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EFORE the United States entered the war, the executive branch of the Government consisted of ten departments and a number of separate bureaus and commissions, such as the Inter-State Commerce Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and United States Tariff Commission, each responsible directly to the President. The heads of the ten departments, acting as the Cabinet, were also expected to advise the President upon matters of general policy, each man thus combining his individual executive function with a general advisory function. When we entered the war, the Government had to be greatly expanded. It was clear that special administrative bodies would have to be appointed to deal with food, fuel, shipping, restrictions on exports and imports, and the like. So a number of these special bodies were formed. Like the regular departments, most of them were made responsible to the President; unlike the regular departments, their chiefs were not given Cabinet positions. The Cabinet continued to act as a general board to the President, but it was composed of such overworked executives that it could rarely meet more than twice a week or give more 'than passing attention to the general problems of mobilization and strategy. For the consideration of such matters the President depended upon the Council of National Defense, an advisory department headed by a group of six Cabinet officers, supposed to be especially concerned with the problems of mobilization. But the Council of National Defense only partially fulfilled its mission; while it answered the important purpose of putting a vast corps of competent civilian advisers at the disposal of the various departments, it did not take itself seriously as a policy forming body. It did not make decisions controlling the policy of the departments represented in its own membership. It did not, therefore, co-ordinate even these six departments. It had, furthermore, no authority to direct the numerous executive bodies not represented upon it; and some of these, such as the Treasury Department, the Food Administration, and the Shipping Board, are of great importance. An attempt was made to expand the Council of National Defense by adding to its membership the heads of all the war-making executive bodies, but this experiment came to naught, as far as the writer was able to learn, and the influence of the Council of National Defense steadily diminished. A group consisting of Mr. McAdoo, Mr. Hoover, Mr. Hurley, Mr. Baruch, Mr. McCormick, and Dr. Garfield now meets with the President every Wednesday afternoon; but that is as near as we have got to a general policy board. Each one of our twenty or thirty departments and administrations has therefore gone its own way. Duplication of work and conflicts of policy and authority between these executive bodies can at present be settled only by the President. He is the single arbiter.

It is an extraordinary state of affairs. No man on earth could have the time and strength to settle promptly the innumerable questions which come up for settlement at Washington. Certainly no man who is writing war messages and entertaining visiting diplomats has time to do this. As a result of the inadequacy of what ought to be a central executive department, but is, in fact, a single man with a mere staff of secretaries and clerks, only the most critical and disastrous conflicts have been referred to Mr. Wilson. Therefore the United States Government, instead of being a single machine, remains to-day a congeries of practically independent bureaus which achieve co-ordination only by the laborious methods outlined above, or else by appeal to the President, which often means a delay of weeks while Mr. Wilson devotes his personal time to a "study of the problem" from written memoranda upon it. There is no machinery for the anticipation of such problems and the formulation of a general policy which shall bind the whole Government.

Take a single example of Government duplication. Nobody, so far as the writer knows, has counted the number of depart ments and bureaus which send publicity material from Wash

ington, competing for public attention and newspaper space. Probably thirty would be nearer the mark than ten. The following are a few of these: The Committee on Public Information, the Food Administration, the Fuel Administration, the Liberty Loan Organization, the War Savings Committee, the Shipping Board, the Labor Department, the Department of Agriculture, the Ordnance Bureau of the War Department, the Commission on Training Camp Activities, the Bureau of Education, and the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. There are a great many more, and some of them have two or three independent publicity men working at various points in their organization. It is one of Mr. Creel's duties to co-ordinate Government publicity, but he is helpless, for he has no authority over the department heads; and each department head, believing his work to be of paramount importance, and wishing to have a publicity bureau directly responsible to himself, resents restriction by Mr. Creel or anybody else, and lets his press agents go ahead sending mail to newspapers and magazines. Tons of paper are wasted. The editors shout their protests and throw the mimeographed sheets of propaganda into their waste-baskets. The public is bewildered by the babel of press agents and the multiplicity of things which, according to them, will" win the war." But the flood continues. Mr. Wilson either does not see or prefers not to see, feeling that any interference would look like Presidential censorship of news (which it would); and nobody else has the power to do anything. It is like the race of armaments; to cut down on your own outlay is merely to be beaten by a rival. To stop crying your own departmental wares is to be shouted down. The situation can be met only by action by a central deliberating body which would have time and energy to study the matter, and whose decision would control every Governmental office.

Duplication and conflict are not even the most serious defects of our present administrative machinery. More serious is the fact that ours is a Governmental body without a brain. We have no war planning board. We have no general staff to study and determine executive policies and make a business of foresight. We are making war at random.

The Army, to be sure, has its General Staff; but is it necessary to remind the President again that, in his own words, "it is a Nation which is at war, not an army"? The professional training and special experience which fit the War Department's General Staff to do the thinking of the Army are the very things which unfit it for duty as a National planning board. By training and prejudice it looks at things from a soldier's point of view. Its professional bias makes it about as useful in determining general policies as would be a group of Mr. Hoover's advisers or Mr. Hurley's experts. Each group has its own limits of imagination. We need men who can see the whole picture.

Furthermore, we need men who will not, like the present Cabinet or the Council of National Defense, be so absorbed in their individual executive duties that they cannot devote themselves to consideration of the whole administrative problem. We need men who will not only reconcile the policies and practice of the existing departments, plan reorganizations, and bring about changes in personnel where necessary, but also keep their eyes open for the needs of the future, foresee what new departments, what reorganizations, are going to prove advisable, watch the existing departments to see that they are meeting all problems'n adequately, and deliberately determine our National strategy as is not now done.

A study of the British War Cabinet shows the kind of administrative council which experience has proved most useful. In addition to his own personal secretariat-a group of five assistants who perform approximately the services that occupy Mr. Tumulty and his associates at the White House Mr. Lloyd George has a War Cabinet of five men besides himself, only one of whom, Mr. Bonar Law, has any other duty than

that of membership in the Cabinet.1 These men sit every morning and almost every afternoon, and invite into their meetings such experts as may have the special information they need. The writer is informed that there are often as many as twenty people at their sessions. They take up important topics in rotation and determine policies thereon, and they have their own executive staff, who see that reports made for the consideration of the Cabinet are obtained, and that the decisions of the Cabinet are carried out.

What would we not gain from such a group of authentic Vice-Presidents! If Mr. Wilson had a group of advisers who thus met every day and all day, our food, fuel, shipping, ordnance, aviation, and railway policies would at last be developed into something like a single policy. Imagine that we had had such a War Cabinet last autumn, and that it had tackled the aircraft'problem (as it would have)-a question which has been the object of "special investigations " by informal representatives of the President and reinvestigations by Congress and the Department of Justice and endless worry and talk in Congress and the press for months. The War Cabinet, knowing the shipping situation and the railway situation, and having consulted with the Army General Staff and with Mr. Baruch, would have known what sort of an air policy we needed and were able to adopt. It would have called in Secretary Baker, General Squier, Colonel Deeds, Mr. Coffin, a group of motor experts, and perhaps a few foreign advisers, and would have questioned them in detail. It would have called for reports where necessary. Its knowledge of the whole war game would have enabled it to reach a decision far more quickly than any Congressional investigating committee, and it would have had executive power to act at once. Months might have been saved. In like manner, the War Cabinet would now be consulting with Secretary Houston, Secretary Wilson, and their special ists on the subject of farm labor. It would be its business to foresee the fuel situation next winter and arrange for team play between Dr. Garfield, Mr. McAdoo, Mr. Baruch, and Mr. Schwab. Such a Cabinet, with its own staff of assistants and clerks, would take two days to study a situation that Mr. Wilson of necessity takes a week to unravel personally. Whenever changes in personnel proved necessary, such a body could force them upon a complacent department head. The War Cabinet would give us unity and serve as a National administrative brain. Mr. Wilson's reluctance to appoint such a body is natural. He believes coalition government to be impracticable in this country, and does not wish to displace his present Cabinet. His policy is to build up a war machine outside it where necessary, but not to disturb it any more than he has to. Sometimes he gives to outside war bureaus functions which would naturally belong within the Cabinet if the Cabinet were stronger. For instance, the War Trade Board might just as well be operated by the Secretary of Commerce if the latter did not happen to be Mr. Redfield; but Mr. Wilson prefers to let Mr. Redfield stay and to give the control of exports and imports to Mr. McCormick. He has built up working relations with his department heads which he would not want to see an intervening council break down.

More significant, perhaps, is Mr. Wilson's fear of loss of control of the Nation's policy if a War Cabinet took hold. He wants our foreign policy (and to a less extent certain phases of our domestic policy) absolutely in his own hands-where many of us are well content to have it rest. Knowing that it is impossible to decide a question of food, munitions, or commerce without in some degree affecting our foreign policy, he will not do anything which may loosen his grip on the helm. Then, too, Mr. Wilson is not constitutionally the sort of man who likes to work orally. He has the scholar's mind and mode of work; he alls for written reports and makes written decisions, usually by letter. He distrusts oral information because he feels himself to be prejudiced favorably or unfavorably by the personality of the man who is talking to him. Possibly he is also humanly afraid of being talked around; afraid that a War Cabinet would run away with him. It is, at any rate, an instrument not made to the hand of a man who sees nobody except his family, a small This statement is based on Mr. Robert Donald's explicit account of the British War Cabinet's duties, written in April, before Lord Milner assumed his duties at the War Office. I do not know to what extent, if at all, Lord Milner now acts as a member of the War Cabinet.

group of relatives by marriage, his Cabinet (as a body, and not often as individuals), an occasional Senator or Representative, and a few, a very few, trusted informal advisers.

As this article is being written, the passage of the Overman Act has made it possible for the President to effect several much-needed redistributions of Governmental authority. Although this law in a certain sense frees the President, it also adds vastly to the burden of Presidential responsibility, which long ago became too heavy for any one man to carry. It makes Mr. Wilson responsible not only for a single correction of the obvious duplications at Washington, but for a continuing adaptation of Governmental machinery to the changing needs brought about by our changing and developing strategy. The Overman Bill, therefore, not only removes all doubt of his authority to appoint a War Cabinet without further legislation; it makes its appointment all the more necessary. When will Mr. Wilson overcome his natural human reluctance to the plan, and realize what he will gain by having his hands freed for the great task of international statesmanship? The War Cabinet is inevitable; better have it now than after six, twelve, or eighteen months more of haphazard government have disastrously proved the need of it. Such a War Cabinet might have two useful functions not yet mentioned. It might maintain a closer touch with Congress than can our overworked President or any single existing department. The President has neither the time nor the inclination to see Congressmen. Despite the fact that his tremendous power is largely the result of his control over Congress through his party leadership, Mr. Wilson has become well-nigh as remote a figure to most Congressmen as he is to private citizens. Department heads cannot avoid seeing Congressmen occasionally, but in general resent their intrusion, knowing well that there is frequently a deserving constituent in the offing; their resentment has been sufficiently obvious to widen the breach between the Congress and the Executive; and the ignorance of our administrative machinery displayed by some of our lawmakers shows from what a vast distance they view the work going on a mile or two northwest of the Capitol. For example, Mr. George Creel was rebuked the other day by the House for impertinent language to a member, but in the very debate which stirred his wrath Mr. Creel was denounced on the floor of the House for issuing too much Liberty Loan publicity when everybody con versant with the subject knows that the Liberty Loan publicity is almost entirely put out by the Treasury Department and the local Federal Reserve Bank Committees ; Mr. Creel has nothing to do with the bulk of it.

Such ignorance and there is a fresh exhibition of it almost every day would seem to call for a closer understanding of administrative procedure. This is where the War Cabinet might prove of service.

Secretary Baker has made a great discovery. He has invited the Senate and House Committees on Military Affairs to sit in with the War Council of the War Department, and has made these Committees his useful friends instead of his foes. He has learned that a Congressional committee, though a bad master, is a good servant, and his innovation is doing worlds for Congress. It is giving the Committees on Military Affairs a more practical understanding of the problems for the settlement of which they share responsibility with Mr. Baker. It is giving these Committees an opportunity to substitute legislative foresight for shrill fault-finding based on hindsight. One likes to foresee a War Cabinet which in similar fashion would occasionally invite Congressional leaders to attend its deliberations and even to take part in them. The education of Congress would thus extend beyond exclusively military affairs to problems such as those of food, labor, and transportation. The War Cabinet, to be sure, would have to be careful not to be stampeded by Congressional delegations; but an astute body of men could avoid this, and at the same time secure a measure of the results which students of political theory have long had in mind when they proposed that Cabinet officials should have seats in Congress. Our legislators will do better work if they are not so apparently held at arm's length.

The general character of the War Cabinet might enable it to keep in closer touch with the country also than can the President or any single department. At present the Adminis tration feels towards Governors, State Councils of Defense, and

local leaders generally, much as a board of directors usually feels towards its stockholders; they are potential interferers, to be cajoled with soft generalities when they visit headquarters, and kept from tampering with the works. Local leaders are rightly confused by the complexity of Governmental Washing ton. There is no one place where they can go to discuss general policies with responsible officials, to give advice that they have come perhaps two thousand miles to give, and to obtain information. Mr. Hoover tells them one thing, Dr. Garfield another; Mr. McAdoo, half a mile away, tells them something else; and a section of the Council of National Defense, of uncertain relation to the other Federal departments, advises them about their State Council of Defense.

The War Cabinet ought to have a special staff to discuss general problems with those who know the sentiment of the country at large and the special needs and demands of the various localities. This staff might also make the connection between the War Cabinet and the various State Councils of Defense. The existence of such machinery would at least do something to cure Washington of its provincialism and to help interpret Washington to the visiting representatives of the hundred and ten millions.

The Administration, take it all in all, is not doing badly. Its achievements, although uneven, are substantial. It has accumulated considerable speed since its recovery from a state of partial paralysis during last December and January. It is doing better work every day. It is always months ahead of Congress. Still, when everything is said on its behalf, there remains to the observer at the capital a certain general impression of slowness. There are so many delays in Washington! Reorganizations, dismissals, appointments, decisive orders—always they seem to lag behind the need which they were meant to meet. Many a Government employee gets cynical about the Administration. "We needed a labor administrator last July," he complains, and got him this May. We needed centralized civilian con

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TOU don't feel very well, do you?" "No, I don't."

"YOU

trol of aircraft production last May, and got it this April. We needed a Government ownership of railways last summer, and got it in December. We needed a real housing programme last September; we got part of it in the winter and the rest late in the spring. We needed centralized control of purchasing last le year; we got it bit by bit, have a large measure of it now, but haven't got it all yet. We have needed a War Cabinet since the war began, and we haven't got it yet. It took us months to get strong men to handle purchasing and transportation for the Army, and there seems to be no outlook for stronger men in the various high positions that are still feebly held.

FO

"This kind of thing happens again and again," he continues. "A few specialists on the inside discover that a certain step is going to be necessary. They recommend it. They begin to feel do that the step is becoming immediately imperative. They find it is being proposed to Mr. Baker or the President or somebody else, and wait. They get impatient. They wait another month, and get furious. The matter, they hear, is under consideration.' fir Finally the press and the country wake up to the need for the step, and call for it. By this time it is long overdue. At last, after a very careful personal study of the matter' by the President himself, the step is taken. Is that the way to win a war?” One need not stress the point that by its very leisureliness the Administration saves itself many a mistake. Time brings experience; it is easier to make housing plans, for example, now than last year, when the need for houses lay in the future rather than in the present-and, alas! the past; it is easier to win pub. lic approval for the appointment of capitalists like Messrs. Ryan and Schwab now than last year, when the need for men of vast executive experience was not so obviously paramount. But is the Administration to follow public opinion? It must lead. It must organize itself so that prompt action is possible, and then act promptly. If the Nation is to play a winning part in this war, the Administration will have to display more foresight and be more fearless to discard dead Governmental forms and methods for those dictated by the necessities of victory.

The curt negative came from a soldier who looked very seedy indeed. Military was the last word to describe him. He had shuffled into the canteen a few minutes before and sat down in the first chair at any old table in a rumpled, dejected heap. "You want something to eat, don't you?" I went on. The girl at whose table he was sitting apparently hadn't seen him. Ours is volunteer service, and these slips sometimes occur, and then I, as manager, am supposed to come to the rescue. "What you want?"

do

"Well-" he hesitated.

I was afraid he would scorn the milk-toast and tea I brought, and I retired to my high revolving chair, from which I can survey the room over my cigarette and candy counter. But he didn't scorn it. He ate every mouthful-indifferently-life was evidently endlessly boring; and when he finished he sat staring before him. The other boys kept coming and going, laughing and chatting with me and the pretty waitresses or else seriously asking advice on all subjects from socks to matrimony. Finally the new boy came up to pay his check.

"You look tired," I said. "Why don't you go upstairs to the club-room and lie down? It's nice there lots of couches and pillows. You must take care of yourself now."

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Maybe I will go." But he didn't move. He might not act friendly, but he seemed to like to stay around. I hated to see him standing first on one foot and then on the other while I doled out change and passed the time of day with other soldiers and sailors.

"Come back here,” I said. “There is a nice chair, and you can rest yourself." The loud creaking of the wicker told how heavily he sank into the armchair. All of a sudden I realized that he had been saying something half mumbling. I caught: "Felt so lonesome I bumped into people on the street so they'd cuss at me and I could sass back. I had to talk to some one, didn't I?”

"Talk to me," I said, quietly. "Tell me about yourself. Where do you come from?"

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'My folks live in St. Louis, but I haven't been home for years. Only before I came in this outfit I went home to say good-by. Ma ain't much on writing, so she wanted me and my brother to go in the same branch when we enlisted, so we'd be together. But I got sick, and he went on over to France. So I guess I'm out of luck, that's all."

"What branch are you in?" I asked him. "Aviation."

"That's always interesting."

"That's what I thought it would be; but it's not as interesting as what I was doing before. I'm not an aviator, see? Only a mechanic."

TR

the jockeys, and-well, after a while I got the chance to ride the ponies."

"You did, really?" I exclaimed. "Now that was exciting." "I had to keep in training then. Then was the time I found I could go without the booze if I had to. But after a race I never stopped."

There was a long pause. My friend had something irresisti bly nice about him, after all. I was beginning to be interested. What did you do next?" I asked.

"Well, then the war came along and I enlisted. Say, my name is Archie Thomas; what's yours?" I told him.

"Well," he said, "when I got this uniform on and was doing my bit for Uncle Sam I wanted to keep away from the gang; but I couldn't tell my brother, could I? I guess it's good he's went to France. Well, I guess I'll be going.

I looked up to see why he was leaving so abruptly, and saw Mr. Fitzgerald standing beside me. Mr. Fitzgerald is one of our volunteer workers, and is a very attractive man. Archie evidently felt that he was intruding.

"This is Mr. Archie Thomas, Mr. Fitzgerald," I said. "Mr. Thomas doesn't know any one in New York and doesn't know what to do with himself. What do you suggest?"

"How would you like to go to a nice house for dinner, Thomas?"

But Archie Thomas had changed. "Me!" he jeered. "Who wants me for dinner? I'm a bum, I tell you. What is she-a fly girl?" His tone was the tone of the streets.

"She's not a fly girl, Thomas. Mrs. Woodruff is a very lovely woman," said Mr. Fitzgerald. "She asks us to send up some boys every week. Her husband's in the service and away. She's old enough to be your mother."

"Aw-what do I want to go there for? Send some other soldier boy," said Archie.

"Oh, take a chance." That was Mr. Fitzgerald. Archie looked up suddenly. Chances were in his line.

"All right," he said. "Give me the dame's name and tell me how to get there I'll take a chance."

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She sent a car for you," said Mr. Fitzgerald; and they went off together.

The next news came from Mrs. Woodruff. She called up to offer another invitation.

"That last boy you sent was a queer prize package," she said. "Nevertheless the prize was there when you finally found it." "What did he do?" I asked.

"Oh, he walked into the hall as if he owned the place and told me he was a bum, and he'd always been a bum, and if I didn't want him he was going-he wasn't going to be kicked out." "And what did you say?"

I said I had always hated angels and to come right in. He was sick, too; and as he had forty-eight hours' leave I kept him right with me. I think the rest did him good."

"Well," he said, "she gave me a swell feed and said her house was my home. She's one lovely woman!"-echo of Mr. Fitzgerald. She asked me to write to her. I called her bluff. And she answered me-here's the letter-and since then I've pest pestered her with letters. I can't do nothing for her, though, so guess I can't go there so much. It ain't right.' "I'm sure she'd miss you," I said.

I

Archie became a regular customer of the canteen then. He hung over the candy counter and chatted by the hour, and the sullen look was wearing away. One day he said: "I don't know what I'll do after the war. I don't want to go back with the gang; but I bet I will."

"Why don't you make something of yourself?" I suggested. "Me? What can I do?"

"Watch your chance. It may come in the army," I proph

esied.

And two weeks later he came dashing in to Mr. Fitzgerald

and me while we were counting how many boys had had the "regular dinner."

"My Lord!" he gasped; "they're going to send me to Cornell! Me! What'll I do at Cornell? I never finished school." "You'll make good," I said. "What are you going to study?"

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Well, you see, it was like this. They called for volunteers who knew anything about photography. I thought about my little old studio in St. Louis and what you said about chances, I volunteered. There weren't many, so I got taken." "Bully for you!" said Mr. Fitzgerald. "You must write to us."

SO

But he didn't write, and was gone so long that I thought something had gone wrong. Perhaps he wrote to Mrs. Woodruff, but I never thought to ask. There are so many boys, you see. But more than two months later in walked Archie-a very different Archie too. He was as neat as a pin, with a starched white linen stock showing above his blouse. Gone was the slept-in look from his uniform. It might have been tailored. Even his hands were spotless. He was proud of himself, too, and ready to jolly us all.

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Kept straight the whole time," he told us, "and worked like the deuce. It was aerial photography." Then followed a long explanation of the same, from which, after a maze of something about studying angles and lights, I gathered that the aerial photographer hangs by one leg and takes pictures which only he and a few other privileged characters can understand even when printed. But we all know the value of those pictures. And this was our Archie! Suddenly he looked serious. "It's all the club," he said. "Where would I be if I'd never come in here? What made you do it?" And he shook hands solemnly with Mr. Fitzgerald and me.

I can't deny that his new-found self-respect made Archie a little bit vain about this time. But we thought it did him good. It prompted him to spend a dollar and a half out of his pay once a week for a room in a hotel near by-because it had a bath attached and he could have it alone.

He began to have friends, too-nice boys-they were other aerial photographers. Each time he came in there was some new discovery.

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I

'Just had a scrap," he told us. Between here and my hotel there are three of those rotten booze peddlers. I was walking along, and he comes behind me and says, 'Say, can I get some thing for you?' I didn't pay no attention, but he follows along after and says,' What do you want, boy?' I got mad then, so turned around and says: You're talking to me, are you? All right, walk right along and speak up so I can hear you. What do you want? You needn't act so fresh,' he says; 'I'm trying to do you a favor.' 'Who asked you to?' says I; 'did I ask you?' 'No, you didn't,' says he; but I guess you want something, all the same.' That made me madder, and I grabbed him by the throat and shook him. 'You're trying to sell me some of that damned whisky!' I shouts. Well, if any one asks you, you go get it for them, and don't go up to fellows who never thought of a drink and put the idea in their head. I could turn you over to the military police.' A crowd began to come up, so I kicked him off. The bum!"

of

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Oh, well, I figure that if a fellow wants a drink it's none my business. I won't stand in his way. Only I didn't want one," said Archie.

The next time he came in his story was different.

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Say," he said, laughing, "I just came in from Hempstead with a pretty girl. There was only one seat, and that was next to her, and so I took it. See? I stared at her, too, 'cause I liked to see her blush. When we got to Jamaica, all of a sudden she says:

"You change here for Brooklyn.'

"Do you?" I says. "Thank you;' and I jumped up and went out on the platform. When I got there, I realized I didn't want to go to Brooklyn at all, so I beat it back on the train and sat down behind her. You should have seen her face! So I says: "You needn't feel so peeved. I didn't want to go to Brooklyn, only you rattled me. See?"

"But she wouldn't look at me. When we got to the Penn station, we got out, and she had a big grip. I says, 'I'm going to carry that for you,' and she says, snippy, I prefer to carry