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weakness and inefficiency of the authorities in Ireland under the administration of Augustine Birrell as Chief Secretary for Ireland. It is said, with some force, that the officials knew that the adherents of the Sinn Fein Association and the followers of the labor agitator James Larkin were drilling, and that they should have foreseen and forestalled any outbreak. The London "Mail " says:

Mr. Birrell never asked why the volunteers existed. He knew it was not to serve against the enemy, but rather to obstruct the Imperial forces. On December 10 he declared, "evidence of their disloyalty is voluminous," yet he did nothing. If he had any policy other than merely drifting, it was to turn a blind eye to the disloyal movement. The Government persuaded itself that the treason could be overcome by resolutely looking the other way. The Government's wait-and-see policy was complicated by a hide-the-truth policy.

Mr. Asquith, in the House of Commons on May 2, stated that the Government was prepared to discuss the conduct of Mr. Augustine Birrell, a motion having been made demanding Mr. Birrell's resignation, but on the following day Mr. Birrell's resignation was reported.

Throughout this disturbing and disheartening incident the leaders of the Home Rule party, and particularly Mr. John Redmond, have been earnest and outspoken in their indignation, while the attitude of the Ulster leaders has been equally vigorous. Mr. Redmond has declared that in the South of Ireland the loyal adherents of the Home Rule party, as compared with the wild and impracticable revolutionists demanding a republic, are at least ten to one.

OUR GAME OF

CHESS WITH MEXICO

Three men have been at the focus of the gaze of every one who has been interested in the Mexican situation during the past week. They are Major-General Scott, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, as famous for his 'diplomatic triumphs over the Indians as for his military victories over them; Major-General Frederick Funston, the man who captured Aguinaldo and the commander of our forces along the border; and General Alvaro Obregon, Carranza's Minister of War, who eclipsed Villa's glory and lost an arm in the battle of Celaya about a year ago. These three men have directed the conferences between the United States and the de facto

Government of Mexico which have been taking place at Juarez and El Paso.

Distinguished as they are, General Scott and General Funston have been virtually messengers, being restricted almost entirely to the deliverance of the proposals of President Wilson to the Carranza Government and to the pronunciation of a policy formed at Washington. But while General Obregon has been ostensibly only the spokesman of Carranza at this conference, he is much more than that. He is probably the most popular man in Mexico to-day and certainly the most powerful. The one-armed hero of Celaya has succeeded to the power and the glory that were Pancho Villa's. He may make and unmake Mexican history. He himself summed up his present position accurately if he said, as alleged by newspaper reports: "No musical instrument ever responded more faithfully to the touch of the master than do the Mexican people to the man of the hour. Just now I am the man of the hour."

As we go to press it is unofficially reported that the delegates to the conference have agreed to recommend to their respective Governments that an official agreement be adopted whereby the American troops shall remain in Mexico until satisfied that banditry has been wiped out and that the Carranza government is able to cope with any emergencies; but it is also rumored that the Americans will consent to fall back towards the border and "hunt" for Villa only within a restricted area. But, in any case, whatever happens, Obregon will bear watching. The chances are that he will gain by any development of the conference. If the United States assents to any course of action pleasing to the Mexican masses, those masses will give Obregon the credit. If the conference is disappointing to the Mexican people, it will be easy for Obregon to shift the blame to his nominal chief, Carranza, and then put himself at the head of a popular movement to win by force or otherwise what arbitration may fail to win.

It is significant that as Obregon grows more popular and more prominent, the rumors of his disagreement with Carranza increase.

In the meantime, to be ready for any outcome of the El Paso-Juarez conferences, both Mexico and the United States have been doing on a small scale what Europe did on a large scale during the first week of August, 1914. Mexican forces are reported moving up toward the border in great

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strength, and additional units of the American army are moving down toward the border.

Figures recently published by the War Department, however, show that from March 16 to April 28, inclusive, only 5,417 recruits had been obtained to raise the army to full war strength as authorized by Congress soon after our expedition crossed the border. At this rate, it will take all summer to get the 20,000 recruits called for by the Hay Emergency Resolution, although it ought to be pointed out that the present rate of enlistment is much larger than it was before our soldiers entered Mexico.

General Pershing is rapidly pulling together his forces within Mexico into the unity. that is strength. The great majority of the men under General Pershing are now reported to be "dug in" at Namiquipa, waiting on events.

Two facts stand out clearly from the Mexican muddle as this is written. First, the pursuit of Villa has virtually ceased, and the chances of ever catching him after this delay-unless it be true that he is injured -will be almost nil unless we resort to broad-scale intervention and comb the country for him. Second, Carranza co-operation thus far has been a myth. Actual efforts of the Carranzistas to assist in the hunt for Villa, if there have been any at all, have been more than outweighed by the efforts of Carranzistas to block our expedition, such as the ambuscade at Parral. So far the sum total of Carranza co-operation is zero, or minus.

the House, after it had already passed the Senate, was brought about by the revolt of thirty Democrats acting in conjunction with the entire body of Republican Representatives. The names of these thirty Democrats are deserving of record here. They were:

Allen, Ohio.
Beakes, Michigan.
Bruckner, New York.
Carew, New York.
Coady, Maryland.
Conry, New York.
Dale, New York.
Dooling, New York.
Driscoll, New York.
Eagan, New Jersey.
Estiponal, Louisiana.
Farley, New York.
Fitzgerald, New York.
Flynn, New York.
Gallagher, Illinois.

Gallivan, Massachusetts. Griffin, New York. Hamill, New Jersey. Hart, New Jersey. Hulbert, New York. McAndrews, Illinois. McDermott, Illinois. Maher, New York. Olney, Massachusetts. O'Shaunessy, R. I. Patten, New York. Phelan, Massachusetts. Riordan, New York. Smith, New York. Tague, Massachusetts. It will be observed that many of these men are Tammany Democrats from New York City, a group of men in Congress who frequently come in for no little criticism from the public press. There have been instances, however, when Tammany Democrats in Congress have seen National problems more clearly and faced them more courageously than some of their Democratic brethren from other States.

Apparently this defeat of the Clarke amendment on the floor of the House settles for the present any prospect that Congress will give any definite promise concerning the date of independence of the Philippines. As a substitute for the Philippine Bill with the Clarke amendment, the House accepted the Jones Bill with its vague promise of independence upon the establishment of a stable government and its revision of governmental organization in the Philippines in the direction. of enlarging the factor of native control. The Jones Bill is by no means satisfactory to those who are most familiar with the traditions of the American occupation of the Philippines, but, compared with the Clarke amendment of the Senate bill, it is a step backward in the right direction.

SECRETARY BAKER ON
PREPAREDNESS

When Secretary Baker entered the Cabinet, fear was expressed in many quarters that his appointment meant a change from Secretary Garrison's sympathetic attitude towards the view-point of the General Staff. Recent events have done much to dissipate this idea, and an

interview with Secretary Baker published in the Philadelphia "Ledger" has still further served to place the Secretary of War accurately in the public mind.

In this interview Secretary Baker was asked, "Do you favor active preparedness?" He answered:

Unquestionably. It represents a power full of possibilities for good." Resolve and act" is the order of the day, and it is far better to overweight preparedness than to underweight it.

Mr. Baker was then asked: "How large an army, in your opinion, should the country have, to meet future requirements?'' He replied:

The War College has figured it out most competently. To give us enough of a garrison to defend our overseas possessions properly and adequately to protect our coasts, these officers say we need a fully trained mobile force of 500,000 men, composed of the regular army and its militia reserve. Then, back of that, there

ought to be a citizen force, not first-line troops, but troops which had received certain training. This citizen body has been put at 500,000.

Those who are strong in the belief that the experts of the army and navy are most competent to decide on the amount of preparation required to carry out the policies of the civil government will have no quarrel with the following statement made by Secretary Baker in his interview in the "Public Ledger :"

Neither the soldier nor the sailor is responsible for the National policies, many of them legacies of years' standing, yet both must assume full responsibility for the amount of force necessary to maintain these policies. Not only must they determine the extent of the force required, but they must see that the state of readiness is maintained.

If Congress can only be brought to a similar understanding of the value of expert opinion, a long step away from present wasteful methods of making military and naval appropriations will have been made.

MR. ROOSEVELT IN ILLINOIS

If the attitude of the Middle West towards the question of preparedness can be judged by the reception given to Mr. Roosevelt's address on "National Duty and International Ideals," delivered before the Illinois Bar Association, the current belief that this region is in a pacifistic frame of mind is decidedly wrong.

Certainly the tremendous ovation given to

Mr. Roosevelt, when he declared for the introduction into the United States of a universal system of military service founded on a modified form of the Swiss system, was more than a mere tribute to his personality.

Mr. Roosevelt made it clear that in his championing of the cause of preparedness he had not forgotten the programme of social justice which figured so prominently in the Progressive platform of 1912. Speaking of industrial mobilization, Mr. Roosevelt said:

Preparedness must be both of the soul and of the body. It must be not only military but industrial and social. There can be no efficient preparedness against war unless there is in time of peace economic and spiritual preparedness in the things of peace. Well-meaning men continually forget this interdependence. Wellmeaning men continually speak as if efficient military preparedness could be achieved out of industrial and social chaos, whereas such military preparedness would represent merely a muscular arm on a withered body.

Mr. Roosevelt emphatically indicated the side of preparedness which is of immediate importance to the defense of the country. In the general discussion of the problems of military defense, the country has too often forgotten the fact that the navy constitutes the most vital element in its security. Mr. Roosevelt said:

We need, beyond anything else, a first-class navy. We cannot possibly get it unless the naval programme is handled with steady wisdom from the standpoint of a nation that accepts the upbuilding and upkeep of such a navy as cardinal points of continuous policy. There should be no party division along these lines. A party which, whatever its views are on other subjects, stops the upbuilding of the navy or lets it be impaired in efficiency should be accepted as false to the vital interests of the American people. The navy should be trained in deep water, in salt water, and it should be trained always with one end in view-to increase its fighting efficiency.

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The whole question of preparedness in Mr. Roosevelt's view is bound up with the vital issue of Americanism. "Not only," he says, questions of elective and legislative machinery, but all questions of internal reform, must stand second to our insistence that this is one nation, the American Nation, not a mere tangle of quarreling nationalities, and second also to the duty of facing the fact that at present all moral sanctions and standards in international relations are imperiled, and that our prime duty is to fit ourselves to

defend the lives of our people and the honor and vital interest of this Nation."

In this last quotation Mr. Roosevelt has clearly stated what we believe to be the great issue of the coming Presidential campaign.

A PLATTSBURG of THE SEA

The military training camp for civilians at Plattsburg, New York, last summer was so successful that this year there are to be similar camps at half a dozen points in the United States. What has worked so well for the army ought to work as well for the navy, and the announcement of a training course for civilians in the navy this summer is timely and welcome.

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Substantially, the aim of the Navy Department in opening this training cruise for civilians is to do for the amateur tar what Plattsburg has done for the amateur soldier. The Navy Department announces that the course will begin on August 15 and will terminate on September 12, and that the training will be given on board reserve battle-ships. course is open to any citizen of the United States between the ages of nineteen and forty-five who can pass a prescribed physical examination and who can prove that he has had a high school training and is "following a trade or occupation where experience gained would be beneficial to the Government in time of need." Undergraduates and graduates of colleges, pilots and pilots' apprentices, and those who have had six months' experience in any one of a long list of specified trades are also particularly referred to as eligible, but the above-quoted blanket clause will let in most men who can afford to give thirty days of their time and the thirty dollars which will cover everything but the applicant's traveling expenses to and from the ship. Applications must be made to any recruiting station or substation not later than June 1, and at these stations applicants can get full information as to the details of this brief naval course.

In a general way, however, the studies to be taken up will be largely optional, and recruits will have an opportunity to specialize on such subjects as navigation, signaling, engineering, etc. The object of the training cruise as announced by the Navy Department is :

"To help equip properly qualified men to act as reserves in time of war or National emergency by giving them a course of train

ing on war-ships under naval officers and naval discipline.

"To foster a patriotic spirit and give to civilians some knowledge of the navy and the naval requirements of the country.

"To interest civilians in naval matters so that by taking future courses of training and by study many can qualify for acting commissions after taking the necessary examination."

A special appeal is made to the owners of yachts or motor boats which would be useful as auxiliaries in time of war. During the final week of the cruise the battle-ships will return to the naval districts whence they came, and here the owners of such yachts and motor boats will be given training to enable them to operate their small craft in conjunction with the big war-ships. It is not necessary that such owners take the preliminary three weeks of instruction, although it is very desirable that they do so. To be eligible for enrollment a boat must be seaworthy and able to care for a crew of at least four people for forty-eight hours.

When this course of training was announced, many nautical experts made the criticism that to put green men on a battleship and to send them to sea without any preliminary training might so dampen their enthusiasm for the navy that they would forsake it forever. This seems to be a point well made. We believe that this training course would be more useful if permanent training camps were established on the shores of such sheltered waters as Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay, and if the first part of the course were devoted to teaching recruits naval rudiments and to getting them acclimated at such base camps.

With this single criticism, we heartily approve the plan of training cruises for civilians. The principal benefit which the country derived from the Plattsburg camp last summer, we believe, was the recognition which it aroused among civilians of the need of adequate military preparedness against war and of the need that each citizen be prepared to do his share in defending his country. The arousal of a similar interest on the side of naval affairs will be, we believe, the great benefit to be derived from this Plattsburg of the sea.

A BOY SCOUT RALLY

Any skeptic regarding the kind of military training and discipline which the Boy Scouts of America receive would have had his doubts

removed if he could have attended a rally of Boy Scouts which was reviewed by Governor Whitman, of the State of New York, in the Seventy-first Regiment Armory, New York City, on Saturday afternoon, April 29. The rally was held under the direction of the Manhattan-Bronx Council, of which Judge Franklin C. Hoyt, of the New York Children's Court, is president. From two to three thousand boys participated, and the discipline, good order, and efficiency with which they went through their various exercises and performed their various "stunts was a remarkable demonstration of the success of the Boy Scout system. The great drill floor of the armory was filled with groups of boys going through their evolutions and performing their feats, and to the spectator it was more interesting and overwhelming than a ten-ring circus. Games, calisthenics, signaling, binding up the wounded, bicycle drills, races, tent-pitching, tying of knots, and various other feats were performed rapidly and without confusion.

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Some of the performances were stunts indeed. One troop, for example, brought into the hall some lofty and fairly good-sized tree trunks, and, lashing them together in tripod form, raised them up like an oldfashioned barn-raising, and thus formed a signal tower perhaps twenty-five feet high. One of the boys then shinned up one of the legs of this gigantic tripod, and, clinging to the crotch at the top, went through his code of wigwag signaling. In the woods or fields this tripod could have stood partly embedded in the earth, but on the polished floor of the armory the other boys of the troop clustered up around the foot of each of the three great legs and had to hold it in place by main strength. The rapidity and skill of this maneuver would have done credit to a band of strong men trained in the art of woodcraft, mechanics, and the field operations of an army. And yet not one of the boys appeared to be over seventeen or eighteen years of age, and many of them were much younger. Every number on the programme was interesting, and the one we have briefly described is indicative of the skill and discipline which all the participants displayed.

The remarkable performances of these boys were not only a credit to their physical prowess and their quickness of intelligence, but the whole exhibition showed how interesting and how valuable a system of education might be made in this country which

would teach our boys how to do things with their hands and their minds at the same time, under discipline and with prompt obedience to orders. The work of the Boy Scout organization is a practical illustration in a voluntary organization of what might be done in the United States if we were to adopt a system of universal military service like that which is so successful in Switzerland or Australia. Perhaps it is too much to hope that the time will come when every public and private school in the United States will have a Boy Scout organization connected with it. It is, however, an ideal to be hoped and worked for.

That there is an aesthetic side to military discipline was well illustrated at this particular rally by the very exceptionally good music furnished by the military brass band of the Police Department. The music of the occasion was furnished by the police band of the city, through the courtesy of Police Commissioner Woods. The men were clad in police fatigue uniforms, and they not only played Sousa marches as well as Sousa's band itself could have played them, but they played the incidental music with unusual charm and professional skill. In his address Governor Whitman declared that he had attended few public occasions more impressive.

Our readers will remember that the Scout law requires a Scout to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent. An organization which is cultivating these qualities in American boys is performing a National work of the best kind of patriotism.

A BUSINESSLIKE MAYOR

The average New Yorker does not realize how good a city government he is getting from the administration of Mayor Mitchel. He accepts clean streets, well-constructed pavements, good order maintained by the police, the reduced death rate, freedom from plague or contagious epidemics, the extension. of public school work, the development of the park and playground system, the striking improvements in the docks and water-fronts, the decrease in the damage and danger of fires, the successful efforts to deal with the sick, suffering, injured, and dependents. of the city in a more humane fashionall these things he accepts without much thought of their source, as he accepts the air and sunlight. But the benefits of good municipal government are not bestowed

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