from St. Moritz.

It seemed a fitting time to make a pilgrimage to the last
resting-place of the great humanist philosopher of Rotterdam and
Louvain, for in that prodigious upheaval of the sixteenth century,
which has passed into history as the Reformation, Erasmus was the one
noble spirit who looked with a tolerant and philosophical mind upon
both parties to the great controversy. He suffered the fate of the
conservative in a radical time, and as the great storm convulsed
Europe the author of the _Praise of Folly_ probably said on more than
one occasion: "A plague o' both your houses." Nearly four centuries
have passed since he joined the "silent majority," between whom is no
quarreling, and the desolated Louvain, which he loved, is to-day in
its ruins a standing witness that immeasurable folly still rules the
darkened counsels of men.

As I reached Basle and saw the spires of the Cathedral rising above
the Rhine, it seemed to me that the great convulsion, which was then
rocking all Europe with seismic violence, was the greatest since that
of the French Revolution and might have as lasting results as the
great schism of the sixteenth century.

I was not fated to see the tomb, for when I reached my hotel the
facilities of civilization had broken down so abruptly that if I did
not wish to be interned in Switzerland I must leave early on the
following morning for Paris. Transportation had almost entirely
collapsed, communication was difficult, and credit itself was so
strained that "mine host" of the Three Kings was disposed to look
askance even at gold.

Our journey took us to France by way of Delle. Twenty-four hours after
we passed that frontier town, German soldiers entered and blew out the
brains of a French custom-house officer, thus the first victim in the
greatest war that the world has ever known.

As we journeyed from Basle to Paris on that last day of July the fair
fields of France never looked more beautiful. In the gleaming summer
sun they made a new "field of the cloth of gold," and the hayricks
looked like the aureate tents of a mighty army. It was harvest time,
but already the laborers had deserted their fields which, although
"white unto the harvest," seemed bereft of the tillers. Some had left
the bounty of nature to join in the harvest of death. From the high
pasture lands of the Alps the herdsmen at the ringing of the village
church bells had left their herds and before night had fallen were on