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THE SILENT TRAFALGAR.

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The world's greatest naval victory took place on Thursday, November 21, when ninety ships, the flower of the German Navy, surrenderedwithout a shot being fired-to the Admiral of the Grand Fleet, off the coast of Scotland. The real secret of victory in this war," says the London Observer, "has been hidden from the eyes of the multitude, but will be revealed in after years, spelled out in eight letters-s-E-A P-O-W-E-R." Here is part of the great German Navy that made the ignominious surrender.

G

ERMANY'S

WELL-KNOWN

GERMANY'S LAST HOPE

CLEVERNESS has

worked out a grand plan that causes her to look forward to the future with confidence. She hopes to achieve at the Peace Conference what four years of the sword has not been able to get for her. Secrecy being essential, the whole scheme, with typical Teuton finesse, is loudly trumpeted through the press and proclaimed from the rostrum, so that if we are not warned, at least it is not their fault. It seems that, as usual, Germany is staking her all on one throw of the dice, and this time the little game is to cause dissension among the Allies, and particularly between America and Britain. The Kölnische Zeitung indorses the opinion of Dr. Paul Rohrbach, who in a lecture at Cologne predicted that Germany's chance will come when America and the Entente "start to squabble among themselves." He said:

"The victorious maintenance of our existence as a state will be achieved at the moment when, as is always the case in coalition wars, the various interests of the individual states that are leagued against us break out in all their brutality and turn upon one another. The fall in England's tonnage and the constant rise in America's tonnage will produce this critical moment and these conflicts of interest."

The Berlin Vorwärts thinks that the Peace Conference will be the moment to set the Allies by the ears:

"Everything that can still be saved and won can now only be won and saved in the negotiations of the Peace Conference. Even without weapons, the German people will be an important factor at the peace table. A people of seventy millions which can not be exterminated and which holds firmly together, remains valuable as a friend and dangerous as an enemy for the future which is now to be decided. We have promised of our own free will and our own conviction to join a league of nations in accordance with Wilson's principles. By this voluntary adhesion to the league of nations, we have much to give to the world, for which a forced adhesion can never supply a substitute. Even without arms we shall not be defenseless at the peace table."

Theodore Wolff, in his Berliner Tageblatt, sees the makings of a

number of pretty little squabbles in all of the Allied countries, and exultantly writes:

"In almost every country there is a movement which presses for moderation and a movement which presses for the sharpest measures. In France the Socialists are turning against Clemenceau. In England Henderson and his comrades are trying to put on the brake, tho there is little real difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals except that the former want to throttle us while the latter want to thrash us. The real division only begins at the point where the talk is of the foundations of peace of the map of Europe and of the future shaping of the world. A wide difference is seen between the Northcliffe men and the English Liberals who have been won over to Wilson's principles, as in France between the Nationalists and the politicians of the Left, and, to cap it all, it is seen that there is no firm program as yet agreed upon by the Entente governments." All shades of German opinion unite in predicting trouble between ourselves and the British, tho the wish is perhaps father to the thought. The Kölnische Zeitung writes:

"The thick fog of rhetoric which floats backward and forward over the Atlantic will not deceive anybody who knows. The English and the Americans feel themselves to be the greatest competitors in trade and they spy suspiciously on one anotherstill more as regards the future than as regards the present."

Dr. Paul Lensch, the famous "Socialist Imperialist," in his paper Die Glocke, chortles with joy over the prospect of a family row at the Peace Conference:

"In England people lull themselves in the hope that the alliance with the 'Anglo-Saxon cousin' possesses eternal value, awakening. The more independent the Union has become in but from this expectation there will be one day an unpleasant this war as a world-Power, the more vigorously will she be able to support her special interests against England. There are plenty of conflicts of interest with the old sea queen. The part which New York will play in the future in the money market is primarily directed against the position of London, and the construction of an American mercantile marine hits at the decisive point the former, position of England as the world's carrier.

"One must always remember that the true consequences of

20

The Literary Digest for December 7, 1918

Until then war will appear only with the conclusion of peace. the common hatred of Germany keeps the opponents together and bridges their antagonism. At the Congress of Vienna it was only by a miracle that war by Austria, France, and England against Prussia and Russia was prevented, and the coming Peace Conference may provide similar scenes.'

In his organ, the Berlin Deutsche Politik, Paul Rohrbach argues that the future will inevitably give Germany her diplo

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matic opportunity at the expense of the Allies if she only plays her cards rightly. What that "rightly" means, we can see when he comes to discuss Anglo-American relations, which he does thus:

"What was England before the world-war, and what is she to-day? Before the war she was the first world-Power, proud and unassailable, more independent in her policy than any other state in the world, politically and economically based upon her own dominating world-position. To-day she is dependent upon the United States, once her colony; what England achieves and what she is not to achieve at the conclusion of peace depends upon America's leadership. . . and even after the war English policy will feel permanently its dependence upon America.

"It does not need much wisdom to predict that whereas there are already strong conflicts of interest between England and America, the United States after the war will not hesitate to employ her power even against England. While England before the war stood politically independent and free on every side, she is henceforward tied in her decisions by America and, in part, even by Japan. At the moment German consciousness subordinates these things to Germany's own direct fate, but the altered world-situation will sooner or later make itself felt for us as well as for the rest of the world, and if we pursue the right policy the developments will be by no means to our disadvantage."

The latest German "menace" is recognized by the London Times, which writes:

"The important work of defining precisely the conditions of a just peace must devolve upon the Allied and American statesmen. President Wilson, who was among the first to forecast the main lines of such a peace, and who has, from time to time, added to them principles and precepts which experience of actual warfare has led him to regard as essential, has undoubtedly worked out in some detail a plan on which he believes the general postulates of peace should be translated into practise. If the Allied Governments have not yet progressed as far as he in this direction, they should hasten to make good their omissions and to draw up their terms of peace in accordance with the high

ideals they have always profest. Much-perhaps everythingwill depend upon the spirit in which this is done. Provided that they preserve the moral unity and the firm acquiescence in joint sacrifice that have marked the armed struggle and keep before their eyes the goal of the greatest common good, they will be able to attain a joint program for peace, the justice of which will defy all the efforts of the beaten enemy to divide them. The Allied peoples would regard as intolerable any meeting of Allied representatives with cunning and unprincipled enemy diplomatists to haggle and dispute over the main terms of peace. They desire no 'peace conference' of the sort which disgraced diplomacy at Vienna a century ago, or which sowed at Berlin in 1878 the seeds of the present catastrophe."

But most British editors believe that the war has so firmly cemented the Anglo-American Entente that all the problems of the peace table can be adjusted without friction. On the British side this cordiality is undoubtedly strong, we are told, and the London papers point for proof to the extraordinary popular outburst last July 4, when Britain for the first time in her history spontaneously celebrated the Declaration of Indepen dence. Space forbids adequate quotations from the pamphlet of the Independence-day speeches, put out by the Library of War-Literature, 511 Fifth Avenue, New York, but the remarks of Viscount Bryce and Mr. Winston Churchill, the Minister of Munitions, show that England is determined to let no German intrigue disturb the good feeling now existing between the two nations.

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AMERICAN COLONIES IN AFRICA?-The future of the former German colonies is now much under discussion in Europe, and many think that America should bear her share of "the white man's burden." The Manchester Guardian says:

"Some of those who are interested in colonial questions are asking whether the time is not coming when America will reconsider her attitude with regard to undertaking territorial obligations in the backward regions of the earth.

"If the administration of the German colonies is to be added to the already enormous burden resting upon the British Empire, this burden-if it is to be carried alone by us or even shared in some manner between Great Britain and France-may become altogether too unwieldy. There is the greatest need in colonial administration of the efficient and liberal-minded help which America could supply.

"An obvious suggestion is that America might undertake the responsibility for the administration of Liberia. The miserably

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THE BRITISH REPLY.
The Get-Together Boys."
-Evening News (London).

disturbed and backward state of this black republic is suffi
ciently well known, and America has a peculiar interest in it
because there is in the country a population of some 10,000 half-
castes and negroes who are American citizens."

BREAKERS AHEAD FOR THE LEAGUE

T

OF NATIONS

HE INK WAS HARDLY DRY on the armistice before a rejuvenated Poland, true to her former history, was engaged in two wars of her own, one with the Ukraine and the other with Prussia. Poland, at least, has made up her mind not to wait for the Peace Conference to decide her boundaries, and she shows an inclination to assert the doctrine of "self-determination" in no uncertain form. This doctrine that brilliant Roman weekly, L'Unita, tells us is a heresy and may prove one of the reefs upon which the whole League of Nations may be wrecked. Its view is enunciated in expressing some dissatisfaction with the Allied statesmen who were responsible for the terms of the armistice offered to Austria. The Italian weekly bitterly regrets that we did not insist upon intervening then and there on behalf of the Slavic nationalities instead of leaving them to work out their own salvation. L'Unita writes:

"The policy of the Entente Allies toward the Slav nationalities of Austria-Hungary is neither less nor more than a case of the right and duty of intervention which ought to be resolutely affirmed by the democratic parties of the Entente.

"This idea in many minds is cloudy and confused. The only one of the Allied statesmen who seems to have a clear grasp of all its constituent elements and all the consequences which it implies is President Wilson. Even Lloyd George does not make it clear whether he regards intervention in the internal affairs of Austria as a right and a duty of democratic justice, or simply as a useful war-expedient."

True democrats are urged to accept the dogma that the right of intervention is one which belongs inherently to the family of nations and can be exercised by that family whenever conditions seem to require it:

"Many backward democrats have not understood that if they really desire to work effectively for the League of Nations they must abandon without hesitation or regret the fantom of self-determination and affirm clearly and resolutely that this war must end the day of the old 'sovereign states' which recognized no authority superior to their own and regarded as a diminution of liberty and as a casus belli any attempt on the part of one state to intervene in the internal affairs of another."

L'Unita lays it down as an axiom that the right of intervention is indispensable to a league of nations, and that selfdetermination and intervention can not mutually exist in the same political area:

"A league of nations whose central authority had not the right to intervene continually in the affairs of each of the associated nations in order to control armaments, to guarantee the rights of national minorities, to eliminate disputes about customs and frontiers, to secure at least comparative homogeneity of political institutions between the associates-a league of nations which did not limit the right of self-determination as affirmed by Lenine and Count Burian, would be a mere mystification.

"As real individual liberty is inconceivable unless each individual sacrifices part of his own liberty to the requirements of civilized society, so real national liberty for all nations great and small can not be achieved without some effective limitations in the liberty of each nation. The absolute right of selfdetermination leads to the absolute right of peace and war. I Would a league of nations be worth having which left to its component states this absolute right of peace and war?"

Passing from theoretical to practical questions, L'Unita tells us that not alone in Italy but throughout Europe the more old-fashioned politicians are offering a distinct if passive resistance to President Wilson's pet child, the League of Nations:

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declaration of war by Austria and Germany in 1914 will be impossible.

"Not venturing openly to refute the idea of Wilson and the soldiers, these 'Prussians of the Entente' are trying to boycott it quietly. They smile over it sardonically. They talk of it as little as possible. They are preparing, when the time comes for final decisions, to bring against it all sorts of quibbles and obstacles, being here at one with the German and Austrian diplomats and militarists. For there existed a military 'International' considerably more solid than the Socialist one, whose program was to stir up and keep open as many causes of quarrel as possible, and the heart of this 'War-International' is in all countries, German or anti-German, the armament industry.

"The Bolshevik theory of self-determination and the pseudodemocratic prejudice about non-intervention, by giving a wrong slant to the democratic International and rendering it incapable of clear and coherent work on behalf of an effective league of nations, is playing into the hands of the military International. For this reason, it is necessary that these mental specters in the ranks of democracy should be faced without further delay and finally laid."

While influential circles in Italy see dangers and difficulties ahead, before the League of Nations can become a practical reality, equally influential circles in Germany are being rapidly converted. For example, Friedrich Naumann in his paper, Die Hilfe, writes:

"Our thoughts continue to busy themselves with the League of Nations, which is now, we are told, to be extended over the whole human world. We have got to find our adjustment to it somehow or other, for it is unquestionably on the march and will come either with our cooperation or in spite of our resistance. "If the majority of the German people and their intellectual

leaders are once convinced that the League of Nations is inevitable, historically necessary, and practicable in itself, Wilson I will find no better collaborators in the whole world than the Germans. We know by experience what it means to be conquered. We have a more lively sense than any other people of what a blessing it might be if mankind were demilitarized. For us it would mean a wider and freer zest in life."

None the less Dr. Naumann does not hesitate to confess that German opinion is somewhat suspicious of trusting itself to the mercies of an international council which they seem to think might possibly take a toll of

vengeance for the past:

"It would not do for us to be slaughtered in the name of justice to the accompaniment of cosmopolitan psalms. Against such a hypocritical cruelty all sections and parties of our nation are at one. We do not mean that this is what Wilson has in mind, but as a proof that he has not, we hope he will soon find the right word to stigmatize the will for our destruction which sounds in the voices that come across to us from England and France."

A TRIBUTE FROM DENMARK-America's part in the

war has moved Denmark to astonished admiration. Here is a meed of generous praise from the Copenhagen Politiken:

"What America has achieved is a world record which no European country can match. An army has been created which it has been possible to move to France and which has changed the fortunes of the war. A commercial fleet is now being constructed which in a few years will make America the greatest sea-Power in the world; and, politically, America has gained a leading position within the circle of the Allies which will make it indisputably primus inter pares."

The Politiken is at some pains to explain our sudden and successful appearance in

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and we are reminded of this by the Belgian Minister at Washington, who tells us that Belgium is going to be in a sad plight this winter and is still in need of all our aid and sympathy. He writes:

"Under the terms of the President's basis of peace, Germany

DIE NACHT AM RHEIN.

the lime-light of the world's stage and it finds the secret of our material and political success lies in the "melting-pot":

"If one asks what has been the reason for this almost explosive development of strength, the answer must be that the American nation is an extract of European youth, which, melted together for some generations, has produced a race of incomparable health. This young nation has the finest natural setting to develop its abilities, and has, by acquiring what it found most useful of European technique and culture in addition to its own improvements, given a new impetus which will be decisive for the future direction of its development.

"The British world outlook, the German power of organization, the Gallic logic, the Slavic imagination, Scandinavian broad-mindedness-all this has been transplanted in the American fertile soil, where it blossomed into a growth of exotic abundance. "Problems which we in Europe in a tarrying way try to conjure away, the destruction threatening the war-devastated countries, America seems to solve with playful ease. The community

is organized for war according to one will, capital is rationed, factories placed under state control, prices regulated, and tax systems worked out as if they were matters of course. result achieved very likely surprized the Americans themselves." The

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must pay for the reconstruction of Belgium. There will, however, be an interregnum before collections can be made. from Germany, wherein not only must the Belgian people be fed, but their industries must be started, their railways and canals constructed, destroyed houses must be rebuilt, raw material must be found to start factories, seed and agricultural implements must be furnished, in order that the people of Belgium may be put to employment and self-support at the earliest possible moment. Moreover, the whole population is undernourished and must have enlarged food-supplies instantly in order to enable them to go to work.

"The President's direction to Mr. Hoover that he should enlarge the activities of the Commission for Relief in Belgium to embrace the relation of the United States to this reconstruction program, and that he should handle all matters in connection with this American relationship is a matter of the most intense satisfaction to every Belgian.

"The enlarged shipments of food already started to Belgium to meet the present emergency, the large orders just being given for cloth, the great response of the American people to Mr. Hoover's appeal through the Red Cross for second-hand clothing, and the measures under consideration for prompt amelioration in other directions are all in line with the marvelous activity of the Commission

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throughout the whole of the last four years. "That Mr. Hoover and his associates in the Commission for Relief in Belgium and in the Food Administration are to have charge of this enlarged interest of the American people in Belgium will give a feeling of absolute confidence to the whole of our people and this evidence of America's continued solicitude will be an encouragement and stimulation to my people second only to their actual liberation from German oppression.

"The English and French Governments have already evidenced their solicitude in this matter and their willingness to cooperate and give support to Belgium in her task of rehabili tation. It must always be borne in mind that over four million of our seven million people are destitute and are to-day subsisting in soup lines; that except for the garments provided through the Relief Commission they have had no textiles for over four years; that the whole clock of industry has been stopt, and that the Germans have carted away to Germany all the machinery which they did not destroy in Belgium.

"They destroyed our railways, our mines, and our canals. Never before has a country been reduced to such a plight as ours to-day and never has a country had such friends. We have won the war. We must now bend every effort to restore our country and prepare it for its glorious future."

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Disabled Canadians at preliminary instruction in house-wiring in the electrical laboratory of McGill University. They complete their training by doing practical work with contractors. Canada's industrial reeducation system is based on cooperation by the Government and the employer.

HOW CANADA HANDLES HER DISABLED SOLDIERS

W

ITH THE APPROACH OF PEACE the problems of reconstruction are looming large, and especially those connected with the returning soldier who can not work at his old occupation. Our neighbor, Canada, has been dealing successfully with this problem for three years and more, and her experience will be valuable to us, all the more because conditions in her case approximate our own much more nearly than any of those met in European countries. An account of Canada's industrial reeducation system is contributed by C. Norman Senior to Industrial Canada (September). Mr. Senior tells particularly of the cooperation of manufacturers and of the survey of industrial plants made to find wider opportunities to train disabled men with the least inconvenience to employers. Says Mr. Senior:

"About 45,000 casualties have been returned to Canada. A special staff of interviewers is maintained by the Reestablishment Department for the purpose of interviewing every one of these to ascertain whether or not his injuries or condition of health are such as to prevent him from returning to the occupa

tion at which he earned his living prior to enlistment. The proportion of such cases has maintained a fairly constant average of about 10 per cent. An order in Council provides that all who are so disabled by their war-injuries as to be unable to resume their prewar vocations are entitled to be trained for new occupations. The training is given at public expense, while the man and his family are maintained through an established scale of pay and allowances, based approximately on military pay and allowances and the Patriotic Fund allowance.

"At the latest compilation of statistics (August 1) 5,045 disabled men had been approved for specific courses of industrial reeducation. . . . When the original interviewer reports on the probable necessity of training, a medical officer sees the man in question and confirms the report from the strictly physical standpoint. This being done, the veteran is brought before what is known as a Disabled Soldiers' Training Board for the purpose of recommending a suitable new occupation for which he should be trained. . . . .

"The members of the Board act as advisers to the soldier. It is the business of the Vocational Officer to bring to the conference information as to the possibilities for training. The medical officer states whether or not the man's injuries are such as to interfere with the movements necessary to do given work. The

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Convalescent Canadian soldiers improving the shining hour of spare time in hospital by making up the educational deficiencies of their youth.

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