kept steadily in view as the goal of the struggle. The statesmen of the Entente powers interpret the spirit in which their nations are fighting and the spirit in which they envisage the problems of peace as that of right and justice. They have set out to overthrow militarism, to disprove the obnoxious axiom that might goes before right. They are not fighting for themselves, but for humanity. They are the defenders of small nationalities. Very well, then. In their agreement not to sign a separate peace the Entente powers must have laid down as the basis of the peace the right of every nation, once freed from the German yoke and the German menace, to decide its own destinies. France and Great Britain are the splendid examples of nations that have developed to their present degree of civilization and enlightenment because they have evolved through many generations into democracies. By arms the two peoples have overthrown their autocrats and defended their soil from alien domination. They have frequently had to repel invaders. Each has tried to conquer the other. Within the memory of the present generation they have been on the verge of war. They have gone through a laborious period of interior assimilation, civil wars, anarchy, that extended through centuries. For Frenchmen and Englishmen to cite the antagonism between the Balkan races and the events of the last thirty years since the power of Turkey was weakened in the Balkan Peninsula as reasons for putting the Balkan States under foreign domination, or "protection," is illogical and unfair. Do they expect babies to become men without passing through the period of childhood, and then, forgetting their own slow, painful, uncertain development, are they going to declare the right of others to potential manhood forfeited because of the faults of childhood? Great Britain could never have become what she is today if France had controlled her destinies. Nor could France have become what she is under British guidance. Do French and British believe that it is equitable to attempt to force Russian domination upon the races of the near East? Certainly not. I can hear now Premier Viviani's ringing words, "Every small nation has the right to live its own life, and it is the glory of France that we are going into this war to defend Serbia and Belgium from the German covetousness"; and Mr. Asquith, "We shall not lay down the sword until we have established a just peace on the basis of the liberty of small nations." In the reconstruction of Europe, if Constantinople is to be regarded in the light of principle and not as a pawn, the great powers, when they come to the peace conference, will adopt the formula of Lord Grey in dealing with the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, just as they will adopt that formula in dealing with Belgium, Poland, and the Slavic elements of Austria-Hungary. Heretofore, in every international conference since the Congress of Vienna set the example of the strong using the weak as pawns, unfortunate subject races have seen their national aspirations discussed and decided wholly on grounds of expediency and of the interest of the big fellows who acted on the principle that might was right. The great powers, after each war, have remade the map of Europe without the slightest regard for the principle of the "free development, in conditions of equality and conformity to their own genius, of all the states, large and small." Poles and Finns, Czechs and Croatians, Serbians and Bulgarians, Greeks and Rumanians, Turks and Arabs, Armenians and Syrians, have seen the lands in which they live and their national aspirations used as pawns. Diplomats have put them forward to block the game of other diplomats, and sacrificed them without compunction, when they thought there was any advantage in doing S e t t mats, even at peace conferences, have spoken beautiful words about the little fellows, but their vote has invariably shown cynical and deliberately calculated selfishness. If there is to be any change in the spirit and in the result of the next peace conference, it will come through the adoption of Lord Grey's noble ideal as a basis of settlement. The great nations will consider the interests of the little nations as they consider their own interests, and they will regard national aspirations and national revendications in the light of principle, judging all alike, and refuse to play weaker nations as pawns. This is idealism, this is humanitarianism, this is self-abnegation; and I suppose many who read these lines. will laugh at what they call my naïveté. But I have a right to view the near-Eastern question from the idealistic point of view, for the Entente powers have struck that key-note. They must hold to it and not be carried away by the lust of conquest. Otherwise their children and ours will weep the bitter tears we are weeping to-day, and bear anew the grievous burdens of the present generation. An exiled Napoleon, and the destruction of a military machine about which things were felt and written a hundred years ago curiously like what is being felt and written to-day, did not bring peace and harmony to Europe. No more will an exiled kaiser and the collapse of the Prussian militarism bring peace in our era. Far be it from me to discount the indignation that demands chastisement and reparation for what has happened since 1914; for I have lived in the midst of the suffering since the first day of the war, and know what it means. But the violation of Belgian neutrality and the brutal reign of terror visited upon an unoffending people through the German invasion were not to me, as to most of those who saw and wrote, unprecedented events in contemporary annals, and the beginning of the horrible precipitation of Europe into hell. It was not a new story. It was another chapter in a story that had been unfolding for years, and of which I have pro been an eye-witness. Only those were surprised and shocked who did not know about the earlier chapters. In 1909, in one city of Asia Minor, I saw within a few days more civilians butchered than have been killed in all of Belgium during two years of war. The Armenians were just as much under the treaty protection of the European powers as were the Belgians. Not a single power that had signed the Treaty of Berlin made an official test to Turkey. From 1909 to 1914 the near East was in a turmoil. What was the attitude of European diplomacy? Disregard of the legitimate aspirations of small nations, indifference to human suffering through war and oppression, the making of every move in negotiations for the advantage of the movers and with never a thought of the interest of the moved. Students of history in the face. of a world war must adopt the attitude of physicians in the face of an epidemic. If physicians limit their attention to specific cases, and think only of curing the disease when it manifests itself, they keep getting new cases. To stamp out the disease they must hunt for the germs. regenerated Germany or a chastised and powerless Germany will in no way destroy the germs that make for war. International diplomacy must be born again in the spirit of Lord Grey's program. International diplomacy must renounce the spirit of self-seeking, and remake Europe in such a way as to "assure the free development, in conditions of equality and conformity to their own genius, of all nations, great and small." A I have confined myself to discussing the principle to be applied in dealing with the question of Constantinople. One is rash who would attempt to set forth a specific solution of the problem that has baffled Europe for a hundred and fifty years. If the Armenians, to whom Europe collectively owes a debt, are gathered into one or the other of their historic lands, between Turks and Russians and Persians, or between Turks and Arabs, their "free development, in conditions of equality and conformity to their own genius." can be assured by the collective guaranty of Europe. The Arabic-speaking peoples of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Arabia, freed from Turkish domination, and put temporarily under European guidance, will evolve in time into an empire of their own. The Turks, limited to Constantinople and Asia Minor, will have more hope of political and economic regeneration than in the past, when they held an amorphous and disorganized empire, and were the victims of rival European ambitions. The states of the Balkan Peninsula should be left to work out their own salvation, as the rest of Europe has done. Is not this the application of the avowed policy of the Entente powers toward small nations? As in the case of Poland, so in the case of the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. The Entente powers in the third year of the Great War have come to the parting of the ways. If they stick by their original program, and hold fast to the ideals that have made their cause precious to lovers of humanity throughout the world, there is glorious hope for the future, and they can expect to keep and increase the sympathy and support of neutral nations -a sympathy and support that grow more precious, invaluable indeed, as the European conflict reaches its climax. But if, on the other hand, they are tempted by lust of conquest engendered in the heat of conflict, or if they yield to expediency, so easily confused with right when every nerve is strained to win, the durable peace becomes a castle in Spain. Lovers of France and the advocates of Anglo-Saxon solidarity ought to urge with all their heart and soul that Constantinople be considered in the light of principle and not as a pawn. It is only one of several issues where a choice has to be made; but Constantinople is in its potentialities the most important issue, and in its unmistakable clearness the test issue. So without breathing I went down the stair, Into the parlor, where the perfumes led. I lit my candle there And held it a long time above my head. There was an oblong box, and at its base As white as they. I thought them very tall And they threw fearful shadows on the wall. I tiptoed to the box, then, silently, To look what death could be; And then I smiled, for it was father who Was sleeping quietly. He dreamed, I think, for he was smiling, too. And all at once I knew death is a thing That stoops down, whispering A dear, forgotten secret in your ear Such as the winds can sing. And then you sleep and dream and have no fear. Perhaps the winds have told the dream to flowers On nights of lonely hours; Perhaps we, too, could learn if we could seek Perhaps the lilies knew, but could not speak. R WEIR CROUCH |