to his unselfish and..courageous mo-... tives, to doubt it. For the real truth is that, while the whole world requires the encouragement and the light of idealism, the whole world would probably not survive if idealism were given a completely free rein.

After considering the doctrine of self-interest according to Jeremy

Bentham, he continued:

No nation in democratic conditions will ever become the knight errant of the world. The governors of each nation are the trustees of the whole people; and, unhappily, they are removable trustees. They must always keep peace with the beneficiaries of the trust, because the beneficiaries in this particular matter can at any moment discharge them from their offices. And therefore it seems to me that, while the name of President Wilson must always be revered by those who render homage to purposes almost superhuman, pursued with a zeal almost as superhuman, yet it must none the less be recognized that his judgment of his own countrymen was wrong, and that by the error of that judgment he became, paradoxically enough, the agent of all those post-war developments from which his altruistic mind would most especially have recoiled.

Some of President Wilson's friends in this country and some of his most ardent admirers in Great Britain have resented these remarks. Mr. Wilson himself, however, must realize that his acts as a public man were subject to criticism and analysis. However much we may in this country resent what Lowell described as "a certain condescension in foreigners," we cannot hold ourselves or our Government, or even our Presidents, immune from even severe comment by people of other lands, whether they speak on their own soil or ours, provided there is no ascription of evil motives or unjust and willful distortion of facts. Certainly in this case Lord Birkenhead made every effort to keep his comment within proper bounds, and it seems to us that he succeeded in doing

So.

AN INTERNATIONAL SUIT AT LAW

OR the first time one nation has

Fbeen summoned into court by an

other and subjected to the decision of an international court.

The case is that of the S.S. Wimbledon, chartered by a French company to carry a cargo of munitions through the Kiel Canal to Poland via Dantsic. German officials, acting under regulations...concerning neutrality, declined to permit the passage of the steamship

through the Canal. The plaintiff in the case declared that Germany was required to allow the passage by a provision in the Versailles Treaty. The Court decided the case against Germany, declaring that the neutrality of Germany is subject to the restrictions of the treaty which Germany had signed. Germany's claim that such restrictions on her neutrality were a denial of her sovereignty was answered by the Court when it said, in effect, that the Kiel Canal had been permanently dedicated to the use of the world while Germany remained at peace, and that the restrictions, having been accepted by Germany in the exercise of her sovereign rights, are not incompatible with her sovereignty. Precedents were cited in the use of the Panama Canal.

Ordinarily in international cases before tribunals the procedure has been one of arbitration, by which con

flicting claims have been compromised. This case is essentially different in that the decision was not a compromise but a judgment according to law and precedent. The Wimbledon case will remain historic as marking a new stage in the development of international relations under the public law of nations.

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

W

ITH the single exception of Dickens's "Christmas Carol" probably no story of Christmas-time has been in this country so widely accepted as the embodiment of the holiday spirit of mirthfulness and good · will to men as "The Birds' Christmas Carol." It has been read by almost everybody, old and young, and innumerable bands of amateur actors in schools and churches have enacted its scenes. It is full of contagious fun, and it also has the just measure of pathos that makes it Christmas-like. Now that the news comes of Mrs. Riggs's death in England, it is recalled to mind that this, her first success, was written neither for fame nor for financial reward, but to help by its proceeds the first free kindergarten on the Pacific coast, established largely through the efforts of the author and her sister, Nora Archibald Smith, whose name is known to our readers as that of a writer of notable verse and equally interested with Mrs. Riggs in educational work.

Next best known to her delightful "Birds' Carol" book are probably Mrs. Riggs's "Rebecca" stories.

The success that "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" had on the stage and in the moving pictures was probably a surprise to the author.

"Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" is as good a girls' book as has been written since Miss Alcott's "Little Women." Both were well received on the stage because both authors had a sense of humor, understood children, and knew how to be sprightly without being foolish.

These two stories perhaps will outlive most or all of the writer's other books, the list of which is long. Next to them in readable qualities may be put "A Cathedral Courtship" and "Timothy's Quest."

Mrs. Riggs naturally always used. for literary purposes her early signa-. ture, Kate Douglas Wiggin; her first husband, a California lawyer, died in. 1889; her surviving husband is Mr. George C. Riggs, of New York. Her circle of friends was large here and

abroad, and the book which she had completed before she was taken ill this summer in England should from its title, "My Garden of Memories," prove agreeable reading.

Kate Douglas Wiggin was delightful as a reader aloud of her own stories. Her personality was buoyant, spirited, and graceful. She was a woman of many accomplishments and, above all, a true lover of human nature.

THE FRENCH REPLY, BUSINESS-OR JUSTICE

T is easy to believe that between friends we should be neutral.

I

When, however, one friend seems forgetful of some obligations and is following a course that will bring trouble and promote injustice, neutrality is out of place. Both France and Britain are friends of America. In their quarrel the Government of this country has not been directly involved; but as a people we are very much concerned in it nevertheless. Both self-interest and a decent regard for the welfare of our companions in arms should lead us Americans to keep ourselves informed as to what the quarrel is about and to use such influence as we have on the side that is seeking justice.

Underneath all argument about milliards of marks and A and B and C bonds and the documentary basis for considering the occupation of the Ruhr legal or illegal there is between the French and British Governments a difference in point of view.

The British Government seems to think that the war is over, that the issue is settled, that all has been got out of it that can be, that there is a mess that needs cleaning up, that there are debts to be paid, that friends and enemies alike need to get back upon their feet, and that the most important thing to do is to make a rough estimate of debts all around, charge off bad debts to profit and loss, and begin again to do business on the old basis.

The French Government seems to think that the war has not really yet been won, that the issue has not been settled; that the aggressors who were beaten on the field of battle are nearly succeeding in getting the victory over the bargain counter; that there will be no safety for any one, and least of all for France, if those who ran wild over Belgium and northern France like drunken madmen, killing, torturing, destroying, can emerge from all

the negotiations stronger than their rivals, freer from debt and the penalties of war as they are freer from its material scars; and that the one thing essential is not a business settlement, as if the whole affair had been a commercial transaction, but the establishment of a precedent and a principle that will serve as a warning to aggressors in the future and as a vindication of those nations that preferred to risk annihilation rather than to let fear dictate a craven submission.

It is these two different points of view that explain the divergence between Britain and France in their approach to Germany. If Britain's point of view is right, then all of France's logic, all her pleas for justice, all her assertions of right, are futile. If the French point of view is right, then all of Britain's array of economic statistics, all her reproaches to France for the settlement business, all her arguments that the French course is costing more than it will ever produce, are simply the arguments of an Esau defending himself for selling his birthright for a mess of pottage.

Since The Outlook went to press last week the French note in reply to the British, which was then simply outlined in semi-official forecasts, has appeared in full in the New York "Times" of August 23. Together with the covering letter from the French Prime Minister it occupies nearly fourteen newspaper columns. It is obviously impossible to give even a brief summary of it that is at all adequate in any limited space. We wish we could believe there was a large number of Americans who would take the pains to read that note through. Any American who does not share the opinion of Congressman Berger and the "New Republic," that it was a great mistake for us to have been in the war, anyway, can by reading that note at least understand the French conditions, and almost any American who believes in what America as well as France was fighting for will, we are sure, agree with the substance of that note-if he reads it.

Certain points in that note are worth citing, not because they are the strongest points, but because they help to indicate the difference between the British and the French point of view -between the point of view of the British, who look at the whole matter as a commercial transaction, and that of the French, who look at it as an issue of justice.

In the first place, Britain looks upon

the occupation of the Ruhr and upon the economic hardships from which all countries are suffering, and argues that France is holding back world recovery. And France replies that, even though the improvement in economic conditions since the occupation began be disregarded, "France is in no way responsible for the economic crisis. It is German resistance which prolongs an unfortunate situation; everything which encourages the German resistance contributes to this continuance, and everything which does not discourage this resistance encourages it." Britain thus looks at the pounds and shillings and pence in the till; France looks at the defaulter and wants the defalcation punished and made good.

In the second place, Britain offers as an argument to France her willingness to reduce alike her claims upon her allies for the payment of their debts and upon Germany for the payment of reparations. And France replies by asking, "Is it possible... to confound sums which the Allies spent in order to win the war and those which Germany owes for having ravished our territories? Every pound sterling, every dollar which France owes England or the United States represents Allied blood which has been spared. Gold marks of Germany represent Allied blood which has been spilled."

In the third place, Britain deplores any action which seems to retard the wheels of commerce even in the interest of treaty rights. France replies by saying that she "does not believe that the economic restoration of Europe is possible except by observation of the treaties and by adherence to justice."

In the fourth place, Britain speaks of her own unemployment as her share in the devastation, and on that account urges acquiescence in Germany's evasion of payments and avoidance of the fulfillment of her obligation. France replies that British unemployment reached its greatest point of intensity long before the occupation of the Ruhr, and that the French insistence upon the execution of the Treaty is not merely for the sake of getting reparations, but for the sake of enforcing scrupulous respect for the given word and through fear of a dangerous precedent which would be created by the violation of the Treaty on which the foundations of Europe now rest.

There are other points in the French note which are of themselves of equal importance with these. For

(C) Keystone

example, in reply to Britain's tardy conclusion that the occupation of the Ruhr is illegal under the Treaty, France points out that Britain herself had already sanctioned that occupation as a legal measure by joining with her allies in threatening Germany with it. The British rejoinder that those threats were really threats of a new war are not very convincing, particularly in view of the fact that the British never considered the German arguments on the illegality of occupying new territory worth answering and in view of the fact that the British, citing the German violations of the Treaty in justification, joined with the Allies in occupying territory beyond the bridgeheads. Other points, however, we do not intend to discuss here, for they are aside from the fundamental question at issue between France and Great Britain.

Even if Britain were right from her point of view in believing that the French course was economically hurtful (and even from her own point of view we believe she is wrong), there can be no doubt on which side America will stand ultimately in an issue between business and justice.

N

ARY A Word," said the cap

tion of a cartoon which The Outlook recently reproduced, presenting President Coolidge as a sphinx. It was a good cartoon. The

Thus would it be spoken. Never would it be spoken, "Nary a word." The "a" is included in what sounds like "nary."

N outstanding feature of the coal strike of last year was the patience shown by the consumers of hard coal. There was grumbling of course, and there was protest against the inconvenience, and in some cases actual hardship, experienced. But on the whole the public was patient. That it should be asked to be patient again under a repetition of last year's disregard of its interests and comfort is almost incredible.

Governor Pinchot, of Pennsylvania, in his first talk with representatives of the miners and the operators following his conference with President Coolidge, laid stress on this very point. His address bristles with positive, plain-spoken assertions that the patience of the public cannot and must not be imposed upon once more. Thus he says: "The anthracite-using people of the United States are losing patience," and follows this with the positive declaration:

The public interest demands that this controversy shall be settled, and that a suspension of mining shall be avoided. The thing is possible-and it must be done.

Settlement means that neither side can get everything it would like to have. Few people ever do in the world we live in, but the settlement

of this dispute is absolutely necessary for the public safety and welfare. The public needs and must have coal.

There is such a thing as moral force as well as physical force and legal force. The moral pressure of such a talk as Governor Pinchot gave to the coal men may well stir these rather leisurely controversialists into the conviction that action must be taken now that, as Mr. Pinchot said, the eleventh hour is upon us and the crisis has been reached. "It can be done and must be done."

As we write, the Governor of Pennsylvania is engaged in separate conferences with chosen representatives of the miners and the operators. At the same time Governors of the other hard-coal consuming States or their representatives are in conference in New York to provide for the interests of coal consumers if the strike comes into existence; they will take measures to insure the proper distribution of coal and to make it easy for consumers to obtain substitutes, such as

pointed such a board, both sides knew that they would get fair treatment, and so they accepted arbitration. We have no doubt that President Coolidge could any day name so fair and capable a board that both sides should be willing to accede to its decisions. At present the operators have a certain moral advantage in that they declare themselves willing to arbitrate, while the miners insist that they were ill treated in the arbitration of 1920 and that the system which has existed for twenty years of settling questions by bargaining as between miners and operators ought to be continued. That again is precisely such a question as cannot be determined by individual members of the public.

Naturally, every one asks, If arbitration is not the right method, what is the right method? Those who refuse the principle of arbitration are bound to offer an alternative. None has been offered so far, and to the

ordinary observer the only choice lies between arbitration, voluntary compromise (which so far has not been successful) and conflict until one party or the other is exhausted. Last year's experience and the fact that both parties to the controversy have full treasuries because of the high prices paid by the consumer and the high wages paid to the miners make the prospect of an obstinate coal war gloomy from the public point of view.

The arguments and figures presented day by day by the antagonists in this dispute have been precisely such as should be put before a board of conciliation or arbitration, with a mutual pledge to abide by its decision. This has been done successfully in scores of cases in other labor disputes; what is there to make it impossible here? The long-enduring public will not forever consent to be the buffer between labor and capital in a matter that is to it of vital concern.

be hoped will provide also that in case of a strike this year soft coal may not be sold (as it was last year) at the absurd price of $12 a ton and upward.

Thus for the first time in the negotiations for peace in this coal problem the note of positiveness and preparedness has been sounded. If the combatants refuse to recognize this pressure of public opinion, now become immensely stronger than it has ever been before, it will follow naturally and apparently inevitably that Congress (perhaps called together in special session for this purpose) and President Coolidge will provide such laws and such administration of those laws as will prevent miners and operators from sacrificing to their opposed demands the comfort and safety of the coal-using public.

There are certain things as to which the public cannot form conclusions and ought not to be called upon to form conclusions. Whether, for instance, the miners are right or not in their contention that they received an increase in wages later than men in other industries and that their wages even now are not on a level with other industries of like skill and danger, is not a question for the average newspaper reader to determine. Such problems require close study of intricate facts and figures. They ought to be decided by a non-partisan board of experts acting for the public as well

for the miners and operators. When President Roosevelt in 1903 ap

D

BY LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR OF THE OUTLOOK

R. CHARLES W. ELIOT, Presi- fore, not merely in the opportunities dent Emeritus of Harvard, who for education, but also in the problem deserves to have conferred upon of how those opportunities shall be him the title of Primate of All Amer- used. ica in Education, recently printed a statement in the newspapers expressing his anxiety about the condition of academic education in the United States. He thinks the trouble lies in the attempt to standardize everything -in the tendency to cast the minds of students in one educational mold.

Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, recently published a report in which he said that this country was not getting adequate returns for the enormous sums of money it is spending on public education.

These criticisms by two of the foremost educators in America confirm the conscious or sub-conscious anxiety about modern education which thousands of fathers and mothers are feeling at this time. In two or three weeks the schools and colleges will be open for another year's work, and there is scarcely a family in America that is not wondering with anxious perplexity what that year will mean in the development and training of a son or daughter.

This anxiety is a good sign. It means that the country at large is taking a keener interest than ever be

.

In spite of the justice of such warnings as those of Dr. Eliot and Dr. Pritchett, there is no reason for discouragement. We are not face to face with new phenomena that are alarming because they are unprecedented. It so happens that my reading this summer has led me to appreciate that the problem is not a new one. The literature of English biography is full of criticisms of the useless conventionality of so-called "higher education."

No university in the world has a more resplendent history than Oxford. An honorary degree from that queen of universities is to-day more eagerly welcomed by men of intelligence than any title that the King of England can bestow. Oxford has given to the world a more widely known company of Prime Ministers, statesmen, philosophers, men of letters, poets (although much might be said for Cambridge on the score of poets and men of letters), historians, teachers, and preachers than any other school of "higher education" in the worldcertainly in the English-speaking world. But the uselessness of an Oxford education has been frequently commented upon by some of her most

famous sons. Even in the days when the sole purpose of Oxford was to produce doctors of divinity she did not succeed very well. In the "Life and Times of Anthony Wood," the quaint Oxford antiquary of the English Civil War period, there is this entry:

Dec. 21st 1683, Friday. At 3 in the morning died suddenly Mrs. Lasenby, the hostess of the Mitre Inn, having about three hours before been most strangely affrighted by 3 rude persons, viz.:—

66

Thomas Baker, M.A.., All Souls Coll. John Aldworth, M.A., Ralph Olive, M.A., Thomas Edwards, of St. John's, M.A., not among them, but there by accident. These having been drinking at the Mermaid Tavern, newly opened after having been closed some time, came drunk to The Mitre; were let in by a boy then up. They came as they pretended to eat something. The boy said they were all in bed. They enquired where Mrs. Lasenby lyed. The boy showed the window. They waked her and desired to have some meat dressed. She said 'twas late and would or could not rise. Whereupon they called her names, and told her she deserved to have her throat cut. Being extremely frightened she fell into fits and died at 3 in the morning. The Masters were examined by the Vice-Chancellor and Bishop and they afterwards apologized for their conduct before the Congregation.

...

The idea of Oxford in those days seems to have been that though a man's sins were as red as scarlet an apology to the Congregation would make them white as snow.

Three-quarters of a century later, Jeremy Bentham, the famous English juridical philosopher, says of the undergraduate days which he spent at Oxford about the time when George Washington was brilliantly fighting the Indians as a colonel on the staff of General Braddock: "I learnt nothing; we just went to the foolish lectures of our tutors to be taught something of local jargon." And on one occasion, commenting on the fundamentalists of Oxford and the theological tests required of the undergraduates (Mr. Bryan and Senator Lusk will please take notice), he remarked that the streets of Oxford were "paved with perjury." A little earlier Gibbon, the historian, was an In later undergraduate at Oxford.

life he described as follows the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere in which he lived: "The Fellows or monks of my time were decent, easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder. Their days were filled by a series of uniform employmentsthe Chapel, the Hall, the coffee-house

and the common-room-till they retired weary and well satisfied to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, writing or thinking they had absolved their consciences. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes and private scandal."

But if it be objected that this was Oxford of a hundred and fifty years ago, let us turn to a later critic or two. Walter Bagehot, it is true, was not an Oxford man. He took his degree at the University of London. But it is doubtful if England has ever produced a wiser economist or more penetrating critic, and what he says about the Oxford spirit of the last half of the nineteenth century, although long, is worth quoting in full if for no other reason than because of its delightful irony:

...

us

There is much to be said in favor of the University of Oxford. No one can deny to it very great and very peculiar merits. But certainly it is not an exciting place, and its education operates as a narcotic rather than as a stimulant. Most of its students devote their lives to a single profession, and we may observe among them a kind of sacred torpidity. The most characteristic of Oxford men labor quietly, delicately, and let in hope usefully, a confined sphere; they hope for nothing more, and wish for nothing more. Even in secular literature we may observe an analogous tone. The "Saturday Review" is remarkable as an attempt on the part of "university men" to speak on the political topics and social difficulties of the time. And what do they teach us? It is something like this: "So-and-so has written a tolerable book, and we would call attention to the industry which produces tolerable books. So-and-so has devoted himself to a great subject, and we would observe that the interest now taken in great subjects is very commendable. Such-and-such a lady has delicate feelings, which are desirable in a lady, though we know that they are contrary to the facts of the world. All common persons are doing as well as they can, but it does not come to much after all. All statesmen are doing as ill as they can, and let us be thankful that that does not come to much either." We may search and search in vain through this repository of the result of "university teaching" for a single truth that it has established, for a single high cause which it has advanced, for a single deep thought which is to sink into the minds of its readers. It affords, indeed, a nearly perfect embodiment of the corrective skepticism of a sleepy intellect. "AB says he has done something, but he has not done it; CD has made a parade of demonstrating this or that proposition, but he does not prove his case; there is one mistake in page 5, and another in page 113; a great his

tory has been written of this or that century, but the best authorities as to that period have not been consulted, which, however, is not very remarkable, as there is nothing in them." We could easily find, if it were needful, many traces of the same indifferent habit, the same apathetic culture, in the more avowed productions of Oxford men. The shrewd eye of Mr. Emerson, stimulated doubtless by the contrast to America, quickly caught the trait. "After all," says the languid Oxford gentleman of his story, "there is nothing true and nothing new and no matter!"

The last English critic of Oxford to whom I shall refer is Frederic Harrison, somewhat cantankerous, to be sure, but passionately desirous that young England should be well eduIcated in the best sense of that word. Writing in 1910, only a few years before his death, but nearly sixty years after he had taken his first Oxford degree, he remarked: "I am not belittling real study in physical science, and I am quite aware that these new researches do require much special treatment and equipment. . . . But the attempt to foist these special physical researches on Oxford, which still remains largely an aristocratic gymnasium and essentially a theological seminary-where not one student in a hundred intends to pursue a scientific profession, where there is little scope. for post-graduate study, in a world traditionally devoted to the 'humanities,' to Church, to 'good society' and sport-this is a sheer waste of labor and money."

These criticisms of course give only a one-sided view of Oxford, but they are sufficient to show that the spirit of dissatisfaction with the educational quality of university life is neither new nor confined to America. Even Charles Darwin, the great naturalist -and great Diabolus of Mr. Bryan's philosophy-in writing to a fellowscientist shares in the general chorus of condemnation: "Many thanks," he says, "for your welcome note from Cambridge, and I am glad you like my Alma Mater, which I despise heartily as a place of education, but love from many most pleasant recollections."

The real trouble with university education and with the secondary schools, which are supposed to prepare for university education, is hit upon, it seems to me, by two educators of such diverse personality and training as Darwin, the English scientist, and Booker T. Washington, the American Negro. Says Darwin: "To return to schools. My main objection to them