I HAVE signed the Peace Treaty, not because I consider it a satisfactory document, but because it is imperatively necessary to close the war; because the world needs peace above all, and nothing could be more fatal than the continuance of the state of suspense between war and peace. The six months since the armistice was signed have, perhaps, been as upsetting, unsettling, and ruinous to Europe as the previous four years of war. I. look upon the Peace Treaty as the close of these two chapters of war and armistice, and only on that ground do I agree to it. I say this now, not in criticism, but in faith; not because I wish to find fault with the work done, but rather because I feel that in the treaty we have not yet achieved the real peace to which our peoples were looking, and because I feel that the real work of making peace will only begin after this treaty has been signed, and a definite halt has thereby been called to the destructive passions that have been desolating Europe for nearly five years. This treaty is simply the liquidation of the war situation in the world.

The promise of the new life, the victory of the great human ideals, for which the peoples have shed their blood and their treasure without stint, the fulfillment of their aspirations toward a new international order, and a fairer, better world, are not written in this treaty, and will not be written

in treaties. 'Not in this Mountain, nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth,' as the Great Master said, must the foundations of the new order be laid. A new heart must be given, not only to our enemies, but also to us: a contrite spirit for the woes which have overwhelmed the world; a spirit of pity, mercy, and forgiveness for the sins and wrongs which we have suffered. A new spirit of generosity and humanity, born in the hearts of the peoples in this great hour of common suffering and sorrow, can alone heal the wounds which have been inflicted on the body of Christendom.

And this new spirit among the peoples will be the solvent for the problems which the statesmen have found too hard at the Conference. There are territorial settlements which will need revision. There are guaranties laid down which we all hope will soon be found out of harmony with the new, peaceful temper and unarmed state of our former enemies. There are punishments foreshadowed, over most of which a calmer mood may yet prefer to pass the sponge of oblivion. There are indemnities stipulated, which cannot be enacted without grave injury to the industrial revival of Europe, and which it will be in the interests of all to render more tolerable and moderate. There are numerous pinpricks which will cease to pain under the healing influences of the new international atmosphere. The real peace of the peo

ples ought to follow, complete, and amend the peace of the statesmen.

In this treaty, however, two achievements of far-reaching importance for the world are definitely recorded. The one is the destruction of Prussian militarism; the other is the institution of the League of Nations. I am confident that the League of Nations will yet prove the path of escape for Europe out of the ruin brought about by this war. But the League is as yet only a form. It still requires the quickening life which can only come from the active interest and the vitalizing contact of the peoples themselves. The new creative spirit, which is once more moving among the peoples in their anguish, must fill the institution with life and with inspiration for the pacific ideals born of this war, and so convert it into a real instrument of progress. In that way the abolition of militarism, in this treaty, unfortunately, confined to the enemy, may soon come as a blessing and relief to the Allied peoples as well. And the enemy peoples should at the earliest possible date join the League, and, in collaboration with the Allied peoples, learn to practise the great lesson of this war, that, not in separate ambitions or in selfish domination, but in common service for the great human causes, lies the true path of national progress. This joint collaboration is especially necessary to-day for the reconstruction of a ruined and broken world.

The war not only has resulted in the utter defeat of the enemy armies, but has gone immeasurably further. We witness the collapse of the whole political and economic fabric of Central and Eastern Europe. Unemployment, starvation, anarchy, war, disease, despair, stalk through the land. Unless the victors can effectively extend a helping hand to the defeated and

The Morning Post

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broken peoples a large part of Europe is threatened with exhaustion and decay. Russia has already walked into the night, and the risk that the rest may follow is very grave indeed. The effects of this disaster would not be confined to Central and Eastern Europe. For civilization is one body, and we are all members of one another.

A supreme necessity is laid on all to grapple with this situation. And in the joint work of beneficence the old feuds will tend to be forgotten, the roots of reconciliation among the peoples will begin to grow again, and ultimately flower into active, fruitful, lasting peace. To the peoples of the United States and the British Empire, who have been exceptionally blessed with the good things of life, I would make a special appeal. Let them exert themselves to the utmost in this great work of saving the wreckage of life and industry on the Continent of Europe. All this is, I hope, capable of accomplishment; but only on two conditions.

In the first place, the Germans must convince our peoples of their good faith, of their complete sincerity through a real honest effort to fulfill their obligations under the treaty to the extent of their ability. They will find the British people disposed to meet them halfway in their unexampled difficulties and perplexities. But any resort to subterfuges or to underhand means to defeat or evade the Peace Treaty will only revive old suspicions and rouse anger, and prove fatal to a good understanding. And, in the second place, our Allied peoples must remember that God gave the overwhelming victory, victory far beyond their greatest dreams, not for small selfish ends, not for financial or economic advantages, but for the attainment of the great human ideals, for which our heroes gave their lives.

THE AMERICANIZATION OF ENGLAND

BY SIR SIDNEY LOW

THE Americanization of this country goes on at a great pace. American stories and magazines are stacked on every bookstall. About half the new plays which are presented on the London stage come from across the Atlantic; so do many of the revues, and variety entertainments, and music-hall shows. The English theatrical manager is now as much interested in New York and Chicago as he used to be in Paris. We get our dances from Amer. ica, with the weird music to which they are enacted. Our mothers and grandmothers floated through the valse to the dreamy sensuousness of Strauss and Gingl and other Viennese composers. To-day young couples — and middle-aged couples-jerk and jazz, while minstrels imitate or exaggerate the noises which arose from the banging of tin kettles and rattling of saucepan lids at negro camp meetings in the Southern States. Thus does the course of Empire pursue its westward

way.

The greatest American 'spiritual' conquest of all is that of the cinema. In the world of the film America is supreme; at any rate she has far more than a two-Power superiority. One hears much of new British companies, and combinations, which are to produce native films, sufficiently striking, 'boomed' with the requisite energy, and supported by the necessary vast capital, to compete with the American importations, and even to overcome them in our markets. One may hope something will come of these enterprises; for there is the possibility of a great art in the cinema theatres which will in time lift them clear of vulgarity and mere profit mongering. We would

like to think that it may reach its highest possibilities in this country, on the artistic as well as the commercial and mechanical side. In the meantime, the Americans hold the field, and they supply, I believe, about ninety per cent of all the films shown in our picture theatres. Millions of English, Scottish, and Irish men, women, and children see these American photographs every week of their lives. The cinema is the chief recreation of the masses of the people perhaps it may be said their chief interest outside their own work and domestic affairs. It has superseded the church, the meeting house, the lecture platform; it outshines the novel and the popular magazines; it is overtaking its most formidable rival, the cheap illustrated daily and weekly newspaper. And it is, in the main, American.

This is surely a matter of deep interest and significance. Nearly all classes of our population, except perhaps the intellectuals, and even they are beginning to frequent the

pictures,' are habitually and constantly seeing life through American spectacles. Certain phases of American society must be better known to our small tradesmen, mechanics, laborers, with their wives, sons, and daughters, than our own. What goes on, from the scenario writer's point of view, within the luxurious mansions and country houses of American financiers has been revealed to every English shop assistant and factory hand. They know all about the mammoth hotels, and the sumptuous restaurants, and the dance hal's and night clubs, and the seaside or hillside pleasure resorts. They know the ways of the millionaire, upright or shady, generally shady,- and the ways of the adventurer, who aspires after his dollars or his daughter, and the ways of the

Wild West, where stalwart young men with revolvers defend virtuous school mistresses. They know all about those other young men, the fast young men who engage in the pleasures of the town, and tempt 'business girls' to stray into the paths of error. They gaze at American houses, American furniture, American scenery; they confront American police captains, and American trainmen, and American criminals. The moral presented to them is that of the writer of the American story. For them the difficult epigrams in which the composer of the American scenario is accustomed to express his thoughts have no mysteries. They can construe the sub-titles offhand, translate even the obscurest of them at sight.

No wonder our younger generation talks American. No wonder astute advertisers, anxious to catch the prevailing note, allure us with direct personal exhortations in the manner of the American publicity expert, who is an acknowledged master of his craft. Mr. Jones no longer informs the nobility and gentry that he has a stock of goods which he is prepared to sell at a moderate price. He prefers a more direct and demonstrative form. 'You are a business man; your time means money. You cannot afford to cut it to waste by fooling around after low-grade stuff. It is up to you to get the best. You get it, and get it quick, from A. P. Jones. Why? Because A. P. Jones specializes in mind-saving. A. P. Jones has studied this thing out. He knows that you need your brains for live work, not for worrying over back numbers. Therefore, -,' and so on, for a vivid column or two. The language, the mode of thought, would have been unintelligible to most Britons a few years ago. But O. Henry, and the American magazines, and 'Uncle Sam' plays, and the cinema,

but most of all the cinema, have made it familiar in our mouths as household words. No missionary ever had such a preaching stool in foreign lands as this pictorial pulpit, which is set up several times a day- everywhere.

One might speculate widely as to what the results of this feast of film kultur are likely to be. From one point of view you might say there is something obviously beneficial in it. We are all asking that the two Englishspeaking peoples shall be brought into closer communion, that they shall get to know more of one another. Well, is not the cinema reaching toward this high purpose? is it not, at least, making the Americans better known to the British, and giving us a deeper understanding of our kinsmen across the ocean? Is it? I am not so sure. For the view we get of the United States on the films, and indeed through the other agencies of popular information, is scrappy, incomplete, and distorted. In the popular screen pictures, as in the popular 'best-selling' novels, and in the only kind of American periodical publications which circulate in Great Britain, we have certain phases of American life over-emphasized, and others ignored. After all, a great nation does not consist mainly of 'crooks' and criminals and dishonest financiers, and impossibly sentimental girls, and fatuous 'society women,' and funny men playing the fool brilliantly. If you were to judge the United States from the majority of the picture shows, or from the magazines on sale in England, you would form an erroneous impression. There are other aspects of that varied and vivid civilization. But we do not see much of those other aspects; we do not understand, for example, how intensely sober America is under this surface frivolity so insistently presented to us; how much there is of genuine thought, earnest effort, and

OF Anatole France, as of Mr. Bernard Shaw, it can be said that to see him once is to store a memory. There is such kindly cruelty in his shrewd eyes, such friendly malice in his short beard. The great Frenchman looks like his books: he is ironic and pitiful. In all his works, some thirty of them, that note is felt. He sees mankind as small, wretched, blinded by its own superstitions, and yet simple, lovable, beautiful. He sees man sanely, and sees him whole; he pities him for falling into illusion, he loves him because he can commit art. And now and then he hates him as inferior to his ideal; then he lashes him with satire.

It is mainly as a satirist that Anatole France will be remembered. His chief works, Penguin Island, Contemporary History, The Gods Are Athirst, The Revolt of the Angels, all these are less novels than satires cast in fiction form. He never falsifies his picture by forcing life to conform to it; he contents himself with sketching the adventures of priests attaining bishoprics by the narrow path of comic intrigue, of mock conspirators, of politicians astride on the popular donkey, of capitalists making money for the good of the people. And he is not always kind to the people. A declared Socialist, he loves the people, but is

not taken in by them. Thus, in The Gods Are Athirst, he pricks with savage irony the historic figures of the French Revolution; demonstrates that Jacobin, Girondin, Royalist, all well meaning, were theatrical and showed off. For he will not be deceived; that is the centre of Anatole France's mind; he will not even be deceived by women, whom he loves; only in The Red Lily has he painted a woman with any nobility; nearly all the others are flighty, frivolous, and charming.

Being a Frenchman, carrying the great tradition of Voltaire and of Renan, Anatole France naturally enlisted under the anti-clerical banner, because in France the Roman Catholic Church is a political force in a sense quite different from the Church of England here. As a Socialist he found the Roman Catholic Church actively inimical; so he took up the torch fallen from Diderot's hand and set out to 'crush the infamous one.' He had much to do with the movement which, after the Dreyfus case, separated the French Church from the state. In nearly all his books appear clerics who plot with nobleman and capitalist to overthrow the Republic. He is just enough, for the years 1898 to 1905, in France, were as full of clerical and political intrigue as any Florentine court. Coups d'état, military dictatorships, Bourbons traveling from London in egg boxes-all this was within likelihood. Anatole France poked so much cruel fun at these people that, by becoming ridiculous, they became powerless. He sank forever General Mercier (the chief persecutor of Dreyfus), by causing his prototype to say, 'If you must have evidence against the traitor. . . invent it; manufactured evidence is better than the truth because it is made to order.'

Anatole France does not limit his attacks to the Church. He takes a defi