during the War of 1812 with the United States. The sinking of the American sailing ship William P. Frye by the German auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich in the South Atlantic on January 27, which is reported as this issue of The Outlook is going to press, is not an event of the sort to cause serious international complications, if newspaper accounts of the affair are accurate. Accord ing to them, the sailing vessel was carrying contraband of war, and it is said that her crew were all taken off before she was sent to the bottom. International law permits a war-ship to sink a merchantman under these circumstances, if military necessity prevents her from convoying the latter to port. On this point Article XLVIII of the Declaration of London says: "A neutral vessel which has been captured may not be destroyed by the captor; she must be taken into such port as is proper for the determination there of all questions concerning the validity of the prize." But Article XLIX declares that " as an exception, a neutral vessel which has been captured by a belligerent war-ship, and which would be liable to condemnation, may be destroyed if the observance of Article XLVIII would involve danger to the safety of the war-ship or to the success of the operations in which she is engaged at the time." REPAIRING THE RUIN It is a pleasure to be able to turn from the narration of man's efforts to destroy man to a recital of what several hundred thousand good Samaritans are doing to relieve the distress that war has brought upon their fellow creatures. Belgium is now only a geographical expression. Whether it will ever be more than that again is one of the main issues for which this war continues to be waged. But the Belgian nation cannot be rebuilt unless there are, Belgian citizens available as timber. Hence it is important that every one who has resented the violation of King Albert's country and who wants to see a new and stronger Belgium rise from the ashes of the old should strain his generosity for the benefit of the several million non-combatant Belgians locked in the ruins of their former kingdom, who would have starved long ago for all that their conquerors have done for them. According to the last report of the Belgian Relief Fund, up to February 15 that organi zation had delivered in Belgium food supplies worth $1,553,000, donated by 150,000 Americans co-operating in perhaps the greatest work for human redemption the world has ever seen. The 25,000 letters of sympathy from some of these 150,000 donors will become part of the permanent historical documents of the Belgian Government if that Government exists after this war. Not all of the work of the Belgian Relief Fund has been done in Europe, however. An important feature of its activity has been the assistance of Belgian fugitives to this country, who have found homes and positions through the Fund. According to the report of the investigators sent abroad by the Rockefeller Foundation, by the first of April Belgium s entire non-combatant population, numbering approximately seven millions, mainly helpless women and children, will be entirely dependent for existence upon continued charity. It is no time to stop giving. We must redouble our gifts. War correspondents in the smitten kingdom report that Belgian women with babies in their arms go grubbing in rubbish heaps for empty condensed-milk cans, thrown aside by soldiers, in the hope that a few drops of the precious fluid may remain. "It's the only way to get milk for their babies," said a German officer. "I have seen them run their fingers around the inside of a can which looked as bright as a new coin, and hold them in the babies' mouths to suck." AN EASTER GIFT FOR BELGIUM Hundreds of tons of food must be sent to these destitute mothers and their emaciated babies if they are to live to see the verdure of summer mercifully springing up to hide the ruins of their homes. On behalf of the 1,500,000 homeless and hungry children of desolated Belgium the Belgian Relief Fund now appeals to the boys and girls of America to fill up a ship with food and clothing, which is to sail as soon as possible, as an Easter gift to Princess Marie José, the nine-year-old daughter of King Albert and Queen Elizabeth. to "It is quite like a fairy story," reads the appeal of the Fund, "for all you American boys and girls, as well as all the young folks between the ages of sixteen and sixty.. save from starvation and death the boys and girls across the sea, who only a few months ago were, like you, happy in their homes and schools, at their work and play." The cargo of this " Ship of Life and Love" is to be devoted particularly to the sustenance of the more than thirty thousand war babies in Belgium-babies, that is, who have been born since August 4, 1914, in barren fields, ruined cottages, or wherever their unfortunate mothers found temporary shelter from the advancing tide of carnage and violence. Whoever contributes twenty-five cents or more toward the equipment of this Easter argosy will have the privilege of sending an Easter message, not to exceed twenty words, to the little Belgian Princess, and will receive in turn a Princess Marie José picture souvenir card of thanks. Contributions should be sent to the Belgian Relief Fund, 10 Bridge Street, New York City, and marked for the Belgian Easter Argosy." 66 DIVIDED POLAND Poland's misfortune has been perhaps less dramatic than Belgium's, but no less acute. A divided people, the Poles fight each other under the eagle of Germany and the double eagle of Russia. Over the terrain that was the ancient Kingdom of Poland the Czar's Poles and the Kaiser's Poles, whether they will or no, must destroy each other and each other's homes. By the accounts of dependable eye-witnesses, Russian Poland, where Hindenburg and the Grand Duke Nicholas have been grappling these seven months, is now in as sorry a state of waste and ruin as Belgium. Americans and Polish-Americans have not forgotten far-off Poland even in the enthusiasm of ministering to the Belgians. The American Polish Relief Committee, of 14 East Forty-seventh Street, New York City, headed by Madame Marcella Sembrich, has raised already thirty thousand dollars for the distinguished prima donna's suffering countrymen, while a like amount has been gathered together by a similar organization in Boston under the leadership of the famous Polish pianist Madame Antoinette Szumowska-Adamowska. A NEW SPIRIT AND A NEW HERO There are yet no signs of an early peace, nor any considerable indications of weakening in either hostile camp, if the apparent crumbling of Turkey is excepted. However, the old Prussian tone of bombast seems to have left the German leaders, and among them as among the people the spirit of Hindenburg's 6. grim motto, Durchhalten" ("Hold out "), is everywhere. Pertinacious old Hindenburg and all that his dogged character stands for have caught the German imagination to-day. He is the Cincinnatus of the German Empire. Says a correspondent of the London "Times," just returned from Germany, after declaring that the Fatherland is still pervaded by a stubborn confidence: Yet one hears little talk of victory. There is little boasting of the prowess of German arms. Stranger still to foreigners, the Emperor's name rarely, if ever, figures in conversation. In point of popularity with the people he ranks about fifth. Field Marshal von Hindenburg is the national hero, although among well-informed people his Chief of Staff, General von Ludendorf, is given credit for his victories. The war on the eastern frontier is to the Berliner of far more interest and importance than the campaign in the west. And, trying to account for this same strange, last-ditch kind of assurance which Germans profess to feel to-day, the Berlin correspondent of the New York "Times" says: The answer is Hindenburg-not only the man himself, but all that he stands for, the personification of the German war spirit, the greatest moral asset of the Empire to-day. He is idolized, not only by the soldiers, but by the populace as well; not only by the Prussians, but by the Bavarians and even the Austrians. You cannot realize what a tremendous factor he has become until you discover personally the Carlylean heroworship of which he is the object. FRANCE UNDISMAYED France, of all the Allies, has most cause to desire peace except Belgium, Servia, and Montenegro. Yet the French papers reflect an almost unanimous resolve of the people to see the war through its sanguinary course, cost what it may. This spirit of tenacity is reflected in a letter I have just received from a young French soldier. "The French public," he says, "has made up its mind and has quietly accepted the idea that the war is going to last long. I hear from home that this abnormal war life has become in a way normal. Nobody expects the end before the last months of this year at the soonest. In the army, the men, however severe the strain, are ready to go on to the bitter end. Among the reservists, mostly married men, the idea that their children must not see this again is the backbone of their morale. I do not mean to say that Forge, and with Wellington at Waterloo. It is also no doubt largely responsible for the phlegmatic bravery of the reservists with Hindenburg in East Prussia. In fact, it has always been the very essence of the courage of the citizen soldier with a family behind him, fighting, as Kipling says, "for 'im and 'er and it." But the fact that, throughout history, war has succeeded war and generation after generation of fathers has died for the same dim hope that each war would be the last, does not prevent us from sympathizing with the French in the same noble aspiration that "their children must not see this again," and adding fervently, "Yea, and their children's children." New York City, March 10, 1915. II-HOW RUSSIAN SOLDIERS WERE ENLIGHTENED IN JAPAN I BY GEORGE KENNAN Na recent article on "War Relief in Russia" (The Outlook of September 24, 1915) I referred to the fact that in the course of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 a large number of Russian soldiers received a liberal political education and studied, for the first time, an unexpurgated history of their own country in the prison camps of Japan. I have never before had occasion to tell the story of this revolutionary propaganda; but inasmuch as Americans were directly concerned in it, and Russian prisoners seem likely to be enlightened in a similar way in another and greater war, it may be worth while to tell it now.. Soon after my arrival in Japan in the early summer of 1904 I was invited by the Japanese Government to make an excursion in one of its auxiliary cruisers to the Liaotung peninsula, by way of Yokohama, Kobe, Sasebo, and the western coast of Korea. In the course of this voyage we stopped for a day or two at Matsuyama, a town on the eastern coast of the Inland Sea, and there had an opportunity to visit several hundred Russian prisoners captured at the Battle of the Yalu, who had been brought to Matsuyama and there confined in two or three old, disused Buddhist temples (see The Outlook of September 10, 1904). Among the officers and soldiers with whom I talked were a num ber of educated and intelligent men; and when I asked them whether they were well treated or not, and whether anything could be done to increase their comfort, they all said: "We have nothing to complain of so far as treatment is concerned, but we are urgently in need of occupation. We sit here from morning to night, day after day, with nothing to do but hold our hands. Can't you get us something to read? A few Russian books or papers would give us the greatest possible comfort." "I have a little Russian literature of my own," I said, "which I brought with me from America; but I'm afraid you wouldn't like it." Why not like it?" exclaimed one of them. "We'd like anything. I'm ready to read even cook books and arithmetics, if they're only in Russian." My books are not of that kind," I replied. "They're interesting enough, but they're written from the liberal or revolutionary point of view, and are more or less hostile to your Government." "We're "That's nothing," said another. not children in arms, neither are we feebleminded; we'll take them for what they're worth, good or bad." "I've got a nearly complete file of Peter Struve's 'Osvobozhdenie ;' would you like to have that ?" "Of course we'd like it! If you can spare it, for Heaven's sake send it to us!" “You shall have it," I replied. "As soon as I get back to Tokyo, I'll send you that, and whatever else I can find that seems suitable." I took the names of several of the officers and men, and six weeks later, when I returned to Japan from the Liaotung peninsula, I mailed to Matsuyama a selection from my small Russian library, including several books which, from the Russian censor's point of view, were "extremely pernicious." Whether they were received or not, and, if received, what impression they made, I never knew. As the war progressed; the number of Russian prisoners in Japan steadily increased until, after the surrender of Port Arthur and the defeat of General Kuropatkin at Mukden in 1905, it amounted approximately to seventy thousand. I visited a number of the newly established prison camps, including a very large one at Kokoro on the Inland Sea, and everywhere I heard from officers and soldiers the same appeal : "Can't you get us something to read?" The idea then occurred to me that the concentration in Japan of large numbers of book-hungry soldiers would afford an excellent opportunity for a campaign of education and enlightenment in the Russian army. These men, at home, had never had a chance to read liberal literature, on account of the strict civil and military censorship; and thousands of them knew nothing whatever even of the causes of the war in which they had been fighting. To enlighten them, it seemed to me, was a moral duty, because, if the army could be won over to the liberal cause, there might be a chance of success for the Russian people in their struggle for liberal reforms. In order to carry through successfully such a campaign of enlightenment as I had in mind it was necessary to obtain the permission, if not the sympathetic co-operation, of the Japanese military authorities; and I therefore arranged for a personal interview with the Minister of War. General Terauchi, whom I had already met, was a Samurai of the ancient typestrong, resourceful, inflexible, and extraordi 1 "Liberation"-a monthly magazine edited by Peter Struve and published, for several years prior to the war, in Stuttgart. It was not strictly a revolutionary period. ical, but it was very liberal in its views, and was prohibited in Russia.-G. K. narily able. He would have been a great war minister in any age or any country; but he was as silent, reserved, and impenetrable as the Sphinx of the great Pyramid. "Your Excellency," I said, "I have ventured to seek an interview with you for the purpose of asking permission to distribute Russian literature among the prisoners in the detention camps. I have recently visitedthem in a number of places, and have found both officers and men hungry for something to read. I want to supply them with literature that will enlighten them as to the nature of their Government and the reasons for the present war. I am interested, as you know, in the cause of Russian freedom, and I hope to promote it by educating a part, at least, of the Russian army, so that it will co-operate with the people in their great struggle for freer institutions. Japan, also, should be interested in that struggle, for the reason that Russian aggression in eastern Asia is the work of the autocracy, not of the people. If the people ever get control of their own destinies, they will devote themselves, not to conquest, but to universal education and the full development of the territory they already have. There will be no more Manchurian adventures,' and Japan can rest secure. ask permission, your Excellency, to help both Russia and Japan by inducing the officers and soldiers of the Czar to co-operate with the people in securing for Russia a representative form of government." I I said much more than this, but I cannot now remember all my arguments. They were intended to convince the Minister that in permitting me to distribute literature of a liberal, or even revolutionary, nature in the prison camps, he would be helping the Russian people and at the same time securing the future safety of Japan." General Terauchi listened attentively, with his eyes fixed on mine, but did not give me the least encouragement or show the slightest sign of interest. He asked no questions, made no remarks, and his. face was as devoid of expression as the obverse side of a tombstone. To a Westerner this impenetrable reserve of a Japanese Samurai is very disconcerting; but I managed to get through my argument in a confused, halting way, and finally stopped. The Minister rose and merely said: "I will communicate with you on the subject in the near future." I bowed profoundly and withdrew, wondering whether I had made any impression upon him at all. |