ber, were business men with an earnest desire to improve the codes and practices of their calling, editors, economists, and trade association officials.

In order to arrive at a means for reducing costly fluctuations of price due to lack of co-ordination between the rate of production and the rate of consumption, the Conference determined to continue its study of the field of distribution and to advise the United States Department of Commerce of the need for separation of distribution expenses from production cost in its biennial census compilations. Business men were urged to familiarize themselves with the statistics of distribution prepared by the Federal Reserve Board and its regional banks and to co-operate in the development of this service. Trade associations, chambers of commerce, and other business organizations were called upon to uphold and to make more effective right principles of business conduct. Business organizations were urged, also, to provide means for the conciliation or arbitration of business disputes.

One of the most important resolutions adopted asked that the President of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States appoint a "Joint Trade Relations Committee formed of representatives of manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and the consuming public, to act as a clearing-house for complaints of objectionable and destructive practices and to promote such co-ordination as will effect economies and improve mutual relations." Some delegates, however, expressed a fear that the establishment of such a committee might run counter to the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.

A biennial enumeration of distribution agencies, to be made by the United States Bureau of the Census, was recommended. Secretary of Commerce Hoover suggested, however, that the work might be better done by a research organization created by and under control of the Conference itself.

The Conference declared that existing wastes in advertising are the result, in large part, of lack of marketing information and poor correlation of advertising with the sale of products. It recommended as a remedy a permanent Market Research Planning Commission.

Individual distributers were urged to educate consumers on the cost of service. Business men were asked to co-operate to repress dishonest business failures. The amended system of procedure of the Federal Trade Commission was commended.

The Conference called the attention of the Secretary of Commerce to the need for uniformity of weights and measures throughout the United States and for information of the public on the processes of distribution. Co-operation was pledged to advance uniformity in State legislation affecting distribution. Commercial bribery was condemned. The Chamber of Commerce of the United States was asked to determine the advisability of a comprehensive study of the effect of installment selling on the consuming public and on business.

It was agreed that large aggregations of capital "intelligently administered and under proper regulation are capable of rendering a valuable service and should not be discriminated against when their operations are in the public interest." The committee reporting on general conditions affecting distribution said that, while large-scale business cannot object to regulations which affect the public interest, "it can properly object to regulations in favor of less efficient competitors when such regulations imperil the exist

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ence or proper functioning of large-scale business."

The Conference recommended to the Chamber of Commerce of the United States early consideration of the wisdom. of suggesting amendments to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Clayton Act, and the Federal Trade Commission Act.

The Greatest Foe of Militarism in China

C

HINA has been so long considered a model of pacifism that it is hard for the Western mind to realize that no country in the world is so dominated by the military as China is to-day. As a matter of fact, China has always been subject to the domination of military chiefs. In that respect China of the twentieth century is much like Europe of the Middle Ages.

What is significant in the present conflict between these military chiefs, or tuchuns, is that for the first time Chinese nationality has become an issue. Gen

FENG

From Louise Thompson, Shanghai, China

eral Feng, the so-called Christian general, is really a leader in the expression of this nationalistic spirit. He is China's Cromwell, determined to make his country free of military domination within and foreign domination without. He is the incarnation of the unborn national self-consciousness, ready to punish unto death all who insist on keeping China in bondage.

And yet he is attacked, not only on the ground that, like other military chiefs, he seeks control of Chinese revenues, but also on the ground that he is friendly with the Russian Bolsheviki. He is denounced as a Red.

That he has been friendly with the Russians is undenied; but his friendliness with them is due to the fact that they have promised to help him in setting China free. It is from territory controlled by the Soviets that he can most easily get supplies. It is from Russia that the most practicable aid has come to those who are moved by the national spirit, which, because of China's past subjection to foreign Powers, is antiforeign.

This does not mean, however, that Feng is Bolshevist or that he represents any large movement toward the Soviet idea. In fact, the Russians themselves. know very well that China is not fertile ground for Bolshevist seeds. There is a Bolshevist center in China, and from this center Red ideas may in time spread farther.

This center is the Southern Chinese Government at Canton. As Radek, the leading Russian Communist expert on foreign affairs, has said (in an article in the "Pravda" for the first of last September), "The Southern Government is the only government of workmen and peasants in China." It is controlled by the revolutionary party that had been founded by the late Dr. Sun Yatsen. Originally merely republican, it has undergone an important evolution, and its left wing, composed mainly of intellectuals, has fallen into the hands of Communists. The Southern Government has confiscated pagodas, church property, and religious objects and sold them at public auction. It has imitated in many respects the methods of MosCOW. It has also, as Radek acknowledges, become an important center of propaganda. There are the headquarters of the Sailors' Union, which covers southern China, Hawaii, the Philippines, and the adjoining British and Dutch colonies. But no one knows better than

Radek and every Russian Bolshevist that the Southern Government is a comparatively uninfluential factor in the life of China. What Moscow is doing in China is not with any hope of making the conservative landowning Chinese into Bolshevists, but in order to whip up the antiforeign feeling. That anti-foreign feeling was apparent in China long before the Communists entered the field. But the Communists contributed to the propagation of that feeling.

General Feng, therefore, is accepting all the help he can get from the Russian

(C) Henry Miller News Picture Service, Inc.

Feng, China's Christian General Bolsheviki, not because he is a Bolshevist, but because he is a nationalist.

In the war that has been going on between Feng Hu-hsiang and Chang Tsolin Chang, on the whole, represents a policy favorable to the Powers, especially Japan, while Feng represents the new anti-foreign feeling and embryonic patriotism of the Chinese. Indeed, if Feng's policy prevails, the effect will be injurious to the old military chieftains and a breakdown of Chinese militarism. Feng's army is the most efficient in China to-day. His soldiers are disciplined. His military camps are orderly. He represents the closest approach that any one in China has made to modern military methods. It is just because of that fact that he is the greatest menace to Chinese militarism there is. On the military field Feng stands for the very military field Feng stands for the very thing which in diplomacy the Chinese delegates at the conference with the foreign Powers are endeavoring to foster

the freedom of China from the domination of outsiders.

S

War and the Law

OMETIMES war has been likened to dueling. It has been argued that as dueling has become antiquated and has been virtually abolished by the substitution of courts of law to which individuals can appeal for the settlement of disputes between them, so war can be made unnecessary and virtually abolished by the establishment of an international court to which governments can appeal for the settlement of international disputes. If war were but international dueling, then doubtless it could be replaced by courts, and there would be a chance for substituting "law for war." But since the Middle Ages war among civilized nations has seldom been merely international dueling; it has been in every great instance something much more fundamental.

The Napoleonic wars, for example, were not duels to settle international disputes. The issues were not issues of law. What happened during the Napoleonic period could never have been prevented by any court. Those wars were the product of the French Revolution, which in turn was the product of the rise of what we call democracy in the midst of privilege and oppression. Those wars were the forcible wiping out of inequalities, of unearned privileges, of little and big autocracies, all of them legally intrenched. There were, of course, involved in these wars incidental disputes between the nations, but they were not the causes of the wars. The so-called Civil War in this country was not a duel to settle a dispute between the States; if it had been, it would never have happened, for there was, as a matter of fact, a court set up for the very purpose of settling interState disputes. The United States Supreme Court did not prevent the War of Secession, because the issue was not one subject to legal settlement. The World War was not for the settlement of a dispute between the nations. There was no dispute whatever as to the legal right and wrong of Germany's action. The German Government itself acknowledged that it was committing a legal wrong. About that there was absolutely no dispute whatever. Those who seek to justify Germany do so on extra-legal grounds. The Allies were engaged not in any attempt to settle a dispute, but in a

they would have resisted just as des

perately if it had had the sanction of law.

If this country joins the Permanent Court of International Justice, as it should, under proper safeguards, it ought not to do so under any misapprehension. By joining such a court it will not abolish war. It will not even greatly lessen the chance that it will in some future exigency be involved in war. Some wars may be prevented by court decisions, but not all wars. If great wars are to be prevented, it must be by other than merely legal means. If, for example, what the Russian Bolsheviki stand for should become a great world force, no court could settle the issue between the fanatics who believe in it and the lovers of liberty who would resist it to the death.

The cause of the International Court does not need to be buttressed by illusions. It is sufficiently strong to stand on its solid merits. Those who lead others to expect of it what it cannot give

are

merely inviting disappointment. America should join the Court for what it is, and not for what it is not. It is not a substitute for war. It is a means for determining and supporting legal rights.

Diplomacy, arbitration, education of public opinion, and power mustered in the interest of peace and against aggression are the chief resources of the nations in the prevention of war. Nothing can take the place of the will to peace; and when that is reinforced with power it can prevent war. Nothing else can.

The determination of the legal rights of nations, the decision of what is just under international law, is an end in itself, and to that end the United States should lend the weight of its approval to the World Court.

I

T

Houses!

HE public in general and consumers of anthracite (at such times as they can get it) in particular are out of patience with both the war factions in the coal strike. The leaders do not act like men who want to settle a dispute. Whenever a move for conference is suggested, whether by Governor Pinchot, or the business men and mayors of the coal field, or by clergymen who know the deprivations among the poor, or even by humble press men who strive in vain to convince miners and operators that the public has rights and interests, forthwith the leaders on one side or the other declare that conference is impossible unless this or that is agreed upon or ruled out before conference.

What is conference for if not to iron out difficulties? If permanent high profits and high wages could be insured in advance, the other matters could be adjusted in a day. These people, labor leaders and operators' leaders, do not act as if they were in earnest. They say "Peace, peace," but there is no peace in their hearts-only victory at the consumers' expense.

"A plague on both your houses!" says the disgusted public. "We must and will look elsewhere for relief. We must use other kinds of fuel than hard coal this winter, as a majority of people in America do always; and if Congress does not follow the suggestion of the President to act upon the recommendations of the Coal Commission of 1923, then we must settle down to permanent use of other fuel and emancipation from the dictation of anthracite magnates and labor union leaders."

SUPPOSE that a greater volume of comment, criticism, and interpretation has been written and spoken about the plays and poems of Shakespeare than about any other body of literature that has ever been produced by man with the exception of that collection of prose and poetry which we call the Bible. Every aspect of Shakespeare and his works has been so discussed and rediscussed that it sometimes seems as if

not only the subject but the world at large had been exhausted. All that Shakespeare wrote and did, so far as the world could discover it, has been analyzed to the last particular in the laboratory of criticism.

But just as the play-going and playreading world had come to regard the genius of Shakespeare as a fixed quantity, like a chemical element in the universe, some original in England con

of the most mysterious and inexplicable plays of Shakespeare in modern dress, and we now have Hamlet clad in a dinner coat and smoking a cigarette; Horatio sporting a Burberry ulster and a Henry Heath fedora hat; Polonius decked out in a swallow-tail, white waistcoat, and monocle; the Queen of Denmark and Ophelia charmingly arrayed in evening gowns by Poiret; and an automatic pistol substituted for the conventional sword in the unintentional assassination of Ophelia's father. Thus the discussion of Shakespeare's motives, purposes, and subtleties, which after blazing for more than two hundred years had about burned out, has flared up again.

ness.

I went the other night to see this modern version of "Hamlet," which is now being played in New York. It is excellently well done and deserves a better public support than it is receiving, for it is an interesting and entertaining spectacle and the play-goer realizes as never before, perhaps I did, at any rate that Shakespeare was a human being, like the rest of us, and not a mysterious and miraculous kind of supergenius. The fact is that human nature is in itself a miracle which we do not understand and cannot explain. To try to make towering specimens like Abraham Lincoln and William Shakespeare sports, in the biological sense of that word that is to say, inexplicable and spontaneous variations from the normal type-really detracts from their greatWhen you see "Hamlet in Modern Dress," you see Shakespeare as he really was, a playwright and theatrical manager who wrote for the box-office and not for posterity. His transcendent genius appears in his knowledge of human nature, its passions, its vices, its virtues in his comprehension of life and his unsurpassed literary expression of that life. He paid little attention to what the sophisticated call the dramatic unities. He thought little about the laws of time and space and geography. What he wanted to do was to hold his audiences spellbound over the tragedies and set them rocking with laughter over the humors of life as he saw it all about him. If he could do this by introducing a couple of English peasants as gravediggers into a Danish historical romance and melodrama, he did it without thinking much about inconsistencies and anachronisms. This aspect of his dra

matic art shows itself very clearly in a dinner-coated Hamlet. We fail to see it in the conventional Hamlet, because the whole thing is archaic and the grave-diggers seem as natural as Hamlet himself.

It is a pity that the audiences which have seen "Hamlet in Modern Dress" have not been larger. I suppose the highbrows fight shy of it because it is modern and the lowbrows because it is ancient. As a matter of fact, it is rattling good melodrama of the "unhand me, villain," type, with this supreme advantage, however-it was written by an incomparable master of literary style and imagination.

I should be sorry to have it supposed from these casual comments on the common humanity and modernity of Shakespeare that I am small and presumptuous enough to try to belittle him. Not at all. I am trying to defend him from that kind of mistaken scholarship which has so set him apart from ordinary life that many intelligent men and women grow up with the idea that he is incomprehensible. Unfortunately, this is the influence that a certain kind of scholarship has had upon all classical literature. The Bible has suffered from it as much as Shakespeare. It might not be a bad thing for some daring innovator to give

us the story of Esther or the story of David on the stage, not in modern language, but in modern dress. Both are melodramatic, but very human. I could not write a scenario to save my life, but perhaps Mr. Will Hays might find some one to make a moving picture out of the life of David. It would certainly be very moving, not merely in the technical sense, but in its effect on the emotions. David's fight with Goliath, his friendship for Jonathan, his poignant lament over the death of his son Absalom, and his love affair with the beautiful Bathsheba run the gamut of human experience. One may imagine Shakespeare as being tempted to try his hand at the dramatization of the life of David but being estopped by the thought of the effect which the theological prejudices of the day might have upon his box-office receipts.

On coming home from "Hamlet in Modern Dress" I was interested to see what two of the wisest critics who have ever written in the English language had to say about Shakespeare-Dr. Johnson and Emerson. In the general index of John Murray's edition of Boswell, published in London in 1835, Shakespeare is

mentioned twenty-four times. One of Johnson's lesser-known works is his edition of Shakespeare, of which Mrs. Thrale said: "It is observable in his preface to Shakespeare, that while other critics expatiate on the creative powers and vivid imagination of that matchless

Maurice Goldberg. Courtesy Bonwit Teller & Co.

Helen Chandler, who plays the part of
Ophelia in "Hamlet in Modern Dress"

poet, Dr. Johnson commends him for giving so just a representation of human manners.' Of this same preface Adam Smith, author of "The Wealth of Nations," observed that it was the most manly piece of criticism that was ever published in any country. Dr. Johnson was not always just to French culture and literature, but he certainly hit the

mark one day when, in discussing the French drama, he remarked that "Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest."

The humanity of Shakespeare impressed itself also upon Emerson, as these sentences of his indicate: "Who saw Milton, who saw Shakespeare, saw them do their best and utter their whole heart manlike among their brethren." "An omnipresent humanity co-ordinates all his faculties." "Some able and appreciating critics think no criticism on Shakespeare valuable that does not rest purely on the dramatic merit. . . . I think as highly as these critics of his dramatic merit, but still think it secondary. He was a full man, who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and images, which, seeking vent, found the drama next at hand. Had he been less, we should have had to consider how well he filled his place, how good a dramatist he and he is the best in the world. But it turns out that what he has to say is of that weight as to withdraw some attention from the vehicle."

was

Dinner coats and revolvers cannot destroy what Shakespeare has to say. In some respects I think they help it, for they prove the truth of what Emerson asserts, that the vehicle is secondary and that the essential is Shakespeare himself.

To discourse on "Hamlet" without alluding to the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy would be singular, or at least unfashionable. A small but vociferous group of persons tell us that we cannot believe in Shakespeare because his origin was so humble and his education so limited. Perhaps three hundred years hence literary skeptics of the same type of mind will assert that Lincoln could not have written the Second Inaugural or the Gettysburg Speech and prove by ingenious ciphers that they were the work of Charles Sumner. Moreover, the Baconians argue that if Shakespeare the obscure play-actor had been Shakespeare the supreme playwright the records of his external life could not have been so fragmentary and meager as they are. This argument is sometimes a poser, I confess. But only yesterday I stumbled on a concise and, for me at least, conclusive answer. In a somewhat haphazard reading of an essay on George Borrow by Theodore Watts-Dunton I came across the following comment on Shakespearea kind of obiter dictum:

In these days no lives, as a rule, are less adventurous, none, as a rule, less

tinged with romance, than the lives of those who attain eminence in the world of letters. . . . Perhaps one reason why we have almost no record of what the greatest of all writing men was doing in the world is that while

his friends were elbowing the tide of life in the streets of London, or fighting in the Low Countries, or carousing at the Mermaid Tavern, or at the Apollo Saloon, he was filling every moment with work-work which en

abled him, before he reached his fiftysecond year, to build up that literary monument of his, that edifice which made the monuments of the others, his contemporaries, seem like the handiwork of pygmies.

N The Outlook of November 25 I

I

outlined the main points in the Government's brief in the Federal Trade Commission's investigation of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and allied moving-picture corporations. Counsel for the Government commission charged the moving-picture corporations (and Adolph Zukor, head of the Famous Players in particular) with an attempt at the monopoly of the motion-picture industry and of coercion, intimidation, and conspiracy for the restraint of trade.

The brief for Zukor and the Famous Players admits that they control the best theaters and make the best pictures and that Zukor is a dominating figure in the industry, but specifically denies the other charges. The defense counsel says that it is true that the Famous Players Company is commercializing art and making it pay dividends, but he puts the question, "What of it?"

Inasmuch as the Famous Players defense brief covers 970 pages, it will only be possible here to state briefly the eight points of the defense argument:

1. A denial that the Famous Players Company or its constituent corporations now have or have ever had any semblance of a monopoly. In 1924 the total estimated admissions to movie theaters aggregated $540,000,000, with the total film rentals reaching $155,000,000. "Naturally," it says, "this growth has been attended by some confusion, and the previous experiences of many of those who were prominent in its early stages, coupled with the temperamental character of the business, has made for intense and bitter competition." To-day, however, the industry is approaching stabilization and its larger units have obtained a position fairly comparable with those in other industries. The brief admits that the Famous Players Corporation is predominant in the production of pictures, but reasons that this is because it controls the best directors and the best executive and dramatic skill, and asks the question, "When was it a crime. to surpass others in quality?" The enormous growth in the manufacturing cost of feature films was illustrated by the following statements: "In 1912 the average cost of a feature film was $8,000, while 'The Covered Wagon' of recent years

cost $800,000. The average cost of the ordinary feature picture during the past two, or three years has been about $200,000." Exceptional cases were citede. g., "The Ten Commandments," $1,600,000; and "The Thief of Bagdad," $2,000,000. These increases are attributed to intense competition.

2. Contention that a motion-picture producer may lawfully sell his product direct and own the facilities for such sale, as do Ford and certain other manufacturers in marketing their products. The Government's reply brief, however, states that it has no objection to producers selling direct, but that no producers or combination of them should be permitted to corner any section, and that in the moving-picture field the South and other sections are controlled by the respondents.

3. That the only conspiracy shown in the records is one against the Famous Players Company, and not one by them. The "real monopoly," it claims, is composed of a combination of so-called "independents," who have combined against the Famous Players Company, but with whom "counsel for the Commission brazenly links arms." Instead of the attempt of the Famous Players Company to stifle the First National Company, it claims that in reality the First National Company was trying to stifle the Famous Players.

4. Denial of the use of unfair or coercive measures in the acquisition of theaters or in the sale of pictures. If any unfairness was practiced, it was only the local field of exhibition, and does not come under the Inter-State Commerce Act, and therefore the Commission has no jurisdiction. Zukor was characterized as being conspired against by his bitterest enemies, and he was likened to Edison, Ford, and others as being a man of vision and the savior of the movie industry.

5. It admits "block booking" (that is, the necessity of buying all the pictures or none), but claims that it does not adversely affect meritorious competitive pictures.

6. Mary Pickford's testimony is called "utterly false." "Inasmuch as Zukor had paid Miss Pickford $2,000,000 for two years' work," counsel says, "Would he

then offer the actress a measly $250,000 to quit the pictures for all time?"

7. Denial that the Famous Players Company has close connections with Marcus Loew or the First National Company other than minor mutual relations as customers and minor stockholders in an inconsequential number of theaters.

8. That the desire of the Commission's counsel that the Famous Players Company be forced to sell its theaters cannot be granted, as it exceeds the authority of the Federal Trade Commission to issue such an order.

To an outsider it seems that the defense of the moving-picture people consists of many evasions of the Government charges. For example, they seek to prove that they control only a very small percentage of the country's movie theaters. This is a quibble in terms, for the Government's contention is that they control the first-run theaters. It is of little importance whether or not they control the majority of small picture houses. Also the percentages arrived at by the Famous Players Company take no account of the large business of the other moving-picture corporations with which the Government claims Mr. Zukor and the Famous Players have acquired influential control. Though this is denied by the defense, it seems to be quite well established by the Govern

ment.

The hearing has now degenerated into a denunciation by both sides of the opposing counsels. It is also noticeable that some of the members of the Federal Trade Commission are not satisfied with the preparation of the case by the Commission's counsel. On the other hand, the Commission has taken official cognizance of its chief counsel's petition to reopen the investigation, and has set January 6 as the date for the new evidence. At that time the Government promises to show evidence of further conspiracy and promiscuous theater buying since the close of the testimony taken in 1924.

It is impossible to foretell when a decision will be handed down, but all indications point away from any definite action toward the curtailment of the socalled film trust.

E. W. M.