"The many-eyed and many-winged hosts, named in the Hebrew tongue Cherubim and Seraphim.. the appellation of Seraphim plainly teaches their ever moving about things divine, their constancy, warmth, keenness, and the seething of that persistent, indomitable, inflexible motion But the appellation of the Cherubim denotes their knowledge and their vision of God."-Dionysius the Areopagite.

The burning seraphs, of created things
Most near to thee;
These are all wings.
They cannot see

Thy face, so close they are to thy Divinity.

They soar within thy light,

Plunge through the rushing river of thy grace;

To them it is a night
Fulfilled of ecstasy,

Where loved and lover meet in love's embrace.

Far off beyond that zone of moving fire,

The steadfast cherubim
All-wise

Thy Being hymn,

Thy neighborhood eternally desire. Their anguished eyes

Are ever fixed on thy Reality.

Yet there they may not be:

They cannot rise,

Love hath not made them free.

Thy heart they know, that dread and deep Abyss.

Thy heart they know! Yet cannot

come more near.

The torment of the seer

Is theirs, that all shall see and all must miss.

In vain

Their sweeping vision of supernal

things;

'Tis but a deeper pain,

Since the One Truth they teach, They may not reach

They have no wings!

Ah, can it be

That here, all grief above,

Is still played out earth's bitterest tragedy?

Must those who clearest see

Thy beauty, linger in this twilight dim?

THE DYING RESERVIST.

I shall not see the faces of my friends, Nor hear the songs the rested reapers sing

After the labors of the harvesting,

In those dark nights before the summer ends;

Nor see the floods of spring, the melting snow,

Nor in the autumn twilight hear the stir

Of reedy marshes, where the wild ducks whirr

And circle black against the afterglow, My mother died; she shall not have to

weep;

My wife will find another home; my child,

Too young, will never grieve or know; but I

Have found my brother, and content

edly

I'll lay my head upon his knees and

sleep.

O brother death-I knew you when

you smiled.

Maurice Baring.

DEATH.

Opening that we cannot find,
Groping our way amid dark walls!
There's light out yonder where the
wind

Singeth in thy chinks like one who
calls.

Well hid art thou, O Door!

Locked and barred, and curtained o'er.

A little postern through which men
Can slip away, unheard, unseen.
Thy bolts are drawn and closed again,
And dark as they have ever been.
The walls of time close round and
round,

Unpierced still by light or sound!
Rosa Mulholland.

President Taft had hardly uttered what Sir Edward Grey on March 13 described as the "bold and courageous words" of his proposals relative to the settlement of "matters of national honor" by Courts of Arbitration when I received from one of the makers of opinion in the United States the following appeal:

What is now wanted is a calm and fair interpretation of the prevailing opinion in France to-day with regard to disarmament, and especially with regard to the recent proposals of Sir Edward Grey and President Taft. It would seem as if France would naturally be the next nation to come into line. Why not register the pulse of the French people on these ethical and spiritual matters.

The view expressed by my distinguished correspondent, "it would seem as if France would be the next nation to come into line," is not surprising. France is, no doubt, a Power interested, and even supremely interested, in "ethical and spiritual matters." What the English-speaking world chiefly knows of France is her idealism -the date of 1789, the Contrat Social of Rousseau and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Revolution with the Walkyrie dash of the Republican armies over the toppling thrones of Éurope, and the mystic words which were the deeper undertone of the Marseillaise: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. It couples with that knowledge the recollection of the doctrinaire policies of the Réveur Couronné of the Second Empire, who was ever ready to rush to the succor of fallen nationalities and who claimed thereby to be prolonging the democratic war-cry of the volunteers of the Revolution. And finally, the English-speaking world, face to face with

the forty years of the Third Republic, admires the altruism of her political philosophy of "solidarity"-in reality, a dream of the Masonic inspirers of that Republic-her magnificent tenyears battle for Right against Raison d'Etat in the great drama of the Dreyfus case, her constant urbane attitude of conciliation ("L'Adaptation des Alliances"), her diplomatic intervention at moments of tension between the Powers (the "Dogger Bank"), and her undeviating loyalty to the ideal that maintains the Tribunal of The Hague.

This is the France-which is only one, and not the whole, France-which is visible from over the sea and from over the Channel; but it is a France of mirage; and if that mirage has often duped and lured the "Anglo-Saxon" or the Levantine vision, it has never vic timized the sceptical scrutiny of the Powers of the Continent. There is quite another France and even more real France, the France that has evolved not on some distant Atlantis, nor yet upon an island separated by the estranging sea from intimate Continental contacts. There is the France that has all along formed an integral part of Continental European soil. That France, in order to remain abreast of the fashion of the hour, may vote platonic resolutions in favor of disarmament—calling upon the Government "to exert every effort to place upon the programme of work at the next Hague Conference, in agreement with the friendly and allied Powers, the question of the simultaneous limitation of armaments" (February 23)— but the same France notes with singular satisfaction the cautious and lukewarm character of the terms in which the British Sovereign-addressing the Lord Mayor on April 30, after the Guildhall Meeting of the 28th held to

consider the proposals of the President of the United States of Americaperfunctorily affirmed his "gratification" at receiving "these records of opinions, unanimously expressed, upon a question of such supreme and farreaching importance, by an assemblage so, representative of the various lines of thought in our religious, political, and social life."

It can serve no useful end to prolong the optical illusion of which the foreigner becomes so easily the victim with regard to French idealism. There may, on the other hand, be a certain advantage in avoiding misconception as to the positive conditions which, whether they like it or not, are bound to determine the attitude of presentday Frenchmen towards such demonstrations as those of the English-speaking communities with regard to Treaties for the Abolition of War.

I

On May 9 the news reached Paris and Berlin late in the evening that the Provincial Committee of the Reichsland, the Délégation d'Alsace-Lorraine, had that afternoon been prorogued. The Cabinet order of the Emperor dissolving this Assembly was dated May 6, the first day of the Emperor's visit to Alsace, and it was issued from Strasbourg. Forty-eight hours later the Alsace-Lorraine Constitution and Finance Bills were rejected by the Committee of the Reichstag. Commenting on the confusion that reigned in the Committee prior to the rejection of these measures the Berlin correspondent of the Times observed: "Now, as so often, one is tempted to believe that most people in Berlin and throughout the greater part of the German Empire know no more about Alsace-Lorraine than about the German colonies, if indeed they know as much." Paris, France in general, are fortunately better informed.

There is a certain historical document which may have been forgotten in Berlin, which no doubt is little known in London and in Washington, but which, if it does not yet figure, as it ought to figure, on the walls of every French school, is still fresh in the memories of most Frenchmen. It is the unanimous Declaration of the Deputies of the French Departments of the BasRhin, the Haut-Rhin; the Moselle, the Meurthe, and the Vosges protesting against the alienation of Alsace-Lorraine, and affirming the immuable volonté of the population of these two Provinces to remain Frenchmen. One hundred and seven members of the National Assembly-among whom were the actual President of the French Chamber of Deputies and the M. Clemenceau who avenged M. Delcassé at 'Casablanca-voted against the preliminaries of peace ceding Alsace and a portion of Lorraine to Germany. had been moved to assume this sublime responsibility by the perusal of such passages as follow-and it would be a crime not to preserve the original language of the Declaration:

They

Europe ne peut permettre ni ratifier l'abandon de l'Alsace et de la Lorraine. Gardiennes des règles de la justice et du droit des gens, les nations civilisées ne sauraient rester plus longtemps insensibles au sort de leur voisine, sous peine d'être à leur tour victimes des attentats qu'elles auraient tolérés. L'Europe moderne ne peut laisser saisir un peuple comme un vil troupeau; elle ne peut rester sourde aux protestations répétées des populations menacées; elle doit à sa propre conservation d'interdire de pareils abus de force. Elle sait d'ailleurs que l'unité de la France est aujourd'hui, comme dans le passé, une garantie de l'ordre général du monde, une barrière contre l'esprit de conquête et d'invasion. "La paix faite au prix d'une cession de territoire ne serait qu'une trève ruineuse et non une paix définitive. Elle serait pour tous une cause d'agitations intes

En résumé, l'Alsace et la Lorraine protestent hautement contre toute cession; la France ne peut la consentir, l'Europe ne peut la sanctionner.

En foi de quoi nous prenons nos concitoyens de France, les gouvernments et les peuples du monde entier, à témoins quoi nous tenons d'avance pour nuls et non avenus tous actes et traités, vote ou plébiscite, qui consentiraient abandon, en faveur de l'étranger, de toute ou partie de nos provinces de l'Alsace et de la Lorraine.

This protest was drawn up by Gambetta at Bordeaux. The great patriot, who was to become the Tyrtæus of revanche, had shown himself a seer: "La paix faite au prix d'une cession de territoire ne sera qu'une trève ruineuse et non une paix definitive. Elle serait pour tous une cause d'agitations intestines, une provocation légitime et permanente." Forty years of growing armaments are but the confirmation of

this melancholy prophecy. In a proud

and noble letter on "The Rôle of Bismarck" addressed to Professor Hans Delbrück by Monsieur Emile Ollivier, author of L'Empire Libéral, and published in the Figaro of May 14, the Minister of Napoleon III. said:

No one contests Bismarck's glorious place among the dominators of the world. But political facts are not to be judged by their immediate consequences. There are distant consequences which convert into calamities what had seemed to be good fortune, and which turn into bitterness victories that had been received with rejoicing. The reflecting observer already perceives the sombre morrows of the policy which led you Germans to success. Have you gained anything in conquering populations whom you torment, who hate you, curse you, and are merely waiting for a favorable circumstance to rise up against you? Was not the fact that you have made it impossible to come to an understanding, without arrière

for the accession of territory which was not needed for your Unity? Has your security been augmented by the fact of your having afflicted and buffeted a nation whose humiliations never last for more than a time, and who suddenly on the morrow of a Soubise or a Bazaine may behold the advent of a Turenne or a Pelissier? A state of reciprocal distrust between France and Germany is a permanent cause of tumult in Europe.

Frenchmen understand very well why the dream of unrestricted AngloAmerican arbitration should at any time make its plausible appeal to Englishmen, and why, above all, at the present moment, a dangerous proposal like that of Mr. Taft should masquerade with iridescent will-o'-the-wisp seduction before the eyes of both worried and tired statesmen and of a people familiar with Isaiah. Frenchmen are little given to reading the Bible, but they have their own political sacred document, a Gallic Table of the Law known as Les Droits de l'Homme: and their imagination, therein fed on an ideal of abstract Justice, has readily assimilated the phraseology of the harbingers of the Millennium from a Quintet and a Michelet to a Jaurès and a d'Estournelles de Constant. They, furthermore, clearly enough perceive how special are the cases of England and the United States, how ripe is the hour in England for the success of a meeting like that of Guildhall, where Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour, whom the Primate of England called the "Great Twin Brethren," Hector and Achilles, joined with the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, and with all the prelates of all the Churches of Christian, and even of Rabbinical, England in organizing a Crusade of Peace, to the cry of Dieu le veut-the same cry, by the way, to which the Prussians marched down the Champs Elysées. Clearly apparent. as well to Frenchmen is the utility of