The press has not had an easy task in attempting to gratify the natural desire of the public for dramatic details of the war operations. But even after making the fullest allowances for all difficulties, whether due to the censorship, to broken communications, or to the indiscretions of partisans, one can scarcely congratulate the newspaper world as a whole upon its achievements. In New York, for instance, there have been two or three papers which have maintained reasonable standards; but most of the papers have published and republished so-called news of a kind that should never have found public record. Why should any journal waste time in announcing, in large type, that “the Servians swear that the enemy will never enter the capital so long as one house stands and one Servian lives”? This is mere bombastic rubbish, and has nothing to do with the patriotism and fortitude of the Servians. The appearance of perpetual “war extras,” with no additional information, but with immense scareheads, is another unpleasant sign of the shallowness and insincerity that we permit in these busy days. Frothy journalism may flourish for the moment: but the public has a better memory than it is sometimes supposed to possess. “_Civilized Warfare_” Some one, somewhere, appears to be laboring under a rather serious mistake, or we should not have been exposed so frequently during the last few weeks to the phrase “civilized warfare.” There is no such thing, of course, as civilized warfare. All war is necessarily barbaric in its methods, and ludicrous in its assumption of semi-decency. When nations go out, in the name of God, to mangle and destroy their fellow-creatures, they are reverting to the primitive profession of murder. The glory of war is the glory of murder, however it may be embellished by infantile brains. We have heard much of atrocities and “uncivilized” outrages. Probably most of the stories are utterly false: but even if they were true, they would only be in full accord with the whole purpose, methods, and disgrace of war. Let us realize, very clearly, that war is necessarily and always murderous and barbaric, and let us abandon the pretence that we are shocked at the annihilation of towns, the rape of women, the slaughter of children, the desolation of once-prosperous communities. These are the trimmings of war. If we order the feast, let us pay for it; but let us, in the name of all decency, give up the pretence that we are either civilized or Christianized. _Saintless Petrograd_ The official change from St. Petersburg to Petrograd removes the intrusive saint from the Russian capital. The city was named after Peter the Great, of somewhat uncouth memory, and the subsequent sanctification by the rest of Europe was perhaps a tribute to the religious reputation of Holy Russia.