None of these

things is done or even undertaken by the Hay Bill. The provision for the regular army is absurdly inadequate. It does not meet the needs as set forth by military experts. It is a makeshift. The total number which it would ultimately add to the force of the regular army equals the estimated average number of German casualties for less than nine days.

The worst part of the Hay Bill, however, is not in its failure to provide for the Nation needed means of defense, but in the positive harm that it will do to National defense if its provisions are adopted. By providing payment for the men, and especially the officers, of the State militia organizations it proposes to do two wrongs to the country. First, it helps to fasten upon the country more securely than ever a military system which has always failed and always must fail, and thus will give new sanction and power and political prestige to forty-eight little armies which cannot, by their very nature, be unified into one effective National force. And, in the second place, it does this by buying patriotism. The men whom this bill proposes to pay are not professional soldiers, but are supposed to be civilians trained for military duty. Such civilians should (and most of them do) count their military duty as a part of their civic obligation. Instead of that, this bill approaches it as if it were a commodity. It places National defense on the basis of a commercial contract. acted, the bill would commit the country to a repudiation of the essence of democratic principles in National defense.

If en

It would be better to have no army bill passed at all than to have the Congress of the United States adopt such a bill as that proposed by Mr. Hay and his Committee.

MR. BRANDEIS, HARVARD, AND

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Our readers know by this time that we hope that the nomination of Mr. Louis D. Brandeis as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States will be confirmed by the Senate. They also know that this hope is not shared by some citizens of National distinction. For example, a group of Boston lawyers signed and sent to the Senate Committee which is considering the appointment a remonstrance. Among those who signed this Boston protest was President A. Lawrence Lowell, of Harvard University. That

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President Lowell should have taken this part in the "Brandeis controversy ". has aroused a good deal of interest throughout the country, and has excited a lively discussion among Harvard alumni-a discussion of such moment that a recent issue of the "Harvard Alumni Bulletin " contains both an editorial on the episode and a letter from President Lowell explaining his position.

The "Bulletin's " editorial points out that Mr. Brandeis has had a very unusual and prominent relation with Harvard University, of which he is a graduate in the Department of Law, and from which he received the honorary degree of Master of Arts at the hands of President Eliot. He has received an honorary election to membership in the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, has been secretary of the Harvard Law School Alumni Association, and has been for many years a member of the Committee officially appointed by the Board of Overseers to inspect the Law School. "Few members of his profession," says the Bulletin, "have received more signal recognition from the University."

The "Bulletin " goes on to say that it regards President Lowell's protest against the nomination of Mr. Brandeis as a mistake of judgment. But it adds:

It is far better for the President of Harvard sometimes to make a mistake than always to stand aloof and refrain from using his entire influence in public matters of vital import. The freedom of speech and action which have always belonged to the Harvard Faculty should pre-eminently be his also.

With this sentiment The Outlook heartily concurs, as it does also in the general principles laid down by President Lowell in his letter to the "Bulletin." He says rightly that "the University as such can have no opinion on public questions, but each and every member is free to state his personal views according to his conscience." He admits that when the president of a university speaks there is danger that a popular impression shall be created that he speaks for the university as a whole. Against this popular error he protests: "From that freedom "-that is to say, the freedom of a university teacher to state his personal views according to his conscience-" the president ought not, I think, to be wholly cut off." And President Lowell concludes:

He may be mistaken. He may unconsciously be prejudiced, or he may be opposing prejudice.

He may differ in opinion from many people whose judgment he respects. His views may be unpopular; but it is not only opinions which are popular that it is right to express.

We have seen no better statement than that which the "Harvard Bulletin " and President Lowell make of the true principle of academic freedom in a democracy. While we do not share President Lowell's views regarding Mr. Brandeis, we are very glad that he made his protest to the Senate, if for no other reason than because it has given occasion for a fine and broad example of academic freedom, upon a clear and convincing statement of the principles which underlie that freedom.

SENATOR TAGGART, OF INDIANA

Thomas Taggart, for many years head of the Democratic machine in Indiana, has been appointed United States Senator by Governor Ralston. The occasion of his appointment was the occurrence of a vacancy through the death of Senator Shively. When such a vacancy occurs, the Governor has authority to fill the vacancy by appointment-the appointee to hold office until his successor can be elected.

Few men have been so powerful in the Democratic party as Taggart. He is a member of the Democratic National Committee, and as Chairman of that Committee in 1904 managed the Parker campaign. He has almost invariably had his way in directing party affairs in his State, and has been successful in the party's National counsels. His methods have been those of the genial handshaker. If he has any convictions on great National questions, they are not generally known. He has been three times Mayor of Indianapolis; but, aside from that and from holding the office of auditor in Marion County for two terms, he has wielded his power not as a public official but as a party manager. His name has been in the newspapers in connection with his headship of the company which conducts the French Lick Springs Hotel and resort, and with the indictment which was brought against him, and later dropped for lack of evidence, in connection with the alleged Indianapolis election frauds. With all due allowance for the bitterness of politics in Indiana, there can be no doubt that Taggart has represented a discreditable type of politics.

With Charles F. Murphy, of New York,

the Tammany leader, and Roger Sullivan, of Illinois, Thomas Taggart was conspicuous in the Baltimore Convention in 1912. These three men, outwardly representing the opposite type of politician to that of Woodrow Wilson, skillfully managed to make it evident that the Wilson nomination depended upon their support; they proved that they held the balance of power in that Convention, and that they thus were entitled to the spoils of the party, whoever was nominated.

When, in the fall following that Convention, the Democratic party was successful, The Outlook pointed out that the election meant the strengthening of the power of the bosses. The course of events since then has verified that statement. The nomination of Mr. Taggart to the Senate is but one illustration of the hold which machine oligarchy has upon the party.

Whenever the people of Indiana. want a different kind of Senator to represent their State they can have their way. The responsibility rests upon them. It is, in the last analysis, the people of that State who must decide whether they want as their representative a man of the type of Oliver Perry Morton, Indiana's great war Governor, or a man of the type of Thomas Taggart.

LIQUOR LEGISLATION IN NEW YORK

We had not supposed that a measure of any kind could be so drawn that it would appeal equally to suffragists and anti-suffragists and to all shades and degrees of temperance advocates. Apparently, however, this has been accomplished by the AntiSaloon League in New York State. Recently The Outlook reported and commended the excellent Optional Prohibition Referendum Bill which that organization had introduced in the New York State Assembly. With the thought that perhaps this bill might be killed and thus delay all temperance legislation for another year, the Anti-Saloon League has now introduced in the New York State Senate an Optional Prohibition Remonstrance Bill identical in all respects with the Optional Prohibition Referendum Bill, except that it gives the women of the State a voice in the control of the liquor question. And it does so without raising the question of a Constitutional amendment, by providing for a remonstrance petition instead of a vote at an election.

The new bill provides for the registration (by the regular registry officials, but not on

the days on which men are registered) as liquor remonstrants of all women who in the matter of age, citizenship, and residence comply with the requirements prescribed for male electors.

The measure provides that upon the filing with the proper court of a remonstrance petition, signed by not less than fifty-one per cent of the registered electors and registered liquor remonstrants combined, the court shall fix a day for hearing objections to the remonstrance and the signatures; and if the court shall find the petition valid, the political division covered by the remonstrance shall, with the expiration of the license year, become prohibition territory for two years and thereafter until reversed by a petition of similar form.

This ingenious proposition for a remonstrance petition really may be said to have had its germ in the present liquor law, a law which, to put it mildly, can hardly be said to be drawn in the interests of temperance reform. The present excise law provides that when the nearest entrance to a saloon lies within three hundred feet of the entrance to any building occupied exclusively as a dwelling, there must be filed with the application for the license a written consent executed by the owners of at least two-thirds of the total number of buildings within the prescribed distance which are occupied as dwellings.

From this consent proviso women propertyowners are, of course, not excluded. If they can give the consent for the creation of a saloon, why can they not give an inverted consent for its abolition? The provisions of this new bill in regard to separate registration days and the filing of a petition which eliminates the necessity of attendance at the polling-booth give to anti-suffragists an opportunity to express their opinion upon a subject which most of them would doubtless choose as the one public question upon which they would most like to be heard.

This bill ought to have behind it the full force of the temperance sentiment of the State. The Outlook would like to see the bill tried out in practice.

BETTER THAN ACQUITTAL

Thomas Mott Osborne, the public-spirited Warden of Sing Sing, who has been haled into court by those who, for one reason or another wished to discredit his efforts for prison reform, has made great progress toward vindication. The charge of perjury against him, on which he was brought to trial

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and willingly faced a jury, has been dismissed. The dismissal occurred under circumstances which make it even more of a vindication than acquittal would have been. The charge was, in substance, that Mr. Osborne, in order to conceal the fact of immorality in Sing Sing Prison, perjured himself in making false statements to a member of the Prison Commission. After the Commissioner in question, Dr. Diedling, had given his testimony, the Judge ruled that this Commissioner had no legal right to make an investigation or to demand answers to his inquiries, and that, moreover, Mr. Osborne's "refusal to answer and his evasive replies were to make good the promise he had made to the men that, since they had confessed and had been punished, "he would go to jail sooner than betray their confidences." On the stand Dr. Diedling, who has been persistently inimical to Mr. Osborne, discredited himself as a witness. For example, in answer to the question as to whether he was discharged from the service of a life insurance company for his part in a plot to fleece insurance companies, Dr. Diedling only replied: "I don't know. I gave up all my life insurance." He testified also that he had indorsed an alleged violet-ray machine for curing rheumatism, on the ground that "it eliminates the harshness of treatment found in others," before he had tried it himself on a single patient. Dr. Diedling's testimony aroused laughter in the courtroom. Judge Tompkins, in dismissing the indictment, made emphatic his statement that the dismissal was not on a technicality.

"To make out the crime of perjury," said Judge Tompkins, "it must appear that false testimony was knowingly and willfully given by the defendant, under oath, concerning material matter under investigation in a judicial or other proceeding authorized by law. Two of these elements are lacking in this case. The jury would not be justified in finding a willful intent or purpose on the part of the defendant. There is no proof here that Dr. Diedling was authorized by law to conduct this investigation or administer an oath."

This first case, therefore, against Mr. Osborne ends with the chief witness discredited and the whole case thrown out of court, as not having enough substance of law or fact in it for submission to the verdict of a jury.

The cause of prison reform for which Mr. Osborne has stood ought not to be bound up in his personal fortunes; but there is no doubt, whatever that a personal triumph