if the point is raised that Bernhardi is a characteristic exponent of our public opinion as indicated before, he is no such thing-then one should pay a little closer attention to the part that has been played by the Matin in France and the newspaper concern of Lord Northcliffe in England. This is disturbing peace and poisoning the wells in a circle of millions of readers.

Is the cause of the slogan "German militarism" to be found in the inborn insular aversion to general obligatory military service, which is in vogue in France and Russia just as it is in Germany?

A nation having obligatory military service takes an absolutely reversed view of things. It looks at war as something tragic for the reason that it concerns all without exception, the Prince and the laborer, the academician and the peasant, in the same manner and carries the same worries into castle and hut. General Hamilton may say with a vanity of the aristocratic professional soldier: "Yes, conscription is a tremendous leveler. The proud are humbled; the poor-spirited are strengthened; the national idea is fostered; the interplay of varying ideals is sacrificed." We Germans know that this dreadful equalizer produces the true democracy of duties, which is not based

upon the supermankind of Nietzsche, but upon the categorical imperative of Kant. But, above all, such a democratic army of general obligatory service is not an instrument to be used according to whim for the conquest of the world, but a means of defense of the home country, of the defense of all by all, only to be employed in case of need. In the English army of professionals the world-conquering poor devils may sing in the verses of Rudyard Kipling:

"Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor, For 'alf o' Creation she owns: We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame,

An' we've salted it down with our bones."

In the German peoples' army, however, there resounds the old song of the comrade with the refrain composed and added to it by the people themselves: "In der Heimat, in der Heimat, da gibt's ein Wiedersehen ("At home, at home, a reunion there will be ")-for they are standing in the field to protect their home and all it stands for.

The German peoples' army therefore is peaceful by nature-and so has been our policy since 1871. The English professional army is by nature on conquest bent-and so has England's policy been from time immemorial.

Young Heinrich at the age of ten,

An offspring of the Huns,

Joined manly hate of Englishmen
With childish love of buns;
And so it filled him with delight
When bakeries divulged

A plan whereby these passions might
Be both at once indulged.

In fervent love of fatherland
Young Heinrich swiftly brake
The patriotic doughnut and
The loyal currant cake;

To guard his hate from growing less
Through joy at this repast

He saved-precocious thoroughness!— The "strafe" bits till last.

Cambridge, Aug. 9, 1915. To the Editor of the New York Times:

I

HAVE worked, during the last months, on the side of those who seek to avert the danger of this

country being involved in civil dissensions arising from racial sympathies or antipathies concerning the European conflict. In particular, I have repeatedly expressed my conviction that sympathy with one or the other of the warring nations should not induce American citizens to attempt to coerce our Government into deviating from the strict observance of the accepted rules of neutrality.

I have therefore advocated non-interference on the part of our Government with the internationally legalized traffic in arms and munitions of war, even though, through circumstances over which the United States has no control, this traffic turns out to be of decided advantage to one of the belligerents and of very serious disadvantage to the other. For the inhibition of this traffic would be equally to the advantage of one of the belligerents and to the disadvantage of the other, and as a positive Governmental measure it would make the United States in a much stricter sense legally a partisan of one of the warring powers than mere non-interference with this traffic does.

But the time has come, I believe, when this question should also be looked at from another point of view. Through the course of events it has ceased to be a question of international legality only, and has come to be a vital question of national and international morality.

Is it moral, from the national point of view, that the United States, a nation which officially stands for the policy of peace and against excessive

armament, should now permit within its own borders the manufacture of arms on so large a scale that this industry bids fair to become one of the leading industries of the country?

Is it moral, from the national point of view, that our Government should permit the rise in this country of a set of capitalists whose interests are exclusively or predominantly identified with war, and which, therefore, by its own self-interest, is bound to abet and to foster the war spirit among masses of people?

Is it moral, from the international point of view, that this country, while officially holding aloof from the gigantic carnage which is now devastating Europe, should, as a matter of fact, through its continued shipment of arms make itself a participant in this destruction, and indeed thrive upon it?

And if as is by no means impossible -the continued sale of arms to one of the belligerents from an officially neutral country should finally come to be one of the decisive factors in the issue of this war, would that be an issue to which the United States would have reason to point with pride as a victory of international morality? Would not that be the result of a positive assistance from this country to one of the warring groups which could not any longer be reconciled with moral neutrality?

These are questions so momentous, so far-reaching, and so pressing that Congress should, the sooner the better, have an opportunity to discuss them. They are questions which should be decided without the bias of racial sympathies or antipathies, solely upon the ground of American national welfare.

I

TALIAN fortitude has been quite undisturbed by the fall of Lemberg. The Italians of their own choice entered the war at the time when the Russian retreat had begun and they were prepared for the events that have since occurred. If the Italians had failed to take the Alpine passes of Trentino and Carnia, and to establish themselves on the line of the Isonzo, they would no doubt be more alarmed about the possibility of the Germans coming down in force upon the Lombard plain. But that is felt to be an impossibility since the passes have been seized, and the fact that Germany, though it sends volunteers to the Trentino, will not actually declare war against Italy, is held to indicate that Germany seeks to minimize the Italian war and its effects, rather than to attempt any big coup on this side of the Alps. I do not think it will be possible to minimize the effects of the Italian war in the long run. The spirit of the people and of the army is so strong, so quiet, so patient, so determined. There has been no grumbling

at the comparative want of progress of the last fortnight; for people here have watched the great war long enough before they entered it to understand that quick results on a big scale are not to be looked for till the Allies as a whole are on the advance again. The Italians are doing their duty of the hour in drawing off more and more Austrians from Galicia. They are acting as a muchneeded "magnet" to the forces of the common enemy. And meanwhile they are making real progress on the Carso, the bare plateau of limestone uplands above Monfalcoux, Gorizia, and Trieste.

Two things have tended to maintain public confidence here in the last few days. The news from England and the news from Russia. The Lloyd George

munitions campaign and the rising up

of the English people to face the adverse hour is as much commented on as the Czar's spirited manifesto and the similar uprising of the Russian people of all classes and parties to continue the war till final victory. It is believed here that something of the spirit of 1812 has been aroused in Russia by the recent defeats. The spirit of England and of Russia respectively has been watched, and is at this moment approved. The spirit of France is not even watched, for the Italians know that the tragic determination of every Frenchman is to die rather than to fail of victory. land is well beloved here, but she is distant and relatively a stranger. With France there have been more quarrels in the past, but she is more kith and kin to Italy. Her ways, whether in war or peace, are simpler and more understandable to the Italian. There is also a deep feeling for the enormous sacrifices of men that France is making. The wrongs of Belgium are also very deeply felt by the people of Italy. That feeling meets one here at every turn.

Eng

I was present at a pro-English demonstration last night at one of the theatres. It was a patriotic revue of the war and the Italian politics that led up to it. There was Aristophanic political license, Giolitti and Bülow being as important dramatis personae as Cleon before them. Such uncensored freedom would, one fears, have been sadly abused and vulgarized on the English stage, but here it was used most delightfully. The civilization " of twentyfive centuries" knows how to do these things. There was a true delicacy of wit in the scene where Bülow, who looked his very self without any cariacaturing of his Ambassadorial dignity, unrolls to Giolitti and his "Parliamentary Majority" an

As the British Ambassador was known to be present-it was a benefit night for the Blue Cross-a tableau had been specially put in about the British Navy. A British naval officer, looking, I fear, more like a representative, say, of the Chilian Navy, read a spirited speech about how England had drawn sword for honor and Belgium; and then we all got up and clapped for the British Ambassador to the strains of "God Save the King." A little later, when an "old Garibaldino" was singing his song, the presence of Ricciotti Garibaldi was detected in one of the boxes, and we all got up and clapped for him to the strains of Garibaldi's hymn; thereupon Ricciotti Garibaldi made us a speech about how his horse was wounded in the 1866 campaign, and gave a shriek of pain that he has never forgotten, and how we should all subscribe to the Blue Cross in aid of the wounded horses. Outside these demonstrations in the theatres no one now demonstrates or shouts in the streets, as they were constantly doing during the ten months of Italy's "neutrality." This is quite as it should be. The municipality has just put up a notice to tell us what we are to do if an air raid is made upon Rome. We are already very considerably darkened at night.

To return to the patriotic "revue." The song that was most often encored was a trio by a Socialist and anarchist and a priest, all united to go to the front. The song was witty and at the same time stirring, and when the actor representing the priest waved a tricolor handkerchief and cried "Avanti Savoia " he brought down the house. There was certainly no contempt or malice implied against the priest, quite the opposite. That reminds

me that this Sunday there were again held patriotic services in several of the principal churches of Rome and in the Cathedral of Milan, with a war sermon there by Cardinal Ferrari on patriotism. It is not merely on the stage that priests are patriotic today.

Another of these patriotic revues was about the old dying wolf, Austria, and the bellicose mastiff, Germany. It reproduced in the most forcible manner both the character of modern Germany and the hatred of Italians for the historic idea of Austria. The black and yellow wolf, hobbling on a crutch shaped like a gallows, was in himself an artistic creation. We had Cavour, Rossini, and I know not whom beside. The appeal was to historic memories-what 66 our fathers have told us "-and it moved a vast audience far more than anything that happened fifty years ago could touch a corresponding English audience. Me it moved, because it is part of my profession to understand the multitude and delicacy of the historical allusions. Certainly Austria is paying now for what she did in Italy between 1815 and 1866. And her retention of Trento and Trieste have kept the memory of the old yellow and black hangman alive in Italian hearts, in spite of all the delusive appearance of the Triple Alliance. Trentino and Trieste are everywhere the magic words. To the Italian populace those are the two objectives of the war.

But Germany had her due share in the piece. One of the best songs was a trio by a German commercial traveler, a spy, and a professor. The part of the German professor in the present European tragedy is as well appreciated here as with us. These revues no doubt are trifles, but they serve to illustrate the various phases of public opinion at the

moment.

It is with very different feelings from those of the detached and light-hearted tourist that one walks the streets of Rome today. Formerly an Englishman in Rome has felt as though this wonderful mise en scène of the agonies and tragedies and achievements of three thousand years of Italian history, which are bounded in the little circle of this

city, were a glorified and joyous plaything for the visiting scholar or poet from the isle of safety. "Dulce mari magno." Ever since, in the Winter that followed Waterloo, the flocks of "Milords Inglesi" came in their private chariots to possess the Piazzi di Spagna, after their twenty years of war-exile from Italian joys-ever since that date, now a century old, we English have moved about in Italy and Rome in a privileged position. For we alone have been citizens of a State in no fear of being conquered by an insolent foe, persons free from the heavy burden of the race-feuds and military despotisms of the Continent, safe in our inviolate isle. We watched with too little understanding the convulsions of all Europe in 1848; we pitied the agony of France in 1870, but never feared her fate for ourselves; even the long struggle for Italian freedom with all its sufferings and postponements, though it moved our sympathy, was a thing remote from our own experience. And so we have always trodden the historic streets of Rome, where liberties and empires so often rose and fell, as persons detached from the cruelties, sacrifices, and catastrophes of its history ancient and modern, observing all with the snug pleasure of an art-critic before a masterpiece.

And now, behold, these ancient tragedies and agonies are become flesh and blood to us. We, too, strive for our lives

and our liberty against the Tedeschi, sworn to enslave us. Our far-flung empire is in danger as was once that of Rome. Divisions or want of forethought now would ruin us, as Italy was ruined when Landsknecht and Spaniard sacked this city near 400 years ago. And so, as we move about among the present inhabitants of Rome, amid a people that has risen to its dangerous duty at this crisis of European freedom in a mood so sober and with preparations so well made, we English feel heart-brothers with them, sharers at last in the agonies and sacrifices and dangers which their fathers knew so well as their daily portion. We are blood-brothers with Europe "Sink or swim, survive or perish," we are in for it together now. That this change will profoundly alter our character I cannot doubt. Whether mostly for good or mostly for bad, it is far too early even to guess.

now.

Meanwhile the Italians are watching, with friendly but penetrating eyes, to see how we drag ourselves out of the dangers among which we have fallen. They have heard that the Englishman is best when he has his back to the wall. They are watching, and they think the munitions campaign and the loan a good beginning. They are waiting to see if England also is capable of a Risorgimento on a mightier scale of organized effort than that which sufficed to free Italy two generations ago.