ships in clubs and societies, together with more college degrees than were ever taken by any one in so short a space of time; finally, among other gifts, wo automobiles:

But the chief thing which the Marshal ook back was a greater measure of lovê ind honor than has ever been shown to iny foreigner in this country, save that other great Frenchman, Lafayette.

WAR OR LAW?

W

HILE Ireland is laying aside guerrilla warfare to accept selfgovernment, labor disputes in America are still fought out by strikes or lockouts, or by threats of strikes and ntolerance toward organized labor. The war is not always one of blows, although ctual violence has lately been comnitted in the milkmen's strike, the coal trike in Kansas; and the packer emloyees' strike. It is a war against the community when milk, coal, and meat tre held back or raised in price while employers and workmen quarrel.

We have had, and still have, hopes of ndustrial betterment through such muual relations as have been established by the Shop Committee plan in the large Chicago packing concerns. It gives employees a voice in the working and liv. ng conditions and tends to bring workers and employers into friendly relations. It is not acceptable to those labor leaders who accept the views of Mr. Samuel Gompers, because it is inconsistent with the closed-shop idea, for which the American Federation of Labor always contends. Is it consistent with he idea of a fair and honest open shop? Is it consistent with the two basic denands of organized labor-collective Jargaining and the right of employees to Jargain through any union men they nay choose to represent them? Organzed labor thinks not; but organized labor is not all labor, and the rest of labor has a word to say. In the packers' strike the union men are in the minority, yet they claim the right to govern.

It is because this industrial dispute in Chicago raises such questions that The Outlook has asked its industrial correspondent, Mr. Sherman Rogers, a warm riend of the Shop Committee idea, to ell our readers on another page about the Chicago situation. From another correspondent, a judicially minded student of economic and industrial conditions in Chicago, we have the following report, largely confirmatory of what Mr. Rogers says:

Managers of Chicago packinghouses say the strike that started on November 28 has not seriously affected operations. In the plant of Armour & Co., according to company claims, but 400 of 6,500 employees

obeyed the strike order. The propor--
tion in other plants was said to be
about the same. Union officials claim
a much larger percentage of the
workers quit their employment. They
assert that the proportion on strike in
other packing centers, such as Kan-
sas City, Omaha, and South St. Paul,
is much larger than in Chicago.
However, failure of the strike in
Chicago, the largest packing center,
presumably would mean its general
failure. The direct cause of the strike
order was a reduction in wages which
had been consented to by the general
plan board of Armour & Co. An im-
portant underlying cause was union
dislike of the Shop Committee plan
which has been instituted by the
packers. Union officials and their
Sympathizers say the Shop Committee
plan is an effort to break up the es-
tablished labor organizations. Spokes-
men for the five large packing con-
cerns in Chicago say that they will
refuse offers of arbitration by the
Government, which representatives of
the unions are trying to bring about.
The packers say production is nearly
that
normal, and
the places of
strikers have been filled. There was
some disorder at the outset, especially
on the part of women workers and
sympathizers, but large numbers of
policemen were put on duty at the
yards and outbreaks of violence soon
ceased. The stockyards unions in
Chicago were badly demoralized prior
to the strike as a result of internal
dissensions. Therefore they were not
in a position to conduct a strike
effectively, especially in the face of
present industrial conditions.

The unions are very bitter against the packers and their new Shop Committee plan, and evidently the strike was a desperate last-stand protest which they could hardly have expected to succeed under present conditions. The unions were greatly weakened by internal dissensions before this strike was ordered,

Every attempt to harmonize labor and capital is admirable. Their interests are largely identical. Mr. John R. Commons in a book lately reviewed in The Outlook told of thirty concerns in which he found some form of industrial self-government. All this is striving toward an ideal. But until unions cease to be dogmatic and tyrannical when they have the power employers will try to oust them, and until employers recognize that the workers are part of the business and not part of the machinery labor will distrust attempts at conciliation. while that innocent bystander, the consumer, not to speak of the unorganized worker, is between two fires and demands peace. He does not wish to wait until theories work out future harmony; he wants protection, and wants it now.

Mean

It is for this reason that many are turning their eyes in hope to the Kansas Industrial Court plan. Under Governor Allen's leadership, the law that instituted this Court gives it broad powers to require and enforce arbitration. At this very time a labor agitator is in jail

in Kansas for disobeying the Court, and the agitation to free him is not by the unions but by rebels against the unions. Elsewhere in this issue will be found special correspondence on the Kansas situation. If this method of dealing with industrial disputes that affect primary products like coal and food and public utilities like railways is sound and stands the test of a United States Supreme Court decision, here may at last be seen that combination of arbitration and authority so long desired by many writers and thinkers.

Ultimately there must be authority to settle such disputes or the trend to Government ownership and Socialism will grow. But there must also be, together with law and authority, the peaceful frame of mind, the desire to do justice as well as to exact justice, the realization that workmen, whether organized or not, are in their way business men, not hostile hordes, and that employers, despite the jibe about soulless corporations, are increasingly humane and open-minded, and that they in large numbers are recognizing the idea of joint effort with labor for common improvement.

THE VALUE OF PLAY

66

“A

LL work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," like most proverbs, contains a much more profound truth than is disclosed on the surface. Play is the first form of social intercourse that appears in animate life. Puppies play together long before they fight. School-children learn how to get on with one another in their games and plays. The rules and regulations which they themselves evolve out of their play contests are certainly muclr more important to them and perhaps more influential upon them than the rules and discipline of their parents or teachers.

The adult world for the most part has heretofore regarded athletics and play as something belonging to the leisure classes and to children. It has been a world with three-fourths of its population not knowing that the pursuit of happiness involves the right of every one to play-not knowing that the spirit of recreation, of fun, of relaxation, is universal and instinctive, and that from the cradle to the grave this instinct constantly seeks to exert itself and find natural expression.

In the field of education it was the perception of this truth that enabled Pestalozzi and Froebel to make their original and far-reaching innovations in the education of children. In the vernacular of American school and college athletics the phrase "a good sport" is as high an encomium as can be conferred

upon a boy by his fellows. It means a boy of character, persistence, honor, and reliability, who is just and fair himself and expects justice and fairness from his associates. One of the happiest echoes of the recent Harvard-Yale football game was the statement by the captain of the Harvard team in a newspaper interview, that the only thing that detracted from his overwhelming joy at the Harvard victory was his realization of the disappointment of the Yale captain, who is widely known, not only at Yale, but at other colleges, for his fine sportsmanship. After the game the Harvard captain wrote to the Yale captain, saying how much he admired his spirit and leadership in the direction of fair play. It was an appreciation of the effect of fair play on character that led Theodore Roosevelt to phrase one of his best-known aphorisms-"Never flinch, never foul, but hit the line hard."

These observations are prompted by Miss Mayo's article, which appeared in last week's Outlook, "Fair Play for the World," and Mr. Elwood Brown's article, "Teaching the World to Play," which appears elsewhere in this issue. International sport conducted on the right lines and in the right spirit can do more than a score of diplomats to promote international understanding and friendliness. One of the striking results of this new conception of international play is its influence upon the International Olympic Committee. That body has adopted for future Olympics the separate-championship principle described in Mr. Brown's article. By this ruling no nation as such is declared winner, but separate championships are awarded in each sport. It is not thought fair to indicate by a tabulation of points won that a given country is inferior to another when a variety of conditions of population and training may make the mere accumulation of points impossible. The separate-championship plan has been used by the Y. M. C. A. in the Far Eastern Games since their origin and was most successfully applied to the Inter-Allied Games in Pershing Stadium following the armistice-games which were jointly organized and conducted by the American Expeditionary Forces and the Y. M. C. A.

The experience of Czechoslovakia in the Pershing Stadium is of international interest. Czechoslovakia had been torn and beset by war. Its physical education had been largely of the German type. As a consequence, while earnestly anxious to accept General Pershing's invitation, it hesitated to test its physical skill with more favored nations. The question of national pride with the new nation was uppermost. Czechoslovakia, however, did have one athletic unit, a

soccer team, which it was willing to pit against any soccer team from any country. The contests at the Pershing Stadium were arranged on the separatechampionship principle and not upon the point system. Czechoslovakia had the chance to win the soccer championship, but it had no chance whatever to accumulate even a respectable number of points on the general system of scoring. It therefore entered its soccer team and also made entries in many other events with the object that its men might learn rather than with the expectation that they would come off victors. The result was that Czechoslovakia won the soccer football championship of the Allied armies, defeating such splendid teams as those of France, Belgium, the United States, and Canada. This victory at once compensated for the defeats in other lines of sport and in a dramatic fashion called the attention of the Czechoslovakian people to the importance, the possibilities, and the glory of physical skill and fitness through games. The moral and stimulative effect was so great that the Czechoslovakian Government declared a national holiday on the day of the champion team's return home.

We do not think it an exaggeration to say that no work of the International Y. M. C. A. is more important than the work which it is now carrying on in the promotion of group play and athletics in the Near East. It deserves the sympathy and, as far as possible, the support of every believer in wholesome, virile, and yet friendly international relations.

In this it has been immensely helped by the new Budget Act. That act, we take it, pre-supposes our Government to be a great business corporation, under the control of a president. He assumes responsibility for the corporation's activities:

The corporation is divided into many departments and bureaus. As the President is unable himself to ascertain the needs of all these departments and bureaus, Congress authorized him last spring to appoint a Director of the Budget to do it for him.

The vice-presidents of the corporation are the Cabinet officers of the Government and the managers of the special domains we know as the bureau chiefs. Heretofore these vice-presidents and managers have "run" their departments and bureaus as if each were a separate

authority. There has been little or no attention to correlation. Apparently these high officers have never regarded the Government as one great enterprise the total cost of which must be provided for; each one in his own sphere has gone on without attention as to how what he did fitted into the entire scheme. More over, "politics" often called for spending not saving. The inevitable result has been excess outlay as well as overlapping and an absence of administrative inte gration in the Executive estimates hitherto transmitted to the Secretary of the Treasury and thence, without revision, to Congress.

Under the operation of the new act, however, the President, through his agent, the Budget Director, has woven all parts of the Government into a single agency, working to a common end. Instead of the old system, under which there was little or no restraint on bu reau chiefs or department heads, those officers must now account to the Presi dent, through his Budget Director. The Director has the power to revise the estimates. The result has been, we are glad to say, an unprecedented spirit for economy in the departments. Another means of efficiency has been seen in the working of a Federal Purchasing Board and a Federal Liquidation Board. These, following the passage of the Budget Bill, were established by Executive Order to co-ordinate and economize the purchas ing and selling activities of the separate T departments.

The estimated expenditures were recently submitted to Congress by the Budget Director, the energetic General Dawes. They show a decline of over

a billion and a half dollars for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1922, from the expenditures of the previous fiscal year, and of nearly half a billion dollars for the fiscal year 1923 below the expenditures for the present fiscal year. The Budget Director, having proceeded as far as he could under executive authority, has been obliged to report a deficit of about $24,000,000 in excess of the estimated receipts for the current fiscal year and of some $167,000,000 in excess of the estimated revenues for the ensuing year. These deficits will, we be lieve, be largely done away with because of economies resulting from the application of the armament limitation policies now being decided upon in Washington.

Even if they are not so done away with, Congress can reduce the aggregate amount recommended by the President, so as to bring it within the estimated revenues. For, though responsibility for the budget as it comes to Congress is the President's, Congress has relinquished none of its power to revise the estimates. It thus has, as it should have, final

C

= responsibility for the amount placed at the President's disposal for the conduct of the Government.

At the end of consideration of the budget by Congress there may perhaps be a surplus balance in the accounts instead of a deficiency. One reason for this hope is the fact that the Budget Law places all responsibility for reporting appropriations to the House of Representatives (the initiator of all financial legislation) upon one committee instead of upon eight, as formerly. Thus that committee is enabled to focus its efforts on the entire Governmental needs, and, what in our opinion is equally important, department heads are prevented from appealing first to one committee and then to another for money.

Even after the close scrutiny given by the Budget Director, the Appropriations Committee can call department heads and bureau chiefs to testify as to the necessity of the sums recommended in the budget. The Committee, under its efficient Chairman, Representative Madden, of Illinois, has been organized into sub-committees to consider the needs of each of the ten executive departments, the full Committee being responsible for the resulting bills. Of course the work of making appropriations for the Government could hardly be conducted in any other way. For proper consideration of the problems involved in the annual appropriations for the Government would require well over three hundred actual committee working days, so

that if one committee undertook the task of ascertaining the facts in connection with every budget act the appropriations might not be reported for a year. Under Mr. Madden's method, however, the first bill should be reported in early January and the last bill not later than the third week in March.

Thus both executive and legislative labors in connection with our new financial system are giving to the American people what they have never had before -an efficiently centralized instead of a destructively decentralized régime; statements understandable by the man in the street; an unprecedented programme of economy; and last, not least, promptness and despatch in accomplishment.

Each

The race of man is gradually emerging from a previous animal race. individual has passed through a previous animal form before he came forth into the light. Life is a struggle between the animal and the spiritual, that from which we came and that to which we go, the animal governed by his appetites and passions and the man to be governed by his conscience and his reason. I can understand the Seventh Chapter of Romans. I see the fact but not he reason for the fact.

Virtue is impossible without the possibility of vice; for virtue is the free choice of the good and the free rejection of the evil. I would rather live in a world of men who can choose than in a world of puppets who can move only as heir unknown master pulls the string. But there are so many lives in which he incitements to virtue seem feeble und the incitements to vice are strong. Why? Why?

I can see that temptations and sorrows are apparently indispensable in a school of virtue. There can be no courage if there is no danger, no patient Dearing of burdens if there are no burHens to be borne, no self-control if there are no passions to be controlled, no generosity if there are no needs for unselfishness to supply, no pity if there re no sorrows to be pitied. But the chool of experience is a hard school; nd many pupils seem never to learn the And too often the wind is not

esson.

KNOLL PAPERS

BY LYMAN ABBOTT
WARUM?

tempered to the shorn lamb. Why? Why?

Often I find refuge in my own littleness, where the Hebrew found it: Neither do I exercise myself in great matters,

Or in things too wonderful for me. It is absurd that a microscopic insect on this little pebble that we call the world should expect to comprehend the universe. It is wonderful that we understand so much, not that we understand so little. But still the problem remains unsolved and still the question repeats itself within me: Why? Why?

My refuge from Warum? is not in philosophy, it is in action. For the problem, Why is there sin and sorrow in God's world? I have learned to substitute another: What can I do to combat the sin, what to alleviate the sorrow?

Some years ago a fire broke out on the wharves of a great steamship company on the western bank of the Hudson River opposite New York City. The flames cut off retreat to the land. Some people were burned to death; others, taking refuge from the flames in the river, were drowned. The next day, crossing the river on the ferry and looking at the blackened ruins, I said to an agnostic friend at my side, "This is the sort of thing which makes me sometimes a skeptic." "Yes," he replied, "if you are looking on. But if you are one of a rescue party and are pulling an oar you somehow feel that life is worth living and that there is a meaning even in life's tragedies."

This is true. The escape from Warum? is joining the rescue party and substituting for the problem, Why is there sin and sorrow? the problem, What can I do to conquer the sin and alleviate the sorrow?

A French soldier in the Great War wrote home to his mother: "Here in the trenches we all believe in God and a future life. The atheists are all at the rear." The soldiers in the trenches were too busy fighting the Hun to spend any time in trying to account for his existence.

A visitor is taken through a hospital and is appalled by all he sees and hears. The mystery of sin and sorrow oppresses him. "Why?" he cries to himself; "oh, why?" But the surgeon in the same hospital has no time for philosophy. "What can I do to succor and to save?" is all his thought. He does not solve the problem, but he escapes from it. And in the rendering of service he finds the answer to the question, Is life worth living?

I know a young lady, scholarly, refined, delicate, a charming social companion, full of the simple joy of living. She offered her services to the Red Cross, went abroad, and was sent to the front. She lived in daily danger, in a wilderness of grime and dirt, often without water to wash, almost never with water to bathe, surrounded at times by coarse and profane companions, often by the sick, the wounded, and the dying. And her letters home were radiant with the joy which the opportunity of service brought to her.

We lighten our burdens by taking on the burdens of others; find comfort in our sorrows when we carry comfort to other sorrowing hearts; find life worth living when we make life worth living. If we believe that the Son of God has come into the world to make out of our tangled life an ordered kingdom of justice and good will and we volunteer to aid him in this age-long campaign, we find an unexpected exhilaration in the service, and the worse the tangle the

greater the exhilaration. The soldiers in camp sing the "Marseillaise" or the "Star-Spangled Banner" with an enthusi

asm which a congregation of civilians cannot know. The real answer to Warum? is General Armstrong's motto:

"What are Christians put into the world for but to do the impossible in the strength of God?"

A

hic

Japa

WELL-KNOWN Dutch correspon-
Ident was speaking:

"The war is won already."

A group of us were standing on the balcony of a London club. Within fortyeight hours the world of men and things had been changed from order to chaos. Everything tangible had seemed about to turn into the fragment of a dream. The very laws of nature had seemed to be suspended. Four years of a world war have since taught us what men can endure; but then nobody knew what was impending. On Saturday I had left Paris to learn on my arrival in London that Germany had declared war on France. This was Monday.

der to avoid any possible cause of conflict, and so that it could not be said that France had been the first to open hostilities. I took the responsibility of waiting until the last moment to order mobilization in a Europe that was shivering and ready in her armor to meet the foe. I waited until the last minute." Indeed, France waited so long and gave Germany such a military advantage that the Germans gained a momentum which seemed irresistible. The Dutch journalist was certainly very nearly right.

almost as strong as that which the Dutch journalist presented for the Ger mans. It can be stated about as follows:

Being very nearly right, however, is sometimes the same as being very far wrong. This observant and wellinformed Dutchman was as right-and as wrong-as the Germans. He overlooked one factor-the same factor that the Germans had overlooked. He might have saved himself the mistake if he had consulted the writings of Bisníarck. In his diplomacy Bismarck was always a realist. He never allowed his desires, his ingenuity, or his imagination to run him away from the facts. Among the facts that he always kept in mind was one which the Germans, after his retirement, forgot-one that this Dutch journalist forgot-the fact of moral force.

and

mil

ith

Dent
the a

Eve
23 2

re

prese Cast hat

feren

tors,

into

DOW

Luch

have
Doth

America, who called the Conference, was in no great need of reducing her armament. She could stand the burden of a large naval armament better than any other country in the world. What she really wants and needs is a free and fair field for the development of foreign trade in the Far East. She has been Some shut out from a great deal of the field Umle by "spheres of influence" established by: b other nations. She does not want a 20t sphere of influence for herself. She is Fill not in the habit of backing up with relati Government money or with armed force the special interests of her citizens in foreign lands. She is not organized to maintain monopolies in the Far East like those of other nations, and her peo Paris ple would not back up her Government in protecting them. Consequently Amer ica has only one hope for profit in the to fa Far East, and that is the really Open Door. On the other hand, neither Japan nor Great Britain has any special inter est in keeping the door to the Far East open. In certain regions Japan has a monopoly and Great Britain has in others. What both Great Britain and Japan do need is relief from their bur den of taxation. Great Britain needs this relief so much that she has already virtually surrendered her primacy on the high seas, and Japan is beginning to realize that her ambition for large military and naval establishments is costing her more than she can afford to pay. For relief from this taxation caused by armaments Great Britain, and especially Japan, would be willing to pay a good price. So long as we might maintain our building programme of 1916 Great Britain and Japan would be forced to continue building ships. The proper strategy, therefore, would have been to let Japan and Great Britain know that we demanded a fair deal in the Far East; that as long as conditions continued as they have been we should have to go on building up our Navy, which we could well afford to do; but if they were willing to relax their hold upon China so as to open it to the free comit has been said, a few old obsolete ships petition of Americans we might consider

"The Germans," explained this expert on international affairs from the Netherlands, "are going to sweep through Belgium. No Belgian force can stand against the Germany artillery; no Belgian army can seriously oppose the German mass attacks. In six weeks the Germans will have crushed France, and will have reduced her permanently to a third-class Power. It will take as long as that for the Russians to mobilize and to reach the German frontier. By that time Germany can turn her attention to the east, and it won't take long for the Germans to rout the troops that the Japs whipped and to crush Russia. Of what use would it be for Great Britain to get into this war? There is no British army worth talking about. Long before British troops in any number could be ferried across the Channel the war would be over. In fact, the war is practically over now. The Germans have already won it."

It was moral force that sent England into the war scarcely more than twentyfour hours after my Dutch acquaintance had finished his prognostication; it was moral force that turned the retreating French back upon the victorious, carousing Germans at La Fère-Champenois; it was moral force that broke Giolitti's power and ranged Italy against the Central Empires; it was moral force that sustained the Canadians in the inferno at Vimy Ridge; it was moral force that gathered the youth from the prairies and cities, from the mountains and coasts, of a distant continent and carried them across the infested sea to Belleau Wood and Château Thierry, to Cambrai and St. Mihiel, to the Argonne, and finally to Coblenz.

This observant and well-informed neutral journalist was very nearly right. While the German troops were swarming ready for the attack not a French reserve moved. While the Germans were battering down the forts at Liège the French were standing back of their own lines. France was apparently giving her cause away at the outset. René Viviani, who was at the head of the French Government at the time, was destined to stand in a hall in Washington and tell how he had met the crisis. "I, as head of the Government," said M. Viviani, at the fourth plenary session of the Armament Conference, "assumed the terrible responsibility of ordering the French troops to withdraw within ten kilometers of our own frontier. assumed the responsibility of delivering part of my country to the enemy in or

I

Often during the Armament Conference have I been reminded of what that correspondent from the Netherlands said to me in August, 1914. According to prophets, the Conference has been doomed from the beginning. Perhaps.

will be scrapped; perhaps some good resolutions will be passed; but the nations that know what they want and mean to get it are going to have their way. The case that these prophets of disaster present is very strong-it is

the Som WOU Bot only

yielding something on our ship-building

Instead of that, argued these same prophets, what did Mr. Hughes do? Saying nothing about our demands in the Far East, he started by making a

bave

fend

and

-proposal for a reduction in armament. That is to say, he gave America's case away. He made it appear that what America needed and must have at any cost was a reduction in the armament burden, whereas that was the very thing which we, of all nations, needed least. He put us in the position of begging Japan and Britain to grant America something that they were eager to have done. He thus left America without anything to trade with. With their hands to their mouths to hide their smiles, Japan and Great Britain could, one with great reluctance and the other with the expression of many compliments to American idealism, agree to the arrangement for which they would have been willing to pay well, and then, as a reward for their acquiescence, secure from America assurance that their present favorable position in the Far East would not be disturbed. It is true that with Japan's and Britain's consent - some old battleships will be laid aside a little sooner than they otherwise would be; but Great Britain's naval power has not been seriously impaired and Japan I will have actually made some gain in relative naval armament, while the United States has been deprived of naval power in the western Pacific. The Conference, according to these commentaItors, has thus been going the way of the Paris Peace Conference and Mr. Hughes has fallen into the same error as that into which Mr. Wilson allowed himself to fall. Like Mr. Wilson, he let it be 1 known that he wanted something very much which the other nations would have been only too glad to give him for nothing and even pay a fair price to I get, and he has thus made it impossible E to get from them any price whatever. America lost her case thus at the very beginning. So runs the prophecy.

As if that were not bad enough, our diplomats, it is alleged, have allowed themselves to be paying a price for - something else that the other nations would have been only too glad to give. Both Japan and Great Britain have been only too eager to get us involved with them in a mutual protective association. They have known that we could protect - ourselves, but that we would be a dangerous antagonist if they committed any offense; so they have secured safety for themselves by getting us into a FourPower Treaty which puts us on our honor to consult with them before we can call them to account. As a price for this they have given up the AngloJapanese Alliance, of which they were both getting rather tired, anyway. To use a sentence from one of the prophets: "In a position to dictate we have cast away our advantage, given it away as a concession instead of using it to force one." The sinister forces of national greed and Machiavellian diplomacy, as seen through the eyes of these observers, have been sweeping through the undefended territory of American interests and ideals and are winning the contest.

LORD RIDDLE, OFFICIAL PUBLICITY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT, AT
HIS DAILY CONFERENCE WITH WRITERS AT THE ARMAMENT CONFERENCE
Lord Riddle is seated in front at the left

As a consequence, so these commentators predict, America will have deprived herself of the power to protect China against Japan, will have lost China's friendship, which is not only desirable in itself but necessary for future peace and safety, will have abandoned Guam and the Philippines to the tender mercies of Japan, will have provided Japan with a guaranty of safety, will have made it impossible to do anything to protect a revived Russia against Japan though Japan by the Four-Power Treaty is protected against Russia-will, in short, have put her head in the noose in the faith that Japan and Great Britain will not pull the rope.

What these prophetic observers omit in all their calculation is moral force. When Mr. Hughes presented the American proposal at the first session, he was not asking something for America; he was offering something in the interest of all the rest of the world as well as of America on America's behalf. His position in the strategy of peace was exactly what Viviani's position in 1914 was in the strategy of war. He not only declined to make an attack, but he stood well within his country's natural frontiers. By this proposal he announced that America had no intention of waging an offensive war on anybody, and in proof of it was willing to forego the position of superiority which she could secure. He was not asking for something for America from rival diplomats. He was offering to other countries something on America's behalf and substantiating it with evidence of America's good faith.

At once behind Mr. Hughes was mobilized the public opinion of all the nations involved. Moral force is not a substitute for the bayonet, but it gives power to the bayonet thrust. Moral force is not a substitute for economic power, but combined with economic power it can turn the scale against economic power alone. In his statement

Mr. Hughes made clear to the world as nothing else has made clear the economic power that America has at her command; but at the same time he coupled with that economic power the moral force of other nations.

.

That is why it was wise for him to start with naval armaments. In all this Armament Conference the fundamental questions, as I have said before, are those of national policy, and specifically those concerning the policy of the nations in the Far East. These questions, however, are not of the kind that command popular interest except in some passing or picturesque phase. For a while many Americans were stirred up about Shantung, but very few of them knew what Shantung was or what its problems involved. Fewer know much about Manchuria or Siberia; and only the experts know anything about Chinese customs duties or the problems of exterritoriality. Indeed, even those who write about the subject sometimes confuse exterritoriality with extra-territoriality. And yet such questions as these are important factors in the Far Eastern problems. Logically perhaps, in order to satisfy the not always intelligent intelligence of the intelligentsia, Mr. Hughes should have begun with a demand concerning the Kiaochau-Tsinanfu Railway, but it would have hardly enlisted the support of the people. stead he began with something that the people could understand-a simple proposition, reasonable in itself, and involving the exercise of moral choice. once he had the people with him; and not only the people of this country but of other countries. It was so simple a proposal in its substance that everybody could understand it; it was so fair that everybody approved it.

In

At

The result is that everything which America, through her spokesmen-Mr. Hughes, Mr. Root, Mr. Underwood, and Mr. Lodge-proposes comes with the advantage of that backing of public