which are asked by the audiences on these subjects. In New York City many languages have been spoken since before the Revolution; and consequently it is eminently fitting that many lectures should be given in the Italian and German languages, and in Yiddish. Another happy adaptation of these lectures to the public service is the instruction given concerning the preservation of health, and especially concerning the prevention of tuberculosis. A long step toward the unification of the educational facilities of the metropolis is taken in the co-operation of the lecturers with the public libraries. On every lecture bulletin the location of the nearest library is printed, and the librarians prepare special lists of books for reading in connection with the lectures.

GAMBLING WITH THE

PEOPLE'S HEALTH

Alarm should be felt throughout the country at the action of Governor Dix in demanding the immediate resignation of the Health Officer of the Port of New York. If the facts could be generally known as they are known to us, alarm would be accompanied with angry resentment. For sheer irresponsibility, this action of Governor Dix's matches anything that has been done by any high public official in recent years.

The Outlook is not saying this carelessly or heedlessly. We have seen the transcript of evidence taken by the Commissioner whose recommendation Governor Dix follows. We have the report of that Commissioner, who took the evidence and who made the recommendation. In the light of that evidence, Governor Dix's action is not only astounding, it approaches the incredible.

For sixteen years Dr. Alvah H. Doty has been Health Officer of the Port of New York. Although an officer of the State of New York, he has stood as guardian at the gate through which nearly a million immigrants a year pass from Europe to all parts of the United States. In all that time he has succeeded in preventing any imported epidemic from getting a foothold in this country. Perhaps the finest achievement of his administration has come within the past year in his successful defense of the Nation against the threatened invasion of cholera. His work in this respect has called forth high praise from physicians and medical experts.

What is more astonishing still is that he

has done this with appliances that are far from adequate and with a force of helpers that the State has been too niggardly to make as efficient as they should be.

Against this man a newspaper, the "Jewish Morning Journal," instigated certain charges, and offered to support them by the statements of some immigrants. Some of these statements are so palpably unreasonable and contradictory that no person of ordinary intelligence would consider them as calling for any refutation.

One example will suffice. It was charged that mothers were not allowed to see their children even when they were very ill and dying; and, second, it was charged that mothers were allowed to see their children under circumstances of illness that caused the mothers great distress. In other words, the Health Officer was charged with being inhuman on absolutely opposite grounds.

The Commissioner, by the name of Bulger, issued a report which, so far from being judicial in character, is virtually a mere restatement of charges, with a show of reference to the evidence. What the character of this report is may fairly be judged from three examples. This Commissioner, to cite one example, lumps yellow fever with smallpox, plague, and cholera as a disease that can be conveyed from one person to another by direct exposure. We had sup

posed that no citizen who had access to the ordinary means of information was to-day ignorant of the fact that yellow fever is conveyed exclusively by a species of mosquito that does not exist at the latitude of New York. Another instance: this Commissioner cites as serious testimony the fantastic tale that a drink was prepared from gin and passed around in an urn which had contained human ashes, which some one had said were the ashes of the late Colonel Waring. Of course this story has no value except to supply newspapers with front-page material, and, if it had its origin in anything but a disordered and malicious witness's mind, can be attributed only to somebody's grisly sense of humor. One more instance: the Commissioner, in referring to the charge that two or more children were on various occasions washed in the same water, admits that this charge was "stoutly contradicted and indignantly denied" by the Supervisor of Nurses and by the Chief Medical Officer; but he says that the immigrant women whose testimony supported the charges appeared to be "frank, candid, conscientious," and so he

rejects in toto the testimony of these two responsible people, and declares that this alleged mode of washing children is a foul and cruel " wrong on helpless childhood," condemns itself, and cannot be excused. These are fair samples of the Commissioner's report which Governor Dix accepts as adequate reason for dismissing Dr. Doty, whose record as a health officer has been extraordinary and in some respects unique."

Governor Dix's letter to Dr. Doty, approving and following the recommendations of the Commissioner who condemned Dr. Doty, is such a letter as one would write to a man who had proved himself, by the results of his work, corrupt, immoral, and incompetent. Undoubtedly this letter, read in whole or in part by hundreds of thousands, will create the impression that Dr. Doty has been not only incompetent, but immoral and corrupt. It is a calamity for a State that it should have for Governor one who so little realizes his responsibility as to put forth such a document as this letter. It absolutely disregards the indorsement of Dr. Doty by men of the highest standing in the community in particular, such eminent physicians as Dr. Flexner, the great bacteriologist of the Rockefeller Institute; Dr. Janeway, Dr. Jacobi, Dr. Prudden, Dr. Biggs, Dr. Park, Dr. Polk, President of the Academy of Medicine; and the former physician to President Cleveland, Dr. J. D. Bryant.

This is not the first time that attempts to secure Dr. Doty's place for some other man have been made. Charges substantially like these and supported by substantially the same testimony were offered during Governor Hughes's administration, and Governor Hughes, after an examination of them, refused even to institute an investigation. When he reappointed Dr. Doty, Governor Hughes made special reference to his efficient service.

Not the least serious aspect of the Gov. ernor's demand for Dr. Doty's resignation is the way in which it has been presented. Dr. Doty's term expired about a year ago (in February, 1911), and Governor Dix, if he had wished, could have appointed his successor then. But he did not wish to do

THE LAW'S DELAYS1 Laymen and litigants have long felt the injustice and inefficiency resulting from the law's delays. Lawyers and judges have also taken up the cry, and the greatest hope that the country has for reform of the courts, the trial and punishment of criminals, and the administration of civil lawsuits is found in the fact that the best jurists are in favor of such reform. The especial merit of Mr. Moorfield Storey's little book on the law's delays, the substance of which formed a series of lectures at the Yale Law School, is that it deals with a legal and technical subject in a human and interesting way.

Mr. Storey is an accomplished lawyer, but he is first of all an ardent anti

imperialist, and therefore a passionate opponent of Theodore Roosevelt, whom he regards, as an arch-imperialist. His book is in itself an amusing illustration of the law's delay, or rather of the lawyers' delay, for he delays attacking his main subject in order to devote some pages to a severe criticism of Mr. Roosevelt's alleged criticisms of the courts. He also illustrates one of the defects of legal procedure in the criminal law when he asserts to the jury (that is, to us, the readers of his book), as a fact, something that is contrary to the evidence. In criminal law, we believe, this is called pettifogging. He repeats as fact some newspaper gossip about Mr. Roosevelt by referring to and condemning 'his attacks during the recent political campaign [that of the autumn of 1910] upon the Supreme Court of the United States and upon other eminent judges whom he characterized variously as fossilized,' 'reactionary,' or in even less flattering terms." The speech "during the recent political campaign" upon which this distorted gossip is based was delivered by Mr. Roosevelt before the Colorado Legislature, upon the invitation of that body. The only passage in which the word "fossilized occurs (we quote from the stenographic report already printed in full in The Outlook) runs as follows:

By a five to four vote they [the Supreme Court] declared the action of the State of New York unconstitutional, because, forsooth, men must not be deprived of their "liberty" to work under unhealthy conditions.

All who are acquainted with the effort to remedy industrial abuses know the type of mind (it may be perfectly honest, but is absolutely fossilized) which declines to allow us to work

The Reform of Legal Procedure. By Moorfield Storey The Yale University Press, New Haven.

for the betterment of conditions among the wage-earners on the ground that we must not interfere with the "liberty" of a girl to work under conditions which jeopardize life and limb, or the "liberty " of a man to work under conditions which ruin his health after a limited number of years.

Such was the decision. The court was, of course, absolutely powerless to make the remotest attempt to provide a remedy for the wrong which undoubtedly existed, and its refusal to permit action by the State did not confer any power upon the Nation to act. The decision was nominally against State's rights, really against popular rights.

Mr. Roosevelt called, not individual judges, but a type of mind, fossilized. Unless Mr. Storey possesses that not uncommon type of mind himself, he will be the first to perceive how baseless is his charge that Mr. Roosevelt "attacked the Supreme Court" and characterized it as "fossilized." The incident is not of great importance except as showing the difficulties of dealing with legal injustice. For here we have an eminent lawyer who, in the very act of protesting against certain defects of the legal profession, perpetrates some of these defects in his own practice.

Aside from this blemish the book is a valuable and interesting one; it is full of entertaining anecdotes, vital experiences, and expert opinion. The simplicity of legal administration in England, as compared with American methods, is brought out more than once in the course of the book, and we quote the following incident, related by Mr. Storey, as an indication of what may be done for real justice when legal technicalities and legal jargon are tempered with common

sense:

Some years ago a friend of mine in England was watching the trial of a case, when one of the counsel called a witness. "Why do you call this witness?" said the judge. "I want to make the jury understand the working of a winch," was the reply. Oh," said the judge, "the jury understands that," and, turning to the jury, he said: "Gentlemen, don't you all know what a winch is and how it works?" They all nodded assent. "You see," continued the judge, "you don't need this witness. Call your next.' A little while later the case was given to the jury, who, as is very often the case in England, consulted without leaving the box. After a few minutes the judge turned to them and said: “Well, gentlemen, have you agreed?" "We stand eleven to one," answered the foreman. Addressing the counsel, the judge said: "Gentlemen, will you take the verdict of the eleven?" They assented, and the case was ended. This was practical sense, and it may be added that consultation by the jurymen under the eye of the judge and counsel should be

encouraged. It insures attention to business, and avoids much waste of time in the jury

room.

In contrast with this common-sense treatment of non-essentials in English courts Mr. Storey gives some examples of the way in which justice has been defeated by the observance of trivial technicalities in some American courts within a few years:

One man was convicted of murder in the first degree and the verdict was set aside because the foreman spelled "first" "fust." In another case a convicted murderer was given a new trial because "breast" was spelled in the indictment without the "a." Another murderer was given a new trial because, though the indictment alleged that he stabbed a man who did "instantly die," the words "then and there" were not inserted before "instantly," as if he could have died instantly without dying "then and there," or as if it made any difference when or where he died if he was killed by the accused Again, an indictment for rape was held defective because it concluded "against peace and dignity of the State," instead of " against the peace and dignity of the State," and a conviction of murder was set aside because in the name of the murdered man, Patrick Fitz-Patrick, the second "patrick was spelled with a small "p."

Among the fundamental remedies which Mr. Storey proposes for these defects in American legal procedure we select three for especial mention.

The first is better courts with greater powers that is, courts with able, strong, and independent judges who shall have a greater latitude than they now have in rendering decisions and in directing the course of trials.

Second, legislatures which shall devote themselves to the enactment of general principles rather than detailed, petty, and complicated prohibitions.

Third, a body of lawyers who believe that their function is to promote justice and to prevent crime, and who will no more stoop to encouraging and prolonging litigation for the sake of profiting by it than a physician will stoop to spreading an epidemic for the sake of the fees that he may derive from it.

The independence of judges is not promoted by expecting a judicial candidate to contribute money to the campaign funds of the party which supports him.

Justice is not served when the Legislature establishes a system of conditions and prohibitions under which, as happened recently in a case cited by Mr. Storey, 9,000 men may be summoned and nearly 5,000 examined before a jury is finally chosen; or under

Italy finds her African expedition far from a holiday picnic. She holds so much of the province of Tripoli as is covered by the guns of her fleet. But permanent occupation and settlement of the country are possible, if at all, only at the cost of long, expensive, and tedious guerrilla warfare with the native tribes. In such a warfare little is to be gained in either honor or commercial advantage. Even if Italy's successes have been as great as her most enthusiastic sons think they have been, Italy could not regard the offer of mediation as an unfriendly act. She might welcome it; as did Japan after far greater victories both on land and on sea.

The future holds dread possibilities: for Italy, danger of present unrest breaking out in republican revolution against a military monarchy which imposes an added burden of taxation on a people already overburdened; for Turkey, danger of a revolution against the Young Turk and a return of the Old Turk to power, with all which that involves, including possible wholesale massacres; for the surrounding countries, danger of a new religious war-the Crescent against the Cross-the seriousness of which it is impossible to overestimate. These are not probabilities; but they are possibilities, seriously discussed by those most familiar with the existing conditions.

Peace is not impossible. Italy made war avowedly to secure protection for her citizens residing in Tripoli. If through mediation she could secure adequate guarantees for such protection, she could make peace without humiliation.

America is the one Power which can intervene without provoking hostility. England, France, Germany, Spain, Russia, all have interests which would cause both Italy and Turkey to look upon their proffered mediation with some suspicion. America has no such interests. She would be free from suspicion. And President Taft, who is by nature and training a diplomat and by temperament and principle a peace-lover, is the man to undertake the delicate and difficult task.

If ever it is desirable to offer mediation, if ever circumstances allow, this is the time and these are the circumstances.

Peace hath her victories no less than war. If by her good offices America could reconcile Italy and Turkey, she would have won for peace a victory second only to that which she won by her mediation between Russia and Japan.