Christ or Odin?

"I crush whatever resists me."

You cannot well conceive a science, whether it be mathematics, or architecture, or philosophy, without its axioms, dogmas, or first principles. Without them there is no basis on which to raise the superstructure. So it is with the science of religion. Take Christianity: if it is to be taught scientifically, it must start with the most tremendous dogma, the Divinity of Christ. Either Christ was or He was not what He claimed to be. If He was not, you must shout with the Sanhedrim: "Crucify Him!" If He was, you must sing with the Church: "Come, adore Him." One thing is certain, you cannot be indifferent to His claim or to Him; you must either hate Him and His creed, like the Prussian warring Superman, or love Him and it, like England's Crusading Kings.

The cartoon before us is the finished picture which I can trace from its first rough sketch in the hands of Kant, through its different stages of development in the schools of Hegel, of Schopenhauer, of Strauss, till it was ready for its final touches in the hands of Nietzsche. In fancy I see it hung, on the line, in the Prussian picture-gallery under the direction of War Lords, whose boasted aim it is that the world shall be governed only by Prussian Kultur and Prussian Religion.

The fatal mistake made by the Teutonic race in the past was, we are told, the adoption of Roman culture and Roman religion. Germany once submitted to an alien God and to an alien creed. She, the mistress of the earth, the mightiest of the mighty, and the most Kultured of the Kultured, had actually once worshipped "an uncultured peasant Galilean," and made profession of "His slave morality."

Now they had altogether done with Christ, the Nazarene. The shout had gone forth: "We will not have this Man to rule over us." In the future no gods but Thor and Odin shall rule the "world-dominating race." Prussia seemed to think the world's need to-day was the religion not of Virtue, but of Valour. "In a day now long fled was heard the cry: 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,' but to-day there shall go forth the word: 'Blessed are the valiant, for they shall make the earth their throne.' In the past ye heard it said: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit,' but now I say to you: 'Blessed are the great in soul, for they shall enter into Valhalla.' Again, in the dark ages it was said to you: 'Blessed are the peace-makers,' but now in the blaze of day I say unto you: 'Blessed are the war-makers, for they shall be called, if not the children of Jahve, the children of Odin, who is greater than Jahve.'" For those who want more of this mad jargon on the same lines let me refer them to the late Professor Cramb's book on Germany and England.

With this cartoon before me, I am driven to fear that when the war is done there will rise up in Germany a louder and stronger cry against the Christianity of Christ than ever was attempted after the Franco-Prussian War. The "man of blood and iron," the man with the mailed fist and the iron heel, I much apprehend, will not be satisfied with tearing down the emblem of the physical Body of Christ, but to slake his bloodthirsty spirit he will want to go on to belabour His Mystical Body no less. God avert it!

BERNARD VAUGHAN.

Ferdinand

Ferdinand s'en va t'en guerre ne salt s'il reviendra.(Old French song adapted.)

In this war, where the ranks of the enemy present to us so many formidable, sinister, and shocking figures, there is one, and perhaps but one, which is purely ridiculous. If we had the heart to relieve our strained feelings by laughter, it would be at the gross Coburg traitor, with his bodyguard of assassins and his hidden coat-of-mail, his shaking hands and his painted face. The world has never seen a meaner scoundrel, and we may almost bring ourselves to pity the Kaiser, whom circumstances have forced to accept on equal terms a potentate so verminous.

But we no longer smile, we are tempted rather to weep, when we think of the nation over whom this Ferdinand exercises his disastrous authority. Forty years will have expired this spring since the Christian peasants of Bulgaria rose in arms against the Turkish oppressor. After a year of wild mountain fighting, Russia, with fraternal devotion, came to their help, and at San Stefano in March, 1877, the aspirations of Bulgaria were satisfied under Russia auspices. Ten years later Ferdinand the usurper descended upon Sofia, shielded by the protection of Austria, and since then, under his poisonous rule, the honour and spirit of the once passionate and romantic Bulgarian nation have faded like a plant in poison-fumes.

Raemaekers presents the odious Ferdinand to us in the act of starting for the wars—he who faints at the sight of a drawn sword. His hired assassins guard him from his own people and from the revenge of the thousands whom he has injured. But will they always be able to secure so vile a life against the vengeance of history? How soon will Fate condescend to crush this painted creature?

EDMUND GOSSE.

Juggernaut

KULTUR HAS PASSED HERE

Yes, Kultur, the German Juggernaut, has passed this way. There is no mistaking the foul track of his chariot-wheels. Kultur is the German God. But there is a greater God still. He sees it all. He speaks,—

"Was it for this I died?—Black clouds of smoke that veil the sight of heaven;Black piles of stones which yesterday were homes;And raw black heaps which once were villages;Fair towns in ashes, spoiled to suage thy spleen;My temples desecrate, My priests out-cast:—Black ruin everywhere, and red,—a landAll swamped with blood, and savaged raw and bare;All sickened with the reek and stench of war,And flung a prey to pestilence and want;—Thy work!"For this?——Life's fair white flower of manhood in the dust;Ten thousand thousand hearts made desolate;My troubled world a seething pit of hate;My helpless ones the victims of thy lust;—The broken maids lift hopeless eyes to Me,The little ones lift handless arms to Me,The tortured women lift white lips to Me,The eyes of murdered white-haired sires and damesStare up at Me. And the sad anguished eyesOf My dumb beasts in agony.—Thy work!"

JOHN OXENHAM.

Michael and the Marks

LOAN JUGGLERYMichael: "For my 100 marks I obtained a receipt. I gave this for a second 100 marks and I received a second receipt. For the third loan I gave the second receipt. Have I invested 300 marks and has the Government got 300, or have both of us got nothing?"

"The Loan: good for 100 marks!" Look at him! He is the favoured of the Earth, lives in Germany, where Kultur is peerless, and education complete (even tho' the man may become a martyr of method). War comes! and he is seen, as an almond tree in blossom his years tell, when lo! a War Loan is raised with real Helfferichian candour, and Michael has just stepped out of the Darlehnskasse, at Oberwesel-on-the-Rhine, or other seat of Kultur and War Loan finance. Are visions about? said an American humorist now gone to the Shades; and Michael, Loan note in hand, eyes reversed, after a visit to two or three offices, wants to know, and wonders whether this note can be regarded as "hab und gut," and if so, good for how much? Is it a wonder that an artist in a Neutral Country should depict German affairs as in this condition, and business done in this manner? Michael is puzzled; and in the language of the Old Kent Road, "'e dunno where 'e are!" He is puzzled, and not without cause.

All who have followed Germany's financing of the War share Michael's perplexity. Brag is a good dog: but it does not do as a foundation for credit. Gold at Spandau was trumpeted for years as a "war chest"; but when the "best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley," especially when a war does not end, as it should, after a jolly march to Paris in six weeks, through a violated and plundered Belgium, then comes the rub—and the paper which puzzles Michael. A German, possibly Dr. Helfferich, the German Finance Minister, may believe, and some do believe, that it does not matter how much "paper," in currency notes, a State, or even a Bank, may issue. The more experienced commercial and banking concerns of the world insist upon a visible material, as well as the personal security, to which the German is prone. The round-about method of issuing German War Loans unquestionably puzzles Michael; but will not impose on the world outside.

Let it be marked also, that German credit methods have been, in part, the proximate cause of this War; a system of credit-trading may last for some years only to threaten disaster and general ruin. Now, it is "neck or nothing"; Michael goes the round of the Loan offices, and behold him! Germany herself fears a crash in credit, and even the German Michael feels that it is impending. Already the mark exchanges over 30 below par.

W. M. J. WILLIAMS.

Their Beresina

"Father, is it still a long way to the Beresina?"

"Is it still a long way to the Beresina?"

The whole civilized world sincerely hopes not.

Death, with the grin on his fleshless face, is hurrying them along to it as fast as his troika can go. Three black horses abreast he drives—Dishonour, Disappointment, and Disgrace—and the more audacious of the carrion-crows fly croaking ominously alongside.

Little Willie, with the insignia of his family's doom on his head, is not happy in his mind. "Father's" plans have not worked smoothly, his promises have not been fulfilled. Little Willie is concerned for his own future. He is the only soul in the world who is.

When the First—the real—Napoleon entered Russia, on June 24, 1812, he led an army of 414,000 men—the grande armée. When the great retreat began from burnt-out Moscow he had less than 100,000. By the time the Beresina was reached but little of the grand army was left. "Of the cavalry reserve, formerly 32,000 men, only 100 answered the muster-roll." The passage of the river, which was to interpose its barrier between him and the pursuing Russians, was an inferno of panic, selfishness, and utter demoralization. Finally, to secure his own safety, Napoleon had the bridges burnt before half his men had crossed. The roll-call that night totalled 8,000 gaunt spectres, hardly to be called men.

"Father, is it still a long way to the Beresina?"

We may surely and rightly put up that question as a prayer to the God whom Kaiser William claims as friend, but whom he has flouted and bruised as never mortal man since time began has bruised and flouted friend before.

"Is it still a long way to the Beresina?"

God grant them a short quick course, an end forever to militarism, to the wastage it has entailed, and to all those evils which have made such things possible in this year of grace 1916.

JOHN OXENHAM.

New Peace Offers

NEW PEACE OFFERSVon Bethmann-Hollweg"The worst of it is, I must always deny having been there."

The present policy of Germany is a curious mixture of underhand diplomacy and boastful threats. If she desires to impress the neutral States, she vaunts the great conquests that she has been able to accomplish. She points out, especially to Roumania and to Greece, how terrible is her vengeance on States which defy her, such as Belgium and Serbia, while vague promises are given to her Near-Eastern Allies—Bulgaria and Turkey—that they will have large additions to their territory as a reward for compliance with the dictates of Berlin.

But, on the other hand, it is very clear that, as part and parcel of this vigorous offensive, Germany is already in more quarters than one suggesting that she is quite open to offers of peace. As every one knows, Von Bülow in Switzerland is the head and controlling agent of a great movement in the direction of peace; while lately we have heard of offers made to Belgium that if she will acknowledge a commercial dependence on the Central Empires her territory will be restored to her. Similar movements are going on in America, because throughout Germany still seeks to pose as a nation which was attacked and had to defend herself, and is therefore quite ready to listen if any reasonable offers come from her enemies to bring the war to a close.

The unhappy German Imperial Chancellor has to play his part in this sorry comedy with such skill as he can manage. To his German countrymen he has to proclaim that the war has been one brilliant progress from the start to the present time. This must be done in order to allay the apprehensions of Berlin and to propitiate the ever-increasing demand for more plentiful supplies of food. Secretly he has to work quite as hard to secure for the Central Empires such a conclusion of hostilities as will leave them masters of Europe. And, without doubt, he has to put up with a good many indignities in the process. "The worst of it is, I must always deny having been there." Kicked out by the Allies, he has to pretend that no advances were ever made. Perhaps, however, such a task is not uncongenial to the man who began by asserting that solemnly ratified treaties were only "scraps of paper."

W. L. COURTNEY.

The Shields of Rosselaere

THE SHIELDS OF ROSSELAEREAt Rosselaere the German troops forced the Belgian townsfolk to march in front of them.

The climax of meanness and selfishness would seem to be reached when an armed man shelters himself behind the unarmed; yet it is not the climax, for here the artist depicts a body of German troops sheltering themselves behind women, calculating that the Belgians will not fire on their own countrywomen and unarmed friends, and that so the attack may safely gain an advantage.

There is a studied contrast between the calm, orderly march of the troops with shouldered arms and the huddled, disorderly progress to which the townspeople are compelled. These are not marching; they are going to their death. Several of the women have their hands raised in frantic anguish, their eyes are like the eyes of insanity, and one at least has her mouth open to emit a shriek of terror. Two of the men are in even worse condition; they are collapsing, one forward, one backward, with outstretched hands as if grasping at help. The rest march on, courageously or stolidly. Some seem hardly to understand, some understand and accept their fate with calm resignation.

One old woman walks quietly with bowed head submissive. In the front walks a priest, his hand raised in the gesture of blessing his flock. The heroism of the Catholic priesthood both in France and in Belgium forms one of the most honourable features of the Great War, and stands in striking contrast with the calculating diplomatic policy of the Papacy. There is always the same tendency in the "chief priests" of every race and period to be tempted to sacrifice moral considerations to expediency, and to prefer the empty fabric of an imposing Church establishment to the people who make the Church. But the clergy of Belgium are there to prove what the Church can do for mankind. This cartoon would be incomplete and would deserve condemnation as inartistic if it were not redeemed by the priest and the old woman.

WILLIAM MITCHELL RAMSAY.

The Obstinacy of Nicholas

"Why, I've killed you twice, and you dare to come back again."

The venerable quip that what is firmness in ourselves is obstinacy in our opponents is illustrated with a ludicrous explicitness in the whole tenor of German official utterance since the failure of the great drives. The obtuseness of the Allies is so abysmal (it is again and again complained in the Reichstag and through Wolff) that they are unable to see that Germany is the permanently triumphant victor. Whereas for Germany, whose cause even the neutrals judge to be lost, to hold out at the cost of untold blood and treasure is merely the manifestation of heaven-conferred German steadfastness. The Army into whose obstinate corporate head it is hardest to drive the idea of German military all-powerfulness is the Russian, of which retreating units, actually armed with staves against a superbly equipped (but innocent and wantonly attacked) foe, were so stupid as to forget how to be broken and demoralized.

And this long, imperturbable,verdamteNicholas, who was declared on the highest German authority (and what higher?) to be annihilated twice, having turned a smashing tactical defeat into strategical victory, bobs up serenely in another and most inconvenient place. Absurd; particularly when "what I tell you three times is true." ... Neonapoleon didn't remember Moscow. But he will.

JOSEPH THORP.

The Order of Merit

THE ORDER OF MERITTurkey: "And is this all the compensation I get?"

Turkey had no illusions from the beginning on the subject of the war. If the choice had been left to the nation she would not have become Germany's catspaw. Unfortunately for Turkey, she has had no choice. For years upon years the Sultan Abdul Hamid was Turkey. Opposition to his will meant death for his opponent. Thus Turkey became inarticulate. Her voice was struck dumb. The revolution was looked upon hopefully as the dawn of a new era. Abdul Hamid was dethroned; his brother, a puppet, was exalted, anointed, and enthroned. Power passed from the Crown, not, as expected, to the people and its representatives, but into the hands of a youthful adventurer, in German pay, who has led his country from one folly to another.

Turkey did not want to fight, but she had no choice, and so she was dragged in by the heels. She has lost much besides her independence. The crafty German has drained her of supplies while giving naught in return. The German's policy is to strive throughout for a weak Turkey. The weaker Turkey can be made, the better will it be for Germany, which hopes still, no matter what may happen elsewhere, so to manipulate things as to dominate the Ottoman Empire after the war.

Turkey is still a rich country, in spite of her enormous sacrifices in the past decade. She has been exploited from end to end by the German adventurer, who will continue the process of bleeding so long as there is safety in the method; but Turkey is beginning to ask herself, as does the figure of the fat Pasha in the cartoon: "And is this all the compensation I get?" An Iron Cross does not pay for the loss of half a million good soldiers. Yet that is the exact measure of Turkey's reward.

RALPH D. BLUMENFELD.

The Marshes of Pinsk

THE MARSHES OF PINSK, NOVEMBER, 1915.The Kaiser said last spring: "When the leaves fall you'll have peace." They have!

In what are we most like our kinsmen the Germans, and in what most unlike? I was convicted of Teutonism when first, in Germany, I ate "brod und butter," and found the words pronounced in an English way, slurred. But if we are like the Germans in the names of simple and childish things, we grow more unlike them, we draw farther apart from them, as we grow up. We love war less and less, as they love it more. We love our word of honour more and more as they, for the love of war, love their word less.

There is no nation in the world more unlike us; because there is no war so perfect, so conscious, so complete as the German. And being thus all-predominant, German war is the greatest of outrages on life and death. We English have a singular degree of respect for the dead. It has no doubt expressed itself in some slight follies and vulgarities, such as certain funeral customs, not long gone by; but such respect is a national virtue and emotion. No nation loving war harbours that virtue. And in nothing do the kinsmen with whom we have much language in common differ from us more than in the policy that brought this Prussian host to cumber the stagnant waters of the Marshes of Pinsk.

The love of war has cast them there, displayed, profaned, in the "cold obstruction" of their dissolution. Corruption is not sensible corruption when it is a secret in earth where no eye, no hand, no breathing can be aware of it. There is no offence in the grave. But the lover of war, the Power that loved war so much as to break its oath for the love of war, and for the love of war to strike aside the hand of the peace-maker, Arbitration, that Power has chosen thus to expose and to betray the multitude of the dead.

ALICE MEYNELL.

God With Us

GOD WITH US"At the command 'Gott mit uns' you will go for them."

Threeapachessit crouched in shelter waiting the moment to strike. One is old andgaga, his ancient fingers splayed on the ground to support him and his face puckered with the petulance of age. One is a soft shapeless figure—clearly with small heart for the business, for he squats there as limp as a sack. One is the true stage conspirator with a long pendulous nose and narrow eyes. His knife is in his teeth, and he would clearly like to keep it there, for he has no stomach for a fight. He will only strike if he can get in a secret blow. The leader of the gang has the furtive air of the criminal, his chin sunk on his breast, and his cap slouched over his brows. His right hand holds a stiletto, his pockets bulge with weapons or plunder, his left hand is raised with the air of a priest encouraging his flock. And his words are the words of religion—"God with us." At the sign the motley crew will get to work.

It is wholesome to strip the wrappings from grandiose things. Public crimes are no less crimes because they are committed to the sound of trumpets, and the chicanery of crowned intriguers is morally the same as the tricks of hedge bandits. It is privilege of genius to get down to fundamentals. Behind the stately speech of internationalpourparlersand the rhetoric of national appeals burn the old lust and greed and rapine. A stab in the dark is still a stab in the dark though courts and councils are the miscreants. A war of aggression is not less brigandage because the armies march to proud songs and summon the Almighty to their aid.

Raemaekers has done much to clear the eyes of humanity. The monarch ofFelix Austria, with the mantle of the Holy Roman Empire still dragging from his shoulders, is no more than a puzzled, broken old man, crowded in this bad business beside the Grand Turk, against whom his fathers defended Europe. The preposterous Ferdinand, shorn of his bombast, is only a chicken-hearted assassin. The leader of the band, the All Highest himself, when stripped of his white cloak and silver helmet, shows the slouch and the furtive ferocity of the street-corner bravo. And the cry "God with us," which once rallied Crusades, has become on such lips the signal of theapache.

JOHN BUCHAN.

Ferdinand the Chameleon

FERDINAND THE CHAMELEON"I was a Catholic, but, needing Russian help, I became a Greek Orthodox. Now I need the Austrians, I again become Catholic. Should things turn out badly, I can again revert to Greek Orthodoxy."

There is one whole field of the evil international influence of Germany in which Ferdinand of Bulgaria is a much more important and symbolic person than William of Prussia. He is, of course, a cynical cosmopolitan. He is in great part a Jew, and an advanced type of thatmauvais juifwho is the principal obstacle to all the attempts of the more genuine and honest Jews to erect a rational status for their people.

Like almost every man of this type, he is a Jingo without being a patriot. That is to say, he is of the type that believes in big armaments and in a diplomacy even more brutal than armaments; but the militarism and diplomacy are not humanized either by the ancient national sanctities which surround the Czar of Russia, or the spontaneous national popularity which established the King of Serbia. He is not national, but international; and even in his peaceful activities has been not so much a neutral as a spy.

In the accompanying cartoon the Dutch caricaturist has thrust with his pencil at the central point of this falsity. It is something which is probably the central point of everything everywhere, but is especially the central point of everything connected with the deep quarrels of Eastern Europe. It is religion. Russian Orthodoxy is an enormously genuine thing; Austrian Romanism is a genuine thing; Islam is a genuine thing; Israel, for that matter, is also a genuine thing.

But Ferdinand of Bulgaria is not a genuine thing; and he represents the whole part played by Prussia in these ancient disputes. That part is the very reverse of genuine; it is a piece of ludicrous and transparent humbug. If Prussia had any religion, it would be a northern perversion of Protestantism utterly distant from and indifferent to the controversies of Slavonic Catholics. But Prussia has no religion. For her there is no God; and Ferdinand is his prophet.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

The Latin Sisters

THE LATIN SISTERSItaly: "Indeed she is my sister"

The Latin Sisters! Note carefully the expression of France as contrasted with that of Italy. France, violated by the Hun, exhibits grim determination made sacrosanct by suffering. Italy's face glows with enthusiasm. One can conceive of the one fighting on to avenge her martyrs, steadfast to the inevitable end when Right triumphs over Might. One can conceive of the other drawing her sword because of the blood tie which links them together in a bond that craft and specious lies have tried in vain to sunder. What do they stand for, these two noble sisters? Everything which can be included in the word—ART. Everything which has built up, stone upon stone, the stately temple of Civilization, everything which has served to humanize mankind and to differentiate him from the beasts of Prussia.

Looking at these two sisters, one wonders that there are still to be found in England mothers who allow their children to be taught German. One hazards the conjecture that it might well be imparted to exceptionally wicked children, if there be any, because none can question that the Teutonic tongue will be spoken almost exclusively in the nethermost deeps of Hades until, and probably after, the Day of Judgment.

For my sins I studied German in Germany, and I rejoice to think that I have forgotten nearly every word of that raucous and obscene language. Had I a child to educate, and the choice between German and Choctaw were forced upon me, I should not select German. French, Italian, and Spanish, cognate tongues, easy to learn, delightful to speak, hold out sweet allurements to English children. Do not these suffice? If any mother who happens to read these lines is considering the propriety of teaching German to a daughter, let her weigh well the responsibility which she is deliberately assuming. To master any foreign language, it is necessary to talk much and often with the natives. Do Englishwomen wish to talk with any Huns after this war? What will be the feeling of an English mother whose daughter marries a Hun any time within the next twenty years? And such a mother will know that she planted the seed which ripened into catastrophe when she permitted her child to acquire the language of our detestable and detested enemies.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL.

Misunderstood

MISUNDERSTOODBernhardi"Indeed I am the most humane fellow in the world"

It need not necessarily be supposed that the directors of German destiny, who are not devoid of intelligence, took the ravings of Bernhardi over-seriously. He had his special uses no doubt before the day. But on the morrow of the day, when questions of responsibility came to be raised, he became one of many inconvenient witnesses; and there has scarcely been a better joke among the grim humours of this catastrophe than the mission of this Redhot-Gospeller of the New Unchivalry of War to explain to "those idiotic Yankees" that he was really an ardent pacifist. The most just, the most brilliant, the most bitter pamphlet of invective could surely not say so much as this reeking cleaver, those bloody hands, that fatuous leer and gesture, this rigid victim. Bernhardism was not a mere windy theory. It was exactly practised on the Belgian people.

And this spare, dignified figure of Uncle Sam, contemptuously incredulous, is, I make bold to say, a more representative symbol of the American people than one which our impatience sometimes tempts us now to draw. Most Americans now regret, as Pope Benedict must regret, that the first most cruel rape of Belgium was allowed to pass without formal protest in the name of civilization. But that occasion gone, none other, not theLusitaniaeven, showed so clear an opportunity. A people's sentiments are not necessarily expressed by the action of its Government, which moves always in fetters. Nor has President Wilson's task been as simple as his critics on this or the other side of the Atlantic profess to believe.

JOSEPH THORP.

Prosperity Reigns in Flanders

PROSPERITY REIGNS IN FLANDERSFour hundred and eighty millions of francs have been imposed as a war tax, but soup is given gratis

Wherever Prussia rules she has only one method of ruling—that of terror. Wherever she finds civilization and the wealth which civilization creates, she can do nothing but despoil. She is as incapable of persuasion as of creation. No people forced to endure her rule have ever been won to prefer it as the Alsatians came to prefer the rule of France or as many Indians have come to prefer the rule of England. In Belgium she has been especially herself in this respect.

A wise policy would have dictated such a careful respect for private rights and such a deference to native traditions as might conceivably have weakened the determination of the Belgians to resist to the death those who had violated their national independence. But Prussia is incapable of such a policy. In any territory which she occupies, whether temporarily or permanently, her only method is terror and her only aim loot. She did indeed send some of her tame Socialists to Brussels to embark on the hopeless enterprise of persuading the Belgian Socialists that honour and patriotism wereideologies bourgeoisesand that the "economic interests" of Belgium would be best promoted by a submission. These pedantic barbarians got the answer which they deserved; but on their pettifogging thesis Raemaekers' cartoon is perhaps the best commentary.

The "prosperity" of Belgium under Prussian rule has consisted in the systematic looting, in violation of international law, of the wealth accumulated by the free citizens of Belgium, for the advantage of their Prussian rulers; while to the mass of the people it has brought and, until it is forever destroyed, can bring nothing but that slavery which the Prussians have themselves accepted and which they would now impose upon the whole civilization of Europe.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

The Last Hohenzollern

GOTT STRAFE ENGLAND!"Father says I have to do the same with France"

Behind him stands the embodiment of all that Prussian kultur and efficiency mean, wooden uninventiveness, clockwork accuracy of movement—without soul or inspiration. He himself is thin and scraggy—Raemaekers has intensified these characteristics, but even so the caricature of the reality is more accurate than unkind. Many months ago, this vacuous heir of the house of Hohenzollern set to work on the task of overcoming France, and the result ... may be found in bundles of four, going back to the incinerators beyond Aix, in the piled corpses before the French positions at and about Verdun; some of the results, the swag of the decadent burglar, went back in sacks from the châteaux that this despicable thing polluted and robbed as might any Sikes from Portland or Pentonville.

He is the embodiment, himself, of the last phase of Prussian kultur. Somewhere back in the history of Prussia its rulers had to invent and to create, and then kultur brought forth hard men; later, it became possible to copy, and then kultur brought forth mechanical perfection rather than creative perfection, systematized its theories of life and work, and brought into being a class of men just a little meaner, more rigid, more automaton-like, than the original class; having reduced life to one system, and that without soul or ideal, kultur brought forth types lacking more and more in originality. Here stands the culminating type; he will copy the good German Gott—he is incapable of originating anything—and will "do the same to France."

As far as lies in his power, he has done it; in the day of reckoning, Germany will judge how he has done it, and it is to be hoped that Germany will give him his just reward, for no punishment could be more fitting. The rest of the world already knows his vacuity, his utter uselessness, his criminal decadence. As his father was stripped of the Garter, so is he here shown stripped of the attributes to which, in earlier days, he made false claim. There remains a foolish knave posturing—and that is the real Crown Prince of Germany.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.

Piracy

TIRPITZ'S LAST HOPE—PIRACY

In the summer of 1914 Germany stood before the world, a nation of immense, and to a great extent of most honourable, achievement. Her military greatness had never been in dispute. But in the previous twenty years she had developed an internal industry and an external commerce on a scale and with a rapidity entirely unprecedented. She had to build a navy such as no nation had ever constructed in so short a time. She seemed destined to progress in the immediate future as she had progressed in the immediate past.

What has the madness for world conquest done for her now? She has made enemies of all, and made all her enemies suffer. Like the strong blind man of history, she has seized the columns of civilization and brought the whole temple down. But has she not destroyed herself utterly amid the ruins? Her industry is paralyzed, her commerce gone. Her navy is dishonoured. Some force she still possesses at sea, but it is force to be expended on sea piracy alone. And it is not piracy that can save her. At most, in her extremity, it will do for her what a life belt does for a lone figure in a deserted ocean. It prolongs the agony that precedes inevitable extinction. It is the throw of the desperate gambler that Germany has made, when she flings this last vestige of her honour into the sea.

ARTHUR POLLEN.

"Weeping, She Hath Wept"

THE WIDOWS OF BELGIUM

While a world of mourners is plaintively asking, "What has become of our brave dead, where are they? Alas! how dark is the world without them, how silent the home, how sad the heart"; whilst the mourner is groping like the blind woman for her lost treasure, the Belgian mother, and the Belgian widow, and the Belgian orphan are on their knees, praying, "Eternal rest give to them, O Lord; let a perpetual light shine upon them," the Christian plea that has echoed down the ages from the day of the Maccabees till now, exhorting us to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins. I would remind the broken-hearted mother beseeching me to tell her where can her brave boy be gone, adding, "His was such a lonely journey; did he find his way to God?" of the words of the poet, who finds his answer to her question in the flight of a sea bird sailing sunward from the winter snows:

There is a Power whose careTeaches thy way along the pathless coast,The desert and illimitable air,Lone, wandering but not lost:He who from zone to zoneGuides, through the boundless sky, thy certain flight,In the lone way which thou must tread aloneWill lead thy steps aright.

The brave soldier, who in the discharge of high duty has been suddenly shot into eternity by the fire of the enemy, will surely, far more easily than the migrating bird, wing his flight to God, Who, let us pray, will not long withhold him the happy-making vision of Heaven. Pilgrims homeward-bound, as you readily understand, at different stages of their journey will picture Heaven to themselves differently, according as light or darkness, joy or sorrow encompass them. Some will picture Heaven as the Everlasting Holiday after the drudgery of school life, others as Eternal Happiness after a life of suffering and sorrow, others again as Home after exile, and some others as never-ending Rapture in the sight of God.

But to-day, when " frightfulness" is the creed of the enemy, and warfare with atrocities is his gospel, very many amongst us, weary with the long-drawn battle, sick with its ever-recurring horrors, and broken by its ghastly revelations, will lift up their eyes to a land beyond the stars.

FATHER BERNARD VAUGHAN.

Military Necessity

ON TICKET-OF-LEAVEConvict: "The next time I'll wear a German helmet and plead 'military necessity.'"

It may be asserted that the plea of "Frightfulness" will not be recognized a "military necessity" when Germany is judged, and that this enemy of civilization, even as the enemy of society, will be held responsible for its crimes, though they stand as far above the imagination as beyond the power of a common felon. Bill Sikes may justly claim "military necessity" for his thefts and murders, if Germany can do so for hers.

Under Article No. 46 of the Regulations of The Hague, we learn that "Family honour and rights, individual life and private property must be respected," and, under Article No. 47, "all pillage is expressly forbidden." But while it was a political necessity to subscribe to that fundamental formula of civilization, Germany's heart recognized no real need to do so, and secretly, in cold blood, at the inspiration of her educated and well-born rulers, she plotted the details of a campaign of murder, rape, arson, and pillage, which demanded the breaking of her oath as its preliminary. Well might her Chancellor laugh at "the scrap of paper," which stood between Germany and Belgium, when he reflected on the long list of sacred assurances his perjured country had already planned to break.

No viler series of events, in Northern France alone, can be cited than those extracted from the note-books of captured and fallen Germans. Such blood-stained pages must be a tithe of those that returned to Germany, but they furnish a full story of what the rank and file accomplished at the instigation and example of their officers. Space precludes quotation; but one may refer the reader to "Germany's Violations of the Laws of War,"[A]published under the auspices of the French Foreign Office. It is a book that should be on the tables at the Peace Conference.

We cannot hang an army for these unspeakable offences, or treat those who burn a village of living beings as we would treat one who made a bonfire of his fellow-man; nor can we condemn to penal servitude a whole nation for bestial outrages on humanity, ordered by its Higher Command and executed by its troops; but at least we may hope soon to find the offending Empire under police supervision of Europe, with a ticket-of-leave, whose conditions shall be as strict as an outraged earth knows how to draw them.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

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