which—­Oh, heroic deed—­falls upon the Germans by threes, no, by fours or fives.  Your present-day statesmen, wholly unworthy of representing a people with your past and your inheritance, incite the Mongolians and blacks against us, your brother nation.  They steal and permit our small and insufficiently protected colonies to be stolen and no not care a jot for all considerations of Europeans’ culture and morals.

An Unnatural Russian Alliance.

England, once the home and the refuge for all free spirits from the days of the Inquisition, from Rousseau until Freiligrath and Karl Marx, England has allied herself with Russia—­the prison and the horror of all friends of liberty!  Hear ye, hear ye illustrious dead, who lived and struggled for the freedom and the greatest possible joy of mankind, and shake in your tombs with disgust and with horror!  But you living ones, and you, Bernard Shaw, the foremost of all English artists, do everything in your power to break this terrible alliance and make it powerless for England.  Much more lies in the balance for her than is understood by your present nearsighted politicians, who have in mind only the momentary advantages.  The destruction of the German power is not the only thing in question here; no, it concerns a great part of civilized Europe in regard to the suspension of their hard-won political liberty; and England, the people of the Magna Charta, the first free Constitution, can never be a party to that.  That is why we call to you, Bernard Shaw, in the name of Europe, and ask you for your voice in the struggle.

It is a splendid thing that this serious time has also aroused the poets, the thinkers and artists as political and diplomatic advisers, and we should not let ourselves be crowded out of this profession, for which, thanks to our minds, we are not less fitted than the high-brow Lords and Counts.  Men of our guild from Thucydides and Herodotus to Petrarch and Rubens, and our Humboldt and your Beaconsfield have ever shown themselves to be good intermediaries and peace advocates.  And that, believe me, Bernard Shaw, is of more importance to our people, as well as to our Kaiser, who for over twenty-five years has avoided war like a poison, than all other bloody laurels.  Here’s to a decent, honorable and “eternal” peace.

HERBERT EULENBERG.

British Authors Defend England’s War

One of the most interesting documents brought forth about the war was issued Sept. 17 in London.  It was signed by fifty-three of the leading British writers.  Herewith are presented the text of their defense of England and their autograph signatures in facsimile.

The undersigned writers, comprising among them men of the most divergent political and social views, some of them having been for years ardent champions of good-will toward Germany, and many of them extreme advocates of peace, are nevertheless agreed that Great Britain could not without dishonor have refused to take part in the present war.  No one can read the full diplomatic correspondence published in the “White Paper” without seeing that the British representatives were throughout laboring whole-heartedly to preserve the peace of Europe, and that their conciliatory efforts were cordially received by both France and Russia.