become necessary and even now make a slow business of it. That preparedness may be needful because of the aggressiveness of others I cannot deny. To the argument that it is an insurance for peace I do emphatically dissent. Montaigne once observed that the walls of his castle on the mountain from which he took his title were in bad repair. Indeed, there was more breach visible than bastion. His neighbors were always reproaching him for permitting such dilapidatedness to prevail and pointing out the peril he underwent. The philosopher answered by saying he had noted that the strongest defenses had to stand the most assaults. During twenty years no hostile force had ever tackled the mountain, but his well-walled neighbors had to withstand many a fierce foray!

It is no time now to argue our own position. We have taken unexceptionable ground, even though departing wide from our ancient principles. World power means world responsibility, if we chose to make it so. The giant declines to remain longer supine. We do not greet the change eagerly. There is doubt in many an American mind as to the wisdom of so wide a purpose. Yet there could be no other justification save to aid the cause of universal democracy. If the task brings us to a world-state where rulers can be made the servants of the people, the die will have been well cast. But there are perils beyond. We, too, may forge tools that will cut their owners. We may take on a lust for conquest that will bring evil in its train. We will surely fill the minds of men with the excitement and confusion of war and when it is over these minds will not adjust themselves to the humdrum of an industrious and quiet life, but will remain idle and distracted to the end of their days. This is one of the greatest evils growing out of such a conflict. The dead and wounded count much, but the mentally disabled count far You need not worry over the European millions who are expected to leap back into industry when released from the ranks of war. They will not leap. They will be stunned by their share in the great events. Their minds will not find room for common thoughts. They will ever be in trench or battle to the last of their days, menacing no industries but those of their own lands.

more.

What there is most to deplore is the breaking down of intellectual and moral influence, which I take it we are here trying to revive. The scholars and philosophers of Germany are the leaders in the upholding of strife. So it is across the world. We, here,

flout pacifists and call for deeds not words. The clergy are not preaching the doctrine of peace and good-will, but fiercely calling for vengeance, and gentle woman rallies all her strength, not in shuddering remonstrance against the ruth of war, but in zealous urgings that husbands, sons and brothers shall take a hand. With all due respect to the good, they appear more belligerent than the fighting men, more insistent upon revenge. I am not speaking as a critic. I am trying to describe one of the great anomalies. As to the consummation for which all mankind should wish, a durable peace, based upon good-will and justice, I frankly believe will never If it does it will be because some nation is brave enough to lay down its arms, dismantle its ships of war and say to all the world: "We have put aside the tools of conflict. We will be brothers to mankind and will abide the event, feeling that if our sacrifice fails the red will be on other hands than ours. ""

come.

EQUIPMENT FOR THE POST BELLUM PERIOD

BY CHARLES H. SHERRILL,

New York City.

It seems to me that the most important equipment that our country can have for the part which it must play at the end of this war, is its state of mind. We in this country have had a proper and a high state of mind not once but several times. We rose in our might to gain our freedom. We cleaned our escutcheon of the black stain of slavery. We freed Cuba, and then, having freed her from a foreign enemy, we freed her from ourselves, not once, but twice.

May I venture to suggest two vitally important movements through which we can help our country to improve its state of mind?

The first and less important of these is that of so altering our mental attitude toward other nations that in our dealings with them, commercial, personal or diplomatic, we shall constantly grant full consideration to their point of view. I am personally under great obligations to our Government for permitting me to represent it for two years in the great Latin-American republic of Argentina, because my service there taught me our need for studying and

thereafter considering the point of view of other peoples. Foreigners are apt to approach almost any subject from a different angle than ourselves, and unless we take that fact into account we shall fall short of coming to a full understanding with them in personal relations, in business, or in governmental questions of an international character. We must learn to take thought of how the other man is thinking-it is courteous, it is good business, it is of vital importance to anyone pretending to statesmanship. Let us take as an example our relations with the other republics of the western hemisphere. We, as a nation, have a right to be proud of the historical fact that our intentions toward those peoples have always been of the best and purest. But have we always considered their point of view upon international questions? Wouldn't our relations with them be greatly improved if, during our history, we had occasionally stopped to consider what they thought of the settlement of some question instead of going straight ahead to settle it according to our own views of right and wrong? I think we are all agreed upon this point, and especially those who, through living among South Americans, have come to know and, therefore, to like them as cordially as I do.

You will find before this war has come to its bitter issue that the South Americans will all be found on the right side of the argument. They are a great people. They are not excitable or flighty as many of us believe them to be. I shall never forget something that happened one night at the opera house in Buenos Aires. They have an opera house there which, in most particulars, is superior to the Metropolitan in New York. One night, for no particular reason, an anarchist threw a bomb in that audience. What happened? What would happen in New York City? I fear there would be panic and trouble. What happened down there was magnificent. The audience behaved very quietly, although a number of people were injured. The manager came out and stated very calmly that owing to an unfortunate accident it was impossible to continue the opera, and he asked the audience to withdraw. The band played the national anthem and they filed quietly out. No one who saw that magnificent proof of national poise and self-control can feel other than I do about those people. I believe that the Latins of South America, by coming

to the free soil of this hemisphere, have become steadied and Americanized, just as we Anglo-Saxons from northern Europe have been speeded up and Americanized, in the northern part of this hemisphere. In type we are approaching each other more and

more.

My second suggestion touching our national equipment for the post bellum period is vastly more important than my first. It is that we use this crisis in the world's affairs to cast ourselves back into the state of mind of our ancestors when they wrote into our Declaration of Independence that splendid acknowledgment of the Divine Source from Whom flows all our blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Let me recall a picture to your minds. We are in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We are assembled on the Green. It is the night before the fateful battle of Bunker Hill, that momentous test of whether raw levies of farmers can fight off trained troops and therefore win the freedom they so passionately desire. What preparation are those sturdy ancestors of ours making for the life and death struggle into which they are about to enter? What do we see just as the day is breaking? There is a hush, and then all those earnest armed Americans kneel reverently down and invoke the Divine Blessing upon their patriotic enterprise. Then rising lightly to their feet, they march off to meet the enemy. They go equipped with that splendid spirit which armed Cromwell's Roundheads, those earnest warriors who always united in prayer before going into battle. We have come a long ways since the War of the Revolution, and part of it has been downhill, for we are not so earnest or so frank in our religion as were the heroes of those days. Recently I was reminded that the word religion comes from the Latin "religio”—a tying-back. What we as a nation need most, both in the present crisis and to meet world conditions thereafter, is a tying-back to the Great Author of our being, a continuing and not a mere Sunday contact with the great Power House above. Made powerful with that power we shall pass from being mere descendants of those who won and kept our liberty, to being worthy ancestors of a far greater American race, facing confidently forward and upward to the future which lies. before.

DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATION OF THE COMING PEACE

CONFERENCE

BY EDWARD A. FILENE.

A business man need not apoligize for concerning himself, in these unusual times, with the problems of international politics. They are today giving close consideration to international affairs not always so much from intellectual choice as from practical necessity. For the fact is that in the years succeeding this war business success, social advance and political progress will depend more on the kind of settlement that is made of this war than on the individual plans and initiative men and women bring to any particular piece of work.

If this war ends in the usual kind of settlement, no amount of private initiative can free business from the handicap of rival armaments and their crushing tax burdens, and the trade wars that are as certain to follow a patched up peace as night is to follow day. Therefore upon the ground of self-interest, if no higher reason existed, diplomacy becomes as legitimate a concern of business administration as are the costs of production.

The stability and free development of the world's economic life demand a new kind of settlement of the war. There must be set up such joint guarantees of justice and peace that the nations will not be driven into an unprecedented rivalry in armaments which coupled with the enormous cost of reconstruction would give rise to taxation so heavy that, if indeed revolutions did not follow, trade wars would be inspired so destructive as to complicate the business life of the whole world.

One of the things that this war has demonstrated is that foreign affairs are personal affairs for all of us, although in our easygoing moments we have acted as though foreign affairs do not concern the average man and are the exclusive property of diplomats operating behind the closed doors of secret council chambers. This war has proved that the blunder of an hour in a foreign office may undermine the results of a century of constructive domestic effort. All this means that when the time comes to write the treaty that will end this war there must be recognized with new emphasis the vital connection between diplomacy and the domestic development of nations.