SHALL WE VOTE FOR
WILSON?

Mr. Theodore Price in his article elsewhere in this issue has made out a very strong case for the economic achievements of the Wilson Administration. To those who vote for a President of the United States because, above everything else, they want his Administration to give them economic prosperity the article will be very persuasive. If we believed that the coming Presidential election should be decided solely upon economic grounds, it would perhaps be difficult to combat Mr. Price's statistical arguments.

Even in an economic debate, however, it would be fair to point out that the Federal Reserve Act, which Mr. Price is right in calling the superlative achievement of the Wilson Administration, is the product, not of Mr. Wilson's constructive statesmanship, but of the Republican statesmanship which created the Monetary Commission and enunciated the principles of the Federal Reserve Currency System; and that the Income Tax Law is economically pernicious, because through its exemption clauses it is not justly democratic.

Another economic weakness of the Wilson Administration is its failure to establish a National budget system. It is the lack of a National budget that gives us to-day "pork barrel" appropriations, haphazard expenditures unrelated to any coherent plan, and special taxes laid, now on this article and now on that, whenever there is a special need for money.

.If Mr. Price were President of the United States, we believe the very first thing he would do in order to make his Administration economically sound would be to establish a National budget. This the Democratic party has so far declined to

do, and it is thus fundamentally lacking in economic leadership.

But our opposition to Mr. Wilson is not based on economic grounds. It is based upon 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 charter of this Republic by its founders. They said that the chief right of mankind under government is the right "to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and asserted that it was the duty of Americans to maintain that right and to attempt to overthrow governments that denied the right. Mr. Wilson says that the chief right of Americans is the right to safety and prosperity, and their chief duty is to be neutral in the great world controversy that now actually threatens their safety and prosperity.

When we say this to the advocates of Mr. Wilson's re-election and point out his failure to protest against the invasion of Belgium, they reply: "But the invasion of Belgium was so sudden, so unexpected, so incredible, that even the greatest Americans were too dazed to make a protest."

But twenty-one months is certainly a long enough time for a statesman to take in formulating his policy with regard to an international crisis of unprecedented gravity. And twentyone months after the invasion and ravaging of Belgium Mr. Wilson, in an important public address in Washington, again stated his policy of neutral indifference with regard to the European war in the following language:

"With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst forth we are not interested to search for or explore."

We assert again that a statesman who can deliberately take this attitude with regard to a gigantic human struggle that is likely to change the whole course of civilization for generations to come, and who can and does conform his political deeds to such a formula, is not a statesman whose judgment on any grave question we can trust.

In ordinary times the American people have often chosen their Presidents for economic or financial reasons. In extraordinary crises they have chosen their Presidents for their human ideals when those ideals have been put clearly before them. Washington was not made the great leader of his country because he was a sound economist in his private affairs and one of the most successful men of his time in industry and business. He

was chosen because he was willing to suffer privation, the loss of property, and even death in the defense of human liberty. Lincoln was not chosen because he was a great lawyer and because the people believed that he could maintain a peaceful neutrality in a world-wide contest between the advocates of bondmen and the advocates of freemen. He was chosen because he was concerned in the causes and the objects of slave power, and because he was interested to search for and explore the sources of the flood that threatened to tear the Republic asunder.

It may be that the mass of Americans have not yet risen to an appreciation of American ideals. It may be that they do not yet realize that their prime duty is to stand publicly for those ideals at home and abroad. If so, is it not because Mr. Wilson has failed to grasp the great opportunity of moral and patriotic leadership that was offered to him? Instead of rising to a great occasion, instead of touching the consciences of the people and arousing them to their duties, Mr. Wilson appears to us to have devoted himself to "playing safe." Such a spirit in such a crisis of civilization as the world is now facing repels our sympathy and confidence. We prefer to follow the King of the Belgians rather than the King of the Greeks.

ABOLISH MODERN TORTURE

This

About a year ago a farmer and his housekeeper in New York State were brutally murdered. Opposite their house lived a German by the name of Stielow with his wife and his brother-in-law, Nelson Green. A reward of six thousand dollars was offered for the detection and conviction of the murderer. Stielow and his brother-in-law were arrested and by a detective were put through what is currently called the "third degree." is a process of cross-examination conducted privately by the police, generally for the purpose of extorting from the accused a confession of the crime. Stielow can neither read nor write, and both he and his brother-in-law are said to possess sub-normal intelligence. At the end of the inquisition a written paper was put before Stielow and he was told to subscribe to it, which he is alleged to have done by a mark or seal. On the trial Stielow was convicted of the murder and Nelson Green was convicted of being accessory. Stielow was sentenced to death and Nelson Green

to imprisonment. The official report of the trial is not before us, but it is reported to us, on what we regard as good authority, that there was no evidence against Stielow except this confession. He afterwards declared that he did not know what it contained, but signed it because he was assured that if he did the detective would secure his release. The prison authorities at Sing Sing became satisfied of his innocence, and Mrs. Grace Humiston, of New York, became interested in the case and convinced of Stielow's innocence, and set to work to secure his release. The Appellate Court had confirmed the conviction, we presume on the ground that there was no disregard of law in the trial, and that the question whether the confession was genuine or not was one for the determination of the jury. The Governor refused to interfere. There was clearly no case for pardon, for if Stielow had committed the crime it was one of unpardonable atrocity, and the Governor rightly refused to retry the case after it had been passed upon by the Court. day or two before Stielow was to have been executed Mrs. Humiston secured a stay of proceedings, and before the execution could take place under that stay another man by the name of King, arrested for another crime, confessed to Mrs. Humiston that he himself with an associate had committed the murder. He has since retracted this confes

A

sion, and charged that Mrs. Humiston bribed him to make it, a charge which we do not conceive that even those most convinced of Stielow's guilt or most desirous to get the reward upon his execution do or can believe. It is certain that if Stielow were to be tried now, with the fact of King's confession before the Court, no jury would declare Stielow guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The third degree," so often practiced, as in this case, to wrest from the accused a confession of crime, has long been condemned both by our ablest psychologists on scientific grounds and by our ablest jurists on the ground of law and justice. It is but a new form of the old method pursued in the Middle Ages of extorting confession by torture. "There are," says Professor Münsterberg in his interesting volume "On the Witness Stand," "no longer any thumbscrews, but the lower orders of the police have still uncounted means to make the prisoner's life uncomfortable and perhaps intolerable, and to break down his energy. A rat put secretly into a woman's cell may exhaust her nervous sys

That sometimes this brutality is inspired by a desire on the part of the police to win a reputation for success, sometimes by the more sordid desire to get the reward offered for the detection and conviction of a criminal, can hardly be doubted by any one who possesses a knowledge of human nature. But even when it is inspired solely by a desire to ascertain the truth and serve the ends of justice, as is probably often the case, it is still unjustifiable. Excellence of motive did not justify the inquisitors of the Middle Ages. Says Henry Charles Lea in his 66 History of the Inquisition :" "Employing with cynical openness every resource of guile and fraud on wretches purposely starved to render them incapable of selfdefense, the counsels which these men utter might well seem the promptings of fiends exulting in the unlimited power to wreak their evil passions on helpless mortals. Yet through

all this there shines the evident conviction that they are doing the work of God." The conviction of the high-minded policeman that in the employment of the "third degree" he is serving the ends of justice no more justifies his method than did the conviction of the inquisitor that he was doing the work of God justify his similar method in the Inquisition. The excellence of his motive may protect the policeman from our criticism, but not the method which he employs from our condemnation.

And that method is illegal, unjust, inhuman, and worse than useless. It violates the fundamental principles of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and shocks the American sense of justice. Anglo-Saxon law assumes that every man is innocent until proved guilty; the "third degree assumes the accused to be guilty unless he can prove himself innocent. Anglo-Saxon law forbids the use of torture to wrest a confession from the accused; the "third degree" employs a mental torture hardly less brutal than the rack or the thumbscrew. If current reports are true, the prisoner, even when no special devices are employed to destroy his self-control, is not infrequently subjected to an exami

nation conducted continuously for twentyfour or even thirty-six hours by successive examiners, until he breaks down from sheer exhaustion. Anglo-Saxon law forbids secret tribunals; the maintenance of a "star chamber " was опе of the chief counts of the Puritan indictment against the administration of Charles I; the "third degree" is conducted in secret with no friend or counselor of the prisoner present to guard his rights. Anglo-Saxon law forbids cruel and unusual punishment; the "third degree" inflicts a cruel and unusual punishment on an accused not proved guilty and therefore presumably innocent.

And this illegal and inhuman method of treating the accused fails lamentably in its object-the detection of crime. It is almost as likely to wrest a confession from the innocent as from the guilty. The experience in the Middle Ages that confessions wrested from the accused and testimony wrested from witnesses were wholly untrustworthy is confirmed by the experience of the courts in many a case where that untrustworthiness is not so dramatically established as it has been in the case of Stielow. Professor Münsterberg gives a number of illustrations of this truth. One must here suffice:

Every lawyer knows the famous Boorn case in Vermont, where the brothers confessed to having killed their brother-in-law, and described the deed in full detail and how they destroyed the body, while long afterwards the "murdered " man returned alive to the village. The evidence against the suspected appeared so overwhelming that they saw only one hope to save their lives by turning the verdict, through their untrue confession, from murder to manslaughter.

The third degree" has grown up naturally. It is less the fault of the police than it is of the law which makes no provision for a carefully guarded inquiry of the accused by a properly appointed official. Ex-President Taft put this matter very clearly before the graduating class of the Law School of Yale University in an address delivered in June, 1905, an address to which The Outlook called attention at the time, but which seems to us to have received very much less consideration from the public and from legislators than it deserves. He said:

If the administration of criminal law is for the purpose of convicting those who are guilty of crime, then it seems natural to follow in such a process the methods that obtain in ordinary life. If anything has happened and it is im

portant to discover who is the author of it, the first impulse of the human mind is to inquire of the person suspected whether he did it, and to cross-examine him as to circumstances. Certainly this is the domestic rule by which your wife or your mother proceeds to find out who it is that broke the window, who it is that stole the jam from the pantry, or why it is that the sweeping has not been done by the person charged with that duty. She goes to the suspected culprit and asks the questions natural under such circumstances, to see whether her suspicion of guilt is well founded. Now the proposition that it is unjust to call upon the person suspected of a crime to tell of his connection with it is at first sight untenable. Why is it unjust? If he is not guilty, will he not have the strongest motive for saying so? and if he is guilty and seeks to escape liability, will he not use every effort to make his conduct con-. sistent with his innocence? Why, then, does it expose the defendant to improper treatment if an officer of the law at once begins to interrogate him concerning his guilt? But the answer is, he has the right to consult counsel. He should not be hurried into statements which he may subsequently desire to retract. In other words, he should be given an opportunity, after he has committed the crime, to frame in his mind some method by which he can escape conviction and punishment.

We are inclined to think that the Prison Reform Associations, State and National, in this country could undertake no reform better worth their while than one which would involve the absolute abolition of the "third degree" and the substitution of a guarded examination of the prisoner by a judicial officer appointed for that purpose. We would have the law absolutely prohibit the police from making or permitting any private secret inquiry of the accused. We would have him brought, as is done in France, before a judicial officer, whose attitude of mind, however, should be rather that of a judge in a children's court than that of a prosecuting official, and whose object it should be, not to convict the accused of crime, but to make it easy for the accused to tell the truth. Such inquiry should follow immediately after the arrest; the prisoner should have a right to have a friend or counsel present; he should be advised that he may keep silence if he chooses to do so, but that this choice of his would go before the jury if he comes to trial, and would be taken into account by them in reaching their decision. Save for the judge, the accused, his friend or counsel, and possibly the policeman making the arrest, the

inquiry should be private, neither public nor reporters being permitted to be present. The newspapers should be left to depend for their information on the official reports furnished them by the courts.

That this method, borrowed from that pursued in the family, and adopted though not in its best form by the Code of France, can be adopted in this country without modification we do not affirm. But we are sure that the illegal, unjust, inhuman, and inefficient method of the "third degree" ought to be abolished absolutely, and that such abolition is not practicable unless it is accompanied by some rational and guarded method for a legal, just, human, and efficient method of getting at the mind of the prisoner at the bar.

A COMPLAINT CONCERNING MR. ROBERT CARTER The editors of The Outlook have a decided grudge against Mr. Robert Carter, of the New York" Evening Sun." It is a grudge founded on the inescapable fact that he adds considerably to our editorial labors.

Once a week it is our task to choose from the work of newspaper artists a group of cartoons typifying the development of public opinion throughout the country. Clippings from all over the United States are piled upon our library table, and a large and empty waste-basket placed conveniently at hand. Then the work of selection begins. Cartoons with good ideas badly executed, cartoons with poor ideas respectably executed, and cartoons which in both thought and craftsmanship are deserving of summary execution rapidly pass the way of all flesh. When the basket is filled to overflowing, upon the table there remain perhaps a scant dozen of cartoons from which a final choice must be made.

And this is where the intrusive Mr. Carter generally breaks in upon our editorial calm. It has happened more than once that when the chaff has been taken away the bulk of the remaining wheat is found to be inscribed with the name of Mr. Robert Carter. In righteous indignation we ask Mr. Carter, How can conscientious editors provide a variety of cartoons for their readers when one cartoonist insists upon monopolizing most of the good ideas and a still larger percentage of the good drawings?

We insistently wish to call Mr. Carter's offense to the attention of the Inter-State

Commerce Commission, or any other public service body with the power and the will to act against the activities of this apparent'y unrepentant monopolist.

Even if we cannot forgive Mr. Carter his annoyingly.frequent successes, we are broadminded enough to express openly our debt to him for what is, perhaps, his best contribution to the record of American cartoon history.

Lin

We like, without qualification, his presentation of Uncle Sam. Mr. Carter's Uncle Sam is not a pen-and-ink abstraction. He is the visible embodiment of an ideal. colnian in stature and countenance, austere of thought and speech, courageous of heart and mind, strong enough to be tender, wise enough both to dream and to act, Mr. Carter's image of our National spirit looms like a mountain-peak among the conventional visualizations of the American Nation. The Uncle Sam of Mr. Carter's creation is a citizen of the world, with world-wide sympathy and understanding. Yet in the transition which he has undergone from the rustic Brother Jonathan of half a century ago he has not lost the true tang of Americanism, the shrewd humor born of the open spaces of an undeveloped continent, nor the vision and the outlook of the eternal pioneer. We want more of Mr. Carter's Uncle Sam, not only in the pages of the "Evening Sun," but in the halls of Congress and in the executive chambers of our Government.

speakers stumped up and down the land, bands played, and the roadside was made hideous with multicolored posters. The general purport of this excitement was to bring home to the average citizen the fact that the Government wanted money and wished to get it quickly.

Now all this hullabaloo affected different people in different ways. Some men marched up to the tax-collector and turned over all their worldly goods, and then trudged away to the poorhouse. Others joined together in companies and gave their notes to pay certain specified sums of money upon demand. Still others, and these were in the great majority, sat by the roadside and cheered loudly for those who entered the tax-collectors' booths. But not infrequently they turned their backs on those who came out of these same booths, having given their all. And these same cheerers and jeerers always had excellent reasons for not contributing anything to the Government from their own purses. Either the crops had been too bad or too good, or the weather had been too wet or too dry, or the clocks had been too slow or too fast. It did not take a very robust excuse, on the part of those who wanted an excuse, to pass muster in the Land that Paid no Taxes.

After a long time those who had impoverished themselves and those who had pledged themselves to pay taxes all out of proportion to their means began to open their eyes to the situation. "It is a privilege to help our Government," they said; "but, because it

TAXES

Some people called it Utopia; others suspected that its political philosophy might be improved upon. At any rate, it was a pleasant land flowing not only with the milk and honey of Biblical tradition, but also with the gasoline of modern civilization.

The strange thing about this land was the fact that nobody ever paid any taxes. That is, no cne ever had to pay any taxes. Of course the Government needed money and used a great deal of it, but all it ever received was collected by "voluntary contributions." At least that was the theory of all those who declared that the system was the bulwark of democracy.

This was how it worked out in practice. Once in so often the Government called for a tax rally. Flags were flung to the breeze,

Since all our citizens use the roads, cross the bridges, catch the fish, drink the water, and enjoy the profound pleasure of criticising without stint the public officials that our Government provides, why should not all our citizens have an equal share in supporting that Government which they are inclined to boast of creating? We are not selfish. Let every one have a share in those tax garlands they have been so ready (at times) to place upon our brows."

Whereupon certain ethical leaders declared that the country was being given over to the dollar worship of Mammon.

And certain editors gave it as their opinion that the Ogre of Confiscation was stalking abroad in the land.

And certain lotus-eaters declared that their ancient freedom was at stake; that unless the proper steps were taken the time was