for inexhaustible energies with which to inform, not to say inflate, the will of man.

When the Kaiser says 'God wills it' he really means something; but what he means is 'I will it as much as a god could will it.' This egoistic hysteria has the same marks we all recognize about it in private life. Thus it will praise itself constantly without praising itself consistently. The German is like the man who will shoot at people; and exult in his own justice if he hits, and in his own mercy if he misses. He will call himself popular to prove his charm; and then call himself persecuted to prove his endurance. He will prove that he has grown rich entirely by his talents; and then that he has grown poor entirely through his virtues. We know the type in personal relations; but we had scarcely realized that since it can be encouraged by a philosophy, it can be spread like a religion. The vision seems as fantastic as that of a whole population of lunatics, each believing he is made of glass. But these men think themselves, and therefore each other, to be made not so much of glass as of diamond; of something not only hard to break but too precious to be broken. It is the nonGerman world they believe to be made of glass. For this is the unique mark of a religion of the race, as distinct from one of the altar or even the flag, that in merely reverencing his own blood a man merely worships his own body. He does not look to something above his head, even stone fetish or a rag on a pole. All the idolators are also the idols.

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In the present case, while this rigid ecstasy of self-worship has saved them from internal discontents, a series of accidents has saved them from a sense of external dangers. It may be questioned whether it is really a fine

thing for a man not to know when he is beaten; though it is unquestionably a fine thing for him not to care when he is beaten. Anyhow, it is certain that Germany in this war has often been beaten in such a fashion that she did not know it. The wound of the Marne would have been enough to warn a sane man; but it was not enough to stop a madman. Moreover, there was really a coincidence of something inconclusive about all the checks to the enemy charge. A fight in the ultimate sense, may be defensive and yet decisive; but it can hardly look decisive. Seen from that height and distance, even the German defeats have looked like German victories. The English at Ypres, or the French at Verdun, showed what wise men would always call a superiority, but not what fools would ever call a success. Hence the second factor in German psychology to-day is the fact that the external peril has not yet pierced, or has only recently begun to pierce. The state of mind is not only complex but confused; being a German state of mind.

Thus it is perfectly true to say, as the peacemakers say, that Germany has long been thinking of peace; certainly hoping, possibly longing and wailing for peace. But Germans think about peace for the excellent reason that the word means anything, and therefore nothing. And the Germans, especially since they became modern philosophers, wallow in words that mean anything and therefore nothing. The point about 'peace' is that it is a sliding term that might stand for any stoppage at any stage. It is not even the word of one who wishes an end of war; but rather of one who shrinks from defining any end of it. Speaking about peace is simply a way of being silent about terms of peace. In this sense it is very true that the ordinary

German has long been thinking of peace. But has he really been thinking of defeat? Does he think of it really coolly and clearly, as a Frenchman thought of it at the very beginning of the war? My own guess is that he will not think of it till the very end of the war. It is one of the converging and crushing arguments for making sure that the war really does end, and does not merely break off, or rather break down.

One exceptional mark of this exceptional crusade is this; that we are not attacking the German kingdom, or even his Empire, but his world; in the unique sense of his universe. That is what constitutes a religious war; it is not between commonwealth and commonwealth, but between cosmos and cosmos. Our enemies are doubtless every day more bewildered, and even disappointed, rather at their unsuccess than anything they would call their failure. But they can for a long time feel that things are going against them, before they begin to feel what things are going against them. And they will find it hardest of all to feel that what is against them is not so much things as the nature of things. As men talk of an anthropocentric, they live in a Teutocentric universe. They do not claim a place in the sun in the sense of a place in the sunshine; they claim to be the sun. The failure of Teutonic destiny would affect them

Land and Water

as apocalyptic signs in the sky would affect a solid materialist who believed in nothing but astronomy. The old and strong sort of skeptic would say it must be a hoax. The new and weak sort of skeptic would say it must be a hallucination. Similarly the happy savage might waver between the notions of fireworks and of fire-water. When the Day of Judgment had reached a certain acute, not to say personal, point, he would believe in it, but hardly before. That is what will happen to the Germans in these earlier stages of their defeat. They will find it hard to believe their eyes; they will prefer to believe their eyeglasses and spectacles and telescopes and microscopes; for these, as I have said, are all made of mirrors. They will believe, as the skeptic would believe, at a certain stage of a Day of Judgment. The devils also believe and tremble. But these are not devils; they are nothing worse than devil-worshipers: and for them it would capsize the cosmos to find that the devil is not God. That is the deepest of all the many reasons for driving any victory home; the depth of the disease and the unearthly strength of the delusion. Nor will any but the shallow be perplexed by the paradox that it is not only a case of kill or cure, but of kill and cure; and that the very difficulty of doing it is part of the proof that it must be done.

VOL. XI-NO. 576

As I wandered the other afternoon around the old familiar spots in the Borough which are such appealing survivals of Dickens Land in London, there came to my mind the lively letter that the great novelist wrote to his American friend, Professor Felton, describing the holiday tour in Cornwall he was making with Maclise, Stanfield, and Forster. 'If you could have seen but one gleam of the bright fires by which we sat in the big rooms of ancient inns at night until long after the small hours had come and gone, or smelled but one steam of the hot punch... which came in every evening in a huge, broad, china bowl! I never laughed in my life as I did on this journey. It would have done you good to hear me!'

I think of the happy days and nights of long ago when Dickens found the joy of life in every street and byway of the great city, and the feast and wassail bowl were typical of the Merrie England in which he lived, and I contrast them with the days that are, when Britain is fighting for her very existence as a nation, when the food of the people is strictly rationed, when the houses of cheer are closed during many hours of the day, and when, long before midnight, curfew rings out and hushes the great city to silence.

I enter the Borough from London Bridge, and at the Southwark end of the bridge I find the New Zealander, not contemplating the ruins of the capital, but in the uniform of the King, and on his sleeve the wound

stripes that tell of the share he has had in saving the capital.

As I step into High Street, a bulldog peers out at me from a narrow alley leading to an old-world slum. There is a wistful 'What-about-those-biscuits?' look in the animal's eyes, and I think of Bill Sikes and his dog, and I wonder if Nancy would have managed something for the faithful beast with one of her coupons. But the Nancy who passes me to-day wears Bill's regimental badge. He is doing a bit of good work for a change, and doing it on the Western front.

Near the top of High Street there is an air raid warning which tells the nobility and gentry of the Borough that the greatest safety will be found by staying at home. I think of Fagin on a raid night. He would probably have been down the nearest tube, and the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates, being 'physically unfit,' would have been with him. And what an ideal hunting-ground the tube on air raid nights would be for them!

As I stroll along High Street I note that conscription and war conditions have played havoc with the Dickens types that until recently were still to be found there.

By the entrance to the yard of the Old George, where the picturesque wooden galleries still remain to remind us of the old Pickwickian days, a couple of Waacs are chatting with a Red Cross nurse. On the spot where Mr. Pickwick first met Sam Weller, two Australian soldiers are making a local inquiry of a pretty postwoman.

I wonder what Mr. Pickwick would have thought of Australian soldiers at the door of his inn? And what would Sam have had to say to the pretty postwoman?

I turn down a narrow passage at the back of the old Marshalsea. Here are still some portions of the prison. At the door of one of the little houses that are faced by the walls of the old house of captivity where Mr. Dorrit lay a prisoner for debt, a youth in the uniform of the Royal Air Force is talking to a gray-haired old lady, probably his grandmother. I wonder what the old lady thinks of aeroplanes and airmen, and as I glance up at the little windows let into the high prison wall, I wonder how the poor debtors would have felt on a Zeppelin night.

As I look at the smart young fellow with his cap balanced jauntily on the side of his head, I think of the amazement with which Mr. Pickwick would have eyed him through his goldrimmed spectacles, and I see Sam Weller increasing the angle at which he wears his old white hat in good humored mockery of the apparition.

In Little Dorrit's playground, children are still at play, but one of the little girls is being called home by her mother. The mother wears a uniform with trousers to it, and there are letters on the collar of her tunic which suggest that she is in the employment of a window-cleaning company. How Little Dorrit would have stared to find a mother in trousers in her playground! And what would Maggie have said?

The London Chronicle

At the top end of the passage that leads from High Street to Little Dorrit's playground there are two establishments that were familiar objects in the Dickens days. One is a public house, and the other is a pawn shop. But though it is early in the afternoon the public house is closed by Legislature's harsh decree. Before the war this establishment was so liberally patronized by the ladies of the neighborhood, that the proprietor found it necessary to placard the windows with a notice that no drink must be taken outside. This was quite a necessary order, for until it was enforced you had to push your way through a small army of mothers refreshing the inner woman before you could reach the ground on which their offspring were at play. That typical scene of Dickens Land in London has passed with the war, probably never to return.

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And the riot of the streets Dickens knew them has passed away, too. The boys of the Borough no longer fight each other. They are fighting their country's foe. The ragged wreckage that inspired the pencil of Cruikshank is conspicuous by its absence. The gorging citizens the well-to-do worshipers of the flowing bowl, the youth and the middleaged that found its joy of life in hot and rebellious liquors, all these have vanished.

The London that they knew throbs now with the staid and sober note of good work and good will, good work for the war, and good will to win. it.

THE LUXURY TAX

WE have to congratulate, on a more or less successful end of their very exhausting labors, the membersand especially the chairman and the technical adviser — of the committee appointed to consider and report what articles and places ought respectively to be classed as articles of luxury and places of luxury for the purposes of the provisions of any Act of the present session which may impose a duty on payments made in respect of goods sold or supplied, accommodation supplied, or services rendered, at any place of luxury.' These terms of reference show how little real guidance was given to the committee as to the scope of its task. All that it was asked to do was to state what are articles and places of luxury if an Act were passed imposing a duty on such articles and on services rendered at such places. It developed at a very early stage a desire to range over a much wider field, and its deliberations were enlightened by an incorrigible humorist, who seems to have regarded the whole proceeding as a joke, and drafted a report in the style of Mr. Justice Darling's judicial utterances. It never made up its mind whether the object of the suggested tax was to get revenue or check expenditure. On page 26, in the course of a very interesting memorandum on 'the economic aspect of the luxury duty,' it is stated that the consumption of such articles [more costly than is essential for utility] is not merely to be taxed, it is to be discouraged.' On page 50, a paper handed in by five members of the committee observes

that the proposed luxury duty obviously is for revenue purposes. It is not aimed solely, if at all, at discouraging expenditure upon articles which can properly be classed as luxuries, nor can its imposition be justified by the desire to effect a decrease in the purchase of those necessary articles which by reason of their price are held to contain an element of luxury.'

Under the circumstances, the committee's report (White Paper 101, price 6d.) is a very much more sensible document than might have been expected. It assumes that the intention of the Government was that the duty should fall, not on everything beyond the necessaries of life, but only on such expenditure as may fairly be called unnecessary or superfluous. It decided (a question which it had not been asked) that, apart from the taxation of certain occupied rooms, it would be better, for the revenue and for everybody else, to tax articles rather than places. It divided articles into those in Schedule A, on which the duty is to be paid whatever the price, and those in Schedule B, including meals and accommodation at clubs, hotels, lodgings, etc., on which the duty is to be paid when the price is above certain specified prices. As a rise in prices is clearly possible, it is recommended that some machinery should be set up for raising the scheduled prices if circumstances so demand. Schedule A includes jewelry, clothes made of silk or furs, or trimmed with fur, fans, perfumes, rents for fishing and shooting rights, riding and hunting clothes, liveries, pictures, sculptures (except on first sale to a private purchaser, portraits at or over