be called upon as a nation to play a very important part in the final adjustments following this conflict. And if we open-eyed fall a victim once more to this most powerful weapon of British diplomacy we may fail in playing our part in a manner that we may lastingly regret. Day by day our judgment is being undermined by this force in the hands of England. But knowing it we ought to guard against it, pro-German and anti-German alike, till the war is over.

LORD NORTHCLIFFE AND THE WAR1

Lord Northcliffe has been a power in British journalism for now nearly twenty years. It was on May 4, 1896, that the first issue of the Daily Mail was sold in the streets of London. Its advent marked a revolution in the press not merely of the metropolis but of the whole kingdom.

Besides the Daily Mail Lord Northcliffe is also the chief proprietor of The Times, which he secured control of some eight or nine years ago, and the Evening News, which came into his possession about a couple of years before the Daily Mail was started.

To many Englishmen Lord Northcliffe, as the director-inchief of these three powerful journals, seems a sinister figure. Yet it would be easy, I imagine, to overestimate the extent to which he actually lays down the policies of his newspapers. He is believed to write himself many of the editorials in the Daily Mail, but I have never heard of his writing a single one for The Times or the Evening News. The three papers pursue, it is true, though in very different ways, the same general lines, but this probably arises from a natural approximation of attitude and opinion rather than from a central inspiration. One often, too, hears it said that Lord Nothcliffe cares only for circulations and success and that he will champion any cause and exploit any momentary passion if only by so doing he can sell more papers. This is a ludicrous untruth. Lord Northcliffe is an extremely practical journalist who understands all sides of the business, is proud, and naturally so, of the unexampled triumphs From an article in the North American Review,

1 By Sydney Brooks. August, 1915, p. 186-96.

he has achieved in his chosen profession, and possesses a highly developed instinct for catching the popular favor. But he is also a man of genuine public spirit and patriotism. He has travelled much and with an understanding eye and mind; he is one of the comparatively few Englishmen who really know America and can enter into the American point of view; he is one of the largest employers of labor in the kingdom and one of the largest manufacturers of paper in the world. All this, and a zest in life that brings him into agreeable relations with multitudes of people, make him a man who would count in any sphere. He enjoys life and he enjoys power and he enjoys particularly turning out a better newspaper than anyone else; but for money itself he has, I should say, the indifference that most men feel who have made a sufficient fortune in their early years by sheer hard work and to whom it is simply an instrument for further activities. Lord Northcliffe is a prodigious and insatiable worker, a man of swift and strong emotions, of instantaneous, usually shrewd, sometimes erratic and impulsive decisions, kindly and generous in his periodical relations with men, tingling with ideas himself and quick to appreciate them in others, with an ever-present sense of humor that can generally be appealed to when his self-confidence shows signs of passing into rashness or obstinacy, an expert fisherman and therefore a man who knows how to wait, and a joyous and wholly delightful companion on the golf-links. He is in every sense a man of power, but it is power directed to no personal or unworthy ends. So far from merely giving the public what it wants he more often makes it want the many excellent things he has to give; and if he were once convinced that the national interest demanded that a certain thing should be done, Lord Northcliffe would do it and would keep on doing it, whatever the loss of popularity or circulation or advertisements.

Lord Northcliffe was the first man with knowledge and courage enough to lay bare the shortage of shells and machine guns, which, so long as it lasts, must pile up the casualty lists and operate as a fatal barrier to any sustained advance. Nobody, again, who knows him can doubt that in acting as he did, he was impelled solely by public motives. Nor, I think, can anyone question that the net result has been highly advantageous to everybody except Lord Northcliffe, that the country at last realizes the truth which official assurances had obscured or per

verted, and that it was only by painting the situation in its real colors that the British people could be stirred to the gigantic efforts necessary to retrieve it. It was the question of the shells far more than anything else that brought down the Liberal government and led to the coalition ministry, the division in the powers of the War Office, and the appointment of Mr. Lloyd George as minister of munitions. These developments may have been discussed and meditated even before Lord Northcliffe started on his campaign. But his journals, and his alone, made them inevitable; and it is merely a question of time before the value of the national service that they thus rendered is ungrudgingly recognized.

For all editors and newspaper proprietors the war has necessarily been a time of peculiar difficulties and anxiety. The censorship controls their news columns, but it does not control their editorial policy. To know when the interests of the country called for silence and when for plain speaking; to weigh the public gain that might be hoped for from criticizing the speeches or actions of ministers against the risk that thereby the national unity might be impaired; to decide how far particular measures or policies should be advocated and how far it would be better to leave the initiative solely in the hands of the government—all these problems, occurring and recurring in a hundred different forms, have asked for their solution an extraordinary degree of balance and discrimination. The papers under Lord Northcliffe's control have borne the test well. They have never underestimated the enemy or lent any countenance to the ludicrous notion that this war will be either a short or an easy one. They have consistently striven against official optimism or reticence or timidity to induce the nation to face the facts. On many questions—the internment of aliens, for instance, the drink problem, the best way of handling the labor difficulty, the need of national service, and the supply of shells their suggestions and their insight have been proved by the event to be superior to the government's. Their criticisms have in the main been constructive and directed solely to the more efficient prosecution of the war; and their timely disclosures of deficiencies that grew the more dangerous and the harder to remedy the longer they remained unrealized or only hinted at or surrounded with mystery, may prove to have saved the country from a great disaster.

FRANCE

GERMAN REPLY TO FRANCE1

Through the French Yellow Book, as through all the official publications of the Triple Entente, there runs as a red thread the idea, that Germany could have prevented the war if she had exerted her influence on Austria-Hungary, so that the latter might moderate her demands on Serbia. In this matter the powers of the Triple Entente begin from the one-sided standpoint: that Russia had a right to act as the protector of Serbia, and could demand from Germany recognition and respect for this claim. On the other hand, the members of the Triple Entente deny Austria-Hungary the right to take, in opposition to the provocations, lasting for years, of a small neighbor, the steps which she found necessary for the maintenance of her security and her position as a great power. According to the view of Russia and her friends, Germany ought to have caught Austria-Hungary's uplifted arm, and acquiesced in the standpoint adopted by Russia, that it lay with the powers to decide how far Austria-Hungary should be permitted to exact satisfaction for herself in face of the Serbian provocations. In other words, in the diplomatic duel between the Triple Entente on the one side and AustriaHungary and Germany on the other, the last named ought quietly to have accepted the defeat and humiliation which had been planned for them by the Triple Entente. As they did not see fit to submit to this and as Germany, in loyalty to the obligations of her alliance, took her stand on Austria-Hungary's side, war broke out.

That Germany, as is repeatedly hinted in the Yellow Book, steadily refused to lend her hand to the bringing about of a peaceful solution, is an assertion which strikes the truth right in the face and is refuted by the Yellow Book itself in various places. Germany only expressed her objection to the English proposal to adjust the disputed question in a conference of four

1 This reply to the French Yellow Book was published in the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, an official German government organ, on December 21, 1914.

powers or by means of conversations between four, because every interference of the powers in the question, which, according to the German view, concerned Austria-Hungary and Serbia alone, was opposed to the standpoint which Germany had adopted on principle from the beginning of the crisis, and because the German government had from the outset been of opinion that direct conversations between Vienna and St. Petersburg offered more prospect of success and, in the event of an agreement being possible at all, would lead to the goal more quickly. In spite of this undoubtedly justified objection, the Berlin cabinet, as is evident even from the Yellow Book, showed on every occasion the greatest willingness to lend its hand to the promotion of a peaceful settlement of the dispute.

Equally unjustified is the reproach which has been directed against Germany, that she refused to counsel moderation to Austria-Hungary. Germany took all the steps in Vienna which were reconcilable with the dignity of her ally. She only refused to exercise the pressure upon Austria-Hungary which was demanded by Russia and her friends. In conformity with Germany's advice, the Austro-Hungarian government at once declared itself prepared not to try to attack the territorial integrity of Serbia. It is also owing to Germany that the direct exchange of ideas between Vienna and St. Petersburg, which had been interrupted for a few days, was again resumed, a fact in regard to which, of course, all the publications of the governments of the Triple Entente very wisely remain silent.

The manner in which the Yellow Book describes the action of Baron von Schoen, the ambassador at Paris, is very characteristic of the one-sided standpoint of the Triple Entente. He was commissioned to suggest to the French government in a friendly way common action in the direction of peace, and he had also expressed in this connection the request that counsels of moderation should also be given in St. Petersburg from Paris. Every impartial person will be obliged to admit that an irrefutable proof of the conciliatoriness of the German government, as well as of its wish to see peace preserved, is to be seen in this step. But the French statesmen see in Baron von Schoen's suggestion nothing but a clumsy attempt by Germany to sow distrust between Russia and France. Note this carefully! The powers of the Triple Entente demand of Germany that she should not only give her ally good advice, but that she should