(c) INTERNATIONAL FILM SERVICE A MEMENTO OF THE TRIUMPH OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE AT WASHINGTON The flag seen in the picture flew over the House of Representatives when the Suffrage Amendment was passed. It was presented to Representative Jeannette C. Rankin, of Montana, as a memento of the occasion. From left to right are seen: J. J. Sinnott, Doorkeeper of the House; J. Connelly, secretary to Representative Carter, of Massachusetts; Representative Rankin; Representative Carter, who is said to have cast the deciding vote for the Amendment THE COAL FAMINE-THEATERS IN NEW YORK CITY RESORT TO WOOD FOR FUEL The unaccustomed sight in New York City of men carrying in supplies of wood for feeding the furnaces of places of amusement was seen recently as a result of the coal famine C INTERNATIONAL FILM SERVICE THE BOLSHEVIK CABINET This photograph, published by courtesy of the Seattle "Times," was, it is stated, received from a Russian lieutenant who came to America via Vladivostok. The names as given by him are: Left to right-Zlotowsky, Michailov, Lynochaisky, Léon Trotsky (leaning forward on table), General Murawov, and Nogin (standing). The woman is Mlle. Colontai. The others are not identified AMERICAN RED CROSS AMBULANCES IN ITALY TO AID OUR ALLIES In Italy's hour of need our Red Cross ambulances have arrived to help. They are shown crossing the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. The façade of the great Cathedral is seen at the right INTERNATIONAL FILM SERVICE AN AUSTRALIAN MOTOR CYCLE CORPS IN THE HOLY LAND The new crusade which has resulted in the restoration of Jerusalem to Christendom has brought with it warriors borne on speedier mounts than ever carried their predecessors of old. The picture shows some of these modern crusaders making good time over the roads of Palestine notwithstanding the heat indicated by their large hats and short trousers The next installment of "Whose Prisoner?" entitled "A Reunion in the Sky," describes a combat I THE CONFESSION OF A QUAKER BY GEORGE A. BARTON, PH.D., LL.D. N these perilous days, when intrigue, which seeks to debauch by treachery everything that brutal armies, Zeppelins, and piratical submarines cannot reach, is seeking to use the I. W. W., pacifists, and even Quakers, for the attainment of certain ends, it appears to be the duty of every loyal man who can say anything to hearten those who are struggling for the preservation of our liberties and civilization, and to preserve in the world some sort of ethics higher than those of the jungle, to speak out. It is this sense of duty to the Nation and to humanity that calls forth the following confession of faith. The writer is a birthright Friend, and has been also a Friend by conviction. For years he has been a minister in the Society. He has until recently, with the leaders of his denomination, held the view that all war is unchristian. In the manner of many intelligent Christians, he held this tenet without ever having thought the matter through in a completely searching way. He lived through the Spanish-American War, but there was nothing in that war which compelled a re-examination of the basis of his belief. A large part of the impetus of that war arose from the unchristian desire for vengeance for the deaths caused by the explosion of the Maine. Remember the Maine!" seemed to him a particularly unchristian battle-cry. The present war has, however, caused a re-examination. Evidence accumulates that the war was started by what Dr. van Dyke has happily called the "Potsdam gang" for motives of international robbery and murder. With unexampled patience and Christian forbearance, President Wilson for nearly three years sought by moral suasion to deter this " gang " from its fell purpose, without avail. They counted on his patience as an instrument for the accomplishment of their ends and went steadily forward enslaving small nations, giving their women over to rape and slaughter, making war on non-combatants, wantonly murdering with Zeppelin and submarine, systematically subverting almost every detail of the slowly evolved code of ethics as understood by Christian peoples. This condition compelled the writer to ask himself the searching question whether it was wrong for his country to join the vigilance committee of the Allied nations in restraining this international bandit. In seeking the answer he naturally went to the Scriptures, to the scientific study of which he had for many years been devoted. The corner-stone of the defense of the Quaker testimony against war has been the command, "Thou shalt not kill." This is taken by them to be a command of universal sweep-a command that admits of no exceptions. It is a part of the Decalogue. But scholarly research makes it clear that this Decalogue was, when given, meant for Israelites only. No Old Testament saint dreamed of applying it beyond the nation. It was, moreover, addressed only to the heads of Hebrew families. Within the nation it was applicable only to them. This is the meaning in every instance of the " thou." Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother" was not given for boys and girls, but for men to their aged parents. Children obeyed as a matter of course, but parents weakened by age might not be honored. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" shows that it was not addressed even to grown women, for nothing in it prohibits a woman from coveting her neighbor's husband! It was addressed to the responsible heads of families to regulate their conduct within the nation. As the heads of families were responsible 66 for their women and children, the Decalogue may nevertheless be said to have regulated ideals of life within Israel. It was, however, never understood to forbid a community from removing an individual who threatened the integrity of its life, for the law provided that these should be put to death by stoning-a process in which a whole community shared. What the Decalogue was understood to forbid was killing to gratify private grudges. Just as it did not prevent capital punishment within the nation, so no holy man of the Old Testament period thought that it applied to war. War was by them cheerfully waged in the name of the very God who had, as they believed, given them this Decalogue. This command Jesus quoted in Matthew v. 21, not to say that its application is of universal scope, but that hatred is sin! The taking of life without hatred incident to the restraining of a murderer from his criminal act or of a robber nation from subverting the institutions and ethics of the civilized world Jesus does not here condemu. Later (Matthew v. 38) Jesus quotes the law of blood revenge and after the quotation says: "But I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on the one cheek turn to him the other also "--words that have been the citadel of non-resisters from the Quakers to Tolstoy. Did he mean the words to be taken literally? To do so would cripple every effort for social and industrial reform, would abolish every police force in the world, and of course would make war impossible for his disciples. He clearly did not mean them to be taken literally, for when he was himself smitten he did not turn the other cheek, but calmly rebuked the smiter and demanded justice (John xviii. 23). A. H. Rihbany, born and reared in the Lebanon, says in his "Syrian Christ," page 115: "A Syrian's chief purpose in a conversation is to convey an impression by whatever suitable means, and not to deliver a message in scientifically accurate terms. He expects to be judged, not by what he says, but by what he means." Jesus was a Syrian, and it is clearly the duty of his disciples to employ every means at their disposal to find out what he meant before committing him to the enunciation of a law that would place all the best things of life at the mercy of thugs and lunatics. Throughout the last half of the Fifth Chapter of Matthew Jesus is engaged in teaching that the sin does not consist in the mere outward act, which is its outgrowth, but in the inner purpose of the soul. Hate, not simply killing; lust, not an external act only; having two standards of honor, not the mere uttering of a legal oath-these are, according to him, the essence of sin. Every consideration of sound exegesis indicates that here he was teaching in a striking Syrian fashion that revenge is wrong, and even resistance which springs from mere anger; that a Christian should always, even under the most personal provocation, be master of his own spirit. To interpret the words so as to make Jesus command us to stand by and see a murderer kill a woman or child and lift no hand, or to command us to make no effort to restrain robber nations from working their murderous wills on Serbia and Belgium, is to do Jesus gross injustice. It is cause for gratitude that there is growing among men a new sense of the sacredness of human life. The Friends have long tried to live so as to express to the world their sense of its sacred value. They have, some of them, heroically suffered in this endeavor. Socialists and others have now grasped the truth. A proper appreciation of this value promises in time to ameliorate many human wrongs. To hold, however, that life is so sacred that man may never take it is to distort the truth. It makes the possession of phys I life of more value than liberty, justice, and right. The evoluemary process has been God's method of creation. That process involved the taking of many lives by other finite beings. They were God's agents in carrying on the evolutionary process. Christ brought to earth the ideal of a universal brotherhood. When his spirit and that ideal rule all hearts, it will never be necessary for a human life to be taken by men in the interest of society. We are in a transition period; the Christian ideal has not yet influence with all men. Until it has we must still believe, that the forces which, with divine sanction, have ruled brute force during the evolutionary process still have the divine sanction, when for the preservation of all that is sacred brute force must needs be restrained. God himself takes every life that he gives. He does not hesitate for wise purposes to take many lives prematurely. He nevertheless does it without hate and without a desire for revenge, all the time" making his sun to rise on the evil and on the good.” Jesus commanded us to be perfect as the Father is perfect, not more perfect than God! While a due sense of the rights of humanity and the worth of human life demands that no life should be sacrificed until every effort has been made to redeem it and make it helpful to the world, the writer finds no warrant in Scripture or in reason for believing that when men have unmistakably and irrevocably set themselves to destroy others it is not righteous to go even to the limit of taking life to restrain them. Jesus said: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Christians recognize in him the revelation of a tenderness in God that nature did not reveal. The knowledge that “God is love we owe to Jesus. The extreme pacifist, however, takes the fragmentary account of the life and sayings of Jesus given us in the Gospels as the full revelation of Christ, and hence of the Christlikeness of God. Ought we not, however, to turn the principle about, and to learn from God as he is revealed in nature something of the Godlikeness of Christ, concerning which the Gospels are almost silent? The man of Nazareth was tender, but he was also strong. He could weep with mourners, but he could utter indignant words to hypocrites. Was he not, if we knew him completely, a worthy son of that Father who is tenderly present with the dying sparrow, but who nevertheless, for wise ends, sacrifices numerous individuals that the type may persist? Jesus once declared concerning a centurion that his faith was superior to any that he had found in Israel. He did this without condemning the centurion's profession. He declared in the synagogue at Nazareth that he came to fulfill certain great words of Isaiah lxi, among which were the words, " to proclaim release to the captives." In the Greek of Luke as in the Hebrew of Isaiah, the word rendered "captives" means "captives taken in war." When such considerations are taken into account, the writer is compelled to believe that the Allies engaged in the present war in accordance with the mind of Christ, and that it is his duty as a Christian man, although he abhors slaughter, to lend what little influence he may possess to the support of the Government in its struggle for world righteousness. A favorite saying of the late Professor J. H. Thayer, of Harvard, was "Every error is a truth abused." The intellectuals in Germany illustrate this by believing in a God who is com pletely revealed in the biological struggle. He is without compassion. With Him might makes right. The extreme pacifist illustrates it in holding that the will of God is completely revealed in one or two figurative sayings of Jesus. The wise man opens his mind to every source of knowledge concerning the Infinite. He believes in a God whose handiwork is the universe, the wisdom and strength of whose purpose are revealed in the evolutionary process of the ages, but whose humanity, tenderness, and love are revealed in Jesus Christ-a God who is leading the world toward Jesus' goal of brotherhood and peace, not through the agency of magic or miracle, but by the processes of spiritual regeneration and social evolution. WEEKLY OUTLINE STUDY OF CURRENT HISTORY BY J. MADISON GATHANY, A.M. HOPE STREET HIGH SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, R. I. Based on The Outlook of January 30, 1918 Each week an Outline Study of Current History based on the preceding number of The Outlook will be printed for the benefit of current events classes, debating clubs, teachers of history and of English, and the like, and for use in the home and by such individual readers as may desire suggestions in the serious study of current history.-THE EDITORS. [Those who are using the weekly outline should not attempt to cover the whole of an outline in any one lesson or study. Assign for one lesson selected questions, one or two propositions for discussion, and only such words as are found in the material assigned. Or distribute selected questions among different members of the class or group and have them report their findings to all when assembled. Then have all discuss the questions together.] I-FOREIGN AFFAIRS A. Topic: Chinese Changes. 1. What Chinese changes does The common B. Topic: Russia's New Despotism; Trot- Note-read the second reference for this II-NATIONAL AFFAIRS A. Topic: Mr. Garfield's Ukase and Ex- Reference: Pages 169, 170; editorial, pages 1. In what respects and to what extent B. Topic: Repairing the War Machine; Reference: Pages 176-180. 1. Discuss the function of the War Cab- III-PROPOSITIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Blind loyalty is as sure to lead to IV-VOCABULARY BUILDING (All of the following words and expressions are found in The Outlook for January 30, 1918. Both before and after looking them up in the dictionary or elsewhere, give their meaning in your own words. The figures in parentheses refer to pages on which the words may be found.) Publicists, politic, political party, opinion (177), sui generis, irenic, Caliban, postulate (178), inexorable, guerdon, protagonist, expatriated, episode, diabolical (179), unctuous (180). A booklet suggesting methods of using the Weekly Outline of Current Historry will be sent on application. 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