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with the citizens indicating by vote the activity they desire the post to perform, the net result in public improvement will be incalculable. The service given will be truly comparable with that given during war time.

I find myself leaving the subject of community betterment reluctantly, for, in my opinion, it is a magnificent enterprise and is truly the field in which the Legion should labor during the remainder of its life.

YE

ET there is also the Legion's campaign to arouse the dormant voter to a greater sense of public duty, which many leaders of American life consider the most constructive service the Legion has yet given. Certain it is that nothing that the Legion has undertaken has aroused such widespread approval. President Coolidge in his message to the Legion's Philadelphia Convention emphatically indorsed the "get-out-thevote" campaign. Vice-President Charles G. Dawes praised it unstintingly. Newspapers of every class, creed, and political hue united in declaring that the Legion is the only organization that could undertake such a delicate task without its motives being questioned, and the only organization most likely to achieve a modicum of success.

In conjunction with the National Civic Federation, the Legion began, just prior to the 1926 primaries, a campaign of political education, with the object, not just to increase the number of voters at an election, but to arouse in the citizen a greater interest in the machinery of politics. In other words, the addition of a million or more unintelligent votes merely increases the work of the votecounters and does not result in better government. The Legion campaign is intended to interest the citizen in the selection of candidates as much as in voting, an important difference from previous "get-out-the-vote" campaigns. The initial effort began with the calling of more than five hundred meetings in as many communities, where permanent organizations were effected. The Legion officiated merely in setting up the meeting. Other civic organizations sent their representatives, of which the Legion became merely one. So successful was this effort that it is now planned to carry on a two-year program, ending with the 1928 Presidential elections. The experiment may then be weighed to find out if such a campaign should be conducted over a period of several years.

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decision to hold its 1927 Convention in Paris, France, has aroused widespread interest. Unquestionably the movement of 30,000 Americans to France next year of 30,000 Americans to France next year will be an international incident of more than usual consequence. Such an unprecedented movement-the greatest peace-time transatlantic movement in the world's history-certainly is clothed with a public interest, as a newspaper editor told me not long ago.

My own opinion, and that of the Legion in general, is that such a pilgrimage abroad will greatly aid our foreign relations. Contact and knowledge, it is said, are the basis of international understanding. If this be so, then 30,000 Americans drawn from every State in the Union will carry back with them a real sympathy for France and her probreal sympathy for France and her problems.

(3) The training of all field, line, and staff officers of the Reserve Corps, together with the enlisted personnel of the organized reserve for a period of fifteen days every three years.

(4) A Reserve Officers' Training Corps adequate to provide 5,000 reserve officers annually.

(5) A Citizens' Military Training Camp of 50,000 men.

(6) The procurement, development, and maintenance of such material and camps as will properly equip all the above components and the further maintenance of an adequate war reserve for three field armies. The Legion will always put its full influence behind adequate National defense.

THAN

HANKS to the $5,000,000 endowment fund contributed by the public to endow the Legion's work for disabled veterans and war orphans, this phase of

Free policies outlined above are of the organization's service has been placed

major interest; but the Legion still holds as its paramount objectives rehabilitation of the disabled, care of the war orphans, and maintenance of an adequate National defense.

National defense never arouses a great deal of public interest in peace time. That is the reason why wars have cost America so much in blood and treasure; the door is locked after the horse has gone. Yet members of the Legion who have seen war at first hand, have seen the bloody consequences of a short sighted military policy, do not intend that unpreparedness through lack of public interest shall slay the youth of another generation should another war break upon us.

When the National Defense Act of 1920 was passed, the Legion stood behind it unequivocally. To-day it stands just as bluntly for the strict observance of every clause in that act, the first military policy this country ever had. The efforts of certain organizations-pacifist, Communist, and otherwise to abolish the military training provided for in high schools and colleges will meet with stern resistance by the Legion. Congress has not provided sufficient funds to keep the military establishment up to the level set in the National Defense Act. At Philadelphia the Convention petitioned Congress to appropriate the funds necessary to maintain:

(1) A Regular Army of 12,000 officers and 125,000 enlisted men, in addition to the recently authorized increase in the Air Corps.

(2) A National Guard of 190,000 men, to be increased by annual increments to 250,000 men by 1936.

on a permanent basis. During the coming year the Legion will spend more than $225,000 on these two rehabilitating activities. The program of the Legion in its rehabilitation and child welfare work is too well known to need amplification here. For six years they have been the outstanding policies, and will continue so. With the advent of closer co-operation between the United States Veterans' Bureau and our rehabilitation service, the work progresses favorably, with only legislation asked that is necessary to correct some manifest injustice in the present laws covering the disabled.

In child welfare work the Legion has gone ahead, on its principle that "a home for every homeless child of a veteran" is the only sound principle. The billet system has been gradually less emphasized; and at present and in the future, until they are closed, the billets will be used merely as a temporary clearing-house for children waiting to be placed in proper homes. The increase in child welfare work during the short year of initial effort is indicated by the last report, which showed 805 war orphans cared for by the Legion. by the Legion. The number will increase as the Legion gains more experience in this line of service, as it is estimated that 35,000 orphans eventually will need some form of care.

As I look back over this article it

strikes me that the Legion's year will be devoted to outstanding public service. Not one activity has been listed but directly affects the entire Nation.

It seems to me that the Legion is proving that its slogan of service, "To God and Country," is no idle phrase.

S

By CRISTEL HASTINGS

OD, make my eyes to look on hills,
That I may find my rest,

And never let me see a sail
Against the ocean's breast.

Never let the salt of spray
Lay soft upon my lips,

Nor let the vagrant winds bring tales
That have to do with ships.

God, make my eyes to look on trees

On winding roads of land,

And never let my footprints mark

A strip of shell-strewn sand.

Never let me look on hulls

That face the spindrift way

If I would plow straight furrows in

A field beyond the bay.

The Juilliard Musical Foundation

What Is It Doing and What Has It Failed to Do for Americans ? By CHARLES HENRY MELTZER

EVEN years ago-to be accurate,

on the evening of June 25, 1919Mr. Augustus D. Juilliard, well known both as a captain of industry and as a lover of "grand" opera, died in his New York home at 11 West 57th Street, leaving about $5,000,000 to his kin and others near to him, and bequeathing the residue of his large fortune to a Foundation which was to be incorporated for the encouragement and development of music and musicians in this country. The exact value of the residue in question was roughly estimated at the time at something between fifteen and twenty million dollars. Never before had so splendid a provision been made here for the assistance of music. Never had our musicians and our music lovers been so heartened.

In the clauses of Mr. Juilliard's will specifically dealing with the musical bequest, of which The Outlook has secured a copy, it is laid down that the executors and trustees "as soon after my death as may be practicable shall incorporate or cause to be incorporated under the general laws of the State of New York or by special Act of the Legislature of the State of New York a corporation to be known as the Juilliard Musical Foundation, which shall have authority, among

Courtesy of the New York "World"

The Late Augustus D. Juilliard, Capi talist, Donor of the Juilliard Musical Foundation

such other powers as may be conferred upon it, to take and hold property and administer, invest and reinvest the same, and to devote the income therefrom to the objects of said organization, which

shall be in general scope as follows: (a) to aid worthy students of music in securing a complete and adequate musical education, either at appropriate institutions now in existence or hereafter created, or from appropriate instructors in this country or abroad; (b) to arrange for and to give without profit to it musical entertainments, concerts and recitals of a character appropriate for the education and instruction of the general public in the musical arts; and (c) (to such extent as it may be lawfully entitled so to do without affecting the validity of the trust by this section of my Will created) to aid by gift of part of such income at such times and to such extent in such amounts as the Trustees of said Foundation may in their discretion deem proper, the Metropolitan Opera Company in the City of New York, for the purpose of assisting such organization in the production of operas, provided that suitable arrangements can be made with such company so that such gifts shall in no wise inure to its monetary profit."

In thus stating the objects and powers of the corporation, Mr. Juilliard explained that he did not intend to limit his executors and trustees to the exact terms used, nor that the charter to be

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procured by them should be limited only to the objects above set forth. With what some have come to regard as regrettable laxity, he left details "to the good judgment of the Trustees." Furthermore, he directed his executors and trustees, upon the organization of the Foundation, "to transfer and pay over unto the said corporation the entire capital of the said trust fund created by this section of the Will," in order that said. corporation "may devote the same under the laws of the State of New York to the uses and purposes that may be provided in the charter." He requested that the Trustees appointed should be "the President of the Central Trust Company of New York, the President of the Guaranty Trust Company of New York, and my nephew Frederick A. Juilliard," who were to choose "at least two other persons whom they deem best qualified to act with them." To continue: "(d) Until the organization of the corporation Juilliard Musical Foundation as hereinabove provided (which I trust may be accomplished without any appreciable delay after my death) ... I direct my said Executors and Trustees under this Will to pay over unto said Frederick A. Juilliard all income that may be actually received from the fund provided to be transferred to said corporation upon its organization, but that upon the organization of said corporation all distribution of income from said fund unto said Frederick A. Juilliard shall cease, and there shall be no apportionment to him of income partially or wholly earned."

In the event, for any reason, of a failure to organize the Foundation the funds originally bequeathed for musical purposes should go, in equal amounts, to the American Museum of Natural History and St. John's Guild.

The wording of clause d is suggestive when one reflects on the delay in the functioning of the Foundation. And this reminds me that, in an interview which I had with him over two years ago, the Secretary of the Foundation, without binding me to discretion, said to me, "Are you aware that . . . if I had not put my hand in my own pocket to make the Foundation a going concern before a certain date, there might have been no fund to administer?" What was meant by this I do not know.

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tion as a purely private matter. "The public be damned."

Despite the wording of clause d, it was years before anything of the least use to music was achieved by the trustees. One of their first acts was the appointment as secretary and virtual

Keystone

Eugene Allen Noble, L.H.D., D.D., S.T.D., LL.D., Secretary of the Juilliard Musical Foundation

administrator of a gentleman who, though of evangelical respectability, was quite unknown as a musician or an influence in art. More years elapsed, during which this gentleman was supposed ing which this gentleman was supposed to be painfully amassing information to guide him in the disbursement of those millions. Meanwhile American musicians creative and interpretative-were struggling for existence, admirable musical societies were starving for want of money, and unselfish efforts to promote National opera and opera in English were being, courteously and less courteously, refused recognition. From time to time we read of foolish scholarships of $1,000 each and restricted to one year-which, in some way not clear to most, were being awarded by judges selected by the administrative secretary. Far from helping poor and aspiring students, in effect those scholarships were adding to the prevailing misery of American musicians. What they needed was, not casual gifts, but more and more outlets for their talents, in the shape of musical societies, symphony orchestras, and opera companies, besides, in the case of creative musicians, opportunities for free hearings and publications of their music. This obvious fact was slighted and, even of the pitiful sums devoted to scholarships, all or most

went into the pockets of a few favored professors connected with the Foundation. The policy of the Foundation helped the children of the rich at the expense of the poor students and artists, creative and interpretative, whom Mr. Juilliard must have been most anxious to encourage.

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A

CCORDING to a letter to me from Florence E. S. Knapp, Secretary of State for the State of New York, dated April 30, 1926, there is no record of a corporation, foreign or domestic, in her office at Albany under the name Juilliard Musical Foundation.'

Protests against the delay in the administration of those millions multiplied. But were they heeded? The press as a whole ignored them. Not till about a year ago, when, after the Board of Advisers of the Foundation resigned, presumably as a rebuke to the secretary, the addition of Mr. Kenneth Bradley, of the Chicago Bush Conservatory, as educational executive, was made public; and it is notorious that since his appointment Mr. Bradley has had little or no liberty and initiative allowed him.

In an interview with a New York daily newspaper, Dr. Noble, the secretary of the Foundation, was credited with the almost incredible statement that only students able to clothe, house, and feed themselves should think of butting into music. At last, however, a great Plan for the disposal of the Juilliard fund (now estimated at less than fifteen millions, though it would seem only natural that the original capital had been increased by large accumulations of interest) was announced. What did it tell us?

That the Foundation was arranging for the merging into one training school of Dr. Frank Damrosch's Institute of Musical Art and two or three other private institutions not named. That in some improved fashion the awards of scholarships (and fellowships) would be

continued. That students would have to pay-and it is notorious that they would pay extravagantly-for their education. Nothing of the least importance was said of indispensable outlets for graduates. Nothing was promised for the encouragement of composers. Nothing was even hinted at with regard to the production of opera, the performance of music, or the assistance of musical societies ordered in clause b of Mr. Juilliard's will. In brief, one more academy, on old lines,

Dr. Noble explained in September of this year that the Foundation was incorporated by a special act of the Legislature in 1920. It is strange that this bas not generally been known to those nterested. -THE EDITORS.

was to be organized, in competition with less wealthy institutions and many excellent teachers. Since the first revelation of the Plan promises of assistance in securing professional engagements to graduates have been printed. But they are merely promises.

Not one word as to the monetary con

est) of the Foundation. What of the remaining millions? Why has there been no public accounting for their stewardship by the trustees? Why have no Why have no meetings been organized by musicians and music lovers to demand explanations of Dr. Noble and his employers?

sideration involved in the "merger." CONSIDER the methods adopted in for

But, at the wildest guess, it would not account for more than a quarter of the fifteen millions (without accruing inter

eign countries, and more particularly in France, where qualified students get their musical education gratis for

three, four, or five years, and, in the case of laureates, are assured of public appearances and productions in state theaters, to say nothing of the "Prix de Rome" awarded to the best composers. Then compare it with the present Plan of the Juilliard Musical Foundation. If the late Mr. Juilliard had dreamed that a mountain in labor would produce such a ridiculous mouse, would he have been sc careless as, alas! he was, in the disposal of his fortune?

Weeds: Nature's Wound Dressers

W

EEDS are the wound dressers of the soil. Whenever man or nature makes a scar, the vigorous, coarse-fibered weeds find out the spot and straightway mend the injury. Hated and much objurgated, the weed, of whatever breed, is one of the most useful forces in nature. The farmer regards it as a foe, the gardener as a nuisance. In truth, it is a friend that persists, regardless of ill treatment and attempts at extirpation. Soil, to preserve its strength, must be protected with some sort of nature covering, otherwise the rains leach it, or wash away the precious particles of mold that make it reproductive. Man neglects this factor in his dealings with the earth. Plowed fields are allowed to go uncovered after the crop is harvested. Washouts are left to take care of themselves. So is burned-over land. In all three instances great damage results, and much more would follow but for the energy of the weed family.

How weeds seed so swiftly is one of the benign mysteries. Could man find it out he would soon become the destroyer he likes to be, to his own great harm. Therefore the weed keeps its secret. We only know that on every bare and neglected spot where it is possible for seed to lodge or root to hold the weed appears and lustily seizes the bare spot. Soon verdure shows, the soil is held together against the shower. Nitrogen is coaxed from the air and disribed about the roots. The leaves and stalks decay in the fall and a little "top soil" is created, which grows with the seasons. In time enough is created to afford life to finer plants and the soft grasses. The wound is healed.

The weeds themselves are often replaced by others in the course of their operations as salvors. Soil wounds are not all caused by abrasions. Some are sores made by dumping refuse,, creating

By DON C. SEITZ

besides unseemly sights and smells and smothering out the gentler plants. I recall a notable case of weed-work. Some years ago the town of New Rochelle, in New York, selected a swamp on the line of the New Haven Railroad as a dumping-ground for refuse. The ashes and other débris were thrown over a ledge, creating a nuisance to the eye and nose, and, what was worse, poisoning the half-dozen acres in the swamp, so that nearly all the plant life died. Where the frogs had sung in cheerful tones a rusty scum appeared, and where in autumn glorious colors showed there was nothing but the dull-red tinting of the rust. The ledge had become a mountain of ashes, from which tin cans rippled into the swamp. It was altogether a most dolorous exhibition of the desolating carelessness of mankind, where convenience outweighed all other considerations. No thought was given to the appearance of the approach to the town -an American habit, by the way, it being customary to brighten the railroad vicinage with garbage. The thing went on for several years, and the festering mound grew in unsightliness.

Finally, the vandals who did it shifted their ground and left the scene to nature. The jimson-weed (stramonium) was the first one bold enough to tackle the discouraging desolation. Soon its broad leaves appeared and its strong roots found foothold in the ashes. With the found foothold in the ashes. With the growing summer its pale-blue blossoms gave a shy touch of color to the dismal mound of gray. With the fall its seed pods rattled full. These seeds are poisonous, and little children are often killed by them. Fortunately, the ashheap was too isolated for childish feet and the stramonium brought no harm in its wake. The next year the valiant ragweed, with its thick branches, crept up the slope. In the rusty waste at the base of the cliff the fireweed found a

place and fringed the edge of the ashheap. Thus a filter of roots was found that checked the passage of the lye into the swamp. It was not long before the desolation began to show signs of life. The flags peeped out of the morass. Young swamp maples and black alders began to appear. Other trees whose roots like water followed and tall grasses grew green on the borders. In another season it was dotted with oases of green, that became bronze and gold in autumn. By the next spring the frogs renewed their clamor and small turtles came from somewhere to sit on stumps in the sun. Life had come back to the swamp. It was itself again, and now is finer than ever before in beauty and the great variety of its dwellers.

But what of the gray ash-heap? No sign of it remains. It gives no trace of the rubbish that built it. Moreover, the weeds, having fulfilled their mission, have vanished too. Young trees and forest plants have taken their place, with grass where the soil is too thin for shrubbery. Complete replacement has come to mend all the injury done by the garbage gatherers. Man did nothing to remedy his outrages on nature. The despised weed has restored the landscape and hidden all the vileness that he brought to the pleasant place.

The poets sing of grass and flowers and warble of the graces of the vine. Some one should pen a pæan for the weed. But for it none of the others could make their way.

The angry gardener should give pause to his wrath. The weed is but intervening to save him from his own undoing. Where his plants do not protect the earth he should let the weed freely fulfill its function. The garden will be better for it and the invaders, mulched in the fall, will add an invaluable meed of richness to the "patch" that can be procured in no other way.

406

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The Book Table

Edited by EDMUND PEARSON

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Poets of New England and Otherwhere

W

By ARTHUR GUITERMAN

HILE not a New Englander
best
myself, some of my
friends are New Englanders.
Having spent many happy days in
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Mas-
sachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecti-
cut, my circle of acquaintance in those
States includes, not only exemplars of
the less picturesque classes, but also
farmers, woodsmen, fishermen, innkeep-
ers, mechanics, and like proper subjects
for literary exploitation; and in the
teeth of novelists and poets (including
the late Miss Amy Lowell) I protest that
New Englanders are not cast in any un-
varying mold; that they are not neces-
sarily dour, gloomy, dry, narrow, or
even "Puritanical;" that, while they
may not be disposed to greet every cas-
ual stranger effusively as "Brother,"
they are not necessarily unfriendly.
There is as much individuality to be met
in New England as anywhere else, and
your true New Englander should not be
dealt with as an ethnological or entomo-
logical specimen. So, in Wilbert Snow's
new collection of poems of the Maine
coast, "The Inner Harbor,'
refreshing when one of his characters,
discoursing on college professors, turns
the tables by concluding:

His profile clear, the glint of an eye,
And where I looked there he was not.

There are no disappointments in Sara Teasdale's "Dark of the Moon." This collection of fine, brief lyrics has all the delights of the author's earlier booksmelody and lilt, clear and lovely imagery, and the high simplicity that is so rare and precious in poetry. Of course, Miss Teasdale continues sweetly wistful, melancholy, and regretful in even her gayer moods, and prone to sudden poetic forebodings, but her sighs are music and her tears are pearls. She has a gift for presenting the essentials of a landscape or a mood, thus reaching the reader by awakening recollections of experience paralleling her own. Many will recall the mood suggested in "Autumn Dusk:" I saw above a sea of hills

A solitary planet shine,
And there was no one near or far

To keep the world from being mine. Miss Teasdale's publishers have also issued a set of four of her volumes'Flame and Shadow," "Rivers to the

"it is quite Sea," "Love Songs," and the present

Here comes one now through Ama-
riah's field

To see how we behave when we set
here

And talk all mornin' long; he'll listen

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"Dark of the Moon"-bound in leather and boxed.

The merits of "Lee: A Dramatic Poem," by Edgar Lee Masters, lie in certain eloquent passages begotten of the author's enthusiasm for his subject; its worst faults arise from a harking back to pompous models of a mode outworn. Mr. Masters has deemed it necessary to employ the device of a chorus cognizant of present, past, and future to aid in the presentation and development of his argument, and for this service he enlists two benevolent devils with the Persian These names Ormund and Arimanius. individuals, who have apparently a contemptuous affection for the human race and a great admiration for Robert E. Lee, interrupt the action with philosopbical and historical conversations that may

sometimes be impressive, but are at other times rather funny. On page 10, and in the year 1861, these two spirits are hovering around the base of the unfinished Washington Monument, which,

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In writing to the above advertiser please mention The Outlook

The Macmillan Comtr Lee

pany, New

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