Whatever may happen, this is not going to change all at once. We are not going to fall on each other's neck and swear eternal friendship. Nevertheless, a great new fact has come into existence. In the most momentous crisis in the history of the world the whole Englishspeaking race is at last standing shoulder to shoulder. Nothing but criminal unwisdom or malignant ill-fortune can cancel or turn to evil the beneficent results that ought to flow from this wonderful and almost unhoped-for achievement of German political genius. Never again can it be said that "all active political relations between Great Britain and America have been hostile relations." That remark is expunged from the page of history.

And now it is up to us-why should we not talk American?-to make the best of this new situation. Hitherto take us all around-we have been culpably and stupidly inappreciative of America. The time has been, no doubt, when there was a great deal of rawness in American life, which lent itself to caricature, and when, on the other hand, many Americans displayed at once great self-assertiveness and morbid resentfulness of criticism. But the civil war may fairly be said to have made an end to all that or at least the beginning of an end. Since then half a century has passed, and now we have not the smallest rational excuse for carelessness or captiousness in our judgments of America.

To any one with a spark of imagination the United States is the most fascinating country in the world. Its past is romantic, its present marvelous, its future inconceivable.

Let me give one instance of the romance of the past that clings to so many places in America. I will not speak of Lexington or Concord; I will not speak of Mount Vernon or Charleston; I will speak of the place in all America which most people in England, perhaps, think of as the very antithesis of romance-I mean Pittsburgh. It is called "hell with the lid off," and I don't say it does not merit that term of endearment; but to stand on the big bluff over against the city, and look down upon the confluence

of the Allegheny and the Monongahela (most beautiful of words!) is to experience a strange and complex emotion. For the two rivers (each as great as the Rhine or the Rhone) unite to form the magnificent Ohio. And the Ohio rolls on into the still mightier Mississippi; and down these gigantic waterways the first French adventurers paddled thousands of leagues through the boundless, sinister wilderness; and Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley sought the city of Eden; and Huckleberry Finn and Jim went drifting through an Odyssey which I, for one, believe to be as surely immortal as any story in this world. A few miles up the Monongahela is the spot where General Braddock, with George Washington and George Warrington in his train, fell into the fatal ambush. And there, at the very tip of the tongue of land between the two rivers, nestling in the shadow of the skyscrapers like a beehive under St. Peter's, is the little octagonal blockhouse, pierced for musketry, which was once Fort Duquesne, and after that Fort Pitt, and from which the city takes its name. Of the titanic, lurid picturesqueness of the scene I shall not attempt to speak. I have merely tried to suggest a few of the historic and literary associations which cluster around the spot itself, and the vast river system to which it is, as it were, the northeastern gateway. How any one can find America prosaic or uninteresting passes my comprehension.

As for its present, as summed up and typified in New York, what is there in the world to compare with it? The view of the mountainous city, towering between its noble estuaries, is by far the most impressive testimony that can anywhere be found to the genius and daring of man. Beautiful? I don't know. There is an immense amount of beautiful architecture to be seen in New York and all through the Eastern States; but the whole impression of New York is more than beautiful-it is exciting, thrilling, inspiring. To land in New York on a cloudless day (and they are many) of Spring or Autumn is to realize why America is bound to lead the world. It is because there is some as yet un

identified element in the pure, keen air, which, passing into the blood, tingles through the whole system in the form of energy and capacity.

Yet there is no greater error than to think that New York is a city of unresting rush, clatter, and whirl. It is a city where not only women but men have plenty of leisure and know how to enjoy it. Above all, it is a city where they have always time to be helpful and hospitable to the stranger within their gates. Nowhere are the amenities of life carried to higher perfection. I never return to England without feeling that I have come back some five-and-twenty years in the art of living, at any rate on the material side. Indeed, one might say fifty years, were it not that we have of late had the sense to learn a good deal from America.

And think, now, of the future! America has been, and still is, largely occupied in the development of her material resources; yet think what strides she has also made on the intellectual side! The splendid universities which stud the land may not rival those of Europe in pure scholarship; but they are humming hives of all sorts of eager intellectual activity. It will not, perhaps, be to their disadvantage if intimate relations with Germany are severed for a time.

Their lead

ing scholars confess that the German influence has not been wholly beneficial. But everywhere they have magnificent apparatus for research, and everywhere they make full use of it. Who does not know that the cultivated American is one of the finest products of civilization? And civilization of the best sort is spreading with enormous rapidity.

I am aware that in some ways my vision of America is unduly roseate, for the simple reason that it has been my good fortune, wherever I went, to move almost exclusively in the circles that were most congenial to me. Of course there are many less desirable sides of American life with which I have scarcely come in contact, or not at all. There are, for instance, the vulgarities and crudities inseparable from every great half-educated democracy-that is a matter in which we certainly have no right to

throw the first stone. Of course America, like all the rest of the world, has great social struggles, and possibly convulsions, to go through, before she can attain something like a just and stable social order. New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis-there is much that is terrible as well as much that is admirable in the life of these swarming, seething cities. But nowhere is there a more alert social idealism at work, or a more ardent spirit of social service.

My point, then, is this: Let us realize what an enormous advantage we possess in our community of language, of historical and intellectual traditions, and of political and moral ideals, with this nation of marvelous achievements and still more marvelous potentialities. If these ideals are to survive and flourish, it is of the utmost importance that America and Great Britain should grow together, instead of growing apart. The community of speech, while it is a priceless bond, is also a source of danger. Careless, carping, supercilious talk, narrow-minded comment, uncivil jesting, whether with pen or pencil, rankles doubly when it is brought home to us in our own language. This is an admonition to both sides, but mainly to England. We are the older people, and ought to show the finer consideration. In this respect our sins are many sins, mainly, of ignorance and thoughtlessness. But, in spite of everything, we are, and have been any time this century, drawing together in a remarkable way. Note how half the most successful pieces on the London stage are of American origin, and are often most acceptable when played by American actors. Note how the bookstalls are piled with the writings of an author so redolent of the soil as O. Henry. Think how the cinema is familiarizing even the street arab and the factory girl with the surface aspects of American life. We have now a unique opportunity to draw closer all the countless ties which unite us with our "gigantic daughter of the West." Let us have done with carelessness, ignorance, supercilious patronage, flippant criticism, and make the best of this great boon which the Germans have so kindly forced upon us.

abreast of the British and astride the Ourcq.

The battle was continuous and on a scale hitherto unknown. Military students will study its details for generations. Here I can only attempt the merest outline of the great struggle.

Von Kluck was outfought by a superior force, which caught him in a false position into which he had been betrayed by the belief that his opponents, soundly beaten, needed only one more hard blow to complete their collapse. Instead of that they were in excellent morale, and had received powerful fresh reinforcements. I believe that eventually it will be proved that the speed of von Kluck's pursuit had caused his great army to outrun much of its supplies. His change of direction toward the east was not only an attempt to drive a wedge through the allied front, but also was intended to close up his overextended lines of communication.

On Sept. 9, following a whole series of glorious battles, the British crossed the Marne at Château-Thierry, and by evening were some miles north of the river. The French, under d'Esperey, ended a day of terrific fighting by joining the British right at Château-Thierry. Further east one of France's greatest Generals, Foch, found von Bülow's right flank exposed and attacked the Prussian Guard at La Fère Champenoise. In the marshes drained by the Petit Morin, Foch took forty guns and many prisoners, and about Sept. 9 he had driven a wedge between the armies of von Bülow and von Hausen. As the battle progressed the French General Staff used Langle to help Foch, and the Germans were driven back toward Epernay and Châlons.

By Sept. 10 the Allies had virtually completed the great victory called the battle of the Marne. The German right (von Kluck) had received heavy reinforcements of perhaps 40,000 men, but von Bülow's crushing defeat to the east made it impossible for the German line to re-form for a counterattack.

The German retreat is admitted to have been a military masterpiece, and on Sept. 12 they had reached the line of positions on the Aisne and the Suippes

which they had previously prepared for emergency use. On the east the Crown Prince fell back to preserve the alignment, and this saved Fort Troyon, which, under bombardment, was ready to fall. The Crown Prince held the Argonne and St. Menehould. In the Vosges, after a prolonged struggle, the French, under General de Castlenau, withstood an attempt of the Crown Prince of Bavaria to force a passage through the Gap of Nancy. By Sept. 12 de Castelnau had taken Lunéville, St. Dié, and the line of the Meurthe.

Battle of the Aisne

The battlefield of the Aisne is the birthplace of modern trench warfare.

When the Germans were pursuing the French and British toward Paris in the first week of September it might have seemed as though the prospect of quick victory would obscure all other vision. Nothing in the long history of the war proves the value of trained professional staff officers more clearly than the fact that just then, as they crossed the Aisne flushed with victory, parties of sappers were left behind. Their mission was to prepare a defensive position on the plateau north of the river valley and extending to the east across Champagne into the Argonne. Beyond the Argonne the Crown Prince was already closing in to the investment of Verdun with a great circle from the Argonne to the Woevre.

It was nearly the middle of September when the victorious Allies, fresh from the victory of the Marne, began to be puzzled by the stern resistance they met along this line. It was no longer merely the hard fighting of rear guards determined to cover retreating armies, but seemed like the determined stand of an enemy unwilling to retreat further. On Sept. 12 Maunoury's Sixth Army, which had clung to the heels of von Kluck's army all the way from Paris, began to shell the hostile positions beyond the river with a view to covering a crossing by pontoon, as the bridges had been systematically destroyed. The British Army to the east, near Soissons, was similarly engaged. Beyond them the other French armies were delayed under d'Esperey

and Langle along the Vesle and the upper Suippe.

On the 13th Maunoury got several divisions across the Aisne under heavy fire, and a good part of the British Army crossed, but with great difficulty. The following day these French and British troops fought their way forward until they came in touch with the real German lines of intrenchment on the high ground of the plateau, where they proceeded to dig themselves in and try to hold on to the ground gained. Sir John French was the British commander, and in command of the First Corps was Sir Douglas Haig, who was destined to win much glory in the heavy fighting of the next week. England lost many officers in this hard-fought battle, including three Colonels in one brigade, all killed on the first day.

On the 15th the Germans began a series of violent counterattacks and forced both French and British to retire short distances, which, however, were largely regained on the 17th after the arrival of strong reinforcements. On the 18th the Allies failed, after furious efforts, to break the German fortified lines, and so the acute stage of the battle ended.

On the right, meanwhile, the German Crown Prince was delivering a fierce attack upon the fortress of Verdun, held by the French under General Sarrail.

First Battle of Verdun

Before the German defeat at the Marne the Crown Prince's right flank had held St. Menehould, twenty miles west of the fortress, but in maintaining his alignment with the German armies to the west he had fallen back two days' march to the north. General Sarrail realized from the experience of the Belgian forts that no fortification could withstand a close bombardment by the heavy German howitzers. Consequently he threw up earthworks and intrenchments on every hill and across every valley for twenty miles or more around. On Sept. 20 the German heavy shells practically demolished Fort Troyon, south of Verdun, and on the 23d the Crown Prince's forces crossed the Meuse and captured St. Mihiel, with the bridgehead, thus establishing a marked salient in the

line of invasion which was destined to remain for years.

On Oct. 3 the Crown Prince attempted to turn Sarrail's flank and get through again to St. Menehould, where he would have cut the railway communications between Verdun and Paris. In the Forest of Argonne the French won the battle and established touch with the right flank of General Langle's Fourth Army in Champagne, thus establishing a line which, with slight fluctuations, remains to this day.

Joffre's Extension to the Sea

General Joffre had formed two new armies meanwhile, and about the time the lines along the Aisne began to congeal into what we have since learned to call the stalemate, he brought these new units up on the left. General de Castelnau was brought from Lorraine to command the Seventh Army, and Joffre brought out of a professorship in the military college General Maud'huy to command the Tenth Army. The Seventh Army took its place on a line through Péronne and Roye about Sept. 20, and at the end of the month Maud'huy occupied Arras and Lens after a hard battle in which the French used every available reserve, including even marines.

This great extension was intended to outflank the Germans in their intrenchments on the Aisne, and by cutting their lines of supply compel another retirement. The plan failed because simultaneously the Germans were extending their right flank in an effort to gain the coast at Calais.

Early in October large forces of German cavalry were active about Lille, and General French asked for authority to transfer the British Army from almost the centre to the extreme left. General Joffre agreed and filled the gap with a new army of reserves under General d'Urbal. By Oct. 19 the British First Corps reached St. Omer just in time to prevent huge German armies from driving a wedge between the Allies and the Channel ports.

Alsace and Lorraine

As soon as it became evident that war could no longer be avoided, France de