4

VOLUME XVI

Contents

119

Editorial Notes

Leading Editorials

War Aims and Party Politics

What Japan Thinks...

Stabilizing Demand for Labor

General Articles

The Balkan Front

It Is War..

122

124

125

Vladislav R. Savic 128

2nd Lt. Marc P. Dowdell 131

The Education of Joan and Peter-IX....H. G. Wells

A Communication

Correspondence

Books and Things...

Reviews of Books

Rewards, Penalties and Plato..

Human Nature in Industry

A Freudian Lyricist.......

F

.....

132

.... H. N. Brailsford 135

141

P. L. 142

Philonous 143 .Ο. Τ. 144 .L. U. 146

OCH'S offensive power offers as yet no indication of abating. Although the enemy is actually engaged on a longer front than has remained continuously active in any other of the great battles in the west, there remain great masses of British troops to the north and American troops to the east that are waiting for the command to attack. The Germans have lost much ground, a matter by no means so negligible to them as their newspapers pretend to believe. If the Allies keep on gaining ground they may presently menace the Lorraine iron districts as seriously as the Germans ever menaced Paris. And a menace to Lorraine, from which Germany secures three fourths of her ore supplies, would give the German nation a bitter foretaste of defeat. But what Foch is chiefly accomplishing is the wearing down of German man power. In the grim exchange of prisoners for prisoners, of lives for lives, the balance runs against the Germans. In an operation of such huge proportions the initial gains the defensive enjoys in selected positions are overbalanced by the losses inevitably attending retreat. Until the Germans

Number 200

find themselves in positions they can actually hold, every week will reduce their strength more rapidly than it reduces the strength of their foes. Even apart from the steady accretion of American troops, the Allied preponderance in man power grows more pronounced.

F

ROM such considerations it is not, however, to be inferred that this is likely to be the decisive battle which will bring Germany to her knees. As the German army recedes, it approaches the system of communications prepared in three years of fighting behind the Hindenburg line, while the Allied armies will have to improvise new roads through a wide stretch of territory devastated by war. This is a condition which makes for a greater mobility of German reserves. It also increases the possibility of massing artillery, upon which German fighting efficiency has been largely dependent. The Germans have lost many guns and much of their reserve stock of shells has been used up or destroyed, but it would be an overoptimistic view that they do not retain enough guns and shells to defend themselves well when once they have made their way back to tenable positions. It is therefore safest to assume that in the course of the next two months' fighting the armies will find themselves deadlocked, to await the time when America has in the field a great part of the eighty divisions assured by the pending man power bill. The final act will then begin. The Germans cannot stand against the armies of our Allies, augmented by an American army hardly inferior in strength to all the forces Germany will then have at her disposal.

same change of mind are appearing. The Dutch newspapers are commenting with a new frankness, unfavorable to Germany, upon her recent military performance and present military situation. Swiss papers written in German and hitherto pro-German in tone are reported as printing anti-German articles. Sweden, recognizing the Allied blockade in effect, is shutting down on trade with Germany, increasing her trade with the Allies, turning over to the Allies four hundred thousand tons of shipping. In other words, German stock is going down in Spain and in three of the countries nearest her and in a favorable position for estimating what is happening to her.

A

MERICANS, as well as Russians, must feel very uncertain as to the exact nature of our For

relations with Russia. Is it peace or war? a little time this uncertainty seemed to be cleared up by press reports, stating that the Soviet government had declared war on America. But these reports have neither been confirmed nor denied; how they arose can only be conjectured. Somewhere around August 2nd Chicherin appears to have informed our consul at Moscow that our landing at Vladivostok and Archangel was war; this was mere rhetoric, but may have been confused with diplomacy. We should admit ourselves that it was an act of war if there were such differences between Russia and America as nations are ready to fight about. There are no such differences, and if the Soviet government is patient, it need take no great harm from the temporary occupation of the few inhabited points in the frozen north or the remote Pacific. Such occupation is irregular, but so also is the Soviet government irregular. If the Bolsheviki had taken their chances with the Constituent Assembly, America could not possibly have acceded to the proposal to occupy Russian soil. Were a constituent assembly convened even at this late day, the United States would have no choice except to recognize the government it created and respect its formal sovereignty.

THE Allied governments can not permit the

Czecho-Slovak forces in Russia to fall vic

tims to the armed attack of German and Austrian prisoners. But is it actually true that the CzechoSlovaks are in any such danger? Chicherin denies it, according to a communication that has reached the American press by the unnecessarily circuitous route of Moscow, Stockholm, Berlin and Amsterdam. The communication contains the further challenge: "Should, however, the grounds of this attack on the Soviet republic be really those stated in the Japanese-American message [the defense of Czecho-Slovaks], the Soviet Government suggests

that the governments exactly formulate their wishes in the matter." Just what do we wish in the matter of the Czecho-Slovaks? That they be granted unmolested egress from Russia? Or that they remain, chartered to interfere in the domestic Russian affairs which we are pledged, ourselves, not to meddle with? Chicherin's challenge ought to be accepted. If we have any solution of the Czecho Slovak problem that does not involve an overturn of the Soviet government we ought to set it forth. If we do not have such a solution and do not want it, we ought to say so. It is of no use to employ any other than a policy of candor with a primitive people like the Russians.

M

R. ROMAN DMOWSKI, president of the Polish National Committee with headquarters in Paris, has exact specifications for the creation of a "strong and really independent Poland." A recent interview in the New York Tribune quotes him as demanding the "complete restoration of Poland, with the reestablishment of its ancient frontiers and the political union of 35,000,000 to 37,000,000 Poles." In this union he includes Upper Silesia, with its rich coal fields, part of Middle Silesia, Posen, West Prussia, with the Baltic littoral, the port of Dantzig, all of Galicia, Russian Poland on the lines of the Congress of Vienna, and a nominal union of Lithuania with Poland. Some will here recognize barren historical shores from which the waters of a genuinely Polish population have long since receded, others will hold this programme modest not to include the 3,500,000 Poles in the United States. Such nationalistic dreams will provide a warm chapter in the "self-determination of nations."

E

VEN more remarkable than the almost solid vote by which it passed the man-power bill is the thoroughness with which the House, cutting out here one irrelevancy and there another, finally got the bill stripped for action. It wisely left out the anti-strike clauses, which were so drawn that they made no distinction between individual quitting and going on strike as one of a group, and which, by depriving strikers of their industrial exemptions and sending them back to their local draft boards, would have aggravated the difficulty of filling their places in essential industries. The plan to put boys of eighteen into a separate deferred class was no doubt less irrelevant, and had behind it both a genuine feeling against calling boys o this age to the colors and a genuine belief that the war could be won without them. But the plan was also a step toward permanent universal mili tary service. Had it been adopted the advocate of such service would, after the war, have done their best to keep alive this bit of war legislation, to preserve universal military training of a separate class of boys of eighteen. Without either this deferred class or the anti-strike clauses the manpower bill is much more strictly a win-the-war measure than it would have been with them. diminishing supply of adult labor, are seizing upon the pretext of the nation's need to extend the enslavement of the children. State and local authorities are not as a rule to be depended on to defend the health and liberty of children against the clamor of private interests singing to the tune of patriotism. It is the war that has created this situation. It is as a war policy that the relaxation of standards of child welfare is defended. But war policy is a federal, not a state or local or private matter. If our resources become so fully engaged that we must enlist the toil of children in order to win the war, we shall not hesitate to make the sacrifice. But let us do it deliberately, as an organized nation clear as to our policies, fully conscious of the costs we incur, not by disorganized private initiative under the impulse of patriotism fortified by private profit.

THE

J

HE more we are permitted to know about our aircraft production enterprise, the plainer we see that here lies the really damaging failure in America's war effort. We appear to have accomplished little but mistakes that presumably will not have to be made again. Apparently we were defeated by our national arrogance. We were not content to accept the experience of our Allies, gained through three desperate years, as a basis upon which to build; we wanted an American aeroplane designed by American engineers, turned out in quantity by American methods. There were numerous French and British and Italian planes that had stood the test of actual fighting. There were aeroplane engineers and organizers to be borrowed if we had asked for their services. The same spirit that kept us as a nation from subordinating our inexperience to the experience of our Allies has made impossible close cooperation among our own engineers. Each one has been sincere in his desire to serve his country; each has been quite willing to work himself to death for the common good, but he wanted his own way. wanted to be the prima donna, in General Kenly's phrase. The engineer comes by his propensity honestly. America, too, wanted to be the prima donna of the air, without going through the tedious process of instruction.

S

He

TANDARDIZATION was our great hope in aeroplane production. It is a powerful force; many of the greatest achievements of American industry may be ascribed to it. But standardization is most valuable in an industry after a long period of experimentation has reduced the problems of forms and materials to their simplest essentials. It is an excellent thing to standardize automobile construction now, when the multitude of fancies have been tried out and accepted or discarded. If we had standardized automobile production in the old days of the "horseless carriage" we might never have had an automobile worth anything. The aeroplane is, to be sure, much farther advanced, but it is still far from a condition in which we can dispense with the process of restless competitive experimentation. We should have made better progress if we had contented ourselves with arrangements to turn out borrowed types in sufficient numbers to gain the primary advantages of quantity production. The "prima donna" quality

of our engineers could then have been turned to good account in devising improvements that would make the borrowed ideas really our own, instead of merely generating cross purposes in a prematurely unified domain.

C

ONCRETE ship construction is another field in which we ought to guard ourselves against too early standardization. In this field progress is so rapid that the technique of six months ago is practically obsolete. The "Faith," with her maiden voyage hardly completed, already looks archaic. From the point of view of present knowledge, she is a mistake. But she floats, performs service, makes money. Would that we had millions of tons of such mistakes! The concrete ships now being constructed for the Fleet Corporation will likewise look very queer a year hence. That is exactly what is to be desired; it is a measure of progress made. If our shipping authorities recognize the possibilities of progress in such construction, they will not seek to contain the art within a few standardized projects, but will endeavor to stimulate competition of designers and constructors. If alongside of the ships the government is building we had other ships building under private auspices, we could feel greater confidence that next summer our steel and wooden fleets will be greatly augmented by really serviceable concrete ships.

P

ROFITEERING, we

learn with relief, is not

an American monopoly. Herr Victor Karl Adels of the Mannesmann Arms and Munitions factories has been fined $375,000 and sentenced to six months in jail for profiteering, in three years, to the extent of at least $1,375,000. His methods appear

to have been the familiar ones of commission broking and skimping on deliveries. Thus the imitative quality of the German mind is again exposed. Herr Adels appears to have been guilty of concealing far the greater part of his takings in order to escape hostile comment and the income tax. Vile imitator, again! The one anomaly in the story of Herr Adels lies in the magnitude of the fine imposed upon him. If American profiteers were compelled to disgorge in the same proportion, the German Finanzministerium would turn green with envy.

There is another apparent deficiency in Senator Lodge's declaration that deserves much more extended consideration. He makes no reference whatever to an international organization after the war, except such as is doubtfully implied in the statement that Constantinople must finally be taken away from Turkey and placed in the hands of the Allied nations as a free port." But the problem of Constantinople is after all relatively simple, capable of solution in terms of the traditional kind of international agreement. The really dificult

IN

one point, at least, Senator Lodge's statement of war aims ought to prove illuminating to observers of American opinion. This is the evidence it offers of the extreme militancy of America. In all the other belligerent countries, Allied or enemy, the party in power represents the war spirit in its most irreconcilable form. The opposition tends toward conciliation and compromise. In America the party in power is more resolutely determined to push the war to a victorious conclusion, more extreme in its war aims, than any other Allied government. But our party of the opposition desires to occupy a position still more extreme. Senator Lodge meant not merely to give more concrete expression to American war aims than has been given by President Wilson, but to exceed the President's measure in the penalties he proposes to inflict on Germany and her confederates. The Central Powers could indeed more advantageously accept Senator Lodge's concrete demands than President Wilson's principles. Any reasonable interpretation of those principles would cover not merely the territorial changes demanded by Senator Lodge, but also the transfer of Bukowina and Transylvania to Rumania, and the liberation from Turkish rule not merely of the oppressed Christians but of the Arabian-speaking Mohammedans as well.. But Senator Lodge's greater moderation is to be ascribed not to defect of the will to war, but to defect of understanding of the nationality map. This defect is further illustrated by his underwriting an independent Serbia and an independent Jugo-Slavia. Moreover, Senator Lodge limits Italian claims to Italia Irredenta "including Trieste " as if there were no problems of Dalmatia, the Ionian Islands,

torial adjustments Senator Lodge proposes to make. He would have an independent Czecho-Slovak state. Does he suppose that a small state like this, commercially and industrially pretty much at the mercy of Germans and Magyars and afflicted with a powerful alien nationality scattered through its territory, would be able by its own resources to maintain its independence? Senator Lodge demands an independent Jugo-Slav state. Is he unaware of the fact that among the Jugo-Slavs there is a royal party, devoted to the dynasty of Karageorgevitch, and a republican party, whose mutual antipathies threaten an internal condition in which foreign influence might easily penetrate unless Jugo-Slavia's right to settle her own affairs is defended by other resources than her own? Is he unaware of the conflicts of interest between our Allies -between Italy and Jugo-Slavia in the matter of Dalmatia, between Italy and Greece in the matter of the Ionian Islands and Epirus, between Greece and Jugo-Slavia in the matter of Saloniki, between Jugo-Slavia and Rumania in the matter of the Banat of Temesvar-to ignore the Hungarian claim altogether? To adjudicate these competing claims in the peace conference is not enough, if what we are striving for is permanent harmony even among our friends. We may agree with Senator Lodge that first of all we must beat Germany, beat her decisively. But beating Germany is a premise, not a conclusion. The world cannot be baptized safe for democracy and thereafter be forever certain of salvation. Whether the correction of old injustices, the launching of new states is to mean anything in history depends not only on what is done during the war but on what is done after it.

To this Senator Lodge would probably assent.