PRINCE SAID HALIM
The Grand Vizier of Turkey
Amid the strains of the German national anthem, played by the Turkish military band, Lieut. Capt. von Mücke, together with the War Minister, Enver Pasha, paced along the long German and Turkish fronts. Then he led forth his forty-four men and marched, amid new ovations, all through Stamboul, across the great bridge to Galata, to the deck of the steamship General, at the head of his little band, now grown epic, amid the cheers of Byzantium, on which he and his officers had never set foot before—always in the clear blue and sunlight of this war-heavy Whitsuntide day.
But nothing stirred me more deeply on the whole journey than that cold official report of the man who was being celebrated, before his Admiral, and I saw in that lowered swordpoint the symbol of the old and incorruptible Prussian spirit.
Civilization at the Breaking Point
By H.G. Wells.
[Copyright, 1915, by The New York Times Company.]
THE submarine and aircraft have put a new proposition before the world. It is a proposition that will be stated here as plainly and simply as possible. These two inventions present mankind with a choice of two alternatives, or, to vary the phrase, they mark quite definitely that we are at the parting of two ways; either mankind must succeed within quite a brief period of years now in establishing a world State, a world Government of some sort able to prevent war, or civilization as we know it must break up into a system of warring communities, perpetually on the warpath, perpetually insecure and engaged in undying national vendettas. These consequences have been latent in all the development of scientific warfare that has been going on during the last century; they are inherent in the characteristics of the aircraft and of the submarine for any one to see.