ween the Catholic Church and the
Protestant. The so-called British Empire tends strongly to become a
federation; and the methods of Government both in Great Britain itself
and in its affiliated Commonwealths are becoming more and more
democratic in substance. The war has brought this fact out in high
relief. As to the United States, it is a strong federation of
forty-eight heterogeneous States which has been proving for a hundred
years that freedom and democracy are safer and happier for mankind than
subjection to any sort of autocracy, and affords far the best training
for national character and national efficiency. Republican France has
not yet had time to give this demonstration, being incumbered with many
survivals of the Bourbon and Napoleonic regimes, and being forced to
maintain a conscript army.

It is an encouraging fact that every one of the political or
Governmental changes needed is already illustrated in the practice of
one or more of the civilized nations. To exaggerate the necessary
changes is to postpone or prevent a satisfactory outcome from the
present calculated destructions and wrongs and the accompanying moral
and religious chaos. Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe,
reconstruct European society, substitute republics for empires, and
abolish armaments are in fact obstructing the road toward peace and
good-will among men. That road is hard at best.

The immediate duty of the United States is presumably to prepare, on the
basis of its present army and navy, to furnish an effective quota of the
international force, servant of an international tribunal, which will
make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars not a truce, but
a durable peace.

In the meantime the American peoples cry with one voice to the German
people, like Ezekiel to the House of Israel: "Turn ye, turn ye from your
evil ways; for why will ye die?"

CHARLES W. ELIOT.

Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 8, 1914.

THE LORD OF HOSTS.

By JOSEPH B. GILDER.

"He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh."

The warring hosts that gather
To ravage, burn, and slay,
Turn first to that dread Father
To whom the nations pray:

"O God, our hearts Thou knowest,
Our minds Thou readest clear;
Where we go, there Thou goest--
With Thee we have no fear.

"The folk that harm and hate us--
Thy enemies, O Lord--
Thou knowest how they bait us:
Make brittle their stro