writing his new play, "A Kiss for Cinderella." This play is the story of a little London slavey who shares with Sir James in the ownership of his key to the land of make-believe. In all the drudgery of work in war-time London this little slavey never loses the will and the power to escape to a place where Zeppelin bombs have even less chance to crush the spirit than they have in the streets of England's capital. But at last there comes a time when her spirit becomes too strong for her starved and fevered body, and Cinderella, for so she has chosen to call herself, passes into the world of make-believe, where the fairy prince for whom she has longed puts a crown on her head and a glass slipper on her foot, after the fashion of all Cinderellas' princes since time and imagination began.

Cinderella's ball is a glorious Cockney paradise where a gilded hokey-pokey wagon supplies the refreshment and the king and queen ensconce themselves in gilded rockers of a type which only Barrie's brain could have dreamed.

-

When the clock strikes twelve, Miss Maude Adams-we mean Cinderella, for naturally they are one and the same person-finds herself in a hospital. What happens there and how the fairy prince of her fevered dream turns into a real prince with blue coat and night-stick only Barrie himself can properly tell.

Whoever is fortunate enough to become acquainted with Barrie's Cinderella will be reconvinced that the "Sir" which has had the temerity to attach itself to his name is a peculiarly unsatisfactory title for a man who is a king in his own right-the King of Make-Believe.

JAMES MONROE TAYLOR

That was a notable audience which gathered at Vassar College chapel on the 21st of December at the funeral services of the Rev. Dr. James Monroe Taylor, the ex-President of the College. His twenty-seven years of administration, brought to an end by his resignation in 1913, is characteristic of a country the educational progress of which furnishes one of the best testimonies to the value of the democratic spirit.

When he was called to the presidency, Vassar College was largely a preparatory school. This preparatory school had been necessary when the College was incorporated in 1861, because at that time the idea of a college for women was so far novel that America furnished no schools adequate to give the preparation necessary to maintain a college standard for examination. One of Dr. Taylor's first acts showed the courage of the man. He succeeded, not without some opposition, in inducing the trustees to abolish the preparatory department, and with it to abolish a very considerable proportion of the income on which the College depended. The result justified his courage.

At the time of his death Vassar College was in its general equipment and efficiency in the first rank of American colleges, though, of course, its scope, field, and endowment were much less than that of certain American universities. The scheme of university, however, was in Dr. Taylor's mind, and in one of his last reports he put before the trustees his ideal, which involved building a second college upon grounds belonging to the institution and affiliating the two under one administration in a manner not identical with, but in some respects analogous to, the method of the English universities.

The growth in material equipment during his presidency was equaled by the growth in intellectual and spiritual power. It was his faith that a thousand students were as many as one collegiate institution could take care of, and for several years under his leadership the number of pupils was limited to a thousand, with, as a result, always a considerable waiting list of applicants. The democratic spirit with which he had pervaded the institution is indicated by the fact that the College students, under his inspiration, established a social club for the servants, which became for them an intellectual center, with a library, reading-room, and classes carried on by the undergraduate students themselves. The library building, erected during his presidency, is one of the most beautiful and commodious in the country, and one, we believe, of the earlier college libraries to depart from the old library traditions. The great mass of books is open to the students, who can roam in the alcoves and gather from the shelves whatever books they wish to use. The advantage of thus becoming acquainted with books, not merely with

specific facts to be found in single books, was one which the older librarians in our colleges failed to recognize. Dr. Taylor's ideal of women's education is well expressed by a sentence attributed to him, substantially as follows: "I wish the graduates of Vassar College to be so educated that no one meeting them socially will know that they are college graduates, and no one will be surprised to learn the fact if they do learn it."

Dr. Taylor was a man of deep and strong feelings, but they were always kept under his control, and he combined a prophetic idealism with a practical common sense to a remarkable degree. He had almost a passion for keeping himself and his College out of the limelight. The lives of its pupils were the only advertisement he desired.

On the occasion of the funeral service special friends, the Board of Trustees, members of the Faculty, public educators, and the students of the College filled the chapel. The spirit of the meeting was one of thanksgiving for Dr. Taylor and for the service which he had rendered.

THE TREE OF LIGHT IN NEW YORK CITY

For the fifth time the Tree of Light in Madison Square, New York City, has sent out its message of good will. The Tree was lighted for the first time on Christmas Eve, by the touch of a little blind girl from the Lighthouse for the Blind. Eagerly she reached out her hands to feel its sturdy trunk, asking how far it was up to the star which she was to light when the trumpeters signaled; and how many lights would gleam suddenly out on its branches when she touched the button.

But the most impressive event came on the night after Christmas, when the people and chorus assembled at the Tree, and sang several carols-the best carol-singing the "Tree of Light" has ever heard. Then the leader invited every one to fall in line and march across the street to Madison Square Garden, where the "Messiah" would be sung, free to all. Through lanes kept clear by hundreds of boy scouts, including a squad of blind boys, the chorus marched away singing, "O Come, All Ye Faithful." With amazing orderliness the great crowd followed into the hall, with no tickets of admission, no reserved seats, no privileged person, a thoroughly democratic crowd, with a high percentage of men-silk hats and caps, shawls and fur coats, grandmothers and little children-hundreds and hundreds of the common people to hear in song the story of the Messiah: in all some fifteen thousand of them, not to mention the two thousand more who waited in long lines outside hoping for admission.

The community chorus numbered a thousand voices, with an orchestra of ninety men, and good accompanying it was, even without a rehearsal. For Mr. Harry Barnhart, of Rochester, its leader, has the personality which makes his conducting full of spirit. Without being told, the audience rose for the Hallelujah Chorus, that splendid climax of Handel's difficult oratorio; and heartily they joined in the three Christmas songs substituted for the traditional symphony marking the intermission. Three months ago, most of the community chorus could not read a note of music. Yet their singing was notable for being absolutely true to key, for the absence of slurring and dragging, for swelling out in great bursts of sound that carried the audience with them. And all this without soloists to vary the monotony of what is really a long oratorio.

The community chorus and the community tree are now inseparably linked together.

THE DANISH ISLANDS

On December 20 and 21 the Danish Rigsdag passed one of the most notable pieces of legislation in its history of two and a half centuries. On December 20 the Folkething, the lower house of this Parliament, by a vote of 90 to 16, adopted the bill ratifying the treaty for the sale of the three islands composing the Danish West Indies to the United States. The following day the Landsthing, the upper house, by a vote of 40 to 19, confirmed the action of the lower house. Thus the political crisis in Denmark on this subject, which has lasted since early August, is ended.

The final vote was assured by statements from Danish Cabinet Ministers, who showed, first, that no Danish Cabinet

had ever been unwilling to effect the sale, and, second, as regards the islanders' immediate needs, stated that compensation to the hurricane sufferers would be made, and also to those inhabitants who might suffer any loss from the sale. The purchase price is $25,000,000, more than three times as much as we offered in 1867 for only two of the islands, and five times the price offered in 1902 for all. The somewhat privileged upper house, in which Danish landowners are predominant, opposed the later transfer, its action being due, so it has been supposed, to German influence. Germany has long coveted the islands, both because of their strategic importance and also because she has no coaling station in the Western Hemisphere.

Our acquisition of the islands will be of increasing strategic importance in relation not only to the other West Indian islands in which we have either a proprietary or merely a commercial interest, but also in relation to our interests on the mainland as well. While, from a commercial standpoint, the price to be paid is excessive, as the islands have already ceased to be a source of much profit to Denmark, it is not excessive from a standpoint of military advantage.

The Danish Parliament's approval opens the way to a prompt exchange of ratifications between the two Governments, after which our Administration is expected to introduce a bill in Congress appropriating the purchase price and providing for the institution of an American territorial government.

Thus, negotiations intermittently in progress ever since 1861, when we first tried to buy the islands, seem to have come to an appropriate end.

THE GOVERNMENT SHIPPING BOARD

President Wilson has now named the members of the Government Shipping Board. Why a Government Shipping Board? Because, by the Ship Purchase Bill recently passed by Congress, a Board is to be established to supervise freight rates in American waters, and also to organize a $50,000,000 corporation to build or buy merchant ships. Forty-nine per cent of the stock is to be available for public subscription; any not subscribed is to be taken by the Government. The ships built or bought may be leased by private interests, but, should private concerns fail to take them, they are to be operated by the Government. In time of war they may also be used as naval auxiliaries.

There are five members of the Board. They are nominated for terms of two, three, four, five, and six years. Three of the members of the Board are Democrats and get the long terms.

Mr. William Denman, who has the term of six years, is a California lawyer with experience in Admiralty cases. He was Chairman of the Investigating Committee at the time of the municipal corruption exposures in San Francisco in 1908.

Mr. Bernard N. Baker, of Baltimore, the well-known shipping expert and for thirty years President of the Atlantic Transport Line, comes next in term of service.

Mr. John A. Donald, of New York City, who has also had a lifelong experience in the steamship business, especially in the West Indian fruit trade, follows in order.

Mr. John Barber White, a Kansas City Republican, has the three-year term. He is an expert on export business and is president of several large lumber companies.

Mr. Theodore Brent, of New Orleans, a Republican, is a railway man, having occupied important positions in connection with the Rock Island and the St. Louis and San Francisco

lines.

It will be interesting to see what this Board does.

AMERICANS IN MONASTIR

The news that the Serbs were back in Monastir was of special interest to the American Board (Congregational), for it has maintained religious and educational work there for fortyfour years.

Monastir has a population of about fifty thousand. Two-fifths are Moslems. It has several mosques, churches, and educational institutions, both Christian and Moslem.

Before the first Balkan War (1912) Monastir was the fourth city of Turkey-in-Europe and had a large Turkish garrison.

Within the past four years the ownership of Monastir has changed from Turkish to Serb, to Bulgar, and now again to Serb. In all previous cases, as doubtless in the latest, our American work has gone steadily on. Our schools have not been closed. The American Board's workers have continued to care for the wounded or the sick of any nationality; they have gone in and out among people of all classes, and the homes of Americans have been centers of friendliness and helpfulness. Thus something else goes on in a war zone besides war. We might think that war is the only thing that occupies the Monastir population, just as we might have thought football the only thing that occupied the undergraduate mind this autumn. Probably the first statement would be as untrue as the second.

T

THE PRESIDENT'S UNASKED ADVICE HE President's note to the Powers, reported in last week's Outlook, has been variously received both at home and abroad. By some it is warmly commended; by others as warmly condemned. This is partly because different partisans give to it differing interpretations. But it is partly because it calls for both commendation and condemnation. It was an opportune message inopportunely sent; a rational request irrationally presented.

The German note was sent to the United States with the request that the United States forward it to the Allies. It suggested peace negotiations, but it did not suggest any basis for such negotiations. The President in forwarding it to the Allies might well have accompanied it with an official expression of public opinion in the United States. He might in diplomatic phraseology have called the attention of the Allies to the omission of any definite proposals; he might have said, as he subsequently did say, that the whole world is weary of this war; that the neutral nations are injuriously affected by it; and, speaking not only for the United States but for all the neutral nations, he might have expressed the hope that the Allies would do what the Germans had not done, state clearly their objects in the war and the terms and conditions upon which they would be willing to enter into peace parleys. Germany could have taken no exception to such a statement, for it would have been the simple truth. The Allies could have taken no exception, for it would have been a natural accompaniment to the message which the President had been asked to convey to them.

But he said nothing. He acted simply as a letter-carrier. He manifested no more interest in the note than a postmaster manifests in the letter which he delivers at the window, or the censor manifests in the letter which he has opened and read before forwarding it to its destination. His silence might well have been interpreted as meaning that America had no interest in the peace proposal. That interpretation was the more natural since the President has more than once declared that we have no concern with the war and no occasion to inquire into the causes which produced it.

Did the President lack the necessary courage? or the pre-vision? or was it simply a case of "second thoughts are best." We do not know. We only know that he allowed the golden opportunity to pass. And when opportunity is allowed to pass it is always difficult and often impossible to overtake it. When the President did speak, it was too late. The Allies had already spoken. On the 19th of December Lloyd George, speaking not only for England but for all the Allies, declared in very definite terms what they were fighting for and what was the irreducible minimum on which alone they were willing to enter into peace negotiations: "Complete restitution, full reparation, and effectual guarantees." After that speech unasked advice was an intrusion; it is not strange that it has been resented as an impertinence. And that resentment is the more natural, for the advice has been since accompanied by a veiled warning that the United States may yet be drawn into the war, with no intimation on which side the President thinks our interests lie.

The official reply of the Allies to the German note will probably reach our readers before this issue of The Outlook can reach them. That it may add to the three conditions of peace negotiations specified by Lloyd George is possible. That it will

Tommy (ready to go

over the top"). I suppose we shall be making history in a few minutes, sergeant? Sergeant. History be blowed! What you've got to make is geography.

What those "Tommies" were doing everybody is doing. Like the man who talked prose and did not know it, we are all of us doing our part without realizing it in making the history and geography which future generations are to study.

It is of no special credit to a man or woman to be a historymaker without knowing it. The chief difference between human beings and other creatures is that the human being is capable of reflecting upon what he and his fellows are doing and of guiding his future conduct by what he has learned in the process of reflecting upon his past conduct. What is true of the individual is equally true of any group of individuals and of the nation. If we are to be intelligent makers of history, we ought to be intelligent observers of it in the making.

More than that, we shall not really understand past history without understanding current history. One reason why to many students in the school and college history has seemed dull is that it is considered as something quite apart from the ordinary passions and beliefs and prejudices and ideals of contemporary folk. To learn why kings and presidents, why parliaments and congresses, why soldiers and clerks and business men and farmers, do to-day what they do is to open one's eyes to the fact that farmers and merchants and kings and all the other people who made Babylon and Greece, mediæval France and the German states and merry England, were moved by much the same feelings, guided by much the same beliefs, swayed by the same prejudices and ideals, that are working in the minds of men to-day.

And one who discovers this will find it impossible to read either current history or the history of the past without sharing the experiences of the makers of that history. He may keep himself from partisanship, but he cannot withhold his condemnation from that which seems to him evil, or his approval from that which seems to him good. If he really understands what he is studying, he cannot remain a merely neutral observer.

This at least is taken for granted, this is what underlies the idea, in the Outline Study of Current History which Mr. J. Madison Gathany is to conduct from week to week in The Outlook.

This Outline Study, though it is intended to be of specific use to teachers of history and teachers of English in schools and colleges, has not been prepared with a view of serving any one class of readers. It is designed to serve all readers of this journal who wish, while being makers of history, to be intelligent observers and interpreters of it. And we are particularly gratified at finding in Mr. Gathany one who not only regards history as something alive and human, but is also qualified to make current history appear alive and human to others. And since Mr. Gathany is to make these pages the basis on which his Study of Current History is to rest, we welcome the fact that he is to make opinions expressed in these pages the subject of searching questions, and is to submit those opinions to discussion and criticism. With the principles which Mr. Gathany sets forth in his article on another page we heartily agree. Indeed, it is because we knew of Mr. Gathany's methods and ideas of studying current history that we asked him to institute

in our pages this Outline Study. And we believe that every reader of The Outlook who desires to make the best possible use of it will find it profitable to turn to those columns in which Mr. Gathany's Outline will appear each week.

PACIFIST, MILITARIST, OR JUSTICIST?

Once upon a time a clergyman was asked by a newspaper reporter whether he believed in a personal devil with horns and hoofs. The clergyman expressed his doubts as to the existence of such a being. "Why, then," said the reporter, "you are an atheist."

In much the same fashion the American citizen who declines to call himself a pacifist is likely to be put down as a militarist. One reason why all those who advocate peace at any price, or even peace at almost any price, are inclined to regard all who disagree with them as believing in militarism is that our English vocabulary is defective. We have a name (recently coined) for the believer in peace at any price-we call him a pacifist. We have a name (an old word with a new meaning) for the person who believes in putting the military power at the topwe call him a militarist. But for the rest of us who are neither

pacifists nor militarists there is no generally accepted name. We propose, for want of a better term, the name justicist. Pacifism is the belief that the chief object of the state is to establish and maintain peace. Those who believe in this doctrine regard peace as more important than national obligation, more important than the honorable observance of pledges, more important than the defense of weaker peoples, more important than the preservation of the nation's institutions, more important than even the protection of the lives of children and the lives and honor of women. Those who hold this doctrine are entitled to be called pacifists.

Militarism is the belief that the chief object of the state is to establish and maintain power. Those who believe in this doctrine regard the power of the state as an end to be sought in itself, and to the securing of that power they believe it is right to sacrifice treaties and other national obligations and to make the military organization of the state superior in authority to the civil government. Those who hold this doctrine are entitled to be called militarists.

There is, however, a third doctrine which is neither pacifism nor militarism. For the lack of a better name, we shall call it justicism.

Justicism is the belief that the chief object of the state is to establish and maintain justice. Those who believe in this doctrine regard peace as the normal condition of human life, but are willing to sacrifice the comforts and benefits of peace in order to secure justice. If there is injustice between man and man and there is no other way to establish justice than to hunt down the offender, they are willing to have the community disturbed until the offender is caught, secured, and subjected to the courts of justice. If there is injustice between nations, they are willing, if it is necessary, to have the tranquillity of the world disturbed in order to protect those who are suffering from injustice and to restrain the unjust nation. They believe that the state should be powerful, but are willing to sacrifice the state's power when it is the agent of injustice, and at all times to restrain it, to make it subject to the conscience of humanity. And to this end they believe that the military forces of the nation should be subject to the civil authority. Those who hold this doctrine are neither pacifists nor militarists, and they are entitled, if they wish, to be called justicists.

The militarist declares that necessity knows no law, and defends the violation of neutralized territory and the invasion of an unoffending nation under the plea that the perpetration of such wrong is necessary to the power of the state. The pacifist deplores such injustice, utters moral condemnation against the perpetrator of the wrong, but because resistance will mean a disturbance of the peace acquiesces in the wrong and permits, or at least does nothing to prevent, the militarist's success. The justicist denies the truth of the militarist's philosophy, declines to join the pacifist in permitting the triumph of that philosophy, and declares not only that the state should resist it, but that he himself, so far as in him lies, should

do all that he can to thwart the militarist's aims, to prevent the pacifist from assisting the militarist, and to re-establish law, honor, and justice.

CHRISTMAS, 1916, LOOKING
BACKWARD

The city dweller who has noted the matnematically modulated manner in which the hall-boy of his flat accepts his Christmas offering and who, out of the corner of his eye, has seen this same dignitary "checking off," on a convenient cuff, the names of his benefactors and the size of their benefactions, may feel, on looking backward at Christmas, that the occasion has lost some of the spontaneous kindliness which has made that day in the past the happiest festival of the Christtian world. Even for that city dweller, however much of a pessimist he may have become, and no matter how far he may have been removed from any possibility of celebrating Christmas in a truly Dickens-like fashion, there does exist an opportunity of making Christmas as personal a celebration and as Christmaslike in spirit as anything which could have been achieved with unlimited holly, fireplaces, spangles, turkeys, and plum puddings. The Christmas spirit is, after all, only Christmas thought expressed in some form or other-it does not matter much how or what. One of the best ways of expressing such a spirit, and one which has been growing in popularity during the past few years, is the sending of a Christmas card which is something more than a purchased jingle and which conveys some idea of the individuality of the sender and of the real thought which underlies the Christmas greeting.

It is now a long way until next Christmas, but we cannot wait until then to share with our readers one of the best of such personal expressions of Christmas thought which came to us this year. Perhaps it may start some one thinking of new ways of saying "Merry Christmas" in 1917. It is never too early for such an effort and never too late to feel the spirit of a "Merry Christmas" which is not the rubber-stamp greeting that chills like frozen mist.

The Christmas letter to which we refer came to us with the expressed fear that it might get tangled up in the columns of some newspaper, but we are going impolitely to ignore every thought that such a prohibition is meant to apply to us, and

W

TITHOUT distinction of party, American newspapers are praising or blaming President Wilson for his note to the Powers. In any event, as the Burlington, Vermont, "Free Press" (Rep). says, President Wilson to-day occupies the center of the world stage. "His message of peace has challenged the attention of all civilized nations."

AMERICAN APPROVAL

The Burlington "Free Press" continues:

Whether neutral or belligerent, all countries are busy to-day scanning his words and wondering what the harvest shall be. The President has thus centered all eyes upon himself and the American Nation he represents, because he has given voice to the peace aspirations of all belligerents no less than of all neutrals. Whether the American overtures are accepted or not, President Wilson's fame as a champion and advocate of peace is made doubly secure.

President Wilson wants each of the belligerents to tell what he is fighting for, chronicles the Syracuse "Post-Standard" (Rep). If the objects of warfare are thus formulated he believes that there will be laid the foundation for peace.' Says the Louisville "Courier-Journal" (Dem.):

If this is not a proposal for peace, notwithstanding the President's disavowal, it is hard to classify it. It is certainly some

thing new in international deportment for an outsider formally to inquire of the participants in a war in which he is not involved what they think they are fighting about.

"Wilson's note for peace strikes the right key," proclaims the Lewiston, Maine, "Journal" (Rep.). It "is timely in tact and in sentiment. The rights of neutrals are our business and the belligerents should sit up and take better notice."

The New York "World's" (Dem.) opinion follows:

A majority of the American people, in the East at least, have ceased to think about the war in terms of the United States. They are pro-British or pro-French or pro-German, and nonAmerican. They have forgotten that their country has any direct relationship to this conflict or has any rights that it is bound to protect unless those rights happen to coincide with the aims of one set of belligerents or another. The President's note is a definite assertion that the United States has something of its own at stake, and that its standing in court is not to be ignored. Therefore the chief point in favor of the note is its careful basing of the suggestion for a conference upon the plain, indisputable interest of the United States, concludes the Milwaukee Sentinel" (Rep.), and adds that "it is professedly a move in our own proper business, and not a piece of officious interference that might warrant a rebuff."

66

Many American-American newspapers agree for once with