Puslapio vaizdai
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The cathedral viewed from the tower of St. Pierre. In the foreground and at the right edge of the picture may be seen towers of the old Roman wall

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Gateway of the ancient château fortress at Montépelloy, near Senlis

that life was, after all, not so much shorter than art, that Senlis would not change one whit in fifty years, and that I might finish my interrupted sketch next day or next year or ten years hence.

As I walked through the dusk I came to a very modern inn, dead white and businesslike and utterly out of keeping with the rest of the town. It seemed to say, "Leave romance and color and come to pork chops and beer!"

ON an autumn evening in 1915, I entered the twenty-centuries old town of Senlis. I sat in the front seat of a war ambulance, which passed the gates only

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after a searching examination by the unshaven, sweaty, war-worn French sentries who held a barrier-fort across the road. "C'est que ces sals Boches ont tout brûlé 'vant d'partir, 'puis ils ont fusillé le maire," they cried after us as we left them and sped down the hilly cobbled main street, through the wrecked, charred shell of the former town of Senlis. Chimneys and scarred wall-fragments stood out against the sky, while among them lay black ashes, like dust within the ribs of a skeleton. We looked straight through these ribs at the red sun setting into the hills behind. As we rode through the dusk we came to the very modern inn, dead white and businesslike and utterly out of keeping

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Ruins of the Château de Thiers at Senlis. Tourists who pass hurriedly

through the country may ascribe to the Germans many

ruins that date from a much earlier period

with the rest of the town of Senlis. It had been the headquarters of the officers of the German general staff. The chef told us stories of their brutality and arrogance. The house of pork chops and beer had been passed over uninjured and unscathed, while the town of romance and color had disappeared in flames.

ΤΗ

Ireland and the War

By F. SHEEHY SKEFFINGTON

HE extraordinary cleverness of English diplomacy, which contrasts so strikingly with German clumsiness in that department, is nowhere more manifest than in the manner in which it has contrived to blanket Ireland-to make the world forget that there is such a place, and to eliminate it wholly from the discussion of the rights of small nationalities, about which England is now so enthusiastic. Yet Ireland's claim to independence is as good as that of Belgium or Poland.

England has so successfully hypnotized the world into regarding the neighboring conquered island as an integral part of Great Britain that even Americans gasp at the mention of Irish independence. Home rule they understand, but independence! "How could Ireland maintain an independent existence?" they ask. "How could you defend yourselves against all the great nations?" I do not feel under any obligation to answer this question, because that objection, if recognized as valid, would make an end of the existence of any small nationality whatever. All of them, from their very nature, are subject to the perils and disadvantages of independent sovereignty. I neither deny nor minimize these. But the consensus of civilized opinion is now agreed that they are entirely outweighed by the benefits which complete self-government confers upon the small nation itself, and enables it to confer on humanity. If the reader will not admit this, I will not stay to argue the matter with him. I will merely refer him to the arguments in vogue in favor of the independence of Belgium as against Germany, or of the Scandinavian countries as against Russia.

Neither will I stop to argue with those who say that Ireland should be content with home rule. Ireland has not got home rule, and, unless England is sufficiently humbled in this war to make Ireland's

friendship worth buying, is not likely to get it. But what if it had? Bohemia has home rule within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Is Bohemia contented? It is notorious that the great mass of the Czechs are eagerly longing for the moment when Russia will inflict such a blow upon the Austro-Hungarian Empire as may enable Bohemia to become an independent central European state. Again, if Bohemia, why not Ireland?

There is an idea in some quarters, sedulously encouraged by England, with an eye on the friendship of the United States, that whatever may have been the case in the past, the English Government in Ireland has improved of late years. Let us therefore examine its conduct in Ireland during the months immediately preceding the war.

A Liberal government was in office in England, pledged to give home rule to Ireland. On the strength of that pledge, Mr. John Redmond and his party kept that government in power for over four years, and enabled it to pass not merely the act for curbing the power of the House of Lords, but other measures, such as the National Insurance Act, in which Ireland had no interest or which were actually detrimental to Ireland. In Ulster Sir Edward Carson led, armed, and drilled a body of 80,000 men, pledged to resist by force the enactment of home rule. Their drilling and arming were in themselves unlawful; their avowed object was still more so, involving defiance of the enactments of that imperial Parliament to which they professed the utmost loyalty. Nevertheless, the Liberal government allowed this open propaganda of rebellion, this aristocratically led and financed movement, to proceed unchecked.

After two years of this, the nationalists of the South awoke. After all, they said, we outnumber these Carsonites by about

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