SIR ARTHUR WING PINERO, one of the most popular of living dramatists.  His plays include “Sweet Lavender” and “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.”

SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University, poet, novelist, and writer of short stories.

SIR OWEN SEAMAN, since 1906 editor of Punch, writer of parodies and light verse.

GEORGE R. SIMS, journalist, poet, and author of many popular dramas, including “The Lights of London,” “Two Little Vagabonds,” and “Harbour Lights.”

MAY SINCLAIR, writer of novels dealing with modern moral problems, “The Divine Fire” and “The Combined Maze” being best known.

FLORA ANNIE STEEL, author of “Tales from the Punjab,” “On the Face of the Waters,” “A Prince of Dreamers,” and other novels and short stories, most of which deal with life in India.

ALFRED SUTRO, dramatist, author of “The Walls of Jericho,” “The Barrier,” and other plays of modern society.”

GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; author of “England Under the Stuarts,” and other historical and biographical works.

RT.  HON.  GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, historian, biographer of Macaulay, and author of a four-volume work on the American Revolution.

HUMPHRY WARD, journalist and author, sometime Fellow of Brasenose College, editor of several biographical and historical works.

MARY A. WARD, (Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD,) best known of contemporary women novelists; her first success was “Robert Elsmere.”

H.G.  WELLS, novelist, author of “Tono Bungay” and “Ann Veronica.”

MARGARET L. WOODS, poet; her “Wild Justice” and “The Invader” have placed her in the front rank.

ISRAEL ZANGWILL, novelist, poet, dramatist, interpreter of the modern Jewish spirit.

The Fourth of August—­Europe at War

By H.G.  Wells.

Copyright, 1914, by The New York Times Company.

Europe is at war!

The monstrous vanity that was begotten by the easy victories of ’70 and ’71 has challenged the world, and Germany prepares to reap the harvest Bismarck sowed.  That trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of Europe, that has arrested civilization and darkened the hopes of mankind for forty years.  German imperialism, German militarism, has struck its inevitable blow.  The victory of Germany will mean the permanent enthronement of the War God over all human affairs.  The defeat of Germany may open the way to disarmament and peace throughout the earth.

To those who love peace there can be no other hope in the present conflict than the defeat, the utter discrediting of the German legend, the ending for good and all of the blood and iron superstition, of Krupp, flag-wagging Teutonic Kiplingism, and all that criminal, sham efficiency that centres in Berlin.  Never was war so righteous as war against Germany now.  Never has any State in the world so clamored for punishment.