invasion against England's rule, and northern Ireland threatens armed revolt against Irish rule, and the Church continues to foment bitter strife between the factions, so long it is certain that independence would bring upon Ireland the civil wars of the past, and England would be compelled to interfere in order to re-establish law and order.

Home Rule has much to commend it. Americans are used to local self-government and instinctively desire for other peoples what has proved so great a boon to their own land. But there are serious practical difficulties which have hitherto prevented the establishment of local self-government for Ireland. The relation of Scotland, Wales, England, and Ireland to each other is more like that of the counties in one of our States than like that of the States in the Union. One Parliament. legislates for all four countries. To leave Ireland without representation in Parliament would deprive her of all part in the great affairs of the nation. To leave her representatives in Parliament and at the same time create an Irish Parliament to govern in local matters would give Ireland authority over such questions as the land tax, the housing of the poor; the regulation of the liquor traffic, conditions of suffrage, and the like for the English people, while the English people would have no authority respecting similar matters in the government of Ireland. To the American a federal system in which every component part of the British Empire should have some share in the Imperial government and each colony and province should have independent authority in local legislation seems an ideal. But to expect the English people to undertake so radical a reconstruction of the British Empire while this war is absorbing all their thoughts and energy is not reasonable.

And yet the American cannot agree with those who, whether Irish or English, think no change in the constitutional relations of England and Ireland is desirable. It is true that the injustice of England's rule is a thing of the past; it is true, as our contributor Charles Johnston told our readers in The Outlook of week before last, that "the wrongs of Ireland have long since ceased to exist except on paper or in the chatter of politicians." Nevertheless good government is not a substitute for self-government. Self-government is the passion of the age. We are demanding it in America for our cities and for our political primaries. Initiative, referendum, and recall are all extensions of the principle of self-government. Women demand the ballot, not because government is bad, but because they wish a share in the self-government of the state. Even the children are eager to take part in the government of their schools. And twentythree civilized nations are engaged to-day, at an incredible sacrifice, in fighting to make it possible for those nations which believe in self-government to establish and maintain it. Ireland will never be at peace until England finds some way in which to unite local self-government in the island with a share in the national government of the Empire. This is her problem. The lamentable failure of the Irish Home Rule Convention has not been without its uses, for it has demonstrated that the Irish people cannot agree upon any solution of the Irish problem, and they have by their failure effectually, though unintentionally and unconsciously, thrust the responsibility of finding a solution of that problem back on the people of Great Britain.

THE POEMS OF JOYCE KILMER

There are two kinds of poetry-the static and the dynamic, the pictorial and the evocative, the expository and the creative. The one tells the whole story, and the reader praises or yawns! the other gives a hint, and with a sudden, unexpected analogy or imaginative flash stirs the reader's imagination to complete the vision according to the experience and the needs of his own spirit. Static poetry is really not poetry at all. It is prose for one reason or another set to dubious music. It is important only when it is a path leading to the top of the mountain where the view is; or when it is a spring-board from which the swimmer dives off into the deep pool. Even in the greatest poets the percentage of lines that are static and those that are dynamicthe percentage, that is, of pedestrian prose and winged poetryis a hundred to one. We plow through the hundred lines and keep our Miltons and our Wordsworths complete in ten volumes

on our shelves for the overwhelming wonder of that hundred and first.

Joyce Kilmer, who died heroically in France early in August, was in no sense a great poet. The greater part of his two or three slender volumes is not poetry at all, as he, who was a keen and just critic, would be the first to admit. It is verse of charm and tenderness and whim, now humorous, now devotional, always sincere, sane, wholesome, vigorous, courageous. It reveals a man one would have loved to know, a man with more than a touch of Eugene Field and Whitcomb Riley, praising the homely things they praised, revealing the gentle tolerance they knew. He sings of the "Twelve-Forty-five" rushing past Paterson, whose "foolish warring children keep The grateful armistice of sleep."

He sings of the delicatessen-man and of the "Servant Girl and Grocer's Boy:"

"Her lips' remark was: 'Oh, you kid!'

Her soul spoke thus (I know it did) :

'O king of realms of endless joy,
My own, my golden grocer's boy,

I am a princess forced to dwell
Within a lonely kitchen cell,

While you go dashing through the land
With loveliness on every hand,''

and so forth. He sings of "Main Street" and of " Dave Lilly, fished-out streams on the sides of Greylock; he sings of the the drunkard and ne'er-do-well whose ghost still fishes the deserted house, the "house with the broken heart;" of the snow man the children made in the front yard. He sings of the poet's unappeasable hunger

For unattainable food,"

Yet it is not because of these snatches of fancy or whim or religious fervor that a lover of poetry will in these furious times call upon his harried fellow-men to pay tribute to this poet buried in a forest in France. It is rather in spite of them that we praise him. For these poems are static. They tell what there is to tell; we commend or we yawn; we pass on; we are not kindled.

But that is not the end. Twice in his brief career this gallant and graceful spirit, whose poetry was, in the main, the frail and imitative poetry of journalism, came face to face, once with the wonder and once with the terror of life, and was moved to create. He looked at a tree and made a great discovery, and no one who has read the poem that Joyce Kilmer made in celebration will ever look in wonder at a tree again without remembering what Kilmer said of it and of its brethren :

Quicksall adds, has its specially drilled chorus and the Marine bands are trained to a high state of efficiency. Lay musical organizations journey to the Y. M. C. A. "hut" at the Navy Yard to give entertainments for the enlisted men. At the noon hour the employees in some of the mills gather to sing the songs that the enlisted men and the public alike have come to relish.

This is, however, hardly developing a new idea so much as it is adapting an old. It is shaping the idea and practice of community singing to its purpose of strengthening war-time morale. Doubtless the Philadelphia public would not have accepted the Liberty Sing so readily had it not been accustomed to the Community Sing. At the first of a series of Sunday Community Sings held last summer by Mr. Albert Hoxie, one of the pioneers of community music, some three thousand residents of the city district were present; at the last there were at least ten thousand. Such a preparation represented weeks of work saved for the Liberty Sing Commission.

It is probably the realization of this fact which has impelled the Government officials responsible for the promotion of the National programme to signify their intention of duplicating the Philadelphia organization and methods in other cities. Liberty Sings are, after all, applied Community Sings. This realization has gone far towards clarifying the purpose and rendering true the aim of "Singing to Win the War.'

For, as Mr. Quicksall affirms, community music leaders have learned certain primary lessons. They have learned that the charms of music-and hence its effects-are largely bound up

with understanding and association; that great, simple music of overwhelming power and breadth of dignity, like the Russian national anthem, for instance, is not to be found for the looking or written for the asking. They have learned that the noisiest ragtime air often voices the emotions of millions.

So the heads of the movement, says Mr. Quicksall, "have wisely parted company with the dwindling group of community music leaders who would either start their singing with classical music or adhere through all time to the songs of Stephen Foster. They have recognized the middle ground. Their numerous song booklets constantly include new numbers-the songs the people would ultimately sing in their homes and on the streets whether or not they received official recognition. And their programme is empirically correct."

It is evident, we hope, that in planting the Liberty Sing in every city, town, and village of the Nation the United States Government is making substantial progress in the solution of two National problems. As Mr. Quicksall says: "No direct testimony from enlisted men or the folks they leave behind.is necessary to prove the inspiriting values under the stress of war of a Liberty Sing; it is only necessary to look into the upturned faces of any audience and heed the volume of sound it thunders forth."

We hope that the Philadelphia idea of Liberty singing, founded on community singing, will spread to every one of our cities and towns. Every one needs the war value of a Liberty Sing. Every one needs, through a Community Sing, the deep implanting of the genuine spirit of song.

L

ONG stretches of monotonous labor of an unfamiliar kind, amid uninspiring conditions, far removed from all the accustomed compensations, unrelieved by the normal interludes of domestic relaxation-such is the lot of the overwhelming majority of our soldiers in France.

Some of them fight and will fight, but even with the infantry and artillery the glorious red moments of delirious warfare are rare. They may be in the trenches for weeks before the fateful whistle blows some morning in the gray of dawn. There are weary, weary hours of watching, days of digging, weeks of snaillike movement toward the front lines, months of back-tiring and soul-tiring training. The romance and glamour and intoxication are all crowded into a brief but gorgeous fraction of time which is the heroic epoch of the individual and the Nation.

Back of those sacred and sanguinary front lines stretch innumerable camps, big and little-away back, right through France to the Alps, the Mediterranean, or the Atlantic. And there the men work, work, work, in glue-like mud or gray dust, until the soul within them grows small and hard and bitter. They came out here with valor beating like a triumphant chant in their hearts; what religion they originally possessed had turned to a passionate romance; what patriotism they had known was keyed to the clarion blast of self-forgetful combat. They landed in France as a host of heroes, with hardly a reluctant or timid spirit among them. They would have fought at any moment, singly or as divisions, with all their equipment or with their bare fists; but throughout all the weary months they have had to work. Work! Just work! Erecting camps, building camps, transporting supplies, felling forests, digging experimental trenches, making aviation fields-rough, common, monotonous work, but the kind of work which will win the war.

So they grow tired and homesick and self-despising. When men fall into such a state, they lose morale. It cannot be explained to each and every one of them, in terms that spray inspiration over their jaded lives, that they are really winning the war. No one can turn the tasks of the bakers, the sawmill

operators, the quartermaster's box-bearers, the pick and shovel gang, the transport mechanics, into so many hundreds of thousands of perpetual epics. The men simply grow stale and sullen; they continue to work, but there is no elation in their labor; they continue to live, but there is nothing spontaneous in their living.

How to relieve them, to reinvigorate them, that has been the question. Their lot is inevitable; ninety-nine one-hundredths of an army's life must be humdrum and inglorious. How to save their bodies, their minds, their souls-that is the spiritual problem of the military command. And, above all, democracy dare not fail in the attempted solution. If our men should sink to the level of mercenaries, democracy would have lost itself in trying to save itself.

Thus the question of vacations for our soldiers became a vital problem, inseparably connected with the winning of the war and indissolubly a part of our mission to humanity. After months of circumscribed toil our men must have a rest, and such a rest as can bring back the best and sweetest elements of their home life. It must be sane and wholesome, but, above all, it must reach beyond the muscles and into the brain and heart. Our French allies can go home on leave and live again for a few days with their loved ones amid the vineyards or on the boulevards, in the country they adore or the city of which they are enamored. All over France I have seen the poilu on leave, sitting at his doorstep or in a café with his dear ones about him, and every one so happy.

Our British cousins go back to "Blighty" for a few days; and even the colonials feel that England is next door to home. But to our troops home is impossible. Some of them have been over here for more than a year, and, much as they may admire France, its ways are still strange to them and its pleasures can never be theirs. So the American military authorities are establishing "leave areas," into which our.men can go for brief vacations and where they will find such relaxations as will take away their war weariness, their homesickness, their feeling of

individual futility, or whatever self-revulsion may have gathered in their hearts during the months of inglorious and grueling labor.

Savoy, with Aix-les-Bains as the center, has been established as the first "leave area." The entire scheme seemed to me to be so reasonable and so necessary that I spent four days in Aix in order to see for myself how the men responded. In the first place, Aix is the Mecca, in times of peace, of European royalties, big and little, and American millionaires. For situation it is a place beyond description. All around us are the noble peaks of the French Alps. The town lies close to the turquoise waters of Lake Bourget; historical monuments abound even back to Hannibal's Pass, through which the intrepid general led his elephants; in the town the hotels are unsurpassed anywhere in Europe-vast and sumptuous palaces; the Casino (now the headquarters of the Y. M. C. A.) has long been second only to Monte Carlo for gayety, brilliance, and gambling; the thermal baths are world famous; and the parks and walks are places of refined beauty.

Nothing is too good for the American soldier. He may come from a rude cabin in a clearing on the slope of a Tennessee mountain, or from a tiny frame cottage in a squat Middle West village, or from a tenement in the purlieus of one of our vast cities, but he walks and lives and acts like a king in gorgeous Aix-les-Bains. (Three enlisted men are now billeted in the royal suite once occupied by Queen Victoria.) The military authorities have leased three-quarters of all the hotel accommodation of Aix and the vicinity for our soldiers. Not only is their transportation furnished by the Army, but their board and lodging are also paid, and they live as well as any one need wish to live on this earth. Do they appreciate it? Yes, in a way. There is no groveling gratitude; they simply take it all as if it was theirs by right, as if they had earned it-which indeed they have. Those who are entirely unfamiliar with such splendor quickly find their feet and move about among it all unabashed.

But it must not be thought that French fashion and beauty have entirely abandoned the place. The élite are still here, and mingle freely with our men on the streets, in the parks and places of amusement. There is no incongruity. Our men behave as gentlemen, and in the four days of my visit here I have not seen a single element or semblance of vulgar rowdyism on the part of the American soldiers. Trim and straight and with quiet dignity and self-respect they move about, and no one has cause for complaint. Such a result, however, is not due to chance. If hundreds of men had been dumped into Aix, or any similar place, with no occupation but to sit about the cafés or roam the streets, there would have been trouble. It is at this point that the Y. M. C. A. emerges in a most important rôle. Working hand in hand with the military authorities, the Y practically takes over the lives of the men from the moment they arrive in Aix.

First and foremost incidentally, one of the boldest things any philanthropic institution has ever done-the Y. M. C. Å. has taken over the magnificent world-famous Casino for the period of the war. We have nothing in America to compare with the Casino, with its acres of ballrooms, assembly halls, gambling-rooms, concert piazzas, covered terraces, etc. There is a theater in the building capable of holding one thousand people; and dining-rooms and reading-rooms and approaches innumerable, through beautifully developed gardens, with fountains and lawns and green bowers. Now it all belongs to the Y. M. C. A. for the benefit of the American soldier on vacation.

Working in this center there are seventeen Y. M. C. A. male secretaries, and about twenty-five Y. M. C. A. women. These inspire and guide and control the social life of the place. There is something going on all the while to meet the taste of the most dissimilar men: movies in one room, vaudeville in another, a dance in a third, a billiard tournament in a fourth, while the foyers and library and writing and dining rooms are also abuzz with soldiers. On one evening the men had a choice between Madame Réjane playing in "Sans-Gêne," a movie, or a dance. On Sunday evening, following a religious song service, the men could choose between a movie and a concert. The concert, excellently rendered, was patronized far more liberally than the movie, and, when the programme is considered, it is a great com

pliment to the taste of the American soldier. The men enjoyed every piece, judging by the applause! Here is the programme just as it was distributed:

In the matter of outdoor sports the Y. M. C. A. controls, by arrangement or lease, practically all the facilities of the region. During his eight days' vacation, at the very minimum cost, the soldier may take the Y. M. C. A. steamer up Lake Bourget to the rare old monastery where the Dukes of Savoy lie buried; he may go by train to the summit of Mount Revard, from which the snow-clad peak of Mont Blanc seems only a stone's throw away, and from which point also he can look across into both Switzerland and Italy and down upon the Chartreuse, and trace the lines of several glaciers; he may go by train, bicycle, or on foot (always personally conducted and instructed by a Y man) to a dozen other spots of natural or historic beauty; he may swim, or go fishing, or play tennis, golf, or baseball; or, if he prefer a less strenuous life, he may lounge in the gardens or upon the terraces, listening to band concerts or meeting refined and interesting American women on terms of equality such as he knew at home. Thus a soldier can have any type of vacation he prefers, but always one that will refresh and strengthen him, that will take the weariness out of his body and the irritation from his mind, and charm away any devil that is infesting his spirit.

Aix-les-Bains is only one vacation center. Many, many more are to be opened rapidly. I visited two others, one of them an extremely interesting spot-Chambéry, the capital of Savoy. It is the center from which the Blue Devils come, the most feared of all the soldiers of France. By great good fortune the Y. M. C. A. secured the château of the Count of Boigne for its center, much of the furniture being left in the famous house. The pictures on the walls have been gathered and loaned by a committee of citizens, and every canvas is well known in the salons of Europe. Adjoining the Y. M. C. A. château is the castle of the Kings of Italy, belonging to the Savoy family since the year 1200. The esplanade of this castle has been turned over to our soldiers by the Préfet, or Governor, of Savoy, together with several tennis courts in the royal grounds. In spite of the apparent grandeur, the place has been made homelike. The Y. M. C. A. ladies cook all the things the men like most; they organize dances, games, trips, concerts, etc. One of the best compliments I heard to the Y. M. C. A. in France was in Chambéry, where I was told that the demi-mondes say they cannot understand how the American women can make such a wonderful place that the soldiers are utterly indifferent to the illicit pleasures they themselves offer.

The work of the Y. M. C. A. in the front-line trenches is instinctive. Any one, any organization, would be proud to give

Surely the saints you loved visibly came
To welcome you that day in Picardy-
Stephen, whose dying eyes beheld his Lord,
Michael, a living blade of crystal flame,
And all the flower of heavenly chivalry

Smiling upon you, calling you by name.
Leaving your body like a broken sword,
You went with them-and now beyond our sight
Still in the ranks of God you sing and fight,
For death to you was one more victory.

1

S

SELF-CONTROL

ELF-CONTROL, or self-government, is essential in exercising command. A commander who cannot control his emotions of anger, excitement, etc., or who is swayed by his impulses of vanity, egotism, ambition, or personal prejudices, cannot obtain the best results from others, nor give his own best service to the cause.

Not only must an officer set an example of self-control, but he should in every possible way strive to teach the habit to his men, particularly in regard to their passions and appetites, the indulgence of which will quickly ruin their bodies and render them unfit for duty and bring discredit upon the uniform and disgrace upon the nation they represent.

COURAGE

Physical courage is naturally associated with ideas of deeds of valor; it is expected of a soldier. It is usually an acquired habit, based upon moral courage.

There is little use in telling a man not to be afraid; but there is use in telling him that, no matter whether he is afraid or not, he will not run away. He will stay because he is facing a danger common to all, because his comrades on his right and his left are going to stay, because he would rather die than run away. It is his moral force, in other words, that will keep him from yielding to the impulse to run away.

The truth of this is verified by incidents like one that occurred in a Canadian regiment in France. The regimental commander wanted a certain bridge to be held at all costs until the arrival of expected reinforcements. He could spare only a fraction of his force to hold it. He confided the mission to a captain, who selected fifty men for the task. The detachment had hardly got into position when the Germans rushed the bridge. With their machine-gun and rifle fire the Canadians stopped the rush. The

The counsel concerning the duties of young officers embodied in this article and in that in The Outlook for August 28 by the same author will be included in a book entitled " Winning and Wearing Shoulder Straps," to be published by the Macmillan Company. Publication authorized by the War Department.

Germans formed and reformed, only to have their assaults break down under the fire of the defenders. Then the German artillery intervened, and the captain began rapidly to lose his men. He himself was soon killed, but his junior leaders, in turn, took command until there remained but a corporal and eight or ten men. The corporal said: "Men, we must either get out of here or die; as for me, I prefer to die here." Every man stayed with him. The corporal was killed, and soon there was but one man left able to fire a gun. This lone soldier, amid the bodies of his comrades, got a machine gun into action and held the bridge till the reinforcements arrived. He had been wounded eight times, and died before he could be taken to the rear.

DEVOTION TO DUTY

I think it was Cromwell who said that the fighting strength of an army depended upon every man's knowing and loving what he was fighting for. Of some men we feel that when they are given a thing to do that thing is going to be done.

The officer who is brutal or arrogant, who believes solely in driving men like beasts of burden, cannot inspire confidence or inculcate the spirit of duty. Neither can one who is vain or egotistical, who puts his ambition for personal advancement before his duty to the cause. Confidence is not to be won by posing, by affecting an interest that is not sincere, by false methods of seeking popularity.

Confidence is destroyed by an attitude of indifference, the "don't-care" attitude, the attitude of the man who does just as little as he can, and keeps his eye on the clock for quitting time.

To instill into his men his own spirit of devotion to duty is the constant care of the leader. He cannot be everywhere present; yet duty must everywhere be well done. If Jack does his watch or sentry duty honestly and efficiently, Bill and Jim, and all the others whose turn it is to rest, can do so with confidence that the gas alarm will be sounded in time to save their lives, or that, if the enemy attacks, he will not get at them before Jack gives warning. They will feel that Jack is " on the job."

If Bill and Jim like to feel that when Jack is on duty it will