Life — May 17, 1917 — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HANDS orr! sible to estimate how much of it there is left. All we know is that as long as it lasts we are committed to keep up our end of it, and to make that end commensurate with our powers, The war news that we get from the western front is good. What we do not know with any accuracy concerns the relative exhaustion of France and Germany. As long as the French and British can do the kind of fighting we read of now, democracy and civiliza- tion are safe. Our great affair is to get effectual backing to them before they weaken. That is what gives all its power to the exuberant Roosevelt endeavor to get soldiers from here to France and send them soon. We want to keep up not only the man power and food and munition power of our Allies, but their spirit and their hopes. It is a grim business, as Mr. Wilson a but mighty interesting. We get nothing but scraps of news out of Ger- many, but they are pretty grim scraps. 907 Russia is in a state of fermentation, and seems to be useless for the mo- ment, but may not be useless next week or next month, But our business for the moment is not in Europe. It is here—to get mov- ing; to buy the liberty bonds; to get our food Hooverized; to get our rev- enue system worked out; to build ships; to raise food; to make an army ; to send some troops to France, and send them soon. We don't seem to be doing anything, but we are. We are progressing in all these matters. The plans have to be drawn and the contracts let before the building begins to go up. Our plans are being drawn; our contracts let. It takes too long; it is distracting to have to begin at this late day; but we are beginning, and there will be something adequate to show for our endeavors sooner than we think. % ry R. CHOATE fairly died at the front. Not in the trenches could any man serve the country and the cause he loved to greater purpose, or with a greater concentration of his strength, than Mr. Choate did in his last week, One marvelled at his re- peated appearances and successive speeches, and wondered how fourscore and five could stand the pace. New York put him to the front as the fittest unofficial citizen to receive the envoys of our Allies, He discharged that dis- tinguished service with the grace and the skill and the warmth and the pa- triotism which combined in him as in no one else. No service could have appealed to him more than this last one that summoned him, He loved the United States; he loved Great Britain; he loved France, and the ceremonies in which he spent his last strength were the visible sign of an affiliation of those great democratic countries, closer, heartier, deeper than up to two months ago his utmost imagination could have pictured, Nune dimittis he might well have sung when that re- markable and protracted demonstra- tion was over, and he could settle back in the repose of his own home. comichooks, -cOom