abolish all smoking on the busses, and am ready to make that small sacrifice in the interests of the general good. If a forceful and thoughtful presentation of the subject is made, I believe the innovation could be made without friction.

The bus company hopes that the regulations which have been adopted will prevent the need of so drastic a change in the habits of its patrons, but whether this is so or not, the whole controversy has created an inviting picture of American good sense and afforded a striking example of commercial courtesy. There are other public

service concerns which can well afford to follow the example of the Fifth Avenue Coach Company.

PROTESTANT CHURCHES
IN ALLIANCE

HE recent meeting of the Federal TCouncil of the Churches of Christ at Washington was significant, first, for the character of the attendance. More than five hundred delegates were present, representing thirty Christian bodies. Conspicuous among the foreign delegates were General Robert Georges Nivelle, of France, and the Rev. R. C.

as may be necessary to carry forward a larger work, and requested the constituent bodies to provide for the Council's support by a system of equitable apportionment. Should this recommendation be adopted by the churches it would give them, for the first time, an adequate organ of representation in

their common work. Dr. Robert E. Speer was chosen President for the next four years.

Most significant of all, however, was the spirit pervading the Council. While not blind to present difficulties and dangers, the Council faces the future with a confident spirit promising well for " the resolute and united advance to which it calls the churches. We hope that the Council may realize Bishop Lawrence's words to them: "We need to-day something of the same spirit of adventure which the Pilgrim Fathers had. If they had put on the Mayflower the motto 'Safety First' they would never have reached this country."

WHAT OUR BOYS FACE IN THE CANAL ZONE

To express the fellowship and catholic unity of the Christian Church.

To bring the Christian bodies of America into united service for Christ and the world.

To encourage devotional fellowship and mutual counsel concerning the spiritual life and religious activities of the churches.

To secure a larger combined influence for the churches of Christ in all matters affecting the moral and social conditions of the people, so as to promote the application of the law of Christ in every relation of human life.

The Council was established, as has often been said, "for the prosecution of work that can be better done in union than in separation." To this end it authorized the Executive Committee to appoint such additional secretaries

UCH of our present prosperity is our merchant sailors.

elements in the mixed foreign and native population, undermines our boys' morals. They must be safeguarded at all costs so as ultimately to come back as unsullied as can be.

Of course the best possible solution would be to get reform legislation from the Government at Panama. Pending this, Americans must do the next best thing. They must provide halls for clean amusements and light refresh ments and buildings for religious wor ship. As to worship, some seventee Protestant denominations are repre sented among the five hundred resident members of the Union Church of the Canal Zone and the thousand young people in the Sunday schools. This nonsectarian church was established in 1914. It includes four local congrega tions and one mission. The treasurer of the Church is Mr. A. R. Kimball. 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City. From the beginning this er periment in Christian co-operation has been successful. But only a beginning has been made to provide proper physical equipment. The Outlook appeals with confidence for aid in this endeavor.

When Jack's ashore in the seaport THE TWILIGHT OF THE cities of our mainland, he finds welfare work carried on for his benefit. This is also true of some of the ports of our possessions. In one of these possessions -the Canal Zone-the need for such work seems to be greater than elsewhere.

The ports of Colon and Panama are daily visited by hundreds of seamen from commercial vessels as well as by sailors and soldiers of the United States Navy and Army. In addition there is the American community along the Panama Canal, composed of nearly fourteen thousand of our white fellow-citizens, together with the many soldiers located at the posts which guard the Canal. The social conditions are remarkable.

In the first place, though the Eighteenth Amendment is in operation in the Zone proper, in some of the streets of Colon and Panama nearly every other store is a saloon. The Zone comprises a strip of territory five miles wide on either side of the Canal, but excluding the cities of Colon and Panama.

Second, in no other region of equal population is there more prostitution. Most of the prostitutes are suffering from syphilis or gonorrhea or both.

A tropical climate, together with bad

S there is a time in our northern lands when day is ended and ye night has not come, so now w are living in a time when the World War is ended and yet world peace is not come. It is the twilight of the war. Impulses that governed all but the most sordid or insensible or cynical among us while the enemy exposed us

common danger are no longer lively. There is no longer the urgent call to self-sacrifice, no longer the prompt response. And yet there re mains the restlessness bred of war. Nerves are still on the trigger. People are again resorting to foreign travel for recreation, and yet, as never in the former days of peace, they are ham pered by war-time passports. Con merce is reviving, and yet it feels the drag of the restrictions surviving the blockade and of the impediments in foreign exchange. Treaties of peace have been signed, yet we hear of fighting in Russia, in Ireland, in what was Turkey, and along the Adriatic: and we expect fighting to be renewed in Poland.

Nominally, enemy nations are now friendly; but there lacks the confidence that is the only true basis for interna

tional as well as for personal friendship. It is impossible for those who felt the devastating touch of the creatures in field-gray to think of Germans without a shudder. The Germans meant that their atrocities should be remembered, and they are remembered. Peaceful relations with those who perpetrated the deeds cannot be re-established by the mere signing of a treaty. With them we are no longer at war, but it can hardly be said that with them all the world is yet at peace.

It is in this twilight of the war that the League of Nations is sitting at Geneva. This assemblage seems to be an embodiment of the spirit of the times. While it attempts to organize peace, it lacks the coherence and driving power of a war alliance. It is designed to unite in a common fraternity the civilized nations of the world, but it still excludes, as it ought to exclude, those nations which, though deprived of belligerent power, retain the belligerent disposition. Lacking both the stimulus. of war and the normal relationships of peace, the nations whose representatives are assembled at Geneva are in these days subjected to a severer test than that provided by either peace

or war.

In spite, however, of its depressing influences, such a time as this has certain compensating advantages. In time of peace sentimentalism is too likely to interfere with reasonable preparation for war. In war time emotional strain forbids concentration of thought upon the establishment of permanent #peaceful relationships. In this twilight period, free alike from an abnormal emotionalism and from sentimental excess, it ought to be possible for men to keep in mind the lessons of war while setting their faces for peace; to keep their minds fixed on ideals without letting go their hold on facts.

It will serve to promote just and stable international relations if, in organizing peace, men in authority keep clear certain distinctions.

National isolation is a relative term. No nation has ever been able to live wholly in itself. Those who profess to advocate a policy of aloofness could not, even if they would, keep nations aloof. The Chinese Wall, a symbol of isolation, never kept China isolated. Japan, even in the period of exclusive. ness, was never completely shut off from other peoples. Great Britain's traditional policy of "splendid isolation was carried on when the British were penetrating all parts of the globe. In the world as it is constituted today points of contact between nations

are increasing in number and in complexity.

These international relations are not all of the same kind. They may for the most part be put into three categories administrative, diplomatic (or political), and legal.

Under administrative relations may be grouped all those questions that arise between nations which can be settled on a basis of routine. These involve no questions of essential policy on the part of any nation or group of nations. Their difficulties can be mastered by experts and need never become cause for friction. Such questions as international postal arrangements, bills of lading, details of the management of ports, exchange of information concerning maritime charts, and many other matters essential to intercourse between nations are of great importance, but they need never become questions for public discussion. For centuries such questions have been arising from time to time, but in recent years, with the development of means of travel and trade, they have become more and more numerous and more and more technical. Even war so destructive as that from which we are emerging does not sever all such relations; for the processes of exchanging prisoners or of sending money and provisions to prisoners in enemy territory became, after the arrangements were once made, a matter of routine.

Under diplomatic (or political) relations may be grouped all those questions that arise between nations which involve matters of national policy and interest. These questions are often conflicting, and in many cases are pregnant with strife. What is to the advantage of one nation may be or seem to be of disadvantage to its neighbor. They are not necessarily questions of right or wrong. For example, if the matter of tolls in the Panama Canal had not been made the subject of agreement by treaty, it would have been a question purely of national interest and policy. Such questions, like questions as to wages or hours of labor between employer and employee, do not necessarily involve any law or equity. They are questions to be settled by compromise and mutual agreement if possible, and are proper subjects of arbitration. They are usually settled by compromise between diplomats. They constitute the texture and fabric of diplomacy. The men to whose settlement they are intrusted are trustees of the interests of their respective nations, and are morally bound to see that their respective peoples are not put at a disadvantage.

These constitute the kind of questions from which most wars spring, or at least used to spring. They cannot be settled by strictly judicial tribunals because they do not involve questions of law or equity; but they can be, and often have been, settled by arbitral tribunals, because it is found that a disinterested party can often adjust conflicting interests. Indeed, it often happens that even after a war the belligerents will resort to what is virtually the arbitration of a neutral.

Under legal relations should be grouped all those questions that arise between nations which involve international law. This group of questions is of comparatively modern origin, because the existence of international law as it is at present understood has been recognized clearly only in modern times. And yet these legal questions between nations are not without precedent in mediæval or even ancient times. There was a general recognition in the Middle Ages of the distinction between lawful and unlawful dynastic claims. The Church acted on occasions as a judge of the law. Those who take the German view that every sovereign state is unmoral and without obligation to observe any law, human or divine, except that of its own necessity, deny even now that there is any such thing as international law; but that question seems to have been settled by the World War. It was Germany's defiance not merely of the interests of her neighbors but of her neighbors' rights that roused the world against her. It is generally recognized to-day that nations have rights in law and equity, and therefore that nations are bound by law and equity to observe one another's rights. With the development of practice and custom generally recognized as having legal validity and with the multiplication of treaties, which are in the nature of legally recognized contracts, these legal relations between nations become more and more important.

In great measure the failure of statesmen so far to perfect an international organization for peace, or even to draft one that creates more confidence than distrust, is due to the failure to observe the distinction between these three kinds of international relations. It is natural for diplomats and politicians to think that all questions can best be settled by political and diplomatic methods. As a matter of fact, many of the most serious failures in government have been due to intrusting to politicians questions that are essentially non-political. We are learning in America that there is a legitimate function

of the politician, but that it does not concern such purely administrative questions as those affecting the routine business of a municipality or the conduct of such a national enterprise as the post office, and that emphatically it should be kept separate from the machinery of the law. What we have learned of the corrupting influence of politics 'that has extended beyond its proper sphere in matters of domestic concern we should apply to questions arising between nations.

If during this period the nations can learn how to organize their mutual relations so as to confine the diplomats and politicians to their proper function and to intrust administrative questions to experts and legal questions to international jurists, this twilight of the war may prove to be not what it seems, a time of confusion, but a time of construction.

HYPHEN AND PACIFIST

ALLIES

WO elements in our population have repeatedly shown a mutual affinity. During the war the German-American who was more concerned with Germany than with America found a ready partner in his propaganda in the pacifist. Together the GermanAmerican and the pacifist labored to keep the country out of war. The fact that their reasons were not altogether identical did not prevent the effect of their activities being the same. And together they did more than any one else to create dissension within the Nation and to keep the Nation unprepared for the task to which it was inevitably called. To-day there is a new partnership of exactly the same kind. This time the pacifist's partner is the Irish-American.

A privately organized committee has been holding sessions in Washington, listening to reports and opinions of various people concerning the troubles in Ireland. The head and front of this committee is Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the "Nation." Mr. Villard is one of our pacifists. He has found ready supporters among those Americans of Irish descent who think of Ireland as their motherland, just as the German-Americans thought of Germany as their fatherland. It is this committee which has brought to this country Mrs. MacSwiney, the widow of the hunger-striker, Lord Mayor of Cork, who starved himself to death as a martyr to the Sinn Fein cause.

This committee has no power to

swear witnesses or to provide adequate cross-examination. It has failed, as it was bound to fail, to secure reports and opinions directly from Sinn Fein's opponents. Its only effect upon Great Britain has been to arouse resentment against what the British regard as American meddling with matters that concern the British Empire. It is the same sort of resentment which would be aroused in this country if a committee of Englishmen should stir up racial feeling in this country by assuming the prerogative of inquiring into the lynching of Negroes.

It is not necessary or right to attribute consciously selfish or sordid motives, to those who are engaged in this socalled investigation. Their intentions, however good they may be, do not alleviate one bit their offense against international relations and the interests of this country. Theirs is a performance which can result in no contribution to sound public information and can result only in intensifying prejudice and occasioning resentment.

The Irish-Americans who are engaging in this effort are obscuring the just claims of the Irish by their endeavor to involve America in the cause of Sinn Fein, and thus are injuring the cause they are professing to promoto. And the pacifists engaged in this enterprise, by arousing resentment and causing friction, and thus making peace more difficult, are likewise injuring the cause they profess to promote.

It has always been the doom of the hyphenate to bring disrepute upon the country of his origin and the doom of the pacifist to bring disrepute upon the cause of peace.

NOT AS OTHERS ARE, BUT STILL WORTH

T

WHILE

HE Provincetown Players have for seven years flung out the banner of defiance to the commercial stage of Broadway. Despite the excellence of some of their productions, despite the idealistic aims of those who have organized this association, the commercial stage still seems to be doing nicely, thank you. Nor is this statement to be taken as referring wholly to its financial status.

We are quite aware of the fact that the commercial stage has a legion of shortcomings to answer for. It has coined vulgarity into profit, it has built up a star system which has retarded the development of the art of acting, it has pushed forward incompetent actors for

stril

One thing, however, the commercial Emp stage has not been guilty of, and that is I T intellectual snobbery. On the whole, Neg are inclined to think that the dramat from snob may be as hurtful to his art as this E dramatic vulgarian. A hint at what we posi mean by intellectual snobbery may be taint found in a quotation from the announce bidin ment which the Provincetown Player que distribute to those who foregather in their excellent little theater in Me dougal Street. This announcement beery gins: "There exist to-day in New York He City perhaps a thousand men and r women who, as individuals, are the a spiritual equals of those who saw the ch first performances of Aristophanes Molière, or Shakespeare." It is easy to m guess what argument follows this state as ment, a statement which is neither his bran torically sound nor dramatically whole in some. Certainly neither Aristophanes nor Shakespeare wrote their plays for the any small group of (we know of Do other word to use) highbrows. The art of Shakespeare was catholic enough in Th its embrace to include in its appeal the th euphuists who followed in the footsteps d of Sir John Lyly, the gallants of the Court who watched his plays from coigns of vantage on the stage, and the Elizabethan equivalent, filling the p of the Globe Theatre, of those who now delight in the antics of Mack Sennet and his troupe.

When one is further informed by the Provincetown Players that "groups like ours are about to inherit the whole duty of dramatic man," and that they think one of their promised phy "good, even though it be predestined i to popularity," the casual visitor Greenwich Village is indeed tempted to hie himself back to the dramatic marts of Broadway.

But for those who chance to visit the theater of the Provincetown Players and who feel such a reaction we have a word of advice. Don't depart in anger, for the fare is better than the menu.

One of the most successful bills which the Provincetown Players have recently staged begins with a delight ful curtain-raiser wherein Harlequi and Pierrot war for the heart of Columbine. Pierrot is a dreamer and his weapons are fantasies of the mind: Harlequin is a practical soul, useful at sweeping time, but otherwise about a inspiring as a cold potato. We can

A

eave our readers to guess which wins The victory.

Following this curtain-raiser by Lawence Langner comes a play which has xcited no little interest among dra atic critics. It is Eugene O'Neill's triking study of terror called "The Emperor Jones."

The Emperor Jones is an American Negro, an ex-convict, and a refugee From justice. When the play opens, he

Emperor of a West Indian island, a osition he has won by a process unainted with legality or honor. He is iding his time, waiting until he has queezed his superstitious followers ry. When that moment occurs, he is Expecting to prescribe for himself a mery sudden change of climate.

He miscalculates his time of grace, or when he comes on the stage he earns from his side partner in evil, a ockney beach-comber, that his followfrs have fled to the hills, whence the m-tom has called them to war. But he as laid his plans for escape well. With ravado based upon his conscious supeiority to the rabble which he has berayed, and trusting to the fact that the ribesmen believe him invulnerable save From a silver bullet, he departs for the past.

The next scene finds him at the edge the forest at nightfall. He has travsed a great plain and has come to e place where his cache of food was idden. It has disappeared, and his ravado begins to slip away from him. he great forest which he has entered kes hold of his spirit. The brittle rmor of the theology of his childhood isappears and leaves him at heart a rimitive savage, as superstitious as the ild pursuers whose drums continually rob through the forest aisles. The ory of his progress through the forest is ld in seven scenes. As the terror grows pon him he sees apparitions among e trees-the form of a fellow-gambler has slain, the figure of the prison aard he has murdered, a slave auction

and himself upon the block, the hold of a slave ship America-bound, and an African witch doctor and his god. As each apparition appears he fires a shot from his revolver, until at last there remains to him only the silver bullet which he has saved for his own destruction if worse comes to worst. This shot, too, he expends, and at last his pursuers trap him close by the very point where he started the night before. He falls, riddled by the silver bullets which have been cast to encompass his end.

Certainly the psychology of his visions and of his terror is not wholly visions and of his terror is not wholly sound. Nor are the stage mechanics of

M

ORE than two years have passed since Armistice Day, and nearly two years have gone by since Ir. Roosevelt died, on January 6, 1919. he approaching anniversary of his eath gives added interest to a story hich has just reached us of a letter hich he sent to the A. E. F. for a Christmas greeting in 1918.

Mr. Benjamin F.Seldon, a Y.M.C.A.

secretary who served with the 367th Infantry (colored-the Buffaloes), promised Mr. Roosevelt that he would keep him in touch with the progress of that regiment. Colonel Roosevelt was particularly interested in this unit, first because he was president of its welfare organization, and secondly because some of the officers of the regiment, including Colonel Moss, its Commander,

his apparitions as successfully done as (whisper it not in Gath) they might have been done on commercial Broadway. But even if the obvious limitations of both stage and book are taken into consideration, the work of Charles S. Gilpin, the Negro actor who plays the part of Emperor Jones, is remarkably convincing. It is extremely doubtful whether Broadway would have afforded him the chance to play this part, and for that lovers of the drama can be grateful to the Provincetown Players. But we wish that their efforts were a little less permeated with the spirit of the fly that rode upon the wheel of Alexander's chariot!

ΤΟ THE A. E. F.

were serving in the 24th Infantry when that regiment was in support of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill. After the first battle in which the 367th Infantry was engaged Mr. Seldon wrote Mr. Roosevelt asking him to send the Buffaloes a Christmas letter. Mr. Roosevelt replied that he could not discriminate among the regiments, and therefore sent a letter for all the