contests will be of frequent occurrence, and in the National Air Races approximately 500 planes will compete.

The Fair covers 1,010 acres of actual exhibition ground, as compared with 1,142 acres at St. Louis in 1904, 666 acres at Chicago in 1893, and 285 acres at the Centennial. The outlay' is $23,320,000, as compared with $24,691,000 at San Francisco in 1915, and the total attendance is computed at about 36,000,000, which is nearly twice that at St. Louis or San Francisco.

Has Democracy in Europe Failed?

M

USSOLINI in Italy, Pangalos in Greece, and now Pilsudski in Poland have successfully led revolts against the only form of democracy that these countries have known. And France is in a mood to welcome such revolt. Does this mean that democracy in Europe has failed?

M. Maurras, editor of the famous royalist journal "l'Action Française," of Paris, answers in his article on another page his own question by declaring European, and particularly French, democracy bankrupt.

But parliamentary government, which is really what Mussolini and Pangalos and Pilsudski have displaced and what M. Maurras arraigns, is not identical with democracy. Indeed, it has existed. under forms of government that were distinctly undemocratic. A parliament may rule without being really represent

ative of the people. Indeed, in England, where parliamentary government first established itself, the Parliament was not at first at all democratic, and at times. was as tyrannous as any monarch. Moreover, intertwined with parliamentary rule in many, and perhaps most, European countries there has been the rule of a bureaucracy-that is, a rule by specially appointed experts, trained for their calling and admitted to power only through examination. An interesting description of this concomitant of parliamentary government in Europe is to be found in Dr. Moritz Julius Bonn's small book on "The Crisis of European Democracy." While parliament has talked, often futilely, bureaucracy has really governed. And European parliaments, cut up into blocs, petty parties, and inconsiderable factions, have often found themselves powerless to work the will of anybody, whether of a majority or a minority. It is against the feebleness, the impotence of parliamentary government that Europe has been revolting, not against democracy as such.

But even if parliaments could manage to work out the will of the majority, M. Maurras would still be opposed to them, because he, and many in Europe who think as he does, are opposed to the rule of the majority. He says that, strictly speaking, democracy means "the régime which gives the control of the state to the most numerous-that is, to the least cultured; that is, to the less well informed; that is, to those least able to choose and act with freedom and discernment." But democracy does not

necessarily mean always the rule by the majority. In the United States democracy itself has erected safeguards against the tyranny of majorities. And usually democracy does not act by means of majorities, but by means of compromise and what Miss Follett in her able book on "Creative Experience" calls "integration." Out of discussion, out of even bitter conquests, in democracy often come results which are neither the will of the majority nor the will of the minority, but a new product made up of the will of both.

Thinking Disarmament

G

ERMAN military uniforms were the only military uniforms visible at the conference table at Geneva when experts under the auspices of the League of Nations began their official discussions on May 18 at Geneva, Switzerland. The one great nation theoretically already disarmed, Germany was the one nation to appear with the symbol of armed forces. That incident graphically explains the reason why the voluntary disarmament of nations in Europe is extremely difficult.

It is not armament that makes a nation dangerous, but an armed mind. The fact that Germany has been forced to destroy most of her weapons of war and to disband her great military machine does not make her neighbors safe if she thinks in terms of arms and armies. Of all the problems before those experts at Geneva, the chief is that of finding a way to secure moral disarmament. Here

in the United States we are so thoroughly disarmed morally that it is hard for us to imagine the state of mind of those countries who have to keep morally armed because they know their neighbors are morally armed, and who therefore fear any scheme which may give their neighbors an advantage in case they have the chance to translate their mental state into a material form.

In particular, Americans have shown themselves incapable of appreciating as a people the French point of view. It has been very easy for us to lay down our arms. So when the French come to such a conference as that at Geneva and ask that in any plan for disarmament every nation's potential military resources should be taken into account, so that those without such resources might be allowed to make up for their lack by the maintenance of a larger military establishment, they find the Americans hard to persuade. Moreover, they have to face the fact that estimating potential resources involves complicated technical difficulties, and besides is largely a matter of opinion, and therefore provocative of dissension. Fortunately, Hugh Gibson is a man of experience and of tolerant mind, and as head of the American delegation has welcomed the expression of the French view. In spite, therefore, of the enormous difficulties which any estimate as to potential military resources would encounter, the French delegation, under M. Paul Boncour, succeeded in getting the French proposal on the program as a subject for discussion and inquiry.

At first thought this may seem to be a serious check to any progress toward disarmament; but it is not. There can be no progress toward disarmament until the minds of nations are set at rest. The first business of the conference now in session at Geneva is not to get rid of arms, but to get rid of fears.

In fact, what is called the preliminary conference on disarmament at Geneva is not really a conference at all. It is rather the session of a large committee to ascertain and establish facts and, if possible, to draw up a program. It is not a political discussion with a view to international action, but the proceedings of a commission of experts. Its purpose is not one of diplomacy, but one of research.

In all such conferences expectations far outrun possible achievement. In the case of this conference popular expecta

achievement, but to be altogether on the wrong track. People who are seeking to find a means for establishing just and peaceful relations between nations must not look to this conference for establishing such a means. That is not its function. That may be the function of some

zeal outruns discretion, as it appears to have done in the case of Mr. Pinchot and his supporters, the effect may be as harmful as if it were caused by selfishness and corruption.

gathering in the future. At present what First Aid to the Farmer

these experts are to do is to reconnoiter the ground, find where fears and dangers lie, and prepare the engineering plans for such a structure as the builders who may come after them may find it wise and possible to erect.

E

Vare's Victory

ITHER the Republican Senatorial primary in Pennsylvania was a contest over prohibition or it was not. Nobody can have it both ways.

Those who want to relax the Prohibition Act and those who would like to see the Prohibition Amendment nullified point out that Mr. Vare, the successful candidate, was the only one of the three candidate, was the only one of the three who was openly wet. They therefore argue that the result shows that Pennsylvania, so far as the Republican Party, the dominant party in the State, is concerned, is against prohibition. But what the wets fail to note is that Mr. Vare is a minority nominee. The votes against him were many thousands more than the votes for him. If the issue was prohibition, therefore, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania has recorded itself as overwhelmingly dry.

To this it may be answered that the vote cast against Mr. Vare was a vote against the Philadelphia machine, and that the vote against Pepper was a vote against the Pittsburgh machine. If that is true, it is equally true that the vote against Pinchot was a vote against what his opponents regarded as his political vagaries. In that case, the issue was not clearly prohibition.

In either case-whether the contest is regarded as one chiefly over prohibition or not-Mr. Vare's victory cannot be regarded as a popular indorsement of the

wet cause.

For a further analysis of the issues in this primary election and the effect of the vote we refer our readers to Mr. Waldo's special correspondence on another page. It is clear that Pennsylvania has permitted a fine public servant to be dismissed from the Senate and has substituted for him one whose record clearly demonstrates his incompetence for service in

T

HREE agricultural bills are before Congress-the Haugen Bill, the Tincher Bill, and the Aswell Bill. The Haugen Bill has been defeated in the House of Representatives, and is still to go before the Senate. The other bills have not yet come to vote.

All three bills are aimed at the problem of securing for the farmer a fair price for the staple products of agriculture. The Tincher Bill and the Haugen Bill both create an agricultural council, which in turn nominates an agricultural board, which is also created by this bill. In the Tincher Bill the duties of the

agricultural board are practically confined to loaning money to co-operative farm organizations, whereas in the Haugen Bill it is provided that the agricultural board shall actively work for the marketing of farm products. The Aswell Bill provides that the agricultural board shall be created by three farmers' organizations.

These three bills represent attempts to solve the economic problems of the farmer and to settle political unrest. Was it not Mark Twain who said that "Every one is always complaining about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it"? These bills are an attempt to do something with a question which is almost as difficult to handle as the weather itself.

Throughout the Middle West there is undoubtedly a feeling that industry and labor benefit greatly by Governmental assistance. It has been phrased in sub

stance as follows:

Industry is on stilts through the aid of the tariff; labor, through the aid of restricted immigration.

The farmer must get stilts of his own or take away those of industry and labor, so that all three shall be upon the same footing.

Of course the analogy is not wholly sound very few analogies are. The stilts given to industry and labor are to a certain extent also stilts for the farmer. For the prosperity of labor and the prosperity of industry aid greatly in maintaining prices for farm products.

In so far as the economic situation of

Governmental help of any kind can accomplish a real amelioration of present conditions. Where the cost of production is higher on American farms than elsewhere in the world and where land values are inflated beyond their true productive worth, it will not help, in the long run, to extend Governmental aid any more than it helped the British miners to subsidize uneconomic mining.

If such a measure as the Haugen Bill were to be passed, it could only tend to create a larger surplus of farm products, which in turn would require increased appropriations to process and market. Where there is a surplus of farm products, it will not help to artificially subsidize the creation of that surplus. The resulting cycle of operations is a vicious one. What American agriculture needs is, first of all, an understanding that

I

over-production or too costly production

acts inevitably for the destruction of profit and capital. profit and capital. It needs also a chance to dispose of such products as it can create economically in a sellers' market. The farmer has been tremendously handicapped because all too often he has had little or nothing to say as to the proportion that he should receive of the ultimate price of his products. He has been like the lumberman and the miner who have to trade at a company store. The price of what he has to sell as well as of what he has to buy has been fixed by agencies outside his control. Το change this condition without adding unnecessary burdens or creating a new bureaucracy should be the object of

agricultural legislation. agricultural legislation. It is on their ability to do this that the bills now before Congress should be judged.

HAVE in my lifetime collected perhaps two thousand books, but I have never been a "book-collector." That is to say, I have never sought, nor, for that matter, have I ever been able to buy, rare books and first editions. Until recently I have .been perfectly contented with my situation in this respect. The bibliophile who hunts a book because it is a rare first edition, or because of some peculiarity in its typography or imprimatur, or because it has been owned and thumbed by some great figure in literary history, has in the past commanded my admiration but never excited my envy. I have been inclined to agree with Dr. Johnson that, while first editions are great ornaments to any library, the most useful editions for a reading man are often apt to be the last.

But all that is changed. I do not mean to say that I am any more envious of book-collectors than I ever was, but two recent experiences have taught me to set a very much higher value upon their services as promoters of a love of literature. The prime function of books is not to serve as beautiful and interesting curios, but to enable their owners to make some progress in knowing the best that has been thought and said in the world. The two recent experiences to which I have just referred have given me a new glimpse of how potently the real book-collector furthers this desirable end.

The first was an opportunity which I have had within a month of examining some of the rare books and manuscripts that were bequeathed by a New York collector, who died fifty years ago last April, to a well-known club of that city among whose most loyal members he was numbered. These books were recently put on exhibition at the suggestion of a member of the club who has the instinct of a bibliophile for ferreting out rare and interesting instances of literary history. I will mention only one example in this unusual exhibition. It is a first edition of some of the poems and tales of Edgar Allan Poe, which includes "The Raven" and "The Gold Bug." The margins of this particular copy contain corrections and annotations which Poe himself made in lead-pencil. Some of the corrections are purely typographical, but some are radical changes in the style and phraseology. Here one may see some of Poe's criticisms of his own work. He has, for example, stricken out one entire stanza of "The Raven" and written in a new one. He has changed his adjectives in some places and in others altered his fancies or images. Whether these corrections have ever been incorporated in subsequent editions I do not know. I am not enough of a bibliophile for that. But this annotated copy is a striking illustration of the fact that the creative artist

never attains what he himself regards as a perfect or final effect.

Perhaps the most extraordinary instance of persistent striving for perfection is found in the translation or paraphrase of the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyám by Edward FitzGerald. This retiring, sensitive, and super-conscientious man of letters published four editions of his "Rubaiyat," with many variations, before he was satisfied. Some of his variations are improvements, some are not, but they go far to show that the best poets are not merely born but are made by the hardest kind of labor. For example, FitzGerald made four versions of the noble first stanza of the "Rubaiyat." In the first edition he

wrote:

Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of

Night

Has flung the Stone that put the Stars to Flight.

In the second edition he changed this to read:

Wake! For the Sun behind yon Eastern height

Has chased the Session of the Stars from Night.

In the first but unpublished draft of the third edition he framed the passage thus:

Wake! For the Sun before him into

Night

A Signal flung that put the Stars to flight!

And the final form of the third edition reads as follows:

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night, . . .

Most critics agree that, however admirable FitzGerald's striving for perfection may be, he did not succeed by these modifications in bettering his first inspiration.

But I have left myself too little space to record my second lesson in the fine art of book-collecting. A month ago I had the pleasure and benefit of spending an hour or two in the library of one of the most accomplished of contemporary American collectors, Mr. A. Edward Newton, of Philadelphia. A host of readers know him as the author of many delightful essays about his art, especially of the volume entitled "The Amenities of Book Collecting," which is so entrancing and enticing to amateurs of letters who are not fortunate enough to be

collectors. With no disparagement to the distinguished members of the "Johnson Club" of England, I rise to pronounce Mr. Newton, when measured by the standards of book-collecting, the first of living Johnsonians. His rare books by Johnson and about Johnson, his prints, and his portrait of Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds constitute a unique and beautiful library in themselves. Its value in mere dollars and cents is appalling. As a memento of my visit Mr. Newton gave me a copy of the facsimile which he has caused to be made of the catalogue of the sale of Dr. Johnson's library.

This catalogue is one of the rarest and most highly prized specimens in the flora of bibliophilia. Mr. Newton's own copy was once the property of General Oglethorpe, who founded the State of Georgia and who used to give Dr. Johnson famous dinners in exchange for the latter's equally famous conversation. General Oglethorpe was present and bought something on each of the four days of the sale, including an Irish grammar in a miscellaneous parcel for which he paid sixteen shillings. These facts are known because Mr. Newton discovered another copy of the catalogue, owned by a gentleman in London, with notations made by the auctioneer on the margins opposite each of the six hundred and sixty two items. These annotations show each purchaser's name and the purchase price. It is this copy which Mr. Newton has reproduced in facsimile. The proceeds of the sale-including a first folio of Shakespeare, which went for one pound two shillings to a gentleman named Ireland-amounted to less than two hundred and fifty pounds. Think of it! And think in connection with it of Dr. Johnson's remark at the auction sale of Thrale's brewery. "We are not here," he said, "to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice."

Dr. Johnson's library was sold in the famous auction-room in London, then and still known as Christie's, in 1785, two months after its owner's death. I would not presume to equal the charming essay by Mr. Newton which constitutes the introduction to the facsimile catalogue. The beautifully printed volume is slight in physique but enormous in its revelation of Dr. Johnson's personality and tastes. It brings into lifelike relief the lines and features of Bos

several hours of entertainment in examining and re-examining the catalogue and have made some casual memoranda of the items which it contains.

Dr. Johnson owned at least six or seven works of medicine and surgery, including "Mudge on a catarrhous cough" and "Mudge on the smal! pox," which makes one realize the great lexicographer's physical sufferings and hypochondria. Whether this medical Mudge is the same Mudge whose edition of the Psalms Dr. Johnson appeared to value I have found no means of discovering.

There is no copy of Boswell by me here in the country, where I am writing this, but I seem to remember a remarkable legal opinion which Johnson, although not a barrister, once gave Boswell about some lawsuit of the little devoted Scot's. The catalogue explains Johnson's legal lore. He owned many books of legal statutes and philosophy, including four volumes of Blackstone's Commentaries, thirty volumes of the Acts of Parliament, and a copy of "De Jure ac Belli," by Grotius. Dr. Andrew D. White in his "Seven Great Statesmen" calls this work by Grotius on war and peace, written nearly a hundred years before Johnson's birth, one of the epochmaking books of the world.

Beethoven, who was just fourteen. years old the month that Dr. Johnson died, suffered, like the author of "Rasselas," from physical ills that brought him to the verge of despair. He says in one of his diaries that he was fortified and taught patience by Plutarch. Dr. Johnson doubtless also found comfort in the Greek moralist, for he owned an edition of Plutarch published in 1542. It may have been a Latin translation, for the volume bore the title of "Plutarchi moralia opuscula." The learned Doctor read Latin as easily as he read English, but he was also an excellent Greek scholar. He owned three copies of the New Testament in Greek, one of which he must have bought only a few months before his death, for it was published in London in 1783.

In Johnson's day sermons were a valued form of literature, and the catalogue contains many items of these clerical compositions, which confirms what we know from Boswell of Dr. Johnson's devout interest in theological writings. But it is quite in harmony with the Boswellian reports of his voracious literary appetite to find that his reading was not

and history. There was a scientific corner in his mind, for he owned a very respectable collection of books on arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, chemistry, and astronomy. He had little ear for music and sometimes spoke contemptuously of it. It is therefore surprising to see that he possessed three volumes on music by Dr. Burney, who was Dr. Johnson's contemporary, and was one of the foremost historians and critics of music in his day. But perhaps Dr. Johnson's capitulation to music was because Dr. Burney was the father of Fanny Burney, the author of "Evelina" and one of the founders of the art of novel writing in English; and we know from Boswell that Dr. Johnson was greatly captivated by her personal charms as well as by her literary precocity.

He was interested in belles-lettres as well as in the heavier forms of literature. In spite of his denunciations of the French, and presumably of the Latin races generally, he apparently read Spanish, French, and Italian. His library contained a quarto Spanish edition of "Don Quixote," the works of Racine, a French Bible, a two-volume Italian dictionary, and a copy of Boccacio's "Decameron" in the original. It is to be hoped that the passages which Bohn thought it necessary to interpolate in French in his English translation of the "Decameron" did not offset the moral advantages which the good Doctor found in his comprehensive collection of sermons and in his copy of Plutarch.

One might go on with many other items of this remarkable catalogue which set one to thinking about the extraordinary variety of Dr. Johnson's human and literary interests. Mr. Newton, among other things, has this to say of it:

The Catalogue of Johnson's library! Our book-collecting, then, all comes to this. A man spends freely of his time, his money, and his energy-and dies. And ere he is cold in his grave, enter his executors with power to act and sell under the hammer of the auctioneer the books which were once a part and parcel of the man himself.

I beg to differ. I have learned that the work of such a collector as Mr. Newton, no matter what dispersal his library may eventually suffer, throws a clear and guiding illumination upon literature as literature. Thus he deserves a croix de guerre in the never-ending war of civilization on ignorance and medi

Ο

N Tuesday, May 18, at the Republican primaries in Pennsylvania, Representative William S. Vare was preferred for the Senatorial nomination over Governor Gifford Pinchot and Senator George Wharton Pepper; and John S. Fisher was chosen to be the party standard-bearer in the campaign for the Governorship over Edward E. Beidleman. Vare and Beidleman were the candidates of that organization which Elihu Root, at the Union League Club in Philadelphia, once called "a corrupt and criminal combination masquerading as Republicans;" so that the politically incorruptible and undefiled who deplore the victory of Mr. Vare in the Senatorial contest find their disappointment tempered by satisfaction in the defeat of Beidleman, his running mate, for the gubernatorial nomination.

The vote for Vare was about 600,000, as compared with about 500,000 for Pepper and more than 300,000 for Pin.chot. Thus it is seen that if the Organization solidarity had been pitted against a house of reform undivided, Vare's plurality of almost 100,000 over Pepper and nearly 300,000 over Pinchot would have been transformed into a shortage of 200,000 votes, and Vare would have found himself in an overwhelmed minority.

On the other hand, Mr. Fisher became

think, without having to try to read it through the dim glass of their choice of a particular candidate in a primary."

These statements of Senator Reed, illuminative as they are, invite comment. In the first place, it may fairly be asked by a dispassionate outsider whether Pinchot deservedly incurs censure for his refusal to withdraw from the field in favor of Pepper. The two men had been friends, hailing each other as "Dear George" and "Dear Gifford" in correspondence. One link between them was a shared admiration of Roosevelt; but that admiration has often been conceived and expressed by very different types of men. Pepper and Pinchot are temperamentally unlike. Pinchot is a crusader sometimes carried by the initial momentum of generous impulse to extremes that lend color to the charge of fanaticism; Pepper too is an idealist and a visionary, but he is also a Philadelphia lawyer. Pinchot by his effort for the conservation of the forest land of Nation and State has conferred a benefit on his own time and on posterity such as entitles him to be held in grateful remembrance. Pepper, an extremely able attorney and a devout Episcopal churchman, is a gentleman and scholar in politics whose occasional efforts to speak the language of the Organization stalwarts-as when at a ward meeting he said, "We shall spit

after his rival, Mr. Beidleman, had received many floral tributes and much back-slapping as the presumable winner. Tardy returns from rural districts changed Beidleman's meager surplus into a deficit of about 15,000. The disconcerted manager of Beidleman says that he intends to challenge the figures; it is highly improbable that they will be sufficiently changed to alter the result, as it is also unlikely that the Senate "probe" into the cost of the primary candidacies will amount to anything.

Of Vare's total vote more than half came from Philadelphia, where he carried all but one ward. Outside of the city, which is also Philadelphia County, he carried but six counties in a total of 67. Mr. Vare, with his "machine-tooled" victory, thus finds himself with Philadel

1 See editorial comment.

mary election, May 19, Senator Reed, of Pennsylvania, on the floor of the Senate ascribed the outcome to two causes. The first of these, he said, was the interjection of Governor Pinchot and his candidacy, dividing the so-called "dry" sentiment. The second cause, he "dry" sentiment. The second cause, he declared, was "a wave of resentment against the Prohibition Law, which blinded many people to the real questions at issue. It was the one opportunity they thought they would have for an expression of their sentiment on the wet-and-dry question." In a feeling aside, he added: "I believe that question ought to be taken out of politics, at least out of the campaigns for choice of representatives in the Senate, by allowing the people of Pennsylvania to express their sentiments in a referendum on that subject, so that we may know what they

tuated the difference between the kind of man he is and the kind that is a servile and a willing henchman of the feudal system which Vare inherited from Quay and Penrose.

Pepper and Pinchot are both aligned with what the Organization derides as the silk-stocking and highbrow element. It is the boast of Vare, on the other hand, that he came from the people, has stayed with the people, and will be one of the people to the end. His favorite campaign ditty averred that he "followed the plow and milked the cow." In the early days he owned pigs and collected city garbage for them; after that he took contracts, with his brothers, for street cleaning. He is proud of the fact that he is self-made. He holds himself accountable as a partisan of the straitest sect of the system whereby he rose-a