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1916

COURAGE WITHOUT FORESIGHT

power with electric is great, but more and more railway men are coming to believe that in the long run the substitution pays.

THE AMERICAN

ARTISTS' AID SOCIETY

The plight of the Blakelock family, to which The Outlook has already called the attention of its readers, also calls attention to the fact that, though we are in this country far from being as well supplied with material aid to necessitous artists and their families as is France, for instance, our artists have been endeavoring to do what they could among themselves. The result has been the formation of an Artists' Aid Society, which certainly needs wider support than it now has.

It may be said that there is no reason why a painter who becomes incapacitated or dies should receive greater material succor than if he had been in some other walk in life. Doubtless among plumbers, for instance, or bricklayers, there may be found quite as many cases appealing for aid. And yet the fact that men have enriched the world by painting beautiful picturespictures which go to make men finer in quality as they gaze at them, pictures which because of the inspiration of their creators awaken aspiration in the observers certainly gives to those creators a peculiar niche in the respect, appreciation, and esteem of the public.

The society in question is composed of artists not over fifty years of age who maintain a fund for the families of deceased members. But such a fund is far from being sufficient to meet all needs. We should have here, if possible, the French law, which requires from all sales of pictures at public auction a small percentage for the benefit of incapacitated artists or the estates of those deceased. Should an artist have no heirs, the portion of the fund that would go to his estate is accumulated as a benevolent fund for other artists.

A plan now proposed is that artists should receive a small percentage, say two per cent, of the increase in value of their pictures from each sale. Public attention has been justly aroused by notable instances in which painters failed to realize anything like the value of their masterpieces—such an instance as the now famous "Moonlight," sold by its creator, Blakelock, for $400, and resold a few weeks ago for $20,000. A reproduction of this picture appears on another page.

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COURAGE WITHOUT FORESIGHT

The unconditional surrender of General Townshend's forces, long besieged in Kut-elAmara by the Turks, ends, for the present at least, England's brave but ill-considered Bagdad adventure. The loss does not in the least affect the major battle-lines of the great war; from the large military standpoint it is insignificant; it does not appreciably diminish the Allies' prospect of final success. What is important is its moral effect. The attempt was doomed to failure from the outset. English soldiers have everywhere fought well, but English generals and war councils seem slow to learn the lesson of the Boer War; over and over again-at Gallipoli, in the case of Servia (and, some would say, of Belgium), in the Balkans negotiations, and in the Mesopotamian campaign—they have moved too soon or too late; they have fought without taking account of the odds; they have been ill served by their information departments. 'Dogged does it" is a capital motto, but "Haste makes waste" is equally sound. To push ahead in a bull-headed way and hope to "muddle through" somehow is disastrous. Fortunately and again exactly as in the Boer War-hard experience has had its effect, and since this Bagdad fiasco was entered upon the reconstitution of Great Britain's war methods at home and in the field promises better foresight and judgment than were seen in Churchill's belated and weak attempt to relieve Antwerp; or in the blunders which lost the chance of breaking the Turks' defense at Suvla Bay, as frankly and convincingly told by Sir Ian Hamilton; or in the blindness as to seemingly obvious probabilities which led to this Kut-el-Amara surrender.

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The Mesopotamian campaign was a huge blunder. It was to be a dash to Bagdad from the Persian Gulf—that is, a “dash" over hundreds of miles in a difficult country against a fortified enemy of unknown strength. General Townshend's army started with at least twenty-five thousand men; it surrendered less than ten thousand strong. What has become of the rest? It was sent (English newspapers say against General Townshend's judgment) up the Tigris River, with no rail communication, nearly five hundred miles from its water base, to attack whatever army the enemy might have. Victorious in its earlier actions, it was first checked at

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Two recent events in the war, reported this week in The Outlook, relate to the regions shown on these maps. The surrender of General Townshend's forces took place at Kut-el-Amara, shown here on the larger map, over 100 miles southeast of Bagdad. The Russian forces moving south toward Bagdad have reached Diarbekr, about 400 miles northwest of Bagdad-see small inserted map

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THE FIRST HUNDRED THOUSAND

Ctesiphon, about twenty-five miles below Bagdad, then driven back by an overwhelming Turkish army, in part outflanked, and finally shut in by the Turks in Kut-el-Amara. over a hundred miles south of Bagdad. There it has remained for several months, while a large British relief force has again and again tried in vain to succor it. Now, his supplies exhausted, General Townshend has been forced to surrender without condition and to hand over five million dollars in money to the Turks. The story in this bare outline shows on its face that the campaign was doomed from its inception, and doomed simply because, in the expressive slang of the day, Great Britain had no idea of what it was "up against." The army of the relief expedition, it has been intimated, is itself in a dangerous situation. Bagdad may fall, but if it falls it will fall, not to England, but to the Russian forces advancing south from Erzerum and west from Persia. This may have an important influence over the relations of England and Russia as to Constantinople and Asia Minor in the final settlement after the war.

The loss of men, material, and money thus incurred by England is in such a vast war negligible, but the loss of prestige is more serious. The lesson will be a sharp admonition to England that political bickering, military red tape, and action without foresight must give way to harmony, sound leadership, and prevision, so that the valor of the fighting men may not be nullified by lack of sagacity in their leaders.

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to take its part in the first line of attack in a great war. The picture is painted with humor and sympathy and understanding. It is at picture which deserves more than a careful study by any American citizen who is interested in the problem of National defense.

The independent American who won't take orders from anybody, who considers even self-discipline an insult to his free-born inheritance, can peruse with profit the following account of the change in the mental attitude of the recruits in Kitchener's army as the progress of their training continued:

At home we are persons of some consequence, with very definite notions about the dignity of labor. We have employers who tremble at our frown; we have trades union officials who are at constant pains to impress upon us our own omnipotence in the industrial world in which we live. We have at our beck and call a Radical M.P., who, in return for our vote and suffrage, informs us that we are the backbone of the nation, and that we must on no account permit ourselves to be trampled upon by the effete and tyrannical upper classes. Finally, we are Scotsmen, with all a Scotsman's curious reserve and contempt for social airs and graces.

But in the army we appear to be nobody. We are expected to stand stiffly at attention when addressed by an officer, even to call him "sir"-an honor to which our previous employer had been a stranger. . . . The N. C. O.'s are almost as bad. If you answer a sergeant as you would a foreman, you are impertinent; if you argue with him, as all good Scotsmen must, you are insubordinate; if you endeavor to drive a collective bargain with him, you are mutinous; and you are reminded that upon active service mutiny is punishable by death. It is all very unusual and upsetting.

But military discipline and the hard facts of experience began to break through this crust of civilian habit and misunderstanding. After a time Ian Hay writes:

Presently fresh air, hard training, and clean living begin to weave their spell. Incredulous at first, we find ourselves slowly recognizing the fact that it is possible to treat an officer deferentially or carry out an order smartly without losing one's self-respect as a man and a trades

unionist...

We are getting less individualistic, too. We are beginning to think more of our regiment and less of ourselves. At first this loyalty takes the form of criticising other regiments because their marching is slovenly or their accouterments dirty or-most significant sign of alltheir discipline is bad. We are especially critical of our own Eighth Battalion, which is fully three weeks younger than we are, and is

not in the first hundred thousand at all. In their presence we are war-worn veterans. We express it as our opinion that the officers of some of these battalions must be a poor lot. From this it suddenly comes home to us that our officers are a good lot, and we find ourselves taking a queer pride in our company commander's homely strictures and severe sentences the morning after pay night. Here is another step in the quickening life of the regiment. Esprit de corps is raising its head, class prejudice and dour "independence" notwithstanding.

This attitude of mind is not gained except at the cost of hard knocks and weary commands. There are those whose infractions of the military law lead them into serious trouble. There are those whose ignorance is a high stumbling-block on the road to the making of a soldier, and there are those who, like "

Wee Pe'er," have hearts too big and courage too great for the strength that is in their bodies. Ian Hay's story of Wee Pe'er is too long to retell, but it will be found to deserve many re-readings. The tragedy of Wee Pe'er and the story of the triumph of discipline and order belong to the later chapters of the book. In these chapters, as in the earlier record of the first elementary drills, there are many incidents made memorable by the Scotch dialect which Ian Hay uses so tellingly. There is the incident of the corporal who began (but did not complete) an explanation in the midst of a drill as to the reason why he had not passed an order more clearly :

I was sittin' doon tae ma dinner on Sabbath, sir, when my front teeth met upon a small piece bone that was stickit in

There is Private Mucklewame, who, when asked to describe a scout, replied, "They gang oot in a procession on Setterday efternoons, sirr, in short breeks."

There is Private McSlattery, whose knowledge of geography is, to say the least, somewhat limited. It was Private McSlattery who, feeling that he was being kept back from the war for no good and sufficient reason, voiced the following complaint after he had been kept on parade for two hours in a northeast wind for the edification of certain spectacled dignitaries from the Far East :

"This regiment," he announced, "is no' for the front at all. We're jist tae bide here for tae be inspeckit by Chinese Ministers and other heathen bodies!"

As Ian Hay explains, for Private McSlattery the word Minister could have only one sig

nificance, and his strictures were occasioned by sectarian rather than by racial prejudice.

We recommend "The First Hundred Thousand" to students of Scotch, students of war, students of peace, and to students of good reading. If it comes into the hands of any one not included in this list, we recommend that it be read, anyhow, even if no specific excuse can be found for its perusal.

WHAT JESUS CHRIST THOUGHT OF HIMSELF

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Coming to my table the other morning, I found laid upon it a letter from a correspondent asking me, "In what way can the divinity of Christ be proven?" and at the same time also a little book by Anson Phelps Stokes entitled "What Jesus Christ Thought of Himself," which seems to me to answer the inquiry of my correspondent. Not, indeed, exactly. It is not an argument to prove the traditional theory of Christ's divinity. It refuses to define, or even to consider, the metaphysical relations of the Son to the Father in a theological Trinity. Its author concedes that some conservatives will think his conclusions unorthodox and not consistent with Nicene theology. I am much more concerned myself to reach conclusions consistent with common sense and the teachings of Jesus Christ and his immediate Apostles; and that this little book does so successfully that I make no apology for reporting its substance and its conclusions here.

Jesus Christ lived a thoroughly human life; he grew not only in stature but in wisdom. He was not only hungry, thirsty, weary, but he was sensitive, and at times sad, lonely, perplexed, sorely tempted. He was conscious of the limitations of his power and the limitations of his knowledge. Offices in the kingdom of God he said it was not his to give; knowledge of the time of his second coming he said that he did not possess. In matters outside of the sphere of the soul's positive religious life and experience his information was based on that of his place and time. He constantly recognized the source of his wisdom and of his power to be not in himself but in his Father: "The Father hath sent me ;""My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me ;""As the Father said unto me, so I speak ;" "No man can

What Jesus Christ Thought of Himself. By Anson Phelps Stokes. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1,

1916

WHAT JESUS CHRIST THOUGHT OF HIMSELF

come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." To his Father he appeals in every crisis of his life." It is not merely to a better self' within that he directs his appeals, but to the eternal God. . . . In communion with God alone does complete peace and assurance come to his soul..... Take communion with God out of his life and there might be left us an ethical ideal, but surely there would be no religion, no redeeming power. Jesus Christ lived a human life, deriving his being and drawing his inspiration from a divine source."

With this consciousness of human limitation and human dependence there is equally clearly revealed another, but certainly not inconsistent or antagonistic, consciousness.

He was conscious of fulfilling the Old Testament; conscious of speaking with an authority transcending that of the revered traditions of his time; conscious of a right to set aside directly ancient forms and ceremonies, such as fastings and washings, and, indirectly, by a liberal interpretation, observances as sacred as those of the Sabbath day; conscious of filling to the full the ancient hopes of Israel of a coming Messiah who would bring in the kingdom of God—a consciousness affirmed in his first recorded sermon in Nazareth, and reiterated under the solemn sanction of an oath in the trial for his life before the Sanhedrin.

In this spiritual consciousness of Jesus Christ as it is recorded in the fragmentary biographies which we possess there are two characteristics which are absolutely unique in spiritual biography. In his utterances there are no expressions of repentance and no expressions of aspiration. In them there is no parallel to Paul's, "The good that I would The good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do;" no parallel to the Psalmist's, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Jesus looks back upon his life's past without regret ; he looks forward to his life's future without eagerness. His spiritual experience is not that of a seeker after God; it is that of one who has found God and is at rest in him.

The secret of this combined self-consciousness in Jesus Christ-this consciousness of the human and of the divine-Dr. Stokes finds in the teaching of the first chapter of the Bible, that God created man in his own image; that it was God's spirit breathed into man that made him a living soul, and gave him the capacity of communion with his Father in

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heaven. To Jesus the human and the divine are not essentially unlike, but kindred, and God is first of all one. The historical Jesus was not in his own mind equivalent to, or an integral and essential part of, the Godhead. . . . It does not seem possible, without restricting the idea of Deity, to call him, as he walked on earth, God, and we cannot believe that he would have himself liked to be so called." The power he possessed was divine. It came from God. The spirit which entered his soul was the Eternal Spirit. Prophet he was indeed, but something infinitely greater too-revealer and revelation of the love of God. He not merely preached it and proclaimed it, but he manifested it, through his own life of perfect righteousness and service. And

it is this realization in one man of God's purpose for all men, rather than any difference of essence or potentiality between Jesus and his brethren, that makes him, as far as we know, the only perfect Son of the one Father." "God is trying to incarnate himself in every one of us, and it is to be hoped that some day we may all realize our latent divinity, as did Jesus of Nazareth, and be in a measure Christs-perfect men in love and faith. . . . If ever that day comes, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ will stand out the more prominently, as without him it would have been impossible to reach his level." This uniqueness of Jesus Christ, this manifestation of God in Jesus of Nazareth, "is not necessarily dependent upon any theory as to his birth. The believer in the Virgin Birth and the believer in the natural birth of Jesus may both place their faith in the same Incarnation.'

Dr. Stokes has rendered a real and important service to the Christian Church, and especially to young and thoughtful men and women, by this statement of spiritual faith in the terms of a rational philosophy. We agree with him that it is not in accord with the traditional theology of the past; and it is in accord with the Nicene Creed only as the Nicene Creed is regarded as an emotional, not a philosophical expression, as the utterance not of an opinion but of a profound reverence. But whether it is in accord with creeds ancient or modern, theologies old or new, is not important if it is in accord with the teachings of Jesus concerning himself and the teachings of the Apostles concerning him.

It did not come within the purpose of Dr. Stokes to consider the apostolic teachings, and it would make this article altogether too long if I were to attempt an interpretation,

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