The greatness of a people is judged 1 from this new standpoint, not by its territorial extent or military power, but by what it has done for human prog

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ress.

Side by side with the teaching of history we should teach the living languages, not only for their 'utilitarian' value, but also because they reflect national character. Indeed, we can paraphrase Buffon's statement, Le style c'est l'homme, by saying Le style c'est la race. Even the most elementary instruction in the language and grammar of a foreign country may thus serve as an introduction to the psychology of its people, pending the acquirement of a still better instrument for such research in a knowledge of its national literature. For example, the very first words of English that a French child learns may well be used to illustrate a fundamental intellectual difference between Englishmen and Frenchmen. It is the Englishman's impulse to express everything in a concrete form. He does not say, as we French do, 'Bon jour' all day long, but 'Good morning,' and 'Good afternoon.' He has not a single word to express the general idea of promenade; he must specify the particular way in which this is done, a walk, a drive, a ride, and he even specifies horseback riding or bicycle riding. An Englishman visualizes an action instead of thinking of it abstractly. He reasons by images, while the Frenchman reasons by concepts. For an Englishman the essential thing is not so much the general action itself as the particular way in which it is performed. The same psychological quality makes him always place the adjective before the noun, because he thinks of the particular before the general. One nation has an analytical mind, which proceeds from the particular to the general; the other nation has a synthetic mind, which proceeds

from the general and the abstract to the particular.

A French pupil, if his attention is constantly directed to these nuances of the English language, will not only familiarize himself thus with the general qualities of the British mind, but he will acquire a certain taste for the concrete and the precise that will offset his innate tendencies to the other extreme. On the other hand, an Englishman who learns the mechanism of the French tongue, and its genius for synthesis, will acquire at the same time ability to reason in the Latin way, to grasp the constant and absolute element beneath the ever-varying superficial aspects of phenomena.

Why may we not hope that this system of education will in time attenuate the fundamental differences between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin mind differences which M. Painlevé used at a recent meeting of the League Assembly to explain the divergencies in the public policies of France and Great Britain? M. Poincaré, who is a typical Latin logician, would have understood the English better and would have made himself better understood by them, and Mr. Chamberlain would not have been so agitated over the idea that the policies of the two nations, so different from each other, were to be governed by the Geneva Protocol, — a universal rule, if Englishmen and Frenchmen had been for generations educated each in the other's modes of thought.

I consider, therefore, that by education, particularly in history and in languages, we can make much progress toward creating the fundamentals of an international mind, at least among the thinking element of every people. I need not proceed further and dwell on the immeasurably greater rôle that a thorough knowledge of national literatures will play here.

But the breath of life must be breathed into these inert facts of knowledge by the imagination. Michelet summarized in a short sentence the virtue and the magic of the imagination when he defined history as 'an integral resurrection of the past.' Similarly, a sense of international solidarity calls for an integral evocation, a concrete envisioning, of humanity in its entirety, as living and struggling shoulder to shoulder with ourselves. Abstract reasoning and manuals of morality cannot give us this vision. It is necessary that the child be trained from an early age to scan broad horizons, that the idea of international solidarity should assume in his mind the form of living, concrete, familiar images, in order that his concepts of other peoples and races may be something more than dead notions added to the mental furniture of a scholar's brain in order that they may become a living part of his everyday consciousness, and make internationalism one of the great and abiding realities of existence in his everyday thought. He must be trained to think of people of other blood and tongues, with their activities and occupations, their hopes and disappointments, not as strangers, but as neighbors and kinsmen in the larger human brotherhood. The needs and aspirations of other peoples ought not to present themselves to him as problems, as abstract puzzles calling for a purely intellectual solution, but as concrete and actual emotions and experiences akin to his own sensations and desires.

Many people cannot understand why the French attach such importance to Reparations, because they have not actually seen the ravages from which our country suffered, and are unable to visualize them. We cannot comprehend the tragic meaning that an Englishman attaches to the

word unemployment, because it does not raise before our eyes the misery of the multitudes in the slums and poorer quarters to which the workless laborer returns at night cast down and disheartened after his vain search for a job.

Sympathy is, in fact, the child of observation and imagination. The better we know other nations the better we shall like them, and the more effectively we shall be able to serve them. How are we to explain a certain type of aggressive pacifism, which is hardly a promoter of peace? Is it not because its exponents have never tried to put themselves in other people's places? They have always dwelt in the shadow of their individual and their national egoism, which unconsciously dominates all their moods and theories. They have never risen to the plane of mutual sympathy.

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A man with an enlightened knowledge of his own character, and of his country and humanity, will therefore not think of internationalism as a doctrine exterior to himself, or antagonistic to the ideal of the individual or of the fatherland. Quite the contrary, he will conceive it as the very law that governs the integral development of his being, projected over the whole universe. If this means dualism, it is no other dualism than the eternal conflict between the body and the spirit. The realization of internationalism is the limit which humanity constantly approaches in its secular pilgrimage toward spiritual unity. The platonic idea of an harmonious equilibrium of the human faculties under the authority of the spirit naturally expands into something greater-into a perfect equilibrium between national and international faculties and needs, into a universal harmony among nations engaged, to use the fine expression of H. G. Wells, 'in a common adventure.'

And that is to be soon, for does not the prophecy declare that in the years between 1926 and 1929 the Crescent shall override the Cross?

Yet he did not look quite English. The long, sallow face with marked features suggested an admixture from somewhere further east. Not Semite, either Jew or Arab; not exactly Magyar, or Czech, or Romany either. Yet a touch there was of the strange, fanciful, such as fancy might associate with the magic of the Pied Piper.

Later I asked. Yes, he was English on his father's side. His English forbears for generations had been soldiers; but on his mother's side he was of Cossack blood. Her name and rank need not be told, but her father had led Russian troops to within sight of Constantinople, and her uncle was the famous Skobelev, daring leader of cavalry, hero of the Shipka Pass, and winner of the few Russian successes in the long-drawn siege of Plevna when Osman Pasha held out stubbornly against the assaults of the besiegers. That Balkan war was an epic of my

1 From Cornhill Magazine (London literary monthly), May

schooldays, revived years afterward when I met an English officer who, as a lad, had served under Osman and endured the siege.

That blend of the Cossack, that heritage of Skobelev blood, accounted for everything strange. I was not astonished to hear that my man was born with the wanderlust, that he had a Varangian fever for war; yet not springing from a love of bloodshed or innate cruelty rather the strange electric thrill that possesses some men who are born to 'drink delight in battle.' It is a physical sense, he said, a tensity of spirit that breaks out in a bodily quivering; you feel, as it were, all the eyes of all your men piercing into you, their urgent spirit concentrated in yourself, as they look upon you to lead their charge which, for the moment, makes a man into something more than his single self- the concentration of hundreds of fighting wills. And he told a story of one of our great generals whose possession of this same instinctive power led him early to high rank. 'It was during the Russo-Japanese War,' he said, 'and this officer was Military Attaché with the Japanese army. We were together watching a grand assault of the Russians on a Japanese position. The Russian Guard, in their long gray overcoats, splendid men, perfectly disciplined, made a magnificent spectacle. We knew, what they did not, that they were advancing into a trap. Three masked batteries were about to open upon their flank. The wild ecstasy seized upon us both as we watched. I

managed to contain myself; he was carried away, and sprang to his feet, crying, "Ave, Cæsar, morituri te salutant!" Then the guns opened.'

Join this half-berserk sense to the wanderlust and you get a man who has spent his life seeking adventure all over the world. Wherever there was a 'scrap' there he would find himself. No Dugald Dalgetty bartering hard knocks for pay and changing service for the highest bidder, but an adventurer for the sake of adventure and the thrill of it, fighting as often as not for the under dog where adventure was most romantic. East and west he had gone: had fought in Mexico at the time of Carranza, had entered Lassa in disguise. He had penetrated into Afghanistan, secure in his half-Oriental face and his wide knowledge of Eastern languages. He knew the talk of the bazaars, had felt in everyday folk the tide of Moslem unrest. And he drew a vivid picture, heightening effects perhaps, and unconsciously enlarging things already known, out of active sympathy toward the side he had espoused.

The prophecy he quoted about the speedy overthrow of the Cross by the Crescent is not only believed in by the ignorant and fanatical-and Islam is the religion of fanaticism. India is astir with it; even Moslems who have studied in our Western universities, from Berlin to Harvard, from Paris to Oxford, profess at least to believe it, but whether from religious or political motives is another question.

Afghanistan, the most conservative country in the world now that Tibet has opened its gates to travelers, the most self-centred, anti-alien, and fanatical, is possessed with this idea, and automatic as its government is, is accepting from Soviet Russia-professed enemy alike of Capital and Cross -the means for imposing Afghan force

once more, as in past centuries, upon Northern India. Telegraphic communication with Moscow has been established amid great rejoicings; squadrons of Soviet airplanes are camped on Afghan territory. And now Morocco hints that the strongest tribe of the Tuaregs, finest and most relentless fighters of the Sahara, is making overtures to the Riffi to aid as good Moslems in a holy jehad for the extirpation of the unbeliever and of European suzerainty in North Africa. Proximus ardet, the fires which may produce a world-wide conflagration are very near the doors of Europe.

Less ardent observers, it is true, read the omens differently, but the view seemed characteristic of the man.

To-day, when the greater call of the World War is over, and service in our own army no longer needed, our adventurer has drifted to Morocco, where he has been one among the twoscore European officers of varied nationality who manage the artillery, lead troops, organize campaigns in support of hardy mountaineers who may be killed but will not surrender their independence to a conqueror type of so many mountain races. And he has won the name of Ishmael El Ambria el Saharan the Lion of the Sahara. Be it remembered that the Riffi are not a black race. They are not so tinged with Negroid or even Arab admixture as the Moor of the Lowlands.

They are Berbers, a white people, dark-skinned, dark-haired, a branch of the Mediterranean race which has provided much of the South European population, and has spread in prehistoric days as far as our own islands. They have been known for two thousand years as stiff in resisting coercion, whether of Roman governor or Arab caliph. In Africa they recovered their independence from their Arab rulers; in Spain they wrested rule from their

weaker brethren of the Moslem conquest, and carried the Moorish conquest north and north until at last they reeled back under the great hammerblow at Tours.

Now, long since expelled from Europe, they are encircled by the Western Powers who have marked out North Africa with separate spheres of influence. Western order cannot endure irregular and predatory neighbors. As England and the Lowlands had to pacify the raiding Highlanders, as India had to tame the lawless nations on its frontiers, so France and Spain seek to ensure order in the Highlands of the Atlas whence disorder may at any time flood into their civilized districts. That is sufficient motive, quite apart from the lure of the wealth that lies in the mineral resources of the mountains.

But order of that disciplined sort is hardly to the Berber mind. No, is their answer, and above all for free men: Upon compulsion, No. And a warlike spirit is fanned by religious fanaticism. South Africa has taught us, as it taught the Germans against the pitiful Hereros in German Southwest, the difficulties of guerrilla warfare in wild lands where means of communication are lacking and regular troops, unaccustomed to such conditions, are at a sad disadvantage.

In a war of attrition the few resolute thousands, ready to sally from their mountain fortresses, or to defend them to the last, can inflict incommensurable damage in life and treasure upon the numerous but less mobile forces of their assailants. In the judgment of those who have been in their ranks, they may be killed off, but they will not submit. Many of the neighboring tribes have been detached from them, for the time at least. One hope of theirs is to stir up new outbreaks elsewhere in North Africa in the rear of their assailants. Another is that the Great Pow

ers, already in financial difficulties at home, may consider it not worth while to continue the vast expense of war, however their military chiefs may urge that it is cheaper to make an end now than to begin all over again hereafter. My friend did not profess he was moved to join in the fray by anything more than the fighting instinct which had led him into other fighting fields. He did not pose as one who had rushed to help a nation 'rightly struggling to be free,' whatever satisfaction might afterward be drawn from the thought. He did not enter upon the struggle in the mood of Garibaldi's Englishman, or others of his kind who gave themselves to the cause of Italian freedom as to an ideal of humanity. The soldier in him came to imagine the possibility of another European Power settling down in military occupation of the land, fortifying a naval port outside the Straits to secure the entrance of the Mediterranean, and setting up a few Big Berthas fourscore miles from Gibraltar to pulverize its rocks, so much more vulnerable to shells than yielding earthworks. And, to aid Big Berthas, flights of bombing airplanes would come from bases so conveniently near. Such nightmares of high politics were doubtless a happy afterthought of militarism, stiffening the resolution once taken to uphold the Riffi, stout fighters, so acceptable to a fighting manall the more because a long-distance assault on Gibraltar, if ever contemplated, would be incomparably easier from within Spain than from Morocco.

The stubborn character of the war, the General asserted, is by no means reflected in the published dispatches of the French and Spaniards. Indeed the Riffi were often moved to laughter by the contrast between actual fact and European report, whether formally edited for publication or captured as unedited papers in trench raids. Vic