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employ in worship, nor between their respective philosophies of religion: it is a difference in their estimate of the values of life. Paganism values power as a means of exercising authority; Christianity values power as a means of rendering service. Nor is this merely an ethical difference. Paganism reveres God because of his power and authority, and is a religion of fear. Christianity reveres God because of his love and his freely offered service to his children, and is a religion of loyalty and hope.

Struggle for existence, survival of the fittest," is the law of the jungle. But even in the jungle a higher law appears: "Struggle for others, salvation of the unfit." It appears in the devotion of the tigress to her cubs; in the brooding of her eggs by the mother bird and in the foraging for the fledgling brood by the father bird.

Savage man just emerging from the animal is at first more animal than man. He accepts the law of the jungle as his law. Only in gradually developing forms does the higher law appear. First in the family: the father hunts and fishes for the mother and the children; the mother labors and drudges for the children and the father-to them she devotes her life; for the children not infrequently she sacrifices her life. The struggle for others and the salvation of the feeble intermingle with and modify the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest.

By insensible degrees this higher law, born in the family, pervades the life outside the family. The warrior fights not merely for himself, not merely for his home; he fights for his tribe. For others than himself he endures hardships, bears burdens, suffers; if need be, dies. So patriotism is born. The comrade falls at his side in battle. The warrior lifts the wounded up and bears him away to a place of safety, binds up with a rude kind of surgery his wounds, and nurses him back into life. So philanthropy is born. As savagery diminishes and civilization emerges man discovers that ignorance brings disaster to the family and to the community; that the untaught man cannot do his share in the service of the community. In order to hunt, to war, to fish, to make the garments for his body and the blanket for his bed and the wigwam for his shelter, he must learn. So education is born.

Thus gradually out of the savagery of the jungle grows up the civilized state. It is equipped with farms, factories, railways,

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shops, banks, courts of justice, with hospitals and asylums for the handicapped, with schools and colleges for the ignorant--all instruments of power for use in service. A police is organized to protect the individuals from wrong threatened within the state; an army is organized to protect the individuals from wrong threatened from without the state. The police and the army are necessary adjuncts of the civilized state because they are necessary to protect what the state holds dear-the lives, the liberties, the properties, and the sacred honor of its citizens. But if the army is organized, equipped, and used, not for the protection of the state, but for the conquest of other states, and if the police is used, not to protect the unprotected against the aggressions of the strong, but to enable the strong to exploit the weak, it is a barbaric state. For the test which determines whether a state is civilized or barbaric is this: Does it value power because power promotes the exercise of authority or because power is a means of rendering service? If it values power for the authority it confers, it is barbarism; if it values power for the service it makes possible, it is civilized.

Militarism is a reversal to barbarism; it is a return to the law of the jungle; it has never heard of struggle for others and salvation of the unfit, or has heard of it only to contemn it. It values power only as an instrument of authority. It does not organize an army to protect the nation; it organizes the nation into an army for aggression on other nations. Its philosophers avow struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, to be the benign law of life. Its military leaders declare that a weak nation has no right to exist. Philosophers and leaders unite to glorify war as the only means of determining which nation is the stronger. If they honor self-sacrifice, it is only that form of self-sacrifice which increases the power and authority of the nation. The spirit of militarism relegates woman to an inferior place because she is of the weaker sex; accounts war as the highest art because it is the art of using force; exalts the military profession to the highest rank because it is the profession which exercises authority. Militarism is essentially egotistical, essentially provincial. It recognizes no culture but its own. It disguises its most sordid ambitions even to itself by its faith that it is intrusted with a mission to impose its culture on all other peoples. It can conceive no form of government, no system of laws, no art, music,

literature, or philosophy, no achievements, no character, comparable to its own. Roman militarism despised Germanic civilization, Anglo-Saxon militarism despised Latin civilization, Roman Catholic militarism despised Protestant civilization, Occidental militarism despises Oriental civilization.

When militarism gets control of a nation and uses its authority not for service but to exploit the many for the benefit of the few, either the many must submit to see their country relapse into barbarism, as Spain relapsed into barbarism under the Bourbons, or they must arm and fight militarism with the only weapons militarism respects, as the Puritans fought the Stuarts. When militar

ism gets control of a nation and uses the wealth, the science, the resources, the population of the nation, to exercise authority over other nations and impose on them its laws and its civilization by force of arms, there is no alternative but to resist it by force of arms, and to continue the resistance until it acknowledges itself beaten and desists from the attempt.

No modern nation is wholly possessed by militarism; no modern nation is wholly free from it. We do not wonder that some of our readers, remembering the militarism of England and France in the past and of Russia in the present, are perplexed by the present terrible conflict. If only all the civilized men were on one side and all the barbarians on the other in life's long campaign, how easy it would be to comprehend each several battle! But they never are. All the Puritans were not saints; all the Cavaliers were not sinners. But the victory of the Puritans gave England liberty. All the colonists were not saints, all the British were not sinners; but the victory of the colonists created a Republic, "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.' All the North were not saints; all the South were not sinners. Both fought with honorable bravery for what they believed to be the right. But there are very few men in the South to-day who are not thankful that the Union was preserved and slavery was destroyed.

The issue was confused then; the issue is confused now. It is always confused to the combatants engaged in it, and generally to the onlookers. But when the soil now watered by blood is bringing forth harvests, and birds are singing where now cannons are thundering, and church bells are calling to worship

where now trumpets are calling to deadly battle, the world will see that the issue now being fought out on the plains of Belgium and France in the west, and in Galicia, Poland, and Prussia in the east, was the issue between civilization and barbarism, between power sought to obtain authority and power used to render service. The Allies are fighting the battles of Germany for her. In 1848 pacific Germany rose in revolt against the militarism of Prussia and was defeated. The militarism which then dominated Germany is to-day attempting to dominate Europe. The free peoples of Europe have risen in revolt against this attempt. They will not be defeated. And when the war is over no people will have more reason to be grateful for Germany's defeat than the people of peaceful, industrial Germany.

CHRISTMAS IN TIME OF
SORROW

There have been many disasters on the high seas, but the Christmas ship Jason made a successful voyage and has received a royal welcome. She was not a neutral ship; her function was to bear a message of good will, and to remind every people whose ports she visits of another message delivered more than nineteen hundred years ago.

The angels who sang Peace on earth, good will to men," were not only angels but prophets. Their song held in its heart the spirit of a very advanced stage of Christian life in the world; so advanced that it could have had very little meaning to the men who heard it. There was not in the history, the conditions, or even in the language spoken two thousand years ago, much that interpreted a love so broad and deep that it included the welfare of all men. But because the great Christmas psalm has so much unfulfilled prophecy in it there ought to be a more impressive and practical expression of the Christmas spirit to-day than the world has ever known.

The Christmas ship was laden with thousands of tons of gifts for bereaved children on the other side of the sea. Every one was eager to have something to do with the cargo, with the transportation and lading, and every kind of service was rendered gratuitously. Express companies, railways, delivery companies, the United States Government, shared in this endeavor to send across the

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sea the spirit of Christmas in practical form. The New World was eager to wish the Old World, not a " but a "merry happy Christmas. Nowhere in the world this year among people who think can there be a

merry "Christmas; for the world stands in the shadow of a great and terrible bereavement. In countless homes there are memories instead of men; in countless hearts there is love but no joy. Everywhere the great shadow of the tragedy rests alike on little children, on anxious or sorrowful women, on strong men. No country is exempt from real participation in the struggle; nowhere among civilized peoples is there a landscape on which this cloud does not rest.

But while Christmas cannot be merry, it ought to be happy, because the very soul of Christmas is the spirit of self-denial and selfsacrifice. For many years its observance has tended more and more to become conventional and extravagant and to lose the beautiful simplicity of the giving of the heart. It has become a matter of barter, or artificial promotion, of devices for the development of trade. A man once asked in a shop what a certain article was for, and the clerk replied, "Oh, just for a present!" It meant nothing; it simply cost money, and was of use one day in the year.

Now is the time to work a real reformation. Not in Christmas; that cannot be reformed, because it does not need to be; but in Christmas giving, which has wandered so far from the divine impulse which gave it birth. The giving ought to be more generous than ever; but it ought to be directed to those who need it. We load our friends living in comfort and even in luxury with things they do not need either for their own use or as an expression of our affection. Now is the time to turn the beneficence of Christmas away from those who do not need it to those who are in sore distress.

There are many ways in which we can wish our friends a Merry Christmas; and the best way is not to give to those who have, but those who really need. This does not mean robbing Christmas of its beautiful sentiment and making it a purely practical affair; it means charging Christmas with a deeper sentiment and making it serve a nobler ideal. Instead of buying things for people who do not need them, let us take account of those we can help and pour upon them the tide of affection.

The community Christmas is no longer an

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experiment; it has brought warmth of heart and neighborly good will wherever it has been tried. Why not make it a community festival everywhere? A lighted tree in every city and village for everybody; no speeches, no presents, no division between givers and receivers; everybody a host; carols by all the church choirs and singing societies, and patriotic songs; no expense; and a Happy Christmas from everybody to everybody.

ARE SERIOUS BOOKS

NEGLECTED?

Is the reading of serious books on the decline among Americans? Mr. George P. Brett, the well-known publisher, thinks that it is; and in an article in the November" Atlantic Monthly" he cites various proofs in support of his contention, and advances some reasons for the decline. The adoption of the "play method" of teaching children may, he thinks, be one of the principal reasons why, when they are older, boys and girls find books on serious subjects distasteful and uninteresting, if not positively incomprehensible. Then, too, the indulgence of American parents, who feel obliged to offer to their sons and daughters well-nigh unlimited opportunities for pastime and amusement, in place of hard study and instructive reading, accounts for a certain lack on the part of the rising generation of acquaintance with good literature. The result in later life is likely to be the development of a "butterfly habit of mind," which is too often apt to be satisfied with newspapers and cheap magazines, and which finds change and recreation in automobiling, dancing, golf, and in listening to mechanically produced music and in looking at moving pictures.

Mr. Brett's argument cannot be summarized in a paragraph; the foregoing is intended merely to indicate its drift. As a whole, the indictment is severe, and some of the counts are undoubtedly sound, even if one dissents from the general conclusion that books in these days have "lost the pre-eminence they formerly enjoyed as the principal, and for many people the only, means of whiling away pleasantly or instructively the unoccupied hours of life."

There are, however, reasons for the decline in the buying and reading of serious books which lie outside those cited by Mr. Brett, and which deserve consideration. In the first

place, the conditions affecting the publishing of books and the reading public as well have changed enormously in the last forty or fifty years. In those remote days young people had some respect for authority, for the opinion of their elders, at least so we are assured by those same young people, now that they are grown up to mature and ripe age. They then read serious books as a matter of duty, when they would perhaps have preferred to read Mayne Reid and Oliver Optic. Nowadays, however, young people have lost, as a class, much of the reverence which their fathers and mothers had for the tradition which associates the reading of serious books with the possession of general intelligence, and are not made to feel any sense of obligation to read such books. In these days a book, to hold their attention, must have in it what in college and preparatory school circles is designated, we believe, as pep." Librarians, moreover, tell us that the boy and girl of to-day demand stories treating of contemporaneous life of the ever-interesting problems growing out of the complex and constantly changing social and economic conditions of the present. To these young readers who have all of life before them the novels and romances of Dickens, Scott, Cooper, and Hawthorne deal with a remote, unknown, and uninteresting past, and they find these classics interminable in length, slow in action, and dull in character.

Moreover, forty-odd years ago the publication of a new book was an event, and only books of importance got themselves published. There were not more than eight or ten publishing houses of rank in the country, and the yearly lists of books published by these houses were as small in numbers as they were choice in quality. A new book in those days was something that every person of intelligence, if he would hold his own in current talk, had to read, whether it was "Our Mutual Friend," ""The Moonstone,"

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English Traits," "The Marble Faun," or "The Origin of Species." One must remember, too, that in that time there were only about half a dozen monthly magazines; that, with very few exceptions, the weekly periodicals were mainly religious and frankly denominational in character; and that the huge Sunday newspaper was still in the future.

Contrast those conditions in a population, say in 1870, of thirty-eight and a half millions with the conditions prevailing to-day with a

even in applied science. And, subjected to the test not of literary interest but of general intelligence, the average man of to-day, with

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these new sources of information within his reach, would compare not unfavorably, we think, with the man of fifty years ago.

I

IN the face of the hard times which are upon us, what ought the American consumer to do who is honestly anxious to relieve suffering both in Europe and in America? Should he place his charity at home or abroad? Or should he divide it between Europe and the United States ?

This problem was put by The Outlook to its readers in its number for November 18, 1914, at the request of Mrs. Florence Kelley, President of the National Consumers' League.

Mrs. Kelley and the members of the League are at a loss to know the duty of conscientious Americans in the face of unprecedented suffering on the Continent and the almost unparalleled extent of unemployment and poverty at home. Should such Americans help their countrymen by buying a bale of cotton, or should they send a sum equivalent to the cost of the bale to Belgian orphans? Is it right for us to send money to the war sufferers abroad when this necessitates economizing to the extent of discharging servants and foregoing luxuries which provide employment in home industries? Or, if we should give up such luxuries as books, automobiles, the opera, etc., for philanthropy, might we not do better to practice this philanthropy in our own slums than among the needy of Europe?

The question Mrs. Kelley put to the readers of The Outlook was, in her own words, as follows:

"My impulse is to cut down expenditures for food, clothing, servants, household decorations, books, and recreation in order to have more money wherewith to help the suffering; but if we all do this, shall we not produce more unemployment the more conscientious we are?"

Mrs. Kelley's query called forth numerous replies from Outlook readers, and it is evident that the dilemma which she finds confronting her is faced by thousands of other well-meaning people in America. Some of these replies merely echoed her question, or

Several other writers could advise "Perplexed" on this point, for, without going deeply into abstract economic theories, they very sanely suggest that this is a good time to practice all possible economy. Mr. R. H. Douglass, of Pasadena, California, writes: "The poorer consumers should be educated to save their salaries and buy for cash, as they can buy far cheaper that way. The wealthier ones should crucify self and live the Golden Rule. The National slogan should be, Stop waste and live the Golden Rule.'

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Three other letters, in a somewhat similar strain, are as follows:

My only suggestion is that we shall all avoid indulgence in too extravagant luxuries which might emphasize the gulf between those who have and those who need, while any money saved should be spent in direct aid of what Mr. Shaw terms" the undeserving poor."

SOPHIE W. WESTON.

It appears to the writer that the equilibrium of the markets is not so easily disturbed as the Consumers' League would lead us to believe.

If the individual is left to follow his own impulse as to the particular luxuries or even partial necessities he chooses to sacrifice, that he may have more money wherewith to help those in distress across the waters, these lines of sacrifice will be so varied that they will not disturb any special group or groups of the unemployed.

When a child, my admiration was stirred again and again by a dear old mother in our church society who always chose one particular way to make her sacrifice when she wished to give to sweet charity. She would say, "Well,