as Wells does, that all the priests of the Roman Church are selfish and hypocritical materialists is as extravagant and unintelligent as the most superstitious article which he can find in the Catholic creed. The trouble with Mr. Wells is that he is one of the most superstitious men of the age. He has a childlike faith in crass materialism. He pooh-poohs any belief in the power of spiritual beauty. If he is as logical as he thinks he is, he must secretly cherish the opinion that all artists would like to be linen-drapers, that Keats would rather have been a livery-stable keeper than the author of "The Grecian Urn" if Society had only let him follow his bent. But, as Mr. Wells so thoroughly knows, Society, as at present organized, is, next to the Catholic Church, the most cruel and selfish combination in human history!

The fact is that the Roman Catholic Church has a beautiful side which appears to be wholly beyond Mr. Wells's comprehension. I happened upon, the other day, a charming little aquarelle in the New York "Sun" which in a few simple strokes reveals this spiritual beauty:

The girl had spent last summer in the south of France, visiting old churches and gazing out over the blue Mediterranean. A longing to be back there grips her occasionally. She sighs for the lovely peace of the evenings, when she watched the peasants coming home across the fields and along the shaded roads, and saw their heads bend reverently at the sound of the Angelus.

Last Sunday, a glorious day, clear, cool, with deep-blue skies, lazy white clouds, and leaves shimmering in the sun, she spent an hour up at the Cloisters on Washington Heights. Amid the ruins of the old French abbey and in the sweet, quiet walled garden she lived again the serene spirit of life as she had experienced it last summer.

Outside the Cloisters she wandered along the road. The river was blue, blue as the Mediterranean, and across

The girl smiled. Here was a bit of the Old World. An old abbey, blue water, and peasants praying at a wayside shrine.

This recalls an experience of my own. Many years ago I was leaving Milan on a very early train. Desiring to have a last glimpse of the Cathedral-which, in spite of its bizarre exterior, has one of the most beautiful interiors in Europe -I left my hotel soon after sunrise and stepped inside the great church. The early morning sun-rays piercing the superb stained-glass windows filled the mysterious building with a truly "dim religious light." As I stood just inside the great entrance, listening to the intonations of early mass coming from the distant chancel, an old man, evidently of the peasant class, entered, holding a small boy of nine or ten years by the hand-probably, I thought, his grandson. The man was of the tall, spare, finely chiseled Italian type. His clothing, old and evidently mended here and there, was scrupulously neat and clean. He took out a red bandanna handkerchief, spread it on the stone floor to protect his carefully cherished garments and those of his equally neat charge, and showed the boy how to kneel. I was the spectator of a first lesson in reverence. As I stepped out into the piazza to return to my hotel, I left the old man and his grandson kneeling there with bowed. heads bathed in delicately tinted sunlight and in the faint strains of the distant organ. Mr. Wells would perhaps call this a pitiful display of superstition. But I have remembered it, and often thought of it with benefit, as a manifestation of that irrepressible belief of mankind that there is a mysterious spirit in the universe which elicits our recognition, adoration, and loyalty.

Longfellow, certainly not a Romanist, has described a similar experience in a beautiful sonnet which he prefixed to his translation of Dante's "Inferno:"

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door

A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,

Lay down his burden and with reverent feet

Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor

Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; Far off the noises of the world retreat;

The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.

So, as I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate,

Kneeling in prayer and not ashamed to pray,

The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, While the eternal ages watch and wait.

It is this belief which has produced some beautiful characters in the Roman Catholic priesthood whom no other "interesting, well-paid employment" could have diverted from their faith and works St. Francis, Cardinal Mercier, and Father Damien, for example.

At the risk of making this article too long, I venture to offer another illustration of the influence which the Roman Catholic Church has had in the cultivation of an appreciation of spiritual beauty. It may be found in the autobiographical reminiscences of François Millet, the French painter, whom no one, I think, would undertake to call conventional or superstitious:

came

This I remember hearing about my great-uncle, who was the brother of my paternal grandfather. He had been a laborer in his youth, and had become a priest rather late in life. I think he had a small parish at the time of the Revolution. I know that he was persecuted at that time, and I have heard how a party of men to search my grandfather's house, when he was hidden there. They prosecuted their search in the most brutal fashion; but being of an ingenious turn of mind, he managed to make a hiding-place which communicated with his bed, where he took refuge when his enemies came. One day they arrived so unexpectedly that his bed had not yet time to get cold, and when they were told that he was gone, they exclaimed, "He was here just now; the bed is still warm, but he has managed to escape!" And all the while he could hear them talking. In their fury they turned the whole house upside down, and then went

away.

My uncle said mass, when he could, in the house; and I have still the leaden chalice which he used. After the Revolution he lived on with his brother, and held the office of Vicar of the parish. Every morning he went to church to say mass; after breakfast he went to work in the fields, and almost always took me with him. When we reached the field, he took off his cassock, and set to work in shirtsleeves and breeches. He had the strength of Hercules. Some great walls which he built to support a piece of sloping ground are still standing,

and are likely to last for many years to come. These walls are very high, and are built of immense stones. They give one an impression of Cyclopean strength. I have heard both my grandmother and my father say that he would allow no one to help him to lift even the heaviest stones, and there are some which would require the united strength of five or six ordinary men with levers to move them.

He had an excellent heart. He taught the poor children of the village, whose parents could not send them to school, for the love of God. He even gave them simple Latin lessons. This excited the jealousy of his fellow

M

priests, who complained of him to the Bishop of Coutances. I once found, among some old papers, a rough draft of a letter which he addressed in selfdefense to the bishop, saying that he lived at home with his peasant brother and that in the Commune there were some poor children who had no sort of instruction. He had therefore decided to teach them as much as he could, out of pity, and begged the bishop, for the love of God, not to prevent these poor children from learning to read. I believe the bishop at length consented to let him have his own way-a truly generous permission. As he grew old my great-uncle be

came very heavy, and often walked faster than he wished. I remember how often he used to say, "Ah! the head bears away the limbs." At his death I was about seven years old. It is very curious to recall these early impressions, and to see how ineffaceable is the mark which they leave upon the mind.

No, Mr. Wells, criticise the iniquities of the Church all you will, but do not forget that all revolutions are not faultless, all persecutions are not ecclesiastical, and all priests are not self-pampered materialists.

Y suit-case is on a garden chair, my typewriter on the suit-case. I am on another garden chair, and all of us are in the shade of an ash tree on a hillside overlooking the gorge of Natural Bridge.

I am not going to walk down there to see that finest, perhaps, of all our natural wonders. It is not that I mind the walk. The distance is only a quarter of a mile, and I love walking-love it, in moderation, even on a hot day such as this is. It is not that I would begrudge the fifty cents which I should have to pay at the gate-though I do think that the Federal Government ought to take the Natural Bridge out of private hands.

Here is my reason for sitting up here and looking across the gorge to the blue Blue Ridge beyond, instead of going down there to see a thing that clings in my memory as the most impressive natural object that my eyes have ever beheld.

This morning I climbed up out of the Shenandoah Valley onto the divide. Back of me were the numerous streams of the Shenandoah head-waters. Away off to my left were the little streams, threading their way among hills, that go to make the James. Off to my right were other little streams, winding among hills equally big and blue, that go to make up the Tennessee, which, far away, loses itself in the Ohio, which joins the Mississippi. Waters starting on their way to the Chesapeake and to the Atlantic; other waters starting to the much more distant Gulf of Mexico! I wanted a drink.

A big old house stood on a gentle slope above the road. An old lady, white-haired and gentle, sat on the porch with a strapping big and finely dressed man, thirty-five years old at a

guess. I took my water-jug out of its nest of newspapers, walked into the yard, and said to the lady, "I am wondering if you will give me a jugful of awfully cold mountain water?" She pointed to the fountain, but apologized. The water was piped down from the mountainside, she said, and got somewhat warm on the way. I was hiding my disappointment under the pretense that, anyhow, it would be better than the water I was accustomed to, when the big man reached for his straw hat. "If you don't mind walking a quarter of a mile," he said, "I'll take you to the finest spring you ever saw-at least, it is the finest one I ever saw. And," he continued, after introducing himself, "I have seen several springs. We have them right here in these mountains, where I was born and brought up. I know hundreds of them. And I know hundreds of others all over the country. I am something of an electrical engineer, and have worked on power-line construction in various parts of the country for fifteen years. Oh, I've seen fine springs East, West, North, and South, but nothing to equal this one where we are going right now to fill your jug. I haven't seen it since I went away to college twenty years ago. I am having a real vacation now, and mother and I came back to the old farm, though it is in the hands of strangers, to be together-and alone for a while. I haven't been down to the spring yet. I'm awfully glad you came along with your jug; gives me an excuse for getting away from that iron-pipe swill."

By that time we were, I could see, approaching the spring. The location did not seem to me ideal. The ground was low, almost marshy. On closer approach, the spring confirmed my fears. It did not flow with the sparkle

and splash that a mountain spring ought to have. It was sluggish-a big, lazy hole full of water which had a milky look. Perhaps it carried no surface mud, but it carried mud just the same. But a man cannot belittle another man's favorite spring, can he?

I stooped and filled my jug. When it was full, it was opaque. I lingered for a moment, stooping over. And I think, in my heart, I was sneering at this big mountain man, come home to boast of a spring so poor as this.

Then I straightened up and faced him.

His eyes were red. His mouth twitched at the corners. He was cramming his handkerchief back into his pocket.

"It"-he hesitated "it doesn't look right. I'm sure-I don't know. I can't see that anything has been changed. And I know it was the finest spring I ever saw."

Of course, it never was really a fine spring. His finest spring was the imagination of memory.

He was a saddened man as we walked back up the hill. He said nothing until we were half-way up. Then he broke into over-done enthusiasm for a powerline project that he is going to survey in Florida this winter.

I was a saddened man, too, as I drove on to Natural Bridge. And here I sit under this ash tree looking out to the blue hills over a great chasm. What is in that chasm I do not know. What is in my mind concerning it I do know. For a long, long time it has been a delight to me when my memory has reverted to it. And I will be dad-blamed if I am going to have my hallucinations shattered by a prodding, peering, prying reporter's probe in the hands of

DIXON MERRITT.

IA JUANA!

TA

One hesitates even to mention the name, lest it shall further advertise an already over-advertised spot. Yet Tia Juana exists, and it is a situation to reckon with. Some months ago it flared into the headlines when an entire family committed suicide after forty-eight hours of Tia Juana festivities. But, headlines or no headlines, Tia Juana is there 366 days of leap year, and only one day less on other years, doing its deadly work.

Tia Juana (Aunt Jane), however, is not so much a place as a condition which extends for some eighteen hundred miles along our Mexican border. It has all the lure of that poetic country where "there ain't no Ten Commandments" and a man's wish is law. It represents the step over the line which means to many the temporary breaking from accepted standards and the letting down of moral conduct. To the occasional visitor it has the lure of the unusual, but to the dweller along the border the unusual soon becomes the commonplace.

It is perhaps easy to become unduly horrified, for when one checks his impressions against conditions which existed in many of our great cities in the United States a few years ago (and which still exist in some places) the question is raised whether Tia Juana is, after all, so far behind the rest of us. However, the public conscience did become aroused over the conditions in our own cities, and by strenuous efforts a great change has been wrought.

What shall be done with our Tia Juanas? Needless to say, there is but one ultimate answer. They must be done away with. The welfare of the community demands it. However, it may not be amiss to understand what it is all about.

To the average visitor Tia Juana stands for play, for excitement, for an excursion into the unusual, and possibly for a dip into vice in an environment where vice seems to be the natural thing and where social disapproval is reduced to a minimum. Back of it all, however, our Tia Juanas stand for a huge commercialized exploitation of morbidity. The amount of money which crosses the line and is expended in resorts there is past all computation, and records kept by the Bureau of Immigration show that in addition to immigrants and emigrants 12,000,000 casual visitors cross and then

By JAY S. STOWELL

recross the Mexican border each year. In the resorts of one Mexican town, rarely mentioned in the headlines, from $35,000 to $40,000 in American checks are said to be passed in a single Saturday evening in addition to all the cash trans

The Last Stand

of the Indian

-a striking survey of the social, political, and economic problems of Mexico will appear in next week's issue

of The Outlook.

actions. So profitable is this business of vice that now we hear stories of the establishment of a huge Mexican Monte Carlo some miles down the Lower California border, and we are also told that the development of a great racing-track in the United States close to the line awaits only the liberalization of California laws.

In general, the stock in trade of this great commercialized enterprise is liquor, gambling, and prostitution. At Tia Juana one hundred days of racing and hilarious betting are included, and at Juarez bull-fighting is added for good

measure.

We refer to "our" Tia Juanas advisedly, for the major enterprises along the border are controlled by Americans, the chief patrons are from the United States, and the profits accrue chiefly to Americans. Not all of the money, however, goes to Americans, for large fees are demanded by the Mexican governors for permission to run the institutions in question. The amounts thus secured are enormous, although there is reason to believe that they do not all find their way into the public treasury. It is a well-established fact, for example, that a former governor of Lower California moved across the border into the United States for tactical reasons after having made himself immensely wealthy from the proceeds of vice. The license fee for the Tia Juana race-track alone is said to be $2,000 a day.

It is hard for one to appreciate the extent of what is carried on unless he has watched the countless multitudes crossing the line by automobile and railroad on a busy day, visited the enormous multiplied and crowded gambling-houses which are as easily accessible as grocery stores in one's own town, seen the large number of well-patronized saloons, and got a view of the multitudes of scarlet women, who evidently secure enough income to pay the heavy fees demanded and to provide a living for themselves, else they would not continue at their trade.

And to all of this American young men and women and older men and women come, and with it they mingle freely until one can hardly tell the good from the bad. Incidentally, it should be added that the houses of prostitution, which a few years ago were filled with American girls, are now occupied by Mexican girls. This seems to be due to an attempt to protect home industries. However, American girls are in some cases still permitted to serve as "percentage" girls, and there is reason to believe that by circumventing the regulations which permit them only to receive a percentage of the amount spent for liquor by their companions they are able to carry their activities further than the legal restrictions might allow.

Nor should it be imagined that the desire to clean up this rather disagreeable situation is all on one side. President Calles himself is in slight sympathy with what goes on. Some years ago, while he was still Governor of Sonora, I had an opportunity to traverse the entire border, and along the Sonora border, so far as could be ascertained, not a saloon was open and every attempt was made to emphasize wholesome trade relations rather than to pander to the abnormal. Under Calles's successors, however, condiions have changed for the worse. It should be noted, in contrast to this, that at other points, such as at Juarez, there has been a marked improvement in surface conditions, at least.

Nor are the Mexican consuls enthusiastic about the present situation. Yet they tell strange tales of modern American girls coming storming into their offices demanding to know why they cannot go across the border in company with their boy friends without a written permission from their parents. At San Diego it is said that thousands of young

people of this sort have been discouraged from visiting Tia Juana by a voluntary organization which has stopped cars en route and urged the young people to turn back to their homes.

The problem for those who live on the border is an acute one, particularly when there are growing children. As one man in a border town far from Tia Juana said, "No self-respecting parents will undertake to raise a family in this town." Yet, unfortunately, some self-respecting parents feel obliged to remain.

In some cases, of course, vice conditions are but adjuncts of a very important and very wholesome trade relationship with Mexico. Large sums of Mexican money are spert daily in the United States for the ordinary necessities of life, in addition to about a million dollars' worth of imports which go into Mexico each day.

TH

It is evident that there are ways in which this disagreeable situation can be controlled when governments arrive at the point where they wish to control it. The closing of the border at Tia Juana after 6 P.M. probably is a move in the right direction, although it is in some respects unfortunate that moral conditions are such as to make the closing necessary. The new closing order grew out of the Peteet tragedy, which was enacted there a few months ago and which was so widely heralded in the newspapers. Naturally, those who remain later than six o'clock can stay overnight and return the following day. The closing of the border from 6 P.M. to 8 A.M. has greatly reduced the number of evening visitors. At the same time it has seriously limited legitimate travel across the line. The situation is far from satisfactory.

Some day a way will be found and "Aunt Jane" will once more stand for all that is clean and wholesome rather than the contrary. In the meantime might it not be well to insist that some one be looking for that way?

The discouraging factor is the acquiescence of so many of the more respectable members of American communities in the conditions which exist "across the line." It is easy to look upon present conditions as "inevitable" and to apply to them all of the old arguments which were applied to our restricted vice sections, and doubly so when floods of pleasure-seeking visitors have money to spend in legitimate as well as questionable channels. On the border, as elsewhere, we tend to get what we really want, and there, as in too many other places, the almighty dollar still warps men's social judgments.

HE Shenandoah National Park promises soon to join the sisterhood of playgrounds now available to the people of the United States. National Parks, be it understood, are distinct from National Forests, but in this case the two will link up. The Nation already owns much wild land in Virginia adjacent to the Blue Ridge, which it is proposed to encompass in the

By DON C. SEITZ

Shenandoah reservation. Here a territory ten miles wide and seventy miles long, roughly speaking, and estimated to inclose 520,000 acres is being brought under option to create the Park. The Southern Appalachian National Park Committee, appointed by Secretary Work, composed of Representative Henry Wilson Temple, Pennsylvania, Chairman; William C. Gregg, New

Jersey; Harlan P. Kelsey, Massachusetts; Colonel Glenn S. Smith, United States Geological Survey, Washington, D. C.; and Major William A. Welsh, General Manager, Palisades Interstate Park, New York, has indorsed the proposition emanating from Virginia, where a vigorous Shenandoah National Park Association, headed by Colonel H. J. Benchoff, of Woodstock, has successfully