splendid work done by the Nation for the maintenance of a sound currency; a work in which, while the part played by the Nation was less unique than in the two causes already mentioned, it was marked by the same extraordinary energy, ability and effectiveness. A less continuous, but perhaps even more striking example of the Nation's activity was its leadership, in 1884, in the struggle against the nomination and election of Blaine, and in favor of the election of Cleveland. To it must be assigned the first rank among all the many strong forces which were arrayed against the lowering of the standard of honor of the Presidential office.

Such are a few of the great causes in which the Nation has done signal service. But even if we were to make a much fuller list of them, this would convey no idea of the nature of the paper. It is the elevation of purpose, the high moral tone, and the splendid intellectual quality of the Nation which distinguish it even more than its specific achievements. Not that it is free from faults; far from it. The very ardor of conviction which is behind all that it says is the source of a defect which, especially in recent years, has reached such dimensions as to go far toward undermining its influence with a large portion of the very class to which it is chiefly addressed. In its early years its main energies were devoted to the furtherance of great causes upon which the combatants were separated as goats from sheep: in such questions as that of the merit system against the spoils system, or that of hard money against greenbackism, the foes the Nation was fighting represented either low morality or crass ignor

ance or both. The practice of treating its enemies with contempt, natural enough in such cases, seems to have bred habits of contemptuous disregard of whatever may be advanced, upon any question, on the side to which the Nation is opposed. Splendid as has been the fight of the Nation against protection, against silver, against imperialism, all of these have been marred by frequent and glaring unfairness toward the opposing side, and the same thing is true in many other instances. Such unfairness is doubtless the product of genuine zeal in behalf of a cause held to be not only right but vital, and of genuine contempt for those who are arrayed against it; but it has none the less had the effect of alienating many of those whose allegiance it would be of most consequence for the Nation to retain.

But to say this is only to say that no human institution is perfect. The young men who, in the '60's and '70's, sat at the feet of Mr. Godkin, and drank in his words of wisdom, and gathered inspiration and courage from his teachings, have now passed the meridian of life. Few indeed of them have been able to continue that undivided allegiance which, in the golden days of youth, they gave with such unfaltering heartiness. Some have diverged from him on one line, some on another. But on all of them his influence has left an impress which will remain as long as life endures. Many of them feel that it is to their early reading of the Nation that they owe a large part of what is best in their habits of thought and in their ideals of conduct. To be brought, week after week, into contact with those utterances, in which it would be difficult to say whether the moral

news that Mr. Godkin is no longer to be its we head is to them like the announcement of the e of a great chapter in their own lives. Whether ndividual men and women or as American citi, they feel that they owe him the most profound itude. He has been to them individually a cont aid and inspiration; and no man has a better than he to say, with Othello, "I have done the e some service, and they know it."

ENGLAND AND THE WAR

(December 15, 1899)

The

In the midst of the discouraging news which has been accumulating during the past few days, the people of England have shown the solid and sterling qualities which distinguish them as a nation. reverses suffered by the British arms at Stormberg and Magersfontein have not, indeed, in themselves, been of great magnitude, but taken in connection with all the circumstances they have been calculated to produce greater consternation than far heavier defeats sustained in a war against a different foe. To be repeatedly out-manoeuvered, thwarted, and severely punished by an enemy who, but a few weeks ago, was regarded with contempt, is an experience calculated to upset the equanimity of any people. Nor is this all; for the bare possibility of ultimate defeat-faint as that possibility is, even now brings into view vistas of disaster appalling in scope and in significance. The people of England see a war which was entered upon as a mere "incident" in the general sweep of British expansion suddenly assuming the proportions of a contest on the issue of which the integrity of the British Empire may possibly turn, and this owing to military reverses which might apparently have been avoided by the exercise of proper military skill and precaution. To the humiliation of repeated defeats by an adversary regarded as inferior is superadded the feeling of unexpected danger of the gravest kind

brought on apparently through a combination of diplomatic short-sightedness and military rashness; and it must be admitted that a sharper test of a nation's capacity for calmness and self-restraint could hardly be devised. Yet London, though of course profoundly stirred, has given no sign of anything even approaching hysterical excitement. There are no frenzied cries for the instant removal of anybody from his post, either civil or military. The Government is made to understand, sternly enough, that its account is being grimly cast up by thousands of indignant critics; but there is no demoralizing crusade, no wild and unreasoning excitement.

What the present situation—even though it may at any moment be entirely changed by a decisive British victory—must bring home, with melancholy emphasis, not only to every thoughtful Englishman, but to every person whose natural inclination is to wish well to England, is the utter needlessness of the war, and the combined wickedness and folly of the policy which brought it on. It is one of the 、 weaknesses of human nature that the force of any injunction, either of morals or of prudence, is never felt to the full until the transgression of it has brought on some painful consequence. It is difficult to see how anything could have been plainer, a few months ago, when this war was in the air, than that the condition of things in the Transvaal was not such as to make war a necessary recourse for the remedying of it. It was absolutely clear that England had no more right, under the convention of 1884, to interfere in the domestic affairs of the