Volume 143

W

The Indictment of Daugherty HEN President Harding chose Harry M. Daugherty as Attorney-General of the United States, he could hardly have anticipated in imagination the price that he would have to pay for this acknowledgment of a political and personal debt. No one, unless it were the President himself, really believed that Mr. Daugherty was a suitable man for the place.

And what seemed evident at the time of his appointment became clearer as more facts concerning his career came to public knowledge. It transpired, for example, that he sold to Charles W. Morse, a convicted criminal, his own influence with President Taft; and the only defense that has appeared is that he never got from anybody in connection with the Morse case more than about $4,000. His record as Attorney-General was not reassuring. In the so-called "oil scandal" he certainly did not have a fair deal; but it is impossible to imagine any such scandal attaching itself to the names of certain men.

Now the Federal Grand Jury in New York has indicted Mr. Daugherty, together with Thomas W. Miller, former Alien Property Custodian, and John T. King, former Republican National Committeeman from Connecticut, for offenses alleged in connection with the return to

a German copper magnate, Richard Mer

ton, of about $7,000,000 which had been seized by the Government. The charge is that Mr. Daugherty and Colonel Miller authorized the payment of this amount without such investigation as would be involved in the proper discharge of their duties.

It has also been charged that a huge bribe had been paid for the authorization of this transaction, and that it was divided between Daugherty, King, Miller, and the late Jess W. Smith, who committed suicide after the oil deals. It was supposed that John T. King had secured immunity by his confession in a previous indictment. He was for a while Progressive leader in Connecticut; and he now is the Republican ruler in Bridgeport, where his indictment is considered the result of prejudice.

Politicians of the Past

W

HO

Number 3

ran against Roosevelt for President in 1904? A little more than a week ago few of the younger voters of the country could have answered the question; and if a good many of them can answer it now it is only because the notice of his death on May 10 was displayed prominently in the newspapers. And on the preceding day there died another New York politician who to his own political discomfiture had felt the weight of Roosevelt's popularity. For years they had both been out of public life and had relapsed into comparative obscurity.

Alton Brooks Parker was Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals of New York when he was nominated for the Presidency by the Democratic Convention at St. Louis in July, 1904. He had been active in politics in his State, and was generally credited with having engineered the nomination and election of David B. Hill as Governor. He represented the reaction of the party against the domination of Bryan, from which it had suffered in the two preceding elections. Bryan backed Hearst for the nomination, and was badly beaten. The Convention was silent on the silver issue, and Mr. Pulitzer, of the "World," sent Mr. Speer, of his staff, to get a statement from Judge Parker. The Judge was in swim

issue had in the victory of Senator Watson and Senator Robinson in the Indiana Republican primaries is a matter of opinion, and will remain in dispute. It is hardly necessary, however, to explain Senator Watson's victory by reference to any question of policy. Mr. Watson's strong point is not statesmanship. He is a master political mechaniship. He is a master political mechanician and understands thoroughly the machinery of Indiana politics. With twenty men in each precinct organized for him, as he is said to have, he has ample means for collecting votes. Of course, he can pick up votes here and there by coming out for certain bills, such as the Railroad Labor Bill, dry legislation, and so on. But, after all, what are issues compared with an organization?

ination, and was very reluctant to say anything; but was finally induced by Mr. Speer to send a telegram to the Convention, saying that he regarded the gold standard as firmly and irrevocably established, and that if his position was unsatisfactory to the Convention he wished to decline the nomination. Later in the campaign Mr. Pulitzer induced Judge Parker to make charges based on "common knowledge" that Mr. Roosevelt's campaign manager had used Government secrets to get campaign contributions for the Republican Party from the "trusts." This roorback proved unavailing and Mr. Parker was defeated by a greater margin of votes than any other candidate in history. in history. From that time on Mr. Parker devoted himself to the law, in which he prospered. He frequently lent

leave destruction in their wake. Accustomed to a life where the ever-ready "white wing" and the garbage-collector function as regularly as the rising and setting of the sun, these city dwellers have little or no conception of the beauty and dignity of clean earth. They break down fences, strip flowering shrubs, and all too frequently lead one to wonder why the word "urbanity" ever came to mean what it is supposed to mean and why "civility" should have been the distinguishing mark of those who dwelt in

dergraduates of a college in some common exercise is a natural and wholesome way of fostering its peculiar and distinctive spirit. It is because of the individualism of Harvard that it was the "college at Cambridge" that was the first to break away from the common American tradition of compulsory college chapel. For well on toward a half-century attendance at religious exercises at Harvard is as much a matter of free choice as it is anywhere else in America. And now Yale has concluded that neither the spirit of the college nor religion will suffer by following Harvard's example.

Yale has one great advantage in undertaking the experiment now. The change has come about in consequence of an agitation for it by the undergraduates themselves. It is not a charter of freedom willingly granted by authorities who wish to test those who are in their charge, but one that has been wrested from them by those who with their successors are to enjoy it. As a consequence the undergraduate body has assumed responsibility for proving its success. The agitation was led by C. F. Stoddard, a member of the present senior class, through the Yale "News," the undergraduate daily paper, and continued to success by R. L. Post, the present chairman of the "News's" editorial board. Among the supporters of the movement is the Rev. Charles Reynolds Brown, Dean of the Yale Divinity School and pastor of the University Church, who believes that true religion will flourish under liberty.

A Memorial to Walter Camp

A

GENERATION ago undergraduates in colleges contesting with Yale on athletic fields regarded Walter Camp with respect and despair. There seemed to be a magic in his name that cast a spell over Yale's athletic foes. Even when disappointment, however, was mingled with bitterness because of what seemed to be "Yale luck," but was in fact the result of the combination of Walter Camp's spirit with Walter Camp's skill, undergraduates of rival institutions never felt bitter toward Walter Camp himself.

And as these men of other colleges have grown to maturity and seen what Walter Camp did for athletics, and particularly for football, they have joined to erect at Yale a memorial to him. His place in intercollegiate athletics has been unique. In his judgment as well as in

(c) Professor Woodbridge Metcalf

his integrity such confidence was reposed that his opinion on athletic matters, and particularly on football, became a sort of standard by which the opinions of others were measured. He was probably more influential than any other man in inducing men of middle life to keep up physical exercise, not chiefly as a means to health, but as a means to vigor and self-control. To him is in great measure due the recognized improvement in athletics as both a test and an expression of

moral conduct. He did not moralize or preach; but he somehow made his influence tell for whatsoever things were honest and of good report. This memorial, for which a memorial committee appointed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association and consisting of college men of all sections of the country

is inviting subscriptions, will preserve his memory not merely as the father of American football, but also as fosterer of clean play, hardiness, and manhood.

A World Conference on Forests

A

NEW, or at least a broadened, field

in which greater international aid and co-operation is looked for in the future, is that of forestry. An international conference on forestry has just been held at Rome. This conference, the first of its kind, was attended by about eight hundred delegates from the European and other participating countries. The United States was creditably represented.

Although each nation, like each individual, must learn by its own experiences, still there are questions connected with this subject which are as truly international as many of the other matters on which nations confer with one other. Until now international study in the field of forestry has not been with the purpose of determining how the nations of the world might co-operate, might benefit one another and themselves at the same time, through a regular and systematic exchange of forestry knowledge. The United States, realizing its needs, as lumber use in this country continues to outrun lumber growth six to one, is certain to benefit to some extent from contact with the older nations which have suffered from the experiences of forest depletion. Europe to-day has some living illustrations of what the United States can do, as part of its share, in the interchange of forestry help.

Reports which have been received from the other side state that millions of the young trees which have been planted in Great Britain, France, and Italy as part of the reforestation work since the war are from seeds sent there annually since 1919 by the American Tree Association. The forestry officials of those countries have written in high praise of this gift from America and of its good effects. These "tree citizens" transplanted from the United States to Europe will be one of the mediums through which the value of forestry in its broadest and best, its international, sense will come to be realized.

The lessons learned at the Rome meeting should have far-reaching effect in the upbuilding of better-regulated and more carefully preserved forests throughout the world.

The Saving of Redwoods

THE redwood, lesser yet huge cousin

of the giant sequoia, will still, according to latest indications, occupy most of its native portion of the Pacific slope

in the day of Americans yet unborn. The redwood is peculiar not only in the size and the age of the individual tree, but in the smallness of its homeland, a mere ribbon of mountainside seldom, if ever, extending more than thirty miles from the edge of the Pacific. Twentyfive years ago it seemed that the homesteader, following on the lumberman, would gradually replace the redwoods with grass and potatoes. Settlers tried their hand at making the cut-over forest land their own. The trees were gone, but the stumps fought the settlers off. They sent up new shoots, and when these were burned or lopped off, still more shoots, until the settlers had to give up.

A tree that rises literally from its ashes to defend its invaded soil gives convincing proof of its vitality. The old

lumbermen had turned their backs, as they thought, forever on the cut-over redwood lands. But the lumberman came back to take another look. What he saw impressed him so deeply that he started to aid the redwoods in their revival.

The Humboldt Redwood Reforestation Association, formed in 1923, has as members the University of California and most of the chief redwood timberland owners. It has set up a redwood seedling nursery, and started to replant the bare patches among the self-made new redwoods. Its work has attracted so much attention that landowners in Oregon, well north of the old redwood region, have taken to planting seedlings, and New Zealand, all the way across the globe, has undertaken a four years' course of redwood seed experiments. Instead of losing its place among the living, as so many of nature's giant species have lost theirs, the redwood stands in a fair way to hold fast its own small region and, still more noteworthy, to spread to lands where it never grew before.

The Air Conquest of the Arctic "THERE is a new art in the world to

day, the art of flying. A new world to conquer, the world of the atmosphere. A new ocean to navigate and utilize, the ocean of the air, whose only coasts are infinite space."

situation by saying: "Byrd's object was North Pole and back, summed up the to reach the Pole. Ours to fly to Alaska via the Pole. I only hope we succeed as well as Byrd has." Commander Byrd and his pilot, Floyd Bennett, have fairly earned the record of being the first fliers to accomplish what Peary and Matt Henson and four Eskimos did with sledge and dogs. But what a difference! Byrd and his Fokker three-motor monoplane did in about fifteen and a half hours what took Peary over two months to accomplish from base to base.

Commander Byrd's triumph was due to preparation and audacity. His equip ment was the best possible. When a day of perfect polar weather favored him, he seized the opportunity instantly and boldly. He believed that Amundsen's Thus wrote Peary after his days of experience last year, when he came exploration were over.

That air navigation is the one feasible and practical method of Arctic exploration has been amply proved this month. Amundsen, after Byrd's dash to the

within less than two hundred miles of the Pole but was compelled to return because of fatal injury to one of his two planes, showed that the best chance was for a bold dash by one plane at just the right

minute; and, risky though this plan may seem, the result justified Byrd's theory.

It is gratifying to Americans that the first air conquest of the Pole, like its first conquest over the ice, has been made by an American naval officer. The names of Peary and Byrd will stand together in the annals of Arctic exploration.

It is not of the slightest importance whether or not either of the victors passed over the exact imaginary point scientifically termed the North Pole. So far as the precision of their instruments permitted, each located the position to a reasonable degree of exactness. Byrd had new and improved instruments.

The value of aircraft for Arctic exploration has been proved by the Norge as well as by Byrd's voyage. Her long journey from Italy to England, to Norway, to Russia, and to Spitzbergen was as free from trouble or disaster as the progress of an express train.

On May 11 the Norge started from King's Bay on her voyage of over two thousand miles from King's Bay, Spitz