The Ramsay Macdonalds, the Charles Trevelyans, the Arthur Ponsonbys--et id genus omne--have prattled about the inexpediency of humiliating Germany. What a waste of foolish words! Can the imagination of Man conceive of any greater humiliation than that which Destiny, not the Allies, must inflict upon Hunland? That humiliation, inevitably, will come from within, and prey like a hideous cancer upon the body politic. No publicist, however prescient, can measure its ravages, for they are hidden from our sight. But none can doubt that, like a cancer, these ravages will grow and spread till the world gapes aghast at them. Whatever punishment we may be able to inflict upon these Baby-Killers and Pirates will be as nothing compared with the humiliation which, pede claudo, dogs the steps of failure and bankruptcy. In this cartoon, the younger of the two Weary Willies is fitly habited in sable. He is in deepest mourning for the last of his dynasty--HIMSELF. HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL [Illustration: THE CROWN PRINCE: “Isn’t it an enjoyable war?” WILLIAM: “Perhaps, but hardly as much so as I anticipated.”] The Shirkers Current experience is proving that war is a grim condition of life, and that none can escape its effects. No religious or philosophic precept is potent enough in practical application to prevent its outbreak or to stay its course. The strong man of military age, who claims the right to pursue normal peaceful avocations when his country is at war, pleads guilty, however involuntarily, to aberrations of both mind and heart. There are few who do not conscientiously cherish repugnance for war, but practically none of those to whom so natural a sentiment makes most forcible appeal deem it a man’s part to refuse a manifest personal call of natural duty. The conscientious objector to combatant service may in certain rare cases deserve considerate treatment, but very short shrift should await the able-bodied men who, from love of ease or fear of danger, simulate conscientious objection in order to evade a righteous obligation. Lack of imagination may be at times as responsible for the sin of the shirker as lack of courage. Patriotism is an instinct which works as sluggishly among the unimaginative as among the cowardly and the selfish. The only cure for the sluggish working of the patriotic instinct among the cowardly and the selfish is the sharp stimulus of condign punishment. But among the unimaginative it may be worth experimenting by way of preliminary with earnest and urgent appeals to example such as is offered not only by current experience, but also by literature and history. No shirkers would be left if every subject of the Crown were taught to apprehend the significance of Henley’s interrogation: What have I done for you, England, my England? What is there I would not do, England, my own? SIDNEY LEE