The Outlook 1916-09-20
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The Outlook SEPTEMBER 20, 1916 Offices, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York For the third time within a little over two years Mr. Gregory Mason, of The Outlook’s staff, has gone to Mexico as its.representative to study Mexican questions and the Mexican people at close range. He will go to the capital, Mexico City, and to the central part of the Republic in order to answer in his articles in The Outlook such questions as these: Do Mexicans hate Americans, and if so, why? than Americans ? position of the Church in Mexico to-day ? now ? annexation, intervention, or what ? bankrupt and ruined ? What about German and Japanese influence in Mexico ? What is the condition of education in Mexico What is the political ability of the Mexicans ? the methods in actual municipal and State elections.) How about the land question in Mexico ? Has Carranza accomplished anything ? questions upon which Mr. Mason’s articles will throw light. able account of personal experiences and incidents. Do Mexicans respect other foreigners more What is the (Mr. Mason hopes to watch and report Do Americans in Mexico want Is Mexico These are only a few of the They will also include a read- Mr. Mason goes first to Yucatan, partly to look into the controversy over the sisal monopoly, partly because Yucatan occupies a peculiar position among the States of Mexico.—THE Epirors. THE WEEK THE STORY OF THE WAR Attention continues to be centered on the military operations in the Balkans as the most immediately important activity of the whole war. Two developments in this cam- paign in the week ending September 13 were of paramount importance. First, the con- tinued attack by Bulgarians and Germans on Rumania in the Dobrudja; and, secondly, the forward movement on the part of the Allies on the Salonika line. The Dobrudja is that portion of Rumania which adjoins the north- eastern corner of Bulgaria. The part attacked lies to the southeast of the Danube River. It is quite probable that Rumania somewhat neglected thissection of her frontier because of her anxiety to push through the mountains into Transylvania, where, as we have already noted, she has established her- self beyond the mountain passes, has taken three important towns, and is facing the Austrian forces which hold a position along the River Maros. No doubt, also, Russia was evidently looked to by Rumania to send forces south from Reni to attack Bulgaria through the Dobrudja. Germany, under the leadership of General Mackensen, however, struck in this quarter with great rapidity and energy. Mackensen has taken Tutrakan and Silistria, both almost on the bank of the Danube ; the first seems to have been an old- fashioned fortress easily pounded to pieces by the big guns; the second isa place of impor- tance. The future of the campaign in this sec- tion depends upon Russia. She seems to have every opportunity of moving whatever forces she can spare south through eastern Rumania, and thus to attack the Bulgarian and German forces with these purposes in view : to combine with the other armies of the Allies, to drive the enemy back of the Danube, to cut the rail- ways, and eventually to march upon Con- stantinople. Bucharest is to some extent threatened by the advance in the Dobrudja, but though the distance from the present German and Bulgarian position to Bucharest is not much over forty miles, the Danube River forms a strong defensive line. The second new move in the Balkans dur- ing our week was what looks like the begin- ning of a large advance by the French and the British from Salonika. The French appear to be moving north along the line of the Var- dar River—that is, in the general direction 113
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114 THE OUTLOOK of Nish, and ultimately Belgrade ; while the British seem to be moving more to the east— north along the Struma River, which is practi- cally the only other available line of advance. Meanwhile it is said that the Bulgarians have evacuated the seaport of Kavala. Altogether there is a strong probability that before win- ter comes the push on all the fronts in the Balkans by the Allies will embarrass Austria greatly and may very probably end in the re- occupation of Servia. On the western front the gains of the week, both by French and British, were valuable. The capture of the town of Ginchy by the British forces was a fine bit of work. The French all through the week made gains, and particularly on September 12 took important positions which are of great value in the probable early attacks on Combles and later upon Péronne. ‘They took fifteen hundred prisoners in one day. ‘The fighting in all this section during the week was severe and the fatalities large. There had been no very important devel- opment on the Russian front up to Septem- ber 13, although advances have been made in the Carpathians, and apparently a strong advance movement is preparing in the neigh- borhood of Kovel and Lemberg. The long-expected resignation of the Zaimis Ministry in Greece again renews the prediction that Greece is about to enter the war on the side of the Allies. The reports of the week indicate that her delay is due to the refusal of the Entente nations to promise at this late hour what Greece wants to have if the Allies win. THE CARMEN’S STRIKE IN NEW YORK he memorandum and recommendations issued by the Public Service Commission and Mayor Mitchel in New York City last week, while they do not settle the strikes on the surface, subway, and elevated roads, will serve to clear the air, to give the public information as to the complicated issues, and perhaps to offer a basis for possible agreement between the contending parties. ‘This basis has been definitely rejected. as we write, by the officers of the Interborough Company, but that does not necessarily mean that out of it may not grow negotiations which may avoid further injury and inconvenience to the public. The unions have accepted the proposal of arbitration, but with some condi- tions. Every fair-minded citizen will agree 20 September with the statement in the memorandum that “to-day, as on the 6th of August, the clear legal and moral principles governing the situation remain the same. LEach side be- lieves it is standing for its rights, but the rights of both sides are subordinated to the rights of the public, and it remains as true to-day as then that the public’s right is a right superior to the rights of either the men or the company.” The specific recommendations made by the Mayor and the Public Service Commission are, in brief, as follows : The strike to be called off immediately. The condition of affairs that existed before the break in negotiations to be restored. Arbitration to be used to determine whether the Interborough individual working contracts— the rock on which the union and the employers split—constitute a breach of the peace pact of August 7. The same means to be employed to determine whether the Interborough obtained signatures to these contracts by fraud, misrepresentation, coercion, or intimidation. It will be remembered that the strike in early August on the surface lines belonging to the New York Railways Company was settled temporarily by an agreement which has been summarized in The Outlook. That agreement included the consent of both par- ties to the arbitration of questions that might exist between them, and there was .an implied recognition of the union by the Company. The Interborough Company, which controls the subway and elevated lines, was not a formal party to this agreement. But, as the memorandum of the Commission points out : Mr. Hedley informed Mr. Fitzgerald and his associates that as the same men governed the policies of the Interborougk as governed the policies of the Railways Company, they might proceed upon the assumption that the principles and policies embodied in the Railways agree- ment of August 6 would be regarded as con- trolling in the case of the Interborough. It was definitely agreed to by both that the prin- ciple of freedom to organize, the principle of freedom from intimidation or coercion, and the principle of arbitration should govern. Hardly, however, had the public begun to rejoice at the settlement of this strike when charges and countercharges began to be made by all the parties concerned, each alleg ing on the part of the other bad faith and acts contrary to the spirit and letter of the agreement. ‘These charges have led to the existing strikes, and most emphatically they
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i916 THE are accusations which ought to be arbitrated under the original agreement. On both sides a spirit of antagonism and a desire to fight rather than to conciliate has been manifested. CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE STRIKE The chief cause, among several, of the existing trouble concerns the action of the Interborough Company in circulating two years’ contracts among their employees for individual signatures, and the insistence of the company that it will not deal with the Amalgamated Association of Street and Elec- tric Railway Employees, which is a National Association in which the several unions con. cerned are united. The Interborough de- clares that it is willing that its men should belong to a union of their own which has been formed under the name of a Brotherhood, but declines to deal with any ‘outsiders,’ although the agreement of August specifically provides that the men in dealing with the companies may do so through any represent- ative they may choose, and they have appar- ently chosen the Amalgamated to represent them. On the other hand, the Amalgamated Association leaders insist that the ‘‘ Brother- hood ” is not a union at all in the proper sense ; that the contracts obtained from the men were signed under misapprehension or fear of dismissal, and that in refusing to arbi- trate the validity of these contracts the Inter- borough Company has forced the fight. The Interborough, in a statement issued immediately after the Public Service Com- mission’s memorandum, declares that over ten thousand men have signed the contracts and that the Company will protect the rights of those men under those agreements and will not “submit to any person or body of men the question whether those agree- ments should have been made.” ‘The Com- pany denies all charges of fraud, threats, coercion, or intimidation. —The Amalgamated Association, on the other hand, considers that the Interborough, and perhaps to a less de- gree the company controlling the surface lines, have entered into a campaign of war to the death to union organizations, and that their utterances plainly show this intention. The surface line employees, in addition to their interest in the Interborough questions, make specific charges on their own account, and in turn are charged with breaking their \ugust agreements. As to the actual history of the strike, it WEEK 115 may be said that, fortunately from the point of view of the public, it has been far from complete. There have been considerable delay and inconvenience, and on the surface lines a shortage of cars, and in some of the more remote and detached districts of the city the inconvenience has been serious and irritating in the extreme. There has also been violence, but not on a large scale, and, compared with some other great strikes of this character in other cities, so far the num- ber of serious attempts at violence has been small. Strike-breakers have been used, but not to a large extent; one serious accident, in which two persons were killed and twelve injured, was caused by a trolley car manned by incompetent strike-breakers. The subway and elevated lines have carried on their serv- ice without serious breaks or interruptions. Generally speaking, the public has been patient, and only quietly indignant at the sit- uation, which has, however, given the people of New York a partial demonstration of the terriblé condition which would arise should a strike on its main arteries of travel be com- pletely effected. There is at least a possibility of sympa- thetic strikes in occupations, such as those of the longshoremen and teamsters, which are of use by the transportation companies for the furnishing of coal and in other ways. The number of men who may be called out on these sympathetic strikes, if their unions decide so to do and secure the consent of the National unions involved, is estimated at from forty to seventy thousand men. Mean- while some of the unions have urged their men individually to show sympathy with the strikers by declining to ride in any of the cars—a difficult plan to be carried out under transportation conditions in New York City. LAFAYETTE DAY Lafayette, the French nobleman, general, and patriot, is, next to Washington, perhaps the most distinguished military figure of the American Revolution. What our forefathers thought of him is strikingly indicated by the fact that there is in every State of the Union either a city or county that bears his name. When he visited New York, at the age of nearly seventy years, in 1824, he received a reception such as no other foreigner has ever, perhaps, received on American soil. A year or two ago a committee of Ameri- can citizens was formed to celebrate Lafay- ette’s birthday, the 6th of September, and a
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116 notable celebration was held week before last in New York under the auspices of this com- mittee. A distinguished group gathered in the fine aldermanic chamber of New York’s beautiful City Hall in the afternoon. Judge Alton B. Parker presided. ‘The words of welcome were spoken by Acting: Mayor Dowling, and addresses were made by Mr. Sharp, our present Ambassador to France ; Mr. Bacon, our former Ambassador to France; Dr. John H. Finley, who is Commissioner of Education of the State of New York, and a recognized authority regarding the effect of French civilization on the destinies of this country ; and, finally, by the French Ambas- sador, his Excellency J. J. Jusserand. Am- bassador Jusserand is peculiarly, among foreign diplomats, entitled to and possessed of American esteem. He has been longer in Washington than any other foreign Ambassa- dor or Minister. His charming wife is an American. He himself has written in Eng- lish some remarkable books regarding the fundamental sources of American social insti- tutions, such as “ The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare,” ‘‘ English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages,” “ Literary History of the English People,” and finally, and only recently published, ‘* With Americans of Past and Present Days.” Mr. Bacon, whose speech we print in full elsewhere, and Dr. Finley, whose effective poem written for the occasion will be found on another page, both pointed out the close relationship which has existed and ought still to exist between France and the United States, the two greatest democracies of modern times. ‘“ Here, in Lafayette,” said Dr. Finley, “is the incarnation of the perpetual youth of France! Disinterested in purpose! ‘Thinking not of cost or sacri- fice if the cause be just, even though it seems to be lost! Ever beginning again with un- quenchable spirit !’’ And he added that in this country and at this time “ our supreme task is to make that spirit universal, as it is in France to-day.” In his response Ambas- sador Jusserand expressed his own gratitude and that of his country for the aid and sym- pathy which have come to France from a large and influential section of the American people. Hereferred to the American ambu- lance and hospital workers, and spoke of the young aviators, like Victor Chapman, who have gone from this country to the aid of the Irench Republic as American aerial Lafay- He concluded with a play of words ettes. THE OUTLOOK 20 September upon the title of one of Dr. Finley’s books, which is a charming example of French wit and French sympathy. ‘“ Dr. Finley,” he said, “has written a distinguished historical work on the achievements of French explorers in the Mississippi Valley. The title may be taken in a scientific sense or with a touch of sentiment. I like to ascribe to Dr. Finley a feeling of sentiment for France when he chose for the title of his book, ‘ The French in the Heart of America.’ I can only say that when the war is over some Frenchman, gratefully mindful of all you and your com- patriots have done for France, will write a book which he will entitle ‘ America in the Heart of France’ !’” On the evening of Lafayette Day a ban- quet was given by the France-America Soci- ety in honor of Ambassador Jusserand at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Every one of the important Allied countries was represented at this banquet by either a consular official or a military or naval attaché. Ambassador Jus- serand spoke again and read messages of thanks to the Society and its friends from President Poincaré and Prime Minister Briand. Mr. James Beck, the distinguished American lawyer, who has made an interna- tional reputation for his analysis of the illegal criminality of the invasion of Belgium, made a notable address. He has just come back from France and England, and _ visited Verdun during the siege, and, among other places, the great cathedral at Rheims. The most beautiful details of this monument of Gothic art, he says, have been irretrievably ruined. He drew a moving picture of the faith of all Frenchmen, who, even down to the most humble soldier, believe that they are fighting in defense of liberty, independence and democratic freedom, which was, indeed the fight of Washington and Lafayette. GIFFORD PINCHOT FOR HUGHES Next to Theodore Roosevelt, probably the best-known Progressive in the country is Gifford Pinchot. As the representative and leader of the Conservation movement during Mr. Roosevelt’s Administration, he not only became widely known to the American public, but obtained an expert knowledge of the administrative side of Government business. His fine honesty and courage, combined with a notable kindliness and human sympathy, have won for him National leadership, which he still possesses. His public attitude on the
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1916 THE present National issues is therefore signifi- cant and important. He has just made a statement of that attitude, in which he has declared himself to be an opponent of Presi- dent Wilson and a supporter of Mr. Hughes. “T am,” he says, ‘neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but a Progressive. Yet, there being no Progressive nominee, unless I choose to support a candidate who cannot be elected, I must vote for either Wilson or Hughes.”’ He bases his opposition to the present Administration on President Wilson’s failure to protect American rights and honor in European and Mexican relations; on his vacillation and inconsistency with regard to National defense; on his failure to make his words effective by deeds with. regard to the conservation of our natural resources ; and on the record of his Administration in reintroducing the spoils system into the vari- ous Government departments. Mr. Pinchot has lived in Washington for many years and has himself been a distin- guished Government officer. For. this rea- son the attention of those who are defend- ing the Wilson Administration on economic grounds ought to be especially arrested by what he says in the following paragraph: “T have known official Washington from the inside for six Administrations. In that time the Government business has never been so badly done and so inefficiently as it is now done under Wilson.” There has been considerable discussion as to whether the bulk of the Progressive vote of 1912 would go to Mr. Hughes or to Mr. Wilson. Mr. Pinchot’s statement, coupled with the results of the Maine election, must be taken, we think, as an indication that the Progressives of 1912 will very largely sup- port Mr. Hughes. THE MAINE ELECTION On Monday of last week the election in Maine resulted in a clean sweep for the Re- publicans. ‘They elected a Governor, two United States Senators, all four of the Con- gressional Representatives from the State, and a large majority of both houses of the State Legislature. ‘The new Governor, Mr. Milliken, has the confidence of the people and has proved to be an admirable candidate. H{e had the solid support of the anti-liquor element, and in practically every speech he declared himself for enforcement to the utter- most of the present anti-liquor law. The WEEK 117 Prohibitionists, therefore, may justly claim his election as a triumph for their cause. The two newly elected United States Sen- ators are Colonel Frederick Hale, who is a son of ex-Senator Eugene Hale, and ex-Gov- ernor Bert M. Fernald. Mr. Fernald’s oppo- nent was Professor Sills, of Bowdoin College, while Colone! Hale’s antagonist was Senator Johnson, the present holder of the seat. Senator Johnson has been distinctively a per- sonal supporter.of President Wilson, and in his campaign received Administration support in a marked degree. - His defeat by Colonel Hale is pointed to by the Republican mana- gers, with reason we think, as indicating a loss of Administration prestige in the State of Maine. ‘This opinion is strengthened by the defeat of Congressman McGillicuddy, of Lewiston. He represents an industrial dis- trict in which there is a large so-called ‘“ labor vote,’’ has had a creditable record in Con- gress, and has introduced into that body some excellent proposals in the interest of labor. In spite of this record and of the support of Administration speakers of National promi- nence, he has failed of re-election. The Maine voters, by a referendum ballot, at this election ratified, despite strong cor- poration hostility, the fifty-four-hour bill passed by the Legislature in 1915. This act reduces the working week of women and minors from fifty-eight to fifty-four hours. Maine is, we believe, the fifteenth State to adopt a measure of this kind. The total number of votes cast was the largest in many years. ‘This increase in the total vote in a State of well-nigh stationary population is significant of the great interest taken in the election, and perhaps indicates that the country is not so apathetic about National questions as the quietness of the Presidential campaign so far would seem to suggest. ‘The Governor was elected by a ma- jority of approximately 14,000, and the other cartlidates by somewhat smaller majorities. But the figures clearly lead to the conclusion that the Progressives of Maine—and there was a large body of them, for Maine was the only New England State to give in 1912 a larger vote for Mr. Roosevelt than for Mr. ‘Taft—have gone back to the Republican party. OUR UNECONOMIC MILITIA SYSTEM A letter has come to us from an army officer stationed on the border which points
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118 out, with a very graphic illustration, one of the many serious defects inherent in our present military system. We will let him tell his story in his own words : “An old company commander of mine was recently showing me over the camp he had laid out for some militia brigades. He stopped the car to inspect a drainage ditch. ‘**When the Regiment came down here,’ he remarked, ‘I asked for a detail to dig this ditch, and when they reported I care- fully explained to the corporal in charge just what the ditch was to accomplish. ‘Then I asked him whether he understood. He did. It turned out that he was a civil engineer who had been called away from the charge of a five-million-dollar drainage contractin Florida.’ ** So it goes. We hear some militia blamed for inefficiency, but that can be, and is being, remedied by border field service. Such arrant economic waste as the above incident illus- trates can never be remedied under our present indiscriminate system of obtaining militia sol- diers ; it is the first principle of that system. ‘* Morally, the corporal in question deserves credit for enlisting in the militia. All he had to guide him was patriotism, emotional con- sciousness of debt to country, the evaluation of his home. Enlistment and _ intelligent obedience were all that seemed to him neces- sary. But logically, economically, why should he waste the capabilities of an engineer officer in a position where they have the greatest chance of being wiped out, lost, in action on an infantry firing-line ? Or, rather, what right had the State to let him waste them? ‘The State saw nothing in him except a recruit. “There are many men in the militia to whom it is rather an incongruous lark to serve in the ranks for fifteen dollars a month. In some cases, no doubt, it is a very good thing. But when we have fought our Battle of Mons and look about to renew the officers it will cease to be a joke. It will not be satisfactory then to go -up and down tthe militia firing-line calling for any engineers, doctors, or railroad men present to stop shooting and begin different work.” In the Swiss army, under a system of universal service, the capabilities of this engineer-corporal would have been utilized in a way to preserve for his country the resources of his invaluable technical training. Possibly we are too optimistic in hoping that the time may come when we shall handle our military problems as intelligently as the free citizens of the Swiss Republic. THE OUTLOOK MR. ASQUITH INDORSES INTERNATIONAL PEACE LEAGUE The International League to Enforce Peace has received a very important indorse- ment in a recent address delivered by Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister of England, at Queen’s Hall, on the anniversary of Great Britain’s entrance into the war. Coming from a man who is, in the best sense of that term, a representative of the people, this speech may, in its prophetic hope, be ac- cepted as representing the public sentiment of Great Britain and an indication that when this war is over Great Britain will be ready to join with other civilized nations in an organic attempt to secure peace in the future by the only method by which jeace can be secured —an organization of peace-loving nations to compel, by force where necessary, obedience to international law by all peoples. One paren- thetical phrase in this speech is worthy the special notice of Americans. When Mr. As- quith says that the hope of peace rests “‘ upon the common will of Europe, and J hope not 07 Europe alone,’ it is impossible to doubt his implication that the United States, perhaps all the American states, would unite in this com- mon will to protect peace by the maintenance and enforcement of law. In his address he said, with notable clarity and force of expres- sion : By the victory of the Allies the enthronement of public right here in Europe will pass from the domain of ideals and of aspirations into that of concrete and achieved realities. What does public right mean? I will tell you what I understand it to mean—an equal level of op- portunity and of independence as between small states and great states; as between weak and strong safeguards, resting upon the common will of Europe, and I hope not of Europe alone; against aggression ; against international covet- ousness and bad faith; against the wanton re- course, in case of dispute, to the use of force and the disturbance of the peace ; and, finally, as a result of it all, a great partnership of nations, federated together in the joint pursuit of a freer and fuller life for the countless millions who by their efforts and their sacrifice, generation after generation, maintain progress and enrich the inheritance of humanity. We do not believe that the American peo- ple will be prevented by any fear of “ entan- gling alliances ” from entering into such an international federation, and we hope that when the time comes for the organization of such a federation our National Government will be of a character and possessed by a
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CARTOONS OF THE WEEK Rollin Kirby in the New York World “YOU'LL NEVER CATCH ME IN THAT TRAP AGAIN, GENTLEMEN!” UNCLE SAM’S LESSON—WILL HE PROFIT BY IT?
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CARTOONS OF THE WEEK Sykes in the Philadelphia Evening Ledger From the Montreal Daily Star “WHAT MUST BE, MUST!” “AND THEN THERE WERE SEVEN” GREECE PREPARING TO GO IN THE EUROPEAN “LITTLE INJUNS”—WILL THERE BE ANY LEFT? Satterfield in the Chicago Evening Post From Le Péle-Méle (Paris) THE GERMAN FAMINE “If only the dove of peace would come !”” ‘Yes, we might roast her !’ THE TEST CAN AUSTRIA KEEP THE RUSSIAN BEAR OUT? PEACEFUL DREAMS OF FOOD
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CAN STRIKES BE PREVENTED? spirit which will represent the international courage of its people. THE “REVISTA UNIVERSAL ” The “ Revista Universal,” or “ Universal Review,” a Spanish illustrated monthly maga- zine which has been published in New York City for two years, has recently changed hands. It may not be apparent at once why this fact should be recorded in The Outlook, but the new owners of this review have an- nounced a policy all too rare among any peri- odicals, and so rare among Spanish-American periodicals that we consider it noteworthy. Though the new owners of the magazine are admittedly in sympathy with the cause of liberalism in Mexico as represented by Car- ranza, they have undertaken to publish a journal of impartial and independent views designed to promote more intimate relations and good feeling among all the countries of Pan-America. The “ Revista Universal,’’ says the open- ing announcement of the editors, ‘‘ proposes to undertake a work of unification, of spirit, and of hope; and if there is a Pan-American ideal, and, above all, a Pan-Iberian-American ideal—this will be its ideal, synthesized in the inspiring motto of the last Pan-American Congress at Washington: ‘One for All and All for One.’ ” The “ Review ” undertakes to inform its readers on all important “ social, economic, and political questions of the twenty-one countries which form the great Pan-American family,’’ and it hopes to draw upon the abili- ties of the best Spanish writers and authors in the Western Hemisphere. It is a high ideal which this magazine has taken for itself, an ideal difficult to attain. But the first number of the ‘“‘ Revista Uni- versal ” contains much promise of adequate fulfillment. Although, as above mentioned, the editors of the journal are in sympathy with Carranza, the leading article is contrib- uted by a man whose hostility to the cause of the First Chief is well known, and another article sings the praises of the Mexican painter Father P. G. Carrasco, a Jesuit priest, although the antipathy of the Constitutional- ists to the clerical orders of Mexico hardly needs mention. ‘The English translations of the more important articles in the ‘“ Revista Universal’’ which its editors plan to furnish to American journals may well be an impor- tant service to the latter in the discussion of Latin-American affairs. 121 CAN STRIKES BE PRE- VENTED? In the tumult and confusion of the present labor war there is one fundamental principle which needs to be affirmed, maintained, and, if necessary, fought for: the principle that in America the majority govern. This is a government by the people, for the people. Government by the few im- posed on the people is un-American, undemo- cratic, unjust, and unendurable. It is quite immaterial whether that government is im- posed by a political bureaucracy, a landed aristocracy, moneyed lords, or organized labor. ‘Three or four weeks ago four hun- dred thousand men demanded that the United States Government establish eight hours as the standard labor day for our rail- ways, and threatened to deprive the Amer- ican people of their highways if the demand were not granted. Whether the eight-hour day is practicable or impracticable, whether it is reasonable or unreasonable, should have been decided by the hundred million people, not by the four hundred thousand railway employees. The same principle is involved in the labor disturbances in New York City. There are five million people residing in New York City. It is estimated that one million people use the subways, elevated railways, and surface lines every day. A few thousand men are attempt- ing to tell these million citizens on what con- ditions they may use those cars, and to enforce the authority which they have assumed they have called for a sympathetic strike—that is, they are endeavoring to stop all the industries on which the life of the city depends in order to compel the city to submit to their authority. The labor leaders affirm that the President of the Interborough Company is attempting to prevent the existence of labor organizations, and that they are fighting for the right of work- ingmen to organize. The President of the Inter- borough Company affirms that he is not op- posed to labor organizations, but believes in the right of individual workingmen to make indi- vidual contracts, if they prefer todo so. We believe in the right of workingmen to organize and to substitute collective bargaining for indi- vidual bargaining. We believe in the right of workingmen not to organize and to depend on individual contracts if they prefer to do so. But we emphatically deny the right of either labor unions or corporations to deprive New York City of its means of transit while they fight out this issue. ‘The counsel of the
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122 THE OUTLOOK Interborough Company is quoted as saying: ‘‘] believe this country is in the same posi- tion as it was when Lincoln said it could not exist half free and half slave. I believe it cannot exist half union and _ half non-union.” We do not believe that he is right. But the question whether he is right or wrong is not one to be decided for the five million people of New York City by the Interborough cor- poration or by the labor unions, or by a battle royal between the two; it is one to be de- cided for the city of New York by the five million people who live in the city of New York, or possibly by the ten millions who live in New York State. When the question of a strike was submitted to a mass-meeting of employees, it is said that their shouts of “ Strike ! Strike ! Strike !” could be heard a mile away. What sort of a deliberative as- sembly is that to determine for the people of New York City on what terms and conditions they may use their highways ? We do not here contend for the right of labor to organize, though we have always maintained that right; nor for the right of the individual laborer to work without be- longing to an organization, though we have always maintained that right. We contend for the right of the American people to determine on what conditions their public highways, Federal, State, and municipal, shall be carried on. All claims, whether of capitalists or laborers, are subordinate to the fundamental right of the majority to pass upon those claims and to enforce their de- cision on both employers and employed. The reader will ask, How do you propose to accomplish this result? We here point out one way in which it can be accomplished. A few words of preliminary definition are necessary to make clear what follows. There is a great difference between an arbitral tribunal and a court of justice. The difference is not merely nominal ; it is vital. Arbitration is generally arranged after the controversy has arisen and while prejudices and passions are excited. It usually works through one or more representatives selected by each of the contestants to represent their respect- ive interests, and an umpire chosen by them ; thus it is a bi-partisan tribunal with a non- partisan umpire. Its decision is naturally and almost necessarily a compromise. And it has no inherent power to enforce its de- cree, though power may be, and sometimes is, created by law for its enforcement. A court of justice is a permanent organiza- 20 September tion created with no reference to a particular dispute. Great pains are taken to make it non-partisan. In a jury trial no one is allowed to act as juror who has any interests or preju- dices in favor of either party. Care usually is, and always ought to be, taken to secure as judges men of judicial temper, free from personal, class, or political prejudices. ‘The object of the court is not to settle a contro- versy, but to secure justice, and it is expected to consider, and generally does consider, not merely the interests of the contestants, but also those of the general public; in fact, public policy frequently cetermines its judg- ment. As soon as its judgment is declared, that judgment becomes as much a part of the law of the land as an act of the legislative body, and the whole police and military power of the State and, if necessary, of the Nation is pledged to enforce it. One way out of the present industrial sit- uation would be the creation, not of com- pulsory arbitration, but of a special judicial tribunal with power to bring before it the parties to any industrial dispute affecting a National, State, or municipal highway, hear the respective claims of the parties, examine witnesses, require the production of books and papers, and authoritatively decide the controversy, a decision which it would then be the duty of the police and, if necessary, of the military power of the Government to enforce. We have heretofore pointed out how such decision could be enforced on the corpora- tion. If it refused or failed to obey the decision of the court, the court could put the corporation into the hands of a receiver who would execute the decree, exactly as_ the court now puts a corporation into the hands of a receiver if it fails to pay the interest on its bonds. We have also pointed out the truth that freedom of contract does not mean that parties are free to keep or break their contracts at pleasure. When a contract is made, the law enforces the keeping of the contract. ‘The law might require all con- tracts for employment on a railway, Federal, State, municipal, to run for a definite term, as for one or two years. If this were the case, and men were taken into the service at different times, their contracts would expire at different times. They could not, there- fore, lawfu'ly combine to leave in a_ body, nor could any employee be _ discharged except for cause on complaint presented and hearing given. If the men felt themselves
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1916 THE POLICY aggrieved, a complaint could always be lodged with the court and correction demanded, and it could be lodged by any individual or by any group of individuals. If an employee was discharged and complained of the in- justice of his discharge, the law might pro- vide that his wages should continue until the court had passed upon his complaint. If any man left his employment before the expiration of his contract, he would render himself liable to arrest, fine, and possibly imprisonment. If any conspiracy was formed in order to induce the men to leave in a body in violation of their contracts, the conspirators could be arrested, and, if convicted, fined or imprisoned, or both. In brief, such atribunal, possessing the combined powers of a civil and a criminal court, would establish, not only for the parties but for the people, the judicial method of securing ju;3- tice, which civilization has long since estab- lished in lieu of war for the settlement of private quarrels, and is tending to establish in lieu of war for the settlement of international quarrels, and should long since have estab- lished in lieu of war for the settlement of industrial quarrels. : No doubt objections may be urged against this plan, or against any plan which the wit of man can devise. ‘The question for the thoughtful student of affairs is whether the objections to some such plan are as great as those to the present no-plan, which leaves the community helpless while the quasi-owners and the operators of our public highways fight out the questions as to wages and conditions of labor which are sure to arise between them from time to time. Of some other possible plans we may speak in future issues of ‘The Outlook. THE POLICY OF REPRISAL Congress has enacted a measure giving the President power to take action of a dras- tic nature against the British and French Governments. ‘This action provides that the President may withhold clearance from ves- sels that discriminate against any American citizen or firm or from vessels of any nation that restricts the commerce of American ships or citizens. An accompanying measure, known as the Phelan Amendment, adopted by the Senate but struck out in conference, and rightly regarded by its critics as even more dangerous in its possibilities, authorized OF REPRISAL 123 the President to deny the use of the United States mails, telegraphs, cables, wireless, and express service to British and French sub- jects or firms, if their Governments restricted American mails or trade. It is believed that the Phelan Amendment was opposed by the State Department. The Outlook has already expressed its con- viction (August 2, 1916, page 775) that a foreign nation has a legal right to restrict the trade of its own subjects, and therefore to prohibit its subjects from dealing in certain materials or with certain specified citizens of other countries. We believe, also, that it has a moral right to do this if in its judgment the national exigency is sufficiently great to warrant such a course. Whether it has any right to interfere with the mails is a much more serious question. In general, the invio- lability of the mails is a National right. We do not propose here, however, to dis- cuss these legal questions. It is evident that they are both questions on which lawyers of eminence are not entirely agreed. Nor do we here consider the wisdom of Great Brit- ain’s policy. We think that it was unwise; that it will do her cause more harm by provoking hostility in neutral countries than it can possibly do her cause good by inflicting in- jury upon her enemies or restricting trade by which they might profit. We have here, how- ever, simply to consider the righteousness and the wisdom of the action of our own Congress. Concerning that, two principles may be laid down, we think, with confident assurance of their correctness. I. The question whether Great Britain and France have a right to prohibit their citizens from trading with certain of our citi- zens, and the question whether they have a right to open American mails if they have reason to think those mails are carrying aid to their enemies, are both questions which can properly be referred to a disinterested tribunal for settlement. A protest against any interference with our trade or with our mails, even by prohibitions laid upon their own citizens, would lay a foundation for a demand in the future for compensation in rectification of the wrong, for whatever wrongs are done by such interference are of the kind that can be measurably compensated for by apology and damages. They are certainly far less than the wrongs inflicted upon us by Great Britain’s careless or possibly intentional acts in allowing cruisers to be fitted out in British ports to prey upon American com-
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THE OUTLOOK merce. ‘That wrong our country endured during the Civil War, and for that wrong demanded compensation after the war was over, and it established before an impartial tribunal its right to such compensation. ‘The precedent pursued by the Lincoln Adminis- tration in 1861—65 is the one which should have been followed by the Wilson Adminis- tration in 1916. The viciousness of the course pursued by our Congress in dealing with the blacklist is emphasized by the viciousness of the course pursued by our President in dealing with the German submarines. When Americans by the score were murdered on the high seas, in violation not only of the principles of inter- national law but of the principles of human- ity, we made a protest; but we did not ven- ture on any reprisal. We continued to treat Germany as a friendly Power in our protests, and to say complimentary things to her, and up to the present time have taken no efficient measures to protect the rights of Americans to travel freely on the high seas. But when England interferes with our trade we do not stop.at protest; we propose vigorous measures of reprisal. gress does not require reprisal. It is true that the Act of Con- It leaves the matter to the discretion of the President ; and we hope that the President will have the dis- cretion not to exercise the authority which the act confers upon him. But it is also true that the passage of the act has served to stimulate in at least one of the Southern republics a proposal to similar action, and to stimulate in this country the unfriendly feel- ing toward Great Britain already aroused by her blacklist. When our citizéns are mur- dered, our Government protests and does nothing ; when our trade is interfered with, our Government not only protests, but pre- pares to hit back. It is not strange that satirists abroad think we care more for prop- erty than for life. II. The attorney regards the nation as his client, and seeks, only to defend her legal rights and possibly to instruct her in her legal duties. The statesman takes a larger view. He considers the future, and shapes the policy of his nation in such a way as will at least tend to secure honor for her now among the nations of the world, and in the future their friendship and their support in any international exigency which may arise. The Congressional policy of reprisal is the policy of an attorney, who thinks only of the present and of his nation’s legal rights, who 20 September has no vision for the future and no consider- ation of what policy will promote the nation’s honor and the nation’s ultimate welfare. The official policy of the American Nation has been that of an attorney, not that of a statesman, and is full of serious peril to the Nation in the future. Germany declares that she is fighting for her life. ‘The German people very generally believe this declaration. ‘There is much to warrant that belief. ‘The war which she has herself provoked will not prove fatal to her existence, but will inflict upon her wounds from which she will be long in recovering. And we have officially declared to this people, from whom we have derived the literature of a Goethe, the philosophy of a Hegel and a Kant, and the religious freedom won for the world by a Luther, that whether she lives or dies is a matter which does not concern us. We could hardly have done more to make Germany our enemy if we had joined the Allies in the very beginning of the war. In- deed, we probably should have done less, because we should have abbreviated the war and not allowed time for hate to grow to its present proportions. Individual Americans have contributed to Germany through the German loan, and probably some scores or hundreds who returned to their Fatherland are fighting in her ranks; but America as a Nation has told her formally and officially that what she regards as a struggle for her life does not concern us. On the other hand, the Allies believe that they are fighting to defend free government from a. military despotism, that they are fight- ing the same battle which Americans fought in 1776against Great Britain, and which England and her European allies fought a little later in the prolonged wars against French militarism under the lead of Napoleon the Great. And we have officially informed them that this war does not concern us, that we do not care to know what are the causes which have produced this war, that we are not inter- ested in the question whether liberty shall live or die on the European continent. Indi- vidual Americans have done much to coun- teract this official declaration of not merely neutrality but indifference. ‘Thousands of them have gone across the border to enlist in the Canadian army; thousands of them have gone across the sea, some to enlist in the French ranks, some to enlist in the aero plane service, the ambulance service, and the hospital corps. And the American press,
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1916 with a remarkable approach to unanimity, has interpreted the faith of the American people that the Allies are fighting on Euro- pean soil the battle which our fathers fought in 1776. But individual expressions of ap- preciation and friendship and individual serv- ices, while they may modify, cannot counteract the official expressions of the Government and the official action of Congress. It is a curious phantasy, incomprehensible to us, which leads any man to imagine that this attitude of supreme indifference to the life- and-death struggle in Europe will lead the combatants, or any of them, to invoke our good offices in settling the terms of peace when the end of the war comes. We have won by our course neither the respect nor the friendship of the battling nations. Nor have we done anything to unify neu- tral sentiment, set an example to neutral nations, or secure co-operation in the protec- tion of neutral rights. We have in official notes incidentally mentioned the rights of neutrals, but we have made no attempt to protect those rights by action, and no attempt to organize the forces of neutrals in even so much as a protest in support of those rights. The only example we have set has been our apathy, if not our acquiescence, in the flagrant disregard of the neutral rights of Belgium ; and the only action which we have proposed to take against the violation of neu- trality has been this proposed reprisal, pur- posed to protect, not the rights of neutrals throughout the world, not even the rights of Americans to their lives, but the rights of our own trade threatened by unfriendly action. We must also remember that our official indifference to the great issues involved in this war is the more perplexing to the Allies, since they cannot easily understand why, if a people have a common sympathy, it should not be reflected in their governmental action. In England, France, and Italy government changes with the changes in public sentiment. No administration can long survive in those countries a radical change in public opinion, because that change is reflected in the legis- lative assembly, and the action of the legisla- tive assembly determines the life of the administration. England, France, and Italy have in effect, though not in form, the recall, and only the very well educated Englishman, frenchman, and Italian can fail to believe that in a free government the policy of a na- tional administration reflects public opinion. Unless the people should decree a radical THE FRENCH SPIRIT 125 change in administration and public policy, we shall find at the end of the: war that we have sown for ourselves in all nations the seeds of disrespect, if not of open hostility, and prepared for ourselves a possible harvest of calamity in the not far-distant future. No nation can stand alone. It is as true of na- tions as of individuals that none can live for himself only. Unless the American people find a way to emphasize the truth that neu- trality is not indifference, that they are not unconcerned in the questions which concern their fellow-men, that they are not absorbed in their own National interests and do not think that National safety is more important than National duty and National honor, should our own land be imperiled, we shall have no right to expect anything but the same indifference to our welfare which we have officially expressed when other nations were imperiled ; and we shall be left to fight, not only without aid, but without sympathy, the battle for our own protection, perhaps a battle for our own existence. THE FRENCH SPIRIT A few years ago, at the Fourth of July reception given by the American Ambassador in London, a boy of delightful face and engaging manner said, as he took the Ambassador’s hand, “I came to salute the flag, sir.” In reply to questions by the Am- bassador, he gave his name, which was that of a noble French family, and said that his great-grandfather had served with Lafayette during the Revolutionary War and that his family always observed the Fourth of July. The quick response of interest and affection on the faces of the Americans about him was the distinctive answer to the unspoken appeal to American gratitude. Among the brilliant figures who appeared in the struggle of the American Colonies two young men are especially conspicuous, Lafayette and Hamilton. Gallant in bear- ing, brilliant in action, it was their special distinction that Washington loved them. <A hundred and forty years after the Declaration of Independence, on the birthday of Lafayette, who was born in 1757, flowers were placed on his statue and upon that of Washington, his great leader, in Union Square, New York, at the place where the tides of human life are always at the flood. Americans can take but little satisfaction in some of the dealings of this
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126 country with France ; but we have nothing to regret in our treatment of Lafayette. The history of French settlement on this continent has an epic quality, which Parkman has brought out in a series of histories which have the charm of romance; a charm which is peculiarly and distinctively French. Wher- ever the fleur-de-lis was planted, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence half across the continent to the mouth of the Mississippi, the French influence is still seen in gentle manners and charm of social life. As a national movement, the endeavor of France to share with the English the control of the continent failed, but as a contribution to the civilization of the New World it has its own enduring quality. It was inevitable that the celebration of Lafayette Day this year should take on new importance, for never in history has any nation held the position which France holds to-day in the thought of the world. Even her foes, intrenched on her soil and _ striking at her life, are free to confess their admira- tion of her superb courage and her indomi- table spirit. Armed more completely than she was in the days of Napoleon, there seems to be no.suspicion’ of her motives and no hatred of her successes. The reason is not far to seek, and it lies, perhaps, unconsciously at the foundation of the admiration of her foes. Lafayette wrote to his wife from the ship that brought him to this country that he regarded his service in the Colonial Army as likely to be “a brevet of immortality.”” Such it has proved to be; his name is not only written broadly across the page of American history, but it is writ- ten everywhere over the face of the conti- nent in the names of towns, streets, squares, colleges, and institutions of all kinds. It was his happy fortune, in a life of many perils and vicissitudes, to receive in person the most generous payment (in gratitude and affection) for his services. He was twice the guest of the Nation, and each visit took the form of a triumphal procession. He was more widely known personally and by sight in America than any other foreigner of his time. Making long journeys by carriage, the people in many sections thronged the roadsides and welcomed him as a friend. He drove under triumphal arches, groups of girls threw flowers in his way, cities greeted him with every kind of hospitality. When he came a second time, in 1824, many men who fought with him were still living to wel- THE OUTLOOK 20 September come him as a comrade. At Lexington he was met by fourteen of the seventy Minute Men who had “fired the shot heard round the world.” Lafayette’s service was significant of the French spirit, and the affectionate enthusiasm which greeted him in this country was evoked by a French national characteristic. He has become a national hero in this country be- cause he rendered an international service. And France has always been in a conspic- uous degree the servant of the international spirit ; the spirit, that is, which, consciously or unconsciously, in making a path for itself opens a way for humanity. France has rendered notable services to science, and especially in those fields of scientific activity in which the fruits secured are for the heal- ing of the nations; the fact that Pasteur has become a popular hero shows that his work appeals to the national imagination. But France is associated in the thought of the world with art rather than with science, and this is full of deep significance ; for art is an expression of the human spirit, and the inter- est of the French, even in their moments of most passionate absorption in national defense or national advance, has never left the human spirit out of account. In a peculiar sense France has been the protago- nist of the human spirit, and has incessantly fought, sometimes in a kind of furious blindness, for its liberation. The French are pre-eminently a social people ; the interest of the individual is sub- ordinate to the interest of society ; and no one can understand them who does not rec- ognize the force and influence of the family and the state. To a Frenchman the state has all the definiteness and reality of a person. A peasant woman was once noticed wander- ing about that “ brilliant university ” which is the center of the Government buildings in Paris. She carried a great bunch of flowers in her hands. Toa gendarme who saw her confusion and asked what she was looking for, she replied: ‘‘I have brought these flowers for the Administration.” In France patriotism is a passion, and, while General Joffre is husbanding the lives of “his chil dren,” there is not a man in the trenches who would not lay down his life for France. The country which gave us_ Lafayette. which rendered us invaluable aid in the strug gle for independence, which gave us a defini tion of rights in the Declaration, is ‘‘ the coun try of Europe in which the people is most
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1916 THE RECORD alive.” In this sentence Matthew Arnold has given the world a definition and an ex- planation of the French spirit. Served bya quality of intelligence which plays over the whole surface of national activity like a light, and by a common sense which, in spite of many excesses, anchors French aspiration and idealism in reality, France is not only in intensity of feeling a nation, but, in a real sense, the nation among nations. With all the faults of her genius, she fights with a sword in one hand and with a light in the other, always, consciously or unconsciously, bearing the fortunes of the human race with her. There are many things which are humiliat- ing to Americans in the attitude of our Gov- ernment toward the great struggle between absolutism and democracy, the age-long fight for the liberation of the spirit, now going on in Europe; but there is nothing to regret in the devotion to France in her hour of need of many young Americans, nor in the finely conceived and finely organized service of American women to the suffering and sorrow of France; and no one can read without gratitude and emotion the words of the French Ambassador spoken in New York on Lafayette Day : THE RECORD December 6, 1915. It is proper, therefore, to review what the nine months’ session did. Sixty-fourth Congress is, of course, still in existence, and is Democratic in both branches. OF CONGRESS 127 No, the fighting, the bleeding France of to- day is the France of all time, that of yesterday and that of to-morrow; that of Joan of Arc, of Bayard, Turenne, Hoche, Lafayette, the same as that of Joffre. Some have wondered that the French, pretty well known for their dash, could show such endurance, but this was to forget that France fought a hundred years’ war and won it. Never in my country will the American volun- teers of the great war be forgotten. There is not one form of suffering among the innumer- able kinds of calamities caused by a merciless enemy that some American work has not tried to assuage in the hospitals, in the schools for the maimed and blind, on the battlefields, in the trenches, nay, in the air, with your plucky avia- tors. The American name is blessed in the trenches, where those kits named after the hero of to-day, Lafayette, have brought comfort to so many soldiers. Serving in the ambulances, serving in the Legion, serving in the air, serving liberty, obey- ing the same impulses as those which brought Lafayette to these shores, many young Ameri- cans, leaving family and home, have offered to France their lives. Those lives many have lost, and never was there shown such abnega- tion and generosity as that of men who, like Victor Chapman, died to rescue their American and French co-aviators. OF CONGRESS The first session of the Sixty-fourth Congress has just adjourned ; it convened at Washington The The members of the House and some members of the Senate were elected in 1914, the Representatives elected for a term of two years, while the Senators are chosen for terms of six years. The House has 435 members, the Senate 96. The ratio of representation in the House is one member to every 212,407 of the people; in the Senate there are two Senators from each State. WHAT WAS EXPECTED? What did the members expect to do on December 6, 1915? As to National defense, there were the Garrison and Daniels plans for the increase of the army and navy—the first with its scheme of ‘“ Continentals,” the latter a “little navy’’ scheme disguised as a “big navy” programme. ‘These original propositions bear but remote resemblances to the mass of defense legislation finally en- acted. As to revenue, there were questions in December, 1915, as to how money could be raised—whether by the sale of bonds, by tariff duties, or by direct taxation. As to tariff duties in particular, there was the ques- tion as to whether sugar should remain on the free list or should be put back on the dutiable list. Then there was the demand of farmers that the Administration finally redeem its promise as to rural credits legisla- tion. There was also the demand by ship- owners to obtain a modification of the Sea- man’s Law, and there was much talk about what Congress should do regarding the pro- posed amendment to the Constitution grant- ing the vote to women. WHAT DID CONGRESS DO? We separate the accomplishments of Con- gress into Good, Bad, and Mixed Good and Bad. Its inaction regarding certain things
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128 expected was in some cases welcome and in others unwelcome. I—GOOD ACTS The Child Labor Law, forbidding inter- State commerce in the products of mills or factories in which children under fourteen years of age have been employed, and in the products of mines or quarries in which chil- dren under sixteen have been employed. The Federal Workmen’s Compensation Law, providing thirty-five per cent of her hus- band’s wages during widowhood to the widow of any workman employed by the Govern- ment and killed in the discharge of duty, and granting to a workman during total dis- ability a monthly two-thirds of his wages and a less amount in the case of partial disability. The Postal Savings Bank Amendment to the Law of 1910. An amendment increas- ing the amount which individuals may deposit in the Postal Savings Banks from $500 to $1,000 with interest, and an additional $1,000 without interest. The Federal Farm Loan Law. A step in the direction of rural land banks the prece- dent for which has been set by Germany, France, and Denmark. Doubtless experience will suggest amendments, but it is action in the right direction. The Railway Regulation Resolution, pro- viding for an investigation of the efficiency of the present system of control, and also of conditions which would attend Government ownership of all public utilities—railways, telegraphs, telephones, express companies. The Gd Roads Law, appropriating $80,000,000 during the next five years to be spent in making good roads, if the State in- volved puts up a dollar for every dollar given to it from the Federal fund. But the ad- ministration of this law must be scientific and efficient to save it from the dangers of the “ pork barrel.” The Sugar Repeal Law, repealing the free sugar clause of the Underwood Tariff Bill, thereby continuing the receipt of some $40,000,000 in customs revenue by the Treasury. The Military and Naval Academies Law, increasing the corps of cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and of midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, an increase of vital importance to the plans that have been since adopted in enlarging the army and navy. The Fortifications Appropriation Bill, ap- THE OUTLOOK propriating some $25,000,000 for fortifica- tions and other works of defense and for their armament. The Army Appropriation Bill, with its lib- eral appropriations for the maintenance of the reorganized army and militia and for sup- plies and equipment. The bill also establishes an embryonic Council of National Defense. This is a commendable step in the right direction, even if it does not altogether satisfy the demand for the complete co-ordination of all our resources. The Ratification of the Nicaraguan Treaty, providing for the right to construct a canal, if ever desirable, across Nicaragua, and for a naval base in the Bay of Fonseca, the con- sideration being $3,000,000. The Ratification of the Haitian Treaty, es- tablishing a financial guardianship similar to ours in the Dominican Republic and creating a Haitian constabulary, to be officered*by Americans until the natives are fitted to take over the command. The Ratification of the Danish Treaty, pay- ing $25,000,000 for the three Danish West Indian Islands. ‘Though the price is five times as much as was offered in 1902, it is justifiable in view of the extinction of a pos- sible source of foreign complications which might lead to a war involving us, under the Monroe Doctrine. The Ratification of the Migratory Bird Treaty between the United States and Canada, providing that no bird important to agriculture because it is an insect destroyer shall be shot at any time, and that the open season for game birds may be restricted to three months and a half. II—BAD ACTS The Widows’ Pension Bill, passed at the last moment of the session for patent political rea- sons, and unwarrantably increasing both claims to pensions and the amount of pensions. The Ship Purchase Law, committing the Government to $50,000,000 of absurd ex- penditure on the pretext of a Governmental purchase of merchant vessels to aid trade and to act as naval auxiliaries. The Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Zaw. According to Senator Kenyon, of Iowa, ‘‘half of its $42,000,000 is to be poured into waterless streams and dry rivers.”” Cer- tainly the greater part is to be spent on proj- ects of purely local interest, from which no permanent National benefit can result. Mr. (Continued on page following illustrations)
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Current Events Pictortally Treated PHOTOGRAPH FROM PAUL THOMPSON " * KING FERDINAND OF RUMANIA The entrance of Rumania into the world war calls attention anew to the picturesque figure of her King. in 1865, he has just passed the half-century milestone. He is the nephew of the late King, Carol I, whom he succeeded on the death of the latter in 1914
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¢ ¥ “GBM Shei aE Msn? a, Pee se RE Orere me PHOTOGRAPH BY GUY SPENCER THE BISHOP POTTER MEMORIAL PULPIT IN THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE DIV E, NEW YORK CITY The picture shows the figure of St. John the Baptist, at one side of the stairway leading to the pulpit. The pulpit, which is one of the largest and finest in America, was donated by Mrs. Russell Sage. It was designed by Henry Vaughan, of Boston, and is built of Tennessee marble, It was dedicated September 10
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& TOGRAPH FROM CENTRAL NEWS PROTO SERVICE A MEMORIAL TO LORD ROBERTS ERECTED IN GLASGOW This striking statue of Lord Roberts was recently unveiled in Glasgow by the Countess Roberts, the great soldier’s daughter, in the presence of a distinguished company, which included 140 veterans who had fought under Lord Roberts in various campaigns, including the Indian Mutiny, Abyssinia, and Afghanistan
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PHOTOGRAPH BY AVERICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION VICTOR AND VANQUISHED IN THE NATIONAL LAWN TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES Richard Norris Williams 2d (at the left), of Philadelphia, the new champion, is being congratulated on | victory by the loser, William M. Johnston, of San Francisco
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PHOTOGRAPHS FROM PRESS ILLUSTRATING SERVICE “LET THE BUYER BEWARE” Che New York City Bureau of Weights and Measures has unearthed many ingenious frauds practiced on pecting buyers. The picture at the top of the page shows a pail with false sides, desigt the customer into thinking she is going to get a large quantity of spinach at a bargain price. Telow is an 1 to deceive ingenious deception used by a shopkeeper who sold “ five pounds ” of vegetables and allowed the purchaser t to weigh them herself. The five-pound weight was up to standard, but as it remained constantly on the Scales the woman could not see that the scales did not really balance. The weights attached to the scoop end of the scales were effectually hidden
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PHOTOGRAPH FROM PRESS ILLUSTRATING SERVICE CARL E. MILLIKEN, JUST ELECTED GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF MAINE Mr. Milliken, the Republican candidate, defeated his rival, Oakley G. Curtis, the Democratic candidate, by a large majority. See editorial comment
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THE RECORD Kenyon added, “I want to say that if the price of holding my seat in the Senate is to vote for bills of this kind, the seat may go.” The Eight-Hour Law. While many friends of the eight-hour day are glad that Congress has sanctioned it in such a quasi-public indus- try as transportation, they resent the fact that action was taken under duress, believing that it does not represent the real sentiments of many Congressmen who voted for it. It decides by legislation questions of wages and hours in a single industry which ought to have been decided by a commission after in- vestigation. Perhaps the most vicious thing about it is that it does not include provisions for making future general railway strikes impossible. MIXED GOOD AND BAD ACTS The Army Reorganization Law, generally known as the Hay Bill. Its good features are its provisions for enlistment and transfer- ence, for the payment of the expenses of the citizens’ training camps, and for the creation of an officers’ reserve corps. A questionable feature is the appropriation of $20,000,000 to establish a Government nitrate plant in the interest of war munitions. The bad features are, first, an insufficient in- crease of the regular army ; and, second, the Federalizing of the militia, which makes the militia officers professional soldiers without subjecting them to the restrictions which apply to the regular army, gives them a financial interest in Federal politics because of their Federal pay, and encumbers the regular army with civilian interference. Finally, the bill wholly fails to provide for the country’s greatest need, universal military training and universal military service. The Naval Appropriation Law, carrying an appropriation of no less than $313,000,000, the largest ever made. The law provides for the construction of sixteen capital ships and a proportionate number of other necessary craft in three years; and it increases the navy’s enlisted strength. It is a pity, how- ever, that so splendid a measure should be marred by the appropriation of $11,000,000 for an unnecessary Government armor plant. The Revenue Law. Its. good features are the incidental establishment of a Tariff Com- mission and the imposition of a duty on dye- stuffs. Its questionable features are the re- taliatory provisions for the unwise blacklists and the mail hold-ups by Great Britain, pro- visions which lodge unprecedented power in OF CONGRESS 137 the President’s hands. Its bad features are the doubling of the personal income tax (thus emphasizing the evils both ‘of class legislation and a tax on industry, not property); a Fed- eral inheritance tax, involving conflict with the States and double taxation ; and, finally, a tax on war munitions, thus discriminating against single industries. The whole bill rep- resents an unscientific way of raising money. The Philippines Law is commendable in spirit, but has, we think, the tendency to weaken the authority of the United States without any proportionate lessening of our responsibility. INACTION We commend certain inaction by Congress ; for instance : The Colombian Treaty has not been and ought never to be ratified. The Immigration Bill has not become and ought never to become law if it contains the literacy clause which has caused President ‘Taft and President Wilson to veto previous immigration bills. But we disapprove certain inaction at this session ; for instance : The Corrupt Practices Bill, prohibiting the buying of votes by direct or indirect means and the contribution by corporations for po- litical purposes, and limiting individual and campaign committee contributions. The Conservation Bills, providing for the use of water power on public lands and on navigable streams anywhere; and for the exploration and disposition of coal, oil, gas, and phosphate lands. The Labor Bills, particularly the Canadian Industrial Disputes Act, recommended by the President. It is to be regretted that the session could not have legislated concern- ing such matters as the enlargement of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, increase of freight rates, and the lodgment in the hands of the Executive of the power, in case of military necessity, to take control of such portions and rolling stock of the railways as may be required and to operate them for military purposes. The Vocational Education Bill, giving ex- pert advice to the States by Federal specialists in vocational, agricultural, industrial, and com- mercial education, and in home economics. The Waterway Commission Bill, establish- ing a National River and Harbor Commission to be as responsible and effective a body as is the Inter-State Commerce Commission.
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SEPTEMBER SIXTH’ ‘“WHOSE DAY SHALL THIS DAY BE?” 1 Read by Mr. Finley conclusion of his address. 138 BY JOHN FINLEY ‘“Whose day shall this day be?” I heard one cry At dawn, this morning, through the gray sea mist That hid the towers and tenements, as if The city were again the huddled town ; “Who'll win for aye this precious’ bit of time, Which, ere it ends, will make earth’s habitants (Or such of them as stay in their clay huts) Older by some two thousand thousand years, But richer by a thousand million deeds ?— What am I offered for this autumn day ? Who'll make a bid? Ere morrow it must go To him who bids the most. Time cannot wait, Though he would fain ‘bid in’ its growing light That soon will turn to warm and golden noon, And paint the earth against the misty skies, As if Corot had come again to life ;— Fain keep its genial heat to warm the heart And hearth when snows are deep on Vosges and Alp. “Wake, men, and bid! See how its conquering glow Makes all the circling rivers amulets Of argent, cities varicolored gems, And land and sea a tranquil tapestry! What am I bid?” And one, ere others could, Cried out: “I fling unnumbered lives of men To buy it in the planet’s calendar ; To crush a planet-capital and make A holiday for millions. This, my bid!” “« Upnumbered lives of others’ am I bid, Thousands of human skulls and skeletons— Does any one bid more ?” “I give my own,” *“ Je donne ma vie!” As many thousands cried In answering deed of self-forgetfulness, Or, choking, gasped in death, beside the Marne. Then rose a loud confusion, as when men Bid in a stock exchange; one off’ring this, One that—an epaulet, a bag of gold, A name, a serum, or a victory. All day the bidding ran, on into hours, When labor, knocking at the doors of dawn, Was silent, and the captains ceased command, When only scholars bid, bent o’er their books, Mothers o’er babes, or nurses o’er the sick ; Till late, there rose the ghost of one long dead, Our first ‘‘Immortal,’”’ who for millions spoke : at_ the Lafayette Day celebration, in the City Hall of New York, on September 6, at the See editorial comment elsewhere.
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LAFAYETTE * Q Author of all Days! There lived a youth, A tall and slender boy, of flaming crown, A son of France, but dear as ever son Of own could be to one whom I have heard A people call their country’s father. He, He was a gallant youth, noble of birth, But noble also in the noblest use Of that high word. He risked his all: His fortune, home, and life; not for his King Or country; not for rank or rich reward ; But for an alien and a kingless land, Struggling despairfully but with just cause For that sweet liberty through which alone Mankind can rise. And by the unbought aid Of this French youth, this boy of flaming crown And flaming heart, came victory at last, Came victory and liberty for us. He could but bid his fortune and his life,— We add to his brave all, what we, in turn, A great, lank, youth-republic, now ‘may give In kind, and do of love engage to give, So long as Thou, who didst appoint the lights Of heav’n for signs and seasons, days and years, Shalt yearly bring September sixth to bless In endless calendar this whirling earth.” The hammer on the bell of midnight fell. “Going,” he said, the Ancient One of Days, * Going,”’ and, with the last sonorous stroke Cried, “‘Gone.” ‘This day is his, forever his, The son of France, the friend of Washington, The brave god-brother of America, The youth, youth-summoning, de Lafayette !” LAFAYETTE’ BY ROBERT BACON FORMERLY AMERICAN AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE N the sixth day of September, in the () year 1757, a day honored by the peoples of two republics, and des- tined to be a day set apart in the history of mankind, a child was born, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the realization of political freedom. By birth a subject of France, by Act of Congress an American citizen, his name is ‘‘ sweet as honey on the lips of-men.” Of proud and ancient lineage, reared in the lap of luxury, he discerned across an ocean * An address delivered at the celebration of Lafayette’s oe thday in the City Hall of New York, on September 6, the flush of liberty as of a sun strangely rising —not setting—in the West, and putting aside place and position as unwortby of ambition, he associated himself with the lowly and oppressed of the New World. ‘“ When I heard your cause, my heart enlisted.” But, although he came single-handed, as it were, offering his services without rank and with- out pay, and his life a sacrifice, if need be, yet through him and his devotion to that cause France and the United States fought shoulder to shoulder at Yorktown, and through their co-operation the independence of the struggling colonies was realized and the liberty of a whole continent assured.
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140 At this great and crowning moment Lafay- ette and Rochambeau stood shoulder to shoulder, and to-day they stand shoulder to shoulder in the city which bears the name of their great companion in arms, facing the White House, and reminding by their pres- ence the successors of Washington in the Presidency of that perpetual alliance of two peoples, evidenced, indeed, by no scrap of paper, but inscribed in the hearts of every American. . When the independence of the United States was formally proclaimed on the 4th of July, 1776, Lafayette was less than nineteen years of age. On the 26th day of March, 1777, he sailed from Bordeaux in a vessel of his own furnishing, but his departure was delayed by royal command. He escaped to Spain, whence, on the 20th of April, with De Kalb, later to fall in the cause they es- poused, and some other chosen companions, he put to sea in his vessel, aptly called the “Victory.” Still a youth of nineteen, he reached the coast of South Carolina the 13th day of June. He made his way under diffi- culties to Philadelphia, then the capital of the country, where he arrived on the 27th day of July. The little city swarmed with adven- turers, eager for high commands in return for real or alleged experience. Commissions to foreigners meant lack of commissions to deserving Americans, and the reception of Lafayette was, as he himself said, ‘‘ more like a dismissal than a welcome ;” but Lafayette had come in the interests of a cause, and he was not to be deprived of the opportunity of serving it. He addressed the Congress, set- ting forth his circumstances and the reasons which had impelled him to cross the ocean to offer his services to the young country. He felt that he had earned the right to serve, say- ing that, “ After the sacrifices that I have made in this cause, I have the right to ask two favors at your hands: the one is, to serve without pay, at my own expense ; and the other, that I be allowed to serve at first as a volunteer.” Congress could not resist such an appeal. It therefore resolved that ‘his service be accepted, and that in consid- eration of his zeal, illustrious family, and con- nections he have rank and commission of major-general in the army of the United States.” ‘The commission, however, was meant by Congress to be honorary, leaving it to Washington to avail himself of Lafay- ette’s services or to appoint him to such command as events should justify. THE OUTLOOK 20 September His zeal for the cause was sincere; his courage, shown at Brandywine, was unques tioned ; his tact was even greater than either. Upon his. arrival at camp Washington had said: ‘ It is somewhat embarrassing to us to show ourselves to an officer who has jus come from the army of France.” ‘l’o whic! delicate compliment Lafayette finely replied : ‘I am here to learn, not to teach.” | He not only felt his youth and inexperi ence, but the embarrassment that his presence in high command might create. He overcame every difficulty. ‘ I read,” he said, “ I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and upon the result of all this I make an effort to form my opinion and to put into it as much com- mon sense asI can. I am cautious not to talk much, lest I should say some foolish thing, and still more cautious in my actions, lest I should do some foolish thing, for | do not want to disappoint the confidence that the Americans have so kindly placed in me.” His conduct at Brandywine, and the further evidence of skill as well as courage in the affair of Gloucester, coupled with his faultless devotion to the cause in which his heart was enlisted, led Washington to recommend to Congress, within less than six months after his arrival in America, that he be appointed to the command of a Division, and Congress resolved .that ‘General Washington be in- formed it is highly agreeable to Congress that the Marquis de Lafayette be appointed to the command of a Division in the Conti- nental Army.” He was accordingly put in command of a Virginia Division, and he shared the hardships of defeat and the sweets of victory with his men. He went through the trying winter at Valley Forge, where, as he tells us, “the unfortunate soldiers were in want of everything; they had neither coats nor hats nor shirts nor shoes ; their feet and legs froze until they grew black, and it was often necessary to amputate them... . The army frequently passed whole days with- out food, and the patient endurance of both soldiers and officers was a miracle which every moment seemed to renew.” The recognition of the independence of the United States by France, and the de- fensive alliance on the 6th day of February, 1778, due in no small measure to Lafayette’s influence, put an end to gloom and despond- ency. Great Britain declared war against France for its support of the cause in which not only Lafayette but France was now en listed, and the United Colonies found them-
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1916 selves possessed of an ally as powerful as it was sympathetic, generous, and high-minded. The wants of Valley Forge were made good. Clothing and equipment came for the men, ammunition and supplies for the troops. A French army under Rochambeau was landed ; a French fleet stationed itself in American waters. The Virginia Division under Lafayette outmaneuvered Cornwallis. The allied armies of Washington and of Rochambeau marched south to join Lafayette. The French fleet under De Grasse cut off escape by water from Yorktown, and, besieged alike by land and sea, Cornwallis, on October 19, 1781, surrendered his army to Washington, and the independence of the United States, thanks to the kindly aid of our first, our great, and our only ally, became a fact. To-day, as we celebrate the birth of Lafay- ette, his devoted country is taking part once more in a war of independence, a war which will save, has already saved, civilization and HUGHES AND THE PEOPLE OF THE WEST 141 free institutions from the imposition of a theory of government in the hands of a dominant sovereign will, just as, on ‘an Octo- ber day in the year 732, Charles, surnamed Martel, halted an invading army at Tours, thus preserving France and western Europe from an alien and militant civilization. The sattle of the Marne, fought and won by Lafayette’s countryman Joffre, on Lafayette’s birthday, makes of the 6th day of September a date memorable not only in the history of our country, but in the annals of civilization. In commemorating the services of Lafay- ette, the friend of liberty, the friend of America, and the friend of Washington, our hearts go out to France in her struggle for mankind, for ideals—for our American ideals ; and, as Rochambeau said to Washington in 1781, so to-day I say to you, sir [turning to M. Jusserand], the Ambassador of the glori- ous country of Lafayette and of Rochambeau : Entre vous, entre nous, ala vie, a la mort! HUGHES AND THE PEOPLE OF THE WEST BY FREDERICK M. DAVENPORT STAFF CORRESPONDENT OF THE OUTLOOK Mr. Davenport’s first article on Mr. Hughes’s Western trip was published in The Outlook of last week, September 13, under the title “* Across the Continent with Hughes.’—TuHE Epirors. UGHES was a political liberal before H he started West. But if he had not been, and had retained his normally open mind, he would have been a political liberal before he came back. ‘The most significant thing about the rejuvenation of Republicanism in the real West—that is, in the Mountain and Pacific Coast States—is that the party in that section of the United States, in spite of the momentary political bewilderment which besets the whole coun- try, is irrevocably committed to further and rapid political advance. The clouds of reac- tion that were clearly on the horizon after the election of 1914 are passing away. The greater part of the States through which we have passed have long been for the most part naturally Republican States, and the furnace power of the party is still here. It was the attempt of the Oid Guardsmen of the party in the East in 1910 and 1912 to slow down the machinery by throwing in a monkey- wrench, by the employment of reactionary sabotage, that wrought the Republican havoc and destruction of these later years. And the Hughes tour through the West has brought to light so many evidences of the rising tide of Republican liberalism in the midst of the process of party reconstruction now going on there that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err in discerning that the only hope of National Republican peace and success lies in the determination upon the part of the Republican leaders and States of the East to accept generously the spirit of liberalism and aid in guiding it into deep and useful channels of National progress. Any other course now will injure the Republican party beyond recovery. As I go on to unfold some of the popular political phenomena which the Hughes tour brought to light, I think what I have in mind will be clear. And I will just tell the story without attempting all the time to adduce 1 As for you and us, we stand united in life and in death !
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142 what I say as proof. Michigan and Minne- sota, which we first visited, are under the grip of liberal forces, but these States are too near the East to be really called Western. Let us begin with North Dakota. In North Dakota there has just taken place within the Republican party one of the most remarkable revolutions in the history of National politics. It would take a whole article to set forth even the important details, but here is the substance of it. Whether rightly or wrongly, the farmers of the Northwest have long been dissatisfied with the system of distribution of their great product—wheat—and have believed that too great a share of the profit has gone to the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, the railways, and the great terminal warehouse corporations in that part of the country. North Dakota has taken the initiative, and twice by referendum the people have voted for a terminal warehouse of their own, and a Re- publican Legislature, under the alleged influ- ence of powerful lobbies, has failed to respond to the popular will, has refused the appropri- ation desired. And this year, in the summer primaries, there was a revolution. Scores of Ford cars, full of plain farmer organizers of shrewd and vigorous mind, went through North Dakota from end to end in the interest of a Republican ticket that would be respon- sive to the will of the people of the State. And although on primary day floods filled the rivers and had already carried away the bridges, the farmers of the State got to the polls, some swimming streams and many going far around to get to the polling places, and they overwhelmed the ruling recalcitrant Republican machine. ‘They nominated a full Republican ticket of their own by an immense majority, and it was freely predicted when we were there that the candidate for Gov- ernor, Lynn J. Frazier, of Hoople, a genuine farmer all of his life, but a graduate of the University of North Dakota, would poll eighty per cent of the entire vote of the State. There are nearly forty thousand farmers in North Dakota in this league of popular de- fense who pay nine dollars apiece a year, and their ably edited organ at Fargo, the ** Non-Partisan Leader,” boasts already fifty thousand farmer subscribers. And this new movement is not confined to North Dakota. It is spreading rapidly through the surround- ing States. In seeking a more honest inspection of the grading of grain, more just conditions ih the marketing of grain, they are attempting to THE OUTLOOK 20 September do, as in the old days when railway regula- tion began in the West, certain things by State power which ultimately must be done by Na- tional power, if we should once get a National administration sufficiently wise and far-seeing and strong. The spirit of this new movement found itself in full sympathy with the liberal- ism of Hughes. Its followers didn’t inquire what his views were on the State grading and warehousing of grain, but they recognized in him a true yokefellow who had had to fight in New York narrow and dogged legislators and party bosses just as they had in North Dakota. The new gubernatorial nominee presided, and he and Governor Hughes ex- changed public compliments, and my judg- ment is that the State of North Dakota is safe for Hughes and the whole farmer Republican ticket. But look out, Repub- lican party, and do your duty with National ‘power if once more you gain control at Washington, or there will be a develop- ment of State socialism in the West that will wake us all up and tangle us all up ina hurry. One of the most interesting characters we ran upon in the Northwest was Louis W. Hill, son of James J. Hill, and the present head of the Great Northern. James J. Hill, who has recently died, was a rough, brusque pioneer who, especially in the later years of his life, realized the value to his railway of spreading in a democratic way enlightenment among the people along his road. And he spent large sums in developing sentiment for pure seed, diversified farming, and dual cat- tle—that is, animals which are both good milkers and good beefers. The son Louis combines a good measure of the shrewdness of his father with a natural democracy of great charm. Modestly and inconspicuously he went along with us in his private car while we were on the Great Northern line. And it was a pleasure to see the farmers delight in him. They would crowd around him in the hotel lobbies and at the stations and say, “ Hello, Louis, you’re going to stay a day or two, ain’t you ?” And Louis, while talking to one man, would involuntarily grasp the hairy hand of another ; and once I heard him say, * My, | thought I had hold of a jack-rabbit.” And everybody laughed. Then I watched him go around the corner out of sight of the crowd and put Hughes caps of red, white, and blue on the little girls and pin flags or buttons on the little boys. The time has come in the Northwest when you can’t even be an efficient
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1916 and successful railway man without being a democrat and a liberal. And you don’t have to be for any class to get along with those folks. If you start in by being on the square and just, that is all they ask. But so much they will have. They will get it from the Republican party, if they can. But they will get it. They are husky citizens ; they have their fine systems of education, their colleges and their universities, and no clever Eastern political or business reactionary can put any- thing over on them one minute longer. But they are for Hughes. Out here you are in the Roosevelt coun- try. Just before we crossed the Little Mis- souri in North Dakota we stopped at Me- dora. This is the station for the old Roose- velt Ranch, seven miles to the south, on the Red Trail from St. Paul to the Coast. There is a brand-new bridge over the Little Missouri at this point, and at one end of it is a great legend with these words: ‘“ Theodore Roosevelt once ranched in this valley.” Said an old man to Hughes in the crowd of rough and simple and homely folks at the station : ‘“* We like you all right in this country because Roosevelt likes you.” And another elderly man said: “I wish you had brought him “IT wish I could have,” along with you.” responded Hughes ; “ he is well and in fine fettle.” ‘I know he is,” said the old man, ‘ T had a letter from him last week.” swung on the train, I overheard a knot of men discussing their hero—* He was a good one, you bet he was,” said one of them. They are rough, simple, homely folk, but they know that once a great soul dwelt among them and became greater and stronger as he dwelt. He laid bare in his country a subtle tyranny, more dangerous than the open and brutal autocracy of Russia. And he extended immensely the boundaries of the domain of freedom in the United States. So successful was he that one of the chief obstacles now to the quick reconstruction of the Republi- can party to meet a National need is the newly acquired and widely spread sense of freedom and independence on the part of four and a quarter millions who followed him in 1912, and who will never wear the collar of habit and machine oppression again. Across the line in Wyoming we ran into the same kind of simple, prosperous, sturdy human nature which is everywhere character- istic of the Northwest. In Laramie, where Bill Nye lived and founded the ** Boomerang ”’ in 1881, I rode out to the meeting in the park HUGHES AND THE PEOPLE OF THE WEST As I. 143 with a citizen, formerly of Pennsylvania, but for forty years a resident of the State of Wyoming. After he had been in Laramie five years he went back East for a visit. And they said to him there, ‘* Why don’t you stay here with your folks? Why do you go out again into that God-forsaken country ? Don’t you like your folks?” And he said, ** Yes, I like my folks—some of them. But some of them seem different. I like to live out there with simple, honorable people that don’t fool you.” He said to me, “ Stranger, sympathy means a good deal out here. You see that young man walking along there ; he is running for County Clerk. He'll be elected, easy, over the older man who is running against him. You see, he’s got a crippled hand, and he limpsa little. People have got sympathy for him and he’ll win hands down.” Of course sympathy needs regulation and control, but it is one root of about everything that is worth while in human life and human society. In Wyoming you may come upon a natural reason and original source for woman suffrage in this country. Wyoming has always had equal suffrage from the territorial days. And I tried to find out why. I was talking about it with two of the most distinguished Repub- licans of the State. And one of them said to the other: “* Why, don’t you remember Rob Morris’s mother, Esther Morris, who was the biggest personality in the South Pass mining camp in the early days? ‘They made her justice of the peace. You see,” he said, ‘there were only a few women in this coun- try at that time, and they did about every- thing just as well as, or better than, the men. And the equality idea just kind of naturally started around here, especialiy with Esther Morris about. They didn’t think about poli- tics at all. It was just naturally human, that’s all. The first territorial legislature was for it, and the State legislature ratified it at once. And so we have had it for more than forty years. Oh, no, we will never have any other system.” Both Republican factions in Wyoming are for Hughes, both the Roosevelt and anti- Roosevelt. The re-election of Republican United States Senator Clark is not so sure. The Democratic Governor Kendrick is young and wealthy and able and very popular, and he is the Democratic candidate for United States Senator, with the likelihood of powerful support from the Progressives. ‘There is no trouble for Hughes in any of these formerly Republi-
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144 can States. The soul and vigor of this North- western democracy was everywhere an inspira- tion to Hughes. And as we went over State after State in this vast domain, with its fine sense of National unselfishness and freedom and equality and the right, I could not help thinking of poor little old New York, with the finest people in the world, but with as yet a too narrow-visioned public and political leader- ship. And I hear again the genuine enthusi- asm of the Northwest and the voice of Hughes as he said to them over and over: “New York and the Northwest must stand shoulder to shoulder—we go up or down together.” Suddenly, to the wonderment of many of the younger newspaper men of the Hughes party, we ran into the Western prohibition wave. Instead of receding, it is rising higher and higher. In Wyoming it shares, with the struggle over the Senatorship, the chief atten- tion of the people. In Utah both parties have declared for it, and there is no question about the passing of the law or its enforce- ment. The Mormon Church will be behind it. ‘ You know,” said a leading Mormon to me, ‘ there weren’t any saloons in Utah until the non-Mormons began to move in. We In an- are naturally a temperate people.” ticipation of the aridity which is to be, the most popular song of a very considerable Salt Lake element of the population is a para- phrase of “ Tipperary :” “It’s a long way to San Francisco, It’s a long way to go. It’s a long way to San Francisco, To the wettest town I know. Then good-by, Tom and Jerry, Farewell Rock and Rye, It’s a long, long way to San Francisco, When Utah goes dry.” Perhaps I will write something more later about Utah, about something even more im- portant than the prohibition situation in that State. Utah is on the verge of being one of the most progressive commonwealths in the Union. I know, like Vermont, it went for Taft. I know about the Reed Smoot ma- chine, and the Mormon machine, and the Union Pacific influence, and the beet sugar influence, and all that. Sut the Repub lican candidate who won in the primaries the nomination for Governor this year was the Progressive nominee for Governor in 1912 —a Mormon ecclesiastic, a “ stake” presi- dent with ten or fifteen bishops under him, a progressive of progressives. And thereby THE OUTLOOK 20 September hangs one of the most interesting tales in current American political progress. The friends and foes of prohibition are to try conclusions again this fall in Cali- fornia. Every great vineyard in California has a great sign warning against it. But my best information is that there is a very strong probability that the first amendment proposed will win this time, and that saloons will be driven from the State of California. In Washington and Colorado attempts are being made at the coming election to modify the existing law. But nothing could be more futile than the effort. In Washington even the extremely conservative Blethen, of the Seattle ‘ Times,” who fought prohibition bitterly, was out just before we came into the State with a declaration that all the power of his papers would be turned against any step backward. Like William H. Cowles, the very progressive owner of the Spokane papers in the eastern part of the State, he holds that the economic results as well as the moral results of one year of prohibition are beyond price. And the same thing is true in Colorado. Every witness of whom I made inquiry, including Governor Carlson, who is prohibition’s most valiant champion in the State, told me the same story. The majority for it, if it were voted upon again, would be doubled and more. Said ‘a prosperous and excellent citizen who took me about Denver in his car, ‘“* My cellar is still well stocked, and I voted wet. But ”— pointing to a corner where one of the leading saloons used to be—‘all these places are filled up and good business has covered every loss and more. Why, the Brown Palace Hotel never did so well. And I don’t know,” he said; “it’s a more clean and wholesome town. If this thing comes up again in any form, I vote dry.” A reporter for the Kansas City “ Star,” whom I met on our train, and who had been spending a week in Denver inter- viewing for his paper, and in the interest of the prohibition movement in Missouri, many leading bankers and merchants who had voted wet last time, told me the same story. It is dry for all of them if the matter comes up again. It is in the air of the West—anything that injures man, woman, or child, whether it is political or economic tyranny or liquor, or whatever it is, has got to go. And there is very much of this sentiment that is naturall) Republican. How, in the name of goodness
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1916 HUGHES is Eastern Republican conservatism going to stand against it? If conservatism tries it gain, it means another revolution and de- struction. The best conservatism can do is to guide this liberal sentiment and balance it for the good of the whole Nation. And Montana. I understand that some- body said, when the tour was being arranged, that we should slip past Butte in the night, because Butte was always a troublesome strike center. Nothing could be sillier. The Hughes meeting and experience in Butte were inspiring. There was no mass-meeting anywhere which gave expression to a more thorough Americanism. When the band played and sang, ‘‘ We’ll never haul the old flag down,” you could hear the echo of the cheers from the surrounding hills. Montana is one of the most perfect examples of what has been wrong in American political life. For years it was a hot-bed of political corrup- tion during the feud days of Heinze and Daly and Clarke. But this sort of thing never grew out of the heart and the mind of the people. It was the result of a greedy legal struggle over previously unsurveyed and un- charted angles of property beneath the sur- face which had turned out to be of enormous value. And these violently contesting eco- nomic groups sought to move legislatures and courts and the powers of darkness, each to his own behest. But that is all past now; these shady economic rights are at least legally established, the legislature and the electorate of Montana as well as the courts are lifted above those days, and the State has probably the most drastic corrupt practices act that exists anywhere in the world. And Montana—keep your eye on that State. There is no commonwealth in the North- west with greater possibilities of economic and political progress. When we reached the Coast, in western Washington and California, we came again upon the trail of the Old Guard spirit and temper which brought on the Republican revolution. Now that Hiram Johnson is destined to become the Republican leader of the Pacific Coast, it is illuminating to com- pare his point of view with that of his reac- tionary adversaries. With Johnson a party is a channel for the expression of the popu- lar will and an avenue of public service— and nothing more. With his adversaries a party is a fetish, a purely theological church. The adversaries of Johnson on the Coast are medizeval in their thinking. I cannot illus- AND THE PEOPLE OF THE WEST 145 trate it better than by alluding to the horror- stricken attitude of mind of the wife of one of the Republican candidates for United States Senator in that part of the country, who found out that one of the women workers from the East was developing a branch of the Hughes alliance among Democrats. She expressed the view that that kind of effort ought to be looked into, as very likely treasonable to the cause. The idea of a Democrat voting the Republican ticket was instinctively obnoxious! How could he? Why should he? He doesn’t belong to the same church. At the time that Hughes went through California the political situation involved for the moment an irreconcilable conflict. And he could only proceed quietly and steadfastly on his way and follow the course which he had pursued in every other State he had visited—that is, accept the conduct and the escort of the at-the-moment prevailing Re- publican organization, and avoid taking part in local controversies, even where some local injustices had undoubtedly been done. 1910 and 1912 were good years for head-breaking, and there was a lot of it done that needed to be done. But the job this year of National leadership of a slowly reconstructing party is of a different sort. And the result in California turned out hap- pily anyway, without the slightest intentional prejudicial effort one way or the other on the part of Hughes. The days of political medizvalism and proscription and economic short-sightedness and trying to put it over on human folks generally are evidently done in California Republicanism also. The Progressive John- son’s splendid victory in the Republican primary, his control of the Republican organ- ization, and his practically assured election as Republican United States Senator would seem to establish that. Don’t you see that the wave of Republican liberalism has got started again all over the West ? Everywhere the trail of liberalism and democracy. Down to the southernmost point of California, where in the Exposition inclosure at San Diego, in the great peristyle of the organ, under a marvelously blue sky, with a background of buildings and foliage and parasols and women’s dress of wonder- ful range of color—reminding you of the Stadium at Harvard on a perfect class day— with the flags blowing and the welcome from the great throat of the organ, many thou-
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146 sands of eager men and women, who seemed to have nothing to do but to listen, hearkened to the message of the man who might be- come by the election their great National leader. It was a vast audience of free men and free women who could actually sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,’ which is more than any other audience can do that I ever heard in this world—a fine, cheery people, a paradise even for old folks and babies. What a country! As we wended our way back up the hot San Joaquin Valley with the temperature 104° in the shade—but you don’t have to stay in the shade, as some- body interpolated—and on through again to the East, there rushed upon me, as frequently before, out of experiences in the West the conviction of the perfectly tremendous poten- tialities of the American people. Under the skin they are the same wherever you go. Can’t combine efficiency with freedom? They can combine freedom with anything. What an international crime it is that such possibilities of efficiency and Americanism should lack fit organization and public guid- ance! So far as American citizenship is a byword among ourselves and abroad, it is solely because we ourselves permit our Gov- ernment to put that face upon itself in do- mestic and foreign relations. The govern- ment that is pushed off its feet and its poise by class interest at home, or by barbarism on its border, or by arrogance across the seas, cannot fitly represent such a people as the people of the United States. I have been asked since my return whether there seems to be the sort of enthusiasm for the Republican party and its leader in the Western part of the country which presages a change of administration in Washington. It depends upon how you measure enthusi- asm. If by crowds and applause, we had plenty of them. If by bands, we had far more than our share. [I didn’t believe, and I still refuse to believe, that there are so many bands in the world as met us at stations by the way. But whatI saw convinced me that the test of what the American people propose to do in November is not to be measured by political ebullience. We have had twenty years of political agitation and revolution, which, with some evils following in their train, THE OUTLOOK have been fruitful of great good on the whole to the life of the country. . But I think this election is not to be lost or won by enthusi- asms, but by the presence or absence of a profound sense of National duty, by the presence or absence of a firm “set” on the part of the mind of the country toward the underlying need of the country. Measured by this test, I think Hughes in the West everywhere met the sober judgment of the electorate with respect to the qualifications of a National leader. He made throughout his journey a deep impression of a firm, deliber- ate, straight-out man who knows how to do his duty. He aroused those reactions which lie in the practical sense rather than in the emotion of the average citizen. He made his audience think or at least pretend to think, and inspired respect and confidence rather than ebullience. He gave evidence of a deep desire to help and of great ability to help his fellow-countrymen, but he marked out no easy path. ‘ Not demagoguery,-not stand- patism, but hard common sense,” he said again and again, is the way to peace and safety. Coolly and accurately analyze the facts in every emergency, find out what is justly and fairly demanded by the facts, and then go and do it. Everywhere he made the impression of genuineness, of downright, un- assuming, abiding sincerity. I heard a man say that whether Hughes was elected or rejected depends a good deal in the present contingency upon whether Barnum was right or Lincoln was right in his estimate of the American people. I don’t think that. No matter what happens, I am sure that the qualities which Lincoln discerned and anchored to in his hope for the future of the country lie deep in the nature of our whole citizenship. Iam sure also that in the great Northwest the recent suspicion of Re- publicanism is slowly passing away. The earlier and truer spirit within the party of a patriotic and triumphant liberalism is return- ing. I look for Hughes to carry everything that is naturally Republican in that whole section of country in November. The psy- chological ‘‘ set ” in the West, as in the East, is towards confidence in the record and char- acter of Hughes, and towards a return of Republicanism to power in the Nation. New York, September 12, 1916.
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STRIKES AND THE PUBLIC BY PAUL W. BROWN EDITOR OF THE ST. LOUIS ' , YITHIN the recent past we have seen the Congress of the United States enacting one of the most important labor statutes ever passed, for no other reason than that a general railway strike would paralyze the business of the country and cut off the means of subsistence of millions of people if it did not pass this law. This marks a new departure in American legislative history. We have had in the past plenty of legislation enacted at the behest of special interests, representing small groups of citizens, but the fiction of free action and due deliberation has been hitherto religiously preserved. It is important that we take note of causes and fix responsibility for this de- parture from tradition. The anarchy of massed wealth in the United States has long been the theme of moralists. The anarchy of trades-unionism is working its way to favor as a topic to-day. But the fact has been singularly overlooked by all commentators that the responsibility for the contempt of both for laws, ordinances, and constituted authorities rests squarely upon the shoulders of the public, in view of the public attitude toward industrial disputes. This attitude has been one of the most callous indifference, not only to the welfare, but also to the plain rights of both employers and employees. There is no large city in the United States that has not, within the past decade, seen well-doing manufacturers employing union labor, whose men were with- out grievances, ruined by the closing of their works by what is called ironically a ‘“‘ sympa- thetic ” strike, while the extent of the public interest was measured by the remark that nothing could be done, since “‘ no violence had been offered,’ it being considered anything but violent to bankrupt a prosperous business man for no just cause. Within the same time, in these same communities, well-doing union workmen, supporting families and pay- ing for little homes, have been turned out with- out warning by lockouts, determined upon, not because of anything the workingmen had done, but because of what it was concieved they might do. And the public has disregarded the incident. For what are hunger and in- justice in the absence of “ violence ”’ ? “REPUBLIC” By this criminal indifference, manifest through many years and unshaken by the protests of a few far-seeing men, we, the general public, have trained two groups of citizens, second to none in their power in modern society, to the belief that justice and equity count for nothing in industrial disputes, and that the entire reliance of both sides must be upon force. Opposite as the poles in many of their views, the trades-unionist and the employer have always held one belief in common: that the general public interest in labor disputes is exactly limited to their relation to public convenience, and that the moral factors in them do not appeal to the public mind. ‘The effects of this have been the more disastrous in view of the increasing ethical temper of society in dealing with other social questions. If a workingman’s child is knocked down by a passing vehicle, a modern ambulance hurries to the spot, and the little one enjoys, in a modern hospital, care which the wife of the President could not have com- manded a half-century ago; but the father of that child may be turned out of the shop where he makes his living by an employer desiring to ‘‘ get the union,” and society cares nothing for the fact or the consequences. If a drunken man pauses and sings a maudlin song at 1 a. M. on the walk in front of the employer’s house, an officer—or two, if nec- essary—comes at once; but if his plant is closed by a “sympathetic strike,’ society cares not, “so long as no violence is done.” From this results the undying bitterness of both sides in industrial disputes. There is none of the victor’s usual good nature here. ‘‘ We won,” says the employer, ‘ but it wasn’t because we had the right of it, though the union hadn’t a leg to stand on. We won because we could get on without the men who went out, and they knew it. If our contracts had not been just as they were, we should have been beaten, with all the right on our side.”” ‘‘ We won,” says the victorious union official, ‘‘ but it wasn’t because we had a good case, though we were only fighting for the necessaries of life. We won just because the warehouses were empty and the mills full of partly finished orders. 147
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148 If they hadn’t given in, we could have ruined them, and they saw it and came down.” By this indifference, we, the general public, have trained up two sets of men who are, in the simplest meaning of the words, danger- ous to society. For that .man is a social peril who honestly believes that his rights count for nothing in the minds of his fellow- men, and that in matters as fundamental as his right to do business or his dependence on his work for his living he has no resource except physical force. The popular philosophy of labor disputes is very clear and very simple. It declares that the right to work or quit and the right to hire and discharge at will are natural rights of man. ‘To abrogate the first would be to introduce involuntary servitude ; to in- terfere with the second would be to deprive the individual of the right to do his will with his own property. ‘Therefore we may do nothing “so long as_ no. violence is offered.” This view is so shallow that we should not have been contented with it for an instant had it not accorded with our mood of moral laziness. To realize this let us look at the relation of the public to the railways, and to their continuous operation. Every railway starts, not with a private exercise of private rights, but by a public grant of one of the powers of a sovereign state, for certain purposes, to certain individ- uals. This is, of course, the power of emi- nent domain, by which the public is partner of every railway company in .the _ United States through every hour of every day of its existence. Here is Smith, running a grocery under the natural rights of man; he wishes to enlarge it, and Jones refuses to sell the lot next him. But the rail- way comes from the State capital and takes Jones’s lot forthwith at a price fixed by the THE OUTLOOK court, because the railway has had granted to it by the sovereign people the right of emi- nent domain. ‘The money to build a railway comes from the people—part from a generous land grant, more from savings banks and insurance companies which invest their in- comes in railway securities. Then the people pay the rates the railway charges. The little town changes. The slaughter-house falls to ruin; the butcher buys his meat from the great packing company to which the farmers ship their cattle and hogs. The wagon- maker dies; his son goes to the city, and gets the sixth fire on the left side in the wagon factory there. The city dairymen go out of business, and a milk train takes milk from .the <village every morning. In the course of years the whole business and indus- trial structure of the country is built over because of the railway, which was not onl; built by.the people’s money and sustained by. their. payments. of rates, but which is founded on a delegated governmental power. The right: of the people to compel the continuous operation of that railway is one with the right of self-preservation. It is one with the right of defense when attacked by a foreign foe. In our fatuous indifference to the moral rights both of employers and of workingmen, we have had the experience which from the beginning of things has overtaken those who have found that an injustice to. others only buries the barbs of injury in one’s self, and that in the very act of ignoring the rights of others we perforce ignore ourown. ‘The way out of our present tangle must be sought along the line of assumption of our neglected responsibilities and practical vindication of our own neglected yet undoubted rights. And our first step must be the clear recognition of the fact that we ourselves have sowed the seed now coming to harvest.
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THE RUSSO-JAPANESE TREATY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE OUTLOOK HE conclusion of a treaty between Russia and Japan for the protection of their joint interests in the Far East is a natural and logical outcome of the great change in international relations brought about by the European war. Russia for centuries has been trying to get an ice-free outlet to the oceans of the world. At the end of the war with Turkey in 1878 success seemed to be almost within her grasp; but her legitimate aspirations were baffled at that time by a combination of the central and western European Powers against her, with Great Britain at their head. Seeing no prospect of getting access in the near future to the Mediterranean, Russia turned her attention, in the early eighties, to the Far East, where there seemed to be a chance of securing an ice-free port in China or Korea. By the construction of the Trans- Siberian Railway she greatly strengthened her position on the coast of the Pacific, and the aggressive and acquisitive policy that she soon adopted there threatened the vital in- terests of Japan, and finally brought about the Russo-Japanese War. In that conflict Russia was disastrously defeated; but there is good reason to believe that as soon as she had reorganized her army and improved her means of communication with the Orient she would have found a pretext for renewing the struggle. In another war, as in the first one, her chief object would have been to acquire an ice-free port on the Pacific, which she could use as a naval‘and commercial base, and thus extend her power and develop her commerce on that ocean. The breaking out of the war with the Teu- tonic Powers in 1914 and the participation of Turkey as a combatant suddenly changed the whole aspect of world affairs. Not only did it make Japan an ally of Russia, but it removed at once the principal reason for an aggressive Russian policy on the coast of the Pacific. Expansion in the Near East was infinitely more. important for Russia than expansion in the Far East; and from the moment that Turkey took the side of Ger- many the Czar and his advisers saw, and the Monarch himself frankly said, that the time had come, at last, for “a final settlement of certain long-standing questions connected with the outlet of the Black Sea.” A suc- cessful war with ‘Turkey, under the condi- tions that existed in 1914, seemed likely to give Russia (1) possession of Constantinople and the Dardanelles ; (2) free entrance to the Mediterranean ; and (3) a preponderating influence in Asia Minor and the Balkans. With such a prospect as this in view, Russia lost her keen interest in the Far East and abandoned the plans that conflicted with the interests of Japan. Then, when Russia was in desperate. need of munitions, and Japan proved her friendliness by rendering invalu- able assistance to her former enemy, the way was cleared for just such a treaty as that which the two Powers have recently con- cluded. If the Japanese had shown in Man- churia the ruthlessness and ferocity that the Germans have displayed in Belgium and France, the feeling of bitterness and hatred that would have been left might have pre- vented a reconciliation; but, as the leading Russian newspapers said in explanation of their change of attitude toward Japan: “ It was easy to make friends again with the Japanese, because they always fought us like gentlemen.” The disposition of Russia and Japan to get together for the protection of their joint interests in the Far East was greatly strength- ened by the proposal to neutralize the Man- churian railways, which was made by Secretary Knox in 1909. Both Powers regarded this as an attempt on the part of the United States to deprive them of their legitimately acquired advantages ; and in July, 1910, they entered into another: treaty, whose avowed object was to ‘maintain the sfatus guo in Manchuria,”’ and thus to prevent any such interference as that which Secretary Knox’s proposal threatened. Affairs remained in this state until 1916, when it seemed desirable to revise the treaty of 1910 and widen somewhat its scope. Which of the two Powers proposed the revis- ion we have no means of knowing ; but. under the changed conditions brought about by the European war, it was clearly in the interest of both that there should be a written understanding with regard to their attitude toward each other in the Far East, as well as their future attitude toward Germany and China. In the convention of July 4, 1910, they agreed “to confer on methods to be 149
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150 taken with a view to mutual co-operation in maintaining the s¢a¢us guo in Manchuria.” In the new treaty the form of expression is almost exactly the same, except that, instead of ‘the maintenance of the sta/us guo in Manchuria,” the object of the agreement is said to be ‘“‘ the defense of their Far Eastern territorial rights and special interests.”’ Nothing in the new convention suggests unfriendliness towards us, and none of its provisions seems to be aimed at us, but a few of our people are predisposed to regard with suspicion every move that Japan makes on the Asiatic mainland, and as soon as it became known that she had concluded a treaty with Russia for the better protection of her lar Eastern rights and interests our alarmists saw in it an attempt to close the ‘open door ” of China against us. Senator Lewis, of Illinois, at once introduced a resolution in Congress calling on the Secretary of State for information with regard to the object and effect of the new treaty, and ina speech sup- porting his resolution he expressed the belief that Russia and Japan intended to ‘ eliminate the United States from the Oriental sphere.” Then Mr. Charles Denby, ex-United States Consul-General at Shanghai, took the field with a statement, or interview, in which he said that “the Japanese are an intensely ambitious and selfish race ;” that they are the ‘* propagandists of a new yellow civilization ;” that the alliance with Russia is going to be of “the greatest value to them only when they come into open breach with the United States ;” and that “if we should, by some circumstance not yet revealed, become the object ” of the “preparations ”’ which they are now making, such preparations “ would be terribly effective against us.” (New York ** Sun,” July 10.) Now what foundation is there, if any, for this distrust of Japan and Russia? What good reason is there for believing that they intend first to oust us from the Chinese mar- kets, and then combine against us if we resist the establishment of a ‘“ yellow civilization ” for the domination of Asia ? In the first place, it may be remarked that this cry of ‘“* Wolf !’? whenever Japan moves (and often when she does not move) is very old. For eight years at least we have heard it semi-annually, if not oftener. In a long series of alarms, beginning with the San Fran- cisco public school troubles, the Japanese have been accused of preparing for war with us by buying 750,000 rifles from the Crucible THE OUTLOOK 20 September Steel Company (1908); of plotting against us in Hawaii and the Philippines (1909) ; of excluding Americans from the Manchurian mining fields (1909) ; of discriminating against our commerce by means of transportation rebates on the Manchurian railways (1909) ; of seeking to monopolize the truck-farming lands in California (1909); of sinking the dry-dock Dewey in. Manila Bay (1910); of planting mines in that same bay (1910) ; of taking soundings and making charts of Cali- fornian harbors (1910) ; of secretly conspiring with Mexico against us (1911); of attempt- ing to secure Magdalena Bay, in Lower Cali- fornia, for a naval base (1911); of secretly taking photographs and making maps on the coast of Alaska (1911); of trying to get supreme control in Manchuria under pre- tense of fighting the bubonic plague (1911) ; of conspiring with Mexican insurgents against us (1912); of persecuting the American mis- sionaries in Korea and trying to abolish Christianity there (1912); of conspiring with Germany to overthrow the Monroe Doc- trine (1912); of attacking the American Consul in Newchang (1912); of forming an alliance with our west coast Indians against us (1912); of threatening to attack Java, and thus compelling the Dutch to seek our support (1912); of trying to buy Lower California from Huerta (1914); of attempting to get spies into the fortifications of the Panama Canal (1915); of seeking to secure a foothold in Lower California by running a vessel ashore there and sending war-ships to assist in salvage operations (1916); of conspiring with Germany to get control of the San Blas Indian lands in Panama (1916); and, finally, of conspiring with Russia against us at least two or three times in the last ten years. Were any of these statements true? Not one, so far as could be ascertained. Many of them were officially contradicted by our Government; some, including the Magda lena Bay story, were disproved by Congres sional investigation ; and all eventually fell t the ground for lack of support. And ye! now come Senator Lewis and Mr. Denby) with the assurance that we are about to be ‘eliminated from the Oriental sphere ;” that the “ preparations” which Japan is making will be “terribly effective agains! us;” and that the ultimate result of the Russo-Japanese alliance will be the establish ment of a yellow Asiatic civilization which will dominate the Ear East and leave no room
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1916 whatever there for us. Is it not time, at last, to stop this irrational and childish mis- representation of a friendly Power ? A moment’s consideration of the recently concluded treaty in connection with the situa- tion created by the present war will show, | think, the extreme improbability of the assumption that Russia and Japan intend to “eliminate the United States from the Ori- ental sphere.” Russia at the end of the war will be ur- gently in need of the very things that the United States, and only the United States, can give her, namely, money, manufactures, and organizing brains. Before the war her commercial and industrial life was largely influenced, if not controlled, by the Germans. who handled her foreign trade to the extent of nearly half a billion dollars, and who also managed through their agents a large part of her domestic business. After her recent experience Russia will hardly care to let Ger- many play again within her boundaries the part that she played there in the first thirteen years of the present century. As far as pos- sible, therefore, she will look elsewhere for the things that Germany has hitherto sup- plied. But where can she find them? In the past she has drawn vast sums of money from Belgium and France in the shape of loans for governmental, industrial, and rail- way enterprises; but Belgium and France will not be in condition to furnish great sums of money after the war. For capital to develop her resources and for manufactured goods to supply her needs Russia will here- after be dependent to a much greater extent than ever before upon the United States. She is already conscious of this, and is mak- ing every possible effort to improve her trade relations with us and to interest us in her territory and its possibilities. Is it reason- able, then, to suppose that for the sake of making a little more profit in the Far East she would join Japan in an attempt to shut us out of that field, and thus incur our hos- tility at the very time when she most needs our good will and help? The supposition is too improbable for belief or serious dis- cussion. As for Japan, she can easily enough hold her own in the Chinese markets without excluding us therefrom. She already has seventeen per cent of China’s whole foreign trade, as compared with our seven, and she is gaining on us every day. Why should she close the ‘open door’’ when we so seldom THE RUSSO-JAPANESE TREATY 151° enter it, and accomplish so little when we do go in? Outside of kerosene, tobacco, and certain manufactures of cotton, what does our Chinese trade amount to? A few million dollars in flour, lumber, and manufactures of iron and steel, but not enough, certainly, to make a fuss about. We ourselves, more- over, have done more to restrict our Far Eastern business than Japan and Russia have ever done or are likely to do. By our Sher- man Law we threatened to punish our ex- porters and manufacturers if they ventured to combine for the purpose of extending their business in the Chinese field ; by our action, through our President and Secretary of State, we discouraged our financiers when they pro- posed to make investments in China; and by recent legislation we have practically driven our steamship lines from the Pacific and thrown most of the carrying trade into the hands of the Japanese. Of what use is an “open door”? when we can hardly get access to it, and when, even if we do reach it, we have to limp through it with our feet in legis- lative shackles ? If Russia and Japan succeed in getting the greater part of the Chinese trade, it will not be because they have barred us out, but be- cause they have carried -on their business in the Far East with intelligence and vigor. According to the latest report of the Chinese maritime customs, Russia and Japan now have in China 3,596 commercial firms, with 157,819 clerks, agents, or individual traders. We have there only 157 firms, with clerks, agents, or individual traders to the number of 4,716. Russia and Japan together, there- fore, have twenty-two times as many firms engaged in the Oriental trade as we have, and thirty-three times as many selling or buying agents. And yet some of our alarm- ists would have us believe that these two Powers intend, by their recent treaty, to ex- clude us from the ‘“ Oriental sphere ” because they are afraid of our competition ! We own the Philippines, and we think we are entitled to say something about Oriental affairs. If Japan had asked us, instead of Russia, to enter into a treaty with her for the protection of her and our territorial rights and special privileges in the Far East, would we have consented? Certainly not. Our Con- gressional statesmen would have seen in such a proposal only a decp-laid scheme of the wily Japanese to involve us in hostilities with our “great and good friend ”’ the Czar—“ our best friend in Europe.” But just as soon as
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152 THE OUTLOOK Japan makes such a treaty with Russia, our great and good friend suddenly becomes a hostile conspirator who aims to ‘ eliminate us from the Oriental sphere ” in order that his people and the Japanese may get rid of our insignificant competition. Japan and Russia have greater and more vital interests in the Orient than has any other Power except Great Britain. Japan’s interests are military and political, as well as commercial, because China is now in the transition stage of her national life, and is comparatively powerless to resist aggression. If, in her present weak condition, she should fall under the domination of a strong military Power, or group of Powers, she might be- come a serious menace to Japan’s very exist- ence. We think that our geographical rela- tion to Mexico, and our special interests in 20 September that country, entitle us to take any measures that seem to us necessary for the maintenance of her integrity and the protection of her soil from invasion. If we doubted our ability to defend her against two such Powers as Ger- many and Japan, for exaample, we should think we had a perfect right to form a treaty combination with the Power whose Mexican interests stood next to ours in importance; and we might, naturally enough, make such an alliance without intending to monopolize the resources of Mexico or exclude other nations from that commercial field. The cases, of course, are not exactly parallel, but they are similar. China, in a certain sense, is Japan’s Mexico; and in judging Japanese policy we should think for a moment what our policy would probably be if we were in Japan’s place. GEORGE KENNAN. AN ENFORCED VACATION BY A CITY AVE you, my amiable male reader, felt secretly annoyed when your friends—probably your wife, and certainly your physician—have suggested that you cut your daily diet of Havanas in two, {feeling that your intimate acquaintance with yourself constituted you a better judge of such matters than they? Have you felt that your physician’s advice to spend at least three- quarters of an hour at lunch was good advice for somebody else, but that you had neither the time nor the inclination for it? Have you felt that you would de to take a month’s vacation, but with so many “irons in the fire’ things would go to smash if you did ? Do you know what it is to lie awake at night and plan your campaign for the following day? Then you are getting ready for an enforced vacation. . One fine morning Dame Nature looked me over and said to herself : ‘‘ This cheerful idiot is more interested in the checker-game of life than in the real thing, life itself. Others can’t seem to change his methods ; I'll takea try.” Said she: “ If I knock his legs out from under him, I guess he’ll slow down; if I hit him in the stomach, he’ll probably do a little thinking on that score ; and, to make a thor- oughly good job of it, I’ll just give his nerves a few jolts to shake them up. If this treat- DWELLER ment doesn’t change his view-point, let him die ; he is of no further interest to me.” After Dame Nature got through with her playfulness, her victim, like a bedraggled poll- parrot that had just been ducked in a water bucket to improve his manners, looked around him, somewhat dazed, and his wife took him by the ear and led him away out of the scheme of things, and he dropped out of life. That was seven months ago. Have you ever been in the depths of the Maine woods, where the only sound you hear that savors of civilization is the occasional whistle of a tiny locomotive operating on a little narrow-gauge railway that works its way up through the woods? Have you? Then you'll agree with me that it’s a long distance away from Wall Street, La Salle Street, and State Street; from the club with its extra sirloin and mushrooms ; from the theater and all those other “ indispensable’’ things that nowadays go to make up the life of man. The transition from civilization, from mar- kets that cater to your palate, to a little cam; in the woods too far away to make possible either milk, eggs, or meats, is quite a jump. In the early part of your enforced vacatio: in the woods you will find it hard to crow out of your thoughts the things left behind. It’s well to make a clean break, even if you do tree witl boy I little and A the dinit part to a very eithe
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1916 AN lo fidget and fuss fora short time for the things that are missing. Don’t take any of the latest magazines with you, and don’t arrange to have them sent-to you. Take a few books that you wouldn’t read at home because you were “too tired to read that heavy stuff.”” You'll enjoy them after a time. Pick out one publication that gives you all that’s really. worth while. This isn’t a sop to the editors, but the magazine link that binds us to civilization is The Outlook. It really doesn’t matter who are appearing at the theaters, or who has just made $10,000,000 shipping supplies to the Allies. Until you can begin to get dog tired phys- ically by doing something constructive in the woods—building a dock, making rustic furni- ture, making a bean pole, cleaning out and blazing a trail—your mind will complain fre- quently at the ‘‘ raw deal ” you are giving it by taking away the food on which it feeds ; but this is all necessary in getting a new view-point. How well do you know your boys? Do they like.you? I don’t mean respect you. We will hope they do that, though I am not altogether sure of it. But do they like to stay around where you are, and do you like to have them? Or are they willing for you to go your way if you'll let them alone so they can go theirs ? You know, your boys are very apt to have a lot of horse sense, and can teach you a lot if you’ll climb up, not down, to their level. If you don’t know the different birds and their voices, if you are unacquainted with the habits of animals, if you don’t know the best places in the waters near you to look for fish, if you have been too indifferent to watch his majesty the sun wake up the world in the morning, and carefully bank his fires and put out his lights at night, you haven’t half lived, do you know it ? Picture a tight little camp, set back in the trees about three hundred feet from the lake, with a comfortable sleeping-porch which the boys and I have built along its front. Inside the best-natured and most willing little cook-stove you ever saw—after the boys and I manufactured a damper for it. \t the other end of the camp, and facing the stove from various angles, are parlor, dining-room, and library, with no intervening partitions to make passage from one room to another difficult. Upstairs we sleep in very bad weather, for flanking the camp on either side at a respectable distance are the ENFORCED VACATION 153 tents, where sleep waits for you on the pillow. And sleeping out of doors is the rule. Rustic chairs of home manufacture, a big stone fireplace, a dining-table in a shady spot under the trees, complete the outdoor equipment. Oh, I forgot the dock with its ‘* approaches,”’ which the boys and I think was quite a piece of work. The other morning at daybreak I went to the boys’ tent and whispered to one of them, after shaking him awake: “ Let’s go out and try a fly. I think the fish will rise.” Putting some crackers in our pockets and without waking the rest of the sleepers, we put out onto the lake. I know there is one accomplishment I possess that my boys re- spect. I can cast a fly better than they can, but they are rapidly catching up. This prompts me ta say: If you haven’t got a hobby, get one. It doesn’t so much matter what it is, but your hobby will come in mighty handy if you have to quit business for a time. Out on the lake discussion followed as to the relative merits of a Silver Doctor, a Pro- fessor, a Parmachenee Belle, and other flies as each were tried with indifferent success on that particular morning. A few trout, and, in the hope that enough could be added through the forenoon for dinner, we were back at seven tc build a fire and make toast and chocolate, which, with black mission figs, is all they'll give us for breakfast, no matter what protests we make. Really wives and mothers have more sense in some things than we men have. After breakfast two of us tackled a dead tree in the woods. Cut down, sawed, and split, we need not worry for dry wood when the next rainy day arrives. There is exhila- ration and sport in swinging an ax; but if you are ever asked to define hard work, just say, ‘‘ Sawing wood with a buck-saw.”’ It’s one thing in the woods there’s no romance in, and you can’t put it in. Sometimes we go “ plug-fishing.* I have long had a secret contempt for plug-fishing as a sport, as compared with the art of cast- ing a fly; but I have found this year that plug-fishing has its virtues. I can hardly im- agine anything that will better teach patience. You simply sit and wait. Unless trout are on the table at dinner time—for the midday meal in the woods is always dinner, never luncheon—the meal is all vegetables. Think of it, all vegetables!
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154 And I always considered vegetables, if we except green corn, green peas, and aspara- gus, as a sort of necessary evil to be endured in moderation for the good of the system. Of course there is as great a variety from day to day as the out-in-the-world markets will furnish. If you have followed me thus far, 1 am going to tell you, in all honesty, that a dinner of vegetables is good, mighty good. From four-thirty till seven is fly-fishing time. Usually our canoe and two boats are all in use in different parts of the lake or drifting along within calling distance, and at supper time there is animated conversation about the “big one” that rose alongside the canoe, and the “old sockdolager” that was just hooked lightly through the lip and got away before he could be brought to net. After supper there is reading aloud from some of the books brought into camp until the boys’ bedtime at eight-thirty—before this year I have thought reading aloud or being read to was an unmitigated nuisance—then an- THE NATIONS AT THE END OF A BY ALICE CLOUD hung over the earth A A fierce onslaught had been repulsed..- We were all dazed, and worked as people in a trance trying to get together the men and nurses of our unit, so as to send as many of the wounded as we could to shelter ; and the dead—they lay where they had fallen. I bent over the body of a little Scotchman, a brave, sturdy young fellow. His curly hair was stained with blood, the deep-blue eyes were fiery. He was talking fast, though the failing strength made his voice very low, and I had difficulty in hearing what he said. His exhausted mind could find no rest. Each incident of the battle was being lived over. ‘** Boys, it looks like business.’’ He got excited. “D—nthem! This placeis like a plowed field; there is hardly a place to stand. My ears! why are they buzzing so? Oh, yes, I know; the big shells. They are ! The author of this sketch of actual life and death is a young American volunteer who has _ been working for the wounded and dying in a French military hospital. THE OUTLOOK 20 Septembe: other half-hour or more reading quietly. t one’s self, and at nine-thirty lights out, finish ing a busy day. Providing amusement for yourself from within yourself is much more satisfying than amusement sold to you on the basis of two dollars for an orchestra chair. So the days go on. -In another month the enforced vacation will be over. The heavy walking-stick, a very necessary aid up to ten weeks ago, has been thrown aside, and now I can follow any pace the boys want to set through the woods, and can jump the bad holes in the “ corduroy” or clear mud-holes at a jump as well as they. The great outdoors; hard work mixed with real fun; one, sometimes two, dips in the lake a day—each has done its work. It was a wise doctor who prescribed it, and would prescribe nothing else. Don’t be foolish, as I was, and wait till you are forced to take a vacation. It is apt to be along one. Make a regular vacation a part of your year’s business. WAR DAY AT YPRES THAYER! going at it hard, nurse. On with your masks, boys—the clouds—look, they are going to give us the gas. Well, let them try!” Suddenly he flung his arms around my neck and whispered, ‘‘ Mother, water, please.” I gave him a little, and he smiled and quieted. “Nurse, you don’t mind, do you? You see”’—he grew wistful—‘I like to think I am at home—and mother—you’ll tell her ?” “Cheer up, my laddie,” I said. ‘“ You'll be well before long. To-night you are going to the ambulance, and in a week or so you'll be home.” He scarcely listened. The faint flicker of a smile passed over his face. “ What’s that light over there ?” he cried. “Tt’s a French fuse éclairante; and that light there—it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.”’ I could not see it. “Tt’s lonely, you know, nurse; and the music and the flowers and the birds.”
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1916 Then I knew what he meant. The delirium had set in. A cool wind was sweeping away the clouds on the horizon and the golden streaks were fast fading into silver. ‘The moon and stars came out, and night hid the horrors of the day. Suddenly, out of the night, came the voice of the little soldier: “Your hand, nurse; it will help me take the stride.” THE READER’S VIEW 155 His eyes glowed and he held me fast. “IT died that they might live again.” And then, as if transported, “Yes, I am going to live.’” And, raising himself with a strength I had thought long since gone, he cried in a clear, strong voice, ‘‘ Long live England !” The living heard, and it justified the smiles on the faces of the dead. He fell back into my arms and [I laid him on the ground that he had conquered. THE READER’S VIEW CRIMINAL LAW: A SUGGESTED CHANGE I have read with great interest the article on page 942 of The Outlook of August 23 on the subject “ Abolish Modern Torture.” It is certainly scandalous that the police should be allowed to interrogate in private a person whom they suspect of crime, and the sooner it is done away with the better for the innocent and the guilty and for society at large. There is, however, one other improvement which ought to go hand in hand with this re- form, and that is the abolishment of the absurd rule which allows a prisoner oz his trial to re- fuse to go on the stand to testify, and prevents the prosecuting attorney from using that refusal in summing up the case to the jury. When a man is implicated by circumstantial evidence, it is his duty to go on the stand and explain those circumstances, and, from an ordinary, common-sense point of view, if he refuses to explain incriminating circumstances, everybody understands that it is because he cannot explain them and it is a sign of guilt. That is the rule on which every one goes in ordinary life, and it is the rule which prevails in the courts in the trial of civit cases. As it is now,a man accused of crime can remain silent in the face of the most incriminating circumstances, and unless there is direct evidence of his guilt, the jury can very properly acquit him. ALBERT H. ATTERBURY, New York City. Attorney at Law. THE ORIGIN OF “JOHN BROWN’S BODY” The following is a copy of part of a letter from Miss Mary W. Greenleaf, of 36 Oak Street, Belmont, Massachusetts, dated August 4, 1913, to Miss Alice A. Gray, of Languoit, New York. Miss Greenleaf is a daughter of James E. Greenleaf, who was a son of the Rev. Patrick Henry Greenleaf, an Episcopalian clergyman of Charlestown, Massachusetts : “You are right in supposing that the James Greenleaf mentioned in the newspaper article was my father, and I will give you a faithful account of the use and origin of.the song, ‘John Brown’s Body Lies Mouldering in the Grave.’ The John Brown named in the song was not the John Brown of Harper’s Ferry fame, but a John Brown ina regiment of Boston Light Infantry, stationed at Fort Warren (South Boston, Massachusetts), at the beginning of the Civil War. James E. Greenleaf (my father) was captain of one of the companies, and John Brown was a member of it. “On the night the song originated the men were trying to pass a cheerful evening before the company was to start next day for active service in the South. One of their number, as they were joking John Brown, said, ‘John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,’ then other men added more lines, and at last some one said, ‘ Greenleaf, you give us a tune to sing it by.’ Father said he thought of the old Methodist tune which seemed to fit the words, so they all sang it, marching around their tents. “P. T. Gilmore, the famous bandmaster, was at Fort Warren that night and heard it. He was jubilant over the swing of it all, father said ; and he came to him and said, ‘ Captain Greenleaf, I must have that to play going up State Street (Boston) to-morrow. morning; can you give it to me?’ And then, though it was after eleven o’clock, he sat down on an old box and by the light of a candle wrote entirely from memory the score for the band, and gave it to Mr. Gilmore by midnight. a “ As they marched up State Street that next morning the air was first publicly played asa war song, and that old Methodist tune has stirred men’s souls to ‘marching on’ ever since. My father never claimed authorship of the tune, and was always much annoyed at the articles appearing from time to time in connection with the famous song, and almost always incor- rectly reported. Several times he tried to give the press the correct story, but the idea that the great John Brown was the John Brown of the song was so firmly fixed in the public mind that it was hard to contradict it.” “(Signed) MARY W. GREENLEAF.”
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BY THE WAY An advertisement of an aviation school says, “ A short course will tit you to fly any type of machine. Pupil flies the first lesson.” The aeroplane, at this rate, may yet overtake the automobile in popularity as a pleasure vehicle. Another indication of the future of the flying- machine is seen in the erection of a huge build- ing in Brooklyn, New York, for the manufacture of gyroscopes and other adjuncts to the aero- plane; it is said that it will employ two thousand workers. “Our present idea of beautiful hands in women differs from that of the M ddle Ages,” says a writer in “Good Health.” ‘The old idea was that portrayed in sacred pictures of the old masters—long, slim hands with delicate tapering fingers that suggest sainthood.” The firm, muscular hand that is the ideal at present, according to this writer, has been developed through the use of golf clubs, tennis racquets, canoe paddles, etc. Notwithstanding Great Britain’s absorption in the war, she is building more merchant ships than a year ago. Among the 432 steam vessels on the ways at present in British shipyards there are some large liners. Two vessels of be- tween 30,000 and 40,000 tons burden are under construction, and more than a score of over 10,000 tons. The Mauretania, it will be remem- bered, is of 32,000 tonnage, while the New York, of the American Line, has a tonnage of about 10,000. As an example of made-to-order “funny” stuff, with a certain edge of wit, this extract from the “ Chaparral” has its appeal: “ Downan Out.—Jo Cose: ‘Is Mr. Downan in?’ Ima Stenog: ‘No, he went out to lunch.’ Jo Cose: ‘Will he be in after lunch?’ Ima Stenog: ‘ No, that’s what he went out after.’ ”’ Sometimes there are profits in the insurance business, even when run by a Government. Since the United States Bureau of War Risk Insurance was started, two years ago, it has received $2,950,377 in premiums and suffered net losses of only $712,518, leaving a balance of $2,237,859 on the right side of the ledger. “Waste Land Boy Contest.” The heading invites further reading: “ The idea of the con- test is for a farmer to look over his land, pick out the bad spots, turn over one acre of it to his son and let him improve it. Money prizes of $100 are offered in each of six sections of the United States. For entry blanks and further information about the contest write to E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company, Wilmington, Delaware.” A vegetarian magazine starts an article on “The High Price of Meat ” with the discon- certing remark, “It is encouraging to see the price of meat continually going higher.” Thou- 156 sands of people, it says, are finding out that meat is notessential as an article of diet, and that one may maintain health, strength, and vigor without meat far better than with it. The majority, however, it may be observed, are not invalids, and are not troubled about maintaining health, strength, and vigor—they have these; but they are vitally interested in having “a good table”—and vegetarianism certainly does not help in this respect. An article called “ Putting Punch in Salesman- ship” in the “Automobile Trede Journal” discriminates carefully between “noise” and “punch.” “Don’t get the idea that noise has anything to do with punch,” it says. “We all have met salesmen who seemed to think that, the louder they talked, the deeper the impres- sion they would make. Noise may represent a certain kind of force, but it is not the kind that will get by with a buyer.” “Signs were put up in hotel rooms notifying guests that no one could sleep more than eight hours without being charged another dollar for his couch.” This three-shift rule for sleepers is said to have been adopted in Nederland, Colorado, during the recent boom in the tung- sten industry. Tungsten is found in but few places in this country, and Nederland is one of them. The boom has quieted down now, but for a time the memories of 49 were revived in the experiences of this district. The Los Angeles “ Examiner ” ‘has a home that is probably unique architecturally. It is built on the lines of the Spanish architecture of the early days of southern California, but the material is steel and reinforced concrete. Ex- cepting a central tower, the building is only two stories high, thus presenting a radical departure from the “sky-scraper” style of newspaper building. Who owns Spitzbergen? Nobody, accerd- ing to “ Shipping Illustrated.” “ The conditions at Spitzbergen are unique,” it says, “in that this is probably the only inhabited and promising part of the world that is under the sovereignty of no country, has no government of any kind, and no police force, courts, laws, or regula- tions.” There are valuable coal deposits on the principal island, all above sea-level, and after the war is over no doubt a government will be organized to care for the four hundred persons who are engaged in developing these mines. The future historian of New York City may find space for this side-light on the infant paralysis epidemic of 1916. Itis in the form of an advertisement in a daily paper: WANTED-—In order to save lives and_ limbs of chil- dren, asmall amount of blood from any child or adult who has had infant paralysis. Itcan be taken by a needle puncture. Expenses of volunteers will be pai and those in need will be recompensed. Apply anyday... to the New York State Board of Health at, etc., etc.