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On time for war time

YOUR country depends upon you. You depend upon your clock. Promptness is good proof of loyalty these days.

This war is a race against time. Ships, munitions, food must be rushed along. Every minute counts. Everyone knows it.

To-day the good alarm clock takes an important place in the home. It starts the day on time.

It tells honest time all day. It is a practical, economical, time-saving tool-the kind you need in war time.

Westclox alarms are well-known, wellliked. Their timekeeping wins them friends everywhere.

The Western Clock Company is doing its utmost to supply its share of the alarm clocks this country wants and needs today. The demand is greater than ever before. The supply is not big enough to meet it.

Take good care of your alarm clock. Think how important it is to you in times like these. Try to get as much good service out of your clock as the maker built into it.

Western Clock Co. -makers of Westclox

Big Ben Baby Ben Pocket Ben America Lookout Ironclad Bingo Sleep Meter

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CURRENT POETRY.

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MISCELLANEOUS.

39-40 43-80; 85-86

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No Wool Famine.

Rubber Outrubbered

Will Our Roads Stand Truck Traffic?

Shall We Keep on Saving Daylight ?.
New Swiss Route to Salt Water.
Railroading on a Country Road.

TERMS: $4 a year, in advance; six months, $2.25; three months, $1.50;

single copy, 10 cents; postage to Canada, 85 cents a year; other foreign postage, $2.00 a year. BACK NUMBERS, not over three months old, 25 cents each; over three months old, $1.00 each. QUARTERLY INDEXES will be sent free to subscribers who apply for them. RECEIPT of payment is shown in about two weeks by date on address-label; subscription including the month named. CAUTION: If date is not properly extended after each payment, notify publishers promptly. Instructions for RENEWAL, DISCONTINUANCE, or CHANGE OF ADDRESS

should be sent two weeks before the date they are to go into effect. Both old and new addresses must always be given. Those who desire to renew such subscriptions must do so before expiration.

Published weekly by the [Funk & Wagnalls Company, 354-360 Fourth Avenue, New York, and Salisbury Square, London, E. C.

Entered as second-class matter, March 5, 1899, at the Post-office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879.

Entered as second-class matter at the Post-office Department, Ottawa, Canada.

ST NICHOLAS

for Boys and Girls

What chance does your boy or girl have to be one of the nation's leaders in future years? It depends not only on education but on mental environment and the will to succeed.

If you knew how many successful men and women of today were readers, of St. Nicholas in their youth, you would not hesitate to subscribe to this magazine for your own children. You would subscribe if it cost ten times as much.

St. Nicholas is a real influence in the lives of its readers. It cultivates. It inspires. It stimulates ambition. It is a healthful-minded friend to boys and girls in the vital, formative period of youth.

St. Nicholas is a real magazine. It has fascinating stories, lots of them, but all clean and wholesome. Its tales of adventure and discovery and science and nature are instructive and interesting.

There is a monthly review of world events, written especially for youthful minds. The department of patriotic work is timely. The stories and games and verses for little folks are delightful.

Best of all, St. Nicholas gives its readers something to do. The St. Nicholas League competitions have encouraged thousands of budding artists and writers and amateur photographers. All their

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most promising work is published in the
magazine and gold and silver badges are
given.

Do this for your children's future. Give
them St. Nicholas now.

St. Nicholas is one of the few things that have not advanced in price. The cost is but $3 per year, less than a cent a daya mighty small investment when you consider the dividends it will pay in the minddevelopment of your children. Better still, take advantage of our Special Subscription offer of 2 years for $5.

There is no finer Christmas or birthday gift than St. Nicholas. Send check or money order to St. Nicholas, Subscription Dept. K-1, 353 Fourth Ave., New York.

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BECOME AN EXPERT

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The Digest School
Directory Index

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W

E print below the names and addresses of the schools and colleges whose an nouncements appear in The Digest during October. The October 5th issue contains a descriptive announcement of each school. We suggest that you write for catalogs and special information to any of the institutions listed below, or we will gladly answer your direct inquiry. Latest data procured by one who visits the schools is always on hand. Price, locality. size of school, age of child, are all factors to be considered. Make your inquiry as definite as is possible and receive time-saving information by writing to the schools or direct to the

School Department of

The Literary Digest.

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PUBLIC OPINION (New York) combined with THE LITERARY DIGEST

Published by Funk & Wagnalls Company (Adam W. Wagnalls, Pres.; Wilfred J. Funk, Vice-Pres.; Robert J. Cuddihy, Treas.; William Neisel, Sec'y), 354-360 Fourth Ave., New York

Vol. LIX, No. 3

New York, October 19, 1918

Whole Number 1487

S

TOPICS OF THE DAY

THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY AND THE PEOPLE'S PEOPLE'S REPLY

INCE WE ARE FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY and to end secret diplomacy, it is perhaps fitting that the German peace bid, addrest to the head of the American Government should have had such a clear, direct, and categorical answer from the American people themselves, for while President Wilson was sitting in the White House carefully preparing a counteroffensive to meet the Prussian peace offensive, the spokesmen for the American people in Congress, on the street, in the sanctums of newspapers in our great cities and county-seats alike were telling what they thought of Prince Maximilian's request for an armistice and peace negotiations. They were telling it, as various editors remark, with a unanimity which has never been equaled in this or in any other warring country; "from Quoddy Head to San Ysidro, from the Florida Keys to Semiahmoo, came the answer of the American people, generally in some such phrase as the New York Tribune's: "We demand the unconditional surrender of Germany, and we prefer to receive it on German soil."

Our people were clearly ready for a curt rejection of the German overtures such as the earlier Austrian note met, with at the White House. They were naturally surprized when, expecting to be thrilled by a battle-cry, they found themselves called upon calmly to appraise a cautious and clever diplomatic maneuver. In Washington, according to one correspondent, twenty-four hours' study of President Wilson's note pretty well did away with the original disappointment of those who had looked for a flat refusal to entertain any proposition emanating from Germany. Everybody, says another writer, exprest disappointment on first reading; then, after hours of thought, two camps formed: those who considered it a splendid piece of strategy and the equivalent of a demand for surrender, and those who held it "a weak invitation to a lot of peace talk" which might even impair the morale of the Allied armies. Editorial comment has naturally formed along similar lines. A typical editorial state of mind is that of the Baltimore Sun, which thinks that no one else in the country would have taken the course the President did, which admits that the general feeling of the country "was that the right answer would be simply a hot demand for unconditional surrender," but which concludes that since the thing has been done everybody is bound to “recognize it as the logical, straightforward thing to do."

Since further press discussion of the President's note would be hardly intelligible without a reference to his actual words and the precise phraseology of the communication from Berlin, it may be well to interrupt the editorial conversation by quoting both documents. On October 6 the new Imperial German Chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden, dispatched the following note through the Swiss Government to the President of the United States:

"The German Government requests the President of the United States to take in hand the restoration of peace, acquaint

all the belligerent states of this request, and invite them to send plenipotentiaries for the purpose of opening negotiations. "It accepts the program set forth by the President of the United States in his message to Congress on January 8, and in his later pronouncements, especially his speech of September 27, as a basis for peace negotiations.

"With a view to avoiding further bloodshed, the German Government requests the immediate conclusion of an armistice on land and water and in the air."

On the 8th Secretary of State Lansing presented a note to the Swiss Chargé d'Affaires at Washington containing a communication to the Imperial German Chancellor which read:

"Before making reply to the request of the Imperial German Government, and in order that that reply shall be as candid and straightforward as the momentous interests involved require, the President of the United States deems it necessary to assure himself of the exact meaning of the note of the Imperial Chancellor. Does the Imperial Chancellor mean that the Imperial German Government accepts the terms laid down by the President in his address to the Congress of the United States on the 8th of January last and in subsequent addresses, and that its object in entering into discussions would be only to agree upon the practical details of their application?

"The President feels bound to say with regard to the suggestion of an armistice that he would not feel at liberty to propose a cessation of arms to the governments with which the Government of the United States is associated against the Central Powers so long as the armies of those Powers are upon their soil. The good faith of any discussion would manifestly depend upon the consent of the Central Powers immediately to withdraw their forces everywhere from invaded territory.

"The President also feels that he is justified in asking whether the Imperial Chancellor is speaking merely for the constituted authorities of the Empire who have so far conducted the war. He deems the answer to these questions vital from every point of view."

Since the note of disappointment was the first to be heard, it may be well to give it first place in considering the comment on this carefully worded document. Senator Lodge, Republican leader in the Upper House and one of the foremost spokesmen for his party, declared himself "keenly disappointed," as he has felt very strongly "that there should be no discussion with the German Government until they are ready and compelled to accept the terms we think it right to impose." ExPresident Roosevelt fears "that the President's latest announcement will be treated as an invitation to further note-writing," and is of the opinion that any "effort to fight and to negotiate at the same time is apt to damage the fighting end of the combination." The other Republican ex-President likewise fears Mr. Wilson may have taken a false step. Mr. Taft realizes that the President has been trying to deprive the Kaiser of the opportunity to rouse his people to a "last-ditch" struggle, but wonders if "the object is worth the effort." Mr. Taft asks further in his statement in the Philadelphia Public Ledger:

"Is it not dangerous to invite acceptance of the points made in the address of January 8 in the changes which have taken

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place in the situation since that address? Would some of the fourteen points not need amendment? Moreover, are not many of them so phrased that a formal acceptance of them would leave many issues open for dispute and easily lead to a renewal of hostilities?

"If the achievements of the world's proper purpose in this war demands, as it does, an unconditional surrender of a tricky, cruel, and untrustworthy foe, why not say so now and be as frank in our language as we ask him to be in his?"

it

Mr. Gifford Pinchot points out that "discussion of peace weakens the attack far more than the defense-weakens us far more than our enemies." The Chicago Evening Post considers the note "certainly a source of danger for the future." Now, thinks, if the rulers of Germany "can talk and send notes, they will have a chance to string their people along till winter comes and compels the dying away of Foch's merciless offensive." This note, the Boston Transcript thinks, "falls painfully short" of popular expectation, and its "tone and terms revive the ugly memories of the sterile Lusitania series." Nor are the critics all to be numbered among the President's political opponents. The Democratic New Orleans Times-Picayune fears "that the note as it stands will impress millions on both sides of the ocean as a modification, even in some sense a retreat, from the fine and straightforward position which he took in his address of September 28." The Memphis Commercial Appeal (Dem.) in Tennessee also condemns the idea of "negotiations with an outlaw and a murderer except on an 'unconditional-surrender' basis." In the Far West we find the Salt Lake City Herald (Ind.) regretting "that the President's note to Germany was not more decisive," and the Denver Rocky Mountain News (Rep.) is very much afraid that President Wilson's answer is but the beginning "of diplomatic correspondence between Washington and Berlin regarding construction of phrases that may give the enemy time to mend the break along the fronts."

President Wilson's diplomacy seems to the New York Globe "nimble and adroit, worthy of Talleyrand in his best days," because his note "succinctly puts queries whose answer will either compel a statement of German terms or force an abandonment of the assertion that Germany is threatened with extinc

tion." But The Globe is nevertheless convinced that great danger lurks in playing the game this way. It says:

"We are on the eve of complete victory. If the President's note is interpreted by our allies as meaning that the President, having said no negotiation with the present Government of Germany is possible, is now negotiating with it, there will be great dissatisfaction among those whose help is necessary to us if Germany is no longer to be a menace to us and to the world. Our own efforts will inevitably relax if the idea gets headway that a settlement is in an advanced stage. So far as Germany is concerned it will seem to many that she will be stimulated to say to herself: 'Behold, we need but to hold out a little longer to escape humiliation.'

"If Prince Maximilian says 'Yes' to the President's queries, and there is some sort of rift between this country and our allies, it is possible Germany, and cracking Turkey and AustriaHungary, with new hope in their hearts, will be stimulated to new efforts, thus leading to a prolongation of the war. The proviso that evacuation must precede an armistice is valueless. Germany and Austria-Hungary are already evacuating. To allow them to withdraw their armies and stores from danger and to establish a new line of defense would, in the opinion of most experts, be a military gift to Germany."

While many would have preferred a message like the answer to the Austrian peace note, the San Francisco Chronicle (Rep.) holds that the note of the 8th was "even more crushing in its rebuke, for under cover of diplomatic language it contains a rapier thrust at the insolence of German Imperialism." Never before, it adds, was the word "merely" intended to mean so much-"merely the German Government, merely the Kaiser, merely those things for which no honest, sensible people have a moment's respect or trust." Another Western daily, the Portland Oregonian (Rep.), calls the note an "adroit" counter-offensive:

"Germany seeks to set the Allied peoples talking and to develop differences among them which will strengthen the pacifists. The President seeks to set the German people talking with the same result."

The President's note seems to the Los Angeles Times (Rep.) to be an admirable strategic move. The Pittsburg Dispatch (Ind. Rep.) believes that the German leaders are now put "in a position where they must choose between virtual surrender

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