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and earned the regard and respect of their pupils.

Even to the girls' schools the war brought new tasks. By descriptions, by maps and charts, the positions of the armies were explained to the children; the many economic and political questions brought to the fore by the conflict were discussed and elucidated. Through the children, these discussions and explanations reached the parents and helped to educate the popular mind generally.

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In addition, an effort was made to develop the feeling of national responsibility in the minds of the pupils. almost every teacher's desk throughout Germany is a collection box in which the pupils deposit their savings. Every month these boxes are opened, and quite a little ceremony is made of the occasion. The children dispose of their collections as they see fit. Each class has its own particular work; one buys materials for presents to be sent to the soldiers at the front, another undertakes the care of a sick child and saves money with a view to sending its little protégé to a convalescent home, a third collects newspapers, a fourth provides a nearby hospital with games which the members of the class construct themselves. All this not only affords the children pleasure, but it has a real civic and educational value. The burden on the teacher is a heavy one, for she has to devise means of keeping the children interested and to act as guide and friend for them in their selected activities. The league opened in Berlin in the Winter of 1915-16 a State exhibition: "School and War." It was an impressive exhibit of the tremendous value of this work. By this work in the schools, the experiences of the war are engraved on the hearts of our children, and they will never forget its lesson.

In many houses throughout Germany the father is absent. To many he will never return. It would be culpable in the extreme to neglect the growing youth in these homes. The league is active in getting hold of girls and boys over school age who are enjoying a novel and dangerous freedom. Volunteer work

ers of the league, women of education and social position, are engaged in organizing boys' and girls' clubs and in keeping closely in touch with their charges, over whom they exercise a tactful care.

The civil work of German women, however, has not been confined to looking after the welfare of children and of soldiers' dependents, important as that work is. They have taken in hand the organization of their own domestic economy. In recent years it has been the fashion abroad to regard the German woman as pre-eminently the housewife, concerned exclusively with her kitchen, her children, and her church. In fact, in England and America the idea that German women were anything but housewives, cooks of skill and resource in producing food whose first quality was substantial, nutritive value, whose social standing was vested purely in the ability to keep house well and economically, received no credence.

As a matter of fact, for the last decade the German woman was paying attention to many other things than her house, and the housewife type was rapidly disappearing. German women were entering the professions, and the other forces of our modern social structure were forcing the housekeeping type into the background. Germany came more and more to live on imported goods. The war instantly changed that. Food could no longer be imported, delicacies were out of the question, the women had to learn to keep house and supply the table in a rational manner from Germany's own resources. It took a little time for the women to realize this, but when they did they acted quickly and successfully. The housewives throughout Germany were organized into guilds, sometimes associated with local institutions, sometimes as independent bodies.

The first task undertaken was a rigid training in economy. Nothing must be wasted! The war broke out just at the season of the fruit harvest, and immediately preserved fruit kitchens were improvised everywhere. Volunteers toiled over the stoves, putting up the rich fruit harvest, so that none should go to waste.

This was true not only of the small towns, but even in Berlin. In one of the capital's most beautiful and wealthiest suburbs, throughout August and September, every morning the heavily laden fruit carts from the Central Market in the city appeared at 8 o'clock. Beside the driver of the first cart sat two of the ladies of the suburb who went to the market every morning at 6 o'clock in order to procure the choicest fruit. The carts were unloaded in the yard of the schoolhouse and their contents carefully weighed. Then a crowd of young girls, with handcarts of every description, busied themselves distributing the fruit to the houses of the women who had agreed to put up preserves on that particular day. If there was any surplus, the ladies who bought the fruit and other volunteers prepared the preserves in the school kitchen. They were at their post every day while the harvest lasted. The preserves were collected weekly from the houses and stored in the schoolhouse. In three months this suburb put up more than 20,000 pounds of preserves, which were distributed among hospitals, hospital trains, and children's homes. The work was continued in the late Summer of 1915 and in 1916.

The organization of housewives did more than preserve fruit and vegetables. The public had to be taught how to live differently-not worse than in peace times, but differently. A people is most conservative where its eating is concerned. Men cling to food habits when all others disappear. And the task confronting the housewives was nothing less than teaching the nation to alter its food habits, its ideas of a menu, its eating custom. At first, the means tried was mass meetings in which lecturers expounded the new principles of dietetics, and speakers from the audiences described their experiences.

Many a woman who had never before even thought of addressing an audience found herself on the platform exhorting and advising her neighbors out of her own experience.

Meetings were not enough, however. Women came in droves, listened intently, applauded enthusiastically—and then

went home and, after a brief struggle against the family tastes, gave up, and tried to adhere to the pre-war dietary. Rapidly, of course, the sale of many staples was restricted and the import of others ceased altogether, thus throwing the established menu into chaos. Then the housewives' guilds began practical demonstrations in neighborhoods, showing how the available foodstuffs could be best employed.

Cooking recipes were invented and experimented with, cooking evenings and cooking parties organized, and consult-ing and advisory bureaus opened throughout the country. The solution of the dietary problems is ascribable altogether to the work of the housewives' guilds.

The marked increase in the cost of living was due in no small degree to the activities of the middlemen, who bought low, held stocks in reserve, and then forced the selling price as high as they could. The housewives determined to overcome this situation by opening up co-operative retail shops, operated by volunteers, where good wares could be purchased at little more than wholesale cost. These shops presently controlled the food price situation in their localities, many of them in crowded districts taking in more than one thousand marks on a single afternoon. And these shops proved particularly valuable as a market for the fruits and vegetables grown by members of the housewives' unions.

For, early in the war, the policy of cultivating every scrap of ground was put into effect by the women of Germany. The organization of girl scouts and many large girls' schools undertook the cultivation of untilled tracts, and every day crowds of young girls and women could be seen marching under the guidance of a specially trained teacher to their fields. The product of these fields was turned over to the various relief agencies. The work itself proved of great health value to the volunteers, and many an anaemic society belle became husky at this work.

In the poorer quarters of the cities the task of public alimentation was carried out with detailed thoroughness. Popular

kitchens and so-called middle-class kitchens were opened, and the women in charge took care that these eating places and cooking places were made as bright and attractive as possible. Something dainty and appetizing was to be had for even the simplest meal.

In these kitchens perhaps more than in any other of the war institutions was the radical social benefit of the conflict on the domestic problems of the German Nation made most manifest. All classes worked together. The wealthy woman and the shopkeeper's wife found themselves side by side, giving the very best in them for a common cause, united in labor for the nation. A common purpose united them, and acclaim went to the individual who did the best work, no matter what her social status might be. In the relief committees of the National Women's Service League the wives of high officials and the wives of Social Democrats meet on a parity. Women from town and country, adherents of various religious beliefs, work hand in hand and realize in action the profound truth and wisdom of the Emperor's dic

tum: "I know no parties, I know only Germans."

These women see already in spirit the new Germany after this cruel and bloody conflict is ended. Their work is all for that future Germany of peace. Mothers, brides, and sweethearts, they know that in this new Germany many strong arms and clever minds will be lacking. Their thoughts, despite their work, wander perpetually to the resting places of the peaceful sleepers in France and Poland, Nearly every one of them has lost some one who cannot be replaced, but they have refused to permit themselves to lapse into inactive brooding and mourning. They remain steadfast in life, active to administer the legacy of the dead placed in their hands. They form an army of peaceful fighters against enemies which threaten all the nations of the world-against poverty, neglect of the young, an economic situation that inevitably brings in its train the root of destitution, bodily and mental exhaustion. Their weapons are altruism and purity, their gauge the dignity and wellbeing of the German Nation.

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After the honor of the Berlin nails comes the grip of the Russian pincers.

By Alfred Rosenblatt*

Professor in the University of Cracow

Oh, tra le mura che il fratricidio cemento eterne, pace e vocabolo mal certo. Dal sangue la Pace solleva candida d'ali. Quando! -Carducci: La Guerra, Bologna, 1891.

C

IVILIZATION and war appearespecially in the light of the present war-to present irreconcilable antitheses. Therefore the assertion that war has a civilizing significance seems to us to be a fantastic paradox. And, nevertheless, distinguished minds have seriously busied themselves with this problem and have historically demonstrated the civilizing influences of war.

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Some twenty-five years ago there was held in Rome a great congress of the League for Peace, participated in by important scientists and prominent members of European Parliaments. Brilliant speeches against war were delivered, plans for eternal peace were discussed, resolutions demanding the settlement by arbitration of all international difficulties were framed and adopted, &c.

Shortly after this there appeared a poem dedicated to war by the well known Italian poet, Giosue Carducci, entitled "La Guerra," and ending in the strophe cited above, which is particularly fitting at present. In glowing words Carducci sings the praises of war and describes what mankind owes to it. Even the discovery of America may be credited to the warlike spirit of an adventurer, who, armed with sword and shield, sallied forth to conquer new lands for the

Spanish Empire.

In this connection Lotar Dargun, late professor of German history and legal history at the University of Cracow, whose untimely death was a severe loss to science, took up the question of the civilizing influence of war in a public

Specially translated for CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE from Nord und Süd, the Berlin political and economic magazine published by

Dr. Ludwig Stein.

lecture, investigated it more closely, and presented the bright sides of war in a manner calculated to be of universal interest in the serious times through which we are passing, and to banish, or at least lessen, our grave anxieties regarding the consequences of the war.

The civilizing power of war was already recognized and discussed by old Lord Bacon of Verulam. The conquests of war and their meaning for the progress of humanity have also been discussed in detail by Herbert Spencer and the well-known sociologist, Professor Gumplowicz of Gratz.

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Alexander Humboldt describes in Cosmos the civilizing effects of the Macedonian wars of Alexander the Great. He takes especial pains to point out that they opened an extensive and beautiful part of the world to the influence of a highly cultivated people; that through Alexander's conquests the Greek language and literature were spread abroad with beneficent effects, and, finally, that at the same time the making of scientific observations and the systematic elaboration of all the sciences, through the teachings and example of Aristotle, became clear to the intellect. He closes by declaring that the Macedonian expedition may be regarded as a scientific expedition in the truest sense of the word, and, indeed, as the first in which a conqueror surrounded himself with savants from every branch of science, with naturalists, surveyors, historians, philosophers, and artists. Even Aristotle exercised an indirect influence through the intellectuals of his school who accompanied the expedition.

The most prominent historian of the Roman Empire, Mommsen, says that the Romanization of Italy was only effected through Sulla's wars, and that this result was not too dearly bought by the streams of blood spilled in those wars.

The conquest of Gaul by the Romans was also a work of civilization of the first rank.

All the larger States have been organized as the result of wars. Among the Germanic peoples military organizations were at the same time governmental bodies. Thus war created the State and the State created civilization.

International law was also created by war, but the present war has unfortunately annihilated it.

We have to thank war for the founding and the development of cities and for their growth and strength. War forced the inhabitants of scattered districts to unite, to build fortified towns, and to organize places for defense against the dangers of war. The Princes' need of money, induced by the wars that they carried on, was often the cause of progress in the matter of public institutions and rights; that is to say, the sovereigns engaged in war needed, money for the war and the cities furnished them with it in return for rights and privileges which made possible and also promoted the prosperity of the cities.

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The greatest human blessings, religion and ethics, science and art, owe much to war-as Professor Dargun points out-than would be believed without an investigation of the question. Through wars religion and ethics have found their way to all parts of the world.

Many branches of science receive their greatest advancement through wars.

In the first line comes geography. It is not necessary to prove that war requires a thorough and detailed study of the hostile country, thus promotes geographical and ethnical science, and contributes to the spread of this knowledge.

The great progress of modern technique stands in close connection with military technique. The mighty advance in the technique of fortification and the manufacture of arms promoted by war's needs has reacted in an animating manner upon all other branches of technical work and has aided invention. The mastery of the air by human beings and the unexpected development of the art

of flying may certainly be traced indirectly to war. The extension of lines of communication, especially in the form of great and far-flung networks of railroads, is the result of the necessities of war. And the civilizing effects of railroad connections constitute a recognized and inassailable fact. The railroad unites even the smallest town with the great centres of culture, science and art, spreads civilization in every direction, brings individuals and nations closer to each other, and promotes industry and the welfare of the people. But a short time ago the American magazine, Popular Science Monthly, pointed out in a long article how in Germany all branches of science, of technique, of industry, and of trade worked hand in hand with militarism to their profit. Because militarism spurs inventors and investigators on to create things that it needs for its purpose, inventions are made that add life to all industries and enrich the entire nation.

The Germany of today owes its greatness and strength to the war of 1870-71.

That war offers many productive stimuli to art and literature is proved by the numerous masterpieces of art and literature that treat of warlike events; we shall only mention Homer's immortal "Iliad," Virgil's "Aeneid," the Nibelungen songs, Shakespeare's war dramas, the Maid of Orléans, Wallenstein, and all the magnificent battle paintings, &c.

Dargun closes his exceedingly thoughtprovoking exposition by contrasting the virtues of peace with the virtues which war brings to maturity. There are, says Dargun, certain virtues necessary for the maintenance of the soundness of the people, such as personal manly courage, the consciousness of duty and honor, discipline and the sense of order, consciousness of the worth of one's own personality, and the willingness of self-sacrifice for the common good, which attain their true value only in war. These virtues become weaker during periods of long-continued peace. The full inner worth of the nation is only developed in times of danger. The sentiments of all the members of the State are united and concentrated in the all-powerful feeling

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