way. The Turkish army is mobilized; a Turkish army of the first line of 200,000 men all Mohammedans, is formed; a body of 72 German superior officers is incorporated in the Turkish army.

In a very few days Turkey, although she denies it, is expected to declare war against Russia, and a general uprising of the Mohammedan world is within the possibilities.

The Balkan War" is a sort of permaRency in Europe. Since the fall of the East Roman Empire and the taking of Constantine's capital Turkey has been a power of varying strength in Europe. Step by step the Turks advanced northward, spreading terror wherever they came, until, in 1683, when they besieged Vienna, they were driven back by Sobieski's Poles and some German regiments. Since then there has been a Balkan War" whose flames sometimes sprang high up, at other times were secretly smoldering under the ashes. Such events as the Crimean War and the last Russo-Turkish War and the latest uprising in the Balkans are episodes only in the European efforts to reduce and finally drive out Turkey from Europe. Yet, though his holdings of territory in Europe have dwindled down to very little, the "Sick Man is still in possession of that wonderful place, Constantinople, on the Bosphorus. When the Turk has to leave Constantinople and go back to Asia, whence he came, who shall be his heir and successor ? Constantinople is the bridge between Europe and Asia. It leads to the lands of those teeming millions of people, industrious and intelligent, whose dreaming and whose work have for many centuries contributed to European wealth, to our philosophy and our religions, to our arts, our poetry, our architecture.

They still send us the products of their industry—their wonders of silks, of embroideries, of rugs, of porcelains, and a hundred other things. To them we owe Our oranges and our peaches, our coffee and tea, our sugar and spices, as well as our fairy tales. Such is the land of Arabia and Persia and India and China. It is the land of our dreams and our desires.

No wonder that Constantinople, the bridge to all this, is jealously watched by the nations of Europe, for it will bring new wealth and power to the successor of the present régime. Three great Powers are competitors for this succession, and whenever one of them seems to get nearer to the coveted goal the other two will be her bitter enemies. In the

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first place, there is Russia. The possession of the Bosphorus by Russia would open the door for her fleet and her commerce of the Black Sea into the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. It would make Odessa a great center almost at once. Even now, without the free passage to the sea, Odessa is the greatest harbor and commercial town in Russia.

With

The fact that the Balkan peninsula is inhabited principally by Slavic tribes who, though all the time in bitter strife among one another, are of the same Russian Greek religion, makes Pan-Slavism an excellent pretext to Russia for trying again and again to gain territory there and approach Constantinople. nople. After Sebastopol, her fortress in the Crimea, had fallen in 1851, and she had to yield to her enemies England, France, Italy, and Turkey, she tried again in 1878. the help of Rumania she advanced victoriously far south, and hoped to dictate the terms of peace in the Treaty of San Stefano in the very outskirts of Constantinople; but Disraeli sent an English fleet into the Dardanelles and frustrated Russia's intentions. Bismarck called the Powers to convene in Berlin, and peace was established in the Treaty of Berlin. Treaty of Berlin. England acquired Cyprus. Eventually Austria got Bosnia and Herzegovina. Germany gained in prestige without having drawn her sword. Pan-Slavism had to wait. Germany wanted peace.

England could wait. Holding Gibraltar and Malta, and Egypt, Cyprus, and the Suez Canal, she was master in the Mediterranean and controlled the shortest way to India and China.

With Germany as a friend of Austria and of Turkey, an actively helping friend, whose advice and example and whose officers led them to improve their armies and defend their possessions against the pressure from East and West, the necessity of uniting dawned on England and Russia. Constantinople could never be won by either of them as long as Germany had to be reckoned with. And so the unnatural alliance of the two old enemies was achieved, and France was easily attracted as a very desirable third by the hope of having her revenge for 1870.

The three watched for their opportunity, and it came along with the Serajevo incident. Servia intended to cause an uprising of the Slavs in Austria, and knew Russia would support her. The result was the great European war. It is really an Oriental war. When and where will it end?

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as

HE characterization by Mr. Bullard,

The Outlook's war correspondent, of the Japanese ultimatum to Germany "brutal and provocative" is not quite right. Taken in itself, the ultimatum does indeed sound brutal, but to understand Japan's course of action in the present case we must take into consideration Germany's attitude towards Japan during the past twenty years.

Most people know how Germany treated Japan at the end of the Chino-Japanese War, which cost Japan a hundred thousand lives and a billion dollars.

But few Americans

know that Germany's interference with the Chino-Japanese peace terms was only the first of many unpleasant experiences which Japan has had with Germany.

In the war against China Japan was convinced of the justice of her cause. When the war came to an end, therefore, Japan thought she could demand of China the cession of the Liaotung Peninsula without violating the dictates of justice. But Germany, But Germany, perhaps anxious to ingratiate herself with the Czar, peremptorily ordered Japan out of the peninsula. To my mind that advice was far more "brutal" than the Japanese advice recently given Germany. On the day the peace treaty was signed between China and Japan all Japan was celebrating; the next day the whole country was in mourning because of that German advice. Not that Japan was sorry to part with the newly acquired peninsula, but because her pride and her sense of honor were outraged by the overbearing attitude of Germany. The German advice was far more peremptory than the French and Russian notes on the same occasion. The Kaiser's note, in its original form, even asserted that Japan could not afford to disregard the counsel of such a powerful country as Germany. And the masterful manner in which the German Ambassador presented it to the Foreign Department is still a topic of gossip in Tokyo.

When Germany occupied Kiaochau on a slight pretext, she had a secret understanding

with Russia, in virtue of which the Czar was free to occupy the Liaotung Peninsula, the self-same territory from which the Kaiser and Czar compelled Japan to withdraw only two years before. You can well imagine how chagrined Japan was.

The German seizure of Kiaochau, followed by the Russian occupation of the Liaotung, the English occupation of Weihaiwei, and the French occupation of Kwanchau Bay, were largely responsible for the Boxer disturbance of 1900. When the Boxers besieged the Legation quarters in Peking, Japan proposed to the Powers that she be permitted to rush her troops to rescue the beleaguered foreigners. The Kaiser put his foot upon Japan's proposal, and insisted that unless Japan could guarantee that her action would by no means interfere with the interests of other Powers he could not accept the proposal. Such incidents clearly show the Kaiser's mental attitude towards Japan.

During the Boxer disturbance Russia was scheming to add Manchuria to her own map, and it was an open secret that the Kaiser was encouraging this ambition of the Czar's. About this time the London "Times" published an article reporting the existence of a secret treaty by which the Kaiser was to render clandestine assistance to the Czar in the event of a Russo-Japanese war.

While Japan was measuring swords with Russia, Germany's attitude towards the Muscovite Empire was the virtual violation of neutrality. The Berlin Government permitted a German steamship company to sell a number of steamships to the Russian navy and to help Rozestvenski's Baltic squadron secure coal en route to the Japan Sea. What was more surprising, a German officer who was by Japan's special courtesy permitted to accompany the Japanese army to the front was found secretly reporting to his Government the activities of the Mikado's forces without the permission of the censoring officers.

To say that Japan is, in the present junc ture, actuated solely by sense of obligation towards the treaty of alliance with England

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HERE is very little known on this side of the world about the personality or characteristics of the man who has so suddenly been elevated to the headship of the great Roman Catholic communion. He succeeds one "by birth a peasant, by vocation a saint," who, ascending the Throne of the Fisherman utterly unknown to the great world, has left an impress on his Church deeper than any Pontiff for five hundred years, and convinced a skeptical world that the virtues peculiar to the meek and lowly Christ are still able to conquer where the more fascinating characteristics of earthly power fail. Pius X was called to rule over a Church that had regained through the masterly diplomacy of Leo XIII its position of acknowledged importance in the affairs of the world. By the diplomacy of the undiluted Gospel he brought that Church to a height of spiritual development unparalleled for many centuries. Benedict XV comes to rule when all the arts of diplomacy and the disinterestedness of the highest spirituality will be needed to enable the Papacy to regain its róle as peacemaker and to revive religion in those fair countries of Europe which now are devastated by terrific war, and whose sad condition even now may furnish at least one commentary on the cryptic prophetic symbol of the new Pope," Religio depopulata." The external task confronting Benedict XV is stupendous. If Germany should win and

enslave Europe, he will have to contend with the same arrogant spirit that created the Falk Laws and the Kulturkampf. Should the Allies prove victorious, Rome will be most intimately brought in contact with the overwhelming power of the Greek Orthodox Church, its most deadly enemy. The triumph of Russia will sound the death knell of Roman Catholicism in eastern Europe. Either alternative will certainly require the exercise of the shrewdest diplomacy on the part of the Papacy, for there will no longer be the prestige of a great Catholic power like Austria to give it material backing.

What the intellectual condition of Europe will be after the war no man can say. Harnack has proclaimed that the struggle is really between Teutonic and Muscovite cul

ture.

It is a new thought to us, at any rate, that the world that has successively passed under the intellectual yoke of Greek and Latin, Celt and Teuton, should come to be dominated by the Slav. But it is in the range of possibilities, and, in the event of Russian victory, of probabilities. One fact is prominent in this war, and that is the appeal to God. Prussian atheism has made that appeal as well as Christian England, while infidel France immediately suspended the decrees of expulsion issued against certain religious communities, and the mobilizing troops welcomed with affection the car-loads of nuns who were hurried with them to the front to serve as nurses. All the world must

have been touched by the evidently sincere and sincerely simple religious faith of the Czar in calling his people to arms. The mushroom religious philosophies for the moment have disappeared.

In their awful danger men, so far as they are religious, have gone back to the elements of religion. God has become a reality for them and prayer a necessity. On the whole, a decidedly healthy spiritual element is discernible in the part of the world involved. With the high spiritual condition of the Church achieved under Pius X, the future of Benedict XV would therefore seem to promise auspiciously as far as his own Church is concerned. But what are the prospects of that Church exerting any influence upon a victorious Prussia, essentially atheistic though apparently Christian, or a triumphant Russia, strong in her orthodoxy? We must not forget, either, that recent incidents illustrating the theological division in the English Established Church have made manifest the decay of patristic Christianity in England, and consequently rendered more difficult the task of Rome to impress herself upon that great nation. Such are some of the elements of the problem that confronts Benedict XV. What is his equipment to deal with them?

It is quite obvious that the secretary of Cardinal Rampolla must be a trained diplomat.

Under that masterful, patient, learned mind the knowledge acquired during the protracted, diverse, and delicate negotiations conducted in the reign of Leo XIII with the Great Powers of Europe must prove of immense advantage to the new Pontiff, called now to originate such negotiations for himself. It is equally obvious that his diplomacy or policy lacks sympathy with that pursued by Cardinal Merry del Val. It is no secret that the latter was responsible for the removal of Mgr. della Chiesa from Rome; and it is quite legitimate to infer that there will be a radical divergence in policy. The experience acquired by Benedict XV as actual administrator of the important see of Bologna will be invaluable to him now, as the pastoral service of Pius X proved of such benefit to him and his Church. So that, from the point of view both of diplomacy and the pastoral

office, Benedict XV comes to the throne wel equipped for the tremendous task set before him. His rumored appointment of Cardinal Ferrata as Secretary of State is an indication of his sympathy with what may be termed the Broad party in the Church. The new Secretary of State has been a consistent friend of Cardinal Mercier, of Mechlin, who was continually in trouble with the last administration on account of his modern ideas as expressed in his Institute of Philosophy at Louvain. This would seem to indicate some relaxation of the rigidity that many had come to fear in the scholastic policy of Pius X. That policy served its purpose. Modernism will never again be heard of in the Catholic Church. The present cataclysm, bringing men, as it surely will, back to primitive and fundamental notions, will clear away many of the fantastic difficulties created by a fatuous intellectualism. And clear thinking on the part of the rulers of the Church of Rome, freed from any extravagances or rigor induced by a natural hysteria at the discovery of the rank treachery disguised as Modernism, will attract the attention of those emerging from the débâcle and genuinely seeking light and truth. Such would seem to be the attitude of the Papacy as suggested by the appointments thus far made.

The pronouncements attributed to the Pontiff during the Conclave with regard to the position of the Papacy in the present struggle are an augury of much promise for a successful diplomacy. They were absolutely without partisanship, and presented not only a high but the only true conception of the duty of a Pope claiming to be the representative of Christ. Utterly disinterested, without a trace of worldliness, they proclaimed the office of a shepherd seeking to calm and restrain his unruly sheep. The most striking feature of these utterances was that they placed the Pope in the position, not of one who held aloof until the battle was fought and won, but who in the thick of the mêlée sought to make his voice heard and to bring back the combatants to a sense of reason and of right. They betokened fearlessness a great quality in one who sits in the chair of Peter.