Ten thousand thousand hearts made desolate;
My troubled world a seething pit of hate;
My helpless ones the victims of thy lust;--
The broken maids lift hopeless eyes to Me,
The little ones lift handless arms to Me,
The tortured women lift white lips to Me,
The eyes of murdered white-haired sires and dames
Stare up at Me. And the sad anguished eyes
Of My dumb beasts in agony.
--Thy work!"

JOHN OXENHAM.

[Illustration: KULTUR HAS PASSED HERE]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

MICHAEL AND THE MARKS

"The Loan: good for 100 marks!" Look at him! He is the favoured of the
Earth, lives in Germany, where Kultur is peerless, and education
complete (even tho' the man may become a martyr of method). War comes!
and he is seen, as an almond tree in blossom his years tell, when lo! a
War Loan is raised with real Helfferichian candour, and Michael has just
stepped out of the Darlehnskasse, at Oberwesel-on-the-Rhine, or other
seat of Kultur and War Loan finance. Are visions about? said an American
humorist now gone to the Shades; and Michael, Loan note in hand, eyes
reversed, after a visit to two or three offices, wants to know, and
wonders whether this note can be regarded as "hab und gut," and if so,
good for how much? Is it a wonder that an artist in a Neutral Country
should depict German affairs as in this condition, and business done in
this manner? Michael is puzzled; and in the language of the Old Kent
Road, "'e dunno where 'e are!" He is puzzled, and not without cause.

All who have followed Germany's financing of the War share Michael's
perplexity. Brag is a good dog: but it does not do as a foundation for
credit. Gold at Spandau was trumpeted for years as a "war chest"; but
when the "best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley," especially
when a war does not end, as it should, after a jolly march to Paris in
six weeks, through a violated and plundered Belgium, then comes the
rub--and the paper which puzzles Michael. A German, possibly Dr.
Helfferich, the German Finance Minister, may believe, and some do
believe, that it does not matter how much "paper," in currency notes, a
State, or even a Bank, may issue. The more experienced commercial and
banking concerns of the world insist upon a visible material, as well as
the personal sec