Good progress is achieved in the campaign against Russia; a chapter of it may be brought to a happy close before long.  The spirit of the country shows no symptom of weakening; it is really wonderful what a firm resolve pervades our whole people, though every man between twenty and forty-two stands in the field, and though the losses are frightful.  Economically we hold out easily; the expenses of war are defrayed by inner loans, which give unexpected results; every bit of arable land is tilled as in time of peace, the old, the women and the half-grown youths doing the work of their absent supporters, neighbors assisting each other in a spirit of brotherhood truly admirable.  In cases of urgent need we have the prisoners of war, whose number increased to nearly 300,000 (in Austria-Hungary alone) and to whom it is a real boon to find employment in the sort of work they are accustomed to.

The manufacturing interest, of course, suffers severe losses; but the number of the unemployed is rather less than usual, since a greater part of the “hands” is absorbed by the army.  In a word, though the sufferings of war are keenly felt, they are less severe than had been expected, and there is not the smallest indication of a break-down.  The area of Germany, Austria, and Hungary taken as a whole is self-supporting with regard to foodstuffs.  The English scheme of starving us is quite as silly as it is abominable.  England can, of course, inflict severe losses on our manufacturers by closing the seas against their imports and exports; but this is not a matter of life and death, such as the first reprisals of Germany, if successful, may prove to England.

Generally speaking, it seems likely that England will be caught in the net of her own intrigue.  She did not scruple to enlist the services of Japan against her white enemies, but this act of treachery will be revenged upon herself.  The latest proceedings of Japan against China can have one meaning only—­the wholesale expulsion of the white man from Eastern Asia.  The Japs do not care one straw who wins in Europe; they seized upon their own opportunity for their own purposes.  England only gets her deserts; but how do Americans feel about it?  Can America be absolved from a certain amount of responsibility for what may soon prove imminent danger to herself?  Has not her partiality for England given encouragement to methods of warfare unprecedented in the history of civilized nations and fruitful of evil consequences to neutral nations?

To us, in our continental position, all this means much less than it means to you.  It does not endanger our prospects.  We feel comparatively stronger every day.  Our losses, though enormous, are only one-half of those of the Entente armies, according to the Geneva Red Cross Bureau’s calculation.  The astounding number of unwounded prisoners of war which Russia loses at every encounter, and even in spaces of time between two encounters, shows that