Lady Macbeth undertook to translate this prophecy into deeds. The first step was the murder of Duncan, and, as a part of it, the attempt by a lie to place the guilt upon Duncan's own attendants. The first step having been taken, the next step inevitably followed in the murder of Banquo, and one atrocity led naturally to another until the news was brought to Macduff: "Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes savagely slaughter'd." Macbeth, however, still relied upon the prophecy of the evil spirits, "Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth," and he followed the fatal advice until it led to his death.

The course of Germany in the present war offers a parallel to the tragedy of Macbeth, which is almost startling in its details. The part played by the witches and by Lady Macbeth in the tragedy has been played by the professors and the PanGermanists of modern Germany, who have made Germany believe that it was destined to be a world power and sovereign among states, and that it must carry this out by force. This doctrine led naturally to the invasion of Belgium, acknowledged by the Chancellor to be illegal, but subsequently justified, as was the murder of Duncan, by a false claim. Upon this initial crime, there inevitably followed the whole policy of frightfulness, including the killing of women and children, corresponding exactly to Macbeth's murder of the wife and children of Macduff. But we all know the end. Macduff accepts the challenge: "Damn'd be him that first cries

'Hold, enough,'" and the contest ends with the death of Macbeth.

We must accept the German challenge, if we would have peace. If we were contending with an uncivilized people, we might hope to gradually educate them to higher standards, but we are not. We are contending with a philosophy of scientific savagery evolved by people who, in their personal relations, are civilized, but who, collectively, acting as a state, are under what seems to many a tragic obsession. The only thing that will cure them of this obsession is a conclusive and overwhelming proof that it does not pay, and that can only be accomplished by defeat. In helping to bring this about, the United States must realize that it will be required to make a supreme sacrifice. It will need not only all of its physical and material resources, but it must exemplify the very highest moral qualities at the same time. Discipline, self-restraint, courage and tenacity must be shown, if we are to rid the world of the plague which this philosophy has brought upon it and enabled civilized man to again resume his progress in the direction of humanity, respect for treaty obligations, and international decency.

Democracy on Trial

By Robert McNutt McElroy, Head of the Department of History and Politics in Princeton University; Educational Director of the National Security League.

It is given to our age to demonstrate that abstract ideas can command a loyalty as unreserved and as self-effacing as a loyalty to a dynasty has ever commanded. Autocracy has failed; but democracy is still on trial, and the day of its testing is now, now while the flags which once faced each other at Bunker Hill and Yorktown float together upon every government building in England and America, in token of a common aim, not for America and England alone, but for all the peoples who have resolved that the world shall not be Prussianized by force of arms.

No one dare accuse the President of having acted hastily. With unprecedented patience, he waited until the time arrived when the ideals involved had been made so clear as to command the united support of all real Americans, of whatever race; and he should now have in his hands as a voluntary offering to the new era the support of every American. The time for debate is past.

We are not warring against the German people, but against the perverted patriotism, against the ironhanded leaders of German absolutism. The triumph of American ideals will mean a liberated Germany and will sound the deathknell of absolutism throughout the world. Give the people of Germany control of Germany, and the few remaining strong

holds of absolutism will at once become untenable. Unhorse Prussianism, and we may confidently expect to see the new Germany speedily take her place among the peace-loving, honorable nations of the world. Let the real Teutonic heart of Germany once more beat freely, and the war-lord will call in vain for cohorts to deny "The Rights of Nations."

The New Diplomacy of the New World

An address before the North Carolina Teachers' Assembly, Charlotte, N. C., November 30, 1917, by President Edward K. Graham, of the University of North Carolina. WHEN President Wilson said that in making war on Germany America had no quarrel with the German people, he said a strange and wonderful thing to two nations at war, and a thing that aroused dissent almost as violent in America as in Germany. We have come to understand and accept the fact that though we are to give millions of lives and sink billions of dollars in this struggle, yet even in the event of complete victory we shall not ask a dollar of compensation nor the extension of national authority over one foot of new territory. Our victory is not in the old terms of conquest nor in them is the source of our national authority among men. Our Nation and its authority are just what its power to reflect and actualize the aspirations of men makes it. Mr. Wilson meant to say that if the Germans could come to understand what America truly means they would know that the war is for them, and for all men everywhere quite as much as it is for us.

We have not, perhaps, sharply asked ourselves what our full meaning is, nor have we come to understand just what form the thought that now deeply stirs the soul of the Nation will take. But the essence of our meaning is clear, and daily it is becoming clearer, as the source of the Nation's material and spiritual strength in this immediate crisis, and the guarantee of its benign and wholesome reconstruction after the war.

It is just this simple fundamental that the world gets and then forgets of the supreme rights of human life as such. We mean to give a new importance to that, and to get new extensions and applications of it in all our relations through a more real and genuine sense of its divinity as manifested by ourselves and all other men in all our relations; and we mean to say, I think, that no other concern is comparable to its nurture and development, regardless of whether it touches our business, our religion, our politics, or our education, or whether it concerns a cook, a factory child, a farm hand, a clerk. We mean to say, too, that a human life has more value than the longest column of figures in the world, and that the life of a little child has more weight than the trade balance of the nations. This we are coming to know as the meaning of America, and this is the prophetic voice in which the new world will answer in actualities the aspirations of the old.

"One knocked on the door, and a voice asked from within,' Who is there?' and he answered, 'It is I.' Then the voice said, 'This house will not