It is just up to that point that the United States should at this stage be ready to commit herself in the general council of conciliation, namely, to say this: "We shall throw our weight against any power that refuses to give civilization an opportunity at least of examining and finding out what the facts of the dispute are. After due examination we may reserve the right to withdraw from any further interference between such power and its antagonist. But, at least, we pledge ourselves to secure that by throwing the weight of such non-military influence as we may have on to the side of the weaker." That is the point at which a new society of nations would begin, as it is the point at which a society of individuals has begun. And it is for the purpose of giving effect to her undertaking in that one regard that America should become the centre of a definite organization of that world State which has already cut athwart all frontiers and traversed all seas. It is not easy without apparent hyperbole to write of the service which America would thus render to mankind. She would have discovered a new sanction for human justice, would have made human society a reality. She would have done something immeasurably greater, immeasurably more beneficent than any of the conquests recorded in the long story of man's mostly futile struggles. The democracy of America would have done something which the despots and the conquerors of all time, from Alexander and Caesar to Napoleon and the Kaiser, have found to be impossible. Dangerous as I believe national vanity to be, America would, I think, find in the pride of this achievement--this American leadership of the human race--a glory that would not be vain, a world victory which the world would welcome. SIR CHRISTOPHER CRADOCK. By JOHN E. DOLSON. Through the fog of the fight we could dimly see, As ever the flame from the big guns flashed, That Cradock was doomed, yet his men and he, With their plates shot to junk, and their turrets smashed, Their ship heeled over, her funnels gone, Were fearlessly, doggedly fighting on. Out-speeded, out-metaled, out-ranged, out-shot By heavier guns, they were not out-fought. Those men--with the age-old British phlegm, That has conquered and held the seas for them, And the courage that causes the death-struck man To rise on his mangled stumps and try, With one last shot from his heated gun, To score a hit ere his spirit fly, Then sink in the welter of red, and die With the sighting squint fixed on his dead, glazed eye-- Accepted death as part of the plan. So the guns belched flame till the fight had run Into night; and now, in the distance dim, We could see, by the flashes, the dull, dark loom Of their hull, as it bore toward the Port of Doom, Away on the water's misty rim-- Cradock and his few hundred men, Never, in time, to be seen again.