"Yes," he said, "why not let the Belgian royal yacht seize it?"

This suggestion from Page was one of the great inspirations of the war. It amounted to little less than genius. By this time Washington was pretty wearied of the Dacia, for mature consideration had convinced the Department that Great Britain had the right on its side. The transfer to American registry was only too clearly a subterfuge to conceal German ownership, and facts were coming to light which seemed to show that the German Government was financing the whole enterprise. Washington would have been only too glad to find a way out of the difficult position into which it had been forced, and this Page well understood. But this Government always finds itself in an awkward plight in any controversy with Great Britain, because the hyphenates raise such a noise that it has difficulty in deciding such disputes upon their merits. To ignore the capture of this ship by the British would have brought all this hullaballo again about the ears of the Administration. But the position of France is entirely different; the memories of Lafayette and Rochambeau still exercise a profound spell on the American mind; France does not suffer from the persecution of hyphenate populations, and Americans will stand even outrages from France without getting excited. Page knew that if the British seized the Dacia, the cry would go up in certain quarters for immediate war, but that, if France committed the same crime, the guns of the adversary would be spiked. It was purely a case of sentiment and "psychology."

THE LATE

SENATOR WILLIAM J. STONE Of Missouri, one of the most aggressive pro-German influences in the Senate. In both the American Congress and the British Parliament there were forces constantly working against the efforts of Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Page to maintain friendly relations between the two nations

And so the event proved. His suggestion was at once acted on; a French cruiser went out into the Channel, seized the offending ship, took it into port, where a French prize court promptly condemned it. The proceeding did not cause even a ripple of hostility. The Dacia was sold to Frenchmen, rechristened the Yser and put to work in the Mediterranean trade. The episode was closed in the latter part of 1915 when a German submarine torpedoed the vessel and sent it to the bottom.

Such was the spirit which Page and Sir Edward Grey brought to the solution of the great shipping problems of 1914-1917. There is much more to tell of this great task of "waging neutrality" and it will be told in its proper place. But already it is apparent to what extent these two men served the great cause of English-speaking civilization. Neither would quibble, or uphold an argument which he thought unjust, even though his nation might

LORD CHARLES BERESFORD

should be the directing ideas of human society-such was the ultimate purpose at which these two statesmen aimed. And no men have ever been more splendidly justified by events. The Anglo-American situation of 1914 contained dangers before which all believers in real progress now shudder. Had Anglo-American diplomacy been managed with less skill and consideration, the United States and Great Britain would have become involved in a quarrel besides which all their previous differences would have appeared insignificant. Mutual hatreds and hostilities would have risen which would have prevented the entrance of the United States in the war on the side of the Allies. It is not inconceivable that the history of 1812 would have been repeated, and that the men and resources of this country might have been used to support purposes which have always been hateful to the American conscience. That the world was saved from this calamity is owing largely to the fact that Great Britain had in its Foreign Office a man who was always solving temporary irritations with his eyes constantly fixed upon a great goal, and that the United States had as ambassador in London a man who had the most exalted view of the mission of his country, who had dedicated his life to the world-wide spread of the American ideal, and who believed that an indispensable part of this work was the maintenance of a sympathetic and helpful coöperation with the English-speaking peoples.

gain in a material sense, and neither would pitch the discussion in any other key than forbearance and mutual accommodation and courtliness. For both men had the same end in view. They were both thinking, not of the present, but of the coming centuries. The coöperation of the two nations in meeting the dangers of autocracy and Prussian barbarism, in laying the foundations of a future in which peace, democracy, and international justice

A

PPARENTLY on my mere say-so, the following article says about the North various things which are the opposite of common beliefs. Two years ago this would have been embarrassing for me. Even those who might have admitted that eleven years beyond the Polar Circle, travelling on the average two thousand miles per year on foot, had given me ample opportunity to study conditions up there could still have questioned my veracity or my judgment, if not both. But now we can get in one place and in compact form weighty if not conclusive support for enough of the more essential statements of this article so that the reader will be inclined to say: "Since the points of this argument which I can check have full support, the rest of the argument and the conclusions are probably all right."

The authority in question is the report of the Royal Commission appointed by Order in Council of date May 20th, 1919, to investigate the possibilities of the reindeer and musk-ox industries in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Canada.

This report traces its origin back to a series of letters and interviews I had with Mr. Arthur Meighen, then Minister of the Interior for Canada but now Prime Minister. After Mr. Meighen had become in general convinced that the subject was important and deserved the attention of Parliament, he arranged that I should address a joint meeting of members of the Senate and the House of Commons. The presentation of the case for the great food producing resources of the North was satisfactory enough to Parliament so that Mr. Meighen felt justified in appointing a Royal Commission to investigate the possibility of domesticating the musk-ox and of introducing domestic reindeer-both with a view of making the northern prairies (commonly miscalled "barren grounds") producers of domestic meats on a commercial scale. I was a member of this Commission, but being already committed

to definite views by having lived more than a decade in the North, no real judicial function rested in me, but only in the other three Commissioners. For this and other reasons I resigned from the Commission in February, 1920.

The Commissioners could scarce have been more happily chosen. Dr. J. G. Rutherford, a veterinarian by profession originally, had become through a lifetime of study and practical work nearly or quite the leading stockman of Canada. He was chairman. J. S. McLean is manager of the Harris Abattoir Company, the leading meat packers of Canada. J. B. Harkin is Commissioner of Dominion Parks and in that capacity has charge of Canada's successful work in preserving the American bison, and is a leader in game conservation and kindred activities.

The Commission, during a service of two years, examined thirty-five witnesses-missionaries, fur traders, explorers and othersmen who had spent in the North anything from one to thirty or more years. According to their own testimony these thirty-five witnesses had spent in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Canada, or (in a few cases) Alaska or Siberia, a total of two hundred and eighty-nine years, or an average of more than eight years each. The testimony is many hundreds of thousands of words. It has, however, been admirably epitomized by Dr. Rutherford in a hundred page report that has been submitted to the Canadian Parliament. This is now a public document, open to all. These are the findings which, supported by ample testimony, have given Canadians assurance that the glamorous and romantic but eternally frozen and forever worthless North is a myth. In its place Dr. Rutherford's report has given them a commonplace but inhabitable and valuable North.

It is this report that will support enough of the contentions of this present article (without contradicting any of them) to give it a general aspect of established truth. If you think

some statement of this article extravagant, compare it with the official report. You may find the report more soberly worded as to conclusions and recommendations, for I know and love the North and Dr. Rutherford judges it merely by testimony. But you will find the facts the same in these articles and in the report, except that the articles cover a greater variety of subjects than fell within the scope of the Commission's inquiry.

It is difficult to see how any of the wrong ideas about the North obtained such wide circulation and such a firm hold. But it is especially difficult to see how the idea can ever have arisen that the Far North is devoid of vegetation, or else that if there is vegetation it is only mosses and lichens. An actual canAn actual canvass of the school geographies and a reading of the encyclopædias will nevertheless leave you with that impression. And yet every botanist will tell you in so many words that the contrary is true.

That mosses and lichens everywhere prevail in the school book accounts of the Far North, while in the North itself they are inconspicuous as compared with the flowering plants, would seem unbelievable if it were an isolated case. As a matter of fact the school books are full of just that sort of misinformation. We, the common people, believe it, although the specialists have always known better.

There is perhaps no more striking instance of misknowledge than the classic one of the ostrich which hides his head in the sand when he is frightened. Some twenty-three hundred years ago there was living in Greece a 'very interesting but not particularly reliable writer by the name of Herodotus. Apparently he was the first to put in circulation in Europe the story that there is a bird in Africa, gigantic of body and conspicuous on the open plain, yet so foolish that when he is frightened he hides his head in the sand and imagines that if he cannot see his enemy his enemy cannot see