the peace of Europe.

The second point to be noted in the history of the party,
is that it has been, in a vital sense, an opposition on paper
only. It has flourished hitherto under a constitution that
foredoomed it never to come into actual power, never to be
committed to the enactment of its own policies, in the face
of the opposition of other parties, never even to see those
measures which it fathered in debate put through except

352 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

with the consent and assistance of the Government or of
one of the reactionary groups. Invariably this consent was
bought with an off -setting gain on the imperialistic side.
With this as the actual process of Socialist policy, there lay
in the Socialist internationalist formula — in the speeches re
ported abroad as flung at the head of the Government by
Socialist debaters — the gravest danger to the cause of peace
ful evolution toward democracy throughout the world. The
inveterate tendency of human nature, let alone party lead
ers, to unpack its heart in words when secure against the
practical consequences of those words and assured that it
shall never be called on to be responsible for enacting them,
becomes a peculiarly dangerous one when there exist in the
responsible parliaments of democratic peoples groups of men
who are urged, by their long political history, by their party
devotion to party formulas, and by their native temper, to
attach to the utterances of German Socialists and the ru
mored discontent of the German masses, a meaning and a
weight wholly illusory, a meaning so flagrantly disproved
today that belief in it would be grotesque were it not so full
of sinister implications for the future.

For the temper itself of the German opposition has been
from its beginning that of an army within an army. How
could it be otherwise? Socialists in Germany have gradu
ated from the same schools, from the same universities, from
the same army, as the imperialists. They have lived all their
lives in the same mental atmosphere, that of superior and
inferior, woman standing as breeder and general servant at
the bottom of the scale. On one occasion, when the present
writer was remarking to a German Socialist on the absence
of any endeavor to promote independent judgment in the
ranks of the party, the answer was given in a tone of Teu
tonic finality: " Here we have to fight an army. To do it,
we must adopt the tactics of an army." So that for the
mass of the German " opposition," the very school that was
pretending to liberate them politically was busy adding an
other turn to the screw that held them in mental subjection.

A savage intolerance toward any form of revolutionary
thought except that endorsed by the party was characteristic
of leaders and followers. I have seen a mass-meeting of
Socialist workmen deny, on the cue of the chairman, freedom
of speech to a fellow workingman because they suspected in
him an advocate of syndicalism, and I heard them applaud

THE ILLUSION ABOUT GERMANY 353

with jeers the brutal gesture that sent him reeling from the
platform to the floor. Intolerance had been instilled into
the thinking of the professed " opposition." From that it
was only a step to the doctrine of physical force. German
Socialists have been the agents of Prussian imperialism
among the " comrades " of every nation. " Imperialists? "
— a visiting German Socialist deputy at Geneva was quoted
as saying, in an interview with a Swiss party member, in
January, 1915 — " of course we German Socialists are im
perialists. We will conquer Europe with our army, and
then socialize it."

To every German the army is the tool of his idea, the
instrument of his mission. ' The function of the German
is to impose organization on mankind," said Ostwald, as a
justification of German aggression. As for the temper of
the whole German people, it had become such that no pos
sible war that the imperialists could declare but must be
regarded by them as a war of defence. An observer of the
entrance of the first German troops into Luxembourg said
that the most terrifying thing was the expression on the
faces of the soldiers. It was that of wild beasts at bay.
Their glance flashed ferociously from side to side down every
cross-street and alley. They had been told that the French
were already in the place, and might spring on them from
ambush at any moment. It is an epitome of the teaching
and the mental attitude of the German people for forty
years, of Prussia for centuries. Where, in these two inter
locking phalanxes, with obedience within and fear without
as the two watchwords, was there room for public opinion?

Whether there is any other means of breaking up this
war-complex than by breaking up the German army, it is
for the German people itself, and for it alone, to say and
prove. On them, and on them alone, lies the burden of
proof. We must accept the word of no one else for them.
We have done so once, and that once too often. The United
States has spoken at last the word that History has been
waiting for ever since the first volley was fired: " We can
have no dealings with the present Government of the Ger
man Empire." In that word the " Necessity knows no
law " of the German Chancellor got its final and logical
reply. To act on that word, never to recant it, is the duty
of the Republic to mankind, and to Germany.

F. V. KEYS.

VOL. ccvn.— NO. 748 23

GERMANY AND ALSACE-LORRAINE

HOW TO HELP ANNEXATION

BY G. K. CHESTERTON

THE practical proposal that the war should end, sub
stantially, with a German evacuation of Belgium and Serbia,
is certainly not so impossible, at least in the physical sense,
as some might suppose. Nay, it might well be regarded
as an example of history repeating itself. It might be said
that the Germans have proved in the past that they possess
the magnanimity and sagacity to withdraw their armies from
lands in which they were in armed occupation. Thus it is
a fact to be gravely noted that after 1870 the Germans
did not continue to occupy the whole of France for ever.
Although the King of Prussia was so satisfied with the taste
and comfort of the Palace of Versailles that he selected it
among all his country residences for the scene of his corona
tion as German Emperor, yet he good-naturedly withdrew
after a time and exiled himself from these familiar scenes,
retiring to some modest and unpretentious home in Potsdam
or Berlin. The conquerors were even then too temperate
and merciful to impose upon all the citizens of France that
admirable system of German education, necessarily accom
panied by the imposition of the German language, which
they have imposed on that fringe of more fortunate French
men whom they found living in Alsace. Notre Dame de
Paris has not, after all, become in any sense a German
cathedral in the same fashion as Cologne; and the quaint
old symbol of the French flag, as well as a quite distinctive
dress for French policemen and soldiers, still remain to attest
to the wise limitation laid by the victors on themselves. In
short, it is an admitted fact of history that the Germans in
1871 bestowed upon France every one of the benefits and
concessions which (according to the peace proposal now
before us) they would bestow upon Belgium or the Balkans.

GERMANY AND ALSACE-LORRAINE 355

Those, therefore, who hold the historical thesis that Ger
many suffered defeat and a diminishment of power in 1870,
will naturally accept the view now offered to us that the
present punishment of Germany has been enough. They
will naturally believe that a Germany evacuating Belgium
will be a Germany as chastened, sobered and reminded of
her own weakness as was the army of Moltke when it
marched out of France. But those who do not think that a
repetition of 1870 can be regarded merely as a lesson to
the Germans, will be equally logical if they draw the oppo
site deduction. If Germany was in any way triumphant or
exuberant after emerging undamaged from that short but
dangerous adventure, it is obvious that she will be more
triumphant and more exuberant after emerging from this
much longer and more dangerous one. Any seeds of any
thing suggestive of self-satisfaction that could be detected
in the German Empire for the last forty years must neces
sarily shoot and blossom in a more fragrant and flowery
manner; any faint hints of racial ambition which anyone
may have heard whispered in Germany, having been fully
justified, will be plainly expressed. Any counteracting
Teutonic elements of self -distrust or self-depreciation will
naturally be overbalanced; any shyness or morbid self-criti
cism we may hitherto have remarked in the Prussian officer
will be warmed by such encouragement into something
almost suggestive of pride.

In plain words, if we can take at all seriously the pro
posal of a mere peace of evacuation, this is the only serious
thing to be said of it. It will be a peace of which the
Germans will talk, and of which they will even be logically
justified in talking, precisely as they talk of the peace of
'71. Now there is only one detail of differentiation upon
which this plain fact might be challenged. It may be ob
jected that in '71 the new German Empire forcibly annexed
two French provinces on the fanciful pretext that centuries
ago they admitted the feudal and very formal suzerainty of
an old and utterly different German Empire. It may be
urged, by those who profess to combine their care for peace
with a care for justice and the liberation of peoples, that
this at least will not now be repeated. The Germans will
not, as might naturally be expected, declare the whole of
Normandy and Picardy to be parts of Germany. This
magnanimity is the more striking, and even surprising, be-

356 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

cause the annexation would be quite in accordance with those
philological and ethnological discoveries which German sci
ence has always been so fortunate in making, at the very
moment when they could be confirmed and embodied by
German Imperialism. The Prussian professors, upon their
own principles, might easily take Normandy on the ground
that it is named after the Northmen. For that matter, the
Prussian professors, upon the same principles, would be
quite willing to take France on the ground that it was named
after the Franks. Today, however, the Teutons are content
with something less than this full logic of Teutonism; and
this alone marks a difference between the two cases. Even
intrinsically this argument could be answered, by adducing
the Pacifist or Prussian proposals about Poland; for if Prus
sia not only retains Posen and completes her task of turning
the other Polish fragments into a fictitious state under her
own protection, she will have added something to her power
as much more important than Alsace-Lorraine as the an
nexation of the United States would be more important than
the annexation of one of the smallest South American repub
lics. Nevertheless, it will be well to concentrate here on the
case of Alsace-Lorraine, and to leave the case of Poland
for consideration in another context. In one very real sense,
the example of the lost French provinces really is the mark
and test of this war, in comparison with the other aggressive
wars of Prussia; and it is certain that public opinion every
where will regard the fate of these provinces as the register
of Prussian victory or defeat.

The writer of these lines is an Englishman; but he is
Anti-Prussian, primarily because he is a European. He also
happens, however, to be vividly convinced of, and vitally
concerned for, certain ideals not always associated with Anti-
Prussianism; ideals by no means common to all Europeans
and if anything rather uncommon among Englishmen. The
two most directly concerned here are the dogma of de
mocracy and, what is perhaps a negative deduction from it,
the distrust or even detestation of what is called Imperialism.
It is, at this point, particularly to those who agree with him
in being democrats and Anti-Imperialists, that the considera
tion of a certain plain fact is here commended very urgently
indeed. It concerns the absolute and adamantine necessity of
restoring these provinces as the lawful possessions of the
French Republic; and of refusing any proposal for Ger-

GERMANY AND ALSACE-LORRAINE 357

many retaining them upon any pretext, or even any proposal
for neutralizing them in the manner of Belgium (an ominous
parallel) or for confusing the issue by an impossible and
intrinsically inconclusive scheme of voting. And I believe
that the point, in the most extreme degree that is possible in
politics, can be proved with the clarity of mathematics.

If there were an Imperialist Primer or a Grammar of
Land- Grabbing, the first and simplest exercise in the encour
agement of the art, would be this example of the refusal of
the provinces to France. It is an exercise in the encourage
ment of territorial theft; it is annexation made easy; it is a
military model for invasion. But it is, from the standpoint
of a democrat and Anti-Imperialist, something yet more
than that. It not only smooths the path of invaders, but it
quite specially smooths the path of despotic invaders. It not
only leaves all lands helpless at the mercy of the land-
grabber, but it leaves democratic lands particularly helpless.
It not only gives an advantage to anyone who wishes to con
quer, but another and quite special advantage to anyone who
is ready to enslave. This is the thesis to be proved; and I
think it can be proved.

For what was it, after all, that Prussia did after the
Franco-Prussian War? She forcibly took over two great
populations of passionately patriotic Frenchmen, about
whose allegiance and affections there was at the time literally
no doubt whatever. They not only personally felt but they
publicly declared that they were being carried into captivity
against their will. If voting is so very important, the vote
was overwhelming. Large masses of them, having expressed
their feelings thus, expressed the same feelings further by
leaving the country at great sacrifice, that they might con
tinue to live under the French flag. For the last forty years
a continuous stream of them has poured over the frontier;
men who deliberately left their native province in order to
live in their native land. In their place came Germans, many
of them planted there officially, nearly all of them planted
artificially; according to the same principle by which Prus
sia was making artificial plantations in Poland. Now for
this sort of official colonization despotic power is obviously
useful, is often necessary. A tyrannical government can
manage such things infinitely more easily than a free gov
ernment. If the French Republic told a Breton who was
fond of Britanny to go and live in Alsace, he would not go.

358 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

But Prussia can always command a type of tame population
which will go anywhere to which the route is officially organ
ized. She will never lack colonists equipped with every con
venience, except the capacity to colonize. It is therefore
simply as plain as a pikestaff (a very appropriate figure for
the staff of the Teutonic pilgrim) that if we accept a
Teutonic transformation in Alsace as settling the matter,
we simply hoist a signal to say that such matters can always
be settled by annexation, so long as it is annexation by an
autocracy. We offer a permanent prize and provocation to
conquerors, so long as they are also despots. The military
ruler has only to send in one body of his slaves in uniform
and then another body of his slaves in mufti ; and lands will
be perpetually added to the possessions of pure despotism,
amid pacifist cheers for the principle of pure democracy.

To take a working model: suppose the Germans landed
in Essex and succeeded in annexing that county. The jus
tification of the act, by the recognised German philosophy of
history, would, of course, be the easiest part of the matter;
there could be no reasonable doubt that the county in ques
tion is " old German land." It is self-evident that Essex is
only a degenerate version of East Saxony. It is merely the
more eastern portion of the King of Saxony's dominions
which, in some convulsion of the Dark Ages, has been so dis
located as to turn up at a considerable distance to the west.
It is unfortunate that the military acquisition of the territory
would certainly present difficulties which are absent from
this logical establishment of a claim to it ; and even if it were
successful, a problem of the population would remain. The
Essex country folk are proverbially slow and conservative;
and few of the rustics have any close acquaintance with an
thropological and ethnological hypotheses. It is probable
that an almost ineradicable prejudice, to the effect that they
are an English and not a German population, will lead
nearly all of them to assert the English character of Essex,
and even lead many of them to migrate into Middlesex. A
despotic German officialism has then only to send a crowd of
official colonists in the track of her official armies ; and Essex
is secured for ever by what is solemnly described as a popular
vote. The invader then proceeds to fix the same imperial
eye upon Middlesex ; and the game is continued at the option
of the player.

Clearly then the upholders of " no annexation " have here

GERMANY AND ALSACE-LORRAINE 359

invented an ingenious trick, first for making annexation in
cessant, and second for making it safe. And the annexation,
it is equally clear, will be most incessant and most safe, when
it is done by rulers who are imperial princes and not popular
magistrates. Considered as a principle applicable over long
and varying epochs of the past (as it would certainly, if ac
cepted, be applied over long and very varying epochs of the
future) it would have meant that in every case a wave of
slavery and savagery could wash out all that had preceded it.
It would, for instance, have encouraged and completed the
work of every one of those Asiatic inundations from which
our culture barely escaped. It would have helped the Per
sians to dispossess the Greeks; for the Persians admittedly
enormously outnumbered the Greeks; and all the Persians
would have obeyed the Great King, while the Athenians
were generally rather too republican to obey the great re
public. The German Emperor told his soldiers to behave
like Huns; and we have in this another incidental instance
of the beauty of a smooth and symmetrical obedience. But
the principle upon which the German Emperor's favorite
Socialists are claiming Alsace is a principle which would
have favored the ancient Huns as much as it favors the
modern ones. And it would give a final victory, over all
Europeans, to any such invasion as the Emperor himself
used to prophesy as the Yellow Peril.

But if the proof from the prime calamities of Europe be
vaguely regarded as too much a thing of the past, it is easy
to show that it has every sign of being also a thing of the
future. I can even give an example which, coming from an
Englishman concerned to prove the Prussian pre-eminence
in evil, will at least be disinterested and detached. One of
the most recent adventures of that Imperialism, which I
regret in all countries, occurred in the policy of my own
country; and I was myself bound in consistency to regret it.
The South African War, by which the two Boer Republics
were annexed, was generally regarded in Europe as a wrong.
But it was in no sense whatever wrong, if the theory of an
Alsatian plebiscite is right. Lord Milner and Cecil Rhodes
actually conquered the Boer country upon the same identical
principle which our Pacifists propose as a fair settlement of
the Alsatian country. Indeed their case for annexation
(with which I wholly disagree) was nevertheless a far fairer
and clearer one; for there was already a majority of Out-

360 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

landers or aliens to outvote the Boers, before their presence
was made a pretext for war. British Imperialism at least
first flooded the territories with citizens, before it flooded
them with soldiers. It did not base its argument on what
might happen forty years afterwards; or announce itself
unanimously elected by the votes of a multitude of babes
unborn. But though the principle of the imperialist settle
ment in Africa was more democratic than that of the inter
nationalist settlement of Alsace, it contained this same
unique falsity, which must necessarily be the fountain of any
number of such annexations. It used the fact of unfairly
colonizing a country as a reason for unjustly conquering it.
Once admit that principle, and there need be no end to such
colonizations and conquests, so long as they are conducted
by powers with rich resources, with large populations and
especially (if they are to be specially lucky in such work)
with reactionary constitutions. Now anybody who will look
at the modern world with his eyes wide open will know per
fectly well that this sort of expansion and progress is one to
which the modern world is especially prone. In every quarter
of the globe, especially in South America and Africa, there is
a perpetual pressure of colonial ambition which would at any
moment take advantage of this principle. Germany espe
cially is known to keep herds of tame exiles browsing on
foreign pastures ; and the mere counting of so much head of
such cattle could always create this sort of international
quarrel. The worst version of the South African War will
only make it a mere sample of the sort of claim which the
more plutocratic Powers will always be ready to push, where
there is any sort of cosmopolitan confusion. What the prin
ciple would have meant touching Asiatic immigrations into
Europe in the past, that alone it will mean touching Eu
ropean immigrations into America in the future. It will
mean simply the final superiority of the master of many
slaves.

There is only one way to arrest annexation ; only one way
in which such a stampede of sophistry and spoliation can be
stopped. The opportunity for it is now, and will never re
turn ; the test case is lit with a limelight of concentrated pub
licity that will never hold the attention to such a test case
hereafter. Rightly or wrongly Alsace-Lorraine has become
this test case, which the whole world is watching. Let it
revert to France and the whole world will know that the rush

GERMANY AND ALSACE-LORRAINE 361

of annexations has been reversed; that civilization has de
termined to return to its boundaries. Let it remain to Ger
many or under the shadow of Germany, in whatever form,
upon whatever pretext; and the whole world will know that
such annexations are always ultimately justified and can be
safely imitated. It is simply obvious that the refusal to
return the provinces to France will mean the complete vic
tory of Germany ; but it will mean much more than that. It
will mean the victory of an annexationist policy as such. It
will mean that the trend towards Imperialism in all the na
tions will not be curbed, far less cured, but will be directly
encouraged. The only way to cure such grab and go-as-you-
please is to make a public exhibition of the restoring of stolen
goods. If that is done, everyone will know that the epoch of
annexation is over. Everyone will know that henceforward
even successful land-grabbing will not ultimately succeed.
No one will steal what he will know that he cannot keep ; no
one will again commit the crime first and make up the excuses
afterwards, if he knows that those excuses will not be heard.
But there is a final and farcical fact which crowns the ar
gument. It is equally obvious that this Pacifist compromise
about Alsace not only gives a special advantage to external
aggression, but also gives a special advantage to internal mis-
government. It will not only be the interest of a prince to
seize a province by war, but it will also be to his interest to
oppress it when he has got it. For, supposing for the sake of
argument that there is now a German majority in Alsace,
how was that majority attained? Even German citizens are
not sufficiently tame to troop into a strange country in suf
ficient numbers for that. Even German officials are not
sufficiently numerous to overbalance a population without
assistance. The process was admittedly accelerated and com
pleted by the continuous exodus of the original French in
habitants. That exodus in its turn was accelerated and com
pleted by German tyranny, or what they regarded as Ger
man tyranny. So that even if we were in any doubt about
whether the Germans ruled badly, we could not (in common
reason) have any doubt that it was to their interest to rule
badly. If they did not, we can only suppose that they re
frained from pursuing their most obvious advantage, through
some over-sensitive modesty in the German character or some
suicidal unselfishness in the Prussian policy. But even then
we should have no guarantee that the next aggressor, having

362 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

modelled himself upon Moltke and the successful Alsatian
annexation, would necessarily share the characteristic Teu
tonic bashfulness or the typical Teutonic self-effacement.
The common-sense of the crux would remain what it is ; and
it is that, in this particular position, it is obviously better
policy to set up a bad government than a good one. Make
the lives of the old inhabitants intolerable and they will not
remain to resist the new inhabitants; anybody can see that,
and (by all accounts) the German rulers have seen it very
clearly. To sum up, therefore, these are the three conse
quences of testing the claims to Alsace by an official counting
of heads at the moment. First, it will quite obviously set up
a principle which is a permanent provocation to war. Second,
it will provoke quarrels in which a rigid despotism will always
have a better chance than a free country. Third, it will ac
tually make a malevolent despotism more probable and prac
tical than a benevolent despotism. The best man will always
be the aggressor ; the best aggressor will be the autocrat ; the
best autocrat will be the tyrant. Such is the goal, or golden
age of republican idealism, towards which we apparently
travel.

All this is the plainest rationality and policy, and applies
to all the politics of all the peoples ; in that sense it does not
matter to what particular nation this disastrous policy is
applied. But what, when all is said, is the nation to which
we are applying it? Against what community are we spe
cially asked to deal this stroke of folly and bad faith? We
are asked to commit this treason especially at the expense of
France; of the one nation with whom all European and
American democracy has always sympathized in her self-
defence, and whom even Prussian despotism has hardly dared
to accuse of mere aggression. We are to do this wrong to
the one people whom almost everybody admits to have been
in the right. Nay, we are not only to disregard a justice
which even the Germans can hardly deny, but a gratitude
which we ourselves have incessantly asservated. Everyone
knows that France could have had Alsace-Lorraine ten times
over, if she had listened to the tenfold flatteries of Germany
during the present war, offering her every kind of concession
to betray her Allies. Ever since she took the first rush and
won the whole war for us in the passages of the Marne, the
Germans have been bribing her with both hands. If she had
not so stood, England would never have had time to create

GERMANY AND ALSACE-LORRAINE 363

an army, and most certainly Russia would never have had
time to create a revolution. Now that England is at leisure
to elaborate discipline, and Russia at leisure to enjoy liberty,
it is pleasantly proposed that they should desert their first
line of defence; that they should throw away the broken
shield behind which they have done all things. It is an agree
able proposal that England having thus been able to increase
her own armies, should throw over that historic army of
which she at first formed a small part. But indeed it is not
more quaint than the larger conception, that the ultimate
work of the Russian Revolution should be the undoing of all
the work of the French Revolution. France had stood upon
the Meuse in the eighteenth century exactly as she stood upon
the Marne in the twentieth; but she was even more solitary,
and of the peoples there was none to help her. From that
stand, and from that alone, came all that we call democracy
to-day. What shall an instructed disciple of democracy say
to the democrats who wish to complete an experiment in
Petrograd or an inquiry at Stockholm by extinguishing in
darkness and disappointment the lights of Paris? Where
were they when the foundations of the Republic were laid, or
when was fixed the corner-stone thereof, when the men about
to die sang together, and the boys who fell in thousands
shouted for joy? We know where were the Russians, where
were the Swedes, where were the English, in that first and
fearful crisis when none knew whether liberty should live.
Now we have learned better; and can make an end of our
teacher. Let us wear the red cap and never reveal from
whose head we have plucked it; let us shout "Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity," so long as we translate them out
of the language in which we learnt the words. The very
name of France shall be a guilty secret for us. The very
emblem of France shall insult us like a caricature. We shall
go forth gravely into the streets as the disciples of de
mocracy; and we shall be ashamed to hear a cock crow, be
cause we have denied our master.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

WAR AND HUMAN EVOLUTION:
GERMANIZED

BY VERNON KELLOGG

THE causes and alleged justifications of wars have been
nearly as various as the wars have been numerous. The habit
of the flag in following commerce and missionaries and tour
ists has been a great, and, from the point of view of some
ambitious diplomats and rulers, very useful cause of war.
Fishermen and the fish in the sea have been causes ; explora
tion has been helpful. Taxes and tea and fair representa
tion; language and race and the growth of colonies have
been causes less trivial.

But I have learned since this war began that all these
causes and justifications alike are trivial in the face of the
great cause, the fundamental cause and the full justification
of all war. I have learned all this from a fount of wisdom
than which, in the opinion of the fount, there is no more copi
ous nor blessed nor disinterested flow of knowledge and wis
dom from human sources. I have learned it from the Ger
mans.

Also I have learned the full answer to a little problem that
has troubled evolutionists for some time ; the problem of the
chief cause and directive control of human evolution. This
knowledge also has been given me by the Germans.

In books about war and its relation to the evolution of
man, especially in books written by Germans, I had often
read the somber declarations that war takes the place in
human life that the rigid and ruthless Darwinian struggle
for existence holds among the lower animals, and that the
Spencerian survival of the fittest, as applied to human
groups, was to be determined chiefly, if not solely, by the out
come of wars to extinction. Also that this struggle and sur-

WAR AND EVOLUTION: GERMANIZED 365

vival are the chief factors in all evolution, including the evo
lution of man.

Hence war is natural, it is inevitable, and is, indeed, to be
welcomed as the necessary final test of the value of the differ
ent lines of development and organization of human life and
society represented by various existing human groups.

I had read this, I say, in German books and heard it in
lectures in German universities by benevolent-looking elderly
professors devoted, in practice, to most peaceful occupations
in households, classrooms and beer restaurants. But it was
not until I had lived in and traveled about all over German-
occupied Belgium and France, seeing and hearing many
incredible things, and had spent days and nights and weeks
and months of much talk and enlightenment at German
Great Headquarters in a French village on the banks of the
Meuse — that beautiful stream that flows by such towns of
experience and knowledge as Dinant, Namur and Liege —
that I truly realized that what I had read in German books
about war, and heard in German classrooms, was not just
words and play at logic, but the expression of a conviction of
belief, the reasoned acceptance of a terrible and fatal phil
osophy, so widely and thoroughly spread among a whole
people as to give this people bodily into the hands of a few
leaders who represented the technical knowledge necessary to
success in this great all-deciding human struggle for exist
ence. It is a philosophy that makes war and slaughter and
rapine desirable, and justifies in the conduct of war every
form of cruelty and deceit, and all surrender of personal
humane and moral standards; a philosophy that puts man's
position and behavior and his evolutionary struggle back, not
into medieval times, as has been sometimes said, but into pre
historic, Glacial time, when a half -beast, half -man type was
all of man that the earth knew. In that time, undoubtedly,
man, naked, hairy, stooping, was only an animal among ani
mals, and at the mercy, for his persistence, of the outcome
of sickening struggles of brute strength and brute cunning
against other brute strength and cunning.

But, as has been well said by Liberty Hyde Bailey, what
we have done in times past shows the way by which we have
come ; it does not provide a programme of procedure for days
that are coming, or, if it does, then we deny the effective evo
lution of the race. Yet that this Glacial Time condition of
human evolution still holds today in all its crass tigerishness,

366 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

is the present German attitude. The German people have
been brought to this attitude, and held in it, by virtue, or,
rather, vice, of the combination of a philosophic acceptance
of the mutual fight principle as opposed to the mutual aid
principle, and of a deliberate, selfish cultivation by the rulers
and leaders of the nation, for the sake of their own persist
ence in despotic power and the persistence of hereditary auto
cratic government, of the conditions of military control and
military exaltation which enable these leaders easily to dic
tate the actual thinking and expression and behavior of the
whole people.

It is a vivid illustration of the danger of a combination of
a little knowledge, but not enough, and of a deliberate exer
cise of the "will to believe" despite sufficient knowledge to
warrant non-belief. The great mass of the people of Ger
many illustrate the first element of the combination; the in
telligent and really educated classes, the "intellectuals," the
other.

A favorite argument of these intellectuals in justifica
tion of war and the German method of carrying on war is the
argument drawn from biology and evolution. But this argu
ment is always based on certain assumed premises. Most
important of them is the complete acceptance of the idea that
evolution is solely determined by a rigorous and ruthless
struggle for existence of the most combative type.

Now, let us remember, even before we criticize the valid
ity of this utterly brutal evolution conception, especially in
its relation to human evolution, that this modern German
visualization of it is not even the idea of the great founder of
it. For of the struggle for existence Darwin says: " I use
this term in a large and metaphorical sense, including de
pendence of one being on another, and including (which is
more important) not only the life of the individual, but suc
cess in leaving progeny." This is, indeed, far from the pres
ent-day scientific philosophy so passionately invoked by the
German natural philosophers as the biologic basis of advan
tage — phrased in German war parlance as " military neces
sity." Any softness in such a struggle is a surrender of
natural advantage and denotes a weakness on the part of
the soft-hearted contender. As the struggle is between
groups, the fate of individuals does not count. As it is a
struggle of Darwinian type in its Germanized form it is a
struggle to the death.

WAR AND EVOLUTION: GERMANIZED 367

Are Belgians in the way? Brush them aside. Is there
an apparent opportunity to use them in the struggle? Make
slaves of them. Is it easier to profit by these slaves by re
moving them by force from their homes into the factories in
Germany? Do it, even though women weep and children
shriek. Do these slaves, for some absurd reason of personal
honor, of loyalty to principle and to country, refuse to work
in these factories devoted to making the things which are to
help sow death among their brothers and fathers and friends
and their Allies on a battle front? Then punish them by
exposure in concentration camps, and by beating and star
vation — especially starvation, for that saves food. And if,
as a result of the obstinacy of the slaves, and hence the neces
sary continuance of the beating and starvation until the vic
tims are in a physical condition when work is an impossibil
ity, even if their spirits were sufficiently broken, then send
them back as physical wrecks or corpses to their distracted
families, to be cared for. A single cattle train brought two
hundred and fifty-five of these slave wrecks from Aachen to
Antwerp in March of this year. It took forty-eight hours
to make the few miles — German transportation is not what
it was — and there was no food for the men during this time.
The American Relief representatives met them with bread
at Antwerp. But it was a little late. Every one of these
men was removed from the train on a stretcher. On fifty of
these stretchers the men were dead. They did not die simply
from forty-eight hours' lack of food. They died from a
three months' experience of the practical application of Ger
many's philosophy of war and of human evolution on the
basis of the struggle and survival factors.

In October (1917), six hundred and eighty Belgian chil
dren arrived in Evian-les-Bains on a single train; they were
all between the ages of four and twelve ; they were emaciated
and sickly, and they were alone — no mothers, no big sisters,
no fathers. They were sent out of Belgium by the Germans
to Switzerland and thence to France to be cared for. Two-
thirds of them had been taken from their parents because
their fathers would not work for the German army and were
being starved into submission, and the mothers were willing
to let their children go rather than see them starve, too. Think
of that line of weak little motherless things, climbing down
from the train and marching along the platform as bravely
as they could, into the hands of kindly, but unknown, foster-

368 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

mothers and big sisters. Can you picture any more incred
ible and poignant sight in all the war? Well, that sight was
just another incident in the practical working out of Ger
many's war philosophy.

This is no live-and-let-live philosophy, you see. In fact,
it is not a kind by the side of which live-and-let-live philos
ophies can even exist; their holders would fall easy prey to
the tiger philosophers.

Finally, it is not a philosophy which recognizes anything
in man and in human evolution sufficiently different from
what is in the lower animals and their evolution to make it
necessary to revise in any way the conception of evolutionary
control as worked out in the study of lower creation in order
to apply it directly and rigorously to human life. This phi
losophy does not recognize the distinction we make when we
say, " Man has responsibilities quite apart from the condi
tions that obtain in the lower creation. Man is a moral
agent; animals and plants are not."

This philosophy seems to take no account of the extent
and importance in human life of what may be called man's
social evolution as contrasted and often in conflict with his
natural evolution. We live in a state of social advancement
and moral refinements far beyond those dictated by our stage
of natural evolution. We do this on a basis of an elaborately
constructed social and moral fabric into which each individual
is fitted after birth by association and education, by precept
and corrected practice. Is all this laboriously acquired ad
vance of man over the lower animals, built up on moral self-
consciousness, and ever, in turn, resulting in more of it, to be
taken into no account? Is all this to be thrown aside for the
sake of a sophisticated, over-driven, biological, dehumanized,
mechanistic philosophy of tiger evolution that would put us
back five hundred thousand years into the Glacial Time con
ditions of our half -beast, half -man ancestor? Yet that is
exactly what the German natural philosophers and the Ger
man war philosophy maintain.

As zoologist I knew something about the importance of
the mutual aid principle as a factor in biologic success and
evolutionary advance, even among the lower animals. As
student of human evolution and man of a little scientific edu
cation, even though some of it was got in Germany, I know
enough about the biology of the human species to be confi
dent that I have evidence and reason on my side when I say

WAR AND EVOLUTION: GERMANIZED 369

that you cannot settle all, nor even many, of the problems of
human biology by a swift reference of them to the categories
of half -solved problems of tiger biology.

We must not be carried off our feet by the fascination of
the solution by origins. We may have originated from tiger
ancestors, and we may, from a rigorously evolutionary point
of view, differ from them now only quantitatively. But this
quantitative difference is already so enormous, so extreme,
that for all practical purposes it may be treated as qualita
tive. Speech, writing, tradition, education and mental and
moral self-consciousness have made us and our evolutionary
trend very different from tigers and tigerish evolution. If
the Germans wish to cling to Glacial Time conditions and
behavior, let them, but strictly within the confines of their
own land. Let them not insist on carrying this prehistoric
Kultur by force of tooth and claw into other lands.

We should like to be beyond war. But we cannot be so
long as Germany is not and looks on our aspiration as a weak
ness to be taken advantage of. Unfortunately there can be
but one answer to a people that insists on success in war as
the criterion of racial advancement, and as the most impor
tant factor in human evolution. We have to accept, for the
moment, the challenge to bloody debate. But when we have
debated the matter in this horrible way, and have won, let us
see to it that the winning is the last one of its kind necessary.

VERNON KELLOGG.

VOL. ccvii— NO. 748 24

JAPAN AND SHIPS

BY M. TOGO

THE attitude of Japan in the Great War has not been hid
under a bushel. From the very first our people have not
only talked about doing their duty, but they have done it to
the best of their ability. Perhaps no stronger declaration of
this purpose and resolution has been made than that con
tained in the contribution made by Viscount Ishii to the book
issued on behalf of all the Allies. In this carefully prepared
utterance he said:

As we see our duty, and the duty of the world, only one thing is
left to do. It is to fight out this war which neither we nor any other
people or nation, other than the aggressors, have sought. It must be
fought to the end without wavering, without thought of national or
individual advantage. The victors are to be victors for civilization
and the world; not for themselves. The contest upon which we are
unitedly engaged will not only end this war, upon its result will depend
the extinction of all wars of aggression. No opportunity must ever
come again for any nation or people, or any combination of nations
or peoples, however strong or numerous, to seek that universal domina
tion shown by experience to be impossible, which, if it were possible,
would mean the destruction of human progress.

We are proud to be associated with America as Allies in so great
a cause. Our duty thus keeps pace with our obligation and both are
guided by our highest desires. We, like you, have enlisted until the
war is settled and settled right; you, like ourselves, have no favors to
ask, and neither seeks conquests or indemnities; both merely ask that
they may live their own lives, settle their own problems, smooth out
their common differences or difficulties, and do their best, along with
all other peoples, to make the world a better, not a worse, place to
live in.

In our relations with the United States we have tried to
do our duty, not only in the war, but in everything else that
shows our friendship. We have just completed with that
country a satisfactory agreement assuring the territorial
integrity of China. We have kept faith in the so-called
gentleman's agreement entered into years ago in respect to

JAPAN AND SHIPS 371

the immigration of Japanese labor. It has been our practice,
and it is our purpose, to respond quickly and generously to
all fair business proposals, and we insist that we ought not to
be asked to consider any others.

It is for these and many other reasons we feel that the
urgent need of the United States to increase her tonnage
should lead her to utilize the shipyards of Japan for the
benefit, not only of the two countries directly involved, but
for that of all the Allies as well. These shipyards are ready
for work. The labor is there, well trained, well paid. With
a supply of materials it can build each year a million tons of
new ships. Nobody, at the present time, can predict when
this war will end, or what the economic conditions will be
when it is over. There is nothing so clear as the fact that if
the ships are built now they will help win the war, and the
universal opinion is that in no other way can it be won.

During the two years previous to the entry of the United
States into the war, the great shipbuilding companies of
Japan made contracts with American manufacturers for the
steel plates and shapes necessary for constructing a large ton
nage of ships for the use of the Allied nations and their citi
zens. These contracts were taken at prices fair to builders
and buyers and remunerative and satisfactory to both Amer
ican capital and labor. The material involved amounted to
from 250,000 to 400,000 tons of plates, shapes and angles,
and provided for continuous delivery during the years 1917
and 1918. Under them, a number of ships varying from
5,000 to 10,000 tons each have been built by Japan and deliv
ered to English and French buyers, while like commitments
have been made with the same class of purchasers for further
ships. They are not reserved for Japanese or any other
specific buyers ; they are built under contract, or, when ready,
are sold to the first comers among the representatives of the
Entente Allies.

This absolute free trade in ships, if the United States had
fulfilled her contracts made before her entry into the war,
would have thrown the new vessels thus built into the balance
against German submarine frightfulness, and that, too, with
a promptness that could not have been commanded else
where. The Japanese yards did not have to be put in order
for work ; they were already thoroughly equipped with up-to-
date facilities, with highly trained labor, with ample capital,
all ready to act without delay. The Shipping Board has

372 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

done magnificent work in repairing damaged ships and divert
ing others into the most useful channels, but its weakness has
been in the production of new tonnage. If the United States
had carried out her contracts with Japan all the resources of
these great Japanese shipbuilding establishments would have
been utilized to build new tonnage and strengthen the Allies
on their weakest side : ships.

But about six months ago, intimidated by the prospective
needs of the gigantic American shipbuilding programme,
Congress authorized, and the President proclaimed an em
bargo on the export to Japan of steel plates and shapes for
shipbuilding purposes. This action closed the opportunity to
supplement promptly, through the Japanese shipbuilding
resources, the production of ships for the use and directly
under the control of the Allied Governments. Although it
has become apparent that the United States produces far
more steel than can be utilized in her own programme, and
could let Japan have the steel contracted for, and much more
besides, without jeopardizing American interests in any way,
the embargo has been in force ever since.

Japan had anticipated her own needs and those of her
Allies by making contracts in the United States for the steel
necessary to complete vessels aggregating more than a mill
ion tons. At the present time, six months after the embargo
was laid, Japanese shipbuilders are closing their yards and
sitting idly by, with partly finished and therefore useless
ships on their ways, and new construction made impossible
while the whole world is clamoring for tonnage.

Economic pressure, according not only to the Japanese
but to prominent steel men in the United States, will shift
every ship built by any of the Allies into those waters where
it is most needed to carry out their purposes and resolves.
It will do it with that celerity which characterizes these high-
pressure war times and the necessities of a world situation.
The United States is engaged in the war as an ally of Japan,
as a matter of fact, if not by formal agreement, and the two
countries are working together for a common end, the quick,
assured and effective defeat of the Germans and their Allies.
The embargo was laid to protect the United States from neu
trals and enemies. All additions to ship tonnage by any of
her Allies are direct benefits to her, and to all, and will help
her to win the war.

But Japan has not waited for economic pressure to shift

JAPAN AND SHIPS 373

any ships to where they will do the most good. The tonnage
of Japanese ships which traverses the submarine zone and
reaches European Allied ports regularly is well over 200,000,
and, in addition, 100,000 tons are chartered to Great Britain
and France and are carrying coal and supplies between these
two countries. More than 25,000 tons of shipping sailing
under Japanese registry have already been lost by bombs,
torpedoes or mines, and Japan is continuing to pay a steady
toll for risking her ships in the Allied cause. In addition to
policing the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Japan is at present
effectively helping to patrol the Mediterranean, and is caring
for the Allies' interests at Vladivostok.

There are 113 shipways for ships of over 1,000 tons stand
ing idle, or about to become so, in Japan, and at last reports
twenty-eight new big ways were in course of construction and
scheduled to be finished by January of this year. In 1914,
when the war broke out in Europe, Japan could build, at
most, 200,000 tons of ships a year. Her annual capacity at
present, if steel is available, is more than 1,000,000 tons a
year! Since the outbreak of the war the tonnage of Japanese
shipping actually put into the water up to September, 1917,
when the American embargo seriously curtailed the output,
has been nearly 600,000 tons. In 1914 the tonnage launched
was 65,140; in 1915 it was 98,212; in 1916 it was 251,484,
and up to September, in 1917, it was 158,860 tons, with many
uncompleted ships standing on the ways, unable to be
launched for the lack of a few plates.

The total investment in shipbuilding yards in Japan is
64,215,500 yen, or about $32,107,500. The total capital
invested in Japanese steamship companies is 269,734,000 yen,
or, approximately, $134,867,000. There are twenty-nine
steamship companies in Japan, five of which are subsidized.

The total merchant marine of Japan numbers 2,133 ships
of all descriptions, with a total tonnage of 1,577,025. The
chartered bottoms, however, bring the total tonnage up to
about 2,000,000. In addition, Japan is trying to complete
her elaborate shipbuilding programme. Her yards received
orders last year for 370 new ships, of an aggregate tonnage of
1,330,000. They accepted these orders depending upon the
United States for their supply of raw material. Ships ag
gregating 500,000 tons are now on the ways. After all
available resources are exhausted, 60,000 tons of steel plates
and shapes will be lacking to complete these ships. The

374 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

burning question in Japan to-day is how to secure this bal
ance of 60,000 tons needed to complete ships now on the ways
and to clear these ways for the balance of 830,000 tons which
Japan is prepared to add this year to the world's available
tonnage if she can secure the raw materials.

If the United States could not produce more than enough
steel for her own use, she could not supply any to Japan.
But actual production does not mean total capacity, and into
this question enters the fact that the United States Govern
ment is doing things in a gigantic way, and its negotiations
are almost exclusively with the largest producers of steel.
There is an immense capacity in the smaller steel mills which
has not been even touched. In fact, the embargo and the
price agreements of the Government with the larger produc
ers have combined to make profitable foreign trade impossible
for them. Moreover, the large steel mill owners of the
United States have assured the War Industries Board of a
sufficient supply of steel for all Government needs.

Getting down to actual figures, the annual production of
steel of the kind which can be used for shipbuilding purposes
in the United States is 3,500,000 tons. Deducting 700,000
tons, or 20 per cent, for a margin of safety, this leaves even
then 2,800,000 tons. The United States Government's re
quirements to carry out the programme of building in eigh
teen months 6,000,000 tons of ships, or 4,000,000 tons in a
year, not all of which will be of steel, will be approximately
one-third of the steel ship tonnage, or about 1,864,000 tons
a year.

Why, then, when there is crying need of an ever-increas
ing procession of ships to Europe from the United States for
the movement of American armies, of munitions for their
use, and of supplies for their maintenance, has not the United
States licensed the export of steel to Japan in sufficient quan
tities at least to enable the Island Empire to complete the
ships now standing on her ways? The answer is that the
United States has been bargaining for a greater proportion
of the existing Japanese tonnage than Japan can afford to
give, and this at a critical period when time is the very essence
of the contract. By prolonging the negotiations at Wash
ington in order to secure a little additional tonnage now, the
Shipping Board is preventing Japan from building an im
mense tonnage, so that she could supply in six months or a
year a much greater tonnage than that demanded now. And

JAPAN AND SHIPS 375

six months have already been consumed by the negotiations.

" That after months of negotiations," said the New York
Tribune, of January 6th, " nothing has come of the Japanese
effort to raise the embargo on American iron and steel con
tracted for by Japan is really a disaster for both nations, as
well as for the Allied cause. It means that the United States
will have some hundreds of thousands less new tonnage in
1918, and it means the paralyzing of the shipbuilding indus
try in Japan."

Japan is willing to put every ton she can spare where it
will do the most good in the war against Germany. The
Japanese shipyards do not have to be put in order to work;
they are already equipped. Where the United States may
face a shortage of labor trained for this kind of work, Japan
has highly skilled labor ready to work if it can be held
together. This will prove a difficult, if not impossible task,
however, if the Japanese shipyards must remain shut down.
In the meanwhile, the various States are just beginning to
report their enrollments in the volunteer army of 250,000
shipbuilders which the United States is raising, Iowa being
the first to report.

Part of the Japanese shipping programme is the main
tenance of her Pacific trade necessary to her national exist
ence, since she, like England, must import vast quantities of
food and other commodities. Part of it is the transportation
of grain for foodstuffs from Australia and South America to
Europe, thus relieving the pressure on American markets for
food supplies to the Allies. Some part must be devoted to
the exchange of products with the United States which
amounted in the year ending June 30 last to $333,599,667 —
$130,472,189 exports from the United States and $203,127,-
478 imports from Japan. Finally, Japan had to replace in
the same way the large tonnage from other countries which
formerly carried goods to and from Japan, but is now
diverted to the transport of troops and munitions for the
war.

Four proposals have so far been exchanged between the
United States and Japan. The first Japanese suggestion
was that the United States raise the embargo to the extent of
letting Japan have 600,000 tons of steel on the condition that
the major part of the 1,200,000 tons of ships that Japan
then proposed to build should be placed at the disposal of the
Allies. This programme, however, contemplated too long

376 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

a time, so all programmes were postponed, causing delay.

Japan then proposed that if the United States would
give her 450,000 tons of steel— 150,000 in 1917 and 300,000
this year — she would in return supply the United States with
150,000 tons of ships 'in 1917, and a tonnage of 750,000
between January, 1918, and September, 1919. During that
period Japan expected to build with American material not
less than 1,350,000 tons, retaining 600,000 tons for her own
purposes and for the other Allies. The United States again
refused, and made a counter-proposal.

The counter-proposal was that beginning with last No
vember, Japan should deliver to the United States 1,000,000
tons of ships at the rate of 100,000 tons a month for ten
months, the Shipping Board to pay for them at the rate of
$170 a ton and Japan to be allowed to receive the 450,000
tons of steel she had contracted for. This meant that most
of the million tons to be sold to the United States would have
to come out of shipping already afloat, as by September,
1918, the Japanese could not build more than 300,000 or
400,000 tons out of the American material. Moreover, $170
a ton from the United States for ships for which British
shipping men were willing to pay as much as $400 a ton did
not look very attractive.

Japan's latest proposal was that she would turn over
150,000 tons of existing ships to the United States, and
between that time and next August 200,000 tons more, built
from American material, if America would supply her with
only 175,000 tons of steel, from which a total of 525,000 tons
of ships could be built. This proposal was accepted by the
United States, subject to the conditions that none of the ex
isting ships should be less than seven years old, and that the
price should be $170 a ton for existing ships and $200 a ton
for new ships.

This would have made- the average price received by
Japan for these 350,000 tons of ships $187, against the Brit
ish offer of $400 a ton, and would have thus entailed a sacri
fice of .$213 a ton, or a total of $74,550,000. The 175,000
tons of steel which the United States agreed to supply under
these onerous conditions would suffice to build 525,000 tons of
ships, but as Japan had to part with 350,000 tons of ships
to secure the steel, the net addition to Japanese bottoms
would have been only 175,000 tons. At this time when few
foreign ships are visiting Japanese shores, Japan is sadly in

JAPAN AND SHIPS 377

need of bottoms, and she rejected the proposal on the score
of both expediency and the financial sacrifice she would be
forced to make. There the negotiations have rested for the
present, while Japan is making desperate efforts to develop
her own steel industry and the mines of China, and to contract
for such raw materials as are available from South American
countries.

Japan needs ships. The world needs ships. Japan has
the facilities to build a million tons of ships a year. She has
the trained labor. She lacks the raw material — the steel
plates and shapes. Until the entry of the United States into
the war American steel was relied upon to enable Japan to
build her ships. Japan does not manufacture the same arti
cles as the United States. She has not the same raw materials
to export. In view of America's gigantic shipbuilding pro
gramme she will not for decades, if ever, have or need as large
a merchant marine as the United States.

At the present juncture, Japan could charter her whole
merchant marine to her Allies, if this were possible, without
starving her people and ruining her trade. But because she
cannot give her Allies a greater proportion of her ships now
they are in effect refusing to allow her to build more ships,
which she could put into their service. The Japanese do not
understand why, if ships are invaluable, the United States
is wasting time making them propositions which no nation
could or would accept, thus paralyzing their shipbuilding in
dustry. They do not understand why, if there is co-ordina
tion of effort among the Allies, England is bidding more than
twice as much as the United States for Japanese ships. It is
true that Japan cannot build ships rapidly without Amer
ican steel, but she has offered to sacrifice 50 per cent, and
more of the market price of the ships to get the steel, and has
been unable to get even the steel contracted for before the
United States entered the war, although this Government
has admitted that it has this much surplus steel and it should
be delivered to Japan as a matter of equity and moral right.

Neither the authorities nor the people of Japan can un
derstand why in this crisis of the world's fate, when, as uni
versally admitted, everything depends upon ships, there
should be any resort to bargaining or dickering, or, indeed, to
any policy except that which under the operation of the
greatest speed and efficiency, produces the necessary ships.

M. TOGO.

RUSSIA AND THE WAR AFTER
THE WAR

BY CHARLES JOHNSTON

THE situation in Russia grows steadily clearer, and at the
same time more menacing. The events of the last month at
Petrograd have made it, I think, abundantly evident that
there is not an atom of difference in principle between the
various groups of Socialists who are " playing politics " in
the former Russian capital ; there is simply a ferocious rivalry
between the " ins " and the " outs." Lenin and Trotsky
have been able to seize and hold autocratic power simply
because they are more audacious, because they are wholly
devoid of scruples or hesitations, and are, like the German
forces on the Belgian frontier at the beginning of August,
1914, determined to hack their way through to victory. But
we shall be wise to realize that the Socialist programme is
identical, not only among all the Russian Socialist groups,
but in all Socialist organizations whatsoever, throughout the
world. They all desire to do exactly what Lenin and Trot
sky are doing; and they will do it the instant they get the
opportunity. We are face to face, not with a Russian peril,
but with a worldwide peril; and the struggle with these
destructive forces will constitute, I believe, " the war after
the war" far more than any economic struggle against
Germany.

We shall be wise, therefore, to take advantage of the pres
ent situation, clearly to see and clearly to formulate the pur
poses and principles of the Russian Bolshevist forces, not
merely because this is essential to a right understanding of
the situation in Russia, but far more because Petrograd
happens to be the point at which the purposes and principles
of world Socialism, through the removal of outside pressure,
have reached the boiling-point, revealing themselves in their
stark destructiveness.

RUSSIA AND THE WAR AFTER THE WAR 379

We have been told that Lenin and Trotsky have been
making a gallant and heroic fight against imperialist Ger
many on behalf of the rights of those parts of the former Rus
sian Empire occupied by German and Austrian troops: on
behalf of Poland, Courland and Lithuania. And this fight,
which we are asked to welcome and applaud, is being made in
the name of the " principle of the self-determination of peo
ples," which is, by the way, a phrase translated from Ger
man. But before we approve and applaud we shall do well
to ask ourselves what the real purpose of the Russian peace
negotiators is; what they really have in view for these occu
pied regions, should some miracle bring about the removal
of the German and Austrian armies. How will " self-deter
mination " actually work out?

We shall find the real answer at Petrograd, in Finland,
in southern Russia, in Roumania.

How has " self-determination " actually worked out at
Petrograd? The fate of the recent Constituent Assembly,
which has now followed the hapless Duma into the void, is
the answer to that. The Duma was in a sense representative
of all classes of Russians : the nobility, the Church, the mer
chants, the manufacturers, the workmen, the peasants. Mem
bers of all these classes actually sat in it, spoke and voted.
From the point of view of the Socialists, that was enough to
damn it. They absolutely scout the idea of the equal rights
of all classes. In their view, no class has any rights at all,
except the Socialists themselves, and the class which they
claim to represent, " the poorest class," according to the
wording of Lenin's recent manifesto. All elements above
" the poorest class " are frankly doomed to destruction. It
is, of course, notorious that the Socialist leaders themselves
practically never belong to the class they claim to represent.
They are, for the most part, ambitious lawyers or writers,
" white-handed," as the Russia phrase is, who see the possibil
ity of gaining autocratic power for themselves by inflaming,
in " the poorest class," the passions of envy and cupidity.
It is futile to claim for them humane and exalted ideals and
motives; the time-tried rule must apply to them: " the tree is
known by its fruits."

And because their real motive is autocratic power, to be
grasped by inflaming the cupidity of " the poorest class,"
however much they may try to veil their purpose by fine
phrases, they fight furiously and unscrupulously for power

380 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

among themselves, quite regardless of their common verbal
adherence to humanitarian principles. This was quite
clearly shown by the fate of the so-called Constituent Assem
bly, which was, of course, not representative of all Russia in
any true sense, but was practically a gathering of Socialists
only. It was, to leave out elements which had no prac
tical meaning, divided into two groups of Socialists, with
identical programmes : a minority of Bolshevik Socialists and
a majority of Revolutionary Socialists. And, simply because
the Bolshevik Socialists had command of the Red Guard, a
band of desperadoes originally armed by Alexander Keren-
sky in his uncandid struggle against General Korniloff , the
Lenin-Trotsky party drove out the majority of the Constitu
ent Assembly at the point of the bayonet, a number of them
being murdered. Before we grieve over these murders we
should remind ourselves that, had the Revolutionary Social
ists been in a minority, but in possession of predominant
armed force, they would have used exactly the same violent
measures to secure control for themselves.

In Petrograd, therefore, the principles and practice of the
Socialists have made themselves entirely clear; they are a
group of despotic leaders, not belonging to " the working
class," who are grasping at autocratic power by inflaming
the cupidity of the lowest class to murderous violence. I
wrote the words " the working class " in quotation marks a
few lines back, to bring out a fundamental principle of Social
ism; they recognize as "work," — not in their protestations
but in their actions, — only palpably material work, the exer
cise of the muscles, not of the intellectual and spiritual pow
ers. They tacitly declare war against these ; spiritual power,
of course, they openly scoff at, since they are frankly materi
alist; and intellectual power they will annihilate, so far as
in them lies. They are already annihilating it in Russia.
For we must now see clearly that the Russia which onqe en
riched the world by its spiritual and intellectual life and
accomplishment has ceased to exist. And exactly the same
destruction will follow in the wake of Socialism, wherever it
is triumphant. In the last analysis, this will inevitably mean
an unspeakable degradation and impoverishment of all hu
manity, an abasement which will fall first and heaviest on
the lowliest classes, the very " People " whom the Socialists
assert that they worship. By destroying the spiritual and in
tellectual life of mankind the Socialists will plunge the world

RUSSIA AND THE WAR AFTER THE WAR 381

into a bestial degradation which we shall be wise to realize
in advance. Therefore, all who have at heart the true well-
being of mankind must be the uncompromising foes of Social
ism, and must be diligent in stripping off the false pre
tences, the dishonest humanitarian protestations, which dis
guise the fatally dangerous reality.

So far, Petrograd and the regions immediately dominated
by Petrograd. We come now to Finland. Finland is an
excellent example of one of the smaller nationalities of
Europe which has its own tongue, its own thought, its own
constitutional life. When Finland passed, in 1809, from
Swedish to Russian control this national life continued unim
paired, except for a brief, unhappy period of " Russification,"
the aims of which were early abandoned. And as a result of
the elimination of Nicholas II as Grand Duke of Finland
the practical tie between the two countries was broken a year
ago. Finland desired completely independent national life,
and the constitutionalist Provisional Government made
some advances toward recognizing this desire, planning, per
haps, a federal union between Russia and Finland later on.
But the November revolution swept the Provisional Govern
ment out of existence. The Bolshevik Socialists, who then
came into power, proclaimed their acceptance of the German
phrase " self-determination of nations." How did they, in
fact, work it out for Finland? By sending a Red Guard
army over the frontier, to force Bolshevik principles upon
Finland, wholly regardless of Finland's own wishes and as
pirations. As this is written, the national army of Finland
is fighting valiantly against this Russian invasion, which is
every whit as brutal, as unjust, as tyrannous as was the Ger
man invasion of Belgium in 1914. So much for humani
tarian protestation — and for practice. And the Socialists
will do exactly the same thing, making the same glib pro
testations, wherever and whenever they get the chance.

Their action in Southern Russia proves this to demonstra
tion. Two regions of Southern Russia had declared their
autonomy, the Ukraine and the country of the Don Cos
sacks. The Ukrainian movement, as we know, had been
secretly fostered by Vienna for years, as a part of the subtle
and far-reaching Hapsburg plan. The purpose was two
fold: to weaken Russia by a separatist impulse, and to
strengthen the Hapsburg control over the Southeastern
Slavs, really in order to use them against the Magyars. For

382 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

this is, I believe, the secret of the Hapsburg tenderness for
the Poles ; and the Hapsburgs would, I think, if the Austrian
Teutons allowed them, give much larger freedom both to
the Czechs and to the Jugo-Slavs, Serbian and other, from
a sincere love, not of Slav nationalism, but of the Hapsburgs.
And we shall be wise, in parenthesis, to cherish no delusions
as to Hapsburg benignity. They are playing a difficult
game, and they are playing it with subtlety and determina
tion. But benignity is not one of its elements. For I am
deeply convinced that the purposes of the Hapsburgs are
just as brutally egotistic as those of the Hohenzollerns ; but
their methods are more subtle and polished — and, therefore,
the more dangerous.

But the result of Hapsburg support in the past is that the
professional Ukrainians now tend toward Austria and to a
separate peace with Austria. There are other elements in the
Ukraine which are more genuinely national, arid which might
develop a valuable nationality; for these Southern Russians
have many great gifts. But have the Petrograd Socialists
been willing, while professing adherence to " self-determina
tion " of nationalities, to allow this Southern Russian nation
ality to develop along its own inherent lines ? The despatches
give the answer: Bolshevik forces have invaded the Ukraine,
as they have invaded Finland, in order to thrust the principles
of the Petrograd Bolsheviki down the throats of the Ukrain
ians. In the Ukraine, as in Finland, the Bolshevik Social
ists are stirring up and waging civil war, war for the Social
ist despotism, and they are recruiting the forces of the " Red
Army " precisely by inflaming the envy and cupidity of their
followers.

The outrages of the Bolshevik despotism, the application
of their singular understanding of " self-determination,"
have not been limited to parts of the former Russian Empire.
Nothing could be more striking, more full of revelation, than
their action toward oft-betrayed Roumania. We have not yet
heard the Roumanian side of the story; but, from what the
Bolsheviki have themselves published, what happened would
seem to be this: the Bolshevik despots of Petrograd deter
mined to overthrow the existing government of Roumania,
with which the Roumanian people and the Roumanian army
appear to be entirely satisfied, but which does not comply
with the standards of Socialist despotism. So they sent
Bolshevik Red Guards to Roumania to force " the Social

RUSSIA AND THE WAR AFTER THE WAR 383

Revolution " upon the Roumanians. These men were arrested
and disarmed by the Roumanian army, ;which was, and
is, loyal to the cause of the Allies, in the face of overwhelming
sufferings. This wholly right and lawful act of self-defence
aroused the ire of the Petrograd despots, who subjected the
Roumanian Minister at Petrograd to insults such as accom
panied the departure of Allied Ambassadors from Berlin in
August, 1914; they sent armed forces against the Rouman
ians, and they " confiscated " a sum stated by them to be
$600,000,000 in gold, which the Roumanian Government had
deposited for safe-keeping in Moscow. It would be possible
to match this outrage against international morality only by
similar acts of Germany.

This brings one naturally to the Petrograd Socialists'
repudiation of loans to Russia, which, of course, they glibly
excuse and explain; and which is, equally, of course, quite
right and lawful according to the Socialist canon of honesty;
no one but a Socialist has any rights which a Socialist is bound
to recognize. By the way, how exactly that duplicates the
German theory and practice! Knowing Socialism, there
fore, we should have been entirely prepared for this repudia
tion, but there is a further point to be made. Exactly the
same kind of reasoning was used by the Provisional Gov
ernment to justify the proposed plundering of land-owners
in Russia, in one of their Socialistic experiments, the purpose
of which seems to have been a shameful desire to win the
support of the Russian peasants by an appeal to their greed.
The moral is this : if we made no protest whatever when the
Socialists of the Provisional Government planned to plun
der the Russian land-owners, then we have not the slightest
right to protest now, when the same doctrine is applied to
our loans in Russia.

So, through this series of examples, we reach a position
in which we are better able to answer the question raised at
the outset: What is the real purpose of the Petrograd despots
in pretending to espouse, at Brest-Litovsk, the freedom, the
liberty of self-determination, of Poland, Courland and Lith
uania? Surely it is quite evidently this: they wish to be in a
position to force these regions also to swallow the bitter fruits
of the Russian Revolution; they wish to be in a position to
send Red Guards over their frontiers, as they have already
sent them over the frontiers of Finland, of Ukrainia, of
Roumania. And, abominable as has been the tyranny of the

384 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

German and Austrian armies of occupation in Poland, worse,
if possible, than their acts in Belgium and occupied France, it
is a matter of serious doubt whether Poland would not suffer
even worse things, if given up to the tender mercies of the
Petrograd Socialists and their Red Guard of murderous des
peradoes. They would make true the words of Joel: " That
which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten."

But we shall flatter ourselves if we imagine that the Social
ists intend or expect to limit their blessings to Eastern
Europe and, perhaps, Russian Asia. Their own professions
to the contrary are entirely frank; they are calling for a Red
Army of Russians to force their despotism on the whole
world; and their intention to do this is what I mean by " the
war after the war." And they already have their allies in
the least successful elements in every country, who have
persuaded themselves that their failure is due to " capitalist
despotism," and who are prepared to begin the Socialist civil
war the instant they see a chance of success. Precisely the
same principles which we see now operative in Petrograd,
with precisely the same inspiration of envy, hatred and greed,
have been preached in every " platform " of the Socialist
party in this country and elsewhere ; and we are in a far bet
ter position today to realize what these incendiary principles
mean than we were a year, or six months ago, before Russian
Socialism had a chance to reveal itself. A year ago the over
whelming triumph of Socialism in Russia appeared a dream.
Today it is a destructive reality. We shall do well, therefore,
not to regard as a dream the possible infection of other coun
tries.

All that I have said concerning the Russian Socialists is
based, not on hostile testimony, but on what they have pub
lished about themselves or allowed to be published; much of
it is drawn from their manifestos.

So the revelation of Russian Socialism is, thanks to them
selves, pretty complete. I have tried to analyze it at length,
in order to press a practical point : We are advised by writ
ers who are either deceived, or wilfully deceive themselves,
to come to terms with these " advocates of democracy," these
" friends of humanity," to make common cause with them
against German imperialism. That advice I should like to
combat, not with the logic of argument, but with the logic of
fact.

The Provisional Government of Russia a year ago en-

RUSSIA AND THE WAR AFTER THE WAR 385

tered into a compact with the Russian Socialists, and made
common cause with them against the regime which they held
to be their common enemy. I suggest that, before coming to
terms with those same Russian Socialists and signing a treaty
with them, we take counsel from the Provisional Government,
asking them how, in their experience, their own alliance with
the Russian Socialists has worked out. Or, to put the thing
more directly, I am profoundly convinced that any alliance
with these forces of destruction will be exactly as fatal to
whoever makes it as was the ill-fated and, as I hold, deeply
unprincipled alliance made with them by the Duma revolu
tionists. Their aims are not our aims ; their principle of op
position to Germany is not our principle. They wish to
overthrow German despotism, in order to substitute a des
potism of their own, quite as tyrannous, quite as destructive —
if not more destructive. Like Germany, they aim at world
wide domination. And their domination will mean not the
destruction of nationalities only, but the destruction of every
thing that gives worth to human life ; of everything beyond
animal self-indulgence, which is, for them, the only reality.

Now that I have tried to indicate the real nature and the
ugly menace of Russian Socialism, which differs not at all
from Socialism the world over, I am not willing to leave the
matter with what may be called a purely negative statement.
Let me try to state the affirmative side : If the principles and
practice of Socialism are what they are, what is the really
effective way to meet them — to save the life of humanity from
this menacing evil?

Fundamentally, Socialism is an appeal to egotism, to
envy, hatred and greed; an appeal which, Russia's experience
shows, sows and quickly reaps a crop of spoliation, outrage
and murder. Let us see clearly, at the outset, that it is folly
to try to oppose to this contagious and inflammatory egotism
some other expression of egotism. If the principles of So
cialism be, as I believe, principles of evil, they can only be
conquered by the principles of good; against their greedy
self-indulgence we must oppose self-sacrifice ; we must defeat
their spurious and murderous " brotherhood " by real broth
erhood; we must overcome their false internationalism by a
genuine patriotism, grounded in sacrifice.

Socialism teaches that great wealth, the conspicuous re
ward of successful effort, is really plunder, made possible by
" the capitalistic system." But in reality the winning of
VOL. CCVIL— NO. 748 25

386 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

great wealth is the fruit, not of capital, but of extraordinary
gifts of insight and energy; the insight to perceive some im
mensely wide-spread need or requirement, and the con
structive energy to supply that need. One can only make
millions by supplying the needs of millions ; and every excep
tionally gifted man who has made millions has at the same
time enriched, by supplying their needs, millions besides him
self. There are seeming exceptions ; but this is the genera)
rule. Therefore, the free activity of the exceptionally gifted
men enriches the whole community, the whole nation, the
whole human race. The Socialists, I think, either fail to see,
or are unwilling to see, this simple natural law. They see
only the reward — and the sight of the reward fills them with
envy and hatred.

But even the reward they do not see truly; and, indeed, I
think that, in this reward of immense wealth, there is a great
element of benevolent glamor — benevolent, because it leads
the exceptionally gifted men to exert their great and valuable
powers to the full, to the enrichment of the whole com
munity ; but also glamor, because so great a part of the reward
dwells only in the imagination.

For example: even the multi-millionaire does not wear
two suits of clothes at once, or eat two dinners at once, nor can
he be in two rooms at once. And one room, one suit of
clothes, one dinner, most of us can fairly come by. And all
the rest is touched with glamor. Let us be grateful that our
exceptionally gifted men are willing and eager to take their
pay in fairy gold.

But the practical point is this: these gifted men, gifted
with insight and energy, make their fortunes by perceiving a
want and then supplying it. But just at the point of sup
plying the need, they may make a fair bargain or they may
drive a hard bargain. A fair bargain leaves both parties well
satisfied. A hard bargain leaves in the man whose need is
supplied at too great cost to himself a feeling of rankling in
justice — and this is the stuff that Socialism is made of. Our
gifted men, I am persuaded, find their real reward in the free
exercise of their great powers, in the sense of freely flowing
creative energy, a faculty in essence Godlike. But they find
a less authentic reward in precisely the things the Socialist
sees and covets. It would seem, then, that what is needed is
a clearer recognition on their part that their true motive and
driving-power is already spiritual, with a consequent spirit-

RUSSIA AND THE WAR AFTER THE WAR 387

ualizing of their whole feeling about their work and its re
wards. This will transmute the alloy of egotism in them,
and will make them generous, so that they will make only
generous bargains. And it is an open secret that it will also
make them happy. But the practical point is, that this all-
round generous dealing will sterilize the poison of Socialism.

This is a practical counsel. Let us put it to the test, as
we have already, as a nation, put to the test another spiritual
law, the supreme principle of courageous sacrifice in a holy
cause. Let anyone compare the national feeling to-day with
the feeling of this nation when the sinking of the Lusi-
tania was accepted, and he will clearly see that our sacrifice
has brought us immense national happiness. The spiritual
law has already justified itself. It will do so, not less strik
ingly, if worked out through the whole field of national pro
duction. We shall then have true brotherhood, instead of
the spurious and murderous brotherhood of Socialism.

I said, a little while back, that Socialists are either blind
or blind themselves to the simple natural law that really gov
erns the possession of wealth. Of this blindness, there is, I
think, a very simple cause, which can be expressed in terms of
two dates. Karl Marx, the father of the Socialism of hatred
and greed, completed his theory and published his great book
about 1850. But it was nearly ten years later that Darwin,
in The Origin of Species, disclosed the principle of progres
sive development through the natural selection of gifted indi
viduals. And this is the same principle which in human life,
I think, ordains that all progress is made through the ef
forts of exceptionally gifted individuals, who, while raising
themselves, raise the whole level of humanity; a law true not
only in the field of production, from which I drew my illus
tration, but in every field of the life of mankind, and es
pecially in intellectual, moral and spiritual life. And it is
precisely against the exceptionally gifted men that the
Socialists in their blind envy and greed have declared war.
They are doing their best to annihilate the one effective means
of human progress.

And, primarily, I am convinced, because they do not un
derstand the simplest laws of Evolution; because their text
book was written ten years before Darwin, and because its
ideas and, even more, its bitter and destructive spirit, have
never been changed.

CHARLES JOHNSTON.

AFTER THE WAR

BY EMILE BOUTEOUX
Member of the French Academy

Is the war being carried on for the sake of conquest or
supremacy, of gain or revenge? No, it is a crusade in defense
of the spiritual interests of mankind, for the preservation of
human freedom, dignity and brotherhood.

It is of the future that our soldiers are thinking whilst
undergoing such prolonged and bitter trials ; they are deter
mined to make it better than the past has been, and it is
because they draw their might not from material organiza
tions, but from the noblest feelings and the loftiest aspira
tions, that this might is inexhaustible. As Pascal said, mat
ter fades away before mind. However great its power, it is
finite, whereas that of mind is infinite.

How are we to reconstruct the world, everywhere threat
ened with ruin? Or, rather, what special qualities and vir
tues will men need for the worthy performance of the work
to be done? Assuredly the present war has shown how
powerful are material resources, but the mind of man is still
dominant. But what must be his attitude toward the tasks
that will have to be taken up?

He will have to become more adaptable, we shall be told.
The greater the role of matter, the more its laws must be
understood. Material progress is essentially one of those
" unmoveable facts " of which Cromwell spoke, recommend
ing us to take them as our starting point in all our calcula
tions.

Were we satisfied with this principle of adaptation when
the time came for us to think of our future? Adaptation,
pure and simple, was nothing else than the seductive doctrine
called pacifism. We were told: There is now being created
so enormous a force that the forces of all other States com
bined cannot counterbalance it. Let this force become as-

AFTER THE WAR 389

sured that it has no opposition to risk and it will of necessity
be a pacifist force. Being sovereign mistress, it will attack
no one.

For years before the outbreak of the war the Germans
never wearied of repeating: We represent peace. Germany
is the rock of peace: der Hort des Friedens. As a matter
of fact, when war came upon us the Nobel Prize for peace
was about to be awarded to Wilhelm II.

Indeed, had we passively adopted the coming world dom
ination of Germany, had we regarded it as natural that she
should impose her will upon all and become the world's
policeman, pacifism would no doubt have kept its promise
and we should now have had peace. We had only to recog
nize, as we were taught, that honor was a survival of a bar
baric age, to abjure the past and peace would have been ours.

We refused. This war is the protest of a will determined
to do its duty against might that offers us comfort along with
servitude.

No, all facts are not Cromwell's " unmoveable facts " ;
human and physical facts must not be classed together. Peo
ple speak glibly of sociological and historical laws as though
they resembled the laws of matter. They represent only a
contingent state of things, with physical phenomena, it is
true, as their basis ; though man, with his intellect, his feelings
and activities, has contributed toward their production. Now,
what man has done he can undo.

We shall have to work energetically in creating a state of
things that will guarantee mankind against the repetition of
a like catastrophe. We must utilize to the full the experi
ence and the new conditions in eliminating such scourges as
have threatened our very existence in France : alcoholism, de
population, political anarchy; and in creating the most just
and prosperous society possible, and, I will add, the most
pacific. For, while peace is not the first of blessings — jus
tice occupying the premier place — it is an inestimable boon
when it is the logical consequence of justice and not the sole
end pursued along a pathway of lies, cowardice and baseness
of every kind.

And how are we to create a new world? Mankind in
vents by returning to a more or less forgotten past and there
in finding its models. Strange to say, it is the very action
which does not aim at being a creation, which tends simply to
restore the beautiful and great productions of the past, that

390 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

speedily becomes a genuine creation. Grace is given to him
who innocently believes that he can do nothing of himself,
and must, as Pascal said, " by humiliation lay himself open
to inspiration."

We could not think of making a tabula rasa of the past
and giving it no more than an historical interest. Theodore
Roosevelt, a man of heart and ideals, told us that in his
African travels, when far from civilization, his favorite book
was the Chanson de Roland. The reason was that in this
poem, which is far from being as artistically perfect as the
Iliad or the ^Eneid, are depicted the noblest feelings of
humanity; the cult of loyalty, honor and justice, the tender
love of country, the passion for honor, valor and devotion.
Professor Schofield, of Harvard, recently told us : " In
France was born that chivalrous spirit which has excited the
admiration and emulation of all who love human dignity and
which is now being shown in the struggle being carried on
between the classic and the Germanic world."

The greatness of this past lies in the fact that it is by no
means dead; it remains living and fruitful throughout the
centuries. Great things are themselves the germs of new
greatness, and, in this development of the glorious legacy of
our ancestors, true creation is to be found.

A consideration of the principles which guide German
conduct will show those we ought to adopt. In Germany,
for the past hundred years, there has grown up a certain
practical philosophy which might be defined as a fatalistic
artificialism.

Germany has accustomed herself to regard nature, the
past, humanity, science, art, religion, all that is or can be,
as material which she has the right and the power to fashion
after her own will. The German is master of the universe ;
he defines himself as Ein Herrenvolk (a master-people).
By his art and methods, his knowledge of the nature of
things, he can change man and the entire world. He inso
lently sets against the timid doctrine of adaptation a uni
versal artificialism.

Adopting the same point of view, certain German pro
fessors, beginning to find that their countrymen have suc
ceeded too well in inculcating that hatred which they affect
to regard as a confession of fear, now write: " After the war
we must try to become systematically amiable " (systematisch
liebenfuriirdig zu werden) .

AFTER THE WAR 391

The notion of artificialism is but half of the German
conception of life ; the German is also omnipotent because, as
a primitive people (Urvolh), he is directly connected with
the initial principle of things. Being the visible agent of
God, it is through him that God carries out His designs in the
world.

At the outbreak of the war the German pastors
preached: Gott will durch uns Taten tun: " God intends
to do extraordinary things through us." God, that is to say,
not a conscious and free Being, a person as we understand
the word, but a law of development, in virtue of which the
end toward which things tend to move is determined from all
eternity. And this end is none other than the universal
hegemony of Germanism. Germanism accounts for every
thing, since there is nothing in the world the perfection and
reason for existence of which do not contribute to realize the
German ideal.

By considering the German point of view we come to a
better understanding of our own. The offspring of a classic
civilization, we do not regard will and action as anterior to
thought and being; we look for excellence in a true and har
monious blend of thought and will, the universal and the in
dividual, law and liberty.

We do not claim, by scientific and psychological methods,
to effect a radical transformation in human beings, to make,
e. g.,, a man into an automaton or a German into a French
man. Nature must be respected, and in her types, which she
preserves throughout the ages, she is truly deserving of re
spect. Consequently we obey her, not as slaves, but as co-
workers. And while our art assumes the duty of transcending
nature, it also endeavors to transcend itself in order to rise to
that blend of art and nature which is called the natural.

The past, too, in our eyes, is deserving of respect. The
Germans utilize it, extracting from it such elements as inter
est them or are suited to their purpose and caring nothing for
the rest. In our opinion, the ancients lived for themselves
no less than do the present generations of men ; in a generous
and original thought there is something more than material
that can be used or that must be rejected. We still read
Plato, not only as scholars but as disciples; we think there
is something in him that is great, infinite and divine, and
that his writings will always contain something for us to
reflect upon, something that is living and creative.

392 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

We likewise repudiate the doctrine of fatalism. The
Germans accuse us of believing in nothing but the independ
ence of the individual, of seeking freedom in anarchy. There
is a false conception of individual freedom; a legitimate self-
possession is too frequently mistaken for the rejection of all
obedience and respect. Such a use of individual freedom,
however, is by no means inevitable. There is assuredly more
freedom in mastering one's passions than in giving way to
them. Our task is to reconcile liberty with law and justice.
We shall always uphold that education, based on respect for
nature, tradition and liberty, which is called a liberal edu
cation.

In accordance with this principle, we will consider man
in his physical, his intellectual and his moral nature.

Our first problem in physical life is that of natality. A
decreasing birth rate, the stagnation of the French popula
tion, is extremely serious. " How can France," wrote a
German, " continue to play a part in the world? She is
committing suicide; within a measurable period ahead she
will be non-existent. Nature abhors a vacuum. It is but
natural and right that the four sons of a German should seize
the place usurped by the one son of a Frenchman."

The problem is as difficult to solve as it is important. The
evil is profound; a low birth rate springs from that egotism
and love of pleasure which causes children to be regarded as
an encumbrance, a cause of the diminution of the family
fprtune. A child, it is urged, is desirable as an heir, but one
only, so that the fortune may not be split up; and so the
future is gaily sacrificed to the present, the race to the indi
vidual, the country to money.

Now, the French race is a fruitful one; our instinct is to
cherish our children, in proof of which consider the wonderful
growth of the French population in Canada and Algeria, and
in certain parts of France itself.

Of a surety, intelligence must control all our actions, but
why should intelligence be used in thwarting Nature where
she is engaged in so fine and admirable a work? What is
procreation but that perpetual renewal of life, effected by
childhood, and which is so healthily contagious in those who
are growing old? It is criminal to oppose nature's eternal
elan toward life and youth. Not only is procreation the
reasonable and desirable satisfaction of a fundamentally
natural instinct, it is also our duty to insure the continuation

AFTER THE WAR 393

of the human service entrusted to us. We may not regard
the universe as made for ourselves, as culminating in our
paltry individuality and as having for its only object the
procuring of a few pleasant sensations.

After natality we will consider physical worth. This
must not be regarded as the basis, or even the generating
cause of intellectual and moral qualities. Such an interpre
tation of Juvenal's famous line : mens sana in corpore sano,
is a misconception. Neither the sound mind nor the sound
body engenders the other; both are alike necessary.

In the perfection of the body are three essential elements.
The first is health, the unit which, as has been said, when
placed before the zeros of life, gives them value. Nowadays
we show ourselves extraordinarily anxious about our physical
well-being; there is no scientific progress or costly invention
to which we do not appeal for obtaining health. And yet,
how often do we miss it because we either neglect or despise
the simplest of means : sobriety of living and obedience to the
laws of morality.

The second essential quality is strength and suppleness.
The man who is physically strong is more free and capable
of helping himself in every circumstance of life than the one
who is weak. And in war, since it still exists, physical vigor
is a practically indispensable condition, not only of dash and
audacity, but of endurance and coolness, of self-possession
and mental freedom.

The third quality is beauty. This must not be relegated
to museums, or made the aristocratic privilege of the few.
Physical beauty is a good thing in itself. Did not the great
philosophers of old claim that in all things beauty inclines
the mind to appreciate propriety, moderation and grace, the
forerunner, so to speak, of goodness?

Now, let us consider intellectual culture.

Socrates taught that the virtue of a man is in proportion
to his knowledge. Never, indeed, has the power of science in
the field of action been manifested as during the present war.
The spirit in which the education of the intellect is conceived
will have a decisive influence over the future of our land. As
a general principle, every citizen must possess a fund of prac
tical and utilizable knowledge. It has been the fashion to
make a radical distinction between theory and practice. The
pure scientist has seemed to disdain realization and the prac-

394 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

titioner has regarded the great generalities of pure science
as useless.

Such conceptions have had their day. There is not a
theoretical as distinct from a practical science ; there is simply
science, which both explains and produces phenomena.

The consequence of this principle is specialization. The
field of science is so immense that manifestly each individual
can cultivate only a small part of it. Every man must be
good at something, and this will enable him to be good for
something.

Coordination, too, must go along with specialization. All
essential specialties must have their own organs for social
life in order to be complete and normal. Some degree of
intervention on the part of the directing power, the State,
here seems necessary; no longer can we allow individuals to
learn just what they please. We cannot simply apply what
Americans call the elective system (worked by the students
themselves) of the branches of study they are to take
up. Here, the students are inadequate judges. At Har
vard University, where this system held sway — it has since
been greatly mitigated — I asked a student what course of
lectures he had chosen. He answered that he was attending
those given in the afternoons, the reason being that he liked
to spend his mornings in bed!

We cannot content ourselves with being parts of a man,
Teilmenschen, according to the German ideal; we intend to
maintain the distinctive character of human society. Re
member, there is no true bond between individuals or classes
of individuals that entirely differ from one another, such as
we find in division of labor. Between such persons there is
merely juxtaposition, a purely external organization, anal
ogous to the arrangement of the parts of a machine. Human
society must be something more than a set of wheels ; it must
be made up of persons who exchange ideas, who live, as it
were, within one another.

The general culture of which we are thinking is expressed
in French literature and art. In Germany, literature has
reached a high stage of development. All the same, it is a
specialty, like chemistry or surgery. Die schone Literatur
has nothing to do with scientific works, nor vice versa. To
say that some learned or philosophical book was well written
would be ironical praise.

Quite different is the French conception of art and litera-

AFTER THE WAR 395

ture. A country, to our mind, is a living person, made up of
a body and a soul. The body is the soil, whilst literature and
art compose the soul. These, indeed, contain and keep eter
nally living and fruitful the finest and greatest thoughts, feel
ings and dreams of our ancestors; all we have accomplished
ourselves and all that marks our role and mission in the world.
Literature, to us, is not a specialty; it is a common conscious
ness.

Now, we must consider moral culture. In spite of the
progress of science and the resulting transformations, this
has lost nothing of its importance. On the contrary, the
greater the power of action, the more necessary the inner
curb. What are our moral duties in the world as at present
constituted?

In solving this problem, we must follow Pascal's maxim:
measure our power by our duty, not our duty by our power.
Now, once we are thoroughly convinced that we ought to do
anything, without the slightest doubt we shall be capable of
doing it.

Take individual virtues. In Germany the doctrine is
held that private virtues — moral virtue strictly so called, —
are of no importance where the political organism has all the
perfection and power of which it is susceptible. The Prus
sian State demands of its citizens the services it needs; it
has nothing to do with their personal morality. " Private
virtues," said Treitschke, " are good for monasteries."

Now, we cannot admit that such virtues are suitable for
monks alone. The whole tendency of the educators of man
kind, throughout the ages, has been to instill in the indi
vidual more dignity and worth. We intend to remain faith
ful to such teaching. Nor do we admit that another nation
should arrogate to itself the monopoly of civilization, prog
ress and duty, whereas what it really offers to the world is
the prostitution of science, morality and religion to violence
and barbarity.

Private virtues are indispensable to the very existence of
true human societies. In the Protagoras of Plato we read
that Jupiter ordered Mercury to distribute the virtues of
modesty and justice, not to a few, but to all the citizens with
out exception, since no society is possible apart from these
virtues. Who would dare to affirm that this doctrine is no
longer true?

Efowever indispensable private virtues may be to society

396 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

itself, we do not admit that social virtue is a simple generali
zation of it. In organized society there is something more
than an arithmetical total of individual capacities. The Ger
mans have given us a terrible example of the awful power
that can be created by organization. It is useless to utter
anathemas or reasonings against this power. Force can be
overcome by force alone. Now, the multiplication of force
can be obtained only by the mathematical combination of in
dividual forces. Individuals must therefore become literally
parts of a whole. In the sight of the State, are individuals,
especially in times of crisis, no more than numbers, imper
sonal forces? Does public duty henceforth consist in being
prepared, at the command of the State, to abdicate all sense
of justice, modesty or morality? Is the proposition: Unsere
Kriegsfuhrung kennt keine zuchtlose Grausamkeit — Our
mode of warfare knows no undisciplined cruelty, — synony
mous, as the Germans say it is, with that other proposition:
Unsere Kriegsfuhrung kennt keine Grausamkeit — Our
mode of warfare admits of no cruelty of any kind?

Over against such theories as these we set the classic doc
trine: the nation or State is not simply a force, it is a moral
being. The State has been instituted to provide a loftier de
velopment of the powers of mankind. Consequently, it can
neither be indifferent to morality, nor above — for in this con
nection above would mean below — morality. The State has
its duties, rights and responsibilities, and cruelty or injustice
committed by the State remains cruelty and injustice.

The violation of Belgian neutrality, the devastation of
Serbia, the massacre and slavery of civilians, submarine war
fare, are all State crimes. Unheeding the shameless sophistry
of our opponents we still maintain that evil is evil, whoever
commits it, and that a nation, no less than an individual, is
capable of virtue or vice, honor or infamy. For this reason
we can give the most willing obedience to our country and to
the State whose mission it is to safeguard it.

The objection may be urged that the German State is
more than a person, that it is a divinity, God visible and
realized in this world. Certainly the German people, in their
political conceptions, are known to be guided by a mystic
and religious idea. What they have set up to worship, how
ever, is German force, whereas the sovereign before whom
we bow is right and justice.

Hence result interesting consequences, as regards both

AFTER THE WAR 397

the inner life of States and their mutual relationships. Were
we to consider the State as nothing but a force, individuals
would find it necessary to become wheels in the perfectly de
termined and infallible working of a machine. What, then,
would become of the rights of the individual? Could there
be any freedom of conscience, any tolerance for those who
took it into their heads to think for themselves?

On the other hand, admit that the State is a person, as an
individual is; then freedom of conscience acquires singular
importance. It is not only freedom that I must recognize in
my neighbor, because he is a man like myself, I must also
acknowledge the right of the State to cultivate amongst its
citizens every form of thought and feeling calculated to con
tribute to its beauty, prestige and greatness. Variety is more
beautiful and fruitful than uniformity. The State can advo
cate only a liberty which is for it a principle of life, creation
and originality. The State as force will have nothing to do
with freedom of conscience; the State as person respects and
guarantees it, and, if need be, institutes it.

To deprive it of any of the characteristic expressions of
its genius is to mutilate a nation. Why have we deplored the
violence that has separated us from our brothers of Alsace-
Lorraine? It is not only because they were as attached to us
as we were to them, it is also because they contributed a
special note needed to make France truly harmonious. It
was a loss to the entire world when the precious qualities of
these two provinces were rudely torn away from the whole of
which they formed an essential element. They were both like
and unlike us; and it is just this blend of similitudes and dif
ferences that constitutes the originality and the beauty of a
human society.

And what is true of a State applies also to the relations
between States. There is one new fact that has been either
revealed or created by the war: the unity of the world. The
solidarity between nations is no longer a doctrine or a possi
bility; it is a fact; and the result of the war will determine the
regime that will govern the whole world, not merely a few
nations.

What will this regime be? According to Germany, a
State is something absolute, its essential attribute being sov
ereignty. Now, there can be only one sovereign, as there can
be only one God. Were it otherwise the would-be sovereigns
would make war until only one was left, Which should be

398 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the State par excellence? The one that combines in the high
est degree force and culture, i. e., the Prussian State, the
German State, its development, and, in the near future, un
less we check the process, the State which will be called Mittel-
Europa, and then simply Europa, a further development of
the German State. The German doctrine is that all States
are destined to be either absorbed or dominated by this one
State.

Even theoretically we cannot accept such a doctrine. If
the nation is a moral being, a person, the nations have the
right to remain free and to some extent independent within a
universal solidarity, just like the individual in the State of
which he is a part. All the same, how can this independence
between States be reconciled with the unity which manifestly
is to reign throughout the world?

Evidently this reconciliation would be inconceivable were
there no other binding agent than force. Force demands
and makes slaves. A despotic government will partially re
spect the characteristic elements of various national qualities
only in so far as it can exploit them. But if we admit that,
between nations as well as individuals, there are bonds of feel
ing, both natural and deserving of respect, if we deem it both
possible and desirable that nations should strive not only for
their own greatness but for the honor and greatness of
humanity, then we shall deem it possible for State unions and
federations to come into being and to exist, firm and strong,
without being founded on material well-being or on the love
of this alone. To human consciousness, fidelity, honor and
justice are beautiful and deserving of respect; but because
they are also in conformity with reason, they are built up on a
basis of feeling.

To conclude, then: After the war we must expand our
ideas both of duty and of power. We must conceive as form
ing part of our duty not only the dealings between individuals
with one another, but also those that concern the prosperity
of the land, the harmony of society, the dignity of the State
and the establishment of international relations of equity and
good- will. We cannot effect our salvation all alone, nor can
we do our duty except by sharing in the common duty.

The idea of power, too, must be enlarged by means of
science and organization. We shall expect both of these to
give all they can, without thereby abandoning the cult of lib
erty and the ideal, but rather building up on liberty itself the
very organizations which reason shows to be necessary.

AFTER THE WAR 899

On whom will the form and character of our life depend
in the coming future? Who will govern us? The heroes
who return from the front, where they have set an example
of the very qualities and virtues that will be needed. They
will prove equal to the tasks awaiting them. Remain ever
confident: they will build up for our land a destiny worthy
of her sacrifices. Through trials and dangers transcending
the power of imagination to conceive, they have become, as
it were, the living incarnation of two of our most inspiring
French motoes: " Fais ce que dots" ; ff Quand m&mel "

EMILIE BOUTEOUX.

A NEW CHARTER OF LIBERTY

BY DARWIN P. KINGSLEY

OUR immediate duty is to win this war.

Since the days just preceding the Battle of the Marne
disasters have been no thicker, the outlook has been no
blacker than now.

The thicker the disasters, the darker the outlook, the
more imperative that duty becomes.

We have entered the conflict because we could stay out
no longer and retain our self-respect. We have gone over
seas to meet a monster that planned later on to attack us
in our own homes. We fight to drive from the world The
Terror that slays, that debauches, that violates, that knows
no honor, and has no compassion ; but we also fight in order
that, for similar reasons, the world may never have to fight
again. If this is to be a place fit for habitation by civilized
men, if it is to be a place in which hope and ambition and
unselfishness and human affection are to flourish, we must
win the war, and then make that victory effective through a
change in the fundamental relations between democratic
states.

With victory we shall face an unprecedented crisis, out
of which a new world should be born — a world splendidly
worth its fearful cost.

In that crisis, and fighting against that rebirth, will lie
the deadly force of inertia, the paralyzing influence of an
cient prejudices and fears, and a natural longing for the
restoration of the old conditions.

Restoration of the status quo between the democracies
of the world, after Germany has been crushed, means de
feat; it means defeat not because the old world will then
be broken financially and shattered morally, but because that
new world cannot be born under the old conditions.

When this war began we were utterly unprepared to

A NEW CHARTER OF LIBERTY 401

do our plain duty. We must not face the crisis that will
lie in after-war conditions still totally unprepared.

A comprehensive post-bellum programme, thought out
in advance and agreed to in principle by the Allies, is almost
as important as victory itself.

To destroy this German Terror is necessary, but that
does not reflect our full purpose. The conditions out of
which this Terror was born, unchanged, will later produce
others like it, possibly worse. We fight not only to crush
or change Germany, but so to change the fundamentals of
civilization that they shall no longer naturally breed, in part
at least, the ideals which have made Germany the Monster
that she is.

Neither the Anglo-Saxon, the Latin, the Japanese, nor
the Slav can understand the remorseless, senseless, brutish
savagery of the German. The chaos, the lawlessness of in
ternational relations, excuse and explain in part the German
attitude, but they do not explain or excuse the monstrous
crimes which, beginning with Germany's self -violated honor,
have proceeded through thickening horrors to Ambassador
Luxburg and his advice to sink the ships of friendly Powers,
but to do it in such a way as to leave no trace.

The only immediate answer to these inhuman deeds lies
in the throat of cannon and machine guns ; no other answer
is possible.

But there is another side to the problem which will assert
itself, as we hope, at no distant date. The great majority
of the peoples of the world is neither insane with egotism
nor drunk with the lust of power. The majority of the
world is to-day genuinely democratic — democratic not
merely in its forms of governments, but democratic in its
sympathies, in its willingness to concede to others the rights
it demands for itself. That majority was badly organized
when this war began; it was really so organized as to invite
war. It was democratic within the frontiers of those civic
entities which we call Republics, but in the relations between
those units it was autocratic. Those relations must be
changed; they must be reorganized. This reorganization
will include Germany if it then appears that the word of
a German in Germany can be taken for anything, if it then
appears that as a people they have acquired a conscience;
otherwise the German State must remain the Pariah
amongst nations that it is to-day.
VOL. corn.— NO. 748 26

402 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Outside the incomprehensible savagery exhibited by
Germany, I see little in her attitude toward other nations or
in her purposes as a sovereignty that is really illogical or
inconsistent with the present laws governing national exist
ence. It is even possible to see how the doctrine of uncondi
tioned sovereignty, which was and still is the basis of world
relations, tended and tends to develop the amazing brutali
ties of the German people.

Each of the great sovereignties assumes that it is uncon
trolled and uncontrollable by any other state, that in the
last analysis it is itself the law. This is a reversion to a
primal instinct. It created as many supreme authorities in
this little world as there are great sovereignties. It erected
impenetrable barriers, barriers called frontiers, between the
sons of men. It made civilization a powder magazine. On
the first of August, 1914, the magazine blew up.

Such having been the method of unconditioned sover
eignty before the war and such its fruits, what will happen
if it is continued unmodified after the war?

War will happen, war again and again, with the ulti
mate dominance of one great military Power.

It was as certain as the law of gravitation that both
soon and late sovereignty must fight with sovereignty and
that only the strong could survive. The violent change in
the relations between sovereignties that followed the mar
vels of steam and electricity simply hastened the day when
the fight was to begin, and increased its horrors. It was
logical — indeed who shall now say it was not necessary? —
for each sovereignty to prepare for that day. Substantially
all sovereignties except our own did prepare. Germany sim
ply saw a little more clearly than others or realized with
more ruthlessness than others what the situation meant, and
made corresponding preparation. It was logical, although
entirely unmoral, for any sovereignty to build up out of
this condition a fiction of superiority as Germany did. The
sovereignty that was perfectly logical, and without moral
sense, could well argue, as Germany did:

" This condition means war, there is no escape from it;

" Ultimately only one great Power can survive ;

" The Power that survives will be the one that has the
will to survive;

" That will is God-given, it was born of the plans of
the Creator; therefore,

A NEW CHARTER OF LIBERTY 403

" Germany having that will is chosen of God to rule

the world; hence

" It becomes our duty, in order to carry out the Divine
Purpose, not only to equip ourselves by every pos
sible means, but to spy on other sovereignties in
times of peace, to weaken them by any possible
process, to suborn their public officers, to bribe their
generals, to buy their newspapers, to pervert their
public opinion;

" Moreover, it becomes our duty in order to obey the
Divine Will to strike whenever it seems that we
are best prepared to strike and the rest of the world
is least prepared to defend itself; and
" As this will be the Supreme Fight, the one that is to
establish God's purpose on the earth we shall be
justified in hesitating at nothing, we shall have
warrant for any act that will terrify — the end will
justify the means."

In the doctrine of sovereignty, except as it may be quali
fied by the principles of democracy, there is no more morality
than there is in the law of the jungle.

The logic of Germany was born of the morality of that
Doctrine, and therefore, always under pressure from Ger
many, we had, for years before this war began, constantly
increasing armament by land and sea, the so-called "bal
ance of power " in Europe, and the international chaos of
1914. In that chaos Germany thought she saw her oppor
tunity. She knew herself prepared. Her spies told her
that France was unready. She knew that the Government
of Russia was rotten, that she could suborn Russia's rulers,
bribe her generals, and debauch her public opinion. She
believed that Great Britain was decadent and would enter on
no quixotic enterprise. She assumed that Italy would re
main in the Dreibund. She expected us to become involved
only after she had crushed Europe. It seemed to be " The
Day ". It would have been but for the glorious soul of
Belgium, the matchless courage of France, and that gray,
grim, silent line of ships which rests somewhere in the
North Sea.

For years Germany's preparation had been obvious, its
purpose confessed, the crisis inevitable. But the Democ
racies of the world apparently could not see the obvious, they
preferred to ignore Germany's brazenly confessed purpose.

404 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

They adhered to the doctrine of sovereignty and at the same
time they flinched from the full measure of its fearful logic.
They preserved their frontiers, they waged economic wars
on each other through tariffs, but they did after a fashion
recognize the rights of other peoples, and they did not let
the lust for power utterly consume their souls. They built
their railroads, for example, for commerce and not for war.
They risked their very existence, as we now see, by not being
entirely logical — and they have very nearly paid the price of
their inconsistency. It is clear, therefore, that the democ
racies of the world must not permit that crisis to arise again.
To prevent that they must either deny their own faith and
become armed camps or they must formulate a post-bellum
plan which will remove that monstrous logic from the demo
cratic world, and they should formulate that plan now.

Assume that Germany is so changed in the not distant
future that civilized men can deal with her, or that she is so
crushed that she can be ignored: what then?

Are we still to follow the old programme ? Can the world
be reorganized for peace on those lines? It never has been.
For some centuries now, peace in Europe has been merely a
period of preparation for the next war. Is the doctrine of
unconditioned sovereignty to be preserved with all its hideous
significance for the future? If so, what shall we have gained
by victory? Shall we have gained anything?

At the very threshold of all post-bellum discussion this
doctrine will stand and thrust its bloody history into our
councils. We cannot ignore it. We dare not palter with it.
What are we to do with it? It cannot as yet be utterly abol
ished. Nationality with all its crimes was as inevitable a step
in the evolution of government as mammals were hi the evo
lution of man. It has played a great part, it must still play a
great part; but its role hereafter in the democratic world
must not be the leading part: humanity must come first.

In general terms, what does that involve? It will not be
easy to modify the doctrine of sovereignty or to indicate a
better plan; but whether the task be easy or difficult, it is now
time — ignoring details — to name certain principles which
must be adhered to in the future relations of democracies, if
the victory that will cost us so much is not after all to be
frittered away. If the Allies having crushed Germany con
tinue relations between themselves such that in a generation
or two it will be necessary for them to turn and crush each

A NEW CHARTER OF LIBERTY 405

other, what will victory in this conflict have been worth?

Let us put it as baldly and as offensively as possible:

The sovereignty of the United States as between itself
and the democracies, great and small, with which we should be
federated at the close of this war must then be qualified. The
sovereignty of Great Britain, France, Italy and all the de
mocratic peoples included in that federation must be quali
fied in the same way.

That is the medicine the democracies of the world must
ultimately take. Few people ever like their first whiff of it.
Our forefathers did not like it, but it was good for them and
they took it.

Apart from the necessity for such action between democ
racies after the war, we are already committed to the prin
ciple ; so is Great Britain.

Great Britain has said that she fights, and we have said
that we fight, to make the rights and privileges of weak peo
ples and small states as secure against aggression in the fu
ture as are the rights and privileges of great states. Even
Germany has professed that purpose, although her first act
in this war was inviolate Belgium, and the first act of her
principal ally was to attack a small state. President Wilson
in his call for a declaration of war said we must have a part
nership of democratic nations, a league of honor, a partner
ship of opinion. " Partnership " is a strong word, but it is
not quite strong enough. A " league of honor " would be
fine — we have had such things in the world before — but it
will not solve this problem. A joinder of democratic states
in which weak peoples and small states are to be fully pro
tected must rest on clearly defined rights, and not on priv
ileges granted by the grace of more powerful states. How
ever sincere the great states in a league or partnership might
be when it was formed, however perfectly they might intend
then to respect the rights of small states, the precedents of
history show clearly that they cannot be trusted to that ex
tent, neither can they long be trusted to keep the peace
between themselves. The history of the Thirteen States
between the Peace of Paris and the adoption of the Consti
tution shows what would happen. Small states in such an
enterprise must have as definite a place, their rights must
be as clearly assured, as are the rights and privileges of the
small states in the Federal Union. Safety that rests on
grace or favor will not do. The union of democratic states

406 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

after this war, to be effective, must be as indissoluble as the
Federal Union itself.

Therefore out of the democracies of the world there must
be created, not a League of nations, not a Partnership be
tween states, but, by federation, a new State, a new Power,
whose authority shall be drawn directly from the people —
just as the authority of our Federal Government is drawn
from the people and not from the States as such. The
structure of that great new Power should rest on these prin
ciples: It should have the power to tax; it should act directly
on the individual; it should have a bicameral legislature; it
probably should have the three great divisions of our Federal
Plan— Executive, Legislative and Judicial; and, most im
portant of all, it should have a great Court whose verdicts,
within fundamental limitations, shall be conclusive on all the
States so federated.

These five great principles were never incorporated into
the government of federated states until our Constitution
was adopted, and ours is the first successful government in
the world's history based on federated states.

Certain objections will immediately ar^e in the minds of
all patriotic men. All such objections — excfept perhaps those
that spring out of the problems of language — were raised at
Poughkeepsie in the summer of 1788 and were beaten to
death by the logic and eloquence of Alexander Hamilton;
they were raised that same summer at Richmond by Patrick
Henry and were conclusively answered by John Marshall
and James Madison. By the power of superb leadership
the Federal Constitution was adopted. And what has it
wrought? What has it not wrought?

In the beginning it created a responsible State out of
political and commercial chaos.

It made this land the dream and the hope of the plain
people of all the earth.

It gave rule by the people a new significance and power.

Its greatest achievement is one we as yet only dimly
comprehend : it created a new type of man.

The severest mental test under which free men were ever
triumphant was the adoption of our Constitution. The
severest civic test in which free men have triumphed was in
our Civil War. The severest test of their capacity as states
men ever faced by free men was formulated in President
Wilson's call for men on April 2, 1917. That was a test

A NEW CHARTER OP LIBERTY 407

indeed. How big was our average citizen? The President
assumed almost a super-man. How broad was his vision?
The President assumed that it was as wide as the world.
Did he understand the real meaning of this war? Some of
our so-called great men did not understand it then, and some
of them apparently do not understand it now. Would this
plain, peace-loving democrat give up his property, his busi
ness, his sons, his daughters, in a contest that seemed almost
at the other end of the earth? The splendid boys, bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh, who without a word of complaint
have given up their careers in life and are now gathering in
our training camps and on our ships, the millions of others
waiting their turn, the Liberty Loans, the quick response
from all who can anywhere serve, give the President his
answer.

American citizens, self -governed, free, are now rising to
heights never before trod by free men. They are fighting in
another hemisphere to help save the liberties of mankind.
Having done that, it follows that the work will be but half
done unless we formulate and support a programme by
which those liberties so dearly preserved may certainly be
perpetuated.

That calls for a new order, for a new world, for a new and
a greater Charter of Liberty. Under that charter must come
all the truly democratic and self -governed peoples of the
world. If we are to have peace, then between these peoples
there must be no more questions of " honor " — the interna
tional code duello is as much an anachronism as the individual
code duello, and it must go. If we are to have peace, then,
between these peoples there must be no more non- justiciable
questions, and therefore we shall need no Councils of Con
ciliation and no Arbitral Tribunals, but we shall need that
great Court whose decrees under the limitations of that
charter shall be binding on all.

To achieve that, or anything approaching it, the old order
must be abandoned.

This thought, the necessity of an adequate post-bellum
plan, is probably foremost in the minds of all the thinkers of
the democratic world. It has already assumed a variety of
forms. It has been nobly phrased by President Wilson. It
has been mouthed by the German autocracy. Societies have
been organized here and in Europe to forward plans more
or less imperfectly thought out.

408 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The League to Enforce Peace has attracted most atten
tion. In substance that organization has been endorsed very
widely. But the League does not propose really to change
the basis of international relations, it does not go to the root
of the difficulty. It proposes to use both its military and
economic forces against any member that attacks another
member, not having first submitted the questions at issue to
the Judicial Tribunal of the League or to its Council of
Conciliation.

If such differences are first submitted and the parties are
still dissatisfied, they may then fight without interference by
the League, or if one is dissatisfied, presumably it may then
attack the other.

Under this plan questions of honor do not disappear;
sovereignty is shorn of little of its arrogance; no effective
process by which law shall take the place of force in interna
tional relations is proposed.

And yet the League has done and is doing fine work. It
is leading the world up to the real problem. Let us re
member that the resolution of the Continental Congress
which called the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 did not
direct the delegates to draft a new Constitution ; no state gave
its delegates any such authority. All that Convention was
expected to do was to formulate and submit amendments to
the old and impotent Articles of Confederation.

But when the great men who made up that body met they
tore up their instructions; under the inspiration of Wash
ington's opening address they erected a new standard and,
in his literal words, " left the issue with God." If it had been
announced that the Convention of 1787 would propose the
abandonment of the Confederation, and would write a new
Constitution — there would have been no Convention, no
Constitution then and probably no United States of
America now.

The Hague Tribunal was at best only a Confederation,
feebler than ours ; so feeble indeed that it never really accom
plished any great thing. It undertook to create an Interna
tional Court but failed because of inherent impotence. It
was impotent because its units were sovereignties and, in the
last analysis, sovereignties can obey no law but their own.

Let there be no mistake. When victory comes we cannot
go back to any Hague Tribunal; that was a device to meet
conditions in a barbaric age. We shall then have marched

A NEW CHARTER OF LIBERTY 409

far past that. We shall be within reach of a victory through
which we can really utilize Victory. We can win that larger
victory, we can banish international anarchy and the inter
national code duello if we tear up our instructions as our
forefathers did, erect a new standard, and fight in a world
arena for the ideals of Hamilton and Washington.

President Wilson in his message of December 3, 1917,
raised that standard and rallied the democracies of the world
with words of rare courage. After referring to the " part
nership of nations which must henceforth guarantee the
world's peace ", he said:

That partnership must be a partnership of
peoples, not a mere partnership of Govern
ments.

Into that sentence the President has compressed the
whole philosophy of our Federal Government, the whole
philosophy of world democracy, the only process by which we
can hope to achieve permanent peace.

In his message of January 8th, in Article III of his pro
gramme, he calls for the " removal as far as possible of all
economic barriers " between the nations associating them
selves to maintain peace. A partnership of peoples as dis
tinguished from a mere partnership of Governments with
economic barriers removed means Federation and noth
ing less.

Sir Frederick Smith, Attorney General of Great Britain,
speaking recently before the New York State Bar Associa
tion, referred to the difficulties which would attend the
achievement of the President's programme and said that
those difficulties by swiftly and unexpectedly merging would
overwhelm the proposal, because they are so stupendous in
their aggregate weight. If a mere league of sovereignties,
of Governments, is to be entered into, and not a Partnership
of Peoples, Sir Frederick is right. The difficulties would
overwhelm the proposal. But if the democracies of the
world should federate, it is perfectly clear that the difficul
ties pointed out by this distinguished lawyer, the very diffi
culties that made both our Confederation and the Hague
Tribunal impotent, would rapidly disappear. They would
disappear because they all, or substantially all, spring out
of conditions that exist under a partnership of Governments
but do not exist under a partnership of peoples.

To illustrate: Connecticut levied a tax on imports from

410 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Massachusetts under the Confederation, as she had a right
to do. She was acting as a sovereignty. All the thirteen
States did similar things, as they had a right to do. Diffi
culties arose; chaos followed; civil war was narrowly averted.
But when the Confederation became a Federation, when the
partnership between thirteen Governments became a part
nership of peoples, these " rights " disappeared and most of
the difficulties went with them.

With the lapse of time we more and more realize what a
crisis in the development of democracy the Convention in
Independence Hall in 1787 was. Suppose it had failed!
Suppose it had followed instructions. Suppose Washington
and Hamilton and Madison and Franklin had listened to the
fears and had been influenced by the prejudices of the several
States. Suppose that later on Clinton and not Hamilton
had won in * New York and that New York had stayed out of
the Union. Suppose that Patrick Henry and not John
Marshall had won in Virginia and that 2 Virginia had stayed
out of the Union. Can we measure the calamity? Would
Yorktown, where our fathers had won the identical victory
we are now sending our boys to Europe to win, have had any
further meaning for them? Would it have any meaning for
us now?

Nothing is more certain than the political destruction of
the Thirteen States if the Federal Constitution had failed
of adoption.

Nothing is more certain than a return to confusion, chaos
and war, and an ultimate recrudescence of autocracy in some
form, if democracy triumphant does not redeem itself, does
not abandon the old order and federate.

None of the Thirteen States lost any dignity or liberty
or endangered its integrity by entering the Federal Union.
No democratic state would lose any dignity or liberty or
imperil its integrity by entering such a Federation.

On the contrary, each of the Thirteen States took on
added power and dignity and insured its integrity by sur
rendering it separate sovereignty.

The surrender of separate sovereignty is the only process
by which the democratic States of the world can severally
insure their continued integrity.

Rjn the decisive ballot 67 votes were cast; 80 for, 27 against, Governor Clin
ton not voting. The official majority for the Constitution was 8; the actual ma
jority was two.

*The majority in Virginia was 10; the ballots cast totaled 168.

A NEW CHARTER OF LIBERTY 411

War between the States of this Union — grown from
thirteen to forty-eight — is now unthinkable. War between
the democratic states of the world must be made equally un
thinkable, and that cannot be achieved while the doctrine of
unconditioned sovereignty survives.

In the history of this country from 1783 to 1789 we have
the history of a world democracy, in microcosm, successfully
worked out against problems as complex as any which will
exist at the close of this war. Seeking a federation of demo
cratic states after we have achieved victory in battle, we shall
not be testing out a theory, we shall be following historic
precedents. To the truth of that, the flag that floats over us
bears eloquent witness. Its thirteen stars have become
forty-eight, and in that development no star was lost — not
even when our foundations were re-tested and re-established
by the bloody verdicts of a great Civil War.

In planning to destroy democracy Germany has un
wittingly created an opportunity through which the estab
lishment of world democracy may be advanced by centuries,
but by this very act she has raised supreme issues which
must be met and met now:

1st. Are democracies strong enough to sustain themselves?
Can they meet and hurl back the desperate physical
challenge of autocracy?

2d. Can they grasp and utilize the opportunity which vic
tory will bring?

The answer to the first question is still incomplete, largely
because the Allies have fought as separate sovereignties, as
partners, as a confederation, and not as a unit with one com
mon and over-mastering purpose. This method has been so
ineffective and so costly that the Prime Minister of England
and the Premier of France lately joined in utterances
which point out that weakness with brutal frankness. Not
unnaturally, indeed almost inevitably, the Allies are re
peating the confusion and the follies of the Thirteen States
in our Revolution. Worse than that. The Thirteen States
did unite in one supremely important thing: they made
George Washington Commander-in-Chief of all their armies.
The Allies have failed as yet to unite under a Common
Leader in any department of the war.

The test of the second question — Can the Allies wisely
utilize victory? — will follow hard on the heels of victory. It
will not wait long for a reply. If the Allied Nations driven

412 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

together by the centripetal force of war co-operate with dif
ficulty, what will happen when that unifying force is with
drawn? What happened after our liberties were won in
1783, when the common peril had been abated? A period of
weakness, of confusion, and of folly unbelievable.

Liberty was saved and order restored only when the
Thirteen States swallowed their false pride and gave up the
barbaric right of separate sovereignty. The lesson is plain.

The next great question will be — indeed it now presses —
to what extent have the democracies of the world learned that
lesson? Obviously they have not learned it for war. The
English Premier almost imperiled his seat by his recent
declaration in favor of a War Council of the Allies. The
mere suggestion that an English Army might be directed by
a body not entirely British immediately aroused the bar
baric instincts of sovereignty and set all the politicians upon
the Premier's back. The people, however, sustained him.
May not that circumstance and the clear call for unity of
action recently issued by President Wilson be an augury
that with victory democracy will achieve speedily what
it took us eighty-two years to accomplish? Our fathers
faced the problem when the Peace of Paris was signed in
1783; we completed the task at Appomattox in 1865.

We shall indulge in sheer sophistry if we attempt to
argue that the Allies' problem will be essentially different
from the one we have solved in this hemisphere. It will be
exactly the same problem.

It is therefore time, high time, ignoring details, to ex
amine fundamentals, to formulate principles, to admit facts,
to recognize unavoidable conclusions, as the basis of post-
bellum discussions.

On these four Principles all sound discussion must rest:

First Principle: All men are created equal.

Sovereignty has compelled us practically to deny the
universality of that principle.

Governmentally we assert that only Americans are cre
ated equal.

Second Principle: All men are endowed by the Creator with
certain inalienable rights.

Our instinctive desire to apply this principle beyond our
own frontiers explains largely why we were so pitifully un
prepared when we entered this war.

A NEW CHARTER OF LIBERTY 413

Third Principle: Sovereignty is an attribute of the indi
vidual and not inherently an attribute of
the state.

That is the very essence of democracy, and is at eternal
war with all frontiers.

Fourth Principle: States are instrumentalities and not
ends.

Until that principle is recognized and enforced there can
be no lasting peace.

The following indisputable Facts must be recognized in
any effective discussion :

First Fact: None of these four principles, which express
universal truths, has yet been tested — except between
the States in this Republic — beyond the limits set by
national frontiers; they have otherwise never had any
but a local application.

Second Fact: To make the world safe for democracy and
democracy safe for the world these principles must
everywhere be applied, BETWEEN democracies as well
as WITHIN democracies.

Third Fact: The doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty is
the force that has prevented such an application of
these universal truths.

Therefore as between democracies the doctrine of uncon
ditioned sovereignty must be abolished.

It is not too early for the Allies to agree on these prin
ciples as the basis of their post-bellum plan. It is not too
early for them to recognize the truth of these facts. It is not
too early to admit the great conclusion that follows from
those principles and facts.

But democracy can apply that conclusion only if its
hands are clean. There can be no federation of democracies
after peace comes if that peace is a cowardly compromise
with criminals. First there must be bitter repentance in
Germany — either through a reawakening or through sheer
physical defeat.

Cities cannot compromise with gunmen and burglars and
remain cities: democracies cannot compromise with forces
that 'deny the very fundamentals of democratic faith and

414 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

remain democracies, and the Allies can never compromise
with the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs.

We fight to establish liberty, to restore the good order of
.the world; but good order will not be restored, liberty will
not be established, merely by defeating Germany. There
can be no permanent regime of good order in the world if the
relations between the nations now allied are continued after
the war as they were before the war. If this conflict has not
taught us that, it hasn't taught us anything.

Autocracy was halted at the Marne. It was defeated at
Verdun. It will be crushed only in Berlin. Its menace will
be ended when triumphant democracy issues and its units
adopt a new Charter of Liberty, based on the identical sur
render made by the Thirteen States when they adopted the
fundamental law of this Republic. By no other process can
a peace be organized which shall be worth the crushing cost
of this conflict.

DARWIN P. KINGSLEY.

THE SECOND COMING

LOUISE DKISCOLL

A strange thing the Preacher said,
And proved it by the Book,

He told all people who could hear
To wait and watch and look

To see the risen Lord appeart

That Jesus who was dead.

How curious it will bel

The blue, familiar sky

Cracked open suddenly,

Broken from east to west

Like an old dish, a bowl,

Blue china, just now whole,

Now broken, as though dropped

By a careless maid. Then stopped

Will be all laughter, and the sun,

Its long course run,

Will suddenly stand still,

And people in the street

Will stop and look to see

Archangels pass and meet,

A light — music, maybe —

Angelic hosts and choirs,

And saints bowing before

A shining, swinging door,

And tending altar fires.

How the thief will stay
His furtive, skillful hand 1
What will the liar say?
The plotter, quite confused,
Will face the true Judgment.
Sly men with ill intent
Will stagger, faint at heart.
No one may stand apart
And claim a special case.
We must meet face to face
With Him who lived and died,

416 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

He whom men crucified.
He rose again
And judges men.

If He should come today

We'd see the soldiers stand

Each with his tool in hand,

The drowned from the deep sea

Would bring old jewels caught

In their wet, streaming hair.

What secrets will be there,

When from old graves the dead

Creep whispering. Overhead

A rain of shining wings,

Scents, colors, and such things

As we have never seen or known

Poured from the Great White Throne !

We do not all believe.

No, there are some who say

That these old tales deceive,

And day will follow day

To some logical end.

We shall still earn and spend,

Weep, sleep, and by-and-by

Stop struggling and die.

And some have never heard,

And some men do not care.

How we will stand and stare

When stars remember the lost word

And sing, and the skies fall !

That high, blue, silent wall

Of Heaven — larkspur blue —

Will crumble and fall down,

And flame will circle all the earth

Like a great jeweled crown.

Will any of us cry out?

" Oh, God" will someone say,

" W hy don't you put some of these things

In a great box with fastenings,

With locks and seals, to use again,

To give, perhaps, to other men

On worlds less lovely than this one

Whose day is ended and whose work is done.

In Heaven is there no treasury
For beauty of this earth and sea?

THE SECOND COMING 417

Green fields that never sinned

And flowers innocent,

White highways where the wind

Ran between faithful trees,

And valleys redolent

Of sweet herbs where the bees

Go honey seeking — these —

Have you no use for them?"

And we who love the turquoise cave,

Will there be some among us who

Will try to catch the stars and save

Some bits of immemorial blue

To carry with us, like the shells

That children carry from the sea,

For keepsakes in eternity?

LOUISE DRISCOLL.

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 748 27

AT THE FRONT :
THE END OF A BITTER DAY

BY ARTHUR HUNT CHUTE

IN the Chateau Park the shells were falling thick as
leaves in an autumn forest. The nightfall was bitter and
gray. The sunshine with which the day began long since had
fled. Fast-moving somber clouds were blotting out the sky,
while squalls of wailing wind gave promise of a night of
storm.

Along the road that dipped beyond the Chateau Park a
line of troops was passing. They marched in single file, with
apprehensive step, like hunted deer, moving swiftly at the
double, then falling flat upon their faces, while the blast of
death went hurtling overhead.

The men wore helmets covered with the same material as
the sandbags of the trenches. Their uniforms were in color
like the dust of the road. On their shoulders they bore great
packs; their rifles were carried at the trail. When they
doubled they were oppressed by those toiling burdens.

Ever since noon the troops had been passing over the dip
of the road in an endless chain. Sometimes a shell fell
athwart that human chain, and one, — two, — three, or more
went down. There was a rush of stretcher bearers, and limp
figures were removed. But the column did not waver. The
broken links were closed and the endless chain moved on.
Whatever else might happen, the firing line must be fed, and
these marching men could know no pause.

Inside the chateau the thick walls muffled every noise, the
sound of the guns seemed far away and the cry of the
stricken could not be heard.

When the storm began I was afraid that the chateau
would soon be about our heads, but the calm of the Brigadier
gave me faith in the invulnerability of the walls. The great,
dark, paneled room was wrapped in gloom. The Brigadier

AT THE FRONT 419

sat in a chair beside the window, the Adjutant sat at a
telephone, almost obscured.

As I gazed at the face of the Brigadier that tornado of
battle without seemed in another world. His long, lean
frame was sunken deep into a chair. In the twilight the
detail of features was lost, but a bold, high forehead, a pallid
countenance, and eyes as black as night were clearly dis
cerned. The red and gold of his insignia gave a relieving
touch of color. Looking at him, sitting there so somber and
aloof in the gloom of the chateau, I seemed to be regarding
a portrait by Rubens or some old Flemish master.

Outside, the shell-swept dip of the road and the hunted
figures reminded one of battle; but in the room with the
Brigadier there was the calm of vespers. Once during the
early afternoon a shell came crashing through the upper sto
ries of the chateau. I was all a-tremble. But the Brigadier,
with whom I was talking at that moment, merely raised his
eyebrows, and with cold indifference announced, " That's
pretty close, my boy. Go on, my boy, go on. Don't let that
interrupt you."

Now and again a sudden ring of the telephone told of a
frantic cry from the trenches, or the guns. Often the Adju
tant breathed with excitement as he uttered portentous news.
Sometimes there was a pause, while the Chief glanced at a
map, or pondered dispositions. But his imperturbable calm
was unbroken, and always in that quiet, low-spoken voice he
gave his answer.

Only once in that long and trying day did I hear his
accent change. He was for some time without a message
from a certain forward Observing Officer. " What's he
there for? " he exclaimed testily, and taking the telephone,
he laid down the law in the terms of a soldier.

Many a time thereafter, when I had been far forward in
the midst of battle, there came with a steadying peace the
picture of that Brigadier. Two weeks later our line was
suddenly pierced by the enemy. Consternation reigned in
the trenches. During those awful moments of suspense,
while I sat in Battalion Headquarters telegraphing to our
guns, there flashed before me, in the shadow, the memory
of that serene and steadfast face.

My days' confinement in the chateau came by the chance
of battle. We were taking over from another battery, and I
had been sent forward to acquaint myself with the zone of fire.

420 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

In the early morning I had ridden across country for
five miles with my groom. At the Right Group Artillery
Headquarters I was to receive a guide to direct me through
to the guns. The Right Group Headquarters I found situ
ated in a chateau, famous throughout Belgium for its miracu
lous escape from the shells.

I left my horse in the care of the groom in the stables and
entered the room reserved as Headquarters. Before any
explanations could be made our calm was broken. The Hun
let loose a mine beneath our trenches and even where we
were the ground was shaken from the vast reverberation. In
a twinkling all the enemy's artillery was in action. Without
the slightest warning, we had been plunged from the peace
of a springtime morning into the wildest inferno of battle.
A message from the battery to which I was going sent me
instructions to wait until a barrage which cut off their ap
proach had been lifted. All day I waited, and at night I
received instructions to return to the wagon lines to convoy
ammunition.

We had had a month of calm, an unheard-of experience
in the salient of Ypres. With the succession of uneventful
days and the serenity of the springtime, we had almost for
gotten that world of war in which we dwelt. Men came out
of the trenches and returned again, just as those at home
went to their daily tasks. Life took on an almost peaceful
round.

Amongst the cavalry and the artillery we had a horse
show, and the infantry, while out at rest, indulged in a festive
day of sports. At the wagon lines the monotony of life was
beginning to pall. I was glad when the Major said to me,
" You're for the guns tomorrow."

The foundations of our world of yesterday had seemed as
fixed as the hills; today they are insubstantial as the mist.
Yesterday I stood at attention while the Major-General of
a division passed. Tommies and mere junior officers might
come and go, but that resplendent General passing in his
luxurious limousine seemed fixed and set. Indeed, had I not
said to myself as he passed, " His future is secure." But in
the chateau on that bitter evening the Adjutant announced,
in tones of awe, " The General of the Division holding our
left was killed this morning."

The Brigadier's Headquarters for me was a place of
ever-increasing gloom. It had gone ill with us, and every

AT THE FRONT 421

mischance was echoed back into that chateau, as into a whis
pering gallery. One's heart grew heavy with ever-increasing
news of disaster. At such an hour the imperturbability of
the Brigadier shadowed forth his invincible faith. He smiled
as I clicked my spurs and saluted to him in parting, and
called out, " Good luck to you, my lad," as I left the room.

In the hallway I met the Adjutant. " I envy your old
boy his stoic calm," I declared.

" The same here," said the Adjutant. " He is certainly
a priceless example to the rest of us chaps."

Leaving the chateau for the noise without was like com
ing from the deep recesses of a lighthouse into the open of
an angry sea. One's first impulse was to dart back again
into the cloistral seclusion of the muffled walls. Overhead
there was a constant whirr of shells. The Germans had got
by aeroplane the exact position of a heavy battery opposite,
and around the gun-pits there was an endless rain of bursting
shells.

The cordite in one gun-pit was ignited by the detonation
of an enemy shell. In a moment the whole gun-pit glowed
with fire, and flames forty feet high leaped up into the sky.
" Gawd pity the poor blighters in that gun-pit! " some one
exclaimed. I felt a pang for those unfortunate gunners, who
in a twinkling would be burnt to a crisp.

It was pitch dark now, but the landscape was momentar
ily alight from the burning cordite. In the glare we beheld
that long thin column still moving at the double over the dip
of the road. In the lurid light, the crouching darting figures
looked more than ever like hunted beasts.

That morning when I arrived, all was sunshine in the
courtyard. The morning light was stealing through to the
wood behind, and the trees were thrilling to the voices of
the springtime. As we cantered in toward the stables, my
horse pricked his ears to the voice of a lark. I breathed
deeply of the scent of meadoW and wildwood, and exulted
in the balm of the morning aip

But the close of day was sad because of the changes that
had come. The wildwood was inky blackness, a storm swept
the forest, through which the louder tempest of the Red
Artillery shrieked and screamed.

The courtyard, that morning so spic and span, was now
littered with indescribable debris — arms and equipment,
bully-beef tins, ration limbers, cartridge-cases, and the in-

422 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

evitable backwash of the tide of battle. Here and there
great shell-holes gaped. The wounded were lying along the
sides of the buildings, and in the carriage-house a First Aid
Dressing Station was clogged with patients. Behind the
carriage-house lay a row of pathetic figures sewed up in
gray blankets.

I found my groom busily engaged in holding my horse
down to earth. But my approach quieted him, and he opened
his great black eyes appealingly, and rubbed his nose against
me, saying plainly, " Do take me out of this wretched
place!"

Once in the saddle, our mounts needed no urging. They
proceeded to put the greatest possible distance between them
and the dreadful chateau where they had suffered night
mares all day long.

The roads were black with troops, moving up for the
counter-attack. Voices which I had heard the night before
in the Estaminet hailed me in passing. Later, when I heard
that this one or that one had gone West, I recalled their
last salutation.

Now and again I was stopped by the clogging of traffic.
At such times those going up were keen for the latest
rumors from those going down.

" How much have we lost? " " Are we holding? "
" Have we counter-attacked yet? " " Are there many be
fore us? " ' Will our crowd be the first to go over the
top? " These were the commonest questions.

I paused in one place and bent in my saddle to shake
the hand of a brother officer of the old 17th Nova Scotia
Highlanders. We had been together at the very start, and
felt a camaraderie not known in later units of swifter chang
ing personnel.

I had heard of dread presentiments in France, but never
did I encounter a more remarkable case than that of my
brother-officer. He had been on the line for nearly two
years, and was noted for his sang-froid. But that night
his hand trembled, and he was ashen pale. He tried to smile
at some pleasantry of mine, but his face was overcast by
a cloud of sickening apprehension.

" By-bye, old man, my time has come," he said huskily
in parting.

" Nonsense," I answered. " They haven't made a bullet
that can hit you yet."

AT THE FRONT 423

But I watched him move off as one who has received his
death-warrant. Many a time he had passed unscathed,
where it had seemed that scarce a blade of grass could live.
I thought of him as one who lived a charmed life. For such
a one to lose heart seemed direst tragedy.

Two hours later, in leading his company across a field,
his head was blown off his body.

On leaving my pal of the old 17th, I felt overwhelmed
by a wave of sadness that had been rising within me all day.
This was the end of a bitter, bitter day. How could a man
keep up his courage through weeks and months of such
calamity?

With brooding sadness, I pulled my horse up at the
cross-roads, to let a long column of motor-lorries pass.
While I paused thus in moody silence, I heard from up the
road the sound of singing. A small squad of men were
coming out of the trenches, and, true to convention, they
were singing as they came.

" Who are you? " I asked, as they passed, thinking that
they were some cyclist company, or fatigue party, that had
been up for special duty in the trenches.

" We're the ' Princess Pats'," came the proud reply, and
then I heard them launch off again into another song.

I had seen that same regiment, then nearly a thousand
strong, pass down the road towards Ypres not less than a
week before. I remembered how I was thrilled as I thought
of their fighting prowess, and gazed at their Colonel, appear
ing every inch a soldier, riding his charger at the head of
his men. Behind the Colonel came the pipes, playing Blue
Bonnets Over the Border. After that came the long lines
of companies with their full complement of officers. It took
fifteen minutes for the entire regiment to pass, going in;
but it took less than a minute for that remnant to pass, going
out.

All that was left of them went by. They had been cut
to pieces often before, but this time they were decimated.
The gallant Colonel had been killed while leading his men
over the top. All the Company Commanders and other offi
cers had been wounded or killed, and only one boyish-faced
subaltern remained, who now marched at the head of the
column.

Companies that went in over two hundred strong were
now returning with twenty-five. The total strength of the

424 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

regiment as it passed was less than seventy. Those seventy
had suffered agonies beyond description. They had faced
the springing of a giant mine. They had occupied the
crater, and they had held on in the face of shell-fire so ter
rible that it had robbed some of their reason. When the
Germans had offered them a truce, and asked them to sur
render the crater, they had yelled back, " Surrender be
damned! Come and take the crater! "

The Huns had not taken the crater. Reinforcements
had arrived, and it was safe. Now, the remnant of the regi
ment that saved the day were marching back to billets.
Their uniforms were torn, and caked with blood and filth.
Their faces were haggard. The regiment was shattered, but
its spirit was unbroken. While one man remained, the
" Princess Pats " remained. With that same blithesome and
light-hearted mien the handful went swinging by, joining
with lusty voices in an old troop-song:

Steadily and shoulder to shoulder,

Steadily we'll ride and sing,
Marching along, steady and strong,

Like the boys of the Old Brigade.

Down the road I followed them into the darkness, until
the sound of the singing grew faint and died away. Then,
with light heart restored, I too struck up a song, and can
tered down the road. For me the flashing glimpse of that
brave remnant had swept all clouds away.

I had seen a star at the end of a bitter day.

ARTHUR HUNT CHUTE.

FEAR, COURAGE, AND CHRISTIANITY

BY ANNE C. E. ALLINSON

FEAR assaulting, courage repulsing: from man's origin
these enemies have made his heart their battlefield. No life
was ever so fortunate or so powerful that it did not contain
hours of terror. No life was ever so mean that it did not
contain a moment's fortitude. Today the war, which, like
a monstrous lens, magnifies all emotions, is giving titanic
size to this pair of close-locked foes within our own nature.

" Fear is a nasty emotion." These words were written
long since by a woman who was doing relief work in Arme
nia during a typical massacre by the Turks, and who did
not know, when she rose in the morning, whether she would
be alive — or would be willing to be alive — at nightfall. " On
the whole," she added good-humoredly, " it is probably the
worst ill to which flesh is heir." The light phrase holds an
exact meaning. Under the torture of the mind's fear the
flesh experiences painful changes. " I am poured out like
water and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like
wax: it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength
is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my
jaws." How many thousands today in Europe — women
and girls and little children — know once more the age-old
terror of the helpless ! In Belgium and in France, as in the
storied Thebes of Aeschylus's ruthless vision, " ' tis cause
for tears that maids scarce come to womanhood, plucked all
unripe, should cross the threshold of the halls of hate " and
" bloodstained bleatings of the new-bom infants at the breast
make clamorous undertone." Almost as appalling is it to
remember the fathers and husbands and lovers who, fighting
at a distance, must fear the worst through months, or even
years, of silence. Add to this the knowledge of millions of
men — our own, in great battalions, soon to be among them
— who realize that they may be struck down by the enemy
tomorrow. The bravest of them are not the swashbucklers

426 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and fire-eaters but those whose flesh, in some sensitive hour
of anticipation, recoils from the shell and bayonet. And
finally, the wide world over, women in stricken multitudes
are dreading the death or mutilation of their beloved. The
burden of the world's fear becomes almost too heavy to bear.

And yet there is healing for this sickness, release from
this burden. In the twinkling of an eye the world's courage
also confronts us in heroic size. Fear's image dissolves from
view. The little boy on a street in Belgium lets the Prus
sians kill him rather than betray the movements of the men
of his village. The soldier who has not been allowed to hear
from his wife and young daughter for more than two years
writes : " The enemy knows what he is doing in this, but
even so he will not succeed. It needs only one more effort
of courage." The men who know they may be killed rush
to the battle's front. Their mothers and wives who know
they may never come back send them forth with a smile.

While courage and fear are thus thrown upon a vast
screen we have the opportunity to look for their substance
and their meaning.

Inherent in all living are assaults from terror. We may
be safe from the physical dangers of war or from the perils
braved in times of peace by those who risk their lives to
preserve civic order, or to conquer disease, or to open up
new lands and waters. But sooner or later, in some guise
or other, each one of us meets danger face to face. Among
our most humdrum or most sophisticated emotions fear may
rise up like a savage in the midst of civilization, primitive,
violent, relentless. It assumes varying forms, from the pri
mary fear of death and pain implanted in us by nature to
that mysterious fear of sin, of spiritual disaster for ourselves
or for others, which is the Spirit's gift, our deepest hell and
our divinest heritage. There is the fear of failure in work,
fear of becoming a burden through sickness, fear of the de
cay of old age, fear of poverty, of injustice, of cruelty, fear
of death's separations and loneliness. Fear unresisted leads
to sanatoriums and insane asylums. Fear as a phenomenon
is analyzed by the psychologist, described by the novelist,
painted by the artist. Man's superstitions are born of fear,
and his philosophies recognize that he is afraid.

Release from terror is counted among our most beau
tiful experiences. The lost is restored. The child rises from
sickness. The prodigal returns to his father's house. The

FEAR, COURAGE, AND CHRISTIANITY 427

soldier at the front hears that his daughter is safe. The
lover or son comes home from war to a woman's arms. How
brilliant then is our day of gladness after the night of ter
ror! Sometimes a yellow telegram, torn open in a second
of time, lifts us from hell to heaven. Sometimes the day
breaks more slowly, a few birds sing hopefully, a faint rose
paints the sky, and then in warmth and radiance blooms the
morning of our joy. But this blessedness is not bravery.
One is life's occasional guerdon, perhaps undeserved. The
other is a quality of our own. Back there in the night it met
fear in mortal combat. Its victory was independent of our
fortune. The child may die, the soldier may never come
home, and yet fear is trampled under foot while from the
soul's ramparts floats the flag of courage. This courage,
universal, dramatic, creative, illumines the " sombre scroll
of history," burns in music and poetry, and lends an aureole
to our diurnal round.

Now as we look back upon some victory we are able to
see that it lay in the substitution for those lesser desires
which breed fear of a larger and fuller passion. Fears
shrivel as we contemplate a purpose or standard or ideal
beyond our own fortunes. Such an ideal may vary with
the individual or with his crisis, but in time of public stress
and danger practically all of us become united in some
mighty emotion in which our little terrors lose their very
being. Today it is patriotism which is generating courage
in millions of men and women. Always among free peoples
it has been a principle of power and beauty. Those who are
scornful of it in their plea for internationalism fail to see
that while, in some far off time, the world may become as
intimately dear to us as the land that gave us birth, yet
here and now love of country is higher than love of self, a
powerful rescuer from the idols of our own caves.

Patriotism obviously is not a principle confined to times
of war, to those who give their blood or their substance or
their beloved to preserve the physical or the spiritual life
of their country. The explorer who wants to plant his coun
try's flag at one of the poles of the earth, the scientist or
the poet who consecrates his laurels on his country's altar
may be as ardent a patriot as can be found in our armies.
And, further still, in times of outward peace, when the actual
flag no longer floats above our doorway, this noble emotion
may win the victory over many a private fear, lift many an

428 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

obscure heart to unseen grandeur. True patriotism is the
measurement of all a citizen's acts by the standards set by
bis country in her greatest hours, the raising of his separate
life to meet the life which she has wrought out of the good
ness and the courage of all her children. We thus become

. . . the pith and marrow of a Nation
Drawing force from all her men,
Highest, humblest, weakest, all,
For her time of need, and then
Pulsing it again through them,
Till the basest can no longer cower,
Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall
Touched but in her passing by her mantle-hem.

There never was a truer citizen of our own nation than a
little child — a girl at that — who entered the dark and empty
rooms of which she felt afraid. " I repeat to myself " —
she explained — " ' the land of the free and the home of the
brave,' and then I march in."

So throughout the course of history the great traditions
of country and of race have evoked courage in dark night
and abysmal dread. " Be British, my men," the captain of
the Titanic called out at the height of danger, knowing that
this reminder to England's seamen would ensure the prior
safety of the weak and helpless. In the trap of Thermopylae
Sparta's law inspired Leonidas and his band to glorious
martyrdom :

Here we their orders obeyed, here we are lying in death.

When the Athenians were at war Pericles recalled to them
their habit of courage, a courage, he believed, not enforced
by law but born of their passion for their city. " Fix your
eyes upon her until you become filled with love of her " — so
he urged at the burial service of the first dead — " and when
you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, remember
that she was made by men who knew their duty and had
the courage to do it."

From the traditions of race it is but a step to those of
all humanity. Of every courageous act we are the heirs.
Our heritage waits only to be claimed. A young Russian
Jew who in college elected Greek — disregarding its " use-
lessness " — and read the Defence of Socrates, said to his
instructor: " I came into this class afraid to die. Now I
am not afraid." When Socrates before his judges acted on

FEAR, COURAGE, AND CHRISTIANITY 429

his belief that he " ought not to do anything common or
mean when in danger," and when he drank the hemlock with
dignity and serenity, he set in motion waves of courage
which, spreading far from his country's shores, have washed
away fear from many human souls. So from all countries
and all ages we are compassed about with a great cloud of
witnesses. History, literature, the day's newspaper, the ob
servation of our nearest neighbors in village or city, all these
declare unto us the power of some idea over the shrinking
will, the triumph of courage born of a noble passion over
terror spawned by the littleness of self.

But it is now that Fear, in the desperation of approach
ing defeat, turns to her last weapon. Mocking and sneering
comes the question: who am I to know the glorious passions
of the brave? In danger, in suffering, in sorrow I shall be
entrapped within myself. The moral paradox of being
afraid of cowardice often serves as a theme for fiction, but
it may become for us all a grim reality.

Distrust of our own courage is Fear's last weapon — her
foul and poisonous gas poured out to blind and strangle.

Against this assault have men devised any protection?
In the experience of the race has there been discovered a
certitude from which our fighting powers may draw sta
bility?

Courage — as the Stoics pointed out — is a primitive vir
tue. If fire was the Promethean gift to the first mortals,
courage was the prerequisite enabling them to use it. Man's
progress has depended on his being courageous enough to
do new things, think new thoughts, undergo new perils. His
rise in the scale from savage to world's master might be
recorded in terms of his victory over his terror of nature,
of his gods, and of his fellow-men. But in this rise he has
purified his primitive virtues, coming nearer to their source
and transmitting more of its quality and energy. The
courage of the brute and the courage of the hero are sepa
rated from each other by the length and breadth of that
moral world which has been created by intelligence. It is
within this world that we must look for the establishment
of faith in our own bravery.

Neither Greek philosophy nor Christianity — which be
tween them contain the highest ethical thought as yet known
to our western civilization — make any great point of cour
age. Paul did not include it among the " fruits of the

430 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

spirit," Plato was more concerned with justice and Zeno
with wisdom. But the courage of Socrates glorified Pla-
tonism and the Stoicism of the noblest Romans often culmi
nated in an austere heroism. Perhaps it is our familiarity
with the life of Rome that has led us to consider courage a
pagan rather than a Christian quality. Since our school
days Roman virtue — virtus — has been known to us as cour
age. And yet in the Roman Empire, wrought of blood and
iron, Christianity made headway and finally conquered only
through the surpassing courage of its earliest followers and
missionaries. Paul acknowledged that he often faced his
work in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And
yet onward he went, preaching the crucified Christ in perils
of water, in perils of robbers, in perils by his own country
men, in perils by the heathen, in perils on the sea, in perils
among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in
watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in
cold and nakedness. Peter shivered and cowered, in one
black hour before the dawn, within a Jewish doorway in the
presence of a few underlings. He even sank so low as to
deny his friend and master. And yet this same Peter,
washed clean by tears, carried Christ throughout Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia Minor, Bithynia, and finally to
the gates of Rome. He who had trembled for his life before
a handful of provincial officers in his martyr's death defied
an Empire. The apocalyptic vision of the early Christian
church beheld the " fearful " along with the " abominable "
of every kind in the lake which burneth with fire and brim
stone. Followers of Peter and Paul faced savage beasts,
cruel flames, and every species of torture devised by the
brutal Roman, for the sake of bearing witness to their faith.
History shows no such succession of heroic acts among the
ordinary, the obscure and the lowly as those which perpetu
ated a religion of love in an empire of power and pride.

It is obvious that these Christians were made brave by
a great passion. But what lay beyond this?

Although the ordinary paganism of Greece and Rome
was based on self-confidence, the philosophies of the intel
lectuals admitted as clearly as Christianity ever did the
struggle in man's nature between good and evil. So Socra
tes and Paul, both of whom — separated by centuries and
religions — crowned unusual physical endurance with superb
moral fortitude, would have agreed in representing courage

FEAR, COURAGE, AND CHRISTIANITY 431

as the reply of our higher nature to cowardice which is a
suggestion from the lower. This point of view is also a
common one. " The revolt of our baser nature," a young
soldier of France called a momentary weakening of the will
before battle. " I did everything that I was afraid to do "
— so a woman explained her victory over nervous depres
sion — (f I refused to submit to blackmail" Now the Pla-
tonist argued that the inward man, deriving strength from
a clear perception of the Absolute Good, was bound to con
quer the inward beast. The Stoic believed that the " wise "
man, having " something in him which is as it were a God,"
could not fail to behave in a god-like way. The Christian
of the New Testament had faith in the "power of the
Spirit." He alone regarded this power as independent of
the " wisdom of the wise " and the " understanding of the
prudent." When I am weak, then am I strong, he pro
claimed in an audacious and magnificent paradox.

His certitude rested upon the experience of a person,
and hence passed from the isolation of philosophy to the
continuous fecundity of life. He forces us, after two thou
sand years, to examine his faith. Is it, indeed, true that our
protection against fear waits only to be claimed in a supreme
heritage?

The most fruitful heroism of history, the act of courage
which changed the very course of civilization and put a new
kind of man into the world, was preceded by hours of ter
rible fear. Golgotha had its prelude in Gethsemane.
Always Jesus had shown a beautiful comprehension of the
fears of simple people. During the years in Nazareth, when
he lived with Joseph who worked hard to make a living for
the growing family, and with Mary who spent herself for
her husband and children, he saw at home and among his
friends and neighbors the shadows of anxiety, of sickness,
of sorrow. When he entered into his larger field he saw
nothing different, not even in the capital city of Jerusalem.
As he went about all the cities and villages and saw the
multitude he was " moved with compassion on them because
they fainted." For these men and women, subjects of a
foreign Power, patriotism was of no avail. When their boys
were drawn into the Roman legions — like the subject aliens
in European armies today — fathers and mothers had to look
elsewhere for their courage. But to all who labored and
were heavy laden Jesus offered the release of a passion

432 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

operating alike in bond and free. Be of good cheer, his
spirit called to theirs, as he went about helping the poor and
anxious, the lonely, the sorrowful and the sick. It was as
if, seeing that their multiform terrors flowed out from the
temporal, like glaciers spreading from one awful summit, he
directed their vision upward to the eternal, a supra-mundane
Sun in whose conquering rays all fears are dissolved. As
for himself, he knew, obviously, a dread far beyond their
narrow experience. In his work was at stake a vast prin
ciple. Proportionate to his love for all men was his fear
that they would reject his gift. And upon his near horizon
loomed death, in no one of its tranquil guises, but at its
wildest. When the hour approached he must have been
overwhelmed by the sense of external and immediate defeat.
He fell upon his knees in an agony. His sweat was, as it
were, great drops of blood falling to the ground. Here
lies humanity bruised and bleeding on the rack of fear.

But the Son of Man rose from his knees and walked
forth to meet what he had feared: betrayal from the friend
he had loved, mockery from the multitude he had pitied,
injustice from the government he had obeyed, death from
the world he had sought to save. It is significant that,
among the recorders of his life and death, the one who best
understood him omitted all mention of the hour of suffer
ing. He obliterated it, as the master himself would have
done, from any permanent place in a record of spiritual
experience. It was a mere levy of blackmail by the flesh,
spurned and scorned by the spirit's divinity. This disciple's
story of the garden begins with the courage of Jesus as he
stepped forward to meet his enemies. And it is immedi
ately preceded by the record of his last talks with his friends
in which, with words like tongues of flame, like streams of
living water, he declared unto them that the son of man is
the son of God.

Such is the decision of Christianity. Trouble is near.
Terrors for myself, for my beloved, for my country, for this
tortured world, gape upon me with their mouths as a raven
ing and a roaring lion. Fear whispers: Your loves, your
traditions, your faiths and visions, all will fail you. My
soul makes answer: God is within me. He shall not fail.

ANNE C. E. ALLINSON.

WORDSWORTH AND ANNETTE

BY HARRY T. BAKER

THE publication for the first time, in Professor Har
per's recent biography, of the facts in the case of Words
worth's liaison, in his twenty-second year, with a young
French woman throws a vivid light on the asceticism of
his poetry and on its neglect of the passion of love. That
asceticism, it becomes evident, was not natural; it was stu
diously cultivated. His previous biographers had agreed
that in early youth he was moody and passionate, subject
to whims and sudden enthusiasms. He seems to have been
as much in sympathy with the spirit of the French Revo
lution as Byron or Shelley; and he was old enough, at its
beginning, to evaluate it as they could not. His revulsion,
after the Reign of Terror and the ascendancy of Napoleon,
was due not merely to the failure of revolution without
but to the traitorous emotions within his own breast. After
spending something more than a year in France, he was
suddenly recalled, in December, 1792, or January, 1793, by
relatives — his parents were dead — who adopted the effica
cious plan of stopping his allowance. Undoubtedly they had
learned of his entanglement with Annette, daughter of a
French Royalist; and, whether Wordsworth intended to
marry her or no, he was prevented. For he had at this time
neither occupation nor income.

The Memoirs by his nephew, the Bishop of Lincoln,
published shortly after the poet's death in 1850, explain
Wordsworth's state of mind during this momentous period:
" He was an orphan, young, inexperienced, impetuous, en
thusiastic, with no friendly voice to guide him, in a foreign
country, and that country in ,a state of revolution. . . .
The most licentious theories were propounded; all restraints
were broken; libertinism was law. He was encompassed
with strong temptations." Having gone so far, the Bishop

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 748 28

434 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

makes, however, no further revelations. He excuses with
out telling why excuse was necessary. Oral tradition at
Cambridge is said to have handed down the story; but it
was apparently known to but few persons, and its authen
ticity was probably not established. Hence the conspiracy
of silence, if one may venture to call it that, which prevailed
from 1793 to 1916!

Annette had borne the poet a daughter, Caroline; and
in a sonnet of 1802, It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and
Free, she is addressed in the line,

Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

a line previously thought by critics to refer to his sister
Dorothy. In view of the passage which follows, clearly
descriptive of the mind of a young child (Dorothy was
about thirty years old), the absurdity of such a reference
is obvious:

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

This has a pretty close relation to the central thought of
the famous ode, Intimations of Immortality: that the young
child is nearer to Truth, to God, than the man.

Both mother and daughter had been referred to more
than once by name, in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal; but
they had apparently not excited the curiosity of readers.
Wordsworth did not marry until 1802. About three months
before the event he and Dorothy went to Calais to meet
Annette and Caroline; and it was then that he wrote the
sonnet to his daughter — for whom he evidently cherished an
affection which makes one curious to learn of her subsequent
career. What Annette's attitude to the proposed marriage
to Mary Hutchinson was it is impossible to ascertain; but
there is probably something significant in Dorothy's remark
in her Journal, under date of March 22, 1802, seven months
before the ceremony: "A rainy day. Wm. very poorly.
2 letters from Sara [Hutchinson] and one from poor
Annette." That Wordsworth's conscience was uneasy at
this time seems to be proved by his subsequent visit to
France. What became of Annette and the daughter Caro
line is not recorded; but Mr. Harper mentions that the

WORDSWORTH AND ANNETTE 435

mother was later known as Madame Vallon. This is in
itself no proof, however, that she ever married. In default
of full evidence it is difficult either to attack or to defend
Wordsworth. His relatives may have been responsible for
the separation in 1792; but Wordsworth's marriage to Mary
Hutchinson would seem to leave something to be explained.
And Dorothy's " poor Annette," though capable of more
than one interpretation, does not cause one to rest wholly
satisfied with her brother's course. Mary Hutchinson, it
should be added, is said to have been told the truth about
Annette.

Wordsworth's detestation of Byron and Byronism, then,
may well have had some root in his own Byronic period of
youthful unrestraint and random impulse. His lines in the
Ode to Duty, written in 1805, are profoundly significant:

Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance-desires.

Equally significant is his admonition, in the poem To the
Sons of Burns, written in 1803:

But ne'er to a seductive lay

Let faith be given ;
Nor deem that " light that leads astray,

Is light from Heaven."

The quotation in the last two lines is, of course, from one
of Burns' own poems. The application to Wordsworth's
early passion is as clear as is the attitude which he later
seems to have taken to that passion — and to Annette. None
of his published poems appears to have been addressed to
her; for surely the Lucy group, written in 1799, goes back
to an earlier love, and a more spiritual one, in England. If
there is autobiographical value in these, she died suddenly,
in the very flush of youth and beauty:

And few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

The poignancy of the poet's grief makes it probable that
this poem, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, and its
companion, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal, were recollec
tions of reality.

At some later period Wordsworth planned to write a

436 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

love poem, apparently of some length; but he gave it up
for a reason which, in the light of the Annette episode, be
comes illuminating. " I feared," he said, " that I might
write it with a degree of warmth which could hardly have
been approved by my principles, and which might have been
undesirable for the reader." One of his biographers, Pro
fessor Winchester, dryly comments: "Most readers, I
judge, will decide that he might have taken that risk with
perfect safety." And so they might, but for Mr. Harper's
revelations, which make it clear that the poet was right in
suspecting himself of possibilities of strong passion. In
deed, there is something very suggestive in another remark
by Mr. Winchester: " There was a vein of asceticism in
the man; he seemed a little afraid of all ardent passion,
however pure." He was afraid; and this explains his reti
cence on the subject of love.

There is one hitherto neglected poem, nevertheless, which
now takes on " something of angelic light." It is, strangely
enough, the one concerning which Arnold said: " I can
read with pleasure and edification Peter Bell} and the whole
series of Ecclesiastical Sonnets, and the address to Mr. Wil
kinson's spade, and even the Thanksgiving Ode; — every
thing of Wordsworth, I think, except Vaudracour and
Julia'3 Professor A. C. Bradley, writing before Mr. Har
per's discoveries, says: " The following lines from Vaudra
cour and Julia make one wonder how this could be to Arnold
the only poem of Wordsworth's that he could not read with
pleasure :

Arabian fiction never filled the world

With half the wonders that were wrought for him.

Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring;

Life turned the meanest of her implements,

Before his eyes, to price above all gold;

The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine;

Her chamber-window did surpass in glory

The portals of the dawn; all paradise

Could, by the simple opening of a door,

Let itself in upon him: — pathways, walks,

Swarmed with enchantment, till his spirit sank,

Surcharged, within him, overblest to move

Beneath a sun that wakes a weary world

To its dull round of ordinary cares;

A man too happy for mortality!

This poem, though not published until 1820 — and there is

WORDSWORTH AND ANNETTE 437

probably significance in the delay — was written in 1805.
There can be little doubt that it is based upon the Annette
episode. Indeed, Mr. Harper professes to see in it "an
account of the reasons for then* separation." This, how
ever, is probably to consider it too curiously.

The opening lines, which Mr. Bradley does not adduce,
show unmistakably that 1792 was the Romeo-and- Juliet
period of Wordsworth's life, a period when " the white won
der of dear Juliet's hand " seems more important than the
revolutions of empires:

O happy time of youthful lovers (thus
My story may begin), O balmy time,
In which a love-knot on a lady's brow
Is fairer than the fairest star in heaven!

This is not the mild William we knew. His genius
has suffered a sea change. There is something almost
Shakespearean in the passage which Mr. Bradley quotes. It
" gives a very echo to the seat where love is throned." Let
no one say, after reading these two passages, that Words
worth could not write love poetry. He must have delib
erately suppressed his tendency to it. His passion for
woman became a passion for nature. But how illuminating
is Lowell's comment, which, though applied to himself, has
an even deeper application to Wordsworth:

Nor th' airth don't git put out with me,
Thet love her'z though she wuz a woman;

Why, th' ain't a bird upon the tree
But half forgives my bein' human.

The " very ecstasy of love " — whether sane or no — had been
diverted into a religious exaltation of nature. There never
was nature poetry like Wordsworth's before. Passion,
" like a right gipsy ", had beguiled him to the very heart of
loss; but in the mountain solitudes he had found his soul
again.

In yet another poem of his maturity, Surprised by Joy
— Impatient As the Wind, written in 1812 or later and
published in 1815, Wordsworth probably refers, as Profes
sor Herford has suggested, to the Lucy of his early years.
Written on the death of his daughter Catherine — the poet
himself states this in a prefatory note — its concluding lines

438 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

are nevertheless a piercing reminiscence of an ideal affection
in youth:

That thought's return

Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn *.

Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

The lyric intensity of this is rare in Wordsworth's poetry —
whether he is writing on love, on nature, or on humble life.
This is indeed, to use his own phrase, " emotion recollected
in tranquillity." It is perhaps the last evidence of that sub
terraneous fire which he austerely strove to quench. Having
once confused passion with love, he ever afterward dreaded
the flame.

" From the Lyrical Ballads" declared Hazlitt petu
lantly, " it does not appear that men eat or drink, marry
or are given in marriage." And the Ballads were published
in 1798. In that year the youthful Byron had just entered
into his lordship at ten, the jocund candles of the French
Revolution had burnt out and there was no " Promethean
heat" that could their light relume! Burnt out, too, for
ever, were the Revolutionary flames in young Mr. Words
worth's breast. Thereafter he dedicated himself to nature,
and to peasantry against the solemn background of hills and
sky. Solitude became his favorite word — that solitude from
whose bright marge he escaped so often into infinity. But
he did not, in the bitterness of his disillusion, cry out with
Antony,

I am so lated in the world that I

Have lost my way forever.

And, seldom as he expressed it in his later poetry, he must
sometimes have felt that struggle to escape into infinity
through love, a struggle which Browning describes so
admirably :

I yearn upward, touch you close,

Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

Catch your soul's warmth, — I pluck the rose
And love it more than tongue can speak —

Then the good minute goes. . . .

Only I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain

Of finite hearts that yearn.

In that delightful essay, On Going a Journey, Hazlitt

WORDSWORTH AND ANNETTE 439

expresses the life creed of many a young Revolutionist of
1789: "The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty,
to think, feel, do, just as one pleases." Byron puts it in
equivalent phrase:

I would not change my free thoughts for a throne.

So felt Wordsworth in his Byronic and Hazlittian period;
and " bliss was it in that dawn to be alive." But Byron
and Hazlitt never achieved self -discipline ; they gloried in
clinging to that crude Revolutionary ardor. It was Words
worth who, coming to regard life mainly as a matter of
" plain living and high thinking ", wrote, in his great period
from 1798 to 1808, verses of which one of his greatest
critics, Leslie Stephen, says : " Other poetry becomes
trifling when we make our passages through the Valley of
the Shadow of Death; Wordsworth's alone retains its
power." In the midst of a military conflict which dwarfs
that of Napoleon, how salutary to remember that verdict
now. Wordsworth had gone down into the depths of emo
tion ; he had not succumbed ; and he had brought up perma
nent comfort to mankind. Like Shakespeare and like
Browning, he made poetry " the breath and finer spirit of
all knowledge." And it was in some measure the spiritual
upheaval of his early years that perfected his maturer
verses. He who would understand Wordsworth must re
member the prophecy of his mother, who was taken from
him in his childhood. " The only one of her five children,"
says the poet himself, " about whose future life she was
anxious was William; and he, she said, would be remark
able, either for good or for evil. The cause of this was that
I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper." No placid and
unpassionate person could have produced, not merely the
Lucy poems and the great passage in Vaudracour and Julia,
but Tintern Abbey and Intimations of Immortality. Words
worth came trailing clouds of glory to his quiet refuge on
Rydal Mount.

HARRY T. BAKER.

DRAMA AND MUSIC

THE CHICAGO OPERA COMPANY AND
ITS MEMORABLE SINGING AND ACTING

BY LAWRENCE OILMAN

TEN years ago the opera-going public of New York was
asking itself, with some bewilderment and not a little irrita
tion, why it was compelled to travel to the jungles of West
Thirty-fourth Street in order to hear the most important
lyric-dramas composed since the death of Wagner, and
many of the ablest singing-actors then alive, while one of
the great opera-houses of the world was contemporaneously
open for business and running full blast on Broadway.
That golden age of the immortal Hammerstein came to a
lamented end. Yet here among us today it is, in many
of its essential features, miraculously resurrected before our
eyes and ears; and again we are asking ourselves, with in
creased bewilderment and a little more irritation, why it is
that, with the same great and abundantly favored Institu
tion still open for business and running full-blast in our
operatic midst, we are compelled to journey to inaccessible
urban purlieus in order to hear:

(Imprimis) the greatest opera of the last quarter-century,
and the chief glory of the lyric stage in France;

(Item) a group of the most popularly beloved music-
dramas of our time;

(Item) the most gifted and versatile singing- actress
now living;

(Item) the most applauded coloratura singer now living;

(Item) the only tenor now living who has command
ing excellence both as singer and actor;

(Item) a half-dozen other singers who are extraordi
narily distinguished and able in both the French and Italian
repertories.

These are puzzling questions, and we shall not pretend

DRAMA AND MUSIC 441

to answer them. It is not, indeed, our business to answer
them, even if we knew what the answers are. But every
public commentator who is aware of the best that the lyric
stage is capable of yielding knows that it is his business to
ask, and to continue to ask, as long as so preposterous a
situation exists. Under present conditions, we are depend
ent upon the kindly ministrations of an out-of-town organ
ization for many of the richest satisfactions which the
operatic stage of our time affords; and that, in the circum
stances of our case, is clearly absurd.

But even a limited repast is better than continual
deprivation; and so there is not an opera-lover in New
York who is not immensely in the debt of Cleofonte Cam-
panini and his Chicago Opera Company, from those who
are made happy by hearing again the incomparable Pelleas
et Melisande of Debussy to those whose cup of joy is filled
to the brim by the captivating procedures of Mme. Amelita
Galli-Curci. So we have all been happy, and delightedly ap
plausive, and perhaps have made glad the heart of Mr.
Campanini and his indulgent associates to an extent suf
ficient to persuade them again to come East and comfort
us in our provincialism, reminding us that New York is not,
after all, the operatic capital of America.

What are our particular causes for satisfaction and
happiness in the Chicago company's too brief stay among
us? Well, they are not few. We are happy, first (that
is, many of us are), because a shamefully neglected master-
work has been restored to the experience of those who loved
it and fought for it when, a decade ago, it was esteemed
only by a forlorn minority of aesthetic adventurers, who now
have the gratification of seeing a formerly undervalued work
of rare beauty and genius win at once a public that has
finally caught up to it.

Ten years ago we said, speaking of Pelleas et Melisande,
that it seemed to us certain that the extraordinary impor
tance of this score as a work of art would compel " an ever-
widening appreciation"; because Debussy, looking at these
audaciously innovating pages of his, could say with Coven
try Patmore, " I have respected posterity." If posterity
may be said to foreshadow itself within ten years' time,
Debussy has been justified of his presumptive faith in it.
The veterans who battled for this work a decade ago, when
it was new and, to many, perplexing and futile, should not

442 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

be denied their present moment of complacency at the mem
ory of that overflowing and deeply moved audience at the
Lexington Theatre the other day which, after the heart-
shaking Fourth Act of Pelleas et Melisande, paid so obvi
ously heart-felt a tribute to the genius of Debussy and the
eloquence of his interpreters.

As for the impression made by this score, after its long
seclusion, upon those who felt its spell in the beginning, let
it be said merely that its greatness seemed more certain and
secure than ever. As time goes on, it will be less and less
needful to insist that this music is the product of one of the
most exquisite and scrupulous spirits in the history of art.
It is steeped in beauty — beauty of a profoundly original
kind; it is saturated in poetic mood; it is fashioned with
unchallengeable mastery. Since the enthralling and sov
ereign voice of Richard Wagner was stilled, none other has
spoken out of modern music with so haunting and magical
a blend of loveliness and emotion, with such potency of sug
gestion, with an accent so enchanting and unique.

The exhibition of this unparalleled lyric-drama was
the most impressive achievement of the Chicago com
pany's season in New York. Few that witnessed it will
forget the indescribable Melisande of Miss Mary Garden
— now, as ten years ago, one of the two or three perfect
things on the contemporary stage. It was unapproach
able then: today it is so superlative in its beauty and
puissance that it leaves this amazing artist securely placed
among the supreme poetic tragedians of the theatre. A
Pelleas new to New York, M. Alfred Maguenat, was sin
cere and impassioned, a figure of touching simplicity and
ardor, grave, youthful, nobly romantic. The Golaud
of M. Dufranne has always been a superb conveyance; it
is still matchless. An admirable Arkel was M. Huberdeau,
and the Genevieve of Louise Berat, new to New York,
sufficed. M. Marcel Charlier's conducting caused one to
long for the memorable insight of Cleofonte Campanini into
the secrets of this score. M. Charlier was perhaps misled
by the fact that he was confronting music of half-lights
and misty contours and shadowy perspectives, and fancied
that the right way to deal with it was to smudge it; not
realizing that with such music the utmost clarity and pre
cision are essential. He seemed to think that mystical speech
must necessarily be blurred and veiled — a common error.

DRAMA AND MUSIC 443

Some inspired moron in the Dark Ages of musical criticism
once spoke of the personages in Debussy's opera as " stam
mering phantoms"; M. Charlier is too sensitive an artist to
share permanently a kindred delusion.

We have dwelt upon this revival of Pelleas by the Chi
cago company because it will long remain unforgettable; it
was by all odds the finest accomplishment of Mr. Campa-
nini's organization in New York, and would have justified
their visit thrice over if they had done nothing else. That
they did do several other things is abundantly known to the
public.

For example, there was Mme. Galli-Curci, generally
regarded as the brightest gem in Mr. Campanini's casket
of jewels. Of course she is not that. As a lyric inter
preter she is not to be named in the same breath with
Mary Garden, for while she deals superlatively with trivial
material, Miss Garden deals superlatively with great ma
terial. Until the violinist who plays exquisitely some pyro-
technical rubbish by Paganini is ranked as the equal of a
violinist who can interpret exquisitely the Brahms concerto,
it will be fatuous to regard the most applauded achieve
ments of such singers as Mme. Galli-Curci as anything more
artistically consequential than a dazzling kind of tonal pres
tidigitation. It is a difficult and delicate art to balance a
chair on one's chin; it is a difficult and delicate art to nego
tiate the " Mad Scene " in Lucia. It must not be forgotten
that it is because Mme. Galli-Curci can trill in the neighbor
hood of high C a few seconds longer than most of her com
petitors that the operatic public forms in line three blocks
away at four o'clock in the afternoon to be among those
present when she does it. The much more important fact
that Mme. Galli-Curci can sing legato phrases with loveli
ness of line and color is not the fact that sold out the Lex
ington Theatre at all her appearances. The fact that hers
is a voice of delicious quality — limpid and fresh and sweet
in the ear — would not of itself draw fifty people to the box-
office at her appearances. Her technique is not impeccable;
nevertheless, she is a captivating artist, sensitive in the pro
jection of beautiful tone and the shaping of melodic design.
She has dramatic skill. She is admirably simple and genuine
in temperament, and altogether engaging as a singing-
actress. But let us, for the sake of honesty in our attitude
toward the operatic stage, be candid with ourselves in this

444 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

matter: If Mme. Galli-Curci were forbidden to sing above
the staff, forbidden to disport herself in the florid idiocies of
the bravura passages in Lucia and Dinorah; if she were com
pelled to abjure record-breaking trills and all other vocal
embroidery engrossing merely because of its difficulty; if
she were confined to the musico-dramatic interpretation of
great parts instead of playing with such antiquated operatic
dolls as Lucia and Gilda and Dinorah — would she have
created the excitement she has? She performs very beauti
fully indeed music that is not worth performing at all. We
are glad Mr. Campanini has her in his dazzling collection.
But we are much gladder that he has Miss Garden; and
Lucien Muratore, an insurpassable artist in his field; and
Rosa Raisa, a dramatic soprano of irresistible emotional
force; and such masters of histrionic singing as Dufranne
and Baklanoff and Dalmores.

It has been a rare pleasure to hear again Charpentier's
Louise and Massenet's Juggler, which are so beloved of our
public that they have been carefully excluded from the reper
toire of our local Institution — on the principle, no doubt, that
it is unwise to indulge the popular taste when it leans away
from easily provided satisfactions.

Mr. Campanini permitted us also to hear several novel
ties. Of these the most interesting was Sylvio Lazzari's
Le Sauteriot. M. Lazzari is an Austrian by birth, an Ital
ian by parentage, a Frenchman by adoption. The text of
Le Sauteriot was contrived by Henri Roche and Martial
Perrier after a play by E. de Keyserling. Its literary
quality is immeasurably above the average, and certain
scenes have charm; occasionally there is deep poetic feel
ing. As a whole, however, it is diffuse, it is loosely articu
lated, it is much too long, and a good deal of it is, on the
stage, dull and ineffective — for example, the greater part
of the first act. Ruthlessly condensed, rewritten with a more
realistic eye to dramatic values, it might be made a touching
and admirable thing.

And M. Lazzari's music would be helped by courageous
deletions. Surely he cannot be unaware of the amazing ex
tent to which he has helped himself from the score of Pelttas
et M6lisande. Almost every one, these days, is permitted to
admire Debussy in this convenient and practical way; but
M. Lazzari is altogether too bland in his apparent assump
tion that he can saturate his music in essence-of-PelUas and

DRAMA AND MUSIC 445

get away with it successfully in a community that, musically,
is not altogether simple-minded. M. Lazzari has feeling
and dramatic instinct, and, on the whole, fine taste; but we
beseech him to stop leaning on his confrere, to stand man
fully on his own legs and sing bravely his own songs, if he
has any to sing — and we think he has. This score of his
has beauty and passion; if it were less obviously derivative,
we should have high hopes of him. At all events, Mr. Cam-
panini is to be praised for letting us hear it in the very
effective performance achieved (under the composer's direc
tion) at the Lexington Theatre.

We have also added to our mental furnishings, thanks
to Mr. Campanini (and to the truly magnificent Miss Rosa
Raisa as heroine), an experience of Mascagni's Isabeau, an
opera which, though composed a decade ago, was unknown to
New York. There is opportunity now for only a word con
cerning this composition; but it should at least be recorded
without postponement that, though hampered by an inco
herent and clumsy libretto, — based by Luigi Illica upon the
legend of Lady Godiva's spectacular canter, — Mascagni has
been able to produce a score written with dignity, with large
ness of utterance, with refinement of craftsmanship. Isabeau
sets his capacities in a new light. It lacks high distinction;
it has many dull and barren intervals ; but at its best it holds
and imposes.

A new American opera has been staged for us by Mr.
Campanini: Mr. Henry Hadley's Azora. It was amiable
and commendable of Mr. Campanini to go to the very con
siderable trouble of mounting Azora — if mediocre operas
must be given merely because they are American. But we
are not going to discuss Azora; for we prefer to conclude
this thank-offering to the Chicago Opera Company upon
a note of unsullied gratitude.

Sirs and Madams from Chicago, we of New York
salute you. You have immeasurably enriched the winter of
our operatic discontent.

LAWRENCE GELMAN.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH

FRANCO-AMERICAN MEDITATIONS

BY LAWRENCE OILMAN

IT is a difficult mission that Pierre de Lanux under
takes in his Young France and New America, and one is
not merely reciprocating M. de Lanux's own exquisite
amiability in saying that only a Frenchman could
have done it without tactlessness. An Englishman would
have been condescending; a Japanese would have been
naively inept; a Russian would have been uncomprehend
ing; an Italian would have been graciously fatuous. But
M. de Lanux is a Frenchman; therefore he knows how
to commend without the suggestion of patronage, and how
to indicate shortcomings without offense. That is to say,
he is a natural funambulist — his feats of interpretive bal
ancing and critical wariness are accomplished without
apparent effort and with a delightful absence of anxiety:
you never feel that he is triumphing over any fear of the
rapids beneath him — for him, you like to fancy, the rapids
have been forgotten rather than heroically put out of mind.
Yet that there are rapids beneath him, threatening and
highly dangerous ones, is apparent from the most cursory
glance at M. de Lanux's " Foreword " (we wish, by the
way, that he had not acquired this pompous affectation of
literary America, where no one any longer is content to
write a simple " Preface ").

What has M. de Lanux attempted in Young France
and New America? " To define and to sum up," he says,
" the possibilities which Franco- American relations will offer
tomorrow on intellectual as well as on concrete grounds,"
concentrating especially on " the results of cooperation be-

1 Young France and New America, by Pierre de Lanux. New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1918.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 447

tween elements of the younger generation of both coun
tries." This book is written " for the young men and women
of America who are interested in the present life of France."
It embodies the reflections of a Frenchman who spent the
year 1917 in America.

At first blush, this sounds as if we were promised noth
ing more illuminating than the familiar compliments of
Ambassadorial banquets, the reciprocal flub-dub of inter
national amicability that has stereotyped the after-dinner
oratory of a thousand Franco- American gatherings. How
well we all know those ancient cliches! ..." Com
mon interpretation of republican principles . . . Love
for country and for freedom . . . The friendship of the
two Republics . . . ' But M. de Lanux is too urgent a
realist to come before us mouthing these desiccated plati
tudes. He has more pointed and definite things to say, a
new kind of interchange to propose. After all of our
old reasons for mutual understanding, he says, there exist
now new and more powerful reasons. Chief among the new
values which will be born from the present upheaval there
is, for the French and ourselves, " the realization of common
standards in life " ; above all, there is to be recognized and
justly appraised " the value of mutual knowledge between
the youth of France and America." M. de Lanux per
ceives that the old generalities, the old hands-across-the-sea
symbolizations, had lost, long before the war, whatever con
tact with reality they once possessed: he perceives that new
and fresh interpretations, made with the eye on the object,
patterned upon reality by internationalists of delicate intui
tion and richly sympathetic imagination, must be substi
tuted for them, if the younger generation in " the two
Republics " is to be persuaded to the accomplishment of
fruitful contacts.

How is this intellectual and spiritual interchange to be
brought about, and what results are to be hoped for from it?

Looking about him in America, M. de Lanux finds us
divisible into two broad categories, having practically noth
ing in common save the name " American," and " ideals
which have never had an opportunity to appear to be com
mon." First, there are the families who lived here in the
time of the Civil War, " mostly of English, Irish, Dutch,
and French descent." Second, there are those who have
arrived here since — chiefly Germans, Slavs, Jews, Italians,

448 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Syrians, etc. It is M. de Lanux's theory that this latter
and unamalgamated element will be made an organic part
of us by the shedding of their blood in our common cause:
" when they have given their blood, the last difference be
tween you, which rested in an unequal experience, will be
swept out, because they will have shared the greatest
experience of your civic life." This is " the capital fact of
the present evolution."

From this united and harmonized America M. de
Lanux anticipates the more efficient exercise of certain vir
tues which he confidently attributes to us: our freedom from
" old prejudices and methods," our " tendency to settle
things according to elementary human right." And, fur
ther, he expects from us " some great artistic revelations."
We shall soon be ready for " creation," and " already some
splendid isolated works are showing the way."

What, then, do we need that France can give us, and
with what can we recompense France? Let us traverse
hurriedly (of necessity) some of our generous ambassador's
deprecations and recommendations.

Are not, he asks, " some disputable forms of success "
still pursued by us, " at the cost of happiness, health, and
life itself, by men and women of rich resource who kill in
themselves all possibility for deep, personal, original life"?
They are, dear Sir, they are. But let us not dwell upon
that undeniable, disconcerting, and somewhat over-familiar
indictment; let us seek some fresh illumination. Here it
is, perhaps: We are to benefit by the French tendency to
criticise — " a certain intellectual, critical, negative tendency,
which too easily turns into mockery " : the faculty " to which
the best of us [the French] owe their sense of proportion
and the clear thinking for which they are noted." This is
to act upon " the opposite faculty " possessed by Amer
icans : " a positive, enterprising tendency to go after imme
diate results, embarrassed by very few hesitations." Now
if we can agree, says M. de Lanux, to combine French craft,
skill, science and critical deliberation with our own audac
ity, our " passion for visible and immediate results," little
will remain beyond our reach. Thus it appears that the
element in the French character which explains, says M.
de Lanux, certain French failings — that " critical, negative
tendency" which he exhibits — at the same time offers the
best hope for cooperation between the youth of Amer-

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 449

ica and France. He means, it would appear, that we are
to benefit by acquiring a habit of scrutiny and deliberation
and self-examination, while they are to benefit by an infec
tion of audacity and a " passion for immediate results."

We beg to protest that all this seems to us a darkening
of counsel, chiefly because, as M. de Lanux states it without
qualification, it isn't so. It is far more a French trait than
it is an American trait to undertake new experiments, to
explore and test new intellectual territory. We do not
speak as one having authority — we are not a Frenchman.
We bring into court one whose authority is indisputable:
M. Pierre de Lanux himself. Hear him contradict himself:
" France is a well-spring of creative power, a land of
spiritual, scientific, and social experiments and experiences."
In the face of this, it is unnecessary to observe that France
is hardly in need of America's experimental impulse. If
it were necessary, we should like to ask M. de Lanux if he
has a vision of, let us say, M. Claude Debussy being
inspired to new experiments in music by Professor
Horatio W. Parker and Mr. Henry Hadley and Mr. Fred
erick S. Converse; M. Bergson being inspired to new medi
tations upon the inner life of man by the Rev. Dr. Hillis
and the Rev. William Sunday; M. Francis Jammes being
inspired to new poetic experiments by our excellent and
indispensable American Fers-libristes; M. Paul Claudel sit
ting expectantly at the feet of the dramatic muse of Mr.
Percy Mackaye. We are not attempting to set off equals
against one another: we are merely assembling, for the sake
of inciting suggestive reflection, a group of types. Alas,
M. de Lanux, America suffers not from an excess of abun
dant creative life and positive endeavor in the regions of
the intellect and the imagination, but rather from a lack of
these things : our thinking and our feeling are too timid and
formularized and traditional, rather than too audacious and
experimental.

Undeserved rewards, said Meredith, are exquisite. But
M. de Lanux is too generous; he is embarrassing. His
trouble is that which beset Mr. W. W. Jacobs' old bargee —
" too much affability : that's what's the matter with me,"
said the old bargee. And that's what's the matter with
M. de Lanux. He seems honestly to love us, but he is
wishing the wrong things on us. We do not need more self-
consciousness and self-examination — the Pilgrim Fathers,
VOL. CCVIL— NO. 748 29

450 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

God forgive them, attended to that for us. We need what,
in his soberer and less post-prandial moments, M. de Lanux
knows perfectly well that France can give us — the France
for whom he answers, with loving veracity, in reply to his
own question, " What does France mean? " And then we
see that he knows as well as any of us what France means :
She means, he answers, " the land of free invention, discus
sion, and experiment for social progress ; a living laboratory,
where every new principle is tried before being spread over
the world." Those of her sons who today are fighting
because they love France, have loved her, as he says,
" because she meant that " — because, as we too are well
aware, it is there that the gardens of the mind have gateways
without number, and are flooded always with clear light.

The American soul, M. de Lanux, is at once a more
naive and a more wistful thing than the soul of France: it
was born old, yet it has not yet grown up. But it is, in
its own way, an incomparable thing, because of its passion
ate, unquenchable idealism; and to it there come, from time
to time, noble thoughts, that pass across its depths and sur
faces like great white birds. M. Maeterlinck himself, we
think, would grant it; and so, with an even more generous
alacrity, we believe, would our indulgent missionary from
France.

LAWRENCE GILMAN.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

DEMOCRACY AFTER THE WAR. By J. A. Hobson. New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1917.

America is fighting for the preservation of democracy ; but America
is beginning to feel a trifle disquieted by doubt as to the possible effect
of the war upon democracy itself. Are we, by any chance, ourselves
drifting towards " Prussianism " in the sense, at least, of excessive
centralization, or perhaps towards socialism, or even towards both
at once?

Whatever one may think concerning these questions, one cannot
rest in the comfortable supposition that democracy after the war will
take care of itself. To say nothing of the difficulty of extending
democratic principles so as to make them effective in international
relations, it is obvious that we must look to democracy here at home.
Shall we, after peace has been won, attempt to restore democracy to
its original status, or shall we allow it to expand into something that
looks rather more like State socialism than democracy as hitherto
conceived ?

The issues of the post-war period are already looming up. In
order to define these issues — that is, in order to take the first step in
understanding them — it is necessary to obtain a broad and penetrating
analysis of the condition of society as it is at present. Such an
analysis is furnished by the Englishman, J. A. Hobson, in his recently
published book, Democracy After the War. Although Mr. Hobson's
view is based upon British conditions, it is without doubt sufficiently
broad to interest Americans.

Mr. Hobson is a forceful writer — searching in logic, vehement in
style, disillusioned in thought. Like others who carry the psycho
logical point of view into sociology, he is, indeed, somewhat inclined
to be in his own way extreme. But he is neither pessimistic nor
unfair. Without cynicism he admits and takes into consideration those
ideal motives which join with economic forces in determining social
and political conditions. Plainly, it is not his object to show that men
are the slaves of economic laws and that all their supposedly higher
motives — including patriotism — are but pretenses or delusions. With
out bitterness, he attempts to point out the connection between " capital
ism," or " improperly," and the other " enemies of democracy." It is
evidently not his aim to prove the existence of a deliberate conspiracy
upon the part of property owners against the welfare of the people,
or to preach the necessity of a class war. It is enough for him to

452 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

show that forces not in themselves wholly or necessarily evil do in
fact cooperate through "a kind of instinctive cunning" to produce
an evil result.

Mr. Hobson's account of society is, of course, nearly identical, so
far as it concerns " improperty," with the Socialistic account ; but it
should not for this reason be hastily rejected as unscientific and
doctrinaire. Possibly the difference between a reformed and chastened
socialism and an expanded and fully developed democracy would not
in the last analysis turn out to be fundamental. However this may be,
it is clear that Mr. Hobson's analysis of society from the democratic
point of view differs from all the cruder varieties of socialistic analysis
in that it recognizes as the enemy of human welfare not capitalism
merely, but reaction. According to Mr. Hobson's view the forces of
reaction include imperialism, protectionism, militarism, legalism, " dis
tracting emollients" (such as charity, sport, and drink), regulative
socialism, conservatism, State absolutism, authoritarianism, and bureau
cracy. All these apparently diverse influences and interests are in fact
closely interlocked. But it is important to bear in mind that the
" unholy alliance " of these forces is due only in a small degree to
conscious, deliberate purpose. If all the members of the " alliance "
should suddenly become aware that a deliberate purpose, or conspiracy,
in fact existed, the whole structure would doubtless fall apart. But
there is individual selfishness and there is unclear thinking; and these
are sufficient to effect a practical combination.

This being the case, it is obvious, Mr. Hobson maintains, that the
attack against reaction should not be leveled exclusively against " land
lordism " or " improperty," since such an attack would be doomed to
failure because of the powerful defences, political, moral, and intellec
tual, by which the enemy is encompassed. " Socialism has neither a
concerted, feasible tactic, nor a sufficient number of able, trusted
leaders in close intellectual and political agreement, nor a large enough
body of enthusiastic, convinced, and indivisible followers." Hope,
therefore, must be placed in the triumph of democracy — that is, in the
complete control of the government by the people. This control, how
ever, is evidently itself in large measure dependent upon the progress
of educational reform, upon the true freedom of the press, and upon
intelligent, concerted efforts directed against all the reactionary powers.

Specifically, Mr. Hobson's thesis is that after the end of the present
war democracy in Great Britain will be in grave danger of a serious
setback.

The danger will arise from the new economic situation and from
the old international anarchy. It will be impossible, Mr. Hobson
argues, to undo the work of State socialism which has been going on
during the war. The same causes that made it necessary for the
government to assume so wide a control over business and industry
will render it impossible for the government suddenly to relinquish
this control without plunging the country into economic disorder.
For similar reasons, the government will retain its increased power
of taxation. At the same time there will be a real necessity for
increased productivity in all industries. Under these circumstances
it is, in Mr. Hobson's view, inevitable that the forces of reaction will
endeavor to gain control of the new machinery of the State. In internal

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 453

affairs they will work for the adoption of a system not unlike that by
which Germany has enslaved its working classes, but more liberal in
appearance ; to this end, they will use the need of increased productivity
as a lever, and an elaborate programme of social legislation as a pallia
tive. At the same time they will work against internationalism and
in favor of a "close State."

Mr. Hobson's advice to British labor is clear and definite. Ac
quiesce in the demand for increased productiveness, he says in effect,
but resist all efforts to shift the burden of taxation by " broadening
its base," and oppose all policies tending to restrict expenditures for
education and for economic developments. Do not be led into the
snare of syndicalism or guild socialism, but endeavor to get control
of the State. Above all, stand for internationalism and reject the
doctrine of the "close State."

Democracy After the War is a significant and valuable book not
merely because it points out a definite policy to be pursued in a situa
tion that has been accurately forecast, but also, and especially, because,
making use of all the strong points of the Socialist account of society,
it draws from this account only such conclusions as are reconcilable
with belief in democracy, and holds that other and more radical con
clusions are inadmissible. Implied in the whole work, however, is
the assumption that before democracy can wholly prevail, " improp-
erty " must be abolished. If this is the case, democracy, as we at
present understand it, is but a stage of evolution toward a form of
socialism. On this point, it seems, more is implied in Mr. Hobson's
analysis than is necessary for the support of his main conclusions,
and more than most readers can readily bring themselves to accept.

To ARMS. By Marcelle Tinayre. Translated from the French by
Lucy H. Humphrey, with a preface by John Finley. New York:
E. P. Button & Company, 1917.

Simply as expressing the spirit of France, Marcelle Tinayre's
novel holds a strong appeal for American readers. The same spirit,
however conveyed to us, would win our approval and admiration.
News stories, books of social sketches, the personal reports of those
who have cooperated with the French in various kinds of war work,
all tell the same story concerning the essential worth, the remarkable
adaptability, the splendid courage of the French people. We have
not the least doubt, therefore, that the novel To Arms is essentially
sincere and truthful, and that it calls for sympathetic appreciation upon
just grounds.

But this does not quite amount to saying that To Arms is a great
or even a good novel. On the contrary, one cannot escape the con
clusion that the story is in no way big enough to serve as an adequate
vehicle for its theme. Instead of seeing the war through the eyes of
the persons of the story, instead of feeling its effects as they feel them,
the reader constantly thinks of the war apart from the story ; the novel

454 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

thus becomes merely one of a number of discourses about the war,
and is not, as it ought to be, an embodiment of patriotic feeling.

In structure, the story is very simple. Principally it describes the
feelings of a young wife, ideally happy in her marriage, as the day
approaches which is to deprive her of her husband perhaps forever.
Madame Davesnes symbolizes the sacrifice of the good women of
France. In her, as a peculiarly fine type, romantic love is blended
with great firmness of character and with willingness for sacrifice.
That tenderness, grace, and allurement in woman are consistent with
a strength and depth of character that in America we should call
Puritan, is the meaning that seems to be intended. Her husband,
though less fully drawn, is also conceived as possessing in a high
degree both delicacy and strength of soul. Both portraits are ap
parently designed as strong contrasts to the ideal man and woman as
conceived in the philosophy of les Bodies.

In addition, the author, through a great number of little incidents
and descriptions, aims to show the moral effect of the war upon
people of many different classes and types.

To make the method of incidental character sketching effective for
the purpose of a war novel would seem to require the power of a
great realist. And this power Marcelle Tinayre, though she is shrewd
and observing, seems to lack. To join the sentimental motive with
the great emotion of righteous warfare in a grandly impressive whole,
would seem to demand the genius of a Victor Hugo. Lacking this,
the author seems to take a too romantic, a too sentimental, view of
the great struggle, though this is plainly not her intention.

In short, accustomed to write romances, Marcelle Tinayre has writ
ten about the war simply a romance — but a romance which testifies
to the author's intense patriotism.

THE PRINCIPLES OF AMERICAN DIPLOMACY. By John Bassett
Moore. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1918.

A nation is most clearly conceived as a spiritual whole when it is
seen in its relations with other nations; and the study of American
diplomacy, even apart from the necessary connection between domestic
and foreign policies, is an essential part of training for the best citizen
ship. Through this study, certain principles that have always formed a
part of the American Idea may be clearly perceived, and the value
of these principles to the world may be estimated.

In American diplomacy there has been a sufficient consistency to
convince one that a real national will exists. Foreign policies have
not been merely the results of changing economic conditions or of
variable moral conceptions. The essential ideas that were dominant
in the very beginning of the Republic have remained a part of the
national consciousness and have on the whole guided the conduct of
the nation in its dealings with foreign Powers. Are these principles
and ideals ultimately sound? Are they practical? Have there been,
and are there likely to be in the future, serious divergences from

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 455

them? A real opinion regarding these questions on the part of a
majority of thoughtful citizens is obviously necessary if democracy
is to be effective — that is, if it is to be intelligent, and if it is to be
emotionally prepared for action.

The materials for forming such an opinion are furnished in ad
mirable form by John Bassett Moore in his book Principles of American
Diplomacy. If this volume is in effect a manual of patriotism, its
patriotic appeal is due, not to anything in the nature of ex parte
pleading or to any attempt upon the part of the author to found
theories of action upon past acts, but almost wholly to the logic of the
facts themselves.

The Principles of American Diplomacy embodies substantially the
entire text, with few alterations or amendments, of a work published
by the author in 1905 under the title American Diplomacy: Its Spirit
and Achievements. To this text, however, have been added discus
sions of all important diplomatic events that have occurred between
1903 and 1917 (including, of course, the events relating to the Great
War), as well as a whole new chapter upon the subject of Pan-
Americanism. The method employed is topical — the diplomatic de
velopments in relation to each general subject or policy being treated
in chronological order. Thus the reader is able without undue dif
ficulty to understand what has been in the main the attitude of the
United States throughout its whole history in regard to neutrality, the
freedom of the seas, the Monroe Doctrine, international arbitration,
and many questions hardly less important.

In all this, there is sufficient room for difference of opinion as to
the wisdom and the motives of particular policies ; nor does the author
in any way attempt to narrow the scope of individual thought upon
these subjects. But no reasonable and attentive reader can fail to
note, and to feel as inspiring, the generally consistent adherence of
the nation to certain root principles and the generally favorable work
ing-out of certain tendencies. The practical effect of these prin
ciples and characteristic tendencies is seen to have been great, and
thus the United States, portrayed by an analysis of its motives and
acts, stands out as an expression of the most enlightened conception
of nationality.

American diplomacy has been an influence in behalf of political
liberty; it has uniformly advocated the view that "the true test
of a government's right to exist, and to be recognized by other govern
ments, is the fact of its existence as the exponent of the popular
will." American diplomacy has always stood for the principle of
legality in international affairs. At the same time it has held to the
doctrine of non-intervention and has maintained the distinction be
tween the American and the European System. Throughout its whole
course, it has been characterized by frankness and simplicity. Who
ever understands these things will be slow to acquiesce in any sur
render, urged upon grounds of immediate urgency, of the values that
have already been maintained. Only upon the most fundamental rea
sons will he consent that the nation shall in essentials change its mind.

Dr. Moore's whole treatise is a justification and explication of the
statement made in his opening chapter, that " not only the most im
portant event of the past two hundred years, but one of the most im-

456 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

portant events of all times, was the advent of the United States into
the family of nations."

NATIONAL PROGRESS (Volume Twenty-seven of The American
Nation). By Frederic Austin Ogg. New York : Harper and Brothers,
1917.

The period 1910-1917 has been a period of notable growth and
change. The problems that have emerged during these years are larger,
vaguer, and at the same time more complex than the problems of the
remoter past. Dissatisfaction with social conditions; a sense of the
larger relations connecting groups and classes with the nation as a
whole, and the nation with the world; a desire for progress in a
democratic direction, have been increasingly operative among the
people. The need for a fuller understanding of principles and for
confident leadership has been strongly felt. At the same time party
lines have become less clearly marked ; the tendency in politics has been
toward a general, though not very distinct, division upon the demarka-
tion between radicals and conservatives — a division that to some extent
obliterates the narrower distinctions between the two principal political
parties. Progressivism, though it failed to become the foundation of
a successful new party, remains a powerful movement.

It is evident that at no time in the history of the country has there
been so great a need as there is at present for reliable and well-digested
information concerning a great variety of political problems and tend
encies that have developed within a comparatively brief time. These
problems and tendencies are part of our present intellectual and social
life, and at the same time they include so wide a field and mark so
rapid a change as to require studied historical treatment no less than
the events of longer epochs belonging to our earlier history.

Even a cursory reading of Professor Frederic A. Ogg's compact
history of the last ten years suffices to show how the broadening of
political problems has necessitated more accurate analysis and more
comprehensive views. The result of the election of 1908, though it
appeared to be a sweeping Republican victory, really presaged a great
shift in political power. Delay on the part of the Taft Administration
in carrying out the promised reforms in currency and banking, and
more particularly the discontent of the country with the Payne-Aldrich
tariff law, in considerable part explain the Democratic victory in 1912.
Yet even among the Democrats there occurred a change of view-point
in regard to at least one of these issues. It is a noteworthy fact that
although, as late as 1915, President Wilson declared that the nation
had all the machinery that was needed for the investigation of tariff
problems, the leaders of the Democratic Party, including the President,
gradually changed their minds and reverted to Taft's plan for a tariff
commission. Another remarkable change of front is seen in the passage
of the Keating-Owen child-labor law in September, 1916. " No more
sweeping use of the powers of Congress to regulate commerce," de
clares Professor Ogg, "was ever made. Years before, Wilson had
pronounced the Beveridge bill ' obviously absurd.' Now he was willing

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 457

to use the spur upon Congress in behalf of a measure that was de
cidedly more drastic/1

These instances, although they are of especial interest as indicating
a new political orientation, are not of course the most striking as
regards the actual changes implied in them. Whoever reads Professor
Ogg's accounts of the dealings of the Government with the railroads,
with corporations and trusts, with industry and labor, during the last
decade or more, will be compelled to perceive how the sphere of
government has inevitably enlarged, how the pressure of ideals and
of economic demands has called for larger and firmer control and
direction, how the boundary line between government and liberty has
become more difficult to draw while the necessity of drawing it clearly
has become more apparent than ever.

At the same time the reader of this book of Professor Ogg's can
hardly fail to perceive the broad significance of the problems that arose
even before the war in regard to the foreign policy of the United
States. The Caribbean policy of the Government, its attitude towards
the South American nations, towards Mexico, towards Japan, all serve
to show the distinction between the rival conceptions of international
ism and imperialism — conceptions that must either struggle to destroy
each other or find some mode of reasonable compromise.

Manifestly there has been a drift at the same time toward increased
control of the government by the people ; but the two impulses, though
they have combined to produce the great changes which have taken
place in our time, are not really the same nor necessarily parallel in
their direction. Since the entrance of the United States into the Great
War both tendencies have been intensified: the Government never
wielded more power; the people have never been more democratic.

To these general and vague ideas, Professor Ogg's book gives that
substance and that practical meaning which are necessary to make
possible the formation of definite opinions and to check theorizing.
The author, although he is impartial, as every historian should be, and
reserved, as befits the historian of recent events, by no means hesitates
to draw legitimate conclusions. He points out unsparingly both the
weaknesses of the Republicans under Taft and the mistakes of the
Democrats under Wilson. He adequately criticizes, for example, both
the Payne-Aldrich law and the Adamson law. An especially interest
ing and instructive feature of the book is Professor Ogg's analysis
of the results of presidential elections.

The book National Progress should prove of great value in helping
intelligent men and women to form broadly based and independent
opinions upon the problems of the time. It gives information of the
sort that seems to be needed for the successful working of democracy
in these days.

AENEAS AT THE SITE OF ROME. By W. Warde Fowler, M.A.,
LL.D., Edin. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1917.

In a degree somewhat unusual among scholars, Dr. Fowler com
bines extensive linguistic and antiquarian learning with literary taste
and true humanistic zeal. His commentary upon the Eighth Book

458 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

of the Aeneid — a commentary that ranges from minute and technical
questions concerning the meanings of words to broad interpretations
of Vergil's spirit and intention — are simply designed to increase the
reader's literary enjoyment of the poem by removing difficulties and
pointing out beauties.

For Dr. Fowler the Eighth Book of the Aeneid has an especial
charm. The whole epic derives its grandeur ultimately from its proph
etic strain. To the Roman the Aeneid summed up the greatness
of Roman nationality and character; to the modern it appeals as an
epic of civilization. With grandeur there is joined in Vergil's great
work a certain sweetness and gentleness. These two qualities are
especially manifest in the Eighth Book, and hence Dr. Fowler is fully
justified in adopting as the motto for his volume the lines of
Wordsworth :

We live by hope

And by desire; we see by the glad light
And breathe the sweet air of futurity,
And so we live, or else we have no life.

" The Eighth Book consists not of a single story, but of a succession
of scenes, somewhat in the manner of a Waverly novel." Its plan,
however, seems to Dr. Fowler " wonderfully happy and complete."
From the account of how Aeneas found his way to the site of Rome
by Rome's own river to the portraiture upon the hero's magic shield
of the crowning victory of Actinus — a victory of the utmost signifi
cance in the history of civilization — the poem makes its meaning felt
both subtly and harmoniously. In several respects, too, this Book more
than others suits the taste of modern readers. It is free from
" Homeric battles," the use of divine machinery in it is not obtrusive,
and the human figures it depicts, such as Evander and Pullas, really
enlist one's sympathy.

In the critical commentary which he has appended to the Latin text
of the Eighth Book, Dr. Fowler not only enables one to appreciate the
local allusions and " delicate Roman touches " with which the Book
teems, but also not infrequently touches larger problems — such as the
significance of Vergil's idea of fate, which he presents as a profound
and ennobling conception.

It is perhaps not too rash a suggestion that comments such as
those that Dr. Fowler has supplied in this volume would be more
profitable to young students of Latin than the rather dry and almost
exclusively grammatical notes that are contained in most school edi
tions of Vergil. It is well within bounds to say that every teacher
of Latin will find profit in reading Dr. Fowler's remarks. And to the
few persons outside the teaching profession who read Latin with ease
and with appreciation of literary values, Aeneas at the Site of Rome
will prove a delight.

THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE. By David Jayne Hill. New York :
The Century Co., 1917.

" The struggle now going on," writes David Jayne Hill in the
preface to his new book, The Rebuilding of Europe, has been variously

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 459

called ' a trade war ', a contest regarding ' the destiny of smaller states ',
' a war for democracy/ and ' a war for principles/ What has been
most completely overlooked is the fact that the Great War was not in
its beginnings, and is not now, so much a struggle between different
forms of government as it is a question regarding the purpose and
spirit of all government. . . . The truth is that the Great War is
a revolution against the alleged rights of arbitrary force, rendered
necessary by the failure to reach the goal of a secure international
organization by an evolutionary process."

To show wherein this failure lay, is Dr. Hill's task in the first chap
ter of his book, which deals with the development of the idea of the
state in modern Europe.

The historian and the evolutionary scientist are fatalists only when
they forget that thought is as much a part of evolution as peoples and
institutions. It is only when we perceive once for all and clearly that
the concept of national sovereignty which has come down to us from
medieval times, and which has been in theory accepted even by demo
cratic governments, is wrong, that we cease to be fatalists. For so
long as we contend merely for an emotional ideal — as, for instance, for
peace or for libety, or for democracy — our wills are not really free.
It is only when we see beyond these great goods the principle of justice
on which they depend that we cease to be merely impulsive. And if we
seek for liberty through the study of sociological and phychological
laws, then we are in danger of becoming fatalists with a vengeance.

Because Dr. Hill has clarified and justified and given due authority
to the conception of law and justice as distinct from irresponsible
might in international relations, his book deserves to be called a liberal
izing and in the only proper sense of the word an optimistic work. But
he goes beyond this, taking into consideration existing realities, the
economic and political situation of the world today. Finally, without out
lining a detailed programme, he develops from the facts and principles
previously considered his ideas of the reorganization of the world,
making the difficulties in the way of permanent peace seem less formid
able than to minds less fundamentally clear they may easily appear.

The profundity and lucidity of this little book give it an importance
far beyond that of most discussions of the war and its problems.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY

XI
(January 3 — February 6)

This review of the tenth month of our war with Germany
is written on the last day of that month — the next day after the first
public announcement in our newspapers that American troops are at
last holding a sector of the line on the west front in France. How
long they had been holding it before the censor permitted the an
nouncement is, of course, not public property. Nor does it matter.
The main thing is that we are now on the line, and it is a promise of
the fulfilment of our hope that before the end of the war the fighting
strength of the United States shall make itself felt.

This begins to look like what the average man understands by
" participation " in the war. Of course we have been actually partici
pating for a long time, in fact for ten months. There are many dif
ferent methods of participation, with various economic forces that
may be more effectual in reducing Germany's power of resistance than
the fighting valor of the men we now have on the sector we hold in
France. We have been helping to make it a real blockade, and to cut
off the numerous and devious means by which Germany obtained sup
plies, no matter how small the quantity, of the different materials she
needed in her war making. We have strengthened our allies with
money and credit, and our naval forces have borne a gallant and dis
tinguished part in the defense of the allied transport service against
the submarines.

But now we have men "on the line." There is an "American
front " and the censor permits it to be known that our men are hold
ing trenches in Lorraine. We may even particularize a little. We are
almost on the German border. With a little fortunate effort we might
become invaders of the enemy territory. Every day the news reports
give details of the doings of our soldiers on this front, and bring in
evitably the sad news of casualties — men killed and wounded, and
occasionally captured. Nothing approaching the dignity or importance
of a battle has occurred as yet on the American front, but our men
are in the fighting, and the close of the tenth month finds us really
"participating in the war against Germany."

Three alliterative subjects were the chief recipients of public at
tention during this tenth month — participation, peace and preparation.
Strong efforts for all three have run co-ordinately throughout the
month, but at the close the hopes for peace were not as high as
they had been at different points during this time. Certain distin
guished efforts to pave the way for a possible discussion of peace

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 461

terms were made in this month. David Lloyd George, the British
Prime Minister, delivered a remarkable speech, outlining the British
war aims. He was followed in a few days by President Wilson, who,
speaking to a joint session of Congress, laid down fourteen specific
conditions of peace. In due course formal replies came from Count
von Hertling, the German chancellor, and Count Czernin, the Austrian
premier. Neither speech offered a hopeful basis for enduring peace,
and the month closed with the publication of a formal statement by
the Supreme War Council of the Entente Allies rejecting the peace
feelers of the Teutonic allies, and announcing that the Council had
" arrived at a complete unanimity of policy on measures for the prose
cution of the war."

This announcement appeared in the same newspapers which car
ried that of American occupation of a part of the Lorraine front. So
just as we were informed that we were actually getting into the fight
ing on land we were assured that the war was to go on indefinitely,
and that the hopes of an early peace which had been inspired by the
various -statements of aims were not yet to be realized.

The peace parleys which had been going on at B rest-Li tovsk be
tween the Bolshevik Russians and the Ukrainians on one side and the
Teutonic Allies on the other have continued at intervals since our
last review. First one side, and then the other, has journeyed
back to Petrograd or Berlin as the case might be, for consultation
with superiors, and to make explanation or receive orders. It has been
reported at different times that each side had broken off the negotia
tions. But if either side ever did, it has soon repaired the break, and
when the original armistice expired it was renewed for one month
more on Russian initiative.

Meantime the Russians have been encountering more and more
difficulties and divisions at home, and the Teutonic Allies have been
progressing in arrogance and rapacity, as was to have been expected.
Having at first declared their acceptance of the Russian principles of
" no annexations and no indemnities," the Germans were forced to
meet a practical application of the formula in the case of the Russian
territories now held in German occupation. Their answer was a flat
refusal. They declined to evacuate these territories, as contemplated
in the first and second items of the Russian terms of peace. They said
that these territories " already had local authorities who had declared
in favor of breaking away from Russia, and such decision should be
regarded as valid." They did not regard it as necessary to remark
that these local authorities had been installed by German military
forces and now function under German control. Neither the Bolshe-
viki nor any one else was fooled by these tactics.

On January 10 the Teutonic negotiators solemnly announced the
withdrawal of their offer to conclude a general peace without forcible
annexations and indemnities on the ground that the Allies had not
accepted it. Therefore the responsibility for continuing the war rests —
from the German point of view — entirely on the Entente Powers.

At this writing the Teutonic negotiators are again in Berlin for
conference and there is renewed suggestion of a rupture of the nego
tiations.

462 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

This month opened with Mr. Lloyd George's statement of British
war aims. It was made on January 5, before the British Trade Union
conference. The terms specified were closely similar to those of pre
vious declarations. The British are not fighting, he said, to crush
Germany, but it will be much more easy to negotiate peace with a lib
eralized Government. Belgium must be restored, politically, territori
ally and economically, with such reparation as can be made for the
devastation of her towns and provinces. Serbia, Roumania, Montenegro
and the others similarly to be restored. And the British will stand
by France to the death for the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine.

The Lloyd George statement was accepted as satisfactory by Brit
ish labor and by Britain's allies. Three days later, on January 8,
President Wilson went before Congress and delivered the most care
fully itemized and specific statement of peace conditions that has come
from any of the belligerent statesmen. He voiced again his distrust
of the German rulers and demanded to know for whom the negotiators
at Brest-Litovsk spoke — the " spirit and intention of the liberal leaders
and parties of Germany, or those who resist and defy that spirit and
intention and insist upon conquest and subjugation?" His programme
of world peace contained fourteen paragraphs: 1, open diplomacy;
2, freedom of navigation, in peace and in war; 3, removal of inter
national economic barriers ; 4, reduction of national armaments ; 5, ab
solutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, the interests of
the population concerned having equal weight with Governmental
claims; 6, evacuation of all Russian territory and such settlement of
all questions affecting Russia as will give her unembarrassed oppor
tunity for independent determination of her political development and
national policy ; 7, Belgium evacuated and restored ; 8, Alsace-Lorraine
restored to France; 9, Italian frontiers readjusted; 10, the peoples of
Austria-Hungary accorded freest opportunity for autonomous de
velopment; 11, Roumania, Serbia and Montenegro evacuated; occu
pied territories restored; Serbia to have access to the sea and the
political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the
Balkan States to be guaranteed internationally; 12, Turkey to be
assured sovereignty of Turkish portions of Ottoman Empire, but other
nationalities now under Turkish rule to have unmolested opportunity
for autonomous development, Dardanelles to be free for all nations
under international guarantee; 13, an independent Polish State; 14,
an international league for peace.

The entire Allied world endorsed the President's statement of peace
conditions. British labor especially approved. In Germany it aroused
furious anger, and the newspapers, which are under Government con
trol, published it in garbled or distorted form or not at all.

Count von Hertling and Count Czernin replied to the Wilson and
Lloyd George speeches on the same day, January 24. The German
Chancellor spoke before the Main Committee of the Reichstag, and
the Austrian Premier before the Reichsrat. Count Hertling made his
reply specific, taking up the President's terms paragraph by paragraph.
To the first five he professed adherence, but explained as to number 2
that it would be highly important for England to give up Gibraltar,
Malta, Aden, Hong-Kong, the Falkland Islands and other " strongly

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 463

fortified naval bases on important international routes." He suggested
that " practical realization " of number 5 " will encounter some diffi
culties." As to number 6 — the evacuation of Russia — Count Hertling
said that since the Entente had refused to join in the negotiations
within the specified period of ten days he must " decline to allow any
subsequent interference." The Belgian question, number 7 in Mr.
Wilson's programme, Count Hertling said " belongs to those questions
the details of which are to be settled by negotiation at the peace con
ference." As to Alsace-Lorraine he said : " I can only again expressly
accentuate the fact that there can never be a question of dismember
ment of imperial territory." Numbers 9, 10 and 11 Count Hertling
left to Austria-Hungary, with the remark that where German inter
ests were concerned " we shall defend them most energetically."
Number 12, he said, concerned only " our loyal, brave ally, Turkey."
He added that the integrity of Turkey and the safeguarding of her
capital " are important and vital interests of the German Empire also,"
and Turkey could count on Germany's energetic support. The Polish
question, Mr. Wilson's number 13, was for Poland, Germany and Aus
tria to decide. " We are on the road to this goal," said Hertling. As
to the league of nations, " if it proves on closer examination to be con
ceived in a spirit of complete justice and impartiality toward all," Ger
many was ready, when all the other questions have been settled, to
" begin the examination of the basis of such a band of nations."

Count Czernin also made a detailed reply to Mr. Wilson, consider
ing the President's terms paragraph by paragraph. In general the
Austrian Premier was far more ready to talk peace on the Wilson
basis — or sought to convey that impression. " Our views are identi
cal " he said, " not only on the broad principles regarding a new
organization of the world after the war, but also on several concrete
questions, and differences which still exist do not seem to me to be so
great that a conversation regarding them would not lead to enlighten
ment and a rapprochement." Count Czernin added that this situation
tempted him to ask " if an exchange of ideas between the two Powers
could not be the point of departure for a personal conversation among
all States which have not yet joined in peace negotiations."

But while all this looked on the surface very much as if Austria
would really like to begin effective peace conversations, there was a
reference to Austria's determination to stand by her allies, especially
Germany, which destroyed the value of Count Czernin's otherwise
ostensibly peaceful discourse. He said that Austria-Hungary, " faith
ful to her engagement to fight to the end in defence of her allies, will
defend the possessions of her war allies as she would her own."

Which brings the peace question back to the same old proposition
of beating Germany.

There was one sentence in Count Hertling's speech which disclosed
the interesting fact that the attitude of the world with respect to Ger
many has at last penetrated German intelligence. He said that the
conception of Germany's enemies " finds expression as if we were the
guilty who must do penance and promise improvement." And he
added : " The leaders of the Entente must first renounce this stand
point and this deception."

464 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

In those two paragraphs the reason is fully set forth for the unani
mous decision of the Entente Supreme War Council that the war
must go on. As long as Germany is correctly interpreted by that speech
of Hertling's and as long as Austria will support Germany as Czernin
asserted, there is nothing to dp but bring up the guns, and that is just
what American preparation aims at.

Meantime there have been continued reports from both Austria
and Germany of domestic upheavals which may or may not portend
an early collapse of their present iron control. For more than a fort
night the news reports have dealt with labor demonstrations and strikes
in Vienna, Berlin and other important cities and towns of both Germany
and Austria. The workmen were represented as demanding " peace
and bread." The reports from Vienna were coupled with news of
the fall of the Cabinet. In Germany, where government control of the
press is supreme, the conflict of reports was such as to confuse the
situation. No accurate line on the extent of the upheaval was obtain
able. The military forces were relied upon to put down the strikes,
and there were threats of shooting strikers. There were also reports
that strikers were warned to go back to work or take their chances
with the army. At all events German iron discipline seems to have
regained the mastery, if, indeed, it ever was really threatened.

There have been two domestic battles of absorbing interest during
the month, both connected with our preparation for a larger measure
of participation in the fighting on land later. One was a fight with
the forces of nature as well as of organization and inefficiency in the
effort to end the transportation congestion, and by moving both coal
and freight get the industry and transportation of the country once
more on something like a going basis. The other was a fight that
developed in the Senate and was aimed against the deadening effects
of red tape in the military organization. At this writing both fights
seem to have produced good results.

The coal and transportation situations have demanded and received
unremitting attention and effort. The Fuel Administrator and Director-
General of railroads have had to fight not only the constant production
of more freight and coal than could be transported by the railroads
under existing conditions, but also an unbroken series of snow and
other storms and of severe cold weather, the like of which is hardly
within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.

Early in the month Secretary McAdoo, the Director-General of rail
roads, had an important conference with the heads of the railroad
brotherhoods and, as the newspaper reports put it, " requested " them
to work overtime in order to help meet the shortage of labor. The
brotherhood leaders expressed a willingness to work with Mr. McAdoo
to maintain transportation efficiency. Mr. McAdoo thereupon an
nounced his intention to appoint a Wage Adjustment Commission to
take up the question of increased pay which the brotherhood men were
pressing. Later Mr. McAdoo named Secretary Lane as head of this
commission, with Interstate Commerce Commissioner McChord as an
other member together with Chief Justice J. Harry Covington of the
Supreme Court of the District of Columbia and William R. Willcox,
former member of the Public Service Commission of New York.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 465

On January 6 Mr. McAdoo issued orders doubling the demurrage
on railroad cars in order to force consignees to unload them more
promptly. On the 14th he ordered that coal for domestic use and for
vital public utilities should have first preference in shipment, with
food stuffs and coal for bunkering ships to our allies next in order.

On January 16 the Fuel Administrator ordered coal sellers to give
preference in this order: 1, railroads; 2, domestic users, hospitals, etc. ;
3, public utilities ; 4, bunkers ; 5, municipal, county and State govern
ments and public uses; 6, manufacturers of perishable foods.

At the same time the Fuel Administrator ordered a total shutdown
for five days from January 18 to 22, both inclusive, and for each Mon
day for ten weeks. This order applied east of the Mississippi and in
Minnesota and Louisiana. Dr. Garfield declared that it was necessary
in order to prevent a crisis and widespread suffering.

There was an immediate and angry protest from all parts of the
country affected by the order. Industries everywhere declared that
it was an uneconomic measure and would have disastrous effects, en
tailing great loss upon industry and hardship upon working men whom
it would deprive of wages aggregating millions of dollars. Dr. Garfield
insisted on enforcing his order however, and was supported by Presi
dent Wilson. The Senate adopted a resolution requesting the Fuel
Administration to postpone the order, but it went into effect just a
quarter of an hour before the Senate Resolution reached Dr. Garfield.

The vigorous efforts to relieve the coal famine in New York and
the New England States were making some headway, despite the
severity of the weather, and this closing order gave further assistance
until there was talk of rescinding the order for further Monday clos
ing. When the order was issued more than a hundred steamships
were held in port for lack of bunker coal. In the first two weeks more
than 75 of these ships received the necessary supplies, and this greatly
improved the ocean transportation situation. The fact appears to have
been that the industrial production of the country was greater than
the available ships could transport, especially when they were delayed
by lack of bunker coal.

On January 4 President Wilson went before Congress and delivered
a message urging legislation to complete and support the Federal con
trol of railroads undertaken as a war measure. He asked a specific
guarantee to the roads that their properties would be maintained
throughout the period of Federal control in as good repair and as com
plete equipment as at present; and that the roads should receive
equitable compensation. He recommended as the compensation basis
the average income of the three years ending June 30, 1917.

The Administration bill conforming to the President's speech was
introduced in both Senate and House, and immediately encountered
opposition because no limit was set for the period of Federal control.
Both senators and representatives believed that the law should provide
some date for the termination of Federal control, one year, or two
years after the war. Mr. McAdoo contended vigorously against such
a limitation and President Wilson supported him. But both Senate
and House committees voted for a time limit. The bill appropriates
$500,000,000 to form a revolving fund to cover expenses of control,

VOL. ccvn. — NO. 748 30

466 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

equipment, betterments, etc. The Administration is urging action on
the bill, as a means of facilitating the notation of the next Liberty
Loan, which is scheduled to come before spring. Mr. McAdoo told
a committee of Congress before which he was urging action on the
railroad bill that it would be necessary to raise about ten billions before
the end of the fiscal year. But not all that will be by loan.

The criticism of the War Department was accompanied by much
more acrimony than developed from the fight over the railroad legis
lation. This situation culminated in an attack by President Wilson
upon Senator Chamberlain, of Oregon, chairman of the Senate Com
mittee on Military Affairs. Mr. Chamberlain spoke on January 19 at
a luncheon given him in New York by the National Security League.
In the course of his extemporaneous address he said that the War
Department had " fallen down," that it had " almost ceased to func
tion " and that there was inefficiency in every department of the gov
ernment. Next day President Wilson wrote asking him if he had been
correctly quoted. Upon receiving the Senator's reply to the effect that
he had been quoted with substantial accuracy, the President issued a
statement accusing the Senator of an " astonishing and absolutely un
justifiable distortion of the truth," and adding that the Chamberlain
statement " sprang out of opposition to the Administration's whole
policy, rather than out of any serious intention to reform its practice."
The President referred to Secretary Baker as " one of the ablest pub
lic officials I have ever known."

This denunciation of Senator Chamberlain was surprising in view
of the Oregon senator's strong support of numerous Administration
measures. It was Senator Chamberlain who handled the food control
bills which were not supported by Senator Gore, the chairman of the
Committee on Agriculture. Mr. Chamberlain replied in a three-hour
speech in the Senate on January 24, in which he rehearsed some of the
evidence that had been given before his committee in the hearings OR
War Department conduct which it had been conducting for some time.
It was at these hearings that the inefficiency in the Ordnance and
Quartermaster's bureaus, and in other War Department bureaus was
brought out.

These hearings had resulted in the preparation by the Senate Com
mittee of two bills, one providing for the creation of a war cabinet of
three, and the other for the appointment of a director of munitions.
Both bills were strongly opposed by the Administration and Secretary
Baker. Mr. Baker had appeared before the committee in these hear
ings, and had defended his department, but in a way which lent color
to the belief that he was not sufficiently impressed with the size and
importance of the task before his department. His appearance had
rather increased the demand in the committee for the legislation.

Senator Chamberlain's speech in reply to the President made a
profound impression. He declared that the President did not know
the truth as it had been presented to his committee, and he gave official
figures to show the shortages of clothing, and the deaths in the train
ing camps in which Surgeon General Gorgas had testified there were
unsanitary conditions and lack of proper clothing.

Secretary Baker promptly requested another opportunity to appear

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 467

before the committee and present additional information. He did ap
pear on January 28, and produced a statement which made a much
better effect in its showing of the accomplishments of the War Depart
ment. He did not contend that mistakes had not been made, but that
when discovered they had been corrected and were not repeated. Also
he declared that an immense amount of work had been accomplished,
and that no army of such size had ever been raised and equipped so
quickly before. He said we should have half a million men in France
by spring and a million more ready to go. Afterward Senator Cham
berlain lunched with Mr. Baker, and there were indications that an
agreement might be reached as to the director of munitions bill. But
Administration opposition to the war cabinet measure was unremit
ting. Mr. Baker did appoint a " surveyor general of purchases " and
gave the place to Mr. Stettinius, who had been the chief purchasing
agent for the Allies before we entered the war. But it was pointed out
that the new surveyor of purchases was without the real authority
which alone could give him solid ground for success.

By way of pleasing contrast the House committee which investi
gated the navy reported in terms of the highest praise of its work,
commending its efficiency and achievements. Notwithstanding the
tremendously increased demands upon it, said the report, it was work
ing smoothly and harmoniously and with great efficiency.

Provost Marshal General Crowder announced that more than a
million men in class 1 of the draft registrants had been accepted for
service, and that the yearly class of young men reaching the age of 21,
who will be made liable for military duty under pending legislation,
will number more than 700,000. General Crowder estimates that nearly
all these men will be available for military service, and that they
will be sufficient to meet all demands upon us for troops. So the
tenth month marked substantial gain in accomplishment and real
improvement in prospects.

(This record is as of February 6 and is to be continued)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

OUR DEFECTIVE WAR MACHINE

SIR, — Latterly no one has had to say, with the member of Congress
who was reproached for not standing by the President, " I would gladly
stand by him if I could only find out where he stands." True, during
four years, we were all taught to be pacifists, but the nation is no longer
" too proud to fight " and " peace without victory " is to-day unthinkable.
I leave it to others to explain this remarkable transition, but I pray God
that the first tuition did not make us a nation of slackers, if not of cowards !
In every cantonment there are men who refuse to fight, to drill, or even
to wear the uniform; and the departments of the Capital are filled to
overflowing with young officers and civilian clerks between 21 and 81.
The Y. M. C. A. workers, including the President's son-in-law, are nearly
all of draft age. He who doubts this assertion — let him go and see for
himself ! In the much-investigated Ordnance Department, there are over
4,000 employees where there were 90 before the war. This is a fact,
however incredible it may seem. And all other offices are similarly over
crowded with young and inexperienced men. Anything rather than shoul
der a rifle and fight ! Why are not retired officers and women substituted
for them?

This condition, and the multiplicity of councils and boards — advisory,
defensive and what not — these are the true causes of the slow progress of
the War Department. In the Navy Department these conditions do not
obtain to the same degree; hence less fault is found. Moreover, the Navy
and Marine Corps have been increased by only 100,000 men — the Army
by 1,000,000.

But why should a successful broker upon the floor of the Stock Ex
change be made a member of the Council of National Defense? Or a
College President be placed in charge of the fuel distribution? Why
should a pronounced pacifist, a clever young lawyer of Cleveland, be Sec
retary of War, in time of war? And why should another pacifist, a third-
rate editor of a third-rate paper of a third-rate town of a third-rate State,
be Secretary of the Navy?

In times of peace, this playing of politics or rewarding of one's per
sonal friends, would make little difference; but in the face of a national
crisis, it seems little less than criminal. When the existence of a state of
war was declared last April, there were two officers so pre-eminently
qualified for Secretary of War and for Secretary of the Navy, that it is
difficult to comprehend how they could have been overlooked. General
Goethals, after the administrative and executive ability displayed in the
construction of the Panama Canal, was thought to be the inevitable choice

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 469

for the first position ; and Admiral Fiske, inventor and naval expert, upon
whose shoulders the mantle of the lamented Mahan seemed to have fallen,
for the second. We should have a different tale to tell, had this been
done. Instead, Goethals was hitched to a Pacific Coast politician, a lawyer
and counseller for the lumber league of that region, with whom he refused
to pull in harness. Admiral Capps succeeded Goethals and Admiral Har
ris succeeded Admiral Capps. Both Admirals have resigned, and up to
date the Shipping Board, from which so much was expected, has been a
disaster. Whose fault? Nine months of war have passed and little or
nothing tangible has been accomplished.

What have we really got to show for our enormous expenditures of
nearly twenty billions of dollars? Hot air, certainly; plenty of it! In
deed, we appear to be trying to spend, if not to waste, as quickly as
possible. The " cost plus 10% " system is an outrageous swindle. The
more the contractor can spend or waste, the more he will receive. Very
fine! Go to one of our camps and see how it works. Is it, after all, a
big bluff, as the Germans say ? Does the Administration hope to frighten
them into surrender by our huge but slow preparation? If not, why this
extreme and prolonged deliberateness ? Who is responsible?

General Goethals is coming into his own, perhaps, as Quartermaster
General, but would have made a better Chief of Staff. So would General
Wood, another good soldier. If, as Napoleon said, armies crawled on
their bellies to-day, General Bliss^ the present incumbent, would do bet
ter as a Commissary of Subsistence, the Corps of his predilection. Ad
miral Fiske appears to be permanently shelved. Meanwhile, the chief
exploits of the Secretary of the Navy have been the puerile prohibition
in the service of the use of prophylactics against venereal diseases, of
erotic tattooing, or of the enlistment of sailors having amatory figures
(" September Morns ") indelibly marked upon their skin (a favorite
device of " Old Salts ") and of the acceptance of donations from the
Navy League for sailors or of the entrance of the members thereof to
Navy Yards. Truly an enviable record!

I have no desire or intention to assail the President, whose many ad
mirable qualities I was among the first to recognize and praise, but whose
fatal disposition to make mediocre appointments I deplore. Unless the
nation is completely hypnotized, something must be done quickly or we
shall lose the war by inaction. Let us visualize present conditions :

President Wilson:

College Professor and Pres
ident; original Pacifist.

Secretary Baker:
Lawyer and Pacifist.

Secretary Daniels:
Editor and Pacifist.

V
E
R

Emperor William:

Lifelong Sailor and Soldier

and Ruler.
General von Hindenburg:

Lifelong Soldier.
Admiral von Tirpitz:

Lifelong Sailor and Soldier.

REMEMBER: these are the men who respectively direct opposing war
policies ! We shall win — we must win ; but at what sacrifice of lives and
treasure, perhaps — even with the assistance of Colonel House of Texas !

CHARLES SMITH.

NEW YORK CITY.

470 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

ABOUT A GREAT RACE

SIR, — I read with interest the article in the December issue of THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW entitled, I Am a Jew. It takes me back in
reminiscence through many phases of my own experience. I am therefore
tempted to draft a few comments by way of observation and discussion.

The life phases that thinking men pass through are determined by
the cast of their mind and by environment. Certain broad generalizations,
however, will cover the requirements of a general statement.

It is almost a truism to say that one cannot with wholesomeness live
a life of strict materialism any more than a life of strict spirituality. The
one comprehends only the material or animal side of human nature and
leads to selfishness and forms of savagery. The other comprehends only
the theoretical or emotional side of human nature.

Wholesomeness results from a clear knowledge of the whole of human
life. The wants of the physical and those of the spiritual presuppose the
activities that supply these wants. Neither can stand alone, nor can the
activities they represent be any more separated.

One does not have to be a Jew to recognize emptiness in Western
civilization, nor does one have to be a Gentile to recognize failings and
weaknesses in Oriental life. Men of all races and ages have found
occasion to criticise the emptiness of things in general. But emptiness
is more a state of mind than it is a condition of life. A man is not
trained who has not learned to find contentment within his own mind, who
cannot retire within this sanctuary when occasion requires.

While still a boy I saturated my mind with Emerson and Marcus
Aurelius. Later, through my inevitable contact with commerce, I revised
my earlier interpretations of business and life values in general. I started
with very one-sided notions of spiritual values. I had vision but no per
spective. For years it never occurred to me that matter and spirit, so
to speak, are counterparts in all living and thinking. They are the mas
culine and feminine, the primary and secondary, the action and reflection
of our existence. Neither by itself can possibly represent a normal con
dition. But in union they bring poise and contentment. In their fusion we
find health.

Now for the political and social. The present aim of the German
Government, say, compared with the settled trend of all English political
ideals, makes it easy to decide which ideal one prefers to live under and
support. The world war ought to lead all men away from the political
side of race existence toward the political ideal of freedom. The idea
becomes greater than any race because it comprehends all races. No
race can rightfully dominate other races save through the dominance of
superior ideals. Nor can any one race hold itself apart from other races
without suffering politically and socially. And rightfully so. Thinking
men make themselves citizens of the world. Intellectually they cease to
be American or English or Jewish or German. To approve and foster
the political ideals of England and France, and of those other races that
are struggling toward this goal, should bring pleasure and satisfaction to
every thinking man. Failure or refusal to affiliate with men of all races
who aspire to these political ideals will cause any man to grow stale and
sour through very isolation. Ideas, not blood, are what count.

Politically and socially your race suffers because it has refused to be-

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 471

come a part of other races in blood and in cooperation. True, you have
created a book known as the Bible; but not even a bible comprehends the
whole of what we know as modern life. A bible will not operate the
business of a nation nor of a world. The so-called spiritual things in
human nature must join themselves to the inevitable programme of eco
nomic life to accomplish a rounded purpose.

If you insist that God made the Jewish race, you must admit the
same of other races. All have varying capacities and deficiencies. But
all men should be able to find mental food and spiritual refreshment in
any country devoted to political freedom, and in working out with such
peoples the varied problems of further human elevation.

Americans are a chosen people in that they have put into operation
certain social and political principles, and share these principles and
privileges freely with all nations. That constitutes the superiority of
America. And so long as America maintains this spirit we will remain
superior to all races as races, because we perpetuate a common brother
hood regardless of race or creed. We aspire to universal life.

I like the sentiment expressed by Marcus Aurelius : " We are all
made for cooperation, like the hands and the feet, and the upper and
lower teeth." Commerce, in so far as it ministers to human wants, is a
thoroughly spiritual employment. Any task that is necessary to the
maintenance of the social welfare is noble labor. The spirit one brings
to one's task represents the measure of one's cooperation in the work of
the world. And this, in turn, becomes the measure of a man.

The spirit of cooperation is loftier than the spirit of race. To refuse
to become a unit in the amalgam of modern life is to be caught in the
eddy, while the stream of progress and endeavor sweeps onward.

Races have their phases and their periods of transition. An exces
sively commercial era may be material to a fault. Or it may, like the
trend now strongly evident in America, represent a robust practical blend
ing of the two essentials of wholesome living.

I am proud of my race. But I am prouder of its world ideals, and
its practical sense in carrying them forward in a practical manner for the
betterment of human existence.

A READER.

NEW YORK CITY.

THE HEBREW AND THE MODERN WORLD

SIR, — Great good can come from discussion of the place in the world
occupied by the Hebrew, and the article in the December number of
your magazine was a truthful and pitiable word picture of the struggle
going on in the minds of that people. Suffering is always worthy of
respect and alleviation, and only more so when not brought about by
weakness or error.

The mystery to me is that the central reason for the condition that
has partially ostracized the Jew is not clear to every man that has given
the matter consideration, be he Jew or Gentile. Certainly, if in the
weak judgment of man there is an unpardonable sin, it is to differ. Like
begets like, and holds for its progeny an unlimited love. Fondly to his
breast, through the generations, the Jew has hugged the delusion that

472 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

he is of the chosen of God. Had he, himself, thought of himself as an
unmarked bit of humanity, he today would be like unto others, and such
merit as he possessed would be an element in the make-up of the com
mon man.

The Jew is suffering from a chronic state of the same malady that
in the German has become acute, and is fast taking from him the splendid
strength that might have been a mighty factor in making the world a
better home for man.

If the Jew will curb his puny pride, drop the superstition that he
is a special messenger of God, and learn not to be thankful that he is
not as others, then sooner or later the Gentile will drop his silly perse
cution of the individual of today for what was done in years gone by
by a people who let a few fear-driven priests, operating under the first
law of nature, do their thinking for them.

PRINEVILLE, ORE. P. C. GARRISON.

SOUND VIEWS OF A PLAIN MAN

SIR, — I have been reading your January number and am moved to ex
press the views of a plain man, who may be nameless, hence with no
ulterior motives, etc.

I regarded your excoriation of the Kaiser in the December number as
the most absolutely red-blooded American expression so far, but alas, I
seem to be somewhat alone in my opinions and views. There is a spirit of
fat indifference and torpid stupidity on many sides. Who that remembers
the Nation springing to arms in defense of poor Cuba can but wonder at
our attitude for two years before and since entering the war. Why, oh,
why ! But enough. Something has changed with the American people. As
to Roosevelt. Why, oh, why, again. Even his opponents would like to see
him at the head of 500,000 volunteers in France who would follow him
like a knight of old. But something which a common plain man cannot
fathom keeps this high-minded, energetic, ardent patriot buried. At that,
I am strictly against his idea of keeping up military training after the
war. That is why I understand we are in this war, to police the world
in future with the overwhelming power of the Entente so that there need
be no strictly military programmes, except as police force and for gym
nastic results, etc.

You say nothing about aeroplanes, and this is, I think, our most ter
rible mistake. If we had been ready with unnumbered thousands of aero
planes, bombists, etc., several months ago, we could have pulverized Ger
man frontiers to splinters, of course at frightful loss of men and machines,
but small compared to this dragging, undecisive warfare. But it " takes
ten years for ideas to penetrate." To build a ship takes six months or a
year, with labor troubles, shipways to prepare, material to commandeer,
etc., to endless confusion. Aeroplanes can be turned out anywhere and
everywhere to standard literally in thousands; the Allies have begged us
for them time and again, and yet we fight with Congress, and ponderous
delay goes on. We ought to have $2,000,000 more right away, and it
would be a good chance that the shipping programme could be halved with
speedy victory. The South American countries should be called on to
furnish labor; we have the money and the material; why can't Brazil
send us 100,000 skilled men? — also the other South Americans lined

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 478

up with us. Then our own country should be mobilised and put on
rations right now; don't wait until forced into it; there are unnumbered
thousands yet who should be put to war work ; quick, decisive action of the
old forgotten American stripe is what we need. A dim feeling persists
in my mind that a few dozen stalwart Republicans, captains of industry,
might help a lot. Let us grind these bloody monsters of Prussianism until
they beg for mercy. Your term, "Unconditional Surrender," is the right
term.

SENEX.
ST. Louis, Mo.

ATTENTION, PATRIOTS !— THE NAVY NEEDS EYES

SIR, — The Navy is still in urgent need of binoculars, spy-glasses and
telescopes. The use of the submarine has so changed naval warfare that
more " eyes " are needed on every ship, in order that a constant and effi
cient lookout may be maintained. Sextants and chronometers are also
urgently required.

Heretofore, the United States has been obliged to rely almost entirely
upon foreign countries for its supply of such articles. These channels of
supply are now closed, and as no stock is on hand in this country to meet
the present emergency, it has become necessary to appeal to the patriotism
of private owners, to furnish " EYES FOR THE NAVY."

Several weeks ago, an appeal was made through the daily press, result
ing in the receipt of over 3,000 glasses of various kinds, the great majority
of which have proved satisfactory for naval use. This number, however,
is wholly insufficient, and the Navy needs many thousands more.

May I, therefore, ask your co-operation with the Navy, to impress upon
your subscribers, either editorially, pictorially or in display, by announc
ing, in addition to the above general statement, the following salient
features in connection with the Navy's call:

All articles should be securely tagged, giving the name and address of
the donor, and forwarded by mail or express to the Honorable Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, care of Naval Observatory,
Washington, D. C., so that they may be acknowledged by him.

Articles not suitable for naval use will be returned to the sender. Those
accepted will be keyed so that the name and address of the donor will be
permanently recorded at the Navy Department, and every effort will be
made to return them, with added historic interest, at the termination of the
war. It is, of course, impossible to guarantee them against damage or loss.

As the Government cannot, under the law, accept services or material
without making some payment therefor, one dollar will be paid for each
article accepted, which sum will constitute the rental price, or in the event
of loss the purchase price of such article.

Toward the end of January it is proposed to distribute throughout the
country posters making an appeal to fill this want of the Navy.

As this is a matter which depends entirely for its success upon pub
licity, I very much hope that you will feel inclined to help the Navy at
this time by assisting in any way that lies within your power.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT,
Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

474 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

A BROADER VISION

SIR, — I am only a plain woman whose opinion is not worth much, but
I recall the days when as editor of the Altruist, a small magazine, I
welcomed words of congratulation on the success of my efforts to help
the world along, and you are doing such a big thing in such a broad, big
way with your Gospel of Americanism. We are climbing by your editor
ials to heights where we can gain a broader vision of the ultimate. Once
in a while, as in your January number, you go over my head, and I
question, on first reading, the wisdom of saying certain things just now;
but just as the President gets ahead of our slow thinking and the nation
has to wait and catch up with him, sometimes through sloughs of de
spondency and deep waters, we invariably come to the other side of
Jordan into the Promised Land, and say with you, " Thank God for
Wilson ".

The impulse to write you has come from your editorial on a " Benevo
lent Despotism ". There you lead doubters and honest questioners by
beginning at their point of contact. You seem almost too much one with
them, at times, and to sustain their doubts; and sometimes I have ques
tioned whether what they did believe and "wanted to believe was not
strengthened rather than weakened by your way of putting the question.
It takes for me several readings of the finale to get fixed in my mind that
your conclusions, too briefly put, are what you are striving to prove — not
the people's argument. LAURA S. STEWART,

PHILADELPHIA, PA. Chairman War Relief Dept.,

The Needlework Guild of America.

PRAISE FROM PALMETTO BLUFF

SIR, — Thank God for Colonel Harvey and his incomparable pen!
Your December and January articles have snatched the people from their
spell of mental and moral cowardice and shaken them back to their
senses.

You are our foremost patriot and resplendent in your paganism. If
it were not for you and Colonel Roosevelt, the dolts and dunces would
sack the Republic.

It costs much to be a man, but there are compensations, and you have
had it in the approval your articles have incited. It gave me much
pleasure to distribute many copies of both numbers, and all who had
missed the numbers were grateful for my calling them to their notice.

We were just on the edge of chaos when you sounded the tocsin ! Now,
all hands are awake, and it took your intellectual courage and matchless
pen to excite the mental mutiny that now floods the land.

We have had too much mental sycophancy, and intellectual courage
seems to have oozed out of all men.

We are eagerly awaiting the February number. No pen has done so
much for manhood and civilization since Voltaire.

PALMETTO BLUFF, S. C. EDWARD SHAUGNESSY.

FROM AN AMERICAN PATRIOT

SIR, — Having read your magazine faithfully for years and joyously
during the recent months, I hasten to send you my check for renewal.
Is there any earthly thing that a woman of some intellect and aged

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 475

fifty-two can do to help? I have an only son, Divisional Bayonet In
structor at Camp Devens, and an only daughter graduating this spring
from her three years of training at the Presbyterian Hospital. I don't
want to roll bandages — although I have been complimented upon mine;
but I do want to speak or write — to help vitally — if only I can learn how
and where.

If your articles do not arouse our countrymen I know of none that
can, and the January number hits the nail squarely on the head. There
is no doubt of the popular sentiment about representative men taking
representative places, and we need them at once. This number is splendid,
editorially, and I am only sorry that I am not a man to be able to write
such caustic truths. I am merely an admirer.

BROOKLYN, N. Y. MARTHA C. INGALLS.

RECOGNIZING FUNDAMENTALS

SIR, — I am enclosing check for four dollars to renew my subscrip
tion to the REVIEW. I consider it the most ably edited magazine relating
to national and political matters of which I have any knowledge; and
your contributors are of the very highest class.

In these days, it is refreshing to read a publication which still recog
nizes fundamentals; which does not undertake to teach that no lessons
can be drawn from history, and which does recognize that there are
certain inherent and inalienable rights which neither legislators, con
gressmen nor executive officers should be permitted to ignore.

FARGO, N. D. B. F. SPALDING.

LOOKING BACKWARD

SIR, — The renewal of my subscription prompts me to state with what
pleasure I recently learned from Solomon B. Griffin, managing editor
of the Springfield Republican, that it had on its reporting staff, when
he was a youth of eighteen, Colonel Harvey, whose contributions to the
REVIEW, Mr. Griffin agrees with me, are unequalled in inspiration,
instructiveness, and clarity of expression.

SPRINGFIELD, MASS. ROBERT S. FOLSOM.

PRAYERFUL

SIR, — I note that you pray, "Thank God for Wilson". This no
doubt because his policy concerning terms of peace appeals to all liberty-
loving men. I am saying the same prayer, when inspired by this thought.
But please " keep a string on " your prayer that you may pray for the
restoration of our Government when the war is over, and we face the
problems it will leave to all Americans. CHARLES RICHARDSON.

TACOMA, WASH.

WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION NEEDS
SIR, — May I express the hope that the President will take note of

and accept your offer of service? (REVIEW, Jan. 1, 1918).

The Administration needs sympathetic, intelligent critics. It needs a

real interpreter. Your service could be splendid in those fields, and even

if no notice is taken of your current editorial, perhaps the next one, or

the one after that, will get home. I hope so.

NEW YORK CITY. FRANK L. SCHEFFEY.

476 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

THE TWO LOYALTIES

SIR, — It is a blessing and a delight to hear a word from somebody
capable of distinguishing between loyalty to a country and loyalty to
its officeholders, and any one who has the gizzard to speak it deserves
all we can give him. I hope you are going on and pioneer a way for
intelligent and self-respecting Americanism.

NEW YORK CITY. ALBERT JAY NOCK.

THE THOUGHT OF MANY

SIR, — I wish you would convey to Colonel Harvey for me my per
sonal thanks for his editorial in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for
December and January on Colonel House's commission. He expressed
in those editorials the thought of a very large number of our citizens.

CHICAGO, ILL. HARRY OLSON.

A MUCH-NEEDED WORK

SIR, — On reading your latest editorial I am moved to write you.
It is a great, and, in my judgment, a much needed piece of work. My
chief knowledge of yourself comes from the monthly visits to my library
of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. I have written you simply because
the mood is on.

NEW YORK CITY. GEORGE P. MAINS.

HITTING THE SPOT

SIR, — Your editorials in the January number, particularly as to the
services of Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Root, and Chief Justice White, hit the
right spot. Keep it up until some of the powers that be realize that we
are at war and that the lives of some of our young men may possibly be
saved if proper and timely preparation is made.

MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. FRANK R. HUBACHEK.

SERVICE

SIR, — I have read your " Thank God for Wilson " and others, and
want to offer my appreciation for all of them. I am sorry that our
men in charge do not use the great force and personal popularity of
Mr. Roosevelt. We need everything to win the great war.

I like your splendid service.

CHARLOTTE, N. C. J. W. JAMIESON.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 477

THE " WAR WEEKLY"

SIR, — Before you land in Burleson Gaol, accompanied by Senator
Chamberlain, permit me to congratulate you on your " War Weekly " and
wish " more power to your aim " and more ink to your pen. Here's my
dollar and when the mails are denied send express, my expense.

I'm late to the office through stopping to read No. 2, including the
slam at wooden ships (you'll change your mind on that), and feel that
your constructive criticism should do a world of good.

Your article, " Secretary Baker's Privy Council ", shows the weak
ness and incompetence which has cost us hundreds of millions of dollars,
thousands of lives and months of most valuable time. Baker must go and
quickly or else his power be taken from him as proposed by Senator
Chamberlain. Chamberlain is known and respected by the whole Pacific
Coast, regardless of party, as an able, honest man. The President has
been most unwise in alienating him in the endeavor to support Baker.

BELLINGHAM, WASH. J. J. DONOVAN.

SIR, — I am enclosing checks for a renewal to THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW, as we are unable to keep house or bake bread without it; also
for The War Weekly.

I am a Republican and a staunch one, but the views of Colonel Harvey
appeal to me very strongly and I am a staunch supporter of Woodrow
Wilson since he has changed his position and now stands for the pro
tection of Americans and a World Policy for the protection of ALL.

I consider that Colonel Harvey and Henry Watterson are the two
greatest world editors living; any thing from either of them commands
the attention of the patriotic and the admiration of the liberty-loving.
All hail to both!

ARKANSAS CITY, KAN. C. T. ATKINSON.

SIR, — I herewith enclose you my check for $5, for which please send
me for one year THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW and your weekly publi
cation, or supplement, summarizing the war news. I received as a sample
copy the first issue of this weekly publication and hope you will send me
all that have appeared since the first issue, as I am so well pleased with
it that I do not want to miss any of them.

NASHVILLE, TENN. J. M. ANDERSON.

SIR, — Enclosed herewith please find postal money order for which
kindly send me THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, commencing with the
Febuary number, and THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW War Weekly, com
mencing with its first copy, both for one year.

I do not want to lose any of Colonel Harvey's editorials. He has
been, and is, if not the best, one of my best teachers of Americanism, and
to hear periodically a strong and honest American voice is necessary in a
place where the colonial policy, or the Latin-American policy of the
Government do not deserve the least commendation.

SAN JUAN, PORTO Rico. S. SIRAGUSA.

478 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

SIR, — As a constant subscriber and reader of THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW for at least thirty years past, I take pleasure in enclosing my
subscription to the War Weekly, which you will begin publishing imme
diately after January 1, as per announcement on page 1 of the January
issue of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

The purpose of this new publication is a most worthy and timely one,
and I am exceedingly gratified that THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW has
decided to undertake it.

PITTSBURG, PA. JOSEPH W. MARSH.

SIR, — Personally, I greatly regret the War Weekly is not to have
greater circulation. The editorials in the REVIEW are the ablest and most
thought provoking discussions of current events I know of, and would be
of immense benefit to public opinion if they could be more widely dis
tributed. Can't anything be done to send the War Weekly widespread if
it is to contain discussions of equal merit?

EVANSTON, ILL. T. E. QUISENBERRY.

SIR,— rKindly send me THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for a year,
with the War Weekly. I have the January number of THE REVIEW, so
let my subscription begin with the February number, but would like the
Weekly from its first issue. I feel that it will do me good, and help me
to express my feelings — or help me by expressing my feelings more
strongly than a private individual and a spinster from Boston-wards is
expected to do. I welcome the Weekly idea.

NEWTON, MASS. ELIZABETH FYFFE.

SIR, — Enclosed find my subscription for the War Weekly. Please
start my subscription with the first issue. I do not wish to miss anything,
and if every issue of the Weekly proves as interesting as each issue of the
REVIEW it is going to be a real beacon. Your editorials in the REVIEW are
each one an oasis in the desert of journalism; refreshing, invigorating and
more than all, filling one with hope for the future. May you live long
and die happy.

DAYTON, OHIO. GEORGE W. MILLER.

SIR, — I enclose herewith my subscription for the War Weekly by
George Harvey.

Now I feel confident that the war is going to be prosecuted to a suc
cessful issue.

I am a regular subscriber to THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, and at
the expiration of my present subscription the same will be gleefully
renewed.

MADISON, Wis. GEORGE A. BOISSARD.

SIR, — Enclosed please find one dollar to pay for the War Weekly, in
connection with the REVIEW to my address.

I was so delighted by the contents of the sample copy just received
that I am unable to resist the temptation of spending another dollar
on the pungent little Weekly.

HANSKA, MINN. C. AHLNESS.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 479

SIR, — I think my subscription is about out. Please credit me with
five dollars for THE REVIEW and the new annex — I forgot its name — I
read it from cover to cover. Colonel Harvey is as good as ever to me and
having him oftener is worth a lot more. More power to his arm!

SHARON, CONN. JEROME STUART CHAFFEE.

SIR, — I enclose check for renewal of my subscription to the REVIEW
and for the War Weekly. I have often felt that once a month was too
seldom to hear from Colonel Harvey, and I am delighted at the oppor
tunity of getting this weekly review.

EAGLE SPRINGS, N. C. B. F. BUTLER.

SIR, — I congratulate you that you are about to commence publishing
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW'S War Weekly.

Perhaps this will fill the void thousands of readers have felt since the
discontinuance of Colonel Harvey's editorship of Harper's Weekly.
Here's hoping that it will.

CHATTANOOGA, TENN. JOE V. WILLIAMS.

SIR, — Last night at dinner two of the men got to talking of THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW WAR WEEKLY and wondered how they could
get it. I told them it went only to subscribers of THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW. They hauled out five dollars each, and these bills I enclose.

INDIANAPOLIS, IND. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE.

SIR, — Enclosed please find one dollar in payment for a year's sub
scription to THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW WAR WEEKLY. I only
wish you had begun it a year or two years ago.

CEDAR FALLS, IOWA. EUNICE H. OVERMAN.

SIR, — The first one is fine. Keep it up. It is Capital! If you can
keep the same " Pep " in all of them that you have in the first one you
will be furnishing a distinct contribution to NEWSPAPER WAR INTELLI
GENCE. CHARLES WENTWORTH.

ST. JOSEPH, Mo.

SIR, — Please put me down for subscription to the new War Weekly.
The sample is great. But I might have known, as I did in my inmost
knowledge box, that whatever George Harvey promises will be performed
in double measure. Here's power, and more power, to his arm !

LANCASTER, PA. GEORGE F. MULL.

SIR, — I am enclosing you herewith check for one dollar for your new
publication, the War Weekly.

I don't care to miss any of Colonel Harvey's editorials, especially
concerning the conduct of this war.

ALBEMARLE, N. C. JOHN D. SPINKS.

480 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

SIR, — I enclose my check for a year's subscription to THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW'S War Weekly. I am sure I can afford to miss nothing
from Colonel Harvey's able pen. I could not get along without the
REVIEW.

LEICESTER, MASS. FRANCIS E. SMITH.

SIR, — I enclose one dollar for a year's subscription for your War
Weekly. I am a subscriber for the REVIEW for 1918 at above address.

Congratulations. I want to hear from you weekly. A whole month
is too long between " drinks ".

ALBANY, N. Y. GEORGE MCLAUGHLIN.

liSic i

EARL READING
THE NEW BRITISH AMBASSADOR

Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine aaetur

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

APRIL, 1918

VICTORY— PEACE— JUSTICE

OUR FIRST YEAR IN THE GREAT WAR

ANOTHER year! — another deadly Now!

Another mighty Empire overthrown!

And We are left, or shall be left, alone;
The last that dare to struggle with the Foe.
'Tis well! from this day forward we shall know

That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought;
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low.

No American poet, if one did live today, could say with
truth as Wordsworth said of his countrymen a century ago,
that " We are left, or shall be left, alone; the last that dare
to struggle with the Foe " ; never before, praise be to God,
were England's hearts of oak less daunted or the souls of
France more valiant. And yet, indeed, " 'Tis well," if at
last, as we stand upon the threshold of " another year/' dis
tressed if not dismayed by the spectacle of " Another mighty
Empire overthrown," we know —

"That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought"

How blind we were this one short year ago! We had
elected to keep out of the war. " All the while," said the
President in his second inaugural address, " we have been
conscious that we were not part of it," and, even though

482 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

we should " be drawn on, by circumstances, to a more active
assertion of our rights and a more immediate association
with the great struggle itself," the " shadows that now lie
dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk
with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves."
As late as February 26, he had " thought that it would suf
fice to assert our neutral rights with arms " and on April 2
he felt that assurance had been added " to our hope for the
future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening "
happenings in Russia. War there needs must be, but it shall
be an academic war and soon ended — this was the great illu
sion pressed, with utmost good faith, no doubt, for months
and months, by the President and his associates upon the
minds of the people. We say it in no captious spirit but
we say it, — as a fact which has been attended by consequences
whose continuance and repetition must be averted in the
future if the world is to be saved.

We have been at war a year, come April 6 — technically
and confessedly, though Germany had been waging war
against us for many months before. What have we accom
plished in that year?

In the first place, we have suffered disillusionment. We
have indeed suffered that in several respects. One relates to
our prestige and authority in the world. There were those —
Ilium fuit! — who thought, or who thought that they thought,
that no nation in the world would dare to stand up against
us. Let the United States so much as threaten to take a
hand, and the offending nation would incontinently drop its
guns and raise the white flag of unconditional surrender. It
may be that such was the case at some point in our history.
What is certain is, that it was not the case in April, 1917.
It may be that such might have been the case then, if we had
acted differently during the few preceding years. But we
had not acted differently. And so Germany refused to be
scared at the prospect of having to fight us in addition to the
other Allies. On the contrary, she regarded our advent
among the belligerents with at least an affectation of uncon
cern if not of contempt.

Now it may be that Germany made a mistake in so doing;
just as she did when she spoke so slightly of " Britain's con
temptible little army." We rather think that before the end
is reached the Huns will find that it was a very serious thing

VICTORY— PEACE— JUSTICE 483

to them for America to enter the war. Yet now, as the net
result of the first year of our participation, what is there to
show that Germany underrated us or that we deserved the
prestige which the event proved we had not?

In another respect we have suffered disillusionment. This
year has demonstrated that despite the President's ill-advised
protestation that "we have not been neglectful" all that
was said about our unpreparedness and about the urgent
need of preparation, was true, and not only true but most
tremendously timely and pertinent. It is officially confessed
that we were grossly and grotesquely unprepared; and that
even in the tense weeks between our severance of relations
with Germany and the actual declaration of war, when it was
obvious that the chances were a thousand to one that we
should very soon be at war, even then there was scarcely a
single prudent and resolute step taken toward preparation.

Indeed, after the declaration of war lack of preparation
continued to prevail. Money in plenty was provided, and
the Administration was invested with such power as never
was exercised before save by a dictator or a czar. But it was
months before any adequate army began to be raised and
months more before it was equipped with the necessities; and
it was months before there was any real beginning of ship
building; though of course it was obvious to everybody from
the very beginning that men and ships were the very Alpha
and Omega of our war needs. Utter unpreparedness before
the war began, and sluggishness in making amends for that
neglect after it began; these were the two circumstances
which should have yanked us out of our fool's paradise of
dreams of formidable invincibility.

Nor can we escape the coijviction that this first year of
our war has been less effective than it should have been, be
cause of a certain irresolution — shall we say, an inclination
toward " watchful waiting "? — in what should have been the
supreme and unwavering leadership of the nation. We
would not for a moment minimize the tremendous burden
of care and responsibility which rested upon the President,
nor would we demand that every man shall have infallible
dsion and a conviction of the end from the beginning. But
we must believe that far more would have been achieved dur
ing our first year of war, and that consequently the cost of
the whole war to us in treasure and in lives would have been
greatly lessened, if there had been a greater degree of con-

484 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

stancy in policy, and less inclination toward dalliance with an
optimistic opportunism.

It is easy to understand the President's passionate yearn
ing for peace. We all share it. There is no American worthy
of the name who would not rejoice at the making of peace
to-morrow, provided it was a clean, honorable, just and
righteous peace, and not the peace of the Hun. But it surely
is evident now that our various excursions toward peace by
negotiation were, from the very beginning, as vain and futile
as the chasing of a rainbow for its hidden pot of gold. Such
adventures did not bring peace; they postponed it. They
did not embarrass the foe nor unite and strengthen our
friends, but just the opposite. Our tentative overtures or at
least suggestions of peace simply played into the hands of
Germany and strengthened her, while they gave encourage
ment and aid to the propagation of disloyalty on the Italian
front and of Bolshevikism throughout Russia. When the
war-weary troops saw month after month pass without the
striking of a single blow by the United States in the war, and
when they learned that this country was apparently seeking
a " peace without victory " through negotiation instead of
fighting, what wonder that they lost heart?

This is of course not to say that there has been nothing
good in our policy. There has been much that was worthy
of all praise. No commendation could be too high for
the President's war message of a year ago ; nor for his state
ment of our war aims and purposes of January 8 last. Those
utterances were vibrant with the true spirit of American
democracy. They were so supremely fine that it was a thou
sand pities to have them in the least degree compromised or
modified by any subsequent temporizing, explaining, or
pussy- footing. It seemed at times as though the President
were afraid of himself; afraid, that is, that he had gone too
far and shown himself too resolute, wherefore he reckoned it
prudent to hedge somewhat. And this was all the more re
grettable because in no case had the nation failed to follow his
leadership in his most advanced declarations. In all his dis
tinguished career Mr. Wilson has never made two other ad
dresses which have so instantly, spontaneously and all but
universally commanded enthusiastic popular approval and
support, as did those epochal messages of April 2, 1917, and
January 8, 1918. Why was it necessary — if we may em
ploy the paradox- — to detract from them by adding to them ?

VICTORY— PEACE— JUSTICE 485

Our efficiency in the first year of war has been impaired,
too, by what we may perhaps describe as a romantic humani-
tarianism. Our gingerly tenderness in dealing with alien
spies and domestic traitors has been such as the world has
never known before, and such as would be incredible and im
possible in any other nation. Long after the declaration of
war, enemy aliens were as free to go and come, to see and to
hear, as were our own most loyal citizens. Even after the
adult males of the tribe were subjected to some slight degree
of surveillance and restraint, " the female of the species "
remained as free as ever. And to this day the allies of our
foes are practically unrestrained. We can understand a man
being a pacifist, unwilling to sanction the imposition of cap
ital punishment upon a traitor or a spy ; but we cannot under
stand such a man's being made and kept Secretary of War.
Would a man who was particularly fond of omelettes employ
as cook one who had conscientious scruples against the break
ing of eggs?

We have been unpleasantly reminded, too, that in sordid-
ness and self-seeking Americans are " as common mortals."
We shall not say that profiteering and frauds are more pre
valent in this war than in others, but we certainly cannot say
that they are less so. We should have to go far in history
before we found a more flagrant example of — well, of ques
tionable propriety — than that of the giving of army contracts
to the brother of the Secretary of War and the bolstering up
of the job with the use of statements fittingly to be described
with Our Colonel's " shorter and uglier word." From that
example very close to the head, down through the various
grades there has been a disgusting display of sordid zeal to
make money out of the nation's needs. It was discreditable
before our year of war to seek extortionate profits in war
trade with other lands. To do so now that we ourselves are
in the war, in trade with our own Government, is discredit
able to the degree of abomination.

We should hesitate to decide off hand whether another
feature of our first year of war should be attributed to
indifference or to panic. We refer to the little short of
reckless delegation and redelegation of authority and grant
ing of power and money. Beyond question, all money and
all power and authority that are needed for the expeditious
and inexorable prosecution of the war to a victorious end
ing should be granted without grudging and without delay.

486 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

But such grants can be made without signing blank checks.
It may be that everything that has been done has been en
tirely necessary and is capable of complete justification and
was inspired by eternal wisdom; only, it would be ever so
much better to have the people persuaded of the fact instead
of asking them to take it on blind faith. " Open your mouth
and shut your eyes and I'll give you something to make you
wise " may be a very good game of childhood, but it is not
to be commended to a great nation involved in a great war.

That we have made some progress in military prepara
tion is of course not to be disputed. We have enrolled an
army, large in comparison with what it was before, though
still small in comparison with what it will have to be to win
the war. We have also now, at the end of a year, begun
to equip it with the necessities of warfare. We have a force
on the fighting line, quite competent, with the use of bor
rowed equipment, to hold a sector of that line and of course
to give a good account of itself. We have also, after months
of Denmanism, begun to build ships, with a prospect that
if there are no more strikes, and the weather is favorable,
and nobody puts moth-balls in the gasoline tank, we may
turn out this year nearly half as much tonnage as the Ger
man U-boats destroy, and a quarter as much as was prom
ised earlier in the year.

What the year has brought forth in the camps of our
enemies is a different story, and one which it is still less
pleasant to contemplate. It would be folly to dispute that
Germany has immensely improved and strengthened her
position, from both the military and the diplomatic point
of view. On the western front, indeed, she has been held
back, and at some points has been forced further back;
though nowhere between the Alps and the North Sea has
there been anything resembling a decision. Everywhere else
she has been gaining ground. She has driven the Italians
out of Austria and has in turn invaded Italy. She has sup
pressed all hostile action in the Balkans. She has conquered
Roumania and made that rich country her vassal. She has
conquered Russia, annexed all its western provinces and
made a subservient vassal of the southern provinces from
Poland to the Caucasus. She has occupied and practically
annexed Finland, and gone far toward making vassals of
all the Scandinavian kingdoms. She has secured for her
ally the Unspeakable Turk, all of Russian Armenia and

VICTORY— PEACE— JUSTICE 487

Transcaucasia, and thus has opened her way to Persia, to
Afghanistan and to the borders of British India. She has
also gained a strong and advanced foothold in Siberia, with
a threat of advancing across the continent to the Pacific coast.
In making these territorial gains Germany has enor
mously replenished her supplies for both military and civil
consumption. She has gained access to the chief granaries
of Europe and Asia; to the richest oil fields in the world; to
vast cotton plantations in Central Asia; to inexhaustible
mines of copper and platinum; to the most extensive forests
in the world. She has also nearly doubled her population by
the addition of great subject peoples, who will immensely
increase her man-power for both military and industrial pur-

Eoses. Her dream of " Mitteleuropa " is not only realized
ut is expanded into an Eurasian realm.

At the same time she has shown herself impregnable at
home. The year has been filled with wild and whirling words
about driving a wedge between the German people and their
military rulers, and about a German revolution against the
Hohenzollerns. They have been as idle as they have been
wild. The wedge has not been driven. The people have not
revolted. With the scarcity of supplies measurably relieved,
and with the stimulus of victory all along the eastern line,
the German people are to-day more united, more devoted to
the House of Hohenzollern, and more determined to prose
cute the war to a successful German peace, than they have
ever been before since the war began.

Such are some of the chief results of the first year of our
participation in the war. They are not gratifying nor flat
tering to contemplate. But they must be faced.

Happily, there is something else to be said. In spite
of all these things the spirit of this nation and of its allies is
unbroken. Never were Great Britain and France and Italy
more resolute than they are to-day. They are disappointed
at our inefficiency and delay, but that means to them simply
that they have got to hold out so much the longer before our
aid becomes effective. They have no thought of weakening,
and they would not have even though they were left to fight
the battle out alone. Equally resolute is the spirit of a saving
remnant of our own nation. For we are not all asleep, we
are not all profiteers, we are not all rainbow chasers, we are
not all infected with the poison of lafollettism. In spite of
all our blunderings and delay, there are in this country mil-

488 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

lions of quiet, resolute, clear-headed and red-blooded men,
who believe in victory over the Hun as they believe in God
Himself. They realize the awful cost, the needless cost, not
only in treasure but also in human lives, that our follies have
imposed upon us, and while they condemn the needlessness
of it they unhesitatingly and steadfastly assume the burden
and will bear it to the end.

The iridescent dream of victory in the first year has faded,
and that of victory in the second year is fading. Whether
the third or the thirty-third year be necessary, however, of
this be sure, that we shall fight it out to a clean-cut victory
for God and man over the Devil and the Hun.

But there must be no more wavering, no more palaver
ing, no more shaking of the faith of our Allies through " re
stating " greatly modified war aims ; there is nothing in the
world to do but to fight on and on in what now has come
to be a war of endurance upon substantially equal terms.

VICTORY— PEACE— Justice! That is all.

WHEREIN WASHINGTON FAILS

WE spent the month of February in Washington, and
found opinion as to the merits of our performance in the
War about equally divided between those who contemplate
with satisfaction what has been done well and those who
express their anger at what has been done badly. This divi
sion is, of course, temperamental, so far as it does not repre
sent a tacit pledge of loyalty to the political " ins " or to
the political " outs." What is extremely curious is that each
opinion is the child of Surprise. Those whose thumbs are
up for the Administration say that, in view of the novelty
and magnitude of the task, of the extreme haste demanded
by the circumstances, of our mental and material unprepar-
edness, our achievement has been surpassingly good. Those
whose thumbs are down voice their amazement that in a coun
try which has more coal, more iron, more lumber, more rail
road mileage, more food products, more machinery, more
great industrial organizations, and, by general acclamation,
more business genius than any other nation, it should not
have been possible to introduce into the conduct of the war
more order and efficiency.

WHEREIN WASHINGTON FAILS 489

When we examined the actual conditions under which
our part in the War is being directed from Washington the
only circumstance which surprised us was that anyone could
be surprised at what has occurred.

We found in Washington plenty of patriotism, plenty
of ability, plenty of enthusiasm, plenty of industry; what
was almost entirely lacking was a clear understanding of
the principles of administrative technique, or, upon a more
sinister interpretation of the facts, a general unwillingness
to apply them. It is only by one or the other of these
explanations that we can account for those shortcomings
which, with unlimited means and unlimited ability at the dis
posal of the Government, are the unmistakable symptoms
of defective organization.

There is one branch of the national service which, since
we entered the War, has been almost entirely exempt from
criticism — the Navy; and if we trace to its source the effici
ency by which it has so greatly distinguished and contradis
tinguished itself we shall find the ultimate cause of the
unsatisfactory results of the efforts made in other spheres of
duty by men not less talented, not less patriotic, not less
industrious than are those who make up the Naval personnel.

Naval efficiency is the product of two elements in naval
organization. One is the unbroken chain of responsibility
which links the Secretary of the Navy to the youngest sea
man on a submarine-chaser. There is not in the Navy a
carelessly worded document, an inaccurate coal report, or
an unoiled bearing in regard to which it is not possible to
name one particular man as the person at fault; and this
ability to place blame exactly where it belongs extends from
a defective rivet in a bulkhead to a strategic error in an
engagement at sea.

But this delicacy of functional articulation would be
worse than useless were it not for another element with
which it is closely co-ordinated, namely the extreme definite -
ness with which naval purposes and naval methods are
formulated.

Those who have devoted any thought to the general
problems of administration are familiar with the claim, so
often advanced, that naval organization cannot be taken as
a model, because the conditions to which it is adjusted are
radically different from those which other enterprises are
called upon to meet. It is, we are told, a technical service,

490 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

it is always on a war-footing, constant efficiency is imposed
upon it by the nature of its operations and is maintained by
a discipline from which there is no appeal.

Whatever force may lie in these arguments when they
are employed during peace times to excuse a failure to do
things " navy fashion," they have no force whatever when
we are at war. " Navy fashion " is not too good, and noth
ing short of it is good enough, when the price of every
inefficient act must be paid in human suffering and in human
life.

The plain fact is that Washington is not yet on a war
footing. We do not say that no part of it is on a war foot
ing, what we assert is that so large a proportion of our total
war effort is being directed in a spirit of earnest, good-
natured amateurism that we are denied the full benefit which
we ought to receive from the portion which is being directed
with skill, foresight, and promptitude. There are altogether
too many people in Washington who are redoubling their
efforts after they have forgotten what their aim is.

What we saw, what we heard, what we read satisfied us
that Washington has, up to the present, acted without ade
quate prevision of needs, without adequate information, with
out adequate definition of authority, without adequate
co-ordination of effort, without adequate fixation of respon
sibility, without adequate inspection and report on methods
and results.

The delay and confusion, the errors of commission and
of omittance, to which public attention has been directed by
Congress and by the press can be attributed to one or another
of these inadequacies, to several of them operating in malign
association, or to personal incompetence among the agents
of the Government. If it could be shown that the last named
cause had played an important part in our failure fully to
utilize the resources of the nation, the guilt would rest
squarely upon the shoulders of the Administration, which is
free to draw at will upon the experience and intelligence of
the country. We believe that it has had a share, but not a
large share, in making conditions what they are.

Of the other causes we may say that if each is in turn
applied to any set of Administrative circumstances, failure,
where it has occurred, can be traced to its general source, and
thence, by a process of elimination, to a particular group or
individual.

WHEREIN WASHINGTON FAILS 491

This fixing of responsibility is the cardinal principle of
successful administration, since it opens the road to all bet
terment ; but it avails nothing if the road remains untrodden.
If consideration for persons or for customs is to arrest the
hand of reform, if nobody's feelings are to be hurt, if no one
is to lose his position, if punishment is not to follow neglect
or reward attend upon competence, if constructive criticism
is to be branded as disloyalty, if inquiry is to be met with
unnecessary secrecy or with fussy resentment, then the effort
to improve administrative methods in the interest of economy
and efficiency is foredoomed to failure.

There is little evidence to be found in Washington that
we are to have more than a piecemeal adjustment of our
Government mechanism to the pressing needs of War. That
there is actually a science of administrative technique, that
we are confronted with few problems which have not at some
time in some country been the subject of study and report,
that every executive task, irrespective of its magnitude, is
embraced within the formula of an administrative logic,
Washington appears to be totally unconscious.

This inability to appreciate the true nature of the execu
tive element in Government is fundamental to our institu
tions. It arises from our national habit of regarding admin
istration as the twin brother of politics. We have placed
ourselves between these two figures and, through trying for
a century and a half to keep one eye fixed on each, we have
acquired that governmental squint which makes it impossible
for us to see right in front of us the area of confused aim
and conflicting interest which is the breeding ground of
political corruption and administrative inefficiency.

Nothing is more urgently required at this moment than
a thorough re-examination of the whole machinery of our
Government in the light of what has happened since 1787.

Our succeeding generations have seen Government pass
from the simple duties imposed upon it by the needs of a
primitive community to an all-embracing activity which con
cerns itself with the child at the mother's breast, with the
corpse awaiting its shroud, and with almost every circum
stance which lies between these two estates of humanity.
We have been content to believe that, in some mysterious
way, a system designed to perform little more than the
functions of the tax-collector and the policeman would bear
the strain of regulating, by means of good- will and a huge

492 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

clerical staff, the immeasurable complexities of modern life.
It is time that we emancipated ourselves from this delusion.

LABOR AND THE WAR

WHERE stands Labor in the war? The question should
not be necessary. We ask it under protest, holding that in
such a matter no classes should be recognized but the nation
should be united. The Bolsheviki may preach the devil's doc
trine of class wars, and proclaim it to be the first duty of work-
ingmen to fight against those whom they call the bourgeoisie.
We prefer the American doctrine of community of interest
between employer and employes, between capital and labor,
and among all members of the Commonwealth.

The question is raised, however. The Bolsheviki, the
lafollette, the Pacifists, the I Won't Work and other wearers
of mental motley pretend that the war was started and is
being prosecuted by wicked capitalists for their own sordid
sakes, and against the will and the interests of the " prole
tariat " ; wherefore they are in favor of inciting the " prole
tariat " of all nations to go on universal strike against the
war, and to compel immediate peace by negotiation, after the
fashion of Brest-Litovsk.

What then are the facts concerning the attitude of Labor,
or of workingmen, toward the war?

We suppose that there are no two other important coun
tries of the world, not excepting the United States, in which
Organized Labor is so influential, both subjectively and ob
jectively, as in Great Britain and France. In them it has
accomplished ten times as much for the dignity and the wel
fare of workingmen as have the far more noisy and pre
tentious Social Democrats of Germany. We may therefore
take its dicta as the mind of the world's industrialists in their
greatest social and political advancement, and in their best
estate.

There was recently held in London an international con
ference of representatives of the workingmen, or of the or
ganized labor and the political labor parties, of those coun
tries, the chief purpose of which was to consider the war, and
what should be the policy of Labor toward it and toward the
prospective terms of peace ; and it adopted a detailed declara
tion of principles and a programme of action, for the guid-

LABOR AND THE WAR 493

ance of its constituents, and for communication to the or
ganized labor of all other countries, particularly including
the Central Powers.

The first item of this instrument was significant. It was
a clean-cut and unequivocal declaration in favor of fighting
the war out to a victorious finish in order that the world may
be made safe for civilization. That was the fundamental
purpose of the Conference in supporting the continuance of
the war. No matter who won the war, the people would
have lost unless that end was assured. There followed-^a
demand for a League of Nations to enforce peace, which is
the proposal of many of the most resolute supporters of the
war in this country, and which may indeed be regarded as
primarily an American principle; the abolition of secret
diplomacy and the publication of all treaties, according to
the American practice; and the making of all Executives,
and especially all Foreign Ministers, responsible to popular
Legislatures, as they are in Great Britain and France, and
as not a few think they would better be in the United States.
The abolition of compulsory military service and the limita
tion of armaments are also demanded, but it is made clear
that they are not to be undertaken until after the ending
of the war.

The next item has to do with Belgium. The Conference
emphatically insists that a foremost condition of peace must
be Germany's reparation of her wrongs to Belgium, includ
ing payment not by all the Powers but by Germany alone
for all the damage that has been done to Belgium in the war,
and of course complete restoration of Belgian independence.
Until Germany is willing to do that, say the workingmen of
those two great industrial countries, the war must be inex
orably prosecuted.

The question of Alsace and Lorraine follows, and the
Conference insists as a matter of abstract right that if the
people of those provinces wish it, they must be reunited with
France, and thus must be annulled that crime of 1871 which
the Conference characterizes as " a brutal conquest, and
violence committed against the people."

Concerning the Balkans, they must be evacuated by the
invaders, and the various peoples must be permitted to settle
their own destinies " without regard to the imperialist pre
tensions of Austria, Hungary, Turkey, or any other state."
That means, of course, the restoration of Bosnia and Herze-

494 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

govina to Serbia, the freeing of Croatia and Slavonia, and
the cession of Transylvania to Roumania.

As for Italy, she must have Italia Irredenta restored to
her, though there must be no conquests beyond that limit.

Poland must be reconstituted in unity and independence,
with free access to the sea. Therefore Prussia and Austria
must surrender Posen and Silesia and Galicia, and Dantzig
must be again a Polish seaport. As for German annexation,
Open or disguised, of Lithuania, Livonia or Courland, that
" would be a flagrant and wholly inadmissible violation of
international law." Since the Conference adopted that dec
laration, Germany has in fact annexed all three of those
provinces, wherefore the proletariat of Great Britain and
France are resolved to prosecute the war until that act is
undone.

For the Jews, there should be established for them a free
state in Palestine, under international guarantee, such as
Great Britain has already promised. Armenia, Mesopo
tamia and Arabia must not be put back under Turkish
tyranny — as Germany has since done with Armenia. Aus
tria-Hungary is not necessarily to be dismembered, but if
the Jugo-Slavs and Czecho- Slovaks want to be free and in
dependent, they should have that right. Finally, the African
and other colonies are to be disposed of after due deliberation
by the peace conference, in which " the communities in their
neighborhood will be entitled to take part."

Such are the deliberate judgments of the freely chosen
representatives of the millions of industrialists of Great
Britain and France. They accord closely with the views
already expressed by Mr. Gompers and other authoritative
American labor leaders. They demonstrate unerringly the
substantial unity of all so-called classes in these three coun
tries, concerning the prosecution of the war and the essential
terms of peace. Organized labor and the national govern
ments are in complete accord.

We insist, then, that these declarations are supremely
entitled to be regarded as the real voice of the world's work-
ingmen. We know of no reason why the words of a German
workingman, with the fear of lese-majeste before him and
with a Boche bayonet potentially at his throat, should be
esteemed as more authentic than that of an Englishman, a
Frenchman or an American. We have never heard of any
degree of enlightenment and advancement in Russia beyond

THE JAP OR THE HUN ? 495

the rest of the world that should entitle Bolshevik opinions
to outrank American, British or French.

So when we say that the war must be fought to a vic
torious finish that will make the world safe for democracy,
that Germany must relinquish Belgium and pay full in
demnity for all the damage which the war has done to that
country, that Alsace and Lorraine must be returned to
France, that the partition of Poland must be undone and
the independent Polish nation must be re-established, that
Serbia must have her lost provinces returned to her, that
Italia Irredenta must be redeemed, and that British South
Africa and Australia must have a voice concerning the dis
position of the German colonies adjacent to them — when we
say such things, we are speaking not for " imperialists " or
" bourgeoisie ", whatever those terms may mean in a land
where they do not belong, but for Labor, for the proletariat,
as our European friends are fond of calling it, or, best of all,
for the people.

The fact is that more than almost any other war that ever
was waged, this is the people's war. Never were the rights
and welfare of the people — the non-combatant people —
so shamefully violated as they have been in this war. Never
have the people been so infamously wronged, robbed,
ravished, tortured, murdered. Never have the fundamental
principles of popular rights and popular government been
so insolently defied, denied and threatened with extinction.
It is and it has from the beginning been a war waged against
the people by an autocratic military caste, and it is high
time for all the people of the world to recognize that fact and
to act upon it, as those of the three chief Allied nations have
done.

Let there be no more question as to where the people
stand, or where labor stands, in this war. They stand for an
inexorable prosecution of the war until the archfoe of popu
lar government and the rights of man is eliminated from
the councils of the world.

THE JAP OR THE HUN?

The Jap, or the Hun? Which?

If in form the question seems somewhat reminiscent of
Frank Stockton's immortal The Lady, or the Tiger? we

496 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

apologize to the tiger for putting him in apposition with the
Hun. Not even the mangiest man-eater that ever prowled
the jungle is quite deserving of such a fate.

But whatever comes of the existing complications in Rus
sia, and for present consideration especially in the Asian
portions of that empire, one thing is clear: Immediately
upon the collapse of efficient government at Petrograd, with
the accompanying danger of German domination, — a danger
which is now made real, to the incalculable cost of the world,
— the cooperation of Japan with the Allies, of which indeed
she is one, should have been made effective. With the unani
mous approval of the Allied Powers, and with or without
their nominal participation, which could easily have been
given, Japan should have taken possession not merely of
Vladivostok and all the Siberian Pacific littoral, but also of
the trans-Siberian Railway and of Siberia itself, as far west
ward as possible or as seemed desirable. If it were possible
for her to push her way clear across the Continent, into
European Russia, to Moscow and to Petrograd, so much
the better.

And in approving and promoting that movement, the
United States of America, instead of hanging back and
pussy-footing, should have taken the instantaneous and un
reserved initiative.

Such a course on the part of Japan and the Powers would
have been impregnably justifiable, from whatever point of
view it might be regarded.

Precedents assuredly are not lacking. One of the most
recent was the international intervention in China at the
time of the Boxer insurrection. No power has challenged
the propriety or the legality of it, judged on the broad basis
of international equity. Yet so far as general international
interests were concerned, there was not a tithe of the need
and the justification for it that there now is for intervention
in Russia. Another precedent was established by the
European Powers in 1878, when they provided for Austrian
intervention in and temporary occupation of the Serbian
provinces of the Turkish Empire; a precedent which was
not vitiated by Austria's monstrous and criminal breach of
faith in stealing that which was assigned to her to hold in
trust. We may be sure that no such infamy would mark
Japan's occupation of Siberia. A third precedent, if mem
ory serves us aright, was provided in Russia's occupation of

THE JAP OR THE HUN ? 497

the Kuldja Province; in which case, the Bolsheviki not then
being in power, Russia kept faith and duly restored the
region to its rightful owner when the beneficent purpose of
the intervention had been achieved.

From the Russian point of view, such action by Japan
would be approved and welcomed by men of integrity and
reason. Traitors and highbinders, like Lenin and Trotzky
and their kidney,' would doubtless rage against it, because
there was " nothing in it " for themselves. But men like
Prince Lvoff and the others who really effected the revolu
tion against Czarism, would welcome it as assuring the sal
vation of Russian democracy. Obviously, there is no ground
on which valid Russian objection could be made. There
would be no infringement upon Russian sovereignty, because
it no longer exists. Russian sovereignty lapsed, was abro
gated, ceased to exist, when the Bolshevik coup d'etat de
stroyed the Constituent Assembly and surrendered to the
Huns. In that catastrophe Russia became an anarchy, and
it became not only the right but also the duty of some civilized
Power to intervene, for Russia's sake as well as its own and
that of the world at large.

We are staunch sticklers for the right of national self-
determination. But we do not maintain the right of any
nation to raise hell to the peril and detriment of its neighbors.

From the point of view of the European Allies there was
and is imperative need of such a course. The German in
vasion of Asia is the gravest menace to them since the Marne.
The German Government is already boasting that its road is
now open to Persia and Afghanistan, and through them, of
course, to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and to
the borders of British India. It is also quite evident that
the Bolshevik betrayal comprised the surrender of Siberia
to the hordes of German prisoners of war who were in that
country and who were released from confinement as a result
of the treason of Brest-Litovsk. Would such an incursion
of the Huns, with the appearance of Hunnish U-boats and
cruisers in the Indian and Pacific oceans, be a matter of in
difference to the Powers? How is it to be guarded against
unless by a Japanese advance through Siberia, which would
block the Huns' raids in that direction and which, if carried
far enough, either into European Russia or into Turkestan,
would make it too perilous for Germany to attempt to reach
India or the Persian Gulf.

VOL. ccvn.— NO. 749 32

498 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Such a campaign would place Germany again between
the " jaws of the nutcracker," with Japan taking Russia's
place as the eastern jaw.

There remains to be considered the point of view of the
United States; assuming for sake of argument that this
country has or ought to have a point of view separate from
that of its Allies.

Beyond question, American precedents are overwhelm
ingly in favor of such a course. Apart from our participa
tion in the Chinese intervention, already recalled, we have
been doing that sort of thing on our own account, all the way
through our history. We began it a hundred years ago, in
our intervention in Florida. We did it a generation ago in
Samoa. We did it twice in Cuba, with most excellent results.
Only a few years ago, in President Wilson's first term, we
did it in Mexico. We can perceive no ground on which we
could logically and equitably object to Japan's following the
example which we ourselves have set.

Can we not trust Japan? We are not unfamiliar with
diplomatic history, but we cannot remember nor can we by
searching find a case in which Japan has regarded a treaty
as a " scrap of paper," or in which she has not loyally ful
filled her obligations. If there have been any apparent eva
sions of treaty stipulations, they have been on our side rather
than on hers. We recently made with her a " gentlemen's
agreement " on a very important matter. Surely it would
be an extraordinary thing to enter into such relations with a
nation which we could not trust. Incidentally we might re
mark that we do not think very highly of such agreements,
which seem to us merely a trick for making a treaty which
need not be submitted to the Senate. That savors too much
of the " secret diplomacy " which when practiced by others
we have been so copiously condemning. But there can be no
question that the making of one logically implies a high de
gree of mutual confidence between the two Powers.

But if we could not trust Japan, if we feared that she
would make her occupation of Siberia permanent, and if we
feared her hostility toward us, what would be the logic of
the case? Why, beyond question, for those very reasons we
should assent joyfully to the invasion of Siberia, because it
would be turning the peril away from our own shores. We
have a pretty high opinion of Japanese efficiency, but we
really do not believe that that country would be capable of

THE JAP OR THE HUN ? 499

invading, annexing and assimilating Siberia, and then at the
same time or a little later invading, annexing and assimilat
ing the United States. If we were afraid of Japan, the
shrewdest thing we could possibly do to protect ourselves
would be to send her off on this Siberian enterprise.

Of course, however, we are not afraid of Japan, and we
do not distrust her. She had her chance to be unfriendly
toward us early in the war, when Germany did her level best
to persuade Japan to join her and Mexico in a war of con
quest against us. Japan rejected the proposal with unhesi
tating emphasis and with unconcealed contempt. All through
the war she has refrained from seeking to take any advan
tage of us, and has manifested a loyal friendship above all
praise. To our mind it is high time that we showed our
appreciation of her friendship and our reliance upon her
good faith.

There is, we know, no little prejudice against Japan in
the United States. That simply means that there is a lot of
German propaganda. Mr. Lansing, our Secretary of State,
declares that the suspicion, constraint and doubt which have
to some extent arisen between the two countries, were " fos
tered and encouraged by the campaign of falsehood adroitly
and secretly carried on by Germans whose government, as a
part of its foreign policy, desired especially to alienate this
country and Japan." Mr. Root, formerly Secretary of
State, says that he has not the slightest doubt that " the at
tempts to create bad feeling between the United States and
Japan have been very largely the result of a fixed and settled
purpose, and that purpose formed a part of the policy of
that great ruling caste of Germany which is attempting to
subjugate the world." Mr. Gerard, lately our Ambassador
at Berlin, says that tales of Japanese hostility to the United
States emanated from German sources, and he suggests that
" much of the prejudice in America against the Japanese
was cooked up by German propagandists."

Would it not be an astounding anomaly if in the present
tremendous crisis this country permitted this same pernicious
German propaganda to alienate it from Japan and to deprive
us of the cooperation of that country in a matter which may
involve the very existence of America? We all know that the
tales of Japan's acquisition of Magdalena Bay, of Japanese
troops in Mexico, of Japanese boats secretly taking sound
ings in our harbors, of a Japanese plot to destroy the Panama

500 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Canal, of Japanese designs against the Philippines, were all
deliberate, baseless and wanton lies, invented by German
propagandists with malice aforethought. The animosity and
distrust which are now manifested toward Japan may safely
be set down as the more or less direct result of that same in
fernal propaganda.

How, therefore, shall we answer the question concerning
the temporary control of Siberia and perhaps of all that is
left of Russia herself?

The Jap, or the Hun?

As for us, we prefer Japanese loyalty to German treach
ery. We prefer Japanese cleanliness to German filth.
We prefer Japanese who keep treaties to Germans who
treat them as mere " scraps of paper." We prefer Japanese
civilization to Hunnish barbarism.

The Jap, or the Hun?

In Heaven's name, the Jap !

PRICES AND PRODUCTION— A CONTRAST

LET us not get " the big head." It is unpleasing to be
a kill- joy, but it is unwise to cherish a fool's paradise. The
statistics of our industries and commerce for the last year
are so colossal, from the most obvious point of view, as to
suggest danger of a mischievously exaggerated estimate of
our progress in the minds of those who — and it is to be
feared that they constitute the great majority — take only
that point of view and quite neglect to consider others which
are really much more significant but which the imperfec
tions of our statistical service render less accessible.

There is something tremendous, something dazzling to
the imagination, in the current reports of our foreign com
merce for 1917. It amounted, we are told, to $9,178,000,-
000; of which $6,226,000,000 were exports and $2,952,-
000,000 were imports; leaving a balance in our favor of
$3,274,000,000. Thus the balance in our favor was con
siderably more than the total of imports, and was about
equal to the entire value of our trade, both exports and
imports, ten years ago. Those figures, we repeat, are tre
mendous. They impress the mind as do the measurements
of the interstellar spaces. They are too great for ordinary
comprehension. Taken at their face value, without ex-

PRICES AND PRODUCTION— A CONTRAST 501

planation, they would convey the impression of commercial
— and therefore of industrial — progress made by the pro
verbial " leaps and bounds," and of an attained greatness
quite overshadowing all else in the economic history of the
world. ^

It would be a mischievous mistake, however, thus to take
these figures. They are, it is true, entirely accurate; and
we are prone to rely upon the foolish saying that " figures
don't lie." The fact is, of course, as Carlyle said, that " you
can prove anything by figures." There is nothing more
misleading than accurate statistics which give only a partial
view of the facts. The error in this case would lie in con
founding values with volumes, and in assuming that these
figures represent so much actual increase in the extent and
amount of our trade. There has been some increase in the
latter; in some details a very large increase. But it has
not been nearly sufficient to account for the enormous
increase in the value of our commerce which we have cited.

The pernicious imperfection of our statistics as com
monly published is in their omission of quantities. They
tell us what was the total value of our exports. Perhaps
they go a little further into details and tell us what was
the value of the steel, and of the wheat and of the cotton
which we sent to other lands. That is all true, and all inter
esting. But they do not tell us how many tons of steel,
and bushels of wheat, and bales of cotton, we sent; although
it is perfectly apparent, on reflection, that these latter fig
ures would be most important of all, as signifying the real
increase — or decrease — of our trade.

We shall find, upon analysis, therefore, that the great
increase in the value of our commerce, which is reported
and upon which we dwell with so much exultation, is by no
means altogether due to a commensurate increase in the vol
ume of our exports, but very largely to an increase in the
prices of commodities. Between 1910 and 1917 there was
an increase of about 233 per cent in the total value of our
exports. But at the same time there was an increase of
200 per cent in the price of pig iron, of more than 100
in steel billets, of 100 in copper, of 100 in cotton, of 135
in wheat, of 84 in beef, of 100 in pork, and so on through
the whole list of commodities. It was not that we were sell
ing so much more, but that we were getting so much more
for what we sold.

502 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The same considerations apply to the current statistics
of our agricultural products, which we have been exploit
ing into one of the wonders of the world. It is made
known, doubtless with accuracy, that in 1917 the total value
of those products reached the almost incomprehensible total
of $19,443,849,381. In 1910 it was only $9,037,390,744;
so that in seven years there was an increase of 115 per cent;
whereat the superficial observer might exclaim upon the
stupendous progress which our agricultural industries have
made.

The fallacy in any such view is to be perceived through
making a comparison not merely of the total values but of
the quantities and prices of our chief agricultural products
in 1917 with those of preceding years. Let us take for this
purpose the five years from 1911 to 1915 inclusive, the five
years immediately preceding the material influence of the
war upon our agricultural economics ; reckoning the average
total values, amount of production, and price rates, of those
years.

The first of our crops in importance is corn. Its total
value in the five years 1911-1915 averaged $1,644,511,000,
and in 1917 it was $4,053,672,000; an increase of more than
140 per cent. Enormous! But "season your admiration
for a while." There was in the same period, it is true, a
certain increase in actual production. That was from
2,754,164,000 bushels to 3,159,494,000 bushels, or something
more than 14 per cent. Thus the increase in production
was only one-tenth as great as the increase in value. The
difference is of course explained by the fact that the price
per bushel rose from 59.7 cents to $1.283, or nearly 115
per cent. It was to the increase in price far more than to
the increase in quantity that the increase in the value of
the crop was due.

Our second crop is cotton. Its total value increased in
the period under consideration from $709,629,000 to $1,517,-
558,000, or nearly 114 per cent. Splendid, indeed! But
if we look a little further we find that the quantity pro
duced did not increase at all, but actually decreased from
14,175,872 to 10,949,000 bales; due, as might be supposed,
to a corresponding decrease in the number of acres planted
and in the number of pounds grown on each acre. The
decrease in production was thus nearly 22.7 per cent, but
at the same time the price rose from 10 cents to 27.7 cents,

PRICES AND PRODUCTION— A CONTRAST 503

an increase of 177 per cent, and that was what caused the
increase in the total value of the crop.

Third, wheat; the crop in which there is perhaps the
chief interest, as of greatest international importance. The
increase in the value of the crop has been from $705,890,000
to $1,307,418,000, or more than 85 per cent. But as in the
case of cotton, there was not an increase but a considerable
decrease in the quantity produced, due to a decrease both
of the number of acres planted and the number of bushels
obtained from each acre. The decrease in total quantity
was from 806,361,000 bushels to 650,828,000 bushels, or
more than 19 per cent. But of course there was a great
increase in the price per bushel, from 87.9 cents to $2.009,
or more than 129 per cent. That was why the total value
of the crop so greatly increased.

Take a fourth crop, potatoes. Its value increased from
$219,137,000 to $543,865,000, or 148 per cent. There was
also an increase in production, from 362,910,000 bushels
to 442,536,000 bushels, or 22 per cent; due to increase both
of acres planted and of bushels obtained from each acre.
Yet it is obvious that the increase of 148 per cent in value
was due not so much to the increase of 22 per cent in pro
duction as to the increase of more than 103 per cent in
price, from 60.4 cents to $1.229 a bushel. The same cir
cumstance is still more forcibly illustrated in a comparison
of the potato crop of 1916 with the average of the five
immediately preceding years. There was an increase of
more than 91 per cent on total value of the crop, while
there was not an increase but an actual decrease in quan
tity of 21 per cent, but an increase of nearly 142 per cent
in price.

These facts and figures demonstrate, then, that we are
not so much enjoying expansion of commerce and growth
of industries as we are experiencing — enjoying or suffer
ing, as you please — expansion of prices. Between the two
things there is a vast difference. The one is substantial,
the other is unsubstantial. The increase of prices, or of
so-called values, is artificial and will prove transitory. For
this reason it is far more important that we should find a
market for two bushels of wheat where we sold only one
before, than that we should content ourselves with getting
twice as much as formerly for the one bushel. It is far
more important to grow two bushels where only one grew

504 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

before, than to double the price for the one bushel. Quan
tity is a fixed factor; price is fluctuating.

It is, no doubt, a fine thing to have so great a balance
of trade in our favor. It enables us to be— and it imposes
upon us the duty and the necessity of being — the financial
backer of the Allied Nations. But that, after all, is a tem
porary matter, pertaining to only the period of duration
of the war. The far more important questions are, to what
extent we shall be able to hold permanently after the war
whatever increase there has been in volume and distribution
of our commerce, and to what extent the balance of trade
will continue to be in our favor — after the special economic
conditions of the war are ended and the war-time inflation
of prices has collapsed.

It is a fine thing to say, no doubt, that the value of last
year's corn crop was sufficient to pay four times over our
national debt as it existed before the war. But there is a
grim anomaly in the fact that while in 1917 the value of
our crops was more than double what it was in 1910, we
are now suffering from scarcity of food, though in that for
mer year, with less than half the value, we had abundance.
The explanation is of course obvious. There has been little
if any increase in production, and there has been a consider
able increase in the demand for exportation. But the lesson
of it ought to be equally obvious; it ought, as the French
say, to strike us in the face. It is the need, set forth months
ago in the pages of this REVIEW, of agricultural mobiliza
tion and intensive farming.

What we need to do is to shut our eyes to the flattering
and delusive figures of vast values through inflated prices,
and to open them to those of meagre production. There is
no use in talking about how many national debts the value
of our corn crop would pay off, or how many automobiles
or wrist watches the potato crop would buy. What we need
to consider is how, right now in Anno Domini 1918, we are
going to produce enough wheat and pork to feed our Allies
who are saving our wives and daughters from being ravished
by Hohenzollern Huns.

THE REAL SECRET DIPLOMACY

BY G. K. CHESTERTON

THERE is in England a body of opinion called the Union
of Democratic Control, to which I have not myself the honor
to belong, but the title and aims of which embody very lucidly
and thoroughly almost all that I think about the problems of
the war. The very name is a fine and sufficient summary of
nearly everything which I shall attempt to say here. If
there is one thing in which I have always essentially and liter
ally believed it is democratic control; which is (it should be
noted) something much more extreme and drastic than demo
cratic consent. I believe that the people can rule, and that
when it does rule, it does so better than any of its rulers.
Even where it is unjustly forbidden to rule, and appears only
to dissolve and destroy, I am disposed to defend it ; I believe
that no human institution in history has really so little to be
ashamed of as the mob. And when the Union of Democratic
Control passes to its more particular object, it satisfies me
even more fully. It aims chiefly at eradicating that evil
craft of secret diplomacy, by which princes and privileged
men cynically make and unmake kingdoms and republics as
they roll and unroll cigarettes ; and no more think of consult
ing the citizens of the state than of consulting all the blades
of grass before bargaining for the sale of a field. This de
testable detachment, inherited from the heartless dynastic
ambitions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has
been covered in my own time and my own society by the large
and optimistic advertisements of what is called Imperialism.
I can say without fear or penitence that I have always hated
and always done my hardest to extirpate Imperialism, as an
ambition of any country, and above all, as an ambition of my
own.

It is indeed true that the members of the Union of
Democratic Control do not agree with any of these principles,

506 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

with which I myself agree so ardently when I read them in
their official literature. If it be counted some sort of reflec
tion on a society that its mere individual membership does not
happen to include any person who assents to its printed for
mulae, the U. D. C. may be held to suffer from such a disad
vantage. Of the most eminent member, Mr. E. D. Morel, I
can only say that his warm admirers, while agreeing as to the
thoroughness of his enthusiasm, are apparently doubtful only
about its object; and that in any case the mere evisceration
of secret diplomacy can hardly be supposed to satisfy or
explain it. He is himself so eminently secret a diplomatist
that there is a doubt, not merely about what it is that he does
for his country, but about what country it is that he does it
for. The other members are mostly widely respected and
well-informed men, famous in almost every branch of culture,
and for almost every type of conviction; with the exception
of those special and peculiar doctrines with which they are
accidentally connected by the formularies of their member
ships. Probably the most influential are a group of aristo
crats, representing the great governing class families of Tre-
velyan, Ponsonby, Buxton or Hobhouse, whose tradition it
naturally is to perpetuate Burke's antagonism to the theory
of the French Revolution. And, indeed, one of them only
recently refused to submit himself to any popular vote in his
constituency, for the explicit reason that the great Anti-
Jacobin, who lies buried at Beaconsfield, would not have ap
proved of a representative paying any attention to anything
which he is alleged to represent. But in the plain appeal I
am now writing, I am concerned with the principles of the
Union of Democratic Control; and I am therefore in no way
concerned with any of its members.

To those principles, which condemn an undemocratic
diplomacy, it is now necessary to make a new and very urgent
appeal. For undemocratic diplomacy has returned in a new
and even more undemocratic form. It is not merely that the
popular opinion has never been expressed, but that it is cen
sored and silenced when it has been expressed. The acts of
a mob can be hidden like the acts of a man. Silence does not
rest merely on the momentary negotiation of two or three
officials ; silence can be spread over the desires of whole popu
lations and the destiny of whole provinces. It is not one
diplomatist who wears a mask, but a million democrats who
are all required to wear muzzles. The chief example of this

THE REAL SECRET DIPLOMACY 507

new secret diplomacy is the earnest exhortation addressed to
the English and French, that they, should qualify the vehe
mence of their Anti-German feeling, out of consideration for
the international idealism either of Petrograd or of Stock
holm. Sometimes this modification is recommended as a way
of securing peace for the world. Sometimes it is only recom
mended as a way of securing peace within the Alliance. But
upon one point all the Stockholm-Petrograd school of demo
crats is agreed ; and that is the need of imposing silence upon
the democracies of the West.

Now, while I agree with the internationalists as to the evil
of private understandings, I think it the reverse of an im
provement to take refuge in public misunderstandings. I
think it a bad thing that diplomatists should secretly arrange
the transference of French people to the power of the Em
peror of China. But I think it worse to declare that all
Frenchmen really desire to be Chinamen, lest any hint of the
reverse should ruffle the serenity of the Chinese. I think it
bad that white men should be despotically driven into an alli
ance or a war with black men ; but I think it worse that white
men should be made to black their faces, for fear of disturb
ing the solidarity of the human race. It is an evil thing that
the people should not choose for themselves, but should be
tricked beforehand into having something whether they like
it or not. But it is a worse thing that we should not even
know what they do like; what they would really choose, or
perhaps have already chosen. It is the case against secret
diplomacy that the masses are never consulted until it is too
late ; but it seems to be the upshot of the new Pacifist diplo
macy that the masses are never consulted at all. For it is
idle to talk of consulting the people, if all their most primary
passions and bitterest experiences are to be concealed in the
interests of a theoretic humanitarianism. And that, and
nothing else, is really the claim of those who insist on the
Anti-German feeling in England being qualified by concern
for less exasperated feeling in Russia.

Now, it is simply a fact, like death or daylight, that the
English people, and especially the English proletariat, re
gards the German of this war exactly as it regarded the
Whitechapel murderer, who ripped up poor girls with a knife.
Seeing that the German also, as it happens, has ripped up
poor girls with a knife, the parallelism of the sentiment is not
perhaps so surprising. The English proletarians desired to

508 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

find the Whitechapel murderer and punish him ; the English
proletarians also desire to find the Germans who commanded
these German atrocities and punish them. This is the will of
the people, if the will of the people ever existed in this world.
It is now necessary to insert here a most emphatic warn
ing against people being misled upon this point by any such
sectional incident as a vote in favor of Stockholm, temporarily
upheld by certain representatives of certain English Trades
Unions. Such votes are variable and, as a basis of argument,
quite unreliable. They are unreliable for three successive
and decisive reasons, each final without the other. First, it
is admitted, because it cannot be denied, that such schemes of
representation are so wildly illogical as to be simply mean
ingless. We should not think much of a scientific assembly
in which the men who believe that the earth is flat had as
many representatives as those who cling to the more common
opinion that it is round. We should not accept as authorita
tive a congress of religions in which the Scotch sect of the
Upstanding Glassites (now, alas, nearly extinct) was repre
sented by serried rows of delegates, covering as many
benches as all the Catholics or all the Mohammedans put
together. We should not bow down to a representative sys
tem which brought out the remarkable result that as many
Englishmen wear sandals as wear boots ; or that the earnest
students of Scripture who think it wicked to have their hair
cut are as numerous as those who observe the rite at more or
less reasonable intervals. Yet this was strictly, literally, and
indeed admittedly, the composition of the so-called Labor
Conference now in question; in which enormous over-repre
sentation was given to tiny Pacifist groups holding opinions
rather rarer than the opinion that the earth is flat. Second,
even this disproportionate and absurd assembly admittedly
voted under a complete misapprehension about the most
decisive question of fact. They voted because they had been
distinctly told that their allies in Russia insisted on a discus
sion at Stockholm, at which the English case could be put
against the German. As a fact, the Russian Revolutionary
Government did not so insist. Secondly, therefore, even if
the meeting had been representative, it would have voted on
a misrepresentation. And, thirdly, even if the fact had not
been entirely misrepresented, and if the Trades Unions
had been formally and legally represented, there is an
obstacle more absolute and unanswerable than all the rest.

THE REAL SECRET DIPLOMACY 509

It is the fact that no sane man denies the sight of his own eyes
and the testimony of his own ears ; it is the fact that we deal
today with deadly realities, and have no patience for political
fictions ; it is the fact of the nature of fact. I know that most
Englishmen, and especially most poor Englishmen, are furi
ous with the Germans, exactly as I know that most of them
think it desirable to wear clothes or prefer cooked meat to
raw. The man who pretends to doubt it would pretend to
doubt the nose on a man's face, because it slightly differed
from the nose in his portrait. Representation, at its best,
does not profess to give anything more than a picture or
emblem of the multitudinous mind of the people. When that
mind is so unanimous and so uproarious that anybody can
see it in the street, and almost breathe it in the air, the man
who prefers to believe the figure rather than the fact is some
thing very much worse than a lunatic. I stress this paren
thesis because I conceive myself primarily to be bearing wit
ness to facts for the benefit of foreign opinion; and whether
or no the internationalists think this popular feeling should
be gratified, it can do no kind of good, even to their own cause,
that they should be simply ignorant of anything so human
and so huge.1

Now a democrat, for whom democracy is a living convic
tion and not merely a long word, has nothing whatever to do,
qua democrat, with the wisdom or perfection of a popular
demand as any modification of its political right. When he
is sure of the people's will, he must admit the people's author
ity, if he is a democrat, and if he is also an honest man. That
all retribution or expiation is barbaric may be a part of en
lightenment, but it is not a part of democracy; and any use
of it to evade a general demand is a denial of democracy. To
believe that the German criminal will spontaneously repent
of his crimes may be in itself charitable, but it is not in itself
democratic ; and if it is used against the general will it is anti
democratic. Particular men who hold the democratic thesis
may also hold that men should not be punished for murdering
girls. For that matter, they may hold that men should not
be discouraged from murdering girls, or that men should be
warmly and enthusiastically urged toward murdering girls.
But they do not hold these things as part of the democratic

1 Since this passage was written it has been more than Justified even by the
Trades Union Congress, which has itself returned to the popular patriotic view
of Stockholm. The passage is now hardly necessary, but it is still true; but it is
an understatement of the truth.

510 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

thesis; and, if they let them prevail against the general will,
they do not believe in the democratic thesis at all. In the
case of the English people there is only one possible alterna
tive. Either Germany must pay for the wrong which the
people believes it has suffered; or else the people has no right
to have an opinion, or no right to express an opinion, or no
right to make that opinion prevail.

But it will no doubt be very earnestly urged that an opin
ion may be democratic in appearance while being very un
democratic in origin. It is implied that the Anti- German
feeling in England was officially and therefore artificially
produced. It is contended, to summarize briefly what is to be
said for this view, that our diplomatists had darker motives
for spreading a theory that a British promise when made to
Belgium ought to be kept, and that a German promise when
made to Belgium ought not to be broken. These intellectual
departures, it is implied, were first encouraged by a small
knot of officials a few years ago; and so subtly disseminated
by them that they have since come to have much the appear
ance of being the common morality of mankind. In the same
way these British sophists so prepared the soil of our mental
ity, that when a German soldier (in the fulfilment of his
native discipline and natural duty) killed the village priest as
a punishment for the patriotism of the village atheist, it
seemed almost as if we should always have regarded such an
action as in some way unreasonable or unjust. The ordinary
mass of men (it is argued) would inevitably have thought it
natural that the village priest should be regarded as having
performed the actions of the village atheist, or even of the vil
lage idiot, had not the subtle, fluent, brilliantly eloquent and
bewilderingly universal philosophers who are the younger
sons of our English county families and the products of our
English public schools, misled the multitude by the music of
their rhetoric and the audacious novelty of their reasoning.
In short, it is explained that our statesmen and diplomatists
have managed to persuade us, not only that we have a wholly
academic antagonism to the abstract disruption of a compact
or disregard of a signature, but that we have also certain de
tailed grievances, against treating non-combatants as com
batants or calling a watering-place a castle. The statesmen
have schemed at Westminster and Windsor ; the diplomatists
have intrigued at Vienna and Petrograd; and so the whole at
mosphere of Europe has been gradually heated, until we

THE REAL SECRET DIPLOMACY 511

fancied there was something alarming about the look of a
Zeppelin and imagined some superstitious immunity to have
attached to a hospital ship.

I may be excused if I absolve myself from the further
strain of stating this thesis seriously; but it is a thesis on
which our enemies almost entirely rely. As it happens, it is
not only intrinsically imbecile, but is relatively the precise
reverse of the fact. It is not so much an injustice to the
British Government and governing class as a gross and very
excessive compliment to them. It attributes to them much
more foresight than they had, and an attitude in which they
would since have been entirely justified if only they had had
it. It supposes the governing classes to have been the Anti-
German influence. As a fact, it was the governing classes
who had always been the Pro-German influence, and the only
Pro-German influence. It is the real and very damaging
joke against the most educated part of England, that for
decades past it had been trying to educate the mob, and try
ing to educate it all wrong. The universities were Pro- Ger
man, the fashionable philosophies and religions were Pro-
German, the practical politics, the social reform and slum
ming were all copied from Germany ; for it is the whole art of
slumming to pay no attention to the opinion of the slums.
Only in the slums would you have found already a resent
ment against the German shopkeeper, more especially as the
German shopkeeper was commonly a German Jew. Simi
larly the great aristocratic statesmen, like Salisbury and
Rosebery, kept in close alliance with the German Emperor;
the great quarterlies and the graver magazines discussed him
as the architect of Germany and the arbiter of Europe. It
was only the coarse caricaturists of the gutter who called him
then the lunatic they all call him now. If the German con
troversialist (as is likely enough) were to turn his whole argu
ment upside down, and maintain that the Anti-German move
ment was an insurgent tide of illiteracy and lawlessness out
of the slums, and almost out of the sewers, submerging in a
flood of filth the tradition of the English gentry, he might
find a vast deal more to be said for that fallacy than for the
other. It might be held that the mob had first moved us to
hatred of Germany; I should myself add such a fact to my
reasons for believing in the mob. But in truth it was not
merely the mob, but something more practical still. There
was only one thing that could really cure the Pro-German;

512 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and that was the German. And wherever the German passed,
there was no more Pro- Germanism.

There is a very obvious and ordinary reason for the
English people being more Anti-German than the English
Government. It is the simple fact tljat the German has
made even more direct war on the English people than he has
on the English Government. It is an argument arising from
the plain facts of the physical situation and physical experi
ences of the island and the islanders. And the simplest and
soundest way of stating the argument is to say that the
English hate the German because they know him. It is here
that all humanitarian generalizations, however true in many
cases, about the distant interests of diplomacy and the exclu
sive information of diplomatists, are in this particular case
completely irrelevant and pointless. It is perfectly true that
princes and politicians can teach an ignorant people that a
far-off foreigner is a fiend; I should say that this was true
of our view of Russians in the Crimean War. It is not in the
smallest degree true of our view of Germans in this war ; for
the simple reason that the foreigner is not far off and the peo
ple is not ignorant — at least, it cannot possibly be ignorant of
the foreigner. And if Englishmen think the foreigner is a
fiend, it is solely because they think, rightly or wrongly, that
he behaves like a fiend — not to their government, but to them.
It was possible to tell a Victorian Englishman that a Rus
sian knouts women and lives on tallow candles; for a Rus
sian, like a Chinaman, was physically so remote as to be un
real ; and these fables were told about him because he himself
seemed almost fabulous. But it is not necessary to tell a
modern Englishman that a Prussian treacherously drowns
poor fishermen, or pours poison and flame on peaceful and
unprotected villages ; any more than it is necessary to tell a
modern Englishman that cats eat mice or that mice eat cheese.
It is quite useless to say that subtle diplomatists have con
spired to misrepresent the mouse; or that an arrogant mon
archy is angry with the cat because it looked at a king. That
Germany has suffered wrong from our statesmen is argu
able; that she has inflicted wrong on our citizens is self-evi
dent. To say that these things are merely incidents of war
is merely to quarrel about words. The fact which a demo
crat will feel important is that fact that this democracy does
regard these acts as something much worse than war. The
Germans, for instance, have poisoned wells ; and the wicked-

THE REAL SECRET DIPLOMACY 513

ness of poisoning wells has long been an ordinary English
proverb and figure of speech. The Germans introduced the
use of venomous vapors in battle ; and the poor people whose
sons and husbands have been " gassed " do in fact speak of
them in a style never used about other wars, in which they
have been merely wounded. In the presence of this popular
feeling all the international talk about quarrels manufactured
by governments is perfectly true and perfectly irrelevant.
Cynical British statesmen might have poisoned men's minds
against Germany. But the indignation is there because
men's bodies have been poisoned by Germans. Sensational
journalists might have taken away the characters of a race of
foreigners. But the feeling has not been created by the
taking away of characters, but by the talking away of lives.

This democratic decision was embodied and emphasized
in the famous refusal of the Seamen's Trades Union to take
Mr. MacDonald to Petrograd. Here again it is quite pos
sible to talk of the intrigues of politicians ; and here again it is
quite irrelevant. Anyone who chooses is at liberty to say
that the strike may not have been spontaneous, or may have
been prompted by a secret government order; just as he is
free to say that it may have been prompted by an ancient
English prejudice against Cossacks or by an ancient High
land feud against MacDonalds. But if anybody says that
such a strike could not have been spontaneous, or must have
been prompted from above, he simply knows no more about
any kind of poor Englishman than I do about the man in the
moon. At any moment any number of any sort of English
proletarians might have made an indignant demand for repa
ration for German piracy. Any number of them at any time
would have distrusted the diplomacy of Mr. MacDonald,
in so far as they have ever heard of Mr. MacDonald.
Whatever prompted that particular strike, there was popular
opinion enough to prompt a hundred of such strikes. And
popular opinion does sometimes express itself, even through
the modern machinery of representative self-government.

The side of the question may be summed up by saying
that talk of the intrigues of governments and the slandering
of peoples is pointless for a perfectly simple reason. It is,
that the popular case against Germany does not rest on the
disputed, but on the undisputed things. The things the
English denounce are not the things the Germans deny, bud
the things they cannot deny. The violent perjury which
VOL. ccvu. — NO. 749 33

514 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

waged war on a people who had grown up unarmed under a
permanent promise of peace, may have been a mere modifica
tion of modern diplomatic methods ; but there is no doubt that
the Germans did it, and no doubt that the English detested
it. The launching of enormous airships useless against armies
and useful only to create panic by the killing of civilians, may
be only a little artistic touch added to the latest scientific
armament; but there is no doubt that these machines were re
garded with admiration in Germany and with horror in
England. The scuttling of poor little boats plying

Seaceful and ordinary trades may be a mere alteration of
etail in international arrangements; but even the Germans
will not deny that they do it, and even the Germans will not
deny that the English are shocked at it. Here there is no
possible question of diplomatic distortions or travelers' tales ;
the facts are admitted and, in the English popular view, the
facts are final.

The matter therefore seems so far to resolve itself into the
very simple question of whether the democratic conference of
Europe shall or shall not express the real views of the real
democracies. If it is to express them, there is not the shadow
of a doubt, in the case of the allied peoples in the West, about
what those views really are. It is, I suppose, physically pos
sible (though morally most improbable) that they should be
forced to renounce these opinions by the prolonged torture of
a pitiless war; just as it is possible for a philosopher to be
forced to renounce his opinions on the rack. But that is not
the procedure now most favored in the enlightened school of
international democracy, as a method of finding out a man's
opinions. It is presumably possible in the abstract that we
should be physically compelled to pay attention to German
proposals, as we might be physically forced to pay ransom
to a brigand; but we should not say he was an international
fellow- worker ; we should say he was a blackmailer as well as
a brigand. The fact remains that, upon the worst and wildest
possibility, our public testimony could only be Pacifist if it
were tortured or terrorized; it could not possibly be so as long
as it was true. I repeat therefore that the question simply
is whether the democracies are to dare to say what they mean ;
or whether a few self-appointed public orators are to an
nounce to the world that they mean something else, which we
all know they do not mean. This strikes me as involving a
degree of meekness and self-effacement in the masses infi-

THE REAL SECRET DIPLOMACY 515

nitely more abject and absolute than that demanded by the old
despotic foreign policy of which I have always disapproved.
We talk of denouncing secret diplomacy; but at least the
diplomacy did not have to be secret. That a policy was con
cealed from the people was itself a confession of the power
of the people. Princes and chancellors hid themselves in
dark places from a thing like a thunder-cloud or a deluge:
democracy. But now a man may say in broad daylight that
all democrats believe that black is white; and it must be re
ceived in religious silence. For those who were once hailed
throughout the world as democrats are democrats no longer.
The democrats have all become diplomatists. In truth, we
have all become secret diplomatists, and must forever hide
our hearts from each other; for in each will be the dark tale
of a justice which we desired and dared not demand.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

WAR LOANS VS. BUSINESS AS USUAL

BY BENJAMIN STRONG
Governor, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Two great Government war loans have now been issued,
which have gathered into the Treasury $5,800,000,000. Our
Government also had outstanding March 6th over $2,600,-
000,000 of short notes, together representing $8,400,000,-
000 of war borrowings concluded in six months and, in
addition, taxes have been paid by our citizens amounting
to many hundreds of millions. People are beginning to ask
how these loans and tax collections may continue at such a
pace during a possible long war when the estimated national
savings is but somewhere about $6,000,000,000 a year.

In general it may be said that after the Government has
borrowed all the uninvested fund of savings, further loans
must rest upon bank expansion else borrowing must stop.
The conclusion is obvious, that increased savings mean a
corresponding curtailment of expansion, a sounder loaning
and financial condition for the nation and, even more impor
tant in the long future, habits of individual thrift. But
what is the relation between thrift and war loans, and how
may thrift be practiced without imposing great losses upon
merchants and manufacturers who would both pay taxes
and buy bonds if they were prospering under the influence
of the illusive slogan "Business as Usual"? To answer
this, we must accept as realities some very obvious conclu
sions as to a nation's wealth and how it may be diverted from
the uses of peace to those of war. The wealth of a nation
is not alone its natural resources, for, were it so, this country
would have enjoyed greater wealth before its discovery and
settlement than at present, since we have consumed much of
its natural resources in the last 400 years. Nor is it popula
tion alone, for, in that case, China, India or Russia would
enjoy wealth far greater than ours. The wealth of a nation

WAR LOANS VS. BUSINESS AS USUAL 517

is what it produces from its natural resources, by the appli
cation to them of the labor of an energetic population so that
their products may be used and enjoyed and made serviceable
for further production, leaving out of account the less im
portant wealth represented by investments, or services ren
dered, in foreign countries. In time of peace, the produc
tion of a nation is roughly equal to its consumption, plus
what it uses in its foreign trade. When war comes, pro
duction must be increased to meet the appalling wastage of
war, and, if the war is extensive and long, the amount of
labor required for production of both peace time consump
tion and war consumption is insufficient, and is soon reduced
by withdrawal of men for war making. The demand of
those who want consumption as usual, meaning " business
as usual," is the natural conflict of peace conditions with
war conditions ; in other words, competition of the individual
consumer in the markets for labor and material with the
Government which needs labor and material. The " wealth "
of the nation will not prove sufficient to meet the demands
of both. The time soon arrives when unnecessary consump
tion must be reduced or stopped, else this bidding of indi
vidual against Government will advance prices of labor and
materials to prohibitive levels. Expansion in bank loans and
deposits and inflation of currency issues will be a necessary
accompaniment, and the whole economic structure will be
undermined. This is " economic exhaustion."

Various means of minimizing these evils are possible, and
we must set about employing them. Our reward will be
certain in later years. The more important steps to be
taken are:

First: Reduce the consumption of luxuries.

Second: Avoid waste in the consumption of necessities.

Third: Develop more effective application of labor to
production.

Fourth: Bring women into productive occupations.

Fifth: Economize the use of credit.

But some one will at once say that by this programme his busi
ness, say that of manufacturing musical instruments, is ruined
because he produces a luxury. And the grocer may see van
ishing profits if his trade in luxuries is stopped and in staples
curtailed; and the laboring man see lower wages if his work
is made more productive and women employed in addition,
and the banker see less interest profits if he curtails loans to

518 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

customers of the " luxury " class. This is all true enough —
in fact so true that it appears as though here must be the
root, or some of the many roots, of the evil of " business as
usual."

The changes and adjustments forced upon us by war can
not all be brought about at once. Just now, with general
economy the theme of every lecture, we hear many cries of
protest, each indicating in turn " whose ox is being gored."
If every change ultimately necessary were instantly accom
plished, no harm would result to anyone ; possibly some per
sonal discomfort due to self-denial would be felt, but labor
would find new kinds of employment, manufacturers new
kinds of production, traders new articles of trade, and banks
new customers. Were only a few readjustments made at
once and others allowed to wait, our plight would resemble
that of an excursion boat whose passengers all rushed at
once to one rail. It might capsize.

These war readjustments should proceed as rapidly as
possible, each at a rate so adjusted that labor will be con
stantly employed, but with no shortage of labor, so that each
manufacturer can adjust his affairs and apply his power,
his machinery and his organization to some war need; each
affected trade liquidate old lines and introduce new and es
sential ones; each bank reduce loans for unnecessary pur
poses as it expands loans to Government and customers for
war purposes.

Of course, no such ideal readjustment is possible in its
entirety and in detail. Some injuries will occur, losses will
be sustained, the balance of employment and supply of labor
will not be exactly preserved. Only when we take a national,
rather than a personal view of the matter, do we see that our
problem is both to win a military war, which, if lost, may mean
our destruction, and to conduct an economic war, which, if
lost, might well cost us as dearly as the loss of the military
war. For, to preserve our economic strength, which is funda
mentally the ability to produce goods and finance their pro
duction and distribution cheaply in the world's competitive
markets, including our own, will give us the comforts of a
future free of so heavy a war mortgage that we can at once
go about our business without the usual post war prostration.

Failure to readjust so as to bring about curtailment of
unnecessary consumption by individuals and thereby set free
goods and labor for war consumption by the Government

WAR LOANS VS. BUSINESS AS USUAL 519

means that we must conduct the war by the employment of
goods and labor at constantly increasing prices. That makes
war more costly, makes the burden of taxation heavier and
the total of the Government's borrowings greater. All of
the goods and labor employed for war purposes are produced
and employed during the period of the war and not by future
generations of producers. If the price level at which war is
conducted is indefinitely advanced because of competition
between the individual consumer and the Government, the
Government's borrowing needs are just so much greater.
The loans to provide the sinews of war furnished by those who
buy bonds become in effect a mortgage on the nation's future
income to be liquidated by future generations of taxpayers.
If the science of Government were so perfected that this
ideal transformation could be brought about, the following
consequences might be assumed:

First: The consumption of raw materials would be lim
ited to the manufacture of personal necessities and
war materials.

Second: The product of labor would provide in part or
wholly the net increased consumption of goods caused
by war.

Third: There would be little, if any, shortage of labor,

for it would not only be more effective, but women

would replace men drafted into the army and navy.

Fourth: Advancing prices would be checked, both for

labor and materials.

Fifth: Credit required for production and distribution
of luxuries and to finance waste would be saved
for the Government's needs.

Sixth: The "wealth " of the nation, destroyed in war,
would more largely 'be furnished out of economies
practiced.

Seventh : The Government would need to borrow less as
its supplies would cost less, and would pay less in
terest because the supply of credit would not be
burdened with the load of " business as usual."
It is claimed, as may be true enough, that even so vision-'
ary a programme would not enable the " wealth " of the na
tion to meet the demands of war. Then, indeed, we must ac
cept a carefully safeguarded plan of expansion to make up
the balance. Our people must to that extent mortgage their
future " wealth," the product of their future labor applied

520 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to our resources, and do it cheerfully. That mortgage on our
labors of the future will largely be the loans, both those made
by our Government and those made by individuals to enable
them to pay taxes and to buy bonds of the Government. With
the mortgage kept at the smallest possible amount, we may
confidently expect that greater efficiency of labor, a lower
price level, and stronger bank reserves than other nations,
will allow us to emerge from the war, weakened to be sure,
but not exhausted, and stronger than most others.

There seem to be four procedures immediately necessary,
some of which are already under way:

First: Some control of raw materials by the Govern
ment.

Second: Education of the public as to how they should
not spend their incomes.

Third: Education of laborers as to where they should
work.

Fourth: Education of bankers as to what loans should
be gradually reduced or discontinued.

The effect of the fourth item of the programme is the only
one to be considered here. It directly relates to the contest
of " War Finance vs. Business as Usual." If the bankers
of the country were able to curtail unnecessary and wasteful
borrowings by their customers, loans, the proceeds of which
are used to build or improve homes, extend plants and busi
nesses pertaining solely to luxury, build places of amusement,
and for many other purposes which I purposely refrain from
enumerating, all of these bankers would have surplus credit
to employ in loans to the Government or industries vital to
its war needs. Those from whom credit was so withheld
would be restrained from the employment of labor and mate
rials, many would liquidate some part of their inventories
and not replace them, so also saving labor and material, and,
equally important, the lessened use of credit would reduce
loans and deposits, increase the ratio of bank reserves, reduce
interest rates and facilitate the Government's financial pro
gramme.

A cautious but deliberate and voluntary policy along
these lines would be safer, more equitable, and, probably, as
effective as the only alternative, which is higher rates of
interest, along with higher prices for everything. The nat
ural check to expansion in time of peace is the prohibitive
interest rate, combined with over-production induced by ris-

WAR LOANS VS. BUSINESS AS USUAL 521

ing prices. In war times, the operation of this law proves
embarrassing because of the excessive rates which the Gov
ernment must pay for loans, and the corresponding shrinkage
in security values sold in competition with Government bonds.
Other serious dangers accompany the elevation of prices and
interest rates. In a long war it may seem to become an end
less race with the dog chasing his tail in a circle.

These problems must not only be faced courageously, but
dealt with intelligently. The fathers of young men who
are serving their country in the army and navy are proud
of the sacrifices they make. Too often, however, when the
sacrifice appears at the altar of business, where we have so
long worshipped false values, we shrink and protest.

Some, unfortunately, must sacrifice their sons, others some
part of their business prosperity, and still others may face the
ordeal of a double sacrifice of both. It is one of the awful
consequences of war. Let us devote ourselves to avoiding an
unnecessary sacrifice of both boys and business by ordering
our affairs so that we are not consuming the supplies at
home which our armies need at the front.

BENJAMIN STRONG.

THE COMING COPPER FAMINE

BY SYDNEY BROOKS

THIS is a war of metals, and one vast and vital side of it,
the side of munitions and material, will need for its proper
telling a historian who is something of a metallurgist and a
good deal of a manufacturer. He will have to show how it
was the seizure, forty-five years ago, of the iron ore beds of
Alsace-Lorraine that alone made it possible for Germany
either to begin or to sustain the present war. He will have
to trace out the immense advantages that accrued to her when
in its first few weeks she overran Belgium, one of the most in
tensively industrialized countries in Europe, and seized all
its workshops, its tools, its coal and iron mines; when she
captured the coal-fields of northeastern France, the iron ore
districts on the Lorraine frontier, and the great manufactur
ing city of Lille ; and when the Pennsylvania of France, the
region from which France derived three-fourths of her steel,
had thus fallen into the enemy's hands. He will have to fol
low the effects of these prodigious developments the world
over — in Britain, first of all, as the main workshop and ar
senal of the Alliance, in America next as the chief producer of
raw material, and lastly in every land whose resources, thanks
to British sea-power, have been harnessed to the service of the
Allies. The uses and properties of steel and copper, of anti
mony, lead and tin, of spelter, tungsten, and mercuiy and of
a host of other metals and substances will have to be known
to him ; and the struggle to get them and to make the most of
them will form one of the most amazing and fascinating
volumes in his whole narrative.

Especially, for the drama there is in it, will he keep an
assiduous eye on copper. If one cannot quite say of copper,
as one can of steel, that it furnishes the base for the whole
monstrous mechanism of modern war, one can at least say
that among the indispensable metals in a belligerent's armory

THE COMING COPPER FAMINE 523

it holds the second place. Every rifle cartridge case contains
nearly half an ounce of the purest copper. Every bullet that
flies from a machine gun has been enclosed in a casing of
copper and zinc, gas-tight and exact to a five-hundredth
part of an inch. Every shell that is fired, whether shrapnel,
high explosive, or armor piercing, is encircled with a copper
band to prevent contact between the shell and the gun-barrel
and to ensure close fitting in the rifling. Every fuse has
copper among its constituents ; it is the chief element in Ad
miralty gun metal; for field telephones nothing else will do;
and in war as in peace the whole electrical industry comes to
a standstill without it.

Before 1914 Germany was producing on an average some
26,000 tons of copper. She may conceivably, and with the
help of the Austrian mines, have increased her production
to somewhat over 30,000 tons a year. But that is probably
not much more than a fourth or a fifth of her imperative war
needs. In normal times Germany required about 250,000
tons of copper annually. During the war, even after every
domestic use of the metal had been restricted to a minimum,
it is difficult to see how she could get along with less than
from 125,000 to 150,000 tons, that is to say, between four
and five times as much as she had ever raised from her own
soil. For the past three and a half years, therefore, by no
means the best of Germany's problems has been to make good
an annual shortage of 100,000 tons of this prime military
essential.

How far she has succeeded in solving it is, of course, un
known. But the methods she has adopted in attempting to
solve it are by now fairly familiar. First, she drew on her
accumulated stores. There cannot be much doubt that, hav
ing intended the war and prepared for it, Germany had can
vassed its copper aspects in advance. In the five years before
its outbreak she was an unusually heavy buyer of the metal.
It has been ascertained that during that period she imported
200,000 more tons of copper than went into her export busi
ness. At what figure her reserves actually stood in August,
1914, one cannot tell. But they were unquestionably large
enough to meet the demands of the brief, triumphant cam
paign on which the General Staff confidently counted.

Secondly, Germany proceeded to import all she could
from neutral countries. That source of supply has by now
been pretty well cut off, but in the early days of the war it

524 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

flowed freely. In September and October of 1913 Italy, the
Netherlands, Norway and Sweden imported under 11,000,-
000 pounds of copper. In the same months of 1914 they
imported over 52,000,000 pounds, and there can be little ques
tion that some of it, probably a good deal of it, found its way
into Germany. The British blockade at that time was poorly
devised and ineffectively enforced. The official list of contra
band goods did not, for instance, include copper regulus or
matte which might contain up to seventy per cent, of copper ;
and inexperience and an anxiety not to tread too heavily on
America's toes forfeited in the matter of copper as with a
good many other commodities some of the advantages of
supremacy at sea. The temptation moreover to neutral ex
porters was irresistible. Even before the end of 1914 any one
who could land a ton of copper in any form across the Ger
man frontier could get for it £160 paid down in gold.

But most of all the German Government relied on the in
genuity and self-sacrifice of its subjects at home and of their
friends abroad to supply it with the copper it needed. The
chemists and metallurgists and manufacturers were set to
work to devise substitutes. As early as April, 1915, the
Allies picked up on the battlefields many German fuses made
not of copper but of aluminium with a small cap of iron.
They were not altogether a success; the shells, being over-
light at the point, too ofter fell sideways and failed to ex
plode. In other directions German technologists may have
had happier results in their search for an alloy to take the
place of copper, but we shall have to wait till the end of the
war before their efforts can be known and studied. Mean
while the capture of some Serbian copper mines partially re
lieved the situation. The German Government paraded its
acquisition for all it was worth, dispatched six thousand
miners to its new treasure-trove with the utmost publicity,
and did what it could to persuade the German people that
mines which produced before the war hardly more than seven
thousand metric tons and the machinery of which had been
largely destroyed before their capture, would now meet the
war requirements of the German Empire.

That pretence, of course, could not be kept up for long.
The German people have had their shortage of copper very
sharply brought home to them in their homes and daily lives,
and they have shown a fine spirit in endeavoring to overcome
it. Some enthusiast estimated in the early days of the war

THE COMING COPPER FAMINE 525

that there were 2,000,000 tons of copper in domestic and
manufacturing use in Germany. The Government at once
took steps to get as much of it as it could. In Hamburg
alone, over two years ago, there were twenty-nine stations
for collecting copper utensils. In January, 1916, the sur
render of all articles of copper, brass or nickel was made com
pulsory. Since then the whole Empire and all the conquered
territories have been gone over with a fine tooth-comb in the
search for copper.

The fifty-four castles and residences that belong to the
Kaiser as well as the opera houses and theatres he subsidizes
have been ransacked for the precious metal. Printers and
publishers had to yield their " blocks." The cable tramways
in Kiel and many other towns were torn up. The cathedral
at Bremen was stripped of the copper in its roofing. Church
bells have been pretty generally confiscated. The cemeteries
have been searched for crucifixes, crosses and medallions.
The holy-water basins in the Belgian churches have been
requisitioned. Private householders were urged at first and
then ordered to hand over all the copper saucepans, kettles,
cauldrons, boilers, cooking utensils, door-knobs, bed-warm
ers, coffee machines, ash trays, chandeliers, and ornaments
in their possession ; and a vast service to art and humanity has
been rendered by melting down many of the public statues in
bronze and copper.

Outside the Fatherland German agents have been inces
santly busy on the same quest. They were found over two
years ago buying copper and bronze guns at Teheran, Ispa
han and throughout Persia. In all the adjacent neutral coun
tries they bought up copper coins by the bushels. The pris
oners in German camps when writing home were made to ask
for the oddly innocent gift of a copper saucepan. The very
herdsmen's huts in the Swiss hills and valleys were visited by
German emissaries on the lookout for stray copper utensils.
All sorts of machinery were purchased by the German Gov
ernment in contiguous countries provided that one-third of it
was made of copper. Guileless orders for copper lamps and
copper motor accessories were showered on the Scandinavian
kingdoms. Danish engravers were startled one day by an
order for a million copper plates, with the Kaiser's portrait
engraved on each, to be shipped as "works of art."

Smuggling, of course, has gone on systematically. All
Germany's neutral neighbors at a very early stage of the

526 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

war forbade the exportation of copper from their territories.
Copper none the less has leaked over the frontiers in a thou
sand disguises. A Danish captain tried to run forty tons of
it as sugar but the bottom dropped out of one of the casks
and his game was stopped. Five Dutch subjects were ar
rested in February, 1915, for trying to smuggle copper under
the cargo of a Rhine boat. Railway cars returning from
Sweden to Germany were found to be fitted with double
sides for holding copper. The British blockading squadrons
have found copper buried in orange cases from Spain and
hidden in hollow logs and candlesticks. They have inter
cepted steamers whose names were written in copper letters
a foot long. They have unearthed the metal in bales of cloth
and wool and bags of maize and linseed from South America,
and just two years ago they seized two hundred packages of
copper, each weighing five pounds apiece, which German
sympathizers in the United States had sent by registered
first-class mail to their friends in the Fatherland as a Christ
mas present.

All these somewhat desperate shifts tell their own tale.
They mean that Germany, the greatest importer of copper
in Europe, will when the war is over be absolutely bare of it.
There is nothing, therefore, incredible in the report that Ger
man manufacturers or the German Government have al
ready placed orders for 200,000,000 pounds in the United
States for immediate delivery on the return of peace. Be
fore the war nine-tenths of Germany's foreign supply of
copper came from America, the supplementary sources on
which she counted being Australia, Belgium, Japan, Serbia,
and Great Britain, all enemy countries. The Allies, if they
care to use it, have thus an immensely powerful weapon in
their virtual monopoly of a raw material out of which Ger
many has built up a considerable export trade and the steady
supply of which is indispensable to her industrial develop
ment at home.

What applies to Germany applies also to her Allies.
The end of the war will find areas in Europe and Asia
Minor inhabited by 150,000,000 people practically with
out a pound of copper among them. And when to
these we add the territories that Germany has overrun
and despoiled we get a population of not less than 200,000,-
000 in a state of copper famine. It is not easy to realize
all that this means. Our great grandfathers would not have

THE COMING COPPER FAMINE 527

minded the prospect. Three generations ago an output of less
than 10,000 tons a year sufficed for the needs of the entire
world. Nowadays we consume annually over 1,000,000 tons.
Copper enters into our domestic and industrial lives in a hun
dred different ways on which the average man never wastes
a thought. It is present in every article of brass and of
bronze that we use. Wherever there is electricity copper is
an essential element. In the existing state of applied science
there could be no electrification of a single railway without
a lavish use of copper for cables and fittings. Practically all
the telegraph and telephone wires the world over are made of
copper. It is the best conductor of electricity that so far has
been discovered. Many experiments have been made with
aluminium but as a conductor it has never yet been found
either as economical or as lasting as copper. And apart from
this one has only to think of the boilers, stills, cooking vessels,
seamless pipes, nails, wire, etching and engraving plates,
lightning-rods and writing pens that are made out of copper
to get some idea of its manifold uses and importance and of
the dislocation that would be caused were the supply to run
short or the price to become prohibitive.

But these precisely are the developments with which the
war threatens the world. Not only have great and populous
regions been denuded of copper, but the production of the
metal has been so vastly accelerated by the events of the past
three and a half years that the exhaustion of the chief exist
ing mines is now a matter of one or two decades, and no more.
The United States at present produces some fifty-five per
cent, of the total output. In February, 1914, five months
before the outbreak of the war, Mr. Ryan, the President of
the Amalgamated Copper Company, declared that the cop
per available in the United States would be exhausted in fif
teen years. Since then the unprecedented demands of the
belligerents must have considerably reduced his estimate of
America's productivity. The copper output of the United
States in 1913 was 557,000 metric tons. In 1916 it was
880,000 tons.

One must carry in one's head the copper statistics of the
past hundred years to appreciate the significance of the situ
ation that is now shaping itself. Three generations ago, as
I just said, the ^orld got along with an annual copper pro
duction of less than 10,000 tons. In the 'twenties some 13,-
000 tons sufficed; in the 'forties, 29,000; in the 'sixties, 90,-

528 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

000 tons. For the first seventy years of the nineteenth cen
tury the annual average consumption was 32,000 tons and no
more. Then came the dawn of the electrical age and with it
a vastly increased demand for copper. For the three closing
decades of the last century the average annual production
was nearly eight times as much as during the previous seven
decades. From being 32,000 tons a year it rose to 240,000;
during the first decade of the present century it increased
still further, to all but 700,000 tons a year; and in the six
years since 1910 it has averaged over 1,000,000.

Copper, in other words, has only won its position as an
indispensable metal within the last forty or fifty years. Less
than one-fourth of all the copper raised in the nineteenth cen
tury was produced in the first seven decades, and more than
three-quarters in the remaining decades. Roughly, one may
take 1870, or even perhaps 1880, as the beginning of the cop
per era. Between 1881 and 1890, for instance, its produc
tion increased by all but one hundred per cent. ; in the follow
ing decade by an additional fifty-six per cent., and between
1901 and 1910 by a further eighty-eight per cent. In the
past sixteen years the world's output has been nearly fifty
per cent, greater, than the entire production for the whole of
the nineteenth century; and the figures for 1916 alone, show
ing a production of 1,450,000 tons, exceeded the total pro
duction for the twenty years between 1851 and 1870, and
were some thirty per cent, greater than the figures for the
whole of the ensuing decade between 1871 and 1880.

The demand for copper, then, while accentuated by the
war, was not caused by it. It has been growing continu
ously, and at times almost violently, during the past four
decades as part of the natural process of industrial develop
ment, for which the new uses that have been found for elec
tricity are mainly responsible. It would have gone on grow
ing even if there had been no war. What the war has done
to copper is to accelerate its production, to divert a great deal
of it from industrial to belligerent purposes, to impose a
severe and unexpected drain on existing sources of supply
and to create conditions in which, when peace returns, the
world, needing copper more than ever, will have to draw heav
ily on its already depleted reserves.

This brings us to the question of how long these reserves
are likely to last. Copper is found more or less all over the
world's surface. There are believed to be vast deposits of it

THE COMING COPPER FAMINE 529

in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It is being mined
in Central Africa, in the United States, in Spain, in Chile,
in Australia, in Japan, in Russia, in England, Scotland and
Wales — in fact, the countries are few where it does not occur
in greater or lesser quantities. On the other hand, the coun
tries are fewer still where the beds are rich enough and access
ible enough to have any appreciable effect on the world's
supply. Not far short of sixty per cent, of the total copper
production comes from the United States. That is one of the
fundamental facts of the copper industry. Another is the pre
dominance of the few big mines over the many smaller ones
as factors in the total production. More than half the entire
output — to be exact, fifty-six per cent, of it — comes from
only seven per cent, of the companies engaged in copper min
ing, and sixty per cent, of the companies produce no more
than six per cent, of the output. There are some three hun
dred and thirty-five copper mines working today. Of these,
one hundred and thirty-nine, or forty-two per cent., pro
duce less than 500 tons apiece per annum, while twenty-three
mines have an average annual output of over 26,000 tons.

The big mine, then, and especially the big mine in the
United States, is the main element, if not the crux, of the sit
uation. If we take the six biggest American mines, which
are together responsible for about a third of the American
output, and calculate their known reserves of ore against
their programme of future production, we find that they
have before them an average life of no more than twenty-two
years. If, again, we add to these half dozen mines the two
giants in Chile, that are owned by American interests, we
find that on the same basis their average period of productiv
ity may be reckoned at twenty-seven years. That, however,
is probably an extreme estimate, unless a policy of deliberate
restriction of output is followed. If no such policy is adopted,
if the supply is maintained on a level with the demand, then
the copper required for the resumption of industrial life in
Europe, where, as has been said, areas inhabited by 200,-
000,000 people will end the war practically denuded of the
metal, must still further reduce the productive life of the
Transatlantic mines to nearer twenty than thirty years.

A world without copper is inconceivable to the average
man. He assumes without question that what has become a
necessity of modern life will somehow or other Continue to be
produced as heretofore; that new mines will be discovered

VOL. ccvn. — NO. 749 34

530 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and opened; that new methods will be invented for working
lower-grade ores; that science will produce synthetic copper
out of iodine and lead or zinc, or will devise some effective sub
stitute ; that copper sooner or later will be got direct from the
ore without the intermediate processes of smelting or refin
ing, and that in one way or another an adequate yield will
always be forthcoming. And no doubt he is right. Is there
any instance of an indispensable metal dropping out of exist
ence through sheer exhaustion of the supply and without leav
ing behind something equally good to take its place?

On general principles the average man could make out a
strong case. None the less, there are certain disquieting
facts staring him in the face. The mines that at present
produce sixty per cent, of the world's ouput have an active
life that is definitely limited to between two and three
decades. Other mines are known to exist, but in almost every
case climatic conditions or their remoteness from communica
tions render them unworkable. Metallurgists seem to agree
that the extraction of copper from low-grade ores has already
been carried pretty nearly as far as it can be. Thousands of
laboratories are working on the problems of synthetic copper
and of an efficient substitute, but so far without even a gleam
of success. It takes at least five million dollars and five years
of lavish capital expenditure before even a copper mine that
has easy access to its market can be made productive. It
takes much more, both of money and time, when the mine has
to be linked with railways and roads to the outer world.
Meanwhile, the demand for copper which has been mounting
in great upward leaps for the past thirty years, has been im
mensely stimulated by the war, and after the war will develop
into a world-wide and almost ferocious scramble. We are
not faced with any immediate prospect of the disappearance
of the metal. We are faced with the certainty of a shortage
that among the nations which do not look ahead and guard
themselves in advance will be little less than a famine.

The pressure of the world's needs upon the existing re
serves of copper was a notable but little noted feature of the
decade preceding the war. There are six countries — the
United States, Germany, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary,
France and Italy — that in 1903-4 consumed seventy-eight
per cent, of the total output. Ten years later these same
countries consumed eighty-seven per cent. In that decade,
while the population had increased by only eleven per cent.,

THE COMING COPPER FAMINE 531

their consumption of copper had increased by eighty-nine per
cent. It had risen from 1.61 tons per each thousand of their
peoples to just under three tons. If these countries were to
carry on into the years of peace merely the normal increase
of 43,000 tons of copper a year, which they averaged in the
decade preceding the war, they would be consuming 1,607,-
000 tons in 1925, 1,808,000 five years later, and over
2,000,000 tons in 1935. But, as we have seen, their real
demand is likely to be considerably in excess of this estimate.

We do not yet know how much copper any given country
can consume. Hitherto the greatest intensity of consump
tion has been reached in the United States. It stood there in
the year 1912 at 3.69 tons for each thousand of the popula
tion, having increased during the previous eight years at the
rate of just over four per cent, per annum. If we were to
take these figures — namely, a four per cent, increase each
year and a per capita consumption of 3.69 tons for every
thousand of the population — as representing the maximum
that any country is likely to attain to, the estimate just given
of the probable consumption of the six countries for 1925,
1930 and 1935 would require some reduction in the case of
the first two years and a slight increase for the third. Per
haps if we place the copper needs of the world in 1935 at
2,500,000 tons, or nearly two and a half times the average
output of the last six years, we shall not be very far wrong.

It is practically certain that the existing mines, even if
they are worked to their fullest capacity, cannot in the next
seventeen years rise to this level of production. But are they
likely to be worked to their fullest capacity, or anything like
it? So long as copper is indispensable, those who own copper
mines may find it to their interest to limit the output, not in
order to maintain prices, but to increase them. If we are
really — as we seem to be — nearing a time when copper will
be as relatively valuable as diamonds, the big American group
that controls the copper production of the United States and
Chile, and, therefore, of the world, may think it worth while
to imitate the policy of De Beers. Copper in the past half
century has been one of the greatest gambling counters of
Wall Street, and the price of the metal has been famous for
its sudden jumps. Forty-five years ago it reached $540.00;
twenty-two years later it touched bottom, at $185.00; ex
actly ten years ago, in the space of nine months, it jerked up
and down between $530.00 and $310.00. The coming years

532 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

may easily surpass all the Stock Exchange excitements that
have been stirred up in the past by copper; anything that
even resembles a find of the precious metal will be floated at
once; but copper itself is likely for the rest of our lifetime to
enjoy in the metal markets of the world a fairly stable price
— the highest.

One thing only can prevent a hold-up of the entire world
by the American copper magnates, and that is the discovery
of fresh sources of supply. All over the earth men are pros
pecting for new deposits or reopening abandoned mines.
Even in Great Britain, in the Lake district, in North Wales,
in Argyllshire, the hunt is on. ' There are few important
metals," said the British Minister of Munitions, last June,
" of which there is greater need for scientific and methodical
development in this country than is the case with copper."
But it is not Great Britain that can be looked to to mitigate
the coming famine or loosen the American hold on the world's
copper. The only country from which such possibilities can
be expected is Russia, which stands today, so far as copper is
concerned, just where the United States stood thirty-five
years ago, and which, like the America of that date, possesses
vast copper deposits that only await railways and capital for
their development. Undoubtedly that development will
take place. But for the moment Russia is an Empire in
flux and too distracted to give a thought to her hidden indus
trial capacities, and it is too much to expect that her vast
wealth of copper and other minerals can be exploited in time
to avert a severe and universal shortage in one of the world's
most essential metals.

SYDNEY BROOKS.

THE PRESIDENT AND PUBLIC OPINION

BY FABIAN FRANKLIN

Germany's sweep into Russia, the dominion she has not
only established but flaunted over that once great empire,
Roumania's submission to the Kaiser and acceptance of his
unsparing terms, have made the " peace offensive " of a few
weeks ago seem almost a distant memory. But in its essence,
though doubtless greatly changed in form, the question upon
which so many minds were centered by the " long-distance
negotiations " between President Wilson on the one hand
and Count von Hertling and Count Czernin on the other,
may recur in a not distant future. That question is whether,
in a situation at all resembling that which existed at the time
of those exchanges, the idea of a negotiated peace is one that
it is possible to entertain. And upon one particular aspect
of that question, and an extremely important one, a closing
episode of the recent " peace offensive " period offers matter
for serious thought.

On the 1st of March Mr. Hughes made a notable ad
dress at the meeting of St. David's Society in New York.
His words were a solemn warning against the danger of en
tertaining any hope that in the then existing relation of mili
tary advantage as between Germany and the nations arrayed
against her, a peace worth having could be obtained in any
other way than by the demonstration of superior power and
of inflexible determination to win the war. "There could
be ", he said, " at this time, it is quite evident, no negotiated
peace but a German peace." He did not say that Mr. Wil
son thought otherwise. He did not say that the President's
address of February 11 in reply to Hertling and Czernin
implied that he thought otherwise. He made no criticism
whatever of the President. That Mr. Hughes had the ad
dress of February 11 in mind is highly probable, nay, almost
certain; but whether the warning was designed to have refer-

534 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ence to the actual intent of the President's address or only to
the impression which, whether by a true or a false interpreta
tion, was widely put upon it is quite another question.
Clearly, if the President did not mean by his address to stim
ulate the hope of a negotiated peace, Mr. Hughes's speech
was not opposition but support; so far from tending to em
barrass him, it helped to strengthen his hand by the clearing
away of a false and undesired impression. As for motive,
it goes without saying that Mr. Hughes was animated solely
by devotion to the cause of his country and unstinted loyalty
to the head of its Government.

There is no reason to believe that Mr. Wilson himself
found anything to object to in Mr. Hughes's speech. But in
quarters not remote from the President it appears to have
been a stumbling block and a rock of offence. The New
York World declared that " no matter how amiably " the
speech may have been worded, it was " plainly enough in
criticism of the President's replies to the Pope, the German
Chancellor, and the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister,"
and that Mr. Hughes had misinterpreted these replies. The
Washington correspondent of another leading New York
paper stated that in Administration quarters the speech was
construed " as nothing more than a questioning of the good
faith of President Wilson." These observations, though
more or less significant as indicating a certain over-sensitive
ness in quarters fairly close to the President, do not call for
special comment. But in the Washington letter there occur
two statements which, taken together, raise a question of
vital interest. The first statement is this :

The President will not make peace a moment sooner than American
public opinion will want it made.

And the second is this:

Men who talk with the President from time to time come away
with the distinct impression that about the most uncompromising person
in the world on the subject of a just peace is the Chief Executive of the
United States.

Read separately in their context, these two statements may
pass, with most readers, as equally satisfactory ; brought into
juxtaposition, it should be plain to everyone who stops to
think that they strike two entirely different notes. Yet there
is only too much reason for believing that the confusion of
thought which the combination represents is widely en
tertained.

THE PRESIDENT AND PUBLIC OPINION 535

An incalculable amount of mischief is done by easy-going
dissemination of the crude doctrine that the only function
of a leader in a democracy is to be the interpreter of the
people's will ; a doctrine in some sense true enough, but only in
a sense infinitely removed from that which would sanction a
mere ear-to-the-ground attitude. Even in ordinary times
the function of a leader is to look much deeper into the pres
ent, and much farther into the future, of public opinion than
is possible through a mere count of noses, real or hypotheti
cal; and in time of war that kind of insight and foresight is
not only desirable and necessary, it is so indispensable that
anything else would mean imbecility and impotence. In time
of war the head of the nation must take upon himself the re
sponsibility of deciding not what the people want from mo
ment to moment, or even from year to year, but what, in the
light of all that his knowledge, his conscience, and his insight
teach him, they will in the long run approve as just and wise.

Now, if Mr. Wilson is " about the most uncompromising
person in the world on the subject of a just peace," all is
well; if, on the other hand, his state of mind is represented
merely by the assurance that he " will not make peace a mo
ment sooner than American public opinion will want it
made," all is far from well. Public opinion is subject to
strange changes of mood, in actual fact; and as to the out
ward signs of public opinion, they are so shifting, so various
and so liable to being read, even by the most honest of in
terpreters, in the light of his own inward desire, that to trust
to a firm and f arseeing policy upon any such basis would be
sheer folly. If any one objects to such warnings as Mr.
Hughes gave in his speech, he may do so either on the ground
that the President is firm as a rock, or on the ground that he
will never recede from his position until he is convinced that
public opinion demands it; but it is impossible to object on
both these grounds, for they are incompatible with each other.
You cannot at the same time say that President Wilson will
be guided by public opinion and that it is reprehensible to in
timate any doubt that he will stick inflexibly to his purpose.
And not only is the objector bound to choose one horn or the
other of this dilemma, but he is wrong whichever horn he
chooses. For if the President is subject to the guidance of
public opinion, those who are intensely opposed to a certain
possible change are called upon to make this known, as their
contribution to the expression of public opinion; while if he

536 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

is determined to stick uncompromisingly to his position, no
better service can be rendered to him than to show that any
deviation from it would be regarded by patriotic citizens as
a calamity.

As a matter of fact, however, the only endurable sup
position is that Mr. Wilson will hold to the course he laid
out for himself and for the nation in his memorable war-
speech of April 2, 1917, and in his address of December 4,
1917, at the opening of the present session of Congress.
Nothing short of an overwhelming demonstration of national
sentiment against that course could possibly justify any
variation or shadow of turning in the prosecution of the su
preme purpose declared in those utterances; and there is
about as much probability of such a demonstration as there is
of the Capitol being swallowed up by an earthquake. The
nation's response to the President's call was instantaneous
and enthusiastic; and thus far every month has but served to
emphasize the staunchness of its loyalty. Thus pledged to
a mighty effort, to the accomplishment of the great task
necessary to our safety and the safety of the world, we must
stand to the work at any sacrifice. To do otherwise would
mean dishonor and disgrace, as well as the destruction of all
that we prize as a nation of freemen, all that our country's
history has stood for. And no shifting of the blame upon a
wavering of public opinion could serve to lift the guilt of it
from those upon whom the responsibility of action falls, and
above all from the one man with whom alone the decision rests.

Probably no one knows this better than President Wil
son himself, and it is to be hoped that all the men of any real
weight in his entourage know it too. And there is another
thing which they must know likewise, but which they may
at some time be tempted to forget or ignore. Not only is it
the President's duty to be superior to the fluctuations of
public opinion which may be encountered in the course of the
war, but it is in his power almost completely to control them,
one may almost say to prevent them. It is hardly an exag
geration to say that in this tremendous trial of the nation he
can make public opinion what he chooses. This is due partly
to the traditional respect of Americans for the Presidential
office, partly to the extraordinary hold which he himself has
established upon the public confidence, and partly to a third
factor. The very magnitude of the issues, the enormous
range and complexity of the problems involved, the novelty

THE PRESIDENT AND PUBLIC OPINION 537

in American affairs of any such consideration of interna
tional difficulties — all this powerfully reinforces the nation's
instinctive desire to stand unquestioningly behind the Presi
dent in time of foreign war. No man but Mr. Wilson him
self can shake the people's determination to carry out the
programme which Mr. Wilson laid out, to fulfil the pledge
which in their name he has solemnly made and solemnly re
iterated. Unless he gives the signal to relax, there will be
no relaxing of purpose ; there will even be an intensification
of purpose whenever he gives the signal for that. Never
has there been a time when the impulse that the President
may receive from public opinion was in such large measure
a reflection of the impulse which public opinion receives from
him.

In this one respect President Wilson's task is distinctly
easier than was Lincoln's in the Civil War. Upon the issues
of that war there was serious division of opinion in the North,
resting upon long-standing party divisions bound up with
the whole history of the Republic. There was constant dan
ger of these divisions manifesting themselves in such shape as
to threaten the integrity of the nation's policy. Such oppo
sition, whether open or covert, as exists now to the nation's
war policy belongs to a wholly different category. In part
it is plainly stamped as of alien origin, in part it represents
the attitude of individuals professing doctrines that are of
recent date and which have no standing in what may be
called the collective consciousness of the people. Against the
clear call of militant patriotism the sound of these voices will
never be able to make head. Its only opportunity for seri
ous mischief lies in the possibility of a conjuncture of which
as yet there is no sign, but against which our minds must be
fore-armed. When death and destruction have been brought
home to us as they so long have been to the nations of Eu
rope, when the outlook is dark and doubtful, when we shall
be suffering real privation at home and grieving for the loss
of our best and dearest abroad, then any lowering of that
note of militant patriotism will be an invitation to the mal
contents to put forth all their latent strength and to gather
into their ranks all who are weak of heart or infirm of pur
pose. But, stupendous as Mr. Wilson's task is in other re
spects, he has at least this advantage, as compared with Lin
coln, that even in that contingency his appeal will be to an
essentially undivided nation, not to a people among whom

538 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

traditional party divisions gave a certain respectability to the
proposals of sedition or disloyalty.

How formidable these proposals became in the closing
year of the Civil War, we shall do well to recall and lay to
heart now. Everybody knows that the Democratic national
platform of 1864 declared that the war was a failure; what is
not so well remembered is the degree in which the infection of
discouragement and discontent had spread outside the limits
of the Democratic party. It was not a Democrat, but
Horace Greeley, who wrote to Lincoln on August 9, 1864,
almost frantically urging him to stop the war. Let us re
call precisely what he said:

I know that nine-tenths of the whole American people, North and
South, are anxious for peace — peace on almost any terms — and utterly
sick of human slaughter and devastation ... I beg you, implore you,
to inaugurate or invite proposals for peace forthwith. And in case
peace can not now be made, consent to an armistice for one year, each
party to retain, unmolested, all it now holds, but the rebel ports to be
opened.

This may serve to give some idea of the back-fire with which
Lincoln had to contend. But he held firmly on his way.
And who shall measure what his country, what the cause of
liberty and democracy the world over, owes to his constancy?
Long before that proposed year of armistice would have ex
pired, the Confederacy had become a thing of the past. The
fall of Richmond, the surrender at Appomattox, the saving
of the Union for all time, had been accomplished within eight
months of the penning of Greeley's letter. And in the in
terval there had been fought not only great battles, but the
political campaign which Lincoln himself at one stage deeply
feared would result in victory for the party which had de
clared the war a failure.

Against just this kind of difficulty, thank Heaven, Presi
dent Wilson will not be called upon to contend. But on the
other hand the real outlook — the actual difficulties before us,
the undeniable grounds for discouragement, as distinguished
from the mere promptings of a panicky imagination — may
offer a far darker prospect than any that presented itself
to the North during the Civil War. The desire to yield be
cause of partisan half-heartedness or dissent is so nearly non
existent that it need not be reckoned with ; but the temptation
to yield in the face of staggering difficulties may become so
great as to require leadership as high and as firm as Lincoln's

THE PRESIDENT AND PUBLIC OPINION 539

to resist. And in order to brace the nation to resist it when it
comes, it is essential that the tone of public opinion be stead
ily sustained at every stage of the struggle. It is an intense
realization of this that prompts such warnings as that of Mr.
Hughes. Those who feel impelled to make them cannot
trouble to inquire too closely what bearing they may have
upon the President's state of mind. To gauge that state of
mind exactly is beyond the possibility of any but himself;
and the matter is one upon which we cannot afford to take
chances. Mr. Wilson may know as well as anyone can tell
him — he probably does know as well as anyone can tell him —
how potent every word he utters may be for good or ill. Vast
as are his powers as executive head of the nation, his in
fluence in determining the nation's temper is a factor no less
momentous in the shaping of events. And if there be but a
shade of doubt as to whether an utterance of his may tend
toward relaxing instead of strengthening the people's con
centration on the one purpose of carrying the war to victory,
then those who know the dangers that may be ahead must
speak out and do what in them lies to remove that shade of
doubt.

No American can contemplate the burden of responsi
bility resting upon President Wilson without a sense of its
awful, its appalling, weight. It may be doubted whether
any human being in all history has been called upon to ex
ercise power so vast and comprehensive, and to make de
cisions so many-sided and so momentous. No higher tribute
can be paid to a man than that which his countrymen are
paying to Mr. Wilson when they repose in him a trust com
mensurate with that power and that responsibility. The con
sciousness that they do so must be to him not only a source of
pride and satisfaction, but an invaluable reservoir of
strength. We have gone through a twelvemonth of star
tling departures from our accustomed ways, of commitments
to giant undertakings undreamed of a year ago, of readjust
ments affecting almost every phase of our economic organi
zation. All this has been done essentially under the guidance
of the President, and it has been accepted with a readiness,
an absence of serious dissent or disturbance, that is little
short of marvelous. But there is a limit beyond which con
fidence in the President cannot go without becoming an un
manly subserviency, desirable neither from the standpoint of
the people nor from his own. The doctrine that the king can

540 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

do no wrong was not, even in its palmiest days, understood to
cover the acts of the king's ministers. The President of the
United States must be — and Mr. Wilson most emphatically
is — his own prime minister; to refrain from warning him or
the country that he may have made a mistake, or that he may
be in danger of making a mistake, on the ground that this
implies a want of confidence in him, would be to wrap our
selves in an atmosphere of more than Oriental servility. It
would be the worst service we could do him personally, as
well as the nation. His great messages of April 2, 1917,
and of December 4, 1917, stand unwithdrawn, nor is there
any reason to believe that he contemplates any withdrawal
from the position upon which he then planted himself and
the nation. But dark days are before us — darker days, and
more of them, than any of us a few months ago expected to
have to confront. Day by day, this will become more fully
realized by the nation; and it would be playing the part of
the ostrich to shut out from our consciousness the danger at
home that will surely arise from the increase of danger
abroad. We shall have disloyal Vallandighams lifting up
the voices they now dare not raise, and loyal Greeleys yield
ing to the counsel of panic fear; and it will rest with Wilson,
as it rested with Lincoln, to hold fast his purpose in the face
of clamor and temptation. He will stand firm; he will not
mistake the voice of a hysterical minority, or even a passing
mood of the nation, for the deliberate mandate of the Ameri
can people. But it is for us, so far as in us lies, to strengthen
him to hold the rudder true, as it will be for future generations
of Americans to acclaim the imperishable greatness of his
service.

FABIAN FRANKLIN.

NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION

BY HENRI LAMBEET

AN old aspiration which in relatively recent times has
found its rational expression in the "self-determination of
nationalities," or " government by consent of the governed,"
is destined to play a leading role in the political reconstruc
tion of Europe and the world. The fate of mankind will
largely depend on the right appreciation and application of
this " mundi principium ordinis" Such a principle cannot be
too seriously tested. Compliance with errors or illusions,
pursuit of will-o '-the-wisps, when the gravest issues are at
stake, may again lead men to fields prepared for immeasur
able ruin and innumerable graves. Welfare and progress can
come only from a recognition of truth. Is self-determina
tion, as an aspiration and a political principle, born of un
questionable truth? If so, what should be the method of its
application?

This query transcends the domestic issues of the life and
development of the smaller nationalities concerned; it raises
the whole problem of the organization of a better interna
tional life ; no satisfactory answer can be given to it if consid
ered by itself, isolated from the general question of the con
ditions making for greater international justice, harmony,
security, thus preparing the advent of a permanent universal
peace and the birth of a truer and higher civilization.

As long as nations feel insecurity in regard to one another
the peoples will be confirmed in the entirely sound idea that
national might, Great Powers, Empires, are necessary. They
will, perforce, form compact national blocks and, impelled
by vital interests, will refuse to listen to the pleas of sacrificed
and wretched subject nationalities. Insecurity will inevit
ably lead to the formation of the greatest possible national
units, the integration of smaller nationalities into empires. It
follows that the problem of international security must first

542 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

be solved before the gradual disintegration of these great
national units and the reconstruction of the world into inde
pendent or autonomous nationalities can be attained; only in
this way can a natural and lasting readjustment be worked
out.

In an industrial and commercial age, when the progress
and the very existence of peoples depend fundamentally on
their achievements in these domains, it is clear that the satis
faction of economic interests through a just equality of eco
nomic rights must form a prerequisite of international secur
ity. Economic justice and security are fundamental justice
and security. It has been far too commonly overlooked by
students, lawyers and statesmen that the policy of nations
and the evolution of human progress have been influenced
constantly and increasingly by the economic conditions of
the period. For nearly half a century justice or injustice in
international relations has been fundamentally a question of
equality or inequality of economic rights and opportunities.
This is not only natural, but in conformity with morality and
righteousness, in their truest and highest meaning.

In one of the most eloquent pages of all literature, your
original and stimulating philosopher, Emerson — who was,
be it remembered, a true poet — wrote as follows :

Trade was always in the world, and, indeed, to judge hastily, we
might well deem trade to have been the purpose for which the world
was created. It is the cause, the support and the object of all govern
ment. Without it, men would roam the wilderness alone, and never
meet in the kind conventions of social life. Who is he that causes this
busy stir, this mighty and laborious accommodation of the world to
men's wants? Who is he that plants care like a canker at men's
hearts, and furrows their brows with thrifty calculations? that makes
money for his instrument, and therewith sets men's passions in ferment
and their faculties in action, unites them together in the clamorous
streets and arrays them against each other in war? It is Trade —
Trade, which is the mover of the nations and the pillar whereon the
fortunes of life hang. All else is subordinate. Tear down, if you
will, the temples of Religion, the museums of Art, the laboratories of
Science, the libraries of Learning — and the regret excited among man
kind would be cold, alas! and faint; — a few would be found, a few
enthusiasts in secret places to mourn over their ruins; — but destroy
the temples of Trade, your stores, your wharves and your floating cas
tles on the deep; restore to the earth the silver and gold which was
dug out thence to serve his purposes; — and you shall hear an outcry
from the ends of the earth. Society would stand still, and men return
howling to forests and caves, which would now be the grave, as they
were once the cradle, of the human race.

NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION 543

This partial and inordinate success by which this institution of
men wears the crown over all others is necessary ; for the prosperity
of trade is built upon desires and necessities which nourish no dis
tinction among men; which all, — the high and humble, the weak and
strong, can feel, and which must first be answered, before the impris
onment of the mind can be broken and the noble and delicate thoughts
can issue out, from which Art and Literature spring. The most en
thusiastic philospher requires to be fed and clothed before he begins
his analysis of nature, and scandal has called poetry, taste, imagina
tion the overflowing phantasms of a high-fed animal.

No economist has ever so inspiringly pointed out the basic
importance of the economic factors and issues in the problems
of human life, and so implicitly their necessarily crucial bear
ings on national and international political welfare and
destiny.

Justice in international relations is above all a policy that
favors the economic development of all nations, without ex
cluding any. Doubtless the production of wealth is not the
supreme aim and object assigned to humanity, and economic
prosperity can never provide the consummation of the edifice
of human progress ; but it does provide its foundation and its
material structure, and the right of every nation constantly
to enlarge this edifice is clear and inalienable. And since the
growth of the material prosperity of nations is the necessary
condition of their intellectual and moral advance — for we
cannot conceive of a lofty civilization as a product of poverty
— their right to the fullest economic development compatible
with the wealth of their soil and their own capacity for useful
effort is a right that is natural and indefeasible — a divine
right in the holy sense of the term.

Now, the economic development of every nation is insep
arable from the ever-widening operations of its exchanges.
None can live and prosper economically isolated from the
others. Cooperation through economic exchange is thus seen
to be not only the main and fundamental fact, but the essen
tial natural right of man in his international relations. Free
dom of exchange will be the tangible manifestation and the
infallible test of a condition of true justice, of morality, of
righteousness, in international life.

If only freedom of exchange can give the required equity
in rights and stability of opportunity to the industrial ac
tivities of all nations, and thus insure the necessary security
to their fundamental life, it must be recognized that, in the
absence of such freedom, powerful nations will not, nay,

544 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

cannot consent to abandon the conception of prosperity guar
anteed and protected by a military power which must itself
be attained by expanding territory and increasing population.
In a system of international life made of privilege, monopoly,
exclusion, the stronger progressive peoples will rightly, by
force and subjection, constitute the greatest possible terri
torial, political and economic units, not only for reason of
military power, but also because such a policy offers the sole
means of achieving economic liberty, stability and expansion.
For the desire to conquer, to annex, to form economic empires
at the expense of subject nationalities, there exists, in the
very nature and force of things, only one alternative.

Had all nations lived, if only for ten years, under a regime
of freedom of exchange and intercommunication, they would
see clearly that greater advantages than formerly accrued
to them from territorial expansion and imperial centraliza
tion of power were obtainable through unrestricted inter
course, and without the evils engendered by the old system of
domination. The idea of cooperation and association would
replace the idea of power. Peoples would free themselves
from the madness of " empires." And gradually, even the
great acquisitive nations would cease to find it detrimental to
their interests and their progress to accord autonomy or inde
pendence to the various nationalities of which they are com
posed; indeed, free intercourse and the " open door " would
prove an immense boon for all, great and small.

On the other hand, it appears extremely doubtful whether,
under a regime of reciprocal exclusions and inequality of
rights and opportunities, with the resulting international
rapacity, strife and instability, the smaller nations would
have a true interest in separation from the great empires ; for
their economic and political isolation would mean poverty
and decadence or stagnation, with added insecurity.

The cooperative federation of the nations, under a regime
of economic freedom, insuring equality and general prog
ress, minimizing jealousies and rivalries, tending to unify
interests and identify political conceptions and aims, is the
only solution of the question of nationalities that can con
ceivably be satisfactory and permanent.

From other and most important points of view, the coop
erative economic federation of the world is needed much more
than a political " league of nations " as the condition prece
dent of a safe and progressive settlement of the problem of

NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION 545

nationalities. Let us not deceive ourselves; the principle of
self-determination and self-government, if applied in un
favorable conditions, bears germs of national dissolution,
anarchy and international wars.

Democratic suffrage and parliamentary institutions, as
practiced by the older nations, have not been so successful
in achieving national welfare or international safety as to
permit great expectations from their adoption by young, un
educated and turbulent peoples. It might well prove better
that autonomy, as a step toward independence, should remain
to be settled by the great national units concerned within a
limited period after true fundamental international liberty
and security have been established. Meanwhile, the old de
mocracies ought better to exemplify the benefits of their insti
tutions. Democratic self-government is not a national pan
acea, but only the machinery which is susceptible of smooth
running if seriously improved and properly used.

The peril of international disputes might increase in pro
portion to the number of nationalities if the new nations
began their life of independence by adopting the prejudices
and committing the errors born of ignorance of economic
truth; an ignorance which has led most of the old nations,
democracies included, to seek prosperity not in the prosperity
of all through cooperation, but in mutual exclusion, monopoly
of opportunities, spoliation through the absurd and immoral
system miscalled " protection," which leads fatally to war
between nations whose " places in the sun " are altogether
unequal and insecure. Self-governing nations must be en
lightened lest they become international nuisances.

Moreover, are all regional portions of great countries, all
ethnical sections of great national commonwealths, to enjoy
the right of self-determination? If so, this right would soon
turn into general dismemberment and universal anarchy.
But if free economic intercourse, with its consequent gradual
unification of interests, ideas, morals, institutions (and even
language in the form of a universal commercial and familiar
idiom) were established as a general principle and actual rule
between all national groups, it would no longer matter so
much to a man on what side of the border line he lived.
National and international tranquility would be much less
endangered by ethnical aspirations and local vicissitudes.

Freedom spells justice and morality and proves to be the
only safe refuge of man. Sound economics, that is to say,

vn 740 ?$

546 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

truth, freedom and justice in economic relations, are, by the
very nature and necessity of things, at once the moral basis
and the palladium of individual, national and international
life.

If all the regional and ethnical interests of the great
national units are not to be granted the right of self-deter
mination and self-government, what will be the criterion?
Neither race, language, religion, customs, history, geograph
ical proximity nor common government constitutes the main
factor in the formation of nationality. It is common eco
nomic interests, combined with one or with several of those
factors, that makes nationality a vital force. Our economic
life and relations are our fundamental life and relations. The
true and profound origin of nationalities is economic in its
nature; consequently, the question of national welfare must
remain an economic issue. Under a regime of free economic
intercourse the complexity of the problem would be reduced
to a minimum ; on the other hand, any settlement that disre
garded this freedom would prove artificial and ephemeral.

It therefore seems useful to suggest that the present ques
tions can hardly be answered satisfactorily by the process of
plebiscites or referendums.

Why should the vital interests and the political fate of
the inhabitants of a given portion of a contested country be
definitely and finally determined by the will of the inhabitants
of other parts of the country? Why should the political
wishes as well as the fundamental interests of an enlightened
minority, and of the *vohole group, be sacrificed to the wishes,
and often to the blind passions or prejudices, of a majority?
Why should countries thus forcibly, by numbers, be affiliated
with a greater national unit? In many cases, minorities and
majorities may be nearly balanced and subject to changes.
Would not the result of a plebiscite then be an error, an
illusion, a will-o'-the-wisp? Only autonomy leading to com
plete independence— the natural and gradual result of the
international security engendered by the cooperative federa
tion of the nations — can finally satisfy the various interests
of all the members of a nationality.

There, moreover, stand against the settlement of these
questions by way of referendums and plebiscites divers com
plications and difficulties which may prove insuperable. It
seems as if Nature itself had thus provided for the necessity
of a deeper, or of a higher solution ; as if, for the happiness

NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION 547

of the smaller nations, and for the safety of the greater, a
superior purpose — by no means inaccessible to human under
standing, since God does not put us insoluble riddles — re
quired the advent of a state of righteousness, morality, spir
ituality in international life.

Such a view of the question as is here presented may be
considered pure idealism by those " practical men " who
profess to deal only with " realities and facts." It may be
scorned by the " practical politicians " of the allied countries
as well as by those inspired by Germanic ideas, culture and
aims. In conclusion, therefore, let us complete our state
ment by challenging them with this pragmatic argument: It
may well be that absolute security and certain peace can exist
only when no peoples any longer have reason to desire con
quest, and, consequently, none of them has any reason to fear
it. Now, liberty of trade relations between two peoples (as
suring, as it does, liberty of general intercourse) is equivalent
to mutual annexation by these two peoples ; and the same lib
erty extended to all peoples would be equivalent to reciprocal
annexation by all peoples. No nation would any longer have
an important, or even a serious interest in vanquishing other
nations and conquering their territories. Given universal
freedom of commerce, and it appears that international mo
rality, as manifested by the absence of conquest and war,
would become a positive, practical reality.

If it has been shown successfully that the permanent free
dom of smaller nationalities is dependent on this final aboli
tion of war and conquest, we are justified in concluding that
enduring satisfaction of the legitimate desire for self-deter
mination and self-government can be produced only by such
practical international morality as will result from world
wide enjoyment of " places in the sun " and equal opportu
nities afforded to all nations. Such, even according to prag
matic interpretation, appears to be the will of Nature—
against which the will of man can never prevail.

Whatever may be the differing views of men — idealistic
or realistic — it is manifest, we think, that only by a rational
and scientific (because natural) method of self-determination
can the reconstruction of the world, according to national
aspirations, provide the future of mankind with a useful and
durable framework for a worthier and a higher civilization.

Wrongly put, the problem of self-determination would
be insoluble or susceptible only of an artificial and ephemeral

548 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

settlement; illogically dealt with, the issues involved are
fraught with eminently and imminently grave perils. Na
tional self-government is not an unquestionable principle, is
not a truth that stands by itself as natural and immanent;
it is a political contingency depending on such a progress of
morality and civilization as will be marked by international
security. Freedom of nationalities cannot be the origin and
cause of this security and of peace ; it can only be the natural,
gradual, logical consequence of these.

International security and peace must fundamentally
manifest themselves in the economic life and relations of the
nations. In proposing, as the third of his fourteen articles,
" the removal, as far as possible, of all economic barriers and
an equality of trade conditions for all nations," the President
of the United States has enunciated the moral condition and,
we may hope, has laid the moral foundation of a new and
better world order, in which national collectivities will gradu
ally find the necessary opportunities for the material and spir
itual welfare and happiness of their members. Such will be
the result, the blessed fruit, of a Pax Economica.

HENRI LAMBERT.

WHAT WE OWE TO SOCIALIST RUSSIA

BY CHARLES JOHNSTON

ON the whole, there seems excellent reason for believing
that " Lenin " and " Trotsky," and the pseudonymous per
sons who have cooperated with them, have been from the
first, and are at this moment, paid agents of Kaiser Wil-
helm. Much evidence to this effect has been already pub
lished ; but the crowning proof lies in the application of the
profoundly searching principle : " By their fruits ye shall
know them." They have done, at every point, exactly what
paid agents of Kaiser Wilhelm would have done; and they
have done it in characteristically German ways.

Let us try to take an inventory of what we owe to them,
so far, beginning at the north, with Finland. The announce
ment that German forces would occupy the Aland Islands,
which command the harbor of Stockholm, is followed now
by the further announcement that Germany will occupy the
whole of Finland " in order to restore order," and, I sup
pose, in the interest of " the self-determination of peoples."
Well, where does Germany get her pretext for this prelim
inary annexation of Finland? From the outrageous invasion
of Finland by Russian Socialist forces, the so-called " Red
Guard" of "Lenin" and "Trotsky." In other words, if
Germany had deliberately contrived and concocted a pretext
for occupying Finland, with the intention, of course, of turn
ing occupation into annexation, and, as now appears, of
setting Kaiser Wilhelm's son on the throne of Finland, she
would have arranged for precisely this invasion. We are
fully justified, by what we know of Germany's action else
where, — for example, by our knowledge of Germany's
beneficent intentions for Texas, New Mexico and Arizona,
— in coming to the conclusion that Germany did arrange
for the Russian Socialist invasion of Finland, and that
" Lenin " obediently furthered this arrangement.

550 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Taking the next step to the south, to the Lettish country
about Reval and Riga: Germany desired a good pretext for
invading and later annexing this valuable Baltic region-
valuable through its situation, as commanding Russia's out
let to the sea. What good pretext could be given? Evi
dently, the best would be the oppression of the German
Ost-See landowners, who, to put it mildly, have never en
joyed large popularity with their Lettish tenants. So the
" Red Guard " rushed wildly through the Lettish country,
producing the requisite number of outrages, and Germany
had her pretext. And the point is that here, as in Finland,
the pretext was a good one; the presence of German armies
is distinctly better than the wild outrages of the " Red
Guards." Germany's game, therefore, required Russian
Socialist outrages in the Lett country. The outrages were
promptly forthcoming. Is it not a fairly sound conclusion
that they were produced by Stage-manager " Lenin," at
Germany's behest?

Germany next desired a good verbal excuse for annex
ing, in conjunction with Austria, the whole of Lithuania
and Poland. The best possible reason for immediate action
— the reason, that is, which would make the strongest appeal
to the Pharisaic-sentimental element in Germany — would
be, that these regions were menaced by Russian Socialist
contagion which, passing through these regions, might con
taminate the sacred soil of Germany. And we shall be wise
to recognize the fact that the overwhelming majority of
Germans hate and abhor Russian Socialism — not because
of any moral principle, but because Russian Socialism is so
certain to destroy what the German so sincerely worships,
material well-being and success. So, in order to reconcile
the sentimental element in the Reichstag, to induce them
to swallow then* protests against " annexations and indemni
ties," it was necessary to frighten them, to touch them at
their tenderest point, their love of material comfort; and the
menace of Russian Socialist contagion frightened them in
exactly the needed way. So the annexation of Courland,
Poland, Lithuania, are accomplished facts, and we shall have
no protest whatever from the German sentimentalists. Once
again, the ingenious " Lenin " took the precise action that
was necessary to bring this about.

We come next to that problematic region called
Ukrainia. with its plea for separate national life. The

WHAT WE OWE TO SOCIALIST RUSSIA 551

story of Ukrainia has been often told. The " borderland "
between the Slavs and the Moslem Turks and Tartars, it
was gradually filled up by a population largely Russian and
Polish, with a small admixture of Tartar and Turkish blood,
due to the presence of captured women. At first, this bor
derland was under Polish influence, Poland being, in those
early days, much stronger than Russia. But the Polish
overlords were exacting and tyrannous, and, in order to
escape from them, the Ukrainians, led by the patriot Khmel-
nitski, sought, and finally gained, an alliance with the Mos
cow Tsars, in the days of the father of Peter the Great.
There were elements which resented this union with Russia;
they sought aid from Poland, from Sweden, from Turkey:
from all Russia's enemies. Later, this separatist element
in Ukrainia was carefully fostered and supported by Aus
tria, working from Lemberg as a strategic base; and the
modern "Ukrainian" movement is distinctly Austrian in
spirit and purpose.

Austria ardently desired to reach an understanding with
the pro- Austrian politicians at Kiev who called themselves
the Rada, the Ukrainian National Assembly — a practical
understanding, which should mean bread for the starving
Viennese. The Rada politicians, on their part, desired to
add to Ukrainia all of southern Galicia and northern Buko-
wina, at Austria's expense. Inspired by this desire, they
might hold out for better terms, and thus delay the sending
of wheat to hungry Vienna. How could the screw be put
upon the Rada? Obviously, by a Russian Socialist invasion,
which would frighten the Rada into believing that their own
power and pleasant prospects were endangered. So the
Russian Socialist invasion was forthcoming; Austrian help
was called in to stem it; the claim to Galicia and Bukowina
was given up, in part for the solatium of a bit of Poland
about Kholm — and the Austrian game was won. Is it not
common sense to suppose that this exceedingly timely inva
sion of Ukrainia by the " Red Guard " was not a mere stroke
of luck, a sheer bit of Austrian good- fortune? Austria is,
at this point, as clearly beholden to " Lenin " as Germany
is in Finland.

One step further south, and we reach Roumania, whose
position has been, and is, the climax of this whole eastern
tragedy. What pressure could be put upon often deceived
and betrayed Roumania, to force her out of the war on

552 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

terms that would give up to Germany the Carpathian oil-
wells and the Wallachian wheat-fields? Two things might
be done: to render Roumania practically bankrupt, and
therefore powerless, by seizing her gold reserve, which had
been deposited in Moscow; to attack in the rear the Rou
manian forces which have courageously held their ground
in the face of heavy odds. Well, both " inducements " were
promptly supplied. The Roumanian gold reserve at Mos
cow was seized by the Russian Socialists, and the attack on
the Roumanian armies was made by the " Red Guard."
And now we are told that " Lenin " has agreed to the pay
ment by Russia of a huge gold indemnity to Germany. So
we have revealed, within a few weeks, the real destiny of
the stolen Roumanian funds. It was openly announced that,
during the critical week when " Lenin " was ousting the
equally Socialistic but less resolute Kerensky, officers of the
German staff were industriously helping him at Petrograd,
No doubt they saw from afar the brilliant cash possibilities
of the Roumanian coup, and showed the compliant " Lenin "
exactly how it might be brought about.

Throughout these transactions, the doings of Austria
have been both interesting and instructive: interesting to
those who have some insight into the finished methods of
Austrian statecraft; instructive, perhaps, to those who are
still under the charm of Austrian guile. When it is a ques
tion of the character of some one who has the ill luck to
be found among a band of thieves, one can get a pretty con
clusive test by his attitude when it comes to the division of
the spoils. So, now that the Russian bear is being cut up,
we have our chance to measure Austria's " good faith."

We are told that, " in accordance with the principle
of the self-determination of peoples," " Lenin " of Petro-
grad will give up to Mohammed V of Constantinople,
at the instance of the latter's kind friend, Wilhelm of Pots
dam, not only that part of Armenia recently liberated from
murderous Turkish tyranny by the brilliant campaign of
the Grand Duke Nicholas, but that older part of Armenia
which was liberated in the last ninety years; and that, as
a kind of tip to Wilhelm for his good offices, Germany will
get the immensely valuable oil-wells at Baku, the railroad
to Batum on the Black Sea, and the port of Batum, into
the bargain. Exactly in what way this is a triumph for
the world's proletariat we have not been able to discern. But

WHAT WE OWE TO SOCIALIST RUSSIA 553

one may judge, by this work of supererogation, how very
useful and obliging Mr. " Lenin " is. Concerning the stran-
gle-hold which, thanks to the same obliging friend, Germany
has already gained in Siberia, enough has been said, of late,
in the newspapers, and adequate action seems to have been
begun.

But, now that we have roughly enumerated the many
kindnesses which " Lenin " has bestowed upon Germany, we
should be wise to look the facts in the face. It is no longer
the question whether Germany will win the world- war; as
regards nearly half the world, that question is closed. Ger
many has already won in the East — thanks to Russian So-
cialism. To look at the matter from the standpoint of
American industry, it will be well to recollect that:

(1) Germany now controls both the oil-fields, in Rou-
mania and at Baku, which seriously competed with Ameri
can oil, together with the finest deposit of manganese in the
world.

(2) Germany now controls wheat lands among the rich
est upon earth, wheat lands which, including southern Siberia,
vie even in area with our own wheat-growing zone.

(3) Germany now controls the one great untouched tim
ber-zone remaining in the world, stretching right across
Siberia.

(4) Germany controls the vast leather-producing area
which runs across central Russia and Siberia.

(5) Germany now controls immensely valuable mining
zones, containing everything from iron to gold, running from
the Don valley to Ussuria.

(6) Germany now controls, in the Urals, practically the
whole of the world's supply of platinum, quite indispensable
to our electrical industries.

That is about where we stand, thanks to Socialism and
its faithful support of German policies.

Now let us consider where we stood, just over a year
ago, before Socialism got in its fine work in Russia. It
will be remembered that, in mid-March, 1917, the Emperor
Nicholas II abdicated under pressure from the Duma lead
ers, Rodzianko, Milyukoff, Gutchkoff and the rest. These
gentlemen at that time let it be understood that they took
this violent step to save the Allies' cause; that Nicholas II
was on the eve of signing a separate peace with Kaiser Wil-
helm. And, throughout all the Entente countries, and in

554 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

lands then neutral but now, happily, belligerent, this story
was believed, and Nicholas II was branded as a traitor.

And, by one of those ironic coincidences in which history
is an adept, just one year later, when " free, revolutionary
Russia " has signed a separate peace with Germany, and a
deeply ignominious peace, there comes the tardy vindication
of the Russian Emperor's honor. On March 1, 1918, this
cablegram was despatched from London: " Speaking at a
dinner given in his honor tonight in London, Sir George
Buchanan, British Ambassador to Russia, who is now on
leave, took occasion to correct the widespread report that,
at the time of his abdication, Emperor Nicholas was ready
to conclude a separate peace. Sir George Buchanan said
there was not a word of truth in this report. Doubtless
Nicholas had much to answer for, he remarked, but he never
would have betrayed the cause of the Allies, and was always
a loyal friend to England."

I should think that no one among the Allies, and, most of
all, no one in England, will read that sentence without a keen
feeling of shame. After he had fought loyally for the Allies
during nearly three years, in the face of enormous sacrifices
and losses, the Emperor Nicholas was deserted by the Allies.
This loyal friend of England was deserted by England. And
today we see the fruit. . . .

One remembers that, a year ago, just after the abdica
tion of the Emperor Nicholas, our newspapers broke forth
in a storm of merriment at the expense of Wilhelm of Pots
dam. He was warned, with much side-splitting laughter,
that his turn would come soon. And we, the readers, were
told that the Russian " revolution " filled the German Kaiser
and his militarists with wild dismay. There would be a
certain humor in reprinting those jubilant prophecies now,
but that humor would be grim. . . . The simple truth is
this : from the very beginning of the war, Germany watched
for the Russian revolution, worked for it, prayed for it;
and, when it came, as one may well believe, by German
prompting and with German aid, the Kaiser and his war
party breathed to their Gott the deepest thanksgiving. They
felt that the world-war was half -won. And, on the instant,
they sent to Russia, post-haste, the engaging and helpful
" Lenin." . . . Which shows just how much Germany
feared the Russian revolution. She feared it as a drowning
man fears a life-preserver. . . .

WHAT WE OWE TO SOCIALIST RUSSIA 555

One remembers that, within two or three months of
Nicholas* abdication, General Brusiloff made this declara
tion to an English correspondent : " Russia will not be able
to bring all her forces to bear before the Spring of 1917;
and then she will possess the greatest and most complete
army in her whole history. During the year 1916, we have
been compelled to fight with a marked inferiority of ma
terial and of large caliber guns; the year 1917 will find
us masters of a material equal to that of our adversaries,
and we shall have, at the same time, an extraordinary superi
ority of men. This situation will continue in a steadily
increasing degree until the end of the war. Our recruits
each year are of the best possible quality, infinitely superior
to any human material that the Teutons can dispose of, I
am convinced, to fight against us in the campaign of the
coming year. . . . '

That was the military situation, according to one of the
ablest Entente generals, just before the forced abdication
of the Emperor Nicholas — an abdication brought about by
Milyukoff, Rodzianko, Gutchkoff and the rest because, they
told us, Nicholas II was on the eve of making a separate
peace. Herr Liebknecht has truthfully declared that, so
far as Germany is concerned, " the war was begun by a
lie." It now appears that the same thing is true of the
Russian revolution. It was begun by a cowardly slander.
The Emperor Nicholas " would never have betrayed the
cause of the Allies, and was always a loyal friend to En
gland. . . . ' For both the lie and the revolution, we are
indebted to Russian Socialism.

But we ourselves are not without responsibility. The
avowed plan of Milyukoff, Rodzianko and the rest, as I
have more than once pointed out, was to inaugurate a con
stitutional monarchy, with themselves as Ministers. They
had no intention at all of establishing a republic, because
they had sense enough to see that that form of government
would be wholly unsuitable for Russia. And if we look at
what has happened in Russia since, we shall see how well
grounded that opinion was. Kerensky, so far as he gov
erned at all, governed as a dictator; there was not the
faintest pretense, during his brief tenure of power, of self-
government. " Lenin " has governed, and is governing,
frankly as a despot, with the supine Socialist Sovyets doing
his bidding. So far, throughout the course of the twelve*

556 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

months since the revolution, two bodies only in Russia have
shown the smallest power of self -management : the Austrian-
trained Rada of Ukrainia, and the German-trained Social
ists of Petrograd.

But the Duma plan was checked by the quixotic refusal
of the Grand Duke Michael to accept the throne until a
Constituent Assembly had endorsed him. So the Duma
group, with Kerensky coming more and more to the front
and steadily playing into the hands of the Sovyets, formed
a Ministry of themselves and then broke faith with the
Grand Duke Michael by failing to summon the Constituent
Assembly. Within a few weeks they had betrayed the Rus
sian nation and the Russian army into the hands of the
Socialists, who swiftly brought that great country to the
completest ruin.

I have suggested that we ourselves are not free from
responsibility. And our responsibility was incurred at this
point: When the abdication of Nicholas II was cabled to
America, practically the whole of the press acclaimed " the
coming of a new Republic," the triumph of " the American
form of government " in Russia. And it is very likely that,
daunted by this American acclamation, the Russian Consti
tutionalists no longer found in their faint hearts the courage
to carry out what they knew to be the only wise and prac
tical plan — the establishment of a limited monarchy in Rus
sia with Grand Duke Michael on the throne. While they
hesitated, the howling mob of Socialism swept them away.

Has the year which has elapsed led us to a riper judg
ment? Have we begun to suspect that there may be an
element of vanity in the belief that our own form of govern
ment must necessarily be the best for everyone else, abso
lutely fitted for peoples wholly unlike us in ethnical, mental
and moral fibre? Have we come to understand that the
government which was established here, in 1787, was only
possible because the thirteen colonies had already had their
training in self-government, on the basis of law and prac
tice laboriously wrought out through centuries of growth —
a process of which there was not the slightest trace in Russia?
Have we at last come to understand that the Russian, guided
almost wholly by feeling and imagination, demands, by the
very structure of his soul, a government that shall appeal
to his feeling, his imagination — and that no other govern
ment can live in Russia? The Russian needs a personal

WHAT WE OWE TO SOCIALIST RUSSIA 557

center for the deep loyalty and devotion that is in him; he
needs, if you wish, an idol, in the best sense; just as he needs
an ikon — a holy picture — to help him to concentrate his
vague and vaporous thoughts in prayer.

The Socialists have maintained themselves in Russia so
far, not because they have made even a pretense of estab
lishing self-government, for they have made no such pre
tense ; but because they have, in fact, appealed to the feeling
and imagination of the Russian, by which he is absolutely
dominated and ruled. What, for example, could be more
pathetic, more tragical, than the traitorous organization, by
the Socialists, of " fraternization/' where the childish Rus
sian soldiers wept and kissed the Germans, believing that
the millenium had come — while the Germans were photo
graphing the position of the Russian batteries?

But, unhappily, the appeal of the Socialists has not,
for the most part, been to so generous a sentiment as that
which prompted " fraternization." On the contrary, their
appeal has been, on the whole, — as the appeal of Socialism
invariably is, — to the worse feelings rather than the better:
to envy, hatred, greed, the impulse of anarchy. And the
Russians, ruled by feeling, have fallen victims to this appeal,
and have run violently down the descent to national ruin.

Let whoever will, then, draw up an inventory of what
Russia owes to Socialism, and of what the Allies owe, and
are likely to owe in the future, to the reign of Socialism in
Russia; and then let us judge the whole tree of Socialism
by its fruits. Of all the outgrowths of the German soul, it
is, perhaps, the most dangerous to humanity.

But I believe that the God of justice and of mercy
reigns, and will turn even this calamity to our good. For
it is certain that Russia's defection will compel this country
to fight this most holy war not with the finger-tips, but with
our whole heart and soul and mind and strength, impelling
us to great and worthy sacrifices — for without sacrifice there
is no redemption. If, in this spirit of consecration, we go
forward in this war, then, we may confidently hope, the God
of justice and of mercy, whom Germany has outraged and
blasphemed, will give the cause of the Allies a victory that
will insure justice and mercy to mankind.

CHARLES JOHNSTON.

THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

BY E. S. ROSCOE

NOT a few lawyers and laymen have always been scep
tical of the value of international law, because it has,
unlike municipal law, not been enforceable by any form of
legal sanction. They have, logically enough, denied that it
was strictly law at all, and asserted that the word law, as
applied to it, was misleading. But for what it is worth, the
word is not likely to be altered, and the term " international
law " is now too fixed in the general understanding as com
prehending a body of customs and rules regulating the rights
and duties of nations and peoples inter se, to be liable to
change.

It is now, however, after the experience of the present
war, beyond doubt that the absence of any kind of sanction is
fatal in a large measure to the value of international law.
Publicists and politicians have been in some degree to blame
for this inflated value. For, if one thing more than another
is obvious, as we look back over the last half century, it is that
jurists have laid down rules and delegates have signed con
ventions with the utmost satisfaction to themselves without
attempting even to consider how their rules and their conven
tions were to be enforced, and without any expression of
doubt that they would be binding. The optimistic amiability
which has actuated them is pitiable to regard. The strong
attacks in Great Britain on the Declaration of London show
that it was supposed, even by its opponents, that if it were
ratified it would be irretrievably binding. Men generally
were then in a state of false security, believing that at any rate
international agreements would not be broken. It was in
fact assumed that a reign of international law at length ex
isted as part of an advanced civilization. But the true result
of the several agreements from the Declaration of Paris in
1856 has been the formulation of an agreed statement of cer-

FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 559

tain hitherto doubtful propositions. " Maritime Law,"
says the preamble to the Declaration of Paris, " in time of
war has been for a long time the subject of regrettable dis
putes;" it then asserts the desirability of establishing some
uniform doctrine. But the result is, in actual fact and under
present circumstances, no more than a partial codification of
certain voluntary but hitherto disputed principles. On the
other hand, the tendency at the present moment is to take too
pessimistic a view of the subject and amidst many direct vio
lations of international rules to overlook the abounding con
tinuance of a large body of international law as an effective
though not compulsory guide to international conduct. In
spite of this, however, we must now realize that it may be
useless for jurists to lay down maxims on the written page or
for delegates to append their signatures to international
pacts unless they can be made binding. The practice in the
past has tended to lull the world into a false security, for we
now very clearly see that however obviously right from the
point of view of international morality a custom or a rule
may be, it is liable to be infringed by a nation which does not
find it convenient to be bound by it.

One may take for example the use of asphyxiating gases.
By the Declaration on this subject signed at The Hague on
July the 29th, 1899, — of which Germany was then a signa
tory and Great Britain, at a later date — the contracting
Powers forbid the employment of projectiles having for their
only object the diffusion of asphyxiating or noxious gases.
The Declaration contains a clause that it ceases to be binding
if a non-signatory Power becomes an ally of a signatory
Power, though why this fact should have this effect, unless
the non-signatory Power does not abide by the rule, it is diffi
cult to understand. But be that as it may, and without refer
ence to the merits of the Declaration, here is an international
compact which Germany infringed without notice and with
out hesitation. This particular declaration was admitted by
and virtually the result of the Declaration signed at St.
Petersburg in 1868, the preamble of which noted that " the
progress of civilization should result as far as possible in
diminishing the calamities of war." But from the very begin
ning of the present war the object of the Germans has been
not to lessen, but to increase, its horrors, and thus to act in
direct violation of an admitted international principle.

One cannot, under these circumstances, but ask the ques-

560 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tion, what is to be the position of international law after the
war? Is it to be in a more real sense law, or is it to remain
as now, a mere statement of ethical international conduct?
It is not of much use for conventions to be signed at The
Hague or any other place, if, when the time comes for them
to have effect, they are to be treated as waste paper at the
will and pleasure of any great Power who chooses not to be
bound by them.

It is clear, therefore, that some form of international
sanction should be created by which some rules, at any rate,
of international law can be enforced. When we reach this
point it becomes obvious that the necessary sanction can be
obtained only by means of an international agreement to en
force some definite rules. Consequently, the future efficacy
of international law seems to depend, in a great measure,
upon the formation of what in public discussion has been
called a League of Nations. The war has shown that the
mere common assent of several Powers to a particular instru
ment which embodies particular principles or rules of inter
national conduct does not — standing alone — cause them to
be adhered to. Consequently, it follows that in addition to a
common agreement as to certain phases of international con
duct, there should also be common determination that a
Power refusing to abide by a contract shall be compelled to
do so by the other signatories. From this, one result seems to
flow: that only such rules as are based on universally accepted
principles and are clearly stated and agreed to by signatory
nations can be capable of a combined international enforce
ment. If this be so, then only a limited number of rules
will have attached to them an actual international sanction.

It seems also to follow that until the full result of the
present war is apparent, and until the so-called League of
Nations is actually formed, it will avail little to trouble about
the body and substance of international law. For, if rules
are not to be made effective by international sanction they will
remain only precepts of international morality, which, like
precepts of personal morality, are followed by well disposed
and contravened by evil disposed persons unless they happen
to be embodied in municipal jurisprudence so as to be enforce
able by the ordinary machinery of justice.

Assuming, however, that one result of the war is the for
mation of a body of nations prepared to enforce certain rules
of international law, it is impossible not to perceive the

FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 561

many difficulties which are still before us. For one thing,
the vastness of changes in the workl to-day may render an
international agreement after the space of perhaps a quarter
of a century plainly futile. This is especially a difficulty
which faces any one who would desire a definite code regulat
ing war on land and sea. In a recent number of this REVIEW
I showed how the attempt to regulate the law as to contra
band — a fairly simple subject — had broken down. This
particular point was clearly stated by Admiral Mahan in the
discussion which preceded the passing of the Declaration as
to the use of asphyxiating gases. " A vote now taken," he
said, " would be in ignorance of the facts. . . . As to
whether injury in excess of that necessary to attain the ends
of warfare, of immediately disabling the enemy, would be
inflicted." While this argument referred only to the sub
ject before the delegates, its basis has a wider application,
for it is worse than useless to formulate rules the action of
which at a given time cannot be foreseen. Again, the vast-
ness of the disturbance caused by a modern war makes the
issue so vital that the temptation to break an agreement, if
by so doing success is brought nearer, is certainly stronger
than it was in former times, and the difficulty of enforcement
so much the greater. There is a legal maxim, de minimis
non curat lex — the law is not concerned with trivial things, as
it may be rendered. Does it not bring us up against essential
and non-essential rules of international law? Are there not
rules of international conduct which are scarcely of sufficient
importance to demand large international action which yet
have to be formulated? Another point may be put interroga
tively: Is it possible to obtain unanimity in regard to rules
when delegates have one eye on international morality and
another on national interests, when a nation cannot foresee
if in a war it may be neutral or belligerent? Should a small
nation — it is unnecessary to give examples — by its non-signa
ture prevent a rule from having full validity by international
sanction? Allusion has just been made to the fact that a
Power not a signatory to the Declaration as to asphyxiating
gases — and the Declaration is used here only to illustrate
general points — can by adhering to a signatory Power during
a war cause the invalidity of the Declaration. Is such a state
of things to continue in the future? One might reply that na
tions should agree on certain basic principles and leave the
application of them to time and circumstance, and it may be
VOL. ccvii.— NO. 749 36

562 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to a decision of a League of Nations. It is a basic rule that
neutrals may supply belligerents with any kind of goods, and,
consequently, as money is only one article of commerce, a bel
ligerent may raise a loan in a neutral country. Upon this
point international writers have differed, which shows, among
other things, that a statement of a proposition of international
law by a writer, however eminent, must not be regarded as
more than the expression of a personal view. But difference
or no difference, international custom applying a basic prin
ciple to a certain set of facts has regarded the raising of a loan
in a neutral country as valid. Here is a distinct example of
the growth of international law in connection with the devel
opment of modern commerce and financial intercourse and of
a recognized consequential rule. Yet it is one which could
quite conceivably be broken by a belligerent nation which
was strong enough to prevent a neutral nation from lending
money to another belligerent. It is also an example of a
practice which has produced on this point international order
and regularity, and which, as experience has shown, is agreed
to by civilized nations. As an international custom it is not
compulsorily binding. If embodied as an international rule
would there be a sufficient international sanction to enforce
it if infringed? Indeed, should it be left a custom, or, assum
ing the creation of a League of Nations, should it be for
mulated as an absolute international rule? The question is
asked not because a special importance can be attached to this
particular subject over others, but because it is only by en
deavoring to apply theories to concrete cases that we can get
among realities. The late Mr. Hall, with remarkable pre
vision, wrote in 1889 in the Introduction to the Third Edition
of the Treatise on International Law that it would be idle

also to pretend that Europe is not now in great likelihood moving
towards a time at which the strength of international law will be too
hardly tried. Probably in the next great war the questions which have
accumulated during the last half century and more will all be given
their answers at once. Some hates, moreover, will crave for satisfac
tion; much envy and greed will be at work; but above all, and at the
bottom of all, there will be the hard sense of necessity. Whole nations
will be in the field ; the commerce of the world may be on sea to win
or lose ; national existences will be at stake ; men will be tempted to do
anything which will shorten hostilities and tend to a decisive issue.
Conduct in the next great war will certainly be hard ; it is very doubt
ful if it will be scrupulous, whether on the part of belligerents or neu
trals ; and most likely the next war will be great.

FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 563

The author's pessimistic presentiment has come true. Will
the permanent result which he foresees of a temporary period
only of anarchy be equally accurate? " There can be very lit
tle doubt that if the next war is unscrupulously waged, it also
will be followed by a reaction toward increased stringency of
law." This would seem to depend on one of two circum
stances — on the creation of a collective international league
unalterably determined to enforce international agreements,
or on the practical strength of an outraged international
morality without reference to any new and ideal formation of
international forces.

Certainly, however, it is desirable that not only those
who are professionally, whether academically or officially, in
terested in the law of nations, but the public generally, should
seek to realize the probable position of the subject after the
end of the war, and that it is a matter of vital importance to
the peoples of the world. It may be urged that if a per
manently peaceable international condition succeeds as a re
sult of this unparalleled war, it is futile to consider principles
and rules, many of which come into action only during a state
of war. No doubt there is truth in this contention, but in
the obscurity which at present envelops future international
relations it is well to endeavor to formulate, however imper
fectly, our ideas on the subject discussed in the preceding
pages.

E. S. ROSCOE.

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
AND INSANITY

BY WHIDDEN GRAHAM

THE sentiment in favor of laws prohibiting the manu
facture and sale of alcoholic beverages has been largely
created by the wide-spread circulation of statements pur
porting to show that the use of intoxicating liquors is the
chief factor in causing insanity, crime, poverty and disease.
This idea finds expression in the statement, now being circu
lated in the press, that " the intemperate use of alcohol is
filling our insane asylums, jails, poor houses and cemeteries."
This assertion is generally accompanied by the further state
ment that prohibition of the liquor traffic materially reduces
the number of insane persons, as compared with the number
in non-prohibition territory.

To correct the mistaken impression created by the con
stant repetition of these assertions it is only necessary to
examine the official records of the various States and the
United States Census Reports, which show that instead of
alcohol being the chief cause of insanity, it is one of the
least of causes. Further disproof of the prohibitionist claims
in regard to the relation of alcohol to insanity are found in
the conclusions reached by eminent alienists and scientific
students of the question, and State records showing that
prohibition does not diminish insanity.

What are the facts? The number of insane persons
admitted to hospitals in the United States in the year 1910,
as reported by the Census Bureau, was 60,769. Of this
total the number suffering from alcoholic psychoses was
6,122, or 10.7 per cent. The percentage of alcoholic insane
varies considerably in the different States, but the average
rate given above is approximately the same from year to
year. This establishes the fact that instead of alcohol " fill-

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES AND INSANITY 565

ing our asylums " only a trifle more than ten per cent of
the cases of insanity is ascribed to its use.

Following their assertions in regard to alcohol as the
chief cause of insanity, the prohibitionists claim that by
forbidding the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages
the number of the insane would be greatly decreased. An
examination of the statistics of the various States show
nothing to support this claim. The latest figures on this
subject, taken from the Census Reports for 1910, disprove
this theory. They show, for instance, that wet Indiana had
fewer alcoholic insane than dry Kansas. Wet Nebraska had
the lowest rate in the Union. Dry Oklahoma had the highest
rate, with the two exceptions of Colorado and Nevada.
Maine, which has had prohibition longest, shows a higher
rate than eleven wet States. In view of these facts it is
evident that prohibition does not decrease insanity.

Still stronger proof of the failure of prohibition to
diminish insanity is found in a comparison of the number
of insane persons in Maine and Kansas, the two banner
prohibition States, at different periods. In 1890 Maine had
92.6 insane per 100,000 population. In 1903 the percentage
had increased to 125.3 per 100,000. In 1910 the percentage
was 169.5, an increase in twenty years of eighty- three per
cent.

The insanity rate in Kansas increased from 88.4 in 1890
to 165.6 in 1903, and to 172.2 in 1910, an increase of ninety-
four per cent. These two States had prohibitory laws dur
ing the twenty year period referred to, and yet co-incident
therewith was this very great increase in the number of the
insane. Applying the logic of the prohibitionists, who say-
that the higher rate of insanity in certain license States is
due to liquor drinking, the marked increase of insanity in
Maine and Kansas must likewise have been due to prohibi
tion. That policy was in force in those States for twenty
years. The rate of insanity increased more than eighty per
cent in Maine, and more than ninety per cent in Kansas.
Therefore: prohibition is the cause of insanity!

In reply to this showing of the increase in insanity under
prohibition, it may be answered that there has also been a
marked increase in the number of insane in license States.
True, but if liquor drinking is, as alleged, the principal
cause of insanity, the rate of increase would always be much
greater in the States where the sale of liquor is permitted.

566 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

That this is not the case the following instances will show.
In 1890 the number of insane per 100,000 population in
California, always a wet State, was 272.2. In 1910 the
percentage was 279.8, an increase of only 2.7 per cent. In
wet Rhode Island the percentage of insane in 1890 was
191.0 per 100,000. In 1910 the percentage had increased
to 229.1, an increase of only 16.6 per cent. Oregon, another
license State during the entire period 1890-1910, had in the
former year 176.6 insane persons per 100,000. In 1910 the
percentage was 232.6, an increase of thirty-two per cent.
This comparatively small increase of insanity in license
States, as contrasted with the much greater increase in pro
hibition States, proves beyond question that the use of
alcohol is not the chief factor in causing insanity.

The fact that insanity has greatly increased in the two
States that have had the longest experience under prohibi
tion, disposes of the claim that prohibitory laws will diminish
the number of the insane. There remains the question: to
what extent is alcohol the actual cause of insanity even in
the ten per cent of cases ascribed to it?

What is known as " alcoholic psychoses," is a disordered
mental state popularly supposed to be due to the excessive
use of alcohol. It has certain definite characteristics, and
there is no question but that its existence is associated with
alcohol drinking. There is, however, a serious doubt as to
whether the excessive use of alcohol is the " cause " of the
mental disorder, or merely a symptom of mental weakness
which existed previous to the acquisition of the drink habit.
This latter view is being taken by an increasing number
of physicians who have given the subject careful study, and
their conclusions are to the effect that as a rule the mental
weakness which leads to excessive drinking antedates the
alcoholism. This is the position maintained by Dr. Karl
Pearson, the eminent English biologist, who has made an
exhaustive study of the " Influence of Parental Alcoholism
on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring." In his
latest discussion of the subject Dr. Pearson says: "The
abuse of alcohol is one of the stigmata of degeneracy. It
is not the cause of degeneracy, but its product. As the
production of degeneracy — whether in the form of mental
defect, epilepsy or insanity — is checked, to that extent the
abuse of alcohol will be checked."

Much the same view of the problem is taken by Dr.

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES AND INSANITY 567

Wilhelm Stocker, of Jena, Germany, who is recognized as
one of the foremost authorities on alcoholic psychoses. In
a book dealing with various phases of the question, published
in 1910, he states that the abuse of alcohol is not the cause
of mental defects and insanity, but it is to be considered
itself as the outcome of a diseased mental condition. Dr.
Stocker says:

In the majority of my cases the question is not, however, of
simply psychically subnormal personalities, but of sick individuals in
whom a definite basic, and further-to-be-diagnosed, illness could be
traced. Thus the chronic alcoholism in their cases is to be regarded
in the first instance as a symptom of a definite mental ailment.

Taking eighty-nine individual cases of extreme alco
holism Dr. Stocker found that in thirty-four cases the alco
holism was due to epilepsy, in twenty-seven cases to melan
cholic mania, in fourteen cases to dementia prsecox, in nine
cases to other psychoses, leaving only five cases in which
the excessive alcoholism could not be traced to some definite
mental defect. Thus in the eighty-nine cases of alcoholic
insanity there were less than five per cent that could not
be shown to be due to peculiar physical and mental condi
tions, of which the abuse of alcohol was merely a symptom,
and not the cause.

Similar testimony is furnished by Dr. Irwin H. Neff,
Superintendent of the Massachusetts State Hospital for
Inebriates. In an address before the National Conference
of Charities and Corrections, at the 1915 meeting at Balti
more, Dr. Neff said:

Statistical knowledge bearing on the subject overwhelmingly
supports the conclusion that a considerable number of confirmed
drunkards are mentally defective, ranging from mild emotional dis
turbance and judgment perversion, to well defined psychoses.

And again:

Inebriety is an expression of nervous weakness, the nervous
weakness being inherited, a psycho-neurotic fault; founded on this
weakness, manifestly a defect, is a habit we call drunkenness.

If drunkenness is the result of mental weakness, that
weakness is necessarily the cause of alcoholic insanity.

Dr. R. W. Branthwaite, an English physician of high
standing, in his " Report of the Inspector Under the In
ebriates Acts" for the year 1908, says:

The more we see of habitual drunkards the more we are con
vinced that the real condition to be studied, the trouble we have to

568 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

fight, and the source of all the mischief, is a psycho-neurotic pecu
liarity of some sort; an inherent defect in mechanism, generally
congenital, sometimes more or less acquired. Alcohol, far from being
the chief cause of inebriety, is merely the medium which brings into
prominence certain defects that might have remained hidden but for
its exposing or developing influence.

That is: the excessive use of alcohol is simply a manifesta
tion of a mental weakness that develops into insanity.

In the report of the " Committee of Fifty to Investigate
the Liquor Problem " on the Physiological Aspects of the
Liquor Problem, Dr. John S. Billings, a distinguished
American physician, says:

In any cases where there is a tendency to psychic or nervous
instability and abnormal action, either inherited or acquired, the exces
sive use of alcohol may act as the exciting cause, like a torch to
inflammable material, but the same result may be produced with any
excess creating a strain on the nervous system, and the alcohol would
produce no effect upon a nervous system in normally good condition.

The most convincing proof that the real cause for the
excessive use of liquor and alcoholic insanity is mental weak
ness, or some inherited psychic fault, is found in the indis
putable fact that only an insignificant percentage of all those
who drink liquors are afflicted with insanity. Careful inves
tigations by the Committee of Fifty show that eighty per
cent of the adult male population of this country use alco
holic beverages, and it is claimed by the prohibitionists that
the percentage is even larger. Out of this total of more
than 25,000,000 males, there are about 5,000 cases of alco
holic insanity annually, or less than one fiftieth of one per
cent. If it were true that liquor drinking is the real cause
of insanity, how does it happen that such an exceedingly
small percentage of those who drink become insane? If
the prohibition theory is correct, the moderate drinkers
should in time all become excessive drinkers or drunkards,
and the latter, in turn, develop alcoholic insanity. The fact
that they do not proves that it is only the very small minor
ity afflicted with mental weakness, or some other constitu
tional infirmity, who drink to such excess as to affect their
already weakened minds. A cause must be universal in its
application, and if 25,000,000 men can drink without injury,
it is fair to assume that the very few who are injured must
have something peculiar in their physical or mental makeup

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES AND INSANITY 569

that renders them specially liable to excessive drinking, and
the insanity which accompanies it.

The word " cause " is so loosely used that its meaning
is generally lost sight of. When men speak of the " cause "
of anything they presumably mean that certain co-existences
and sequences are necessarily associated. But through care
less thinking the word " cause " is often used in connection
with wholly unrelated facts. Correct principles of reason
ing demand that in order to establish a cause it must be
shown that a like cause always produces a like effect, and
that there is an invariable and unvarying relation between
the cause and the effect. Applying this rule to the question
of alcohol as the cause of insanity, we find that millions of
men drink liquor. Of these only a small percentage drinks
to excess. Of all the men who drink less than one-fiftieth
of one per cent develop alcoholic insanity. How can it be
claimed that liquor drinking is the cause of insanity, when
the alleged cause not only does not invariably produce the
same effect, but in ninety-nine and nine-tenths cases pro
duces no effect whatever?

The prevailing opinion of the medical profession that
excessive drinking is due to an abnormal state of mind is
thus stated in an editorial article in The Medical Record
for August 5th, 1916:

The fundamental error in dealing with the problem of alcohol
is the conception of it as a habit-forming drug, the abolition of which
would mean the automatic regeneration of all inebriates. As a matter
of fact, the inebriate is not normal and, deprived of his alcohol, would
drift to some eleemosynary institution. This has been proved by the
experience of prohibition States.

The same view is taken by Dr. William A. White,
Superintendent Government Hospital for the Insane,
Washington, D. C., in a paper, " Alcoholism, a Symptom,"
read before the Society for the Study of Inebriety at
Washington, December, 1915, in which he says:

Is alcohol in these cases only a symptom of some underlying
fundamental condition which has escaped our notice, simply because
it is too subtle to be seen by casual observation or found by ordinary
methods of inquiry ? I think it is, and my attention was first attracted
to this possibility many years ago. Some of you at least will remem
ber the work of the English hereditarian, G. Archdall Reid, Darwinism
and Race Progress, in which the author, who, I may remind you,
has since written many able and learned works, undertook a statistical

570 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

study of the effects produced by prohibition, in several of our prohibi
tion States, where prohibition statutes had been in operation for a
considerable number of years. His conclusions were no less striking
than unexpected at that time. It was to the effect that the statistics
clearly indicated in these States, that as the consumption of alcohol
had been diminished and as drunkenness had been lessened, the admis
sion to the insane asylums and poor houses had progressively and
correspondingly increased. If we do not instantly discard such a
conclusion as this, and will stop for a moment and give it careful
consideration, we must be struck by the probability of its truth, and
by its important social significance. Such a conclusion can only mean
that the alcoholic as such is a mental defective in some way, and that
if his mental deficiency does not show as indulgence in alcohol, it
will later show a frank mental disease, or as that type of deficiency
which leads to pauperism.

This conclusion, I am convinced is a correct one, and I am re
minded as I dictate these words of the occasion of a meeting of your
Society here at Washington some two or three years ago in which I
heard your President, a man grown old in this particular work, say
in discussion, that he had never seen an inebriate who aside from
his inebriety was a normal man.

WHIDDEN GRAHAM.

TO-DAY

THE SOLDIER OF THE UNION

;>Y JOSEPH S. AUERBACH

A stricken soldier faltered on death's field
Surrendering of blood unto the State,
For her, enriched in strength, to dedicate

His eager gift of life to sword and shield ;

So that advantaged valor might not yield
Hope's standards, where defeat must subjugate
The truth, which makes men free and only great

And is to all but fiends by God revealed.

Would we attest our love for this fled soul
To dwelling-place of fame, and his desire

From out the cup of bitterness to quaff

Of death with blithe salute, upon the scroll
Of our resolve be vows of faith and fire

That wrought in deeds shall be his epitaph.

ON SOME TO-MORROW

THE COMING WAR

Greet folly as fit prompter at harangue

Of emulous divines whose utterance,

That unbelief for its foul progeny

Has whelped this fiend of universal war,

Is but the counterfeit of pious thought.

These prate as if because men cling no more

In childish faith to obsolescent creed

God had ordained that through remorseless years

Commissioned rivers must run red to seas,

And lands, once gay in pride of charm, repine

For banished harvests' bloom and reapers dead;

Whilst undesirous, heavy-laden winds

Come with dread moaning of sore-stricken men,

And gloating outcries of more infamous

Adepts at ghastly and revolting trade

Taught best in Hell, apprentices whereof

Alike have been the victors and the slain.

So too does reason scoff at skeptic sneer

That in this anguished darkness of the world

Falters but guttered candle of true faith,

And that its pristine light shall dawn no more

To recompense the vigil of the soul

With trust in a pervading Providence.

For when Time to posterity's avail
Shall inventory the estates we leave,
In none such vacancy will there be found
The wisdom justly meriting acclaim,
But mockery of outlook upon life,
Impoverished cavil with unpurposed aim
Concerning only licensed deeds of guilt

ON SOME TO-MORROW 573

That wrong had wrought and servile custom brooked.

We know how portents menacing may breed

Contagious ills, if swept not as of old

By the destroying besom of God's will;

And how from torpid and oblivious sleep

Presaging death, awakening must come

At times by the alarm and guns of war.

And though bereavement may not stay its tears,

Uncomforted amid this spectacle

Of savagery's carnival of blood,

Untutored thought alone dare harbor doubt

That in some overruling, sentient mind

Reside the sovereign and sequent plans

To bring to consummation all resolve

Instinct with aspiration's dreams and prayers;

That Heaven in the grapple of vain lords

Sides ever with slaved children of crowned greed

Condemned to grope in shadow of the sword,

Until at last for martyred souls is fame

And shaft to tell the death of vassalage.

Recurring cycles of assuaging years

Confirm to us this truth ; and when dire need

Has moved the pity of God's care, He sends,

Full quickened with the breath of His desire,

Anointed messengers to heal the hurt

And bind the wounds of ages in a day.

So 'mid dark terror surety we may have
That though despair be life's investiture
And for ascendancy Hell wars with Heaven,
Unto a wronged and desecrated earth
Envisioned hours will come to manifest
Guilt-weary nations resting on their arms,
Enfeebled with a profitless debauch,
And suppliants for interceding grace:
The monarchs, whose hereditary lust
Of rule, grown pitiless by nurtured hate,
Had banqueted upon the blood of men —
With heads divested of presumptuous crown
Which a deluded world has too long deemed
The sanctuary for kings' murderous thoughts;
And paled servitors, peopling ghostly ranks
Bereft of countless ones unsepulchered

574 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Save in welcome graves dug by their own hands
As refuge from insatiate onset,
Or unremitting and relentless shell;
And mourners in habiliments of woe
To match the lamentation of their song.

Then for the soul, in votive consonance

With vibrant waves of faith that court release

From their serene ethereal domain,

The void, clairvoyant after solitude

And dowered with divinity of speech,

Will hold discourse by more inspired Voice

Than hearkened to when bush or mountain-top

Or pagan fane was the appointed place

Wherefrom a god would counsel with his race.

It will not dwell on concepts of foul shame,

Nor tell the story of infernal vows

To which base hordes of men were consecrate,

And will disclaim avenging thought for crimes

Of miscreant king or serf; at assize

Shall they be doomed where red-robed justice sits

Afar from Mercy- Seat; yet even there,

— Or else the Christ has lived and died in vain —

A monster may by contrite deed be saved

From pangs and horrors of exultant death ;

Albeit a righteous God would never dare,

Since He would have men glory in His name,

To let Hell's awful terrors chained at last

Go free again to drench the world in woe.

There will resound the clarion summons

To souls required for the venturous pledge

To compass and destroy sin's hateful haunts,

Where long ago there scarcely had been gained

The outposts of its cruel citadel,

Defiant yet to every sacrifice

Those arrogant, barbaric walls to raze.

Responsive to the words of that appeal

Legions will rally to be volunteers

For whom enlistment is to be through life,

Though no enrollment there would be vouchsafed

Till choice had been accorded those dismayed

And f eaf ul of the contest to ensue,

To take departure from among that throng;

ON SOME TO-MORROW 575

And of the ranks thus by withdrawals thinned
Theje shall be trial made to know aright,
Whether with prudence panoplied are they
Whose prowess only may not win the goal.
So through dismissals but the few shall stand
To answer to the roll call of the Lord —
A mighty marshaling of His elect
Twice-sifted like the band of Gideon
For combat with unnumbered heathen foes.

To these accepted ones that pleading Voice
With suasion of Archangel will proclaim:
* You are the heralds of a new made earth
To bear glad witness of oncoming hosts
Who following in footsteps you make safe
Shall enter and possess the promised land.
If you would falter not in days to come
Bid you forever to corrupting ease
Farewell, to self and its consuming love
Which burns resolve to ashen nothingness,
And leaves no soil wherein brave deeds may root.
As you with vows and girded loins go forth,
Have shield as well as spear at your behest ;
Fervor denied restraint invites defeat
And weaponless are you without resource
Which only discipline can give to faith.
Nor faint for that your numbers be so few ;
As prophesied of old, the victory
Not always with the multitude abides;
It is the loyal Remnant which so oft
Has served as ransom for a craven bond —
The veteran few, with crust for a repast,
Who nourished by high purpose for their strength
And beating back the onslaught at the walls,
Have sallied forth with might imperious
And awed usurping wrong to abdicate
The place possessed by cunning's devious art
Or wrested from the watcher by assault."

The Voice will say how past reverse was met,
And a redeemed world had recreant been
To trusts which truth admonished it to keep,
Turning deaf ears to wisdom's messengers

576 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Whom it saw laughed to scorn and overcome,
Nor murmured aught at their ignoble fate.
And since as new crusaders in those ranks
They would essay once more a pilgrimage
Which ofttimes saints had been unequal to,
There shall be warning from the solemn Voice
Of vicious and destroying ills, at war
With man's progression towards diviner things :
Of ominous greed that fattens on the food
Heaped up by those enforced to live in dark
Prone unto earth, without the ecstasy
From dreams of fairer dreams or communion
By the dulled toiler with an ordered mind;
Of mouthing of the pharisaic creed,
And unbelief and baleful blasphemy
At altars raised to the subservient gods ;
Of wandering upon treacherous ways
Where one must go companion with pretense;
Of shrines dust-laden and unvisited
Where vaunting valor had forgot to kneel
And shrive itself for quest of hallowed cause;
Of spurious fame and riches vast and power
That guile sells in the market-place for souls.

Arraigned will be the servitude of child,
Foul blight of manhood and of motherhood,
As noisome growth like unto basil-plant
Flourishing upon graves of buried hopes
Of parentage, and the despondent State;
The guilty hands with boastful proffered gifts
Whereto loud almoners aver no claim
If challenged in the court of conscience;
Youth without thrift and old age mendicant;
And gold that tarnishes in misers' chests
Or traffics in the virtue of the weak,
Or buys preferment for dishonored aim;
Custom or law, that cringes at demand
Of labor truculent with weaponed threat,
Having no retribution for misdeed;
Justice blind and so enmeshed in precedent,
It may not minister to mute distress;
Privilege inherited or purloined
That with supercilious glance and mien

ON SOME TO-MORROW 577

And the affronting tongue bids insolence
Connive through power to rob desert of meed;
And vain desire with lordly recompense.

Against such wrongs and their accursed brood
Which maim and slay was warfare to be waged
Till peace abide in honor's dwelling-place
Untenanted by feud, and barren lands
Aflower appear, where blood protesting
Of heroic dead had mocked endeavor
Of shamed dust to apparel its dull self
With beauty's garb of herbage and the rose ;
Till knowledge have no borders for her realm,
Well-springs of reason be the source of faith,
Life the fruition of ennobling zeal,
Man worship a true God and laud the State
And be forever to his neighbor kin.

At last the Voice in reassuring note
Will covenant with all those dauntless ones,
If on the march they be dispirited,
For hope renewed and vehement delight
Through languid days, and for prophetic dreams
By night of Triumph's strains in temples blest
With benediction of benignant stars
And oriented to the coming Dawn.

JOSEPH S. AUERBACH.

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 749 37

SITUATIONS WANTED

BY BBANDEB MATTHEWS

In a forgotten book by a forgotten British bard, in the
Gillot and Goosequill of Henry S. Leigh, we may read the
appealing plaint of a playwright who felt that his invention
was failing and who could no longer find the succession of
poignant episodes that the drama demands:

Ten years I've workt my busy brain

In drama for the million;
I don't aspire to Drury Lane,

Nor stoop to the Pavilion.
I've sought materials low and high

To edify the nation;
At last the fount is running dry —

I want a situation.

I've known the day when wicked earls

Who made improper offers
To strictly proper village girls,

Could fill a house's coffers.
The lowly peasant could create

A wonderful sensation.
Such people now are out of date —

I want a situation.

The writer of these despondent stanzas had had a hand
in a play or two but he was by profession a lyrist and not
a dramatist; and it may be doubted whether any of the
born dramatists would ever have sent forth this cry of dis
tress, since fecundity is a necessary element in their endow
ment. The major dramatic poets have always been affluent
in their productivity; Sophocles and Shakespeare and
Moliere appear to have averaged two plays in every year of
their ripe maturity. It is true, of course, that they had no
scruple in taking their material wherever they might find it,
not only despoiling their predecessors of single situations,

SITUATIONS WANTED 579

but on occasion helping themselves to a complete plot, in
geniously invented, adroitly constructed; and needing only
to be transformed and transfigured by their interpreting
imagination.

We like to think that in these modern days our drama
tists are more conscientious in the acquisition of their raw
material and that they can withstand the temptation to
appropriate an entire plot or even a ready-made situation.
When Sardou was scientifically interrogated by a physiolog
ical psychologist as to his methods of composition, he evi
dently took pleasure in declaring that he had in his note
books dozens of skeleton stories, needing only to be articu
lated a little more artfully and then to be clothed with words.
Probably no one of the playwrights of the second half of the
nineteenth century was more fertile in invention than Sardou;
and not a few effective situations originally devised by him
have been utilized by playmakers in other countries, — one
from La Haine, for instance, in The Conquerors, and one
from La Tosca in The Darling of the Gods. Notwith
standing this notorious originality, Sardou was frequently
accused of levying on the inventions of others, without recom
pense or even acknowledgment; and more than once the
accusers caught him "with the goods on him" — if this
expressive phrase is permissible. Les Pommes du Foisin,
for example, was traced to a story of Charles de Bernard's,
Fernande to a tale of Diderot's, and Fedora to a novel of
Adolphe Belot's. As it happened, Belot had dramatized his
novel, and when he saw that Sardou had borrowed and bet
tered his plot, he made no outcry; he contented himself with
arranging for a revival of his play so that the similarity of
its story to Sardou's might be made immediately manifest.

When Mario Uchard asserted that the dominant situa
tion in his La Fiammina had been lifted by Sardou for serv
ice in Georgette, Sardou retorted by citing three or four
earlier pieces and stories in which an identical situation could
be found. Those who seek equity must come into court with
clean hands ; and Uchard lost his case. Nevertheless the im
pression left upon at least one reader of the testimony was
that Uchard had no knowledge of the forgotten fictions which
Sardou disinterred, that he believed himself to be the inventor
of the situation in dispute, and that Sardou probably did
derive it from Uchard, although possibly he may have
invented it independently.

580 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The fact is indisputable that the number of situations fit
for service on the stage is not infinite but rigorously re
stricted. Gozzi declared that there were only thirty-six, and
when Goethe and Schiller sought to ascertain these, they
could not fill out the list. M. Georges Polti accepted Gozzi's
figure and after indefatigable investigation of several thou
sand plays, ancient and modern, he catalogued the three
dozen with all their available corollaries. Of course, scientific
certainty is not attainable in such a counting up ; there may
be fifty-seven varieties or even ninety and nine. The play
wrights of this generation have to grind the grist already
ground by then* predecessors a generation earlier; they may
borrow boldly, that is to say, they may be aware that what
they are doing has been done before, or they may be inno
cently original, fondly believing themselves to be the invent
ors of a novel predicament, unaware that it was second-hand
a score of centuries before they were born.

There is the Romeo and Juliet situation, for instance —
the course of true love made to run rough by the bitter hos
tility of the parents. We can find that in Huckleberry Finn
in the nineteenth century, and we can also find it in the
Antigone, more than two thousand years earlier; and we
may rest assured that Mark Twain did not go to Sophocles
for it, or even to Shakespeare. It is probably to be found in
the fiction of every language, dead and alive; and those who
employ it now do so without giving a thought to any of its
many earlier users. The theme is common property, to be
utilized at will by anybody anywhere and anywhen.

During the run of The Chorus Lady in New York I
happened to call the attention of Bronson Howard to the
identity of its culminating situation with that in Lady
Windermere's Fan. A young woman foolishly adventures
herself in the apartment of a man, whereupon an older
woman goes there to rescue her; then when the younger
woman is summoned to come out of the inner room in which
she has taken refuge, it is the older woman who appears, thus
placing herself in a compromising position in the eyes of the
man whom she is expecting to marry. "Don't forget that I
had had it in One of Our Girls" Howard remarked, with
out in any way suggesting that Oscar Wilde had despoiled
him, or that Mr. James Forbes had lifted the situation from
either of his predecessors. Then I recalled that I had seen
it in an unacted play, Faith, by H. C. Bunner, the story of

SITUATIONS WANTED 581

which he had taken as the basis of a novel entitled A Woman
of Honor. Knowing Bunner and Howard intimately, I felt
certain that they had no doubt as to their right to utilize this
situation, and that if either of them had been conscious of any
indebtedness to any specific predecessor they would have
declared it frankly.

Bronson Howard, on the playbill of The Henrietta,
acknowledged the borrowing of a situation from Vanity
Fair; he was moved to this confession because in this case
he happened to know where he had found the situation. He
knew that it was borrowed, and not his own invention. A
confession equally complete and of a somewhat larger import
is to be found in the author's note prefixed to Maeterlinck's
play, Marie Magdeleine:

I have borrowed from M. Paul Heyse's drama, Maria von Magdala,
the idea of two situations in my play; namely, at the end of the first
act, the intervention of Christ, who stops the crowd raging against
Mary Magdalene, with these words, spoken behind the scenes: 'He
that is without sin among you let him cast the first stone' ; and in the
third the dilemma in which the great sinner finds herself of saving or
destroying the Son of God, according as she consents or refuses to
give herself to a Roman. Before setting to work I asked the venerable
German poet, whom I hold in the highest esteem, for his permission
to develop those two situations, which, so to speak, were merely
sketched in his play, with its incomparably richer plot than mine; and
offered to recognize his rights in whatever manner he thought proper.
My respectful request was answered with a refusal, none too courte
ous, I regret to say, and almost threatening. From that moment, I was
bound to consider that the words from the Gospel, quoted above, are
common property; and that the dilemma of which I speak is one of
those which occur pretty frequently in dramatic literature. It seemed
to me the more lawful to make use of it inasmuch as I had happened
to imagine it in the fourth act of Joyzelle in the same year in which
Maria von Magdala was published and before I was able to become
acquainted with that play.

Then the Belgian poet declared that except in so far as
these two situations were concerned, his play had absolutely
nothing in common with the German drama. "Having said
this," Maeterlinck concluded, "I am happy to express to the
aged master my gratitude for an intellectual benefit, which
is not the less great for being involuntary."

This note calls for two comments. The first is that
although the words from the Gospel are common property,
still it was Heyse who first applied them to Mary Magda
lene; and the second is that although the dilemma that Mae-

582 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

terlinck wanted to borrow from Maria von Magdala was one
that he had already imagined in Joyzelle, and one that
could be found not infrequently in earlier plays, notably in
La Tosca of Sardou, in the Dame aux Cornelias of the
younger Dumas and in the Marion Delorme of Victor
Hugo, still it was Heyse who first had the happy thought
of putting this dilemma up to Mary Magdalene. When the
Belgian poet persisted in making his profit out of these two
inventions of the German story-teller, he may have seemed
to sdme rather high-handed in his forcible rectification of his
frontier by the annexation of territory already profitably
occupied by his neighbor. To this, it is only fair to answer
that the application of the Gospel words and the propound
ing of this special dilemma to Mary Magdalene were so nat
ural as to be almost necessary, if her story was to be shaped
for the stage and sustained by a satisfactory struggle. They
are so natural and so necessary that M. Maeterlinck might
almost have been expected to invent them for himself if he
had not found them already invented by Heyse.

Bronson Howard would have held that M. Maeterlinck
was absolutely within his right in taking over from Herr
Heyse what was necessary for the improvement of his own
play, if only he declared the indebtedness honestly and if he
offered to pay for it. And no playwright was ever more scru
pulous in acknowledging his own indebtedness than Howard.
The situation which he took from Vanity Fair, for use in The
Henrietta, he might have invented easily enough or he
might have found it in half a dozen other places besides
Thackeray's novel; but, as he was aware that it had been sug
gested to him by Thackeray's novel, he simply had to say
so — just as, many years earlier, on the playbill of his Moor-
croft, he had credited the suggestion of its plot to a story by
John Hay, although this source was so remote that Hay was
able to say to me that he never would have suspected it except
for the note on the programme.

When I assert that Howard might easily enough have
invented for himself the situation he borrowed from Thack
eray, I am supported by my own experience. I invented that
situation, quite forgetful of the fact that I must once have
been familiar with it in Vanity Fair; and I made it the cen
ter of a one-act comedy, This Picture and That, written
almost simultaneously with The Henrietta. Only after the
performance of my little piece and only when I saw How-

SITUATIONS WANTED 583

ard's play with its note of acknowledgment to Thackeray,
did I feel called upon to doubt my own originality. A few
years thereafter I had the pleasure and the profit of collabo
rating with Howard in the composition of Peter Stuyvesant,
Governor of New Amsterdam, and when we were still en
gaged in the arduous and delightful task of putting together
our plot, of setting our characters upright upon their feet,
and of seeking situations in which they might reveal them
selves effectively, I chanced to suggest that we might per
haps utilize a situation in a certain French drama. I have
forgotten the situation and. the title of the play in which it
appeared. I made the suggestion doubtfully, as its accep
tance might lay us open to the accusation of plagiarism.

Howard promptly waved aside my scruples by a decla
ration of principle: "When I am at work on a play," he
explained, "my duty as an artist is to make that play just
as good as I can, to construct it as perfectly as possible, no
matter where I get my materials. If this situation you sug
gest is one which will help our play, we must take it without
hesitation. Our scenario is certain to be greatly modified
before we are satisfied with it and ready to begin on the
actual writing; and very likely we shall find that this bor
rowed situation, which to-day seems to us helpful, will not
survive to the final revision ; it may have led us to something
finer and then itself disappeared. But if, when the play is
done at last, we are face to face with the fact that one of our
situations came to us from somebody else — then our duty
as honest men begins. We must give due credit on the play
bill when the piece is performed and in the book when it is
published. Furthermore, if the somebody from whom we
have borrowed is alive, if he has rights, either legal or moral,
we must secure his permission, paying whatever may be
necessary."

Bronson Howard was as candid as he was clear-eyed;
and the principle he declared is one by which every drama
tist would do well to govern himself. If a playwright should
be exceedingly scrupulous and seek to avoid the use of any
situation invented and utilized by any one of his predecessors
in the long history of playmaking, he would soon find him
self at a standstill and in a blind alley; he would discover
speedily that unused situations are very scarce. The play
wright must perforce resign himself to the employment of
those which have already seen service. Where there is spe-

584 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

cific obligation he should acknowledge it frankly — unless,
indeed, the borrowed situation is so well known that acknowl
edgment may seem a work of supererogation. It is instantly
obvious that the Rantzau of Erckmann-Chatrian is an
Alsatian Romeo and Juliet, and that the Andre Cornells of
M. Paul Bourget is a Parisian Hamlet; these resemblances
were so very evident that they could not be denied and there
fore need not be declared.

With characteristic wisdom and with a liberality as char
acteristic, Goethe held that what was really important was
not where a situation came from but what use was made of
it. He noted that Scott had helped himself to a situation
from Egmont, and "because he did it well, he deserves
praise." We may be sure that Goethe would have only com
mendation for the skill with which the Jacobean playwrights
despoiled the Spanish stage, because these gifted English
men always bettered what they borrowed. In his illuminat
ing little book on the Spanish Drama, George Henry Lewes
called attention to the imaginative energy with which
Fletcher, in the Custom of the Country, transformed an
ingeniously contrived situation in Calderon's Mejor esta que
Estaba into one of the most superbly dramatic scenes in all
drama.

In the Spanish piece, Don Carlos rushes in and begs
Flora to conceal him and save his life. She has no sooner
hidden him than his pursuers enter — to tell her that they
have followed into the house a cavalier who has just killed
her cousin. She keeps her promise to protect the hidden
fugitive; and she tells those who are seeking him that he
sprang from the window into the garden and so escaped.
This is an effective scene; but it is infinitely inferior to that
made out of it by Fletcher (possibly aided by Massinger).
Donna Guiomar is alone in her bed-chamber; she is anxious
about her absent son and she kneels in prayer. Rutilio
rushes in. He is a stranger,

— a most unfortunate stranger,
That, called unto it by my enemy's pride,
Have left him dead in the streets. Justice pursues me,
And for that life I took unwillingly,
And in a fair defense, I must lose mine,
Unless you, in your charity, protect me.
Your house is now my sanctuary !

SITUATIONS WANTED 585

Donna Guiomar agrees to shelter him and bids him hide
himself in the hangings of her bed, saying:

Be of comfort;

Once more I give my promise for your safety.
All men are subject to such accidents,
Especially the valiant; — and who knows not,
But that the charity I afford this stranger,
My only son elsewhere may stand in need of.

Then enter officers and servants with a bier whereon a
body lies lifeless; and a servant declares that

Your only son,
My lord Duarte's slain !

And an officer explains that

his murderer,

Pursued by us, was by a boy discovered
Entering your house.

The noble mother, stricken to the heart, is true to her
promise. She tells the officers to go forth and search for the
murderer. Then at last, when she is left alone with the
corpse of her son, she orders the concealed slayer to make his
escape :

Come fearless forth! But let thy face be cover'd,
That I hereafter be not f orc'd to know thee !

This is an incomparable example of the deep difference
between the theatrically effective and the truly dramatic —
between adroit story-telling on the stage for the sake of the
story itself, and story -telling for the sake of the characters
immeshed in the situation. The incident invented by Cal-
deron is ingenious and it provides a shock of surprise and a
thrill of suspense ; but how much richer and nobler is the sit
uation as Fletcher improved it, and how superbly did he
phrase the motive and the emotion of the stricken mother!
The Jacobean poet achieved surprise and suspense and also
a larger significance, because he had imagination to project
the scene as a whole, to prepare it, to express its ultimate
value, and to end it to the keen satisfaction of the spectators.

The younger Dumas, a playmaker of surprising skill, was
once persuaded to rewrite a play by Emile de Girardin, the
Supplice d'une Femme. The original author protested that
he could not recognize his piece in the new version. Dumas

586 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

explained that the original play had been cast aside because
it was a poor piece of work, quite impossible on the stage.
But it had a central situation which Dumas declared to be
very interesting and very dramatic; and therefore Dumas
had written a new play to present this novel and powerful
situation so as to make it effective in the theatre, which was
precisely what Girardin had been incapable of doing,
although he had invented the situation.

"But a situation is not an idea," Dumas explained in the
article in which he justified his rejection of Girardin's plot
and construction. "An idea has a beginning, a middle and
an end — an exposition, a development and a conclusion.
Anybody may happen on a dramatic situation; but it must
be prepared for, it must be made possible and acceptable;
and above all, the knot must be untied logically." Then
Dumas illustrated these assertions by suggesting the kind of
dramatic situation which anybody might happen on. A
young man falls in love with a girl; he asks her hand; and
they are married. Then, and only then, at the very moment
when he is about to bear her away to their future home, he
learns categorically that he has married his own sister.
"There's a situation! and very interesting indeed. But how
are you going to get out of it? I give you a thousand guesses
— and then I give you the situation itself, if you want it. He
who can start with this and make a good play out of it will
be the real author of that play, and I shall claim no share
in it."

The situation around which Girardin had written the
Supplice d'une Femme was difficult and it was dangerous;
but it was not impossible. Dumas was able to find a way out
and to bestow upon the story an attractive exposition, a
highly emotional development and a conclusion at once logi
cal and acceptable to a profitable succession of audiences.
And this is just what one of the established American drama
tists was able to do recently for a novice who had happened
on a strong and striking situation. The piece in which the
prentice playwright had put his situation was promptly re
jected by all the managers, until at last in despair he went
to the older dramatist for advice. He had placed his powerful
situation in the first act, so that it was inadequately prepared
for and led up to, while its superior force and weight pre
vented his giving to the later acts the increasing force which
later acts ought to possess. The remedy suggested by the

SITUATIONS WANTED 587

more experienced dramatist was simple ; it was to begin and
to end the story earlier — to cancel the original second and
third acts and to compose a new first and second act to lead
up to the strong and striking situation which could then be
amply developed in the new third and last act to be made
out of the material in the original first act.

In Rupert of Hentzau, the sequel to the Prisoner of
Zenda, there is a superb situation which needed to be solved
and which cried aloud for poetic treatment. Rudolph Ras-
sendyll looks almost exactly like the King of Ruritania. In
the Prisoner of Zenda circumstances force him to take the
King's place and to be crowned in his stead; so it is that he
meets the King's cousin, the Princess Flavia, and falls in love
with her and she with him. In Rupert of Hentzau we find
that the Princess, for reasons of state, has married her cousin;
and then circumstances again force Rassendyll to personate
the King, who is suddenly murdered andhisbody burnt. What
is Rassendyll to do? Shall he accept the throne and take
with it the Queen who loves him and whom he loves? The
Queen begs him to do this for her sake. If he decides to
profit by this series of accidents then he must for the rest of
his life live a lie, knowing that he is holding that to which
he has no right, legal or moral.

Here is the stuff out of which serious drama is made;
here is one of the great passionate crises of existence, when,
in Stevenson's phrase, " duty and inclination come nobly to
the grapple." Here is an ethical dilemma demanding a
large and lofty poetic treatment — like that which Fletcher
bestowed on the situation he borrowed from Calderon. Un
fortunately the author of the story was unable to rise to this
exalted altitude; and he got out of the difficulty by a tame
device, which simply dodged the difficulty. Before the hero
can declare his decision he is assassinated. The author had
happened on a fine situation; he was adroit in his exposition
of it and in his development ; but he failed to find a fit con
clusion.

Perhaps, in the course of time, when the hour strikes for
a rebirth of the poetic drama, a dramatic poet of a later gen
eration — a poet who is truly a playwright and a play
wright who is really a poet — will be tempted to take
over this situation invented by the ingenious novelist;
and he may be able to discover a satisfactory conclusion and
to treat it with the interpreting imagination it demands.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

HAZLITT'S PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

BY EDITH FRANKLIN WYATT

' WHOEVER becomes wise, becomes wise by sympathy ;
whoever is powerful, becomes so by making others sympathize
with him."

So wrote William Hazlitt nearly a century ago. None
but a believer in the faith of democracy could have written
these beautiful words, which are indeed almost an expression
of its creed; and Hazlitt was an early and strong supporter
of that faith. The taste for a life unpretentious ; the grace
of a swift and penetrating despite of impositions, of smug
ness, of bluffs ; the brilliant power of appreciating the world
as a wild miscellany — these are peerless traits for a sup
porter of democracy: and Hazlitt possessed them all.

Yet it is not chiefly for these strong temperamental abili
ties that one finds Hazlitt's essays and the tale of his life of an
especial interest as one re-reads them now.

How is democracy to be realized? How is it to be main
tained? Not only in its abstract governmental principles,
but in its concrete expression in the world of ideas and of
human life. How are human beings to be made happy, and
how is one to be made happy oneself in the chaos of disorder,
the wild miscellany of stupid injustices that the world pre
sents only less under a rule of the people by the people and
for the people, than under a rule of kings by kings and for
kings? These are the questions we are asking ourselves to
day. Whitman, as our most authentic poet of democracy,
purports at times, as we know, to be a great answerer of such
questions. But he cannot answer them. He can only con
sole us magnificently and hush them to sleep by his splendid
singing and the profound tones of his unbelievable assurances
of " good in all."

HAZLITT'S PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 589

No one, indeed, of all the prophets of progress by popular
rule can answer these questions satisfactorily. But yet the
world has assembled some curious and fascinating testimony
on them; and in Hazlitt's spiritual presence as a philosopher
and his struggles as a human being, one finds an especially
eloquent record of the difficulties, the failures and successes
of a supporter of democracy.

A born critic, living from 1778 to 1830, Hazlitt encoun
tered in his support of democracy two main difficulties in these
very circumstances — the period of his existence and the char
acter of his genius. After the American and the French
Revolutions he saw the rising vogue of liberal opinion in
England subside to the dead level desired by the supporters
of the status quo. Napoleon was a figure somewhat fan
tastically but none the less deeply identified for Hazlitt with
the cause of freedom. He saw Napoleon become a mere
detestation, a bogey. In the gust of the reaction that swept
over England with this change, he saw the mystical fires of
Coleridge's imaginative passion for mankind blown out like
a candle's flame. He saw Wordsworth's deep, grave dream
of the beauty of the common growth of mother earth, her
tears, her mirth, her humblest mirth and tears, broken in the
air like an iridescent bubble, at the vulgar breath of that wind
of prudent worldly doctrine, and forgotten for the world's
paltriest rewards: and Wordsworth was by no means the
only Lost Leader of that day. Hazlitt saw Godwin leave
his cause without ever receiving just a handful of silver, still
less a ribbon to stick in his coat.

To pass over lesser instances, these men were to Hazlitt's
perception, and have remained in fame, the genius, the poetry,
the leading radical thought of the England of his time. By
their prostrations we may judge the force of the backward
current, of the tremendous Tory undertow, which yet never
dragged down Hazlitt's mind, nor even the least, light, float
ing touch of his fancy.

Radical thought was not for Hazlitt a moral programme,
it was an instinctive preoccupation. " If I can live to think
and think to live I am satisfied." He enjoyed supremely
analysis, discrimination, keen-edged appreciations, swift pre
cisions: and with this sparkling faculty, he suffered all his
life from belonging to our English-speaking race. It is the
literary custom of our own countrymen and the English to
rate emotional far above mental perceptions. Hazlitt was

590 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the mental peer of Coleridge and Wordsworth, their superior,
indeed, in sheer strength of mind, if not in the gift of ex
pression. But he has remained far their inferior in fame,
even though he possessed in a high degree the gift of expres
sion, a power most unjustly underrated in him from our
depreciation of his medium.

Hazlitt had a knowledge of abundant subjects for criti
cism. Fortune and temperament had combined to give him a
motley view of creation. Born two years after the American
Declaration of Independence, the son of a Unitarian clergy
man of Irish descent and English residence, he had lived suc
cessively before he was nine years of age in Maidstone, Kent,
England; in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland; in Philadelphia;
in Boston (where his father founded our first Unitarian
church), and in England again, at Shrewsbury. He read
for the ministry. At thirteen he wrote an eloquent plea, pub
lished in the Shrewsbury Chronicle, in defense of the perse
cuted Dr. Priestly.

He abandoned reading for the ministry and lost himself
in meditation on a philosophical composition entitled The
Natural Disinterestedness 'of the Human Mind. At nine
teen he abandoned his composition for the fascination of a
chance acquaintance with Coleridge, who came to Shrewsbury
to fill a neighboring pulpit; and for two or three years, in
which, he has told us, he " did nothing but think," he walked
with Coleridge; he visited Wordsworth in his company; he
listened to the conversation of the creator of Kubla Khan, " a
round-faced man in a. short black coat like a shooting jacket,
which hardly seemed to be made for him," whose voice
" sounded high on

Providence, foreknowledge, Will and Fate —
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute";

as they passed " through echoing grove, by fairy stream or
waterfall."

He abandoned the Lake Poets. He devoted himself to
learning the art of painting, becoming expert enough to
receive several commissions as a copyist; and he visited the
Louvre, and copied for various patrons the glories of Ru
bens, Titian and Rembrandt, returning to the life of an itiner
ant portrait-painter in England and to several odd jobs of
writing for London publishers, who issued also our old ac
quaintance, The Natural Disinterestedness.

HAZLITT'S PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 591

Hazlitt had married at thirty a friend of Mary and
Charles Lamb's, a young woman of rather modern type,
though doubtless always in existence, a species of Superman
or a species of Beaver, perhaps, with a small property in the
country. It was not till he was thirty-four — an age at
which Burns's production as an author was finished — that he
was stirred by the need of a larger income for his child to start
out on his literary career in London.

All was now grist that had come to Hazlitt's mill. As a
miscellaneous writer on successive London dailies and various
periodicals, he was a literary critic, a critic of painting, a the
atrical critic, a political critic and acute reporter of the House
of Commons' debates, a striking author of travels and essays
on philosophy and general subjects. This was his career, "liv
ing to think and thinking to live " for the next eighteen years,
till his death at fifty-two. He never read a book through
after he was thirty. One might almost say he never wrote
a book. He wrote an able, amazing, truthful, expressive
miscellany, out of which, at intervals, he scooped up the cap
ital volumes we know: The Spirit of the Age, The Plain
Speaker and all the other collections — volumes whose peren
nial appearance was the occasion of the perennial attacks of
the hosts of conservatives of Blacktvood's and the Quarterly.

Hazlitt's Essay on The Natural Disinterestedness of the
Human Mind had appeared on the field of a battle of books,
then read with the senseless havoc wrought by Gifford, the
carnage created by the most personal, the most partisan, the
most jealous and malicious literary onslaughts known in the
history of letters in our language:

We are far from intending to write a single word in answer to this
loathsome trash (Hazlitt's Character of Pitt), Gifford exclaims. But
if the creature (Hazlitt) in his endeavor to crawl into the light must
take his way over the tombs of illustrious men, disfiguring the records
of their greatness with the slime and filth which marks his track, it is
right to point out to him that he may be flung back to the situation in
which Nature designed he should grovel.

What had Hazlitt done to deserve this? He had a man
ner of writing which no less useful a soldier in the liberation
war of humanity than Heine regarded as not only brilliant
but profound; and as Hazlitt ironically remarked of his own
career, the Tories know their enemies and the people do not
know their friends.

592 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Hazlitt and his editors had to face other difficulties than
the Tories. They had to face all those problems connected
with the mutually repellent ideas of freedom in the expression
of thought, and what is called "effective organization," that
puzzle us to the top of our bent today. Free thought, dis
criminating testimonies to truth, cannot be invariably de
pended on any more than the diagnosis of an honorable doc
tor, to give a consistently flattering account of radical per
sons.

Hazlitt would tell the truth from his own point of view,
regardless of its effect on either the opposition or on his own
camp. He was disconcerting. He was terrible. No Liberals
knew when the Plain Speaker might not imprint his image
upon the public mind in as undignified a manner, and as irrev
ocably, as he described the important and weighty old Jeremy
Bentham trotting about in his London garden — " in eager
conversation with some opposition member, some expatriated
patriot, or transatlantic adventurer, urging the extinction of
close boroughs, or planning a code of laws for some * lone
island in the watery waste/ his walk almost amounting to a
run, his tongue keeping pace with it in shrill, clattering ac
cents, negligent of his person, his dress and his manners, in
tent only on his grand theme of Utility." If Anti-Bentham
ites had long since hated Hazlitt, could you expect Bentham
ites to rely upon him fearlessly?

We find Leigh Hunt, the most generous of the Plain
Speaker's editors, exclaiming after Hazlitt had published, in
his absence, a shrewd commentary on Prometheus Unbound:

I think, Mr. Hazlitt, you might have found a better time and place,
too, for assaulting me and my friends in this bitter manner. . . .
The sight of acquaintances and brother-reformers cutting and carbo
nadoing one another in public is, I conceive, no advancement to the
cause of liberal opinion. In God's name, why could you not tell Mr.
Shelley in a pleasant manner of what you dislike in him?

And on another occasion he bursts into an irrational
merely human complaint against the non-partisan critic:

You have imagination enough to sympathize with all the world in
the lump! But out of the pale of your own experience in illness and
other matters of consciousness, you seem to me incapable of making
the same allowance for others which you demand for yourself !

The failure of Hazlitt's contemporaries to rate justly his
peculiar force and brilliancy, combined with his enemies' vio
lent attacks upon him, rasped him to a state of irritable sen-

HAZLITT'S PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 593

sitiveness, a degree of self -reference and self-pity that made
him an exceedingly difficult companion. After an abusive
article against him had appeared in Blackwood's, if a servant
were slow in opening a door for him, the unhappy author of
The Natural Disinterestedness supposed the man had read
the attack and his consequent despite had occasioned the
delay.

He accused his wife, most unfairly, as their son has said,
of a lack of sympathy with him. Their marriage had been
filled with illness, disappointment and grief. They had lost
four of their five children. In 1819, after eleven years
together, they had determined to live apart: and in the fol
lowing summer Hazlitt was distracted, and his literary work
temporarily confounded, by the occurrences he has commem
orated in Liber Amoris.

The young daughter of a tailor, the landlord of Haz-
litt's lodgings, became fascinated by their lodger's conversa
tion. He became infatuated with this girl, Sarah Walker,
and by his belief that she loved him. This belief was almost
purely self-derived. But in the hope, indeed the expecta
tion, of marrying her, an expectation in which he persisted in
spite of her obvious and growing indifference, he induced his
wife to obtain a divorce from him in Scotland. When he
returned from these legal proceedings and found that
Sarah Walker had confirmed her indifference by forming an
attachment for a youth of the same age, living across the
street, his grief and fury knew no bounds. He literally went
to pieces. He told the whole story of his self-derived
romance, his imaginary wrongs at the hands of Sarah Wal
ker, to every one — to his friends, to the waiters at the coffee
houses, to strangers — told it sometimes five times a day.

Having transcribed and edited a number of literary ver
sions of his dialogues with her, and added to them several let
ters which he had written to Patmore and Knowles about the
affair, he entitled this account Liber Amoris, and published it
as a book. Though in some respects a disingenuous record,
omitting quite rightly the most discreditable passages of his
conduct about Miss Walker — his slanderous suspicions of
her, and vilifying, intolerable accusations — it is yet a suffi
ciently discreditable tale. He is himself the painter of the
most repulsive picture we have of him. His extraordinary
meanness of feeling about a woman far younger than himself
and destitute of all his advantages of knowledge and educa-

VOL. CCVIT. — NO. 749 38

594 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tion, his virulent frenzy against her for her failure to return
his passion, are of some material very different from love —
an emotion whose splendor and richness may be said not once
to breathe in the pages of Liber Amoris, filled as these are
with passion and jealousy, with madness and hunger.

Yet in reading these pages we have to subtract something
from the misery they purport to represent. They were writ
ten in the period of what Whitman called "the literature of
woe," when repining was the fashion: and we have to remem
ber their author's high degree of volatility. " A million of
hours will not bring back peace to my breast," he says to Pat-
more. But in considerably less than even ten thousand hours
after his eternal disappointment had come upon him, he is at
tending a prize-fight, in the greatest flow of high spirits ; and
the delightful drive thither in the Brentford stage has brought
back to his breast if not peace at least a strong and even
enjoyment of existence:

The day was fine, the sky was blue, the mists retiring from the
marshy ground, the path was tolerably dry, the sitting up all night had
not done us much harm — at least the cause was good; we talked of
this and that with amiable difference, roving and sipping of many sub
jects, but still invariably we returned to the fight. At length, a mile
to the left of Hunger ford, on a gentle eminence, we saw the ring, sur
rounded by covered carts, gigs and carriages of which hundreds had
passed us on the road. Joe gave a youthful shout, and we hastened
down a narrow lane to the scene of action.

But the perfection of The Fight should not be marred by
excerpts. As Mr. Birrell says, " it is full of poetry, life and
motion. It is Hogarth, Shakespeare and Nature." But it
is not only a masterpiece, it is one of those characteristic
masterpieces of Hazlitt's, like The Spirit of Obligations,
which could have been written only by a person of tremendous
capacity for understanding and liking existence.

It is with no surprise that one learns that two years after
Hazlitt had written of his lost love, " The universe without
her is one wide, hollow abyss, in which my harassed thoughts
can find no resting place," he married for the second time.
Little is known of his second wife, Isabella, except that she
was the widow of a Colonel Bridgewater, of the Island of
Grenada, who had left her a fortune of three hundred pounds
a year, that she was considerably younger than Hazlitt, and
that they formed each other's acquaintance on a stage-coach
journey. After they had been married a few months, and

HAZLITT'S PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 595

at the close of a tour of theirs on the Continent, Hazlitt re
turned to England ; and his second wife parted from him, as
he supposed, temporarily, to visit a sister of hers in Switzer
land. But she intended, as it proved, a final separation,
whose cause remains unknown.

Mr. Birrell thinks she may have refused to return because
she had learned that as Hazlitt had obtained only a Scotch
divorce from his first wife, his second marriage was bigamous.
William Carew Hazlitt, Hazlitt's grandson, says that his
father, then a very direct and manly child of about thirteen,
had visited Hazlitt and the second Mrs. Hazlitt during their
foreign journey: and that it is probable that the boy's out
spoken description of the wrongs inflicted by his father upon
his mother, and his own resentment of them on her behalf,
so stirred the young Isabella (the second Mrs. Hazlitt) that
she had quietly determined not to return to England with her
husband. This is a surmise so generous and creditable to the
honorable character of women that one does not relinquish it
readily, whether true or untrue. It has the free movement
of a Meredithian situation, and a fine air of nature. After
all, the staunch little William Hazlitt would have come
rightly by a passion for free criticism and plain speech.

It was in his human relations as a man to his individual
fellow-creatures that the elder Hazlitt failed. He was a
feeble friend, an unsatisfactory son, an unsatisfactory
father, a poor husband, and an unworthy lover. As his dis
tracted editor observed, Hazlitt's imagination was for man
kind in the lump. The emotional and confidential character
of his written style, on the other hand, led his admirers to
expect from him a more flattering and differentiated sym
pathy than he was capable of expressing.

His mind had a distinguished firmness of texture quite
different from the material of his heart. His regard for
Napoleon could withstand all the changes of the world's in
consistency. While other men were meditating recantations
of their faith of opposition to the Divine Right of Kings,
Hazlitt was brooding and sickened over the downfall of that
opposition as lesser creatures might be over the loss of a per
sonal fortune. Talfourd says that the St. Helena imprison
ment, which meant to Hazlitt the disparagement of democ
racy, left his friend a broken man. This depreciation of a
great and just principle was something he could not forget
for a prize-fight.

596 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The integrity and solidity of his mental conceptions are
astounding. At fourteen he had started an essay on no less
a subject than A Project for a New Theory of Civil and
Criminal Legislation. For some thirty years, it seems, he
chanced to be distracted by other matters; and at forty-four
we find him returning like a stone-cutter to a statue left half
completed in its marble matrix, and chiselling it out with
the utmost readiness, all unimpaired by the mere passage of
aerial time. Out of such solid mental stuff he could create
certain gods of the soul, which he carried intact through all
his comings and goings — beautiful, glimmering presences,
which he set up in the corners of various and often very
squalid temporary lodgings of his spirit. But his heart was
of poorer and cheaper stuff; and had in its depths no such
magnificent quarry of candid-glowing marble for the crea
tion of keen-cut and enduring images. Its gods were senti
mental, plaster things, certain to be broken in moving — yes,
all of them, even the companionship with Coleridge — and
Hazlitt was always moving.

But when you come upon those other immortal gods of
Hazlitt's mind, looking out at you from his pages, you are
thrilled with their splendor, you rejoice in their grace, you
think long of their truth. (( I knew all along there was but
one alternative — the cause of kings or of mankind. There is
but one question in the hearts of monarchs — whether man
kind are their property or not. There was but this one ques
tion in mine. These are his successes — his power of pro
found meditation, his brave trenchant sense of the way of
justice through the world. He was a good hater of all poor
pride. None knew better than he how it can trivialize truth
in the mouths of some of her strongest spokesmen. "Even
among philosophers," he says, "we may have noticed those
who are not contented to inform the understandings of their
readers unless they can shock their prejudices." Hazlitt
himself, it may be said, shocked prejudices almost with his
every motion in his passage through the periodical press of his
time. But it was because prejudices were in his way on his
road to truth, and not because he was, like Byron, a profes
sional shocker. He is disgusted with the mindless vanity of
Byron's opinions :

They appear to me conclusions without premises or any previous
process of thought or inquiry. I like old opinions with new reasons,
not new opinions without any ; not mere ipse dixits. He was too arro-

HAZLITT'S PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 597

gant to assign a reason to others or to need one for himself. It was
quite enough that he subscribed to any assertion to make it clear to the
world, as well as binding on his valet.

A solitary thinker, Hazlitt gives us his mental life to a
surprising degree, in all its murkiest shades and most deli
cate tones. He wrote as he thought and thought as he wrote.
When he went into a fatuous madness, he wrote a work that
recorded it; and could not have helped expressing himself in
this work, more than he could avoid telling his humiliating
tale to the waiters. He breathed and lived in words: and
when he is sick almost to semi-consciousness, he writes :

I see (as I awake from a short uneasy doze) a golden light shine
through my window curtain on the opposite wall. Is it the dawn of a
new day, or the departing light of evening? I do not know well, for
the opiate "they have drugged my posset with" has made strange havoc
with my brain, and I am uncertain whether time has stood still, or ad
vanced, or gone backward.

The contemporaries of a sincere original thinker no doubt
perceive in the varied paths of his life and his liberty certain
colors and cloud-shadows that vanish with the yellow sun
light of his days on earth, and are invisible to later truth-
seekers discerning him from afar across the twilight.

On the other hand, distance has its own powers of reve
lation for us. Watchers from the plateaux of a world the
original thinker could not know, we may trace, on looking
back, his course as a whole, his pursuit of happiness, in a
manner not possible to his immediate companions by reason
of their very proximity.

This is especially the case with William Hazlitt's his
tory, at once fortunate and bitter, noble and mean, so dis
concerting to his observers close-at-hand that they could not
regard its general direction. Another circumstance has cast
a peculiar illumination on both his thought and his fortunes
for his admirers of to-day. He was a true prophet of the
faith of democracy: and on regarding his biography in the
search-light of the shaft of candor which the last few years
have revolved around the world of men's thoughts on that
faith, one finds in his spiritual presence as a philosopher and
his struggles as a human being qualities hardly perceptible
before.

Our difficulties are Hazlitt's difficulties. We too live in
a world where critical discriminations are greatly underrated

598 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

in comparison with emotional perceptions. We too are dis
traught between the need of expressing free criticism, and
the fear that if criticism remain free it may be sunk without
a trace left by the enemy. Our field of letters, too, is divided
into small antagonistic cliques, less violent in manner, but
not less limited in mind nor less patronizing in tone, than
those of Hazlitt's day — more settled in the customs of that
vanished subject of his mockery, The Monthly Review, a
publication that mentioned Gray's Elegy as "A little poem,
however humble its pretensions," which was "not without ele
gance or merit."

If our difficulties are his difficulties, so our failures are
his failures. Our democracy also can only sympathize in the
lump, and with the general conception of the common weal,
but not with establishing its concrete reality. It cannot be as
much interested in the actualities of injustice close at hand.
Its ideas of sex, too, are widely silly and cruel, largely con
fused, and founded on a respect for superstitions, largely
wanting in merciful wisdoms concerning the starvations of
the world.

These being our own failures and difficulties, we need all
the more to learn the elements of those successes that fill Haz-
litt's pages, and were characteristic of his earthly years.
When he came to die, after long pain, and in poverty, if not
in want, the last words on his lips were, "Well, I have had a
happy life."

One knows well what he meant. For him all experience
was an arch wherethrough gleamed the untraveled world.
In walking with him one walks always through the infinite
charm of existence, and is hardly less delighted with the lack
of practicability in Utilitarians than with the splendors of
the Louvre. Shadowed road, and far snow-mountains, the
taste of coffee and bread-and-butter — not only the things
Hazlitt enjoyed, the things you enjoy yourself, the great,
brief opportunity of living on the earth and of dying on it
indeed, present themselves to you as splendors of keen style,
conceived in immortal magic.

If Hazlitt could not act according to his own belief that
whoever becomes wise becomes wise by sympathy, he could
yet leave behind him a legacy of inexpressible value to us in
our democratic task of understanding the wild miscellany of
the world.

EDITH FRANKLIN WYATT.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH

CHASTITY TRIUMPHANT1

BY LAWRENCE OILMAN

ALICE MEYNELL is one of those happy artists who have
realized an aim. In Mrs. Meynell's case that aim was ob
viously to achieve, by literary embargoes of the most
drastic kind, the utmost purity of English style attainable by
mortal flesh. She has accomplished precisely that. To be sty
listically purer than Mrs. Meynell would necessitate an alti
tude of intellectual chastity accessible only to a fabulously
virginal soul. This astonishing craftswoman now writes an
English prose that is the most perfect thing of its kind our
speech contains. Its proud, fanatical purity abashes. " They
are the kind of people", remarked Mrs. Wharton once in a
deathless characterization, " who drink tea with their
luncheon ". ' They are the kind of people ", you can easily
fancy Mrs. Meynell remarking, " who use phrases like ' the
latter ' and ' the former ', and adjectives of critical commen
dation like ' colorful ' ; who not long ago discovered the
smartly psychological use of the word ' reaction ' ; who have
conceived a mad passion for ' intensive ', and who today are
finding a thousand uses for * camouflage ' unsuspected by the
simple-minded French." Of course it is much easier to im
agine Mrs. Wharton drinking tea with her luncheon than it
is to imagine Mrs. Meynell taking to her bosom such soiled
doves of speech as these. You can no more picture her on
terms of intimacy with any of these fallen creatures of our
speech than you can picture her using a public drinking-cup.
But Mrs. Meynell is immaculate not by contrast with those
who resort to words made grimy and bedraggled by the maul
ing of the crowd, but by contrast with genuinely fastidious
writers — writers who would no more say " the latter " and
" the former " than they would wear a diamond collar-button
or marry an Esquimo. Even those who pray nightly that

1 Hearts of Controversy, by Alice Meynell. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. 1918.

600 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

it may be granted them to write heedfully, expressively, and
with a minimum of awkwardness, must regard Mrs. Meynell
somewhat as Poe's envious connoisseur regarded Israfel.
She rebukes the best. How many contemporary users of
written English can you name who do not sin now and again
by flabbiness or flatness, or thinness or triteness or triviality,
or a lapse into the otiose ? Mr. George Moore is a marvellously
cunning artist in prose ; yet Mr. Moore's grammar is strange
ly insecure and his taste can be appalling. Mr. Arthur Sy-
mons' ear, alert to the timbres of verse, betrays him at times
in his prose. Mr. Max Beerbohm is a consummate magician
with the movement and color of words, but he is prone to be
dapper. You will name, perhaps, William Butler Yeats, the
master of a prose unequalled in English for artful loveliness.
But the prose of Mr. Yeats is an instrument of restricted
agility and compass. Its transcendent beauty issues only out
of moments suffused with revery or impassioned contempla
tion. His is peculiarly the speech of ritual and enchantment.
At its best it is a wonderful thing — a thing of supreme mas
tery, of incomparable subtlety and eloquence. It is a prose
of incense and altar-cloths and priestly gestures, or of the
lonely heart brooding in still places :

. . . That far household, where the undying gods await all whose
souls have become simple as flame, whose bodies have become quiet as
an agate lamp. . . .

. . . He was of those ascetics of passion who keep their hearts
pure for love or for hatred as other men for God, for Mary and for
the saints, and who, when the hour of their visitation arrives, come to
the Divine Essence by the bitter tumult, the Garden of Gethsemane,
and the desolate rood ordained for immortal passions in mortal
hearts. . . .

. . . The pale colors, the delicate silence, the low murmurs of cloudy
country days, when the plough is in the earth, and the clouds darken
ing towards sunset. . . .

— that is not an order of prose competent for wide usefulness.
The most beautiful that our written English speech can show,
it does not play easily with quotidian things. It seldom ab
sents itself from gravity. Mirthf ulness is impossible to it.
It has no cutting edge; it can neither sting nor whip in the
service of the Comic Spirit. It is, in short, of limited service
ability for criticism or exposition, and none at all for contro
versy. It is the speech of rhapsody and evocation, of dream
and contemplation ; the speech of a seer, a visionary, a great
poet, an historian of beauty.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 601

The prose of Mrs. Meynell is a cooler thing, an alerter
thing, a more pliant and flexible thing. It can be sly, it can
be limber : its movements are not hindered by vestments a lit
tle stiff with their magnificence, a little heavy with their jewels
and precious stuffs ; and there is other light in its world than
the light of candles and altar fires and starlight and pale skies.
Hers is an instrument capable of speaking with nimbleness
and abandon, yet with a noble and exquisite gravity — as if a
flute could at will transform itself into a horn. This writer
can be gay and barbed, and she can be a poet rapt in ecstasy.
Again, like Israfel, she can sing " wildly well " — beautifully
and with passion. She can fill the ear with enchantment. She
has that power which she generously imputes to Tennyson,
of so illuminating a word that it becomes a thing of strange
wonder, as though it had never been dulled : " The word with
draws, withdraws to summits, withdraws into dreams; the
lawn is aloft, alone, and as wild as ancient snow." In her
speech, too, " the golden, soft names of daffodil and crocus
are caught by the gale " as you speak them. And for all her
incredible reticence and the cloistral quietudes of her way
of loveliness, she, also, can be the poet of " wild flowers, wild
winds, wild lights, wild heart, wild eyes."

So easy a command of briskness and gravity, of un
daunted competence allied with the gift of incantation, is a
joyous spectacle for the disheartened observer of our public
writing. But Mrs. Meynell is not, of course, precisely
alone in her blend of competence and beauty — a few here,
a few there, have a like address and charm. It is in the
uncanny completeness of her avoidances that she excels and is
unique. In all one's long reading of her, it is not easy to re
member her giving a moment's aid and comfort to those for
whom the writing of English is less than an endeavor calling
for the most sensitive scrupulousness, for an unrelaxing vigi
lance against the unclean spirits of laziness and excess, spuri-
ousness and complacency, cheapness and the easiest way. To
achieve this kind of immaculateness, as Mrs. Meynell does,
without the suggestion of oppressive rectitude, is an attain
ment that has breadth, height, and solidity. It calls insist
ently for studious observation, for emulation, for the deepest
respect.

We choose, for this occasion, to confess a livelier interest in
Mrs. MeynelFs way of speech than in its burden ; partly be
cause the communicative art of these essays in criticism is so

602 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

rare and treasurable a thing, and partly because it is not so
easy to applaud their matter as it is to delight in the man
ner of their delivery. Perhaps the truth is that Mrs.
Meynell was intended by a Divine priority order to interpret
the natural world and the subtler rhythms of human experi
ence rather than to value the significance of other artists.
Perhaps it should be frankly recognized that she is chiefly,
after all, a poet in prose and verse, a rich and delicate creative
spirit occupied with the capture and communication of
beauty, rather than an appraiser of the craft of others. How
come to any other conclusion when she finds in Tennyson
nothing more gravely dissatisfying than " his bygone taste,
his insipid courtliness, his prettiness," and calls him " more
serious than the solemn Wordsworth"? When she per
ceives in Swinburne " a poet with puny passions, a poet
with no more than the momentary and impulsive sincerity of
an infirm soul"? When, for her, programme-music is not
only a " bygone " thing, but a thing that has " justi
fied " itself less well than the descriptive narrative style
of Swinburne? — which leaves you with a troubling vision of
Strauss and Debussy, d'Indy and Loeffler, Beethoven and
Cesar Franck and Tchaikovsky being boxed on the ears and
sent weeping to their cribs, while Swinburne dances derisively
in the doorway — unaware, happily, that Mrs. Meynell was to
say of him that, " conspicuously the poet of excess ", he is
" in deeper truth the poet of penury and defect ", whose pas
sion for liberty and freedom was a borrowed and dishonest
thing. And, finally, when she deems it worth while to deplore
Dickens' " lack of knowledge of the polite world "? — though
he is to be thanked for showing us the comic inmates of
" homes that are not ours."

But why, after all, should we ask for critical sagacity
in a poet of exquisite contemplations, the mistress of a blame
less and lovely art?

LAWRENCE GILMAN.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE. By Vladislav R. Savic. New York:
Fleming H. Revell Company.

It is unfortunately not true that Americans feel for Serbia a sym
pathy comparable to that which is generally felt for Belgium. Yet that
Serbia was grossly maltreated by Austria-Hungary, that the Serbian
people made every sacrifice that men can make, in fighting for that
cause for which Americans are now also fighting — these are facts as in
disputable as are the facts regarding the violation of Belgian neutrality
and the heroic resistance of the Belgian people.

Sympathy for a nation that has almost suffered extinction in fighting
a good fight, and admiration for a brave and much enduring people,
are not, however, quite sufficient to guide us in our attitude toward
Serbia. In the case of Belgium these sentiments may seem to be
enough : the resistance of Belgium is a moral event as simple as it is
grand. But the case of Serbia is different. In the case of Serbia
the moral element is complicated with other elements, which do not
indeed dim or diminish it, but which do make necessary a careful
study of the whole problem of which Serbia's suffering and heroism
are a part. In other words, it is impossible without some knowledge
of .the Balkan Problem to judge Serbia justly; and without some
knowledge of the national aims and character of Serbia it is impossible
truly to understand the Balkan situation as it was and as it may be after
the conclusion of this war.

M. Savic is, of course, perfectly right in pointing out that this
problem has become of vital interest to America. He scarcely exag
gerates American sentiment when he says : " America cannot but be
victorious on the battlefield ; but if her Government should fail to secure
a peace which will be the embodiment of her principles, she will be
defeated, notwithstanding her victories in beating the German army."
Now the settlement of the Balkan situation is certainly a question that
calls for the most thorough understanding of principles and the most
judicious application of them.

The problem has two main parts : the fate of Austria and the
fate of the Southern Slavs.

Of Austria-Hungary M. Savic, like all Slavic or for that matter
Czech writers, speaks bitterly. "Austria-Hungary is incurably bad;
it is a state without a soul. The most degrading oppression, the
least justifiable exaction, sheer injustice, the cynical denial of any
right of citizenship, are always cloaked by a form of legality and law-

604 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

prescribed procedure. Every student of it may see how there is a state
endowed with every modern institution warranting the freedom of
the citizens, and yet governed by a police which disposes of the liberty
and honor of every subject of the empire." The foreign policy of
Austria-Hungary, moreover, especially with respect to the Southern
Slavs, is described as malevolent and besotted, directed as it has been
by the fatal concordance of interests and ambitions among the Ger
mans, the Hapsburg dynasty, and the Magyars.

It is of no consequence, perhaps, if M. Savic in his legitimate
indignation has slightly over-colored the picture. Austria-Hungary,
in all conscience, is bad enough ; and one has no difficulty in agreeing
with the author that in the event of an inconclusive termination of
hostilities the dual monarchy, demoralized and more dependent than
ever upon Germany, would be, if possible, a greater menace to the
peace of the world than it was before the outbreak of the war.

Turning from the case of Austria-Hungary, M. Savic treats in
some detail of the character and national aspirations of the Southern
Slavs. The history of these peoples from the earliest times supports
their claim to be regarded as in spirit a great nation. Originally,
in the seventh century, the Southern Slavic tribes were called in by
the Byzantine Emperors, to repeople the northern and central provinces
of the Balkan peninsula, which had been devastated by Goths and Avars,
and to protect the northern frontier of Byzantium against further
attacks. " To that part assigned them — namely, to be the guardians
and protectors of European civilization, — the Serbo-Croat nation," de
clares M. Savic, " has remained faithful until now." Always non-
aggressive in character, and always aiming in their warfare rather at
the liberation of fellow Serbs from foreign oppression than at terri
torial gain, this people has evolved an intense and justifiable national
pride. How intense this feeling is, the world generally did not begin
to realize until the outbreak of the first Balkan war — though a study of
the whole history of the Serbo-Croats up to that time might have been
sufficient to show that Southern Slavic nationalism is a force to be
reckoned with. Even those Serbs who migrated in great numbers to
the north were possessed by the same spirit. Through loyal union
with Austria and Hungary, they sought to realize their ideal of national
liberty ; but they were thwarted by " the greedy exploitation of a
German dynasty and the brutal oppression of overbearing, haughty
German and Magyar masters."

Certainly the services of Serbia to the cause of the Entente Allies
entitle her to consideration apart from the justice of her historic claims.
Serbia has not merely suffered much; she has accomplished wonders.
The military importance of the Serbian army has not perhaps been
fully appreciated. In her early campaigns Serbia " riveted upon her
battlefields enormous forces of the common foe and annihilated forces
nearly equalling her total strength." Even the terrible retreat into
the Albanian mountains was advantageous to the Allies. In Albania
the enemy was held at bay, and this gave time for the reinforcement
of the Salonica front.

M. Savic has written a strong presentation of the Serbian point
of view. So long as national claims and rights are the sole question,

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 605

it seems obvious that Serbia's interests should overrule those of Bul
garia and that they should be given weight even against the interests
and aspirations of Italy. It is not quite clear, however, that national
aspirations are the only questions involved in the Balkan situation ; nor
may it be taken for granted that America is committed by its own
policy and theory of government to the view that every problem of
this sort is to be solved through the furtherance of traditional national
aims and through observance of the principle of racial unity. Federa
tion, not national aggrandizement, is the American idea: this is not
quite the same as Panslavism — perhaps not quite the same as the
Serbian conception of an ideal settlement of the Balkan situation. In
the friendliest spirit surely the United States will endeavor to see that
full justice is done to Serbia and that full reparation is made to her
for all that she has suffered. It would be a mistake, however, to sup
pose that Americans are inclined to accept whatever extreme construc
tion any people may be inclined to put upon its " national destiny."

M. Savic has written a forceful plea, which is also an illuminating
interpretation. His book, however, should be regarded not as affording
a solution of the Balkan problem, but only as a just and eloquent
presentation of one aspect of that problem.

LORD ACTON'S CORRESPONDENCE. Edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V.
Lawrence. New York : Longmans, Green and Co., 1917.

It is as a historian that Lord Acton is chiefly remembered ; for al
though his historical writings are not actually very numerous, although
his projected magnum opus — the History of Liberty — was in fact never
completed, his immense learning and his profound judgment made a
deep impression upon the minds of historical scholars all over the world.
His influence, direct and indirect, has been very great.

And yet it is doubtless true that as a historian Acton has come to
seem a little bit old-fashioned. Certainly he was not what we now mean
by a " scientific " historian. His history was to him not merely a
method of inquiry, but a system of thought. His mind was filled with
it, and in a degree unusual with modern scholars he carried it about
with him. What he knew, or aspired to know, was not historic prob
lems, or the method of historic research, but history. Furthermore, he
differed from the typical scientific historian of to-day in that his con
ception of history was profoundly and unashamedly ethical. His histor
ical views were as deeply wrought into the structure of his mind as were
his religious beliefs or his political judgments. Indeed, all three sets
of opinions were at root nearly identical : certainly there was no incon
sistency among them.

As a religious thinker, Acton seems, at first thought, less important
than he does as a historian. How could a Catholic who strenuously
maintained those doctrines concerning the freedom of belief and the
supremacy of conscience which are popularly supposed to be the ex
clusive property of Protestants write about religion in a way that would
be effectual with other Catholics? And again, h^w could one to whom
the Roman Catholic communion was "dearer than life," — one who

606 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

accepted certain beliefs on faith, and who seems to have cared com
paratively little about reconciling science with religion, — how could
such a one write about religious matters in a way that would affect
opinion outside his own Church ?

His position was, indeed, anomalous ; yet he cannot be accused of in
consistency. In his opposition to the Vatican Decrees he was actuated
by principles, not by considerations of expediency. He was beaten,
yet he did not feel obliged to separate himself from the Church. He
saw that the dogma of Papal Infallibility in its final form was very
much qualified; he perceived that Newman's minimizing view of the
doctrine " made it possible technically to accept the whole of the De
crees." Moreover, he was a layman : he held no teaching office. But
these, after all, were not the considerations that weighed most with
him. In time he came to realize that he had always been opposed to
the policy of which the decrees were but the latest expression. He was
a Catholic at heart; he " belonged," as he once said, " to the soul of the
Church " ; but with the official government of the Church throughout
its history, he could have had, except for brief periods, little sympathy.
He could not withdraw from communion with the Church without de
taching himself from its soul ; he could remain in that communion
without approving or professing to approve what he regarded as a false
and harmful policy.

The truth is that Acton's criticisms of the Church are of a piece with
his criticisms of history and with his criticisms of literature and of
politics. In all these fields of thought he is equally consistent and
courageous; in all equally his point of view is profoundly ethical. A
few great principles controlled his judgment — the principle, especially,
of freedom, and next to that, perhaps, the principle of the sanctity of
human life. Minor principles did not weigh with him as they do with
less comprehensive thinkers. Democracy was not to him the ultima
ratio. Of centralized democracy he disapproved almost as heartily as
he did of absolutism. It was for this reason that his sympathies dur
ing the American Civil War lay with the South. Nationalism or racial
autonomy he did not make a fetish. Though he approved of Gladstone
and of Home Rule, his adhesion to Liberalism depended not on the
narrow doctrine of nationalism but upon the broad conception of free
dom. Autocracy, of course, he utterly condemned, and so well did he
understand the fundamental difference between absolutism and free
dom, and the practical workings of the former, that he was one of the
first to foresee the real danger of Prussianism.

In short, Acton had made a synthesis of his historical, his religious,
his personal views upon a very broad ethical basis. In his judgments he
can never be accused of narrowness or undue severity. In history, he
maintained, personal vices and personal virtues are commonly of little
account : sincerity and concern for the sanctity of human life are almost
the sole moral tests of a statesman. He was thus very far from being
a petty moralist. Yet he consistently maintained the ethical standard.

In his general correspondence the same strength is apparent — the
strength, namely, of unity and consistency — that appears in his formal
writings. Great power usually results from a broad synthesis. In
Acton's case power is supplemented by detailed knowledge. Acton

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 607

was a thorough student of history, a man acquainted with affairs, a
man of the world, a man of letters capable of acute literary criticism.
It is as such a man that the first volume of his letters reveal him.
Seldom in epistolary literature is so much strength joined with so much
sanity and so much charm as in the case of Acton's correspondence.
His ideas, always deeply based, often original, not seldom challenging,
are the expression of a personality that has acquired an exceptional de
gree of unity. The ideas themselves, in many cases, seem particularly
adapted to a time in which men are being compelled by the terrible logic
of war to take stock of their ethical conceptions and to view the whole
of life's problems in a realistic and at the same time an earnestly
moral or religious light.

CAMPAIGNS AND INTERVALS. By Jean Giraudoux. Translated by
Elizabeth S. Sergeant. New York : Houghton MifHin Company, 1918.

Looking at the war in certain large and, in a sense, conventional
ways we can all after a fashion understand it. As a moral phenom
enon, as a military event, as a huge catastrophe, it may be more or
less clearly grasped with the aid of principles, maps, or statistics. But
besides wanting to understand the war in the abstract, people passion
ately desire to appreciate it as experience.

Now the question that every one wants to have answered with
respect to any experience in the least out of the ordinary — the ques
tion, "Just how did it seem?" — is the hardest of all questions to
answer satisfactorily. Most men simply cannot answer it at all. Their
replies consist of irrelevant details or conventional ideas. If any one
even for a moment succeeds in describing an experience unconvention
ally, fully, and truly, the appreciative hearer rejoices.

Obviously the experiences of war, as they present themselves to an
impressible and reasonable mind, must seem shockingly incoherent.
War breaks up old coherences, creates new associations. Events never
before thought of in the same category occur together or in sequence.
Thoughts or emotions that never in time of peace had even a bowing
acquaintance with each other are joined in a close embrace. War
experiences must be therefore the hardest experiences of all for the
conscious impressionist — the soldier who is also a skilled writer — to
describe adequately to those unconscious impressionists, his question
ers. They are a dull, gaping lot, these questioners, for we are all dull
when it comes to understanding one another: it requires something
like genius to make one's inner sense of a thing plain to the most
intelligent and friendly soul. But the questioners are really in earnest.
They are worth enlightening; and in order that they may be enlight
ened they must be made to feel not only the strangeness, the incon
gruity of things as they appear to the soldier, but their oneness as
experience, their seeming coherence, their dreamlike plausibility.

Perhaps no more sincere, more exact, more unconventional or
more various record of war impressions was ever written than that
which Jean Giraudoux has given us in his book Campaigns and Inter
vals. The effect of many passages of this record is so simple and so

608 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

strong as to remind us of the work of Stephen Crane. But Campaigns
and Intervals is not, of course, as is The Red Badge of Courage, a
one-idea-ed book: it is not a study merely of one chain of events or
of one emotion. It is both more delicate and more versatile than
Crane's masterpiece ; and the fact that it records real instead of imagi
nary occurrences, increases both one's estimation of its value and one's
admiration for the art with which it is executed.

How do sensitive, civilized men feel in the hour of waiting for the
great ordeal ? Here is M. Giraudoux's answer or a part of it : " But
chiefly, without respite, we think of the first wounded and the first
dead of the battalion. All the mental power we have stumbles sharply
over this first corpse. We understand the second, and the third, and
toward the hundredth we ourselves stretch our stark length on the
ground; but suddenly, in spite of us, the first dead whom we have
finally laid out in our minds comes back to life, scrambles to his feet,
and the whole thing has to be done over again. When a soldier who
is setting a match to his pipe lights up his face for an instant, we
tremble for him as if he were flashing a signal to death. Our shoul
ders slump; age comes upon us. Restlessly we wander up and down
in this darkness which makes victory seem scarcely more desirable
than morning. ' Cest toi? ' ' Yes, it's I,' comes the tremulous answer,
out of a deep courage. ..."

Sometimes, too, the author mingles psychology with spectacular
bits of description and with humorous observation in a manner that
produces an astonishingly complete and convincing picture of the
reality. The following description of a group of refugees, though
characteristic, is by no means an exceptional instance:

"They all carry, either in cages or on leash, the animals which
make the best fugitives: dogs, canaries, cats. In every carriage, too,
is the object that would have been saved in case of fire, or else —
today a bond of union — the one that would have been quarreled over
in a division of property; a card-table, suspended like a goat with its
feet tied together, or a phonograph. Now comes a hair-dresser with
his waxen heads. Now some poor old people with their fixed attach
ments — an old woman in her armchair, an old man on his camp-stool.
Some fresh, plump women in waterproofs, who have taken time to slip
on their best chemises, but not to tie up the pink ribbons, which flutter
in the breeze."

Is there in this series of impressions, one may ask, any unity beyond
that which is produced by the hanging-together of the impressions
themselves? Most certainly there is: A certain steadiness, a certain
" lucidity of soul " is manifest through the whole book. Without
attempting in the least to disengage the ethical or spiritual elements
from the human spectacle, M. Giraudoiix enables us to perceive the
nobility of human nature as represented in the French civilian turned
soldier: he lets us see that this soldier, strangely and sometimes ab
surdly affected as he is by the terrors and the incongruities of the
war, has a soul.

The translator has done her work so well that one scarcely has
occasion to remember that the book was not originally written in
English.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 609

WOMEN AND WAR WORK. By Helen Fraser. New York: G.
Arnold Shaw, 1918.

Of all the effects that the war has produced, or is producing, within
the countries at war with Germany, none is more interesting than the
change which is taking place in the status of women.

Other changes, though possibly fraught with great significance, are
either less revolutionary or have the air of being less permanent. Men
have learned to submit cheerfully to severe restrictions ; but submission
to centralized authority for the sake of patriotic cooperation is no
new thing, even in democracies. In war time, people are learning
to be more economical, more temperate, more thrifty; but economy,
temperance, and thrift, are not novelties — in France, at least, they were,
even before the war, national habits. And besides, there is no assur
ance that the virtues learned in wartime will continue to be generally
practised after the immediate occasion for their exercise has passed.
Meatless and wheatless days may teach self-sacrifice, but will not
necessarily establish a habit of economy among people whose standard
of living is normally high.

The change in the condition of women, however — especially in
England and in France — amounts to a revolution in thought. Certain
prejudices, certain false sentiments, have departed — probably never to
return. It is true that this revolution, like most other revolutions, has
been for a long time preparing ; but the results are not on that account
less surprising. The strength and adaptability of women in all manner
of work connected with the war have been a revelation.

Just what the change has meant to England one may most easily
and most agreeably learn from Helen Fraser' s Women and War Work
— almost an ideal war book in its combination of informing facts and
figures with straightforward emotional appeal and serious, work-a-day
enthusiasm. Miss Fraser is an official of the British Treasury: she
is now lecturing in this country with the approval of the British
Government. Since August, 1914, she has been continuously engaged
in various kinds of war work. Her book shows that she possesses not
merely a thorough understanding of the details of organization, but a
real insight into human nature.

When one thinks of women's work in the war one naturally thinks
first of such things as nursing, Y. W. C. A. work, and the clerical
work connected with the big supplementary organizations. One knows,
of course, that women do in some cases work in munitions factories
and on farms ; that they perform heavy labor and engage in dangerous
service. But if one's information is derived from a casual reading of
newspapers or magazines one has much to learn.

In England, in France, women have come to the front amazingly
as organizers. In England they have not only proved equal to the
immense task of nursing the sick and wounded, but they have supplied
some of the ablest physicians and surgeons. On the farms and in
factories they are doing all but the heaviest work. They have proved
their ability as mechanics and engineers. In the munitions factories
they do not shrink from performing the most dangerous operations.
Women police officers are doing the things that men have done as well

VOL. ccvii— NO. 749 39

610 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

as the men have done them and are doing things that men cannot do
nearly so well. The success of English women in all kinds of work
formerly regarded as fit only for men is astonishing; the number of
women who are doing men's work in England is far greater than
most persons suppose: to-day there are between 800,000 and 1,000,000
in munitions works alone. England has carried on a tremendous experi
ment in practical " feminism " and the results exceed all expectations.

As for gallantry : "On one occasion in France in an air raid, enemy
bombs came very near some girl signallers. They behaved splendidly,
and some one suggested that it should be mentioned in the Orders of
the Day. ' No/ said the Commanding Officer, ' we don't mention sol
diers in orders for doing their duty.' The * Waacs ' — members of the
Women's Army Auxiliary Corps — are a part of His Majesty's Forces,
and when a girl joins she is subject to army rules and regulations.
Before going to France, she is handed the two identification discs
which every soldier receives."

In spirit, Miss Eraser's book is not merely patriotic. In reading
it one catches a glimpse of a future better than the past — of finer
and more practical ideals, of juster ethical standards, of better relations
between the sexes and truer cooperation between men and women.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY

XII

(February 6 — March 5)

THE United States has completed the eleventh month of its war
against the Imperial German Government. The month opened with a
disaster at sea, in the loss of the transport Tuscania, torpedoed by a
German submarine, almost at the completion of her journey to a British
port with 2,179 American soldiers aboard, many of whom were lost. It
closed with the repulse of a strong German raid upon a part of the
front line trenches in France held by American troops. This was not
a battle, nor even a raid of great importance. The news despatches were
curiously exact in specifying that the German force numbered 240 men.
They reported that numerous Americans were killed and others
wounded, adding that many Germans were killed, including two offi
cers whose bodies were left tangled up in the barbed wire defences of
the American trenches. Two or three of the Germans who managed to
get as far as the American trenches were unable to escape with their
retreating comrades, and remained as prisoners in American hands.
Complete details have not been received at this writing, but there were
indications that some American prisoners were taken by the raiders,
which, no doubt, was the German object.

Throughout the month there have been constant reports of minor
contacts between our men and the Germans, and the beginning of our
casualty list has been made. We have gained experience with gas, bar
rage fire, grenades and bombs, and other features of modern war. There
has been nothing yet approaching the magnitude of a serious action,
however — nothing to furnish a comparative test of the fighting quali
ties of the new American army. But they have shown on all the less
important occasions in which they have met the Germans that they
are well worthy of the confidence of their people in the account they
will render of themselves when the real trial comes.

The Tuscania was the first American troopship to fall a victim to
the submarines. In addition to the 2,179 soldier passengers she car
ried a crew of 222, making 2,401 persons aboard. Of these 149 sol
diers and 17 members of the crew were lost. The others were taken off
by British torpedo boat destroyers which had been guarding the con
voy of which the Tuscania formed part, or were saved by means of
boats and rafts. The universal testimony of the survivors was of the
gallantry of the young troops in the face of the great test. It was their
superb discipline which brought so large a number through safely. Part
of the survivors were landed at Irish ports and part in Scotland.

612 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

But while this disaster at sea, and the steady report of small
losses in action, served throughout the month to deepen the impression
upon the minds of the people in the United States that their armed
force was beginning at length to make itself felt on the battle fronts,
the dominant note of the month was possible peace. The intermittent
negotiations between the Bolshevist Russians and the Teutonic Allies
at Brest-Li to vsk were alternately on and off, then came to a com
plete rupture, when Trotzky, refusing to sign a treaty on the basis of
the German terms, declared Russia's warfare at an end and the de
mobilization of the Russian armies. No peace had been signed, but
then, as they seemed to think, it took two sides to make a war, and as
they were determined not to have war Germany could not go on alone.
If they really thought that, they did not understand the full capabilities
of the Germans. There was a brief and surprised pause. Then the Ger
man newspapers began to talk seriously of the grave necessity of mov
ing forward in Russia, and of the urgent appeal of the Ukrainians
for German aid.

The Ukrainians had been permitted to enter into independent nego
tiations with the Teutonic allies, and they agreed on peace terms and
signed the treaty. When the Bolsheviki turned on Ukrainia the new
German " friends " of the Rada went promptly to the assistance of
the Ukrainian Republic. Reports are conflicting, but it seems that there
was a bloody battle for possession of Kiev, won by the Bolsheviki,
with horrible slaughter during and following the fighting.

The announcement of the peace between Ukrainia and the Central
Powers was made on February 9. The next day Trotzky made his
great gesture. Thereupon von Kuehlmann, the German Foreign Minis
ter and Count Czernin, the Austrian, went back to Berlin and German
Great Headquarters, whence it was announced that the Brest-Litovsk
negotiations " having ended in violent rupture bearing the seeds of
future conflict, it was necessary to consider the eventuality of very
energetic military measures against the Russians." On February 18
Berlin announced that two German armies were advancing against
the Russians. One crossed the Dvina and moved on Dvinsk, quickly
occupying it. " Called on by Ukrainia to help in her heavy struggle
against Great Russia," said the Berlin announcement, " our troops have
commenced their advance."

The next day Lenin and Trotzky announced that they had been
forced to sign a peace on German terms, and sent a wireless message
to Berlin. General Hoffmann, one of the negotiators at Brest-Litovsk,
demanded the signed document. He remarked that telegraphed signa
tures were not binding and might be forged. Germany now made new
terms; surrender of more territory and a huge indemnity, variously
reported as about $4,000,000,000. The Germans captured thousands of
prisoners, many guns and quantities of military supplies in their advance.

On February 22 Lenin and Krylenko, the subaltern commander-in-
chief of the Bolsheviki armies, signed a proclamation posted in Petro-
grad calling all the Russians to fight the invader to the death. As this
is written the news despatches report the Germans as proclaiming
their intention to hang or shoot the Bolshevist Red Guards whom they
catch, especially in Ukrainia, and assert that a start was made by hang-

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 613

ing 200 in the market place at Wolmar, without investigation.

The obvious, tangible result, therefore, of the Russian revolution
thus far, is the practically complete disruption of Russia ; the cessation
of her warfare against Germany, Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria; the
vast advantage of Germany and her allies ; the possession by Germany
of a tremendous extent of Russian territory, with enormous supplies
of food and various kinds of military material, including guns and
munitions; the liberation in Russia of hundreds of thousands of Ger
man and Austrian prisoners of war, and the ultimate great reinforce
ment of Germany's man power. These are facts all of which have a
direct bearing upon what the United States must be willing and pre
pared to do in order to see that our war against the Imperial German
Government does not end in a disaster to us and to civilization.

The progressive disruption of Russia having proceeded so rapidly
as seriously to menace the stability of conditions in Eastern Siberia,
Japanese occupation of Vladivostok and of points west along the rail
road became a subject of earnest consultation among the Allies. It
was reported that Japan was ready to take active measures, both to
protect her own paramount interests against the danger of German
organization of Eastern Russia and also in defense of Allied interests.
Great Britain, France and Italy were reported to have advised Japan
to act. The American Government, however, still clings, apparently,
to the hope that some power of recuperation in Russia may yet free
her miraculously from the blight of Bolshevism, and bring her again
into the line of duty to civilization. Our consent to the proposed action
by Japan is withheld therefore, and at this writing nothing has been
done.

While the Russian attempt to secure peace through direct negotia
tion with the Germans was moving on to failure at Brest-Litovsk, the
American attempt to bring peace nearer through public speech was
proceeding. The eleventh month of our war with Germany was marked
by the continuance, by President Wilson, of the long range discussion
of general peace principles with Count von Hertling, the German Chan
cellor, and Count Czernin, the Austrian Foreign Minister, which
formed so interesting a part of the history of the tenth month. On
February 11 Mr. Wilson went before a joint session of the Senate and
House of Representatives and delivered an address in reply to the
speeches of Hertling and Czernin on January 24. Those speeches had
been in the nature of replies to President Wilson's address to Congress
on January 8, when he laid down fourteen conditions of peace. Now
the German Chancellor has again replied to the President, in a speech
before the Reichstag on February 25, and the prospect of peace is
brighter or darker according as one interprets what the statesmen said.

In his February 11 address Mr. Wilson differentiated the speeches
of the two Teutonic statesmen and declared that the German's was
" certainly in a very different tone from that of Count Czernin and ap
parently of an opposite purpose." The President dwelt upon this and
seemed to be actuated by hope of developing a difference between his
two enemies. He credited Czernin with seeing the " fundamental ele
ments of peace with clear eyes " and with not seeking to obscure them.
But Hertling seemed to have forgotten or to ignore the Reichstag reso-

614 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

lutions of July 19 — the peace without annexations or indemnities
resolutions.

" What is at stake now is the peace of the world," declared Mr.
Wilson. " This," he added, " depends upon the just settlement of each
of the several problems to which I adverted in my recent address to
the Congress." That referred to the fourteen conditions of peace he
laid down in his January 8 speech. But he immediately qualified that
by saying " I, of course, do not mean that the peace of the world de
pends upon the acceptance of any particular set of suggestions as to the
way in which those problems are to be dealt with."

After further consideration of this point, and further emphasis on
the difference between Hertling and Czernin, the President laid down
these four general principles essential to any effective consideration of
peace :

First— That each part of the final settlement must be based upon the essen
tial justice of that particular case, and upon such adjustments as are
most likely to bring a peace that will be permanent.

Second — That peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sov
ereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a
game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of
power; but that

Third — Every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in
the interest and for the benefit of the population concerned, and not as
a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims among rival
States; and,

Fourth — That all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the
utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new
or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would be
likely in time to break the peace of Europe, ana consequently, of the
world.

" A general peace erected upon such foundations can be discussed,"
said Mr. Wilson. "Until such a peace can be secured we have no choice
but to go on."

The same day that the President laid down these four principles
the German Kaiser, replying to an address presented by the Burgo
master of Hamburg on the occasion of the peace with Ukrainia, ex
plained the German view of how peace may be achieved. He said :

We ought to bring peace to the world. We shall seek in every way to do it.
Such an end was achieved yesterday in a friendly manner with an enemy, which,
beaten by our armies, perceives no reason for fighting longer, extends a hand to
us and receives our hand. We clasp hands.

But he who will not accept peace, but on the contrary declines, pouring out
the blood of his own and of our people, must be forced to have peace. We
desire to live in friendship with neighboring peoples, but the victory of German
arms must first be recognized. Our troops under the great Hindenburg will
continue to win it. Then peace will come.

President Wilson's speech evoked a very prompt and public dis
claimer from the British Premier. Mr. Lloyd-George addressed the
House of Commons the following day and declared that, although he
regretted it, he could not altogether accept the President's interpreta
tion of the Czernin speech.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 615

" It is perfectly true, as far as the tone is concerned," he said, " that
there is a great difference between the Austrian and German speeches.
But I wish I could believe there is a difference in substance." Then, re
ferring to the Czernin speech he added, " It was extraordinarily civil in
tone, and friendly. But when you come to the demands put forward
by the Allies it was adamant."

The British Premier went on to show the unyielding character of
the two speeches, and said that until there was some better proof than
had been provided in these speeches that the Central Powers were pre
pared to consider the aims and ideals for which the Allies were fighting
it would be Great Britain's regrettable duty to go on and make prepara
tions necessary to establish international rights by force of arms.

Count von Hertling's latest reply to Mr. Wilson was delivered be
fore the Reichstag on February 25. He began by saying that the
Reichstag was entitled to an explanatory statement, " although I enter
tain certain doubts as to the utility and success of dialogues carried on
by ministers and statesmen of belligerent countries." He agreed with
Mr. Runciman's view, as expressed in the Commons, that " we should
get much nearer to peace if responsible representatives of the belliger
ent Powers would come together in an intimate meeting for discussion.
I can only agree with him that that would be the way to remove num
erous intentional and unintentional misunderstandings and compel our
enemies to take our words as they are meant, and on their part also to
show their colors."

With that introduction Count von Hertling proceeded to analyze the
four principles of peaceful settlement laid down by President Wilson,
and to declare his fundamental agreement with them. After stating
the first one, in the President's terms, he said :

" Who could contradict this ? The phrase, coined by the great
father of the Church, Augustine, 1,500 years ago — ' justitia funda-
mentum regnorum ' — is still valid today. Certain it is that only peace
based in all its parts on the principles of justice has a prospect of en
durance."

Then, quoting the President's second clause he commented :

This clause, too, can be unconditionally assented to. Indeed, one wonders
that the President of the United States considered it necessary to emphasize
it anew. This clause contains a polemic against conditions long vanished, views
against Cabinet politics and Cabinet wars, against mixing state territory and
princely and private property, which belong to a past that is far behind us.

I do not want to be discourteous, but when one remembers the earlier utter
ances of President Wilson, one might think he is laboring under the illusion
that there exists in Germany an antagonism between an autocratic government
and a mass of people without rights.

The third clause is only the application of the foregoing in a definite direc
tion, or a deduction from it, and is therefore included in the assent given to
that clause.

Then, quoting the President's fourth clause, von Hertling said:

Here, also, I can give assent in principle, and ^declare, therefore, with Presi
dent Wilson, that a general peace on such a basis is discussable.

Only one reservation is to be made. These principles must not be proposed
by the President of the United States alone,, but they must also be recognized
definitely by all States and nations. President Wilson, who reproaches the

616 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

German Chancellor with a certain amount of backwardness, seems to me in
his flight of ideas to have hurried far in advance of existing realities.

Having thus accepted the Wilsonian principles, Count von Hertling
labored to forestall their application to the Russian case. In doing this
he produced the interesting assertion that Germany's course against
Russia was defensive rather than aggressive.

" Our war aims from the beginning," he said, " were the defense of
the Fatherland, the maintenance of our territorial integrity, and the
freedom of our economic development. Our warfare, even where it
must be aggressive in action,- is defensive in aim. I lay especial stress
upon that just now in order that no misunderstandings shall arise about
our operation in the east."

From that he progressed to declarations that Germany does not in
tend to establish herself in Esthonia and Livonia, and that her object
in Courland and Lithuania is chiefly " to create organs of self-deter
mination and self-administration."

Speaking in the House of Commons two days later Foreign Secre
tary Balfour declared that he was unable to find in von Hertling's
speech any basis for fruitful conversation or hope of peace. The Ger
man Chancellor's lip service to President Wilson's proposition, said Mr.
Balfour, was not supported by German practice.

Coincident with the report of the Chancellor's smooth description of
Germany's purposes, principles and practice, came the news that a Ger
man submarine had torpedoed another British hospital ship, the Glen-
art, clearly marked and lighted, with loss of 164 lives.

Announcements of American casualties — in small numbers as yet
— have become a regular feature of the news. There is an almost daily
repetition of the phrase " Gen. Pershing reports " followed by names of
men killed or wounded. And with significant frequency have appeared
reports of fatal accidents at the aviation training camps. Secretary
Baker permitted the announcement to be made, toward the close of the
month, that the first American battle planes were on their way to
France.

Mr. Baker revealed the fact that these planes are equipped with
twelve-cylinder Liberty motors. But no information was given as to
numbers of manufacture or shipment. The Secretary had insisted,
before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, that 1,500,000 Ameri
can troops would be ready for service in France this year. The impli
cation was that whether or not they are actually sent to France depends,
or will depend, on the question of ocean transportation. The War
Department is asking Congress for $450,000,000 more for aviation.

On February 10 Mr. Baker announced the organization of the Army
General Staff into five divisions, Executive, War Plans, Purchases and
Supplies, Storage and Traffic, and Army Operations. Each division
is under a director who is an assistant chief of staff. Meantime Con
gress is proceeding with consideration of measures that will or may
involve considerable army reorganization. One of these measures is the
so-called Overman bill, conferring upon the President blanket power
to reorganize the executive departments without regard to the limita
tions of existing law, and to shift bureaus and their personnel from

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 617

one to another as he sees fit, to rearrange duties, and generally to effect
such organization of the administration as he deems best to secure the
most efficient results. As at first drafted this bill conferred upon the
President authority to create new bureaus and offices. There was
much opposition to the bill, and especially to this feature. But it has
been modified somewhat in committee and seems to have de
veloped support enough to secure its enactment. The disposi
tion generally seems to be to give the President every power which
he feels he needs for successfully carrying on the war.

Congress is also at work on the bill giving the President all the
power with regard to Government operation of the railroads which he
asked in his special address on that subject, and guaranteeing the finan
cial return that he suggested. At the same time a bill creating a War Fin
ance Corporation, to be owned by the Government, is on its way to en
actment. This corporation is to have a capital of $500,000,000 and to
be authorized to issue bonds to the amount of $4,000,000,000 in order
to enable it to make advances to war and contributory industries. These
bonds are to be receivable by the Federal Reserve Banks for discount.

Secretary McAdoo has announced the opening of subscriptions for
the Third Liberty Loan on April 6, the first anniversary of the declara
tion of war against the Imperial German Government. In preparation
for floating the loan he has offered treasury certificates of indebted
ness in $500,000,000 lots at fortnightly intervals, with the expectation
of floating $3,000,000,000 of them among the banks before the general
subscription to the bonds begms.

With the news of casualties, and of the sinking of ships coming by
cable almost every day during the month, there has come also, from
various places within the country, and especially from shipbuilding
establishments, news of labor troubles and of strikes. One labor union
in particular, the ship carpenters, whose leader had not joined with the
other union labor leaders in agreeing to submit differences and difficul
ties to the Wage Adjustment Commission organized by the Shipping
Board, made demands for increase of wages and for the closed shop,
and struck to enforce these demands, without giving an opportunity to
any Government agency to offer a solution. Chairman Hurley, of the
Shipping Board, telegraphed Mr. Hutcheson, the leader of this union,
urging him to take the patriotic course, but Hutcheson insisted on his
demands. At length President Wilson telegraphed Hutcheson, setting
forth the situation in the shipbuilding industry and asking, " Will you
co-operate or will you obstruct ? " Thereupon Hutcheson advised the
ship carpenters to return to work, but still held out for the closed shop.
Union labor generally stood by the Government, and pledged unswerv
ing efforts until the Kaiser yields.

A significant announcement of great cheer came from the Navy De
partment on February 18. It was that construction work had proceeded
so much faster than anticipated that it was possible to order a number
of additional torpedo boat destroyers, and contracts were let according
ly. It was an inspiriting evidence of efficiency.

( This record is as of March 5 and is to be continued)

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES

PRAY FOR THE PRESIDENT

(From The Louisville Courier- Journal)

Under the somewhat misleading superscription, " Thank God for
Wilson," Colonel George Harvey has in his NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
for January an editorial essay which were more accurately entitled,
" Some Mistakes of the President."

How much we shall have reason to bless our stars for the present
occupant of the White House it will be for future events to decide. As
Colonel Harvey says, we are at the moment not only in the honeymoon
of the war but in a flush of enthusiasm over the President's thrilling
utterances. Assuredly, he is a master of eloquent and lucid statement.
This, however, can hardly outlast reverses, or even waning ardor. There
will come lulls in America as there have come lulls in England and in
France. It is not going to be a simple or easy task to maintain a high
pitch of patriotic fervor throughout a vast country containing a hundred
millions of diverse nationalities. People grow weary and listless as they
become accustomed to changed and none too exhilarating conditions.
Then their tendency is to turn upon their heroes and rend them.

Anyhow, we are in for it. " The die," the editor of THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW continues, " is cast irrevocably and there is no middle
course. The powers of light must prevail over, or succumb to, the rulers
of darkness. ' Only a miracle can bring peace,' declares Maximilian
Harden ; ' either Germany must be crushed or her enemies must be
defeated; there is no alternative.' And Harden speaks the truth, — as
we speak the truth when we repeat what we said last month: that at
no time since the battle of the Marne has the outlook been as black as
it is today. Advantages gained in sporadic battles, such as that of
General Byng, only to be lost immediately in full or in large part, avail"
nothing. Not only in the East, where Russia and Roumania are releas
ing millions of trained German soldiers for service elsewhere, but on the
decisive Western front, the situation is bad."

This is true enough. What we may do when we get over there
remains to be shown and seen. If we arrive in the nick of time, and,
the back of the German man power and morale beginning to bend, if
not broken, we carry all before us the destiny of the President as the
foremost leader of modern times will be fulfilled. If we fail — if the
situation remains at a standstill — if this time next year the existing
deadlock continues — he will be assailed and distrusted as a failure; no
one to share his ignominy; none to do him reverence. It is a dizzy,
dangerous height on which he stands.

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 619

DEMOCRACY AND THE WORLD.

(From the Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise)

President Wilson has given us a new phrase in his " making the
world safe for democracy." Colonel George Harvey of THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW contends that our President is only engaging in rhetori
cal acrobatics and that his sayings amount to little. Nevertheless, Colonel
Harvey takes this most quoted phrase and paraphrases it: " Making
democracy safe for the world."

That isn't necessary. Democracy is safe for the world. It is the
only system of government that gives to every man, whatever his station
in life may be, a square deal. And it is democracy alone that will solve
the multiplied problems which will come to us when the war ends.

Colonel Harvey with his brilliant writings could be doing the nation
a far greater service were he devoting his energies to making the world
safe for democracy. In trying to make democracy safe for the world
he is wasting his time and talent.

Once we have the world safe for democracy, democracy will attend
to the business of making itself safe for the world.

To point to the bolshevik element in Russia as an example of Russia
is as unjust as it would be to hark back to the days of wild-eyed populism
in Texas and call that democracy. It was real democracy to which
President WTilson referred and that is the only kind of democracy that the
world will be made safe for.

We are destined to play a rather important part in the war which
now rages and we, therefore, shall have something to say when the terms
of peace are decided upon. One of the things we shall say is that the
world must be made safe for democracy. And by that we shall not mean
any anarchistic system which would dethrone justice will be set up as
democracy. We mean that real democracy will be the rule, and by this
term " democracy " we do not mean that which characterizes any politi
cal party but, rather, the something which makes the man who toils feel
that he is as good as the man for whom he works.

Colonel Harvey is, as a rule, radically wrong. And we do not think
that, in this instance, he is right.

Our first duty is to make the world safe for democracy. Having done
that, we may safely depend upon democracy to make itself safe for the
world.

JUSTICE BY, AND FOR, JOSEPHUS

(From The New York Herald)

In his WAR WEEKLY attachment to THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
Colonel George Harvey contrasts the punishment meted out by the Secre
tary of the Navy in the case of Lieutenant Friedrick, in command of
an American destroyer which fired upon an Italian submarine, and that
of Captain Victor Blue, who was in command of the battleship Texas
when she went upon the rocks. Formal charges against both officers
were passed upon by navy courts, the finding in the case of Captain
Blue recommending the loss of twenty numbers in rank, a penalty which,
according to precedent, would deprive him of his command; that in the
case of Lieutenant Friedrick recommending the loss of thirty numbers,

620 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the minimum penalty provided by navy regulations, but accompanied by
a strong plea for clemency by the court. It was shown in the Friedrick
case that the fault clearly lay with the commander of the Italian sub
marine, who failed to fly the agreed upon signal when challenged by the
American destroyer. This was recognized by the Italian Government,
which, through its Ambassador, urged the setting aside of the verdict
of the court and commended Lieutenant Friedrick for his action.

Secretary Daniels passed upon the findings of both courts. He cut
the punishment of Captain Blue in half and restored him to his com
mand ; he ignored the clemency plea of the court in the Friedrick case,
depriving of his command an officer whose only " offence," according to
the record as made public, was to exercise the caution that was his clear
duty.

The circumstances of the two cases are recalled, not for the purpose
of refreshing the memory of Americans concerning them but to illustrate
the wisdom of the aphorism that Governors' staff colonels get into trouble
when they rush in where navy angels fear to tread. Colonel Harvey
intimates that the action of the Secretary in the Blue case was inspired
by Captain Blue's also being a native of North Carolina.

While it is true that Captain Blue was born in North Carolina, he
early deserted that State, removing to South Carolina. Nobody should
know better than Colonel Harvey that since prohibition removed the
possibility of the traditional amenities between Governors there has been
between the residents of the two Carolinas no love lost and none to lose.

DEBATE

(From The Rochester Post-Express)

In another column is printed a part of Colonel Harvey's editorial in
the current number of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Aside from the
pleasure of reading an argument so finely conceived and executed, there
must come to thoughtful and open minded readers of Colonel Harvey's
editorial the conviction that he is more than an expert editorialist; that
he is a great debater. This is a fact to make us glad ; for while we have
fine statement of argument and eloquent summarizing of opinion, we have
comparatively little debate in the greater manner of an older day. The
basic quality of genuine debate is fairness of attitude, courtesy toward
opponents and careful consideration of their positions in the matter
discussed. The great debaters of record were masters of plausibility;
they were clear and forceful in statement and they had the art of simu
lating candor, when they did not feel it. They made courteous admis
sions; they did not load themselves with troublesome assumptions of
villainy. Lincoln and Burke, Webster and Pitt knew how to carry con
viction under a manner reasonable and self-restrained. They gave no
impression of hypocrisy, yet they were masters of ironical exploitation
of weakness and inconsistency. Moreover they entered debate with a
high purpose; they sought less a reputation for themselves than a means
of convincing their opponents. It is in this spirit and in this manner
that Colonel Harvey writes ; he desires to be able to " Thank God for
Wilson " and he closes his article with the adjuration " Make it so."

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 621

"BE ON THE JOB"

(From The Washington Herald)

George Harvey in his NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW'S WAR WEEKLY,
edited in Washington and printed in New York, is going to have the
time of his young life if the first three issues of the WAR WEEKLY are
fair samples.

The gentle irony of Harvey does not stale. The word " chuckle "
was created for Harveyized readers. You feel genuinely sorry for the
one who runs foul of this distinguished editor's satire, but you are just
as genuinely certain that the blow was above the belt and for the victim's
good. You are reminded of Marse Henry Watterson's remark: " If
anyone dares tell me to go to hell, I want George Harvey to do it."

With the precision of a surgeon like Mayo, George Harvey gets at
once to the root of every question. His wide acquaintance among men,
his intimate association with those who have made and are making
history, eminently qualify him for the role of the honest critic.

Mr. Baker is "flippant" and "jaunty," and Mr. McAdoo is "on
the job " and has " made the best record of any Government official
since the United States entered the war."

If you are not already a subscriber to THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,
"be on the job" and send $5.00 and get the WAR WEEKLY for good
measure. You'll get your five back in the first issue — if you have the
human brand on you.

SOME MEN ARE BORN SUPERANNUATED
(From The World)

Under the title of " Superannuated Generals," our excellent and
seething friend George Harvey wails bitterly in THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW'S WAR WEEKLY that Secretary Baker was responsible for the
sending of General Sibert to France; that General Pershing found that
General Sibert " could not stand the strain of training men in the field
and sent him home," but " a younger officer might have gathered very
valuable field experience if he had been given General Sibert's experi
ence." Then follows the customary complaint that the Administration
gives no opportunity to General Leonard Wood, who, by the way, hap
pens to be in France and was slightly wounded the other day.

The real significance of Brother Harvey's criticism does not appear
until we consult the Army Register and find that General Sibert was
born on October 1,2, 1860, and General Wood was born on October 9,
1 860. Sibert, who is three days younger than Wood, is " superannu
ated," but Wood, who is three days older than Sibert, is in his very prime.

This fable teaches that when you wish to nag the President or Secre
tary Baker and revile the conduct of the war, anything will do as a text.

NOT NICE, BUT TRUE.
(From the Harrisburg Telegraph)

George Harvey, writing in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for Febru
ary, says that the chief business of America has come to be the " killing of
Germans."

622 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

That is not a nice sentence, but it is so distinctly the truth that it
ought to be read and considered by every American.

"Killing Germans " must be America's chief occupation henceforth
until Germany is brought to her knees. The more Germans we kill
the fewer will be left to kill us. It is plainly a case of kill or be killed.
Either Germans or Americans must die, and as between the two we must
see to it that death comes to the Germans. We must kill Germans in
France or they will kill us — and our wives and children here in our own
country.

" Killing Germans " is to be our chief occupation, because the more
we kill the more quickly peace will be restored. That is the reason why
Americans are so desirous of quick and effective co-operation with our
allies. That is the reason why we are so indignant over errors and de
lays and so insistent upon speed and efficiency.

THE TASK FOR THE CHURCHES

(From The Christian Advocate)

A few years ago, when men were prophesying the downfall of the
American Republic, George Harvey, now editor of THE NORTH AMER
ICAN REVIEW, declared that he believed in the permanency of the Amer
ican Republic because the people believed in universal education and the
culture of conscience. He added that the public schools were well-
organized and able to reach all the people, and it was to the church
we must look for defenders of peace, promoters of righteousness, and
upholders of justice. . . .

It is perfectly clear that if democracy is made safe for the United
States and for the world it must depend upon the public schools and
the Christian church. While both of these institutions may be criticized,
their success is full of hope for the future of our country. We sometimes
overlook the fact that there are 175,000 churches in the United States
supported by the voluntary contributions of the people, and the main
business of these institutions is the culture of the inner life and the
development of righteousness, justice and mercy.

CONVINCING AND INTERESTING

(From The Baltimore Sun)

There is a changing attitude toward public controversy in our modern
American magazines, which, while formerly devoting themselves almost
exclusively to the field of instruction and entertainment, are now taking
a place with the newspapers in the discussion of current problems in an
editorial way. . . . The magazines of pure opinion — such as THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, the Forum, erstwhile the Atlantic Monthly,
and in more recent times the quarterly Yale Review — are apparently
becoming restless under the urge of the spirit of timeliness, so much so
that the NORTH AMERICAN, for one of them, has been able to resist the
pressure no longer and has established at Washington a weekly edition,
as it were. It is the idea of Colonel George Harvey, of course, and he
calls it his WAR WEEKLY. It is a buster, as might be expected, and it

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 623

gives him a fine medium for letting off the steam that used to accumulate
to such dangerous proportions when carried over to the monthly issues
of the NORTH AMERICAN. In his weekly Colonel Harvey spells the
name of La Follette with small letters, and launches out at the world
in general in brave tones and bright capitals. He is both convincing
and interesting, whatever his views.

" MALICIOUS, LYING TOMMYROT "
(From the Philadelphia Record)

Colonel George B. McClellan Harvey, whose animosity against the
President is such that he issues a weekly edition of THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW in order to attack the Administration as frequently as possible,
is overwhelmed with grief because the Government, while publishing the
names of soldiers who die in France, does not, he says, make known the
names of the men who die in the training camps. Apparently the Colonel
does not read the newspapers — a bad failing in an old newspaper man.
So far as the camps containing nearly 100,000 Pennsylvanians are con
cerned, full publicity is given to the very few deaths that have taken
place in them. The families are promptly notified and the correspon
dents are given full information. Doubtless the same condition exists in
all the camps. The Colonel seems to have invented this charge out of pure
malice. It is a fair sample of much of the tommyrot that is being printed
about the methods by which the Government is handling the war.
When no truthful statement can be made recourse is had to straight lying.

NO TIME TO LOSE
(From The Springfield Republican)

Colonel George Harvey, finding THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW too
deliberate for his rapid fire thought, has begun the issue of a WAR
WEEKLY appendage to that venerable publication. Readers of THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW can get this paper for $1 a year additional,
but no others need apply. In his WAR WEEKLY the Colonel will review
each seven days as they pass in the national capital. If Woodrow Wilson
was unwise enough to make Colonel House his next friend, Colonel
Harvey will not withhold his advice from the occupant of the White
House and the rest of the country. There is Colonel Watterson's word
for it that " no one has written of the war so wholly informed and so
luminously intelligent and sincere as Colonel Harvey." No doubt Mr.
Tumulty has seen to it that the President is supplied with THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW, and there is nothing for it but to send $1 and get
the baby so that nothing may be lost.

CONDITIONED

(From the Hartford C our ant)

" Thank God for Wilson " is the legend printed red on the cover,
and also the title of Colonel Harvey's editorial. Is Saul become a
prophet? or is this the case of that later Saul who, after his conversion,

624 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

became known as Paul? We are twice, at least, instructed that his
(Wilson) " Scotch-Irish, American, Presbyterian heel is rooted in the
ground." Yet the editor insists " that at no time since the battle of the
Marne has the outlook been as black as it is to-day." The President is
implored to abolish his makeshift of a war council and bring to his aid
competent men. We quite agree with the editor that " it is maddening
that he (Wilson) should persist in attempting to bear the whole bur
den alone." " What this government needs is vision." It seems to
prefer supervision. Several other criticisms seem to condition the
editor's thankfulness.

OUTSPOKEN

(From the Boston Evening Transcript)

The outspoken George Harvey speaks out once more in THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW for February when he tells us in the course of his
leading article that our duty is the killing of Germans, and that to the kill
ing of Germans we must bend all our energies. " The more Germans we kill
the fewer American graves there will be in France. The more Germans
we kill the less danger to our wives and daughters. The more Germans
we kill the sooner we shall welcome home our gallant lads. Nothing else
now counts." But he adds that we who stay at home must help to put
our house in order. " The censorship as we have come to know its mani
festations without understanding its reasons for existence is gone, and
that is a more vital fact than would be the going of Mr. Baker, with all
his smug cocksureness and detestable flippancy in the midst of this most
awful of tragedies the world has ever known."

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INDOLENCE

(From The New York Herald)

" Why not shift the operations but let the name of the hours remain
truthful? " asks Colonel Harvey, who is something of a reactionary on
this turn-the-clock-ahead proposition.

If the Colonel will turn to his almanac he will find that whatever
else may be said for the present " standard " time it cannot be said to
be truthful.

" Let us save daylight — and oil and gas and electricity, not to men
tion our eyes — by all means," he adds ; " but also let us consider whether
the psychology of indolence or of energy will not permit us to do so
without saying that six is seven and twelve is one when we know all
the time that it isn't so."

Isn't the Colonel, from his watch tower at Washington, sad enough
over the manifest results of that psychology of indolence without wishing
more of the same upon the country?

THE THREE COLONELS

(From The Wilmington (Del.) News)

Miss Richards caused audible smiles through the audience by her
allusion to the suggestion making the rounds of Washington, that the
proposed War Council be composed of three colonels — " The " Colonel,

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 625

with Colonel House and Colonel George Harvey, editor of THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW, whose editorials contain just enough pepper to make
them always appetizing. Colonel Harvey was the very first man to
mention Woodrow Wilson as a Presidential possibility, but since that
day he has been at outs and ins with the President, so that a guess as to
where he stands now with the nation's Chief Magistrate would be a
hazardous venture.

With three such colonels in the war cabinet, something would surely
be doing!

TOO BIG FOR ONE

(From The St. Johnsbury Caledonian)

Editor George Harvey of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW thinks the
President would do well to utilize the services of Theodore Roosevelt
either on a foreign mission or right here at home. The suggestion has
merit. The President has too much responsibility on his shoulders, a
task too big for any man to perform alone. If he would call upon half
a dozen men of Mr. Roosevelt's type to take charge of a single depart
ment of war work and be wholly responsible for it the war could be
prosecuted with greater vigor and peace more quickly brought about.
There should be the same organization that successful corporations have,
responsible heads for the different departments with understudies ready
to fill any gap that may open in the directing forces of the business.

AN ACQUISITION
(From The Louisville Courier- Journal)

Beginning with the new year Colonel George Harvey, in response
to many requests for more frequent and timely editorial utterances during
the war, proposes to issue from Washington City, as an adjunct of THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, a publication to be called THE NORTH AMER
ICAN REVIEW'S WAR WEEKLY, at a subscription rate of a dollar a year.
It will certainly be an acquisition. No one has written of the war so
wholly informed and so luminously intelligent and sincere as Colonel
George Harvey. What he says is always worth reading, and his WAR
WEEKLY ought to be a conspicuous success.

CUSSING AND DISCUSSING
(From The Hartford Courant)

Colonel George Harvey, the brilliant editor of THE NORTH AMER
ICAN REVIEW, has developed now the WAR WEEKLY of that REVIEW,
giving every Saturday his readers a live letter from Washington and
also several pages of discussions of the pressing questions of the day.
When Colonel Harvey discusses, he doesn't stop with that; he cusses,
too; and his comments are always readable and often judicious. The
only trouble with his WEEKLY is the apprehension it creates that the
REVIEW itself may be robbed of a part of its charms.

VOL. ccvii.— NO. 749 40

626 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

(From The Philadelphia Public Ledger}

Colonel Harvey in the January NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW regrets
with this newspaper that the President has not found any use for
Colonel Roosevelt. He suggests that the Colonel be sent to Japan or
to South America to attempt to facilitate the co-operation with America
in prosecuting the war. If the Colonel had been sent to Russia the
success of the mission to that country might have been more brilliant.
Indeed^ it might have been possible to have prevented the success, of the
German machinations which have made the Russian armies impotent.

DEFYING TIME

(From The Bookseller)

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW is a veritable storehouse of worth
while editorial comment, fearless and dynamic, that loses nothing of the
famous editor's well-known power of expression, that time has no power
to diminish. The articles, that range from present world interest to
literature and drama, are all the work of careful, able writers, experts
in their various lines, that keep the standard of the magazine at its
best. With this famous monthly within reach, one cannot be ignorant
of the important things that are making history, for its war articles are
a big selling feature.

A SERIOUS OMISSION

(From Life)

Brother George Harvey's new North-American-Review-weekly -war-
is sue-while-you-wait says :

Brother Edward Sandford Martin of Life, the first man who shook the hand
of the man who shook the hand of John L. Sullivan and now the most intimate
friend of the most intimate friend of the President, recalls, etc., etc.

All right, brother, but in begarlanding Martin with all these distinc
tions you should add, " pupil of George Harvey."

Shall a dozen faithful years of apprenticeship to Harvey's Harper's
Weekly go for nothing?

T. R.— AN EASTMAN OR A PATRIOT?
(From The Fort Worth Record)

" The nation should call Roosevelt," chortles Colonel George Harvey
in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Colonel Harvey is mistaken. A
Federal district attorney should call Roosevelt for preaching sedition
and for his vitriolic abuse of the war President of the United States.
A Federal district attorney put Max Eastman of the Masses out of
business; a Federal district attorney made the editor of the Appeal to

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 627

Reason eat out of the hand of Uncle Sam and like it. Why should the
sanguinary colonel be immune? Why should he be permitted to be a
common scold and a fomenter of strife?

CAPTIONS

(From The Mobile Register}

Colonel George Harvey, editing THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for
January, writes : " Thank God for Wilson ! " indicating an enthusiasm
that will surprise all who recall the earlier incident of the Harvey-
Wilson relations; but the Louisville Courier- Journal dispels the glamor
by saying that Colonel Harvey's editorial under the above quoted caption
might more accurately be entitled " Some Mistakes of the President."

HOW TO BECOME A BETTER AMERICAN.

(From the Washington Herald)

To meet a popular demand, George Harvey's War Weekly is offered
to the public generally at two dollars for fifty-two issues. To NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW readers the price is one dollar a year. We mention it
in this column, which is unpurchasable for advertising, because we
believe thinking people who read George Harvey's weekly comment will
become better Americans.

IT STILL DOES.

(From the Jacksonville Times-Union)

Once the East believed that THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW stood for
the best public opinion of the country. An able argument in the current
number of the REVIEW declares that if we using force to " make democ
racy safe throughout the world " we are foolish or wicked but in fight
ing to the uttermost to resist wrong we are performing a plain duty.
Now where stands the public?

NOT THE BEST USE
(From The Louisville Courier- Journal)

Colonel Harvey thinks Mr. Wilson should have sent Mr. Roosevelt
to Russia instead of Mr. Root. So think we. And we agree with Colonel
Harvey that the Administration is not making the best use it might of
those Republican leaders who are notably true to the cause and the
purpose of winning the war.

BUREAUS, WHAT-NOTS, ETC.
(From The Omaha Bee)

Colonel George Harvey calls for a real war council made up of
the biggest men in the country, regardless of politics, instead of just a
sociable meeting of bureau heads wearing a new label. It will come
in time.

628 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

NO DOUBT

(From The Macon Telegraph)

Colonel Harvey says the Administration should find something for
Colonel Roosevelt to do. The Administration no doubt would be glad
to furnish him a Maxim silencer to play with.

WHO SAID IT?

(From The St. Louis Republic)

Who said the eminent editor of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
cannot appreciate a joke? He calls our informal Commissioner to
Europe Colonel " White " House.

A WARNING

(From The St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

If Mr. Wilson doesn't make some use of T. R. pretty soon, Colonel
George Harvey will get mad and offer him to the Kaiser.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

THE PHILIPPINES AND "SELF-DETERMINATION"

SIR, — " The Philippines again ! Surely, we have heard enough about
the Philippines — more bother to us than they can possibly be worth/'
says, perhaps, a reader. The first we heard about them was when
President McKinley, at the end of the Spanish War, after whipping
Spain and taking Cuba from her (to tie it " with a string " to the
United States), suggested that we should also take her "leavings" in
the Pacific, which were, de facto, ours by conquest, as he said: the Phil
ippine Islands. " Self-determination " was not in the air then, and to
clinch the affair it was arranged, as a condition of the treaty of peace
with Spain, to pay $20,000,000 for them, stock, lock and barrel, throw
ing the people in, just as serfs or " souls " used to go with the land in
old times in Russia. It seemed all serene — on a western tour the Presi
dent's suggestion that it would be a good thing to be a " world Power,"
having caught on, in rear-platform addresses. Realizing the situation,
if there had been no objection raised to the new " imperialism ", with the
acquisition of this outpost the United States could have gone ahead as
Germany had been doing for nearly twenty years (giving us warning,
as Admiral Dewey told us, by her desire to obtain this very outpost her
self), building up a big military establishment ourselves suitable to the
new attitude, and so have been " prepared," according to the fullest jingo
ideal, for the events of 1914!

Perhaps it might have been as well! The thing did not slip through
comfortably even with McKinley's winning manipulation. It was only
a molehill, thrown up by an entrenching opposition in the way at first
which had to be faced, no mountain — in fact more like the Horatian
ridiculus mus. Those who began the opposition in 1898, mature
men, are dropping like the leaves in Vallambrosa. There are few left
who remember how on a June day in that year, stirred by some words
of protest in the newspapers, the writer made a visit to the late Gamaliel
Bradford and suggested to that zealous publicist that the two should
" hire a hall " and there propose a protest against the extension of the
United States sovereignty over eight millions or so of brown brethren on
the other side of the world, without their consent.

So the infant " Anti-Imperialist League " was born and rocked in the
Cradle of Liberty, Faneuil Hall, and baptized the nineteenth of Novem
ber following. Its nineteenth annual meeting was held a few weeks ago.

630 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Its history is that of the struggle, first against the ratification of the
treaty with Spain so as to prevent the acquisition of the " possessions,"
and since to cause atonement to be made for what was thought " the
deep damnation of " their " taking " — thought so by them and by the
representative half million of quickly and easily acquired adherents to the
league, with many prominent members of the President's party, like
Benjamin Harrison, Thomas B. Reed, John Sherman, and George S.
Boutwell, the league's first president. He kicked over the traces and
became an opponent upon this contention of the organization which lie
had represented so long as Secretary of the Treasury and Senator.
Senator Hoar was the leader of the movement in Congress, and in
speeches of invective, like those of Cicero and Brutus and Edmund
Burke, denounced his official chief for the departure from our national
principles. School boys who had heard him might well have " marked
and written " these words of eloquence " in their books," and they will
be found a mine for historical quotation.

It was the secretary's duty to sustain the league's contest in Wash
ington, and Senator Hoar showed a hesitating mind himself, which was
very interesting, to one at his elbow, as to the advisability of party
rupture. As he mused aloud, he dwelt on the strength and popularity
of McKinley, which were impressing themselves upon him as he said:
"There might even be a filibuster — if — ?" Party affiliation was too
strong for him and he remained in the Republican ranks, forgiving but
not forgetting. On the Saturday night before the Monday when the
ratification of the treaty was to come up in the Senate, its defeat seemed
assured by the final promise given the Secretary by Senator Mason that
he would join in the vote against it, if his vote should be needed to
determine the question. Stopping on the way to Boston to see Mr. Car
negie at his house in New York, the philanthropist, who had been the
league's God-father, with $1,000 birthday present, came out eagerly
from an important parlor conference in which he was engaged to be
told of the situation, and said at once that his influence with the Senator
was considerable and that he would press it by letter. Mr. Carnegie
kept his word, but his letter did not reach the addressee until the vote
was passed and the treaty was ratified with Senator Mason's vote. Had
Mr. Carnegie used a " special delivery " stamp the fate of the Philip
pines might have been different! The $20,000,000 he offered after
wards to reimburse the Government if it would release the islands could
not prevent that which ten cents might have forestalled!

Mr. McKinley's only argument to the writer, when the case of the
League for the Philippines was presented to him, with that pat on the
coatsleeve (his winning way), was: "You would not have me give
them back to Spain, would you? As "giving back" was impossible,
since they had not been Spain's to " give back," there was no respect
ful reply possible! The Filipinos had already won their independence
before Dewey came, and had cooped the Spanish power in Manila, ready
for easy conquest by the alliance of the native forces with those of the
United States.

While the United States was putting down the " insurrection," which
was simply a passionate struggle for the maintenance of freedom
against our imposed sovereignty — freedom that Aguinaldo and his

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 631

countrymen thought the United States was to leave them to enjoy, after
their joint success in the coup de grace to the Spanish power — the Anti-
Imperialist League, having been foiled in the attempt to urge a friendly
recognition of the autonomy of the islands, opposed with all its power
the " marked severities " of the conduct of the war against the Filipinos.
When there came the conquered peace (La tranquillite regue a Varsovie)
then ensued the United States government by a commission. Its head,
President Jacob Gould Schurman, came back to testify that the Philip
pines should be independent. The chief of the new administration which
followed, William H. Taft, Governor General, who had opposed the
original acquisition of the archipelago until persuaded by McKinley
to "make the best of it," fed the Filipinos on remote and vague hopes
which were no more satisfactory, perhaps more provocative, than the
avowed " colonial " conviction and purpose of his successor, W. Cameron
Forbes. Working " agin' the government," the two potent arguments
all along against our urgent pleas for justice, any time from the first to
the nineteenth year of " possession," were McKinley's " smart " phrases :
" Americans do not scuttle," nor " Ever pull down their flag," — sounding
brass and tinkling cymbals ! Meanwhile the Anti-Imperialist League
was busy in maintaining the ideal of Philippine independence in the
islands and in the United States, and especially with the Democratic
party, into four successive platforms of which we promoted the writing
of the plank pledging autonomy to the archipelago.

When the party came into power the lid was off. Governor General
Harrison took the reins, with the slogan fresh upon his lips : " The
Philippines are our heel of Achilles," and behind him was the Organic
Act passed by Congress called the " Jones Bill/' promising independence,
to be granted to the Philippine Islands upon timely application for it.
The future held two possibilities — the continuance of the Philippines as
a colonial possession of the United States, as the investor probably de
sired, in their own interests and which Mr. Taft thought desirable and
Mr. Forbes essential. Some reactionary Filipinos, indeed, may be content
for awhile with Filipinization of offices and with a promotion of eco
nomic development, and would advocate if they dared hanging up the
ideal and promise of independence. They can not persuade the ambi
tious, self-conscious Filipino to be humiliated permanently by the colon
ists' dependency and to see his labors and his bloodshed wasted. Were
such an attitude general, the United States might realize a position predi
cated by Governor Boutwell and implied in Governor General Harri
son's dictum — that in certain events, the more the Filipinos wanted us,
the less we should want them. Their status defying the Monroe Doc
trine in principle, would expose the United States also in case of war
to certain, even if temporary, disaster in remote " possessions."

But the World War holds out a better promise. " Self-determina
tion " is in the air, the fires of liberty are rekindled in the Philippines,,
the pledge of it is taken out of storage and things are in a fair way to
the initiation of a movement to ask of Congress, according to the prom
ise of the Organic Act, the " grant " of independence, that it may be
ready for ratification and guarantee along with that of all the " weaker
peoples " at the after-war council of permanent peace. Such was the
proposal of the Anti-Imperialist League at the annual meeting the other

632 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

day, indorsed by the Resident Commissioner from the Philippines, the
Hon. Jaime C. de Veyra, who said:

I am perfectly in accord with the suggestion that our independence be
granted in time for ratification by the after-war council. This is a wise step in
view of the reiterated declarations of President Wilson and of the fact that the
principle of self-definition is to be one of the unequivocal bases of a general
peace.

Let us hope for " the Day " when the United States will set the
example by its realization in the Philippines of the great world prin
ciple of self-determination.

NEW HAVEN, CONN. ERVING WINSLOW.

LABOR UNPREPAREDNESS

SIR, — Without attempting to apportion the blame for our culpable
unpreparedness in spite of ample warning, and for our supineness, indif
ference and delay in asserting and maintaining our rights when they
were trampled upon, which have beyond question prolonged the war, and
caused incalculable loss both of life and treasure, it becomes every one's
duty, if continuing unpreparedness is apparent in any direction, threaten
ing our success now that we are in, to raise his voice in protest.

That unpreparedness does exist in connection with the labor situation,
is as evident as that it can be remedied if considerations affecting politics
are disregarded.

In a report submitted to the Senate on the 16th of January by a com
mittee representing all the leading industrial and manufacturing associa
tions throughout the country, it is stated that there are still constant
strikes and threats of strikes in all sections with the sole purpose of pre
venting the employment of any but union labor. It is further stated, as
must be evident to every one, that there is a wide and serious shortage of
labor. This could not be otherwise when there is considered the abnormal
demand for war work, the crying need for increased agricultural produc
tion, and the withdrawal already of more than a million men chiefly from
the ranks of labor for service in the army.

That this shortage must steadily grow greater is plain. There will
soon be another draft, taking another million from work. As they become
soldiers and non-producers, the amounts of ammunition and military sup
plies for them must be enormously increased, requiring more employees,
and almost more important, we must next Spring plant and later harvest
greater food crops than ever before, for ourselves and our allies.

Where are the laborers coming from, and where are the 100,000 or
more sailors to be had to operate our new merchant marine? We are
told also on all sides that one of the principal reasons for coal shortage
is lack of sufficient men on the railroads. We see already the farmers
protesting against the shipyards and munition plants for luring their
hands away from them by bidding as high as $9 per day for workmen,
and saying the result will surely be a decrease in the acreage planted
instead of an increase.

The following contains the substance of reports received from all
parts of the country by the New York Board of Trade and Transporta-

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 633

tion, written by State Commissioners of Agriculture or Masters of State
Granges. It is testimony that can not be ignored or belittled:

Maine: Great shortage of farm labor; acreage probably will be reduced
by one-fourth or one-third. Texas: More labor needed than ever before, but
supply is much below normal. North Dakota: Alarming shortage; farmers dis
couraged and cannot plant for normal crop. Vermont: Shortage means a cut
in production. Massachusetts: Serious situation; farmers cannot go ahead with
only the help of boys and untrained workmen. Connecticut: Depressing conditions;
farmers may try to raise only enough for their families. Rhode Island: Many
will not plant as much as last year. New Jersey: Farmers think that planting
of even the usual acreage will be very hazardous. Pennsylvania: Very great
shortage of skilled farm labor ; the exodus from farms has been continuous. Dela
ware: Unless relief comes, the usual acreage cannot be prepared. Maryland:
Labor situation is acute. Virginia: Lack of labor, and acreage reduced accord
ingly. Georgia: Impossible to cultivate as much land as last year's area. Flor
ida: Affected by loss of negro workmen drawn to the North; hope the Government
will bring Porto Ricans. Ohio: Farmers discouraged and at their wits' ends.
Indiana: Probably a reduction of acreage. Illinois: The number of idle acres
will be increased.

Who is to be held responsible if the shortage thus indicated takes
place? Surely the Administration, which has received repeated warnings.

Nor is it to be forgotten that we must, as fast as we send abroad sol
diers, follow them up with an army of labor to do the work for them of
supply, transportation, etc., behind the lines.

In the face of these well-known conditions, which must grow steadily
worse, and the further fact that since the war began immigration, on
which we have largely relied to keep up our labor supply, has practically
ceased, there has been sent out from Labor Headquarters in Washington
a camouflage statement to the effect that there is no shortage of labor;
that any difficulty is solely due to faulty distribution which the authori
ties take it upon themselves to say they can and will remedy.

It is impossible to believe that the country will be lulled into a sense
of false security by any such declaration, only to find itself again in a
condition of entire unpreparedness to meet what is plainly ahead of us.
Have we not already been taught the cost of such blind folly? Mr. Wil
son, Secretary of Labor, says there is no shortage. Mr. McAdoo, a little
later, testified before the Senate Committee that there was a shortage,
and the anthracite coal operators are calling for 25,000 more men.

Our experience in sending troops abroad shows that before planting
time, with the help of Japan, we could bring here at least 200,000 laborers
under contract till the end of the war, to be returned to where they came
from just as was done in Cuba. They could be kept in cantonments and
put under the control and direction of the Department of Labor, to be
sent by it wherever they were needed, to do railroad, agricultural or
munitions work. They make industrious, capable workers under direc
tion, and can be had at reasonable wages. France is importing large num
bers of them by way of Vancouver. Prison labor should also be utilized.
Why not, in one particular, get ready beforehand, for what is surely
coming ?

One thing further is needed to make the country wholly efficient for
its stupendous task. Prices of the leading commodities have been fixed.
In order to stabilize them the men producing them should be called into
the Government service at a fair and generous compensation and strikes
forbidden. This is just as necessary, just as reasonable and just as per-

634 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

missible as it is to call men into the ranks of the army whose pay is fixed
at only $30. per month, no limit as to hours, and with anything like a
strike punished as mutiny.

Such a condition would mean real thoroughgoing preparedness and
efficiency. Nothing stands in the way of it but the timidity of politicians,
which, to the great detriment of the country, was in glaring evidence at
the time of the passage of the Adamson Bill. Is such timidity still suffi
ciently great and controlling to hamper and perhaps wholly thwart the
efforts and sacrifices we are making to win the war? It will require the
utmost exertion, the willing sacrifice, the unwavering courage of all
classes, and the subordination of every political and selfish consideration
to do it.

With every man capable of working in factory, field, shop, shipyard
and munition plant declared to be in the service of the United States for
the period of the war, with prices of commodities and wages fixed for
definite periods at fair rates subject then to readjustment, and strikes
forbidden, we should have stability of prices and wages, and an efficient
democracy which no Power could resist.

Has Congress the courage to organize victory or shall we go limping
and stumbling along as we have, wasting our resources, and not bringing
to bear anything like our full strength ?

It has been stated recently that 100,000 laborers are to be brought
from the West Indies. There are three objections to this plan: They
are needed where they are, to keep sugar production at the highest possi
ble point; the number proposed is but a drop in the bucket; and they
are well known to be nothing like as industrious, biddable and efficient as
the Chinese.

WASHINGTON, D. C. ARCHIBALD HOPKINS.

ROOSEVELT AND WILSON

SIR, — In the January REVIEW we read that: " * * * Mr.
Roosevelt's personal following is still the greatest and most devoted in
the country. We wonder sometimes whether the President appreciates
how many loyal citizens feel a sense of personal tragedy in the shelving
of one who must be regarded as the most generally recognized, if not
actually, the foremost patriot in the land." A letter to the editor says:

* * * Thousands feel that the President is playing pretty small
politics in studiously ignoring the Colonel." The Outlook, with which for
years Roosevelt was officially connected, sets forth that, to head his
Cabinet, Washington chose Jefferson, a leader who " could never have
been sympathetic to him ", that Lincoln, in the dark days of 1860, called
Stanton to take the Secretaryship of War, in spite of the fact that they
were opposed in politics, that Stanton had been " bitter in spirit and
insulting in form " in expression toward him. " Yet Lincoln chose him.
But that was Lincoln."

Washington's purpose was to lead in building up a wise and stable
democratic government. Had Jefferson everywhere been proclaiming
that " when human nature had changed and the millennium had come "
a stable government could be built up, would Washington have chosen
him?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 635

Lincoln's purpose was to put down secession and maintain the union
— incidentally, he freed the slaves. Had Stanton made it known to the
world as his firm belief that: " By the right of secession and slavery
alone can we acquire those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern
strife of actual life," had he insistently declared that slavery and seces
sion could be done away with " when the millennium had come and
human nature had changed," would Lincoln have chosen him, no matter
what his efficiency, his personal following? Would riot, rather, the
very facts of his great influence and personal following have made Lin
coln wisely refrain from increasing the influence of one bent on defeat
ing his great purpose?

President Wilson's purpose is so to win this war that the rule of
international justice may succeed to the ruinous, bloody, wasteful hor
rors of war, which may otherwise again be forced upon the world when
ever a strong, ill-intentioned nation wishes.

Roosevelt, with almost or quite German fervor, has lauded war
as war. Years ago he said : " We must play a great part in the world,
and especially perform those deeds of blood, of valor, which above every
thing else bring national renown. * * * By war alone can we
acquire those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual
life." (The Strenuous Life.) To-day, in spite of the incredible suf
ferings of the war-worn, overtaxed world, he reiterates that his hope for
future peace lies in our building up an army after the war which shall
be " the most efficient in the world." To the President's statement
that: " In every discussion of the peace that must end this war it is
taken for granted that that peace must be given by some definite concert
of power, which will make it virtually impossible that any such catas
trophe should ever overwhelm it again," he scornfully replied that
" war might end when the millennium had come and human nature had
changed."

It takes vision of a noble sort to be a leader in the changing of that
same human nature, which now, as never before, is prepared for the
change by universal suffering: to see that not even how long the war
lasts is so vital as that it should end war. The tragical pity of it is
that such a forceful natural leader as Roosevelt has not that vision; will
not cast his great influence on the side of the world's desperate need —
on the side of progress.

Does not the very fact of Roosevelt's great influence and personal
following make Wilson wisely refrain from increasing that influence ?

E. A. SMITH.

Los ALTOS, CALIFORNIA.

HE SAW LINCOLN

SIR, — I am not, I regret to say, a regular reader of THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW, and I therefore do not know whether the views of
those of us who regret the sending of Mr. Barnard's statue of Abraham
Lincoln to Europe have appeared on your pages. From reading the
communications in your December number I am reminded of the decision
of Justice Sir Roger de Coverly in the litigation relative to the willow
tree, which was, if I remember rightly, in these words: " Much may

636 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

be said on both sides." And I crave the space to say something con
trary to the judgment of Mr. Macmonnies, Mr. Hastings and Mr.
Fletcher.

Let me first say a word in reference to Mr. Macmonnies' suggestion
that there has been " a nation-wide organized attack " upon the work
of Mr. Barnard. I am no part of the organization; never heard of it
before; am not led or incited by it.

Now, I have seen Abraham Lincoln. I stood for an hour not ten
feet from him and looked straight into his face while he delivered an
address. I stood near enough to see him plainly while he made a dif
ferent sort of speech. I sat by, one evening, while for an hour he car
ried on a conversation with a number of men. In answering an inquiry
as to how he felt after Douglas had defeated him for the Senate, he
took hold of the toe of his boot with his ample hand and said, " I felt
very much as a big boy in Sangamon County who was running up hill,
barefooted, felt when he stubbed his toe against a stone. Somebody
asked him how Tie felt. ' I'm too big to cry/ said he, ' but it hurts too
bad to laugh V [General Logan cribbed this story when he undertook
to explain how he felt when he was defeated for Vice- President.] I was
a boy, a young boy if you please, but I had, and always have had, a
remarkably good memory for objects I have seen. As to my fitness to
pass judgment on a sculptured figure — well, if references are required,
I will refer you to Mr. Frederick Macmonnies. I went to see Mr.
Barnard's statue of Lincoln — went alone, so as not to be distracted.
I stood a long time — looked at it from several points. It is truly a
striking, an impressive statue; but it does not look like Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Cox tells us that Mr. Barnard declared that he " was carrying
out in his sculpture his ideal of Lincoln." That was not the spirit in
which Macmonnies worked when he made the beautiful and lifelike
statue of Mr. Stranahan that stands at the entrance to Prospect Park,
in Brooklyn. We sent to the sculptor several photographs of the sub
ject — Mr. St. Gaudens kindly saw to the posing of the dear old gentle
man — and when the statue was unveiled, while Mr. and Mrs. Stranahan
sat by, everybody remarked the perfect likeness.

Mr. Fletcher declares that his first impression of Mr. Barnard's
work was that " it does not look like Lincoln." Then he sets his imagina
tion at work and reads a " miracle " into the bronze. It seems to me
the English and French might better have been shown Abraham Lincoln
as God made him than as Mr. Barnard imagined God should have made
him.

NEW YORK CITY. ELIJAH R. KENNEDY.

IS THE UNITED STATES A " PIKER " ?

SIR, — Is this great United States a " piker " ?
You all know what a " piker " is.
This great United States is a " piker."
Why?

Your magazine carries the following: "Notice to Reader — When you
finish reading this magazine place a one-cent stamp on this notice * * *

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 637

and it will be placed in the hands of our soldiers and sailors at the
front. * * * A.S. Burleson, Postmaster-General."

Mr. Burleson is a Texan and has seen a horse race and has sat in a
poker game; he knows a "piker" when he sees one.

London Punch (and other British papers and magazines say:
<rDrop us in the nearest post box and the British Empire will place us
in the hands," etc. — no one-cent stamp nor other tool of any kind.
The British Empire has five men at the front to our one (both at the
front and in training — mostly in training — thanks to several people) ;
it is spending five dollars to our one, and, — Glory be, — it has been
in this scrap from the first — even during all the time that we were too
proud to fight. If anyone needs — really needs — that one-cent stamp
it is the British Empire; but, while it is not too proud to fight, it
is too proud to ask that measley little one-cent stamp from its taxpayers
and citizens to pay for giving the boys at the front something to read.

It is easy to guess why this great United States asks for that meas
ley little one-cent stamp. It is to conceal the deficit. What causes that
deficit? The franking of seed catalogues, speeches and reports from
the Comptroller of the Currency. But, if this United States was run
with the slightest regard to correct business methods, all these franked
things would be charged up to the department, or the Congress that
franked them, and the deficit would show up as against the place and
the people that cause it.

I think that you all iiave your own ideas about our Post Office
and our Congress — ideas that have a bearing on the zone post rates on
periodicals.

Now, the Government may want to continue to be a " piker," but we —
the average citizen — do not want to be in that class, even through the
proxy of our duly elected governmental representatives.

So — why not give Burleson a "tip?"

And if a " tip " doesn't get the answer — try a " big stick."

I am writing this as a patriotic American citizen, who has licked
many of those " one-cent stamps," and who expects to continue to do so.
Bought a few Liberty Bonds, too. Chipped in for the Red Cross and
the Y. M. C. A. War Work, too. But it's the idea of being a citizen of
a " piker " government that chafes. We can't allow Uncle Sam to sit
in a game with John Bull and be a " piker."

And now, in the words of the late lamented Partick Henry (who, by
the way, was way back in the line of my mother-in-law's family) : " If
this be treason, Mr. Speaker, make the most of it."

GEORGE H. VAN STONE.

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO.

POETIC " INSPIRATION "

SIR, — In the December issue of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,
Mr. Conrad Aiken writes on " The Mechanism of Poetry " to combat
" a widespread notion . . . that poetic inspiration has something mys
terious . . . about it, something which escapes human analysis." He
condemns the " usual theory of poetic inspiration that it is due to a
tempest of emotion in the poet." The conclusion arrived at by Mr.

688 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Aiken is that we are brought " back to the theory of Freud. It is to
some deep hunger, whether erotic or not . . . that we must look for
the source of power."

Freud's original doctrine, I supposed, was that the source of power
was erotic. If we modify this theory so far as to teach that the source
of power is either " erotic or not " it seems to me that the theory has
become a little flat.

Mr. Aiken suggests that the poetic inspiration is a manifestation of
" the hunger of the frustrate for richer experience." But that is pre
cisely the theory which he started out to combat. What is more mys
terious, " translunar " and " beyond analysis " than the hunger of the
soul ? Mr. Aiken complains that " our criticism is still a rather primitive
parade of likes and dislikes." But after experimenting three times a
day for a good many years, I have become convinced that this primitive
parade of likes and dislikes is just exactly what " hunger " is. The
difference between " emotion " and " hunger " of the soul is the differ
ence between tweedledum and tweedledee. The " scientific " and " psy
chological " poetic critics are driven back into the harbor of popular
common sense. Poetry is the rhythm of emotion.

TUCKAHOE, N. Y. FREDERICK A. WRIGHT.

FROM COUNSELOR JOB E. HEDGES

SIR, — Please accept this expression of my appreciation of the re
markable work you are doing anent the war through the columns of
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. I am particularly impressed with the
February number. You struck the key-note when stating that what
Washington officialdom needed was vision. What Congress needs is an
active, virile, cohesive minority party, competing with the majority party
in constructive support of the Government in this crucial time. Your
February article appealed to me particularly, again, in using the word
" unselfishness " as the acid test of support. No one in Washington
need have the slightest doubt that the intelligent people of the country
know on whose brow to plant the laurel of approval for patriotic service.

NEW YORK CITY. JOB E. HEDGES.

A PRESIDENTIAL SUGGESTION

SIR, — When you are editorially reviewing men as Presidential can
didates for the next election, I sincerely hope that you will suggest in
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW the name of General Leonard Wood
for that high office. He is a man of international fame.

I believe he merits and would get the highest recognition from our
people as a whole; so it would make no difference which great party
nominated him — he would win out.

His past efforts toward military preparedness for the United States
now give him a warm place in the hearts of the people, which will outlast
the " too proud to fight " idea.

ARDMORE, PA. I. N. KNAPP.

[We do not consider this a suitable time to discuss Presidential possi
bilities ; neither upon general principles do we regard professional soldiers
favorably in that connection. — EDITOR.]

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 639

THE " WAR WEEKLY "

SIR, — I am alarmed, but not surprised, at the pungent brilliancy (as
well as the brevity) of the War Weekly articles.

NEW HAVEN, CONN. ERVINQ WINSLOW.

SIR, — I enclose my dollar for the weekly issue. I got a dollar's
worth of satisfaction out of the first issue. That paragraph, " The Week,"
on the first page dated from Washington, was great.

BOSTON, MASS. HOWARD W. LANG.

SIR, — $1.00 a year? It is worth $1.00 a week to me to read what
Colonel Harvey writes in your new War Weekly, so therefore please con
tinue sending the Weekly to my address and find draft enclosed to cover
my subscription for one year.

TOLEDO, OHIO. M. M. MILLER.

SIR, — I enclose a dollar bill and wish my name listed for THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW'S War Weekly , and anticipate receiving my money's
worth several times over. With full appreciation of the service you pro
pose to render in this way,

WARE, MASS. J. GARDNER LINCOLN.

SIR, — Enclosed please find check for one year's subscription for the
War Weekly, by far the best current events and war reading we have
had in our home for some time. It ought to be a great success.

DETROIT, MICH. CLARA E. BEEBE.

SIR, — Only the other day I remarked to a friend the pity of it that
the clarion articles of Colonel Harvey were not appearing in a big met
ropolitan daily, so that they might go to hundreds of thousands instead
of the fewer thousands of which the subscription lists of the REVIEW
must consist. The " man in the street " is the fellow who most needs
the virile quality of Colonel Harvey's words.

I must have the War Weekly. Find my check for $1.00 and start
me at the beginning.

Could I not possibly send a War Weekly subscription to a friend in
England? Will the British Government permit its receipt? I have been
clipping and mailing articles from the REVIEW regularly. The people
" over there " need these articles.

NEW YORK. JOHN NORRIS MYERS.

SIR, — The country is indebted to you for the War Weekly, which is
a contribution of the finest and best patriotism. Courage coupled with
judgment seems in these days to be a scarce article. Intelligent mice
are quite plentiful, real men only here and there. You are performing
a great service. You have the ear of the country, and the approval of
thoughtful and patriotic men.

INDIANAPOLIS. JAMES W. NOEL.

640 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

SIR, — While I cannot call myself technically a subscriber to THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, yet it has been a long time since I missed a
number. The passing of Harper's Weekly left a blank which I am de
lighted to know will be filled in part at least by the War Weekly, to be
issued in connection with THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, for subscribers
to the latter. I enclose herewith my check for $5.00, covering the two
subscriptions.

UNIONTOWN, PA. EDMUND H. REPPERT.

SIR, — The first issue of the WAR WEEKLY has been received, and I
am delighted with it. As I expected, it is a reincarnation of the old
Harper's Weekly I knew and loved so well. Many of your readers
regret that the prospect of being put into " Burleson Gaol " seems to
worry you so much. It needn't, for we shall surely bail you out, unless,
of course, your persistence in indulging in constructive criticism of the
administration of the war constitutes a crime so heinous that bail will
be denied you. In that case we shall be sorry for you, of course, but
we shall not suffer ourselves; for, without a doubt, you will write a
" Martian's Progress " or something of the sort and let us have it in
weekly instalments. With Colonel Roosevelt as your cell neighbor, it
ought to make pretty lively reading.

METUCHEN, N. J. GEORGE H. LYNE.

SIR, — Extremely interesting, frank in expression, clear in thought,
and is bound to be appreciated by those who enjoy good literature.
Please present my compliments to its distinguished editor.

BOSTON, MASS. WILLIAM M. WOOD.

SIR, — Enclosed you have $5.00 covering price of subscription to THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW and the War Weekly, for one year beginning
February 1, 1918. I have chanced upon a copy of the War Weekly and
like it very much. I have been a render of the REVIEW, purchased
irregularly at the news-stands.

The late start and feverish haste of the whole round of our war prep
arations reminds me of the Irishman who ran to catch a train, and missed
it. A bystander remarked:

"Pat, you didn't run fast enough."

Pat replied:

"Begorra, I didn't start soon enough."

Missed it! What would it have meant to the Allies in 1916 had we
then been as far along as we are now? — A subject for a strong article
in the War Weekly.

NEWPORT, TENN. J. W. FISHER.

Bain News Service

GENERALISSIMO FERDINAND FOCH

Trot Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

MAY, 1918

ARE WE TOO LATE?

INEFFICIENCY NOW IS TREASON

BY THE EDITOR

WE have reached, we are told, the turning point in the
war. Perhaps it is so. If a turning point was desirable, and
if the turn is for the better, we earnestly hope that it is so.
True, we have heard of turning points before ; which appar
ently did not materialize, or the turning of which was not
decisive and effective. Perhaps we shall have better luck
with this one; though we must confess that it has for some
time seemed to us that what is most needed is to keep right
straight on toward the goal which we long ago set.

The present turning point, however, is said to be espe
cially in the diplomacy of the war; the President's speech at
Baltimore having indicated that he has definitely abandoned
all further notions of peace through negotiations or through
appeals to the democracy of Germany to revolt against au
tocracy or yet through efforts to drive wedges between Ger
many and Austria, and that he is now inflexibly determined
to press the war to a victorious issue through " Force, force to
the utmost; force without stint or limit; the righteous, tri
umphant force which shall make right the law of the world
and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust." This is
because he has reached a " moment of utter disillusionment "
in which he realizes the iniquity of Germany's purposes and
the futility of negotiating with the mad dog of the nations.

That is well. It is gratifying to know that the President
has at last become disillusioned, as most thoughtful men in

642 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

America were a long time ago, and that he now fully commits
himself to the course which his clear-sighted fellow citizens
have from the beginning recognized to be the only one com
patible with the honor of the country and with the interests
of mankind, and the only one giving promise of the victory of
Righteousness over the Beast. Let us sincerely hope that he
will remain disillusioned, and that the " moment of utter dis
illusionment " will not prove fleeting and presently give place
to some new illusions of " peace without victory ", but will
endure until the end.

This is the more to be emphasized because of the effort
which is apparently being made by some of the President's
superserviceable champions, through excess of zeal, to have
it appear that the President himself has never suffered from
illusions concerning the war, and that it is not he but the
American people who have now become disillusioned. Such
a pretence cannot, of course, be sanctioned by the President,
who indeed in that very Baltimore speech made it quite clear
that he was speaking with an exceptional degree of per
sonality, and that it was to himself that the utter disillusion
ment had come. That should be clear to all. The American
people have not, as some are suggesting, insisted that every
offer of peace be carefully scrutinized and analyzed. They
were fully convinced two years ago, by Germany's persistent
lying about the U-boat outrages and other matters, that there
was no truth in the Hun, and that any peace overtures should
be regarded as insincere and deceitful.

Perhaps it was well that the President was more patient
and more potentially credulous, and that he, unlike most
thoughtful Americans, insisted upon carefully scrutinizing
and analyzing every Hunnish " peace drive ". It may be that
in that he was wiser than the people. If so, we cheerfully
credit him with that superior wisdom, and take upon our
selves and our fellow citizens the reproach of having been
from the beginning skeptical and fearful of " Greeks bearing
gifts " ; provided always that we are not called upon to suffer
the fate of Laocoon. Suffice it that President and people
now alike perceive the real character of the Wooden Horse,
before the thing has got within our walls. If that be the turn
ing point which the President has reached, let us thank God
and take courage. Now, at last, the road is straight before
us all.

It is somewhat remarkable, however, if not disquieting, to

ARE WE TOO LATE? 643

note that simultaneously with this pronouncement concerning
the President's vision, another of his hot-gospeller champions
— as though he needed a champion! — tells us that Mr. Wil
son, along with Lord Roberts and a few other gifted seers,
unerringly discerned the impending conflict long before it
occurred ; and that accordingly, weeks before that mysterious
tragedy at Sarajevo which was made the pretext for the war,
he sent the expert and authoritative Colonel House of Texas
to Europe to endeavor to open the blinded eyes of the Gov
ernments of Great Britain, France and Germany to the awful
peril which was menacing them. The extraordinary feature
of the case is that the President gave no glimpse or inkling
of this prescience to his own people or even to his associates
in the Government. For once he regretfully laid aside his
" passion for publicity," and yielded to the impulses of what
his eulogists felicitously call his " stern self-confidence " and
his " close-mouthed austerity and pride." Thus he kept the
dread secret locked within his own mind and heart, while the
American people, all unconscious and undreaming of it, con
tinued in their fools' Paradise of unpreparedness and paci
fism — the unpreparedness for which Mr. George Creel now
devoutly gives thanks to God.

Now, assuming these representations of the President's
zealous incense-burners to be entirely true, it was no doubt
tremendously generous and noble of the President to bear the
burden alone, and to endure the unjust imputation of know
ing no more about things than any ordinary mortal. Yet
questions inevitably arise. If he indeed had this " unique
vision of Armageddon " with which the eulogistic historian
of the New York Evening Post from whom we quote
now credits him, was it not his duty to warn his own country,
and to make at least some rudimentary preparations to meet
the coming storm? And why did he so vehemently insist that
we knew nothing and cared to know nothing of the sources
and causes of the war? It is quite obvious that if he knew
all about it in advance, if he had been able to " cast his eye
abroad and note the ominous signs in world politics," if he had
" surveyed the European situation and perceived that the two
opposing groups of Powers were drifting toward the war
which had been dreaded for a generation," why surely he must
have known something about the causes and influences which
were at work. Moreover, if his vision was at the beginning
so clear and penetrating, how could it be that a little later he

644 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

became so blinded as to suffer the illusions from which he
now exultantly proclaims his deliverance?

We must regret, then, that some of those who presumptu
ously affect to be speaking in behalf of the President do him
so gross a disservice as to invest him with the fantastic fig
ments of their own imagination. The President's speech at
Baltimore contained sentiments and expressions for which
no commendation could be too high. But its eloquent author
had, we confidently assume, no thought of making it mark the
turning point in American history, or in the history of the
war. Intensely personal in tone, it made known to the nation
the gratifying and inspiring fact that the President himself
at last fully discerns the duplicity and insincerity of our arch
enemy, that in all further dealings with Prussian militarism
his voice will be in his sword, and that he now assumes that
militant leadership of the nation which the nation has long
desired him to assume.

In such a conception, we must gladly acclaim this " turn
ing point of the war." If it is thus recognized by other na
tions, so much the better. It should hearten our patient and
long-suffering Allies to know that we are done with rainbow-
chasing and with wedge-driving — save for the wedges that
are driven with twelve-inch guns. That it will cause the
Huns to abandon their intrigues, propaganda and falsehoods
— such as Count Czernin has been profusely putting forth —
we do not expect; but it will go far toward rendering such
devices vain. At any rate, if it is or has been the turning
point, let us stay turned, with our diplomacy as direct as the
shooting of our guns.

As for the military turning point, that is a different thing.
Doubtless the Huns hoped to make this Spring drive on the
western front decisive. Doubtless, too, it would have been
decisive, in glorious reaction against the Huns, if only the
full strength of America could have been cast upon the side
of our Allies. As it is, there will have to be many more " turn
ing points " before the end is reached. One of the common
est observations concerning our own Civil War is, that Get
tysburg was its " turning point." But was it, really ; with all
the weaiy campaign of the Wilderness to follow? We have
always had a notion that a good case could be made out for
Fort Donelson as the " turning point ", in view of the fact
that there was enunciated that principle of moving immedi
ately upon the enemy's works until he was forced to " un-

ARE WE TOO LATE? 645

conditional surrender " which in the end proved to be the
only way of winning the war.

The real turning point of this war was, or is, or will be that
at which America — Government and people — becomes con
vinced in mind and heart and soul that the only thing to do
is to move immediately upon the Hun with every ounce of
our fighting strength, and to keep pressing on and slaughter
ing Boches and destroying German resources until the Beast
is beaten into unconditional surrender. Have we reached
that point at last? Has the President himself reached it?

So the words spoken in conclusion at Baltimore would
indicate, but the question leaps irresistibly to mind: Why
was it necessary to speak them a full twelvemonth after Con
gress, responding promptly to the importunity of the Presi
dent, made formal declaration of war? Does not the mere
engaging in war imply the use of force? What else could
the President himself have had in mind when he proclaimed
the quick preparing of the Navy and the immediate raising
of a comparatively great army, and urged the people to hus
band all their resources for participation in the mighty con
flict? Why the present manifestations of surprise, relief
and rejoicing among ourselves and notably among our Allies?

The words themselves are not dissimilar. " We are ac
cepting this challenge ", he declared in April, 1917. " I
accept the challenge, I know that you accept it ", he repeated
in April, 1918. And, alas, the distressing record of the year
cannot be disregarded.

On December 4 the President declared that peace could
not even be discussed until German autocracy, " this intol
erable Thing ", had been defeated.

On January 8 he laid down, in fourteen carefully drawn
articles, " the only possible programme " of peace; declared
that we " stand together until the end " with the Allies for
"these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions
of right", and pledged America "to fight until they are
achieved ".

On February 11 he informed the enemy Powers that he
would discuss peace upon the basis of four abstract principles
he enunciated, and that " the only possible programme " of
the preceding month, the " rectifications of wrong " which
were then " essential ", constituted merely a " set of sugges
tions ", " only our own provisional sketch of principles ".

On April 6 he recognized explicitly for the first time that

646 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

" force " was required, — " force to the utmost, force without
limit or stint ", — but he declared simultaneously that he was
" ready, ready still, ready even now, to discuss a fair and just
and honest peace at any time that it is sincerely purposed —
a peace in which the strong and the weak shall fare alike ".

This has the old familiar judicial ring. What it really
means or what it is intended to convey to our friends or to our
Allies we do not venture to surmise. Undeniably at the mo
ment " the strong " is Germany and " the weak " are Bel
gium, Poland and Serbia. Can it be that in the great ac
counting they are to " fare alike " ? Does the President still
consider that we have no interest in " the causes " and pur
poses of the mighty struggle for very existence which has
been thrust upon the world by bloodthirsty Germany? Is
this another " peace feeler " insinuated into a declaration of
defiance more resonant even than the stern threat to hold to
a strict accountability the murderers of our own unoffend
ing citizens and children who perished with the Lusitania?

God forbid! Rather let us hope that, at the end of a
year of pottering about in fatuous expectation of a quick
collapse of the enemy when shown the ruler in the schoolmas
ter's hand, the great drive has finally opened the President's
eyes to the stark, staring menace not merely to France and
to England but to our own beloved country. And upon
pended knees, in humility and shame, let us all, and let Mm,
beseech Almighty God to permit us and Mm to atone in the
immediate future for the sins of the past. Never, never, since
America won her independence and peace with victory has
she been so humiliated as she is today. Warning after warn
ing has passed unheeded, pleading after pleading has been
made in vain, prediction after prediction of the terrific strug
gle now in progress has been placidly assumed by our own
pathetically disorganized War Department, — with what re
sult ? One hundred thousand American soldiers on the fight
ing line when there should have been and could have been
half a million, and that small number broken up into seg
ments and scattered from Nieuport to Belf ort, as mere fillers-
in, inadequate as a separate command to maintain a single
sector or part of a sector against the Huns. Little Portugal
has us beaten numerically two to one. " Exhausted Eng
land " sent twice as many thoroughly trained troops to Pic-
ardy in ten days after the mighty battle began as we have
furnished in a year.

ARE WE TOO LATE? 647

Patient and propitiatory as our Allies have been, consid
erate and flattering as their Press has been compelled to be
to ourselves generally and to our President specifically, the
pent-up feelings of England and France finally found an
outlet which could no longer be restrained through the out
spoken declaration of the British Premier to the House of
Commons.

In America there is a very considerable number of men in the course
of training and the allies look forward to having a large American
army in France in the spring. It has taken longer than anticipated to
turn those soldiers into the necessary divisional organizations. If
America waited to complete these divisional organizations it would not
be possible for these fine troops in any large numbers to take part in
this battle in this campaign, although it might be very well the decisive
battle of the war.

This was, of course, one of the most serious disappointments from
which the allies had suffered. It is no use pretending it was not one
of our chief causes of anxiety. We depend upon it largely to make up
the defection of Russia. For many reasons — reasons, perhaps, of
transport, reasons connected with the time it takes, not merely to train
troops and their officers, but to complete the necessary organization —
it was quite impossible to put into France the number of divisions every
one had confidently expected would be there.

Under the circumstances we, therefore, submitted to the Presi
dent of the United States a definite proposal. We had the advantage
of having the Secretary of War in this country within two or three
days after the battle had commenced. Mr. Balf our and I had a long
conversation with him upon the whole situation, and we submitted to
him certain recommendations which we had been advised to make to
Mr. Baker and the American government.

On the strength of the conversation we submitted proposals to
President Wilson with the strong support of Premier Clemenceau, to
enable the combatant strength of the American Army to come into
action during this battle, inasmuch as there was no hope of it coming
in as a strong separate army. By this decision American batallions will
be brigaded with those of the allies. This proposal was submitted by
Earl Reading on behalf of the British government to President Wilson,
and President Wilson assented to the proposal without any hesitation,
with the result that arrangements now are being made for the fighting
strength of the American Army to be brought immediately to bear
in this struggle, a struggle which is only now beginning, to this extent,
and it is no mere small extent, that the German attack has been held up.
It has stirred up the resolution and energy of America beyond anything
which has yet occurred.

Courteously excusing us for policy's sake while looking to
the future, Mr. Lloyd George plainly put the blame for the
" serious disappointment " which our Allies suffered squarely
upon the Ajxrerican Government, where it belongs. To

648 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

gate the offense which might be resented by our sensitive
Administration he called attention to " the material and dra
matic assistance rendered by President Wilson in this emer
gency ", — in response, in fact, to a virtual demand from both
France and England that our little force be split up to fill
the chinks, here, there and everywhere, thus rendering use
less all of our railway building and other arrangements to
feed, clothe and care for our own men and taking out of their
hearts the spirit of comradeship and National pride which
makes for success in battle.

" If we wish to avoid a war lasting for years ", said Lloyd
George, — and by this he meant to avert defeat and destruc
tion — " this battle must be won now, and to win it we must
be ready to throw in all our resources. The men we propose
taking today may well be the means of winning the decisive
victory of the war and with these measures and with the
promise of America we have no fear of the ultimate issue ".

The promise of America! That is all they have had ex
cept money, of little real value in such a crisis, and food —
and now they have transferred to us their food ships, delib
erately facing starvation, to bear our troops to the rescue
because, after a full year, we have no means of transporting
them ourselves. And eleven months and two weeks after
we declared war and everybody knew the one vital need was
ships, ships, ships, we are expected to be thrilled by the an
nouncement in newspaper headlines that " President Wilson
personally directs that the movement of troops abroad be
hastened ", to be protected, after they get there, we assume,
by the one solitary combat airplane which so far we have
started on its .way.

But despair we must not. While our own Government is
rubbing its eyes in irritated resentment at having to cease
dreaming dreams, our Allies are more nobly resolute than
ever.

" If ", writes a trustworthy American from London,
" Italy should give up, if France should crack, if even the
United States should desert her, England would only with
draw her army to her own shores, dispose her navy to meet
the new situation, develop her own production and, if need
be, fight on for forty years. This is the English spirit and
the daily mood of the English people ".

And the old tiger Clemenceau adds :

Bleating about peace will not crush Prussian militarism. War and

A CALL TO PATRIOTS 649

nothing but war must be the only thought. In all wars he is the con
queror who can believe a quarter of an hour longer than his adversary
that he is not beaten. I shall continue the war to the last quarter of an
hour, for the last quarter of an hour will be ours.

But withal they know that only America can save the
day. That they will hold fast to the last ditch and the last
man we cannot doubt. But if, despite all resistance, the
Huns should succeed in dividing the armies, what then for
stricken France but surrender, what for England but a last
great stand, and what for America, which has stopped work
absolutely upon both her coast defenses and her battleships,
but reverberations from the canyons of despair —

Too late; too late; too late!

Take heed, you men in authority :

Inefficiency now is treason.

A CALL TO PATRIOTS

REPRINTED FROM THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW^
WAR WEEKLY

WASHINGTON, April 12, 1918.

THE Hun is at the gate; the Republic is in peril; freedom
is at stake ; civilization and humanity tremble in the balance ;
America must save the cause; her sons are on the battle-
line; her men and boys, her women and daughters at home
are working, giving, hoping and praying for victory, in this,
the darkest hour of the great invasion.

Shall we at such a time impair the power and strength of
the Nation through partisan strife among ourselves when
every ounce of the energies which we can rally is required to
meet the beseeching calls of our bleeding Allies, to help, help,
help, in their desperate and heartrending struggle against
the common foe?

ff United we stand, divided we fall! "

No country has better reason than our own to realize this
immutable truth; none has heeded it in the past at greater
cost in the blood of men and the grief of women. Can nothing
be done to avert the calamitous effects of a bitter political
contest throughout the Union, already beginning and bound
to rage with increasing virulence till the polls shall close in
November?

Forget patriotism (God forgive us!) for a moment and
heed only partisan considerations.

650 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

What has the Democratic party to gain from a contested
election next Fall? It already has a majority in the House,
— small but sufficient; suppose that majority should be in
creased to fifty or a hundred, what of it? Mr. Clark would
continue to be Speaker, there would be no changes in chair
manships of committees and the new members would be as
ciphers except in voting. True, such a result might be
heralded as a striking testimonial of approval of the Admin
istration, but that is all. There would be no practical advan
tage. And if the opposition should win, what then? Surely,
in the words of the late Mr. Holman, it is better to be safe
than sorry. Weighing possibilities in the balance, clearly the
Democrats have nothing tangible to win and much perhaps
to lose from the hazard of an election.

What of the Republicans? Suppose they should carry
the House, what would they have won? Committee chair
manships, clerks and doorkeepers and — a Speaker, presum
ably Mr. Mann, who voted for the McLemore resolution and
for pretty much everything else that the Germans wanted.
They would acquire no real power, — not even control of the
great appropriations which have already been made chiefly
and would be completed between November and March. In
point of fact, they would not be in a position to oppose any
measure proposed by the President because they would have
been elected under pledges to uphold vigorous prosecution of
the war. For this very reason, moreover, they could not
even maintain successfully that their majority should be
taken as a rebuke to the Administration, unless the choice of
a virtual pro-German as Speaker should be so regarded, —
and surely that would be neither palatable nor popular. All
they could claim would be that they had been elected simply
and solely because they were Republicans.

The only thing under the sun that the Republicans could
win by carrying the House would be the privilege of divid
ing the responsibility for the future conduct of the war, —
thus barring them completely from making a clean-cut issue
two years later, when the existing Government as a whole
must make an accounting to the people and either stand or
fall upon the record made with full authority.

No less surely than the Democrats, though for quite dif
ferent reasons, the Republicans have nothing to win and
much, perhaps, to lose from a contested election.

But the country and the cause have a great deal, a very

A CALL TO PATRIOTS 651

great deal, perhaps everything, to gain from an agreement
between the two parties to re-elect practically all of the
present members. Let us enumerate a few of the advan
tages :

1. It would avert the bitterness of a nation-wide cam
paign.

2. It would make the issue, wherever an issue might be
raised, one of Loyalty pure and simple, with no such differ
entiations as disgraced the Wisconsin campaign and might
easily have produced a Socialist, pro- German Senator.

3. It would not only achieve specifically but would sig
nify notably to our Allies a splendid unity in purpose and
determination.

4. It would eliminate the dangerous participation in a
political contest of two millions of soldiers in camps scattered
from Flanders to California.

5. It would obviate the waste of hundreds of thousands,
possibly millions, of dollars in useless electioneering when
every penny is needed to win the war.

6. It would save at least a day's time consumed by any
where from ten to fifteen millions of men in simply voting,
to say nothing of many days of campaigning, thus increasing
the country's productivity by this means alone by more than
a hundred millions of dollars.

7. It would release for speaking for Liberty .loans and
other war purposes, not only the hundreds of the chosen
representatives of the people, but also thousands of others
who otherwise would be electioneering, — not only release
them, but release them in such a way that Republican and
Democrat could stand shoulder to shoulder upon the same
platform and plead the cause of their common country.

8. It would elevate Patriotism above Politics and would
redound to the pride and glory of the Nation whose elders
at home would bury prejudice in their eagerness to back up
the boys abroad who soon will be giving up their lives by the
thousand in the service of the Republic.

Can it be done? Of course, it can be done. It is being
done. Already the leaven is working. And it makes the
heart glad that again the Old Dominion leads the way. Two
years ago the Ninth District of Virginia elected Bascoinb
Slemp, a Republican, to Congress, by a plurality of only
1,388 out of a total vote of 34,308, — a margin none too large
for comfort. But there will be no contest this year. Last

652 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

week the Democratic district committee met and adopted
unanimously the following resolution:

Whereas the minds and hearts of all our people are and should be
turned toward the winning of the war for democracy, and whereas we
do not believe their time and energy should be diverted from patriotic
activities into the requirements of a fierce partisan campaign, there
fore we recommend to the democratic party in the ninth Virginia
congressional district that no nomination for Congress be made this
year.

Fitting and stirring expression of patriotic thought I And
what was done in the Ninth District of Virginia can be done
in practically every other district in the country by co-opera
tive action to that end by the official leaders of the two great
parties.

What have they to say? Is it too much to ask that Chair
man McCormick and Chairman Hays call their executive
committees together and at least consider the practicability
of reaching an understanding which would save God only
knows how many precious lives — and, it might be, even the
war itself?

Upon the Presidential election in 1920, as we have said, the sug
gestion has no bearing whatever. The future must care for itself.

With respect to Senators to be elected next Fall, the impropriety
of attempting to choose by agreement men to serve six years is apparent.
Nevertheless, the fact may well be noted that a fine spirit is beginning
to pervade the country. Already the Democrats have given notice that
they will not oppose the re-election of Senators Nelson of Minnesota
and Kenyon of Iowa, and it is virtually assured that the two parties
in Idaho will unite upon Senators Borah and Nugent, if the former,
as it is hoped and believed, shall reconsider his determination to with
draw from public service at this critical time.

Other States which may be ignored because of the collusiveness
of party primaries are Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, Oklahoma, Louis
iana, Arkansas, Colorado, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Michigan,
South Carolina, Mississippi and Wyoming, leaving only fifteen States
in which Senatorial elections would be requisite in November, to wit:
Rhode Island, New Mexico, Maine, West Virginia, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, Kentucky, Illinois, Oregon, Nebraska, Delaware, Kansas,
South Dakota, Montana and Massachusetts.

Doubtless, too, several of these States will follow the example of
Iowa and Minnesota, and reach agreements shortly, thereby reducing
the total to so small a number that the two National Committees could
readily effect an arrangement such as we have proposed, to little or no
injury to either party or any individual and to incalculable advantage
of the country and the cause.

Our call is to the patriotism of America.

A CALL TO PATRIOTS 653

Consider what a partisan election means!

Next November the people of the several States, as duly
ordained by the Constitution, will march to the polls and
drop a ballot in the box bearing the name of John Doe,
Republican, or Richard Roe, Democrat. Mr. John Doe
is the present member from the Sixty-ninth District of Michi
gan. We do not know him, that is those of us who live in
New York or Massachusetts or Pennsylvania, but we do
know that Mr. John Doe is a loyalist, that he is in favor of a
vigorous prosecution of the war against Germany, that being
a decent, straightforward, upstanding American he has sup
ported the President since the declaration of war against
Germany, that he has voted for all the war legislation the
President has recommended, that he has urged his consti
tuents to buy Liberty bonds, to support the Red Cross, to
economise in the use of food; in short, to do everything that
an American should do in these critical days, and that is to
devise means whereby the largest number of Germans can
be killed in the shortest space of time at the smallest cost to
American life.

So far as the war is concerned — and that is the one thing
now that concerns every man, woman and child in the United
States — Mr. John Doe is neither a Republican nor a Demo
crat. He is neither a Prohibitionist nor a friend of the
demon rum. He is neither a Suffragist nor an Anti. He is
simply a good American who has risen superior to petty
politics and has put all his heart and strength and vigor
of intellect into the great cause. And there are 434 other
John Does and Richard Roes — barring the few disloyalists
of whom we shall speak presently — like him; like him,
patriots and not partisans, like him, heart and soul in the
war and thinking of only one thing — how to win in the
shortest possible time.

Beginning with this month and until late in the summer
the 435 members of the House will — if there is to be a
partisan election — be thinking of their renominations. Every
member wants to be renominated, naturally and properly
enough. Having worked for the best interests of the country
he thinks he is entitled to a renomination. In every district
there is at least one man, in some a dozen or more in both
parties, who cherish the ambition to come to Congress. Mr.
John Doe has made enemies in his own party, and the
opposing party might capture the seat. Mr. John Doe,

654 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

therefore, from now until his nomination must give every
thought to his own political future. He must fix his political
fences, and that cannot be done at long range. Instead of
being in Washington attending to legislative business Mr.
John Doe is at home wooing his constituents. Mr. John Doe
has ceased to be a disinterested patriot, to whom the war
and nothing but the war counts, and has become a politician.

The thing is psychological. In the atmosphere of the
House, where party has ceased to exist, he is influenced by
his moral surroundings and sees the infamy of injecting
politics into the conduct of the war, but at home, where he has
gone solely to talk politics, where he appeals for support
solely on political grounds, he sinks again to the level of the
party man. If he is a Republican, he solicits the influence
of Republicans because the Democrats have managed the war
very badly ; and while he may not honestly believe that it is the
only justification for his retention, he strives to establish his
case. And if he is a Democrat, the argument is reversed.

Now follow the thing through. Mr. John Doe goes
back to Washington and in the House, even while voting for
a war measure, he criticises the Administration to show to
his constituents what a good party man he is. Instead of
having one thought he has two, and the second has sub
ordinated the first. What he thinks of more now than any
thing else is his renomination. The opposition is active and
it behooves him to be vigilant. His courage is tempered by
caution, he dodges a vote for fear of offending and is sensi
tive to criticism. In a word, his former robust independence
is weakened by the fear of losing his nomination.

Having gained his nomination, he will for the next four
or five months make his claim for reelection purely on the
score of party politics. In substance what he will say is this :
" Of course I shall support the President in the conduct of
the war, but it is much better for the country to have a
Republican majority in the House of Representatives than
a Democratic majority. Give us a Republican majority and
the war will be managed more efficiently. You ask for proof.
Look at the mistakes made by the War Department, remem
ber the past winter and the shortage of coal, do not forget
the time when sugar was short." And a great many people
will heed him.

His Democratic opponent will controvert this. Now
we are not in the least interested in John Does and Richard

A CALL TO PATRIOTS 655

Roes personally. We think it is not of the slightest con
sequence to the country at large or the carrying on of the
war whether the Sixty-ninth District of Michigan is repre
sented in Washington by John Doe, Democrat, or Richard
Roe, Republican, provided both men are loyal Americans;
what we are vitally interested in is the effect it will have
on the country.

The war cannot be successfully prosecuted unless the
country puts its whole heart into it, unless it is unified, unless
its strength, both physical and spiritual, is given to the sole
purpose of war. It is idle to pretend, it is either the dis
honesty of knavery or the ignorance of fools, that the country
can be unified when for the next six or eight months it will
be talking and thinking politics and the appeal will be made
to passion and narrow prejudice in favor of Richard Roe
and what he represents, to the injury of John Doe and what
he stands for. Resort to all the hypocrisy you please, talk
as grandly as you like about " the free choice of the people ",
neither hypocrisy nor humbug can conceal the facts.

What are the facts? Simply personal selfishness and
the contemptible meanness of professional politicians and a
certain number of men who would sacrifice the common good
for their own advantage or that of their party. The man
agers of the Republican party hope to carry the House,
believing it will forecast their victory in the Presidential
election. We shall not venture a prediction as to what will
happen next November, but if we know anything of Ameri
can politics we are prepared without reservation to affirm
that were the election to be held next week the Democrats
would control the House by a substantial majority. The
Democrats want an election because they believe it will
strengthen their majority and it will foreshadow their con
tinuance in power two years later. In some districts the
sitting member is to be jockeyed out of the nomination, in
other districts the majority is to be reversed by appeals to
partisanship. In every case the motive is the same. Selfish
ness, personal gain — $7,500 a year, mileage and Congres
sional perquisites — and the vanity attaching to being an
" honorable " are to submerge the cause to which we are
dedicated.

Throw this country into the turmoil of an election this
year and what will happen? We shall see the war relegated
to the inside pages of the newspapers and the front pages

656 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

given over to the speeches of the Richard Roes and John
Does, " the monster rally " at the Grand Opera House and
the torch light procession. Instead of the people discussing
the war, soberly thinking about the war, we shall hear them
excitedly discussing the tariff, prohibition, votes for women.
Instead of the people going to hear Liberty Loan speeches,
they will go to hear political addresses. Instead of the
thought of the people being concentrated on one thing, and
that thing the only thing that matters, they will be distracted
by the claims of rival party hacks, of the virtues of one party
or the vices of another. Politics will creep into the camp, into
the factory, into the home. Solidarity will be weakened.

What is to be gained by it? A few more Republicans
or a few less Democrats. A speaker who is a Democrat or
a Republican. Republican chairmen of committees where
there are now Democrats. Will it save the life of a single
American boy? Will it shorten the war by a single hour?
Will it stop the expenditure of one dollar? We gain nothing
by it, but we throw the country into discord and confusion,
arouse antagonism, leave resentment, and break down that
unity without which the war cannot be won.

The solution is simple, as we have shown. The Constitu
tional requirement of an election every two years would be
observed, but there would be no necessity for any member
of Congress to leave Washington to look after his fences or
campaign, there would be no political speeches and no injec
tion of politics into the more serious business of carrying on
the war. Those members of the present House who are
disloyal, fortunately they are few, should be notified by their
party chiefs that unless they decline to be candidates for re
election they will be opposed by a non-partisan candidate.
In nearly every case the threat would be sufficient, and the
obstinate man would be slaughtered at the polls without it
having been necessary to make a campaign, as the mere
publication of a man's name on the blacklist of disloyalty
would mean his defeat.

It would protect the President. Mr. Wilson cannot be
entirely deaf to the claims of party. He is now pestered to
make certain appointments for party reasons. Politics
should not be permitted to pass the portals of the White
House, and yet politics will penetrate the White House as
they will the camp, the factory and the home if there is an
election this year. The politicians fear the public will disap-

AMERICANS SHOULD BE AMERICANS 657

prove. Their fears are misplaced. The public takes the
broad view; it would welcome any arrangement whereby
politics can be kept out of the war. Both in England and in
France there has been no general election since the beginning
of the war. From England and France we have learned
much about the conduct of war; may we not learn from them
the further lesson that if a country would make war suc
cessfully abroad, it cannot carry on political warfare at home?

AMERICANS SHOULD BE AMERICANS

THE Secretary of the Interior is right. There is need of
Americanization. There is need of it in elements and fun
daments. The latest census discloses the discreditable fact
that nearly five per cent of the adult population of the United
States can neither read nor write the English — which is the
American — language; more than 4.6 per cent of those over
twenty years of age, and more than 5.5 per cent of those over
ten years. Incidentally, Mr. Lane reminds us that of regis
tered men of conscription age nearly 700,000 are illiterate;
wherefore our " citizenry trained to arms ", upon whom we
have been bidden to rely for protection, are largely a citizenry
untrained to letters.

Now that is discreditable, and something more. It is a
menacing condition. A state cannot be in a healthful con
dition when more than a quarter of its adult citizens are un
able to read or write the national language. For these il
literates are practically debarred from the information which
is essential to good citizenship. Consider: The President is
occasionally making addresses to Congress of the highest im
portance. The Government is issuing innumerable tracts and
bulletins, filled with information about the war, about food
conservation, about agriculture, about a multitude of things
of direct and very great interest to all the people for their
own good and for the nation's good. In addition, there are
all the publications of newspapers and books, conveying in
formation which every citizen should have in order to under
stand the issues of the day and his duty concerning them.

But all these are practically sealed books to the illiterate.
He can know of them only through hearsay. His neighbor,
who can read, is his only source of information. But that
neighbor may not accurately understand what he has read.
VOL. ccvu.— NO. 750 42

658 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

If he does understand it, he may not have the faculty — which
indeed is rare among the best of us — of accurately repeating
it. And if he does repeat accurately, it is practically certain
that he does not repeat fully, but merely a few of the more
sensational and striking portions, which may not give any
thing like a correct notion of the whole. The result is that
the illiterate person gets at best only a partial and distorted
view of affairs, while there is always grave danger that he
will get a maliciously perverted view. For the propagandist
of evil is always more fluent and zealous in imparting misin
formation than any good citizen is likely to be in telling the
truth.

Similar considerations apply, in some respects with even
more force, to the other millions who, while more or less il
literate in English, are literate in some alien language, the
language of the country from which they or their parents
came hither. They are similarly debarred from information
in English, and are dependent upon that which is provided in
the alien press, and this latter is almost inevitably colored
with alien hues. For example: In the first two years of the
war, before America entered it, multitudes of Germans,
Austrians and Hungarians in this country gained their chief
if not their only knowledge of it from the papers printed in
their own mother tongues. We know quite well what that too
often meant. There was presented to them not the American
view but the alien view.

" As a man thinketh, so is he." And as a man reads or
hears, so he thinks. Getting their information from alien
sources, they cherished alien thoughts, and thus themselves
remained or became essentially alien. There can be no doubt
that to this cause is due much of the pro-German and dis
loyal sentiment which has persisted throughout the United
States during our first year of the war. Those who cherish
it may or may not have become legally and technically natur
alized : They certainly have not been Americanized in mind
and heart and thought and feeling. Obviously the first step
toward such Americanization is to get into touch with Amer
ica by learning to use the English language as the common
medium of speech, reading and thought. That is why illiter
acy in English is so serious a matter.

For this same reason we must approve the action which is
being widely taken for the very great modification if not the
entire suppression of German studies in the public schools.

AMERICANS SHOULD BE AMERICANS 659

It would be foolish to exclude German from the curriculum
simply because we are at war with Germany. But in so far
as German is retained, it should be regarded, treated and
taught as a foreign language, at par with other foreign
languages. Such, it is notorious, has not always been the
case. In many schools, with large German constituencies,
German has been exploited far beyond due bounds, as though
it and not English were the national language. That has
been because German parents have wanted their children to
be educated in German rather than English, and to regard
German and not English as their mother tongue. To that
end, there have been used German text books, some of them
revised if not originally prepared in Germany for the pur
pose, in which German immigrants in America, and their
American-born children as well, are urged, even commanded,
under penalty of disgrace, to cherish the German tongue as
their own, above that of their adopted land. It was mons
trous that such teaching was ever permitted in American
schools. It would be moral treason to tolerate it longer.

That the pernicious system of dual allegiance, which Ger
many alone has had the effrontery to maintain, should be
specifically and completely condemned, goes without saying.
We should think that it would be quite proper to refuse
naturalization to any persons coming from a country which
maintained it, unless they would under oath expressly repudi
ate and abjure it. So, too, there should be an end of the sys
tem, prevailing in some States of this Union, of permitting
unnaturalized or only partly naturalized men to vote. Since
the Constitution forbids the States to abridge or deny the
right of suffrage on certain grounds, it seems a pity that it
does not also forbid the granting of suffrage to any who have
not complied with certain requirements.

We have further been reminded in this war of the im
policy of permitting great masses of aliens to come hither and
to remain here unnaturalized. There was proposed a few
years ago a scheme for requiring immigration to be propor
tioned to naturalization, so as to permit immigration of those
who became American citizens, and to prohibit that of those
who did not become naturalized. It is to be believed that
some plan of that nature would be beneficent. Certainly it
would be desirable in some way to discourage and indeed to
prevent the accumulation in America of numerous alien
colonies persistently remaining alien in allegiance and in

660 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

speech. It is well to be hospitable. But it would be poor
policy to carry our hospitality so far as to make America no
longer worth coming to.

' WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR? "

THE ancient lawyer's question comes aptly to mind in
scanning the international relationships of the great war.
Who is our neighbor? Or, mutatis mutandis, who are cm-
allies? Who are our foes? More specifically, where does
Russia stand? And Japan? Also, Bulgaria? And that
once Unspeakable Turk whose unspeakableness is now sur
passed by that of his Kultured ally and overlord?

There may be some uncertainty concerning Russia. At
first she was undoubtedly our ally, and was treated as such,
and acted as such ; until the rise of Lehmann and Braunstein,
alias Lenine and Trotzky, who have repudiated that alliance.
Are we to insist that the former relationship still exists, or
are we to accept the dictum of the Bolsheviki? Upon the
answer depends the technical justification of the course which
we should pursue in respect of Siberia, though it may not
affect the character of the course.

First, then, if Russia is still our ally; what? Why, we
should intervene, or should sanction our allies' interven
ing, in Siberia, to restore and to maintain order and to prevent
such Hunnish deviltry there as there has been at the other
side of the empire. If Russia is our ally, she should trust us
and our other allies, and should welcome our cooperation;
just as France welcomes it in Picardy and Champagne.

But if she is no longer our ally? In that case we are
under no obligation to help her, but neither are we under
obligation to stand idly by and let her surrender her territory
to our foes, to our peril. If she cannot or will not keep her
house in order and prevent our enemies from utilizing it
against us, our natural rights of self -protection, or those
of our ally, Japan, abundantly warrant intervention to abate
the nuisance — just as we intervened in Florida, a century ago.

In either case, therefore, we should approve and en
courage Japanese intervention just so far as may be necessary
to keep order in Siberia and to keep the Hun out.

But is Japan our ally? Well, she is certainly the ally
of our allies, France and Great Britain, and it would there-

' WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR? " 661

fore be rather awkward if she were not ours also. We have
been treating her in various respects as though she were our
ally. We have just been borrowing a lot of her shipping, for
belligerent purposes, which we should scarcely have done if
there were not close relations between us; and not long ago
we made a " gentlemen's agreement " with her which we
should not have made with a power which we did not trust.
The assumption is, therefore, that Japan is our ally, and
that she should be treated as such.

Similar considerations apply to the relationship between
Japan and Russia. Earlier in the war they certainly re
garded each other as allies. Indeed, Russia inclined so much
toward Japan as almost to excite jealousy on the part of
other powers. There is a story, so well substantiated that
it would take a good deal to disprove it, that before the war,
and in the early part of the war, Russia employed many
Japanese in her navy, to raise it to the efficiency which
Japan's fleet had displayed under Admiral Togo; and that
in consequence, when a Russian vessel was selected by the
allies for the honor of leading the way through the Darda
nelles, the batteries of that Russian ship were manned by
Japanese gunners. We should say that after that Russia
ought not to demur at Japanese intervention to save Siberia
from chaos or the Huns.

The logical solution of the Siberian problem would have
been, at the first menace of either Hunnish conquest or
domestic chaos, for the allied Powers to send in thither a
joint expedition for protective purposes. This would have
consisted chiefly, of course, of Japanese, but also of small
contingents from America and the other allies, as a guarantee
of good faith and of the responsibility of all the Allies for
the benevolent conduct of the expedition. To say that just
because the men who have surrendered all western Russia
to the Huns and have involved all European Russia in
disorder and collapse, object to any interference with similar
processes in Siberia, we must stand aside and see such ruin
wrought, would be to repudiate much of the spirit in which
this war is being waged and some of the purposes which we
have in view in waging it.

We have raised, also, the question of our relationship to
Bulgaria and Turkey. With those Powers we are nominally
at peace, and their subjects in this country do not come under
the ban of enemy aliens. Yet those Powers are certainly

662 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

active allies of our foe, and are the foes of our Allies. They
are assisting our enemies against us. They are " adhering
to the enemies of the United States, giving them aid and
comfort." For Americans to do that would be treason. For
aliens to do it can scarcely be reckoned friendship. If, as
we are told, troops from those countries are operating on the
western front, where our own troops are, will they refrain
from firing upon our men and attack only our Allies? And
are our men to be careful not to fire upon them, but only
upon their allies?

It seems to us an anomalous state of affairs, for us to
be assisting our allies on the western front, but to be unwilling
or unable to aid them in the east. It is a noble thing for
us to strive to right the wrongs of Belgium ; but why should
we debar ourselves from striking a single blow in behalf of
the other martyr nations, Serbia and Armenia?

Surely by this time we ought to be able to tell which
nations are our allies and which are our foes ; and to be ready
to treat them according to that classification.

FOCH

fe Unless all history is at fault, the appointment of a
Generalissimo is essential to success'" — NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW for December.

" In warfare men are nothing; a man is everything. It was not
the Roman army that conquered Gaul; but Caesar. It was not the
Carthaginians that made armies of the Republic tremble at the very
gates of Rome, but Hannibal ; it was not the Macedonian army marched
to the Indus, but Alexander ; it was not the French army that carried
war to the Weser and the Inn, but Turenne; it was not the Prussian
army that defended Prussia during seven years against the then greatest
Powers of Europe, but Frederick the Great."

Napoleon's maxim comes back to us with alienated
majesty, as the Allies worn with almost four years of sacri
fices, turn to the French military master for guidance and
accept his greatest living exponent for their leader.

For the present it would avail nothing to recount in
detail the horrible sacrifices that civilization has made since
August, 1914, because the Allies have been without leader
ship. Future historians may be relied upon to lift the veil
and tell the whole truth to another generation. Let us recall
the errors of the past only as warnings for the future.

FOCH 663

Having resolved to begin anew and follow Napoleonic
precepts it was indeed fitting that Ferdinand Foch should
be chosen to lead the allied armies. Those who have studied
Foch's Conduct of War and Napoleon's Divines and who
have compared the generalissimo's tactics in the field with
those of the First Consul, must, indeed, be impressed by the
degree to which the student has imbibed the principles and
methods of his master.

In the writings and tactics of Foch we are constantly
impressed with the kind of direct, simple, powerful decisions
and executions that made Napoleon master of the continent.
We find little or no time wasted on theoretical discussions of
the finer points of strategy. Throughout his works we find
him constantly urging " activity, activity, activity and com

mon sense."

There is but one sharp difference between Napoleon and
Foch. It is in years. Foch is now more than twice as old
as Napoleon was when he reached his zenith. He was born
in a little town near the Spanish border sixty-six and a half
years ago. He is short, closely knit, extremely well pre
served for his years and looks like a warrior. Like Napoleon
he is an artilleryman by training and a horseman by prefer
ence. His earlier career was not unlike that of the ordinary
French officer — except that he excelled in diligence. He did
the routine of a junior officer to the French artillery school
where he eventually established himself as one of the repub
lic's great military authorities.

It was on March 5, 1914, that General Foch found his
first real opportunity to put into practice his life time studies.
Next to Joffre it was Foch who contributed most to the de
feat of the German onrush. Without Foch's superb execu
tion Joffre would not have prevailed. The French line had
been forced back to the valley of the Marne and von Kluck
threatened to envelop the left wing and take Paris. Joffre
issued his famous order:

" The moment has come for the army to advance at all
costs and allow itself to be slain where it stands, rather than
give way."

As the French left wing moved forward in obedience to
the order, von Kluck found that his plans would not carry
and immediately made a redisposition of his forces with
the intention of driving a wedge through the center. Foch
holding the center, commanded the Ninth Army of 120,000

664 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

men. Von Kluck attacked him with the Prussian Guard and
the Saxon Army of 200,000. As the wings recoiled under the
terrific French attacks, Foch's troops were forced to bear
the brunt of the entire German movement. For five days
the Germans battered him with ever increasing force, finally
on the ninth of September, the crisis came, the French line
was breaking and Foch performed his supreme exploit. He
sent this telegram to Joffre:

" My right has been driven in, my left has been driven
in — therefore with all that I have left in my centre I will
attack."

Materially and physically at that hour Foch was beaten
but his indomitable will mastered the Germans. From
that day the slow German retreat began. Is it any wonder
that Joffre called him " The first strategist of Europe? "

Six weeks after the Marne, when the Germans attempted
to outflank the entire French army, to seize the Channel ports
and destroy England's lines of communications, General
Foch, then in command of the allied forces, saved the British
on the banks of the Yser and stopped the Germans at Ypres.

Foch is the sole allied commander, now in active service,
who has never failed to carry through a major operation that
he planned and directed. He is the sole active commander
who has the unbounded respect and admiration of the British
and French forces.

Indeed from every viewpoint, he appears to be the sole
commander fitted by training, experience and successes to
outwit Hindenburg.

It is not too much to hope that some future commentator
on Napoleon may amend his maxim with this : —

" It was not the allied armies, who struggled hopelessly
for four years, that finally drove the Germans across the
Rhine; but Ferdinand Foch."

THE ETERNAL BATTLE

BY JOHN JAY CHAPMAN

THE war is, as Senator Borah recently said, the latett
and greatest phase of the eternal battle between two forms
of human government, — the kind typified by the Hohen-
zollern and the kind typified by Abraham Lincoln. The
issue has arisen this time in its most abstract and universal
form. It has polarized humanity. It can no longer be ex
pressed in terms of politics : it is merged in religious truth.

The thing which has happened to the world during the
last four years, and which never happened before, is the
focalization of truth, the focalization of virtue. Every bit
of vision that a man has, every scrap of truth he sees, is in
stantly taken up into the great stream of the world's life, a
stream which every one seems now to be aware of, and to
gaze on as if it were the aurora borealis. You will get an
assent from the nearest man to any true thing you say about
any matter that comes up ; and this makes you feel as if you
were in contact all the time with the gigantic heart of
humanity.

It was very different thirty years ago. When I came out
of college the world seemed to me to be like a padded cell in
a lunatic asylum. Nobody was interested in anything. You
could not get a response to an intelligent idea from anyone ;
and, unless you trod on his toes, or pinched him with a tin
man's shears at the very moment that you made the remark,
he would simply look coldly on you and pass along. The
truth was, though nobody knew it at the time, that the world
was wearing toward the close of a sad epoch. The inspira
tions of art, literature and conduct, which had been brilliant
in the middle of the nineteenth century, had passed, and
faded away, and died down to dispersed death-taps and
rumbles. The atmosphere was deaf. Men's senses were
blunted ; and in order to pierce their indifference and insensi-

666 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tiveness, the artists, poets and playwrights had to resort to
strong acids and weird conceits. Art became sharp-tongued,
cynical and often sinister. People could only relish what was
a little rancid. The influence pervaded every country of
Europe. It was an epoch, — the great historic epoch, — of
disillusion.

Now there is a connection between all that happens at any
one time on earth (though no one can find out just what the
connection is or means), and there was a connection between
this cynicism which overspread Europe and America fifty
years ago, and the transformation that was then going on
in Germany, — the transformation of the German people into
a diabolical war-machine. No one outside of Germany was
aware of the process ; and even in the Germans themselves the
change was largely unconscious. It crept on like insanity,
and the further the disease advanced the more convinced the
patient became that he was the only sane man in the world.
When the thunder-clap came and the cloud broke in 1914,
it was clear that we were, all of us, living parts of the storm.
The shock never could have thrown us off our feet, as it did,
if it had been an extraneous thing. The shock was, in fact,
part of a world process.

Apparently, revolutions are like diseases; they come on
with a bang. Nature adjusts and adjusts herself, and keeps
adjusting herself to the inner trouble, and the man goes about
his business with only an occasional headache or passing
qualm, — until, some day — crash ! — he is on his back, delirious
with typhoid ; and lucky for him if he gets back to normal life
and work within a year and a half! While he lies on his back
there, the invisible ministers of nature come to rescue him.
He is nearer health now than he has been for years, perhaps,
before the collapse. Now, at last, he can accept the streams
of health that flow into him. The visions of his early years
come back to him and he does not beat them off. In return
ing and in rest he is saved. And, what the German people
really need is rest. I do not see how they are going to get it
for some time to come ; and I certainly hope that no rest will
reach them, except the purgatorial and religious kind of rest
that comes to a man whose will has been defeated and who
returns to peace and to strength through the sacrific of a
troubled spirit. That is the sort of rest the Germans need.
They have been driven and scared and harassed by their rulers
till their brains are in shreds and tatters. They are anemic

THE ETERNAL BATTLE 667

maniacs. They represent the injured cells of the world-
organism.

The great typhoid fell suddenly on civilized man, — who
had been walking about for half a century with the germs of
it in him, — and the visible part of him suddenly formed itself
into a line of trenches that stretched from the English Chan
nel to the Alps, while the invisible and unimaginable ministers
to his recovery streamed to his rescue. One might say they
had been hovering and waiting for a chance to reach him
and enter into him, as the angels of youth and health wait
above the head of the tired business man till he breaks down,
and gives them a chance to enter.

When the stroke of paralysis fell in Germany a literature
of heroism blossomed on the following day in France, Eng
land and America. The philosophy of government, which
had become a bookish thing, put out branches and bore fruit
that fed the world. Time's whole treasury of legend and of
divinity was poured into men's thought in a flood which they
found themselves, as if by magic, able to receive. This was
the climax which the nineteenth century had been building up
to. The war itself is a detail. The greatest work of the war
is done already ; for the great dam is broken and the waters of
life are let loose upon mankind. I have observed this in read
ing the Bible. The Old Testament reeks and blazes with the
war. Isaiah lives in the flame of the war like a salamander.
Turn over his pages, and you seem to be passing the open
doors of spiritual munition furnaces. The Psalms never
spoke before. The Psalms, which come from the depths of
human feeling that lie fathoms below any other lyric litera
ture, and speak out of that part of us which is beneath the
conscious, — from the caverns below sickness and health in the
center of uncreated things, — the Psalms now sound their in
timate clarions, and we hear easily and every day the strains
that used to reach us only at times of crisis or of illumination.
Words and phrases, which had become too familiar to keep
a meaning, resume their power, and the texts call to us, like
spirits released from bondage. The same thing holds true
of all the tales of history, all the ballads and poems of romance
which the idealism of mankind has left in its wake.

The war is the fight for the soul of man, as that soul exists
and has existed in western Europe; and every syllable of the
past which ever expressed that soul has again become vocal.
Such is the music to which the Allied armies are now march-

668 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ing. The aim of Germany is to subdue man's spirit; that of
the Allies, to preserve it. And the one great thing for which
we have all cause to be thankful is that the issue is well under
stood. Neither England, nor France, nor America has any
interest in a world made up of citizen-slaves and military
despots. If it becomes necessary to sink all the wealth and
half the populations of those countries in this war it will be
done.

So far as reason can judge the struggle is just beginning,
and, but for the fact that every important change of scene
in the war's history has come as a surprise, we should expect
this war to go on for at least a generation. Perhaps Fate
has some new surprise in store through which there will be a
speedier end than we can foresee. In any event, our cue is
to fight.

The Allies cannot compromise, for a compromise would
be merely a retreat to a new military position. So long as
Germany's ambition to conquer the world persists, it is mere
self-preservation for us to continue the battle. And, if one
considers that it has taken two hundred years to create the
Prussian caste and tradition, one can hardly imagine that
the thing will decay or collapse suddenly. There have, in the
past, been thirty years' wars, hundred years' wars, and epochs
and ages of war. Everyone protests that the resources of
modern life cannot stand such a strain, and that human
nature will not endure it. But these very questions of
endurance are the ones that our prophets have been most
wrong about. Human nature is elastic and extensible, and
seems able to endure almost anything. Society adjusts itself
to war; the back broadens to the burden; a man bears what
he must, and it is always a thousand per cent, more than he
thought he could bear.

The United States is slowly and clumsily getting into
harness. But the very slowness with which she goes in is an
earnest of persistency. The one step that she had to take
rapidly — conscription — she rose to like an eagle. Consider
ing the fact that this nation is fighting in a region five
thousand miles away; considering that she has not yet been
seriously hurt, but is fighting as one might say, from a mental
perception of the issues ; considering that she is an unwieldy
democracy, full, as Shakespeare says, of the cankers of a bad
world and a long peace, she is doing extremely well. Such
large masses of people have never before been moved to

THE ETERNAL BATTLE 669

self-immolation on grounds so purely intellectual. It is not
in human nature to be truly aroused in war till the blood
flows.

Once we are clenched upon the foe, I see no reason why
we should let go for fifty years. And I believe that the wiser
heads in Germany are beginning to suspect this also. Those
wiser heads, however, will not prevail to change the course
of their nation. Events are in a mill-race. No one can stop
them, — not the Kaiser, not Junkerdom. It is a course of
things like the French Revolution, one of those rapids of
history, which no one truly understands or controls. The
leaders are figureheads. They are carried on the current,
wave their arms and disappear. Something is being threshed
out underneath, something which perhaps we should not wish
to arrest if we had power to understand all.

You and I happen to be of the generation whose destiny
it is to begin the battle; and so long as we acquit ourselves
well in our own part we need not concern ourselves with the
unthinkable outcomes. I confess that we are apt to yearn
over the world as if we were gods in whose charge the matter
lay, and as if we must already have been guilty of some neg
ligence, or the trouble would never have reached its pres
ent dimensions. The crash is indeed so tremendous that it
destroys all our apparatus of thought. Whatever bit of
cleverness we seize upon as a life preserver turns out to be
a sinker. We cannot grasp the situation or size it up intel
lectually. We must walk the waves or we drown.

Does not all this give us a wholesome view of life? And
has not the war done more to cure the ails of philosophy than
a thousand years of any other religion? It has faced us with
the spiritual realities, and has caused the rest of life's ap
pearances to evaporate. I say that we are all of us morally
in the same position as the young volunteers whose whole
duty is done when they enlist, only our enlistment is not so
simple a matter, and not evidenced by singing, marching,
dying. The war is in the air we breathe and is changing us
all, day by day, into a new kind of men and women; and
though the oxidization be as slow as that which turns a dead
tree in the forest into moss, we may be sure that it progresses
unceasingly, and is a part of the everlasting process of na
ture. Changes are also taking place in Germany; there is
nothing indestructibly permanent about German militarism.
It may look the same on the outside as it looked six months

670 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ago, but there are differences, — ten million million progres
sive differences, — which we are helping to accelerate.

The war is in the air we breathe, — the air which accepts
and transmits our volition like an electrical force. This
volition shows itself most notably in two forms; first in
assisting the business of the war, and second, in spreading
the religion of the war. The two are in real life so com
mingled that you can scarcely distinguish between them.
But one thing is certain: — the religion is the important part.
The bandages and munitions alone would neither win the
war nor save the world. The impulse behind them is what
is saving the world.

By the inexorable logic of fate we are forced to become
unselfish. Every day reveals to each of us some new form
of this same idea, some new and deeper aspect of the war.
Expediency, which generally throws its weight in human
affairs on the side of self-interest and materialism, — expedi
ency, which usually makes men selfish, presses upon us in
this case with the weight of the universe and crushes us into
faith and virtue. Faith and virtue are the issue. The
struggle is to preserve them and keep them alive in the
world. Now we see and feel that the only things that will
keep them alive are virtue and faith.

There lives in my street a young married woman who
works hard over Red Cross matters, — so hard in fact that
some one remonstrated with her, fearing she might injure
her health. She replied that she had no fears. " How should
I get tired, with God in my heart? " I have often remem
bered this speech. Truly it seems at present as if any one
who does anything whatever with God in his heart is fighting
the war.

Thus has the lens of this terrible war focalized the spirits
of men and brought us all into a new communion. We feel
the current in almost all those whom we meet, and even the
most commonplace among them seem to tingle with eternal
truth. JOHN JAY CHAPMAN.

OBSTACLES IN THE WAY OF
DRAFTING ALIENS

BY ALBERT H. WASHBUBN

SOME years ago, in an official despatch to one of our for
eign ministers, Mr. Blaine remarked:

It is notorious that the impressment of American seamen into the
naval service of a foreign power was at one time a serious grievance,
not to be acquiesced in, and raised a question upon which all parties in
this country were unanimous in regarding as one of international char
acter. (For. ReL, 1881, p. 757.)

With becoming diplomatic restraint, the one time Secre
tary of State here points to the historic source of the policy
exempting aliens from compulsory military service, which is
just now in so many quarters the object of much misunder
standing and resentment. There is hardly a school boy who
does not know that the practice of impressment on land and
sea ultimately became the overshadowing grievance which
prolonged, if it did not cause, the War of 1812. Even in
the obscure beginnings of this controversy, the two govern
ments were deadlocked on an issue of law. Nobody denied
the right of the British Government to compel military
service of its own subjects and in the enforcement of
such service to exercise, with proper limitations, in time of
war, at least, the right of visitation and search. Many Brit
ish sailors, however, were able to show American citizenship
papers. It was charged, and it was probably true, that some
of them had been fraudulently obtained. Could the allegi
ance of a subject be renounced at will, and did naturalization
bind the government which did not consent to it? While
Congress, beginning with the act of March 26, 1790, passed
measures, from time to time, to enable alien whites to become
citizens, it must be remembered that at this stage the status
of naturalized citizens or subjects had received scant atten
tion either in treaty or municipal law. As late as 1830, Mr.

672 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Justice Stoiy, speaking for our Supreme Court in Shanks vs.
Dupont, 3 Pet. 246, declared the general rule to be that no
persons could by any act of their own without consent of the
government, put off their allegiance and become aliens.
The precise point here decided turned upon the construction
of a clause in the Jay treaty of 1794 and it is significant that
at the same term of the Court the same justice, in a contempo
raneous case (3 Pet. 162), cited with apparent approval the
axiom " that each government had a right to decide for itself
who should be admitted or deemed citizens." It was not,
however, until nearly forty years afterwards that Congress
in the act of July 27, 1868, formally proclaimed the doctrine
that " expatriation is an inherent right."

It is easy to understand how, in the light of this confused
state of the early law, the status of naturalized aliens pre
sented a formidable barrier to any treaty of peace, and why
the treaty of 1815 was silent upon this vital point, but the
fact remains that, whether by tacit agreement or otherwise,
the question of impressment never thereafter seriously threat
ened the peaceful relations of the two nations.

The stand thus taken in the formative period of our
national history was very definitely to influence our future
policy. It led Mr. Elaine to observe immediately after the
sentence quoted from the above-mentioned despatch that
" public sentiment here in regard to that subject was borne
in mind during the late Civil War."

By 1861 the right of nations to naturalize foreigners
without regard to their primitive allegiance had been very
generally affirmed by the leading text book writers, but
the right of expatriation, which would seem logically to flow
from the operation of any system of naturalization, did not
find the same universal acceptance. This seeming incon
sistency apparently rested upon the theory that naturaliza
tion is a matter of municipal law, whereas expatriation is a
matter of public law. There has been, as is well known, an
irreconcilable conflict between the naturalization laws of the
United States and the military laws of Prussia. Russia has
persisted down to the recent present, anyway, in denying
the right of expatriation and this attitude led a few years
ago to the abrogation of the treaty of 1832. The State
Department note of July 29, 1881, is fairly typical of our
unwavering protest against any interference with the liberty
of naturalized American citizens of Russian birth travelling

OBSTACLES IN DRAFTING ALIENS 673

in Russia. Therein our Minister was instructed to advise the
Minister of Foreign Affairs that:

We can make no new treaty with Russia, nor accept any con
struction of our existing treaty, which shall discriminate against any
class of American citizens on account of their religious faith.

Wheaton gives 1870 as the date of England's abandon
ment of the claim that her subjects carried their national
character with them wherever they went.

On the other hand, the status of domiciled foreigners
whose alienage was unchallenged was reasonably fixed and
definite when the Civil War began. The differences which
were presently to develop grew mainly out of the American
contention that alien exemption shifted into liability upon the
taking out of first citizenship papers. Tracing the swift
unfolding of a threatened entanglement of no mean propor
tions, Secretary Seward had declared in August, 1862 :

I can hardly suppose that there exists, anywhere in the world, the
erroneous belief that aliens are liable here to military duty.

And the following month, in a letter to Governor Morton
of Indiana, he wrote:

There is no principle more distinctly and clearly settled in the law
of nations, than the rule that resident aliens not naturalized are not
liable to perform military service. We have uniformly claimed and in
sisted upon it in our intercourse with foreign nations.

This declaration went no further than to assert that
resident aliens were not liable to perform military duty
in the service of the United States. It did not undertake to
say at what point of time an alien by some voluntary act of
his own ceased to be an alien and, as such, immune from
military conscription of any kind.

The reason which forced Seward to define the Ameri
can position was, of course, simple. He was spurred thereto
by the activity of the representatives in Washington of vari
ous foreign Powers. During the summer of 1862 the State
Department was informally advised that British subjects
who had merely declared their intention to become citizens
of the United States were expressing apprehension that they
might be drafted into the militia. The Secretary replied in
a note to Mr. Stuart, the charge, that none but citizens were
liable to militia duty. A little later, on October 24th, the
VOL. ccvn.— NO. 750 43

674 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

real point in issue loomed into full view, when Seward again
wrote to Stuart :

I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your note of yes
terday, and, so far as it relates to the liability of aliens who may have
exercised the right of suffrage to military duty in this country, to state
in reply that no doubt is entertained upon that point by this depart
ment. Aliens who exercise that right are considered as citizens of the
States where they reside, and, as such, are within the purview of the
law which requires all such citizens between the ages of eighteen and
forty-five, with certain specific exemptions, as liable to be drafted into
the militia. A person may be a citizen of a State, and, as such, entitled
to vote therein, without being a citizen of the United States.

At this stage Lord Lyons took up the cudgels and in a
trenchant letter to Seward, based upon cases arising in Wis
consin and Illinois, developed the argument that native born
British subjects were voting under a state law not purport
ing to naturalize them, but conferring, for reasons of local
policy, the privilege of voting notwithstanding alienage; that
the United States did not regard them as citizens nor extend
them protection as such; that they were not admitted to the
full privileges of citizenship, and consequently they ought
not to be subjected to its peculiar burdens; and finally
that* the power of naturalization rested exclusively in the
Federal Government (Idem, p. 413) . The French Minister,
Mercier, doubtless acting in full understanding with his Brit
ish colleague, coincidently took similar ground and to him,
on November 10th, the Secretary answered:

This is a complex government, consisting of State governments,
within their sphere independent of the federal government ; the federal
government, in its sphere, independent of the State governments. Col
lisions between them cannot be prevented by executive action. They
must, however, be reconciled when they have occurred. The govern
ment calls on the States to furnish troops by draft of the militia. The
States determine for themselves who constitute the militia, and they
make a draft. * * * If the governor of a State errs and subjects
to military duty a person who is entitled to exemption on the ground
of alienage, a question is thus raised between the United States and
the nation which is entitled to protect the complainant. This depart
ment then receives and effectually decides the case.

Up to this time, then, the status of aliens who had de
clared their intent to become American citizens, without hav
ing taken out their final citizenship papers, was no nearer
final settlement in an international sense than it had been
in the administration of Madison. It was still further com-

OBSTACLES IN DRAFTING ALIENS 675

plicated by a provision which had crept into the constitutions
of some of the newer States — especially the States of the
West, pursuant to which a declaration of intention to acquire
citizenship under the laws of the United States made the
maker of it a citizen of that State. Many State constitutions
make United States citizenship the test of State citizenship,
but there are at the present moment nearly a dozen States
which make declared intent the test. This anomaly has had
some curious results. Not long ago, it was reported in the
public press that the two United States senators from
Indiana besought the President to promulgate regulations to
prevent an enemy alien without his final papers from assum
ing the office of mayor of Michigan City. The United States
courts were likewise appealed to, but the federal judge
returned the rather obvious answer that he was powerless to
interfere under the law. A constitutional amendment to bar
aliens from voting has, it is true, been introduced, but such an
amendment, if submitted by Congress to the several States,
would be ineffective at the present juncture. A bill has also
been offered to prevent first paper alien enemies from voting
for federal offices, but legislation of this kind is confronted
with Article I and the recently adopted Seventeenth Amend
ment of the Constitution, providing that the electors in each
State voting for members of the House and Senate " shall
have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most
numerous branch of the State legislature."

But to revert to the state of affairs existing at the close of
1862, Congress presently intervened to hold up the hands of
the State Department. By the act of March 3, 1863, it was
declared that all able-bodied male citizens of the United
States and " persons of foreign birth who shall have declared
on oath their intention to become citizens " between the ages
of twenty and forty- five years were liable to perform military
duty. By an amendatory act of February 24, 1864, it was
further expressly provided that no person of foreign birth
should on account of alienage be exempted from enrollment
or draft who had at any time assumed the right of a citizen
by voting at an election held under authority of the laws of
any State or territory, or of the United States, or who had
held any office under such laws.

Here was fuel for a very pretty international quarrel in
an awkward hour, but the unequivocal stand on the part of
Congress had one immediate effect — it cleared the diplomatic

676 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

atmosphere. The Powers most concerned accepted the new
legislation without further serious protest. Great Britain met
the changed situation by proposing that British subjects
who had merely declared their intention to assume American
citizenship without having exercised any political franchise
ought to be allowed a reasonable period either to exercise
the option of leaving the United States, or of continuing to
reside therein with the annexed conditions. Lincoln adopted
this suggestion, and in the proclamation of May 8, 1863,
announced that no plea of alienage to support military ex
emption would be allowed in favor of any person who had
declared his intention to become a citizen, and thereunder
at any time had exercised the right of suffrage or any other
political franchise, nor on behalf of any person of foreign
birth who, having declared on oath his intention to become
a citizen of the United States, should be found within the
United States after the expiration of a period of sixty-five
days from the date of the proclamation. In a foot-note to
the fourth edition of Halleck's International Law, published
in 1908, and revised by Sir G. Sherston Baker, an English
authority, it is said of this action of the United States that
" it was tacitly acquiesced in by the British Government."

Our Minister at Stockholm reported on June 20, 1863,
that the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Sweden and Norway
took no exception to the President's proclamation and that
instructions had been issued " that all Swedes or Norwegians
' who had declared on oath their intention to become citizens
of the United States, under the laws thereof/ had forfeited all
claim to protection from the laws of their native country and
were aliens." (Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, page
1216.) It should be noted here that by Article 1 of the
Naturalization Convention of 1869 with Sweden and Nor
way it is expressly provided that " the declaration of an
intention to become a citizen of one or the other country has
not, for either party, the effect of citizenship legally
acquired."

To the general acquiescence in the American contention
there was, it appears, one lone exception. The Minister of
Switzerland, residing at Paris, relying upon the exceptional
stipulations contained in the Swiss treaty, lodged a protest
with Mr. Dayton, our Minister to France, and Mr. Seward
made this the occasion of the following comment upon the
proclamation and the law upon which it was based;

OBSTACLES IN DRAFTING ALIENS 677

But it was forseen that some emigrants, who had declared their
intention, might complain of surprise if they were immediately sub
jected to conscription. To guard against this surprise the proclamation
was issued, giving them ample notice of the change of the law, with the
alternative of removal from the country if they should prefer removal
to remaining here on the footing on which Congress had brought them.
Surely no foreigner has a right to be naturalized and remain here,
in a time of public danger, and enjoy the protection of a government,
without submitting to general requirements needful for his own secur
ity. The law is constitutional, and the persons subjected to it are no
longer foreigners, but citizens of the United States. The law has
been acquiesced in by other foreign powers, and I am sure that Switz
erland cannot be disposed to stand alone in her protest against it.

This was in July, 1863. The foreign born then, as now,
made up a substantial percentage of our urban population,
especially in the large cities, and some of them were inevitably
caught in the military drag-net following conscription legis
lation, but, save for the class of cases just noted, which were
based upon express acts of Congress, there was not, as Secre
tary Bayard observed in 1888, a single instance throughout
the Civil War where an alien was held to military duty when
his Government called for his release.

The rule that aliens are exempt from military service has
some exceptions, which are, when examined, more apparent
than real. It is generally recognized that domiciled foreign
ers may be required to serve in the militia or the civic and
national guard for the preservation of order and the enforce
ment of the laws within a reasonable distance of their place
of domicile. Halleck says that such duty is, however, re
garded as of a civil rather than of a military character and
does not include service against a foreign enemy nor general
military service in civil war. Madison, apparently, had such
a distinction in mind when, in 1804, as Secretary of Stcite,
he wrote to Monroe, then in England, that citizens or sub
jects of one country residing in another could never be right
fully forced into military service "particularly external
service." (Moore, Int. Law Digest, vol. iv., p. 52.)

Professor Moore quotes Mr. Seward as saying in 1867:

In the absence of treaties, citizens of the United States who have
become and are remaining domiciled in foreign countries could not be
exempt from certain common obligations of citizens of those countries
to pay taxes and perform duties imposed for the preservation of public
order and the maintenance of the Government.

This statement was made in connection with the case of
two American citizens named Albee and Gordon, who claimed

678 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

exemption from enrollment in the national guard during an
insurrection in the Argentine Republic in 1866. The treaty
of 1853 between the Argentine Republic and the United
States expressly exempted citizens of the United States
residing in the Argentine Republic " from all compulsory
military service whatsoever, whether by sea or by land."
In harmony with this theory, Secretary Fish said in 1876
that the fact that a resident in Chile was a citizen of the
United States did not, there being no relevant treaty stipula
tion, exempt him from service in a temporary civic guard
in which all residents were required by law to serve.

This brief review, even if it stood alone, would disclose
a sufficient reason for halting any overnight reversal of a long
continued practice. But it does not stand alone. It would
be strange indeed if a policy, so consistently adhered to,
were not reflected in various treaty stipulations based upon
mutuality. Such conventional arrangements first began
to appear about the middle of the last century. Thus we
have treaties providing for mutual exemption of nationals
from compulsory military service with the Argentine Repub
lic 1853, Belgian Congo 1891, Costa Rica 1851, Honduras
1864, Italy 1871, Salvador 1870, Servia 1881, Spain 1902,
Switzerland 1850. The usual type of covenant differs little
from that found in the Argentine treaty already quoted.
In the case of Italy and Servia the language employed is
still more definite and precise, the Italian stipulation provid
ing for exemption " either on land or sea, or in the regular
forces, or in the national guard, or in the militia."

To be sure there is nothing sacred about a treaty. It
stands on the same footing as an act of Congress. Neither
is inherently superior to the other. A treaty may supersede
a law or Congress may by law repeal a treaty — only, as the
Supreme Court has said:

When the two relate to the same subject, the courts will always
endeavor to construe them so as to give effect to both, if that can be
done, without violating the language of either. (124 U. S. 194.)

In the famous Chinese Exclusion cases, it was repeatedly
stated in effect that before an intention could be imputed to
Congress to violate an important article of a treaty with a
foreign Power such intention must be clearly and unequivo
cally manifested, and the language of the law which is sup
posed to constitute the violation must admit of no other
reasonable construction.

OBSTACLES IN DRAFTING ALIENS 679

Congress by a majority vote could, tomorrow, with the
assent of the Executive, abrogate every existing treaty; it
could of course by a two-thirds vote accomplish this result in
spite of the Executive. Mr. Justice Gray thus tersely puts
the rule:

In our jurisprudence, it is well settled that the provisions of an act
of Congress, passed in the exercise of its constitutional authority, on
this, as on any other subject, if clear and explicit, must be upheld by
the courts, even in contravention of express stipulations in an earlier
treaty. (149 U. S. 720.)

There is, however, a decent and orderly way of abrogating
a treaty by giving formal notice of termination in accordance
with its terms. And it is not to be lightly assumed that the
legislative branch of the government will do any arbitrary
thing which will give color to the charge of bad faith. Still
less is it likely unheedingly to overturn a policy which rests
not only upon explicit treaty provisions, but, also, in the
absence of any treaty, upon comity and reciprocity. Such a
course would only invite reprisals upon our citizens residing
abroad.

Alienage as a basis for exemption — however well
grounded in public law it may be — undoubtedly involves
some inequality and hardship for the native citizen living on
his native soil. It was recently reported in the press that, in
one country in Nebraska alone, 736 first paper voters of Ger
man birth had claimed exemption from military service on the
ground that they were enemy aliens. These figures do not
seem to match up with General Crowder's recent report to
the Secretary of War, and their accuracy is open to challenge.
But taking them at their face value, this exemption claim is
strictly in accordance with the selective service law, which
limits, within the prescribed ages, liability to all male
citizens " or male persons not alien enemies who have declared
their intention to become citizens." Declarants of German
birth who have taken out their first papers are thus, within
the purview of the law, alien enemies, just as are unnatural-
ized Germans who have never made any application what
ever. Such persons would not knowingly be accepted for
service.

The number of declarants who may be described as allied
aliens or neutral aliens is, as might be expected, large. The
Crowder report shows that of the 1,243,801 aliens who were
registered under the selective service law 921,018 were either

680 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

co-belligerents or neutrals. As to them, the Provost Marshal
General says:

It seems probable that while allied and neutral aliens are more
sympathetic in their attitude toward the selective-service law than are
aliens allied with the enemy, their sympathy does not very often find
expression in an eagerness to serve in the army.

The report further states "that the benefit of alienage,
over and above all other grounds for exemption and dis
charge, amounted to 10 per cent," and " it appears that four
in ten aliens were enabled to avoid service in other ways than
by claiming alienage."

It goes without saying that any policy that even seems
to place the alien in a position of vantage over the humblest
citizen is bound to provoke an antagonism which will ulti
mately force some readjustment. It has been held that Con
gress may expel aliens of a particular class, or permit them
to remain under such conditions as it may impose. From this
it follows that a system of registration and identification may
be provided (149 U. S. 714) . Machinery of registration and
identification is, in fact, at this moment actively in operation
as a preliminary step to effective control over alien enemies.

As to neutral or allied aliens, the problem is different. So
called alien slacker legislation is now being actively agitated
and pressed, but, if such legislation should prove to be too
drastic, it would probably be smothered or vetoed. In its
stead there may be a resort to some modification of the Lin
coln proclamation of May, 1863. What is still more prob
able, in the case of allied aliens especially, is that treaty
revision will attempt to reach the more glaring inequalities.
Indeed it has been officially announced that such treaty
revision with Great Britain and Canada, which not only deals
with the status of first paper citizens of British birth, but
which also provides an adequate method for the military en
listment of nationals of each power dwelling in the territory
of the other, has been submitted for ratification.

To state the case in a single sentence, alien exemption and
liability, while they cannot be altogether divorced from mu
nicipal law — that is neither possible nor desirable — come
peculiarly within the scope of international law and practice.
No settlement of a question beset with so many diplomatic
pitfalls and potential of such far-reaching political conse
quences can possibly be lasting which ignores this funda
mental truth. ALBERT H. WASHBURN.

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS
RECONSIDERED

BY H. E. BARNES

IN any attempt, however modest, to reconsider the evolu
tion of Anglo-American relations, it is necessary to assume
at the outset a broad standpoint of interpretation. The es
sential futility of episodical history in general has been
sufficiently demonstrated by such historians as Lamprecht
in Germany, Seignobos in France, Green, Maitland and
Vinogradoff in England, and McMaster, Turner, Shotwell,
Robinson and Hayes in America. No time need be wasted
in pointing out the fact that this type of history has been
equally disastrous in interpreting the development of the
relations between Great Britain and the United States. The
general misinformation and misunderstanding which exist
on this subject today is as much due to the fact that Anglo-
American relations have been studied in terms of the Stamp
Act, the Boston Tea-Party, the Wyoming Massacre, the
Chesapeake-Leopard episode, the Trent Affair, and the
Venezuela boundary dispute, instead of being approached
as a part of the broad problems of imperial administration
and the expansion of the industrial revolution, as it is to the
inaccuracies in the analysis and interpretation of these epi
sodes in the popular text-books and literary histories of the
past.

Any review of the newer interpretation of the history
of Anglo-American relations must necessarily begin with
the era of colonization and the establishment of an Anglo-
American civilization. A distinguished American historian
has aptly remarked that any attempt correctly to interpret
the American Revolution is bound to fail unless one grasps
the fact that in the most fundamental sense the American
Revolution was brought to this country by the colonists.

682 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

From the standpoint of social and political psychology there
is undoubtedly a large amount of important truth in this
statement. Those who emigrate from their native country
are invariably the radicals and dissenters at home — the ener
getic, progressive, and adventurous element which is jealous
of external interference from any source. The settlers of
the American colonies were more than religious dissenters:
they were those who were dissatisfied with existing social,
political, and economic institutions in England in the seven
teenth century. The religious situation in England was but
an incident in a more general and fundamental movement.
If these classes were dissatisfied with the relatively radical
British institutions of the seventeenth century, it does not
seem particularly strange that their more progressive de
scendants resented the attempt made after 1760 to establish
in America many of the administrative institutions and prac
tices of a Britain which had grown much more conservative
since 1650.

Not only were the original American colonists the most
radical, restless, and progressive element in the countries
from which they migrated, but also the circumstances of their
life in their new environment tended to make them and their
descendants more radical and more variant from the general
type of the citizens of the mother country.

The political circumstances of the greatest significance
in the period of colonial history which bear upon Anglo-
American relations were the problems connected with the
colonial control of the royal governors, and with the nature
and enforcement of the British colonial commercial policy.

The text-book historians, as well as many of the literary
historians, have taken great delight in exposing in relentless
detail the instances of tyranny on the part of a few royal
governors. One hears much of such men as Berkeley and
Andros, and but little of the " ninety and nine " governors
whose generally satisfactory rule gave their terms of service
no cause for special attention on the part of the colonists
or later historians. Moreover, the authoritative students of
the regime of the colonial governors, such as Professor
Greene, have demonstrated that the powers of the royal gov
ernors were in general very greatly curtailed by the control
of the colonial assemblies over their salaries. In this way
the colonists were able to exact concessions and to secure a
very considerable degree of local freedom and self -govern-

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 683

ment. That the colonists were very well satisfied with this
arrangement is apparent from the fact that one of the most
hated features of the new imperial system which George III
and his ministers attempted to establish in America in 1763
was the proposal to alter the colonial administration in such
a manner as to remove the colonial governors in large degree
from the control of the colonists. The significant fact about
the colonial administrative system is that for a century the
colonists were becoming familiar with and attached to a
system of representative local political institutions which
enabled them to curb and often to control the representa
tives of British authority.

Even more definite and portentous were the traditions
of colonial freedom from active British restraint which were
built up in the same period in the field of commercial rela
tions. The regulation of the commerce of Great Britain and
her dependencies from 1600 to 1760, like that of all other
countries of that time, was governed by the body of politico-
economic theory and practice known as Mercantilism. This
doctrine proceeded upon the unquestioned assumption that
colonies were commercial and financial ventures planned and
executed for the benefit of the mother country and her citi
zens. It was essential, therefore, that colonial trade be care
fully regulated solely in the interests of the colonizing nation.
Such was the theoretical foundation of the British laws which
governed the trade of the American colonies. They were not
an ingenious British invention for the oppression of the
British colonies, but were for two centuries as much the
universally accepted foundations of the economic order as a
protective tariff has been an integral part of the platform
of the Republican party since 1860. Moreover, as Mr.
George Louis Beer has convincingly pointed out in his au
thoritative volumes, the trade restrictions in theory imposed
by Great Britain upon her American colonies were far more
liberal than the similar regulations enacted by the other
European nations. " Legitimate " types of colonial trade
and industry were stimulated by British bounties. Even
more significant is the fact that these relatively liberal trade
restrictions were very laxly enforced by Great Britain, and
remained practically a dead letter down to 1763. Smug
gling was not only common — if not well nigh universal — but
it carried with it practically no moral or social stigma.
Equally important is the fact, pointed out by Professor

684 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Osgood, that in Anglo-American controversies between 1763
and 1775 the old trade laws played little or no part. But if
the trade laws, through laxity of enforcement, in themselves
had little direct influence in bringing on the American Revo
lution, they were indirectly of the greatest importance in
creating the general situation of which the American Revo
lution was a natural and almost inevitable product. The
fact that for a century strongly restrictive laws existed on
the British statute books, but were not consistently enforced
and could be ignored and defied with practical impunity by
the colonists, was an influence scarcely to be exaggerated in
building up that attitude of independence from, and of con
tempt for, British authority which existed in America in
1763. This created a situation which practically assured the
failure of Great Britain when, after 1763, the attempt was
made really to enforce these long ignored and dormant laws.
Finally, along with political and economic influences
which were operating between 1650 and 1760 to produce a
fundamental separation, in fact if not in theory, between
Great Britain and her American colonies, there was also
working a deeper sociological process which produced what
has been most felicitously termed by Professor Becker " the
beginnings of the American people." A widely different
geographic, social, political and economic environment acting
upon a population originally psychologically variant from
the great mass of Englishmen, tended inevitably to create
in the colonies a people who became, generation after gen
eration, more and more divergent from their kinsmen across
the Atlantic. Not only were these environmental influences
working to produce an essential dissimilarity between
Englishmen and Americans, but through the fundamental
uniformity of the American social environment there was
being created a homogeneous and united American people
and the beginnings of a national self -consciousness. The
creation of a distinct American people made it impossible
for them to think or feel as many Englishmen did, greatly
intensified the potentialities for discord and misunderstand
ing, and equally lessened the possibility for harmony, co
operation, compromise, and mutual understanding. To be
sure, the process of unification and amalgamation in the
colonial population was not completed by 1763, but it has
gone far enough to create a strong feeling of national self-
consciousness and of essential independence of England in

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 685

a large and influential portion of the population — large
enough, as subsequent events proved, to be able to force the
Revolution on the remainder of the colonists and to carry it
to a successful termination. Finally, it must not be forgotten
that it was this group in the colonies which has been most
affected by the historical and environmental influences mak
ing for the development of a new American national self-
consciousness which was bound to find the new British
imperial system most oppressive and burdensome to their
personal interests.

Attention may now be turned to a brief analysis of the
nature and the occasion of the institution of the new British
imperial policy in the period following 1763, which, oper
ating in connection with the historical antecedents of a cen
tury, produced the culminating incident of the process — the
American Revolution. It has been the fashion in the past
to represent the origin of the new British system of vigorous
imperial administration as the result of the fatuous arro
gance and tyranny of George III with a view to oppressing
and exasperating the citizens of the American colonies, and
in particular the inhabitants of the city of Boston. A series
of scholarly investigations, most notable among them being
the recent work of Professor Alvord, have, however, forever
discredited this venerable interpretation of the American
Revolution in terms of the personality of George III and
the succession of events in Boston in the period between
1763 and 1775.

It is now generally agreed among scholars that the new
imperial policy — in which such measures as the Stamp Act,
Townsend Acts, and the " Intolerable Acts " were but sub
ordinate incidents — was necessitated on the part of Great
Britain by the greatly increased burden of imperial adminis
tration which had been thrust upon her by the additions of
the vast district in Canada and in the Mississippi Valley
acquired from France in 1763. If Great Britain desired to
retain an effective control over this territory which had been
gained as a result of more than a half -century of intermit
tent conflict with France, it was indispensable that the pre
carious slipshod and haphazard methods of the previous
century of colonial administration be abandoned, and that a
systematic and efficient reorganization of the imperial system
be effected. How little part the personality of George III
played in the initiation of this new imperial policy is evident

686 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

from the fact that all constructive British statesmen of the
period, of all political affiliations, agreed upon the necessity
of establishing a new imperial system; it was only later that
Englishmen split over the question of the advisability of
carrying out the project in spite of colonial resistance. Of
the desirability and necessity of this reform in imperial ad
ministration there can be no doubt, but neither can there
be any uncertainty that the colonial policy of the previous
century, which has been outlined above, had made the possi
bility of the peaceful execution of this new plan extremely
remote. Great Britain had postponed until too late the
attempt to establish a strong system of imperial administra
tion in America.

The entire legality of the measures passed by Great
Britain as a means of putting her new policy into execution
is unquestionable. As Professor Osgood, the leading author
ity on the subject, has clearly pointed out, " the theory of
the English parliamentary control over the colonies was as
fully established and as firmly supported by precedents as
any system could be." The modern theory of direct repre
sentation in Parliament to give validity to a law, was foreign
to the English constitutional system down to 1832. More
over, the whole moral issue involved in the colonial claims
to representation for taxation, falls to the ground when one
understands that Grenville offered to withdraw the British
schemes for taxation and to allow the protesting colonies
to devise a system of taxation through their own representa
tives in the colonial assemblies. Benjamin Franklin, the
American representative at the Court of St. James, was, how
ever, compelled sadly to admit, in answer to Grenville's prop
osition, that the colonists would neither consent to taxation by
England to meet the expenses of colonial administration, nor
would they be able to agree upon any general system of self-
determined and self-imposed taxation.

Not only was the new imperial system constitutionally
legal, but also the scheme of taxation which it was proposed
to institute to support the administration was certainly rea
sonable and relatively equitable. Inasmuch as the money to
be collected was to be expended in the defence and govern
ment of the colonies its purpose was certainly just. Again,
the " incidence of taxation," while not perfectly distributed,
was fairly equitable, as it fell chiefly upon the commercial
classes. But the bourgeoisie in America, as elsewhere, were

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 687

the radicals in political theory and were those who had been
the longest accustomed to, and had profited most from, es
sential independence of British authority. They were, there
fore, the most dangerous class to tax, as England discovered.

The fundamental explanation of why the conflict, implicit
in the nature of things in 1765, should have been brought to
a crisis in the following decade, is to be found in the differ
ences in attitude and in psychology between those English
men who supported the execution of the new and vigorous
imperial policy in spite of colonial opposition, and those
colonists who led the opposition to the new British imperial
ism. In the first place, there was a fundamental difference
between the British Tory who had come into control of Brit
ish policy and the American Patriot in the line of approach
to the conflicting issues. The English statesman who sup
ported and directed the new plan was chiefly interested in the
practical, legal, and administrative aspects of the controversy,
and from this standpoint there was certainly little foundation
or justification for the American position. The Patriot on
the other hand was in reality most concerned with the eco
nomic phases of the new system, but in public utterances
stressed the abstract moral and theoretical aspects of the
questions at issue. There was, therefore, no common meet
ing ground for the contending parties. Equally significant
was the wide diversity between the psychology of the Tory
ministry and that of the Patriot agitators. It was as impos
sible for the inflexible Tories who constituted the " King's
friends " to understand the position and arguments of the
radical Patriot, " replete with sentiments of general liberty,"
as it is for the present day Prussian Junker to interpret the
psychology of the leaders of the Bolsheviki. In other words,
a problem of diplomacy and statesmanship, which would
have taxed the ingenuity of the most congenial minds, was
entrusted to parties who could scarcely have come to prac
tical agreement over questions in regard to which they were
theoretically in perfect harmony.

It is, therefore, of prime importance to keep in mind this
fact that the political policy and circumstances on both sides
of the Atlantic from 1763 to 1773, which led to the outbreak
of the American Revolution, were guided by those classes
in the two countries who were most divergent in character
and viewpoint. Those who were most determined to carry
out Britain's new imperial policy at any cost had to deal

688 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

with those in America who, for diverse reasons, mainly eco
nomic, resented most keenly British interference and were
most attracted by the thought of ultimate independence from
Great Britain. Thus the wide variation between the leaders
in Britain and America in the decade before 1775 is quite
as important in explaining the occasion of the conflict as
in furnishing the basis for interpreting the more fundamental
historical issues. By their inflexible determination to enforce
the new imperial system, the Tory ministry played into the
hands of the radical Patriot minority in America and en
abled the latter to gather a sufficient following to hazard a
war with the mother country.

In April, 1775, owing to the vigorous determination of
the Tory imperialists to carry the new colonial administrative
policy into execution and the uncompromising assertion by
the radical Patriot leaders of virtual colonial autonomy from
imperial control, the Revolution, latent in the general con
ditions of the period, broke out into active conflict. It has
been conventional to picture the American Revolution as the
attempt of united imperial Britain to coerce a group of
highly unified resisting colonists. The writings, however, of
such men as Trevelyan and Fiske, which have revealed the
sympathy of the strongest branch of the English Whigs with
the American cause, and the researches of such writers as
Van Tyne, Fisher, Flick, and Siebert, which have for the
first time presented an appreciation of the strength and na
ture of the Loyalist party in America, have made it clear that
the American Revolution cannot be understood in its broadest
aspects unless it is regarded as in essence a civil war within
the British Empire along class and party lines, rather than
along mere territorial or geographical divisions. It was the
struggle of British and American liberals and radicals against
the policies of British conservatives and imperialists, sup
ported by the American Loyalists.

In 1763 there was general unanimity among British
statesmen as to the necessity of instituting a vigorous and
systematic imperial administrative system. It was only when
it became apparent that the execution of this plan would in
volve an open conflict with the American colonies, and when
the new imperial policy, originally the work of Whigs and
Tories alike, became primarily identified with the programme
of the Chatham Whigs and the Tory party after 1765, that
the Rockingham Whigs split off from the supporters of the

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 689

new imperialism and became sympathetic with the colonial
cause. The remarkable prevalence of Whig sympathy with
the colonial cause in the Revolution is well stated in the
following quotation from Professor Van Tyne's authorita
tive volume on the Revolution :

In and out of Parliament the Whigs rejoiced openly over Amer
ican victories. In the House of Commons it was not unusual to speak
of the American troops as " our armies," and Franklin and Henry
Laurens, the President of Congress, were extravagantly praised.
Newspapers constantly handled Washington with respect. One said,
" There is not a King in Europe but would look like a valet de chambre
by his side." Benedict Arnold, too, before his treason, was a favorite
hero and his picture was everywhere, though after his treason he was
bitterly attacked. Parallels were drawn repeatedly between Hampden
and Montgomery and their causes were said to be the same. The
English Whig journals openly denounced Lord North for having begun
an unjust war which he was incompetent to conduct. Yet the Govern
ment, which before the war had muzzled the press ruthlessly, now
allowed America to be praised, and endured violent attacks upon
itself. When so many people approved such language the administra
tion saw the danger of prosecution. The support of the nation was
given to the defenders of political liberty.

Ample evidence exists that the Whig sympathies re
mained with the Patriots throughout the conflict, especially
significant in this respect being the attitude of the Whig
ministry which came into power with the fall of Lord North
following Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown. In their con
duct of the peace negotiations with the colonists, their atti
tude was so lenient that no less an authority than Professor
John Bassett Moore describes the Treaty of 1783 as the one
by which England gave the most and took the least of any
treaty ever negotiated by Great Britain.

That Americans were similarly divided over the issues
of the Revolution has long been understood by historical stu
dents. American society was divided by the Revolution into
three approximately equal parties. The Patriots, who fur
nished the whole initiative and direction in the Revolutionary
movement, were made up mainly of merchants like John
Hancock, who were interested in resisting the enforcement of
the trade laws, together with a few radical Whig aristocrats
such as Jefferson and the Lees, and parvenu agitators, oppor
tunists and revolutionary agents of the type of Patrick
Henry and Samuel Adams. The Patriots were thus chiefly
composed of those classes who were most directly affected by
VOL. ccvu.— NO. 750 44

690 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the operation of the new British imperial system and who
most perfectly reflected the current American political radi
calism. The Loyalists, who constituted the party of active
opposition to the Revolution, were composed of British offi
cials, honest merchants who were injured by smuggling,
most of the large landholders of the middle colonies, and the
clergy of the Anglican church. The Loyalists were scarcely
depraved and degenerate renegades, but were rather those
classes which constituted the most eminently " respectable "
portion of the colonial population in 1775, and their position
was, to say the least, morally as defensible as that of the
Patriots. Between these two extremes and about equal to
either of the above parties were those, mainly middle-class
farmers, who were generally indifferent to the whole con
troversy and who, as a class, never took any united action in
resisting Great Britain.

As the Patriots were the group who controlled the policy
of the colonists from 1765 to 1783, it is most important to ex
amine their dominating purpose as the party of resistance
to England, to determine whether their party programme
aimed primarily at compromise and conciliation or at ulti
mate independence from Great Britain. Recent scholars
have in general come to accept the position much earlier
stated by authoritative scholars, but most systematically and
comprehensively presented in Mr. Sydney George Fisher's
volumes, which present a mass of incontrovertible evidence
to support his thesis that the real core of the programme of
the radical leaders of the Patriotic party from the beginning
was independence of British control. In other words, the
Declaration of Independence was not the result of a sudden
inspiration, but was the statement at a well chosen time of
the underlying principles that had inspired the Revolutionary
leaders from the beginning of the controversy. Burke's
famous speech on " conciliation " as well as Howe's policy
of conciliation, then, rested on an absurdly erroneous inter
pretation of the motives and policies of the Patriot leaders.

Of course there is always opposed to this view the ostenta
tious documents and letters of the Patriot leaders from 1763
to 1776, which if literally accepted at their face value would
indicate that the nearer the Patriot leaders approached to
July 4th, 1776, the more deeply attached they became to
Great Britain. The whole force of the general situation at
the time, together with the evidence presented by the activi-

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 691

ties and attitude of the Patriots themselves, is opposed to the
old interpretation which unquestioningly accepted as entirely
valid the rhetorical public statements of the Patriot leaders.
In the first place, if the revolutionary leaders had from the
first been bent upon independence they would not have dared
to take this position openly before 1776, for even at that
time there were many who were strongly opposed to the Brit
ish policy since 1763 and who favored resistance to it, but
who were unwilling to go as far as separation and independ
ence. From 1763 to 1776 it was incomparably easier for the
revolutionary party to win support by stressing the alleged
British tyranny than it would have been if the main emphasis
had been placed on the desirability of independence. When
it was agreed among the revolutionary leaders in the early
summer of 1776 that the time had come for a declaration of
separation and independence, if they were to check the
progress of the British campaign of conciliation, they were
under the very urgent necessity of maintaining with great
emphasis their previous loyalty to Great Britain in order to
allay the suspicions and gain the support of those in the anti-
British party who were not yet willing to go as far as separa
tion, and who had hoped for a reconciliation with Great Brit
ain. Finally, one might ask why, if the aim of the Patriots
was not independence, did they not in 1776 accept Great
Britain's conciliatory approaches instead of declaring their
independence and effectively terminating thereafter any real
hope of conciliation and compromise? Perhaps the fact
that some of the prominent Patriot leaders, such as Hancock
and the Adamses, were slated to be hanged in case Britain
regained control of the colonies by war or by negotiation is
of great significance in explaining their attitude.

Though there still may be some room for controversy as
to the historical antecedents and development of the Declara
tion of Independence, there is almost entire unanimity
among historical scholars as to the nature of the document.
With all that literary power which few Americans have been
able to equal, Jefferson gave an elegant form to the political
principles of Locke and a few earlier but less important Eng
lish political theorists. He himself admitted that he made
no pretension to originality of doctrine, but gave to the al
ready extant radical political theory a trenchant and com
pelling statement which it had entirely lacked in the monoto
nous and tortuous phraseology of John Locke's Second

692 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Treatise of Government. The Declaration of Independence,
then, in its doctrinal aspect was not an original product of
colonial thought, but was a most brilliant and effective state
ment of the Whig political theory then current in England.
Whig political theory from England, then, as well as Whig
agitation in England, came to the aid of the colonial cause.
As a summary of British imperial policy and an analysis of
contemporary politics, the only intelligent manner in which
to view the Declaration of Independence is to regard it as
the party platform of a radical minority party which were in
danger of summary punishment for treason if they were not
able to make this platform sufficiently effective so that it
would attract enough of a following to make its policy an
assured success. Jefferson naturally tried to make out the
best possible case to establish the tyranny of the King, since
upon the success of his demonstration depended to a large
degree the sanction which would be given to the radical policy
of separation and independence by the more moderate mem
bers of the anti-British party, the aid of whom was sorely
needed by the radicals.

When one turns to consider the purposes of Great Brit
ain in the American Revolution, nothing could be more
remote from the truth than the conventional picture of the
British conduct of the war which represents Great Britain as
from the beginning stubbornly determined upon a ruthless
and relentless programme of repression, to the execution of
which she bent all her energies under the direction of the
greatest military geniuses at her command. In reality Great
Britain never made any serious attempt to conquer the colo
nists until the summer of 1778, and up to that time had been
constantly in hope of being able to effect a reconciliation.
The Howes, who were in command of the British forces in
America from 1775 to 1778, were radical Rockingham Whigs
who had publicly opposed the coercion of America and were
consciously appointed so that a programme of conciliation
might be carried on in conjunction with a show of arms. Mr.
Paul Leicester Ford has well described the policy of the Brit
ish ministry in sending General Howe to America as " Lord
Howe's commission to pacify the colonies." If it seems
strange to some that the colonists did not accept Howe's
conciliatory advances it is only necessary to remember that
the British proposals did not embrace either colonial inde
pendence or a general amnesty for Patriot leaders. Hence,

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS 698

those who were leading the Revolutionary movement in
America were as vigorously opposed to liberal and concilia
tory proposals by Great Britain as they were to British
conquest by force of arms. Their policies and persons would
have suffered equally in either event. In a most fundamental
sense the Declaration of Independence was a bold counter-
stroke, designed to check the dangerous development of a
powerful movement in the colonies in favor of a pacific
adjustment with Great Britain.

General Howe's whole course in his campaigns was ridic
ulously dilatory and lethargic. He practically converted his
military commission into a commercial enterprise and a season
of social festivities. At any time between 1776 and 1778
a vigorous and determined policy on his part could have com
pletely crushed the colonial resistance, or could have con
verted it into a hopeless and desultory guerilla warfare. The
investigation of the charges of incompetence made against
Howe in 1779, after his recall, was a mere travesty upon a
true and effective inquiry and furnishes an admirable illus
tration of the division of English opinion in regard to the
American Revolution. All in all, the British campaigns in
America from 1775 to 1781 were grotesque examples of in
competence, lack of vigor and purpose, and vacillation, which
contrasted most unfavorably with the conduct of the English
troops shortly afterwards in the Napoleonic wars, as well
as with their prowess previously exhibited in the French and
Indian War.

To conclude the discussion, the following observations
seem justified. The American Revolution was the product
of fundamental historical causes, and was rendered practi
cally inevitable by the circumstances of colonization and the
development in the subsequent century of colonial develop
ment. The possibility of a peaceable adjustment of imperial
problems was destroyed when the control of Anglo-American
relations was entrusted to British conservatives and Ameri
can radicals. This radical Patriot party in America, which
best represented the advanced product of the circumstances
of a century of colonial history, motivated from the beginning
with a dominating desire for independence, forced the Revo
lution on the remaining two-thirds of the population, who
were either indifferent or opposed to the movement, and,
through the aid of the English Whigs, was able to carry its
sweeping programme to a successful termination. Its work

694 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

was not a disinterested struggle to advance the cause of ab
stract liberty among mankind and, therefore, the foundation
for a glorious American epic of deliverance from the oppress
or, but was rather a very striking political and military
achievement in executing an ambitious party programme.
Without attempting to settle finally the problem as to
whether the motives of the Patriots were praiseworthy or
their achievements beneficial, one may safely maintain that
there was surprisingly little in the preliminaries or events of
the American Revolution which can furnish the basis for
lasting animosity between America and Britain. The causes
of the conflict were about equally distributed between the two
countries, and in each the parties favoring and opposing the
American revolutionary movement were about equally di
vided. The forces which are today bringing Great Britain
and the United States into closer harmony and firmer alliance
quite dwarf into insignificance the alleged causes for sus
picion and discord which date back to 1776.

H. E. BARNES.

CLEMENCEAU

BY GKAHAM H. STUABT

To the ordinary American fairly conversant with the
political history of his country, its national politics and poli
cies are inseparably intertwined with the personalities of its
Presidents. Under the Third Republic of France, if Thiers
be eliminated, President before the present constitution was
promulgated, no French President could be named whose
personality has had any lasting influence upon the country's
destiny. Casimir-Perier tried, but soon gave up in dis
gust — even Poincare, who as Prime Minister was a vital
force in the Republic, has been reduced to the same impo
tence which has characterized the Presidents who have
preceded him. The names which stand forth as truly sig
nificant of contemporaneous France, Gambetta, Jules Ferry,
Waldeck-Rousseau, Clemenceau, all have directed her des
tiny from the tribune as Presidents of the Council. But
even Prime Ministers in France have powers of a most
ephemeral sort, and an English critic has asserted that it
would be rash to say that the Third Republic had produced
a politician worthy of the name of statesman. Has the long
political record of the present incumbent of the Premiership
of France been of such a sort that he deserves the name, or
have the people of France in dire need of a statesman given
him a last golden opportunity to merit it?

In order to understand the underlying causes of the fifty
changes of ministry which have occurred between the Franco-
Prussian War and the outbreak of the World War, many
of which were engineered by Clemenceau, a brief considera
tion of the system of government under the present consti
tution of France, and how such a constitution was acquired,
is essential.

696 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

In 1814, after a kaleidoscopic series of changing govern
ments — Bourbon absolutism, red republicanism quickly de
veloping into terrorism, and only checked by Napoleonic
imperialism — France decided to adopt a constitutional mon
archy. Inasmuch as Montesquieu had long since written his
Esprit des Lois, in which he so highly extolled what he
considered to be the English parliamentary system, she
looked no further than across the Channel. The success of
the Constitutional Charter was not all that could be desired ;
Charles X was forced out, the constitution was revised, and
under Louis Philippe we have the most successful working
of parliamentary government in France, if a government
may be called a success which can be overturned with the
ease with which Louis Napoleon succeeded in causing the
downfall of the July monarchy. A new constitution, where
the separation of powers was still more accentuated, was
adopted, but the Napoleonic tradition was not conducive to
republicanism and it was not till almost the end of the em
pire that a parliamentary system was re-established. The
debacle of 1870 engulfed not only the empire, but also the
constitutional regime, and the National Assembly under the
able direction of Thiers was more interested in getting rid
of the Prussian invader than in governing according to a re
publican formula. With the Commune put down and
France redeemed, the jealousies of the various mr >urchical
factions allowed the Republicans to triumph, and Assem
bly was reluctantly forced to draft the consti4 on, which
with few changes is the system of government under which
France exists today.

Clemenceau has said in the Chamber with his accustomed
bluntness that the French Republic is governed incoherently.
A careful scrutiny of the parliamentary system as exhibited
under the Constitution of 1875 will clearly bear out the
criticism. The fundamental weakness is the lack of a re
sponsible head — the President, who is given powers com
mensurate with those of the President of the United States,
has them completely nullified by the necessity of having all
his acts countersigned by a minister, and the ministry, in
stead of being omnipotent as in the English system, is not
merely responsible to its own majority party in Parliament,
but to any individual of any political group. Its downfall
may be caused by an interpellation upon the most trivial
question. The fact that there are no two great parties, but

CLEMENCEAU 697

merely a series of groups, several of which must unite to
form any ministry at all, and the ever existent French
national characteristic of changeability so well summed up
in their proverb, "Otes-toi de la que je m'y mette" clearly
shows how a powerful personality like Clemenceau may
become the terror of weak ministries and obtain the well
deserved epithet of tombeur de ministeres.

When on November 13th last the Painleve Cabinet re
signed after a debate on the Allied War Council, when its
vacillating internal policy regarding Caillaux and Malvy was
especially criticized, President Poincare called upon Georges
Clemenceau to form a Cabinet. In less than twenty-four
hours the veteran parliamentarian had formed a Cabinet
which, following his formal address of ministerial policy,
received a vote of confidence by 418 to 65, 63 of those oppos
ing being Socialists. That a Radical who has as many bitter
enemies as Clemenceau should be able to receive such an
overwhelming vote of approval gives promise that finally
the French Chamber has decided to follow a more vigorous
policy, and has picked the man who, though he has been
accused of many failings, has never been accused by his most
violent enemies of a lack of vigor or of patriotism.

Georges Clemenceau, now seventy-six years of age, was
born in La Vendee, and his character has always shown some
thing of the harshness of his early environment in Brittany.
His father, a stern Republican, who was long imprisoned
for his opposition to Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat of 1851,
brought his son up in the Republican creed, and the son, who
had the greatest respect for his father, never abandoned the
principles so early inculcated. His mother was a very well
educated woman, and herself prepared her son for the High
School at Nantes, where Georges was an excellent orator, but
a rather unpromising student. The one exception was his
quick mastery of the English language, and at a later day
he confessed that this was principally due to his desire to
read Robinson Crusoe.

As his father was a doctor, Georges came to Paris to
study medicine, and in the Quartier latin he became an
ardent enthusiast in the movement termed le reveil de la
jeunesse. Through his knowledge of English he became
acquainted with a wild soldier of fortune named Cluseret,
who had served in the United States Army against the
South, and who with several Yankee friends vehemently

698 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

opposed Napoleon's open encouragement of the Confed
eracy. It was due to this chance acquaintanceship that the
young medical student became acquainted with American
history and felt a desire to see the country — a desire which
he was to gratify sooner than he expected.

Disgusted with political conditions at home, in 1865
he came to America with letters to Horace Greeley, and while
waiting for patients he wrote a little, and later taught French
literature in Stamford College. One of his friends once
declared that all but one of the ladies who came to his courses
were engaged, and she became Mme. Clemenceau. At any
rate he married Miss Mary Plummer, and when he returned
to France in 1869 he took with him his American wife and
child. He settled in Montmartre, which even then was an
unruly quarter, though it had not yet acquired its present
reputation as an abode of cocottes and apaches. During the
Revolution of 1870 he was elected moire of his arrondisse-
ment, and the following year he was sent as a radical dele
gate to the National Assembly, where he became a friend of
Gambetta and aided him in opposition to Bismarck's terms
of peace. When the Assembly removed to Versailles, and
refused to hold any parley with the Commune, Clemenceau,
although not wholly in sympathy with the Commune,
resigned.

The Parisian Government soon afterwards expelled him
from Montmartre, but he immediately helped to found the
League des Droits de Paris, and when the national Govern
ment regained the upper hand, he did all in his power to
save the Communists. He regained his prestige at Mont
martre when the terrible passions of the Commune had
cooled, and he was sent to the Paris Muncipal Council as
its delegate, and remained there for five years, finally be
coming its president. He resigned only to take his place
as a member of the Chamber, where his first speech was a
powerful plea for complete amnesty for the Communists,
and the eloquence and fearlessness of this first speech gave
him a position among the leading Radicals. He did not
cease his agitation until, after a five years' struggle, he gained
his point, and a complete amnesty was declared. It was
at this time that he first came into opposition with M. Ribot,
whom he was to oppose so often in the future.

Clemenceau was one of the few friends of Gambetta, who
aided in resisting Marshal MacMahon in his attempt to dis-

CLEMENCEAU 699

solve the Chamber of October, 1877, and at MacMahon's
downfall Clemenceau wished to see Gambetta president;
but already it was realized that under the recently made
constitution a lay figure was needed for the presidency,
rather than a powerful personality like Gambetta, and the
cautious and parsimonious Grevy was chosen. Gambetta,
keenly aware of the hostility of Grevy, knew that although
he was leader of the majority group of the Republicans he
would never be asked to form a ministry by Grevy except
through pressure. He thereupon changed his tactics, and his
party, the Republican Union, by its tacking and hedging
and throwing overboard many of the fundamental precepts
of the Revolution, and following a policy of opportunism,
completely alienated the Radicals. This group now turned
to Clemenceau as their leader.

It was at this period that Clemenceau started in upon
his campaign of unseating ministries who failed to keep their
promises, a procedure which was to make him the most feared
and most hated man in French public life. There is no
doubt that he used his power insolently; his cutting,
clever speeches, logical but merciless, sought out the vul
nerable spots of his opponents and rent asunder all screens
of hypocrisy as though they were cobwebs. The Fourtou-
BrogHe ministry, de Freycinet two or three times, Jules
Ferry, and even the redoubtable Boulanger himself fell
under his onslaughts. Nor was his oratory bombastic or
violent. In speaking, Clemenceau usually stood with his
hands in his pockets, talked slowly and deliberately, in a
clear but wholly unimpassioned voice. Camille Pelletan,
one of his most faithful adherents, thus described him on the
rostrum : "His movements betray a nervous brusqueness but
mastered by an iron will, by a sangfroid always alert. His
clear, quick, incisive tone compels attention. There is no
ornament except from time to time a biting phrase, or a
word striking in its bitter sarcasm. No desire to embellish
his words or to round out his periods. It is logic blunt and
unanswerable."

Another attribute which contrived to keep him before
the country was his power to strike the public imagination.
No matter what he did, it seemed to be done in a picturesque
fashion, and although bis personality oftentimes failed to at
tract, it never failed to attract attention. In many ways
he might be compared to Roosevelt — an English contem-

700 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

porary has aptly styled him " Neither consistent nor politic,
but always picturesque." Could Roosevelt sum up his own
policy better than Clemenceau has done it for him: (f Vous
serez tou jours fort si vous gouvernez avec le pays" He too
is a coiner of phrases — his term " bloc " to designate the
theories of the Revolution, which he insists must be per
petuated, has served as an apt designation for his party in
the Chamber. It was he who provided Zola with the striking
title J'accuse, for his famous letter which was to pave the
way for the ultimate acquittal of Dreyfus. His phrase, " I
am voting for Loubet," became a political battle cry and
Loubet became President. Strongly opposed to a colonial
policy which now has been proved to have been the one re
deeming feature of the opportunist regime, he drove Jules
Ferry from power with a nick-name, le Tonkinois. His
picturesqueness of diction may be shown by this sentence
from one of his political speeches to his constituents in the
Var: "A minister is nothing at all, a stick floating on
water. You can never thank us too much that we do not
do more harm than we do."

Clemenceau has not merely fought with his pen — he has
always been ready to defend his pen with sword or pistol,
and on many an occasion he has been given opportunity to
do so. It is doubtful whether he himself could say just
how many duels he has fought. Gambetta termed him with
his two fellow radicals, Lockroy and Perin, " The Three
Musketeers." His duels with Paul Deschanel and his most
bitter enemy, Paul Deroulede, are perhaps the most famous,
though his duel with the Prince de Chimay over a news
paper article intimating that the Prince had retained his
American wife's fortune when she ran away with the gypsy
Rigo, gained him the greatest notoriety.

No human being could make as many enemies as Clemen
ceau and hope to go wholly unscathed, and when his fall
came it was overwhelming. The Panama Canal scandal,
which was almost as disastrous to the French bourgeoisie as
the Revolution was to her aristocracy, was the indirect cause.
Since 1878 Clemenceau had been director of a newspaper
La Justice, in which he could freely advocate his policies of
free education and the separation of church and state. A
certain Jewish banker, Cornelius Herz, who at one time had
possessed some shares in La Justice, and who was now sus
pected of having acquired his wealth through his dealings

CLEMENCEAU 701

with de Lesseps, was accused of being assisted in his various
shady transactions by Clemenceau. To accuse Clemenceau
of being wealthy was so ridiculous that he had only to give
proofs of his almost impoverished condition to refute it.
But his enemies were determined to get revenge, and they
next accused him of being unfriendly to the Russian Al
liance which all France was madly enthusiastic over. They
even forged letters in order to convict him of selling out his
country to England. Deroulede made a wild denunciation
of Clemenceau in the Chamber, accusing him to his face of
being a traitor to his country, asserting that his colleagues
shared his views, but were only kept from expressing them
by the fear of the caustic tongue and dueling ability of
Clemenceau. The great Radical leader listened quietly to
the denunciation and answered it in one short sentence, " M.
Deroulede, you lie." The duel which followed settled noth
ing. The press took up the affair and all the so-called
proofs were shown to be forgeries, but the tide of Clemen-
ceau's popularity had turned and he was ruined politically.
The greatness of the fall of one who had so long pos
sessed almost autocratic power might have been expected
to cause a complete withdrawal from the public eye, for a
time at least. To Clemenceau it simply meant that, Phoe
nix-like, an author was to arise from the dead ashes of a
politician. He contributed numerous articles to the daily
press; tried fiction and the drama. A play produced at the
Renaissance was fairly successful and his novel Les Plus
Forts, a keen satirization of modern social conditions, though
crude in places, was powerful. As a philosopher he was even
more successful, and the brilliant series of essays entitled
Le Grand Pom, gave him the reputation of being a
profound and logical thinker. However, his favorite
medium of expression was the press, and a newspaper,
LSAurore, which he established and directed during this
period, was the real factor in his political rehabilitation.
The Dreyfus affair gave him his great opportunity. He
was one of the first to be convinced of the innocence of the
Jewish officer and he immediately opened the columns of
his paper to Zola and other defenders. He, himself, wrote
a series of polemics in defence of the unfortunate Dreyfus,
which by their sustained power of attack and keen incisive
logic, caused the justly fearful defenders of Henry and
Esterhazy to curse silently the unbridled freedom of the

702 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

press. Before Dreyfus had finally seen the last blot on his
honor erased, Clemenceau had been returned to the political
arena as a Senator, by the same district which had cast him
out so indignantly as a Deputy some years before.

It might seem as though fate had chosen his reappearance
at a time when his invective and merciless satire would have
boundless opportunities. The Waldeck-Rousseau ministry
had just come to an end, the longest and one of the ablest
ministries of the Third Republic, and what is still more re
markable, one which came to an end by the voluntary retire
ment of the premier. The new ministry under Emile
Combes, a radical whose anti-clerical propensities were of an
ultra violet hue, was to bring France to its lowest point of
political degeneration. The sinister influence of the Social
ist, Jaures, was felt in every decree of the Chamber. The
Act of Separation of 1906, which had severed the relations
between the Church and State, was carried out with brutal
severity towards the religious orders. As the pursuit of
internationalism quickened, the need of military prepared
ness seemed to vanish, and the term of military service, al
ready down to three years, was reduced one more. Huge
posters on walls and buildings called to the people to join with
their German brothers and crush out the military despotism
of the army. The Minister of War was more interested in
reports of the petty jealousies of the army brought to him by
his Freemason spies, than in maintaining an effective military
force. Patriotism was a myth. Never did Clemenceau
have a more fitting subject than Combes, and never did he
use his caustic pen to better effect. The reaction came and
once more a ministry had fallen at the hands of the Tiger.

The Rouvier ministry tried valiantly to cope with the
storm which the one patriotic member of the former cabinet
had aroused by his strengthening French influence in Mo
rocco. This was interfering with German plans, and al
though Delcasse had been held over as the most able man
whom France possessed for the direction of Foreign Affairs,
he was now sacrificed, and Algeciras showed France inter
nationalism from the German point of view. The weak
Sarrien ministry which followed had several strong men in it,
but the man who was to have the real power was the Minister
of Interior, Georges Clemenceau. Before the year was
over President Fallieres had asked him to become the
nominal as well as the actual head of the cabinet.

CLEMENCEAU 70S

Now that the great destroyer of cabinets had at last be
come President of the Council, what sort of policy might
he be expected to pursue? His enemies had always claimed
that he had no policy other than the destruction of others —
" this parliamentary musketeer, this d'Artagnan of the ex
treme left, without principles or prejudices," as the well
known French critic, Ernest-Charles, writes — what sort of
policy could such a man pursue? His great catch-phrase
" the Revolution is a bloc," although used with great success
as a party slogan meant nothing after all. He had always been
against the Empire, but the imperial ghost no longer stalked.
His hostility to the church can be best expressed by his own
suggestion to the priests : " Gentlemen, the other world is
a very fine place, go and rule in it." He had declared that
ministers did not wish to act ; they wished to live. Could con
structive statesmanship be expected from such a man?

His fearlessness and disregard for criticism were im
mediately shown by choosing as Minister of War, General
Picquart, who as a colonel, had sacrificed his future military
career in befriending Dreyfus. At an early Parliamentary
session, instead of side-stepping the redoubtable Jaures, he
met him on his own ground, and the result was one of the
greatest debates that the Chamber had ever listened to. All
Paris was delighted — his ministry was established. The
treatment which he accorded the Church will always do him
honor, for notwithstanding his cynical regard for both the
Pope and the Concordat, he realized that French Catholics
were French people and treated them accordingly. His
policy in regard to strikes and labor agitation was not so well
considered — in fact in its quick changes from iron handed
suppression to the most indifferent laissez oiler it was no
policy at all. In his absolute control of the prefectures
throughout the country, an excellent political machine of
French model, and in his utter disregard for the Chamber
which he lorded over, he hardly carried out the ideals of
popular government which he had so often expressed. An
Englishman has thus picturesquely characterized him: " M.
Clemenceau in power dropped principles, battle cries and
dogmas, though chosen because of them. He kept the coun
try down to facts and Parliament kept him in office accord
ingly."

Fortunately the final judgment of a ministry's perform
ance is not confined wholly to internal affairs, even though

704 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the prime minister retains the Portfolio of Interior. Cle-
menceau had picked as his Minister of Foreign Affairs the
same man who holds the office today, his friend Stephen
Pichon, a man who had already served his country in many
capacities, as deputy from Paris, as minister in Santo Do
mingo, as resident-general of Tunis, as ambassador to China
during the Boxer Rebellion, and whose fearlessness and
ability were now to have their greatest test. Marianne could
smile once more when the Kaiser snarlingly recoiled pour
mieux sauter, after Algeciras had shown that international
highwaymen do not always get away with the spoils ; but the
thought of Tangier would always bring the blush of shame
to her cheek until she alone, with the world looking on in
stead of helping, could answer the Teutonic savage in a way
that even he might appreciate. Casablanca gave her the
chance. The Prussian war-lord once more demanded that
France cringe before him. The Schnaebele Affair, Fa-
shoda, Tangier — must France always cower — would the man
who had faced death a score of times without fear tremble
when he held his country's destiny instead of a revolver in
his hands? Clemenceau was true to his creed. He refused
the demand, not in the devious fashion of diplomacy, but
flatly and without excuse. The Kaiser's bluff was called.
The next time he would wait until he wished to strike before
speaking. France will never say that the Ministry of Cle
menceau was a failure. Victor Berard, writing in the conser
vative Revue de Paris a few months afterwards, well ex
pressed the feeling of France : " Too high praise can never be
given to the Clemenceau-Pichon Ministry for the service
which they rendered at that time, not only to our own
national interests, but to the cause of European peace. M.
Clemenceau by his firmness in November, 1908, has been, I
believe, the best workman of the present accord."

It was one of the weird paradoxes of politics that his
second fall was to a great extent due to the very incident
the painful memories of which his strong policy had almost
obliterated. Delcasse had attacked the ministry's naval
policy on many occasions — he had even brought about the
downfall of the Minister of Marine, following the explosion
on the Jena — but for once Clemenceau's bitterness carried
him too far. In attacking his rival he evoked the incident
of Tangier, which all France wished to forget. Even his
own valiant efforts to give her the right to forget could not

CLEMENCEAU 705

save him, and his cabinet met the fate that he had so often
prepared for others.

Almost a decade has passed and although " the Tiger "
has grown old he has ever kept his claws sharpened for the
enemies of France. She had but to call. Once more fight
ing her greatest fight for freedom, France must struggle
not only against the foreign foe, but against the more in
sidious attacks which are being made at her very heart, and
by those whom she has given the honor to be her protectors.
Caillaux, a minister in Clemenceau's former cabinet, and
afterwards Prime Minister himself; Malvy, Minister of In
terior under Caillaux and carried over by Viviani; Humber,
senator and proprietor of Le Journal; Turmel, member of
the Chamber; Leymarie, head of the Secret Service: what a
roll of dishonor! Never was there a more crying need for
a stern, ruthless leader who will crush out treachery where-
ever it raises its head. All France aroused has called him.

Who could resist this appeal of the brave women of
d'Oberville-en-Caux : "We women of France, mothers,
wives, sisters of the brave soldiers of Normandy, profound
ly indignant at the scandals of treason, the horror of which
has penetrated into the depths of our country, we arise to
cry vengeance against the traitors who strike our brave loved
ones in the back while offering their blood so valiantly to our
dear native land. To you M . le President du Conseil, to
you, tireless fighter, champion of justice, Frenchman and
patriot we appeal — we rally under your flag, the emblem
of energy — we have faith in your standard."

This desire for Clemenceau made itself felt in the Cham
ber when the vote of confidence was taken, and if his speech
may be considered an outline of his policy, France will not
look to him in vain. A cold, dispassionate speech perhaps,
but the hidden fire of patriotic purpose beneath it — the
patriotism of a man who knows no fear, whose heart beats but
for France, who believes in her destiny and will battle to the
last ounce of his strength to keep her in the place where her
valiant sons have gladly given their blood to place her—
la France eternelle.

GRAHAM H. STUART.

VOL. ccvii. — NO. 750 45

THE STRATEGIC RETREAT OF THE
GERMAN LANGUAGE PRESS

BY CLYDE WILLIAM PARK

IT is doubtful whether official Germany will give her
journalistic apologists in America full credit for their diffi
cult struggle amid the trying conditions which followed the
entrance of the United States into the war. On the con
trary, it seems likely that she will single them out for par
ticular " hate," because they have failed to make her suffi
ciently loved, feared, or respected to accomplish her aims
in this part of the world. She will of course resent even more
deeply their failure to neutralize the loyal Americanism that
has nearly everywhere been shown by citizens of German
ancestry. Lest Germany, with characteristic ingratitude,
should deprive her long-suffering adherents of deserved rec
ognition, it should be noted that some of them have done all
that an aroused public opinion would permit, in order to
further her interests. If they have finally turned against
her, or have at least outwardly abandoned her cause, it is
only after a masterly retreat and a period of stubborn
resistance.

At the beginning of the war, to be sure, there were abund
ant protestations of loyalty. No other attitude could have
been openly avowed. The mental, or sentimental, reserva
tion, however, which accompanied the statement of editorial
policy, was often sufficiently evident. More often, the reser
vation was indicated by the unsympathetic tone of subsequent
expressions concerning America's part in the war — a series
of outbursts which in their diminishing frequency and in
tensity marked the gradual subsidence of adverse editorial
opinion. The change from unqualified pro- Germanism to a
fairly consistent, though at times perfunctory, Americanism
was thus brought about by such gentle degrees as to give no
shock to any of the Kaiser's well-wishers. How complete

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE PRESS 707

a revision of editorial attitude was necessary can be appreci
ated when it is recalled that before the war, expressions like
the f olio wing> from the Detroit Abend Post of February 1,
1917, were very common:

Germany is showing the United States a way to avoid any risk for
her ships and for American passengers. Now has come the time for
Wilson to show whether he is a great President or only an unworthy
servant of England and her financial agent in America, J. P. Morgan.

The extent of the ground covered by the retreat may be
seen in a contrast between early and later editorial comment
on parallel subjects. For example, until shortly before the
entrance of the United States into the war, Germany was
assumed to have a monopoly of diplomatic honesty more
complete than her much-advertised corner on the world's
supply of potash. Although suffering outrageous misfor
tunes because of the intrigues and bribes of perfidious Albion
and others, Germany stood erect and gave the world an
impressive example of blunt honesty and straightforward
ness in her international relations. Insinuations to the con
trary were always traceable, directly or indirectly, to Brit
ish calumnies and to the purchased slanders of a subsidized
English language press. Because of Germany's well-known
diplomatic integrity, as affirmed by the German language
newspapers, the report of Zimmerman's proposal for a Ger
man alliance with Mexico and Japan against the United
States was simply incredible, and was of course confidently
disputed or indignantly denied. While he was being cham
pioned as the victim of misrepresentation, it will be recalled,
Zimmerman inconsiderately admitted the charge, exposing
his journalistic defenders in America to attack and compel
ling a hasty retreat. That he should suddenly plead guilty
in the midst of the trial, and without consulting his attorneys,
was most exasperating. The next stand, accordingly, was
made on the issue of Zimmerman's personality. He was a
blundering blockhead — the exception that furnished convinc
ing proof of the rule concerning Germany's good faith in all
her international dealings. At the same time, though, his
imprudence had reflected seriously on honest Germany and
had regrettably inconvenienced her friends abroad. Time
passed, and the German Government did not seem so much
concerned over its honor as over the embarrassment attend
ing the exposure of Zimmerman's clumsy intrigue. This

708 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

was the signal for advancing somewhat to a new line of
defense. Zimmerman's plot, upon second thought, was not
so bad. It merely suggested a hostile alliance, IF the United
States should unfairly begin hostilities as a result of so slight
a provocation as the resumption of Germany's U-boat war.
The proposed alliance, after all, was a purely defensive
measure on Germany's part and was dictated by stern neces
sity, like everything else that the Fatherland had done,
including, of course, the devastation of Belgium and north
ern France, and the sinking of the Lusitania. Germany's
diplomatic honor, then, was still unshaken, and the fact
that it could withstand so severe a trial showed it to be abso
lutely invulnerable.

The trouble with this position was that it took a deal of
explaining and kept the Herren Eeddkteurs so much on the
defensive that a vigorous pro- German drive became impos
sible. Further revelations followed, backed by indisputable
evidence in the possession of the United States Government,
and it began to appear that Zimmerman's attempted surprise
was not the only one which Germany's accredited represen
tatives had been preparing for unsuspecting neutrals. A
little later, official recognition that a state of war existed be
tween Germany and the United States necessitated retire
ment to new lines of defense and especially, the adoption of
different tactics. Still, the old tradition of Germany's unim
peachable diplomatic character died hard, and notwithstand
ing the increase of anti- German sentiment in connection with
the draft registration and the Liberty Loan campaign, it
was possible for some time either to ignore or to minimize
the Fatherland's diplomatic perfidy. The apologists for Ger
many were increasingly on the defensive, however, and when
Count Luxburg touched bottom in his notorious ff spurlos
versenkt" message, it became apparent, even to many of
them, that something was rotten in Wilhelmstrasse. Al
though some feeble attempts were made to fix the blame
wholly upon the discredited Ambassador, and thus to uphold
Germany's good name, this charitable interpretation was not
universal. More than one editor, exasperated by long and
fruitless efforts to defend the indefensible, not only repudi
ated Luxburg but also ventured the opinion that Germany's
diplomatic representatives in general had been chosen accord
ing to an obsolete system which unduly favored the nobility.

A final blow that came nearer home was the State Depart-

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE PRESS 709

ment's exposure of Count von Bernstorff s contemptible in
trigues in this country. Comment on the revelations con
cerning this " Friend of America " was somewhat divided.
The Illinois Staatszeitung said on September 25, 1917:

Now we do not subscribe to the formula that the end justifies the
means, but we cannot see anything wrong in the attempt to maintain
peace between Germany and America. . . . Such act of Ambassador
Bernstorff can refer only to a possible contribution to the treasury of
organizations which before the declaration of war were actively work
ing for the maintenance of peace between the two countries.

As against this pitiful exponent of defensive sophistry,
there were other German language papers which met the
issue more directly and more nearly from the American stand
point. The following quotation from the St. Louis West-
liche Post (Mississippi Blatter) of September 23, is expres
sive of an attitude that was becoming increasingly common
during the latter stages of the retreat :

The first excitement caused by the Luxburg case had hardly begun
to cool down when another chapter was added to the seemingly in
exhaustible German Diplomacy ! . . . The central figure is Count von
Bernstorff, the former German Ambassador at Washington, a man who
by those who unreservedly condemned the means employed by German
diplomacy and also by those who opposed Germany on principle was
considered to form an honorable exception. He was credited with
tact, good sense, and a more thorough knowledge of the American
people than that possessed by all other German representatives com
bined. For this reason the disappointment and the indignation is doubly
keen when it becomes apparent that Bernstorff was not a whit better
than the majority of his aristocratic colleagues. The fact that, while
asseverating his friendship, he deemed a beggarly $50,000 sufficient to
make the greatest parliamentary body in the world subservient to his
purposes, is proof of the contempt that in his innermost heart he enter
tained for the United States. This contemptuous disregard is ex
pressive of the arrogance of " junkerdom ", an arrogance that as a rule
is coupled with an appropriate dose of dulness. No one can blame
the other countries for refusing to have further dealings with such
diplomats and for insisting that there be a radical change, not in per
sons alone, but in the entire system. If to accomplish this an outward
pressure is indispensable is a matter for the German people themselves
to decide.

In a broader sense, these two quotations represent not
simply particular editorial reactions, but also more or less
definite types of newspapers. On the one hand, there is
stubborn pro- Germanism, hedging (transparently) where
necessary, but always with apologies for the Fatherland and

710 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

with attempts to allay righteous indignation aroused among
German- Americans by the perfidy of an arrogant and in
triguing autocracy. Such an attitude of special pleading
results from the assumption that whatever is Prussian is
right. There is much insistence upon Germany's defensive
position as a victim of Einkreisungspolitik, and the naive
hope is expressed that in case things go against the Central
Powers, America's sense of fair play will rescue Germany
from any untoward consequences. Where this attitude pre
vails, affirmations of loyalty and slogans of " America First "
signify nothing, for they are cancelled by an inescapable im
pression that the whole question is being looked upon from
the German point of view. To this Kaiser-worshiping sub
serviency, an attitude of independence and sincerity is a
refreshing contrast. However bitter a newspaper may have
been at the start, however much it may have been unwittingly
a guardian of Germany's interests, yet if it showed an honest
desire to understand the American point of view, there was
hope for it. For such a paper, a seeming retreat might be
come in effect a progress toward freedom from the intellectual
and moral domination of Berlin.

The principal stages of the retreat and the favorite lines
of defence are indicated somewhat in detail by the quotations
which follow. These translations and summaries are taken
from issues of representative German language newspapers
published in the United States during the Summer and early
Fall1 of 1917. Because complete files of many papers were
not readily accessible to the writer at the time when the
specific extracts were made, it happens that a large propor
tion of the illustrative matter, particularly for the first stages,
is furnished by a few journals. It is recalled from a general
survey of the German language press during the transition
period, that these papers were moderate in tone as compared
with many contemporary publications of their class, and that
they anticipated many other journals in retiring from the
earlier position. The extracts taken from these papers, it is
believed, are fairly representative of the group. In justice
to the German language press as a whole, however, it should

xThe act of October 6, 1917, requiring foreign language papers, pending the
issuance of a license, to file with the Postmaster translations of articles dealing
with the Government or with international matters, doubtless hastened the final
stages of a retirement which was already nearly accomplished. Whether the
improvement represents a change of heart or merely prudential acquiescence,
could be determined only in the case of individual newspapers.

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE PRESS 711

be said that for several months past there has been a decided
improvement in editorial tone as compared with that of the
transition period.

I. MISGIVINGS AS TO AMERICA^ PARTICIPATION IN THE WAR

From the Cincinnati Folksblatt:

In the neutral countries of Europe the entrance of the United States
into the war has not awakened the enthusiasm that was expected in
this country. In fact, only words of the strongest disapproval are
heard, because by this action peace, which has been so ardently desired,
is now postponed. There is also no lack of sharp criticism concerning
the reasons which are given as the justification for our country's en
tering the war. It is recalled, in this connection, that the neutral coun
tries have repeatedly besought our government to oppose England's
gross violation of neutral rights and that these appeals have fallen on
deaf ears. Likewise it is remembered that if the United States had
done what was considered to be our duty it would not have been neces
sary for Germany to take the measures which would be so hard to
accept, and that peace might long ago have been accomplished. When
one considers that the neutral countries of Europe assume an impartial
attitude, it is highly significant that they find no words of praise for the
position of our country, but on the contrary, very severe blame.

(May 30, 1917.)

The Chicago Tribune complains of a lack of popular enthusiasm for
the war. Why should we wish to help England overthrow Germany?
We have much more to fear from England than from Germany. The
former can attack us from Canada, the Bahamas, and Vancouver; the
latter, from no quarter. (June 2, 1917.)

It is significant that seventy-five per cent of those who registered
claimed exemption. This shows that the war has awakened no en
thusiasm, that it was forced on the people, and that if it had been put
to a vote, it would have been decisively rejected. There is no question
of cowardice involved. American youth have always been ready to
fight for their country when it was necessary, but people cannot see
the necessity for this war. (June 7, 1917.)

The Ostpreuszische Zeitung believes that Germany could make
peace with the United States by ending her submarine war. So far
as those who brought about the war are concerned, it is all one what
Germany does or does not do, the war must go on until Germany is
prostrate and helpless. (June 9, 1917.)

Secretary McAdoo says that seven hundred millions of the two-
billion dollar loan are still lacking. Some say that the slowness of
people to respond is due to lack of confidence in the administration,
but that cannot be considered an important reason, since the bonds are
in any case, an attractive investment. The real reason must lie in the
people's disapproval of the war. Sacrifices for an indefinite period to
help England do not appeal to our citizens. (June 9, 1917.)

712 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

President Wilson himself says that we are not in this war for gain.
Therefore, it seems, we are taking part in order to lose some thirty
billions. (June 11, 1917.)

From the Cleveland Waechter und Anzeiger:

We freely admit that the President has at various times attempted
to explain to the American people the reasons for the war, but the un
fortunate fact is that the people have not understood them, and prob
ably will never understand them. . . . This explains the lack of en
thusiasm responsible for the failure of voluntary recruiting and the
liberty loan, despite the zealous efforts of the whole press for months
to arouse the war spirit. (May 23, 1917.)

II. — HOPELESS OUTLOOK FOE THE ALLIES

From the Cincinnati Abend Presse:

London again reports that eighteen vessels of more than 1600 tons
have been sunk by U-boats in the week just passed. That makes the
third week that the number has been eighteen. Surely the submarines
are working with amazing regularity. How it must simplify the mak
ing of Admiralty reports! (May 31, 1917.)

From the Cincinnati Volksblatt:

The rejoicing of a week ago over the reduction in number of vessels
sunk by submarines has given way to anxiety over the increase in
number sunk during the past week. The idea of conquering the sub
marines with destroyers has proved fallacious. If fewer vessels are
sunk during a given week, it is because fewer are sent out, or because
the submarines have returned to their base for supplies.

(June 14, 1917.)

In view of the increased number of naval vessels which have been
put into action against the U-boats, the recent success of the latter is
surprising. (June 21, 1917.)

From the Cincinnati Abend Presse:

At the time of Joffre's visit to New York City, the Tribune said
that he won his victories with an inferior and a poorly equipped army.
Where he won any victories, the Tribune does not say. Probably Joff re
himself would be glad to learn. At any rate, a French correspondent
has taken exception to the Tribune's statements regarding the condi
tion of Joffre's army. (May 31, 1917.)

The English have required two and a half years and whole moun
tains of explosives to compel the Germans to give up three small Bel
gian villages out of 500 which they hold. If General Haig expects to
free Belgium, he must count on living a long life. (June 13, 1917.)

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE PRESS 713

From the Cincinnati Volksblatt:

Hindenburg's statement that the Allied offensive is ended, must be
taken very seriously, for he states nothing but facts and makes only
conservative estimates. The Allies have no hope of winning the war
this summer, especially since Russia has become helpless. Neither can
America's assistance avail anything, because it cannot reach the Allies
in time. Even supplies and credit cannot be furnished at the rate which
the Allies require. Now that Hindenburg has shown that the offensive
which was to decide the war has completely broken down, there is no
use in continuing the war another day. (June 4, 1917.)

III. — CROSS-PURPOSES OF THE ALLIES TOWARD AMERICA AND
AMONG THEMSELVES

From the Chicago Staatszeitung:

The Russian disclosures in the proceedings against former War
Minister Souchomlinoff should be given widest publicity by the govern
ment. According to the German Chancellor, they furnish absolute
proof of the fact that the German Emperor up to the last minute has
tried to maintain peace. President Wilson, if shown to a certainty
that he has been misinformed, is too high-minded not to withdraw the
charges which in his answer to the Pope he hurled at the German
people and the German Emperor. (September 8, 1917.)

The war aims of America are restricted to the safe
guarding of democracy and civilization. The admission that the terri
torial possessions, the commerce, and therewith the power, of Germany
must not be disturbed, and that even an extension of its sphere of in
fluence, at least in an easterly direction, would not be incompatible
with such a peace, simplifies considerably the attainment of these war
aims. Germany can on this basis without any risk or loss of prestige
accept the American views concerning the guarantees necessary for the
maintenance of democracy and civilization. (Sept. 26, 1917.)

From the Cincinnati Abend Presse:

The statement of General Mitkisch, of Belgrade, concerning the
sufferings of the Serbians, indicates how they have had to atone for the
sins of their government. (June 7, 1917.)

Efforts to convince Americans that the England of today is entirely
different from the England of 1776 are being put forth with extraor
dinary zeal and cleverness. We read everywhere that the guilty person
was a half-idiotic German king, George III. But the present king,
George V, is as German as the Third. (June 9, 1917.)

Interest in Uncle Sam's mammon becomes more and more general.
Even the Roumanian Government sends a commission of beggars to
Washington. (June 12, 1917.)

714 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Good-natured Uncle Sam has already fed the eternally money-
hungry John Bull two billion dollars. Whether he will ever get a cent
of it back is very doubtful. There is such a thing as good nature which
is closely related to folly. (June 14, 1917.)

Italy, too, refuses to let her socialist delegates go to Stockholm. She
has good reason, however, for she has so much to conceal that such
prudence is quite comprehensible. (June 14, 1917.)

Now Japan is going to favor us with a diplomatic mission. It was
only a few weeks before Japan's declaration of war against Russia that
a Japanese mission visited the latter country. (June 15, 1917.)

From the Cincinnati Volksblatt:

In his Russian note, President Wilson expresses a singular fear of
the Berlin-Bagdad plan. Evidently a new route of trade is dangerous
if it is not monopolized by England. (June 11, 1917.)

The Allies have driven King Constantine and the Crown Prince out
of Greece because these rulers were unwilling to have their country
become an English-French province. That is a fine commentary on the
assertion that we are waging war in order to safeguard the independ
ence of small states. (June 13, 1917.)

How soon our soldiers may need to defend our rights instead of
those of other nations may be seen by the excitement which our note
to China has aroused in Japan. (June 15, 1917.)

IV. GERMANY HAS BEEN MISREPRESENTED

From the Cincinnati Abend Presse:

A recent book entitled, An American Major Invades Belgium,
shows the much-maligned German officers there, though strict, are
courteous and humane. (June 1, 1917.)

Balfour says that in the future the use of submarines must be re
stricted. He knows as well as we do that the use of submarines is hot
forbidden by international law. (June 4, 1917.)

Secretary McAdoo is seeing ghosts these days. In his St. Louis
speech he pictures the horrors of a German victory. Of course, the
Germans would not attempt to invade this country, and if they should,
it would go hard with them. Then every one would spring to the de
fence of his country and there would be no need of conscription

(June 9, 1917.)

" The Germans are entirely justified in bombarding fortified Lon
don," said Baron Montague of Beaulieu recently in the English Upper
House. (June 30, 1917.)

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE PRESS 715

From the Milwaukee Germania-Herold:

Even Americans who are otherwise reasonable and moderate are
hard to convince that the greater part of the crime and misrule at
tributed to the invaders in occupied Belgium are invented and falsified.
The article quoted below should be all the more impressive refutation
of these stories, since its source, Reedy's Mirror, has always supported
the Entente, has approved of the Administration programme, and has
hitherto opposed all peace agitation :

" In whispers it has long been said that people in England and
France were displeased with the Belgians, but now both in England and
France one may hear outspoken criticism of them as standing lower,
in many cases, than the hated ' Bodies.' It is said that Belgian civilians
have shot British and French soldiers in the back. In Paris it is openly
asserted that the only Belgians who cannot be accused of pro-German
tendencies are King Albert and his entourage. If such reports were
heard only once or occasionally, one would be inclined to let them pass
unheeded, but one cannot longer ignore them when they proceed at the
same time from widely separated sources. Suffice it to add that in
view of these conditions it is remarkable that there should be talk of
continuing the war." (September 1, 1917.)

From the Cincinnati Volksblatt:

All this talk about the " German Peril " threatening America is
sheer nonsense, cooked up by the English press. Germany could not
conquer the United States, because the latter country, like Germany,
is highly civilized. Moreover, Germany would not risk sending her
whole fleet over here, nor would she wish to oppose a country of such
great resources as America's. We should have preparedness, but our
real enemy is Japan. (May 31, 1917.)

The cry, " The enemy is at our doors ", fails to frighten people.
They know that an enemy which is 3,000 miles away could not be
dangerous, even if the nation which we call our " enemy " were hostile
toward us. (June 11, 1917.)

In Germany, as in every other country, there are radicals; for ex
ample, the Pan-Germans, who aspire to world empire like that of
Rome. Their followers, however, are few. The majority adheres to
the moderate Reichstag element, which favors peace without annexa
tions or indemnities. (August 23, 1917.)

From time to time there is evidence of a disposition to
condemn certain of Germany's official acts. Such articles
as the following show, if not disillusionment, at least a grow
ing impatience with the Fatherland.

From the Cincinnati Volksblatt:

The episode of Count Luxburg, who sent the brutal message which
caused the estrangement between Germany and Argentine, will aid a

716 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

movement in Germany which had already begun before the war, 'namely,
to oppose the exclusive employment of the nobility in the diplomatic
service. There has long been a suspicion that Germany's diplomatic
corps was somewhat lacking in efficiency, and especially, in a whole
some understanding of humanity. This costly experience will hasten
the time when a more democratic system will prevail and officials will
be chosen for their ability and not because of birth and property
reasons. (September 13, 1917.)

If the Cologne Zeitung " regrets " the Bernstorff affair, we hope it
regrets not simply the exposure but also the fact that he engaged in
such activity. He did not injure the United States, but his action re
flects on innocent Germans in this country.

(September 25, 1917.)

V. THE URGENT NEED OF AN EARLY PEACE

From the Cincinnati Folksblatt:

It is admitted that the Allies cannot win this year, but it is said that
they can win next year, when we shall have 500,000 men to send over.
Since next year's increase in Germany and Austria will be about 700,-
000, it is not clear how the Allies can win in 1918. Such facts as these
should restrain people from talking of victory and should induce them
to talk about peace. (June 9, 1917.)

The officially expressed opinion, that whoever speaks of peace is a
traitor, is untenable. Peace is being demanded in Russia, Germany and
Austria, and also, if the people dared to speak-out, in England and
France. (June 16, 1917.)

Representative Fuller of Massachusetts asks for a coalition cabinet
on the ground that the war will last until 1922 and a cabinet represent
ing both parties is needed to inspire public confidence. If the war is to
last five years, what we need is a peace cabinet and not a coalition
cabinet. (August 11, 1917.)

Estimates of war expenses for the first year, originally placed at ten
billions, have mounted to fifteen, then eighteen, then twenty-two bil
lions. The urgent necessity of an early peace is evident, for no reason
able person would say that we could hold out for three years at such a
rate. (August 28, 1917.)

There has been much ado over the action of Mayor Thompson in
permitting the meeting of the Society for Democracy and Terms of
Peace. Meetings have been held in England, France, Russia, and Ger
many. It would be singular if what is permitted everywhere else should
be forbidden in free America. (September 2, 1917.)

The Central Powers in their answer to the Pope offer peace. Will
the Allies accept it ? If not, why not ? This question they must answer
to their people. They cannot evade it. (September 24, 1917.)

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE PRESS 717

VI. — DEFENSE OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE GEEMAN LANGUAGE

PRESS

It was inevitable that the German language papers should
eventually be placed in the position of defending their right
to exist as a class, or at least, of proving their fitness to sur
vive as individuals. Those which had improved could not
live down immediately the memory of their earlier offenses,
even where these were errors of judgment committed in
good faith. The entire group suffered, of course, from the
continued disloyalty of some incorrigibly pro-German papers
like the Philadelphia Tageblatt. Their discomfort was need
lessly increased, it would seem, by an unfortunate chip-on-
the-shoulder attitude shown by some editors who, although
protesting the absolute clearness of their patriotic consciences,
went out of their way to take offence at general statements
which could not possibly have been intended for such con
sistent loyalists as they professed themselves to be. The
favorite defence was to point out the almost universal loyalty
manifested by citizens of German ancestry, though, recall
ing the earlier manner of many papers, one would have to be
careful about inferring a relation of cause and effect. More
often, it would appear, the papers in adjusting themselves
to the American point of view, had followed, rather than led,
their readers.

From the Cincinnati Abend Presse:

. . . There is no German press in this country in the sense that
some persons allege; they are only American papers in the German
language. . . . Some characteristics of its own, however, the German
press tenaciously preserved. . . . We disdain lies and hypocrisy,
banal phrases, etc. . . . But we are just as loyal as we are true ; just
as dependable as we have hitherto been stubborn, and just as ready
for sacrifice in a great cause as we are stingy under some circum
stances . . . but we cannot be counted upon when attempts are made
to poison public opinion by petty meanness, to lead people astray with
lies or to deceive them with falsehoods, or to substitute words and
gestures for patriotic deeds. (June 25, 1917.)

From the Chicago Staatszeitung:

The German- American press of America is in existence for over 170
years and during all those long years the 550 newspapers published in
this language have never had any other objects but to make of their
readers good American citizens and to urge them to learn the English
state language of the United States as fast as possible, in their own as
well as in the country's interest. (September 10, 1917.)

718 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

From the Cleveland Waechter und Anzeiger:

The German language newspapers of the country are today as loy
ally American as any English language paper; better than many. They
were and are only anti-British and have of course given emphatic ex
pression to this anti-British sentiment. (June 22, 1917.)

From the Milwaukee Germania-Herold:

Anonymous threatening letters have been received by the Editor
from two sources : from one, because we are alleged not to have sup
ported the German government sufficiently ; from the other because, in
the opinion of some of our critics, our American patriotism has not
been sufficiently ardent. Threats from these diametrically opposite
sources confirm us in the belief that we have taken the right course.

(September 11, 1917.)

From the New York Staats-Zeitung:

Over in the World Building surprise seems to have possessed itself
of people that the German language newspapers in the United States
are neither sneering at the President's terms nor damning the note
with faint praise. It (the note) appeals particularly to German- Ameri
cans, because it dispels the mist which has heretofore hung over our
participation in the war. . . . And it appeals to those of us who have
not forgotten the history hickoryed into us before the " sacred right
of lying " was enthroned in the world.

The German language press in this country was frankly opposed to
our entrance into the war — so long as we could honorably keep out of
it. Once in the war, however, a determination to support the govern
ment occupied its editorial policies. While others have been snapping
at the heels of the Administration — yelping their little seditious words
of advice — destroying that unity of mind which is necessary to team
work — we have presented a solid front of support. We have spoken
for — and to — that potential element of the American nation which
springs from Germany, always in the past a friend of America, and now
unfortunately compelled to be in arms against her. We German-
Americans appreciate the President's note perhaps more fully than
others can. We read in it a message from ourselves to our friends
across the waters. (September 1, 1917.)

From the St. Louis Westliche Post:

In connection with the charges against the Philadelphia Tageblatt,
it is timely for the German language press of the United States to de
clare itself and to announce the principles for which it stands. It is un
fortunately a fact that since the beginning of the war against Germany
some of the German language papers have not honestly and conscient
iously endeavored to be leaders of and counselors to their readers in
loyalty to and patriotism for the land of their adoption, where they or
their fathers sought refuge from political or economical oppression.
That the Westliche Post and other leading German language papers

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE PRESS 719

have during all this critical period demonstrated their unfaltering and
absolute loyalty to the United States Government is nothing to boast
of, for it is only a plain duty that could be ignored only by a press and a
people that have no clear conception or understanding of the meaning
of loyalty. (September 16, 1917.)

In all this tangle of unsympathetic comment, amusing in
its mixed logic and tragic in its conflicting emotions, there
is probably less of deliberate propaganda than of bewildered
readjustment — a reluctant shifting of the editorial point of
view to meet an extremely embarrassing situation. And the
editors were given ample freedom to make this change in
their own way. During the period in which the foregoing
extracts were published the German language papers were
practically unhampered by censorship. A tolerant, though
watchful, Government, realizing the difficulty of their posi
tion, gave them the benefit of every doubt and made it as
easy as possible for them to become reconciled to the painful
reality of war between America and the Fatherland.

The editors were careful, of course, to avoid technically
treasonable utterances, though for a time many articles were
well within the twilight zone of implied disloyalty. Oc
casional editorials breathed an old-fashioned Carl Schurz
type of Americanism, but these welcome exceptions were
rare. A potent corrective for the negative attitude of certain
papers was the increasing pressure of an awakened patriot
ism among all Americans, including the vast majority of
citizens of German ancestry. With many editors, per
haps, an even more powerful influence than public senti
ment was a growing conviction that the German Govern
ment was much to blame. And yet, after having idealized
Germany for years and after having defended her war
measures against a preponderance of adverse American
opinion, they could hardly be expected to oppose her without
a reasonable period of mourning for their dead illusions.
The adoption of a properly hostile attitude toward the
Fatherland was doubtless made easier by the accumulation
of evidence in the hands of the United States Government
showing the brutal selfishness of Germany's rulers. At least
these revelations, brazenly and cynically confirmed by the
accused Government, proved the folly of attempting fur
ther to palliate Germany's crimes against humanity, or to
oppose the overwhelming force of an aroused public opinion.

CLYDE WILLIAM PARK.

WAR AS A BUSINESS PROBLEM

BY ALLEYNE IRELAND

TIME was when war was a matter of waving plumes, of
shining armor, of rough and tumble combat, in which muscle
counted for more than brains, and the problems of commis
sariat, transport, and supply never troubled the mind of
noble, gentle, or serf. When the wars were small they were
family affairs. His Lordship gathered about him the Arm
strongs, the Smiths, the Carters, the Archers, the Lightfoots,
the Seamans, the Hardys, the Sturdees, the Swifts, the
Doughty s, and their like, and joined issue with his neighbor.

When the wars were larger it was a case of a tribe fighting
a tribe, a people a people. Ferocious as these conflicts were,
they had this to commend them — it was seldom necessary to
fight a second war in order to find out who had won the first.

It was not in such family or tribal wars that militarism
had its roots. It was the exigencies of peace which demanded
that, in the interest of agriculture and industry, the business
of fighting should be turned over to a small body of special
ists who would relieve the majority from all military duties;
and out of this demand grew the profession of arms.

Warfare then settled down into a duel between trained
armies, the populace at large accepting the fate determined
for it on the field of battle, and taking little part in the fight
ing. It was not until Napoleon's day that war again as
sumed the character of a struggle between peoples ; and after
a comparatively brief period it passed again into the hands
of a small military caste.

In the nineteenth century the growth of industrialism and
the increase of trade turned men's thoughts toward the arts
of peace, and Europe entered upon an era of material pros
perity during which the idea of war on a vast scale ceased
to be repugnant to the man in the street only because it had
become ridiculous.

WAR AS A BUSINESS PROBLEM 721

The oratorical barrage which advanced steadily just
ahead of the army of Parliamentary reform in England had
the double effect of raising in the public mind engaging
visions of a world to be ruled, willy nilly, by the good-will
of a genial electorate, and of blinding the country to the
temptation offered by its wealth and territory to any nation
whose leaders, however mistakenly from the moral stand
point, should adopt the arm and not the tongue as the engine
of achievement.

The Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the Franco-
Prussian War, universal military training by the conti
nental powers, the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War —
none of these, nor all of them together, sufficed to disturb
England's complacent reliance upon sea-power as her only
ready weapon on a hemisphere seething with military prep
aration.

And what of the United States? Not only had she these
examples to teach her that the night of war was not drawing
toward the dawn of peace, but she was also afforded for her
guidance nearer and more terrible warnings. She saw the
value of treaties proved by the ravishment of Belgium, she
saw the price of military unpreparedness paid by England
with a mounting tide of blood and treasure, she saw inter
national law appraised at its practical worth by the man
who sank the Lusitania, she saw that war was no longer
a duel between military castes, that it had again become a
struggle between peoples.

Between the sinking of the Lusitania and the declara
tion by Congress that a state of war existed with Germany,
nearly two years elapsed. " We waited," says Mr. George
Creel,1 Chairman of the Committee on Public Information
appointed by President Wilson, " we waited until every fair-
minded citizen of our peace-loving democracy was aware that
peace was impossible before we reluctantly began to prepare
to defend ourselves."

I leave it to Mr. Creel to explain, if he cares to do so,
whether in the above passage he is describing the Adminis
tration or the fair-minded citizenry as having waited until
everybody had become convinced that war was inevitable
before it reluctantly began to prepare to defend the country.

That there has been a reluctance to throw the full weight
of the nation into the war at the earliest possible moment,

~~*The Independent, March 80, 1918
VOL. ccvii— NO. 750 46

722 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

that our activities have been guided too much by the idea of
defence and too little by that of defiance, are criticisms which
have usually been condemned as reflecting upon the honor
of the United States and upon the sincerity of the President;
but the words I have quoted are taken from " The Seventh
Message from the United States Government to the Ameri
can People."

So far as these causes have been advanced, outside of
officialdom, to account for the wide discrepancy which exists
between what we promised for our first year in the war and
what we have performed, I believe the argument to be ill-
founded. The real source of our difficulties lies much deeper
than the superficial and temporary delusion that the world
can be made safe for democracy by reluctant preparation
and defensive strategy.

It lies in our failure to distinguish between those prob
lems which are in their nature political and those which are
executive. " It arises," says an editorial in THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW for March, " from our national habit of
regarding administration as the twin brother of politics. We
have placed ourselves between these two figures and, through
trying for a century and a half to keep one eye fixed on each,
we have acquired that governmental squint which makes it
impossible for us to see right in front of us the area of
confused aim and conflicting interest which is the breeding
ground of political corruption and administrative ineffi
ciency."

Nobody, so far as I am aware, has suggested that political
corruption has been in any measurable degree responsible for
the vexatious impediments which have balked our war meas
ures of their full success; but of administrative inefficiency
there have been many specific charges, and some official ad
missions.

Administration as a non-political function of government
is a conception unfamiliar to the American mind; and I
propose to describe in outline how administrative problems
appear to the eye of a man who has spent twenty years in
studying those forms of government in which administration
is conducted on a non-political basis. I have observed in
actual operation ten distinct forms of government which
conform to this condition. They are the Crown Colony
System in various British Colonies; the Central Govern
ment of India; the Indian Provincial System in Burma;

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724 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the System of Protected Native States in the Malay Penin
sula; the Government of a Commercial Company in Borneo;
the Rule of an Independent White Raja in Sarawak; the
early American Government in Mindanao; Limited Parlia
mentary Government in British Guiana and Barbados; the
French Colonial System in Indo-China; and the Dutch
Colonial System in Java.

In the countries I have named there are administered the
public affairs of more than 300,000,000 people. Although
these governments have been constantly attacked on the
ground of their lack of a popular political element, it is the
general verdict of those who have observed them in action
that, leaving political participation aside, they furnish this
vast population with a larger measure of the tangible fruits
of good government than is enjoyed by any people under
the more " liberal " constitutions of Europe and America.

If the reader will turn to Chart A he will see set forth
in a simple diagram the Business of Government. The head
ings under " Policy — Internal " are not quite complete, be
cause the size of the page forbade the inclusion of more detail,
but they suffice to give a view of most of the matters with
which modern government is concerned in its internal ad
ministration.

Now, the only important respect in which a political
government differs from a non-political government in re
gard to any matter presented in Chart A under the head of
Policy is that in the one case Policy is decided ultimately by
the opinion of voters, and in the other by the judgment of
administrators. If, for instance, the Policy to be settled
is whether Communications — railroads, telegraph, telephone,
etc. — should or should not be owned and operated by the
government, the decision would be reached in the United
States by Congress, subject to the veto of the President,
whereas in India it would be reached by the Viceroy, after
consultation with his Council, subject to the veto of the Sec
retary of State for India.

The influence exerted upon Policy by the one and by the
other of these two modes of procedure differs profoundly.
In the United States the matter is decided, initially, by some
hundreds of men, few having any special knowledge of
the point at issue, and many having strong political motives
for taking a particular view; in India the matter is decided,
initially, by six men, each of whom is a trained and expe-

WAR AS A BUSINESS PROBLEM 725

rienced administrator, and none of whom has any electorate
to please, any powerful business interest to placate, or any
political party to support. In the former instance the veto
rests with one man who may have no more than an amateur's
acquaintance with the question involved; in the latter the
veto also rests with one man; but this man is, in practice,
guided by the advice of the India Council, a body of from
ten to fourteen men, sitting in London, composed, as to the
majority, of ex-Indian officials of long service and varied
administrative experience.

It is not, however, in relation to the manner in which
Policy is settled, but in relation to how it is carried out that
the practice of the non-political governments offers an ex
ample which, if we followed it, would enormously enhance
the efficiency of our participation in the war.

I may here anticipate the objection that there is no lesson
to be drawn by a self-governing Democracy from the ex
perience of countries ruled, as it were, by executive decree.
Before the reader decides to sustain this objection he should
give due weight to two considerations : one that the President
now wields a personal power quite as sweeping as that of a
Viceroy; the other that the moral I hope to point concerns
only the carrying out of a policy after it has been formulated,
a matter upon which the question of origin can have no bear
ing whatever.

The general problem to which I address myself is the
part to be played by the civil government in carrying out
plans decided upon by the military authorities, or by whoever
determines Policy and has the final power to demand service
— in other words, the problem of mobilizing all the resources
of the country so that they may be made instantly available
for military purposes.

It will be noted that in the center of Chart B is the word
Administration. I may begin, then, by naming the adminis
trative bureaus which should be created as soon as war has
been decided upon.

1. A Department of Control and Direction.

2. A Bureau of Transportation.

3. A Bureau of Shipping Administration.

4. A Bureau of Fuel Administration.

5. A Bureau of Port Administration.

6. A Bureau of Food Administration.

7. A Bureau of Supplies.

726 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

8. A Bureau of Labor.

9. A Bureau of Law and Legislation.

10. A Bureau of Information on Resources.

The Director General of the Department of Control and
Direction should issue all the general orders upon which the
Bureaus would act. There should be attached to the De
partment a Deputy-Director of each of the Bureaus, thor
oughly posted on the work of his own Bureau. These
Deputy-Directors would form a corps of liaison officers
whose duty it would be to furnish information to the Director
General, to discuss among themselves every question in which
the demands of one Bureau threatened to conflict with the
demands of another, and to reduce to the smallest possible
number and to formulate in the most concise manner those
points in regard to which an irreconcilable conflict of judg
ment made it necessary to seek a decision from the Director
General.

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CHART B

I may explain that the Bureau of Information on Re
sources would be engaged in the collection, from every avail
able source except the other Bureaus, of every kind of sta
tistical data, and in their systematic arrangement. This
Bureau would need as its Director a professional statistician
of recognized authority. The Bureau would serve as an in
dependent check on the figures supplied to the Director Gen
eral by the other Bureaus — a most important function.

WAR AS A BUSINESS PROBLEM 727

Let the reader now place himself in the position of the
Director General of Control and Direction, and assume that
he has been asked by the war authority to arrange for the
shipment to France of fifty thousand tons of coal a week. In
connection with what follows, the reader should have Chart B
under his eye.

The " Aim " having been defined, the Director General
will require certain information upon which to construct his
" Plan of Execution " and to issue his " General Orders."
From Bureau 2 he will receive a report on transportation,
with suggestions as to how any deficiency can be met; from
Bureau 3 a report on available shipping, with suggestions;
from Bureau 4 a report on available coal, with suggestions ;
from Bureau 5 a report on loading at the ports, with sugges
tions; from Bureau 10 a report to be used in checking the
figures furnished in the other reports.

The reports from 2, 3, 4, and 5 would be exchanged be
tween the Bureaus concerned so that they could be discussed
at a meeting of the Deputy-Directors of these Bureaus (the
liaison officers) for the purpose of drawing up a liaison report
on matters where coordinate action was needed; such, for
instance, as the train schedule on which the coal would be
delivered at the ports of loading — a question to be discussed
jointly by the Deputy-Directors of Transportation, Ship
ping, and Port Administration.

When the Director General has before him the reports
to which I have referred above he is in possession of every
thing embraced under " Information " in Chart B. He
knows the " Aim " ; under " Technical " he has his informa
tion on movement; under " Resources " he has his informa
tion about the material (coal) to be moved; he has his liaison
report and his checking report on figures.

The " Decision " now waits upon his " Consideration."
He may find it necessary to call in " Technical Advice " to
aid him in finally determining a point raised in the liaison
report, to consult the Bureau of Labor as to workmen called
for by the Bureau reports, or the Bureau of Law and Legis
lation as to existence or the need of authority to commandeer
men or materials. He will, finally, be in a position to draw
up his " Plan of Action," which should be supplied in full,
with his " General Orders," to each Bureau concerned.

From this point onward the execution of the " Aim "
demands no more than the ordinary abilities of managers

728 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and superintendents, each of whom should receive written
orders — the former from the Bureau Director concerned, the
latter from the manager.

The limits of a short article have not allowed me to do
more than deal in outline with the broad, general aspect of
administrative technique. The largest problems as well as
the smallest are amenable to a similar treatment. The scheme
which I have outlined does, not mean, necessarily, that the
Aim will be accomplished. The coal mines may be blown up
or flooded, blizzards may tie up the railroads, submarines
may sink the ships before they reach port. What the scheme
does insure is of the utmost importance:

1. It will enable the Military Authority to know whether,
uncontrollable circumstances apart, the Aim can be carried
out in whole or in part.

2. It will eliminate confusion of plan, and conflict of
authority as causes of failure.

3. It will concentrate the strategy of the Aim in the hands
of a few men of exceptional ability, and distribute its tactics
among a large number of men whose talents suffice for the
carrying out of orders.

4. It will enable the Director General of Control and
Direction to diagnose failure and to prescribe the proper
remedy.

It is, perhaps, superfluous to add that no administrative
scheme can be employed as a substitute for brains. What a
schematic, non-political treatment of administrative prob
lems can do is to promote clear thinking, prevent confused
action, aid judgment, and fix responsibility.

All this simply means that every non-combatant problem
in war is neither more nor less than a business problem, and
that it can be solved by sound business methods.

ALLEYNE IRELAND.

STYLE ' IN WOMEN'S CLOTHES

BY RICHARD BARRY

Now is the time for women to be delivered from the
tyranny of " style " in clothes.

Does this sound like the fad of a dress reformer, or like
some vain proposal to abolish the contrarieties of feminine
lure? Does it sound like a chimera?

On the contrary, this is but the definition of the next in
evitable step in national progress ; — the end of that chimera,
changing " style." It is only sounding the knell of the
heterogeneous fads in women's dress which have obsessed us
with increasing virulence for the past generation.

This step, instead of abolishing the feminine arts, will
civilize them. It will lift us, as a nation, from the semi-
barbarism of clothes-silliness to a higher aesthetic plane of
clothes-adornment.

On the floor of Congress it has been declared that high
heels are more dangerous to the welfare of the United States
than German submarines. It is just as true that eccentric
waist lines are more deadly than Big Berthas and that freak
ish skirt effects are more perilous to national safety than food
waste.

We have become accustomed to the argument that the
war is to be fought out more within the nations involved than
on the battle lines. We recognize the truth that the nation
or nations best fitted to survive, the ones best fitted to con
serve all resources — not a few resources, but all — will be the
final victor.

Then why longer ignore the obvious truth that confronts
us concerning women's clothes? We have come to the end of
an era in everything else, from transportation to party poli
tics; are we not also at the end of the " style " era in women's
clothes? Is not the time definitely here for the establishment
of a simple, rational, permanent national costume?

730 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

There is a terrific waste of time, money and health in
keeping up with the race of style. It has become a squirrel
cage in which women perpetually exhaust themselves in striv
ing to reach a place where they never arrive. And the men
dangle futilely at their heels, incompetent either to stop the
race or win it.

It is time to emerge from this semi-barbarism and become
truly civilized. The older races long since learned the folly
of this nonsense. The Orientals and the Slavs have settled
on one becoming style for women which is made practically
permanent, and in which is full opportunity for all true
aesthetic expression and development. America, for the first
time, is put to the actual test of making good her assertions of
being the leader of the world. We will make good in the
larger issue only by a complete mastery of the essentials of
national character; among these essentials women's dress
stands in the forefront.

So-called " style " is the assassin of character. It is an
imposition made by the shrewd upon the ignorant, an easy
advantage taken by pretense over worth. It is the curse of
beauty, the bane of art and the death of originality. These
truths have always been self-evident and undisputed. But
now they are more. They are a menace to national endur
ance. Therefore, let us rally our forces and abolish " style."

Is there a man married to a woman of fashion who in the
past five years has not felt a pang of shame at his wife's
appearance? Does he ever stop to ask why it is that she, poor
slave, has felt compelled to lead him, all unconsciously per
haps, into a shame that is degradation?

The reason is too simple.

Women have nothing to say about what they shall wear.
A little group of men, possibly as few as a dozen, certainly
no more than fifty, practically all located in New York, pre
scribe each season what the prevailing " style " shall be. They
are business men engaged in the pursuit of making money,
as quickly and as easily as possible. Most of them have come,
within a few years or a generation, from the lower east side
of New York, which accounts for the often grotesque admix
ture in a passing " style " of the motif of a European peasant
costume with the Parisian eccentricities manufactured in the
French capital only for export.

When one of these " couturiers " (the chief words of the
women's dress trade have been adapted from the French)

"STYLE" IN WOMEN'S CLOTHES 731

wants to exploit a new " style " he dresses one of his sales
women or models in it and sends her forth. The herd women
(beginning with the upper classes) have seen these " styles "
in the windows and in the " salons," have heard and read of
them, but no woman has had the courage to make a spectacle
of herself until she sees someone else doing it. Thus the model
performs the function of the lead bull at the slaughter house.
Once the women of the herd have seen these " styles " they
feel that they, too, must " keep up," and not look old-fash
ioned, or out of date, and they hasten to the shops presided
over by the graduates of the lower east side. Thus our " best
dressers " become imitators of shop women, and the worst
dressers sigh themselves into freakish imitations of the
" best " dressers. And " style " ambles on a short pace, but
never beyond another season, for the secret of the large vol
ume of business is in the frequent change of " style." Or so
our " couturiers " believe, though they would do a more sub
stantial business on a different basis.

Women understand the general facts all too well, but they
should be reiterated. Who does not know, for instance, that
these styles are repeatedly changed with the prime object
in view of forcing the purchase of new materials? Last
Spring, skirts were wide; now women must put a narrow
skirt under the wide one and cut off the old skirt to
show the new. Thus, even if women should cry for wide
skirts after suffering a season in narrow ones they cannot use
the same wide ones of last year, for they will be too short,
and to make it absolutely certain the designers will doubtless
proclaim that next season the skirts must be long as well as
wide. Then, as a little added turn to the general imbecil
ity of the thing, this season the skirts are humped up in
the back so as to insure the use of three times the necessary
material.

This is not a matter of any one particular season, although
the present season (in midst of war) illustrates the absurdity
and rascality of the idea as well as any. The present decree
of skirts less than a yard wide to save material is simply an
excuse for & change next year when that same narrow mate
rial cannot be used. At the same time the arbiters of fashion
make sure that the two-yards-wide skirt is of the most expen
sive yet least durable material.

Thus American dress goods get the name, which in some
cases is deserved, of being " shoddy." Is it not true loyalty

732 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to national reputation to bring about principles of American
manufacture which will substitute for " shoddy " the name
of fixed and reliable values ?

Of course the physical suffering of women on account of
these absurdities may be beside the question. Women have
always been willing to suffer tortures for " style." Tight
shoes and tight corsets have done as much to stunt future
generations as low-class poverty. So why complain about
narrow skirts of the present, except in the hope that women,
having obtained a partial freedom, may now demand com
plete enfranchisement from the tyranny, not of clothes, but
of dress designers? During the last period of the "hobble"
skirt the matter became so poignant that street cars and
equipages lowered their steps to accommodate the needs of
the season's " style." If so much can be done in peace times
for general convenience is it too much to ask in war times,
as a measure of public policy, that the whole baneful " style "
be abolished utterly?

This is not the time for woman to be hampered by tight
skirts or freak bustles and excess cloth. She needs her free
dom for activity, for accomplishment, and she needs her
money and the money of the men for other things than absurd
clothes. Physical freedom is her prime need, as it is that of
the nation. Physical freedom is the basis of all other freedom
— moral, intellectual, political.

It is hopeless for American designers to attempt an ad
vance along the vicious path which has already been traveled
to its final ingenious refinement by the more deft French de
signers. We have had this season a sample of what our native
designer does in the silhouette, advertised as the "American
fashion." This tight skirt, bustle effect, an ultra adaptation
of post-Civil War style, did not " catch on," despite the
efforts of models, showgirls and pseudo " smart " women.

The time has come to establish a style of our own and to
make that style permanent. And when style ceases to be
" style " it becomes costume. We are accustomed to patron
ize other national costumes, vaunting our superiority in
changing " style." Whoso does that is ignorant of the fact
that a costume is the last expression of a civilization, and that
it comes after " styles " are outworn and discarded as ugly,
barbarous and inefficient.

The American costume must be in keeping with Ameri
can ideals. It must express the national character. It must

"STYLE" IN WOMEN'S CLOTHES 733

be both simple and beautiful. It must be capable of repro
duction in the cheapest fabrics without losing the grace of its
lines, and yet it must be able to lend itself to subtle adorn
ment and elaboration for the pleasure of the wealthy and the
artistic. Above all, it must be something so adroitly adapted
to the manners of the people that it can be maintained long
enough to be perfected. The fiat of a government might in
stitute it, but time alone can establish it.

If all this required any revolutionary change it might be
folly even to contemplate the step, for in nothing is the human
being so conservative as in clothes. It is fortunate, doubly
fortunate that the present styles approximate the ideal
which might easily, with the proper authoritative defini
tion, become the national costume. Therefore, we do not
need reform; we need only standardization. If we can
contemplate seriously national prohibition from alcohol sure
ly we can acclaim national prohibition from the degrading,
debilitating, incessant changes of style.

The straight lines of the season at hand offer us the way
out. Except for certain freakish excrescences, which, luckily,
have not " stuck," the style of the present time is distinctly
United States. The skirts are wide enough for comfort and
long enough for grace; the sleeves are sensible, yet graceful;
the neck may be high or low according to one's choice; the
waist line is normal. Could anything be more American?

What the majority of American women are wearing now
should remain our national costume, or be rigidly held as the
basis on which to build a national costume. The peril to the
situation lies in the fact that " a little group of wilful men,"
those designing designers, will not be content to let well
enough alone, but will tamper and trifle with the effect until
they achieve a general change for the purpose of building up
quick sales.

The present way of dressing is an incorporation of our
old shirt-waist-and-skirt idea, the coat suit which has made
the American girl famous the world around. It is respon
sible for the one universal creation of an American artist, the
Gibson Girl. Such lines lend themselves to all purposes of
dress ; they are charming in street or evening gowns, beauti
ful in afternoon effects and adaptable for evening wear ; they
may rule both house and street gowns, the sport, the one-
piece, the two-piece, the three-piece, and they may be adapted
for any demand in formal evening attire.

734 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

A generation or two of sticking to this one style and we
would have something worth while in women's clothes. We
might become (in respect of women's clothes) like the Chi
nese, with fabrics whose texture can survive a decade and
with decoration to please and educate the eye of man instead
of distracting and revolting him.

Another clothes vice bred by ever-changing " style " is
the gradual deterioration of fabric until now practically our
entire production is " shoddy." No matter what price one
pays, it is all but impossible to get textiles that will last
more than a year or two. This is largely because the mills
look for quantity of production first, instead of quality. The
designers and the whole brood of manufacturers that follows
in their train hitch their volume of annual output ever higher
and higher while the standard of values goes ever lower and
lower. Women no longer expect anything to last. It is not
the vogue to want durable materials, but those of rich appear
ance. Durability is a minor consideration, anyway, when
the styles change so rapidly and so radically.

This leads to a trade consideration of the advantage or the
disadvantage in a national costume. The business world
might be against the standardization of a national costume,
perhaps without analyzing its possibilities, though it would
doubtless prove to be the soundest business wisdom to insti
tute any change which would lead to a standardization of
manufacture. If standardization is good for the production
of oil or baked beans it certainly ought to be good for the
production of cloth. The only ones to suffer would be the
wholesale designers (those destroyers of true art), but the
adroit creatures would doubtless adjust themselves to the
new dispensation.

This is no plea for anything that would resemble a uni
form. If the national costume should remain set on the
present straight lines it would still permit of embroidery and
embellishment.

Is it too much to ask of the Government, at a time when
our young men are dying in the trenches, to stand behind the
women in their desire to be sensible, and to help them main
tain an American ideal in clothes by decreeing a national
costume?

RICHARD BARRY.

ROUMANIA

BY GEORGE E. WOODBERRY

Another land has crashed into the deep,

The heir and namesake of that Rome, whose laws
Spread the great peace. — Gray Power, that yet o'erawes

The thoughts of men, first to bid nations keep

The bounds of right, and earth's wild borders sleep,
O, from thy pinnacle 'mid time's applause
Salute, great Rome, the victim of man's cause,

Thy child, Roumania! — Nay, not ours to weep.

O Latin Race! how doth our debt increase

At every flash of thy unfathomed soul,
Long on the rock of justice founding peace,

While ever round thee new-born ages roll!
Genius divine! when shall thy glory cease!

Rise, rise, Roumania ! yet thy soul is whole !

GEORGE E. WOODBERRY.

AMY LOWELL: A PERSONALITY

BY HELEN BULLIS KIZEE

"And Deborah, a prophetest, . . . judged Israel."

AMONG our New England foremothers, whose stern
energy accomplished tasks which the most strenuous of
modern feminists would hardly care to resume, Deborah
was a favorite name. Perhaps it voiced a hardly-repressed
hunger for empery; perhaps they cherished it as a stand
ing — if unheeded — reminder to their lords that not all the
judges in Israel had been men. At any rate, the story of
the woman without whom generals refused to go to war,
whose word was law to her tribe, who lifted up her voice
robustly and sang the achievements of God, Israel and her
self in superb, far-echoing strophes, unshamed and unre-
buked, must have had a strong appeal for women who bore
the burdens of pioneer life and of a terrifying theolatry
equally with their men, yet who were forbidden to be heard
in church or state, or even, with open authority, in their
own households.

It would be safe guessing that Amy Lowell counts a
Deborah among her ancestors; in any case, she is no mean
avatar of the Deborah spirit. She sings, she goes to war,
she judges. And if she condescends to soothsaying more
rarely than did her prototype, it is probably because cata
lepsy as a means to prophecy has gone out, and the historical
method has come in.

In her recent volume, Tendencies in Modern American
Poetry, Miss Lowell employs this method with excellent
results. It could hardly have been an easy book to write.
Sainte-Beuve long ago pointed out that an estimate of his
contemporaries is the final test of any man's critical powers,
and such criticism is apt to swing between the evil extremes
of the " savage and tartarly " and the " appreciative." Miss

AMY LOWELL: A PERSONALITY 737

Lowell has avoided both formulas. She does not consider
a poem as an isolated phenomenon, causeless and miracu
lous, as a savage regards an eclipse of the moon, but rather
links it up with the poet's personality, with his ancestral
inheritance and with the circumstances and opportunities of
his life. In Six French Poets the method was singularly
successful, considering the difficulties in the way of securing
data; in Tendencies in Modern American Poetry it is well-
nigh completely so. And its success is a tribute to other
than the purely critical powers of its author. It might
easily bear as a sub-title, " A Book of Friends," for Miss
Lowell personally knows the poets she comments upon, and
evidently admires and likes them, yet she holds the scales
evenly. We feel throughout a spirit of mingled courage,
kindness and independence illuminating the subject, and the
result is the note of personality that is so priceless in criti
cism, yet which, unhoneyed on the one hand or uncrabbed
on the other, is so hard to come by.

Tendencies in Modern American Poetry is an attempt
to range the so-called " new " school that has risen to public
notice within the last ten years, though it has been in process
of rising much longer than that; in fact, ever since the Pil
grims landed on Plymouth Rock. For its newness is not,
as Miss Lowell points out, one of form — the form may be
conventional or unconventional — but of the spirit; it is a
" revolt against the immediate past." The book takes up
Edwin Arlington Robinson and Robert Frost, Edgar Lee
Masters and Carl Sandburg, " H. D." and John Gould
Fletcher as poets typical of the main tendencies within this
general movement. The first two clothe their new vision of
the world in conventional verse; the second two in verse that
is generally unconventional, sometimes as ragged and cindery
as a ride-the-rods hobo; the third pair in verse that while
it is not of " the immediate past," is carefully, even clas
sically constructed. Clearly, it is not form which links them
together. Miss Lowell sees them all as " revolting against
stilted phrases and sentimentality; . . . endeavoring to
express themselves and the new race which America is pro
ducing " — she sees them as heralding a poetic renaissance
which shall keep pace with the quickened thought and emo
tion of a nation in social flux within, and brought without
into new and thrilling touch with a familiar world suddenly
grown unfamiliar.
VOL. ccvii.— NO. 750 47

738 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

There are of course other American poets, as Miss
Lowell admits in her preface, who share in the reaction
against Victorianism dilute, and whose work well deserves
attention in any comprehensive review of living authors.
But Tendencies in Modern American Poetry does not aim
to be a comprehensive review. Its author follows Shaw in
preferring the originative mind and (it may be) a halting
performance, to the unoriginative mind and (possibly) a
complete performance. It is a preference which not only
lies at the root of sound criticism but helps to explain why
sound criticism is rare. For a perception of what is origina
tive above that which is merely imitative argues a mind in
no small degree originative on the part of the critic.

With one exception, there can be no quarrel with Miss
Lowell's choice of her representative poets. Edwin Arling
ton Robinson truly enough stands for the old order wrought
upon by new influences ; " a highly developed, highly sen
sitized and intellectual product of the old plain living and
high thinking generations, throwing off the shackles of a
superstition and an environment grown too narrow." Justly
enough, Robert Frost, also of an elder tradition, is ranked
with the great bucolic poets, — with Burns and Synge and
Mistral. And for what may be called the middle period of
revolt, no better types could be found than Edgar Lee Mas
ters and Carl Sandburg. But in the last chapter, devoted
to " H. D." and John Gould Fletcher, one feels a certain
sense of dissociation. It is a good chapter, even a good
.climax, but not the climax which belongs to this particular
book.

The truth is that this last chapter is a " compelled sin."
Its author, naturally, could not discuss herself in such a
volume, yet of all Ainerican writers, it is Amy Lowell who
should logically follow after Edwin Arlington Robinson,
Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg.
" H. D." and Mr. Fletcher have, it is true, written exquisite
verse. Their Imagist poetry at its best is as good, perhaps
better, than Amy Lowell's Imagist poetry. It would be
hard to recall anything that she has written as sculpturally
perfect as "H. D.'s" Sea Gods or as imaginatively dash
ing as Mr. Fletcher's " trees like great jade elephants "
straining at their chains beneath the wind. But they have
let themselves drift into the backwater of formula. Not
that formulas in themselves are necessarily evil. The form-

AMY LOWELL: A PERSONALITY 739

ulas of rhyme and rhythm have helped to swell a noble tide
of literature, that of Imagism will add its element of beauty.
But like opium, they are deadly to their slaves; only to the
man who refuses to be bound by them do they reveal their
virtues. If Miss Lowell's book has significance beyond
that of a collection of pleasant literary essays, it lies in the
tracing of the gradual emancipation of American poetry
from the rigidities of " schools," and it is rather confusing
to the reader to be plunged in the last chapter backward
in fact if not in time, to the consideration of a highly de
veloped, highly restrictive school as the " tendency " toward
which the revolts of Mr. Robinson and Mr. Frost, Mr. Mas
ters and Mr. Sandburg are but as milestones along the way.

Amy Lowell herself, on the other hand, is perhaps the
least formula-bound poet now writing. She is an Imagist,
but she does not see the world exclusively in the terms of
Imagism ; she feels, and makes the reader feel, its enormous
variety. Her historical sense does not permit her to despise
the past because it is past, nor to fear the future because
it lies around a bend in the road. So she writes freely and
flexibly and experimentally, as a poet should who springs
from a free, flexible, and experimental people. In fact, a
great reason why a consideration of Miss Lowell herself
would form a logical last chapter in Tendencies in Modern
American Poetry will be seen if we emphasize, ever so
slightly, the word American. It is true that she has taken
much from the French, but she has, in every sense of the
word, taken it home. Other Imagists have taken it away
from home. This does not make them less poets — it may
even make them better ones — but the " federation of the
world " has not yet become so closely knit that national
tendencies can be represented on the principle of exchange
professorships.

Long ago, as we count time nowadays, Ezra Pound
wrote, " Good art begins with an escape from dulness."
There can be no question that Miss Lowell's book has
escaped; it is interesting from its first page to its last.
Its author bears with her no touchstone of poetical values,
— that has gone the way of the philosopher's stone — she
carries a searchlight. Now and then, to be sure, she seems
not to perceive all of the picture revealed by her o\^n
beam, notably in the case of Edgar Lee Masters. Now
and then, too, a shade of dogmatism obscures it, as when

740 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

she says that " Scott's novels are very little read, it is true,
. . . less because so many of them are in dialect, as that
they are all so largely mere fustian." But these are minor
things. What is really important is that criticism of living
writers is in the way of being rescued from the desuetude
into which it has fallen since the day of Poe.

In style, the book is uneven. Every now and then vivid
passages flash out, as the description of the Swedish peas
antry from whom Carl Sandburg springs, or of the " strange,
faun-like, dryad-like quality " of " H. D.," who " seems al
ways as though just startled from a brake of fern." But
Miss Lowell seems to have striven conscientiously against
her own ability to write with literary finish, and has achieved
in the main a certain plain colloquialism which runs from
an incisive vigor that is wholly admirable, at one extreme,
to the level of commonplace conversation at the other. While
in her poetry she freely admits ideas to fellowship with
beauty, in her prose she seems to suspect the association
of beauty with ideas.

Although Miss Lowell would probably be called a
sophisticated woman, in the sense of having, through an
inherited and a personal culture, left the untaught simplici
ties far behind her, her latest book leaves with the reader
a strong impression of the most simple and unaffected integ
rity. Whether this is the result of an art which has com
pleted the circle, or of a survival in her of the old New
England love of directness and of " uncluttered " spaces,
mental as well as physical, or whether it is only the working-
out of the native judicial temper of a Deborah, does not
matter. What does matter is that the impression is as ines
capable as it is welcome.

There are still many people and many critics — if the dis
tinction be not an invidious one — who do not care for Miss
Lowell's poetry. From the vantage-ground of personal
preference it is easy enough to quote at them Mr. Howells'
witty remark that " a good thing can be liked only by those
who are good enough to like it/' but this closes the door.
The way to open the door is to search for reasons.

One reason why a portion of the public has looked
askance at the author of Patterns and Spring Day is
that they cannot believe that she Is as unaffected as she

AMY LOWELL: A PERSONALITY 741

seems. Is it possible (they ask) that a grown woman can
seriously inform the world of the pleasure she finds in watch
ing the spots of dancing sunshine reflected from the water
in her bath-tub " wobble deliciously on the ceiling," and in
the feeling of the " green-white water, the sun-flawed, beryl
water," upon her body? Can she expect us to follow her
in her lyrical joy in the clean linen and the shining service
of a well-ordered breakfast table and the appetizing savors
of its food? If for the bath-tub in a white-tiled room we
substitute the ocean or a mountain lake, or if we imagine
coffee steam " fluting in a thin spiral up the high blue sky "
from the trenches in France instead of through the open
window of a breakfast-room in Boston, we should recognize
these things quickly enough as the proper material of poetry.
But as it is, there is an intimacy about the record of them
which, to the conventional mind, seems hardly decent. And
although the same mind would doubtless admit the Napole
onic era as a suitable theme for verse, Miss Lowell's treat
ment of it proves almost as dismaying as her apotheosis of
the bath-tub and the coffee-pot. Surely there should be a
more elevated chorus to the vast drama of the time than the
tap-tapping of hammers!

It is a peculiarity of majorities to tend to dissociate
poetry from life, to value it for its oracular qualities — in a
word, to push it farther and farther back toward the Python.
Once in every generation or two, a poet rescues it tempo
rarily. So did William Blake, so Wordsworth, so Walt
Whitman. So every imaginative child rescues it for a day
or a year, as far as he is himself concerned, but he is inar
ticulate, he cannot pass on to others the thrill he gets from
the play of sunlight in his morning bath or from the " wheels
of white " which dazzle his eyes from a polished silver pot.
The poet dies in him precisely as his vitality and his curiosity
dwindle. These qualities have persisted with Miss Lowell.
She takes no one else's word for the triviality or common-
placeness of a thing, she tests the matter out. If it proves
to be actually trivial or commonplace, no harm is done, it
is only an experiment which has failed. If, on the other
hand, a heart of beauty reveals itself at the unhabitual touch,
the world is permanently and incalculably enriched. Miss
Lowell is helping to emancipate poetry not only by writing
it, but by the spirit in which she writes it. And the more
we cultivate a like flexibility of mind in ourselves, the more

742 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

we are successful in resuming the vitality and the curiosity
which we have " lost awhile," the greater value we shall see
even in those poems of hers which we may have been inclined
to consider affected or wilfully eccentric.

Another reason why Miss Lowell is unapprehended
of the multitude is that she is distinctly a poet of civil
ization, and she has applied to civilization the touchstones
which we are accustomed to see applied only to nature.
For the past fifty years poets have been accustomed to
find their rapture on the lonely shore; practically all the
objective poetry has been nature-poetry. Miss Lowell
gives us very little of this. She lives in a man-made world,
and her uncompromising conscience will not permit her
to write of it as though it were God-made. To the con
ventional poet the sight of a shop-window full of giddy
festoons of red slippers would bring no emotion except
a regret that they were not something else, somewhere
else — red ivy on a frosted wall, perhaps, or red blossoms
in a tropical forest. To Miss Lowell, too, they suggest other
objects: — red rockets over a pond, scarlet tanagers, and so
on. But she brings them all back to the red slippers,
whose glowing color in itself contents her, instead of
letting the red slippers lead her to remote, traditionally
poetical images. It is not enough to say that she is a realist,
it is scarcely half the truth. She is rather a veritist, and a
romantic veritist at that, not seeking to relate the fact to
the phantom, but to incorporate the phantom with the fact.
She accomplishes this by bringing to bear upon the fact,
civilized, conventional, artificial as it must be in her accepted
world, senses as acute and unsophisticated as those of a sav
age. Through her poems runs a sensory leit-motif which
not only relates their parts to each other, but relates the
whole to the general experience of the thronged world. Often
it is vivid color, as in Sea-Blue and Blood-Red; sometimes
it is sound, as when in the group of Napoleonic poems she
hears, steadily, beneath the crashing of empires, the monoto
nous tap-tap of hammers, the tearers-down and builders-up
of the man-made world, now putting the last touches on a
battle-ship, now closing in lead and mahogany the " strange
wayfarer " who once was Emperor with his

. . . baubles of a crown of mist
Worn in a vision and melted away at waking.

AMY LOWELL: A PERSONALITY 743

Naturally enough, it is only by an effort of will and
imagination that a poet so far progressed from the primi
tive as Miss Lowell is can revert to it. In The Overgrown
Pasture she does so successfully, but these poems are trage
dies, and tragedy is the element in the heart of man least
affected by civilization. She would be quite incapable of
writing a piece of cracker-barrel genre like Robert Frost's
Hundred Collars, and, in fact, in Tendencies in Modern
American Poetry, she characterizes that reflection of the old-
time Yankee's dislike of affectation and belief in the natural
equality of man as " a little dull — a laborious attempt at
humor." She stiffens instinctively at the glimpse of the
half -drunken collector:

. . . Naked above the waist,
He sat there creased and shining in the light,
Fumbling the buttons in a well-starched shirt

and she can appreciate neither the man's innate and abound
ing kindliness nor the effective contrast between his human
disreputableness and the frigid respectability of the college
professor. This is not to say that Miss Lowell is without a
sense of humor, but rather that her culture and that of her
forbears has constantly tended away from the simpler and
cruder manifestations of it until they have become genu
inely unrecognizable to her. This is perhaps one of the
penalties imposed upon Miss Lowell by her sex. The state
ment that women lack a sense of humor has been resented
by them, and justly so. But it cannot be denied that an
enjoyment of the Hundred Collars type of episode lingers
longer in the cultivated man than it does in the average
cultivated woman.

Not only in the profusion and freedom of her utterance,
but in her general view of the external world, Miss Lowell
resembles another prolific masculine genius — Charles Dick
ens. She does not show his influence as she shows the
influence of Keats, in an occasional poem, except, indeed,
in the tale of Mr. Spruggins and his nightmare, which is,

r'te deliberately, Dickens heightened by Cruikshank. But
ough the work of both runs the same vivid sense of the
interwoven dependence of man and nature, the same quick
susceptibility to personality in wind and cloud, to the impact
of brilliant color and the rhythm of motion. And here we
have a proof of how far personality determines technique.

744 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

For though Dickens was as instinctive as a newfoundland
and Miss Lowell is intensely premeditative, these common
susceptibilities have worked out into curious similarities of
method — the " last of the mythologists " meets the first
romantic veritist upon the rolling ball of polyphonic prose.

The affinity between Miss Lowell and Charles Dickens
begins and ends, however, with this sensitiveness to impres
sion, a trait more physical, perhaps, than mental. Dickens
was a lavish sentimentalist, Miss Lowell is a lavish roman
ticist. Often she seems in danger of the fate that so con
stantly overtook the elder writer — a keying up of an impres
sion to over-epithet, over-emphasis; but so far she has been
saved from it by her balance, her lack of sentimentality, and
— a still surer safeguard — by the fact that in spite of the
fascination which the shining shells of things have for her,
she sees something better and graver beyond them — some
thing which, except in the field of social emotion, Dickens
did not see at all.

Somewhere, Miss Lowell has said, " Schools are for those
who can confine themselves within them. Perhaps it is a
weakness in me that I cannot." It is unlikely that the pos
sibility concerns her much. Judging from the three volumes
of poetry and the two of criticism we now have from her,
to say nothing of a fecund output of current verse, little
concerns Miss Lowell save that she should not fail in sin
cerity, in directness, in courage, and in the consistent pursuit
of her ideal.

Perhaps not all of these are qualities which immediately
occur to most people in connotation of the word poetry.
That is a pity. One of the worst counts against formula
is that personality hides behind it, conforms to it, through
it standardizes itself, so to speak. Free personality and we
shall go far toward freeing poetry. Even now, when a long
step has been taken in that direction, we have people on the
one side still afraid of the new, and on the other, equally
afraid of the old. Miss Lowell has said:

New forms are invented to express something which seems inade
quately clothed in any of the old forms ; but that they must necessarily
push the old forms out of existence seems a strangely unhistorical
statement ...

Some poems come into a writer's mind as expressed in metrical
verse, others in the freest of free rhythms. A poet is only true to
his art and his " vision " when he follows these subconscious dictates,
and writes in accordance with them.

AMY LOWELL: A PERSONALITY 745

This seems such a reasonable statement that it is not
until one thinks back upon poetry in general that one grasps
its insidious implications. How many conventional poets of
the past have been forced by the originality of their vision
to invent new forms to clothe it? How many unconven
tional poets of the present have a vision whole enough to
demand a harmonious and rounded prosody for its expres
sion? In brief, how many are capable of swinging the doors
of their personality wide enough to let the idea itself deter
mine the technique of its expression? To do it calls for a
particular and rare sort of freedom. Dr. Johnson came near
the secret when he advised to clear the mind of cant. Miss
Lowell has so cleared her mind — if not completely, in a
world of incompleteness, at least conspicuously; and, given
this freedom, it is natural enough that her ideas and her
forms should follow a wide range. Now, in the " freest of
free rhythms," she describes a popular lunch-room; now she
relates a romantic tale in strait Spenserian stanzas. Now
she offers a psychological study of an episode of passionate
crime, now nine pages absorbedly intent upon visualizing
for us the motion of a child's hoop.

This diversity of thought and expression is to some ex
tent a drawback to Miss Lowell's popular acceptance. A
classifying critic no sooner pins her realism, say, upon his
cork, than lo, she soars away, a moth of the ideal. He
rebukes her for freakish novelty, and she responds with an
irreproachable sonnet. He points out that she is over-intel-
lectualized, and a riot of color and of human passion like
Sea-Blue and Blood-Red smites him suddenly and he blinks
with the dazzle of it. So he puts on a safe eye-shade and
writes down, " Brilliant but superficial." The fact is, that
though she often lays herself open to criticism with a sort
of helpless frankness, she cannot be pigeon-holed. And that
is very confusing to the people who are accustomed to say,
" Zola, naturalism; Tennyson, music; Mark Twain, humor."

Part of Miss Lowell's freedom is no doubt due to her
acquisition of foreign culture, but the important thing is
that it has remained a native freedom. This New England
receptiveness has been tested before. In the day of Thoreau
and Emerson and Longfellow it absorbed an enormous
amount of German philosophy and romanticism without ap
parent discomfort. It is highly significant that long before
the war came to alienate us from Germany and incline us

746 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

toward France, Miss Lowell had turned to French models
and had found in them a fresh force to replace the long-
spent German impulse. It was as sure an instinct as that
which leads the ailing savage to a medicinal spring. And
it was time. During the last years of the nineteenth century
and the first of the twentieth we drifted on an ebb tide.
Paul Elmer More comments in one of his essays on the
" lack of resistance " which characterized writers of the New
England school. That lack was strenuous endeavor com
pared with the inertia of the men who followed them, for
the most part so much seaweed in the currents of formula
and commercialism.

But Miss Lowell resists. She leads a new generation
of poets who are all of them, in one way or another, resist
ing, and she has carried her resistance farther than they, out
of the region of the " popular movements " with which, as
Thoreau says, " God does not sympathize," into the realm
of art. This is a direction, of course, in which the French
have long pointed the way, and it is a direction from which
our Teutonic inheritance of mystical sentimentalism has too
long withheld us.

Linked in effect if not in origin with her various resist
ances, is Miss Lowell's high development of the historical
sense. No small part of her value to this generation is her
rescue of poetry from the immediate and the personal. If
Wordsworth had been writing at the beginning of the twen
tieth instead of at the beginning of the nineteenth century
he might have said, the time is too much with us. We have
lived too wholly in the present. If we have not felt, like
the Bourbon king, that we were the State, we have felt that
we were, in a way, history — a history sufficient to itself.
And our conceit is recoiling as sharply upon us as the king's
did upon his House. Just now, the great war is compelling
us to turn back the pages, but we shall forget again; when
the poignancy of it is a little removed we shall once more
return to the pleased contemplation of our own navels unless
our poets, the only prophets we admit, remind us to a far
ther gaze — the "Debits — credits? Flux and flow through
a wide gateway," which is Miss Lowell's vision of the past.

Imagining Miss Lowell herself, for a moment, in his
torical perspective, her appearance in New England at this

AMY LOWELL: A PERSONALITY 747

moment has significance. There is no need to dwell here
upon the qualities of the old stock that settled and subdued
those granite hills from Connecticut to Maine. If we have
never felt its flint and steel strike a smothered fire within
ourselves, we have seen it in our neighbors, in fiction, or in
caricature. But the descendants of the pioneers, we are told,
who have not gone West, have for the most part degen
erated into " shiftlessness " or incredible morbidity. There
is as much truth in this as in most exaggerations. Between
the upper and the nether millstones of physical and spiritual
rigidities, New Englanders have become the victims of innu
merable psychical suppressions. These are plainly visible
in the work of Mr. Robinson and Mr. Frost, and we see
Mr. Masters, half conscious of them, in Laocoon throes of
struggle. But Miss Lowell has nearly if not quite escaped.
In spite of generations of inhibition behind her, she is singu
larly free; out of a soil that it is the fashion to call "starved"
she draws a passion for color and the glitter of the seasons;
as the new psychology " sublimates " desire into thought,
she has sublimated her native Puritanism into desire — desire
for beauty, for perfection, for the verities of art, and she
has turned the compulsion of conscience to the fulfillment
of her desire. In a word, she encourages us to believe in a
New England renascent.

A well-known American critic says in a recent magazine
article:

During the last two centuries, English poetry has accepted a prin
ciple which is Spanish or Italian rather than English — the principle
of uninterrupted beauty and distinction. . . . The law which governs
our poetry today is the acquired and alien law of constancy in beauty
with variations and inequalities in life; the ancient and native law
for English verse is constancy in vitality with interruptions or dispari
ties in charm.

This statement of the " ancient and native law " fits the
case of Miss Lowell as though it had been written of her
alone. Whatever " interruptions or disparities in charm "
her verse may have, she stands in the great Anglo-Saxon
tradition of " constancy in vitality." This vitality, which
includes all those qualities and the defects of qualities which
make of a man or woman not a person but a personality,
transcends the mere line-by-line printed page of her work,
and is the spring of the influence she is exerting upon
American literature. HELEN BuLLIS

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE

BY VERNON LEE

" All art," wrote Pater, summarizing Hegel, " tends to
the nature of music". This saying had long haunted me ; and
with it the suspicion that knowledge of the nature of music
would afford the best clue to the aesthetics of other arts less
simple in their tasks and less seemingly intimate in their pro
cesses. Now what is the nature of music? To one who deals
with aesthetics not as part of a priori philosophy, but as a
branch of empirical psychology, the nature of music, like the
nature of anything else we can discuss with any profit, is
merely another way of saying its actions and reactions as
they can be discerned and foretold by us. From this point
of view the nature of music would be most profitably studied
not so much by analyzing and comparing various works of
art, since that would acquaint us only with the evolution of
various styles and the influence of individual masters, as
by examining the effects of music in general on its hearers.
Since, from the psychologist's point of view, an art is not
the material agglomeration of objectively existing pictures,
statues, poems or musical compositions, but the summing up
of a set of spiritual processes taking place in the mind of the
artist and in the mind of him who receives his gifts ; or rather
the work of art is the junction between the activities of the
artist and those of the beholder or hearer. Indeed, musical
aesthetics ought to be the clue to the study of all other
branches of art, first and foremost because the evanescence of
music's material makes it more evident that the work of art
really is the special group of responses which it is susceptible
of awakening in the mind of the hearer, including the com
poser himself, who mentally hears his own work in the process
of building it up and taking stock of its whole and its parts.

The enquiry into what music is, therefore becomes, for
those thinking like myself, an enquiry into what music doe!

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE 749

in the mind of the hearer, or, more correctly, of what the mind
of the hearer does in response to the music which he hears.
But the " mind of the hearer " is not an individual entity; it is
only a convenient average of the phenomena common to all
or most minds of all hearers under examination. And the
first result of such examination is to reveal that these hearers'
minds, although similar in one or two main points which
oblige us to classify them as hearers of music, are in other
respects dissimilar, indeed so dissimilar that we are obliged to
consider them as belonging to opposed classes. Therefore,
before being able to say how music acts upon mankind as a
whole, we have to enquire how music acts upon different cate
gories of human beings, which, as already remarked, is an
other way of saying how the minds of various categories or
types of hearers act in response to the music they hear. Ever
since Galton and Charcot, empirical psychology has dealt
more or less scientifically with certain types whose names at
least, the visual, the auditive, the motor, the verbal type and
their cross breeds, have become familiar to most readers. But
it is not this classification we have applied to our subject.
For although it becomes apparent that the visualizing and the
verbal endowment may produce special responses to music;
and althought we may suspect that the motor type, that
enigma and deus ex machina of experimental psychology, may
be at the bottom of other kinds of responses, yet the phenom
ena we are studying are of a far less elementary nature than
those determining such classifications, and the method of
tackling them is not that of the artificially simplified experi
ments of the psychological laboratory, but, on the contrary,
a method starting from the extremely complex data furnished
by every-day experience and thence working its way by
comparison and analysis to the simpler, more intelligible facts
underlying these first-hand, and often puzzling, facts of ex
perience.

Starting from such everyday experience, we are immedi
ately obliged to notice that there are persons in whose life
music means a great deal, others in whose life it means less,
and others in whose life it means nothing worth reckoning.
These last-named people we will, for the moment, leave out
of our enquiry, although subsequent sifting of this rejected
material may lead, even in these musical nullities, to discov
eries shedding light on the modes of being of persons in whose
life music means something.

750 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

This convenient, though slovenly, form of words affords a
short-cut into our field of study; and more particularly into
the method, whose technical details would demand a separate
essay, by which I have endeavored to deal with it, assisted by
my invaluable fellow-analyst, Miss Irene Cooper Willis.
For in the successive questionnaires, written and verbal inter
rogations, by means of which I have tapped the musical ex
periences of nearly two hundred subjects, there has recurred
a query which has always received two apparently irreconcil
able sets of answers. This query, altered as has been its
actual wording (in English, French and German, besides
successive versions) and implied though cunningly inexplicit,
in many other questions presented to my subjects, can be
summarized as follows : When music interests you at all, has
it got for you a meaning which seems beyond itself ', a message;
or does it remain just music? And here before dealing with
these conflicting answers, I must explain that such enquiries
have to steer between opposite dangers : they can avoid the
Scylla of suggesting an answer, in so far worthless, which the
interrogated subject would not have otherwise come by, only
by running into the Charybdis of being answered by a person
who does not really understand what you are asking. And
of all the whirlpools of cross purposes, over whose darkness
the present enquirers have strained their psychological eye
sight, none is so baffling as the one of which meaning is itself
the obscure, the perpetually shifting centre. However, by
dint of indefatigable watching round that maelstrom, fishing
for any broken items found whirling in its obscurity, my
eyes and those of my fellow-investigator have been able to
discern the cause of its baffling but (as afterward became
apparent) quite regular eddies. I have remarked that the
word meaning is one whose own meaning is apt to vary.
And it was by following up its two chief meanings in the pres
ent connection that we were able to make our first working
classification of the persons who had been good enough to
answer my questionnaires. One of those two meanings of
meaning is embodied in my previous sentence : " persons
in whose life music means a great deal," which is only another
way of saying " persons in whose life music occupies much
attention " ; for meaning is here used as a measure of im
portance, and importance, when we are dealing with mental
life, means importance for the attention, or as we call it, in
terest. I would beg my readers to bear in mind this connec-

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE 751

tion between meaning as here employed and attention; for
musical attention is going to be one of the chief items of our
inquiry.

But meaning can also be taken as roughly implying a mes
sage, as in my query: " Does music seem to you to have a
message, a meaning beyond itself? 33 And half of the sub
jects interrogated did precisely answer that undoubtedly
music had a meaning beyond itself, many adding that if it
had not it would constitute only sensual enjoyment, and be
unworthy of their consideration, some of them moreover in
dignantly taking in this sense my words about music remain
ing just music. That for these persons music did not remain
just music, but became the bearer of messages, was further
made certain by pages and pages, often of unexpectedly
explicit or eloquent writing which attempted to describe the
nature of that message, to describe the things it dealt with
and the more or less transcendental spheres whence that
message of music seemed to come.

So far for one-half of the answers. The other either
explicitly denied or disregarded the existence of such a mes
sage; insisted that music had not necessarily any meaning
beyond itself, and far from taking the words " remains just
music " as derogatory to the art or to themselves, they an
swered either in the selfsame words or by some paraphrase,
that when they cared for music it remained just music. And,
in the same way that the believers in meaning as message
often gave details about the contents of that message, so,
on the other hand, the subjects denying the existence of a
message frequently made it quite clear that for them the
meaning of music was in the music itself, adding that when
really interested in music they could think of nothing but the
music.

Now this latter answer, repeated as it was in every form
of words, suggests a possibility if not of reconciling two
diametrically opposed views concerning the nature of music,
at all events of understanding what such an opposition implies
and depends on. For distributed throughout the question
naire in such a manner as to prevent their being interpreted
into a theory which might vitiate the spontaneity of the
answers, was a whole set of questions bearing upon the nature
of that alleged message, of that meaning beyond itself, which
music might assume for its hearers : In listening or remember
ing music, especially music accompanied by words or sug-

752 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

gestive title,1 did the answerers see anything, landscapes, peo
ple, moving pictures or dramatic scenes, in their mind's eye?
Did music strike them as expressing the emotions or life-
history of the composer or performer, or their own? Or else
was such emotional expression merely recognized as existing
in the music without being referred to any particular persons?
The affirmative answers, often covering many pages, showed
that according to individual cases the " message " was prin
cipally of one of these kinds, visual or emotional, abstract or
personal, but with many alterations and overlappings. But
fragmentary, fluctuating, and elusive as it was oftenest de
scribed as being, and only in rare cases defining itself as a
coherent series of pictures, a dramatic sequence or intelligible
story, the message was nevertheless always a message, inas
much as it appeared to be an addition made to the hearer's
previous thoughts by the hearing of that music; and an addi
tion due to that music and ceasing with its cessation. Now
comes an important point: while half of the interrogated sub
jects declared that such a meaning or message constituted a
large part of music's attraction, some persons actually admit
ting that they went to hear music for the sake of the images,
emotions, trains of thought with which it enriched them,
the other half of the answers by no means denied the existence
of a meaning in music, often indeed remarking that without
such a meaning it would be mere sound; but they further
more claimed that such meaning resided inseparably in the
music itself; and added that whenever they found music
completely satisfying, any other meaning, anything like visual
images or emotional suggestions, was excluded or reduced to
utter unimportance. Indeed this class answered by a great
majority that so far as emotion was concerned, music awak
ened in them an emotion sui generis, occasionally shot with
human joy or sadness, but on the whole analogous to the ex
altation and tenderness and sense of sublimity awakened by
the beautiful in other arts or in nature, but not to be compared
with the feelings resulting from the vicissitudes of real life.

1FThe author, in framing her questionnaire, seems not to have given suffi
cient emphasis to this very vital qualification. It is obvious that a listener's
reaction to music which is offered to him accompanied by words, motto, or sug
gestive title ( "programme-music ", as it is technically called) will necessarily
be different from his reaction to " absolute " music — that is, music unassociated
with any explicit poetic, pictorial, or dramatic subject-matter. It makes all
the difference in the world whether the hearer's reaction is produced, for example,
by Strauss* Don Quixote or Brahms' C-minor symphony. It seems to us that
the author's questionnaire should have clearly established this distinction as of
capital importance. — EDITOR.

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE 753

It was nearly always persons answering in this sense who ex
plicitly acquiesced in the fact that music could remain, in
no derogatory sense but quite the reverse, just music.

I must here interrupt our comparison of these two main
classes of answers, those which affirmed music to have a mes
sage, and those which acquiesced in its remaining just music,
and explain that a large part of our questionnaires consisted
in queries attempting to classify the answerers themselves.
To what extent were they musical? This question, like all
the main ones of our enquiry, was not left to the direct de
cision of the subjects interrogated, most of whom would have
been incapable and perhaps unwilling to write themselves
down as more or less musical than an average mankind about
whose endowment they would probably feel ignorant. Con
formably therefore to the rest of my method, the question
naire contained sets of queries which, taken together, con
stituted an objective criterion of the degree of musical en
dowment and cultivation: queries dealing principally with
memory for musical sequences (melody) and especially for
musical combinations (harmony and orchestral timbre) along
with the capacity and habit of taking stock (analysis) of the
tone-relations constituting the music they were hearing;
finally, the capacity for finding accompaniments and for ex
temporizing, these being the proof either of special musical
endowment or of special musical cultivation. By this means
it became possible to ascertain how far the conflicting answers
about music having a message or remaining just music cor
respond with the musical status, if I may be allowed this ex
pression, of the individuals by whom they were furnished.

Two other sets of queries dealt respectively with memory
of and interest in visible objects; with interest in the drama
and especially with such tenacity of emotional memory as
enable painful past associations to spoil opportunities of pres
ent happiness; all of which queries were intended to obtain
some insight into the imaginative and emotional disposition
of each answerer. For my whole enquiry had started with the
working hypothesis that the tendency to attribute to music an
emotional message (i. e., the expression of the emotional vicis
situdes either of the answerer or of the composer or of some
third person) might be due to the greater predominance of
emotional interest in the answerer's usual inner life. This
hypothesis speedily broke down : some people were obviously
very emotional who yet persisted in answering that music had
VOL. ccvu.— NO. 750 48

754 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

no message for them; others utterly rejected the just music
alternative without revealing any particular emotional bias,
or, for that matter, any particular development of visual
imagination either. Still less was it possible to connect musi
cal endowment and cultivation with the presence or the lack
of any specially emotional disposition. But while this first,
and insufficiently complex, view of the problem utterly broke
down, the sifting of the evidence which led to its rejection
left us quite unexpectedly with what has, I think, proved a
real clue to the matter.

For although there seemed no direct relation between the
degree of emotional disposition and the question whether
music had or had not a message, a meaning beyond itself, this
question showed itself in an obvious relation to what I have
called the musical status of the answerers. The more musical
answerers were also those who repudiated the message, who
insisted that music had a meaning in itself, in fact, that it re
mained for them " mere music." A certain number of highly
musical subjects not only declared this to be the case with
themselves, but foretold that we should find it so with every
sufficiently musical hearer. Their own experience was that
the maximum interest and maximum pleasure connected with
music can leave no room for anything else. And this answer
led to the framing of queries bearing upon musical attention;
queries which elicited some very unexpected information.
For the distinctly musical answerers proved to be those who
admitted without hesitation that their musical attention was
liable to fluctuations and lapses. They were continually
catching themselves thinking of something else while hear
ing music. They complained of their own inattention and
divagation. But — and this is the important point in the evi
dence — these lapses were regarded by them as irrelevancies
and interruptions : the music was going on, but their attention
was not following it. The less musical answerers, those also
who found in music a meaning beyond itself, seemed compar
atively unaware of such lapses or interruptions. From some
of their answers one might have gathered that rather un
musical people could sit through two hours of a concert with
unflagging enjoyment. But further sets of queries revealed
that although unbroken by boredom, restlessness or the con
scious intrusion of irrelevant matters, that enjoyment was
not confined to the music. When asked whether the music sug
gested anything, they abounded in accounts of inner visions,

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE 755

trains of thought and all manner of emotional dramas, often
most detailed and extensive, which filled their minds while,
as they averred, they were listening to the music; indeed
some of which, they did not hesitate to admit, constituted
the chief attraction of music.

Putting their statement opposite that of the musical an
swerers, — namely, that musical appreciation left room for
nothing else, and although musical attention could and did
frequently lapse, it could never be simultaneously divided be
tween the heard music and anything else, — the conclusion
became obvious that there existed two different modes of
responding to music, each of which was claimed to be the
only one by those in whom it was habitual. One may be called
listening to music; the other hearing, with lapses into merely
over-hearing it. Listening implied the most active attention
moving along every detail of composition and performance,
taking in all the relations, of sequences and combinations of
sounds as regards pitch, intervals, modulations, rhythms and
intensities, holding them in the memory and coordinating
them in a series of complex wholes, similar (this was an oc
casional illustration) to that constituted by all the parts,
large and small, of a piece of architecture; and these archi
tecturally coordinated groups of sound-relations, i. e., these
audible shapes made up of intervals, rhythms, harmonies and
accents, themselves constitute the meaning of music to this
class of listeners ; the meaning in the sense not of a message
different from whatever conveyed it, but in the sense of an
interest, an importance, residing in the music and inseparable
from it.

This is what we gather about what I have called listening
to music. Hearing music as it is revealed by our answerers
is not simply a lesser degree of the same mental activity, but
one whose comparative poverty from the musical side is eked
out and compensated by other elements. The answers to our
questionnaires show that even the least attentive hearers have
moments, whose frequency and duration depend both on gen
eral musical habits and on the familiarity of the particular
piece or style of music, of active listening ; for they constantly
allude to their ability to follow or grasp, as they express it,
the whole or only part of what they happen to hear. But
instead of constituting the whole bulk of their musical experi
ence (in such a way that any other thought is recognized as
irrelevant) these moments of concentrated and active atten-

756 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tion to the musical shapes are like islands continually washed
over by a shallow tide of other thoughts; memories, associa
tions, suggestions, visual images and emotional states, ebbing
and flowing round the more or less clearly emergent musical
perceptions, in such a way that each participates of the qual
ity of the other, till they coalesce into a homogeneous and spe
cial contemplative condition, into whose observation and
blend of musical and non-musical thoughts there enters noth
ing which the hearer can recognize as inattention, as the con
centrated musical listener recognizes the lapses and divaga
tions of which he complains. Moreover, in this kind of
hearing of music there really are fewer intrusions from every
day life. Musical phrases, non-musical images and emotions
are all welded into the same musical day dream, and the trains
of thought are necessarily harmonious with the music, for if
they were conflicting, the music (which is heard though not
listened to) would either drive them away or (as in the lapse
of the more musically attentive) cease to play any part. For
these intermittently and imperfectly perceived sequences and
combinations of sounds do play a very important part in
these day dreams. By their constancy, regularity and dif
ference from anything else, they make and enclose a kind of
inner ambiance in which these reveries live their segregated
and harmonious life. It must be remembered that while the
eye (to which psychology adds the motor sense) is unceasing
ly building up a spatial world which is the scene of our every
day existence, the usual dealings of the ear are with inter
mittent and heterogeneous impressions, so that only music
can surround us with a continuous and homogeneous world
of sound, a world foreign to what we call real life, and there
fore excluding from its magic enclosure all real life's con
cerns, save when they have been stripped of all reality,
accidents and urgencies, and been transfigured by a bath if
not of oblivion, at least of harmonious contemplation.

The above summing up of the evidence of those answerers
who admitted that they did not always follow or grasp, i. e.,
actively listen, to the music they were hearing, and who alleged
that for them music had a message — a meaning beyond itself
— has taken us much further into the question of the nature
of music than is warranted by the limits of the present article.
A future examination of the answers to my questionnaires
must follow up these first indications, and deal with the other
category of answerers, those whose attention is engrossed by

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE 757

the music, and who allege that for them music remains just
music.

But at the bottom of these varieties of musical experience,
and of the many subdivisions and crosses thereof, lies the
question of musical attention. And the first fruits of my
questionnaires have therefore been the establishment of a
distinction between listening to music and merely hearing it ;
between a response to music such as implies intellectual and
aesthetic activity of a very intense, bracing and elevating
kind, and a response to music consisting very largely in emo
tional and imaginative day dreams, purified from personal
and practical preoccupations and full of refreshing visions
and salutary sentimental satisfactions. These are the two
ways of impersonal, contemplative happiness in which
music can benefit mankind. And they explain the two kinds
of meaning which are ascribed to music and which music can
have in our lives.

Further study of the data elicted by my questionnaires
may some day enable us to show how these two main modes
of responding to music overlap and enrich one another; it
may even suggest how the desire for music as something to
be listened to has gradually evolved out of a primitive need
for music as something to stir inert, or release pent up, emo
tions, and to induce such day dreams as restore and quicken
the soul.

VERNON LEE.

MESSAGES

BY STARK YOUNG

MR. BYNG has a congregation near Buff alo. If you talk
with him you will find that he is a Progressive Minister —
whatever that may mean; it implies, perhaps, a bold indiffer
ence to such questions as Adam's being really the first man
and a firm insistence on the necessity of sermons. Mr. Byng
feels very radical about many things — Brieux's not shocking
him, for example; and Mr. Byng tells you about this as some
of his brothers say " damn " to show to the world of laymen
their emancipation. And Mr. Byng is not so much a fool
as he is an entertainer, an entertainer with a self-confi
dent patter and the gift of teasing platitudes into the radical
and reducing the radical to platitude. Wide horizon is his
vanity ; and he might have gone further but for the fact that
in his mild circles almost any idea would be radical. He in
herits from the older ministry many of their vices and some
of their worst virtues. And he is never more himself than
when, with a mild arrogance, capped and loaded with a text,
and after a very pointed prayer that is a sort of leading
article in the day's service, he insists on people's being
improved.

There are two societies among the sisters of his parish.
One of them, the Dorcas Society, only sews and knits and
talks and gives church suppers. For Mr. Byng this society
is beyond the pale of his ethical pressure. He lets the mem
bers go their ways, and he and his wife — who, it seems, was
on the kaleidoscopic verge of an art career but for her mar
riage — smile at them with witty superiority, very much, I
am afraid, as Mr. Byng's (to use his own phrase) " superficial
people with the leisure class culture " would smile at him.

But in the Ladies Tuesday Club he thinks there is room
for development, an opportunity for something to be done.
If you talk with him about it, he will give you the impression

MESSAGES 759

that it is all a matter of tact with people; that he has simply
forced them to see that they have been reading Browning and
Tennyson, Shakespeare or Rostand and Maeterlinck and
recent fiction as mere literature. He insists that they take up
Brieux, Stanley Houghton's Hindle Wakes, Galsworthy's
Strife, Justice, The Mob, and in general, say, plays like
Kindling. Mr. Byng longs to make it clear to his follow
ers that his grouping of Tennyson and Rostand and recent
fiction may be well enough as mere literature. But these
people must, he insists, get down into books with a message.

To begin with, " mere literature " is a dangerous phrase;
it means nothing and can therefore mean anything. Our Pro
gressive Minister means by it, perhaps, that mere literature
is just reading, disconnected from life and life's problems,
problems very dear to him. But so far as it is anything at
all, literature is an expression of living in its own terms.
There can be no such thing as mere literature, any more than
there can be mere paint in painting, though there may easily
be such a thing as trying to read literature without regard
to its content. Mr. Byng might as well speak of mere re
ligion. That would be an impossible idea; for Mr. Byng,
outrageously unthinkable. Once a parishioner spoke of hav
ing enjoyed a sermon of his. " Enjoyed? " Mr. Byng re
plied, looking astonished under the knot of his heavily
responsible eyebrows, " enjoyed! " He hoped never to hear
that word again; his aim was to appeal to the mind and the
spirit; implying that for him enjoyment made no part of
such a process.

The attraction of the definite cause in a work of art is
obvious. A message, a cause, as the raison d'etre of a piece
of art, is easy. Most men are cowards in the face of life,
which is a perilous flight ; and gentle frauds in familiar moral
ity, which is a sort of roost. The lazy way out is the moral,
the message, the cause, the purpose, as an explanation of the
appeal and response that involves no little of our mystery.
It is the resort of the simplest souls ; even the young lady who
thinks Billie Burke a great actress tells me that The Calling
of Dan Matthews may be all I say it is, trite, foolish, empty,
and "yet after all it has a message." She says the words
with a kind of cult security, a pat finality, folding her mental
hands across the bosom of her soul. Pollyanna, I say to her,
is worse than poor stuff, flat, absurd; and yet, she says, it has
a message. She need make no defense. I should be willing to

760 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

let her have her Pollyanna on the ground that she enjoys it,
enjoys weeping with it, romancing, smiling, fooling and
mooning with it; but I refuse to allow her to put up the
message as an excuse. And meanwhile the Young Men's
Christian Association Travelling Secretary, a waterish
young man with a serious long nose and no forehead, shows
his list of books, not so literary perhaps, he says, but books
with a purpose.

But all writing, all art, since the beginning of time, has a
cause in view. It may not be to teach us to be glad, or to
prove that the first love is the best, or that good girls have
their reward in marrying wealthy heirs and reforming young
noblemen ; or, more seriously, to bring to our minds the neces
sity of sweatshop legislation, or the ravage of venereal
diseases, or the equal rights of women and the single standard
for men. But the cause may be the revelation of life, sincer
ity in recording men's actions, their moods, growth and de
generation. The great books carry their moral, since that is
a part of the all-round material in hand, and a lesson may
attach itself to a great play, as the benefits of fresh air may
be learned from the nightingale's voice, or as the necessity
of precaution may be learned from a conflagration. The
cause of the greatest literature is a cause that is all-possessing.
It is too large not to be in its best phases far removed from
any one socially reforming purpose ; its message and its peo
ple and circumstance are all one, the cause of the race and
our relation to our universal life and affairs. Under this
and in this the special message, the bare mission, takes its
place just as Brieux with his syphilis theme takes his place
under God or God's biology.

These explaining people are the friends of the ideal that
do it such harm. They are like the mediocre friends of great
men that go about reducing them to mediocrities. They are
the people who make puritanical dolts of lovely saints, and
turn the joys of natural kindness into drab obligations.
They make goodness noisome with second-rate morality, as
camomile is made now to suggest a disordered liver, or the
dainty horehound in the garden to warn us against croup,
They feel an enthusiasm that they are restless to explain and
justify to others; and since their judgments and their social
reasoning are along the simple lines of moral axioms and
utility, they make the justification of their enthusiasm axio
matic and platitudinous. It is this sort of pedestrian explana-

MESSAGES 761

tion of beauty and apology for delight that drives many to a
rash denial of all morality in art and to wild evictions and to
cries about art's sake. They could with more coolness make a
better reply than that. It may easily be true that out of the
beauty and delight and profundity of art, there emerges a
synthesis that is moral ; but this is only a heightened form of
our delight, and more finally beautiful. It can take care of
itself and does not need moral apology and minor dogma at
tached to it. Its excuse lies in its complete expressiveness.
To look merely for a cause, a message that will justify our
response to art, is to discount the directions into which the life
in us springs. For if our lives are led under the divinity in us,
the oneness of the Universal Divinity demands the constant
flowing out of ourselves into many channels.

Why then should the Tuesday Club members under the
Progressive Minister in the Buffalo suburb allow themselves
to be taken in hand? Their leader is industriously without
light. He gave up his wings as well as his cassock; he pro
gressed from wings to a portentously solemn feather duster.
This study for the message is only a provincialism in the world
of the spirit. And yet such people as Mr. Byng are able to
spread widely such an attitude into communities and schools.
Students emerge with justifications of the Laocoon group,
Othello, Comus, which are good because they teach that
pride brings a fall, jealousy is a sin, virtue to be followed.
They should be asked what is the good of a golden sunset, or
whether we fall in love to increase posterity, or swim best
when we remember muscular development. This teaching
has no conception of the magnificent revamping that art
gives to the truistic. And it lessens the difference between
the great and small; it is capable of justifying on the same
ground Virgil and Longfellow; and if its tenets were pushed
to the bottom, the Catechism, the Psalm of Life and the
Y. M. C. A. reports would be as good for study as Tintern
Abbey or the Song of Songs. This attitude opens a way for
the natural grudge felt by limited persons toward beings
more spaciously gifted than themselves, more apt at response
to the world of fife. It helps to put the volitional, the ob
viously moral, and the minor beauties of martyrdom, utility,
and negation in the place of intellect, delight, beauty, and
power. It would reduce to domestic and pew usage and
social serviceability the very light of the skies.

Why should the Tuesday Club suffer Stanley Houghton

762 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to be put upon them if they prefer Rostand? Stanley
Houghton has promise, but his plays are young in their
art, automatic, hard, meagre. Or why should they, unless
they choose, leave The Sunken Bell or In A Balcony for Jus-
tice or the plays of Mr. George Middleton? Justice as pro
duced by Mr. Payne was so moving as to make the discussion
of it as prison reform propaganda a sacrilege against human
living. And any straightforward instinct might ask, Why
read Mr. Middleton's plays at all? They are bourgeois, cant
ing, flat, and always, inevitably it seems, without infectious
vitality, robustness, verve, penetration. They never proceed
from within out, they are full of platitudinous ambition to dis
cuss life; they are too exhaustible; too little about too much.
Since nothing in them is recreated through the imagination,
transmuted into life, there remain only the thoughts, the mes
sage. But one would have to be free of all the middle-class
editorials of the last twenty years in order to find there
thoughts that are as such interesting or fresh. Or why should
the Tuesday Club be nudged through Kindling? The intro
duction, it is true, tells them that ff Kindling is admirable as
a work of art ; but it is even more important as a social docu
ment. The play reminds us with a pang that each of us is
at least a tacit partner in a social organization that is guilty
of infanticide upon an enormous scale." But — even if we
pass over the remark that a play may be more important as
a social document than as art, as if art had ultimately any
other importance — all this is merely oblique rubbish. Kind-
ling has no problem, it has only a situation. It is essentially
the work of a man of real humanity but no culture, a serious
and promising suburbanite. But the play has moments of
real excitement, beauty, insight, tenderness; all reasons for
seeing it, though not for being sent to it on account of a
cause. But after all the Tuesday Club members go to the
play to be stirred with life, and they have a right not to be
hectored out of their Maeterlinck and Thackeray if Maeter
linck and Thackeray delight them. Their Progressive Min
ister is no friend to the prosperity of art when he would use
it as a social sermon. And after all they should suspect that
it is largely a case of ego; which in a revivalist would have
been ecstatic, hortatory, violent, but in Mr. Byng is only
insistent, reforming, and unconsciously supercilious. His
great asset is his memory; he remembers all his own shallow
but moral reactions but cannot remember how many times he

MESSAGES 763

has told the same thing to the same person. This brings
about in him a repetition that passes for moral earnestness,
though it is only persistent ego and monotony of mind.

And many of Mr. Byng's favorite recommendations
among books and plays may get flat, unexpectedly without
stimulation, exactly as he himself might be stale and flat
by the side of some man with intelligence, a warm heart and
a steady gift for his own share of life. Good art may indeed
have a moral ; but the moral can be really got out of the art
only by experiencing in terms of it, never by moralizing about
it. And Mr. Byng will never understand how much easier
it is to be moral about a thing than to enter into it; or how in
art the search for a cause, the message, may be a purpose or
an emotion, but the search for living is an instinct.

STARK YOUNG.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH

REBECCA WEST1

BY LAWBENCE OILMAN

Or that engaging literary mystery presented to the read
ing world as " Rebecca West ", we know nothing — nothing,
that is to say, which would concern those who are made happy
by the information that Mr. Chesterton sprinkles pepper on
his beer; that Mr. Bernard Shaw refuses to sit thirteen at
table; that Mr. Wells cannot achieve sleep without a volume
of Mrs. Humphry Ward under his pillow; that the world's
most enviable author, whose pen-stroke evokes Niagaras of
gold, — the Hon. William McAdoo, — is physicaly incapable
of blushing. For such simple souls, who are unable to con
ceive of a literary product apart from a definitely oriented
literary producer, plainly ticketed and clearly identified as to
source and milieu — for such, we should despair of making
Rebecca West credible or persuasive. For, alas, we know
positively only one fact concerning her — a fact meagre and
ungratifying — namely, that she is a writer of dazzling intel
ligence and extraordinary fascination, with an easy and sov
ereign power of making words dp the bidding of her wit, her
courage, and her unslakable passion for loveliness. Whether
this author is a lady or a holding-company, a spinster or a
mother of ten, a Briton, a denatured American, or a modified
Pole like Mr. Conrad; whether the true name to be attached
to her remarkable creations be Rebecca or Hilda or Norah
(assuredly not Hedda) ; whether these blossomings were
seeded in Park Lane or the suburbs or the East End — these
things we can guess about, and nothing more.

It is too bad. Rebecca West should have realized that lit
erary mysteries are effective only when employed by writers
whose art is cheap enough to invite a wide public con-

*The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West. New York: The Century Co.,
1918.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 765

sumption. A mind like Rebecca West's, truculent, challeng
ing, cruelly contemptuous of the anserine, a mind that takes
fire from beauty and the contemplation of difficult hon
esties, a spirit both communal and patrician, will not suffi
ciently excite the literary market to make it care very much
whether Rebecca West is an educated bar-maid or one of
Queen Mary's Ladies-in- Waiting. She should have supplied
her publishers with full biographical data, with anecdotes and
" views " — with, in brief, the kind of journalistic shock-ab
sorber which would ease the impact upon the reading-public's
cerebral tenderness of an art that is unbending in its intellec
tual disdain of the flabby and the platitudinous; that con
fronts the complacent with a flaming passion for spiritual
clarities, and a touch upon the keys of its instrument too much
concerned with mere beauty to win out against the criards of
the literary mob.

What one knows of Miss West, then, relates only to
a disembodied intellectual and artistic force. So far as
America is concerned, she was accouched by the youngest of
our Journals of Opinion, in whose pages she might have
been observed a few years ago vigorously demonstrating the
completeness of The World's Worst Failure — which, as sig
nificantly as you choose, she held to be Woman. Following
this exploit, she disconcerted those who had settled back com
fortably in their critical lounging-coats and slippers after hav
ing, asi they thought, at last entombed Mr. Henry James in
his appropriate resting-place — disconcerted them by briskly
though affectionately summoning that eminent shade from
the retreat so carefully allotted to him, scrutinizing his pass
port with embarrassing thoroughness, and at last selecting an
entirely new and unprepared destination for him — one, to be
sure, that was full of light and peace and beauty, but not at
all in the location that had been so meticulously planned by
the predecessors of Miss West.

It was in 1916 that her biography and critical survey of
Henry James appeared; and now, for the first time, so far
as contemporary history reveals, she comes before us as a
novelist in The Return of the Soldier: an authentic master
piece, a one-act drama with music — the music of Miss West's
superbly imaginative prose: prose that is not easily to be
paralleled in its range and flexibility; for it has wit at the
pitch of virtuosity, and loveliness at the pitch of lyric rapture,
and, on its noblest levels, a depth and tenderness of vision

766 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

that belongs only to an understanding which has seen through
to the sources of spiritual beauty. This swift and poignant
fable would have won the admiration of Henry James.

When Chris was wounded in France, he sent a telegram,
not to his adoring wife Kitty at Baldry Court, England,
but, amazingly enough, to Margaret Allington at her old
home, Monkey Island, where, fifteen years before, her father
had kept an inn, and where Chris had known her before he
married Kitty. And it was Margaret, now no longer the
young girl with a body like a lily-stem whom Chris had
loved in the old days, but a plain, middle-aged woman with
red hands, wearing a yellowish raincoat and a sticky straw
hat with funeral plumes, a woman " repulsively furred with
neglect and poverty, as even a good glove that has dropped
down behind a bed in a hotel and has lain undisturbed is re
pulsive when the chambermaid retrieves it from the dust and
fluff " — it was this Margaret who appeared at Baldry Court
with Chris's telegram in her hands. And the next morning
there came a letter from Chris's cousin, the Rev. Frank
Baldly, telling them that the wounded man had summoned
him to the hospital at Boulogne where Chris, a victim of con
cussion, was so strangely recovering. * Without flickering
an eyelid, quite easily and naturally, he gave me the surpris
ing information that he was in love with a girl called Mar
garet Allington ", wrote the astounded churchman. " He
declared that he meant to marry this Margaret Allington.
' Oh, indeed ! ' I said. ' And may I ask what Kitty says
to this arrangement ? ' * Who the devil is Kitty ? ' he asked
blankly. * Kitty is your wife,' I said quietly, but firmly.
He sat up and shouted: ' I haven't got a wife ! . . . It's
the damndest lie ! '

" I determined to settle the matter by sharp, common-
sense handling. ' Chris/ I said, ' you have evidently lost
your memory. You were married to Kitty Ellis at St.
George's, Hanover Square, on the third, or it may have been
the fourth ' — you know my wretched memory for dates — ' of
February, in 1906.' He turned very pale and asked what
year this was. ' 1916,' I told him. He fell back in a fainting
condition. . . .

" The doctor says he has satisfied himself that Chris is
suffering from a loss of memory extending over a period of
fifteen years ".

They brought Chris home, a clearly defined case of

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 767

amnesia — a stranger in his own home, married to a woman
he did not know, in love with a woman he had tried to forget.
" His unconscious self ", explained the English psycho
analyst who was called in to treat him, " is refusing to let him
resume his relations with his normal life, and so we get this
loss of memory. . . . Mr. Baldry's obsession is that he can't
remember the latter years of his life. Well, what's the sup
pressed wish of which it's the manifestation ? " It was
abundantly obvious to them all that, for the real Chris, who
had been so violently projected forward out of the past,
his pretty, trivial wife, Kitty with the chiffon soul, meant,
and had meant, less than nothing to him; and it was equally
obvious that he wanted Margaret, and none but Margaret.
In fact, he announced to them that he would die if he did not
see her — standing in his own drawing-room, he demanded it
unequivocally; and it was of no use to tell him that she was
not as he thought of her— that she was old, unbeautiful,
drearily married, " seamed and scarred and ravaged by
squalid circumstances ".

So, perceiving that he was not to be denied, they brought
Chris and Margaret together.

It is in her portrait of Margaret grown old, of this woman
whose personality sounded through her squalor " like a beau
tiful voice singing in a darkened room ", that Rebecca West
has achieved a superlative performance. . . . " ' If she
really were like that, solemn and beatified!" exclaims
Chris's cousin, who understandingly loves him; " and my eyes
returned to look despairingly on her ugliness. But she really
was like that. . . . Her grave eyes were upturned, her worn
hands lay palm upward on her knees, as though to receive the
love of which her radiance was an emanation ".

And Miss West is equal to those crucial passages of her
fable which recount the meeting of Chris and his damaged
Margaret. She has moments of greatness here, moments
wherein she surmounts many perils. One would have said
of this situation — of a resumed love that, after many years,
must be made to survive a physical devastation — that
it must necessarily recall what Miss West herself has said
of certain fictions by Henry James: that "the foreground
is red with the blood of slaughtered probabilities " — that
here we have something " perfect in phrase but incredibly
naive in its estimation of persons and situations." Such a
situation as this of Chris and his undaunted love for the Mar-

768 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

garet who was suddenly not the outward Margaret of his
dreaming memories — such a situation must seem to threaten
a sticky abyss of sentimentalism; to compel dismissal as real
istic material for a sober fictional art because, as the matter-
of-fact lady said of Alice in Wonderland, " it is so unlikely ".
But Miss West's victory is in persuading you that it not only
is likely, but that it is inevitable — that it would and must have
happened just as it happened with Chris and Margaret. You
would have sworn that this must turn out to be, as Miss West
says of James's The American, " an exposition of the way
things do not happen". You would have sworn that here,
at least, Rebecca West, that implacable realist, that burning
pillar of intellectual scorn, must necessarily collapse into a
feeble romantic posture. But she doesn't. We know of
nothing in modern fiction so austerely veracious, so gravely
and nobly beautiful, so triumphant in their exalted spiritual
realism, as the passages in Miss West's novel which exhibit
this meeting and its significance. So that, as you read, you
find yourself murmuring with an enriched conviction, as one
encountering by chance the wandering exquisiteness of the
heart, — " Some there are who do thus in beauty love each
other ".

LAWRENCE GILMAN.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY. By George Trumbull Ladd, LL. D.
New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1918.

Essentially an attempt to find confirmation for those faiths of re
ligion and commonsense upon which all the higher human values seem
to depend, Dr. Ladd's book about the nature of personality seems
especially well suited to the needs and the spirit of the present time.
Those whose faith the war has shaken will be grateful for reassurance ;
those others — by many signs, the more numerous class — who have
gained through the war a deeper sense of the worthiness of life, will
be glad to read Dr. Ladd's explicit statement of what they have come,
through intuition and through reflection upon their experience, im
plicitly to believe.

The philosopher who takes the idea of personality just as he finds
it and then, instead of trying to reduce it to simpler elements by
analysis, proceeds to show its invincible wholeness in actual life, may
hope to accomplish two things. He may hope to increase faith just by
revealing the depth, the richness, the persistence — in short, the practical
reality — of what we call personality; and he may hope to defend the
commonsense conception of personality against the attacks of those
who would destroy or weaken it by analysis.

Those most abstract of our conceptions which are expressed in such
words as " self," " soul/' " will," and in more recent times " person
ality," are exceedingly ancient and most deeply ingrained. The earliest
men were obliged to invent words to express these ideas, and neither the
ideas themselves nor the words expressing them can well be eliminated
from our minds or our vocabularies. The thinker who tries to avoid
reasoning " anthropomorphically " — that is, in a manner all too human
— either arrives at negations or reasons in a circle. For while the
realities of self and of soul cannot exactly correspond to the vague or
crude conceptions that the words connote, yet they defy minute
analysis. Personality, for example, cannot possibly be resolved into
mere numerical unity.

And so the most hopeful way of approaching the problem of per
sonality would seem to be the method which Herbert Spencer applied,
very largely pro forma to religion, but which Dr. Ladd uses in all
sincerity and with all faith — the method of inquiring just what the
facts themselves mean. From this point of view, the crude, anthro
pomorphic ideas of savages and of early men — those beliefs which
shock us by their materialism and suggest painfully low origins for our
most exalted beliefs — are in themselves significant phenomena, because
in them the fact of spirituality is already implied. Why have men

VOL. ccvn. — NO. 750 49

770 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

always been religious? Why have they always attached a vaguely
transcendental value to the soul? The difficulty of answering these
questions suggests the only acceptable answer: Men have believed
these things because they have had an intuition of the truth.

If one studies in a similar light the etymology of the terms in ques
tion, as does Dr. Ladd in perhaps his most original chapter, that upon
" The Witness of Words " ; or if one takes the simple facts of ex
perience — the coming to self -consciousness of the child, or the larger
experience of " coming to oneself " in the moral sense, one will be led
to much the same conclusion.

All goes to show that with the rich yet mysterious conception of
personality are bound up all those interests of ours that are most
precious and most " practical." Our beliefs concerning self — the belief
in rationality as something not merely mechanistic, in beauty as some
thing not purely sensuous, in morality as something not simply habitual,
in religion as something not wholly institutional — are primary. Com
plete disbelief on these points would, it seems, almost paralyze our
minds.

By his examination of the historical and actual conception of per
sonality, Dr. Ladd justifies and enhances the meanings which common-
sense and faith have attached to the term. He also in some sort suc
cessfully defends these meanings as against materialistic or other de
sponding or minimizing views, — even, in a measure, as against prag
matism, — and without going deeply into controversy.

But when an effort is made to go beyond the point marked by this
sort of general reassurance, the need of a profounder doctrine becomes
clear even to the eyes of cultivated commonsense.

The essence of Dr. Ladd's belief about the self is contained in
various statements about the will : In the chapter on " The Centre of
Personality," one reads : "Now man's . . . self is capable of choice;
and choice is the highest expression of the will that is in man, of the
Will that is the centre of his personality." It is, of course, evident that
neither the conception of will as the centre of personality nor that of
the will as choosing is metaphysically clear. But the pronouncement
is not meant to be final ; more definite statements follow. Turning to
a later page, one finds : " The will of any personal Self is the person
regarded as self-active." This is more definite; yet it blends the two
conceptions of will and self in a manner that cannot be regarded as
ultimately satisfactory. If the will is a process or a relation, it cannot
of course be identical with the self, and if it is not, the question of
how the mysterious entity called self can choose, becomes acute.
The exact problem, indeed, seems to be the distinguishing of the self
from those functions with which we can hardly help identifying it.
Finally, however, we reach a fuller and more precise formula:
"Rational will is the Self regarded as determining its own conduct
with a view to realize the ends that are morally good!'

This last is certainly more satisfactory, for it introduces the ten
dency toward moral goodness as a characteristic of the " self of selves,"
and as a means of distinguishing between the Self and the Will re
garded as intellectual choice. This passage is, perhaps, an exact
definition of the real belief of commonsense.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 771

To free this belief from all metaphysical and practical objections,
to develop its full implications in a manner convincing to the men of
to-day, would be no light task. Greater clearness regarding the soul
and its relation to the universe is certainly desirable, say the meta
physicians, rightly rejecting the assumption of the common man that
we already know all that is necessary about the self. But neither Kant
nor commonsense seem capable of preventing a war like the present
one, and perhaps so simple a restatement of the commonsense and
Kantian view as Dr. Ladd has given will not quite content the people
of the post-war period.

Nevertheless, Dr. Ladd has written one of the most hopeful and
helpful of books — a book that is, if one may steal Paul Elmer More's
application of a saying of Disraeli's, notably " on the side of the
angels." In no small degree the author, in defining the beliefs he has
held to against discouraging opposition for a lifetime, has formulated
the probable faith of the future.

THE NEMESIS OF MEDIOCRITY. By Ralph Adams Cram, Litt.D.,
LL.D. Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1917.

Can the aims of Democracy be achieved by the methods of Democ
racy? It is this question — and none can be more important or more
urgent — which Ralph Adams Cram discusses with great force and
directness in his Nemesis of Mediocrity.

The semi-religious halo which oratory has placed upon the brow
of Democracy has had the unwholesome effect of exempting our politi
cal institutions from that constant pressure of criticism and adjustment
which in every other department of our national life has been the
soul of progress. In challenging the fundamental principle which
underlies Democratic methods, namely that quantity and not quality
is the true measure of right governance, Mr. Cram has performed a
task to which he has brought an unusual combination of clear thought
and moral courage.

Mankind has paid an incalculable price in blood and agony for
its refusal to believe that for the accomplishment of noble purposes
something more is needed than a generous idealism and a warm faith
in the goodness of all men. What the world's Democracy is paying
today is neither more nor less than part of this price.

The ultimate reason why we are now at war, the final cause of the
world's failure thus far to crush one autocracy, after nearly four years
of heroic effort, is that the autocrat, whether engaged in good works
or in evil, has always realized the vital need of that strong leadership
which Democracy has rejected as undemocratic.

Mr. Cram has an abiding faith in true Democracy, but he is con
vinced that without the wise and firm direction of the- few, the power
of the many can but make Democracy a menace instead of a blessing.

Every writer and orator, from Plato to the Hon. James Hamilton
Lewis, who has delivered himself upon the subject of politics, has
given us a definition of democracy. Mr. Cram follows this ancient
custom when he says : " True Democracy means three things ; Aboli
tion of Privilege, Equal Opportunity for All, and Utilization of Ability.

772 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Unless democracy achieves these things it is not democracy, and no
matter how ' progressive ' its methods, how apparently democratic its
machinery, it may perfectly well be an oligarchy, a kakistocracy or a
tyranny."

It was James Russell Lowell who asked forty years ago : " Is ours
a government of the people, by the people, for the people or a kakis
tocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?" It is
Ralph Adams Cram who answers that, so far as the three main elements
of true Democracy are concerned " the peoples are worse off than they
were fifty years ago, while during the same period government and
society have become progressively more venal, less competent and fur
ther separated from the ideals of honour, duty and righteousness."

These are hard words, but they cannot be dismissed with a gesture
of dissent. Anyone who reads Mr. Cram's Nemesis of Mediocrity
and M. Faguet's Culte d' Incompetence is confronted with facts of
which the significance cannot be mistaken. For the United States
they mean either that after striving for more than a century to estab
lish a Democratic government we have failed to do so, or that having
established a Democratic government in 1787, it has failed to give
us anything approaching real Democracy.

It is a matter worthy of serious consideration that in 1912, both
the Democratic and the Progressive platforms made these very charges
against American Democracy. The Democrats demanded " a return
to the rule of the people," and offered themselves as " an agency
through which the complete overthrow and extirpation of corruption,
fraud, and machine rule in American politics can be effected." The
Progressive platform stated that " Behind the ostensible government
sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and ac
knowledging no responsibility to the people." These are far from
being encouraging descriptions of American Democracy one hundred
and thirty-four years after the adoption of the Constitution.

Mr. Cram attributes the present plight of the world's Democracy
to a prevailing mediocrity of character, talent, and culture. He places
the blame for this condition upon that false doctrine of environmental
determinism which has flattered the ignorant into the belief that it is
in society's laboratory, the school, and not in nature's laboratory, the
blood, that fools can be made wise, and the vicious virtuous.

In a world which is almost convinced that one man is just as good
as another, and which is quite convinced that, whether he is or not,
he is entitled to just the same weight in the political system, there is
little room for great leaders of men, and less for the biological truth
that leadership is a native quality inherited from the ancestry, and not
a label which can be pinned upon a man by the vote of a party caucus.

Mr. Cram is less at home when he deals with the biological aspects
of human progress than he is when his subject is the fallen state of
culture and politics. The readiness with which he accepts a great part
of the teachings of twentieth century science upon heredity — even
though he places the word science between inverted commas — is mis-
mated to the scorn he heaps upon the pioneers in the modern study of
evolution; nor is it clear why he should deay to the spiritual qualities
in man that capacity of transmittance by d ascent which he accords to
genius, character, and intelligence.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 773

What politics has done to leadership, as Mr. Cram points out, is
to drive most of it into other fields — into commerce, banking, engineer
ing — and to impose upon those who would still be political leaders
the condition that they should lead as a man strapped on a horse and
driven before a cavalry regiment would lead a charge.

That the Democratic world has been crying in vain since 1914 for
a leader great enough to restore leadership to the position from which
Democratic methods have degraded it is a grim fact which, of all the
grim facts of the war, is the most difficult to face with equanimity.

AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY. By
George Burton Adams, Litt. D. New Haven : Yale University Press,
1918.

Just at present, while history is being made and while civilization
is at stake, one may see more clearly than it has been usual for men
to see in the past that the true interest of history is the progress of
civilization.

But with just what aspect of civilization should history chiefly
concern itself? The question requires a definite answer, for civiliza
tion is a result to which many factors contribute, and the effort to
study all of them at once usually results in confusion.

Unquestionably those who insist upon the primary importance of
constitutional history are essentially right. Those developments in the
life of peoples that have to do with the continuing, effort to adjust the
more or less conflicting claims of liberty and government do, it is
plain, mark out in the clearest and broadest outline the advance of
civilization and define its meaning Freedom and discipline — these
ideas are fundamental. It is on a moral difference in the conception of
these that the vital distinction between Kultur and civilization hinges.

The constitutional view is, on the whole, the prevailing view in
most books of history. Yet these very books are often found dull by
the inexpert reader. The historic narrative seems so slow in reaching
the point — the idea that interests and enlightens; and at the same
time there is so much that seems like digression! Emphatically the
average intelligent reader needs to have some means of relating historic
facts and ideas before he begins to read history at all. Possessing
this, he can hardly miss an understanding of the story and a true sense
of its grandeur, even though his memory retain few details.

An admirable key to English history is supplied by Dr. George
Burton Adams in his new book sketching the growth of the English
constitution. This treatise is a model of judicious condensation. In
its larger point of view, moreover, as well as in its discussions of par
ticular questions, it is, without being too theoretic, notably clear and
philosophical.

This larger point of view is important; for the leading ideas about
English history and about history and life in general which one obtains
from a not too studious reading of Dr. Adams's book are of wide
application. In particular, one is made to understand the process of
English constitutional growth through unforeseen extensions of prin
ciple and through unnoticed changes — as in the unintended develop-

774 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ment of the Small Council into the Exchequer; and one is enabled to
understand the true meaning and value of sound compromise. Again,
the reader is repeatedly stimulated to draw for himself the important
distinction between the logic of precedent and the logic of progress,
to grasp which is to find a clue at least to those puzzles regarding
justice and law, conservatism and reform, consistency and experiment,
which complicate most large public questions and many small private
ones. " The historical argument," writes Dr. Adams, in words that are
worth remembering, " is never of any validity against the results to
which the living process of a nation's growth has brought.it. How
ever far they may go beyond the beginnings the past has made, if they
are the genuine results of national life, they have a rightfulness of
their own which history cannot question." This remark throws light
upon the nature of the contest between Parliament and the King in
the seventeenth century — and upon much else.

By the discussion of more specific points, too, the author often
helps one toward clearer historic judgment. His explanation of the
English doctrines that " the King can do no wrong," and that " sov
ereignty resides in the King and his Parliament," show these ideas to be
landmarks of progress and not, as they superficially seem, bulwarks of
privilege ; and through such discoveries one is brought to a real under
standing of the nature and value of English conservatism, one result
of which — the retention of the Kingship in a free government — has,
paradoxically enough, greatly facilitated the spread of democracy in
Europe. Even Gerniany has borrowed the idea of limited monarchy
from England, and, says Dr. Adams, " the entire English constitution,
with all its details of public law and practice, could be carried into effect
under the present German constitution with only one amendment of
importance, the constitution of the upper house and its relation to the
lower, and a really democratic government could be secured by a new
regulation of the right of suffrage."

It is interesting to observe that Dr. Adams thinks a written con
stitution not out of accord with the genius of the English Government,
and that he looks with favor upon the idea of a federation of British
nations.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND ASIATIC CITIZENSHIP. By Sidney L.
Gulick. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918.

That the course followed by the United States with regard to
Asiatic immigration has been in theory unjustifiable is a statement
that few students of the question would deny. " Eight times in
fourteen years," Mr. Sidney Gulick reminds us in his recently pub
lished book, " anti-Chinese agitation on the Pacific coast has secured
increasingly drastic and obnoxious legislation in Congress. All but
one of the measures were passed under political pressure." Treaties
were contravened and protests on the part of the Chinese Government
were disregarded. The situation with respect to Japan is essentially
just as bad. The Japanese Government, it is true, has behaved with
fine consideration ; the " gentlemen's agreement " works smoothly ; yet
" so long as Japanese are regarded as ineligible for naturalization,

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 775

their status in the United States is precarious, and local differential
treatment and legislation is inevitable."

What is the remedy? Mr. Gulick has ready a well-prepared and
ingenious answer. First, let the tests for naturalization be made
more rigorous. Secondly, let us use every available means to further
the Americanization and proper distribution of immigrants. Finally,
let us admit to the United States from each foreign land a number
of persons not exceeding a small percentage of the number from that
land who have already become Americanized. The aim of this pro
posal is to ^secure equal treatment for all foreigners, and thus to re
move friction, and at the same time to harmonize our immigration
policy with real American principles.

Arguing with all the plausibility of the first speaker for the affirm
ative in a debate, and, it should be said, with much cogency, Mr.
Gulick refutes without difficulty some popular objections to his favorite
plan. Intermarriage of the races, he rather reasonably contends, has
no more to do with citizenship than have the flowers that bloom in
the spring. Intermarriage, when it occurs, is normally the result of
Americanization, and the granting of citizenship is a still more ob
viously normal outcome of the same process. It might be said, of
course, that the removal of any restriction tends to facilitate intermar
riage; but the point seems scarcely worth following up. And in
general few of the common criticisms so far made of the percentage
plan seem to have much weight.

There is one exception. The objection that the plan, while just
in form, would not satisfy Asiatics, because in effect it would restrict
them much more rigorously than it would Europeans, seems somewhat
formidable. In his answer to this argument Mr. Gulick, indeed, pro
duces less conviction than he does elsewhere. The truth is, he says
in effect, that Japan would be satisfied. " As a matter of fact, Jap
anese who understand these proposals do not resent them. If all
immigration to America is restricted on the same principle, that which
they resent is removed, and they are satisfied." Moreover, if we are
to discover any rational principle upon which to base regulation of
immigration, we must begin, thinks Mr. Gulick, with the situation as
it now is.

Japan is perhaps as likely to content itself with strictly impartial
treatment as is any nation in the world. This seems the corollary of
the truth that no nation more keenly resents humiliating distinctions.
But there is such a thing as economic dissatisfaction, and this may
not always yield to ethical argument. If foreigners are under economic
pressure which makes large numbers of them want to come to this
country, they will not really be satisfied with severe restrictions, no
matter how impartial these may be. They will simply be, under Mr.
Gulick's plan, deprived of an argument.

This is merely saying that the adoption of the percentage principle
would not necessarily smooth out all possible disagreements with
foreign nations over our immigration policy. But unless there is some
other principle the application of which would accomplish this result,
or unless it can be shown that the percentage plan itself would cause
undue friction, Dr. Gulick's proposal may stand approved so far as
its external effects are concerned.

776 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

There is also the question of its internal effect, and this, too, has
an economic side. The crux of the immigration question, in peace
times, is the standard of living. Can any improvement in naturaliza
tion laws reach the evil of a low standard of living — an evil which
economists compare to a disease — without setting up a property quali
fication for voters? And indeed can examinations for admission to
citizenship be made so effective as in fact to keep out large numbers
of undesirables? Would not the difficulty of determining just what
is meant by Americanization, or " assimilation," lead to great slackness
in the administration of the law?

If satisfactory answers can be given to these and other practical
questions of a similar nature, there would seem to be no obstacle to
the general acceptance of Mr. Gulick's theory.

The theory is persuasively advanced, yet one cannot help thinking
that it would command more respect if it were urged with a little less
of the zeal of a propagandist. In dwelling upon the ethical side of
his subject the author is somewhat given to diffuseness, while his en
thusiasm for international brotherhood gives to his whole discussion
a somewhat rosy coloring, making his plan seem perhaps less practical
than it really is. There is, however, no lack in his book of proof to
support statements made about immigration into America. Mr. Gulick
examines statistics with thoroughness and with fairness.

SERBIA CRUCIFIED. By Lieutenant Milutin Krunich. Boston and
New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918.

If what Lieutenant Krunich has written were really and altogether
what it seems to be in part — if it were in any abstract or pretentious
way a treatise on the national spirit of Serbia, an interpretation, or a
formal plea, — one would have to set it down simply as a very nai've
book. Especially in the earlier chapters, there is, indeed, an overflow
of emotion that strikes one as somewhat primitive or childlike — an
unrestrained glorification of Serbia, a vehement, heartfelt hatred of
Bulgaria, a loathing almost physical for Serbia's enemies and especially
for Germans. The effect of unsophistication is increased by a some
what overwrought and ecstatic style.

Different peoples, to be sure, have different temperaments. To the
Anglo-Saxon the melting of the soul into an intense feeling of mingled
hatred and pity may seem a kind of moral deliquescence. In the
Serbian this very state appears to be consistent with the sternest, most
deliberate heroism, if not the normal accompaniment of it.

One night, after five days' fighting before Nish, Lieutenant Krunich
was lying in the grass outside the trench.

" Suddenly, in the midst of this silence, this beauty ... a voice,
a song! A beautiful manly voice on the Bulgarian side is softly and
sadly singing a song. My God, a Bulgarian is singing! My whole
being, intoxicated by the sweetness of this night, now fell into such
an emotion under the influence of this voice, this song, that I became
oblivious of place and reality. . . . 'La Tosca!' I exclaimed loudly.
'A Mario in his last moments, in a sea of most dreadful human un-

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 777

happiness, feeling the sighs of the dead instead of the embrace of
happy love, seeks with the last shriek of his heart his happy dreams I
The dreams of love ! And this Mario now is a Bulgarian ! A traitor,
murderer ! No, no, I cannot believe it ! . . . What desires this man,
this unhappy Bulgarian?' I asked myself. I felt a powerful struggle
which surged more and more through my being. I can never psycho
logically explain those moments. ... I felt only as if a strange
power had risen with a dreadful right in my soul, to destroy the song,
this confession of a murderer, this sacrilege of the last beauty of a
Serbian dream."

But if the mood of this personal record is quite different from
anything that one would expect to find in an English, French, or
American fighting man, it is in this very fact that the strength of
the thing ultimately proves to lie. And the strength of it is, ultimately,
very great — so great, indeed, that extremely tender-minded people
cannot be advised to read Lieutenant Krunich's story. The reader
must expect to be wrought up — not merely horrified as by blood and
crime, but stirred in a more actively emotional way.

Chivalrous devotion to country, sensitiveness of soul — these are
united in Lieutenant Krunich's way of reacting to war with a terrible
clearness of vision and a raw sense of reality. In brief, no one else has
drawn war-pictures quite so fearfully appealing as has this Serbian
officer. Poor writing there is, doubtless, in the narrative, but there is
also sincerity and power. The death of a dear friend, horribly wounded,
in a hospital ; the frantic protests of a feeble old sexton who tries to
protect a graveyard from desecration by trench-diggers; the inconsol
able sorrow of a company of Serbian soldiers for the death of a home
less child whom they have adopted and hungrily loved; the helpless
pain of aged men and women; the unutterable grieving of a mother
over a mutilated body, — these things are made not merely catastrophic,
but as homefelt as the sufferings of a child. The violation of Serbian
soil itself is described not merely as an affront to manhood, but almost
as the dishonoring of a woman.

The book induces an acute, painful pity and a strong abhorrence
of those who caused the war. In reading it, one forgets the larger
aspects of the struggle and becomes simply an outraged human being.

PROFIT SHARING: Its Principles and Practice. A Collaboration.
New York : Harper & Brothers, 1918.

The idea of profit sharing as a means of improving the condition
of the working classes is not a new one. As early as 1870 it received
much consideration by American philanthropists and social reformers.
In 1889, there were in America thirty-two firms practising profit shar
ing, and in Europe the idea had been tried somewhat earlier.

Recently, as the result largely of labor agitation and unrest, there
has been a renewed interest in the subject; yet the emphasis has shifted
from the humanitarian side of profit sharing to its business side. It
is primarily as a means of promoting business efficiency, and only
secondarily as a means of benefiting the employe, that profit sharing
is viewed by the modern employer.

778 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

This probably means only that the idea has come out of Utopia
and entered real life; that it has ceased to be the possession of a few
enthusiasts and has been adopted by practical men. Business is not
less but more humane than it used to be. There is good reason, more
over, for the conviction that those reforms are best which have a
sound economic basis. Yet the changed attitude toward profit sharing
is of interest as showing that if innovations of the sort loosely called
socialistic come in through business administration, they must come
in very slowly. For the maxim, " Business is business ", is ever the
ruling principle in a social order based on economic competition;
though, of course, the rule receives from time to time a more en
lightened interpretation.

The spread of profit sharing has made a careful survey of the whole
field both desirable and feasible. This work has been undertaken by
competent hands. The men who have collaborated to produce the
book Profit Sharing, recently published by Harper & Brothers, are:
Arthur W. ^urritt, treasurer of the A. W. Burritt Company; Henry
S. Dennison, president of the Dennison Manufacturing Company;
Edwin F. Gay, dean of the Graduate School of Business Administra
tion of Harvard University; Ralph E. Heilman, professor of econom
ics and social science in Northwestern University; and Henry P. Ken
dall, president of the Lewis Manufacturing Company and treasurer
of the Plimpton Press.

These investigators have been especially interested in finding an
swers to certain practical questions relating to profit sharing. Does
profit sharing promote efficiency? Does it prevent waste? Does it
tend to stabilize labor? Does it lead to effective management? — to
increased cooperation? Each of these questions is answered with a
carefully qualified affirmative. The future of profit sharing is, indeed,
in the well-considered view of the authors of this work, far greater
than has been realized.

Certain principles, however, must be adhered to if profit sharing is
to be successful, and these principles show quite accurately the extent
to which ideal and practical considerations coincide.

Market wages must in all cases be paid; that is, profits allowed to
employes must be in addition to wages and not a substitute for them.
The payments, moreover, must be substantial. Again, the plan of
profit sharing must be definite and suited to the needs of the particular
business. Finally — and this seems especially worthy of note — it is
always better to reward individual effort, when that is readily meas
urable, than to resort to the profit-sharing plan.

From the whole discussion two conclusions stand out as of chief
importance for a general grasp of the subject. First: " While in cer
tain circumstances profit sharing may be advantageously introduced
among the rank and file, it is not believed that in groups of large size
it will normally operate as a strong incentive to personal efficiency,
increased effort, care, economies, or cooperation." Secondly, profit
sharing must have a firm business foundation. " It must pay its own
way, or fail."

In an appendix to the work are given a number of detailed plans
for profit sharing which should be of real use to business directors,

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY

XIII
(March 5— March 31)

THE twelfth month after the American declaration of war against
the Imperial German Government closes in the midst of the most
critical situation that has developed since the opening days of the great
struggle, nearly four years ago. As this is written — on the eve of April
1, — the long heralded and somewhat sceptically regarded German spring
offensive has been on for ten days, and has driven the British and
French lines back on a front of fifty miles and for a maximum distance
of nearly forty miles, but that is of course not the average. The attack
opened on March 21, on the famous Cambrai salient. For the first
three days progress was slow, although the Germans brought into the
fighting upwards of ninety divisions, aggregating considerably more
than a million men, and supported them with vast concentration of
artillery and big guns. The British lines received the brunt of the
assault. Gradually they were forced back under sheer weight of num
bers, fighting very gallantly, until the whole territory taken a year ago,
at the time of the famous Hindenburg " strategic retreat," was again
in German hands. Bapaume, Peronne, Noyon, Montdidier and a num
ber of other battle-scarred places are again in the hands of the Huns.

But as this is written certain events making for renewed confidence
in the power of the Allies yet to beat the Germans have occurred. The
greatest of these is that unity of Allied command has been accomplished
at last, in the appointment of General Ferdinand Foch, chief of the
French General Staff, and French representative in the Supreme War
Council of the Allies, to be generalissimo of the Allied forces in France.
He is therefore at the head of the French, British and American armies.

Another event of much importance in this connection is that on this
day, for the first time since the offensive began, the German assaults,
although continued with vigor and insistence, were all repulsed, and
the British and French positions restored to the ground given up the
day before.

And of consuming interest to Americans, whatever may be the
appraisal of its importance to the result of the battle, is the fact that an
American army of more than 100,000 intensively trained and thorough
ly equipped men, the flower of General Pershing's forces, are moving
forward to take their share in the battle. It is a smaller force than the
British had at Mons, in September, 1914, but its injection into this
battle means that after twelve months of preparation, we are at length
able to strike a blow on land at our enemy. We are beginning to get
into the war.

780 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

In the twelfth month of our war with Germany, as in the eleventh
month, there was much talk of peace, but this time with a vast differ
ence. In the eleventh month President Wilson was still carrying on his
appeal to the Austrian and German peoples to express themselves, no
matter what their governments said. This long range debate with
Hertling and Czernin was abruptly dropped this month. A new line
of peace talk, coming almost wholly from the German Kaiser, with
occasional strong support from Field Marshal von Hindenburg or one
or two German newspapers has taken its place. But the peace of which
the Emperor Wilhelm speaks is one not easily recognizable in anything
that President Wilson has had to say on the subject.

Having forced the helpless Bolsheviki of Russia to sign their igno
minious confession of disgrace and disaster the Austro-German states
men turned their attention to the even more helpless Roumania, and on
March 5 Count Czernin, the peaceful tone of whose talk had seemed
especially hopeful to the President, threatened the hapless little Balkan
nation with extinction if it did not at once agree to peace on the Austro-
German terms. These included the cession of the Dobruja to Bulgaria,
and a " rectification " of the Austro-Hungarian frontier for " strategic
reasons," which meant cession of territory to Austria.

Next day Kaiser Wilhelm sent a number of telegrams of congratu
lation to different notables upon the occasion of the " glorious conclu
sion " of the war on the eastern front. To King Frederick August,
of Saxony, he said : " I feel the greatest gratitude toward God and the
army which has extorted this peace. Firmly trusting in the sword I face
a future which will, after all heavy sacrifices, bring us victory and a
strong peace."

Two days later, on March 8, the Kaiser replied to a telegram of con
gratulations from Philip Heineken, director of one of the great German
steamship lines, saying : " The German sword is our best protection.
With God's help it will bring us also peace in the west, and indeed the
peace which, after many troubles and much distress, the German people
need for a happy future."

Hertling and Czernin may talk as they like of peace and the instru
ments for making it, but when the German Kaiser speaks, the German
sword has its due recognition.

There was silence among the Germans on the subject of peace for
two weeks after that message to Heineken. Then, on the eve of the great
offensive, the Kaiser, Hindenburg and others of the German leaders
sent numerous messages of encouragement to the faithful all over the
Empire. Telegraphing on March 21 to the Provincial Council of
Schleswig-Holstein the Kaiser said : " The prize of victory must not
and shall not fail us — no soft peace, but one which corresponds with
Germany's interests."

That same day Field Marshal Hindenburg telegraphed the Posen
Provincial Council : " God willing, we shall also overcome the enemy
in the west and clear the way to a general peace."

They made plain to their people what they expected from the great
offensive. The prize must be great for the price in blood was certain
to be very high. The best information obtainable is to the effect that
the German losses have exceeded anything hitherto occurring in this
frightfully costly fighting. So, on March 26, the fifth day of the drive,

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 781

the Kaiser said to his favorite newspaper man : "Every one out here
is staking everything. Every one out here knows and trusts we shall
win everything. All Germany fights for her future."

Cologne and Berlin newspapers of the next day reveal the effect
which the daily reports of success were having upon the temper of the
people at home. Or were they only setting a bait to tempt a war weary
people to further frightful extravagances ? " It is self-evident/' says
the Cologne Volks-Zeitung, " that after what is now happening we can
no longer conclude peace on the terms we were ready to accept a week
ago. The enemy must be brought to a submissive spirit, and forced to
grant everything we need in the future, especially in colonies and raw
materials."

And the Deutsche Zeitung of Berlin feels free to reveal again the
real spirit which the war necessities of the last year or two have been
forcing it to conceal. " Down with the worship of the peace god," it
cries. " The cry of vengeance, and our truly German hatred of England
is ringing with renewed force throughout the Empire. Down with
England ! "

That same day, March 27, the Kaiser, swelling with glory and the
triumph of his victorious army, which, having driven everything ahead
of it for a full week, until, apparently, it had created a situation such
that no Allied counter-stroke was feared, telegraphed the vice-president
of the Reichstag a message of joy and pride in which he once again
disclosed the true reliance of his heart and the true purpose of his
course.

" We have grievously shaken England's army, by God's help," he
said. " May the German people, ?nd especially their chosen represen
tatives, derive confidence anew from these achievements that the Ger
man sword will win us peace. May it be recognized that what is now
needed is that the people at home, too, shall manifest, by their fortitude,
their will to victory. The coming world peace will then, through the
German sword, be more assured than hitherto, so help us God !"

The peace of the German sword — a strong German peace ! Hinden-
burg has the same idea and merely phrases it a little differently. The
successes of that week of offensive had started the congratulatory wires
to buzzing, and von Hertling had sent a message to von Hindenburg,
to which the Field Marshal replied : " Proud to be fighting under the
leadership and under the eyes of the Supreme War Lord our troops
are battling in a manner above all praise. The army will not relax until,
with God's help, it has won for the homeland the good victory which it
needs as the foundation for a future based on a strong German peace."

The great offensive which produced this exultation and induced this
self -revelation on the part of the Kaiser and his followers had been in
preparation for four months or more. During that time, reports had
been coming to Allied headquarters of a concentration of material be
hind the German lines. Despatches from the Allied front indicated a
corresponding preparation to meet it. There were reports of the gather
ing of material, of the digging of new trenches and so on until it
was said that our defenses were twenty miles or more in depth. Mili
tary experts spoke of the line as " practically impregnable."

As day after day went by, and week after week of favorable
weather brought no development from the Germans, doubt began to

782 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

be expressed as to whether or not there would be a German offensive.
Then, on the morning of March 21, it began, with a furious bombard
ment of gas and high explosives for five hours, followed by wave after
wave of German infantry advancing in mass formation as they did in
the fall of 1914, in the first days of the war. They came in numbers
and with a determination that counted no cost and would not be denied.

At no previous stage of the war has there been such a concentra
tion of men and artillery. The Germans outnumbered the British three
or four to one everywhere, and in some places as much as eight to one.
The drive was on a fifty mile front, from a little below Arras to just
north of La Fere. Day by day as the drive continued the German
claims rose — from 16,000 prisoners and 200 guns to 25,000 prisoners
and 400 guns ; at length to 75,000 prisoners and more than a thousand
guns. And after the first recession each day added to the list of places
again under Hun domination.

From the first there was expression of confidence among the Allies,
for their line was bent but not broken, and the German wedge was never
able to separate British from French. The fighting front grew from
fifty to ninety miles, as the huge salient was developed by the German
push. And every day there was talk of a great counter-stroke — " when
the right time comes " — which shall take advantage of German exhaus
tion and throw them back.

The Germans signalized their drive by opening fire on Paris with a
new long-range gun, which threw shells of about 9 inches calibre a
distance of more than 70 miles. It fired slowly and at intervals of a
quarter hour or more. The first day it did little damage, although a
few persons were killed and others wounded. But on Good Friday one
of its shells struck the roof of a church in which a considerable num
ber of worshippers were gathered. The shell broke through the roof
and masses of heavy stone and building material fell, killing about
75 persons, of whom 54 were women, and wounding 90 more.

The selection of General Foch for supreme command was first re
ported on March 29. That same day General Pershing called on him and
placed all the American forces in France at his disposal. The week of the
German drive had brought numerous appeals for American help. Mr.
Lloyd George, the British Premier, sent a message through Lord Read
ing, the British special ambassador to this country, and various obser
vers in Paris cabled despatches of similar tenor.

" The American people will be proud to be engaged in the greatest
battle in history," said General Pershing to General Foch. Mr.
Baker, Secretary of War, who had been in Europe for two weeks or
more on a tour of inspection of the American forces there, and of
consultation with our Allies, publicly expressed his satisfaction with
General Pershing's course. At the same time President Wilson cabled
his congratulations to General Foch upon his appointment, saying :

" Such unity of command is a most hopeful augury of ultimate
success. We are following with profound interest the bold and brilliant
action of your forces."

A day or two later Mr. Lloyd George, announcing in the House
of Commons General Foch's selection, spoke of the inestimable advan
tage always enjoyed hitherto by the enemy in having a single command,
and remarked that at last the Allies will fight as a unit.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 783

The announcement that Mr. Baker had arrived at a French port
was made in Paris on March 10. The War Secretary, upon reaching
Paris, made public a brief statement in which he said that we " are
committed with all our resources to winning the war." Two days later
the War Department announced that every energy would be employed
to speed up the sending of troops to France. On March 14, the Admin
istration began formally taking Congress into its confidence by having
the members of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs meet with
the War Council for a general conference. The state of war prepara
tion was discussed at this conference and the production charts were
shown to the Senators. They disclosed that the talk of unsatisfactory
progress in aircraft production which had been going on for some time
was well founded. It was revealed that this work was 74 per cent,
behind schedule. The President had had a special investigation made
on his own account first by an individual and then by a special com
mittee not connected with the Administration. Over half a billion
dollars had been spent and less then a dozen aeroplanes of the fighting
type had been sent to France. Of course, great equipment has been
accumulated, plants for construction of aircraft and machinery have
been helped or erected, and a great force of men has been organ
ized in the aviation section of the signal corps. But battleplanes have
not been sent to France.

The Aircraft Production Board began an inquiry of its own, and
the Senate Committee on Military Affairs resumed its investigation of
war preparations with special reference to aircraft production. On
March 26 there was an outburst of bitter criticism in the Senate, in
which it was said that instead of the 22,000 planes which were to have
been sent to France by July, according to the estimates of last year
when the $640,000,000 appropriation was made, less than 50 actually
would be sent. The estimate of last year had been cut down repeatedly,
as time went on and it was seen that nothing like that figure could be
accomplished. It had been dropped to 10,000, and then to 5,000, to
3,000 and even lower. But the actual figures given in the Senate debate
were 37 to be shipped by July.

On March 20, President Wilson had a conference at the White
House with the heads of several of the important war bureaus. The
War Industries Board had been reorganized on March 5, under the
chairmanship of Bernard. M. Baruch. He headed the list of the Presi
dent's advisers at this White House conference, accompanied by Mr.
McAdoo, the Director General of railways ; Mr. Hoover, the Food Ad
ministrator; Mr. Hurley, chairman of the Shipping Board; Mr. Gar-
field, the Fuel Administrator, and Mr. McCormick, chairman of the
War Trade Board. It was intimated that the purpose of the confer
ence was the co-ordination of war industries. Two days later the
War Trade Board issued a long list of articles importation of which was
placed under restriction as non-essential to the winning of the war.

On March 23 the Bureau of Ordnance of the War Department
published a summary of the work of the Gun Division, showing antici
pated and executed expenditures of $2,000,000,000 covering the erection
of sixteen large plants for the construction of mobile artillery and
cannon. At the beginning of the war this Division consisted of three
officers and ten civilians. At the end of 1917 it had 500 officers and

784 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

3,500 civilians and by the middle of this year it will have 1,500 officers
and 10,000 civilians. Many thousand cannon have beten ordered.
Several of the new plants are nearing completion and gun forgings
are now being delivered. In the Senate outburst on March 26 it was
said that we had lost six months in the production of field artillery
through attempting to improve the recoil of the French 75, generally
admitted to be the best field gun in service. But having failed to make
the improvement we are now making the gun from the French plans,
and will presently have a supply of American made French field guns
for our army.

This Senate debate also brought forth charges of delay and failure
in the ship-building programme. In a speech in New York on March 26
Chairman Hurley, of the Shipping Board, gave a mass of figures tend
ing to show that the ship-building programme was making very good
progress. Sir Eric Geddes, first lord of the British Admiralty, had
spoken in the Commons on March 20, and presented figures to show that
the total net loss of world's tonnage from the beginning .of the war to
the end of 1917 was 2,500,000 tons.

Mr. Hurley pointed out the fact that the Shipping Board had been
compelled to develop new means of constructing ships in order to
carry on any building programme. When the United States entered
the war 70 per cent, of the capacity of the existing ship yards of the
country was occupied by naval construction, and the remainder by
private contracts. There were then 37 steel ship yards in the country.
The Board has located 81 additional steel and wood yards since then,
and has expanded 18 others. The 37 old yards have increased their
capacity from 162 ways to 195, and thirty new steel yards are in process
of construction which will have an aggregate of 203 ship-building ways,
making 67 yards with 398 ways that very soon will be in full operation.
Similarly the 24 old wooden yards, with 73 ship ways have been in
creased to 81 yards with 332 ways completed or nearing completion.
Thus there are now in sight 730 ship-building ways, of steel and wood,
which is 521 more building berths than England has. This is an indus
try built new from the ground up in very large part. Plant construction
is nearing completion and the ship-building programme will be in full
swing in a short time.

Meantime, after negotiating in vain for months with the Dutch Gov
ernment for the use of the Dutch ships lying in American waters,
which aggregated some 500,000 tons, President Wilson issued a proc
lamation on March 20 requisitioning the ships and turning them over
to the Navy Department and Shipping Board to equip, man and oper
ate. It was estimated that about 200,000 tons of Dutch shipping was
lying in ports of our allies, and it, too, was to be requisitioned for
allied service. The President's proclamation said that the ships were
to be used for essential purposes in connection with the prosecution
of the war. They are to be armed, which means war zone service.
The navy announced that it had the guns and crews ready.

Throughout the month there has been discussion of the possible
intervention by Japan in Siberia to prevent the practical acquisition
of that territory by German influences, and to save the vast stores of
war material heaped up at Vladivostock and other points for which
transportation to Russia in Europe was never available. Japan has

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 785

regarded the Russian disintegration and the advance of German influ
ence toward the east as very menacing to her own interests and to
the peace of the East. It has been reported from Tokyo and from
Paris and other points that the British, French and Italians were united
in desiring to have Japan intervene. But Washington has made it
clear that President Wilson is not of that mind. On March 4 London
reported that the British, French and Italian ambassadors at Tokyo
were about to ask Japan to safeguard allied interests in Siberia. The
next day it was intimated in Washington that we would not join in
that request.

Despite the signing of peace treaties with the Bolsheviki and
Ukrainians the Germans continue a steady advance into Russian ter
ritory. On March 8 the government-controlled Wolff news bureau of
Berlin sent out a despatch saying : " We have acquired a direct free
route via Russia to Persia and Afghanistan."

President Wilson, however, clings to the hope that something may
yet be accomplished by the Russians. On March 11 he sent a message
to the Russian people through the all-Russian congress of Soviets,
expressing " the sincere sympathy which the people of the United States
feel for the Russian people at this moment when the German power
has been thrust in to interrupt and turn back the whole struggle for
freedom and substitute the wishes of Germany for the purpose of the
people of Russia." He assured the Russians that this Government
would " avail itself of every opportunity to secure for Russia once
more complete sovereignty and independence in her own affairs and
full restoration to her great role in the life of Europe and the modern
world. The whole heart of the people of the United States is with the
people of Russia in the attempt to free themselves forever from auto
cratic government and become the masters of their own life."

Two days later the congress of Soviets voted, 453 to 30, to ratify
the peace treaty with the Central Powers. On the same day it adopted
a response to the President's message. It expressed the appreciation
of the congress, first of all to " the laboring and exploited classes in the
United States " for Mr. Wilson's message, and added : " The Russian
Republic uses the occasion of the message from President Wilson to
express to all peoples who are dying and suffering from the horrors
of this imperialistic war its warm sympathy and firm conviction that
the happy time is near when the laboring masses in all bourgeois coun
tries will throw off the capitalist yoke and establish a Socialist state
of society, which is the only one capable of assuring a permanent and
just peace as well as the culture and well being of all who toil."

The day that message was received in Washington there came one
from China to the effect that 20,000 Chinese troops would be ordered
to Harbin and beyond to help guard against German aggression, and
that the money for the expenses of this expedition would be found
by Japan. Also there was a message from Japan reporting Premier
Terauchi as saying in the Diet that intervention had not yet been
decided upon. He added that the military situation had reached " a
state of perfect preparedness."

On March 18 the Supreme War Council of the Allies, in Paris,
issued a statement denouncing the German political crimes against
Russia and Roumania and refusing to recognize the peace treaties. It

VOL. CCTII.— NO, 750 50

786 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

said that the war must be fought out " to finish once for all this policy
of plunder, and to establish the peaceful reign of organized justice."

On March 21 Tokyo reported the assembling of the Elder States
men and the prospect of a Crown Council to consider intervention.
Next day London suggested the possibility of allied intervention to
allay distrust of Japan. And on the 24th General Terauchi replying to
an interpellation in the House of Peers said : " The Government have
not considered the question of intervention in Siberia. The Empire is
not so powerless as to be frightened to such an extent by German
penetration in the East."

Throughout the month there has been constant report of American
activity on a small scale in the trenches in France. It was announced
that our troops held trenches at four points, aggregating in all about
four and a half miles of " front." The War Department makes almost
daily announcements of casualties. That for March 31 showed totals
of 181 killed in action; 163 killed by accident; 776 died of disease; 237
lost at sea — including the Tuscania victims— 48 died of wounds; 22
captured ; 41 missing and 780 wounded.

On March 6 President Wilson established four classes of decora
tions for service: 1. Distinguished service cross. 2. Distinguished
service medal. 3. Service chevrons. 4. Wound chevrons. Several of
the crosses and medals have been conferred.

(This record is as of March 31 and is to be continued)

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES

WHAT WAR MEANS
(From The Indianapolis Star)

Colonel George Harvey, for one, has no doubt that we are at war,
and he has a very clear idea of what is meant by war and of what we
should do, being in war. Among other things he believes spies should
be shot. He asks in his NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW " how long before
the sentimentalists in control in Washington will awaken to the fact
that we are at war? " and goes on to say: " How long must the people
endure the silly chatter of the Secretary of the Navy, who preaches the
doctrine of love the German as thyself, or the Secretary of War spouting
Sunday school platitudes, or the polished periods of the President reiter
ating the fallacy that we are not at war with the German people? How
many more lives must be sacrificed before the people do justice? We
are at war. The German people, whom we have been implored not to
hate, with devilish cunning are daily committing murder and arson,
impeding military preparation by crippling factories and machinery, kill
ing men and women without compunction. The time for sentiment has
passed, the time for action has come. The spy knows the penalty when
he is caught, that penalty should be swift and certain; he should be
sent not before a civil court, where justice is uncertain and legal techni
calities govern, but placed on trial before a court-martial, where justice
and not chicanery rules; and no politico-sentimentalist should have the
power to set aside the sentence. ' The sword of justice has no scabbard/
Unless we keep the blade keen and let it fall remorselessly it will be
turned against ourselves. A single spy shot will deter a score, but one
spy cast loose because the web of justice can not hold is the encour
agement to a hundred more. And yet — can anybody picture Newton D.
Baker signing a death warrant? "

Colonel Harvey says further, and declines to apologize for his words:
" Our duty is to kill Germans. To the killing of Germans we must bend
all our energies. We must think in terms of German dead, killed by
rifles in American hands, by bombs thrown by American youths, by shells
fired by American gunners. The more Germans we kill, the fewer Amer
ican graves there will be in France; the more Germans we kill, the less
danger to our wives and daughters ; the more Germans we kill, the sooner
we shall welcome home our gallant lads. Nothing else now counts.
There is no thought other than this, no activity apart from the duty
forced upon us by Germany. The most highly civilized nations are
united as they never were before, actuated by the same impulse. In
England, France and Italy, among the English speaking peoples of the

788 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

new world, under the Southern Cross and on the torrid plains, they, like
us, see their duty clear. It is, we repeat, to kill Germans/'

The colonel's words sound brutal, but killing is what war means and,
in spite of our growing army and of our wealth poured out like water,
and of our food conservation and all the rest, many of our people still
cherish the pacifist notion that the war will somehow end before we get
far enough into it to do so wicked a thing as to kill a man.

WE ARE INTERPRETED
(From The San Francisco Bulletin)

The privileged classes, as vouched for by Colonel George Harvey, the
editor of the most snobbish magazine in America, believe about as follows :

1. Our " war aims " must not be stated. To do so would be intelligent and in
war time we must not be intelligent. Besides, it might shorten the war. (How
ever, Mr. Wilson has stated them.)

2. We are not fighting this war "to make the world safe for democracy."
(However, President Wilson says we are, and ninety-nine and forty-four hun-
dredths per cent of the Americans who are doing the fighting and working think
we are.)

8. We must not try to separate the German people from the German govern
ment nor the Austrian people from the German people. We must simply kill
Germans. To admit that the masses in Germany and Austria are human beings
capable of thought might lead to the same claim being made for the masses in
this country. (However, President Wilson has already admitted as much.)

With these three articles of faith there goes a further belief that what
the masses in the United States need is discipline, and that what the
Government needs is more iron in its system, together with a sneaking
suspicion that the German way of handling the common people is
rather clever, after all. As a writer in the New York Public imagines
them saying to one another :

"After all, you've got to hand it to Germany. They manage these things
supremely well. No nonsense with labor agitators, and a fellow like Baker
wouldn't last two minutes in Berlin!"

It is hardly necessary to point out the likeness between these traducers
of the President, of the United States, and of the common people and that
small band of plotters who are burning and destroying here and there in
order to keep us from winning a war which they, too, declare is nofc to
make the world safe for democracy.

But, between the two, stands the nation, sound and whole, and it be
lieves that it is fighting this war for democracy, and it is fighting it for
democracy. And the dust blown down the street by the afternoon breeze
is not more quickly scattered than will be the human chaff which dares
face the wind of human freedom which is coming roaring across the
battered face of the world.

•

PROPAGANDA
(From The St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Colonel George Harvey thinks it is a pity we have entered the war
with alluring rhetorical phrases ringing in our ears, and urges us to
adopt the direction of the British Admiral who said he was in the war

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 789

to kill Germans. That is, we may not all agree that we are in the war
to make the world safe for democracy, or for any other reason the defini
tion of which can be agreed upon later. We can only agree that we are
all in the war to kill the Germans before they kill us. The Colonel says
in a recent issue of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW:

Our duty is to kill Germans. To the killing of Germans we must bend all
our energies. We must think in terms of German dead,- killed by rifles in Amer
ican hands, by bombs thrown by American youths, by shells fired by American
gunners. The more Germans we kill, the fewer American graves there will be
in France ; the more Germans we kill, the less danger to our wives and daughters ;
the more Germans we kill, the sooner we shall welcome home our gallant lads.
Nothing else now counts. There is no thought other than this, no activity apart
from the duty forced upon us by Germany. The most highly civilized nations are
united as they never were before, actuated by the same impulse. In England,
France and Italy, among the English-speaking peoples of the new world, under
the southern cross and on the torrid plains, they like us see their duty clear.
It is, we repeat, to kill Germans.

This illustrates pretty fairly, we believe, the principal advantage the
Germans have over us in the war. Granting that we are equally matched
in arms, the Germans are vastly superior in propaganda. Indeed, their
propaganda has been in the past year the great factor in the war. It is
said to have been entirely responsible for the Italian defeat, and it got
in its fine work in Russia. Does the Colonel want to discard this
powerful weapon and make it a walkover for the Kaiser? We think
not. Nor is Mr. Wilson, who happens to be leading us, going to permit
any such folly. He has seen from the beginning the necessity for defini
tion. All the alluring rhetorical phrases of which the Colonel complains
are his. If they ring in our ears, as the Colonel regrets, so much the
better. We mean to ultimately make them ring in men's ears everywhere.
Of course, we are going to kill Germans, but that is a consequence of
having a cause. What the Colonel is trying to do is to back us into the
war, and it can't be done.

THE ONLY WAY

(From The Bookseller)

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, with its war articles and broad inter
ests presenting world events and conditions by able and far-reaching
writers, has never been more interesting, more illuminating than of late.
And the publishers promise a continuously better magazine. The war
articles have given the magazine an impetus that has resulted in increased
sales and the material to come promises to still further increase its
circulation. With the recent transport disaster, with its heavy loss of
life, one reads Colonel Harvey's editorial article in the February issue
with a new sense of its import and agrees with that fearless and forcible
writer that the only way to end this world horror is to bend every energy
to killing Germans. . . .

There is another thing that dealers who are alive to their business in
terests should attend to and that is to order with discrimination for the
newsstands near the military cantonments, forts, army posts, and railway
terminal stands. Give good display to THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
for its war numbers are such as to attract all the enlisted men. This pub
lication, always interesting, has added to its attractiveness as well as sell-

790 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ing features by including highly interesting material bearing upon the
present war. If you are not already getting this publication, you can
help your business by ordering it from your news company. Place the
copies on your counter where they can be seen. The magazine has a big
sale at the present time.

THE MOTION IS SECONDED
(From The Lyons [N. Y.] Republican)

Colonel George Harvey, the brilliant editor of THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW in the current number of that valuable and weighty magazine
comes out in unmistakable language in a leading editorial in favor of
killing the German spies. We have advocated this for the past year.
We have thought all along that this Government has been too weak and
sentimental and too tolerant of American traitors and German spies.

The time came long ago when German spies should have been shot in
squads of twelve at sunrise in at least a dozen cities of this country. This
would have had the effect to check the intrigues which have been going on
and the destruction that has taken place by reason of the depredations
of Germans in this country. Some Germans have not hesitated to set fire
to American manufacturing plants and dynamite others and to commit
every crime that they could commit which they believed would result in
hindering this country in carrying forward the war to a successful termina
tion.

These German spies are enemies that deserve death and they deserve
it a hundred times more than the German soldier who stands in the line of
battle and shoots at American soldiers. The German soldier who does this
is fighting fair and is fighting in the open, but the spy, the sneak, the
dynamiter, the assassin, who works in secret and who kills the innocent,
the non-combatant, is the most despicable being on earth and the quicker
every one of these slimy instruments of Germany are killed, the better it
will be for this country.

We second the motion of Colonel George Harvey to kill the German
spies.

AN APPARENT MISUNDERSTANDING
(From The Rochester Post-Express)

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW WAR WEEKLY quotes Secretary
Baker's statement of January 21st that his brother, H. D. Baker, in
order to relieve the War Department of embarrassment " had gener
ously resigned " from the Engel Aircraft Company, which has Govern
ment contracts for nearly a million dollars' worth of airplane parts, and
terminated his financial interest in the concern, returning his stock hold
ings to the treasury. But the possibility suggests itself that the Secre
tary may have been misinformed as to the admirable action of his brother,
for the Cleveland Leader of February 3d announces that Brother Baker
" is still actively directing the management of the Engel Company; "
and the chairman of the board of directors testifies before a Senate
committee that he is still the " executive head " of the concern, will
remain in that capacity indefinitely, and that a part of the common

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 791

stock — " a million dollars, maybe " — was set aside for the three original
owners of whom he was one. Of course this is not a matter vital to
the nation's welfare, and Brother Baker is no doubt a patriotic man and
useful citizen in any capacity which affords an outlet for his energies.
The only point of interest is the apparent confusion as to the facts ; and
perhaps Mr. Creel, chairman of the committee on public information,
may clear the matter up in the Official Bulletin as soon as he finds time.

JUDGED

(From St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

In the vicious assault of Colonel George Harvey, editor of THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW, on the Administration over the shoulder of Secretary
of War Baker is the following paragraph :

But it is not the enemy, whose ways are his own, who most concerns us. It
is the Allies. And, so far as the world is informed, the Allies have no plans.
Their Supreme War Council was summoned into being with a flourish of trumpets
but quickly ended its first session with the sapient announcement that " unity of
action " had been agreed upon. The United States was not represented officially.

What a wise thing it would have been on the part of the Supreme War
Council of the Allies to have informed the world, including our enemies,
concerning their war plans. What more could the council say with the
least regard for prudence except that " unity of action " had been agreed
upon?

The Colonel made a fool crack in that paragraph. Perhaps his whole
assault may be judged by it.

OUR DEAD IN CAMPS
(From Life)

George Harvey in his WAR WEEKLY says we ought to pay more honor
to our war-dead who die at home.

The names of those who die in France have been published, he says,
in the Official Bulletin, but for ten times as many who have given their
lives in camps at home there has been no roll of honor.

He thinks that if the Official Bulletin won't print their names, the
other Government paper, the Congressional Record, ought to do it.

There is no doubt that the men who have died in camps at home as
well deserve honor as those who have died abroad. But would anybody
care, except Colonel Harvey, whether their names were published in the
Official Bulletin or the Congressional Record? Does anyone but Colonel
Harvey ever peruse either of those periodicals ? Would anyone else know
whose names were in them?

It may be they are read in newspaper offices, and that their lists, if
they had them, would be copied in the daily press. If so, so do.

The death of a soldier in training camp is as sad as the death of a
woman in child-birth. It is death at the threshold of adventure. Colonel
Harvey is right. The roll of honor of our men who die for the war at
home should be as carefully kept and published as the roll of those who
die abroad.

792 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

THE PEOPLE PAY
(From The Boston Evening Transcript)

More than a month ago an appeal was made to the American Congress
in the name of the American people, by Colonel George Harvey, for the
publication in the Congressional Record of " the names of all American
soldiers who have already given their lives to their country " and that
the Record " inscribe daily thereafter the names of the thousands who
are yet to die on the nation's roll of honor, to the end that the splendid
sons of the great Republic shall not pass into the beyond ' unwept, un-
honored and unsung.' " If the people as a whole endorse that appeal
the Administration never lived and does not live today that would dare
to turn a deaf ear. It is not the War Department, much less the Com
mittee on Public Information, which is paying the cost of this war in
life and treasure, sorrow and sacrifice. It is the people. If it does not
help the enemy to know the home address of a British tommy or a French
poilu, why should it help him to know the town and State and next of
kin of a Yankee who dies anywhere along the American front that
stretches from Manila to Lorraine?

THE SAVING GRACE

(From the Kennebec Journal)

Colonel George Harvey, who went down to Princeton University a
few years ago and discovered Professor Woodrow Wilson and dragged
him forth into the limelight, shouting: " Here is your candidate for
President," has made another discovery. This time it is the deplorable,
almost unforgivable weakness of the aggregation in Washington now
sitting on the destinies of this nation. In this month's NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW Colonel Harvey, who is its editor, publishes a scathing denun
ciation of the partisanship of the Administration, of its failure to care
for the soldiers entrusted to it by the country, and especially of its failure
to show proper recognition to the thousands of loyal young men who
have died in this country's training camps, most of them largely because
of red tape, lack of camp preparation for them, and wholly inadequate
care. The arraignment in Colonel Harvey's own inimitable way is bitter
in the extreme, but has the saving grace, we hope, of jarring Congress
into taking action which he suggests for a roll of honor for our dead
who were denied the opportunity to go farther than the training camps
to fight for their country.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

MUST CONGRESS GO?

SIR, — Will you please answer an earnest inquiry? It is, Why not
abolish Congress? This may seem startling, but, honestly, has not Con
gress outlived its usefulness and become one of those unnecessary expenses
everyone is being urged to cut off in war-times ?

Is it possible to point to a single performance of the national legisla
ture since March 1, 1913, at all commensurate with the expense, delays
and annoyances of this obsolete and unwieldy body? Over and over again
we read that the President has proposed to Congress certain legislation to
which the leaders thereof seriously object, with the conclusion of the
prescient reporter that, " Despite all objections, the Congress undoubtedly
will do precisely as the President directs." And in every instance devel
opments prove the accuracy of the prediction. Why, then, put the Presi
dent to the trouble of going to Congress with his recommendations; the
labor of impressing on the members that it is their duty to obey, not to
think ; and the delay of waiting — as he occasionally does — for Congress to
act before putting his recommendations into effect?

It is true that Congress used to constitute a certain check on public
expenditures, but not so now. It makes a great fuss and pother about
passing "the big supply bills ", and in the end does just'what the Presi
dent tells it to and — buys and distributes garden-seed. With the latest
legislation ordered by the President, solemn enactments creating specific
offices and apportioning the funds between the several agencies of the
Government may be swept aside with a stroke of the Presidential pen, and
a redistribution made at the discretion of the Executive.

We used to believe that Congress alone had power to make war, and the
President did direct the passage of war resolutions in the cases of Ger
many and Austria<-Hungary ; but not so in the cases of Mexico and Hayti,
where the bodies of over six hundred Haytians and several hundred Mexi
cans bear mute testimony to the fact that war was made ; while the bodies
of the American dead in Arlington prove that it was made by the United
States.

Much time on the part of Senators, and brain-power on the part of the
official reporters and newspapermen, have just been expended in an inves
tigation by the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. As a result, the
members of the committee solemnly decided, in all seriousness, that the
country needed a " War Cabinet " and a " Director of Munitions " —
greatly to the annoyance of the President, who was thus compelled to start
a Democratic Ananias Club with the Chairman of the committee as its
charter member.

794 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Time was when the Senate was supposed to possess an important
function in advising the President regarding agreements with foreign
nations and consenting to important appointments. But no one ever con
sented to Colonel House, or Dr. Hale, or even John Lind, and have they
not all functioned just as beautifully as if the Senate, at the dictation of
the President, had confirmed them? Was it necessary for the Senate to
consent to the agreements with Villa, or with Carraiiza, or with Hayti?
Why, the President has not even considered it wise to inform the Senate of
the agreements entered into on behalf of the United States by his special
ambassador at the Paris Conference ; or about the pledges which he himself
made on the part of this Nation to France and England through Balfour
and Viviani; or of his formal recognition of Japan's special interest in
China. Can anyone deny that as an advising and consenting body the
Senate has passed the age of consent?

Why then should not Congress pass a single act — under cloture with
debate limited to an hour in each house — abolishing itself for the period of
the war and for eighteen months thereafter; delegating to the President
authority to issue bonds, levy taxes and make disbursements, and to do
whatever is, in his judgment, for the best interest of the country; em
powering him to fill all offices he may see fit to create, at such compensation
as he may deem wise, with his son-in-law? Would it not be infinitely
simpler for the business men of the country to have to deal only with
Messrs. Wilson and McAdoo, instead of with numerous and divers councils
and commissions on national defense, imports, lingerie, exports, morals,
publicity, fuel, shipping, food, and so on, ad lib.? Would it not be far
more economical to permit these two statesmen to take such compensation
as they see fit and dispense with several hundred members of Congress,
drawing salaries aggregating $4,000,000, to say nothing of mileage, for
doing nothing?

Then all these M. Cs., with their invertebrate protestations, their long
winded quibbling, their sycophantic twaddle, could go home and swell the
ranks of farm labor, where, God knows, they are needed.

These are war times, times when everyone is being adjured to cut red-
tape, abandon precedent and practise thrift. They are days when innova
tions, total abstinence, woman suffrage, popular election of unpopular
Senators, and personal purity are being accomplished by Constitutional
amendment. Why then, in God's name, should we not boldly strike at our
greatest extravagance and abolish Congress — by Constitutional amend
ment if need be — but abolish it anyway ?

WASHINGTON, D. C. AN ANXIOUS INQUIRER.

CUSSING WILL HELP

SIR, — You have so often clothed in lucid and scintillating editorials my
views on public questions, that I must confess my expectation to find in an
early forthcoming issue of the REVIEW an article entitled " This is the age
of little men," a subject explored several years ago by Marse Henry
Watterson, when Kentucky sent a certain small man to the Senate.

The President sent a Commission to Paris to engage in an Allied con
ference on the war. At the head of this Commission was Colonel House,
unknown to fame in America, except as a gubernatorial Warwick in Texas,
until Mr. Wilson became President. Passing by Mr. Wilson's choice of

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 795

the other provincial celebrities composing the Commission, many of us,
not interested at present in the perpetuation of either the Democratic or
Republican party, are somewhat curious to know about how long it will be
before a vigorous agitation is begun demanding that some of the great men
of this Nation, men of experience and men of prestige abroad, are called
into the service. England sent a Commission to this country immediately
after we declared war headed by Mr. Balfour, one of her most dis
tinguished statesmen, and as such known and recognized throughout the
civilized world. France sent us a Commission headed by Mr. Viviani, an
ex-Premier, and General Joffre, the commander in chief of her armies.
England and France sent as heads of their Commissions men who were of
world-wide renown and eminence, thus evidencing a high conception of the
distinguished rank of such special ambassadors. We felt proud and com
plimented by the splendid personnel of these Commissions. The names of
Mr. Balfour, Mr. Viviani and General Joffre were familiar words in
America; but who in Europe knows anything about Colonel House other
than a small minority who have studied American politics and probably
formed the opinion that the Colonel was the one man who had acquired a
sort of weird influence over our President? Why not Mr. Roosevelt, Mr.
Taft, Mr. Root or Mr. Hughes? They are the four men best known in
Europe, and particularly Mr. Roosevelt.

I never voted for Mr. Roosevelt, but I am praying for the opportunity
to do so at the next election, and I believe there are many hundreds of
thousands of American voters in my frame of mind. Possibly a Presi
dential knowledge of that sentiment in the country renders Mr. Roosevelt
wholly ineligible. Then besides, these four best known Americans abroad
happen to be Republicans, and that, with a good many other signs of the
times, leads me to inquire whether or not we are fighting this war to make
the world safe for democracy or fighting to perpetuate the Democratic
party ?

The time is past to talk about fighting this war along altruistic lines.
We have got to get mad. We can't fight this war according to the rules of
the prize ring, and this is no time for Democrats or Republicans. The
only question we ought to ask in this country is — who is an American and
who is loyal ? We don't seem to realize that we are beset with real enemies
abroad and infested with traitors at home. We ought to think more about
our fighting the Germans than merely helping the Allies. When are we
going to declare war on Bulgaria and Turkey and exhibit sense enough to
proceed on the theory that the United States and all the Allied nations,
so far as the war is concerned, constitute one political entity? Shall each
nation shift for itself, and thereby give Germany a sure chance to win the
war? It has been German strategy to destroy the weakest adversary first,
taking them one at a time. The common clodhopper, if loyal, of course,
has sufficient vision to see the imperative necessity of the United States
declaring war on Turkey and Bulgaria. Shall we sit back and see Ger
many and Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey, as a unit, fighting one of our
Allies, and stand by and see one of our Allies destroyed, or shall we
declare war against all our enemies? If it were not so serious, our position
would be ludicrous. The folly of it is astounding. Oh, if I just had your
power of expression ! As it is I will have to stop and go to cussing.

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA. GEO. S. RAMSEY.

796 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE RUSSIAN SOUL

SIR, — Being for several years a faithful reader of your valuable
periodical, I perused the article of Mr. Shaw in February, 1918, regard
ing the great Russian writer, Fedor Dostoevski. All this article is based
on a mistake which I can explain by insufficient knowledge of the Rus
sian language on the part of Mr. Shaw. The phrase, " the Russian soul
is a mystery," was completely misunderstood and mistranslated by the
words: "The Russian soul is a dark place" (Russkaya dusha potemki,
which means " The Russian soul is the deepest mystery/' but not dark).

I have no time to show that every point in this article is wrong, but
I wish to express my deep desire for the better relations between two
races in future, that no unclean hands and unclean purposes would touch
the holy things and the shrines of both nations. When we are ready to
put on the clean dress-shirt, we wash our hands if they are not clean;
otherwise the shirt will be spotted, and the laundry will be accused
instead of our own hands.

What about Dostoevski, who is respected in Russia as a prophet and
who showed the purest and the cleanest sources of the Russian soul
through awfulest crimes of the derelicts and the degenerates which were
the heroes of this writer? I wish only to make a parallel with another
far greater genius, but as well gentle — Shakespeare. If perverse mind
will bring the attention of the reader to the heroes of Pericles and Titus
Andronicus, with the description of the ugliest crimes and vices, or to
many scenes of the Historical Chronicles or King Lear, and will leave
without remarks the greatest ideas of Shakespeare, his strong propa
ganda against capital punishment, his unparalleled humanity at the rough
time of the sixteenth century, his clemency even for the criminals, his
unsurpassed kindness, many times higher than even in the Holy Scrip
ture — then the reader may receive just the same wrong idea about the
greatest humanitarian of England and of the whole world — Shake
speare.

Hands off, you all who want to destroy the shrines of the nation or
of all humanity, for the purpose of some political propaganda! Dosto
evski, Tolstoi, Pushkin, are our shrines, our saints, our glory. Isn't it
enough for you that Russia, devastated by Germany, has fallen into the
hands of the wickedest fiends who came from New York and Switzerland
and who sell our country, our towns, our museums, our temples, to the
enemy, who stir up the roughest instincts of the mob to destruction, and
who are cheering their victory over the Russian nation, applauding our
humiliation and our misery?

SEATTLE, WASH. DR. ALEXANDER KOHANOWSKI

(Secretary to the Russian Consulate).

P. S. — I return once more to the leit-motif of the article of Mr.
Shaw: "The Russian soul is a dark place," instead of, as it ought to
be, " The Russian soul is a deep mystery."

This last one phrase of Dostoevski — Russkaya dusha potemki, or:
" The Russian soul is a mystery " — comes from a very popular Russian
proverb: "Stranger's soul is a mystery," or in Russian: chujaya dusha
potemki. In this proverb, a Russian had no intention to insult a stranger

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 797

as having a dark soul. The word potemki means " incapability to see
anything by a blind man," and in this expression means only — and noth
ing else — " mystery." A. K.

A LITTLE LESSON IN LOGIC

SIR, — I have no doubt that you want to do your fullest bit in the prose
cution of our great war, but do you think you are helping the cause by such
" cutting and slashing " editorials as your " Plea to the President," which
appears in your March number ? What do you suppose would be the effect
on the public morale and on the morale of the soldiers who are fighting in
the field and training in the various camps if this editorial were echoed by
all the magazines and newspapers of the country?

I have no doubt it is hard for you — it would be for me if I were in your
place — to " forgive and forget " Mr. Wilson's blunderbuss in eliminating
you from his supporters in 1911-12 after all you had done in support of
his Presidential candidacy; and it is very natural for you to remember his
refusal to recognize the " unspeakable Huerta " as President of Mexico,
which you so strongly urged upon him, and perhaps you have not yet
recovered from your disappointment on account of his defeating Mr.
Hughes in 1916, whom you were so very, very, anxious to place in the
Presidential office. But since Mr. Wilson is the people's chosen President,
since he is the captain of the ship on which we are sailing over bloody seas,
since he is Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, which are a wall of
fire between the German war machine and our free government, is it not
better that the people — and the army — should have the fullest possible
confidence in his Administration ?

As to your question whether a former pacifist like Secretary Baker can
possibly prosecute the war efficiently as the head of the War Department,
let me refer you to the cases of William McKinley and Abraham Lincoln,
saying nothing about the cases of millions on millions of your fellow-
citizens who deprecated war and were anxious to avoid a conflict with
Germany, but are now ready to " do or die " in their country's cause.

NEWARK, OHIO. MILTON R. SCOTT.

[Our courteous correspondent seems to be laboring under an error of
logic-peculiar to a certain type of American mind. It consists in assuming
that support of the Nation in its high purposes is synonymous with support
of the Nation's administrative agents in their follies and ineptitudes. Let
us paraphrase the second question of our correspondent's letter and turn
it in his own direction : " What do you suppose would be the effect on the
public morale and on the morale of the soldiers who are fighting in the
field and training in the various camps if they thought that the stubborn
stupidities of the men responsible for their lives and the safety of the
Nation were deliberately concealed and condoned by those intrusted with
the duty of public comment upon the conduct of the war? " Our corre
spondent, thinking reverently of Secretary Baker, refers to the attitude
of Lincoln and McKinley toward their War Secretaries. Well, when
Lincoln found that Cameron was unfit, Cameron went; and Alger did
not survive the revelation of his incompetency as long as Baker has
survived the revelation of his. — EDITOR.]

798 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ALAS, THERE IS NO MONEY IN IT!

SIR, — In your WAR WEEKLY against President Wilson and his Admin
istration you are certainly lending " comfort " if not " aid " to the
enemy. I subscribed, expecting to find in the WEEKLY an honest review
of events occurring in Europe and elsewhere in connection with the war.
Instead I find nothing but abuse of the President and his Cabinet and
of Mr. House. It becomes more and more evident that your WEEKLY
is but a partisan newspaper of an extreme type to assist in carrying the
fall elections of Congress against the Administration. You were no doubt
influenced in starting this paper, either by your hatred of the President or
because there was money in it from some source. The back page of your
issue of February 16 is a contemptible libel and you know it is such. Mr.
Lincoln was assailed while carrying the heavy burden of the war by
men such as you, assassins of reputation. I do not care to have such a
paper in my household to read when even my little children, who have
been taught to be patriotic, exclaim about your crown sketch: "Papa,
isn't this wicked?" Please discontinue sending me your WAR WEEKLY,
but send it to your dear friends, the Huns in Germany. They will appre
ciate it, no doubt. You may keep my dollar.

PORTLAND, ORE. CORNELIUS GARDENER

(Colonel United States Army, retired).

NO, WE DIDN'T FORGET

SIR, — I have read with much pleasure your " Thank God for Wil
son " in the January NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

I would like to ask you one question in connection with it, however.

When you said that the country acquiesced in the President's decision
that it was inadvisable to send a man without army training abroad in
response to Roosevelt's request, did you momentarily forget that he had
entrusted the control and management of the War Office to a man with
out Colonel Roosevelt's military experiences, to a man who not only had
no training or experience of the kind, but was constitutionally unfit for
the position? Did you forget the "blessed unpreparedness " which will
cost so many lives and may lose the war?

No doubt our Minister of War is a most excellent man and citizen —
but does he fit in the War Office at this time any more than you and
Colonel Roosevelt in the " Burleson gaol " ?

Ever since the denial of Colonel Roosevelt's request by the Presi
dent, the lines in The Lady of the Lake', bewailing the absence of
Rhoderic Dhu from the battle, have rung themselves through my mind:

O, where was Rhoderic then?

One blast from out his bugle horn

Were worth ten thousand men!

Colonel Roosevelt would not need so many lessons as other men to
be ready and fit anywhere.

ALASCADERO, CALIF. M. S. DEVEREUX.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 799

MOBILIZING THE WAR SPIRIT

SIR, — Bearing upon your powerful and fascinating " Thank God for
Wilson," in the January NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, I have hesitated
some time about telling you how much it rode with me. Your suggestion
that public men who can attract an audience should be utilized to mobilize
and keep vibrant the war spirit of the nation interested me.

I have been doing that work upon my own initiative ever since the
war began; have held two hundred war meetings; have addressed many
thousands in different States and have particularly wrought among
agrarians, wha did not at once comprehend the profound significance of
the war, which indeed none of us did perhaps.

I do enjoy the REVIEW.

SAULT DE SAINTE MARIE, MICH. CHASE S. OSBORN.

UNIQUE

SIR, — I am enclosing my check for a year's subscription to the WAR
WEEKLY, and thank you for the privilege of subscribing. For a number
of years I have read THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, in particular the
editorial work of Colonel Harvey. Since the entrance of the United States
into the world war, I have followed the Colonel's pen patiently, painstak
ingly and regularly. His fearless and intelligent critiques continue to be
unique in the annals of American war literature. They perform a great
and distinct public service to every thinking American who reads them.
The pen of no living American is more brilliant, more caustic or more
timely. I revere the patriotism which prompts their utterance.

TAUNTON, MASS. SILAS D. REED.

THE CHICAGO OPERA COMPANY

SIR, — A copy of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW (March issue) has
just been received by me and I have read with great interest a splendid
article by Mr. Gilman contained therein about the Chicago Opera Com
pany's organization which I have been able to bring to New York and
present to the public of this city.

It is indeed very gratifying to receive such favorable mention and to
have the same appear in such a publication as THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW.

With appreciation, and again thanking you,

NEW YORK CITY. CLEOFONTE CAMPANINI.

WHO SHE IS

SIR. — In an article by Lawrence Gilman describing the Chicago Grand
Opera Company, there is mention of " The most gifted and versatile
singing-actress now living." Will you kindly advise who is here
referred to?

B. A. MILLER.

[Mary Garden. — EDITOR.]

800 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

BLUE BUT TRUE

SIR, — I think your current issue is rightly colored — blue. It is blue
all through. However, it is better to know the truth, for the truth may
make us free of a lot of philandering pacifists and doddering incompe
tents. Keep a-going. I wish to God we had you and Theodore and a
few more like you in charge of things.

MT. CLEMENS, MICH. FRANK E. NOLLIS.

ENDORSED

SIR, — As an American citizen, I read with approbation your article,
as quoted in Sunday's New York Tribune, on our war with Germany.
The TRUTH — so eloquently and trenchantly expressed by you — should,
and I believe will, be accepted and endorsed by the overwhelming major
ity of our countrymen.

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS. LUTHER A. LAWHON.

A SENTIMENTAL IDENTITY

SIR, — Your sentiments are mine.

It is a pity that you are not the editor of a penny paper with a
daily circulation of one hundred million.

BROOKLYN, N. Y. EDWARD G. LONGMAN.

Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

JUNE, 1918

THE PERIL OF THE FUTURE |f

A VITAL QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED

BY THE EDITOR

STEP by step the strategic plans of German conquest are
being disclosed. Long ago, we assume, all persons of in
formation and perspicacity dismissed, if indeed they had ever
accepted, the impudent pretence that Germany was forced
into the war by unexpected events and undertook it in self-
defence, and became convinced that she deliberately planned
the war and entered it at her own chosen time for the pur
pose of extended if not world-wide conquests. But it has
required the progress of affairs to demonstrate the full scope
and purport of her plans. Hitherto the most commonly
recognized and most notable scheme of national expansion
in the world has been that of Russia, in seeking through two
centuries of effort a commercial outlet and frontage on the
high seas at a point where they are never barred with ice.
That has been a great and persistent undertaking, and it has
largely determined the whole trend of Russian foreign policy
and has had a profound influence upon the international af
fairs of both Europe and Asia. Yet it is now seen to have
been a comparatively trifling thing by the side of the pre
datory policies of the Hohenzollerns, even if we consider
nothing more than the attempts of the latter to secure con
trol of maritime highways, which have been by no means the
whole or even the major part of their ambitions.

The first important step in the campaign of conquest was
the partition of Poland, which Frederick the Great conceived

802 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and executed largely for the sake of securing by the theft of
Danzig an import frontage and a great harbor on the
Baltic Sea, as also for connecting two parts of Prussia into
an integral whole by seizing the territory which lay between
them. The sequel to this was the seizure of the southern part
of Denmark, which greatly increased Prussia's frontage on
the Baltic, gave her a frontage on the North Sea, and pro
vided her with an eligible route for an inland waterway con
necting those two frontages. A little later the conquest and
annexation of Hanover gave her an extended North Sea
frontage.

At this point she could well afford to suspend for the
time her operations in that direction, and seek strategic con
quests elsewhere. She therefore turned to the east. Nego
tiations with the Sultan of Turkey secured concessions
through which Germany was to have special privileges on the
Bosporus and Dardanelles, an outlet on the Syrian coast of
the Mediterranean Sea, control of the Euphrates Valley, and
an outlet on the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. That was
a gigantic scheme of German hegemony clear across two
continents, from the North Sea to the Indian Ocean, tapping
the Mediterranean Sea by the way. Through her most sub
servient tool, Austria-Hungary, she at the same time planned
to secure an outlet down the Vardar Valley to the head of
the Aegean Sea, and by the rape of Bosnia and Herzegovina
to confirm greatly the German position on the Adriatic.
Further domination of the Mediterranean was sought in the
attempt to seize Morocco and thus possess one side of the
eastern gateway to that sea; the frustration of which attempt
by France, Great Britain and the United States won for
these countries the most savage resentment and hatred of the
Huns.

German aggressions in the Pacific began with the attempt
to crowd America and Great Britain out of Samoa and to
win all those islands for the German colonial empire. Other
steps in the same direction included the seizure of various
lands and groups in the East Indies and Polynesia, and also
an important foothold on the Chinese coast. Militant in
trigues were also initiated for the acquisition of the Philip
pines, which were frustrated by the expedition and intrepid
resolution of George Dewey ; another cause of wrath against
the United States.

There remained the western Atlantic and the Caribbean,

THE PERIL OF THE FUTURE 803

and the Isthmian Canal route between the Atlantic and the
Pacific. The list of German schemes in that direction is a
long one. It comprises the attempt, led by Dr. von Holleben,
to meddle between the United States and Spain in the spring
of 1898; and the balking of at least one of the negotiations
for the American purchase of the Danish West Indies; by
which means Germany hoped to prevent the extension of
United States influence thither. Other intrigues aimed at the
acquisition of the Dutch West Indies by Germany. The
defeat of the negotiations for a canal treaty between the
United States and Nicaragua in 1902 was due very directly
to German influence over the then Nicaraguan minister to
the United States, and the same game, with a somewhat dif
ferent ending, was played at Panama. It was through Ger
man influence that Colombia was persuaded to reject the
canal treaty, Germany then being engaged in an attempt
to secure for herself the reversion of the old de Lesseps canal
concession at Panama, intending to complete the work and
make it a German canal across American soil.

All these various and variously-resulting drives at water
ways and sea frontages antedated the present war. In this
conflict they have been continued, together, of course, with
the development of other schemes of conquest. The conquest
of Belgium was effected partly as the first step in a drive
at Paris and France by the route of supposedly least resist
ance, and also for the sake of gaining a working frontage on
the British Channel. Serbia and Montenegro were con
quered largely in order to promote the schemes already men
tioned for German dominance on the Aegean and the Adriatic.
The Baltic Provinces of Russia are being annexed to Ger
many in order to give her full possession of the continental
shores of that sea, and the German conquest of Finland has
been essayed with the object of pushing northward to the
Kola Peninsula so as to gain on the Terian and Murmanian
coasts frontages on the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean.
The seizure of Ukrainia is intended to make the Black Sea a
German Lake, and the attempt to set up a German province
in the Caucasus is meant to give Germany a footing upon
the shore of the Caspian.

Formidable as are these schemes of waterway domination,
they are not by any means the whole of the German cam
paign of conquest. The prosecution of them has greatly
facilitated others, one of which is now beginning to loom up

804 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

with a portentousness not surpassed by any other feature of
the entire situation. In the course of the highly successful
drives along the coast of the Baltic and the north shore of
the Black Sea, Germany has crushed and demoralized Rus
sia, deprived her of her sea coasts, and isolated her from the
rest of Europe. Whatever may be the status and the pros
pective outcome of the war on the western front, it is indis
putable that Germany has already completely won that on
the eastern front. She has achieved the conquest of Russia,
and it now rests with her to determine in what manner she
shall most advantageously employ the results of that con
quest.

Already she has utilized those results in three important
ways. One is the withdrawal of hundreds of thousands of
troops from the east for service on the western front. It is
well within bounds to say that the recent drive in Flanders
and Picardy would not have been undertaken but for the
collapse of Russia, or, if undertaken, would not have been
nearly as formidable as it was. The second is the securing of
vast supplies both of food and of munitions of war or the raw
material for them. Alsace and Lorraine were stolen in 1871
chiefly for the sake of their iron mines, but in seizing Russia
the Huns have secured immeasurably richer mines of iron,
the chief platinum mines of the world, one of the richest of
oil fields, vast cotton plantations, and the granary of Europe ;
and much of this wealth is immediately available for the sup
plying of wants and for the allaying of discontent. The third
way in which the conquest has been utilized is the unifying
and confirming of the whole German people in support of the
Government. There can no longer be complaints that the war
is a failure or that it is being waged for nothing. The Im
perial Government can claim that it has " made good ".

Now all this is on the supposition that Germany elects
to continue the war in the west, as indeed she is doing. But
there is an alternative, which has been somewhat more than
hinted at. That is, for Germany to content herself with her
eastern conquests, which are by far the greatest ever made by
any nation in modern times if not ever in the history of the
world and to abandon her efforts in the west. That would mean
withdrawal from France and Flanders, and fortification of
the old frontier of Germany, to protect that empire in its
new conquests. That would place Germany in an exceed
ingly strong position. We do not say that it would be im-

THE PERIL OF THE FUTURE 805

pregnable. But if in more than three and a half years Ger
many, minus her eastern army, has been able to hold the Allies
in check on their own soil, what would be her capacities for
defence when fighting defensively on her own soil, and plus
the great force which she was able to draw from the eastern
front? If she should elect to adopt such a course, the Allies
would be greatly nonplussed and embarrassed. They could
not logicaly and consistently give up the war, yet they would
find the difficulties of pursuing it far greater than before.

We do not say that that is what she is going to do. But it
would be foolish not to recognize the possibility of her doing
so, and even the probability of it in certain contingencies.
There can be little doubt that she would adopt that course in
preference to confessing defeat all around and suing for
peace or offering unconditional surrender. Neither can there
be any doubt that the strategy of her accomplished cam
paign thus far has placed her in a situation in which to adopt
that course would be easy and hopeful of success.

As for the potential results of such a course, they must be
obvious. The Allies must either accept that settlement as an
ending of the war, or must refuse to do so and continue the
war for the purpose of undoing it. If they should elect the
former course, Germany, reenforced with the population and
the inestimably great resources of the Russian Empire, would
be admirably situated to prepare herself for a renewal of
the war not many years hence, in circumstances far more
favorable for herself than those of 1914. Her man power,
and her power in all other respects, would be vastly greater
than in the present war, both positively and comparatively,
while her opponents would be just so much the weaker; and
she would have foes on only one side instead of on two.

These considerations would, we may confidently assume,
compel the Allies to refuse to recognize that settlement and
to continue the war. They would have to do so against a
united and augmented Germany, backed by almost bound
less resources and fighting on a single front. We must be
lieve that the result of even such a conflict would be the over
throw of the Huns. That would be a necessity of civilization
and of Christianity. But it would be a stupendous task.
At the present time Russia is so disorganized as to be
of little value to its conqueror. But the course which Ger
many has been pursuing in Ukrainia indicates unmistakably
that she is bent upon the reorganization and restoration of

806 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Russia for German profit at the earliest possible moment.

In that outlook lies an immense peril — perhaps the great
est that has ever confronted the world. We have expressed
faith that the Allies would now reject any proposal that
would give to Germany a free hand in the East, despite the
fact that she would speak as a conqueror and could well af
ford to make most liberal and tempting offers to the Allies
in the West and even to Italy. But we have to confess that
our sense of certainty with respect to the future is not strong.
Assuming, as we trust we may with confidence, that the Ger
mans have come to realize that they cannot break through
and presently will begin to intrench themselves with their
customary skill and thoroughness, what then? To say, as
many do say, that because they will have failed to achieve
their immediate purpose the war will have been won by the
Allies is, to our mind, to talk nonsense. The enemy has only
to " dig in " and stay there. If the most powerful military
machine ever known could not pass our far less effective
force, what chance have we of smashing his defenses to and
beyond the Rhine this year, next year or ever, for that
matter?

It is easy enough to shout "We are going to win; of
course we are ; anybody who suggests a possibility of our los
ing is a traitor," etc., etc. ; they are heartening words and we
like to hear them; but how are we going to win? That is
what we want to know.

Suppose the frightful business continues, as probably it
must, for several years or even for one year and the situation
remains substantially unchanged, the Allies having drawn
from America and the enemy from Russia in about equal pro
portions, and then Germany suddenly proposes to turn back
all she has won in the West and to keep only what she has
won in the East, what are we going to reply? What is
stricken France going to feel and even perhaps say? What,
England? What, the people of America? What, — and this
is the gravest question of all — President Wilson? What,
ourselves, for that matter? We simply do not know and
cannot foresee. But we do realize that the peril of having to
face such a situation is not only, as we have declared, im
mense, but even perhaps far more imminent than we imagine.
It is something, therefore, that we should begin to think of
and to prepare for, with the utmost seriousness.

Is it not probable that the time will come when we shall

THE PERIL OF THE FUTURE 807

have to determine how much of the world's obligation to
civilization we of this generation are bound in honor to as
sume and how much we are warranted in passing on to our
successors ?

That surely is the way we are drifting. So far as is
known, — and information to the contrary, if there be any,
invariably leaks out, — neither our Allies nor ourselves have
formulated any plans for actually winning the war. We
are simply expecting Germany to lie down. We have not
even a great policy in common, except as to defensive fight
ing in France. Great Britain, perceiving the danger of such
a situation as we have indicated arising, is eager to put Japan
into Russia to head off German mobilization of the mighty
man power of that distracted and prostrate country, but
President Wilson refuses assent upon the ground that to do
so might induce somebody to suspect the sincerity of our
declarations that we seek no conquests.

Who that somebody is Heaven alone knows. It cannot
be any one of the Allies ; that is certain. It may, of course,
be Mexico, but we hardly think so. Probably it is Germany
or Turkey or both — our " adversaries," as Mr. Baker sweetly
calls them. In any case, the United States objects to and
actually prevents the prosecution of the war in the East after
the manner deemed most advisable, if not indeed absolutely
essential, by our " associates." We do not maintain that the
President may not have satisfactory reasons for pursuing this
course, but we do insist that he assumes a tremendous re
sponsibility if, as Mr. Creel informs us, he does so merely to
preserve appearances in the eyes of anybody who might pre
tend to mistrust our motives.

We would not for a moment distract the attention or the
energies of the Government and the people from the most
pressing need of hurrying men to France. On the contrary,
we would concentrate all efforts to that end, not only to
atone partially for our criminal negligence in the past, but to
meet, so far as it lies within our power, the very exigency
which we have depicted as likely to arise. Precisely as Ger
many " speeded up " in the hope of securing a decision in
her favor before the Allies could get America in, so should
America put forth every ounce of strength to help to achieve
something somewhere before Germany can get Russia in.

But doing all this need not and should not prevent simul
taneous consideration of other equally dangerous problems to

808 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

come, with a view to reaching correct solutions promptly.
For ourselves, we rejoice to say, we find the present situation
fairly satisfactory; it is the only too obvious peril of the fu
ture that fills us with apprehension.

THE EVILS OF PARTISANSHIP

IT is a pity that we cannot recast the old adage about
laws being silent amid arms, or arms silent amid laws, and
say Inter arma factiones silent. There is need of it, now
more than ever before in all our history. There has been
need of it before; or at least the evils of faction in wartime
have been felt. In the Revolution there were Tories. In
the undeclared French war there were Gallicans and Angli
cans. In the War of 1812 there was the Hartford Conven
tion; the reputation of which is the worst thing about it. In
the Civil War there were Copperheads. To-day, apart from
the Pacifists and Bolsheviki and what not else, there is too
great an inclination to draw party lines between the two
great parties, without thought of the effect upon the national
welfare.

By this we do not mean to condemn or to decry criticism
of the Government or the legitimate functions of an opposi
tion party. We believe in criticism; and God knows the
Government has now and then deserved it. We believe in
an opposition party, watchful, alert and outspoken. But we
do not believe in criticism or in opposition that is mere
nagging or attempts at destruction. They should be in
structive and constructive. Particularly, we do not believe,
at a time like this, in supporting the Government's policy
through thick and thin just because the head of the Govern
ment belongs to your party, or in criticising and condemning
it simply because you belong to the other party.

Such factionalism has not, of course, universally pre
vailed. Some of the strongest disapproval and criticism of
the present Administration have come from members of its
own party, and some of its strongest support has come from
the opposition party. Yet now, with a general election loom
ing in the distance, there is an obvious inclination to draw
party lines sharply and to seek party advantage at the polls
—we will not say, at the cost of national interests, but at
least without so far exalting them above mere party con
siderations as we could wish.

THE EVILS OF PARTISANSHIP 809

We have said that this has been done before. It is inter
esting to recall what happened in 1862, though without any
suggestion that it should be repeated. Faction raged fiercely
against the Administration at that time, not in spite of but
because of Lincoln's war policy. Dissatisfaction and de
nunciation prevailed. The one supreme issue was whether
the Government, in the midst of the great war, was to be
supported or not. On that issue there was an almost nation
wide reaction against the President and his policy. The
great free States of the North went against him — New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. The Democratic
opposition in the House of Representatives was increased
from 44 seats in the Thirty-seventh Congress to 75 in the
Thirty-eighth, and the Republican majority was reduced to
only twenty. In fact, only the three "Border States" saved
the Republicans from being placed in the minority and saved
the Administration from having to face a hostile majority
in the House. Lincoln's shrewd policy toward Maryland,
Kentucky and Missouri, and the presence of Federal troops
in them, caused those States to return Republican delegations
and thus saved Congress for the Administration. Two years
later, in 1864, there was a still greater landslide in the other
direction, the Administration being overwhelmingly sup
ported.

It must be recognized that our governmental system, as
differentiated from the systems of European States, gives
not merely opportunity but also some measure of provoca
tion for such factional movements. That is because we have
fixed terms for Congress, fixed dates for general elections,
and an Executive irresponsible to Congress — save in ex
treme cases, of impeachment. Whether we wish it or not,
therefore, we must have a Congressional election every sec
ond year, and when an election is held, it is extremely diffi
cult to suppress or to prevent factional rivalries. In Great
Britain it is possible to avoid such an opportunity for par
tisanship by the simple expedient of extending the Parlia
mentary term. The present British Parliament was elected
in December, 1910, for a term of not more than five years,
and met in January, 1911; so that it has already exceeded
its normal term by more than two years. In such fashion,
quite impossible here, the rousing of party passions in a
general election, and the danger of an enforced and perhaps
detrimental change of administrative policy are avoided ; and

810 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

they may continue to be avoided until after the end of the war.

While thus a stability and continuity impossible here
are secured there, the British — as also the French — system
provides for a degree of flexibility and responsiveness to
public sentiment and adaptation to changing needs also im
possible under our system of a fixed Executive and irre
sponsible Ministers. While Parliament remains unchanged,
numerous changes have been made in the Cabinet, and doubt
less will hereafter be made whenever they seem desirable.
That is because the Prime Minister and his colleagues, unlike
our President and Cabinet, have no fixed terms, but have
a tenure dependent upon the will of Parliament. There can
be no question that the Cabinet changes which have occurred
in both Great Britain and France have been beneficial and
have resulted in increased efficiency in the prosecution of the
war. What changes would have occurred here, had the
Executive been dependent upon Congressional approval,
may be an interesting subject for conjecture. It is quite con
ceivable, however, that one or two changes might advanta
geously have been made.

There can, of course, be no thought of changing our sys
tem at this time, if indeed it is ever deemed desirable so to do.
We must continue with fixed terms and with irresponsible ex
ecutives. But it may well be submitted, both to political lead
ers and officials and to the people, whether it is not possible
for us, in this time of supreme need, voluntarily and in a
measure informally to secure for ourselves the chief advan
tages of the one system while retaining the form of the other.
We must have a Congressional election this year. But it
should be possible for us to exercise a restraint upon partisan
passions and ambitions, so that the aim of all will be not to
win a majority for this or that party, but to secure the elec
tion of a House composed of the best men — the best men for
the present crisis — regardless of party affiliations. Similarly
it would be commendable and honorable in the Executive,
although quite secure against removal by a hostile vote, to
seek continually to command the confidence and approval of
the representatives of the people.

In such fashion, while retaining our present system, with
its undoubted advantages, we should also enjoy the advan
tages of the other systems. We should have a continuity and
stability of policy, and yet a flexibility and a responsiveness
to the will of the people. We should avoid the spectacle of

ENEMY SPEECH MUST GO 811

patriots lambasting each other at the hustings instead of
slaying the Huns in the trenches.

ENEMY SPEECH MUST GO

THE speech of the Hun must be abolished in America.
That is evidently the widespread popular judgment, backed
up and enforced to an increasing extent by official authority.
We referred last month to the then steadily growing move
ment for the exclusion from the schools of German textbooks
obviously designed as agents of Teutonic propaganda, and
for the discontinuance of the teaching of the German
language, unless to a limited extent in some of the higher
grades. That excellent movement is meeting with a gratify
ing measure of success, and it is now being appropriately
complemented with another for the suppression of the Ger
man periodical press. Some of the foremost German news
papers in the country have voluntarily suspended publication
or gone out of existence altogether — if we may call that vol
untary which is done under overwhelming moral compulsion
or in prudent anticipation of legal constraint. In many
places, including some of the largest cities, newsdealers will
no longer handle German papers, and in some places there
have been issued municipal ordinances or administrative de
crees forbidding under penalty the sale of them.

This movement is being much discussed, pro and contra,
a few prominent American papers affecting to consider it in
tolerant and short-sighted; though apparently on altogether
mistaken grounds. The notion seems to prevail with them
that the purpose of the suppression of the German press is
to prevent German propaganda, which is quite erroneous, and
which, if it were true, would stamp the movement as futile.
Of course, German propaganda should be suppressed and
prevented, by any means which may be found necessary.
But it would probably be not at all necessary to abolish the
German press for that purpose, since it is of quite insignifi
cant importance as a propagandist. Its utterances can be
watched just as carefully and just as thoroughly as those of
the English-printed press, and can be dealt with in the same
way. Moreover, German papers are read only by Germans,
and it is not so much to them that Germany aims to present
her propaganda as to Americans. Thus one line of propa
ganda in an English-printed paper would be more effective

812 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

for Hunnish purposes than a column in a German sheet.

It is therefore not for that reason that the German press
is denounced and is to be abolished, but rather because its ex
istence is at all times inimical to American national unity. It
retards the growth of Americanism among a numerous class
of immigrants and their descendants. It prevents or delays
the political assimilation of naturalized citizens, and makes
for the perpetuation of an alien element in the state. Such
things are great evils. It is obviously desirable for all immi
grants to become not merely legally naturalized but also
mentally and spiritually acclimated and assimilated, so that
they will think American thoughts and get into practical
and controlling sympathy with American institutions and
with the spirit of American democracy.

That desirability is generally conceded, excepting by
Germans. They too generally deny and resist it. Of all
the immigrant elements of our cosmopolitan population, Ger
mans have ever been the most insistent upon retaining the
language of the Old Country together with its manners and
social customs, and have been most reluctant to become thor
oughly Americanized. In consequence, there have long ex
isted in various parts of the country populous German colo
nies, in which German is almost exclusively spoken and read,
together with great German societies and leagues existing in
all parts of the country, the avowed object of which has been
to perpetuate German speech and German customs in this
country, and to keep the affections of Germans in America
fixed upon the transatlantic Fatherland. Nor are the mem
bers of these colonies and societies, and the readers of German
papers all actual immigrants. They are largely the children
and more remote descendants of immigrants. Thousands of
people who were born in this country and whose progenitors
for several generations were American citizens, speak and
read the German language by choice, and cherish German
customs and German ideals above those of the United States.

That is an exceedingly undesirable state of affairs, and it
is very intimately associated with the maintenance of the Ger
man press in this country. It is thus associated in a dual man
ner, as both cause and effect. It is largely the cause of the
existence of the German press, because it creates a demand
for it. The German press in America exists because there
are so many people who want it and are ready to sustain it.
On the other hand, this large alien population is in a sense

ENEMY SPEECH MUST GO 813

an effect or a result of the German press, because that press,
by supplying the wants and catering to the sentiments of im
migrants and their children encourages them to neglect to
learn English and to remain alien in mind and spirit.

How great an evil this is may be seen from the examples
of other lands. There are various bi-lingual or polyglot
countries in the world, and in every one of them the diversity
of language has militated against national unity and has
been a fruitful source of trouble. That has been the record
of Canada, where of all countries in the world there is the
most excuse for duality of speech. In South Africa the
language question was for years one of the most formidable
causes of friction between Afrikander and Outlander. In
Belgium the difference in language has been one of the chief
causes of disagreement between Fleming and Walloon.
Austria-Hungary has long been notorious for its numerous
language-problems, which have frequently led to government
crises and to violent revolts.

Like causes produce like effects ; and with all our patriotic
pride we cannot maintain that this country is so superior or
so exceptional as to be exempt from the common rule. We
do not want, we must not have, such language problems in
America. To avoid them it will be well to discourage as far
as possible all alien prints, save as they may be desired to
serve a temporary purpose. When numerous immigrants
come hither who are unable to read English, it is doubtless
better that they should have papers in their own language
than none at all. But the existence of those papers should
not in the least restrain them from learning English as
rapidly as possible, and when they have done this they should
substitute English for foreign papers. To regard the alien
press as a permanence, intended to cultivate and confirm the
permanent use of foreign tongues in America, is thoroughly
reprehensible and indicates a lamentable failure to under
stand the spirit of the American Republic.

Entirely apart from all this, however, and quite regard
less of what may become of the other alien press, this thing
seems quite indisputable: That when we are at war with a
country, whose avowed object is the subversion of our civili
zation and the substitution of its own, it is worse than folly
to tolerate the continued and active existence of an agency
which, voluntarily or involuntarily, makes for sympathy with
that country. The patrons of the German press in the

814 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

United States either are or are not loyal. They sympathize
either with America or with Germany. If they are not loyal,
if they are pro-German in their sympathies, then without
hesitation they should be treated as enemies and should be
deprived of their alien prints. On the other hand, if they are
loyal, if they sympathize with America against Germany,
they should demonstrate that fact by renouncing German
prints and German speech and identifying themselves with
the nation in language as well as in all other respects. In
either case, the alien enemy tongue should be silenced.

WHERE WE LET JUSTICE FAIL

ANOTHER international tribunal of justice has come to
naught. Perhaps it is too much to say that that at The
Hague has entirely failed. Monstrously flouted and defied
and temporarily crushed into nothingness it has been, by the
brutal treason of the Hun; but we must hope that after the
Blond Beast has been slain the great court, founded amid so
high and noble aspirations of humanity, will be rehabilitated
in far more than its former strength. For the time, however,
and for the greatest occasion which the world has ever known,
that court and all the fine conventions which surrounded it,
have failed in utter nothingness.

The second failure is of lesser magnitude, and has passed
with immeasurably less notice, yet in itself it is of much im
portance and it reflects upon this country a reproach of re
sponsibility which we should gladly have escaped. We refer
to the abandonment of that Central American Court of
Justice which was designed to be, and which for a time ac
tually was, to the five Central American Republics what the
Permanent Tribunal at The Hague was to be to all the world.
Indeed, the lesser court was in intent and organization the
more perfect and relatively the more potent of the two.

There was much need of it. Those five states had for a
hundred years had a peculiarly troubled history. Therefore
their resources had remained undeveloped, their progress had
been checked, and they had become a byword among the na
tions. In this court it was purposed to end their troubles by
assuring the unbroken prevalence of peace and justice among
them through the substitution of law for violence. Never did
a community of nations more gracefully, confidently or

WHERE WE LET JUSTICE FAIL 815

auspiciously submit themselves to a mutual moral suzerainty.

In that fine achievement the United States was peculiarly
interested. It was under moral obligations to be, as atone
ment for the past. For it must be confessed that this country
had not dealt well with its southern neighbors. At the very
beginning it had discouraged the splendid aspirations of the
Panama Congress. Later through the deviltries of Walker,
the buccaneer, it had incurred unmeasured resentment and
suspicion. At other times it had shown itself more ready to
exploit sordidly than to aid generously. It was therefore
gratifying to have our Government invite the five states to
hold a conference under its benevolent auspices at Washing
ton, and there, with its moral participation, to enter into
treaties for their common welfare.

That conference was epochal; in no respect more than in
the establishment of the court at San Jose. For the first time
in the history of the world a company of sovereign states,
" for the purpose of maintaining unalterable peace and
harmony in their relations, without in any case being obliged
to have recourse to the employment of force," created an in
ternational tribunal composed of jurists who were to devote
their entire attention to its duties, and bound themselves to
submit thereto for settlement " all controversies and ques
tions which might arise among them, of whatsoever nature
they might be, in the event that their respective chancelleries
had not been able to reach an agreement." We are not sure
that in its external activities the United States ever did a
nobler thing than when it acted as moral sponsor for that
achievement.

It was ten years ago that the court thus established began
its work, and it promptly proved itself as efficient in practice
as it was exalted in theory. Numerous causes were submitted
to it, some of them of a character that without it would prob
ably have provoked destructive war. In fact, it was recog
nized by all that at least two international wars were averted
by its jurisdiction, as well as several domestic insurrections.
Its judgments were rendered promptly, and were unhesitat
ingly accepted as authoritative and binding. It presented
for some years to the world an unprecedented and inspiring
spectacle of once turbulent states dwelling harmoniously
under the sway of a public law analogous to private law — an
example which the world might well have emulated.

But a few weeks ago that tribunal was abandoned and

816 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

dissolved, with no promise of its ever being restored ; and for
that catastrophe it is difficult entirely to free the United
States from blame. The chief cause of offence was the treaty
which was made between Nicaragua and the United States
in 1913, to some provisions of which the other states objected.
Thus it was held that Costa Rica, Salvador and Honduras
fronted upon the Bay of Fonseca equally with Nicaragua —
as they certainly do — and that therefore Nicaragua's cession
or leasing to us of islands in that bay and commanding all
its shores was a matter of legitimate concern to those states.
Again, Nicaragua conceded to us the sole right to construct
an interoceanic canal across her territory; while it is notorious
that the San Juan River, which would certainly be a part of
that canal, forms the boundary between Nicaragua and Costa
Rica and is therefore half owned by the latter state.

It would be idle to pretend that these expressions of con
cern on the part of the three states were not well founded.
That fact was practically conceded by our own Government
when the Senate, in ratifying the treaty, stated that nothing
in it was intended to affect any existing rights of those states.
But that well meant declaration was really in itself offensive,
since it was practically an agreement between the United
States and Nicaragua concerning the interests of other na
tions; which should, of course, have been extended so as to
include those nations. It naturally did not satisfy them, and
they asked the United States to let the matter be passed upon
by The Hague. We must feel a large measure of regret and
shame to say that this request was refused by our Government.

As a last resort, the three states carried the case to the
Central American Court of Justice, which decided the suits
of Costa Rica and Salvador in their favor. Nicaragua, feel
ing secure in the quasi protectorate of the United States, de
nied the authority of the court and disregarded its judgments.
After that there was of course only one thing to do. A court
repudiated and flouted by its own makers could not longer
exist.

For this unhappy ending we must hold ourselves trebly
responsible. Our first error was in making such a treaty with
Nicaragua without at the same time negotiating with the
other states which, by our own admission, were legitimately
interested in some of its terms. A capable diplomat should
have perceived at the outset that Nicaragua had no monopoly
of the Bay of Fonseca or of the San Juan River, and would

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA NEEDED 817

have deemed it just and politic to consult the states which
shared her interest therein. There is little doubt that the
three would have been ready to listen to proper representa
tions on the subject, and to have come to equitable terms
which would have made our position there much stronger
than it could possibly be under a treaty made with only a
single Power.

The next error was in so cavalierly refusing to submit the
case to the tribunal at The Hague, and thus repudiating our
own professions and, worst of all, throwing the dispute back
to be fought out among the Central American States them
selves. While reference of it to the San Jose court was
doubtless proper, it would have been still more appropriate
to send it to The Hague.

Finally, we erred in not exerting diplomatic influence to
compose the controversy, after it had been carried to the
Central American Court and Nicaragua had shown her un
fortunate inclination to disregard that tribunal. It should
have been possible for us, even at that eleventh hour, to
satisfy the just demands of Honduras, Costa Rica and Sal
vador, and to have saved the San Jose court from being dis
credited and dissolved. Whether it is now possible to undo
the mischief already done, and to reestablish the court, is a
grave question, which our Government cannot morally afford
not to try to answer in the affirmative. It would be an ever
lasting reproach to us to have that tribunal vanish after ten
years of beneficent existence, because of our own inept or
sordid diplomacy.

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA NEEDED

THERE is urgent need of American propaganda in the
Allied and neutral countries. It may seem strange to say so.
Americans have traditionally been reputed experts in the art
of blowing their own horns. Among ourselves, indeed, there
is plenty of talk. Perhaps there is more talk than informa
tion ; yet in spite of the official ostrich-attitude we fancy that
reading, reflecting and clear-minded folk are getting an in
creasingly comprehensive notion of what is and what is not
going on. But talk among ourselves and knowledge among
ourselves are very different things from information about us
among other nations.

A year ago or less we were talking fifteen to the dozen

VOL. ccvii. — NO. 751 52

818 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

about having anywhere from twenty to fifty thousand air
planes in service by this time, and about having a million
and a half trained soldiers marching toward the Rhine. Of
course, intelligent Americans, to the manner born, discounted
all such flub-dub pretty much as it deserved. They knew
that while such achievements were what we should perform,
there wasn't a ghost of a chance of our doing them. But
people " over there " didn't discount it. They took such talk
at its face value. They had heard and seen so much of our
boasted American enterprise and energy that they were quite
prepared to expect any achievement by us, and certainly
were inclined, as they had a right to be, to expect us to fulfil
those promises.

And now Sidney Low tells them that after more than a
year of our participation in the war we have precisely one
airplane — just one, count it! — in France, and that Great
Britain and France will have to continue to bear the burden
of the war for a considerable time yet, before America can
take any decisive part in it. In that he tells the truth, and
the people " over there " believe him, though against their
own wishes; and they wonder why there is so vast a differ
ence between our promises and our performances. It is
natural and indeed inevitable that they should thus wonder,
because all the explanations which are familiar to us are
quite unknown to them. They heard of our promises, and
now they hear what Sidney Low says about our non-fulfil
ment of them, but they have heard nothing between the two.
No wonder that they think it most almighty strange. We
should hate to say out loud what they would be quite justified
in thinking about it ; and about us.

We need, therefore, American propaganda. We need
that the American purpose and attitude in the war shall be
made clear, and that our progress and in some cases lack
of progress shall be frankly and truthfully reported and ex
plained. To cite a few specific cases : Our Allies should be
informed, not merely as Sidney Low has done it, that we
have only one airplane " over there ", but also why there
has been so exasperating a delay, and what a chance there
is of better results now that a practical and capable man
has been put at the head of the air craft business. In like
manner, they should be informed of the reasons for delay
in shipbuilding, and of the difference between Schwab and
Denman, or Hurley, and what is likely to come of the change.

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA NEEDED 819

In other words, there should be international co-ordina
tion, in popular knowledge as well as in military command.
We are all agreed that it was a fine thing to make Foch
Generalissimo. It would be impossible to extend the same
principle to civil government. But at least it would be pos
sible to have all the allied nations completely informed of the
doings of the others. There is an old saying and a true one
that it is a fatal mistake for a defendant to mislead or to
deceive his own lawyer. But it is certainly as bad for a
Nation to deceive or at any rate to fail to inform fully its
own allies.

We have been fully informed concerning our Allies.
They long ago saw to that. They sent authoritative com
missions hither to tell us what they were doing. Some of
them maintain here permanent bureaus, commissions, or
what not, of information, which are continually at work.
They have done admirable work; tactful, helpful, all but
indispensable. They have conduced to a high degree of
understanding on our part of the condition, prospects and
purposes of our Allies, and, consequently, to such apprecia
tion and confidence as should always prevail among allies
if their cooperation is to be effective.

That is precisely the sort of work which needs to be
done by ourselves and for ourselves in European countries,
especially in England and France ; and we are not sure but
that the need of it is greater than was the need of European
propaganda here. That is because Americans as a rule have
been and are much better informed about Europeans than
Europeans are about Americans. Objectively, we are cos
mopolitan; subjectively we are provincial. We are pretty
well informed about the world at large; and we vainly
imagine that all the world is as well informed about us. But
it isn't. The intelligence which European countries receive
concerning American affairs through the press is so meagre
and ill-proportioned as to be little better than worthless,
when indeed it is not actually misleading and mischievous.

Time was when we appreciated this need, and met it.
In the days of the Civil War the Government was superbly
served by Adams at London and by Dayton at Paris. But
they were not enough. Their work was not merely supple
mented but worthily complemented by that of our " un
official commissioners," such as August Belmont, Thurlow
Weed, Bishop Mcllvaine, Archbishop Hughes and Henry

820 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Ward Beecher. The services of these men were simply in
estimable in practical value. They expounded and pleaded
the American cause as it could not otherwise possibly have
been done. To officialdom, to business men and financiers,
to social leaders, to intellectual leaders, and to the masses
of the people, their appeal was direct with the force of per
sonality, and it was effective. Of Mr. Beecher, whose mis
sion ranged from visiting the Queen at Windsor to speak
ing to riotous mobs of half-starving workingmen at Man
chester and Liverpool, it has been said that he confirmed the
Sovereign and converted the subjects.

We need such work to-day, no less than we needed it
then. It cannot, obviously, be done by our stated ambas
sadors, any more than it could have been done fifty-odd
years ago; though, of course, it must be done under un
mistakable official authority. Colonel House cannot do it
all. Even such a unique superman as his amazing panegyr
ist portrays in the New York Evening Post would not be
sufficient for the task, in addition to the multifarious other
duties which he is supposed to perform at Washington, D.
C., at Dallas, Texas, and Heaven only knows where not.
Besides, he addresses himself to Kings and Presidents and
Chancellors and Prime Ministers. But there are others who
also need to be addressed. We cannot ask him to bear a
message to the people. Yet that message must be borne.

There is at Washington a vast and costly establishment
known as the Committee on Public Information. In its con
dition of chronic creelismus it may be a question whether
its information is greater than its misinformation, or per
haps its obfuscation. But its existence affords an apt sug
gestion of the nation's greater need. That is, of a suitable
agency of public information, not for Americans, who do
not need it, but for the Allied and neutral peoples, who do
most sorely need it, and who need it not for their own sake
but for ours. They can, perhaps, get along very well with
out understanding us; but can we get along without being
understood by them? If " coordination " is the talisman of
success, is it not desirable to have coordination, not merely
among the various departments of our own Government, and
not merely among the various Allied Governments, but also
among the Allied peoples who stand behind those Govern
ments and without whom the Governments would be futile
and impotent?

SAVINGS AND GAINS OF WAR 821

We believe that one of the most creditable and most
profitable things that our Government could do, would be to
invite, perhaps informally or even formally, as a commission,
two or three representative citizens to take the lead in a
systematic American propaganda in the Allied and neutral
countries. They should be men representative not merely
of the Government and certainly not merely of a party, but,
in the amplest and most unmistakable sense, of the American
people and of their spirit in this war. Their purpose should
be not to whisper in the ears of distinguished personages
or to essay any of that secret diplomacy which we have
renounced and repudiated, but to make American policy and
American purposes known in the widest and therefore most
effective manner, so that friends and foes alike may justly
understand what is meant by America's participation in the
war.

There is no man in the nation so eminent or so pre-occu-
pied that he would not be honored by such a mission and
that he should not be ready and eager to accept it. There
is none who is suited for it and whose undertaking of it
would be of value to the nation, whose political antecedents
or whose partisan affiliations should debar him from being
chosen for it. " It's war we're in, not politics," and it is
in ungrudging recognition of that fact that patriotic propa
ganda should be directed.

SAVINGS AND GAINS OF WAR

WAR is not all waste. The enormous sums which are
being raised by taxes and loans, which are being appropriated
by Congress, and which are being expended by the militant
departments of the Government, are not all to be lost, blown
away in powder and shot and sunk to the bottom of the sea.
Some of them will, of course, thus be disposed of. There
is an appalling amount of waste, of necessary as well as
of wanton destruction of property; more, proportionately, in
this war than in any other. Uncounted millions of dollars
worth of shells and of other devices for use exclusively in
war are being utterly destroyed. All this is in addition, of
course, to the unspeakable ravages on the land, the razing
of cities and forests and orchards, and the supreme loss of
human life.

But not all of the money will be thus used. Not all the

822 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

cost and effort of war is lost. Much of it, far more of it
than we are likely to think, is of permanent value and profit
in peace. By our so-called war expenditures we are con
ferring vast benefits upon the world entirely apart from that
of merely winning the war — which is the greatest benefit
which can at this time be bestowed. Note, for example, the
work of the Shipping Board, upon which hundreds of mil
lions of dollars are being expended. That is done on the
immediate account of the war. If it had not been for the
war it would not have been done at all. And the hundreds
of ships which are being built will be used first of all to help
us win the war. But they will afterward, for a much longer
time, be used in the commerce of years of peace.

For years we have been lamenting, and with cause, our
lack of an adequate mercantile marine and our consequent
decline to insignificant rank among the commerce-carriers
of the high seas. It will be a happy and most gratifying
achievement to have that marine, lost to us in a former war,
far more than replaced and America restored to more than
her former rank, through the exigencies of another war. It
would of course have been monstrous to plunge us into the
war just for the sake of that achievement. But now that we
are in the war for other reasons, it would be folly not to
improve fully our opportunities in that respect, and in doing
a great war work to do a comparatively great work for peace.

It is a great gain that as a result of this war we are be
coming far more self-reliant as a nation and, in the noblest
meaning of the term, more self-sufficient than ever before.
Hitherto we have been dependent upon foreign lands for
many essential articles which we could and should have sup
plied ourselves at home, if only we had had the ingenuity,
the enterprise, the gumption. We have, for example, been
looking to Germany for dyes and many other chemicals and
drugs, of which the raw materials, ironically enough, came
from our own country. If the war had not occurred, we
might have gone on indefinitely in that fashion, dependent
upon an alien land for necessities of industry and also of
health and life. But when the war cut off that source of
supply, through sheer necessity we set ourselves about the
work which we should have done long before, and the result
is that we are now in a fair way of supplying our own wants,
perhaps even better than they were supplied by Germany.
That great gain is a by-product of the war.

SAVINGS AND GAINS OF WAR 823

The war is teaching us to practice intensive agriculture,
and to improve all the land. The nation has been awakened
to the discreditable fact that our margin of food production
beyond our own actual domestic needs is very narrow, be
cause we let so much of our land lie waste, and because we
do not get as much from it, acre by acre, as we should; not
more than half as much as Germany. The necessities of the
war, emphasized by scarcity of food and high prices, have
set us pretty vigorously to mending our ways. Waste land
is being cultivated, and cultivation is being made more thor
ough, so that presently we may be making two bushels of
potatoes or what not to grow where only one bushel grew
before. Doubtless we ought to have done this without the
stimulus of war, but we did not; and therefore we must re
gard with gratification the doing of it as another of the
by-products of the war, of immense prospective value to us
in the coming years of peace.

We are learning economy and thrift. It used to be said,
not without truth, that a French family could live well on
what an American family wasted. We are now learning to
correct such habits, partly through the stress of high prices
and partly under legal compulsion, and are effecting savings
of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. This, too, we
ought to have done without the war, but did not. The war
has driven us to it, and we must therefore offset the enormous
wastefulness of war with this great correction of the waste
fulness of peace.

It seems probable that we shall also learn, because of the
necessities of the war, to utilize far more fully some of our
sorely neglected natural resources. The scarcity of fuel last
winter set men to considering ways and means of making use
of the gigantic water power which in many parts of the
country is neglected and is running to waste, and the con
gestion of the railroads has already caused the Government
to turn to the rivers and canals as supplementary or comple
mentary channels of transportation. Our neglect of these
latter has been one of the most discreditable anomalies of
our economic history. Nature has endowed us with such a
multitude of natural waterways as no other land enjoys,
needing nothing but a little improvement to fit them for
use ; and also with a unique opportunity for the construction
of artificial waterways of inestimable service. Yet for years
we have not only failed to improve our opportunities, but

824 TED& ^ORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

have actually been going backward and abandoning the few
waterways which we once utilized. Our chief enemy in this
war, though not nearly as well endowed and adapted as we,
has more than three times as great a system of inland water
ways as we, and it is a fact of universal acknowledgment that
to those waterways she owes a great part of her marvellous
industrial and commercial achievements in time of peace, as
well as her marvellous efficiency in mobilization and transport
in time of war. It is not the least of the good services of the
war that it is rousing us, through necessity, to give to this
matter the attention which it deserves.

These are some, by no means all, of the good effects of
the war upon our national economy. They cannot justify
the evil of the imperial wretch who precipitated the war, and
they cannot compensate us for the irreparable losses of the
war. But they do afford an appreciable degree of consola
tion, and also of inspiration, in the knowledge that through
the processes of the war we are promoting the industries, the
profits and the blessings of peace.

PATRIOTISM AND1SACRIFICE

BY VERNON KELLOGG

AFTEB dinner in a Massachusetts Avenue house not long
ago, a gentleman whose platinum-buttoned, heavily-corded
white silk waistcoat indicated considerable interest in dress,
and the means to indulge it, took up the matter, where the
host had dropped it, of doing one's bit. The host had not said
what he was doing. He didn't need to. Everyone knows
who knows Washington to-day.

The gentleman of the indicative waistcoat said that as he
could not get into uniform and there did not seem to be
exactly the right place for him in Washington, he was going
in for saving food. He was, in fact, limiting himself to two
slices of toast with his morning coffee. He had long been
accustomed to three, or even four. He was now living re
ligiously up — or rather down — to two; never made an excep
tion of a single morning, except, perhaps, Sundays.

Now, if everybody would do what he was doing, he said,
one or two slices of toast multiplied by everybody would
equal so many slices a day, which, in turn, would equal so
much wheat flour, which would in so many weeks or months
be so many tons saved for the wheat-hungry English and
French and Italians and Belgians. He took a second
Havana, and beamed patriotically and sacrificially on our
group.

The last time that I was in Antwerp, proud old Flemish
city of trade and wealth, was in March, 1917. It was after
we had broken off diplomatic relations with Germany and
were moving obviously on toward war. The Commission for
Relief in Belgium was preparing to take its staff out of the
occupied territory of Belgium and Northern France where
we had been " relievers " for nearly two and a half years, and
I was going out to Rotterdam where our food-ships unload,

826 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and then across to our head office in London to report on the
situation inside.

It was not an encouraging situation. Ever since the first
of February when the Germans had declared their danger
zones about the United Kingdom, including all of the Chan
nel, not a single one of our food-ships had reached Rotter
dam. The stocks of food in our central depots in Belgium
were dangerously low, and the communal depots could not
be kept fully supplied. This meant that thousands, hundreds
of thousands, of Belgians, who had heretofore got their food
from the communal depots, were forced into the soup lines
which were always provided for first.

In Antwerp, proud old city of well-to-do Flemish bur
ghers and large families, formerly comfortably housed and
fed, the soup lines had increased from fifty thousand to one
hundred and fifty thousand persons. The soup kitchens
and lines themselves were multiplied, but the queues were
stretched out to more than double length, and the waiting in
them was long. Twelve women fainted as they waited in a
single line one day. Half of the men, women and children in
wealthy, proud, old Antwerp were getting food from the
soupesl

Now, an interesting and wonderful and noble thing about
this is that there was a way open to many of the Anversois
and the other Belgians forced into the soup lines in the other
cities and towns and communes of the country, to avoid the
humiliation of the soupes and to have more food than they
could get there. This way was, to work for the Germans ;
to go to Germany and work for high wages — at least, the
German placards all over the city of Antwerp and all over
the rest of Belgium promised high wages — in the German
war factories, or to go to the Flanders front and dig trenches
or cut up timber for the trenches, or do any of several things
that the Germans much wanted these starving Belgians to do.

But they would not do it; they waited in line for a cup of
soup and a piece of bread every day for weeks and months
and years. And they fastened pieces of old rags on to
wooden soles and wore them for shoes. And they made coats
out of old blankets, and blankets out of anything. But they
said little about this, and did not beam patriotically and sacri-
ficially on other people, for everybody was doing it, and only
we few Americans were there to listen and see, and we were
mostly too busy trying to make sure that the soup kitchens

PATRIOTISM AND SACRIFICE 827

had something to make soup out of, to find time to listen
or look.

After seeing Belgium and France and England in war
time, I sometimes wonder if America is really in the war at
all. There are men in uniform, and there are many posters
of the Food Administration and the Liberty Loans, and I
saw headlined in the newspapers only this morning the fact
that an American sergeant had killed a German. More
Americans will have killed more Germans by the time this is
published, and the Germans will have killed — ah, I stumble
at writing it! — perhaps even many Americans. But more
than a million Frenchmen have been killed, and by the time
this is published the English " Roll of Honour " will be near
the million mark, too, for they are going dreadfully fast these
days.

We 'Americans are patriotic, in this war; but, as for sac
rifice, except for the few families already bereft of son or
father and those more numerous others whose sons have
already gone across and are justifiably suffering constant
anxiety because of this, we have not made the beginning of
a beginning.

The Food Administration has, indeed, worked us up
gradually from " don't waste," through a " wheatless day,"
and then two, a week, and a "meatless day," with later
an added " porkless " one, and " save sugar " and " save
fats," to a pound and a half of wheat flour limit a week, or,
if you are well-to-do and can easily buy many other things,
to no wheat at all until the next harvest. And the Fuel
Administration has had a " tag-the-shovel " day, and then
some chilly Mondays, quickly returning to warmer ones when
we objected. And the Treasury has asked us to make our
investments in safe securities of lower interest rather than in
less safe ones which pay higher interest when they pay any
at all.

That, put roughly, is about the extent to which our
patriotism has led us to sacrifice.

All this is not to decry the quality of our patriotism or
its potency to lead us sometimes to real sacrifice. But so
far it simply has not done it.

Perhaps it has not needed to yet. But the Food Adminis
tration seems to think differently. It has tried to make evi
dent the opportunity for sacrifice, even if it has not really
asked for it, because from what it knows of Belgium and

828 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

France and Italy and England, it sees a real opportunity
and a real need for a little American sacrifice in the way of
eating.

Take the single matter of sugar, for example. Italy and
France are now allowing themselves an average of about
seventeen ounces of sugar a month per capita. We are
" saving sugar " on a consumption basis of over one hundred
ounces a month per capita. We do not eat quite all of this
on the table or use it in cooking. We drink part of it at the
soda fountains, and use up a much smaller part in various
factories that produce neither edibles nor potables. But we
do actually eat about eighty ounces a month.

Then there is meat. The English now get their meat on
ration cards; also their butter, margarine and other fats.
They allow themselves twenty ounces of meat, including
poultry and game, a week. This is the weight as the meat
comes from the butcher, including the bone. To encourage
" self -suppliers ", the Englishman who catches or raises his
own rabbit may eat all of it without weighing it 1 But in this
time of war, and sacrifice for the sake of winning it, we are
eating meat, not including poultry and game, at the rate of
fifty ounces a week per capita.

Again take the matter of the control of public eating
places. There has been constant complaint from the house
wife to the Food Administration that it was most discourag
ing to try to live up to the specific suggestions of the Food
Administration appeal for food conservation when the hotels,
restaurants, dining cars and clubs were not playing the game
also. There was similar complaint in England.

What the Food Administration has done is to renew, more
pressingly, its appeals to the managers of the public eating
places, and just now it has been promised by a large group
of managers of first class hotels and restaurants, that they
will toe the mark squarely. In fact, they have offered to keep
their toes a little behind the mark chalked down by the Food
Administration, and have pledged themselves to use no wheat
at all in their kitchens and dining rooms until the next har
vest. That is a fine pledge; let us assume that it will be
honestly and finely lived up to.

But what the English have done in this same matter is
to take no chances — not that I do not prefer the American
way, if it works. By Government order the actual quantity
of food that may be served in the English public eating places

PATRIOTISM AND SACRIFICE 829

is strictly and specifically limited. The present allowance of
the staple foods is: meat up to the total of your meat card
allowance, twenty ounces (as it comes from the butcher) a
week; three ounces of bread at breakfast and dinner, two at
luncheon, and one and a half at afternoon tea; one-third of
an ounce of butter, margarine and other fats at each of the
three meals, and one-fourth of an ounce at tea; no sugar at
any meal or at tea except that one-seventh of an ounce per
person may be used in preparing luncheon and one-seventh
in preparing dinner.

This sounds drastic. It is drastic, and is drastically en
forced, as anyone who has had recent experience in London
hotels and restaurants can assure you. It is really approach
ing sacrifice in eating. I met a very hungry man the other
day who looked the part; he had just come across from
England.

England, all along the line, is backing up its appeal for
voluntary support of food economy — they say " food
economy " over there where we say " food conservation "—
by legally enacted and enforced government orders under the
Defence of the Realm Act. It is under this act that their
Ministry of Food— we call ours Food Administration — is or
ganized and endowed with large power.

The Food Controller of England has authority on a
parity with that of the Admiralty or Ministry of War. Our
Food Administrator has a very limited authority; he has
achieved most of his results by appeals and agreement. He
asks people not to hoard or waste food. In England, hoard
ing and wasting of food are crimes. Marie Corelli was fined
three hundred and fifty dollars not long ago for hoarding.
For similar foresight, a member of Parliament was recently
fined and had his surplus private food stocks confiscated.
A captain and steward and fireman of a small steamer were
fined and sentenced in March to six months' imprisonment
for putting twenty-eight loaves of stale bread in the boat's
furnace I

Finally — because we must not make our catalogue tire-
somely long — let us refer to the subject, always an all-im
portant one in connection with food physiology and so
ciology, of bread; or, better, to widen it, of cereals — not
meaning by this term breakfast foods, as has come to be a
common American usage, but all of the food-grains, wheat,
rye, corn, oats, barley, rice, et cetera.

830 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The French are a bread-eating people. The diet of
France is 52% bread; 48% other things. We rely on bread
for less than 40% of our eating. Any considerable limita
tion in the quantity and quality of bread in France means
sacrifice. Well, French patriotism has. led to French sacri
fice in the matter of bread. All the wheat flour used in
France is obtained by milling the grain at an extraction rate
of 85% ; that is, from every one hundred pounds of wheat,
eighty-five pounds of wheat flour is made. We are milling
at 74%.

This action of the French in milling at 85% means an
inclusion in the flour of certain outer, rougher parts of the
grain usually discarded from the flour for use as animal feed.
This grey wheat flour is mixed with from 15% to 30% of
flour made from other cereals, corn, barley or rice usualty.
When this mixed flour is baked into bread, the bread is doled
out to the people on ration, by means of bread-cards. The
ration adopted in March of this year is about two-thirds the
amount the people have been accustomed to. The price of
this bread is kept low by government subsidy, so that all may
be able to buy the permitted ration, but the price of meat
and other foods is so high that it is practically impossible for
a large part of the people to make up the bread deficiency in
their diet by increasing the use of other foods. The bread
situation in France is truly one of sacrifice, of patriotic
sacrifice.

Now we of America have a direct relation to this French
sacrifice; we play an important part in connection with it;
we play this part whether we wish to or not; we are un
avoidably associated with it. We can ameliorate it or make
it more severe. We have before us inescapably the question
of whether to make it a greater sacrifice or a lesser one.
Theoretically, I hear the loud answer of all of us: We will
make it a lesser one; we will help those noble French, those
wonderful French, those sublime French who are to-day
carrying the torch of patriotism before the world.

Practically, our answer is less loud, though it is not a
shameful answer, it is not wholly discouraging. But it is less
loud; the reason of this is that the proper practical answer
calls for a little sacrifice.

The situation is simply this: France has sent her men
from the farms to the battle-fronts. She has had little fer
tilizer. She has lost several million acres of agricultural
land to the Germans. She had bad weather for her crops

PATRIOTISM AND SACRIFICE 831

last year. Altogether she is so reduced in food productive
power that this reduction and the bad weather let her have
last year but 45 per cent of a normal wheat crop. Even in
peace time France produces less wheat than she eats. Always
she must get wheat from outside; now she must import it on
a wholly unusual scale; and it is just now that it is especially
difficult to import.

Australia is simply too far away; it is impossibly expen
sive in tonnage, because of the time element, to get the Aus
tralian wheat. Some can come from the Argentine, a little
from India. But the great bulk of the imports must come
from America

The situation is almost identical for England, Italy and
Belgium.

This makes a great wheat demand on us — a demand far
greater than can be met from our normal surplus. What to
do? Nothing simpler than to point this out; but doing it —
well, there is where our opportunity for a little sacrifice
comes in. We must simply eat less wheat. What we do not
eat can go to France and the other Allies. In the next three
months, that is, until the next harvest, we should restrict our
eating of wheat — not of cereals generally, but just of wheat
— to one-half our usual use of it. If we reduce the wheat
consumption of the whole country to a weekly per capita
average of a pound and a half of wheat flour, we can still
send overseas that minimum amount indispensable for their
" carrying on." If we eat more, we can't.

But there is a considerable group of people in this coun
try who simply must have more than a pound and a half of
wheat flour a week. Bread is the most convenient and the
cheapest of foods, hence the man who must make his money
go farthest in an attempt to get even enough to eat must buy
bread or the wherewithal to make it. The corollary is that
some others must get along without any bread — that is,
wheat bread — at all. Those of us who can buy other foods
to take its place, as meat, fresh vegetables, and other cereals
to be used as breakfast foods, quick breads and the like, must
do it so as to keep the national per capita average down to
six pounds of wheat flour a month.

We may call this sacrifice if we like. If we do, then
here is a beautiful chance not only to be patriotic but to sac
rifice something — our taste, perhaps, certainly not our health,
for the best physiologists assure us of that.

832 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Those five hundred managers of first-class hotels and
restaurants who met the other day in Washington and the
day after in New York — for there was not room enough in
Washington for them to stay over • night — and solemnly
pledged themselves to use no wheat at all in their kitchens
and dining rooms from April 14th until the next harvest
made a good start. A great many households have done the
same. More ought to.

So much, then, for wheat and the opportunity it gives us
for sacrifice.

Surely there must be other opportunities. The wheat
sacrifice is merely the one that happens just now to be very
clearly defined and very much needed. The others will
reveal themselves to the man or woman looking for them.

Buying Liberty Bonds can be made a sacrifice. Cutting
out one's luxuries and cutting down one's comforts in order
to lend money to the Government and to the Allies is a
sacrifice of sorts, although buying Liberty Bonds by trans
ferring savings deposits or converting securities is hardly to
be called that.

The thing to do is to try to visualize what the people
inside the steel ring about Belgium, and the marvelous people
of France, and the nobly muddling-through people of Eng
land, are doing.

Inside that steel ring about Belgium a whole people of
seven and a half million imprisoned bodies and sorely beset
souls has made constant, universal, terrible sacrifice for
nearly four years to maintain a spiritual and (to the extent
possible in the face of machine guns at street heads and in
open places) a physical resistance to the German Juggernaut.
The Teuton government in Belgium has kept up ever since
the days of the invasion a persistent attempt to break down
this resistance by brute force, insidious intrigue and open
invitation to an easier life.

But the Belgians have chosen suffering and sacrifice
rather than surrender of national and personal honor.

The French morale, after an inconceivable sacrifice of
men, money and material, was never higher than now. Eng
land has given most of its best and is now giving the rest,
and living a life of repression quite beyond our present
understanding. All these people are making the superlative
sacrifice. Our opportunity is beginning.

We must try to put ourselves somewhere near them in

PATRIOTISM AND SACRIFICE 833

this common opportunity and need for individual repression
of luxury and comfort. We are with them heart and soul
and army and navy in this great struggle against darkness
and catastrophe. But we must also be with them as indi
viduals, as a hundred million earnest and eager individuals
committed to go the limit. They are going the limit already ;
we must go it, too. When we get to that stage there will be
nothing to this war but a winning. If we never get to it,
there will be every chance of a losing. The Germans know
this and they are counting on our selfishness. Are they
making their usual mistake in judging the psychology of a
people? Or are they, for once, not?

VEBNON KELLOGG.

VOL. ccvn.— NO. 751 53

ENGLAND'S FEMININE WAR WORKERS

BY LADY KENNABD

WE see her photograph in every picture-paper, and every
breeze that blows wafts to our ears another tribute to her
name. And yet, how few of us have met her in the flesh : the
woman who works to win the war? This not for the reason
that her being is but chimerical, but for the fact that she
works so hard that no time is left for play. Her services are
voluntarily given, she boasts no uniform, she is not even hon
ored by a number, often she has attained no distinction save
a friendly nickname, for her tasks carry her beyond the
haunts where people see and are seen.

I intend to give her first place in this, my thank-offering
to my sex. The others will be dealt with later: the women
who work and win promotion and decorations, the women
with careers. It is not for me to decry them, but, as the
women who have found remunerative work in war, they rank
but second to those who have been content to find remunera
tion in satisfying the need war brings for altruistic effort.

The canteen worker, for instance. Her daily drudgery
began with the outbreak of hostilities, and, when the fight
is over, she will drop back to where she sprang from, usually
a comfortable home where beds are made for her and dishes
washed. Her social standing amongst feminine war workers
is like that of the dustman in peace-time occupations. Her
duties take her out in all weathers to do the nastiest kind of
things, she is as necessary to this new life as was the har
binger of domestic cleanliness in days of peace, and as un
appreciated. Life holds for her no promise of promotion,
and her job is usually accomplished at night time and towards
dawn, when all the living world is near to death. Even the
soldiers she serves with sandwiches and coffee have grown to
regard her existence as a matter of course, and grumble
mightily when a buffet they patronize turns out to be, by

FEMININE WAR WORKERS 885

chance, understaffed. Yet, how many of those soldiers have
carried away her cheery: " God Speed 1 " as their last fare
well, how many more have found her kindly sympathy their
first realization of "Blighty"? I have known women —
grandmothers at that — criticized as follows : " Oh, So and
So? — She doesn't overwork herself! — yes, I believe she does
work at a canteen" (oh, the intonation!) "but one never
hears of her doing anything! " And then, I have helped such
ladies to pack their little satchels with a few war bread sand
wiches and a thermos flask, just at the hour when I myself
was sitting down to a comfortable evening meal, and watched
them from the window, hail a bus at the corner to take them
an hour's journey to the station canteen which counts upon
their presence for its being. I lived in the same house with
one of them once, and, just occasionally, on raid nights,
when sleep had been interrupted, I have heard her stumbling
up the stairs towards three o'clock admittedly " very tired ",
but cheerful still, full of details about the raid, the bombs,
and the delightful characteristics of the " Tommies " of the
night's drafts.

More potent heroines, still less publicly acclaimed, are the
scores of girls in their teens who have undertaken the same
occupation in France. Nothing exciting there, mind you!
No firing-line thrills, nothing of interest to see, still less of
interest to do. Just the day's hard work and the difficult
sleep of nights, paralyzed by cold in winter, dust stifled in
the summer time. Their mails irregular, their friends for
getful, with hands coarsened and complexions spoiling, they
have carried on and are continuing to carry on, thinking
sometimes a little wistfully, as their letters prove, of the
dances, the flirtations and the weddings happening at home.

A prototype to the above, unto whom, together with the
Canteen Worker, is the highest honor due, is to be found in
the Pantry V.A.D. She has passed no examinations, lacks
all technical knowledge, and accepts, nevertheless, all those
unpleasantnesses which are a portion of the unofficial sub
ordinate obliged, for form's sake, to wear a uniform. All
regulation V.A.D.s, secure in their regimental tabs and
standing, are the first to scorn her, unto whose feet the para
dise of " wards " is generally forbidden ground. Qualified
nurses' probationers make her their drudge. Sisters pretend
that she does not exist, and the committee which runs any
hospital where she may have been gratefully accepted, long

836 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ago, as a worker, never again consider her, except to present
her with a bill for broken china when she leaves, generally
because of varicose veins or physical breakdown. Yet not
an officers' hospital in England but would come to a stand
still without her. She knows this perfectly well, because she
alone can competently judge the work she has undertaken.
She grumbles a little at home, pities herself in the pantry,
and laughs a little, quietly, when she reads in the newspaper
of the public vote of thanks tendered to the officials of her
hospital. She has plenty of proof in daily life that " The
Boys " know all about it and are grateful. That is all that
matters, so she — carries on!

Before turning to the salaried workers of the war, this
list, which aims at a Biblical standard in its motto: " — and the
last shall be first," must include the woman who stays at
home to keep her house in order. Home does not neces
sarily imply the one that she has planned and furnished in
her early married days, before the war; it is usually some
one else's "home ", very far away, and, from her point of
view, depressingly un-homelike. She is the woman who fol
lows the drum, and whose journeyings may drag her from
Land's End to John o' Groat's. Her income is dwindling,
consequently so also is her household staff, and all the while
her responsibilities are growing together with her children.
She does a great deal of her own house work, all her own
mending, and, incidentally, knits a number of soldiers' socks.
She has plenty of time for thinking, whilst her husband, once
a well-to-do city clerk, tramps the country in ill-fitting put
tees, wondering why he was ever born. And her thoughts
turn to a future in which things cannot but grow worse. The
time will come when the raison d'etre of it all will have faded
into a series of cyphers on an envelope marked: " B. E. F."
and when there will not even be the occasional evenings to
look forward to which still mark " his " homecoming. But,
at this period, she washes the baby, or turns her seam, or
tidies a cupboard and — carries on!

Mark well the fact that these three : the Canteen Worker,
the Pantry V.A.D. and the Woman who follows the Drum,
are practically the only war workers who have systematically
held to the same job since the winter of 1914, thus proving
the metal of their soul to be of purest gold. For the alloy
of human nature has ever been an almost universal lack of
fixity of purpose.

FEMININE WAR WORKERS 837

These are the women Victoria Crosses of the war, and the
following have earned the D.S.O. :

I will write of them in the order of their coming, as best
I can remember it.

The birth of the Munition Worker occurred in the dark
ages. Her advent was first whispered, then publicly ru
mored, and only became reality to me when a school friend
turned up suddenly to dinner one evening, in overalls. " You
don't mean to say? " I queried aghast, " that you've — ? "
* Yes, I'm making fuses," she announced. " And what is a
fuse? " (I had been wanting to know for weeks!) " Well,
I can't quite describe it," she said, " but I'm told that I'm
awfully good at making them." For the first time in the
histoiy of our acquaintance that girl had pocketmoney, for
the first time since I had known her she looked contented.
I do not mean to imply that the one thing resulted from the
other — she was not that kind. She was almost irritatingly
happy and more busy than seemed quite nice. This all hap
pened, you see, before the days when semblance, at any rate,
of occupation became a necessary passport for mutual tolera
tion and respect.

The Munition Worker lives on, more flourishing, per
haps, but less joyous nowadays than when, as pioneer, she
scorned to conform to type. Dukes' daughters and factory
girls still work side by side, but they have lost something of
their sense of humor through the finding of a common level.
Mostly spendthrifts whilst still in embryo, they incline to
wards vulgar ostentation when fully fledged, but they have
those most human virtues: justice and generosity. Send
round a penny collecting card into a gathering of their clan,
and as much benefit will accrue to the charity, provided that
it be a popular one, and judged deserving, as can be mulcted
at social matinees. Cheerfully tendered, moreover, and, as
often as not, anonymously. I have heard it rumored that
these women are spoiled, that they have been overmuch con
sidered and over paid. It is true that welfare centres have
been instituted for them in hundreds, canteens and recreation
huts provided, classes offered and lecturers sent there free of
charge. Surely, however, it is wiser to exaggerate the good
we try to do them than to risk exaggeration of the harm they
might do themselves? And the army of women that sprang
forward wholeheartedly to put their shoulders to a creaking,
dangerous wheel, will never do more than threaten to aban-

838 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

don it should bad times come, which cannot, at any rate,
prove worse than those already sampled and surmounted 1

Following closely upon the heels of the Munition Worker
came the Government Clerk. She represented in pathetic
hundreds the poverty-stricken ranks of the women whom
life had overlooked. The bulk of those earliest volunteers
who answered to the call for typists, shorthand writers, ac
countants and masters of foreign tongues was composed of
the host of superannuated teachers, daughters who had
elected to " stay at home and look after mother," and women
doomed for various reasons to spinsterhood and oblivion.
Imagination painted for them a roseate future comprising
soft pile carpets, comfortable leather furniture and fires ever
burning — an office Utopia, in short, to make up for life with
a big " L," hitherto missed at home. At first they hardly
realized the worth of " pay " — it was the material comfort
for which they yearned. Disillusionment followed swiftly
regarding this latter, but the weekly pay envelope taught
them independence they had never thought to gain, plus self
respect. Their juniors, better favored, less in need, marked
the altered carriage of these derelicts, and instituted a veri
table siege of Government Employment Bureaus. Work —
paid work — was found for all, and its inauguration proved
comparatively simple with results quite moderately satis
factory to the Powers at the Head.

Contemporaneous with the advent of the Munition
Worker and the Government Clerk was the first appearance
of the Woman in Khaki. I am not going to enlarge upon
the score or so of denominations into which her original corps
has since divided itself by reason, not only of its growing
numbers, but also because of the immense scope of work it
has undertaken in contemporary times. I have neither the
space nor the technical knowledge necessary for such a dis
sertation. Even my unprofessional eye, however, has enabled
me to judge of the extent to which she has become essential
to the machinery of warfare. Equally so, my untrained ears
have resounded to the tales of all that she has accomplished
since those early days when one was wont to cast amused
glances over small squads of perspiring women drilling in
the spring sunshine of Hyde Park. That was in 1915,
before conscription came. They were all " Tommies " then,
these women, almost pathetic in their apeing of the training
and uniform which had hitherto marked the man of war.

FEMININE WAR WORKERS 839

They are commissioned officers now, and have in their hand
the organization of an army dependent upon which are the
most essential supplementary parts of the machinery of the
trenches. They have grown into skilled mechanics, motor
drivers, transport workers, military private secretaries,
makers of aeroplanes and a dozen other things. They police
themselves and work their own promotion. They represent
the finest, strongest, healthiest promise of our race, for they
are mostly the girls who will be the mothers of the future.
Their hours are long and their work is hard— yet, of all the
women war-workers I have seen, they look the most con
tented. No one smiles at them now, and they themselves
smile out most radiantly upon the new military world which
they have half created.

First cousins to them are the Women in Navy Blue, born
later but no less efficient. These comprise the women police
men whose work is left for guessing, but to whose services
each soldier man one meets pays tribute. And together with
them can be classed the " Wrens " whose duties lie with the
Senior Service, but whose coming has been so recent that
they have not yet had time to prove themselves as a com
ponent part of a very splendid sisterhood.

My subject would be incomplete without mention of the
Women Workers on the Land. Myself, I live in London,
and have had, consequently, little opportunity of judging
them. But, remembering my own innate recoil from answer
ing that particular call when it appeared in every newspaper
and on every placard in the city, and visualizing my frantic
search for excuses for not doing so, I can but acclaim as
heroines those women and girls who went. Imagination suf
fices amply for depicting all that is repellent in such duties —
actuality could but prove more distasteful still ! Every femi
nine instinct is outraged by a life which brings one out of
bed at dawn and throws one into it again at sunset with
bones and muscles at war; in the course of it she wears un
becoming clothes, handles blistering implements and comes
into direct contact with every insect that crawls at each
essential turning of the sod! And yet, not only did many
thousands of women throw themselves into the breach at once,
but they held to their job and are holding yet. It is not even
as if they were well paid, for they earn but the meanest
laborer's wage. Perhaps it is the fact that they are manipu
lating the very soil that fathers, brothers and husbands are

840 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

dying to defend which has given them this power to carry on.

I have purposely reserved my epilogue for treating of the
Nursing Service. No written words, however, could hope to
do justice to women whose records have been graven in
marble and preserved in the annals of empire. Tribute has
been paid them in full measure by the only beings whose
tendering could have been, by the nurses themselves, appre
ciated: namely, by the generals, officers and men for whom
they have worked and, sometimes, died. Women like myself,
debarred through force of circumstances from joining their
ranks at the outbreak of war, have thereby forfeited the right
even to acclaim them, except silently and in their prayers.

But the work of the regulation V. A. D.s who are their
subordinates and destined one day to fill their ranks is still
a fit subject for my pen. This work is undertaken, often
without pay, in England and in France, by women and girls
who flocked from every forgotten nook of the Empire in the
earliest days of the war, and clamored for patriotic occupa
tion. Such an army required many months of strenuous
organization, and the only persons who could be spared for
the task had to be preliminarily chosen from the units of the
army itself. Confusion and misunderstandings came as an
unavoidable result of amateurish legislation, and thereunto
can be directly traced the multiplicity of carping criticism
which this admirable institution has had to bear. All con
tumely, however, has died a natural death before the universal
efficiency reigning now. The V. A. D.s are divided into
numbered regiments, and on their shoulder-straps this num
ber gleams, together with an initial, marking the town of
origin. They have their colonels (or commandants) , captains
and non-commissioned officers. They wear an arm stripe for
each year's service, and are in all things, and at all times, sub
ject to strict military discipline, any infringement of which
would be promptly reported to headquarters and dealt with
there. Their scope of work covers extensive ground. Ac
cording to rank, they may be deputed to any kind of occupa
tion, from that of commandant of a hospital to that of ward
maid. Some of their duties are civilian ones, such as office
keeping, accounts, etc. ; others relate entirely to the nursing
profession. All depends upon a few preliminary first aid
" exams " which some of them have passed, and others not.
The only difference between these " official V. A. D.s " and
those " unofficial," eulogized in my earlier paragraph, is to be

FEMININE WAR WORKERS 841

found in the fact that the former have been officially enrolled
at headquarters and appointed to a regiment or " detach
ment," as it is called, whereas their prototypes have missed
this recognition through laziness or through ignorance, as
the case may be. The official V. A. D., provided that she has
the necessary qualifications and inclination, can become a
hospital probationer after a set period of training, after which
she passes into the eminence of the nursing profession,
whither this article does not claim to follow her.

Let the envoi of appreciation which, it is hoped, will
spring to the hearts of all who read these pages, be sent to the
social workers of the war. I have placed them last upon the
list so that they may obtain true worth of gratitude for all
that they have done.

Does contemporary life admit of anything more suicidally
wearisome than an hour spent in the querulous, treacherous
atmosphere of a committee meeting? Or is there anything
more unacceptable to the average and entirely untrained
feminine intellect than the responsibility of organization?
And yet the days of just those women whose career and train
ing have fitted them for nothing but continuous pleasure are
spent in " getting through " committee meetings and " get
ting up " entertainments, flag days, etc. They have given
their men — gave these, in fact, more spontaneously in the
first days of the war than did, in proportion, the middle and
lower class ; they have given an enormous percentage of their
wealth ; they have given, and continue to give, in ever increas
ing ratio, their time. And what, in this world, remains more
precious than this same time, once the men have been taken
and the money dwindles? One can go still further and point
out that they have set an example of will power, fortitude
and endurance which will, as much as anything accomplished
by all the rest of the men and women of England put to
gether, enable the nation to carry on to victory !

LADY KENNABD.

JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND

BY JOHAN F. SCHELTEMA

The sacred armies and the godly knight
That the great sepulchre of God did free.

THE legendary lore of Jerusalem has a story to the effect
that every year in the night of the 18th of March, namely,
the day on which, A. D. 1313, the burning at the stake of
Jacques de Molay marked the suppression of the Order of
Knights Templars, whose last Grandmaster he was, an ap
parition disturbed the solemn quiet of their rubble-hidden
burial vault at Ophel. Unsheathing his flaming sword, a
messenger from heaven, clad in heavy armor under the flow
ing white cloak with the red cross that distinguished them
during their lives, entered the place where they had hoped to
find rest after their valorous deeds in the service of the Lord,
and asked with thundering voice and awful mien: " Who,
then, is to cleanse God's warriors of the stain that the Holy
Sepulchre is still in Paynim hands? " And the poor, morti
fied knights of Christ, forced to an answer by their dreadful
visitor's insistent interrogation, that broke the silence of their
mournful repose over and over again, could only find heart
for the feeble response, while they moved uneasily in their
tombs : " None from our midst : our Temple is destroyed.
Not unto us the task of reclaiming the Holiest; not unto us,
OLord!"

Henceforth the Templars can slumber calmly until they
wake to the blast of the last trumpet. The grim spectre of
reproach for unaccomplished vows is laid. It needed another
Godfrey of Bouillon to do it and he has been found. After
673 years of continuous Muhammadan dominion since the
Kharizmians, driven from their homes by the Tartar invasion
and invited West by Sultan Ayyub, had ended the inter
mittent sway of the Franks in Jerusalem, an army com
manded by Sir Edmund Allenby occupied the town on

JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND 843

Tuesday, the llth of December, 1917. His entering on foot
by the Jaffa Gate, commonly called " the friend," made him
f ulfill, thanks to an ingenious if far-fetched play on his name,
an alleged prophecy which predicted that " he who shall exalt
Jerusalem among the cities of the earth will come to her
unmounted, humbling himself before God (Allah) and the
Prophet (an-Naby)." Whether it was foretold or not, last
Christmas saw a British general officer as protector and de
fender of the Holy Sepulchre, a title which seemed dignified
enough to the first Christian ruler of a domain whose royal
sovereignty he had refused, because " a king should not be
chosen where God suffered and was crowned with thorns."

Now, as eight centuries ago, when mediaeval Europe set
out on its oriental excursions prompted by devotional ardor,
its fortuitously educational tours in the form of crusades,
the capture of Jerusalem reopens the eternal question of
predominance in the Near East, of control over the old-
established routes of commerce by land with farther Asia.
Yerushalayim — founded in peace! — an ancient hill-fort
already in the time of Melchizedek, priest-king of Salem,
who " brought forth bread and wine " to Abraham and
blessed him, has sustained a full score of sieges in the cease
less clash of arms for supremacy of trade ; has consequently
become a Babel of tongues and religions, a confusion of
peoples and races, that do " not understand one another's
speech " nor customs nor modes of worship. Christian, Jew
and Moslem meet there on a spot consecrated by the origins
of the dogmas that spiritualize their labors, each considering
his faith the only true one. The very holiness of the place
unchained tempestuous rage in dismal contrast with the
hopeful mystery of final redemption from sin and sorrow,
of the going up from the doom of evil to pure, immortal joy
we attach to it. And behold, on that " theatre of nations,"
as Gibbon so properly calls it, the curtain is raised for another
act in our world's great drama, an episode connected with
our war of wars.

At one of the conferences held in London to devise ways
and means for keeping within bounds the rivalries among
the European Powers, intensified by the Balkan imbroglio,
then worse confounded by the Turkish revolution, a diplo
matist of long experience remarked that, after all, it did not
matter very much whether he and his confreres in session
could stave off a general conflagration which, if not precipi-

844 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

tated by squabbles in the cock-pit of Eastern Europe, was
sure to come anyhow on account of conflicting claims in
Western Asia. Just there Syria with Palestine is one of
the most coveted places in the sun, a traditional bone of con
tention. So much so that its map, dotted with battle-fields,
can well serve for an illustration of military tactics and
strategy in marches and counter-marches from prehistoric
times to our present day. Rather loosely constituted in its
component parts, it lacks precise boundaries as a whole.
The term Palestine in particular has no positive geographic
value nor does it convey the idea of a political unit. Running
North and South " from Dan to Beersheba," the section of
the mountain rampart between the Syrian desert and the
Mediterranean so designated creates the impression of a
projection of Europe along the latter's basin into Asia as
Spain is a projection of Africa into Europe. Its Mediter
ranean climate, too, helped it to exceeding prominence among
the meeting-grounds of East and West, made it a fit locality
for the birth of the Messiah and the dissemination of His
Gospel. Hallowed through His teachings and death, yet
thereafter as before the scene of grievous dissensions, it has
been cut up by the Sublime Porte according to the exigencies
of Ottoman administration. The liwa (district or depart
ment) of al-Quds, lit. " the Holy," comprising Jerusalem
and environs under an independent mutassarif (prefect),
covers a territory almost identical with the new testamental
Judaea; Western Palestine is incorporated into the vilayet
(province) of Bayrut; Eastern Palestine is under the juris
diction of the waly (governor) of the vilayet of Suriya
(Syria), who resides at Damascus.

For the government of alien subjects, says a close ob
server, the guiding word in the Turkish language is akildneh,
which means " skillfully." There has always been and still
is much difference of opinion concerning the methods em-
ptoyed by the Turk in exercising his administrative skill,
especially with regard to the infidels whose false invention
denies the super-excellence of his faith. While a good many,
and among them Christian missionaries of repute, who know
him well, defend him as kind-hearted and naturally tolerant,
others echo and re-echo the estimate associated with the Near
Eastern policy advocated by the school of Bright and Cobden,
which delighted in gibbeting him as " an irreclaimable ruffian
who should be improved off the face of the earth as soon as

JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND 845

may be." National aspirations and international jealousies
had doubtless something to do with such extreme views,
enmities engendered already during the crusades, ambitions
culminating, for instance, in Napoleon's plans for Eastern
conquest ; clashing in divided counsels over Muhammed Aly's
efforts to expand Egypt toward the Persian Gulf, in the
Syrian troubles, in the Turco-Grecian and Turco-Russian
conflicts — divers flamings up of the ever-smoldering Eastern
Question.

After entering upon its modern phase with the treaty of
peace concluded between Russia and Turkey at Kuchuk
Kainarjy on July 21st, 1774, and affecting the Napoleonic
wars, the Eastern Question was ignored — and for good
reasons — at the Congress of Vienna and the subsequent Con
gresses of the so-called Holy Alliance. The Treaty of Paris
established a system of guarantees which aimed at putting
the Ottoman Empire under a sort of tutelage and would have
facilitated its partition, a foregone conclusion since in 1699
the Peace of Karlowitz marked the beginning of its decline,
if the interested Powers had been able to agree on their
claims to the Grand Turk's heritage. The Congress of
Berlin, revising the Treaties of Paris and London, empha
sized the political doctrine that the Sick Man on the Golden
Horn is responsible to Christian Europe for his demeanor
in the domains still remaining to him after successive ampu
tations. In Article 62 of the treaty which terminated and
crowned its travail, it also recognized the protectorate of
France over the Latin Christians in the Levant, without,
however, specifying her " acquired rights," but discounte
nancing any attempt to change the status quo of the Holy
Places. Far from clearing the situation with respect to those
ticklish problems, the quasi-prophylactic reservation and in
junction became in its vague phraseology a new source of
contention. France, founding her privileges in the Near
East upon numerous treaties and agreements which in the
course of four centuries confirmed and amplified the Capitu
lations granted in 1535 by Sultan Solunan II to King
Francis I, was not disposed to overlook Austrian and Italian
encroachments on her protectorate in its widest sense, includ
ing her supervision of the Roman Catholic clergy, secular
and regular, even though she is anti-clerical at home. Russia
was accused of more zeal than discretion in her propagandism
of the Greek Orthodox faith.

846 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Further complications ensued in consequence of the
advent on the scene of Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany
as the protector of the protestants in competition with Great
Britain; as the protector of German Catholics on the strength
of Pan-Germanic arrogations ; as the protector of Islam, too.
In fact, chameleon-like, he revealed himself as willing and
ready to pose for anything, to assume any role which could
mask the real object of his visit in his real quality of an
august commercial traveler, bent on smashing with his mailed
fist all obstacles to a world monopoly for his firm, the house
of Hohenzollern and — at a most respectful distance behind
as a partner of slightest importance — Germania. If, a thou
sand years earlier, the Teutons under Arminius, annihilating
the legions of Varus in the forest of Teutoburg, had made
their debut as an essentially warlike people, increasingly
opposed in the coming ages to classic civilization, that heir
loom of the Latins they despised, their imperial exponent
of our day, seeking an outlet in the East for their growing
commercial and industrial energy, found also the Anglo-
Saxons barring their path. Yet it was one of that race,
Cecil Rhodes, who is said to have opened the Kaiser's eyes
to the chances offered by Turkey in Asia as a stepping stone
for conquest in the track of Alexander the Great to offset
lost opportunities in Africa, improving upon the frustrated
plans of Napoleon the Great. However this may be, rather
than the spirit of Bismarck, apathetic to a degree in the mat
ter of colonial ventures, it was von Moltke's that, in 1898,
animated his Majesty on his picturesque journey to Jeru
salem and the Holy Land, ostensibly undertaken to attend
in person the consecration of the German Church of the
Redeemer, built on the site of the long demolished Chapel
of Santa Maria Latina, in 1869 presented for that purpose
to his father, the then Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, bv
the Sultan Abd' al-Majid.

The diligently advertised, spectacular event reminded one
of Isaiah's plaint: " Cry, O city; thou, whole Palestine, art
dissolved: for there shall come forth from the north a
smoke " ; and the crowning ceremony on the Muristan gave
fresh food for the conviction that history repeats itself. Had
not Pope Gregory IX, excommunicating the other German
Emperor, a Hohenstaufen, who graced the Holy Land with
his presence, preceding this Hohenzollern by seven centuries,
styled him a henchman of Mahound, the Antichrist, that

JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND 847

traveled to Jerusalem not as a crusader or pilgrim, but as a
pirate? Piracy takes a multitude of forms according to
circumstances and times. Friedrich II appropriated by
means of his marriage with Yolante, daughter of King Jean
de Brienne, also the fair and pleasant " daughter of Zion "
with all the territory she held, the principalities, counties,
baronies and seignories that depended on her, to the extent
his arms and diplomacy could prevail. Wilhelm II. of
wider vision, thought of universal dominion, coveting conti
nents. The gigantic enterprise, described in current par
lance as the five B's (Berlin-Byzantium-Baghdad-Bassorah-
Bahn), was to give him a kind of preventive mortgage on
the Near and Middle East to start with. A direct result of
the Kaiser's first visit to Sultan Abd'al-Hamid II in 1889,
which inaugurated German ascendency in Turkey, it grew
from the small beginning of the concession in the previous
year of a railroad doubling the already existing one from
Haydar Pasha on the Bosporus, opposite Constantinople,
to Ismid, some sixty miles in length, and to be run through
to Angora. Between 1893 and 1896 a branch line was con
structed from Esky Sheher to Konia (Iconium) . On March
5th, 1903, Zihni Pasha, Turkish Minister of Commerce and
Public Works, and the President and Directors of the Ana
tolian Railway Company signed the convention which pro
vided for an extension from Konia instead of Angora, as in
von Pressel's original plan, to the Persian Gulf, by means
of the Imperial Ottoman Baghdad Railway Company. Paid
for by loans negotiated through the intermediary of the
Deutsche Bank, this Pan-Germanic triumph raised in the
Central Empires an enthusiasm by which the depth of dis
appointment at the scheme's impending collapse can be
gauged.

The news of the recent happenings in the Holy Land,
while the British army in Mesopotamia holds the projected
railroad's main eastern station, carries indeed evil bodings
for its completion and later exploitation under German man
agement. Throwing back the Turkish troops that were to
invade Egypt, and following the way of Philistine migration,
the British army in Palestine seized in rapid succession
Beersheba and Gaza, the key, as Napoleon considered it, of
Syria to the North and the Nile Delta to the South. After
the taking of Askalon on the 9th and of Jaffa on the 17th
of November, a halt was called to wait for the French and

848 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Italian contingents despatched to participate in this modern
crusade, led in turn by Sir John G. Maxwell, Sir Archibald
Murray and Sir Edmund Allenby, warriors of no less
prowess but greater discernment and political sagacity than
their famous predecessor, Richard of the Lion Heart.
Though Hebron was found evacuated, the enemy offered
resistance at Bethlehem and several other places whose names
conjure up images of peace and good will rather than mur
derous combat. In the night of the 8th of December the
Turkish garrison withdrew from Jerusalem and on the morn
ing of the 9th the civil authorities came forth with a flag of
truce to surrender the town. To quote the cinque cento poet
once more:

The walls were won, the gates were opened wide.

Like General Maude's proclamation to the inhabitants
of Baghdad, General Allenby's to those of Jerusalem, read
in four languages at the base of the Tower of David, imme
diately after his unpretentious but none the less highly im
pressive formal entrance of the town, was a model of soldierly
statesmanship on lines quite different from the threatening
declaration promulgated as an earnest of Jeremiah's predic
tion by Cyrus, King of Persia. In his dispositions for a wise
exercise of his functions as military governor of al-Quds of
the Moslemin, General Allenby showed also much necessary
tact. One of his orders provided for the continued Moslem
guardianship of the Qubbah as-Sakhrah in the Haram ash-
Sharif, the chief Muhammadan shrine on the sacred hill
where Jehovah had hovered in a cloud; where David had
seen His angel, standing " between the earth and the heaven,
having a drawn sword in his hand " ; where Solomon's temple
stood and the new one that replaced it, and Herod's temple ;
the silent corner of the high place where the Avim and the
Anakim used to sacrifice in their prehistoric age; where
Hadrian raised an altar to Jupiter, turning the city of the
son of Jesse, which is Zion, into the Roman colony of Aelia
Capitolina. So, with respect to the Bayt al-Maqdis, the
home of the sanctuary, prospective Moslem subjects were
appeased and propitiated by measures calculated to impress
upon them Great Britain's solicitude for their religious needs
and wishes, on a par with the substitution of a British for a
Turkish guard to the caravan that conveys from Cairo to
Mecca the Mswah, the annually renewed covering for the

JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND 849

Ka'bah. Notwithstanding the Emperor Wilhelm's assur
ances to successive Grand Signiors at Stambool, the German
attitude toward Islam compares most unfavorably with these
attentions : General von Falkenhayn, for example, directing
Turkish operations from Aleppo, has scandalized the true
believers, by establishing himself with his giaur German staff
in the principal house of prayer there, the jamf Zakariya,
where tradition points out the grave of that righteous
doubter, John the Baptist's father.

Reasons accumulate why Sir Edmund Allenby, pushing
on from Jericho for a junction with Sir William R. Marshall,
commander of the late General Maude's army in Mesopo
tamia, should prove as formidable a hindrance to the realiza
tion of the Kaiser's oriental dreams as Sir William Sidney
Smith was to those of Napoleon. A junction as contem
plated, after the taking of Mosul, by an armament moving
northward from Baghdad, and the armament now proceed
ing from Jerusalem toward Damascus and Aleppo, rein
forced, perhaps, by troops from Cyprus, descending upon
Mersina or Ayas to occupy Adana, would mean the cutting
of the lines of communication between Asia Minor and Syria
with Arabia. General Marshall is badly hampered by the
failure of disintegrating Russia to second his movements;
General Allenby, on the other hand, has in his favor the sup
port given to him by allied Arab tribes, that harass the Hejaz
Railway and swarm up east of the Jordan, covering his right
flank. His victorious march to Aleppo and Killis (Mus-
timieh), the meeting-point of the Syrian railways with the
railways east to Ras al-Ayn in the direction of Mosul, and
west and northwest to Alexandrette, Konia, Haydar Pasha
and Smyrna, might settle the fate of the Asiatic provinces
of the Ottoman Empire, at least in so far as their southern
portion is concerned, despite its secret treaty with Germany,
which guaranteed Turkish rule in those regions. The initial
wresting of Palestine from the Grand Turk's clutch augurs
well for the consummation in the near future of the " bag and
baggage " policy, conformably to the words of the Quran
(chapter of al-araf, that is the partition between paradise and
hell) : " Unto every nation there is a prefixed term; therefore
when their term is expired, they shall not have respite for an
hour, neither shall they be anticipated."

The ultimate restriction contained in this pearl of wisdom,
fallen from the mouth of the Prophet, is highly pertinent to
VOL. ccvii.— NO. 751 54

850 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Palestine at a new parting of the ways in her fortunes. Pro
visionally under martial law, administered by a British mili
tary governor, with the British flag flying dominant over
Jerusalem and the French and Italian flags hoisted over
French and Italian property such as convents and schools,
whose will the Holy Land be to have and to hold after the
conclusion of peace? Prized beyond estimation for its re
ligious associations and of the utmost strategical value, espe
cially to Great Britain as a bulwark to Egypt and a coign
of vantage for the protection of an overland route to India
more direct than the German Baghdad Railway, it possesses
only moderate attractions in an agricultural or industrial
sense. Though a large part of the Jordan valley can, no
doubt, be reclaimed by irrigation, elsewhere there is little
room for the farmer's or live stock raiser's pursuits, except
in the plains of Esdraelon and Sharon, and Upper Galilea.
At this moment no more than about four or five thousand
square miles of its soil are under cultivation. It has no
navigable rivers. Its mineral wealth consists principally
of some phosphate, some traces of rock-oil in scattered
localities, and sulphur and asphalt in the vale of Siddim,
collected by the gatherers of salt on the shores of the Dead
Sea, the Lacus Asphaltites of the Romans and the Bahr Lut,
Lot's Sea, of the Arabs. Malaria asserts itself severely and
so does the insidious sore which in its most malignant varieties
blossoms out as the vexatious, unornamental Jericho boil or
Aleppo button.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, Palestine has known
a good deal of immigration even before the Hebrews came
and the Philistines and the Greeks, who populated the cities
of Decapolis, and later the Arabs. In 1856, six years after
Ludwig Ross began to advocate German colonization in the
Holy Land, a number of Americans settled in Jaffa, but
their experiment miscarried: some could not stand the climate
and died ; the survivors moved away. More success attended
the " Temple " colonies founded by Christoph H. Hoffmann
of Wurttemberg, also in Jaffa, in Hay fa, Sarona, Rephaim
and Jerusalem. Moslem Circassians, seeking refuge from
Russian attempts at conversion, were given new homes by
Sultan Abd'al-Hamid II on the east banks of the Jordan
and along the Hejaz Railway, and developed that region
according to their primitive notions of husbandry. Sinking
artesian wells, building dams for water storage, draining the

JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND 851

country and covering it with eucalyptus plantations to keep
off the malaria, the thousands of Russian Jews who, equally
in search of religious freedom, fled to Palestine between 1881
and 1914, did rather better; and their thriving colonies, of
which that at Petah Tikwah is the oldest, are now consoli
dated under the auspices of the Palestine Colonization Asso
ciation after having been financed at a loss by Baron Edmond
de Rothschild. Whatever industrial concerns exist, handi
capped by lack of coal and iron, are also mostly owned or
managed by Jews, notably the tanneries and dyeshops, the
soap factories at Nabulus (Shechem) and the trade in
oranges at Jaffa. Thanks to Hebrew activity, the slender
material resources of the Holy Land were increasingly util
ized up to the breaking out of the war. And, strengthening
the claims based on the relations between ancient Palestine
and Israel, these obligations of modern Palestine to the
Israelites of the present dispensation have doubtless influ
enced the intention of the Powers of the Entente, formulated
by Mr. Balfour, British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, to
establish for the Jewish people after their long wanderings
and mournings for the palace that lies desolate, a national
home in the shadow of Mount Zion, its corner-stone and
foundation.

JOHAN F. SCHELTEMA.

GRADES OF MEDICAL OFFICERS
IN THE ARMY

BY MAJOR LOUIS L. SEAMAN, M.D.

A GRAVE crisis for the American soldier awaits the de
cision of Congress — a military question of most serious im
port — although to the casual observer it may seem compara
tively trivial. It is embodied in the bills introduced by Mr.
Owen in the Senate, and Mr. Hicks in the House, for " fixing
the grades of the commissioned officers of the Medical Corps
of the United States Army on active duty, and for other
purposes," and is as follows:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter the
commissioned officers of the Medical Corps and of the Medical Re
serve Corps of the United States Army on active duty shall be dis
tributed in the several grades in the same ratios heretofore established
by law in the Medical Corps of the United States Navy. The Surgeon-
General shall have authority to designate as " consultants " officers of
either corps — and relieve them as the interest of the service may re
quire.

Sec. 2. That the Medical Corps, through its officers, shall have
supervision and control of the hygiene and sanitation of posts, camps,
commands and troops under such regulations as the President may
establish, with authority to issue and enforce such orders as will pre
vent or diminish disease, except that when such orders interfere with
necessary war operations the military commander may suspend them.

All of which means as follows :

Shall the American soldier in the present war be sacrificed
to preventable diseases, through red tape and the petty
jealousies of Line and Staff officers — as has occurred to a
frightful extent in past wars — or shall he be allowed to retain
his health under the most advanced science of the age?

That is the real question Congress is asked to settle, —
and when it is remembered that in every war in which the
United States has engaged, indeed in all the prolonged wars

GRADES OF MEDICAL OFFICERS 853

of history (except the Russo-Japanese War), the medical
officer has had to combat the foe that has caused eighty per
cent of the mortality — never less than four times, and often
twenty times as many as the artillery, infantry, mines and
all other methods of physical destruction combined, there
should be no question as to the result.

The Surgeon General of the Army asks for higher rank
for the members of his Corps — that they shall be graded the
same as in the Medical Department of the Navy — because
it will add to the prestige of the Corps, and thereby increase
their influence. Unquestionably increased rank will have
some effect, especially when it is remembered that the Re
serve Corps to-day constitute over eighty per cent of the
total Medical Corps of the Army, and is made up of the
cream of the American medical profession. But at the hear
ing before the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate
on March 15th, when discussing sanitary regulations and
recommendations made by medical officers, Senator Owen
said:

A brigadier general of the line does not hesitate to disregard
advice bearing on typhoid fever or pneumonia which is given by an
officer of subordinate rank, and unless the Medical Department has
rank it is difficult for the line officers to realize that the advice which
the medical officer gives should be taken upon the basis of its merits
and not upon the basis of the rank of the one who makes the recom
mendation. Upon that point I think General Gorgas should explain
to the Committee his opinion.

Gen. Gorgas. — I think that is the real argument from the stand
point of efficiency for this increased rank.

Later Senator Hitchcock asked this question:

Suppose a division commander or a camp commander refuses to
take the advice of a medical officer — advice which the medical officer
deems essential: Has he any way of bringing it up to you, and can
you issue superior orders to compel the recognition of the medical offi
cer's advice through your rank as compared with the rank of that
officer ?

Gen. Gorgas. — Cases of that kind are constantly coming up,
where the medical officer disagrees with his division commander. He
sends it up through the adjutant general. You know, I am just an
advisory officer. I have no direct authority anywhere. The adjutant
general sends it over to me practically for advice, but my action would
go with regard to it. If I concur with the medical officer, the Secre
tary and adjutant general would take it into consideration. Of course,
they are the final authorities in the matter.

854 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Sen. Hitchcock. — The Secretary and the adjutant general would
finally decide the question ?

Gen. Gorgas. — Yes.

Sen. Hitchcock. — So that your power is only advisory ?

Gen. Gorgas. — My power is only advisory.

Sen. Hitchcock. — And even if there were a brigadier general on
the spot, his powers would be only advisory ?

Gen. Gorgas. — In the Medical Department? Yes, his powers are
only advisory.

Sen. Hitchcock. — So that mere rank does not give authority?

Gen. Gorgas. — It does not give authority.

Thus it is seen the medical officer or department in the
Army to-day has no authority. Without some authority —
which may be exercised without interfering with the strategy
or military operations of war, i. e., when the army is not
actually engaged in battle — it is possible his department
may again prove a humiliating failure, as it has in every
war in which our forces have ever engaged. I have been
present, either as an officer or observer, in eight wars — in
every continent in the world — and I assert that the medical
officer in our Army has not even the privileges which would
enable him to maintain the health of the men who are en
trusted to his care. He selects recruits because of their
youth, health and physical ability to withstand the hardship
of war. It should be his business, first, last and nearly all
the time to maintain this condition — and he would do it if
given adequate authority. Then, if he failed, he should be
court-martialed and dismissed from the service. But he has
no authority — not even over the ration. The vast majority
of diseases which incapacitate an army result from auto
intoxications, which could be prevented by proper dietary.
Witness the Spanish- American War, where in a period of
three months, as stated in the report of the Surgeon General,
" 293 men died from battle and other casualties, and 3,681
from disease"; and in this army of 170,000, there were
158,000 hospital admissions, or ninety per cent, although
three-fourths of the men never left the camps of their native
land. The Japanese army had for the same period about
four per cent hospital admissions, including their wounded,
or about 1/22 times as many. The vast difference in these
figures illustrates the value of a medical and sanitary depart
ment properly equipped, and empowered to enforce prac
tical sanitation and supervision of the dietary. I believe
that if this department had been properly systematized, with

GRADES OF MEDICAL OFFICERS 855

sufficient numbers, with supervisory control over the ration,
and with power to enforce sanitary and hygienic regulations,
the units of our Army would have returned to their homes
at the close of the Spanish- American campaign in better
physical condition than when they entered it.

Disease is the silent foe that lingers in every camp and
bivouac. It is this foe, as the records for the past two hun
dred years prove, that has been responsible for four times
as many deaths as the guns of the enemy, not to mention the
vast number of invalided, and pensions, the cost of which
every twenty-five years is equal to the entire cost of the war
from which they resulted.

Every death from preventable disease is an insult to the
intelligence of the age, and when it occurs in the Army, where
the units are subject to discipline, it becomes a governmental
crime. The State deprives the soldier of his liberty, pre
scribes his hours of rest, his exercise, equipment, dress, diet,
and the locality in which he shall reside, and in the hour of
danger expects him, if necessary, to lay down his life in
defense of its honor. It should, therefore, give him the best
sanitation and the best medical supervision that the science
of the age can devise. For just as surely as the engineer
who disregards the signal, or the train-dispatcher who gives
wrong orders, is responsible for the loss of human life which
follows, so Congress is responsible for the thousands of sol
diers' lives stupidly, criminally sacrificed, — not on the glo
rious field of battle, but in camps from known preventable
causes. It is for these men, never for those who fall gallantly
fighting, that I offer my prayer.

The rank of Surgeon General should be commensurate
with the importance of the department of which he is the
head. He should be a member of the War College, and
responsible only to the Secretary of War, or to the President.
There should be conferred upon him and his subordinates
final authority in all matters of sanitation and hygiene, ex
cept in the emergency of battle, when, of course, all authority
should devolve upon the officers of the line.

The importance of the medical as compared with other
Staff departments has never been sufficiently recognized or
appreciated in our country. Until it is clearly realized that
the most important function of the medical officer is the
prevention of disease rather than its cure, the old custom
will prevail. To be efficient, the medical officer must not

856 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

only be a good surgeon, but a sanitarian, a bacteriologist, a
chemist, and an administrator. Upon him devolves the duty
of preventing disease, and his part in maintaining the effec
tiveness of the units makes him a most important factor in
the military establishment.

The following resolution was submitted by the writer at
the meeting of The International Congress of Military Sur
geons in St. Louis, 1904, and, after favorable report by the
Executive Committee, was unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That the Association of Military Surgeons of the United
States now assembled, respectfully petitions Congress at its next ses
sion to reorganize the medical departments of the United States Army
and Navy on a broad basis similar to that of the countries most
advanced in military sanitation, giving to their officers equivalent rank,
dignity, and power, and to their personnel ample numbers for the
proper care of the ill and injured in military and naval service.

The adoption of the bills introduced by Senator Owen
and Representative Hicks will go far toward rectifying a
humiliating failure — one which, if the present war is suffi
ciently prolonged, may result in the defeat of our army,
for more wars have been decided by disease than by bullets.

Louis L. SEAMAN, M.D.

THE JEW IS NOT A SLACKER

BY LEWIS P. BROWN

The foreign born, especially the Jews, are
more apt to malinger than the native born.

THUS we read in the original manual of instructions for
the Medical Advisory Boards connected with our selective
draft. In the present manual this anti-Jewish remark has,
by order of the President and the Secretary of War, been
deleted. Had the remark been made in one of the less ad
vanced of the European countries to-day, it would have oc
casioned little or no surprise. But in America, and coming
from an official source, it is, to say the least of it, rather stag
gering. An attempt to account for its appearance and for the
unhappy anti- Jewish prejudice it is but one manifestation
of, gives rise to much interesting speculation.

Now there is no evidence whatsoever to prove that the
foreign born Jews more often malinger than the foreign born
non-Jews. Similarly it cannot be shown that the Jews, for
eign born and native together, are less loyal to their country
than are their non- Jewish compatriots. ( On the contrary, ac
cording to the Bureau of Jewish Statistics the Jews, who
form hardly three percent of our total population, have pro
duced over four percent of our total armed forces.) How,
then, shall we account for this anti- Jewish prejudice? How
is it that even in official circles the notion obtains that the Jew
is an almost consistent " slacker "? The prejudices of com
mon people can be completely attributed to ignorance. But
not so the prejudices of more or less intelligent and fair-
minded officials. How much truth, then, underlies this
opinion concerning the Jew?

It seems that at least this much is true : that flagrant in
stances of malingering on the part of Jews do at times occur.
Such instances are marked not by their frequency so much as
by their intensity. And because of this intensity they impress

858 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

most deeply the minds of those brought into contact with
them. That is probably why the impression obtains that " es
pecially " the Jews malinger. Officials connected with the
draft boards tell us — and, it seems, very truthfully — that
there are some Jews in this country to-day (fortunately they
are very few) who will go to almost any length in their at
tempts to evade conscription. They will involve themselves
in a whole maze of lies, they will perjure their souls and maim
their bodies rather than serve in the army. They are "slack
ers ", of course, but yet their " slacking " is not sneaky, mean,
and " yellow". It is " red " ; it is imbued with a peculiar zeal
and passion. It is a type of " slacking " altogether anomalous
— and also for that reason, most impressive — to the American
born and bred.

For of course, these strange "slackers " are, almost to a
man, neither American born nor bred. They may well be
termed un- Americanized Jews. And any intelligent under
standing of the existing notion that the Jew is a " slacker "
presupposes an intelligent understanding of the life and
history of this un-Americanized Jew.

The un-Americanized Jew is one who lives in this country
but is not yet essentially a part of it. He is just what his
name implies — an un- Americanized Jew. He is usually a
newly-arrived immigrant. Sometimes he has lived here a
decade ; sometimes two ; seldom more than that. Often he is
already a naturalized citizen of America — political status
makes little difference to one's method of thought and life.
But most usually he is still a complete foreigner in this land.
He is usually from Russia; but that is merely because the
latest wave of immigration to this country happened to be
from Russia.

What this un-Americanized Jew thinks of war can be
quite briefly told. He thinks it the ugliest institution on
man's earth. He hates war; he hates everything that smacks
of war. Therefore he will seldom enlist of his own free will.
He will seldom even submit unreluctantly to conscription.
Rather he will sometimes malinger unblushingly. He will
often strain every nerve — and pull every wire — in his attempt
to evade the draft. And he will make his attempt not shame
facedly and with downcast head, but deliberately, almost
proudly, without a qualm of conscience. — There is nothing
to be gained in attempting to deny these facts. I am a Jew
and a right brother to this man, but I would not attempt to

THE JEW IS NOT A SLACKER 859

deny them. Of course, I deplore them; I am thoroughly
ashamed of them; I am exceedingly glad they are true of but
very few Jews ; but nevertheless, I cannot deny they are true
of those few. I know it is just because those facts are true —
no matter of how few — that the impression does exist that all
Jews are "slackers."

But, though I am thoroughly ashamed of my brother's
conduct, I find it difficult to blame him for it. He is far less
at fault for his aversion to war than is the saint for his aver
sion to vice — or the " idle rich " for their aversion to work.
This terror of war is bred in his bones ; he imbibed it with his
mother's milk. His whole soul rebels at thought of the
" pride, pomp, and circumstance of war ". If this un- Ameri
canized Jew sometimes attempts to evade conscription, there
are many reasons for it.

In the first place, he is a foreigner, and as such, intellectu
ally averse to war. War, he thinks, is waged only for con
quest of territory. Patriotism, he believes, is merely one
man's love for another man's country. When you tell him
we are fighting for Democracy, he goes to the atlas to see
just how large Democracy is. He cannot conceive of waging
wars for ideals. In the " old country " they do not wage them
— at least, not that kind.

In the second place, he is a Jew, and as such, emotionally
averse to war. He is constitutionally antipathetic to physical
violence. He has nothing of the berserker in him. His medi
eval teacher, Maimonides, cautioned him to avoid extremes
and, willy-nilly, he has done so most religiously. And war is
entirely a matter of extremes. . . . The dashing heroism
we Occidentals so greatly admire, the heroism of those who go
out into the wild places of the earth and wrestle with soil and
beast and f ellowman, that heroism is in part a mystery to him.
It puzzles him and he feels lost when he meets with it. How
ever, he does not despise it. The animal within him is not so
dead but what tales of wild adventure will strike responsive
chords within his breast. Yet he realizes only dumbly that
that something stirring men to stake their all on one mad
fling against the Infinite is a something that partakes of the
divine. And that something remains foreign to him always
— until he is Americanized.

Not that he is devoid of heroism now. But his heroism is
less primitive, less glaring and spectacular. His life is not
like the rocket which rends the dark with one red flash and

860 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

then, sputtering, dies out. It is rather like the candle which,
through the long hours of the night, flickers dimly in the win
dow of the cottage on the moor. He does not claw the naked
earth amid the mountains of the West. He rather claws old
rags and bones in some foul cellar on Hester Street. He sel
dom dreams of martial glory or of empire and dominion. He
longs rather to teach his son to read the Chumish well. He
will die for his convictions as his fathers died before him, but
quietly and seriously and without gay bravado.

It is not that the martial spirit is non-existent in the Jew,
but that it has been almost crushed beneath centuries of
servility and oppression. And is that at all surprising?
After but four centuries under Roman rule the Britons lost
almost entirely the sense of fight. Is it any wonder then if
after fully twenty centuries under far worse than Roman
rule, without a country and without a right, these Jews seem
also to have lost that sense of fight?

Powers neglected tend to atrophy. Fish in subterranean
streams will lose the sense of sight. Ducks out of water will
lose the ability to swim. And so men unable to use physical
force lose altogether the sense of fight. Their bodies wither,
and if they are to live their minds must now protect them.
Their minds must become wily and sharp. Their whole life
must become cerebral. They must live by their wits.

Now that is just what happened with the Jew. Early in
this era he lost his country and his freedom and found himself
adrift in a wide unfriendly world. Of course, had his people
combined and united, then, no matter how small, it might yet
have attempted to resist further aggression. But in a little
while his people was scattered to the four corners of the civi
lized world, was scattered everywhere from England to the
Upper Nile, from Portugal to the Caucasus. By the might
of his arm it was impossible for him to prevail. And yet to
live and to live a Jew he felt it his God-given duty. Well
then, since he would preserve his life and physical prowess
could not avail him, he had to fall back upon mental acumen.
Since it availed him naught to whet his sword, he filled his
coffers instead. It was not that the Jew was inherently a
financier. But he simply had to collect shekels or else — he
had to die. And collecting shekels for centuries long he
soon forgot altogether that there was another weapon with
which to fend off aggression. So when he was attacked he
did not even dream of physical resistance. He had no confi-

THE JEW IS NOT A SLACKER 861

dence in his own fighting powers, and his comrades were few
and unable to aid him. All he could do, then, was bribe. And
he bribed right and left with his hard-earned shekels — can
you or I blame him for that? He was fighting for life and
he had but one weapon — money, money, and money alone.
Rebel, fight, resist with armed force? Good Heavens, no!
He had not done that for centuries. How could he attempt
it now? How could he?

That is why this brother of mine is to-day estranged from
the physical. That is why emotionally he is averse to war.
He has not played that game of death for nearly two mil-
leniums. Yes, once he was a mighty warrior (do you remem
ber Samson, Saul, and David, — and the Maccabees?). But
now . . .

Can you wonder then if his sallow cheek blanches when
of a sudden he is called to go out and kill? Can you blame
him then if his bony hands tremble when ordered to go and
shed blood?

But that is not all.

Many of these un- Americanized Jews are not afraid of
this war merely because it is war. For those of them from
Russia (and the majority of them are) it has a further and
more poignant terror — the draft. Our draft recalls to them
that other draft. It recalls to them the Russian draft with
all the misery it entailed — its cruelty and torture, its foulness
and despair. They remember how it would tear them from
their homes, from their sanctified tables and hallowed syna
gogues, and would thrust them out among brutes of men,
bestial Cossacks, who took delight in crushing their already
half -crushed souls. It recalls to them those ugly years of un
clean meat and unclean men and unclean thought and life.
They see again in this, our draft, the darkest cloud in the
dark sky of their dark Russian days.

That is why many of these un- Americanized Jews are so
fearful of this draft — they think it a return to the Russian
way of life. So, as in Russia, they feel it only right to strive
their utmost to evade it. In Russia it was as rare to see a Jew
graciously submit to conscription as it would be to see a Bel
gian happily submit to deportation. It was considered almost
a duty of the Jew to attempt to escape conscription. It was
literally true that the three great events in the Russian Jew's
life were birth, exemption, and death. I have heard of and
known men who lived for months on foul bread and water that

862 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

they might be too slight and weak when their time of service
came. Men swallowed vials of the fieriest of spirits that their
hearts might wildly palpitate when their examination came.
Men bribed with their last kopecks the corrupt officials of the
Czar, that they might remain in quiet and escape those years
of pain. Can you blame them? I cannot. My father, my
grand-father, and my great grand-father did it, and, had I
been in their places, I would have done the same.

But that does not mean I would attempt it here. I know
that here conscription assumes a far different aspect. I
know that here the soldiery is clean and fine and manly.
I know the officers are decent, fair, and honest. I know that
the ideal soldier here is not the sneaking bully but the hail-
fellow-well-met. Yes, I know all this, but — and here lies the
root of the evil — my un- Americanized brother does not.

Can you wonder, then, if he is sometimes a " slacker "?
He cannot help it. He knows no better. For all he knows
our soldiers may be but newer Cossacks, and our President
in war-time but another Ivanye Ganov. And for his igno
rance and for his dread of war he deserves not harsh censure
but rather kindly sympathy. You who walk free and lightly
through the terrors of the hour, remember that he, poor for
eign Jew, stumbles heavily beneath the burden of twenty
centuries of unremitting woe. Shall you then ask him to walk
with your alacrity and sprightliness? If you would measure
him by your standards, then aid him to be like you. Teach
him your ways and your thoughts. Americanize him. Do
not ridicule and deride him. There is much that you are
learning and will learn from him. Do not sneer at him; do
not scorn him. (It is just the sneers and scorn of the Goyim
that make the Jews so clannish.) But approach him sym
pathetically and he will readily respond. It is the sun and
not the storm that makes the rosebush flower. . . .

If his obstinacy should make you lose patience — and pa
tience runs very short in war-time — remember that the work
of centuries cannot be undone in a moment. Just bear with
him a little — until he is Americanized. You will find it worth
your while.

LEWIS P. BROWN.

THE GOVERNMENT AND WAGE
EARNERS' INSURANCE

BY FOBREST F. DBYDEN

The most striking achievement during the year 1917 in
insurance matters was the substitution by the United States
Government of a well-considered plan providing for protec
tion to the military and naval forces of the United States
against death, illness and accident in place of the present
pension system. While in the strictly technical sense of the
term the plan cannot be considered as insurance, since the
premiums are totally inadequate to meet the probable loss
that will be experienced under conditions of warfare without
a parallel in military or insurance history, nevertheless, the
Government measure emphasizes the fact that life insurance
has now become a public as well as a private necessity. If
further proof were needed, it is found in the approval which
has met the operations of the War Insurance Bureau. The
amount of war-risk insurance issued on the lives of those in
the military and naval forces of the United States is now
more than fourteen billion dollars. To clearly emphasize the
magnitude of this achievement it should be pointed out that
this amount is more than the total insurance in force in the
five largest companies in the United States, and the youngest
of these companies is more than forty years old.

As has been said, it should be borne in mind that the
premium paid by the insured is admittedly inadequate, the
theory of the plan being that the premium charged the in
sured is fixed at a yearly net term rate based on conditions
of peace, the Government assuming the payment of the
extra premium created by the war hazard. No insurance
company could provide this protection at the Government
rates without drawing upon the funds contributed by other
insurers, the use of which without the policyholders' con-

864 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

sent would be an illegal diversion of their funds. In addi
tion thereto, the extent of the hazard is so stupendous that
few private companies, if any, could sustain the loss which
will be entailed. The plan, as adopted, was, therefore, neces
sarily one for the Government and not for private operation.

The companies, however, have been able to render valu
able assistance toward the success which has been secured.
Through their combined agency force, as well as by direct
appeals from their officers, they have been largely instru
mental in inducing its universal acceptance by those for
whose benefit it was created. The only substantial criticism
made against the plan was that the Government should
eliminate the premium feature in its entirety. As the
amount which the insured pays is an insignificant portion
of the cost it was urged that any individual contributions
might be eliminated, in order to avoid possible discrimina
tion and not leave unprotected those who needed its pro
tection most. It was felt, however, by the framers of
the bill, as well as by Congress, that it was desirable that
the individuals constituting the Army and Navy should feel
a personal responsibility for the protection of those depend
ent upon them, and that in addition thereto they should not
be placed in the position of mendicants, but that it should
be clearly recognized that the Government was assuming
only the war hazard which had been created by reason of
their response to the Government's call. The universal
acceptance of this protection has largely, if, indeed, not
entirely, nullified criticism along these lines, and the fears
of those who expressed this view have not been realized.

The profound change in the universal appeal which life
insurance makes to the average citizen has occurred since
the Civil War. At that time the amount of life insurance
in force was insignificant, and notwithstanding that its value
was even then clearly realized, its universal use was con
sidered practically impossible.

During the long intervening period of years an army of
life insurance agents has been effectively at work dissemi
nating information on insurance and inculcating habits of
systematic savings and thrift among every element of the
population. First, however, as an effective agency in behalf
of the rational thrift education of the people, credit must
be given to the system of industrial insurance, established
in the United States in 1875, upon the basis of the long-

WAGE-EARNERS' INSURANCE 865

established principles of ordinary legal-reserve life insurance,
modified to meet the needs and conditions of wage-earners
and their dependents. Within less than fifty years this form
of insurance has been developed to extraordinary propor
tions, not only in this country, but practically throughout
the entire civilized world.

At the present time, according to a conservative estimate,
the number of industrial policies in force in this country is
about 36,000,000, providing not less than $5,000,000,000 of
insurance protection. Since for obvious reasons the business
is practically limited to the urban population of the United
States, estimated for 1918 at 51,500,000, the per capita of
industrial insurance may be conservatively placed at $97.00
for the population affected, or at the ratio of 70 industrial
policies to every 100 urban inhabitants.

Primarily these results are attributable to the effective
insurance education of the masses in systematic habits of
saving. It is chiefly on account of the weekly-premium-
payment system that voluntary deductions from wages on
account of insurance have become a matter of habit, and it
may safely be assumed that savings habits thus developed
in one direction must, in due course of time, become effective
in many others, and the conclusion seems justified that the
wide diffusion and remarkable success of the first and second
Liberty Loan subscriptions — and as this is written the out
look for the third is equally good — are largely due to the de
velopment of rational habits of savings through the instru
mentality of industrial insurance. The service thus rendered
to the nation at a time of national peril admirably reflects the
broader aspects of life insurance as a social-service institu
tion. The fact, however, must not be overlooked that in
addition thereto the industrial companies have assumed their
proper share of Liberty Loan subscriptions. Every dollar
thus subscribed represents the savings of wage-earners
through these companies, aside, of course, from their financial
interests in ordinary insurance, which, within the last twenty
years, has made extraordinary progress, in consequence of
the effective insurance education gained through many years
of satisfactory experience with insurance on the weekly-
payment plan.

It is rather difficult to estimate with accuracy the amount
of ordinary insurance in force with wage-earners insured
with industrial companies, but it is a fact of enormous social

VOL. ccvii.— NO. 751 55

866 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

and economic importance that, dating practically from only
1886, when active efforts at ordinary insurance development
among industrial policy holders were first inaugurated, the
amount of such insurance on January 1, 1918, in force with
twenty American industrial companies was approximately
$3,600,000,000 (including Canadian business) . Of this vast
sum, certainly not less than two-thirds represent ordinary
insurance in force on the lives of American and Canadian
wage-earners, aside from the more than $5,150,000,000 of
insurance in force on the industrial plan.

In the history of American industrial society there
is no more gratifying and conclusive evidence of genuine
progress than the achievements revealed by these statistics
of industrial and ordinary insurance protection in force
among our wage-earners and their dependents, most
urgently in need thereof. In the future unquestionably
even more, and probably much more, satisfactory business
results will be attained, but considering the difficulties aris
ing out of apathy, indifference and suspicion, all of which
had to be overcome in the development of both industrial
and ordinary insurance among wage-earners in former gen
erations, often ruthlessly exploited by promoters of vision
ary plans of mutual aid, by lotteries, by then-permissible
forms of reckless speculation, etc., our insurance progress
during the last forty years may properly be placed among
the most notable evidences of a true civilization and of the
attainment of an extraordinary degree of social and economic
security by American and Canadian wage-workers, in the
furtherance of plans of voluntary insurance, and without
compulsion or coercion of any kind whatever.

There are those who are impatient with what has been
done and who insistently demand the introduction of Euro
pean systems of so-called social insurance, resting upon un-
American principles of political and social life. There is
unquestionably a legitimate sphere for State interference
under conditions of exceptional national stress and strain,
but it would be a most serious fallacy to assume either the
necessity or the permanent advantage of a more general
application of social-insurance principles to the wage-earning
element of the population, influenced in their conduct by the
higher standards of American labor and life. For, aside
from the economic advantages of voluntary thrift and its
obvious relation to the national welfare in time of war, the

WAGE-EARNERS' INSURANCE 867

exercise of the voluntary thrift function is of the utmost
importance as a factor in the moral progress of a people.
A government may establish a compulsory system of in
surance, upon the basis of experience gained through the
successful conduct of private enterprise, but it may, after all,
fail conspicuously in its effort to meet the social and eco
nomic, as well as the moral, needs of those concerned.

In a larger sense, all modern life insurance companies
are social-service institutions. They are tending more and
more towards the attainment of the highest possible degree
of efficiency, economy and liberality. They are becoming
indispensable subsidiary agencies of the Government in the
furtherance of the larger plans and purposes of a well-con
sidered national policy. Perhaps the most concrete illustra
tion of the force of this conclusion is the rapid growth of so-
called " Group Insurance." This form of insurance admir
ably combines the interests of the employer and the interests
of the employee, in an effort to increase the economic security
of the wage-earner's family in the event of his death or dis
ability. The element of cost is reduced to its lowest possible
proportions. The security itself is equivalent to that of a
Government bond. The effect of a group insurance policy
is to bind more closely together the employer and the em
ployee and to reduce the economic waste resulting from an
unnecessary labor turnover. More than this, however, are
the higher humanitarian aspects, which influence broad-
minded and far-seeing employers of labor to realize that the
welfare of the employee and those depending upon him is to
him a matter of paramount duty, the effective discharge of
which is best facilitated by the application of insurance
principles to the successful solution of a problem which in
the past was left only too often to apathy and chance. The
principle of group insurance will unquestionably be further
perfected and its application will become more general, to the
mutual satisfaction of both the employer and the employee.
Group insurance, however, illustrates but one of the many
unrealized possibilities of the further development of the
principles of wage-earners' insurance on a voluntary basis.
The future in this respect was never so full of promise as
it is at the present time.

FORREST F. DRYDEN.

A PEACEFUL REVOLUTION IN
PENOLOGY

BY ORLANDO F. LEWIS

MEN'S thoughts in general are not focussed in these days
upon prison reform. Yet precisely in these years of the Great
War there is occurring in the penological principles and
methods of American prisons a fairly speedy and basic revo
lution. I do not refer to the honor system and to the daring
experiments in self-government undertaken in Auburn and
Sing Sing prisons since 1918. Those striking movements are
already, not ancient history, but nevertheless aligned some
what in their proper perspective in the historical sequence of
reformatory steps in American prison administration. What
I refer to is a still newer movement, revolutionary in its char
acter, which has as its basis the utilization of scientific explora
tion of the make-up of the individual delinquent.

It is now well known that it is the purpose of the Govern
ment to conduct at each cantonment thoroughgoing psy
chological and psychiatric tests of the mentality of each of our
soldiers. Already it is estimated, from tests now available
for study, that some two per cent, of the military forces of
the country are so mentally backward as to be of little or no
available use in the defense of the nation. Never before has
such an attempt been made to determine ability for war in
terms of psychology and psychiatry. And, upon the results
obtained from sporadic tests in several cantonments, the Gov
ernment now purposes to apply the scrutiny of mental spe
cialists to all of " our boys in khaki ". The incompetents
must be weeded out, that in the time of vital stress the mili
tary organization may not fall down in spots where the enemy
might break through. And, furthermore, the incompetents
must be weeded out at the beginning of the intensive train
ing of the cantonments, in order that they may not clog up
the machinery of military education, and that the Govern
ment may not be put to the useless expense of trying to edu-

REVOLUTION IN PENOLOGY 869

cate for war those whose mental capacity precludes the ade
quate assimiliation of such training.

The scientific study of mental deviations is no new thing.
The insane have been housed in asylums for generations. We
are familiar with the principles of the unchained, kindly treat
ment of the insane as sick persons, and not as those possessed
of demons or of criminal natures.

But the Government is going much further than that. It
is now saying that it can utilize a group of psychiatrists, to
determine mental deviates who are far from being as con
spicuously mentally defective as the insane, but who are
nevertheless in many stages of mental incompetency.

From the comprehensive analyses of the psychiatrists and
the psychologists there will be discovered not only mental
deficiencies but mental abilities. It is anticipated that in
many instances the special man for the special job can thus
be quickly picked, and fitted into his proper niche in the great
war machine. The cantonment is, until the sifting process
takes place, a great melting-pot, a great multitude of still
undiscovered potentialities. The slow process of military
training is in itself a sorting process, but only as a by
product. What the Government hopes to do, through call
ing in the mental specialists, is to set up the sorting and
classifying processes at the beginning, instead of relying
solely upon the school of military training.

I have cited these remarkably progressive steps which the
Government has taken, not only because they are little short
of revolutionary, but because they are in the main but a
highly-magnified parallel of the " new movement " in prison
reform referred to at the beginning of this article. It is of
no importance now to trace a possible connection between the
psychiatrical research undertaken in Sing Sing prison, or
in the Government Hospital for the Insane at Washington,
and the introduction of psychiatrical methods in the canton
ments. It is important to see that what is now officially un
dertaken by the Government in the cantonments is recognized
in an increasingly large number of correctional institutions
as fundamental to an adequate effort to reform its inmates.
The " new penology " of 1918 demands, in short, the abso
lutely necessary presence of the psychiatrist and his sorting
system within prison walls. And to an extent not dreamed of
(save perhaps by some psychiatrists) a few years ago, the
reform of the individual prisoner is now seen to be, not merely

870 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

a matter of change of heart, or of industrial training for life,
or of determination to succeed, but of comprehensive individ
ual readjustment of the individual's abilities and disabilities
to the demands of the competitive life that he will enter at the
close of his prison sentence.

Let me make this clear by tracing very briefly four out
standing historical stages in the conception of " reforma
tion ", as applying to the prisoner. The idea that prisoners
should be reformed is over a century old.

As relating to adult offenders, and particularly to con
victs, reformation connoted at first in the main a religious,
spiritual conversion. It was not the job of the prison but of
the chaplain or the occasional prison missionary to effect the
reformation of the inmates. Prisons were conceived of as
massive, towering, gloomy and even cruel deterrents of
crime. Hence the inhumanity of the construction of Sing
Sing between 1825 and 1880, with its catacomb-like cells,
void of light and ventilation, sweating dampness and chill.
Hence, also, the vicious rule of mass-movements and of per
petual silence; of ready floggings and of callous oblivion.
The prison, and its administration, aimed to make the com
mission of crime a horrible danger through the terrific pen
alties. Into these Bastiles the chaplain might come, and
save, here and there, a soul if he could.

Slowly our prisons came to their second stage in the con
ception of the meaning of " reformation ". The opening of
Elmira Reformatory in 1876 was both a proclamation and a
confession. A proclamation that the duty of the State was
to educate prisoners for subsequent self-support in the life
after prison, and not simply to punish for the crimes of the
life before prison. A confession, that terroristic methods in
prison were a failure, if the sole method of administration.
The second stage in American " reformation " was, therefore,
a remarkably well worked out system of industrial, physical
and school training; so surprisingly insurgent and modern,
for the time, that it marked the beginning of the era of State
reformatories of adults throughout the country. Only the
convicts between the ages of 16 and 30 were thus favored in
New York, but in other States fewer restrictions as to age or
the seriousness of crimes were made.

With the establishment of Elmira Reformatory there was
also introduced into the United States the indeterminate
sentence, and its necessary complement, parole. The indeter-

REVOLUTION IN PENOLOGY 871

minate sentence abolished the fixed sentence, and set a maxi
mum limit to the time of stay of the prisoner, at some time
within which he might, if his industry and his conduct war
ranted it, be released to " try out his wings " on parole; under
official supervision. In short, the advent of the reformatory
system, with its grades within the institution, its varied
branches of training, its indeterminate nature, and its subse
quent modified liberty for the inmate outside the walls, placed
the burden of reformation mainly upon the individual in
mate. It was a system requiring intelligent understanding
by the inmate, and responsibility for his conduct and ac
tivities.

A third stage in the development of the concept of ref
ormation began to develop with the advent of the twentieth
century, namely, the "honor system", and still later, as
applied to adult prisoners, the so-called " self-government "
system. The last decade and a half have prominently em
phasized character-building as a reformatory method. Trust
the prisoner. Develop his sense of loyalty and responsibility.
Put him into positions of temptation, that he may learn to
withstand temptation. Bring out the good that is in him.
Treat him as a human being. See his essential likeness to
other men, not his unlikeness.

It appeared ultimately that there was no one "honor
system ". Indeed, there was generally no definite system,
but just a development of the elements of risk in prison ad
ministration through the granting of privileges to the chosen
inmates. The honor system came into being when the pos
sibilities of escape or of trouble-making by inmates became
greater than the provision made by the prison for guarding
against such possibilities. The honor system meant taking
a chance — often a very long chance. Judge Lindsay sent
boys and adults with their own commitment papers to in
stitutions, unaccompanied by an officer. Warden Tynan,
also of Colorado, worked gangs of prisoners on roads even
more than a hundred miles from the prison, without the
deterrent rifle or shotgun. Warden Homer, of Great
Meadow Prison, New York, sent out farm gangs under simi
lar conditions. And all over the country, between 1910 and
the present date, wardens and superintendents have with in
creasing frequency tested successfully the feasibility of such
acts, which often passed over into actual " stunts " in the
public mind.

872 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Now, the honor system assumed the normality of the
prisoner's mind. It connoted an appreciation of responsi
bility. If a prisoner ran away, it was frequently explained
that a poor choice of prisoner had been made by the warden,
because the prisoner turned out to be feebleminded. The
honor system was, by and large, a quid-pro-quo arrangement.
The warden gave increased privileges, in return for a definite
or tacit agreement by the prisoner not to escape or to start
trouble. The honor system therefore demanded of the pris
oner intelligence to understand his ethical obligations, and of
the warden it demanded personality and efficiency. Person
ality, because adherence to the obligations of the honor sys
tem focussed generally in loyalty to the warden, who must
be thought of as square and as a " white man ". Efficiency,
because a flabby, amiable, white man could not retain the
respect of the inmates. The honor system was character
ized by Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne as an integral part of a
benevolent despotism. The relationship of the inmate to the
warden was the basic factor in the success of the system.

As an insurgent departure from the honor system arose
the self-government system, which is not yet beyond experi
mental stage in methods, although the principle underlying
the methods is accepted fairly generally by at least the the
oretical penologists of our country. The fundamental thesis
of the self-government system is that all the results achieved
by the honor system can be better achieved, and are of far
greater social value, if they do not arise as a bargain be
tween warden and prisoner, but as by-products of a mutual
relationship between prisoner and prisoner. Freedom of
mind and movement within the prison is necessary in order
to train prisoners for the greater freedom after the prison
life. But that freedom should be used to help the prisoner to
understand his social and civic relations to his fellows. Hence
the mutual features at Auburn and Sing Sing, the elections
of officers and delegates by the inmates, the inmates' court,
the entertainments and classes managed by the inmates.
Theoretically, also, the warden should subordinate himself,
and exercise little direct influence upon the prisoners' activi
ties, having once defined the limits of the freedom of the
prisoners. It amounted to an effort to create within the
prison walls an approach to the complicated problems of
democracy outside the walls. If politics raged outside, they
were legitimate inside. By suffering injustice and even graft

REVOLUTION IN PENOLOGY 873

at the hands of fellow-inmates, the prisoners would acquire
the sense of justice and of discipline, and would have a
clearer conception of their own anti-social past in society out
side.

The thesis was fascinating, and sufficiently correct to ex
cite huge interest throughout the nation. Mr. Osborne's
personality and insurgency added to the spectacular features
of the Sing Sing administration between 1914 and 1916.
But, for a number of reasons, this huge, unprecedented, tu
multuous, popular undertaking carried with it enough of
hemming and complicated factors to make it unclear, within
the limited time of the experiment. Had Russia undergone
revolution in 1914 or 1915, the apparently inevitable conse
quent political upheavals and social bewilderment might have
had lessons for the self-government experiment at Sing Sing.

Let it not be thought that the undertaking in Sing Sing
resulted in failure. Far from it. We are still too near it to
be able to survey it comprehensively and in the light of ulti
mate results. But self-government, more restricted by con
siderable than in 1915, exists in Sing Sing today, with two
quite contrasting opinions as to its efficiency and its scope.

We are now entering upon a period in prison administra
tion in which the psychologist and the psychiatrist will have
broad scope. Their fundamental thesis is that all reforma
tory methods are liable to failure — and have largely failed in
the past — for the simple reason that the individual delin
quent has not been thoroughly known. Therefore he could
not be thoroughly treated. Each single prisoner is a sepa
rate, and often highly complicated, problem. How expect
that even a group - treatment, let alone a mass - treatment,
could be effective? Indeed, it is not primarily a question of
reformation, but of individual readjustment. Of what avail,
in the securing of high percentages of " reformations ", are
shops and honor systems and efforts at self-government, if a
considerable proportion of the inmates of prison are mentally
so deficient or erratic as to make it impossible or improbable
that they can be regarded as responsible, or that they can
go out into the world and earn their own living in the hard
manual or physical way in which the bulk of prisoners have
to work, if they are to keep out of prison again?

For nearly a decade, increasing doubt has been expressed
as to the mental normality of the prison population in gen
eral. We have been passing through an era of psychological

874 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

" tests ", applied to the inmates of correctional institutions
by persons varying widely in training. Strikingly extreme
percentages have been announced. For a time it was claimed
that the Binet- Simon tests, and their developments, in this
country could with considerable accuracy determine the
mental age, and consequently the feeblemindedness, of pris
oners. Several years ago the following list of findings in
different institutions was announced :

Feebleminded

Massachusetts State Industrial School for Girls 28%

New York State Reformatory, Elmira (male) 37%

New Jersey State Reformatory, Rahway (male) 33%

New York State Reformatory, Bedford (female) 37%

Massachusetts Industrial School for Girls 50%

Maryland Industrial School for Girls 60%

New Jersey State Home for Girls 33%

Illinois State School for Boys 20%

Although estimated percentages varied widely, certain
facts struck all observers. Custodial treatment for the
most seriously feebleminded was imperative. Feebleminded
women of child-bearing age were social menaces. Prostitu
tion was recruited to an undetermined extent from the ranks
of the feebleminded. Feebleminded families propagated
their kind. The strain cropped out even where normal per
sons intermarried with feebleminded. All over the country
the prison and reformatory wardens, superintendents and
officers called for special institutions for the care of this
group. Feebleminded inmates clogged the machinery, in
dustrial and reformative, of the correctional institutions.

Moreover, the population of the prisons and reforma
tories was changing in nature. Probation was, to use the
graphic words of one prison administrator, " skimming the
cream off of the prison population ". The Court deferred
the period of imprisonment during good behavior. Thou
sands of men and women were spared the stigma of a prison
career. But the residue — those who went to prison — were
found to be less normal, on the whole less efficient, less in
telligent than were the prison populations of the past. The
prison problem was approaching more the nature of a cus
todial problem.

Then the psychiatrists began to appear, with their vigor
ous pronouncements. They were alienists, a group differing
from the psychologists, whose training had been with the

REVOLUTION IN PENOLOGY 875

" normals " rather than with the " abnormals ". From the
Government Hospital for the Insane at Washington came
to Sing Sing, upon an appropriation supplied by the Na
tional Committee on Mental Hygiene, maintained by the
Rockefeller Foundation, Dr. Bernard Glueck, to be the di
rector of the psychiatric clinic at that ninety-year-old institu
tion. The State of New York had voted, through its legisla
ture in 1916, to make the most radical departure yet an
nounced in any American State. A receiving prison and
clearing house were to be established at Sing Sing prison.
Every prisoner committed to a State prison in New York —
there are four of them — must first pass through this center of
comprehensive mental, physical and industrial examination
at Sing Sing. All the features of the new Sing Sing should
converge upon the adequate analysis of the individual delin
quent. Pending the erection of this great reception prison,
which will provide for 1,000 inmates, the physically little, but
socially highly important, psychiatric clinic at Sing Sing has
been operating for a year.

I quote -Dr. Glueck as to the field of the psychiatrist in
prison, and as to the clearing house:

It is not because the psychiatrist promises to solve the problem by
some magic procedure, but because it is in the nature of these disciplines
(psychology and psychiatry) to devote themselves to the understanding
of human behavior, whether such behavior be normal or abnormal. The
psychiatrist in his daily experience utilizes methods of procedure which
are intended to bring about better adjustment in maladjusted in
dividuals, and it is hoped that because of this experience he may be of
assistance both as a diagnostician and as a therapeutist in the field of
criminology.

In the matter of the place of the clearing house in prison
administration, Dr. Glueck says :

The clearing house is an accepted institution in the modern in
dustrial world. It is an institution which makes possible a clear
delineation and characterization of the individual members of large
groups, for the purpose of bringing about a better classification and
better adaptation.

In connection with the problem of crime, a clearing house is to
serve as an auxiliary institution for the administration of the law,
whose object it would be to make such an observation of the individual
offender as will enable it to furnish dependable recommendations :

First, to the Court in cases of demonstrable, diminished or absent
responsibility ;

Second, to the administrators of penal and reformatory institutions
in all cases, with the object of bringing about such a relationship

876 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

between the prisoner and the institution as will tend to produce the
maximum degree of adjustment between him and society upon his
release from the institution.

Let me point out that Dr. Glueck here indicates two
functions of a clearing house. First, to help the Court in its
decision as to the proper institutional or extra-institutional
disposition of the case at the bar. Secondly, to help the in
stitution itself to employ reasonable and adequate methods
for the readjustment of the inmate.

A year's intensive examination of hundreds of cases at
Sing Sing has led Dr. Glueck to the following analysis of the
outstanding groups in the prison population:

1. Accidental offenders, not pathological.

2. Normal young adults, capable of learning useful trades, in
whose criminal career economic dependence has played an important
role. Can be taught and materially improved for the battle with life
on the outside.

3. Normal prisoners of more advanced age. Not likely to acquire
a trade through instruction in prison. The prime consideration in the
case of these men is the extent to which they may be made useful to
the State during their incarceration.

The above groups constitute about forty to forty-five
per cent, of the prison population, and are mainly first offend
ers. With these groups the State should do all it can to
prevent relapse into crime. In short, about half the prison
population will react relatively normally to normal methods.
Here, incidentally, is the part of the population with whom
the honor system and self-government will be most suc
cessful.

Three other groups were singled out by Dr. Glueck.
These are the problem cases of the institution — the challenge
to modern penolgy to solve:

4. The insane delinquent. Require transfer to a hospital for the
criminal insane, or careful supervision in the prison.

5. The feebleminded delinquent. Various stages of arrested mental
development. A considerable number require permanent segregation
in an institution for defective delinquents, where they might be self-
supporting. The percentage of recidivists (repeaters in prison) is
relatively large among the feebleminded.

6. The psychopathic delinquent. This is a class less understood
by the layman. Such inmates have a mentality which, while not placing
them within the well-recognized categories of mental disease, brings
them decidedly outside the pale of normal human beings. They con-

REVOLUTION IN PENOLOGY 877

tribute largely to the ranks of the recidivists. In many respects they
constitute a greater menace than either the insane or defective delin
quent.

Here is, then, speaking in general terms, the problem
of the prison today: a population half of which is relatively
normal, mentally, and half of which is mentally abnormal,
with all degrees of deviation. The psychiatrists are already
telling us that we have in the prison populations a highly
complicated set of mental problems, and that we are basically
wrong in assuming the general presence of full responsibility.

Percentages, in this early stage of the newest penology,
are dangerous. If the psychologists and psychiatrists are
right, our prisons face the difficult processes of a new de
velopment, namely, the adequate analysis and the adequate
individual treatment of the delinquent. No wholesale train
ing plan, with shops and the like, will suffice. No wholesale
turning loose of prisoners into a yard, and wholesale expecta
tion that they will find their own democratic solutions of social
relationships and of obligations to each other and to the
prison, will suffice. No general belief in the religious conver
sion of a prison population to a better life on earth will suffice.
" Man, know thyself 1 " is the echo ringing in the ears of
those to whom the psychologists and the psychiatrists have
spoken among prison administrators.

It is to be seriously doubted if this new addition to the
penological forces of reform will bring any panacea. That
the individual prisoner will be much better understood in the
future than in the past is unquestionable. But social and
economic conditions outside the prison will lead many in
mates back in time to the institutions.

But there lies the present, and enormously promising,
direction of the new penology, before us. Moreover, there is
today an alliance of the penologist, the administrator, the
educator, and the scientist, all bent on seeking the solutions
of prison discipline, such as has never occurred before. This
alliance must reach far back of the prison, into the court, the
school and the family. The principle of the clearing house
must be recognized as a necessity in court procedure. Pro
bation officers make reports today to the judge on social and
economic factors in the " cases " before them. But the Court
needs, fully as much as the report of the probation officer,
the report of the psychiatrist — not in every case before the
Court, but in many. And back of the Court is the school,

878 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

where the record of the child should be consecutive from the
entrance of the youngster into the classroom. Further back,
all the time, must our preventive work go.

Our obligation to the individual prisoner increases as we
understand what the obligation is. We know, now, that we do
not know enough about the prisoner. Knowing that, we shall
be derelict if we do not adopt the means to find out, and then
act adequately.

Unquestionably we need the psychiatrist. His field is
constantly increasing. The Police Department of the City
of New York has maintained a psychopathic clinic until re
cently, with surprisingly good results. Many cities have
established similar clinics in connection with their courts,
among them Chicago, Cincinnati, Seattle, St. Louis, Boston
and Philadelphia.

The criminal court is the great gathering place of those
charged with or guilty of crime. Here is the focus for the
most humane and sagacious justice, if the Court rises to its
duty. From here the human being who needs upbuilding
should not, if it is possible to prevent it, be sent to prison.
But above all, it should be known what the human being be
fore the bar of justice needs. The psychiatrist, in many in
stances, can tell us when no one else can.

He can pick out of the stream the mentally defective, the
feebleminded with psychopathic tendencies, the alcoholic
without criminal tendencies, the sick, the persons suffering
with infectious disease, the drug addict, the constitutional in
ferior, the " borderland cases ", and other mental deviates.
The Court has at present no such agency.

There have been penological revolutions in the past.
Now comes a peaceful revolution — literally, a turning
around to the scientists for light. We are in a period of pop
ular interest in abnormal psychology. Psychoanalysis has
gripped the attention of the public. Our dreams are being
turned inside out, and symbols, sublimations, repressions and
blockings are becoming familiar terms. The eternal search
for the springs of human conduct has taken another direction.
Its reflection is already found within the most progressive
prisons and reformatories.

ORLANDO F. LEWIS.

CHANGE

BY MARY BRENT WHITESIDE

She sits in her familiar place.

There is so little change !
The sunlight filters through the quiet leaves,

That scarcely disarrange
Its amber patterns on the garden seat.

As blue as other years, the larkspurs are,

And through the lattice of the pergola,
The fading roses shatter at her feet.

There is so little change ! She turns

Half wistful, now and then,
As though she listens mutely for a step,

That may not come again.
Her hands are busy as in other years,

And many a snowy bandage, deftly rolled,

Is laid upon love's altar, but of old,
Her eyes knew not this misty rush of tears.

MARY BRENT WHITESIDE.

A STRANGER IN MY NATIVE LAND

BY ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL

CERTAINLY, I feel a stranger in my native land, and it
would be sheer affectation if I pretended I did not after
living out of it for thirty-three years.

It is true that there was not a moment of those thirty-
three years when America did not mean home to me. I never
thought, I never spoke of it as anything else, and I was not
to be laughed out of the habit by English friends who pro
fessed themselves amused when I gave the name to a place
I so persistently stayed away from. But America, even to
oblige me, was not standing stock still during my long ab
sence. As time went on I could hardly have recognized in
myself the young, eager seeker after adventure who had
sailed for Europe in the dim, remote Early Eighties. Com
mon sense warned me that home had changed as radically,
that it would prove no longer home as I remembered it. In
my most sentimental mood I could not hope to return to an
America unchanged, untouched, unimproved, unspoiled, an
America full of real Americans, an America whose ways
were simple and whose standard did not refuse comfort where
luxury could not be afforded, an America where everybody
met on equal terms, an America where the old order ruled.
It would have been pleasant, just as it would to find the
friendly old houses of other days with the same pictures on
the same walls, the same chairs set at the same angles, the
same cloth laid at the same hours on the same hospitable
tables. Of course, the friendly old houses have gone, except
in a few cases which I treasure as one might rare and precious
heirlooms. And, equally of course, the old America has gone.
But, though I knew what to expect, it is a disappointment,
now I am at home, to feel not at home but homeless, be
wildered by the big differences in my country and the people,
embarrassed by the small differences in myself.

A STRANGER IN MY NATIVE LAND 881

I pass lightly the difference in the way home looks, houses
shooting up skyward as they never did in my youth, the once
empty streets congested with traffic, the slow horse car re
placed by the clanging, earth-shaking trolley, the shop win
dows displaying a luxury undreamed of a generation ago,
less green about and more posters — everywhere, the familiar
background all but vanished. Home is cruelly foreign in
my sentimental eyes. Had I had my way, Philadelphia
would not have grown an inch or got rid of a single brick.
I cannot deny that, in many respects, it has improved in
appearance. If it has lost much in tranquil picturesqueness,
it has gained in impressiveness, though, apparently, at too
fast a pace to keep up with harmoniously throughout. It is
splendid in its skyscrapers, unbelievable in its boulevards,
ambitious in its schemes for further improvement. But,
on the other hand, where it is not splendid and unbelievable
and ambitious, it is shabby and neglected and can boast the
dirtiest streets I have ever had to take my walks abroad in.
I speak of Philadelphia because it is the town I have seen
most of since my return. Of New York I have seen enough
to know that it has made itself more splendid without falling
into such an abyss of dirt. Most towns in the country, I
fancy, are going through the same transformation and prob
ably carrying it out more after the pattern of Philadelphia
than New York. But change in looks, though it hurts more
than almost any other change, is going on, and must go on,
the world over.

I pass as lightly the difference in the people, who have
grown as foreign as the land. I left them so American that
they could assimilate the foreigner who then came to our
country to benefit himself and not the capitalist. I find them
so foreign that my fear is they will assimilate the American,
who, after all, is too fine a type to be sacrificed. To speak
of my own immediate experience : In the house where I am
staying, I have an Irish chambermaid, a Greek waiter, a
Dalmatian handy-man. At the near station my boots are
blacked by an Italian, at the near tailor's my gowns are
pressed by a Pole. When I go into the shopping streets,
every other sign bears a foreign name; when I glance over
the list of births and deaths and marriages it seems as if the
Boche must be already in possession. Yesterday, music
called me to the window and a procession of hundreds passed,
each bearing that Russian flag which I, for one, never care

VOL. ccvu. — NO. 751 56

882 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to see again — Slavs, I have learned from the morning's
paper, making a patriotic demonstration. Why should they
make it as Slavs and not as Americans ? And it is not Phila
delphia alone that has been invaded and conquered. All
America during my absence has been turned, not into the
melting-pot some call it, but the dumping-ground, the refuse
heap of Europe. The longer I am in my native land, the
nearer I seem to get to the inevitable day when we real
Americans, like the Indians, shall have our reservations and
when our successors will come to pay their quarters to stare
at us as curiosities. But of this change in the people I say
less, because I am far more concerned with the change it has
made in the national manners.

I am not to be outdone in admiration of the perfect State
governed by the people, for the people, or in appreciation
of our great statesmen who planned to make it ours. But
I long since discovered that perfection is seldom attained in
this imperfect world and, in my most patriotic mood, I have
never mistaken America for Utopia. However, when I look
back, it seems to me that if we had not come up to our states
men's ideal for us, we had worked out an agreeable substitute
for ourselves.

In my memory, democratic life at home was friendly and
easy-going, ruled by the comfortable feeling that every
citizen was as good as every other citizen, no matter how
wide the gap opened between them by money and brains.
There was no pretense of anybody being superior or inferior,
and whoever thought himself superior, and was so foolish
as to take others into his confidence, found out quickly to his
cost that nobody agreed with him. The people who did the
governing for themselves, when they happened to meet, met
on equal terms, despite the inequality in the manner of their
lives and the nature of their business. They did not meet, I
admit, with the charm and grace and delicate intelligence with
which the French have disguised the failure of equality. My
enthusiasm for the past could not mislead me into presenting
my countrymen with the fine shades of politeness they never
possessed and never wanted to. But if they were without
the little courtesies that soften the hard edges of life, they
might have given points in kindliness to every other people
in the world. Americans were, above all, kindly in the
democracy of my memory. Kindliness ruled all their rela
tions. They accepted the chances of life and of their own

A STRANGER IN MY NATIVE LAND 883

ability and were neither cowed nor exalted by the result.
The sort of work they did or did not do was as little of a
barrier as the respective scale of their fortunes, and though
they lived their social lives apart, they could, when brought
together, treat each other as if they were all rational human
beings and not merely masters and servants, employers and
employees, leagued class against class in undying enmity. I
do not think that imagination or sentiment can be altogether
responsible for this pleasant picture of American Democracy
as I see it down the long vista of the years.

With my impression of our Democracy of to-day, I doubt
if imagination plays any part at all, much as I would prefer
to believe it did. I allow for the disappointment of the
native returning from exile, who wants everything precisely
as, and where, it was in her memory, which is precisely as
and where the native who stayed at home had been struggling
not to keep it. But the most liberal allowance cannot explain
away the change I find nor my conviction that, if we do not
take care, our manners will soon be as un-American as our
people. My countrymen have not improved in politeness,
but they have lost considerably in the kindliness that an
swered the purpose of daily life every bit as well, if not
better.

On landing in New York, I wondered to see in elevated,
subway and surface cars a printed appeal from the presi
dent of the Interborough to his conductors asking them to
treat passengers as they would be treated themselves. But
my first few days' experience made me wonder still more
why he did not publish a similar appeal to passengers. When
I get into a crowded car I do not want to take a place from
a man who is probably far more tired than I — I am not sure
that I enjoy being offered a place by anybody since the first
time a young girl in a London bus insisted on giving me hers
and so revealed to me, as no looking-glass yet had, the white
ness of my hair and the number of my wrinkles. But it
added to the amenities of life when the man would have been
ashamed to sit while the woman stood. Try as I might to
argue myself out of it, I was shocked in New York always
to see the men sitting and women standing, as I am now in
Philadelphia to see great hulking young negroes filling the
seats of the trolleys and women of any age hanging on to the
straps. And it shocks me in the same way to be hustled by
men in the streets, to have swing doors swung by men in my

884 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

face, seldom to have a man pick up the parcel I drop, to be
waited on in restaurants as if the waiter's business was to
thrust it down my throat — to be reminded that this is a free
country in which you may be as rude as you like, that equality
permits no civility. I begin to understand why public offi
cials go further than the president of the Interborough and
order their employees to be civil. Altogether, my first weeks
at home have kept me busy trying to find out why people
whose business is to do certain kinds of work for me, work
that pays them well, should make it an occasion for rudeness.

I do not think I am far wrong in laying part of the blame
upon our foreign population. Many of these foreigners
have in their own lands manners that we must envy and
might well adopt, but that they rid themselves of with amaz
ing alacrity on our hospitable shores. I look back to French
and Italian restaurants in which it was a delight to be waited
on by the Italian and French waiters, who, in ours, are often
the worst offenders; and their case is typical. The trouble
probably is that the Europeans who come to us do not under
stand our American free-and-easiness. They mistake it for
rudeness, so unlike is it to their own code of politeness, and,
by being rude in what they fancy is the American way, they
hope to show how quickly they have become Americanized.
Their example perhaps reacts on the native Americans who
grow a little ashamed of their old kindliness. This, anyway,
is the amiable theory by which I endeavor to comfort my
self.

But whatever the real explanation may be, more of the
blame lies with the people who accept, unprotestingly, a new
un-American want of courtesy that verges on insolence. We
Americans have the reputation of being too easy-going — up
to a certain point. But once we get to it, we also have the
reputation of rising in our wrath. I should say we have
been carried miles — leagues — beyond in this matter of man
ners, and yet we are not rising and, instead of wrath, we are
showing a meekness we never had the reputation for.
It is difficult to believe that Americans have been busy
evolving the virtue of meekness while I have been away; it
used to be so unlike my countrymen to turn the other cheek
under any provocation. But it is no easier to believe that
they have lost confidence in themselves, so essential a part
of the American easy-goingness was it never to be afraid of
anything. As I have come recently from England, I know

A STRANGER IN MY NATIVE LAND 885

that the democratic spirit of the day can and does breed fear.
But, surely, in our country we are too used to the habit of
democracy to be frightened by its novelties. And yet why,
if we are not meek, if we are not afraid, do we put up so
cheerfully with a sort of rudeness that does not legitimately
belong to us? I am conscious, too, of something like fear in
our increased sensitiveness to criticism, our shrinking from
the outspoken truth on this or any other subject. An English
friend, here on one of the innumerable propaganda missions
of the moment, confided to me that what struck him most in
Americans was their timidity. I laughed at the time, but I
have been wondering ever since if he, the real stranger, had
instinctively got to the root of the evil.

I am as puzzled by the apparent readiness to accept the
very un-American line that is being drawn to-day between
superior and inferior. If the American who thought him
self superior in the old days was obliged to keep it quiet, the
American of the present generation who thinks himself
inferior insists upon everybody knowing it and proclaims as
loudly his determination not to stay inferior but to take his
turn at bossing the show straight through. Every citizen is
not content to be as good as every other, but the citizen who
rebels against the monopoly of capital by claiming the mo
nopoly of labor, plans to be a good deal better and does his
best not to let the other forget it for a moment. It is the
meekness of the other in trying not to forget that puzzles
me most. The same spirit prevailed in England before I
left; but there, where the class hitherto claiming superiority
has had its recognized day too long not to lose grip upon the
privilege, I was not surprised. The new doctrine, however,
threatens the American's old belief that in our country we
are all born equal — that we all have, anyway, equal oppor
tunities. But from assiduous, and I hope intelligent, reading
of the papers and from much talk with the enlightened whose
knowledge of our country is more intimate than mine could
be as yet, I gather that we must now make it our duty to
prepare for the coming social revolution and, whether we
be jurist or publican, pauper or millionaire, artist or me
chanic, skilled or unskilled laborer, to recognize the new
line unquestioningly and to get ready to take our place with
becoming submission on the side appointed to, not gained
by, us.

Again I am puzzled by the amazing contrast that has de-

886 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

veloped since my time between the excess of luxury and the
excess of discomfort, among not only different classes of
workers, but people of the same social group, even in the
life and conditions of one and the same person. If many
Philadelphians live like princes, many resign themselves
without a murmur to a degree of inconvenience I would not
ask my worst enemy to endure, though at the present mo
ment I am enduring it myself. For some, not so much as
a crumpled rose-leaf destroys the luxurious succession of
the best breakfasts, lunches and dinners eaten in any town
in the world ; others are sent by every meal, through the cold
or the heat, to the cheerless boarding house or the restaurant
where whatever little self-respect they have left wilts under
the reception that awaits them. Those who do not take their
drives regally in the best motors and taxis to be found any
where must fight their way into dirty, overcrowded trolleys
and hang on to a strap. Garbage lies at the front door of
residences that are palaces within. From an opera house
that on an opera night is almost alarming in its flaunting of
wealth, the audience go home through streets that for filth
could give points to the little Italian towns at which my
youthful American nose once turned up in contempt. The
same extremes face each other wherever one goes or whatever
one does.

And again, I am left marvelling at the meekness with
which the luxury is paid for " through the nose," or with
which discomfort is endured. I am told there is no use fight
ing against conditions in one's own household, still less in poli
tics. But curiously, in my own filthy, ill-kept, down-at-the-
heel town of Philadelphia, though I can see that most of the
time the citizen is afraid to complain, when he summons up
courage and does, the municipal tyrants are no less afraid of
him; as was shown recently, when a little wholesome protest
brought about the cleaning of the streets for what looked
like the first time in centuries. This encourages me to hope
that things are not so bad as they seem and that success in
political life and decency in private life are not prizes for the
high bidder alone. I have an idea that we Americans so
enjoy washing our dirty linen in public that sometimes we
would rather make believe our linen was dirty than lose the
chance of a washing. But I must admit that I have now to
do a good deal of tipping I never would have done in the old
days, and that the wheels of daily life would run very rustily

A STRANGER IN MY NATIVE LAND 887

if I refused to do so. Without the tipping, called bribery by
the bold, the political wheels would not run at all, if I am to
believe a sober-minded citizen who defended the police —
Philadelphia's political scapegoat at the moment — on the
grounds that, if they were corrupt, they were not to blame
since every other official in the country has his hand out, too.
And I fear that the system must have gone far when I read
in a newspaper a serious plea for factories to keep on turn
ing out rubbish the people like in order to give our munition
workers something to throw away their big wages on, and
so pamper them into sticking at their job for a price the
uninitiated might think an inducement in itself. In England
and France when munition workers, earning more than ever
before in their lives, squandered their money on pianos and
jewels and high living, the extravagance was criticized and
condemned. To cater to such extravagance looks uncom
monly like another variety of tipping, and probably the muni
tion workers themselves would be the first to resent such
an objection, but it is disquieting to think there could be even
one American so timid of soul as to recommend it.

Perhaps it is because I am fresh from England, from
three and a half years so much nearer the battle-field that,
in our way of taking the war, I feel a weakening of that alert
American imagination supposed to be one of our great
national assets. It is true that England is separated only
by the Channel from the horrors of war, and that in that
country the constant movement of troops, the men home
from the front, the wounded, the air raids, are continual and
eloquent reminders of what those horrors are. I never knew
how wide the Atlantic is until now, when its endless miles
stretch between me and the Zeppelins and Gothas, the
wounded soldiers and war-stained khaki, that I had grown
too well accustomed to. So far from it all do I feel over
here that I can understand how infinitely further it must be
for those who have never been over there. But, after all, we
had the sinking of the Lusitania and the Ambassadorial in
trigues against " those idiotic Yankees " to stir our imagina
tion when we were not in the war, if it had not been stirred
already by the devastation of Belgium and Northern France.
Now that we are in the war, with the youth of our country in
camp and trenches, our casualty lists beginning and our ves
sels sinking, our papers shrieking a story out of every war
blunder and profiteering scandal, the grim realities we are

888 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

up against should make imagination's task the easier. But
I question if life could go on so smoothly in the usual way if,
as a people, we had risen to the full appreciation of the
tragedy in which we now have our part to play. I do not
need to be told on what a colossal scale we set about playing
that part. To me, watching from the other side, our
promptness was almost miraculous. Washington had
scarcely declared war before the English papers were rejoic
ing in our enormous loans to the Allies, our doctors and
nurses were lending a touch of American color to the London
scene, our sailors everywhere were proving the presence
of American ships in English waters, our soldiers were
marching through the London streets to thrill me with
patriotism as I saw how fine a type, spare-limbed, straight-
backed, clean-faced, the ragbag of nations which is America
has produced: But now that I am at home, there are mo
ments when it seems as if political squabbles and a chorus of
criticism had drowned for the public the hum of machinery
going on from one end of the land to the other and the tramp
of armed men at drill in camp or already bound for the
trenches.

I left a London sad, tragic, grim ; its once crowded streets
all but empty of traffic; the nights dark, sinister, alive with
the noise of battles in the air; the days consecrated to war
and the preparations for war; the people drawing their belts
tighter round their waists, their fireless grates forcing them
to close half their houses; amusement after amusement
dropped because of the difficulty of getting from one part
of the huge town to the other, also because war left less and
less leisure save to men home on leave. And the sadness was
not in the town alone, but in the people, the tragedy grown
with time too heavy to be thrown aside as in the first light-
hearted years, the gleam of hope from last summer's cam
paign overshadowed, blotted out by the Italian disaster.
" Business as Usual " had got to the end of its run, no longer
mistaken for anything save the bitter farce it was, and the
people knew themselves to be face to face with the bare,
stark facts, shorn of their glamor. I did not have to see
France to be gripped by her sorrow and desolation.

And so, haunted by her gaunt spectre, steeped in the
grimness of England, it hurt me to get to New York and
Philadelphia and to find them on the surface as gay as if
such a thing as war had never been heard of. Lights blazed

A STRANGER IN MY NATIVE LAND 889

at night as if, secure from the danger of air raids, America
was unable to imagine the equal danger in not lowering them
to save the fuel essential to the Allies — though it is fair to
add that, in the interval, much of the blaze has been extin
guished. Motors and taxis thronged the streets, and do still,
as if, because there was no shortage of gasoline with us, we
could not imagine the seriousness of the shortage of petrol
with the Allies. It may be that by comparison with peaceful
days, famine now stalks in American kitchens and larders,
but to me every dinner, every lunch, is a feast, as if we could
not imagine the truth, too plain in London, that the world's
supply of food is dwindling. I know the scarcity of food
may seem an exaggeration while butchers' shops are full of
meat and confectioners' overflow with sweets and grocers
make as brave a show as ever. The same signs of plenty kept
England from believing until stern need had her by the
throat. But we have had the advantage of England's mis
take and, besides, conditions have got to a pass when we
should see unaided our own mistake in clinging to luxury and
extravagance when, to be content with comfort, would lessen
the actual want of the people with whom our fate is linked.
We work hard, we give in charity, we pay big taxes, we buy
Liberty Bonds by the billion, but I am afraid we still draw
the line at the sacrifice of luxury and pleasure. The theatre
prospers, so does the opera, and far more the vaudeville and
the movies. The world dines and dances, it crowds Palm
Beach and Atlantic City, it -fills the newspaper society
columns with gossip. Headlines on one page may tell of the
retreat, the loss, the death of the men who bear the burden of
war ; on the next, in type as large, they announce : " Dinners,
Card Parties and Theatre-Going Occupying Society." So
ciety is occupying itself in other ways, too — is doing its bit;
but society could do a bigger bit or it would not have the sur
plus energy to make those headlines possible, or, I might add,
to warrant the interminable columns of fashion news and
fashion advertisements, the endless reports, with illustrations,
of the pleasure-seekers by the sea.

I may be reproached for narrowing my vision, for blind
ing myself to the great things that have been done during my
absence, especially of recent years. Instead of depressing
myself over mere matters of habit and courtesy, or the inevit
able mistakes of the public and the playing down to them of
the press, it may be thought I should have sought encourage-

890 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

ment in the suffrage victory won by the women whose position
is as the poles apart from what it was in my youth, to the vic
tory won by the people who think their old conditions slavery
compared to their new, to the victory won by the legislation
which is making a saint of the freeborn American, despite
himself. But my interest has been in my own impressions
of my own country and what is characteristic of it, not in my
opinion of the tendencies which it shares with the world.
Women almost everywhere have been fighting the same
battle. Labor almost everywhere has been bent on regener
ating society. Legislation almost everywhere has been eager
to force virtue upon mankind. These movements belong to
the age rather than to any one nation. We could have shared
in them without a change in the essentials that make us
Americans. It is because there has been change in these
essentials, because we are no longer American in the old way,
which was a good way, that my home-coming has brought me
disappointment and regret in the midst of my pleasure. It
is therefore natural that my first and strongest impressions
should be of the changes that mean to me loss.

ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL: REALIST

BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

ON a mellow day in the early autumn of the year 1900, 1
sat on an old wooden bench in the open air with an English
gentleman, and listened to his conversation with a mixture
of curiosity and reverence. The place was one of the fairest
counties of England, the town on the other side of a screen
of trees was Dorchester, and my seat-mate was Thomas
Hardy. I remember his saying without any additional em
phasis than the actual weight of the words, that the basis of
every novel should be a story. In considering this remark,
which came, not from a doctrinaire, but from a master of long
and triumphant experience, I could not help thinking that
what seems axiomatic is often belied by the majority of in
stances. In the field of art, as in the field of religion, what
ought to be seldom is. An honest critic, who should examine
the total product of prose fiction for any given year in the
twentieth century, might frequently fail to find any story
at all.

As we look back over the history of the English novel, it
appears that every permanent work of fiction has been a
great story. Robinson Crusoe, Clarissa, Tom Jones, Hum
phry Clinker, The Bride of Lammermoor, Pride and Preju
dice, Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss,
Richard Feverel, The Return of the Native, Treasure Island,
The Last of the Mohicans, The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry
Finn, although they represent various shades of realism and
romanticism, have all been primarily stories, in which we
follow the fortunes of the chief actors with steady interest.
These books owe their supremacy in fiction — at least, most of
them do — to a combination of narrative, character, and style ;
and every one of them, if given in colloquial paraphrase to a
group about a camp-fire, would be rewarded with attention.

In order to illustrate what I mean by a realistic novelist

892 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

whose happiest effects are gained by writing good stories
with real characters, I know of no better choice among con
temporaries than Archibald Marshall. Mr. Marshall is not
a man of the highest original genius, which is all the better
for my purposes, for original genius can and will go its own
way, performing miracles that lie outside the scope of this
essay. But Mr. Marshall is an admirable novelist and an
artist of such dignity and refinement that only twice in his
career has he written a novel that had for its main purpose
something other than truth to life; in each of these two at
tempts the result was a failure.

I know how difficult it is to " recommend " novels to
hungry readers, for I have written prescriptions for many
kinds of mental trouble, yes, and for physical ailments as well.
I know that Treasure Island cured me of an attack of tonsil
litis and that Queed cured me of acute indigestion; but I
have no assurance that other sufferers will find the same
relief. Yet I have no hesitancy in recommending the stories
of Archibald Marshall to any group of men or women or to
any individual of mature growth. One scholar of sixty years
of age told me that these novels had given him an entirely
new zest in life; and I myself, who came upon them wholly
without preliminary introductions, confidently affirm the
same judgment. Of all the numerous persons that I have
induced to read these books, I have met with only one skeptic ;
this was a shrewd, sharp-minded woman of eighty, who de
clared that she found them insupportably tame. I can under
stand this remark, for when girls reach the age of eighty they
demand excitement.

Those who are admirers of Mr. Marshall's work will
easily discover therein echoes of his own experience. He is
an Englishman by birth and descent, familiar with both town
and country. He was born on the 6th of September, 1866,
and received in his home life and preliminary training plenty
of material which appeared later in the novels. His father
came from the city, like the father in Abington Abbey; he
himself was graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge,
like the son of Peter Binney; it was intended but not des
tined that he should follow his father's business career, and he
worked in a city office like the son of Armitage Brown; he
went to Australia, like the hero's sister in Many Junes; he
made two visits to America, but fortunately has not yet writ
ten an American novel; he studied theology with the inten-

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL: REALIST 893

tion of becoming a clergyman in the Church of England, like
so many young men in his stories; in despair at finding a
publisher for his work, he became a publisher himself, and
issued his second novel, The House of Merrilees, which had
as much success as it deserved; he tried journalism before and
during the war; from 1913 to 1917 his home was in Switzer
land; now he lives in a beautiful old English town, a place
hallowed by many literary associations, Winchelsea, in
Sussex.

In 1902 he was married and lived for some time in Beau-
lieu in the New Forest, faithfully portrayed in Eocton Manor.
He spent three happy years planning and making a garden,
like the young man in The Old Order Changeth. Although
his novels are filled with hunting and shooting, he is not much
of a sportsman himself, being content only to observe. His
favorite recreations are walking, reading, painting and piano-
playing, and the out-door flavor of his books may in part be
accounted for by the fact that much of his writing is done in
the open air.

Like many another successful man of letters, his firstxstep
was a false start; for in 1899 he produced a novel called Peter
Binney, Undergraduate, which has never been republished
in America, and perhaps never will be. This is a topsy-turvy
book, where an ignorant father insists on entering Cambridge
with his son ; and after many weary months of coaching, suc
ceeds in getting his name on the books. The son is a steady-
headed, unassuming boy, immensely popular with his mates ;
the father, determined to recapture his lost youth, disgraces
his son and the college by riotous living, and is finally ex
pelled. The only good things in the book are the excellent
pictures of May Week and some snap-shots at college cus
toms; but the object of the author is so evident and he has
twisted reality so harshly in order to accomplish it, that we
have merely a work of painful distortion.

For six years our novelist remained silent; and he never
returned to the method of reversed dynamics until the year
1915, when he published Upsidonia, another glaring failure.
Once again his purpose is all too clear; possibly irritated by
the exaltation of slum stories and the depreciation of the
characters of the well-to-do often insisted upon in such
works, he wrote a satire in the manner of Erewhon, and
called it a novel. Here poverty and dirt are regarded as
the highest virtues, and the possession of wealth looked upon

894 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

as the sure and swift road to social ostracism. There is not
a gleam of the author's true skill in this book, mainly because
he is so bent on arguing his case that exaggeration triumphs
rather too grossly over verisimilitude. He is, of course,
trying to write nonsense; a mark that some authors have
hit with deliberate aim, while perhaps more have attained the
same result with less conscious intention. Now Mr. Marshall
cannot write nonsense even when he tries; and failure in
such an effort is particularly depressing. He is at his best
when his art is restrained and delicate ; in Upsidonia he drops
the engraving-tool and wields a meat-axe. Let us do with
Peter Binney and with Upsidonia what every other discrim
inating reader has done : let us try to forget them, remember
ing only that two failures in fifteen books is not a high
proportion.

Of the remaining thirteen novels, two attained only a
partial success; and the reason is interesting. These two
are The House of Merrilees (1905) and Many Junes
( 1908) . The realism of the former story is mixed with melo
drama and mystery; these are, in the work of a true artist,
dangerous allies, greater as liabilities than as assets. He
has since happily forsaken artificially constructed mysteries
for the deepest mystery of all — the human heart. In Many
Junes, a story that will be reprinted in America in 1919,
we have pictures of English country life of surpassing love
liness; we have an episode as warm and as fleeting as June
itself; we have a faithful analysis of the soul of a strange
and solitary man, damned from his birth by lack of decision.
But the crisis in the tale is brought about by an accident
so improbable that the reader refuses to believe it. The
moment our author forsakes reality he is lost ; it is as neces
sary for him to keep the truth as it was for Samson to keep
his hair. Furthermore, this is the only one of Mr. Marshall's
books that has a tragic close — and his art cannot flourish
in tragedy, any more than a native of the tropics can live
in Lapland. The bleak air of lost illusion and frustrated
hope, in which the foremost living novelist, appropriately
named, finds his soul's best climate, is not favorable to
Archibald Marshall.

It was in the year 1906, and in the novel Richard Baldock,
that he came into his own. This book, which will make its
first American appearance next autumn, contains a story
so absorbing that it is only in the retrospect that one realizes

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL: REALIST 895

the vitality of its characters and the delicacy of its art. There
are no heroes and no villains. Every person has the taint
that we all inherited from Adam, and every person has some
reflection of the grace of God. There is no one who does
not say something foolish or ill-considered; there is no one
who does not say something wise. In other words there are
no types, like " heavies," " juveniles," and " ingenues." As
is the case in nearly all the novels by its author, we are
constantly revising our opinions of the characters; and we
revise them, not because the characters are untrue, but be
cause we learn to know them better.

Every fine novel and every fine drama must, of course,
illustrate the law of causation — the principle of sufficient
reason. But characters that run in grooves are not human.
In Richard Baldock, we have, as we so often have in the
work of Archibald Marshall, strife between father and son
— a kind of civil war. This war, like many others, is begotten
of misunderstanding. There is not only the inevitable diver
gence between the older and the younger generation, there
is the divergence between two powerful individualities.
We at first sympathise wholly with the son. We say to our
selves that if any man is foolish enough to sacrifice all his
joy in life to a narrow creed, why, after all, that is his affair;
it is only when he attempts to impose this cheerless and
barren austerity on others that we raise the flag of revolt.
At the deathbed of the young mother, one of the most
memorable scenes in our author's books, we are quite certain
that we shall never forgive the inflexible bigot; this hatred
for him is nourished when he attempts to crush the son as he
did crush his wife. Yet, as the story develops, and we see
more deeply into the hearts of all the characters, we under
stand how the chasm between father and son is finally crossed.
It is crossed by the only durable bridge in the world — the
bridge of love, which beareth all things.

In 1907 appeared one of the most characteristic of Mr.
Marshall's novels, Eocton Manor. It was naturally impossi
ble for any well-read reviewer to miss the likeness to Anthony
Trollope. If I believed in the transmigration of souls, I
should believe that Archibald Marshall was a reincarnation
of Trollope, and William De Morgan a reincarnation of
Dickens. In an interesting preface written for the American
edition, Mr. Marshall manfully says that he has not only
tried to follow Anthony Trollope, " but the whole body of

896 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

English novelists of his date, who introduced you to a large
number of people, and left you with the feeling that you
knew them all intimately, and would have found yourself
welcome in their society. That particular note of intimacy
seems to be lacking in the fiction of the present day, and I
should like to have it back."

To all those who have not yet read a single work by our
author, I counsel them to begin with The Squire's Daughter,
and then take up — with particular care to preserve the cor
rect sequence — The Eldest Son, The Honour of the Clintons,
The Old Order Changeth. These four stories deal with the
family and family affairs of the Clintons, and together with
a separate book, The Greatest of These, belong to Mr. Mar
shall's best period, the years from 1909 to 1915. When I
say the " best period," I mean the most fruitful up to the
present moment in 1918. He is still in the prime of life, and
it is to be hoped that he may yet surpass himself; but since
1915, perhaps owing to the obsession of the war, he has not
done so. Watermeads is a charming story, and in Abington
Abbey, which now has an excellent sequel, The Graf tons, he
has introduced us to another interesting family; but none of
these books reaches the level maintained by the Clinton
tetralogy, nor penetrates so deeply into the springs of life
and conduct as his most powerful work, The Greatest of
These.

To read the Clinton stories is to be a welcome guest in
a noble old English country house, to meet and to associate
on terms of happy intimacy with delightful, well-bred, clear-
minded men and women; to share the out-door life of
healthful sport, and the pleasant conversation around the
open fire; to sharpen one's observation of natural scenery
in summer and in winter, and in this way to make a perma
nent addition to one's mental resources ; to learn the signifi
cance of good manners, tact, modesty, kindly consideration,
purity of heart — not by wearisome precepts, but by their
flower and fruit in human action. To read these books is not
to escape from life, it is to have it more abundantly.

If, as Bacon said, a man dies as often as he loses his
friends, then he gains vitality by every additional friendship.
To know the Clinton family and their acquaintances is not
merely to be let into the inner circle of English country life,
to discover for ourselves exactly what sort of people English
country folk are, to understand what family tradition and

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL: REALIST 897

ownership of the land mean to them — it is to enlarge our
own range of experience and to increase our own stock of
permanent happiness, by adding to our mental life true
friends — and friends that are always available.

Not since Fielding's Squire Western has there been a
more vivid English country squire than Mr. Marshall's
Squire Clinton. The difference between them is the differ
ence between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. He
is the man of the house, the head of the family, and it is
not until we have read all four of the stories that we can
obtain a complete view of his character. He is a living,
breathing man, and we see the expression on his face, and
hear the tones of his voice, which his daughters imitate so
irresistibly. With all his pride and prejudice, with all his
childish irritableness, he is the idol of the household. His
skull is as thick as English oak, but he has a heart of gold.
He is stupid, but never contemptible. And when the war
with Germany breaks out in 1914, he rises to a magnificent
climax in the altercation with Armitage Brown. We hear
in his torrent of angry eloquence not merely the voice of one
man, but the combined voices of all the generations that
have made him what he is.

Yet while Mr. Marshall has made an outstanding and
unforgettable figure of the fox-hunting Squire, it is in the
portrayal of the women of the family that he shows his most
delicate art. This is possibly because his skill as an artist
is reinforced by a profound sympathy. The Squire is so
obtuse that it has never dawned upon his mind that his wife
is a thousand times cleverer than he, nor that her daily
repression has in it anything savoring of tragedy. In the
third book, The Honour of the Clintons, intense and pro
longed suffering begins to sharpen his dull sight; and the
scenes between the old pair are unspeakably tender and
beautiful. Mr. Marshall never preaches, never tries to adorn
the tale by pointing a moral. But the wild escapade of the
daughter in the first of these stories, and the insistence of
the mother on a superior education for the twins, exhibit
more clearly than any letter to the Times could do, what
the author thinks about the difference between the position
women have held in English country homes and the position
they ought to have.

Of all his characters, perhaps those that the reader will
remember with the highest flood of happy recollection are
VOL. ccvii. — NO. 751 57

898 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the twins, Joan and Nancy. In the first novel, this wonderful
pair are aged thirteen; in the second, they are fifteen; in
the third, they are twenty-one. Mr. Marshall is particularly
skilful in the drawing of young girls. Whatever may be
woman's place in the future, whatever she may drink or
smoke or wear or say or do, there is one kind of girl that
can never become unattractive; and the Clinton twins illus
trate that kind. They are healthy, modest, quick-witted,
affectionate, high-spirited; when they come in laughing and
glowing from a game of tennis, and take their places at the
family tea-table, they bring the very breath of life into the
room.

In The Eldest Son, which, of the four delightful books
dealing with the Clinton family, I find most delightful, there
is a suggestion of the author's attitude toward humanity in
the procession of candidates for governess that passes before
the penetrating eyes of Mrs. Clinton. Her love for the old
Starling — one of the most original of Mr. Marshall's crea
tions — has not blinded Mrs. Clinton to the latter's incom
petence for the task of training so alert a pair as the twins.
Of all the women who present themselves for this difficult
position, not one is wholly desirable; and it is plain that
Mrs. Clinton knows in advance that this will be the case.
She is not looking for an ideal teacher, for such curiosities
are not to be found on our planet; the main requisite is brains,
and she selects finally the candidate whom many society
women could immediately dismiss as impossible, the uncom
promising, hard-headed, sexless Miss Phipps, who has about
as much amenity as a steam-roller. Miss Phipps bristles with
faults; but they are the faults that spring from excess of
energy, from a devotion to scholarship so exclusive that the
minor graces and minor pleasures of life have received in
her daily scheme even less than their due. But the twins
already possess everything lacking in the composition of
their teacher; what they need is not a sweet, sympathetic
companion: what they need is what nearly every one needs,
mental discipline, mental training, and an increase in knowl
edge and ideas. In this dress-parade of candidates we have
a miniature parade of humanity in the large ; no one is fault
less; but those who have an honest mind and an honest char
acter have something essential. And who knows but what
the shrewd and deep-hearted Mrs. Clinton did not also see
that in the association of this mirthless female with two young

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL: REALIST 899

incarnations of vitality and vivacity, both parties to the con
tract might learn something of value? Miss Phipps is about
to discover that the countryside in winter has resources
entirely unguessed at by her bookish soul; that there are
many of her countrymen and countrywomen who find in out
door sport a secret of health and happiness. When she looks
out of the window at the departing riders and hounds, she
learns, in the words of our novelist :

All this concourse of apparently well-to-do and completely leisured
people going seriously about a business so remote from any of the inter
ests in life that she had known struck her as entirely strange and inex
plicable. She might have been in the midst of some odd rites in an
unexplored land. The very look of the country in its winter dress was
strange to her, for she was a lifelong Londoner, and the country to her
only meant a place where one spent summer holidays.

I am aware that the most insulting epithet that can be
applied to a book, or a play, or a human being is the word
" Puritan " ; and I remember reading a review somewhere
of Abington Abbey which commented rather satirically on
the interview between Grafton and Lassigny, and most
satirically of all on the conclusion of the interview, which
left the stiff, prejudiced, puritanical British parent in pos
session of the field. But once more, Mr. Marshall is not
trying to prove a thesis; he is representing the Englishman
and the Frenchman in a hot debate, where neither is right
and neither is wrong, but where each is partly right and
partly wrong. Each says in the heat of the contest something
injudicious, even as men do when they are angry. But when
Lassigny literally takes French leave, we do not care who
has scored the most points ; the real winner is the one who is
not present — the girl herself. For when two men fight about
a woman, as they do somewhere every day, the truly im
portant question is not, which man wins? The only real
question is, does the woman win? It is perhaps better to
win by a quarrel than to win the quarrel.

In the novel The Greatest of These, which is in some
respects the most ambitious and the most effective of all
its author's works, we have an illustration of his favorite
method of portraying the shade and shine of human character
by placing in opposition and later in conjunction two leading
lights of two large classes of nominal Christians — a clergy
man of the Church of England and a minister of the Dis
senters. The novel begins on a note of sordid tragedy, as

900 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

unusual in the books of Mr. Marshall as a picture like the
Price household is in the work of Jane Austen; here it serves
to present the forthright and rather self-satisfied Anglican,
who little dreams of his approaching humiliation; he is
brought into conflict with a lay Zeal-of-the-land Busy, whose
aggressive self -righteousness is to be softened by the very
man whom he looked for to strengthen it. Here too, as in
Exton Manor, we come as near as we ever come in Mr. Mar
shall's books to meeting a villain — in each case it is a woman
with a serpent's tongue. Every page that we turn in this
extraordinary book lessens the distance not merely in time
but in sympathy between the two leading characters; the
evangelical Dissenting preacher is drawn with just the sym
pathy one would superficially not expect from a man of
Mr. Marshall's birth, breeding, and environment. He is in
some ways the author's greatest achievement; whilst his less
admirable wife is so perfect a representative of the busy city
pastor's helpmate that we can only wonder how it is possible
to put on paper any creation so absolutely real. There is
not one false touch in this picture. William Allingham
wrote in his diary after reading one of Browning's poems,
" Bravo, Browning!" Upon finishing this story which I do
not fear to call a great novel, I could hardly refrain from a
shout of applause.

Mr. Marshall is a twentieth century novelist, because he
is happily yet alive, and because he writes of twentieth cen
tury scenes and characters; but he is apart from the main
currents of twentieth century fiction, standing indeed in the
midst of the stream like a commemorative pillar to Victorian
art. He has never written historical romance, which domin
ated the novel at the beginning of our century; he has never
written the " life " novel — beginning with the hero's birth
and traveling with plotless chronology, the type most in
favour since the year 1906; he has never written a treatise
and called it a novel, as so many of his contemporaries have
done. Every one of his novels, except the two unfortunate
burlesques, is a good story, with a good plot and living
characters ; and he has chosen to write about well-bred people,
because those are the people he knows best.

I call him a realistic novelist, because his realism is of the
highest and most convincing kind — it constantly reminds us
of reality. So far as Mr. Marshall's Victorian reticence on
questions of sex is concerned, this strengthens his right to

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL: REALIST 901

the title Realist. As Henry James said, the moment you
insist that animalism must have its place in works of art,
there almost always seems to be no place for anything else.
If a novelist is to represent real life, he must make subordi
nate and incidental what in a novel like Bel- Ami dominates
every page.

Archibald Marshall is a realist. He represents cultivated
men and women as we saw them yesterday, as we shall see
them tomorrow. He seldom disappoints us, for among all
living novelists, while he is not the greatest, he is the most
reliable.

WILLIAM LYON PHELPS.

AUTHORSHIP AND LIBERTY

[The following extended extract from the oral argument of Joseph
S. Auerbach before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court (First
Department) , in the supression of The "Genius" by Theodore Dreiser,
is printed in the REVIEW as a timely and forceful contribution to free
dom of thought and expression. — THE EDITOR.]

May it please the Court:

AT the instance of the Society for the Suppression of
Vice, through threat of arrest of the publishers, The
" Genius'* by Theodore Dreiser, has been suppressed as an
obscene book; and you are asked in this agreed case to deter
mine whether such unwarranted action shall be judicially
upheld.

In the controversy are involved questions of more im
portance than are usually submitted to a court of justice.
For if the circulation of a book of its achievement can be for
bidden, this officious and grotesque Society will have been
given a roving commission for further mischief, and freedom
of thought and expression dealt a staggering blow from which
it will not soon recover. If, on the other hand, your decision
be as we think it should be, it will undo a great injustice not
only to a distinguished author and to the community at large,
but will be a kind of charter right for author and publisher
and even the participant in public debate.

In order to accomplish this you need not be opposed to
some agency for the suppression of vice manifesting itself by
way of lewdness in the printed word or picture, though in my
opinion such duty should devolve upon the legally consti
tuted public authorities charged with the prosecution of
crimes. If we are to have another agency, surely there
must be such a judicial determination as to its legitimate
province, that it will not be invited to run amuck at reputa
tions and property rights, and by threat of arrest do that
which is equivalent to issuing execution in advance of judg
ment.

AUTHORSHIP AND LIBERTY 903

Let me say also that you are not called upon to endorse
all the scenes or episodes of the book, standing alone or even
in their context; for Mr. Dreiser is not asking of the Court
commendation of his literary excellence, but a judgment
restoring to him the property rights of which he has un
justly been deprived. On the contrary, it may well be that
you will dissent from the propriety and necessity for some
of them, and would not care to be sponsor for all the book
contains on some pages by way of heightened color; you may
have little or no liking for its principal character or for any
of its characters, or admire its style or subject-matter, or be
willing to subscribe to all of the author's philosophy of life.
In more than one of these particulars I should be in accord
with you. We may say the same of many books which
have made literary epochs, and even of those which have had
to do with the advancement of civilization in the world.

So long ago as the middle of the last century, when free
dom of thought and expression was far from being what it is
to-day, the Madame Bovary of Flaubert, a classic now, was
not condemned nor its author or publisher punished, though
the work was by no means in all respects approved by the
French Court.

Yet the inquisitorial censor who by prying into The
ff Genius " can find the objectionable view as to morality and
decency, must certainly have his sensibilities rudely shocked
if he turn to some of the pages of Madame Bovary. The
judges said this by way of conclusion:

But whereas the work of which Flaubert is the author is a work
which appears to have been the result of long and serious labors from
a literary point of view and from that of a study of characters; that
the passages indicated by the order of reference, however reprehensible
they may be, are few in number if they are compared with the whole
extent of the work; that these passages, whether it be in the ideas
which they expose, whether it be in the situations which they represent,
all contribute to the unity of the characters which the author has
wished to present, even in exaggerating them and in infusing into them
a realism vulgar and often shocking :

Whereas, Gustave Flaubert protests his respect for good manners
and for all that relates to religious morality; that it does not appear
that his book has been, like certain other works, written with the sole
aim of giving satisfaction to the sensual passions, to the spirit of license
and of debauch, or of ridiculing those things which should be sur
rounded by the respect of all :

That he has committed the error only of losing sometimes sight
of the rules which every writer who respects literature like art, in order

904 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

to accomplish the good which it is called upon to produce, should be not
only chaste and pure in its form but in its expression:

Under these circumstances, as it is not sufficiently established that
Pichat, Gustave Flaubert and Fillet have rendered themselves culpable
of the offences which have been imputed to them ;

The tribunal acquits them of the accusation brought against them
and discharges them without costs.

Nor is it your function any more than it was that of the
French judges to be critics of social offences not the subject
of judicial review. As the Court in a case I shall refer to
later has said: " It is no part of the duty of courts to exer
cise a censorship over literary productions."

Before giving a summary of The " Genius" let me ask
you also to keep in mind what is so well stated in People v.
Mutter, 96 N. Y., particularly at page 411.

The test of an obscene book was stated in Regina v. Hicklin (L. R.
3 Q. B. 369) to be, whether the tendency of the matter charged as
obscenity is to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such
immoral influences and who might come into contact with it. We
think it would also be a proper test of obscenity in a painting or statue,
whether the motive of the painting or statue, so to speak, as indicated
by it, is pure or impure, whether it is naturally calculated to excite in
a spectator impure imaginations, and whether the other incidents and
qualities, however attractive, were merely accessory to this as the
primary or main purposes of the representation.

Accepting this rule as correct, let us see how The
" Genius " stands its test.

It is a book of nearly seven hundred and fifty closely
printed pages. It is a study of men and things, intense,
sombre and often gruesome — persisted in at times to the
point of tediousness — and neither the principal character,
Witla, nor any of its characters attracts the reader. That
anyone would turn to this book to gloat over its licentiousness
is unthinkable, for it compels attention and interest by reason
of its almost epic breadth of view as to some phases of life,
to which we may not wisely shut our eyes.

Witla, the " Genius," is born in a town called Alexandria,
in Illinois, somewhere toward the close of the last century,
and reared in a home not so ordered as to give a right direc
tion to the thoughts or aims of youth. The boy is weak and
anaemic, and along with the artistic taste which he longs to
develop, he has dreams of great fame. But at the outset we
see in him the early manifestations of unbridled amorous

AUTHORSHIP AND LIBERTY 905

desires destined to drag him down as he seeks to rise; and
one of the early episodes of the book is with a young girl,
ending, however, only in a kind of cheap love-making.

Moody and odd, slothful in study, he is moved often by a
conception of life which is crude, if not corrupting. He
begins his career on the town newspaper and later starts for
Chicago to try his fortunes there, with a few dollars in his
pocket. This is as Chicago appears to him:

At page 36 we read:

The city of Chicago — who shall portray it ! This vast ruck of life
that had sprung suddenly into existence upon the dank marshes of a
lake shore. Miles and miles of dreary little houses; miles and miles
of wooden block-paved streets, with gas lamps placed and water mains
laid, and empty wooden walks set for pedestrians ; the beat of a hun
dred thousand hammers; the ring of a hundred thousand trowels.
Long converging lines of telegraph poles; thousands upon thousands
of sentinel cottages, factory plants, towering smoke stacks, and here
and there a lone, shabby church steeple, sitting out pathetically upon
vacant land. The raw prairie stretch was covered with yellow grass;
the great broad highways of the tracks of railroads, ten, fifteen, twenty,
thirty, laid side by side and strung with thousands upon thousands of
shabby cars, like beads upon a string. Engines clanging, trains moving,
people waiting at street crossings — pedestrians, wagon drivers, street
car drivers, drays of beer, trucks of coal, brick, stone, sand — a spec
tacle of new, raw, necessary life !

Again at page 39 we read:

It was a city that put vitality into almost every wavering heart;
it made the beginner dream dreams ; the aged to feel that misfortune
was never so grim that it might not change.

Underneath, of course, was struggle. Youth and hope and energy
were setting a terrific pace. You had to work here, to move, to step
lively. You had to have ideas. This city demanded of you your very
best, or it would have little to do with you. Youth in its search for
something — and age — were quickly to feel this. It was no fool's
paradise.

Such vivid description characterizes the author's art so
that it may fairly be said to be the rule and not the exception.

He gets a job at storing stoves, but his pay is but a few
dollars a week; and finally after having been brutally
threatened by one of the workmen he leaves the place and
secures a position with a real estate concern at eight dollars
a week, only to be thrown out of employment when the
enterprise fails. He buys a suit of clothes on the instalment

906 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

plan ; hires himself out as a driver for a laundry at a slight
increase in wages, begins making sketches and meets a
laundry-worker who becomes his mistress. He then obtains
a position as collector for a furniture company, at an increase
sufficient to enable him to enter upon the study of art. Allow
ing himself five dollars a week for living expenses, he spends
the remainder for necessaries of life and for amusement.
He is fortified in his views of what he thinks is the justifiable
freedom of the studio by his experience in art study and by
an affair with one of the models. These are his thoughts of
the artistic life (at page 50) :

There was what might have been termed a wild desire in the breast
of many an untutored boy and girl to get out of the ranks of the com
monplace; to assume the character and the habiliments of the artistic
temperament as they were then supposed to be; to have a refined,
semi-languorous, semi-indifferent manner; to live in a studio, to have
a certain freedom in morals and temperament not accorded to the
ordinary person — these were the great things to do and be.

On returning from a visit to his home he meets Angela
Blue, who is later to become his wife. He gets a position
on a Chicago newspaper, is engaged to be married, and comes
to New York City, where his art struggles are described
with much detail. He paints street scenes with some suc
cess, and several are accepted as covers for magazines.

Beginning with his life in Chicago, his relations with two
women are given some importance and their injurious effect
upon his purpose in life begins to manifest itself to the reader,
though perhaps not to Witla.

At page 117 he is visiting at the home of the girl to whom
he is engaged, and the morality of the girl's mother, Mrs.
Blue, is contrasted with his own.

He could feel in her what he felt in his own mother — in every good
mother — love of order and peace, love of the well being of her children,
love of public respect and private honor and morality. All these things
Eugene heartily respected in others. He was glad to see them, believed
they had a place in society, but was uncertain whether they bore any
fixed or important relationship to him. He was always thinking in
his private conscience that life was somehow bigger and subtler and
darker than any given theory or order of living. It might well be
worth while for a man or woman to be honest and moral within a
given condition or quality of society, but it did not matter at all in
the ultimate substance and composition of the universe. Any form or
order of society which hoped to endure must have individuals like
Mrs. Blue, who would conform to the highest standards and theories of

AUTHORSHIP AND LIBERTY 907

that society, and when found they were admirable, but they meant
nothing in the shifting subtle forces of nature. They were just acci
dental harmonies blossoming out of something which meant everything
here to this order, nothing to the universe at large. At twenty-two
years of age he was thinking these things, wondering whether it would
be possible ever to express them; wondering what people would think
of him if they actually knew what he did think; wondering if there
was anything, anything, which was really stable — a rock to cling to —
and not mere shifting shadow and unreality.

He attains recognition as an artist; sells some pictures;
marries Angela Blue from a sense of obligation, and goes to
Paris, where he might legitimately expect great success. But
his Paris pictures show a falling off in ability. He further
deteriorates ; and during what should have been the maturity
of his powers, he can paint no pictures. The reason is not
left to conjecture, for at page 246 we read:

It was his hope that he could interest America in these things —
that his next exhibition would not only illustrate his versatility and
persistence of talent, but show an improvement in his art, a surer
sense of color values, a greater analytical power in the matter of char
acter, a surer selective taste in the matter of composition and arrange
ment. He did not realize that all this might be useless — that he was,
aside from his art, living a life which might rob talent of its finest
flavor, discolor the aspect of the world for himself, take scope from
imagination and hamper effort with nervous irritation, and make ac
complishment impossible. He had no knowledge of the effect of one's
sexual life upon one's work, nor what such a life when badly arranged
can do to a perfect art — how it can distort the sense of color, weaken
that balanced judgment of character which is so essential to a normal
interpretation of life, make all striving hopeless, take from art its
most joyous conception, make life itself seem unimportant and death
a relief.

Not only is his course not defended, but on the contrary
the author holds him up to the reader as " the coward, the
blackguard, the moral thief that he knew himself to be "
(page 263).

The weakness of Eugene was that he was prone in each of these
new conquests to see for the time being the sum and substance of
bliss, to rise rapidly in the scale of uncontrollable, exaggerated affec
tion, until he felt that here and nowhere else, now and in this par
ticular form, was ideal happiness (p. 285).

He gives up all attempt at art. His health fails; his
money is gone; he obtains work as a day laborer, and his wife

908 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

goes back to her home so as to be able to exist. He recog
nizes the cause of the punishment visited upon him.

To tell the truth, great physical discomfort recently had painted
his romantic tendencies in a very sorry light for him. He thought he
saw in a way where they were leading him. That there was no money
in them was obvious. That the affairs of the world were put in the
hands of those who were content to get their life's happiness out of
their management seemed quite plain. Idlers had nothing as a rule,
not even the respect of their fellow men. The licentious were worn
threadbare and disgraced by their ridiculous and psychologically dis
eased propensities. Women and men who indulged in these unbridled
relations were sickly sentimentalists, as a rule, and were thrown out
or ignored by all forceful society (pp.393-4).

Now a married woman becomes his mistress.

After a time he obtains a position in the advertisement
department of a newspaper, and subsequently becomes adver
tising manager of a concern with a large salary.

Then he meets the eighteen-year-old Suzanne, and is de
luded into the belief that nothing else counts but another
contemptible amorous affair, for which he is prepared to
sacrifice his wife and his position. His savings invested in a
real estate scheme are swept away ; his wife dies giving birth
to a daughter; and Suzanne, after removal from his influ
ence, quickly forgets him; he turns unavailingly for con
solation to philosophy, to religion and to Christian Science.

Toward the end of the book he again takes up painting,
with some of his old ability restored to him. The final effect
of his experience on his character is given at page 733 :

Under the heel of his intellectuality was the face, the beauty, that
he adored. He despised and yet loved it. Life had played him a vile
trick — love — thus to frenzy his reason and then to turn him out as
mad. Now, never again should love affect him, and yet the beauty of
woman was still his great lure — only he was the master.

Such in briefest outline only is the scheme of this book.
Why Mr. Dreiser may have written it is not the subject of
inquiry here, but only whether he is entitled to say what he
has said. Yet from the point of view of the man of letters
there are as many reasons why he should have written The
" Genius " as that Holland should have told in Jean Chris-
tophe the long story of the hero's adulterous intrigue with the
wife of a friend who had welcomed him to the shelter of a

AUTHORSHIP AND LIBERTY 909

home, or that Galsworthy was willing to be responsible for
The Dark Flower, and more than one other like book.

Leading men of letters of England and from the Authors'
League of this country have raised their voice in condemna
tion of its suppression. And we have collected in the brief
a few of the views of distinguished critics as to the book,
though we do not give these quotations because it is necessary
for you to assent to them in order to decide this case in favor
of Mr. Dreiser. For whether you are in sympathy with the
favorable comment of such distinguished critics as Mr.
Gilman or Mr. Huneker or Mr. Mencken or prefer to accept
the rhetorical arraignment of Mr. Stuart P. Sherman or the
supercilious silence of some other college professors concern
ing Mr. Dreiser — as they labor to present their superior
academic views concerning the province of fiction — is of little
or no importance in this controversy.

The whole preposterous campaign that has been carried
on against such books as The " Genius " finds its excuse in
the shallow notion that the adult must be fed on the same
kind of mental food as the child. Inasmuch as indolent
parents betray a trust towards their children by not stand
ing sentinel over their course of reading and intellectual
and moral training until they reach mature age, a book in
tended for thoughtful persons must be suppressed by some
Vice Society, lest the susceptible young be contaminated by
contact with it! In disregard of the accepted rule of law
and common sense, the application of a general principle is to
be measured by and subordinated to the possibility of an
individual hardship!

In the present case there is a claim urged which goes
beyond even this absurdity. For in the defendant's brief
this reason (italicized as in the quotation) is given as sub
stantially the sole justification of the action of the Society:

In these pages are included accounts of what the Society claims
to be indecent conduct in art studios, and the seduction of the woman
who afterwards became the wife of the principal character; adultery
with two other women and improper relations with a young girl, a
guest in the home of the principal character and his wife; and the
immorality of the whole story and its demoralizing tendency are
claimed to rest upon the proposition that all of these women had these
experiences without apparent harm to themselves or their position in
society.

Is there any more superlative degree to which nonsense
may attain?

910 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

As the character of Witla is developed there are graphic
scenes of his amours, on a few pages out of a volume of over
seven hundred pages. Taking them all, first and last, they
are, in the author's judgment, part of the setting of Witla's
character — poor enough at best, with only now and then
some faint recognition on his part that life is opportunity.
It does not require any argument, but merely the statement
of the fact, to convince us that a thing in one environment
may be objectionable from the point of view of morals and
even good taste and quite unobjectionable in another. Text
is not to be ripped out of context and given an interpretation
like that which the exhorter at protracted meetings or even
the prominent divine from the pulpit in days gone by de
lighted to give to Scriptural chapter and verse. A nude
model in the artist's studio is accepted as appropriate; ex
posed elsewhere it may well be the height of impropriety.
Even a great picture in a gallery, that is an inspiration for the
artist, may not be suitable to reproduce for indiscriminate
circulation or for exhibition in the shop window. The Penal
Law again and again discriminates in punishment for the
same offense, according to the time, place and circumstance
of its commission. ,

This obvious distinction is pointed out with much force
in the case of People v. Tylkoff, in the Court of Appeals, at
page 196, of Volume 212.

It is obvious that the question whether a given act or word is
indecent must within limitations be tested by the prevailing common
judgment and moral sense of the community where it is performed or
uttered (People v. Muller, 96 N. Y. 408), and further that such de
termination may be largely influenced by the particular circumstances
and conditions under which a given act occurs. For instance, in a
public meeting called to decide whether a particular woman should be
appointed a policewoman or social worker it might be entirely appro
priate and proper truthfully to disclose concerning her that she was
an improper person for such appointment because of the bad char
acter indicated by the word set forth in the present indictment and
which while perhaps somewhat harsher in sound is entirely synonymous
with other words frequently used in public discussion or reports with
out any resulting thought of an affront to public decency. On the
other hand, without excuse or reason to use such language of a woman
in a public and mixed gathering assembled to consider no subject which
made the same relevant or appropriate might properly be found to be
an outrageous and indecent act.

From the point of view of probability as to the develop
ment of character, are we not to say this as to The " Genius ":

AUTHORSHIP AND LIBERTY 911

Even admitting that the subject-matter or the style of the
book is not engaging, we must see that, on the whole,
Witla with his temperamentally narrow, characterless outlook
upon life and shut-in horizon, and deprivation of the advan
tages of adequate home-training or enlightening experience
in the world, acts precisely as one would expect him to act.
Moreover, no other character of the book does that which can
fairly be said to be unnatural or unreasonable for the man or
woman to do.

*******

The question is not whether the passages which the So
ciety for the Suppression of Vice censors can be published
separately as a book, but whether they are in an appropriate
context in this book. The question is a relative, not an abso
lute one, and resolves itself into this : Can such a character
as Witla be portrayed by an author?

Among the dust-covered books in my library are the
works of Thomas Bowdler. On turning to his " bowdler
ized " Shakespeare I found that, with all his squeamishness,
even he — appreciating the distinction I refer to — avoids the
mutilation of many a passage wherein there is often language
not appropriate for parade in conversation with children. A
censor who objects to parts of The ff Genius" would prob
ably not be edified by such undeleted lines as these :

Ah, dear Juliet,

Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

You will find, too, on examination that Bowdler has often
been equally sane, as for instance when he reproduces scene
after scene from Measure for Measure. Necessarily this was
so, since recalling the plot of Measure for Measure, we must
recognize that if he had acted otherwise he would have been
obliged to suppress it altogether. For the action of this
absorbing drama turns largely on the intrigue of a lecherous
hypocrite, to buy a noble woman's virtue with the ransom of
her unprincipled brother from a sentence of death.

Men of understanding know that life is not a pleasing
story or a play ending well, a holiday procession or a divert
ing pageant to be viewed with unctuous satisfaction by the
amiable professor from the college window. They know that

912 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

looked at from many points of view it is a great tragedy which
neither we nor the saints nor even professional altruists are
permitted to interpret or understand — a struggle between
contending forces where often the standards of right are
yielded to might and injustice. It is not our part to dog
matize about life, and even religion deprived of some of its
old orthodox views as to the compensations of an hereafter,
must stand by the side of agnosticism, mute and reverent over
the inscrutable decrees of Fate or Providence.

*******

Permit me to call your Honors' attention to a few of the
cases on our brief, wherein the right to circulate books has
been the subject of litigation.

In 1897 the trial of the publisher of the English trans
lation of D'Annunzio's Triumph of Death took place and he
was acquitted. Yet the Triumph of Death in so-called lewd
description goes much further beyond Madame Bovary than
Madame Bovary goes beyond The ff Genius.**

There are two other well-known cases in which the opin
ions are models of a proper judicial attitude for this case.

In Matter of Worthington, reported in 62 State Re
porter, the right was involved to sell The Arabian Nights,
Tom Jones, The Works of Rabelais, Ovid's Art of Love,
The Decameron of Boccaccio, The Heptameron of Queen
Margaret of Navarre, The Confessions of Rousseau, Tales
from the Arabic and Aladdin. Judge O'Brien said this:

It is very difficult to see upon what theory these world-renowned
classics can be regarded as specimens of that pornographic literature
which it is the office of the Society for the Suppression of Vice to sup
press or how they can come under any stronger condemnation than
that high standard literature which consists of the works of Shake
speare, of Chaucer, of Laurence Sterne, and other great English
writers, without making reference to many parts of the Old Testament
Scripture, which are to be found in almost every household in the
land. The very artistic character, the high qualities of style, the
absence of those glaring and crude pictures, scenes and descriptions
which affect the common and vulgar mind, make a place for books
of the character in question, entirely apart from such gross and obscene
writings as it is the duty of the public authorities to suppress. It
would be quite as unjustifiable to condemn the writings of Shakespeare
and Chaucer and Laurence Sterne, the early English novelists, the
playwrights of the Restoration, and the dramatic literature which has
so much enriched the English language, as to place an interdict upon
these volumes, which have received the admiration of literary men for
so many years.

AUTHORSHIP AND LIBERTY 913

And further, at 117:

A seeker after the sensual and degrading parts of a narrative
may find in all these works, as in those of other great authors, some
thing to satisfy his pruriency. But to condemn a standard literary
work because of a few of its episodes would compel the exclusion
from circulation of a very large proportion of the works of fiction of
the most famous writers of the English language.

In St. Hubert Guild v. Quinn, in 64 Miscellaneous Re
ports, Judge Seabury held concerning the question as to
whether the volumes of Voltaire were obscene :

The judgment of the court below is based upon a few passages in
each of these works, and these passages have been held to be of such a
character as to invalidate the contract upon which the action has been
brought. These few passages furnish no criticism by which the legality
of the consideration of the contract can be determined. That some of
these passages, judged by the standard of our day, mar rather than
enhance the value of these books can be admitted without condemning
the contract for the sale of the books as illegal. The same criticism
has been directed against many of the classics of antiquity and against
the works of some of our greatest writers from Chaucer to Walt Whit
man, without being regarded as sufficient to invalidate contracts for
the sale or publication of their works. * * *

It is no part of the duty of courts to exercise a censorship over
literary productions.

The defendant's counsel asserts in his brief that in coming
to a conclusion as to whether or no The " Genius " is obscene,
you are not at liberty to make comparison between it and
other books. This position is not supported by the authorities
he cites, which go only to the extent of stating that where an
author is on trial, there may not be submitted for the con
sideration of the jury the entire body of literature, nor the
jury required to read a certain number of books before
arriving at a verdict. Naturally enough this is proper, since
bounds must be set to the introduction of evidence.

The correct view under the decisions we quote on our
brief is that the accepted standards of literature do furnish
a basis of comparison, since necessarily opinions concerning
a specific thing undergo revision as such general standards
change. We do not have to search far to find the illustration
to make this abundantly clear. Books critical of the Bible,
which were once considered blasphemous and subjected the
author not only to public condemnation but punishment,
may now be written and published, without even unfavorable

VOL. ccvn. — NO. 751 58

914 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

comment in either a court of law or the court of public opin
ion. The Church itself has almost ceased to protest against
the views of distinguished divines as well as laymen that
belief in none of the miraculous incidents of the Bible —
including even the birth of Christ — is essential to religious
faith. In drawing-room conversation, as well as in public
discussions, matters to-day are freely spoken of in detail
which could scarcely be hinted some time since without of
fense. We have had the sanity to welcome back Mrs. War
ren's Profession to the stage.

What a man like Mr. Dreiser may be able to do further
with his maturer art when he comes to deal with some of
the menacing things of this day and generation — for all of
them will not have been burnt out, even by the fires of war —
we cannot know. Do we wish to destroy a pen such as his
because it is not the pen of the exhorter? And are we entitled
to expect much of him if we relegate him to a desk with some
official of the Society for the Suppression of Vice looking
over his shoulder to tell him what he may and what he may

not write?

*******

Do we wish to ignore the fact that somewhere between
the depravity of criminals and the aspirations of worthy men
— in a territory whose debatable boundaries have never been
fixed — there are the Witlas, with just about his attenuated
hold upon decency and morality and honor? Do we wish
the book we applaud to give itself the supercilious air of in
difference as to the ominous whereabouts of such a place and
the existence of those who people it? Shall it deal with things
as they are or as we have been drugged into believing them
to be or as we wish them to be? Shall we covet truth or
credulity? Are we forever to be on the lookout for the book
that lures us to the delectable hour and to slippered ease?
Shall authors aim at subserviency to what George Santayana
in his Winds of Doctrine terms the "genteel tradition"?
Are we not willing, now and then, to welcome a protest
against the smug satisfaction of much of the writing of to
day — with its starved vocabulary and structural weakness
and paucity of ideas and homiletic nonsense, in disregard of
the privilege and high calling of authorship?

We shall err grievously if we fail to understand that the
right answer to such inquiries in and out of Court is of grave
import not only to society but to the Republic.

AUTHORSHIP AND LIBERTY 915

Even if you are not disposed to agree with me as to the
justifiable province of fiction, the decision must be in favor
of Mr. Dreiser. For not only is vice not glorified by him,
but the effect upon Witla's character of licentious excess and
the flouting of social conventions is in a measure disastrous.
The slave of his carnal passions, he rises in the world only to
fall again, until he determines upon his emancipation; and
at the end it is clear that whatever success he may thereafter
attain is likely to be measured by the persistence of that
resolve. If Witla cannot be said to be wholly ruined by evil
propensities, he certainly is not elevated by them. Although
only now and then he has a realization of how unstable he is
in high purpose, — and this in part is the moral of the book
or even in a sense its tragedy — the reader throughout knows
of it, and never once does he excite our sympathy or have
an inkling himself of the finer issues of life, except when he
determines upon some assertion, feebly lived up to, of mas
tery over himself and his desires.

So the book parts company with Witla, unrepentant,
perhaps, for there is nothing in his conduct so far as he can
see calling for repentance, but quite evidently disciplined
if not chastened by an experience which, if it has taught him
nothing else, has at least taught him the folly of persistence
in stupid, degrading error. It may even be that he looks into
a future where he shall be able to lay claim to character as
well as fame. For the last we see of him is in a new home
with his baby child, his sole precious possession now, — his
little " Flower Girl." He has carried her asleep in his arms
to her couch and tucked her in and has gone out of doors
under the skies of a November night.

Overhead were the stars — Orion's majestic belt and those mystic
constellations that make Dippers, Bears, and that remote cloudy forma
tion known as the Milky Way.

Where in all this — in substance, he thought, rubbing his hand
through his hair, is Angela? Where in substance will be that which
is me? What a sweet welter life is — how rich, how tender, how grim,
how like a colorful symphony.

Great art dreams welled up into his soul as he viewed the sparkling
deeps of space.

The sound of the wind — how fine it is tonight, he thought.

Then he went quietly in and closed the door.

*******
Permit me to emphasize these thoughts in closing:

916 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

It is not alone Mr. Dreiser's book which is on trial before
you, but interests affecting the community and the State.
For when the voice of courageous criticism, protest, warning
or comment concerning law or custom or life has died out
because of the injunctions of courts and the mandates of
arrogant legislation, or is heard in feeble utterance because
of the threat of punishment, from irresponsible and officious
agencies or of obloquy from a mistaken public opinion, men
will indeed be bondsmen. The suppression of this book is
only a new manifestation of the increasing disposition of men
not to desire knowledge of the truth, provided ignorance
ministers to their peace of mind. So foreboding is this tend
ency that I hope your Honors will not regard the following
illustrations as irrelevant to the present controversy.

In many ways which I do not stop to refer to, but with
which all thoughtful persons are conversant, the Church itself
is not, in the words of the Prophet, valiant for the truth while
it feeds men on the husks of creed and doctrine, who famish
for the nourishment of a quickening faith.

Even this world-war was due to the refusal of France and
England as well as ourselves to know of the truth. For
Germany had announced in degenerate revelry, in book and
essay and lecture, from the housetops and from the throne,
her malevolent, hellish purpose to rule or ruin. Not alone
were we answerable for neglect of this warning, since chiv-
alric France just before the storm was to burst upon her
was turning her thoughts to the staging of the frivolous
Caillaux Trial ; and England was covering with dishonor her
greatest General, who was merely pleading for an army of
a few hundred thousand additional men wherewith to de
fend her imperilled Empire. Can we doubt that fearless
ness to see the truth would have avoided this war which
threatens civilization with an awful desolation, if that bent
line of battle in France be ever broken? Nor is this menace
a remote menace having to do with some future ideal State
and citizenship. It is something immediately concerning
us, for on the steadfastness of that bent line waits the
appalling issue whether the men of our country shall be
slaughtered or crucified or doomed to a degrading bondage,
and the leprous hand of lust be reached out for the sacred
person of the American woman. To visualize such desola
tion with reference to this very room, it would mean that
in the place of you who sit in this High Court, — of which we

AUTHORSHIP AND LIBERTY 917

of this City and State and Country are very proud, — would
be the fawning Prussian hireling to pronounce the will of
Junkerdom; and we know that such a will is the death of
Justice. Yet we are confronted with all these hideous pos
sibilities because of the disinclination of the world to look
fearlessly upon the uninviting side and things of life.

Let us not deceive ourselves by regarding these thoughts
as remote from this case. For to-day we of the multitude
by turning away from the Truth whenever it presents a for
bidding or even an unconventional countenance are in the
degrading, perilous bondage of an intellectual formalism. It
is a bondage which, among other things — by interpreting
words to be things, emotional ideals to be ideas, creeds to be
faith, superstition to be religion, appearances to be realities
and many a new-fangled notion to be the equivalent for the
old-fashioned values — has brought us to the cross-roads
where we must take one of two paths; that for which igno
rance or craven subserviency to popular prejudice is the sign
post, or that where knowledge which is unafraid is pointing
the way. One is easy to travel, for it goes downwards with
the heedless, motley crowd, but it abounds in treacherous
places; while the other, even if it require the arduous journey
amid prospects often disheartening, has the exhilaration of
the upward climb with an undaunted company, and reaches
the heights at last.

Mr. Dreiser insists that in his uncompromising portrayal
of character he has invited us to know of truth by seeing
life as it is and not as some visionary souls would conceive
it to be. Shall the ascetic zealot, the obsequious time-server,
the professional reformer, the blatant demagogue or their
hired man be commissioned by the courts to deny to him this
privilege? Nor is it extravagant to say that your favorable
disposition of this case will contribute in no small measure
to fortify and sustain men in the determination no longer
intellectually to " halt between two opinions " — as the people
of Israel, when arraigned by the prophet Elijah, were halt
ing in their religious beliefs between Baal and Jehovah.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH

FIELD-NOTES OF A CRITIC1

BY LAWRENCE OILMAN

EVEBY life, said John Addington Symonds, has its draw
backs: the life of the saint, its pangs of mortified flesh; the
life of the sensualist, its battles of lust and intervals of
drowsy crapula; the life of the dreamer, its evanescence of
delight and its unslaked appetites. So, too, the life of that
least of God's creatures, the critic whose task is the appraisal
of art on the wing, has its unique drawback, undramatic but
disquieting. This special difficulty of the critic who must
regard the arts as they pass before him on the swift wings
of their contemporaneity, estimating the strength and beauty
of their flight and guessing at their destination, is a difficulty
of recognition. On the one hand is his obligation " to project
and steep himself, to feel and feel till he understands," as
Henry James has instructed him; "to be infinitely curious
and incorrigibly patient, and yet plastic and inflammable and
determinable." On the other hand are the concrete problems
of the undertaking. Is Schoenberg important or negligible?
Is young Mr. Leo Ornstein a pathbreaker on his way to
sun-smitten heights, or is he a psychopathic curiosity? Who
is telling the truth about Cubist painting: Mr. George Moore
or Mr. Willard Huntington Wright? How cordially should
we weep for those who looked without ribaldry upon the fabu
lous " Spectric " poetry of those criminal harlequins, Mr.
Arthur Davison Ficke and Mr. Witter Bynner, alias
"Knish" and "Morgan"?

Such problems as these are not instances frivolous or
extreme : they are urgent and terrible and constant. There
are critics of exceeding sensibility who sputter like a frying
egg when Mr. Ornstein's name is mentioned ; there are other
critics, equally to be esteemed, who accept him without a

^Horizons, by Francis Hackett. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1918.

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 919

tremor of misgiving. Ornstein happens to be an aesthetic
Issue, like Carl Sandburg and Masters and Brancusi
and the later painting of Arthur B. Davies. In the
face of these challenging apparitions you can, of course, be
piously indignant, Viewing with Alarm; or you can be
magisterially contemptuous; or you can have pressing busi
ness with a man around the corner, and thus avoid committing
yourself; or — you can project and steep yourself, after the
Jacobean formula, and feel and feel till you think you under
stand; and then, with a prayer to God and a defiant curse
for posterity, you can speak your mind. If this is not a
life with a drawback, beside which that of the saint is as an
aphrodisian consummation, one misses the significance of the
word.

We think of Mr. Francis Hackett as among the un-
terrified — a critic who has said, with Thomas a Kempis : Da
mihi, Domine, scire quod sciendum est. His special distinc
tion among those who in our country are observing and re
porting the parade of current letters is that he has made this
drawback of the critic seem unreal. Criticism, he truly per
ceives, " is an art limited by the critic's capacity for emotion.
Without rapport there can be no criticism." Our critical
academics are untroubled by any awareness of this need : they
do not, as he says, " savor the wine of literature until they
see the orthodox name on the orthodox cobwebbed bottle.
They do not arouse and foster the feeling for literature ; they
thwart and kill it. . . ." With labels and cobwebs Mr. Hac
kett is exhilaratingly unconcerned; and in his " field-notes of
criticism " — as he unassumingly calls this collection of studies
— he is as open to new contacts, and as keen for them, as
patiently eager and eagerly patient, as plastic and inflam
mable, as even Mr. James could wish.

This is a rare thing in our American criticism — this
imaginative combustibility, this quick responsiveness of the
appraising mind. " What is new in literature," said William
Sharp a good many years ago, " is not so likely to be unfit
for critics, as critics are likely to be unfit for what is new
in literature." We in America have never been rich in critics
who were able to disprove their unfitness for what is new in
literature. One recalls them, as of yesterday and to-day —
a congealed and timid company, for the most part, clinging
with pathetic trust to their shibboleths and fetishes and mut
tering their creeds; one sees them crouched (as Stevenson

920 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

might have seen them) " round that little idol of part-truths
and part conventions which is their deity, crying out upon
* blasphemy ' or * indecency ' — and becoming, in the process,
truly blasphemous and indecent themselves."

These critical " field-notes " of Mr. Hackett's are the
reportings of a subtle and sensitive observer of the Anglo-
American literary scene during the past decade. Within this
term Mr. Hackett has studied and annotated such variously
consequential phenomena as the outgivings of Mr.
Howells, Mrs. Wharton, Professor Stuart P. Sherman,
Winston Churchill, Sherwood Anderson, Arnold Bennett,
George Meredith, Henry James ; Samuel Butler and James
Joyce, H. G. Wells and Dostoevsky, Synge and Tolstoy,
Rupert Brooke and Vachel Lindsay; Edgar Lee Masters,
Carl Sandburg, Maurice Maeterlinck, Ralph Barton Perry,
and Bertrand Russell. And there are memorials to certain
incidents of the American stage, some pretty thoroughly for
gotten, some unimportant, some worth rewarding by a back
ward glance — Mr. Lazarus, and Watch Your Step, and Old
Lady 31, and Misalliance, and Good Gracious Annabelle,
and the engrossing plays for a negro theatre by Ridgely Tor-
rence. Mr. Hackett's wit, which flows with reckless in
continence, is profitably occupied in exhibiting the Broadway
sentimentalities of Miss Crothers' Old Lady 31 and the spec
tacle of the T. B. M. yearning toward the pseudo-nudity of
a leg-show, " like a large fish floundering after a butterfly."
But was it worth while giving permanent space between cov
ers to such divertissements (shrewd and corrective though
they are), when Prof. Stuart P. Sherman's spear knows so
many brothers? Broadway, paphian or sweetly maudlin, is
small and ancient game for so lethal a marksman as Mr.
Hackett, when more pestiferous breeds are still extant.

Mr. Hackett disavows pretensions to " the deeper criti
cism ", with " its aspiration surpassing the aspiration of the
reviewer . . ., spaciously planned and bravely carried
on . . ." His deprecation is to be respected. Yet, so
creative a thing is a warm and valiant critical impulse,
that even a disjointed body of haphazard reviewing may ex
hibit imaginative and spiritual integrity; and this is pre
cisely what comes to pass for the appreciative reader in Mr.
Hackett's case: the recognition of a critical spirit singu
larly inquisitive and uninhibited; honest and susceptible;
poetic, pliant, adventurous. This is criticism uncommonly

THE BOOK OF THE MONTH 921

fine-fingered and acute. It can touch Mr. Howells and feel that
" there is nothing about him, not even the oppressed patience
which seems so large a part of his goodness, that vitiates his
artistic being." It can touch Mrs. Wharton and feel that
" with a higher sense of comedy, other realities would
emerge in her landscape which, under the light that is
habitual with her, is somewhat cold and bleak." Valu
ing the effectiveness of her satire on the absurd preten
tiousness and false zealotry of the women of the American
" culture " club in Xingu, it perceives, too, that " the satirist's
acid scarifies them too deeply in their social character. . . .
It is in dealing with such women as these, women who if any
thing would err on the side of amiability, that Mrs. Wharton
becomes frigidly conventional. " Understanding such as
that proceeds from manifold and sympathetic scrutinies; it
has seen our American existence from more than one angle.

Mr. Hackett is buoyantly unimpeded, unbeholden
to formula. Taboos do not exist for him. He is not,
like the majority of those who in America communicate
to us their aesthetic responses, primarily a conserver
of the moralities and incidentally a student of the in
terplay of life and the creative imagination. He is not of
those who, as he says, " cower behind the moral life of the
race to peer at art " : who " call an artist moral names simply
for giving life as he sees it " : who " blame him, not for failing
in his art of presenting life, but for presenting a view of life
that does not edify." He is a valuable influence in American
criticism because he studies our aesthetic yield without piet-
istic or doctrinaire prepossessions, with an eye unfilmed by
conventional assumptions and spurious refinements. Our
long devotion to the flaccid in art may some day be a
little less depleting because of his astringencies. He sees
not only what American writing is, but what it might become
with an added courage and sincerity, an added delicacy of
insight, an added curiosity about loveliness ; with less of that
reverence of inertia which is a cardinal defect of our intel
lectual life — reverence for sterile and invalid things, for atti
tudes and dogmas and dishonest certifications.

And he can be persuaded and persuasive in speaking of
the Democracy that, with Vachel Lindsay, is not merely a
phrase : " It is something poignant of the people. It sup
poses an absence of classes, a conjunction of all kinds of
human beings. It is that faith in the excellence of human

922 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

beings which makes life worth living. It finds that excellence
by inclusiveness. It is different from any other and all other
religions. It has at root a kind relation to God because it has
a kind relation to man. It is more than liberty, equality and
fraternity. It is a feeling that the mortal planet is a good
and decent place to live in and on. It is the thing Lincoln
had. It is the thing Whitman had. It is the thing Emerson
partly had. It is the thing that the West has, and not the
East so much, the thing that the Negro took away from the
South and yet the thing that abides, though not singularly,
in America. ... It may be religious. Perhaps it is. It
comes down from the mountains, it walks among the people,
it plows through snow to say who will be president." And
further, in amplied reference to Lindsay: " Where else in
this country of emergence is there in combination nationalism
so free and swinging, religion so vigorous, human contact so
unprejudiced, beauty so adored? Sometimes it is the adora
tion of beauty we attend at, mere services in her name. But
not seldom he is at the heart of conviction and ecstasy and
splendor. The man who tramped as a beggar through our
States could afford to go light because of his affluence. He
had every man for his comrade. He went afoot with a
people. He marched with the moon and the sun."

LAWRENCE GILMAN.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

THE WARFARE OF TO-DAY. By Lieutenant Colonel Paul Azan.
New York. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918.

What sort of war, from a military standpoint, is this which we are
now waging — and which, in conjunction with our Allies, we must and
shall win? A war, one readily answers, that exceeds all past wars in
the number of men engaged, in the variety and complexity of the
technical means employed, and in the greatness of the economic strain
upon all the combatant peoples. If one is asked to be more specific,
one feels quite safe in saying that the new thing in the present struggle
is " trench warfare."

Not much greater than this, really, is the amount of military knowl
edge we may, in general, expect to gain from the reading of numerous
war books and from an eager effort to make out the meaning of the
news from the front as reported in the daily papers. Yet we cannot,
of course, satisfy ourselves with three commonplaces and a half-truth.
We feel that if our judgment is to be sane, our hope rational and
steady, we need, as citizens, not to say as soldiers, a broad compre
hension of the military problem.

That such a comprehension must require primarily a careful study
of technique is one's natural first impression. An officer must possess
a great deal of technical information, and a civilian who means to
understand modern warfare needs, it may be readily assumed, the same
kind of knowledge first of all. But this view is erroneous in that it
attaches undue importance to minor facts. Even the soldier, though
he must be a specialist, needs to learn principles quite as much as he
needs to learn rules.

This is a truth the full bearing of which is not always easily
grasped even by eager and intelligent learners, as Lieutenant Colonel
Azan discovered when he was lecturing on modern warfare to student
soldiers at Harvard.

" When I set forth the necessity for collaboration between the in
fantry and the artillery," records M. Azan, " not a hearer took notes ;
when one of my comrades explained that the bottom of the trench was
1.7 m. below the surface of the ground and 2 m. below the top of the
parapet, every pencil jotted down the precious information."

The point is that the formation of a trench must necessarily depend
a great deal upon the purposes that it is intended to serve and upon
the nature of the ground. " What is the use," asks M. Azan, " in
saying that the trench should be 1.7 m. deep if, as in the Yser region,
water is found at .3 m. (10 inches) ? " In the same way most of the

924 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

precise rules for carrying on military operations are subject to notable
exceptions and limitations. For this reason, the author repeatedly
cautions his readers against the tendency to memorize details such as
the distances to be maintained between several lines of attacking troops,
or the exact way in which during an attack the " specialists " are to be
distributed.

In order that we may really begin to understand the war in its
military aspect, Lieutenant Colonel Azan would have us first firmly fix
in our minds the conception that this is not a war of trenches but
a war of positions. To call it a war of trenches is to use inexact and
misleading language. " The war is no more a war of trenches than
it is a war of artillery, a war of asphyxiating gas, or a war of grenades."

For three years each side has been trying to " break through," by
attacking vigorously in determined zones. In other words, each com
batant has been attacking certain positions — a position being a strong
point " usually corresponding to some geographical region and com
prising several less important elements, also corresponding to the
terrain, called centres of resistance/' When by the capture of posi
tions in a defensive line a deep and broad breach is made, the whole
line, being threatened from the rear, may be obliged to retreat or
crumble.

Like most fundamental ideas, this of " positions " is in itself ex
tremely easy to understand — which, perhaps, is just the reason why it
was for a long time overlooked. To make clear its full application,
however, one would need to rehearse a large part of M. Azan's dis
course on the theory and practice of modern warfare. Of course, it is
only by a careful study of details — a study which M. Azan, through his
French lucidity and his scholarly precision, makes as easy as possible
for his readers — that one can obtain anything like an adequate prac
tical grasp of the principle ; but there are one or two corollaries that
are immediately enlightening. In the first place, it is obvious that
the object of all battle plans is not to occupy certain stretches of terri
tory but to destroy the opposing army by breaking down its defences :
to understand this truth enables one better to estimate the significance
of gains or losses. In the second place, it is clear that the so-called
" war of movement " can be but the phase of pursuit in the present
war of positions, and that its appearance will be the sign of victory
for one side or the other : to know this, is to dismiss much vain specu
lation.

Besides this fundamental principle of modern warfare, Lieutenant
Colonel Azan teaches, with equal thoroughness, another great lesson —
the lesson of organization in its two aspects of specialization and col
laboration. Everyone knows, of course, that soldiers have to be trained
to expertness in many things besides marksmanship and the manual
of arms, and that team work is a necessity. But it is safe to say that
few of those who have yet to read this book have formed anything
like adequate conceptions of the degree and variety of specialized skill
required every day at the front, or of the importance and difficulty
of securing mutual understanding among the various parts of an army.
The planning, the map-making, the transmission of orders and informa
tion along the line and between front and rear — all this requires a

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 925

degree of system, of individual good judgment, of coolness in emer
gencies, that we at home but faintly understand.

Notable for clearness and breadth of view, this treatise of Lieu
tenant Colonel Azan's is by no means lacking in precise facts; and
the details are filled in from precious experience — experience gained at
the expense of toil, and danger, and bloodshed. There is not a single
fact in the book, however, which does not contribute to an understand
ing of the military problem as a whole. Moreover, always alert to
prevent misconceptions, the author guards as carefully against over-
dependence upon principle as against misleading emphasis upon par
ticulars. He shows us the difference between red tape and real effi
ciency in the presence of an active enemy; he makes us see what the
work of an officer really is.

If anyone still cherishes the secret hope that this war may be won
almost any day merely through some extraordinary stroke of luck, or
some strategic inspiration, or some sudden outburst of valor, on our
side, or through some oversight on the part of the enemy, this book
should bring him to a more practical frame of mind and a sterner
resolution; for it reveals in a very striking and convincing way the
real magnitude and complexity of the task that our American armies
must help to accomplish. Of very great interest in this connection are
the author's observations on the training of troops in America — a sub
ject upon which Lieutenant Colonel Azan is qualified to speak with
authority : it is to be hoped that his advice has not come too late to be
of use in the present crisis. More than any exhortation, this book of
tested theory and grim, practical war-wisdom will prove stimulating to
Americans — both soldiers and civilians — because it tells just what is
involved in the military task we have undertaken.

EUROPE'S FATAL HOUR. By Guglielmo Ferrero. New York:
Dodd, Mead & Company, 1918.

Superficial people assume that when the Teutonic Powers have
once been completely defeated, international crime will have been
effectually discouraged for the future, and progress will continue
uninterruptedly along the old lines. Thoughtful people are not con
tented with so easy an optimism. They see, in the first place, that
it will be extremely difficult to ensure peace and progress by any new
political devices or by any redistribution of territory. In the second
place, they see that the hope of the world lies in a revision of ideals:
there must be an ethical change.

This change is even now going on. It seems clear that after this
war is over men will find that their whole attitude toward life has
altered. Not only will they look upon large questions with new eyes,
but they will feel a difference in their subconscious reactions, their
impulses, their ideals. The lesson learned from the war will be formu
lated in a thousand different ways. Emphasis will be laid anew upon
" efficiency " and " preparedness " ; peace will be extolled as never
before; progress will be re-defined. But what is the great underlying
lesson that we are to learn?

926 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

This is the question that Ferrero, the historian of ancient Rome,
has set himself to answer in his book, Europe's Fateful Hour. He
finds the solution of the problem in a very simple principle, derived
from his study of antiquity.

Common sense and common conscience have always taught men
that blessings limit one another; but the spirit of man revolts against
limitations. Man is extreme even in his virtues; he builds towers of
Babel; he is wise overmuch. Sometimes for brief periods there is
wise living. The earlier Puritans, for example, had a large measure
of sweet reasonableness; they loved God and did not despise life.
But the later Puritans tended to sour fanaticism. We, their descend
ants, have reacted against the extreme of moral rigor ; we have made
the discovery that it is possible to be good without being dismal; but
we have not reverted to the orderliness and equable force of Colonel
Hutchinson and his fellows. On the contrary, it is easy, at least for
our young people, to believe that it is possible to combine irresponsi
bility and " efficiency," to be entirely care-free and perfectly good.
We want both extremes. Our rich men set no limits to their wealth,
or to their philanthropy. They do not know when to stop getting
money, or when to cease building libraries and endowing charities.

These are small illustrations. Everywhere may be seen the con
flict between the ideal of quantity and that of quality, between power
and perfection, between Romanticism and Classicism. Everywhere
one may perceive the effort to achieve a paradoxical reconcilement of
opposite extremes. The world has hoped to secure peace by preparing
for war; it has tried to admire all ideals equally and has pursued
contradictory aims with unexampled energy. " Our age desired
power, but it also desired, in all sincerity, character, equity, justice,
truth, good. It was easily angered if any one doubted of these virtues.
Unfortunately, if it wanted these blessings, it was not the less con
strained, by dominating passions and interests, to sacrifice them daily
to its desire for riches and power."

Of the ideals of quality and perfection, the Latin races are the
traditional custodians; and although these nations themselves have
indulged not a little in the sin of immoderation and power-worship,
the great overturners and breakers-down of the classic ideals of
civilization and morals have been the Germans. They have, for one
thing, perverted classical scholarship. Imitating their example, the
rest of the world, before the war, had fallen into the way of regard
ing the classics as thorny sciences; and it was in a way to lose the
true message of Greece and Rome. But the tendency to transform
or altogether to disparage the study of the classics is, of course, but
a striking symptom of a general disease — a disease that had originated
in all countries at the same time, but that had taken firmest hold
upon Germany.

Other peoples admire the great; Germany, the colossal. " The
great is pure quality, whereas the colossal is quality with a large
admixture of quantity. Stern intellectual discipline and humility are
absolutely essential not only for the creation of the great, but also
for its right understanding and appreciation. The colossal, on the
contrary, is one of the myriad forms of human vanity and is readily

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 927

understood and admired even by minds of coarser fibre, wholly devoid
of education." It is based upon a sort of false mysticism which seeks
the infinite in vagueness, in the absence of limitation, in boundless
and grandiose desires.

But is not the secret of German success precisely that sense of
order which is claimed as the especial possession of the Latin races?
It is necessary to be clear on this point. Ferrero answers without
hesitation, No. Order is not simply organization. Order is above all
" the sense of the limits which a society ought not to overpass if it
does not wish to see reason transform itself into folly, truth trans
form itself into error, beauty transform itself into ugliness, and good
transform itself into evil."

Ferrero's fundamental idea is simple enough — so simple, indeed,
that it would seem scarcely to require two hundred and fifty pages of
print for its explication. The treatise is indeed prolix and eloquent
rather than concise and analytical. Its central idea, however, appears
to be as profound as it is simple, and its implications are wide and
deep. To have stated the idea clearly, to have called attention arrest-
ingly to the extent of its possible meaning — this is no mean achieve
ment. Ferrero seems to have outlined a great and vital truth — a truth
that is perhaps very close to the truth. There is something wholesome
and inspiring in his exhortation to the world to return to the worship
of that God who is " the august guardian of measure."

PROBLEMS OF THE PEACE. By William Harbutt Dawson. New
York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918.

When a crime is committed by an individual the ethical sense of
mankind demands the punishment of the criminal. Revenge, it is true,
is not the animus; but punishment is punishment — and it involves
restraint and privation. Is there any reason why the same logic should
not be applied to nations? To this question William Harbutt Dawson
replies, in effect, that if it is out of the question to indict a whole
nation, it is even more impracticable to punish a whole nation.

In a sense Germany is even now being punished. Se is sustaining
enormous losses on the battlefield — making bloody sacrifices in a cause
which, if she ever learns the truth, will fill her soul with loathing. At
home her people are said to be upon the verge of starvation. The judg
ment of history will be against her — and age-long infamy in the sight
of the whole world is no light matter. Yet all this does not seem to be
enough. Germany, we say in our hearts, is a criminal, and she should
be punished as criminals are punished.

Thus it appears that for the majority of men the ideas of justice
and retaliation are almost inextricably intermixed. And history hardly
furnishes a precedent to show the world how to deal with an inter
national crime so monstrous, so deliberately premeditated, as that which
Germany has perpetrated. Such is the ethical problem. The answer
certainly cannot be given by a purely pacifist philosophy ; indignation,
even when it is righteous, may be a poor counselor; and so perhaps
we cannot do better than listen to the warnings of caution and com
mon sense.

928 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

These are set forth by Mr. Dawson with that cool logic and that
weight of conviction which always assure for this writer's views an
attentive hearing. Though attached to moderation on principle, the
author does not simply urge the practice of this virtue ; rather he points
out the formidable difficulties in the way of a punitive policy. His
reasoning is hard to resist.

Proposed measures of economic retaliation range in practicability
from the trade boycott of the Central Powers by the Allied nations to
the internationalization of the Kiel Canal — " a measure," remarks Mr.
Dawson, " at least more sensible than the alternative proposal, which
is that it should be filled up." All these suggestions the author analyzes
conscientiously, with the result that he finds them all defective. Stated
simply, the unavoidable conclusion appears to be that commercial retali
ation would mean not the punishment of Germany, but rather a con
tinuation of the war under a new form; and it would mean that the
real purpose of the Allies had failed. Moreover, the methods employed
would necessarily be crude and wasteful. " As a simple weapon of
commercial warfare, even a tariff of the ordinary kind is a device of
questionable efficiency ; far from being an arm of precision, it is at best
a cumbersome blunderbuss with an ugly kick and an evil way of dis
persing its shot indiscriminately. It is far worse with a trade boycott."

Proposals for political retaliation include projects of map-making
of which the most extreme is the dismemberment of the German Em
pire. A thorough examination of even the more moderate and plaus
ible of these plans strongly suggests that there is something vitally
wrong with the conception on which they are all based. For example,
to take from Prussia her Polish territories against her will would
entail the expatriation of more Germans than Poles, and the last state
of the Polish question would be worse than the first. Nor could any
thing but evil result from reversing the political situation in Austria-
Hungary, by taking three millions of Germans bodily out of Austria
and placing them under their old enemies, the Czechs. Changes, to be
sure, are desirable. In Austria-Hungary a third kingdom comprising
large Czech and Slovak populations might well be created. The south
ern Slav nations might advantageously be federated. But political
changes should not be made rashly or in a spirit of retribution. It is
really a very debatable question whether anything would ultimately be
gained by excluding Germany wholly from the Near East or by depriv
ing her of her colonies. As for the dismemberment of Germany, that,
if it were possible, would be a signal for a new war for national unity.
But in fact it would be a dismemberment in name only ; for the states
of the empire are organically united by interest and by feeling. Spir
itual and economic dissection is beyond the power of political surgery.

Willy-nilly we must reckon with Germany in the future, and in
some sense we must be reconciled to her. Unless the Allies should have
the will and the power utterly to destroy her, she will remain a great
nation, with power both passively and actively to help or harm the
world. She will recover her strength. " I predict with confidence,"
writes Mr. Dawson, " that the rapidity of this recovery will even more
startle the world than did the recovery of France after 1870." She
will seek alliances, and she will find them, for alliances have always
been determined in the long run by interest. Ill-judged retributive

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 929

measures, then, would mean a resumption of the old European sys
tem, with its dangerous division of nations into hostile groups and its
unsafe doctrine of the balance of power.

With a command of facts, a nicety of reasoning and a patience in
analysis, that enforce respect, Mr. Dawson discusses all the difficult
and delicate problems of the peace that is to follow the present war.
The question of indemnities, of reparation, of the disposition of Alsace-
Lorraine — these and many other questions he presents in a somewhat
unexpected but very clear light. Always he inclines toward astonish
ingly moderate views. He even advocates, though admitting the moral
right of France to say the last word on the subject, a compromise with
regard to Alsace-Lorraine. It is difficult in this and some other cases
to keep one's point of view so entirely objective as a proper apprecia
tion of the argument doubtless requires. One occasionally feels that
plain moral principles are safer guides than somewhat doubtful infer
ences from confusing evidence. But on the whole, Mr. Dawson's treat
ise expresses a point of view that cannot be left out of consideration.

The conclusion of the whole matter would seem to be that the vic
tory of the Allies must be in the end a moral victory. A political and
moral regeneration of Germany is what we must hope the war will
lead to. If the evil spirit is driven out of Germany, then indeed
we may dispense with retaliation; but if not, retaliation, Mr. Dawson
seems to believe, would be worse if possible than a practical restoration
of the condition that existed before the war. Moral victory, however,
depends upon material victory ; and material victory must be complete.
It must also, alas, be costly: moral evils are not removed by easy
triumphs.

THE MAKING OF A MODERN ARMY, AND ITS OPERATIONS IN THE
FIELD. By Rene Radiguet, General de Division, Army of France.
Translated by Henry P. du Bellet, formerly American Consul at
Rheims. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1918.

More limited in scope and less philosophic in thought than Lieu
tenant Colonel Azan's treatise upon modern warfare, General Radi-
guet's little book, The Making of a Modern Army, perfectly fulfills
the modest purpose declared by its author. It will certainly aid Ameri
cans " in reading between the lines of the communiques, in compre
hending the plan and the importance of individual engagements, and
finally in enabling those who have relatives at the front to realize
fully the importance of the parts assigned to them."

The book is, moreover, an admirably clear and concise manual of
war knowledge. To young men who are expecting to become officers
in the American Army it should be of very great use as affording a
rapid yet somewhat detailed account of the facts and methods with
which they will need to become thoroughly familiar. The principal
points in regard to the work of every kind of troops, the value and use
of every variety of weapon, the duties of officers, including those of
the chief and his staff, are all fully outlined. The making of trenches
and the organization of trench systems are carefully explained. With-

VOL. ccvn— NO. 751 59

930 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

out waste of words the author makes plain the practical reasons for
things. Attack, defense, withdrawal, all the phases of combat, are
set forth with the accuracy and with the sense of relative importance
that one would expect of an experienced commander.

The ordinary reader will find in this volume, besides a concise de
scription, clear as a blue-print, of the mechanism of a modern army,
many facts that will help him to realize the huge scale of the work —
for example, the striking fact that between the 12th and the 19th of
April one four-gun battery fired about 3,600 shells per gun. Since
this is a normal figure, it is easy to see that millions of shells are fired
on a large front in a few hours. There are also citations of special
acts of bravery in the book, as well as many interesting suggestions,
among which one may note a hint concerning the desirability of arming
soldiers with automatics for hand-to-hand combat.

More than once the author emphasizes the formidable thoroughness
and determination of our enemies. He describes, for instance, the
systematic fashion in which the Germans have prepared defensive posi
tions in their rear. On the other hand, the superior physical condition
and higher morale of the Allied troops give ground for confidence. The
Germans, according to General Radiguet, were constrained to adopt the
plan of training bodies of " shock-troops " for assault, because they
had found that attacks with ordinary troops were ineffectual. The
shock-troops are volunteers induced to enter specially dangerous service
by the promise of better rations.

Some of General Radiguet's remarks have direct reference to
America. With respect to aeroplanes, he urges Americans to sacrifice
their pride as inventors and to adopt types of planes from among the
best now used by the French, the British, the Italians, and even by the
Germans. He makes clear why France needs American civil engineers
and railroad men. A suggestion that he offers with respect to the
training of troops in America seems extremely practical. In learning
the work of attack and defense, the soldiers, he urges, should be trained
upon "an exact reproduction of the shell-torn fields on which the
American troops are destined to manoeuvre in Europe."

The military information that is so important just now could not
be obtained in a clearer form than in this book of General Radiguet's,
nor could it be had from a more reliable source.

" OVER THERE " WITH THE AUSTRALIANS. By Captain R. Hugh
Knyvett, Anzac Scout. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918.

No troops have awakened more enthusiasm than the Anzacs ; none
better deserve admiration and gratitude. And there is a special appeal
to the imagination in the story of their gathering and of their exploits.
Captain Knyvett tells how the men poured in from the back country
to the points of concentration; there was no transportation available,
and so they walked. The Government took notice of their spontane
ous movement and sent officers to meet them. The men were dressed
in blue dungaree suits in lieu of uniforms and they were drilled along
the road. They went with light-hearted courage, a high spirit of

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 931

adventure. There is in the tale an epic quality which all that we know
of the time when America, too, had a back-country teaches us to appre
ciate.

These men, who set out so zestfully on the road that was to lead
to Gallipoli and to Pozieres and Thiepval and Bapaume, were filled
with physical vigor and with the superb confidence that physical vigor
gives; they had youthful enthusiasm, the pioneer love of overcoming
difficulties. They were intensely proud of their country and eager " to
prove her worth as a breeder of men." By a natural and free impulse
they were drawn into the war. If there had seemed to be deliberate
heroism, moral resolution, in their behavior, the phenomenon would
be less impressive ; but they simply obeyed without much thought the
instinct to fight for the right.

The men were taken to Egypt for training. Kitchener knew well
the best place in which to train Australian daredevils, and " it was
Egypt and the desert," declares Captain Knyvett, "that made Gallip
oli possible/'

Instances of bravery, individual and collective, abound in the story
of the Dardanelles campaign. A characteristic exploit, exactly the kind
of exploit that Americans most strongly react to, is that of the New
Zealander Lieutenant Freyberg (now Brigadier-General Freyberg,
V. C), who swam, towing a raft, from his ship to the coast at Bulair
and by lighting flares kept a whole Turkish army in momentary expec
tation of an attack ; after which he swam five miles out to sea, search
ing for the destroyer that was to pick him up, and then, when he had
floated several more hours, was picked up exhausted and half dead.
In the record of Australians and New Zealanders at Gallipoli and in
France there are numerous instances of just such gameness; and the
initiative, the dauntless courage, of these troops in battle is inspiring.

If there is any work more trying to nerve and soul than that of
a scout in No Man's Land one would like to know what it is. Captain
Knyvett's simply related deeds are terrifying to think about. How
many persons understand what this scouting means? How many
know, for instance, that the scouts are trained for work in the dark by
being made to go through the ordinary soldiers' exercises blindfolded,
until they gain the extra sense that a blind man has ?

After long and meritorious service, Captain Knyvett was struck
by a bomb and badly smashed. In a French hospital he partially recov
ered, but one of his legs was paralyzed and he was sent home to Austra
lia. The grafting of a nerve upon the injured nerve of his leg made
him an active man again, and he returned to the front. [Captain Kny
vett has since succumbed to the effects of his injury. — EDITOR.]

Blunt and somewhat boyish in style, astonishingly effective in
phrasing now and then, Captain Knyvett's narrative possesses a raw
realism and a bare sincerity that go right to the heart. The author
writes in an absolutely simple, conversational manner. He does not
carefully work up anecdotes ; he does not seem to try for jocularity or
for the effect of atmosphere or flavor in describing a soldier's life. In
consequence, no other narrative of personal war-experience so insis
tently, though undesignedly, suggests to the reader the searching ques
tion, Am I capable of such devotion to duty?

932 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

BLOCKING NEW WARS. By Herbert S. Houston. Garden City:
Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918.

It is, of course, one thing to argue that a commercial boycott would
be wise as a measure of retaliation against Germany and quite another
to maintain that economic pressure, or the threat of it, might help to
prevent wars. In the latter case one has to compare the cost of engag
ing in commercial warfare with the cost of armed conflict. The com
parison, as made by Mr. Herbert S. Houston, results in the conclusion
that the grand total of the imports and exports of all the belligerent
nations for 1912 falls far below the sum expended by each of these
nations for war purposes in a single year. Nor can it be reasonably
objected, as Mr. Houston further points out, that the effect of the pro
posed plan would be heaviest on non-combatants ; " for as the less can
not exceed the greater, economic pressure alone, as a preliminary force
to prevent war, will never be so hard upon women and children and
other non-combatants as economic pressure in time of war."

The plan, Mr. Houston makes plain, has the support of many
experienced business men, and so cannot be regarded as a dream of
economic theorists or peace enthusiasts. If properly developed, it
might lead not only to greater security against international lawless
ness, but also to greater convenience in the transaction of business
between the citizens of different nations. Both of these purposes
would, it seems, be served by the establishment of an international
clearing house and an international chamber of commerce.

The real effectiveness of the scheme is what most needs demon
stration. As Mr. Houston acknowledges, the contention that if a
league of nations pledged to employ economic pressure in the inter
ests of peace had existed before the outbreak of the present war,
Austria might have been held in check, is subject to the important
qualification, " if Germany had been a member of the league." But,
needless to say, Germany, whether she belonged to a league of nations
or not, might easily have prevented Austria from going to war. In
order to estimate the value of the device, one must consider what its
effect would have been upon Germany herself. Germany, no one
doubts, had counted the cost and would have taken the plunge in any
event.

As has often been pointed out, commercial intercourse does not
necessarily mean friendship, nor is mutuality of commercial interests
a safeguard against the menace of militarism. The plan of using the
threat of commercial warfare as a restraint seems, however, to be a
logical part of the programme of the League to Enforce Peace, which is
generally regarded as on the whole the most hopeful suggestion that
has been made toward preventing war. The commercial boycott would
introduce an intermediate stage between the breaking-off of diplomatic
relations and the declaration of war. Its application would have the
effect of calling the bluff of any bellicose nation, without actually pre
cipitating hostilities.

Although Mr. Houston's treatment of the subject is rather too
brief to carry complete conviction, his book is of value as setting forth
a carefully formulated programme, argumentatively explained and
backed by considerable authority.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY

XIV

(April I— May 1)

WHEN the thirteenth month of American participation in the war
against Germany opened, the great drive of the Central Powers in
their spring offensive was in full swing. Already it had resulted in
substantial gains of territory for Hindenburg's forces, and Berlin was
celebrating the capture of a large number of guns and many thou
sands of British prisoners. Throughout practically all the month the
drive continued, with occasional halts for reorganization, but with
steady gain for the German arms. Their progress, however, became
slower and slower as the extension of their lines increased their own
difficulties, and as the Allied position improved and resistance was
strengthened. Finally, almost at the close of the month, the Germans
met a distinct and disastrous defeat. They had forced the British
out of their positions on the Messines Ridge and had advanced their
salient to the south of Ypres. That was the beginning of their last
success. On April 29th General von Arnim, with sixteen divisions,
delivered an all day assault on a fifteen mile front. The Germans
were met by heavy machine gun cross fire and were literally mowed
down. Thirteen of von Arnim's divisions were broken up and thrown
out of the fighting. At this writing no renewal of the drive has been
attempted.

Meantime, on April 15 General Foch had been formally appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies in France. Up to March
25 he had been serving as special adviser of the Supreme War Council
at Versailles, and since March 25 he had been giving instructions, but
only as to strategy. Since April 15 he has been giving orders as
Supreme Commander on the Western front, and Italian and Amer
ican troops are in his army, as well as British and French. The
American forces in France have been put on the lines as rapidly as
possible, brigaded with both British and French troops. On April
20 the Germans in considerable force attacked a part of the line held
by our troops at Seicheprey, but were completely repulsed after hard
fighting. Berlin reported the capture of 183 Americans. General
Pershing reported that we had suffered rather severe losses, but there
has been no confirmation of the Berlin report of this capture.

Toward the close of the month Germany began pushing Holland
in a manner indicating an intention to drive the Dutch into the war.
A pretext was made of the old question of transportation of sand and
gravel. The month closed with the situation very critical for the
Dutch, although possibility of a settlement has not been exhausted.

The steady progress of the German drive was accompanied nat-

934 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

urally by a rising tide of annexationist sentiment. The intransigeants
recognized their day and again talked of indemnities and of " com
pensation for their sufferings, their sacrifices and their losses." There
was much open expression of their determination to seize the iron
deposits of France and to disregard the claims of Belgium.

While this was going on there was occurring a singularly inter
esting and significant series of events, centered at Vienna and aimed,
apparently, at an effort to take advantage of the temporary success
in arms to promote a " German peace." This series opened on April 2,
when Count Czernin addressed a deputation of the Vienna City Coun
cil. He began with the boast that " with the signature of peace with
Roumania war in the East is ended," and, after further felicitation on
that fact, proceeded to discuss President Wilson's speech of February
11, in reply to the Czernin address of January 24. He acquitted the
President of any intention to drive a wedge between Vienna and
Berlin, saying " he does not desire that and knows that it is impossible."

Count Czernin then joined Count Hertling, the German Chancellor,
in declaring that the four principles of Mr. Wilson's speech " are a
suitable basis upon which to begin negotiations about a general peace.
The question is whether or not Mr. Wilson will succeed in uniting his
Allies upon this basis."

After describing the efforts which he alleged the Central Powers
had made to avoid a new offensive, Count Czernin said:

" A short time before the beginning of the offensive in the West,
M. Clemenceau inquired of me whether and upon what basis I was
prepared to negotiate. I immediately replied, in agreement with Berlin,
that I was ready to negotiate, and that, as regards France, I saw no
other obstacle to peace than France's desire for Alsace-Lorraine. The
reply from Paris was that it was impossible to negotiate on that basis.
There was then no choice left."

Having thus intimated again to the United States their willingness
to consider peace, ostensibly on the Wilson basis, Count Czernin went
on to advise the President, the Allies and the Entente generally in
indirect but no less forceful phrase of the real character of the peace
the Central Powers are seeking. " We are fighting," he said, " united
for the defence of Austria-Hungary and Germany. * * * What
ever may happen we shall not sacrifice German interests any more
than Germany will desert us. Loyalty on the Danube is not less than
German loyalty."

Thereupon the Austrian Foreign Minister threw in a little discus
sion of the terms of peace with Ukraine and Roumania, as if by way
of interpreting what he expected in a peace with France, Great Britain,
Italy and the United States. He said that the peace with Ukraine
and Roumania included " full protection " for " our interests in the
questions of grain, food supply, and petroleum," as well as " indem
nification for the injustice innocently suffered by many of our coun
trymen owing to the war." Then he added, " I do not intend to go
begging for peace, or to obtain it by entreaties or lamentations, but
to enforce it by our moral right and physical strength."

" Those who continuously beg for peace," he continued, " are
despicable and foolish. * * * To endeavor to conclude peace at
any price is despicable for it is unmanly, and it is foolish because it

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 935

continuously feeds the already dying aggressive spirit of the enemy.
* * * The leaders of the people must consider that certain utter
ances made abroad produce just the opposite effect from that they
desire."

This speech evoked immediate and bitter retort from Paris and
led in a short time to the downfall of Count Czernin. When Premier
Clemenceau was asked about Czernin's statement that he had initiated
a peace move, he replied with only two words, " Czernin lied."

Washington took this remarkable speech as a new peace drive,
launched by the Central Powers at what they regarded as a favorable
moment, when their armies were making substantial progress on the
Western front. It was a calculated effort to entrap President Wilson
by seeking to appeal to his well known readiness to consider peace
at any stage of the war, provided there appears a possibility of secur
ing a genuine peace on decent terms. Also Czernin probably had in
mind the possibility of driving a political wedge between Great Britain
and France, but Clemenceau^ terse and vigorous comment upset the
calculations of the Teutonic statesmen. Subsequent developments
showed that Clemenceau was prepared very amply to back up his
charge.

On April 5 the French Government issued a statement disclosing
the fact that an interview had been had in Switzerland between Count
Revertata, counselor of the Austrian Legation at Berne, and Count
Armand, an official agent of the Paris Government. But it was at
the Austrian's initiative and Count Revertata wrote of it as held
" with a view to obtaining from the French Government a proposition
to Austria which might lead to future peace and be of such a nature
as to be susceptible of being endorsed by Austria and presented to the
German Government." The French statement added that " Count
Czernin in his speech not only did not tell the truth, but told the
opposite of the truth, which in France is termed ' lying '."

On April llth Emperor Charles of Austria personally entered the
controversy with a telegram to the German Kaiser saying " I accuse
M. Clemenceau of piling up lies to escape the web of lies in which he
is involved, making the false assertion that I in some manner recog
nized France's claims to Alsace-Lorraine as just. I naturally repel
this assertion. At the moment when Austro-Hungarian cannon are
firing along the Western front, no proof is necessary that I am
fighting for your provinces."

That same day the French Government made public in Paris the
text of a letter written by Emperor Charles to Prince Sixtus de
Bourbon, his brother-in-law, and sent by Prince Sixtus on March 31,
1917, to President Poincare. In this letter Emperor Charles, after
asserting the solidarity of the peoples of the dual monarchy and their
determination, spoke of the bravery, resistance and dash of the French
and hoped that " his keen sympathy for France, joined to that which
prevails in the whole monarchy, will avoid a return of the state of
war for which no responsibility can fall on me."

" With this in mind," continued the Emperor Charles, " and to
show in a definite manner the reality of these feelings, I beg you to
convey privately and unofficially to President Poincare that I will sup
port by every means, and by exerting all influence with my Allies,

936 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

France's just claims regarding Alsace-Lorraine." To this unequivocal
declaration regarding France's rights in Alsace-Lorraine, the Aus
trian Emperor added a declaration about Belgium which, he said,
" should be entirely re-established in her sovereignty, retaining entirely
her African possessions, without prejudice to the compensations she
should receive for losses she has undergone."

This disclosure produced rage in Berlin, dismay in Vienna and
rejoicing in Paris and the Allied capitals. Vienna gave numerous
explanations in defence — the letter was written by the Duchess of
Parma, mother-in-law of Emperor Charles, and the Emperor had
merely added some lines over his signature : the letter as published in
Paris was garbled: the letter as published was a false version: the
letter was a forgery, etc. Before the publication of the text, the
Austro-German press had referred to it as a pure invention.

The downfall of Czernin came promptly after the publication of
this letter. On April 15 it was reported both from Holland and
Switzerland. At the same time it was announced that Emperor Charles
had telegraphed to the German Kaiser, " Clemenceau's accusations
against me are so low that I have no intention longer to discuss this
affair with France. My cannon in the West are our last reply."
That same day he accepted Czernin's resignation, but continued him
temporarily in charge of foreign affairs. It was said in explanation
of Czernin that he had not known of Emperor Charles's letter to
Prince Sixtus until the French made it public. The latest attitude of
the Austrian Government is that the letter to Prince Sixtus was forged
and it now professes to be endeavoring to learn who was responsible
for the delivery of the forged letter to the French press.

On April 17 Baron Burian, Minister of Finance in the Austrian
Government and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, was recalled
to the Foreign Office to take Czernin's place. He is a super-reac
tionary who may be expected to attempt to outdo the German Junkers.

It has also developed from Paris that Prince Sixtus had received
two letters from Emperor Charles. The second has not been made
public, a fact which may have some bearing upon the Emperor's
refusal longer to continue the discussion.

If Czernin was really desirous of evoking a declaration from Pres
ident Wilson on the subject of the possibility of peace, he was promptly
successful, although no doubt he did not seek exactly what he got.
On April 6 the campaign for the Third Liberty Loan began. President
Wilson went to Baltimore to open the campaign and to review a divi
sion of troops from Camp Meade. It was an inauspicious day for
peace talk. The President began his speech by saying:

" This is the anniversary of our acceptance of Germany's challenge
to fight for our right to live and be free, and for the sacred rights of
freemen everywhere. The nation is awake. There is no need to call
to it. We know what the war must cost, our utmost sacrifice, the
lives of our fittest men and, if need be, all that we possess."

In this speech President Wilson notified Germany and her Allies
of the intention and readiness of the United States to use force to
the utmost, without stint or limit, to accomplish victory.

" I call you to witness," he said, " that at no stage of this terrible
business have I judged the purposes of Germany intemperately.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 937

* * * I have sought to learn the objects Germany has in this war
from the mouths of her own spokesmen, and to deal as frankly with
them as I wished them to deal with me. * * * I have sought to
learn from those who spoke for Germany whether it was justice or
dominion and the execution of their own will upon the other nations
of the world that Germany's leaders were seeking. * * *

" They have answered — answered in unmistakable terms. They
have avowed that it was not justice but dominion and the unhindered
execution of their own will. The avowal has not come from Ger
many's statesmen. It has come from her military leaders who are her
real rulers. * * * We cannot mistake what they have done in
Russia, in Finland, in the Ukraine and in Roumania. The real test
of their justice and fair play has come. From this we may judge
the rest. * * *

" I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. All the world
shall know that you accept it. * * * Germany has once more said
that force and force alone shall decide whether justice and peace shall
reign in the affairs of men, whether right as America conceives it or
dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind.
There is, therefore, but one response possible from us: force, force
to the utmost ; force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant
force which shall make right the law of the world and cast every
selfish dominion down in the dust."

The next day, telegraphing to King George of England, in reply
to greetings on the anniversary of American entry into the war, the
President said:

" Permit me also to assure your Majesty that we shall continue
to do everything possible to put the whole force of the United States
into this great struggle."

The month closed with vigorous preparation to carry out the pur
pose thus so clearly expressed by the President, to put the entire
force of the nation into the struggle. Mr. Baker, Secretary of War,
having returned from his inspection of American troops in France
and his conferences with our Allies, took to the House Committee on
Military Affairs the estimates of the War Department for appropria
tions for the ensuing year. He based these estimates upon an unlim
ited army, and he told this Committee that it was the desire of the
President to raise, equip and train the largest number of men possible.
Alteration of the existing law which requires the President to raise
troops in increments of 500,000 was desired. The estimates submitted
aggregate about fifteen billion dollars, which Mr. Baker requested
Congress to appropriate for the service of the army for the next year.
That sum is considerably larger than the entire expenditure of the
Government for the current year. At the same time Mr. Baker an
nounced the early calling to the colors of several hundred thousand
more men and reiterated his statement of belief that we should have
more than one million five hundred thousand men in France before
the end of the year. Shipments of men and supplies to Europe have
been greatly accelerated already and will be further increased.

Congress has been working on various measures designed to assist
in the equipment of the country for war. Two of these have been
exceptionally controversial. One was the bill intended to confer upon

938 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

the President extraordinary powers with reference to co-ordination
and reorganization of Governmental departments. The other is de
signed to enable the Government to punish disloyalty and sedition.

The month has seen practical confession of failure in one of the
most important measures of preparation — the production of aircraft.
On April 10, the Senate Committee on Military Affairs rendered two
reports of its investigation into this question. The majority report
called the Signal Corps work greatly disappointing; contained pointed
criticism of the Government for procrastinating, neglect to arrive at
quick decisions, and for misrepresenting the progress of the aviation
programme. The minority report laid emphasis upon the fact that
contracts had been let for the production of a large number of battle
planes in France. During the remainder of the month the subject
was before the Senate repeatedly and numerous ugly insinuations of
criminality were made. Direct charges did not become public, how
ever. On April 24 the situation reached a climax in the reorganiza
tion of aircraft production. President Wilson appointed John D.
Ryan, of Montana, president of the Anaconda Copper Mining Com
pany and a member of the Red Cross War Council, to be Chairman
of the Aircraft Board and Director-General of Aircraft Production
in place of Howard E. Coffin. Major-General George O. Squier,
head of the Signal Corps of the army, was displaced as head of the
aviation section and a new division of aeronautics was created with
Brigadier-General William L. Kenly as its head.

In pleasant contrast with the situation regarding aircraft produc
tion was the work of the United States Shipping Board. The demand
for more men in France, emphasized by the progress of the German
drive, resulted, naturally, in increased efforts to stimulate ship produc
tion in this country. On April 2 Edward N. Hurley, Chairman of the
Shipping Board, telegraphed every shipyard in the country that "the
American people want ships, not excuses." March deliveries were
30,000 tons under estimate. He demanded a general speeding up.

On April 9 it was announced in Washington that by additional
restriction on imports, by withdrawing ships from the less necessary
trades, and by obtaining neutral tonnage, the United States had been
able to put 2,762,605 tons of shipping into the North Atlantic service
to carry men and munitions to France. Of this amount 2,365,434
tons were registered as American. Japan had promised about 250,000
tons by summer.

On April 16 a new post was created in the shipping organization —
that of Director General of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. It was
filled by the appointment of Charles M. Schwab, chairman of the
Board of Directors of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Mr. Schwab
is to have " practically unlimited powers in connection with the work
of construction of all shipyards of the country doing work for the
Fleet Corporation." That announcement was made at the White
House, following a conference with the Shipping Board representa
tives and Mr. Schwab with the President. Mr. Hurley continues as
Chairman of the Shipping Board and President of the Emergency
Fleet Corporation, and Charles Piez continues as Vice-President of
the Fleet Corporation. The post of General Manager of the Fleet
Corporation previously filled by Mr. Piez is abolished.

OUR WAR WITH GERMANY 939

On April 19 Mr. Schwab opened offices in Philadelphia, taking all
the division chiefs of the Fleet Corporation connected with ship con
struction and about fifteen hundred employees with him, and it was
announced that the operating department would be removed to New
York. It was also announced that the output of tonnage for April
would be about 240,000 tons and that the indicated output for the
year would be more than four million tons. The month closed with
a signal triumph for the Shipping Board in the launching of a 5,500-
ton steel ship in twenty-seven days and three hours after the laying
of the keel.

The campaign for the Third Liberty Loan has occupied the entire
month. It closed with a substantial over-subscription in practically
all of the twelve districts. At this writing it is too early to give the
figures, but it is known that the loan has been the most successful
undertaken by this Government, and probably the most successful of
all those taken by the Allies in the number of subscribers. Prelim
inary figures show that probably more than 17,000,000 individuals have
taken part in subscribing to this loan. This is another evidence of the
accuracy of the President's statement at Baltimore on April 6 that
the nation is awake.

[This record is as of May I and is to be continued]

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES

LET MASSACHUSETTS LEAD
(From The Boston Transcript)

At the dinner tendered Lord Reading by the Lotos Club a fortnight
or more ago, Colonel George Harvey made a suggestion pertinent to
the times which has not found favor with professional politicians of
either party. On that account it has attracted all the more attention
among the people to whom " nothing else matters until the war is won."
The suggestion was that the usual campaign preceding the election of
a new House of Representatives, which the Constitution fixes for Novem
ber next, be abandoned, to the end that the people might be spared the
annoyance of the blare of partisan trumpets and give ear only to counsel
and constructive criticism intended to speed up the conduct of the war
and hasten the day of victory. The election must be held, but the cam
paign could easily become so nominal that the mass of the people would
pay little attention to it and content themselves only with an examina
tion of the records on the war of the candidates seeking reelection. No
congressman who has opposed either directly or indirectly the vigorous
prosecution of the war since the declaration of hostilities ought to be
reflected. The number of those is not large and it ought not to require
a campaign from coast to coast to defeat them. Concentration upon the
opponents of the war and its left-handed supporters would accomplish
the desired result of weeding these men out of Congress and replacing
them with duly qualified citizens to whom the winning of the war as
swiftly as possible is the paramount purpose of their lives.

Fortunately for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, its representa
tion in both houses of Congress is without any taint of disloyalty, and
it includes no cuckooes. Of the sixteen congressmen in the House, fifteen
will be candidates for re-election. They are Representatives Treadway,
Gillett, Paige, Winslow, Rogers, Lufkin, Dallinger, Tinkham, Greene
and Walsh, Republicans; and Representatives Phelan, Tague, Gallivan
and Olney, Democrats; and Representative Fuller, Independent. Repre
sentative Carter, Republican, will retire from Congress at the end of his
term, and therefore his successor must be chosen. So far as the fifteen
candidates for re-election are concerned, however — the Republicans and
the Democrats — we can think of no good reason why the suggestion of
Colonel Harvey should not be adopted by the people of Massachusetts.
The traditional policies of peace times upon which the parties divide are
not uppermost in the mind of the electorate today, but have very properly
been subordinated to policies that concern the conduct of the war. The

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 941

Democratic members of the delegation, as well as the Republican mem
bers, have not abandoned their allegiance to their country and set up in
its place an allegiance to the administration. Their loyalty has been
loyalty to the Government and not to the personality of any member of
the administration. This is not to say that every member of the delegation
has been wise in all of his criticisms or in all of his compliments, but no
member of the delegation has ceased to function as a congressman or is
guilty today of uttering the cuckoo cry " Don't criticize — energize," a
slogan of cowardice which is the successor of " Safety First " in the
lexicon of national self-abasement.

In other years it will be possible to strengthen the delegation by the
election of a number of men better qualified for congressional service.
We can well afford to make loyalty the acid test this year — loyalty to
congressional responsibility, the loyalty of intelligence and courage.
Such a test the Massachusetts members of the House of Representatives,
both Republicans and Democrats, can pass. What is true of the Massa
chusetts congressmen is true of the Massachusetts senators. In Lodge
and Weeks the Commonwealth has two representatives in the Upper
House of Congress whose fearless pressure for maximum efficiency in
the conduct of the war is daily felt at both ends of Pennsylvania avenue.
To recall either one would be worse than a loss to Massachusetts ; it would
be a disadvantage to the nation.

Massachusetts may well lead in the adoption of Colonel Harvey's
timely suggestion by serving notice on the professional politicians to
keep out of this State this year, and by re-electing the whole Massachu
setts delegation at Washington in recognition of the loyalty with which
they have supported the prosecution of the war, opposed its misconduct
wherever they believed they found misconduct, and stood by the Govern
ment in its every forward step toward victory. Let us keep these men
on the job until the war is won or until one of them falls a victim to the
sneaking hope of a premature peace. The professional politicians will
not welcome the idea that this is an off year for them. But this is the
people's war ; they will pay its costs ; they are the only sovereigns in this
country. Their representatives at Washington are their head servants and
nothing more.

DOWN WITH NINCOMPOOPISM!

(From The Louisville Courier- Journal)

The President spoke well at Baltimore, as, barring an occasional
slip of tongue, he speaks everywhere and always. The born pacifist
finds it hard to change himself into a warrior. But Woodrow Wilson
was not born a pacifist. He accepted pacifism as a part of the gospel
of Sweetness and Light to which he became a convert during his literary
salad days and has pursued it professionally as President of the United
States.

He has learned the needful lesson in the White House. His present
answer to the gage of battle thrown down by the Kaiser leaves nothing
to be added or desired. It aroused the listening Marylanders to a high
pitch of enthusiasm. . . .

942 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The President has gotten bravely over the conceit that we are fight
ing only the autocracy, headed by Billy Be Dam'd, and his militarist
Blood Tubs, not the German people; to Hell with them, along with the
Hohenzollerns ! Forced by Germany to take up arms in defense of all
we hold near and dear, we are fighting to shield our wives and children
from the defiling hand of the Germans. We are fighting to protect our
homes from a beast that knows no mercy, a beast whose lust is destruc
tion. We are fighting to preserve the institutions we love, the liberty
we cherish, the freedom that belongs to us. We are fighting in France
because it is there we can strike the enemy, but if we are defeated in
France we shall be conquered in America; no longer freemen, but slaves
of the most merciless and brutal taskmaster the world has known. Nor
is it true that for the German people we have no feeling of hate. As
George Harvey truly says, "you can no more separate the German
Government from the German people than you can separate the bite of
the mad dog from his blood," proceeding to show that the wickedness
and infamy of the German people is in their blood; and the corruption
and poison of their blood that have made them — not a small class or a
caste, not their rulers alone, but the whole people — a nation of savages;
and then, writing in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, he says:

Nor is it true that the Prussian alone is guilty. The brutality of the Prussian
cannot be exceeded, for that were impossible, by Bavarian or Saxon, but in the
refinement of their cruelty, their beastliness, their inhumanity, between North and
South German there is little choice.

With this premise established our duty lies clear before us.

Our duty is to kill Germans. To the killing of Germans we must bend all our
energies. We must think in terms of German dead, killed by rifles in American
hands, by bombs thrown by American youths, by shells fired by American gunners.
The more Germans we kill the fewer American graves there will be in France;
the more Germans we kill the less danger to our wives and daughters; the more
Germans we kill the sooner we shall welcome home our gallant lads. Nothing else
now counts. There is no thought other than this, no activity apart from the duty
forced upon us by Germany. The most highly civilized nations are united as
they never were before, actuated by the same impulse. In England, France and
Italy, among the English speaking peoples of the new world, under the southern
cross and on the torrid plains, they, like us, see their duty clear. It is, we repeat,
to kill Germans.

That is the way to " spit it out." To the devil with the sensibilities
of those nincompoops who waste their sympathies over the sufferings of
the lobster as his complexion turns from dirty blue into delicate pink,
while they are unmoved by the misery of the Belgians and the French.
Down with nincompoopism ! The millions of easy-going Americans, flat
tering themselves they are Christians because they feel no hate, to whom
the war has as yet no meaning, need to be aroused to a realization of
what the war means, not only to them, but to their men; that it is the
lives of their men against the lives of Germans.

" We do not know how many Germans we have yet to kill," says
George Harvey, to which the Courier- Journal suggests a million, or
more, nor all of them on the battlefield, for there are hundreds, maybe
thousands, of spies and secret agents, who must likewise be looked after.

Nor an end of the war until the Stars and Stripes float over Pots
dam, until the boys in khaki are quartered in Berlin and have made
Unter den Linden their own, until Bill the Damned hangs from a cross-

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES

bar in front of the Schloss, and justice has been rendered by the German
nation and people — ample, pecuniary justice — to Serbia, Belgium and
France.

"UNANIMOUS CONSENT"

(From The Evening Mail)

Our good friend Colonel George Harvey and others who are urging the
election of senators and congressmen next fall on a unanimous consent
platform — that is, by agreement of Republicans and Democrats on candi
dates — ignore the fact that this was never intended to be, and is not now,
a unanimous-consent government.

Ours is a government by parties — by political division of the people.
It has never been better governed than when the party in power found
itself faced in Congress by a spirited, critical minority ; it has never been
more poorly governed than when the party in power has had an over
whelming majority in Congress, and King Caucus, backed by executive
decree, has legislated by steam-rpller.

We are not to forget — indeed, in these days we must not forget — that
the preamble to our constitution begins " We, the people of the United
States * * * " The people have many opinions. They view events
great and small from many angles. Every citizen is entitled to express
himself as he believes to be for the best interest of the government.
Sound thinking for the country is not confined to Washington, whether
in the White House or in Congress ; the truest interpretation of the aspi
rations and purposes of our nation comes from the ballot box. Take it
by and large, as we look back through our century and a quarter of years,
our election figures from time to time have pointed the way to our des
tinies more wisely, more safely, than have the voices of our statesmen.

Election day is our day of judgment by the people. It is the bulwark
of our government, the best anchor we can tie to. It is never more so
than in times of stress. It must be free from manipulation by two-party
agreements. We must have a free Congress if we are to have a real
Congress. Republicans and Democrats are one in the resolve to fight this
war to a victorious finish, whether it takes one year or ten ; but Republicans
and Democrats may differ greatly as to the conduct of the war. In so
doing, provided their differences are based on honest and broad grounds,
they really help win the war. They uncover mistakes before mistakes
prove disastrous; they make optimism justify itself, instead of leaving it
to run riot in imagination.

President Wilson has had a more solid support from Republican
senators and congressman than any President has ever had in war time
from political opponents. He has had a more helpful, broader support
from Republicans than he has had from his own party. He has been
more bitterly assailed by Democrats than by others; and he has assailed
Democrats — the latest his friend Senator Chamberlain — more bitterly
than he has assailed Republicans. At the same time, Republicans have
not hesitated to call attention to the weaknesses — some inevitable, others
not inevitable — of the administration's methods, plans and delays. It
cannot be truthfully said that the criticisms from the Republican side
have been captious, petty or not well based. Men of the type of Senator

944 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Lodge have remained silent under great pressure from war conditions to
speak the truth to the country. They have waited hopefully for a change
for the better; they have resisted demand after demand to make known
the facts before them ; they spoke only when silence had become a menace
to the true interest of our country.

Such an opposition is an inspiration to good government, to responsible
leadership. It ought to be welcomed, not opposed, by those in author
ity. Whether it is welcomed or not, the people, we may be sure, will
insist upon it. No combination of party managers, if one should be
attempted, could avail against the popular determination to have Congress
what it was intended to be — the free expression of the people's desires
and opinions.

THE " STAATSZEITUNG " AND THE CONSTITUTION
(From The Staaiszeitung)

Colonel George Harvey, who so ably edits THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW, can lay claim to inclusion among our most distinguished citizens.
Yet, even he is neither " two-thirds of both Houses " of the Congress nor
" the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several states." A certain
presumption might consequently attach to the Colonel's attempt per
sonally to amend the Constitution of the United States by passing over
the Congressional elections this autumn, were his motives for the sug
gestion not so patently good. Colonel Harvey apparently looks with
apprehension upon a change of Congressional complexion that might lessen
the earnest cooperation between the Capitol and the White House in the
prosecution of the war. The Colonel worries needlessly — even danger
ously, when his worries move him to so very radical a suggestion as that
which he made at the dinner given to Lord Reading the other night.

The Republican party has an honorable war record. A Democratic
President has received from its representatives in the Congress sound
counsel and unflinching support. On more occasions that one, when
Democratic legislators on Capitol Hill developed signs of truculence,
Republicans put through legislation asked for by the President and
demanded by the situation. It is idle, therefore, to say that the country
has anything to fear from an election which might return a Republican to
the Congress from a district at present represented by a Democrat. To
say it, is to indict the whole Republican candidacy of disloyalty. The
record of the Republicans now in the Congress disproves the indictment,
even before it is delivered.

Colonel Roosevelt very frequently says some very foolish things.
There is no questioning his loyalty, however, even when he " lets himself
out " as he did down in Maine the other night. " It is the duty of the
Republican Party ", said Colonel Roosevelt in his Portland speech, " to
stand like a rock against inefficiency, incompetence, hesitation, and delay
no less than against any lukewarmness in serving the common cause of
ourselves and our allies." Sometimes the Colonel is given to finding
" inefficiency, incompetence, hesitation, and delay " where they do not
exist. This statement of principles, however, and of the duty of the
Republican party is eminently sound. The same principle and the same
duty are recognized by the Democratic party. It is, therefore, difficult

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 945

to see what either has to fear from the other as a result of an election
required by the Constitution.

Under the political systems of other parliamentary countries general
elections may be waived. Under our own, elections must be carried out
as they are definitely provided for by the fundamental law of the land.
So ingeniously conceived is our Constitution, however, that while a change
in the political complexion of the Congress may be effected every two
years, only death or impeachment can change the Executive until the term
for which he is elected has expired. This condition has sometimes resulted
in peace time in predicament. There is no danger whatever of it result
ing so in war time. So far, party lines have been obliterated in the Con
gress. They will undoubtedly continue so until the end of the war.

There would, therefore, appear to be no good reason why the Consti
tution, rather than Colonel Harvey, should not have its way this year, as
it has been allowed to have it for the last one hundred and thirty years.
While we gladly admit our admiration of the Colonel's many distinguished
and estimable qualities, we are compelled to say that we think his recent
novel suggestion something of a slur on both the Democratic and Repub
lican parties.

A LOTOS DREAM
(From The Brooklyn Times}

The unmistakably American writer for the World who described the
banquet of the Lotos Club, and the even more profound student of the laws
and institutions of the United States who prepared a headline for the stir
ring and striking article the writer produced, distinguished our good friend,
Colonel George Harvey, as the chief, the exemplar, the archetype of all
the Bolsheviki, in their exuberant interpretation of the speech the Colonel
made. Probably no one in all this broad land was more amazed than
Colonel Harvey when he read at the top of the first column on the front
page of our contemporary, this revolutionary caption: "Keep Wilson In
As the President, Colonel Harvey Urges." Nor did his amazement lose
its momentum, we venture to say, when he found it printed in black and
white that

Original sponsor for President Wilson in 1906, later a predictor of Mr. Wil
son's defeat by Justice Hughes, and after Mr. Wilson's election, his bitter critic
and lampooner, Colonel Harvey, nevertheless, last night deplored the injection of
political partisanship into affairs at Washington, and urged the two great parties
reach some agreement whereby Mr. Wilson might retain office without the animosi
ties and expense of a contest at the polls, presumably for the duration of the war.

We confess that when this paragraph assaulted our sense, we cried
out, " Colonel, don't ! " We prepared rapidly an appeal on behalf of the
rights and liberties of our fellow countrymen, and the Constitution in
deadly danger, from Phil, old scout, to Philip the day after. We felt
rushing up in us a plea to Colonel Harvey to give the matter reconsidera
tion — not in the Lotos Club, but somewhere else.

Fortunately, before we committed this to type, we read on. And on.
And brought up, bang, at the end of Colonel Harvey's speech without
finding a single reference to the election for a President of the United
States, to be held, in accordance with law and custom, in the year 1920.

VOL. ccvii.— NO. 751 60

946 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Having thus followed the lines in our vain quest, we read between the
lines. Still the matter of the next Presidential election remained remote
and untouched by any thought of Colonel Harvey's. He did speak of
the coming Congressional elections. He did say that the legislative branch
of government should remain in political harmony with the executive
branch. He did urge that this be assured by an agreement of the leaders
of both the great political parties to unite on all the present members of
Congress, except the few whose disloyalty was easily ascertainable, or
already ascertained. " True/' said Colonel Harvey, " we must observe
the form of an election, but there should be but one issue — loyalty to
country, to civilization and to God."

Our concern for the Constitution is relieved. Colonel Harvey does
not intend to commit a revolution. He just wants everybody to vote for
the Democratic candidates in the coming election, who are already in
Congress, or the Republicans who are already in Congress. With the
exception of one or two here and there, whose names, doubtless, he will
furnish on application. So far as the Colonel is concerned, we shall go
right on being a Republic. But our contemporary should realize that the
Lotos Club is dangerous except for seasoned veterans who can remain
cool under the heaviest artillery fire.

" FATUOUS NOTIONS OF DUTY AND LOYALTY "
(From The Evening Sun)

Colonel George Harvey — like some other contemporary thinkers —
has a strange idea of the United States Constitution. He seems to think
it is an elastic bag with reversible lining.

His latest simple and easy proposition is that the Congress elections
falling due in the early winter of this year should not be held or should be
turned into a mere farce, the Constitution and the laws to the contrary
notwithstanding, because in his opinion they are not necessary. He
launched the idea at a Lotos Club speech on Wednesday evening. He
thought the setting aside of the election was a mere matter of arrange
ment between the leaders of the two political parties. This looks like
a neat, modern adaptation of Congressman " Tim " Campbell's famous
remark.

Colonel Harvey's rosewater inspiration is quite characteristic of the
period. Fatuous notions of duty and loyalty take the place of robust
common sense. He fears that an election may be made the occasion of
partisan striving. Well, what of it, if partisan rivalry bring out whole
some criticism and healthy competition for popular favor by demonstra
tion of ability to serve?

What could possibly be more welcome to smug self-sufficiency and
inefficiency, should they by any remote chance creep into high places, than
an " arrangement " that would guarantee them against the acid test of
the popular suffrage?

RHETORIC AND SPILT MILK
(From The Evening Globe)

Colonel Roosevelt is unquestionably right in saying that it is by shoot
ing rather than shouting at Germany the war is to be won. Rhetoric has

CONTEMPORARY ECHOES 947

done good (for a democracy is necessarily a government by talk), but it has
done about all the good in the present crisis of which it is capable. The
need of the hour is for acts, and, as far as possible, a tongue-tied leader
ship. Blessed is the man who can control his lips in this crisis and whose
energy goes into doing.

But as rhetorical proclamations of purpose and boastful announce
ments of what is about to be done no longer help much, so unbridled
criticism is of slender use. That unwarranted delays have occurred is
patent. That the President in many respects has failed to measure up to
the ideal is sadly true. But under our form of government we cannot
change horses even though there should be desire to do so. The President
is in office. This is a fixed fact of the situation. Such being the unal
terable condition, it is not easy to see what good comes from railing at
his leadership. If milk has been spilt it is not to be recovered by com
plainings. The President is the centre of national authority and action
and he must be supported.

But disregarding the series of admitted mistakes that have been made,
Colonel Roosevelt does a great public service by raising his voice to
educate public opinion to the need of making preparations on the theory
that the war will not be short. In August, 1914, as all can now see, this
country was guilty of a great blunder when it failed to enter the war
when Belgium was violated. But no one is warranted in complaining of
a fellow citizen on this account. As far as we are aware THE NORTH
AMERICAN REVIEW and The Globe had a monopoly of the view that
neutrality was impossible in the presence of the issue raised. But neither
the President nor even Colonel Roosevelt saw the reality, although they
both now "see that if it had been recognized at once the war would have
been over long ago. The colonel's eyes opened within three months,
while the President's remained closed for two and a half years, but
except in the matter of quicker perception the mistake was the same.
Here was an error that really counted and which must not be repeated
by assuming that Great Britain, France, and Italy will do our work and
that hence there is no reason for America to disturb herself. It is as
immoral as it is unwise for us to rely in this way on the sacrifices of our
allies. We must show by acts that we are not slackers in the great
business of saving civilization.

WHO FIRST DAMNED WILLIAM?
(From The Philadelphia Public Ledger)

We appreciate the kindliness of our correspondent who compliments
us on having dubbed the Kaiser " William the Damned " in a recent
editorial on this page; but credit for having originated the phrase should
be given, we believe, to Colonel George Harvey. It's a good one.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

THE SCRIPTURES ON THE WAR

SIR,—

The following Scriptural applications to the War may be of interest
to your readers.

Uncle Sam: For himself:

" Blessed be the Lord my strength, Who teacheth my hands to war,
and my fingers to fight." (Ps. CIV, 1).

" I call heaven and earth to record this day " (Deut. XXX, 19), that
" by the space of three years " (Acts XX, 31), "I laboured for peace "
(Ps. CXX, 7).

"The nobles . . . sent many letters" (Neh. VI, 17), "rising
up early and sending them " (Jer. XXV, 4), " And the king answered
them roughly, . . . saying that" (2 Chron. X, 13), "he hath de
scribed a boundary upon the face of the waters " (Job XXVI, 10),
" wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass
thereby ". (Is. XXXIII, 21).

"Woe is me!" (Is. VI, 5), "In the valley of decision" (Joel III,
14), " I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, and had no comfort".
(Ps. XXXIX, 2).
Why he had no comfort:

" The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground "
(Gen. IV, 10).

" In the day that thou stoodest aloof, in the day that strangers car
ried away his substance, and foreigners entered into his gates . . .
even thou was as one of them." (Obad. ii.)

" Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the
inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to
the help of the Lord against the mighty". (Judges V, 23).

" I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would
thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou art luke-warm, and neither
cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth . . . Thou sayest, I
am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing: And
knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind,
and naked." (Rev. Ill, 15-17).

" What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul? " (Mark VIII, 86).
His Excuses:

" Am I my brother's keeper " ? (Gen. IV, 9).

" I said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 949

people, The work is great and large, and we are separated . . . one
far from another ". (Neh. IV, 19).

" Ye have not passed this way heretofore." (Josh. Ill, 4s).

" When he shall roar, then shall the children tremble from the West."
(Hos. XI, 10).

" For as yet the people had not prepared ", (2 Chron. XX, 33).

" It is a rebellious people . . . which say to the seers, See not ;
and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us
smooth things, prophesy deceits." (Is. XXX, 9, 10).

"They cry, Peace, peace" (Jer. VI, 14).

" Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of
the Lord yet revealed unto him" (1 Sam. Ill, 7).

His call:

" And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel,
Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak; for thy servant heareth ". (1 Sam.
Ill, 10).

" Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here " ? (Numb.
XXXII, 6).

" Prepare ye war against her, and let us go up ". (Jer. VI, 4).

" Arise ye, and pass quickly over the water ". (2 Sam. XVII, 21).

" Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty
vessels; borrow not a few ". (2 Kgs. IV, 3).

" Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships ... to bring
thy sons from far". (Is. LX, 9).

His response:

"We have sinned . . . we will go up and fight". (Deut. 1, 41).

"Now I have prepared with all my might". (1 Chron. XXIX, 2).

" I will bring thy sons from the East, and gather thee from the West:
I will say to the North, Give up ; and to the South, Keep not back : bring
my sons from far, and my daughters from the end of the earth ". (Is.
XLIII, 5-6).

" And all the people said, Amen, and praised the Lord". (1 Chron.
XVI, 36).

For our Army and Navy:

" Ye shall pass over before your brethren armed, all the mighty men
of valour, and shall help them, until the Lord have given your brethren
rest . . . then shall ye return unto the land of your possession, and
possess it." (Josh. I, 14-16).

For Germany:

" The Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, be
cause there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.
There is naught but swearing and breaking faith, and killing, and stealing,
and committing adultery." (Hosh. IV, 1, 2).

For the Kaiser:

" Thou hast said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God ". (Ezek.
XXVIII, 8).

For the Crown Prince:

" I am a worm, and no man: a reproach of men, and despised of the
people". (Ps. XXII, 6).

950 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

For the Kaiser's sons severally:

" Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night,
Nor for the arrow that flieth by day . . .
A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thou
sand at thy right hand:
But it shall not come nigh thee."

(Ps. XCI, 5-7).

" They are in no peril of death, but are lusty and strong.
They come in no misfortune like other folk: neither are they plagued

like other men.

And this is the cause that they are so holden with pride: and over
whelmed with cruelty.
Their eyes swell with fatness: and they do even what they lust."

(Ps. LXXIII, 4-7).

For von Emmich (Aug. 1914) :

" I passed over upon her fair neck ". (Hosh. X, 11).
For the Governor-Generals of Belgium and Poland:

" And he commanded the task-masters of the people, and their offi
cers, saying " (Ex. V, 6), " Everyone that is found shall be thrust through;
and everyone that is taken shall fall by the sword. Their infants also
shall be dashed in pieces before their eyes ; their houses shall be spoiled,
and their wives ravished/' (Is. XIII, 15-16). " I will not pity nor
spare, nor have compassion." (Jer. XIII, 14).
For von Hindenburg:

" He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass ". (Job XIX, 8).
For the Submarine:

" I will prepare destroyers against thee, everyone with his weapons ".
(Jer. XXII, 7).

" His soul draweth near to the grave, and his life to the destroyers ".
(Job XXXIII, 22).

" I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer ". (Ps. XVII, 4).
For Drs. von Bemstorff and Dumba:

" They also did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been
ambassadors " (Josh. IX, 4) ; " in whose hands is mischief, and their
right hand is full of bribes ". (Ps. XXVI, 10).

" Are not his servants come unto thee for to search, and to overthrow,
and to spy out the land " ? (1 Chron. XIX, 3).

" The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was
in his heart : his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords w
(Ps.^LV, 21).

" It was not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour: for
then I could have borne it ... But it was even thou . . . mine own
familiar friend/' (Ps. LV, 12-14).

" So he returned with shame of face to his own land ". (2 Chron.
XXXII, 21).
Their confession:

" Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonour ".
(Ps. LXIX, 19).

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 951

To those who are willing to accept a German peace:

" This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he
will take your sons, and appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to
be his horsemen . . . and he will set some to plow his ground, and
to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instru
ments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confec-
tionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields,
and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give
them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of
your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will
take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young
men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth
of your flocks: and ye shall be his servants." (1 Sam. VIII, 11-17).

For the Secret Service:

" Go, I pray you, make yet more sure, and know and see his place
where his haunt is, and who hath seen him there: for it is told me that
he dealeth very subtilly. See therefore, and take knowledge of all the
lurking places where he hideth himself, and come ye again to me . . .
and I will go with you . . . and will search him out." (1 Sam. XXIII,
22-23).

For the Shipping Board:

" I have considered the things which thou sentest to me for : and I
will do all thy desire concerning timber . . . my servants shall bring
them down . . . unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats
unto the place that thou shalt appoint me, and will cause them to be
discharged there, and thou shalt receive them." (1 Kgs. V, 8, 9).

" Let him make speed, and hasten his work." (Is. V, 19).

For all German-Americans:

" As free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness."
(1 Pet. II, 16).

For Belgium:

" And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee
rest from thy sorrow, and from thy trouble, and from the hard bondage
wherein thou was made to serve, that thou shalt take up this parable
against the King . . . and say, How hath the oppressor ceased ! . . .
that smote the peoples in wrath with a continual stroke, that ruled the
nations hi anger, with a persecution that none restrained. The whole
earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing . . . Hell
from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming . . . the
worm is spread under thee, and worms cover thee. How art thou fallen
from heaven, O Day Star, son of the morning ! How are thou cut down
to the ground, which didst lay low the nations ! And thou saidst in thine
heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars
of God ... I wiU be like the Most High. Yet shalt thou be brought
down to hell, to the uttermost parts of the pit. They that see thee shall
narrowly look upon thee, they shall consider thee, saying, Is this the
man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms: that made
the world as a wilderness, and overthrew the cities thereof; that let not
loose his prisoners to their home"? (Is. XIV, 3-17).

952 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

The Watchword for France:

" Thou shalt not pass ". (Gen. XXXI, 52).
The Watchword for England:

" Though they roar, yet can they not pass." (Jer. V, 22).
For Italy:

" And he pressed him: howbeit he would not go." (2 Sam. XIII, 25).
For Russia:

" He f eedeth on ashes : a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that
he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand " ?
(Is. XLIV, 20).
Our purpose for Germany:

" Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free ". ( Jn.
VIII, 82).

For the faint-hearted at home:

" In quietness and confidence shall be your strength ". (Is. XXX, 15).
For the world f after the war:

" I saw a new heaven, and a new earth : for the first heaven and the
first earth were passed away ". (Her. XXI, 1).

STUART L. TYSON, M.A. (Oxon.)

[NOTE: The translations used are the Authorized, the Revised, and
that in the Anglican Prayer Book Psalter. — AUTHOR.]

CODDLING LABOR

SIR, — I wish to express my hearty approval of the editorial appear
ing in the March number of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW under the
heading of, " Wanted, a Leader."

For some time it has seemed to me that unless active steps were
taken to disclose to the thinking people of this country the actual condi
tion of affairs existing in our Government, and through public demand
compelling the replacement of the weaklings and incompetents with
whom the President has surrounded himself, the war would either be
immeasurably prolonged or we would stand a very great risk of being
defeated. This publicity and effective criticism can, of course, only be
brought about through the press, and it was, therefore, with the greatest
satisfaction and approval that I read your article as being a decided
step in the right direction.

I wish to call your attention to a matter which has received very
little comment by the press, and that is the reduction of working hours
for the Delaware shipbuilders. The occasion imperatively demands that
every loyal citizen should exert himself to the utmost according to his
capabilities, and the country might reasonably expect that these ship
builders should voluntarily increase their working hours; yet, urged on
by their leaders, they demand not only abnormal increase in pay, but a
reduction of working hours and the closed shop. Although the very
existence of the nation is at stake, the Shipping Wage Adjustment
Board — or at least two members of it — in the absence of Mr. Coolidge
grant the reduction of working time demanded, giving the men the eight
hour day with a half holiday on Saturday. When we are continually
being told that the successful prosecution of the war and the maintenance

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 953

of our own soldiers at the front demand the maximum output possible
of shipping in this country, yet these two men, Mr. V. Everett Macey,
an officer of the National Association for Labor Legislation and pro
fessed union man, appointed by the President, and Mr. A. J. Berres,
Secretary-Treasurer of the International Association of Machinists, nomi
nated by Mr. Gompers, have the daring to actually reduce the working
hours in the face of their loud protestations of loyalty and determination
to aid in winning the war.

The public generally has not had this deliberate act of treachery
brought to its attention in a sufficiently forceful manner, and I would
urge that you look into and confirm these facts and bring them to the
attention of the public in a suitable editorial.

As a manufacturer I have been keenly alive to the activities of the
labor leaders during the war and the complete manner in which the
present Administration has placed itself on record as aiding and abet
ting labor in all its demands. Having had many experiences with these
activities and knowing what they result in, I am fearful of what may
be before us unless public opinion can compel the Administration to halt
in its present course.

Although a complete stranger to you, I trust you will appreciate
what has induced me to write you in this manner.

PROVIDENCE, R. I. Louis W. DOWNES.

MAKE IT SO!

SIR, — Why, with our bedlam of preparatory war work and particularly
our noisy machinery in the Committee on Public Information, have we
not a Directory of War Activities in every postoffice, national bank,
Red Cross headquarters, the principal public libraries, municipal employ
ment offices, and a hundred other stations where men, women and money,
with a desire promptly to throw their help into the national crisis as
volunteers or employees, may, by a ready reference, connect with an
attentive Government department or agency without the loss of time,
bewilderment, disappointment and disgust which now prevent the coun
try's talent from landing on the right spot?

After this German sentence I need not discuss the great utility of
such publication, in a thin-papered popular edition the sale of which
would pay for the whole project.

That would be mobilizing the still dormant national potentiality
ready and willing to serve.

At present the man in the street, the shop, the laboratory, farm or
office doesn't know who's who, what's what, or where to go with his
patriotic force in a unified scheme to fight with the whole nation, not
its soldiery alone.

NEWARK, N. J. H. W. WACK.

(Four Minute Man, New York and New Jersey.)

AN OLD FRIEND

I have been a reader of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for many
years, and think I have an unbroken file since 1890 — nearly thirty
years. I read Colonel Harvey's articles with great interest. I think
he is one of the most pungent and forceful writers of the day. His

954 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

criticisms of the Administration and conduct of the war are constructive
and ought to do something toward eradicating the spirit of partisanship
which is too powerful in Washington just now. If the President could
be induced to avail himself of the biggest and ablest men, regardless
of their political faith, a long step toward efficiency and ultimate success
would surely be achieved.

Why don't you offer the WAR WEEKLY to the general public as well
as the subscribers to the REVIEW? In my opinion it is deserving of the
widest possible circulation.

Los ANGELES, CAL. T. D. M.

DISSENT

SIR, — I admire the brilliant style of Mr. Harvey's writings, but I
am persuaded that the author's general attitude of carping, stinging
criticism of the Administration serves no good purpose in this hour of
the Nation's peril. I regard President Wilson as the greatest, the wisest
and the most far-seeing statesman in the world — the very hope of democ
racy. He should have the sympathy and the ardent support of every
sincere and warm-hearted American citizen. The spirit of Mr. Harvey's
utterances does not appeal to me.

PUYALLUP, WASH. ROBERT MONTGOMERY.

HELPING THE LIBERTY LOAN

SIR, — The Liberty Loan Committee directs me to thank you for
your kindness in granting us permission to reprint in pamphlet form
Gov. Strong's Liberty Loan article from the April NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW. There has been much favorable comment on this article, and we
are gratified to be in a position to use it in our Publicity Campaign for
the Third Liberty Loan.

Your patriotic cooperation is very much appreciated.

NEW YORK CITY. J. I. CLARKE,

(Assistant Director of Publicity, 2nd Federal Reserve District)

YES, WE HAVE THOUGHT

SIR,— I am of the opinion that it would be a great satisfaction to
you and a relief to the reading public if you could finally decide whether
Mr. Wilson is the greatest President we ever had or a horrible mistake.

Every great editor has some people who look to him for political
guidance and adopt his opinions as their own; have you ever thought
of what must be the state of mind of your particular followers in respect
of Mr. Wilson?

NEW YORK CITY. S. B. SMITH.

BRIGHT IDEA FROM HONDURAS

SIR, — An English friend, who has but recently returned from a three
months' visit to his birthplace, after reading " Wanted, a Leader," re
marked: "Apparently both London and Washington are having similar
trouble, a leader who is determined to have no one about him who might
eventually overshadow him."

To me, this was quite a new view of the matter.

SAN PEDRO SULA, HONDURAS, C. A. R. B. WATSON.

957

INDEX

TO THE

TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTH VOLUME

OF THE

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

After the War, 388.

Alcoholic Beverages and Insanity,
564.

Aliens, Obstacles in the Way of Draft
ing, 671.

ALLINSON, ANNE C. E.. For Right
eousness Sake, 102; Fear, Courage
and Christianity, 425.

Alsace-Lorraine, Germany and, 354.

American Propaganda Needed, 817.

Americans Should be Americans, 657.

Anglo-American Relations Reconsid
ered, 681.

Are We Too Late? 641.

At the Front, 418.

AUEBBACH, JOSEPH S. To-Day, 571;
On Some To-Morrow, 572; Author
ship and Liberty, 902.

Authorship and Liberty, 902.

BAKER, HARRY T. Wordsworth and
Annette, 433.

BARNES, H. E. Anglo-American Re
lations Reconsidered, 681.

BARRY, RICHARD. "Style" in Women's
Clothes, 729.

Ben Butler and the "Stolen Spoons".
66.

Benevolent Despotism, Are We to
Have A, 17.

Book of the Month, The, 130,284,446,
599, 764, 918.

Books Reviewed, 136, 289, 451, 603,
769, 923.

BOUTROUX, EMILE. After the War,
388.

Brazil's Interest in the War, 339.

British Railways During and After
the War, 196.

BROOKS, SYDNEY. British Railways

During and After the War, 196;
The Coming Copper Famine, 522.
BROWN, LEWIS P. The Jew is Not a
Slacker, 857.

Call to Patriots, A, 649.
CAMBRIDGE, ADA. The Haunted

House, 268.
CARTER, MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM H.,

U. S. A. Problems of Military

Transportation, 52.
Change, 879.
CHAPMAN, JOHN JAY. The Eternal

Battle, 665.
CHESTERTON, G. K. Germany and

Alsace-Lorraine, 354; The Real

Secret Diplomacy, 505.
CHUTE, ARTHUR HUNT. How Sleep

the Brave, 221; At the Front, 418.
Clemenceau, 695.
Communion, 245.
Contemporary Echoes, 150, 307, 618,

787, 940.

Coordination at the Top, 329.
Copper Famine, The Coming, 522.
CULBERTSON, WILLIAM S. The Tariff

Commission and its Work, 57.

Democracy Safe for the World, Mak
ing, 178.

Diplomacy: — Town Meeting Diplo
macy, 181; The Vice of Secret
Diplomacy, 209; The Real Secret
Diplomacy, 505.

Dostoievsky's Mystical Terror, 246.

Do We Speak English? 91.

Drafting Aliens, Obstacles in the Way
of, 671.

Drama and Music. 122, 278, 440.

DRISCOLL, LOUISE. The Second Com
ing, 415.

958 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

DEYDEN, FOEBEST F. The Government
and Wage-Earners' Insurance, 863.

EDITORIALS: — Thank God for Wilson,
2; Are We to Have a Benevolent
despotism? 17; Rodin, 21; We Must
Kill to Save, 161; The Lesson to the
Nation, 172; Straining the Sinews
of War, 173; Making Democracy
Safe for the World, 178; Town
Meeting Diplomacy, 181; Kill Spies,
183; Wanted: A Leader, 321; Can
Pacifists Win the War? 321; Coor
dination at the Top, 329; The Hun-
nishness of the Hun, 334; Brazil's

- Interest in the War, 339; Loss of
Trade and Need of Ships, 342; Vic
tory _ peace — Justice, 481 ; Our
First Year in the Great War, 481;
Wherein Washington Fails, 488;
Labor and the War, 492; The Jap
or the Hun, 495 ; Prices and Produc
tion — A Contrast, 600; Are We Too
Late? 641; Inefficiency Now Is Trea
son, 641; A Call to Patriots, 649;
Americans Should be Americans,
657; Who Is My Neighbor? 660;
Foch, 662; The Peril of the Future,
801; The Evils of Partisanship,
808; Enemy Speech Must Go, 811;
Where We Let Justice Fail, 814;
American Propaganda Needed, 817;
Savings and Gains of War, £21;

EMERSON, ALFRED. The French King
dom of Jerusalem, 40.

End of a Bitter Day, The, 418.

Enemy Speech Must Go, 811.

England's Feminine War Workers,
834.

English: — Do We Speak English? 91.

Eternal Battle, The, 665.

Evils of Partisanship, The, 808.

Fear, Courage and Christianity, 425.
Feminine War Workers, England's,

834.
First Year in the Great War, Our,

481.
FISHER, ISOBEL HUME. The Mother,

81.

Foch, 662.

For Righteousness Sake, 102.
FRANKLIN, FABIAN. Prohibition and

the States, 231; The President and

Public Opinion, 533.
French Kingdom of Jerusalem, The,

40.
Future of International Law, The,

558.

German Language Press, The Strate
gic Retreat of the, 706.

Germany and Alsace-Lorraine, 354.

Germany, The Great Illusion About,
345.

GILMAN, LAWRENCE. Drama and
Music, 122, 278, 440; The Book of
the Month, 130, 284, 446, 599, 764,
918.

Gothic in France, The, 111.

Government and Wage-Earners' In
surance, The, 863.

Grades of Medical Officers in the
Army, 852.

GRAHAM, WHIDDEN. Alcoholic Bever
ages and Insanity, 564.

Great Illusion About Germany, The,
345.

HARVEY, GEORGE: — Thank God for Wil
son, 2; Wanted: A Leader, 321;
Can Pacifists Win the War? 321;
Are We Too Late? 641; A Call to
Patriots, 649; The Peril of the Fu
ture, 801.

Haunted House, The, 268.

Hazlitt's Pursuit of Happiness, 588.

How Sleep the Brave, 221.

Hunnishness of the Hun, The, 334.

Inefficiency Now is Treason, 641.

Intellectual Equivalent of "Student
Activities", An, 239.

International Law, The Future of,
558.

IRELAND, ALLBYNE. War as a Busi
ness Problem, 720.

Japan and Ships, 370.

Jap or the Hun, The, 495.

Jerusalem: — Jerusalem the Golden,
24; The French Kingdom of Jeru
salem, 40; Jerusalem and the Holy
Land, 842.

Jew is not a Slacker, The, 857.

JOHNSTON, CHARLES. Russia on the
Edge of the Abyss, 185; Russia and
the War After the War, 378; What
we Owe to Socialist Russia, 549.

Justice Fail, Where We Let, 814.

KELLOGG, VEBNON: — War and Human
Evolution: Germanized, 364; Pa
triotism and Sacrifice, 825.

KENNARD, LADY. A Roumanian Diary,
25; England's Feminine War Work
ers, 834.

KEYS, F. V. The Great Illusion About
Germany, 345.

Kill Spies, 183.

Kill to Save, We Must, 161.

KINGSLEY, DARWIN P. A New Charter
of Liberty, 400.

KIZER, HELEN BULLIS. Amy Lowell:
A Personality, 736.

Labor and the War, 492.

LAMBERT, HENRI. National Self-De-

termination, 541.
LEE, VERNON. Varieties of Musical

Experience, 748.

INDEX

959

Lesson to the Nation, The, 172.

Letters to the Editor, 156, 313, 468,
629, 793, 948.

LEWIS, O. F. A Peaceful Revolution
in Penology, 867.

Liberty, A New Charter of, 400.

Lifetime, 245.

Loss of Trade and Need of Ships, 342.

Low, A. MAUBICE. The Vice of Secret
Diplomacy, 209.

LOWELL, AMY. Madonna of the Eve
ning Flowers, 244.

Lowell, Amy: A Personality, 736.

Madonna of the Evening Flowers, 244.

Making Democracy Safe for the
World, 178.

Marshall: Archibald Marshall: Real
ist, 891.

MATTHEWS, BRANDER. Situations
Wanted, 578.

Medical Officers in the Army, Grades
of, 852.

Messages, 758.

Military Transportation, Problems of,
52.

Mother, The, 81.

Musical Experience, Varieties of, 748.

National Self-Determination, 541.
Neighbor, Who is My, 660.
New Charter t>f Liberty, A, 400.
New Verse and New Prose, 257.

Obstacles in the Way of Drafting

Aliens, 671.
ORCUTT, WILLIAM DANA. Ben Butler

and the "Stolen Spoons", 66.
Our War With Germany, 144, 299, 460,

611, 779, 933.

Pacifists: — Can Pacifists Win the
War? 321.

PARK, CLYDE W. The Strategic Re
treat of the German Language
Press, 706.

Patriots, A Call to, 649.

Patriotism and Sacrifice, 825.

PATTERSON, WILLIAM MORRISON. New
Verse and New Prose, 257.

Peaceful Revolution in Penology, A,
867.

PENNELL, ELIZABETH ROBINS. A
Stranger in My Native Land, 880.

Penology, A Peaceful Revolution In,
867.

Peril of the Future, The, 801.

PHELPS, WILLIAM LYON. Archibald
Marshall: Realist, 891.

Poems: — The Mother, 81; Madonna
of the Evening Flowers, 244; Com
munion, 245; Lifetime, 245; The
Second Coming, 415; To-day, 571;
On Some To-Morrow, 572; Rou-
mania, 735; Change, 879.

Poet's Wisdom, A, 82.

President and Public Opinion, The,

533.

President At His Best, The, 2.
Prices and Production — A Contrast,

500.
Problems of Military Transportation,

52.
Prohibition: Prohibition and the

States, 231; Alcoholic Beverages

and Insanity, 564.
Public Opinion, The President and,

533.

Railways: — British Railways During
and After the War, 196.

Real Secret Diplomacy, The, 505.

Righteousness Sake, For, 102.

RODIN, AUGUSTE. The Gothic in
France, 111.

Rodin, 21.

Roosevelt, Theodore, see Thank God
for Wilson.

ROSCOE, E. S. The Future of Interna
tiona} Law, 558.

Roumania, 735.

Roumanian Diary, A, 25.

Russia: — Russia on the Edge of the
Abyss, 185; Russia and the War
after the War, 378; What We Owe
to Socialist Russia, 549.

Savings and Gains of War, 821.
SOHELTEMA, JOHAN F. Jerusalem and

the Holy Land, 842.
SEAMAN, MAJOR Louis L. Grades of

Medical Officers in the Army, 852.
Second Coming, The, 415.
SHAW, CHABLES GBAY. Dostoievsky's

Mystical Terror, 246.
Situations Wanted, 578.
SLAUQHTEB, GEBTBUDE. A Poet's Wis
dom, 82.

Some To-Morrow, On, 572.
Spies:— Kill Spies, 183.
Straining the Sinews of War, 173.
Stranger in My Native Land, A, 880.
Strategic Retreat of the German

Language Press, The, 706.
STBONQ, BENJAMIN. War Loans vs.

Business as Usual, 516.
STUABT, GBAHAM H. Clemenceau,

695.
"Student Activities," An Intellectual

Equivalent of, 239.
"Style" in Women's Clothes, 729.

Tariff Commission and its Work, The,

57.

Thank God for Wilson, 2.
THWING, CHARLES F. An Intellectual

Equivalent of "Student Activities,"

239.
To-Day, 571.

960 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

TOGO, M. Japan and Ships, 370.
To-Morrow, On Some, 572.
Town Meeting Diplomacy, 181.

Varieties of Musical Experience, 748.
Verse and Prose, New, 257.
Vice of Secret Diplomacy, The, 209.
Victory — Peace — Justice, 481.

Wage Earners' Insurance, The Gov
ernment and, 863.

Wanted: — A Leader, 321.

War: — Thank God for Wilson, 2; Are
We to Have a Benevolent Despot
ism? 17; A Roumanian Diary, 25;
The French Kingdom of Jerusalem,
40; Problems of Military Transpor
tation, 52; Our War With Germany,
144, 299, 460, 611, 779, 933; We Must
Kill to Save, 161; The Lesson to the
Nation, 172; Straining the Sinews of
War, 173; Making Democracy Safe
For the World, 178; Town Meet
ing Diplomacy, 181; Kill Spies, 183;
Russia On the Edge of the Abyss,
185; British Railways During and
After the War, 196; The Vice of
Secret Diplomacy, 209; How Sleep
the Brave, 221; Wanted: A Leader,
321; Can Pacifists Win the War?
321; Coordination at the Top, 329;
The Hunnishness of the Hun, 334;
Brazil's Interest in the War, 339;
Loss of Trade and Need of Ships,
342; The Great Illusion About Ger-
4nany, 345; Germany and Alsace-
Lorraine, 354; War and Human
Evolution: Germanized, 364; Japan
and Ships, 370; Russia and the War
After the War, 378; After the War,
388; A New Charter of Liberty,
400; At the Front, 418; Victory-
Peace — Justice, 481; Our First Year
in the Great War, 481; Wherein
Washington Fails, 488; Labor and
the War, 492; The Jap or the Hun,
495; Prices and Production — A Con
trast, 500; The Real Secret Diplo
macy, 505; War Loans vs. Busi
ness as Usual, 516; The Coming
Copper Famine, 522; The President
and Public Opinion, 533; National

Self -Determination, 541; What We
Owe to Socialist Russia, 549; The
Future of International Law, 558;
Are We Too Late? 641; A Call to
Patriots, 649; Americans Should be
Americans, 657; Who is my Neigh
bor? 660; Foch, 662; The Eternal
Battle, 665; Obstacles in the Way
of Drafting Aliens, 671; Anglo-
American Relations Reconsidered,
681; The Strategic Retreat of the
German Language Press, 706; War
as a Business Problem, 720; The
Peril of the Future, 821; The Evils
of Partisanship, 808; Enemy Speech
Must Go, 811; American Propagan
da Needed, 817; Savings and Gains
of War, 821; Patriotism and Sacri
fice, 825; England's Feminine War
Workers, 834; Jerusalem and the
Holy Land, 842; Grades of Medical
Officers in the Army, 852; The Jew
is Not a Slacker, 857..

War and Human Evolution; German
ized, 364.

War as a Business Problem, 720.

War Loans vs. Business as Usual, 516.

WASHBUEN, ALBERT H. Obstacles in
the Way of Drafting Aliens, 671.

Washington Falls, Wherein, 488.

WEBEB, C. JEFFEBSON. Do We Speak
English? 91.

WELLES, WINNIFBED. Communion,
245; Lifetime, 245.

Where We Let Justice Fail, 814.

WHITESIDE, MABY BBENT. Change,
879.

Who is My Neighbor? 660.

Wilson, Woodrow: — Thank God for
Wilson, 2; The President at His
Best, 2; A Plea to the President
321; The President and Public
Opinion, 533.

Women's Clothes, "Style" in, 729.

WOODBEBBY, GEOBQE E. Roumania,
735.

Wordsworth and Annette, 433.

WYATT, EDITH FBANKLIN. Hazlitt's
Pursuit of Happiness, 588.

YOUNG, STABK. Messages, 758.

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