Since then we have learnt something of what America is doing. We know that ten millions of men have registered as material for the American army, that a gigantic aircraft scheme and a huge shipbuilding program are in process of realization; that enormous camps and cantonments have been established for the training of officers and men, that American women have crossed the Atlantic, in spite of the great danger from submarines, to act as nurses at the front, that the regular army has been increased to thrice its former size, that the volunteer militia has been doubled through voluntary enlistment, and that an immense expenditure has been voted for war purposes. We know all this and we are glad, and thankful that hands have been held out to us across the sea. True sympathy and true understanding are very rare in this world. Even between individuals they are not easy to bring about, and between nations they are practically unknown. Diversity of tongues builds up walls between the peoples. But the Americans and the British ought to learn to draw near to each other, and surely the end of this war, whenever it comes, will find them more inclined for true friendship, for frank understanding, than they have ever been yet, less critical of national failings, less clearsighted for national faults. The brotherhood of man, which the idealistic Russian sighs for, may only be a far away dream, but the brotherhood of those who speak one language, have one great aim, and fight side by side for freedom against force, law against lawlessness, justice against persecution, right against evil, is a reality, and must surely endure long after the smoke of the world war has faded into the blue sky of peace, and the roar of the guns has died away into the silence of the dawn for which humanity is longing. The happy warriors lead us. Let us follow them and we shall attain a goodly heritage. [signed] Robert Hichens. Poetic Justice I The blow fell without warning, and a typewritten notice informed the Poet that the Cabinet Committee on Accommodation required the tiny, thread-bare chambers in Stafford's Inn, where he had lived unobtrusively for seven happy, insolvent years. "'There was no worth in the fashion; there was no wit in the plan,'" murmured the Poet. The rooms were too small even for a Deputy-Director-General, and he knew that not one of the silk-stockinged, short-skirted, starling-voiced young women with bare arms and regimental badges, who acted as secretaries to Deputy-Director-Generals, would consent to walk up four flights of creaking, uncarpeted stairs to the dusty sparrows' nest on the housetop that was his home.