other Allies take the same sensible attitude, the new treaty should be a further guaranty of order in Europe.

The New Shah

HE Coronation of Reza Khan as

THE

Shah of Persia in Teheran on April 25 was, by all accounts, one of the most gorgeous spectacles of modern times. Like Bonaparte, Reza put his ceremonial and ancient crown on his own head, but he received homage of lesser crowns and jeweled regalia from the nobles gathered around the peacock throne.

When the "Boy Shah" was formally deposed about six months ago, after he had become a member of the kings-inexile colony in Paris, observers pointed out that, although there were already in existence a Constitution and a National Assembly, they were a mere pretense. Reza will undoubtedly be a dictator, but his history shows ability and shrewdness.

When he formed a Republic (on paper) after the revolution of 1923, it was as the quickest way of getting rid of the Kajar dynasty, which, after all, dates back only a century and a half.

Reza is called an "ex-stable boy," but in fact he is of aristocratic family. He served for a time as a cadet in the cavalry and took care of his own horse in accordance with a Persian custom. He is described as a man of culture and taste and has had some diplomatic experience.

What is sought by the Persians is not democracy but public order, honest rulers, material improvements, and a reasonable share by the people in the affairs of the country. An English correspondent who knows Persia well says. that "Reza Khan is enough democracy for Persia."

The Shakespeare Theater

THE

HE recent destruction of the Shakespeare Theater at Stratford-onAvon, in England, by fire, has led to an international movement to rebuild and endow the playhouse at Shakespeare's birthplace. Supplementing the English effort, an American committee has been formed, with Percy S. Bullen, 66 Broadway, New York, American correspondent of the London "Telegraph," as Secretary. The Committee will collect funds toward a construction cost of $500,000 and an endowment fund of $750,000.

With such a sum, the dual object of providing a fitting memorial and giving

stories, and she argued with intellectual aridity rather than emotional appeal, whereas when Selma Lagerlöf was asked by her Government to write a series of popular text-books they turned out to be also delightful fairy-tales.

Miss Key wrote and lectured on child training, on woman's rights, and on marriage reform, and was an early leader of the so-called feminist movement. She was "advanced," yet her doctrine was that for women motherhood came before public work and that freedom of divorce was the way to prevent loveless marriages. It is said that her pro-German attitude in war time was not because of special admiration for Germany, but from a belief in peace at any price. In a brief notice of her book "War, Peace, and the Future," published during the war, The Outlook's reviewer, after describing it as a plea for peace, added dryly, "We do not, however, find in the book any plea for justice, liberty, or human rights."

Miss Key has left as a guest-house for workingwomen who show aptitude for culture and love of beauty her home on Lake Vettern, built on land owned by the Swedish Government and filled with pictures, books, and art objects.

Who's a Liberal?

T

WO subscribers recently stopped their subscriptions to The Outlook. One wrote:

I am a political radical, and I subscribed to The Outlook because I felt that I needed a check upon my theories. I find The Outlook so liberal, however, that it is no longer of any value to me.

The second subscriber wrote:

How The Outlook has changed! It is no longer the Liberal journal that it once was, but has become a hard and fast conservative. I have reluctantly decided to discontinue my subscription.

It begins to look as though the adjectives "liberal" and "conservative" were rather elastic terms. If they have any value at all at the present time, it is as convenient epithets for the use of those who do not take much trouble to think. You're a liberal! You're a conservative! have almost come to have the same meaning as "So's your old man!"

When some one proudly says, "I am a conservative," he does not mean that he wishes to conserve things as they are. He

merely means that he has certain pet dogmas which he regards as of supreme value and that those who do not place the same value upon these dogmas are, ipso facto, enemies of the Republic, and probably wife-beaters. The self-confessed liberal is generally equally certain that he is the possessor of the whole truth. He keeps ready at hand specific

nostrums for the ills of mankind. Those who prefer other remedies he consigns to

(C) Underwood & Underwood

Ellen Key

the same limbo which the conservative has selected for those who oppose his

views.

As a matter of fact, the words "liberal" and "conservative" ought not to be taken as opposite terms. A man who is liberal can be thoroughly conservative, and a man who is conservative can be thoroughly liberal.

Of the two terms the word "liberal" has probably departed furthest from its original significance. The meaning of the word in its truest sense is well illus

trated by a passage from Lowell's "Among My Books." He wrote:

The study of them [the classics] is fitly called a liberal education, because it emancipates the mind from every narrow provincialism, whether of egoism or tradition, and is the apprenticeship that every one must serve before becoming a free brother of the guild which passes the torch of life from age to age.

Even those who believe that true liberalism can be achieved by other things than the study of the classics might well accept Lowell's use of the word "liberal." Liberalism is not a dogma: it is, or should be. an attitude of mind.

Uncle Sam and His Debtors

A

CARTOON in a recent number of the London "Punch" depicts Uncle Sam as a paunchy, prosperous gentleman lecturing an assembly of pinched and poverty-stricken nations of Europe, and asking them if they have learned nothing from the war. The reply is, "We have learned what we owe you."

Clever and cutting, it is characteristic of the regrettable bitter spirit that has arisen over the settlement of the war debts between former allies who should be the best of friends. Blame lies on both sides. Mean-tempered things have been said and answered in the same way. There was the picture of America, bloated with wealth yet squeezing more vast amounts from war-stricken Europe, drawn by Winston Churchill, Chancellor of the British Exchequer, in a debate in the House of Commons. It was followed by. the London "Morning Post's" caustic comment on "this policy of almost skinning Europe." Senator Borah, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, in ill-advised retaliation, accused Mr. Churchill of aiming at complete cancellation of the debts. Senator Reed, of Missouri, in his irresponsible speeches opposing the Belgian and Italian agreements, has declared that the United States is more popular now in Germany than with the Allies.

Former Premier Poincaré, in a recent public address in France, has drawn a just and appealing picture of the difficulties of his country, facing the debt demands of both Great Britain and the United States, and of her need for reparations first for the damage done by German armies. But he has failed to grasp or express the fact that America is contending for the principle of recognition of obligations, on which all credit must be based.

Uncle Sam, as a result of all this, is being drawn by European caricaturists as "Uncle Shylock." Such unfair and unjustified' attacks strike at the basis of all good and helpful relations.

The treatment accorded to Belgium, France, and Italy has shown that the people of the United States, as represented by their Government, are not inclined to press hard terms upon their friends. Since the war we have waited to come to an understanding with France, while she paid a slight amount of interest in comparison with her huge

total indebtedness.

Admittedly easy terms have been granted to Belgium and Italy, after similar long delays; and the Debt Funding Commission is now considering easy terms for France.

The final ratification of the Belgian and Italian agreements by both houses of Congress evidently has improved the chances of a French agreement. The irreconcilables have made their last stand. Defeat in the Senate of a motion to reconsider the ratification of the Italian agreement is conclusive proof of the prevailing wish for a sensible and speedy settlement of the debt problems still outstanding. It is apparent that any understanding on the French debt which can be accepted by the Debt Commission

debt agreement with, them. We ought to be willing to do at least as much for the Allies as we have argued that they and we should do for Germany.

The plea of France for leniency makes an appeal to the sympathies of America equaled only by that of Belgium.

France needs to secure in New York loans to aid her to escape from her present financial crisis. Payments on her internal debt now take three-fifths of her revenues. Her hopes depend on an agreement maintaining the principle of recognizing obligations. It is to the interest of both parties to reach a settlement on the most favorable terms that can be ratified.

popular preachers in the country, notably at the colleges, it is not because of his preaching primarily that he has made the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church an extraordinary force in the life of New York City; it is because of his genius as a cultivator of religion itself. A man may be very able as a speaker and writer about horticulture or farming and yet not be able to make things grow. Henry Sloane Coffin has made religion grow in his church and through his church. He can talk about religion, it is true, so that people will listen and even the skeptical will respect what he says; but all the preaching in the world would not do what he has done and has succeeded in getting others to do.

Dr. Coffin has really made of his

dent Coolidge's Administration is reasonably assured of adoption.

Ambassador Bérenger, of France, has shown that his country now has a firm intention to face the unpleasant problem, and it seems probable that his negotiations with the Debt Commission in Washington will end in success. What he is reported to have offered consists of smaller initial payments than those which Caillaux agreed to ($25,000,000 as compared with $40,000,000), but a larger ultimate sum (over $7,000,000,000 as compared with $6,220,000,000) approximating more nearly the amount of $7,500,000,000 which the American Commissioners regarded as a minimum.

The terms outlined prove that France is ready to face to the full of her capacity the obligation represented by her great debt. Her will to pay is emphasized further by the news from London that France is to begin to remit a sum equaling $20,000,000 a year on her debt to Great Britain, pending a final agreement regarding the terms of full repayment.

A great deal of trouble has been caused by the notorious "safeguard clause" by which France has sought to retain the right to reopen the question of her war debt to the United States in case Germany fails to fulfill her duties under the reparations program now in operation. There is an important reason why Americans should view this desire tolerantly. Many people do not understand that the Transfer Committee, set up by the reparations plan of the Dawes committee of experts, has the duty and responsibility of controlling the payments to be made by Germany to the Allies, so as to avoid undue harm through depression of German exchange. No such protection is thrown around the Allies by the

I

'N calling to its Presidency Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin Union Theological Seminary, in New York City, has virtually declared its faith, not in theology or scholarship, but in religion.

This does not mean that it is abandoning theology or underestimating scholarship. Its retiring President, Dr. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, whose very success as an administrator has brought him burdens which he can no longer bear, is one of the foremost scholars in the world, and is a profound student and gifted teacher of the history of theology, and he will remain long, we hope, to inspire the students of the Seminary with the love of truth and learning. If there is any divinity school in the country in which the spirit of the true university is alive and promises to flourish, it is Union Theological Seminary. But if the function of the minister is to be a leader of religion, it is not the chief function of the seminary to create theologians or scholars, who in turn will create other theologians and scholars to be teachers of theologians and scholars after them ad infinitum. Its function is to foster and train men who will become skilled in the direction of religious life. It is precisely because Dr. Coffin's eminence is due, not to his scholarship, though his learning is broad and well rooted in the love of truth wherever it may be found, but to his skill in religious leadership, that his accession to the Presidency of Union Theological Seminary is significant of what is taking place in the Church to-day.

It was about twenty years ago that Henry Sloane Coffin became minister of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. Although he is one of the most

What is its neighborhood? That church has answered the question in the same way that Jesus answered the man who asked him, "Who is my neighbor?" Wherever it has seen a need and has had a chance to minister to it there it has found its neighborhood. At least that has been its ideal. Outwardly it has shown its ideals in its building and in its organizations; but these have been simply the forms of expression that are necessary in modern American city life. What has counted has been the service it has done and the way it has done it.

And, naturally, it has not asked people primarily to believe or accept without believing a creed. It has recognized that creeds are part of life, but are not the threshold to life. Jesus Christ did not start out by asking people what they believed. It is true that he asked some of his most intimate disciples what they thought of him, but only after they had been associated with him and had been his disciples. He did not require them to perform any rites. He did not ask people what they knew or whether they were good or bad before he accepted them. He started, not by an examination, but by an invitation-"Come, follow me." His religion was life. His test of religion was what that life produced. John the Baptist wanted to know whether Jesus was the Christ, and Jesus told John's messengers to go back to him and tell him what they had seen. And the test to which he submitted was the one to which he put others. By their fruit he would know them. Not saying "Lord, Lord," was for him the sign of religion, but doing the will of the Father.

The story of the good Samaritan was the expression of this in the terms of

Palestinian life in the first century. The American churches' task is to find means of expressing it in the terms of American life in the twentieth century. Choosing a man with Dr. Coffin's record, Union Theological Seminary shows that it is aware of what should be its chief business in the training of its students.

ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT.

To Clean the Ocean of Oil

F

YOUR years ago Congress adopted a joint resolution requesting the President to call a conference of maritime nations with a view to adopting effective means for the prevention of oil pollution of navigable waters. The situation, it was admitted, was very bad. Pollution from oil had become such as to menace the maritime and fishing industries, to increase greatly the fire hazard to port and shore property, and to render many bathing beaches practically unusable. An Interdepartmental Committee was appointed to arrange for the conference. This Committee has just now reported to the Secretary of State. that "the Government of the United States is now warranted in convening a preliminary conference of experts representing the Governments concerned."

Four years seems a long time when a need is urgent. In this case, however, the interval does not represent time wasted. Shortly after the Committee began its work in August, 1922, the fact was ascertained that nobody knew how to prevent the dumping of oily mixtures into the sea; nobody had invented a machine which could be readily installed on shipboard and which would effectively separate oil from water mixtures. The Committee therefore concluded, and the Secretary of State and other officials concurred in the conclusion, that it was "not expedient to call an international conference until we shall be in position to submit practical proposals." The Committee now believes that it can submit such proposals, and the conference-at least a preliminary conference-will be called presumably within the next few months.

Meanwhile the situation has greatly improved. When the resolution was adopted, pollution was reported from all seaboard and lake States except New Hampshire and Mississippi and had reached serious proportions in and around the harbors of New York, Boston, Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, the Mis

sissippi River, Galveston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and many lesser ports. By the most recent reports, only about one port in seven has an oil-pollution problem at all serious. The situation is still far from what it should be, but it has improved steadily during the four-year interval. Some of this improvement is due to investigations and other activities instigated by the Interdepartmental Committee. Much of it is due to the passage by Congress of the Oil Pollution Act of 1924, and much to State and municipal laws and ordi

nances.

By either statute or ordinance or both, something effective has been undertaken toward preventing oil pollution to the waters of the following States: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington.

Meanwhile measures for the prevention of oil pollution have made progress in most of the other maritime nations, including practically all of the states and colonies of the British Empire, Denmark, France, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden.

S

There still remains the problem of preventing the dumping of oil and oily mixtures at sea outside of territorial waters, much of which floats to the coasts. And this problem, necessarily, much be solved by international cooperation. It is to be hoped that it will be solved by the conference about to be called. This, apparently, is made possible by the progress of the past few years in devising machinery for use on ships which will separate oils from such mixtures as must be discharged at sea.

Much remains to be done at home, of course. Waters are polluted by oil from many sources other than oil-burning or oil-carrying vessels-from oil field operations, oil terminals and loading points, refineries, gas plants, industrial plants, ship-repair yards, railroads using or transporting oil, and from sewer systems. Most of those things are outside the scope of investigation indicated by the joint resolution of 1922, outside the province of the Interdepartmental Committee. That Committee has, however, pointed them out.

We ought to set our own house, as nearly as possible, in order before the representatives of other nations come to sit in conference with us.

College Thinking About College
Drinking

By LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT
Contributing Editor of The Outlook

ENATOR EDGE, of New Jersey,

has introduced a bill into the Senate which would modify the Volstead Act so as to permit a larger alcoholic content in beverages that may be legally sold under the Eighteenth Amendment. In support of this bill he requested the special Senate Committee whose hearings have just been concluded. at Washington to summon two Yale undergraduates to testify as to conditions prevailing in the University under prohibition and as to the sentiment of the undergraduate body regarding the prohibitory law.

The two undergraduates quite properly responded to this official request. One of them is Chairman of the "Yale Daily News" and the other is the Managing Editor. That they hold these two honorable offices is an indication of their high standing in the undergraduate body.

Their testimony is therefore to be regarded with respect so far as it touches the facts which come within their own observation and experience. They testified, first, that it is possible, although not always easy, for Yale students to obtain intoxicating liquors from bootleggers; and, second, that a substantial majority of the undergraduate body is antagonistic to the Volstead Act. They apparently did not, as of course they could not, express any opinion as to whether the amount of drinking at Yale under prohibition is greater or less than it was thirty or twenty or ten years ago. They have had no experience on which to base such a comparison.

With regard to comparative conditions there is some important testimony which the editors of the "Yale Daily News" frankly admitted was outside of the range of their knowledge. The Chief of

Police of New Haven expressed this opinion:

Speaking from the authentic records of the Police Department, there is much less drinking now than before the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. Yale undergraduates are much better behaved than then, and one of the direct benefits of prohibition is that their conduct has improved so materially.

And the following statement from Professor Charles C. Clark was read upon the witness stand:

I am not a prohibitionist, and have never been. I will admit to you, however, that the effect of prohibition at Yale University has been good. know whereof I speak, for I have been a member of the Committee on Discipline from a time dating back many years before prohibition.

I know conditions intimately. I do not pretend that the students are prohibitionists or are not drinking, but the change has been simply revolutionary. In the old days our Committee was constantly busy with cases involving intoxication and the disorders originating from it. Now we have practically no business of the kind at all to transact. Moreover, this is in spite of the fact that in the old days we rarely troubled ourselves about a case of mere intoxication if it had not resulted in some kind of public disorder, whereas now intoxication of itself is regarded as calling for the severest penalty.

Doubtless the appearance of the two Yale undergraduate editors before the Senate Committee as "wet" witnesses will subject them to-a good deal of criticism in certain quarters. They deserve, however, not criticism, but commendation. When college undergraduates attempt an original and independent investigation of a great public controversy, and then temperately express the conclusions and opinions which they have thought out as a result of that investigation, the effort is highly creditable to them and to the system of education which they are pursuing. For the gravest criticism of American colleges is that they do not teach their students to think.

This criticism is not made by outsiders, but by those who are most familiar, both in theory and in practice, with collegiate training in this country. Not many months ago one of the Faculty of Dartmouth College, Professor Leon B. Richardson, of the Department of Chemistry, was commissioned by the President

a personal investigation of college education in this country and England. In carrying out this mission he visited nineteen colleges and universities in the United States, two in Canada, eight in England, and three in Scotland. His report took the form of a book of nearly three hundred pages entitled "A Study of the Liberal College." The report is in itself a tribute to the breadth, vigor, and sanity of the educational atmosphere of Dartmouth. For, while it is written by a scientist and consists of a collection and comparison of accurately ascertained facts, it is characterized by a delightful literary quality which commands the interest of the layman. After a careful survey of the English university and the American college, Professor Richardson believes that "a superiority of the English system. is that the student is assumed to be acquiring an education mainly by his own efforts, but with the assistance of the teacher, rather than learning lessons in the fashion of the schoolboy." This judgment he supports by much evidence, of which the following effective passage is a good sample:

When a student is enrolled in an Oxford College, and has selected the field in which he intends to work, he is assigned a tutor who specializes in that subject. . . . He usually meets his tutor once a week, almost always alone, for a conference of an hour. In order that there may be something to discuss, he brings with him an essay covering some topic which has been agreed upon at a preceding conference. This essay is read, and then followsor is supposed to follow-a discussion upon themes suggested by it.

The stress placed by Oxford upon written work, and particularly upon literary style, can hardly be overestimated. It is one of the features of the Oxford system which most troubles the American student who comes to the English university with habits formed in his home college. When he submits his first essay and finds that his tutor is much disturbed by the occurrence of the same word twice in a single sentence, or too many words ending in ion on a page, he is frankly puzzled. Those words express what he wants to say, the meaning is clear, so why worry more about it? But his tutor persists in his objection to slipshod English, and eventually the student finds it convenient so to care for the way in which he expresses his ideas as to make that no longer a source of friction. . . .

What does the tutor expect of the student in these weekly conferences? Again the Oxford undergraduate with

shock. At home he was given definite assignments; he studied his lesson with the object of learning what the textbook said, and he spilled it forth, when called upon, with as little change as possible. He found that his scholastic success in college depended on how successfully he followed that process. He tries the same method at Oxford, and finds, to his astonishment, that his tutor takes not the slightest interest in his mastery of the facts; such information is taken for granted, but that he is expected to give his own ideas upon the subject in question. As very likely, he never had an idea in his life, and as he had never been encouraged to form one, he is much perturbed at the situation and much disgusted at Oxford and its ways. A Fellow of Balliol, who has had much to do with American students, gives this as his experience. At first the youth brings facts to his tutor; then, when this will not do, he searches sedulously for the comments and criticisms of others, he laboriously works them up and produces them in triumph. When he finds that this process is of no more avail than the other, that his own ideas are all that will fit the case, he explodes with exasperation and says that his American teachers would classify such stuff as "hot air." But when it is evident that the job must be done and that he must set himself to the novel task of forming conclusions of his own, he finds, after a time, to his astonishment, that these conclusions are neither so vaporous nor so heated as he had expected. Then it is that the Oxford method begins to impress itself upon him in its real strength.

Lest any reader may think that Professor Richardson has become an Anglomaniac in education, let me hasten to add that he does not find Oxford and Cambridge wholly free from defects nor American college methods entirely lacking in advantages. But he does insist that cisatlantic educational institutions should make "greater demands that the student think rather than memorize."

Yale is evidently making its students think. And so I venture to bring to the attention of my professional colleagues on the "Yale News" my own conclusions on the prohibition problem, hoping that they will give them a modicum of con sideration.

There are only four ways of dealing Nationally with the liquor trade:

1. Sell alcoholic liquors as freely as spring water without Government interference or taxation of any kind; thi would remove political corruption, but would promote worse disasters.