Twice hallowed o'er by insult's brutal hand,

As Pallas owns on Athens' golden hill,
We have it now, thanks to your far-flung brand!
Your shame--our gain, misguided German skill!

Probable Causes and Outcome of the War

By Charles W. Eliot.

President Emeritus of Harvard University; Officer Legion
d'Honneur (France); Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, first
class (Japan); Royal Prussian Order of the Crown, first class;
Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy; Member of the General
Education Board, and an original investigator for the cause of
international peace.

_Following Is Reproduced a Series of Five Letters to_ THE NEW
YORK TIMES _from Dr. Eliot, Together with the Comments Thereon
by Eminent Critics._

DR. ELIOT'S FIRST LETTER.

_To the Editor of The New York Times:_

The American people without distinction of party are highly content with
the action of their National Administration on all the grave problems
presented to the Government by the sudden outbreak of long-prepared war
in Europe--a war which already involves five great States and two small
ones. They heartily approve of the action of the Administration on
mediation, neutrality, aid to Americans in Europe, discouragement of
speculation in foods, and, with the exception of extreme protectionists,
admission to American registery of foreign-built ships; although the
legislation on the last subject, which has already passed Congress, is
manifestly inadequate.

Our people cannot see that the war will necessarily be short, and they
cannot imagine how it can last long. They realize that history gives no
example of such a general interruption of trade and all other
international intercourse as has already taken place, or of such a
stoppage of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life
as this war threatens. They shudder at the floods of human woe which are
about to overwhelm Europe.

Hence, thinking Americans cannot help reflecting on the causes of this
monstrous outbreak of primitive savagery--part of them come down from
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and part developed in the
nineteenth--and wondering what good for mankind, if any, can possibly
come out of the present cataclysm.

The whole people of the United States, without regard to racial origin,
are of one mind in hoping that mankind may gain out of this prodigious
physical combat, which uses for purpo