nor our land turned into a vast and bloody hospital; and we have not experienced the appalling terror and shame of the foe’s absolute dominion in our streets and lanes.  We have suffered; we shall suffer; but our suffering is nought and less than nought weighed against the suffering on the Continent.  Why, in the midst of a war of unparalleled horror, we grumble if a train is late!  We can talk calmly of fighting Germany to a stand-still, even if the job takes two years, and it behooves us to talk so, and to prepare for the task; and for myself I am convinced that we could make good the word.  But France and Belgium will not use that tone, if Russia does.  Once the German armies are across the frontiers, the instinctive pressure in favor of peace would be enormous, and considerations of the distant future, of the welfare of our descendants and the progress of mankind, would count little in the scale.  In that moment, if it happily comes, our part and Russia’s would be to sustain and encourage and salve the supreme victims of fate.  A tremendous factor in our favor would be the exhaustion of Germany; and the measure of our power and of the fear we inspire is the furious intensity of Germany’s anger against our inconvenient selves.  Without us the war could not last beyond the end of this year, and the peace would be unsatisfactory.

And even with us, insisting on our own terms of reconciliation, I do not see how it can last over six months more on anything like the present scale, for the Kaiser, despite his kinship with Deity, can neither create men nor extract gold coins out of an empty hat.  Military arguments, in Germany as elsewhere, hold good only for a certain period.

Barrie at Bay:  Which Was Brown?

An Interview on the War.

From The New York Times, Oct. 1, 1914.

As our reporter entered Sir James Barrie’s hotel room by one door, the next door softly closed.  “I was alone,” writes our reporter.  “I sprang into the corridor and had just time to see him fling himself down the elevator.  Then I understood what he had meant when he said on the telephone that he would be ready for me at 10:30.

I returned thoughtfully to the room, where I found myself no longer alone.  Sir James Barrie’s “man” was there; a stolid Londoner, name of Brown, who told me he was visiting America for the first time.

“Sir James is very sorry, but has been called away,” he assured me without moving a muscle.  Then he added:  “But this is the pipe,” and he placed a pipe of the largest size on the table.

“The pipe he smokes?” I asked.

Brown is evidently a very truthful man, for he hesitated.  “That is the interview pipe,” he explained.  “When we decided to come to America, Sir James said he would have to be interviewed, and that it would be wise to bring something with us for the interviewers to take notice of.  So he told me to buy the biggest pipe I could find, and he practiced holding it in his mouth in his cabin on the way across.  He is very pleased with the way the gentlemen of the press have taken notice of it.”