There is but one way out of war and war preparedness. That is through the federation of the world.

Why not go about that now? To say we must wait until all nations are ready is silly. There must be a beginning sometime, somewhere.

WE ARE THE ONLY NATION THAT CAN BEGIN.

The great big American idea is federation. Why not advance that, instead of calling names?

Monday, December 14, 1914.

THE CRUELTY OF FEAR

"THE cause of atrocities," says John Galsworthy, "is generally the violence of fear. Panic's at the back of most crimes and follies."

Never was a truer word spoken. Fear has many and hideous whelps. Despair and suicide, failure and spoiled work, quarrels, disloyalty, and crime; also cruelty, worst of all. They all take after their mother, who is the arch enemy of men.

Many a dog has been driven mad because being abused he became afraid and in his demented confusion snapped at his pursuers, bit even those who tried to befriend him.

The stag at bay will fight like a tiger. The horse unnerved by terror will try to kill its keeper. The gentlest animals, stimulated by terror, are dangerous.

Drive a man into a corner and there is no telling what he will do. Under the mad instinct of self-preservation he will forget all

moralities, all sympathies; he will be a man no more, but a wolf.

The cruelties of the underworld are due to the constant terrorizing to which they are subjected. They are hunted like forest beasts. They are watched by the police, threatened, browbeaten, clubbed, third-degreed. All under the world-old delusion that fear prevents crime.

As if fear ever did any good! In the spirits of men action is equal to reaction. The more fear, the more violence. Every reign of terror ends in a reign of blood.

Keep a child in a state of terror and every vicious, heartless and vindictive trait in him grows. It is the surest way to bring up a

criminal.

Kindness is the sister of Courage. Poise, gentleness, and clear vision belong only to the unafraid. Fear shrivels the heart, darkens it, until only the batlike brutalities remain.

War is caused by fear. It may seem a proud thing to make other nations dread us, to impose upon them by superior fleets and armies. But never so was peace preserved. Intimidation is but unstable sand upon which to erect national security.

The French people were afraid, and there

broke out the bloodiest of revolutions; it was the inhumanity of terror.

The Belgians were afraid; their conquerors need have expected nothing but retaliatory atrocities.

The nation whose ambition is to be feared invites its own destruction.

Fear at last always sinks into the filthy mire of cruelty. Women revert to hyenas, men become mad dogs, nations are transformed into bandits.

Tuesday, December 22, 1914.

SISTER CITIES

To know is to love. Love is the deepest knowledge.

We hate people simply because we do not understand them. Hate is a by-product of ignorance.

Always provincial people are the best haters. Railways and steamships are breaking up the old historic hates of the world. Let us hope that this present war is the dying contortion of race rancor.

What a great thing it would be if all the people of the United States could become acquainted, for instance, with all the people of Japan!

A little incident is in point. The cities of Puteaux and Suresnes in France, on the one hand, and Keighley in Yorkshire, England, on the other, call themselves "Sister Cities." Their sisterhood has been manifested for some ten years in a most interesting way.

It came about like this. Sir Thomas Bar