tions. Can he stop them from doing so on the ground that they do not understand the true spirit of his civic inheritance? Steuben, Kosciuszko, and Pulaski will be at once flung in his face, and rightly. For how much of the Revolutionary conflict was understood by the patron-saints and mythological forerunners of the recent immigrants? And yet their help was accepted, their memory is glorified, the cosmopolitan mark was received, Englishry was renounced. I was standing on the night of one "Fourth of July" in the Town Square of New Haven, which the first Puritan settlers had laid out centuries ago, on the steps of the Center Church, which two Oxford men had founded. They had come here in order that they might realize their cherished dreams of the Puritan Commonwealth. Here British religious individualism had tried in congregations to work out its destiny, undisturbed by the contrary element within its own nation, untouched by the influence of its spiritual brethren of different nationality. In those surroundings I had dreamed many a time of the Puritan founders of the State, I had followed their paths among the wooded hills up the Connecticut River, I felt their thoughts when, on my pilgrimage, I reached the slopes near New Guilford, which after long search a group of immigrants from Surrey and Kent had chosen for their settlement, because it reminded them so much of the countryside of Southern England. was impossible to think of that distant past in the Town Square of New Haven on the night of the Fourth of July. A noisy, surging crowd was rolling through the square, rockets were fired, flags were waved. I heard Italian, French, Polish, and Greek spoken around me. I saw hundreds of little American flags, and coupled with them flags of many nations. The one flag which was nowhere to be seen was that of Britain, It the land which once had been loved as mother country, which now is honored by Americans as the center of the great sister-commonwealth, but which on the "Fourth of July" is dimly thought of by the multi-lingual crowd in the New Haven Square as a brutal tyrant. What associations were rising in the imaginations of those in the crowd who had themselves suffered in the Old World, when they heard the phrases about "Britain's cruel yoke"? Across the square, in a fine old frame house I had sat at dinner that night with descendants of the founders of the State, with Anglo-Saxons of the purest lineage, in their feelings and thinking more closely allied to Englishmen than are millions of men now living under the British flag. We had sat behind drawn blinds, and a feeling of bored, weary uneasiness had seemed to prevail in the room. The noise was coming from outside, the Mob's Carnival was proceeding in the Square; I guessed that hardly any one of my companions, whose forefathers had been actors in the great drama, exactly knew what his own feelings now were towards the queer festivities of commemoration, or towards their still queerer participants, who by their very joy tried to let the old Americans know and feel that they, the crowd in the Square, were their fellowcitizens. Did they not resent the indiscretion of the strange yelling and noisy rejoicings? In many of them flowed the blood of loyalists. Why were those Dagoes shouting over Hutchison's broken heart, over Galloway's shattered life, over the mute tragedy of many of America's noblest men, over the "pity and fear" of the great AngloSaxon tragedy? Well, the fathers of the now "submerged Americans" used to celebrate that day before these strangers had entered the land; the rejoicings of the Fourth of July had grown to be the custom of the country. Could an American of Anglo-Saxon extraction now protest against them, against the Legend of the Revolution? Could he step forward and tell the foreign immigrants that the ideas of right and liberty, which his ancestors had brought over from the British Isles, were not dead in their old home, that each of the two great divisions of Anglo-Saxondom, treading its own path, had reached a freedom and developed a form of commonwealth unequaled by any other nation; that the attitude of the immigrants towards his own blood, kin and ancestry was offensive to him? The same night I walked among the crowd with a descendant of the first Puritan settlers. I could guess the thoughts with which he was struggling; there were things which neither he nor I could formulate, and neither of us would have dared to touch upon. We had left the Square, had passed out of The New Statesman. the crowd, and were walking up a side road, between the mighty rows of old elm trees. Finally he broke the silence; he remarked with a smile, simulating cheerfulness: "We teach more foreigners English than does Great Britain, we compel them to adopt our language, laws, and constitution in a way unknown to the British Empire." The Englishman spoke in him; there was not a drop of blood in him which was not the best blood of England. I felt like asking him why he did not unfurl the flag of his own ancestors, and make the strangers in the Square and all their little foreign flags bow to it? Of course, they would shriek "Treason"; for could the glorious Revolution ever be forgotten or interpreted in any other than the traditional way? They were rejoicing in the Town Square over his renunciation of Englishry. L. B. N. DR. WILSON'S "HOUSEHOLD FOES." The relations between President, Parliament and people in the United States have for generations been those of the ship's captain, with a mixed crew and a crowd of emigrant passengers peculiarly liable to panic in a storm. The brains on the bridge have throughout known all the dangers, yet executive officers on watch have too often been distracted by insistent clamor and protest from all classes below. Luckily, this big America rolled through summer seas until 1914, when the breakers of Deutschtum whitened with imminent crash. Hence all these domestic broils in Washington and bewilderment abroad. Even Abe Lincoln, now secure in the Hall of Heroes, was beset with carping deputations-chiefly from the West, be it said, where Mr. Bryan lives, and the blind Senator Gore, who sought to warn American citizens off armed liners of the Allied nations. The fact is that to Nebraska European quarrels are remote as Mars' canals. To Oklahoma the word "war" suggests only Mexican anarchy, which is all too near, and very bad for business. President Lincoln suffered those Western spokesmen gently. "Now suppose," said the Emancipator, "all you possessed were committed to Blondin's care to carry across the Niagara Gorge on a rope. Would you shake his cable? Would you yell, 'Blondin, stand up straighter! Go a bit faster! Lean to the north. . . No-more to the south!' Gentlemen, you'd just hold your breath as well as your tongues till your gold was safely over. And this Government carry a mighty burden. Treasure untold is in their hands, so don't badger them; they're doing their very best. Be silent during the crossing." The delegates stole away with every protest quelled by the rugged genius of this man. Now the Blondin ordeal is also Dr. Wilson's who turned upon his hecklers in mid-air, so to speak, till they shrank from further meddling in sheer fear of the Unknown. Whence came this pervasive impression that Dr. Wilson had neither Parliament nor people behind him in his stand against murder at sea? Undoubtedly from William Jennings Bryan. As State Secretary he told Dumba and Bernstorff that the first Lusitania Note need not be taken too seriously. The German Press has given Bryan short shrift. Yet his "peace-at-any-price" policy has been a trump-card in the hands of the National German-American Alliance. It has also given driving power to each pro-German plot, from the proposed embargo on war munitions to ingeniously contrived runs on big banks subscribing to the Anglo-French Loan. Thus at Pittsburg every shop and telephone buzzed mysteriously with panic rumor: "Get your money out while you can!" Berlin was exceedingly rude to Mr. Bryan. To the Berliner Zeitung the apostle of peace was "a teetotal hero with well-fed face and voice of unction." He was also Wilson's friend. The President took leave of his eccentric Foreign Minister "with affectionate regards" and "God bless you!" very deeply felt. Bryan retired amid Parthian clouds of snipe-fire from all quarters-Democratic, Republican, Progressive, and Independent. "His unspeakable treachery" roused the New York World to fury. His "love of the limelight" was recalled; his public appearance at Chautauqua lectures, so as to offset the lighter "turns." The State Secretary was no sooner out of office than he was rousing the hyphenates and Clan-na-Gael Irish, who beat the reporters when those harassed men forgot to rise at the strains of "Die Wacht am Rhein." This was in early June of last year. Then it was that Mr. Bryan ("Et tu, Brute!") began a submarine campaign of his own against the President. These tactics wounded Dr. Wilson personally, as well as nullifying every move he made against Bernstorff and Berlin. If President Taft (Mr. Bryan put to his supporters) advised all Americans to leave Mexico when red anarchy fell, why should not Wilson warn citizens off the Allied ships-for the nation's sake if not for their own? And Mr. Bryan was dead against the transport of munitions on American passenger boats. These dicta were eagerly seized by German agents and Anglophobe organs of all ranges, from the Staats-Zeitung to the Washington Post. A monster petition of four million signatures was foisted upon Congress against the home trade in guns and shells for the Allies. And Congress was impressed, as Berlin knew perfectly well. Hence the Gore resolution in the Senate, and Mr. McLemore's corresponding motion in the Lower House. Beyond doubt these would have been carried by large majorities, and the traveling American forbidden the "armed ship," were it not for the President's dramatic challenge to Messrs. Kern, Stone, and Flood, whom he invited to the White House for a frank talk, on a certain historic evening. "We covet peace," Dr. Wilson told these legislative leaders. "And we shall ensue it at any cost-save the loss of honor." . . "Our duty is clear," the President told the Senate Chairman of Foreign Relations. "To forbid our people to exercise their rights (i.e. to sail in Allied ships] for fear we should have to vindicate them would be a deep humiliation indeed." Berlin's belief that he was bluffing was then and there traced back to Bryan's nods and winks with the naïve and devious Dumba. The Aus trian passed on to the Ballplatz and Wilhelmstrasse an assurance that Wilson was only a wordy professor, saving his face and marking time for a capricious, mercurial people who had a nose for "the day's noos," and would forget the Lusitania as the next big prize-fight drew near. It was a pernicious fallacy of course, as the President showed Congress and the world. He turned upon the peacemongers, their leaders and tools of all degrees, putting the issue crudely for the first time, as the New York World put it next day. "Is the foreign policy of the United States to be dictated from the White House or the German Embassy?" Whereupon all parties coalesced. The President's household foes now fell back upon their second lines. The British blockade, for instance, and interference with Uncle Sam's mails; the non-neutral making of guns and shells, the flotation of loans which caused the retirement of Congressman R. U. Page, brother of the Ambassador at our Court. It is a tense, expectant situation. Colonel House has reported the submarine as Germany's winning card -especially the newer types, which are all that cunning and Schrecklichkeit can devise. On the other hand, Washington will have no more parley on the preposterous question, "Is murder legal if it gets a goal?" "There can be no question," says the inspired Journal of Commerce, "about a warship's obligation to warn a merchant vessel and refrain from attack if it make no resistance, no attempt to escape." The Journal recites the established rules. "If the U-boat cannot conform to these, it must confine itself to attacks upon real warships. If the A B C of human ity and law make this weapon useless, that is its owner's misfortune as a Naval Power." Here, then, is an impasse which even the Berlin Admiralstab finds awkward; though, as Herr Zimmerman told the New York Associated Press, "There are limits beyond which the best friendship snaps." And Hans Delbrück, who always reflects the Berlin Foreign Office, considers overt rupture a disaster. "America," he points out, "holds a very valuable pawn in that vast mercantile fleet of ours now lying idle in her harbors." One vessel alone the Imperator-cost nearly £2,000,000, and eclipsed even the Cunard's pride of place for size and splendor at "The decision our Government has to make," Professor Delbrück owns, "is undeniably serious. Has not Portugal seized all our ships? They will soon be in English service." sea. It is safe to say that, despite the "diplomatic difficulties" which Captain Persius foresees, Germany's decisive weapon must have full scope. "We are fighting for our existence," says Baron von Mumm von Schwartzenstein, of the Foreign Office. On the other hand, one more drowned American means a state of war, with the banishment of Bernstorff and Baron Zwidinck-who continues all the Dumba deviltries as Austrian Chargé d'Affaires. It is this prospect which has thrown America's social and political psyche into unexampled confusion. The President's victory is no more than a truce. Uneasy Senators and Representatives are daily bombarded with sheaves of letters and telegrams urging the sound sense of the Gore resolution, and, consciously or unconsciously, supporting Bernstorff and Bryan in the Anglophobe and peace campaigns. Moreover, Congress resents the Presidential pistol at its head. The Senate itself is split into heated, factious camps. So is the Lower House; whilst "preparedness" for war is up against fierce opposition, or remote Western lethargy that asks what all the fuss is about, and is bored by the space given it in the papers. The Middle West and Pacific Slope are distinctly pro-German; and this element the President placates by appointing as War Minister Mr. Newton Baker, his former secretary and college pupil. Mr. Baker is a prominent pacifist, quite opposed to his predecessor's Continental Army, and favoring an increase in the State Militias and National Guards. This will gratify State pride. It will also increase confusion, for these forces are controlled, and may even be disbanded, by the Governor of the State to which they belong. As for naval programmes, these meet with energetic protest, even in anti-Japanese States of the Far West. "We're mere children in these matters," the President is told. "We must take a lead from Germany on land warfare, and from Great Britain at sea. Suppose we spend hundreds of millions on capital ships only to find that science [read the submarine] puts it over on mere size?" And in the background of "preparedness" stands the temperance fanatic, calling for the total suppression of the liquor traffic -a coup that would pay for such an army and navy as would smash a world in arms! America is an unwieldy subject, and in treating it British writers are badly at sea. Even resident correspondents take local views. They convey no idea whatever of "those United States" which are sharply divided in ethics and ethnics-climatically, politically, and by conditions peculiar to themselves. "America" should convey to the thinker not a nation in the European sense, but a stupendous and sparselypopulated continent, split into dozens of sovereign States, with very real frontiers and local affairs of all-absorbing interest. Massachusetts has no more in common, say, with Arizona than Ireland has with Albania. The Federal Chief of these States has long presided in an affable and gilded peace. But this vanished at the first gun of the Great War, leaving the President aghast at the sudden blaze of Teuton nationality. "They have formed plots to destroy property," Dr. Wilson complained to Congress. "They have conspired against the neutrality of this Government, and sought to pry into confidential transactions to serve interests alien to our own." Here were vengeful household foes"infinitely malignant," was the President's memorable phrase. Their seat and center lay in the two Germanic Embassies, but Bernstorff was prime plotter of them all, and boasted of a "million army" ready to fight for the Fatherland. Why was he not sent packing after those acres of revelation by newspaper sleuths? Because he and his are in possession, and now locked and linked with the native legions of apathy and peace, and Anglophobia. No Administration would care to rouse the Germans. "Ex pede Herculem!" If they have burned and bombed when the nation was at peace, what hellupon-earth would these hosts loose if it came to an open breach with Deutschland? "There are twenty million of us Germans and Austrians here," said Representative Vollmer, of Iowa"too many to intern, I guess." Open terrorism was here preached, and backed up in Berlin, where Der Tag reported truculent meetings of the German-American in San Francisco. "Real German was spoken," Berlin was told. "And Washington was clearly warned without any effort to spare its feelings." Look at the late Herman Ridder, of the New York Staats-Zeitung. He was |