t I think of the arrest of E. D. Morel.

I am not personally acquainted with E. D. Morel. I do not know whether,
as is asserted, he has sent me some of his works during the war. I never
received them.

But from all that I know of him, of his activities prior to the war, of
his crusade against the crimes of civilisation in Africa, of his
writings upon the war (few of which have been reproduced in Swiss or in
French journals), I consider him to be a man of high courage and
vigorous faith. He has always dared to serve truth, to serve truth
alone, scorning danger, regardless of all the animus he was arousing.
These things would be little. Morel has displayed rarer qualities, has
achieved a more difficult task, in that he has been willing to disregard
his own sympathies, his friendships, and even his country, when the
truth and his country were at odds.

Thus he is in the succession of all the great believers: Christians of
the early centuries, the reformers during the epoch of the wars of
religion, the freethinkers of the heroic age of free thought, all those
who have prized beyond everything their faith in truth--in whatever form
truth presented itself to their minds (divine or human, for to them it
was always sacred). I may add that such a man as E. D. Morel is a great
citizen even when he is demonstrating to his country the errors which it
is committing. Nay more, he is preeminently a great citizen when he does
this and because he does it. Some would draw a veil over the errors of
their country; they are unprofitable servants, or they are sycophants.
Every brave man, every straight-forward man, knows best how to honour
his country.

The state may strike down such a man if it pleases, as the state struck
down Socrates, as the state has struck down so many others, to whom,
after they were dead, it raised useless monuments. The state is not our
country. It is merely the administrator of our country, sometimes a good
administrator, sometimes a bad one, but always fallible. The state has
power, and uses power. But since man has been man, this power has
invariably broken vainly against the threshold of the free soul.

R. R.

_September 15, 1917._

"Revue mensuelle," Geneva, October, 1917.

XIV

YOUNG SWITZERLAND

If we were to attempt to found our judgment upon Swiss periodical
literature, we should form a very false opinion regarding the public
mind of Switzerland. In this land, as everywhere, the press i