the colonies which she possessed previous to August, 1914, but those of England, France, and Belgium as well. This, indeed, is already being openly advocated in the German press. The colonial troops, it is argued, have proven their great value in this war in two ways. First they have been a material addition to the forces in Europe and have given an excellent account of themselves on the European battlefield. Secondly, they can be made thoroughly competent to defend their own land against any attacks to which future war might subject them. In at least one of the German papers commenting on the plan of mobilizing Africa, it was openly stated without effort at concealment that the basic idea was a preparation for the next war. The question of population is also inextricably entwined about the reduction of Germany's allies, economically at least, to the status of German vassals. Germany has seen to it that financially she controls their destinies. This is true now in every economic sense; after the war it will be true in a commercial sense as well. The principal object in this has been and continues to be not alone the wealth which exists but the fighting population as well, since through the control of the material resources the control of the man power can be made absolute. This subservience to German domination is, in the case of Turkey in particular, in every sense absolute. This the Kaiser has carefully and skilfully contrived to bring about, since Turkey is the most important link in the German chain of influence. It is not merely because the longer section of the Bagdad railway runs through the Turkish Empire. The most potent element is the Turkish population25 million people-almost half as large as that of Germany. Place this population under German rule for twenty-five years, permit Germany to mobilize and train and control its latent resources in man power, and we shall at that end of that period see a military force of more than 3 million men—perhaps, indeed, double that number-fully equipped and ready to be thrown into a new Battle of Europe. The completion of the railroads between the Taurus mountains and the Persian frontierwhich roads have already been under construction for some years-will make the problem of the transportation of these troops to any European theatre one of simple solution.

We may, then, sum up the situation as it will exist twenty years after the close of the

present war somewhat as follows, provided the Allies do not succeed in dictating all the terms of peace:

Germany, her territory unscathed by the present war, will have in large measure recovered from its effects, while, with her continental enemies so bitterly ravished by the war's sweep, the process of regeneration will scarcely have gotten well under way. The mobilization of her man power and that of her allies will place an army of 17 million men all German-trained and German-equipped under the German command to be thrown against one fourth of that force in Europe. This time the struggle will be short. There will be no miscalculation, no Marne, no Verdun. Then will the real German aim-not Hamburg-Bagdad

but Calais-Bagdad-be achieved; and out of the apparent downfall of the present war will spring the World Power of which the Pan-Germanic League has been dreaming since 1870 and of which Bernhardi wrote in 1912.

It is to be observed, too, how all this synchronizes with the peace efforts which at certain periods Germany has put forward. Germany was told at the Marne that she was not to be permitted to win the war. This message was emphasized when, after a triumphal march through Russia, her army was pinned down definitely on the Dvina River behind the great Tirul Marsh. Then it was that the first peace overture was made. But the effort was weak, and the western Allies had not begun to fight, so the seed fell on sterile soil, and Germany pulled in her horns and bided her time for a more auspicious occasion, an occasion which she later attempted to create.

THE HAMBURG-BAGDAD DREAM The destruction of Serbia furnished another opportunity for a peace move. But it was broken on the rock of the Allies' sense of decency and right, and as before, dissolved in mist. Then came the German repulse at Verdun, and the Somme, the forerunner of an Allied victory. It was the first positive proof that the German lines in the west could be strained to the breaking point-a demonstration that Germany could not ignore. There was no longer any question of German victory on the decisive front in France and Belgium. The thing had become impossible. As the British and French artillery continued. to hammer this fact relentlessly into the Ger

man mind, another peace propaganda was begun. This time it was more widespread, more determined, and more effective than before. In December, 1916, even the President of the United States himself was stirred to move for peace. Later the Pope, as a result of the pressure of the Austrian Cardinals, made a similar effort to reconcile the warring Powers. But by this time the Allies had come to understand and know Germany, and in consequence realized that peace on the basis of a stalemate, with an ostensible return to the status quo ante, would in effect be a German peace just as surely as if Germany had really been declared the victor. This effort, therefore, went the way of its predecessors.

The failure here was followed by the drive in Italy, not because Germany hoped to obtain a military peace, a peace dictated by force of arms, but because through crushing Italy she hoped for peace through negotiation, a peace made around the council table on the basis of exchange. But Germany is actuated in all this not by the desire for peace for the sake of peace, but for peace for the sake of war, lest she be too thoroughly exhausted before the close of the present struggle to be ready for the next one which she proposes to launch.

The whole German attitude is admirably summed up by Nietzsche who, in his “War and Warriors," says: "Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars-and the short peace more than the long.'

WHY AMERICA IS IN THE WAR

It is not necessary to state to any American whose mind functions humanly and nationally what such a situation in Europe would mean to the American continent. The meaning of the last three years is altogether obvious. Equally obvious is our present duty of carrying the present war on to a successful conclusion though its accomplishment take two, ten, or twenty years. But what is meant by "victorious conclusions"? When can a nation at war be said to be victorious. Only when it has achieved the purpose for which it took up arms through the defeat of the Power with whom the quarrel existed. If, therefore, we would perform our duty in the present case we must first see clearly what that duty is; which means that we must face facts rather than theories, think along geometrically straight lines, speak the truth without circumlocution no matter whom it may hurt, and

speak it so that he who runs may read it, and, reading, understand it.

Our first step must be a radical change in our mental processes, a revolutionary upset in our war psychology. We are to-day suffering from an overdose of idealism which is struggling hard to destroy the bacilli of facts with which our position in the world is surrounded. I know of no better way to express our mental condition than by the use of a word for which I feel a personal indebtedness to France-camouflage. Instead of living up to our international reputation for straightforward speaking even to the point of bluntness, we have been going out into the highways and the byways seeking for high-sounding phrases which betoken an esthetic idealism through which to explain the most ordinary and elementary processes. Our grandfathers would adjure us to call a spade a spade. But we refer to this prosaic tool as an instrument which man, inspired by God, devised in order that Nature might be assisted in her effort to reproduce plant life and thereby create on earth the democracy of the soil. But this war is so big, it reaches down so close to the roots of things, that there should be no room for camouflage of this sort. for camouflage of this sort. There never was a time when it was so necessary for a people to realize the truth and to grasp the elemental facts surrounding our present-day life. Failure to do so may involve us in future disaster and drag down with us our present Allies who have given so generously of their riches and of their blood for the cause for which we are all fighting.

The mass of people in the United States is peculiar in that, because of its heterogeneous, cosmopolitan character, it responds only to elemental facts, plain truths plainly told. There is no racial ideal because we are not a race but a mixture of races. When, then, we tell this mass that we went to war for an abstract governmental principle, we are not only camouflaging the facts, but we are sowing the seed of discord since we are not all ready to accept that principle as the correct one. Moreover, we do not all understand it and consequently are not willing to fight for it. On the other hand, every man understands what we mean when we tell him that his home is in danger because there has been let loose a wild beast which is threatening to murder his children and maltreat his wife, and every man will fight for their defense. Even the scruples

of the pacifist and the qualms of the conscientious objector would fade before the attack. And yet we persist in interpreting our entrance into the war in terms of democracy, humanity, and civilization, esthetic abstractions, incapable of precise definition.

Again, we are exponents of the basic rights of the individual to liberty of thought and of action. We believe that the voice of the people when expressed is the supreme law of

the land. It follows, therefore, that the people of a sovereign state have an inalienable, indisputable right to choose the form of government under which they shall live. We recognize that in every state the people are the true source of all power. If they choose to exercise this power either by permitting an existing government to continue, or by overthrowing it in favor of some other, it is their right and their privilege with which no outside

But we did not go to war for democracy, nor to confer its benefits upon the German people, nor for humanity, nor for civilization. If these were our propelling motives we must acknowledge ourselves to be the most hopelessly dense, thick-headed, ignorant people in the civilized world. The war broke out on the 1st of August, 1914. Was democracy threatened only in January, 1917? Is it not rather coincidental that democracy was placed in the balance only when our rights as a sovereign Power were attacked? Were not humanity and civilization outraged when Germany marched through Belgium, put her cities to the torch, and turned bayonets

Why did we not declare war on Russia before the revolution?

We know why we went to war, and the reason is self-defense-nothing more; and no State could have could have a better reason. Our citizens while on a legal errand on an international highway were attacked and ruthlessly murdered. We were informed, moreover, that they would continue to be murdered at the will of Germany. In defense of our citizens, of our country's flag, of our Nation's honor, we took up arms. And no nation ever entered upon a more justifiable struggle, or did so with a purer motive. The defense of one's home and of one's country against a

cruel, unscrupulous aggressor is surely enough for any man in whose soul there is even a glimmer of decency and right to fight for. It is useless, then, because unnecessary, and it is moreover dangerous, to cloud an issue already so clear and so simple, by garbing it in highsounding words and phrases that only destroy its substance. The issue at stake is civilization, undeniably-but the American people must be made to understand clearly and in no uncertain terms why we, the United States, took up arms.

The next fact, the existence of which we must recognize, is the force against which we are fighting, since it is only through the defeat of this force that we can claim the victoryand this force is the German Government, which is one with and is backed up, supported, aided, and abetted by the German people. Victory can be achieved, then, only by the defeat of both. The German people have placed the stamp of approval upon the invasion of Belgium and are even now demanding the annexation of that unfortunate state; the German people turned the Lusitania massacre into a German fiesta; of the two hundred and odd Socialist papers in Germany less than a dozen acquiesced in the justice of the attempt to separate the Government and the people. We have received no evidence that the German people do not want the Government they now have. We have, on the contrary, a wealth of evidence that they do.

The trouble lies much deeper than a superficial governmental form. It is the entire system of German philosophy with which both Government and people are thoroughly impregnated. For years, all German thought has been controlled by the doctrines of the famous triumvirate, Nietszche, Treitschke, and Bernhardi. Almost without exception, every professor in every German university, every teacher in every German school, every preacher in every German pulpit has been teaching and preaching of Germany's divine mission on earth, of her paramount right, by virtue of her superiority in mind and in morals, to anything she might feel necessary to her unlimited growth regardless of who might be the rightful owner. Deutschland über Alles is but the crystallization of this entire philosophy. And as a vital dogma of their political and religious faith the German peoples believe it and live it. Until this dogma is stripped from German philosophy, until there has been beaten into

the soul of every individual in the empire that right alone makes for might, and that there is no righteousness in brute force-until the German people are taught the meaning of personal individual honor, of national and international morality, the German people as well as their Government will continue to constitute the greatest menace to civilization and to the peace of the civilized world.

But what, you may ask, has all this to do with Germany's preparations for the next war? The connection is not difficult to establish. Any peace which does not embrace a permanent solution of those questions for which we took up arms is unthinkable. But before we can think of peace we must form a clear mental conception of why we are fighting, whom we are fighting, and what we are fighting for.

The Germans are shrewd, cunning, and unscrupulous. A German so-called democracy, with a Scheidemann as its head and the Hohenzollerns behind the curtain pulling the string, would not be a difficult thing to form; and, once formed, how could we, if we are honest in our stated aims, refuse to make peace. And having made peace, what would there be to prevent the beast from again raising his ugly head, and, while his fangs are still dripping with the blood of the millions he has caused to be slain on the soil of Europe, burying his claws in the heart of the civilized world?

If we destroy the Hohenzollerns and leave untouched the German people with their false philosophy we are applying merely a surface treatment to a deep-seated canker which will only erupt again, more violent, more virulent than before.

If we would accomplish our purpose, then this Power must be destroyed; otherwise we have lost the war, and all the sacrifices of wealth and of life will have been in vain. The peace will not be a peace but, as I have said, a truce, and we must at once prepare for a greater, a more consuming struggle. Lest we make such a peace, we must change our mental process, revise war psychology, and see to it that the ability ever to war again is permanently removed from Germany and from all things German, from the quiet beer drinker of Munich as thoroughly as from the war lord at Wilhelmstrasse. This can be accomplished, not through peace engineered about the council table, but through peace made on the battle field as a result of the destruction, the capture, or the dispersion of the German Army.