lined with indirect lighting and each column of the court standing clear in a blaze of golden illumination.

Address at City Hall

At the City Hall, where the formal reception was held on the evening of the mission's arrival, M. Viviani, in response to an address by Mayor Mitchel, replied as follows:

You were right when you dwelt on the wonderful spectacle which France has given to the world for three years. You were right when you said that the blood of France is flowing like water. From the open wounds of our soldiers has flowed the pure red blood of France. It has flooded our plains in the very spots where formerly our farmers and our workmen were living at peace.

And why does the invader pollute our soil? We are a pacific nation, as pacific as yourselves, but you have seen for yourselves how easy it was to remain faithful to dreams of universal peace. You cherished such dreams. You were a great people, with only one thought-humanity and justice. We were a free democracy and we had only one thought-universal right and humanity. But German aggression was thrust upon us. We were compelled to rise in arms, and now we fight-we fight for our territory, for our wealth, for our historical traditions-in order that the invader may not take another step on our sacred soil. France fights for theworld-for justice, for humanity-and it is because she fights for that that at last the American people have risen to give France and her allies their moral and material aid.

Slavery Worse Than War

I fully understand how you faltered in the face of the awful duty that confronted you. For war has its dangers and its horrors, its moaning widows, its premature deaths, and casts a blight on the mothers of infants who are our hope and joy and who know only woe and calamity.

War is a horrible thing, but could there be anything more terrible for people than to live without honor or independence? Just as you were unwilling to allow your national honor to be humiliated under the insolent threats and mandates of Germany, we were unwilling to submit to break our oaths. When we look back into the events of the last three years, you have seen small peoples oppressed and great nations like Russia. England, France, and Italy rush to the defense of the rights of mankind in order to save from the wreck some portion of their national honor. You have felt the revolt of your consciences from the first hour when German aggression struck at your brothers, and it was then an easy matter for those who had witnessed the evolution of American feeling to foresee what would happen and what has actually happened since.

All America has risen in arms. We have just visited the Middle West. We have just seen what enthusiasm has arisen among the men, the women, and the children of these regions.

We have found everywhere, even in those very places where we had been told we would not find it, the virile resolution of a whole people acclaiming our message, and we find it here again in these streets of New York, this great city where millions of men surge like waves of the sea.

Democracy in Arms

I cannot do better in order to symbolize this union of the French and American people than to appear before you side by side with Marshal Joffre. It is indeed pleasing to me in this by no means foreign land, in this friendly land, bound by so many ties to France, to thank the French Army for the heroic manner it has fought, for the great deeds it has done. That army at the outset of the war had to give way materially before the most formidable onslaught that the history of man has ever recorded, but came back and hurled itself upon the invader. Yes, they threw themselves into the fray, those youths in their teens, their eyes aflame and their hearts, going into battle, going to death, but going for the country, for civilization, for mankind.

Our army is our nation in arms. It is democracy in arms for its honor and independence. You will say-you also-that you have seen that wonderful sight of democracy which has known how to organize its forces, how to marshal its strength. A democracy which has not awaited the hour of danger, which, like our own, had its army, its leaders, its chiefs, and which, thanks to what it had done, was able to hold its own. As I was on my way here I neard the crowd acclaiming those who accompanied me, and who wear the uniform like Marshal Joffre, as the saviors of the world. Yes, the soldiers of the Marne are the saviors of the world. But if we had not had conscription, if there had not been the men to answer the call of mobilization, what would have befallen our country despite its courage, its enthusiasm, its valor? There, citizens, you have the great and grave legend taught by the war.

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So long as there is in the world a warlike Germany, so long as there is a tion of prey, a country bent on oppression, on treachery and violence, so long will democracies be imperiled. If they would save the treasures of civilization and the heritage of mankind which are theirs they must meet the danger, they must be ready, they must arm themselves, but with the purpose never to place the sword at the service of aught but the right.

The home of Henry C. Frick on Fifth Avenue was placed at the service of the guests. On May 10 the whole city united

in demonstrations. The commission went in the morning to attend the unveiling of a statue of Lafayette in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and later were entertained at luncheon by the Merchants' Association of New York. In the afternoon Columbia University conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws upon Marshal Joffre and Vice Premier Viviani, after which they visited Grant's Tomb. In the evening a reception was given in the Public Library by the French patriotic societies, and a great gala concert followed in the Metropolitan Opera House, where the audience contributed $85,000 for Marshal Joffre's use in relief work. The Mar

shal's arrival in the Opera House at 11 o'clock at night, when the audience interrupted Paderewski's playing of a masterpiece to rise and cheer the victor of the Marne, marked the climax of a memorable and strenuous day for the visitors.

Balfour Visits Congress

Meanwhile at Washington the British Commissioners remained in daily conference with Cabinet officials. On May 5 Mr. Balfour, head of the commission, was invited to attend Congress. In the scene that followed two precedents of a century and a half were broken. It was the first time in American history that a British official had been invited to address the House of Representatives, and it was the first time that a President of the United States had sat in the gallery. The welcome to Mr. Balfour and his associates equaled, if it did not surpass, the demonstration which had greeted M. Viviani and Marshal Joffre earlier in the week. The demonstration given to the President rivaled that which Mr. Balfour received. Unannounced, he slipped into the Executive Gallery. For several minutes no one on the floor saw Mr. Wilson, although he was sitting in the front row. Then suddenly a member on the floor discovered him, and a group rose, applauding. The whole House followed, and for several minutes the floor and galleries joined in hearty applause.

As the applause died down, Speaker Clark appointed a committee to escort the British Mission into the Chamber. At a few minutes after 12:30 o'clock

they appeared and the whole House rose to greet them while hearty applause swept the floor and the galleries. The ovation lasted several minutes, subsiding only to start with a new outburst of cheers and hand-clapping when the Speaker introduced Mr. Balfour. The British Minister was visibly affected by the warmth of his reception.

Through it all the President joined vigorously in the applause. When the speaker had finished and stood below the rostrum with General Bridges, Admiral de Chair, and the British Ambassador, shaking hands with the members as they filed past, Mr. Wilson again surprised those present by slipping downstairs quietly and passing down the line with the Congressmen.

Balfour's Address to the House

In his address before the House of Representatives Mr. Balfour said:

Will you permit me, on behalf of my friends and myself, to offer you my deepest and sincerest thanks for the rare and valued honor which you have done us by receiving us here today? We all feel the greatness of this honor, but I think to none of us can it come home so closely as to one who, like myself, has been for forty-three years in the service of a free assembly like your own.

I rejoice to think that a member, a very old member I am sorry to say, of the British House of Commons has been received here today by this great sister assembly with such kindness as you have shown to me and to my friends.

Ladies and gentlemen, these two assemblies are the greatest and the oldest of the free assemblies now governing great nations in the world. The history, indeed, of the two is very different. The beginnings of the British House of Commons go back to a dim historic past, and its full rights and status have only been conquered and permanently secured after centuries of political struggle.

Your fate has been a happier one. You were called into existence at a much later stage of social development. You came into being complete and perfected and all your powers determined and your place in the constitution secured beyond chance of revolution, but though the history of these two great assemblies is different, each of them represents the great democratic principle to which we look forward as the security for the future peace of the world. All of the free assemblies now to be found governing the great nations of the earth have been modeled either upon your practice or upon ours, or upon both combined.

Mr. Speaker, the compliment paid to the mission from Great Britain by such an as

sembly and upon such an occasion is one not one of us is ever likely to forget; but there is something, after all, even deeper and more significant in the circumstances under which I now have the honor to address you than any which arise out of the interchange of courtesies, however sincere, between two great and friendly nations.

We all, I think, feel instinctively that this is one of the great moments in the history of the world, and that what is now happening on both sides of the Atlantic represents the drawing together of great and free peoples for mutual protection against the aggression of military despotism.

I am not one of those, none of you are among those, who are such bad democrats as to say that democracies make no mistakes. All free assemblies have made blunders, sometimes they have committed crimes. Why is it then that we look forward to the spirit of free institutions, and especially among our present enemies, as one of the greatest guarantees of the future peace of the world? will say to you, gentlemen, how it seems to me.

It is quite true that the people and the representatives of the people may be betrayed by some momentary gust of passion into a policy which they ultimately deplore, but it is only a military despotism of the German type that can through generations, if need be, pursue steadily, remorselessly, unscrupulously, and appallingly the object of dominating the civilization of mankind. And, mark you, this evil, this menace, under which we are now suffering, is not one which diminishes with the growth of knowledge and progress of material civilization, but, on the contrary, it increases with them.

When I was young we used to flatter ourselves that progress inevitably meant peace, and that growth of knowledge was always accompanied as its natural fruit by the growth of good-will among the nations of the earth. Unhappily, we know better now, and we know there is such a thing in the world as a power which can with unvarying persistency focus all the resources of knowledge and of civilization into the one great task of making itself the moral and material master of the world. It is against that danger that we, the free peoples of Western civilization, have banded ourselves together.

British in New York

Mr. Balfour and the other members of the British Commission reached New York by special train Friday afternoon, May 11, and every step of their way from the Battery to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Astor, which had been placed at their service, lay through cheering crowds. The party was formally received at the City Hall by Mayor Mitchel and a delegation of distinguished

citizens. An enormous crowd was in attendance. The lawn at the entrance was filled with 2,000 schoolgirls, all clad in white middy blouses and dark blue skirts with red hair ribbons, and each with a flag. Behind this group was a column of Boy Scouts in mass and pyramid formations, all clad in khaki. Every available foot of space in the park and surrounding streets was filled with cheering people, among whom the flags of the United States, France, and Great Britain were freely intermingled.

Mr. Balfour was formally greeted by the Mayor, who was followed by Joseph H. Choate, former Ambassador to Great Britain. [Mr. Choate died suddenly three days later in his New York home.] In the course of his speech Mr. Choate said:

We hesitated, we doubted, we hung back, not from any lack of sympathy, not from any lack of enthusiasm, not because we did not know what was the right path; but how to take it and when to take it was always the question. I feared at one time that we might enter into it for some selfish purpose, for the punishment of aggressions against our individual, national, personal rights, for the destruction of American ships or, of a few American lives, ample ground for war; but we waited, and it turns out now that we waited wisely, because we were able at last to enter into this great contest of the whole world for a noble and lofty purpose, such as never attracted nations before. We are entering into it under your lead, Sir, for the purpose of the vindication of human rights, for the vindication of free government throughout the world, for the establishmentby and by; soon, we hope; late, it may beof a peace which shall endure and not a peace that shall be no peace at all.

Fortunately, we have now no room for choice. Under the guidance of the President, we stand pledged now before all the world to all the allies whom we have joined to carry into this contest all that we have, all that we hope for, and all that we ever aspire unto. We shall be in time to take part in that peace which shall forever stand and prevent any more such national outrages as commenced this war on the side of Germany. We have been only thirty days in the war, and already it has had a marvelous effect upon our own people. Before that there was apathy, there was indifference, there was indulgence in personal pursuits, in personal prosperity; but today every young man in America, and every old man, too, is asking: "What can I do best to serve my country?"

Mr. Balfour, in the course of his reply, said:

Those who had the good fortune to drive

through the streets of the city up to this hall, I am sure must have been astounded at the whole-hearted exhibition of enthusiasm which, from every street, from every window, from every house, made itself visible and audible to the spectators. Seldom have I seen a sight-and my experience, alas, is an old one-seldom, or never, have I seen a sight so deeply moving; never have I seen a sight which went more to the heart. If, on the other side of the Atlantic, where the stress and strain of battle seem sometimes hard to sustain, they could have one glimpse of the sympathies shown them in this vast and noble community, it would give them, if there be faint hearts-I have not heard of them on the other side-if faint hearts there be, they indeed would regain new strength, new courage, new enthusiasm, new resolution, and they would feel again, if they ever ceased to feel it, that firm determination to carry through at all sacrifices this great struggle to its appointed end, which, after all, is the very strength and nerve of the allied forces.

Dinner of Mayor's Committee

The climax of all these proceedings Iwas the joint reception in New York on May 12 to both the French and English Commissions. It took the form of a dinner at the Waldorf tendered by the Mayor's Reception Committee, which was attended by 1,000 of New York City's leading men; in addition there were present the only two living exPresidents, Taft and Roosevelt, the Governor of New York, and other men distinguished in official and civic life.

Here again Mr. Choate delivered the principal address on the part of the city, following Mayor Mitchel. In the course of his speech Mr. Choate said:

America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, America has learned what this war is about, what it is for-that it is for the establishment of freedom against slavery, for the vindication of free government against tyranny, and oppression and autocracy and all the other horrible names that you can apply to misgovernment. When it came to that there was but one question for America, and our President at Washington has solved it for us. Nobody can tell how far he saw ahead any more than we at this moment can tell how far we can see ahead.

Balfour on the War's Meaning In his address Mr. Balfour said:

I have not come here authorized by my Government to set myself up or to set my friends up as instructors of the great Amer

ican people. They know and you know how to manage your affairs, and do not require us to teach you. It may be, it probably is, the fact, that a study of the history of this war will show those who run and desire to read that there are certain mistakes which a great democracy, imperfectly prepared for war, may easily make. We shall be happy to describe these mistakes to you, if happily it will be your desire to learn the lesson from them. But I do not propose either now or at any other occasion to set myself up as an adviser or monitor on these great themes. It is enough that I proclaim my unalterable conviction that we have reached a moment in the world's history on which the future, not of this country, but of every country, not of its interests, but of every interest of civilization is trembling in the balance. At that critical moment it is my bounden duty to raise my voice and to appeal to all who will listen to me today in the great task which we have been bearing for two and a half years, and which you have cheerfully and generously determined to take the weight of upon your own shoulders.

Why is it that the people of this great city have come forth instinctively-I was going to say by thousands; I feel inclined to say by millions-to show their enthusiasm for the cause you have taken up? It is because they instinctively feel what is the vital issue at stake, because they instinctively feel that it is neither desirable nor, were it desirable, possible for this great Republic to hold itself aloof from a world in suffering and not do its part to redeem mankind.

Surely it is a significant fact that here we are, the representatives of three great democracies, in the very heart of New York, to plead a common cause. What has brought us all together? What is the meaning of this unique gathering? What is the meaning of the multitude crowding your streets today and yesterday? It is a shallow view to suppose that each of these great nations has had a separate and different cause of controversy with the enemy-that Russia was dragged in because of Serbia, that France was dragged in because of Russia, that Great Britain was dragged in because of the violation of Belgian territory, and that the United States has been dragged in because of the piratical warfare of the German submarines. All those causes are, each of them, and separately, no doubt a sufficient reason, but for a moment to consider this war carried on by the Allies as that of separate interests, separate causes of controversy, is an utterly inadequate and false view of the situation. These are but symptoms of the absolute necessity in which a civilized world finds itself, to deal with an imminent and overmastering peril. What is that peril? What is it we feel that we have got to stop? I will tell you my view of it. It is the calculated and remorseless use of every civilized weapon to carry out the ends of pure barbarism. To us of English speech it seems

impossible, incredible, that a nation should clearly set itself to work and co-ordinate that every means of science, every means knowledge, that industry can provide, not for the bettering of its own people, but for the demolition of other peoples.

The history of the world is too full of the We adventures of unscrupulous ambition. know all through history of men who have endeavored, at the cost of others, to expand their own State. Within the last century, or a little more, we have seen men of genius trying to coerce the world. But this is not a case of a new Napoleon arising to carry out This is not a case of ada new adventure. venture, of a genius seeking to satisfy his ambition within the limits of his own country.

It is something far different and far more It is the settled dangerous for mankind. determination to use every means to put the We all know whole world at her feet.

it is a commonplace that science has enormously expanded the means by which men Modern destruction is can kill each other. carried out as much in the laboratory of your universities as it is on the field of battle, but we have always believed, we have always hoped, that this increased power of destruction would be limited and controlled by the growing forces of humanity and civilization. We have been taught, not by Germany, but by those who rule Germany, by the military caste which controls Germanywe have been taught a different lesson, and we now know not merely that every scientific weapon will be put in force to make war more horrible than it was in barbarous times, but that even the rights of civilization, of trade, of commerce, even the intercommunication between different peoples, will be used for the same sinister object.

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Ladies and gentlemen, that is the danger we have to meet, and if at this moment the world is bathed in blood and tears from the highlands of distant Armenia down to the very fields of France, almost within sight of the Strait of Dover-if we have of life, not reckless destruction merely of soldiers but of civilians; if we have seen peaceful communities dragged through the mire, ruined, outraged; if horror has been heaped upon horror, until really we almost get callous in reading our newspapers in the morning-if all these things are true, shall we not rise up and resist them?

Shall we who know what freedom is become the humble and obsequious servants of those who only know what power is? That will never be tolerated.

The free nations of the earth are not thus to be crushed out of existence, and if any proof is required that that consummation is impossible, it is a gathering like this where the three great democracies of the West are joined together under circumstances unique in the whole history of the world.

And that fact should also give strength

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You in America cannot realize, imagine the suffering and horror of what war has meant to France and her people. But you will arouse yourselves to the battle for liberty, justice, democracy, and humanity.

When the war is over and peace reigns in the world-and Germany is vanquishedhistory will say that the free peoples of the earth joined their powers and resources to make the world safe for justice, for good faith between nation and nation, and for humanity.

In the name of France and my companions I thank you all and the entire population of New York for the great ovation and welcome The soul of America you have extended us. is so great and noble that it is fitting that America should arise to fight for the cause of freedom and justice. It is the greatest honor of my life to have been here and see and realize the spirit of this sister republic. You, may depend upon Joffre and myself to do all we can to aid you and inform you in all the details of the great task ahead of you. I see before me now the might and strength of Germany and realize that it must-that it will be overthrown.

Following the dinner at the Waldorf Mr. Balfour was driven to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. There he was presented with the diploma of Doctor of Laws conferred upon him on Thursday by Columbia University. The presentation was made by Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of the university, who explained how the degree had been conferred.

In accepting, Mr. Balfour was deeply touched. He said afterward that he had