When President Wilson during his western tour three months ago, said some startling things as to the grave danger of America's being drawn into the war, many people condemned him for giving way to a form of sensationalism incongruous with the whole of his previous record. The movement of events since the sinking of the Sussex would seem to show that Mr. Wilson was not without prevision of the present crisis. He had evidently been led to form a right estimate of German pledges and compromises. Germany, it was plain, would not abandon the practice of submarine piracy, and a day would come when the President must cease sending Notes of protest and warning and take decisive action. That day would seem to have arrived. To hold up the flag and keep out of the war has been the twofold aim of the Washington Government. Can both be done? If so, is the method followed by Mr. Wilson for the past fifteen months the right, or the only, one to pursue? If war after all is to be the end of all his patient negotiation, would it not have been better to declare war when the Lusitania was sent down? And if a war policy was impossible then, how is it that America has been brought to face it now? These are questions asked on all hands in England, and they ought to be clearly answered.

President Wilson's opponents (their present temper is extraordinarily fierce) contend that his method has been

wrong from the beginning. Not only has it subjected the United States to unparalleled humiliation, but it has not been a genuine peace policy at all. At every stage it has involved the imminent risk of war-unless the words used were to be taken as meaning nothing. Indeed, they argue it prepared a series of crises out of which, unless by supernatural luck, there was no issue except war. The alternative method-that is Mr. Roosevelt's -would have had the appearance of greater hazard, but in reality it would have made for peace, and peace with power and honor. No one knows what Mr. Roosevelt would have done. He would not have acted in regard to Belgium: that is clear from his published statements in the autumn of 1914. But, according to the likeliest interpretation, when the submarine war was proclaimed in February, 1915, he would have warned Berlin, in emphatic terms before a single merchant crew had been drowned; he would have held Count Bernstorff responsible for the Lusitania advertisement; he might have forbidden the liner to sail until security for its safety had been given; and he would certainly have made the world ring with the noise of his preparations for war. The assumptions behind this hypothetical policy, are, first, that Germany, realizing that the United States was resolved to act as a strong instead of a hesitant neutral, would have consented to surrender the advantage of her submarine arm; and

secondly, that the President, in adopting a spirited tone and attitude, would have been able to count upon the united support of the American people. The first assumption (though the Lusitania might have been saved) is unwarranted; the second goes against the accumulated evidence of the whole war period.

This latter is the capital fact which Mr. Wilson has realized, the fact which his enemies in America, like his contemners on this side, altogether fail to appreciate. The United States is not a nation in our European sense. Its five or six principal regions are as diverse in character as they are geographically separate. In this country (small blame to us) we conceive of America as Anglo-Saxon. We know the overwhelming weight and intensity of the moral judgment passed by the Atlantic States in favor of the Allies. Some of us have noted that there is little pretense of neutrality in the most powerful newspapers. Alike in headline, editorial, and humorous column the bias is unmistakable; while that very serious journal, Life—the nearest thing to Punch as a reflection of wellto-do opinion-belongs, you would say, at least as much to London as to New York. But it is foolish to identify Boston and Philadelphia-where opinion is not only strongly pro-Allies, but passionately pro-English—with America west of the Alleghanies and the Great Lakes, just as it would be misleading to read the fine manifesto, published recently, of the 500 intellectuals as a statement of what the multitudes are thinking and feeling in the wide areas of the Mississippi Valley or beyond the Rocky Mountains. The Middle West, remote from both the oceans, does not and cannot share the outlook of New England or the Southern States, and it contains what is, in many respects, the characteristically American element of the population; while to the

people of the Pacific coast it would be obvious folly to talk of the danger of German aggression. They live under "the straining floodgates of the East" and see the menace of tomorrow, not in German dreams of world dominion, but in the expansionist impulses of Japan.

The geography and social variety of the United States are a sufficiently powerful influence towards complete neutrality in the European conflict, but, as everyone can see, they are not more powerful than the racial influences. None of the population estimates of German-America are satisfactory; but it would not, I think, be possible to fix upon a smaller figure than fifteen millions, especially if we count in with them the large bodies of Scandinavian and other sympathizers. At the beginning of the war it was possible to believe, as Mr. Roosevelt still appears to believe, that the great bulk of the German-Americans are "straight" Americans and would behave as such under whatever ordeal; but that is a point upon which most observers would express very serious doubts. It is, however, not German-America alone, formidable as that element is, which makes the racial obstacle to a completely national policy. There is another aspect of the problem, and one of immense significance, which is persistently overlooked. I mean the enormous mass of opinion in America which is, by racial tradition and political sympathy, either resolutely neutral or else distrustful of, or hostile to the Alliance. We cannot expect the people from Greece and the Balkan States to be enthusiastic for American action on behalf of the Allies; but far more serious in this connection is the great mass of new Americans fed by the immigrant stream from Poland, the Baltic provinces, Galicia, and other parts of Russia and the Russian border. All these, whether Jews or not, have one overmastering sentiment in regard to Euro

pean policies and governments-a profound horror of Russian despotism, a puzzled indignation and resentment against the co-operation of freedomloving Britain and France with the autocracy from which they have fled. Whether Hebrew or not, I have said; but it is necessarily among the Jews that the feeling is most intense, and that feeling has been stimulated by the recently published report by the American Jewish Committee upon the treatment of the Jews in the Eastern

war zone.

It is impossible, I think, to defend the whole of Mr. Wilson's policy since the first Note on the submarine issue. The most thoroughgoing admirer must admit that, time and again, the President has said both too much and too little, has too often trusted to luck, and has missed more than one opportunity for decisive action which the whole neutral world would have applauded. But it ought to be remembered that his position has been and is one of unexampled difficulty. A review of the whole situation impels one to the conclusion that every possible

The New Statesman.

course would in one way or another have laid his Government open to disaster. It is abundantly clear that, in the controversy with Germany, wisdom as well as safety made it advisable for him to refuse every occasion for a breach that did not imply a thoroughly American quarrel; and that occasion he appears to have reached. It should also be borne in mind that the condemnation to which he is now being subjected is in the main retrospective. That is to say: Mr. Wilson is denounced and repudiated, not because his early inaction went against the nation's will and judgment-most emphatically it did not; but because he failed to see a year ahead and consequently could not know, when the catastrophe befell, what at least onehalf of the American people would have chosen to do if they had known what was to follow, which means, in effect, that Mr. Wilson is condemned because, in default of a supreme genius of divination, he has had to make the most of the powers of intelligence and judgment with which nature has endowed him.

S. K. R.

Now and again, on evenings which are termed musical, and which at least do not fail of being noisy, a songster will recite to you passages, usually of a tender nature, that happen "oft in the stilly night." It is possible that he may not be very intimately acquainted, of any personal knowledge, with night in the solitude of the country out of doors, for if he were it is hardly conceivable that he could sing of it, with a clear conscience, as "stilly." It is true that sometimes, if you put your head out of window in the midnight when no breeze is stirring, you may for a moment or two have the

illusion that no sound is about you, but that is because your bedroom window is rather likely to be above the ground floor, and with no growth of any floral things about it. Unless these are its circumstances it is impossible that you may listen even there for long without being aware that, far from the night being "stilly," it is in reality filled and alive with a perfectly astonishing number of sounds. No single one of the sounds is loud-that is true -but probably it is just because of the absence of any one noise of overmastering loudness that it becomes possible for you to be thus aware of what ap

pears to be an infinity of tiny sounds which strike you as with the sensation of hearing all, or a great number of them, at the same moment. It is likely that the physiologist would tell us that it is an impossibility for us actually to receive the impression of more than one sound, that is to say, of more than one length of air-wave, at a single instant; but at least these very small sounds follow each other with such swiftness, and each makes such a slight and quickly passing appeal to the auditory sense, that we are certainly not conscious of any inexactitude in affirming that we hear a multitude of them at the same time. They seem to come altogether into one jumbled impression. In the daytime it is hardly possible to have a like experience. In that work-a-day world there is nearly always some noise that is so emphatic as to make you aware of the singleness of the sensation it gives you. The psychologist, no less than the physiologist, has his say here, telling you that the attention can be given to one object of sense only at any one instant. In the comparative calm of the night there is, for many minutes together, no single sound to occupy your attention strongly; it i3 distributed, going from one of the little sounds to the other so quickly as to give them an illusion of coalescence, like the optical illusion of the kaleidoscope. It is thus even as you lean from your window. It is thus, magnified multifold, if you pass into that far closer communion with nature which you may establish if you come forth from your tenement of bricks and mortar, which is the fence that modern man has erected between himself and things as nature would have them be, and stand or lie silent on Mother Earth in the midst of all the rest of her children. Believe me you will not then find night "stilly," nor a time

when all the good children of Mother Earth are asleep.

Certain of the sounds you will identify, or at least will believe that you assign to their real makers. Of such are the innumerable little patterings, as it were the sound of a scratchy pen traveling over paper, then stopping very short and abruptly-the scribe's idea not too fluent in his mind. These are the footfalls of small nocturnal people going over the carpeting of dry leaves or among the stiff grass blades with hard-shod feet and talons. They may be feet of shrews or voles, or even of larger creatures than these; but the majority of the pattering and the scratching will be done by the insects, because they are far more numerous and more incessantly busy-the ants, the beetles, and so on. And generally

it is the fallen leaves that play the part of sounding-board to it all. It may be that quite a different creature is at work, making more direct use of the leaves for its own lawful occasions, but, like the others, producing from the leaves a sound that is almost night-long. One of the many correspondents who are kind enough to write to me on the subjects of some of these short essays in the Westminster describes this process vividly. "Walk ing," he says, "in my garden on a quiet November evening, I used to be astonished by hearing a constant rustling of dried leaves on the ground, always ahead of me. It was too late for birds to be about. I wondered, could it be mice, and would they be so numerous and omnipresent? I decided in the negative, and then tried by the quietest and slowest approach to stalk the mysterious beings who rustled the leaves. After many failures I at last succeeded, and discovered they were Darwin's favorite earth-worms, who were busy pulling the withered leaves into and down their holes, I suppose to provide themselves

with nourishment during the hard weather which lay before them. It then became a pleasure, while promenading the garden by day, to notice the leaves in scores that were more or less dragged into the worm-holes. They were twirled round as we twirl a sheet of paper round a bouquet of flowers, and I think the stalk and narrow end were always pulled in first. Querywhat sort of mouths, teeth, and jaws have worms?" The final query is something of another story, and too long for the present discussion, though a chapter on "mouthpieces" and their variations according to their special purposes might be interesting enough. But for the rest, these are evidently the comments of a good observer, and of one who can describe what he obThere can be very few, even of far more casual habit of observation than this correspondent, who have not noticed the leaves, as he says, sticking partially up out of the worm-holes on any lawn after a damp night. It is possible that he who saw them may have wondered, not knowing that it was the work of worms, and, it may be, speculating, as this one seems to have speculated, whether worms had the grip of jaw sufficient for the purpose. Of all the tiny noises of the night this, of the worms working among the leaves, is perhaps the least suspected, and the most persistent.

serves.

There is one mood of Nature and one only in which the night, for the watcher, is not filled with these innumerable, scarcely palpable sounds. When all the world is wrapped in the garb of snow the activities of very many of the nocturnal creatures are checked; The Westminster Gazette.

this check of the activities occurs as a result of the low temperature simply, and we find it at times of a hard and crisp frost, no less. But the snow, besides being an enervator of vital forces, acts also as a muffler of all sound that the creatures still have enough vitality to produce. It is not a time at which the watcher will care to remain watchful for long, by wood or fell. To be "out with Nature" may be the ideal life, but this, like most general dicta of its kind, is to be accepted with the due limitations of the manner and the place and the time, as classically laid down by Aristotle; and lying on your cloak at midnight in the woodland is not the ideal of all that is most comforting when the snow is about you. You will be the less tempted to dally because all except the louder voices of the night are hushed. It is, as it were, a dead world, or a world of arrested life. The very silence is so oppressive as almost to seem audible. You may go home, to your far more grateful fireside, with the impression that not a living thing has been stirring about you as you held your brief nocturnal vigil. And then, coming forth the next morning and going to the same place, you will perceive the tell-tale face of the candid snow as it were riddled with wrinkles formed by the footprints of little creatures that must have been going to and fro all about you, even while you watched, though you saw and knew nothing of them. You may be assured that you were well spied upon yourself, though you were all unwitting of your watchers.

Horace Hutchinson.

"When I Was a Boy in Russia," by Vladimir De Bogory Mokrievitch, is illustrated by fourteen photographs

disclosing Russians of many ages and ranks, and its text initiates young readers into the mystery of affairs in