may have, but to the methods that may be employed in carrying them out. If the only reason for the rejection of an appointee is that he does not belong to the wing of the party to which the Senator from his State or from his part of the State belongs, the rejection is indefensible. Those readers who know The Outlook do not need to be assured that our sympathy is with the President in his purpose to oppose reactionary forces in his party and to further in it the progressive spirit.

received its strongest impetus and its greatest encouragement from women. In Europe it is a man's movement.

The alcohol-fighters of Europe are biologists, psychologists, criminologists, sociologists, economists, jurists, and all the other scientific "ists" in the catalogue. Their accusations are correspondingly multifarious. But they may all be reduced to one essential fact. Alcohol is not a stimulant, but a narcotic. Alcohol paralyzes. It is the lethal dose, the fool's paradise, the coward's joy.

The man who first demonstrated this is, and has been for twenty years, the ranking

MAN

The question of intemperance has in various parts of the world been approached from two different directions. It has been attacked on the one hand by moralists and on the other by scientists and economists. Under such sustained fire it has seemed sometimes that the citadel of alcohol possessed very surprising power of resistance.

Perhaps, however, the final surrender awaits the time when both moralists and scientists shall be ready, not only to attack independently the same objective, but to work in more active co-operation. When the Prohibitionists of Maine, in continuation of their half-century struggle against the liquor interests-a struggle actuated largely by moral rather than economic considerations-appealed in a recent election to August Forel, the Swiss biologist, for scientific information as to the consequences of alcohol, they took an active step towards the formation of such a necessary alliance. Only by the organization of all forces working against the menace of liquor can ultimate success be gained.

Miss Katharine Anthony, of New York City, who has made an active study of the alcohol problem, recently returned to this country from a visit to Professor Forel, in Switzerland, during which she had the opportunity of studying under his direction the progress of the anti-alcohol movement in Europe. The information she gathered on this subject she has placed at our disposal, and from it the facts in this editorial are taken.

Not only in the emphasis placed upon scientific research, but in another particular, the European temperance movement differs from that in America. In this country it has

Professor of Psychiatry in the University of Munich, and an international authority on fatigue toxins, exposed a common fallacy. People had always believed that alcohol, taken in moderate doses, stimulated mental activity, and that only excessive doses had a narcotic influence. Thus alcohol was supposed to reverse its own action, just as water does under a falling temperature, first contracting until the freezing-point is reached, and then expanding.

But Kraepelin's experiments, published in 1892, exposed alcohol as a consistent, readyto-work narcotic. It puts on the brakes at once. He found that the individual's ability to add, to memorize, and to judge began to decline under the influence of only forty to eighty grams of alcohol. A group of Heidelberg students were set to adding half an hour a day for four weeks. The first and third weeks they received no alcohol; the second and fourth weeks they worked under the influence of the moderate dose. gained speed the first week, lost it the second (notwithstanding seven days' practice), regained it the third, and relost it the fourth. The history of the four weeks' experiment was set down in the form of what scientists call a "curve," but which looks like the letter "M." To interpret it you need only to note "Enter alcohol" at the beginning of each downward stroke.

Next Kraepelin made tests of the memory and judgment under the influence of alcohol. Now, memory and judgment are higher powers of the mind, inasmuch as they depend upon the association of ideas. The brain makes connections as does the operator in the telephone exchange. When alcohol is present, the operator in the brain dozes and makes faulty connections, if she does not go to sleep. altogether. Memory halts and the judgment

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is untrustworthy as long as alcohol paralyzes the switchboard.

Here was news for scholars and men of letters, including the experimenter himself, who had started in with no preconceived ideas. Kraepelin says that the first time he was ever drunk was on the day of the celebration of the victory of Sedan. He was the first convert to his own experiments, and is now one of the most militant milk-drinkers of Europe.

Another European of the same temper is Lieutenant Boy, of Sweden, who made a study of the effect of alcohol on his soldiers! He tried them on accurate firing, quick firing, and endurance firing without alcohol and after a forty-gram dose. Then he made a map of the records and circulated it throughout Europe. Certainly for the soldier it is no invitation to alcohol, for it shows a lowered efficiency in shooting each time the moderate dose was taken.

It remained for two Swiss doctors to make the alcohol question a paternity problem. Dr. von Bunge, of the Basel University, says that alcohol is a paralyzer of mother's milk and that the daughters of drunkards tend to go dry. As a physiological chemist, Bunge made a special study of the milk of mammals, and of human milk in particular. He collected the histories of 1,600 mothers, both nursing and unable to nurse, and after years of careful study concluded that these drybreasted women owed their failure as mothers to their alcoholic fathers.

Another Swiss doctor, Dr. Bezzola, went about rudely poking into the paternity records of his fellow-citizens. He used the birth statistics for the entire Swiss population between 1880 and 1890. From the registered birthday of each person born he subtracted nine months in order to secure the date of conception. During this decade. 8,190 idiots were born. His object was to compare the conception days of the idiots with those of the rest of the population. The normal maximum for the whole people was in the summer. But the idiots showed two maximum periods besides the summer-the months of February and October. Now February is the month of the carnival and October the month of the vintage. The idiots were the children of the carnival and the vintage.

Primitive man did not know that such a thing as fatherhood existed, but civilized man has lost that state of irresponsible igno

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rance. And the modern man to whom the consciousness of fatherhood means something more than economic responsibility and the tie of property cannot but weigh the meaning of these new warnings. It is part of the business of being a man.

AMERICAN CRITICISM AND AMERICAN FICTION

If two recent writers are to be believed, the standards of periodical (including newspaper) criticism and of the art of writing fic tion are distressingly low in the United States. It was only a few months ago that Professor Bliss Perry, of Harvard University, maintained with much particularity, in a note: worthy article in the "Yale Review," the thesis that literary criticism in the United States, looked at broadly and in the light of foreign criticism, lacks candor, trained intelligence, and distinction. The conclusion that Professor Perry reached was that periodical criticism, having served publishers, booksellers, and authors with, more or less unsatisfactory results, should now serve the public, without fear or favor; and he expressed the opinion that sooner or later the astounding discovery would be made that the public was in favor of the change.

It is not impossible that some of the defects which Mr. Edward Garnett, an English writer, finds in American popular fiction, and which he describes at length in the "Atlantic Monthly" for December, may be due to the failure of criticism in this country to perform its proper function. Mr. Garnett points out two characteristics of popular latter-day American fiction which prevent it, in his opinion, from ranking as fine art: first, exaggeration; and, second, "the presentation and glorification of 'standardized' morals, manners, emotions, and of stereotyped social ambitions and ethical valuations."

In proof of his first charge Mr. Garnett cites Mr. Owen Johnson's "The Salamander," which, in his view, violates almost every canon of good art. The story, he says, belongs to a class of fiction in which "the publishers and the authors seem to be conspiring to force the note of exaggeration till the typical 'best seller' seems to work with automatic prevision in scenes of sweet sentimentalism or in shock after shock of melodramatic interest."

An analysis of Mr. Winston Churchill's

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novel "Mr. Crewe's Career" serves as an illustration of Mr. Garnett's second point. He distrusts the bona fides of the novelist's characters. They suggest the thought that most of the latter-day American story-tellers seem to be in a conspiracy to make the world better,' to 'touch the heart,' to 'make you forget all your troubles,' to 'exalt life and love,' to be a sunshine-maker." The effect of this sort of fiction, says Mr. Garnett, is "to leave one with the uneasy idea that the weight and momentum of American civilization are rolling out the paste of human nature very flat and are stamping it with machine-made patterns of too common an order." The relation of cause and effect is not very obvious, but perhaps Mr. Garnett is right, although the layman may still cling to the old-fashioned opinion that human nature is much the same with us as it is with other peoples, even if it doesn't get itself adequately portrayed in our popular fiction.

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If Mr. Garnett had read Mr. Churchill's 'Coniston," he would have discovered that the author of "Mr. Crewe's Career " has the artist's conscience as well as the American's cheerfulness. Before he discusses American fiction again he will do well to read the candid and thoroughly written stories of Mrs. Watts, whose latest novel, "The Rise of Jennie Cushing," is a close study of crude conditions as well as an appreciation of the American faith in the possibilities of the human spirit.

Mr. Garnett has at hand the remedy for the disease which he diagnoses, although he confesses that the commercial, ethical, and sentimental ideals which seem to make up American optimism render it impossible for the remedy to be acceptable to the patient. "The novelist," he says, "should put.human nature under the lens and scrutinize its. motives and conduct with the most searching and exact interest. His æsthetic pleasure in the rich spectacle of life should be backed by a remorseless instinct for telling the truth."

Advice of this sort may seem to point the way to the very heights of Parnassus, but the results, for most writers, it is safe to say, would be more likely to be studies of unattractive, if not positively repellent, aspects of human nature and extremely unpleasant pictures of life. They might or might not be art, according as they were well or ill done. But, even if they did meet the highest tests, they would

probably, as Mr. Garnett fears, fail to find an audience of any considerable size, while the "sunshine-maker,' for whom, by the way, it would not be difficult to say a good word with a perfectly easy literary conscience, would sell by the tens of thousands.

It is always instructive to get the point of view of a critic; and this, in the case of Mr. Garnett, is revealed by the books which are to be found upon the shelf of "prized American classics"-Walt Whitman and Poe, Howells, Thoreau, Sarah Orne Jewett, O. Henry, and Stephen Crane. Of several of these authors it is unnecessary to speak; all would agree that they have earned their right to the high classification which Mr. Garnett gives them. Of the others, however, it may perhaps be noted that American critical opinion has never conformed to the English estimate of Whitman, while many of us outgrew long ago the enthusiasm with which we once read O. Henry and Stephen Crane.

In the judgment of Mr. Garnett, our two ablest novelists are Edith Wharton and Anne Douglas Sedgwick. The restricted influence which they exert, in, proportion to their gifts, leads him to infer that the American mind may be hostile to the artist in literature. Unsympathetic would, we think, be a more accurate term, so far at least as Mrs. Wharton's character portraits are concerned. Perhaps the explanation of this attitude of mind is to be found in. the dramatic exigencies of modern fiction, which seem to render it necessary for the "artist in literature " to make the leading characters in the story deficient in ideals and in ordinary human sympathycontrolled, in a word, by ignoble motives and seeking sordid or wholly selfish ends. doubt, as Mr. Garnett says, the optimistic National temperament prevents a due appreciation of the value, from the point of view of the "artist in literature," of such character portraits. In time our people may outgrow this prejudice in favor of a National type in fiction in which higher ideals are embodied.

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Meanwhile, if any one desires to evade the issue altogether, he can perhaps take refuge in Professor Perry's dictum that we are not a book-reading people. "The vast majority of our ninety-odd million people," he says, at the conclusion of his article in the "Yale Review," "have no literary appetites which cannot be supplied by the newspapers, the magazines, and an occasional best-seller' novel."

T

HE two main battle fronts changed

very little during the week December 16 to 23. In the western campaign the Allies continued to press the Germans at many points on the line through Flanders and France. But their bulletins did not claim more than a large number of minute advantages. At this rate it would take them. half a century to drive the Germans out of Belgium. But, although the Allies have little to show in the way of results, the fact that they have assumed the "offensive" is notable.

A soldier who is attacking is stimulated by the hope of victory. In a defensive action the best that one can expect is not to be defeated. The former is decidedly better for the morale of the troops.

The armies in the eastern campaign are still far from such a deadlock as that which has developed in France. There is still chance for strategic maneuvering-dashing advances, rapid retreats, and wide-flung flanking movements. It is a stupendous duel between the Field Marshal von Hindenburg and the Grand Duke Nicolas Nicoliovitch. Each is bent on the utter destruction of the other. The Russians are just as anxious for victory as the Germans, but they are not nearly so bitterly pressed for time.

There has never been any doubt that the Austro-German forces were stronger than their enemies on either frontier, but in this war it is a question of defeating France and Russia at the same time, with Great Britain, Belgium, and Servia thrown in. The Germans have concentrated an unexpectedly large share of their forces in Poland and have succeeded once more in driving the Russians back almost to Warsaw. They may reach that city. But there would be relatively little gain in this success unless they delivered so smashing a defeat to the Russians as to put them out of the fighting for a couple of months. Then the Germans would be free to throw the bulk of their forces, which are now in Poland, against the French and British.

Austria would be free to crush Servia. Victories-no matter how glorious—which accomplish less than this are hardly worth while. The Germans do not wish to penetrate farther into Russia, but to be able to get out of Russia.

Even if their present forces in the west are able to resist the Allies' offensive, they will need reinforcements as fast as the units of Lord Kitchener's army land on the Continent. A very large force of fresh troops is promised before spring. In order to attempt any new advance on Paris or Calais the Germans will need some of the troops they are now using in Poland. At the outside, they have three months to crush the Russians.

The reports of this week indicated that von Hindenburg was being met by a stiffened resistance and that the Grand Duke had enough men to spare to push on an energetic offensive in East and West Prussia and still hold his ground in Galicia.

Unless the Germans score a great victory quickly-which is of course a constant possibility-they will have to accept the defensive attitude on both frontiers. Such a change of plan in the heat of action is very hard to time correctly. A fortunate decision is more likely to come from a statesman than a general. Inevitably a soldier is reluctant to admit that his aggressive action has failed. He is always tempted to try once more, to make one last desperate effort, which, if it does not succeed, will leave him too exhausted for a vigorous defensive campaign. An overeffort, if it fails, spells disaster. Military history is full of such incidents.

"An invading army which stops invading is defeated." The German army in the west has stopped invading. And if von Hindenburg is stopped in Poland-on the present lines, at Warsaw, or a hundred miles farther east-the German offensive will have failed. But there is a great difference between stopping an invasion and conquering an invader.

The Germans, if they make up their minds to it in time, can prepare a defensive war which might last for years. They could make the conquest of Germany so horribly expensive that the most bellicose of their enemies would shudder and listen to such terms of peace as are called honorable. But to accept a defensive plan would be to give up all hope of glorious victory. It is doubtful if the Fatherland possesses statesmen wise and forceful enough to impose such a policy on

the army and nation. It is more probable that the General Staff will continue pushing one desperate offensive after another-any one of which may be successful. Such a policy-von Bernhardi's gambling formula of World Power or Downfall-may bring a disaster which will end the war. This is the best chance of a speedy termination of the war.

THE BALKANS

Once more the reconstruction of the Balkan alliance is being discussed. It is certain that the diplomats of the Allies have been working towards this goal. The theory is that if the Rumanians are given compensations in Hungary, the Serbs in Bosnia, the Greeks in the Epirus, they will give back to Bulgaria the territories they took from her in the second Balkan War. Such an arrangement sounds plausible, and it may be accomplished. But it is doubtful if any redrawing of frontiers would heal the blood feuds of that unhappy peninsula.

However, if the Balkan States make peace among themselves, it is extremely probable that Rumania and Greece will enter the war on the side of the Allies-the Greeks against Turkey, the Rumanians against Austria. This would immensely increase the temptation of Italy to "redeem" the Trentino. It might well be the coup de grace to the House of Hapsburg. Germany, with no ally but Turkey, could hardly keep up the struggle much longer.

THE SEA ROVERS

The dramatic side of the German raid on the English coast has received more space than it deserved. If there were any Belgian refugees from Louvain or Aershot in Scarborough, it must have seemed to them a very small affair.

Six or more German fast cruisers-taking advantage of a heavy fog-slipped through the British patrolling squadron and crossed the North Sea without discovery. Their presence was not suspected until they opened fire. According to one "eye-witness" report, four of these ships lay off Scarborough for a half-hour and bombarded the town.

The raid raises many questions for the international lawyers. Were the towns defended? What is a fort? Was there any ground for the plea of "military necessity"? Did the Germans avoid unnecessary damage to the property of non-combatants? The Hague regulations for sea warfare are hope

lessly vague on all these points, and we may be sure that the legal lights of England will denounce the act as barbarian and the German lawyers will say that it was entirely civilized. One thing seems quite certain. The Germans did not do as much indiscriminate damage as they might have done. Five hundred shells-the highest estimate I have seen -is very slow work for four war-ships in half an hour.

It is impossible to say whether the Germans gained anything by the raid until we know whether the fear of invasion has persuaded the British Government to keep at home troops which otherwise would have been sent to Flanders.

The people of the coast towns which suffered will undoubtedly consider this action the most momentous of the war, but there is little chance that the Admiralty will allow it to alter their plans. The British home fleet has for its first duty the protection of the island from invasion. The desire to destroy the enemy's sea power must be kept secondary. However regrettable it may be to have the Germans shell unimportant coast towns, that does not indicate that they can land troops. A serious invasion would require at the very least 50,000 men. And even with the smoothest sea and not a British ship in sight, it would take a good many hours to disembark such an army.

The problem of the Admiralty is to be always ready to concentrate within a couple of hours at any point on the North Sea coast a naval force superior to that of the German fleet. If they can do this, the British Isles are safe from invasion. And no combination of circumstances, no possible advantage elsewhere, would justify the Admiralty in taking any chances in this matter.

The main outlines of its naval strategy are now fairly clear: The North Sea has been closed by mines at both ends. Heavy fields have been laid from the coast of Scotland to the Norwegian waters and across the Straits of Dover. A few "lanes" have been left open for neutral shipping. They are carefully guarded and in all probability they are frequently changed. The chance of any ship getting through without an English pilot is very small. This work, if it has been well done -and it is only a question of time, care, and money-confines naval action for the German and British home fleets to the North Sea.

In this limited field the Admiralty has a force greatly superior to that of Germany.