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naval command, but whether any of them would lead to the desired goal is doubtful. They might assemble the whole of their effective battle fleet at

Hawaii and improvise an advanced base at Wake Island, whence they could either demonstrate off the Japanese coast or make a bold attempt to recapture Guam.'

Wake Island, as Mr. Bywater's excellent charts show us, occupies an important strategical position, 2010 miles due west of Hawaii. It is not, however, a secure refuge for a large fleet, and in only a few hundred miles north of the Marshall Islands, whence Japanese submarines might be expected to operate. In these circumstances, heavy losses would be almost inevitable; nor must it be forgotten that serious damage from torpedo, mine, or other cause would be equivalent to total loss, in view of the absence of docks and repairing plant.' The Americans, we are told, would lose every disabled ship to a certainty, being without a proper base, in the event of a fleet action anywhere in the Western Pacific.

Mr. Bywater's discussion of a possible battle between the main forces of the two Powers is worth quoting at some length. He enumerates the points in favor of the Japanese that make up for the numerical superiority of the Americans:

First, they would be fighting at no great distance from their own great naval bases, and would, therefore, arrive on the scene of action in a condition of maximum fighting efficiency, and with the knowledge that a short and secure line of retreat lay open to ships that might suffer injury. Secondly, they could emerge with the whole of their serviceable heavy ships, cruisers, and destroyers, including the older boats of limited fuel capacity; whereas it is extremely doubtful whether the American fleet would be accompanied by more than a portion of its full complement of destroyers.

Thirdly, they would possess in their four battle-cruisers of the Kongo class a squadron of heavily-armed ships at least six knots faster than the American battle

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ships, the first American battle-cruiser gaining a tactical advantage of the highest will not be ready before 1923, — thereby importance. Fourthly, having decided to fight, they would proceed to call up every available submarine, ordering these boats to lie in wait to attack the American fleet before and after the action. This list does not

by any means exhaust the advantages that the Japanese would enjoy, but it will serve to show that the numerical preponderance of the Americans would be heavily discounted by other factors. Any attempt to predict the course of events after action had been joined would be profitless. On paper, at least, the contemporary battleships of the two Powers are well matched. . . . Failing authentic data, it is impossible to say whether either fleet has a marked superiority in gunnery. All that can be said with confidence is that the shooting on both sides would be excellent, since both navies devote ceaseless attention to the gunnery branch. Japanese officers affirm, however, that battle practice in their navy has been developed by methods more scientific and effective than those in vogue in the American service. Be this as it may, it is a fact that the Japanese navy, as early as 1915, was using fire-control instruments which were not introduced into the American navy until 1917 or later.

The Americans would be sorely handicapped by their want of fast cruisers and aircraft carriers, and would suffer a further disadvantage by reason of their inferior speed. It is most improbable that the action would be fought to a finish, for the Japanese could gain nothing by exposing themselves to the crushing preponderance of the American broadsides. They would be more likely to use their superior speed as a means of breaking off the action when it suited them, leaving their destroyers, submarines, and torpedo planes to harass the enemy and administer the coup-de-grâce to his disabled ships. For the Americans, any result short of a complete and overwhelming victory would be tantamount to defeat, for the reasons already propounded; and the Japanese

could be trusted to employ tactics which would rule out the chance of such a decisive issue to the encounter. The action would probably be fought at very long range. The atmospheric conditions in those latitudes. normally permit of visual observation at greater distances than are possible in Europe, and some of the best naval shooting records have been made in Far Eastern waters. Then, too, the Japanese, having the higher speed, would be certain to fight at their own range and avoid closing to a distance at which the heavy American salvos could be concentrated with deadly precision.

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A STUDENT'S LETTERS

BY GADIR

[A Barcelona student, who speaks French and German and has already won success as a writer, contributes, under a nom de plume, the following observations upon Paris and Berlin.]

From La Vanguardia, March 15, April 15
(BARCELONA CLERICAL AND FINANCIAL DAILY)

I AM on my way to study at Berlin. I chose the route via Paris because I wished to see again 'the city of light.' Like other beautiful things, the better it is known, the more it pleases. I never come here without discovering some new detail that I previously had passed over unobserved.

I rose at dawn to-day, and rejoicing with the Parisians in its bright welcome of warm spring sunshine, hastened forth to visit an old friend of mine, a painter who lived in the Latin Quarter, in a mansard chamber not far from the cupola of the Institute of France, and almost rivaling it in elevation.

My friend lived by his art after the modest fashion of the Bohemians of the Latin quarter. A single room served him as studio, bedchamber, reception room, and drawing-room. Opening off

of it is a tiny kitchenette where he prepared his own breakfasts, and not infrequently, when funds run low, all his meals. I looked forward with eager anticipation to renewing my acquaintance with both my friend and his quarters. I could see the latter in my mind's eyethe easels with their disorderly burdens of canvases beside the fireplace, halffinished pictures leaning against the walls, two divans invariably monopolized by all kinds of articles, a wardrobe, and in a corner a folding cot. My friend managed to exist on what his paintings and drawings brought him, although it was very little.

With all this in my mind, I reached the house where he lodged. The concierge remembered me, and detained me to say that my friend was no longer living in the mansard chamber; he had

moved to the second floor. To the second floor! I was still incredulous with surprise when I found myself facing a door on the second floor, which actually bore the name-plate of my artist friend, with the title 'Professor.' What could he be professor of! Of course, he was teaching painting. A little page in uniform answered my ring and conducted me to a small but prettily decorated reception room, where a dozen or more people were already waiting. I thought I must be dreaming. My friend on the second floor, in a luxuriously furnished apartment, with a servant in uniform to attend to callers!

He explained things at once. He had deserted his Bohemian life and his art. The war was the reason. During those dark days, nobody bought pictures. The cost of living became impossible. A broadbrimmed hat and a flowing tie cost more than he got for an oil painting. To pay for a pair of boots, it was necessary to paint for a week and to spend another week running around trying to sell his pictures. In the old days, he could get a fair meal for less than a franc. To-day, one pays seven francs for a poorer one. Moreover, nobody will trust an artist any longer when he is temporarily out of funds.

So he was forced at last, by his extreme distress, to abandon art, and to become professor of a subject which it seems one masters by a very brief period of study. I mean the occult sciences. In fact, my friend's apartment is a sort of factory, with a regular corps of employees, where for a few francs you can obtain a complete history of your past, your present, and your future. It is a profitable trade. My artist friend is thinking of getting married and buying a house.

I departed, much disillusioned. I realized how greatly my friend had changed from the old days of his carefree vie de Bohême and aspiring visions.

I thought regretfully of his former modest lodging, with its easels, and canvases, and still smelly pictures leaning against the walls.

However, my friend's case is not unique. The old Latin Quarter has vanished. Its familiar streets and byways no longer harbor a picturesque artist population. The few who are left slink by apologetically, followed by dubious glances one can hardly say whether of pity or disapproval.

The old Bohemians have been transformed into government clerks, shop clerks, higher-grade artisans, employed in places where art goods are manufactured by wholesale, or if more enterprising and energetic - they have retired to the country, to marry some rich village girl.

So the streets of the Latin Quarter are to-day just like any other streets in Paris. Their restaurants and cafés, with their high stools, which were formerly such joyous places, thronged with merry, thoughtless students and artists, are to-day quite like other restaurants anywhere in Paris. Students still throng the boulevard of Saint-Michel, but they are not the shouting, singing crowd they used to be. They fill the cafés, soberly drinking vermouth and talking politics.

The Luxembourg Gardens, formerly the rendezvous of students and artists, have become a little bourgeois park, where you see young matrons sunning themselves with their children in the morning, old men reading their newspapers, and nursemaids with their charges. Even the trees, which are just now bursting into bud after their long winter sleep, and the flowers, and the very benches, seem to regret the absence of the vanished generation of Bohemians who were the life of Paris.

Thus Paris has lost one of its greatest charms. It has lost its Latin Quarter. I, who knew that quarter as a stu

dent, I cursed the inhuman and stupid war, which, after ruining so much else, has brushed away, as with a careless back-blow of its armored hand, the sites and scenes of my happiest memories.

Of the three great capitals of Europe, Paris, London, and Berlin, Paris is unique. It is the most perfect and beautiful and imposing city in the world. It charms and subjugates the visitor from the moment he sets foot within it. In respect to architecture and monuments, it will never have a rival, because it is the fruit of the labor of the French nation through all the centuries of its history. In fact, it is a mirror of French history. That is why we are so prone to identify Paris with France; that is what gives the city its charm, its indescribable fascination. People say, 'Paris is Paris.' It is a city which absorbs you and makes you part of itself. It is every man's home.

London is very different. For the first few days, the newcomer is disillusioned and repelled. His first month there is usually one of blues and rebellion. London is not an engaging city on first acquaintance. One continues to feel a stranger there for a long period. But his acclimatization once over, and a difficult process it is, especially if he arrives in the winter, he finds it hard to tear himself away again and to reaccustom himself to Continental Europe. He misses, long afterward, the tranquillity and poise, the conveniences and elegancies of English life. He becomes enamored of the wonderful 'City,' with its gigantic railway stations, its fantastic rhythm of life and movement, its miles of wharves, which are monuments to the nation's history. Yet how quickly you can forget the London of to-day, the mighty capital of the greatest empire which the world has known, the centre of the globe's wealth and trade and rule, when you turn aside

into one of its quiet, restful squares, with their ancient ivy-covered monuments, which recall the leisurely, jovial life of Merry England,' of the old England of queens and armored kings and knight-errantry and tournaments!

Berlin, the Berlin from which I write to-day, possesses none of the qualities of either of its sister capitals. Our admirers of Germany tell us that it is the model metropolis. It is a model in the German definition of the word, with long straight avenues, broad and regular, with impeccable asphalt pavements, and with parks and squares that cannot escape monotony in spite of all their statues of kaisers and generals. It is a city of uniform buildings, of great shops of reinforced concrete which look like barracks, and of barracks which look like German bee-houses, with ultramodern palaces of kaisers and crown princes, up-to-date museums, libraries, and government offices. Everywhere order and method. The one charm that Berlin possesses is its suburbs. One does not have to stay a week to discover that Berlin has not been built piecemeal by the loving labor of departed generations of Germans, but that it is a great real-estate development, laid out by postgraduates in architecture and city-engineering. Berlin is a city made in an office, and you cannot make real European capitals in an office. Nothing here starts you dreaming of the days of knightly lists and tournaments. Berlin contains no memorials of bygone royal magnificence, of princesses and clowns, of knights and pages. It is a parvenu capital, with everything put precisely in the right place. That is why admirers of Germany call it a model metropolis.

I have been told that Berlin is larger than Paris and smaller than London. Very few people reside in the centre of the city, which is a sort of official quarter, containing the former imperial palaces, the university, the libraries, the

great museums, the government offices, and the banks. There is the famous Unter den Linden and the Lustgarten, on one side of the Brandenburg Gate. The northern section of Berlin is the business quarter and the one where working people live. It is the least impressive part of the city. I reside there myself, as do most students. The West End is where the wealthier people dwell, - particularly in Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf, and Schöneberg. A little farther out are the really magnificent suburban parks, with their immense fir and pine forests and sylvan lakes, where the people skate in the wintertime and go picnicking on summer afternoons.

What impression has Berlin made on me? That city, like all the rest of Germany which I have seen, is very different from what I anticipated. I came to Germany expecting to find cities in distress, people in rags, half-starved poverty in the alleys, stores and factories closed, theatre and music-halls and dance-halls deserted. Instead of that, Berlin and all of Germany show no trace of the suffering of the war and the defeat that followed. Business is carrying on as usual. The streets are full of life and incomparably cleaner and better kept than those of Barcelona. The parks and public gardens are much better cared for than are ours. I shall never forget the depressing effect which Barcelona made upon me, when I arrived last winter, to find the whole town placarded with handbills, advertising, auctions, forced sales, things going at half-price and below cost; and announcements that merchants were selling out their stocks and closing up their business. I found myself plunged in an atmosphere of bankruptcy where every man was trying to save something from the wreckage of his fortunes by desper

ate remedies, where a spirit of panic prevailed. I find nothing of that sort in Berlin. On the contrary, business conditions seem to the ordinary observer perfectly normal. The merchants of Berlin are not giving away their goods; they are not selling out at cost; none of them has taken a notion to go into violent liquidation; store-fronts are not deformed with glaring bunting signs they are distinguished only by the ordinary, everyday announcements of their name and business.

I was struck at once by the poor taste of the Germans in matters of dress; but that has always been so. It is true of the men, who completely miss the knack of appearing well-groomed, but it is even more noticeable of the women. Their gowns look as if they had been dropped on them out of a fifth-story window, and one always has an uneasy feeling that their hats are on hindsidebefore. The Germans have no word of theirown for elegance. They borrow the Latin term, elegant, to express that idea. This is no mere philological accident!

Berlin, like all Germany, conveys the impression of a nation at work, of people who are making things, who have what they need, who have surmounted the crisis of the war, and who have set themselves, with plodding resignation and the best of will, to restoring their depleted fortunes.

What surprises me most of all, however, is to find Berlin in a state of perpetual merry-making. Compared with Paris, it is like a metropolis en fête. On every hand are crowded restaurants, jingling orchestras, concerts, theatres, cinemas, and ballrooms, running full blast, day and night. All are well patronized. The city fairly makes a business of gayety. My acquaintances study hard and work hard, but they also dance hard and play hard.

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