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Tommy (during heavy bombardment, to his musical pal): "Chuck it, Nobby! I can't get to sleep while you're making

that awful noise!

THE PETTY ANNOYANCES OF LIFE AT THE FRONT

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THE CONSCIENTIOUS HEN

Visitor from Town: What on earth's the matter with this hen-she starts attacking me when I try to take the egg from her nest. . . . Look here, you silly thing, here is my egg-ticket!"

A GOOD-NATURED GERMAN JOKE ON GERMANY'S FOOD SHORTAGE

THE WEEK

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"Ay! Ay! Boatswain! Ready! O ready!" The old-fashioned Boatswain in our mess tells me that we haven't got the terms just right; that seamen never heard of a " Boatswain a "Coxswain," but that the proper pronunciation is "Bos'n " and " Coxs'n;" but it all sounds nautical to us of the Medical Corps, and, anyway, we address each other by the titles of our ranks. . . .

There has been considerable discussion in our mess as to the way the new law. will work. Personally, I have always desired the title of "Boatswain," and now that, practically, it is legally mine, I have proposed that all of us Fharmacists, Machinists, and Carpenters-now staff Boatswains-should perform some of the more public functions of the line Boatswains. I don't mean that we should do any of the work with the anchors and chains and such, but we might "pipe the side" when the Secretary of the Navy or the Chairman of the Senate Naval Committee comes aboard. Instead of the piping of one lone line Boatswain there might be ten or a dozen of us staff Boatswains all piping the side together. It would make an appropriate reception for the civil functionaries, who always require the limit in military honors, and for Staff Admirals, even if the line Admirals would not stand for it. . . .

Some of my messmates do not take kindly to the changes required by the new legislation.

The old and philosophic Chief Machinist said: "Well, I s'pose I'll have to stand for it, to be called Ensign;' though I ain't one an' don't look like one an' don't want to be one."

The Gunner and the Carpenter growled because they did not wish to be addressed as "Boatswain."

The one line Boatswain in our mess, who is a taciturn and muscular person and an overbearing line officer besides, said: "As all you guys are going to be called what you ain't, I'm goin' to be called 'Judge' in this mess, an' don't you fergit it."

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According to the" Navy," the blame for this: proposal cannot be put upon any legislator from the interior country. It was the work of a very small group of men in the navy itself who have coveted the military titles which belong to the officers of the line.

This tempest in a teapot is a good illustration of the pettiness which sometimes creeps into the discussion of even large public issues.

JAPAN AND RUSSIA

It is not remarkable that on a subject of which so little is known as the form and intended effect of the recent movement towards a Russian-Japanese Entente there should be a great deal of variety of opinion. This variety of opinion seems to follow no hard

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and fast racial or national lines. Distinguished publicists of Japan, Russia, England, and the United States can be found who will aver in confidence that the RussianJapanese Treaty is aimed directly at England. And just as distinguished men from all these countries can be found who loudly protest against this view of the convention.

This disagreement among experts is the less remarkable when one considers that the final text of the treaty has not yet been made public. But the text of the tentative agreement as published in the semi-official Japanese newspapers on July 8 is as follows:

The Imperial Government of Japan and the Imperial Government of Russia, having resolved by united efforts to maintain permanent peace in the Far East, have agreed to the following:

ARTICLE I

Japan will not be a party to any agreement or political combination directed against Russia. Russia will not be a party to any agreement or political combination directed against Japan.

ARTICLE II

In case the territorial rights or special interests in the Far East of one of the contracting parties recognized by the other contracting party are menaced, Japan and Russia will confer on the measures to be taken in view of the support or co-operation necessary for the protection and the defense of these rights and interests.

In faith thereof the undersigned, duly authorized by their respective governments, have signed this Convention and thereto affixed their seals.

Done at Petrograd, the third day of the seventh month of the fifth year of Taisho, corresponding to the 3d of July (20th June), 1916.

MOTONO. SAZONOFF.

We are informed by responsible Japanese in this country that the following arrangement has been tentatively agreed upon, the final details to be adjusted within a few weeks, when the Japanese delegates, Prince Kanin and Dr. Adachi, arrive at Petrograd :

First, a grant to Japan of the control of the Eastern Chinese Railway between Changchun and the Sungari River. Japan had asked for the railway concession from Changchun to Harbin. The Sungari River is just about half-way between those two points. The tentative price which Japan is to pay for this concession is $7,000,000. Second, Japan is to have a share with Russia in the navigation rights of the Sungari River. Third, freedom of trade, residence, and travel in

Siberia, Mongolia, and Manchuria to be enjoyed equally by Japanese and Russians. Fourth, Japan to furnish munitions to Russia when to do so does not interfere with her own plans for defense.

All these concessions and the considerations to be paid for each are to be threshed out in Petrograd when the Japanese delegates arrive there.

MOTIVES FOR THE TREATY

So much for the little that we know of the actual arrangement between the two great Powers who were at war with each other

only eleven years ago. When it comes to considering the conditions which have made such a treaty desirable for both Russia and Japan, we are on more solid ground. The desire of both Japan and Russia to keep the influence of any third Power at a minimum in China has been a principal factor in the arrangement of the treaty. Russia's desire to be protected by a strong ally in her rear while she is facing embattled Germany has been matched by Japan's desire to have the support of Russia for Japanese policies toward China. But, while military motives have been strong in bringing the two nations together, the entente has been mainly brought about by commercial factors. Japan's trade with Russia has increased enormously since the beginning of the war. As Mr. Alexander Znamiecki, Russian expert of the National City Bank of New York, has recently said to a representative of The Outlook, "Two very important factors in the RussianJapanese rapprochement are Russia's need of foreign markets for her foodstuffs, raw materials, and half-manufactures, and again the value for the growing Japanese industries of the enormous neighboring Russian market." In this connection an article in the

influential Russian newspaper "Novoe Vremya" recently said: "Japanese merchants, adapting their merchandise to the demands of the Russian traders, are studying the Russian household in every detail. A few days ago, for instance, some boots appeared on sale, of Russian shape, for the use of the populace, accompanied by a bottle of shoe polish."

As to the prediction that the RussoJapanese alliance means the end of the AngloJapanese alliance it can only be said that there is no proof that Russia and Japan are at present aiming at such a consummation.

On the other hand, ample reason for the agreement between Russia and Japan is found in the desire of both to be secure from the Far Eastern ambitions of any third Power and in the manifest political and economic advantage which the alliance offers to both Powers in present world conditions.

THE CHURCH IN MEXICO

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which was the scene of the conferences which ended the Russo-Japanese War, has been assured of additional historical fame through its selection as the meeting-place for the members of the joint American-Mexican Commission арpointed to discuss the difficulties between the two countries. By the time this issue of The Outlook reaches our readers the date of the first formal conference will probably have been decided at a preliminary meeting in New York City. Portraits of the six commissioners appear elsewhere in this issue.

The greatest interest in the conferences lies in the possibility that they will be marked by a discussion of more fundamental questions than the withdrawal of our soldiers from Mexico and the patrolling of the border. Certainly it is to be hoped that the deeper questions of the economic and agrarian reconstruction of Mexico will be discussed, as well as the future status of the schools and churches in that country.

The religious question in Mexico has been a source of friction throughout the history of that country, and a careful and sane discussion of it by the Commission is to be desired. That this will be accomplished is the more probable in view of the fact that the leading Mexican member of the Commission, Señor Luis Cabrera, has had a powerful hand in the formation of Carranza's policy towards the Church. Señor Cabrera has recently published a pamphlet on this subject which is a highly interesting contribution. In defending the Constitutionalists from charges of injustice towards the Church Señor Cabrera says: "We Constitutionalists are Catholics, the Villistas are Catholics, the Zapatistas are Catholics. Ninety-nine per cent of the Mexi can population is Catholic, and therefore the Constitutionalist party could not in the present struggle attempt to deprive the Catholics, who form the totality of the Mexican people, of their right to profess their religion or of their right to take part in political questions." He goes on to say that the aim of the Con

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stitutionalist Government toward the Catholic Church has been merely "to enforce the strict observance of the laws known as laws of the Reform . . . because they form an integral part of the Mexican Constitution, ... which [laws] up to the present time have been disregarded."

These laws provide for the separation of the Church and State, the incapacity of the Church to possess landed property, and the abolition of convents. In gist, the aim of the Constitutionalists in enforcing these laws has been to keep the Church out of temporal affairs, in which it has often wielded a most unwholesome influence in Mexico in the past. We Americans who also believe in freedom of worship and in the absence of all Church power in temporal affairs must sympathize with the Mexicans in so far as they pursue these aims. We ought to congratulate the Catholics of the United States, therefore, for going on record at their recent convention in New York City as demanding in Mexico only "liberty of conscience and freedom of worship as they exist in our United States."

If the Catholics of Mexico want only what the Catholics of the United States profess to want for them, they are asking for only what the Constitutionalists profess to be willing to give them. Any continuance of friction over the religious question in Mexico would mean, therefore, that either the Church authorities or the Constitutionalist leaders are insincere. And if either party should prove to be insincere, that party can expect to be condemned by the public opinion of the United States.

Unfortunately, there is only too much evidence of outrages and injustices committed against Catholics in Mexico, but Señor Cabrera says that these are the deeds not of Constitutionalists but of bandits, who have sprung up from the disorganized condition. But he adds that some Catholics in Mexico have so conducted themselves as to produce exasperation and disorder. All this makes it all the more clear that the Church in Mexico should be one of the subjects of consideration by the Commission.

A GREAT FRENCH PAINTER

To those who are prone to think of Corot, the greatest figure of the Barbizon school, which has reflected such glory on French art, as "an ancient" it will be a surprise to learn that one of his colleagues and intimate personal friends lived, until only last week. Corot, who was affectionately known by

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his fellow-artists as "Papa" Corot, died forty years ago, in his eightieth year. His friend and associate, Henri Harpignies, has just died, in his ninety-eighth year. pignies was more than twenty years younger than Corot, but the older man and the younger man were thrown together in the Barbizon colony, and the work of Harpignies shows the influence of that relationship. Corot and Harpignies made a journey together into Italy in 1860. At that time Corot was sixty-four years old and Harpignies about forty. It is easy to imagine how strong must have been the art sympathy between these two in order to bridge the disparity of their ages in such a journey to the land in which the art of painting, as we moderns understand it, had its birth. The effect of that journey was immediate on Harpignies, for on his return he scored his first great success in the Paris Salon.

The group of painters who lived in the little village of Barbizon, near Paris, and who gave birth to what is now known as the Barbizon school of painting, were rebels against the sentimental, subjective theories which then dominated French art. They abandoned studio compositions, garlands of roses, shepherds and shepherdesses of the Corydon and Phyllis type, and went directly to nature for their inspiration. Rousseau found his in trees; Corot his in gentle landscapes suffused with light; François Millet found his in the work and family life of the French peasant. The sufferings and privations which this group of disciples of a new art endured are most interestingly exemplified in the life of Millet, who had for most of his career the greatest difficulty in keeping soul and body together. The story is told of Corotwhether it is apocryphal or not we do not know that when he sold one of his pictures at what seemed to him and his friends to be a most generous price (but which was, in reality, trifling compared with the immense sums that his paintings command to day), and when he was congratulated on this success by a colleague, he replied, whimsically: Well, I am not sure. It makes the collection of Papa Corot incomplete!"

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Harpignies was the last survivor of this great band of artists, but it is comparatively recently that his pictures have come to be appreciated at their full value in this country, for his name and work have been overshadowed by the greater fame of his Barbizon colleagues. Harpignies has been espe

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