amazingly simple problem. Each race is closely related to and in sympathy with a larger number of its kindred outside the border of Hungary. The Slovaks and the Czechs, the Rumans and the Rumans of Rumania, and the Serbo-Croats and Serbians, are closely related, and an international boundary which cuts each of these three races virtually into two parts, leaving each "half slave and half free" has no place in the peace which should follow this war. Half measures in either of these three cases will lead inevitably to another war. We must not let ourselves be blinded for one moment to the absolute necessity of giving the Slovak counties to Bohemia, Transylvania and the Bukovina to Rumania, and Croatia-Slavonia to the new South Slav state. F. B. LATADY.

BIRMINGHAM, ALA.

NATURE AND JOHN BURROUGHS

SIR,-May I add from the lengthy book of my experience some incidents in support of Mr. John Burroughs' defence of Nature from Tennyson's reproach that she is "Red in tooth and claw?" This could only apply in any case to a small fraction of her empire-the carnivora --and the cruelty is very largely discounted, firstly by the fact that most animals are lacking in those sensitive nerves which give us pain; and secondly that the attack of the maurauder seems to carry with it a sort of anaesthetic which deadens in a very curious way the sensibility of the attacked.

The absence of sensation in fish is very pronounced. Here are two crucial cases. I was fishing on Goose Creek, an affluent of the Rio Grande. I watched a trout feeding in mid-stream. I threw my fly above him, he seized the lure but the faithless gut snapped at its joining with the line. However the fish returned to his station and I could see the glint of my long cast with its three flies trailing far below him in the stream. He remained feeding while I rigged up another cast and he again snapped at my fly. This time the gut held and I landed the fish, recovering the first leader. Now it is impossible to suppose that the fish in any way appreciated the hook in his lip, or was incommoded by the leader to which the fly was attached, for he went on feeding as if entirely unemcumbered.

Here is another illustration that fish can have no nerves of sensation about their mouths. An Irish gentleman, expecting a Bishop to dine with him, took his rod to supply his Lordship with a fresh fish. There was a small lake on his estate, and he saw a pike stationed at the mouth of the inlet which supplied water to the lake. Putting a frog on his hook he cast it into the stream above the pike, who voraciously seized the bait, and after a due amount of fight he was landed. It was yet early in the morning so the fisherman extricated the hook out of the fish's mouth and threw him back into the lake. To his surprise the pike went back to his previous station waiting for anything that the rivulet might bring him. Again he baited his hook with a frog which the pike again seized; he was again landed after a tussle and again thrown back into the lake, and the fish swam back to his original position as if nothing had happened. This was done three times. Now it is impossible to believe that the pike in any way felt any discomfort or soreness from having a large hook three times torn out of his mouth.

That the victim of a stronger animal, intent upon its destruction, is so shocked as to preclude any sensation of pain, has numerous illustrations; space restricts me to two typical instances.

My friend, Lieut. Gen. Brownlow, was traversing, with a brother officer, an Indian jungle, when suddenly a tiger sprang upon his friend who was close before him. He fired at the springing beast and shattered his lower jaw. The tiger dropped, but in a moment, seeing the General close to him he reared and put his paws on his two shoulders. Although his lower jaw was all but useless he managed to mangle the General's knee and left hand. The General averred that he felt no pain other than if some one had struck him a blow, but what is still more remarkable, for the General was a deeply religious man, is that at this crisis of his life, when a blow from a tiger's paw would have finished his career, the only thought which possessed his mind as the tiger was breathing his last breath in his face was, "What an ugly brute you are."

My second illustration is even more remarkable. Major Shepherd was crossing the country with his Regiment; when camping near a village which was pestered by a man-eating tiger he was petitioned by the villagers to rid them of their enemy. A man-eater is an old tiger who finds it difficult to forage for his living in the open and prowls about the outskirts of a village, picking up now a human being, now a villager's cow. In this case the tiger had killed a cow and eaten half at one repast, the habit of the man-eater being to finish the cow at the second mea! during the following night. The villagers erected a scaffold in sight of the quarry and the Major took his place on it. During the night the tiger appeared. An angry growl and a spring behind some rocks told that he had been hit. The Major remained on the scaffold until it began to dawn when he very foolishly descended and went to seek the tiger, whom he found behind the rocks still very much alive. The beast sprang upon him, knocked him down, took him up as a cat would a mouse and walked away. Not having a good balance, he laid his victim down and took a better hold, hitting his head against the stones on the ground, but it was the last effort of the tiger's life, and he dropped dead. Of course the bones in the neighborhood of the major's shoulder and some ribs were broken. When on furlough he came to London to have the broken bones reset and loosened. He then told me that he felt no pain whatever when the tiger was carrying him, and the only thought which occupied his mind was, "I wonder at which end he will begin to eat me."

But the chief gravamen against Nature is not its cruelty but its extraordinary wastefulness. The natural effort of all generation is to reproduce the original, but this effort in the vast majority of cases is fruitless. How very seldom is an oak tree found to sprout from any one of the thousand acorns that fall upon the ground; how few of the millions of the seeds of the cotton tree, floating away on their downy wings, ever take root downward and grow up upwards? Indeed a moment's consideration will convince us that if every seed produced a plant there would not be room for human beings to exist in a world of such exuberant vegetation.

Or, look at the fecundity of fishes. The cod is said to produce sixty million eggs in a season. Now if each of these eggs produced a codling, and so on and so on, the very sea itself would be almost solid with piscatorial life.

As far as I know only one philosopher has given us any solution of this extraordinary feature of the impotency of Nature to reach its legitimate object. That philosopher is the man whose writings are more read than the writings of all other men put together, and it is in his Epistle to the Romans, which in the opinion of many is the greatest piece of ratiocination the world possesses. In the eighth chapter St. Paul declares that this impotency of Nature was not due to any inherent incapacity but that it was deliberately imposed by the Creator until such time as man recovered what his sin had divested him of, namely, the capability of regulating Nature, "dominion over the earth.'

THE DEANERY, DENVER, COLORADO.

SUGGESTIONS

H. MARTYN HART.

SIR, I have been reading the WAR WEEKLY and also THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, buying the same at the news-stands. I have concluded I want to be sure of getting every number, and therefore inclose check for five dollars for combined subscription.

There has been considerable discussion as to the future of Constantinople after the war. By general consent, the Turk is to be pitched out of Europe, and the question then is, who should have charge of the administration of the city? Russia cannot handle her own territory; Bulgaria should not have it, and it cannot be given to Serbia or Greece without serious difficulties. Joint control has never worked well. Not many Americans would be satisfied to hand it over either to France or England.

Why not turn the civil administration over to Belgium? It would be a stinging rebuke to the Hun; a glorious tribute to the bravery of Belgium, and in the care of a small nation Constantinople would not be a menace to the rest of the world. I have never heard this discussed or mentioned in print. Coming from an obscure country lawyer, it would not be discussed for what I think is in it. Let Mr. Harvey think the proposition over and, if he agrees with me, present it as his own suggestion in some future number.

I don't want to be a nuisance with suggestions, but Colonel Harvey discussed, some time since, possible nominees for the Presidency, and here is another suggestion: Let the Republican party nominate exSecretary Garrison on a platform of loyalty, and I think the rest of the campaign would take care of itself. I need hardly add that the Republican party once took a Democrat and won in 1868.

This is so revolutionary that it is best not to spring it with the other suggestion. As a life-long Republican, I would like to see just this nomination made.

PIPESTONE, MINN.

C. T. HOWARD.

WE CONCUR

SIR, On the principle that "every little helps " I wish to commend most heartily William Roscoe Thayer's article in the October REVIEW. It is the best prophylactic against maudlin sympathy for the "Hun"

that I have read. Albeit, out of respect for the Huns of history, I de not like to apply that epithet to the Prussianized Germans of today. Mr. Thayer always writes well-very well, in fact; but the time he las written admirably. I wish his article could be published in pampalet form and placed in the hands of every family where Engist is read.

I take the liberty also to say that your correspondent in Glenbrook Conn., is probably in error regarding Sir Henry Wotton's definen of an ambassador. As the Carnegie library here is temporary closed. I cannot investigate the case fully; but William Lewis Hertsle, an Englishman born in Germany, says in his Treppenwitz der Weitgeschichte, the sixth edition of which lies before me, that the definition was written by Wotton in the album of his friend Fleckamore thus: "Legatus est vir bonus peragre missus ad mentiendum rei publicae causa." Taking into account the time when Sir Henry lived, and his reputation as a scholar, his use of the Latin would be antecedently probable.

ATHENS, OHIO.

IN TIME OF CRISIS

CHARLES W. SUPER

SIR,-I have read your WAR WEEKLY and am a reader of your great monthly. I am pleased to state that I certainly appreciate your grand work in leading the thoughts of the Nation aright in the war crisis.

I have but one criticism, and that is your disposition, as I see it, to hedge at times on the idea that you might be taken to be partisan. You are a partisan in the sense that you are positive. You know what you know and say it. And this you do in an original and pleasing style.

War is a positive thing, and it must have determined and inflexible leadership both upon its military side as well as upon its diplomatic side -a leadership that is capable of holding the Nation firmly to the verities involved, that there be no wavering on the ultimate purposes, failing in which, all the sacrifice of blood and treasure may be in vain. Particularly is this needed in the gigantic struggle in which we are now involved. The German propaganda is watching the vulnerable spots in the allied diplomatic front, with an eye single to personal predilections and waverings in the personalities of the Allied leaders, as closely as it watches for the weak spots on the battle front.

DURANT, OKLA.

COMMIT IT TO MEMORY

C. H. ELTING.

SIR, The October number of THE NORTH American Review is the best ever issued.

Thanking you for the great number of the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, I am, sir, W. J. BOONE.

THE COLLEGE OF IDAHO, CALDWELL, IDAHO.

INDEX

TO THE

TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTH VOLUME

OF THE

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW