Life — May 16, 1918 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

‘LIFE~ ana NoTERNATION! = CiRcVS ROREI NC UBJUGATION OF RUSSIA flection that the speeding up of f!ag- ging military industries is being stand- ardized, and the gunmakers can be expedited by the same methods that have imparted velocity to shipbuilding, and are expected to impart it to air- planes. Ships really seem to be coming along hopefully. The concrete ship Faith has shown a good record on her trial trip, and there are to be more, Wooden ships and steel begin to be completed in numbers, and the biggest mine-field that ever was has been laid about the U-boat nests in the North Sea. And troops continue to go over in quantity, and all the influential states- men who talk about more troops from here talk very big. Colonel Roosevelt urges an army of five millions. Mr. Baker deprecates putting any limits to our army, but is for having all the troops we can equip and transport, and wants thirteen billion dollars to spend on them. So also Mr, Daniels. Let us have no talk, he says, of three or five million men. Under the selective draft we have dedicated twelve million men to fight this war, and are calling and training them as fast as possibl di the only measure of our contribution is ships. Gradually our imaginations, at least, are being educated up to the size of the undertaking we are in for, It is very large. It seems considerable when one reads merely about drive and re- coil on the French front, but when the 799 mind wanders to the raine and the rest of Russia, and to Asia, top, bottom and thiddle, the mental faculties are prone to stagger. But ance the war must be won or lost, and while proceed- ings are so active there. is a lull at this moment of writing—ail the other matters are left to welter along with the minimum of atten- tion. though there HOUGH the anti-British and anti- war activity of Roman Catholic priests and bishops in Ireland and Quebec has made the observer ask him- self which side Rome is on, he does not get a clear answer out of the visible facts. No doubt the Vatican includes pro-Germans, neutrals and possibly pro- Allies, but the chance that it is’ exert ing influence in Ireland or Quebec in favor of Germany is small. The rows in Ireland and Quebec are not religious ut racial, The mass of Roman Catho- c Irish and of Roman Catholic French-Canadians find local leaders in their clergy, and, of course, it is to the local interest of the Catholic clergy, and indeed of the Church, to maintain that leadership. If they maintain it by leading where their people want to go, that is about what politicians do in the land of the free. Wherever the Catho- lic Irish insist upon going, no doubt their bishops and priests will be found leading them. It is a good deal the same with the Jugo-Slavs, except that the movement is in the other direction. The Jugo- Slavs are rebelling against Austria, and the Austrian government complains to the Holy Father that the Archbishop of Laibach is leading the rebels. In these States we are a good deal out of conceit with systematic political leadership by the clergy. We have had it, and swapped it for leadership by hosses and other laymen, and point with somewhat chastened pride to our en- viable political case. We are, of course, an exemplary political spectacle, All the same, countries whose civilization is geared to ecclesiastical direction may not be detached from it suddenly with- out di , whose Church was bad enough, .but since it suddenly lost hold on the mujiks the results have not been edifying. ter; as witness Russ comicbooks.com