KINDNESS VERSUS CANNON

THE United States of America has in Europe the reputation of being sordidly addicted to the Almighty Dollar, lacking in idealism and altogether new, provincial minded, and

crass.

Nevertheless, when occasion presents itself to capture the South American trade while the hands of other nations were war-tied, it is found difficult to stir the Yankees up to any great enthusiasm. On the other hand, when Belgium was stricken, when seven million people were threatened with starvation, when both Germans and allies dared not feed them for fear of aiding the enemy, and a whole nation was like to be extinguished, sacrificed to military necessity, these same Yankees within a few months organized a fleet of thirty-one ships for the transport of food to the perishing victims.

It is the most magnificent event in history; a regularly operating fleet engaged by the citi

zens of one country to save the citizens of another.

Corporations have vied with private persons in co-operating in this splendid work of succor. Millionaires, railroads, express companies, the postoffice itself, have seconded the benevolence of thousands of individuals.

When the war storm is over, this golden deed will

"Lie like a lane of beams athwart the sea."

The struggles of captains, the campaigns of slaughter waged by the driven millions, shall sink to the brutal level of all former wars; but this mighty act of a neutral people shall remain lustrous forever.

Alfred Nerinex, burgomaster of Louvain, speaking of America's swift aid to his people, said:

"We cannot buy food, even if we have the money, when the doors are closed to imports. Feed us now, and we will pay you back in industry when the war is over. We are paying back now in gratitude for the lives America has saved, gratitude which will endure as proof that human affection is stronger than any treaty alliance. The most powerful army in the world cannot Teutonize Belgium, but

America, armed with bread, is Americanizing Belgium."

In such actions as this lies our true defense. To guard against war the common-sense course is to remove those passions and customs of time-honored evil that cause war; and not to excite the envy and fear of the nations by arming against them.

No sum of money is too great to spend in making Japan, Mexico, and all other countries feel that this vast democracy of free people is friendly and not suspicious, that we are generous and unafraid.

But to expend our huge resources in arms that all may dread us, to play the braggart and the bully, is the height of mental and spiritual darkness.

Tuesday, January 26, 1915.

POLAND

If you have tears to shed for the miseries of the human race shed a few for unhappy Poland.

For months the armed hordes of twentieth century barbarism have added daily new pages of blood, of ruin, and of devastation to the long book of "The Tragedy of Poland."

This wretched land has become the most enormous, the most sanguinary, and the most savage arena for the brutalities of European militarism. It has been a wild whirl of sack and pillage, assassination and destruction.

The Poles themselves have not the Belgian satisfaction of dying for their fatherland. Over a million of them are scattered among the Austrian, German, and Russian armies, half a million in the Russian and Austrian forces each, and a hundred thousand among the German. Often the father on one side, his sons on the other. A fratricidal orgy!

Three-quarters of Polish territory is tram

pled and despoiled by the swaying, wrestling armies. Hundreds of villages have fallen in the way of the madmen and have been reduced to heaps by artillery fire. The armed belligerents, advancing and retreating, back and forth, have ploughed the devoted land with the red share of war, whose hell-seed crop is perennial hate.

Two vast human torrents have passed, leaving few living beings behind them, annihilating what they could not carry away, so as to leave no supplies for the enemy.

Beside the enormous losses properly due to war, beside those which might be attributed to strategic reasons, come the numerous outrages, robberies, and cruelties perpetrated by the soldiers personally; destruction for destruction's sake.

Innumerable families are homeless. Hunger is everywhere. The railways are torn up, the bridges smashed. Factories are in cinders. Homes demolished. Red ruin everywhere.

There is no oil. The long winter nights are spent in darkness.

Their flocks and grain have gone to enrich the army commissary.

A whole people is assassinated by the criminal bands of modern civilization, by czar and kaiser, who started out upon their vile work