THE AMERICAN LEGION'S

PILGRIMAGE

s. The Outlook has already recorded, a large number of members of the American Legion have gone to France to take part in various war celebrations there. At Blois they dedicated the Joan of Arc statue. At Tarbes, the birthplace of Marshal Foch, they placed a tablet on his house. At Flirey they took the principal part in the dedication of the monument, the gift of the municipality, to the A. E. F. At Château Thierry the Legionaries found a literal home-coming welcome. Entire families trudged miles to meet them. Many a child brought flowers for "his American," hoping that he was among the party. Many fathers and mothers inquired for American soldiers whom they had known during the war, and gave to the Legionaries letters to carry back to those men. An immense audience witnessed the laying of the corner-stone of the Pont Roosevelt, built to replace the bridge destroyed by the Germans when the Americans drove them from the town. Mrs. Douglas Robinson, Mr. Roosevelt's sister, thanked the municipality for naming the new

bridge after the President and his son Quentin. Thereupon the principal dock along the Marne was christened Quai du Colonel Galbraith, in memory of the former National Commander of the American Legion, whose recent tragic death was deplored by all.

Colonel Galbraith's successor, John G. Emery, is winning favorable opinion everywhere, as may be judged by an excerpt from his address at Flirey:

Blood is mixed with the mortar that holds these stones erect. Bayonets beat into trowels, spread it there.

The time has come when the end of wars should no longer be considered in the light of an impossible dream. Is not that hope echoed in the heart of every veteran? Is it not the ambition of every veteran, of every nationality, to continue to serve the ideals for which we fought? We hope there may arise some one who will point the way to an understanding whereby all wars shall cease. ...

If we unite and have the courage to speak what is in our hearts, nothing can successfully oppose us. The victory of November 11, 1918, will become the final triumph of humanity and not what the name we have given that date now indicates, merely

an armistice which inevitably shall end in new conflicts and the further desolation of mankind.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE ZR-2
THE details of the tragic disaster to

the ZR-2 are given in an article by the aviation expert, Laurence La Tour

ette Driggs, elsewhere in this issue. The facts as Mr. Driggs presents them speak convincingly for themselves. The dirigible has indeed proved a dangerous and costly means of navigation. To say that a new instrument has proved dangerous and costly does not mean, however, that experiments looking towards improvement in its construction should no longer be carried on. Progress in any direction is not made by such a method of procedure.

The men who gave their lives in the great disaster over the city of Hull deserve at least one monument from the country in whose service they perished. In their name we can at least pledge ourselves to refrain from sending into the sky any more airships whose fragile hulls are filled with explosive gas. We have the means and the money to at least eliminate this one risk from the adventure. Perils enough will still remain.

A LOCAL EVENT OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE

PR

RESIDENT HARDING has now signed the joint resolution of Congress giving Federal authority for the development of the Port of New York as proposed by the Joint Commission of the States of New York and New Jersey.

Five years ago, in adjusting a case between the two States, the Inter-State Commerce Commission ruled that "historically, commercially, and industrially, the cities of northern New Jersey within the metropolitan district constitute part of New York," and that the future development of the port facilities of New York must include territory situated in both States. To this decision was greatly due the creation of the New York-New Jersey Development Commission, which framed the treaty between the two States. Last April this treaty was entered into by them, Under it "the Port of New York authority" would consist of six commissioners, three from each State, with power to buy, lease, and operate any terminal or transportation facility, to establish rates, to hold real or personal property, and to borrow money. This treaty, having received the War Department's approval, has now the President's signature.

Under the authority of the treaty there will now be built an automatic system to expedite the distribution of foodstuffs and other merchandise; a belt-line railway, larger elevator, warehouse, and pier facilities at the congested points, the dredging of channels, the establishment of free ports, and the construction of highway access to every part of the Port's water-front. The fulfillment of these plans will relieve congestion and will both cheapen and expedite the

distribution of merchandise between points throughout the country and those abroad.

T

IRELAND

HE Irish question, which is only another name for the age-long conflict between some of the people of Ireland and most of the people of England, is not so simple as it seems to the extremists on both sides. In Ireland the extremists seem to think that it can be settled by murder and violence; the extremists in England propose to settle it by despotic force and reprisals. But for three hundred years these methods have been faithfully tried by both sides and have been abject failures. Fortunately a glimmer of common sense begins to appear out of the tragic experience. The radical Irish republicans, or Sinn Feiners, begin to perceive that some kind of peaceful or affiliated relationship with England is desirable for their own welfare. The English, thwarted by the reactionary House of Lords in their attempts under the leadership of Gladstone to give a large measure of freedom to the Irish, are now endeavoring to persuade Ireland to accept the principle of Dominion Home Rule-the principle which has made Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the South African Union prosperous, contented, and free nations within what is commonly known as the British Empire but what Viscount Bryce more accurately and happily calls a commonwealth of English-speaking nations.

All this is brought out in the recent negotiations between Eamon De Valera, the leader of the Irish republicans, and Prime Minister Lloyd George of England. Their last exchange of letters, courteous and conciliatory although long and argumentative, may be boiled down into the following conversation:

De Valera. Ireland will never be contented until she is as independent of England as Belgium is of France or Switzerland is of Germany. When she has attained that independence, she will desire to live as amicably with England as Belgium does with France or Switzerland does with England.

Lloyd George. England desires amity with Ireland, but her political, economic, and social interests are too closely bound up with those of Ireland for her to consent to such a severance as you propose and a reliance merely on the friendly treaties of a foreign power. What we propose is that you shall be as free as Australia, but bound to us by as close ties of kinship and institutions as Australia.

De Valera in his letter to Lloyd George assumes that liberty and independence are synonyms. They are not synonyms. The desire for liberty is an unquenchable desire. The ambition for

independence is an impossible ambition. We can secure liberty only by recognizing the fact that we are not and cannot be independent.

Russia is independent, and the Russian people have no liberty. New York State is not independent, and her people have liberty. At the close of the Revolutionary War the thirteen Colonies were independent States. Our fathers saw that if they were to be free they must cease to be independent colonies. They spent many months in framing the Constitution, by which they surrendered to a central government their independence in order, as they expressed it, "to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

The political history of the world emphatically teaches the truth that independence may be fatal to liberty. The whole tendency of civilization has been to substitute interdependence for independence.

Time was when England was composed of a number of independent kingdoms. Her people did not become free until these kingdoms were united under one government. Time was when France was composed of jealous principalities perpetually at war with each other. The unity of France which destroyed the independence of these principalities was a necessary preparation for the liberty of the French people.

The present century has furnished striking illustrations of the same truth. In 1831 most educated Italians did not desire Italian unity; they desired independence for their separate kingdoms. Mazzini started the Revolution that made Italy free by preaching the radical doctrine that she could become free only by becoming a united Italy. And under the inspiration of his teaching, the statesmanship of Cavour, and the sword of Garibaldi, she became free, because the separate provinces surrendered their independence in order to become free.

ages.

De Valera asks the Irish people to set themselves against the spirit of the age-yes!-against the spirit of all the He separates himself from the great world leaders of liberty-Lincoln, Mazzini, and O'Connell - who have sought for liberty, not through isolation, but through co-operation; not through independence, but through interdependence.

Independence of Ireland would be perilous to England. It would be fatal to Ireland. Those who have long desired to see Ireland self-governing, who approved Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, who have welcomed the Irish to our country, to our schools, to our industries, to our ballot box, and to our homes, who have found in them industrious workers, loyal citizens, personal friends, who admire their warm-heartedness, their hu

mor, and their imagination, and appre ciate their intellectual ability, look with well-grounded apprehension upon the proposal to make Ireland independent because they believe that it would destroy Ireland's liberty. In peace she is dependent upon Great Britain for her markets, in war she is dependent on Great Britain for protection. In 1803, if Ireland had not been protected by England's fleet, Napoleon would have crossed the Channel and subjugated Ireland more easily than he crossed the Alps and subjugated Italy. In the Great World War, if Ireland had not been protected by England's fleet, the Hun would have crossed the Channel and ravaged Ireland as he ravaged Belgium and France. The prosperity, the liberty, the very existence of Ireland depend upon co-operation, not isolation.

It is sometimes said that Dominion Home Rule cannot work in Ireland because the North of Ireland is Saxon and Protestant while the South of Ireland is Celtic and Roman Catholic. The uncompromising Ulsterites,. like Sir Edward Carson, insist that the Home Rule experiment is too risky to be tried. But it has been tried under still more adverse conditions in Canada and has succeeded. Quebec is French and Roman Catholic, while the rest of Canada is English and Protestant. All Ireland is one in this respect, that it speaks one language. The people of Canada labor under all the racial and religious differences of Ireland, and, in addition, have had to overcome the obstacle of two languages. Nevertheless the Canadians have found Home Rule so practical that the English-speaking Protestants of that free but interdependent nation once chose a French-speaking Roman Catholic as their Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who was one of the best Prime Ministers they ever had. Are the Northern and Southern Irish willing to admit that they are less competent in adminis trative government than the Canadians?

A POOR WAY WITH DISSENTERS

T

HE old question of academic freedom of opinion will not down. It crops up wherever there are teachers, schools, and trustees. Even in universities where the broadest possible latitude of opinion is permitted there are always individuals to be found ready to cry, "Throw him out, I do not agree with him." To the credit of American academic tradition, however, there have been cases where men have cried, "I do not agree with him, therefore keep him in." Such an incident occurred at Har vard during the Boston police strike which made Calvin Coolidge a National

1

Ex

figure. A young and radical instructor took the part of the striking policemen in a public statement. An older colleague of the instructor did all that he could to offset what he regarded as the pernicious doctrines of the defender of the strikers-and later sent a generous contribution to the Harvard Endowment Fund, explaining that he did so because President Lowell had refused to heed the popular demand for the instructor's dismissal.

Apparently the lesson to be drawn from such an incident should be carefully studied by the Board of Visitors of the Virginia Military Institute. The Board of Visitors has recently dismissed from the Institute Colonel Robert T. Kerlin because Colonel Kerlin ventured to send an open letter to the Governor of Arkansas appealing for clemency for a group of Negroes condemned for committing murder during riots in Phillips County.

正 The Board of Visitors in calling for 12 Colonel Kerlin's resignation said frankly e that its action was not only based upon his letter to the Governor of Arkansas, but that it had taken into consideration his general activities in inter-racial matters.

It was not until that church at Hoop Spur, filled with men, women, and children, at night in lawful meetding, was fusilladed that any Negro

fired a shot. Then in the days of "riot" following were the Negroes of Phillips County not indiscriminately hunted, harried, and shot down like beasts of the jungle? Fifty or sixty Negroes, four or five white men-that was the ratio of killed. Was this a riot of the blacks or of the whites? Colonel Kerlin wrote further of the trial in these stinging phrases:

Then came the travesty of a trial in the Circuit Court at Helena. Ninety-two men, without legal counsel, without witnesses, without knowledge of court procedure and their rights, some of whom were whipped, tortured in electric chairs, and terrorized into pleading guilty to murder in the second degree, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one year to life. Sixty-seven of those, I understand, are yet in prison serving the life sentence. Twelve men, likewise tortured, were sentenced to death, and six of these are to be executed June 10.

Colonel Kerlin's appeal for clemency was passionate and emotional in tone. It reads more like an evangelist's exhortation than a lawyer's brief, a fact which, granting Colonel Kerlin's prem

ises to be correct, need hardly be wondered at. There is nothing in the letter, however, which could have been personally offensive to Governor McRae or to which the Board of Visitors of the Virginia Military Institute can be justified in taking exception.

Colonel Kerlin's other activities in inter-racial matters, so far as we have observed, are entirely in accord with the principles laid down by the most enlightened Southern leaders. His work has been in association with such men as James H. Dillard, Bishop Theodore Bratton, Jackson Davis, and George Foster Peabody. He has received the commendation of such men as Dr. James E. Gregg, Principal of Hampton Institute, and the appreciative attention of Principal Moton, of Tuskegee. He has labored for the development of the. Interracial Committees which have been described in The Outlook and whose accomplishments are detailed in an article by Principal Moton which will appear in our next week's issue. Colonel Kerlin has also been a contributor to The Outlook himself, for his article on "Some Singing Johnsons" appeared in our issue of August 3, 1921. He is the author of an illuminating study of Negro opinion as reflected in Negro newspapers.

We give this list of Colonel Kerlin's activities at some length in order to permit our readers both in the North and in the South to judge for themselves whether or not the Virginia Military Institute has in the present instance acted in accord with its fine traditions. For ourselves we should say that its Board of Visitors, taking into consideration the changes which have occurred in the last seventy years, is very much less liberal in its attitude on the Negro question than the Board of 1851, which perImitted one Thomas Jonathan Jackson, later to earn the name "Stonewall," to conduct a Sunday school for the moral instruction of Negro children. We do not think that the action of the authorities of the Virginia Military Institute is in accord with the best of modern Southern opinion.

writer, because, when he took pen in hand, he made, as Oliver Goldsmith said, little fishes talk like whales.

One of the best of English "epistolizers" to use his own substantive for a writer of letters-James Howell, explains the matter thus: "Indeed we should write as we speak: and that's a true familiar letter which expresseth one's mind, as if he were discoursing with the party to whom he writes, in succinct and short terms."

Thackeray speaks of "The Familiar Letters of James Howell" as one of his "bedside books," meaning by that, we suppose, books of calm and restful entertainment. Written three hundred years ago, Howell's letters certainly give the reader a more human and intimate picture of the customs and manners of his time than many an elaborate and painstaking history.

In ancient literature the letters of Pliny the Younger are more readable than Cicero's orations; in English literature Cowper's letters, if not finer, are certainly more cheerful than his poems; and in the literature of our own country John Marshall's letters to his friends often more frankly reveal his mind on questions of the Constitution than his epoch-making decisions from the bench.

One of the pleasantest of E. V. Lucas's always pleasant books is a collection of letters from all sorts of sources on all sorts of subjects. He calls letter-writing "The Gentlest Art," and gives that title to his collection. Truly a gentle art is letter-writing. It cannot be forced or browbeaten into action. It has no technique or rules or set forms. Machinery is abhorrent to it. The perfect letter flows from the pen, or at least must seem to flow from the pen, like the music of the improvisatore. The successful letter-writer must be a full man; he must have read and thought and written much; he must have faithfully cultivated his powers of observation and expression; but when he sits down to write a familiar letter he must not stop to observe what he writes or to think about its expression; he must write, as the Latins said, currente calamo; he must let his pen run away with him.

It sometimes seems as if this gentle, shy, elusive Art had been frightened out of the world by modern efficiency. Stenography and typewriting terrify her. Neither the writers of "best sellers" nor statesmen have time to court her.

But pessimists who fear the worst for the future of the Gentlest Art will be cheered by the surprising fact that one of the busiest of modern editors and publicists and statesmen has recently been revealed as a letter-writer of the most engaging type. It is not at all fantastic to think that the late Walter H. Page may live in American annals,