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willingness to agree that hereafter the United States should be free to send its soldiers across the border at any time in pursuit of Mexicans who had raided American soil.

Meanwhile the Mexican-American Commission has adjourned until some time in January. And as the advance of the season has made New York City more a center of social life than Atlantic City, for the benefit of the Mexican commissioners the next conferences will be held on Manhattan Island.

With the ordering home of 17,000 more National Guardsmen comes the announcement from the War Department that the force on the border will be reduced to 75,000 men and kept at that strength until there is a definite clearing of Mexican skies.

Americans who have no material interest in Mexico, as well as those whose sons and brothers are condemned to patrol the border, may well begin to ask if our patience in waiting for Carranza to accept or reject the recommendations of his commissioners has not begun to be a fault.

THE LITERACY TEST AGAIN

An immigration bill substantially similar to the one which was vetoed by President Wilson a year ago has again been approved by both houses of Congress. The literacy test, which President Wilson objected to in the old bill, is contained in the new one. In their time Presidents Taft and Cleveland also vetoed bills containing similar provisions.

With some exceptions, this test will exclude "all aliens over sixteen years of age, physically capable of reading, who cannot read the English language or some other language or dialect, including Hebrew or Yiddish." One important class of persons excepted from the necessity of meeting this test is that class of persons seeking admission to the United States to avoid religious persecution in the country from which they have come, when that " persecution involves a restriction or denial to any class or sect of such alien of the means or opportunities of obtaining an education sufficient to comply with the literacy test hereinbefore provided." This clause in quotation is an amendment to the former bill and is an important addition.

The House voted for this bill by 308 to 87, and the Senate by 64 to 7. The support of the measure thus seems more than strong enough to make it a law over the President's veto. Nevertheless he ought to veto the proposal, for the literacy test is an un-American

provision, entirely contrary to the traditional spirit of American government and American political philosophy.

Boston, on Tuesday, December 19, voted to remain a wet city by a majority of over twenty thousand. The prohibition question in Boston has been made a very live issue during the past few weeks because of the activities of Billy Sunday and the efforts of the Anti-Saloon League and many prominent citizens of Boston to turn the capital of Massachusetts into the dry column. On the list of those who signed the advertisements of the Massachusetts Anti-Saloon League are to be found such names as Dr. Charles W. Eliot, Bishop William Lawrence, Major Henry Lee Higginson, the Rev. Paul Revere Frothingham, Mr. B. Preston Clark, Mr. J. Randolph Coolidge, Jr., Dr. Richard C. Cabot, Dean Edmund S. Rousmaniere, Professor William Z. Ripley, Mr. Robert A. Woods, and the Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester.

The election was naturally a serious disappointment to those who hoped to make Boston dry, for the wet majority was much larger than at the election a year ago. It was hoped that with the aid of Billy Sunday, who did so much to turn Michigan into the dry column, the dry forces might be victorious. That the drys even hoped to carry the city of Boston is perhaps significant of the change in the general attitude toward the prohibition question.

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Meanwhile at Washington there is waging a controversy over the Sheppard Bill, designed to make the District of Columbia dry. amendment to the Sheppard Bill designed to permit a referendum vote in the District of Columbia as to whether it shall go dry or not is, as we write on December 20, deadlocked in the Senate. Another amendment to this amendment, designed to permit women to vote on the liquor question if it is decided to allow a referendum, passed the Senate by a vote of nearly four to one. The Sheppard

Bill has now been before the Senate for nearly two weeks, to the exclusion of other business. It is being backed by the Anti-Saloon League and the prohibition forces of the country.

It is generally supposed that the prohibition sentiment is much stronger in the West and South than in the East. Much evidence can be found, however, to prove that the sentiment for prohibition is stronger in the East

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than is generally supposed. New York State, for instance, a State which permits only onefifth of its electorate to vote upon the liquor question, put out of business this last fall over six hundred liquor-selling places. This is two-thirds as many as were closed by Nebraska's vote for State-wide prohibition, nearly as many as went out of business in the entire State of Virginia on November 1, and about three times as many as will be closed by the vote in South Dakota at the last election.

The prohibition forces in New York are now united upon the passage of the Optional Prohibition Remonstrance Bill, which has already been described and strongly commended in these pages. The prohibition The prohibition forces have also decided to support a Statewide prohibition referendum bill. Both bills will be simultaneously introduced in the Senate and the Assembly in New York and will be given a joint hearing.

It seems to us that the Optional Prohibition Remonstrance Bill, which gives to both men and women of the State a real voice as to whether or not the liquor business shall be permitted to continue, is as advanced a measure as is at present practical. It represents the result of the legislative experience of the Anti-Saloon League in many States and the practical experience of many of those upon whom has fallen the responsibility of enforcing the liquor laws of the country.

THE APPROACHING MUNICIPAL
CAMPAIGN IN NEW YORK

A news article in the New York "Tribune " is authority for the statement that Republican leaders in New York City are preparing to support Mayor Mitchel, a Democrat elected on a fusion ticket, for reelection in 1917.

Since the "Tribune" does not give the names of these leaders, the report is perhaps to be regarded more as a "feeler " for public opinion than as a definite promise of action. It suggests, however, how important the next municipal campaign in New York City may be for the whole country.

The first and plainest question involved in the renomination and re-election of Mayor Mitchel is simply one of good government.

Is New York wise enough to return to office a Mayor who is both efficient and progressive, and to defeat Tammany in its inevitable attempt to regain control of that city's government ?

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The second question is of greater concern, perhaps, to the country as a whole.

Is the Republican leadership in New York State blind enough to attempt to elect a party candidate as Mayor of New York City at the expense of returning to power the old spoils system from which Mayor Mitchel and his administration have so largely and so happily freed the metropolis ?

If the Republicans of New York permit this to be done, they will do much to confirm the opinion of their leadership which prevails throughout so large a section of the West.

PROFESSOR HUGO MÜNSTerberg

The controversy over Professor Münsterberg's relations with Harvard University and his attitude towards the country in which he has been so long a distinguished guest came to a sudden and tragic conclusion on December 16. While lecturing before a class in Radcliffe College Professor Münsterberg was suddenly stricken and fell unconscious to the floor. He died twenty minutes afterward.

Hugo Münsterberg was born in Danzig, East Prussia, in 1863. He came to America in 1892 to take a chair of Psychology at Harvard. In 1910 and 1911 he was the Harvard Exchange Professor at the University of Berlin. In that year he organized the Amerika Institut of the German Government, and became its first director. Professor Münsterberg's work as a psychologist was not only of technical concern, but in recent years he did much to awaken a popular interest in his science. He wrote many magazine articles on psychology and its application to business and the furtherance of justice.

After the outbreak of the great war his articles and statements in defense of Germany excited bitter protest from many sources. There was no little demand that he should be asked to resign his chair at Harvard, but free speech is one of Harvard's most fundamental traditions, and the authorities of the University very wisely declined to ask for Professor Münsterberg's resignation. Professor Münsterberg explained his own position toward

the United States in an article in the New York Times" in September, 1915, in which he said that his views were not set forth as those of a German-American, but as those of a German. He said:

I am a German and have never intended to be anything else. I did not leave Germany because I liked it less. I was professor at a German university when Harvard invited me to

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develop here the interest for experimental psychology. I accepted the invitation at first for a short time only, and under the condition that I might stay here as a citizen of my Fatherland. Later, when many a European summons called me back, I resisted every temptation and stayed on, not only because the American scholars urged me to continue, but chiefly because I had become fascinated by the hope to help toward international amity.

While he supported German policies, Professor Münsterberg denounced many of the activities of the Teutonic hyphenates in this country. He condemned the forming of an alien party within the United States as a crime against the spirit of true Americanism," and said that its results would reach far beyond the time of the war.

CHARLES BOOTH

By the death of the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, at the age of seventy-six years, England and the world lose a foremost economist, for through his monumental "Life and Labor of the People of London " Mr. Booth made students of sociology everywhere his debtors.

The Booth Steamship Company of Liverpool is one of the well-known navigation enterprises which distinguish that port; it was formed by Mr. Booth and his brother, Alfred Allen Booth, who is now also the chairman of the Cunard Steamship Company and of the Anchor Line.

Charles Booth's experiences as a practical business man were of benefit to him in keeping him from any doctrinaire or academic view in his study of social problems. He judged those problems directly, personally, intimately, but always practically. When he began to take account of the economic condition of London in so far as the working classes were concerned, his conclusions were not those of the maker of a card catalogue or of the compiler of statistics. The "Life and Labor of the People of London," filling seventeen volumes and requiring for its preparation seventeen years of scientific investigation, is probably the most complete survey of the social condition of a great city ever attempted.

This is Mr. Booth's best-known publication, but there were others also of moment"Pauperism," "The Aged Poor," "Old Age Pensions," and the succeeding series of volumes entitled "The Religious Influences of London." There was no question about Mr. Booth's belief in the practical as well as in

the ideal virtues of religious conversion as a step toward self-help.

As with social workers in other countries, the unrest caused by inadequate information, leading to sudden strikes and much unnecessary desolation, made due impression on Mr. Booth's mind, as one may note from a recently published pamphlet by him on "Industrial Unrest and Trade Union Policy." He was always a supporter of industrial arbitration, and endeavored to show that no efficiency was worth the name which was not equally profitable to employer and employed. An example of Mr. Booth's style may be found in the conclusion to his "Life and Labor of the People of London:"

Seventeen years and an equal number of volumes have been occupied with this inquiry. In as many pages I must now try to sum up the results: seventeen words would doubtless suffice did I know how to choose them aright. . . .

We see life cursed by drink, brutality, and vice, and loaded down with ignorance and privilege, while industry is choked by its own blind struggles. . . . Improvement certainly there has been at every point, . . . but the gulf is still wide. ...

There are two distinct tasks: to raise the general level of existence, but especially the bottom level, is one; to increase the proportion of those who know how to use aright the means they have is another, and even a greater. But each effort should aid the other. . . . For the treatment of disease it is first necessary to establish the evidence as to its character, extent, and symptoms. Perhaps the qualities of mind which enable a man to make this inquiry are the least of all likely to give him that elevation of soul, sympathetic insight, and sublime confidence which must go to the making of a great regenerating teacher. I have made no attempt to teach; at the most I have ventured at an appeal to those whose part it is. . . . The dry bones that lie scattered over the long valley that we have traversed together lie before my reader. May some great soul, master of a subtler and nobler alchemy than mine, . . . make those dry bones live so that the streets of our Jerusalem may sing with joy !

It is not surprising that such a critic of English life was drawn into the service of the state as President of the Royal Statistical Society, as a member of the Tariff Commission, and as Privy Councilor.

BENEDICT XV AND

THE CHILDREN OF BELGIUM

Perhaps no act of the present Pope will be more gratefully remembered than his contribution to the relief of the children of Belgium. In a letter to Cardinal Gibbons

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