"No harbor is so sheltered but that the ship of death may sail in." Far, far away I just can see A little boat sail toward the quay. What does it bring-whose can it be? The cold north-sea that runs, ah, me, I see it now beyond the lea, Look, look! they wave-they call for me! To see what they have brought to me! They laid it at the feet of me The long black box that came by sea, "God, God, explain the mystery * Of Death!" * Magazinists of the World on the War Condensed from the Leading Reviews The antagonisms between Germany and Russia are brought into sharp relief by the subjoined extracts from the review articles written by the exponents of the respective nations' causes, while the personal sketch of Russia's new War Minister, a translation of which leads the series of extracts from the reviews of the chief nations in the war, is one of the first presented to English-speaking readers. General Polivanoff, the New Russian War Minister T: [From the Petrograd Niva.] HE Petrograd Niva ("The Field") gives one of the first Russian sketches of General A. A. Polivanoff, the new Russian Minister of War, who takes the place of General Sukhomlinoff: The new War Minister, Infantry General A. A. Polivanoff, was born in 1855. He is full of life and energy. His biography shows him to be a profoundly instructed, hard-working man of action. Completing his studies in the Classical Gymnasium (High School) and in the Nicholas College of Engineering, after a brief service as construction officer in the Second Battalion of Sappers, and in the Grenadier Regiment of the Life Guards, A. A. Polivanoff in 1876 entered the Nicholas Academy of Engineering. But the Russo-Turkish war, (which broke out in the following year,) led him to return voluntarily to his regiment, with which he fought gallantly in the valleys of Bulgaria and in the Balkans; he was gravely wounded under Gorny Dubnyak-a bullet through the chest-and for military excellence he received two decorations, the Cross of Saint Anne of the fourth degree, with the badge for valor," and Saint Stanislav of the third degree, decorated with swords and with the ribbon. In the year 1878, A. A. Polivanoff returned to the Nicholas Academy of Engineering, and there completed his studies, in the first rank. Returning once more to the Grenadier Regiment of the Life Guards, he entered another military academy in 1885-the Nicholas General Staffwhere he finished brilliantly in the year 1888, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on the General Staff. Colonel Polivanoff was then 33. For the next eleven years he worked hard in inconspicuous posts, first as senior adjutant of the Kieff military circle, then as director of the Military Science Committee, and finally as head of a department of the General Staff. Το this period of his activities belongs his important work of military research, "A Sketch of the Commissariat of the Russian Army in the Danubian Theatre of War in the Campaign of 1853-4 and in 1877," (Petrograd, 1894,) marked by the distinction and solidity of its method and the soundness of its deductions. In April, 1899, Colonel Polivanoff was appointed assistant editor, and in August of the same year editor in chief, of the official military organs, the journal, "The Russian Invalid," and the review, "The War Magazine "-and showed himself to be a gifted journalist. He soon waked up the Russian war periodicals, and his editorial sway of the Russian Invalid and the War Magazine forms the most brilliant period of their history. Completely changing the former character of these publications, notably broadening their scope, and attracting to their columns the younger literary talent of the army, Polivanoff gave his collaborators ample elbow room for the manysided ventilation of scientific, departmental, and statistical military questions, and he succeeded in making the specialist military official gazette and magazine interesting to a wide circle of Russian society. For five years he served the Russian Army and Russian society in the character of a man of letters; in the year 1904 he became a permanent member and director of works of the Grand Committee on Fortifications, in 1905 he was for a short time the Second Quartermaster General of the General Staff, and in the same year General Polivanoff was appointed Chief of the General Staff. In the year 1906 he was appointed to the recently created post of Assistant Minister of War, and at the same time was appointed a member of the Council of the Empire. It would be of high interest and ad vantage to the whole civilized world should it fall to the lot of General Polivanoff to write the Russian history of the present war, as General Kuropatkin, one of his predecessors at the War Ministry, wrote the Russian history of the Campaigns of Plevna, Lovcha, and Shipka, in the Turkish war of 1877. S Does Russia Menace Sweden VEN HEDIN'S attack on Russia has brought a forceful Russian reply. Sven Hedin bases his attack on the assertion that Russia, to get an open ice-free port, needs to expand toward the Atlantic. He did not look forward to the opening of the Dardanelles; he saw Russia's outlets toward the sea blocked in the direction of the Persian Gulf and the Pacific. The Baltic is also closed. For this immense suffocating empire, he exclaimed, the only possible issue to the sea is across the Scandinavian peninsula. "If I were a Russian," he adds, "I should myself recognize in this policy a vital necessity for my country." Sven Hedin was so possessed by this idea that one might think he wished to " suggest" it to Russia, so eager was he to put Sweden on her guard against this "inevitable danger." It is easy to understand the effect that this passionate propaganda had on Swedish opinion, creating not so much an aggressive hatred of Russia as a profound apprehension of her aims. Nicholas Emilianoff, who has given the answer to Sven Hedin in a Swedish pamphlet, is the constructor of the new railroad which Russia is now building between Petrograd and the Murman coast, situated on the Kola Peninsula, north of Finland, on the Arctic Ocean, to the northwest of the White Sea and Archangelsk, at the northwestern corner of Russia. Thus Emilianoff speaks of this region with authority. He demonstrates that the Murman coast, thanks to the passage of the Gulf 2 Stream, remains free from ice all Winter, and thus allows unbroken communication by sea with the rest of the world to be maintained all the year round. The natural harbors are excellent and easy to equip. The waters are full of fish, among the best in the world. These regions, hitherto wholly waste, only need a railroad to open them up to civilization and prosperity. While the White Sea and the harbor of Archangelsk, although situated further south, are blocked by ice during the greater part of the year, the Murman coast enjoys a relatively mild climate, for the warm waters of the Gulf Stream permit no icebergs to approach. If Russia had built this railroad sooner, she would not now be short of munitions. The Murman coast, linked by the new railroad with Petrograd, will, therefore, have a high importance for Russia, strategically, in time of war; economically, in time of peace. Emilianoff concludes that, given these circumstances, the fears of Russian aggression against Norway and Sweden are unjustified. The Murman coast once utilized, Russia needs no port on the coast of Norway. Then why should she menace the Scandinavian countries, and challenge a conflict with England, which might not look favorably on the creation of a Russian naval base opposite her coasts? The construction of the new line was decided in part in the month of October, 1914, and in part in January of the present year. Before this date, therefore, there was justification for Sweden's uneasiness. G German War Literature By a Russian Critic, "Eusis," in Sovremenny Mir (The Contemporary World) URING the first five months of the war there were published in Germany 1,460 books, pamphlets, and reviews (counting their titles, but not separate issues) dedicated to the war. During the same period, according to the reckoning of a Munich professor, more than 3,000,000 patriotic poems were written. If to this we add the fact that the majority of general periodicals which existed before the war have now been transformed into special war journals we must admit that the Germans hold the record for the rapidity and extent of their mobilization of literature for war needs. The Germans themselves are proud of this record, especially in comparison with France, where the presses have not been able to print a tenth part of what is produced in Germany. To study this whole literary output is impossible; at best, one could only measure it by statistics, as so many hundredweight of spoiled paper and printer's ink, or express in square miles the extent of the pages consumed by this war literature. There is no doubt that in time German lovers of statistics will carry out this task, and we need only await that happy day, conscious that, taken as a whole, the German "Kriegs literature" deserves no more delicate characterization. This literature is, for the most part, apologetic and polemical. The subject of the apologetics is: Germany and her rulers; the method of apology is every distortion of thought and fact within the power of a man who is ready for anything and despairs of everything. The polemics are of the same kind: without measure or bounds, without the sense of responsibility, without sparing even their own honor. They say that Danton, in controversy with the Girondists, exclaimed: "I spit upon my honor, if only France may be saved!" Almost all Germany is now in the same mood. And to this mood one cannot apply ordinary human standards. The critic's problem may be, neither an estimate of this literature nor a controversy with it, but only the selection from it of that part which continues the normal work of thought, not yet quite distorted by delirious ideas, but which is trying to understand the situation created by the war, to show the nation its problems, to remove the difficulties of the war, to explain its causes, to try to divine its issue, and so forth. It stands to reason that, in its service to society, the war literature of Germany, as of every other country, is in many ways different from the literature of a time of peace. Even in the most tranquil people, the temperature and pulse do not remain normal at such a time. But precisely these perturbations in the normal development of thought have a special interest, making clearer the meaning of the more important complexes of the nation's lifeof course up to the point where the writer goes completely crazy, when criticism must give place to psychiatric diagnosis. The war literature consists chiefly of pamphlets. A book is a rarity. Only military statistics run to fat books. And this is natural. The time for scientific analysis has not yet come. And a nation which is carrying on a contest, not for life, but for death, does not need, and does not recognize, scientific analysis. It demands that thoughts should be pelted at it, like bombs, in rapid succession, in sufficient quantity, and sufficiently concentrated. What is now demanded of an idea is not its scientific soundness, but its ballistic quality, and the effectiveness of its impact. It is all one whether that idea is conservative or ultra-democratic; it must possess such qualities as will be significant in an atmosphere of bursting bombs. Defense and attack are carried out by the same means, and raise equal quantities of dust. In their war literature the Germans have been true to their great benefactor organization. In Germany there are now fewer people who stand alone, or who walk alone, than in time of peace. There are hardly any critics, and this, if you wish, is the most characteristic trait of human thought in time of war; extraordinary credulity, a proneness to accept without criticsm any and every thought, if only it tends in the desired direction. War creates a mass of Utopias. The future will criticise them. Another characteristic trait is the extraordinary contagiousness of ideas. People, crowding together more than usual, feel that they belong to the mass, and need each other's support. They crowd together, and, where the way is opener, where the road is wider, where there is more fight, whether natural or artificial, there the crowd takes its way. War literature must be popular in form. War literature is a word of command. And in a word of command, the most desirable qualities are lucidity, brevity, and definiteness of direction. You cannot command like this: if such and such facts are so and so, then, if the remaining conditions are unchanged, and so on. A command of that sort is useless. For this reason, even the most moderate and undecided minds have now become firm and decided. For this reason, many who were leaders in time of peace have left the stage. They have yielded their places to others, perhaps less thoughtful, less talented, less conscientious, but at the same time more definite and decided-sometimes even impudent and shameless. This is seen in every region. Among the conservatives, the talented Delbrück has become almost silent, and the almost talented Schiemann has become altogether silent, but, in compensation, Baron von Zedlitz and the upstart Hetsch have suddenly become the leading minds of conservative politics. Among the liberal professors, most conspicuous are Franz Liszt and Sombart; on the other hand, Brentano and Schmoller have grown too old for such a stormy time, and in the strenuous activities of national economic science and practice their names are hardly heard. Among the Social Democrats, Kautzky has almost retired into the shade, while Heine, Schiemann and even a certain Lentsch have suddenly become the enlighteners of the multitude. T ୧୯ Russia on the Way to Revolution By Dr. Theodor Schiemann, Professor in Berlin University. HIS very interesting and un usually well written pamphlet by Dr. Schiemann is an excellent example of the kind of literature Germany produces in such abundance, to mold German public opinion concerning the war. Dr. Schiemann, who is a personal friend of the Kaiser, holds that the work of revolutionary propaganda has been carried on in Russia by wounded men sent back from the front: All the thousands and other thousands who returned home, discharged as no 99 longer fit for service, everywhere related the same thing in town and village, that they were badly treated and badly led, that the officers reveled and caroused, and refused to go into battle. The poor soldiers were knouted by the Cossacks, when they did not wish to go forward, and forced into action by machine guns and artillery. They described how they had to wait in the trenches without weapons, until rifles were available for them, because their comrades had been killed, and what a contrast there was in the camp of the Germans. How superbly they were treated, how well they were all taken care of, how the officers were at once brothers and fathers to their men, |