THE DILEMMA IN THE BONUS

I'

F money is to be paid, either as a further compensation or as a free gift without thought of compensation, to the men who served in the American Army during the war, it cannot be snatched from the air. Even

if the money is immediately secured by

a bond issue or is taken from the sums which may be paid to the United States by the debtor nations of Europe, the burden upon the taxpayer will be only postponed; it will not be removed. If the money is to be raised by bonds, those who lend the money by buying the bonds will ultimately have to be repaid out of taxes; and if the money is paid from the amounts owed to the United States, it means that the tax burden which those amounts might lighten will remain unrelieved.

If the people of this country were convinced that the payment of a bonus to each of the men who served in the war was the best use that could be made of the money, there would be no complaint. The pressure upon Congress to pass a bonus bill has been met, however, by a pressure in the contrary direction. As soon as it was plain that a bonus bill meant more taxes, protests began to flood Congress.

1 A number of suggestions for the necessary taxes were made. Among them the following:

FEBRUARY 22, 1922

biles and gasoline would bear heavily upon the farmers, who are dependent more than ever before on their "flivvers" and their gasoline tractors, and are less able than ever to pay their present taxes. The tax on light wines and beer is of course opposed by the supporters of strict prohibition, for such a tax would involve relaxing the prohibitory laws.

Of all the taxes the most practicable seems to be the sales tax; but because that is very widely distributed it would arouse widespread opposition. Its very merit creates a difficulty.

In a long speech in the Senate Mr. Borah, of Idaho, discussed the bonus on Monday of last week. He estimated the cost of providing properly for the disabled soldiers alone as ultimately amounting to at least seventy-five thousand million dollars, and declared that any bonus to men of sound mind and body would cripple the Government's power to provide for the disabled. Moreover, he argued with force that to prevent, or even retard, the recovery of agriculture and commerce in this country by means of imposing new burdens upon agriculture and commerce would be to do a greater injury to the men asking for the bonus than any benefit which they might derive from it.

Perhaps men who went overseas and came back to find that in their absence some of their neighbors who escaped military service prospered, while they themselves lost their jobs, their energy, and their hope, will not be quick to respond to Senator Borah's appeal that "the situation which confronts this country at this time is more perilous and requires more consideration and more sacrifice at the hands of these young men than the distressful days in which they were in the camp;" but they may be led to realize that in asking for the bonus they are asking for something which will ultimately work to their own injury by preventing or greatly postponing the end of this period of unemployment, and they may be affected by the fact that what they ask for would inevitably lessen the power of the Government to do what it ought to do for their "buddies" who were wounded.

MOB VIOLENCE A
FEDERAL OFFENSE

HE House of Representatives has

Tpassed the

ready described in The Outlook. The strongest thing the opponents of the law

seem to have found to say against it is expressed by the New York "World" when it declares that the bill would never have passed the House if it had not been that its opponents had no reason for voting against it because they knew that it was unconstitutional.

This kind of thing is easier to say than to prove. We have, on the one hand, a declaration by the New York "World" that the Dyer Bill is unconstitutional. On the other hand, it is stated by the friends of the bill that its constitutionality has been recognized by the Department of Justice through Judge Goff and by Attorney-General Daugherty, and that the House Committee on the Judiciary was convinced that the bill is Constitutional and so declared.

The Supreme Court of the United States is the one and only authority on. this subject, and the "World," like other people, might well await its decision before settling the matter offhand.

The bill provides fines or imprisonment for persons convicted in Federal courts of taking part in any act of mob violence which leads to the death of the person attacked; it forbids and penalizes also any interference with an officer protecting a prisoner from lynching; it penalizes the act of an official who fails to do his duty in preventing a lynching. It goes further also in providing penalties against States, counties, or towns which fail to use all reasonable effort to protect citizens against mob violence.

That lynching is a National, and not a local, offense may be argued from the fact that the reputation of the country at large suffers from acts of violence and barbarism. The Republican leader in the House said, "The finger or scorn of other nations is pointed at us for not taking steps to check . . . such frightful and atrocious crimes as burning at the stake." It is well also to remember that the usual emotional argument in favor of lynching, namely, that it is punishment for attacks upon women, loses most of its force when it is known that such offenses are, and have been for many years, responsible for less than a third of the total lynchings and that not a few of even the burnings alive were for quite different offenses.

The ultimate way out from such a condition of affairs as this is through education and character building, but in the meanwhile we may well ask whether the States in which lynching most often

was decided that not only the eleven judges elected last September by the Assembly and Council of the League of Nations, but also four supplementary judges should participate in this election. The eleven judges are:

Viscount Finlay, formerly Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.

André Weiss, Member of the Institute of France.

Commendatore Dionisio Anzilotti, Professor of International Law at the University of Rome.

Rafael Altamira, Senator of Spain and one of the original draftsmen of the fundamental statute of the new tribunal.

Ruy Barbosa, Brazilian statesman and law professor.

Max Huber, jurisconsult to the Swiss Government in international affairs.

B. T. C. Loder, member of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands and an eminent authority on maritime law.

Didrik Galtrup Gjedde Nyholm, of Denmark, President of the Mixed Court of Cairo, Egypt.

Yorozu Oda, Professor of International Law at the University of Kyoto, Japan. John Bassett Moore, former Councilor of our Department of Státe.

The four deputy judges are: Demetriu Negulesku, of Rumania, delegate to the League of Nations.

C. W. Wang, President of the Chinese Supreme Court.

Nikhaile Jovanovich, of Jugoslavia. Frederik Valdemar Nikolai Beichmann, of Norway.

These judges, chosen by the representatives of the fifty-one nations in the League, are to preside over a Court always open to settle disputes on the basis of law and justice rather than on that of diplomatic expediency. Moreover, the Court will be open not only to members of the League of Nations, but also to all states invited to join the League.

Keystone

our delegates at the Conference, he would change the old so-called "Permanent Court of Arbitration," erected by the First Hague Conference (which was really neither "permanent" nor a "court"), into a real court of justice, to be always open, and to settle cases, not as subjects for diplomatic arbitral negotiations, but as cases to be judged solely by the strict application of rules of international law. The Second Hague Conference approved the project and established a court in all details with the exception of the choosing of judges. This detail has now been settled by Mr. Root, who, in his position on the committee of jurists chosen by the League of Nations to establish the new Court, succeeded in providing that the judges should be chosen by the Assembly and the Council of the League. Of course Mr. Root was asked to be one of the eleven judges. At his declination the invitation went to John Bassett Moore, a foremost American authority in international law.

Dr. Loder was appropriately elected President of the new Court. He will receive an annual salary of 15,000 florins (normally a Dutch florin is worth about forty cents) plus an allowance of 45,000 florins, while the other ten judges each draw 15,000 florins annually plus an allowance of 20,000 florins. These salaries are borne by the League of Nations.

The judges are to appear in blackvelvet robes, lined with black silk, with the collars trimmed with ermine. will wear black-velvet berettas, similar to those worn by the judges of French courts.

The new Court will, we do not doubt, do two things; it will define what con

stitutes international law, and it will

apply fairly and fearlessly the principles of right and justice.

HAT is the difference between "nonviolent, non-co-operation" and "civil disobedience"? Mahatma Gandhi recently changed the first formula to the second in his propaganda for a larger share of self-government by the native people of India. The first formula indicates non-resistance or at the most passive resistance. Does the second go further? It certainly was so interpreted by the British authorities, for the India Office on February 7, according to Associated Press despatches, issued an official communication indi cating "that it was the intention of the Government to adopt stern measures to suppress the campaign of civil disobe dience in India" and adding that "no Government could discuss, much less accept, the demands contained in the re cent manifesto of Mahatma K. Gandhi, the Indian Nationalist leader."

Both phrases have unquestionably been used by Gandhi, although the sec ond has been variously quoted as "civil disobedience" and "civic disobedience." Whether rightly or not, this has been interpreted by the Secretary for India, Mr. Montagu, as revolution, not evolution, and he laments that the people of India should think they could get selfgovernment by revolution. At the same time, it is reassuring to note, the Secre tary for India declares that the British Government is in favor of "swaraj" (the term used by the agitators for selfgovernment), but points out that to ob tain the same kind of self-government that Canada has means to gain the same ability and restraint, and that this must be a gradual process.

The situation has changed definitely and hopefully since this utterance by a responsible representative of the British Government. It had been generally reported that the arrest of Gandhi had been ordered, on the ground that his new plan of civil disobedience involved encouragement of violence. The fact that now in India there is an alliance between Mohammedan revolutionary teachers and Buddhist revolutionary teachers had caused some fear as to the outlook. Wisely and sensibly, however, Gandhi immediately announced that he had decided to abandon his programme of civil disobedience for the present at least. As this decision was based on disapproval of two or three recent outbreaks of violence, in one of which seventeen native policemen were killed,

it may be taken to indicate that Gandhi's real feeling is still toward a

International

non-resisting, peaceful remonstrance rather than for violence or active disobedience of the Government.

An excellent statement about the Indian situation was made lately by Dr. Shastri, of the University of Calcutta. In a lecture at Princeton, he said:

I favor a continuation of association with England. India must learn the art of government and administration. To separate suddenly from the Empire would be suicide. India needs an evolution of national character. Before I went to Canada I did not understand what was meant by a dominion within the Empire. Why, Canada has the highest kind of selfgovernment. She is a free country in every sense of the word. Such a free country would I see India.

I have a strong faith in British statesmanship. In my opinion, India cannot entirely exercise self-government under present conditions, as there would be mob rule.

TURMOIL IN IRELAND

HE present state of things in Ireland

lieve what one pessimist has said: that the Irish, Protestant and Catholic, those who favor a republic and those who believe in the Irish Free State, all are too prone to use their passions rather than their brains. As we write Great Britain is retarding the withdrawal of troops from Southern Ireland and is strengthening her forces in Ulster to protect the border from forays by her unneighborly neighbors to the south;. forces of the Irish Free State are drawn up on their side of the division line; men of Ulster have been captured and carried south over the border.

All this turmoil and danger is said to have begun with what should have been a trifle-the arrest of some ardent

Sinn Feiners who attended a football game in Belfast with revolvers in their pockets. They were arrested for carrying concealed weapons, and their excited fellow-patriots in the south demanded their immediate release and, without waiting to see what would happen, began sporadic guerrilla warfare. The incident is nothing; the real cause of this trouble is that sectional hatred which seems stronger now than even before. The prospect for a harmonious, united, single Ireland is not promising.

Add to the other troubles of Ireland the strong support that De Valera seems to be gaining in his reasonless agitation for a republic and nothing but a republic, and the situation seems to have portentous indications of possible civil war in the south, as well as sectional war in the northeast. It has been pointed out that De Valera's own substitute treaty (the one that he tried to get his own southern Parliament to demand in place of the agreement at London) did not contain even the word republic, nor anything that meant republic. His followers are emotionalists and lovers of strife rather than of concord and prosperity.

We have in this country just now a veteran in the struggle for true selfgovernment in Ireland, Sir Horace Plunkett. We are extremely glad to see remarks in a recent address of his in New York which represented the view, not of an unreasoning optimist, but of a quiet and sensible lover of Ireland. Sir Horace said:

There is nothing in any of these happenings to make us fear for the future of Ireland or to lead us to believe they will mar the course which the treaty has laid down. They are just the inevitable result of what Ire

land has gone through in the past fifty years, during which time the fiercest political passions have been aroused in the Irish minds.

That Sir Horace is not pro-British in his view was indicated by two or three of his replies to questions on this occasion. One auditor asked him to tell "the difference between Casement and Carson." He instantly replied, "One they hanged and one they made a judge." He also declared that Carson represented a policy antagonistic to fourfifths of the Irish people. His belief in the ultimate unity of Ireland was vividly put in the sentence: "God made one Ireland, and Lloyd George proposed to make it two. We cannot have peace, progress, and prosperity in Ireland without unity."

THE ITALIAN CABINET AND THE ROMAN CHURCH

A

T the moment of the Pope's election the Italian Cabinet falls. During recent months the tendency of Church and State in Italy to come together has increased. Thus the King decorated Cardinal Maffi with a high order-and he is the only prelate ever so honored. Certain mutual privileges have been recognized by the Vatican and the Italian Government. When Sigor Bonomi succeeded to power, he stated that the relations between Church and State were more promising. Although the Giolitti Cabinet contained three members from the Catholic (or Popular) party, the three of that party who en tered the Bonomi Cabinet were more eminent and they occupied the impor tant positions of Ministers of Justice, Agriculture, and Public Works.

The official visit of condolence of one of these Ministers, Signor Mauri, to the Vatican the day after Benedict XV's death aroused strong feeling among nonCatholics and anti-Catholics, which was strengthened by the announcement that in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate eulogies of the late Pope would be delivered by the Presidents of those bodies. The Opposition caused hesitation concerning the eulogies, and the Catholic party remonstrated as to any delay. The Cabinet was thus beset behind and before.

After reviewing the situation, Signor Bonomi decided to act as M. Briand had done in a similar exigency, and, without waiting for an adverse vote in the Chamber, resigned. The King has had much difficulty in inducing some one to take his place.

The fall of the Bonomi Cabinet may have been hastened also by the fear that the new Pope (who, like Cardinal Maffi, is accounted as very favorable to a rapprochement between Church and