The brutality of the Teutons--Austrians and Germans alike--their willingness, in order to win, to throw away everything we think admirable in conduct, created a reaction in America by arousing us from our laissez-faire attitude to the conviction that there can be no neutrality between right and wrong. The opportunity should not be lost to enforce this lesson upon the young, who should be taught to hate the devilish spirit by which the Teutons are obsessed. In due time, when their defeat is accomplished, a reaction will set in among themselves. The cost is appalling, but I believe that nations, like men, can “rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.” Meantime, with what pride we realize that--as eventually even German historians will admit--our own part in the war is on a higher plane of disinterestedness than we have ever reached before, a level of altruism that has rarely, if ever, been attained by any other nation! ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON. _February 22, 1918._ [Illustration] _Peace Plots Revealed in America and France_ Mr. Rathom, Editor of the “Providence Journal,” whose exposure of von Bernstorff’s plots seemed to show a gift of necromancy, states that his information came to him through men and women (often Bohemians and Slavs) “who not only took grave risks in the work--for they were braving German vengeance--but gave up their time and in many cases their own funds, without a dollar of compensation from the ‘Journal’ or anyone else, in order to give us the facts which would prove to the American people the manner in which they were being tricked and fooled.” If this cartoon of Mr. Raemaekers shall serve to make the native American take seriously a situation which is serious in the extreme, it will not have been made in vain. Whenever an American hears or overhears any one in any station of life uttering treasonous language, he should report the matter and give the name of the culprit immediately to the Secret Service,--not content himself with repeating the words at the club as a good story. JOHN JAY CHAPMAN. [Illustration] _Belgium, 1918_ You, who on the tree of shame show forth again the Sacrifice of Calvary: you for whom scourge and thongs and the mockery of dull beasts are the circumstance of martyrdom: you who freely offered yourself that man might be saved, “yet so as by fire”:--Belgium! in the depth of your agony and the long torment of a red martyrdom, remember that the Cross of your own Passion endures only until the Resurrection that comes after the third day. God, in mercy Incarnate, as Man suffered the shameful death of the Cross that the world might be saved from the penalty of its sins. The Tree of Scorn is raised up on Calvary, becoming the instrument of shame and of death, yet “the leaves of that Tree shall be for the healing of the Nations.”