six children, seeing her husband and two eldest
daughters being carried away, remonstrated, she was told that as an
alternative she might find their bodies in a canal in the rear of the
house.

Nothing could be more significant of the Government's attitude than the
incident told by James W. Gerard. The people of a town were imprisoned
or fined for their conduct toward a delayed train of Canadian prisoners.
When he heard it he thought that at last the Government was going to put
a stop to the maltreatment of prisoners. But he learned on investigation
that the townsfolk had been punished for giving a little food and drink
to the starving and fainting prisoners.

And yet the most singularly brutal phase of this destruction of nature
and wealth and art and life is the German defense of it. War is always
hell and most of the awful things in this war have had their
counterparts in other conflicts, though the Teutonic element has brought
some peculiar refinements of cussedness and has given a thoroughness and
"pep" and "kick" to the war business.

BETTER PREPARED NEXT TIME.

German writers, instead of making excuses for turning the nation into a
war machine for forty years, complain that Germany was not prepared as
she should have been and would be better prepared next time. Her
professors do not regret that the soldiers at the front are so
unrestrained in cruelty, but urge that they are too soft and kind to
make effective war. The German correspondents all write enthusiastically
of the devastation of the country they are leaving and of the desert
created by German genius. Editors speak of the mercy which tempered the
necessary hardness towards this once beautiful stretch of country and
its inhabitants. The destruction of property which can serve no military
purpose is defended on the ground that it is legitimate from a strategic
point of view.

This all amounts to saying everything must give way to the
considerations of war. It is taking the argument in the fable of the
wolf and the lamb as serious philosophy and accepting the position of
the wolf. They fail entirely to see the humor of the fable, and hence
the fallacy of the wolf's argument.

The greatest hope of civilization, which trembled for a time before the
spectre of German barbarity, is that frightfulness cannot endure the
long and full test. The great initial advantages are more than offset by
new opponents. The gain of the invasion of Belgium was canceled