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At the closing session of the National Council, held on May 1, Walter W. Head, of Omaha, Nebraska, was elected President of the Boy Scouts of America to succeed Milton A. McRae, of Detroit. Mr. McRae filled the unexpired term of James J. Storrow, whose untimely death robbed the Boy Scouts of the fine leader elected to the presidency a year ago. The Vice-Presidents elected are Mortimer L. Schiff, of Oyster Bay; Milton A. McRae, of Detroit; Charles C. Moore, of San Francisco; Bolton Smith, of Memphis; and John Sherman Hoyt, of New York City. The list of honorary officers is headed by President Coolidge as Honorary President. The Honorary Vice-Presidents are Chief Justice Taft, Colin H. Livingston, William G. McAdoo, and Daniel Carter Beard.

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Daniel Carter Beard

National Scout Commissioner, and the hero of thousands of boys all over the world

ing that the many dramatic and spectac-
ular features of scouting are but a means
to an end, and that the real purpose of
the movement is citizenship training and
character building.

"My earnest hope is that the funda-
mentals of scouting will become generally
recognized as one result of this year's
meeting of the National Council. My
other strong hope is that the thinking
men of America will not only applaud
scouting, but will give it personal service,
so that our enrollment may include a
larger percentage of the boys within the
age limits."

Chief Scout Executive James E. West has frequently stated that he believed an additional million boys between the ages of twelve to seventeen could be enrolled if the leadership were available. Discussions among the delegates indicate that this problem of securing qualified leaders will be met by vigorous action on the part of the local councils.

Plans to reach rural boys through the extension of area councils and the further development of the Lone Scout idea were developed during the year, and a decision was reached to develop a program for boys between the ages of eight and twelve.

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Sir Robert S. S. Baden-Powell Founder of the British Boy Scout Association and "Chief Scout of the World"

achievement, editorial writing, fiction, poetry, history, acted plays and the published drama, music, and art. The other is that in all or most of these fields the conditions of award lay stress on public benefit and influence as well as on technique.

The awards just made are for things published or accomplished in the year 1925. As a whole they do not make as brilliant a record as that of the two years preceding, but they do include much that is meritorious.

The list of awards is too long to be

receives posthumous recognition as the best poem of the year. In biography Harvey Cushing's Life of Osler and in history the sixth volume of Edward Channing's "History of the United States" are the prize winners. The award for the best American play goes to "Craig's Wife," by George Kelly, a decision confirmed by play-goers and critics. These prizes were $1,000 each except that in history, which is $2,000.

Medals of Honor

repeated here in full. Those in which THE week has been prolific in an

the largest popular interest centers are as follows:

To the "Enquirer-Sun," of Columbus, Georgia, of which Julian Harris, son of Joel Chandler Harris, is editor, is awarded the $500 gold medal for disinterested and meritorious public service. This service was that rendered by the "EnquirerSun" in its "brave and energetic fight against the Ku Klux Klan; against the enactment of a law barring the teaching of evolution; against dishonest and incompetent public officials; and for justice to the Negro and against lynching."

The prize of $500 for the best editorial of the year under the test of "clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning, and power to influence public opinion in the right direction" was awarded to an editorial written for the New York "Times" by Edward M. Kingsbury under the title "The House of a Hundred Sorrows," on which the "World" comments that it "brought freshness into an appeal for charity, usually a humdrum task."

The best piece of reportorial work was adjudged to be that by William B. Miller, of the Louisville "Courier-Journal," in connection with the attempt to rescue Floyd Collins in the Sand Cave disaster. The award is for $1,000. Mr. D. R. Fitzpatrick, of the St. Louis "Post Dispatch," received the prize of $500 for the best cartoon of the year, called "The Laws of Moses and the Law of To-Day." Turning from journalism to literature, we first note that Sinclair Lewis's "Arrowsmith" is chosen as the best novel of

the year. Its ability certainly is unques tioned, but not every one will agree that it precisely conforms with the test of presenting "the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood." Miss Amy Lowell's "What's O'Clock?"

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nouncement of awards in recognition of ability and service rendered. The Roosevelt Memorial Association gives each year medals to persons selected as worthy in three out of ten fields of endeavor and honor.

Thus this year Admiral Sims is so honored for his services in National de

fense, Senator Beveridge as having made by his fine Life of John Marshall "an

eminent contribution to literature," Daniel Beard because of his long-continued activity in "the leadership of youth and the development of American character." Assuredly these three contributions to American citizenship are consonant with Theodore Roosevelt's character and patriotic aspiration.

A recognition of American women's achievement in art and literature is seen

in the choice, as recipients of medals

named in honor of William D. Howells and bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of Cecilia Beaux as a foremost American woman painter, and of Mary Wilkins Freeman as holding a high place among American women storywriters.

Courage and heroism deserve and receive recognition. The Carnegie Hero Fund, which has been in existence for twenty-two years, lately awarded twenty medals, five of which were to persons who had sacrificed life to save life; all five were for heroic but vain efforts to rescue the drowning.

The Passing of the
Old Academy

THE destruction of the New York

Academy of Music, built in 1854 and rebuilt in 1866 as a temple of opera, means little to the younger generation. But to their elders, of whom not a few survive, it will have painful interest. With hardly a quarter of its present

population, New York, in the dead 60's, managed to support an opera house fully as dignified as the Metropolitan, and, in some ways at least, its superior.

Great singers of the world, among them Americans, had sent their voices through the wide spaces of the theater. Patti and Gerster, Nilsson and Kellogg, Cary and di Murska, Jenny Lind, Brignoli, del Puente, and the never-to-beforgotten Grisi and Mario were among the stars who shone at the Academy. Not even "Jean"-the admirable "Jean" or that more recent light, Caruso, ever attained to the celebrity of Mario, the tenor of tenors. Bravely one manager Mapleson and Campanini, dared fortune after another, from Max Maretzek to in its walls. Conductors, of whom Arditi was one of the most popular, had charge of orchestras no less excellent than those later directed at the Metropolitan by chiefly Italian and French, were interSeidl, Mancinelli, and Toscanini. Opera, preted on the stage of the Academy suavely and beautifully.

But time is pitiless. In 1883 a group of dissatisfied millionaires, who had been unable to buy boxes at the Academy, erected a then new and gaudy house on upper Broadway. That spelled the death, after a brief fight, of the old building. Soon the Metropolitan will be destroyed, and succeeded by a larger "temple of art," in 57th Street. There, for a few seasons more, the existing rulers of the Metropolitan Opera Company may or may not-maintain their monopoly of opera in this city which, since the foundation of the regretted Academy, has quadrupled its population, though it has but one opera house of real importance.

Opera may not be a necessity. As now organized, it is beyond doubt a luxury. But need it remain a luxury? For every person who is longing to hear symphonies it is a safe guess that ten are eager to hear opera. At the prices still exacted by the Metropolitan, the cost of opera to the masses is prohibitive. Unless some movement is begun to make opera democratic it will shrink to a sport for a handful of wealthy people, sitting, as in the days of Addison, in front of a stage listening to singing which to a vast majority of them is unintelligible. The remedy seems plain.

Some one with enterprise and imagination should build, as a beginning, an American opera house; engage a com

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pany of good (but not necessarily extravagant) singers, with a trained orchestra and chorus, lower the prices of seats, lengthen the season, and present opera, without costly trappings, in the language of this Nation. At first such an experiment might be expensive, but it should become profitable, or at least self-sustaining. The fashionables could still air themselves in the new Metropolitan. And the masses could enjoy opera, as they do comedy and tragedy, in another "temple."

Milk-With No Cream for the Farmer

N

EW YORK CITY has been airing a milk scandal involving bribery of large proportions among officials of the Health Department. It is charged that they connived at the watering of lacteal fluid sold by dealers who deliver the product in cans. "Loose milk" this is called. It is served to restaurants, bakeries, and the large users. The "graft" is estimated to have been worth $1,000 per day to the crooked officials. They were supposed to wink at the addition of twelve per cent of water.

Milk is the one food that feeds and refreshes. The business of delivering it in New York involves large capital, which earns a handsome return. The burden of this is laid on the consumer and the farmer. When it is considered that two acres of average pasturage are required to feed a cow in summer, plus grain, and grain and ensilage in winter, it will be seen that a poor return must result from receipts of 42 to 5 cents per quart for milk that sells from 12 to 18 cents in the city.

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Thomas had declared that not two per cent of the people of the country would vote for revolution; he insisted that this strike had not been brought about by people who wanted an upheaval, though there were some such, but that it was a "plain economic-industrial dispute where the worker says he wants justice."

The struggle started with the strike of the mine workers. The Government attempted to deal with it by granting a subsidy to the industry, in order to maintain existing wage levels, and by appointing an impartial Commission to report on coal-mine conditions and methods of future operation. The report of this Commission was summarized in The Outlook for April 7. The subsidy terminated on May 11, with the proposals of the report still being violently debated by the representatives of owners and workers. The leaders of the unions ordered their men out on sympathetic strike. Prime Minister Baldwin strove unceasingly to mediate in the interest of peace, but in

vain.

Without a reorganization of the mining industry the effort of the miners to get more wages was doomed to failure. There was no income from the mines out of which more wages could have come. But the whole wage question in England is something more than trying to get blood from a turnip. It arises from the fact that English employers think of labor as something to be bought in a cheap market. European observers have noticed the contrast afforded by American industry. Here the most enlightened industrial managers see in labor, not a commodity, but a part of the human element to which the products of industry naturally should go in the form of wages as high as industry can afford. Their reward consists in a wider distribution of wealth, which of itself creates a market for the products of industry and a source for industrial capital. In this respect English methods are archaic. On the purely economic side there is strength in the English workers' demand.

The weakness is in their political aspect.

Since Labor is organized into a political party in Great Britain, this strike is something more than an economic struggle. It has revealed a condition in the country that goes to the roots of the nation's life. It is far more profound than any question of wages or hours. What is involved now is the question whether the

course of British affairs is to be determined by the trade unions or by the Government representing all the people.

When the unions prevented the publication of one of London's daily papers, the "Daily Mail," because an editorial denounced the general strike as an attack upon all the people, the issue on this score was made plain. When the miners refused to work unless the mine owners pulled down their lock-out notices, they were within their rights. But when politically organized body of workmen, comprising millions of workers and a minority of the nation, hold up the most vital functions of modern society, they attack the basis of government. They are attempting to substitute compulsion for the will of the people as expressed in lawful ways. As between the workers and employers, sympathy may well go to the workers; but as between politically organized Labor as a part of the people and the Government as an organization of the people as a whole it is to the interest of free government everywhere that the victory should go to that party to the struggle that stands for the people as a whole.

Many observers fear that this strike may be in fact a threat of civil war. As we write it is too early to accept any such alarmist conclusions. Despite the gravity of the crisis, the sober second thought and common sense of the British workers should make it possible to find a way out of the deadlock. But whether the conflict is short or long, it is essential that the power of organized groups to dictate to the whole nation should be defeated decisively once and for all.

Oscar Solomon Straus

O

SCAR SOLOMON STRAUS had the rare distinction among public men of being universally both respected and liked. Throughout his life he showed that combination of qualities of character that win both regard and affection. In spite of his wide experience with men of all kinds who were not always of good will, he retained that faith in his fellow-men that inspired their faith in him. As a consequence he had a public career which was almost, if not quite, unique. He was the confidant, friend, and in varying degree colleague of five Presidents. He served in diplomatic, judicial, and administrative positions with honor to himself and to his country.

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When occasion demanded, he never hesitated to stand squarely and openly for what he thought right and just; and yet he seemed to remain immune to the shafts of political enmity.

Perhaps the secret of his career may be found, if anywhere, in his early life. He was born of a Jewish family that had for many generations been residents of the Bavarian Palatinate (which under Napoleon became the French Department of Mont Tennérre) and came as a child with his mother, brothers, and sister to join his father, who had established himself as a merchant in Georgia. In the town of Talbotton the circuitriding ministers of various denominations were accustomed to stop at the Straus home for dinner largely because of the elder Straus's Biblical erudition. In his autobiography (written at our request, and first published in The Outlook) Oscar Straus writes:

If a text was in question, my father always had his Hebrew copy of the Old Testament at hand and was ready to translate passages literally for their information.

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I was thus fairly brought up on theological discussion. From my earliest days, it seems, I have been so situated as to be made aware of denominational controversy. At the table in my parents' home I saw and listened to representatives of every Christian creed. In college I figured, but as an olive-branched neutral, in the feud between "Evidences of Christianity" and the non-Episcopalians. And later years saw. me in Turkey as the American diplomatic envoy, defending the representatives of Christian churches from the hostility of the Turk.

His idealism thus took root in early life. The faith of his fathers became to him not a barrier between him and other people but a bridge to their minds. It was not strange, therefore, that when he was proposed as Minister to Turkey Henry Ward Beecher (the first editor of this journal) wrote to President Cleveland urging his appointment, not in spite of, but because he was a Jew and as such could set forth "the genius of American government," which treats all people "without regard to civil, religious, or race peculiarities as common citizens." Mr. d Straus's marked success as Minister to Turkey under Cleveland led to his appointment to the same position later by a President of opposite political faith, Mr. McKinley, and then for the third time as envoy to Turkey (in this instance as Ambassador) by President

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Taft. He was the first of his faith to become a Cabinet Minister; for he was chosen by President Roosevelt to be Secretary of Commerce and Labor for a reason expressed by Mr. Roosevelt in these words: "I want to show Russia and some other countries what we think of the Jews in this country." When in 1912 he was nominated by the Progressives for

Oscar S. Straus

Born December 23, 1850. Died May 3, 1926

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their candidate for Governor of New York, there were some people, including Mr. Straus himself, who saw the humor in the fact that the Convention joined in singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers;" but it was more than a humorous incident-it was, in fact, one of the greatest tributes that any public man has ever received in this country, for it was a spontaneous expression of that spirit of more than tolerance which Mr. Straus embodied throughout his life.

And as he was for the breaking down of the partition between men within the country, so he was for breaking down the walls of partition that separate countries from one another. As a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, to which he was appointed in 1902 and reappointed by Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, he was long familiar with international questions. Inclined by nature to seek and find points of agreement rather than of controversy, he was very hopeful concerning the effect of the establishment of the

League of Nations. He was in Paris during the Peace Conference, and as Chairman of the society known as the League to Enforce Peace gave his support to President Wilson. It is doubtful whether any event in his public life gave him such happiness as the acceptance of the Covenant of the League by the nations assembled at Paris.

Those with whom he agreed as to public policies found him always a cordial and hopeful associate. Those with whom he disagreed found him free from all trace of vindictiveness or suspicion and always charitable. And those who knew him well were not surprised to find him ready to spend himself in causes which he believed for the public good. It was characteristic of him that after holding National and international offices of great distinction he should consent to become the Chairman of the Public Service Commission of the First District of the State of New York when he found that there was an opportunity for service. Few Americans have expressed in their lives so well as Oscar Straus what all Americans like to think is the spirit of their country.

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I

Time to Act

N his address to the National Crime Commission, lately in session at Washington, President Coolidge earnestly indorsed the expressed purpose of that association to inquire into the best ways of preventing crime and obtaining justice against the criminal. The work of inquiry is now being carried on energetically by commissions, State as well as National, by the daily press, and by magazines. Not one cause but many have been found for the prevalence of crimes of violence. The time has come for action to follow inquiry.

Legislatures and courts must act if inquiry is to have value. If it is true, as these inquiries indicate, that the AngloSaxon ideal of fair play even for those accused of crime has leaned backward, so to speak, and that protection for persons unjustly accused has gone so far that there are too many and too wide loopholes of escape for the guilty, such as too easy bail, too much insistence on technicalities, too many opportunities for delay between conviction and punishment-then it is for Legislatures, courts, and bar associations to tighten up the criminal procedure. One speaker at the

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Washington conference said: "In one of our large and comparatively well regulated cities a recent survey brought to light the startling information that out of every seventy-five felonies that were committed only one offender was ever punished at all." Such a state of things speaks for itself.

Recent startling crimes point directly to alliance between dirty politics and criminal violence. The machine-gun assassination of William McSwiggin, an assistant State's Attorney, in Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, brought out the statement that within the last three years nearly a hundred men have been slain in the warfare between two rival gangs of "beer runners." Stores of magazine guns and munitions were found in gang headquarters. This suggests another cause of violent crimes-the ease with which arms may be obtained and the consequent need of a better license system over the sale of arms and closer inspection of retail sales.

In the singular case of Isadore Presser in New York State there is an intimation that Presser was concerned in a secret drug ring inside his prison and that his strange and long freedom from rearrest and final parole had a sinister connection in the byways of corrupt politics. Presser escaped, disappeared, or was kidnapped from Great Meadow Prison in July, 1921, and was at large until May, 1925, except when he was under arrest for new offenses. His career is thus described by one newspaper writer:

Here is a creature whose record for twenty years includes murder, robbery, burglary, jail breaking, bail jumping, and bootlegging. He has been arrested thirteen times. He has

been convicted seven times. He is a habitual criminal of the worst typea killer and a pistol carrier. And yet if the Governor had not interfered he would have been turned loose years before his time was up.

If Governor Smith's inquiry into the Presser case is thorough and open, it may throw light on the reasons why criminals do not fear justice as they should.

Another reason why the war against crime is not efficient is that public feeling as to criminals is variable. At times it is fierce and eager for punishment, at other times it is sentimental and weak. When the other day, in Buffalo, a jury disagreed in the case of one Richard Whittemore, charged with taking part in the murder of two bank messengers, the clamor of approval, reporters said, was. such as never had been heard in that court-house. This man was a hold-up man and gangster with an evil record behind him, and is now to be tried on a charge of beating a penitentiary guard

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The bullet-riddled car in which
McSwiggin was killed

to death! Probably the evidence justified the Buffalo jury in disagreeing; but why the wide popularity?

Incidents like these show that citizens as well as jurists should enlist in the war on crime and criminals if civilized society is to defend and maintain itself.

White and Black in Carteret
A Southerner Surveys a Northern Race Riot
By DIXON MERRITT

ARTERET sprawls over the mud

flats of Raritan Bay, on the coast of northern New Jersey. It appears to the visitor disjointed and disorganized. It has no business center, properly speaking. There are business houses along a street near the railroad station, and these the visitor accepts as the center of the city until he finds that not all of the things necessary even to a city of 15,000 are there. He discovers,

bit by bit, that Borough Hall, including police headquarters, is nearly half a mile down a side street, that half a mile beyond Borough Hall is another business section, that the one hotel which the prideful part of Carteret acknowledges as such is half a mile from any one of the three, and that these and various other ganglionic snarls do not connect with a central brain.

Flesh-and-blood Carteret is like board

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