1

tion is noteworthy, particularly the parting of the Red Sea and the sudden release of the walls of water overwhelming the Egyptians in their chariots. According to his custom, Mr. Cecil B. De Mille has been unable to resist telling how the production required fifty thousand pounds of nails and five thousand pillowslips. In fact, the Exodus seems to have ...been an even more difficult undertaking for Mr. De Mille than for Moses. Nevertheless the Children of Israel did not need tons of talcum powder and five hundred pounds of glycerine for make-up.

But the nails have been well driven! "The Ten Commandments" is one of the most powerfully effective spectacles that has yet cast its shadows on the screen. With the candor of the motion pictures, it is pronounced "The greatest inspirational entertainment the world has ever seen." If it inspires other producers to go and build likewise, perhaps the boast will not prove an entirely empty one..

7

the sufferance of two other parties, and it will go out at any moment when those two other parties, or enough of their members.to form a majority, come to an agreement to oust the Labor Government. In the second place, it takes up responsibility for the peace, safety, and order of the realm at the very time that a railway strike begins. To have a labor problem on its hands at the very moment it comes into office would be disturbing for any new government, but is particularly so for a labor government.

How serious the strike would be in crippling the railway lines was not clear as we went to press; for the strike was not of all the railway employees, but simply of one union, the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. The National Union of Railwaymen received an order from their leader to remain on their jobs, for they were committed to accept the decision of the National Wages Board to reduce wages in accordance with the reduction in the cost of living; but the National

Union refused to abide by the award and struck. Some of the enginemen belong to both unions. What the new Labor Government will do in an emergency of

(C) Underwood

Maurice F. Egan, Diplomat and Author

istry. As there are only 259 Conservatives in the House, it is evident that a. number of Liberals voted with the Conservatives and against the Labor Party. Mr. Baldwin took his defeat with the highest good humor and caused laughter by his chaffing of the Liberals for their support of a party with a Socialist programme.

The occasion was characterized as an inquest and an autopsy. Mr. Baldwin, replying to the charge that his own party had committed suicide, and referring to the former Liberal Premier who had helped to bring the Labor Government into being, described Mr. Asquith as "an

It has sold arms to the recognized Government of Mexico.

It has forbidden the sale of arms by private interests to the rebellious Mexican faction, of which de la Huerta is the head. It has lodged a protest with de la Huerta against the mining of Mexican harbors, declaring that such an act was an "unwarranted threat against the commerce of the world."

It has sent the cruiser Richmond to Tampico and forced de la Huerta to postpone the blockade of that port and the port of Vera Cruz.

Our Government has also permitted Mexican troops to traverse American soil in order that they might more quickly reach points of danger.

So far as we know, there is nothing unprecedented in any of these acts. The de la Huerta faction has no belligerent rights. Naturally, should the Obregon Government be overthrown, what the United States Government has done will not tend to decrease the unpopularity of Americans with the successful faction. Naturally, there will be criticism in South America that the acts of our Government constitute another interference with the internal affairs of a Latin-American republic. As long as Mexican factions appeal to the rifle for the settlement of electoral disputes, there does not seem to be much use in arguing as to whether or not the present course of our Government is in accordance with democratic principles. If Mexican elections were conducted according to the principle of majority rule, there would be no need for us to intervene in any way. Under the circumstances, Mr. Hughes seems to have acted wisely and courageously. radical character of the Obregon Government is proof enough that the United States is not seeking to support this Government because it expects to receive favors in return or because it is currying favor with "vested interests" and Big Business.

A

The

America Loses a Veteran Servant

AURICE FRANCIS EGAN has died in his seventy-second year, and left his countrymen in his debt. He was distinguished in at least two professions, literature and diplomacy; he had been an editor of periodicals and encyclopædias, and a professor of English literature in the Catholic University of America. His list of published work is long, and includes poetry, fiction, memoirs, criticism, and translations. His "Confessions of a Book-Lover" appeared only

From "Peter Newell's Pictures and Rhymes," courtesy of Harper & Brothers
A Vicious Goat

"I do not love my billy-goat, I wish that he were dead,
Because he kicked me, so he did he kicked me with his head."

about a year ago. He will be mourned
not only in this country but in Copen-
hagen, where he was the American Minis-
ter for ten years, becoming Dean of the
Diplomatic Corps. President Cleveland
had selected him for a diplomatic ap-
pointment, but it was President Roose-
velt who sent him to Denmark. He was
continued in office by Presidents Taft
and Wilson. Both the latter offered him
the Embassy to Vienna, which he was
compelled to decline.

He was genial and well-beloved; a Roman Catholic, notably broad-minded; a scholarly and agreeable gentleman whose service in Denmark was of far greater value to his country than could ever be repaid. Two absurd and not wholly pleasant events took place during his years in Copenhagen: the coming of Dr. Cook, and of the Ford "peace" pilgrims. But the negotiations for the purchase of the Danish West Indies were carried on during his term of office, while his presence at Copenhagen, "the listening post of Europe," became unusually valuable during the Great War. "Ten Years Near the German Frontier" is entertaining, but it is something more than that; it is an exposure of German methods of sinuous plotting and ruthless warfare, as important for Americans to read to-day as ever it was. No compensation which America could pay would be adequate reward for the presence of men like Dr. Egan among our diplomatists. What actually happens, in our penurious system, is that they have to decline further service, as he did, because they do not belong to the class of wealthy

His

men for whom Congress chooses to reserve these appointments.

The Humor of Peter Newell

PETER

ETER NEWELL's career was a joyous episode in the history of American comic art and illustration. His death the other day reminded many how long it is since his work has been appearing regularly. Those to whom the artists and authors of twenty-five years ago are merely figures of archæology and ancient history will have to be told that such a man ever existed. About the time of the Spanish War, and for a few years before and after, there were many Americans who watched each number of the Harper publications for Newell's pictures, and greeted the books of John Kendrick Bangs (such as "The House Boat on the Styx") fully as much for his illustrations as for the text. Peter Newell illustrated one or two books by Frank Stockton, and he was sympathetic with that rare spirit; he tried to illustrate Lewis Carroll, but here he plainly attempted the impossible. Nobody could replace or even approach the figures which John Tenniel had forever fixed in our imaginations. There was a winning simplicity in Newell's humorous fancies; a technique quite original. Oliver Herford might have conceived "The Little Rabbit's Mistake:" "Hello, some rabbit's lost its tail! Too

bad, I do declare!" (He saw a fluffy thistle-down afloat up in the air.)

But his figures of children and of grown people, too, were all his own. Newell has been imitated but not surpassed.

I'

Lenine

F greatness is measured by power,
Nikolai Lenine, who died last week,

must be counted one of the greatest. men of this generation, and in fact of the great men of history. It would be hard to name in modern times any one who has exercised such power as he. From the time the Bolshevists came into power in Russia his ideas have prevailed over one-eighth of the population of the world. More than any other man he laid out the road on which Russia started to travel in 1917. Not only indirectly, but to some extent directly, he affected the internal policy of other nations in Europe. His influence has been felt in America. Lenine was indeed great if greatness consists solely in power.

But if greatness is to be measured not by power but by service, if indeed it is true that the greatest shall be the servant of all, Lenine's title to greatness is by no means clear. Whatever his motive, and that we do not judge, whatever his intent, and even that is not wholly plain he brought evils on the world from which mankind will long suffer.

He was a product of Czarist autocracy. Roused against the oppressive rule of that régime, he became as a young man a rebel against it. Though born of an educated and well-to-do family (his real name was Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov), he identified himself in spirit with the oppressed masses. He was a convert to Marxian Socialism. Arrested as a dangerous agitator, he was exiled to Siberia, and on his return from exile he began a career which to the day of his death resembled that of a religious zealot. His revolutionary spirit was inflamed by the execution of a brother. He became the enemy, not only of the Russian Government, but of the whole social system of the civilized world.

Unknown outside of Russia, he emerged into international fame when, with the connivance of the German Government during the war, he entered Russia. The Germans undoubtedly expected that he would serve as their tool, undermining Russian resistance. Lenine, on the other hand, believed that the German Government's action in financing him would serve his own ends. The Germans' purpose to use him as their agent is clear from the statement made by the German General, Hoffman, who had charge of the Propaganda Department on Germany's eastern front, for he clearly classed Nikolai Lenine with poison gas

as a device for breaking down the Russian front.

The Russians, and particularly the Russian peasants, were tired of the war, and Lenine brought them a message of peace. The result was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which took Russia out of the war.

Thus the Germans accomplished their purpose; but Lenine's purpose remained to be fulfilled.

Lenine was a student, a philosopher, a theorist, an idealist. Paul Miliukov, who was the most distinguished leader in the movement for constitutional government in Russia before the war, and who was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the brief experiment of self-government which followed the breakdown of the old régime, has testified in his book, "Russia, Today and Tomorrow,' "1 that in the earlier days Lenine had been "a stubborn debater and a slow-thinking scholar." Lenine, however, was more than a scholar; he was a man of powerful personality, and he thrust himself upon the party that overthrew Kerensky, and established what we know now as the Soviet Republic. He was a doctrinaire, bound to put his doctrines into practice.

This is not the place in which to attempt an outline of Lenine's theories. It is sufficient to say that they were an attempt to translate the Marxian Socialism out of the language of Utopia into the life of the twentieth century. He believed that Socialism could come only by a catastrophe, and he deliberately brought that catastrophe upon Russia and attempted to bring it upon the world. That which other Socialists held up as a sort of day of judgment in the dim future Lenine undertook to make a present reality. And he made it a reality.

He hated illusions and he thought he was free from them. He acknowledged that Communism was not possible for Russia except as it could be established in a Communistic world. He therefore set himself to destroy the existing system in Russia and to propagate the theory of Communism itself. He did this by a mixture of frightfulness and coaxing. For frightfulness he had on his right hand Trotsky; for coaxing he had at his service skillful demagogues. At his right hand were the Red Army and the Cheka (a tribunal of inquisition more powerful than anything the Czarist régime knew), and at his left was the Internationale.

Before he died Lenine learned-it

Russia, Today and Tomorrow. By Paul N. Miliukov. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.25.

must have been to his chagrin that he had been, like others, a victim of illusions. Three years ago he instituted what he called the New Economic Policy (nicknamed Nep, for short), by which he undertook to carry out what he called a strategic retreat. In fact, it was a forced retreat. That the Bolshevists have greatly modified their course under Lenine is everywhere recognized. But what remains as a heritage from this man's doctrines is a government as tyrannous and despotic as any that the world. has ever seen.

Under Lenine the Bolshevists presented themselves to the Russian masses as a pacifist power. To men weary with

Lenine, from the bust by Clare Sheridan war they promised peace; but they brought to Russia murder, assassination, rapine, and slaughter.

Under Lenine the Bolshevists came to

the Russians with a promise of political freedom; but to this people long oppressed by autocracy they brought a new despotism, the so-called dictatorship of

the proletariat, which was nothing but an

oligarchical rule as heartless as it was

tyrannous.

evil. I spoke to Lisa Zorin to see whether something could not be done to ameliorate the evil. Lisa claimed

that "piece work" was the only way to induce the girls to work.

Under Lenine the Bolshevists presented themselves as harbingers of a new era of international good will; but to the Russian people they have brought only that which has aroused the distrust of the rest of the world and has driven Russia to a position of virtual international ostracism.

If service is the measure of greatness, history will record among the great of Russia, not Lenine, but those figures who braved terrorism alike under the Czar and under Bolshevism; those who, like Nicolas Tchaykowsky and Madame Breshkovsky, kept bright through all vicissitudes their faith in freedom and in the Russian people, and in their faith have served their country and the world.

An Old Story that is Always New

W

HEN Dr. Cook went into well-deserved retirement because of his uncontrollable desire to sell worthless oil stock to gullible investors, probably a great many people regarded the incident as establishing a precedent in knavery and as an example of the peculiar viciousness of modern "blue sky" promoters. Sometimes people grow tired of the constant admonition to investors to steer clear of speculative stocks. They do not realize that each generation must learn for itself the dangers of attempting to get something for nothing.

One of the best satires on get-richquick schemes is contained in that story of Bret Harte's which deals with the duping of the devil himself. Perhaps if you are a Bret Harte enthusiast you will remember his tale of the fishing journey which the devil made to San Francisco. Casting a skillful line baited with a greenback fly, the devil attempted to entice the good people of San Francisco to their ruin. But the fishing was not as

Under Lenine the Bolshevists presented themselves to the Russian people as the apostles of an industrial freedom; but to those people long accustomed to fatiguing and dulling labor they brought a régime in which workers were more enslaved than ever. Let Emma Goldman testify as to this. In her book "My good as the devil expected; so he con

Disillusionment in Russia"1 she writes:

In America I should have scorned the ideal of social welfare work: I should have considered it a cheap palliative. But in Socialist Russia the sight of pregnant women working in suffocating tobacco air and saturating themselves and their unborn with the poison impressed me as a fundamental

1 My Disillusionment in Russia. By Emma Goldman. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. $2.

་

sented to adopt the proposal of one of his victims, namely, that the victim would be released if he could show the devil how to make a really enticing fly. The devil departed and left his ally alone on the roof of the building where he had. been fishing. In due course of time the devil himself was hooked and landed beside his former victim. To the devil's

inquiry as to the bait that was used, his collaborator answered, "Wild Cat." Probably the greatest orgy of wildcat speculation known to history was that which centered around the historic South Sea Bubble. Small, Maynard & Co.' have recently brought out a book by Lewis Melville which tells the story of this great financial venture. The rage for South Sea stock dragged to ruin commoners and peers who invested in the maddest kind of speculation. "Incredible as it may sound," writes Mr. Melville, "a thousand persons in one morning paid two guineas each, as a first installment for shares in a company 'for carrying on an undertaking of great importance, but nobody to know what it is.'" Such extravagant speculation brought forth, among other protests, a playlet by Chetwood called "Exchange Alley; or, The Stock-Jobber Turned Gentleman; with the Humours of our Modern Projectors." "The little skit," says Mr. Melville, "though in a crude manner, hit off effectively the folly of the day. One scene, especially, put the manner very clearly before those who had eyes to see.' We quote from this skit as it appears in Mr. Melville's most interesting volume:

The dramatis persona of "Exchange Alley" includes:

MISSISSIPPI, a merchant dealing in stocks.

BITE, a stock-jobber.
CHEAT-ALL, a broker.
BUBBLE, a promoter.
AFRICANUS, a new created gentleman.
CRAVE-MORE, a female stock-jobber.

...

noses

Bubble. First an insurance of ships to the spacious World of the Moon-a project for building a fleet of flying ships of the greatest burden insured from fire . . . to furnish rods to flog the universities abroad-to make hoop petticoats-to show bears, monkeys, and

monsters-to make hempen halters-I think this is an ample list of projects, Mr. Cheat-All.

Cheat-All. You're right; but what will be the certain depending profit from these mighty schemes?

Bubble. Only as much as we can genteelly get by subscription.

to?

Cheat-All. What will that amount

Bubble. About four or five millions -a sum which will make three or four persons very easy in their circum

stances.

Cheat-All. But I'm afraid of the Charter for Halters, lest our necks should be deservedly slipt into the suffocating noose.

Bubble. There's no danger of that,

1 The South Sea Bubble. By Lewis Melville. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. $1.

my dear. I've a certain charm that will effectually gain the consent of the subscribers, and they'll be more ready to part with their money than we to receive it.

Cheat-All. What alluring bait is that, my dear?

Bubble. Only that of extraordinary gain a plausible scheme for procuring them cent. per cent. is a snare they have no power to avoid. They'll deposit their cash with eagerness, and, like the dog in the fable, catching at the shadow, willingly resign the substance.

In commenting upon the failure of such satire as this to move the investing public of eighteenth-century England Mr. Melville says, in quoting from contemporary evidence:

These well-intentioned folk, bleating their simple warnings, might as well have kept their breath to cool their porridge. In vain did newspapers point out the folly of it all. No one heeded. Not even when a paper announced that at some (sham) address, "On Tuesday next, books will be opened for a subscription of £2,000,000 for the invention of melting down sawdust and chips, and casting them into clean deal boards without cracks or knots," did people pause in their wild career. Not even a practical joke made any appreciable impression on them. "Here has been the oddest bite put upon the Town that ever was heard of," so ran a paragraph in the "Weekly Packet," January 2, 1720. "We having of late had several new subscriptions set on foot for raising great sums of money for erecting offices of Insurance, etc., at length some gentlemen, to convince the world how easy it was for projectors to impose upon mankind, set up a pretended office in Exchange Alley for the receiving of subscriptions for raising a million of money to establish an effectual Company of Insurers, as they called it. Upon which, the day being come to subscribe, the people flocked in, and paid five shillings for every £1,000 they subscribed, pursuant to the Company's proposal; but after some hundreds had so subscribed (that the thing ought to be freely known) the gentlemen were at the expense to advertise that the people might have their money back again without any deductions; and to let them know that the persons who paid in their money contented themselves with a fictitious name, set by an unknown hand, to the receipts delivered out for the money so paid in; and that the said name was composed only of the first letters of six persons' names concerned in the said publication."

Human nature being what it is, it behooves every investor of money, whether in small sums or large, to see to it that

his funds are put only into the hands of firms of proved reliability.

Intelligence Tests and a Limitation

NTELLIGENCE tests, in some forr

I

or other, continually get into the news. The other day it was reported that they had been given to a number of very successful men in a certain city. And there was great surprise to find that some of these men made rather poor grades and that a highly able and successful bank president made a very poor score indeed. Now men of low intelligence do not become bank presidents. It may have been different in the army. An acquaintance of ours once told a fellow dugout-dweller that a certain colonel had tried the army test and had made only a twelve-year score.

"Well?" queried that disrespectful private. "Well?"

There seem to be obvious exceptions to the findings of the best tests. In one school, where the 200 boys of a grade were separated into eight groups of 25 each, intelligence tests were given with greatest care, and the boys were grouped according to intelligence, the ablest in the first group and dullest in the eighth. One lad, placed in the seventh, pugnaciously set to work and steadily climbed, group by group, until he reached the first. With ordinary tests-which are tests for acquired information rather than of intelligence--he did not do much above average, but on tests of fundamental qualities of intelligence he did very well indeed. And for his determined and aggressive character there was no test whatever.

We might agree that there are two kinds of tests, neither one of which can give a complete picture of an individual's intelligence, and beyond these there are personal qualities that cannot be tested except through actual performance.

The first kind of test is that which depends on acquired knowledge. Of course this depends much on intelligence, but it also depends largely on environmentcity, school, and home. Tests suitable for a city child might be grossly unfair if given to a country child, and vice versa. Such tests are of great help, but they should never be considered complete tests of native intelligence.

The second kind of tests attempt to reach fundamental mental qualitiesqualities upon which intelligence itself depends. depends. Such might include those for

nd

10

d

recognition, for association of ideas, for co-ordination, and the visual and audi-. tory memories. They might well include such an excellent device as the "cylinder test" of Dr. Lightner Witmer, of the University of Pennsylvania, which, regardless of school or other environment, is a good test of a child's judgment and learning capacity and other valuable qualities.

But there are no tests that will measure such qualities as persistency, mental doggedness, honesty of purpose, indifferds ence, and so on, which affect tremendously an individual's use of his mental equipment. Some children of mediocre mental ability, through sheer determination and perseverance, make a very high standing in school, and others of brilliant mind, because of a lack of important character qualities, have been abysmal failures.

Let us say, then, that the use of both kinds of intelligence tests can be of great use in judging of a child's intelligence and in planning his education. But it would be a serious mistake to declare that any tests could determine a child's future place or success in society. For this place and this success depend also on other non-testable qualities-personal character qualities-without which the most able mentality may well prove worthless, and with which even a very average mental equipment may achieve a very great success.

Judge Lynch Reversed

TOPE and despair, terror, courage,

H

and the patient will to struggle to the end were elements involved in one of the greatest cases in American legal procedure that has received little notice in the press of the country. The end of this case was marked by the appearance of the news item several weeks ago which reported that Governor McRae, of Arkansas, had commuted the sentence of death of six Negroes to terms of twelve years in the State penitentiary. For more than four years there had been a fight for the lives of those men; but there had been more than six lives at stake. The long legal battle which saved these men from the electric chair repelled encroachments of lynch law upon American courts.

In Arkansas an organization of Negro farmers a few years ago had undertaken to get a settlement of legal claims against white landowners. On the night of September 30, 1919, while they were attend

ing a meeting in one of their churches, called to arrange for the employment of counsel to help them in their claims, they "were attacked and fired upon by a body of white men," as Mr. Justice Holmes, in delivering the opinion of the United States Supreme Court, reports the facts on which there was no dispute, "and in the disturbance that followed a white man was killed. The report of the killing caused great excitement and was followed by the hunting down and shooting of many Negroes and also by the killing on October 1 of one Clinton Lee, a white man. O. S. Bratton, a son of the counsel who is said to have been contemplated, . . . is said to have barely escaped being mobbed. . . . A Committee of Seven was appointed by the Governor. ... The newspapers daily published inflammatory articles. On the 7th a statement by one of the Committee was made public to the effect that the present trouble was 'a deliberately planned insurrection of the Negroes against the whites.'" A mob which marched to the jail to lynch the arrested Negroes refrained from acting when the Committee gave its solemn promise that the law would be carried out. "According to affidavits . . . the Committee made good their promise by calling colored witnesses and having them whipped and tortured until they would say what was wanted. . . The Court and neighborhood were thronged with an adverse crowd that threatened the most dangerous consequences to any one interfering with the desired result. The counsel did not venture to demand a delay or a change of venue, to challenge a juryman, or to ask for separate trials. He had had no preliminary consultation with the accused, called no witnesses for the defense although they could have been produced, and did not put the defendants on the stand. The trial lasted about three-quarters of an hour and in less than five minutes the jury brought in a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. According to the allegations and affidavits there never was a chance for the petitioners to be acquitted; no juryman could have voted for an acquittal and continued to live in Phillips County and if any prisoner by any chance had been acquitted by a jury he could not have escaped the mob."

Except for one sentence, used for the purpose of condensation, this report of the admitted facts in the murder trial is in the dispassionate language of a United States Supreme Court Judge. It conveys of course no suggestion of the emotional

strain, the sense of outrage, the conflicting fears, the hatred and anger and fear engendered; it sets forth the facts simply so far as they are pertinent to the question whether justice was administered with due process of law.

It would seem that the question answered itself; but it did not answer itself in the minds of the judges of the two State courts and the Federal District court to which the case was appealed. There was no lack of effort to obtain justice. Of the counsel for the colored prisoners the outstanding figure was a Southern white man, formerly AttorneyGeneral of the State of Arkansas, eminent among the lawyers of the State, Judge George W. Murphy. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People appealed to public sentiment for a defense fund, and received contributions from both white and colored people. While the case was in a critical stage Judge Murphy, a man advanced in years, weakened by his toil on the case, died, a martyr to the cause of justice and a witness to the sense of justice among the finest spirits of the South.

After various technical appeals and after the case was finally argued before the United States Supreme Court by Mr. Moorfield Storey of Boston, President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and former President of the American Bar Association, the order of the Arkansas Federal Court was reversed, and the accused and convicted prisoners were saved from execution that they might have a hearing. And eight months after that their sentence was commuted by the Governor of the State. The effect of this decision can be seen more clearly by the reference to the famous case of Leo Frank. In that case the accused was tried under conditions not unlike those in the case of these Negroes. The spirit of the mob pervaded the community and even invaded the court-room, and ultimately triumphed by the lynching of the convicted man. According to the record in the Frank case (Frank v. Mangum, 237 U. S. 309) the Presiding Judge stated that he did not believe that the guilt of Frank had been shown beyond a reasonable doubt, and when he requested Frank and his attorney to remain out of the court-room when the jury rendered its verdict he gave as his reason that if the jury were to bring in a verdict for the defendant, or would disagree even, he could not answer for the life of Frank nor of his attorney because he felt he could not give