13. The immediate starting of training forces for health, fire, and police systems.

14. The revival of efficiency in the office of the Commissioner of Accounts.

But the need of needs is publicity. Mr. Cutting indicates that insufficient publicity has been given not only to the working papers of the Commissioner of Accounts, but also to the records of the Health and Police Departments, the Corporation Counsel, and the City Chamberlain to protect the Mayor, to say nothing of protecting the public.

New York City's population now amounts to about five millions. It costs the city nearly $200,000,000 a year to take care of those people. They should have fullest information concerning civic methods. If Mr. Cutting has his way, they will have.. Strength to his elbow!

Then came the question, Who cleans the snow from the streets?" The reply was, "The Street-Cleaning Department of the city government."Who cleans the sidewalks?"

Not the government, but each dweller in a house," was the answer. Then the children were asked to observe on their way home how many walks were cleaned. The next day they reported that many were still uncleaned.

Were the citizens left to their own discretion in this matter?" the teacher inquired. "No; a city law commands them to clean their walks." Then certain paragraphs from the law were written on the blackboard. Why was the law not obeyed? Why was it not enforced? Do we respect law in general, if a particular law is habitually disregarded? There was a discussion regarding these queries. Then the suggestion was made that Neighborhood Clubs be formed in the interest of clean walks. Through the school talk the newspapers became interested. So did civic organizations. The whole forms a practical lesson in civics.

It is gratifying that schools are taking up this study in such practical ways. In Cleveland, for instance, city problems are being

actually and practically worked out in the biology courses. In Indianapolis a course in

Community Arithmetic " has been introduced in the elementary schools. In Kansas City, Kansas, the study of civics is being pursued in the high school course in chemistry, and high school pupils have been employed in the municipal laboratories in making analyses of water and milk.

Another step in advance is that the Federal Bureau of Education has arranged with the National Municipal League for more effective civic training in our schools by appointing the secretary of the League's Committee on Civic Education a collaborator in the Bureau at Washington. He will have an office there, acting as the Bureau's specialist in this field. Thus greater interest should be stimulated in this subject, both among educators and the public generally.

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE CHILDREN

Do Americans care enough for the welfare of American children to invoke for their protection the governmental powers they have invoked for the protection of commercial and financial interests?

Whether the United States will use its Federal power to diminish the evils of child labor is not a question of Constitutionality but merely a question of will. Congress has power enough if it wishes to exercise it.

The real obstacle to effective legislation to restrict inter-State commerce in the products of child labor is not any valid Constitutional objection-it is the special interest of those who profit by child labor.

A few years ago there was a bill before Congress which invoked the Federal power over inter-State commerce so as to make the production of goods by child labor practically impossible on any large scale. This bill was called the Beveridge Bill, because it was introduced and advocated by Senator Beveridge. There was a great outcry against it on the ground that it was unconstitutional. And yet exactly the same powers which that bill invoked have been exercised for the benefit of the jewelry trade! In other words, it is perfectly Constitutional to use the Federal power over foreign and inter-State commerce to benefit those who make a profit from a special industry, but not to benefit the children who are made to carry burdens

in many kinds of industry! The mere statement of this proposition is its own answer.

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There is now before Congress another bill which has been introduced by Mr. Palmer, a prominent Democratic Representative from Pennsylvania. It invokes exactly the same power that the Beveridge Bill invoked. applies that power in a different way, possibly a better way; but it has discovered no new power. Now that the bill bears a Democratic name we trust that the Democrats in Congress will see a new light.

The argument that this bill does not really regulate inter-State commerce, but only pretends to do so while really regulating industrial processes, has no basis in fact. If it were not for inter-State commerce in the products of child labor there would be no need for Federal action. It is because those States which have high standards cannot help themselves against the competition of States with low standards that the problem of child labor is a problem of interState commerce.

Some day a Federal Child Labor Bill restricting inter-State commerce in the products of child labor will be passed. It ought to have been passed long ago.

THE UNITED STATES AND THE REST OF THE WORLD

The international relations of the United States were made the subject of serious discussion in the Senate last week; and there have been indications of late that the Senate and the country are awakening to the fact that those relationships need looking after. A good many members of Congress as well as a great many of their constituents do not seem to realize that the United States is no longer in isolation, taking its own way in the world without reference to the interests or opinions of others. That day ended when the Treaty of Paris was signed. The United States has become a member of the family of nations; not because it chose to forsake the counsels of the fathers, but because in the inevitable development of the modern world it was impossible that it should pursue a policy of isolation. Entering, as it has, into competition with and claiming its share of the commerce of the modern world, it has been compelled to assume the responsibilities of a participant in world-wide trade.

Last June The Outlook pointed out the fact

that the United States had chilled the friendship of several great nations. It has offended Russia, Germany, England, and Japan, and in every case it has done so unnecessarily. Exercising its sovereign powers, it has by its manner of exercising those powers given grave offense. Senator Lodge, speaking in the Senate last week, reiterated this point.

The debate in the Senate which called forth this utterance from Senator Lodge was in some respects very unworthy of a body of men to whose utterances great responsibility attaches. It was unpardonable for Mr. Bristow, for instance, without a scintilla of evidence, to insinuate that railway interests have induced the President to violate the plank in the Democratic platform assuring free tolls to coastwise shipping. And Senator O'Gorman, with curious lack of humor, took occasion to charge the Carnegie Peace Foundation with "sinister and corrupt" purposes. He declared, if newspaper reports are to be trusted, that its object was to promote, not international peace, but an Anglo-Saxon alliance. One of his colleagues endeavored to excuse Senator O'Gorman's foolish remarks, utterly out of place in the United States Senate, on the ground that he was loyal Irishman." The United States does not want loyal Irishmen " in its chief deliberative body; it wants loyal Americans; and, moreover, it wants Americans who have some sense of the dignity of their position and of the responsibilities which go with such a position and ought to govern the utterances of United States Senators.

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Senator Lodge, in a strong, clear statement, recognized that the country is in "the unfortunate and unhappy position of incurring the active dislike of many nations instead of the friendship which she once possessed, and the distrust of many more." This country cannot be an outlaw among nations. It cannot, for instance, ask of the great Powers to give it a free hand in Mexico, to allow it to work out its policy in that country without interference, although the interests of many foreign subjects are involved, and at the same time pursue in its relations with those countries an ungenerous policy. Secretary Hay once said of certain Senators who attempted to defeat every treaty presented to the Senate that their idea of a treaty was a document which gained everything for the United States and gave nothing to the other party. The tendency of this country has been to say to the other coun

tries, "Go to the devil if you do not go with us;" a policy which would in the long run involve a general exodus in that direction.

The foreign relations of this country ought to be governed by the same sense of justice, the same regard for human rights, that the country is trying to enforce in its domestic relations. It is impossible to carry out progressive policies looking to the establishment of social justice on this continent and enforce a selfish, short-sighted policy towards the rest of the world without bringing the Nation into contempt; nor can the country go on neglecting its foreign relations and allowing matters to drift without getting into serious danger. Senator Root's reminder that in international relations courtesy is an element of as great consequence as principle needs to be taught to the American people, many of whom instinctively assume an insolent attitude when any other nation makes any request or even suggestion to this country.

The United States has a perfect right to fix the qualifications of citizenship in its territory and the conditions under which land can be held, but it ought to do this with courtesy and regard for the feelings of other countries. It has a perfect right to insist that its citizens traveling abroad shall enjoy the freedom of travel insured by treaties between all firstclass Powers; but it ought to enforce that right with due consideration for the traditions, conditions, and feelings of the country with which it is dealing. It has a right to determine what its tariff shall be, what duties it shall levy, but it ought not to act in such matters as if it were the only party interested. It has a perfect right to determine what tolls shall be paid for the use of an interocean canal which it has built at great expense, but it has no right to disregard provisions of agreements into which it has entered. In a word, the United States cannot conduct itself as if it were independent of all other Powers. It is not, and it ought not to be. It is one of a family of nations. It has to deal with the welfare of the globe. It must recognize its responsibilities, and it must act like a neighbor.

In calling the attention of Congress, through its leaders on foreign relations, to the responsibilities of the United States toward its neighbors, the President has acted with wisdom at a time when wisdom on this subject is doubly welcome.

LETTERS TO UNKNOWN
FRIENDS

Since the death of my beloved wife, I have been told " many times and oft" that I outght not to mourn her departure so deeply- hat she is happy in her home in heaven, and that I would surely meet her after I departed from this life. In every instance I have replied in substance as the late Senator Cullom states his views in his Memoirs: "I have no great fear of death. . . . I certainly wishbeyond any words I have power to express that I could have greater assurance that there will be a reuniting with those we love and those who have loved us in some future world, but from my reading of the Scriptures, and even admitting there is a hereafter, I cannot find any satisfactory evidence to warrant such a belief. Could I believe that I could meet the loved ones who have gone before, I do not know but that I should look forward with pleasure to the 'passing across.' Not having this belief, I am content to stay here until I am called hence."

We have two sources for our belief respecting the future-the Scriptures and philosophy.

The say

There is little reason to believe that the Old Testament writers believed in personal immortality. If they did, their belief was certainly very shadowy, vague, and unsatisfactory. It was Jesus Christ who brought life and immortality to light. His disciples certainly believed in personal immortality, in the recognition of friends, in the future life, and in their memory of earthly conditions. The disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration recognized Moses and Elijah. ing of Jesus to the penitent thief, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise," and to his disciples, "Where I am, there ye may be also," would be unmeaning if there was to be no recognition of him in the other world. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews declares that in our earthly race we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses whose recognition of their earthly friends involves their personal knowledge of what we are doing. The message in the parable of Abraham to the rich man, "Son, remember," clearly indicates that the past history and the present condition of life on the earth are known to the dead and clearly implies a personal immortality which carries with it personal recognition. Paul's statement, "Now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face," cannot be true if we do not understand one another better in the future life than in this. The book of Revelation, and especially its reported chorals of praise, clearly indicate that kind of community of life which is impossible.

without personal recognition. In short, the whole New Testament in its dealing with the future life takes the recognition of friends for granted.

There is not space here to restate the philosophical argument for personal immortality. It must suffice to say that it is impossible to maintain a doctrine of personality and eliminate memory of the past and personal recognition of the realities of the present. This ability on my part to remember my past and identify myself with it and to recognize my friends of the past by their personal qualities is essential to a normal personality. When this is lost, as it sometimes is in certain forms of mental disease, all that is valuable in personality is lost. The ability to recognize a friend is greatly aided by the sight of his face and the sound of his voice. But these are not essential to such recognition. If they were, Helen Keller could have no friends. There is possible a spiritual recognition; the voice and the face are only interpreters of this spiritual recognition. Spirit with spirit can meet.”

What can be said to one whose dear friend died suddenly in an accident, and had never acknowledged Christ to be his Master?

For the notion that there is no opportunity for repentance beyond the grave neither the Bible nor philosophy gives any warrant. The general declaration of the Bible, running through it from cover to cover, is that the mercy of God endures forever. This statement is made explicitly over and over again in the Old Testament. It is the repeated refrain in several of the Psalms; see especially Psalm 136. To deny it is to deny the statement of Christ that he will judge the world, and the statement of the Apostle that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. It is to deny such statements as that of Isaiah, that if the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return unto the Lord, the Lord will have mercy upon him; and such statements as that of Ezekiel: "When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right; , . . none of his sins that he hath committed shall be remembered against him." This notion is equally against the teachings of life. God, says Christ, is our Father. No father would be worthy of the name who should refuse forgiveness to a child who sincerely repented, and sincerely desired to live

a life of loyalty and love in his father's home. I should say, therefore, to such a person, You have an absolute right to believe that the mercy of God is infinite and to trust your friend to the infinite mercy of a Father who loves your friend with a patience and a persistence, a depth and a tenderness, of love far surpassing yours.

To me Jesus Christ was the one perfect man sent unto this world as a great teacher to show us by his life how we should live. Is it right to worship him as God?

We are like those who should find themselves on shipboard upon an unknown ocean, not knowing whence we have come, whither we are going, or who is our commander. We need this knowledge in order to know how we should live. Jesus Christ answers these three questions. He tells us whence we have come. We are the offspring of God; he is our Father because we have come from him and are made in his image. He tells us who our Father is, not merely, not mainly, by his words, but by his character. God is spirit, and pure spirit is invisible to us and incomprehensible by us. That God may

make himself known to us he dwells in and manifests himself through human experience, and pre-eminently in and through the life and experience of Jesus Christ, who is "God manifest in the flesh "—that is, the supremest manifestation of God possible in a human life. And Jesus tells us what is the predestined end of our voyage. It is that we may

be like him, may possess his spirit here and hereafter, and may share with him in the glory of his divine character. If we pray to Jesus Christ, as I do without any hesitation, it is because in Jesus Christ I see the God who is unseen and would be unknown but for this human manifestation of himself.

Is cremation Christian burial?

Of course cremation is not burial. We assume that your question means: Is cremation a Christian method of disposing of the body? I do not see that Christ's teaching gives any answer to this question. Cremation is neither Christian nor un-Christian, but it is an entirely proper and legitimate method of disposing of the body, and certainly in our towns and cities much more considerate of the welfare of the living than burial. The body has finished its functions at death. Do what we will, it will speedily dissolve into its original elements. Or, if we are able scientifically to preserve it, it is only as a mummy, a