in the corner of the room, 'to which the boy may repair when tired of mental work?'

Not only the musician, but the artist, the artisan, the scientist, the athlete, the farmer, and the home-keeper know the weariness of routine. They know, too, that the world's business must be done, and they set themselves to the task. Is that not the attitude of a good citizen?

And now, what about the schoolroom? What is needed there? Air and sunlight, certainly, but why luxury? An artist's studio is not a place of ease and luxury; it is a place suited to his work. The laboratory of a scientist may not be beautiful: it is a workshop. A glance at either of these places shows the nature of the work done there.

A schoolroom is a place where the child learns to do things, where he discovers things by his own thinking and experimenting, and where-after some patient drudgery, it may be - he experiences the joy of accomplishment. Does it need to suggest the luxury of a cultured home, so that some children 'need not step down when they leave their homes for school'? If they do 'step down' from these homes, and touch elbows with others who step up when they enter the school, it seems to me a wholesome preparation for citizenship.

Too conservative? Perhaps so; though projects and motivation are a part of my creed. But has not the educational pendulum swung far enough in this direction? M. T. H.

The wonderful tales which have been related by your correspondents concerning the super-educated proletariat of Boston are by no means incredible to me. Of course Bostonians are expert linguists they have to be, in order to get about their city and keep out of jail.

For example, on a visit to your city, my eye lighted on this sign: 'Smoking allowed on this car only when weather permits running cars with windows open, and then only back of cross seats, when at least four windows on each side, including windows back of cross seats, are open.'

I repressed my desire. But suppose some unfortunate, more venturesome than I, had decided to take a chance. Suppose that, after reading this sign carefully, he had taken his place as directed, back of the cross seats, and that the four windows on each side were open, including the windows back of the cross seats. But suppose that, having only a single-track mind, he had failed to note that it was raining outside, and hence, although the windows were open, the weather really would not permit running the cars with windows open. He would of course be violating the regulation by smoking, and the poor devil would be liable to fine or imprisonment. Personally I am inclined to account for the culture

DEAR ATLANTIC, ——

What do teachers know?

One of them who is taking an extension course in English asked me not long ago for some information regarding modern poets. I am not an authority, but I gave her a few names, while she took notes industriously.

'Grace Fallow Norton,' I said, 'occasionally has a poem in the Atlantic.'

She carefully put down, 'Norton - Atlantic.' I would n't have spoiled that for the world, so I went on hastily, though somewhat chokingly, to say that Amy Lowell is perhaps at the head of the school of free verse in this country.

She was very businesslike. 'Amy Lowell,' she jotted down, school of free verse.' Then she looked up, pencil poised, And where is this school located?' she asked.

Sincerely,

MARY F. ROBINSON.

And while we are on the subject of teaching, perhaps it is appropriate to notice a certain attitude toward it on the part of some parents. We print this remarkable example sent us from a famous school. DEAR ATLANTIC, —

Behold the trials of the secondary school which endeavors to teach the youth of to-day the art of English Composition. The paragraph below is the reaction, in part, of a lawyer of New York City whose son had failed to meet the requirements. The name of the boy and of the school are changed, the rest is an exact transcript.

'Just how a boy can fail in the subject of English, even I today with my own experience, cannot see or understand, and without hesitation or fear of possible successful contradiction I assert that no man lives today who could mark a pupil as having failed or succeeded in English, except on possibly definitions or lack of committing something to memory; the subject of English is too broad to be marked down that way to a day, one might be very learned in English along one line and be utterly dumb about another, who then could say failure, it seems incredible to be argued even, but for fear you may not understand me I wish to say definitely that I am raising no issue with you or Kensington. I do not occupy any position to do that, but it is such an all important element to all growing young men that good views of any person might be valuable even to Kensington when submitted by fair impartial men and I am trying to do that, notwithstanding John is involved.'

IN 1910 David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Asquith Cabinet, estimated that the direct war expenditures of 'the countries of the world' were at that time no less than $2,250,000,000 a year, and were increasing at a rate that would double this sum by 1920. He then predicted that the economic life of the nations could not long endure the strain; and it did not long endure the strain. Within four years Europe was in the midst of the most disastrous war yet recorded in the annals of the human race.

By common consent Germany has been held responsible for this conflict, and this responsibility is formally acknowledged in the Treaty of Versailles. But when we say that Germany was responsible, we do not mean that Germany alone created the conditions that brought about the war, and that Germany alone shaped the issues that inspired the appeal to arms. The record of Germany's guilt is, in the main, the record of the Imperial Government in the latter part of July, 1914, after Lord Grey, then Sir Edward Grey, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, had made an appeal for a four-power conference, to adjust the situation that had grown out of the assassinations at Serajevo.

VOL. 128-NO. 2

"The more one reads the memoirs and books written in the different countries upon what happened before August 1, 1914, the more one realizes that no one at the head of affairs quite meant war at that stage. It was something towards which they glided, or rather staggered and stumbled, perhaps through folly.'

President Wilson was savagely censured in 1916 for a speech in which he said that he did not know just what the war was about, and had never been able to find anybody who could tell him. To his exasperated critics there was no mystery whatever about it. Europe was at war because the Germans were a wicked and depraved folk, who had taken diabolical advantage of the unsuspecting innocence of the Russians, the French, and the British. An opinion of that sort does well enough for the temporary purposes of propaganda, but it hardly serves the ends of history; and curiously enough we are still without authentic information as to the final argument that swung the Imperial Government to one of the most reckless and disastrous decisions in all history. All

the German war memoirs, biographies, and recollections that have appeared since the war are strangely vague when they arrive at that fateful moment when the sword was thrown into the balance. They do not tell us precisely who was in favor of and who was opposed to war, and what the final argument was that determined the course of the Government.

Yet it is possible to piece together certain scraps of information that are available, and arrive at a fairly satisfactory conclusion. In order to sustain its enlarged military establishment, the German Government had been compelled to impose what was equivalent to a tax on capital. This tax was most burdensome to German commerce and industry under the intensive competition to which they were subjected. Not only were the Social Democrats, the most numerous party in the Empire, preparing to resist the renewal of the military estimates, but German business was increasingly restive under its load of taxation. To the Junker mind, there was no solution of the problem short of war. To diminish the military establishment was unthinkable. To make the political concessions necessary to appease the Social Democrats and obtain their support for the army programme was likewise unthinkable. The overhead had become too great for the Imperial system. Then came the murder of the heirapparent to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and the General Staff instantly reverted to the ancient precept of imperialism, not merely German imperialism, but all imperialism, — which is that a successful foreign war is the best means of averting a domestic crisis. And so Europe was plunged in blood in consequence of a military panic that had its origin in an economic emergency, which in turn was produced by competitive armament. The Lloyd George prediction of 1920 was fulfilled.

When the Chancellor of the Exchequer made the speech referred to, the $2,250,000,000 which the nations were spending every year for past and future wars represented $50,000,000,000 of wealth, on a basis of five per cent. In other words, $50,000,000,000 of the world's assets were for all practical purposes segregated and devoted to the task of earning income to be devoted exclusively to supporting military adventures of one kind or another.

After a war that cost approximately $348,000,000,000 in property and production, nobody quite knows the aggregate war budget of the nations. It has been variously estimated at from eight to ten billion dollars a year. If we take the smaller figure and capitalize it at the modest rate of five per cent, the amount is $160,000,000,000 which means that, after extinguishing $348,000,000,000 of the world's wealth, $160,000,000,000 of what is left is now set aside to pay the reckoning and make ready for new wars.

It is needless to say that labor and industry cannot carry that burden, and when government attempts to sweat them to that extent, it is defeating the very ends of national defense which it professes to serve. War is no longer a conflict between uniformed forces of professional combatants. It is a conflict of all the resources of the belligerents, of whatsoever kind and nature. What ended this war was the overwhelming economic force of the United States. What enabled Germany to fight all Europe to a standstill on two fronts was, not its superior military establishment, but its superior economic system.

The German army was undoubtedly the most perfect military machine ever constructed by the genius of man, but it ditched itself within six weeks after the beginning of the war. All the elaborately contrived plans of the General

Staff were frustrated at the battle of the Marne, after von Kluck had outmarched his communications. The remainder of the war was a series of desperate attempts on the part of the German high command to adjust itself to conditions that it had never contemplated; and in the end it was the economic collapse of internal Germany which left Ludendorff's armies a defenseless shell. So much for military preparedness at its best and its worst.

While military experts are acrimoniously discussing the lessons of the war, the most important lesson attracts practically no attention on their part. It is the lesson that was demonstrated in its most dramatic form by the American intervention - that is, that economic - that is, that economic resources can be easily and quickly translated into military resources; that a sound economic system is the essential element in any extensive military undertaking. But these resources are not interchangeable. Economic energy can be speedily converted into military energy, but military energy is not recontrovertible into economic energy. Like the radiated heat of the sun, it is lost. It can never be reassembled and welded into another sun.

The white man's civilization is an economic civilization. It is sustained by economic supremacy, and by that alone. It is that which has given to the so-called Nordic races their dominion over land and sea. In point of numbers they are inferior to the brown and yellow races. In point of physical courage they are likewise inferior, for the Oriental faces both torture and death with a resignation and a fatalism that the white man either had never attained or has long ago lost. In ability to endure hardship, to exist on a minimum of nourishment, and to survive in the midst of an evil environment, the swarming millions of Asia are superior to the European or the American. As for in

tellectual power, dismissing the uses to which that power is applied, the Eastern mind has attained a discipline and a subtlety of reasoning that the Western mind has never yet achieved. It is the white man's economic accomplishments which have been the magic carpet that transported him everywhere, and the armor that none could penetrate. While this economic supremacy exists, no other race can challenge the white man's civilization. Whenever that supremacy has been weakened, the white man's civilization has been menaced. It is again in peril.

Three great military empires were extinguished in the war, but three great economic empires were wrecked, as well. Russia has been rightly described as an 'economic vacuum.' AustriaHungary is practically in ruins; and whether the great German economic machine will ever be permitted to function freely again is still a matter of speculation. We are only beginning to comprehend the terrific impact of the blow that the war dealt to the economic structure of Europe; and from the day the Armistice was signed, conditions have grown steadily worse. It must be apparent to anybody who will examine the situation dispassionately that, unless this economic fabric can be speedily restored, modern civilization may slowly disintegrate, to its utter ruin, as preceding civilizations have disintegrated.

Obviously the place to begin the work of reconstruction, so far as the government is concerned, is with the burden of taxation under which all the great nations are groaning. The one point at which an extensive reduction of taxation can be made, which reduction will have an instantaneous economic effect, is military expenditure.

The United States is spending on future wars alone more than the entire net expenses of the Federal govern