identity in the multitudinous County of London; which, in itself as happy an example, doubtless, of the hostel smoothly working as one need cite, placed me in grateful relation with a lady, one of the victims of her country's convulsion and in charge of the establishment I allude to, 5 whom simply to "meet," as we say, is to learn how singular a dignity, how clear a distinction, may shine in active fortitude and economic self-effacement under an all but crushing catastrophe. "Talk about' faces-!" I could but privately ejaculate 10 as I gathered the senses of all that this one represented in the way of natural nobleness and sweetness, a whole past acquaintance with letters and art and taste, insisting on their present restrictedness to bare sisterly service. The proud rigor of association with pressing service 15 alone, with absolutely nothing else, the bare commodious house, so otherwise known to me of old and now, like most of our hostels if I am not mistaken, the most unconditioned of loans from its relinquishing owner; the lingering look of ancient peace in the precincts, an element I had already as 20 I passed and repassed, at the afternoon hour, found somehow not at all dispelled by the presence in the central green garden itself of sundry maimed and hobbling and smiling convalescents from an extemporized small hospital close at hand, their battered khaki replaced by a like uniformity of 25 the loose light blue, and friendly talk with them through the rails of their inclosure as blessed to one participant at least as friendly talk with them always and everywhere is; such were the hovering elements of an impression in which the mind had yet mainly to yield to that haunting force on the 30 part of our waiting proscripts which never consent to be long denied. The proof of which universally recognized power of their spell amid us is indeed that they have led 15-32: b, c. me so far with a whole side of my plea for them still unspoken. This, however, I hope on another occasion to come back to, and I am caught meanwhile by my memory of how the 5 note of this conviction was struck for me, with extraordinary force, many months ago and in the first flush of recognition of what the fate that had overtaken our earliest tides of arrival and appeal really meant-meant so that all fuller acquaintance, since pursued, has but piled one 10 congruous reality after another upon the horror. It was in September, in a tiny Sussex town which I had not quitted since the outbreak of the war, and here the advent of our first handful of fugitives before the warning of Louvain and Aerschott and Termonde and Dinant had just been an15 nounced. Our small hilltop city, covering the steep sides of the compact pedestal crowned by its great church, had reserved a refuge at its highest point, and we had waited all day, from occasional train to train, for the moment at which we should attest our hospitality. It came at last, 20 but late in the evening, when a vague outside rumor called me to my doorstep, where the unforgettable impression at once assaulted me. Up the precipitous little street that led from the station, over the old grass-grown cobbles, where vehicles rarely pass, came the panting procession of the 25 homeless and their comforting, their almost clinging entertainers, who seemed to hurry them on as in a sort of overflow of expression or fever of charity. It was swift and eager, in the Autumn darkness and under the flare of a single lamp-with no vociferation and but for a woman's 30 voice scarce a sound save the shuffle of mounting feet and the thick-drawn breath of emotion. The note I except, however, was that of a young mother carrying her small child and surrounded by those who 3-31: v, h. bore her on and on, almost lifting her as they went together. The resonance through our immemorial old street of her sobbing and sobbing cry was the voice itself of history; it brought home to me more things than I could then quite take the measure of, and these just because it expressed 5 for her not direct anguish, but the incredibility, as we should say, of honest assured protection. Months have elapsed, and from having been then one of a few hundred she is now one of scores and scores of thousands; yet her cry is still in my ears, whether to speak most of what she 10 had lately or what she actually felt, and it plays to my own sense, as a great fitful tragic light over the dark exposure of her people. 2-13: h, n. 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14. THE GREAT TRIUMPH 1 WERE the public and our city officials truly alive to the significance of the tremendous moral victory won by the President of the United States yesterday, flags would be flying from every building and bells would be pealing from 5 every church tower in this city to-day. Because it is a victory of peace, and for peace, and not one purchased at the cost of thousands of human lives on a bloody battlefield, these external signs of thankfulness and of glorification are lacking. Within the hearts of all Americans who have 10 understood the meaning of what has been going on and the gravity of the crisis through which the Republic has passed, there is, however, a devout thankfulness and a profound gratitude to President Wilson which needs no outward expression to render it complete. They know that it has been 15 given to the President to achieve a moral victory for his country and for all humanity, which forever insures him a foremost place in the pages of American history, and has mightily enhanced the power and prestige of the United States. Without mobilizing a regiment or assembling a 20 fleet, by sheer dogged, unswerving persistence in advocating the right, he has compelled the surrender of the proudest, the most arrogant, the best armed of nations, and he has done it in completest self-abnegation, but in fullest, most patriotic devotion to American ideals. 25 No error could be more serious than that of looking upon this splendid success of our diplomacy as a victory on a 1 Editorial in The New York Evening Post, August 2, 1915. mere punctilio, a satisfaction like that of the duelist upon a "point of honor." The principle for which we were contending, though it happened to be embodied in a form which, in the concrete, might be made to appear as of trifling character, was a principle than which nothing could 5 be more vital. The carrying on of commerce upon the high seas- -even commerce in contraband-without peril to the lives either of crew or of passengers, is one of the few privileges of international intercourse in time of war which have been held intact and unchallenged for generations. In set- 10 ting at naught this simple and unmistakable principle, Germany justly earned the title of "an outlaw nation"; and it was to vindicate and reëstablish the law of nations in a vital point that we interposed our veto. The crime of the Lusitania massacre did not consist in the fact that there 15 were Americans among the murdered; but it was owing to that fact that we had specific ground for intervening on our own account-intervening without making ourselves the judges of other nations in their relation to each other. Had the matter, however, concerned merely the slight ad- 20 vantages or opportunities immediately at risk for Americans, we could not have nerved ourselves to the point of insisting on our rights at the peril of the bare possibility of war with a nation with which ours desired to be at peace. Our case was impregnable in law and justice; but what 25 made it great and momentous was that it was in principle the case of international right, the case of civilized warfare against unshackled terrorism—in a word, the case of civilization itself. It is because of these facts that President Wilson's tri- 30 umph goes far beyond the bounds of our country. If it constitutes a chapter in our history of which Americans always will be proud, it is an achievement that serves the 20, 21:1. 20-29: c, f, n. |