1. From L'Echo de Paris

It is but justice that in these days all France should acclaim President Wilson. The service he rendered us in March, 1917, when he threw the sword of America into the balance with a truly formidable energy, will have its effect on all our future history. Had it not been for that decisive act of his, France would not be what she is today, would never have had the chance to be what she is going to be.

The great merit of the President is to have understood that the war could not be fought by halves, that the nations taking part in it could not limit their individual responsibilities as if they were so many separate business houses. Once the struggle was on in full force, no compromise was possible. The league of liberty either must strike down the league of imperialism or be struck down by it. In the days that followed victory, while we were mentally reviewing the various great battles in which the American troops had held their share of the line, while we were reading the casualty list published at Washington, we were perhaps, misled by our memories of the accomplishments and sufferings of the French and British troops into underestimating the value of the coöperation which came to us from the other side of the Atlantic. A party existed in the Allied countries, which, despairing of finding a military solution of the war, was inclined to end it by some kind of diplomatic arrangement. Then President Wilson spoke forth, and the pusillanimous policy was given over. Our generals, seeing our resources in

men and material being reduced day by day hesitated to gamble in a supreme counter-attack the forces which they had left; then the immense preparations of America came to light and our leaders saw that even in the case of a disaster, there was a reserve power at hand to throw against the enemy. They took the risk, therefore, of the August offensive. On the other hand, when our enemies beheld 300,000 soldiers of the New World crossing the seas every month, at a time when the East no longer yielded them soldiers and their facilities of transportation were scarcely able to carry two divisions a week from East to West, at heart they felt themselves beaten long before they even approached the field of battle. By July, 1917, following the tightening of the blockade around several little neutral States which the Allies had not quite been able to handle, our enemies understood only too well what it meant to bring the greatest neutral State in the world. into the ranks of their enemies. Yet even then, though they felt the economic force of America's anger, they could not bring themselves to believe in her military power. They were to read their destiny by the light of Pershing's gleaming bayonets; the lightning was about to strike them.

Such are the benefits which we owe to President Wilson and his citizens. Now that the terms of the armistice are signed, we must work to secure peace. It is our task to create a world order bringing with it the most stable guarantees of peace and free development. In relation to this new task, President Wilson represents what one

may call the cause of political idealism. In the past, the conflicts of peoples with peoples unrolled themselves without violence as long as a certain equilibrium of armed forces reigned between them, and as long as wisdom, prudence, and the love of justice were to be found in the hearts of the rulers. Our guest of to-day strives to create a more ambitious system, he seeks an international formula which shall forever avoid all chance of a brutal conflict even when a disproportion of forces exists between the disputing peoples, even when the love of war inspires a materially powerful government. After the carnage which we have just been witnessing, such an ambition is necessary and safe. The experience of history does not encourage the test: let us agree, however, that come what will we must try to escape from the cycle of ancient experience and that the wish to bring about new conditions is a good one. It is but natural that the idea of a less bloodthirsty universe should have arisen in one of those puritan consciences which always cherish a strong sense of the duty which the individual owes to his fellows and of the great moral forces which act among men.

We shall have to come to an agreement in regard to the method to follow, and under pretext of inaugurating a new era, we must not deprive the old order of the few guaranties of security which it possesses. It is from this point of view that, in the past, we have been obliged to criticize certain of the political acts of Mr. Wilson. It seems to us, nevertheless, that an entente between ourselves and our great American associate is an easy matter, that associate whom it rests in our power to call 'ally.' Let us make the test of the new order, but in so far as its absolute success cannot be assured and the twenty-five years

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indispensable to that test be not over, let us maintain, mediocre and unsatisfying though they be, the columns of the old order. In other words, let us have the two kinds of organizations, one superimposed upon the other; one which we may call the positive order, which will strive to keep the peace by military guaranties, one the idealist order whose strength will lie in its juridical conception of international problems. Let us put off any definite substitution until the next generation. Immediately realized, it means for us deadly danger.

It will be objected, perhaps, that there is a contradiction between the two efforts. We think not. What is, according to the ancient order, the strongest guaranty we can find for our tranquillity? It is the integral maintenance of the military, political, and economic league which has just won for us the victory. But, on the other hand, if the Society of Nations of all the nations ever comes to pass, will it not have its source in that league which, formed without precedent in history, already includes more than twenty States?

The road which leads to ideal peace and to positive peace is but one road. Let us not imagine byways which have no existence. It is of course not certain that in working for our actual assembly of nations, we shall be working for the Society of Nations, for, perhaps, after all, such a society is quite impossible in this century. But it is certain that in working against the present assembly of nations we shall be working against the Society of Nations. The latter institution is possible only through the former.

In this spirit, let us salute the great chief of the American Republic. And in his person, we shall salute the new union between France and the United States.

II. From Le Figaro

PRESIDENT WILSON comes; they announce tidings of him in the tone that people once used in saying "Truth is on the way.' 'In a few days he will be on this continent,' I was about to say, he will descend upon earth. For we are accustomed to see him appear in the clouds of Heaven from which he talks to humanity, and this gives a touch of dizziness to certain spirits that are otherwise stable.

We must never forget that if the words of Wilson are children of the mountain top, his action takes place upon the earth, and clasps the earth closely. His thought forms itself in the highest skies even as a kind of nebulous star; it seems to detach itself regretfully; suddenly we behold it condense and burst upon the world of mankind, striking at the precise point in which action is necessary. Finally, this disturbing meteor, distributing incontestable benefits, spreads itself over the land.

In the days preceding the President's reëlection, we were still troubled by his pacificism, by his counsels concerning the purposes of the war, and by his homilies on peace without victory, when of a sudden, in the name of those very principles, he thrust the United States into the pitiless war against the enemies of civilization. He alone seemed capable of convincing the Great Democracy that her moral and material welfare compelled her intervention. Others had, of course, even before the President, demanded that intervention, but they did not have sufficient hold on the public to turn their wish into a reality. Time alone could render that necessity visible to the eyes of a people ignorant of European affairs, and could crystallize into unity those nation-wide sentiments whose stupendous outburst brought forth from the

soil a gigantic army and from the coast the necessary fleet.

In such a manner were all the aspirations, all the forces, and all the resources of the greatest civilized nation carried to their maximum of service by a chief magistrate in whom humanity had seen but a sublime dreamer. Those absolute powers, centred in his person, in whom vibrated the whole soul of his people carried away by their enthusiasm for the holy places of Civilization, translated themselves into action in a most practical spirit

with a conception of the ensemble and a sense of detail which left no doubt as to the power of so well-ordered an enthusiasm. And the world wondered to find the most skillful of statesmen in this biblical prophet whose sacred madness had sometimes so disturbed us. It was clear that he possessed a genius for the handling of men and affairs as great in scope as the genius of those 'shepherds of peoples of ancient times, when a judge ruled over the tribes of Israel.'

It is always a surprise for us to find in a preacher a leader in war. The last of the great statesmen of this Old Testament style, if we except President Kruger, was Oliver Cromwell. To tell the truth, we have never understood him in our Latin countries any more than we have Shakespeare, and it was only by transforming him that Bossuet made him immortal.

If there is to be found in Wilson 'the incredible depth of spirit' of that ironic puritan to whom 'it was given to deceive the peoples and prevail against the kings,' nothing ever authorized us to carry further this comparison with that 'subtle hypocrite,' denounced by Bossuet, that 'skillful politician' who was as pitiless as the chief of a Hebrew tribe. Outside of his insistence on prevailing against kings, no one could accuse President Wilson of deceiving the

peoples in the manner that Bossuet describes; but he is past master of the art of winding them about his finger. Let us say that he excels in the art of leading the mob to take the path he has secretly prepared for it. In such a manner did the elected representative of the American people, a man passionately devoted to peace, lead down the path of his implacable logic a whole nation till it bade him declare war.

One can almost say of him what used to be said of God, that his ways are dark. For it is from Heaven itself that he seeks inspiration.

We are but little accustomed to see our politicians raise their eyes to the sky before determining on their course of action.

'What's that?' said Renan to a cabinet minister who was boring him with the recital of his endless occupation, 'You never find time, M. le Ministre, to say a prayer?'

Mr. Wilson is a statesman who prays; it is his heritage from his grandparents who were Presbyterian ministers. Even now his language, couched in terms of the highest culture, has kept a tang of that 'patois of Canaan' which shone in the language of Kruger and was even to be found in the bellicose harangues of Colonel Roosevelt.

We are always somewhat bewildered by this sublime jargon, but we make no delay in recognizing in the Wilsonian preaching a prelude to action, a kind of mystical preparation from which the action emerges as assured and well knit as the meditation was wide and uncertain. We have before us a Christian who mounts into the pulpit on Sundays and holydays, and vows the rest of his time to hard work and the good fight. He deliberates in the light of Heaven, slowly and solemnly, before taking sides, but when the prayer, which separates him a moment from the community of mortals, has come to an end,

then all the virtues of action wake in him to form a swift and irrevocable decision.

It is, nevertheless, true that sometimes his sermons have caused us a shiver such as we feel on seeing the performances of a virtuoso aviator. Wilson holds the world's record for height, and the wheelings of this great thinker, I almost said pilot, astound us and reassure us with their most unexpected tricks of ending satisfactorily.

What a dexterity is needed by pastors of peoples for the management of their flocks! What ingenuity even in the service of the most burning faith and the most loyal sense of honor! The first 'Nabis' of the desert had a bit of the sorcerer to them, says Renan. Doubtless one must have had to preserve something of the magic of primitive times to preside over the destinies of the most modern democracy.

A great initiate, such as Moses, must of necessity, possess a secondary personality which is that of a consummate politician. When his head disappeared in the clouds of Sinai, his people regarded him as a humanitarian dreamer, and danced about the Golden Calf,. which must have been a kind of protest against primitive meatless days. After descending to the plain he unfolded the most marvelous spirit of reorganization, he foresaw all the needs of a population marching through a country bare of resources, with a genius for food conservation which history did not perceive again till the coming of M. Victor Boret. He invented manna, that savory substitute for wheat, he made fountains of delicious water burst from rocks, he made the bitter water of salt lakes drinkable, and he ended by distributing, under the mark of the Bronze Serpent, a serum against poisons and infections. And all this after having got his whole army across the Red Sea dry shod!

If we admit in this recital the working of a certain Oriental tendency towards exaggeration, can we not resolve the matter to the legendary commemoration of a matter of naval transportation, an operation carried on in the face of an enemy unable to hinder it, a deed as remarkable in its conception, execution, and success as was the transportation of American troops across a 'bridge of boats' every bit as metaphorical.

The analogy is a curious one, but we do not make it to authorize a premature identification of Moses and Wilson. Let us leave this impertinence to the gossips of the streets and salons, who are going about insinuating that the great American statesman is at hand to give laws to the universe. It goes without saying that this irreverent suggestion has not its source in us and has no credit here; it is only too patently part of that persistent but hitherto vain propaganda which seeks to sever the Allies and create conflicts of opinion.

This fact, too, explains zeal shown in certain quarters to represent the Fourteen Points like a kind of idol before which all perforce must bow the head.

Mr. Wilson's intimates and friends have certainly never presented the Fourteen Points in any such light; they have never insisted on them as articles of faith.

They are 'propositions' in the sense which this term has in philosophy, still more in the theological sense of the word—that is, propositions offered for discussion and not dogmas. It has been said, with humor, that we are dealing with the Fourteen Points and not the Ten Commandments.

world offers no finer spectacle than this; it offers no higher dignity; and there is no greater object of ambition on the political stage on which men are permitted to move. You may point, if you will, to hereditary rulers, to crowns coming down through successive generations of the same family, to thrones based on proscription or conquest, to sceptres wielded over veteran legions and subject realms - but to my mind there is nothing more worthy of reverence and obedience, and nothing more sacred, than the authority of the freely chosen magistrate of a great and free people; and if there be on earth and among men any right divine to govern, surely it rests with a ruler so chosen and so appointed. John Bright, at Rochdale, December 4, 1861.

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.- President Wilson's message declaring war on Germany.

The idea of America is to serve humanity. Address at the unveiling of Commodore Barry's statue.

PRESIDENT WILSON has arrived in Europe, and in a few days will be the guest of the King and of the British nation. It is a matter of the deepest consequence that the character of his mission should be understood. If that is perverted-still more, if its purpose is thwarted and made ineffectual the consequences will be beyond all calculation. What are the circumstances? America is the greatest nation the world has ever known, and the greatest democracy. It has been so ordered that this people should be the final determinant of the war. The chief military effort, indeed, was not America's nor the main sustaining force. That glory is ours. Nevertheless the Power which was the arm