clear perception of the different needs and will be in a position to supply them without wasteful dispersion of energy. The investigations which the members of the commission have had made have confirmed their opinion that the resources of the Allies, supported by America, will prove adequate to meet all needs in all directions-men, money, shipping, food, appliances, and material of every kind.

President Wilson made public on Nov. 18 a cablegram he had sent to Colonel House, in which he stated emphatically that the United States Government con

siders "unity of plan and control" between all the Allies and the United States essential; he asked Colonel House to attend the first meeting of the Supreme War Council with General Tasker H. Bliss as military adviser. The President's action was understood to remove all doubts as to this Government's attitude toward the Interallied Council. It impressed upon the opposition factions in England and France the fact that the United States gave the Rapallo plan its unqualified indorsement.

Fresh proof of the serious plight of Russian finance was given in the speeches delivered at the Moscow conference, where it was asserted that in the three years of war Russia had expended 45 to 50 per cent. of the material resources of the people. Imports were only 16 per cent. of the volume required, and a commodity famine had been caused at a time when production had declined 50 per cent.

M. Nekrasoff, the Minister of Finance, said that the State purse was empty. The unfavorable factors of the pre-revolutionary period could not be deemed the sole cause of bad conditions, he said, for the activity of the revolutionary period had been the more prodigal. For the revolutionary period from March 1 to July 16, 1917, credit notes had been issued for 832,000,000 rubles; in 1914 the amount was 219,000,000 rubles; in 1915, 223,000,000 rubles; in 1916, 290,000,000 rubles, and from Jan. 1 to March 1, 1917, 420,000,000 rubles.

The United States Government up to the Lenine revolt had advanced a total credit of $325,000,000 to Russia, of which sum $190,900,000 was in actual cash. When Kerensky issued his interview (referred to on Page 420) Nov. 1, the United States responded immediately by placing $31,000,000 to the credit of the Russian Government.

General Dessino, representative of the Russian Army with the British, early in November gave the following information of the number of Austro-German troops on the Russian frontiers:

Four German infantry divisions and three Austrian infantry divisions had been withdrawn from Rumania and Galicia immediately prior to the attack on the Italian front. At the same time a few German divisions have been transported from the French front.

The total mass of enemy troops which is being maintained at present against the Russian armies is: Eighty-six infantry and ten cavalry German divisions, thirtythree infantry and eleven cavalry Austrian divisions, and seven Turkish and Bulgarian infantry divisions, making a total of 147 divisions.

An authority possessed of exact information concerning the Russian military situation said:

Only seven German divisions have been withdrawn from the Russian front for use against Italy. There was a moment, however, when the last Russian offensive against the enemy conducted by General Brusiloff produced a critical situation and compelled Germany to rush eighteen divisions to the Russian front to arrest the Russian advance.

The Germans have not seen fit to recall these troops. The conditions on the Riga front are such that the Germans are facing the necessity of falling back, and this certainly is not proof of the collapse of the Russian Army.

which was made public on Nov. 14, is signed by the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Nilo Peçanha, and is addressed to the Brazilian Minister at the Holy See. It explains that the President of the republic had not personally replied to the Pope's peace proposals because only now is Brazil in a state of war. The note follows:

The Brazilian Nation, which has never engaged in a war of conquest, but has consistently advocated arbitration as the solution for external conflicts in the constitution of the republic, and has no grievances and sufferings past or present to revenge; which has solved with serenity all questions regarding territorial limits, and with a precise knowledge of what belongs to her and an accurate acquaintance with the extent of her vast territory; which, thanks to the labor not only of her own sons, anxious to prove themselves worthy of so rich a patrimony, but of that of all foreigners whom our hospitality has assimilated; this nation, your Excellency can assure his Holiness, would have remained apart from the conflict in Europe in spite of the sympathy of public opinion for the Allies' liberal cause had Germany not extended the war to America and thereby prevented intertrading between all neutral countries.

Without renouncing her obligations as an American nation, this country could not fail to assume the position of a belligerent as a last resource, without hatred or any interest other than the defense of our flag and our fundamental rights.

Happily today the republics of the New World are more or less allied in their rights, but all, equally menaced in their liberties and their sovereignty, draw closer the bonds of the solidarity which formerly was merely geographic, economic, and historic, and which the necessities of self-defense and national independence now make political as well.

For such reasons Brazil can no longer maintain her isolated attitude, and now, in close solidarity as she must be and really is with the nations on whose side she has

ranged herself, she can even speak as an individual entity.

No Brazilian heart can receive without emotion the eloquent appeal of his Holiness in the name of the Almighty to the belligerents in the cause of peace. Though no State religion has been adopted by Brazil, and all creeds are equally free, none the less Brazil is the third Catholic country of the world, and has maintained unbroken for centuries relations with the Government of the Holy See. Brazil, therefore, recognizes the generous motives that inspired the appeal of his Holiness asking that by disarmament and arbitration and the establishing of a régime in which the brute force of armies shall give way to the force of moral law, the restoration of France and Italy should be granted, and the Balkan problem and the restitution of liberty to Poland be considered.

Only the countries most deeply interested in these questions can judge if the honor of their arms has been saved in this war, or if these modifications of the political map of Europe are likely to restore tranquillity.

So long as the political and military organization that suspended living law the world over and suppressed spiritual conquests supposed to be established beyond question-so long as this power continues to abuse the alleviating functions of war and to destroy the Christian spirit that inspired the society of nations, only these nations can say whether confidence in treaties has disappeared and whether any other force excepting some new spirit of order can be accepted as a guarantee of peace.

Through the sufferings and the disillusions to which the war has given rise a new and better world will be born, as it were, of liberty, and in this way a lasting peace may be established without political or economic restrictions, and all countries be allowed a place in the sun with equal rights and an interchange of ideas and values in merchandise on an ample basis of justice and equity.

The Colombian Senate on Oct. 20 adopted a resolution protesting against German submarine warfare.

I

AM introduced to you as the Presi

dent of the United States, and yet I would be pleased if you would put

the thought of the office into the background and regard me as one of your fellow-citizens who had come here to speak, not the words of authority, but the words of counsel, the words which men should speak to one another who wish to be frank in a moment more critical perhaps than the history of the world has ever yet known, a. moment when it is every man's duty to forget himself, to forget his own interests, to fill himself with the nobility of a great national and world conception, and act upon a new platform elevated above the ordinary affairs of life, elevated to where men have views of the long destiny of mankind.

I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel is it is very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this war came about and just what it is for. You can explain most wars very simply, but the explanation of this is not so simple. Its roots run deep into all the obscure soils of history, and in my view this is the last decisive issue between the old principles of power and the new principles of freedom.

Germany Before the War

The war was started by Germany. Her authorities deny that they started it. But I am willing to let the statement I have just made await the verdict of history. And the thing that needs to be explained is why Germany started the war. Remember what the position of Germany in the world was-as enviable a position as any nation has ever occu

pied. The whole world stood at admiration of her wonderful intellectual and material achievements, and all the intellectual men of the world went to school to her. As a university man, I have been surrounded by men trained in Germany, men who had resorted to Germany because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching training, particularly in the principles of science and the principles that underlie modern material achievements.

Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the most competent industries in the world, and the label "Made in Germany" was a guarantee of good workmanship and of sound material. She had access to all the markets of the world, and every other man who traded in those markets feared Germany because of her effective and almost irresistible competition.

She had a place in the sun. Why was she not satisfied? What more did she want? There was nothing in the world of peace that she did not already have, and have in abundance.

Monopoly Methods Employed

We boast of the extraordinary pace of American advancement. We show with pride the statistics of the increase of our industries and of the population of our cities. Well, these statistics did not match the recent statistics of Germany. Her old cities took on youth, grew faster than any American cities ever grew; her old industries opened their eyes and saw a new world and went out for its conquest; and yet the authorities of Germany were not satisfied.

You have one part of the answer to the

question why she was not satisfied in her methods of competition. There is no important industry in Germany upon which the Government has not laid its hands to direct it and, when necessity arise, control it.

You have only to ask any man whom you meet who is familiar with the conditions that prevailed before the war in the matter of international competition to find out the methods of competition which the German manufacturers and exporters used under the patronage and support of the Government of Germany. You will find that they were the same sorts of competition that we have tried to prevent by law within our own borders. If they could not sell their goods cheaper than we could sell ours, at a profit to themselves, they could get a subsidy from the Government which made it possible to sell them cheaper anyhow; and the conditions of competition were thus controlled in large measure by the German Government itself.

Aimed to Dominate World's Labor

But that did not satisfy the German Government. All the while there was lying behind its thought, in its dreams of the future, a political control which would enable it in the long run to dominate the labor and the industry of the world. It was not content with success by superior achievement; it wanted success by authority.

I suppose very few of you have thought much about the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway. The Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway was constructed in order to run the threat of force down the flank of the industrial undertakings of half a dozen other countries, so that when German competition came in it would not be resisted too farbecause there was always the possibility of getting German armies into the heart of that country quicker than any other armies could be got there.

they are not talking about the heart of the matter.

Take the map and look at it. Germany has absolute control of Austria-Hungary, practical control of the Balkan States, control of Turkey, control of Asia Minor. I saw a map in which the whole thing was printed in appropriate black the other day, and the black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad-the bulk of the German power inserted into the heart of the world. If she can keep that, she has kept all that her dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can keep that, her power can disturb the world as long as she keeps it, always provided-for I feel bound to put this proviso in-always provided the present influences that control the German Government continue to control it.

I believe that the spirit of freedom can get into the hearts of Germans and find as fine a welcome there as it can find in any other hearts. But the spirit of freedom does not suit the plans of the Pan Germans. Power cannot be used with concentrated force against free peoples if it is used by a free people.

Allusion to Austria-Hungary

You know how many intimations come to us from one of the Central Powers that it is more anxious for peace than the chief Central Power; and you know that it means that the people in that Central Power know that if the war ends as it stands they will, in effect, themselves be vassals of Germany, notwithstanding that their populations are compounded with all the people of that part of the world, and nowithstanding the fact that they do not wish, in their pride and proper spirit of nationality, to be so absorbed and dominated.

Germany is determined that the political power of the world shall belong to her. There have been such ambitions before. They have been in part realized. But never before have those ambitions been based upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan of domination.

May I not say that it is amazing to me that any group of people should be so ill-informed as to suppose, as some groups in Russia apparently suppose, that any reforms planned in the interest