love you as you are-unique-singular -I tremble lest this Old World dim your fountain of joy."

I could not look at M. Novinsky. The terror of night and the steppe seemed flowing over me as on that day at the cathedral. The world without this figure-so simple, so gentle, so subtly understanding-it was dull, unimaginable! Into whatever paths of the heart life

sky staring again with his head on his hands.

"I am happy that America is yours to return to, Amerikanka." The voice with its un-English timbre roused itself after a pause. "But you will never forget Russia. It will always remain something tragic, magnetic, to be remembered? Perhaps these are the last days we shall have together and I must speak out my heart; that is the Slav. It may be that in Peking you have heard that I am a worshiper of women. I am. I worship all beauty. But you are the first woman I have ever known well. You cannot know what it means, youyour joy against this old unhappiness so intrinsically a part of me. It is unspeakably dear-this experience. If I loved you less-I should ask more of you. But I prize you as you are.

I

might lead me, it would never be this one, desired. I rose from the pine where we had been sitting, putting my hand to my throat to free it from ache. What mattered the world -Old or Newwithout this tender

figure!

"I shall always return." I tried to choke back my tears. "Something compelled me here I do not know what-and I shall always return. I love Russia."

We were again on the needle-carpeted road, Orlik's road, moving toward a little woodland bridge under the highvaulting trees. M. Novinsky stopped now as we came to a turn in the forest road, subdued and fragrant from a thicket of a delicately flowering white bush.

"Russia has given me a soul," I repeated, avoiding him and looking up at my dim green comrades, the trees, blindly struggling against a cold gray tide. "I shall always return."

He had never kissed my hands before, after the manner of his race; he bent over them as if it were a rite.

"Amerikanka," he said slowly, searching my face with a terrible earnestness. "Russia is not a land to which one returns with joy. If it were not my own country, perhaps I should love it less than other lands-lands of sunshine and freedom. If she were at a less crisisor less unhappy-I might leave her. But

as she is now, struggling, upheaved I am bound to her. You love Russia, but you do not know Russia. The Russia you see is the Russia of to-day; what the Russia of to-morrow will be no one knows. We are on the brink of change. Everything one loves and everything one hates is going into the melting-pot, and what will emerge no one can say. In time we shall evolve into a great free nation. In time-but what is one man's lifetime in the evolution of a race? For the next hundred years we are going to be the most unhappy people in the world. In my case, if one can envisage the personal-a thing I have almost forgotten-it may mean the loss of everything-of estates, of home, even this old Bortnaka. . . . It is a Novinsky tradition of which we are proud-our long fight for Russia's freedom. But we are nobles, and the first new uncouth forces of democracy for which we are striving will have little place for us." He added the latter with a whimsical smile, but weariness looked out of his eyes. He stared down the road, the contours of his face sharpened in white lines of pain as he turned again to me. "But you, Amerikanka-do you not see, it is cruel to bring you here to this chaos, -no one knows what-with your clear title to happiness there?"

I could feel the taut figure quivering under the leash. He had resigned me. My choice was in my own hands. But his eyes were compelling me, wistfully questioning, exploring my soul, burning out the very essence of me with the intense emotion of the Slav. And that

[THE

intensity, the prescience of which had drawn me overseas-that passion of the East was drawing me now irresistibly to this man lifted up in pain before me. I closed my eyes. Myself, my country, my hope, and my ambition-I knew that I was pledging them all. I had a sense of pathos as at the closing of a chapter. Of irresolution-none. There lay my world, in those fires ready to light at my touch.

"I shall not return-I shall stay in Russia-whatever your destiny-whatever the destiny of this Old World-it is mine, Dmitri Nikolaievitch-Sonia and Raskolnikoff-you know-together."

He was trembling violently as I said the last words, but he put his free hand on my hair and turned me toward himM. Novinsky of my memory. "Your whole life-do you understand your whole life?" His voice was steady, but his face was pale and straining, his eyes touched with the mysticism of the Slav.

"My whole life, Dmitri Nikolaievitch!" My soul seemed holding out her woman hands to this dim, questing face and these darkening eyes. "Together."

"Amerikanka-life-together!"

The passion of the East-sweeping me up in its embrace lifting me on full flood-tides wrapping me in mystic fire. His arms closing about me his body exquisitely near. A torrent rushed through me like the wind in the forest, but at the heart was peace. Strange, sweet tides bore me far, far out-outout to unknown seas! Something poignant in Russia-yes, I had touched it. END.]

HE control of the Mediterranean is the crux of the war. About this great territory, extending from Gibraltar to Persia, and from Austro-Hungary to the Indian Ocean, the settlement of terms of peace will ultimately turn.

None of the warring powers have been willing to discuss the Mediterranean question. Possibly none of them dare discuss their ambitions and their fears. The question is too complicated. Its discussion is too hazardous to existing alliances. The whole Near-Eastern question is kept in the dark because of the dangers of a frank declaration of policy to the relations of the several powers.

In this territory the war had its beginning. Upon this area the thoughts of the chancelleries of England, Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungary, France and the Balkan States have long been centered. The conflict involves the Balkans, Turkey, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, the north coast of Africa, and the control of the water routes through Gibraltar to India, as well as the railroad routes from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf. The political and industrial life of all these peoples is involved in this struggle. For the greater part of a century they have been sacrificed to the controversies of the greater powers. If the titanic conflicts over this part of the globe can be settled, the Belgian, French, and Russian questions are probably open. to solution.

Civilization after civilization rose and fell about the Mediterranean. For centuries it was the center of the world. It might again become one of the world's centers if freed from the struggle for its control.

Moreover, the issues at stake are so complicated, the rights of so many nations and millions of innocent people

are so involved, that the issues cannot be left to the arbitrament of force. They must be adjusted by negotiation. Not the negotiations of victors and vanquished, but the negotiations of an unselfish tribunal or nation thinking in terms of ultimate justice, of permanent security, and of far-flung freedom.

The war will only come to a permanent end when the Mediterranean basin ceases to be the object of exclusive possession. And the United States is the only power involved in the war that can visualize the issues involved, or represent the rights of the weaker states and the neutral world.

A generation ago Great Britain was supreme in the Mediterranean. She was the protector of the "sick man of Europe," and she remains supreme in the Mediterranean to-day. She controls both ends of the sea, at Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, and far more important— the only routes of trade and commerce from Europe to the Orient. Germany has challenged this control. Her Drang nach Osten is a drive at the heart of the British Empire. This is the impasse between the two nations.

The imperialistic ambitions of Germany are susceptible of two interpretations. They may be military, or they may be only economic and industrial. In all probability they are both. In any event they threaten the status quo and the balance of power of Europe; for economic imperialism usually ripens into political conquest.

Thirty years ago, in 1888, German statecraft, in co-operation with German finance and German industry, entered upon a program of penetration into Turkey, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and western Asia. But little attention was paid to German activities until 1898, when the Kaiser made his dramatic visit to Constantinople and declared himself to be the eternal friend of the

Sublime Porte. But from that day to this the mind of the ruling classes in Germany and the diplomacy of Europe have been more concentrated on this " great adventure" or "drive to the East" than on any other imperialistic subject. The activities of Germany in South Africa, in the Pacific and Kiao-chau have been of relatively little importance in comparison with the colossal project for the creation of a Teutonic Empire which came to be known as Mittel Europa. The "Morocco incident" was part of it, as was the "Cretan episode."

The first steps in this pan-German project were taken in 1888, when concessions were secured for the building of railways in Asia Minor. Subsequent concessions of the most far-reaching kind were obtained in 1898 on the occasion of the visit of the Kaiser to Constantinople. These later concessions covered the Bagdad-railway project, "the bridge from Hamburg to the Orient," which was to be the entering wedge and the agency for the ultimate control of the Balkans, Turkey and Asia Minor. For financial penetration is the prelude to political penetration. It is the first step in conquest.

The railway was promoted by the Deutsche Bank, which derived immense profits, estimated at seventy million dollars, from its financing and building. It was to be built by the Krupps and Mannesmanns, and would provide an outlet for the great industries of western Germany. When completed the railway was to be in effect a continuous European-Asiatic system beginning at Hamburg and extending through Berlin, Vienna, Constantinople, Asia Minor, Anatolia, the Tigris River Valley, and on down to the Persian Gulf. It was to be one of the greatest railway systems in the world.

The railway concessions were not unlike the grants made by the Federal Government to the Pacific railways just after the Civil War. By their terms Germany was to finance, build, and operate the railways, but Turkey was to guarantee the interest on the securities. And if the railways was not profitable, or Turkey failed to meet her financial obligations, then, under the implied conditions of such concessions and obliga

VOL. CXXXVI.-No. 815.-92

tions, Germany would step in and assume substantial control of the Government of Turkey. And as the railway was constructed primarily for military considerations and as the profits taken by the concessionaires were very exorbitant, it was quite likely that such a political receivership would follow.

The road began on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus. The main line was seventeen hundred miles in length. There were branch lines to important Mediterranean ports. It connected with other lines running south through Palestine which ended on the outskirts of the desert perilously close to the Suez Canal and Egypt. Branch lines ran eastward to Persia, which is under British and Russian control. And finally, and most menacing of all, the main artery ran on from Bagdad to the Persian Gulf, where a German naval base connected with a German railway beginning at Hamburg, and Berlin would menace India, Australia, East Africa, British interests in China and the Pacific Ocean. The railway was to have been open for traffic in 1917.

The Bagdad Railway, "the bridge to the Orient," was:

(1) A drive at the very heart of Great Britain; it menaced Egypt, the keystone of her empire. It threatened the Suez Canal and British control of the Mediterranean. It was the gravest danger the British Empire had had to face since Napoleon. It was like the Spanish Armada in its significance. It threatened threatened two centuries of empire building.

(2) It meant the ultimate control of Turkey with her twenty million people, western Asia and the Balkan States as well.

(3) Immense opportunities for overseas financing, for trade, commerce and industry were involved in the control of this vast territory. It was the richest unexploited portion of the earth. Its potentiality to Germany was colossal. It meant an economic empire like that of Great Britain. And even without preferential tariffs or the closed door, Germany would be able to control the industrial life of the country.

Other concessions only less valuable than the railway were included in the

grant. There were land grants on either side of the railway amounting to twelve thousand six hundred square miles. Upward of one hundred thousand acres were transferred to the concessionaires for the raising of cotton. Wheat products to free Germany from the outside world, and raw cotton which would relieve her from dependence on the United States and England, could be raised on the lands in Asia Minor. There were other concessions for mines, for oil, for the building of docks, harbors, warehouses, and exclusive privileges of other kinds. Asia Minor is rich in minerals, and only irrigation is needed to bring back a civilization similar to that which prevailed in ancient times, when twelve million people subsisted from the products of the Euphrates-Tigris delta. Already the control of banking and finance was in the hands of the Deutsche Bank, which was slowly devitalizing Turkish institutions, just as similar activities had devitalized Rumania.

This is the economic bond between Germany and Turkey. This explains the commanding importance of Turkey and Asia Minor to the financial and commercial classes. They offer a market for the surplus wealth of Germany. It is potentially one of the greatest markets in the world, as it is the only one left unappropriated by the other powers.

Almost every class in Germany was vitally interested in this project, and its terms and possibilities were widely were widely known and discussed.

The intellectuals and the pan-German historical group visualized a Germanic Empire beginning at the Baltic and the North Sea and extending through Austro-Hungary, the Balkans, Turkey, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia down to the Persian Gulf. It was a vision of empire similar to that of Rome in the days of Hadrian. It was an empire of one hundred and sixty million people under the hegemony of Germany. And the intellectuals and romanticists dramatized this vision just as they dramatized the Kaiser as the lineal successor of the Cæsars; just as they identified modern Germany with the old Holy Roman Empire.

The Junkers, the feudal aristocracy,

which is probably the most reactionary caste in Europe, saw in the territorial expansion of Germany the logical development of the plans laid by Frederick the Great and continued by Bismarck. To the ruling caste it meant an empire like that of Louis XIV. or Napoleon, an empire ruled by Prussia, and Prussia in turn ruled by themselves.

During the last twenty-five years the industrial classes have become very powerful in Germany. Our text-book portrayals contain very little reference to this group which has come into power since the constitution of 1871 was written. It has arisen in Germany just as it did in Great Britain and the United States. And to-day, with the agrarians, or Junkers, it forms the ruling class in Germany. It is quite possible that these big industrials-the Krupps, the Mannesmanns, the great banking and financial institutions exercise more real power than do the Junkers, despite the constitutional privileges which the latter enjoy.

The great industrials are identified with this vision of empire as an opportunity for German trade, industry, and commerce. And these industrials in turn are closely identified with the great exploiting banks, the Deutsche Bank, the Dresdener Bank, the Darmstädter Bank, and several others. Probably no class in Germany is more insistent upon the validation of German claims in Turkey and Asia Minor, in the dream of a Mittel Europa, linked together by a Zollverein, than are the powerful industrial classes of the Rhenish Westphalian districts of western Germany.

Finally the German people are interested in this project because of the outlet it offers for the surplusage of educated men, for immigration into lands where the German would not lose his connection with his mother country, while the working classes saw in it means of employment not only at home, but in the development of these new terri

tories.

The Drang nach Osten commanded the adherence and support of a great part of the German Empire. It is linked up with the national claims of the German people to the right of expansion. It looked to the only unappropriated part