Chapter IX: Part 9

In the establishment of American houses in these countries, as in many other respects, much may be learned from the Germans. They bring out carefully selected young men. These, if efficient, have sure promotion. The partners retire before old age to make room for those who work up. The inefficient are dropped. It is a little like the principle of a good foreign service.

I think the most minute study should be given, first, to the nearer countries, say those north of the Equator, including the republics of the Caribbean. Each country must be separately studied. Primarily, there will be found a cry, sometimes desperate, for capital. Public works, concessionary and otherwise, have stopped for lack of funds from Europe. New developments in railroad building, mining, harbor works, plantations, are arrested. Where European credits have been customarily used to handle crops, there is distress, and no less so in cases in which such credit has previously been given by ostensibly American houses operating really with European capital.

American capital may come to the rescue by advances upon good security through local banks. It can establish banks or buy controlling interests in existing banks, many of which pay their stockholders 15 per cent. or more. It can relieve the stagnation and make profitable investment by an active campaign for public and private contracts and for sound and fair concessions, not visionary or get-rich-too-quick schemes.

Supposably, the repairing of the destruction brought by the war will make European capital scarce for some years, but an effort will doubtless be made to retain for it its former preponderance in these countries; and so it is important that, whatever the war's effects upon our own money markets, use should be made of such an opportunity as does not come more than once.

To be sure, the scarcity of money in the United States makes this difficult, but the same worldwide money scarcity will secure an especially high rate of interest in Latin America, where even in normal times money can often be placed on excellent security in some of the countries, and at a rate very high indeed compared to that prevailing now in the United States. For safe investments with such a margin of profit, it is to be hoped that money, even if dear at home, will be forthcoming.

Undoubtedly the purchasing power of these republics has been hard hit by the cutting off of credits and markets by the war, as their Governments have been hard hit through the falling off of revenues from import duties. Some of the Governments will require foreign loans. Capital, I repeat--and I mean really American capital--is the urgent need. We are not asked to make them a present of capital to buy our goods with, but if we do not help finance them and buy their products they will have nothing with which to buy our goods.

The situation invites us to give capital and credit to take the place of the European supply which has failed. One need not fear that the returns will be uninviting, for Europe would hardly have been supplying credit and capital to Latin America as a mere matter of amiability. Thus our capital must regenerate Latin-American prosperity, while our bankers, merchants, and manufacturers are engaged in making solid, permanent arrangements, not opportunistic ones, to take possession of a great share in the present and still more in the growing future development and commerce of these countries. Capital, then, and credit are the first requisites.

The war has had the effect of making the Latin-American countries realize for once the economic importance to them of the United States. The products of some, like the tin of Bolivia and the nitrates of Chile, have been going almost entirely to Europe. Several republics suffer the more acutely in proportion to their previous failure to cultivate financial and commercial relations with the United States.

They now feel this and are compelled to a mood receptive to our advances. More, they are forced to seek new markets for their goods just as they are forced to buy some of ours. In this way there should come about new exports to the United States, and there should spring up there the corresponding new industries and habits of consumption, to the ultimate benefit of all the countries concerned.

Meanwhile, the United States is the only present economic hope of a number of the republics. It is to be hoped that our capitalists and business men will realize the responsibilities as well as the opportunities of profit in the rôle they are asked to play, and that their response to their new opportunities will be one of courage, thoroughness and intelligence, and one also of quiet patriotism.

II.

POLITICAL POTENTIALITIES.

Turning from the opportunity to the lesson, from the commercial and economic aspects of this question to those that are political in the large sense, one's imagination is appalled at the potentialities of the yet unknown results of so vast an upheaval. Yet we must envisage some of these if we are to be prepared for their effect upon us. We must be ready for the impact of the resultant forces of these great dynamics. We must be ready everywhere, but nowhere more than in our relations with Latin America, in the zone of the Caribbean, and wherever the Monroe Doctrine as still interpreted gives us a varying degree of responsibility.

The war's first effect upon our Latin-American relations is to compel through commercial and financial rapprochement a larger measure of material interdependence, more contact, and, we may hope, a substitution of knowledge for the former reciprocity of ignorance. All this makes for better social and intellectual relations, good understanding and friendship, and so for political relations much more substantial in the case of many of the republics than the rather flimsy Pan-Americanism celebrated in eloquent speeches and futile international conferences.

There is little in Pan-Americanism of that kind. The "raza Latina" of eloquence is not itself homogeneous; still less so is the population of the whole hemisphere. And with Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Santiago we have, of course, far less propinquity than we have with the capitals of Europe. But what we really can do is to build up, especially with the nearer republics, real ties of common interest and good neighborhood, and with the distant ones ties of commerce and esteem.

The war may tend to cure certain rather self-centred countries of affecting the morbid view that the people of the United States are lying awake nights contriving to devour them, when, in fact, it would be hard to find in a crowded street in the United States one in a thousand of the passersby who knew more than the name, at most, of one of those very few countries referred to.

Europe's preoccupation with the war temporarily deprives such a country and its few misguided prophets whose monomania is dread of that chimera, the "Colossus of the North," of the pastime of nestling up to Europe in the hope of annoying us. It postpones, too, the hope of the morbid ones that we shall come to war with a powerful enemy. Now, perhaps, even these will appreciate the remark of a diplomatist of a certain weak country in contact with European powers, who once said: "If we only had the United States for a neighbor! What I can't understand is that your neighbors do not realize their good luck." Turning from these exceptional phenomena, the very fact of the war leaves the United States in a general position of greater political prestige.

Whatever the upshot of the European tragedy, its political and psychological consequences are likely to be great. If it result in new national divisions upon racial lines of more reality, who knows but that the awakened spirits of nationality will germinate fresh military ambitions? Or will the horrors of the war force political reforms and the search for assurance in more democratic institutions against any repetition of those horrors? And is popular government an assurance against useless war while men remain warlike even when not military?

Except from the successful countries or from those where disaster has brought such sobering change that men can return to work heartened with new hope, when the war is over there is likely to be a heavy emigration of disgusted people. Possibly even victory will be so dear that men will emigrate from a country half prostrate in its triumph. Many will come as the Puritans came, and as the bulk of our own excellent Germanic element came, and will cast in their lot with a new nation. We shall get a good share, but doubtless some will go to the republics of the far South, and some to the highlands of the tropics and through the canal to the West Coast. If so, this will tend gradually toward increased production and purchasing power, as well as toward a leavening of social, political, and economic conditions of life.

If the war were indecisive or left all the combatants more or less prostrated, peaceful immigration might give a big impulse to the gradual growing up of powerful States in the temperate zone of the extreme South. The situation there, and the evolution of our own power, make it perhaps even now fair to consider the question of regarding as optional in any given case the assertion by us of the Monroe Doctrine much below the equator, let us say, beyond which it may possibly be doubtful whether we have nowadays much reason for special interest.

But, even so, our relations to South America and our obligations under the Monroe Doctrine, in spite of the blessed fortifications of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, leave us where it is tempting fate to be without a navy of the first magnitude, and a big merchant marine. We have seen what happened to Belgium and Luxemburg. We have seen how even some of the most enlightened nations can still make force their god. Nations learn slowly, and there are perhaps some new big ones coming on, like China.

If the war is a fight to a finish, and the Allies triumph, we can imagine Russia, with its teeming millions of people, occupied for a while in the Near East; Japan consolidating her position in the Far East, an increasingly powerful neighbor to us in the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Pacific Ocean; France still a great power; and England as a world power of uncomfortably ubiquitous strength, able to challenge the Monroe Doctrine at will.

Or, let us suppose that Germany should triumph and that German emigration should swarm into the Caribbean countries, or into Brazil or some other country where there is already a large German colony--elated, triumphant Germans, not Germans disgusted by a disastrous war. Would Germany be likely to heed the Monroe Doctrine, or would it be only another "scrap of paper"?

In the present stage of civilization the safety of America should not be left dependent upon the forbearance of any power that may emerge dangerously strong from the war or that may otherwise arise. The obligations and rights of our Latin-American relations, under the Monroe Doctrine and otherwise, like our security and our efficiency as a force for peace and good in the world, demand a big navy, a merchant marine, and the self-discipline and safeguard of adequate military preparedness. The need of these and of a diplomacy of intelligent self-interest, continuity, and intense nationalism is the lesson brought home to us by the European war in its effects upon our Latin-American relations as well as upon our general position as a great power.

AN EASTER MESSAGE

By BEATRICE BARRY.

Into what depths of misery thou art hurled,
Belgium, thou second Saviour of the World!
Thou who hast died
For all of Europe, lo, we bathe thy feet
So cruelly pierced, and find the service sweet,
Thou crucified.

But though we mourn thy agony and loss,
And weep beneath the shadow of thy cross--
We know the day
That brings the resurrection and the life
Shall dawn for thee when war and all its strife
Hath passed away.

Then, out of all her travail and her pain,
Belgium, though crushed to earth, shall rise again;
And on the sod
Whence sprang a race so strong, so free from guile,
Men shall behold, in just a little while,
The smile of God.

Land of the brave--soon, by God's grace, the free--
Thy woe is transient; joy shall come to thee;
It cannot fail.
The darkest night gives way to rosy dawn,
And thou, perchance, shalt see on Easter morn,
The Holy Grail.

An Interview on the War With Henry James

By Preston Lockwood

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 21, 1915.]

One of the compensations of the war, which we ought to take advantage of, is the chance given the general public to approach on the personal side some of the distinguished men who have not hitherto lived much in the glare of the footlights. Henry James has probably done this as little as any one; he has enjoyed for upward of forty years a reputation not confined to his own country, has published a long succession of novels, tales, and critical papers, and yet has apparently so delighted in reticence as well as in expression that he has passed his seventieth year without having responsibly "talked" for publication or figured for it otherwise than pen in hand.

Shortly after the outbreak of the war Mr. James found himself, to his professed great surprise, Chairman of the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps, now at work in France, and today, at the end of three months of bringing himself to the point, has granted me, as a representative of THE NEW YORK TIMES, an interview. What this departure from the habit of a lifetime means to him he expressed at the outset:

"I can't put," Mr. James said, speaking with much consideration and asking that his punctuation as well as his words should be noted, "my devotion and sympathy for the cause of our corps more strongly than in permitting it thus to overcome my dread of the assault of the interviewer, whom I have deprecated, all these years, with all the force of my preference for saying myself and without superfluous aid, without interference in the guise of encouragement and cheer, anything I may think worth my saying. Nothing is worth my saying that I cannot help myself out with better, I hold, than even the most suggestive young gentleman with a notebook can help me. It may be fatuous of me, but, believing myself possessed of some means of expression, I feel as if I were sadly giving it away when, with the use of it urgent, I don't gratefully employ it, but appeal instead to the art of somebody else."

It was impossible to be that "somebody else," or, in other words, the person privileged to talk with Mr. James, to sit in presence of his fine courtesy and earnestness, without understanding the sacrifice he was making, and making only because he had finally consented to believe that it would help the noble work of relief which a group of young Americans, mostly graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, are carrying on along their stretch of the fighting line in Northern France.

Mr. James frankly desired his remarks to bear only on the merits of the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps. It enjoys today the fullest measure of his appreciation and attention; it appeals deeply to his benevolent instincts, and he gives it sympathy and support as one who has long believed, and believes more than ever, in spite of everything, at this international crisis, in the possible development of "closer communities and finer intimacies" between America and Great Britain, between the country of his birth and the country, as he puts it, of his "shameless frequentation."

There are many people who are eloquent about the war, who are authorities on the part played in it by the motor ambulance and who take an interest in the good relations of Great Britain and the United States; but there is nobody who can tell us, as Mr. James can, about style and the structure of sentences, and all that appertains to the aspect and value of words. Now and then in what here follows he speaks familiarly of these things for the first time in his life, not by any means because he jumped at the chance, but because his native kindness, whether consciously or unconsciously, seemed so ready to humor the insisting inquirer.

"It is very difficult," he said, seeking to diminish the tension so often felt by a journalist, even at the moment of a highly appreciated occasion, "to break into graceful license after so long a life of decorum; therefore you must excuse me if my egotism doesn't run very free or my complacency find quite the right turns."

He had received me in the offices of the corps, businesslike rooms, modern for London, low-ceiled and sparely furnished. It was not by any means the sort of setting in which as a reader of Henry James I had expected to run to earth the author of "The Golden Bowl," but the place is, nevertheless, today, in the tension of war time, one of the few approaches to a social resort outside his Chelsea home where he can be counted on. Even that delightful Old World retreat, Lamb House, Rye, now claims little of his time.

The interviewer spoke of the waterside Chelsea and Mr. James's long knowledge of it, but, sitting not overmuch at his ease and laying a friendly hand on the shoulder of his tormentor, he spoke, instead, of motor ambulances, making the point, in the interest of clearness, that the American Ambulance Corps of Neuilly, though an organization with which Richard Norton's corps is in the fullest sympathy, does not come within the scope of his remarks.

"I find myself Chairman of our Corps Committee for no great reason that I can discover save my being the oldest American resident here interested in its work; at the same time that if I render a scrap of help by putting on record my joy even in the rather ineffectual connection so far as 'doing' anything is concerned, I needn't say how welcome you are to my testimony. What I mainly seem to grasp, I should say, is that in regard to testifying at all unlimitedly by the aid of the newspapers, I have to reckon with a certain awkwardness in our position. Here comes up, you see, the question of our reconciling a rather indispensable degree of reserve as to the detail of our activity with the general American demand for publicity at any price. There are ways in which the close presence of war challenges the whole claim for publicity; and I need hardly say that this general claim has been challenged, practically, by the present horrific complexity of things at the front, as neither the Allies themselves nor watching neutrals have ever seen it challenged before. The American public is, of course, little used to not being able to hear, and hear as an absolute right, about anything that the press may suggest that it ought to hear about; so that nothing may be said ever to happen anywhere that it doesn't count on having reported to it, hot and hot, as the phrase is, several times a day. We were the first American ambulance corps in the field, and we have a record of more than four months' continuous service with one of the French armies, but the rigor of the objection to our taking the world into our intimate confidence is not only shown by our still unbroken inability to report in lively installments, but receives also a sidelight from the fact that numerous like private corps maintained by donations on this side of the sea are working at the front without the least commemoration of their deeds--that is, without a word of journalistic notice.

"I hope that by the time these possibly too futile remarks of mine come to such light as may await them Mr. Norton's report of our general case may have been published, and nothing would give the committee greater pleasure than that some such controlled statement on our behalf, best proceeding from the scene of action itself, should occasionally appear. The ideal would, of course, be that exactly the right man, at exactly the right moment, should report exactly the right facts, in exactly the right manner, and when that happy consummation becomes possible we shall doubtless revel in funds."

Mr. James had expressed himself with such deliberation and hesitation that I was reminded of what I had heard of all the verbal alterations made by him in novels and tales long since published; to the point, we are perhaps incorrectly told of replacing a "she answered" by a "she indefinitely responded."

I should, indeed, mention that on my venturing to put to Mr. James a question or two about his theory of such changes he replied that no theory could be stated, at any rate in the off-hand manner that I seemed to invite, without childish injustice to the various considerations by which a writer is moved. These determinant reasons differ with the context and the relations of parts to parts and to the total sense in a way of which no a priori account can be given.

"I dare say I strike you," he went on, "as rather bewilderedly weighing my words; but I may perhaps explain my so doing very much as I the other day heard a more interesting fact explained. A distinguished English naval expert happened to say to me that the comparative non-production of airships in this country indicated, in addition to other causes, a possible limitation of the British genius in that direction, and then on my asking him why that class of craft shouldn't be within the compass of the greatest makers of sea-ships, replied, after brief reflection: 'Because the airship is essentially a bad ship, and we English can't make a bad ship well enough.' Can you pardon," Mr. James asked, "my making an application of this to the question of one's amenability or plasticity to the interview? The airship of the interview is for me a bad ship, and I can't make a bad ship well enough."

Catching Mr. James's words as they came was not very difficult; but there was that in the manner of his speech that cannot be put on paper, the delicate difference between the word recalled and the word allowed to stand, the earnestness of the massive face and alert eye, tempered by the genial "comment of the body," as R.L. Stevenson has it.

Henry James does not look his seventy years. He has a finely shaped head, and a face, at once strong and serene, which the painter and the sculptor may well have liked to interpret. Indeed, in fine appreciation they have so wrought. Derwent Wood's admirable bust, purchased from last year's Royal Academy, shown by the Chantrey Fund, will be permanently placed in the Tate Gallery, and those who fortunately know Sargent's fine portrait, to be exhibited in the Sargent Room at the San Francisco Exhibition, will recall its having been slashed into last year by the militant suffragettes, though now happily restored to such effect that no trace of the outrage remains.

Mr. James has a mobile mouth, a straight nose, a forehead which has thrust back the hair from the top of his commanding head, although it is thick at the sides over the ears, and repeats in its soft gray the color of his kindly eyes. Before taking in these physical facts one receives an impression of benignity and amenity not often conveyed, even by the most distinguished. And, taking advantage of this amiability, I asked if certain words just used should be followed by a dash, and even boldly added: "Are you not famous, Mr. James, for the use of dashes?"

"Dash my fame!" he impatiently replied. "And remember, please, that dogmatizing about punctuation is exactly as foolish as dogmatizing about any other form of communication with the reader. All such forms depend on the kind of thing one is doing and the kind of effect one intends to produce. Dashes, it seems almost platitudinous to say, have their particular representative virtue, their quickening force, and, to put it roughly, strike both the familiar and the emphatic note, when those are the notes required, with a felicity beyond either the comma or the semicolon; though indeed a fine sense for the semicolon, like any sort of sense at all for the pluperfect tense and the subjunctive mood, on which the whole perspective in a sentence may depend, seems anything but common. Does nobody ever notice the calculated use by French writers of a short series of suggestive points in the current of their prose? I confess to a certain shame for my not employing frankly that shade of indication, a finer shade still than the dash.... But what on earth are we talking about?" And the Chairman of the Corps Committee pulled himself up in deprecation of our frivolity, which I recognized by acknowledging that we might indeed hear more about the work done and doing at the front by Richard Norton and his energetic and devoted co-workers. Then I plunged recklessly to draw my victim.

"May not a large part of the spirit which animates these young men be a healthy love of adventure?" I asked.

The question seemed to open up such depths that Mr. James considered a moment and began:

"I, of course, don't personally know many of our active associates, who naturally waste very little time in London. But, since you ask me, I prefer to think of them as moved, first and foremost, not by the idea of the fun or the sport they may have, or of the good thing they may make of the job for themselves, but by that of the altogether exceptional chance opened to them of acting blessedly and savingly for others, though indeed if we come to that there is no such sport in the world as so acting when anything in the nature of risk or exposure is attached. The horrors, the miseries, the monstrosities they are in presence of are so great surely as not to leave much of any other attitude over when intelligent sympathy has done its best.

"Personally I feel so strongly on everything that the war has brought into question for the Anglo-Saxon peoples that humorous detachment or any other thinness or tepidity of mind on the subject affects me as vulgar impiety, not to say as rank blasphemy; our whole race tension became for me a sublimely conscious thing from the moment Germany flung at us all her explanation of her pounce upon Belgium for massacre and ravage in the form of the most insolent, 'Because I choose to, damn you all!' recorded in history.

"The pretension to smashing world rule by a single people, in virtue of a monopoly of every title, every gift and every right, ought perhaps to confound us more by its grotesqueness than to alarm us by its energy; but never do cherished possessions, whether of the hand or of the spirit, become so dear to us as when overshadowed by vociferous aggression. How can one help seeing that such aggression, if hideously successful in Europe, would, with as little loss of time as possible, proceed to apply itself to the American side of the world, and how can one, therefore, not feel that the Allies are fighting to the death for the soul and the purpose and the future that are in _us_, for the defense of every ideal that has most guided our growth and that most assures our unity?

"Of course, since you ask me, my many years of exhibited attachment to the conditions of French and of English life, with whatever fond play of reflection and reaction may have been involved in it, make it inevitable that these countries should peculiarly appeal to me at the hour of their peril, their need and their heroism, and I am glad to declare that, though I had supposed I knew what that attachment was, I find I have any number of things more to learn about it. English life, wound up to the heroic pitch, is at present most immediately before me, and I can scarcely tell you what a privilege I feel it to share the inspiration and see further revealed the character of this decent and dauntless people.

"However, I am indeed as far as you may suppose from assuming that what you speak to me of as the 'political' bias is the only ground on which the work of our corps for the Allies should appeal to the American public. Political, I confess, has become for me in all this a loose and question-begging term, but if we must resign ourselves to it as explaining some people's indifference, let us use a much better one for inviting their confidence. It will do beautifully well if givers and workers and helpers are moved by intelligent human pity, and they are with us abundantly enough if they feel themselves simply roused by, and respond to, the most awful exhibition of physical and moral anguish the world has ever faced, and which it is the strange fate of our actual generations to see unrolled before them. We welcome any lapse of logic that may connect inward vagueness with outward zeal, if it be the zeal of subscribers, presenters or drivers of cars, or both at once, stretcher-bearers, lifters, healers, consolers, handy Anglo-French interpreters, (these extremely precious,) smoothers of the way; in short, after whatever fashion. We ask of nobody any waste of moral or of theoretic energy, nor any conviction of any sort, but that the job is inspiring and the honest, educated man a match for it.

"If I seem to cast doubt on any very driving intelligence of the great issue as a source of sympathy with us, I think this is because I have been struck, whenever I have returned to my native land, by the indifference of Americans at large to the concerns and preoccupations of Europe. This indifference has again and again seemed to me quite beyond measure or description, though it may be in a degree suggested by the absence throughout the many-paged American newspaper of the least mention of a European circumstance unless some not-to-be-blinked war or revolution, or earthquake or other cataclysm has happened to apply the lash to curiosity. The most comprehensive journalistic formula that I have found myself, under that observation, reading into the general case is the principle that the first duty of the truly appealing sheet in a given community is to teach every individual reached by it--every man, woman and child--to count on appearing there, in their habit as they live, if they will only wait for their turn.

"However," he continued, "my point is simply my plea for patience with our enterprise even at the times when we can't send home sensational figures. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' and the essence of our utility, as of that of any ambulance corps, is just to be there, on any and every contingency, including the blessed contingency of a temporary drop in the supply of the wounded turned out and taken on--since such comparative intermissions occur. Ask our friends, I beg you, to rid themselves of the image of our working on schedule time or on guarantee of a maximum delivery; we are dependent on the humors of battle, on incalculable rushes and lapses, on violent outbreaks of energy which rage and pass and are expressly designed to bewilder. It is not for the poor wounded to oblige us by making us showy, but for us to let them count on our open arms and open lap as troubled children count on those of their mother. It is now to be said, moreover, that our opportunity of service threatens inordinately to grow; such things may any day begin to occur at the front as will make what we have up to now been able to do mere child's play, though some of our help has been rendered when casualties were occurring at the rate, say, of 5,000 in twenty minutes, which ought, on the whole, to satisfy us. In face of such enormous facts of destruction--"

Here Mr. James broke off as if these facts were, in their horror, too many and too much for him. But after another moment he explained his pause.

"One finds it in the midst of all this as hard to apply one's words as to endure one's thoughts. The war has used up words; they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through increase of limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk."

This sounded rather desperate, yet the incorrigible interviewer, conscious of the wane of his only chance, ventured to glance at the possibility of a word or two on the subject of Mr. James's present literary intentions. But the kindly hand here again was raised, and the mild voice became impatient.

"Pardon my not touching on any such irrelevance. All I want is to invite the public, as unblushingly as possible, to take all the interest in us it can; which may be helped by knowing that our bankers are Messrs. Brown Brothers & Co., 59 Wall Street, New York City, and that checks should be made payable to the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps."

A Talk With Belgium's Governor

By Edward Lyall Fox

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 11, 1915.]

Copyright, 1915, by the Wildman News Service.

"It would have been a very grave mistake not to have invaded Belgium. It would have been an unforgivable military blunder. I justify the invading of Belgium on absolute military grounds. What other grounds are there worth while talking about when a nation is in a war for its existence?"

It is the ruler of German Belgium speaking. The stern, serious-faced Governor General von Bissing, whom they call "Iron Fist," the man who crushes out sedition. Returning, I had just come up from the front around Lille, and almost the only clothes I had were those on my back; and the mud of the trenches still clung to my boots and puttees in yellow cakes. They were not the most proper clothes in which to meet King Albert's successor, but in field gray I had to go.

The Governor General received me in a dainty Louis Quinze room done in rose and French gray, and filled incongruously with delicate chairs and heavy brocaded curtains, a background which instantly you felt precisely suited his Excellency. In the English newspapers, which, by the way, are not barred from Berlin cafés, I had read of his Excellency as the "Iron Fist," or the "Heavy Heel," and I rather expected to see a heavy, domineering man. Instead, a slender, stealthy man in the uniform of a General rose from behind a tapestry topped table, revealing, as he did, a slight stoop in his back, perhaps a trifle foppish. He held out a long-fingered hand.

General von Bissing spoke no English. Somehow I imagined him to be one of those old German patriots who did not learn the language simply because it was English. Through Lieut. Herrmann I asked the Governor General what Germany was doing toward the reconstruction of Belgium. I told him America, when I had left, was under the impression that Belgium was a land utterly laid waste by the German armies. I frankly told him that in America the common belief was that the German military Government meant tyranny; what was Germany doing for Belgium?

"I think," replied Governor General von Bissing, "that we are doing everything that can be done under the circumstances. Those farm lands which you saw, coming up from Lille to Brussels, were planted by German soldiers and in the Spring they will be harvested by our soldiers. Belgium has not been devastated, and its condition has been grievously misstated, as you have seen. You must remember that the armies have passed back and forth across it--German, Belgian, English, and French--but I think you have seen that only in the paths of these armies has the countryside suffered. Where engagements were not fought or shots fired, Belgium is as it was.

"There has been no systematic devastation for the purpose of intimidating the people. You will learn this if you go all over Belgium. As for the cities, we are doing the best we can to encourage business. Of course, with things the way they are now, it is difficult. I can only ask you to go down one of the principal business streets here, the Rue de la Neuf, for instance, and price the articles that you find in the shops and compare them with the Berlin prices. The merchants of Brussels are not having to sacrifice their stock by cutting prices, and, equally important, there are people buying. I can unhesitatingly say that things are progressing favorably in Belgium."

The conversation turned upon Belgian and English relations before this war. The Governor General mentioned documentary evidence found in the archives in Brussels, proving an understanding between these countries against Germany. He spoke briefly about the point that the subjects of King Albert had been betrayed into the hands of English financiers and then laconically said: "The people of Belgium are politically undisciplined children.

"They are the victims of subtle propaganda that generally takes the form of articles in French and neutral newspapers," and General von Bissing looked me straight in the eyes, as though to emphasize that by neutral he meant the newspapers of the United States. "I can understand the French doing this," he said, "because they always use the Belgians and do not care what happens to them. It is beyond my comprehension, though, how the Government of any neutral country permits the publication of newspaper articles that can have but one effect, and that is to encourage revolt in a captured people. A country likes to call itself humanitarian, and yet it persists in allowing the publication of articles that only excite an ignorant, undisciplined people and lead them to acts of violence that must be wiped out by force," and the Governor General's mouth closed with a click.

"Do you know that the people of Brussels, whenever a strong wind carries the booming of heavy guns miles in from the front, think that French and English are going to recapture the city? Any day that we can hear the guns faintly, we know that there is an undercurrent of nervous expectancy running through the whole city. It goes down alleys and avenues and fills the cafés. You can see Belgians standing together, whispering. Twice they actually set the date when King Albert would return.

"This excitement and unrest, and the feeling of the English coming in, is fostered and encouraged by the articles in French and neutral newspapers that are smuggled in. I do not anticipate any uprising among the Belgians, although the thoughtless among them have encouraged it. An uprising is not a topic of worry in our councils. It could do us no harm. We would crush it out like that," and von Bissing snapped his thin fingers, "but if only for the sake of these misled and betrayed people, all seditious influences should cease."

I asked the Governor General the attitude of officials of the Belgian Government who were being used by the Germans in directing affairs.

"My predecessor, General von der Goltz," he replied, "informed me that the municipal officials in Brussels and most Belgian cities showed a good co-operative spirit from the start. The higher officials were divided, some refusing flatly to deal with the German administration. I do not blame these men, especially the railway officials, for I can see their viewpoint. In these days railway roads and troop trains were inseparable, and if those Belgian railway officials had helped us, they would have committed treason against their country. There was no need, though, for the Post Office officials to hold out, and only lately they have come around. Realizing, however, that without their department the country would be in chaos, the officials of the Department of Justice immediately co-operated with us. Today the Belgian Civil Courts try all ordinary misdemeanors and felonies. Belgian penal law still exists and is administered by Belgians. However, all other cases are tried by a military tribunal, the Feld Gericht."

I asked General von Bissing if there was much need for this military tribunal. I shall not forget his reply.

"We have a few serious cases," he said. "Occasionally there is a little sedition but for the most part it is only needle pricks. They are quiet now. They know why," and, slowly shaking his head, von Bissing, who is known as the sternest disciplinarian in the entire German Army, smiled.

We talked about the situation in America.

"The truth will come out," said von Bissing slowly. "Your country is renowned for fair play. You will be fair to Germany, I know. Your American Relief Commission is doing excellent work. It is in the highest degree necessary. At first the German Army had to use the food they could get by foraging in Belgium, for the country does not begin to produce the food it needs for its own consumption, and there were no great reserves that our troops could use. But the German Army is not using any of the Belgian food now."

Sultan of Turkey.

_(Photo from P.S. Rogers.)_]

King of Italy.]

I asked the Governor General if the Germans had not been very glad that America was sending over food.

"It is most important," he said, "that America regularly sends provisions to Belgium. Your country should feel very proud of the good it has done here. I welcome the American Relief Committee; we are working in perfect harmony. Despite reports to the contrary, we never have had any misunderstanding. Through the American press, please thank your people for their kindness to Belgium.

"But," he continued impressively, referring back to the justification of Germany's occupation and speaking with quiet force, "if we had not sent our troops into Belgium, the English would have landed their entire expeditionary army at Antwerp, and cut our line of communication. How do I know that? Simply because England would have been guilty of the grossest blunder if she had not done that, and the man who is in charge of England's Army has never been known as a blunderer."

A CHARGE IN THE DARK

By O.C.A. CHILD.

Out of the trenches lively, lads!
Steady, steady there, number two!
Step like your feet were tiger's pads--
Crawl when crawling's the thing to do!

Column left, through the sunken road!
Keep in touch as you move by feel!
Empty rifles--no need to load--
Night work's close work, stick to steel!

Wait for shadows and watch the clouds,
When it's moonshine, down you go!
Quiet, quiet, as men in shrouds,
Cats a-prowl in the dark go slow.

Curse you, there, did you have to fall?
Damn your feet and your blind-bat eyes!
Caught in the open, caught--that's all!
Searchlights! slaughter--we meant surprise!

Shrapnel fire a bit too low--
Gets us though on the ricochet!
Open order and in we go,
Steel, cold steel, and we'll make 'em pay.

God above, not there to win?
Left, while my men go on to die!
Take them in, Sergeant, take them in!
Go on, fellows, good luck--good-bye!

A New Poland

By Gustave Hervé

Gustave Hervé, author of the article translated below, which
appears in a recent number of his paper, La Guerre
Sociale--suppressed, it is reported, by the French
authorities--has been described as "the man who fights all
France." He is 44 years old, and has spent one-fourth of his
life in prison, on account of Socialistic articles against the
French flag and Government. He used to continue writing such
articles from prison and thus get his sentences lengthened.

Hervé has always opposed everything savoring of militarism and
conquest. From his article on Poland it will be seen that,
although he says nothing anti-French or antagonistic to the
Allies in general, he desires a Russian triumph over Germany
not for his own sake, but as a preliminary to a reconstruction
of the Polish Nation out of the lands wrested from Poland by
Russia, Germany, and Austria.

In spite of its vagueness, the Grand Duke Nicholas's proclamation justifies the most sanguine hopes. This has been recognized not only by all the Poles whom it has reached, those of Russian Poland, and the three million Polish refugees who live in America, but moreover, all the Allies have interpreted it as a genuine promise that Poland would be territorially and politically reconstructed.

What would it be right to include in a reconstructed Poland, if the great principle of nationality is to be respected?

First, such a Poland would naturally include all of the Russian Poland of today--by that I mean all the districts where Poles are in a large majority. This forms a preliminary nucleus of 12,000,000 inhabitants, among whom are about 2,000,000 Jews. This great proportion of Jews is accounted for by the fact that Poland is in the zone where Jews are allowed to live in Russia.

Our new Poland would not comprise the ancient Lithuania--the districts of Wilno, Kovno, and Grodno--although Lithuania formerly was part of Poland and still has about one million Polish inhabitants who form the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Lithuania, which is really the region of the Niemen, is peopled by Letts, who have their own language, resembling neither Polish nor Russian, and they likewise hope to obtain some day a measure of autonomy in the Russian Empire, with the right to use their language in schools, churches, and civil proceedings. One thing is certain: they would protest, and rightly, against actual incorporation into the new Poland.

The 125,000 square kilometers and 12,000,000 inhabitants of Russian Poland, lying around Warsaw, would constitute the nucleus of reconstructed Poland.

Must we add to this the 79,000 square kilometers and 8,000,000 inhabitants of Galicia, which was Austria's share in the spoils of old Poland? Certainly, so far as western Galicia around Cracow is concerned, for this is a wholly Polish region, the Poles there numbering 2,500,000.

As for eastern Galicia, of which the principal city is Lemberg, (Lvov in Polish,) the question is more delicate. Though Eastern Galicia has over 1,500,000 Poles and 600,000 Jews, most of the population is Ruthenian. Now these Ruthenians, who are natives, subjugated in former times by the conquering Poles, and who still own much of the big estates, are related to the "Little Russians," the southerners of Russia, and speak a dialect which is to Russian what Provençal is to French.

Besides, whereas the Poles are Catholics, the Ruthenians are Greek Orthodox Christians like the Russians, but differ from the latter in that they are connected with the Roman Church, and are thus schismatics in the eyes of the Russian priests.

Should these Ruthenians be annexed to Russia along with the 1,500,000 Poles and 500,000 Jews, among whom they have lived for centuries, they would scarcely look upon this as acceptable unless they were certain of having under Russian rule at least equal political liberty and respect for their dialect and religion as they have under Austrian rule.

Should they be incorporated with the rest of Polish Galicia into the new Poland? It is hardly probable that they desire this, having enjoyed under Austria a considerable measure of autonomy as regards their language and schools. Would not the best solution be to make of Eastern Galicia an autonomous province of the reconstructed Poland, guaranteeing to it its local privileges?

That leaves for consideration the portion of Poland now forming part of Prussia.

There can be no question as to what should be done with the districts of Posen and Thorn. These are the parts of Poland stolen by Prussia, which the Prussians, a century and a quarter after the theft, have not succeeded in Germanizing.

North of the Posen district is Western Prussia, whose principal city is Dantzic; that too is a Polish district, stolen in 1772. Since then Dantzic has been Germanized and there are numerous German officials and employes in the other towns of the region. All the rural districts and a part of the towns, however, have remained Polish in spite of attempts to Germanize them as brutal as those applied to Posnania. But, if united Poland should include Western Prussia, as she has the right to do--there being no rule against what is right--Eastern Prussia, including Königsberg, will be cut off from the rest of Germany.

Now, Eastern Prussia, with the exception of the southern part about the Masurian Lakes, which has remained Polish, has been German from early mediaeval times. It is the home of the most reactionary junkers of all Prussia, a cradle of Prussian royalty and of the Hohenzollerns. Despite our hatred for these birds of prey, could we wish that the new Poland should absorb these 2,000,000 genuine Germans?

If the region of Königsberg remains Prussian and the Masurian Lakes region is added to Poland, why not leave to Germany the strip of land along the coast, including Dantzic, in order that Eastern Prussia may thus be joined to Germany at one end?

Another question: There is in Prussian Upper Silesia a district, that of Oppeln, rich in iron ore, which was severed in the Middle Ages from Poland, but which has remained mostly Polish and which adjoins Poland. If the majority of Polish residents there demand it, would it not be well to join it once more to Poland, which would become, by this addition, contiguous to the Czechs of Bohemia?

To sum up:

Without laying hands on the German district of Königsberg, united Poland, by absorbing all the territory at present held by Prussia, in which the majority of the inhabitants are Poles, will take from the latter 70,000 square kilometers and 5,700,000 inhabitants. With these, the new Poland would have 24,000,000 inhabitants, including Eastern Galicia.

If Russia gave to this Poland in lieu of actual independence the most liberal autonomy and reconstructed a Polish kingdom under the suzerainty of the Czar--a Poland with its Diet, language, schools and army--would not the present war seem to us a genuine war of liberation and Nicholas II. a sort of Czar-liberator?

And if resuscitated Poland, taught by misfortune, compassionate toward the persecuted and proscribed because she herself has been persecuted and proscribed, should try to cure herself of her anti-Semitism, which has saddened her best friends in France, would not you say that she indeed deserved to be resuscitated from among the dead?

"With the Honors of War"

By Wythe Williams

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]

It was just at the dawn of a March morning when I got off a train at Gerbéviller, the little "Martyr City" that hides its desolation as it hid its existence in the foothills of the Vosges.

There was a dense fog. At 6 A.M. fog usually covers the valleys of the Meurthe and Moselle. From the station I could see only a building across the road. A gendarme demanded my credentials. I handed him the laisser-passer from the Quartier Général of the "First French Army," which controls all coming and going, all activity in that region. The gendarme demanded to know the hour when I proposed to leave. I told him. He said it would be necessary to have the permit "viséd for departure" at the headquarters of the gendarmerie. He pointed to the hazy outlines of another building just distinguishable through the fog.

This was proof that the town contained buildings--not just a building. The place was not entirely destroyed, as I had supposed. I went down the main street from the station, the fog enveloping me. I had letters to the town officials, but it was too early in the morning to present them. I would first get my own impressions of the wreck and the ruin. But I could see nothing on either hand as I stumbled along in the mud. So I commented to myself that this was not as bad as some places I had seen. I thought of the substantial station and the buildings across the road--untouched by war. I compared Gerbéviller with places where there is not even a station--where not one simple house remains as the result of "the day when the Germans came."

The road was winding and steep, dipping down to the swift little stream that twists a turbulent passage through the town. The day was coming fast but the fog remained white and impenetrable. After a few minutes I began to see dark shapes on either side of the road. Tall, thin, irregular shapes, some high, some low, but with outlines all softened, toned down by the banks of white vapor.