would be on the rear of this German army.

The announcements of the French and English War Offices on the evening of the 8th assert that this Allied Army of the Left has begun a successful offensive and the French Center is repulsing the German attack, and, in some places, advancing.

Unless the Germans break through the French line somewhere in a very short time, their western campaign will have failed. Daily the over-seas reinforcements are reaching the Allies. Daily the Russian menace grows more threatening.

It is thankless work prophesying about the impending decisive battle." So far for reasons they have not disclosed-the Allies have managed to avoid it. They may do so again. But it hardly seems possible unless they are willing to sacrifice Verdun, as they have already sacrificed Lille and Amiens and the north of France.

And, as I wrote last week, the issue, when it comes, will be decided by the morale of the opposing armies. "Which has the more stamina?" is still the most interesting question. Both sides have endured almost superhuman strain. The realignment is not very important. Neither side has yet broken the other. Which of the two armies has the more confidence?

The only new element of importance in the western campaign is this shadowy army of Cossacks which is rumored to be gathering in Ostend.

mans would call it a conflict efficiency and enthusiasm. Whichever is the more just description of the opposing forces, the difference in their point of view is very evident. How the mass of civilized folk are going to look on life depends very largely on the outcome of this war.

The German ideal is an immensely able, highly trained corps of leaders, foreseeing every contingency and never unprepared. It had its first expression in Bismarck and Moltke, who claimed to have prearranged every detail of the campaign of 1870. It is illustrated by the story of an American in Berlin who called last week on the Chief of

Staff and began apologizing for intruding on "Oh,' a person who must be so very busy. the General replied, "I'm not busy now. Everything was prepared beforehand." It means that every soldier in the field not only has stout shoes, but a bottle of scientifically prepared oil to keep them soft and watertight. It means that every regiment has its own train of automobile trucks-immensely expensive and utterly useless in peace, but ready for der Tag.

The French ideal is "la levée en masse every able-bodied man snatching up what arms come to hand and rushing to the frontier to defend "La Patrie en danger." It was personified by the barefoot Republican armies which rose out of the ground to the magic of the blazing eloquence of the lawyer Danton, and defeated greater odds than Germany is now facing. It means the motor omnibuses of Paris suddenly transformed into commissary wagons.

Lieutenant-Colonel Montaigne in his book "Vaincre " (To Conquer) has expressed the extreme of this view, and it seems to me to be typically French as distinct from Ger

man.

He cites endless cases, from Thermopylæ down to modern times, to prove that God does not always fight on the side of the greater number. He only grudgingly admits the advisability of keeping one's powder dry. All great world issues, he maintains, have been decided by moral force-" une force morale." He holds that it is more important to teach the boys in school an ardent patriotism than to teach the young men in barracks marksmanship and maneuvers. Above all, he argues, the warrior who is to conquer must be inspired by a passionate hatred towards the enemies of his country.

"The true spirit of war," he writes, "is the spirit of destruction, of murder. The immediate object of a combat is not the victory but to kill. You march only to kill, and you shoot only to kill, and you jump at the throat of the enemy only to kill, and you go on killing till there is nothing more left to kill.

"So the passion of war par excellence is the supreme desire to murder-the spirit of revenge, of hate."

But it is not enough for the entire nation to be inspired by this immense and murderous hate; it must have an equal passion for self-immolation.

"The essence of war is the spirit of destruction, but the essence of victory is the

spirit of sacrifice. Victory goes only to absolute devotion."

This, in spite of its gospel of hate, has been called the moral theory of war. Beside any German military treatise it presents a striking contrast. There is hardly a word in it about the "Manual of Arms or "Cavalry Tactics." It gives no instruction in loading a rifle nor in aiming a cannon. It deals little with what a soldier should do; its main preoccupation is how he should feel.

Alfred Capus, the talented Academician, had an editorial in a recent issue of "Figaro" when the threat of a siege hung over Paris"Ce qu'il faut :"

What is now necessary-in fact, it is the one condition of national safety-is an inexhaustible reserve of moral force. . . .

"Let me repeat. The one condition is that the army and its chiefs shall feel back of them a country ready for all sacrifices, with souls. undaunted, unwavering wills, and a clear-cut, coherent government.

"A weakening of the will, a feebleness of soul, would be as detestable as desertion. To lack sang-froid to-day is to desert before the enemy. It is betrayal.

We all have our duty-the Government, the press, public opinion. This duty, in a single word, is firmness-which implies accord, calm, stoic acceptance of events, ardent confidence in the destiny of our country.

"At certain critical hours a cry of anger is a blasphemy, a doubt may be a crime. The victory is hard to win, but certain. Let the entire nation deserve it. Each to his post! Let us take for ourselves the simple and sublime words of the great Englishman: France expects every man to do his duty.

One would scarcely find such an editorial

in the Berlin papers. A more typical Ger

man utterance in this time of stress is the Kaiser's speech in which he bade his people Be of good cheer. I will lead you to victory."

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ciency of an arbitrary, centralized government or the diffused enthusiasm of democracy, which in the great days of '93 was able to extemporize victory.

To be sure, France is very proud of her admirable field artillery and her daring cruisers of the air, but when it comes down to a bitter crisis it is not on such material excellencies that she relies.

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IN REGARD TO ATROCITIES

For weeks we have been hearing charges of inhuman cruelties committed by the German troops-from French and Belgian sources. The newspapers from Germany which reach us two weeks or more late are full of circumstantial accounts of atrocities practiced by the Belgians, and of French murder and rape in Alsace.

The utility of such stories to a retreating army is evident. If the advancing troops can be made to seem terrible enough, the peasantry will flee before them. And it is harder to subsist an army if the country is uninhabited. The manufacture of such stories is part of the routine of a retreat, just like the blowing up of bridges. There has been much exaggeration-cold-blooded, intentional exaggeration on both sides.

Now comes a signed statement by some well-known American newspaper men who have been to the front with the German army, and who state that they have seen no evidence of especially inhuman cruelty.

This does not mean that the prisoners of war and non-combatants have been having a pleasant time. They never do in a war. The strongest indictment which the peace advocates can bring against war is the way it warps out of shape all accustomed moral standards.

The European troops of all nations when they marched to the relief of the Legations in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion committed frightful atrocities. French soldiers have more than once got out of hand in Morocco. Officers of the Belgian army made a hideous scandal of the Congo Free State. The Italians forgot all about civilization in the vengeance they wreaked on rebellious Tripoli. Our own American army officers, far away from home, in the great heat and unfamiliar surroundings of the Philippines, were charged with practicing the "water cure."

If you give men brutal work to do and send them away from all the accustomed restraints of civilized life, they will become

But the officers of civilized armies are expected to keep their heads even in the heat of war. The official and admitted destruction of Louvain is a much more serious matter than the allegations of atrocities.

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French Government to Bordeaux is also a diplomatic move in the same direction. It is a graphic statement to the world that France will go on fighting even if her ancient capital is destroyed.

Italy and Turkey are—as The Outlook goes to press-still neutrals. How long they can keep it up is decidedly uncertain. The antiAustrian feeling in north Italy is very strong, while the southern Italians do not care a rap for the unredeemed of Trieste and the Trentino. They cannot understand each other's dialects, and they have not been under the same flag since the Roman Empire broke up. The very active revolutionary movement in Italy, which is passionately opposed to war, also has a sobering influence on the Government. But the army is mobilized and may break the leash of prudence at any moment.

Good news arrived on the 8th from Bucharest to the effect that Bulgaria and Rumania have signed an agreement to act together against Turkey in case she declares war on Russia. This, if it is true, will put a damper on the war party in Constantinople. For

she can recapture some of her European ." lost provinces " from the Greeks and Bulgars. But with Rumania and Bulgaria lining up with the Slavs there is small chance of this.

THE EASTERN CAMPAIGN

The shortest military route from Russia to Berlin starts from Warsaw. The Czar's share of the ancient Kingdom of Poland stretches out in a promontory towards the heart of central Europe, but it is bounded on the north by German East Prussia and on the south by Austrian Galicia. No army could advance towards Berlin from Warsaw without exposing its flanks until these borders were cleared. So it is not surprising that Russia's first advances were by way of East Prussia and Galicia instead of Poland, although these frontiers are more than twice as far from Berlin.

Germany and Austria, fearing an aggressive movement from Poland, both made raids towards Warsaw, the Germans from the northwest, the Austrians from the southwest. The Germans claim to have pierced Poland as far as Lodz, and we have no further news from that point. And in East Prussia to the north, while they were at first pushed back, they seem to have checked the Russians at their fortresses along the Vistula.

If

The Austrians began bravely, pushing their raid into Russian Poland to Lublin. But the Russians held them there, and, bringing up forces from south Russia, have pushed into Galicia well beyond Lemberg and are investing the fortresses of Przemysl. they capture this place and rout the Austrians at Lublin, as their latest despatches claim, and if they can hold the German army of the Vistula in its forts, they will be free to advance towards Berlin by way of Poland. If so, they will soon make their influence felt in the western campaign.

Austria has proved almost as weak an ally for the Kaiser as Italy. Despatches from Servia say that Belgrade is still being bombarded. The failure of the Austrians to capture this exposed place, hardly a stone's throw from their military base at Semlin, is almost incredible.

ARTHUR Bullard.

New York, September 9, 1914.

There is before Congress a bill to levy a war tax upon Americans. Why should the American people, who are not engaged in war, have to pay a war tax? The answer is given in the record of our customs receipts. Since the 1st of August, when the European war broke out, up to the 1st of September, the loss of Governmental receipts from the tariff on imported goods has amounted to ten million dollars, in round numbers. If this average is sustained throughout the year, it means the loss of an annual revenue of something like a hundred million dollars. In some way this deficit has to be

The President, in an address to Congress, has called for the levying of new taxes. The two alternatives he mentions he rejects at once-namely, the use of the Treasury balance now on deposit in National banks, and the issuing of bonds. To call upon the deposits in the banks would cause inconvenience and even distress and confusion, he declares, and the borrowing of money by the issuance of bonds would put an unnecessary strain upon the money market.

The only suggestion as to the form of taxation which he makes is that it be such as will begin to yield "at once" and with "certain and constant flow."

Many subjects of taxation have been proposed. The most obvious and simplest way to raise the needed revenue in whole or in part is by increasing the income tax. That can be done by the passage of the simplest kind of an act, changing the present percentage of the tax to a larger figure or lowering the line of exemption so that there will be more incomes to be taxed, or both. It has been suggested also that the surtax (that is, the additional tax upon large incomes) be increased. There is something to be said for each one of these proposals with regard to the income tax. We believe that to lower the line of exemption so that smaller incomes may be taxed than are now taxed would have some wholesome effects, principally in increasing the number of people who would be directly interested in the income tax, and therefore making it more likely that its defects will have a wider popular attention. Moreover, it is not wholesome that a small

minority should be taxed at the behest of a large majority who are exempt from taxation. The increase of the surtax would fall naturally upon those who get their incomes not from service rendered but from property, and, as The Outlook has often said, the ownership of property is a reasonable object of taxation.

It is proposed to revive the stamp taxes which became familiar to the people in this generation at the time of the Spanish War. Such a stamp tax can be levied on a great variety of objects-on checks and on receipts; on tickets to places of amusement, on Pullman tickets, and so on. The advantage of such a stamp tax is that it is very simple of collection, as simple as the collection of the revenues of the Post-Office. It is paid in advance, inasmuch as people will have to have stamps on hand to apply to their checks or bills or tickets. Another advantage of a stamp tax is that it is one which everybody feels, and when the taxpayer feels the tax he is much more likely to watch the expenditure of the public moneys.

Another source of revenue would be a tax on beer, wines, and liquors, and tobacco in its various forms. Of course there is a tax levied on these objects already, but it is a simple matter to increase that tax.

The most important action that Congress can take in this emergency is not, however, the levying of new taxes, but the practice of economy. Individuals and business concerns are cutting down their expenditures for non-essentials. Let Congress do likewise. Now is a propitious time to take the " pork out of the "pork barrel," to cut out from such a bill as the River and Harbor Bill those items of expenditure that are inserted for political effect.

A DAY OF PRAYER FOR PEACE

Last week the President issued a proclamation requesting the 'American people to observe Sunday, October 4, as a special day of prayer for peace. The language of deep feeling in which the proclamation is expressed indicates not only the President's profound desire for peace, but his belief that the warring nations can be brought to a state of mind in which they will be willing to consider the possibility of settling the conflict by the

process of mediation and mutual agreement. Influential Protestant and Roman Catholic ecclesiastics have already taken steps for a universal observance of this day in all churches of the United States. The following is the text of the proclamation: By the President of the United States of America.

A PROCLAMATION Whereas, Great nations of the world have taken up arms against one another and war now draws millions of men into battle whom the counsel of statesmen has not been able to save from the terrible sacrifice; and

Whereas, In this, as in all things, it is our privilege and duty to seek counsel and succor of Almighty God, humbling ourselves before him, confessing our weakness and our lack of any wisdom equal to these things; and

Whereas, It is the especial wish and longing of the people of the United States, in prayer and counsel and all friendliness, to serve the cause of peace;

Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do designate Sunday, the fourth day of October next, a day of prayer and supplication, and do request all God-fearing persons to repair on that day to their places of worship, there to unite their petitions to Almighty God that, overruling the counsel of men, setting straight the things they cannot govern or alter, taking pity on the nations now in the throes of conflict, in his mercy and goodness showing a way where men can see none, he vouchsafe his children healing peace again and restore once more that concord among men and nations without which there can be neither happiness nor true friendship nor any wholesome fruit of toil and thought in the world; praying also to this end that he forgive us our sins, our ignorance of his holy will, our willfulness and many errors, and lead us in the paths of obedience to plages of vision and to thoughts and counsels that purge and make wise.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fourteen, and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and thirty-ninth.

By the President:

WOODROW WILSON.

William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State.

THE RED CROSS SHIP

A singular incident delayed the sailing of the Red Cross (the vessel once the German

liner called the Hamburg) from New York last week. It was found that some of the crew were of foreign nationality, and it was held that on a neutral vessel setting out to relieve suffering without distinction as to race or nation every precaution should be taken to prevent the raising of any question relating to neutrality. The Red Cross, therefore, is to be manned entirely by American officers and men; all the surgeons and their assistants (about 30) and the nurses (about 120) are also Americans.

This ship of mercy, as it has been called, is fitted out by the American National Red Cross, of which the President of the United States is head. The ship has been painted in white and red after the Red Cross colors, and displays a great electric red cross. The efficient work in preparing the Red Cross is to be credited largely to its untiring and resourceful Secretary, Miss Mabel Boardman.

The money for the Red Cross is contributed by citizens, and while $185,000 had been subscribed up to September 7, very much more is needed if our American Red Cross Society is to carry out its plans. So far there seems to have been only a moderate response to the need. When Americans fully understand

how urgent that demand is, it is certain that their contributions will be forthcoming in large amounts. We hope that the present mention of Red Cross activity will lead to the mailing of many checks, large and small, to the American National Red Cross at Washington.

The several Red Cross Societies of the nations are mutually helpful, follow the same rules and methods, and have a loose international organization and regular international meetings. Practically, however, each works by itself but not for itself. Anything in the least partisan is abhorrent to the Red Cross idea. A German Red Cross nurse will succor a Frenchman as quickly as a German; American Red Cross nurses and doctors go to the aid of all the sick and wounded, of whatever flag. The force on the Red Cross steamship is to be divided equally among five Great Powers, and a reserve will be held for emergency. The ship is loaded with supplies-for instance, 300,000 pounds of absorbent cotton and 2,000 cans of chloroform-and these, too, will be divided and placed where they are needed.

The American Red Cross record for its past service.

has a splendid In the present