sympathetic encouragement, and the public houses in the neighborhood of soldier camps did a thriving business.

Fights, riots, outrages against the peace of neighborhoods became frequent. Tremendous scandals affecting certain troop centers were whispered about, but only whispered, since the newspapers generally kept quiet for reasons of public policy. Men were shot, run over by trains and motor-cars, curfews had to be established to gather girls and women into their homes at an early hour, and grave breaches of military discipline were reported. Lord Kitchener issued a personal appeal to soldiers to refrain from liquor and to citizens not to buy drinks for soldiers. Public houses were ordered not to open until nine A.M. and to close at ten P.M. This led to wails of discontent from the brewers and publicans; on the other hand many letters to the press came from those who saw that this was only a half-way measure. A few, very few, military commanders of districts where martial law prevailed closed the public houses over which they had any jurisdiction. Conditions did not improve materially, however, and the state of affairs on November 26, nearly four months after war began, is best shown in a letter to the press from Mrs. Frances E. J. Parker, a sister of Lord Kitchener:

The letters I have already addressed to the press pleading with the nation on behalf of our soldiers have brought me a large correspondence revealing the widespread mischief that is going on at the present time.

In the House of Commons it was said that between thirty and forty per cent. of our new soldiers are being rendered inefficient through drink and its attendant evils. The Prime Minister admitted from ten to fifteen per cent. If the country were placed under martial law there is no doubt whatever that the military authorities would immediately and drastically change all this. It is surely encumbent upon the people of this country to take the necessary steps to secure, through Parliament, the same end.

A great national demonstration in the Albert Hall would bring home to politicians

of all parties the need for prompt action. Would it not be possible for the House of Commons to agree by consent of all parties to do away with intoxicants during the war? Russia has done it, France has done it; why not Britain?

The above letter is specially interesting in that it comes from a close relative of Lord Kitchener, and it is not doing violence to what this lady says to draw the inference that if Lord Kitchener had the power which would be his if the whole country was put under martial law, he would enforce prohibition upon the whole or at least a large part of the United Kingdom for the time being. His career in the past warrants the assumption that he would make and enforce any regulations he thought best for the army, regardless of interests or politics.

When the party in power admits through the prime minister that from ten to fifteen per cent. of the soldiers are rendered inefficient through drink, there must be some vital reason why the country or at least the military camps and their neighborhoods are not made prohibition areas; and there is a reason, in fact there are several reasons, not one of which is brought forward in parliamentary debate or in the press, for they affect too closely the political and social life of the nation.

In the first place the right to drink is a privilege so ingrained in the British character that many of the people who are now writing letters to the papers and otherwise protesting against drunkenness among the soldiers would be among those who would promptly rebel against a prohibition order which in any way affected themselves. There is no doubt also that if teetotalism were known to be compulsory upon all recruits, the response to the call for volunteers would be dishearteningly small, especially among the poorer people. The intelligent man who enlists because his country is in danger and needs his services will do so despite any and all personal inconveniences to himself. The man who enlists because he is out of work, because he is shamed into it, or from some

other exterior pressure and without full knowledge of what all the row is about,and this accounts for a very large number of enlistments in any country, is not going to deprive himself of his beer in addition to undergoing other known hardships; certainly not if he is an Englishman.

Behind all this, sinister in its real meaning, is the influence of the brewers, political and financial. The brewers and the publicans, who are their dependents, prospered at first through a state of war. Then came the order for later opening and earlier closing, and this checked their new-found prosperity. Their complaints were loud and bitter. They were the only people in England who did not with more or less cheerfulness accommodate themselves to the restrictions made necessary by war. Close upon this came an announcement from the police that drunkenness and crime among women had suddenly increased to a marked degree. This was found to be due to the allowance of about three dollars per week made by the Government to the wife of a soldier and the five dollars weekly pension given to a widow. The three dollars a week more than equaled the former net earning power of the man; with no man to take his toll of the wage or to be fed, life became one unending round of no work and frequent visits to the public houses, while, if she was a widow, the money received represented comparative luxury to many a woman. If the soldier's wife is possessed of children, the Government allows her an additional sum at the rate of about sixty cents for each child. Several years ago a law was enacted forbidding the admission of children to places where drinks were sold. This law was the result of an agitation against the very common practice among the poor of taking the young children into the "pubs" and giving them gin or beer to keep them quiet. Since the law went into effect, some doubt has been thrown upon the complete utility of the measure, as experience has shown that in many cases the children are now locked up at home to starve or freeze, or are left shivering outside, while their mothers go

to the public house and enjoy the warmth. within. It will take more than indirect measures to protect the children of the English poor from the evils of drink-besotted parentage.

As a temporary war measure, women are now admitted to public houses only within certain limited hours. All of these measures have been accepted by the brewers and their selling agents, the publicans, as uncalled-for attacks upon their business.

Then came Lloyd George with his war budget of two and a half billion dollars and his scheme for raising new revenue. The income tax was to be doubled, that is, increased from ninepence in the pound to a shilling and sixpence, or seven and a half per cent. of everybody's earned income over $800. Tea was to pay an increased duty of six cents per pound. Tobacco shared in the toll-taking, and the tax on beer was raised from about $1.90 per barrel to about $4.30. The British people simply grinned; said they knew it was coming, and not a voice was raised in protest. In fact, a Labor member of Parliament rose to express his opinion that now was the time to put a tax on wages, so that the working-people could carry a share of the burden. His action was indorsed by the labor-unions. Did the brewers give thanks to the Government for their share of what was to be done? Not a bit of it. They immediately met in solemn conclave and raised the price of beer in the barrel, not only by the amount of the tax, but with an extra charge to cover an estimated loss of business through early closing and through the barring of women from public bars during certain hours of the day, while retailers were authorized to charge an extra halfpenny, or one cent, on every half-pint of beer, to cover the loss incurred through raising the wholesale price and shorter business hours.

In addition to these measures, vigorous protest was made to the Government against the tax. It is highly illuminating to note that not only did the British politicians and the public see nothing humorous or out of the way in this, but in a few days the Government announced that it

had decided to soften the blow to the brewers, and that the proposed tax would be put on gradually, the full amount not being assessed until 1917. The Government also called attention to the fact that the tax would not be quite so heavy as it appeared, for it applied to barrels of beer with a specific gravity of 55, whereas much beer sold was so much lighter that the ultimate tax on a barrel of such liquor would not be above $4.00. This is not a pleasant story, and it is almost incredible from an American point of view. It must be looked at from the British point of view, for it is the British people who not only endure, but also indorse it.

Political partiality to the brewers is easily explained. To many of the wellknown names in the brewing world are now tacked titles of varying value. The services of these men to their country have been no greater and no less than those of thousands of other wealthy and publicspirited Englishmen, but their contributions to party funds have been notoriously large, and their influence with the voters in certain constituencies is naturally formidable. That the weight of this influence would be exerted against any decree of prohibition in the British army is undoubtedly true. However, it would be unfair not to say that the long-established, deep-rooted principle of personal liberty, which means the right to take a drink when occasion demands and the price is in the pocket, is the most serious obstacle in the path of temperance reform in the army. The man who takes a glass occasionally rebels against his personal comfort being interfered with because some one else is liable to drink too much.

When the order closing the public houses of the country an hour or so earlier than usual went into effect, the newspapers printed columns of letters protesting against this restriction. The order was issued to force the publican to turn the soldiers out at an hour which would enable them to get back to camp or barracks and fit themselves for the coming day's work. The majority of the protests were from those who complained that when

they happened to want a drink before they went to bed they could not get it; and all because some soldiers in fit condition were needed by a nation at war for its very existence!

The English nation as a whole is of temperate habit and restrained life. It is only as special classes are considered that the charge of excessive drinking can justly be made. The lower one goes in the social scale, the more alcohol takes a progressively larger place in the dietary, and usurps the position which should be held by nourishing food. The fetish of personal liberty, however, is not placed higher in the esteem of those who drink too much than it is among those who drink but little. In fact, it may be said that the intelligent, self-restrained Englishman of the better class is a greater stickler for what he considers his personal rights than his unintelligent and perhaps besotted fellowcitizen. In other words, for generations he and his forefathers have assumed the right to give the mass of the people the kind of government that he thought was best for them, and incidentally for himself, so that he has judged the liquor question according to his own needs, tastes, and ideas without realizing that he was undermining the foundations of his own liberty. He has treated the poor as unthinking, unintelligent human beings, thus helping to make and keep them so, and at the same time has expected them to exercise intelligent self-control in the vital matter of the use of alcoholic drink. In brief, the ruling class, which is the same now as it has always been, is responsible for the drinking habit of the people and its dire effects. Hence it is responsible for the difficulties which now confront the authorities in handling a body of nearly two million men who are concentrated in camps and removed from all restraining influences of home or business life. Many of these men are young, piteously young to serve as cannon fodder, and the example of the older men is not always good.

A soldier's life is not conducive to the gentler virtues, and the heroes of war ofttimes fail most miserably to live up to

heroic standards in private and peaceful life. Lord Kitchener's sister asks why England cannot do what has been done so promptly and effectively in Russia and France, for the latter country has also stopped the sale of liquors which rob soldiers of their efficiency. The answer is to be found, first, in the social and, secondly, in the political system of the country. It is not to be expected that there will soon be any great change among the people, for men "must die that England live" not only in the military sense, but for a social and political regeneration, which may come some day, or perhaps not at all. The English race always gives the impression that, in its conflict with the centuries, it will go down to defeat defiant rather than conform to new ideas.

It is the good-will of the working-men that put the Liberal party in power, and this must be retained if the party is to remain in office. The fact that a Liberal government took away their beer would settle the fate of that party with a large part of the voters. "'E took away yer beer" would be a slogan which would carry the opposition to victory.

A plan of action which would naturally occur to an American would not be that of Russia or of France. It would probably be to convert the camps and their surroundings into prohibition areas for the time, to punish drunkenness severely, and restrict leave, as the necessities of temperance might demand. American public opinion would support such action now, as it has on past occasions; the soldiers would expect it; it would have little or no effect upon enlistment; and the liquor interests would not be so destitute of a sense of humor as to make public protest, no matter how much private effort they might make to soften the blow to themselves. It

does not take much imagination to realize what would happen to them at the hands of the public should they openly attempt to stand in the way of a temperance movement for the army.

Conditions are fundamentally different in England, however. In England it is a problem of amazing complexity, socially and politically, and only a solution of sorts, and of a most expedient character, can now be attempted. In the meantime the English people will "muddle through" this bog of conflicting interests in the same dogged and marvelous way they have through other situations even more severe in their test of character. The glaring weaknesses of the British national structure are as search-lights playing upon a strength always underestimated by the superficial observer and ofttimes by those who have had full opportunity to weigh it well.

No nation ever ran truer to type, and no nation ever merited more fully the characterization of a bull-dog. They are not pretty to look upon as a whole, but the red-hot iron of adversity is powerless to loosen their hold. They have eliminated the possibility of defeat from their calculations to-day, as they always have, and Tommy Atkins, drunk or sober, his "not to reason why," will again stand effectively between his country and the enemy. It is all the more remarkable that this should be so when it is considered that in all the centuries of English law-making a real system of free education has been denied to the people. They have been encouraged, indirectly at least, both men and women, to look to the dram shop for their only happiness, comfort, and entertainment. No blame attaches to the many who now do likewise, for its alternative is hunger, cold, and lonely misery.

HE traveler in old Russia finds no

THE

more interesting place than the Kremlin at Moscow, that collection of the memorials of East's contacts with West through many centuries. In the Kremlin he will find no more pathetic relics than those which testify to the victory of Russia in the long rivalry that decided whether the great power of eastern and northern Europe should be Russia or Poland.

Russia won, and in sign thereof may be seen, in a wonderful carved casket in the Kremlin museum, the Constitution of the Polish Kingdom, adopted May 3, 1791. The American traveler will bethink himself that there is a striking proximity of this date to that of the adoption of our own Federal charter. If he pursues the subject, he will discover that the Polish Constitution of 1791 was, as nearly as it might well be made, an adaption to Poland's conditions of the Constitution of the United States of America, submitted by the convention at Philadelphia on September 17, 1787.

To-day that Polish Constitution is a relic in a Russian museum, testimony to the last effort of an expiring nationality to deserve perpetuation. It recalls that the fires of the American Revolution of 1775 and the French Revolution of 1789 found reflection in the skies of eastern Europe. But it was too late for Poland. Torn by factional dissensions, victim of the intrigues of more stable neighbors, menaced by the rising Russia at the east, the covetous Austria in the west, the ambitious Germany in the north, and the

rapacious Turks in the south, Poland fell in the moment of the finest inspiration that had marked all its pitiful career as a nation. The first child of democratic genius among Slavic peoples was stricken down as the penalty for too early disclosing his talents to a sordid world.

For the memorials of Poland in its power and glory we may go to ancient Cracow, where the ashes of a long line of kings lie in the great cathedral which is both the Westminster Abbey and the Valhalla of the lost nation; but for the present-day testimonies that the spirit and purpose of a Polish nation yet survive, we must visit the Swiss village of Rapperswil, where for safety's sake the patriots of the disinherited race have set up their national museum.

But Poland's is not all a story of martyrdom. It is also a story of the tragedy of retribution. It may well be doubted whether Poland ever possessed in any single generation the attributes of a true nation. It was ruled by a land-owning aristocracy which tried to keep the king from getting too much power, and at the same time insisted that the people should not get any. The Polish aristocracy succeeded where other medieval aristocracies failed, and its success was Poland's ruin. The king was kept a figurehead, isolated from the mass of people largely by reason of the Polish custom of electing kings. It all looked very democratic; but in fact it merely served to keep aliens or weaklings. on the throne much of the time. Thus suppressing the king and oppressing the people, the aristocracy became a military