l be compelled to join it and to complete
thereby the union of the whole of Europe; it may come sooner than the
conversion of Russia to western ideas could be effected by natural
evolution; it may come through the yellow peril, the menace of which has
been brought nearer to us by the accursed policy of England.

Let Japan organize the dormant forces of China, as it seems bent upon
doing, and the same law of eastern aggressiveness which is at the bottom
of the present war will push the yellow mass toward Europe. Russia, as
comparatively western, will have to bear their first onset; for this she
will require Occidental assistance, and in the turmoil of that direful
conflict--or, let us hope, in order to avoid it--she will readily give
up all designs against her western neighbors, and she may become really
western by the necessities which impel her to lean on the west.

But this may or may not happen. What I see before me as a tangible
possibility is the great western block. It is the only principle of
reconstruction after war that contains a guarantee of a permanent peace;
it is the one, therefore, which the pacifists of all nations should
strive for, once they get rid of the passing mentality of conflict that
now obscures the judgment of the best among us.

[Illustration]

Neutral Spirit of the Swiss

An Interview With President Motta of the Swiss Confederation

[From The London Times, Jan. 30, 1915.]

BERNE, Jan. 20.

The President of the Swiss Confederation is the symbol of a democracy so
perfect that the man in the street is not quite sure who the President
is. He knows that he is one of a council of seven, and that he is
elected for one year, and that is all. In the Federal Palace, the Berne
Westminster and Downing Street, the anonymity is almost as complete.
Officers pass and repass in the corridors--one of the signs, like the
waiting military motor cars at the door, of mobilization--but this does
not change the spirit, simple and civilian, of the interior.

M. Motta, Chief of State for this year, is a man of early middle life.
He is the best type of Swiss, a lawyer by profession, whose limpid
French seems to express culture as well as candor. Nor could one doubt
for a moment the sincerity of his speech. Speaking on the Swiss position
in the war, M. Motta was anxious to remove the impression that it was
colored, dominated by the existence of the German-speaking cantons, more
numerous than the Frenc