"the Midway." All of this district is now within the city limits of St. Paul, attached to that municipality, so the disgruntled 'politans aver, by a sudden night session of the Legislature in the capital city. In the competitive boostings and counter-blasts of the commercial bodies the entire value of these industries is, on the one hand, calmly annexed and, on the other hand, disputed. St. Paul, with an auditorium seating ten thousand delegates, bags most of the conventions, but Minneapolis is building a larger auditorium to compete with it. During a slight smallpox epidemic the press went so far as to battledore and shuttlecock the higher death rate from one side to the other. And so, seventy years after the petty warfare started, it continues to wage. Conan Doyle, in his "Memories and Adventures," published after the war, regarding the Twin Cities. as the international standard of intercity squabbling, tells the story of the small Minnesota boy, asked by his Sundayschool teacher who persecuted Saint Paul, "Don't know," he said, but he guessed "it must have been Minneapolis."

The situation has its humorous effect, just as the Billingsgate exchanged between southern California and California impresses Uitlanders as a joke. But the bigger men in both cities are beginning to forget recriminations in their realization of what the neighborhood is losing. and their broader view of the future development possible to a great united city. Sears Roebuck, considering possible sites for the decentralization of its mighty business, passes over "a house divided against itself" in favor of the more amicable locations of St. Louis or Kansas City; and perhaps Montgomery Ward, already enormously established on "the Midway" and disturbed by the hubbub going on across its plant, may be sorry it came. The truth, demonstrated by the traced arc of Hill's dividers remains true, not for Minneapolis or St. Paul, but for the Twin Cities made one.

In the meantime much remains to be said of Minneapolis on its own behalf. Some years ago, when the Rev. Lyman Abbott visited the city, four hundred of the representative citizens gathered at luncheon to hear him speak on a National topic. At the close of his remarks Governor Johnson, of Minnesota, of an opposite political faith, was asked to respond for the State and the city. Unprepared, he did so rather lamely by contrast with the eloquent address which had preceded his own. After a while, becoming rather embarrassingly involved, he suddenly stopped, in a silence which became dramatic. Leaning forward, he pounded the table with his fist: "I don't care what Dr. Abbott thinks," said he.

"It is so profound a pleasure to listen to a man who originally does think."

Unconsciously, the Lincoln of the Northwest spoke for himself and for the type of intelligence that impresses a visitor in Minneapolis to-day. Conforming in all essential respects to well-established public opinion, Minneapolis manages to keep its own identity distinct. It is one of the strongest "open-shop" communities in the United States-openshop in labor, open-shop in occupations. It is typical of this individuality that the Old Guard and their many youthful imitators walk to work. Ole Bull in bronze playing his magic violin in Loring Park represents a city of sincere music lovers. Every evening in the warm months by thousands the people come together in the parks, Scandinavians and Germans predominating, for communal singing;

and at the end of the season one of the two leading newspapers awards a silver trophy cup to the best people's chorus. Minneapolis makes its own music in its own way, and enjoys it. Also it appreciates the best music of the masters. Not long after Major Henry Higginson formed in Boston the first great American symphony orchestra, E. L. Carpenter organized in Minneapolis its counterpart, which he has ever since insured in poplar support. On the corner of the enormous Dayton department store, which occupies an entire city block, is sunk a bronze tablet recording the fact that the store is founded, as a house upon the rock, upon the old site of Westminster Church; and Mr. George Draper Dayton, like Oliver Wendell Holmes "seventy years young." goes on piling up fortunes without advertising in the Sun

day papers or keeping his show-windows illuminated on the Lord's Day. Minneapolis merchants do business in their own way.

In the sweeping circumference of parkways by which the city in wise forethought has protected its future develop

ment and, in some measure, insured its beauty, Charles M. Loring, another of the city's pioneers, has left in "Victory Drive," as an evidence of his own idealism and the originality of his community, one of the most singularly appropriate memorials of the great war. In four

parallel rows he planted four miles of elm trees from one end to the other of this American Champs Élysée, each tree marked with the name of a Minnesota soldier fallen in the fight each tree growing in living memory of that one man, and all together marching in victory.

Ο

NE who crosses the Pacific gets the impression of it as a vast and lonesome ocean. But around its shores, if you count India, which is Asiatic in its outlook, live more than two-thirds of the human race. The teeming populations of the western shore, the rising national and race consciousness in that area, the interwoven and vested interests of the white peoples, the plasticity of it all as compared with the hard-panned nature of Europe, unite to make the Pacific basin for America as well as for other nations the most seriously important section of the world.

T

America Eyes the East

HE time is here when the prophecy of William H. Seward in 1852 is fulfilled. "The shores of the Pacific," said he, its islands and the regions beyond, will become the world's chief theater of events."

." President Roosevelt was impressed with the same conviction when he wrote President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, of the University of California, in 1905: "I believe that our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China, than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe."

I think this is the instinctive opinion of the people of the United States, and is revealed, as yet perhaps in a bungling way, in the kind of foreign policy which we insist upon for the Government at Washington to follow. We seem to have three popular kinds of foreign policy for three different sections of the earth. For Europe aloofness, except under the most extraordinary international crisis; for the Americans, a protecting arm and almost unlimited co-operation with other republics; for Asia, positive helpfulness and continuing co-operation with the nations of Europe and Asia whose homeland or possessions lie in this great region. Even in, Europe we have permitted our Government to move a step forward from the complete isolation of the fathers. We allow Washington to carry out its policies

through an indirect, unofficial technique. Washington has observers at Geneva, our members of the committees functioning practically completely. Upon non-political problems, such as those relating to opium or the protection of women and children, we are willing to have our representatives sit in closely. Upon reparations we are pleased to have Messrs. Dawes, Robinson, and Young, selected by our State Department but appointed by the Reparations Commission, bear dramatically the leadership and publicity of the enterprise. When the supremely vital reparations financing is finally determined upon in London, it so happens quite providentially and coincidentally that the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, the American observers, the American- Ambassador, the bankers from New York, the experts, the advisers, the technical assistants, all happen to be in London at the same time. This is our indirect technique, designed to emphasize the view that we desire to have nothing to do with the purely local political issues and the age-old political entanglements of Europe.

But the eye of our foreign policy has always looked benevolently out upon the Pacific. We have possessions stretching to the very shores of Asia. We have the Philippines, about which most of the time we appear to think or care nothing at all; but, as President Wilbur, of Leland Stanford, said at the Honolulu. gathering, if anybody should suddenly take them away from us, we would not think of anything else until we got them back.

Our idealism about territorial integrity and the open door for China are known of all men-known generally as rather ineffective bunk, I was shocked to learn when out in the middle of the Pacific. That is, our mental astuteness and moral pressure have only at intervals been sufficient to exert any particular influence against land-grabbing and doors slamming shut. But one thing is certain, Americans are not, and never

have been, isolationists where Asia is concerned.

A

The Shanghai Riots

ND the great issue there is still China. Nothing was more evident at the Honolulu conference. There was more discussion of China than of all other countries put together. The causes of the recent Shanghai riots were explained and interpreted. The Bolshevists were not the cause. The riots were only so much tinder for their flame. The riots grew out of the shooting of a Chinese worker in a Japanese cotton-mill. The worker was protesting to the foreman in behalf of his striking fellows in order to secure payment of back wages, held out to make the laborers stick more certainly to their jobs; and the foreman shot the worker for his impudence and insubordination. This was in the heart of Shanghai, in the great international concession ruled over by an international Municipal Council, where the million Chinese have nothing to say and nothing to do except to pay seventy-five per cent of the taxes. Everything else is attended to by a small international oligarchy known as the Municipal Council, presided over by a perfectly good Englishman. Well, a body of students, who are of course a revered class in China, looked upon the shooting incident as a sign of foreign oppression and regarded the slain laborer as having died a martyr to the cause of the country. There seemed to be no other way of redress, and so they commemorated his death by a memorial service and a parade. During the parade some of the students milled over into the confines of this international area, and were promptly arrested by the international police. Then the whole body of students demanded to be arrested along with the few, and followed the police to headquarters. They had no weapons at all. The crowd increased in front of the station to about fifteen hundred. The police tried to disperse them, but the students.

still insisted upon being arrested. Then warning was given that they would be fired upon. The crowd broke out into laughter. They could not imagine it. Ten seconds later a British sergeant gave the signal to fire-forty-four shots altogether. As a result about a dozen died and twice as many were wounded, seven being shot in the back. Not even the influential Chinese in Shanghai condoned the mob lawlessness on the part of the students. They appreciated the social unwisdom of that sort of procedure. But the sense of outrage on the part of the people, particularly because of the shooting of students, was so great that a joint committee of investigation and conciliation was demanded. The stubborn tactlessness of the English authorities again asserted itself, and they stood pat behind the machine guns and the marines in the harbor. Thereupon the sense of outrage spread to the distant parts of the Empire.

THE

China Emergent

HE relating of this incident at the conference opened wide at once the whole question of the growing foreign industrialization of China, with the increasing manifestations of radical unrest and strike agitation. It is clear that it is espe

cially perilous for the Orient to make

industrially the mistakes of the Occident. It is particularly necessary that the Orient should avoid the sweatshop and the slum, the long hours and the exploitation of women and children, of the weak and the poor, the underfeeding, the bad housing, and bad working conditions. It was brought out that unless we do all in our power to assist the Orient to avoid the costly mistakes made by the Occident during the evolution of the industrial system we shall suffer severely, directly and indirectly. The exploitation has already begun. The workers of China are not getting their share of the immense profits due to the introduction of machinery, power, management. The masses do not yet know it, but when they wake up there will be an explosion that will work great havoc under the existing political and social agitations and resentments of the Chinese people. Even now strikes run quickly into political radicalism. The new Russia is watching and is hard by. Also it appears that the swift development of the capitalistic system in China, with the worse exploitative features, and the consequent low costs of production, will mean fierce competition for the workers of the more advanced lands and have grave political and economic consequences there. This is notably true of England and Japan. It was suggested that it is even doubtful whether

the full capitalistic system should be put into operation in China. There the individual operates naturally as a member of a family, a clan, a guild, and co-operative production as well as distribution in many fields might be more successful than in Europe. It was said that careful thought should be given in China and by the friends of China to determine whether at least a modified capitalism in line with the traditional habits of the people for thousands of years may not make up in happiness to the worker what might be lost in mere efficiency of production; whether a measure of the creative satisfaction which the worker now secures from his handicrafts may not be worth more than a life of inescapable monotony, bound to a machine and forced to seek relief in drink or drugs or in diversions totally disconnected with the daily occupation.

Every modern country has a direct personal selfish interest in the lifting of the standards of well-being among the toiling masses of India, Japan, and China. The destruction of the poor in

the Orient is their poverty, and the grow

ing consciousness of it is becoming the dynamic of Asia.

Foreign Courts in China Bur China is in ferment over other

UT

issues. One is extra-territoriality, the privilege granted by China to foreigners, removing them from the jurisdiction of the national courts. This privilege carries with it the duty of the foreign Powers to see to it that their nationals are kept in order and adequately punished if kept in order and adequately punished if found guilty of offense. This duty, it appears, has in many cases not been well performed by the foreign consular courts, and the Chinese believe they have suffered grievous wrongs. China alone is now subject to this impairment of her sovereignty. Japan freed herself from this restraint long ago, and Turkey also since the Great War. With the development of commerce and missionary activities and the presence of nationals from many treaty Powers at the open ports, and the right of all to travel in the interior and of missionaries to hold property and to reside there, it was shown that the system has become very complicated and developed far beyond the ideas of early negotiators. It was freely admitted that extra-territoriality is wrong and a serious infringement upon the sovereignty of China, and that relinquishment of these rights by the treaty Powers should come at the first opportunity; but it was strongly urged also that the condition of the law and the courts in China, now that the rights have become in a sense vested, does not war

rant immediate abolition of extraterritoriality. China is beginning to draft modern codes, but she has not by any means an adequate number of judges to sit either in the large treaty ports or in the courts of first instance throughout the country.

The Washington Conference in 1922 agreed to the establishment of a commission to investigate the actual state of affairs with respect to extra-territoriality and report to the signatory Powers; but the formal exchange of ratifications of the Nine-Power Treaty, emanating from the Washington Conference and relating to China, has only just been accomplished, and the Chinese themselves have been cool to the investigation, either because they have feared that the report would be biased under the influence of foreign merchants thriving under the special privileges of the existing system, or because they themselves know that they are not nationally ready for the change.

Taxes Fixed by Foreigners

How

ow many in this country are informed of the fact that a universal tariff rate of five per cent ad valorem has been fixed for China by the European Powers ever since 1842? Of course, this is a very low rate which permits of the exploitation of the market of four hundred million people. Now that China is becoming industrialized, how long should this process of tariff fixing by foreign Powers be allowed to continue? America has always insisted upon supporting high standards of living for her industrial classes through the protective tariff. Can we take any other position than that China should be allowed to do likewise for her laboring classes, just as a matter of human justice, to say nothing about the raw violation of sovereignty involved in the present practice? And yet any rapid change here would probably mean serious economic dislocation in nations like Great Britain and Japan which depend in considerable measure upon this artificial market in China. One reason for the feebleness of the Central Government of Peking is, of course, that the whole tax system of the nation is mortgaged to foreign Powers in one way or another.

When the entire indictment is drawn up, it is startling to what extent China has been stripped of territory, of sovereignty, and of national strength by the European Powers. And now the national consciousness is awakened. The masses of China for the first time are demanding their country back from those who have so long had control of it. Young China is also demanding that the nation put its

own house in order. The Chinese people themselves are by no means blameless. They have for generations allowed a weak, helpless, inert and venal Government to make corrupt bargains with foreign Powers.

The new spirit in China is still a hopeless minority spirit, but there are constructive forces at work which point to vast changes a little further on. The national mass education movement, the people's organizations centering around a common occupational interest, the students' patriotic movement which in 1918 forced the Chinese Government to refuse to sign the Versailles Treaty, the Nationwide Anti-Opium Society, the "teahouse" public opinion which made abortive the "Twenty-one Demands" of Japan in 1915, the renaissance movement of the intellectuals to take stock of the mental heritage of China and to create new ideas and ideals-these are more than harbingers of a better day. Capitalism, Christianity, and Battleships

T

HE effect of the Great War upon the national consciousness of China appears to have been very striking. A large element of the leadership seems to be questioning the real worth of Western civilization, its capitalism, its Christianity, its battleships. This time it is not reactionary Boxers, but student liberals whom Western civilization is facing. These critics describe Christianity as a religious mask for political and economic imperialism and exploitation. They charge Christianity with denominational prejudice, disunity, superstition, antinationalism, and hostility to science. They are themselves men of national consciousness and scientific spirit. The European War gave them their shock and

Their view is embodied in a telling and famous cartoon of wide dissemination in China-a giant, one foot on a battleship, one on a pile of guns, one hand pointing to an airplane, the other resting on a tank, breathing out of his mouth poison gas which is framing itself in the sky into the letters-"In God we trust." If that is European Christianity. they are through with it, even though they are not through with Christ.

The conference at Honolulu brought these issues and angles of Asiatic sentiment, and many others, full into the light of discussion and reflection. They should give the Powers pause. Should they not lead America to consider more seriously than is her wont her diplomatic as well as moral responsibility in the Pacific? The conference permitted no conclusions and no statements of policy. But must not America formulate wise conclusions? China is still our chief moral as

well as diplomatic problem among the nations. The strengthening of China against dissolution and exploitation is still the way of justice, as well as of our own National comfort and protection against unending turmoils and war perils in the Pacific. Not by jingo irritations of Japan nor.tail-twisting of the British

I'

lion, but by intelligent co-operation with both these countries in a programme of helpfulness and hope for the sovereign Chinese people-this moral alliance should have power to checkmate Russia as the traditional disturber of Asiatic peace, hold back even a Teutonized Russia from the further imperialistic exploi

tation of Asia, open Mongolia to Chinese and Japanese migration, and shield the shores of the western United States from even the possibility of invasion. The expansion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance into one which included America came none too soon.

Camp Roosevelt, Yellowstone Park, Wyoming.

T used to be my experience to have some of my themes returned by teachers of English composition with the comment that they were lacking in unity. Later, when I began to offer manuscripts to editors, they would occasionally take refuge in the same excuse for refusing them. Sometimes it was just; sometimes it struck me as a very bad reason indeed. Undoubtedly, it is orthodox procedure for the editor of the literary section of a paper to group his books by subject and refuse to let the writers of reviews ramble through a miscellaneous collection of books, merely on the ground that they are all books, and, therefore, may be discussed together.

A rule is a good one when it may be broken for cause, and I confess that the string which binds together the books mentioned in this article is simply that I have been reading them and finding enjoyment in them this summer. A few indeed have been put aside for a longer time than I like to admit, because they were especially interesting and deserved long treatment. One of the discouraging things about reviewing books is the limitation of space, and the necessity for discussing, in a paragraph, an admirable book which deserves its two or three pages just as much as some of the others which happened to get that amount.

Frank Scudamore's "A Sheaf of Memories" is included through its own merits and interest rather than by any intention of mine. When I saw that it was another volume of recollections by a war correspondent, it seemed to be one of a large tribe and not apt to detain an American reader long. As a matter of fact, I have returned to it again and again, reading in it here and there, and have found it one of the liveliest and best of its kind. The author may be the oldest living English war correspondent. He went to Turkey with his father in 1875, when his father organized the Turkish

1A Sheaf of Memories. By Frank Scudamore. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $5.

postal system. Later, Mr. Scudamore was in practically all the Egyptian and Near-Eastern campaigns for thirty or forty years, and witnessed most of the stirring events and knew all of the great figures in Egypt and the Sudan during that remarkable period. His stories of Constantinople under the old empire, of Kitchener and the other Sirdars, and of fights like that at Omdurman, are delightfully related. He never takes himself too seriously, nor is his book an attempt at a history or a treatise. It is amusing, and mainly it is light and easy reading, with curious anecdotes like that concerning Slatin Pasha and the stork. I may add that if this should come to the eyes of the Librarian of the University of California he will find the book to his taste.

In "On the Trail of the Bad Men"* Arthur Train delivers his farewell to the law, and as he leaves he curses it roundly. Henceforth the literary life for him, and no more quibbles and quiddities. This is too bad. There may be two opinions about Mr. Train as a novelist, but I am prepared to fight any one who says that the books which resulted from his experience in the District Attorney's office (such as "True Stories of Crime") are not the very best of their kind. Mr. Train ought to be permanent District Attorney of New York, with many deputies to harry the criminals

to write anything outside their own dreary professional productions.

Arthur Guiterman's "A Poet's Proverbs" makes its readers wonder again how this man can be a Charles Stuart

Calverley, a Benjamin Franklin, and a aphorisms and sententious sayings and Chinese sage all in one. Perhaps the

precepts are not new; nobody to-day can invent a new moral lesson. They all originated in the reign of the Emperor Hwang. Mr. Guiterman, however, contrives to give them a new and amusing twist, and his phraseology is always thoroughly American. Take, for example, this:

"Who'd ever fancy," mused the wise

old Frog,

"That I was once a simple Pollywog!", or this

The Hen that Roosted High and
didn't Cluck
Escaped the Fox-that wasn't wholly
Luck.

Many years ago Richard Harding Davis wrote a story called "A Walk Up the Avenue" meaning Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to Central Park. His hero did not pass the Waldorf Astoria, as that hotel was not yet built. That was a pity, for there is almost always something doing near the Waldorf. One may puzzle why the Chinese or the Liberian flag is displayed and wonder what potentate is visiting the hotel; or one may be held up while a President, a Prince, or a King comes in; or, best of all, at breakfast time, one used to be able to look at the satisfied

couples eating their grapefruit at the tables near the windows. To me they always seemed to be saying, "Well, mother, I guess if the folks in Bucksport could see us now it would make their eyes stick right out." Edward Hungerford has written "The Story of the Waldorf-Astoria with fair success.

2 On the Trail of the Bad Men. By Arthur Train. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $3.

He

A Poet's Proverbs. By Arthur Guiterman. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.

$2.