dispersion of the race the way the Jews were dispersed, or, something still more difficult to imagine, a unanimous renunciation by the Irish of their own nationality. The conquerors hoped for such a renunciation in the eighteenth century, when, under the crushing weight of the Penal Law, the country slowly lost even the memory of its language and its history. It will always stand to the credit of Sinn Fein that it has devoted itself to restoring the spiritual consciousness of its people a movement started in the nineteenth century and that it was the first to realize, fully, the necessity for Ireland to rediscover itself, its past, its condition, and its destiny.

When a nation emerges from such an abyss - Bohemia, Poland, and Armenia testify to that possibility is it reasonable to fancy that it will again fall into the same abyss and disappear forever? If not, what shall be done? Certainly, Ireland will never be able to free itself from England; but it is not to be a constant thorn in England's side-sometimes a danger, and always a disgrace. The only way by which its relentless hatred can be disarmed, will be to offer the country, at once, a sincere and radical change in its form of government, guaranteeing the equality of the two races. That is what England's own interest demands. But do its people realize this?

IN a dark house in a narrow alley of our unhappy city, lives a blind soldier with his wife and three children. The man lies mostly in bed, weeping with his seared blind eyes - oddly he has learned to weep. His wife's mind has been affected by her grief. She will suddenly shriek in the midst of her work, tear her hair, and run round the room as if mad. Then the three children will begin to cry and pluck at her skirt; whereupon she will recover herself, kneel down and fondle her children, and weep quietly. The little pittance which the father receives from the government on account of his blindness by no means supports the family. The woman goes out to work; but since her mental condition makes

her neglectful, forgetful, and distraught, she has lost every good position she obtained and has come down to only the lowest and dirtiest kind of work. So she toils long hours for meagre pay; for employers are quick to profit by the helplessness, as well as the lessened efficiency, of those who serve them. Of the three children, the oldest is a little girl of twelve years; the others nine and seven. They have known nothing during their young lives but hunger and privation, cold and darkness. The horror, when their blind father came back home, and the mother for the moment lost her reason, has left an enduring shadow of tragedy on their minds. The little twelve-year old girl has already learned to depend

upon herself, and acts as if she were a grown woman. She is not only a mother to her little sisters, but earns something for herself — as maid-of-all work and helper in a laundry. She is employed from early in the morning until late at night; seldom going to school and falling asleep when she goes.

In a red house with a flower garden, in South Sweden, there lives a widow. She has no children of her own, but only the son of her dead sister, a crippled, feeble-minded boy, fourteen years old. She provides a nurse for him, and he is cared for and attended to as though he were a little doll. He cannot speak, and must be fed like a bird. Most of the time, he lies still in bed and sleeps, with his mouth wide open.

The widow's house is large and beautiful, with many rooms, and the land about it as far as the eye can see, with its fields and meadows, its beach and forest, belongs to her. There are cows in the pasture and horses in the barn. Many servants live in little cottages nearby. In summer, the table is set for dinner in an arbor of rambler roses.

There the widow lives alone. Whenever she hears the short, shrill cry of the cripple boy, she hurries to him and strokes his withered hand. She loves the child, but as if he were a toy. He has no human attributes.

So the widow busied herself with the duties of the day. She rode over her estate, picked flowers, placed them in vases, and spun and wove. All the cupboards of the house are full of beautiful linen. Physical blessings have been bestowed upon her in abundance.

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As she thought more on the subject, of what a ray of sunshine a happy child would be in the house, and how it would fill her own empty life, her pleasant visions were suddenly brought to a halt when the summer was over the child would have to go home. This was unendurable, so she sat down at once and wrote a second letter to Stockholm. She wished a child to adopt. The child must stay with her permanently, and would become her heir; its remaining was an imperative condition.

The name, residence, and application of the widow reached Vienna, and came to the school which the little daughter of the blind soldier occasionally attended. The teacher read the list through, and the children to be sent to Sweden were selected. Here was a particularly favorable opportunity. A wealthy, childless, widow, wished to adopt a poor little girl. The twelve-year old daughter was selected. She returned home and told her parents and sisters that she must go away. The parents made no protest. They were neither sad nor happy. It frightened them for a moment, but they at once submitted. Nothing else was possible, in their poverty and helplessness.

The day of departure came. The mother sat up the previous night, washing and mending the only clothes the little daughter owned. The girl bade them adieu, and, as if in a dream, boarded the train with her companions. As they sped along, viewing the sunny summer landscape, and the other little girls shouted and sang from the windows, she sat silently staring be

fore her. After three days and three nights, partly by train and partly by sea, she came, late one evening, to her destination. A beautiful carriage with two horses was waiting on the landing. The coachman descended from the box and called the little girl's name. She was lifted into the carriage, and at once lay down on the seat and went to sleep, so weary and weak was she.

The next morning, she awoke in a beautiful little bed-chamber where all the furniture was white. The sun was shining brightly, and the branches of a birch tree tapped against the windows like welcoming hands. Flowers were everywhere. Over the door was a wreath of oak leaves, and in the middle a card on which was in gold letters, 'Welcome, little daughter from Vienna.'

A moment later, the child's fostermother came into the room. She observed the child-her thin neck, her weary, tortured eyes, the wrinkles of pain about her mouth. A feeling of pity filled her heart and an intense desire to make the little creature happy. She would give her everything. Here was something different from the passive, unconscious boy below. A real, true child, capable of receiving and returning love.

But the very next day, the child's new mother was undeceived. The little girl sat silent; she merely nibbled at the food placed before her, and showed no signs of pleasure. At first, the mother thought it was homesickness and would soon pass over. She dressed the little girl in beautiful clothes and boots, gave her a pony for her own use, and arranged to have her taught to play the piano. 'See,' she said to her; 'all these things will sometime belong to you. This great farm, all these pigs, and cows, and sheep, and chickens. In the winter, you will have a sealskin coat, and go sleigh riding. There are six cupboards filled with linen. And

you have seen the silver and the porcelain, and the cut glass? And all the silk dresses? As far as you see, all these fields and woods, these pine trees, and birches, and oaks, and the two little sailboats at the wharf, and this orchard with more than fifty fruit trees, and all these rose bushes and the garden of beautiful flowers, will all be yours! Will you be a good daughter to me, and love me, and stay always with me?'

The little girl's head sank, and she wept silently. The foster-mother waited for a reply. 'How is it, my daughter?' she asked, humble, as people are who seek for love. The child raised her head, weakly, and whispered, amid her hot tears: 'I want to go home.'

Since she would not eat, and seemed to be getting constantly weaker, the widow, finally, became alarmed and sent for a physician;- a specialist, who came from the big city. He was a famous man, one who understood the souls of his patients. When he had observed the child, and heard what could be told him of her condition, he recognized the symptoms at once, and said: 'Sometimes, people suffer more than they can endure. Their hearts are really broken. Then, neither money, wealth, nor even the stars of heaven can help them. This little girl has suffered beyond her capacity of endurance. Her very soul is crushed, just like a withered flower, which cannot be revived even by showers and sunshine.' Before he left, he directed that the child should be left alone; perhaps a miracle would happen, and she would recover her normal character. He enjoined the widow to observe her carefully, for strange things happened to people thus affected.

A day or so later, the little girl rose early in the morning, washed herself, put on the clothing she had worn when she arrived, picked a bouquet of roses

from the garden, laid it on the breakfast table, and went away. She walked through a little patch of woods and came out on the main highway. A peasant woman was passing in a cart. The child asked to be taken to the town. While the peasant woman did not understand her, she let her ride in the cart. When they reached the town, the child went to the railway station, waited an hour, and got in the first train that passed. At first, the conductor did not notice her, and not until she reached Berlin was it observed that she was traveling without a ticket. She could not explain. She merely cried, and said she wanted to go home to Vienna. Sympathetic people took an interest in her and provided her with a ticket to that city. A few days later, she reached Vienna. She had been away, altogether, two weeks. Scarcely had the train stopped, when she sprang wildly out of the car, and having no streetcar fare, walked and ran a long distance to her home.

She came into the room, and sat down by the side of her father on his bed of straw. Her mother knelt on the floor near by, and the two little sisters snuggled up beside her. The little girl sat there, caressing her father, who with his frightfully deformed and emaciated face lay weeping with his mouth, the way the blind weep, and opening and closing his lips as a fish out of the water. The maiden stroked his gray hair, caressed his deformed features, kissed him, and then fell limp into her mother's arms.

The next day, the astonished neighbors saw the little girl again at her daily round of duties; sweeping and cleaning, going to the public kitchen for the dole of charity soup for her father. How was the little girl back home, whom they heard was living like a princess' in Sweden? Indeed, how did it happen?

[The New Statesman (British Radical Labor Weekly), February 12]

GERMANY'S DISILLUSIONMENT

BY LEVIN L. SCHÜCKING

THERE are, evidently, a great many people in England who, to a certain extent, are changing the mental attitude which they adopted toward Germany during, and immediately after, the war. But still they cannot get over certain things. Granted that the Germans were not exclusively responsible for the outbreak of the war, why did they not protest against useless cruelties and barbarities like the air-raids over London, the transportations of the Belgian citizens, the things that happened at Lille, and so on? Or, if they were muzzled at the time, why did they not afterward show unmistakably their disapproval, if not their repentance?

Where are the signs of

Where are the signs of any 'catharsis' of the national mind in this sense? Has, for example, anything serious been done to punish those military leaders from whose hands emanated so much that destroyed the lives and happiness of tens of thousands? Evidently not. Well then . . ?

This attitude, let us admit, undoubtedly appears in a certain sense to be justified. But things do not always appear the same if looked at from different sides. To understand rightly the German mind on this question, one must not lose sight of the historical development of things. There was a moment when not only the military power of Germany but also her 'creed' was shaken to the foundations. That was when the great breakdown of November, 1918, came. Most people, especially among the so-called educated classes,' had put so unshakable a faith in the military leaders that they would have expected anything rather than a sudden collapse of this sort. Everyone

suddenly realized that this exaggerated confidence had rested on the foundation of a carefully elaborated system of lies. So the military defeat brought with it a moral discrediting of the whole system. It did not appear difficult to extend this discredit to militarism all round. The revolution which brought the ideas of socialism to the fore seemed to facilitate this. At a time when officers of the army did not dare to appear in uniform, in public, without being insulted or sneered at, and the victory of pacifist ideas seemed to be in the air, the transformation of the national mind - including the denunciation of the war-brutalities on both sides seemed a mere natural consequence. In fact, pacifism in Germany was well on the way to a great popular victory. Those Germans who from the very beginning of the war had hoped the game would end in a 'draw,' because they could not regard a German victory as a likely benefit for the world or even for Germany, thought the time had come to make themselves the mouthpiece of what was called President Wilson's gospel.

Then came the terrible disappointment which blighted all such hopes. Nobody in Germany, not even the wildest Chauvinists, had anticipated what would happen. Germany, the great beleaguered fortress, surrendered unconditionally. But the hunger blockade was not raised! No one understood the reason why. Had we not laid down our arms and fulfilled every wish of the Entente Powers? Then where was the necessity for this? Was it a mere act of revenge? of punishment? So King Hunger kept his sway. Entente Commissions came and visited the starving towns. I have heard of British officers who came to Breslau and could not withhold their tears on seeing the indescribable sufferings of the children of the poor. They

promised to send relief as soon as possible. But it never came. And then, slowly and surely, the situation changed, and the hope of winning over the German mind to a new conception of things grew dim. You cannot try to reform a man who feels himself 'more sinned against than sinning' or at any rate, it is very difficult. What was begun by the blockade not being raised was finished by the Versailles Treaty, with its cynical disregard of the solemn promises of the Fourteen Points. It made those people who had talked of Wilson's gospel appear in a ridiculous light. 'Right above Might!' Here you see it enacted. 'Self-determination of Peoples!' 'A war against the German government and not against the German nation!' Aye, springs to catch woodcocks,' as Polonius says. And the tremendous wave of bitterness rolling over the starved and defeated country drowned all thoughts of what had happened before.

It certainly should have been the duty of the new government not to let itself be turned by any means from the path it had chosen. It had gained its position by dethroning a power deadly hostile to it, so that it would have been a mere act of common sense to discredit the old leaders as much as possible. At the same time, it would have served the highest moral interests of the country to make the truth known. Something was done in this direction. The publication of the documents concerning the outbreak of the war (the socalled Kautsky-Akten) was carried out conscientiously and with great care. Moreover, a kind of law court was constituted in order to cross-examine the political and military leaders, but it was scarcely to be called a success. Then all measures of this sort came to a standstill. The strange political lethargy of the leading circles was caused partly, no doubt, by the weak