made Burr's cause their own and did everything to shield him. He had never been a Federalist; but this shifty soldier of fortune had a way of enlisting the sympathies of every party in turn. Jefferson took a deep, some thought a vindictive, interest in the trial; but if personal dislike entered into it, he did not let it interfere to the hurt of others. "Remove the major!" he exclaimed, when urged to retaliate upon an officer at Richmond who opened his house to Burr's friends. "Remove the major! I would sooner divide my last hoe-cake with him.”

Again at liberty, Burr went to Baltimore; but, feeling the chill of public sentiment against him, made a hurried departure for England. The story of his wanderings abroad, of his return to America and of his existence in ostracized poverty until death released him at the age of eighty, reads like some grim masterpiece of fiction. Whatever the portion of malefactors beyond the tomb, that thirty years' martyrdom in the flesh, within sight of those he had hoodwinked and those he had envied, ought to count as no small part of his final expiation. Success, had it been possible, would have made him Emperor of Mexico; death as a traitor would still have been attended with some splendor and renown: but the sordid existence to which he was condemned for more than a quarter of a century had in it not one drop of balm.

Yet he bore his reverses, as he had his success, with a malevolent grace all his own. One cannot help admiring his courage after all zest had died out of "the adventure." For at first there was zest in the game. He cut an attractive figure abroad in society, sometimes under a borrowed name, sometimes under his own. Invited at last to leave London, he had the audacity to claim that he was a British subject, which so puzzled the cabinet that they referred it to the law officers, thereby granting him a respite of some months. Afterward he wandered through Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, always asked to move on, growing daily poorer. Learning that Napoleon had given his

consent to the independence of Mexico, he hurried to Paris, to meet with studied coldness and have his passports refused at the instigation of the American minister. It was here that he received that oftquoted message from Talleyrand, "Say to Colonel Burr that I will receive him tomorrow; but tell him also that General Hamilton's likeness always hangs over my mantel," and even Burr's effrontery was not enough to carry him to the interview.

Americans living in Paris would have nothing to do with him. One of them, however, lent him a little money upon which to live through the chill of a Parisian winter. His letters to his daughter, infrequent for lack of wherewithal to pay postage, mocked at want. "How sedate and sage one is with only three sous!" he wrote, recounting gaily the subterfuges by which he sought to outwit poverty. When remittances came he indulged in all sorts of speculation in the hope of recouping his fortune, invading for this purpose the opening fields of science and mechanics. His restless mind was as eager in these directions as that of Jefferson, with this important difference: Burr thought of them with himself as the center and beneficiary, while Jefferson's interest was philosophic and personal.

In one of his rare moments of affluence Burr ordered a new set of false teeth, became intimate with the operator, watched the process closely, and when permission was finally given him to sail for America, bought and carried with him a thousand artificial teeth as a speculation. But the French ship on which he sailed had the bad luck to be captured by the British, and he found himself in London instead of America, with this strange luggage as his only asset. He placed his newly acquired knowledge at the disposal of his hosts, but they patriotically spurned the idea of having anything to do with French teeth.

Reaching America at last under a name not his own, he made his way in wig and ill-fitting coat to the custom-house to get permission to land his effects. The official

But

on duty proved to be the son of an old enemy who would gladly have reported his arrival; and when his books were opened, all bore the name of Burr, instead of the Arnot he had just signed. there was no need for his elaborate precautions; he and his misdeeds were forgotten. War had just been declared against England; even his two largest creditors had no eyes for his return. It was humiliating, but convenient. He slipped into an unimportant law practice in New York City. Clay, meeting him, refused his proffered hand; and as such rebuffs were repeated, he drew more and more into himself.

Then came the great sorrow of his life. His daughter, sailing from Charleston to join him, fell a victim to one of the unexplained tragedies of the ocean. There were weeks of suspense; but when the last slender thread of hope was broken, he put away everything that could remind him of the one being he had really loved, and bore his grief in silence. He sank lower and lower in the professional scale into mere pettifogging practice. Women took care of him out of pity, as they had before out of love. He could make love even yet. In a last effort to mend his fortune he persuaded a rich widow to marry him. They soon parted, and when paralysis claimed him three years before his death, it was in the home of a humble and kindly matron that he awaited the final summons.

It is a sordid story, and morally quite

what he deserved; but it is a sad story, too, with enough of doubt in it to indulge the hope that the blackest charge against his name is false-that he did not deliberately plot to break up the Union for his own personal glory. He denied this at his trial, and in old age in the very presence of death. He admitted plotting revolution in Mexico, but as for the other, he asserted hotly that he would as soon have thought of dividing the moon among his friends.

Feeling against Mexico was in the air. Jackson's eagerness to cross the border never called forth serious reproach. The time came when the feeling could no longer be restrained. Burr's biographer described him lying a paralytic, eyes blazing, newspaper in hand, when war was finally declared. "There! You see," he exclaimed, "I was right. I was only thirty years too soon. What was treason in me is patriotism now."

The final estimate of a man may not agree with even his honest opinion of himself, and it is possible that this being of strangely warped and gifted nature was sincere in his own villainies, the victim of his own talents and eccentricities. Since the Almighty works with what to the finite mind seem such very poor tools, it ill becomes fellow-mortals to usurp day of judgment power; but it seems strange indeed that Destiny could not have used his youthful military talents and spared a bullet for him in some brilliant brush with the enemy.

War will wonder whether reform is altogether what it wanted. There will be more saddle galls and less fatty degeneration of the heart.

We want an army of 150,000 regulars and 200,000 reservists, all fit and well trained, and a navy second in numbers to none but England's and superior to all in efficiency, composed largely of coastdefense vessels. Then we need fear no invasion from either Europe or Asia. Very truly yours,

JAMES B. LATIMER.

Mr. Eric Fisher Wood.

December 7, 1915.

My dear Mr. Latimer:

I acknowledge your letter of November 27, which is easily the most sensible among several scores that I have recently received from anti-preparationists.

I find that the vast majority of those who, like yourself, oppose the attainment by the United States of adequate military preparedness do so only because they have not yet given the matter careful thought, and have not taken pains to examine the facts and statistics bearing upon the subject. Nine anti-preparationists out of ten abandon their cause and become firm advocates of adequate preparedness as soon as they have put aside sentimental prejudices and dispassionately considered the facts. To-day thousands are preparationists who yesterday were anti-preparationists. I myself am one of the converted. I hope that you also will modify your conclusions when I have proved to you that every one of the premises stated in your letter is incorrect.

I have never intimated that England or Germany are on a parity as regards either number of ships or total tonnage of merchant marine. I am quite aware that Great Britain has four times the ship capacity that Germany possesses. I did state that either nation would be able to land 450,000 troops on our Atlantic seaboard within two weeks' time, using only half its merchant ships. This is true, as I will be seen below. Great Britain could perhaps do better than that, or, on the

other hand, her larger number of ships might not more than balance Germany's more thorough preparation and her wellknown efficiency in the movement of troops.

You state that at the outbreak of the present war Germany possessed only 2,350,000 tons of ocean-going ships. Lloyd's Register for 1914-15 credits her with 5,090,331 tons of steel merchant ships. The regulations of the German army do not, however, permit the use of steamers of less than 2000 tons for the transportation of troops; of such ships Germany possesses, according to Lloyd's Register for 1914, 4,018,185 tons.

The Japanese Field Service Regulations specify that three gross tons are sufficient to transport a man and all necessary equipment and supplies, no matter what the size of the ship. In the United States Field Service Regulations for 1914, page 208, we find the following:

On this basis it is plainly seen that half of Germany's marine ships of over 2000 tons displacement could easily accommodate 450,000 men.

Before the present war there were many theories as to how long it would take Germany to mobilize after she had declared war on France. In point of fact, inside the German border and ranged parallel with the boundary of Belgium a large German army was marking time before any declaration of war, and at that moment needed only to be given the word to step across the border. It is certainly not unreasonable to suppose that Germany 1 According to the exigencies of the situation

might embark her men before she chose to declare war against America.

The speed of a transport fleet is not controlled by the slowest unit, since transports travel in groups according to their speed. Moreover, Lloyd's Register for 1914-15 shows that there is not a single ship of over 2000 tons in the entire German merchant marine which does not possess speed enough to cross the Atlantic Ocean in twelve days.

You state that Germany has found it impossible to maintain an army in Russia three hundred miles from her own frontier. Even the daily newspapers show that she has not only done so for three months past, but continues to do so at present.

It is interesting to note that you imply that three thousand miles of water was all that has kept the kaiser from "having at us." Five times three thousand miles of water did not keep him from "having at" China.

I cannot agree with you that General Wood is a political general. He has been for twenty-nine years an army-officer, having received his commission in 1886, at which time he was made lieutenant in the medical corps. He showed great ability during campaigns against the Indians, and for his services in the Apache campaign was awarded the medal of honor, which is an equivalent of the British Victoria Cross and is the highest military award in the gift of the United States. In 1898 he had reached the grade of captain, the same rank which Ulysses Grant held at the beginning of the Civil War. Officers in the medical corps of the army have in war-time the same right to win promotion to the higher ranks as have officers in other branches of the service. At the beginning of the Spanish War, General Wood was by President McKinley appointed colonel of volunteers. He won promotion to the rank of brigadiergeneral of volunteers while in the field in Cuba. Five months after he was made major-general of volunteers by President McKinley for efficient and meritorious

service. Later President McKinley made

him brigadier-general in the regular army, and in 1903 he was made major-general of regulars by President Roosevelt. He is considered by fellow-members of his profession to be the most capable general officer in America.

A large part of the liberal appropriations made by Congress has been spent by congressmen and civil secretaries on useless pork-barrel army-posts and useless pork-barrel navy-yards. West Point was not rebuilt; it was enlarged. Lord Kitchener says that West Point is the greatest military school in the world.

As to the quarters of the captains and first lieutenants serving at West Point, it is incomprehensible that any one who has ever seen them should compare them to "a high-grade apartment-building on Riverside Drive." Last Saturday, when I went to West Point to lecture to the officers and cadets on the Battle of the Marne, I was a guest in the quarters of First Lieutenant R. E. Lee. His quarters are typical of those occupied by the bachelor officers, and consist of a small sittingroom, bedroom, and bath, together with a small office. I have Lieutenant Lee's permission to be explicit. His bedroom is 10 by 11 feet; his sitting-room 10 by 17 feet; his office 10 by 9 feet; the bath-room 7 feet wide. The finish of all the rooms is simple to the point of severity.

So called coast-defense vessels are now obsolete. One reason for this is that the super-dreadnoughts and battle-cruisers possess greater speed and heavier guns. An enemy attacking our coast would with their more powerful guns be able to outrange those of our smaller coast-defense vessels, and with their greater speed they could easily choose and maintain a range outside of the latter's fire-zone. The battle-ships could then, without danger to themselves, pound to pieces the coast-defense vessels, which do not even possess the requisite speed to escape.

I do not know a single army-officer who has fatty degeneration of the heart. Nor do you.

Very sincerely yours,

ERIC FISHER WOOD.