how, with a record crop of potatoes that was far above 50,000,000 tons, we were finally compelled to cut down the consumption of potatoes to an insufficient ration. It is just as incomprehensible how sugar, something that the German Empire has in superabundance, could suddenly become scarce. We shall finally be obliged to state that the supply of milk, butter, and meat has been far below the quantity available according to statistical calculations. Of course, drastic action will have to be taken at last in this sphere, too. But bread still remains the most important and most necessary article of food. It must be supplied to the people in sufficient quantity and in a more efficient manner than formerly after the coming harvest. That even with the poor harvest of last year it would have been possible to increase the bread ration materially is indubitably shown by statistics. That in the future the nation shall again be assured of its daily bread is the greatest task involved in the feeding of the German people. "If You Desire War, Embrace Pacifism” Under the signature of "Grosclaude," a French publicist utters this warning in Le Figaro of Paris: UR country has been invaded for twenty months, hundreds of thou OUR sands of our brothers and sons are dead or mutilated, ruins have accumulated, sacrileges been endured. It is the expiation for the negligence of loyal and trusting people who refused to see Germany in arms planting her heavy guns on our frontier and silently pushing to the very bases of our fortresses the formidable vanguard of her military spies and commercial agents. Two millions of barbarians in pointed helmets have flung themselves upon our land. If Paris was saved from their profanation, it is because a Gallieni rose before them, as a St. Genevieve had risen in the past. If they are breaking themselves upon our lines of defense it is because, under the direction of the Joffres, Castelnaus, Fochs, Pétains, Gourauds, Mangins, Marchands, and other war leaders, our whole nation is enriching with its blood the furrow of victory which, tomorrow, will be dug onward to the Rhine. Nobody doubts this any longer in France, and beyond the border they are becoming resigned to it. The sublime serenity of martyrdom for the faith of right and fatherland adorns the faces of our heroes in their sufferings, and this darkness of a dying world is illumined by the most radiant hope. We do not wish to be pitied, and we feel ourselves loved. Permit our solicitude, in return, to voice its alarm if you do not perceive close to you the peril beneath which we have almost succumbed. Two million helmeted Germans are less to be feared on our soil-you will realize it soon-than fifteen million masked Germans on your own. You are only in the "before the war" stage. We went through that stage-without recognizing it. Be less blind than we; defend yourselves before it is too late. If you let your German millions submerge your commerce, strangle your industries, manipulate your politics, and dominate the choice of your public officials; if they succeed, in short-a thing that would be more frightful than all else in beclouding your conscience, hitherto so free and forthright, then, woe to you, noble America, lost through the most fallacious illusion! A few years ago on the eve of the Agadir incident—a little book, admirably fashioned to penetrate into all minds and hearts, was published simultaneously in France, England, America, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Finland, Holland, Italy, Japan, Sweden-and even in Germany. It was Norman Angell's "The Great Illusion." What Mr. Angell designated by this title was the fear felt by all nations, including ours, of seeing the peace of the world disturbed to the detriment of quite nations by their bellicose neighbors. That book did its work-its poison achieved its evil mission. The most frightful of wars has been let loose upon nations enervated by the mental opiates of that false prophet. Is it necessary to write a volume crammed with arguments and figures, and to put it on sale on the same day in all countries still belonging to the civilized world, to show how fatal to us has been that great illusion" which veiled the dark design of the ravening colossus bent upon enslaving and debasing the world; an object which it has not yet despaired of attaining by ways the most abominable: -by Zeppelins that bombard the civil population, by submarines that sink steamers laden with women and children, by suffocating gases, by floods of burning benzine hurled against loyal defenders, by the blowing up of factories in neutral countries, by diplomatic treachery, and, in addition, by intruding in WH the domestic politics of nations for which if professes friendship? Brother Americans, you whose sense of "struggle" has taught you the advantage of marching straight at a peril without turning away your face, look at us, meditate on our lot, and consider what that execrable, stupefying drug, pacifism, has made of our Europe. The wisdom of the ages has declared, "Si vis pacem.” (“If you desire peace, prepare for war.") Our wisdom of today tells you with the same certitude, "If you desire war, embrace pacifism." I offer that motto to your illustrious Roosevelt. It is with emotion that we see him urging upon you an active prudence. We are counting upon him to put before your eyes the lesson of our dreadful example. And, fallen into the ambuscade whither we were traitorously attracted, we raise out of the night the saving cry of the chevalier: "On guard, America! The enemy is upon you!", The Heart Cry of England's Women By Flora Annie Steel Author of "On the Face of the Waters" and other novels HAT can we do for thee? England! Our England! Through the hearts of how many British women have not those words echoed during the last nineteen months of war! In that first rush of almost overwhelming desire to be at work for her, somewhere, somehow, to take our part with the men who were flocking to the colors, they beat in on our brains with almost maddening force; for we could do next to nothing. We were told, in so many words, to sit at home and spin or knit! So we sat and we knitted; aye! even those of us who felt that we could do scme things better than they were being done by men. Then, more than a year ago, came an appeal for workers from the Board of Trade. Those of us who think, those of us who are keen, cabled "victory each other. But a year has passed, and victory has not come. Application after " to application for definite information has been met by evasion, by statements that the time was not yet ripe, that trade unions stood in the way, that the age limit must be enforced. That sort of thing takes the heart out of humanity. I know thousands of women into whose souls the iron has entered. I am one of them. Two years ago it hurt me to be told I was too old to work. I was keen as mustard; strong beyond compare. Now I am growing blind, perhaps with unshed tears; anyhow, I am past hard manual labor. And it is just because this is so, just because I have missed my chance, that at this present time I am appealing to other women who are not quite so old to forget everything save the fact that they are British women. Let the dead past bury its dead. For of a surety if we women do not come forward now in our thousands, nay! our millions, our nation will as surely go under, as a great nation, as the green Spring leaves pass to their Autumn grave. There is no question of this. After months of procrastination, months on months during which the writing on the wall was visible day and night, we are at last waking up to the need for combined national action, we are at last beginning to read our doom if we do not act at once. In this great crisis of our nation it must not be said that the women hung back, that they Iwould not lend a hand. Millions of men have gone to the front; under 200,000 women are as yet employed in making munitions. This low figure is not the woman's fault; the whole organization for tapping the supply of female labor is beneath contempt; on all sides rank prejudice and crass selfishness stand in her way. But what of that? She is British born. Say what men will, the traditions of her country are her traditions; its courage, its tenacity, aye! everything it has is hers in that they are mother-born. It is not, my sisters, that we have not been patriotic. We have been abundantly But we have possessed our souls in So. patience, we have taken the lowest place, we have done as men have bidden us to do we have kept the home fires burning. But now, when every available man will be fighting, when there shall be no fear, no favor in the citizen's first duty of defense, we women have more to do than boil the kettle against one man's return. Yes, even if it comes to communal fires, we must keep the credit of our country fair and square. Her industries are being depleted of their men; we must renew their vigor-nay, we must increase it! Why? Because we hold the future in the hollow of our hands! Because the unborn millions to come will be born of us! Ours is the part to see to it that the future generations shall live in liberty; so ours is the duty to work our hardest now for the freedom of the world. Not only because we are patriotic, not only because these fair islands of ours are heart-dear to us; but because deep down in every woman's heart—aye, even, in the girl child's-there lies the instinct of the future, the vision of a Promised Land, where there shall be no more strife, but peace unutterable. War, Peace, and the Future By Ellen Key The noted Swedish champion of woman's rights in a recent pamphlet discusses the European situation and the outlook for the future. How OW is mankind to prevent wars from occurring? Is it at all possible to bring this about, and what may be the means? My conviction that war can be abolished is as firmly rooted in my mind as is my belief that it will also be possible some day to humanize what we term humankind. But we must first make some radical changes in our ways of looking at this matter. For instance, so long as the pulpit and the leaders in the educational world proclaim that it is entirely consistent with the plans of Providence to carry on war, and that Christianity can go hand in hand with warfare, just so long will it be useless to advocate peace in home or school. I am convinced that one of the instruments for making war less of a possibility in the future would be the nationalizing of all those industries that are essential to military and naval mobilization. In this way there will be removed certain temptations of individuals to profit by the carrying on of war. Any alliance between nations for the purpose of making common cause in war is bound to prove disastrous finally, because almost always the independence of the smaller countries is at stake. Peace treaties that tread on the sovereignty of other nations invariably lead to war at some future time. The art of statecraft has deteriorated in Europe since 1870. Militarism depresses the free will and the political and economic development of the people. War is only to be prevented where the higher statesmanship is given unhampered opportunity, where an idea and an ideal are afforded the chance to foster and bind closer the interests of the masses. The motive that should have obtained in Europe and should have actuated the political leaders is a kind of co-operation for the purpose of erecting a barrier against the barbarism of the East. Instead of this the lesser statesmanship succeeded in sundering the real culture bearers of western Europe. No other remedy seems to be logical for future peace than that the advanced European nations bury their own differences and stand like a wall against that barbarism which fundamentally does not have its home among them. That many generations may yet have to succeed each other before this light can rise for the nations of western Europe there can be little doubt. I am far from believing, as many do, that the present war will increase the possibility of peace in the future. It may be that greater political activity on the part of European women and the working classes will influence the existing understanding of what constitutes national power, honor, and glory. But notwithstanding all this, it may take hundreds of years before the insanity of the world war will see itself conquered by the common sense policy of world organization through reason. German Defeat Through Exhaustion By H. G. WELLS [From his new book, "What Is Coming?"] After a long war of general exhaustion Germany will be the first to realize defeat. This does not mean that she will surrender unconditionally, but that she will be reduced to bargaining to see how much she must surrender, and what she may hold. It is my impression that she will be deserted by Bulgaria, and that Turkey will be out of the fighting before the end. But these are chancy matters. In the character of the settlement much will turn upon the relations prevailing between Germany and her present rulers. All Europe outside Germany now hates and dreads the Hohenzollerns. No treaty of peace can end that hate, and so long as Germany sees fit to identify herself with Hohenzollern dreams of empire and a warfare of massacre and assassination, there must be war henceforth, open, or but thinly masked, against Germany. It will be but the elementary common sense of the situation for all the Allies to plan tariffs, exclusions, special laws against German shipping and shareholders and immigrants for so long a period as every German remains a potential servant of that system. Human Documents of the War Fronts Behind the dry official reports of military events is a vast fund of emotional human interest. It is the aim of this department of CURRENT HISTORY to give the best available glimpses of that side of the war, as found in private letters, personal experiences, and thrilling episodes of courage, humor, or pathos. THE Killing the Slightly Wounded By A. Pankratoff [Translated from the Russian for CURRENT HISTORY] HE other day, quite unexpectedly, I ran into Lieutenant X., better known as the Junior Subaltern. This was the fourth time I had run across him since the beginning of the war at Insterburg, where the Junior Subaltern was leading his company toward Königsberg; then in the trenches beyond Tarnovo; then in the vicinity of Lublin, during the great retreat; and now, the fourth time. "I am stationed twelve versts from Czernowitz," he went on to explain. The Junior Subaltern is really so young that you can't help envying him. His face shines with health. His eyes are always laughing. His speech is very simple, but impressive; but he does not like to talk; he would rather listen, and laugh responsively with his eyes. Fortune had brought us together; several men sitting down to a common meal. We talked freely about everything. The conversation turned to the German habit of finishing all the wounded enemies they find after a successful battle. During the forest fighting last August one of us had come across sixty Cossacks who had been but slightly wounded, and whom the Germans had hanged on the trees. "We avenged them, however; the Germans got something to remember!" said the narrator. Lieutenant X.'s eyes sparkled with animation. "Well," he said, "of course they deserved it! Of course it is a crime to kill the wounded. But, gentlemen, there are cases when it is impossible not to kill the wounded." What on earth do you mean?" Just what I said! There is such a thing as rightful killing of the wounded!” We insisted, and the Junior Subaltern narrated a recent experience of his, 66 somewhere in Bukowina." He had been in command of a party of scouts. His regiment had just arrived to take the place af another infantry regiment. And the first thing to do was to become acquainted with the locality and to learn the dispositions and intentions of the enemy. The Junior Subaltern was sent out with his company. At one place the opposing armies were separated by a ravine, which forked out toward our trenches. Lieutenant X. knew that the men of the regiment his was replacing had become acquainted with the Austrians, and that the enemies by day came together at the bottom of the ravine by night, entertained one another, and gossiped. |