Thus, “with malice toward none,” and with the highest respect for your expressed views, I am still of the opinion that there can be no greater service rendered to mankind than to make the effort, either through the force of public opinion of the two Americas, or otherwise, to bring these warring Governments together at an early moment, even if this can only be done without stopping their conflict, so that they may make the endeavor, whether—­with their costly experience of the last five months, with the probability that they now know better what need be done to make the extreme armaments on land and sea as unnecessary as they are undesirable in the future—­a basis cannot be found upon which disarmament can be effectively and permanently brought about.

This, at some time, they will have come to, in any event, and must there first more human lives be sacrificed into the hundreds and hundreds of thousands, and still greater havoc be wrought, before passions can be made to cease and reason be made to return?

If, as you seem to think, the war need go on until one country is beaten into a condition where it must accept the terms the victor chooses to impose, because it can no longer help itself to do else, the peace thus obtained will only be the harbinger of another war in the near or distant future, bloodier probably than the present sanguinary conflict, and through no compact which might be entered into will it be possible to actually prevent this.

Twenty centuries ago Christianity came into the world with its lofty message of “peace on earth and good-will to men,” and now, after two thousand years, and at the near approach of the season when Christianity celebrates the birth of its founder, it is insisted that the merciless slaughter of man by man we have been witnessing these last months must be permitted to be continued into the infinite.  Most faithfully yours,

JACOB H. SCHIFF.

President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass.

LA CATHEDRALE.

From Figaro.

By EDMOND ROSTAND.

    Ils n’ont fait que la rendre un peu plus immortelle. 
    L’Oeuvre ne perit pas, que mutile un gredin. 
    Demande a Phidias et demande a Rodin
    Si, devant ses morceaux, on ne dit plus:  “C’est Elle!”

    La Forteresse meurt quand on la demantele. 
    Mais le Temple, brise, vit plus noble; et soudain
    Les yeux, se souvenant du toit avec dedain,
    Preferent voir le ciel dans la pierre en dentelle.

    Rendons grace—­attendu qu’il nous manquait encor
    D’avoir ce qu’ont les Grecs sur la colline d’or;
    Le Symbole du Beau consacre par l’insulte!—­

    Rendons grace aux pointeurs du stupide canon,
    Puisque de leur adresse allemande il resulte
    Une Honte pour eux, pour nous un Parthenon!

* * * * *