alry, afoot, playing the funeral march. The notes of the horns rose high, then sank to a profound vibration through which one heard the pathos of flutes and the despondent thud of drums. Again the brass instruments emitted their melodious wail, as if expressing an irremediable sadness. And that measured rhythm was emphasized by the tread of many feet in unison, as ranks of dismounted troopers, swaying from side to side, passed slowly by.

Now the music was mingled with a gabble of voices: brown monks came dragging their sandaled feet and voicing responsive prayers. Each held in his hand a wax torch; the inky smoke, caught up from the fat flames, was swiftly dispelled. On high a silver crucifix flashed in a shredding cloud of incense.

The Florentines, packed on the footpaths, began to doff their hats; the catafalque appeared, its tall canopy of black velvet oscillating, the silver fringes quivering. In front paced an elderly, smoothshaven man in a black three-cornered hat, a short black apron, and black kneebreeches and stockings. He was the regimental chaplain.

The catafalque was passing. At the four corners, where slender pillars, wound with silver, ascended to the canopy, the curtains of velvet were gathered in, so

that the interior might be revealed. There, rising from a mass of fading flowers, an oblong, rectangular bulk showed its outline through a velvet pall, on the top of which lay a long, straight sword and a lancer's brass helmet, high-crested, bearing across its front the cross of Savoy.

Behind the catafalque, in advance of still more troops, came walking at random many men in uniform and mufti: Toto Fava, Azeglio, and others of the Lancers of Magenta, Campoformio in a black coat, his thin hair tousled. But in the place of honor two went arm-in-arm, their uncovered heads bowed forward-Aurelius and a thick-set gentleman with white mustaches brushed straight up from his lips, who stared into space like an old lion that has received his death-blow.

But Frossie, leaning from the cab, still peered after the departing catafalque, in which the brass helmet glimmered amid the smoke of incense. A low cry burst from her:

"I can't even see my flowers! I left my glasses at home!"

And at last she began to weep. And she continued to weep when the cortège had passed into a haze of dust, and all the while that the cab was bearing her back through the city to the Pension Schwandorf.

IF

the advancement of a new age of artistic appreciation in this country than the recent genuine renaissance of native and vigorous poetry, blazing new trails for itself in realism, fantasy, form, and method.

The best of this work is based upon the craftsman's knowledge of his craft and his clear-sighted study of the poetic "old masters," though the modern poet shows his individuality in two distinct ways. He is either a merciless and challenging realist or weaves new and gorgeous patterns upon the loom of fancy, rejecting old poetic phrase, the age-long-pigeonholed "fit expression" for a given theme, shaping out of the flexible, slang-accreted language of the day a new poetic diction full of pith and "brimmed with nimbler meanings up." Thus, mixed metaphorically, some idea may be given of his enthusiastic and hearty modern method. The question of form I shall soon touch upon.

No image, no elate speculation, no new vision of old commonplace, seems too slight for the modern poet to commit to the written or printed page. And this is well. As Edmund Gosse has said in verse:

If we could dare to write as ill
As those whose voices haunt us still,
Perhaps we too might make our own
Their deep enchanting undertone.

The modern poet is not in the least afraid of seeming absurd or extravagant. He welcomes the rapier of the humorist, the bludgeon of the dogmatist. He demands of his poetry that it have his own life in its veins, not the galvanization of Cheops dead or a thin essence from the veins of the ghost of Keats. It must vibrate, for better or for worse, with a living personality. So form is less to the modern American poet than it was to most of his forefathers. Not that breaking

was Marlowe's "Tamburlaine" that began a reaction against the "jigging vein of rhyming mother wits" in Elizabethan England! And already in America the new vigor of its poets has produced four books at least successful in experiment, intense in individuality, and a nucleus for further enterprising poetry of the future: these are "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed" by Amy Lowell, "North of Boston" by Robert Frost, "The Congo" by Vachel Lindsay, and "The Spoon River Anthology" by Edgar Lee Masters. The writer believes sincerely that work as daring and distinctive as this is more a product of the modern spirit in America-far morethan a mere imitation of modern English or European forms and methods, though something be owing to the latter. There is an intoxication about the way our contemporary poets fling themselves into a dauntless quest for self-expression. One sees it in the intensely modern work of James Oppenheim, Louis Untermeyer, Conrad Aiken, and Carl Sandburg; and, on the other hand, in the quite classic work of Thomas Walsh, whose recently published "Pilgrim Kings" contains those tapestried narratives of the Spanish painters El Greco, Goya, Velasquez, several of which first appeared in this magazine, narratives revealing the psychology and humanity of the subject with deft touches. that make the reader recognize another ardent and subtle individuality mounted in the lists.

For, after all, the only thing necessary to make a book of poetry enthralling is that the true, particular flavor of an unusually keen observer's personality inhabit its pages. Then we can choose as we choose dishes at the table. But what I insist upon is that the modern American poet is far more than ever before a student of his own particular possibilities. He will do anything rather than conform to any

THE

ness for successful war-and unsuccessful war is as inexcusable as the literary-dramatic masterpiece that fails to "get" its message "across" the footlights -are trained men, direction, equipment, and organization. Most phases of the problem can best be examined and solved by our professional experts. These trained men can provide the country with the mechanics of defense, if the country will back them. The War College and the general staff should be the architects and builders of American security. And when the edifice is ready for us, a great gymnasium in which national virtues may be exercised into strength, we shall find the benefit of the exercise extending into every department of life. The mathematical Teuton mind has estimated that the military training of the young man has added sixteen per cent. to the efficiency of German industrial life. France, the home of creative intellect and painstaking honest workmanship, credits her military system with an even greater gain to the peace community. One of these countries we call militaristic in contrast with the pacific character of the other. But it is clear that in this era of growing international competition-the present war simply marks a gap that will soon close-we cannot afford to abandon to our rivals the benefits of a wellproved industrial and economic training.

Incidentally, the training that adds to the industrial power and the wealth of a nation fortifies that nation's ability to defend itself.

Yet we seem hardly to have considered the immense importance to any scheme of defense of a definite organization of our industrial power for effective mobilization. We have learned one distinct fact by the great war, which is that a modern army could not exist, the war could not go on one day, without gasolene. Information, air service, communication, and the transport of ammunition and provisions and the care of the wounded-all are accomplished by virtue of the magic es

sence.

A little more than a year ago a middleaged aristocrat was called to the telephone in his country house in the middle of France. A moment later he summoned his fastest automobile, said good-by to his wife, jumped into the car, and whirled away through a choking cloud of white dust. An hour later he sweated and swore at the flies swarming in his office and wondered, when he had time to wonder, if his over-driven mind would desert him. But it did not slip; it had been trained for this very crisis, the mobilization of the motor reserves in that district.

Eight hundred motors rolled in during that afternoon: roadsters, limousines, touring-cars, motor-cycles, and motortrucks, whirling up storms of dust and a strangling atmosphere of burned gasolene. Some of the trucks were driven by exquisites in the evening clothes of last night's party, and some by men in overalls pulled on over night-shirts, for no time could be lost; war was in the wind.

But the plans had been laid beforehand.

Before night those eight hundred cars and several thousand men were arranged in order. Lodging, food, gasolene, and oil supplies, even uniforms, had been provided, and the prearranged military numbers had been stenciled on the cars. The organization was adequate to its appointed task. In the night those cars went away on the roads in their properly organized and officered sections, ready for the work that has never ceased. Moreover, the middle-aged man had done the job with such thoroughness and despatch that he was promptly required for bigger duties. He is now in command of the motor transport service in half of France. If he were to be confronted to-day by the same problem, hardly a single bead of perspiration would be started on his capable brow. Such is the value of practice that the work would do itself almost automatically.

All this organization is based on the individual skill produced by training, and on the devotion to an ideal that is fostered by common, implicit obedience to the expressed will of the community.

If every owner of every automobile in America should consider himself the trustee of an instrument that in a contingency would be valuable to the defense

of his country, he would gladly register his car, keep it up to yearly inspection standard, and hold it for the instant use of the Government. He would become a living American citizen instead of a duty-dodger. And we should have at once, grouped in convenient territorial divisions, the framework for the sort of transport system without which modern war cannot be waged.

In the same way we could have a real remount service. The Masters of Foxhounds Association proposes to register for government purposes all the horses owned by the hunters of the country. The horsemen themselves offer to place in the service of the Government their own expert knowledge of horses and their undoubted honesty. The offer means five or six thousand ideal officers' mounts and scores of the shrewdest buyers in the country to be had at need for the asking.

In like fashion our manufacturing plants and experts, our great carriers and producers, ought to be classified, registered, and made ready for community use. Our industrial power must be organized into the tremendous defensive weapon which it can be, but which it can become only through the operation in every one of us of a living sense of duty.

INCE the European War shocked us

SINCE

into a sense of insecurity there has been much discussion about the ways and means of preparedness. A general feeling prevails that we must take the utmost precautions to guard against aggressions. We have weighed our army and navy in the balance, and they appear inadequate for our safety if we must face the gigantic horror of a modern war. So the nation has been making up its mind to lay out on guns and ammunition and battle-ships much more than it has ever spent before. The idea seems to be that if we spend half a billion dollars on these things we shall have achieved the highest pinnacle of preparedness. In perfect security we can then pursue the peaceful tenor of our national existence.

That is all very well as far as it goes. If Germany had been prepared with men. and guns merely, she must have succumbed to the starvation of her industries and her people before the war was a year old, and the representatives of Russia and France and Great Britain would have dictated their terms in Berlin. The war has shown that it is not guns or even the men behind the guns that can win to victory or stave off defeat. The decision lies with the strength of the nation as a whole, and that nation is best organized for war that is best organized for peace.

Europe has been learning about preparedness from Germany. Virtually since the outset of the war Germany's foreign trade has been wiped out, and she has been confronted by the problem of being wholly

self-sufficient or giving up. This problem has been met successfully because Germany was ready for it. Her remarkable internal organization, built up laboriously through a period of forty years, was able to stand the strain. So whatever we may think of Germany's ruthless war logic, we' must study her system of preparedness carefully if we, too, would be prepared.

There are two important factors in the German system: one is the conservation and care of her human resources; the other is the policy of national coöperation in industry, agriculture, and everything that tends to promote the general welfare.

The German system of preparedness begins with the child. The child in Berlin gets about fifty per cent. more school training in a year than the child in New York. In addition, the German schools look after the health of the children; they feed the children of the poor and they conduct holiday camps for those who are run down. The utmost care is taken to produce healthy, efficient citizens. An imperial law compels employers to grant time for workers between fourteen and eighteen years to attend continuation-schools. The result of this system has been the passing of illiteracy in Germany, and in large measure the passing of the unskilled worker.

Having trained her people, Germany displays equal zeal in seeing that they have employment. The right to work is emphasized in the common law. Bismarck made it a key-note of his policy. "A man," he declared, "is entitled to say, 'Give me work,' and the state is bound to give him work." Employment is secured largely through cooperative labor exchanges throughout the empire. In times of stress work is also provided by the starting of large public enterprises and through other agencies. In the eight years ending with 1911 unemployment in Germany ranged from 1.1 per cent. to 2.9 per cent. of the total wage-earning population. In New York and Massachusetts, for a similar period, it ranged from 6.8 per cent. to 28.1 per cent. In New York City last winter, in a Federal census of nearly

100,000 wage-earners, 16.2 per cent. were out of work. Obviously we have much to learn from Germany in this respect. has a direct bearing on preparedness, for a man habitually unemployed becomes unfitted for any work, including that of the soldier, and it is impossible to transform an army of the unemployed into an army of fighting men.

Of late a few of our States have been adopting some form of compulsory working-men's insurance, though most of our lawmakers still consider this a form of socialistic madness. In Germany working-men's insurance has been compulsory throughout the empire for over thirty years. The worker is insured against illness, accident, and old age, and if he dies, his widow and orphans are provided for. The insurance scheme embraces clerks and office employees, short contract and itinerant laborers in agriculture, workers at home, teachers, and tutors. The German Government has spent more money on this than it has on the German fleet.

Under the German electoral system the urban population is grossly under-represented in the Reichstag. Since 1871 there has been no reapportionment, despite the remarkable drift of population to the cities. This discrimination is directed against the Socialist-Democratic party, which flourishes particularly in the towns. Though this party is numerically the largest in Germany, it has never administered the affairs of a single parish. Despite this, municipal socialism is the rule in Germany. Perhaps it might be unwise or inexpedient for us to emulate the socialized German cities, but at least we have much to learn from them in assuring the welfare of our urban populations.

The interests of the farmer are as carefully conserved in Germany as those of the city-dweller, for the farmer is a most important factor in preparedness. The German Government has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies for the farmer. It protects him against foreign competition. It has subsidized an army of chemists to increase the fertility of his fields. A model system of inland