to be impossible, but this was a false assumption, as the events of 1864 proved.

Decree and Execution

The Schleswig-Holstein question became acute in 1860, when Denmark endeavored to get control of Holstein, a member of the German Confederation.

In 1864 Federal execution was ordered by the Confederate Diet against the Grand Duke Charles of Holstein to compel him to carry out Confederate decrees of 1860 and 1863, and an army was formed of the lesser States, composed of 6,000 Saxons and 6,000 Hanoverians; a further army of 5,000 Prussians and 5,000 Austrians was held in reserve, but the latter two great powers of the Confederation undertook the task.

Great Britain had encouraged Denmark to resist, but in the end she stood aside and allowed the Danes to be crushed in the war, so that Denmark, instead of gaining control of the Duchy of Holstein, lost both it and Schleswig.

Austria and Prussia came to an agreement in regard to the Duchies to the effect that Prussia was to have the administration of Schleswig and Austria that of Holstein, although the countries to be thus governed by these two powers wished to be united. Then Austria refused to consent to the annexation of the Duchies to Prussia, and appealed to the Diet and to the Middle German States to aid her in case of attack by Prussia. At the same time Prussia addressed a circular note to the German States, in which she begged them to inform her what course they would pursue supposing she were to be attacked by Austria. The majority of these States referred her to the Diet of the Confederation.

Prussia then måde overtures to Austria, but the latter power refused to entertain them. The powers stepped in to try to prevent war. Austria placed the solution of the Schleswig-Holstein situation in the hands of the Diet of the Confederation, promising to abide by its decision. In this case the Diet voted a decree to accede to the demands of Austria, although her call for execution by a Federal army was contrary to the spirit and letter of the act. The vote of the

.

States for this decree stood 9 to 6 on June 14, 1866. Prussia thereupon issued a circular note calling for a new confederation, from which Austria and Luxemburg were to be excluded, and the "six weeks' war between Prussia and Austria ensued.

We see, then, that the elaborate machinery to avoid war failed to work successfully when the two strong members of the confederation came to a disagreement. Each was struggling for the leadership of the confederation-Austria to retain her old hegemony, and Prussia, under the subtle Bismarck, to displace her. These two powerful nations with totally irreconcilable views had to settle their differences by the sword, notwithstanding their being members of a "league to enforce peace."

In this war the “needle-gun" brought swift victory to King William and his allies, and four years later the aggrandizement of Prussia brought about its war with France. The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, considered necessary for the protection of Prussia and the subjection of France, has led to the alliance of that country with Russia. Thus we find that the present catastrophe in Europe goes back lineally to the Pandora's box of the Schleswig-Holstein question.

This review of events shows that the first league to enforce peace was not happy in its results, and yet it may be that, as Prussia once accepted a constitution which provided for the submission of rival claims of Confederate States to the Confederate Diet and the promulgation of decrees and the enforcement of those decrees by Federal execution, it might, in order to bring about a stable peace between the States of Europe and Great Britain, bring itself to an adhesion to some such a league as is now planned.

The present upheaval in Europe was perhaps caused by the disturbance of the equilibrium of the Balkan States as well as by the growing military power of the German Empire and its avowed ambitions, which were curbed by the constriction of Germany within its narrow bounds. The first serious vibrations felt

in Western Europe came from the Balkan States. Now, after two years and a half of war, the control of the bridge between the Teuton allies and the Near East is being bitterly contested. If the Entente Allies should not succeed in barring this eastern extension of Germany over its wished-for vassal States of Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Turkey, the German Empire, like Prussia in the old German Confederation, would be too strong to submit a quarrel to the arbitration of a council of a league of nations. But if the Teutons fail in the Balkans, and the Entente Allies hold the "bridge," Germany might well be a tractable member of such a league, after the experience of this war. This contest on the eastern front seems the vital tug of war, and the western fighting seems now to be a necessary corollary of it.

The practical question, then, before the world is this: If a State, a member of such a league, is strong enough, or thinks it is strong enough, to stand against all the others to gain its end, will it abide by any decree made by the proposed League to Enforce Peace, even after arbitration before the league tribunal, it being understood beforehand that such a refusal would lead to the coalition of the whole world against it?

It is quite clear that before the expe

riences of the "world war," great nations would not have been bound by any such agreement. When the important interests of a nation are at stake, its course has almost always been selfish, but the terrible war may be teaching a lesson even to that nation whose strict adherence to a league would be the only guarantee of its success.

It seems fairly clear, then, that rather than to attempt what may be impossible, that is, the humiliation of Germany, an effort should be made, after a check to the Teutons in the east, to make a peace which should give all the countries their aspirations the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, a recognition of Germany's necessity for expansion, and an outlet for Russia to the Mediterranean, and provide for the restoration and indemnification of ruined small countries; Great Britain has all she wishes today, and only desires to be left alone.

The unstable equilibrium of Europe must be cured before a stable foundation for peace-or for a peace league-can be laid. Communities under alien rule, races governed by other races, religions ruled by other religions, countries shut off from their natural development, countries forced into unnatural expansion, are never content. It is only by minds convinced of these premises that a sound peace can be made.

B

EFORE I went to the British front and talked with the British commanders I shared the view of most uninformed observers from afar that the main purpose of British strategy and tactics alike was to pierce the German lines, to force the Germans out of France by some swift, complete stroke -I believed that this was a possible thing.

But I doubt if any British General of authority really believes or expects this sort of outcome to the war at the present time. Rather the prevailing notion is summed up in Grant's memorable words-and the British Army expects to fight the present campaign out on the existing lines if it takes all Summer or several Summers. Indeed, I was struck with the emphasis Sir Will

that the German troops in front of us are about to collapse, not that the German lines are about to break up like a frozen river with the Spring thaw, but that some day this process of weakening will have serious consequences. It may be

that the Germans will avoid these conse

iam Robertson laid on the parallel of the civil war when I talked with him in London later.

Here is about the point of view of the British Army in France:

"Today we have more guns and more amnunition than the Germans. We are pounding them day and night as they once pounded us. The weakening in their morale is slowly but surely growing, as is demonstrated by the number of desertions that are taking place and the growing readiness of units to surrender.

"We are pounding without ceasing, and the results of the pounding prove not

quences by gradual retirement, but such

Y gradual retirement shakes the morale of the soldier and of the nation. It may be that the Germans will hold on as Lee did before Richmond until the last, and thus court disaster, such disaster as came to Lee. But these things are in the future.

"As to piercing the German lines, given the present style of war, given the magnificent organization of the German lines, given their mechanical resources, notably machine guns, this is a long task. And the main thing is not to pierce lines, but to kill Germans and to wear out the German armies. It makes relatively little difference whether this is done on the line of the Somme or on the line of Cambrai, or even at the French frontier, from Hirson to Lille, behind which is again the line of the Scheldt and the Meuse-the best line of all. Each time the German shortens his line he reduces the number needed to hold it and the strain upon his resources.

"The parallel is, after all, not the football field, but the prizering. We shall only defeat Germany by exhausting her;

we shall only win by a knockout; and the knockout may come in one corner of the ring or the other.

"Two years ago we were holding our lines by rifle fire against high explosives. In the second week in May, 1915, Field Marshal French was compelled to attack at Festubert to aid the French and take the pressure off the Canadians in the Ypres salient. He had ammunition for forty minutes of bombardment, and that was all. Then the infantry had to attack, and it cost 8,000 casualties. We had neither machine guns, trench mortars, nor any of the instruments Germany had been accumulating for years. German aircraft were supreme in our sector.

"But today we have more guns and better guns than the Germans. We fire four shells to the Germans' one, and in the battle of the Somme not a German aircraft.'came over' for days on end. Their artillery shot in the dark; ours was informed by our aviators. At the beginning of the battle of the Somme we had terrific losses because it was a new experience and a new army. A brigade attacking at one point lost 1,900 killed, 1,800 wounded, and brought back 300 men. The other day, in one of the last attacks, another brigade lost 1,400 men, and, in addition to burying 900 Germans, brought back 1,800 prisoners.

"Night and day we pound the Germans. Their artillery does not reply much of the time. We raid their trenches, and they seldom react. We take an everincreasing number of prisoners. We see ever-increasing signs of wearing out. Do not misunderstand-the Germans are still very strong. The new units arrive, each soldier carrying his extra pair of shoes. They are well fed and well led; they will be to the last.

If there is desertion and surrender in some units, others fight as well as ever and there is no 'Kamerad' business with them."

*

No Victory This Year

I do not believe the British Army in France expects to win the war this year. I do not believe that the Generals are thinking in terms of a day, a month, or a year. What seems to be the feeling is

that after two years and a half of war there has been fashioned a British Army which is still gaining in knowledge and strength, but already has a proved superiority over its foe in morale, in material, and in the things that may be measured by the slow but sure retrogresIsion of the Germans before them. For nearly two years the British Army hung on, now it is advancing; it escaped annihiliation, it is experiencing success.

One of the questions I asked all the Generals with whom I talked was as to the possibility of a German offensive at some point on the British front. All agreed that it was possible; some expected it. A push at the Ypres salient, the worst position on the whole front, was frequently suggested. General Malleterre in Paris quite strongly argued that the Germans would make this attack. I think that there is a considerable expectation in London that it will come, and I find this view repeated in later dispatches commenting upon the German retirement about Bapaume.

But such an offensive carries no real peril to the mind of the British Army in France, which is chiefly interested to know if the Germans will bring out some new device, some new weapon like

Troops in Fine Condition

Of the physical condition of the British Army it is impossible to speak too highly. I was in France in the zero weather of January. Every morning I rode out along the roads and camps, and never have I seen so many soldiers, or soldiers looking so young and strong and fit. It semed as if all the eastward leading valleys of France were swarming with British, Canadian, and Australian troops pushing onward to the front; it seemed an endless and inexhaustible flood, while behind, each little village had new reservoirs of khaki-clad Tommies. * * *

From the British Army in France, with which I stayed a week, I brought away the feeling of confidence and of intelli

gent optimism. It has the appearance of an army which has undertaken a contract, not with a time-limit clause, not with a fixed hour or place of completion. It has undertaken a contract to dispose of the German military problem, of that part of the German Army assigned to it to deal with. It feels that it is doing the work, it recognizes that the way is still difficult and the time may yet be long. It expects new German attacks and it envisages the possibility of local German successes, but it has only one possible apprehension: it looks not to the front and the Germans for its main peril, but to England and the man behind the linesif he can hold, the end is assured and the fate of the "Hun" is sealed. And this is the feeling of the French Army quite as well. The soldier sees victory, unless his civilian fellow-citizen weakens-and of this the signs are few in England, as in France.

I can perhaps sum up my impression of the British Army in France by saying it recalls all that I have heard and read of the armies of the North in 1864. It

is a volunteer army in the main; its officers are men proved by the test of two yars and a half of war. Its men, volunteers though they are, are no longer raw or green. Haig, Horne, Rawlinson, Gough, Allenby, Plumer-these Generals commanding armies have survived the test of battle elimination.

As an army the British force has been battered, driven, it has been defeated and it has been repulsed. Its experiences recall those of the Army of the Potomac from the Peninsula to Gettysburg-but, like the Army of the Potomac, it has found itself, it has measured itself against a foe ready and trained and equipped as Lee's army was not. And it is advancing. The Tommy in the trench more clearly than any General or military writer sees and weighs the evidence of of German weakening. Hence his supreme confidence. Hence for him the German peace proposal was the plea of the beaten.

The nearer you get to the German line the more serene the spirit of the British seems.

Over an area perhaps of ten miles by twenty, of the battlefield on the Somme, the whole face of the earth has been changed, the heart of hills has been blown out; you look up the slope of a considerable hill, you climb with difficulty up its rounding slope, and suddenly you gaze down into a chasm, a volcano's crater; all the interior of the hill has been blown out by a mine; the hillside is an open shell; an ocean liner could be concealed in the crater.

Coming out of Albert along the road so many thousands of men have followed to death one approaches the field of actual fighting with little real warning. Albert itself is a shelled, half-destroyed town. The tower of its church, with a statute of the Virgin suspended in a prostrate position across the tower, has become a thing familiar to all who have read of the battle. When it falls, so the people of the region believe, peace will come. But Albert is only a shelled

town; many of its houses stand, most of them retain their walls and many their roofs.

But a mile the other side of Albert, traveling toward Péronne, one comes suddenly out upon the most terrible and bewildering scene of desolation it is possible to imagine. From the upper layer of the earth there has been swept away not alone the trees, the sod, the outer covering, but the very depth of the lower strata has been churned up and scattered about. Of a sudden in the midst of the landscape of Picardy, with smiling valleys and pleasant woodlands, there is the image of the Sahara, of something more than the Saraha, of the fields above Pompeii or Messina, down which have flowed the streams of lava which not only engulf but endure.

Only Skeletons of Hills

Turning off the main road one leaves the car and climbs heavily up a hillside.