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mas recess of Congress to party politics rather than to pending legislation. The President, according to report, busied himself with the working out of longrange plans for holding the Republican majority in future elections, and it was this of which Mr. Lawrence wrote.

Meanwhile, the Democrats, recovered somewhat from the daze of the November blow, began a work of analyzing results. Senator Swanson tabulated the figures anew and found Democratic hope for the future. Thirteen States, he concluded, whose electoral votes will be cast for Coolidge did not give a popular Republican majority, and in a number of others the mandate, even for "restrained conservatism," was so narrow as to be almost negligible.

But out of the Democratic cogitation came a clash. The gavel had not long fallen in the Senate before Harrison, of Mississippi, and Bruce, of Maryland, were, with some heat, accusing each other of responsibility for crushing defeat. But for reactionaries of the Bruce type, said Harrison, Davis would not have been slaughtered. But for radicals of the Harrison type, said Bruce, thousands of Democrats would not have gone over to Coolidge.

Possibly both contentions are right. If either wing of the Democracy had been other than it was, the flight of the fowl would have been different. Neither Senator proves anything against the other, but between them they prove that Democrats must delve much deeper than into columns of election figures to explain away their troubles.

In this issue of The Outlook Mr. Milton presents the case for one wing of the party a wing that believes its defeat in the Convention had much to do with the party's defeat at the polls.

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Not by Jingo

ALL it Chauvinism, and, like everything else French, it sounds interesting and somewhat venturesome; call it Jingoism, and it is just vulgar.

Recently both in Japan and in this country it seems to have broken out like a disease. Fortunately, in neither country is it, or is it likely to be, epidemic. Certainly it is not going to spread here. Mr. Britten's proposal in the House of Representatives for the calling of a conference of white peoples whose territories border on the Pacific was treated

with that mixture of indignation and ridicule which is one of the best disinfectants for this particular form of contagion. It is plain that America can take care of her own jingoes, and we believe that Japan can take care of hers.

It is not easy for two peoples differing so widely in tradition and education as the Americans and the Japanese to understand each other. The Japanese live in a land which has been theirs from time immemorial. They have had no wilderness to subdue, no vast spaces to fill. They are part of their land and their land is part of them. Every foot of it speaks to them of their ancestors, and of their heritage of the past. Every individual in Japan is a thread in a tightly woven fabric. Americans, on the other hand, live in the future, because that is the habit they have formed during generations while they have been bringing the material resources of a continent into subjection. To them the past is only something to start from, and sometimes hardly even that. And individual Americans are almost as free to move about in their environment as are particles of air. To an American what is done is done, and might as well be forgotten, for there is something just ahead yet to do. Not so the Japanese. Everything that is done becomes in turn a part of the past in which they live, and to which everything that is yet to be done must be referred.

That is why the Japanese have found it so difficult to understand the cavalier manner with which Congress passed the provision excluding in fact, though not by name, all Japanese as immigrants; and that is why Americans, even those who admit that the action of Congress was a mistake, have found it hard to understand the reason for Japanese sensitiveness on the subject.

Fortunately, both Secretary Hughes and Prime Minister Kato have given public expression to the fundamentally cordial relations existing between the two countries. Both have stated definitely that there is no question affecting the relations of the two countries which is not capable of an amicable settlement.

It is doubtful whether we Americans have tried to understand the Japanese as much as the Japanese have tried to understand us. That may be because circumstances made it necessary for the Japanese to study the habits and ways of thinking of the West, while we have been busy with our own affairs. That is

why we welcome the presence in this country of such a man as Mr. Yusuke Tsurumi. Since his appearance at the Institute of Politics at Williamstown, Massachusetts, last summer he has been addressing American audiences, many of them in the colleges of the East, as an interpreter of Japanese life and thought. Many of his audiences have found him a thoughtful interpreter of American life and thought as well. We wish there might be many such thoughtful and understanding envoys from each country to the other. If there were, there would be no loss of patriotism either in America or in Japan, but there would be good riddance to what masquerades as patriotism in the habiliments of the swashbuckler. There is no virtue in freedom or in selfcontempt; but the nation that is really strong and respects itself scorns bluster.

Roses and Sky-Scrapers

TH

HAT we have a better kind of humor than any other nation, and that we are quicker to appreciate all true humor than anybody else (especially Englishmen), are prime articles of faith with Americans. A man seeking high office in this country would be ill-advised to utter the least doubt of the theory. Certainly we cling-subconsciously, perhaps to the notion that "an Englishman can't see a joke," and do this in the face of acquaintance with the long line of English humorists from Chaucer through Dickens to Leacock. One method of proving our contention used to be to cite "Punch"-could any one see anything funny in that paper? Latterly some of us have had suspicions. Perhaps "Punch" is just as funny for a British publication as "Life" is for an American one; indeed, it is rumored that there are impartial observers from neutral nations who say that it is even funnier. And so far have we strayed from old-fashioned militant patriotism—it is suggested that there are some Americans who openly and shamelessly prefer "the London Charivari," as it still calls itself in its sub-title.

The existence of large numbers of utterly humorless Americans is a solemn and depressing fact, without regard to any question of our National eminence as humorists. Sometimes it is not humor in its narrow sense- -the ability to "see a joke"--which we lack, so much as humor in its broader aspects: imagination, and a due sense of proportion. A man may

have a taste for funny yarns, he may even recite limericks in public, but be quite unable to see himself in his true relations to the universe. Or he may have no patience at all with jokes and anecdotes, and yet have a keen and useful imagination. The Americans-they are a minority-who denounce France as "militaristic" because she wishes to protect herself from future ravages by a dangerous neighbor lack precisely this kind of humor. They fail to possess the imagination which enables them to ask: How would we act in their place? Would we be smug, content, supine?

The illustrated supplements to our Sunday newspapers often furnish dismal proof of blind spots in our National imagination. Perhaps some of the persons depicted there do these ridiculous things at the bidding of photographers, desperate for a picture. But it requires a genius for absurdity to invent some of their cantrips. The long list of "Days" to remember this or that relative; the National Spaghetti Weeks, when we are adjured to "concentrate" on spaghetti or apricots, to assist the dealers in those foods; the "coronation" of some lady as Queen of the Spaghetti Carnival; the Beauty Shows to advertise cosmetics; the processions of Kleagles and Cyclopses in sheets and pillow-cases-all these events warn us to be careful how we boast too much of our National sense of humor.

Artemus Ward said that the great merit of George Washington was that he did not "slop over;" too many of our public men, said Artemus, failed to guard against that danger. Perhaps the tendency is with us to-day; we light upon a good idea, and then work it too hard. The moment of silence on Armistice Day is a noble and suitable tribute; but already there are attempts to adopt it for all kinds of other purposes. Our custom of placing flowers upon the graves of soldiers on Memorial Day has always been one of our most dignified and touching observances. It has been extended in recent years by throwing flowers upon the surfaces of rivers and harbors in honor of sailors who have perished at sea. This, if done with propriety, may also be a beautiful ceremony. But one of the Sunday papers recently showed a picture of a group of fairly personable young women about to throw roses out of the window of a Chicago sky-scraper, "in memory of Père Marquette and Louis Joliet." Without

raising the question (although the picture raised it) whether any of these young ladies had more than a vague idea who these pioneers were, and without wondering where the roses thus cast to the winds finally landed, is it not time to consider the ridiculousness of such a ceremony? Will not some one presently be eating a snowball in public in honor of Admiral Peary, or climbing to the top of a flagpole and blowing a soap-bubble in memory of the inventors of the airplane?

The Reds and Religion

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E shall pursue our attacks on Almighty God, in due time and in an appropriate manner. These words are attributed to Zinoviev by an Associated Press despatch from Moscow. He was speaking for the Third International, of which he is the head, but what he says in that capacity defines also the policy of the Soviet Government, now ruled by a triumvirate of which Zinoviev is the most conspicuous member.

The blasphemous words quoted were intended by Zinoviev as a concession. "For the moment," he says, "we cannot permit ourselves such a luxury as a vigorous and inflexible religious campaign." So he recommends that what he calls the "campaign against God" should for the present be carried on in a pedagogic fashion, and he even speaks with disapproval of the fact that groups of Boy Scouts have imprisoned whole congregations at worship in church.

If any one still believes that the socalled "Living Church" is a true church and not a mockery of religion, he should find food for thought in Zinoviev's words. Almost simultaneously with the publication of the despatch quoted, Captain McCullagh, who in his despatches a year ago told in the New York "Herald Tribune" the history of the persecution of Greek and Roman Catholic priests by the Reds, states in one of a series of illuminating articles on Russia that one of the principal theological writers of the Bolshevik press is that unfrocked priest, Galkin, the brutal and unjust judge who condemned Archbishop Zepliak and Monsignor Budkiewics to death and had a foremost part in the persecution which a Russian writer asserted included the killing of twenty-eight bishops and twelve hundred priests. From the same source we are told that even now Bolshevist news

papers in almost every issue tell of some church in Russia that has been turned into a Communist club or pulled down. Yet Captain McCullagh, who perhaps knows this subject better than any other English or American writer, thoroughly believes that the anti-religious movement is not from the people but imposed by the small governing clique.

To read such reports as this makes one recall that period of the French Revolution when the execution of priests and the harrying of the Church led Danton and Robespierre to attempt to satisfy the human desire for some form of devotion by establishing the Worship of Reason, but later substituted for that a kind of Worship of the Supreme Being, I while the observance of Sunday and saints' days was still made a criminal offense.

Zinoviev's denunciation of religion confirms an opinion expressed by Justice Ford the other day in the New York State Supreme Court. He had refused to grant the petition put forward by the representatives in America of the "Living Church" of Russia to oust Metropolitan Platon from St. Nicholas's Russian Cathedral in New York City. This ends the contest that has been going on for a year between the two elements in the Russian Church in this country. There are at least one hundred and fifty Russian congregations; a very large majority of these believe in the old Russian Church and resent the attempt of the Reds in Russia to govern the American Russian Church. In rejecting the Reds' demand (for that is what it really amounts to) Justice Ford, apart from the strictly legal points involved, declared of the "Living Church" that it "makes it obligatory upon all its members under pain of mortal sin to make the purposes of the Russian dictatorship their own. Those purposes are well known. They are no less than the subversion of this and all other governments on earth by bloody revolution." He added: "To that end is its world-wide propaganda maintained, all the more dangerous when insidiously carried on in the guise of religious doctrines by agents garbed in the reverential vestments of a great church."

The Russian Church in America should be ruled by Russians in America. If this is ecclesiastically impossible, its authorities should declare an ecclesiastical moratorium so long as persecutors of all religion rule the official church in Russia.

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What 1924 did for Europe: A Tabloid View

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By ELBERT FRANCIS BALDWIN
The Outlook's Editorial Correspondent in Europe

OW is Europe different from what it was a year ago? There has been a change in the continent's face. On January 1, 1924, we recognized certain events, movements, tendencies, as more or less epoch-making. Have they remained so and deepened the lines already traced? Or have these been in some degree obliterated by new events, new movements, new tendencies?

When we speak of Europe, we think generally of its greater countries of Russia, Germany, Italy, France, England. Before the events of 1917-18 all of these used to be known as the Great Powers.

Russia

port, Moscow started a bloody attack, destined to capture the whole country.

The close of the year also sees general Bolshevist propaganda more active than at the beginning; first, in countries like Bessarabia, Bulgaria, and Jugoslavia, where some sympathy can be elicited from minority populations; and, second, in a great center like Paris, where Moscow has established local "cellules," charged to watch factories, arms magazines, benzine depots, and auto garages.

Yet the break-up of Bolshevism itself may be in sight. Two, at least, of its leaders are now at odds.

Meanwhile the country continues to

starve.

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Rykov, head of Soviet Russian Government

1924, Russia is different in external rather than in internal power. Its Bolshevist Government is in a better strategic position; for world morality is such that this Government has now been recognized by no less than twenty-two states, including the Great Powers. And, what is more, if even the biggest of them, the British Empire, dares step back from the forward limit reached by the late Labor-Socialist Cabinet at London, the upstart Soviet Government feels itself quite strong enough to give the old lady a rap over the knuckles. As long as a Labor-Socialist administration existed the Bolshevist Government cherished the hope of amicable understanding with England; so in stirring up trouble in contiguous countries it chose especially Poland and Rumania, more or less dependent on France. But when, in England, the new Conservative Cabinet rejected the preceding Socialist administration's treaty with the Soviets, Moscow -turned attention to those other contiguous countries, the Baltic States, as belonging more exclusively to the British sphere, and, naturally, turned to the most vulnerable of them, namely, Estonia. At Reval then, the Estonian chief

Germany

YEAR ago Germany was using as money dirty, greasy bits of paper marked hundreds, thousands, millions, and billions of marks. Now Ger

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"Fünf pro cent Aluminium,
Fünf pro cent Stahl,

Neunzig pro cent Volksdiebstahl."

Any investigator traveling at this time in Germany finds the cost of living to be far higher than a year ago. But as to other things he is more pleasantly impressed than he was then.

Along the lower Rhine, bordered by the Belgian, English, and French zones of occupation, he sees a new spirit, due to the Dawes Plan. Along the upper Rhine there is also a new spirit of republican strength. This is in contrast with what you will note in eastern Germany, where the great agriculturists, the Junkers, are almost exclusively monarchists. There the Junkers control most of the laborers, shopkeepers, journalists, and even the Government functionaries. As a whole, however, throughout Germany there is more vigor in the repub

lican atmosphere than I observed a year ago. For proof, look at the December elections, where extremes, both Communist and reactionary, suffered. The seed sown five years ago in stony soil by republicans like Rathenau and Wirth is bearing fruit. True, the fruit is not as large and juicy as it ought to be first, because of powerful monarchist currents, and, second, because opinion is split up into too many parties. A particular province may have a dozen or so, but for all Germany the total number of parties, little and big, at the December election was no less than fifty.

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Keystone

Premier Mussolini, of Italy

This may

seem strange. Mus

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solini, the Fascist

leader, now Pre

mier, is a man of great ability, amazing energy, and genuine desire to serve his country. At home he has largely restored to normal both the nation's economic situation and its condition of public order. The first is shown in the smaller number, not only of strikes, but also of the participants in strikes and of working days lost. The second is shown in the smaller number of illegal acts perpetrated by the Fascists. Meanwhile administrative efficiency has admittedly increased tenfold. Looking beyond the former Italian frontier, we cannot but be impressed by the occupation of Fiume, by the Corfu affair, by the treaties with Jugoslavia and Switzerland, and by the Premier's approval of Germany's proposed entry into the League of Nations, because "the greater the number of its members, the greater the peace guaranties."

Why, then, any decline in Fascist fortunes? Because

1. Fascism has brought no decrease in the cost of living, as was expected; on the contrary, the cost has advanced;

2. It has, in particular, not brought the "good fruits" promised as a result of recognizing the Bolshevist Government;

3. It has not brought the anticipated appreciation in Italian currency exchange;

4. It has persisted in its decree laws, despite Mussolini's assurance last May that the practice of issuing them would be discontinued;

5. It has repressed public liberties-as when a Fascist squadron recently fell upon a procession;

6. It has outrageously suppressed the press;

7. It has obtained a queer legal sanction to its usurpation of power by the new electoral law;

8. It has formed a purely Fascist militia exceeding the proposed army strength.

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Keystone Premier Herriot, of France

why the recent $100,000,000 borrowing from America was covered in of

three-quarters an hour in New York and went to a premium. That is why the preceding short-term internal loan was also a success. The Poincaré Government's efforts during the first part of the year to balance the Budget by means of taxation and the Herriot Government's efforts since to balance it by more borrowings may be successful. But there is no assurance of permanent balancing by the latter method. Such balancing is merely shirking the question.

Many other conditions continue satisfactory. There is practically no unemployment. Most of the devastated districts have been restored. Trade flourishes. Frontier security seems somewhat more assured, and the length of military service is soon to be reduced from eighteen months to one year. There has been, however, an increase in living costs. Bread and flour prices have advanced, despite the Government's announcement of its intention to reduce taxation on primary articles of food. Nevertheless the cost of living in France is still less than that in Switzerland and

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Premier Baldwin, of Britain

January 1, 1925, England will still be celebrating the recent return to power of a Conservative Government.

As the year progressed, the LaborSocialists failed to grapple successfully with the problem of the unemployed. Nearly the same was true as regards the allied problems of housing and slum riddance. The Laborites have now been succeeded by the Conservatives and by a constructive programme of developing new building methods, giving more work, and producing houses.

The prospect is also more assured in another economic direction. The LaborSocialist Party was pledged to a policy of nationalizing industries. Englishmen remembered its declaration a year ago that "the supplies of food and other necessaries of life, of water, coal, lighting, and transport, shall be acquired by the state, to be administered nationally or municipally." Englishmen have now been delivered from this impending nightmare.

With regard to questions of agriculture and land, the feeling is also now optimistic instead of pessimistic, as it was when 1924 began. The change is due, first, to the rise in grain prices, and, second, to the announcement that proposed measures will aim at securing an addition of a million acres to the area of arable land. The next economic cause for satisfaction is that at the year's close the dollar value of sterling touches the highest point registered in a long time.

As to foreign affairs, England is also

breathing more freely. The Russian and Egyptian issues show the present Cabinet's course in maintaining British rights abroad with dignity, and the going for the first time of a British Foreign Minister to a League of Nations meeting shows the Cabinet's desire henceforth to be represented in that body by the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs with his proportionate influence.

Twelve months ago Stanley Baldwin, the Conservative Premier, threw away a large Government majority because of an extreme, conscientious personal opinion. This resulted in Liberal action, putting the first Labor Government into office. That Government's record, however, has resulted in returning Mr. Baldwin to power with a huge and homogeneous majority. This is perhaps the year's most striking episode.

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Summary

A CENTURY hence, when those mature

persons, our great-great-grandchildren, talk about our present epoch, they may point to the year of 1924 and say: "That was the year, you know, of the Dawes Plan, later applied to Chinathenceforward the influence of America was predominant in the world;"

Or, "In 1924 that grotesque growth they called Bolshevism had its widest sway;"

Or, "Strange, wasn't it? Really representative government, as we understand it, so declined that only a roughand-ready knight like Mussolini could shake Italy into shape."

Or, "In studying English history the other day I came upon a curious parallel.

Twice a political leader became Prime Minister for the second time within a twelvemonth. The first was the third Marquis of Salisbury; the second, Stanley Baldwin-as he was then. Lord Salisbury's first term was seven months and Mr. Baldwin's about the same. But there is a double parallel, because Salisbury's second term was six years and Baldwin's about the same."

Or, "1924 that was the year, they say, when men began to comprehend the horror of war as never before; you remember reading about the efforts of the League of Nations and the concrete result finally attained after the whole world had had its say."

Or, "That was also the year when the world really recovered enough from the Great War to take a definite upward turn, both economic and spiritual. Well, the world has felt the good effect ever since."

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This historic church, a fine example of Early Gothic, contains the tomb of Charles the Bold and of his
daughter Mary of Burgundy; and among its many marble statues is a group by Michelangelo

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