What one sees is not the watercourses (the watercourses themselves are only twenty meters or more in width), but irrigated regions on each side of the watercourses, which are too narrow to be seen by themselves-just as Egypt borders the Nile.

As the polar caps melt the canals darken, first near the poles, then in lower latitudes. This " wave of quickening "advances alternately in opposite ways, from the north and south poles. Hence, says he, it cannot be due to a natural flow. The water must be pumped along the canals, and hence the intelligent race which constructed the canals is still alive to work them.

To establish, as Lowell has done in the argument just briefly sketched, the possibilities of methods by which the existence of intelligent inhabitants on a planet might be detected by our limited means of observation from a distance never less than thirty-five

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OUR CRIMINAL ASH-HEAP

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million miles is an achievement of no mean order. But here, even more than in the other cases, it seems necessary to return the Scotch verdict of "Not proven.' It is still very uncertain whether the geometrical design is to be found on the surface of the planet or in the subconscious mind of the observer; and in many other points of the argument, though there is no one place at which the critic may say, "This is inconsistent with the established facts," there are many places where alternative explanations are possible and often apparently more probable.

Final judgment should not, and cannot, yet be pronounced in the case. But, whatever this may ultimately be, the name of Percival Lowell will be remembered as that of an enthusiastic lover of science who, by his own investigations and those made possible by his interest and support, has made permanent contributions to the sum of human knowledge.

The annual fire waste in this country amounts to about one-quarter of a billion dollars, and a large part of this tremendous waste-probably more than half, as many prominent underwriters say-is due to incendiarism for gain. For this unruly state of affairs public sentiment is largely to blame. When suspicious-looking fires occur, the popular feeling, often expressed, is: "The insurance companies should worry. We have paid them enough; let them pay their losses." A common expression is often heard even among substantial business men, "Another fellow selling out to the insurance companies." This is a misnomer. He is not selling out to the insurance companies. The firebug simply robs the fire taxpayers.

A recent report states that a juror, who with his fellow-jurymen had voted to acquit a firebug, told a deputy fire marshal, "We knew he was guilty; but if we convicted him, how could he collect his insurance?" What a commentary on common sense and justice!

Insurance companies only collect and distribute the fire tax, and the stockholders of these companies are bound to make a profit. The public pays all the fire losses; hammer this fact home whenever the fire waste is under discussion.

Public sentiment should be so strongly crys tallized against incendiarism that the State fire marshal could have the active co-operation of every property-owner and the courts, in order to bring the firebugs to justice.

The largest factor in reducing the cost of fire

insurance is the reduction of the fire waste. Taxable values should be preserved as far as possible, and from the merchant's point of view money saved to his community by reducing the fire insurance tax means more goods sold and more bills paid. K. NEUTSON, Secretary. Property Owners' Association, Red Wing, Minnesota.

A PROTEST

In The Outlook of October 4 there appears an article by Mr. George S. Dougherty, in which he states that "seventy-five per cent of the pickpockets of America are either Jews or of Jewish descent." I am convinced that there is no foundation for such a charge. Several years ago General Bingham, then Police Commissioner of New York, made a similar statement in an article published in the "North American Review," which he subsequently retracted. I have recently written to Mr. Dougherty on this subject, asking him for the data on which he based his accusation. only reply that he has vouchsafed is: "You are questioning my statement. If you can disprove it, you will be satisfied, and so will I."

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This reverses the rule of evidence which obtains in all American tribunals. One would suppose that he who makes charges of a serious character, either against an individual or a people, is under the duty of furnishing his proofs in substantiation of the charge whenever his statement is challenged.

LOUIS MARSHALL. Guggenheimer, Untermyer & Marshall, New York.

What a nautical journal declares to have been one of the most extraordinary voyages ever made across the Atlantic" was recently completed by the Vigilant, a small tug belonging to New York, which port she left for Cardiff, Wales, October 11. She experienced terrific weather, and sent out S. O. S. calls when the captain feared she would founder. The steamer Ryndam took off the captain and twelve of the Vigilant's crew. Three men-Ferguson, a Scot; Walsh, an Irishman; and John Smith, an American-elected to stick by the tug. They brought her into port November 1, having been at their posts fifty hours without food, water, or sleep. Scotland, Ireland, and America may well be proud of men like these.

In the letters of Lady Bessborough, a clever English woman of Napoleonic times, a story is told of a famous document called the "Intercepted Letter,' a state paper captured by the French from the English. One phrase in this letter, "obstinate fools," was rendered by the French translator, "des Gentilhommes décidés." This translation was ridiculed by William Pitt in conversation with the Duke of Devonshire. The latter wittily responded: "It is not so ill done; there is some affinity between obstinate and décidé, and most gentlemen are fools!"

There is always a field for the inventor of kitchen conveniences. A recent invention of this sort will, it is said, enable the housewife to unscrew the cap of the most refractory fruit jar. It consists of a circular band which is slipped around the body of the jar. Projecting handles enable the holder to get a vise-like grip on the jar itself, so that it is held securely with one hand without danger of breakage, while the other hand is used in turning the cap.

Spain is almost the only country of Europe to which the traveler and the lover of tales of travel can now turn with comfort, as free from the terror of warring hosts. A writer in "Harper's Magazine " tells alluringly of " Adventuring into Aragon." In one of the towns visited, Broto, even the post-card-" in these days when the morning mail brings a post-card from the Taj Mahal or the Great Wall of China "-was unknown. In another, Jaca, throngs of pilgrims come to be cured of ailments, and a simple faith is still theirs. One of them "told us that when he was a lad of fourteen his mother brought him all the weary way from France to be cured of a fever. 'And,' he added, 'the fever left me after twenty years.'

John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, was a remarkable man. One of the most remarkable things concerning him is the fact, to which attention is called by the appearance of a new biography, that he was one of a family of fifteen children, all of whom lived

to maturity and nearly all of whom enjoyed a ripe old age.

In the matter of protecting poultry from human marauders, a poultryman says, the dog is a big help. A bull terrier owned by this poul. tryman used to go out on the main road and wait for suspicious-looking persons to pass. When one came in sight he never made a sound, but just dropped behind and followed with his nose about two inches from the man's legs. The dog never did anything, but the moral effect was tremendous! "I don't pretend," says the dog's owner, "to know how to train a dog to do that. The terrier picked it up himself. No bark, no rush, just went sniffing quietly along behind him!"

One of the most interesting chapters in "The Wrecker," by Robert Louis Stevenson, says Birge Harrison in the "Century," was founded on an incident at Barbizon. Harrison and half

a dozen of his young artist friends had arrived late one evening at the little place and had been obliged to sleep in the hotel's annex. One of the party woke at three A.M., and, unable to sleep, rose silently, seized a pillow, and, moving from cot to cot, delivered to each occupant an impartial and sounding thwack! Pandemonium and a grand pillow fight ensued. Stevenson and his wife, it seems, occupied the room below the one in which these revels took place. On meeting the artist at breakfast the sleep-cheated novelist dryly observed: "I had forgotten, Harrison, that we were ever such reptiles!" But he made good use of the incident later.

English oak, says a book called "Amateur Joinery in the Home," is the most beautiful and durable of all the varieties of oak suitable for joinery, but it is very liable to warp unless thoroughly air-dried and seasoned by exposure. "We have known boards sawn from beams, taken out of houses more than a hundred years old, to warp immediately to a considerable extent," the authors state. The finest quality of this wood is now by no means common, though at one time vast forests of oak covered the greater part of England.

"Now that's what I call extravagance," remarked a salesman in a New York department store, addressing a woman customer. He was not referring to his then present customer, but to a sale he had made the day before. "I wouldn't have minded the six dozen napkins she bought for two hundred dollars, but when she took two tablecloths at one hundred dollars each, I said to myself, 'She's a bit too lavish with her money.' I think she had just come into a legacy, and perhaps that explains it." Perhaps it does. Easy come, easy go" accounts for many big expenditures among the shoppers of New York and other great cities.

THE STORY OF THE WAR:
MR. LLOYD GEORGE
SUCCEEDS MR. ASQUITH

The Cabinet crisis in Great Britain came to a culmination on Tuesday of last week, when the Prime Minister, Herbert H. Asquith, resigned. The King, in accordance with the British constitutional method, summoned the Unionist leader, Mr. Andrew Bonar Law, and placed in his hands the office just resigned by Mr. Asquith. Mr. Bonar Law found himself unable to accept the Premiership. Mr. David Lloyd George was then summoned by the King, but hesitated to accept, and a conference of Ministers with the King was held. The result was that Mr. Lloyd George as Prime Minister will form a Ministry.

A political difference has existed for some time between two sections of the Liberal party. It would probably not be too much to say, also, that these two sections are centered about Mr. Asquith and David Lloyd George. This division, again, is certainly based on divergence of opinion as regards the conduct of the war; one may go further, and say that this divergence is not so much about individual points of policy in conducting the war as it is an outgrowth of dissatisfaction and doubt among the English people. Broadly speaking, they are not entirely satisfied with the present position; they think that something more drastic ought to be done in the prosecution of the war, and, following a political tendency which exists at all times and in all countries, the weight of their dissatisfaction has fallen upon the man who stands at the head of the Government. Elsewhere in this issue of The Outlook will be found an interesting and sympathetic account of the English Prime Minister who has just resigned, written by an English journalist and writer of marked ability, whose knowledge both of the trends of English politics and of Mr. Asquith personally is unusual.

For a week or two a struggle has been going on-not, it was declared, to overthrow but to reconstruct the Cabinet, One sur

Imise as to the ultimate difference between Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George is that the former holds that the war should be pushed vigorously and to a conclusion in the western field; the latter, in the eastern field. Those who believe with Mr. Lloyd George that the Balkans and the Near East form the most hopeful field for reaching a decision now regard it also as reasonable to say that really the Allies have no choice in this matter, for Germany has already made the eastern field so tremendously important that she must be met in that field, whatever is done elsewhere.

Apart from this suggested, but not proved, ground of difference, the Coalition Cabinet has been constantly attacked, and especially by the so-called " ginger group," which, as the name indicates, wants to put more activity in the conduct of the war. This group, for instance, has been urgent for the appointment of a food controller, for arming merchant vessels against submarines, for more drastic action in Greece, and it has criticised the methods of dealing with the Zeppelin raids, has asked for the resignation of Mr. Balfour as head of the Admiralty, and has blamed the Government for the results of the Rumanian campaign. All this seems to have come to a point in the demand for a smaller War Council. At first it was supposed that this proposal would include the presence of Mr. Asquith as Prime Minister in the Council, but later developments indicated that there was an attempt to exclude Mr. Asquith altogether or to give him perhaps the position of an ex-officio chairman, without a voice in the counsels of the body.

The Coalition Cabinet as it stood before Mr. Asquith's resignation consisted of twelve Liberals, ten Unionists, and one Laborite. As our readers remember, Mr. David Lloyd George has been Secretary for War, but it was reported last week that he had resigned that office. No doubt there will be a reconstruction of the Cabinet, whoever is its head. Mr. Asquith, who has just resigned, has been a Member of Parliament for thirty years, was Home Secretary under Gladstone, became

Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1906, and two years later Prime Minister. Mr. Bonar Law has been described as representing in Parliament the business men of the nation. He is himself an iron merchant, was born in Canada, and has been in Parliament for sixteen years.

THE PLIGHT OF THE RUMANIANS

Bucharest, the capital of Rumania, fell December 6. German and Bulgarian forces advanced on Bucharest from the north, the south, and the west. The situation was described in The Outlook last week, and during the week under discussion the news has simply been of continued advance upon the doomed city. According to all probabilities, the Rumanian armies will do well if they can retreat from the neighborhood of Bucharest to the northeast, and there join the Russian forces coming down through Moldavia.

The hope of Rumania to retain at least some part of southern Rumania seemed a week ago to rest chiefly on the ability of Russia to bring forces to her rescue. It was an encouragement to that hope, therefore, that tremendous attacks by Russian forces were reported as taking place upon the mountain passes which separate that part of Russia from Transylvania. It was evident that if Russia could force an entrance into Transylvania through these passes it could place an army to the north or rear of General von Falkenhayn's army now advancing into Rumania. All these efforts, however, have not, up to the date we write, succeeded in breaking through the barrier. Moreover, the Austro-German forces assert that they have repelled Russian attacks in the Danube lowlands, capturing 12,500 men. To the distant reader of despatches the future even of northern Rumania seems to hinge on the possibilities of a large military effort on the part of Russia.

In the other fields of battle nothing of startling importance took place.

THE TREACHERY OF THE GREEK KING

Every week it becomes more evident that the Allies cannot move their great army under General Sarrail to the rescue of Serbia and Rumania until a settlement is reached in Greece.

Last week the situation seemed to come to a positive climax when (the King having re

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monstrous inhumanity of Germany. appeal is made through Mr. Pitney, the correspondent in France of the New York "Tribune," and may be found in the "Tribune" of December 6.

The actual condition cf the people of Belgium is described in unsparing and evidently heartfelt words:

The population of all Belgium is being systematically starved. Consumption and other diseases stalk through the land.

The miserable inhabitants are dying like animals. Women and children are being herded into Germany to make munitions for the German army. Every man between the ages of eighteen and thirty is being taken, not to German factories, but to the German trenches.

There are fifty thousand Belgians under forced labor digging trenches for the Germans back of Soissons. They are half-starved men, seized from the factories and dragged into the frozen fields of winter, clothed often only in a single garment, driven with the bayonet to dig trenches and set up wire entanglements.

It is not surprising that Maeterlinck declares that there is no precedent in history for such a systematic outrage on a whole people. What is the remedy? In Mr. Maeterlinck's view the following is the only way of bringing pressure upon Germany:

The smaller states have protested. Now let America act. The time for protests is past. Germany is acting; let America act. Let America place herself at the head of a league of neutrals with a policy of action-not to protest, but to act-to force Germany to cease her inhuman policy of slavery and death to the smaller nations. Perhaps a policy of reprisal would serve.

But, whatever it is, it must be a policy of action, not merely a weak, formal protest. Germany must understand that there are will and strength behind a protest. Force is the only argument she will understand or heed.

That America should act and not talk is a conclusion in which all Americans may well join. Whether it should act by itself, calling upon other neutral nations to approve and follow its example, or whether it should do precisely what Mr. Maeterlinck suggests in heading a league of neutrals, is not so certain. What is needed, if Belgium is not to be totally destroyed, is immediate action, and experience shows that forming a league to discuss modes of action means, or may mean, time, conference, debate, delay. In one of these two ways, however, America should invite France, England, and Belgium to set forth their charges, should then call upon

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Germany to answer them, and then, if the violations of humanity and international law are not refuted or abandoned, should cut off relations with Germany till she returns to the practices of civilized nations.

If there is any more important subject before the President, the State Department, Congress, and the people of the United States, we do not know what it is. So far the Administration has not made any official statement to the American people as to what it has done or tried to do about the deportation of Belgians. The Outlook has already noted the unofficial reports from Washington to the effect that our Government had remonstrated or protested against deportation of Belgians by Germany and the later report that Secretary Lansing had said, "The United States has not made an official protest to Germany, but has suggested to her what a bad effect on neutral opinion, particularly in the United States, such action might have." Inquiry made last week by The Outlook directly to the State Department through a correspondent in Washington brought out the reply that the Department was not then ready to make any statement whatever to the public on this question, but that such a statement might be made a few days later. Emphatically this is a case for vigorous and, above all, for instant action.

"ON TO CZARGRAD"

Perhaps more important than any development of the war since the avowal of belligerence by Rumania, and possibly to prove more important than that, is the announcement that the Allies have promised to let Russia have Constantinople and the Dardanelles in the event that their cause is victorious. As this announcement was made by Premier Trepof, the new Russian Premier, in an address to the Duma, the declaration must be considered official and conclusive.

As quoted by a semi official news agency, the Premier's declaration to the Duma was in part as follows:

"We then [after Turkey's entrance into the war] concluded an agreement with our allies, which establishes in the most definite manner the right of Russia to the straits and Constantinople. Russians should know for what they are shedding blood, and, in accord with our allies, announcement of this agreement is made to-day from this tribune.

"Absolute agreement on this point is firmly established among the Allies, and there is no doubt that after she has obtained sovereign