They growl about each other to all the winds of heaven. Some of their griefs are legitimate. Between allies of different race there must always be grounds of difference and even of acute divergence of opinion. For generations the Austrians have disliked the Germans with a hearty and vigorous dislike. If ten years ago you called a German an Austrian, he corrected you with superciliousness; if you called an Austrian a German, he corrected you with fury. Germans called Austrians “stuck-up”; Austrians called Germans merely “those Germans.” And now that they are fighting side by side for their existence, now that their whole history and homogeneity as European Powers are at stake, they carp and snap like fretful sick puppies. We--the Allies--are Latin and Slav and Saxon and Celt, and we shall never understand each other really well. The friendship of England with France is new, and has been grafted on centuries of clean warfare and honorable hostility; but on the many points on which we think differently, do we reproach each other? We have all retreated since the war began, and in each case our Allies have hurried up to tell us that our retreat was a masterpiece, as honorable as a victory. Why? Because: _Noblesse oblige_. H. PEARL ADAM. [Illustration] _Germany and the Neutrals_ There are some points in Germany’s attitude toward the neutrals which are ambiguous. Others are only too tragically clear. If we consider in its general character the German submarine crusade, we find that its original intention--to damage not only ships of war but the merchantmen of Great Britain, including passenger boats--involves also a studied neglect of the rights of neutral ships. Everything that might conceivably help Great Britain, either in respect to food-stuffs, commerce, or international trade, or the voyage of harmless tourists on the seas, was, from the point of view of Berlin, to be exposed to the fury of submarine attacks without any nice discrimination between enemies and neutrals. Clearly at one stage of the war the submarine commanders had their orders to stop and overhaul whatever they met on the seas, to give very inadequate time for the crews to escape, and to refuse all assistance to the victims struggling in the water.