HE BUDGET BEFORE

CONGRESS

I'

HE first regular session of the Sixty-seventh Congress convened on December 5. The opening day as marked by the presentation of the udget, required by the new Budget Law, howing estimated receipts and expendiures for the fiscal year, July 1, 1922uly 1, 1923.

The effect of this budget statement pon Congress and the country will, we elieve, be favorably influenced by the work already done by the Budget Bueau, under its energetic and efficient Director, General Charles G. Dawes. ast summer it was reported that the xpenditures for the fiscal year ending uly 1, 1922, might run as high as 4,554,000,000. At this point General Dawes stepped in. He told the executive epartments and bureaus that their operting costs must be lessened. A short ime after it was announced that the overnment would find a way to save ome $520,000,000; since then a further aving was announced. The deficiency or the year will be some $24,000,000, stead of the much larger sum expected. his is a pleasant record in the retrenchlent of Governmental expenses. We hope that a similar economy may istinguish the record of the ensuing

ear.

Certainly, as was expected, the udget presented on December 5 aforded to Congress and to the people hat they never had before the opporinity of a quick survey, not only of ssets and liabilities, but also of econoies necessary in this day of the high sts of living, Governmental as well as dividual.

The new Budget Law, as The Outlook as said, is one of the best measures ver enacted by Congress. Its effect has een not only to bring clearness of stateent and economy of administration, it as also engendered in Congress and nong the people a new atmosphere of terest in financial affairs.

HE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

T was natural that President Har. ding's Message to Congress should egin with a reference to the disordered onditions of the world, that he should xpress the opinion that "no permanent eadjustment can be effected without onsideration of our inescapable relaionship to world affairs in finance ind trade," and that he should express he belief that the present Washington Conference should not improbably bring

Among the specific recommendations of the President are that permanent tariff and foreign debt refunding bills should be promptly passed. He announced that he would soon make special tax recommendations involving further reductions and suggested that Congress might wish to consider an amendment to the Constitution forbidding the issue of non-taxable bonds. He deprecated any attempt to denounce commercial treaties so as to involve the country in a chaos of trade relationships and "add indescribably to the confusion of the already disordered commercial world." Unemployment, the President declares, is decreasing, and there are also "reassuring signs of a business revival from the deep slump which all the world has been experiencing."

A special paragraph is devoted to urging that "it would be good business" if provision should be made to help reclaim the 20,000,000 acres of public land still available and fit for homes and cultivation if properly irrigated.

In dealing with the problems of capital and labor the need of reasonableness,

conciliation, and recognition of the other side's point of view is pointed out. Arbitration in the interests of the commu-. nity as a whole is urged. The rights of labor are defined in this passage: "The right of labor to organize is just as fundamental and necessary as is the right of capital to organize. The right of labor to negotiate, to deal with and solve its particular problems in an organized way, through its chosen agents, is just as essential as is the right of capital to organize, to maintain corporations, to limit the liabilities of stockholders."

It will be remembered that fourteen years ago an agreement was entered into by treaty between Santo Domingo and the United States which is universally regarded as of value not only to both countries but to the stability of commerce and finance as between the countries to the south of us and the world at large. Under this treaty an American official, to be appointed by the President, was charged with the duty of collecting the customs receipts of Santo Domingo; of the total amount collected forty-five per cent was to be paid to the debtors of Santo Domingo, which was groaning under a heavy bonded debt; the rest, of course, was applied to the proper expenses of the Republic. creditors gladly agreed to this plan, and it has been successful in every way. President Roosevelt appointed Mr. Pulliam customs receiver, confident that his abilities fitted the task and that his services in the Philippines made him the right man to deal with such a condition as existed in Santo Domingo.

The

Under the Wilson Administration Mr. Pulliam was compelled to resign. We all remember that correspondence between Mr. Bryan and Mr. Wilson, in which it was suggested that the new appointees to Santo Domingo as Minister and customs receiver should have it close to their hearts to find places for "deserving Democrats."

This was "playing politics" in its crudest form, and it is not to be wondered that from that time conditions in Santo Domingo have been worse than for many years. Before that time, we are told in a letter to The Outlook

by a well-informed diplomat, the entire indebtedness of the island had been paid off and an excess amount of $5,000,000 was expended to great advantage for public improvement. In short, material aid had been given Santo Domingo without any taint of political design, oppression to the natives, or aim to annex the country. Mr. Pulliam was displaced by a prominent Tammany worker. Scandals ensued, an investigation followed, and the Tammany politician was removed, only to be succeeded by a New Jersey politician of whom it has been said that he "has drawn the maximum salary with a minimum amount of service from the Dominican treasury up to the present time."

Mr. Pulliam's reinstatement is at the request of those who know the best interests of Santo Domingo. Beyond doubt, it is a commendable step. An investigation by a committee of the United States Senate is to take up the whole question of the administration of Santo Domingo affairs by the United States. To quote our correspondent once more, this act of President Harding's "is a notable instance of making right by one Administration that which was made wrong by the previous one and is at the same time a gracious recognition on the part of Harding of the principle of efficiency in public service and his wish to respect the desires of the Dominicans themselves."

ADOLF LORENZ, HEALER AND LOVER OF CHILDREN

T

HERE has been some unfortunate and undeserved comment on the work of Dr. Adolf Lorenz, the great Austrian surgeon, in this country. This has been due to misunderstanding. The matter is really simple. Dr. Lorenz, whose visit to America many years ago was a revelation to American surgical and medical science, came a second time, as he has expressly stated, to show so far as one man could gratitude for what the American people have done to save Austrian children. "If," he said, "I can help to save some American children, I will." One of the first things that he made clear in this country was that he did not pretend to superior knowledge or skill over that now possessed by many American surgeons, to whose abilities he paid a warm tribute. An interesting picture of Dr. Lorenz at work appears on another page.

The remembrance of what Dr. Lorenz had done here in the past and the widespread acclaim and interest in his present visit shown by press and people led to an astonishing rush of the parents and friends of afflicted children and others to benefit by what some of them regarded as almost miraculous skill. No one man could operate or even pass

judgment on the multitude that appeared at the clinics. Dr. Lorenz worked with tremendous enthusiasm and almost broke down under the strain. He gave his services freely to those who were unable to pay. Those who were directing the details of his work also opened a separate clinic for those who were able to pay a moderate sum. It is a sound principle in clinic work that where some payment can be made it should be made, to prevent imposition and to encourage self-respect. It is said that patients in this especial clinic paid sums ranging from $2 to $100. It would be perfectly proper also and quite within the general professional usage if Dr. Lorenz were to take cases where the people were able and willing to pay large fees. It is always a matter of personal judgment for the individual physician to determine how he can most properly and honorably divide his services between those who are both poor and afflicted, those who can and should pay a moderate sum, and those whose means allow them to compensate specialists in accordance with their skill and ability. The amount we have seen noted as that received in the special clinics does not in its entirety exceed that often charged by American surgeons for a single operation on a wealthy patient.

There is no doubt as to Dr. Lorenz's wide humanity and his patriotic desire to recognize American help to Austrian children. This became evident when he announced positively that the fees received at the special clinics were all designed to be used for the aid of Austrian children. He says: "It was distinctly understood from the beginning that my services were to be given out of gratitude and gratitude alone. . . . The money that was paid in by those who wanted to pay it, according to my plan, was to go to a fund to be used for crippled children and other charities in Vienna."

We do not think that there has been anything like professional jealousy among American doctors in this case. Dr. Lorenz has had full and cordial cooperation from many eminent men in this country. He has repeatedly stated his belief that there are no better orthopedists in the world than Americans, and he has taken pleasure and interest in sending most of the cases that he has diagnosed to other capable surgeons.

Cleveland garment workers' industry, but now, as in New York, peace is endangered by troubles and quarrels. Its four principles are outlined by a Cleve land correspondent of The Outlook:

(1) Capital and labor have met at a council table and come to an agree ment on most of their disputes. The rest they have submitted to the decisions of a board of referees, representing the public. There have been no strikes in the market since the agreement was signed.

(2) Production is being increased by the joint efforts of manufacturers and union. Industrial engineers, pald by both sides, are standardizing the production of garments and finding scientifically what is a fair day's work.

(8) Steady employment has been assured workers. In the most sea. sonal of all trades the manufacturers have pledged themselves to provide forty-one weeks of employment or its alternative in wages.

(4) A standardized wage scale for the market is set by the referees. This means that the manufacturers have given up their prerogative of determining wages and have given the final voice to the representatives of the public.

We are told that at present the pacific situation is in grave danger because the agreement expires on December 31. Ne gotiations are now in process between the two parties and an effort is being made to draw up an agreement to re place the present one. Conflicting de mands have been presented by each side, and, unless a compromise is effected, one of the most interesting and forwardlooking experiments in American labor history will suffer defeat. Yet our correspondent states that each phase of the complex problem is being taken up in conferences, and the great hope is for compromise. Good spirit and a fair de gree of confidence exist between the leaders of both sides, and the develop ments of the last two years have brought a mutual understanding and an appre ciation of joint problems that is amazing to the outsider.

ECONOMY IN RAILWAY WORK

NEW set of working rules governing some 400,000 railway shop enployees has been issued by the United States Railway Labor Bureau and is already in effect. It aims to save about $50,000,000 a year by applying common sense and efficiency methods. This should help in making it possible to reduce freight rates. Hereafter, to quote the New York "Herald's" exposition of some of the heretofore existing absurdities, "a highly skilled locomotive engineer will no longer be compelled to sit around doing nothing until a shopman arrives to tighten a nut which anybody could do. He can now do it himself or have his fireman do it. It will no longer be required that a first-class carpenter, at

a skilled carpenter's high pay, shall have the exclusive right to knock to pieces an old box car for the scrap-heap; an ordinary workman can do it. It will no longer be necessary to put half a dozen men-a mechanic, his helper, an electrician, his helper, and some other journeyman and his helper-to open a headlight, look at the inside of it, and then shut it. A single helper may do it."

The opening of more opportunities for apprentices will also seem reasonable and desirable to most people, however the unions may regard them.

Alto

gether the new rules seem rational and practical. Just how much the ruling opens the way to "open shop" conditions in railway work seems uncertain, but at least it will give non-union minorities a chance to be represented by non-union representatives in their industrial negotiations with the companies and the Government.

A curious situation arises with the issue of this order. When the recent strike agitation was at its height, the Labor Board announced that it could not take up for some months the railway managers' request for a second reduction of wages because it was so busy with other matters. Now the unions were "in wrong" as to the strike; its cause nominally was the wage reduction already made, but its purpose was to fight further reduction. They were glad to get an excuse to withdraw. But if the Labor Board promptly takes up the question of a new wage reduction about a month after the collapse of the strike it is possible that the unions will resent the loss of the long delay they had supposed was assured them. On the other hand, the railways claim that freight rates should not be reduced until further wage reductions are ordered.

PEACE WITH 'HONOR
FOR IRELAND

T the very moment when what

A seemed to be a complete and final

break in the negotiations over Ireland appeared impending, the welcome news came from official sources that an agreement had been reached between the British and Sinn Fein leaders and that it was to be submitted at once to the British Parliament and the Dail Eireann. This agreement was signed on December 5 by Lloyd George as Prime Minister, Austen Chamberlain, Lord Birkenhead, and Winston Churchill for Great Britain, and Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and George Barton for Sinn Fein.

Rejoicing in both the English and Irish press followed, and the hope is strong that a reasonable way out of the difficulties has been found.

As we write, the details of the agreement are not known. Just before the

Wide World Photos
CROWN PRINCE HIROHITO OF JAPAN, NOW
REGENT

agreement, the rock upon which settlement had struck was reported to be the reluctance of Sinn Fein to agree to an expression of allegiance to the King. Evidently a formula has been found which does not offend Irish susceptibilities and yet includes the acceptance of the indisputable that Ireland is and must be a part of the British Empire. One solution which may have been adopted is for a triple oath of allegiance "To the Irish free state, the Empire, and the King." This would be preferable, one would suppose, to the other formula proposed, which includes recognition "to the head of a community of nations known as the Empire," without mention of the King and with an implied recognition of Ireland as "a nation." Canada is not a nation, but it is a free state in any reasonable meaning of that phrase; Ireland may well accept the same status.

Great Britain and Ireland. English des patches expressed the view that Ulster cannot refuse to undertake the experiment with regard to an all-Irish parlia ment. It is understood that such a plan is now proposed to Ulster as will make it possible to withdraw from the allIrish Dominion parliament after a fair trial of the plan proposed. Up to the present juncture the most serious discord (more so than the question of absolute independence for Ireland or of swearing allegiance to the crown) has been over the fixed determination of Sinn Fein to have one Irish state with one parliament for all of Ireland, and the equally fixed resolve of Ulster not to submit itself to an all-Irish parliament in which Ulster would be in a decided minority.

It must be granted that Ulster's contention has force; she may well feel doubt as to her future treatment by a government in which her former bitter enemies should have decisive power. But when in a discussion between three parties the two that are strongest and largest in territory and population have agreed on a certain measure, it is fair to expect the smallest of the three to come into the agreement if it is possible. The Ulster leaders, notably Sir James Craig, have been excessive and violent in their demands and refusals, but in this crisis we may hope to see moderation prevail. If Ulster refuses the proposal made to her on December 6, there would seem to be nothing left but for Great Britain to make Ulster a Crown Dominion, for the present at least, and persuade Southern Ireland to carry on the agreement without Ulster in the hope that in the end, as General Smuts has prophesied, Ulster will find her own economic and financial needs leading her to union with the rest of Ireland.

It is stated that in 1920 alone the disturbances and crimes that have been so often improperly described as war resulted in the killing of 343 persons and the wounding of 446, while the number of houses, police stations, and other buildings destroyed is well up in the hundreds. It is to make black and tragic records like these impossible that Mr. Lloyd George and his colleagues have patiently struggled against bitter feeling and misled patriotism to secure peace.

THE REGENT OF JAPAN

HE long-continued ill health of Yosho

impossible for him longer to conduct the affairs of state. Accordingly, he has appointed Crown Prince Hirohito Regent. In harmony with Shinto tradition, the Crown Prince has gone to the tomb of his grandfather Mutsuhito to prostrate himself before that august shade. The creation of the Regency was post

poned, it is said, so as to allow the Crown Prince to visit Europe-an experience which would better fit him for his task. It was expected that he would also visit America, but unforeseen events prevented it.

Prince Hirohito somewhat resembles his grandfather, the illustrious Emperor Mutsuhito. Like him, he has shown a personal interest in the various move ments and undertakings of the people and has strongly established himself in their confidence. He is not a reactionary; indeed, his Regency may mark the turning of Japanese tendencies still further in the direction of liberty.

THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE

W

HEN the Armament Conference adjourns and the delegates separate and depart for their various homes, there will undoubtedly be disappointment and possibly despondency in the minds of many good people because the Conference has not accomplished this or that or the other thing. In spite of the fact that the reduction of naval armaments on the part of the United States, Great Britain, and Japan, which is now almost sure of accomplishment, will in itself be a concrete achievement that will justify the calling of the Conference, those who judge the value of this great international gathering in Washington by its tangible and visible fruits are likely to feel that it has somewhat failed of its high purpose-or rather, let us say, of their high purpose.

But as time goes on we feel sure that history will regard the Washington meeting as one of the striking and memorable episodes in human progress. If there could have been an American H. G. Wells in Philadelphia attending the sessions of the delegates who, during the summer of 1787, discussed and framed in Independence Hall the American Constitution, he would undoubtedly have been filled with pessimistic forebodings of the future. Indeed, the public expressions of dissatisfaction when the Constitutional Convention adjourned. in September, 1787, far outnumbered the expressions of approval. Virginia only after the greatest debate and by a scant margin ratified the Constitution, Vand North Carolina and Rhode Island did not ratify until many months later. When Washington retired from the Presidency, the "Aurora," the very able and outspoken organ of the opponents to Federalism, of which Washington was the shining exponent, said that the day of his retirement from the Presidency ought to be celebrated as a day of jubilee

throughout the United States because the man who had brought more wretchedness and misgovernment upon his fellow-citizens than any other living American was about to step into wellmerited oblivion!

This pleasant criticism will give some impression of the disappointment and antagonisms connected with the Dis armament Conference held in Independence Hall in 1787. Yet to-day the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention and the signing of Magna Charta are regarded as the historical beginnings of two of the greatest epochs in the history of human freedom. But the immediate results both of Magna Charta and of the ratification of the American Constitution were confused antagonism, and animosity. The final seal was not placed upon Magna Charta until the English civil war under Oliver Cromwell, and on the American Constitution until our own civil war under Abraham Lincoln. In one sense of the word, both Magna Charta and the American Constitution may be said not to have produced peace but to have engendered war. But the wars which followed them and which they directly begot were wars not of aggrandizement but of freedom and jus

tice.

It is quite probable-more than that, it is inevitably logical-that if the Washington Conference is to lead into the reign of reason in international disputes, the process will be evolutionary, as it was with Magna Charta and the American Constitution. Those who expect that all war will cease, or even that cruelty and horror will be expunged from war, when the Washington Conference adjourns will do well to re-read English history following Magna Charta and American history following the Constitutional Convention in Independence Hall.

Perhaps the most prevalent and most vital mistake that lovers of peace and reason are making about the Washington Conference is to assume that legal or parliamentary resolutions on disarmament bring peace. Peace is a mental or spiritual and not a physical product, although physical conditions may promote it. A correspondent of the New York "World" recently said that the British and Americans disarmed on the Canadian border and the immediate result was a hundred years of peace. The fact is just the reverse. The British and Americans got into a peaceful frame of mind and attitude towards each other, and the result was disarmament. A very good and well-meaning lady writes to the New York "Evening Post:" "I am hoping that the Disarmament Conference may prevail upon all the nations to give up having submarines in their navies. If allowed at all, there should

be absolute prohibition of the torpedoing of passenger liners."

This would be comic if it were not pathetic. Prohibitions are of no avail whatever in any respect or in any field of life unless the majority of the community are of such temper and moral fiber that they will voluntarily observe the prohibitions. It is true that the nations gathered at Washington or elsewhere might express the common sentiment of civilized mankind that the torpedoing of passenger liners is a crime against humanity, and that any nation committing this crime against civilization will be regarded as an outlaw. But an absolute prohibition of the torpedoing of passenger liners in war is not worth the paper it is written on unless it can be maintained by the united and co-operating public opinion of the world.

How this world public opinion is to be united in co-operative effort is something for the evolutionary, historical processes of the future to bring about. In the meantime there is, we think, good ground for hope and cheer in the mere fact that the nations of the world have convened at Washington, and that out of that convention will go on and continue to grow the spirit of international conference and co-operation on matters of international welfare, justice, and the reign of law.

THREE VISITING COM

T

POSERS

HREE foreign musicians visiting this country this autumn have made a distinct impression upon New York audiences-Richard Strauss, the German; Vincent d'Indy, the Frenchman; and Sergei Rachmaninoff, the Russian. Strauss was trained as a pianist, but is best known as a composer of symphonic music, although the songs of his early manhood are some of them very beautiful. D'Indy is a composer of what may be called the French classical school, but has made his appearance in this country as a visiting conductor. Rachmaninoff is a piano virtuoso, but his name first began to be known among American amateurs of music as the composer of an extraordinarily brilliant and popular prelude for the piano, the C Sharp Minor Prelude. We can speak from experience of the impressions which d'Indy and Rachmaninoff have made upon New York concert-goers.

The first personal impression of the Frenchman is that of great dignity. As he stands before the conductor's desk d'Indy is a man of striking simplicity and modesty, apparently with no trace of self-consciousness, certainly none of affectation. He is a man of vigorous and impressive physique, although he is seventy years old, and, save Saint-Saëns,