SINCE the battle was clearly joined between the physical forces of good and evil in the world, there could be no question of the side on which the individual American, true to the ideals of his country, must stand. In the worldconflict between right and wrong, the right, as we have seen it in a reassuring certainty that our vision was true, has won. It was a simple matter to take sides in the great issue, and to plant one's self firmly on the side for which the stars in their courses were bound to fight. To stand anywhere else was but to court defeat and that worst condemnation which comes from within.

Yet, having thrown the whole strength of one's spirit into the struggle for the stupendous common cause, there was left, even up to the moment of its triumph, ample room for divisions and disagreements. The methods and instruments for achieving the victory could not have been the human things they are, and have given satisfaction to every participant in the fight and every witness of it. Even had these means been divine, it is conceivable that there is enough of the critical Job in each of us to have found occasions for complaint.

How, indeed, could it have been otherwise? Three persons before a cold fireplace arrive readily at a shivering unanimity of opinion that the fire must be lighted in it at once; but the one of them who strikes the match and pokes the logs may be perfectly certain that each of the others behind his back believes he could do it better and is re

straining himself from saying so if that be possible only with the greatest difficulty. Multiply your three by any sufficient number, and your individual views become group views, party views, and the taking of sides with one or another group or party becomes as inevitable, and inexorable, as a law of nature.

There are many degrees in the manner of taking sides, covering the entire gamut from the furtive to the blatant. The character of the partisan may appear just as clearly in the quality of his partisanship as in the side he takes. The conservative, who would leave things alone, and the liberal, who tries to change them for the better, are respectively militant and gentle according to their individual natures. One is quite as likely to be a robustious, battle-sniffing person as the other; and this is just as true of private citizens as of semi-public and public characters. To all alike in times of crisis comes the challenge, 'Under which king, Bezonian?' and quietly or noisily the march must begin, and continue, beneath a chosen banner. Young men have been advised to seek out and espouse unpopular causes, for the good of their souls. But the unpopularity of a cause. is not always the measure of its intrinsic merit, whatever its espousal may accomplish for its followers. The more important thing to keep in mind in choosing your cause is that 'God and one are a majority,' and that you are the possible 'one.' Having taken sides on such terms as these, popularity and

unpopularity drop out of consideration. There is ample reward in the satisfaction of knowing precisely where you stand and why you stand there.

Now that the war is won, an original disposition to believe that everything is settled fades from thought and view. The questions inseparable from the taking of sides become just as pressing as they have ever been. In the great object of making the new world which is to emerge out of the conflict a righteous world, a happier dwelling-place for the sons of men, a field of fairer play, everybody is on the same side, just as all were united in the conviction that the menace of autocratic power must be forever quenched. Of course a new day is coming; of course it must be a better day. The only alternative is 'chaos and old night.' But how is the sun of this new day to be conducted in any orderly progress from dawn to its noon, and prevented from sinking in due course beneath a sullen or angry western horizon, malign with promise of storms to come. The human instruments and methods to which some control of this process must be intrusted will afford spacious ground for the taking of sides. The logs in the fireplace to come back from the sun to one of its products - must be lighted and tended; and few of us will be humble enough to believe in our hearts that anyone else can do it quite so well as we. No more of unanimity with regard to the details through which the purpose of the world is to be accomplished will reveal itself in the time now at hand than we have seen in the recent past.

In that past, however, there has been an extraordinary unanimity of spirit in America touching the larger issues of the time. Through whatever means, the war has stood in the eyes of the people as a crusade, a flaming ideal, for the realization of which no sacrifice appeared extravagant. If there are left

any of those Americans who two or three years ago proclaimed themselves ashamed of their country, they are now to be placed only by means of their silence. Yet now there is only one side with which they can possibly affiliate that of their countrymen who could not be induced to part with their national pride. To fortify and secure it, one and all must now join in the supreme effort to win from the winning of the war the very best - no tolerated second-best that the struggle can be made to

yield.

For this broad purpose, and perhaps for this only, we are carrying a virtually non-partisan spirit from war-time into the period of peace. In the matter of details, the possibilities of divergence are without number. When the individual finds himself confronted with the necessity of taking sides with respect to the persons and processes whereby the general purpose is to be attained, he may well beware the danger of losing sight of the really great end in view. If he keeps his eye fixed upon that object, and neglects the negligible smaller things, he will bring to whichever side he joins an element of positive strength. There is nothing more clearly worth remembering at a time like the present than that, in a country organized on the basis of party government, all the patriotism, all the sincerity and honesty of purpose, are not to be found in either of the two larger, or any one of the smaller, parties. Danger for danger, there is not much to choose between fixing the magnifying, sometimes also a distorting, glass upon the merits of your own side and upon the shortcomings of the other. To hold inescapably in view the high objects for which all methods and instruments should be employed is the essential thing. Thus it is that every partisan can increase the vitality and effectiveness of his own party. The goal itself is so much more

important than any of the means for reaching it, that the taking of sides may be lifted from the realm of pettiness into that of dedication to the highest of

causes.

It is on behalf of such causes that it is possible in this new day to take sides. In the social and economic relations of man with man, there must be a continual pressing forward to that democracy of which Lincoln gave the ultimate definition when he said, 'As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.' In the field of the spirit, embodied in the forms of religion, there must be a quickening which shall make the realities of life and death what they call themselves, instead of those disguised opposites which they have so often

been: the men who have dealt face to face with things as they are, will now return to us by tens of thousands, and imitations will no longer satisfy them. The schools and colleges are waking up to the necessity of preparing the minds of the men and women of the coming day to cope with the problems of a freer, larger world. That world itself, through leaguing its nations together for perpetual protection against a repeated plunging of mankind into the miserable sea of its own blood, stands waiting for all of us who are left, to make it the decent, even the pleasantly habitable, world it may still become.

For the true furtherance of any one of these causes, who would not take sides - and all the consequences?

THE SPLENDOR OF THE
COMMONPLACE

AFTER the specialist had taken me aside, and had said to me, 'She can live just about a year, certainly not longer; she will not suffer; no, do not tell her till I give you leave,' she became all at once a person alien, apart, possessing a strange new distinction and charm.

It seemed to me that I should want to know, that I might make that year splendid, important, worth while. But the doctor's orders were imperative, and he knew his patient well. The least I could do, I thought, was to live the time left to her as if it were indeed my own last year of life. And yet, as day followed day, I began to wonder wherein the difference after all would really lie, if I were under sentence to

die, as she was, and I knew. And it came to me quite clearly, that if that were the case, one would not lay stress on the big things, which one might feel fairly certain of carrying over into those years ahead, or into that yearless time which, they tell us, is not time at all, but on the little, homely, intimate things which one may have to leave behind, which have to do with this earth, as we know it here and now.

It came to me quite suddenly, as I read the leading article in the May Atlantic on "The New Death,' that our boys in France were realizing life somewhat as I had done, when I lived vicariously that last vivid year of one who was under sentence to die. We have certainly felt we who are left behind — that there is something going on over there of high import, which has nothing to do with military victories or defeats; that they are finding — those young illuminati — in this horrible war something that we, as a people, cannot afford to miss; whether it be some new crusade of the spirit, or, only that old way of the Cross, well worn by saints and martyrs, but strangely unfamiliar to feet used to stepping blithely down the broad highway of success.

And curiously enough, as one reads such articles as 'The New Death,' and letters and reports that come to one personally, one finds that the interest of our boys in France is centred just where mine had been that unforgettable year, on the quaint and homely happenings of everyday living. The big certainties- life, death, immortality, God- they take joyously for granted, with their strange new insight into things spiritual, their prescience of Reality; but, perhaps for the first time, they are realizing everyday joys; know what quiet means, and rest and needed sleep; are aware of the holiness of clean clothing, the exquisite flavor of coarse

food, the divine loveliness of dawn, and noon-time, and night.

And so, having found out about Life, they know all there is for us to know about Death. Instead of losing its strange distinction, death for them has taken on a new splendor, as have the common things of life.

And as to their losing the Vision, forgetting, those who live to come back,

they may. But they have known Reality, those boys, and one does not easily drop into materialism after one has attained that knowledge. And as to their keeping their belief in God and in Immortality in these high matters they have gone forever beyond theory and belief; for they realize God, and experience immortality here and now. They are tasting what old Father Caussade is always calling the Sacrament of the Present Moment, they, who know so surely that each present moment is quite likely to be their last. 'He has set the world in their hearts'; they are in love with it. And if they come back to us, it may be to find a New Heaven and a New Earth; and those who never come back can say with that poet and mystic, who knows so surely that living and dying are of the same piece, 'Because I have loved this life so well, I know I shall love death also.'

What wonder that their letters home drop quite naturally into unconscious poetry. The most prosaic and practical of these boys are learning what the secret poets and mystics always knew. It has taken a world's war to teach them, and us common people at home through them. Because the price paid for our knowing has been so high, it is for us to see to it that the quality of our daily living shall take on such distinction that those who come back will not feel as aliens, and that the young dying of those others may not have been, so far as we are concerned, in vain.

THE SLAVIC NIGHTMARE

I was at a lecture in a well-known club. The lecturer talked about a great plan: to establish a new Eastern front out of the small Slavic nations, who hate Germany and want independence. 'Poland is not a small nation!' burst out one of the audience.

I applauded, as I am Polish myself. 'I beg your pardon,' said the lecturer, with a polite bow; 'certainly; Poland is bigger than Bohemia, for instance.'

At that point a loud murmur of disapproval was heard from the representative of the Bohemians.

The lecturer tried to continue as impartially as possible. When he finished, his forehead was wet with perspiration.

'It is not an easy job, you know,' he complained to me afterwards. 'All these nations are so jealous of each other! To hold them together is like running a class! A class of immigrants who don't understand each other. Germany poisoned them for centuries with this unhealthy jealousy, and tried to make all the differences much more important than they are in reality. And now you see the results.'

I rather heard them: there was a passionate discussion among the Slavs. I never heard so much noise in my life! 'I am now drawing the maps,' said the lecturer. 'It is hard work!'

Lithuania does not want to be joined with us again, although we were united for centuries. All right: love is free; let us be divorced! With a heavy heart, I outlined a new state of Lithuania.

The Jugo-Slavs want to have an exit to the sea. What is to be done? They are far from any sea. It would be good to give them the right of trespassing. Why not try to internationalize some rivers? That's the idea! But may I do it on my own risk? The heavy weight of the political responsibility made me bend lower over the table.

'Serbia will never, never, be quite friendly with Bulgaria!' the old whitebearded leader of Serbs stated. Would you draw their frontiers after that?

I was perspiring. I felt unhappy. I was as tired as could be.

At eleven o'clock the telephone rang violently. The excited voice of the lecturer asked me to come to the club at once and bring my maps: an extraordinary meeting was to be held; seven official representatives of the Slavs would discuss a most important problem.

When I entered the large hall of the club, I saw seven men sitting at the round green table. Each wore the picturesque national costume of his country. They looked like a living rainbow.

The old white-bearded Serb presided. He was armed to his teeth. The others

"Thank you very much. We will plan the future frontiers of the reconstructed Slavic countries.'

He took me to his office and showed me all his materials. And then my unhappiness began.

Poland at her golden age was a great country: she had exits to two seas; she held Ukrainia. I am a patriot and would like my country to be mighty again; but I have a conscience, and tried not to give her too much space on the map.

all discontented with my maps.

I was discouraged and felt guilty. I started to explain that I did not draw the maps according to my personal ideas: I had followed faithfully all the directions which had been given to me. But they did not listen: they reproached me all together, in many tongues. I felt lost!

Suddenly a wonderful monster approached me: it had two heads; on one was a sign, Jugo'; on the other, 'Slav.' I was terrified. But it seemed to be a kind sort of monster: it did not scold me;