ing camps, in the hospitals, in the trenches, and on the battlefields of the Marne, Ypres, and Verdun, and, in connection with the widespread activities of the Y. M. C. A., has come in close contact with all of the Allied armies, describes his experiences with a vividness and realism which lend an unusual charm to his narrative. There is no attempt at embellishment or literary effect. The writer is dealing with real events and with real men, and chapter after chapter makes upon the reader's mind the impression of flashing pictures of men who fling themselves into 'No Man's Land' with dauntless courage, and 'go west' without a murmur. Especially reassuring to those who believe that war is brutalizing, and only brutalizing, are the instances which Mr. Whitehair gives of the consideration shown to the enemy wounded and prisoners. There are a dozen or more illustrations from photographs.

The Manchester Guardian especially commends to all who are working for the coming of a League of Nations Dr. Fried's Pan-Amerika, a second and extended edition of which has been published at Zurich. In this book, Dr. Fried traces in great detail the steps by which the American states have, by voluntary engagement, built up a system of international law and international organization, intended to eliminate the possibility of war between them. The volume is a diplomatic history of a century of American life. Dr. Fried sees in what America has done a

model and an inspiration for Europe and the world.

Mary S. Watts is already among the foremost writers of American fiction, and her latest novel will add to her reputation as well as to her popularity. The Boardman Family is of three generations' standing in the Ohio city which is the scene of the first half of the story; but Sandra, the only daughter, is not contented with the conventional opportunities that wealth and social position offer, and on hearing a rumor that her father's business is dwindling, she decides to attempt a career of her own, and goes to New York to take up æsthetic dancing. Though the plot is rich in significant detail, its interest is chiefly psychological, and Mrs. Watts's range of shrewd and sympathetic insight has never been more strikingly shown. With equal skill she draws Sam Thatcher, Sandra's dancing school partner of childish days, who achieves as salesman for the Victorgraph a success almost as phenomenal as her own; her manager, Max Levison, with his amazing advertising gifts and his unexpected flashes of fine feeling; and her brother Everett, a gentlemanly idler who looks down on them both. The 'realism' of the current novel is most often associated with pessimism, and the effect is depressing, if not actually revolting. Realism and optimism together make a strong combination, and Mrs. Watts uses it effectively. As an interpreter of the best and most characteristic American types, she has few rivals. The Macmillan Co.

Nothing, Nothing, Nothing! And man that made them

It wants another hour to day,

Yet all the eastern sky is bright,
So quick the flashes leap and die;
And we go marching silently,
Our faces to the eastern sky.

How fiercely leaps the battle roar!

Yet overhead and all about

The night is silent as of yore,

And rank on rank the stars shine out, With one that flames exceeding bright, A lamp of God, a living light, A benediction on the night.

And near me, on a grassy hill,

I see that Form raised up to bless; The Face that knows and pities still

Two thousand years of bitterness, And dark against the troubled sky, One moment seen and then passed by, Those Arms outstretched to draw me nigh.

to and obeyed them,

Schooled his mind to endure its own aghastness,

Serving death, destruction, and things inert,

He the soarer, free of heavens to roam n,

He whose heart has a world of light to home in,

Confounding day with darkness, flesh with dirt.

Oh, dear indeed the cause that so can prove him,

Pitilessly self-tested!

If no cause

beckoned Beyond this chaos, better he bled unreckoned,

With his own monsters bellowing madness above him.

The Westminster Gazette

MARCHING TO ACTION

BY C. A. MACARTNEY
(Lieut. R.F.A.)

Dim-seen before me lies the way, Dark stretch the fields to left and right;

tread

THERE was a period of the great war during which so we may prefigure the judicial observation of the future historian- during which (he writes) the British nation was forced to contemplate the possibility of being starved to concede an ignominious surrender or, at best, to conclude a humiliating compromise. Once (he continues) the proud mistress of the seas, and still imposing her will upon the formidable fleet of her adversary, Britain found her sea-power (a favorite phrase of that epoch) challenged and nullified at every turn by that recent and deadly invention, the submarine torpedo vessel. In one week, no less than forty merchant ships were sunk with their cargoes; the weekly toll of piracy varied from five or six to eighteen or twenty vessels; and although it cannot be said that there was actual want, it is undoubtedly the case that a general scarcity of food began to prevail. But the spirit of the people never wavered. . . . Here the historian, who with a quaint simplicity affects the tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles of the Georgian era, takes off his glasses and stares out of the window at the VOL. XI-NO. 549

smokeless blue. 'I wonder, did it waver?' he says dubiously.

How, indeed, should he know? The movements of the spirit of man are elusive and swiftly transitory. But in fact the English are hard to move, extremely reluctant to entertain disagreeable impressions, and almost incapable of believing that any other power on earth, or sea, or under the sea could defeat the British navy.

Whether or not the Englishman knew from week to week the actual state of the case would have made but little difference to his feelings. He did in fact know very little, and that little was all on the wrong side of the account. But the Admiralty said at intervals that the submarine would not decide the war. That was enough. And the moment has come to say that the Admiralty were right. They made themselves right. Only the Admiralty and the fighting men at sea and in the air know exactly how it was done. The historian of the future may learn in detail how it was done; but it is odds that after the if there is an after the war people will be too tired to read his monumental disquisition. So it is well

war

to learn what we can while we can.

The air and the sea round these islands have become full of eyes, like the beast in the Apocalypse. Eyes in aeroplanes, seaplanes, airships; eyes in submarines and surface craft. Floating between the gray cope of heaven and the wrinkled plain of the sea hangs an airship. She wears an aspect of brooding over the waters. Her eyes are scanning the moving and whitened field beneath them. Eastward, the dawn fires the sullen wrack; and the sombre headlands, their bases ringed about with foam, lighten. Far out to sea, a steamer, looking little as a toy, moves with incredible slowness beneath a plume of smoke; beyond, smears upon the faint horizon indicate other vessels. The men in the car of the airship, swinging level with the wide rim of the sea, have long ago become accustomed to looking down, like the god of the ancients, upon the insects swimming upon the sea he made. They are wholly occupied in seeking for their prey. Presently the watchers discern upon the sliding surface of the water a mark like the print of a bird's foot long V, lengthening. It is the wake of a periscope. This is luck indeed. The airship tilts downwards, comes level again, and the officer pulls a lever, releasing a bomb. The long dark shape slants swiftly downwards, and plunges. In a few seconds there is a muffled detonation, and a fountain of water leaps high. Another bomb follows, and another. At the same time a wireless message spreads instantaneously from the airship and begins to vibrate in the ears of the signalmen in ships scattered far and wide. At the same time flashing signals are made to the nearer vessels. The airship hovers where she is; and the men mark a dark oily stain spreading, and spreading, and smoothing the

a

waves. It is dotted here and there with pieces of wreckage. Presently five or six trawlers come steaming up to investigate, and the airship glides away. That was a lucky shot.

More often there is no sign after the bomb has been dropped; or there is a smaller area of spreading oil, denoting what is probably slight damage. An airship, sailing high, once dropped bombs upon certain long, black objects, which were most likely whales.

Or the airship assembles the hunting party. Cruising alone, she sights the conning tower of a submarine a long way off. There is a destroyer visible, and the destroyer is promptly informed. The men in the airship see the sparks volleying from her wide funnels as she goes about. At the same time the nearest motor launch (or M.L.) flotilla receives the summons, and the leader of the trawler section. These all take their places with the accuracy of a quadrille. They have their own means of discovering the approximate position of the submarine, whether the pirate be escaping or sitting on the bottom of the sea waiting for the trouble to blow over.

But whether she goes or stays, every pallid German in the belly of the submarine is also waiting for the deadly depth charge. It is not necessary to hit the vessel. The shock is so tremendous, even at a certain distance, that the lights go out in the submarine, the engines are shaken out of gear, and the plates begin to open out like a flower. Explode the depth charge a little nearer to her, and the submarine is shattered. It is what the German must hope for, even pray for; because if the explosion does no more than open leaks, the water, gradually rising in the vessel, compresses the air, and also makes

chlorine gas, and death comes by slow torture. Better, in fact, come to the surface and fight it out or surrender. It has almost come to that with the submarine; that it is safer for her to do murder in the light of day.

There are about eighteen hours of daylight at this time of year; and were a spectator to be suspended so high in air that he could miraculously survey the isles of Britain lying beneath him like a child's garden, he would see a chain of moving silver dots surrounding the whole jagged coastline. He would also remark the seaplanes, darker and swifter specks, like birds. They are quicker in pursuit than the airships, but their endurance in the air is, of course, shorter. Swooping low, they drop their bombs over the patch of troubled water revealing the enemy below, or over the feather of the moving periscope. If they catch a submarine on the surface, they have need of swiftness, for their quarry can submerge in thirty seconds.

The British seaplane squadrons are frequently met by enemy seaplanes. In the North Sea two British seaplanes met five of the enemy. Two of the enemy attacked one of the British seaplanes, which was a long way behind its leader, and which put up a running fight. The leading British seaplane manoeuvred to attack the three enemy single-seaters from their rear, at a range of 200 to 300 yards. Steering zigzag, and firing to the front, he hit a single-seater, which turned sharply to port, sideslipped, and crashed into the sea, whereupon the rest of the Germans incontinently fled.

In another fight over the North Sea a British Sopwith, a long way from his base, perceiving an enemy, attacked him from the sun,' as the phrase goes. The attacker thus has

the light behind him, and the attacked has it right in his eyes. The Sopwith opened fire at fifty yards, whereupon the German dived, streaming smoke; one of his wings dropped off, and he fell headlong into the sea.

But it is not all victory. There is a sad record of a seaplane flying somewhere far out to sea, whose signals of distress were received, but owing to some defect in her signaling apparatus, her description of her position was unintelligible. A gale was blowing up; seaplanes went in the teeth of it to search for the craft in distress; but they could not find her. The wreck of her was afterwards washed on shore. Pilot and observer were never seen again. The war in the air is a boys' war; and these two lads, lost in the air many miles out at sea, fought to the last. Their engine was out of order; the wireless would not work properly; the darkness was gathering, and a storm was rising. Swinging and buffeted high up in the night, they knew that the end was approaching. Perhaps they put the nose of the machine down at the last, on the chance of riding out the gale on the floats. Other lads have done it; have clung to the floats for days and nights; and when they were taken off they were

rigid like wood.

rigid like wood. But whatever happened on that night, be sure the boys' hearts did not fail them.

...

Airship and aeroplane work with the patrolling destroyer flotillas, which are organized separately from the destroyers on duty with the Fleet. Many hundreds of sea-miles they cover, and never see a submarine. And then upon a day, it happens, as it happened to H.M.S. —, early one fine morning. She was cruising at fifteen knots, which is a gentle stroll for a destroyer, when her captain sighted a submarine lying on the surface, little more than 200 yards