hospitals because the necessary time and the necessary clerical force have been lacking. The American Ambulance Hospital is so organized that at the close of the war it will have a collection of surgical histories of the most difficult cases which will serve as textbooks for surgeons throughout the world, and which will be the product of American doctors working in an American hospital.

The work of the American Ambulance Hospital has not only its scientific and altruistic value, but it is accomplishing much in cementing the bonds of internationalism. Mr. Robert Bacon, to whom we are indebted for many of the facts here presented to our readers, and Mr. Myron Herrick, the American Ambassador in Paris, are of the opinion that nothing more effective could be done to promote a good international understanding than the carrying on of this work. Every French and British soldier, every soldier from distant parts, every German who is treated at this hospital, will carry away with him recollections of American efficiency and American humanitarianism. President Poincaré, of France, has cabled his appreciation of the hospital to President Wilson, and the Governments of the Allies have been so interested in its work that they have offered to bear a part of the expense by paying so much a day for the maintenance of each wounded soldier. This offer, however, has been declined by the hospital administration, because it believes that by relying entirely upon American contributions it can best retain its independence and neutrality.

The committee in charge of the hospital ardently desires to raise five hundred thousand dollars immediately to maintain the work. The few Americans now living in Paris have themselves raised one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. The money that has so far been contributed in this country brings the total to about two hundred thousand dollars, leaving a balance of three hundred thousand for which contributions are urgently requested. With the money in hand the hos pital is maintaining four hundred beds. building and the staff can take care of a thousand beds as soon as the required funds are obtained. Contributions should be sent to Messrs. J. P. Morgan & Co., 23 Wall Street, New York, who will remit the money by cable to Paris. Americans may take a justifiable pride in the efficient part which their country is taking in the war through this humane instrumentality..

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It is fortunate, not only for this country, but for the people of other lands, that from the beginning of the war the American Ambassador at Paris has been Mr. Herrick. During the days preceding the outbreak of hostilities he rendered great service under conditions that called for wisdom, discretion, frankness, and foresight. When, on the 31st of July, the die was cast, Mr. Herrick was all prepared for departure from his post. The Embassy was dismantled. The Ambassador's trunks were packed. That was on Friday. He was expecting to leave on the following Monday. Mr. Herrick is still in Paris.

Mr. Herrick's foresight is illustrated by the fact that even before war was declared between any of the nations except Austria and Servia he had already communicated with the United States Government with regard to the transportation to the United States of the thousands of Americans who, he foresaw, would be caught in the meshes of a general European conflict. To-day he is the representative in France of whatever Germans may be in that country as well as of Americans, and he is remaining in Paris in spite of the fact that the French Government has moved to Bordeaux. His experience and his personal qualities cannot be inherited by his successor.

There is no known reason why any change should have been contemplated except that there happened to be a change in party control in the United States. How absurd and dangerous is the practice of allowing party politics to control diplomatic appointments is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that in this crisis the expected change in Ambassadors did not take place. If party policies have anything really to do with diplomacy, it is at a crisis like this that those policies should be enforced. The fact that political considerations have lapsed at this time of peril is alone proof that party policies have nothing to do with diplomacy, and that changes in ambassadorships with changes in parties have no relation to the welfare of the country, but are governed by priɣate or political considerations.

Nevertheless, there is now already in Paris another man waiting to take Mr. Herrick's place. The only reason why he is there is that Mr. Herrick is a Republican while he is a Democrat, unless some personal reason concerning Mr. Herrick's own convenience

exists of which the public knows nothing and which so far has not prevented Mr. Herrick from remaining at his post.

If the United States diplomatic service is ever to be made the safeguard to this country that it might be and ought to be, a fresh beginning in making it so would be to recall Mr. Herrick's successor and to keep Mr. Herrick where he is and where he ought to remain.

THE NEWS OF THE WORLD

The greatest shock which the nightmare of war has given the world was the sudden discovery that while it has been buying and selling, learning, thinking, writing, and painting, and conducting the most intimate relations of life as one community, it is still made up of separate parts which on the instant may fly apart. This is an intolerable situation; but it exists, and the world is compelled to recognize it through many losses, inconveniences, and miseries.

The transmission of news from all parts of the world has been brought to such a stage of efficiency that it is not easy to put one's self back to the time, fifty years ago, when news from country to country was fragmentary and dilatory. Not much more than half a century ago Julius Reuter, a German, who knew no English and had no capital, but who had courage and faith in a great idea, opened a small office in the heart of London. He had conceived the idea of creating a center for telegraphic information from all parts of the world; and he went to England because political opposition in Germany presented insuperable obstacles. He was aided, as men of energy and imagination are often aided, by events. The laying of the first cable across the Atlantic put a wonderful instrument in his hands. He saw the immense possibilities for news collection and transmission opened up by the cable. At that time the various countries of Europe were so afraid of the possible effects of rapid exchange of news that they did not allow the building of international telegraph lines. The wires ended at a fixed distance within the boundaries of each country. Since the war began travelers have learned the inconvenience of trains which cannot cross frontiers; in many cases they have been compelled to walk long distances over territory which they once crossed without interruption. When the first telegraph lines were established,

telegrams were carried over the frontiers by post. Reuter promptly tried service by carrier pigeons, with unsatisfactory results.

In England his enterprise met some newspaper opposition, but no obstacles were placed in his way by the Government, and he soon made himself an indispensable accessory to the press. From the beginning, with German thoroughness, he strove for absolute accuracy. The battles of Magenta and Solferino, in 1859, were the first battles of which the European press received telegraphic reports. Reuter at that time had representatives in the three armies-Austrian, French, and Italian. During the Civil War in this country, before the cables were laid, his despatches, inclosed in air-tight cases, were sent to England, received by small vessels off the coast of Ireland, carried to the nearest landing-place, and then transmitted by private telegraph wire. When President Lincoln was assassinated, the mail steamer conveying the news had already sailed. Reuter's launch overtook it, put the despatch case on board, and the event was known in London a week in advance of the receipt of official information. When the war between Germany and France a generation ago broke out, Reuter had become such an international institution that Prince Bismarck himself announced the fall of Napoleon III to a Reuter correspondent.

A JAPANESE NEWS AGENCY

Both the United States and Japan have suffered greatly from the very imperfect and inaccurate transmission of news between the two countries. The necessity for the establishment of additional methods for the transmission of accurate news is becoming more and more insistent, and last year a group of influential Japanese headed by Baron Shibuzawa, one of the most prominent financiers and one of the most public-spirited men in Japan, organized the "Japanese International News Agency," represented by Mr. J. Russell Kennedy, an able and experienced journalist, who was for a number of years the representative of the Associated Press in Tokyo. The new agency, by a combination with Reuter's, aims to receive and to convey full and accurate reports of events, and the newspapers of Japan are now receiving fuller news from all parts of the world than formerly.

It is only necessary to say in regard to the International News Agency that it is in no sense under Government control; that it has

received no subsidy from the Government ; and that it is not aided by governmental financial support. It is conducted upon a purely business basis, and is supported by the newspapers which it serves. These include many of the foremost Japanese newspapers and a majority of the newspapers published in foreign languages.

A RESIGNATION

DECLINED

The newspaper report, accorded greater credibility than it apparently deserved, that a man named Clarence Wiener had threatened to cut out of his will a bequest of ten million dollars to Harvard University unless Professor Münsterberg immediately severed his relation with the University, has given Harvard an enviable opportunity of striking a telling blow for the spiritual independence of American educational institutions. The fact that no one for an instant expected that the Harvard authorities would pursue any other course than the one they adopted detracts in no way from the credit due the University they represent. Not a very long time has elapsed since certain individual American colleges have been accused, perhaps not without reason, of having derived their purses and their opinions from one and the same source. Perhaps the impertinent suggestion of Mr. Wiener has been useful at least in calling public attention to the dominant note that now,exists, not only in Harvard, but in an overwhelming majority of American educational institutions.

In the instance under present discussion Professor Münsterberg, who has expressed himself with more frankness than tact in the defense of his native country, made himself persona non grata to Mr. Wiener, who, it is reported, thereupon made the threatening suggestion to which we have referred.

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lowing this, Professor Münsterberg, more from the dictates of tact than from necessity, promptly offered his resignation to the University. The Harvard authorities then brought the incident to a close, creditably to all concerned but the one responsible for its beginning, by asking Professor Münsterberg to withdraw his resignation and by stating emphatically that the University could not tolerate any suggestion that it would be willing to accept money to abridge free speech, to remove a professor, or to accept his resignation.

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When a man dies, or celebrates his ninetieth birthday, or lives to look back upon some great historic event, such as the Johnstown flood or the Battle of Waterloo, his friends and neighbors are inclined to credit him with the accomplishment of most of the things he has observed. It is a pleasant fiction, and a fiction not without some foundation in truth, when, instead of a person, the time-garlanded spectator happens to have been an institution of genuine importance. The romance of having lived through a period of enduring significance becomes doubly inviting when the honored spectator has actually played an important part in creating the story of his time.

Such, indeed, is the proud distinction of the Hartford "Courant," which has recently celebrated the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its birth. In a memorial issue of one hundred and forty-four pages the "Courant" reminds its readers with commendable restraint and justifiable pride that "the first number of the Courant'

appeared October 29, 1764. While by no means the first paper established, it is beyond question the oldest living newspaper on the continent. It was here a dozen years before the United States arrived, and it published the 'Declaration of Independence' as 'news.' Think of that! We had this news so promptly (there was no Associated Press in those days) that we were able to give it to our readers on the fifteenth of July. It took only eleven days to come all the way from Philadelphia. . . . We had more than a year earlier printed the rousing story brought on horseback by Trail Bissell, who rode through the colony telling of the Battle of Lexington, and before and after that had published many articles fired with the spirit of independence."

In recent years one of the pleasantest associations of the "Courant was the long and intimate connection which Charles Dudley Warner maintained with it. For many years he contributed, either editorially or otherwise, "a column a day;" and in its pages many of his most charming essays first appeared, including the chapters of "My Summer in a Garden."

The Hartford Courant" is a private concern which is, indeed, a public asset.

Το

a newspaper which even the whole United States of America can allude to with editorial courtesy as "our distinguished contemporary" The Outlook offers its hearty congratulations upon a distinguished career and its best wishes for continued independence of thought and of devotion to clean journalism.

THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN INDIANS

Over a thousand Indians and white Americans have banded together during the last three years for the uplift and advancement of the Indian race. This organization, the Society of American Indians, in which only persons of Indian blood may hold an active membership, held its fourth annual Conference at Madison, Wisconsin, last month. Its aim is to suggest and bring about better conditions, and it urges the Indian to "avail himself of every opportunity to learn the ways of civilized life,' in order that he may compete and co-operate successfully with other men; to use his mind and muscle, to become more and more a worker, a producer and a builder, instead of merely a consumer." It demands of the American Nation a better system of laws regulating Indian affairs, better educational facilities, and the settlement of many long unsettled claims.

No one who attended the sessions of the recent Conference could fail to be impressed with the idealism and self-sacrifice of the many educated Indians who had come long distances at their own expense in order to work for the good of their race.

No one

could fail to recognize the splendid oratorical ability of some of the very ones who decried their own "ignorance " and begged for an education for those to come. Pathetically ignorant as many of the older Indians were, who came with their interpreters to seek the aid of their educated brethren, under the mistaken idea that the Conference was called for the discussion of individual and tribal grievances, they showed a sense of justice, a humility, and a pride in their leaders that spoke well for the inherent nobility of the

race.

While many of the members of the Society desire the passage of laws doing away with what they regard as the folly of reservation life, the resolutions adopted by the Society as a whole demand no such immediate change in our governmental policy. First and foremost, they ask the passage of the Carter Code Bill, by which a Commission will draft a

codified law definitely establishing the legal status of the Indian; and of the Stephens Bill, which will enable the Indian to place his claims directly in the United States Court of Claims without first securing the special permission of Congress. The passage of this latter bill would relieve much of the bitterness that has been growing from year to year as the different tribes awaited the settlement of their ancient grievances. As a statement published by the Society says, "Surely a great nation of a hundred million people can afford to do justice to the remnant of that race which once ruled our domain from shore to shore. Surely such a nation can trust the settlement of claims against itself to its own high courts." Other demands which the Society will lay before Congress and the President are the just trusteeship and distribution of tribal funds; the efficient allotment of lands; the wise utilization of mineral and water resources; adequate educational resources; and the just settlement of many specific grievances on the several reservations.

A body of five Indians has been delegated to present their petition to the President, Congress, and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in November. This Nation is a selfappointed guardian of three hundred thousand Indians in this country. Its duty is not merely to deal justly with them itself, but to protect them from the rapacity of those who covet their property, and to enable, them to become good American citizens who will need no guardian.

RETIREMENT SALARIES

FOR TEACHERS

It is proposed to establish in Michigan a system of retirement salaries for teachers, and the not inconsiderable propaganda with which the pedagogues of that State are conducting their fight calls attention to certain phases of the teacher pension problem in the United States which are of more than local interest.

We learn, for instance, that at present in the United States the laws providing retirement salaries for teachers are about as varied and irregular as the general run of State laws usually are in this country. Furthermore, in respect to legislation on this subject, we Americans have allowed ourselves to lag behind other countries, as we have in respect to laws for workmen's compensation, sickness insurance, and other parts of

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the twentieth-century programme of social justice.

The principle of salaried retirement for public school teachers is of comparatively recent introduction in the United States, but Russia has had it since 1819, Saxony since 1840, and England since 1848. Practically all the countries of Europe have it, and in the Western Hemisphere we find the principle in force in the Argentine Republic, and even in backward Mexico. At present, in this country, twelve States make provision for the retirement on pension of all their public school teachers, while fourteen have special acts providing pensions for teachers in the schools of cities with a population of more than ten thousand. New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, and San Francisco are among the large cities whose teachers are protected in this manner. In some States the pensions are paid entirely by the commonwealth, in others they are drawn in part from a fund made up by contributions from the teachers themselves.

Of the arguments usually brought forward by the advocates of retirement salaries for teachers, the following are the most frequently used and seem to have the most force:

1. The existence of a system of retirement salaries will bring to the profession of teaching able men and women who now enter other employments.

2. It will hold in the profession many persons of ability who now leave it for other fields that offer a safer future.

3. Such a system will remove the everpresent nightmare of a penniless and dependent old age, thereby encouraging a teacher t take more needed rest, spend more time in traveling, and otherwise enlarge the teacher's sphere of life, and thus increase his or her usefulness as an instructor. Those countries, like Germany, for instance, where teaching is one of the most honored professions, all have laws providing retirement salaries for the state's preceptors.

Whether funds for providing retirement salaries should be secured through taxation must be decided by other considerations in addition to the desirability of establishing such retirement salaries. In the first place, it must be decided whether the amount raised by taxes now can be made to meet this new drain upon the public treasury. Second, if present taxes are not sufficient, it must be decided whether the people are will

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ing to add any weight to their tax burden. In the third place, it must be decided whether any amount raised by such additional taxation should be spent for this purpose rather than for any other. In general, improvement in the quality and the character of the teaching should give precedence over improvement in buildings and in material; but laws already enacted establish standards in buildings and material that cannot well be abandoned. Unquestionably one of the most beneficent forms that private benevolence has taken has been in the establishing of pensions for professors and other teachers in endowed institutions. If the practice of providing for the future years of teachers can be extended throughout the public school system, either by private gift or by an insurance system or by public appropriations consistent with adequate expenditure for other purposes, the result would be of great benefit to the schools and their pupils.

GERMANY AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE

Disquieting words have been spoken very recently by eminent German officials in America. The fact that they were meant to be reassuring does not make them 'the less disquieting.

Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, formerly German Colonial Secretary, and now Germany's most conspicuous advocate in the United States, was understood recently to have made a statement to the effect that Germany had announced its recognition of the Monroe Doctrine. It may be well to recall here the words in which that Doctrine was first enunciated by President Monroe in 1828, when certain European Powers showed signs of wishing to help Spain recover her lost American colonies:

We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those Powers, to declare that we consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European Power we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or