Whatever happens, doubt not that the Russians are gifted and great-hearted. Their excesses have proclaimed how much they were held back and brutalized by the Tsars. It will take long for them to rid themselves of the traces of their servitude and misery. Even the children born in the new era will catch from their parents some of the evil heritage. Only the grandchildren of the common people of today will come into the full birthright of the free and prove the worth that is in the Russian race. EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS. [Illustration] _Higher Than a Sour Apple Tree_ Other wars end with those who made them. It is the will of the German Emperor that _his_ war should pass on like a blight from generation to generation upon those whose fathers dared to stand against the ravager. To this end he has not only slaughtered and enslaved the defenders; he has sought to destroy the very fruitfulness of the land whereby their descendants must live. To me the deliberate, coldly reckoned murder of the invaded countries’ trees and vines so that the children of the slain and enslaved and their children’s children may draw no sustenance from the kindly earth--that seems the most perverse, the most detestable, the most typical of all the crimes of Kaiserism. The sterilization of Mother Earth! It took the mind of a Wilhelm to conceive it. And for that offence against generations unborn he shall hang, higher than was ever ruler before him, gibbeted in the righteous hatred of an outraged posterity. SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS. [Illustration] “_What a Mean Trick to Turn on That Strong Light!_” “Peace must be framed on so equitable a basis that the nations would not wish to disturb it. It must be guaranteed by destruction of Prussian military power, so that the confidence of the German people shall be put in the equity of their cause and not in the might of their armies.... Europe is again drenched with the blood of its bravest and its best, but do not forget the great succession of hallowed causes. They are the stations of the cross on the road to the emancipation of mankind. I again appeal to the people of this country and beyond that they should continue to fight for the great goal of international rights and international justice, so that never again shall brute force sit on the throne of justice nor barbaric strength wield the sceptre over liberty.” _From the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd-George’s Glasgow speech on war aims, June 29, 1917._ [Illustration] _Christmas, 1917_