THE WAR WEEK BY WEEK.*

SOME of the best comments on the war have appeared in the most unexpected quarters, and this little volume of editorials reprinted from New York Life is a case in point. Life is a paper which has no exact counterpart over here. It may perhaps be not unfairly described as an illustrated society weekly of a satirical rather than comic bent, and in normal times is marked by a somewhat cynical, or at any rate mundane, vein of humour. The "social cuts" which embellish its pages are provided by some of the best American black- and-white artists, including, if we mistake not, Mr. Dana Gibson. But this light-borse element has always been reinforced by political comments of a pungent nature, and these since the opening of the war have assumed a seriousness and importance quite eclipsing the pictorial attractions of the paper. If Mr. Martin, who is responsible for these editorials, is right in saying that the war found the general American mind quite unprepared, there can be no doubt of the energy and thoroughness with which intelligent Americans have set to work to study its progress, to master the State papers, and to grasp the issues involved. The war has overshadowed every other subject of public interest. As Mr. Martin puts it: "Tho more thoughtful people have had no real vacation this year. August is the vacation month, and since August let we have all been to school every day, Sundays included, learning the military art and the history and geography of Europe. . . . There has been no peace, no rest. When we have not been harrowed by enormous battles, vast destruction, and huge mortality, we have been ruminating about the immediate future of mankind. It is as though all bets were declared off and all precedents became invalid on August 1st, and a now time began on that date, to which the calculations that had come to be our habit no longer applied. The jar of this transition is enormous, even here where we are shielded by distance from the griefs and material distress that accompany it. Our friends are not dead, nor in special peril; no consuming disaster hangs over us, and yet most of in Americans are depressed, some consciously, some without knowing why. You can't read war and think war all the time for two months without feeling the strain of it."

It might have been supposed that a writer ilia society journal of a neutral State three thousand miles from the war would be tempted to survey it in a detached way as a great spectacle. But there is no such detachment about Mr. Martin. He represents the thoughtful American thinking bard but humanely on the war in his shirt.sleeves. His style lacks the formality of the ordinary leader-writer, but gains in freshness from its freedom and homely vigour, while on occasion he writes under the impulse of a generous emotion that inspires him to say a fine thing in a fine way. He is not an interven- tionist, but ho wants America "to get into this war harder." "Since it is not proposed that we shall fight in it, we ought to get into the rescue work with more power. . . . Lucky any- body who can go over there and help. Lucky anybody who has much to give and gives it. Those who have not much to give should pinch and give more than they can. That is better than to be left out of this war. It is not brotherly to stay out." Again, "we do not realize this war, we Americans "

" This is our battle, too, that is being fought in Europe ; our destiny as well as their own that Belgians, British, French, Germans, and all the rest are struggling and dying over. This is a conflict of fundamental ideas. If the German idea wins, its next great clash seems likely to be with the idea that underlies such civilization as wo have in these States."

Mr. Martin's attitude towards the various belligerents is singularly devoid of any partiality. Writing early in the war, he observes that, while the unanimity of sentiment in America against Germany is surprising, "it is not anti-German and it is not pro-English." He continues :— " It seems to be a judgment given promptly and spontaneously on the merits of the case as seen by American eyes. As a people we have come in the last fifty years to be almost as near kin to the Germans as to the English. We respect the German ability and value German friendship ; nevertheless, the American mind records and discloses with hardly appreciable dissent the impres- sion that the English, French, and Russians are fighting in this war in behalf of the liberties of all the world, and that Germany

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and Austria are seeking to impose on the world a despotic authority to which it would be ruinous to yield."

The progress of the war has only tended to confirm these views. Mr. Martin likes the Germans, but he distrusts their leadership; he detests the policy of Bismarck, the teaching of Bernhardi and Treitschke—in a word, the German idea ;— "We people of the United States seem to bo the best friends Germany has in the world, the most solicitous for her true welfare, the most anxious to save the pieces of her if shogots broken. But we don't like her militarism, nor believe in her theory that the Team' is the Only Hope. It is no vital defect in her people, but a dreadful

misdirection of leadership that has got her, as we see it, into a war in which defeat will be disaster but victory would be ruin. Yes, ruin infallibly; for there is not room on earth for the Germany of the Kaiser's hopes and Bismarck's purposes. There is no place. no possible toleration, for a superman nation that would dominate mankind. The Germans must be content to be good people, living among good people and polite to them. That is the best that the future offers to any nation."

As for the Kaiser, while admitting that he may have been rushed into the war by the Prussian war party, and caught in

the machinery he so laboured to create, "still it was his

machinery that caught him." No one, Mr. Martin points out, is willing to father the war, but those who have "duly read the papers, white and other kinds, incline strongly to the suspicion that the war is the love-child of the German General Staff " The gospel of force, of assault, of robbery, has been preached openly and effectively in Germany for a generation. Nietzsche preached it until his madness became uncontrollable, and Treitschke, Von Sybel, Von Bernhardi, and heaven knows how many others. They got it into the more or less innocent

German head that it belonged to the Germans to dominate the

rest of mankind. To get that idea out of the German head, out utterly and permanently, is what this great war is primarily

about. Secondarily, it is a war against the whole idea of

militarist domination ; a war against brute force; a war to keep the terrible obsession that has brought Germany and all Europe

to so dreadful a pass from lodging in the mind of any other people for some time to come. It is not a war of the English to crush German trade ; not primarily a war of the French to get back their lost provinces ; not a war of the Belgians to conquer Germany; not a war of Russia to get Constantinople; not a war of anybody for any detail of trade, or revenge, or advantage, but a war of all hands to destroy militarism and the gospel of force, and bring peace and equity back into the world."

As we have seen, Mr. Martin takes long views and looks far ahead. Germany's idea of making Europe a great German trust is unthinkable. "Somehow matters must be handled so that in twenty years Germans will say : 'After all, it was a good war for us. It delivered us from militarism

and Pan-Germanism and left us free to lire and work and trade in a world no longer unfriendly.'" On the lessons which the war has already taught America 31r. Martin is singularly outspoken in the chapter headed "A Little More Armament for Uncle Sam." He even suggests that the soft-shell crab is a better animal emblem for the United States than the good old eagle. "Considering what we are and what we have got, we are, next to China, the most defenceless considerable people on the crust. Only our modest navy impairs our claim to be the Pie of the Nations." America, he urges, seems to have leaned too hard on isolation and her pacific reputation :-

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We are pacific, but we undertake some duties which imply maintenance of a moderately competent apparatus of force. The Monroe Doctrine, that is part of our accepted foreign policy, is

maintained not so much by us as by the navy of England. We see Germany, her vast efficiency in military matters, and the

curious obsessions and aspirations to which the minds that con- trol her are subject. We know that Germany has yearnings that conflict with our continental policy, and that what chiefly stands

between them and us is England, now fighting for her life. We

don't think England will be conquered, but if she should be, what have we got to back up such an answer as wo should wish to mate to a proposal from Germany that she should be allowed to improve the culture of Mexico or South Brazil? And there is Japan, whom we love considerably, and who, we doubt not,is fond of us, but who will think no less kindly of us for having due shot in our lockers, and being not only polite and considerate, but able-bodied." Hence Mr. Martin's modest plea for an adequate minimum apparatus of protection, and for remedying the shortage of munitions of war :— . It takes three years to build a battleship. They say it takes a year to make a torpedo. It takes six months, at least, to make even an experimental soldier, and very much longer to make even an experimental sailor. We do not want to be a military nation, but we should not be too slack about military preparation. Had we not bettor take, quietly but promptly, our little dose of the medicine which is being passed out in such vast quantities to

Europe P Our situation has changed violently in three months. We ought to do something about it, and do it at once. The time is at hand when we shall have to take care of emselves and may be called upon to protect come of our neighbours. Should we not qualify ourselves betimes for these duties P We are having a tremendous lesson in human history, from which, for Os, ono application is In time of war prepare for peace!"

We should have liked to quote from the excellent chapter on"Germany, the Doctor," which shows how Germany's aggression has revivified and regenerated her opponents; but for these and many other acute and inspiring comments we must refer our readers to the pages of Mr. Martin's book. It only remains to be added that his attitude towards Great Britain is friendly without being enthusiastic or effusive. Very few nations love one another, and even when they are united by ties of blood and a common speech we must remember that it is the privilege of relations to be critical. These editorials were written before the complica- tions arising out of the questions of contraband and the blockade, but we have no reason to suppose that they have materially affected Mr. Martin's views. Taken as it stands, the book is a credit to American journalism, alike for its vigorous and refreshing manner, and for the shrewdness, humanity, and foresightedness of the views which it expresses.