The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 | Page 8

fields, broad rivers that smile With the sun on their breasts. I am of the hills-- The great, bald hills where the cattle roam. The peace of the valleys still clings and thrills, And the joy of the tinkling fountains, Where the deep-creviced boulders pile. I am of it, New England, my home!
The tenure of conflicts, the feeble thriving, Are lore of the past. Now the giant peaks May sleep and sleep. Their watch is ended. The beacon towers may crumble and fall. So well have my people defended-- So well have they prospered through striving-- Today her triumph New England speaks In the mantling calm that envelops all.
They have come to New England, the woeful invaders. The hills attracted, the valleys lured; They have sowed their seeds of disturbance and fear. They wrought for destruction, but all in vain. They were told that order was master here. The hills turned censors, the streams, upbraiders. No war of men should be fought, endured! They need wage no battle for peace again!
Like my native hills, my strife is ended; Like my sleeping hills, I have earned life's calm. The sun that smiles on New England's streams Bids human conflicts forever cease. Let those who must, writhe in their dreams At thought of days with horror blended. For me, the meadow's gentle balm-- I am of New England--where all is peace!

United Russia
By Peter Struve.
[From The London Times.]
Prof. Peter Struve, editor of the monthly, Russian Thought, is recognized as one of the most acute political thinkers in Europe. He was one of the chief founders of the Constitutional Democratic Party (the Cadets) and was member for St. Petersburg in the Second Duma. He is also known as an economist of great erudition.
PETROGRAD, Sept. 16.
The future historian will note with astonishment that official Germany, when she declared war on Russia, was in no way informed of the state of public opinion in our country.
This is all the more astonishing because not a single country to the west of Russia maintains so close a communication with Russia as Germany. The Germans, better than other peoples, could and should have known Russia and her material resources, her internal state, and her moral condition. When she declared war on Russia, Germany evidently counted, above all, on the weakness of the Russian Army. There was nothing, however, to justify such an estimate of the armed forces of Russia. Certainly Russia had been beaten in the Japanese war, but in that war the decision was reached on the sea, and after the fall of Port Arthur the land war had no object. The Germans have probably convinced themselves already how superficial was such an estimate of the forces of Russia, but in reality their mistake was due to an entirely superficial view of the national culture of Russia and an extremely elementary idea of our internal development. The Germans did not believe that there is in Russia a genuine and growing national civilization, and did not understand that the liberation movement in Russia had not only not shaken the power of the Russian State, but had, on the contrary, increased it.
Not understanding this, they thought that any blow from outside would tumble over the Russian State like a rotten tree. German aggression, on the contrary, united the whole population of Russia, and by this alone strengthened a hundredfold her external power. This, of course, would have been the natural effect of any attack from without upon any sound people or any State that was not in decomposition. But in this case there was something else. Such a war as this could not fail to take on at once the character both of a world war and of a national war. That is why in this struggle with Germany and Austria-Hungary, elemental forces united in one impulse and spirit both the Russian Radicals, with their tendency to cosmopolitanism, and the extreme Nationalist Conservatives. Nay, more than that, all the races of Russia understood that a challenge had been thrown out to Russia by Germany that morally compelled her, in the interests of the whole and of the various parts, to forget for the time all quarrels and grievances.
This showed itself in the most natural and inevitable way with the Poles, of whose national culture Germanism is the sworn foe. The well-known manifesto of the Commander in Chief did not awake this feeling among the Poles of Russia, but simply met it and gave it support. Equally natural and elemental was the patriotic outburst that spread among the Jews of Russia. In their case the political and social Radicalism which we always find in the Jews turned by some sound instinct against German militarism, which had shown itself the chief cause and occasion of a world catastrophe.
The German declaration of war