Assuming that the German army either loses the initiative this fall or else fails to obtain any further advantage from it, we may confidently expect during the coming autumn two political consequences. First, von Hertling will retire and be succeeded by some Chancellor pledged to keep the confidence of the Reichstag majority. Secondly, in the parleys which will take place Germany will be ready to offer unexpectedly large concessions in the expectation either of obtaining peace or dividing her enemies.

W

HATEVER the effect in Germany of the collapse of the General Staff's effort to obtain a military decision, its effect in Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey will be even more immediately dangerous. The recent rumor that Turkey is ready to withdraw from the German alliance is probably false, for the Allies cannot bring about a just peace without dismembering Turkey to an extent which the ruling class in Turkey would resist as long as they could, but the probability is that their power of resistance is almost exhausted. Turkey in 1914 was even a lower economic organism than Russia. After the racking military tuberculosis of the last four years she must be no less completely enervated and burned out. She will soon either hang lifeless, a bloodless limb from a still comparatively sound trunk or she will succumb to the slightest pressure. It seems to us clear that such pressure should be applied just as soon as the Allies are capable of resuming the offensive. For reasons presented more in detail elsewhere, Germany can be beaten at the smallest possible expense by attacks on her flanks and her communications. An attack somewhere in the near east would take advantage of the weakness of her flank. A sufficiently strong airplane attack from the western front would disorganize her system of communications. These avenues of attack would be dictated by a sound political strategy as well as by a sound military strategy. For if the Slavs are to be emancipated from German domination, something must be done to diminish German military prestige in the

standing has clearly filtered down to the Turkish mind. It is apparent in the recent change of ministry in Bulgaria. It derives importance from the general sense of uneasiness that hangs over the Balkan front. Nothing would, diplomatically, prove of greater value than a careful attention in the next few months to the relation of Bulgaria to the other Balkan peoples. The creation of Jugo-Slavia, at least in ideal, is a considerable assistance to this end. Entente diplomacy has suffered serious attacks in the near east since the beginning of the war; but it looks as though the fates were anxious to provide the opportunity of compensation.

T

HE publication in the New York Times of Lenin's recent speech to the Executive Committee of the Soviets is decisive evidence, if such be necessary, that no reconciliation between Russia and Germany is even thinkable. The treaty of Brest-Litovsk is tossed contemptuously aside. It is a mere breathing-spell to enable a worn-out nation to recuperate its energies. The speech shows clearly that the Bolsheviki, not less than the Monarchists or the Cadets, have not the remotest idea of accepting the present territorial disintegration. The resumption of Russian unity is as essential to them as to any of the antagonistic parties. Lenin, throughout, lays emphasis on the need for international reorganization as the prelude to military reorganization. Here, surely, is the point at which it is possible for America and the Allies to find a source of assistance and friendship. It is exactly by helping in that task of internal reconstruction that the psychological atmosphere of necessary confidence can be created, if Russia can be persuaded, as such action is bound in the end to persuade her, that the sole object of Allied assistance is to make permanent the valuable conquests of the Revolution, we shall strike at the root of German domination in the near east. The stronger we can make Russia the more certain she is to influence the liberal forces of Germany in the direction we desire. But a strong Russia must be a free and self-confident Russia, and that depends, in its turn, upon the mood in which we approach her. Lenin's speech may well prove the key to the desired attitude. Russia does not want to be an Athanasius contra mundum. If we restore her energy she will give us her support. The war cannot really be won except insofar as we secure it.

dent Wilson's principles. These principles have elevated the President above every other figure in the Allied world, and where they relate to selfdetermination and the rights of small nations they are having definite and significant effect in middle Europe. Under the circumstances it is not only natural that Irishmen should seek to relate Allied practices to Allied ideals and precepts, it is supremely pertinent and proper. There is an urgent need for more men in the British army, and Irish man power is at hand, but the conscription of Irishmen in the teeth of President Wilson's principle of self-determination will not only treat that principle as nugatory, it will reduce every pretension to high-mindedness in this direction to pious fraud. The men of Ireland can be enlisted and ought to be enlisted, but not until the principle of selfdetermination is fully and honestly recognized.

A

CCORDING to the Public Ledger bureau at Washington (July 25th) “the Japanese government, it is stated, has not been convinced as yet of the feasibility of dispatching an army to European Russia on account of the great distances to be traversed, but is willing to meet to the full extent of her resources any situation that may arise." This is not the first time that interventionist dispatches have contained a note of doubt on the part of the Japanese that military intervention by way of Vladivostok could actually effect a reconstitution of the battle line in western Russia, where alone it could do more good than harm to the Allied cause. The Japanese have the utmost confidence in their ability to hold Siberia up to Lake Baikal. But to constitute an eastern front on the line of Baikal would be to bracket 175,000,000 out of 180,000,000 Russians with the Germans as acknowledged enemies of the Allies. That is a more desperate risk than the Allied governments have ever assumed. If they were hovering over the brink of defeat they might conceivably assume it. But defeat was never further from the Allied calculations than it is today.

POSSIBLY there is some mistake in the press

reports that District Attorney Fickert has given his affidavit to the effect that Mr. Felix Frankfurter of the National Labor Administration privately admitted his belief in Mooney's guilt and his desire to appease the radical elements in America and Russia. So preposterous a misrepresentation of Mr. Frankfurter's known views could hardly issue from a mind quite in command of itself. Yet it sounds very like Fickert. Since he first made up his mind to fix the guilt upon Mooney, he has not missed a single chance, reasonable or not, to prejudice public opinion against his victim. If

the alternative had been Mooney's life or his own, Fickert could not have conducted a more desperate and unscrupulous fight. Scandalous press campaigns, crooked evidence, class prejudice, all seemed legitimate means to Fickert, provided they helped him to kill his man. American judicial history can hardly afford a better instance of the public prosecutor, supposed officer of the court and guardian of justice, degenerated into a passionate, primordial hunter of men.

S

UBMARINE sinkings in the month of June, according to British admiralty returns, reached a total of 275,000 gross tons. American deliveries of ships in the same month, according to Mr. Schwab, amounted to 282,000 tons. There are discrepancies in the methods of calculation, but they

are not so serious as to disturb the conclusion that very shortly America alone will be building more ships than the losses by submarine of American, Allied and neutral shipping. Whatever the British and Japanese yards may build may therefore be regarded as a net addition to Allied shipping. So far, good. But there is another aspect of the matter Americans should not lose sight of. Much more than half of the ships building today are American; much more than half the ships sunk are British. Out of the 275,000 tons lost in June 161,000 tons were British. If these proportions of production and loss are maintained through many months, as appears inevitable, the net effect will be the progressive transfer of ocean carrying power from the British, to whom it is a vital interest, to the Americans, to whom it must remain a subsidiary interest. We have no desire to encroach upon British interests even through the inescapable consequences of war. In our economic arrangements for the period after the war full provision should be made for a pooling of ship ownership that would clear us of all appearance of economic aggrandizement at the expense of our Ally.

G

Flanking Germany

ERMANY will not succeed in taking Paris and the Channel ports. She will not attain a military decision by the destruction of the Allied armies in France. So much is clear from the results of the last week's fighting. With all her resources concentrated on the western front, with all the advantages to be derived from interior lines, Germany is still not strong enough to repel an energetic Allied assault. She will have to shorten her lines to obtain reserves sufficient to make them safe. And as more and more American troops complete their training, the German line will have

to be still more shortened. The German armies will have to yield ground, however stubbornly they may contest each hill or stream that affords basis

for defense.

But it is a far cry from the checking of the German offensive, or even from a retrograde movement by the German armies, to a conclusive Allied victory. German ambitions centre in the east and southeast, Germany desired victory in the west chiefly to realize on her eastern projects. If the war could end with Germany firmly established in the control of eastern Europe, history would accord her the title of victory. Her western strategy is therefore essentially defensive. Germany is defending not so much her own territory as her eastern spoils. And if she could induce the Allies to play her game, she would have them concentrate their growing resources upon her all but impregnable western front. She could drag out the contest through several bitter years, with a fair hope that eventually war weariness would generate a peace that ignored Germany's eastern dispositions altogether.

The Allies will not, however, play the game according to the German desire. The Slavic lands which Germany regards as her natural prey represent potentially the greatest anti-German force in the world. From the Arctic to the Adriatic Germany is flanked by Slavic populations broken only by the German and Magyar minority of AustriaHungary. All, with the exception of Bulgaria, are anti-German. Nor are they merely passively antiGerman. The wholesale executions of the last four years have not sufficed to check the growth of the revolutionary spirit among the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs. The German and Austrian forces in the Ukraine never feel themselves secure against a popular uprising, and Great Russia has openly proclaimed that she regards the peace of Brest-Litovsk as nothing more than a truce. Given adequate assurance of support, Slavdom would rise against Germany, to the utter overthrow of all German ambitions. Such assurance the Allies will be able to give as soon as their forces in France have attained to secure preponderance.

But when shall Allied assistance to the Slavic peoples be applied? The possibility of working from the north and east has been quite thoroughly canvassed. All the forces that could be supplied over the Trans-Siberian, the Archangel and Murmansk railways would be insufficient to constitute a front that would hold against German attack. The reconstitution of Russian economic life must precede an effective reconstitution of the Russian front. But the key to German control of Slavdom is Austria. By Austria Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo

Slavs are held down; though Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey are held to the Teutonic alliance; Rumania and the Ukraine are exploited over Austrian lines of communication. The collapse of Austria would give the signal for Slavic liberation. Accordingly what is plainly indicated as the next great stroke of Allied strategy will be a crushing blow directed against Austria.

But is Austria vulnerable? Almost all that remain of her best troops are now concentrated in Italy. In the Piave they hold a strong defensive line, but it is a line that can be passed, as they proved themselves in their late offensive. With half a million American and French and British troops to add driving power to the Italian line, it can hardly be doubted that the Austrians could be expelled from the Italian plain. Indeed, it is quite possible that a great disaster may be awaiting the Austrians here.

The roads across the Isonzo and the Alps do not lend themselves to the requirements of a rapid and orderly retreat, especially after snow flies, and it will be near the close of open weather that we shall have half a million men to spare on the west. In any event the expulsion of the Austrian armies from Italy would administer a terrible shock to the crumbling structure of the Dual Empire. In a succeeding thrust toward Laibach, the Allied forces might easily find their flank supported by a Jugo-Slav revolt.

It is not necessary, however, to assume rapid progress into Austria over Napoleon's old route to Laibach. The Italians found the route impracticable; it may still remain impracticable, although the Austrian armies are much weaker and the Germans will be too fully occupied on the west to send relief. At all events Allied forces can be established on the upper Adriatic, to serve as rallying points for Jugo-Slav revolutionaries, as Saloniki has served as a rallying point for the indomitable Serbs.

The progress of the French through Albania, effected by very modest forces, indicates that it is not suicidal to land on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. At one point or another forces sufficiently large could surely penetrate far enough to threaten the railway supplying the Austrians and Bulgars before Saloniki. And this would be the beginning of the end of Central Europe.

With the Allied forces at Saloniki set in motion, supported by the Greeks, Bulgaria would have no choice but to commit her fortunes to the mercies of the Allies. Turkey would collapse and the Allied navies could penetrate the Black Sea, to organize a rising of the Ukrainians. With the prospect of effective relief from the south, the Great Russians could safely resume their war of liberation and accept safely Allied assistance from the north and

east.

All this, it may be objected, would be to violate the Napoleonic principle of concentrating all resources upon the destruction of the main force of the enemy. It would be to dissipate forces on subsidiary fields. To this objection the answer is obvious. When the main force of the enemy is an entire nation, no field that threatens it is subsidiary. An attack upon Germany by way of Italy and the Balkans would essentially be nothing else than a flank attack. It would be an attack upon a flank that Germany has not the resources to defend. For it is promised that before the Allies undertake any other operation they will establish in France forces great enough to occupy the whole German army. That they can do this and still have formidable forces to employ elsewhere is established by the fact that with only 300,000 Americans in the line of battle the Germans are sorely put to it to hold their own. But we already have nearly an additional million men in France, and before the winter our forces will be enormously increased.

a

sure

Accordingly we might confidently look forward to a successful flanking operation even if we had not in prospect the rolling up of great forces in the very territory where it is proposed to operate. But this prospect is brilliant. We can at least mobilize the force at Saloniki, probably 400,000 effectives. We can count with equal security upon 400,000 Greeks. The Italians, with prospect of victory would fight with far better spirit. How many men we could raise in a revolutionary Jugo-Slavia or draw away from a disintegrating Austrian army can only be guessed. The number would certainly be large, and the fighting quality of the best. The operation would involve no new enemies. America, to be sure, would have to make war on Bulgaria, but this she will do cheerfully if Bulgaria does not speedily detach herself from our enemies. And we should have to make war on Turkey unless that iniquitous empire collapsed at the near approach of determined war. It is not impossible that our approach would detach both of Germany's weaker allies. Bulgaria and Turkey are sick of the war. They would probably sue for peace today if Austrian disintegration cut their communications with Berlin.

Before the present campaign is over the Germans will doubtless have launched a succession of peace offers, progressively more tempting. What will it profit the Allies, they will urge, to pay life for life until the Germans are expelled from France, when they would be withdrawn voluntarily on a

basis of peace with the eastern treaties ratified? German influence in the east will remain predominant in any event, so the German propaganda will suggest. We are not, however, confined to a strategy of paying life for life. We have the resources to keep the German armies immobilized in France while we set in flames behind them the whole structure of their control of Slavdom. Liberated by their own efforts and by our aid, the Slavic nations will take care of themselves. German colonization and German peaceful penetration will pass into limbo along with the much more grandiose German project of world hegemony.

Mob Violence and War Psychology

E

VERY American who values the credit and self-respect of his country will be grateful to President Wilson for his eloquent denunciation of mob violence and for his only too convincing demonstration of its injurious effects on the success of American war aims. It is becoming an appalling evil, which is injuring American reputation for selfcontrol and fair play in Europe and which is regarded with altogether too much complacency by American public opinion. Indeed, the evil is so general and deep seated that the President's exhortation will not, we are afraid, avail to reduce its enormity. Lynching will not voluntarily be abandoned as the result of persuasion. It will have to be stamped out by force, and hitherto the municipal authorities or local security leagues and defense societies have not exhibited any sufficient disposition to stamp it out. Americans have long indulged a habit of mob violence and a war such as this inevitably brings to the surface all the failings and anomalies in the organization and morale of a nation. We shall not understand and remedy the current outbreak of mob violence unless we frankly interpret it as one result of the existing war psychology of the American people and base our remedies on this interpretation.

It would be salutary for public opinion to recognize one disagreeable but unquestionable fact in connection with American mob violence. It takes place in almost all cases with the connivance and in many cases with the actual assistance of the "better element" of any community in which it Such connivance or assistance exists at the present time. The facts upon which the President's protest is based are notorious. Yet they meet with comparatively little reprobation or even notice either from the newspapers or from public speakers. There is no indication that the great

majority of those people who do most to mould public opinion in this country are particularly shocked at the presence of mob violence and other evidences of collective moral disintegration. They are doing practically nothing to prevent it. They are even doing something to encourage it. A mob consists in a crowd of excited, credulous, highly suggestible and some times apprehensive human beings who are swept away by a common emotion and while under its hypnotic influence consider any opposition to their will a justifiable occasion for immediate violence. This state of mind is being assiduously cultivated by many of our newspapers, many of our respected fellow-citizens and certain public officials. Those who do not encourage it certainly fail to protest against it. Their exhortation and example do not result in lynching except in that part of the country where Judge Lynch is a recognized public official, but it does result in the ruthless assassination of reputations, in the wholesale condemnation of suspects practically without trial, in a savage intolerance of any but the most extreme opinions and in a callous indifference to individual cases of injustice.

The condition in this respect of American public opinion and its consequences are beginning to excite apprehension abroad and particularly in Great Britain. Journals such as the London Nation are contrasting the liberal and ultimately conciliatory programme for which President Wilson has asked his countrymen to fight with the domestic policy of several departments of the American government during the war and with the impatient and indiscriminate intolerance of so much of American public opinion. French and English statesmen are expressing fears in private that American pugnacity and intransigeance will stand in the way of what they might regard as a possible even if not a wholly desirable peace. They are becoming increasingly puzzled, apprehensive and distressed by the state of mind of this country and by the resulting anomalies of conduct, of policy and of propaganda.

It is no wonder Englishmen are puzzled and even somewhat distressed at the prevailing behavior and the state of mind of this country. It is not easy to understand how a nation which two years ago was profoundly reluctant to enter the war, which re-elected President Wilson in part because he had kept us out of it, which contains an unusually large number of humane, kindly, patient and tolerant people, which has always cherished freedom of speech as the most essential of its civil liberties and which has fought several wars without setting up any drastic censorship of opinion-it is hard to reconcile these facts with certain aspects of the existing domestic policy of the American government and with what is apparently the dominant

state of mind of the American people. Yet it is important that the American state of mind should be understood, particularly by European radicals, who are counting on the future assistance of the American government, and they will fail to understand it unless they approach American pugnacity on behalf of a better world with at least as much friendly curiosity as they have hitherto approached the corresponding lack of pugnacity with which the Russian people expect to realize a similar international programme.

The incompatibility between the American state of mind in 1916 and the American state of mind today is not as flagrant as it seems. Our existing pugnacity and intolerance is the reaction which an intensely patriotic and essentially political people would naturally pass through during the earlier stages of a war, participation in which it had for

a while feared and shirked. The American nation is more bellicose, intolerant and headstrong than its European allies, precisely because of its former irresponsibility. Two years ago it was trying to be indifferent to the moral issues involved by the war. Up to the end of 1916 the government, with the support of the preponderant element in American public opinion, was working on the assumption that American national unity depended on maintaining a neutral isolation with respect to the European war. In acting on this assumption the utmost latitude was allowed to all kinds of pro-Ally, pro-German, pacifist, militarist, and nationalist, and socialist propaganda and activities. In 1917 the nation was obliged suddenly to abandon this assumption. After the German government forced war upon us American national unity came to depend upon a revolutionary reversal of feeling. Instead of preserving isolation we were committed to a policy of mortgaging the future productive ability of the American people and risking the lives of dearly beloved fellow-citizens in a quarrel of European origin which had to be fought out on European soil. Probably the needed revolution in feeling could not have taken place without some measure of calculated violence both in opinion and policy. At any rate, many Americans are now undoubtedly finding compensation for the neutral indifference and pacific irresponsibility of their former attitude towards the war by a disposition to be more European than the Europeans, more warlike than the Gauls and about as intolerant of dissenting opinion as were the British Tories in 1800. This is particularly true of the Middle West, which in 1916 was most reluctant to enter the war on any terms. Typical journals such as the Chicago Tribune, which in 1916 did not consider it of any particular importance to beat the Ger mans, now consider anybody who questions the