"--assuming that the IONS, or NUCLEI of the atom--I know no better
word--"
"Neither do we," we said.
"--that the nuclei move under the energy of such forces what have
we got?"
"Ha!" we said.
"What have we got? Why, the simplest matter conceivable. The forces
inside our atom--itself, mind you, the function of a circle--mark
that--"
We did.
"--becomes merely a function of pi!"
The Great Scientist paused with a laugh of triumph.
"A function of pi!" we repeated with delight.
"Precisely. Our conception of ultimate matter is reduced to that
of an oblate spheroid described by the revolution of an ellipse on
its own minor axis!"
"Good heavens!" we said, "merely that."
"Nothing else. And in that case any further calculation becomes
a mere matter of the extraction of a root."
"How simple," we murmured.
"Is it not?" said the Professor. "In fact, I am accustomed,
in talking to my class, to give them a very clear idea, by simply
taking as our root F,--F being any finite constant--"
He looked at us sharply. We nodded.
"And raising F to the log of infinity;--I find they apprehend it
very readily."
"Do they?" we murmured. Ourselves we felt as if the Log of Infinity
carried us to ground higher than what we commonly care to tread
on.
"Of course," said the Professor, "the Log of Infinity is an Unknown."
"Of course," we said, very gravely. We felt ourselves here in the
presence of something that demanded our reverence.
"But still," continued the Professor, almost jauntily, "we can
handle the Unknown just as easily as anything else."
This puzzled us. We kept silent. We thought it wiser to move on
to more general ground. In any case, our notes were now nearly
complete.
"These discoveries, then," we said, "are absolutely revolutionary."
"They are," said the Professor.
"You have now, as we understand, got the atom--how shall we put
it?--got it where you want it."
"Not exactly," said the Professor with a sad smile.
"What do you mean?" we asked.
"Unfortunately our analysis, perfect though it is, stops short.
We have no synthesis."
The Professor spoke as in deep sorrow.
"No synthesis," we moaned. We felt it was a cruel blow. But in
any case our notes were now elaborate enough. We felt that our
readers could do without synthesis. We rose to go.
"Synthetic dynamics," said the Professor, taking us by the coat,
"is only beginning--"
"In that case--" we murmured, disengaging his hand--
"But wait, wait," he pleaded, "wait for another fifty years--"
"We will," we said, very earnestly, "but meantime as our paper goes
to press this afternoon we must go now. In fifty years we will
come back."
"Oh, I see, I see," said the Professor, "you are writing all this
for a newspaper. I see."
"Yes," we said, "we mentioned that at the beginning."
"Ah!" said the Professor, "did you? Very possibly. Yes."
"We Propose," we said, "to feature the article for next Saturday."
"Will it be long?" he asked.
"About two columns," we answered.
"And how much," said the Professor in a hesitating way, "do I have
to pay you to put it in?"
"How much which?" we asked.
"How much do I have to pay?"
"Why, Professor," we begin quickly. Then we checked ourselves.
After all was it right to undeceive him, this quiet, absorbed man
of science with his ideals, his atoms and his emanations? No, a
hundred times no. Let him pay a hundred times.
"It will cost you," we said very firmly, "ten dollars."
The Professor began groping among his apparatus. We knew that he
was looking for his purse.
"We should like also very much," we said, "to insert your picture
along with the article--"
"Would that cost much?" he asked.
"No, that is only five dollars."
The Professor had meantime found his purse.
"Would it be all right," he began, "--that is, would you mind if
I pay you the money now? I am apt to forget."
"Quite all right," we answered. We said good-by very gently and
passed out. We felt somehow as if we had touched a higher life.
"Such," we murmured, as we looked about the ancient campus, "are
the men of science: are there, perhaps, any others of them round
this morning that we might interview?"
[signed]Stephen Leacock
The Epic Standpoint in the War
After more than three years of the War, we are only now beginning
to see it, as it is, in its epic immensity. On the eastern front
it has been too far from us; on the western front it has been too
near us, and we have been too much a part of it, to get any sight
at all of that series of monotonous and monstrous battles, a series
punctuated only by names: Liege, Antwerp, Mons, Ypres, Verdun and
Arras. And if nothing had happened besides the Titanic conflict
of material armaments I believe that we should not yet be anywhere
near realizing its vastness and its significance.
If we are aware of it now it is because, in the last few months, three
events have happened which are of another order: the abdication
of Constantine, King of Greece, the Russian Revolution, and the
coming of America into the War.
These three events have adjusted and cleared our vision by giving
us the true perspective and the scale.
From the standpoint of individuals, even of those few who have lost
nothing personally, who are alive and safe, who have never been
near the trenches, never watched an air-raid, or so much as seen
the inside of a hospital, the War is a monstrous and irreparable
tragedy.
But from the epic standpoint, it would not have mattered if all the
civilians in Great Britain had been starved to death by submarines,
or burned alive in our beds, so long as the freedom of one country,
even a small country like Greece, was secured forever, let alone
the freedom of a great country like Russia--and let alone the saving
of America's soul.
For that is what it comes to.
Somewhere about the sad middle of the War, an American woman, who
is one of the finest American poets, discussed the War with me.
She deplored America's attitude in not coming in with us.
I said, politely and arrogantly, "Why should she? It isn't HER
War. She'll do us more good by keeping out of it."
The poet--who would not have called herself a patriot--answered,
"I am not thinking of YOUR good. I am thinking of the good of
America's soul."
Since August 4th, 1914, England has been energetically engaged
in saving her own soul. Heaven knows we needed salvation! But,
commendable as our action was and is, the fact remains that it
was our own soul that we were saving. We thought, and we cared,
nothing about America's soul.
In the beginning of the War, when it seemed certain that America
would not come in, we were glad to think that America's body
was untouched, that, while all Europe rolled in blood, so vast
a territory was still at peace, and that the gulf of the Atlantic
kept American men, American women and children, safe from the horror
and agony of war. This was a comparatively righteous attitude.
Then we found that it was precisely the Atlantic that gave Americans
a taste of our agony and horror. The Atlantic was no safe place for
the American men and women and children who traveled so ingenuously
over it.
And when for a long time we wondered whether America would or would
not come in, we were still glad; but it was another gladness. We
said to ourselves that we did not want America to come in. We
wanted to win the War without her, even if it took us a little
longer. For by that time we had begun to look on the War as our
and our Allies' unique possession. to fight in it was a privilege
and a glory that we were not inclined to share.
"America," we said, "is very much better employed in making munitions
for US. Let her go on making them. Let her help our wounded;
let her feed Belgium for us; but let her not come in now and bag
the glory when it is we who have borne the burden and heat of the
battle."
And this attitude of ours was not righteous. It was egoistic; it was
selfish; it was arrogant. We handed over to America the material
role and hung on tight to the spiritual glory. It was as if we
had asked ourselves, in our arrogance, whether America was able
to drink of the cup that we drank of, and to be baptized with the
baptism of blood which we were baptized withal?
We had left off thinking even of America's body, and we were not
thinking at all about her soul.
Then, only a few months ago, she came in, and we were glad. Most
of us were glad because we knew that her coming in would hasten
the coming of peace. But I think that some of us were glad because
America had saved, before everything, her immortal soul.
And by our gladness we knew more about ourselves then than we had
suspected. We know that, under all our arrogance and selfishness,
there was a certain soreness caused by America's neutrality.
We did not care much about Spain's or Scandinavia's or Holland's
neutrality, though the Dutch and Scandinavian navies might have
helped enormously to tighten the blockade; but we felt America's
neutrality as a wrong done to our own soul. We were vulnerable
where her honor was concerned. And this, though we knew that she
was justified in holding back; for her course was not a straight
and simple one like ours. No Government on earth has any right
to throw prudence to the winds, and force war on a country that is
both divided and unprepared.
Yet we were vulnerable, as if our own honor were concerned.
That is why, however much we honor the men that America sends out
now, and will yet sent out, to fight with us, we honor still more
her first volunteers who came in of their own accord, who threw
prudence to every wind that blows, and sent themselves out, to
fight and to be wounded and to die in the ranks of the Allies. It
may be that some of them loved France more than England. No matter;
they had good cause to love her, since France stands for Freedom;
and it was Freedom that they fought for, soldiers in the greatest
War of Independence that has ever been.
The coming in of America has not placed upon England a greater or
more sacred obligation than was hers before:--to see to it that
this War accomplishes the freedom, not only of Belgium and Russia
and Poland and Serbia and Roumania, but of Ireland also, and of
Hungary, and, if Germany so wills it, of Germany herself. It is
inconceivable that we should fail; but, if we did fail, we should
now have to answer to the soul and conscience of America as to our
own conscience and our own soul.
[signed]May Sinclair
Eleutherios Venizelos and the Greek Spirit
Eleutherios Venizelos, the foremost statesman of Greece, the man to
whom in fact she owes that growth in territory and influence that
has come as a result of the first and second Balkanic wars, continues
to exert paramount influence in the solution of the Eastern question,
in spite of the we believe mistaken policy of the Triple Entente
which permitted King Constantine of Greece for so long a period
of time to prevent the direct application of the power of Greece
to and in the successful termination of the war against Germany.
Venizelos has never lost faith in the mission of Greece in the
eastern Mediterranean. He insists that a balance of power in the
Balkans will prevent an all powerful Bulgaria from selling herself
and her neighbors to the Pan-German octopus which has stretched
its tentacles toward Constantinople and on to the Persian Gulf.
Manfully defending the rights of the Greeks in Macedonia and Asia
Minor as he for long years supported those of the Greeks in Crete,
he demands no aggrandizement of territory by right of conquest, but
only the legitimate control and administration of lands that have
been for ages inhabited by men of Greek blood, of Greek religion,
and (until efforts were made to enforce other speech) of Greek
language. He hates as only Greeks can hate, oppression of all
sorts whether by Turk or Bulgarian or Teuton, and desires to see
democratic principles finally established the world over. Holding
this attitude, he could hardly bring himself to believe that King
Constantine could really be abridging the constitutional right of
the Greeks to control their own external as well as their domestic
policy. When fully convinced that this was the King's intention,
Venezelos cast the die that gave Greek freedom a new birth
in Thessaloniki and the Islands. This movement tardily supported
though it was by the entente, has at last borne fruit in a United
Greece which will do her share in making the East as well as the
West safe for Democracy. The people that fought so nobly in the
revolution of 1821 will know how to give a good account of itself
under the leadership of a sane, courageous and farsighted statesman
like Venizelos.
The passage which I have chosen to translate is from the closing
words of the speech delivered before the Greek Chamber of Deputies
October 21, 1915. In the first portion of the speech Venizelos
defends the policy of the participation in the campaign against
the Dardanelles, which he had in vain advocated, and the support
of Serbia as against Bulgaria in accordance with the defensive
alliance concluded with that country.
"I must now once more, and for the last time declare to the
Government which to-day occupies these seats, that it assumes the
very heaviest of responsibilities before the Nation, in under-taking
once more to administer the Government of Greece and to direct its
fortunes in this, the most critical period of its national existence,
with those antiquated conceptions which, if they had prevailed
in 1912, would have kept Greece within her old narrowly confined
borders. These old ideas have been radically condemned not only
by the will of men, but by the very force of circumstances.
"It is most natural, Gentlemen, that with those conceptions under
which that older political world of Greece acted, a political world
which even to-day by its voting majority controls these seats of
Government, it is natural, I repeat, that such a Government should
be unable to adapt itself to the great, the colossal problems which
have risen since Greece, ceasing to be a small state, and enlarging
its territories, has taken a position in the Mediterranean which,
while exceptionally imposing, is at the same time peculiarly subject
to envy, and is on this account especially dangerous.
"How dare you, with those old conceptions assume the responsibility
for the course which you have taken, a course which departs widely
from the truth, from the traditional policy of that older Greek
Government, which realized that it is impossible to look for any
really successful Greek policy which runs counter to the power that
controls the sea.
"How is it possible that you can wish to impose on the country
such conceptions in the face of the repeatedly expressed opinion
of the representatives of the people, and with the actual results
of the recent past before you, a past which, with the sincerity that
distinguishes you, my dear fellow-citizens, you have not hesitated
to condemn, in order to show clearly that in your heart of hearts
you would regard us as better off if we were within the old boundaries
of 1912!
"But, sirs, the life of individuals and the life of Nations are
governed by one and the same law, the law of perpetual struggle.
This struggle, which is even keener between nations than between
men, is regulated among men by the internal laws of the country,
by the penal code, the police and in general the whole organization
of the state, which, insofar as it is able, defends the weak against
the strong. Although we have to confess that this organization
falls far short of perfection, it does at any rate tend gradually
toward the attainment of its ultimate ideal. But in the struggle
of nations, where there exists an international law, the pitiful
failure of which you have come to know, not only in the immediate
past, but especially during this European war, you must perceive
that it is impossible for small nations to progress and expand
without a perpetual struggle. May I carry this argument one step
further and say that this growth and expansion of Greece is not
destined to satisfy moral requirements alone or to realize the
national and patriotic desire to fulfill obligations toward our
enslaved brothers, but it is actually a necessary pre-requisite to
the continued life of the state.
"From certain points of view I might have recognized in accordance
with the conceptions of my worthy fellow-citizen that if it had
been a matter of continuing to have Turkey as our neighbor in our
northern frontier, as she formerly was, we could have continued
to live on for many years, especially if we could have brought
ourselves to endure from her from time to time without complaint
certain humiliations and indignities. But now that we have expanded
and become a rival to other Christian powers, against whom, in case
of defeat in war, we can expect no effective intervention on the
part of other nations, from that moment, Gentlemen, the establishment
of Greece as a self-sufficing state, able to defend itself against
its enemies, is for her a question of life and death.
"Unfortunately, after our successful wars, while we were developing
our new territories and organizing this Greater Greece into a model
new state, as far as lay within our power, we did not have time
to secure at once for the people all the advantages and all the
benefits that should result from extending our frontiers. Our
unfortunate people up to the present has seen only sacrifices to
which it has been subjected for the sake of extending the boundaries
of the state. It has experienced the moral satisfaction of having
freed its brothers, and the national gratification of belonging
to a state which is greater than it was before. From the material
point of view however, from the point of view of economic advantage,
it has not yet been able to clearly discern what profit it has
obtained from the enlargement of the state. It is natural then that
to-day as well, we can only hold before our people the sacrifices
that are once more required of it. These sacrifices, Gentlemen,
according to my personal convictions which are as firmly held
as--humanly speaking--convictions can be, these sacrifices, as
I see them, are destined to create a great and powerful Greece,
which will bring about not an extension of the state by conquest,
but a natural return to those limits within which Hellenism has
been active even from prehistoric times.
"These sacrifices are to create, I insist, a great, a powerful,
a wealthy Greece, able to develop within its boundaries a live
industrialism competent, from the interests which it would represent,
to enter into commercial treaties with other states on equal terms,
and able finally to protect Greek citizens anywhere on earth: for
the Greek could then proudly say, 'I am a Greek,' with the knowledge
that, happen what may, the state is ready and able to protect him,
no matter where he may be, just as all other great and powerful
states do, and that he will not be subjected to prosecution and be
forced to submit to, the lack of protection as is the Greek subject
to-day.
"When you take all these things into account, Gentlemen, you will
understand why I said a few moments ago, that I and the whole
liberal party are possessed by a feeling of deepest sadness because
by your policy, you are leading Greece, involuntarily, to be sure,
but none the less certainly, to her ruin. You will induce her to
carry on war perforce, under the most difficult conditions and on
the most disadvantageous terms.
"The opportunity to create a great and powerful Greece, such an
opportunity as comes to a race only once in thousands of years,
you are thus allowing to be lost forever."
(Translation, with Notes, by CARROLL N. BROWN)
A Tribute to Italy
Even now, few Americans understand the great service which Italy
has done to the Allied Cause. We have expected some sensational
military achievements, being ourselves unable to realize the immense
difficulty of the military tasks which confronted the Italians. The
truth is that the Terrain over which they have fought is incredibly
difficult. By the sly drawing of the frontier when in 1866 Austria
ceded Venetia to the Italians, every pass, every access, from Italy
into Austria was left in the hands of the Austrians. Some of those
passes are so intricate and narrow that an Austrian regiment could
defend them against an army. And yet, in two years' fighting
the Italians have advanced and have astonished the world by their
exploits in campaigning above the line of perpetual snow and among
crags as unpromising as church steeples.
On lower levels they have captured Gorizia, a feat unparalleled by
any thus far accomplished by the English and French on the West.
The defense of Verdun remains, of course, the supreme and sublime
achievement of defensive action, but the taking of Gorizia is thus
far the most splendid work of the Allied offensive.
I do not propose, however, to speak in detail of the Italians'
military service. Suffice it to say that they have proved themselves
excellent fighters who combine the rare qualities of dash and
endurance. I wish to speak of the vital contribution Italy has
made from the beginning of the War to the Great Cause--the cause
of Democracy and of Civilization.
When Italy at the end of July, 1914, refused to join Austria and
Germany she announced to the world that the war which the Teutons
planned was an aggressive war, and by this announcement she stamped
on the Pan-German crimes that verdict which every day since has
confirmed and which will be indelibly written on the pages of
history.
For Italy was a partner of Germany and Austria in the Triple Alliance
and she knew from inside evidence that the Teutonic Powers were
not acting on the defensive. Accordingly, her decision had the
greatest significance, and when before the actual outbreak of the
war she privately informed France that she had no intention of
attacking that country she relieved the French of great suspense.
If Italy had joined the Teutons the French would have been required
to guard their southeastern frontier by a large force, perhaps
not less than a million men, which were now set free to oppose the
German attack in the north.
The world did not understand why Italy waited until May, 1915, before
declaring war on Austria, but the reason was plain. Exhausted by
their war in Tripoli the Italians had neither munitions nor food
and their soldiers even lacked uniforms. It took nine months,
therefore, to prepare for war. Another year passed before Italy
could undertake to face Germany; for the Germans had so thoroughly
honeycombed Italy's commerce, industry and finances that it took
two years for the Italians to oust the Germans and to train men to
replace them.
By these delays, which seemed to the outside world suspicious,
Italy did another service. If she had plunged in prematurely as
the Allies and her friends besought her to do she would have been
speedily overwhelmed. Imagine what a blow that would have been
to the Allied Cause, especially coming so early in the War. Her
prudence saved Europe this disaster. Had Northern Italy become enslaved
the Teutonic forces could have threatened France on the southeast,
and with Genoa as a port they could have made the Mediterranean
much more perilous for the Allied ships and transportation. It is
not for the United States, a country of over one hundred million
population, and yet checked if not intimidated by a small body of
German plotters and their accomplices, to look scornfully on Italy's
long deferred entrance into the War. The Pro-German element in Italy
was relatively stronger than here and the elements which composed
it--the Blacks, the Germanized financiers and business men, many
nobles and the Vatican--openly opposed making war on the Kaiser.
In spite of all these difficulties, in spite of the very great
danger she ran, because if the Germans win they threaten to restore
the Papal temporal power, and the Austrians, Italy stood by the
Allies.