25 SEPTEMBER 1915, Page 23

From the many war pamphlets that reach us we may

select for special mention one that comes from America. Mr, Herbert Armitage Drake, of the New Jersey Bar, has written upon 2"he Prevention of War by Force and Arms (Philadelphia : The John C. Winston Co.). He argues in favour of an alliance of all civilized nations for the pm-pose of upholding inter- national law. We will quote his concluding sentences :— " If we Americans were as alive to our duty to-day as our fore- fathers were to theirs, in their day, and as the Germans are to theirs as. they see it ; if we were as loyal to our love of peace and the spread of democracy as the Germans axe to their love of war and to their upholding of absolutism ; if we were as strong to-day in our opposition to the conquest of autonomous and homogeneous nationality as the Germans are strong in their support of it; if we saw as clearly as we should see, that, with Gorman success in this war, the spirit of the French Revolution and the principles of our own Declaration of Independence would have been put in jeopardy, and a depleting war would have been necessary to uphold for our- selves our own nationality and its principles as we know them ; if we could realize that France and Great Britain are fighting for the same principles and rights of man which we fought for in 1776 and 1861 and as valiantly ; if we could appreciate that the England of Sir Edward Grey is fighting to-day for the same vital political and national principles for which the England of George Canning was willing to fight with us in 1823 ; if our heralding of Lincoln's Gettysburg address as one of the beacon lights of civilization were more to us than a hollow pretence, we would, without waiting for the formation of the advocated alliance, at once ally ourselves with and with all our might, fight for Belgium, France, and Great Britain, that nationality may be upheld, that democracy may be extended, that constitutionalism and the right of men and women as men and women to share in the government may bo established, and that autocracy and absolutism, world-hatred and wars of conquest may perish from the earth."