nothing at all. You complain of my lack of order; where's the order in your own mind? If I was the hot tempered old autocrat some of you people pretend I am, I should have been tickling you up with a thunderbolt long ago. But I happen to have this democratic fad as badly as anyone-Free Will is what they used to call it and so I leave you to work out your own salvation. And if I leave you alone then I have to leave that other that other gentleman at Potsdam-alone. He tries me, I admit, almost to the miracle pitch at times with the tone of his everlasting prepaid telegrams-but one has to be fair. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the Kaiser. I've got to leave you all alone if I leave one alone. Don't you see that? In spite of the mess you are in. So don't blame me. Don't blame me. There isn't a thing in the whole of this concern of mine that Man can't control if only he chooses to control it. It's arranged like that. There's a lot more system here than you suspect, only it's too ingenious for you to see. It's yours to command. If you want a card index for the world-well, get a card index. I won't prevent you. If you don't like my spiders, kill my spiders. I'm not conceited about them. If you don't like the Kaiser, hang him, assassinate him. Why don't you abolish Kings? You could. But it was your sort, with your cheap and quick efficiency schemes, who set up Saul-in spite of my protests -ages ago. Humanity either makes or breeds or tolerates all its own afflictions, great and small. Not me. Take Kings and courts. Take dungheaps and flies. It's astonishing you people haven't killed off all the flies in the world long ago. They do no end of mischief, and it would be perfectly easy to do. They're purely educational. Purely. Even as you lie in hospital there they are buzzing within an inch of your nose and landing on your poor forehead to remind you of what a properly organized humanity could do for its own comfort. But there's men in this world who want me to act as a fly-paper, simply because they are too lazy to get one for themselves. My dear Mr. Peter, when you ask me to exert myself the answer is, why don't you exert yourself? If people haven't taught you properly, teach yourself. If they don't know enough, find out. It's all here. All here." He made a comprehensive gesture. "I'm not mocking you."

..

job, indeed, he was just the man they needed. They docked him a wing-it seemed in mockery of the state of his armand replaced the two wings that had adorned him by one attached to the letter O, and presently he was added to the number of that select company attached to sausage-shaped observation balloons who were sent up in the mornings and pulled down at nights along the British front.

He would sit up in his basket, like a spectator in a box at a theater, with the slow vast drama of the western front spread out like a map beneath his eyes, with half Belgium and a great circle of France in sight, the brown ruined country of the contact, apparently lifeless, with its insane tangle of trenches and communicating ways below, with the crumbling heaps of ruined towns and villages scattered among canals and lakes of flood water and passing insensibly into a green and normal-looking landscape to the west and east, where churches still had towers and houses roofs, and woods were lumps and blocks of dark green, fields manifestly cultivated patches, and roads white ribbons barred by the purple poplar shadows.

He sat on a canvas seat inside the square basket with his instruments about him, or leant over the side scrutinizing the details of the eastward landscape. Upon his head over his ears he wore a telephone receiver, and about his body was a rope harness that linked him by a rope to the silk parachute that was packed neatly in a little swinging bucket over the side of his basket. Under his hand was his map board, repeating the shapes of wood and water and road below. The telephone wire that ran down his mooring rope abolished any effect of isolation; it linked him directly to his winch on a lorry below, to a number of battery commanders, to an ascending series of headquarters up to divisional headquarters; he could always start a conversation if he had anything practical to say. He was, in fact, an eye at the end of a tentacle thread by means of which the British army watched its enemies. Sometimes he had an illusion that he was also a kind of brain. When distant visibility was good he would find himself hovering over the war as a player hangs over a chess-board, directing fire upon road movements or train movements, suspecting and watching for undisclosed enemy batteries or directing counter-battery fire. Above him, green and voluminous, hung the great translucent lobes of his gas bag, and the loose ropes by which it was towed and held upon the ground swayed and trailed about his basket.

It was on one of his more slack afternoons that Peter fell thinking of how acutely he now desired to live. The wide world was full of sunshine, but a ground haze made even the country immediately below him indistinct. The enemy gunners were inactive, there came no elfin voices through the telephone, only far away to the south guns butted and shivered the tranquil air. There was a faint drift in the air rather than a breeze, and the gas bag had fallen into a long, lazy, rhythmic movement, so that sometimes he faced due south and sometimes south by east and so back. A great patch of flooded country to the northeast, a bright mirror with a kind of bloom upon it, seemed trying with an aimless persistency to work its way towards the centre of his field of vision and never succeeding.

For a time Peter had been preoccupied with a distant ridge far away to the east from which a long range gun had recently taken to shelling the kite balloons towards evening as they became clear against the bright western sky. Four times lately this new gun had got on to him, and this clear and tranquil afternoon promised just the luminous and tranquil sunset that favored these unpleasant activities. It was five hours to sunset yet, but Peter could not keep his mind off that gun. It was a big gun; perhaps a 42-centimetre; it was far beyond any counter-battery possibility, and it had got a new kind of shell that the Germans seemed to have invented for the particular discomfort of Peter and his kind. It had a distinctive report, a loud crack, and then the hugh "chuff" of high explosive, and at every explosion it got nearer and nearer to its target with a quite uncanny certainty. It seemed to learn more than any gun should learn from each shot. It was this steadfast approach to a hit that Peter disliked. That and the long pause after the shell had started. Far away he would see the flash of the gun amidst the ridges in the darkling east. Then would come a long blank pause of expectation. For all he could tell this might get him. Then the whine of the shell would become audible, growing louder and louder and lower and lower in note; Phee-whoo! Crack! WHOOF! Then Peter would get quite voluble to the men at the winch below. He could let himself up, or go down a few hundred feet, or they could shift his lorry along the road. Until it was dark he could not come down, for a kite balloon is a terribly visible and helpless thing on the ground until it has been very carefully put to bed. To come down in the daylight meant too good a chance for the nearer German guns. So Peter, by instructing his winch to lower him or let him up or shift, had to dodge about in a most undignified way, up and down and backwards and sideways, while the big gun marked him and guessed at his next position. Flash! "Oh, damn!" said Peter. "Another already!"

Silence. Anticipations. Then Phee-eee-eee-whoo. Crack! WHOOF! A rush of air would set the gas bag swinging. That was a near one!

"Where am I?" said Peter.

• ..

...

But that wasn't going to happen for hours yet. Why meet trouble half way? Why be tormented by this feeling of apprehension and danger in the still air? Why trouble because the world was quiet and seemed to be waiting? Why not think of something else? Banish this war from the mind. Was he more afraid nowadays than he used to be? Peter was inclined to think that now he was more systematically afraid. Formerly he had funked in streaks and patches, but now he had a steady, continuous dislike to all these risks and dangers. He was getting more and more clearly an idea of the sort of life he wanted to lead and of the things he wanted to do. He was ceasing to think of existence as a rather aimless series of adventures, and coming to regard it as one large consecutive undertaking. This being hung up in the sky for Germans to shoot at seemed to him to be a very tiresome irrelevance indeed. He and everyone else with brains including the misguided people who had made and were now firing this big gun at him-ought to be setting to work to get this preposterous muddle of a world in order. "This sort of thing," said Peter, addressing the western front, his gas bag and so much of the sky as it permitted him to see, and the universe generally, "is ridiculous. There is no sense in it at all. None whatever."

His dream of God, as a detached and aloof personage, had taken a very strong hold upon his imagination. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that his fevered mind in the hospital had given a caricature personality to ideas that had grown up in his mind as a natural consequence of his scientific training. He had gone on with that argument; he went on with it now, with a feeling that really he was just as much sitting and talking in that queer, untidy, outof-the-way office as swaying in a kite balloon, a couple of thousand feet above Flanders, waiting to be shot at.

"It is all very well to say 'exert yourself, " said Peter.

"But there is that chap over there exerting himself. And what he is doing with all his brains is just trying to wipe my brains out of existence. Just that. He hasn't an idea else of what he is doing. He has no notion of what he is up to or what I am up to. And he hasn't the sense or ability to come over here and talk about it to me. He's thereat that and he can't help himself. And I'm here and I can't help myself. But if I could only catch him within counter battery range-!"

"There's no sense in it at all," summarized Peter, after some moments of grim reflection. "Sense hasn't got into it."

"Is sense ever going to get into it?"

"The curious thing about you," said Peter, addressing himself quite directly to his Deity at the desk, " is that somehow, without ever positively promising it or saying anything plain and definite about it, you yet manage to convey in an almost irresistible manner that there is going to be sense in it. You seem to suggest that my poor brain up here and the brains of those chaps over there are, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, up to something jointly that is going to come together and make good some day. You hint it. And yet I don't get a scrap of sound, trustworthy reasoning to help me to accept that; not a scrap. Why should it be so? I ask. And you just keep on not saying anything. I suppose it's a necessary thing biologically that one should have a kind of optimism to keep one alive, so I'm not even justified in my half conviction that I'm not being absolutely fooled by life. There you sit silent. You seem to say nothing and yet you soak me with a kind of answer, a sort of shapeless courage...."

Peter's mind rested on that for a time, and then began again at another point.

"I wonder," said Peter, " if that chap gets me tonight, what I shall think-in the moment-after he has got me. .."

3

But the German gunner never got Peter because something else got him first.

He thought he saw a Hun aeroplane coming over very high indeed to the south of him, fifteen thousand feet up or more, a mere speck in the blue blaze, and then the gas bag hid it and he dismissed it from his mind. He was thinking that the air was growing clearer and that if this went on guns would wake up presently and little voices begin to talk to him, when he became aware of the presence and vibration of an aeroplane quite close to him. He pulled off his telephone receivers and heard the roar of an engine close at hand. It was overhead, and the gas bag still hid it. At the same moment the British anti-aircraft gunners began a belated fire. "Damn!" said Peter in a brisk perspiration, and hastened to make sure that his parachute rope was clear.

Perhaps he's British," said Peter, with no real hope. "Рар, рар, раp!" very loud overhead.

The gas bag swayed and billowed, and a wing with a black cross swept across the sky. "Pap, pap, pap.”

The gas bag wrinkled and crumpled more and more, and a little streak of smoke appeared beyond its edge. The German aeroplane was now visible, a hundred yards away and banking to come around. He had fired the balloon with tracer bullets.

The thing that Peter had to do and what he did was this: He had to step up on to a little wood step inside his basket, then he had to put first one foot and then the other on to another little step outside his basket. This little step was about four inches wide by nine long. Below it was emptiness, until one got to the little trees and houses below. As he swayed on the step Peter had to make sure that the rope attached to his body was clear of all entanglements. Then he had to step off that little shelf, which was now swinging and slanting with the lurching basket into the void, two thousand feet above the earth.

He had not to throw himself or dive headlong, because that might lead to entanglement with the rope. He had just to step off, holding his rope clear of himself with one hand. This rope looped back to the little swinging bucket in which his fine silk parachute was closely packed. He had seen it packed a week ago, and he wished now as he stood on his step holding to his basket with one hand, that he had watched the process more meticulously. He became aware that the Hun, having disposed of the balloon, was now shooting at him. He did not so much step off the little shelf as slip off it as it heeled over with the swing of the basket. For some seconds he was falling swiftly, feet foremost, through the air. He scarcely noted the faint snatch when the twine broke. The air whistled by him, but he thought that dreams and talk had much exaggerated the sensations of falling. He was too high as yet to feel the rush of the ground towards him.

He seemed to fall for an interminable time before anything more happened. He was assailed by doubts, whether the twine that kept the parachute in its bucket would break, whether it would open. His rope trailed out above him. Still falling. Why didn't the parachute open? In another five seconds it would be too late.

The parachute was not opening. It was certainly not opening. Wrong packing? He tugged and jerked his rope and tried to shake and swing the long silken folds that were following his fall. Why? Why the devil-?

The rope seemed to tighten abruptly. The harness tightened upon his body. Peter had the sensation of being hauled up again into the sky. It was all right, so far. He was now swaying down earthward with a diminishing velocity beneath an open parachute. He was floating over a landscape instead of falling straight into it.

But the German had not done with Peter yet. He became visible beneath the edge of Peter's parachute, circling downward regardless of anti-aircraft and machine guns. Pap, pap, pap, pap. The bullets burst and banged about Peter.

Something kicked Peter's knee; something hit his neck, something rapped the knuckles of his wounded hand, the parachute winced and went sideways, slashed and pierced. Peter drifted down, helpless, his angry eyes upon his assailant, who vanished again, going out of sight as he rose up above the edge of the parachute.

A storm of pain and rage broke upon Peter.

"Done in!" shouted Peter. "Oh! my leg! my leg!"

"I'm shot to bits. I'm shot to bloody bits!" The tree tops were near at hand. The parachute had acquired a rhythmic swing and was falling more rapidly. "And I've still got to land," wailed Peter, beginning to cry like a child.

a

He wanted to stop just a moment, just for one little moment, before the ground rushed up to meet him. He didn't know what to do with this dangling leg. It became monstrous, painful obstacle to landing. How was he to get a spring? He was bleeding. He was dying. It was cruel. Cruel.

Came the crash. Hot irons, it seemed, assailed his leg and his shoulder and neck. He crumpled up on the ground in an agony, and the parachute with slow and elegant ges

...

tures folded down on the top of his floundering figure. The gunners who ran to help him, found him, enveloped in silk, bawling and weeping like a child of four in a passion of rage and fear, and trying repeatedly to stand up upon a blood-streaked leg that gave way as repeatedly. "Damn!" cursed Peter in a stified voice, plunging about like a kitten in a sack. "Damn you all! I tell you I will use my leg. I will have my leg. If I bleed to death. Oh! oh!... You fool-you lying old humbug! You!"

And then he gave a leap upward and forward, and fainted and fell, still with his head and body muffled in the silk folds of his parachute.

S

H. G. WELLS.

A COMMUNICATION

In Reply to Mr. Brailsford

IR: It is with genuine regret that I feel bound to register disagreement with a contributor of your review whom I respect and admire as one of the ablest and bestequipped spokesmen of liberalism in the Allied countries. Nobody is readier than I to recognize the splendid services rendered by Mr. H. N. Brailsford to the cause of the League of Nations, of internationally organized democracy. I am afraid, however, that his attitude toward the question of dismembering the present Austro-Hungarian empire reveals at once an unjustified degree of optimism regarding its present rulers, and an undue amount of apprehension as to the possibility and desirability of a thoroughgoing settlement.

On the whole, I think, I can subscribe to your answer to Mr. Brailsford's article. I believe, especially, that you hit the nail on the head when you say that the real danger of the dismemberment solution is the likelihood of an abuse of the necessary military victory in other areas.

To underestimate the difficulties of the dismemberment solution would be a fatal error, no doubt. On the other hand, I am afraid that Mr. Brailsford rather undervalues

the difficulties of the federalistic solution.

I fully agree with Mr. Brailsford that "acquiescence " is the best safeguard and truest test of any peace settlement. It is clear, however, that, especially in such a desperately entangled case as that of Austria-Hungary, to attain unanimous acquiescence would be about as easy as to attain absolute justice. The best that can be expected is the acquiescence of the majority.

Applying this test, does Mr. Brailsford believe that the

majority of the peoples in Austria and Hungary will

acquiesce in a solution which will have to be based mainly on the promise of their rulers to be good and establish federalism "within measurable time"? It is more than likely that the overwhelming majority of the Slav population will not. And it is highly probable that the Austrian Germans, when driven to a choice between a federalism in which there is a chance, however slight, of Slav hegemony, and a transfer of the purely German "Kronländer" to the German empire, will prefer the latter alternative.

On the other hand, does Mr. Brailsford believe that the present rulers of Austria, meaning not only the dynasty, but the Austrian and Magyar governing class as well, will acquiesce in a solution which, in terms however polite, will in essence dictate to them the basis upon which they are supposed to run the empire? If there are to be guaranties that the pledge will be redeemed, the rulers will feel humiliated. If there are to be none, the ruled will feel uneasy. There will be trouble in either case.

And what if the federal scheme breaks down "within a measurable time"? Or if it won't come off at all? What does Mr. Brailsford propose to do then? Start another war? Or exclude Austria-Hungary from the League of Nations? But this presupposes that the junkers to whom the "federal" solution will grant another lease of life actually wish to belong to a League of Nations. What reasons are there to assume that Tisza or Hussarek or Mr. Moritz Benedikt are more enthusiastic for league of nations than, say, Clemenceau or Poincaré or Lord Northcliffe? Is there, rather, not every reason to believe that the Austrian and Magyar junker mind, which will never cease to look upon federalism as a humiliation imposed from without, will look for an opportunity, not only for throwing federalism overboard, but also for disrupting the League of Nations and for trying their chance again with the aid of their Prussian allies?

a

Indeed, herein lies the greatest danger of the federalist solution: that whereas it cannot be achieved except under the aegis of a League of Nations, it will include in this body a powerful member-state whose rulers will be tempted to employ every means for destroying the whole arrangement.

broken, and then to impose on a reluctant ruling class a settlement that would leave the greater part of the people dissatisfied.

Would it not, then, be easier and more practical, since a military victory is a prerequisite at any event, to go the whole hog" and enact a settlement with the backing of the majority of the peoples most immediately concerned?

Here, however, two objections must be anticipated. First, that granting the necessity of a military victory, it will take less "crushing," and, therefore, less time, effort and universal suffering, to induce the Austro-Hungarian oligarchy to accept a federal settlement, than to remove them altogether. Second, that face to face with the inevitable, the junkers will be only too glad to make the most of a solution that leaves them political and economic influence proportionate to their wealth and prestige, a prestige, to be sure, not unimpaired, yet assured to them by the mere fact of their survival.

All right. Let us assume that under such conditions a system of federalism can be made workable. Is there anybody to believe that this will usher in the Austro-Hungarian millennium? Is it not much more likely that political and economic warfare will recommence with greater intensity and bitterness than ever?

Let us examine the balance of forces. Firstly, there will be the inevitable revanche party, the sheer militarists, imperialists and centralists of the old school. Then, the Pan-Germans. Then, again, the heirs of Austro-German

Recent utterances of leading Austro-German statesmen and the general tone of the Austro-German press, as reported by the highly credible columns of the New Europe will support my assertion that whatever change is going on in the heart and mind of the Austrian ruling class is leading away from a federal settlement, instead of leading toward it.

As to the state of mind of the Magyar governing class, I have before me, beside the highly enlightening article on Electoral Reform in Hungary in the New Europe, No. 92, a number of clippings from leading Budapest newspapers, mostly reports of discussions in parliament. According to their testimony, jingo arrogance and chauvinistic zeal have reached the highest pitch. A mere mention of universal suffrage, not to speak of inter-racial readjustment, is denounced as "incendiarism" and "high treason" by the overwhelming majority of members.

It is safe to say, then, that a proposal of federalization would hardly be accepted by the Austrian and Magyar ruling class except under some sort of compulsion.

This compulsion cannot come through a revolution of the subject peoples. One of the few things that can be taken for granted in connection with Austria-Hungary is that a revolution there would not stop short of destroying the present system in its entirety. It is extremely likely that a political, nationalistic outbreak would be merely the prelude of a social cataclysm, as it was in Russia.

Barring voluntary acceptance and revolution, the only way in which Austro-Hungarian federalism could be achieved would be an Allied victory!

In short, the Allies would have to go on fighting indefinitely until German and Austro-Hungarian resistance were

Then the Pan-Magyars, the chauvinists and inexorables. These groups will probably hate and detest each other heartily, as they have done in the past. But they will hate and detest federalism even more, and unite to fight it. As they will represent reaction all around, it is fairly certain that they will be reinforced not only by the Jewish financiers and captains of industry, but also by whatever reactionary, capitalistic and clerical elements there are among the Slav groups.

Opposed to this reactionary bloc will be the old separatist parties, Czecho-Slovaks, Jugo-Slavs, Rumanians, all fiercer and more intransigeant than ever. Then, perhaps, there will be a German radical group, and probably a "Little Hungary" party; then socialists of all shades and nationalities, and finally the bolsheviki.

And towering above the struggling factions will be a Germany, to be sure trimmed of the excrescences of her might, but essentially a vigorous and ambitious nation, with powerful influences making for resumed aggression and for intervention on behalf of Austro-Hungarian reaction as the first step! On the other hand, the separatist and radical elements in the federation will seek support from the old anti-German combination.

Nice prospects for the domestic happiness of the Austro-Hungarian confederacy, are they not?

True, the advocate of federalism may say. But, he may add, the same will be the grouping of party forces within the independent national units established as the alternative, aggravated by mutual jealousy and frictions and exasperated by inevitable minority grievances.

Doubtless. But there will be all-important difference. In the case of the federal solution there is every reason to assume that the central executive power, the court, the

army, the federal bureaucracy, with a personnel necessarily inherited, in the main, from the old régime, will throw in all their influence on the side of reaction, of restoration, of imperialism. The principle of "divide et impera" will reign stronger than ever. All the forces inimical to progress and to international organization will predominate.

On the other hand, in the independent national units the progressives will be in the ascendency. The factor of prestige will work on their side. The spirit of "divide et impera" will be put out of business. Radicals, instead of mutually distrusting each other in the nervousness of their balked aspirations, will be willing to cooperate against the common danger, reaction within and a revival of Prussianism without. There will be the immense difference between ins and outs, all in favor of the element that makes for federation and that will depend for its very life on the League of Nations. The disadvantages will be overwhelmingly on the side of Toryism.

Mr. Brailsford expresses misgivings as to the abandonment of many million Germans " to the rule of alien and bitterly hostile majorities." The fault may be mine, but I am unable to find them. A solution must and will be found for the German minorities in Bohemia, Silesia, Slovakia and Transylvania, parallelled by the irreducible Slav enclaves within the German empire. Most of the Germans in Hungary will be included in, or may be transferred to, the Magyar state, where they always fared better than the rest of the population, including the pure Magyar peasantry. As to the millions of Germans in the Austrian crown lands, the only solution for them seems to be incorporation in the German Empire. Indeed, herein may lie an element of compensation, material and sentimental, for the entire German people. For the Allies, as it has been pointed out many times, there is nothing to be feared from the transfer of a few million Austro-Germans, who, divided between socialism and clericalism, will tend to strengthen the potential anti-Prussian element within the Empire.

There remains what is probably the hardest nut to crack; the question of Magyar resistance to dismemberment. Judging from the present temper of the Magyar statesmen and press, this resistance will hold out to the bitter end. There can be no doubt that the Allied recognition of Czecho-Slovak claims has stiffened the fighting spirit of the Magyars and perhaps actually lengthened the conflict. This may be unfortunate, but cannot be altered now. There is, however, one consoling prospect-in fact, here is the great promise that enlists me, a Magyar socialist, on the side of dismemberment. When the disruption of dualism and the establishment of the Czecho-Slovak and Jugo-Slav states is an accomplished fact, together with the loss of non-Magyar territory, it is fairly certain that a tremendous reaction will take place in Magyar popular feeling. Patriots will ask: Who brought this disaster upon us? And socialists will furnish the answer. There will be a settlement of accounts, and somebody will have to pay the bill. That somebody will be Magyar junkerdom. Magyar hegemony will stand before the disillusioned people as a bluff and an incubus. And at last all the fake problems and issues will be swept aside, and the voice of ten million people will ask the Magyar question : who shall own the Magyar land? That day will seal the fate of feudalism in southeastern Europe.

To sum up: For the Allies to leave the solution of the Austro-Hungarian problem to the good faith of the present ruling class on the basis either of an enforced, or an unguaranteed federalism, would mean not to solve the issue, but to evade and postpone it. With the effort necessary to impose federalism on rulers and ruled, the former can be removed and the latter left to work out their own destinies-which is all they ask for.

Many strange things happen to a world war. One of them is that Mr. Brailsford, an Englishman, should defend Austro-Hungarian unity, and I, a Hungarian, should attack it. There can be but one explanation for this apparent anomaly: that in reality both Mr. Brailsford and I mean to attack the same thing: international anarchy, and to defend the same: a safe and sane Europe for us all. New York City. EUGENE S. BAGGER.

CORRESPONDENCE

The Press and Industrial Mobilization

SIR:

IR: The economy movement has meant retrenchment in the consumption of dispensable commodities. To check this decline in sales the business man very naturally increases his advertising. And this increased advertising in turn appears as a veritable godsend to the newspapers and magazines whose costs of manufacturing, as well as news service, are tremendously increased under war conditions. As a result of the situation thus briefly sketched, we find that the press has not only welcomed advertisements opposed to government policy, but that it has until very recently strongly opposed in editorial columns the economy movement and staunchly supported the doctrine

of "business as usual."

The gravity of the problem is revealed by the fact that one of the largest publishing companies in New England refused, in March, 1918, to print a quarter-page advertisement consisting solely of quotations from President Wilson, Treasurer McAdoo, and the Chairman of the War Savings Committee, which urged economizing as a matter of national importance, after having contracted to run such advertisement for four days and having already carried out one-half of its contract. On April 12th this publishing company settled with the inserter of the advertisement for a breach of contract by paying $500.00 damages. The circumstantial evidence of the case is that the advertisers of non-essentials controlled the policy of the publishing company and exercised its control to the extent of excluding from its advertising pages official statements on the necessity of economizing. It is not putting it too strongly to say that for the first year of the war the press of the United States stood almost unanimously opposed to the curtailment of non-essential production.

However much we may sympathize with the position of the press occasioned by its unfortunate dependence upon the advertising of luxuries, we must, nevertheless, set it down as one of the strongest obstacles to a rapid mobilization of our industries. A government-controlled press would have early centred upon the newspapers as one of the most effective agencies for the preaching of thrift. A democratic press, by the very nature of our institutions, can be coerced in the support of government requirements in opposition to its own pecuniary interests only after many months, if not years, of war experience.

H. G. MOULTON.

University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.