now exists, but also to bring up, consider, and act upon the report of the National Coal Commission of 1923. The last Congress certainly knew that such a report existed, for it appropriated several hundred thousand dollars for its cost, but it neither considered it nor even provided for printing it until the last minute. Much less did it act upon it. Under present pressure, the new Congress will probably do something or other in the course of time, but there are no signs of hurry yet evident.

Take the Blinders Off

TH

HE recent meeting of the Executive Committee of the Federal Council of Churches in Detroit gave the enemies of that body's prohibition report an opportunity once again to denounce it.

Bishop Thomas Nicholson, of the the Methodist Episcopal Church, stated that the report put back the fight for prohibition almost to where it started from and wiped out many of its gains. But certainly the prohibition cause will gain more in the long run by basing its progress upon facts. If the blinders are removed from our eyes and we clearly see existing conditions, surely we can better accomplish our purpose. Bishop Joseph Cannon, of the Southern Methodist Methodist Church, however, disagrees. He said at the Detroit meeting, "I have protested against the issuance of this report because it admitted that there had been a breakdown in social conditions caused by prohibition and its methods of enforcement." Evidently the strongest charge that can be made against the report is that it "admitted" facts.

Statements of this kind from church leaders caused Dr. Nolan R. Best, secretary of the Baltimore Council of Churches, to rise in the same meeting and say, "I thank God for that report," and Dr. William Adams Brown, of Union Seminary, to spring to its defense, saying, "It has brought back a waning public confidence in the honesty of the churches."

The address of Dr. Charles Stelzle, veteran temperance worker and religious leader, reflected his usual good sense and wisdom. "Prohibition is not a failure," he said, "because it never has been fully tried. What is mainly needed at this time is a campaign of education-first, to inform people of the actual facts, and, secondly, to win their support to a policy which will remedy the evils now existing in the prohibition field."

For the World Court

N the recent debate on the World
Court at Princeton before a National

World Court Conference Senator Lenroot defended the Court as being something it isn't, and Clarence Darrow criticised it because it isn't something it doesn't pretend to be.

Senator Lenroot thought the United States should adhere to the World Court because we believe in world peace; Mr. Darrow ridiculed the World Court because it would be "the death of freedom" and because "it is not to act unless somebody tells it to."

Of course the World Court is not a League of Nations nor a peace conference nor an arbitration commission. Its powers are judicial; it sits as a permanent court; it decides juridically cases brought before it by nations for its judgment. It does not make treaties nor does it issue peace propaganda; it does not arbitrate disputes on a basis of compromise; but it interprets and applies to each case international law.

The Outlook heartily supports the proposal for the entrance of the United States into the World Court agreement. The Court is not a branch of the League of Nations, although its inception was through the League. It is a perfectly independent judicial body, and as such is of undoubted value. It is not an attempt to abolish war, but one to decide justiciable disputes.

For many years the United States has been committed to the policy of the establishment of a world court of justice.

Whoever wishes to learn in detail the history of the idea of a world court, and particularly the support which American public sentiment and American official representatives have given to it, can probably do no better than to obtain and read the volume entitled "The World Court," by Antonio S. de Bustamante, who is a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice. (That book also describes clearly, so that the layman may understand, the constitution and character of the present Court and the sort of cases that it has dealt with.)

No business of the Senate during the present session will surpass in importance its action on the World Court. This is not because of any practical effect that joining the World Court would have upon this country. We now have the same access to the Court that we will have after joining it. We shall have no more obligations to use it after joining it

WH

HAT is the reason for the perilous condition of France? Is it that the French people have not learned the lesson taught by the experience of the Germans next door to them? Or is it that the French politicians are taking a leaf out of the book of the politicians of Germany?

All signs in France point to the destruction of the French currency and French Government securities. The franc has been dropping rapidly. It is now worth less than it has ever been worth before. The people in France are doing just what the people in Germany did; they are trying to get rid of their paper money and substitute for it things of permanent value, like real estate, or goods, or even diamonds. And as people offer the franc for sale and find few takers, the franc sinks in value. Experience in other countries shows that when this begins to happen the descent gathers momentum.

French holders of Government securities have naturally wanted their high rates of interest. Proposals to cut down the interest have met such opposition that they have been abandoned. Now it begins to look as if these holders of Government securities were to lose the whole value of their holdings. Perhaps the politicians have come to the conclusion that the best way to pay an internal debt is to render the evidence of it worthless. That is the way that the German Government got rid of its debt, and came near getting rid of its middle class as well.

terms of the proposed plebiscite. Chile has taken Peru's place as the critic of the United States for its course in a task that was not self-imposed. General Pershing, president of the Plebiscitary Commission, has been severely arraigned by former President Alessandri, of Chile, and by Agustin Edwards, Chile's representative on the Commission, and also by the Chilean Foreign Office in a communication addressed to the Chilean embassies and legations abroad.

Chile accuses General Pershing of delay in fixing a date for the plebiscite. Peru believes that a fair plebiscite cannot be arranged before April 15; and General Pershing on this point agrees with Peru. Whatever delay there has been is, in the judgment of the American representative, due to obstructions Chile has placed in the path of a fair and free election. If the whole arrangement is not to go to smash, another appeal to the United States is apparently going to be necessary.

It would appear as if the arbiter must support, as far as possible, the position. of General Pershing, who has studied for months the situation on the grounds minutely. Failure in the arbitration would be a severe blow to the prestige of the United States in Latin America. On the other hand, success will bring ill feeling against the United States on the part of the loser. It is doubtful if any other problem so full of dynamite and rancor is to be found in the international affairs of any of the American republics in which this Government or the President of the United States may be called on to use good offices as arbiter.

Europe Stays at Home

The port of Arica

that the United States should make room for some of the millions of persons superfluous to the needs and detrimental to the comfort of Europe. "Make room," is an old argument, old as Ariovistus; it has retained much of its ancient force. Let us see how far it applies at the pres

ent moment.

In the fiscal year ended with last June the immigrant quotas from five of the six chief sources remained unfilled. Although the law of 1924 had greatly cut the totals that might be admitted to the United States from each nation, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, and Sweden all sent fewer immigrants than the law would permit. Some countries, unlike the United States, want immigrants, and are trying hard to draw them. Even those countries have lately had a hard time obtaining anywhere near as many as they wished. In the recent Canadian election the Canadian Government was accused of having failed in the endeavor to fetch in more immigrants.

In Australia so much is the immigrant wanted and so little forthcoming that the Government has this year undertaken to spend $170,000,000 to assist those who will come and settle. All-British Australia has even swallowed its nationalism to the extent of making an arrangement with Italy for the admission of Italians on special terms. Europe, if overpopulated, knows of vacant places at the moment for many thousands of those who actually prefer to stay at home.

Australia and Canada, it is true, seek colonists rather than laborers. They endeavor to get the sort of persons who will take land, and send down into it the roots of their own persistence and enterprise. Europe is probably not overpopulated with persons of that character. No

Dr. Lee De Forest calls his new invention the audalion, and he believes it is likely to find its widest application as a substitute for the present radio loudspeaker, and for the purpose of furnishing the incidental music and dialogue for his "phonofilm," or talking moving pictures.

If one were to take a sheet of selected tough parchment, curve or bend it so that its opposite edges almost touched one another, thus almost forming a cylinder, slide it loosely into a retaining framework and attach to one of its edges a short steel lever which was actuated by an electromagnetic device not unlike those at present employed for actuating the sound-producing diaphragms of loudspeakers, one would have provided the essential elements of Dr. De Forest's new invention.

How the Modern Inventor
Approaches His Problem
HERE, then, is a somewhat unusual

conception; indeed, it is what might be called a wholly illogical one.

Dr. Lee De Forest's audalion is a new typeof loudspeaker" in which electric impulses are converted into atmospheric pulsations or sound-waves by a new principle. It can be applied to strong radio sets of the more recent types, and it will faithfully reproduce the sound qualities delivered to it by the radio set, thus giving head-set quality of loudspeaking

for the protection of their posterity. This statement is prompted by the selection of the site in the city of Washington for the magnificent memorial which has been designed by John Russell Pope.

If the Roosevelt memorial is placed by the Congress of the United States on the site which has been chosen in Washington, it will stand for all time as a symbol of one of the three great periods in the early life of our Republic. The American Nation, born of Washington's courageous dream, born again of the spirit of Abraham Lincoln rising mountain high above the tumult and shouting of civil war, will then have voiced, by the selection of this location for a memorial to Roosevelt, its faith in a new renaissance of its spiritual integrity.

In the lofty jetting fountain, symbolizing the abundant life of Theodore Roosevelt, this Nation will have created a

at least on a priori grounds-even workable.

It is likely that radio engineers have stuck to the orthodox form of circular diaphragm simply because this method of turning electrical energy into sound is altogether the most "obvious" method.

Yet when facts confront theories, facts win. For example, aeronautical engineers retarded the progress of aviation for a long time because they insisted that the wing or "aerofoil" be thin. It was obvious that the thinner the wing, the less head resistance it would offer. Finally, however, some reckless inventor deliberately tried the illogical. He thickened the aerofoil. Its lifting power was instantly multiplied. Nowadays inventors and scientists are not confining their experiments to the obvious; one highly successful inventor consistently flies in the face of logic, and these experimental discursions have proved immensely profitable to him and to industry.

In a similar manner Dr. De Forest has ignored the drum-beating type of soundreproducing device. Instead, he shakes the edge of a sheet of paper tangentially, like a man-or a woman-shaking a rug, though faster and with less amplitude; and in order to send the sound waves out in more than one direction he rolls this paper into a horseshoe

curve.

One foresees many more applications of this basic sound-reproducing principle than for the radio.

Question ?

ON of the East and South, fosterchild of the West, Theodore Roosevelt expressed in his single personality the multiple virtues and achievements of our American democracy.

Washington stands for the birth of the Republic, Lincoln for the permanency of its political union, Roosevelt for those social ideals that permeate all groups and conditions of Americans.

Because The Outlook is so certain of the future of Roosevelt's fame it does not at this time insist on the need of a memorial to express the influence of Theodore Roosevelt upon the American Nation. If the country is fully ready for that memorial, let us erect it now. If there is dissension and disagreement, let us wait for the time when the thunders that broke about his head have become but dimly remembered echoes.

Memorials, after all, add little to the fame of any man. They are monuments, not to the men nations delight to honor, but to the nations who find delight in such men. Unless the heart and mind of the Nation keep march with the spirit and courage of Theodore Roosevelt, massive colonnades of marble will be but empty shells, meaningless physical adornments as void of life as any tomb.

The question of a memorial to Roosevelt resolves itself into something more than the attainment of an ultimate estimate of his achievements. It implies a choice by the American people of the banner under which they choose to fight

of the world that the heart and mind of this man shall stand through the ages as a well-spring of its National life. Is America ready for the question?

A Nation's, Not a Section's, Problem

WTM

E do not agree with Mr. Lilienthal when he says, in his article in this issue, that in their problem of living together the two races have made "a sorry, disorderly, and often bloody mess of it." On the whole, the whites and the blacks in the South live together amicably. Lynchings, real oppression, and the sort of intimidation that causes "race fear" are the exception. If they were not the exception, they would not be news. What we in America must understand is that our problem is to deal with a situation that causes exceptions. That problem is as old as the Nation-and older. It was a problem in Virginia at the time of Jefferson. It was not solved then by the best minds of the South in attempts at gradual emancipation; it was not solved at the time of the Civil War; but it has been all these years in the process of solution. We have been making prog

ress.

Mr. Lilienthal is too despondent in his account of interracial commissions. It is true that the interracial commission in Chicago did not bring a millennium; but it marked a gain. More particularly, the interracial commissions in Southern com

munities have contributed greatly toward an advance to the goal.

Nowhere else in the world is this interracial problem presented more clearly and definitely than it is in the United States. In America both races are learning in the school of experience. We do not yet know for what we are preparing. All we know is that the present task is to provide means by which the two races can live together and yet remain sepa

rate.

There can be no manner of doubt that both races are better off than they were during the era of slavery-better off than they were twenty or twenty-five years ago. The North is beginning now to understand better the problem that the South has faced for generations. The people of the North must not let the novelty of their experience make them feel that the problem has become more complicated. The whole Nation is learning some of the lessons that the South used to study alone.

Should Ministers Be Educated?

M

ANY signs point to a loss in the prestige and influence of the Church. Not the least of these is the decline in the number and quality of students for the ministry.

In his annual report Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, declared:

Unhappily, that "illiterate ministry" which it was the purpose of the pious founders of Harvard College to forfend is now, after three hundred years, in ample evidence on every side. . . If the full truth were said, it would probably be that the greatest obstacle to religious faith, religious conviction, and religious worship is the attitude and influence of a very large proportion of the poorly endowed and poorly educated Protestant clergy.

A

Very

Ex-New Yorker Utters a Cry for Help

Seattle, Washington, November, 1925.

To the Editor of The Outlook: This is from one who spent the first thirty years of his life in your big city and the past ten in Seattle. There are tens of thousands more like me who would consider it exile to have to go back.

We laughed with Mr. Marvin, my family and I, at his stories about Seattle, though it didn't seem particularly inspired. His analyses of cities can hardly all be inspired when he visits each for a few days and must get the "soul" in that short time. But, at any rate, there was nothing to get mad about.

We have three newspapers- -a fool paper, a Hearst paper, and a Scripps paper-not to mention the only big Union daily, with which I'm not familiar (perhaps that's my loss).

It so happened that the "fool" paper got mad over little or nothing, editorialized and made us ridiculous. They could be counted on to do that.

If you ever hear of a man, a good man, who is looking for a city that is hungering for a real newspaper, for God's sake, send him to us. That is the only thing in your whole big city I'd give a plugged nickel for.

Theological education will not save the ministry or the churches. The reason should be evident. The object and the equipment of the minister are radically different from both the object and the equipment of either the lawyer or the physician.

Modern medicine, for example, is a science. The object of the medical student is to acquire such knowledge of that science as to be able to apply it in combating disease. His success as a physician will be in proportion to his knowledge and his skill. Ignorance in a physician is fatal.

It is not so with the ministry. Advance in scientific knowledge has brought no new capacity for religious leadership. Moses and Isaiah, Paul and John, will remain, as they always have been, in the highest rank in the ministry of religion, and in our own day there has been no greater minister of religion than the unordained Dwight L. Moody, though he was without scientific or scholastic training.

R

ELIGION is a form of power. It is not knowledge; it is not theory; it is not belief. Millions of ignorant people have been profoundly religious. Millions who have been puzzled by contradictory theories about religion have nevertheless been religious. Millions who have not known really what to believe, from long before the days of Thomas to the present, have at the same time been deeply and strongly religious. These millions have somewhere found a source of power which they have utilized in their lives, and that power has been their religion. Whether it has always been a good power or an evil power, a good religion or an evil one, is not to the point. It has not been knowledge that has given them this power, for they have been ignorant; or theological theories, for they have not understood them; nor even belief, for they have retained that power though they have doubted.

Those churches that have not been able to impart this power to men have never grown in influence or in numbers; while those that have been able to impart such power have grown and flourished.

In the New Testament the symbols of religion are the symbols of the source of energy-bread, light, fire, water. And throughout the New Testament, and especially in the words of Christ, the test

T

and the plain. But even the ignorant and even the scholastic can serve if they have the power.

CE

ERTAINLY if a man is to teach the history or psychology of religion, or study religion as a biologist would study an animal or a botanist would study a

cause to maintain. And if he can do this, and do this only, what other training does he need than that of an educated man who can understand the points of view of those with whom he has to deal and can speak to them in their language?

But if he is to be a minister, he should be able to show men and women how to get the power that will sustain them when discouraged, make them masters of their own spirits, keep them calm in the midst of the tempest, and give them courage, fidelity, energy, and reasonableness when they have a work to do or a

est obstacle to religious faith? What, in your opinion, is the greatest need of the ministry? How best can the Church secure men who can seize and translate the power of religion? It will help if our readers attempt to answer these far-reaching questions.

ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT.

HE paramount issue in the politics of the past few years— probably the paramount plank in the platforms of both political parties in 1928-will be anti-bureaucracy, antipaternalism, anti-Government-in-business, or whatever name may be given to centralization of control.

That sentence, which has the alliterative sound of the Prudent Patricians of Pompeii, is prophecy of the raw, rank, and unripe kind, which is another way of saying that it is simply a personal opinion. Therefore do not accept it. Look a little and then form your own opinion.

There is a revolution on against bureaucracy, and it already has up a lot of steam despite the fact that it slipped up on the blind side of Washington. Nobody, probably, knows where it started. There are indications that it started everywhere at the same time, that there was a general and simultaneous awakening to the danger-if it is a danger of paternalism.

However that may be, Senators and Representatives in Congress returned from their vacation with a new attitude. Those, with a few exceptions, who for

Do not get the impression that this revolution started in Congress. Revolutions never do start there. That august body is too cautious to be revolutionary. The perfervid orator with too great a wealth of metaphor who referred to a Congressman as "sitting a-straddle of the fence with his ear to the ground" was not, after all, very far from the fact. That is about what the average Congressman habitually does. Congress is not going to do anything to bureaucracy or Government-in-business-not now. It simply has its eye on the revolution.

Some Federal officials have come to the conclusion that the Government has its finger in too many pies. Secretary of Commerce Hoover has had a good deal to say about it, first and last. Secretary of Agriculture Jardine has mentioned it. several times, by way of warning agriculture that it ought to try to keep out of the situation in which other industries find themselves. But the revolution did not start with Federal officials. It must have started back at the crossroads and in the corner stores of the towns and cities or, as was intimated a while ago, everywhere at the same time.

world were saying less about it than of old. Those who formerly did not care much about it one way or the other were beginning to think that things had gone far enough. And those who always wanted to have the Government mind what they regarded as its own business were thinking that some things already done ought to be undone.

Caution Curve Ahead!

bureaucracy bother the American Grocery Specialty Association? I do not know. I cannot think of any business in which the Government is engaged that comes in competition with these knickknack makers. I cannot think of any Government regulations that bear more bindingly on them than on other people. Yet they assembled in Washington the other day and devoted a large part of

their time to discussing the menace of centralization. Senator Wadsworth, of New York, and Merle Thorpe, of the United States Chamber of Commerce, addressed them, both proclaiming against the evil of Government-in-business. Mr. Thorpe, in a statistical mood, told them that "the White House calendar to-day is ninety per cent Government-in-business."

More recently representatives of three hundred organizations of as many different lines of industry, ranging all the way from ship-builders to envelope makers, met together in Washington and definitely launched a campaign to do something about it, whatever it is. They denounced bureaucracy, centralization, paternalism, Government-in-business.

Nearly every trade and industrial organization that has held a meeting recently has had something of the same kind to say.

IT appears to me perfectly clear that

the revolution is definitely on the way to the overthrow of something. Not all of the revolutionists have the same conception of what bureaucracy is. Not all of them draw the line clearly between necessary regulation and governmental interference. If they could all have exactly what they want, as much harm as good might be done possibly more. But they are all agreed that something has grown up in Washington which, if it continues to grow, will be disastrous to the country.

Now this revolution is, after all, a counter-revolution. The real revolution began twenty years or more ago. Its