International hol remains "the most poisonous constituent" of alcoholic liquors. 1 The research shows that most of the alcohol used is denatured, from which the poison has been abstracted. It appears in all instances cited that this has been carefully done. Only harmless traces of "denaturing" have been discovered and no wood alcohol. The average alcohol content found in pre-Volstead days was 42.19 per cent. It is now 42.40, showing that the ancient formula for making whisky is pretty closely followed. Of 123 samples examined in 1915, only thirteen were colored naturally from the charred interior of the barrel. The rest had a chemical com plexion. The present ratio is about the same. Of 78 samples tested only six "appeared to be of genuine character." Coolidge and Smith THE fraternizing of President Calvin Coolidge and Governor Alfred E. Smith, of New York, at the former's summer camp in the Adirondacks might be called the harmony of souls. Both men are much alike in simplicity of life and directness of manner. Nor are they so far apart politically as differing party membership would imply. Mr. Coolidge is a good deal of a Jeffersonian; Governor Smith, a solid believer in the people. That one is silent and the other vivacious Presidential There is no need to worry about the age and eating qualities of this pike, given by the President to Governor Smith. The Governor has publicly announced that the pike is to be stuffed and preserved as a monument to the distinguished angler who inveigled it to his hook only makes their getting together the, more normal. Two persons cannot talk comfortably to each other at the same time. What political partisans and religious bigots may think of Democrat and Republican, Puritan and Catholic, coming together is not a matter of much importance. Their amiable association is a rebuke to political and religious intolerance. Both blind partisanship and pious detestation of others' creeds seem happily on the wane in America. A Matter of Epic Importance M ORE important than the abolition of political partisanship or religious bigotry is the statement contained in a newspaper despatch from the President's camp that the President served the Governor with speckled trout that swam "only twenty-four hours before in the swirling, icy waters of the highland brooks." We sincerely trust that this statement does not report a fact, but that it is merely a newspaper story prepared by a reporter who was brought up on the cold-storage food of the metropolis. Only twenty-four hours before, forsooth! Who would call a trout that had been dead a day a truly fresh fish? There is but one way to serve trout: Catch them and then transfer them as fast as your legs and the pursuing black flies will permit you from the stream to a frying-pan. The pan should have enough bacon fat to half cover such fish as you may secure. The fat should be heated to the boiling point over a hardwood fire before the trout are put in. In such a pan the trout will curl up in appetizing crispness. They will be thoroughly cooked without being greasy. Eaten with the fingers they will provide a dish fit for a President to serve to any governor. We do hope that the trout that the President gave the Governor were not twenty-four hours old. Of course, Governor Smith (who graduated, as a young man, from the Fulton Fish Market, and thus should know what's what in the fish world), no matter what his opinion of the freshness of such trout, would probably not comment upon their age openly. But out of such a misunderstanding of the niceties of the situation there might spring a political revolt which would shake the Nation to its foundation. Let's hope the reporter was wrong. Safety First, Explosives. Second A S the inquiry into the disaster at the Lake Denmark explosion proceeds it is becoming certain that it will not suffice to find the exact causes or even to discover what was wrong. A larger question has arisen: What is wrong and remediable about the care and storage of explosives in dangerous quantities in arsenals and ammunition depots wherever they exist, and what, if any, additional precautions are needed? Senator Edwards, of New Jersey, may have been extreme in his announced intention to ask for Federal legislation to forbid ammunition plants within fifty miles of any community of five hundred or more people, but the memory of the Black Tom disaster, the Morgan explosions, in which fifty were killed, the Nixon ammonite explosion, in which twenty were killed, the Pompton Lakes disaster, in which twelve were killed, and many other casualties from explosives, have made the people of New Jersey alive to the need of constant and efficient protection. It is said that five hundred million pounds of explosives a year are transported in this country and Canada, and that the casualties are proportionately very small; that military and naval policy requires the permanent storage of large quantities of explosives; that it is impossible to keep the families of workers from living near the storage depots; and that exceeding care is used to protect from lightning as well as against other sources of danger. It is the duty of the court of inquiry to find what has not been done that might be done. The magazine that first exploded was of brick, witnesses said, and had in it 4,500 depth bombs and many other bombs and a million pounds of smokeless powder. Is that the safest form of storage? What was there combustible (other than explosives) about and between the buildings? Were they far enough apart? Were explosives above ground that would have been safer in underground magazines? The non-expert citizen knows nothing as to these matters, but he does know that the Government should search to bedrock and report what is requisite for human safety wherever large quantities of deadly explosives are kept. Congress must face firmly the question of danger to human life in the existing huge storehousing of explosives. If it is necessary to create an artificial wilderness to protect villages and towns, that. must be done. If present precautions can be improved and perfected and thereby safety be assured, better still. But human life in some sure way must be more surely safeguarded than the record of the last ten years indicates that it has been. Dictator by Request K ING ALBERT of Belgium, who led his soldiers through the darkest days of the war when German armies held all but a few square miles of their native land, has become the first royal dictator in Europe to-day. The Belgian Chamber of Deputies has conferred upon him practically unlimited powers in the hope of solving the country's financial difficulties and stopping the depreciation of the currency. But in stepping into the row of Europe's "one-man rulers" King Albert presents a contrast to Mussolini in Italy, Primo di Rivera in Spain, Pangalos in Greece, and Pilsudski in Poland. Monarch and master of his people, he is at the same time dictator by democratic request. The measure prepared by the Government of Premier Jaspar grants an "extension of power" for six months. Under its terms the King may modify or supplement all regulations on currency circulation, contract loans, take steps to reduce currency inflation and also to prevent the troubles which deflation might cause, approve any necessary reforms in the statutes of the national bank, attempt to secure the return of Belgian capital invested or deposited abroad, increase tax and tariff rates, and authorize other measures to regulate and stimulate industry and commerce and maintain supplies of necessities. Leading bankers have pledged their support to the Government under the new régime. A plan has been made to create a national telegraph and telephone company to take over these services in the same way that a private management has been designed for the state railways. Freight rates have been increased and exports of fuel and foodstuffs restricted. The Belgian move increases the area of dictatorship in Europe, and undoubt edly is a new blow to confidence in parliamentary government. Yet its effec is likely to prove constructive, because it is not a violent assertion of the will of an organized minority, but the quiet expression of national will and deter mination in a crisis. Prohibition and T last something definite has been said as to what should be done by the country at large with regard to the uncertainty and the unrest growing out of prohibition enforcement or non-enforcement. Two somethings, indeed, have been said, one by Senator William E. Borah, of Idaho, before a Protestant ministers' meeting in Augusta, Georgia, and the other by Mayor William E. Dever, of Chicago, before the Amer ican Bar Association, in session in Denver. It does not matter that one may disagree with both men; the point is that they have said something, which is in refreshing contrast to the great quantity of nothing said by the late Special Committee of the United States Senate and constantly by professional wets and proP fessional drys. Borah and Dever may be regarded as antagonistic to each other, the one a dry, the other at least a modified wet. The things they propose are, if not opposed, certainly not parallel. Borah demands that the Federal Government go more seriously than it has yet gone about the business of enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment; that it be made a major concern of the Government; that, if neither existing party will take such a positive stand, the people form a new party which will. He brands the proposed referendums as so many efforts at nullification-asserts the right of repealing the Amendment, but denies the right of vitiating it by State interpretation of what constitutes an intoxicant. Dever demands that we find out what the effects of prohibition have been and are, and then act accordingly. He as serts that the Eighteenth Amendment has accomplished both a great deal of good and a great deal of harm, but de clares a fact which no sane man can doubt that we do not know the meas 0 D d either of the good or the harm. He ld have a scientific commission, orized by Congress, ascertain the s. Then he would have constructive slation which would result in the reion of the good and the elimination he evil. He does not undertake to what that legislation should be. His stence is merely that the facts be d out and intelligently acted upon. he Borah proposal and the Dever posal agree in this, if in nothing else hat they would have things accomhed by sane, orderly, established hods. That is something new, old t is, in the discussion of prohibition lification. Ve do not agree with Senator Borah's ef that a new party may be necessary enforce the Eighteenth Amendment. do agree with his belief that the FedGovernment has not yet done all t it could do toward enforcement, and olutely with his contention that pendreferendums, particularly the New k one, aim at nullification. The Senator has been severely critid by newspapers, particularly by w York newspapers, on this point. ese newspapers evidently believe that lification, to be nullification at all, st conform in every particular to the th Carolina effort of a century ago. ey overlook the fact that to modify a deral enforcement law by State intertation in such a way that it does not Fe effect to a Constitutional provision is much nullification of that provision the Constitution as if a State should mally declare it null. Indeed, it is lification both more complete and re effective. not in fact intoxicating as determined in Such a modification-which is the And here comes in the reasonableness of Mayor Dever's proposal. We cannot intelligently modify the Eighteenth Amendment, or even the Volstead Law, until we know what their effect has been. That we do not now know must be ap parent to every man who has discussed with other men the question of whether drunkenness has diminished or increased under prohibition, whether bootleg liquor is more impure than that which formerly was sold in the saloons, whether labor and industry have benefited or suffered as a result of prohibition, or any of the numerous questions growing out of the prohibition enforcement situation. Every man thinks he knows, but no man has any real proof to offer. Mayor Dever's idea of a scientific commission may or may not contemplate the right method for finding out the facts, but we clearly are not in position to tamper with the Amendment or the law until we know the facts. Some Random HIS is being written on board a I have just spent two hours of the early morning in driving about St. Paul with my wife in the automobile of a gracious and hospitable friend. Every American who knows anything about the Northwest is aware of the peculiar and delicate relationship existing between MinneapThe prohibition nullificationists do olis and St. Paul. Although they are on t, it is true, follow the South Carolina opposite sides of the Mississippi, they ctrine-which, after all, was a someare bound together not only by bridges at orderly doctrine. They follow, but by a continuous band of charming ther-though no doubt unconsciously homes. They are known in local parhomes. They are known in local parThoreau's doctrine of the "duty of lance as the "Twin Cities.' They are vil disobedience," which, after all, is so closely united physically and geoe doctrine of the right of the individual graphically that they might be called ignore and go contrary to the Siamese twins. Physiologists and psypressed will of his government. chologists tell us that twinship has the Senator Borah is entirely sound in his mysterious quality of producing either as unrelated to the muddy stream that flows by New Orleans, a thousand or two miles below, as if they were a part of another continent. The view from Summit Avenue, across the Father of Waters to the rolling hills and precipitous banks beyond, reminds me of certain stretches of the Hudson. There must be something about St. Paul's surroundings which develops a feeling for artistic beauty. I knew that Cass Gilbert, known throughout the world as the creator of the Woolworth Building in New York City, came from St. Paul, and that one of his earliest architectural works is the Minnesota State Capitol, of which St. Paul is justly proud. But I did not know, until my hostess told me this morning, that Homer Martin, one of the most prized of our landscape painters, and Paul Manship, one of the most poetic of our sculptors, were also products of St. Paul. Man cannot live by art alone any more than he can live by bread alone, but a love of beauty is one of the greatest refreshments and stimulants for the more serious and practical work of life. EAUTY is not merely an expression of ntention that if prohibition is to be irritable antipathy or deep attachment BE t rid of the method is by orderly recal of the Eighteenth Amendment. If e Volstead Law is to be modified, it is be modified in some definite and derminate way, not by any such vague nd nullification-shielding clause as that e law "shall not prohibit the manufacre, sale, transportation, importation, nd exportation of beverages which are between the two individuals which it natural scenery or of pictorial and plastic art, but perhaps finds its most perfect form in the art of literature. Ruskin says somewhere in one of his essays that every man with eyesight has always at his command one of the most perfect forms of natural beauty, no matter how hideous and squalid may be his physical surroundings. He may look culty in getting it into my upper berth for midnight reading. The English do things better in this respect. They make books of five hundred pages, printed on feather-weight paper, that the reader can hold between his thumb and forefinger. I am an ignoramus in the technique of paper-making. Somebody, however, has told me that our manufacturers cannot make feather-weight paper because of some defect in the quality of American commentary on Jefferson and Hamilton, I can't afford to have it rebound. Last night when reading this interesting voliume I had to commit the unpardonable bibliophilic crime of tearing open some of the uncut pages with my finger because I could not scramble down and hunt in the dark for a pen-knife, or wake my wife in the lower berth and ask for the loan of a hairpin. water. That is what American brewers A used to say, in the pre-Volstead days, when they were told-what was the absolute truth-that the only lager beer fit to drink was brewed in Germany. Now I have enough confidence in American research chemists to believe that if our heavy-weight American books are due to the fact that our water is not as pure as that in England-which my patriotism will not allow me to admit for a moment -the trouble can be cured in the laboratory. And, by the way, while Mr. Phelps is striking a blow for book-making reform I wish he would attack the nuisance of uncut leaves. I understand perfectly well the genesis of this obnox ious custom. An English gentleman originally wanted to buy his books with untrimmed margins so that he could have them beautifully rebound in morocco or half calf. But I buy books to read. When I have to pay five dollars for a J ND now for a word or two about slang which I promised when I used above the expressive exclamation "Attaboy!" The New York "Herald Tribune" recently Tribune" recently quoted from article in the London "Mail" by an an Englishman, named John Blunt, protesting against the growing use in England of American slang. This purist, who is blunt by nature as well as by name, reports with horror that a witness in a recent lawsuit in one of the high courts of London made use of the words "up to him" and "proposition," whereupon the witness was quite properly reproved by the Lord Chief Justice. Mr. Blunt's comment upon this fateful event is this: If the Americans want to build up a language of their own, let them; but can't we be content with the language which has given us the greatest literature in the world and is as much a part of England as the very soil? Far be it from me to advocate the indiscriminate use of slang, but it should be remembered that the English language is ever flexible and changing. When a language becomes fixed and immutable, it becomes dead. Latin is as dead as the old Romans, but the English language is alive and the English people are a living people for the very reason that they cannot understand without a glossary the English of Chaucer. Let Mr. Blunt take heart. The English language has not been and will not be ruined by the injection of slang. His complaint is nothing new. I remember some thirty years ago to have seen in "Punch" a cartoon of Du Maurier's which treated this burning question as it ought to be treatedwith playful satire. It was a picture of a pretty American girl playing billiards with an equally pretty English girl in a country house. The English girl had just made a successful shot which she did not intend. This, as every American billiard player knows, we call a scratch. Under the picture was a caption which read something like this: American girl. Oh, what a horrid scratch! English girl. My dear, you should not use such vulgar slang. American girl. What should I say? English girl (after a moment's thought). You should say, Oh, what a beastly fluke! The Southern Slavs Correspondence by ELBERT FRANCIS BALDWIN UGOSLAVIA-southern Slavia. The Italian border passed, the familiar carabinieri, or policemen, fade away. Instead, we see even more picturesquely attired Slovene foresters, for the stony steeps of the Carso, with their scant growth marking the frontier, suddenly give place to great pine forests. We also note much more live stock than in Italy, though apparently of inferior quality. As to buildings, we see no more flat roofs; gables, instead. Jugoslavia is like Italy, however, in being linguistically homogeneous. One language goes everywhere. As a native tongue less than five per cent of the population speak German, and less than four per cent, each, Hungarian and Albanian. Journeying from the Italian border to the capital, you traverse seven provinces and follow the course of the river Save The Outlook's Editor in Europe for some sixteen hours to its confluence with the Danube at the hill on which Belgrade sits. First come Carniola and Sloveniawooded slopes, rich valleys, prosperous villages, the snow mountains in the distance. Lubiana, the chief town, has a lovely location. Then come Croatia and Slavonia. These upper reaches of the Save are very fine, yet the Orient Express, supposed to be the one good train, passes through this superb region in the night. It is not the only good train. The one we took, leaving Trieste in the late morning and arriving at Agram (Zagreb), the attractive Croatian capital, in the evening, though slightly slower, is comfortable enough and affords welcome opportunity for seeing the beautiful country. At Agram one lodges magnificently at the Esplanade or, in more lowly fashion, albeit well, at the Drei Raben. TH HE Croats are a lively folk. Vivacious and idealistic, they are just now boiling the political pot at a great rate for the steadier Serbs. The Croats may possibly be the more cultured of the two peoples; they are rather ex-republicans in politics; they are Roman Catholic in religion. On the other hand, the Serbs may be physically the more vital and vigorous; they are more experienced in administration; they are monarchists and "Orthodox" Catholics. These are differences enough. But Jugoslavia has not to face one more the variety of languages found in Switzerland. Up to the present the Serbs, the dominant race, have kept the Croats and Slovenes fairly well in check. But there are inevitable ructions now. Recently |