WAR COUNCIL IN PARIS

NEVER

EVER perhaps have deliberations so important been so carefully guarded from the public as those of the war conference of the Entente allies in Paris on March 27 and 28. The thirty-seven

persons who took part included the chief Ministers of all the eight allied nations except Russia, and even Russia was represented by her Ambassador to France. Premier Briand of France presided, and among the more influential members were General Joffre, Premier Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Lord Kitchener, General Roques, and General Castelnau; Premier Salandra of Italy, with Baron Sonnino, Signor Tittoni, and General Cadorna; M. Isvolský, Russian Ambassador to France; Mr. Matsui, Japanese Ambassador to France, besides the official representatives of Serbia, Belgium, and Portugal.

History tells of many great congresses and war councils, but a conference of eight allied States, five of them great powers, in the supreme phase of a world war is a new thing; and new also are the spirit and purpose of the meeting in

Paris. It was in essence a business meeting for co-ordinating all the means to victory, including the formulation of a plan for a punitive fiscal system to be used against Germany both during and after the war. It is not improbable that hundreds, if not thousands, of books written in the coming decades will hark back to the Paris Conference for the shaping of their themes.

given below. The main significance of this utterance, unanimously adopted, is its proof of unity. The resolutions are as follows:

1. The representatives of the allied Governments assembled in Paris on the 27th and 28th of March, 1916, affirm the entire community of views and solidarity of the Allies. They confirm all the measures taken to realize unity of action and unity of front. By this they mean at once military unity of action, as assured by the agreement concluded between the General Staffs, economic unity of action, the organization of which has been settled by the present conference; and diplomatic unity of action, which is guaranteed by their unshakable determination to pursue the struggle to the victory of their common cause.

2. The allied Governments decide to put into practice in the economic domain their solidarity of views and interests. They charge the Economic Conference, which will be shortly held in Paris, to propose to them measures adapted to realize this solidarity.

3. With a view to strengthening, co-ordinating, and unifying the economic action to be exercised in order to prevent supplies from reaching the enemy, the conference decides to establish in Paris a permanent committee upon which all the Allies will be represented. 4. The conference decides:

(a) To continue the organization begun in London of a Central Bureau of Freights. (b) To take common action with the shortest possible delay with a view to discovering the practical methods to be employed for equitably distributing between the allied nations the burdens resulting from maritime transport and for putting a stop to the rise in freights.

total expense of the United States Government per annum. In fact, we are conducting Government for 100,000,000 people for less than one-fiftieth of what the war is costing each person in England, France, and Germany.

INSURANCE AGAINST BOMBS

THE British Government now sells reg

ular insurance to its citizens against property damage caused by Zeppelins and aeroplanes; also against the falling fragments of shells sent into the sky by anti-aircraft guns. Against aircraft alone the rate on private dwellings and their contents is 2s. per £100; on all other buildings and their rents, 3s.; on farming stocks, live and dead, 3s.; on contents of shops, factories, &c., 5s.; on merchandise in transit or in public warehouses, timber in the open, oil tanks and. the like, 7s. 6d. Insurance against both aircraft and bombardment costs about 50 per cent. more. Premiums are the same for every part of the United Kingdom, and the Government insurance can be obtained through the ordinary fire insurance companies or at the War Risks Insurance Office in London.

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WAR DECREASES CRIME FFICIAL reports for England and Wales in 1915 show an increase of 3.9 per 1,000 in the marriage rate, but a decrease of 3.6 per 1,000 in the birth rate. The death rate showed an increase of 0.7 per 1,000 in 1915. While the war reduces the birth rate, it also decreases crime. The report of the English Commission of

and new demands for remunerative labor, and (3) the restriction of the liquor traffic.

WIT

CHANGES OF LEADERSHIP ITHIN a period of eighteen days France, Russia, and Italy have changed their War Ministers. In France General Gallieni, who won fame as military Governor of Paris during the Marne battle, retired, and his portfolio was intrusted to General Charles Roques. In Italy General Zupeli resigned, King Victor Emmanuel appointing General Paolo Morrone to succeed him. In Russia General Polivanoff was dismissed by the Czar, and General Shuvaieff placed at the post of Minister of War. Another notable change took place in Russia with the retirement of General N. I. Ivanoff from command of the Russia armies in Galicia and Volhynia-sometimes known as the southern front in contrast to the northern front commanded by the recently appointed General Kuropatkin. The chief command of the southern front is now in the hands of General A. A. Brusiloff, a brilliant leader, who was responsible for the initial Russian successes in Galicia, and whose knowledge of the terrain of the Volhynian and Bessarabian fronts is said to be as complete as von Hindenburg's knowledge of his "lakes." It would appear from these nearly simultaneous changes in the high military administration that the long-awaited allied offensive is approaching.

WOMEN AND WAR

ons were closed or are in process. of closure, eleven having been closed entirely. Between the years 1904-5 and 1913-14 total convictions decreased from 586 per 100,000 population to 369; in the year ended March, 1915, it dropped to 281 per 100,000; the year 1915-16 will show a much further drop. The English prison estimates for 1916 are $500,000, or 12 per cent. below the previous estimate. The decrease in crime is ascribed to (1) the drafting into the army of a considerable section of the population from which the criminals usually come, (2) the increased

Europe by the entrance of women. into occupations heretofore closed against them is rapidly developing. The situation in England was treated in April CURRENT HISTORY; the situation in Germany and France is treated elsewhere in this issue. Women workers in Berlin are estimated at 900,000, of whom 300,000 are skilled, and are represented in all industries. Women are doing laborers' work at Berlin as shovelers and diggers on the new subway construction there, and have replaced the men as street cleaners; they serve as

conductors on trams and trains, as chauffeuses on taxis, as mail carriers, messengers, &c. In London the number of women mail carriers has been increased from 500 to 1,000. In France they are serving in all capacities, the latest employment being that of garrisons in the place of soldiers of the auxiliary service. The French drafts of the 1888 military class will be limited, so that professional men may continue to attend to their duties, and this will give employment to the widows, mothers, and sisters of soldiers killed.

UNPRECEDENTED LOSSES

A COMPARISON of official figures of

our civil war with casualty reports of the German armies demonstrates the sanguinary character of the present war. Americans generally assume that we fought the bloodiest war in history: that fratricidal strife arouses the fiercest passions and, anyway, "that Americans shoot straighter and kill quicker than any other race." But they are entirely wrong.

The official figures of German losses in the present war show that their fatalities on the field were more than double our own during the civil war. In other words, they either dared twice as much, or the French, English, Russians, and Belgians shot twice as straight as Americans.

The British Official Press Bureau reports the German casualties during February, 1916, at 35,198, of whom 10,211 were killed or died either of wounds or sickness; 2,017 missing, 5,217 severely wounded, 1,340 prisoners, 11,865 slightly wounded. The German casualties during March, including the slaughter at Verdun and the sanguinary struggles in the eastern theatre, are estimated at 175,000. This estimate, added to the previous reports, swells the German losses since the beginning of the warincluding all German nationalities: Prussians, Bavarians, Saxons, and Württembergers, but excluding naval and colonial casualties-to the grand total of 2,842,372, of which number about 660,000 were killed and died of wounds, 40,000

died of sickness, 120,000 are prisoners, 220,000 are missing, 365,000 are severely wounded, 265,000 wounded, about 1,050,000 slightly slightly wounded, 140,000 wounded remaining with units. The number killed in action, estimating onehalf the missing as killed, is over 25 per cent. of the total.

The total casualties among United States troops in the four years of the civil war were 877,165, including 212,608 captured, 16,431 paroled on the field, 199,720 died of disease, 40,154 died in Confederate prisons or killed by accident, murder, and other causes, also 199,105 reported as deserters in the four years. Of this total 67,058 were killed in battle and 43,012 died of wounds, being a total of 110,070, or less than 122 per cent., a little less than one-half the total German fatalities on the field.

UNDER

which applies to unmarried men, exemption from military service may be claimed if the applicant can show that he has a "conscientious objection to fighting. To judge from the reports of proceedings before the tribunals set up to hear the claims of "conscientious objectors," the law is more honored in the breach than in the observance. Members of certain religious bodies, such as the Society of Friends, have been granted absolute exemption; but men who are only humanitarians, pacifists, and anti-war Socialists without belonging to similar religious denominations have been treated with extreme severity by the tribunals.

would "hinder recruiting if left." At the Shaw Tribunal a conscientious objector was told: "You are exploiting God to save your own skin. It is nothing but deliberate and rank blasphemy. You are nothing but a shivering mass of unwholesome fat." At Birmingham an applicant said, "It is against Christ's commands to go and fight," whereupon the military representative exclaimed, "Filled up with the madness of insane views! " The great majority of conscientious objectors make no distinction between combatant and noncombatant military duties. This was the stated intention of the Government when the Conscription act was passed, but the tribunals have, with few exceptions, imposed noncombatant service on conscientious objectors even where applicants have made it abundantly clear that this fails to meet their objection to participation in the war. The Government has apparently decided to ignore the law.

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BRITAIN'S NEW BLOCKADE

ANEW British

Order in Council, issued March 30, undertakes to tighten the blockade against Germany by abolishing the distinction between absolute and conditional contraband and applying the doctrine of continuous voyage to both alike. In the words of Lord Robert Cecil, Minister of War Trade: "In future everything passing through British waters on the way to Germany, whether listed as absolute or conditional contraband, is subject to seizure." This applies to cargoes bound from one neutral port to another and to all international mails, which are now being seized and taken to London to be searched for articles whose ultimate destination is believed to be Germany.

The new policy not only ignores Article 19 of the Declaration of London, which provides that "whatever may be the ultimate destination of a vessel or of her cargo, she cannot be captured for breach of blockade if, at the moment, she is on her way to a nonblockaded port," but it also arbitrarily annuls Article 35, which provides that the doctrine of continuous voyage is not appli

As the

cable to conditional contraband. new decree is made retroactive, and as the original Order in Council of Oct. 29, 1914, had definitely ratified Article 35, the change entails unexpected hardships upon American shippers and places a new and serious handicap upon the trade of all neutral nations.

In a recent interview Lord Robert Cecil undertook to justify his Government's new sea policy on the ground that the former distinction between absolute and conditional contraband has vanished since the German Government has taken over the control of all important commodities and is using them for military and civil purposes combined. The degree of patience with which the American shipper will endure this new exercise of British sea power will depend largely upon the still greater extent to which he disapproves of German war methods.

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A PROTEST AND THE REPLY THE United States Government at once filed a protest through Ambassador Page against the removal of mails from neutral ships, and especially against their detention and delay. The protest added that the American Government was inclined to consider parcel post shipments as subject to the same treatment as goods sent by freight or express.

To this communication the Entente Allies made a joint reply, on April 3, through the British Ambassador at Washington, asserting their right to search general mail, but making no mention of the matter of delay and interference. The main point insisted upon was that the "inviolability guaranteed to mails by The Hague Convention No. 11 cannot be regarded as curtailing in any degree "the right of the allied Governments to visit and, if need be, stop and seize the goods which are deposited falsely in the covers, envelopes, or letters contained in mail sacks." It could not be applied, in short, to merchandise sent by parcel post. In the words of the official reply:

Such parcels can in no circumstances be considered as letters, correspondence, or dispatches, and it is clear that nothing can save them from the exercise of the rights