Current experience is proving that war is a grim condition of life, and that none can escape its effects. No religious or philosophic precept is potent enough in practical application to prevent its outbreak or to stay its course. The strong man of military age, who claims the right to pursue normal peaceful avocations when his country is at war, pleads guilty, however involuntarily, to aberrations of both mind and heart.

There are few who do not conscientiously cherish repugnance for war, but practically none of those to whom so natural a sentiment makes most forcible appeal deem it a man's part to refuse a manifest personal call of natural duty. The conscientious objector to combatant service may in certain rare cases deserve considerate treatment, but very short shrift should await the able-bodied men who, from love of ease or fear of danger, simulate conscientious objection in order to evade a righteous obligation.

Lack of imagination may be at times as responsible for the sin of the shirker as lack of courage. Patriotism is an instinct which works as sluggishly among the unimaginative as among the cowardly and the selfish. The only cure for the sluggish working of the patriotic instinct among the cowardly and the selfish is the sharp stimulus of condign punishment. But among the unimaginative it may be worth experimenting by way of preliminary with earnest and urgent appeals to example such as is offered not only by current experience, but also by literature and history. No shirkers would be left if every subject of the Crown were taught to apprehend the significance of Henley's interrogation:

What have I done for you, England, my England?

What is there I would not do, England, my own?

SIDNEY LEE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHIRKERS]

ONE OF THE KAISER'S MANY MISTAKES

Louis Botha--we touch our hats to you!

You are supremely and triumphantly one of the Kaiser's many mistakes.

You have proved yourself once again a capable leader and a man among men. You have proved him once more incapable of apprehending the meaning of the word honour. You are an honourable man. Even as a foe you fought us fair and we honoured you. You have valiantly helped to dig the grave of his dishonour and have proved him a fool. We thank you! And we thank the memory of the clear-visioned men of those old days who, in spite of the clamour of the bats, persisted in tendering you and yours that right hand of friendship which you have so n.o.bly justified.

You fought us fair. You have uprisen from the ashes of the past like the Phoenix of old. You are Briton with the best.

Fair fight breeds no ill-will. It is the man, and the nation, that fights foul and flings G.o.d and humanity overboard that lays up for itself stores of hatred and outcastry and scorn which the ages shall hardly efface.

And Germany once was great, and might have been greater.

Delenda est Germania!--so far as Germania represents the Devil and all his works.

The following lines were written fourteen years ago when we welcomed the end of the Boer War. We are all grateful that the hope therein expressed has been so amply fulfilled. That it has been so is largely due to the wisdom and statesmanship of Louis Botha.

No matter now the rights and wrongs of it; You fought us bravely and we fought you fair.

The fight is done. Grip hands! No malice bear!

We greet you, brothers, to the n.o.bler strife Of building up the newer, larger life!

Join hands! Join hands! Ye nations of the stock!

And make henceforth a mighty Trust for Peace;-- A great enduring peace that shall withstand The shocks of time and circ.u.mstance; and every land Shall rise and bless you--and shall never cease To bless you--for that glorious gift of Peace.

Germany, if she had so willed, could have come into that hoped-for Trust for Peace.

But Germany would not. She put her own selfish interests before all else and so digs her own grave.

JOHN OXENHAM.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOTHA TO BRITAIN

"I have carried out everything in accordance with our compact at Vereeniging."]

BELGIUM IN HOLLAND

In the present crisis of Belgian affairs there is much to remind the historical student of the events which led to the fall of Antwerp in 1585, and the outrageous invasion of the Southern Netherlands by the army of Parma. Then, as now, Holland opened her arms to her wounded and captive sister. The best Flemish scholars and men of letters emigrated to the land where Cornheert and Spieghel welcomed them.

Merchants and artisans flocked to a new sphere of energy in Amsterdam.

Several of the professorial chairs in that city, and in the great universities of Leyden and Harderwijk, were filled by learned Flemings, and the arts, that had long been flourishing in Brussels, fled northward to escape from the desolating Spanish scourge. The grim pencil of Raemaekers becomes tender whenever he touches upon the relation of the tortured Belgium to her sister, Holland, his own beloved fatherland.

We do not know yet, in this country, a t.i.the of the sacrifices which have been made in Holland to staunch the tears of Belgium. "Your sufferings are mine, and so are your fortunes," has been the motto of the loyal Dutch.

EDMUND GOSSE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PROMISE

"We shall never sheath the sword until Belgium recovers all, and more than all that she has sacrificed."--Mr. Asquith, 9th November, 1914.]

SERBIA

The fight of the one and the four might, in view of the difference in the size of the combatants, be called quite fairly "the fight of the one and the fifty-three." Each of the a.s.sailants has his own character.

Germany is represented as a ferocious giant; Austria follows Prussia's lead, a little the worse for wear, with a bandaged head as the souvenir of his former campaign: he does his best to look and act like Germany.

Bulgaria loses not a moment, but puts his rifle to his shoulder to shoot the small enemy: he acts in his own way, according to his own character: kill the enemy as quickly as possible and seize the spoil, that is his principle. Turkey is a rather broken-down and dilapidated figure, who is preparing to use his bayonet, but has not got it quite ready. Serbia, erect, with feet firmly planted, stands facing the chief enemy, a little David against this big Goliath and his henchman, Austria; and the other two, so recently deadly foes, now standing shoulder to shoulder, attack him while his attention is directed on Germany.

The leader and "hero" of this a.s.sault is Prussia, big, brutal, remorseless. The Dutch artist always concentrates the spectator's attention on him. You can almost hear the roar coming out of his mouth: "Gott strafe Serbien." This is the figure, as Raemaekers paints him, that goes straight for his object, regardless of moral considerations.

Serbia is in his way, and Serbia must be trampled in the mire. The artist's sympathy is wholly with Serbia, who is pictured as the man fighting against the brute, slight but active and n.o.ble in build, facing this burly foe.

And poor old Turkey! Always a figure of comedy, never ready in time, always ineffective, never fully able to use the weapons of so-called "civilization." Let it always be remembered that in the Gallipoli peninsula, when the Turks at first were taking no prisoners, but killing the wounded after their own familiar fashion with mutilation, for the sake of such spoil as could be carried away, Enver Pasha issued an order that thirty piastres should be paid for every prisoner brought in alive, a n.o.ble and humane regulation. Let us hope that the reward was always paid, not stolen on the way, as has been so often the case in Turkey.

WILLIAM MITCh.e.l.l RAMSAY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SERBIA

"Now we can make an end of him."]

JACKALS IN THE POLITICAL FIELD

When the tiger," says the naturalist, "has killed some large animal, such as a buffalo which he cannot consume at one time, the jackals collect round the carcase at a respectful distance and wait patiently until the tiger moves off. Then they rush from all directions, carousing upon the slaughtered buffalo, each anxious to eat as much as it can contain in the shortest time."

The human jackal is one of the most squalid and sordid creatures and features of war. We saw him in Dublin the other day emerging from his slum den to loot Sackville Street. Every battlefield feeds its carrion beasts and birds.

This picture of Belgium and its jackals is doubtless only too true. Mr.

Raemakers and the Dutch have better means of knowing than we. The jackal, says the same naturalist, belongs to the _Canidae_, the "dog tribe." The scientific name of the true dog is _Canis familiaris,_ "the household dog." The jackal is _Canis aureus_, the "gold dog." The epithet describes no doubt his colour. The human _Canis aureus_ perhaps deserves his t.i.tle on not less obvious grounds.

"The continent of Europe," the naturalist goes on, "is free from the jackal." It was supposed till yesterday to be free from the lion and tiger.

But in the prehistoric times of the cave man, geologists say, there was both in England and Europe the great "sabre-tooth" tiger. Kipling, who knows everything about beasts, knows him and puts him into his "Story of Ung": "The sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair."