Turks, which has made the campaign apparently so one-sided. An army without provisions, ammunition and officers is not a formidable fighting machine; and even the courage habitually associated with Turkish troops could not bring victory to men ill-fed, ill-clad, imperfectly trained, imperfectly organized, and with hopelessly inadequate ammunition. It is the old story of bureaucratic failure-whether through corruption or financial helplessness remains to be proved; but a shrewd guess can be hazarded.

The war has provided few lessons that will be useful to the great armies of Europe. Something may be gathered from the strategy of the Bulgarian generals; but the campaign for the greater part has been on the plan of twenty years ago, with a good deal of close-range fighting, and an artillery made invin- . cible through the uselessness of the opposing arm.

Lord Houghton as a Prophet

THAT the Turkish crisis is not a new crisis, that the problem to be solved to-day was debated long ago, is sufficiently well known. The Sick Man of Europe has been in the doctors' hands for more than one generation, with collapse always imminent. One of Lord Houghton's Eastern poems, The Turk at Constantinople to the Frank, written more than fifty years ago, brings the past very close to the present and presents a picture that may soon be completed and hung in the Salon of History. A Turk of the old school is considering the possible banishment of his people from Europe, reviewing their early deeds and ideals, and proclaiming the destiny to come.

"When first the Prophet's standard rested on

The land that once was Greece and still was Rome,

We deemed that his and our dominion

Was there as sure as in our Eastern home;

We never thought a single hour to pause

Till the wide West had owned Mohammed's laws.

How could we doubt it? To one desert tribe
The truth revealed by one plain-seeming man
Cut off the cavil, thundered down the gibe,
And formed a nation to its lofty plan:
What barrier could its waves of victory stem?
Not thy religious walls, Jerusalem!

Thus did we justify the Faith by works,
And the bright Crescent haunted Europe's eye,
Till many a Pope believed the demon Turks
Would scour the Vatican ere he could die:
Why was our arm of conquest shortened? Why?
Ask Him whose will is o'er us, like the sky.

The dome to heavenly wisdom consecrate
Still echoes with the Muslim's fervent prayers;
The just successor of the Khalifate
Still on his brow the sign of empire wears:
We hold our wealth without reserve or fear;
And yet we know we are but tented here.

Millions of Christians bend beneath our rule,
And yet these realms are neither theirs nor ours;

Sultan and subject are alike the tool

Of Europe's ready guile or banded powers:

Against the lords of continent and sea

What can one nation do, one people be?"

And the end is foreseen-the return to Asia, "back to the glories of the Khalifate."

"Therefore, regardless of the moment's shame,

Of wives' disdain and children's thoughtless woe,
Of Christian triumph o'er the Prophet's name,
Of Russia's smile beneath her mask of snow:

Let us return to Asia's fair domain,

Let us in truth possess the East again!

Let us return! across the fatal strait
Our fathers' shadows welcome us once more;
Back to the glories of the Khalifate,

Back to the Faith we loved, the dress we wore,
When in one age the world could well contain
Haroun Al-Rashid and your Charlemagne!"

Is that pilgrimage across the Strait now imminent?

Sex-Antagonism

THE fact that even progressive women are not yet fully emancipated from the effect of their long subjection to men is shown in the bitter sex-antagonism expressed by some of the leaders of the crusade against the traffic in womanhood. There is a growing sex-solidarity among women which can no longer tolerate the monstrous horror which casts its shadow over marriage and the home. This sex-solidarity of women is the great new asset of human fellowship, and is destined to work miracles in socializing our still crude democracy. Men have had their groups and fraternities and guilds, and have thrived socially within these bonds of allegiance to, at least, a partial brotherhood. Women have lacked such discipline in "team work "; having, until recently, been held strictly to their household sympathies. Even now, when women have entered the professions and higher occupations, they are not made entirely free of the guild-comradeship of the guilds they enter. Perhaps this is in part owing to the fact that the time for most vital companionship in these ancestral groups of thought and of service seems past even for men. Each partial fellowship, however prized or even revered, is becoming socialized; and the call is now for a world-fraternity in a universal order of common service. But women are not yet, and never may be, full sharers in the guilds and fraternities that have played such a part in the world-leadership of men. Instead, there is rapidly growing a guild of all womankind, a sisterhood of the mother-sex, a free-masonry of the feminine. This is making the trade union movement among women not a class grouping, but rather a mingling of rich and poor, wise and ignorant, strong and weak women, for the benefit of the woman wage-earner. This sex-solidarity, crude and unlovely in some of its expressions, silly and sentimental in others, is yet binding women in a conscious loyalty of each to all and all to each which is giving even small-natured women a new sense of honor and a new power of co-operative action. Already a mighty bridge is being built to span the chasm between the good" woman and the prostitute, and to hold in one common

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outreach of sympathy the woman of the home and the woman of the street. Yet here, inevitably, arises sex-antagonism of a new sort. Pure and noble women, stung to the quick by the new and near view of the enormities of the social evil, often abhor the coarser manhood which consents to this abomination and makes fast the link between greed and lust on the one side, and weakness, ignorance, even innocence and helplessness, on the other. When they have outgrown the passionate revolt of a new experience, these women will see more justly how manysided conditions have bound men and women alike in evil chains which only men and women together can break.

Mr. Hardy's Strictures

MR. THOMAS HARDY recently lamented the corruption of modern English prose, expressing his belief that "the vast increase of hurried descriptive reporting in the newspapers is largely responsible." He added-he was addressing the Royal Society of Literature-" An appreciation of what is real literature, and efforts to keep real literature alive, have, in truth, become imperative, if the taste for it is not to be entirely lost, and, with the loss of that taste, its longer life in the English language. While millions have been learning to read, few of them have been learning to discriminate; and the result is an appalling increase in slipshod writing that would not have been tolerated for one moment a hundred years ago."

Mr. Hardy has some justification for his views; yet he has touched the subject only superficially. No fair comparison can be drawn between the enormous output of the present, and the more leisurely and restricted product of a century ago. The conditions have changed. The greater part of the contents of the daily press is necessarily ephemeral, yet there is a large amount of able journalistic work, while writing of real and permanent value is far indeed from being rare. It is true that in the writing up of more or less sensational "stories," or even in the presentation of simple news, there is a growing tendency toward "cheapness" and slanginess: witness the atrocious word cop," which has apparently found a sure refuge in many of

our papers. But this tendency is not unduly discouraging, providing it be noticed and checked. It probably marks the influx into journalism of a large class whose education is more elementary than was formerly the case. But this new body, responding to the new vast demand, will not remain stagnant and unprogressive. At present it is more concerned with ideas than with expression. But the standard is gradually being raised, as experience calls out what is best in each man, and the third-rate and second-rate is discarded for the best that is possible. Yet there is need for more definite action on the part of those who are able to influence the "tone" of the press, if American journalism is to be freed from the sometimes captious but not wholly undeserved reproofs of its European critics.

Passion in Parliament

THE scenes of disorder recently enacted in the British House of Commons do not support the contention of the anti-suffragists that men, and men alone, are peculiarly fitted to deal decorously with political problems. To the unbiased mind, there would seem no striking difference between the hurling of a large book at a Minister, by an irate masculine legislator; and the throwing of a stone through a window by a suffragist, in order to draw attention to what she considered obvious rights, unjustly ignored.

The claim of the Unionists that a snap division, admittedly not representing the strength of the Government or the feeling of the country, should nevertheless be taken as irrevocable, is dictated by partisan feeling and supported by a false view of parliamentary principles. The fate of a country cannot be decided by the accident of a moment, though the Administration will deservedly lose prestige for the carelessness which made such a contretemps possible.