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of love for the Fatherland. Every one knows that the persons most dear to his Theart are risking their lives for the common cause. Every one gladly and selfsacrificingly throws himself and all that he has into the mighty whirlpool of the war. The nation goes through a baptism of fire that works wonders and from which it arises strengthened a hundredfold, if it only holds out to the happy ending of the war.

Before closing we must find room here for the following observations regarding war and culture from the writings of a cheerful philosopher, (Weber's "Demokritos," 1863.) Wars made men better acquainted with each other and carried the products of nature from one quarter of the globe to the other; silk, fruit, sugar, tea, coffee, and rice from Asia; 'corn, tobacco, potatoes, Peruvian bark, &c., from America. Millions of potato eaters do not know how dear Mithridates made them for Lucullus. In fact, war seems to be an educator of nations; the Trojan war developed the culture of the Greeks, as the one with the Persians and the more remote wars of Sesostris with the nations of India developed the culture of the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, and the Greeks and Carthagenians made the Romans become real Romans. The

To reap his harvest,

Crusades again gave the first impulse to the intellect of Europe, as was also the case with the Turkish and Italian campaigns; the Thirty Years' War brought light into religious thought, as the French Revolution did into politics and even into men's ideas of war itself. One year of war puts more geography and statistics into people's heads than thirty years of peace; long encampments and battlefields enrich the earth at least as much as the clouds of powder smoke clear the air, and we Germans owe to the French war the cutting down of the sorry polycracy that our idol Hermann would certainly have allowed to continue for a long time. In closing we wish merely to express the desire and hope that the present gigantic war, which unfortunately has changed the standards of civilization, will also have its good sides and achieve civilizing effects. Perhaps the greatest war the world has ever seen will also be of the greatest and most important civilizing signifi

cance.

Perhaps it will succeed in doing that which thus far all peace pamphlets, peace palaces, and peace congresses have failed to do that is, bring the waging of war to a reductio ad absurdum and be the last of European wars.

The Destroyer

By CHARLOTTE TELLER

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He is there.

Where they are shaping bombs
In their laboratories,

He stands beside them.

When they search the plains for horses
That men must ride into battle,
His eye sweeps that plain before them.
He is the General of all the armies.
It is his cry that is heard at night—
The cry that torments their dreams.
His voice is in the throat of every one in
council

Who says:

"Let this war go on,

That we may win."

He is Master.

Why Not Make Peace Now? By Israel Zangwill

Novelist and Playwright

Replying to the criticisms of a fellowauthor, Eden Phillpotts, upon his new book, "The War for the World," Mr. Zangwill presents the following argument for immediate peace negotiations on the part of the Allies, incidentally remarking that there is too general a tendency to twist an important text and make it read, "Cursed be the peacemakers, for they shall be called proGermans":

THE imaginary heresies against which

Tmy kindly critic misdirects his in

dignation are (1) that I hold we ought to let Germany run amuck at her pleasure; (2) that the immediate peace I propose would be an "inconclusive peace," nay, tantamount to a German victory. But, surely, when I say that Germany's militarism is her own affair, it is obvious I mean only the internal organization, which is her misfortune, and not that the external effects of this military mechanism can never become England's business. Would, indeed, that England had been "the England of our dreams," and had ridden about as a paladin, redressing human wrong. But a knight who stands idly by while Prussia robs Denmark of Schleswig-Holstein, while she tears Alsace-Lorraine from the bleeding flank of France, while she expropriates the Poles of her Polish province, and who only couches his lance when Belgium-his own buffer Stateis invaded, who even ignores Germany's prior passage through neutral Luxemburg or Russia's subsequent passage through neutral Persia, surely partakes more of Sancho Panza than of Don Quixote.

I gladly concede-and particularly remarked in my book-that a chivalrous enthusiasm for Belgium animated our first volunteers. But that was the Brit

ish people, and foreign policy is, alas! the domain of a few Machiavellian despots, who interpret our generous ardor for the small nations as humbling proud Persia in the dust and setting up poor little Russia on both sides of the Dardanelles. Mr. Phillpotts winces at my "pinpricks," but, inasmuch as the Archbishop of Canterbury will not hear of peace proposals because of our utter and unrelieved righteousness, a little pricking of such Christian complacency may be a necessary prelude to the re-establishment of peace on earth and the salvation of Europe.

For that is the real question. How much longer must the flower of England (and of Europe) be butchered and tortured? How much lower are Christianity and civilization to fall? That the question of peace is not agitating us day and night, that it is even boycotted or replaced by sterile Gallipoli investigations, that true-born Englishmen" are discussing the eleven revues of Londonthis is a monumental example of what I have called "the levity of war politics." If any man can read the description cited by Mr. Galsworthy of the "hundreds of wounded men lying on contested ground and screaming all through the night" and not burn to end the war instantly by any honorable means, he must be a devil-or a munition manufacturer.

But is there any honorable means? Bloch, in his great work, "Budushchaya Voina," ("The Future of War,") prophesied that war's only future was deadlock, and already the critics who scoffed at my contention that Verdun illustrated the thesis are repeating that the Somme is a second Verdun. There are, indeed, thinkers who urge that a deadlock would be the best ending, since militarism would then be universally discredited. It would

have shot its deadliest bolt everywhere and effected nothing anywhere. But I do not even maintain that there is a deadlock-modern warfare is far more than the mere shock of arms-and my argument is unaffected, even if we get through on the Somme.

I do not urge that we should seek peace, but that we should grant it. For, from the paralyzed ports of Germany's extinguished world commerce, from her millions of hungry homes and widowed hearths, one wail for peace goes up. Where is the proud Prussia that set out to capture Paris in six weeks? That triumphal march has been turned to a funeral march. But we are told Germany still holds large slices of enemy country and will only make terms on the basis of the war map." Well, look at the war map. The globe, I was taught at school, is three-fourths water. And we hold that water. Germany, whose future was to have been on it, stands high and dry, like a stranded hulk. And against her conquests in Europe we hold her colonies, territories far vaster and infinitely easier to hold.

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It is the custom in chess when games have lasted overlong to adjudicate on the position and to declare a victory for black or for white. Why play out the great war game to the ghastly end, when the pawns are flesh and blood? Can even

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a German beholding the vast forces now concentrated against Germany imagine that playing it out can give her a victory? The formation of Prince Wedel's League for an Honourable Peace" is sufficient answer-imagine Prussia sanctioning such a league in 1870! Why, the Germans had given up the hope of victory even by Christmas, 1914. Writing in those days from America, Mr. Jerome reported the conversation of a prominent financier in touch with German feeling: "The Allies could get all they wanted in reason now." (He was very insistent on the words "in reason.") 'Why go on piling up ruin and misery for no object? You will not annihilate Germany. At the end of three years you will only obtain from her what she is willing to grant now. Why not take it now?"

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That Germany will now accept any terms" in reason is certain. Those who profess to doubt this must explain why they refuse to put it to the test. It would be so simple to go on fighting, if she asks too much. Is it that they fear we should then be provided with a standard by which to measure the ratio of our further sacrifices to our additional gains, and by which-when peace is signed a year or five years hence-to gauge if the prolongation of the war was far-sighted statesmanship or a gigantic gamble in life and treasure?

The Dawn of
of Doubt in Germany

By Friedrich Naumann

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German Journalist and Author of a Noted Volume on Mittel-Europa"

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day there are people enough who no longer rightly know why we are still fighting. There really are these people.

I was visited lately by a soldier who, late in the war, was taken up in the Landsturm, and who now, as a grown man, has passed through his time of training in barracks. I know him well, and I know that by very reason of his calling he understands the way of thinking of the simple people. He said to me: It must be explained to the people quite simply and intelligibly why they

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are still fighting, because they do not know." I answered that two years are surely enough to make it clear to the thickest head. He, however, replied: "Two years ago all these people knew; but as they read the newspapers only irregularly, have little knowledge of geography, and have no training in historical thought, they, even at the beginning, grasped the general impression rather than the detailed events. Meanwhile, all that has for them returned to a state of flux and become obscure, and now they are mentally helpless in face of the sacrifices of the long war. Hence it becomes possible for the agitation of the Liebknecht type to find its way into the very army."

I then made further inquiries among men and women who, by constant contact, know something of the way of thinking of small people, and this is what I heard. Two years are a long time for the memory, especially when people's sufferings and experiences have been so manifold during this time. At the beginning people had no real idea what war is, but they were ready to conduct war. Meanwhile, death in the field and privations at home have become greater than any power of imagination had previously conceived. Hence the impression easily arises that one has been pushed into something which one did not really desire. The necessity of what is happening is questioned, and the longing that the abnormal state of things may cease dims the eyes to the inevitable character of events. To this is then added the old and eternal mistrust of the small for the great, and it is said: "Those people at the top need the war, and that is why we have to endure it."

And then what a marvelous picture of the beginning of the war takes shape in the brain! From the simple fact that the ultimatum to Serbia was dispatched by Austria, and that the formal declarations of war were dispatched by us to Russia and France, it is concluded that we produced the war. What everybody knew at the beginning of August, 1914— that the declarations of war were only a consequence of the threats of mobilizations pouring in upon us-passes out of

sight, and only the formal course of events remains. To this is then added the unscrupulous campaign of agitation and of calumny by Germans of Germans, as if we had been the disturbers of the peace. One has seen fly-sheets which talk as if it depended on our Government whether it should will peace tomorrow or not. The burden of the trouble and want caused by the war is put upon the Government. Assuredly this hateful perversion is really believed only by few. But some of it sticks-as though the German Government were at bottom just. as guilty as the English Government or the Russian Government-and a dull feeling gets abroad that all the peoples have been condemned to many sufferings by the mistakes and sins of those who rule them.

And there is something still further. Owing to the fact that we have been somewhat vigorous in hailing and celebrating our victories, many people who are weak in arithmetic have lost all sense of the fact that there are still great Russian, English, French, and Italian forces in existence. When, therefore, after two years the very greatest efforts have still to be made, it is as though we had been cheated of our bargain. People can no longer rightly believe that the present battles are inevitable battles of defense. They have rather the gloomy suspicion that a policy of conquest, over and above what is necessary, is being pursued. And here a positively disastrous effect is produced by certain documents in which great leagues and private persons express the lust of conquest. Only general ideas of their contents reach the great mass of the people; but, to the best of my belief, their existence is well known in every barracks, in every workshop, and in every village inn. The consequence of this conquest literature is the disappearance of simple faith in the defensive war.

Of what use to us is all the edifying talk about war aims, if the foundations of public opinion do not meanwhile remain absolutely firm? They are still firm, but more attention must be paid to them than has been the case hitherto.

Herr Naumann then advises that the

people should be taught that the present German occupation of enemy country is a great blessing for the Germans, and also that it is absolutely necessary, because the enemy occupies German col

onies, Asiatic Turkey, Eastern Galicia, and also a bit of the Vosges. They should also be told that the war has to go on because the enemy still desires to attack and crush Germany.

What the Attitude of a Radical Should Be Toward the War

By Prince Peter A. Kropotkin

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There has recently appeared in Russia a brochure entitled 'Prince Kropotkin on the War." Excerpts from it are here translated for CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE. Kropotkin is the leader of the theoretical anarchists and his earlier writings are widely known in America.

SERBIA

NERBIA was not the cause of the war, nor was German fear of Russia, but the fact that, with the exception of an insignificant minority, the class that is in control of Germany's political life was intoxicated by its former triumph over France and its rapidly developing military power on land and sea. This class considered it an offense to Germany that her neighbors had interfered with her desire to capture the rich colonies along the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, and in part of China; that they were in advance of her in planning to control the Adriatic, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and that they had prevented her from establishing her hegemony over Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The rapid extension of Germany's home industries in the last forty years and the failure of a simultaneous growth in wealth among the peasantry, creating no market (such as exists in the United States) for manufactured products, made it possible for the enormous mass of the German proletariat to become infected with the same designs for conquest and to dream of the rapid development of a powerful capitalism through this conquest. As a consequence we have the German admiration for the idea of an allpowerful military State, the worship of the army, and the amazing unanimity of the people on these points.

Freedom of people? Ideals of peace? Progress? Nothing of the sort is inscribed on the banner of the German Em

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Just try to imagine in reality what the triumph of Germany in the present war would mean:

The subjection of all Belgium, or at least the major part of it; in any case, the establishment of Germany in Antwerp and, in all probability, in Calais.

The forcible annexation of Holland to the German Empire.

The menace of annexing Switzerland, which would no longer be defended by France and Great Britain.

The addition to Germany of part of France, and, consequently, the appearance of a line of German forts within a few miles of Paris; the prohibition of French fortifications; an enormous, exhausting indemnity to be spent mainly on the further expansion of the German Army and Navy, (already Bismarck regretted that he had not exacted a $3,000,000,000 instead of a $1,000,000,000 indemnity.) The result would be the debasement of France to the position of a third-rate power; it would no longer dare to take any steps in the direction of social progress because of fear of Germany. Belgium has been in such a position all these years. France would

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