We cannot get rid of "abroad." It is useless to quote George Washington any longer as advising the stay-at-home policy. Since his day we have been appealed to by countries pathetically dependent upon usCuba, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, Panama, China.

The Nicaraguan situation is a case in point. The Presidential campaign there, ending with the elections on October 1, has been attended with disorder. A successor to President Adolfo Diaz had to be chosen. His term expires on December 31, and, under the Constitution, the Nicaraguan President is not eligible for re-election.

There have been four candidates in the field. The Conservatives named Señor Emiliano Chamorro, formerly Minister at Washington. The Progressives nominated Señor Rosendo Lopez, a wealthy planter. The "Government party " named Dr. Carlos Cuadra Pasos, and the "Liberty party" Dr. Juliano Irias. These nominations were made last June. Dr. Pasos renounced his candidacy to accept the post of Minister to the United States, and Dr. Irias resigned his candidacy because of outbreaks in which several persons were killed, and which were also marked by attempts on his life.

In consequence of these disturbing conditions President Diaz called the Nicaraguan Congress in extraordinary session to enact new electoral laws calculated to bring about radical reforms, and to, have these laws effective by October 1.

Our State Department, it is understood, has also let it be known in Nicaragua that our Government, does not. want, and will not have, any revolution or serious disturbances there. A Legation guard of a hundred American marines has been stationed at Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, and has been there since the latest revolution, thus insuring unwonted peace throughout the country. Additional marines, it was said, would be sent should any trouble threaten which the Legation guard could not control. Two of our gunboats are already in the Bay of Fonseca,

off the Nicaraguan Pacific coast, and more will be sent if necessary. The State Department's positive policy throughout the Caribbean zone would indicate that its purpose with regard to Nicaragua will be effectively pursued.

Nicaragua has found financial as well as political peace by reliance upon this country. When the Nicaraguan Government appealed to President Taft to name some one who might become an efficient Collector of Customs, he suggested Clifford D. Ham, of Iowa. The office was offered to Colonel Ham, who accepted it, and has brought order out of chaos. Nor has Colonel Ham confined himself entirely to the collection of taxes. the least important of his activities has been his co-operation with the commandant of the port of Corinto, on the Pacific, in the sanitary cleansing of that town and in the installation of a permanent experienced sanitary inspector.

Not

The work which Sir Robert Hart did in China when that country was particularly dependent upon England, and the work which Mr. Pulliam and Colonel Ham have done in the Dominican Republic and in Nicaragua for the benefit both of foreign bondholders and for Dominican and Nicaraguan financial self-respect and salvation, are beyond price.

THE NEW ARGENTINE PRESIDENT

Last June the Argentinians held their Presidential election. In July the Senators and Deputies, in joint session, after a scrutiny of the ballots, proclaimed Dr. Hipolito Irigoyen President, he having received 152 out of the total vote of 298 in the electoral college chosen by the fourteen provinces. He is to be inaugurated next week. He succeeds Dr. Victorino de la Plaza, who in turn followed President Saenz Peña.

The result of the election of 1916 is of peculiar interest to the people of Argentina, and not without interest to those outside, for Señor Irigoyen is the first Radical to become President of that Republic. For a score of years he has been leader of the Radical party, whose principal reason-of-being is to fight for fair elections. The party has grown apace, and has now in the Argentine Congress a plurality, but not a majority. That majority is a coalition of Conservative, Democratic, and Socialist votes.

Dr. Irigoyen has the rather unusual distinction of being at once a ranchman and a

professor. He made a fortune in land deals and lives part of the time on his large estancia, or farm. The rest he spends in Buenos Aires, where he holds the professorship of Civic Instruction at the Escuela Normal de Mujeres, the normal school for women.

Another unusual distinction marks Señor Irigoyen. He has regularly given his salary as professor to the Sociedad de Beneficencia, which may be called the Charity Organization Society of Buenos Aires, and now proposes to turn over to it his Presidential salary. The Society should thus receive a very important addition to its revenues, for the salary of the Argentine President is 9,000 pesos (over $3,900) a month, and the Presidential term six years. The present ratio between the peso and our currency is about two and threetenths pesos to one dollar.

is

While we do not look for any notable change in the general foreign policy of the Argentine in consequence of the change of President, it is believed that a Radical régime will favor a reduction of tariff duties, a movement towards small land holdings, and a broadening and bettering of educational facilities, in addition to its insistence upon the guaranty of an honest ballot. The increasing eminence of Argentina in South America, economically and. educationally, makes any development in that Republic of moment to all the other American republics, whether in the south or in the north.

PRESIDENT WILSON
ENTERS THE CAMPAIGN

Nominally addressing the Wilson Business Men's National League, but really speaking to the whole country, President Wilson, on Saturday, September 23, at his summer residence, Shadow Lawn, at Long Branch, New Jersey, made what has been termed the opening speech of his campaign.

Accepting the combat offered by Mr. Hughes, President Wilson made the chief subject of his speech the so-called Eight-Hour Law...The effort to settle the controversy between the railways of the country and their employees he termed "an experience which distressed me.". During that controversy, while arbitration was being discussed, he said that he "had this sad thought: Arbitration is a word associated with the dealings of hostile interests. It is an alternative of war. There ought to be no such thing as the contemplation of hostility as between men whose interests are the same and who should co

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operate together." So it came upon him that the real problem was to bring the two sides to understand and believe in one another. The President recounted the experiences and feelings that he had as he tried to do this. The first thing that he stood for was the eight-hour day, because a man does better work within eight hours than he does in a more extended day, and because the eight-hour day is in accordance with the " judgment of society' " and "the vote of every Legislature in America that has voted upon it." How much is it going to cost? is the next question. The only way to answer that question is to try it, the President said; and he cited the eighty-cent gas case, in which the Supreme Court said that the only way to decide whether eighty-cent gas was confiscatory was to go ahead and manufacture it at that price. So, likewise, he said to the railways that when they asked for arbitration on the eight-hour day they were asking for an "arbitration of a conjecture, of an opinion, of a forecast of the figures of experts upon an entirely different experience." So he asked both sides to consent to an eight-hour day, and, since the railway managers rejected it, he got Congress to put it into. law. He urged this eight-hour day, he declares, because he had learned that the whole temper of the legislative body of the United States was in favor of the eight-hour day." The President added that the real thing to settle was what rights the hundred million people of the United States had, and that the business of government is to see that no other organization is as strong as itself.

It was evident in Mr. Wilson's speech that he wished to impress his hearers with the idea that this eight-hour legislation was not forced upon Congress by the brotherhoods, but that it was a product of his own conception of right and justice, voluntarily offered to the people of the Nation.

MR. HUGHES REPLIES TO
THE PRESIDENT.

With this view of the matter Mr. Hughes in his speeches in the Middle West has been vigorously taking exception.

He charges the Administration with dealing in "compromising phrases in the statutes apparently intended to mean one thing to one set of men to get their votes, and another thing to another set of men to allay their fears." Mr. Hughes pointed out that this

so-called Eight-Hour Law does not deserve the name. "It does not provide an eight-hour work-day," said Mr. Hughes at Dayton; "it does not limit the hours of labor. It leaves to the railway companies the privilege to employ men for just as long a time as they were employed before." He declared that in the passage of the Act to promote conciliation and arbitration, signed during this Administration, the law provides for "arbitration with respect to wages, conditions of employment, and hours of labor." He therefore asserted that Mr. Wilson's statement that this matter was not arbitrable was extraordinary. He protested against "any endeavor to confuse the thought of America by talking about an eight-hour work-day when nothing of the sort has been enacted," but only a change in the schedule of wages. He pointed out that he was not dealing with the merits of the controversy, but with the principle that a controversy of this kind, whatever its merits, should be settled in accordance with the facts, and that no legislative body should pass such a law without knowing whether it was right. Answering Mr. Wilson's reference to the eighty-cent gas law, he pointed out that he himself, Mr. Hughes, acted as counsel in that case, wrote an exhaustive report on the cost of making gas, and on every matter relating to the propriety of that rate, and that the Legislature acted only after a most careful and exhaustive consideration

of every fact involved." And Mr. Hughes added: "Think of that as being cited as a precedent!"

As for the argument that if it had not been for the surrender of Congress to the demands of the brotherhoods we should have been involved in great difficulty, he made two replies, as follows: "In the first place, I say to those who counsel surrender in such places, How much are you willing to give up? What does it mean? Any demand, without knowing the facts? How far will you go in having legislation without principle? As I said the other night, you think that you will accumulate courage to make a stand somewhere by continual surrenders along the line. I say, in the next place, that when a fundamental principle of government is involved, stand and see what public opinion, well directed, when an immediate, prompt, and thorough investigation is obtained, will do in your support."

Mr. Hughes also continued his attacks on the Administration for its course in Mexico.

SOME PRIMARY RESULTS

Just a week after the ballots were cast in the New York primaries it was announced that Mr. Calder had won the Republican nomination for the New York Senatorship against Mr. Bacon by 9,007 votes. An amusing episode in this Senatorship fight was the fact that for the Senatorship nomination on the ticket of the American party (the organization originated by former Governor Sulzer) Mr. Bacon was, at last reports, the probable winner by twenty-three votes to twenty-two votes for his opponent, the Democratic nominee, Mr. McCombs. Of course Mr. Bacon (who had no idea he was running on this ticket) repudiates the nomination, though by law, if he is nominated, his name will have to remain on the ballot.

In New Jersey the primary vote cast on September 26 was very close in almost all of the more important contests. The only important contest in which the result appeared conclusive on the day after the balloting was that for the Democratic Senatorial nomination. In that, Senator Martine, the present incumbent, was ahead of his opponent, Attorney-General Wescott (universally regarded as President Wilson's choice) by a vote of about two to one. This was interpreted by all Republicans and some Democrats as indicating the President's political weakness in his own State.

The Democratic candidate for Governor, on the other hand, Mr. Wittpenn, a strong supporter of the President, was nominated without even a contest.

A NEW UNION CHURCH

In 1893 representatives of the missionary boards of the Protestant churches of the United States and Canada met and formed a Foreign Missions Conference, which, except in 1900, the year of the Ecumenical Council, has ever since held annual sessions. The remarkable growth of the spirit of unity among Christian workers in non-Christian lands-not to say in all lands-is illustrated by the work and accomplishments of this Conference.

At the meeting of 1904 the veteran Baptist missionary to China, the Rev. Dr. William Ashmore, in a memorable address, called the attention of the Conference to the close relation which European communities in Asia bear to the missionary enterprise. The deplorable religious condition of many of these communities, he pointed out, was both a re