OCTOBER 31, 1923

GERMANY AT LOOSE ENDS

:

Bavaria is in open revolt against the Reich. Federal troops in Bavaria, violating their oath to serve the Central Government, have taken an oath of allegiance to Bavaria. In Munich this is interpreted, not as treason, but as a patriotic movement to withstand the Communism of Saxony and the so-called Socialism of Prussia.

Saxony in its turn has become recalcitrant and has broken its diplomaticrelations with Bavaria, on the one hand, and, on the other, has defied the commands of the general in charge of the Federal troops there.

Towns and cities in the region of the Rhine have come under the control of separatists, who hope to erect a new free Republic of the Rhineland. This movement began its overt operations On October 21 at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen, in German), on the Belgian border. Most of these towns and cities are in the northern part of the Rhineland, but among those taken over by the separatists is the considerable city of Wiesbaden, farther south. According to reports, these various revolts against the Central Government at Berlin have not been well organized under a common control. In each case it is a minority that is acting, but there has been little resistance. Most of the uprisings have started in territory occupied by the Belgians. Some of the separatists hope to get these various movements united so as to form a government with its seat at Coblenz, the former headquarters of the American Army of Occupation. The French, so far as reports can be trusted, have given no aid to the separatists, but have not interfered with them. Dr. Hans Dorten, who was formerly prominent as a leader in the agitation for a separate Rhineland republic, has had apparently no control over most of these uprisings. The most prominent of the leaders in these uprisings is Leo Deck

P. & A. Photos

ers, who organized the movement at Aix-la-Chapelle, but he has not by any means controlled all the movements elsewhere. The Rhinelanders have no reason for loving the Prussians, and they have suffered greatly from the depreciation of the national currency.

For several weeks observers in Europe have been anticipating what has now happened. The London "Outlook" (no connection of this journal), which has been deploring the course of France and has violently criticised the British Government for not forcefully resisting the French policy, has practically given up hope for a united Germany and says that "it does not require much imagination to see the German Empire of the nineteenth century reverting to the minor principalitury reverting to the minor principalities and powers, the transparencies and margravines, of the eighteenth." If the Reich does break up, the balance of power on the Continent will be with France and her close allies. That is something that Britain will not wholly welcome, yet it is difficult to imagine in the near future any alliance or understanding between Britain and any Power openly hostile to France.

We discuss this situation further elsewhere in this issue.

THE SPARK TEAT MOVES THE WORLD

K

ILOWATTS and amperes, ions and electrons, are not the deep mysteries they used to be. Even a casual visitor to the Electrical Show at Grand Central Palace in New York could not help observing the intelligent interest shown by the thousands of daily visitors there. In the enthusiastic words of the publicity men, the public is fast becoming electrically minded. For electrical mysteries are no longer mysteries. Your "man in the street" has learned to install his own door-bell transformer, read his own electric meter, and trace the complexities of the latest radio circuit.

The keynote of the show seemed to be, "Here is how it is done." Almost none of the 136 separate exhibitions had devices on display which were there solely to startle or mystify. A Nationally known manufacturer of storage batteries had a model assembling plant showing just what went into their storage cells. A fascinated group of automobile owners and radio enthusiasts looked on.

Chocolate bars were wrapped before the eyes of the visitor, voices came out of the air through the radio loud

speaker, and the marvelous electrical sorting and tabulating machines of the Census Bureau, all operated before comprehending throngs. And the fat men stopped long in the booths where manufacturers had electric reducing machines. And there were odd-looking lamps on solid standards for electrical "deep therapy," and alongside were clean white cabinets for electrical baths.

Women saw how easy electricity can make housekeeping. They tarried long before the motor-driven floor waxer and polisher. And there were interested groups observing the ease with which an almost human machine whipped cream and stirred mayonnaise.

There is no further excuse for New York crowds stopping long to watch electricians descend the unknown depths of the street manhole. One company had an exhibit showing a full-sized cross-section of a typical street. The telephone, telegraph, and pneumatic mail tubes were shown, and a manhole was built with big power cables in their place. There were 66,000-volt high-tension cables and small residence 110-volt outlets.

Washing-machines there were in full blast and motor-operated mangles and a very plague of electric heaters. One of these was a monster radiator six feet high which brought the waning Indian summer into the big Pal

ace.

Another manufacturer displayed a realistic coal fire without the coal, whose flames flickered so naturally that the visitor felt warm at once. This, the demonstrator explained, could be purchased "with or without a heating attachment."

The Army and Navy had extensive displays to show the uses to which they put electricity. Besides a very host of electrical communication equipment, the Army had maps showing their country-wide network of telephone, telegraph, and radio communication. The Navy had models of electrically driven dreadnoughts, submarine detection devices, and maps showing the scope of the Navy radio compass stations on the Atlantic, Great Lakes, and Pacific coasts.

As the visitor left the exhibition electrically driven job presses printed pamphlets which were handed him, announcing this to be the electrical age. Well, it is.

Trinil, in central Java, the top of a skull, a left thigh bone, and two molar teeth. This small find was destined to take on the utmost importance to the anthropologist. Dubois described the type represented by the few fragments of bone as pithecanthropus erectus, the "upright-standing apeman." Since that time an enormous interpretative literature has grown up around the remains of this earliest known form of man. His age is placed at about 500,000 years, and he lived at about the beginning of the Glacial Period.

Was pithecanthropus a man, or was he only an ape? Anthropologists favor the man theory, on the whole, but refuse to be positively dogmatic about it. Obstacles have been put in the way even of accredited scientists who have wished to examine the original fossils discovered by Dubois. While plaster casts of the skull top and teeth and photographs of the thigh bone have been distributed to museums and anthropologists throughout the world, the actual fossilized fragments have seldom been withdrawn from the drawer of a safe in Haarlem, in the Dutch Netherlands, where they were placed over twenty-five years ago by their original discoverer.

The timeliness of this brief account of the finding of pithecanthropus comes from an announcement just made that Dr. J. H. McGregor, Research Associate in Human Anatomy of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, had the opportunity while recently in the Netherlands of viewing and handling the actual bones that were dug up from the coarse stratum of Java sandstone, and of contributing his opinion to the all-important question of whether pithecanthropus erectus represented a race of men, or whether he was only a high variety of ape. On his return from Europe Dr. McGregor issued the significant statement that he firmly believes pithecanthropus belongs to the human family, and was more of a man than an ape.

But pithecanthropus was not in the direct line of the ancestry of modern man. Drawing a simple simile, Dr. McGregor likened the Trinil men to a sort of racial great-uncle rather than a grandfather of the present human race-that is, man is believed to have evolved from some variety of much more primitive man somewhat like pithecanthropus.

One of the most natural mental reactions of the newspaper reader who is not an anatomist, on learning that the existence of a near-ancestor of the

human race, dated half a million years ago, is predicated wholly on the recovery of a mere handful of bones, is the question as to how the anthropologist can rightly claim so much from so little evidence. The anthropologist would frankly admit that a considerable element of uncertainty is involved in his decisions. But he would also insist that the anatomist can deduce from the conformation of a bone, especially of a skull top, altogether more information than the layman would perhaps realize until he had made a specific study of anatomy and its intricacies.

WHAT WAS
PITHECANTHROPUS LIKE?

HE part of the skull of pithecan

quite satisfactory in size, corresponding to the part of one's head that would be covered by a common golf cap drawn down over the eyebrow ridges. This extent permits a fairly accurate measure of the brain capac. ity, which in the case of the Trini man is about 900 cubic centimeters. Compared with the capacity of the largest simian brain, which is only 600 cubic centimeters, and that of the smallest brain recorded in the lower members of the living human race. with a capacity of 930 cubic centimeters, it indicates a very low order of intelligence, lying, however, much closer to that of the low human than

to the high ape. Again, from the thigh bone the anatomist is able quite easily to determine the angle at which pithecanthropus erectus carried his torso. Any one without anatomical training from the leg bone of a dog or sheep could roughly determine the angle at which the adjoining bone. formed a joint with it. The smoothed and rubbed surfaces of the articulation would make this perfectly evident. The anatomist measures such angles with care and exactness and expresses them in degrees of arc. Such measurements, as well as other conformations of the Trinil thigh bone, indicate that the Java man walked erect.

Nevertheless, on the whole, very little is known about pithecanthropus in comparison with later forms of early man about which we have quite a fund of intimate information. Since he walked erect, his arms were freed for other uses. Possibly he had already gained control of the thumb, an important acquisition, for it would have enabled him, working in juxtaposition to the fingers, to grasp and hold various objects. Perhaps he

could make crude wood or stone implements and use them to smash nuts for food. He may have used wooden clubs in the chase. We do not know. None of his cultural remains has as yet been found.

were

re

More recent in point of antiquity were the Piltdown man, whose skull and problematical jaw bone. found in England, and the Rhodesian man, concerning both of whom there is little more precise knowledge than of pithecanthropus. In descending the scale of time, it is only when we reach the European Neanderthal race of men, fifty thousand years ago, perhaps longer, that we can piece together a fairly complete and accurate story, with a liberal number of his implements and artifacts to aid our search. Yet this remarkable race of beings, true men but not truly a race of homo sapiens, was not directly ancestral to the living races of man. For just as the Trinil man was a racial great-uncle, so the Neanderthal man is a racial uncle. It was a race that died, an experiment of nature that failed, for these brutal, shambling, literally "low-browed" creatures were exterminated about twenty-five thousand years ago by the remarkable CroMagnon men who entered Europe after the last ice invasion, dispossessed the Neanderthal men of their residential caves, and decorated the cave walls with the paintings of reindeer and other animals of their environment. Finally, about ten or twelve thousand years ago the ancestors of the present-day Europeans came into Europe, established a neolithic culture, and absorbed the CroMagnards.

WHO'S HOOCH?

YONDEMNATION of the Prohibition

the man who for the time occupies the position, but of the position itself, is expressed by the Alcohol Trades Advisory Committee.

This Committee was appointed by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in an advisory capacity with relation to administration of the prohibition laws. It is composed of eleven men, representatives of scientific societies and industries in which alcohol is an important raw material. Most vigorously the Committee opposes the suggestion, just now a subject of serious discussion, that there be created for the purpose of prohibition enforcement a bureau separate from any of the established departments. "The proponents of such a bureaucracy," says the Committee, "may be assured

that it will be opposed with every ounce of energy that can be put forward by those engaged in lawful professions and businesses in which the chemical, alcohol, is required and used." Not only does the Committee oppose a separate bureau of prohibition enforcement, but it specifically recommends to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue that he take out of the hands of the Prohibition Commissioner every administrative duty pertaining to industrial alcohol. Legitimate industry is said to be unalterably opposed to the present enforcement method, "which makes a police officer the source of supply of essential raw materials or any other scheme by which prohibition commissioner shall say how, when, from whom, and in what quantities alcohol shall be secured for lawful purposes."

a

It is charged that the Prohibition Commissioner has not suitable technical knowledge, training, or experience to administer the industrial alcohol provisions of the law; that he is probably out of sympathy with that phase of the law, and that neither he nor his enforcement agents understand the relationship of alcohol to the defense, health, and general welfare of the Nation and to the progress of science.

Here is rather strong language for one agency of the Bureau of Internal Revenue to apply to another agency of that Bureau. The degree of the Prohibition Commissioner's unfamiliarity with the needs of industry and science is probably overstated. In his book "Prohibition Inside Out," just now off the press, Major Haynes devotes a long chapter to "protecting the legitimate user." He states, and that in stronger terms than are used by the Alcohol Trades Advisory Committee, the dependence of industry, science, and the Nation itself upon the legitimate uses of alcohol. If industry has been irksomely restricted-and it probably has-in obtaining supplies of alcohol, the cause is not the Prohibition Commissioner's ignorance of the necessity for alcohol.

Here, to be sure, is a difficult, trouble-making trouble-making situation. Industry must have alcohol in great quantities. Yet from these supplies there are leaks which constitute one of the important sources of "bootleg" liquor. These leaks may be small in comparison with the total quantity of industrial alcohol used, but they are large enough to cause much trouble for the enforcement official.

Possibly the views of those who wish a separate bureau of prohibition enforcement and the Alcohol Trades

Advisory Committee, which would place regulation of the alcohol supply in the hands of an Assistant Commissioner of Internal Revenue, are not really so antagonistic as they appear on the surface. Undoubtedly there would be advantages in having industrial alcohol handled by a specialist in that line, acting under the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. Very likely a Bureau of Prohibition Enforcement could enforce the prohibitory feature of the law more effectively if it were relieved of responsibility as to the permissive features of the law. Both suggestions are probably good. Both may be adopted. Why not?

WHAT UNCLE SAM'S
FARM EXPERT THINKS

HE Federal Government itself is in

THE

part responsible for the difficulties under which the farmers of the United States are now working, Secretary of Agriculture Wallace has stated. The acts which cause the difficulties were committed, to a large degree perhaps unavoidably, by the previous Administration; but the Secretary does not think that the present Administration can for that reason escape the responsibility of doing what it can to relieve the situation.

The previous Administration, Secretary Wallace pointed out, exercised direct control during the war period over prices of wheat and so far as possible of other agricultural products. By appeals to patriotism the war Administration caused a large extension in the cultivated acreage and a large increase in production, creating a surplus which is now lowering prices. By similar appeals it caused a decreased per capita consumption of both wheat and meat. These things, Secretary Wallace would doubtless admit, were necessary or seemed to be so. Few persons expected the war to terminate when it did. Another year of hostilities was generally looked for. These things, which have injured the farmer in recent days, then appeared necessary to the winning of the war. Some other things which the Secre tary mentioned he might not so readily admit were necessary. Among them are advances in freight rates and increases in railway wages, which in a measure made the increased rates necessary; the inflation of living costs and of farm costs of production by encouraging the cost-plus system in industries other than agriculture; the encouragement of a general inflation, and then of a drastic deflation which was particularly injurious to agriculture and which, says the Secretary,

many persons believe to have been directed against agriculture. At any rate, all of these things combined to bring about, as Secretary Wallace sees it, a distorted relationship between prices for agricultural products and prices for other articles, and this disparity he believes to be the root of the present trouble. He is equally certain that the duty of the Government is to exert itself to bring price levels into better relationships.

The Secretary puts no faith in Government price fixing. Neither does he believe that buying and holding a part of the surplus of wheat or of any other crop would bring any permanent benefit. He does believe that the Government could help agriculture by adjusting rates of exchange and equalizing opportunities for interchange of commodities in such a way that foreign competitors would not have advantage over American farmers. Freight rates on agricultural commodities, particularly on those exported, he thinks, must be reduced by at least twentyfive per cent, and he suggests that the entire structure of freight rates should be analyzed. Most important of all, he believes that agricultural prices must be brought up near the level of other prices, and, as a means to that end, suggests establishment by the Government of an agricultural export commission or corporation with broad powers.

Unquestionably, many thousands of farmers have been ruined by the conditions of which Secretary Wallace speaks. There are few who will deny his contention that the Government should provide every possible sound measure of relief. General and continuous prosperity is not possible without agricultural prosperity. Commerce and industry, which recently have prospered while agriculture suffered, must inevitably share a measure of agriculture's burdens, soon or late. But whether prices can be arbitrarily leveled, even by the Federal Government, is a question on which there will be much more violent difference of opinion. Prices of course will ultimately level themselves, and the process is even now operative. The Federal Reserve Board, in its most recent statement, calls attention to the fact that, while prices of building materials, house-furnishing goods, fuel, and various other commodities have been materially reduced during the past month, prices of agricultural products have advanced to such an extent that no material change has occurred in the composite price of commodities. Very likely the pendulum is

now beginning a swing that will favor the farmers. The export corporation suggested by Secretary Wallace might accelerate the swing.

WHY IS ART?

THE

HE American boy in school, preparing for a life of merchandising or manufacturing or farming, studies those things known as the liberal arts, not for the direct benefit he will derive from them in his future work, but because of the broader outlook they will give him and for the indirect advantages they will enable him to bring to his work. Would he be equally benefited, indirectly and in a broader outlook, by a study of that other group of subjects generally referred to as the fine arts? Dr. George C. Nimmons, of the United States Bureau of Education, thinks so and de

schools, to avoid giving a larger place to the fine arts, or at least to some of them. Music, painting, sculpture-a larger place for these possibly may not be demanded. Architecture, landscape gardening, craftsmanship in fabrics, in furniture, in all of the things that go to make up the material side, at least, of family life and of community life-an insistent demand for more liberal teaching of these is almost sure. And the first group will not be without its ardent advocates. At least one artist-educator is already asserting that "if America is ever to be what it ought to be, it must place the fiddle and the paint pot by the side of the cradle."

THE PROPOSED MERGER OF
PRESBYTERIAN AND
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES

clares that the colleges of the country BY

are neglecting a duty by failing to make the fine arts an integral part of their curricula.

The art training proposed by Dr. Nimmons is not professional preparation such as is given by regular art schools, but such training as will give all students in college, no matter what their callings are to be, such an understanding and knowledge of the arts that they will be able to appreciate them properly. This knowledge, he believes, would be of the greatest practical use. It would give the manufacturer and the merchant a standard of good design which, in turn and in addition to making their business more profitable, would greatly elevate the living standards of all the people who use the wares of manufacturer and merchant. If the farmers generally had such an understanding of art, says Dr. Nimmons, there is hardly a farm in the country but could, practically without expense, become a place of beauty. If the people generally had such an understanding of art, the monstrosities of county court-houses and other public buildings would be impossible.

Dr. Nimmons has expressed, in the voice of official Governmental utterance, a conviction that many men and women are expressing just now in personal conversation and otherwise. Of the unusual number of Americans who spent a part of the past summer in Europe, a large part came home impressed with the value of an appreciation of art in rebuilding the ruined places, even in restoring prostrate industries to vigorous activity.

Indications are that it is going to be rather difficult for the colleges of the United States, and even for the public

Β

OY a vote overwhelming in its majority the National Council of Congregational Churches has made an overture to the Presbyterian Church for organic union.

No action of the National Council can bind any Congregational church. As its name implies, each congregation of the denomination known as Congregational is self-governing. Congregationalists are jealous of their religious liberty, and nothing that their National body can do will commit the several Congregational churches to a change in polity. The fact that this overture was made with what approached unanimity indicates two things: first, that there is a growing appreciation of co-operation as well as liberty in religion, and, second, that any plan likely to result from this overture will not sacrifice the liberty which Congregationalists have always jealously guarded.

Though differing somewhat in form of government, the Congregational and Presbyterian bodies have been closely allied from early days.

The proposal arose from the action taken by the Presbytery and Congregational Union of Cleveland,

Ohio.

To work out a plan of National scope and put it into operation will require years. The Congregationalists' overture will be made before the Presbyterian Assembly, which meets next spring.

SPORT AND CASH

APYRUS, winner of the English

fore the flying hoofs of Zev, perhaps the best of American three-year-olds. On the day of the race, and the conditions under which it was run, Zev was