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special session of the State Legislature to meet on February 19 to ask it to give him the power to make a temporary appointment. On the convening of the Legislature Governor Philipp attempted to obtain the passage of an enabling act so that he might fill the vacancy. But the Legislature defeated the bill. This apparently left matters just where they were before.

The Governor had opposed a special election on the alleged ground that it might give an opportunity for an undesirable candidate to succeed. With the loyalist vote divided between Republicans and Democrats, a pacifist candidate might be successful. The Hon. Irvine L. Lenroot, the well-known member of Congress from Wisconsin, told a representative of The Outlook in Washington recently that, if a special election were to be held, some candidate, he believed, could be agreed upon with sufficient non-partisan indorsement to win. While Governor Philipp intimated at the last moment that he wished to appoint Representative Lenroot to the Senatorship, the refusal of the Legislature to permit him to do so is really a victory for Mr. Lenroot, who has all along asked his friends to stand for a special election. At that election, for which the Governor has now issued a call for April 2, Mr. Lenroot has not yet decided whether he will himself be a candidate; if he does, he will represent a hundred per cent Americanism. Joseph E. Davies, Democrat, and member of the Federal Trade Commission, whose Americanism is also doubtless at par value, has announced his candidacy; he probably has the Administration's support. A third candidate is Victor Berger, Socialist and ex-member of Congress, who represents an ultra-pacifist element that is in effect pro-German.

In this exigency the safe plan would be for the Legislature to pass a law providing for a non-partisan primary, with no party candidates permitted, but open to every one who might desire to go upon the primary ballot. The names of the two candidates receiving the highest number of votes at this nonpartisan primary would be placed upon the election ballot, and no other candidates permitted thereon. This might insure a clear-cut issue between a loyalist candidate and a pacifist candidate. It is even possible that the pacifist candidate might be eliminated at the primary, leaving in the contest two loyalist candidates. In either event, Wisconsin would have an opportunity to declare her loyalty to the Government in the prosecution of the war.

Certainly some measure should and can be adopted to prevent a disloyal minority from getting into power by taking political advantage of partisan divisions among the loyal majority.

SPANISH SUPPLIES

For many months General Pershing has found it hard to get lumber, mules, blankets, and other materials from Spain. The reason given for failure to fill his orders was that the transportation system had broken down and that it was impossible to handle goods destined for export.

The Spanish showed more willingness to send supplies, however, when it became known that Spanish steamers were being held up in American ports for lack of fuel. Through the control of bunker coal by the United States and her allies we were in a position to stop the shipment of goods to Spain. But Spain needs our cotton, oils, and other commodities. She should now get them in return for the things General Pershing orders. His ability to buy supplies in Spain would not only save himand us-ship tonnage, but would enable him to build up his reserve stores far more rapidly than otherwise would be the case. In truth, Spain's transportation system, as regards both land and sea, has partly broken down-on land because of labor strikes and at sea because of German submarine warfare. Spain has lost between forty and fifty ships in this way. Her patience has been sorely strained. She has sent repeated notes to Germany demanding that merchantmen be not sunk without warning, that Spain's right to regulate her coastwise traffic without reserve be recognized; in especial, that Spanish territorial waters be respected. Germany has flagrantly violated those rights. She has been giving Spain some of the cause for going to war that she gave us. Perhaps Spain will follow our example. We hope so.

While Germany keeps on expressing surprise that her sea deeds should be construed by Spain as violating international

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law, she also keeps up a persistent flirtation with the Spanish Court, Church, and Army. According to the "Kreuz-Zeitung," the organ of the military party in Berlin, the recent revolution in Portugal was started by England with the double hope of ruling that country and of making trouble on Spain's borders in order to drive Spain into joining England and the Entente Allies. "New hopes have been created lately," says the "KreuzZeitung." " for the Spanish monarch. Thanks to the wise Ger man diplomacy, the hopes that the Spaniards are beginning to recognize are not impossible of realization through German support." These "new hopes," it turns out, are Portugal, Gibraltar, and the French possessions in North Africa.

Be this as it may, we believe that Alphonso XIII, the business interests, and the people generally are anti-German. The combination of these three elements may ultimately prove to be more than an offset to the other three-the Court, the Church, and the Army.

THREE PALACES

According to the London " Daily News," King George has offered three palaces for national use. They are his London residence, which is Buckingham Palace, and also Kensington Palace, London, for public offices; and, for wounded soldiers, his Highland residence, Balmoral Castle.

Because of location, size, and equipment, Buckingham Palace is well adapted for public use. As all visitors to London will remember, it rises imposingly at the west end of St. James's Park, not so very far from the Houses of Parliament and close to various railway and underground stations. The present palace takes its name from Buckingham House, erected by the Duke of Buckingham over two centuries ago, and later bought by George III.

In comparison with the present modernized façade of Buck ingham, Kensington Palace in Kensington Gardens to the west of Hyde Park is indeed an unassuming brick structure. It was partly built by Sir Christopher Wren for William and Mary, and in historic note outranks the other palace. William and Mary died at Kensington, so did Queen Anne and her husband Prince George of Denmark. So did George II. Queen Victoria and the present Queen were both born in Kensington Palace.

The name "Balmoral" is Gaelic for "majestic dwelling." Balmoral Castle, built of granite in Scottish baronial style, with an eastern tower a hundred feet high, is near Perth in Scotland, and was acquired in 1848 by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort. He bequeathed it to his wife. As the location is nine. hundred feet above the sea, as the estate comprises some forty thousand acres, and as the scenery is superb, Balmoral should prove an inspiring place for the wounded in which to get well.

IN THE DAYS OF THE MEDICI

Scores of letters written by Lorenzo the Magnificent were recently advertised to be sold at the famous Christie's London auction room. With them were hundreds of other autographed letters and historic documents relating to the days of the Medici, of whom this Lorenzo was the greatest. But the Italian Government intervened by injunction. Italy forbids works of art and objects of historical importance to be removed from the country without permission. It seems that ancient documents are included under the law.

The Medici papers have long been a mine of inestimable value to the historians and romancists. Thousands of Americans have visited the marvelous Certosa near Pavia, built and adorned by the Visconti and Sforza as a propitiation for their many bloody deeds. The letters are full of the story of these men and their times. A larger number still have read the delightful lives of Beatrice and Isabella d'Este by Julia Cartwright and have enjoyed the descriptions of the brilliant court life, the endless intrigue and plotting, and the personal feuds.

These letters are the mine from which modern knowledge of fifteenth-century Italian diplomatic secrets, medieval customs and fashions, and social and ethical standards have been drawn. Public and private morals were, in the modern view, topsyturvy

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in some points. Thus in one of them Cosimo, Duke of Florence, asks, in behalf of a friend, the privilege of seeing his son in prison. The son, he writes, "was exiled not for political reasons, but only for murder."

Equally naïve is Lorenzo's statement about Beatrice d'Este's wedding, that Lodovico il Moro, the bridegroom, realized that he might expect a request from his bride that he spare the life of one Luigi da Tezago; so, to save himself from any controversy, he had him hanged a week ago in the prison at Pavia."

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FRANCE IS NOT "BLED WHITE"

The following figures, given by Mr. Stéphane Lauzanne, editor-in-chief of the Paris" Matin," director of the Official Bureau of French Information, show better than any words that France is far from being exhausted or "bled white."

In 1914, at the battle of the Marne, France had in the field an army of 1,500,000 men; to-day, after more than three years of war, France has in the field an army of 2,700,000 men. In September, 1914, the French war plants were manufacturing 12,000 shells per day; to-day France is manufacturing 300,000 shells per day. According to an agreement signed by the French High Commissioner in Washington with the War Department, it is the French war industries which manufacture all the light artillery for the American Army.

In these war plants, which are the pride of the French nation and which no exhausted country could maintain, nearly half a million women are actually working, day and night. There also progress has been achieved: in 1914 only 25,000 women were working in these factories; on March 1, 1917, the number had increased to 375,582, and to-day it reaches nearly half a million.

Since the beginning of the war the French Parliament has voted credits for the war amounting to more than $20,000,000,000. Of these $20,000,000,000 only $2,000,000,000 have been borrowed from foreign countries. The whole difference was drawn on the savings of the French themselves; the whole balance was subscribed by loans or paid by taxes. Besides that, France has been able to loan $1,000,000,000 to her allies, and to give them 2,500 guns and 5,000 airplanes.

And to-day on the western front the French army is still holding two-thirds of the whole line. At the beginning of the present year 82 German divisions were facing the French army. As Mr. Lauzanne points out, to need 82 German divisions in order to hold an exhausted army is, indeed, out of proportion.

WHAT HAS BECOME OF RUSSIA?

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USSIA no longer exists. The nine million square miles of territory, three times as great in extent as the United States, which is called in geographies Russia is still tically intact. The hundred and eighty millions of people whom we have been in the habit of somewhat loosely calling Russians still live in this vast area. But an empire or a nation is made, not by its territory nor by the size of its population, but by its unity of national feeling and action. In this sense of the word there is no longer any Russian nation. The population is broken up into geographical communities and political groups that suspect one another and struggle against each other. How far the Russian collapse is due to German intrigue, propaganda, and military power, and how far it is due to the long evolutionary process of despotism and injustice under the Romanoffs, is an interesting question, but one so complicated and with so many political and historical ramifications that it cannot be intelligently treated in a brief newspaper article. The fact that is of great moment to the world at the present time is the unquestionable and manifest fact that there is no Russian Government, no Russian nation, and therefore that the Russian people cannot be a factor in the war nor even in international politics for a long time to come.

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The natural impulse of the Allies is to look upon Russia with distrust and bitterness. Russia has deserted them in their hour of trial, and their feeling of resentment is very strong. It would be surprising if we Americans did not share in this feeling. On sober second thought, however, we believe that the feeling of

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First, the Russian people should be looked on, not with scorn, but with pity and sympathy. Modern Russia dates from Peter the Great, and for the two hundred years since his time Russia has been in bondage to a despotic and cruel autocracy unparal leled in the history of modern Europe. Is it surprising that when this autocracy was suddenly destroyed the Russian people in their new-found but long struggled for liberty should have given themselves up rashly to visions and dreams and imprac tical schemes of universal brotherhood, and should have reacted against any and all kinds of authority? Pity for them should lead us to give them all the sympathetic and wise help that we can in getting back to a condition of liberty under law.

Second, we should bear in mind that the collapse of Russia is not an unmixed blessing for the military autocracy of Ger many. Doubtless the immediate result will be to provide the German military power with food, labor, and other resources. But Russia can no longer be used as a bogie by the Prussian Pan-Germans to terrify the German people into a support of their plans for creating a Mittel Europa under German domi nation. It has become a truism of historical psychology that the masses of people in any country are not imperialistic. Their own domestic affairs are a hundred times more important to them than plans of conquest. The people follow their mili tary leaders only when they are persuaded that they must do so in defense of their homes and personal interests. The working class of Germany in the early days of the war followed the Kaiser and von Hindenburg because they were told that Russia was proposing to swallow them on the north and east and that England and France wanted to throttle them on the south and west. The military caste, represented by the Kaiser and von Hindenburg, played upon their fear in this way in order to get their support for the Pan-German scheme of conquest, but the German people are no longer terrified by Russia. They see that Russia has ceased to be a menace, and thus it may be said that the disintegration of Russia takes away from the military party in Germany a very important prop. It may be questioned, there fore, whether Prussian militarism has not been far more weakened than it has been strengthened by the removal of Russia from the fighting forces of the war. In any event, the destruction of the Romanoff autocracy will in the long run be a great gain to the progress of democratic freedom and reasonable international relations throughout the world.

Third, on the whole the most important lesson for us in this country from the Russian collapse is that it discloses, in a way that the simplest mind can understand, the folly of attempting to negotiate a peace with the Prussian military autocracy. If appeals to reason, fair words, and noble aspirations about human brotherhood could make any impression on German autocracy or even on the German people-Trotsky and Lenine would have succeeded. It is clear that the Kaiser and the Government group of Germany still believe that "Might makes Right," and that international treaties are "scraps of paper." If France or England or the United States were to-day to endeavor to nego tiate with the Kaiser as Trotsky and Lenine did, they would suffer, and would deserve to suffer, as they have suffered.

WHAT CRITICISM ACCOMPLISHES

The two articles about the National Administration which our readers will find in this issue will help them, we think, to understand what is happening in Washington, for the very reason that each article is written from a distinct point of view. In locating a position engineers make observations from two or more points. În examining a piece of sculpture it is always desirable to see it from more than one side. So we believe that these two articles together give perhaps a juster view of our Government than either would give alone.

Both Mr. Davenport, whose Special Correspondence is entitled "Some Washington Impressions," and Dr. Odell, whose article is entitled "Interpreting the People to the President," are experienced observers. Both of them have had training which

enables them to distinguish, among the things that they observe, the important from the unimportant. Neither of them is an advocate of a party or any public man. Neither of them has any interest in any merely partisan criticism. And yet the reader will find that the Administration looks rather different as pictured by the one from the way it does as pictured by the other. There is a somewhat corresponding difference in the way in which groups of people in this country at large view our Government at Washington. One group is inclined to say, "The Administration has done some things very well indeed, but-" The other group is inclined to say, "The Administration has of course made some blunders, but " Thus there is practically unanimous agreement on two things: one, that our Government has to its credit some great achievements; the other, that our Government is responsible for some serious mistakes. It is human nature to crave appreciation for work well done. And such appreciation has been accorded to the Administration, and has been accorded ungrudgingly.

It is also human nature to resent criticism; but in spite of that fact there is little resentment of constructive criticism in the minds of the men at Washington who are doing the hardest executive work in the prosecution of the war.

Indeed, those who are doing the best work are the very men who have recognized the value that public criticism has been to them and to their associates. There is no doubt that since last December, when the investigation of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs brought to public notice serious defects in the Government machine and thus aroused public criticism, there has been a very great improvement.

This does not mean that men in authority and responsible office were slothful or indifferent. On the contrary, there has been no harder or more conscientious work done in this country than has been done by some of the very men whose branches of the Government have been under fire.

The fact is, men in public office in time of war need the tonic of criticism-and for a very simple reason.

Those who talk with men in khaki, and especially with men who have been in training camps or at the front, know that such men talk very little about the war, or about questions of policy or strategy, or about the larger movements of troops, or the big questions of administration. The reason is that the time of those men is occupied from early morning till well on into the night with the intense activities of their own particular duty. The soldier in the trench has little time to think about the intentions of the Kaiser, for he has to have his mind on the intentions of Fritz. The medical officer is overwhelmed with his medical duties, and then has to devote time and energy to making elaborate reports. The field officer is concerned with the care of his men and the receipt and transmission of orders. Now what is true of men in camp and at the front is also true of men immersed in administrative duties. So long as they are left unmolested they have nothing to impel them to see anything but the next thing. If, for instance, they are charged with the duty of providing certain supplies, they have to keep themselves alert to see that the requisitions for those supplies come to them as other requisitions should come and are duly recorded and attended to as they have always been recorded and attended to. How can such men take up the question whether there is any need for requisitions at all? They cannot and they do not unless some outside agency, with sufficient pressure behind it, impresses upon them the fact that there is something more important than the duty of the present routine, and that is the reform of the routine itself.

This is what has happened at Washington. The old machinery that answered well enough for renewing year by year the supplies for a stationary army was put to the job of creating a modern army with modern weapons to fight a war three thousand miles away. The men who constituted that machinery have worked like slaves in order to keep up. They had no thought or mind of changing the machinery itself. Most fortunately for the country, there were men who did have mind for just that thing. And through the investigation in the Senate the pressure was brought to bear for a change in the machinery itself; and already, in two months' time, the effect in some branches of the War Department is remarkable. And among those who are most grateful for that criticism are the men

to-day who see its effect not only in easier work, but in results that have given greater fighting strength to our fighting forces. A people who withhold criticism from their Government withhold that to which their Government has a right.

JUSTICE TO WAR WORKERS

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That men at work on the building of ships should have left their work when, above all things else, ships are needed to overcome the enemy, has horrified the country. It is not surprising, therefore, that the President should have addressed a Message to the strikers telling them that no one can strike a deadlier blow at the safety of the Nation and of its forces on the other side than by interfering with or obstructing the ship-building programme;" and asking them, "Will you co-operate or will you obstruct?" The words of the President sobered these strikers, as they sobered the country. But now that the men have gone back to work, the country should not forget that there is another side to this question.

What that other side is has been tersely stated.

"I know of conditions in Newport News," said Mr. Homer Ferguson, President of the Newport News Ship-Building Company, in his testimony before the Committee on Commerce of the United States Senate, "where eighteen people lived in one room, and in another room a man, his wife, and three children, and two of the children had diphtheria. Imagine such a thing! We talk about uplift and training-camp activities and democracy, and then create a condition like that. I am not much of a settlement worker and that sort of thing, but when the Government goes ahead and creates a condition where men cannot live decently--an unnecessary condition-I think it is right bad."

A great army of laborers must live where the Government's enormous operations are being pushed through. Thirty thousand men are employed in the shipyards in and near New York, and thirty thousand more are coming. Forty thousand workmen have flocked to Bridgeport, Connecticut. Twenty-five thousand are going to the great yards now in development on the Newark meadows. There are no adequate accommodations near by. Most of the men come long distances; they start early and return late. They do not stay long at their jobs. Other men, hearing of the housing conditions, decline to come.

The result is, as Mr. Grosvenor Atterbury, the well-known housing expert, has pointed out in writing to The Outlook, that to-day labor is traveling from one plant to another, leaving in its wake only increasing discontent and unsettlement. And in order to tempt men to work under these conditions the Government must raise the current wage rate, said Mr. Atterbury, and as long as it permits these hardships in living conditions to persist, just so long will it practically bid against itself in the labor market. And, it may be added, just so long will a great and unnecessary overhead charge be added to the expense of making our ships and our munitions which our forces need in abundance.

This was a condition that was foreseen. The need of houses was known last spring by several bodies that brought the need to the attention of the Government. Though recommendations were made according to a plan instituted in the War Department, no request was made directly to Congress to provide the necessary housing. We do not know the reasons for the Government's delay. It was only the more imaginative who were able to visualize the coming of war to America before it came; and perhaps the Government did not soon enough visualize the needs of modern war or the methods to meet those needs. It was somewhat so in England. Though the Government there saw early that the great increase in the number of workmen building ships and making munitions would require a great increase in the number of houses, it did not see as clearly that this increase should be in good houses. It is not enough that there should be simply shelter, sanitation, and provision for family life. Men and women need something more than that. Attractiveness in environment helps the worker as it helps the soldier to do his bit more effectively.

As Mr. Winthrop Hamlin says in his recent study based on the housing collection of the Harvard Social Museum, "Hap

piness, or the chance for happiness, is still wrongly thought of as a luxury without which one may yet lead a profitable life." And Mr. Hamlin therefore includes among the elements which must be provided for in proper housing "æsthetic pleasure."

On page 364 in this issue Mr. Richard S. Childs, in an article on "The New Garden Cities of England," tells how England has undertaken to solve this problem which we have been facing for months in this country. He shows how England has not only provided houses for her war workers, but houses of beauty in veritable cities of gardens.

If America does what England has done, she will have her reward not only in the war but in the years that are to come when the war is over.

WHY NOT?

Dr. Karl Reiland, the rector of St. George's Church in New York City, in a recent sermon made an excellent suggestion, which we commend to our readers:

This dynamic of Prussian violation, this world-changing, military murder, this most Godless business of history, has not caused one great ecclesiastical convention, one convocation, one special synod, one Christian communal protest, or clear ringing call among the differing servants of an offended deity, to voice the vigorous denunciation, the outraged conscience of altruistic humanity, the pathetic miseries, which the deep damnation of this degenerate and blasphemous fratricide unqualifiedly demands. Why not a great wave of Christian unification in every city and town, in every cathedral and building, where, without regard to creed, and with nothing but the Sermon on the Mount, forgetting for the time all theories of ministerial validity and official qualification, remembering only the Divine Servant girding himself with a towel for a servant's task, and his caution that man should seek the true God through a loving brotherhood of menwhy not, I say, come together for the greatest communion service ever held on earth, and find the unification of the fold in a simple, humble, spiritual imitation of the Shepherd? We need no commission to go anywhere else than out into its own dooryard to begin victoriously at home what misguidedly they are seeking vainly abroad. In our own hearts-the realest part of us-we stand close together, for we know best of all that we fundamentally belong to the greatest denomination in the world, which is the communion of the children of one only God.

alive in us the trust that leaves the rest to God that we may do our bit more hopefully and more efficiently?

Such are some of the questions which are being pressed home upon the hearts and consciences of men and women in every town and village in the country. The Church should answer them.

Why not, in the spirit of this suggestion, hold weekly, or at least monthly, meetings in each village, town, and city-meetings in which all religious organizations should unite in services to strengthen our faith, inspire our courage, and incite and quicken our activities?

A French soldier, writing from the front, says in a recent publication : 1

The second service in most churches is a task to ministers and a trial to conscientious laymen. They are exhorted to support a service the object of which is to support them. Why not substitute for this generally lame and inefficient service a union of all churches, including Jewish synagogues where they exist, in a service aimed to promote both piety and patriotism? Why inspire loyalty to the country only in halls, and loyalty to God only in churches?

There are many profoundly religious questions which laymen are asking and to which they have a right to look to the churches for an answer.

Is war ever right?

Does Jesus Christ teach a doctrine of non-resistance?

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If this war does not impel us to think of our destiny and turn to the God whom we learned to know and pray to at our mothers' knees, it will be the fault of the churches. The Outlook has defended them from the charge that they have done noth ing; but are they doing all they can? No. The Church at this time ought to be an army. It is a series of detachments acting independently and separately, with little coherence in counsel and little co-operation in action. Dr. Reiland has pointed out one way in which they can do more. His message we repeat to all the churches we can reach :

What is the difference between the righteous indignation that inspired Christ's unparalleled invective against the hypocrites of his time and the unrighteous wrath which the universal conscience either vigorously condemns or feebly excuses?

Can we maintain a rational faith in the goodness and power of God in view of the awful calamities of the present hour? If so, what is that faith and how shall we maintain it?

How are we to regard death, and in what spirit are we to meet it when it comes to us and to our dear ones?

"We should be workers together with God."

Actions speak louder than words. Dr. Reiland's counsel is both illustrated and emphasized by the remarkable dedication of church headquarters at Camp Upton on February 24-a dedication in which Protestants, Jews, and Catholics unitedof a building to be employed by them all in common under the auspices of a voluntary committee representing six different Protestant communions who provided the cost for the erection of this building.

How shall we maintain our interest and activity in promoting the cause at stake in this war and avoid the worries and anxieties which depress and discourage us?

"I do the little I can do,

And leave the rest to God.”

How shall we discriminate between the little we can do and the rest that we are to leave to God, and how shall we keep

But that dedication ought not to be an extraordinary event. It ought to be an example to be followed in spirit in every community and by all Christian churches, an example of cordial co-operation in promoting the religion of faith, hope, and love of which no sect has any monopoly.

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LENTEN LESSONS

II-A TEACHER OF LIFE

A writer of the first century, a disciple of Jesus, and prob ably a contemporary, has defined in the following words the object of the teaching of Jesus:

For the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world; looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.

This statement, though very brief, is very comprehensive, for it covers the four possible relations of man to life. His relation

To the material world through the body.
To the world of man in society.

To the Supreme Being.

To the future.

How did the great Teacher teach his disciples they should live in these four relations? How should they act toward their bodies and the material world; toward their fellow-men in society; toward God; toward the future? What did Jesus mean by the four words: soberly, righteously, godly, hopefully? What should these words mean to Jesus' disciples?

What should they mean? Then Jesus did teach his disciples what to think.

Yes. Thinking is an important part of living. But with Jesus thinking correctly was incidental, living correctly was essential. Too often in the teaching of the Church thinking correctly has

1 Comrades in Courage. By Lieutenant Antoine Redier. Translated by Mrs. Philip Duncan Wilson. Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, N. Y. $1.40.

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