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FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents per annum.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE CO.

Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents

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THE WAR CURRENT AND PEACE EDDIES.

The third year of the war, ushered in with cheery forecasts which the annual Spring offensive was to have realized, has come and gone, bringing many changes but no decision. For the enemy it closed more hopefully than it began. Instead of inflicting material exhaustion and depletion of man-power it bestowed upon him some military successes and a considerable increase of allied territory.

The year opened with a series of most formidable offensives on the part of the Allies against the Central Empires. In the East Brussiloff's star was in the ascendant and the superb on-rush of his armies filled the minds of the Teutons with dread and pain.

The Somme battle was still raging in the West. Our military critics were lavish in their praises of the way in which it was being prosecuted and glorying in the fact that the Allied forces there were in every respect more than a match for the enemy. On the Isonzo the Austrians were forced to abandon Gorizia, which was literally pulverized by heavy artillery, while in Asia Minor the Russians had advanced to Erzindjan. In a word, the decision of fate seemed about to be given in our favor. And then, to crown all, a new weight was thrown in which would, we were assured, give us victory and peace. Roumania declared war against Austria and her troops swept down the Carpathians like an avalanche carrying towns and villages on the way.

Roumania's resolution was construed not merely as a force but also as a symbol portending a last brief tussle in which the Teutons were foredoomed to irreparable disaster. It was the liquidation of the war. In a word, never since the opening

of hostilities had the cause of the Entente seemed so near a decisive triumph.

What happened afterwards is fresh in the public mind. For the chasm it left between promise and achievement there is, of course, an adequate explanation as there will be for the final issue of the struggle, whichever side it may favor. But to explanations alone, however satisfactory, the Allies cannot look for the attainment of their war aims; something more tangible is requisite. With faith, hope, ardor and eloquence they are superabundantly provided, the one thing still needed is success, and this only intelligence, single-mindedness and energy can bestow.

In the meanwhile, in spite of some reverses and of the high price paid for them by the enemy, neither side is yet sufficiently weakened or dispirited by its losses or its outlook to abandon the essential aims to the prosecution of which these are due. Judging by official utterances, neither group of powers apprehends that the drift of events, military or other, in the near future, will compel it to assent to less acceptable peace terms than might be had for the asking today. Far from that, each one holds, or at any rate proclaims, that it can and will pound the enemy till he becomes as yielding as the softest wax, the Teutons building on their submarine campaign, and the Allies on the co-operation of the United States. Meanwhile, each one is sanguine but subdued. Confidence is perceptibly less selfassertive than at the outset, but is just as evenly diffused. Among all belligerent nations, as distinguished from their Governments, the warfever, together with its wonder-working enthusiasms, has subsided and

cool deliberation accompanied by an earnest desire for an honorable and safe return to normal conditions has taken its place. This temper appearing to Pope Benedict auspicious for another effort at conciliation, the Sovereign Pontiff recently issued a set of peace proposals which would tend to bring Europe back to the status quo ante guaranteed by dicers' oaths and scraps of paper. It proved abortive. And yet in one sense the paper reading of the international situation is correct enough. At the opening of the fourth year of the campaign a new spirit is undoubtedly brooding over the war-waging peoples and painfully seeking embodiment. As yet only partially revealed, it is obviously a solvent of much that the human race had, was, and strove for. In a limited measure, too, it has proved helpful to the Allies, purging their cause of a hideous eyesore; autocracy, still the beam in the Teuton's eye, has ceased to be even a mote in that of the Entente.

Democracy raised to its highest power in Russia is thickly streaked with anarchy, and may yet be tinged with the blood of civil strife. Eschewing conquests and violence it leads straight to both. Russia, for whose sake the Allies are bleeding, is now turning wistfully towards the conscientious objectors.

But the influence of the new spirit is not confined to Russia. Everywhere it is felt as a stimulus to radical change and everywhere its force is sustained and intensified by circumstance which clears the ground for the new order of things. Ideas which for generations vainly awaited embodiment are suddenly taking shape in laws or institutions, the advent of which the boldest prophet would not have dared to foretell three years ago. For now the gainsayers have no voice in the matter. Circumstance is decisive. Thus the

arrogant peace shibboleth of the German has been whittled down to the less pretentious formula: "No annexations and no war indemnities, only guarantees against future aggression.” And as the Allies' revised peace postulates are "Restitution, reparation, the abolition of militarism, and the establishment of freedom for all nations," it might well seem as though the two hostile groups were already near enough to each other to open their minds and confer usefully on the subject of an understanding. Such, at any rate, was the Pope's way of looking at the matter, and his well meant but abortive action was the practical inference drawn from it.

But in truth, although the belligerents have formally renounced what was predatory in their strivings, with a view to bringing this horrible struggle to a speedy close, the ultimate aims of each remain what they were, the Allies yearning for a loose state of international fellowship, each member of which would be free to live and act in his own way, and the Germans devising a real federation of nations the individual components of which would be closely knitted together and directed by a single head towards a common goal. New Europe in the latter scheme would be merely an enlargement of the German Empire and would comprise first, second and third class races. Between these two goals there yawns a gulf too broad to be spanned by any bridge. The Teutons look upon themselves as the salt of the earth, the chosen people whose qualities entitle them to the leadership of the world. And so long as this conviction subsists they will notnay, they cannot-relinquish their claim nor desist from their endeavors to enforce it. Neither peace treaties nor military victories will avail at this conjuncture to alter that.

For no people can put away its

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