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Show HUM mum" . _ Bv WINSTON CHURCHILL rdl Bernha of and chke Treits Von of ideas the action, into ted ONCE transla peculiarly have been repudiated by the civilised world. These ideas are has In it any repugnant to Americans. Militarism, and monarchy whlch ic touch of absolutism, have always 1ncurred on tlIIS. Side of the Atlant population suspicion and dislike; a growing, enlightened portion of our that perceive an added menace to the world‘s peace and true prosperity in by woyen deftly so been has m which militant, nationalised commercialis he the Germans into the monarchical principle, in the hope of prolonging't life of that principle. This nationalised commercxallsm, moreover, IS a logical consequence of the economic doctrineef enhghtened self-interest, the adaptability of which to modern conditions 1s belng seriously challenged. In this mongrel code of modern Germany not only is Nietzsche misrepresented-butieyen (Thrist. lt is a code in which the finest spirits of Germany find no place ; nor does it contain any hint of that new economics of human needs for which the \\'()I‘l(l owes so large a debt to Germany herself. For the German people the people of America, like the people of Great Britain, have a sincere all'ection. The obsession of such a nation is difficult to understand. We can only hope that the time is not far distant when Germany will awake to her better self. The British Iimpire is fighting as truly for the German people as for her own. [Hider the circumstances, our pity and sympathy for the Belgian people, and our indignation at what we must deem the ruthless destruction of that nation to satisfy German militarist, commercial, and monarchical ambition are oycrwhehning. I can conceive of no greater rebuke to this ambition than that manifested bv the contributions which to-day are being poured out by the world at large to care for those Belgians who have so ruthlessly and so needlessly been deprived of their homes and poss ‘sions. No aid was ever given more willingly. We give it, indeed, as a just debt to a gallant people to whom the world owes, and will ever owe, more than it can pay-t0 a people who have sacrificed their all in the cause of progress and liberty. The name of their heroic sovereign, King Albert, will henceforth be written with those of the great liberators of the world. LJW By G. K. CHESTERTON THE LARGEST WINDOW IN THE WORLD IT is a terrible thing to have trod on battlefields before they were fought. It gives a man a cold and ghostly shiver, as of being the babe unborn. But I was a boy, and almost a babe, when I was first in Belgium; and I can only write down the reality that impressed me then. Beyond some streets burning with brass-ware which seemed perpetually on sale, almost out of sight of the great Belfry, there is (or was) a sort of museum of the great Memlinc. Among the pictures was one which even as a boy I could not forget : and very few poets or prophets can even imagine how much a boy can forget. It was a picture in which the window seemed hardly wider than the crack of a door. Yet through that crack the human eye could almost, in the strong Scripture rhetoric, take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts of the sea. .r\nd I remember a voice near me speaking, in an accent that was neither French nor Flemish nor my own . . . " You see how narrow the windows were in those days." I did. I also began to see, for the first time, how narrow the minds are in these days. I looked at the little window again ; and I thought it the largest window in the world. Simply because the aperture was narrow, I knew the landscape was wide. If modern artists had swept it in a larger style, I should have noticed it no more than some hundred miles of wallpaper. Then note not only the pride of the small nation, but the pride of the rich peasantry. Look from the slit of a turret in Cumberland or Calabria and there is a chance that your eye may strike something slightly depressing. But any strip of Belgium will be a string of jewels. Note, thirdly, that the thinness of the outlook is largely due to the thickness of the walls. There is no trace of what vulgar people call " a vista " : the house does not open up indefinitely to the world outside. The man of Memlinc sees the world from his window. But it is still the final fact that the window was his window and the world is not his world. I should have thought it, then, quite inconceivable that any one would assail that turret. ButI should have thought it equally inconceivable that any one should fail to defend it. A man living in such a house might almost shut the front door to protect the beauty of the window. l have never been in Belgium since; I have never met any who could By MARGARET DELAND Liberty-loving America is stirred by the profoundest sympathy for the families of the gallant Belgians who are giving their lives that Liberty may possibly be in connection with any revolutionary or anti-national idea. live ; she has only admiration for the King who, in the face of overwhelming uindow in the world. odds, is leading his people where honour calls. She can never forget hCl‘ debt of gratitude to the martyr-nation whose King and people are giving all that they possess that the Spirit of Freedom may not wholly perish from Since then I have not seen the country, except in frightful photographs. their land. . %M7MW x42 Yet for me Belgium has continued to mean that small field of vision, making certain so vast a field of prosperity. That keyhole is still the largest I have gradually begun to understand what was meant by my alien friend when he spoke of the needless narrowness of the media‘val window. To judge by the photographs, he has broadened architectural effects very much‘; he has blown window into window and enlarged the premises ; he has left 143 |