gentlemen, meet when they step beyond the subject of their own specialty. Decidedly this is the "sweetness and light" of which it is the fashion and indeed the ideal to go in search.

As regards the prominence of the theme in general literature, in the work of those to whom writing is a vocation, it is platitudinous to speak. The fact with regard to fiction alone is in tall letters,-where not? It may be read by him who whirls along in an express train or motor car; significant titles seeming to flash past his eyes no faster indeed than the books themselves appear to be flashed from lightning presses. In the case of poetry-if this delicate though debatable ground may be trodden on at all as a typical field of the age's ideas and ideals-even here the evidences are not without significance. In America at least, "The Man with the Hoe" probably made more impression than any poem has made for a long time, nor have its title and lines yet lost cogency as popular formulas and quotations. In England "The White Man's Burden" has enjoyed a similar prestige, equalled perhaps only by "Lest We Forget," and, if it must be said, "The Vampire." Meantime if, as some pessimists hold, the poets of today are not men of much power, the poets of the past have not forfeited their appeal. Off the lips of preachers and teachers quotations from what the elder bards had to say about brotherly love fall fast as the Vallombrosa leaves. In such circles as have drifted away from older forms of worship, Browning, Tennyson, and even Goethe,-master individualist, for all the philosophy of the last lines of Faust-serve many a lecturer as springboards whence to leap far out into some wide stream of exhortation to altruistic ideals. What the multitudes flock to hear, smaller and more discriminating circles seem also to turn to more and more-if one judges by the steadier growth of devotion to Shelley among idealists of the more scholarly sort. The gist of the whole matter makes it easy for one to believe that altruism was the particular kind of morality Arthur Christopher Benson meant when he said recently: "The truth is that in literature the democracy desires not ideas but morality."

Those ambitious and faithful, if not always erudite, organizations, which usually veer with the spirit of the times-study-clubs, reading-circles, and the like-yield quite a little emphasis to the argument. Women's clubs give special testimony. These, as

likewise independent-minded individuals who could afford to be lilies of the field, but who do not care to devote themselves exclusively to bridge or dogs, no longer seem to find their erstwhile satisfaction in plumbing the mysteries of Browning, Wagner, Botticelli, and the Renaissance. Without having entirely lost their prestige, especially in small towns, these excellent matters allure not as once they did, either as a means of self-culture or the baser means of "killing time." Coteries devoted to their study seem to have been transformed into social science clubs, civic improvement leagues of some kind. Altruistic interests have most obviously supplanted those æsthetic or literary matters over which innumerable fair brows were once knitted.

It may be contended, not irrationally, that however widely altruism may prevail as an ideal of culture among strongminded representative men, clubs of finely organized women, and in similar auspicious circumstances, only the fatuous would pretend that in the general tide of life there is not an intolerable deal of "meanness," selfishness, individualism ugly or inspired (as the case may be,) so far as deeds go; just as there still remains in the narrower circles of the more fortunate an extreme sensitiveness-not entirely inexplicable-to the poverty, ignorance, ignominious birth, and other unpleasant aspects of the less fortunate. Yet for all this general and special condition, it may not be too far-fetched to find for the case in hand some significant arguments in the general speech. Words once the mottoes of a comparatively few who verily believed themselves to be but sounding brass and tinkling cymbals if they had not charity, seem to have become the jargon of the multitude. The terms of altruism have become, as a matter of fact, almost a cant. They are current coins of speech almost constantly jingling. And, if those who keep them in circulation do not continually live on the high plane their diction suggests, there is something even in the fact that they repeat with their lips what they do not honor in their hearts and practice with their hands. As mention of spirits malign was anciently supposed to conjure them from their nether sphere, it is not impossible that so much talk as there certainly is about this matter of altruism may soon conjure it more and more among us.

Meantime, moreover, the best of it is when all this literature and talk and feeling on the subject are sifted free from sensational

chaff, quite a little wheat remains to show how really sincere an interest is actually engaged. It is not all oratorical glow, rhetorical flare, pharisaical posing, and mere wanton contumelious denunciation of capitalists, corporations, kings or whatever similar pernicious creatures or organizations are suspected of thwarting the coming of that happy time "when all men's good shall be each man's rule." On the contrary there is in all this trend, these spoken and written words, sincerity quite enough to give hope— at least to the meliorist. So, though we know that whatever system we devise, a sorry scheme still remains to challenge reform. ative efforts; that our democracies are faulty; that commercialism, selfishness in high and low places, go about seeking what they may devour; and that our very philanthropies are corrupted by paternalism and graft; in spite of it all there is much comfort to be taken from the phenomenon of altruism's being no longer merely the hope of devotees, the vision of idealists, but an ideal of culture in a sense more general.

What further tends to increase the hope this phenomenon inspires is the fact that work is a concomitant of this ideal culture-as has not been always true of the culture of other epochs. Indeed to escape work has seemed the earthly hope men set their hearts upon in other centuries. But now it often appears we have returned to that pristine time when Adam delved and Lady Eve span. So much of an ideal has work itself become, doubtless if the old query were put as to the whereabouts of the true gentleman or gentlewoman, the answer would probably be found engaged in some noble work of hand or brain with social service as its inspiration.

As a final aspect of the subject it may be noted that more than any other ideal of any other age this particular one of altruism is accessible to the "multitude." It is no steep Parnassus up which only the endowed or otherwise favored may climb with success. No privilege of class or wealth, beauty, wit, or grace puts a barbed wire fence around this home-field of all humanity. Which brings one round to the platitude that, after all, altruism as an ideal of culture is not the special possession of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but has been the main thread always that was eventually to give color to the whole fabric of human progress. If our philosophers recognize it, have they

made a formula for it better than Plato's "love is the universal bond of things?" Or than Dante's vision of that which "moves the sun and all the stars?"

Yet after all may not something be said for this final and seemingly more universal recognition? . . . Once in the Dresden Gallery a party noticed a middle-aged woman sitting in deep reflection before the Sistine Madonna. Evidently she was one of those who believe that the significance of the picture may be apprehended only after a long time. For, coming back to take a last look after a long detour through the gallery, the party found her still in meditation-but now bowing her head as if in final satisfaction and saying: "Ich verstehe, ich verstehe!" Perhaps the twentieth century may take some credit to itself if, after long brooding years, it may seem to understand at last the "culture" most worth while, finding it in the old lessons of loving one's neighbor as one's self-after all the true "humanities."

Proposals for New Commercial Treaty Between France and the United States, 1778-1793

BY GEORGE F. ZOOK

Cornell University

On February 6, 1778, Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, as commissioners of the thirteen colonies, concluded a treaty of alliance with the French government, and at the same time another agreement known as the treaty of amity and commerce was signed by the representatives of the two nations.

The question naturally arises as to the motives which led France to take up the cause of the rebellious colonies, the success of which was by no means a certainty. This question is easily answered. France had long been waiting for an opportunity to procure the trade of the thirteen colonies. Ever since the treaty of Paris in 1763, leading Frenchmen had been planning revenge for the ignominious peace, and when Great Britain's domestic trouble with her colonies began to appear, Du Chatelet, French minister to England, proposed that France should relax her commercial restrictions, even at a temporary inconvenience, in order that trade with America might be encouraged. He held that this would lead to commercial habits which would be hard to break even in case of a reconciliation of the colonies with the mother country.* These sentiments continued to be cherished, and doubtless Vergennes saw in the American revolution an opportunity, not only to inflict an irreparable loss upon the power and commerce of Great Britain, but for France to become the recipient of America's trade.†

On the part of the colonies, the motives which led to the treaties are of course even more evident. When it became inevitable that the dispute between the colonies and the mother country could not be settled amicably, the Continental Congress realized that a substitute must be found for the markets of England, whence they had always been in the habit of securing practically

* De Witt's Jefferson, 451, Du Chatelet to Duc de Choiseul.

Doniol, J. H. A., Histoire de la Participation de la France a l'Etablissement des Etats-Unis d'Amerique, I., 244, sentiments expressed by M. de Rayneval, March, 1776. Also De Witt's Jefferson, 471, letter of Vergennes to Comte de Guines, August 7, 1775.