What is expected of the Weather Bureau is that it will warn the Forest Service and others of the coming of the east wind. Action following the warning ought to be for the Forest Service and the other guardians of woodlands. Still, the old tendency to claim credit to the limit is in the hearts of men, even of Weather Bureau men. One of them says, discussing this fire-weather-warning business, "Not long ago a good-sized blaze in the Olympic National Forest, in Washington, was put out by a drifting fog."

Probably Job knew, when he asked the famous question about the east wind, that wet wood will not burn without coaxing.

National Origins

I

T is not generally known that the United States will discontinue after

year

this the plan of restricting immigration by country of birth and will next year, and permanently thereafter, limit the annual inflow of foreigners to 150,000 flat, to be prorated upon a basis of ancestry or national origin of the inhabitants of continental United States by the

Census of 1920. This amendment was tacked on the Johnson Bill, now in operation and better known as the Two Per Centum Limit Law, by Senator David A. Reed, of Pennsylvania, and was later adopted by conference, then duly enacted and signed by the President. It is the law of the land, but does not become effective until July 1, 1927.

Little heralded and less understood, the drastic measure has simply been lying dormant as subdivision (b) of the American Immigration Act of 1924. True, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Secretary of Labor were designated jointly to make determination of immigrant quotas attributable to modern geographical areas upon this basis of the ancestral blood of the American people, but nothing has been done in the matter thus far except the appointment by these Cabinet heads of an interdepartmental committee of experts to study the origin of the modern American homo and make a list of quotas according to their findings. Even such a man as Dr. Joseph Hill, population expert of the Census Bureau, who is a conspicuous member of this committee of experts, admits that about the best that can be done will be to come

gress. Because of the official confusion that has arisen and the woeful lack of understanding of the law by the general public it may be well to quote here the Reed amendment to the Johnson Bill:

(b) The annual quota of any nationality for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1927, and for each fiscal year thereafter, shall be a number which bears the same ratio to 150,000 as the number of inhabitants in continental United States in 1920 having that national origin (ascertained as hereinafter provided in this section) bears to the number of inhabitants in continental United States in 1920, but the minimum quota of any nationality shall be 100.

The amendment then proceeds to tell how. It says that "such determination shall not be made by tracing the ancestors or descendants of particular individuals, but shall be based upon statistics of immigration and emigration, together with rates of increase of population as shown by successive decennial United States censuses, and such other data as may be found to be reliable."

Where New Americans
Come From
NATURALLY, even the experts have

found themselves up to their ears in the quicksands of dilemma. Perhaps the man who has gone farthest thus far as a pathfinder is John B. Trevor, described as a master of arts; a former captain of the military intelligence division, U. S. A.; a chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur; an expert on population and a man to whom a book of logarithms would be far more diverting and more romantic than the personal memoirs of the Countess of Cathcart. Through its "International Conciliation," the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has caused to be printed and distributed a very excellent analysis of the American Immigration Law of 1924 written by Mr. Trevor. Since this treatise has been quoted by members of Congress in debate over the proposed plan of restricting immigration by national origin, it would seem proper to rely upon Mr. Trevor's figures as the best thus far arrived at.

He says that the population of the United States as enumerated in 1920 is composed of 58,421,957 white native born of native parentage; plus an element characterized by the Census Bureau as "foreign stock"-that is, foreign born, native born of foreign parentage,

and native born of mixed parentage, one parent native and one parent foreign born, amounting to 36,398,958; and a balance of "predominately native born of Negro descent, some American Indians, and a relatively small proportion of Asiatics, amounting in all to 10,889,705." After figuring out the proportions, it is interesting and important to note that Mr. Trevor finds that under the new plan Great Britain and Northern Ireland I would have the lion's share of our national immigration under the proposed plan of permanent restriction, with a quota of 85,135. The German annual quota would drop from 50,000 to 20,028. The Irish Free State would have only 8,330 a year, losing heavily from its present quota. Scandinavian countries would suffer great losses, and southern and southeastern European countries would dwindle to quotas of the 100 minimum class, excepting Italy, which would have an allotment of 5,716, a slight increase over the Johnson Bill quota of 3,800.

It seems like going back to Plymouth Rock and Jamestown for a basis of restricting immigration to this great country, much of whose greatness has been wrought by immigrants since 1885.

A Half-Century of Legal Aid

T

HE Scope of the work of the Legal Aid Society of New York, which has just celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, is indicated by a remark in its latest annual report: "The Legal Aid Society does not compete with lawyers but co-operates with them. Except for the Legal Aid Society the legal profession has no institution such as physicians have in hospitals to serve as a clearinghouse for charity cases." It does not give doles of food or money or act as an employment agency; it gives legal aid and advice from a corps of experienced lawyers to those who cannot enforce their rights for lack of means. It requires a retaining fee, but fixes it at twenty-five cents and remits it in case of inability to pay.

The Society largely owed its inception to the energy of Arthur von Briesen. In its early days Joseph Choate, Carl Schurz, Henry Ward Beecher, and Theodore Roosevelt supported the idea and the work; to-day Elihu Root, Secretary Hughes, Chief Justice Taft, and other eminent men approve and indorse it.

How the work has grown is shown by the fact that in 1876 the Society handled 212 cases; in 1925, it had 29,502. Most

of the cases are on the civil side, but a Volunteer Defenders Committee in certain circumstances (usually when assigned by the court) defends indigent prisoners; in 1925 there were 602 cases on the criminal side.

One service of notable value rendered by the Legal Aid Society has been to reduce the extortion of disreputable installment men and to improve thereby the reputable installment business. Another has been to secure payment of wages or rightful debts where the employer or debtor relied on the poverty of the person wronged to secure immunity. Deserted wives also form a numerous class of clients.

In view of a certain sensation now in the public mind, it is interesting to note that the Society's Attorney-in-Chief, Mr. Leonard McGee, very much doubts the

wisdom of the proposal to forbid by law the marriage of a minor under sixteen. He believes that such a law would invite disrespect and disregard, and he comments: "The time has come for those among us who have vision to oppose the many attempts being made throughout our land to accomplish by inhibition that which experience has taught cannot be accomplished aside from education."

The Long Arm of Trade
TIED up at Pier 11 on the San Fran-

As to the scrap metal, Germany has discovered a new reservoir of raw material. In time the metal returns as toys, structural products, and also as finished copper and other wire. It is all good for business. Later on the finished products

Lady Elsie E. Allerdyce

made from scraps will become scraps again, and, after another trip half round the world, will return in new forms to pay for more Alameda corn and Santa Clara prunes.

Of such things is the kingdom of prosperity.

into her giant holds big consignments of the famous canned sweet corn from Alameda County, prunes from Santa Clara, boxes of dried and canned fruit from the valleys of Sacramento and San Joaquin. But this was not all. After the fruits of the earth came bale after bale of old clothes, and after the old clothes ton after ton of scrap iron, tin, wire, and brass.

It seemed a strange medley, and our correspondent stopped to discuss the matter with one of the officers of the Sachsen. The corn and the fruits were understandable enough; but the old clothes? Well, it seems that the old clothes are processed and made sanitary. The apparel in good condition is sold in Germany for use, the balance, after a time, comes back as rags, to be bought

"Nonia"

sand outports of Newfoundland and Labrador have been amply stressed by the books, lectures, and appeals of Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell, who has raised and expended large sums in relief work during thirty-five years he has given to his medical-missionary service. Public response in England, and especially in the United States, has been liberal, reaching, it is said, a grand total of $5,000,000.

Newfoundland itself has now taken up the work in practical form, under the initiative and leadership of Lady Elsie E. Allerdyce, wife of Sir William L. Allerdyce, Colonial Governor of the island.

Poverty is not the worst of the evils the people in the outport hamlets have to endure. Their wants are few, their lives simple. But for the most part the main occupation is fishing. This is sea

months of the year. A poor catch is, of course, a creator of misfortune when no other occupations are available for the rest of the time. The lumbering operations of the two great paper companies at Grand Falls and Corner Brook now give winter work to some five thousand men, and the early development of the Reid properties at Gander River for paper and artificial silk making promise further opportunities. But at the best there is much idleness, especially among women and girls. Many of the latter leave for the States, where they become admirable trained nurses. Largely of Scotch ancestry, they possess a stability of character that fits them for this important and exacting occupation.

It is to the women and girls that Lady Allerdyce has devoted her plans, which took shape in June, 1924, in the form of

an association, of which the initials of its objects have been made to. form the name "Nonia." It was devised just as a cable address, and grew to be both a trade-mark and an appellation. The Reid Newfoundland Company gave the society room in its building. From this point industrial centers are operated over the outport areas, distributing supplies and bringing home-made manufactures to market. Mr. T. V. Hartnett, an American, head of the Imperial Tobacco Company, took over the administration of the finances. Local staff members have built up what is already a promising and prosperous organization. The industrial factors are knitting work and rug making, much of which has to be taught through printed patterns and directions. The women and girls have responded nobly. December sales before Christmas in 1925 amounted to $1,800-no great sum, but $1,800 more than the workers ever had for themselves before. The receipts for the past year from sales were $7,621, but there was a further return in payments to the nurses sent to outports, and a liberal support from friends, so that altogether in the first year $20,000 was kept in motion. The knitters earned $5,301. Small as this seems, it went far and did a world of good.

Samples of the work sent to Boston, where 45,000 Newfoundlanders form a valued part of the population, met with much favor, and there are signs that a wide and successful market is being created. "Nonia" is becoming known as a trade-mark.

It may be noted that in the last year

the women and girls of Porto Rico sold $5,000,000 worth of embroideries and drawn-work in the United States, and those of the Philippines $6,000,000.

Hawaii's Perpetual

Advertisement

HAWAII's AWAII's two spectacular volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa, are almost as continuous in their performances as the electric signs on Broadway, and much less expensive. Kilauea, which is always more or less active, achieved its last big feat of publicity in May, 1924, when a series of tremendous explosions sent up clouds of dust and rocks to a height of 30,000 feet. Less than two years later, on April 18, 1926, the neighboring crater took up the task of keeping the Hawaii National Park on the tourist map of the world. This recent exploit consisted of a big lava flow, such as occurs from Mauna Loa, on an average, every five or six years. The fiery streams pouring down the mountainside to the sea are said to have presented the finest spectacle that the world's largest active volcano has afforded since it has been under the observation of white men.

A volcano subject to violent outbreaks,

however much it may conduce to notoriety, is not, as a rule, an asset to the region where it is located. Volcanic eruptions rank among the afflictions of humanity. Since the year 1500 A.D. 98 eruptions of 57 volcanoes have destroyed about 190,000 people and property of colossal value. Eruptions of the Hawaiian volcanoes have been singularly free from casualties. In the Kilauean explosion of May 18, 1924, one spectator was mortally injured by falling rocks while taking photographs on the rim of the crater, the only case in which anybody has been killed or badly hurt at this volcano since the year 1789. The recent lava flow from Mauna Loa wiped out a small village, but took no lives, and the previous eruptions of the same crater have been equally devoid of untoward consequences. Though it would be rash to predict that the two volcanoes will always maintain their present reputation for "tameness," their record up to date is extremely reassuring.

Meanwhile, besides advertising the otherwise fascinating isles in which they otherwise fascinating isles in which they are situated, the Hawaiian craters furnish science with unique facilities for studying volcanological phenomena at

close range. The observatory on Kilauea, which its indefatigable director, Dr. Jaggar, has made, in proportion to its size and resources, one of the most productive scientific institutions in the world, ought to be supplemented by a similar establishment on Mauna Loa. At present this loftier and less accessible volcano is under only intermittent observation. millionaire with a taste for encouraging science might do worse than invest his surplus shekels in a volcanological observatory on Mauna Loa, to be maintained as a branch of the one that has been in successful operation for the past fourteen years on the neighboring vol

cano.

Germany, Russia, and the League

A

LARMISTS have been warning Eu

rope that the treaty just negotiated between Germany and Russia was intended to draw the German Republic into a military alliance with the Soviet Union against the Allies of western Europe. The text of the treaty, as signed in Berlin, removes these fears. It is, first of all, a neutrality accord strengthening the German-Russian treaty of Rapallo and re-emphasizing their economic understanding.

Russia is a natural market for German production, without which the working of the reparations program might well become impracticable. This is a fact to be read in the history of two centuries of German commercial and industrial activity in Russia.

The new treaty, which is to be registered with the League of Nations, obviously is not designed to interfere with Germany's entry into the association of Geneva. It simply specifies that "should one of the contracting parties, despite its peaceful demeanor, be attacked by a third Power or several other Powers, the other contracting party shall preserve neutrality throughout the entire duration of the conflict." A similar provision applies to economic boycotts.

Germany is left free to co-operate with other nations against Russia if the Soviet Government should be found guilty of an aggressive war upon another state. Germany simply reserves the right that other League Council members have, to make such action subject to her own agreement and consent.

Great Britain has welcomed the new German-Russian understanding. If the

other Allies take the same sensible attitude, the new treaty should be a further guaranty of order in Europe.

The New Shah

HE coronation of Reza Khan as

THE

to be achieved. There surely should be little difficulty in raising the money. A fractional contribution from every lover of Shakespeare in the English-speaking world would do it.

J

OSEPH PENNELL, who died in Brooklyn on April 23, was not old as years These numbered but sixty-five. Yet few Americans have measured more in

Shah of Persia in Teheran on April Joseph Pennell 25 was, by all accounts, one of the most gorgeous spectacles of modern times. Like Bonaparte, Reza put his ceremonial and ancient crown on his own head, but he received homage of lesser crowns and jeweled regalia from the nobles gathered around the peacock throne.

When the "Boy Shah" was formally deposed about six months ago, after he had become a member of the kings-inexile colony in Paris, observers pointed out that, although there were already in existence a Constitution and a National Assembly, they were a mere pretense. Reza will undoubtedly be a dictator, but his history shows ability and shrewdness.

When he formed a Republic (on pa-. per) after the revolution of 1923, it was as the quickest way of getting rid of the Kajar dynasty, which, after all, dates back only a century and a half.

Reza is called an "ex-stable boy," but in fact he is of aristocratic family. He served for a time as a cadet in the cavalry and took care of his own horse in accordance with a Persian custom. He is described as a man of culture and taste and has had some diplomatic experience.

What is sought by the Persians is not democracy but public order, honest rulers, material improvements, and a reasonable share by the people in the affairs of the country. An English correspondent who knows Persia well says that "Reza Khan is enough democracy for Persia."

The Shakespeare Theater

HE recent destruction of the Shake

TH

speare Theater at Stratford-onAvon, in England, by fire, has led to an international movement to rebuild and endow the playhouse at Shakespeare's birthplace. Supplementing the English effort, an American committee has been formed, with Percy S. Bullen, 66 Broadway, New York, American correspondent of the London "Telegraph," as Secretary. The Committee will collect funds toward a construction cost of $500,000 and an endowment fund of $750,000.

With such a sum, the dual object of providing a fitting memorial and giving

go.

accomplishment. Together with his wife, Elizabeth Robbins Pennell, a niece of

Charles Godfrey Leland, he has to his credit a memorable biography of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, while on his own account his output as an etcher and illustrator was remarkable in quantity and merit. Traveling extensively and

International

stories, and she argued with intellectual aridity rather than emotional appeal, whereas when Selma Lagerlöf was asked by her Government to write a series of popular text-books they turned out to be also delightful fairy-tales.

Miss Key wrote and lectured on child training, on woman's rights, and on marriage reform, and was an early leader of the so-called feminist movement. She was "advanced," yet her doctrine was that for women motherhood came before public work and that freedom of divorce was the way to prevent loveless marriages. It is said that her pro-German attitude in war time was not because of special admiration for Germany, but from a belief in peace at any price. In a brief notice of her book "War, Peace, and the Future," published during the war, The Outlook's reviewer, after describing it as a plea for peace, added dryly, "We do not, however, find in the book any plea for justice, liberty, or human rights."

Miss Key has left as a guest-house for workingwomen who show aptitude for culture and love of beauty her home on Lake Vettern, built on land owned by the Swedish Government and filled with pictures, books, and art objects.

Who's a Liberal?

T

WO subscribers recently stopped their subscriptions to The Outlook. One wrote:

I am a political radical, and I subscribed to The Outlook because I felt that I needed a check upon my theories. I find The Outlook so liberal, however, that it is no longer of any value to me.

The second subscriber wrote:

How The Outlook has changed! It is no longer the Liberal journal that it once was, but has become a hard and fast conservative. I have reluctantly decided to discontinue my subscription.

It begins to look as though the adjectives "liberal" and "conservative" were rather elastic terms. If they have any value at all at the present time, it is as convenient epithets for the use of those who do not take much trouble to think. You're a liberal! You're a conservative! have almost come to have the same meaning as "So's your old man!"

When some one proudly says, "I am a conservative," he does not mean that he wishes to conserve things as they are. He

the same limbo which the conservative has selected for those who oppose his

views.

As a matter of fact, the words "liberal" and "conservative" ought not to be taken as opposite terms. A man who is liberal can be thoroughly conservative, and a man who is conservative can be thoroughly liberal.

Of the two terms the word "liberal" has probably departed furthest from its original significance. The meaning of the word in its truest sense is well illustrated by a passage from Lowell's "Among My Books." He wrote:

The study of them [the classics] is fitly called a liberal education, because it emancipates the mind from every narrow provincialism, whether of egoism or tradition, and is the apprenticeship that every one must serve before becoming a free brother of the guild which passes the torch of life from age to age.

Even those who believe that true liberalism can be achieved by other things than the study of the classics might well accept Lowell's use of the word "liberal." Liberalism is not a dogma: it is, or should be, an attitude of mind.

Uncle Sam and His Debtors

A

CARTOON in a recent number of the London "Punch" depicts Uncle Sam as a paunchy, prosperous gentleman lecturing an assembly of pinched and poverty-stricken nations of Europe, and asking them if they have learned nothing from the war. The reply is, "We have learned what we owe you."

Clever and cutting, it is characteristic of the regrettable bitter spirit that has arisen over the settlement of the war debts between former allies who should be the best of friends. Blame lies on both sides. Mean-tempered things have been said and answered in the same way. There was the picture of America, bloated with wealth yet squeezing more vast amounts from war-stricken Europe, drawn by Winston Churchill, Chancellor of the British Exchequer, in a debate in the House of Commons. It was followed by. the London "Morning Post's" caustic comment on "this policy of almost skinning Europe." Senator Borah, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, in ill-advised retaliation, accused Mr. Churchill of aiming at complete cancellation of the debts. Senator Reed, of Missouri, in his irresponsible speeches opposing the Belgian and Italian agreements, has declared that the United States is more popular now in Germany than with the Allies.

Former Premier Poincaré, in a recent public address in France, has drawn a just and appealing picture of the difficulties of his country, facing the debt demands of both Great Britain and the United States, and of her need for reparations first for the damage done by German armies. But he has failed to grasp or express the fact that America is contending for the principle of recognition of obligations, on which all credit must be based.

Uncle Sam, as a result of all this, is being drawn by European caricaturists as "Uncle Shylock." Such unfair and unjustified' attacks strike at the basis of all good and helpful relations.

The treatment accorded to Belgium, France, and Italy has shown that the people of the United States, as represented by their Government, are not inclined to press hard terms upon their friends. Since the war we have waited to come to an an understanding with France, while she paid a slight amount of interest in comparison with her huge