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the next largest, the Ancona; and another rechristened the Sussex, etc. After all, their crews are sailors, and it might be valuable if their confinement camp were on board-without being cruel.

What do the Germans think of our many notes?

The Germans don't understand them, because it is both their philosophy and their religion that "Deutschland" must be "über Alles." And they know the Americans know this. Naturally they don't understand why America appears surprised if they murder any one they like in any way they like, or do anything they like to attain their end. They seem, however, to have a sort of academic interest in notes; it seems to be their German nature.

How will the end of the war come?

Some

Some say it must be through military victories in the field. Personally, without more help I fear this cannot be, for some while, but I am equally sure it can be. Americans who have recently been through Poland and Germany are skeptical as to whether, without the neutral Powers' aid in this matter, which is really a matter for the world police, the Allies can do better than a stalemate.

Will the war end soon?

No, I do not think it will. The general opinion is that it will last a long time longer, yet not a single soul doubts that the Allies will win in the end. They have no fear whatever for their lines in France. The medical corps, with the work of which I am best acquainted, has unconsciously illustrated this. confidence by having erected permanent hospitals so close behind the lines that a man receiving an abdominal or chest wound can be on the operating table in two hours, and has been in one; they have nurses and hospital beds now so close behind our lines that they are under heavy gun-fire. I saw more than one which had been rudely disturbed by a shell while the surgeons were operating.

Why do the Allies feel that they must win? Intuitively, quite apart from argument, they know that right will triumph..

The majority both of the English and the French, of whom only, among the Allies, I have had personal experience, realize that it is a great moral issue that is at stake. Democracy, even personal freedom, and the right to exist independently of the slavery of a huge military autocracy, are threatened. To save those who come after them from

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such a world is the ideal before their eyes. With them it is a real religious crusade. For that they are willing to make the supreme sacrifice of death to their last man and last dollar.

Are they antagonistic to Americans?

No, they are not. They know that the spirit of America is with them. They value the personal sacrifices made to demonstrate this. But they do not think (1) that America has ventured to acknowledge publicly this moral issue; or that, if she has realized it, she is willing (2) to make any sacrifice greater than dollars to attain it. Remembering her idealism in her Civil War, they do not understand why this is so. No, they don't think that fear of the "hyphenateds" is any real factor. They know America sympathizes, but I did not meet any, from the lowest to the highest, who thought that she meant really to fight. When I landed and walked New York streets again, it seemed impossible to advocate that these safe and prosperous people in the streets should actually go to join the men in the blood-stained trenches that one has just come from in Flanders, and sacrifice their lives for any idealism whatever, though that is exactly what I have been advising my own people to do.

It is not sentimental to say that the Allies in their trenches are sustained by the firm belief that there are worse sacrifices than death. I know this to be true from the men I have myself seen, though mangled and dying, with the light of perfect joy on their faces. One man gripped my hand and, looking up into my face, said: "I did my bit, didn't I, doctor?" The assurance that there could be only one answer is the light in the Valley of Shadows that endures when that of "prosperity" is left behind.

I am quite sure that the Germans do not want America to fight. Most certainly they do not believe that she will.

Do the Allies want America to enter the war?

I have met very few with personal experience who have not wished it, for America's sake as well as for the Allies; yet every one recognizes the immense value of the supplies America sent over last year in the time of supreme need. Things have changed for the better, however, in that line of late.

One of the last men I spoke to in England was a young American of a wealthy family who was drilling in an English Tommy's uniform in the parks at Oxford. He was

three years with me in Labrador; and then served seven months at the front." His hospital was a mile or two behind the line. It was all canvas and covered with red crosses. A single Taube circled over it one day, low down-and he and his friends spent the rest of the evening gathering and burying the remains of their wounded. With twenty-four other Americans he enlisted after this. This is a better expression of their opinion than any academic statement. Before I left he told me he had been to the American Embassy to ask how serving the King would affect his American citizenship. In his own` words: "What do you think the secretary said to me, and that without a smile? I should forfeit the protection of the American flag !” I may mention here that a number of stretcher-bearers who bring in the wounded from between the lines told me they no longer wear the Geneva Cross brassard, stating that the white part of it simply helped the Germans to see to shoot them.

You have asked me for bald facts, and I give them because I love America, and because I know that my friends will understand that I am no militarist. My forebears have all been fighters; but I have expressed my own attitude in the field of life I have selected; yet to every one of those whom I love best, and who have asked me whether they should remain in peace and safety or fight and die, I have always advised them this time to go and die if necessary, and many have done it.

Talking to some men behind the lines one day, one told me that as he and his friend were sitting eating their lunch in the trench a shrieking "Jack Johnson" tore through the parapet, passed between him and his chum, and buried itself in the mud below. It did not explode, however. Whereupon his friend remarked: "Never mind, Bill, it's an American-it's too proud to fight." And they went on with their lunch.

A Sunday-school class of six little boys last Sunday at Cambridge were asked, "What is the Golden Rule?" They replied, "Safety first."

The moral setback to Germany of America's joining the Allies would be a sufficient countereffect even to the fall of Verdun. It would be of more value towards hastening possible peace terms than anything that could happen. It would give the militants an excuse for backing down, and assure the people that conditions would not be simply vindictive. All the

men I saw who take life at all in earnest, and have seen for themselves what a German triumph would mean, are unable to understand how any one can be neutral now, any more than they can understand a person being neutral about prostitution or piracy. Not one of them can understand how a democracy could exist in a world in which the German ideal was triumphant. Even if the Allies win unaided, they will feel a sort of sorrow that a country as idealistic as American individual sympathy proves America still to be, should have to live in a world made tolerable only by her kith and kin after a gigantic struggle in which she had had no part. All the best men that I talked it over with felt that this is the only real danger to America; those that really love America always said they hoped she might see this in time. Many foreigners assume that America is completely commercialized; but those of us who have lived long in America know that below any superficial appearance there is always an essential idealism to which one can appeal.

Are the English laboring classes opposed to the war?

No. That is utterly false. If there was ever any hesitancy, the "Zeppelin cure " has long ago banished it. On the other hand, men of every color, from every quarter of the earth, men of twenty-four free peoples, are fighting under the British flag. Has the world ever seen such a force? The veriest pessimist must see hope in such unparalleled sacrifices for a "mere moral issue."

Two astounding facts face one continually close to the fighting: (1) A mechanistic system so marvelous that every day brings new discoveries of its efficiency—and one hears repeatedly, Oh, we learned that from the Germans;" (2) the sublime blunder of the men who are ignorant that it must inevitably collapse sooner or later just because it ignores the spiritual motive as being "unpractical," though that is the only real preservative. Thus the Germans were clever enough to destroy the largest and fastest ocean liner in service in the face of the whole British fleet, and yet foolish enough not to know that, compared with their own spiritual disaster, the material gain was utterly inappreciable.

Do not the English desire to make a propaganda in the United States, as the Germans have ?

The Allies respect themselves and their judgment of America's common sense apparently better than Germany does. But the

Allies believe that the answer to the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" is, "Yes, you are." and, believing that, they are making the supreme sacrifice to live it out. And already for every man they lose they realize that from the inspiration of this sacrifice two more recruits are enlisted.

What about Christians fighting? One member of the family of nations has temporarily run amuck and is destroying the rest, and the temporary expedient of the use of force is the necessary chastisement of a world under law. It will only hasten the establishment of a world police, a recognition of the ideal of the international family under God that Americans left Europe to foundwithout any need for a Kaiser to be its channel of culture.

What is your view of America's position? America must know that the cruel methods practiced by Germany accord with the ac

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cepted teaching of her philosophers, and that her soldiers are simply loyal to the military tyrants who are aiming at a world in which all culture, and eventually the kingdom of righteousness, is to come on earth through a divinely appointed Emperor. It puzzles me, therefore, why America worries over the details and does not admit that to escape what must result if Germany wins was exactly what necessitated America's birth. She stands for a family of all nations under God— equal, free, and happy. For this idea France and England are giving their life-blood. America is looking on and getting rich. I have counseled all I love most on earth to enter on the side of the Allies. I have stood by their graves "somewhere in France." Love is a more durable factor for peace than war. But force is love sometimes, and, though we do not like it, via crucis is now the only via lucis.

I

HAD two opportunities of seeing Disraeli-once in 1871. At that time I used to hear him speak in the House of Commons, but never heard anything very interesting. One quality was noticeable in his way of speaking. This was his deference. An old Member of Parliament once told me that he thought this was one of the causes of Disraeli's Parliamentary success. The House of Commons, as my friend explained, was an extremely conceited body, and Disraeli's deferential manner on getting up to speak, as if he were quite overcome with the consciousness of his own temerity in venturing to raise his voice in so august an assembly, seemed to please them. He was out of office at that time. He had been Prime Minister, and was of course one of the most celebrated men in England. But he was much like other celebrated people. When I came back in 1877, he had become a god. There was nothing in what he had done in the meantime to justify this difference; the change was in people's minds rather than in him. There is a story that is much like him and will give an idea of what he was at this time. As he was leaving a house he asked some one to give him his arm down Piccadilly. The man,

who must have been a person of some wit, said, At such a time as this I should wish to be met by my creditors." "No," said Disraeli, "it is not at such times that your creditors meet you. Your creditors meet you when you are carrying a bundle." There you have the literary quality of the man.

When Disraeli was Prime Minister for the second time, in 1874 to 1881, you never saw him any where except at Court or in the House of Lords. He would be sometimes at Court, looking deathly pale, his hair dyed black, with an elaborate and carefully designed black lock pasted down on his forehead, which increased his pallor. While I did not know Disraeli personally, I had, however, some acquaintance with several of his secretaries, who were themselves pretty great men, and from whom I have heard things about him. Montagu Corry, whom he made a peer (which action reminded Robert Lowe of Caligula's making his horse a consul), was his principal secretary. After returning from the Berlin Conference, he told me some incidents about Disraeli. He said that Bismarck was very fond of Disraeli and that he had three portraits in his library-Princess Bis marck, the Emperor William, and Disraeli

antipathetic. But I doubt if he returned this hatred. He had that toughness and insensibility which was the inheritance of his race, and without which they would long ago have succumbed under the weight of persecution, of enmity and aversion, of which they have been the objects. It was Gladstone's opinion that Disraeli was not vindictive, and he ought to have known. He said so to a friend of mine, adding, "I don't think he dislikes me, for instance.'

It

Although he had certain Jewish qualities, I should say that some of his qualities were not at all Jewish. He had the Jewish courage and pertinacity, but he had also intuition, genius, and humor. These last, I should think, were not distinctively Jewish qualities. There are Jews who have them, numbers of them, no doubt. Heine, for instance. would be hard to find any one who had more intuition and insight than my dear friend Miss Emma Lazarus. Of course these qualities are rare in all races. But my observation is that they are especially rare among Jews. I was once a teacher of English literature in an American college and had a number of Jews among the students. Whatever they could do with ambition and conscientious laborqualities more important than genius and taste they would accomplish. But the appreciation of literature requires special innate qualities which cannot be got up, and in these I thought they were not the equals of the other young people. It is often said that they are deficient in humor. The fact that they have little sense of the ridiculous may be one reason of the inability they often show to keep out of ridiculous situations. But, of course, one knows Jews who have humor.

The great place which Disraeli had in London from 1875 to 1881 was one of several causes to improve the position of Jews there at that time. Another was the rise of the artistic and literary society which came into existence about that time. The wealthy The wealthy Jews were much in contact with this society. Of this improved position you saw many results. Probably one of these was the whitewashing of Shylock by the actor Irving. Another was perhaps the "Daniel Deronda " of George Eliot. I remember one of her expressions which might have been suggested by Disraeli. She speaks of the "vivid gravity" of the countenance of her Hebrew hero. Disraeli's face was not unlike that.

If the reader is able to find much reality in the figures which Disraeli intro

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duced into his novels, or to take more than a languid interest in their fortunes, it is more than I can do. There is indeed a dour, sullen, handsome creature in "Coningsby' who has some life and attraction, but she is an exception. But there is one very real and striking character which one sees in the background behind these lay figures. It is that of Disraeli himself. When he speaks. you at once become interested. There is a young Government clerk in "Endymion," the sole object of whose life is to get into good society. It is a fairly good sketch, but Disraeli's criticism of him is much more interesting than the man himself, as when he tells us that it was wonderful what he accomplished, and that the first requisite in such an undertaking is the determination to succeed.

Disraeli's remarks on life and manners are always interesting. It is interesting to hear from one of the greatest figures in Europe, who is at the same time so near and real to us, remarks which we should expect from a poet or a humorist; to be told, for instance, by a Prime Minister of England that the hansom cab is the gondola of London, that the worst kind of dress is the shabby genteel, or that it is a very dull fellow who thinks he can afford to neglect women. Disraeli is not so much a literary artist as an interesting character.

I heard Disraeli speak a number of times in Parliament, but I don't suppose it was the kind of speaking he did when he was attacking Peel in the forties about the Corn Laws. My office was near the Houses of Parliament, and, as I had always a seat, I used often to go into one of the houses for an hour or So. I heard many good and interesting speeches, but nothing very remarkable as eloquence. I think the best thing I heard was a little ten minutes' speech on British birds by the Duke of Argyll. Argyll. In speaking he seemed to get rid of that toploftical, cock-sparrow look he usually carried about with him. It was a little high and grand, but no more than was proper to the place. He spoke in the tone of conversation, scarcely using a gesture. There were in the speech a finish, a polite ease, and a tranquil pleasure in beauty that were delightful. A daughter of his said afterwards. I don't think he knows anything about birds," from which it was to be inferred that he could have spoken as well on many other subjects.