MATERIAL PROBLEMS MUST BE fairness, all chivalry, all mercy, and be T SETTLED FIRST HE developments of the Great War, up to date, do not hold out any hope that Idealism will be respected until the war is finished and the passions of the belligerents are cooled. It is evident that the practical and material problems must first be solved, leaving the ethical ones for later adjustment. It is to be feared, indeed, that the war will settle down not only into a ghastly conflict of blood and destruction, but also into one of retaliation and cruelty, in which all the laws of war hitherto recognized will be ignored and all international law will become a dead letter. The old Latin motto, Inter arma silent leges, is already construed more literally in practice than it was by the pagans of the preChristian era. Modern inventions of death-dealing machinery, poisonous gases and explosives, deadly air craft and submarines, have furnished an excuse to declare the former international rules for the conduct of war obsolete, and it is a question if this avowal will not become. more pronounced as the war progresses. The world is confronted with the horrible possibility that war will come to mean actually, as it always has in theory, the denial of all humanity, all justice, all come a struggle to the death not a bit less brutal than that of the wild beasts of the jungle. THE ASSAULT ON J. P. MORGAN HE attempted assassination of J. P. Morgan, the eminent financier, was undoubtedly the work of a crank, or a man crazed by too much brooding over the bloody tragedy now enacting in the theatre of the great war. It is the men of prominence who are usually the objects of attacks from the demented. The assassination of Presidents Garfield and McKinley was unmistakably the work of cranks whose murderous instincts had been set aflame by irresponsible newspaper talk and reckless political criticism. The mind of the man Holt who shot Mr. Morgan appears to have been unsettled in much the same manner. The incident tends to emphasize and bring home to every one the necessity for putting a curb upon the tongue and to refrain from vicious war talk. It is a time especially in this country, to soothe instead of to arouse passion. The spirit of neutrality should sit upon the tongue and the pen, preside at the feast, and accompany us in our daily round of duties. Let there be one great country in which W TION HATEVER may be the judgment of William J. Bryan's motives in resigning the position of Secretary of State in President Wilson's cabinet, there is an almost universal feeling of relief at the accomplished fact. We doubt if there is a single one even of Mr. Bryan's warmest admirers who would not admit, if brought to an honest confession, Mr. Bryan's utter incompetency for such a place. President Wilson was doubtless conscious of Mr. Bryan's failings when he grafted him into his cabinet, but he was moved by political considerations which at the time seemed to be compelling. And there is no doubt that Bryan has been highly useful to Wilson in bringing the Democratic party, to which Wilson was comparatively a stranger, to the support of the administration. Bryan's services in the Cabinet have been purely political. At the time the appointment was tendered him there was no dream of the outbreak of the great war which has imposed such a burden and strain upon the office of Secretary of State in conducting our foreign relations. There was to be sure the Mexican trouble, which was rious enough, but at the time probably not appreciated at its full gravity. There is a widespread belief that the fundamental mistake of our Mexican policy was due to Mr. Bryan's impracticable idealism. At that time the President was not fully awake to the weakness of Bryan's character, and carelessly allowed himself to be committed to a policy of drift and pusilanimity which, instead of saving Mexico from anarchy, has resulted in plunging it into the worst anarchy in its history, and has confronted the United States with possibly the hard necessity of military intervention to save the Mexican people from utter destruction. This is a result that was not sought by Mr. Bryan, but it is a result which his vacillation invited. By the time the European situation developed President Wilson was better acquainted with Secretary Bryan, and he judiciously took the conduct of the State Department, so far as it concerned the European crisis, into his own hands. This has saved us from a fatal involvement which could hardly fail to embroil us with one or more of the belligerent powers. For it is usually weakness and not strength which embroils a country in war when the country is seeking to avoid war. Secretary Bryan displayed such a capacity for blundering, such actual imbecility when it came to grappling with practical questions, that his presence in the State Department always endangered the smashing of diplomatic crockery as the presence of a bull in a China shop endangers the smashing of actual crockery. President Wilson is entitled to credit for seizing the reins of our foreign relations and holding them with a firm hand the moment he became convinced of the utter incompetency and uselessness of the driver he had selected. The retirement of Bryan is a load off the shoulders of his administration which may save it from the utter ruin which threatened it. The country breathes more freely that Bryan has gone. In private life his platitudes and puerile philosophies can do comparatively little harm, notwithstanding his accomplishments as an orator, his personal magnetism, and his apparent sincerity. In their long acquaintance with him on the stump and the rostrum the American people have come to size him up pretty correctly. They look upon him much as they would upon an actor with a pleasing voice and presence who entertains but does not convince. His exposition of the beatitudes and generally accepted moralities, and his reiteration of common-place and tawdry sentiment passes off harmlessly like a glow of summer lightning so long as he is a private citizen, and we all have to be thankful that he no longer speaks with an official voice. NO INTERVENTION IN MEXICO T HE arrest of General Huerta on the Mexican border on a charge of violating the neutrality laws of the United States by plotting another Mexican revolution within our borders, adds new spice to the Mexican situation. Perhaps one revolution more or less in Mexico wouldn't make much difference, but the United States is bound to protect its neutrality and not permit the various factions of Mexican banditti to carry on their operations or to enlist men on our soil. No actual or would-be Mexican leader has as yet displayed sufficient patriotism to subordinate his personal ambitions to the welfare of his country. These leaders are not amenable to advice from Washington, and hence there does not appear to be any way for the United States to enforce order and protect life and property in Mexico short of intervention. However, intervention is not to be thought of for the present. This is a very inopportune time for our country to engage in a military adventure in Mexico. President Wilson, in a speech last winter, asserted that the Mexican people had the same right to cut each other's throats as the people of Europe had. If that was true then, it is equally true now. The stories of anarchy and starvation among the Mexican people are no doubt greatly exaggerated. We are so informed by a gentleman who has spent the last two years in and near Mexico. He says that the soil of the country is so rich and the skies so kindly that a very little labor suffices to raise ample food, and that conditions in all the towns he visited were orderly and business going on as usual. Most of the men make a business of fighting for some chief, while the women and children do the work and keep the pot boiling. Almost all the casualties are among the belligerents who have adopted fighting as an industry. It was so in Europe during the formative years of the various nations. Mexico's political development is about that of the twelfth or thirteenth century in Europe. We should wait patiently until some leader arises strong enough to dominate the situation and enforce order, in the mean time bringing to bear such moral influences as we can to hasten the pacification of our sister republic. But we do not think that public sentiment in the United States is ready to approve the shedding of red American blood in a Mexican crusade to compel that people to adopt our ideals. A WOMAN'S DEPARTMENT A WOMAN'S Department of the International Peace Forum, under the leadership of Mrs. Alice Gitchell Kirk, with headquarters at Cleveland, Ohio, has been organized. This Department will have a Bureau in the WORLD COURT magazine, conducted by Mrs. Kirk, who is a well known writer and lecturer who has been prominent in many activities for the promotion of the welfare of her sex and of the rising generation. The purpose of the Department is to promote the cause of National and International Amity by the application of safe and sane principles to world problems; to set clearly before the American people the ideals at issue between American thought and life as compared with the economic, social and political theories which spell revolution and ruin; to exemplify and reinforce the faith of the people in personal initiative as the mainspring of all real social, industrial, political and moral well-being; to encourage the study of the laws of hygiene and so conserve life and promote happiness and usefulness; to promote a loyal adherence to the institu tions by which America has come to be a land of peace, liberty, and progress under law; to uphold the American ideal of home; the dignity of womanhood, and the rights of childhood; the love of country, the supremacy of the flag, and to maintain the everlasting reality of religion as the foundation of civilization. A LESSON TO BE HEEDED broke out. The strength that the nation displayed in industry and commerce was no accident, any more than is the strength she is now displaying in war. Here in the United States especially the lesson of Germany should be taken to heart. We need it in peace, and we may need it in war. We have the most vast and varied resources of any nation on earth, and our methods are the most wasteful. Our people possess phenomenal energy, but HE wonders that Germany has they waste much of it in frivolity. They Taccomplished in this war, not have the most abounding wealth, and they only in the marching and fighting of her armies, but in civic and industrial organization sets the pace for the world, which all the nations will have to approximate in the immediate future, or fall hopelessly behind. After waging war for a year against five great nations and several small ones, in which the number of men engaged and the expenditure of war material has been unparalleled, Germany shows no signs of exhaustion. She has demonstrated that her people cannot be starved out. She has demonstrated that she has an unlimited supply of men and munitions. While the armies of the opposing nations have frequently suffered from lack of ammunition, the Germans have always had an ample supply notwithstanding the lavishness of their expenditure. And in the civil life the whole people of the country not engaged in military operations have been organized and employed so as to produce the best results in supporting the war. The method, the careful planning, the foresight, displayed by the civil and military administrators have never before been equaled by any nation in the history of the world. The marvelous German efficiency is the natural outflow of this method and foresight combined with the energy of the German character. In comparison with the German method the method of the other nations seems haphazard. Other elements of the German power are industry, frugality and careful attention to details. Nothing is allowed to be wasted. The same marvelous organization and method was displayed by Germany in peace before the present war dissipate it in extravagance. With the frugality and patience and method and organization of the Germans our nation could lead the world in peace or in war, in science, in education and in ethics. T NEW PROBLEMS HE invention and application of the submarines and the airships unquestionably call for new rules of warfare on land and sea. The German contention that the submarine cannot be held to the requirement of notice and search required of surface water craft would, if allowed, work against Germany if she had a navy and merchant marine afloat. It is because the German fleets, except the submarines, are practically swept from the seas, that the contention of Germany in regard to the submarines now works almost exclusively in her favor. A prominent American manufacturer, who has had much to do with the development of the modern submarine, asserted, in a recent interview, that the United States should concentrate its naval expenditures on the construction and operation of submarine craft. He avers that with a fleet of five hundred submarines of an approved type, efficiently manned, the coasts and coast cities of the United States could be perfectly protected against armed invasion. With such submarines watching, he says, no hostile ships could approach our coast and every hostile troop transport could be easily sunk. This is a question for experts, but it is evident that the development of submarine warfare is going to lead to great |