Interborough Company is quoted as saying: "I believe this country is in the same position as it was when Lincoln said it could not exist half free and half slave. I believe it cannot exist half union and half non-union." We do not believe that he is right. But the question whether he is right or wrong is not one to be decided for the five million people of New York City by the Interborough corporation or by the labor unions, or by a battle royal between the two; it is one to be decided for the city of New York by the five million people who live in the city of New York, or possibly by the ten millions who live in New York State. When the question of a strike was submitted to a mass-meeting of employees, it is said that their shouts of "Strike! Strike! Strike !" could be heard a mile away. What sort of a deliberative assembly is that to determine for the people of New York City on what terms and conditions they may use their highways?

We do not here contend for the right of labor to organize, though we have always maintained that right; nor for the right of the individual laborer to work without belonging to an organization, though we have always maintained that right. We contend for the right of the American people to determine on what conditions their public highways, Federal, State, and municipal, shall be carried on. All claims, whether of capitalists or laborers, are subordinate to the fundamental right of the majority to pass upon those claims and to enforce their decision on both employers and employed.

The reader will ask, How do you propose to accomplish this result? We here point out one way in which it can be accomplished.

A few words of preliminary definition are necessary to make clear what follows.

There is a great difference between an arbitral tribunal and a court of justice. The difference is not merely nominal; it is vital.

Arbitration is generally arranged after the controversy has arisen and while prejudices and passions are excited. It usually works through one or more representatives selected by each of the contestants to represent their respective interests, and an umpire chosen by them; thus it is a bi-partisan tribunal with a nonpartisan umpire. Its decision is naturally. and almost necessarily a compromise. And it has no inherent power to enforce its decree, though power may be, and sometimes is, created by law for its enforcement.

A court of justice is a permanent organiza

tion created with no reference to a particular dispute. Great pains are taken to make it non-partisan. In a jury trial no one is allowed to act as juror who has any interests or prejudices in favor of either party. Care usually is, and always ought to be, taken to secure as judges men of judicial temper, free from personal, class, or political prejudices. The object of the court is not to settle a controversy, but to secure justice, and it is expected to consider, and generally does consider, not merely the interests of the contestants, but also those of the general public; in fact, public policy frequently determines its judgment. As soon as its judgment is declared, that judgment becomes as much a part of the law of the land as an act of the legislative body, and the whole police and military power of the State and, if necessary, of the Nation is pledged to enforce it.

One way out of the present industrial situation would be the creation, not of compulsory arbitration, but of a special judicial tribunal with power to bring before it the parties to any industrial dispute affecting a National, State, or municipal highway, hear the respective claims of the parties, examine witnesses, require the production of books and papers, and authoritatively decide the controversy, a decision which it would then be the duty of the police and, if necessary, of the military power of the Government to enforce.

We have heretofore pointed out how such decision could be enforced on the corporation. If it refused or failed to obey the decision of the court, the court could put the corporation into the hands of a receiver who would execute the decree, exactly as the court now puts a corporation into the hands of a receiver if it fails to pay the interest on its bonds. We have also pointed out the truth that freedom of contract does not mean that parties are free to keep or break their contracts at pleasure. When a contract is made, the law enforces the keeping of the contract. The law might require all contracts for employment on a railway, Federal, State, municipal, to run for a definite term, as for one or two years. If this were the case, and men were taken into the service at different times, their contracts would expire at different times. They could not, therefore, lawfully combine to leave in a body, nor could any employee be discharged except for cause on complaint presented and hearing given.

If the men felt themselves

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the President to deny the use of the United States mails, telegraphs, cables, wireless, and express service to British and French subjects or firms, if their Governments restricted American mails or trade. It is believed that the Phelan Amendment was opposed by the State Department.

The Outlook has already expressed its conviction (August 2, 1916, page 775) that a foreign nation has a legal right to restrict the trade of its own subjects, and therefore to prohibit its subjects from dealing in certain materials or with certain specified citizens of other countries. We believe, also, that it has a moral right to do this if in its judgment the national exigency is sufficiently great to warrant such a course. Whether it has any right to interfere with the mails is a much more serious question. In general, the inviolability of the mails is a National right.

We do not propose here, however, to discuss these legal questions. It is evident that they are both questions on which lawyers of eminence are not entirely agreed. Nor do we here consider the wisdom of Great Britain's policy. We think that it was unwise; that it will do her cause more harm by provoking hostility in neutral countries than it can possibly do her cause good by inflicting injury upon her enemies or restricting trade by which they might profit. We have here, however, simply to consider the righteousness and the wisdom of the action of our own Congress. Concerning that, two principles may be laid down, we think, with confident assurance of their correctness.

I. The question whether Great Britain and France have a right to prohibit their citizens from trading with certain of our citizens, and the question whether they have a right to open American mails if they have reason to think those mails are carrying aid to their enemies, are both questions which can properly be referred to a disinterested tribunal for settlement. A protest against any interference with our trade or with our mails, even by prohibitions laid upon their own citizens, would lay a foundation for a demand in the future for compensation in rectification of the wrong, for whatever wrongs are done by such interference are of the kind that can be measurably compensated for by apology and damages. They are certainly far less than the wrongs inflicted upon us by Great Britain's careless or possibly intentional acts in allowing cruisers to be fitted out in British ports to prey upon American com

merce. That wrong our country endured during the Civil War, and for that wrong demanded compensation after the war was over, and it established before an impartial tribunal its right to such compensation. The precedent pursued by the Lincoln Administration in 1861-65 is the one which should have been followed by the Wilson Administration in 1916.

The viciousness of the course pursued by our Congress in dealing with the blacklist is emphasized by the viciousness of the course pursued by our President in dealing with the German submarines. When Americans by the score were murdered on the high seas, in violation not only of the principles of international law but of the principles of humanity, we made a protest; but we did not venture on any reprisal. We continued to treat Germany as a friendly Power in our protests, and to say complimentary things to her, and up to the present time have taken no efficient measures to protect the rights of Americans to travel freely on the .high seas. But when England interferes with our trade we do not stop at protest; we propose vigorous measures of reprisal. It is true that the Act of Congress does not require reprisal. It leaves the matter to the discretion of the President; and we hope that the President will have the discretion not to exercise the authority which the act confers upon him. But it is also true that the passage of the act has served to stimulate in at least one of the Southern republics a proposal to similar action, and to stimulate in this country the unfriendly feeling toward Great Britain already aroused by her blacklist. When our citizens are murdered, our Government protests and does nothing; when our trade is interfered with, our Government not only protests, but prepares to hit back. It is not strange that satirists abroad think we care more for prop. erty than for life.

II. The attorney regards the nation as his client, and seeks only to defend her legal rights and possibly to instruct her in her legal duties. The statesman takes a larger view. He considers the future, and shapes the policy of his nation in such a way as will at least tend to secure honor for her now among the nations of the world, and in the future their friendship and their support in any international exigency which may arise. The Congressional policy of reprisal is the policy of an attorney, who thinks only of the present and of his nation's legal rights, who

has no vision for the future and no consideration of what policy will promote the nation's honor and the nation's ultimate welfare. The official policy of the American Nation has been that of an attorney, not that of a statesman, and is full of serious peril to the Nation in the future.

Germany declares that she is fighting for her life. The German people very generally believe this declaration. There is much to warrant that belief. The war which she has herself provoked will not prove fatal to her existence, but will inflict upon her wounds from which she will be long in recovering. And we have officially declared to this people, from whom we have derived the literature of a Goethe, the philosophy of a Hegel and a Kant, and the religious freedom won for the world by a Luther, that whether she lives or dies is a matter which does not concern us. We could hardly have done more to make Germany our enemy if we had joined the Allies in the very beginning of the war. Indeed, we probably should have done less, because we should have abbreviated the war and not allowed time for hate to grow to its present proportions. Individual Americans have contributed to Germany through the German loan, and probably some scores or hundreds who returned to their Fatherland are fighting in her ranks; but America as a Nation has told her formally and officially that what she regards as a struggle for her life does not concern us.

On the other hand, the Allies believe that they are fighting to defend free government from a. military despotism, that they are fighting the same battle which Americans fought in 1776 against Great Britain, and which England and her European allies fought a little later in the prolonged wars against French militarism under the lead of Napoleon the Great. And we have officially informed them that this war does not concern us, that we do not. care to know what are the causes which have produced this war, that we are not interested in the question whether liberty shall live or die on the European continent. Individual Americans have done much to counteract this official declaration of not merely neutrality but indifference. Thousands of them have gone across the border to enlist in the Canadian army; thousands of them have gone across the sea, some to enlist in the French ranks, some to enlist in the aeroplane service, the ambulance service, and the hospital corps. And the American press,

with a remarkable approach to unanimity, has interpreted the faith of the American people that the Allies are fighting on European soil the battle which our fathers fought in 1776. But individual expressions of appreciation and friendship and individual services, while they may modify, cannot counteract the official expressions of the Government and the official action of Congress. It is a curious phantasy, incomprehensible to us, which leads any man to imagine that this attitude of supreme indifference to the lifeand-death struggle in Europe will lead the combatants, or any of them, to invoke our good offices in settling the terms of peace when the end of the war comes. We have won by our course neither the respect nor the friendship of the battling nations.

Nor have we done anything to unify neutral sentiment, set an example to neutral nations, or secure co-operation in the protection of neutral rights. We have in official notes incidentally mentioned the rights of neutrals, but we have made no attempt to protect those rights by action, and no attempt to organize the forces of neutrals in even so much as a protest in support of those rights. The only example we have set has been our apathy, if not our acquiescence, in the flagrant disregard of the neutral rights of Belgium; and the only action which we have proposed to take against the violation of neutrality has been this proposed reprisal, purposed to protect, not the rights of neutrals throughout the world, not even the rights of Americans to their lives, but the rights of our own trade threatened by unfriendly action.

We must also remember that our official indifference to the great issues involved in this war is the more perplexing to the Allies, since they cannot easily understand why, if a people have a common sympathy, it should not be reflected in their governmental action. -In England, France, and Italy government changes with the changes in public sentiment. No administration can long survive in those countries a radical change in public opinion, because that change is reflected in the legislative assembly, and the action of the legislative assembly determines the life of the administration. England, France, and Italy have in effect, though not in form, the recall, and only the very well educated Englishman, Frenchman, and Italian can fail to believe that in a free government the policy of a national administration reflects public opinion.

Unless the people should decree a radical

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change in administration and public policy, we shall find at the end of the war that we have sown for ourselves in all nations the seeds of disrespect, if not of open hostility, and prepared for ourselves a possible harvest of calamity in the not far-distant future. No nation can stand alone. It is as true of nations as of individuals that none can live for himself only. Unless the American people find a way to emphasize the truth that neutrality is not indifference, that they are not unconcerned in the questions which concern their fellow-men, that they are not absorbed in their own National interests and do not think that National safety is more important than National duty and National honor, should our own land be imperiled, we shall have no right to expect anything but the same indifference to our welfare which we have officially expressed when other nations were imperiled; and we shall be left to fight, not only without aid, but without sympathy, the battle for our own protection, perhaps a battle for our own existence.

THE FRENCH SPIRIT

A few years ago, at the Fourth of July reception given by the American Ambassador in London, a boy of delightful face and engaging manner said, as he took the Ambassador's hand, "I came to salute the

flag, sir." In reply to questions by the Ambassador, he gave his name, which was that of a noble French family, and said that his great-grandfather had served with Lafayette during the Revolutionary War and that his family always observed the Fourth of July. The quick response of interest and affection on the faces of the Americans about him was the distinctive answer to the unspoken appeal to American gratitude.

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Among the brilliant figures who appeared in the struggle of the American Colonies two young men are especially conspicuous, Lafayette and Hamilton. Gallant in bearing, brilliant in action, it was their special distinction that Washington loved them. hundred and forty years after the Declaration of Independence, on the birthday of Lafayette, who was born in 1757, flowers were placed on his statue and upon that of Washington, his great leader, in Union Square, New York, at the place where the tides of human life are always at the flood. Americans can take but little satisfaction in some of the dealings of this

country with France; but we have nothing to regret in our treatment of Lafayette.

The history of French settlement on this continent has an epic quality, which Parkman has brought out in a series of histories which have the charm of romance; a charm which is peculiarly and distinctively French. Wherever the fleur-de-lis was planted, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence half across the continent to the mouth of the Mississippi, the French influence is still seen in gentle manners and charm of social life. As a national movement, the endeavor of France to share with the English the control of the continent failed, but as a contribution to the civilization of the New World it has its own enduring quality.

It was inevitable that the celebration of Lafayette Day this year should take on new importance, for never in history has any nation held the position which France holds to-day in the thought of the world. Even her foes, intrenched on her soil and striking at her life, are free to confess their admiration of her superb courage and her indomitable spirit. Armed more completely than she was in the days of Napoleon, there seems to be no suspicion of her motives and no hatred of her successes.

The reason is not far to seek, and it lies, perhaps, unconsciously at the foundation of the admiration of her foes. Lafayette wrote to his wife from the ship that brought him to this country that he regarded his service in the Colonial Army as likely to be " a brevet of immortality." Such it has proved to be; his name is not only written broadly across the page of American history, but it is written everywhere over the face of the continent in the names of towns, streets, squares, colleges, and institutions of all kinds. It was his happy fortune, in a life of many perils and vicissitudes, to receive in person the most generous payment (in gratitude and affection) for his services. He was twice the guest of the Nation, and each visit took the form of a triumphal procession. He was more widely known personally and by sight in America than any other foreigner of his time. Making long journeys by carriage, the people in many sections thronged the roadsides and welcomed him as a friend. He drove under triumphal arches, groups of girls threw flowers in his way, cities greeted him with every kind of hospitality. When he came a second time, in 1824, many men who fought with him were still living to wel

come him as a comrade. At Lexington he was met by fourteen of the seventy Minute Men who had "fired the shot heard round the world."

Lafayette's service was significant of the French spirit, and the affectionate enthusiasm which greeted him in this country was evoked by a French national characteristic. He has become a national hero in this country because he rendered an international service. And France has always been in a conspicuous degree the servant of the international spirit; the spirit, that is, which, consciously or unconsciously, in making a path for itself opens a way for humanity. France has rendered notable services to science, and especially in those fields of scientific activity in which the fruits secured are for the healing of the nations; the fact that Pasteur has become a popular hero shows that his work appeals to the national imagination. But France is associated in the thought of the world with art rather than with science, and this is full of deep significance; for art is an expression of the human spirit, and the interest of the French, even in their moments of most passionate absorption in national defense or national advance, has never left the human spirit out of account. In a peculiar sense France has been the protagonist of the human spirit, and has incessantly fought, sometimes in a kind of furious blindness, for its liberation.

The French are pre-eminently a social people; the interest of the individual is subordinate to the interest of society; and no one can understand them who does not recognize the force and influence of the family and the state. To a Frenchman the state has all the definiteness and reality of a person. A peasant woman was once noticed wandering about that "brilliant university" which is the center of the Government buildings in Paris. She carried a great bunch of flowers in her hands. To a gendarme who saw her confusion and asked what she was looking for, she replied: "I have brought these flowers for the Administration." In France patriotism is a passion, and, while General Joffre is husbanding the lives of "his children," there is not a man in the trenches who would not lay down his life for France.

The country which gave us Lafayette, which rendered us invaluable aid in the struggle for independence, which gave us a definition of rights in the Declaration, is "the country of Europe in which the people is most