that I can think of, and America was established in order to indicate, at any rate in one Government, the fundamental rights of man. America must hereafter be ready as a member of the family of nations to exert her whole force, moral and physical, to the assertion of those rights throughout the round globe.

The President's conclusions are logical only upon the assumption that all the nations of Europe have been equally guilty, that there is no difference between the moral position of Prussia and the moral position of Belgium, ...at no advance had ever been made toward a realization of a society of nations in which the United States had definite responsibilities and obligations, that liberties can be violated and the violation forgotten without the loss of moral stamina, that future promises of reform can be substituted for present courage and the will to endure.

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Against that assumption by the President of the United States a great company of Americans, among whom The Outlook wishes to be counted, have protested, and will continue to protest, because they see in the European war something more than a plex web of intrigue;" because they believe that the Hague conventions represented a measurable advance toward the formation of a society of nations; because they believe that in the violation of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania the United States itself suffered a direct blow to its integrity and liberty; because they believe that the defense of the integrity and liberty of a nation can never be made to wait upon the convenience of time, but must be prosecuted by the generation upon which the blow falls.

MR. ROOSEVELT DISCUSSES
THE PRESIDENT

Taking as his text the President's speech in Cincinnati, Mr. Roosevelt made some severe comments in Brooklyn on October 29 upon the President's policies as he himself had enunciated them. Mr. Roosevelt had in the beginning of his speech quoted from Mr. Mason's interview with Carranza as published in The Outlook, using advance proofs that had been sent out for the convenience of the press. He cited two parallel columns in a Cleveland paper, the headlines in one running, "President Wilson Says We Shall Have to Fight in the Next War," and those in the other running, "Voters Will Support Wilson Because He Is Against War;" and he declared that these two appeals typify the Democratic

campaign. President Wilson, said Mr. Roosevelt, "has been conducting his campaign on the issue that he has kept us out of war. And now he turns around and says that we shall surely be involved in the next war and that we ought to fight whenever there is a repetition of such a crime as the invasion of Belgium or the butchery of the Armenians and of the Syrian Christians.

If his words do not mean this, then they are not worth the breath that uttered them.

If what the President says in his Cincinnati speech is true," continued Mr. Roosevelt, if America is indeed sure to be in the next great war, if it is her duty to use all her physical force for the fundamental rights of humanity over the wide world, then rest assured, my fellow-countrymen, America will never take such a position under the lead of a man whose soul was such as to permit him to make use of such an expression as 'too proud to fight.'

AUSTRALIA AND CONSCRIPTION

Australia has voted, as indicated by the incomplete returns of the election held on October 28, "No conscription for foreign service." It may surprise some of our readers to find that such a question has even been under discussion in Australia. Some of the surprise will doubtless be due to the fact that many people confuse universal training with universal compulsory service at the dictates of a Government.

Australia has universal military training, and in case of invasion she can call upon all her trained manhood to defend her shores. Being a democracy, however, she has found it necessary to vote on the question as to whether her sons can be sent to serve in what is virtually a foreign war. The only difference between Australia and the United States in this respect is that they both possess the power to conscript soldiers for the defense of their country, but that the United States has taken practically no steps to see that its citizens are fitted to protect either themselves or their country.

The Australian vote, according to the incomplete returns, was against conscription for foreign service in about the ratio of nine to eight. The defeat has been attributed to the labor vote, to the women of Australia, and, by one man, to pacifist tendencies imported from the United States.

The Premier of Australia, William Morris

Hughes, in a manifesto issued at Melbourne to the women of Australia, said of the referendum which has just been voted upon :

To vote "No" would be to abandon those gallant Australian troops who have fought and are fighting so heroically for you; to desert the cause of millions of innocent Belgian women and children, whose agony and suffering have evoked the profound sympathy and passionate outcry of the civilized nations for vengeance against those responsible; to be guilty of base ingratitude to those glorious soldiers of France who have died in hundreds of thousands to save you and the women of the world from dishonor and death; and to betray our kinsmen in Britain to whose valor and sacrifice we owe everything and without whose help we should be utterly lost.

It is possible that the apparent futility of the sacrifice of the Anzac regiments at Gallipoli had a strong influence upon the result of this election.

CARRANZA FOR PRESIDENT

General Venustiano Carranza has formally accepted the nomination of the Constitutionalist Liberal party for the Presidency of Mexico. In a statement reported by the newspapers Carranza says that "the greatest generals and the most important civilians have united" in this party, which includes "such men as Generals Gonzales and Obregon," and that "all are disposed to sustain the Government under my charge."

It will probably be months before a Presidential election is held in Mexico. Before that event the revision of the Constitution by Delegates recently elected for that purpose must take place, then Deputies to Congress must be elected, and later Congress must approve the acts done by Carranza in his executive capacity as First Chief. Finally, Congress will call for the election of a President. In a recent decree Carranza set December 1 of the year in which the President is elected as the date on which he shall take office, so that under no circumstances can Mexico have a President before December 1, 1917.

A disclaimer by the Mexican Government and by Señor Luis Cabrera, Chairman of the Mexican Commission, to the conference at Atlantic City, of the statement alleged to have come from Cabrera to the effect that American officials were virtually aiding Villa and Zapata is, of course, convincing only in a diplomatic sense. That is to say, there is good

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reason to believe that the statement represents pretty accurately the real feelings of the Mexican Government. It was issued by the Mexican News Bureau, an organization supported by Carranza funds, and, moreover, remarks similar in general tenor to those disclaimed by Cabrera have been published in the newspapers as coming from the First Chief himself. The particular portion of the alleged Cabrera statement which did most to excite unfavorable public comment in the United States was as follows:

"The importation of arms and munitions for the use of Villa, Zapata, and the other bandits and brigands is conducted under the very eyes of supine officials whose business it should be to hinder their transmission across the border."

After declaring in a public statement recently that the revolutionary leader Felix Diaz had been driven out of Mexico into Guatemala, and that "all Zapatistas had been forced to take to the mountains,” Carranza said: "The only active movement has been that of the Villistas in Chihuahua, which has been able to continue on account of the facilities the enemies of the Government have acquired in the United States to foment and aid the movement."

As we go to press it is reported that the American-Mexican Joint Commission is about to adjourn until after election day.

THE LUTHERAN

FOUR HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY

The

Four hundred years ago Martin Luther nailed ninety-five so-called "theses "on the church door at Wittenberg, Saxony. These theses were directed against the system of indulgences. A Dominican monk named Tetzel had been selling these indulgences, which were assurances of remission of punishment, in return for material contributions to the Church, usually money. Elector Frederick of Saxony, who was what one might call a natural Protestant, had forbidden Tetzel to enter his territories. But the seller of indulgences had drawn many people from Wittenberg to buy the socalled Papal tickets.” Luther, who was himself a monk, was greatly troubled. He. saw that the sales were injurious to the morals of the burghers and believed that the whole system was wrong. So he nailed his theses on the church door, where all could see and read them. In less than a fortnight they were known throughout Ger

many. They were hardly a programme of reformation. They made no attempt at theological definition. They were merely points of a debate addressed to the "man in the street." The effect of their publication was that the sale of indulgences rapidly declined and the Protestant Reformation began to take definite form.

The four hundredth anniversary celebration of this event, culminating a year hence, began last week throughout the Lutheran churches of the United States-the third largest communion in America, including some two million persons.

In New York City last week the celebration began with services at the principal churches, with the dedication of the Lutheran Hospital, and with a religious mass-meeting at which the principal speaker was Dr. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education, who told of the educational value of the work accomplished by Luther, and aptly suggested that the present festival year be devoted to an educational campaign to teach the people to read the Bible. In the evening there was another great mass-meeting at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn.

The opening of the Lutheran Reformation anniversary, in addition to the anniversary celebrations by several other churches, resulted in a total church attendance of New York City Protestants estimated as the largest on any single Sunday in the history of the metropolis.

PATRIOTISM AND EPISCOPALIANS

There is a close relation between religion and patriotism. That was made evident at the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which ended its three weeks' session at St. Louis on October 27 with the reading of a pastoral letter from the House of Bishops. So interwoven are the fortunes of all the nations in the tapestry of fate that to ignore the fact of war would be folly, affirms the letter; certainly the fact that our Nation is not at war "affords no ground for smugness." On the contrary, it throws upon us "the searching responsibility of exalting the true ideals of peace."

Those ideals the letter contrasts with the spirit of a false nationalism. In Europe this false nationalism breaks forth in war, here "in unconsecrated prosperity."

And this remarkable document uses very plain but eloquent words about America, as follows:

The nation that, in some quarters, for the sake of gain, still chains to the wheels of industry the bodies and souls of little children, that allows human life to be sacrificed to the inventions of speed, . . . that heeds but listlessly the cry of the poor and depressed, is not at peace, even though she be not at war.

If, presently, we aspire to act as peacemakers in behalf of the warring nations, on the ground that we are not caught in the meshes of the actual conflict, let our aspirations be tempered by the reflection that we are tainted with the common disease of which the eruption of war is a symptom, not a cause.

Regarding the present war in particular, what has America done for the humanity involved? The letter complains:

Let it be sadly said that, in proportion to her swollen wealth, America's contribution toward the alleviation of innocent sufferers in Europe is the merest pittance. A few have given lavishly even to the laying down of their lives; many, in due proportion to their substance; the vast majority, little or nothing. But the opportunity has not yet slipped by. The wounds of Armenia and Belgium still lie gaping to the sky.

What is the result to ourselves? We have come out richer in purse and poorer in manhood. We may be at peace, but "the peace that smothers the soul is as ruthless and inexorable as the war which mangles the body."

The celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of St. Paul's Chapel, New York City, also formed an occasion for the expression of similar patriotism. St. Paul's, the oldest of the chapels of Trinity Parish, is also the oldest public building in New York City and the only pre-Revolutionary church edifice in it. George Washington attended service there, walking from his house in Cherry Street, the site of which is now occupied by a pillar of the Brooklyn Bridge. Surmounting the pulpit is the brass coat of arms of the Prince of Wales, said to be the only royalist relic still in its original place in the metropolis. Preaching in that pulpit, the Rev. Dr. William Montague Geer reviewed the events in the history of the chapel. He protested that the chapel, of which he is vicar, is not resting on past glories, but is doing good work to-day. In addition to its regular Sunday services it has two daily services, one at twelve and the other at one o'clock, for the benefit of men downtown during the lunch hour; a lunch club with more than six hun