service; and these needs will not be met completely unless every citizen is given the feeling of partnership that comes with full, frank statements concerning the conduct of the public business.

It is our opinion that the two functions-censorship and publicity- -can be joined in honesty and with profit, and we recommend the creation of a committee of public information. The chairman should be a civilian, probably some writer of proved courage, ability, and vision, able to gain the understanding co-operation of the press, and at the same time rally the authors of the country to a work of service.

Mr. Creel, who has been an ardent defender of Secretary Daniels and a strong supporter of Mr. Wilson, ought to be able sympathetically to present the aims and policies of the Administration. The co-operation of the authors and writers of the country with Mr. Creel will, we believe, be limited only by Mr. Creel's willingness and ability to co-operate with them.

THE VAST BATTLE IN NORTHERN FRANCE

Both German and French official despatches describe the fighting in northern France, still going on and increasing in intensity as late as April 18, as the most terrific and extended of the war. A German report from headquarters speaks of it as one of the greatest battles of the mighty war, and therefore also in the world's history." A French War Office estimate of April 17 asserts that General Nivelle's troops in twenty-four hours previous, on a forty-mile front, had inflicted losses of one hundred thousand in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Fierce fighting has been going on at many points over a line more than a hundred miles long.

The most important movement of the week ending April 18 was the great French advance along the Aisne, between Soissons and Rheims, and east of Rheims. Everywhere the French gains were considerable in extent, and seem to be of vital value in reducing the great German salient stretching out toward Soissons and in threatening Laon, which is by all observers considered an essential point in the so-called Hindenburg line; it might be better described as the line chosen by German military skill as that which they had prepared for permanent occupation after the retreat from the Somme district. It certainly has been broken through at more than one point. The German papers having remarked that all German lines are Hindenburg lines," it has been retorted that the only Hindenburg line now visible is a line of retreat. Even on the far northern part of the line a success has been gained by the occupation of Dixmude, while toward the other extreme the French have made gains in Alsace.

66

that time this work was just beginning, being carried on by the French Government in co-operation with a number of Americans organized under the somewhat cumbersome title, "American Committee for Training in Suitable Trades the Maimed Soldiers of France."

When this work was begun, it was announced that for $100 a maimed man could be educated to support himself at such a trade as basket-making, photography, shoemaking, stenography, or tailoring.

In the short space of thirteen months $247,000 has been raised and two thousand cripples have been made self-supporting. The American Committee is now trying to raise more money in order to guarantee the future maintenance of their work and enlarge it. Three schools are in constant operation, as follows: Grand Palais, Champs Elysées, Paris, where three hundred men are being trained; a large private house at 28 Quai Debilly, Paris, which is a school for one hundred maimed soldiers; and Maison Blanche, at Neuilly-sur-Marne, eight miles from Paris, where in the schools founded by Mr. Edward T. Stotesbury, of Philadelphia, five hundred cripples are learning to make their living by the use of artificial limbs or by the development of new senses to replace others impaired by war.

Encouraged by the success of these industrial schools, the French Government has decided to establish agricultural schools for the crippled peasants, and has asked the help of the Amer ican Committee for this purpose. The heaviest burden of this war in France has fallen on the French peasants over sixty per cent of the French army is drawn from the rural population. Without minimizing the importance of the courageous attempts of the women to do the work of men on the farms, the French Government has come to the conclusion that women are not entirely adequate for this work, and that it is important for the welfare of the Republic to replace as much as possible of the lost male labor. With this end in view, the Government has offered to the American Committee two extensive farmsone at Juvisy, about fifteen miles southwest of Paris, and one at Troyes, ninety miles southeast of Paris. For the maintenance of these schools a good deal of money is needed to add to what the Committee has already devoted to this purpose.

Americans wishing to help our friend and ally, France, by the training of her cripples for either industrial or agricultural work may send donations to Mrs. Edmund Lincoln Baylies, Room 134, Biltmore Hotel, New York City.

OUR NATIONAL FORESTS AND PARKS

Last year the American Civic Association started the plan of touring the National Parks, and this year the Massachusetts Forestry Association has started a similar plan, adding thereto the National forests. The object of the tour is educational.

Already the Allies have accomplished more in injury to their enemies in northern France than in all the operations of last year. The German Staff clearly and certainly miscalculated the swiftness of the Allies and the weight of guns the Allies could bring to bear in attacking their enemy in his new positions.

Other war events of note for the week were: the appointment of General Alexieff, formerly Chief of Staff, as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies; a new victory by General Maude over the Turks, northeast of Bagdad; and the report that a German submarine had been sighted on the American coast and had fired the first shot in the American naval war by attacking, but missing, an American destroyer, the U. S. S.

Smith.

NEW LIMBS FOR OLD

A year ago we reported what was being done to train the French war cripples to support themselves in useful trades. At

Travel Number" of The Outlook.

The tour is expected to begin at Boston on June 28, proceed by way of Chicago and Denver to the Rocky Mountain National Park, the Yellowstone and the Glacier National Parks, and the Chelan National Forest, to Seattle; then to Rainier National Park and Forest on the way to Portland, Oregon, and then to Crater Lake National Park and Forest on the way to San Francisco. Of course a visit to the Yosemite National Park and the General Grant National Park would be an accompaniment to the journey to Los Angeles, after which the Grand Canyon of the Colorado would be the chief attraction.

We have only just begun to appreciate what we have in the way of scenic interest and grandeur in our National forests and parks. Nowhere in the world may we find such groves as those of our mighty sequoias, oldest of living trees. Nowhere may we find geysers to compare with ours. Certainly nowhere is there anything comparable to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

From such a trip as that outlined above there should be another benefit than that merely of delight and awe at the sight of the scenery, and that is the tourist's increasing familiarity with

My Fellow-Countrymen:

The White House, April 15, 1917.

The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim and terrible war for democracy and human rights which has shaken the world creates so many problems of National life and action which call for immediate consideration and settlement that I hope you will permit me to address to you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal with regard to them.

We are rapidly putting our navy upon an effective war footing and are about to create and equip a great army, but these are the simplest parts of the great task to which we have addressed ourselves. There is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are fighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be the rights of mankind and for the future peace and security of the world. To do this great thing worthily and successfully we must devote ourselves to the service without regard to profit or material advantage, and with an energy and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterprise itself. We must realize to the full how great the task is and how many things, how many kinds and elements of capacity and service and self-sacrifice, it involves.

These, then, are the things we must do and do well, besides fighting the things without which mere fighting would be fruitless.

We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our armies and our seamen not only; but also, for a large part of the nations with whom we have now made common cause, in whose support and by whose sides we shall be fighting.

We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our ship-yards to carry to the other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, what will every day be needed there, and abundant materials out of our fields and our mines and our factories with which not only to clothe and equip our own forces on land and sea, but also to clothe and support our people for whom the gallant fellows under arms can no longer work; to help clothe and equip the armies with which we are co-operating in Europe, and to keep the looms and manufactories there in raw materials; coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and in the furnaces of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both here and there; rails for wornout railways back of the fighting fronts; locomotives and rolling stock to take the place of those every day going to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military service; everything with which the people of England and France and Italy and Russia have usually supplied themselves but cannot now afford the men, the materials, or the machinery to make.

It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, on the farms, in the ship-yards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made more prolific and more efficient than ever, and that they must be more economically managed and better adapted to the particular requirements of our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the men and the women who devote their thought and their energy to these things will be serving

the country and conducting the fight for peace and freedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on the battlefield or in the trenches.

The industrial forces of the country, men and women alike, will be a great National, a great international, service army-a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the Nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free man everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise liable to military service will, of right and of neces sity, be excused from that service and assigned to the fundamental sustaining work of the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the great patriotic forces of the Nation as the men under fire.

I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to the farmers of the country, and to all who work on the farms. The supreme need of our own Nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs.

The importance of an adequate food supply, especially for the present year, is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only during the present emergency, but for some time after peace shall have come, both our own people and a large proportion of the people of Europe must rely upon the harvests in America.

Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, in large measure rests the fate of the war and the fate of the nations. May the Nation not count upon them to omit no step that will increase the production of their land, or that will bring about the most effectual co-operation in the sale and distribution of their prod ucts?

The time is short. It is of the most imperative importance that everything possible be done and done immediately to mak sure of large harvests. I call upon young men and old alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty-to turn in hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor is lacking in this great matter. I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to plant abundant foodstuffs as well as cotton. They can show their patriotism in no better or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation of the present price of cotton, and helping, helping upon a great scale, to feed the Nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting for their liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will be the visible measure of their comprehension of their National duty.

The Government of the United States and the Governments of the several States stand ready to co-operate. They will do everything possible to assist farmers in securing an adequate supply of seed, an adequate force of laborers when they are most needed at harvest time, and the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as of the crops themselves when harvested.

The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it is possible to make it, and there shall be no unwarranted manipulation of the Nation's food supply by those who handle it on its way to the consumer. This is our opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a great democracy, and we shall not fall short of it.

This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether they are handling our foodstuffs or our raw materials of manufacture or the products of our mills and factories. The eyes of the country will be especially upon you. This is your opportunity for signal service, efficient and disinterested. The country expects you, as it expects all others, to forego unusual profits, to or ganize and expedite shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food, with an eye to the service you are rendering and in the spirit of those who enlist in the ranks, for their people, not for themselves. I shall confidently expect you to deserve and win the confidence of people of every sort and station.

To the men who run the railways of the country, whether they be managers or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the arteries of the Nation's life, and that upon them rests the immense responsibility of seeing to it that these arteries suffer no obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened

power.

To the merchant let me suggest the motto, "Small profits and

quick service ;" and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war depends upon him.

The food and the war supplies must be carried across the seas, no matter how many ships are sent to the bottom. The places of those that go down must be supplied, and supplied at once.

To the miner let me say that he stands where the farmer does the work of the world waits on him. If he slackens or fails, armies and statesmen are helpless. He also is enlisted in the great service army.

The manufacturer does not need to be told, I hope, that the Nation looks to him to speed and perfect every process; and I want only to remind his employees that their service is absolutely indispensable and is counted on by every man who loves the country and its liberties.

Let me suggest also that every one who creates or cultivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of the nations, and that every housewife who practices strict economy puts herself in the ranks of those who serve the Nation.

This is the time for America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and extravagance.

Let every man and every woman assume the duty of careful, provident use and expenditure as a public duty, as a dictate of patriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused or forgiven for ignoring.

In the hope that this statement of the needs of the Nation and of the world in this hour of supreme crisis may stimulate those to whom it comes and remind all who need reminder of the solemn duties of a time such as the world has never seen before, I beg that all editors and publishers everywhere will give as prominent publication and as wide circulation as possible to this appeal. I venture to suggest, also, to all advertising agencies that they would perhaps render a very substantial and timely service to the country if they would give it widespread repetition, and I hope that clergymen will not think the theme of it an unworthy or inappropriate subject of comment and homily from their pulpits.

The supreme test of the Nation has come. We must all speak, act, and serve together. WOODROW WILSON.

AMERICA AT THE FRONT

"We shall never be a real factor in this war until our troops are in the trenches."

These words, from a recent address by General Francis V. Greene, which has been printed in full in the New York Times," should be placarded throughout the country. The Administration evidently realizes the fact that these words express; it is the people of the country that still need to realize it. To give our allies access to our financial and material resources is plainly the duty we can most easily and most promptly perform. But, as General Greene says, "You cannot buy your way through war with your check books. You must pay with your own sweat and blood." And every American who remembers his country's history-its mistakes and its achievements, its ideals and the hardships it has endured for their sake-will want to have America count as a factor in the war as soon as possible.

General Greene points out that in order to do this it is necessary to put through the plan which the Administration proposes

the raising of the regular army to war strength and of the National Guard to nearly half a million men, and to raise an army of half a million on the principle of universal liability to military service.

But, as he also says, it is important to send our men to France to get their training there. He would have this country transport an infantry division to Europe, and he gives military reasons for the need of sending them there as soon as practicable. But there is more than military reason for this. The chief reason is a moral one. The effect of the appearance of our troops in Europe "in heartening up the French and British soldiers in the trenches, as well as the Belgians, Italians, and Russians, will be as immense," says General Greene," as the effect upon Washington's ragged and starving soldiers one hundred and thirty-seven years ago when Lafayette arrived with money, gun

powder, and clothing, but, above all, with the news that some of the finest regiments of the French army were already on their way to America. Our independence really dates from that period, rather than from July 4, 1776.”

This is a reason why every facility should be given to Mr. Roosevelt in his plan of raising a division to go overseas.

The military man, intent on securing military efficiency, is likely to overlook forces that are not purely military. For that reason, some military men deplore the proposal to send from this country at an early date men of military training who could be used in training the forces that we shall need a year from now. In such a war as this, however, purely military considerations should not control. It was because the French people recognized this fact that the governmental authorities of France declined to acquiesce in the proposal of some French military men that Verdun be abandoned to the Germans, for these authorities recognized the truth that whatever military advantage might be gained by yielding this spot in the line would be more than offset by the moral loss in its surrender. And these military men were wrong and the governmental authorities were right; and the repulsion of the Germans at Verdun was a victory far surpassing any incidental military advantage. It meant new moral strength to the whole French Republic.

It is such moral strength that it is our duty to give to our allies as soon as we can. And we should do this not merely for our old-time friend France, but for our new sister democracy, Russia.

It is planned, we understand, to help Russia by lending money to her and by sending a commission to Petrograd to act as an expert advisory board for the new Government. This is well and good. But we ought to give Russia more than money, more than expert advice. We ought to give her the moral strength that can come from the presence of Americans in uniform on Russian soil. And it is important that we do this at this moment, for it is this moment which is supremely important in the determination of Russia's destiny.

We should send to Russia an American regiment, or even a smaller military body. We should send that unit to cross the Pacific, and, traveling across the Russian Empire, to be seen by the common people at the railway stations, to parade in Moscow and Petrograd, and to go to the front. A thousand or five hundred men would give no new military strength to the Russian hosts. There are as many men at the Russian front as Russia needs—more, perhaps, than she can well supply. In a military sense, five hundred Americans might be regarded as five hundred men in the way. But in a moral sense their presence in Russia would be of inestimable value. These men might never actually be in the trenches. It does not matter whether they are or not. But they would find their way into the hearts of the Russian people, and that is where they are needed.

Russia is an infant democracy, and she is looking to the United States, as the oldest of the great republics, for encouragement, for moral support, and for an example of disciplined liberty. The one hundred and sixty millions of Russian peasants regard America as a dream country. Nothing else in the world, we are assured, would create a greater sensation and arouse a greater enthusiasm among the Russians than the fact that Americans not dream Americans, but real Americans-in American uniforms and bearing the American flag were on Russian soil as comrades of the men of the armies of new Russia.

And these Americans would be the strongest safeguards against the perils that threaten Russia to-day. Reverses suffered under the Czar did not break the Russian spirit, because the Russians knew that it was not their fault, but the fault of their reactionary Government. Reverses to-day would be harder to bear because they would engender doubt among the Russian people in the strength of democracy itself. What the Russian peasants, who do not read the newspapers and who do not get the news by the printed page, need is an ocular demonstration of the power of democracy. They need a symbol, a democratic ikon, and this America can give to them.

We must not leave these Russians, these allies of ours, without the moral reinforcement which out of our one hundred and forty years of tried democracy we can furnish them.

And, best of all, we can do this without weakening the future military strength of the United States, and we can do this by

rendering an additional and practical service as well as a symbolic one.

Russia needs engineers for her railways. She has troops enough; she probably has munitions and supplies enough; but she has not means of easily getting her supplies and her munitions to her troops or distributing her food among her people. For the building of such railways America can send American engineers. There are Americans already in Russia building railways. There is no difficulty about putting our civil engineers and all the mechanical engineers we can spare to the service of Russian railways and Russian factories.

We propose that this military contingent that should be sent to Russia be composed of such engineers. They should be formed into a regiment, under the command of a colonel of the American military establishment, with a Russian officer as an aide-de-camp. These engineers need have no more military training than is necessary to enable them to march together and to live under the simplest of military conditions. They can be called from out of civil life. They should be put into American uniforms; they should carry the American flag; they could elect their own subalterns and non-commissioned officers; they could serve as well as any other military contingent as the symbol of America's military force; they could march as well as any other body through the towns and villages of Russia. And when they had served to rally Russian courage, Russian faith in democracy, and Russian confidence in American fidelity, they could disperse to their engineering tasks and serve Russia where Russia most needs service.

Such a regiment of engineers in American uniform would hearten Russia.

They would renew Russia's respect for America.

They would demonstrate to the Russian peasant, inclined, with his new-found freedom, to throw off restraint, that democracy can be not only free, but also disciplined.

And they could render to Russia, through their expert work, invaluable service.

Not the least of the benefits that such an American force of citizen-soldier engineers in Russia would bring would be the benefit to our own land. Their progress across the American continent to the Pacific coast would be told in daily despatches. Their arrival in Japan, one of our allies, would be dramatic and significant. Their journey across Siberia would be told to the American people. The story of their reception in town after town in Russia would tell to the American people what Russia means to democracy to-day. They would help to awaken Americans from lethargy, and give to America a new inspiration and faith in the ideals which Americans profess.

My Dear

AN OPEN LETTER

TO A FORMER PROGRESSIVE

In 1912 you and I were singing together "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and in imagination were fighting the battle of Armageddon. We had enlisted for life in the war against social injustice. But now we have separated. You are all for peace, and I am still for war. Why? Have you changed? Or have I changed? Or has the issue changed?

Professor Eduard Meyer eulogizes Germany as the most monarchical government in Europe. The power of its monarch he says, 66 must be unlimited, and it cannot, therefore, be responsible to man, but to God alone." He wrote before the revolution in Russia, but even then his statement was correct. Absolutism was more apparent in Russia, but more real in Germany. In December last a Russian teacher in this country said to me-I am quoting from memory: "The intellectuals in Russia are democratic; the spirit of the universities is democratic; the army is pervaded by democratic aspirations; the peasantry have learned in the communes the first lessons of democracy; when the next revolution breaks out in Russia, it will achieve its purpose with little bloodshed." And the revolution of last month proved him a wise student of life.

But in Germany the whole structure of government-political, educational, military, industrial-is autocratic.

At the head of this Government is an Emperor who with

frank egotism has thus defined his own idea of his powers: "Only one is master of this country. That is I. Who opposes me I shall crush to pieces. . . . Sic volo, sic jubeo. We Hohenzollerns take our crown from God alone, and to God alone we are responsible in the fulfillment of duty. . . . Suprema lex regis voluntas."

There is a Parliament, but the Ministry is responsible to the Emperor alone, not, as in England, France, and Italy, to the people through the Parliament.

There is universal suffrage, but that suffrage is so adjusted that Prussia controls the Imperial Parliament and a few rich men control Prussia.2

There is a public system of education which is highly efficient for the purpose for which it is organized, but that purpose is distinctly autocratic. There is compulsory education in free elementary schools, but they carry the pupil only up to four

teen years of age. There are secondary schools which carry the

The

education on up to the universities, but there is no open door between the elementary and the secondary school. The elementary school does not prepare for the secondary school. secondary school is not free; entrance into the universities, the professions, and the higher offices in the civil government, the military organization, and the educational system is confined to graduates from the secondary school, and eminent success in the industries of the nation is exceedingly difficult for any others. No private school can be maintained without Government consent, and, in fact, there are only about forty thousand students in the private schools, and these are mostly church schools. The whole educational system is admirably devised to educate the few to govern and the many to be governed.

Such is the constitution of Germany. The Emperor rules Prussia; Prussia rules Germany; and now Germany is attempting to rule the world.

That this is the attempt of Germany The Outlook has heretofore made clear to its readers by quotations from leaders of German thought and rulers in the German state. One quotation must suffice here: "Germany," says Professor Ostwald," thanks to her genius for organization or social efficiency, has attained a state of civilization far higher than that of all other peoples. This war will in the future compel these other peoples to participate, under the form of German social efficiency, in a civilization higher than their own. You ask me what it is that Germany wants. Well, Germany wants to organize Europe, for up to now Europe has never been organized. In this attempt of Germany to compel the free nations of the earth to throw away their hard-earned liberties and accept Germany's autocratic system you have urged America to acquiesce. Or, if you have not actively protested against America's entering into the war, you have not advocated her entrance. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people does not seem to appeal to you. Why?

Do you think that overtime and underpay of laborers is unjust in America, but the enslavement and deportation of laborers is just in Belgium? To work in mines and factories for mothers and wives is wrong in America, but giving them over to the victims of criminal lust is allowable in Belgium? That child labor ought to be fought against in America, but child murder ought to be winked at in Belgium? Or do you think that justice is worth voting for, but not worth fighting for? Does the dramatic spectacle of a battlefield appear to you more horrible than the spectacle of tyranny unresisted, wrong unpunished? If so, I do not agree with you. The Battle of the Marne in France is glorious compared to the futile revolution of 1848 in Germany. The French Revolution is less dreadful than the Bourbon despotism which that Revolution destroyed.

I do not judge the Germans. They are the victims of a tyranny whose deadly influence they did not suspect. A hundred years of autocratic education has transformed the Germany which believed in liberty of thought, if not of action, into a

1 Quoted in the "Nineteenth Century and After," by J. Ellis Barker, an English writer born and educated in Germany.

2 Of the 397 seats in the Reichstag Prussia has 235, or about three-fifths of the whole number, and in the Parliament of Prussia the largest taxpayers-that is, the comparatively few of the richest men-choose as many electors as the great mass of laborers.-A. Lawrence Lowell, Governments and Parties in Continental Europe, Vol. I, pp. 253, 305.

3 Statement by Professor Ostwald in the "Journal de Genève."