Perhaps that is another way of saying that no country will get into the war that dares to stay out. Nations, especially democratic nations, are not much like men. They may not say, “I will fight for you; I will spend my strength and treasure for you; I will die for you and your cause.” Individuals may feel, say, do all that, but individuals are not nations. A nation says: “The laws of my being must determine my conduct. I must go my own gait according to those rules. But if war stretches across my path I need not turn out for it.” How far this war has still to go, no one knows. It may still, any day, stretch across the path of the United States, so that the natural drive of our procedure will carry us into it. EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN [Illustration: _JOHN SINGER SARGENT, R.A._ TWO HEADS FROM A PENCIL DRAWING] _PAUL ELMER MORE_ A MOMENT OF TRAGIC PURGATION Let me say forthwith that this is a book which I shall read with deep interest, but to which I contribute reluctantly. There is gloom enough in the air, and I see no profit in adding the scruples and doubts of my troubled mind to the general sum. For I can find little reason for hope in the evils that have fallen upon the world; and where are the signs of the wisdom that is to be born of these calamitous times? When all is over and in the hush of desolation we have leisure to reckon up the cost of our madness, will it appear that we have learned the meaning of the sentimental shirking of realities? Or shall we continue, as we have done for a century and more, to place sympathy above justice, and to forget the responsibility of the individual in our insistence on the obligations of society; inflaming the passions of men by rebellious outcries against the unequal dealings of Fate, relaxing the immediate bonds of duty by vague dreams of the brotherhood of man, weakening character by reluctance to pursue crime with punishment, preparing the way for outbursts of hatred by fostering the emotions at the expense of reason; and then, in alarm at our effeminacy, rushing to the opposite glorification of sheer force and efficiency? One naturally hesitates to add this note of discouragement to a book in which others of clearer vision will no doubt record the signs of returning balance and sanity among men. Meanwhile, I have found, if not hope, at least moments of tragic purgation in another sort of reading. By chance I have been going through some of the plays of Euripides this summer, particularly those that deal with the disasters of Troy and Troy’s besiegers, and the pathos of these scenes has blended strangely with the news that reaches me once a day from the city. Inevitably the imagination turns to comparisons between the present and the remote past. So, for instance, the very day that brought me the request to contribute to the Belgian relief I was reading the story of Iphigenia, sacrificed in order that the Greek army might sail from Aulis and reach its destination: