winter.' Does this remark throw any light on the recent change of Government? At the same time Germany took care to let fall hints, through the pen of Dr Dernburg, that the alternative of peace would be a renewal of ruthlessness in a form more violent than before; and Mr Swope, editor of the New York World,' who had just returned from Germany, carrying these forebodings with him, gave vent to his anxiety lest such a development might involve the United States.

Meanwhile the Presidential election had come and gone; and Dr. Wilson was firmly seated in the saddle. The plot thickened. On Nov. 20 Cosmos' began to publish his articles in favour of peace-of which more presently-in the 'New York Times'; and next day that paper, hitherto one of the best friends of the Allies, published a leader strongly supporting its correspondent's contention, on the ground that the war was really over. Germany was beaten, and she knew it! Why go on fighting?

The redoubtable Mr Schiff evidently thought the time opportune for making a great stroke. On Nov. 24, at a conference of leaders of the Peace League, he urged the League, in spite of its statement of Oct. 1 (see above), to support immediate intervention. Mr James M. Beck, the eminent defender of the Allied cause, had recently declared that peace now would be 'premature.' This view Mr Schiff dismissed as 'unwise.' 'We would not only be doing our duty (he said), but would gain the friendship of all nations, by moving now for peace.' The condition of things that would supervene upon a war carried on à outrance would be such as to render the efforts of the Peace League for permanent peace of no avail, if they only began after the war. Therefore it was to their interest to press for peace at once. Mr Schiff's proposal does not seem to have met with the approval of the League; and a week later he practically withdrew it, explaining that what he suggested was not immediate peace, but only a discussion of its conditions. That is, indeed, all that Germany proposes.

At the same time, however, Mr. Schiff was forming in New York a branch of the American Neutral Conference Committee, to which we have already referred. The general object of this Committee, in its own words,

is to support our Government in any effort it may make toward a just and lasting peace'; and its specific' object is 'to urge our Government to call or cooperate in a conference of neutral nations which shall offer joint mediation to the belligerents by proposals calculated to form the basis of a permanent peace.' It was with the same object that Congress, before its recent prorogation, added to its Appropriation Bill a vote empowering the President to take steps to summon such a conference, and devoting a sum of money to this purpose. The 'New Republic' aided the movement by an editorial article (Nov. 25) which, in several respects, foreshadowed the coming Note.

'Rumours (it said) that President Wilson intends shortly to take some positive action in favour of peace are rife, and, what is more, they are intrinsically probable. . . . Public opinion throughout the civilised world, both in neutral and belligerent nations, needs above all to know the precise nature of the political objects for which each of the belligerents will continue to fight. . . . We have not as yet been sucked into the war, but our Government has been in ugly controversies with both the Allies and the Central Powers. . . . As long as the war lasts, they are simply insoluble. The American Government will either have to abandon any idea of protecting its citizens, or it will have to make its means of protection more effective. . . . But if we may well be forced to fight, and if by fighting we contribute to the success of one of the two groups of belligerents, we have every reason to enquire what the actual results of the success accomplished by our aid are likely to be. . . . Some positive action by President Wilson in favour of peace is consequently called for by the plain and pressing necessities of American national policy.

'A conference, by defining the terms on which the belligerents would make peace, would furnish our Government with the means of deciding in what way and to what extent its participation in the war could be used to promote, not the national interests of the belligerents, but the common interest in a more secure national order. The 'New Republic" is unable to understand how else this knowledge could be obtained.'

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The whole argument rests on the assertion that the objects of the war are unknown to the Government of

the United States, and that the President cannot decide on his future course of action until the Governments concerned give him the requisite information. This pretence of ignorance had some excuse in the Note; in the 'New Republic' it is mere affectation-or worse.

·

A very similar line is taken in the series of articles, sixteen in number, contributed by Cosmos' to the New York Times' between Nov. 20 and Dec. 18 last. The author is editorially described as 'a distinguished publicist," and is pretty clearly an American citizen. The first article is headed 'All want peace; why not have it now?' and the opening sentence runs thus: 'The time has come to consider whether the war may not shortly be ended by international agreement in which the United States shall participate.' The subsequent argument might be regarded as put out of court by the statement, at the outset, that the question as to what Power is chiefly responsible for the war has become one of merely historical interest'; but, since these articles have evidently attracted considerable attention in the States, it is worth while briefly to examine their contents.

'Cosmos' thinks it clear that Germany and her allies cannot win, and equally clear that the Entente cannot do so except at a cost so heavy that 'victory may be only less disastrous than defeat.' In these conditions he believes that both sides are ready to have conditions of peace pressed on them. Comparing the words of Mr Asquith and Lord Grey with those of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, he finds a practical identity of view, except perhaps on the question of the freedom of the seas. But in this comparison we find a confusion, which we have noticed elsewhere, between the conditions which are to end this war, and the subsequent measures which may ensure a durable peace. The German Chancellor, in the words quoted by Cosmos,' refers to the latter question; Mr Asquith and Lord Grey were speaking of the former. This mistake vitiates the whole argument. Cosmos,' however, seems to think that a conference summoned to end the war can quite easily decide also on measures which will prevent its recurrence. The President seems to think so too. It is a futile idea, already repudiated by the Chancellor himself.

The writer then proceeds to discuss conditions of

peace. His views are interesting as showing what conditions would appear satisfactory to a prominent American authority. He advocates the 'freedom of the seas'-a principle always dear to the heart of Americans -an autonomous Poland, balanced by an autonomous Ireland, the restitution of conquered territories, and the retrocession of Alsace-Lorraine. Russia is to have control of the Straits; the Balkan peoples are to be organised 'on the basis of nationality under an international guarantee'; and a barrier is to be erected against the possible extension of German Machtpolitik to Asia Minor and its adjoining lands.' It all sounds delightfully simple and easy. Such is the author's optimism that he thinks the Central Powers would be willing to let the Poles and the Yugoslavs settle their own fate by plebiscite. Finally, as to the overthrow of German militarism, he devotes a whole article to showing that this is a state of mind' which the Germans must cure for themselves, and that an attempt to destroy it from outside would indefinitely prolong the war. He challenges Mr Asquith's declaration on the subject, being apparently ignorant that the speaker had subsequently explained, quite clearly, that he referred, not to the domestic arrangements of Germany, but to her military domination of Europe.

The remaining articles deal chiefly with arbitration, Hague Conferences, and similar topics, which have nothing whatever to do with the ending of the war. What he says about them is praiseworthy but irrelevant. The confusion already noted is maintained throughout. We have devoted some space to these articles, not because they contribute much of importance to the solution of the grave problems which we have in hand, but because they are typical of certain phases of American thought and feeling. We may regret that utterances to which such prominence has been given should display superficiality of judgment, a shallow and ill-informed optimism, and a strange neglect or misapprehension of the real issues at stake; but it is our business to note the prevalence of this state of mind, and not to minimise its importance for ourselves.

We may hope that the foregoing pages will have thrown some light on the peace campaign in the United

States. But it would be a great mistake not to recognise that such success as it has secured would have been impossible but for other conditions and causes, quite independent of Germany, which of themselves would have sufficed to raise in the States a strong desire for intervention in order to end the war. To these other causes we now turn.

To the widespread pacifism of the United States we have already referred. It forms a fertile ground in which other plants may take root. One of these plants is the dislike of this country, which, always latent in a large part of the population, has been fostered by certain events during the war. While it is doubtless true that the great majority of native-born Americans are more or less strongly in favour of the Allies, principally on account of the wrongs of Belgium, the ubiquity and the force of this sentiment may easily be, and have been, exaggerated. It is strong in the East, especially in New England, but in other parts of that vast country it is largely mixed with indifference or even with hostility. Quite apart from the 'hyphenated,' whether German or Irish, the people of the older stock are by no means always with us. The old leaven of the Revolutionary war still works, kept alive by school-books, and by the occasional rubs of later days. Where the feeling for the Entente is strongest, it is often due to the ancient friendship and admiration for France, rather than to any liking for England, Russia, or even Italy. As for the mass of immigrants from less civilised lands, they are either indifferent or cancel one another. In short, as the N.Y. 'Tribune,' in one of its friendly warnings, pointed out to us, the United States, taken as a whole, are a foreign country; and to call their attitude during the war 'disappointing' is absurd.

To this must be added the ignorance about foreign affairs which prevails, naturally enough, in the Central and Western States, and crops up, sometimes unexpectedly, even elsewhere. The people of the West and Middle West are a long way from Europe; we are apt to forget that New York is further from San Francisco than it is from Falmouth. A democracy is generally ignorant of foreign countries; a democracy so separate and isolated as the American is especially likely to be