The Outlook 1915-04-14
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The Outlook APRIL 14, 1915 LYMAN ABBOTT, Editor-in-Chief HAMILTON W. MABIE, Associate Editor R. D. TOWNSEND, Managing Editor MR. ROOT AND THE NEW YORK STATE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION In the one hundred and thirty-nine years since New York ceased to be a British colony, the task of revising its organic law as a whole has been undertaken six times. The last Constitutional Convention was held in 1894. Last week a new Convention met in the Assembly Chamber of the Capitol at Albany. The features of the opening session were the election of ex-Senator Elihu Root as President and his address. He said: The most obvious duty before us is to scruti- nize attentively the framework of the State Government in order to ascertain in what re- spect, if any, the established institutions are insufficient or ill adapted to accomplish the ends of government. Great changes have come in the industrial and social life of the State since the last Con- vention. To attain the ends which every one agrees ought to be attained, it appears neces- sary that the Government shall interfere to a much greater extent than in former times with the complicated and interdependent life of the people. - The business which Government is required to undertake has vastly increased both in magnitude and variety, and there is a wide- spread feeling that in some respects the busi- ness of the Government has outgrown the organization of government. The question has been not infrequently asked during these recent days, ‘‘ What par- ticular subjects is the Convention going to consider ?” Mr. Root answers these queries by instancing, among others, the following subjects : 1. Taxation, appropriation, and expenditure of moneys. 2. Greater protection in the way of home rule provisions to the strictly municipal interests of our great cities. 3. Conservation and utilization of the State’s natural resources, particularly the forests and water power. 4. Increase of the real power of the voter over the affairs of government by a ballot em- bracing fewer candidates to be voted for, and fewer subjects for the voters to pass upon. 5. More definite relations with each other among the separate offices and commissions, together with more systematic provision and control. RESPONSIBILITY AND POWER As might have been anticipated from Mr. Root’s recent speeches, he emphasized in this address the fundamental principle of union between responsibility and power. It may be that, following this, the Convention will increase the power of the State Executive. As Mr. Root said, responsibility without power can never be justly enforced, and power without responsibility can never be duly controlled. He added: Vague, indefinite, uncertain, overlapping, and conflicting grants of power and divided responsi- bility make good administration impossible. Every public officer and agent should have clear and definite authority to do the acts required of him and should have some.one over him with authority to hold him to responsibility, from the lowest employee to the highest elected officer whom the people themselves hold to responsi- bility at the polls. Many of those who saw Mr. Root preside over that other great body—the Republican Presidential Convention of 1912—can never cease to regret that his example at that criti- cal time cannot be cited to reinforce his coun- sel to the members of the Constitutional Con- vention to remember “the great body of rights and liberties which have grown through many centuries of political and judicial devel- opment and under which we have so long been blessed by peace, order, justice, and individual liberty and opportunity.’’ It must be remembered also that the preservation of cherished rights can be secured only as the forms of government are changed in accord with changing conditions ; and this truth Mr. Root recognized by saying: ‘‘ Where changes are needed they should be made fearlessly 847
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848 and thoroughly, but in such a manner with relation to existing custom and opinion as to be natural developments from the life of the people.” A POOR BEGINNING Governor Whitman and the Republican Legislature of New York have made a poor , beginning. » Swept into power last fall on an avalanche of votes that seemed to betoken discontent with the ‘“ hard times” that had synchronized with the conclusion of four years of Tammany misrule, they faced a golden opportunity. They have made the worst of it. Even such stanch Republican newspapers as the New York “ Tribune”’ have been moved to protest. Four examples are sufficient to illustrate how far Governor Whitman and his Legisla- ture have failed to conform to standards of good government. To begin with, the whole question of taxation has been handled ina bungling fashion, without knowledge of the facts and with palpable and admitted errors. In the second place, a bill now before the Legislature provides that jurisdiction over the construction and alteration of buildings in New York City shall be transferred from the Tenement-House, Fire, and Labor Depart- ments of the city to the various borough Building Bureaus. Such a course, with the weakened administration of the building laws that it would entail, might lead to another Triangle fire horror or to a serious setback in tenement-house supervision. This bill has been condemned by the City Club of New York, by Maud Nathan, President of the Consumers’ League of New York City, and by Florence Kelley, Secretary of the National Consumers’ League, among other qualified non-partisan experts. In the third place, the entire Republican machinery of the State, for the benefit of a few private interests (whose gratitude may mean a few thousand dollars toward cam- paign expenditures), has been set in motion to make legal the employment of women in canning factories twelve hours a day for six days in the week. And, finally, the Workman’s Compensation Law—one of the few good measures given to the State by the recent Tammany Legisla- ture—has been effectively emasculated. The law originally called for automatic payments of fixed sums as compensation for industrial accidents, but as amended by the present THE OUTLOOK 14 April Legislature and Governor it permits “ direct settlements’ between employers and em- ployees. This means the restoration of unfair haggling over injuries between power- ful interests and the victims of industrial accidents, on unequal terms. The popular demand for a broader recog- nition of the principles of social justice in America has not declined. It would be well for the Republican machine in New York to give this consideration careful attention before rolling farther along the road of reaction. THE ELECTION IN CHICAGO The municipal election in Chicago on April 6 was of National interest in several ways. The sweeping victory of the Repub- lican ticket is ascribed: first, to general reaction in the National political situation ; and, secondly, to the passing over to the Republicans of large numbers of Democrats who were displeased at the defeat in the primaries of Carter Harrison for the Demo- cratic nomination. The vote cast was the largest ever polled in a Chicago municipal election. The Re- publican candidate, William Hale Thompson, had a plurality over the Democratic candi- date, Robert M. Sweitzer, of about 140,000. The percentage of the total registration actu- ally polled was over eighty-five. It will be remembered that the result of the primaries was not satisfactory to those voters of either party who were earnestly seeking municipal reform. Mr. Thompson was charged with having had, in the past, a political relation with ex-Senator Lorimer, which did not recommend him as the candidate; Mr. Sweitzer, on the other hand, was charged with a similar political relationship with the Democratic machine leader, Roger C. Sullivan. It was thought that an Independentticket might be nominated, but no such action took place. The general condi- tion in regard to the Mayoralty was thus de- scribed in a recently published letter by Mr. Graham Taylor, whose view is that of the Chicago Municipal Reform Club: “ The can- didates of the two ‘great’ parties are so far from being great enough for the office that citizens who seek only the city’s welfare are indifferent to the choice between them. Thousands of such citizens regard it as a choice of evils and are in doubt how to vote so as to choose the least evil of the two.’’ Mr. Taylor also points out in this article that bad politics has been doing its worst in this
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1915 election to stir up sectarian bitterness among bigoted people. In this condition of things many who regarded the Mayoralty election as a choice of evils have laid stress on the importance of electing reform candidates for Aldermen and Councilmen, and the meager returns which we have at this writing indicate that in two or three cases at least this has taken place; on the other hand, the notorious “ Hinky Dink ” McKenna had 4,000 plural- ity. The Socialist vote was very small— about one-thirtieth of the total. Public interest has been largely centered on the vote of women at this election. The number of votes cast by women was not very far from two hundred thousand ; and this represents about eighty per cent of the number of women registered. The reports before us indicate that about sixty per cent of the women voted for Mr. Thompson, the Republican candidate. This does not differ greatly from the vote of the men as to the division between the two parties. The total vote of the women was much in excess of their vote at the primaries ; and there seems to have been a considerable movement to the Republican party by women who in the primaries voted for Carter Harrison. DELAWARE AND CHILD LABOR To give a machine Republican an $1,800 job, the Child Labor Commission of Delaware has been abolished. The story began when the Commission, in its infancy, in December, 1913, had a Demo- cratic ward worker imposed on it as the State Child Labor Inspector. ‘There were three women on the Commission and five men, and they were appointed by the Su- preme Court. When they found the Inspector grossly incompetent and realized their mis- take, the vote stood six to one, last December, to remove him, as they had power to do under the law. It was the first time a poli- tician had ever been removed by a public body from a paying job in Delaware. The Commission had the honor of setting a prece- dent, but the politicians started in at once for revenge. The Democratic machine wanted the re- venge and the Republican machine wanted the coveted job, so the Legislature of 1915, by a bi-partisan vote, put an investigating committee on the war-path to discredit the Commission. The Speaker of the House THE WEEK 849 sat with this committee and treated the Com- mission, and especially the women, with much discourtesy and injustice. But it took only one day to find that the facts were all against the Inspector, and therefore the investigation finished promptly, and the committee reported to the Legislature that it was ‘“‘ unadvisable ” to present the testimony ; but it nevertheless recommended that the Commission ought to be abolished, that a commission of three men be appointed by the Governor, and that the Inspector be also henceforth appointed by the Governor. The public was stirred to protest, and welfare workers went to work and formed a Committee of Seventy, headed by a business man considered loyal to non-politi- cal appointments. Upon this the Legislature and Governor, acting in prompt accord, jammed through a bill for a Labor Commis- sion of five to take over the appointment of the Child Labor Inspector and also of the woman Ten Hour Law Inspector, who had previously been appointed by the Chancellor. This law the Committee of Seventy tried to protest against, but had no time. Neither had the Child Labor Commission. Manipu- lated by the Speaker and his friends, the bill went through at race-horse speed, distancing every other law at the session, and was signed by the Governor the day after its passage. When, after the Legislature was adjourned, the new Commission was appointed, however, it looked so well that at first the welfare workers were relieved. The chairman of the Committee of Seventy was one member, and a woman member of the Consumers’ League was another. A third was a labor man, and a fourth an ex-floor leader of the House and a close friend of the Speaker, the fourth being a druggist from the State capital. The Labor Commission organized immediately, with the chairman of the Committee of Sev- enty as its chairman, and appointed an In- spector instanter. But, alas for those who had fought to take child labor out of politics! —the Inspector was none other than the ex-Speaker of the House, who had worked so hard to discredit and destroy the Child Labor Commission for doing its duty. Worst of all, he was the candidate, it appeared, of the chairman of the Committee of Seventy. There is good reason for opposition to the policy of intrusting to judges the appoint- ment of administrative commissions ; but the way by which this Commission was ousted from office has placed that issue in the back-
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850 ground. By this railroading process Dela- ware’s working women and children are deliv- ered over to the politicians once more, more thoroughly than ever; but there is a strong feeling throughout the State against the whole ugly situation, and in this lies hope for the future. TURBULENT MEXICO In the military field in Mexico there has been recently both a lull and:a change in the center of interest. ‘The operations of Villa’s army against Tampico and Matamoras have not developed in intensity, as was expected ; consequently, as regards Matamoras, danger of a clash between the United States troops on the American side of the line and one or the other of the fighting Mexican factions has lessened for the time being. This isa danger which always exists when there is fighting going on and shots are being fired over our line with resulting injury to American soldiers and civilians, as has happened from time to time in the recent Mexican disturbances. The new center of military interest is the advance made from the south by General Obregon. It will be remembered that Obre- gon hastily evacuated Mexico City a few months ago, and his actual whereabouts were unknown for a time; but now he appears at the head of a formidable force, moving on the line of the railway which stretches north from Mexico City. Villa has issued a boast- ful message stating that he expects to fight Obregon at Queretaro, adding, ‘‘I have the greatest hope that my army will not only whip Obregon, but will utterly annihilate his troops!” Thus at the present writing an important and possibly decisive battle appears imminent between the strongest fighting generals of the Villa and Carranza forces. Our Government seems satisfied with its very mild degree of success in obtaining reparation for the murder of the American citizen, John B. McManus. It has been reported that some money has been obtained for the family of the victim from the men in command at the Mexican capital—twenty thousand dollars, it is said. The insult and degradation of the American flag has never been denied; but our State Department is reported to hold the view that a public apology or reparation for this act could not be exacted, as it was not committed under official orders! Most important of all, it would seem to the ordinary American, would be some evidence that a genuine effort had THE OUTLOOK 14 April been made to discover and punish the soldiers of Zapata who murdered an American citizen. But of such an effort we have seen no evi- dence whatever. SECRETARY GARRISON AND ARMY REFORM In 1912 the General Staff of the Army brought out ‘“ A report on the organization of the land forces of the United States.” Secretary Garrison has now instituted an inquiry throughout the entire War Depart- ment and the army in an attempt to bring this report up to the minute and to have ready for the next Congress a measure for army reform that will be authoritative and complete. It will be remembered that the six bills recommended by the Secretary for the im- mediate alleviation of certain defects in the organization of our army failed of passage at the last session of Congress. Fora time it seemed probable that the Secretary’s bills would be accepted, bu‘, with the congestion of legislation due to the prolonged fight over the Ship Purchase Bill and the sudden and some- what surprising conversion of certain Congress- men to the need of complete rather than partial measures of. reform, they were left high and dry. It is to be hoped that Secretary Gar- rison’s plan will be carried to a final success, and that under his leadership the question of army reform will be placed before Congress in such a way that the House and the Senate will not care to accept responsibility for its defeat. Among the subjects which it is expected will be covered by the new report will be the modernization of our coast defenses. Doubt- less the final result of the attemptto force the Dardanelles will have a powerful in- fluence upon the development of this vital question. USING TRANSPORTS AS FREIGHTERS A report in the daily press that the Gov- ernment intended to enter the business of transporting commercial products even though the Shipping Bill had died a timely death was recently published. Upon our inquiry of the War Department the exact nature of the new plan has been learned. The new effort seems to be entirely free from all likelihood of involv- ing us in any complications with foreign gov- ernments, and, if the original intention of Secretary Garrison is closely adhered to, from
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1915 THE any danger of interfering with the rights of private ship-owners. It is only a temporary measure of relief for the Philippine Islands which Secretary Garrison proposes to secure through the use of Government transports as cargo-carriers. In a letter to the President Secretary Garrison says: I have received several cablegrams from Governor-General Harrison setting forth the unfortunate condition which has arisen in the Philippine Islands due to the lack of ships on which the products of the islands available for export could be sent to the markets. . It seems clear that the use of the army trans- ports, so long as the merchandise in question should remain the property of private owners, could only be justified by a very grave emer- gency, such as would justify our using property of the United States at home in methods not authorized by law for the protection of the public. There is some doubt as to whether such an emergency has arisen in the islands, but in that we have customarily used vacant space on the army transports to transport property of the Philippine Government, I have been urged to make available space on returning transports for these products, with the understanding that the products, for the purpose of shipment, would be taken over by the Philippine Government, and that the War Department would look to the Philippine Government as the shipper for re- imbursement and ‘for all purposes to which the shipper would ordinarily look to the owner of goods shipped. .. . While this would not by any means fur- nish transportation forall of the products of the Philippines that seek a market in the United States, I hope that it will improve conditions there somewhat, and, unless you see some objec- tion to the carrying out of this project, I shall proceed to do so. In such case, I shall ad vise the Governor-General to invite proposals from commercial shipping agencies to furnish this transportation and will make use of the trans- ports only when it is shown, as a result of the invitation, that transportation is not avail- able. Secretary Garrison realizes very obviously the danger to the private American merchant marine which would arise from any continued use of Governmental vessels for the transpor- tation of merchandise at rates which for busi- ness reasons could not be met by commercial companies. His suggestion to invite propo- sals for the furnishing of the necessary facili- ties for transportation is a wise one. It will serve to protect both the interests of the Philippines and to advertise an opportunity for American enterprise. WEEK 851 HOUSING AND TOWN PLANNING IN BELGIUM Travelers have observed that Belgium is a land of contrasts. One contrast is that, though Belgium was, at the outbreak of the war, the most densely settled country in Europe, the congestion of residence had not increased; it had actually been reduced. Moreover, the Belgians have maintained a one-family house system superior to any system in any of the industrial coun- tries of the Continent. To encourage home ownership among wage-earners, so we learn from an instructive article in the “‘ Journal of the American In- stitute of Architects,’ Belgium provided as far back as 1828 a system of exemptions from taxation. This was later also the start- ing-point of the modern credit systems and tax exemptions which Germany and France applied on a larger scale. Belgium also formed private organizations at the disposal of which cheap capital was placed for the purpose of building houses. Loans at low rates of interest were made from the charitable funds of the country, and also later from the savings banks upon a guaranty secured througha more general use of insurance. The result was an immense increase in home ownership and a great reduction in rentals. While England and Germany, we learn from the article in question, recognize one-fifth as a fair proportion of the work- man’s budget to be expended in rent, the conditions in Belgium have been such as to render possible a rental rate of but nine and one-half to fourteen per cent of the budget. The ability to build thus secured, it was then necessary to make a distribution of population possible. This was done through improved transit facilities in the distances be- tween the residential districts of wage-earners and their places of employment, and the rates were gradually reduced until the cost of such transportation, translated into American terms of coinage and mileage, was .073 of a cent a mile. Such a rate would certainly indicate that the profits accruing from Belgian rail- ways have come from other departments of traffic. The influence of home ownership, reduced rentals, and cheap transportation has been evident, both economically and socially. In the first place, because these needs have led to a fixity and stability of residence, there has been a consequent reduction both in the OS tee OT sR eo eee SS
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852 migratory habits of workers and in unemploy- ment itself. Moreover, there has been a wider distri- bution of factories throughout suburban and rural districts, due to the sufficient labor supply. This wider distribution has also been conducive to improved sanitary condi- tions in the factories. Furthermore, the general cost of living was reduced, not only by home ownership, low rents, and cheap transportation, but also by the opportunity to cultivate home gardens. And the connection of the home garden with the general agriculture of a small country lessens by so much the danger of a rural exodus. Finally, such housing reform assures the conservation of the integrity of the family in ‘““a common home accessible to members employed in the most diversified places and occupations.”’ BELGIUM AND GERMANY It is interesting and impressive to compare housing conditions in Belgium with those in that country—Germany—which is now Bel- gium’s oppressor and which for the time being has diminished Belgian ability to con- tinue in the path of progress so long and honorably followed. It has been said that, as Germany has made great strides in such social improve- ments as rural banks, workman’s insurance, old age pensions, municipal ownership, for example, Belgium would be economically better off as a part of the German Empire . than as an independent country. But in home ownership—certainly the most desirable economic advantage to encourage among wage-workers—the progress of Belgian social- ization, as indicated in the above-quoted article, is not only most striking in itself, but especially striking as compared with conditions in Germany. Berlin, it tells us, has an average of 76.9 persons per building, and Diisseldorf, a city marking the lowest congestion, has 20.09 persons per building. On the other hand, Belgium, despite a greater density of popula- tion, has succeeded in maintaining the very low average of 5.3 persons per building. But that this is not due especially to the rural distribu- tion of population is shown by the fact that the average number of persons per building in the city of Ghent, for instance, is only 3.6. A similar contrast may be noted in the THE OUTLOOK 14 April particular features of cellar occupancy. In Belgium there is and has been since 1867 a complete prohibition of this evil. But in Germany, and especially in Berlin, we are told, the occupancy of cellars has been con- tinually on the increase. Thus, while the problem of housing the very poor and inefficient population in Bel- gium still remains to be solved, the house standard, even of the poorest classes, has been raised, the improvement in this standard being, of course, due largely to the influence of the enjoyment of suburban and rural life made possible to the Belgian working classes. To-day, some once prosperous Belgian cities and towns are in ruins. This is doubly pathetic when we realize what Bel- gium has stood for in the economic and social development of wage-workers. The realiza- tion of this should add strength to the resolve that no peace can conclude the present war unless that peace provide for the rehabili- tation of Belgium so far as is humanly pos- sible. THE ROTHSCHILDS Last week there died at his well-known palace in Piccadilly, and in his seventy-fifth year, the titular head of all the Rothschild connection. This was Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild, head of the English branch of the great banking family. Lord Rothschild’s por- trait appears on another page. The headship of the Rothschilds fell to him in 1879, on the death of the previous Baron Rothschild, who was not a baron by right of a British but only by right of an Austrian title. This Baron Rothschild was the first Jew to be elected to the British Parliament. He obtained that honor in 1847, but it was not until 1858 that he could take his seat by giving oath on the Old Testament alone, as he had persistently insisted upon doing. He was well known in this country, as he had helped to fund our debt after the Civil War. He was well known in France, as after the Franco-German War he facilitated the pay- ment of the huge indemnity to Germany. He was well known in England, not only be- cause of his Parliamentary dignity, but also because he had made it possible for the British Government to purchase the shares held by the Khedive in the Suez Canal. The first of the English Rothschilds has been called the greatest financial genius of the family, and his success was based largely on his ability to get exclusive news earlier than
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1915 THE any one else. At the time of the Battle of Waterloo, for instance, he was in Paris when he received private information that Napoleon had been defeated. He drove in hot haste to the battlefield, verified the story, reached London in incredible time, employed agents to buy up Government consols and such stocks as were certain to advance with the news of British triumph. As a result he made a vast fortune. The origin of the Rothschild family has been recounted in the popular play “ The Five Frankforters,’”’ which gives a graphic notion of -the family spirit, . religiously, socially, and financially. The five sons of the Rothschild who lived at Frankfort went to various countries and financially conquered them—to London one, to Paris one, to Vienna one, to Naples one, and the fifth remained to direct the fortunes of the home house. No other family, Jewish or Gentile, ap- proaches the Rothschilds in prestige of finan- cial possessions and influence. This prestige and influence has been directed conserva- tively. For instance, when the Russian Gov- ernment was in need of money it was unable to obtain any from the Rothschilds so long as it maintained its oppression of their co- religionists. The late Lord Rothschild should be men- tioned as one of the very prominent charitable men of our time. He devoted not only much money, but, what was much more precious, much time, to the poor of his faith. His latest charitable labor was his work in con- nection with the presidency of the British Red Cross, which under his direction raised an enormous sum in an incredibly short time for the wounded. JAPANESE-CHINESE NEGOTIATIONS The conferences between the representa- tives of China and Japan have continued the past week, but no definite results have been reported. There appeared on Sunday in a leading American journal the statements that the Chinese Government has received no official encouragement from any Power such as would warrant resistance to Japan, and has, therefore, conceded demand after de- mand; that aggressive action had been taken by Japanese troops in the garrison towns of Manchuria and Shantung'; that several Chi- nese had»been put to death for stealing Japa- nese telegraph lines; and following this des- patch, in the same column, appeared the WEEK 853 report that the Chinese-Japanese negotiations have been concluded, the Chinese Govern- ment agreeing to extend the Port Arthur lease for ninety-nine years, and recognizing also that Japan has all the rights in Shantung previously belonging to Germany, and accept- ing conditions stipulating that Germany shall never acquire the right to colonies or spheres of influence inChina. These reports, it must be remembered, are not official and cannot be regarded as definite, and in their original form seem inconsistent. A despatch from Tokyo on the following day presented what purports to be an inter- view with Count Okuma, the Premier, in which he says that negotiations at Peking are progressing favorably towards early conclu- sion; that the Chinese Government is not endeavoring to delay negotiations unduly ; and that “ Japan’s proposals are in complete accordance with the Anglo-Japanese alliance, as well as treaties and engagements with other countries, guaranteeing equal opportu- nity in China and the integrity of that coun- try.” Count Okuma declared that the criticisms and uneasiness displayed in this country and in Great Britain were caused by false in- formation; that Japan is not seeking to establish any monopoly in China or to infringe improperly the rights and interests of other Powers; that she has not demanded the appointment of Japanese advisers and is not seeking to create a protectorate over China. He said that deliberate attempts, mostly of German origin, have been made to misrepre- sent Japan’s attitude, especially in America, but that now all points have been cleared up and the interested Powers are acquainted with the Japanese proposals, which largely constitute an attempt to settle questions of long standing (some since the Russo-Japa- nese War); in Shantung Japan is only ask- ing what China has already granted Ger- many. Referring to public knowledge of the negotiations, he added: ‘ When the final disclosures are made, it will be found that the entire situation has been grossly exag- gerated.”’ The Outlook has steadily avoided report- ing the contradictory despatches that have come from Peking during the last two months, and has insisted that no judgment should be passed either on Japan or on China until the nature of the so-called Japa- nese demands are known. It has been unfortunate that the negotiations have been ie stereo SORT NAST NST we
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854 conducted with so much secrecy, and all friends of Japan will hope that this policy will now be abandoned. It is true that during the progress of negotiations between two governments immediate publicity is sometimes undesirable, and in some cases practically impossible. But the silence which has shrouded these negotiations has opened the way for suspicion concerning the nature of the Japanese demands, and the friends of both countries in America will hope that hereafter these negotiations will be conducted with entire publicity, so that there shall be no longer any opportunity for misjudging the Japanese or for creating uneasiness in regard to the interests of China. America is the friend of both countries. “THE BIRTH OF A NATION” Criticism of moving pictures comes per- haps more properly within the field of a weekly journal than criticism of the “ legiti- mate stage.’’ The acted play, whatever its literary merits, may not live to pass beyond the dramatic confines of the metropolis. The “ movie ” drama, whatever its defects, will not improbably reach every city, if not every town, in the country. Of the great feature films costing thousands of dollars, advertised more extensively than any all-star play of the past, this is particularly true. Such a film is “The Birth of a Nation,” a drama of the Reconstruction period based upon the writings of the Rev. Thomas Dixon. In interest and technical mastery of the moving-picture art this film is one of the best “yet produced by a modern director. Appar- ently neither expense nor time has been spared in preparing for the screen the story of the Civil War and the unhappy period which followed. The opportunity, indeed, was one that would have been the delight of any great and careful novelist, and one which would have taxed the knowledge of a great historian. Unhappily for the value of “The Birth of a Nation,” Mr. Dixon is neither. The story of “‘ The Birth of a Nation,’’ as Mr. Dixon sees it, is briefly this: Slavery is brought to the South by the traders of New England. Under slavery the Negroes are happy, working, as we are told in large letters, only from six in the morning to six at night, with two hours off in the middle of the day. The spirit of abolition grows in the North and the spirit of secession in the South. THE OUTLOOK 14 April The war comes. Lincoln, Grant, Lee, the burning of Atlanta, Gettysburg and Appo- mattox, are passed in auguSt review upon the screen. The Northtriumphs. Lincoln is killed, and the radical element in his party, led by a Congressman with a Negro mistress, adopts a policy of reconstruction involving social as well as political intercourse between the black and white races. Reconstruction means Negro domination of the white civiliza- tion of the South. Confronting this menace the Kuklux Klan springs into being, mar- shaled in legions that never were, and re- deems the South from destruction. The difficulty with Mr. Dixon as a pur- veyor of history is that he is not a historian. A historian not only presents true incidents from the past, but, if he is fair-minded and impartial, takes care that the incidents are representative and typical. Many of the most effective and most misleading scenes in “The Birth of a Nation ”’ doubtless occurred some time, somewhere, in the South. Chosen as the whole picture of the Reconstruction period, however, they are unfair and vicious. Mr. Dixon has “a single-track mind,” and the track leads only through a very unpleas- ant country. He is a partisan, and a dan- gerous one. He can see questions only in broad splotches of black and white. He knows but one side of Southern life, the sex problem of “ Aryan and African.” As Mr. Dixon rightly believes and dramat- ically shows, the American Nation was born from the travail of civil war and the injustice of the Reconstruction period, and therefore his photo drama threatens no reopening of the wounds of the white North and the white South. The evil in “ The Birth of a Nation” lies in the fact that the play is both a denial of the power of development within the free Negro and an exaltation of race war. It would be difficult, indeed, to paint in colors dark enough the shame of the Recon- struction period. To say this is not to excuse the offense of a writer who distorts this shame and labels the blurred picture—‘ history.” THE JITNEY INVASION The citizens of Seattle some time ago practically decided to take over control of the street railway service in their city. They already own one important line, but when the Council recently passed a bill to submit to the voters a three-mile extension of that line the Mayor promptly vetoed it, although he had
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1915 THE previously been an enthusiastic supporter of municipal ownership. In his message he said : ** Automobiles are about to supersede car lines. Street railways in all parts of the country are experiencing difficulty in raising money for fear of motor-bus competition. If the city, in the face of this fact, begins to spend money on further extensions, we are fools rushing in where angels fear to tread.” In the meantime the Governor of the State had directed the Chief Engineer of the State Public Service Commission to get exact data relating to the operation of jitney cabs and buses in Seattle. The report states that the street railway system is losing $2,450 each day, because 518 jitneys are carrying 49,000 passengers. Within four weeks after San Francisco saw the first jitney on its streets one thou- sand of them were in operation, and Mr. Mortensen, the trafficmanager of the Panama- Pacific Exposition, announced that he had made arrangements with a jitney company to put on two thousand buses to transfer twenty thousand visitors an hour to and from the grounds. Some street railway directors have said: “ Tf you allow these jitneys to come in and compete with us, you will have to choose between street railways and gasoline. No extensions can possibly be made if our receipts are cut in half. Some lines will have to be abandoned.” THE STORAGE BATTERY VERSUS THE JITNEY But some engineers and capitalists who have looked deeply into the problem see the solution of it in the “ jitneyizing ” of the rail- ways. Oneengineer of long experience in street railway work says: ‘‘ The street railways have undoubtedly got to meet this new competi- tion by entirely new methods. Most of them, if not all, are unable, if willing, to put on more cars for the rush hours, because their power is at its load peak during those few hours and cannot be called on for more, although for eighteen or twenty hours out of the twenty-four they are not using more than half of their capacity. Edison pointed out the remedy four years ago when he showed the splendid efficiency and economy of his new storage-battery car on the Twenty- eighth Street line in New York. He is quoted as saying in an article on ‘ Popular Electricity :’ “‘* At an expense of about thirty-five cents WEEK 855 a day this car is kept in continual service. With storage batteries it would not be neces- sary to erect any new power-houses or increase generators to meet increased transportation demands, for those that are now running at capacity only one-quarter of the twenty-four hours could be used all the time. While almost all the cars of any system are in the barns at night their batteries can be recharged. This would last them through the day, and there would be no overloading on the current.’ ” But, on the other hand, such adoption of storage-battery service, with its flexibility and adaptability to greatly fluctuating demands, means to directors and financial committees the scrapping of a large amount of equip- ment. The diversion, however, of forty-nine thousand fares daily from the registers of the Seattle lines to the pockets of the jitney men is giving a new outlook to the transportation problem. With all the outburst of public welcome which the jitneys are receiving in the West, in many cities there remains a feeling that well-organized, well-managed street railways are the more desirable when their service is adequate, and that the adoption of scien- tific, up-to-date methods of using all their present power—conserving it by storage bat- teries during the low peak load—will solve the problem of jitney competition by putting the competition out of the race. A PUBLIC-SPIRITED WOMAN Bryn Mawr College owed much to Miss Mary Garrett, who recently died at the Dean- ery. A Baltimorean by birth, daughter of the former President, of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Miss Garrett inherited a large fortune, and from the moment it came into her hands devoted it to important public uses, especially to forwarding the education of women. She was one of the three founders of the Bryn Mawr School for Girls in Balti- more, an institution of very high rank, beauti- fully housed, which has received further large gifts from time to time from Miss Garrett. She also made it possible for the Medical School of the Johns Hopkins University to admit women students on equal terms with men by raising an endowment of a hundred thousand dollars, and adding a gift of three hundred thousand dollars. ‘To Bryn Mawr, in whose welfare she was deeply interested, and in the Deanery of which, as the companion of Miss Thomas, she spent the later years of
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856 her life, Miss Garrett’s gifts amounted to over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She was an ardent believer in woman suffrage, and made generous contributions of time and money to the work of agitation. Miss Gar- rett was a fine type of the women of large interests who contribute not only time and money to the support of the causes in which they are enlisted, but who contribute what is still more valuable, disinterested devotion and high character. INSTRUCTION IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Chancellor Brown, of New York Univer- sity, strongly recommends the endowment of a Department of International Affairs in con- nection with the University. poses is not a school for the training of diplomats, but the offering of knowledge of our international relations to college men. He calls attention to the extraordinary output of communications of all kinds from universi- ties in all parts of the world, and from lead- ing schools, writers, and artists ; statements addressed to the intelligence of the world and appealing for its sympathy. This activ- ity shows, Dr. Brown thinks, that modern universities are close to popular life ; but the spirit of these communications does not satisfy those who believe that universities should be institutions of light and leading, and that their leadership should be most conspicuous when the highest human interests are at stake. It cannot be expected that such institutions will have the power to calm the passions of men when war has begun, but it is quite within their scope and power to educate their stu- dents into that knowledge of international relations that would go far toward preserving the peace of the world. What Dr. Brown proposes may be regarded as a logical development from those earlier college courses in which international law was a required study of the senior year; but his plan involves far more than the study of international law as presented in text-books. Clear thinking is needed to draw the line between proper provision for national defense and competitive armaments. It is also neces- sary to familiarize students with those changes and methods which are available to secure rational solution of international difficulties, and also to make students understand the value of international good manners. ‘This is a factor in international relations the im- portance of which Americans have often THE OUTLOOK What he pro- 14 April failed to understand, as they have failed con- spicuously in their relations with Japan. Mr. Root, who is a practical statesman, with large experience in dealing with international matters, has said that in international rela- tions good manners and courtesy are often as important as arguments and principles. And Dr. Brown puts the whole matter of possible education in this direction in an admirable sentence: ‘“‘ We must train the young of this Nation ... to put their faith in international righteousness.”’ ‘That is, beyond all question, the first step towards international peace. The New York University, Chancellor Brown tells us, has “‘ certain courses in inter- national law and politics, in American di- plomacy and foreign policy, and in consular methods,” offered by competent instructors ; but these instructors are hampered by many other engagements. What is needed is a department in which this great subject can be thoroughly taught by men whose special business it shall be to present it. AN EXEMPLARY HOLY WEEK This is an age of Christian union in good works. Why should it not also become an age of greater Christian union in worship? It will become so if the excellent example of Lakewood, New Jersey, during Holy Week is observed. Every day at noon in the Church of All Saints (Episcopal), at the invitation of the Rev. Charles E. Brugler, the rector, with the approval of the bishop of the diocese, the village clergy gathered and held a union service. It naturally followed the general plan of a consideration day by day of the last week of the life of Christ before his crucifixion. The service was short—a prayer or two, an address, a hymn. In itself intensely relig- ious, the impact was doubled because of the manner of its presentation. To hear a Pres- byterian reciting the familiar, ‘‘ Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings,” to see a Baptist and a Methodist going into an Episcopal pulpit and preaching, made Christians of what- ever name feel their essential oneness and interdependence. Year by year the days and seasons which commemorate the life of Christ receive in- creasing observance. Not only the Roman, Greek, and Anglican communions have led the way, but those Protestant bodies which once made little of Christmas and Good
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1915 THE Friday and Easter now make more and more of those significant days. The Episcopal Church is popularly sup- posed to be exclusive, but some of its churches are inviting the clergy of other communions to officiate in their services, and are welcom- ing at the communion all who wish to follow the common Master of all the churches. AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON JAPANESE AGRICULTURE We are generally accustomed to think of the problem of land development on a great scale only in connection with the new coun- tries of the world developed by European emigrants. The story of our own West, of Canada, and of Australia we recognize as part of the work of pioneer history.‘ It will be somewhat of a surprise to many to learn that Japan within the last forty years has had the same problems to face in the island of Hokkaido, and that her work in that island has largely been influenced, if not con- trolled, by the development of agriculture in this country. Hokkaido contains about thirty thousand square miles. It was not opened up to Japa- nese civilization until 1869. It was in 1870 that Governor Kuroda made a journey of inspection to the United States and returned to Japan with four American advisers and with American farm tools, seeds, and stock. The land laws of Hokkaido were modeled somewhat after our own land laws for the development of the unsettled West. The first Japanese College of Agriculture, located at Sapporo, was organized and developed by an American. Its first director was William Smith Clark, President of Amherst Agricul- tural College, who spent a year in Japan laying the foundations for the school, which has since grown to a college, well housed, and with a faculty of over one hundred and forty men. The photographs of some of the farms which have been built up in this new country might very well have been made in the dairy regions of New York State or of Illinois. Apparently, American farmers would find themselves much at home with the imple- ments used on these farms, for American breaking plows, side-hill plows, sulky plows, disk harrows, horse rakes, hay-tedders, corn- huskers, milk pails, sausage fillers, harnesses, wheelbarrows, and pruning shears are all used, and all have had a strong influence upon the designs of home-made tools. Not only American tools but American crops WEEK 857 have been transplanted to this northern island of Japan by her agriculturists. Wheat and corn and potatoes all reached Hokkaido via America. It is interesting to know that in this far corner of the world the varieties of potatoes most extensively cultivated bear such familiar names as the ‘ Early Rose,” the ‘‘ Green Mountain,” and the “ Rural New Yorker.” The first American fruits taken to this Japanese island came from a nursery near Rochester, New York. Apples in particular have done remarkably well in their new surroundings. The Astrachan, the MacIntosh Red, the King, the Jonathan, and even the Ben Davis, that pervasive but unpersua- sive cold-storage favorite, are all known to the Japanese. So the familiar names run through all the other products of this new country. In a pamphlet published by the Tohoku Imperial University we are told that not only does the blood of the American trotter flow in the horses of Hokkaido but that the drivers and farmers of this island continue to handle their horses with the “whoa” and “back” which they learned from their American instructors. The influence of American agriculture upon the development of Hokkaido is some- thing in which we can take very great pride. Of the teachers who have gone from this country to Japan it is said that through them ** Japan has gained a fairer, kindlier concep- tion of America than through all her study of American history.”’ A MEMBER OF THE HOUSEHOLD The Outlook family has lost one of its most valued and trusted members by the death of Mrs. Isidore Kennedy, at the Hotel Martha Washington, New York City, where she had lived during the latter years of her life. Mrs. Kennedy entered the service of The Outlook nineteen years ago, and was tireless in the discharge of all the duties in her department of work. She was much alone in the world, so far as family ties are concerned ; and when some- times her attention was called to the fact that she was staying in the office after working hours, she would reply that it was her home and the Outlook staff was her family. A quiet, modest, self-forgetful woman, she won confidence, esteem, and affection; and her steadfastness of character was a source of strength to her associates.
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858 WAR AND LAW When the German submarine U-28 sent a torpedo into the merchant steamer Falaba and caused the death of over a hundred non-combatants, the life of an American citizen was sacrificed. In the death of Leon Chester Thrasher the United States has become directly concerned with German law- lessness. When Germany first announced her inten- tion of torpedoing merchant vessels, and warned neutral nations that the lives of non- combatants and neutrals would be endangered in that so-called war zone, the United States replied that in case of the loss of an Ameri- can life by this conduct the United States would hold Germany to strict accountability. Now Germany, in an official statement through the German Embassy at Washington, de- clares that in the case of the death of Mr. Thrasher “ military necessity . . . forced the submarine to act quickly. . . . The German Government,” continues the Embassy’s state- ment, “ regrets sacrifices of human lives, but both British ships and neutral passengers on board such ships were warned urgently and in time not to cross the war zone.” The German Government consequently places the responsibility upon the British Government because it has declared commercial war against Germany and has caused merchant ships to offer armed resistance which the German Government says is “contrary to international law.” This plainly means that the German Government expects America to acquiesce in any action that Germany con- siders required by “ military necessity,” and in any reprisal against what Germany wisheg to construe as a breach of international law by the enemy, no matter what the conse- quences to neutrals or non-combatants. It is this attitude of Germany—whose recognition of international law is merely lip service—which leads an American corre- spondent in a personal letter from one of the belligerent countries to write as follows: Discussion of international law, or an expecta- tion that the belligerents will live up to 4 droit de gens, seems rather futile to me. “ Lynch law” is a contradiction in terms. War is the antithesis of law. An international law in regard to war is an offer to frame a code of lawlessness. The more! see of things here, the more I feel that efforts to render war humane are useless. Is this true? Is war the antithesis of law? THE OUTLOOK 14 April Are moral considerations superseded by war? The German official answer is, Yes. On another page Mr. Bierstadt reviews ‘‘ The War Book of the German General Staff,” which has just been published in English translation. In that book, which is official, appears the following passage which Mr. Bierstadt quotes, but which is so important that we here quote it again because in the guise of stating a principle of international law it really repudiates even ordinary moral principles : Bribery of the enemy’s subjects with the object of obtaining military advantages, accept- ance of offers of treachery, reception of desert- ers, utilization of the discontented elements in the population, support of pretenders, and the like, are permissible, indeed international law is in no way opposed to the exploitation of the crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiar- ism, robbery, and the like) to the prejudice of the enemy. Considerations of chivalry, generosity, and honor may denounce in such cases a hasty and unsparing exploitation of such advantages as indecent and dishonorable, but law, which is less touchy, allows it. ‘“ The ugly and inherently im- moral aspect of such methods cannot affect the recognition of their lawfulness. The necessary aim of war gives the belligerent the right and im- poses upon him, according to circumstances, the duty not to let slip the important, it may be the decisive, advantages to be gained by such means.” In the Falaba incident Germany is simply practicing what her military authorities preach. Americans will never consent to this doc- trine. If Germany wishes to find a reason why she has lost the sympathy of the people of this country, she can find it there. In the first place, this philosophy which says, in war-time, ‘“ Evil, be thou my good,” is against all the traditions of America. The Outlook has already more than once referred to the rules of war promulgated during the Civil War by President Lincoln. The spirit of those rules of war is the very antithesis of the spirit of “‘ The War Book of the German General Staff.”” There is no possible recon- ciliation between the spirit of Lincoln and the spirit of that book. Compare with the passage we have quoted this passage from Lincoln’s rules: ‘“ Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assas- sination of enemies as relapses into bar- barism.”’ But it is not only because it is against their
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1915 traditions that Americans repudiate this doc- trine promulgated by Germany, but because it is stupid and unintelligent. Even in war human beings remain human beings. No man, whatever he may profess, can by any possibility escape the moral law. To put it on no higher grounds, it is biologically im- possible. Every psychologist recognizes the fact that the formation of habits is a process that is recorded in the tissues of the brain, and the moral law has by this habit-forming process been engraved upon the brains of men in inerasable characters. To say that war repeals the moral law is to say some- thing unscientific. All the philosophy of the German military writers and their defenders in the chairs of the universities cannot obscure this scientific truth which is known and recog- nized by the ordinary man. We in America may be called upon to sacri- fice more than one American life to German ‘* military necessity,”’ but we are not going to sacrifice to German “ military necessity ”’ the records of chivalry and honor of such leaders in war as Washington and Lee and Lincoln. FIFTY YEARS AFTER At the end of fifty years we are still far from a final estimate of the service of Lincoln to his country and to humanity. We are still too near the mountain to see clearly its mass and height; we can see, however, to recall Carlyle, that as it climbed heavenward it carried half a continent upward. Lincoln’s greatness was not solitary, like Fuji; it was neighborly, like the peaks of the Rockies, which rise from a wide table-land. The very simplicity of Lincoln’s ascent from the obscurity and poverty of the old frontier baffles and confuses the students of his career. The usual keys to greatness are all missing : fortunate birth, education, influ- ential friends, charm of personality. Never did a plainer man, of barer surroundings and more unpromising outlook, arrive at great- ness. The ruggedness of figure and attitude which Mr. Borglum has reproduced with uncompromising fidelity in the striking statue which The Outlook reproduces this week, and which is characteristic of the other great statue of Lincgin, from the hand of Saint- Gaudens, in Chicago, symbolizes the condi- tions from which Lincoln came. He was the plainest of plain people; born in a fron- tier cabin, with only a year of school, at FIFTY YEARS AFTER . &59 work from childhood in a remote country community, poor, of great frame and strength, but of a melancholy temperament; a boy born to hard work, neglected by fortune, unaided by those circumstances which often help able and ambitious men. Lincoln took his country at its worst, so far as material conditions were concerned, and left it at its best; he was the child of its immense spiritual good fortune: freedom of career, confidence in the value of life, faith in humanity, boundless hope and cour- age. He served his country greatly ; she also served him mightily. She held the door of life wide to him; and he became, like Heine, a “soldier in the war for the libera- tion of humanity.” She helped him at every stage because her spirit was in him; the hopefulness and help- fulness of the pioneer, who is of necessity, and later by education and conviction, a neighbor. Lincoln was neighbor to the whole country; and if he were living to-day he would be neighbor to the whole world. As he passed from one community to another his knowledge widened with the horizons, and his sympathy went hand in hand with his knowledge. His life expanded as he entered more and more into the life of the country. Beginning in the isolation of the frontiers- man’s cabin, he became the boy of the farm- ing community, of the country store, of the village, of the Court circuit, of the county, of the Congressional district, of the State, of the section, and finally of the Nation. Webster had laid broad and deep the historic necessity of the National organization ; he defined the unescapable logic of events and made the mind of the country ready for the creation of the Federal unity which modern conditions have made inevitable. But Lincoln was the first statesman to personify and apply the Nationalidea. Surrounded by men of ability bred to the sectional point of view, he emerged from his generation. Born in the South, bred in the North, his mind had the openness of the West. He was the head of a divided family, not the ruler of a shat- tered State. He never for a moment ac- cepted a North and a South; he always thought in National terms of the United States. He rose above sectionalism, partisanship, and hatred as a mountain rises above mist and fog. Few men of his time saw the dimen- sions of his nature, its height of purpose, its breadth of vision, its depths of compassion,
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gk Tes PL DEAE ESS IE SY PT INNE PES 860 : sympathy, tenderness. They were North- erners or Southerners ; he was a man of the Nation. And at the end he had the happy fortune to die for his country. The hour of his vic- tory was also the hour of his release. Then and there began that revelation of his spirit which has ended all misconceptions, and clothed his rugged figure with the majesty of a great soul greatly tried and greatly victori- ous. In the vision of that noble soul which passed before the country ancient animosities were forgotten ; hatred and rancor could not live in the light which streamed from the American who climbed the great altar stairs to die in order that a nation might be born. For the nation has not been reunited; in the feeling of the people it did not exist until Lincoln died for it. It is his monu- ment, as he is the evidence of its right to be a leader in a world rent asunder by the bitterness of narrow ideas, and by that anguish of spirit which is the fruit of selfish seeking of the things that are ours with no care for our neighbors. ARMS AND ADVERTISEMENTS Recently there has appeared in a great many newspapers a full-page advertisement called ‘* An Appeal to the American People ”’ and signed by the editors and publishers of a very long list of newspapers printed in for- eign languages but issued within the United States. The burden of this appeal is as follows : As a result of receiving hundreds of thou- sands of letters, cables, and messages through various sources containing heartbroken appeals, prayers, and pleas from the people of our mother countries, we, the undersigned editors and publishers, have concluded to place this appeal before the great American people on behalf of our readers. .. . We appeal to the American people, to the high-minded and courageous American press, and to the American manufacturer of powder, shrapnel, and cartridges, and we appeal to the workmen engaged in the plants devoted to the manufacture of ammunition for use by the na- tions at war, to immediately cease making pow- der, shrapnel, and cartridges destined to destroy our brothers, widow our sisters and mothers and orphan their children as well as destroy for- ever the priceless possessions handed down by our ancestors. .. . The honor of the American people, the integ- THE OUTLOOK 14 April rity of the Nation, the standing of our manu- facturers, and the patriotism and manhood of our workmen demand that the entire world’ be shown, once and forever, that money soaked with the blood of humanity cannot purchase these qualities. . . Our participation must stop now, and then our influence for justice and righteousness can help end the war. A large proportion of those signing this appeal represent Italian newspapers. On the list of signatures there are over a hundred such men. Jewish papers come next in number, with more than forty names. Polish papers are represented by nearly as many signatures. Swedish, Slavic, and Hungarian editors and publishers rank next. It is sig- nificant of the diversity of our population, if of nothing else, that on this list are the names of men connected with the publication of newspapers in Ruthenian, Greek, Arabic, Syrian, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Finnish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Croa- tian, Rumanian, Servian, Lettish, Bohemian, Flemish, Bulgarian, and Danish. The news- papers which in the past have come out most strongly for an embargo on arms have been those published in Germany. It is worthy of notice, perhaps, that not one of these is on this list. The Outlook has already stated its opinion on the proposal to prevent the shipment of arms and ammunition from this country by a Governmental embargo. It seems to us that under the present circumstances such an embargo would mean not only the viola- tion of our rights but of our duties as a neutral Nation.. The nation which has pro- tested most strongly in spirit if not in form against the course taken by the United States has pursued such a course itself without exception in the past. Germany supplied Russia with arms and ammunition during her war with Japan. The occasion which finally precipitated the attack on Vera Cruz was the attempt to land at that port a steamer-load of German arms. It is in the name of a higher morality, not of international law, however, that this pres- ent appeal is made. We are asked on moral grounds to establish a new precedent, not to maintain an old one. Is this appeal, disregarding the question of partisanship, entirely sentimental or is it. based on funda- mental standards of righteousness ? The answer is clear. To prevent the ship- ment of arms from a neutral country to a
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1915 belligerent is to encourage rather than to discourage militaristic ambition. If peaceful nations cannot purchase arms in time of war, then it behooves every nation that values its independence to arm to the teeth. If such countries as Denmark, Sweden, and Hol- land cannot buy arms for the protection of their frontiers, their only hope of existence lies in the mercy of their powerful neigh- bors. NOW IS CHRIST RISEN FROM THE DEAD In mind, character, and influence the Apostle Paul is one of the foremost men in history. He was a scholar and thinker, a keen ob- server, a man of critical temper and training. He was as free from fanaticism as the most cultivated and stoical Roman of his time; he was a poet in a legalistic age, and he saw life through his reason and imagination ; no man can see life sanely and clearly who does not see with the brain as well as with the eye. And he had all the hardness of spirit of a rigidly conventional religionist against a teacher who had antagonized the organ- ized religion of his time and drawn his disciples chiefly from the illiterate and the obscure. And yet this skeptic, who first approached the Christians of his time as a persecutor, became the ardent, daring, enthusiastic preacher of the most incredible fact in the Christian’s faith—the return of Christ from the dead. St. Paul taught many truths, but his message to the world was summed up in the phrase, ‘“‘ Now is Christ risen from the dead.” That was the trumpet call which he sounded in Asia Minor, in Greece, and in Rome. In the light of it he solved the mys- tery of life; in the strength of it he bore crushing burdens and performed herculean tasks; in the certainty of it he walked the way to death with victorious serenity. Christ had lived with his fellows and knew all that life meant to them; he had seen all kinds of misery; every form of sin was known to him; ignorance, slavery, oppression, cru- elty, ravaged the society of his time. The world in which he lived was impure, brutal, unrighteous ; its sins must have been loath- some to him; at times the world must have seemed intolerable to his pure and loving na- ture. He was familiar with its most repulsive diseases, he felt its awful injustice, for after NOW IS CHRIST RISEN FROM THE DEAD 861 serving it with a divine passion of love it turned upon him and crucified him. And yet in a world that he knew was to put him to death with malefactors he went about doing good, healing, comforting, help- ing, teaching. At the very beginning he once and forever resisted the temptation to impose his will on society by the use of power ; he organized no revolt against tyr- anny, he let loose no ministers of vengeance on a society sunken in selfishness and sin. He was to save men from their sins, not from the consequences of their sins; he was to put a new spirit in them, not to impose laws and institutions on them; he was to bring them to God, not to drive them from evil; he was to rebuild the world by the hands of men who came to understand at last that “in his will is our peace.” And this same Christ is in the world to-day. After nearly two thousand years that world is still cruel, tyrannical, unjust, lustful, and bitterly selfish. Never in its history has it seemed further from the brotherhood of service which he made clear in word and deed than to-day. And yet he does not send his thunderbolts on slayers and rav- agers; he does not turn back the tide of war ; he does not still the tempest. To-day, as two thousand years ago, he walks along highways stained with blood and cumbered with the wreckage of death and destruction, and he invokes no power to arrest the awful tragedy ! But everywhere his voice is obeyed, and everywhere he is healing, comforting, teach- ing. The appalling crisis shows how far off is the end of the divine process of education which is to bring men to the consciousness that ‘they are the children of God; but it shows also how many there are in every nation who are striving to follow in his foot- steps, to live the life of love and helpfulness. They are within the call of the trenches, they are on every battlefield, they are in every hospital, they are working in countless homes, they are pouring out their means like water. The miracle of love is being wrought in the midst of carnage, and its voice is heard where the air trembles with the roar of guns. And the hearts of men burn with righteous hatred of the cruelty and lust of power they once silently accepted; and the protest against the injustice and greed which sow the seeds of war swells into a great pledge that the spirit of Christ shall be the spirit of the nations. “For now is Christ risen from the dead.”
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SN EES whtnee ee aoe POOLE II” * SSI. Ace THE STORY OF THE WAR BY GREGORY MASON HEN Przemysl fell, the Carpathian passes were deep with snow, but recent rains must have turned the roads there into troughs of slush and mire. In this region the spring muds are a greater impediment to transportation than the winter snows, and for a few weeks the going will be hard for the Russians. Yet despite this handicap the progress of the Czar’s soldiers toward the complete con- trol of the Carpathians between Galicia and Hungary was the military feature of the week March 31 to April 7. As this is writ- ten they have cleared the Dukla and Lupkow Passes of Austrians and are sweeping over the heights controlling the Uzsok Pass. The capture of the town of Cisna was important, for at this point begins a railway which crosses the mountains to Lupkow, whence a branch runs north through the Lupkow Pass and along the Ostawa River, making a junction with the line from Przemysl. By gaining the control of this railway the Russians were able to bring the men who were released by the fall of Przemysl to a point south of the Carpathians, where their presence has been reported by the Austrians. The Austrians also admit the loss of the Beskid Range, the highest of the southern Carpathian ranges. This means that in this region at least the Russian steam-roller will have the advantage of gravity; it will be operating on a down grade, and perhaps gathering momentum sufficient to carry it a considerable distance over the Hungarian plain. ‘The appearance of the Russians on the plains of Hungary is likely to have as great an effect in unnerving the Hungarians as the appearance of the arrmy of Hannibal, after crossing the Alps, had upon the Ro- mans. GENERAL RUSSIAN SUCCESS Russia, it is claimed by Petrograd, has made gains on other parts of her long military frontier also. The Slavic diversion which was begun near the East Prussian border, probably with the aim of preventing Hindenburg from removing troops from this point to aid the hard-pressed Austrians, is reported to be successful, and, furthermore, it is reported that the Austro-German invasion of Bessarabia has been stopped. Had this 862 attempt succeeded, ,the effect would have been like throwing cold water on the Ru- manians who favor joining the Allies, for Bessarabia is on the very threshold of Rumania. In the west the armies are sloughing off the lethargy of winter. ‘The Germans appear to be emerging from their hibernation more rap- idly than their opponents, however. Perhaps, with the threat of the spring attempt of Kitchener and Joffre hanging over them, they have decided to rely on their traditional theory that the best defense is an attack. At any rate, during the week they were busy feeling out the Allies’ line at several points, but notably in the Yser and Verdun regions. St. Mihiel is the point of a German wedge opposite Verdun which the Germans will probably try to drive farther into French soil. Apparently the best chance the French have of breaking this salient is to attack it on the sides, where, if they were successful, they could cut the communications of their oppo- nents and perhaps sweep a large haul of prisoners from the Germans at the apex of the wedge. The French well know this, and have been exerting themselves greatly about St. Mihiel. When it comes to a test of strategy, how- ever, it is hard to best a German. No emergency that human intelligence could foresee has been overlooked by the German General Staff. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, the Germansknew more about the disposition of the French forces, about the French railways, and the availability of the rolling stock, than the French themselves. Their maps of French territory were far more up to date and exhaustive than any that their opponents had. To-day the Ger- mans are more painstaking in such matters than ever before. Since the outbreak of the war the German Government has issued mill- ions of maps to the army, diagramming the slightest details of hostile territory held by the Germans, or of German territory held by the enemy. Altogether it is reported that such maps have been issued to the number of 36,000,000. SERVIA AND BULGARIA The recent invasion of Servia by a force of Bulgarian irregulars, the fifth demonstra-
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THE STORY OF THE WAR tion of this kind since the war began, has been called the most portentous development of the week, even though it was unsuccessful. This outbreak indicates that, however her statesmen may feel, many of Bulgaria’s citizens are deter- mined to get back the lands which she lost in the second Balkan War—lIstib, Kotchana, Radovista, and Macedonia west of the Var- dar. In particular do they resent the fact that Bulgars in these territories are being forced to fight for Servia, whose interests in the Balkan tangle will not jibe with Bul- garia’s. It seems hardly likely that the statesmen of Bulgaria intend to enter the war against the Allies just now, for such a move would mean the bombardment of Bulgaria’s Black Sea ports by the Russian fleet and the plowing of her little patch of land on the A°gean by shells from French and British war-ships now devoting themselves to the Sultan’s defenses at the Dardanelles. Furthermore, Rumania, Italy, and Greece would probably rush to the aid of exhausted Servia were that state to be attacked by the Bulgar. The most favorable opportunity for the crushing of Servia oc- curred several months ago when Austria was overrunning the little Kingdom of Peter. The diplomats of Sofia must realize this, and it is probable that they have been using the bellig- erent outbreaks of Bulgarian guerrillas as a threat with which to get concessions from the Allies. Their army would be a great help to the land forces of the Allies approach- ing Constantinople, and were they to regain Thrace up to the Enos-Media boundary established between Turkey and Bulgaria in 1913, they might feel content to stop clamor- ing for lost Macedonia. THE CASE OF THE DRESDEN Information that has reached this country from Chile confirms the claim of Germany that the German cruiser Dresden, recently sunk off Juan Fernandez Island by a British squadron, was within the three-mile neutral zone about the Chilean island when she was attacked. The official report of the Chilean Government says that the governor of the island was about to board the British cruiser Glasgow to serve notice that he intended to intern the Dresden for overstaying her time- limit in Chilean waters when he was forced to turn back by the broadsides which the British vessel fired shorewards at the Dres- den. According to newspaper reports, the British Government seems inclined to make 863 reparation to Chile for this infringement of the international rules. MERLIN ON MODERN WARFARE Some of the inventions that make warfare to-day more spectacular than it has ever been were predicted in advance by scientists, mystics, and writers of fiction. One of the best guessers, of course, was Jules Verne. The oldest prediction that I have found, however, is credited to the magician Merlin, who may have been an individual, but who very likely was a composite personality, like Homer. From the Latin of ‘ Prophetia An- glicana,” an old book of prophecies, comes this concerning aviation : ** Posterity shall endeavor to fly above the highest places.” And in the following excerpt the ancient seer may have had in mind the campaign of Germany’s Unterseebooten : ‘* When the age grows old, submarine lights shall be skillfully contrived and they [ Aosterity] shall plot submarine ambushes. ‘They shall submerge naval arsenals and collect not a little money.” AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN Friendliness, firmness, and respect for nice legalities are the qualities that characterize the note of the United States to Great Britain in regard to England’s Order in Council concerning a blockade of Germany. The note is the brief of an accomplished inter- national lawyer who is at the same time an urbane gentleman with great regard for the punctilios of human_ intercourse. No nation without a chip on its shoulder could take offense at this communication. In brief, the note admits the legality of the new form of long-distance blockade instituted by Great Britain, but insists that the rights of neutrals must not be ignored, saying, “If the course pursued by the present enemies of Great Britain should prove to be in fact tainted by illegality and disregard of the principles of war sanctioned by enlightened nations, it cannot be supposed, and this Government does not for a moment suppose, that his Majesty’s Government would wish the same taint to attach to their own actions or would cite such illegal acts as in any sense or degree a justification for similar practices on their part in so far as they affect neutral rights.” As a defense of American rights and as a plea for the observance of international rules as they existed when the war began this
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5 4 } 4 " 864 THE OUTLOOK 14 April communication is an extremely creditable piece of diplomacy. WAR AND ALCOHOL Great Britain adds the latest bit of evi- dence to the case against alcohol already constructed by Russia, France, and, to some extent, by Germany. Finding that the con- sumption of liquor has been on the increase among the men who are turning out the mu- nitions and equipment which England must have to. wage war, and that this was interfer- ing with the efficiency of these workingmen, the Hon. David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, began a campaign for prohi- bition in which most of the British nation, from the King down, have apparently joined. “We are fighting Germany, Austria, and drink,” said Mr. Lloyd George, “ and, so far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink.” King George at once responded to the Chancellor’s appeal and volunteered to give up the use of all alcoholic beverages himself and to forbid their use in the royal house- holds. The whole nation is agitated over the liquor question, and apparently a con- siderable part of it is disposed to follow the monarch’s example. Simultaneous indulgence in the two evils, war and alcohol, it seems, is not expedient for humanity. We have this on the testi- mony of Russia, France, Germany, and Eng- land. But if drunkenness interferes with efficiency in war, does it not interfere with efficiency in peace? The war-time campaign against drunkenness by the Governments of these four countries is the most impressive testimony ever offered to the value of tem- perance, the greatest blow ever struck at Silenus, god of wine. New York City, April 7, 1915. THE FALABA AND AGUILA ATROCITIES A POLL OF THE NEW YORK AND LONDON PRESS ORE than one hundred and forty M. lives have been lost in the sink- ing by German submarines of the British liner Falaba and the British steamer Aguila. GERMAN OPINION German opinion is reflected by two Ger- man papers published in New York City. The well-known and influential ‘‘ New Yorker Staats-Zeitung ” says: The great number of lives lost certainly gives rise to deep regret. The allied howlers and hypocritical praters about humanity will natu- rally once more make a great outcry. But they should not forget one thing: The number of lives lost in this marine catastrophe sinks into insignificance compared with the millions of Ger- man women and children whom England would like to deliver over to death by starvation, and the procedure of Germany merely constitutes the justified answer to British brutality under such circumstances. “Do you go out on the battlefield when the bullets are flying ?” asks another New York City German paper, the ‘ Herold,”’ and then comments : We observe that the English afternoon papers are much displeased with the Germans because they torpedoed a passenger vessel. If the former rules of war held good, we too should condemn such a proceeding, but as the English from the beginning of the war have thrown all rules of war into the discard we feel that Ger- many owes it to its own interest to do just what has been done. The German Admiralty on February 4 duly announced that all Allies’ vessels in the war zone will be torpedoed. Anybody using these vessels takes the same risk as if he were to go out on the battlefield where the bullets are flying. To these editorial opinions should be added the statements in an interview published in the New York “ Times ” from Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, ex-Colonial Minister of Germany : I should say that if a vessel is hailed by a submarine in war time it has got to stop; if it does not stop, then it must be torpedoed. If it is hailed by a submarine, it must not work its wireless apparatus, with which, perhaps, assist- ance might be readily summoned. A submarine is a very weak craft, its strength lying almost entirely in the suddenness with which it makes its appearance. If the vessel which has been ordered to halt is able to call for help, the value of the submarine may be nullified. I feel that the sinking of the Falaba probably occurred in that way. It is certain that the
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1915 vessel got ample warning, that eventually she tried to slow down, and probably came to a stop. Some of her boats were lowered. But while this was being done she was working her wireless apparatus and called for help. This it probably was that caused the submarine to fire the torpedo that sank her. Much as I regret personally the loss of civil- ian and innocent lives, all the passengers had ample warning that by taking passage in the steamship they would expose themselves to danger. The warning that was issued for Feb- ruary 18 applied to the Falaba as well as to every other vessel flying the British flag. Concerning the death of an American citi- zen among those lost by the sinking of the Falaba, Dr. Dernburg said : That is very regrettable. At the same time, any number of Americans have very unpro- vokedly enlisted with the Allies. These have had, of course, to take their chances of being killed in the trenches, just as they have tried to kill Germans. No protest has come from this country in regard to them. If a citizen or sub- ject of a neutral country engages in war, or unnecessarily sojourns in the zone of war, he takes the consequences. ... On the German side it is the same thing as on that of the Allies ; if an American gets killed while fighting on the German side—why, he gets killed. We gave ample warning that every English vessel plying to or from a British port after February 18 was going to be torpedoed, with only such warning as the necessities of the case permitted. To venture into the English war zone is like going into a house that is burning. Americans who wish to keep out of harm’s way might patronize the American flag.... Nor has any American steamship on its way to England ever been in danger of being torpe- doed by a German submarine. The statement that was made with reference to such was will- fully distorted or perverted. The statement made by the German Government was simply that American vessels might come into danger through the use by the English of neutral flags, especially American flags, as a ruse of war. This practice, advised and sanctioned by the British Admiralty, was detrimental to the rights of neutral nations, and your President has protested against it. ENGLISH The sinking of the Falaba and Aguila with many of the non-combatants aboard the two vessels has struck England with horror, and demands for swift vengeance on the Germans are made on all sides. The Lon- don newspapers unite in expressing the indig- nation of the country at the loss of the lives of so many non-combatants, and especially OPINION THE FALABA AND AGUILA ATROCITIES 865 at the maiming of women by shell fire. ‘* Massacre ”’ is the word which is used most frequently to describe the killing of these non-combatants. The London “ Daily Telegraph ”’ says of the torpedoing : The conscience of civilization is not to be mocked by any pretense that such a deed is excusable. It was merely a criminal act of peculiar violence, a savage slaughter, as foul a thing as was done ... whereverthe . . . spirit of massacre has been unloosed against the help- less. The significance of it is that it presents the phenomenon of German military barbarism in a clear light; it is no longer open to any one to doubt its existence. If the Falaba massacre could be perpetrated in cold blood by men wearing the German Emperor’s uniform, let any reasoning being decide for himself what is possible to such men under the influence of excitement and anger. We leave it to a neutral world, The London “ Daily Mail ” remarks : Reprisals in kind the British navy cannot take, as it will never stoop to cold-blooded mur- der. We hope, however, that we shall hear no more in this country of sparing the Germans. The plain fact is that Germany, as a state, acknowledges no law but that of fear. Her people have repudiated alike Christianity and civilization. To palter with them before their immense and unpardonable sin has been inex- orably punished would be to betray the cause of justice. It would be false to that spirit which burns in the noble words of Mrs. Howe’s great “ Battle Hymn of the Republic :” “T have _ a fiery ‘gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: As ye deal with my contemnors, so with you my grace shall deal.” Among the victims of the pirate submarine was apparently at least one neutral, as a United States citizen, Leon Chester Thrasher, who was a passenger on the Falaba, is reported missing. The question whether the United States Government will permit a belligerent to destroy an unoffending passenger ship in which one of its subjects embarked without giving that subject any opportunity of escape is thus raised in the sharpest form. The London “ Daily Graphic ”’ says : The only comments yet received from neutral countries upon this dastardly crime against the Jaws of war and the laws of humanity come from the United States. The New York press, as might be expected, is emphatic upon the matter, and undoubtedly expresses the senti- ment of the vast mass of the American people. Unfortunately the United States has a Presi- dent who seems unable to recognize the distinc- tion between such crimes against humanity and
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SSE gt SEE TEPER er A a ee ST. Wh aS 866 THE OUTLOOK technical breaches of the rules of international law. Even at this moment President Wilson is reported to be onthe point of despatching a protest, directed not against Germany’s practice of committing wholesale murder upon the high seas, but against the technical irregularity of steps which Great Britain is taking by way of reprisals. Apparently Mr. Wilson has persuaded him- self that his whole duty consists in defending American trade from interference. It does not seem to have occurred to the head of the great- est neutral Power in the world that any obliga- tion rests upon him to uphold the sanctity of those long established principles of warfare which separate civilized men from savage beasts. AMERICAN OPINION The American press as represented by the New York City newspapers was instant in denunciation. The New York “Times” thus reviewed the case: It is beyond dispute that the German com- mander discharged the torpedo which destroyed the Falaba before her crew and passengers could possibly have time to get into the boats after receiving his warning to leave the ship. . In consequence more than one hundred inno- cent non-combatants lost their lives. Again in the case of the Aguila, the German submarine U-28 opened fire before the ship’s company could lower the boats, killing a woman pas- senger, the chief engineer, and two of the crew, and kept up the fire while boats were being lowered. ... The sinking of a peaceful merchant ship, even though she belongs to the enemy, and the killing and drowning of her officers, crew, and pas- sengers, are no part of the operations of war. The objects of the war are not furthered, by the slaughter of innocent men and women. And in authorizing or permitting her naval command- ers to carry on war in this savage manner the Germans do infinite harm to themselves. The destruction of the Falaba and so large a part of her company in this ruthless way tends to make the stories of German atrocities cred- ible. Ata time when the Germans know and admit that they are condemned by the opinion of civilized nations, it behooves their Government to be prompt in denouncing the Falaba crime as an unauthorized act. The New York “ Sun” calls attention to the fact that Germany’s development of her military policy has been marked by certain events which have counted incalculably in the formation of neutral opinion adverse to the Ger- man cause. For example, the “ Sun ” cites: 1. The initial invasion of Belgian territory. 2. The destruction of Louvain. 3. The attack on the Cathedral of Rheims. 4. The bombardment of unprotected seacoast towns. And now: 5. The murder of probably more than one hundred men and women, non-combatants, passengers and crews of the merchant vessels Falaba and Aguila, peacefully and inoffensively navigating the high seas. Concerning the last-named event the ** Sun ” says: This wanton destruction of innocent human life, undertaken avowedly for the purpose of terrorizing the British public and paralyzing commerce of all sorts within the region in which Germany has declared the suspension of the ordinary laws of civilized warfare, may not technically constitute murder—that is, in the view of municipal law. It may not constitute piracy according to the strict definition of that odious term; for the pirate claims no national flag, while these homicidal proceedings near the Welsh coast were conducted under the flag of the German Empire. .. . Yet if it is not piracy, in its elemental relation to the civilized code of warfare, what is it? If it is not deliberate murder, ... what is the right name for the crime? ‘This is not war as the civilized world knows it,”’ asserts the New York “ Tribune,”’ and continues : “ It is assassination. Officers and crews committing such crimes forfeit their right to be treated according to the laws of war. If captured, they should be tried for murder.” Says the New York ‘“ World :” The sinking of enemy merchant vessels before their crews can be taken off and assured of being safely landed is flatly contrary to inter- national law. To blow up or drown helpless passengers is infinitely worse. It is of no mili- tary advantage; this war will be determined, as wars always have been determined, by men in arms. It rouses the pity of the neutral world for the helpless victims and abhorrence for men in high command who order murder done. There can be but one opinion among right-minded men in regard to the sink- ing of the English steamers Falaba and Aguila, with their passengers, by German submarines, concludes the New York “ Eve- ning Post :”’ “In the light of international law the act was piracy. In the light of common humanity it was wickedness such as the history of war will find it difficult to match.”
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THE WAR BOOK OF THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF: A CRITICAL COMMENTARY BY EDWARD HALE BIERSTADT “ WAR conducted with energy can- A not be directed merely against the combatants of the enemy state and the positions they occupy, but it will and ~ must in like manner seek to destroy the total intellectual and material resources of the latter.”’ So died Belgium ! The sentence quoted above is from the third paragraph of the Introduction to ‘‘ The War Book of the German General Staff.” The text of this book is a literal and integral translation of the “ Kriegsbrauch in Land- kriege,” or ‘“‘ Usages of War on Land,” issued and reissued by the German General Staff for the instruction of German officers. It is the most authoritative work of its kind in Germany, and takes precedence over all other publications, whether military or legal, alike over the works of Bernhardi, the soldier, and of Holtzendorff, the jurist. The translation has been made by J. H. Morgan, M.A., Professor of Constitutional Law at University College, London, and the American edition has been published by . McBride, Nast & Co., of New York City. Professor Morgan has written a most ex- haustive Introduction, not only commenting on the book itself, but also dealing with the underlying causes which have resulted in such a philosophy. The professor is frankly prej- udiced, but even his prejudice does not dis- tort the facts with which he is dealing. An excerpt from the translator’s preface sums up the situation very fairly : “Hence the peculiar logic of this book, which consists for the most part in ostenta- tiously laying down unimpeachable rules and then quietly destroying them by debili- tating exceptions. The civil population of an invaded country—the young officer is re- minded on one page—is to be left undis- turbed in mind, body, and estate, their honor is to be inviolate, their lives protected, and their property secure. ‘To compel them to assist the enemy is brutal, to make them betray their own country is inhuman. Such _'See editorial on another page for comment.—THE EDITORS is the general proposition, Yet a little while and the Manual descends to particulars. Can the officer compel the peaceful inhabitants to give information about the strength and disposition of his country’s forces? Yes, answers the German War-Book, it is doubt- less regrettable, but it is often necessary. Should they be exposed to the fire of their own troops? Yes; it may be indefensible, but its ‘main justification’ is that it is ‘successful.’ Should the tribute of supplies levied upon them be proportioned to their ability to pay it? No; ‘this is all very well in theory but it would rarely be observed in practice.’ Should the forced labor of the inhabitants be limited to works which are not designed to injure their own country? No; this is an absurd distinction and impossible. Should prisoners of war be put to death? It is always ‘ugly,’ but it is sometimes ex- pedient. May one hire an assassin, or cor- rupt a citizen, or incite an incendiary? Cer- tainly ; it may not be reputable (anstaindig), and honor may fight shy of it, but the law of waris less ‘touchy ’ (empfindlich). Shouldthe women and children—the old and the feeble —be allowed to depart before a bombard- ment begins? On the contrary ; their pres- ence is greatly to be desired (eim Vortheil ) —it makes the bombardment all the more effective. Should the civil population of a small and defenseless country be entitled to claim the right, provided they carry their arms openly and use them honorably, to de- fend their native land from the invader ? No; they act at their peril, and must, how- ever sudden and wanton the invasion, elabo- rate an organization or they will receive no quarter.” Of course this is all of direct significance, but still it is Professor Morgan talking. Let us see what the book has to say for itself on several questions that have arisen in the past few months. The following excerpt deals with the futility of written agreements as scraps of paper: ‘“‘ Tf, therefore, in the following work the expression ‘the law of war’ is used, it must be understood that by it is meant not a /ex 867
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868 scripta introduced by international agree- ments; but only a reciprocity of mutual agreement ; a limitation of arbitrary behavior, which custom and conventionality, human friendliness and a calculating egotism have erected, but for the observance of which there exists no express sanction, but only ‘the fear of reprisals ’ decides.”’ To abstain from taking advantage of a situation because of a humanitarian view- point is quite outside the tenets of the com- pilers of the interesting volume. Note what is said as to women and children : ‘“‘ If the commandant of a fortress wishes to strengthen its defensive capacity by expel- ling a portion of the population, such as women, children, old people, wounded, etc., then he must take these steps in good time, z.é., before the investment begins. If the investment is completed, no claim to the free passage of these classes can be made good. All juristic demands to the contrary are, as a matter of principle, to be repudiated, as being in fundamental conflict with the prin- ciples cf war. The very presence of such persons may accelerate the surrender of the place in certain circumstances, and it would therefore be foolish of a besieger to renounce voluntarily this advantage.” A notable bit of casuistry is that contained in two paragraphs treating of the corruption of the enemy’s subjects, of murder as a fine art, and of the mistake of being too “ nice- minded :” ‘*‘ Bribery of the enemy’s subjects with the object of obtaining military advantages, ac- ceptance of offers of treachery, reception of deserters, utilization of the discontented elements in the population, support of pre- tenders, and the like, are permissible, indeed international law is in no way opposed to the exploitation of the crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiarism, robbery, and the like) to the prejudice of the enemy. ‘“‘ Considerations of chivalry, generosity, and honor may denounce in such cases a hasty and unsparing exploitation of such advantages as indecent and dishonorable, but law which is less touchy allows it. The ugly and in- herently immoral aspect of such methods cannot affect the recognition of their lawful- ness. The necessary aim of war gives the belligerent the right and imposes upon him, according to circumstances, the duty not to let slip the important, it may be the decisive, advantages to be gained by such means.” As the translator justly remarks in a foot- THE OUTLOOK 14 April note: ‘“ There are certain things on which international law is silent because it will not admit the possibility of their existence. As Professor Holland well puts it (‘The Laws of War on Land,’ p. 61), in reference to the subject of reprisals the Hague Conference ‘declined to seem to add to the authority of a practice so repulsive’ by legislating on the subject. And so with assassination. It can never be presumed from the Hague or other international agreements that what is not expressly forbidden is thereby approved.” The different modes of treatment accorded war correspondents by Germany and the Allies have naturally been the subject of con- siderable comment. The explanation of at least one side of the shield is revealed in the chapter on ‘Civilians in the Train of an Army :” “This circumspection must be observed most scrupulously in the case of newspaper correspondents, whether native or foreign. Since the component parts of a modern army are drawn from all grades of the population, the intervention of the press for the purpose of intellectual intercourse between the army and the population at home can no longer be dispensed with. The army also derives great advantages from this intellectual intercourse ; it has had to thank the stimulus of the press in recent campaigns for an unbroken chain of benefits, quite apart from the fact that news of the war in the newspapers is a neces- sity for every soldier. The importance of this intervention, and, on the other hand, the dangers and disadvantages which may arise from its misuse, make it obviously necessary that the military authorities should control the whole of the press when in the field.” Then follow a long series of rules for correspondents and the penalties attached to their violation. Throughout the book—ex- cept where ambiguity is a matter of policy— the rules are precise and definite to the last detail. Part Two of the work is devoted to “ The Usages of War in Regard to Enemy Terri- tory and Its Inhabitants.” The extract quoted below serves to illustrate the habits pursued in this book of stating a premise and then nullifying it by a blanket exception : ‘Tt follows from all this, as a matter of right, that, as regards the personal position of the inhabitants of the occupied territory, neither in life nor in limb, in honor nor in free- dom, are they to be injured, and that every unlawful killing ; every bodily injury, due to
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1915 THE WAR BOOK OF THE fraud or negligence ; every insult ; every dis- turbance of domestic peace ; every attack on family, honor, and morality, and, generally, every unlawful and outrageous attack or act of violence, are just as strictly punishable as though they had been committed against the inhabitants of one’s own land. There fol- lows, also, as a right of the inhabitants of the enemy territory, that the invading army can only limit their personal independence in so far as the necessity of war unconditionally demands it, and that any infliction that need- lessly goes beyond this is to be avoided. ** As against this right, there is naturally a corresponding duty on the part of the inhab- itants to conduct themselves in a. really peaceable manner, in no wise to participate in the conflict, to abstain from every injury to the troops of the power in occupation, and not to refuse obedience to the enemy’s gov- ernment. If this presumption is not fulfilled, then there can no longer be any talk of violations of the immunities of the inhabi- tants ; rather they are treated and punished strictly according to martial law.”’ From this we go to particulars whereby it is seen that a man can be compelled to betray his country and worse. ‘The phrase in italics below is an epitome of the policy out- lined, ‘‘ the end excuses the means ’’—which, by the way, is a French proverb: ‘The view that no inhabitant of occupied territory can be compelled to participate directly in the struggle against his own coun- try is subject to an exception by the general usages of war which must be recorded here : the calling up and employment of inhabitants on unfamiliar ground. However much it may ruffle human feeling to compel a man to do harm to his own Fatherland, and in- directly to fight his own troops, none the less no army operation in an enemy’s country will altogether renounce this expedient. ‘* But a still more severe measure is the compulsion of the inhabitants to furnish information about their own army, its strat- egy, its resources, and its military secrets. The majority of writers of all nations are unanimous in their condemnation of this measure. Nevertheless it cannot be entirely dispensed with ; doubtless it will be applied with regret, but the argument of war will frequently make it necessary. “As to 5 and 6, the summoning of the inhabitants to supply vehicles and perform works has also been stigmatized as an un- justifiable compulsion upon the inhabitants 869 to participate in ‘ military operations.’ But it is clear that an officer can never allow such a far-reaching extension of this con- ception, since otherwise every possibility of compelling work would disappear, while every kind of work to be performed in war, every vehicle to be furnished in any connec- tion with the conduct of war, is or may be bound up with it. Thus the argument of war must decide. ‘The German Staff in the war of 1870, moreover, rarely made use of compulsion in order to obtain civilian workers for the performance of necessary works. It paid high wages, and therefore almost always had at its disposal sufficient offers. ‘This procedure should therefore be maintained in future cases. The provision of a supply of labor is best arranged through the medium of the local authorities. In case of refusal of workers punishment tan, of course, be inflicted. ‘lherefore the conduct of the Ger- man civil commissioner, Count Renard—so strongly condemned by French jurists and jurists with French sympathies—who, in order to compel labor for the necessary repair of a bridge, threatened, in case of refusal, after stringent threats of punishment had not suc- ceeded in getting the work done, to punish the workers by shooting some of them, was in accordance with the actual laws of war ; the main thing was that it attained its object without its being necessary to practice it.’’ Still more and worse : ‘“* A new application of ‘ hostage-right ’ was practiced by the German Staff in the war of 1870, when it compelled leading citizens from French towns and villages to accompany trains and locomotives in order to protect the railways communications which were threat- ened by the people. Since the.lives of peace- able inhabitants were without any fault on their part thereby exposed to grave danger, every writer cutside Germany has stigmatized this measure as contrary to the law of na- tions and as unjustified towards the inhabi- tants of the country. “As against this un- favorable criticism it must be pointed out that this measure, which was also recognized on the German side as harsh and cruel, was only resorted to after declarations and in- structions of the occupying authorities had proved ineffective, and that in the particular circumstance it was the only method which promised to be effective against the doubtless unauthorized, indeed the criminal, behavior. of a fanatical population. * Herein lies its justification under the laws GERMAN GENERAL STAFF
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870 of war, but still more in the fact that it proved completely successful, and_ that wherever citizens were thus carried on the trains (whether result was due to the in- creased watchfulness of the communes or to the immediate influence on the population), the security of traffic was restored. “To protect one’s self against attack and injuries from the inhabitants and to employ ruthlessly the necessary means of defense and intimidation is obviously not only a right but indeed a duty of the staff of the army. The ordinary law will in this matter generally not suffice; it must be supplemented by the law of the enemy’s might. Martial law and courts martial must take the place of the ordinary jurisdiction.” How in the name of justice, decency, and common sense does the German General Staff reconcile this with the following state- ment appearing a few pages farther on ? ‘The inhabitants of the occupied territory owe the same obedience to the organs of Government and administration of the con- queror as they owed before the occupation to their own. An act of disobedience cannot be excused by reference to the laws or com- mands of one’s own Government; even so an attempt to remain associated with the old Government or to act in agreement with it is punishable. Ox the other hand, the pro- visional Government can demand nothing which can be construed as an offense against one’s own Fatherland or as a direct or indirect participation in the war.” Especially in view of what has happened in Belgium and what may happen in Switzer- land, the dictates of the General Staff on neutrality are of interest. Some of the chief duties and rights of neutral states are out- lined as follows: “ The territory of neutral states is available for none of the belligerents for its military operations. ‘The Government of the neutral state has therefore, once war is declared, to prevent the subjects of both parties from marching through it; it has likewise to pre- vent the laying out of factories and workshops for the manufacture of war requisites for one or other of the parties. Also the organiza- tion of troops and the assembling of ‘ Free- lances’ on the territory of neutral states is not allowed by the’law of nations. .. . “The neutral state has the right to be re- garded as still at peace with the belligerents as with others. “ The belligerent states have to respect the THE OUTLOOK 14 April inviolability of the neutral and the undisturbed exercise of its sovereignty in its home affairs, to abstain from any attack upon the same, even if the necessity of war should make such an attack desirable. Neutral states, there- fore, possess also the right of asylum for single members or adherents of the belliger- ent Powers, so far as no favor to one or other of them is thereby implied. Even the reception of a smaller or larger detachment of troops which is fleeing from pursuit does not give the pursuer the right to continue his pursuit across the frontier of the neutral ter- ritory. It is the business of the neutral state to prevent troops crossing over in order to reassemble in the chosen asylum, reform, and sally out to a new attack. “Tf the territory of a neutral state is tres- passed upon by one of the belligerent parties for the purpose of its military operations, then this state has the right to proceed against this violation of its territory with all the means in its power and to disarm the trespassers. If the trespass has been committed on the orders of the army staff, then the state con- cerned is bound to give satisfaction and com- pensation ; if it has been committed on their own responsibility, then the individual offend- ers can be punished as criminals.”’ Two points arise in regard to the general policy set forth in this work. First, it is obvious that a certain number of the “ rules ” given are diametrically opposed not only to the laws resulting from the Hague Conven- tion, but to every law of decency and civiliza- tion. This transgression is not so apparent in itself, but results from the frequency of the blanket exceptions touching certain usages of war. ‘ Be honorable if you can— but achieve your end at any cost,’’ seems to be the essence of this philosophy. Next, there are a few flagrant examples of the violation by the Germans of their own code. The extract quoted below is taken from, the chapter headed ‘“ Violence and Cunning :” ‘“‘Some forms of artifice are, however, under all circumstances irreconcilable with honorable fighting, especially all those which take the form of faithlessness, fraud, or breach of one’s word. Among these are breach of a safe-conduct; of a free retire- ment; or of an armistice, in order to gain by a surprise attack an advantage over the enemy ; feigned surrender in order to kill the enemy who then approach unsuspiciously ; misuse of a flag of truce, or of the Red
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1915 Cross, in order to secure one’s approach, or in case of attack, deliberate violation of a solemnly concluded obligation, ¢. g., of a war treaty ; incitement to crime, such as murder of the enemy’s leaders, incendiarism, robbery, and the like. ‘This kind of outrage was an offense against the law of nations even in the earliest times. ‘The natural conscience of mankind, whose spirit is chivalrously alive in the armies of all civilized states, has branded it as an outrage upon human right, and enemies who in such a public manner violate the laws of honor ,and justice have been regarded as no longer on an equality.” One of the most remarkable things about this is that we are informed by unimpeach- able eye-witnesses that the Germans have not once, but repeatedly, taken advantage of a Red Cross ambulance to approach the trenches of the Allies, and have even opened fire from this position. And as for the rest RUSSIA AFTER THE WAR 871 of it, that is rendered fruitless by the excep- tion noted in reference to taking advantage of the crimes of third persons—non-belliger- ents—thus placing a premium on the very atrocity so heartily condemned’ in this later paragraph. It is amusing to observe that all through the book frequent foot-notes as well as the text proper call attention to breaches of faith and violations of the usages of war by the French in 1870. The saintly light in which the Germans are made to appear in compari- son suggests either a refreshing mazveté on the part of the General Staff or an over- whelming confidence in the credulity of the persons for whom the book is intended. Altogether ‘‘ The War Book of the Ger- man General Staff” is one of the most astounding as well as illuminating documents so far produced by the great European con- flict. ; RUSSIA AFTER THE WAR II—PRESENT AND FUTURE POLICY BY GEORGE I’ the present attitude of the Russian | Government toward reform is to be taken as an indication of its future policy, there is little prospect of a change for the better. Six weeks after the war began the well-known Russian economist, Peshe- khonof, said : ‘Tt is not difficult to predict what the future: of Russia will be under conditions that have already been clearly defined. The Govern- ment is proceeding firmly and inflexibly along the road that it has previously followed. If there be any difference, it is only in the greater assurance and self-confidence of our rulers.”’? Six months have passed since the above words were written, and the inflexible deter- mination of the Government to proceed along the old road is more clearly apparent now than it was then. There has been no change whatever in bureaucratic methods of adminis- tration, and no indication that the Czar will pursue after the war any other course than that which he pursued before the war and is pursuing now. ‘United Russia,” by A. Peshekhonof; ‘ Russkoe Bogatstvo,” Petrograd, September [4, 1914. KENNAN If there were betting at Lloyds on the chance of reform in Russia, as there is on the speedy conclusion of peace in Europe, the odds would probably be about “10 to 1 against.”” ‘The conservative Russian press, in fact, is already warning the public not to indulge in ‘idle dreams.’”’ Mr. Menshikof, the well-known leader-writer of the ‘‘ Novoe Vremya,”’ said, in a recent number of that semi-official journal : ** The dreaming liberals must look at things soberly. After the war everything will be as it has been, and discussion will relate to means of strengthening the foundations, not of un- settling them. The victorious people, of course, will provide themselves with all neces- sary freedom and enlightenment ; but they will do it in the Russian, the historical, and the Government style, not in any other style.” In this cynical paragraph Mr. Menshikof foreshadows accurately, no doubt, the policy that the Government will pursue when peace shall have been restored. ‘There will be no ‘unsettling of foundations,” and the « free- dom” which the “victorious people” may
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872 expect is the “‘ historical, Russian freedom in the Government style” which the Czar’s happy subjects have so long enjoyed! One of the most striking proofs of the Government's intention to follow the old road is to be found in the recent suppression of the Free Economic Society of Petrograd. In an article on “ War Relief in Russia,” pub- lished in The Outlook of February 24, 1915, I referred briefly to the fact that this Society had undertaken to furnish occupation and entertainment to convalescent soldiers in the war hospitals by distributing among them more than half a million books. The litera- ture thus supplied had been contributed by a great number of individuals, and it was adapted, as far as possible, to the taste and comprehension of peasants who had had only a common-school education ; but it was not selected with a view to political effect, nor did it include any forbidden books. Gen- eral Muratof, however, the reactionary Gov- ernor of Kursk, did not approve of putting books into the hands of the people, and especially into the hands of soldiers; so he proceeded to ransack the hospital libraries of the Free Economic Society with the hope of finding something that smacked of “sedition.” His search was rewarded by the discovery of Tolstoy’s “ Thoughts of Great Men ;”’ Erck- mann-Chatrian’s ‘Story of a Peasant ;” Bogdanovitch’s ‘‘ Government and People of Switzerland ;” and two books on west-Euro- pean labor unions. These were enough. At once he sounded an alarm; confiscated the libraries; and declared that the Free Eco- nomic Society was trying to “corrupt and demoralize”’ the people by circulating books that were “as injurious to soldiers as pornographic literature would be to young girls.” If an autocratic but sensible man like Peter the Great or Nicholas I had been on the throne of Russia, he would probably have said to this bumptious bureaucrat: ‘ You’re an ass! Govern your province, if you can, but leave literature to the censor; it’s his business, not yours.” Nicholas II, however, is not a man of that type. He and “the spheres ’’ sympathized with the Governor’s fear of books, and it soon became known to other bureaucrats, who were watching for an indication of the Imperial will, that the Free Economic Society was under a cloud. Then they, too, sounded the alarm, confiscated the libraries, and issued “ obligatory regulations ”’ declaring that any person who distributed— THE OUTLOOK 14 April or even received—books of the Free Eco- nomic Society would be punished with a fine of three thousand rubles, or imprisonment for three months. Everybody thought that this would end the danger and the trouble. Five hundred thou- sand books had been rendered useless; the people had been protected from “ corrup- tion,” and the country was safe. What more could be asked? The Czar and “the spheres,’’ however, were far from being: sat- isfied. This particular peril had been averted; but some other society might try to ‘“‘demoralize” the people by circulating ‘* Thoughts of Great Men,” descriptions of Switzerland, or novels of Erckmann-Chatrian. It was necessary, therefore, to make an ex- ample of the first offender, and thus prevent a recurrence of the evil. If the peasants should ever find out that there are labor unions in western Europe, or that “ Great Men ” have deprecated war, it might be im- possible to control them. As a warning, therefore, to other incendiary promoters of enlightenment, the Free Economic Society, on the 13th of February, was suppressed “ during the continuance of martial law,”’ or, in other words, for the whole period of the war. Thusthe country was again saved! The Imperial Free Economic Society—to give it its full title—was founded at St. Peters- burg in the reign of Catherine II, just one hundred and fifty years ago. It is the oldest scientific society in the Empire, and during the century and a half of its existence it has borne on its rolls the names of the ablest and most patriotic citizens of Russia. It was organized originally for the consideration and discussion of purely economic subjects, but it has always taken a deep interest in the public welfare, and in recent years has devoted so much time and attention to relief work, on a national scale, that it has become almost a sup- plementary Red Cross. In every great famine of the last fifty years it has been foremost in the collection and distribution of food for the starving, and between 1891 and 1893, in particular, it established hundreds of feeding stations in the provinces where the crops had failed. When the present war broke out, the Free Economic Society took the field at once as a national dispenser of relief to the wounded, to the families of soldiers, and to homeless fugitives from the various fields of military activity. At the time of its suppression it was supporting two large military hospitals of
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1915 its own, as well as many feeding stations ; it had standing committees on war relief in Poland and in the Caucasus; it had sent half a million books to wounded soldiers in the hospitals ; it was collecting money for patriotic purposes in all parts of the Empire ; it was publishing a weekly bulletin of twenty- five to thirty pages, setting forth the nature and results of its operations; and it would shortly have received five thousand rubles which the American Committee of Mercy had put to its credit in the National City Bank of New York. In short, it was doing a splen- did piece of work in a skillful and practical way. Inasmuch as all economists in Russia are liberals, the political views of the Free Eco- nomic Society were liberal ; but the loyalty and patriotism of its officers and members, in the strain of war, ought never to have been questioned for a moment. Its Presi- dent, Professor Maxim M. Kovalevsky, was a prisoner in Germany ; its Secretary, A. M. Rykachef, entered the army as a volunteer early in the war, and was killed in action ; the chairman of its famine relief committee, A. M. Koliubakin, also volunteered and was killed in battle; and three members of its Council, namely, G. A. Falbork, Count P. M. Tolstoy, and Prince Obolensky, were serving in sanitary commissions at the front. And yet Governor Muratof of Kursk, who had long held the rank of.‘ general,’ but who had never imperiled his life in the de- fense of his country, attacked this useful and patriotic society, and finally brought about its suspension, merely because he had found among the books in one of its hospital libra- ries a description of Switzerland, ‘‘ Thoughts of Great Men,” by Count Tolstoy, and the novels of Erckmann-Chatrian. But he had his reward. The Czar immediately gave him a profitable position in the Council of the Ministry of the Interior, and appointed him chief of the subsistence department of the Empire. (‘‘ Mysl,” March 4, 1915.) That, obviously, was much better for a general in the army than going to the front and getting killed. Mr. Koliubakin, chairman of the famine relief committee of the Free Eco- nomic Society, who did go to the front and get killed, was rewarded in a different way. The Government regarded him as “ preju- dicial to public order” even when he was dead ; and on the day when his battle-scarred body was laid in the grave in Petrograd the censor eliminated nearly half of the eulogistic RUSSIA AFTER THE WAR 873 references to him in the funeral notice of the ‘“‘ Reitch.”’ ? Should any one think that these facts are insufficient to show that the Russian Govern- ment intends to follow the old road, the pro- duction of more evidence of the same kind is easy. In an article by Jean Finot on “ Rus- sia of To-Day and To-Morrow,” published in the New York “Times” of March 28, the well-known French writer and editor refers in the following words to the exile of Burtsef : ‘‘The Bourtseff case is most significant. This veteran revolutionist, who won so much sympathy while staying in Paris and London, relinquished his aims at the outbreak of hostilities, and returned to Russia to preach national union even under the banner of autocracy. Before departing he proclaimed the necessity for all advanced parties to rally round the Czar and his Government, in order to fight the common enemy. Trusting to the generosity of his sovereign and to the sacred union of the Russian people, he crossed the frontier. Hee was arrested. Then the Court of Assizes, which sentences without a jury, found a way to condemn him to deportation for life.” Another similar case is that of Vera Figner (Madame Philippova). This heroic woman, who is now more than sixty years of age, is another veteran revolutionist who seems to have trusted the generosity or good faith of the Russian Government. After endur- ing twenty years of solitary confinement in the fortress of Schlusselburg, she was re- leased a few years ago and took refuge in western Europe. In March, 1915, on a promise of safety, it is said, from the Minister of the Interior, she returned to Russia from Switzerland, and was immediately arrested. What has happened to her since that time I do not know; but in all probability she will go back to her cell in the fortress of Schlusselburg, or join Burtsef and Madame Breshkovskaya in Siberia. The Russian Government never forgets and never forgives. The recent exile for life of five Social Democratic members of the Duma has been noticed in the American press, and I need only refer to it. Their offense was that they had held a secret consultation with half a dozen other persons concerning war and peace. They were not charged with treason, or even with conspiracy. ‘They had merely talked, in an academic way, about the desira- bility and the possibility of ending the present 1See blank spaces in the Koliubakin funeral notice, “ Reitch,” Petrograd, February 18, 1915.
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874 conflict, and of settling international disputes without resort to war. In the field of the press the censorship, in many respects, is more severe now than it was a year or two years ago. Among news- papers recently punished (not for articles relating to the war, but for “ prejudicial ten- dency ” in general) are the ‘‘ Russkoe Slovo,” of Moscow (fined 3,000 rubles for an editorial on the late Minister of Public Instruction) ; the “ Utra Rossii” (fined 3,000 rubles for an article entitled “‘ News of the Day”); the “‘ Volkhovski Leaflet ” (editor sentenced to imprisonment for an article published on the third anniversary of the death of Count Tol- stoy); the “ Borba” (editor imprisoned for three months on account of an article entitled ‘‘ The History of the Last Ten Years’’) ; the ‘‘ Novy Raboche Gazette ” (editor sentenced to one year in a fortress for reprinting a speech made by Deputy Skobelef in the Duma); and the “ Raboche Trud ” (editor sentenced to eighteen months in a fortress for “ inciting hostility of laborers t6ward their employers”’). The ‘“ Minusinski Krai,” of Minusinsk ; the “ Dalnivostochny Mir,” of Vladivostok; and the ‘“ Echo,” of Blago- veshchensk, have been suspended for the whole period of the war. The “ Nasha Zhizn,’”. of Moscow, was suppressed before its first number appeared. The Government did not like its prospectus, nor its list of con- tributors, and therefore seized and destroyed it while its first issue was still on the press. It also confiscated in the same way the “ First Almanac for Women ” in Moscow. In most of the larger cities and towns of the Empire the milder form of martial law known as “reinforced defense” has been superseded by “extraordinary defense ” and ‘state of war ;’’ and under the enlarged dis- cretionary power given to the bureaucracy by these more drastic forms of military rule, such freedom of speech as the press previous- ly had has been greatly abridged. Editors, for example, who two years ago were fined 500 rubles or imprisoned for three months, may now, for the same offense, be fined 3,000 rubles or sent to a fortress for a year and a half. The same tendency toward repressive measures of increased severity is shown in the treatment of religious dissenters generally, and Baptists and Evangelicals in particular. The Rev. Mr. Fetler, head of the Russian Baptists in Petrograd, has been expelled from the city ; the Rev. A. A. Alexin has been ban- ished from the province of Kharkof; ten THE OUTLOOK Baptist preachers in Odessa have been exiled to western Siberia, and all the Baptist and Evangelical churches in that city have been closed. The Circuit Court of Moscow has sentenced three Baptist clergymen to fortress imprisonment because their preaching re- sulted in the conversion of Orthodox be- lievers; the Baptist war hospital in the same city has been closed by order of the gradona- chalnik (pretect), and the Baptists have not been allowed to establish hospitals in Eliza- vetgrad and Tiflis. Meanwhile, the news- papers managed or controlled by the Black Hundreds are permitted to incite and en- courage this religious persecution, and to denounce the Baptists, Stundists, and Lu- therans in particular, for the alleged reason that their ‘‘ pernicious’’ forms of dissent were introduced into Russia from Germany. In the article on “ Russia of To-Day and To-Morrow,” from which I have already quoted, Mr. Jean Finot expresses the belief that the medizeval barbarism of the Russian Government is largely due to German influ- ence. Inthe development of this idea he says : ‘* It is well known how greatly the interview of Czar Nicholas with the Kaiser at Cronstadt in 1907 transformed the Russian policy. Under the baleful influence of the Berlin crank the Duma miscarried, and the famous ‘law of tolerance’ of 1907 (the Freedom Manifesto ?) became a dead letter.” That German influence has always been opposed to the development of freer institu- tions in Russia is probably true. As my Russian friend, Dr. Russel, says in a recent letter from Japan, ‘“ The body of the mediz- val eagle was in Berlin; Vienna was one of its wings, and St. Petersburg the other.” German influence, however, does not control the Czar or the Russian bureaucracy now. Who, then, is responsible at the present time for the suppression of the Free Economic Society, the dishonorable if not treacherous arrest of Burtsef and Vera Figner, the exile of five members of the Duma, the campaign against the press, the continued persecution of the Jews, the renewal of aggression in Finland, and the recent attacks on the Bap- tists? All these things have happened since the relations between Russia and Germany became hostile. ‘To me they seem to indicate that the Czar, “the spheres,’’ and the bu- reaucracy have medizeval ideas of their own, not wholly derived from Germany, and that they will never leave the old road until they are driven from it by force.
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Current Events Pictorially Treated Fle FROM THE STATUE BY GUTZON BORGLUM, IN THE ESSEX COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY “WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE, WITH CHARITY FOR ALL” Fifty eed ago, April 15, 1865, President Lincoln died. To the influence of his words quoted above and his spirit of orgiveness and brotherly sympathy toward all his fellow-Americans is probably due in great measure the fact that a half-century after his death America is unitedas never before. During his fife time there were those who doubted his wisdom and discredited his statesmanship; at the present time he is universally regarded as one of the world’s greatest and wisest men
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COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD AN AMERICAN WHO LOST HIS LIFE WHEN THE FALABA, A BRITISH SHIP, WAS TORPEDOED BY A GERMAN SUBMARINE Mr. Leon Chester Thrasher, of Hardwick, Massachusetts, was one of the passengers who lost their ives when the Falaba (shown below) was torpedoed. He was 3I years old and was a native of the United States PHOTOGRAPH BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD THE BRITISH STEAMBR FALABA, SUNK BY THE U-28 OFF THE COAST OF WALES While the Falaba was getting her boats out, in obedience to the orders of the submarine, she was torpedoed, with the result that over one hundred of her passengers and crew were either killed by the explosion or drowned in the heavy sea that was running at the time THE GERMAN SUBMARINES’
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PHOTOGRAPH BY INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICE THE GERMAN SUBMARINE U-29 AS’ SHE WAS ABOUT TO DESTROY THE BRITISH STEAMER HEADLANDS OFF THE SCILLY ISLANDS The torpedo that sunk the vessel was fired just two minutes after this photograph was made from the deck of the doomed steamship by her captain PHOTOGRAPH BY INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICE THE CREWS OF THE SHIPS DESTROYED BY THE SUBMARINE BEING TOWED TO SAFETY bY A TUG THAT CAME TO THEIR RESCUE This picture, showing the boats of the Headland and the Indian City (both torpedoed by the U-29) as they were towed to port by a tug, was also taken by the captain of the IHleadlands DEADLY ACTIVITIES
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PHOTQGKAPH BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD IN THE PASSES OF THE CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS Some ot the fiercest fighting of the war has been going on in the wooded passes of the Carpathian Mountains in Hungary. The photograph shows the advance of an Austrian artillery corps through this difficult region
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PHOTOGRAPH BY AMERICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION BARON ROTHSCHILD, HEAD OF THE GREAT FAMILY OF FINANCIERS Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who died in London, March 31, was the guiding influence in the control of the great fortune of the wealthiest family of the world, which is estimated at two billions of dollars. Che late Baron’s principal occupation was the rnanagement of this enormous fortune, but he was also known for his philanthropic labors, King Edward was one of his intimate friends
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PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRIS & ewe LAYING THE CORNER-STONE OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS HOSPITAL AT WASHINGTON Miss Mabel T. Boardman, Chairman of the American Red Cross, is seen in the picture at the extreme right as she was delivering the address at the ceremonies which accompanied the laying of the corner-stone ; among her dis- tinguished auditors are to be seen (from left to right in the front row): William Howard Taft; President Wilson; Joseph R. Lamar, Justice of the Supreme Court; Henry Breckinridge, Assistant Secre- tary of War; the Rev. Henry N. Couden, Chaplain of the ftouse of Representatives
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PHOTOGRAPHED FOR THE OUTLOOK BY PIRIE MACDONALD THE ONE-ARMED MAN FINDS A JOB This is a picture of Michael Brown, whose story is told on another page in Mrs. Denison’s article about some remarkable work a New York church is doing to relieve war suffering
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THE ONE-ARMED MAN FINDS A JOB BY BEATRICE DENISON NE-ARMED, hungry, ragged, shiver- () ing with cold, Michael Brown stood little chance of getting a job when he applied at the basement door of a certain parish house in New York City a few weeks ago. But he got it, and he is making good. He is happy, and so are you when you look into his cheery face and watch the sturdy figure with the basket as it swings along in a somewhat sidewise fashion from work-table to work-table. Every week hundreds of employment seekers are turned away from that basement door through which Michael passed from dis- couragement and despair to self-respect and happiness. On the day he applied it seemed impossible to find work for any more than were already seated at the long tables. How could another man be taken on—a man with only one arm? Yet the desperate need of this poor, handicapped fellow-being made such an appeal to the leader of the work, the Rev. Herbert Shipman, that he could not dismiss him. Inspiration came. This one-armed man could carry a basket to each table, gather up the finished work, and take it to the shipping-room. And this is Michael’s job. Out of the wreckage of his life there has emerged a cheerful spirit; pride in having real work, gratitude for friendly encourage- ment. Michael has been “ born again.” If you should go to Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, New York City, you would see Michael. You would find him in the parish-house basement of the Church of the Heavenly Rest. He is collecting the hospi- tal bandages which are being made there for the European Red Cross by the down-and- out. soldiers of American industry, recruits from our vast army of the unemployed As you look down the rows of long white-oilcloth- covered tables where over two hundred men are busily working you see many faces on which defeat has set its stamp, but, as Michael passes among them, here and there a face lights up with a smile. Do you see that man with the bound-up hand?) He is holding one end of a strip of gauze in his other hand so that his neighbor can roll more firmly a bandage which he is making. The day that this man with the crip- pled hand applied for work there was no place vacant. But he begged so pitifully that Dr. Shipman finally took him in, only to find that he had an infected finger. This made it impossible for him to work on these hos- pital bandages. He was sent away, abjectly miserable. The next day he came back. ‘Guess there ain’t no danger now, sir, from that sore finger. There it is,” he said, handing Dr. Shipman a small package. “I went to a hospital and had it cut off. You’ll give mea job to-day, won’t you, sir?’ He got the job. At atable over in the corner Michael stops for a whispered conversation with a young man who is working with almost feverish eagerness. There is a story about him, too. It was a bitterly cold day when he appeared at the basement door asking for work. His clothes were thin, his face haggard. Asked when he had had his last meal, he said that he had not eaten for forty-eight hours; also that he had a wife and two little children, and that another baby was coming. The urgency of his need was apparent, but there was really no more room. When he heard this he turned away without a word. Butas he did so Dr. Shipman caught sight of a curiously tragic expression in his face, a look unlike the usual pall of discouragement. Something in that look made Dr. Shipman resolve, then and there, to find this man something to do, if only for one day. So he called him back. “T shall never forget,’ said the rector, “the almost transfigured look that came over that man’s face when I told him he could have work. At the end of the day he came to me. ‘ Doctor,’ he said, ‘if you hadn't given me a chance this morning, I’d have quit the game for good. I’d made up my mind I’d never go back to the wife again without a job. AndI thought thatif I was out of the way the charity folks would take care of her and the babies. But it’s all right now. Here, sir, please take this.’ And he handed me a bottle of bichloride of mercury tablets.”’ It was the realization of the terrible need of the unemployed that led to the establish- ment of this enterprise. These men are employed in making hospital bandages for the wounded soldiers on the battlefields of Europe. The Red Cross Society is in dire 883
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884 need of such supplies. There is nothing “‘ make-believe ” about the work. The war sufferers are in extremity for these things ; our own unemployed are in need of a chance to sell their labor. With one stone Dr. Shipman is killing the two birds that most need killing at the hands of Americans. The enterprise was started on January 14, with twenty-one men; within a week over two hundred were working. Since that time over a hundred applicants have been turned away every day because there is not money enough to provide for more workers. Almost all these men are American-born. They are men who have had fairly good jobs as me- chanics, teamsters, packers, clerks, book- keepers, farm-hands. A surprisingly large number of them have been hospital attend- ants. And these men must be turned out on the streets again to take up the almost hope- less task of finding employment unless more contributions are received before April 19. Each man receives a daily wage of fifty cents and a wholesome luncheon. Material for the work costs $60a day. Wages amount to about $600 a week, and the whole enter- prise costs over a thousand dollars a week. In the twelve weeks since January 14 over twenty thousand dozen bandages and nearly two hundred and fifty thousand gauze rolls have been sent to the Red Cross for use in England, France, Belgium, Russia, Servia, and Germany. ‘These bandages are all sci- entifically constructed. The men _ were taught by volunteer hospital nurses. Per- haps the necessity of ** making good on the job ” lent their fingers unaccustomed dexter- ity, but, at any rate, the result is everything that an exacting surgeon or nurse could de- sire. ‘There are gauze rolls, wound drains, small plugs for bullet holes, arm slings, frac- ture bandages, and huge body bandages. The last named are thriftily made out of long cases of unbleached muslin stuffed with the ravelings from tearing and cutting the gauze and muslin. This work has bred from the start a re- markable spirit of co-operation. Almost every- body who has heard about it wants to help —with personal service if he cannot give money. The hospitals help by sterilizing all these bandages free of charge. A large department store undertakes to cart the cases from the hospitals to the docks from which the Red Cross shipments are made. More than thirty volunteers, men and women, give their services in supervising the work in the THE OUTLOOK 14 April basement, keeping the registry of the men, serving the luncheons, recording the ship- ments, and so on. A doctor contributes sev- eral hours each day ; for numbers of the men are so weakened from lack of proper nour- ishment, from exposure and the fatigue of tramping the streets all day looking for work, that they are in real need of medical super- vision. Those who have helped to keep this work going are not all members of Dr. Shipton’s parish by any means ; some of them are not even church-goers, and they represent various creeds and states of belief or unbelief. Their hearts are touched by the common love of humanity. One cold day in February a man came to the basement and asked to see Dr. Shipman. **] want to do something to help,” he said, “but I can’t spare money. Could you use an overcoat for one of these poor chaps ?” ‘Why, yes,” the rector answered. ‘“ Then here is one for somebody,” the visitor said, and, taking off his coat, he left it and went away. Almost every applicant for work is found to be actually suffering from hunger. Dr. Shipman realized the limited power of fifty cents to purchase food and shelter, and re- solved to interest people in supplying a nour- ishing luncheon to these workers as part of their pay. The response was generous. The men are now served a luncheon consisting of a large bowl of rich, hot soup, and a sandwich made of inch-thick pieces of bread and butter containing slices of cold meat or cheese. An ex-butler out of a job gravely and deftly slaps the sandwiches together. With the sandwich goes a cup of hot coffee, and often there is a banana or an orange to take home to the little ones. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel has daily - supplied forty gallons of excellent soup and dozens of loaves of bread; one woman con- tributes two large cheeses every week; an- other friend sends several bunches of bananas or boxes of oranges and apples, and another often gives a barrel of potatoes. When the day’s work is done, the men who have families to support are allowed to take home five or Six potatoes. The hours of work have been wisely arranged to last from ten-thirty in the morn- ing till three in the afternoon. This gives the men a chance to look for permanent jobs. Already Dr. Shipman and his asso- ciates have found permanent positions for seventy-five men. Places for sixteen of the
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1915 youngest and strongest were found on one of the transports sailing for France with horses for use in the war. An excellent re- port of them was given to Dr. Shipman by the commander of the vessel. One of the lads, who had had some experience in such work, was immediately transferred to the position of a steward on one of the transatlantic liners owned by the company. He is jubilantly grateful to his new friends for making this chance possible. “* You’ve put me on my feet again, sir! I want to thank you for getting me that good job,” said a big, frank-faced carpenter to Dr. Shipman the other day. “ Wife and I are going to get our things out of storage and have a little home again. Thank you, sir, thank you,” and the honest old fellow’s voice grew husky as he shook the rector’s hand and went away. One of the interesting side issues is the ‘shoemaker’s room, where an intelligent, bright-faced young shoemaker teaches the men to mend their own shoes and their chil- dren’s. There is a complete equipment for cobbling. ‘The men are taught how to half- sole and patch. A _ shoe-blacking outfit is also provided, so that a man may polish his shoes before going out on the eternal quest for a job. In such ways this enterprise is increasing the self-respect and lifting the hearts of the “down and out.” The keynote of this base- ment room is optimism, comradeship, good cheer—the spirit of genuine Christian love. The work is entirely non-sectarian ; there is no attempt to give it a religious atmosphere. It makes no difference whether a man is Protestant or Roman Catholic, Jew or Gen- tile. If his need is great and room can be found for him, he is given a place at the tables. It is the broadest love of humanity that radiates here. “T’ve been up against Christians all my life,’’ one man said to Dr. Shipman, “ but I never found the vea/ ¢hing until now.” An- other said, ‘ If any one had told ‘me a little while ago that I’d ever go into a church or say a prayer again, I’d have laughed at him, if I hadn’t cursed him!” Nor are such re- marks the only evidence that these men ap- preciate the privilege of working in this place and of having Dr. Shipman’s inspiring inter- est. Their behavior shows how they feel. In various cases where little sums of money have been advanced to keep a hard-hearted landlord from dispossessing them the debt THE ONE-ARMED MAN FINDS A JOB 885 has been promptly paid. One man who worked all night on the subway and all day in the basement to pay up his rent had to be urged to accept an advance of his daily wage. He had to be shown that his health was his only realcapital. Since the work began there have been only three instances of men com- ing to work with the odor of liquor on their breath. In the three months only four men have proved loafers. ‘They were promptly sent away. The hardest thing that Dr. Shipman and his co-workers have to do is not in managing the details of the work, but turning away those who bitterly need employment. The funds and resources are not large enough. The loaves and fishes need to be multiplied. This work must stop shortly after the middle of April unless more money is contributed. In March an appeal was made through the advertising columns of two metropolitan dailies for financial aid. The response was quite remarkable. Many people came to see the work, and, having seen it, went away to tell others. One man expressed his great desire to help, but said that his business had failed and that he had to save every dollar he could. But he gave Dr. Shipman a small collection of rare coins which he had long treasured. *¢ Sell these,”’ he said ; “ they are valuable. I never thought I’d part with them, but I’ve simply got to help out here.” ‘The man’s voice trembled and tears came into his eyes. ‘Somehow or other,” said Dr. Shipman in speaking of this incident, “this man’s gift seemed to me greater than the largest check we have ever received.” At three o’clock, when the two hundred men file out, cheerfully slipping their daily pay envelopes into their pockets, Dr. Ship- man stands near the door. As they pass by he reaches out and shakes each man warmly by the hand, looking into his face with genu- ine interest. ‘ Good-night, McCarty ; how’s your wife now ?”’ “ Good-night, Brown—I’d know your jolly smile anywhere!” ‘ Good- night, Johnson ; don’t worry about that job, we'll find another one before long.” And so it goes. The illumination of each man’s face in response to Dr. Shipman’s word and smile is worth going far to see. This enterprise should be encouraged and should be imitated by other churches in other cities. It is supplying two of the most burn- ing needs of Christendom—the caring of the needy worker within our own gates and the
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succoring of the wounded in the. great war. Moreover, it is a practical, successful, and inspiring example of that socializing of the church which is so much needed to-day. [Mrs. Denison has been contented to let this fine human story make its own appeal. Without her knowledge we add that the work is in urgent need of funds. It ought not to ON REACTION THE OUTLOOK 14 April be crippled or closed down for want of money. Contributions from one dollar up may be sent to the Rev. Dr. Shipman, Church of the Heavenly Rest, Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, New York. Perhaps somebody who reads this will keep this factory of human help going a week by sending a thousand dollars.—Tue Eprrors ] THE TRAIL OF PROGRESS AND IN THE WEST’ BY FREDERICK M. DAVENPORT SECOND ARTICLE BUSINESS PHASES OF PROGRESS—MICHIGAN AND MINNESOTA HEN I got out of the depression of Wisconsin, I was, at least for the time being, out of the range of genuine reaction among the people them- selves. Over the line in Michigan and Minne- sota, whether I talked with the Governor, with leaders of legislatures, with editors, with heads of great business enterprises, with alert univer- sity professors, or with the intelligent man of insight on the street, I found myself constantly in the atmosphere of continuing progress. Detroit is a prosperous, growing, and wonderful city, thanks just now perhaps, as much as anything else, to the thriving automobile industry, which can build trucks for the Allies in western Europe even if the demand for pleasure and business cars falls off somewhat at home. There have been un- employment and suffering in Detroit during the winter months, particularly in the case of unskilled labor, but for skilled labor this depression has been tempered very much by the volume of prosperity of its dominant industry. In the mining country on the Peninsula also for long periods there has been only three days’ work a week, and in some places hardly that. But agriculture is pros- perous, and Michigan, generally speaking, has not felt the economic pinch as New York has, for example. t Asexplained last week, Mr. Davenport made recently a journey through eleven States of the Middle West, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Coast. In the pres- ent article he gives special attention to business condi- tions.—THE EbDIToRs. In Detroit I came upon an interesting and rather bitter collision in correspondence be- tween a high official of one of the great busi- ness concerns of that city and a represent- ative of the Government at Washington. The high political official seemed to be seek- ing to arouse the disquieting suspicion that powerful banking interests, by underground political manipulation, were undemocratizing the supposedly thoroughly democratized new Federal reserve and credit system of the coun- try. ‘The high business official was brusquely and somewhat haughtily calling the states- man to account for his charge. And at the same time another high business personage in Detroit was taking one of the Michigan United States Senators rather fiercely to task for the activities of the General Gov- ernment in Washington, advising the Sena- tor, in substance, that the country would be better off if the Government of the United States would shut up shop. What particu- larly attracted me was not the persons in- volved so* much as the continuing note of old-time short-sighted antagonism between the business man and the politician, between industry and government. And not long thereafter I observed that the high business official to whom I have referred had been in somewhat close, if not clandestine, confer- ence at Delmonico’s in New York with the head of another powerful business interest in New England, and with an official of the National Committee of the Republican party,
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1915 ON THE TRAIL OF PROGRESS and the drift of sentiment of the gathering, so far as it was allowed to leak out, seemed to be that the Republican party is not going to try to elect a man to the Presidency in 1916, but would seek to put a party back in power ; that the folks who supply the ‘‘ sinews of war” wished to put an end to “ personal government ” and ‘hero worship” and “free-lance egoists’’ of the type of Cleve- land and Wilson and Bryan in the Demo- cratic party, and of Roosevelt and Hughes in the Republican pariy. It appeared to be the consensus of view that this returning leap upon the elephant’s back, and perhaps into the saddle of government, could prob- ably be made under cover of the European war (if that carnage should fortunately con- tinue long enough), and under the cover of the poignancy of economic suffering of the masses of the electorate (if that somewhat mixed blessing might also run its normal course) ! I am pretty sure what Michigan would say to that programme. Michigan, although it was carried by Mr. Roosevelt in 1912, is in general thoroughly recommitted to Republi- canism. ‘The Legislature is solidly Republi- can, and there is in the minds of the people of the State a revolt against what are deemed to be certain economic and _ political defects of Democratic rule. And yet in the reac- tionary year of our Lord 1914 the people of Michigan re-elected a strong Wilson Progress- ive Democrat, Woodbridge N. Ferris, Gov- ernor, with the help of at least sixty thousand Republican votes. Up to 1912 conventions and practical politics in Michigan were under the dominion of gag rule. There is very little of that left in Michigan. And it will never come back. The ancient dominant machine, long defiant of progress, almost immediately became measurably submissive to the popu- lar will. Michigan is established as a com- monwealth of progress. The Democratic Governor Ferris is an elderly business man, of wisdom and sound discretion. His inaugural messages and his aD D> general attitude towards public questions breathe the spirit of insight, of co-operation, of tactful good nature, and of going forward. He is independent and firm without being irascible. He acquitted himself admirably in the great Michigan copper strike of 1913— 14. He made a splendid show of force against lawlessness, and sent the whole Na- tional Guard of Michigan to the scene. As regiment after regiment smoothly and swiftly crossed the Straits of the Mackinac, advance AND REACTION IN THE WEST 887 information over the wires that the Governor meant order first, and that the whole power of the State was pledged to preserve it, cooled the ardor of lawlessness before the troops reached the Peninsula. And then the Gov- ernor handled the questions which arose out of the State’s intervention so diplomatically that not a single life was sacrificed through any fault of the militia. In what striking contrast to the course of the executive in Colorado a year later! The miners and other workingmen of Michigan at first resented the armed intervention and were against Ferris for a time, but later they came more or less to admire the impartial and straightforward stand he had taken. Certainly the net result of the affair did not prevent his handsome re- election. Some day perhaps all executives of our commonwealths in the United States will learn that, even on the low ground of po- litical expediency, a strong and broad-minded and human appeal to the spirit of law and order is a safe play almost anywhere with the American people. It would have been far safer for another Democratic executive, namely, Ammons of Colorado, who lost his office through failure to rise firmly to a similar emergency. There is no talk of reaction in Michigan. An executive and a Legislature of different party faith make advance difficult because where party loyalty is strong, as it is in Michi- gan, there is always a suspicion that one or the other is seeking party advantage, and this prejudice gums the wheels of progress. Nevertheless there have been for two years unusual co-operation and good feeling be- tween Governor Ferris and the Legislature. Speaking of the terrors of progress, Michi- gan is one of those dreadful States with the initiative and referendum, and the message of Governor Ferris as well as the topics up for discussion before the Legislature this year bear no sign of looking backward. Listen to this programme, now under con- sideration: A new blue-sky bill framed by the National Association of Attorneys-Gen- eral to regulate the sale of securities and at the same time stand the test of the Federal courts; the betterment of an already excel- lent Direct Primary Law and the Massachu- setts group ballot; the Oregon system of publicity for candidates to give the poor man a chance with the rich man in standing for office ; a budget system establishing business forethought in the place of chaos in making appropriations ; an enlargement of the powers
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888 of the Public Utilities Commission ; a court of conciliation for industrial disputes ; the further strengthening of a highly satisfactory - Workman’s Compensation Law, passed within two years; a State Market Commission to help the farmer to dispose of his crop at a fair price (what is the use of educating the farmer to double his production if the only result is that the price of potatoes falls to twenty cents a bushel in northern Michigan and the price of fancy apples to twenty-five cents a bushel, while in southern Michigan potatoes are selling for seventy cents a bushel and apples for at least twenty-five cents a peck ?); a stiffening up of banking regulation ; a much shorter ballot in order to get the substance and not merely the form of democracy; housing reform and _ sanita- tion ; conservation of natural resources on the sane principle that the people of this generation are entitled to use them, but not to foreclose their use or their profit to the generations which are to follow—I select the issues at random. ‘The Legislature is com- ing very reluctantly to a decision upon most of these matters, although many important progressive measures are grinding in the mill. And the real underground objection to passing most of them seems to be, not that they are not wise, but that the Repub- lican Legislature had better go slowly for fear that the Governor might win laurels for the Democracy pending the conflict of 1916! It is because of situations like this, which recur again and again, that the movement for a non-partisan State, to which I shall refer later, has assumed considerable pro- portions in certain parts of the West. But Michigan is not a commonwealth of reaction. The result of the influx of skilled workmen into Detroit, and the blowing off of the National political lid in 1912, and other causes, have producedan independent element in the Michigan electorate that the politicians will always have to deal with in the future. Michigan believes in the two-party system and would like to be Republican, and Presi- dent Wilson might not under any circum- stances be able to carry the State in 1916; but if there is any monkeying with popular freedom on the part of a new Delmonico directorate, Wilson will run so far ahead of his ticket in Michigan that it will enor- mously imperil Republican chances in still more independent States which we shall soon visit. It is no time for the level-headed business THE OUTLOOK 14 April men of the country who wish to see prosper- ity for the whole people re-established on sound economic and political foundations to give aid and comfort to reactionary politi- cians who for their own purposes are on the way towards making another National blunder. The people of the country, including par- ticularly the men of the Middle and Far West, from Michigan to the Pacific, are slowly com- ing into a new frame of mind with respect to the business prosperity of the Nation. They are coming slowly to see that we live in an age of co-operation and not of cutthroat competition, that the size of business units is not to be arbitrarily determined by percent- ages or judges, but by efficiency, social and economic ; and, above all, they are coming to understand that the swift advance in social welfare which democracy craves and will have is not possible except upon sound underlying foundations of business prosperity. A Na- tional programme of progress and democracy costs money, and a lot of it; and a broadly prosperous people with wealth efficiently pro- duced and fairly distributed are the only people who can afford to pay for it. It is no time for any business man to undertake the circumverting of government, of dominating it in a class interest. ‘Those days are gone, and I think that the people, at least of the Middle and Far West, will go to the stake rather than see them return. Certainly any attempt at return will arouse the old fight all over again. , It is a time for the statesmanship of busi- ness. ‘The very ablest minds of the Nation are engaged in industry. What holds them back from the genuine influence of leadership which they ought to be exerting over the American people? It is the old record of attempted exploitation and domination in the midst of the burst of industrial prosperity that followed the Civil War. Good men have suffered in reputation with the worst. What is needed to reassure the American people is an attitude of mind which indicates that it is the purpose of business not to rule the State but to serve the State. There are evidences that a cleavage has already been set up be- tween the business men who see and the men who still are blind. Thomas A. Edison and Henry Ford are demonstrating that there is profit in service. I mention these two men because they are National figures—there are many others. I think it is apparent in a recent able address by Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip, of
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1915 ON THE TRAIL OF PROGRESS the National City Bank,’ that his eyes are open to the view that the safe and sure path to financial and industrial advance lies in the final and honorable submission to sound ethics and to the intelligently guided sovereign will of the whole people. In considering the rela- tion of business and politics there is still much food for thought in an ancient maxim, “ Let him that is chief among you, be as he that doth serve.” If business takes the atti- tude of desire to serve with the truly great executive qualities which the best business men possess, and not to rule in union with a party machine by “ ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,’’ business can have any- thing it wants from the American people in the way of a fair protective tariff under an expert commission, or any other real need. So far as a protective tariff is concerned, against the doctrinaire protests of academic theorists, it has always been one of the instinc- tively National policies of the country. The body blow at protection from the fist of the mighty Dolliver and his clan in the Middle West was directed, not at a protective tariff laid for the common good, but at a _politico- business machine method and practice of preparing tariff schedules by and for an inter- ested class, who, having performed before committees of Congress the function of telling the people what was good for them, there- upon strolled out into Pennsylvania Avenue, in the cool of the evening, humming softly to themselves : “T care not for the stars that shine, I only know that I've got mine.” And now about Minnesota. This is, of course, one of the most extraordinarily prosperous of the commonwealths of the Union. Its thrifty and intelligent and enter- prising and preponderantly Scandinavian population is an illustration of what America can do at her best in the way of assimilation of fine strains from western Europe. Prob- ably three-fourths of the people of the State are foreign-born or. the children of foreign- born. And yet there is no more genuinely American and National commonwealth in the Union. Its prosperity has not been scratched by the prevailing industrial depression. Third in the country in its production of oats and wheat and first in the production of barley, its fields everywhere fertile and well-watered, dairying rapidly increasing, its iron ranges 1“ Business and Politics,” address before the New York State Bankers’ Association Convention, New Lon- don, Connecticut. June II, 1914. AND REACTION IN THE WEST 889 yielding five-eighths of the output of ore in the United States, in lumber the chief com- monwealth east of the Rockies, in the main its industry is yielding up precisely those commodities of which the country and the world have now most need. The banks of Minnesota have no lack of funds, and the men of business and finance in Minneapolis and St. Paul are cautious because of what they hear from New York and the East, not because of what they themselves experience. The sys- tem of education in Minnesota, university and common school, is underwritten by the mining royalties of the State lands in the Mesaba Range. If the opinion of experts is not astray, two hundred millions of dollars are in sight as endowment for the common school system, and fifty millions for the university. If one is looking for reaction in Minnesota, he must go after it with a fine-tooth comb. There is a real struggle on, however, between those who do and those who do not favor a greater measure of popular freedom and social advance; and it is still true in Minnesota, as in most of the other Western States, that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Minnesota has worked herself free from rail- way domination. As every one knows, not many years ago the great railway systems of the Middle West parceled out the States to rule. The Northwestern took Wisconsin, the St. Paul took the Dakotas, the Burlington took Iowa, and the Great Northern took Minnesota. In the old days the representa- tive of the Great Northern in the Capitol was the Government. When on political business days he went up in the elevator to his suite in the leading hotel, the chief representatives of the people submissively followed in the next elevator and took their orders for the day or the session, as the particular need might require. It is not so now. When Louis Hill took command of the. Great Northern in Minnesota, there was a new order introduced. ‘The railway now presents in an open and straightforward manner its cause to committees of the Legislature, and, so far as direct influence is concerned, lets it go at that. ‘There is some evidence that the railway influence is well represented in cer- tain of the leading papers of the State, and, in fact, that method of steering public opin- ion on the part. of powerful corporate inter- ests seems to be growing in the Western country. But direct and arrogant coercion by the railways is altogether a thing of the
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Seneen ecm, EM pas past. The Hill interests are far too wise thus to trifle with the public will. The influences that now will bear watching in Minnesota are the great brewery interests and the strong group of gas and traction and telephone corporations which have so much at stake at the seat of government in St. Paul. ‘The powerful brewery influence is, fighting for its life in Minnesota. It is already feeling the ground-swell of prohibition from the States beyond. Every man of the lower house was elected this year on the wet and dry county option issue. The speak- ership contest was a line-up between the wets and the drys, and the all-dry candidate failed by only two or three votes, and that evi- dently because certain personal elements entered in. When the vote came on the county option bill, the drys won. And woman suffrage, which is the twin devil of prohibition to the brewery interest, passed in the lower house and failed in the Senate by only one vote. ‘There is good reason to believe that the Hill influence in Minnesota is on the side of the drys. The wise and foolish virgins in big business in this country are getting sepa- rated faster than many people have any idea of. And various kinds of big business in the West are coming rapidly around towards prohibition. But more of this later. In Minnesota I came upon a non-partisan Legislature—everybody in it this year for the first time nominated and elected without ref- erence to his party affiliations. ‘The people picked the best men from a group without party emblem. And the Wilson Democratic Governor Hammond, also elected in the re- cent alleged reactionary year of our Lord, is the leader of a curious movement to let all the people participate in each party primary— I suppose, in order that the choice of party candidates, if it is to continue, may be mel- lowed by a broad humanity! ‘This seems to legalize something that I fear has occurred in extreme instances in an extra-legal way many times in the old caucus as well as in the mod- ern primary days. ‘This is the first evidence, of which I was to see more later, of a visible \endency in certain parts of the West to ob- literate party lines altogether in State matters. So far has it gone in California that the chief work of Governor Johnson’s second ad- ministration will be centered in making Cali- fornia as thoroughly a non-partisan State as San Francisco is a non-partisan city—all party lines to be swept away except in National affairs. 890) THE OUTLOOK 14 April You will understand what odds the people of Minnesota labor against in the march of progress when I instance the difficulty of amending their Constitution. During the first forty years of the State’s existence only a majority of those voting on an amendment was necessary to pass it. No advantage was taken of it by the people. ‘They passed on an average about one amendment a year and made good choices. But in 1898 some cun- ning old boys began to scent danger in the growing tendency towards independent think- ing on the part of the American electorate, and pulled the wool over the eyes of the peo- ple long enough so that the electorate com- mitted itself to the proposal that thereafter an amendment to the Constitution, in order to be adopted, must receive a majority of all the votes cast at the election at which it was sub- mitted. This pretty effectually stopped con- stitutional amendment in Minnesota, because of course there are a great many shirkers at every election who do not wish to think hard enough to decide upon any constitutional change. This is the explanation of the failure of the eleven amendments voted on in Min- nesota last fall. It was not at all a reaction against everything of the sort, as was the case in Wisconsin, where the Noes generally had it by a huge majority. Asa matter of fact, in Minnesota all the amendments except one had very large majorities in their favor, and even this odd one carried well. The amend- ment for the initiative and referendum got through at a pace of four to one. Nearly two hundred thousand men voted on every pro- posed change in the fundamental law. And yet every proposal failed under the terms of the amending clause which requires a majority of all the votes cast at the election! It is no wonder that there is a large restless element in Minnesota demanding the calling of a constitutional convention. Building a dam without a spillway is pretty bad construction. There is a further hunch, as they say in the West, to the American business man in the story of Mianesota. ‘There is nothing so much needed in the political system of this country as the wholesome entrance into it of the American business man. It would be good not only for business but for the cause of American democracy. Democracy either in its direct or its representative form is still on trial in this country. And perhaps the point of its greatest weakness is govern- mental administration, efficiency, and econ- omy. The cost of government, municipal,
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1915 ON THE TRAIL OF PROGRESS State, and National, is going forward by leaps and bounds. ‘The expenditures for multiply- ing boards and commissions, for vast advances in social welfare, are heavy enough. But waste and inefficiency everywhere appear and are attracting the attention of most patriotic and thoughtful men. Whether a republican form of government is or is not to endure may be determined for this country around the problem of expenditure. Certainly democ- racy cannot stand indefinitely the financial strain to which it must soon be put in the United States. I am not speaking of petty graft, but of fathomlessly careless and stupid organization and administration. Our State governments are particularly full of it. That is what stirs the ire of the conscientious busi- ness man when he gets his first look into politics, and it ought to stir it. Well, one of the most interesting things I found on my journey is the manner in which so many of the big Western States are seeth- ing with a new purpose to make their gov- ernment more simple and efficient. They are at different stages of awakening. Ne- braska and Minnesota and Iowa are perhaps in the van. In Minnesota, as in most other States, a more or less disconnected and un- affiliated bureau has been .added every time anybody had a new idea which he succeeded in putting overupon the Legislature or the peo- ple. Minnesota has fifty or sixty boards and commissions, little separate governments, without unity or responsibility, incoherent, and frequently duplicating each other’s duties. For example, a hotel man in southern Min- nesota wrote in to the State Fire Marshal one day recently-in substance as follows : Dear Sir: The hotel inspector has ordered me to put in a new floor. One of your deputies has instructed me to tear down the building. Which shall I do first? Governor Eberhard, towards the recent close of his term of office, appointed a com- mission of thirty men, who served without salary and paid their own expenses, to sub- mit a plan for the reorganization of the State government upon modern lines of business efficiency. This commission had reported to the Legislature when I was in St. Paul. The report is a fine piece of work. It is, perhaps, a little doctrinaire, and smells too much of the midnight oil of the University of 891 Minnesota. For instance, Minnesota already has an efficient Board of Control over certain kinds of administration and expenditure, whose members are popular and powerful. The new plan dumps them out of office incontinently. There was a general feeling in the State that practical measures would have to be devised to give some of the radi- cal changes a better rootage in the past. But there is no question that the report will fur- nish a basis for discussion that will in the end accomplish great good. Under the new pro- posal the fifty or sixty little. governments of Minnesota will be merged into six great ex- ecutive departments, with the Governor as the leader of the commonwealth of the State, and with the heads of the departments as members of his cabinet. With this centralized scrutiny and control over appropriations, and a merit system for department workers below the chiefs, the efficiency of Minnesota should be vastly augmented. This field of reform is to be commended to the business men of all the States of the Union. Their practical intel- ligence and insight are greatly needed here. And there is no sphere of influence within which they can better serve a common country. There is not much reaction in Minnesota. To be sure, there is a steadying temper of mind, as in other parts of the Middle West, un- favorable to rapid change. The initiative and referendum reform, for example, if pressed, would have a little rougher sledding just now. And some of the political stage-drivers in the State’s politics are ready to take advantage of the situation to put on the brakes. ‘That type of individual is always ready to do this if he hears from Madagascar that the United States is beginning to run down hill. But in the West, anyway, in these days of stress and strain for political stage-drivers, he will let the brake off instantly if he detects a move- ment upgrade. I think Minnesota wants to be Republican in 1916, but how that State will sideswipe a reactionary candidate or a reactionary plat- form! And if John Lind runs for United States Senator on the Democratic ticket, you can’t tell what might happen. He is just as quiet in Minnesota as he was in Mexico, but he is popular. Minnesota is permanently progressive. It is not in the soil or in the AND REACTION IN THE WEST human stuff of the State to be otherwise.
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Beda eee eS SOME REFLECTIONS ON FEMINISM BY ZEPHINE HUMPHREY EFORE the war broke out there was an issue called feminism which inter- ested some of us very much. It is partially overshadowed now, as is everything else, by the great cloud in the east; but it will emerge by and by and reclaim our atten- tion. For, after all, the war, though cata- clysmic, is an episode; whereas feminism is interwoven with all the affairs of our daily lives. ‘Therefore it may not come amiss to take advantage of its temporary abeyance and to consider it quietly before it again leaps into the arena. ‘Times of quiescence are the best times for analysis. It is evident that a good many women know, or at least think they know, what it is all about. They have thrown themselves into the new “cause”’ it offers, and they labor either for or against it with enthusiasm. But there are other women who find themselves rather hope- lessly bewildered by the complaints and claims of their sisters, and though they say nothing — confusion involving a difficulty of utter- ance—their unresponsiveness forms an ele- ment to be reckoned with. It would be well, it might be enlightening, if these women could be coaxed into expression, encouraged to analyze their perplexity. For, after all, they are intelligent, and they com- prise a very solid proportion of the human family, which in all new experiments has to gain or lose, suffer or rejoice, together. When the fate of a whole sex is at stake, it is not fair to.fail to canvass the amaze- ments and indifferences as well as the con- victions of its representatives. ‘* What is the matter ?’’ the eager feminist should stop and say to her lagging sister. “Why don’t you get up and join us?” Whereupon, for answer, she would probably get her own question back: “ What is the matter? ‘That is precisely the query I was going to put to you. What in the world is the matter? We were all going along so nicely, and now—I think you’ve gone mad.” It is soberly true that there are some women who have never suspected that they were slaves, who have thought—when they thought about it at all—that they and their brothers and husbands have shared the privi- leges of civilization pretty eveniy. Not the same privileges, of course. Life is too rich 892 and human capacity too limited for any one person to realize all the possibilities of his or her environment. But what one individual gains he pays for by the lack of something which his brother or sister enjoys, and the law of compensation holds steadfastly sure. Circumstance has decreed that some people shall equip themselves actively and go out to battle with exterior forces, and that other people shall turn their attention to the more interior affairs of daily living. That is very well, that is perfectly fair. Each department of life, being inevitable, is good ; each direc- tion—inner or outer—can have human bless. edness as its goal. Only, the payment must always be made. Natural self-respect de- mands that privilege and sacrifice go hand in hand. ‘Therefore those who go forth miss something of the brooding inwardness of life—the felt presence of God in the soul— and those who remain fail to learn how to make much of an impress on history. Of course these statements are in the large; people like St. Francis and Joan of Arc have to be excepted. It seems ungenerous to weigh the profit and loss of life too closely, and the paren- thesis near the beginning of the last para- graph has significance—* when they thought about it at all.’”’ Most women, like most men, have taken the divisions of experience so for granted that they have practically ig- nored them. They have not considered them- selves a sex so much as an integral part of the human race which together is working its way out of ignorance and mistake into the best kind of competence it canachieve. The race consciousness is a finer thing than any partial awareness, and true vision is a matter of two eyes focusing together in a single glance. Just as it never occurs to one eye to make an independent survey of the world, so men and women have not until lately tried to separate their possibilities. ‘The conclusion seems forced upon us that some disease of astigmatism lurks in our midst. The oneness of life and experience is a reality which not all our specializing experi- ments can contradict or permanently disguise. The whole human race is profoundly one thing. Its members have different positions and functions, but they hold and fulfill these
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SOME REFLECTIONS ON for others rather than for themselves. The feet walk to carry the head; the head selects a smooth path for the feet; and feet and head together are keen upon the goal. We cannot help sharing with one another. So that, paradoxically, we forego special experi- ence only to recover it—perhaps a thousand- fold enriched—at the hands of our friends and neighbors. Men and women, children, priests and actors, seamstresses, brokers, bakers, rich and poor, clever, stupid, practi- cal and dreamy, capable and inefficient—we are all one body, with one great conscious- ness. Our highest privilege is to merge our individual awareness in the common appre- hension. What aremenand women? ‘Two halves of the same apple, two wings of the same bird, two eyes of the same soul. This being so, it is of course perplexing to try to understand how one wing can have outstripped the other, how one eye can have monopolized more than its share of vision. The bird has not flown very far yet, the apple has by no means come to maturity ; but the great process of human development has at least known a consistent unity. It is as absurd for women to try to differentiate their peculiar functions and rights as for one- half of a circle to pretend that it can bea ring. Rights! What are they—either man’s or woman’s? It is easy to see that we are under an immense obligation to somebody or something for our introduction into this beautiful world ; but the question of rights would seem to be all on the other side. The God who has put us here has every right to expect love and service of us. Though we spent every moment of our days and years striving to pour ourselves out in some ex- pression of gratitude, we should still come all too short of adequate requital. It is really rather shameful in us to think that we have any rights. Life is service. ‘That old idea seems to have lapsed nowadays, but it is still eternally true and beautiful. The fullest development of any individual life—and therefore its high- est joy—lies in its contribution to the prog- ress of the common life, the coming of the kingdom. Itis well that men and women should carefully consider how they may best promote this cause, how they may facilitate and direct their efforts ; but their calculations must connote fuller service rather than per- sonal alleviation. Too many workmen in every craft drop their tools the minute the FEMINISM 893 five o’clock whistle blows ;' and the action is sadly significant. Not for their work’s sake, then, do they labor, or for the sake of the general weal, but only to earn their living. No wonder they are dissatisfied. Puny aims breed restlessness in human hearts that are designed for greatness. No wonder, also, they fail to do the good work which deserves and wins.the reward they demand. Oh, it is time that we grew up and ceased whining about our grievances, ceased holding out our hands for sweetmeats, ceased watch- ing the clock! Good hard work is our busi- ness—work which shall tax our strength and skill, work which shall take the most of our time. If we scant our response to the chal- lenge, we shall fail and be miserable. If we yield our natural, loyal consent, we shall be too busy and interested to remember about our precious rights. Our work will reward itself as it goes along. The self-contradiction of feminism is its most perplexing feature. Its advocates com- plain that there is too much stress laid on the difference between the sexes, and then they proceed to lay the most violent stress the world has ever known. The way to confirm men and women in their equality is not to shout at them, ‘* Woman, woman, woman is a human being; woman is equak; woman must have her share; woman must not be a slave any longer; woman is just the same as man; woman, woman, woman!’’ <A _ sex which thus emphasizes itself must consider itself distinct. We seem in danger of doing precisely that which we decry and deplore: of rending the beautiful seamless garment of our humanity. Men and women can best realize their one- ness of being and destiny by holding fast to the common cup of their experience and by mixing the draught together, each contribut- ing something which the other might have lacked. Different women undoubtedly bring different elements to the rich brew; but, taking the sex by and large, it appears that the wine of the spirit is the feminine con- tribution. The study of Heaven takes time | and seclusion; a good deal of slow silence must go to the solicitation of the Holy Spirit. Men may long after the privilege, but the distractions of the crowded world hinder and hamper them. Whereas the occupations of women, conducted so often in solitude, en- gage their fingers but leave their hearts free to brood. There is something peculiarly favorable to meditation in the mechanical,
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a -- 894 THE OUTLOOK rhythmic -motion with which a familiar task is performed. On the face of many a sewing woman the dove of peace visibly rests. It is strange that women do not appreci- ate the greatness of their opportunity. The essence of all things—the very heart of real- ity—is spiritual. What else can a person possibly want who can sit and talk with God ? The material universe is a great challenging riddle, inexplicable, unsatisfactory ; but the life of the spirit is full of truth and love. We are all of us, men and women alike, coming to understand this more and more to-day ; and are turning restiessly from the material preoccupations that have absorbed us. They have been but a preparation, a careful setting of our house in order before a great enterprise. We are all but ready to give ourselves to the widest and fullest re- ligious adventure we have known in many years. Perhaps the stirring and rising of women is a preparation, too, an unconscious response to the far summons which they have heard but not understood. Not pri- marily to concern themselves with social or political evils are they called, but to facilitate the universal return to the Father. They can be all-powerful in this matter if they only will. But if they lose their way among the temporal side issues of our complex civiliza- tion, they will defer their chance and retard the consummation. The crisis is a serious one, even more seri- ous than it appears on the troubled surface. For a movement which is not true to itself does more harm than good. If the feminine element of the universe is going to assert itself, is going to gain ascendency, it must do and be its best. It is not the woman’s best to strive for worldly advantage and ease, to devote her energies to temporal ambition. The love of God is her best, the love of her neighbor, the service of the kingdom that cometh not with observation, the building of the house not made with hands. For these transcendent things she is fitted by nature, by tradition, by the very humility of her worldly weakness. Heaven can make full use of those whom the world does not preoccupy. It must not be forgotten that the forces which have most profoundly and lastingly affected the development of civilization have been put forth in the gentlest sort of humility. In some such fashion as this ponders and speaks the so-called “ conservative ” woman when she has once been induced to express herself. But she does not like the distinction which even this amount of self-study implies. Consciously or unconsciously, the mystic tendency is strong in her, and she would fain leave herself in the life of the universe where she belongs. Not even humanity is the whole thing. ‘The mountains, the seas, the earth, sun and stars, are part of our being, as we are of theirs ; and we are all together com- mitted to a destiny which transcends—while it also includes—our anxious little schemes. Why be so anxious, then? Why not trust? We have grown and learned a great deal since that famous stone age of which we hear so much nowadays. Doubtless we shall go on growing and learning. But losing one life’s to find it is now as always the way of advance; and it is by man’s service of woman, and woman’s of man—above all, by their joint love and service of God—that the kingdom will finally come. When the war is over (ah, speed the day !) we shall have to reorganize our whole civiliza- tion. Then will be woman’s supreme chance to make herself felt in strong and vital service. For we are going to love peace as never be- fore; we are going to insist on the impor- tance of the spiritual life. The hideous cli- max of materialism has disgusted us all. If feminism seizes the chance and steps out boldly in the forefront of the new movement, it can win the love and gratitude of all future history.
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THE SPECTATOR AT THE WORLD’S FAIR quake and the beginning of the great fire, the Spectator left a ruined city, its people standing in line waiting for their daily bread. On that last day of his stay he walked a mile down Market Street, from Van Ness Avenue to the Oakland ferries, over piles of débris which often entirely obliterated the street lines. He returns to San Francisco nine years after, to find a city completely rebuilt, and within its limits an Exposition which for pure beauty has never been surpassed by any of the world’s great exhibitions. It is unique; the realization of a dream. You feel at first that only Aladdin could have created it and no human mind; but as it dawns on you that it was a human mind, or rather a combina- tion of master human minds, you stand within the gates and take off your hat to the creators of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. You want to cheer, and only the fear of the neat-looking khaki-clad guards prevents you. IL April, 1906, seven days after the earth- 2) It is not necessary to compare it with any other exhibition. The memory of the Court of Honor at Chicago, with French’s splendid statue at one end and MacMonnies’s glorious fountain at the other, with the classic colon- nades on either side, all this you will carry with you forever if you are fortunate enough to have seen it. But the beauty of the San Francisco exhibition is a thing apart. There is a glory of the Parthenon at Athens, and another glory of the Great Pyramid, and yet another glory of the gardens of the Villa d’Este. Here, for the first time in the Spectator’s ken, beauty of color dominates even beauty of form, and yet, after a week’s stay, you be- come more and more impressed with the per- fection of the form. There are great door- ways which Michael Angelo might have planned, courts of marvelous beauty of pro- portion and detail. You almost weep to think that it is ephemeral, that in a year’s time it will all have been dissolved like the fabric of adream. The greatest mural artists of the day have contributed the decorations, and yet the Spectator confesses that he has hardly noticed many of these much-heralded paint- ings, simply because the buildings themselves are so beautiful that one can hardly take in the details. Guérin’s color work is so perfect that it amply satisfies ; it is all the coler you want. 3} The exhibition palaces, the State buildings, the Joy Zone structures, the kiosks—all are of a soft, cold, gray tint, a kind of smoked ivory, the color of the imitation of Italian travertine marble used in their construction. This wall covering was first used by McKim, Mead & White on tlie inside of the great concourse of the Pennsylvania Railroad station in New York. They sug- gested that it would be an admirable ma- terial for the Fair buildings, and the man who knew how to make it (out of plaster-of-paris, with the color ground in) was brought on from New York and set to work. Eight colors only are used in the decoration of the buildings. The large domes are terra cotta or pale green, the smaller ones golden burnt orange. A pinkish red with a dash of brown is the background of the colonnades, their vaulted ceilings a deep cerulean blue, and the same blue is used for recessed panels; verde antique is for urns and vases, and French green for lattices and window trim. Everywhere there is shrub- bery; great masses of trees against the cold gray of the walls. At night the effect is magical. No such lighting has ever been attempted before. Not an important detail is lost at night. Shaded lamps are reflected on the sides of the buildings, searchlights shine constantly on statues and columns; and the great Tower of Jewels, gray by day, is pure white in the rays of these searchlights. “The columns of the Tower at night are of the most exquisite turquoise green, and its jewels flash and gleam in the soft California breeze. Nowhere but in such a climate and under such a sky would this Exposition be possible. It would be an anomaly in New York. The Palace of Fine Arts, designed by a Californian, R. B. Maybeck, Professor of Art in the University of California, is per- haps the boldest and in many ways the most successful of all the buildings. Its architect never did anything like it in his life ; in fact, his past record is not one of great achieve- ment, and yet here he has built a palace of beauty such as the world has seldom seen. Looking upon it from across the “ still la- goon,” you see only a great domed rotunda 895
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eS eek gs 896 THE OUTLOOK with wings of colonnades ; these colonnades give it almost the effect of a beautiful ruin. The building itself is concealed behind. A setting of shrubbery, composed of Monterey cypress and other evergreens, leads down to the Jagoon. In the center is an altar, with a kneeling goddess guarding the flame. At night there is no light in this building, but searchlights from distant points illume the splendid dome and the colonnades. The Spectator had his first view of the lighting effects standing in the shadow of these colonnades, looking across the lagoon toward the main exhibition buildings. At twilight a few soft lights, shielded by red- toned shades, began to illume the sides of the buildings. The towers began to glow in red, the last to show life being the Tower of Jewels in the center. One by one these towers became whiter, and soon the great jeweled tower was bathed in a pure white glow, dominating the entire group. Then the Spectator crossed to the mainland and looked back at the Palace of Fine Arts—a never-to- be-forgotten sight, the shrubbery beneath half lost in the darkness, the palace bathed in a soft yellow glow, the kneeling goddess _tend- ing her flame of inspiration. The arrangement of the statues in the colonnades of this Fine Arts building is most effective—each statue is out of doors, where a statue belongs, is independent of every other, and has its own setting. The collec- tion of pictures within is made with rare dis- crimination. One is glad to see an entire room given up to the work of William M. Chase, and other individual rooms to Sar- gent, Duveneck, Childe Hassam, William Keith, Gari Melchers, Redfield, Tarbell, Twachtman, and Whistler. Such an oppor- tunity to study the work and the growth of American painters has never before been offered to the public. 8 The work of another San Francisco archi- tect, Louis Christian Mulgardt, the Court of Abundance, is an example of Spanish Gothic in the period of its greatest enrich- ment; and the effect of this court at night, with red fire gleaming from caldrons below and torches illuminating the marvelous domi- nating tower, is a new experience to most of us, no matter how accustomed we may be to the best in art that Europe has to offer. To travel across a continent is not too much for the chance to see that one court. And there 14 April are others: the great central Court of the Universe, designed by McKim, Mead & White; the ‘“‘Court of the Four Seasons,” by Henry Bacon, of Boston, with Hadrian’s Villa for its inspiration. In the four corners of this court are niches containing groups of statuary by Piccirilli, representing the sea- sons, each one set above a pool where water flows down the steps illumined at night with soft green lights. The Court of Palms is the work of another San Francisco architect, George W. Kelham. Its entrance is from a garden between two towers, each rising to a height of two hundred feet, designed by the same man and in the period of the Italian Renaissance. S| If you can first see the exhibition buildings as the Spectator saw them, in an automabile and from the wooded heights of the Presidio, you will be fortunate. And later at night he saw them again from there. The ordinary approach through the city is not impressive, for the city itself, with a few exceptions, is anything but an architectural delight. As you near the exhibition you begin to be im- pressed by the fence which divides the site from San Francisco’s residence section. It is a hedge, twenty feet high, formed of a solid mass of flowering mesembryanthemum. Evidently it was grown on large rectangular frames, and these were placed in position like a mosaic. The Tower of Jewels and some of the other towers are in sight from across the hedge. Entering the main gates, you are in a garden three thousand feet long, the Festival Hall on the right, the glass dome of the Horticultural Building on the left (at night this dome glows in changing pale green and red); before you is the ‘Tower of Jewels, beneath which is the great archway opening into the Court of the Universe, and through this vista you will see the Column of Progress, capped by a splendid group, the ‘“ Adventurous Archer.” The Marina, a three-hundred-foot-wide esplanade, is at the end of the vista, with the bay beyond. The great exhibition buildings are in two groups of four each on either side of the Court of the Universe. Farther to the left is the Palace of Fine Arts, and beyond that the special State buildings and those of contributing countries. At the end, on the right, is the Joy Zone, a street three thou- sand feet long, containing about the usual Coney Island assortment of joys with a few
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1915 notable exceptions. The chief exception is the Panama Canal, one of the most re- markable reproductions ever seen, and after viewing it, as the advertisements say, ‘‘ you do not need to visit the Canal itself.” Here in a covered building you seem to look down from an aeroplane upon the entire Canal Zone from ocean to ocean. The building is about the shape and perhaps one-half the size of the Madison Square Garden in New York. You sit in a slowly moving gallery, and, putting up to your ears the duplex telephone receivers attached to each chair, you hear a speech (from a phonograph disc) which ex- plains everything at exactly the moment when you want it explained. A miniature ship is passing through the waterway, pulled along by the tiny electric engines ; other ships ride at anchor in the bays, and a train is running over the line of the Panama Railway. 2] There is one curious thing about the San Francisco Exposition. You will find yourself visiting it several times before you begin to realize that you ought to be looking at the exhibits. Yet the exhibits are all well worth seeing. If you are interested in education, you will get inspiration out of the wonderful showing of the schools and libraries. The place is full of object-lessons. One might have known all his life that graham bread was more healthful than white, but if one sees that a slice of actual graham bread is the equivalent of a chunk of white bread three times as large, or of an entire box of twenty-five soda crackers, each about two and one-half inches square, one never forgets the lesson of graham bread. Yousee that a glass dish one-third full of figs contains as much nutriment as a similar dish full to the top with prunes. You are confronted with the sign, “Who is your baker?” Under- neath are pieces of chocolate cake, some of it made from paint, the same kind that is used for freight cars, ‘‘ because it is so inde- structible.” You can spend days in these exhibits. They say there are eighty-seven miles of aisles, but the Spectator is quite sure that he saw almost everything he wanted to see inside the buildings in three days, and he is equally sure that he did not walk eighty-seven miles. They say, too, that it costs sixty dollars to see everything in the Joy Zone, but the Spectator feels that most Outlook readers will be content with the expenditure of a very few dollars in that half-mile of street—two or THE SPECTATOR 897 three dollars will probably suffice—and you may feel even then that some of the money was foolishly expended. The New York State Building is one of the most beautiful and one of the most use- less. Four hundred thousand dollars was spent on it. A hundred thousand dollars has been spent on the exhibit of New York City (in a building of its own), and it is one of the best advertisements a city could have. The man who is responsible for it is Morton L. Fouquet, and every New Yorker will be proud of it and of Mr. Fouquet’s work. Besides the great model of the city, showing the rivers, parks, buildings, and bridges, there are smaller models of subways, ferries, power- houses, with moving pictures (not ready when the Spectator was there), and a marvelous collection of photographs, showing in differ- ent rooms, admirably classified, all the varied industries of the city departments—fire, police, educational, hospitals, charities, thea- ters, etc. The State building is merely a club-house, with a restaurant which by its prices makes one think he is indeed back in New York City ; but for one-quarter of the amount spent by the State on its building the city has made a beautiful and dignified show- ing. Do you realize that one person out of twenty in this country lives in New York City, and that the population of the city is sixty per cent of the State? The Spectator learned this from the signs displayed; and another sign in the fire-prevention depart- ment made an impression. Under the pic- ture of a row of burning buildings was the statement that the waste to the country by fire during a single year is equivalent to the destruction of a double row of buildings placed in lots of sixty-five feet frontage lining both sides of a street that would stretch from New York to Chicago. Fr It is said to cost twenty dollars for a three- minute telephone conversation between San Francisco and New York over thenewline, but in the little theater built by the American Telephone Company, which you enter with- out any charge, you can sit in a comfortable chair, place a telephone receiver at your ear, and hear a man in New York give you the news of the day, including the state of your own home weather, closing with ‘‘ America ” played by a brass band. In the Spectator’s opinion this is the most marvelous exhibit on the grounds.
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BY THE WAY On the Conemaugh division of the Pennsyl- vania Railroad a “roll of honor” has been insti- tuted. It takes the place of the common practice of publishing information about the bad conduct of trainmen who have to be disciplined, which practice has been reversed, and instead there is now published a list of the names of the men who have performed their duties satisfactorily for a year without any occasion for censure The new plan has worked so well that a bulletin announces that “the discipline found necessary to impose on train employees during January, 1915, as compared with January, 1914, shows a decrease of 73 per cent.” The all-round championship of the United States in gymnastic feats was won by Frank Kanis, a member of the Newark, New Jersey, Turn Verein, at the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco recently. A California gym- nast won second place, while a Norwegian was third. Some recent school-boy “ howlers,” as quoted by a New York teacher, are as follows: Q. What happened in 1492? A. “ Discovery of America by the Spinach.” Q. What happened in 1776? A. “Decoration of Independence.” Q. What is a negative? A. “Two Legatives make an infirmative.” Q. Who was Cesar? A. “ He was a king and went high up on a mountain.” “ Little of all we value here sees the morn of its hundredth year.” This, it seems, is espe- cially true of business firms. Only one whole- sale grocery house in America, it is believed, has retained the name of its founder for a cen- tury and always with a member of the family of the same name in the concern. This is the house of S. S. Pierce Co., of Boston, which a few days ago celebrated its hundredth anniver- sary by giving a banquet to its employees. “ Boy Shoots Chief of Bank Bandits; Lad of Fifteen Faces Desperadoes.” This is not an advertisement of a five cent detective story for boys, but a headline in a daily paper describing an actualoccurrence. The boy was Paul Curry, his home was in Stroud, Oklahoma, and he was the son of the town marshal. The bandit leader whom he wounded was disarmed and captured after he had twice fired at the boy whose brav- ery led to the outlaw’s capture. Dr. Rosenbach, of Philadelphia, is, says Mr. A. Edward Newton in the “ Atlantic,” the “most scholarly bookseller in this country to- day.” “Don’t expect ever to ‘discover’ any- thing at Rosenbach’s,” he adds, “except how ignorant you are. ‘ Rosy’ does all the discover- ing himself.” A few years ago Dr. Rosenbach discovered in a volume of old pamphlets a copy of the first edition of Dr. Johnson’s famous 898 “ Prologue Spoken at the Opening of the Thea- tre in Drury Lane.” This is believed to be the only copy in existence; not even the British Museum has a duplicate of it. A contribution to natural history comes to hand ina post-card photograph of “a two-mile auto bridge over Little Egg Harbor Bay,” the roadway of which is for a long distance strewn with broken clam-shells. The post-card naturalist says: “ The white things you see are clam-shells. The sea-gulls get clams from the flats and fly up high and drop them to break the shells so they can eat the clams. The bridge- tender has to sweep them off every day, they cut the tires so.” Under the category of “ Some Film Horrors ” the “ Photoplay Magazine” enumerates these enemies of the movie devotee’s peace of mind: “The comedy your friend has seen ;” “the girl who knows their [the performers’] private romances ;” “ murder music ;” “the man who climbs out during a noble deed ;” “ the pro- fessional seat-changer ;” “ films with a moral ;” “the outrageously long arm of coincidence.” The first “ windjammer ” to use the Panama Canal from the Pacific Ocean, according toa nautical journal, was the Springbank, a Norwe- gian four-master, which on March 4 was towed through the Canal in order to save time on her voyage. Though the Canal tolls amounted to some $2,700, the saving of eighty days in reach- ing her destination is said to have made the expenditure, in view of the high earnings of vessels at present, an economical one for her owners. New York City’s belated snow-storm on Easter Saturday, a heavier snow-fall than any the city experienced during the entire winter of 1914-15, is estimated to have lessened the busi- ness of department, millinery, and florists’ stores by over $1,000,000. In addition, the municipal authorities spent nearly $100,000 to remove this unseasonable snow from the streets so that church-goers and sightseers could get about comfortably on Easter Sunday, which fortunately was a bright spring day. One of the more encouraging features of the war was the news that Przemysl might, after its capture, be spelled Peremysl; but a disturber of the peace that followed this announcement asks that Servia should be changed to Serbia, because the latter spelling is preferred by Ser- vians. Are the old-fashioned forms to be fur- ther upset by changing Germany to its native Deutschland, Nuremberg to Niirnberg, Vienna to Wien, Rome to Roma, and so on? Are none of the old orthographic landmarks to remain as guide-posts in an era of destruction?