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EITHER Yale nor New Haven was founded two hundred years ago. The first has fifteen more than two hundred years to its credit; the second has seen two hundred and seventy-nine years pass since John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton landed at a point now far removed from the water's edge, and made friends with the Quinnipiac Indians, as was shown in the first scene of the Colonial Episode of the recent pageant at New Haven. Yet the celebration of which the pageant of October 21 was the chief event was truly a bicentennial. "In commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the coming of Yale College to New Haven," said the programme, broadly and significantly it stood for two centuries of community between city and College, of joint service to the individual and the Nation. That good government and sound scholarship, education and patriotism, art and spiritual grace, are parts of a whole was the theme of President Hadley's Commemoration Address, and equally so of the historical commemorative meeting on the morning of Pageant Day. It was suggested over and over again in the episodes and allegories performed in the vast Yale Bowl by some seven thousand citizens and students, much more than half of the number women and children. It had influence also in what was not givenfor the original programme contained many incidents not performed, and while the elisions were primarily made for practical reasons, the modified plan clung to just those things that were typical of the joint citizenship and joint Americanism of Yale and New Haven.

In 1901 Yale celebrated the bicentenary of her feeble beginning at Saybrook. That was a great academic occasion. New Haven looked on at the rejoicing of ten thousand graduates. The other day New Haven was not only in it," but the greater part of it, both in the review of history and in the performance itself. What the people did in times past was shown by the people of to-day. The two bicentenaries are not comparable; that of 1901 was a university sedately rejoicing; that of 1916 was a fellowship of town and gown in a popular spectacle, an

appeal to the eye by art and grouping and movement.

An out-of-door pageant on the large scale has its special limitations as well as its special opportunities. It is not drama-it must be and ought to be panorama, picture, shifting incident. Looked at from the dramatic standpoint, the pageant was lamentably weak; of dramatic construction or unity there was practically nothing; there was no written play, no epic poem to be presented, little individual acting. The spoken words were few, and more than one critic has said that those few might about as well have been omitted. The "Book of the Pageant" was an admirable work, well worth buying and keeping; but it was neither text nor programme of the pageant; it was a collection of essays, papers, and poems, by Yale men and a few others, dealing with the historical topics touched on in the pageant or otherwise relating to the city and College.

In the performance here and there an individual won a hearty round of applause, but it was for graceful pose and movement rather than for the detailed expression of passion or character. Thus the memory will long linger of the supple, graceful, swiftmoving Indian runner who brought to his tribe the news of the white men's coming-a part taken by a well-known Yale athlete, John Overton of '17, distance runner; of the stately movement and picturesque pose of the representative of Peace; and of the charm of that bride, Margaret ap Ienkyn, whose dowry, descending to Elihu Yale, made possible his help to the struggling College.

But chiefly the memory of the day is of masses of color and marvelous costumes pouring at times down the thirty aisles from the rim of the Bowl into the arena, there moving in concert, swaying, crossing, circling, in ordered method and with definite purpose. Mr. Markoe, director of the pageant, had long ago done wonders in this kind of art at the Oxford and South African pageants. Colors that on a stage would clash and scream against one another under the sky and on the green field harmonized or peacefully contrasted. This was a democratic affair in many ways, and one was that the performers furnished their own costumes, but from models

and colors chosen by the directors. The care, patience, and oversight needed for superintending the costumes, grouping, and rehearsing of seven thousand people may easily be imagined. As one saw the groups before the performance in and about their tents around the Bowl's exterior, one was reminded of an old-time circus multiplied. There and on the city streets before and after the pageant one passed Puritans, Indians, belles of the hoopskirt era, collegians in bygone attire, old-time red-shirted firemen, Yale Battery members in uniform, and a dozen other varieties. felt that the performers were both part of the show and part of the people; they gave and got pleasure. Surely anybody would rather be one of the little Indian boys whooping and tumbling, or one of the little Colonial girls playing ball, than the President of the United States or even Dean Jones as George Washington on horseback.

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So as the thirty thousand spectators sat, on a perfect October afternoon, scene after scene passed before them until at the end came the tableau of Yale, " mother of men and of colleges," surrounded by her sons and the record of her past. The many thousands of performers and spectators joined in a hymn of praise and aspiration, and the pageant

was over.

What had it presented in history and incident? In the Colonial Period the picture of the founding of New Haven and the treaty with the Indians was followed by three scenes acted " synchronously against a background of busy Colonial life." The background was delightful, but the "three rings in a circus " method, as every one called it, had decided disadvantages. One had to watch closely to segregate the ministers founding the College at Saybrook, the riot which accompanied the removal of the books to New Haven, and the first Commencement exercises at New Haven. The Revolutionary Episode showed vividly the demand by the Governor's Foot Guard (Captain Benedict Arnold) for powder to enable them to join the Concord "rebels;" the British invasion of New Haven, when the town was spared because of the College; the leading of Nathan Hale to execution (ex-President Taft's son was Nathan Hale); and President Washington's visit to New Haven in 1789. The Early Nineteenth Century Episode had a light touch in the Town and Gown riot begun between firemen and collegians-both sides most zealously acted by students with "real water and a real pump," as Dickens's Vincent

Crummles used to say, and in the fantastic burial of Euclid. It had also a serious and patriotic phase in the scenes depicting the raising of Kansas volunteers in 1856 and the surrender in the Civil War by Confederates to Union soldiers (finely represented by Grand Army veterans) of the body of Theodore Winthrop, of Yale, author of " Cecil Dreeme," and the first Northern officer to fall in actual battle. Finally, the present period was shown in one aspect by the Yale Battery, which maneuvered and fired its three-inch guns.

All these scenes and others were interesting in subject and fitted the purpose; but there was naturally a great difference between them in the relative success of presentation. They involved pantomimic acting on a stage of enormous size, and there were many other difficulties for amateurs to grapple. In their character also some of the scenes were not especially fitted for outdoor pageantry.

From the art point of view, the beauty of the performance rested chiefly in the three interludes between the episodes the allegory of the passing of the arts and sciences from the Old World to the New, to aid the infant College; the allegory of war and peace; and the "hoop-skirt prom" of the Civil War time. In all these mass and color were employed with fine and sometimes extraordinary effect. In the first a thousand school-children in green and light-violet shades represented by their moving and waving hands the sea; in the second a rather cryptic symbolism was indicated visually in a wonderful grouping of colors and figures; in the third quaintness and rhythmic dancing made the outdoor ball both amusing and delightful.

The music of the occasion was composed by Dr. Horatio Parker, Dean of the Music School, and others of that Faculty, and was rendered by an orchestra of sixty and a chorus of six hundred.

It would be absurd to compare the Pageant with such spectacles as "Caliban," or to expect from it perfection of detail. It was the work of seven thousand amateurs, more than half of whom were children, and was performed once only, with necessarily imperfect rehearsal. It was as truly a community effort as is a community Christmas tree, only in this case college and city made the community. Taking it for what it was, and not for what it was not, the Pageant was impressive -in some ways also it was beautiful and distinguished.

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HE thirty-fourth annual Lake Mohonk Conference on the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples was held at Lake Mohonk October 18-21, Dr. Samuel A. Eliot presiding. The most encouraging note of progress was probably the report of the advance which had been made under the present Administration in the development of industrial and vocational training in the primary and secondary grades of the Indian schools. The ideal outlined in the report of Mr. H. B. Peairs, Supervisor of Indian Schools, was admirable. It is in harmony with the ideals developed for the Negroes by such leaders as General Armstrong, Dr. H. B. Frissell, and Booker T. Washington, and adopted to such a surprising degree for whites, especially in the Western States. To make it effective, however, teachers must be trained, for a well-equipped school-house is useless without well-trained teachers. It would be well for the Indian Bureau to draft Indian teachers from Hampton Institute, the best school for normal training for industrial education in the country; and, if possible, to arrange with Hampton for a one-year course in industrial education for Indian teachers already in the service.

The recent legislation by Congress increasing the power of the Philippine people over their internal affairs was regarded by the Conference as at least of doubtful advantage to the people. On this subject the paragraph of the platform deserves quoting:

The effect of the rapid withdrawal of American administrators, in anticipation of, and coincident with, this legislation will be watched with unusual interest, but not without misgiving. We believe that this policy of dispensing with the services of trained experts and scientists will have a far-reaching and harmful effect upon the sanitary, social, and economic life of the islands.

The most radical action of the Conference was its adoption of a suggestion made by the presiding officer, Dr. Eliot, who, as a member of the Board of Indian Commissioners and a frequent visitor to the reservations, is very familiar with the conditions of the Indian service. That service is under the direction of a single Indian Commissioner, who is changed with every change in the Federal administration. More frequently than not

he has no knowledge of Indian affairs or Indian problems at the time of his appointment. The result is perpetual kaleidoscopic changes not only in the personnel but also in the policies of the Bureau. As a remedy for this condition, which has for years been deprecated by all workers for and among the Indians, Dr. Eliot suggested the transfer of Indian administration from a single commissioner, always of necessity a political appointee, to a non-partisan commission independent of the Indian Department and of all political control. The Inter-State Commerce Commission affords a suggestive precedent for such a course. This suggestion was carefully considered by a very large and representative Business Committee, and after full and prolonged discussion was unanimously adopted, first by the Committee and afterward by the Conference. The function of such a commission, as defined by the platform, would be to frame and submit to Congress a general Indian law to take the place of the present mass of fragmentary, local, and often inconsistent statutes, and then to apply the provisions of such general law to the varying conditions of the various tribes, much as the Inter-State Commerce Commission applies the provisions of the general railway law to the railways of the country. The object of such a commission would be "to promote a consistent, continuing, and developing policy" and "to bring the present abnormal condition of the Indian to an end as speedily as possible by the incorporation of the Indian in the general citizenship of the Nation."

Incidental confirmation of the wisdom of some such plan was furnished by an admirable statement by Duncan C. Scott, Superintendent of the Canadian Indian Office, giving some account of the Canadian method of dealing with the Indian problem. In lieu of our mass of heterogeneous local laws filling three large volumes-laws which no one, not even the Indian Commissioner, can possibly be familiar with-Canada has one law comprised in a pamphlet of about sixty pages. All the laws of Canada, both federal and provincial, are as applicable to Indians as to white men, so that Indians, whether on the reservations or not, are both under the protection of the laws and amenable to their

provisions. An Indian is defined by law as a male Indian and his descendants. If an Indian woman marries a white man, she and her descendants are legally white and the protection of her person and her property under the law is left to him. In consequence fortune-hunters do not seek Indian wives in order to get for themselves and their children a share in the tribal wealth. These three simple provisions have relieved Canada of many of the complications in which our Indian administration is unfortunately involved. How far these principles could be

applied by the United States in solving its present complex Indian problems is a question which cannot be answered 'without careful study. It would have been well if the Conference had appointed a committee to give the subject such study and report its conclusions to the next annual Conference. It is to be hoped that Mr. Phillips, the permanent Secretary of the Conference, will provide a place for their consideration in the programme and one or more speakers to present the subject to the Conference next year. LYMAN ABBOTT.

PROTESTED

To the Editors of The Outlook:

In your issue of August 23 there appears an editorial entitled "Shall We Vote for Wilson ?" The writer lays the basis for his negative reply chiefly upon the President's failure to protest at the invasion of Belgium by Germany. Mr. Wilson is criticised for

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his failure to put into effective practice, in one of the greatest crises of the world's history, those principles of justice and liberty which were written into the character of this Republic by its founders."

It seems almost incredible that The Outlook, which has always stood as the keenest and, I may add, the fairest critic in New York City of contemporary events, can come forth and declare its antagonism to the present National Executive on this score. Leaving everything else out of consideration, I want to say a few words in answer to such an accusation. Very few of the average voters of the day have, or care to take, the time to investigate thoroughly political or even National questions that come up, and many adopt their political creeds entirely from articles and editorials that appear in your pages. Therefore it does not seem right that they should be influenced for one candidate or against another by so unjust a criticism. Your editor writes as if there were but one side to the case, and brings forward the suddenness of the action as the only defense for the failure to protest. I am endeavoring in somewhat general terms to point out, not only why Mr.

Wilson was not obliged to protest, but in reality how it was his peculiar duty as head of the United States not to interfere.

In speaking of this "failure to protest" it is implied that one of the two following courses should have been followed. One of these courses would have been for the President to send a note to Germany demanding, in the name of international law, humanity, and respect to the United States, that she refrain from an act already carefully weighed as to its advantages and disadvantages, and upon which the fate of the nation seemed to rest. This note would not have contained any threat, but would have been merely a condemnation of the deed and have expressed the moral disapproval of the United States. In considering the question as to whether such a note should have been sent, there are two ways in which the answer can be made: first, considering whether there was any obligation to make such a demand; and, second, as to the possible results of such action. The United States has taken upon itself the responsibility of the Western Hemisphere and declared itself against European interference on these two continents. In the same declaration we have said that we will not interfere in the affairs of Europe. This policy has been declared by the Monroe Doctrine, confirmed by history, and recommended by common sense. Our President is President of the United States, and his interests are naturally those of the United States. If