I

F anything could surpass the extravagance of Soviet Russia's claim against the Allied Powers of fifty billion rubles in gold as indemnity for the direct and indirect damages which that country is alleged to have suffered during and since the World War as results of their action, it would be her ineptitude in basing that claim, as she is said to do, upon the precedent set by the United States in its settlement of accounts with Great Britain after the Civil War. This will be obvious when we recall a chapter of history of fifty years ago, too much forgotten but pertinent to the present time; and it will also be obvious that Mr. Lloyd George acted in logical accord with the precedent of that former episode when he somewhat bluntly declared that if Russia persisted in making that claim there

would be no object in her continuing in the Genoa Conference.

It is quite true that there was a proposal by some Americans to demand an enormous sum of "indirect damages" from Great Britain. It is equally true that if it had actually been made and insisted upon Great Britain would have withdrawn from-if, indeed, she ever would have entered--the Geneva Arbitration; that the best sentiment in America was opposed to the suggestion; and that the only result of its making was a few years' delay in the settlement of the legitimate issues between the two countries.

As early as October, 1863, more than a year after the "escape" of the Alabama from Liverpool and the stopping of the Confederate ironclads from a similar "escape" by the stern warning, “This

means war," Charles Francis Adams, the American Minister to England, intimated to the British Government that this country would prefer claims against it for breaches of neutrality, and would be willing to submit them to any equitable form of arbitration. No reply was then made, but two years later, at the end of the war, the British Government specifically refused to submit the question of its liability for the Alabama's ravages to arbitration, because it held. that its own law officers were the supreme interpreters of the British neutrality laws, though it was willing to join in the creation of a commission to which should be submitted such claims as it (the British Government) saw fit thus to receive for consideration. In this attitude Great Britain doubly erred, as some of her own statesmen have

frankly confessed: First, in ignoring

the international law against which she had sinned as well as against her own neutrality laws; and, second, in declining to go into court unless she herself could determine what charges should and what should not be made. The re sult was that negotiations were for a time suspended.

A year later, however, the British Government reversed that unfortunate and indeed untenable attitude, and indicated its readiness to arbitrate the Alabama claims. Some delay was occasioned by Mr. Adams's retirement, but his successor, Reverdy Johnson, took up the matter where he had laid it down, and early in 1869 negotiated with Lord Clarendon a convention for the settlement of the Alabama claims and all other matters at issue.

It was when this treaty was laid before the Senate for ratification that the demand for "indirect damages" arose. The chief spokesman of that demand was Charles Sumner, who was then Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. He took the ground that the British Government should be held responsible pecuniarily for all the indirect as well as direct losses which the United States had sustained in the war because of its conduct. If the Alabama had not been permitted to sail in the summer of 1862, he said, and if Great Britain had not permitted a Confederate loan to be subscribed, the war would have ended in 1863 instead of 1865. Therefore he held Great Britain responsible for the second half of the war, and insisted that she should be required to pay the entire costs of those two years, in round figures about two billion dollars. He made a strongly worded speech to that effect, and, although it was made in an executive or secret session of the Senate, he took pains to have it made public and as widely circulated as possible. Then, utilizing the intense partisan feeling against Andrew Johnson, who was then -after the futile attempt to impeach him-nearing the end of his term, Sumner rallied the Senate against the treaty, chiefly for the reason that it did not specifically provide for the arbitration of the "indirect damages." The result was that on April 13, 1869, the treaty was rejected by the overwhelming vote of 44 against it to only one cast in its favor.

Meantime Reverdy Johnson, warned by Seward that his treaty would be rejected, proposed to Lord Clarendon a modification of it so as to permit any claims whatever-even for "indirect damages"-to be laid before the Arbitral Commission, and then resigned his place as Minister, without waiting for a reply. There is little doubt that Clarendon would have refused the proposal. Certainly, as soon as Sumner's speech was read in London and the grounds on which the treaty was rejected were understood over there, an overwhelming official and popular sentiment arose

against any arbitration or other attempt at settlement; because, it was argued, America would demand the two billions of "indirect damages," and of course Great Britain would refuse to consider the claim, and so the conference would fail, and there was no use in entering a conference that was in advance doomed to failure. The case was made still worse when that fine historian but poor diplomat John Lothrop Motley was sent as Minister to Great Britain, for he shared Sumner's views, and intimated that unless the "indirect damages" were considered favorably there was little hope of improving relations between the two countries.

Fortunately, Motley was soon withdrawn. But even then it was necessary to wait for some time, until the passions aroused on both sides of the ocean by Sumner's fulminations had in a measure subsided. At last, early in 1871, a Canadian statesman, Sir John Rose, undertook what proved to be successful mediation. His efforts were, indeed, at first menaced by Sumner, who, when asked by the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, what treaty terms would be acceptable to the Senate, again insisted upon "indirect damages," and in a written memorandum prescribed as a sine qua non of settlement Great Britain's withdrawal from Canada and all other possessions in the Western Hemisphere! The sequel to that amazing demand, and in some degree its result, was a revolt in the Senate which removed Sumner from the Chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee and assured a more reasonable policy in that body. A little later Sumner voted for ratification of the Treaty of Washington, although it made no more provision for "indirect damages" thán had the Johnson-Clarendon convention, against which he had thundered and which had been rejected by an all but unanimous vote.

Once more the bogy of "indirect damages" was conjured up. Soon after the first meeting of the Geneva Tribunal, in December, 1871, some malicious marplot, whose identity is matter of conjecture, gave currency in England to a report that Sumner's claims for two billion dollars and the withdrawal of the British flag from the Western Hemisphere were to be approved by the United States Government and would be insisted upon by it at Geneva as essential to a settlement. For this there was not of course the slightest foundation in fact. But the report created much excitement, disquiet, and indignation in England; both parties demanded that any such action be resisted, and the Cabinet seriously considered the propriety of asking the American Government for assurances that no such claims would be preferred at Geneva as a necessary condition to continuance of the conference. The British Foreign Minister told General Schenck, the American Minister, that his Government could not admit that it was within the province of the Geneva Tribunal to consider claims

for "indirect losses," and that statement was a few days later made in the Queen's Speech at the opening of Parliament. In the ensuing debate members of both parties insisted that no such claims should be admitted, though they spoke in a moderate and conciliatory tone, with the exception of William E. Gladstone, who fulminated furiously against the country for which at that time he had an intense animosity.

Sir Stafford Northcote brought matters to a head by saying publicly that he understood the American Commissioners to have promised that the indirect claims would not be made. This was repeated in Parliament and reported at Washington, and all the American Commissioners denied that any such promise had been made. Indeed, one of them, E. Rockwood Hoar, said that he had always understood that such claims were to be presented. A little later it was made clear that this apparent contradiction arose from a sheer misunderstanding. The American Commissioners realized the futility and worse of such claims, and wanted to drop them, but did not see how they could legally do so, seeing that they had been included in the presentation of the American case to the Tribunal. In order to give time for them to find a way out of the difficulty, the next meeting of the Tribunal was postponed from June 17 to June 19, 1872.

On the latter date the question was finally settled. Charles Francis Adams drafted a statement, which was unanimously adopted by the Tribunal, to the effect that, without expressing any opinion as to the difference over interpretation of the Treaty of Washington, the members of the Tribunal of Arbitration were individually and collectively convinced that claims for indirect damages did not, under international law, constitute a valid foundation for an award of compensation, and that therefore they must be wholly excluded from consideration by the Tribunal. That was the end of them. Nothing more was ever heard of indirect damages. And the Tribunal's award of $15,500,000 was hailed with satisfaction and enthusiasm throughout the United States as a wholly adequate indemnity.

Such is the "precedent" upon which the Soviet triumvirs are reported to base their claim of fifty billion gold rubles. It will be perceived that it counts against, rather than for, their extravagant demand, while it does give sanction to Mr. Lloyd George's prompt condemnation of that claim as something that cannot be considered by the Genoa Conference. One of these days the world may decree as a heroic measure for the prevention of war that a nation responsible for starting a war shall be held accountable for all losses caused by that war, directly and indirectly. But that day is not yet; and even if it were. that principle would not give sanction and validity to this fantastic claim of Soviet Russia.

Ο

F course I never saw her. She died years before I was born. But she left behind her a portrait so full of her personality that no living figure is more human to me than my great-grandmother.

I do not at all refer to the portrait over the dining-room mantelpiece, showing her as a withered old woman in a frilled cap, which by the time I was old enough to take an interest in her was the only tangible sign of her existence left in her old home. No;. that might have been any withered old woman in a frilled cap.

There is another portrait of my greatgrandmother not done on canvas with oils. Here are some of the strokes which have painted it for me.

W

HEN I was about eight years old, I went out one day to watch old Lemuel Hager, who came once a year to mow the grass in the orchard back of the house. As he clinked the whetstone over the ringing steel of his scythe, he looked down at me and remarked: "You favor the Hawley side of the family, don't you? There's a look around your mouth sort o' like Aunt Almera, your grandmother-no-my sakes, you must Wa'l

be her great-granddaughter! think of that! And it don't seem more'n yesterday I saw her come stepping out same's you did just now; not so much bigger'n you are this minute, for all she must have been sixty years old then. She always was the littlest woman. But for all that she marched up to me, great lummox of a boy, and she said, 'Is it true, what I hear folks say, Lemuel, that you somehow got out of school without having learned how to read?' And I says, 'Why, Mis Canfield, to tell the truth, I never did seem to git the hang of books, and I never could seem to git up no sort of interest in 'em.'

"And she says back, 'Well, no great boy of eighteen in the town I live in is a-goin' to grow up without he knows how to read the Declaration of Independence,' says she. And she made me stop work for an hour-she paid me just the same for it-took me into the house, and started teaching me. Great land of love! if the teacher at school had 'a' taught me like that, I'd 'a' been a minister! I felt as though she'd cracked a hole in my head and was just pouring the l'arning in through a funnel. And 'twasn't more'n ten minutes before she found out 'twas my eyes the trouble. I was terrible near-sighted. Well, that was before the days when everybody wore specs. There wa'n't no way to git specs for me; but you couldn't stump Aunt Almera. She just grabbed up a sort of magnifying-glass that she used, she said, for her sewing, now her eyes were kind o' failing her, and she give it

BY DOROTHY CANFIELD

to me. 'I'll take bigger stitches,' says she, laughing; 'big stitches don't matter so much as reading for an American citizen.' Well, sir, she didn't forgit me; she kept at me to practice at home with my magnifying-glass, and it was years before I could git by the house without Aunt Almera come out on the porch and hollered to me, 'Lemuel, you come in for a minute and let me hear you read.' Sometimes it kind o' madded me, and sometimes it made me laugh, she was, so old, and not much bigger'n my fist. But, by gol, I l'arned to read, and I have taken a sight of comfort out of it. I don't never set down in the evening and open up the Necronsett 'Journal' without I think of Aunt Almera Canfield.' "

NE day I was sent over to Mrs., Pratt's to get some butter, and found it just out of the churn. So I sat down to wait till Mrs. Pratt should work it over, munching on a cookie out of her cookie jar and listening to her stream of talk-the chickens, the hailstorm of the other day, had my folks begun to make currant jelly yet? and so on-till she had finished and was shaping the butter into beautiful round pats. "This always puts me in mind of Aunt Almera," she said, interrupting an account of how the men had chased a woodchuck up a tree-who ever heard of such a thing? "Whenever I begin to make the pats, I remember when I was a girl working for her. She kept you right up to the mark, I tell you, and you ought to have seen how she lit into me when she found out some of the pats were just a little over a pound and some a little less. It was when she happened to have too much cream and she was 'trading in' the butter at the store. You'd have thought I'd stolen a fiftycent piece to hear her go on! 'I sell those for a pound; they've got to be a pound,' says she, the way she always spoke, as though that ended it.

''But, land sakes, Mis Canfield,' says I, 'an ounce or two one way or the other-it's as likely to be more as less, you know! What difference does it make? Nobody expects to make their pats just a pound! How could you?'

"How could you? How could you?' says she. 'Why, just the way you get anything else the way it ought to beby keeping at it till it is right. What other way is there?'

"I didn't think you could, I knew you couldn't; but you always had to do the way Mis Canfield said, and so I began grumbling under my breath about bossy, fussy old women. But she never minded what you said about her, so long as you did your work right, and I fussed and fussed, clipping off a little, and adding on a little, and weighing it between times. It was the awfulest bother you

ever saw, because it spoiled the shape of your pat to cut at it so much, and you had to do it over again every time. Well, you wouldn't believe it, how soon I got the hang of it! She'd made me think about it so much, I got interested, and it wasn't any time at all before I could tell the heft of a pat to within a hair's breadth just by the feel of it in my hand. And I never forgot it. You never do forget that kind of thing. I brought up my whole family on that story. 'Now you do that spelling lesson,' I'd say to my Lucy, 'just the way Aunt Almera made me do the butter pats!'

I Hall, trying to

WAS sitting on the steps of the Town make a willow whistle, when the janitor came along and opened the door. "The Ladies' Aid are going to have a supper in the downstairs room," he explained, getting out a broom. I wandered in to visit with him while he swept and dusted the pleasant little community sitting-room. where our village social gatherings were held. He moved an armchair and wiped off the frame of the big portrait of Lincoln. "Your great-grandmother gave that, do you know it?" he observed, and then, resting on the broom for a moment and beginning to laugh, "Did you ever hear how Aunt Almera got folks stirred up to do something about this room? Well, 'twas so like her! The place used to be the awfulest hole you ever saw. Years ago-oh, years ago, before there was a good county jail-they'd used it to lock up drunks in, or anybody that had to be locked up. Then after that the sheriff began to take prisoners down to 'the new jail. But nobody did anything to the room-it belongs to the town, you know, and nobody ever'll do anything that they think they can put off on the town. The women used to talk about it-what a nice place 'twould be for socials, and how 'twould keep the boys off the streets, and how they could have chicken suppers here, same as other towns, if this room was fixed up. But whose business was it to fix it up? The town's of course! And wa'n't the selectmen shiftless because they didn't see to it! But of course the selectmen didn't have the money to do anything. Nothing in the law about using tax money to fix up rooms for sociables, is there? And those were awful tight times, when money came hard and every cent of tax money had to be put to some good plain use. So the selectmen said they couldn't do anything. And nobody else would, because it wasn't anybody's business in particular, and nobody wanted to be put upon and made to do more than his share. And the room got dirtier and dirtier, with the lousy old mattress the last drunk had slept on right there on the floor in the corner,

and broken chairs and old wooden boxes, and dust and dry leaves that had blown in through the windows when the panes of glass were broken-regular dumping-ground for trash.

"Well, one morning bright and earlyI've heard my mother tell about it a thousand times-the first person that went by the Town Hall seen the door open and an awful rattling going on. He peeked in, and there was little old Aunt Almera, in a big gingham apron, her white hair sticking out from underneath a bandanna handkerchief, cleaning away to beat the band. She looked up, saw him standing and gaping at her, and says, just as though that was what she did every day for a living, 'Goodmorning,' she says. 'Nice weather, isn't it?'

"He went away kind of quick, and told about her over in the store, and they looked out, and sure enough out she come, limping along (she had the rheumatism bad) and dragging that old mattress with her. She drug it out in front to a bare place, and poured some kerosene on it and set fire to it; and I guess by that time every family in the street was looking out at her from behind the window-shades. Then she went back in, leaving it there burning up, high and smoky, and in a minute out she came again with her dustpan full of trash. She flung that on the fire as if she'd been waiting all her life to have the chance to get it burned up, and went back for more. And there she was, bobbing back and forth all the fore part of the morning. Folks from the Lower Street that hadn't heard about it would come up for their mail, and just stop dead, to see the bonfire blazing and Aunt Almera limping out with maybe an old broken box full of junk in her arms. She'd always speak up just as pleasant and gentle to them-that made 'em feel queerer than anything else, Aunt Almera talking so mild! 'Well, folks, how are you this morning?' she'd say. 'And how are all the folks at home?' And then slosh! would go a pail of dirty water, for as soon as she got it swept out, didn't she get down on her creaking old marrow-bones and scrub the floor! All that afternoon every time anybody looked out, splash! there'd be Aunt Almera throwing away the water she'd been scrubbing the floor with. Folks felt about as big as a pint-cup by that time, but nobody could think of any. thing to do or say, for fear of what Aunt Almera might say back at them, and everybody was always kind o' slow about trying to stop her once she got started on anything. So they just kept indoors and looked at each other like born fools, till Aunt Almera crawled back home. It mighty nigh killed her, that day's work. She was all crippled up for a fortnight afterwards with rheumatism. But you'd better believe folks stirred around those two weeks, and when she was out and around again there was this room all fixed up just the way 'tis now, with furniture, and the

floor painted, and white curtains to the windows, and all. Nobody said a word to her about it, and neither did she say a word when she saw it-she never was one to do any crowing over folks."

HE hassocks in our pew began to look

home from church to put a fresh cover of carpeting on them. They suggested church, of course, and as she worked on them a great many reminiscences came to her mind. Here is one: "I used to love to ride horseback, and grandmother always made father let me, although he was afraid to have me. Well, one summer evening, right after supper I went for a little ride, and didn't get home till about half-past seven. As I rode into the yard I looked through the open windows, and there was grandmother putting her bonnet on; and it came to me in a flash that I'd promised to go to evening prayers with her. I was a grown-up young lady then, but I was scared! You did what you'd promised grandmother you would, or something happened. So I just fell off my horse, turned him out in the night pasture, saddle and all, and ran into the house. Grandmother was putting on her gloves, and, although she saw me with my great looped-up riding skirt on and my whip in my hand, she never said a word nor lifted an eyebrow; just went on wetting her fingers and pushing the gloves down on them as though I was ready with my best hat on. That scared me worse than ever. I tore into my room, slipped off my skirt, put on another right over my riding trousers, slammed on a hat, threw a long cape around me, and grabbed my gloves. As the last bell began to ring and grandmother stepped out of the house, I stepped out beside her, all right as to the outer layer, but with the perspiration streaming down my face. I'd hurried so, and those great thick riding trousers were so hot under my woolen skirt! My! I thought I'd die! And it was worse in the church! Over in our dark, close corner pew there wasn't a breath of air. It must have been a hundred by the thermometer. I was so hot I just had to do something or die! There weren't but a few people in the church, and nobody anywhere near our corner, and it was as dark as could be, back in our high pew. So when we knelt down for the General Confession I gathered the cape all around me, reached up under my full skirt, unbuttoned those awful riding trousers, and just cautiously slipped them off. My! What a relief it was! Grandmother felt me rustling around and looked over sharp at me, to see what I was doing. When she saw the riding trousers, she looked shocked and frowned; but I guess I must have looked terribly hot and red, so she didn't say anything. Well, I knew it was an awful thing to do in church, and I was so afraid maybe somebody had seen me, although old Dr. Skinner, the rector, was the only one high enough up to look over the pew

top, and he was looking at his PrayerBook. But I felt as mean as though he'd been looking right at me. Well, he finally got through the prayers and began' on the First Lesson. It was something out of the Old Testament, that part about how the Jews went back and repaired the ruined walls of Jerusalem, each one taking a broken place for his special job, and then how they got scared away, all but a few, from the holes in the walls they were trying to fix up. Dr. Skinner always read the lessons very loud and solemn, as though he were reading them right at somebody, and he'd sort of turn from one to another in the congregation with his forefinger pointed at them, as if he meant that just for them. What do you suppose I felt like when he turned right towards our corner and leaned 'way over and shook his finger at me, and said in a loud, blaming tone, 'But Asher continued and abode in his breaches!' gave a little gasp, and grandmother turned towards me quick. When she saw the expression on my face (I guess I must have looked funny), she just burst right out into that great laugh of hers-ha! ha! ha! She laughed so she couldn't stop, and had to actually get up and go out of church, her handkerchief stuffed into her mouth. We could hear her laughing as she went down the walk outside!

I

"You'd have thought she'd be mortified, wouldn't you? I was mortified almost to death! But she wasn't a bit. She laughed every time she thought of it, for years after that. It was just like her! She did love a good laugh! Let anything happen that struck her as funny, and she'd laugh, no matter what!"

Later on, as we carried the hassocks back to the church and put them in our pew, my aunt said, reflectively, looking round the empty church: "I never come in here that I don't remember how grandmother used to say the Creed, loud and strong-she always spoke up so clear: 'From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost: The Holy Catholic Church: The Communion of Saints: The Forgiveness of sins- and then she'd stop dead, while everybody went on, "The Resurrection of the body;' and then she'd chime in again, 'And the Life everlasting, Amen.' You couldn't help noticing it, she took the greatest pains you should. But she always said, if anybody said anything about it, that she didn't believe in the resurrection of the body, and she wasn't going to say she did. Sometimes the ministers would get wrought up, and one of them went to the bishop about it, but nobody ever did anything. What could you do? And grandmother went right on saying the Creed that way to the day of her death."

NCE I was taken to see an old Irishwoman who had come, as a young girl, from Ireland just after the great famine in '48, and had gone to work for