and the evening mist rose slowly from the sluggish stream at their feet. The Countess pulled her fur cloak about her shoulders, and the three lodgers walked slowly back through the deserted park to their enforced home.

The weather had turned cold and stormy, and the next day found the stone streets a checker-board of puddles and the Arno a rushing mass of mud and débris from the mountains. It was raining hard as the four lodgers left No. 51 and drove in a closed, ill-smelling cab to the station, just in time to catch the night train for Paris. It was out of season, and the rain and cold had driven the men who usually lounge about the platform under the shelter of the old station.

And so the four lodgers stood alone, huddled together in a little group in front of an empty compartment. The American said something about meeting in the spring, and regards to his friends at the Jockey Club. The Baron raised his hat as if to add decorum to his decorous words of farewell, which he delivered in the best of French. The Baron always spoke the best of French immediately after dinner and on occasions when the finer emotions were to be expressed. La Gommeuse, in a great fur coat and a cloth hat but half covering her mass of curls, stood in the centre of the group, reaching hardly to the shoulder of the Countess. In the dim light of the flickering gas-jet they could see that she was smiling; it was a little forced perhaps, but the trio that she was so soon to leave could hardly inspire mirth as they stood there with the wind whistling down the deserted platform. But in this moment of farewell she still found the words ready which had so often smoothed out their troubles and many nights taken the place of a friend's hand as they lay on a bed of sickness.

"Not later than Grand Prix day," she ran on; " and if I am in the pelouse, you must come and speak to me and tell me if Blanc and Rothschild have their money on. And then some morning just we four will go to Villebon, where your great friends will not be likely to see you breakfasting up in the trees with your friend of the haute bourgeoisie."

The last bell rang; the conductor came forward to close the door. The Countess took the girl in her arms and kissed her twice on the mass of curls over the clear

broad forehead. "Au revoir," was all she said, and pressed the bunch of violets into her hand. The girl jumped into the empty carriage, the door was slammed after her, and the outline of a small face pressed against the glass was the last they saw of La Gommeuse.

When the train had passed beyond the station lights, the girl threw herself on the broad cushions and lay for some moments looking up at the dim lamp in the roof of the compartment. "Thank God, it is over," she said aloud, and raised the violets to her lips. But they were old and stale, and they reminded her of things that were gone. She jumped to the floor, and letting the window fall, threw the flowers far out into the night. For a moment she leaned against the frame, the wind blowing back her curls and baring her forehead to the cold drops of the driving rain. Through the darkness she could see the faint black outlines of the Duomo, and, rising at its side, the Campanile, which is the sign of Florence. With drawn lips she gazed into the darkness until the lines of the great cathedral faded into the night, and then, still holding by the window-sill, she sank sobbing to her knees and rested her head upon her hands. "I am going back," she said— "I am going back." And so she was going back-back to Paris, with its sunshine and its green Bois, back to the boulevards and the theatres and the cafés and the myriads of lights, back to her home, and back to the man she loved.

The three figures on the platform watched the train until it turned the curve and the rear lights had disappeared into the darkness. Then they passed out, through the hot station, past the long line of dripping cabs, and through the narrow streets to the Arno. The circle of lamps stretching from the Old Bridge to the Cascine hung, in the rain-swept night, like a great necklace of cheap, unpolished topaz. The Countess walked in the middle, holding an arm of each of her companions. Their heavy coats were buttoned tight over their chins and mouths, and their hats were pulled far over their faces. Even had they been able, it is doubtful if they would have spoken. By a silent understanding they had refused the offers of the many drivers at the station, and had gone far out of their way in returning by the Arno. For some reason best known to themselves, each wished to

THE problem of preparation for war in modern times is both extensive and complicated. As in the construction of the individual ship, where the attempt to reconcile conflicting requirements has resulted, according to a common expression, in a compromise, the most dubious of all military solutions- giving something to all, and all to none,-so preparation for war involves many conditions, often contradictory one to another, at times almost irreconcilable. To satisfy all of these passes the ingenuity of the national Treasury, powerless to give the whole of what is demanded by the representatives of the different elements, which, in duly ordered proportion, constitute a complete scheme of national military policy, whether for offence or defence. Unable to satisfy all, and too often equally unable to say, frankly, "This one is chief; to it you others must yield, except so far as you contribute to its greatest efficiency," either the pendulum of the government's will swings from one extreme to the other, or, in the attempt to be fair all round, all alike receive less than they ask, and for their theoretical completeness require. In other words, the contents of the national purse are distributed, instead of being concentrated upon a leading conception, adopted after due deliberation, and maintained with conviction.

The creation of material for war, under modern conditions, requires a length of time which does not permit the postponement of it to the hour of impending hostilities. To put into the water a first-class battle-ship, fully armored, within a year after the laying of her keel, as has latter ly been done in England, is justly considered an extraordinary exhibition of

the nation's resources for naval shipbuilding; and there yet remained to be done the placing of her battery, and many other matters of principal detail essential to her readiness for sea. This time certainly would not be less for ourselves, doing our utmost.

War is simply a political movement, though violent and exceptional in its character. However sudden the occasion from which it arises, it results from antecedent conditions, the general tendency of which should be manifest long before to the statesmen of a nation, and to at least the reflective portion of the people. In such anticipation, such forethought, as in the affairs of common life, lies the best hope of the best solution-peace by ordinary diplomatic action; peace by timely agreement, while men's heads are cool, and the crisis of fever has not been reached by the inflammatory utterances of an unscrupulous press, to which agitated public apprehension means increase of circulation. But while the maintenance of peace by sagacious prevision is the laurel of the statesman, which, in failing to achieve except by force, he takes from his own brow and gives to the warrior, it is none the less a necessary part of his official competence to recognize that in public disputes, as in private, there is not uncommonly on both sides an element of right, real or really believed, which prevents either party from yielding, and that it is better for men to fight than, for the sake of peace, to refuse to support their convictions of justice. How deplorable the war between the North and South! but more deplorable by far had it been that either had flinched from the maintenance of what it believed to be

fundamental right. On questions of merely material interest men may yield; on matters of principle they may be honestly in the wrong; but a conviction of right, even though mistaken, if yielded without contention, entails a deterioration of character, except in the presence of force demonstrably irresistible- and sometimes even then. Death before dishonor is a phrase that at times has been infamously abused, but it none the less contains a vital truth.

To provide a force adequate to maintain the nation's cause, and to ensure its readiness for immediate action in case of necessity, are the responsibility of the government of a state, in its legislative and executive functions. Such a force is a necessary outcome of the political conditions which affect, or, as can be foreseen, may probably affect, the international relations of the country. Its existence at all and its size are, or should be, the reflection of the national consciousness that in this, that, or the other direction lie clear national interests-for which each generation is responsible to futurity-or national duties, equally clear from the mere fact that the matter lies at the door, like Lazarus at the rich man's gate. The question of when, or how, action shall be taken which may result in hostilities, is indeed a momentous one, having regard to the dire evils of war; but it is the question of a moment, of the last moment to which can be postponed a final determination of such tremendous consequence. To this determination preparation for war has only this relation: that it should be adequate to the utmost demand that can then be made upon it, and, if possible, so imposing that it will prevent war ensuing, upon the firm presentation of demands which the nation believes to be just. Such a conception, so stated, implies no more than defence-defence of the nation's rights or of the nation's duties, although such defence may take the shape of aggressive action, the only safe course in war.

Logically, therefore, a nation which proposes to provide itself with a naval or military organization adequate to its needs, must begin by considering, not what is the largest army or navy in the world, with the view of rivalling it, but what there is in the political status of the world, including not only the material in terests but the temper of nations, which

involves a reasonable, even though remote, prospect of difficulties which may prove insoluble except by war. The matter, primarily, is political in character. It is not until this political determination has been reached that the data for even stating the military problem are in hand; for here, as always, the military arm waits upon and is subservient to the political interests and civil power of the nation.

It is not the most probable of dangers, but the most formidable, that must be selected as measuring the degree of military precaution to be embodied in the military preparations thenceforth to be maintained. The lesser is contained in the greater; if equal to the most that can be reasonably apprehended, the country can view with quiet eye the existence of more imminent, but less dangerous, complications. Nor should it be denied that in estimating danger there should be a certain sobriety of imagination, equally removed from undue confidence and from exaggerated fears. Napoleon's caution to his marshals not to make a picture to themselves-not to give too loose rein to fancy as to what the enemy might do, regardless of the limitations to which military movements are subject-applies to antecedent calculations, like those which we are now considering, as really as to the operations of the campaign. When British writers, realizing the absolute dependence of their own country upon the sea, insist that the British navy must exceed the two most formidable of its possible opponents, they advance an argument which is at least worthy of serious debate; but when the two is raised to three, they assume conditions which are barely possible, but lie too far without the limits of probability to affect practical action.

In like manner, the United States, in estimating her need of military preparation, of whatever kind, is justified in consider ing, not merely the utmost force which might be brought against her by a possible enemy, under the political circumstances most favorable to the latter, but the limitations imposed upon an opponent's action by well-known conditions of a permanent nature. Our only rivals in potential military strength are the great powers of Europe. These, however, while they have interests in the western hemisphere - to which a certain solidarity is imparted by their instinctive and avowed opposition

to a policy to which the United States, by an inward compulsion apparently irresistible, becomes more and more committed, have elsewhere yet wider and more onerous demands upon their attention. Since 1884 Great Britain, France, and Germany have each acquired colonial possessions, varying in extent from one million to two and a half million square miles chiefly in Africa. This means, as is generally understood, not merely the acquisition of so much new territory, but the perpetuation of national rivalries and suspicions, maintaining in full vigor, in this age, the traditions of past animosities. It means uncertainties about boundariesthat most fruitful source of disputes when running through unexplored wildernesses --jealousy of influence over native occupants of the soil, fear of encroachment, unperceived till too late, and so a constant, if silent, strife to ensure national preponderance in these newly opened regions. The colonial expansion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is being resumed under our eyes, bringing with it the same train of ambitions and feelings that were then exhibited, though these are qualified by the more orderly methods of modern days and by a welldefined mutual apprehension-the result of a universal preparedness for war, the distinctive feature of our own time which most guarantees peace.

All this reacts evidently upon Europe, the common mother-country of these various foreign enterprises, in whose seas and lands must be fought out any struggle springing from these remote causes, and upon whose inhabitants chiefly must fall both the expense and the bloodshed thence arising. To these distant burdens of disquietude-in the assuming of which, though to an extent self-imposed, the present writer recognizes the prevision of civilization, instinctive rather than conscious, against the perils of the future-is to be added the proximate and unavoidable anxiety dependent upon the conditions of Turkey and its provinces, the logical outcome of centuries of Turkish misrule. Deplorable as have been, and to some extent still are, political conditions on the American continents, the New World, in the matter of political distribution of territory and fixity of tenure, is permanence itself, as compared with the stormy prospect confronting the Old in its questions which will not down.

In these controversies, which range themselves under the broad heads of colonial expansion and the Eastern question, all the larger powers of Europe, the powers that maintain considerable armies or navies, or both, are directly and deeply interested-except Spain. The latter manifests no solicitude concerning the settlement of affairs in the east of Europe, nor is she engaged in increasing her still considerable colonial dominion. This preoccupation of the great powers, being not factitious, but necessary, a thing that cannot be dismissed by an effort of the national will, because its existence depends upon the nature of things,—is a legitimate element in the military calculations of the United States. It cannot enter into her diplomatic considerations, for it is her pride not to seek, from the embarrassments of other states, advantages or concessions which she cannot base upon the substantial justice of her demands. But, while this is true, the United States has had in the past abundant experience of disputes, in which, though she believed herself right, even to the point of having a just casus belli, the other party has not seemed to share the same conviction. These difficulties, chiefly, though not solely, territorial in character, have been the natural bequest of the colonial condition through which this hemisphere passed on its way to its present political status. Her own view of right, even when conceded in the end, has not at first approved itself to the other party to the dispute. Fortunately these differences have been mainly with Great Britain, the great and beneficent colonizer, a state between which and ourselves a sympathy, deeper than both parties have always been ready to admit, has continued to exist, because founded upon common fundamental ideas of law and justice. Of this the happy termination of the Venezuelan question is the most recent but not the only instance.

It is sometimes said that Great Britain is the most unpopular state in Europe. If this be so-and many of her own people seem to accept the fact of her political isolation, though with more or less of regret,-is there nothing significant to us in that our attitude towards her in the Venezuelan matter has not commanded the sympathy of Europe, but rather the reverse? Our claim to enter, as of right, into a dispute not origi

nally our own, and concerning us only as one of the American group of nations, has been rejected in no doubtful tones by organs of public opinion which have no fondness for Great Britain. Whether any foreign government has taken the same attitude is not known-probably there has been no official protest against the apparent admission of a principle which binds nobody but the parties to it. Do we ourselves realize that, happy as the issue of our intervention has been, it may entail upon us greater responsibilities, more serious action, than we have before assumed? that it amounts in fact -if one may use a military metaphorto occupying an advanced position, the logical result very likely of other steps in the past, but which nevertheless implies necessarily such organization of strength as will enable us to hold it?

Without making a picture to ourselves, without conjuring up extravagant contingencies, it is not difficult to detect the existence of conditions, in which are latent elements of future disputes, identical in principle with those through which we have heretofore passed. Can we expect that, if unprovided with adequate military preparation, we shall receive from other states, not imbued with our traditional habits of political thought, and therefore less patient of our point of view, the recognition of its essential reasonableness which has been conceded by the government of Great Britain? The latter has found capacity for sympathy with our attitude-not only by long and close contact and interlacing of interests between the two peoples, nor yet only in a fundamental similarity of character and institutions. Besides these, useful as they are to mutual understanding, that government has an extensive and varied experience, extending over centuries, of the vital importance of distant regions to its own interests, to the interests of its people and its commerce, or to its political prestige. It can understand and allow for a determination not to acquiesce in the beginning or continuance of a state of things, the tendency of which is to induce future embarrassments,-to complicate or endanger essential welfare. A nation situated as Great Britain is in India and Egypt can scarcely fail to appreciate our own sensitiveness regarding the Central American isthmus, and the Pacific, on which we have such extensive

territory; nor is it a long step from concern about the Mediterranean, and anxious watchfulness over the progressive occupation of its southern shores, to an understanding of our reluctance to see the ambitions and conflicts of another hemisphere approach, even remotely and indirectly, the comparatively peaceful neighborhoods surrounding the Carib-. bean Sea, bearing a threat of disturbance to the political distribution of power or of territorial occupation now existing. Whatever our interests may demand in the future may be a matter of doubt, but it is hard to see how there can be any doubt in the mind of a British statesman that it is our clear interest now, when all is quiet, to see removed possibilities of trouble which might break out at a less propitious season.

Such facility for reaching an understanding, due to experience of difficulties, is strongly supported by a hearty desire for peace, traditional with a commercial people who have not to reproach themselves with any lack of resolution or tenacity in assuming and bearing the burden of war when forced upon them. "Militarism" is not a preponderant spirit in either Great Britain or the United States; their commercial tendencies and their isolation concur to exempt them from its predominance. Pugnacious, and even warlike, when aroused, the idea of war in the abstract is abhorrent to them, because it interferes with their leading occupations, and its demands are alien to their habits of thought. To say that either lacks sensitiveness to the point of honor would be to wrong them; but the point must be made clear to them, and it will not be found in the refusal of reasonable demands, because they involve the abandonment of positions hastily or ig norantly assumed, nor in the mere attitude of adhering to a position lest there may be an appearance of receding under compulsion. Napoleon I. phrased the extreme position of militarism in the words, "If the British ministry should intimate that there was anything the First Consul had not done, because he was prevented from doing it, that instant he would do it."

Now the United States, speaking by various organs, has said, in language scarcely to be misunderstood, that she is resolved to resort to force, if necessary, to prevent the territorial or political exten