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A Rear-Admiral Rises to Inquire

EFERRING to the editorial, in your issue regard to prohibition conditions, there is another question which should be askedthis:

In view of the fact that on April 30, 1923, the Supreme Court handed down a decision to the effect that transportation of liquors, sealed or unsealed, sea stores or otherwise, within the territorial waters of the United States is prohibited transportation in the sense of the Eighteenth Amendment and of the Volstead Law, and in view of the further fact that in 1924 our Executive ne.gotiated and our Senate confirmed a treaty with Great Britain whereby the said prohibited transportation is allowed, protected, and required, is it possible to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment so long as the enforcement authorities, in obedience to the highest law in the land, must and do nullify that Amendment every day? What is the answer? Washington, D. C.

W. W. KIMBALL.

The Trouble with Seitz STORY is told of an Irishman who ap

on what grounds he wanted to petition for a divorce, he said his wife talked too much. When asked what she talked about, he said, "Faith an' she doesn't say."

This is the trouble with Don C. Seitz's article "The United Universe Corporation," in the April 7 number of The Outlook.

To tell another story illustrative of the article: A certain preacher had a habit of taking his text and leaving it to talk about whatever came into his mind as he spoke. One of his parishioners, exasperated, one day offered his pastor five dollars if he would take a text and stick to it. The preacher accepted the parishioner's offer, and the following Sunday announced the disconnected phrase, from one of Paul's writings, "Much in every way," as his text. That's the trouble with Seitz.

Somebody said to Paul once. "Much learning doth make thee mad." Maybe that is the trouble with Seitz. But if anybody finds out what he was talking about in "The United Universe Corporation," I hope he will tell us.

Fort Myers, Florida.

O. T. ANDERSON.

Contributors' Gallery G

ERTRUDE MATHEWS SHELBY writes about herself: "Some incandescent curiosity about how the economic wheels go round has kept me at journalistic tasks, like this

one of sizing up Florida, until I have contributed some fortyodd articles to various magazines. These range in subject from folk-lore and travel to

land, housing, trade, co-operation, business. and banking. I have written three books: one biography, which had as a main theme the land question of the United States; one book relating to community organization; and one novel with a foreign background-South America."

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COURSE: Bathing II (Morning & Evening)

INSTRUCTOR'S NOTE: This examination is conducted under
the honor system and answers may be written in the bathroom.

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Volume 143

Give Her Her Sails Once More!

TH

HE cover of this week's Outlook shows the Constitution (Old Ironsides) at her dock in Charlestown. It is a pleasure to report that this splendid relic of the old Navy is to be reconditioned with funds raised by the school-children of America. Our contemporary the "Scientific American" tells us that the one-half-million-dollar fund for the saving of the Constitution is on the highroad to success.

On a water-line of 172 feet the Constitution, as originally rigged, lifted her main-truck over 200 feet above the sea. Her bowsprit, jibboom, and flying jibboom reached over 100 feet beyond the stem, her spanker and ringtail booms extended 50 feet beyond the taffrail. The "Scientific American" happily suggests that the reborn Constitution be put back on the active Navy list again as a training ship. What a joy it would be to see the Constitution again with her towering

cloud of canvas!

The Electrical Generation

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May 5, 1926

airships, 86; musical instruments, 57;
motion pictures, 55; telegraph, 50; and
tools, 49.

Some of the items on this list perhaps
deserve a word of explanation. In the
total ascribed to steamship models 42
points specifically belong to battleships
and 45 to submarines. Under the gen-
eral title "electrical appliances" 56 points
were given to electric lights. Possibly
many of the 111 points listed under
"wireless" belong in the classification
"radio."

Number I

ments drawn against football ought to have a broader target. The adulation of physical achievement, hysterical enthusiasm, misplaced emphasis, and unbalanced rewards are to be found in almost every phase of human activity. Perhaps it is not football that should be put on trial, but the human race.

An Arctic Expedition
that is Different

Some of our school friends THE primary purpose of a polar expe

were not particularly exact in their cate-
gories.

In looking through the list, it is at
once obvious how tremendous a place in
the mind of the younger generation is
occupied by electricity. When motion
pictures are ranked lower than current
books and musical instruments, it begins
to look as though the younger generation
is not quite so flippantly minded as some
have supposed.

Alphabetically arranged, the replies included the following subjects in addition to those mentioned: Anæsthetics, anti

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MONG the interesting responses which toxins, bicycles, cablegram pictures, have come to The Outlook in reply to its appeal for a list of ten objects to be included in a museum of modern archæology are two from high schools in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and Mor

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gantown, West Virginia. In these schools the teachers of current events called upon their pupils to answer The Outlook's questions. The classes involved contained some sixty pupils.

canned food, clothes, dirigibles, disk
plows, dynamos, educational exhibits,
engineering projects, jewelry, legal sys-
tems, machine guns, newspapers, paint-
ings, phonographs, radium, refrigerators,
serums, steam-engines, telescopes, trolley
cars, turbo-generators, typewriters, weap-
ons, and X-ray apparatus.

Professors vs. Mankind

Weighing the answers of these pupils A

in accordance with the importance which they placed upon their selections, we find that they consider the following objects as the most significant contributions of our generation to civilization. Ten points were given for first choice, nine for second, and so on down the line.

Radio, 416; telephone, 386; airplanes, 318; automobiles, 315; road construction, 276; electrical appliances, 215; ship models, 211; railroad equipment, 171; models of buildings, 121; wireless, 111; printing-press, 109; current books, 93;

1See editorials in our issues of April 21 and April 28.

Α

COMMITTEE of the American Association of University Professors has drawn up a striking indictment of the game of football which contains most of the familiar charges against this muchdiscussed activity. Distortion of values, destruction of interest in academic prestige, encouragement of drinking and gambling, are some of the things for which football is held responsible. The only remedies offered are the suggestions that students be limited to one year's play in the course of their college career and that the number of games with outside institutions be radically reduced.

It is possible that some of the indict

dition is, as a rule, geographical exploration. Most of the numerous Arctic ventures now in progress or scheduled for the present year are concerned almost entirely with filling up gaps in the map; especially the vast lacuna north of Beaufort Sea, which has so long tantalized geographers. One, however, has a totally different object in view.

A generation ago the Austrian explorer Weyprecht urged the importance of establishing stations in the polar regions for carrying out a program of physical observations. Though he did not live to see his idea put into execution, it was

splendidly realized just after his death in the International Polar Expeditions of 1882-3, when ten nations joined forces in maintaining a chain of meteorological and magnetic stations around the Arctic Circle. The University of Michigan Expedition, which is to go north this sum

mer under the leadership of Professor W. H. Hobbs, will be a more concentrated effort of similar character. For years Professor Hobbs has been advocating a study of the winds over the great Greenland ice cap, in which he sees a clue to some of the weather mysteries of the north temperate zone. These winds are said to take the form of intermittent blizzards rushing furiously downward and outward from the center of the continental glacier. They are similar in character and origin to the Antarctic blasts that led Sir Douglas Mawson to call Adélie Land "the Home of the Blizzard." Their importance is more than local, because they form a link in the general circulation of the atmosphere between the north polar area and the equator, and, according to Hobbs, they have

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de Query in 1912

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130° The proposed stations in Greenland for the study of Arctic winds. The map also shows some of the previous lines of exploration of the Greenland ice cap

a great deal to do with giving vigor to the cyclonic storms that travel across the North Atlantic. Their investigation will be the chief task of the forthcoming expedition.

The party of about twenty is expected to leave the United States late in June or early in July and make its headquarters in the Holstensborg District of Greenland, on the east side of Davis Strait. Four meteorological stations are to be established in this vicinity and operated for a period of fifteen months. Besides the station at the main base, on the coast, there will be one near the inner edge of the fringe of land outside the ice cap; another on the windy upper slope of the ice cap; and a third farther in upon the ice plateau, where the winds are generally light. Two stations will be continuously occupied, while the other two will be visited at fortnightly intervals for the purpose of resetting the self-recording instruments. The stations will be equipped with radio. Last year three meteorological stations maintained by the Danish Government in Greenland began reporting their observations regularly by radio for incorporation in the European

weather maps, and presumably the tem-
porary stations of the Michigan expedi-

tion will do likewise.

A secondary task of the expedition will be the study of ice and icebergs. An attempt will be made to measure the depth of the ice cap at various places by a new acoustic method. The chief breeding-ground of North Atlantic icebergs lies near where the party is to be located.

Altogether quite a contrast to the dash-for-the-pole style of Arctic exploration.

Newspapers and Postal Rates

A

One of the inexplicable mysteries about the Post Office Department is its persistent hostility to second-class matter. Chairman Barnum pointed out that the rate charged newspapers under the present zone system is far in excess of that paid to other forms of transportation, while the rural delivery, which now costs close to $100,000,000 annually, could easily carry four times as much matter as it now does.

This is true, but the Department, with unrelenting persistence, refuses not only to make reasonable rates, but declines to increase its efficiency. Papers are thrust aside and carelessly handled. Indeed, the whole attitude is one of contempt. This can only be credited to the bureaucracy which controls it, and which for twenty years has grown increasingly hostile to the daily and periodical press.

T the recent meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association in New York, embracing some five hundred daily sheets, Chairman J. D. Barnum of the Postal Committee presented a resolution calling upon the Government to reduce second-class rates as much as might be consistent with fairness in the interest of the wider dissemination of publications carrying intelligence. He asked for a "bundle rate" on the line of the parcel post, which would be of especial value to dailies.

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It was the "wets" who demanded the hearings. Originally the "dry" organization opposed the plan. Even the subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee had at first thought nothing could be accomplished by open hearings except to afford a vehicle for "wet" propaganda. but finally yielded to the demands. Then the "dry" organization withdrew its ob jection.

Extremists on both sides have been disappointed. There has been plenty of 'wet" propaganda and a great abundance of "dry" opinion, but evidence has been sparse. Such evidence as there has been on the "wet" side has been testimony in support of what needed no proof-that the violation of the prohibitory law has been widespread and in some regions scandalous; but it has failed to show that, even where most outrageous, violation has equaled or even approached the lawlessness of what was before prohibition a legalized liquor trade. Such evidence, on the other hand, as the "drys" have produced has been in the nature of

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