in that delightfully humorous analysis of French and British character "Les Silences du Colonel Bramble," by André Maurois. It is Major Parker who says of the Germans, "Bombarding open towns is almost as unpardonable as fishing for trout with a worm or shooting a fox," and the Colonel replies, coldly, "You shouldn't exaggerate, Parker; they haven't gone as far as that yet." It is so easy to catch some men by appeal to their vanity that the attack of Madame's rival should almost be classified with the shooting of a fox or the fishing for trout with a worm.

How Madame circumvents her rival and departs in triumph for South America with her husband cannot be successfully told other than by the tongue and the gestures of Gilda Varesi. "Enter Madame" deserves a high place among the recent plays of personality and character.

vague territory which of course we could not see," and we get none of it. The silence of the prairies is waiting for us to come and bathe our souls in its healing tides; the pensive silence of the woods calls to us forever; but how few can heed the call! Instead, we drudge on in the hammering, humming town, and, even if we went out into the great spaces, we should be like the citypent fellow who, after a brief night in the quiet country, had to rush back to cobblestones, since the unaccustomed silence almost drove him mad. His brain cells had become so used to noise and friction that he missed them when they were absent. To such a state can we bring ourselves in a clamorous world. And how pitiful it is!

"But it was not this phase of silence that I intended to go into when I be gan," the Young-Old Philosopher rambled on. "I meant to point out that, wonderful as the anodyne of quiet can be for tired and jaded nerves, have you ever thought what a weapon silence is against our enemies? Let a man berate you, speak ill of you when you are not present, cry out that you are anathema, yell at the top of his voice that you are a cheat and a fraud and a rascal-let him do all this, and then calmly meet his charges with dignified silence, and see how helpless and hopeless he will become. For silence is a sword that cuts the very heart of those who are unfriendly toward us. Remain speechless

amid the clamor of your accusers, and they will not know of what you are thinking; they cannot guess what thoughts of contempt are passing through your mind, and they will be driven almost to the wall of distraction. There is nothing that maddens one more than to receive no answer to a communication, whether spoken or written. If I evade you, refuse to meet you, evince no concern over anything you say or write, I can soon work you into a state of frenzy-which is exactly what I have set out to do. We can confound our treacherous neighbors more swiftly through keeping silent than in any other way-and, what is better still, keep our self-respect.

"But the silence of the hills and the silence of the mind become stupid unless we take something out of them, dig the gold from that great treasury of stillness. To remain simply quiescent is to remain sluggish. We must think during our periods of intense silence and dream of what we shall do when we get back to the noise of the world. Silence is a fortress to which we can retire, and should retire, now and then, in order to hear ourselves think and feel ourselves grow. A wonderful place in time of attack, in seasons of spiritual peril.

"Silence is golden' than you dream it does. isms, it is founded on human experience."

means more Like all trucenturies of

HE second Socialist ouster and the housing crisis have no casual connection with each other, but they were the outstanding events of the recent extraordinary session of the New York State Legislature. A year ago almost nobody knew that there was a Socialist in the Assembly of the State of New York. Now everybody knows it and is interested in it. The Socialist cause and programme have received a vast gift of advertising and exploitation in all the newspapers of the country, thanks to the ineffably stupid strategy of the opponents of Socialism in the State of New York! Last winter many weeks of valuable time and between one and two hundred thousand dollars in State fees for high-priced counsel were expended by the Speaker of the Assembly and his friends in ousting the now famous five Socialists. from the lower house of the Legis

sides, the investigation by the Assembly unearthed disquieting provisions in the constitution of the Socialist party of America. It appeared, for example, that aliens had a voice in the membership, that any Socialist elected to office who should vote to appropriate money for military or naval purposes would be expelled from the party, and that resistance to conscription both of life and labor and repudiation of war debts were written into the most recent National declaration of principles of the Socialists. There were other less creditable factors of class bias and racial and religious prejudice which entered into the original decision of ouster, but the five Socialists were finally excluded on one alleged ground alone, namely, their membership in a party whose declaration of principles at the time was at certain points in opposition to the Constitution of the State of New

York and of the United States of America. The report of the Judiciary Committee, upon which the vote of ouster was taken, explicitly declared that no question of personal guilt was involved, as personal guilt had not been proved.

Since last winter the objectionable provisions of the Socialist constitution and rules have either been eliminated by referendum or are on the way to elimination by amendment process throughout the Socialist constituency. This was made clear in the statement read by the Speaker of the Assembly himself to the House when it convened in extraordinary session. Also the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee called attention to the fact that no personal guilt had been found to attach to any one of these five Assemblymen during the investigation last winter, and that the Assembly had ousted them upon other grounds and upon the understanding that no personal guilt attached to any of them. Nevertheless the Assembly, without further investigation and with meager discussion, proceeded to oust three of the five members again, and this time on the ground of personal guilt! The second ouster, so far as I could make out, was effected without much direct leadership, by a combination of elements in the body, made up of racial and religious prejudice, a pride of opinion in backing up the former vote, and the remnants of the war spirit on the part of several prominent Assemblymen who had been in the Army.

Undoubtedly the second decision was illogical and subversive of parliamentary government to the last degree. The prospective infusion of much new blood into the Assembly next winter will make the judgment cooler and a little more time will heal the war wounds as well as the more irrational of the war prejudices. The whole process from the beginning had one sound factor in it, intensified by the war, namely, the natural resentment of every true American in opposition to anything or anybody who is against the Government. But the method of small tyranny under which the original proceedings were inaugurated, and the riotous prejudice and narrowness of vision which at times marked the investigation and the discussion, and this final ouster upon no ground of logic or law or common sense, have entirely overshadowed any sound purpose of which there was originally some intermixture. If there is no better method than this of fighting unsound doctrine in America, then the country is doomed.

SHELTER FOR NEW YORKERS

When the Assembly was through with its second spasm of spewing Socialists out of its mouth, the Legislature turned to the housing crisis in New York City. Of course this is a part of

an existing National crisis for all great industrial cities, felt most acutely in New York. So far as it results from the pressure of workers in war industries pouring in from the country it will soon in many parts be measurably relieved. But the causes go deeper. The unfavorable environment of the village unfavorable environment of the village and the farm all over the Eastern States of the country is urging the population into the cities. The absence of rational effort on the part of the Federal Government to distribute immigration where it is needed leads to a huddled congestion of the foreign-born in the cities, and especially in New York City. The almost prohibitive costs of labor and materials give pause to the investor, who looks forward to the time of falling costs and prices and values, not very far ahead. The result for a city like Greater New York is that several hundred thousand human beings lack adequate shelter. And in the fierce adequate shelter. And in the fierce competition for homes the profiteercompetition for homes the profiteering landlords see opportunity for easy

prey.

A hundred thousand notices of dispossession had been served by landlords upon tenants in New York City for the first of October. A hundred thousand changes of residence were being promoted, under conditions that would make possible unconscionable increases in rentals on the part of landlords of a profiteering strain. There was believed to be danger of mob action, mob passion, and vast injustice. The programme adopted by the New York Legislature to curb the rent profiteersmen is at once most unusual and drastic. It is not likely that it will remain permanently upon the statutebooks unless housing comes speedily to be reckoned a legal public utility. The new acts everywhere put the burden of proof upon the landlord. The acts allow a landlord to dispossess a tenant who holds over for three reasons only: because the tenant is clearly objectionable, because the owner wishes the premises for the occupancy of himself and his family, or because he wishes to rebuild

-and he must show the validity of any one of these alleged reasons to the satisfaction of a municipal court justice who has the rent cases in charge. The acts make it impossible to dispossess the occupant of a leased or rented apartment for the purpose of letting it to a higher bidder. If the tenant believes the rent unreasonable, he may refuse to pay. The case then goes to the municipal court. Pending the proceeding in the court, the tenant deposits with the justice an amount equal to the last month's rent. If the court holds that there is justification for the increase, the tenant must pay the difference between his deposit and the new rent fixed, or else move. If the court does not allow the rent to be increased, the deposit goes to the landlord for the payposit goes to the landlord for the payment of a month's rent. If the case is

appealed, and takes more than a month for final decision, the tenant must make additional deposit with the court for each month through which the case is prolonged. But the tenant is protected in his possession until the court determines the reasonableness of the increased rental. The acts prevent evictions except for genuine cause, and compel the landlord to prove to the court that the rent received is not extortionate and out of proportion to his investment.

The stimulation of house building was found to be a far more difficult problem, just because the causes of the lack of housing are so varied and deeply rooted. Really only one measure of relief was attempted, a sort of drastic drug for insomnia, to put the patient into a condition in which he may later proceed towards normal under more natural treatment. A bill was passed permitting localities to exempt from all general property taxation for a term of twelve years such construction of housing and tenements as should be begun within eighteen months after the act should take effect. By this plan present builders would be put on a much more even keel with those who built at pre-war costs. This plan does not meddle with any existing taxable objects ; it is for a brief fixed period. The new construction itself will in time become taxable, and in the meantime the land upon which it rests and the abutting property will have added assessment and taxable value.

This rather drastic stimulation of private initiative was felt by the Legis-lature to be a safer remedy than that of municipal construction and operation, which was urged vehemently by the government of New York City. The chief struggle of the session came over the issue of exempting mortgage interest from the operation of the State income tax, in order, as it was alleged, to loosen up the mortgage market and cause mortgage funds to flow into new building. This method was definitely discarded by the Legislature when it was found that it was impossible to exempt new home mortgages without exempting all mortgages, when it was found that the small amount of saving under the State income tax of one or two per cent was quite inadequate to make any difference to the building investor, and when it was found finally that any burden taken off the mortgage would fall back upon and be made up by the real estate itself. Very powerful loaning interests in New York City contended for this exemption, but it was undoubtedly wisely denied them. As it was, it was a revelation of the lengths to which men of conservative minds found it necessary to go in the use of the power of government in order to check injustice and to stimulate production in one of the great necessaries of living.