FIREFLY.

(On a Japanese Theme)

JOHN ERSKINE.

Night in the garden. No stir of leaves.

A firefly twinkling from spray to spray.
The firefly struck my lips, and I brushed it by.

Now at dawn the voice of my love grieves:

"Last night, dreaming I was a firefly,

I flew to your lips-and you brushed me away."

POEMS.

HILTON R. GREER.

OPEN FIRES.

I like my friendships, as I like my fires,
Open, and ruddy to the seasoned core:

Sweet-fibered, hickory-hearted:

The sort to warm a life by, when with storm
Winter smites hard on wall and pane and rooftree.

BROWN GRASSES.

Brown grasses, where the shade and sun

In bronze-and-amber ripples run,

Would wayside Man might claim as much

Warm color at October's touch,

And ere his frost, like you, transmute
Earth-yearnings into ripened fruit!

THE ROMANCE OF THE RAILS.

RICHARD BURTON.

The sleek and shining rails curve down, converge
Into the sunset yellow; soon the urge

And mighty thunder of the train awake
Tremors of terror in the earth, and make
Man feel his smallness; with a cleaving cry
The monster, wind-companioned, hurtles by,
Before imagination is aware

Is but a murmur on the far-off air,
A moving blot against the evening glow.

My dreams slip after it, and long to go
Out, on, into the rimmed world, vague and wide,
To meet Tomorrow on the other side.

I picture how its living freight of souls
Hurls on to fates as various as their goals:-
Potential, large adventures, haps that breed
Romance; the dangers that are God-decreed;
The many-colored future's spicy lure,
Twice over sweet, because it is unsure.

And I would up and follow, follow far
To where the perils and the pageants are!

THE LOST ANGEL.

JULIAN HUXLEY

Oh thou, pure soul, uplift my heart-
True lover, make me love like thee!
Here is a soul for thee to save,

Though weary shall the saving be.

First thou must make the coward brave
-By many bitter doubts and fears:
And then thy heart, so parched and dry,
It must be watered-with thy tears.

There too Hypocrisy and Lust

Sit lords; and thou wouldst drive them thence? Cheat fear ('tis hard) and freely give

Into my charge thine innocence.

To give me an abiding hope

Shall cost thee hours of dark despair;

And wouldst thou teach me strength-my child, My child, it will be hard to bear!

It will be hard, it will be long,
Weary, weary will it be

To trample the devil in the dust
And find the angel hid in me.

But when that angel shall be found,
And at thy bidding shall arise
And see thy face, he will be thine

Till death; and that shall be thy prize.

OUR ECONOMIC PREPAREDNESS FOR WAR

In the current discussion of our preparedness for war it is almost universally assumed that the question turns upon the state of our military and naval equipment and personnel. Have we battleships enough to confront a hostile fleet on equal terms? Have we a large enough mobile army to cope with a possible landing force of the enemy? Have we sufficient field artillery for a serious campaign, and would our ammunition hold out to the end? These are grave questions on which we need all the information that our naval and military experts, unmuzzled, could give us. But there are other questions no less grave that we do not even raise. War is an industrial and financial, as well as a military problem, and economic preparedness is obviously just as essential to the successful conduct of a great war as is military preparedness. The German armies are valiant and splendidly equipped, but Germany would already have been crushed if her industrial organization had broken down. If Britain is to win, this will be due in part to Kitchener's great army, but in part also to "business as usual."

Let us try to imagine what our own condition would be if we awoke to find ourselves at war with some nation powerful enough to dispute with us the command of the seas. Our foreign trade would be wiped out, and the industries producing for export, as well as those operating upon imported supplies, would at once close down, throwing hundreds of thousands of men out of employment. A financial crisis would supervene, and many industries not directly dependent on foreign trade would find their powers of production limited by withdrawal of credit, and this would mean additional hundreds of thousands unemployed. Railway traffic would certainly be thrown into confusion; in some parts of the country warehouses

would be bursting with surplus commodities, while in other parts there would be actual lack of food and fuel. At this stage of the crisis the banks would no doubt organize and attempt to meet the most crying needs for credit, in so far as the conditions of their own security permitted; the government would offer relief through the issue of emergency currency and the proclamation of a moratorium. None the less we should go through a most frightful crisis. Even if our navy should succeed in preventing the landing of a hostile army, we should stagger under the declaration of war as though a mortal blow had been dealt us.

Economic preparedness for war implies the will and power of society, as organized in government, to supplement the energies of private enterprise, when necessary, by a vigorous national initiative. In a country with such a vast and varied domain as our own, this would involve the creation of an information service capable of making systematic collection and analysis of data relating to all productive resources, human and material, with a view to the prompt diversion of industry to new channels in time of need. The problem would be a difficult one, but not more difficult than that of procuring the precise strategic data required in the invasion of hostile territory, which we recognize as a necessary part of the work of every general staff. In our census office we have the rudiments of such an information service, but our statesmen have not as yet conceived the idea of developing this service in such a way as to answer emergency require

ments.

Such a survey of our productive resources would be only a preliminary step toward the mobilization of our productive powers in time of war. For actually effecting such mobilization we should have to make use of the machinery of organized banking and finance. At present the only purpose that our centralized banking system subserves is the protection of the solvency of the banks