greater constituency. The entire number of Socialist members in the lower house of the German Parliament is 110. Of these the Conservative majority numbers 67 and the radical minority 43. According to the "New York Volkszeitung," the 110 Socialist members were elected by over 2,750,000 voters, of whom more than 1,234,000 cast their ballots for forty of the minority. To this number should be added over 175,000 Socialist voters in seven election divisions where the policy of the conservative majority has been repudiated. The radical minority in the Reichstag represents a radical majority of

voters.

Under such conditions we may rightly understand the action of the Berlin "Vorwärts,' which spiritedly refuses to allow itself to be disqualified as the official Socialist party organ. The recent resolution of the Socialist Executive Committee denounced the paper because of its support of the anti-war faction. It would seem that this faction is growing far faster than is any other German political entity. This growth, we believe, has vital significance both for Germany as a nation. and for the decisive issue of the present war.

MAYOR LUNN AND THE
SOCIALISTS

George Richard Lunn is Mayor of Schenectady, New York. He is notable for two

reasons:

First, he is an example of the clergyman in politics. A graduate of Union Theological Seminary and later holding the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Union College, Mayor Lunn was for three years associate pastor of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, New York, after which he became pastor of the United People's Church in Schenectady.

Second, Mayor Lunn is a Socialist, and the first Socialist Mayor elected in New York State. This, however, does not mean that he is not capable of being unpartisan and independent when necessary. It certainly does not mean that he has put his intellectual and moral self-respect into his pocket. In making the appointments delegated to him by law, the other day, he appointed a Republican to a judgeship, declaring that in so doing he was appointing the best man he could find, regardless of party affiliations.

The Socialists were indignant. The party refused to indorse this and other non-Socialist appointments made by Mayor Lunn, alleging

that there were more competent men in its ranks than those appointed. It was natural for the Mayor to resent this attitude toward his functions, especially as indicated by a statement from the Socialist Executive Committee of New York State as published in the daily press:

This is not a question of jobs, so far as the Committee is concerned. Were it not that a vital organization principle is involved, the Committee would not have devoted much time to it. With it is involved the question of the right of the Socialist party to voice its opinions in matters of principles affecting a Socialist administration.

The fact that the party is ready to forego the distinction of having a Socialist Mayor, and all the jobs that go with him, rather than surrender that right, is ample evidence that the distribution of jobs does not concern it.

In nominating and electing Socialists to office the party does not surrender to such officials the sole right of speaking or acting in its behalf on matters connected with the administration of offices intrusted to them. The party must have the right to control their acts (the official acts of Socialists elected to office), and will always insist on that right.

This statement is as naïve as it is frank. From it we understand that a Socialist, if elected to office, may not speak and act for himself or for the people at large; otherwise he would court the party's displeasure and risk being expelled from it.

Tammany may think the same thing about those it elects to office. The Socialists have the assurance to say so. They out-Tammany Tammany!

"LAMPY"

In celebration of its completion of forty years devoted to wit, humor, satire, and fun, not unmingled at times with audacity, the "Harvard Lampoon " has issued what it calls its "Lampoon of Lampooners." It is an issue composed almost wholly of contributionsjokes and illustrations-from former editors.

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It was in 1876, while Professor Charles Eliot Norton was lecturing on the Fine Arts, that Curtis, a senior, snapped a three-cornered note to his classmate Wheelwright: "Come to Sherwood's room after lecture. We are to start a college Punch.'" So thus was started the illustrated comic paper which has been printed more or less periodically from that day to this. The " Lampoon may fairly well be called the progenitor of "Life," for to the first board of "Life's" editors were called

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number to a celebration of its twenty-first anniversary.

It has been for many years one of the most authoritative and important publications in this country dealing with current literature. Indeed, no other publication covers the ground so completely. It is the current history of the literary movement in all parts of the world, and of other allied interests, such as the drama. It combines uncommon literary intelligence with the organized journalistic instinct; and it is thoroughly up to date without being out of perspective, which last is the limitation of most " up-to-date" publications. Mr. Frank Moore Colby and Mr. Arthur B. Maurice, its editors, have given it for many years past a very definite individuality both as regards editorial direction and editorial writing. It is pungent, frank, and outspoken in criticism without fear of new things, and hospitable to modern ideas and methods in literature and the drama.

Many of those methods express new points of view; one finds the spirit of youth renewing itself in faith and prophecy as it has done many times before, often dreaming vain dreams, predicting impossible things, and running a tilt without much regard for sound judgment or a sense of realities, but out of it all the vehement protestation of freedom in which many of the young poets are indulging. Some new notes have already been heard and more will be sounded in the future. There is a great deal of froth and foam, not lacking in iridescent hues, in what may be called the New Freedom of the art of writing; there are also both promise and performance; and the "Bookman" is an invaluable guide to the confused but deeply interesting and significant change of taste and freedom of spirit in the art of expression.

THE FARMER'S YEAR

farmer.

The year 1915 was the most prosperous ever known by the American The value of the principal grain crops and animal products was, according to the figures of the Secretary of Agriculture, $9,873,000,000. To this should be added the minor crops and the by-products of cotton, making a total of $11,000,000,000 for the year's production of the farms. Never before has there been a billion-bushel wheat yield1,011;505,000 bushels; and the corn crop, 3,054,535,000 bushels, has been exceeded

but once in the Nation's history. The effect of this enormous output is seen in swelling bank deposits all through the agricultural States and in boasts of prosperity growing out of the farmers' income. Just how much of it is due to the war is scarcely realized until one goes back to the years of world peace and sees the increase in price levels for the grain and live stock. Dollar wheat has ruled throughout the wheat belt much of the year when it did not, the farmers filled their granaries and held their product. The spectacle of mills surrounded by wheat farms shipping wheat hundreds of miles was common in the early autumn, the farmers refusing to market grain at the price then ruling.

Despite the liberal income, there has been only moderate expansion of new undertakings in the agricultural States. It has been deemed safer to place the money in banks or in sound investments than to branch out in new enterprises. The farmer is loth to admit that he has prospered by the war, but he is conscious of the possibility of a sharp readjustment when the struggle is over and the foreign market is lessened. Actually he has reaped a direct benefit, as important to him as munition-making to the Eastern manufacturer. However, it is creditable to the farmer that he is sincerely for peace, and the sentiment in the Middle West, where there has been all this added increment, is pronounced for early settlement of the war. Some striking figures are given of the increased business with Europe in war supplies from the farm. The first year of the war we sold to Europe $316,000,000 in wheat, compared with $103,595,000 in the preceding year of peace; breadstuffs, $567,607,000, as compared with $181.484,000; horses, $82,276,000, as compared with $3,177,000; mules, $18,041,000, as compared with $622,000; hay, $2,263,000, as compared with $790,000; meats and dairy products. $243,198,000, as against $138,736,000. All this goes into the eleven-billion-dollar business of the farms. The indications are that the high price level for farm products will continue many months yet-perhaps until the coming of the next crop, in which case we shall have another year's rich income added to the already swollen bank deposits of the agricultural States. Certainly there should be no complaint from the farmer as to his share in the business created by the devastation of Europe.

THE "MANCHU LAW"

In attempting to remedy one evil legislators sometimes create another. The Congress that in 1912 passed what is known as the "Detached Service Law succeeded in establishing greater equality of opportunity in the army for officers to enjoy the advantages of what are known as "desk jobs

that is, assignments to department work or American embassies abroad. This law prevents the favoritism by which formerly a few officers sometimes were enabled to monopolize these comfortable positions at the expense of their brothers in the field. But the law is responsible for an evil which seems as great as the one abolished.

Lieutenant Sherman Miles, whose father is Lieutenant-General Nelson A. Miles, retired, has just been recalled from the post of American military attaché to Russia because under the Detached Service Law he is no longer eligible to serve in that capacity. This piece of legislation, farniliarly known to the army as the "Manchu Law," prescribes that no officer under the rank of major is available for detached service unless he has spent two of the next preceding six years on duty with his troop, company, or battery. Therefore at most an officer may have only four consecutive years of detached service, and, moreover, any time through which a man is sick or on leave during his two years of active duty is subtracted from his period of eligibility for service away from his army unit.

Turning to the case in point, Lieutenant Miles must now leave Russia, despite the fact that he is of much greater value there as a military observer than an inexperienced successor could possibly be. Lieutenant Miles "knows the ropes," and has gained the confidence of the Russians to a remarkable degree both for his talent as an officer and for his integrity as a gentleman. He is the only neutral military attaché who has been allowed at the front, and his reports of what he has seen are of great value to our army. But he has been drawn home by red tape.

This law has also worked evil at West Point. Formerly instructors at the Military Academy were able to serve four years at least, but the " Manchu Law" has reduced the average term to about three years. For the avoidance of such evil conditions as this law was aimed to remedy we ought to rely not on legislation but on intelligent administrative regulations within the army. The Manchu Law" ought to be repealed.

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should be so "armed and disciplined" that they can protect themselves. It requires a citizen soldiery. And this involves universal military training and service.

Such discipline would be of great advantage to the moral character and the industrial efficiency of American youth. It would cultivate in them a habit of prompt obedience and the spirit of team work. The more patriotic American, much as he admires the energy, enterprise, and independence of the American youth, cannot avoid at times thinking of him in the terms of Rudyard Kipling's line :

'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own.

Only in a few homes is prompt obedience required. Only to a limited degree is the habit of prompt obedience cultivated in the school. The boys have done something to cultivate the spirit of team work by their voluntary athletics; but only a minority get this training. Organized industry does something to compel team work, but not much to inspire it. Corporations and labor unions do something to develop it, but it is team work for a class, not for the community. It is not easy to conceive of anything which would do more to develop these two needed virtues-prompt obedience and team work-than uni versal military service. General Wood tells us that in this country the murder rate is 124 per million; in Switzerland it is 12 per million. What is the cause of this difference? One cause is the American vice of self-will. What is the remedy for this defect? One valuable remedy would be the soldier's habit of respect for authority and of regard for the comrade at his side.

What is the objection to the creation of a citizen soldiery? Conscription? This is not conscription. The difference is fundamental. Conscription waits till war begins and then forces untrained men to face the enemy and at great cost of life to learn the art of the soldier while under fire; universal military service, on the other hand, trains men in time of peace and without the cost of bloodshed creates a soldiery that may never be called to war. Dislocation of civil life? Switzerland and Australia both have universal military service (as described elsewhere in this number), and in neither is there any more dislocation of civil life than in the United States, for the training is carried on as a part of every young man's education before he becomes a producer. Peril to liberty? Switzer

land and Australia both have universal military service, and in both there is quite as stalwart a love of liberty as in the United States. A great standing army is a peril to liberty, for it may be used by an unscrupulous executive against a people who are unarmed and undisciplined. But a people armed and disciplined for their own defense are not a peril to themselves.

Is there, then, a danger of developing in America the spirit of militarism? American liberty does not indicate the presence in the American character of the military microbe. In the American Revolution General Washington's greatest difficulty was the unscrupulous politician at the Capitol; his next greatest difficulty was the eagerness of his soldiers to doff their uniforms and go back to their farms and their shops. General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. That spring the soldiers both of the North and South were in their fields plowing their land and sowing their seed.

The perils to the American character are not from the ambition for military glory, but from the more sordid ambition for industrial success. One effective means of counteracting the real peril from a too selfish industrialism would be universal military training. It would put the son of the millionaire and the son of the porter side by side in the same camp. It would dampen, if it did not destroy, respect for wealth and inspire respect for character. It would develop in the men of both classes a spirit of mutual respect. It would, for the time being, substitute a spirit of co-operation for a spirit of competition. It would break down the class walls between rich and poor, as the public school is breaking down the ecclesiastical walls between Catholic and Protestant, between Jew and Gentile. And, if war should come, universal service would make it absolutely impossible for the rich man to hire the poor man to do his fighting for him. It is not easy to suggest any better way to promote a universal democratic spirit than to require all ablebodied men to share equally the personal responsibility for the defense of their country and to meet together on equal terms in camp and field during the formative period of their lives. The most democratic institution in America is the public school. The next is the college. In some respects a brief period of universal service in camp and field repeated for several seasons would surpass

both college and public school in its democratic unifying influence.

Decidedly The Outlook favors Washington's call for a free people armed and disciplined as a preparedness for peace and against war.

WATER POWER AS A NATURAL RESOURCE

There appears elsewhere in this issue of The Outlook an article by Mr. Hugh L. Cooper, a well-known American water power engineer, on the relations of Government to the development of natural water powers. There are certain non-technical phases of the water power problem which should be borne in mind in considering Mr. Cooper's article. We propose here to state these phases categorically and as briefly as we can.

Water Power and Wealth. There is a mistaken but not uncommon notion that a great water power is an unalloyed source of wealth-that money is to be picked out of it as diamonds have been picked out of some of the surface mines in Africa. On the contrary, the development of a modern water power demands great risks and great virtues from those who turn it into an engine of industrial efficiency. They must possess hope, faith, patience, courage, and intellectual skill, and must often jeopardize large sums of money before they even know whether their work will succeed.

The Difficulties of Water Power Development. In the alcogravure pictorial section of this issue will be found two pictures which illustrate some of the difficulties that the builders of American water powers have to contend with. There are not always physical difficulties, but sometimes great financial risks. A water power is now in process of investigation in the mountainous region of one of the Pacific Coast States. No previously constructed works have faced such difficult conditions of depth and flow of water as are here imposed by nature. The geological formation of the bed below this volume and depth of water must be thoroughly investigated before the great dam can be built. The problem is how to get at the bed of the stream, which is so far below the surface of the water that it cannot be reached from above. The promoters are driving on the river bank a vertical shaft 195 feet deep, from the bottom of which a horizontal