September 4, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER. 
now pass in review, ready for launching or already 
launched and fitted, a sight to make an enemy gnaw his 
heaven-aspiring moustachios in cliagrin,'not so much 
that he cannot build also (for he can), biit because the 
seas are free to these new craft, which need not lurk in 
any canal or bight, when their day of commissioning 
comes rp.und. This second pageant passes with even 
more majesty than the former, and the authors have the 
credit of their works, for sign on sigri, fronting tHe water, 
bears many a world-familiar name, now more than ever 
of good omen at this pinch of national fortune. 
But the river has not given herself entirely over to 
the service of strife. Perhaps the most significant thing 
in her present state is her fidelity to the arts of peace. 
Great and pre-eminent as her warlike preparations are, 
she still maintains her ancient role of servant of corri- 
merce, not in mere traffic alone, but in output of ships. 
Side by side with grimmer craft, she is repairing the 
losses in our mercantile marine. Slip after slip shows 
the merchant vessel in progress, and in most cases these 
are far beyond the stage of gaunt ribs. All the way to 
the outfall, as town succeeds busy town, another and a 
peaceful activity thrusts itself with reassuring eniphasis 
on the spectator, and the last episode in this long im- 
perial procession is a series of no matter how many 
nierchantment that. will in good time be plying on the 
World's highway, taking their chance with that gallant 
indifference to peril which during this last fateful year 
has won for our merchant seamen a new place in the 
nation's regard. 
So ends the memorable review; but the sea is not 
yet, and another spectacle remains. For this river of 
ours that long ago left the mountains, has by a paradox 
returned to them again, and to far nobler mountains than 
those amid which her streams began their course. But 
the rest of the voyage is matter for another and a quieter 
time. The pageantry of the toiling river banks has now 
given place to the pageantry of the everlasting hills, en- 
girdling the estuary, that now sweeps out broad and 
calm toward the ocean still distant. Thither we may not 
pass to-day as in other years, for a few ftiiles further on 
the peace of water and mountain is rudely broken by a 
reminder of our present state. 
From shore to shore, "" floatfng many a rood," 
heaves the dark line of the protecting boom. And over 
the sunlit waves comes the roar of a racing destroyer. 
AMERICAN INTERVENTION. 
By The Editor. 
LET us admit it frankly that, in times of war, 
murmuring against leadership is aS old as 
war. We recognise now the conditions of 
struggle and anxiety, of victory and defeat 
under which the Old Testament was written ; 
we behold in it a marvellous reflection of the same throes 
ariid distresses of body, mind, and soul under which ♦he 
world suffers to-day. Tales of murmuring against the 
appointed leaders are common. Homer, in the " Iliad," 
hds drawn for all time the classic picture of the unbridled 
and irresponsible war critic in Thersites : 
Awed by no shame, by no respect controlled, 
In scandal busy, in reproaches bold. 
It may be questioned whether the moral side of war and 
its psychical influences have changed at all with the ages. 
Man made mistakes then as now — mistakes which were 
directly due to defects of personal character or intellect, 
but also he made mistakes, then as now, from other and 
hidden reasons. The Greek poet traced these errors of 
judgment and action to the affections and animosities of 
deities on the mountain-tops; the Hebrew writers beheld 
in them the direct working of Jehovah ; and each came 
nearer to the truth than those of us who talk as though 
man were absolute master over the work he undertakes, 
be it supreme or trivial. Influences move him which are 
beyond his control; he yields to forces of which he is 
unconscious or all but unconscious, and unless this truth 
be kept in view, we are apt to utter rashly foolish judg- 
ments on this man or that, or on this or that nation. 
American intervention has been much to the fore 
' the last two weeks. At one moment it seemed inevitable ; 
it appears more remote at the time of writing. It is a 
question entirely for America's own decision, and any 
attempt on the part of a responsible journal under a flag 
otlier than " Old Glory " to force such a decision would 
be rightly resented. But we may strive to understand 
more clearly the motives which restrain as well as impel 
President Wilson and his advisers. In the current issue 
of that admirable quarterly magazine the Round Table 
"Sie subject is discu.ssed by an American writer in a 
masterly manner. Lord Bryce's dictum is cited that 
" public opinion is the central point of the whole 
Am.erican polity," but this is conditioned by the fact 
that under the presidential system of government re- 
sponsibility is far more concentrated' in the hands of one 
man than under our Parliamentary system. .American 
foreign policy is almost entirely controlled by the Presi- 
dent's personal outlook and his individual. cicading.Qf 
the public mind. We are reminded that President 
Wilson is far from being a believer in the policy of 
isolation, and that those who rate him as a peace-at-any- 
price man misread his career and misunderstand his 
nature. 
(For the succeeding statements we are indebted to the 
writer in the Round Table, and his original language is 
used as far as possible.) When the explosion occurred 
in Europe there was in America a" spontaneous outburst 
of righteous indignation at what was regarded as a 
heinous blow to progressive civilisation. The causes for 
it were carefully studied, and Germany was judged the 
arch-culprit. The sinking of the LusUania confirmed 
the opinion of America that Germany as a political 
organism was a pariah among nations recognis- 
ing neither the laws of God nor of man. This anti. 
German sentiment has never applied and does not now 
apply to the German people as individuals, but to them 
as a political group, and especially to those classes that 
have proven false leaders. The war revealed in a flasii 
to the people of the United States that" German political 
thought and ethics were out of harmony with those of 
the balance of the civilised world, and it came to be 
realised every day more fully that were the British 
Empire to fall, upon Americans primarily would rest the 
onerous burden of defending the cause of freedom. 
Alongside of this preponderant mass of public 
opinion there has existed, and still exists, a divergent 
minority — individual judgments which range through 
myriads of gradations from extreme Anglophobia 
through apathy to unqualified German partisanship. 
The champions of tiie German cause are scattered 
through the social strata as well as over the Slates. They 
base their arguments on German efficiency, which once 
admitted, is illogically held to be conclusive proof tliat 
the oflier nations are inefficient and should not stand in 
the way of the super-State's demands. And the opinion 
is not wanting that Germany's legitimate aspirations 
for expansion have been selfishly and deliberately 
blocked by England. 
This is a Ijrief summary of .'Vmerican publi<: opinion 
as it has been formed by the war itself and by the e\ enis 
that immediately preix-ded it. Bwt bai k of it isatradiiion.nl 
friendsliip for France as the ally of the Revolmic.r.ary 
days, and an ever-growing friendship between I\iij;I.ntHl 
and America which has !)ecnme ;i|)pai«;nt during the l.ist 
two decades. The latter fact, allhoiigii the, more ini|)cir- 
^jtj, ifi Q^ften ignored, Tjip writer, 59/ the Round Table 
-;i»V' 
19 
»j^ ^trnl 
•«JS, 
