And the sentence passed on such enemies of the human race is the same which Isaiah uttered thousands of years ago. “Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?” The very catalogue of offenses is the same. And the penalty is that no such posthumous glory as encircles the monarchs of the past will come to him. He goes down to the stones of the pit, cast out from all honorable burial, as “a carcass trodden underfoot.” Never did Raemaekers dip his pen in bitterer gall than when he limned this appalling picture of the fate which awaits a merciless and bloodthirsty tyrant. W. L. COURTNEY. [Illustration] _Hohenzollern Madness_ Maybe the French poet of genius is already born who will sing the Epic of Verdun. One thinks of him staring into his mother’s face, and blinking a pair of wondrous brown eyes at the summer sun. France is too near, too careful and troubled about the present, too deeply plunged in grief and pain to tell that story with the majestic isolation of genius, or fling her inspiration wide enough, as yet, to catch the significance of this supreme event. Marble and bronze will record it, and imperishable verse--of that we may be sure; for the nation that has defended Verdun against the might of Germany holds the seeds of magistral art. Art must spring quickened, enlarged, and ennobled from these furnace fires; and it will happen, as of old, that a people great enough to do great deeds lack not for children of genius to record their immortality in achievements themselves immortal. That follows in fullness of time; for at this moment, while cannon thunder and men die happy, with the light of coming victory for a crown, we may well think of such men alone and pay our homage to the heroes who have saved Verdun at the cost of their lives. But what of Germany’s sons? What of the thousands who have fallen in fruitless attempts to take the hill of Dead Men? It may be ere long that these armies, driven by whip and revolver from behind, will wake to the futility of their continued destruction and begin to measure the worth of the royal command still hurling them to death, that its own wounded vanity and strategical and political incompetence shall find a salve in their sacrifice.