gation of ex-territorial privileges be properly used, the Board believes that, instead of a hardship, it may lead to better conditions. Foreign governments are generally friendly to American missionaries, though local officials sometimes trespass.

More serious for Christian interest and undoing much missionary work just now is the spectacle of "Christian" nations engaged in mutual slaughter. The cruel havoc of it multitudes of Asiatics regard as demonstrating the falsity and worthlessness of Christianity. In the fierce light of the present European woe a fresh demonstration of real as distinct from pseudo Christianity must now be given. This was a central conviction of the meeting at Detroit. It is of special importance in Japan, now passing through a crisis with atheism. Its former Premier, Count Okuma, confessed, "We have religions, but no religion.. We need a religion that grapples the problem of the character of man." Among auspicious facts in Japan is the undertaking of leadership in home missions by a wealthy banker.

An evening at the meeting of the American Board at Detroit was given to "The Layman in Christian Service," commemorating the late President of the Board, Dr. Samuel B. Capen, who died last February, at Shanghai, while on a missionary tour. An eminently fit successor was elected, Professor Edward C. Moore, of Harvard, Chairman of the Board's Prudential Committee since 1905.

MOVIES ONCE more

The Americans of the future are going in great numbers to see moving-picture plays. Night after night, all over the continent, crowds of children and young people are eagerly watching the latest modern dramatic instrument. It has great possibilities for good, as The Outlook has often pointed out; it has also great possibilities of mischief. An attempt is now being made to supervise the pictures shown on these stages in the interests of morality. But the supervision ought to go further; it ought to rule out vulgar pictures. At this moment, so far as children can be vulgarized through the eye, American children are in the process of vulgarization. In too many moving-picture theaters many of the scenes which they are invited to look at rob life of its dignity, refinement, and sentiment. The love-making which is seen on a thousand stages is not actually indecent, but

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it is grossly vulgar; and no boy can look at these pictures without thinking more cheaply of women. It is perhaps not too much to say that most of the moving pictures representing love scenes turn love into broad and cheap farce. Many of these pictures, however, are highly offensive because they familiarize children with scenes of cruelty.

One of the most elaborate films now on the stage is that which tells the story of Cleopatra. Serious objection may be taken to the central figure, representing a large, coarse, voluptuous woman without a trace of any kind of fascination; a woman who could no more tempt a man of Mark Antony's imagination and ability than she could have interested Shakespeare. Cleopatra, it must be remembered, was a woman of genius. It was said of her that "age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite variety." A gross, voluptuous woman has no variety and is stale at the start.

But this film is to be condemned because of the barbarous cruelty with which it familiarizes the audience. In one scene Charmian is thrown to the crocodiles, monstrous creatures whose repulsive forms make the audience shudder. At the close, in order to determine which manner of death is least painful, Cleopatra tries three poisons on as many different slaves, and, to gratify her curiosity, they all die in different kinds of contortions in the presence of the audiSuch scenes as these ought never to be presented to children. Hundreds of Americans have written fluently about the brutalizing effect of the Spanish bull-fight; American children in the most receptive age are being familiarized with scenes of cruelty which are repulsive to every normal-minded

ence.

man or woman.

INTERRUPTED BUT NOT ENDED

One of the very interesting movements which the war has interrupted is the World Conference on Faith and Order. A great deal of work of a preparatory kind had already been done. It was necessary to explain clearly the object of the movement to churches of every kind in this country and in Europe. That of itself was an immense undertaking, prophetic in a way of the purpose and method of the Conference which is to be called. So successful had this preliminary work been that at the outbreak of the war forty-eight commissions had been appointed in this country, in Canada, South America,

England, Scotland, Ireland, Europe generally, Australia, South America, India, and China, to co-operate in preparing for the Conference. Other commissions were in process of appointment; the matters had progressed so far that it may be said that the movement had the approval of churches of the Episcopal order throughout the world, of all the leading Protestant communions in all Englishspeaking countries, of the Old Catholic churches in Europe, and the warmly expressed sympathy of many dignitaries of the Orthodox Eastern Church and of the Roman Catholic Church. When the war broke out, a deputation of the leading clergymen, with Dr. John R. Mott, was on the point of starting for Europe, planning, in the interest of the movement, to have interviews with the leading men in every religious communion in Europe and the Near East. Experience showed that whenever the spirit and purpose of the Conference were explained sympathetic response was made.

If there was reason then for a serious endeavor to bring Christians of all communions into sympathetic relations and to remove the prejudice and misunderstanding which reduce the force of Christian influence, there is far more convincing reason now when Europe is torn asunder and racial prejudice and passion have swept the whole world like a great destructive tide. It may be that the fierce animosities which divide Europe will linger for decades; but it is more likely that the devastation and horror of war, when they are realized, will open the eyes of men to the fact that the higher interests of civilization and its safety are at stake; and that if misunderstanding and ignorance are to continue to divide men there is small hope for the successful issue of that nobler war for the liberation of humanity in which Christianity has always borne a leading part.

In the meantime the Committee which is arranging for the Conference suggests that, while its plans are for the moment suspended, the work of preparation must go on by common prayer for unity and good will, by the discussion of the purposes and spirit of the proposed Conference, by the endeavor to bring together groups of Christians, and through earnest prayer that the awful experience through which the world is passing may open the eyes and prepare the hearts of men for a clearer vision of Christian ideals and a new sense of the community of the world in the possession of those ideals.

AERIAL WARFARE

Bombs have been dropped from aeroplanes on streets and buildings in Paris, and from air-ships upon houses in Antwerp. The effect of these bombs has been the killing and wounding of civilians, including women and children, and the destruction of private property. private property. It has not included the destruction of fortifications, military stores, railway tracks or rolling stock, or anything else of military value. So far as has been reported, the allied armies have not been weakened by the loss of a single soldier, he destruction of a single gun, or injury to a franc's worth of military resources. These bombs dropped from the sky have created in a small portion of the French and Belgian population a degree of anxious curiosity. If such bomb-dropping became frequent and resulted in the loss of many lives, particularly of children, of women, and of the aged, this anxious curiosity would unquestionably be converted into fear, if not terror. The one result, and the only possible result, of such methods of warfare would be to cause panic in the population of the hostile country. It has been reported that the German military leaders contemplate an aerial raid upon London. It is said that Zeppelin airships are being prepared for descent upon the English capital as an air fleet, for the purpose of dropping bombs upon the city. London is probably the greatest neighborhood which the world has ever known. Nowhere else is there so great and so helpless a group of non-combatants as in the population of London. Conditions make it impossible for them to escape. If war is to be waged on the helpless, on women and on children, and on the very poor, London is the place of all places to be attacked, for it is the citadel of helplessness.

Against the deeds of the bomb-dropping air-ships over Antwerp and the bomb-dropping aeroplanes over Paris and against the proposed air-ship raid upon the defenseless population of London there are rising and will continue to rise protests from neutral peoples, and particularly from Americans. The contemplation of the misery, fear, and havoc that might be wrought in such a raid has roused in many Americans the hottest indignation.

Is this indignation anything more than the revolt of humane minds against the inevitable horrors of war? Why should this project of Germany be singled out for condemnation

It

when England and France and Russia are using the most modern engines of war to slay German soldiers, and are doing their best to drive back upon German territory the German armies and to march upon the German capital? War is war. Its very purpose is to make use of death and destruction as the means for attaining its end. has even been said that to protest against such use of bomb-dropping air-ships and aeroplanes without an equal protest against all war is hypocritical sentimentality. Is this the answer that should be made? Should civilized people accept the dropping of bombs upon defenseless populations as a part of modern warfare, to be accepted and endured with stoicism, or should civilized peoples declare that any nation which follows these ways has placed itself beyond the pale of civilization?

There are certain practices which no civilized nation would countenance in warfare. All are agreed on that. The savage uses poisoned arrows; the civilized man does not use poisoned bullets. The savage creeps up by stealth upon a village and massacres every one, men, women, and children, and tortures prisoners. The civilized man does not make indiscriminate massacre his object nor does he countenance torture, but, on the contrary, he treats the wounded of the enemy as he treats the wounded of his own forces. To defend any method of killing or destruction on the ground that war is war is like defending any commercial practice on the ground that business is business. Savage warfare is different from civilized warfare, and the nation that wishes to be regarded as civilized must observe those rules and practices and principles with which civilized nations have hedged war about.

The reason why there is a difference between the warfare of the savage and the warfare of the civilized man is that there is a difference between the object of the savage and the object of the civilized man in war. The savage tribe that makes war upon its neighbors does so out of one of two motives -either the motive of covetousness to acquire its neighbor's land and possessions to the exclusion of its neighbors or the motive of revenge. In either case the purpose of such a savage tribe is to exterminate the neighboring tribe as a tribe.

For that reason

these savages wish to kill the children because those children may grow up to be warriors; they wish to kill the women because

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the women may bear warriors; and, if they spare women, it is only for the purpose they would have in sparing cattle or other possessions-in order that they might possess them themselves. The object of the civilized nation in warfare, on the other hand, is not extermination. When the people of the North and the people of the South here in the United States arrayed themselves against one another in warfare, there was no intention on the part of the North to exterminate the Southerners or on the part of the South to exterminate the Northerners. Rather, there was a great question to be settled, and all other means of settlement had been exhausted, apparently. War was a means not of revenge or covetousness; it was an instrument of judgment. That is why the civilized man speaks of the "arbitrament" of war.

Massacre, torture, and terror help to attain the savage's object-extermination. But massacre, torture, and terror have no real effect upon the civilized man's object. It is for this reason that civilized warfare has been hedged about by rules. Some of these rules have been made by agreements between the nations in times of peace. Others have been drafted voluntarily as concrete expressions of a general principle.

It is in response to this universal feeling with regard to the objects and methods of civilized warfare that general practices and rules have been formulated concerning bombardments. Classical expressions of this aspect of the ethics of war are the rules that were issued by the War Department of the United States on April 24, 1863, under the approval of President Lincoln. We quote from some of these rules:

"As martial law is executed by military force, it is incumbent upon those who administer it to be strictly guided by the principles of justice, honor, and humanity-virtues adorning a soldier even more than other men, for the very reason that he possesses the power of his arms against the unarmed."

"The law of war does not only disclaim all cruelty and bad faith concerning engagements concluded with the enemy during the war, but also the breaking of stipulations solemnly contracted by the belligerents in time of peace, and avowedly intended to remain in force in case of war between the contracting powers."

"Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is

incidentally unavoidable in the armed contest of the war."

"Military necessity does not admit of cruelty-that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions."

"Commanders, whenever admissible, inform the enemy of their intention to bombard a place, so that the non-combatants, and especially the women and children, may be removed before the bombardment commences. But it is no infraction of the common law of war to omit thus to inform the enemy. Surprise may be a necessity."

"In modern regular wars of the Europeans, and their descendants in other portions of the globe, protection of the inoffensive citizen of the hostile country is the rule; privation and disturbance of private relations are the exceptions."

"Retaliation will therefore never be resorted to as a measure of mere revenge, but only as a means of protective retribution, and, moreover, cautiously and unavoidably; that is to say, retaliation shall only be resorted to after careful inquiry into the real occurrence, and the character of the misdeeds that may demand retribution."

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Unjust or inconsiderate retaliation removes the belligerents farther and farther from the mitigating rules of regular war, and by rapid steps leads them nearer to the internecine wars of savages.""

Classical works of art, libraries, scientific collections, or precious instruments, such as astronomical telescopes, as well as hospitals, must be secured against all avoidable injury, even when they are contained in fortified places whilst besieged or bombarded."

"The besieging belligerent has sometimes requested the besieged to designate the buildings containing collections of works of art, scientific museums, astronomical observatories, or precious libraries, so that their destruction may be avoided as much as possible."

Such rules as these express not merely American practice, but the practice of all civilized peoples. Of course these particular rules were drafted before there was any thought of dirigible balloons or aeroplanes, but the principles they enunciate apply to bombardment from the sky as well as bombardment from the earth.

The dropping of bombs, more or less at random, into cities, with or without previous warning, seems to us, therefore, clearly inde

fensible both from the military and from the moral point of view.

From the military point of view it is indefensible because, as experience has shown, it is ineffectual and does not lessen the enemy's fighting strength. Bombs cannot be—or at least have not been-dropped accurately enough to hit a legitimate object of attack. If it were possible to strike with a fair degree of certainty a factory of arms inside a city, cr a dry-dock, or a depot of ammunition, or any building or structure whatever used for military purposes, the dropping of explosives into a city would be a legitimate war measure; but, so far as we know, not a single bomb dropped into Antwerp or Paris has hit an object that was desirable, from a military point of view, to destroy, or, in the process of killing innocent non-combatants and tearing to pieces houses of private individuals, has affected in the slightest degree the result of the struggle in general or in any particular field.

From the moral point of view the bombardment of a city as a city from the sky, like the bombardment of a city as a city from land or sea, is indefensible when it does not greatly weaken the enemy's fighting power. The destruction of a fortified city's defenses may involve incidentally great injury to the city. That cannot be helped; but that is a very different thing from bomb-dropping that merely terrorizes a non-combatant population without giving the attacking force any military advantage, or that wreaks destruction merely for the purpose of satisfying the spirit of animosity and revenge. All the Zeppelins in Germany might have dropped bombs into Antwerp for a month without taking the city or gaining any great military advantage. The city was taken as a result of the destruction of the forts by big siege guns. Such bombardment was legitimate, even if incidentally it did injure the city and kill noncombatants. The Zeppelin bombardment was illegitimate, because it spread death and terror among the non-fighting population without in any way affecting the struggle for the possession of the city. This principle is applicable to any case of aerial bombardment. Although the framework of a fighting air-ship and the roof of its shed were seriously damaged by a bomb dropped from an English aeroplane over Düsseldorf, flying-machine bomb-dropping is not so accurate at present that the military advantages in dropping bombs over inhabited cities justify the incidental

injury to non-combatants, and of course the deliberate attempt to injure non-combatants is not justifiable either from a military or a moral point of view.

Are the Germans, then, to be deprived of the fruits of their labor in developing the flying-machines as instruments of warfare?

It was

In the first place, the Germans cannot be said to have developed any form of air-ship or flying-machine except that particular form of dirigible balloon known as the Zeppelin. They did not invent the heavier-than-airmachine in any of its forms, nor were they pre-eminent in the development of it as an engine of war. It was invented by Langley and the Wrights-Americans—and in the art of using it France and the United States took the lead. We were the first to make an aeroplane that could be launched from the deck of a naval vessel, and that could safely alight on and rise from the surface of the water. In the technique of flying—that is, the art of managing an aeroplane in all conditions of weather-French aviators may fairly be said to have led the world. the French, too, who devised and used one of the most efficient of motor engines for aeroplanes namely, the Gnome. It was a Brazilian, Santos-Dumont, who first became most prominent in developing and controlling the dirigible balloon; and his most noteworthy experiments were made in France. The most effective type of dirigible balloon has, however, been the German Zeppelin, but the dirigible balloon has not been nearly so useful so far in the war as the aeroplane, on either side. On the side of the Allies alone, aeroplanes, since the war began, are said to have flown in the aggregate eighty-three thousand miles, while the Zeppelins have probably not made a tenth of that mileage. Most of the air-scouting-that is, the reconnaissance work-has been done by the aeroplane, not by the Zeppelin. The Germans, therefore, cannot rightly claim priority or pre-eminence in military aviation. They have developed the best bomb-dropping machine, which has terrorized non-combatants in cities; but, so far as we know, it has not yet destroyed a single war-ship, or dock-yard, or gun plant, or arsenal, or even an ammunition train or field battery.

In the second place, if the German nation denied itself as a civilized nation the right to drop bombs upon the civilian population of an enemy's city, it would not be deprived of the legitimate use of aeroplanes and air-ships

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in warfare, for the flying-machine and the dirigible balloon can be legitimately used for military purposes.

They can be used (and have been by the French) in dropping showers of steel arrows on bodies of troops.

They can be used (though thus far they have not been used very successfully) in dropping bombs over hostile troops, trenches, batteries, dock-yards, hangars, arsenals, etc.

They can be used in connection with submarines, and particularly in detecting the submarines of the enemy.

They can be, and have been, used very effectively in guiding artillery fire by dropping over hostile troops or batteries a burning object that leaves behind it a line or trail of smoke, thus giving the location and range.

Most usefully and effectively of all, flyingmachines of various types, but principally aeroplanes, have been legitimately used in air-scouting and signaling. In this respect they have revolutionized modern warfare. They have practically eliminated all strategic combinations and concentrations that depend for their success on secrecy. The saying that the greatest general is he who can guess most successfully what an opponent is doing on the other side of a hill is scarcely applicable now; for no general needs to guess. He gets his information from his air scouts. Formerly a general with forces inferior in numbers to those of the enemy could win by unexpectedly concentrating the greater part of his forces upon a small part of the enemy's. The aeroplane has practically made it impossible for any general to do this, since the enemy's air scouts can discover this plan of concentration and report it. Neither side can now make a move unobserved. Indeed, the latest grand maneuvers in England were abandoned as futile, because neither of the two contending armies could get a strategic advantage over the other. In this respect, therefore, both the aeroplane and the dirigible are not only legitimate instruments of war, but invaluable. If the Germans can develop the Zeppelin so that it will outmaneuver and out-distance the enemy's dirigible or aeroplane, they will reap the fruits of their efforts without descending into the practices of the savage.

The civilized soldier is as brave and daring and aggressive as any savage has ever been; but he fights only against armed foes, and he uses only those methods that can be justified by military purposes. The country that