This scarcely veiled distrust of the Slav ally is, however, but a very small element in English feeling. The one supreme factor is the common Englishman's determination to resist what he believes to be the ambition to gain dominion at the expense of others which has obsessed the Prussian military clique, and has at last set Europe aflame with the most terrible war in history. Not the least of Sir Edward Grey's achievements as a statesman has been his success in so conducting the negotiations prior to the war as to convince his fellow-subjects of the King that Germany has had but one reason for going to war-1 -the determination to dominate Europe. At times in past years there has been a sort of nervous apprehension among the English people about Germany's plans. One day when I was in London there was a single loud crash of thunder. One thought seemed to spring up in everybody's mind-a bomb from a Zeppelin air-ship. That, however, was but a heritage from the period of vague fantastic fears. Now that war has come, all those fears seem to have been suddenly banished. In their place there are a calm confidence and a ready determination to deal with the Prussian King and his group of war lords as they deserve. There was no sign of panic. Some people, it is true, started to stock up with tinned food and groceries as if they expected British coasts to be at once blockaded; but they were not typical. They were laughed at, and some of them, I know, felt very foolish when they found themselves stocked up as for an Arctic expedition while their neighbors were living on fresh food just as usual. Of course this does not mean that the ordinary Englishman is taking this war lightly. Far from it. He is taking it with grim seriousness. He knows very well something of what it means already. The lady who, while driving to the village from her country house, has her favorite pair of horses seized and commandeered for the army, faces a fact of war, even though she does not hear a shot. And there are many people over England who have had to face that fact. Some English families are pulling up their flower beds and planting vegetables instead. There is, however, very little complaint. I heard not a word of it. Instead there is pride in what England has proved herself ready to do.

homes had been demolished in that way. Even when compensated, the owners of such property must suffer great loss; but the spirit of the Englishman at this time was of pride that he could offer a sacrifice.

A few days after war was declared I happened to be in a printing office in London. One of the partners in the firm told me of his experiences that day. He had been on the coast for his holiday, and had received a message from the other members of his firm calling him to London. He came up on his motor cycle-seventy miles in just over two hours.

"The constables along the road would have stopped me," he said, "except that they thought I was on the King's business. All along the road were Boy Scouts. They were watching the telegraph posts to see that the wires were not cut; at every post or two there was a Scout, and they meant business."

This testimony about the Scouts was confirmed by what a Boy Scout himself told me. He himself had been on duty watching the telegraph lines, had been in the squad that had discovered a wire tapped, and after report was made to the military authorities had learned that the tapping had been done by the military, but that somehow a record had not been made. As can be seen, the Boy Scouts are doing real service to their country.

"The anxiety is over, now that war has begun," continued the Englishman in the printing office. "Perhaps the Germans are better men, but we are ready. And the French will fight. The man who has had sorrow in his soul for forty years is bound to fight. The Germans-the poor beggars ! they don't want to fight. It's the Kaiser's doing. He expected to be in Paris by August 6, and now it's the 12th. I'm too old for the army; but I can be useful. I can do police work. can be very useful. man would take a I believed him.

With my motor cycle I Yes, yes, every Englishmusket if needed." And

Never, I suppose, have Englishmen been prouder of their country. They are proud of its patience, its unwearying effort to avoid war, its restraint when Germany proposed to bribe it into neutrality at the cost of France and Belgium; proud of its unhesitating acceptance of war when the time came; proud of the silence of the press when news of military movements was suppressed, not by exercise of authority, but by co-operation

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lockout. The fact that a labor conflict could continue at a time like this seems to me one of the most damning indictments against the prevailing industrial system. But of course

that controversy was lost in the great world war; and I did not think of it again till I started to write this. Certainly, if there are labor leaders in England who are irreconcilable, if the resignation of John Burns from the Cabinet is an indication of an anti-war spirit in the United Kingdom, there was during the first two weeks of the war no outward sign of it of sufficient prominence to attract my notice, and there was no reflection of it in the talk of the man in the street. England's internal problems were forgotten in the presence of the common enemy. One Liberal went so far as to say that the war, he believed, would mean the end of the Liberal party, at least as it had been known heretofore; because war would consume all the money that had been devoted to the operation of such Liberal policies as old age pensions, land reform, and the like. On the other hand, it seemed to me that the war might well mean the strengthening of the real Liberal party, for not only had the Liberal Government shown extraordinary statesmanship in the international crisis, but it had shown courage and efficiency in meeting the national energency by the enactment and enforcement of measures of great social significance-such as the governmental operation of railways and governmental building of houses.

England has been doing unprecedented things because the emergency is unprecedented. The effect of the war upon the common life of the English people was pictured one evening in the House of Commons when I had the good fortune to be present. One member after another rose and laid before the Government the needs of his constituency. A member from a coast region told of the privation of many of his constituents who were dependent upon letting lodgings to summer visitors, and who now found their lodgings empty. Another told of those among his constituents whose livelihood depended upon the use of horses-carters, milkmen, tradesmen who delivered their goods in wagons-and who now found themselves shut off from self-support because their horses had been commandeered. A ripple of amusement passed over the House when it was pointed out that the owner of a single horse need not be apprehensive, as the Government was taking only fifty per cent

of any one's property in horseflesh, and the Government would have no use for fifty per cent of one horse. Another man who represented a fishing constituency asked for governmental insurance for the fishermen as well as for the owners of merchant vessels, especially as the fishermen provided the nation with an important supply of food. Another member spoke on behalf of the wives and families of reservists, and asked that the Government: arrange some system of credit by which these dependents could draw upon the reservists' pay.

Such is the unprecedented situation in England; and the Government is making precedents in providing for that situation. Yet England is not abandoning her traditions. The Kingdom was aroused when the impression was conveyed that the King, of his own initiative, had summoned representatives of all parties to a conference with him, and indignation was allayed only when the Prime Minister explained that he and not the King was responsible. And nothing, not even war, interrupts afternoon tea. On Friday, August 14, the day before I was to take the steamer for New York, I read a notice in Liverpool that all visitors not British subjects had to present themselves to be registered by the police. My friend and I started out to comply with the requirement. Policeman after policeman, in directing us to the police station, informed us that though we were Americans, citizens of a neutral country,

and though we were to sail the next day, we should have to be registered or we should not be allowed to leave the country. By the time the third officer told us that, we were consumed with an eagerness to have our finger prints taken. At last we found the police station, only to be told that we could not be registered because "they" had gone out "to tea." There was something reassuring about that. British institutions seemed, after all, to be solid. We were going to cross the ocean under the British flag; and if the police could adjourn registration of aliens in time of war because of "afternoon tea," we decided that the British fleet must still rule the wave.

Though

And it proved to rule the wave. port-holes were darkened at night by dead lights and by blankets, so that we might be able to slip by any hostile cruiser in the darkness, and though the steamship ran out of the usual course so that it might disappoint whatever German war-ships might be lying in wait for British merchantmen on the Atlantic lanes, no untoward incident occurred. Not only British subjects, not only American citizens, but even the German subjects coming to the United States because they could not get to Germany, who through British magnanimity were allowed to board this British vessel, had reason to be grateful for Britain's mastery of the sea.

ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT. On board the S.S. Campania, August 21.

Ο

NE of the most noteworthy results of Russia's participation in the European war, so far as her internal affairs are concerned, is the sudden and complete abandonment of her so-called "nationalistic" policy. Ever since the accession of Stolypin as Premier, in 1905, the Czar and his Government have been engaged in an illadvised and short-sighted attempt to crush or cripple the Jews and to Russianize by force the Finns and the Poles. Thousands of Jews in all parts of the Empire have been driven back into the great national ghetto known as the Pale of Settlement, while thousands more

have been deprived even of the limited educational facilities which they enjoyed under the pre-revolutionary régime. Scores of Jewish schools have been closed upon the most frivolous pretexts; the admission of Jewish students to the universities has been still further restricted by the lottery system; and the influence of Jewish business men in the commercial world has been paralyzed by an order forbidding them to participate actively in the management of joint-stock companies or corporations.

The treatment of the Finns and the Poles has been equally bad, if not worse. The

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pressure of military necessity has been removed? There is reason to hope that they will; but the world would put more faith in the Czar's pledged word if he had kept his promises in the past. He declared, two or three different times, that he would abolish the Siberian exile system; but political offenders are still being sent to Yakutsk, Yeniseisk, and the provinces of the trans-Baikal. He swore in his coronation oath that he would respect and maintain the Constitution given by Alexander II to Finland, but he broke faith when he approved the law depriving the Finnish. Diet of its constitutional rights and powers. Finally, he solemnly promised, in the Imperial Manifesto of October 30, 1905, that he would give to the Russian people freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religious belief, and freedom of public assembly. Nearly ten years have passed since that time, but Governmental oppression still continues, and the nation has even less freedom, in many respects, than it had under Alexander II. The war, it is true, may result in the emancipation of the Finns and the Poles, under an international guarantee; but, in the light of past history, the promises of the Czar are not to be implicitly trusted. When he was harrying and persecuting the Jews, the Finns, and the Poles, he should have foreseen that at some future time he might need their good will and their help.

The actual or potential interference with British commerce in the Far East by German cruisers from the Kaiser's naval station at Tsingtao, in Kiauchau Bay, led Japan, the Far Eastern ally of Great Britain, to send to the German Government a seven-day ultimatum demanding that the Far Eastern fleet of Germany disarm or withdraw at once, and that the German leased territory of Kiauchau be surrendered to the Japanese authorities not later than September 15, for eventual restoration to China. The Japanese Government based its action on the necessity of "removing the cause of all disturbances of the peace in the Far East, and safeguarding the general interests as contemplated by the agreement of alliance between Japan and Great Britain." As, by noon of August 23, the German Government had not unconditionally agreed to comply with this demand, Japan and Germany are now at war.

As Germany has spent twenty or thirty million dollars in improving and fortifying her position in Kiauchau Bay, and as she has there a fleet of thirteen cruisers and gun

boats, it is not at all likely that she will surrender without a long struggle. Japan and Great Britain have blockaded the entrance to the Bay, and Japan has begun siege operations on land for the reduction of the fortress.

These operations will be carried on mainly, of course, by the Japanese, whose experiences on the Liaotung peninsula qualify them pre-eminently for the task. The forts of Tsingtau, however, are said to be even stronger than those at Port Arthur, and if they are well supplied with provisions and ammunition they will not be easily taken. But the Japanese are experts in sapping, mining, and trench-fighting, and they will not again sacrifice fifteen or twenty thousand men, as they did at Port Arthur, in trying to take strong intrenchments by storm. They will invest the German fortress; approach it slowly through zigzag trenches and saps; destroy the German fleet by accurate highangle fire from heavy siege guns; shatter the forts by means of mining operations and bombardment, and not attempt an assault in force until the intrenchments have been so

weakened that they may be taken by storm without undue loss of life.

Kiauchau Bay, with about two hundred square miles of circumjacent territory, was taken from China by Germany in 1898 as indemnity for the murder of two or three German missionaries. Since they acquired it, the Germans have erected at Tsingtau a typical German city; have connected it with the valley of the Hoangho by means of a railway through the province of Shantung; and have made it a naval base, as well as a point of vantage for commercial enterprise in all that part of China. They have constructed three extensive granite piers, and a steel floating dock large enough to accommodate any battle-ship now in Far Eastern waters: The loss of this colony, naval base, and commercial outpost will perhaps be a more serious blow to Germany than the loss of all her possessions in Africa, while the capture of it will enable Japan to " get even with the Power that was most active in taking Port Arthur away from her after the war with China.

IN

N the afternoon, at the Bon Marché, in the course of our purchasing, we were asked in what shape we carried our money, and when we showed a hundred-franc note were told with a grave look that money was very scarce, and that giving too much change to us, in silver, would be a greater evil than losing the entire sale. In other words, you simply couldn't buy 15 francs' worth of stuff if a 50-franc note was all you could offer in payment. Such a difficulty is easily met by the feminine mind, at a counter of handembroidery; and as our purchases came to

84.95 francs, we were given change, of which we little grasped the later value to ourselves. In crippled French we tried to understand from the bookkeeper what the trouble was, and couldn't in the least grasp any satisfactory answer as to why a war in Servia should make Parisians hoard their gold.

From the Bon Marché we crossed the street to a chocolate shop. There, before putting up our candy, they asked us if we had exactly two francs to pay for it, as they had no change whatever. That looked serious. We bought a paper and sat at a table