sacrifices had to be made by the passengers. What else could you expect?' This: That the sacrifices would have been either borne equally by all classes, or the heavier burden placed on the broader shoulders; that the rich and not the workers would be penalized; and it is exactly that which has not happened.

London is a great industrial centre, with millions of wealth-producers, mostly poor. Has London been spared? We know she has not. Her workers, even munition workers, have been made to wait for hours after other hours of toil before they could get home. Brighton is a pleasure city. Has it been made to feel the reform of these regulations? Emphatically no! Never were its trains more crowded; never were its crowds so great. So we may go on through the piece. The poor clerk wants a season ticket up and down the line so that he may visit his wife and children in the country, outside the raid area. He cannot get it. His employer is a rich man and takes a house for his family at Maidenhead or Staines and has no difficulty. The state has discriminated indeed in favor of the rich.

Now I am not arguing that the government did not do well in taking over the railways and their responsibilities when the war broke out. For certain reasons I need not touch upon, that was inevitable. But I am suggesting th's: That the clamor directed against the new restrictions would inevitably have compelled the railway companies to grant concessions. The state is

The New Witness.

strong enough to ignore it: just as it is strong enough in England to stop postal servants using the right to strike and to prevent the wretched seamstresses in their clothing factories getting decent wages; while at the same time it squanders millions and pays accounts twice and thrice over at the Ministry of Munitions: just also as it was strong enough to disfranchise the Australian railwaymen for using the right of combination, and to smash the strike on the state railways in France. The state is omnipotent, but

One other thing I suggest. I do not suppose we shall ever hark back to the days of private ownership. What does that mean? Simply this: That for a generation or more traveling will be inconvenient, costly, and uncomfortable, and the days of the jolly old excursions to the seaside and the cheap trips to the country will be gone forever. But the shareholder will be quite happy about it, for the state will pay him his interest and the state Socialist will be exultant. He will be shouting for the 'nationalization' of something else the boot trade, or newspapers, or the mines, or any old thing that comes into his muddled head. Perhaps, indeed, he will have entered then on that great campaign, the apotheosis of Socialism, for nationalizing the home; when men's wives are chosen for them. by eugenic experts, and the 'production of the race' is carried on on the stud farm principle. As I said, one despairs at times of humanity.

THE Great War reveals the souls of nations. Formerly we had only a certain general notion of the character of the French, Italians, or English; now, however, our conceptions have grown almost incredibly distinct, and their features are far more clean cut. Our idea of foreign countries has become much clearer and more definite than it used to be. Across the Rhine and the Vosges, French and Germans survey each other in conflict as if they had never really seen each other before. In the direction of Ypres, near Amiens, and on the English Channel, Germans and Englishmen look upon each other with the eyes of strangers who at last are about to begin getting acquainted in earnest. Even the leading representatives of the three ancient civilizations (Kulturs) of western Europe Germans, Englishmen, and French-are oppressed by a paralyzing astonishment in regard to each other. Veils have been torn aside, all forms of courtesy are trodden under foot, poisonous gases creep over the earth, instruments of destruction course through the air, and, in a deafening roar as of hell, opposing brothers recognize each other as mortal foes.

We and our fathers have so many connections with the western peoples *Editor of Die Hilfe, which presents an attitude toward foreign policy and peace aims similar to that of the Majority Socialists,

and their forefathers! Once, in the Middle Ages, the whole of Western Europe was like one great family. It had one faith, one way of living, one interchange of ideas. In chivalry and in the Crusades all countries shared; handicrafts and arts were nearly related. What a common background we have in everything old! Whether we wander in the south of England, northern France, or western Germany, we are surrounded by similar forms of the same Gothic. Although in every century there has been fighting upon these territories, it was indeed, for the most part, over local or dynastic interests that the struggles took place; there was no bloody riving asunder of nations. Hatred there was among neighbors, but not embitterment of races against each other. Even the various wars of succession did not utterly destroy the foundation of the threefold agreement of Germans, English, and French; for in each of the three nationalities burned a fire that was almost the same. After all periods of darkness the family resemblance appeared again.

Frederic II of Prussia made his conquests with English assistance, and enriched his intellect by the study of French writings. Even the great Napoleon did not completely shatter the feeling of kinship. To humble him, English and Germans united, promis

ing as they did so, to respect the French nation. Now for the first time there exists a tempe of deadly import, in which the sons of the three brother-races discover their irreconcilability, the abysmal depth of their separation. Each is ready to die if he can only kill the other, whom he finds unendurable. This at least is the present state of affairs between the determining majority of English and French on the one hand and of Germans on the other.

Everybody knows that this war has become disastrous for all concerned, but no one can do anything but keep on; no other solution appears. How terrible this situation is passes expression. The nations are sorry that they have to fight thus, but they live under a compulsion which cannot be overthrown by any petty expedient. If ever a person wants to know tragedy in its deepest sense, he must understand this present time. Before its cold transparency all natural gentleness is chilled into torpor. In this atmosphere the nations rise against each other, mounting to heights of heroism and to bravery without limit. They outgrow themselves and become giants. All smaller and finer features seem to disappear from their faces; the nations are becoming monumental in the scope of their movements.

We are becoming more German than we used to be, Englishmen more English, the French more French. The hidden backgrounds are coming to the fore; the vital substance, the genius presents itself; nations behold one another uncovered like naked steel.

We three western nations are actually very different from each other. It is not as if speech and folk-ways separated us only accidentally. Far beneath all obvious marks of indi

viduality there are innate attributes of will which have been slowly completing the separation through the lapse of centuries up to this moment in history. There exists a hidden primordial genius of each nationality, which becomes its guiding spirit in the time of desperate need. This primordial genius has now manifested itself.

Of course we Germans cannot be

getting along getting along as the others imagine we do. What we read in their newspapers has been arranged to inflame the passion for war, and to that end has been twisted and distorted. The idea that we really are as the French and English war-promoters describe us, is ridiculous. Such notions will presumably receive as little credence among the moderate elements of those peoples as we give to what the German war-interests offer us on the theme of English and French character. But even when, with careful

deliberation, one deliberation, one cuts off all the inevitable uglinesses and exaggerations, something inexplicable remains on every hand.

Many of us have known the French fairly well; we have often been in their country and read their literature. For all that we never forgot what our ancestors had partly learned, partly suffered from theirs. Yet who among us all, esteeming the little French people as we did for their peculiar traits who among us, I say, would have believed that they and their wives, their graybeards and their children, ever had the tenacity to wage this war for the sake of the idea of Alsace-Lorraine? There is now no Napoleon to force them into fields of slaughter; on the contrary, it is they themselves by the voice of a majority who will this war. What is Alsace-Lorraine to them? Is it for the sake of a mere object to bargain

with, that the whole northern part of the country suffers destruction? Is it some tender regard for individual Alsatians? Are they valued as high as real Frenchmen? No- but the idea that the honor of France is concerned is almighty in its potency! The first of the great French poets, Corneille, is manifestly a prophet of his people. How often have we thought that heroes of the ideal type which he presents exist only in the fancy! It would be ridiculous if they stepped down into reality! In the days of peace they were like tranquil sky-scenes above the stage of an elegantly conventional social gathering. Now, however, Corneille is risen from the dead; the moral conception swallows up everything else in life!

We Germans could never be so antiquated as to say in the spirit of a thoroughly self-conscious, uncompromising hero: 'Let the heavens. fall, if only I have been true to "Justice," have preserved my honor, have been faithful unto death!' We call this idle talk, but for the French it is life itself. They cannot do otherwise. The tragedy progresses; old Clemenceau is a real star in a character part; thus after his departure will the Frenchman be considered by posterity. He feels the eyes of the world fastened upon him, and to them he is one of the classic ancients!

Is it not wonderful that English and French stand so close together in this hour of revelation? The more the inmost depths of character come to the fore, the less can the two be regarded as one. In spite of the manifold minglings of blood and of language which have taken place between them, in spite of the long wars in their past history, they have never really intimately understood each other; for the Englishman was never the tragic hero, but rather the every

day realist. This intellectual power also, which he achieved as pure ideas, he used to transmute into forms more readily recognizable: English Christianity, missions, freedom. He differs from the Frenchman at least as much as Shakespeare differs from Corneille. Invariably, when an idea becomes too ethereally abstract, the Englishman begins to regard it as humor. In his most exalted moments the Frenchman seems to the Englishman like an idealistic ghost. It is not that he has no feeling for greatness, but he thinks in quantitative terms,

respect in which the American takes after and outdoes him. He travels all over the world and expends his energy in buying, selling, managing, preaching. He is so confirmed in this as his mission to the world, that he accepts the homage of the rest as tribute that is to be taken for granted. Mankind exists for him. That was always his real nature; now, however, it breaks forth openly in expression. He demands all ships, dictates all news, controls all credit. Whoever interferes with him shall die, for who has a right to live who is not disposed to think in English terms? The French, like the rest, enjoy the benevolence of the English only so long as they are willing to fit into their world-scheme.

In itself neither the sentimental idealism of the French nor the English world-idea is absolutely dangerous and terrifying, for every nation bears within itself something super-actual as its secret contribution. Its exceptional character lies in the fact that in the hour of danger the hidden reality forces itself into the foreground in such a way that everything else is thrust aside. Where is the French delicacy and prettiness, the wit, the proverbial affability? What has become of the English habit of

living and letting live, the broad geniality and jollity of the great, old boy? In war the national character is becoming hard and violentfanatical here and craftily deceitful there.

In opposition to us they are being thus transformed. They are changing us and we are changing them. Who can alter it? It is destiny-fate. Nobody willed this world-agony, for no one guessed or foresaw it. There is nothing to do but quietly to perform our duty in the midst of the stress of souls and the pressure of affairs. The devout soul tries, even in the most overpowering entanglements of destiny, to believe in a Providential plan. But who has known the thoughts

Translated from Die Hilfe

of the Highest, and who has been His counselor?

This much is certain: We gain nothing if we become weak. However grievous to us may be the cry of those who are still practically unaware of the tragic solemnity of the development of history in western Europe, nevertheless the person who has had historical training cannot avoid the realization that the ancient civilization of brotherhood is destroyed. The tradition of the Middle Ages in Europe has been shattered.

Do we wonder whether later a unified life will grow up again? Whether later? God knows. It is for us to fight for ourselves, for to-day, to-morrow, and the days to come.

FLOWER-LIKE and shy

You stand, sweet mortal, at the river's brim:

With what unconscious grace

Your limbs to some strange law surrendering

Which lifts you clear of our humanity!

Now would I sacrifice

Your breathing, warmth, and all the strange romance

Of living to a moment! Ere you break
The greater thing than you, I would my
eyes

Were basilisk to turn you to a stone.
So should you be the world's inheritance,
And souls of unborn men should draw their
breath

From mortal you, immortalized in Death.*

*Gloucestershire Friends. By Lieutenant F. W. Harvey, Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd. 2s. 6d. Quotations by permission of Mrs. Harvey and of Bishop Frodsham.

Human beauty, that 'greater thing than you,' haunts mankind. Its complex attraction maddens not only saints and artists, but every honest heart. To arrest it, to keep it steadily in view, is our greatest need, yet, like the wind, it is here and is gone. Having moved men like a hurricane, to prove by devastation that their race or their religion is its chosen vehicle, it will be content to fondle a child with caressing indulgence, turning her self-will 'to favor and to prettiness.' Generations have sought to mew it in a sentence, to immortalize it as the memory of a man or the record of a god's visit. Some have claimed that only perfect form could