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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



We have learned the full meaning of citi- 

 zenship. We are going through an ordeal 

 that has called into play every faculty we 

 possess, and that will leave us facing life 

 sanely, distinguishing very sharply be- 

 tween its realities and its solemn plausi- 

 bilities and a hundred times more efficient 

 than we were for meeting all its emer- 

 gencies. 



You must not think of England as de- 

 pressed. She is facing her task, she is 

 bearing her titanic load, with a tenacity 

 that is wonderfully serene. She is serene 

 not only because she is confident of her 

 power, but because she knows she is fight- 

 ing for the noblest causes that ever sum- 

 moned a nation to arms, and because she 

 knows, with an equally passionate cer- 

 tainty of conviction, that honor and duty 

 left her no alternative. 



A NATION IN TRANSITION 



Although nowadays in England there 

 is little social life — people have no time 

 in which to see anybody — and little travel, 

 and practically no sport, and few oppor- 

 tunities and less inclination for amuse- 

 ment, and although we have to get along 

 as best we can without servants, or with 

 very few of them, without letters — every- 

 body is too busy to write except to the 

 men at the front — without motoring, 

 without lights in the towns after dark, 



and without Paris fashions and dinner 

 parties and balls, and although every 

 morning there stares us in the face the 

 ghastly list of the fallen and the wound- 

 ed, still we are buoyed up by the knowl- 

 edge that the cause, the great cause, is 

 worth all sacrifices and all privations. 



That is why we have gladly surren- 

 dered our most cherished liberties, turned 

 our parliamentary system inside out, and 

 submitted to a multitude of restrictions 

 and inconveniences any one of which in 

 the little days of peace would have started 

 a rebellion. 



Great Britain, that seemed so fixed, is 

 now in transition ; the foundations of its 

 whole scheme of life are shifting, even if 

 they are not breaking; habits and preju- 

 dices and old instinctive attitudes of mind 

 are in process of dissolution ; economic 

 conditions that one thought were rooted 

 in the deeps are made plastic and ad- 

 justable ; and from this welter of re- 

 newal there is springing up an England 

 strengthened by enormous sacrifices for 

 great ideals, ennobled by poverty, disci- 

 plined without, losing her characteristic 

 flexibility and self - reliance, knowing 

 more than a little of the true faith of 

 social equality, and proud to have played 

 once more, and not without honor, her 

 historic role as the defender of the lib- 

 erties of Europe. 



RUSSIA'S DEMOCRATS 



By Montgomery Schuyler 



THERE is nothing new under the 

 sun. Recent events in Russia 

 have not introduced an entirely 

 new system of government into that great 

 empire, but the revolution of the past few 

 weeks, as we hastily but inaccurately call 

 it, is in truth a reversal to an earlier form 

 of democratic government in which the 

 Russian people centuries ago had made 

 great progress and in which they stood in 

 the forefront of the European nations. 



The leaders of thought in Russia today 

 have not evolved a novelty, nor are they 



experimenting with a novelty ; they have 

 simply brought back to life the centuries 

 old popular saying of the people in Rus- 

 sia : "If the prince is bad, into the mud 

 with him." 



We must admit, of course, that it has 

 not been exactly the custom in the past 

 few hundred years to act upon this say- 

 ing in the case of rulers who had made 

 themselves disliked by their subjects, but 

 the underlying spirit was always there, 

 waiting with infinite Russian patience for 

 the men and the hour. 



