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dred young women members; organ recitals, a Chinese service once a week, and a service at half-past two o'clock in the morning for night workers. Of course popular interest centered on the historic pew in which George Washington listened to sermons; and Dr. Geer said:

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of such practical benefit to us as universal military training. Dr. Manning concluded:

I advocate universal training because it will make our land practically secure against invasion. I advocate it because it is the only military system that is truly democratic. It puts all on one common footing. It will develop in us those high qualities of orderliness and system, of respect for authority, and obedience to law.

We should like to know if we could meet him, proud or ashamed of our record from 1914 to 1916. It would mean a great deal to many of us to know what would be his opinion regarding the murdered women and children on the Lusitania and our action in that matter. And what about the starving Serbians, Poles, and Armenians, while this country goes on piling up its millions with full dinner-pails and perfect peace with the world, either from fear or self-interest?

On the following day, when the celebration of the anniversary was resumed, representatives of the Governor of the State sat in the pew once occupied by Governor Clinton; the Mayor of New York City, the head of the Army Department of the East, and representatives of many patriotic societies were also there. The preacher of the day, the Rev. Dr. William T. Manning, rector of Trinity Parish, did not fail to indicate that America had not risen either to the measure of her opportunity or of her responsibility. He said:

Other nations have suffered untold sorrows and losses and are showing marvelous spiritual development. We have prospered materially, but, I fear, we have suffered grave spiritual losses. . . It has not in the past been the way of America to sit indifferent to the struggle for justice and freedom anywhere. . . For a nation, as for an individual, there are situations in which to sit in silence, to refrain from bearing witness, or to stop short of using every means to make that witness effective means grievous hurt and peril to the soul.

Dr. Manning then paid his respects to pacifism, declaring that the effort to identify the Christian religion with ultra-pacifism misapprehends the truth and injures religion. "Our Lord did not stand for peace at any price, but for righteousness and truth first and at all costs." What we need, asserted Dr. Manning, is a reawakening of our sense of responsibility as citizens of the duty that we owe our country. As an incentive to this the speaker declared that nothing would be

The whole Nation knows that the National Guard went to the border unprepared to take the field against an enemy. Now, after these troops have spent four months in training and when some of them are returning home and being mustered out of the United States service, military experts tell us that they are still unready. An officer of long experience in the army, and who has seen much of the National Guard, recently remarked: “The organizations are just reaching a point where they are ready to take up real training. Now they must be broken up and sent home. Nothing is ever completed; nothing is thoroughly done."

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'Real training in the Guard on the border has just commenced," so, in a statement to The Outlook, says Major Richard Stockton, Jr., of the Infantry Officers' Reserve Corps of the army, who has just returned from an extended trip along the border. "The European nations have learned that six months is all too short a time in which to train soldiers, and our border experiences have shown us that in the United States, owing to our pitiable lack of preparation, even more time is necessary. The people who imagine that the National Guard troops and the regulars on the border make an army are badly fooled."

The Guard has been occupied to no inconsiderable degree with the mere labor incident to the preparation of camp sites that they might become habitable. It was necessary to clear away the cactus, to dig drainage canals for the camp sites, to drain swamps, to construct roads, to make mess shacks and kitchens, to construct offices, and to perform a thousand other things which do not add greatly to the training for fighting purposes, but which are quite necessary if troops are to remain any length of time in one camp.

Possibly the greatest drawback to the training of the Guard lies in the self-evident fact that its officers, mostly of limited experience

and training themselves, had to attempt to impart knowledge that they were themselves receiving. While these Guard officers were instructing their men they were themselves only students of the few army officers assigned to the various National Guard units. Naturally the men could not make the same progress as would have been the case had their officers' military education been of a more finished nature. Four months after the call it is still possible to tell the regular soldier from the Guardsman when you meet them on the street, and that even though no insignia be shown. The Guardsman is not yet well set up; he has not the soldier's military carriage; his uniform does not fit well and is not always neat; his military courtesy is at a very low ebb. These are the little things that outwardly indicate the presence or absence of training in the soldier.

As a matter of fact, the training has not even pretended to go into the more advanced work which is necessary before troops can possibly be fully efficient in battle. Troops have actually returned from the border without having had any rifle practice at all while they were there, and their officers have reported that they were "leading up" to extended order work of the more advanced kind. At the end of three months there was probably not a single company which had had a "fire control problem " with ball cartridges -the nearest possible approach to battle conditions in peaceful training.

As for equipment, troops have returned as they went, with much of it missing. Much has been done in this respect, and much has been issued, but much is still undone. At the end of almost three months, of the seventyodd thousand horses and mules that were needed only thirty-six thousand had been issued. Of the horses needed for the field artillery, out of twenty-one thousand needed only seven thousand (one-third) had been issued. Men were still short of uniforms. In the supply departments the army was undoubtedly almost as unready for the big task before it as was the National Guard.

Who is responsible? Those who have inquired say that when they have tried to find out they have almost invariably found a hardworking, capable officer of the army or the Guard who was tied down by matters beyond his control. Sometimes it was by lack of experience in dealing with bodies of troops of a size which the Government had never permitted him to see; sometimes it was by the

inflexible red tape of our system. The cause goes beyond the Guardsmen, beyond the army officer, beyond the War Department. It goes beyond Congress, to the American people.

The hard experience of the present mobilization shows that the American people are not sufficiently interested to find out for themselves the truth, and to insist that Congress follow the advice of those who have told us for years that war would find our troops in the condition in which this fortunately peaceful border concentration has found them. This whole experience emphasizes the need of a real Council of National Defense.

"NO MAN UNDERSTANDETH HIM "

If the churches are to reach the people. they must speak to the people in their own language.

It would be useless to preach to a congregation of Chinese in the English language without an interpreter. It is almost as useless to speak to a congregation of East-Siders in the language of Fifth Avenue, or, for that matter, to a congregation of Fifth Avenue in the language of East-Siders. The church which would carry its message to all sorts and conditions of men must be all things to all men. The evangelist who, preaching to horse jockeys, told them that the torments of hell were worse than the torments of a bobtailed horse in fly time may have violated good taste, but he used a figure which his congregation could understand. It is said that the hell of the Icelanders is one of ice, not of fire.

The figures which Jesus employed were not taken from the classics, not even from the Hebrew classics. The husbandman sowing the seed, the fisherman casting his net, the peasant finding treasure buried in the ground, the laborer waiting in the marketplace to be hired, the delinquent tenant arrested for debt, the shepherd going after wandering sheep, the father forgiving a prodigal son-these were the figures which Christ used, taken from life and appealing to the intelligence and heart of his congregations.

And the preacher must not only speak in a language and with figures which non-churchgoers can understand, but he must deal with the topics which interest them. The question

whether God exists in Three Persons or One Person does not interest them. But the question whether there is a Father who hears the cry of his children and comforts, counsels, and consoles them is a question which does interest them very much. This question is constantly sent in various forms to The Outlook by unknown friends. The question whether heaven and hell are places, and, if so, where they are, does not interest them. But the question whether the dead are really dead or are still living, whether the departed are really departed, or whether they are our neighbors and companions, witnesses to see how we run our course, interested in our welfare, and perhaps ministers of courage and hope to our hearts, does interest them. We doubt whether one in ten in the average church congregation knows the meaning of the words "vicarious atonement" or could give a definition of the phrase to the satisfaction of the preacher in the pulpit. But every one who has ever been served by the suffering of another or who has been called through suffering to serve another knows the meaning of self-sacrifice. And the minister who can persuade a congregation that this spirit of self-sacrifice reaches its highest manifestation in God's service of his children by his suffering for them will never fail to reach their hearts.

Émile Hovelaque, in his book "The Deeper Causes of the War," quotes Nietzsche as follows:

Ye have heard it said of old, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; but I say unto you, Blessed are the valiant, for they shall make the earth their throne; and ye have heard men say, Blessed are the poor in spirit; but I say unto you, Blessed are the mighty and free in spirit, for they shall enter Valhalla. And ye have heard men say, Blessed are the peacemakers; but I say unto you, Blessed are those who make war, for they shall be called, not the children of Jahvé, but the children of Odin, who is greater than Jahvé.

Not many profess this philosophy, but some practice it. Many profess the contrary philosophy of Jesus, but few practice it. Most of us sometimes follow the one and sometimes the other counsel, according to our circumstances and our temperaments. The minister who can make his congregation realize the ugliness of Nietzsche's counsel and the beauty of Jesus' counsel, and can inspire them with persistent courage to attempt and with power to attain Jesus' ideal, will never

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But they would pay

lack interested hearers. little attention to a philosophical discussion of the respective merits of the utilitarian and intuitional theories of ethics.

We want from our preachers neither ethics nor theology, but life. This is what the people mean by their demand for practical preaching.

"KEEP ON KEEPING ON"

If Browning had written nothing save "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," he would command the gratitude of all who know the blackest moments in the struggle of life. It is easy for those of vigorous will and courage to push on, however difficult the way, if there are glimpses of distant hills bright with sunlight, or if stars look down on the hardships of the journey; but to the bravest the black hours come when there is no vision of escape from failure, no hope of final achievement. The road to the Dark Tower grew more and more grim, the landscape more and more desolate, the loneliness of solitude more and more oppressive, and at the end the names of daring adventurers all lost in the woe of years "made the time and place one vast misery of failure. Ranged along the hillsides they stood, those who had lost the battle.

"And yet

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set

And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.””

When all seems lost, the unconquerable soul sounds its note of triumph.

This supreme experience of desolation comes to few men and women, but hours of black depression and something like despair come to the purest, the most heroic, the worthiest. What shall a man do when faith seems to fail and hope dies and final failure seems to close in like an impenetrable cloud? Keep straight on. It is the moment of supreme peril, for, according to the old fable, the devil's best weapon is despair. It is the supreme test of character, the moment which shows whether faith has been a matter of sunshine, of prosperity, of happiness, or has become the unshakable foundation on which rest the hopes, the purposes, the strength of a man's soul. Has he the vitality of conviction and the immovable loyalty to stand when all help seems to fail him? That hour is the supreme test of the man; it is

Because it appeals to those elements in human nature which, arriving latest in man's develop ment up from the mere animal, are concerned with the loftiest emotions of which he is capable...

The value of a work of art depends simply and solely on the height of inspiration, on the greatness of soul, of the man who produced it. The value of the work of art is in its quality to make you a sharer in the thoughts and sensations of rarely gifted men. And our joy in receiving them comes from our recognition that, though we have not the power to do such work, we have yet sufficient of the same qualities in ourselves to respond to them when they appear.

With such ideals Chase plunged into any task and at any time of life with an entirely youthful buoyancy. Not as subtle as Whistler, not as rugged as Sargent, he seems more normal than either. Perhaps in his portraits he did not exhibit his mental experiences as much as he might have done, but the sightseer took satisfaction in the solid underpinning of the Chase figures compared to Whistler's, and in the quiet harmony of the Chase tone compared to Sargent's. And one also instantly felt that Chase had been quick beyond most contemporaries to catch a subject at the right moment. His own children understood this trait. One day his little daughter, standing by the window and looking at the sky, cried : Papa, come quickly; here is a cloud posing for you!" Again, the onlooker feels that Chase was sure of himself. "They say am conceited," he said in the course of a talk at the National Arts Club in New York City. "I don't deny it," he continued. "I believe in myself. I do and I must.' Finally, the sightseer becomes conscious of Chase's delight both in his medium and in his sympathy with his subject. Thus his work is as direct, vital, and sincere as it is varied.

Varied?

I

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and skin of fish; here, indeed, was beauty of brush work. His first well-known still life picture was painted in London. He had been attracted by a magnificent-looking cod on a slab in a Kensington fishmonger's shop. He succeeded in hiring it for a couple of hours, took it to his room, and set about painting it. The picture was ultimately bought by the Corcoran Gallery at Washington for $2,000. When Chase returned to London, he called on the fishmonger and asked him to accept some of the money. But the good man declined, merely saying: It were a good portrait, to be sure; but were it not a fine cod?">

If Chase's art was his own individual art, it was also distinctly and peculiarly American art. Perhaps more than any other, Chase was a representative American artist. In whose landscapes does one better get the tang and thinness and crispness of our air, and the whity brightness of our light? In whose portraits may one more worthily realize the American type-that type of which Chase once said:

Watch the crowds along Piccadilly or the Champs Elyseés-you spot the Americans among them almost as easily as if they wore our flag in their buttonholes. It means that already a new type has appeared, the offspring, as we know, of European stock, but which no longer resembles it. An Englishman in the portrait by Gainsborough or Reynolds, a Dutchman by Rembrandt, or an Italian by Titian, is clearly the ancestor of the Englishman, the Dutchman, or the Italian of to-day. But, though the American may have some of the blood of these other individuals, ... wę feel that somehow he has broken away from the steady channel of heredity. And just as his look and character are different, so his art must be different.

And so it is right that the pictures by such an American should be found in well-nigh every important American gallery. Take "Whistler" and his "" Sargent in New York City, his Lady with the White Shawl" in Philadelphia, his "Alice" in Chicago, or the other "Alice," his daughter, which is printed on another page, as examples. Let us not forget, too, that his was the first American portrait to be hung in the Luxembourg in Paris, and that he took first honors at the Expositions there, and that the Italian Government asked Sargent and himself for their own portraits by themselves, to be hung in the Uffizi alongside the classic portraits of old masters by themselves, and that now the two friends look