Bennett, and Dana to theirs; but it would be hard to recall any editorial writer of our day who so well deserves to be included in the list of great American editors.

Not only did Mr. Cobb himself write short, concise, sometimes epigrammatic, editorials, each dealing with a single point of a subject and driving the nail home to the head, but he knew how to teach others to do that very same thing. It has become a common thing to hear journalists say, in substance: "You may like the 'World' or hate it, agree with it or oppose it, but you can't possibly ignore its editorial page or question its vigor."

Henry Watterson once called Cobb the strongest writer of the New York press; a New York paper goes further and declares, "He could say as much in three hundred words as Horace Greeley could say in a thousand, and he could say it better." Another newspaper truly remarks: "Evasion, straddling, pussyfooting, had no place in his editorial equipment."

It is noteworthy how, in the many tributes to this great but modest newspaper man, definite, specific praise for positive, individual qualities takes the place of the usual conventional expressions of esteem.

Personally Mr. Cobb avoided publicity, although there was at one time a report that President Wilson had offered him a Cabinet portfolio; he was a strong supporter of Mr. Wilson's policies and of the League of Nations and chairman of the publicity committee of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

Mr. Curtis Buys the "Evening Post

IN his notice to the readers of the New

York "Evening Post" that he has assumed the sole ownership and direction of that ancient and historic journal Mr. Cyrus H. K. Curtis remarks, inadvertently, we hope, or rather perhaps incompletely, that "I believe that there is room in this community for an evening newspaper which will devote itself exclusively to the business of telling the daily news promptly, accurately, intelligently, and readably without prejudice and without fear of the truth."

We are sure that the "Evening Post" will not devote itself exclusively to news. It has carried at its "masthead" for many years this sentence from its pros

pectus in its first issue, dated November 16, 1801: "The design of this paper is to diffuse among the people correct information on all interesting subjects, to inculcate just principles in religion, morals, and politics, and to cultivate a taste for sound literature." Under Mr. Curtis's management this fine definition of a newspaper's function will doubtless continue to be followed.

'The new owner and conductor of the New York "Evening Post" comes to his work with a varied and really remarkable experience as publisher. Those who have read Mr. Bok's "A Man from Maine" know how, with a pertinacity and quiet confidence that amount to a kind of silent genius, Mr. Curtis built up the "Ladies' Home Journal" from a very weak and tottering foundation into a superb property and with a result in contents and form that obviously is attractive to a vast number of American women; they know also how this was followed by his equally brilliant success in building up the "Saturday Evening Post." To this Mr. Curtis has added the experience of newspaper publisher in conducting the Philadelphia "Public Ledger." His ability and calm common sense will doubtless be of value to his new undertaking.

The traditions and history of the "Evening Post" run back to Alexander Hamilton, by whom it was founded in the year 1801. It has had many able editors, most famous of whom of course

(0) Keystone

was William Cullen Bryant. It has had, especially in late years, a somewhat unstable or shifting course, and it was a relief to many of its admirers when its possession passed in 1918 from Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, whose position in regard to war questions was quite unacceptable to patriotic Americans generally. At that time the management and control came into the hands of Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, of the great Morgan banking firm; later it was transferred to a syndicate of about thirty persons, including many people of prominence in political, commercial, literary, or philanthropic circles.

From the beginning the "Evening Post" has always been pre-eminently a journal of culture quite as much as of politics. It reached its culmination as a paper of fighting force in public affairs during the brilliant editorship of Mr. E: L. Godkin, whose name, with that of Bryant's, will no doubt continue long to be associated with that of this old and fine New York newspaper.

while the National Assembly should debate and determine upon "the régime best befitting the country." To make the way pleasant, the King received for his traveling expenses the round sum of a million drachmas and is to go on the civil pension list for a million and a half drachmas. Millions in our day, however, are not exactly what they sound like, for the present value of a million drachmas in good American gold is $18,000.

Readers will remember that the King thus banished is the son of King Constantine and was placed on the throne when Constantine abdicated. There does not seem to be any strong personal hostility toward King George. His expulsion is due to the continual strengthening of the antagonism aroused through the part taken by this dynasty in the folly and weakness mingled with greed and fierceness which brought about Greece's humiliating defeat by the Turks and her very considerable loss of territory and people and the short but bloody revolution which preceded the rather lukewarm acceptance of George as king.

Athens, the heart of a troubled country

Inevitably the best sentiment in Greece under this condition of affairs has turned to Veniselos, and again he has been urged to take the lead in political and governmental affairs in Greece. He has not yet signified his intentions, but there certainly seems to be no better or more hopeful outlook for Greece than that a constitutional and democratic form of government, whether nominally headed by a king or not, should be formed and made secure. The world outside of Greece, as well as the best and most moderate men in Greece itself, firmly believe that such a government can best be instituted under the leadership of the one wise and sane statesman who since the outbreak of the Great War has appeared on the Greek horizon. It is encouraging to note that Admiral Coundouriotes, who has been selected as temporary regent for Greece, is believed to have the confidence of Veniselos, who consulted him in the past in the dispute that led to the break between Veniselos and Constantine and ultimately to Constantine's fall.

An Exclusive Gospel

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ROM very early days, long before the Nativity which Christendom has been celebrating, the one message of religion that has brought hope to the world is the message that between men and their God the only obstacle is the will to do evil and the only condition of union-between God and men is men's will to do right. The water of life is free to every one who thirsts. Righteousness shall be given to every one who hungers for it. It was an old prophet long before the Christian era who said, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." And it was Jesus himself who said, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled."

Again and again this news of hope has been proclaimed. If there is one duty that is laid upon the Church, it is the duty of proclaiming this good news. "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" "Wash

you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed; judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." This same message was the burden of such parables as the Prodigal Son, the Last Judgment, and the Two Sons. If there is one message that is the same from the beginning to the end of the Bible, it is that men who seek God shall find him; that no form of words, no manner of ceremony, is of any use that does not help man in his seeking; and that every form of word and every ceremony is worse than useless that hinders him; that the letter killeth, while the spirit giveth life.

From time to time, however, there arises in the Church a movement on the part of those who are in authority to reverse this message and to insist that it is some form of words or ceremonial that counts, that it is not those who do the will of the Father who should be received into the Church, but those who say "Lord, Lord!" This is the real issue that has been raised by those who call themselves Fundamentalists and by the Episcopal Bishops' Pastoral Letter. It is not an invitation, but a pronouncement of exclusion, that they proclaim. It is not good news at all.

In these days an increasing number of intelligent and informed people find it impossible to think of the universe as subject to any kind of whim, whether it be the whim of chance or the whim of Deity. There was a time when men saw in every phenomenon the intervention of some whimsical will. Every stone or tree or waterfall was an embodied spirit that could act lawlessly. Everything that happened could be accounted for by some special intervention. To-day there are people who still conceive of the world as not essentially different from the world as it appeared to primitive man. It is not hard for such people to think of God as upsetting the order of nature, for God's Almightiness means to them God's capacity to indulge whatever impulse occurs to him. There are other people, however, who cannot think of God in this way. They do not deny that God is Almighty; but they do deny that certain acts ascribed to God are to them thinkable. They can put themselves, perhaps,

into the place of the ancient Greeks and can people the world by imagination with a multitude of gods; but they find it impossible to think of the world as it is as a world of warring and disputatious deities, and equally impossible for them to think of the God of this universe as a lawless God, as at war with his own mind, as violating what seems to them his own nature.

The question which the Fundamentalists and the Pastoral Letter of the Bishops have raised is whether such people, who refuse to pretend to themselves or to others that they think something that is to themselves unthinkable, shall be warned away from the Church. Shall they be told that the Church is merely a club, a privately controlled organization, of those who consider certain forms of words or certain ceremonials as essential? Shall they be told that the invitation to those who thirst for righteousness, to those who want to turn away from what is evil to what is good, to those who really seek to make the Infinite God their Great Companion, is not to be taken seriously? Are they to be told that what matters is not whether they seek to have the spirit of God incarnate in them, but whether they shall have a certain theory about the Incarnation? Mr. Wheeler, whose article on the Bishops' Pastoral Letter we print on another page, finds it easy to believe certain facts because people have believed them for two thousand years; but not every one reasons as Mr. Wheeler does. Shall every one who does not reason as Mr. Wheeler reasons or as a particular group of bishops reason or as the Fundamentalists reason be told that the Church does not want them until they substitute somebody else's reason for their own? Shall those who see in the Creeds something different from what the bishops see, or what the Fundamentalists see, or what Mr. Wheeler sees, be told that they are dishonest in reciting them as symbols of their faith, simply because the bishops and the Fundamentalists and Mr. Wheeler cannot understand how they can honestly recite them? Shall those who think that all evolution is divine evolution, that it is the way in which God works in his world, be told that they must abandon their manner of thinking before they can have any part and place in the Church, no matter how they may welcome the good news that has been proclaimed and how willingly they admit its one condition of turning from evil to good?

If the Church or any part of the

Church really takes this position, it is preaching an exclusive gospel; it is not freeing the spirit, but trying to shackle the mind, and it will lose its leadership because it will have lost its faith.

ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT.

The Russian Church and the Soviets

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LSEWHERE we print an article from Dr. Hartman, editor of "Zion's Herald," presenting his view of the present situation between the "Living Church" of Russia, the Soviets, and Western Protestantism. Dr. Hartman was with Bishop Blake of the American Methodist Church in Russia at the time when the latter conditionally pledged $50,000 toward helping certain needs of the Living Church, an offer that the Mission Board of the Methodist Church has, rightly, we think, declined to confirm. Bishop Blake and Dr. Hartman believe that the hope of Russian religion is in the so-called Living Church and that foreign aid might help to lead it toward evangelical Protestantism and away from Roman Catholicism, the danger of which they seem to think imminent and lamentable.

The same reasons that deter Americans from active interference in political questions in Russia should deter them from taking sides in church organization questions. We have a right to demand respect and safety for American religious missions in Russia, but not to take part in ecclesiastical quarrels. Just as in their attitude toward her Red Government there are many thousands of Russians who abhor the tyrannical theories of the Soviets and the brutality of their crimes toward the people yet outwardly conform to the Soviet's behests because they believe that revolution is impossible and the only hope is in gradual transformation, so there are evidently in this church dispute many who yield to Soviet supremacy over this "reformed" Orthodox Church because martyrdom and open rebellion are now of no avail. They may be right or they may be wrong; but their problem is assuredly not one for Americans to solve.

Since we wrote last April of the "Reds' War Against Religion" there has been a change in the attitude of the Soviets. Up to that time they had openly derided and persecuted the religious of all kindsRoman Catholics, Orthodox priests and

bishops, and Jews. The Soviets and the powerful and dominant Communist Party were openly atheistic and seemed bent on extinction of the churches. The Roman Catholic prelate Butchkavitch and the Orthodox Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd were executed; many priests were killed or imprisoned, the Patriarch Tikhon was degraded and unfrocked; scores of priests were imprisoned and persecuted; plays and pageants were encouraged ridiculing and insulting religion. A New York "Herald" correspondent declared that "more than a thousand priests have been executed within five years." The Soviets refused to allow the Orthodox Church to raise famine relief, and, when it freely offered its non-consecrated treasures for relief, demanded that consecrated vessels also be given up and called the refusal a crime. Bishop Blake himself in a published statement has said of this period:

It should also be remembered that the Soviet leaders are frankly atheistic. They regard religion as a product of superstition and look upon the Church as an enemy of intellectual and social progress. It is the institution the Soviets fear most, and the one of which they have most reason to be afraid. At the beginning they took an attitude of hostility and oppression towards the Church. Priests who were suspected of counter-revolutionary activities or sympathies were often ruthlessly and brutally dealt with. The oppressive measures of the Government went far beyond the necessities of its own safety, and the Church suffered far beyond its deserts. It is one of those sad and brutal chapters that are written in every revolution.

But it is claimed that the leopard has changed its spots, the Soviets their hatred of religion. We beg to doubt it. What happened was that the Soviets found that the common people of Russia still loved their ancient Church, even though it had been in the past superstitious and possibly corrupt. The Soviets changed tactics; they released Tikhon without trial, and were evidently repaid by him with humiliating promises to be friendly toward the Living Church, as they called the new organization.

The All-Russian Council of the Orthodox Church said: "The Sobor (Council) sees in the Soviet Government the leader of the world to brotherhood, equality, and peace between nations." Meanwhile religious rites for the dying in hospitals are prohibited because the hospitals belong to a non-religious state! The Living Church leaders, to all appearances,

are simply trying to get along comfortably with the Reds!

Public opinion in Russia may ultimately force the Soviets to adopt decent and respectful treatment of religion in Russia, but their past conduct has shown hatred of all religion and they will do no more than they have to do. Opportunists in Russia may possibly be wise in supporting the Living Church, even if it is in a large measure the creature of the Reds. But it is evident that very many Russian Christians more than distrust a Church so established and so influenced. Cajolery and favoritism have been more effective than public persecution in giving the Soviet control of the Church machinery. It remains to be seen how long that control may endure.

In the meantime Protestants in America and elsewhere should flatly refuse to help on in its ecclesiastical terrorism a Government that licenses and encourages publication of the notorious Communist Party periodical entitled "Without God," which is described by the Moscow "Ivestia" (official organ of the Soviet régime) as "particularly important for the antireligious propaganda."

Mr. Ford's Retirement

TOTHING that has happened in

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the pre-nomination Presidential campaign has caused such a sensation as the announcement by Henry Ford, one of the most prominent candidates for the Presidential nomination, that he favors the candidacy of President Coolidge.

The sensation is the greater because the announcement comes from a man whose name has been presented to the Democratic primaries and is made on behalf of a candidate for the Republican nomination.

Two most unworthy motives have been ascribed to Mr. Ford in making this statement. It has been said that he has bartered his candidacy for favorable action on his proposal to buy from the Government the great water power at Muscle Shoals. It has also been said that he has retired in favor of Mr. Coolidge because he expects to get from the Coolidge Administration a large reduction in his taxes. Those who make such charges have issued slanders, not only against Mr. Ford, but against the President of the United States. Each charge implies that Mr. Coolidge and Mr. Ford are both men who are willing to use the

faith of their supporters and the public interest as mere commodities to exchange in a deal for personal or political advantage. Such charges made without a scintilla of evidence reflect upon neither Mr. Ford nor Mr. Coolidge, but upon those who make them. To say that Mr. Ford is mistaken in his judgment of Mr. Coolidge and that Mr. Coolidge is mistaken in favoring a policy which would intrust a great natural resource to Mr. Ford is one thing; but to say that either is willing to make bargains of such a nature for the sake of financial or economic or political reward is quite another.

Mr.

Those who are willing to believe without evidence such things of their fellowmen, whether those fellow-men are eminent or obscure, reveal only the motives that lurk in their own hearts. One of the evils against which democracies must struggle is the evil of substituting personal accusations of this sort for arguments. Those who have followed Mr. Ford's career and who have watched his course in industrial and in political affairs ought not to have been greatly surprised by his announcement. Ford's mind is not a political mind. If we may believe those who have reported his views, Mr. Ford knows this as well as any one else. He is impatient of the restraints of political office and political procedure. He is not disposed to defer his own decisions to the judgment of the mass of the people. He thinks, and sometimes with good reason, that he knows better what most of the people want than the people do themselves. He foresaw the demand for a cheap automobile before that demand existed. He believes he foresees the requirements of agriculture while men engaged in agriculture themselves are not aware of them. He has been a leader, but not a political leader. He is not primarily interested in questions of governmental policy. He has frankly said that he is not the sort of man who would fit well into the Presidential office. In an interview published in The Outlook last May the question was put to him, "Can't we get you to become our Chief Executive and tidy things up for us?" And he answered, "Do you see that rug there? I wouldn't step as far as from here to that rug to be the King of England." And he added to confirm his disinclination for political office, "I have the biggest job on earth as it is."

What effect Mr. Ford's retirement from the Presidential campaign will have

is a matter of surmise; but the reason for it can be found in the fact that Mr.

T

Ford understands his own function in life better than many of his supporters.

HE slogan of the high protectionists twenty or twenty-five years ago used to be the phrase, “The full dinner-pail." The theory was that if we laid heavy duties on imported manufactures we should have more mills; if we had more mills, we should have more wages; and if we had more wages, we should have more prosperity. The mistake was in thinking that wages fill the dinner-pail. They do not. It is food that fills it. Man cannot eat cotton cloth, or woolen carpets, or steel rails, or nuts and bolts, or two-by-four joists, or watches and clocks, or electric lamps, or radio sets, or automobiles. He eats wheat and corn and cabbages and potatoes and beef and mutton and pork and poultry and eggs and fruit. They are what make the full dinner-pail.

From the mistaken notion that blastfurnaces and cotton spindles are the measures of prosperity Americans have been coming slowly but steadily to the conviction that fertile and productive farms are the real measure of our National welfare; that of the four great essentials of civilized life-food, clothing, shelter, and transportation-food is the first to be considered. Man can shelter himself in caves, clothe himself in bark, and transport himself on his own feet if he has food; but he cannot do even these three elementary things unless he eats. In other words, mill-owners and bankers and merchants are thinking to-day as they never have thought before that the United States is primarily an agricultural country. Farmers are beginning to think so too.

This growing realization of the overemphasis which, since the Civil War, the American people have laid upon manufactures is doubtless the fundamental 'reason for the wave of dissatisfaction and unrest which is sweeping over the great agricultural States of the Union. The so-called farm bloc in Congress is simply a vocal expression of this dissatisfaction. The real hope of the farmer, however, lies, not in the United States Treasury, but in the fact that the wisest and most far-seeing industrialists and financiers are actively and earnestly joining in the

"back to the farm" movement-a movement not to the old hit-or-miss farming, typified by Millet's famous picture of "The Man With the Hoe," but to "group settlements which result in the nearness of neighbors, good schools, and social meetings, and which take away the lonesomeness and isolation of the usual pioneer life."

The foregoing quotation is made from a notable report of the South Carolina Land Settlement Commission to Governor McLeod, of that State. In a letter inclosing the report the chairman of this Commission, ex-Governor Richard I. Manning, one of the foremost citizens of the South, writes to me as follows:

The South is developing in a satisfactory way along industrial lines. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of her agricultural interests. Tenancy is increasing; rural people are moving into the industrial centers. To meet this situation our Commission feels that we must have a larger rural citizenship of home-owners. It is to this end we are working. As our condition is one that confronts most sections of our country, I am hoping that you can pass this report, or some part of it, on to the public with such statements as you see fit to make.

Reports of this kind generally give me a tired feeling. I receive many of them. They propose all kinds of legislative and political panaceas, most of which appear on their face to be hopeless or impractical. But I have such a high regard for Governor Manning, whose personality is as delightful as his mind is wise, that with a sigh I resolved to read the report, although it consists of twenty-two typewritten pages. Before I had finished the third page, however, I found that I needed no personal motive to urge me on. It not only contains interesting facts, but is written in an interesting fashion. I wish it could be put into the hands of every man and woman who believes with the old Roman Marcus Porcius Cato that "it is from the tillers of the soil that spring the best citizens, the stanchest soldiers; and theirs are the enduring rewards which are most grateful and least envied; such as devote them

selves to that pursuit are least of all men given to evil counsels." For this definition of the farmer, translated from Cato's "De Agricultura," I am indebted to another Southerner, Mr. Fairfax Harrison, President of the Southern Railway Company.

The South Carolina Land Settlement Commission, of which Governor Manning is chairman, grew out of a conference of citizens held in Columbia early this year. In it there were college professors, newspaper men, bankers, cotton planters and manufacturers, merchants, and railway representatives. The Commission not only studied conditions in South Carolina, but last summer made a journey through Utah, California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin for the of purpose studying at first hand plans for the promotion of land settlement. As to conditions in South Carolina the Commission reports that eight hundred thousand acres of cultivated land have been abandoned in the last three years. thousand white families have moved to the cotton-mills and lumber camps during the last two years." But the case is not hopeless:

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After traveling through twenty States of the Union, the Commission returned home with a greater respect for the potential power of South Carolina's resources. We understand better than we ever did before what a mistake thousands of farmers of the Western States are continually making when they move to the treeless plains of the Northwest, "where they must pay six hundred miles of freight on a chip that they want to throw at a bird, and then must pay for a post to hold the bird up while they throw the chip." Everything that goes to make civilization must be carted until the soil can pay tribute food, clothing, building material, et cetera, while in South Carolina all these things are at our doors. The great difficulty is to make the outside world believe it. This can never be done except through organized effort on the part of the State, with the enactment of the necessary legislation.

Let no reader make the mistake of supposing that the Commission's report is merely propaganda for booming real estate. It is a careful study of the farm colonization plans successfully carried on in California, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, and praises the efforts which have been made in these States to encourage farming enterprises that shall be both commercially profitable and socially agreeable.

Under the auspices of a land coloniza