For three thousand years all the world has listened to the details of those violent and sometimes undignified conflicts between the heavenly powers which favored Greek or Trojan upon that windy plain now visible to greater hosts warring at Gallipoli. The peaceful god who got his name from feeding Arcadian flocks, and kept it as the comic source of innumerable puns and errors from prehistoric times down to Mr. Chesterton-even Pan promised his help to the Athenians in battle, whether they asked for it or not and he seems duly to have appeared at Marathon, smiting the slavish swarm of conscript Orientals, not with a crook, but with a ploughshare. Time would fail to tell of the great Twin Brethren to whom the Dorians pray, and after whose white horses black Auster toiled in vain, how they assisted young Rome's Dictator to repulse the Tarquin tyranny; or to tell of the dog-headed, cat-headed, birdheaded gods which fought for Egypt and the serpent of old Nile against the comparatively human and domestic symbolism of the early Empire; or to tell of cloudy armies embattled in the sky, heralding the Holy City's overthrow, or of the tailed and flaming

star which astounded citizens of London in the year that the Conqueror came, far more than a Zeppelin astounds them now. Its picture, like a sunflower with a tapering stalk, may still be seen upon the tapestry at Bayeux.

These are old tales, old portents. But deep in man's heart a confidence in celestial alliance with a nation's cause has always lain dormant, and in crises of national peril it awakes. The Catholic peasant puts on his uniform, and in his village church commits his life and his country to the care of this patron saint or that. The Orthodox peasant of the Near East puts on his uniform, and in his village church kisses the ancient portrait of the most powerful local saint-kisses it with such fervor that the face must be covered with glass to preserve its features. Among our enemies, the Emperor who once commended Attila's warfare as an example for his troops, has attempted to localize and reduce the Divine Power to "our old ally of Rossbach" (that village being the scene of a considerable Prussian victory many years ago.) And so it comes about that the heart-rending prayers poured by contending nations of Christendom to a Deity who is the same for all, present an inexhaustible theme for melancholy amusement to the satirist or philosopher whose own heart has never been rent by war.

But those who in themselves have experienced war's crazing agony will not wonder or sneer at any prayer which doomed combatants may raise, or at any vision from which they may derive encouragement and consolation. We are not surprised at the spiritual reverence displayed by our Allies in France towards the many crucifixes which have remained untouched by shell when their church has been shat

tered into ruin around them and the forgotten bones of graves turned up into the sunlight again. Preachers have boldly accepted the story of those visionary hosts of angels interposing their flaming swords between the onset of the German cavalry and our tenacious and battle-worn battalions that saved a nation on their retreat from Mons. When they told us that these hosts were invisible to the insensate enemy, but that the horses saw them, and fled, we did not smile in a superior manner. We did not even smile when they accepted the novelist tale that ghosts of gallant Englishmen who fought at Agincourt five centuries ago rose from the neighboring ground, to join once more in England's battle; in evidence of which inspiring resurrection, behold the shafts of English longbows sticking in the earth or in a foeman's heart! We did not smile. We did not even ask for an arrow to be produced in court. strange visions and intimations spring unbidden in the soul when the beating of Death's wing is heard close by.

love and pride of Frenchmen, and of Englishmen too. There is never a church so poor that it cannot afford the mailed figure of the Maid. Other statues may go lacking an offering, not hers."

In France last week, upon the very ridge of war, there was celebrated a nine days' "Supplication to Our Lady of the Afflicted, to obtain victory for our arms, protection for our soldiers, and peace." Only those will jest at such prayers who have never felt a wound or known a beloved head exposed to slaughter. But in the same letter which tells of this Supplication, there is mention of another worship, at which even the detached philosopher and satiric spectator of humanity's fond illusions have no need to scoff. For the writer notices what all have noticed who have known France since the earthquake of war began.

"Truly," he says, "Joan of Arc has come into her own, and after the last ten months there is not a saint in the calendar who stands near her in the

It is nearly six years since the Church in Rome raised to the degree of "Beatitude" the girl whom one of its Bishops ordered to be burnt alive under an inscription declaring her a liar, a plague, a deceiver of the people, a sorceress, a blasphemer of God, an unbeliever in the faith of Christ, a boaster, an idolatress, cruel and dissolute, a witch of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic. It had not taken the whole of the intervening time 478 years-to effect so remarkable a change of opinion, but the question of the authenticity of her miracles occasioned prolonged discussion. The girl herself never claimed miraculous powers, nor believed that she possessed But that is not sufficient disproof, for some people remain unconscious of the extraordinary powers latent in their nature, and some remain unconscious of an entire absence of powers of any kind. The evidence in support of miracles is often difficult to establish, and we need not follow in detail the careful investigations which were at length decided in her favor. For those whose interests are not primarily theological, the miracle of her existence may seem sufficient wonder, and compared with her achievement we would hardly turn the corner to witness the most astonishing marvel recorded in the Acts of all the Saints. The authenticity of her miracle is unquestioned. There was about her none of the languishing sentimentality and trusting sweetness with which the image-makers have invested her, as they have invested even the "Mother of God." "Just the simplest peasant you could ever see"-that is the contemporary account: short, deep-chested,

with black hair cut like a boy's; nothing remarkable about her except an attractive voice. She could not write or read, but at spinning and stitching, as she boasted at her trial, there was not a woman in Rouen could beat her. "That's a good sort of girl," said one of the British "Tommies" of the time; "It's a pity she isn't English!" This characteristic praise reveals the girl's nature better than the most romantic description. She appeared first in "a common red frock, carefully patched," and it was only to avoid insult that she took to men's clothes (which dress, together with sorcery, blasphemy, heresy, and the other crimes enumerated, was among the most fatal charges brought against her). At her trial she said she had never killed anyone, and even to the English she always offered peace. But apparently she could swing an axe with extraordinary vigor, and she had a peculiar way of swearing "En nom Dieu," though her favorite and quieter oath was "Par mon martin!" The sight of French blood, she said, filled her with horror, and she was so sensitive to pain that she cried under it. Yet in battle she took her chance with the rest, and rode bareheaded.

Pity for France "pity for the misery of the French Kingdom”—she gave as the one motive for her deed. For a hundred years France had been dev

The Nation.

astated by foreign war. The enemy claimed the whole, and held about a quarter in possession. Continuous civil strife-faction against faction, Armagnac against Burgundian-divided the kingdom against itself. Plague ravaged the inhabitants; armies devoured the land; the cruelty of warfare could hardly be surpassed even by our own more advanced and scientific age. Then the girl came, and in a few months she had revived her country's hope, stag. gered the invader, and crowned the King as a symbol of national unity. "Before she came," said Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans, "eight hundred or a thousand of my men could not hold their own against two hundred English; after her arrival, four or five hundred of mine could have pretty nearly defied the whole of England's power."

She was wounded, was betrayed, and captured. The King whom she had crowned, lived on among his complacent mistresses, taking no notice of her fate. She was only nineteen when they burnt her alive. But now, at last, she has come into her own, and no more fitting symbol could be discovered for modern France. For no miracle authenticated by the theology of all the Churches could supply a worshipper with truer faith in the reality of spiritual power than does her simple history.

Edwin Davies Schoonmaker, in his "The World Storm and Beyond," (The Century Co.) is less concerned with the first part of his subject than with the tremendous social and economic revolutions which he believes will follow the great European war. He writes with force, almost with passion,

of the mighty changes which he foresees, the extension of Socialism, the collapse of the church, the elevation of woman, the overthrow of existing institutions, the downfall of empires, the federation of the nations. His book will be read with varying emotions, according to the mood in which

regarded as a dream or as a warning, there can be no disputing its cogency or the seriousness of the problems with which it deals.

Charles Morris's "Famous Days and Deeds in Holland and Belgium" (J. B. Lippincott Co.) deals with the present war only in the closing chapter, in which is given a rapid sketch of the German invasion of Belgium, and the courage with which the Belgians sprang to arms, at hardly more than a day's warning, to defend their country. For the most part, the book has to do with the past of Belgium and Holland, and the narrative therefore furnishes a setting for the story of the Belgium of to-day. There are few countries whose history is more full of heroic deeds, and unquestioning sacrifices for principle and liberty; and Mr. Morris has wisely chosen not to attempt a consecutive history, but to tell the tales of these struggles in order, from the tyranny of Charles V, the horrors of the Inquisition, the bloodthirsty deeds of the Duke of Alva, and the gallant and successful resistance of William the Silent down to the nineteenth century. These stories are told with graphic power. They are as thrilling as any tales of romance, and a great deal more worth while because they portray real men, real struggles and real victories for freedom and right. Sixteen full-page illustrations add to the interest of the text.

Nominally, Hugh Paret, the hero of Mr. Winston Churchill's "A Far Country" is a corporation lawyer, but unprofessionally he dabbles in theology after the American manner, seeking first to find, and later to make a creed convenient for him, and at the same time to spread a good table in the presence of his enemies. As far as

ful, and clothes, feeds, and houses himself and his family sumptuously, but the creed is a more difficult matter, and sometimes, from pure indolence, he is almost persuaded to be a Christian. He has no conceit and no delusions, either about himself or these United States in which he lives, and his ability to perceive the ills besetting his contemporaries is offset by genuine esteem for their abilities. Mr. Churchill's national pride does not close his eyes to the queer laxity of American morals painfully apparent in the circles of those too delicately sensitive not to be shocked by the spectacle of the ten commandments engraved upon a church wall before a whole congregation; and so his hero beginning with deception grazes the borders of political and financial dishonesty, and daringly trifles with the seventh commandment. Mr. Churchill treats the situations which he creates both skilfully and bravely, and without cant, and without preaching, and without sacrificing probability or art shows how inevitable is retribution. He keeps his more frivolous readers by giving them such details of the lives of the rich as are spread before them by the "society" reporters, but he subordinates them to the real business of living, and it is to true repentance that he brings his hero. As for his two heroines, he contrives to save both of them. There is little trace of the Richard Carvel romance in "A Far Country," but there is convincing proof of growth in literary skill. The curious may discover some personal traits and some incidents borrowed from contemporary life at certain points in the story but nothing to offend good taste. Eight excellent pictures by Mr. Herman Pfeifer supplement the text. The Macmillan Company.