annoyances and curbs; they have done their utmost to balk every German attempt at expansion in Africa or in Asia, and sometimes their interference has been nothing short of wantonly malicious, as in the instances of Morocco and of the Bagdad Railway. Militarism in Germany? Of course there is militarism there, and some of its aspects are not bright. But why not? British policy for a decade and more has done all in its power to create a military temper in Germany, to throw her into the hands of the war party, and to lash into being that tigerish ferocity with which she now fights you. Commercial jealousy and irritation in manufacturing circles, blended with imperialistic voracity and certain calculations (or miscalculations) of high politics, have led Great Britain into an antiGerman policy and an anti-German war.

You will resent this answer to our question. Το declare that England is fighting, not for Belgium, not for France, not for the sanctity of treaties or human rights, but merely for selfish imperialistic reasons, and rather ill-conceived reasons at that, strikes you, I am sure, as grossly distorted. When you look into your own souls you find no such sordid motives. You find only an intense love of England and of England's honor, and a sense of British quality and worth. I know how you feel and I know that the things you cherish are realities. But these noble realities, I submit, have very little to do with the beginning of this war, or its end.

And you could see this too, were you able, even for

one brief hour, to throw yourselves into complete sympathy with your opponents, and look at the world through their eyes. Had you attempted any such sympathetic understanding of Germany two years ago, this war, I am convinced, never would have happened. You would have seen that the very future existence of Germany depends on her overseas markets, and that she must be able to guard these at all costs. As it is, you have been applying one logic to Germany and another to England. You have looked upon the German navy as an impertinence and a threat, even though the growth of the German navy has been accompanied by a constant demand for the freedom of the seas (i. e., the abolition of the capture of private property at sea). But you have never been able to see that the British navy, nearly twice as large, is a threat (to Germany and possibly to others) especially when accompanied by a stubborn and effective refusal to have the seas neutralized. You could denounce colonial greed in Germany, and stand ready to fight her if she acquired an African colony, or a naval base in the Atlantic; but British expansion, though unlimited, seemed justified, no matter at whose expense; and you could applaud when Bonar Law announced in July, 1915, that the Entente Allies had torn from the Teutons 450,000 square miles of colonial possessions. What is meat for you, you declare to be poison for Germany. You tried, in your supremacy, to enforce a dictation on others to which you would not submit for a moment. The worst you can properly say of Germany is that

she challenged that supremacy, and that she may yet force you to treat her as an equal.

The vital question remains: What of the future? The past is past; it must bury its dead. To fix the blame, to point the accusing finger, to try to anticipate the condemnation of history, is in itself a fruitless task. After all, the stupidest people in the world are they who on whichever side-wish to "punish” some one for this war, this ultimate calamity in which each belligerent shares a portion of the guilt. What strikes one in this gigantic struggle between the British and German nations is not so much its wickedness and its fierceness, as its needlessness, its utter irrationality. Germany is, as I said before, your natural ally; there are a thousand valid reasons for friendship to one valid reason for hostility. Is it too late to hope for a reconciliation between these two great peoples which are so alike in their virtues, however much they may differ in their faults? I think you begin to see what a task you have on your hands in seeking to humble a nation so strong and so indignant as Germany. However the war results, neither Germany nor England can be annihilated. And that is well, for there is room for both in the world. The highest ideal of international development is not a level uniformity, but many divergent cultures, each intensifying its own peculiar merits. Will it be impossible for the English to put their pride-even though it turn out to be a wounded pride-behind them, and make that great effort toward a sympathetic understanding of Ger

many which should have been made long ago? We may hope that the effort can be made, for in the final restoration of Anglo-German friendship lies one of the world's best hopes, and the strongest guarantee of future peace.

FRANCE!

THERE are times when we have to speak sharply

to those we love best. The friends of France will remonstrate with her, and the sincerer their affection the plainer will be their speech.

For France is living in a dream, wrapped in illusion. Because she suffers much she thinks her cause is just, and because her soul is high she imagines her deed is good. Every nation at war tends to idealize its motives, and this is particularly true of this world-war,possibly just for the reason that most of its causes were selfish. The nations enlist under the banners of truth and righteousness, of humanity and pity, of liberty and civilization. But the discerning everywhere see through the sham. In England there are people who call this sort of thing "tosh," and in America there are many who call it "buncombe." In most countries these grandiose sentiments are not taken with entire seriousness; but with you, apparently, yes. No motive is too altruistic or too noble for you to proclaim. You furnish the world an example of national self-deception.

The truth is often like a shower of ice-water. It is gratifying to vaunt the glory of France or to inveigh against the wickedness of the enemy; but it is not so