THE CATHEDRAL.

A Free Translation of Rostand’s Sonnet.

By FRANCES C. FAY.

    “Deathless” is graven deeper on thy brow;
    Ghouls have no power to end thy endless sway. 
    The Greek of old, the Frenchman of today,
    Before thy riven shrine are bending now.

    A wounded fortress straightway lieth prone,
    Not so the Temple dies; its roof may fall,
    The sky its covering vault, an azure pall,
    Doth droop to crown its wealth of lacework stone.

    Praise to you, Vandal guns of dull intent! 
    We lacked till now our Beauty’s monument
    Twice hallowed o’er by insult’s brutal hand,

    As Pallas owns on Athens’ golden hill,
    We have it now, thanks to your far-flung brand! 
    Your shame—­our gain, misguided German skill!

Probable Causes and Outcome of the War

By Charles W. Eliot.

President Emeritus of Harvard University; Officer Legion d’Honneur (France); Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, first class (Japan); Royal Prussian Order of the Crown, first class; Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy; Member of the General Education Board, and an original investigator for the cause of international peace.

     Following Is Reproduced a Series of Five Letters to THE NEW
     YORK TIMES from Dr. Eliot, Together with the Comments Thereon
     by Eminent Critics.

DR. ELIOT’S FIRST LETTER.

To the Editor of The New York Times:

The American people without distinction of party are highly content with the action of their National Administration on all the grave problems presented to the Government by the sudden outbreak of long-prepared war in Europe—­a war which already involves five great States and two small ones.  They heartily approve of the action of the Administration on mediation, neutrality, aid to Americans in Europe, discouragement of speculation in foods, and, with the exception of extreme protectionists, admission to American registery of foreign-built ships; although the legislation on the last subject, which has already passed Congress, is manifestly inadequate.

Our people cannot see that the war will necessarily be short, and they cannot imagine how it can last long.  They realize that history gives no example of such a general interruption of trade and all other international intercourse as has already taken place, or of such a stoppage of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life as this war threatens.  They shudder at the floods of human woe which are about to overwhelm Europe.

Hence, thinking Americans cannot help reflecting on the causes of this monstrous outbreak of primitive savagery—­part of them come down from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and part developed in the nineteenth—­and wondering what good for mankind, if any, can possibly come out of the present cataclysm.