A VISITOR FROM THE MIDDLE WEST.* To see ourselves through
others' eyes is always interesting, but not always so pleasant an experience as Mr. William Edgar gives us in his recent letters on England. These letters were written to his well-known Middle West weekly, the Bellows, between July and November last, and are now reprinted in a pamphlet. In the early days of the war German propagandists and our native pessimists used to represent the Middle West as a hostile land inhabited solely by German-Americans, and predicted that the Middle West would never permit America to depart from her neutrality, unless indeed it was to our disadvantage. Any one familiar with America knew that this was absurd, and that the Middle West wait, if anything, snore essentially American than the Eastern States and more independent of foreign in- fluences, whether German or not When America entered the war, our expectations were fully justified. The Middle West showed itself as enthusiastic in the cause as every other part of the United States, and the young Americans with German names fought splendidly on the Marne, at St. Mihiel, and in the Argonne against the German troops, as Colonel Palmer has told us. Mr. Edgar, whom we may fairly regard as a representative citizen of the Middle West, has always been a good friend to this country, and no Bostonian or New Yorker could have shown a shrewder or more generous sympathy for Great Britain in the fifth year of war than he displays in his letters. He begins with a striking contrast between the situation here in the spring of 1915, when " Britain had not yet awakened to the seriousness of the danger," and the position in July, 1918, when
" Britain seems to have a certain hardening of the arteries. By this I mean that sorrow and loss are being endured with stoicism, that hearts have grown numb with repeated blows, sod grieving is postponed until there is less call for action and more time for mourning. This is not indifference or callousness, but endurance, which has ceased to count losses and only lives for one great end. Certainly there is less outward evidence of the ravages of war than them was three years ago when I was last here."
Mr. Edgar thought well of our rationing system, but disapproved very strongly of our " war bread." France, he said, had shown wisdom in adhering to the normal bread, which was appetizing and digestible, whereas ours was undoubtedly one of the horrors of war.
Mr. Edgar made a brief tour up the Thames last August, marvelling alike at the crowds of well-to-do munition workers and at the harvest—" beautiful wheat of a yield to the acre which seems miraculous to us from the careless West with its fruitful but comparatively unproductive fields." At Oxford he remarked on the sad changes which war had brought :—
" We went to Ifiley, and from there took a long walk through the country round about. It is here, rather than in London, that one gets the fa significance of what the war has done for England, Tho little villages are bereft of men and boys. Only the old, the infirm and the very young have stopped at home. In cottages scarcely large enough, apparently, to house more Eseleatt elating the Last Month. of the War. Dr C. Edgar.
linnespolis; Posers Mercantile Co. 110 nuts.]
than three or four people, the gelds in the windows show that from -two to' els of the male membeW of the' househbld are serving with. the colours, and the ominous black bands across many of these indicate their fate. The streets of these little places are deserted, and their few shops are either closed or have nothing to sell, or no customers to buy from them. There is a brooding silence banging over these villages, as if they were waiting for something to happen. At teatime we rapped upon the locked door of a neat little wayside inn. The sweet- faced women who finally responded said that they had only their own family rations, and could offer us no refreshments. We tried other similar places, with a like result. My companion pointed out the military college he used to attend when he was a boy, end we went to its gates, only to find that it had been aban- doned as a school and turned into a munitions factory. The harsh Clang of machinery had supplanted the cheerful sound of boys at work or play, and the pretty chapel was deserted. . . . I returned to London next day, feeling that I now understood something more than I could ever learn in the great city con- cerning the effect of war upon England and the indoinitable; unflinching spirit of her people."
In London Mr. Edgar noted the lavish expenditure on luxuries, the crowded theatres as well as the crowded churches. But he was not deceived, like some hasty travellers, by the apparent indifference of the capital- " England is entering on the fifth year of the war, and has outgrown hysterics. She is not only fighting, but also living. The Government is wise enough to realize that financially dead merchants and manufacturers, even if they make ao-called ' luxuries' and sell alleged non-essentials,' pay no taxes, buy no war bonds and subscribe to no war charities. They are encouraged to exist, even to make r.s much money as they honestly can, and the Government sees to it that their taxes are sufficiently heavy to equalize things in the end. If anyone imagines that because the English people go to the theatres and concerts, make week-end trips and buy ' non-essentials,' they are indifferent to the war, or callous, or shallow, or selfish, or that they are not, heart and soul, profoundly concerned in its vigorous prosecution, let him see and talk with them to learn his grievous error."
Mr. Edgar tells us that lie was much gratified by his reception at the Royal Colonial Institute, where he lectured on " The War Spirit of the Middle West" to an audience who were " quite unaware of its potentialities as a contributor to the war," but who were stirred to enthusiasm when they heard what the Middle West was doing. He lectured also in the North, and came to the conclusion that Great Britain knows very little about Western America and would be glad to learn more. That is perfectly true. We imagine that the cinema, which gives so many pictures of fictitious adventure in the Western States. might interest the public with pictures of real Western life and of the many great Western cities like Minneapolis and St. Louis. Mr. Edgar reprints his spirited defence of London's morals as against the charges made by Mr. Bok of Philadelphia. Two things in London, we may add, piqued his curiosity—Madame Tussaud's, which he calls " a most amazing collection of historic junk," and the solemn ritual of the City toastmaster, whom ho calls The Voice of London."
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