One of the great facts in history has been the pressure of the semi-barbaric people of the East against the civilization of the West. Every school-boy knows this; but The Outlook makes no account in its editorial of the almost inevitable conflict between Slav and Teuton. If the fervent wish of your editor is gratified, and Germany is crushed, is it not probable that Russia will be the only permanent beneficiary of the war? After France has the lost provinces and England has destroyed the German fleet which has caused her so much hysteria, and recovered the markets which the Germans won in fair competition, then what? Why not Russia in possession of most of Austria and the Balkans, perhaps under the alias of "Greater Servia" then a rest, then Turkey and Persia; then, after another rest, India; and, in the fullness of time, all of Europe she desires? Who can stop her on land with Germany crushed?

It may be in the providence of God the Slav will have so developed as to be worthy of the mastery of the world by that day; but it ill becomes Anglo-Saxons in this hour to uphold his hands and further his plan by sword or pen.

ROBERT M. E. SCHAUFFLER, M.D. Kansas City, Missouri.

Among the many problems suggested by the present war in Europe not the least interesting is the question of its final effect upon government. The opinion is often expressed that a costly and devastating war must have a blighting effect upon democratic institutions. At first sight this view seems plausible, but the course of history, I think, teaches us precisely the contrary.

Certainly for the defeated nation the postbellum period has more than once proved a period of political regeneration. Take Prussia. Utterly crushed beneath the heel of Napoleon, she emancipated her serfs. Not surely from motives of sweet Christian charity, but because a freeman is a better fighter than a slave. Take France. Her downfall in 1870 involved an abolition of the Empire and a return to the Republic. Take Russia.

It is assuredly no accident that she secured her first parliament after her repulse at the hands of the Japanese. Even in backward Turkey there are signs that the repeated losses of territory have fed a feeble but perfectly genuine movement toward reform.

Does the great moral law apply also to nations? He that loses his life shall find it. Tuscaloosa, Alabama. M. C. BURKE.

Your editorial "The War Against Popular Rights," in The Outlook for August 15, shows such a misunderstanding of the past and present conditions, such a twisting of historical facts and inconsequent reasoning, that I cannot help but criticise the same severely.

According to your version of the present European war, Emperor William is the "goat." If Germany wanted war, why did she not begin one while the English had their hands full in the Transvaal, or Russia in the Far East? If the German Emperor is such a brute as you describe him, why is the emigration from Germany so much less now than it was at the beginning of his reign? If it was not the German Emperor who kept the peace of Europe in the past twenty-five years, who has kept it? It would be absolute calumny to accuse him of wanting war. . . . The Germans love their Emperor. They like authority, and their country looks orderly. The American dislikes authority, and his country shows the dislike. Suppose the Chinese or Japanese should threaten to overwhelm the United States, as the Slavs do Austria and Germany, what a howl to arms would rise at once in the face of such danger! You speak of Germany violating Belgium's neutrality. How about Dr Jamieson's raid into the Transvaal? The occupation of the Transvaal, Egypt, Tibet, by the British ? Of China and Persia by Russia? Of New Mexico and Arizona by the United States ? To-day England would be only too glad to grab the Panama Canal.

The talk of arbitration in this war shows that those who are talking entirely fail to grasp the situation. No doubt England would like to arbitrate and leave Germany and Austria in the statu quo. Arbitration would do about as much good as it would have done to arbitrate the Civil War. Bernard Shaw has let the cat out of the bag by declaring that "the English do not want a Germany of Bismarck, but one of Beethoven and Goethe." Of course they do not want a

Germany that amounts to something. They want a Germany that is sterile and does not amount to anything. They would like a Germany that furnishes music and poetry for them and the rest of the world, while England goes after the commerce and the colonies. Very altruistic indeed on the part of John Bull !

In writing this letter to your esteemed publication I am voicing, I sincerely believe, the sentiments of the majority of patriotic Austrians and Germans. They love their bride, the United States, and they honor their mother, Austria and Germany.

I ask you, is French militarism not surpassing any German tendencies along this line? or is the difference between classes and castes, between pride of purse and birth, any less dominant in England than in Germany or Austria ? It is true that the Emperor of Germany enjoys some prerogatives which are incompatible with true democracy; but, despite that, democracy can hardly be said to be less advanced in Germany than in Great Britain. To make it appear that an autocrat (the German Emperor), urged by overweening pride and ambition, seeks to halt popular liberty and social development by this war, you must leave out of consideration that the autocrat par excellence, the Czar,

WAR

Among the volunteers accepted for service in the French army at a recent examination were twenty-two Americans, who were complimented by the examiners on their splendid physical condition.

Instead of motoring, golfing, and playing tennis, wealthy Americans with villas on the Normandy coast are helping the old men, women, and children of the native population get in the harvest.

The war has of course hurt the business of the Panama Canal, and during the first week of its operation only sixteen ships passed through the big waterway. Fourteen of these were American, one being an army transport en route from San Francisco to Europe to bring home stranded Americans.

A note of optimism and encouragement comes from the Banking Department of the State of New York, which reports that the condition of the savings banks of the State is better than it has been since the war began. Depositors who

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I read your editorial in the last Outlook in war re the in Europe. It was all that I could have wished to have The Outlook say on the subject. It was in the line of my thought, but much better expressed than I could have put it. The one thing I am deeply interested in is that those three criminal war lords shall be put in the pillory of universal reprobation, so that they will all be forced by the public sentiment of the world to agree to such amendments to their respective Constitutions as will make it impossible that any one of them can repeat the iniquity of which they have been guilty in precipitating this accursed war on those poor working-people, who are the ones to pay the price in their blood. I hope The. Outlook won't let up on them. Kerrville, Texas.

NOTES

J. F. JOHNSTON,

withdrew their savings during the first panicky days are putting them back, and a general feeling of confidence seems to prevail.

The news comes from London that, in the fear that Germany may lose her trade with the United States, German merchants have published a booklet in English called "The Truth about Germany. Facts about the War." This pamphlet, which praises Americans and praises German commerce, is being distributed among Americans in Germany.

Aeroplanes have taken the part of carrier pigeons, and the English people have been asked to be on the lookout for messages dropped from the sky by England's aviators, for forwarding to the proper authorities.

According to an interview with the Minister of Agriculture and Industry of Holland, published in a Dutch newspaper, the supply of wheat and flour in Holland is sufficient to last only two or three weeks, and it is feared that unless traffic becomes easier in the North Sea

the Dutch may soon be in a precarious condition.

Among the passengers on the White Star liner Celtic, which sailed from New York for Liverpool on August 20, was Dr. Dorothy V. Smiley, surgeon in the Royal Medical Corps, and one of the few women in the British army. Dr. Smiley had been ordered to report for duty. New developments and applications of international and maritime law are expected from the unique libel suit which the Guaranty Trust Company of New York has begun against the North German Lloyd Steamship Company, asking for damages of more than a million dollars because the liner Kronprinzessin Cecilie recently landed $5,000,000 gold of the trust company at Bar Harbor, Maine, instead of at London. It is alleged that it was altogether unnecessary for the Cecilie to turn back as she did when within about 900 miles of the coast of England.

The Hamburg American Steamship Company has offered to lend the steamship Prinz Joachim to the American Red Cross for sixty days for the cost of operation of the vessel. The liner is now in New York.

One effect of Japan's ultimatum to Germany was to lead Lloyds to increase the war risk on Japanese vessels to 6.3 per cent, the highest quoted up to the time it was done-August 20.

Scotch woolen manufacturers fear that the war will drive them into bankruptcy, as a large part of their business has been done with Germany.

According to the London Daily Mail," since the war began nearly fifty English trade and sporting papers have gone out of business, some permanently.

Dr. Alexis Carrel, of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research of New York, is now at the head of a large hospital where wounded French soldiers are cared for. In a letter to a friend Dr. Carrel is reported as saying: "I am seeking men ready literally to give their blood for transfusions to wounded soldiers. Already I have found a doctor and an attorney and hope soon to have several others."

The effect of the war on American opera remains problematical. If newspaper reports can be trusted, nearly all the great male Wagnerian singers have taken the field for Germany. The usual summer preparations for the season are going on at the Metropolitan Opera-House in New York, however, and directors of the house seem to be hopeful that their staff of singers will not be greatly depleted by the call

to arms.

Automobile manufacturers in America do not seem to be greatly disturbed by general busi

ness depression. They express the belief that the enforced cessation of automobile building abroad will create a large foreign demand for machines made in America.

To aid our overworked ambassadors abroad through the crisis which they are now facing, the State Department has asked for Congressional authorization of the temporary appointment of diplomatic secretaries-at-large.

Assistant Secretary of War Henry S. Breckinridge is traveling through Europe at high speed distributing among Americans the gold taken over in the cruiser Tennessee. A despatch to the New York "World" from Berlin says that Mr. Breckinridge made the trip to that city from Holland on a special train in thirteen hours, the usual time being thirty-three hours. His car, it is said, was attached to the special train of a high German official.

As an emergency measure Germany has ordered that all her male subjects between the ages of sixteen and nineteen shall be put through a course of musketry and military training under the instruction of retired officers. If they are called upon to fight, particularly in defense of their homes, these youthful legions may prove to be as formidable as the "minute boys" of '76 or as the cadets of Chapultepec.

At the request of the German Socialist Federation the Socialist party in America has appealed to the Government to seize all abattoirs, storage warehouses, grain elevators, " and other sources of supply of the necessaries of life, in order that the war in Europe may be stopped through lack of supplies to the warring nations." Shipments of food from the United States to countries engaged in the international conflict, by the way, apparently are being made already on a large scale. In beginning an investigation into the activities of agents of Chicago packers, United States District Attorney Wilkerson expressed the belief that Chicagoans alone have shipped 10,000,000 pounds of meat into Canada since the war began. Recently 36,000,000 cold-storage eggs went to Liverpool on the steamship New York, of the American Line, and it is reported that France has asked quotations on 25,000,000 pockets of Louisiana rice.

The American Red Cross has sent a telegram to the Mayors of twenty-seven large cities in the United States appealing for funds. Among other things the telegram states: "Personnel and equipment ready, but funds desperately needed to secure ship and purchase additional supplies."

Lord Kitchener has forbidden the use of all wine and spirits by the British troops at the front.

feels weary, tired; and perhaps he has more than once turned to God in the words of Elias: Enough, Lord; take now my soul!"

The agitation aroused in Germany in 1910 against the authority of Rome has been the crowning sorrow of his pontificate. In a few days he aged as though ten years had passed by. His spirit was not broken; but he no longer has the conviction he had had formerly of the near and brilliant victory of divine authority against the forces of evil.

Against the French Government and against Modernism he battled with growing enthusiasm, for he saw victory "with the eyes of his flesh,” if I may be permitted to speak thus. Without wholly opposing Germany and France, he comforted himself because of the misdemeanors of the former, counting on the return of the latter to the fold, and expecting the prodigal daughter to return at once to take the place of the elder daughter. Instead, occurred the violent demonstrations which had their center and their inspiration at Berlin.

The disappointment was grievous; and the more cruel because it coincided with several sad experiences of the Holy Father concerning a number of men whom he had believed to be more loyal to his ideas than to himself personally. He found in them but little moral and religious strength, and this lack caused him great sorrow. These are the causes which have so vitally undermined the health of Pius X. It may be that he will go on for two or three years longer, but if so it will truly be a miracle.

I have endeavored thus to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, my remembrance of this conversation, because it indirectly sketches, so to speak, a moral silhouette of the Sovereign Pontiff. It explains this paradoxical man-so gentle that he does not venture to ask his own cook not to scramble his eggs too hard, and yet so determined that he does not hesitate to impose his wish on the Episcopate, to disregard the advice of his Cardinals, and to stand alone in his most important resolutions.

The deep and universal agitation produced by the announcements of the ill health of the Pope is an indication that the world is concerned, not alone with the death of Giuseppe Sarto and the question of his successor, but with the realization of the fact that the Papacy is passing through a crisis, and that the institution which since the year 1870 has seemed to attain its highest point of logical perfection may be on the verge of unforeseen changes.

One might say that, except at Rome and in the immediate vicinity of the Cardinals,

the personal question is lost in the contemplation of more serious considerations.

are

It would be idle to waste time in speculating on the chances of various Cardinals, as the newspapers delight in doing. A Conclave rarely achieves the predictions of the thoughtless and innumerable prophets who announce results. Even those who present at a pontifical election are puzzled when they come to tell or write of it. They know the facts only in part, they are misled by current opinion, by intrigue, influences, and end by endowing anecdotes with a value they do not possess.

If one could examine the politico-ecclesiastical considerations awakened by the prospect of the death of Pius X, one might enumerate them in a single phrase, put into circulation, if I mistake not, by an eminent Italian prelate―" the internationalization of the tiara."

But I wish to go a step farther, and above all, to probe deeper, in order to reveal the thoughts that have been bred here and there in the consciousness of the Roman Catholic world. In other words, I wish to approach the question of the succession of Pius X in its religious aspect.

To maintain government by divine right without fear and without reproach, without palliation or concession, with a decision and a frankness which command respect; to impose forcibly on all Catholics the affirmation that the concrete and historical Church has all the rights which the ideal Church, directed by God in person, could have; to assume that absolute theological dogma should take the place of the political and scientific efforts of the world; to regard the static formulas of logicians as concealing on all sides the reality of life; to conceive of the Church, not as a working association to point the way towards broader horizons, but as a means of saving intellectual toil; to transform unconditional and absolute submission into religious virtue; to create a system in which the cure thinks for his parishoners, the bishop for his cures, the Pope for his bishops; to believe that union with the Apostolic See is greater than all the rest, replaces all, is ailsufficient-that there is in traditional Catholic thought the germ of all this I should hesitate to deny.

But there is more besides. In bringing these points into pronounced relief by schisms more violent, perhaps, than those of Luther, the present Pope has essentially altered the