"I think," replied Governor General von Bissing, "that we are doing everything that can be done under the circumstances. Those farm lands which you saw, coming up from Lille to Brussels, were planted by German soldiers and in the Spring they will be harvested by our soldiers. Belgium has not been devastated, and its condition has been grievously misstated, as you have seen. You must remember that the armies have passed back and forth across it—German, Belgian, English, and French—but I think you have seen that only in the paths of these armies has the countryside suffered. Where engagements were not fought or shots fired, Belgium is as it was.

"There has been no systematic devastation for the purpose of intimidating the people. You will learn this if you go all over Belgium. As for the cities, we are doing the best we can to encourage business. Of course, with things the way they are now, it is difficult. I can only ask you to go down one of the principal business streets here, the Rue de la Neuf, for instance, and price the articles that you find in the shops and compare them with the Berlin prices. The merchants of Brussels are not having to sacrifice their stock by cutting prices, and, equally important, there are people buying. I can unhesitatingly say that things are progressing favorably in Belgium."

The conversation turned upon Belgian and English relations before this war. The Governor General mentioned documentary evidence found in the archives in Brussels, proving an understanding between these countries against Germany. He spoke briefly about the point that the subjects of King Albert had been betrayed into the hands of English financiers and then laconically said: "The people of Belgium are politically undisciplined children.

"They are the victims of subtle propaganda that generally takes the form of articles in French and neutral newspapers," and General von Bissing looked me straight in the eyes, as though to emphasize that by neutral he meant the newspapers of the United States. "I can understand the French doing this," he said, "because they always use the Belgians and do not care what happens to them. It is beyond my comprehension, though, how the Government of any neutral country permits the publication of newspaper articles that can have but one effect, and that is to encourage revolt in a captured people. A country likes to call itself humanitarian, and yet it persists in allowing the publication of articles that only excite an ignorant, undisciplined people and lead them to acts of violence that must be wiped out by force," and the Governor General's mouth closed with a click.

"Do you know that the people of Brussels, whenever a strong wind carries the booming of heavy guns miles in from the front, think that French and English are going to recapture the city? Any day that we can hear the guns faintly, we know that there is an undercurrent of nervous expectancy running through the whole city. It goes down alleys and avenues and fills the cafes. You can see Belgians standing together, whispering. Twice they actually set the date when King Albert would return.

"This excitement and unrest, and the feeling of the English coming in, is fostered and encouraged by the articles in French and neutral newspapers that are smuggled in. I do not anticipate any uprising among the Belgians, although the thoughtless among them have encouraged it. An uprising is not a topic of worry in our councils. It could do us no harm. We would crush it out like that," and von Bissing snapped his thin fingers, "but if only for the sake of these misled and betrayed people, all seditious influences should cease."

I asked the Governor General the attitude of officials of the Belgian Government who were being used by the Germans in directing affairs.

"My predecessor, General von der Goltz," he replied, "informed me that the municipal officials in Brussels and most Belgian cities showed a good co-operative spirit from the start. The higher officials were divided, some refusing flatly to deal with the German administration. I do not blame these men, especially the railway officials, for I can see their viewpoint. In these days railway roads and troop trains were inseparable, and if those Belgian railway officials had helped us, they would have committed treason against their country. There was no need, though, for the Post Office officials to hold out, and only lately they have come around. Realizing, however, that without their department the country would be in chaos, the officials of the Department of Justice immediately co-operated with us. Today the Belgian Civil Courts try all ordinary misdemeanors and felonies. Belgian penal law still exists and is administered by Belgians. However, all other cases are tried by a military tribunal, the Feld Gericht."

I asked General von Bissing if there was much need for this military tribunal. I shall not forget his reply.

"We have a few serious cases," he said. "Occasionally there is a little sedition but for the most part it is only needle pricks. They are quiet now. They know why," and, slowly shaking his head, von Bissing, who is known as the sternest disciplinarian in the entire German Army, smiled.

We talked about the situation in America.

"The truth will come out," said von Bissing slowly. "Your country is renowned for fair play. You will be fair to Germany, I know. Your American Relief Commission is doing excellent work. It is in the highest degree necessary. At first the German Army had to use the food they could get by foraging in Belgium, for the country does not begin to produce the food it needs for its own consumption, and there were no great reserves that our troops could use. But the German Army is not using any of the Belgian food now."



I asked the Governor General if the Germans had not been very glad that America was sending over food.

"It is most important," he said, "that America regularly sends provisions to Belgium. Your country should feel very proud of the good it has done here. I welcome the American Relief Committee; we are working in perfect harmony. Despite reports to the contrary, we never have had any misunderstanding. Through the American press, please thank your people for their kindness to Belgium.

"But," he continued impressively, referring back to the justification of Germany's occupation and speaking with quiet force, "if we had not sent our troops into Belgium, the English would have landed their entire expeditionary army at Antwerp, and cut our line of communication. How do I know that? Simply because England would have been guilty of the grossest blunder if she had not done that, and the man who is in charge of England's Army has never been known as a blunderer."



A CHARGE IN THE DARK

By O.C.A. CHILD.

Out of the trenches lively, lads! Steady, steady there, number two! Step like your feet were tiger's pads— Crawl when crawling's the thing to do!

Column left, through the sunken road! Keep in touch as you move by feel! Empty rifles—no need to load— Night work's close work, stick to steel!

Wait for shadows and watch the clouds, When it's moonshine, down you go! Quiet, quiet, as men in shrouds, Cats a-prowl in the dark go slow.

Curse you, there, did you have to fall? Damn your feet and your blind-bat eyes! Caught in the open, caught—that's all! Searchlights! slaughter—we meant surprise!

Shrapnel fire a bit too low— Gets us though on the ricochet! Open order and in we go, Steel, cold steel, and we'll make 'em pay.

God above, not there to win? Left, while my men go on to die! Take them in, Sergeant, take them in! Go on, fellows, good luck—good-bye!



A New Poland

By Gustave Herve

Gustave Herve, author of the article translated below, which appears in a recent number of his paper, La Guerre Sociale—suppressed, it is reported, by the French authorities—has been described as "the man who fights all France." He is 44 years old, and has spent one-fourth of his life in prison, on account of Socialistic articles against the French flag and Government. He used to continue writing such articles from prison and thus get his sentences lengthened.

Herve has always opposed everything savoring of militarism and conquest. From his article on Poland it will be seen that, although he says nothing anti-French or antagonistic to the Allies in general, he desires a Russian triumph over Germany not for his own sake, but as a preliminary to a reconstruction of the Polish Nation out of the lands wrested from Poland by Russia, Germany, and Austria.

In spite of its vagueness, the Grand Duke Nicholas's proclamation justifies the most sanguine hopes. This has been recognized not only by all the Poles whom it has reached, those of Russian Poland, and the three million Polish refugees who live in America, but moreover, all the Allies have interpreted it as a genuine promise that Poland would be territorially and politically reconstructed.

What would it be right to include in a reconstructed Poland, if the great principle of nationality is to be respected?

First, such a Poland would naturally include all of the Russian Poland of today—by that I mean all the districts where Poles are in a large majority. This forms a preliminary nucleus of 12,000,000 inhabitants, among whom are about 2,000,000 Jews. This great proportion of Jews is accounted for by the fact that Poland is in the zone where Jews are allowed to live in Russia.

Our new Poland would not comprise the ancient Lithuania—the districts of Wilno, Kovno, and Grodno—although Lithuania formerly was part of Poland and still has about one million Polish inhabitants who form the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Lithuania, which is really the region of the Niemen, is peopled by Letts, who have their own language, resembling neither Polish nor Russian, and they likewise hope to obtain some day a measure of autonomy in the Russian Empire, with the right to use their language in schools, churches, and civil proceedings. One thing is certain: they would protest, and rightly, against actual incorporation into the new Poland.

The 125,000 square kilometers and 12,000,000 inhabitants of Russian Poland, lying around Warsaw, would constitute the nucleus of reconstructed Poland.

Must we add to this the 79,000 square kilometers and 8,000,000 inhabitants of Galicia, which was Austria's share in the spoils of old Poland? Certainly, so far as western Galicia around Cracow is concerned, for this is a wholly Polish region, the Poles there numbering 2,500,000.

As for eastern Galicia, of which the principal city is Lemberg, (Lvov in Polish,) the question is more delicate. Though Eastern Galicia has over 1,500,000 Poles and 600,000 Jews, most of the population is Ruthenian. Now these Ruthenians, who are natives, subjugated in former times by the conquering Poles, and who still own much of the big estates, are related to the "Little Russians," the southerners of Russia, and speak a dialect which is to Russian what Provencal is to French.

Besides, whereas the Poles are Catholics, the Ruthenians are Greek Orthodox Christians like the Russians, but differ from the latter in that they are connected with the Roman Church, and are thus schismatics in the eyes of the Russian priests.

Should these Ruthenians be annexed to Russia along with the 1,500,000 Poles and 500,000 Jews, among whom they have lived for centuries, they would scarcely look upon this as acceptable unless they were certain of having under Russian rule at least equal political liberty and respect for their dialect and religion as they have under Austrian rule.

Should they be incorporated with the rest of Polish Galicia into the new Poland? It is hardly probable that they desire this, having enjoyed under Austria a considerable measure of autonomy as regards their language and schools. Would not the best solution be to make of Eastern Galicia an autonomous province of the reconstructed Poland, guaranteeing to it its local privileges?

That leaves for consideration the portion of Poland now forming part of Prussia.

There can be no question as to what should be done with the districts of Posen and Thorn. These are the parts of Poland stolen by Prussia, which the Prussians, a century and a quarter after the theft, have not succeeded in Germanizing.

North of the Posen district is Western Prussia, whose principal city is Dantzic; that too is a Polish district, stolen in 1772. Since then Dantzic has been Germanized and there are numerous German officials and employes in the other towns of the region. All the rural districts and a part of the towns, however, have remained Polish in spite of attempts to Germanize them as brutal as those applied to Posnania. But, if united Poland should include Western Prussia, as she has the right to do—there being no rule against what is right—Eastern Prussia, including Koenigsberg, will be cut off from the rest of Germany.

Now, Eastern Prussia, with the exception of the southern part about the Masurian Lakes, which has remained Polish, has been German from early mediaeval times. It is the home of the most reactionary junkers of all Prussia, a cradle of Prussian royalty and of the Hohenzollerns. Despite our hatred for these birds of prey, could we wish that the new Poland should absorb these 2,000,000 genuine Germans?

If the region of Koenigsberg remains Prussian and the Masurian Lakes region is added to Poland, why not leave to Germany the strip of land along the coast, including Dantzic, in order that Eastern Prussia may thus be joined to Germany at one end?

Another question: There is in Prussian Upper Silesia a district, that of Oppeln, rich in iron ore, which was severed in the Middle Ages from Poland, but which has remained mostly Polish and which adjoins Poland. If the majority of Polish residents there demand it, would it not be well to join it once more to Poland, which would become, by this addition, contiguous to the Czechs of Bohemia?

To sum up:

Without laying hands on the German district of Koenigsberg, united Poland, by absorbing all the territory at present held by Prussia, in which the majority of the inhabitants are Poles, will take from the latter 70,000 square kilometers and 5,700,000 inhabitants. With these, the new Poland would have 24,000,000 inhabitants, including Eastern Galicia.

If Russia gave to this Poland in lieu of actual independence the most liberal autonomy and reconstructed a Polish kingdom under the suzerainty of the Czar—a Poland with its Diet, language, schools and army—would not the present war seem to us a genuine war of liberation and Nicholas II. a sort of Czar-liberator?

And if resuscitated Poland, taught by misfortune, compassionate toward the persecuted and proscribed because she herself has been persecuted and proscribed, should try to cure herself of her anti-Semitism, which has saddened her best friends in France, would not you say that she indeed deserved to be resuscitated from among the dead?



"With the Honors of War"

By Wythe Williams

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]

It was just at the dawn of a March morning when I got off a train at Gerbeviller, the little "Martyr City" that hides its desolation as it hid its existence in the foothills of the Vosges.

There was a dense fog. At 6 A.M. fog usually covers the valleys of the Meurthe and Moselle. From the station I could see only a building across the road. A gendarme demanded my credentials. I handed him the laisser-passer from the Quartier General of the "First French Army," which controls all coming and going, all activity in that region. The gendarme demanded to know the hour when I proposed to leave. I told him. He said it would be necessary to have the permit "vised for departure" at the headquarters of the gendarmerie. He pointed to the hazy outlines of another building just distinguishable through the fog.

This was proof that the town contained buildings—not just a building. The place was not entirely destroyed, as I had supposed. I went down the main street from the station, the fog enveloping me. I had letters to the town officials, but it was too early in the morning to present them. I would first get my own impressions of the wreck and the ruin. But I could see nothing on either hand as I stumbled along in the mud. So I commented to myself that this was not as bad as some places I had seen. I thought of the substantial station and the buildings across the road—untouched by war. I compared Gerbeviller with places where there is not even a station—where not one simple house remains as the result of "the day when the Germans came."

The road was winding and steep, dipping down to the swift little stream that twists a turbulent passage through the town. The day was coming fast but the fog remained white and impenetrable. After a few minutes I began to see dark shapes on either side of the road. Tall, thin, irregular shapes, some high, some low, but with outlines all softened, toned down by the banks of white vapor.

I started across the road to investigate and fell into a pile of jagged masonry on the sidewalk. Through the nearness of the fog I could see tumbled piles of bricks. The shapes still remained—spectres that seemed to move in the light wind from the valley. An odor that was not of the freshness of the morning assailed me. I climbed across the walk. No wall of buildings barred my path, but I mounted higher on the piles of brick and stones. A heavy black shape was now at my left hand. I looked up and in the shadow there was no fog. I could see a crumbled swaying side wall of a house that was. The odor I noticed was that caused by fire. Sticking from the wall I could see the charred wood joists that once supported the floor of the second story. Higher, the lifting fog permitted me to see the waving boughs of a tree that hung over the house that was, outlined against a clear sky. At my feet, sticking out of the pile of bricks and stones, was the twisted iron fragments that was once the frame of a child's bed. I climbed out into the sunshine.

I was standing in the midst of a desolation and a silence that was profound. There was nothing there that lived, except a few fire-blacked trees that stuck up here and there in the shelter of broken walls. Now I understood the meaning of the spectral shapes. They were nothing but the broken walls of the other houses that were. They were all that remained of nine-tenths of Gerbeviller.

I wandered along to where the street turned abruptly. There the ground pitched more sharply to the little river. There stood an entire half of a house unscathed by fire; it was one of those unexplainable freaks that often occur in great catastrophes. Even the window glass was intact. Smoke was coming from the chimney. I went to the opposite side and there stood an old woman looking out toward the river, brooding over the ruin stretching below her.

"You are lucky," I said. "You still have your home."

She threw out her hands and turned a toothless countenance toward me. I judged her to be well over seventy. It wasn't her home, she explained. Her home was "la-bas"—pointing vaguely in the distance. She had lived there fifty years—now it was burned. Her son's house for which he had saved thirty years to be able to call it his own, was also gone; but then her son was dead, so what did it matter? Yes, he was shot on the day the Germans came. He was ill, but they killed him. Oh, yes, she saw him killed. When the Germans went away she came to this house and built a fire in the stove. It was very cold.

And why were the houses burned? No; it was not the result of bombardment. Gerbeviller was not bombarded until after the houses were burned. They were burned by the Germans systematically. They went from house to house with their torches and oil and pitch. They did not explain why they burned the houses, but it was because they were angry.

The old woman paused a moment, and a faint flicker of a smile showed in the wrinkles about her eyes. I asked her to continue her story.

"You said because they were angry," I prompted. The smile broadened. Oh, yes, they were very angry, she explained. They did not even make the excuse that the villagers fired upon them. They were just angry through and through. And it was all because of those seventy-five French chasseurs who held the bridge. Some one called to her from the house. She hobbled to the door. "Anyone can tell you about the seventy-five chasseurs," she said, disappearing within.

I went on down the road and stood upon the bridge over the swift little river. It was a narrow little bridge only wide enough for one wagon to pass. Two roads from the town converged there, the one over which I had passed and another which formed a letter "V" at the juncture with the bridge. Across the river only one road led away from the bridge and it ran straight up a hill, when it turned suddenly into the broad national highway to Luneville about five miles away.

One house remained standing almost at the entrance to the bridge, at the end nearest the town. Its roof was gone, and its walls bore the marks of hundreds of bullets, but it was inhabited by a little old man of fifty, who came out to talk with me. He was the village carpenter. His house was burned, so he had taken refuge in the little house at the bridge. During the time the Germans were there he had been a prisoner, but they forgot him the morning the French army arrived. Everybody was in such a hurry, he explained.

I asked him about the seventy-five chasseurs at the bridge. Ah, yes, we were then standing on the site of their barricade. He would tell me about it, for he had seen it all from his house half way up the hill.

The chasseurs were first posted across the river on the road to Luneville, and when the Germans approached, early in the morning, they fell back to the bridge, which they had barricaded the night before. It was the only way into Gerbeviller, so the chasseurs determined to fight. They had torn up the street and thrown great earthworks across one end of the bridge. Additional barricades were thrown up on the two converging streets, part way up the hill, behind which they had mitrailleuses which could sweep the road at the other end of the bridge.

About a half mile to the south a narrow footbridge crossed the river, only wide enough for one man. It was a little rustic affair that ran through the grounds of the Chateau de Gerbeviller that faced the river only a few hundred yards below the main bridge. It was a very ancient chateau, built in the twelfth century and restored in the seventeenth century. It was a royal chateau of the Bourbons. In it once lived the great Francois de Montmorency, Duc de Luxembourg and Marshal of France. Now it belonged to the Marquise de Lamberty, a cousin of the King of Spain.

I interrupted, for I wanted to hear about the chasseurs. I gave the little old man a cigarette. He seized it eagerly—so eagerly that I also handed him a cigar. He just sort of fondled that cigar for a moment and then placed it in an inside pocket. It was a very cheap and very bad French cigar, for I was in a part of the country that has never heard of Havanas, but to the little old man it was something precious. "I will keep it for Sunday," he said.

I then got him back to the seventy-five chasseurs. It was just eight o'clock in the morning—a beautiful sunshiny morning—when the German column appeared around the bend in the road which we could see across the bridge, and which joined the highway from Luneville. There were twelve thousand in that first column. One hundred and fifty thousand more came later. A band was playing "Deutschland ueber alles" and the men were singing. The closely packed front ranks of infantry broke into the goose step as they came in sight of the town. It was a wonderful sight; the sun glistened on their helmets; they marched as though on parade right down almost to the opposite end of the bridge.

Then came the command to halt. For a moment there was a complete silence. The Germans, only a couple of hundred yards from the barricade, seemed slowly to consider the situation. The Captain of the chasseurs, from a shelter behind the very little house that is still standing—and where his men up the two roads could see him—softly waved his hand.

Crack-crack-crack—crack-crack-crack-crack—crack-crack-crack! The bullets from the mitrailleuses whistled across the bridge into the front ranks of the "Deutchland ueber alles" singers, while the men behind the bridge barricade began a deadly rifle fire.

Have you ever heard a mitrailleuse? It is just like a telegraph instrument, with its insistant clickety click-click-click, only it is a hundred times as loud. Indeed I have been told by French officers that it has sometimes been used as a telegraph instrument, so accurately can its operator reel out its hundred and sixty shots a minute.

On that morning at the Gerbeviller barricade, however, it went faster than the telegraph. These men on the converging roads just shifted their range slightly and poured bullets into the next ranks of infantry and so on back along the line, until Germans were dropping by the dozen at the sides of the little straight road. Then the column broke ranks wildly and fled back into the shelter of the road from Luneville.

A half hour later a detachment of cavalry suddenly rounded the corner and charged straight for the barricade. The seventy-five were ready for them. Some of them got half way across the bridge and then tumbled into the river. Not one got back around the corner of the road to Luneville.

There was another half hour of quiet, and then from the Luneville road a battery of artillery got into action. Their range was bad, so far as any achievement against the seventy-five was concerned, so they turned their attention to the chateau, which they could easily see from their position across the river. The first shell struck the majestic tower of the building and shattered it. The next smashed the roof, the third hit the chapel—and so continued the bombardment until flames broke out to complete the destruction.

Of course the Germans could not know that the chateau was empty, that its owner was in Paris and both her sons fighting in the French Army. But they had secured the military advantage of demolishing one of the finest country houses in France, with its priceless tapestries, ancient marbles and heirlooms of the Bourbons. A howl of German glee was heard by the seventy-five chasseurs crouching behind their barricades. So pleased were the invaders with their achievement, that next they bravely swung out a battery into the road leading to the bridge, intending to shell the barricades. The Captain of chasseurs again waved his hand. Every man of the battery was killed before the guns were in position. It took an entire company of infantry—half of them being killed in the action—to haul those guns back into the Luneville road, thus to clear the way for another advance.

From then on until 1 o'clock in the afternoon there were three more infantry attacks, all failing as lamentably as the first. The seventy-five were holding off the 12,000. At the last attack they let the Germans advance to the entrance of the bridge. They invited them with taunts to "avancez." Then they poured in their deadly fire, and as the Germans broke and fled they permitted themselves a cheer. Up to this time not one chasseur was killed. Only four were wounded.

Shortly after 1 o'clock the German artillery wasted a few more shells on the ruined chateau and the chasseurs could see a detachment crawling along the river bank in the direction of the narrow footbridge that crossed through the chateau park a half mile below. The Captain of the chasseurs sent one man with a mitrailleuse to hold the bridge. He posted himself in the shelter of a large tree at one end. In a few minutes about fifty Germans appeared. They advanced cautiously on the bridge. The chasseur let them get half way over before he raked them with his fire. The water below ran red with blood.

The Germans retreated for help and made another attack an hour later with the same result. By 4 o'clock, when the lone chasseur's ammunition was exhausted, it is estimated that he had killed 175 Germans, who made five desperate rushes to take the position, which would have enabled them to make a flank attack on the seventy-four still holding the main bridge. When his ammunition was gone—which occurred at the same time as the ammunition at the main bridge was exhausted—this chasseur with the others succeeded in effecting a retreat to a main body of cavalry. If he still lives—this modern Horatius at the bridge—he remains an unnamed hero in the ranks of the French Army, unhonored except in the hearts of those few of his countrymen who know.

During the late hours of the afternoon aeroplanes flew over the chasseurs' position, thus discovering to the Germans how really weak were the defenses of the town, how few its defenders. Besides, the ammunition was gone. But for eight hours—from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon—the seventy-five had held the 12,000. General Joffre has said in one of his reports that the defense of the bridge at Gerbeviller had an important bearing on the battle of the Marne, which was just beginning, for it gave Castelnau's Army of the East time to dig its trenches a few miles back of Gerbeviller before the Germans got through.

Had that body of 12,000 succeeded earlier the 150,000 Germans that advanced the next day might have been able to fall on the French right flank during the most critical and decisive battle of the war. The total casualties of the chasseurs were three killed, three captured, and six wounded.

The little old man and I had walked to the entrance of the chateau park before he finished his story. It was still too early for breakfast. I thanked him and told him to return to his work in the little house by the bridge. I wanted to explore the chateau at leisure.

I entered the place—what was left of it. Most of the walls were standing. Walls built in the twelfth century do not break easily, even with modern artillery. But the modern roof and seventeenth century inner walls were all demolished. Not a single article of furniture or decoration remained. But the destruction showed some of the same freaks—similar to that little house left untouched by fire on the summit of the hill.

For instance, the Bourbon coat of arms above the grand staircase was untouched, while the staircase itself was just splintered bits of marble. On another fragment of a wall there still hung a magnificent stag's antlers. Strewed about in the corners I saw fragments of vases that had been priceless. Even the remnants were valuable. In the ruined music room I found a piece of fresh, clean music, (an Alsatian waltz,) lying on the mantelpiece. I went out to the front of the building, where the great park sweeps down to the edge of the river. An old gardener in one of the side paths saw me. We immediately established cordial relations with a cigarette.

He told me how, after the chasseurs retreated beyond the town, the Germans—reduced over a thousand of their original number by the activities of the day—swept over the barricades of the bridge and into the town. Yes, the old woman I had talked with was right about it. They were very angry. They were ferociously angry at being held eight hours at that bridge by a force so ridiculously small.

The first civilians they met they killed, and then they began to fire the houses. One young man, half witted, came out of one of the houses near the bridge. They hanged him in the garden behind the house. Then they called his mother to see. A mob came piling into the chateau headed by four officers. All the furniture and valuables that were not destroyed they piled into a wagon and sent back to Luneville. Of the gardener who was telling me the story they demanded the keys of the wine cellars. No; they did not injure him. They just held him by the arms while several dozen of the soldiers spat in his face.

While the drunken crew were reeling about the place, one of them accidentally stumbled upon the secret underground passage leading to the famous grottoes. These grottoes and the underground connection from the chateau were built in the fifteenth century. They are a half mile away, situated only half above ground, the entrance looking out on a smooth lawn that extends to the edge of the river. Several giant trees, the trunks of which are covered with vines, semi-shelter the entrance, which is also obscured by climbing ivy. The interior was one of the treasures of France. The vaulted ceilings were done in wonderful mosaic. The walls decorated with marbles and rare sea shells. In every nook were marble pedestals and antique statuary, while the fountain in the centre, supplied from an underground stream, was of porphyry inlaid with mosaic.

The Germans looked upon it with appreciative eyes and cultured minds. But it did not please them. They were still very angry. Its destruction was a necessity of war. It could not be destroyed by artillery because it was half underground and screened by the giant trees. But it could be destroyed by picks and axes. A squad of soldiers was detailed to the job. They did it thoroughly. The gardener took me there to see. Not a scrap of the mosaic remained. The fountain was smashed to bits. A headless Venus and a smashed and battered Adonis were lying prone upon the ground.

The visitors to the chateau and environs afterward joined their comrades in firing the town. Night had come. Also across the bridge waited the hundred and fifty thousand reinforcements come from Luneville. The five hundred of the two thousand inhabitants who remained were herded to the upper end of the town near the station. That portion was not to be destroyed because the German General would make his headquarters there.

The inhabitants were to be given a treat. They were to witness the entrance of the hundred and fifty thousand—the power and might of Germany was to be exhibited to them. So while the flames leaped high from the burning city, reddening the sky for miles, while old men prayed, while women wept, while little children whimpered, the sound of martial music was heard down the street near the bridge. The infantry packed in close formation, the red light from the fire shining on their helmets, were doing the goose step up the main street to the station—the great German army had entered the city of Gerbeviller with the honors of war.



General Foch, the Man of Ypres

An Account of France's New Master of War

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]

"Find out the weak point of your enemy and deliver your blow there," said the Commander of the Twentieth French Army Corps at Nancy at a staff banquet in 1913.

"But suppose, General," said an artillery officer, "that the enemy has no weak point?"

"If the enemy has no weak point," returned the commander, with a gleam of the eye and an aggressive tilt of the chin, "make one."

The commander was Foch—Ferdinand Foch—who has suddenly flashed before the world as the greatest leader in the French Army after Joffre, and who in that remark at Nancy gave the index to the basic quality of his character as a General. General Foch is today in command of the northern armies of France, besides being the chief Lieutenant and confidant of Joffre. Joffre conceives; Foch, master tactician, executes. He finds the weak point; if there is no weak point, he creates or seeks to create one.

When King George of England was at the front in France recently he conferred the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath—the highest military distinction in the form of an order within the gift of the British Crown—on two Frenchmen. Joffre was one. The other was Foch.

"Foch? Foch? Who is Foch?" asked the British public, perplexed, when the newspapers printed the news of the granting of this signal honor.

"Foch is the General who was at the head of the French military mission which followed our army manoeuvres three years ago," replied a few men who happened to have been intimately acquainted with those manoeuvres.

"But what has that to do with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath?" asked John Bull. And the manoeuvre experts not being able to reply, the English newspapers demanded from their correspondents in France an answer to the query, "Who is Foch? Why the Grand Cross?"

And the main features of the answers to that query were these:

Foch is the "greatest strategist in Europe and the humblest," in the words of Joffre.

Foch is the hero of the Marne, the man who perceived on Sept. 9 that there must be a gap between the Prussian Guard and the Saxon Army, and who gathered enough artillery to crush the guard in the St. Gond marshes and forced both the Prussians and the Saxons, now separated, to retreat.

Foch is the man of Ypres, the commander who was in general control of the successful fight made by the French and the British, aided by the Belgians, to prevent the Germans from breaking through to Calais.

Foch, in short, is one of the military geniuses of the war, so record observers at the front. He is a General who has something of the Napoleonic in his composition; the dramatic in war is for him—secrecy and suddenness, gigantic and daring movements; fiery, yet coldly calculated attacks; vast strategic conceptions carried out by swift, unfaltering tactics. Foch has a tendency to the impetuous, but he is impetuous scientifically. He has, however, taken all in all, much more of the dash and nervousness and warmth of the Southern Latin than has Joffre—cool, cautious, taciturn Joffre. Yet both men are from the south of France. They were born within a few miles of one another, within three months of one another, Foch being born on Oct. 2, 1851, and Joffre on Jan. 12, 1852.

Most writers who have dealt with Foch agree on this as one of his paramount characteristics—the Napoleonic mode of military thought. When Foch was director of the Ecole de Guerre, where he had much to do with shaping the military views of many of the men who are now commanding units of the French Armies, he was considered to be possessed of almost an obsession on the subject of Napoleon. He studied Napoleon's campaigns, and restudied them. He went back much further, however, in his choice of a master, and gave intense application to the campaigns of Caesar. Napoleon and Caesar—these were the minds from which the mind of the Marne and Ypres has learned some of its lessons of success.

Here Foch invites comparison with another of the dominant figures of the war—General French. For French is described by his biographer as "a worshipper of Napoleon," regarding him as the world's greatest strategist, and in following out and studying Napoleon's campaigns French personally covered and studied much of the ground in Belgium over which he has been fighting. French is a year younger than Foch. They are old friends, as are French and Joffre, and Joffre and Foch.

The inclination of Foch to something of the Napoleonic is shown beyond the realm of strategy and tactics. Foch is credited with knowing the French soldier, his heart, his mind, his capabilities, and the method of getting the most out of those capabilities, in a way reminiscent of the winner of Jena. And Foch knows not only the privates, but the officers. When he went to the front he visited each commander; the Colonels he called by name; the corps commanders, without exception, had attended his lectures at the Ecole de Guerre.

As for the men, Foch makes it his business to get into personal contact with them, as Napoleon used to do. Foch does not hobnob with them, there is no joking or familiarity, but he goes into the trenches and the occupied villages and looks the men over informally, inspects food or equipment, makes a useful comment or two, drops a phrase that is worth repeating, and leaves behind him enthusiasm and respect. The Paris Figaro says that he has the gift of setting souls afire, of arousing that elan in the French fighter which made that fighter perform military miracles when the "sun of Austerlitz" was high. It has been declared by a French writer that Foch knows the human element in the French Army better than any other man living.

With all his knowledge of men, his power of inspiring them, Foch is quiet, retiring, non-communicative, with no taste for meeting people in social intercourse. His life has been monotonous—work and work and work. He has the reputation of being a driver; he used to be particularly severe on shirkers in the war college, and such, no matter what their influence, had no chance of getting a diploma leading to an attractive staff position when Foch was Director. When he was in command at Nancy and elsewhere he used to work his staffs hard, and they had to share much of the monotony of work which has been chiefly Foch's life. He did not go in for society, merely making the formal calls required by the etiquette of garrison towns on the chief garrison hostesses, and giving dinners two or three times a year to his staff.

Foch, indeed, with his quiet ways and his hard work and his studying of Napoleon and Caesar, was characterized by some of the officers of the army as a pedant, a theorist, and these held that Foch had small chance of doing anything important in such a practical realm as that of real war.

Because of his Directorship of the Ecole de Guerre he was known to many officers, but as far as France at large was concerned his name was scarcely known at all last August. Yet officers knew him in other lands besides his own. His two great books, "Principles of War" and "Conduct of War," have been translated into English, German, and Italian, and are highly regarded by military men. He has been ranked by the Militaer-Wochenblatt, organ of the German General Staff, as one of the few strategists of first class ability among the Allies.

Foch is a slim man, with a great deal of nervous energy in his actions, being so quick and graceful in movement, indeed, that a recent English observer declares he carries himself more like a man of 40 than one of 64. His gray blue eyes are particularly to be noticed, so keen are they. His speech is quick, precise, logical.

So little has Foch been known to the French public that it has been stated time and again that he is an Alsatian. He is not, but comes of a Basque family which has lived for many generations in the territory which is now the Department of the Hautes-Pyrenees, directly on the border of Spain. Foch was born in the town of Tarbes in that department. Joffre was born in the Department Pyrenees-Orientales, on the Spanish border to the east. Foch's father, Napoleon Foch, was a Bonapartist and Secretary of the Prefecture at Tarbes under Napoleon III. One of his two brothers, a lawyer, is also called Napoleon. The other is a Jesuit priest. Foch and these brothers attended the local college, and then turned to their professions.

In 1870 Foch served as a subaltern against the Germans, as did Joffre. After the war Foch began to win recognition as a man of brains, and at 26 he was given a commission as artillery Captain. Later he became Professor of Tactics in the Ecole de Guerre, with the title of Commandant, where he remained for five years, and then returned to regimental work. It was when Foch reached the grade of Brigadier General that he went back to the War College, this time as Director, one of the most confidential positions in the War Department. From this post he went to the command of the Thirteenth Division, thence to the command of the Eighth Corps at Bourges, and thence to the command of the Twentieth Corps at Nancy.

At the time that Foch was appointed Director of the Ecole de Guerre, Clemenceau was Premier, and upon the latter fell the task of choosing an officer for the important Directorship. There was keen competition for the position, many influential Generals desiring the appointment, and in consequence much wire-pulling went on. The story goes that Clemenceau, a man of action, became impatient of the intrigues for the post, and determined to make his own choice unhampered.

According to the story, Clemenceau, after a conference one day upon routine business with Foch, asked the latter to dine. The Ecole de Guerre was not mentioned during the meal, the men chatting upon general topics. But as the coffee was being brought on, the Premier turned suddenly to the General and said, brusquely:

"By the way, I've a good bit of news for you. You're nominated Director of the Ecole de Guerre."

"Director of the Ecole de Guerre! But I'm not a candidate for the post."

"That is possible. But you're appointed all the same, and I know you will do excellent work in the position."

Foch thanked the Premier, but he still had some doubts, and added:

"I fear you don't know all my family connections. I have a brother who is a Jesuit."

"Jesuit be d——-!" the Premier is reported to have roared in reply. "Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Director! You are the Director of the Ecole de Guerre. All the Jesuits in creation won't alter that—it is a fait accompli."

Among the confidential bits of work worthy of note that Foch has done for the War Department is the report he made upon the larger guns of the French field artillery, which have done such execution in the present war. For many weeks Foch went around the great Creusot gun works in the blouse of a workman, testing, watching, experimenting, analyzing.

Foch was one of the high officers in France who was not in the least surprised by the war and who had personally been holding himself in readiness for it for years. He felt, and often said, that a great war was inevitable; so much used he to dwell upon the certainty of war that some persons regarded him as an alarmist when he kept declaring that French officers should take every step within their power to get themselves and the troops ready for active service at an instant's notice. He also held that France as a nation should prepare to the utmost of her power for the assured conflict.

In a recent issue of The London Times there was a description of Foch by a Times correspondent who had been at Foch's headquarters in the north of France. The correspondent's remarks are prefaced by the statement that in a late dispatch General French mentions General Foch as one of those whose help he has "once more gratefully to acknowledge." The correspondent writes in part:

What Ernest Lavisse has clone for civilian New France in his direction of the Ecole Normale General Foch has done in a large measure for the officers of New France by his teaching of strategy and tactics at the Ecole de Guerre. He left his mark upon the whole teaching of general tactics.

I had the honor of being received recently by General Foch at his headquarters in the north of France—a house built for very different purposes many years ago, when Flemish civil architecture was in its flower. The quiet atmosphere of Flemish ease and burgomaster comfort has completely vanished. The building hums with activity, as does the whole town. A fleet of motor cars is ready for instant action. Officers and orderlies hurry constantly to and fro. There is an occasional British uniform, a naval airman's armored car, and above all the noise of this bustle, though lower in tone, the sound of guns in the distance from Ypres.

The director of all this activity is General Foch. There in the north he is putting his theories of war to the test with as much success as he did at the outbreak of hostilities in Lorraine and later in the centre during the battle of the Marne. Although born with the brain of a mathematician, General Foch's ideas upon war are by no means purely scientific. He refuses, indeed, to regard war, and more especially modern war, as an exact science. The developments of science have, indeed, but increased the mental and moral effort required of each participant, and it is only in the passions aroused in each man by the conflict of conception of life that the combatant finds the strength of will to withstand the horrors of modern warfare.

General Foch is a philosopher as well as a fighter. He is one of the rare philosophers who have proved the accuracy of their ideas in the fire of battle. A typical instance of this is given by "Miles" in a recent number of the Correspondant. During the battle of the Marne the Germans made repeated efforts to cut through the centre where General Foch commanded between Sezanne and Mailly. On three consecutive days General Foch was forced to retire. Every morning he resumed the offensive, with the result that his obstinacy won the day. He was able to profit by a false step by the enemy to take him in the flank and defeat him.

General Foch's whole life and teaching were proved true in those days. He has resolved the art of war into three fundamental ideas—preparation, the formation of a mass, and the multiplication of this mass in its use. In order to derive the full benefit of the mass created it is necessary to have freedom of action, and that is only obtained by intellectual discipline. General Foch has written:

"Discipline for a leader does not mean the execution of orders received in so far as they seem suitable, just reasonable, or even possible. It means that you have entirely grasped the ideas of the leader who has given the order and that you take every possible means of satisfying him. Discipline does not mean silence, abstention, only doing what appears to you possible without compromising yourself; it is not the practice of the art of avoiding responsibilities. On the contrary, it is action in the sense of orders received."

Fifteen years ago at the Ecole de Guerre General Foch was fond of quoting Joseph de Maistre's remark, "A battle lost is a battle which one believes to have lost, for battles are not lost materially," and of adding, "Battles are therefore lost morally, and it is therefore morally that they are won." The aphorism can be extended by this one: "A battle won is a battle in which one will not admit one's self vanquished." As "Miles" remarks, "He did as he had said."

Ernest Dimnet in The London Saturday Review has this to say in part about Foch and his two widely known books:

During his two terms of service at the Ecole de Guerre he produced two considerable works, "Principes de la Guerre" and "De la Conduite de La Guerre," which give a high idea of their author's character and talent. There is nothing in them that ought to scare away the average reader. Their style has the geometrical lucidity which is the polytechnician's birthright, but in spite of the deliberate impersonality generally attached to that style of writing, there emanates from it a curious quality which gradually shows us the author as a living person.

We have the impression of a vast mental capacity turned to the lifelong study of a fascinating subject and acquiring in it the dignity of attitude and the naturalness which mastery inevitably produces. War has been the constant meditation of this powerful brain. In "La Conduite de la Guerre" this meditation is the minute historical examination of the battles of the First Empire and 1870. "Nothing can replace the experience of war," writes the author, "except the history of war," and it is clear that he understands the word "history" as all those who go to the past for a lesson in greatness understand it.

"Les Principes de la Guerre" is more immediately technical, yet it strikes one as being less a speculation than a visualizing of what modern war was sure to be. If the reader did not feel that he lacks the background which only the contemplation a million times repeated of concrete details can create, he would be tempted to marvel at the extraordinary simplicity of these views. But a good judge who was very near the General until a wound removed him for a while from the—to him—fascinating scene tells me that this simplicity and directness—which marked the action of Foch at the battle of the Marne as they formerly marked his teaching—are the perfection to which only a few can aspire.



THE UNREMEMBERED DEAD

By ELLA A. FANNING.

"For those who die in war, and have none to pray for them."—Litany.

We lay a wreath of laurel on the sward, Where rest our loved ones in a deep repose Unvexed by dreams of any earthly care, And, checking not our tears, we breathe a prayer, Grateful for even the comfort which is ours— That we may kneel and sob our sorrow there, And place the deathless leaf, the rarest flowers.

Though Winter's cruel fingers brown the sod, It's dearer far than all the world beside! Forms live again—we gaze in love and pride On youthful faces prest close to our own. Eyes smile to ours; we hear each tender tone, Grief's smart is softened—less the sense of loss. This grave we have, at least; we're not alone!

And they must know of our unchanging love— Our tender thought—our memory—our prayers! And in our constancy, ah! each one shares To whom death comes on distant battlefields, When life's last breath not even the solace yields— "There's one who'll mourn for me—whose tears will flow!"— Not even a grave is theirs, unnamed, unwept! God rest their souls—the dead we do not know!



Canada and Britain's War Union

By Edward W. Thomson, F.R.S.L., F.R.S.C.

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]

Canada's political relation to Great Britain, and, indeed, to all other countries, has been essentially altered by Canada's quite voluntary engagement in the war. Were feudal terms not largely inapplicable, one might aver that the vassal has become the suzerain's ally, political equality connoted.

But, indeed, Canadians were never vassals. They have ever been Britons, whatever their individual origins, retaining the liberties of their political birthright. While in a certain tutelage to their own monarchs' immediate Ministries, they have continually, slowly, consciously, expanded their freedom from such tutelage, substituting for it self-government or rule by their own representatives, without forsaking but rather enhancing their allegiance to the common Crown. This has long been the symbol of their self-government, even as it is to old country kinsmen the symbol of rule by themselves.

The alteration manifested by Canada's active, voluntary engagement in the European war is the change from Canadians holding, as they formerly did, that Great Britain was bound to defend Canada, while Canadians were not bound to defend Great Britain outside Canada. The "dependency" has not been now dragged in; it acted as an independency; it recognized its participation with Great Britain in a common danger; it proceeded quite voluntarily, quite independently, to recruit, organize, dispatch, and maintain large forces for the common cause. Canada's course has become that of a partner in respect of acceptance of risks and of contribution to expenses.

This partner has no formally specified share in gains, or in authority, or in future policy of the concern. Canada has no obvious, distinct, admitted way or voice as to the conduct of war or making of peace. She appears, with the other self-governing Dominions of the Crown, as an ally having no vote in settlements, none of the prerogatives of an ally. Hence some observers in Great Britain, in Canada, in other realms of the Crown contend that the old, expressed relations between Great Britain, Canada, and the other Dominions must inevitably be extensively changed formally as well as actually in consequence of the war.

Some say imperial federation cannot but ensue. Others argue that formal independence must arrive if such federation come not speedily. Others contend for an Empire League of sister States. Nobody ventures to mention what was often talked publicly by Canadians from thirty to fifty years ago, and later by Goldwin Smith, viz., Canada's entrance to the United States as a new tier of sovereign States. The idea of severance from Great Britain has vanished. Discussion of the other alternatives is not inactive, but it is forced. It engages the quidnuncs. They are talkers who must say something for the delight of hearing themselves; or they are writers who live under the exigency of needing to get "something different" daily into print. They are mostly either "Jingoes" or Centralizationists, as contra to Nationalists or Decentralizationists, long-standing opponents.

Each set perceives their notions liable to be profoundly affected by Canada's fighting in Europe. Each affects belief that their own political designs cannot but be thereby served; each is afflicted with qualms of doubt. They alike appreciate the factors that make for their opponent's cause. Both know the strength of popular attachment to Great Britain; both know the traditional and inbred loathing of the industrious masses for the horrible bloodshed and insensate waste of treasure in war. Both sets balance inwardly the chances that sentiments seemingly irreconcilable and about equally respectable may, after the war, urge Canadians either to draw politically closer to their world-scattered kin, or to cut ligaments that might pull them again and again, time without end, into the immemorial European shambles.

But is the Canadian public excitedly interested in the discussion? Not at all. Spokesmen and penmen of the two contentious factions are victimized by their own perfervid imaginations. The electorate, the masses, are not so swayed. The Canadian people, essentially British no matter what their origins, are mainly, like all English-speaking democracies, of straight, primitive, uncomplicated emotions, and of essentially conservative mind. They "plug" along. The hour and the day hold their attention. It is given to the necessary private works of the moment, as to the necessary public conduct of the time.

They did not, as a public, spin themselves any reasons or excuses for their hearty approval of Canada's engagement in the war. Her or their contributions of men and money to its fields of slaughter and waste appeared and appear to them natural, proper, inevitable. They applauded seriously the country's being "put in for it" by agreement of the two sets of party politicians, and without any direct consultation of the electorate in this, the most important departure Canada ever made, because prompt action seemed the only way, and time was lacking for debate about what seemed the next thing that had to be done. In fact, the Canadian people, regarded collectively, felt and acted in this case with as much ingenuousness as did those Tyrolese mountaineers, bred, according to Heine, to know nothing of politics save that they had an Emperor who wore a white coat and red breeches.

When the patriots climbed up to them, and told them with oratory that they now had a Prince who wore a blue coat and white breeches, they grasped their rifles, and kissed wife and children, and went down the mountain and offered their lives in defense of the white coat and the dear old red breeches.

But did they forsake their relish of and devotion to their customary, legendary Tyrolese liberties? No more will the Canadian masses, by reason of their hearty participation in the war, incline to yield jot or tittle of their usual, long-struggled-for, gradually acquired, valuable and valued British self-governing rights. Can the Jingoes or Centralizationists scare them backward? Or the Decentralizationists or Separatists hurry them forward? Won't they just continue to "plug along" as their forefathers did in the old country and in the new, gaining a bit more freedom to do well or ill at their own collective choice—that is, if the war result "as usual" in British security, according to confident British expectation.

Such is the Canadian political situation. It has been essentially similar any time within living memory. The people approve in politics what they feel, instinctively, to be the profitable or the decent and reasonable necessary next thing to do. Which signifies that those controversialists are probably wrong who conceive that a result of the war, if it be a win for the Allies, will cause any great formal change in Canada's political relation to Great Britain.

The truly valuable change in such relations is already secured; it cannot but become more notably established by future discussion; it is and will be a change by reason of greatly increased influence on Great Britain by Canada and the other Dominions. And it appears highly probable that such inevitable change in influence or weight of the new countries is sufficient for all sentiments concerned, and for all useful purposes on behalf of which formal changes are advocated by doctrinaires and idealists.

The British peoples have acquired by long practice in very various politics a way of making existing arrangements "do" with some slight patching. They are instinctively seized of the truth of Edmund Burke's maxim, "Innovation is not improvement." They have "muddled along" into precisely the institutions that suit any exigency, their sanest political philosophers recognizing that the exigency must always be most amenable to the most flexible system.

It is because the existing arrangements between London and the several Dominion capitals don't suit logicians that they do suit experienced statesmen pretty well. Because these institutions can be patched as occasion may require, they are retained for patching on occasion. Because the loose, go-as-you-please organization of the so-called "empire" has revealed almost incredible unity of sentiment and purpose, practiced statesmen regard it as a prodigious success. They are mighty shy of affiliating with any of the well-meaning doctrinaires who have been explaining any time within the last century that the system is essentially incoherent and absurd and urgently needs profound change with doctrinaire improvements.

Sir Robert Borden, for instance. Some days ago he most amiably gave me a little private talk on these matters, of course on the tacit understanding that he was not to be "interviewed" as for close reporting of his informal sentences. He was, by the way, apparently in robust health, as if, like Mr. Asquith, of a temperament to flourish under the heaviest responsibilities ever laid on a Prime Minister in his own country. No statesman could be of aspect and utterance less hurried, nor more pleasant, lucid, cautious, disposed to give a friendly caller large and accurate information briefly, while disclosing nothing at variance with or unfindable in his published speeches. Of some of them he repeated apposite slices; to others he referred for further enlightenment as to his views on imperial federation. Really he was neither secretive nor newly informative. The Premier of Canada at any time is governed, much as I have endeavored to show how the electors are, by that natural, instinctive course of the general loyal Canadian mind, which constitutes "the situation" and controls Governmental proceedings on behalf of the public.

Well meaning persons who allege Sir Robert to have either favored or disfavored imperial federation have been inaccurate. Precisely what imperial federation may be nobody knows, for the simple and sufficient reason that nobody has ever sketched or elaborated a scheme in that regard which appeared or appears desirable as a change from the all-compelling situation. What has never been adopted as desirable cannot be termed practicable in statesmen's language. To declare an untried scheme impracticable might be an error of rashness.

The idea of federating the empire has long attracted Sir Robert, with many other admirable Canadians and Britons, since it connotes or involves the concept of British Union for all worthy and necessary purposes, including maintenance of local autonomy or self-government, surely a most praiseworthy design. Discussion of that idea is unlikely to be harmful; it may be useful; something may come of it that may seem desirable and practicable to substantially all interests and people concerned. A consummation devoutly to be wished, but not to be rushed! One point, frequently specified in Sir Robert's public speeches, was stated as follows in a recent report, pamphleted for distribution by his own side:

It is impossible to believe that the existing status, so far as it concerns the control of foreign policy and extra-imperial relations, can remain as it is today. All are conscious of the complexity of the problem thus presented; and no one need despair of a satisfactory solution, and no one can doubt the profound influence which the tremendous events of the past few months and of those in the immediate future must exercise upon one of the most interesting and far-reaching questions ever presented for the consideration of statesmen.

There Sir Robert was recommending no particular solution. A little earlier in the same speech he illustrated the deep sense of all experienced British statesmen that there never is or can be in the British system any final solution of any grave problem, the vital essence of the system being flux and change to suit ever-changing circumstance.

In so far as this empire may be said to possess a Constitution, it is of modern growth and is still in the stage of development. One can hardly conceive that it will ever distinctly emerge from that state or attain a status in which constitutional development is no longer to be anticipated. Indeed, the genius of the British people and all our past history lead us to believe the contrary. The steps in advance have been usually gradual and always practical; and they have been taken on instinct rather than upon any carefully considered theory.



Which was admonition at once of the Centralizationists and their opponents, the Nationalists.

Whatever alteration of existing British inter-arrangements may come after the war will be done on instinct in view of circumstances that cannot now be foreseen. Wherefore clamorers for this or that, their favorite scheme, are now inopportunists. Hence they are neglected by the public as unimpressive, futile wasters of breath or ink. Indeed Canada, Great Britain, the whole race of mankind are now swept on the crest of a huge wave of Fate. When it casts them ashore, recedes, leaves men to consider what may best be done for the future, then will have come the time to rearrange political fabrics, if need be. Then Sir Robert Borden will probably continue in his often clearly specified opinion that Canada, if remaining liable as now to be drawn into Great Britain's more perilous wars—a liability which must ever urge Canada to strong participation in order that the peril may be the sooner ended—ought to have a share in controlling Great Britain's foreign policy. Which sharing Mr. Asquith declared last year impracticable, in that sense inadmissible.

Westminster must retain freedom to move, act, strike quickly. Her course toward Germany had to be decided last August within a few hours. Obviously her freedom, her power for promptitude would be hindered in proportion to need for such consultation with and approval by councilors of many distant countries as is presupposed by advocates of imperial federation. Why establish control by cumbersome, superfluous machinery when the war has made it clear as the sun at high noon that the essential desideratum, British Union, exists now? All the notable communities of the King's realms have demonstrated that they are in the mind, the condition of a voluntary empire. What more can be desired save by such as desire old country domination of all the concerned countries, and who really long for a formal and subservient Empire?

Sir Richard Jebb, a deep student of the Empire problem, declared clearly last November the meaning of that general voluntary British war union which is a wonder of mankind, and in the course to teach a profound, general political lesson. He wrote:

That the war will in any event change the external relations is evident. But why, if we win, should it change the political relations between the parts, except to the extent of encouraging us to conserve and develop the existing system which has given so signal an example of effective imperial unity in time of need? Continually talking of imperial unity, we fail to recognize it when we have got it. There is never going to be a moment when one might say "Yesterday we were not united; today the Grand Act (of Imperial Federation understood) has been signed; henceforth we are united."

The cult of the Grand Act is a snare and a delusion. Whatever may happen hereafter—even the Grand Act itself—posterity is likely to look back upon August, 1914, as the moment when the British Empire reached the zenith of its unity. Let us remember that the existing system is not stationary, though its principle (voluntary union) may be final. It has been developing steadily since 1902.

The Australian fleet unit, the first of the Dominion navies, which enables each to exert upon foreign policy the full weight of its importance in the empire, was not begun until 1910. The corollary, that any Dominion Minister appointed to reside in London should have free and constant access to the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, was only conceded in January, 1912, and has not yet been taken advantage of, even by Australia.

But the development is all true to principle. What principle? Voluntary co-operation, as opposed to central compulsion. In war, as in peace, each of the Britannic nations is free to do or not to do. But we have invoked naval and military co-ordination, with results which the Australian Navy has already exemplified (on the Emden, &c.)

Has this system of the free Commonwealth, as distinguished from the German principle of a centralized empire organized primarily for war, broken down under the supreme test, as so many of our prophets predicted? On the contrary, it has alone saved South Africa to the empire, besides eliciting unrestricted military aid from each part. Why change it for something diametrically opposed to its spirit, substituting compulsion for liberty, provinces for nation-States?

Sir Richard Jebb's sentence, specifying the nature of the Australian influence on foreign policy, seems apt reply to Sir Robert Borden's oft-repeated specification that a share in control of foreign policy should accrue to the Dominions by reason of their participation in or liability to war. This liability really compels them to engage with all their strength, lest they comfort an enemy by abstention, or by confining their armaments to self-defense, which might and would be read as disapproval of Britain's course, if the war were one of magnitude endangering her. A system more powerfully requiring Great Britain to take heed that her quarrel be just, lest she be not thrice armed by approving children, can scarcely be imagined.

On this matter I have had the pleasure and benefit, during the last twelve years, of talking with Sir Wilfrid Laurier often. In the quoted Jebb view he agreed closely when I saw him a few days ago. He remarked, with special regard to this article for THE NEW YORK TIMES, that his point of insistence at the Imperial Conferences of 1902, 1907, 1911, and on all proper occasions, has been that local autonomy—that is, complete self-government for each of the Dominions—is not only consistent with British unity but necessary thereto as promoting and conserving that unity.

When Mr. Asquith's denial of the practicability of giving the Dominions a direct share in control of Great Britain's foreign policy is considered, the Jebb-Laurier view would appear one to which Sir Robert Borden, cautious statesman, must be led by recognition that potent influence on foreign policy cannot but come to Dominions energetically providing at once for their own defense and for their power to aid Great Britain all along the line.

As to imperial federation, Sir Wilfrid remarked that he has ever been openly attracted by that aspiration toward permanent British union, on which advocacy of the vague project has ever been bottomed. He is, as he said to me, and as all his long series of political actions have manifested, British in heart and way of political thinking, as indeed substantially all his French-Canadian compatriots are. British liberality, not to say liberalism, has attached them to the British system as firmly as any community originating from the United Kingdom. It was a French-Canadian statesman who asserted, some fifty years ago, when many British-Canadians seemed tending toward union with the United States, "The last shot fired in Canada for British connection will be from a French-Canadian." That was before the civil war abolished slavery.

But, even as the Britishism of Old Country liberals is strongly tinctured by devotion to ideals which Americans are wont to regard as theirs—ideals making for settled peace, industry, the uplift of the "common people," fair room and reward for those abilities which conspicuously serve the general welfare—so Sir Wilfrid and his compatriots acknowledge their Britishism to be acutely conscious of political kinship with the American people. The French-Canadian yearning, like that of many Canadians of British origin, is rather for English-speaking union—a union of at least thorough understanding and common designs with the American people—than for the narrower exclusive British union sought by Canadian imperial federationists.

Sir Wilfrid said, in effect, (I do not profess to report his very words,) that federation of those British communities widely separated by geography, but alike in race, language, laws, principles, has always attracted him as a project of excellent intentions. It is at worst a noble dream. That dream has become less impracticable than it was formerly, he thinks, by reason of the essential diminution of the world, diminution of distances and of time by latter-day inventions.

Against the idea of general representation in a central Parliament at London, Sir Wilfrid pointed out that Edmund Burke objected "opposuit natura"—nature forbade it. The wisest of political philosophers could not foresee the telegraph, wireless, steam, airships. These have made a useful central imperial Parliament at least conceivable. Could it be more useful than the advisory council, or Imperial Conference which has become quadrennial, and might possibly become annual? That is matter for discussion. Sir Wilfrid said that such is the political genius of the British race that he would be rash who alleged any design impracticable toward which the race may tend so generally as to put it under discussion for arrangement of details. Conservation of local self-government, prime essential to agreement for union on common purposes, might prove reconcilable with federated defense.

But there is, to Sir Wilfrid's way of thinking, one large objection against now attempting imperial federation. Its agitators contemplate a scheme immense, yet not sufficiently inclusive. They do not contemplate English-speaking solidarity. They purpose leaving out the majority of English-speakers—the American people. In this they do not follow Cecil Rhodes, a chief propagandist of their main design. It is true that the idea of getting Americans to participate in any formal union with all the rest of their brethren by race and tongue seems now impractical. But time works wonders. Mr. Gladstone foresaw the United States a people of six hundred comfortable millions, living in union before the end of the next century. The hegemony of the English-speaking nations seems likely to be within attainment by that one of them which appears destined to become far the most powerful of all in numbers, in wealth, and in security of environment. Time may show to our successors in this world some effective method of establishing agreements amounting to that solidarity for English-speaking action which has been acclaimed as existent for English-speaking thinking by a mind so eminently reasonable as that of Lord Haldane.

It would be hasty, thinks Sir Wilfrid, and it might be injurious for the British countries to move toward any sort of formal union ostensibly tending to set them collectively apart from the United States. Give great beneficent ideas time to develop. Britons can well afford to take their time, since the war has shown existent among them an almost perfect union of sentiment and purpose. And this, apparently, with the blessed effect of enhancing general American good-will to Britons. From so much good understanding more may ensue, Sir Wilfrid concluded.

Such Canadians as hold Edmund Burke to have been a spokesman of consummate political wisdom are apt to regard the busy stir of doctrinaires, who scream for closer political junction of the British peoples, even as Burke regarded the hurry of some of the same kidney in his time. Resolute to bind the thirteen colonies forever to England, they proceeded to offend, outrage, and drive those colonies to independence. Be it remembered that these colonies had contributed so loyally, so liberally to England's armaments and wars that grateful London Parliaments had insisted on voting back to them the subsidies they had granted, holding the contributions too generous. To later proposals of foolish henchmen of George III., proposals that the colonies, since they had revealed themselves as strong and rich, should be dragged into some formal political subordination by which, as by latter-day Imperial Federation, they might be involuntarily mustered and taxed for imperial purposes, Burke said:

Our hold on the colonies is the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are the ties which, though light as air, are strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your Government; they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance....

As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have. The more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows on every soil. They may have it from Spain; they may have it from Prussia; but until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.

This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly.... Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, ... your letters of office and your instructions and your suspending clauses are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your Government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even to the minutest member.

And the doctrinaires of Centralization, vociferating their fad of Imperial Federation, would have that Constitution, in the moment of its supreme triumph for unity, cast away! Cast away for a new and written one by which Great Britain and all her children alike would chain themselves together! Well may practical statesmen view the doctrinaires with some disdain, not unmindful of Burke's immortal scorn of such formalists:

"A sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. To men truly initiated and rightly taught, those ruling and master principles which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together."



ENGLAND.

By JOHN E. DOLSON.

Birth land of statesmen, bards, heroes, and sages; Mother of nations—the homes of the free; Builder of work that will last through the ages, Hope for Humanity centres in thee.

Now that thy bugles their clear calls are shrilling, Now that thy battle voice echoes worldwide, O'er the long reaches of sea rush the willing Sons of thy children to fight by thy side.

Eager to aid thee with treasure and tissue, Other leal millions will come to thy call. Civilization is staked on the issue— Woe to Mankind if thy lion should fall!

Fall he will never, till English force slacken In the great soul of thy dominant race, Now, as of old, do the Destinies beckon Thee to be highest in power and place.

Conflicts now raging will pass into story, Nations may sink in defeat or disgrace; Long be thy future resplendent with glory, Long be thy triumphs the pride of our race!



American Aid of France

By Eugene Brieux

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]

M. Eugene Brieux, the celebrated French poet and playwright, who is in this country as the official representative of the French Academy—the "Forty Immortals"—has written a remarkable tribute to American aid of France during the present war. The address, which is herewith presented, was read by M. Brieux at the residence of Mrs. John Henry Hammond of New York City recently before a gathering of two hundred men and women who have been interested in the work of the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris.

Miss Marie Van Vorst, who nursed the wounded at the American Ambulance in Paris, will speak to you of it as an eyewitness. From her you will receive direct news of your splendid work of humanity. While she was caring for wounded French, English, and German I was attached to another hospital at Chartres. It happens, therefore, that I have never seen the American Military Hospital created by you, but I am not in ignorance concerning it any more than any other Parisian, any more, indeed, than the majority of the French people. I know that the American Ambulance is the most remarkable hospital that the world has seen. I know that you, since the beginning of the war, have brought the aid of medical science to wounded men and that you have given not only money, but an institution, all ready, complete and of the most modern type, and, even more, that you have sent there your best surgeons and a small army of orderlies and nurses.

I know that at first one could not find a place; that there was available only a building in course of construction, intended to be the Pasteur School at Neuilly. This building was far from completion; it lacked doors and there were no stairs. I know that in three weeks your generosity, your energy, and your quick intelligence has made of this uncertain shell a modern military hospital, with white walls, electric light, baths, rooms for administering anaesthetics, operating rooms, sterilizing plants, apparatus for X-rays, and a dental clinic. I know that automobiles, admirably adapted to the service, carried the wounded. And yet I do not know all. I know only by instinct of the devotion of your young girls, of your women, and of your young men, belonging often to prominent families, who served as stretcher bearers and orderlies.

I am not ignorant of the fact that they count by the hundreds those who have been cured at the American Ambulance at Neuilly, nor of the further fact that the rate of mortality is extremely low, although they have sent you those most gravely injured. I know that it is all free; that there are no charges made for the expenses of administration; that for the service rendered by your people there is no claim, and that every cent of every dollar subscribed goes entirely and directly to the care of the wounded. I know also that the expenses at the hospital are $4,000 a day, and that ever since the beginning your charity has met this demand.