far as the machinery and enlistment and enterprise of warfare go, this is doubtless true; but there the resemblance stops. No one denies that a German may feel for his cause the same sense of devotion as we do for ours; but the setting of the conviction in the common moral and historical background of humanity, as well as its expression in thought and deed, is so utterly different that the verdict of the deeper psychology must stand. The genesis of one's own convictions, of the convictions of the common enemy, which creates the position of 1914 to 1917, and the convictions of one's friends and fellow-citizens, form the intimate basis for the interpretation of the world war in terms of the accompanying psychological reactions. In regard to the last, I confess to a considerable disappointment and some measure of mystification. In 1914 it was obvious and natural that men's convictions—I speak particularly of thoughtful, responsible, and influential men-should follow the official clue. The slogan was neutrality. Neutrality, public and private, was proclaimed as the patriotic virtue. This, we were told, is a European quarrel, not ours; and, like all wars, with rights and wrongs on both sides. To our sorrow, we have learned that it is not that kind of a war at all, that it is unlike all previous wars, that it concerns us as intimately as any event since we became a nation. The complacent acceptance of the 1914 attitude by thinking men as a correct diagnosis and a proper position was a disappointment, though an intelligible one. Yet, as viewed by the student of conviction, the request for neutrality as addressed to the thinker was substantially an appeal to ignore his capac ity for judgment. There were many protesting surrenders, possibly more sacrificial ones, and not a few outspoken, even rebellious, protests. But the demonstration as a whole was far more creditable to American charity and generosity of view than to American foresight and logical acumen. The chief justification was the refusal to believe that Germany would so . completely disregard the laws of nations and the spirit of fair play and humanity. It required a cumulative series of aggres sive attacks upon American lives and interests, and the evidence of disgraceful intrigues and underhand betrayal of our patience and good faith, to arouse us to the breaking point. The consolation lies in the testimony borne by the years 1914 to 1917 to the quality of American sanity. Through it all we kept our heads; and our convictions are the sturdier for the proved confidence in their stability.

It is also a disappointment to find in 1917 the supporters of the virtue of neutrality suddenly turned into eloquent moralizers upon the iniquities of the very same actions which they accepted in unprotesting silence in 1914-not, of course, to find them now thus disposed, but to find the change accomplished without any sense of inconsistency, without explanation, without confession of previous incompetence. Convictions should be built of sterner stuff, and men who think and venture to lead should be guided by a compass and not by a weather-vane. This exhibition in the psychology of conviction tries one's faith in the independence of mind of one's esteemed fellow-citizens. It is hard to shake off the conviction that the political habit of jump ing on the loaded band-wagon may account for the transformation, and not too creditably.

But disappointment passes to amazement when we observe men of sterling mental qualities ready to ignore the case of Belgium and all that followed it, even to palliate and excuse. For these are men whom we know, whose judgments we respect. It is true that most of them are of German origin or affiliation, though the affiliation is not always direct or intimate; and some of them are not so bound. But this neither excuses nor explains. Had these men been as ready in their condemnation of Germany's conduct of the war as in acceptance of Germany's plea of justification in entering the war, we should have understood, though in complete disagreement. But to find the defense of violations which if committed by others would receive the severest condemnation, the absolute and complete excommunication from the civilized world that is seriously disturbing. It even sug gests that Mania Teutonica can send its contagion beyond the seas and infect the minds of those with other traditions, with transferred allegiance. The cases are sporadic, truly; but, even so, their mystery is not readily removed.

When the situation is reviewed in a three years' perspective,

the moral that impresses itself upon the psychological mind is the uncertainty of judgment under the stress of tradition. The dead hand of the past still weighs heavily upon our logical disposition. We knew what wars have been and why; we knew that war is war, and at its best is hell; we knew something of diplomatic traditions and the deference which they command. Under these dominating conceptions, the true nature of what was going on in 1914 to 1917 in large measure escaped us. We read about military movements, strategies, trench warfare, novel methods of destruction, and the defenses against them. The amazing vast panorama of the west front and of the yet more complicated east front, the ominous approach to Paris, the disaster of the Dardanelles, and other concrete and gigantic incidents-these filled our minds as the salient features of the war. Gradually we realized that the true issues of the war were the restraints which nations were willing to exercise in the means employed. Poisonous gases, air raids on defenseless civilians, the shelling of hospital ships and Red Cross stations, the fate of Rheims and many another priceless heirloom of the past, deportations and forced labor of prisoners, diplomatie trickery and plotting against neutrals, and the ruthless submarine these became the real issues, and all of them moral ones. If such violations of international faith can be committed and defended, war is not war, but diabolical piracy. It seemed inconceivable that a nation would devise a Machiavellian plot to gain the confidence of the world by profession, and secretly be tray the good faith with which these professions were accepted, to the undoing of the moral foundations upon which civilization is and must be built. For that is where we come out. Germany's stake was the respect and trust of the nations; she risked her moral standing; and, whatever the outcome, she has lost-lost honor, reputation, confidence. She stands a moral bankrupt, self-convicted.

To achieve their purpose the responsible dictors of Germany's course had to spread delusion and mania among the people; for while officials declare war, the people to the fighting and must be kept in fighting mood. Once again the psychological equipment is as important as the matary one; it figures as the morale of the troops, and reflect the national temper and tradition as does nothing else. For this end noble and defensible professions must be maintained as well as the futile myth of the superiority of Germany and Germans to all other peoples; the sham excuse of action in self-defense must be circulated and military necessity urged to justify the basest of crimes. Not even Germany accepts the responsibility for the war, but masks its batteries in a network of plausible pretense. The ultimate responsibility of responsible Germany is for the inoculation of its people with an insidious Mania Teutonica ; and terrible will be the revenge when the deluded people recovers its sanity and asserts its power. For so much of prophecy I venture, that such will be the issue. However charitably we look upon the state of mind that now prevails in Germany, we realize that this psychological condition forms a vital part of the problem that confronts us. I still cherish and try to embrace the conviction that there would be little difficulty in dealing with a sane Germany under responsible control-which in these days is equivalent to a democratic control. The difficulty is to fight the disease and save the patient. The peculiar difficulty lies in the relation of the German Empire to its Kaiser, and the unfortunate evidence, of many years' standing, that the source of the contagion may be in no small measure the personality of its ruler. Clearly, diagnosis cannot directly prescribe treatment, because by the nature of things the world cannot establish a hóspital for insane nations. We must see the thing through on the diplomatic basis supported by military measures. But the greatest support is in the allied determination of great nations that sanity as well as justice shall prevail.

In such a consummation a survey of the rôle of conviction in the amazing years 1914 to 1917 has a modest place. It raises the issue of madness or warfare, according as we judge by outward actions or by their source in conviction. It shows anew that the sanity of a nation is among its most precious assets : that political policy proceeds upon an underlying psychology. The departure in any measure from the road of sanity is an invitation to disaster. Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.

W

AT is a "gob"?

A fish out of water would be the nearest parallel-just about as comfortable, as natural, as happy in an element other than his own. The "gob" used to be like any other masculine sophisticated in the ways of his world, who, in consequence, dealt with calm assurance with his fellows. He may have been a clerk, a brakeman, anything, even a carefully tailored person who drew down an enviable, unearned salary. Voluntarily he may have flopped or forcefully been drawn out of his native element. At any rate, whatever he may have been he is no longer. There was a time when "gob" applied to any naval seaman, as a general term to designate a class, and, if it bore a note of social distinction, it was the general one between the officer and the enlisted man. That was before we went to war, before a horde of land-bred beings-the forces of the U. S. N. R. F.-invaded the special province of the sea, committed sacrilege, and in their ignorance spoke on board a battle-ship of "stairs" and "floors" and "windows." Since then has come a change. The previously enlisted man, the "regular," basks in a new superiority. The word is more particular. I know. I have just gone to sea. I am a gob.

A year or so before this country entered on hostilities the lack of men needed fully to man our war-ships in emergency gave rise to an organization known as the United States Naval Reserve Force the U. S. N. R. F.-composed of men who in the time of peace pursued their civilian occupations, standing, however, ready for instant service should hostilities arise. The Naval Civilian Cruise of 1916 will be remembered as the first effort to organize this body and give it training.

When war broke out, its meager ranks swelled suddenly. The Navy clung to its four-year term of service. The Reserve offered the same enlistment term, but its members were subject to active duty for the duration of hostilities alone. The opportunity of advancement was greater. It was a natural choice. For some, ordered to training camps with others no more experienced than were they, the transition to a seaman-though at best a half-baked seaman- -came more easily. For those of us abruptly placed on active service it was a jolt. No life is more conventional than naval life-the routine of the day, appearance, even speech. We knew little or nothing of these conventionalities. It was another sphere.

I never wore décolleté promiscuously before. My tie had always knotted at the neck, not on my stomach. Trousers used to end in cuffs, not embryonic skirts that wrap themselves about the other ankle. Nor comes it naturally to wear upon your head a broadcloth pancake, slanted hilariously as might the halo of a tipsy saint, and decorated with gilt letters. An unsuspected sentiment attaches itself to that ancient suit of "cits" from which I made the change, now hanging empty in a closet. Some day I shall write an ode about that suit they say war stimulates the arts-for it is the token and the measure of a bygone ease and comfort. How much of personality is manufactured at the tailor's!

The first paralysis of unfamiliarities has somewhat lessened now, but were I tempted to forget my own first spasm, the spectacle of new men suffering the ordeal prevents me. From genial human beings rise frozen, gaping images in "blues;" speechless, for the very words with which the citizens of their new world communicate are unintelligible; motionless, for legs are somewhere lost beneath in flapping serge and arms incased in billowy sleeves that end in binding wristlets. They finger their bare throats as though surprised to find that they possessed them, and, like matches floating in a finger-bowl, draw imperceptibly together, grouped in stupefaction. "What happens to us next?"

Our first steps vary, for some are placed on ships and some in yards, and others on power-boats that now patrol the coast. We all learn differently, according to our situation. But sooner or later there develops in us all a point of view; sooner or later we meet and learn the meaning of the phrase "seagoing,"

criterion of propriety at sea, highest expression of the seaman's approbation. It works a metamorphosis! It points a goal. This wilderness of all things strange is of the standard of the term, of men as well as things. To be a part of it becomes the object. The war may end to-morrow and the balance of our lives be spent in civil occupation. What matter? It is as though the gangway of association were drawn on board; pasts or futurities are of no more concern. Our present destiny is on the

sea.

The gob faces no easy undertaking. Little of his former experience has bearing on the new, yet he must sum up within himself knowledge of the innumerable conventionalities which form the life at sea as truly as on land. Where things are done cycles of human living have evolved the way to do them. Incentives help him little. Patriotism probably brought him into service, a theoretical love of ships and shipping to the Navy. Probably he signed himself at the first opportunity with "U. S. N. R. F." below his name as symbol of his motive. But other men were in the Navy before him. It is a shock to hear the interpretation of these Regulars-"U Shall Never Reach France"-sardonically making merry with his pride. He may not have been the butt of the remark, but, if he is wise, he nevertheless cautiously removes all signs of Stars and Stripes in his behavior, and keeps his patriotism strictly to himself thereafter.

He is not called upon immediately to sacrifice his life and be a hero. He is called upon instead to man a squilgee of which he never heard before-and scrub decks; to part with the skin of his feet in the lye-water with which the operation is occa sionally performed. He coals ship until his unaccustomed back aches with the weight of heavy baskets and his lungs smart with the dust. He is clumsy. He is "bawled out" and his feelings are injured. At night he falls out of his hammock, to the inexpressible delight of more experienced aviators peering from their suspended canvas Zeppelins. Seldom can he ever laugh with the crowd, for what is there funny in the fact that he should spend hours seeking the individual with the key to the anchor watch, run afoul of the officer of the deck, and appeal to him for assistance? Illuminative information which comes later as to the nature of an anchor watch brings mortification rather than a sense of mirth.

Through every minute of the day he stumbles over his ignorance and sprawls into discouragements. The field of unfamiliarities seems endless. It nearly is. The more one learns, the more there is to learn through the application of the newly acquired knowledge. Patriotism! Self-sacrifice! It takes a motive more immediate and personal than these ultimate ideals. It takes persistency--and plenty of it. Then, one of these days, he grad uates. He ceases to be a gob. He has become seagoing. He is a seaman by experience as by name.

The gob parted with his position in society when he boarded his ship. Aboard ship he wins his way into society again, but it is another social sphere than was his first. We of the land, because our interests are of the land, are prone to disregard, if we have any knowledge of, this life of the sea. Our vision has been limited to the horizon seen from shore. We look upon the ocean as a barren, unpeopled waste. We possibly have even crossed that waste, and were unconscious that the ship moved not of itself but through the agency of highly specialized human intelligence. The sailors seen occasionally on deck were merely curiosities, like other fixtures of the ship. We never saw the "black gang," the miniature army whose sweating bodies, naked to the waist, toiled at the fires in the regions, unexplored, below. We merely entered a hotel, ate and slept and passed our time away, and left our hostelry when it had reached another port., But of the manner of its going we were ignorant.

Those of us who now are gobs had had no better understanding. That is why it seems another world in which we live, a Mars in which life was a theory and is now a fact and part of our experience. What of these Martians who, we find, live as