Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace! Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand! Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be!—

.

TENNYSON, In Memoriam.

With heartfelt thanksgiving to God that He has been pleased in His great mercy to lift from the aching heart of the world the four years' agony of War, we have to offer our readers our most sincere good wishes for the coming year which is, we trust, to usher in the new era of Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards Men. The stage is set for a new act in the drama of Humanity; it is now for each one of us, the actors, to fill his part worthily, to work steadily, with the larger vision which excludes self, towards the regeneration of the spirit of man without which the war will have been fought in vain. The Allies have won the War; there remains the winning of the Peace. The world, in President Wilson's memorable phrase, has been made safe for Democracy; Democracy must prove that it is worthy of the gift. We may not expect a new Heaven and a new Earth to be created in a day. There are difficult times ahead, but we must have faith in our leaders, faith in ourselves, faith in the new spirit stirring among mankind. Our message for the year of Peace is Sursum corda. Lift up

your hearts. "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right," we shall, under God, win through "to open to the world a purer hour."

The King in Paris : Foch in London.

At the earliest possible moment after the conclusion of hostilities the King, accompanied by the Prince of Wales and Prince Albert, visited Paris to congratulate President Poincaré and the French nation on the crowning mercy of victory. King George, who had a magnificent welcome, seized the opportunity of conferring upon Marshal Foch the Order of Merit. On December 1st London, in turn, had the pleasure and honour of greeting Marshal Foch, M. Clemenceau, Signor Orlando and Baron Sonnino with a great demonstra'ion of enthusiasm. Never has England welcomed a quartette of guests more illustrious. Their stay was fleeting, but long enough for them to realise the depth and sincerity of our affection and admiration for themselves and for the nations whom they have so superbly led and represented in times of unimaginable stress and anxiety; long enough, too, to enable them in conference with British Ministers to discuss frankly and freely a number of the most pressing questions which confront the Allies in regard to the preliminaries of peace. It is understood that no binding decisions were taken, since the Allied Governments were determined to await President Wilson's arrival before adopting a definite policy; but the meetings which took place in London have done much to clear away the undergrowth of the Peace Conference.

The Home-coming of Haig.

On December 19th London gave an unofficial and informal, but deeply sincere and heartfelt welcome to Sir Douglas Haig and his Generals. At a later date the Field Marshal will ride in triumph at the head of his victorious Armies through the capital city of the Empire which to their unending glory they have saved for freedom. That day will provide a spectacle such as this country has never seen, but in the mind of Sir Douglas Haig it will perhaps take second place to the spontaneous outburst of affection and admiration which greeted his first home-coming. The full-throated cheers from the packed thousands who lined the short route from Charing Cross to Buckingham Palace were not only London's tribute to the superb leading and invincible tenacity of the Commander-inChief, but through him to "the wonderful men whose unequalled courage and endurance have brought us at length by victory to peace."

President Wilson in Europe.

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President Wilson arrived at Brest on December 13th, and proceeding to Paris on the following day had a truly wonderful reception. His first utterance on landing happily expressed the note of his visit. come," he said, "to join my counsel with that of your own public men, in bringing about a Peace settlement which will be consistent alike with the ideals of the United States and of France." If possible Mr. Wilson's Paris welcome was exceeded by the warmth and fervour with which the London crowds greeted him on his arrival on Boxing Day and during his triumphal progress to the City two days later. Apart from the personal interest of Mr. Wilson's presence among us, the. historical imagination cannot fail to be stirred by his coming. Nearly a century and a half ago the New World was called into existence, in Canning's phrase, to

redress the balance of the Old; to-day it is the grateful task of the great Republic of which Mr. Wilson is the leader and spokesman to make good Canning's words, not in any narrow territorial sense, but in the interests of peace and justice throughout the world. During his too short visit to the shores of Europe President Wilson has no doubt availed himself fully of the opportunities for those "heartto-heart talks " with the Allies to which he was so eagerly looking forward, and we feel sure he appreciates more fully at close contact than he could do from his eyrie in Washington that upon fundamentals the agreement between the United States and the European Allies is complete. In saying this we would not be understood to minimise the real and serious difficulties of the peace settlement. Agreement as to general principles is one thing, agreement in regard to their practical application quite another. The members of the Peace Conference will have to reconstitute a shattered world, and the undertaking is one of extraordinary magnitude and difficulty. Ideals and facts must constantly come into the sharpest conflict, and it will require the highest statesmanship to hold the balance true. It has been said that the United States stands for ideals, while the European Allies hold fast to practical politics. We believe this to be only half a truth. We are not without our ideals in Europe, and America's achievements in the war prove her to have no uncertain grasp of the logic of facts. In the friendship and co-operation of the United States and the British Empire lies the hope of the world. We shall not fail America in our advocacy of the principles for which she stands; we may be sure that she will not fail us in her appreciation of our practical difficulties, and we are unfeignedly glad to welcome her great President as the representative and symbol of the union which binds the two countries. We are conscious that the personal opinion of Mr. Wilson will have a very great deal to do with the approaching settlement, and rejoice that it should be

so.

The Armistice.

Since November 11th the world in general has been inclined to forget that there is still a state of war, the only difference being that it is a state, static, and no longer dynamic. There is a tendency, too, to be dissatisfied with the terms of the armistice imposed on the beaten enemy, and to regard those terms as final, which is ignoring the nature and meaning of an armistice. The terms imposed were not intended to represent the final Allied demands on Germany, but only to render Germany impotent during the period in which peace terms are being considered and decided on. By the surrender of the submarines and the bulk of the German fleet, by the handing over of such an amount of land-war material as shall place it beyond the power of the enemy to make effective war, and most of all, by the occupation of the three bridge-heads across the Rhine, the objects of the armistice have been fully secured. In the terms is nothing spectacular beyond the surrender of the German fleet, which is probably the greatest spectacle of its kid in history; the rest of the demands. with which the enemy has complied are so business-like and unimpressive that even Germany itself has largely missed their significance; most of all is the effect of holding the Rhine bridge-heads overlooked, both in this country and by the unrepentant and still inimical Hun, as the German of these days still well deserves to be called.

The three bridge-heads of The Cologne, Mainz and CobBridge-Heads. lenz, held as they are for a radius of 30,000 yards beyond each of the three crossings of the river, emasculate the German arınies completely, even if not a single gun or aeroplane had been surrendered. The object of holding so large an area beyond the river is that of rendering easy the passage of any required number of troops to the eastern bank, for operations, should these be required, east of the river. The area held beyond the river at Cologne destroys all value to the enemy of the industrial

area of which Essen was the main centre; it matters not at all that Essen itself is still in being; what does matter is that all that great area of war production is capable of being reduced to ashes inside a week, if hostilities were resumed. The approach to the Rhine itself took back from Germany the coal and iron areas which formed arteries in which flowed the life-blood of the war; crossing the Rhine, and establishing the bridge-head on the eastern bank at Cologne, neutralised the value to the enemy of all the area in which the raw materials were transformed into munitions of war. Similarly the bridgehead at Coblenz, situated at the junction of the Moselle and the Rhine, gives command of all that bunch of communications which centre in this town, and take from the enemy the power of concentration of his armies for any strategic purpose. Mainz, in its turn, commands the communications of the southern Germanic states, although it is situated well down the Rhine and away from the Swiss frontier. These three places assure the passage of the river to whoever holds them, and with the defensive line of the Rhine gone Germany is vulnerable, helpless.

Lateral Communications.

With Germany in its present state it would have been practically sufficient for the Allied purpose if only the bridge-head at Cologne had been established; that alone would have determined the enemy's power to produce materials of war, and would have stood as symbol of complete victory. But, holding Mainz and Coblenz as well, the Allies have in their grasp all the lateral communications of western Germany, as well as throttling the transverse ways of communication. Germany's main artery for north-to-south and south-to-north movements was the valley of the Rhine, with its railways on either bank; her whole scheme of war was planned with those lateral communications as the main strategic asset, giving absolute freedom of movement behind the frontier, yet so near that frontier as to confer advantage over a