studied thoroughly that "White Paper"
has ever brought this out, and they had not been published in that paper
at the time when Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith made their respective
speeches and committed the British Nation to the war.

Another unhappy use of language which has been noted in the public press
is due to the literal translation of words. Americans simply do not know
what the word Emperor means. To most of them it connotes the later Roman
Emperors, or the autocratic Czar of Russia, or the short-lived but
autocratic quality of Napoleon III., so that when we use the word
Emperor we are thinking of an absolutely non-existing personage, unless
it be the Czar of Russia.

We like very much to make sport of phrases from languages unfamiliar to
us, and we enjoy the jokes of ludicrous translations, and so we take
the term "Oberster Kriegsherr" and we translate it "Supreme War Lord."
What conception the average American forms of that is manifest. Whereas,
as a matter of fact--and this has already been pointed out both in
conversation and in public prints--the term means nothing in the world
but Commander in Chief of the German Empire, has not any different
relation whatsoever in the substance of its meaning than that which
Presidents of the United States have been in time of supreme danger to
the country. Mr. Lincoln was just as much an "Oberster Kriegsherr" at
one period of his term as the German Emperor could ever be; in fact,
rather more.

Sherman's March to the Sea.

In truth, the sense of outrage which Americans feel over the horrors of
war, while most creditable to them, is very often based upon an
ignorance of the rules and regulations of so-called civilized warfare,
and upon a sentimentality, which, though also very creditable, is
unfortunately not one of the factors in the world's work. It would not
hurt Americans occasionally to recall Sherman's march to the sea, during
which every known kind of devastation occurred, or to recall Gen.
Hunter's boast that he had made the Valley of Virginia such a desert
that a crow could not find sustenance enough in it to fly from one side
to the other, and yet at that time, in what we considered the supreme
danger to our country, the conduct of those men was approved, and they
themselves were almost deified for their actions.

While parallels are dangerous and the existence of one wrong does not
make another action right, yet at the same time a very considerable
am