complete independence.

2. Every people knows that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy is an instrument of German domination and a fundamental obstacle to the realization of its rights to free development and self-government.

3. The Congress recognizes the necessity of fighting against the common oppressors.

The representatives of the Jugo-Slavs agree:

That the unity and independence of the Jugo-Slav Nation is considered of vital importance by Italy.

That the deliverance of the Adriatic Sea and its defense from any enemy is of capital interest to the two peoples.

That territorial controversies will be amicably settled on the principle of nationality and in such a manner as not to injure the vital interests of the two nations; interests which will be taken into account at the peace conferences.

The Polish delegates added their declaration that they consider Germany as the principal enemy of Poland, and that they believe that the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is the only way through which they can obtain their independence from Germany.

If we pass by the ancient epoch when it was the custom of the conqueror to "take the city, and slay the people therein, and beat down the city, and sow it with salt," and come to more modern times, we shall find cause to question whether any people has been actually exterminated by war.

Probably the worst devastation in modern Europe was that caused by the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) when the Germans were fighting among themselves. Season by season, says the historian, armies of ruthless freebooters harried the land with fire and sword. The peasant, who found that he toiled only to feed robbers and to draw them to outrage and torture his family, ceased to labor and became himself robber and camp follower. Half the population and two-thirds of the movable property of Germany were swept away. In many large districts the facts were worse than this average. The Duchy of Württemberg had 50,000 people left out of 500,000. Populous cities had become hamlets; and for miles upon miles, former hamlets were the lairs of wolf packs. Not until 1850 did some sections of Germany again contain as many homesteads and cattle as in 1618. So there is justification for the belief that Montenegro, Serbia, and Armenia will come back again to health and strength.

On March 21 an order was issued, applying to all of Great Britain, requiring all entertainments, including theatres, to close at 10:30 P. M., and forbidding any shop window lighting. No public meals were allowed after 9:30 P. M. at hotels, restaurants, clubs, and boarding houses, and the tube and train services were reduced; also, by one-sixth, the amount of gas or electricity allowance.

The British Man-Power bill, which provides for conscription in Ireland and was described in the important address by Premier Lloyd George, (Page 263,) passed its third reading in the House of Commons April 16 by a vote of 301 to 103. The Government announced that a bill giving home rule to Ireland would be introduced, and if it failed of passage the Government would resign. The Man-Power bill was passed in record time by the House of Lords and became a law by the King's signature April 19. Meetings of protest were held by Nationalists, who joined with Sinn Feiners, O'Brienites, Laborites, and Clericals in denouncing the measure.

An increase of 1,426,000 in the number of women employed since 1914 is shown in figures announced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The greatest increase was in industries, which took in 530,000 more women, but the largest proportionate increase was 214,000 additional women taken into Government service. Women have replaced 1,413,000 men since 1914. Industrial and Government work has taken 400,000 women formerly employed in domestic service or in dressmaking.

THE BATTLE OF PICARDY

Military Review of the Greatest Battle in History From March 21 to April 17, 1918

On March 21 the Germans began the great battle which military experts of both sides believe may decide the war. What was indicated in broad lines was that they wished to reach the Channel by way of the Somme and thereby isolate most of the British Army and the entire Belgian and Portuguese Armies in the north. A corollary to such an isolation would have been a movement south on Paris.

As to the narrower lines of the German military plan, however, they became clear. The Germans struck from points where their railways allowed them the greatest possible concentration of troops and at points where the lines of the Allies, owing to the uncompleted battles of Flanders and Cambrai and the failures at Lens, St. Quentin, and La Fère last year, were relatively weak or could be out-manoeuvred with superior force of men and material.

In the first phase of the battle, which carried the enemy down the Somme and its southern tributary, the Avre, to within six miles of Amiens, and to within forty-six miles of the Channel, they first eliminated the Cambrai salient so as to protect their northern flank and then concentrated their attack between St. Quentin and La Fère, near the point where the French and the British Armies joined. The flanks of the great salient thereby developed, however, made dangerous further progress down the Somme. On the north it was threatened by the Arras salient with its protecting ridge of Vimy; on the south by the watershed of the Oise and Aisne.

Frontal attacks to eliminate the Arras salient and the, Oise-Aisne watershed having failed, a flanking movement against the former, which should also have strategic ramifications further north, followed as a matter of military expediency. Thus on April 9 the second phase began. Again they sought the line of cleavage between two armies, where differences of language and tactics made military cohesion difficult—between the British and the Portuguese on the Lille front. A successful penetration of this front for a distance of ten miles would have placed the enemy on the left-rear of Vimy Ridge in the south, and in the north on the right-rear of Messines Ridge, which protects Ypres, the capture of which by the British a year ago had made the subsequent battle of Flanders and their occupation of Passchendaele in the direction of Roulers possible.

In other words, Vimy Ridge bears the same relation to Arras that Messines and its contiguous hills do to Ypres, but while the former ridge also flanks the great German salient stretching down to the Oise, the latter ridge flanks from the southeast the British salient at Ypres developed by the battle of Flanders.

In this second phase of the great battle the German penetration, through military design or expediency, has so far been developed in the direction of Ypres; not in the direction of Arras.