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went with him knowing that he was going to demand of her relentlessly a supreme devotion.

She had wanted power, he was seeking a greater power. She was unscrupulous, but to gain his ends he would have let his children die. She was hard as steel, but Grayson was as relentless as death itself, as relentless as any force of nature. She had loved the most difficult thing, and he challenged her to do the impossible, to let him walk over her heart to gain his purposes in life, and not only to do this, but to be unaware that he even demanded any sacrifice. So, having formed an ideal, she worked toward its fulfilment even though its fulfilment came in a form of which she had not dreamed. That is my explanation.

Mrs. Nevers's is that Vivian fell in love with Grayson's youth, like any schoolgirl, and McAndrew thinks something like the same thing.

"Women can't starve their primitive impulses without paying," is how he put it. "You can't count on them. But that young man will go far. He 'll have to," he added.

The world shared their opinions. It did n't forgive Vivian what it termed her anticlimax, and showed its lack of forgiveness in its deadliest form by losing all interest in her.

Here are the two explanations of the affair. You can take your choice, or Sydney Grayson's, who still naïvely believes that they were intended for each other from all time.

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НЕ

Revelation
By

RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL

E had not made the team. The ultimate momentLast practice for the big game, his senior year— Had come and gone again with dizzying swiftness. It was all over now, and the sudden cheer That rose and swelled to greet the elect eleven Sounded his bitter failure on his ear.

He had not made the team. He was graduating:
The last grim chance was gone, and the last hope fled;

. The final printed list tacked up in the quarters;
A girl in the bleachers turned away her head.
He knew that she was trying to keep from crying;
Under his tan there burned a painful red.

He had not made the team. The family waiting
His wire, up State; the little old loyal town
That had looked to him year by year to make it famous,
And laureled him each time home with fresh renown;
The men from the house there, tense, breathlessly watching,
And, after all, once more, he 'd thrown them down.

He had not made the team, after years of striving;
After all he had paid to try, and held it cheap,—
The sweat and blood and strain and iron endurance,-
And the harassed nights, too aching-tired to sleep;
The limp that perhaps he might be cured of some day;
The ugly scar that he would always keep.

He had not made the team. He watched from the side lines, Two days later, a part of a sad patrol,

Battered and bruised in his crouched, blanketed body,

Sick and sore to his depths, and aloof in dole,

Until he saw the enemy's swift advancing

Sweeping his team-mates backward. Then from his soul Was cleansed the sense of self and the sting of failure,

And he was one of a pulsing, straining whole, Bracing to stem the tide of the on-flung bodies, Helping to halt that steady, relentless roll;

Then he was part of a fighting, frenzied unit

Forcing them back and back and back from the goal. There on the side lines came the thought like a whip-crack As his team rallied and rose and took control:

He had not made the team, but for four long seasons,
Each of ten grinding weeks, he had given the flower,
The essence, and strength of body, brain, and spirit,
He and his kind-the second team-till the power

To cope with opposition and to surmount it
Into the team was driven against this hour!

What did it matter who held fast to the leather,

He or another? What was a four-years' dream?

Out of his heart the shame and rancor lifted;

There burst from his throat a hoarse, exultant scream.
Not in the fight, but part of it, he was winning!
This was his victory: he had made the team!

The American Pharisee

By JAMES DAVENPORT WHELPLEY Author of "The Trade of the World," "British Characteristics," etc.

HERE is a spirit of smugness abroad

THE

in our fair land of America that bodes ill for our spiritual and mental growth. In the Eastern States there is much talk of war contracts, the profits therefrom, and speculation as to what the price of so-called war stocks will be tomorrow and the next day. When a WallStreet man asks another, "How long will the war last?" he does not mean how soon will the bloodshed and misery come to an end and people be allowed to live normal lives; he means in most cases how long will the boom in munition industrials continue.

On the Pacific coast and in the Middle West hundreds of lecturers are visiting the towns, villages, and picnic-groves, and these eloquent speakers are addressing the conventions and meetings of all kinds incident to the summer season. By word of mouth and in the printed text we are being told what a great and good people we are, how rich we are, how safe we are from the wars that ravage other countries. We are praised for our charity, our ideals, and our patience. We are told that our example is one for the world to follow-one the world will follow as soon as it sees the light given off by an exclusively American flame.

Never was a great nation in more deadly peril from within than ours at this particular moment. Americans have laughed at German egoism, have scoffed at the superman of Germany, but nothing that has been said by German publicists is as dangerous to the mind of the great German nation as the gross flattery and mental pap that are now being handed out to the millions of American citizens, their wives, and their children who seek

to add to their knowledge and enlightenment at our summer gatherings.

Any one reading what is written or listening to what is said would believe it was through the exercise of some great virtue not given to other nations that this country is as prosperous and peaceful as it is. The people who swallow this flattery. return to their homes in an exalted state of mind, thank God that the American nation is not as other peoples, and their hearts are full of pity for those foreign communities which cannot be as we are. We prate of the principles underlying the American Government; we quote Washington's Farewell Address to stiffen our argument for an insularity that will deafen our ears to the din in Europe. We see nothing but slaughter in the European cockpit, and fail to thrill with the greatness of the conflict there in progress, of which the killing of men is only an outward sign.

We are indeed a rich and satisfied nation, momentarily annoyed at the check given to our own prosperity by war elsewhere, but thoroughly convinced of our own righteousness, and content with our own condition. We constitute at present the greatest mutual-admiration society the world has ever seen, and, like all such organizations, are blind to our own great shortcomings and our own follies. Even the first flush of our charity is fading away, and our work for the stricken people of Belgium and the sick and wounded of all Europe is in a fair way to cease for lack of funds.

One eminently respectable American citizen, formerly a member of a President's cabinet, proposes that a fund of one hundred billion dollars be raised and used

as a bribe to persuade Germany to leave Belgium, as though such a thing were feasible, logical, or just from any point of view, and as though the war in Europe. were a struggle for the possession of such money as was now in circulation throughout the world. Another eminent American, still more recently a member of the cabinet, quotes the Scriptures to his spellbound audience to prove that the only way to prevent a burglar from looting your house is to leave your doors and windows open, and carefully refrain from having any weapons of defense upon the place. Moral force carries to a certain point, but beyond that point it is necessary to employ a police force. The hand of the traffic policeman is backed by the power of the government, or it would be as powerless to regulate as his individual strength would be to stop a motor-car. This is the reason why thousands of thoughtful Americans are in favor of putting our national defenses upon a workable basis.

Three obsessions have apparently taken hold of our people, or a large number of them. One is that the war in Europe is merely a "rough house" in which a number of nationalities are involved, having divested themselves of all pretense to the restraining influences of civilization, and that it is only the superior intelligence and morality of the American people that have kept us from joining the fracas.

Another idea that has apparently taken hold of the minds of the people is the assumption that America is furnishing the munitions of war for the struggle, and that if we put an embargo on these shipments, the war will stop. It is worth while elaborating this particular point, for it is illuminating as to the lack of knowledge, thought, and reasoning power which we bring to the consideration of affairs other than those touched by our daily lives. Careful estimates show that the money expended in the United States for munitions of war is a very small percentage of the total cost of such material to the warring nations, and with the daily expansion of European production, it is probable that in a short time all the coun

tries involved could continue their military operations without embarrassment even if America ceased to export.

Really to affect the situation in Europe, our country would have to put an embargo upon all exports, to prevent food, raw material, and general supplies from reaching the belligerents. Such drastic action as this is not even suggested by those who would stop ammunition export, and these same people would probably be the first to protest against an interference with what they would call legitimate trade. The support given President Wilson in his demand for freedom of the seas for non-contraband and neutral traffic is proof of this, for non-contraband goods are as valuable in a general way to a people at war as are actual munitions of war.

The moral stand taken by those who advocate an embargo is equally unreal, for if it is wrong to send shot and shell to peoples fighting one another, it is equally wrong to send them in times of peace. There is no protest being made against the large amount of supplies now going to Spain, and yet there is no guaranty that Spain will not soon engage in the war. Even if this does not come to pass, these same munitions may be used against those striving to establish a republic in that country. Munitions of war bought in times of peace are for use in case of future wars; indeed, there is no guaranty that they will not be used against the country. from which they are purchased. This is true of the present war, for before it began every one of the European countries bought war material from the others.

The only tenable position for the advocates of an embargo is that no munitions of war should be manufactured for sale at any time; that it should be a government monopoly, to be exercised only in arming our own people. Then again comes the question of definition of terms, for barbed wire, cotton, flax, oil, motors, and a thousand other things are as much war material as powder and shot, as is shown by the contraband lists of the warring nations. There are probably twelve million or more people now engaged in Europe in

the manufacture of war material. These figures alone demonstrate the small percentage furnished by America, and if ammunition and guns are considered as our only immoral exports, the percentage becomes inconsiderable. Germany, England, France, Italy, and all the other combatants are now getting supplies of one kind or another from America, the relative amounts being determined by shipping facilities.

It is said that about three million petitions have reached Washington asking for an embargo upon the export of munitions of war. It would be interesting to know just how many of the signers of these petitions have ever given any real thought to the question, or would be able to draft a resolution for Congress to enact which would draw the line between moral and immoral export even from their own point of view as to the object to be accomplished.

The greatest obsession of all, however, one in which lies the greatest spiritual danger to our own people, is the unthinking cry for peace; not a peace which settles anything, that guarantees any rights, that does justice or affords rehabilitation to the oppressed, that prevents other wars in the immediate future, but just peacepeace at any price. We would have all lay down their arms; and if some one else was occupying their old homes, for them to find homes and happiness elsewhere.

If by any chance the United States was engaged in this war, and the enemy, whoever it might be, had invaded our territory, damaged our property, and killed many thousands of our citizens, and at this juncture came a demand from neutral nations elsewhere that we should stop fighting to put an end to bloodshed, there is no question as to the answer the American people would give to such a suggestion. It would be a unanimous and indignant refusal. Those very peace-advocates who are now vigorously shouting forth their amiability would be found either volunteering for war if they were men, or helping in every other way within their great power if they were women.

In the earlier history of the United States, and then again not so long ago, the women of America denied themselves everything that their men might serve their country in arms, and, when needed, they stood behind the barricades and loaded the guns themselves that the triumph of what they believed to be right. and just should come the sooner. No great people has ever been too proud to fight for conviction, especially the American nation. Our history would not be what it is had we lacked the manhood and the womanhood to use force when it was needed.

To many of our people, in fact to a majority, this war means merely the mental picture of a horribly mutilated and dying soldier or a burning home. We are aghast with horror, as in the presence of a terrible railway accident. It is the only thing we seem able to visualize. We are angry because there is a war, but at whom we are angry we know only vaguely. It is the anger of a man who is disagreeably interrupted when he is having a good time.

That the German people are engaged heart and soul, with everything at stake, in an effort to extend the power of the German Empire; that the people of Great Britain and her colonies are putting forth the last man and the last dollar to save for themselves their own empire, already great; that the French have enlisted every man, woman, and child to rid French soil of a hated invader; and that one and all of the peoples at war are now fighting to retain possession of what they believe to be their rights and property, do not enter into the philosophy of our American peace-makers.

Our people are being robbed of their power to think, which is at least latent in the mind of every intelligent human being. Our educational system, the public press, with some few exceptions, our movingpicture shows, and our public speakers have so long administered anesthetics to our minds that the possibility of a contentious individualism, a sign of mental independence, becoming a national trait has

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