MISS REPPLIER'S ESSAYS.* Miss RErruan's reputation as an essayist has

long been established on this side of the Atlantic, and to the regard in which she is justly held as a writer who thinks sanely and expresses herself with distinction there has lately come to be added the warmer feeling inspired by her generous and unqualified sympathy with the cause of the Allies. We are constantly warned that we must not attach too much importance to this testimony of the American intellectuals; that we must be careful to offset it by allowing for the influence exerted by uncompromising neutral- ists, by pacificists, by men of business, and by the irreconcilable Irish

and the German-Americans, as shown in the Press, in public meetings and propaganda ; and the caution is no doubt both needful and salutary. It is to be found in Miss Repplier's own writings, as when she observes In the essay headed " The Modest Immigrant " that " the truth is con- temptuously flung at us by Mary Antin, when she says that the

descendants of the men who made America are not numerous enough to ' swing a presidential election.' " Still, this does not alter the broad fact that the great majority of the wisest, the most highly educated, and the most distinguished Americans are solid in their championship of the cause of the Entente Powers. This sympathy takes various forms : only in part does it manifest itself in an open advocacy of intervention ; but it is in the main marked by a deep dissatisfaction with the policy of President Wilson, and an equally deep consciousness that America has lost prestige by her acquiescence in or approval of his attitude. This view informs and animates these essays. Miss Repplier is proud of the past of her country, and not without great hopes for its future. But it is precisely because she is proud of its past that she is dissatisfied with its present. And there are, in her view, two especially disheartening features in the attitude of her countrymen towards the war. " One is the materialism of pacifists who ignore, and have steadily ignored, the crucial question of right and wrong, justice and injustice. The other is the materialism of pious Christians who lament the failure of Christianity to reconcile the irreconcilable, to preserve the long- threatened security of nations." And she goes on :— " When, at the request of President Wilson, the first Sunday of October, 1914, was set aside as a day of prayer for peace—a day of many sermons and of many speeches—prayers and sermons and speeches all alluded to the war as though it were the cholera or the plague, something simple of issue the abatement of which would mean people netting better, the cure of which would mean people getting well. The possibility of a peace shameful to justice and disastrous to civiliza- tion was carefully ignored. The truth that death is better than a surrender of all that makes life morally worth the living, was never spoken. This may be what neutrality implies."

Equally pointed is Miss Repplier's retort to those who lament that religion is eclipsed, that Christian principles are bankrupt, and that the only God worshipped in Europe is " the tribal God who fights for his own people " :—

" When Mr. Carnegie thanked God (through the medium of the newspapers) that he lived in a brotherhood of nations—' forty-eight nations in one Union '—he forgot that these forty-eight nations, or at least thirty-eight of them, were not always a brotherhood. Nor was the family tie preserved by moral suasion. What we of the North did was to beat our brothers over the head until they consented to be brotherly. And some three hundred thousand of them died of grievous wounds and fevers rather than love us as they should. This was termed preserving the Union. The abiding gain is visible to all men, and it is not our habit to question the methods employed for its preservation. No one called or calls the Battle Hymn of the Republic' a cry to a tribal God, although it very plainly tells the Lord that His place is with the Federal, and not with the Confederate lines. And when the unhappy Belgians crowded the Cathedral of St. Gudule, asking Heaven's help for defenceless Brussels, imploring the inter- cession of our Lady of Deliverance (pitiful words that wring the heart I), was this a cry to a tribal God, or the natural appeal of humanity to a power higher and more merciful than man ? Americans returning from war-stricken Europe in the autumn of 1914 spoke unctuously of their country as God's own land,' by which they meant a land where their luggage was unmolested. But it is possible that nations fighting With their backs to the wall for all they hold sacred and dear are as justified in the sight of God as a nation smugly content with its own safety, living its round of pleasures, giving freely of its superfluity, and growing rich with the vast increase of its industries and trade."

As for the alleged collapse of Christianity dwelt on with " something which sounds like elation " by Ethical Societies and with something like despair by those of little faith, Miss Repplier reminds us that " Christianity and war have walked together down the centuries." We have to reckon with humanity, and humanity is not remade every hundred years :—

".It is an anachronism, this human heart, just as war is an anach- ronism, but it still beats. Nothing sacred and dear could have survived upon the earth had men not fought for their women, their homes, their individual honour, and their national life. And while men stay men, they must give up their lives wl en the hour strikes. How shall they believe that, dying on the frontiers of their invaded countries, ex at the gates of their besieged towns, they sin against the law of Christ ? "

No. Religion, in the fine phrase of Mr. Stephen Graham, is never shtken down by war. " The intellectual dominance is shaken and falls ; the spiritual powers are allowed to take possession cf men's Icings." Faith is not killed by the wanton destruction of noble cathe- drals. " That religion can lose nothing by the destruction of her

• Coaseds-Curresta By Agnes ItepplIer, Litt.D. London : Constable and Co. tee. ed. net] monuments is the solace of Christian souls." The faith that built these churches, now shattered or burned, " is as unassailable as the souls of the men who died for them." But there is no safety in talk. Even America is not for ever secure if she is content to confide the safety of her homes to treaties, or rely on the comforting assurance that " the brotherhood of man is the only basis for enduring peace among the nations ":—

" If the Allies emerge triumphantly from the war, and England demands the reduction of armaments, then this good result will have been gained by desperate fighting, not by noble sentiments. We, whose sentiments have been of the noblest, shall have had no real share in the work. If Germany conquers, and stands unassailable, a great military world-power, fired with a sense of her exalted destiny, rich with the spoils of Europe, and holding in her mailed hands the power to enforce her will, is it at all likely that our excellent arguments will prevail upon her to reverse her policy, and enfeeble herself for our safety ? A successful aggressive warfare does not pave the way to a lasting and honourable peace. This is one of the truths we may learn, if we will, from history. For years we have chosen to believe that arbitration would ensure for the world a maximum of comfort at a minimum of cost, and that the religion of humanity would achieve what the religion of Christ has never achieved—the mythical brother- hood of man. From this dream we have been rudely awakened ; but, being awake, let us at least recognize and respect that simple and great quality which makes every man the defender of his home, the guardian of his rights, the avenger of his shameful wrongs. We, too, have fought bravely in our day. We, too, have known what it is to do all that man can do, and to bear all that man must boar ; and it was not in the hour of our trial that we talked about bankrupt Christianity. When Serbia made her choice between death and the uttermost dishonour, she vindicated the sacred right of humanity. When Belgium with incredible courage defended her own good name and the safety of France, she stood erect before God and man, and laid down her life for her friend."

The whole book is remarkable for its sustained impeachment of false sentiment—social and philanthropic—which threatens to sap the fibre of the nation. " Our revolt from the old callous cruelty—the heart- sickening cruelty of the eighteenth century—has made us tender to criminals, and strangely lenient to their derelictions," and this excess of sentiment, misleading in philanthropy and economics, " grows acutely dangerous when it interferes with legislation or with the ordinary rulings of morality." The causes of this change in public opinion are traced in what is perhaps the most remarkable passage in the whole book :—

" A new and painful instance of the cost of modern sentiment is afforded by the statement of Miss Addams and other pacifists that middle-aged men are in favour of strengthened defences, and that young men oppose them, as savouring of militarism ; that middle- aged men cling to the belief that war may bo just and righteous, and that young men reject it, as unreservedly and inevitably evil. I am loath to accept this statement, as I am loath to accept all unpleasant statements • but if it be—as I presume it is—based upon data, or upon careful observation, it fits closely with my argument. Tho men under thirty are the men who have done their thinking in an era of undiluted sentiment. The men over forty were trained in a simpler, sterner creed. The call to duty embraced for thorn the call to arms

A country's a thing men should die for at need.'

Some of them remember the days when Amerioans died for their country, and it is a recollection good for the soul. Again, the men over forty were taught by men ; the men under thirty were taught by women • and the most dangerous economy practised by our ex- travagant Republic is the eliminating of the male teacher from our public schools. It is no insult to femininity to say that the feminization of boys is not a dear-able development."

Miss Repplier does not deny the excellence of the intentions of the champions of the new morality. None the less is she convinced that Americans aro now engaged in letting down the walls of human resist- ance, in lessening personal obligation, with the result that the failure of nerve is apparent on every side. Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in the sphere of education, which is now conducted on the assump- tion that children should never be ooerced into self-control or confronted with difficulties. " The gospel of amusement is preached by people who lack experience to people who lack vitality." And while the sincere effort to regenerate the world by amusing it is to be respected, it is not the final word of reform. In another passage she warns us that we can amuse and interest the child until he is powerless to amuse and interest himself. Miss Repplier is a firm believer in the truth of the Greek saying, XO.XEra rd KaXd. " Every normal child prefers play to work, and the precise value of work lies in its call for renunciation." She has no mercy on the modern paedologist who speaks of "child-material " as if it were raw Bilk or wood-pulp. " Child material' is never thrashed, as little boys were wont to be, it is not required to do what it is told, it enjoys rights and privileges of a very sacred and exalted character; but, on the other hand, it is never let alone, and to be let alone is sometimes worth all the ministrations of men and angels." In her own childhood parents had not the time to instruct and admonish their children all day long, and as a consequence " we enjoyed a little wholesome neglect, and made the most of it." The old-time teacher "sought to spur the pupil. on to keen and combative effort rather than to beguile him into knowledge with cunning games and lantern slides," and Miss Repplier finds him justified by so modern a thinker as the late Professor William James, who stoutly asserted that effort was oxygen to the lungs of youth, and that it is sheer nonsense to suppose that every step of education can possibly be made interesting.

In " Women and War" the excesses of pacificist feminism come under the lash. " Great events," Miss Repplier observes, " however lament- able, must be looked at greatly," and there has been little magnanimity in the protests and appeals of those who write and speak as though battle were a game played by war-crazed men at the expense of women. " The moral courage demanded of every soldier is fully as great as the physical courage, at which women dare to sneer." This is not the attitude of the women of France. "Never once, through terrible months of pain and privation, have they assumed that they were better or nobler than their husbands and sons who died for the needs of France." In a great national crisis three qualities are required of women : intelli- gence, a reasonable modesty, and self-sacrifice; and in all these Miss Repplier finds the paeificist feminists conspicuously wanting. But her severest words are reserved for their unworthy slanders of soldiers " Tho snatching of honour from the soldier in the hour of his utmost trial is possible only to the pacifist, who, sick with pity for pain, has lost all understanding of the things which ennoble pain ; of fidelity, and courage, and the love of one's country, which, next to the love of God, is the purest of all emotions which winnow the souls of men." And it is because she loves her country that Miss Repplier is moved to write as she does, whether the subject is the danger of the unassimilated immigrant, the ingratitude and avowed disloyalty of the German- American, or the folly of misreading the soul of Germany. In reckoning up the perils of America, she holds that it is the fanatic, not the hypocrite, who must be taken into account—the uncompromising because uncom- prehending pacificist, the abnormal product of abnormal conditions, for whom aggression and defence, brutality and heroism, the might of conquest and the right of resistance, have no accurate significance. In her last chapter, on "Americanism," she points out that " of all the countries in the world, we and we only have any need to create artificially the patriotism which is the birthright of other nations " ; that citizen- ship has yet to become for America " what it was to Rome, and what it is to France—the exponent of honour, the symbol of self-sacrifice " ; and that friendship and alliance with those European States whose aspirations and ideals respond to those of the United States are not only a proof of fellowship with humanity but consistent with the beat interests of Americanism.