The misdeeds of individual soldiers are difficult to verify. While these are always exaggerated, it remains the sad truth that every big army contains a certain percentage of ruffians, and that when these ruffians are let loose in a community, with weapons and with military power behind them, bad things are done. It is my own belief that the material in the German Army (which is the best fighting machine that the world has ever seen) will compare favorably with that of any army in the world, and that the percentage of wrongful acts on the part of the German soldiers has been small. Such misdeeds, sometimes to be characterized as atrocities, are the inevitable result of war, and they bring a grave responsibility upon a Government which (to accept as well founded the frank utterances of the leaders of opinion in Germany) has initiated this war for the purpose of "crushing France and of breaking up the British Empire." You appear to think that it is in order for Germany to visit upon unoffending Belgians reprisal for the misdeeds (as far as such misdeeds may be in evidence) committed by Russians in East Prussia. I cannot see that this contention is in accord with justice or with common sense. GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM. New York, Oct. 28, 1914. "The United States of Europe" INTERVIEW WITH NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER. Dr. Butler is President of Columbia University; received Republican electoral vote for Vice President of the United States, 1913; President of American Branch of Conciliation Internationale; President American Historical Association; Trustee Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Commander Order of the Red Eagle (with Star) of Prussia; Commandeur de Legion d'Honneur of France. By Edward Marshall. The United States of Europe. Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, firmly believes that the organization of such a federation will be the outcome, soon or late, of a situation built up through years of European failure to adjust government to the growth of civilization. He thinks it possible that the ending of the present war may see the rising of the new sun of democracy to light a day of freedom for our transatlantic neighbors. He tells me that thinking men in all the contending nations are beginning vividly to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility. Dr. Butler's acquaintance among those thinking men of all shades of political belief is probably wider than that of any other American, and it is significant of the startling importance of what he says that by far the greater number of his European friends, the men upon whose views he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures in European political, literary, and educational fields.