victory was won and to support loyally the Government of the day. Yet successive Radical Administrations, from 1906 to 1914, had no more vehement opponent than he. His indignation at the Licensing Bill, at the Budget of 1909, and at the Parliament and Home Rule Bills, used to bring him to his feet in committee in a state of almost speechless wrath. At times he would stand with, eyes shut, wholly at a loss for words, and with his right hand feebly smiting the left. But the horrors of this war have shaken him to the depths of his being, and any expression of patriotic sentiment, from whatever quarter, is sure of a plaudit from Mr. George Faber, who flings back his head as he cheers, so that he may toss his 'Hear, hear,' a note higher than those around him. Any carping criticism, on the other hand, especially if it comes from the Front Opposition Bench, makes him restless and moves him to wrathful comment. And patriotic tempers are sorely strained at times when the Pacifists are taking merciless advantage of the extraordinary tolerance of the majority, and it seems to require a strong effort of self-restraint on the part of Mr. Thorne and Mr. Stanton to prevent them from rushing across the floor of the House and sweeping the whole bench clear with one wild swoop. But they just boom forth an occasional epithet of contempt, which glides unheeded past the ear of the Chair. Like the whole majority section of the Labor Party, they are splendidly loyal to the compact which they made with the Government, and whatever intriguers there are at Westminster and they are many loyal labor has played

the game.

Lateat scintillula forsan! A Prime Minister, taking a leisurely look round the Back Benches, would find

no difficulty in equipping his Administration half-a-dozen times over with law officers and restocking the courts with judges. K.C.s are plentiful in the House of Commons; even K.C.s in big practice, whose time is money, and everyone knows what brings the political lawyers to Westminster. They are there to get on, and they seem to bring with them from their chambers in Lincoln's Inn or the Temple an almost perfect detachment from personal conviction. Occasionally, indeed, there comes upon the scene a doughty swashbuckler like Mr. Hemmerde, who works up a very tolerable imitation of intense Radical emotion. But the traditional pose of the political lawyers is strict decorum. They keep before their eyes the dignity of the prize of their high calling. The thought that in the time to come they may be Judges of the High Court keeps them decorous and, with few exceptions, dull. It is a paradoxical road to the seat of absolute impartiality this short cut through the arena of party politics - but everything is made easy for lawyers at Westminster, as though their convenience and interests were paramount above all others. Yet they do not stir our pulses. Who marks the K.C.'s rising with a gleam of hope that the discussion is about to be illuminated, or that the theme will be treated with freshness? When the Speaker calls on Mr. X, of Pump Court, or Mr. Y, of Fig Tree Court, or Mr. Z, of King's Bench Walk, we know what is coming. If the subject be new, they speak as if they had 'swatted it up' for their hearers' benefit, and they give the points in a clear and orderly way. But if it be a well-worn theme, they merely pulp it again. Their heart is not in the job. They bring tired and jaded brains to politics. There is too little purely

disinterested public service at Westminster from any section of politi

cians, but the political lawyers give perhaps least of all.

The Fortnightly Review

To understand the war mind of President Wilson, and to learn the lesson it conveys, we must read his speeches from the beginning of the war as though they formed a continuous whole. Those who have not the full text of the speeches before them will find a good substitute in The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, by Messrs. Robinson and West (Macmillan), in which the relevant passages are presented in historical order. Reading them continuously, they present us with a natural, inevitable, and yet very remarkable evolution. I find nothing inconsistent between the earlier and the later sayings of the President, notwithstanding that the former are devoted to the advocacy of peace and the latter to the advocacy of war. On the contrary, the later passages throw back a meaning on to the earlier, which make them doubly significant, while the earlier are like the clear hours of the morning in which the weatherwise may read the portent of a coming

storm.

It has been said that whosoever writes the history of the war must write it as a drama; and certainly there has been no more dramatic feature in the whole tragic story than that presented by the movement of Mr. Wilson's mind from position to

position in correspondence with the gradual unfolding of the plot. In reading through these speeches one has the feeling familiar to every lover of the Odyssey. There is the same. gradual darkening of the atmosphere as events march on to the final catastrophe, the same tightening of expectancy and tension as the gathering storm comes nearer, until at last, when the gloom is deepest, the lightning leaps out and retribution falls on the wrongdoer. If the words are not inadequate to matter of such moment, one may say of the speeches that they have the wholeness of a work of art. The germinating idea of Mr. Wilson's policy is that America, because of her greatness, of her power, of her vast potentialities, is a servant among the nations, and not a master. It is a noble conception, and peculiarly fitted to inspire a young and mighty people with a vision of its destiny, and so to mark out for it in the centuries that are to come a line of development different from and I think higher than, any which the older states of the world have so far pursued. Though the idea of greatness in service has been long familiar in other connections, where perhaps it has received more lip service than loyalty, President Wilson is the first statesman to make it operative, or to

endeavor to make it operative, as a guiding principle of international politics; and this alone, whether he succeeds or not, assures him a distinct place in history and in the grateful remembrance of mankind. Needless

to say, this idea that the greatest

nation must needs be a servant nation stands out as the polar opposite to the notion of national greatness which prevails with the rulers and apparently with the people of Germany; and a prescient mind, on hearing it first announced by Mr. Wilson in the early stages of the war, might have predicted that a moment would come when the two opposites, driven by a dramatic or moral necessity, would break out into open conflict with one another.

From the very first, the question uppermost in the President's mind has been this: In what way, by what policy, by what action can America best serve the nations involved in the struggle, and through them mankind at large? Again and again his public utterances have repeated this, thereby showing its solemn insistence in his private mind; and though he has varied his answer with the change of circumstance, he has never departed from the purpose and spirit of the question. Indeed, he did not wait for the war to disclose his guiding idea.

On March 5, 1914, he said, in a message to Congress when the Panama tolls were under discussion: 'We are too big, too powerful, too self-respecting a nation to interpret with too strained or refined a reading the words

of our own promises just because we have power enough to give us leave to read them as we please'— a sentence which, in its latter clause, anticipates the most hateful aspect of German policy both in the initiation and the conduct of the war, and is almost a prediction of the coming

conflict. Again, on April 30, 1915, he said to the members of the Associated Press: 'We do not want anything that does not belong to us. Is not a nation in that position free to serve other nations?' And three days after the Lusitania had been sunk he followed with the statement, so much misunderstood at the time: 'I am interested in neutrality because there is something so much greater to do than to fight. There is a distinction waiting for this nation which no nation has ever yet had.' A year later he sounded the same note. On April 19, 1916, he said: "We cannot forget that we are the responsible spokesmen of the rights of humanity.' What this last involved comes out very clearly in the Address to Congress on the occasion of America's entry into the war. 'We shall fight for the things we have always carried nearest our hearts for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations, and make the world itself free.'

If the reader will take these speeches as a connected whole, or even the few sentences I have quoted, he will have before him the Odyssey of the President's mind. They indicate the successive stages through which he passed in his efforts to find an answer to the question: How can the United States, in the world crisis that has now arisen, most effectually serve mankind? In the earlier stages neutrality covered the answer that then seemed most fitting. By remaining neutral the President believed that the United States could render most help not only in hastening the advent of peace, but in giving to peace, whenever it

should come, the form most conducive to the just interests of all concerned. He believed and rightly believed that impartiality would confer upon America rights and powers as a peacemaker both during the conflict and afterwards; and he saw, further, that a peace-making nation was the world's greatest need at the time. Then, through no will of his own, but by the direct action of Germany, the right to be neutral, the power to be impartial, was taken from him. The consequence was that the first form of his answer was necessarily abandoned as no longer applicable to the circumstances, and another had to be sought. Only one was possible. If America was to serve all nations she must make war on the Power which was striving to make all nations serve itself. Thus, by what I again venture to call dramatic necessity, we are carried stage by stage from the moment when the President declared 'there is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight' to the last sentence of his speech the other day: 'There is therefore but one response possible from us: force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make right the law of the world, and cast every selfish dominion down into the dust.' Thus was Wilson the peacemaker turned into Wilson the warmaker. The 'divinity that shapes our ends' is clearly accountable for the transition, and the world may rejoice that it found in the President an instrument amenable to its guidance. He stands out to-day as the foremost interpreter of the international mind.

The authors of the admirable book to which I have referred have done well to interweave with their narrative the almost synchronous story of the President's dealings with Mex

ico, for the two things throw light upon one another. If a guarantee were needed for the entire sincerity of Mr. Wilson's professions it could be found in the record of the Mexican transactions. These had given rise to the notion among his European critics, and also, I think, among not a few of his fellow countrymen, that he was an impracticable idealist. We now know that his Mexican policy and his European policy were intimately related. mately related. They sprang from the same root, and had the same guiding idea. Judged by the standards which most conquering Powers have applied to their actions, Mr. Wilson would have been fully justified in making war upon Mexico for the purpose of restoring order, if for nothing else. There were many Liberal statesmen in other countries who found his attitude hard to understand, and in some instances openly condemned it, and there is little doubt that he would have raised his general reputation as a statesman at least, for a time if he had pursued a 'stronger' policy. We now know, however, and by the clearest of evidence, that the 'impracticable idealism' which kept him out of war with Mexico was identically the same with that which later on brought him into war with Germany. As in the later so in the earlier problem, the question Mr. Wilson set himself to answer was how can the American Republic helphow can it best serve the interests of the rich but disordered and miserable country which fate has assigned as its neighbor?

There were abundant precedents for intervention to which Mr. Wilson might have appealed without the slightest fear that his credit would suffer. He came to the conclusion, however, that the best service the United States could render to Mexico

was to respect her integrity and independence, and leave her to work out her own salvation. To the argument that Mexico was incapable of doing this, and that neither her integrity nor her independence was worthy of respect he consistently turned a deaf ear; nor was he much more attentive to the various commercial interests that were involved.

As one reads the story in the light of later events, one is tempted to believe that some kindly genius was warning the President of the situation he would shortly have to face. For, if he had acted on the lines demanded by his critics, he would not only have tied up a considerable part of the national resources at a time when they were all wanted for a far graver enterprise, but he would have seemed to be acting on the accursed principle which underlies the creed of Germany, and so deprived the Allies of the enormous moral force which the entry of America into the war has conferred on the common cause. Had Mexico been within striking distance of German aggression there is not a doubt she would have been conquered, exploited, and enslaved. We well regret that Mexico is still in the condition of chaos, and may possibly remain so for some time to come. But this is as nothing compared with the fact that President Wilson has clean hands.

I cannot refrain from thinking, however, that the President's experience with Mexico may be in some measure accountable for what I will venture to call a certain limitation of vision in his view of the smaller and weaker nations'- a limitation he shares with many who have less excuse for displaying it. In his public utterances, especially in those which refer to the League of Peace, he constantly tends to speak of these small

nations as though they were satisfied with their present smallness and nurtured no designs of expansion at the expense of their neighbors a description which is true of some of them and possibly of Mexico and of other Latin-American states with which the President has been brought into more immediate contact. Whether or no I am right in assigning this as the cause and perhaps I am totally wrong there can be no doubt that Mr. Wilson's habit of mind inclines him to think of small states as needing rather protection than restraint.

Again and again we find him referring to the right of small states to develop their own life in their own way, and to the duty of great states to protect them in this right. Unfortunately, however, there are some small states whose outstanding characteristic is the desire to become big ones at the expense of their neighbors, and whose notion of living their own life in their own way takes precisely that form. Small states of this character and there are several of them

are among the chief troublers of the peace of the world; and it would be difficult for Powers which were once small ones themselves, and have grown great by conquest, to make a rule forbidding the present small Powers from following their own example; and the first attempts to enforce such a rule would certainly lead to some embarrassing reminders, and perhaps to some bitter taunts. But here again the history of the United States has been very different from that of the other great Powers. She would be immune or almost immune from the taunts to which the others would be exposed. And this perhaps may also account, in part, for the fact that Mr. Wilson shows a tendency to overlook the