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The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad sends out a special baggage car each spring loaded with plants for flower-beds at about 150 different stations on its line. It employs a chief gardener to direct this work of beautifying its grounds in these various towns and cities.

"The next step toward the emancipation of the photoplay," says Professor Münsterberg in his new book "The Photoplay," "decidedly must be the creation of plays which speak the language of pictures only." This means the writing of scenarios which shall omit those tiresome printed "leaders" such as, "The Hero says, 'I love another,'" and which shall really tell the story entirely in pictures.

A complete camping outfit, according to "Popular Mechanics," may now be quickly attached to an automobile. It includes sleeping accommodations for two, a shower-bath with canvas shelter, a kitchen equipment with a gasoline stove, a chest with three commodious drawers, a camp table and two camp chairs, storage room for two suit-cases, etc. The outfit is inclosed in a steel case about three feet long, four feet wide, and three and a half feet high, which is fastened to the rear end of the car.

A thrift campaign is being conducted by the Railroad Young Men's Christian Associations along somewhat novel lines. One of the means of attracting attention to the work is the use of "sandwich" placards like this: "To-night at 8 o'clock in the School Auditorium! Bradford Band and Quartet. Lecture; subject, ' Treating a Porterhouse Steak Right.' Free! for everybody."

The non-resistance theory is pretty well condensed in a motto for America suggested by a prominent advocate of peace-at-any-price: "Not a Dollar for Self-Defense." The author of the motto frankly says that he does not believe in resenting insults. One wonders whether he would carry non-resistance to its logical limit and calmly allow a Stegomyia mosquito to bite him if he were in a yellow fever district.

Joseph Jefferson was wont to tell about meeting a modest-looking man in a New York hotel who said he had seen the actor with pleasure in a performance at Washington. Jefferson smiled and asked the gentleman's name. "Grant," was the reply. It was the ex-President! Jeffer son's embarrassment was intense-but not more acute than that of a famous fellow-actor, Booth, when, according to a writer in the current "Harper's Magazine," he asked Tennyson for his autograph with a verse, and on Tennyson's inquiring what the verse should be, answered, "From The Brook' or 'The Bridge.'" Booth then realized that he had asked for a verse from one of Longfellow's poems!

The Indian names of natural objects in Gla cier Park, Montana, have been superseded by commonplace American names, says a

writer in "Collier's." Going-to-the-Sun, Rising Wolf, Almost-a-Dog, and Red Eagle are certainly more picturesque as designations of mountains than Trapper Peak, Huckleberry Mountain, and Haystack Butte. When we have to rename lakes, rivers, and mountains, the work should be intrusted to some one with an imagination and a literary gift-such a person as Helen Hunt Jackson, for instance, whose names of the curious formations in the Garden of the Gods were original, dignified, and suggestive.

The high prices that are frequently paid for antique furniture, as quoted in the newspaper accounts of sales of household effects, give point, by contrast, to this paragraph from "The Industrial Student," of Camp Hill, Alabama:

We are frequently asked how much it will take to furnish a room for two boys. Thirty-five dollars will do this very nicely, giving two good strong three-quarter beds, with mattresses, two chairs, a substantial table, a chiffonier, mirror, rug, etc. A smaller sum might answer, but $35 will do splendidly.

Apropos of the Shakespeare tercentenary, a daily newspaper records the death of "the Shakespeare of the New York police force," Oliver Tims by name. Sergeant Tims had learned seven of the bard's tragedies by heart, it is said. He could and did recite these plays on occasion, and was meticulously accurate in his lines. "One reporter," says his obituary notice," who quoted him as using a split infinitive in one of his recitations earned his undying aversion for the insult."

A first edition of "Pickwick Papers" was sold in New York City at auction for $5,350 the other day. Among the attractions of this copy were "all the advertisements" (the volume consists of the original parts inclosed in covers. advertising pages being inserted before and after the reading matter) and a page of the original MS. One of the regrets of the future book collector will be that there will be no original manuscripts of books of our own dayeverything being now sent to the printer in characterless typewriting.

A curious side-light on the first edition of "Pickwick" is found in the pages of "Dickens and His Illustrators," by Mr. Frederick G. Kitton. According to this authority, Thackeray, then planning an artistic career, and L ech, afterwards famous as "Punch's" cartoonist, both tried to get the job of illustrating "Pickwick" and both were rejected because "neither possessed the necessary qualifications"!

Mechanical devices for repeating prayers (the "vain repetitions " of the heathen) are familiar in the East, but they are outdone, in saving of labor, by the "prayer flags" of Tibet. These, as described by Mr. J. C. White in the "National Geographic Magazine," are suspended on long lines, sometimes reaching across a river. As long as they are moving in the breeze they are supposed to be recording prayers for the benefit of those who put them up.

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THE IRISH REVOLT

A DEFENSE BY SEUMAS MACMANUS
AND AN EDITORIAL REVIEW

THE AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE BY P. H. W. ROSS

PRESIDENT WILSON'S FOREIGN POLICY
STAFF CORRESPONDENCE BY
FREDERICK M. DAVENPORT

FOR COMPLETE TABLE OF CONTENTS SEE
THIRD PAGE PRECEDING READING MATTER

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 1916

PRICE: TEN CENTS A COPY
THREE DOLLARS A YEAR

381 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

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The Outlook

MAY 17, 1916

Offices, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York

THE STORY OF THE WAR:
THE SUBMARINE CONTROVERSY

Elsewhere in this issue of The Outlook will be found a summary of the two notes which have lately passed between Germany and the United States following the demand of the United States in its note of April 18 that Germany should cease her illegal submarine warfare. Editorial discussion of the controversy also appears on another page. Berlin despatches of May 10 say that the German Foreign Office now admits unreservedly that the Sussex was sunk by a German submarine, and offers to make reparation to those injured and punish the commander of the submarine.

A new element has been introduced into the situation by the sinking of the White Star liner Cymric off the southwest coast of Ireland on May 9. There seems to be no doubt that the Cymric was struck by a torpedo without warning. She carried no passengers. Five members of the crew were killed; but probably there were no Americans among the victims. It is said that her cargo was wholly or chiefly munitions of war for the British Government. According to the statement of the White Star Line, to which the Cymric belonged, she carried no guns, and under marine law "was simply an ordinary merchant steamer." Although London despatches describe the Cymric as being "on Admiralty service," it does not appear that the ship had been taken over by the British Admiralty or that it was manned or officered by the British navy. Secretary Lansing is quoted in the daily press as saying that the fact that the ship was in Admiralty service (if it is a fact) was not proof that she was not a merchantman. Either the Cymric was an auxiliary war-ship or she was a merchant ship. All the evidence seems to point to the latter conclusion. In that case her destruction is a plain violation of Germany's undertaking as regards submarine warfare in the note sent a few days before the sinking of the Cymric; but our Administration may very probably pass over the

incident because of the assumption that the submarine captain who sank the Cymric had not received the new orders. It may be pointed out, however, that the fact that Americans are not known to have been killed on the Cymric does not in the least indicate that the United States has no cause for complaint, for by its note Germany made a distinct promise not to destroy without warning any merchant ships, whether British or not, and that assurance was in the nature of a direct obligation to the United States.

In

In this connection we may call attention to the statement as to the German reply to the American note made by Lord Robert Cecil, British Minister of War Trade and Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. this several misstatements of fact about Great Britain in the German note are pointed out, such as that the illegal German submarine warfare was a reprisal against the British socalled starvation blockade-the fact being that the British blockade measures were put in force only on March 11, 1915, a month after the German declaration of its submarine war zone blockade. It is also pointed out that the starvation plea by Germany is absolutely inconsistent with the statement by the German Chancellor in his recent address before the German Reichstag as to provisions, that "we have not run short of anything in the past, nor shall we run short of anything in the future."

ACTIVITY ON THE BATTLE LINES

During the week ending on May 7 fighting in the neighborhood of Verdun was marked with violent attacks by the German forces. A Berlin despatch asserts that a million men are engaged in the renewed Verdun fighting. The point at which the fighting was most severe was upon the height known as Hill 304, which is on the west bank of the Meuse and stands nearly opposite the famous Dead Man's Hill, so that the two heights together command a valley and a road through which the German attack from

the northwest, beginning at the town of Bethincourt, must pass. The Germans have for weeks hammered terribly on this position, but as yet without any decisive result. It must be remembered that even if the position is carried the Germans would then face still another formidable group of fortified hills lying at least three miles from the city of Verdun. Claims were made that Hill 304, or part of it, had been captured by the Germans during the week, but the French declare that they still dominate the position: that most, if not all, of the German gains have been retaken; and that, although enormous numbers of German troops were employed in these attacks, the attacks were in the main broken down by the French fire and cost the Germans serious losses. the other main point of the German attackthat is, between Douaumont and Vauxattacks were also made by the Germans, but apparently without serious results.

On

The great offensive against Verdun has now continued for about three months, without decisive result.

The Russian forces in Asia Minor are reported as moving steadily in the direction of Bagdad and have gained ground also in their movement toward the west, where they are approaching Erzingan. As the spring advances, the Grand Duke Nicholas will be able to bring a still larger army through the Caucasus Mountains, and appearances are that the Russian development of military power in Asia Minor will increase. Some military critics have lately argued that it is in this region that the final decisive results are most likely to be obtained by the Allies, while the western battle-line fighting seems more and more in the nature of a drawn contest because of the facility with which either army can move its forces to repel an attempt of the other to break through. On this theory, the Russian forces in Asia Minor, largely reinforced, will move westward towards Constantinople; and the Allies' forces in Greece, perhaps also largely reinforced, will try to cut the line between Constantinople and Bulgaria.

THE IRISH REVOLT

There have been many protests in America and in Great Britain against the severity of the British Government in its dealing with the leaders of the recent uprising. The Manchester "Guardian," for instance, warmly supports the appeal made by Mr. Redmond, the Irish Home Rule leader in the House of

Commons, for clemency. The "Guardian " says: "We can understand that it may have been desired in the first instance that swift punishment should be seen to follow the offense, and that an example should be set and a stern warning given, but this purpose has long since been served." Many papers in the United States which are not in the least in sympathy with the revolt express the feeling that the severity shown in the executions may be injurious to future relations between Ireland and Great Britain, and think that both tactically and from a humane point of view the severity has been excessive. Mr. W. D. Howells, in a letter to the New York Evening Post," says: "The shooting of the Irish insurrectionists is too much like the shooting of prisoners of war, too much like taking a leaf from the German classic of Schrecklichkeit;' and in giving way to her vengeance England has roused the moral sense of mankind against her. What a pity, what an infinite pity!"

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The other side is put concisely by another writer in the same paper :

These men cannot be said in any sense of the term to represent the Irish people. In fact, the regularly elected representatives of the Irish people unanimously condemn their conduct with abhorrence. They were merely filibusters and, inasmuch as their action has caused the deaths of some hundreds of Irish citizens, murderers. The Government would have failed in its duty to organized society had it not visited upon these leaders the extremest penalty of their guilt. The greatest clemency, however, should be shown to their misguided followers.

On May 9 it was announced that the trials by court martial were at an end. Eleven of the Irish leaders had been executed after court inartial, while nineteen others were sentenced to death but had the sentences commuted to imprisonment. Many others doubtless will be imprisoned. Sir Roger Casement is to be put on trial for high treason under the ordinary process of English law. This trial will be held before a jury; and judges of the High Court of Justice will preside over the trial.

The Outlook prints this week, in addition to an editorial surveying the Irish revolt in the light of Irish history, three contributions showing the feeling of the revolutionaries.

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

The occasion of Mr. Birrell's forced resignation as Chief Secretary for Ireland, reported a week ago in The Outlook, was

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