GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD. [Illustration] _Peter the Hermit_ “_Dieu le Veult!_” The Prussian outdoes the world in his single-minded devotion to physical things. He believes and frankly declares that mercy and honor weaken human power, that if you consider them you must eventually fall before the strong who disregard them. Germany’s attempt to prove the soundness of the Prussian thesis has gradually loosened the moral consciousness of the world. It has gathered to defend the things of the spirit in what is as truly a crusade as that which Peter the Hermit led, a crusade to preserve the sanctity of contract, the few laws between nations that men have worked out, the right of the weak to their chance. Germany, disbelieving in the strength that love of mercy and of honor give men, cannot counter-attack in kind. Every day develops more clearly that the weak place in the Prussian armor is its indifference to moral considerations. IDA M. TARBELL. [Illustration] _The Germ-Man_ The stout gentleman on the opposite page wears a pleased look, as if he were enjoying his occupation. That is natural, for he is a scientist engaged in a very pretty process--the propagation of lockjaw, typhus and other malignant germ cultures with which he expects to speed up the annihilation of his enemies. How does he propose to accomplish this? I will tell you: he is going to introduce those young and vigorous colonies of germs into those little packages marked with a cross which you see lying on the table before him. Those are Red Cross bandages, and they will presently be binding the wounds of our soldiers, and the lockjaw and typhus hordes in them will awake, and rally in a silent loathsome attack that will lay torture and death upon thousands which the noisy, mis-aimed guns have failed to destroy. The germ-man is assured that his atomic missiles will not be mis-aimed. His government has efficiently arranged for those packages to go to the hospitals of Roumania and Belgium and France. That is why he smiles--that is why he has that roguish look.