was that of Dr. Norwood in which he spoke of the Republican Party as being guilty in dealing with the integrity of Woodrow Wilson's soul.

No mention was made by any one on this occasion of any of Mr. Wilson's domestic policies. It was solely his doctrines in international affairs that the speakers discussed. In the sphere of world politics he was extolled as one who had caught the vision of ultimate world. peace and brotherhood.

There is danger to the future historic position of any man in untempered praise. For many years Washington ceased to be a human being because the really human man that he was had been plastered over with the ideas of those who thought they were doing him honor. And any public man whose words are treated as Scripture to be cited in proof of some doctrine will be sure to suffer, as Lincoln has suffered, through injury to his real and lasting influence. Admirers of any American leader, be it Wilson, or Roosevelt, or any other man, can best serve his memory by keeping him hu

man.

Masonry and Catholicism

HE

ERE is a reply to a Catholic critic of Don C. Seitz's article on "Jews, Catholics, and Protestants." The critic, John F. Gilroy, said in a letter which we published in our issue of December 16: "We have the kindest feelings towards the Masons, we look on many of them. as our best friends and differ from them only in religion. Many times have I heard in Catholic clubs, Knights of Columbus councils, and Holy Name Societies the Masons referred to as our separate brothers. Is there anything unfriendly in that?"

Another correspondent in Cleveland wonders how this statement by Mr. Gilroy can be squared with a news item which he found in the "New Age," a monthly magazine issued to Scottish Rite Masons in the Southern jurisdiction. The item as quoted by him. reads:

Knights of Columbus and Masons Don't Mix:-The sudden collapse of the Hamilton-Jefferson movement carries lessons that all may discern. It will be remembered that a few months ago a group of Masons and Knights of Columbus in Utica, N. Y., organized this society to be composed of Masons and Roman Catholics, fifty-fifty, to combat bigotry, so it was explained,

and to promote fraternity among American citizens of all creeds. The organization attracted much newspaper attention because it was asserted that Elihu Root was deeply interested in it. Newspaper editorials all over the nation hailed the new association with encomiums upon the beauties of toleration and brotherly love.

But the auspicious beginning became clouded and the whole project came to grief when the hierarchy of the Church made known its unmitigated disapproval.

Cardinal O'Connell's official organ, "The Pilot," Boston, denounced the whole proceeding as a "contemptible compromising of eternal, essential principles." Said the editorial: "Cheap fraternizing with Freemasonry on the part of Catholics is tantamount to unmanly and unworthy compromise of their precious Christian heritage. Such fraternizing should cease."

which they would be very glad to shake off if they could. It is our feeling, however, that nothing short of a Nation-wide strike or the force of a uniformly aroused public opinion will ever accomplish anything in this direction; and until this method of compensation is done away with it seems to us that a bonus payment for saving time on an established schedule, as suggested by Mr. Leonard, will not be worth while, for the reason that it is so much easier to slow up than speed up. In other words, so long as there remains any form of bonus payment for indifferent work there is little or no incentive for expediting the movement.

Mr. Mills C. Leonard, who runs a locomotive for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Mr. William B. Story, who runs the whole Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé system, seem to agree as to the existence of an evil. Can the railroads and the public be aroused to the point of forcing the evil to be remedied?

So it cannot be said that the Masons were laying some deep conspiracy to entrap the credulous Romanists. The initiative was wholly Catholic.

It looks as if there had been a disagreement in policy between Catholics who understand our American ideals and Catholics who believe that the interests of their Church should be paramount. The liberal Catholics seem to have lost out in the contest. Cardinal O'Connell seems to be doing all that he can to force America to answer "no" to the frequent question, "Will America ever elect a

Catholic President?"

A Bonus for Delay

A

LOCOMOTIVE engineer in our issue of December 23 gave a graphic account of the abuse of the principle of overtime pay by the crews of freight trains. He showed distinctly the great burden which this system of payment laid upon the shoulders of both the railroads and the shippers. Comments which the President of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railway system makes upon this article ought to be of great interest to business men. He writes:

On the whole Mr. Leonard presents the facts very clearly and forcibly. It should be pointed out, however, that the time-and-a-half basis of pay for overtime in road freight service is one of the things foisted on the roads during the period of Federal control

Airplanes and the Arctic

which is farther removed than any other point from each and all places accessible to ships. To this point no adventurer has attained or tried to attain. It has been called (not very exactly, we think) a Pole, and Stefansson describes it as the Pole of Relative Inaccessibility. This point is 84° north and 160° west, but in the days of Arctic exploration by ship and sledge it was far more difficult to reach or to retreat from than the North Pole at 90° latitude, no longitude.

Now the airplane has changed the situation. The distance from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Spitzbergen across the vast area of ice and possibly land in the midst of which exists this geographical and purely mathematical Pole is no greater than that from Newfoundland to Ireland, traversed six years ago by Alcock in an airplane, about 1,900 miles. Since then, it need not be said, the improvement in airplanes and air engines has been notable. Stefansson and other experts think the flight quite feasible, and believe also that there would be a good chance of discovering land and getting valuable geographical data.

An experienced Australian aviator and explorer, Captain George Wilkins, who has made some remarkable flights, will head the expedition. He hopes to fly two large planes carrying supplies from Fairbanks, the Alaskan railway terminus, to Point Barrow, his long-distance starting

point. Captain Wilkins's confidence in what seems to laymen a desperate venture is seen in his statement, "Our flight will be made with the understanding that if our plane fails to reach Spitzbergen or return to Point Barrow, no rescue expedition will be sent out for at least two years." This means, doubtless, that it is thought possible to make landings and in case of need to subsist as the Eskimos do. The MacMillan expedition did not find it easy to make ice landings.

The enterprise is sponsored and managed by the American Geographical Society, the Detroit Aviation Society, and the North American Newspaper Alliance. The fact that Mr. Henry Ford's general manager, Mr. William B. Mayo, is the head of the expedition's Board of Control is generally taken as an indication that Mr. Ford is backing the attempt financially. President Coolidge has written a letter expressing keen personal interest and remarking that "the importance to commercial aviation and the possible development of air routes across the Arctic region make the proposed enterprise of particular value."

Japan in Manchuria

JA

APAN has again emphasized her policy of maintaining a special position in Manchuria. By reinforcing her garrison at Mukden and assuming control in the capital city and strengthening her guards along the South Manchurian Railway she practically intervened in the civil war between Marshal Chang Tso-lin, the Military Governor of the three Manchurian provinces, and General Kuo Sung-lin, who was challenging his power with some apparent chances of success. The Japanese authorities warned the leaders to keep the fighting at least six miles from Mukden. Japan's moves are reported to have checked plans for a revolt against Chang at Mukden and to have cut his opponents off from possible bases of supply, and so to have contributed to the defeat of Kuo, who was captured, tortured, and killed.

Japan has the technical right, under the Portsmouth Treaty, which ended her the Portsmouth Treaty, which ended her war with Russia, to bring her garrison at Mukden up to 15,000 men. She also contends that her action was based on requests from the foreign consuls in

Mukden to keep order in the city. Nevertheless it has further significance in her economic interests.

Japan controls the South Manchurian Railway from Changchun, in central Manchuria, to the port of Dairen (formerly the Russian Dalny). The main line and branches make altogether about seven hundred miles. A great part of it has been built up under Japanese organization. The Japanese have opened up deposits of coal never before touched and have been reported to be mining at the rate of ten million tons a year, with modern electrical machinery and transport. In addition, all along the lines of the South Manchurian Railway the Japanese have established industries, such as soy-bean mills, textile mills, and a steel foundry. South Manchuria has become agriculturally and industrially more prosperous. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese farmers and laborers have migrated and settled there, but comparatively few Japanese. Japan has been concerned in Manchuria, not as a field for colonization, but as a means of contributing to the support of her crowded population at home.

A new branch of the South Manchurian system has been under construction, from Taonanfu, in central western Manchuria, to Tsitsikar, a station on the Chinese Eastern Railway, built through northern Manchuria by Russia. This new branch was started under agreement with the Government of Fengtien Province that is to say, with Chang Tso-lin; and, it was reported, the South Manchurian Railway advanced 18,800,000 yen for the construction, to bear interest at the rate of 91⁄2 per cent, and that the principal materials were to be purchased in Japan. This line, upon completion, would come into competition for traffic from northern Manchuria with the Chinese Eastern Railway, in which Russia is interested. It would have the advantage of providing a direct route to the ice-free port of Dairen, one hundred miles shorter than the present route over the Chinese Eastern line by way of Harbin, and without the necessity of transshipment of goods at Changchun from the Chinese Eastern to the South Manchurian line, now due to the difference of gauge between the two lines. The prospect that completion of the new Japanese-controlled branch from Taonanfu to Tsitsikar will cut into the business of the Russian-built line already has caused

The Outlook years ago. In his own chosen sphere of marine painting he had

no equal. Many of his works are at the no equal. Many of his works are at the Naval Academy, and mural decorations from his brush were placed in several war-ships.

There was a patriotic and heroic spirit in his work which pervaded also his special correspondence in the Spanish War and which prompted him to write special articles on the duty of providing naval defense and for the better understanding by the people of navy men and naval affairs. Several of these articles appeared in The Outlook.

and demolishing periodicals and newspapers, and died possessed of a fortune estimated at forty million dollars. It was the life of an ambitious man.

In the newspaper world Mr. Munsey will be remembered chiefly as a destroyer. In succession there died at his hands the New York "Continent," the New York "Daily News," the Philadelphia "Evening Times," the New York "Press," the Baltimore "Star," the New York "Sun," the New York "Globe and Commercial Advertiser," the New York "Evening Mail," and the New York "Herald." The names of the "Sun" and the "Herald" still remain, the one as a new name of the former "Evening Sun" and the latter as a heading on the New York "Tribune," but the newspapers that those names once represented are as dead as any of the rest.

In this work of devastation Mr. Munsey believed he was doing a service for journalism. "There is no business." he once wrote, "that cries so loud for organization and combination as that of newspaper publishing." His ideal, which

he never realized, was a chain of newspapers under a single control, supporting a veritable faculty of writers, each writing for all, with "a $100,000 or $200,000 a year man at the head of the editorial force and another God-made genius in charge of the business end." If Mr. Munsey's view that publishing is primarily a business for profit, and that struggling journals whose only claim to existence is that they preserve variety and freedom in the expression of public opinion are an unnecessary waste, then his estimate of his own service was quite modest.

On another page in this issue Don C. Seitz describes in none too vigorous language the moral effect of the prevalence of this view of the press as a business rather than a profession and the danger with which it threatens the Republic. It is by coincidence, not by design, that as we are called upon to comment upon the death of this notable newspaperman we present through Mr. Seitz's article the question whether newspapermen are going to abandon their leadership in the pursuit of money.

In war we have learned that liberty cannot be won except under leadership. What is true in war is equally true in peace. Self-government requires free and fearless spokesmen of public opinion. If the press does not supply those spokesmen, who will?

Mr. Munsey was not oblivious of his responsibility in the expression of views on public questions. Although a believer in party organization, he was free from the spirit of subserviency to party organizations. He showed this at the time of his revolt against the Republican bosses in 1912 and became a strong and valued supporter of Theodore Roosevelt. He was not, however, primarily a leader of public opinion. He was too naïve and impulsive in his views. Mr. Roosevelt, in tribute to his courage and activity, used to refer to him as the "wild ass of the desert"-a term that was not without its implication of admiration and friendliness, but could not have been applied to a steady directing force. Mr. Munsey showed his independence during the last campaign in New York State, when as a Republican he heartily supported the Democratic Governor, Mr. Smith, in support of the measures for the reorganization of the State Government and provision for certain public needs.

If the press is to lead, of course it

International

Frank A. Munsey

Who died on December 22 at 71 years of age

must live, and it will always require the services of men who have ability as business executives; but, though it may live, it will not lead unless those who control the press regard their vocation in the spirit in which the physician regards his practice of medicine-as primarily a public service. If the American people are to keep free the channels of public opinion, they must support journals which Mr. Munsey would have thought it a virtue to do away with.

The World Court

O'

PPOSITION to the World Court seems to have arisen chiefly from three fears.

One is the fear that by joining the World Court the United States will be entrapped in the League of Nations. The Court, it is alleged, is a subsidiary of the League, and by becoming a member of the subsidiary the Nation would be virtually and should have to become actually a member of the major organization. This argument is based on a mistaken view of the status of the Court. It is a separate international statute or treaty, not the League, that created the Court. In electing the judges the League acts as an agent of the statute. By a change in the statute itself another agent might be substituted as an electoral college. The League may apply to the Court for an

opinion on a legal case, but in that respect does not differ from any nation

that may appeal to the Court.

The second fear is that by joining the Court the United States may submit its National policies to foreign judges. This fear would be well grounded if the Court were organized to render decisions on political matters. The Court, however, is charged solely with decisions on questions of law. It has no authority concerning any question of policy whatever, and its record so far indicates that its judges are more keenly aware of this limitation on its authority and more certain to keep the Court within its function than any one untrained in law can be.

The third fear is that the United States may be subjected as a member of the Court to the enforcement of the Court's decisions by the exercise of military or other power. In particular, it is the fear that the so-called sanctions of the League may be resorted to in case some decision should go against the United States. Some of the more ardent advocates of the Court who are also ardent advocates of the League have gone rather far to justify this fear. Even Judge Bustamante, one of the judges of the Court, goes so far as to say:

Since all or almost all the nations and their colonies and self-governing dominions now form one social organism for certain joint purposes, this organism, which must have force and authority, might well assume the duty of enforcing the judgments of the Permanent Court of International Justice, in case the defeated nation resists the decision.

Against this view that the decisions of the Court should be supported by military or other force American opinion is clearly overwhelming. For years the United States Supreme Court was comparatively weak because it had no sanctions that is, no means of its own to compel obedience to it; but it ultimately has become the most powerful Court in the world, because it has won for itself the moral support that is the natural consequence of the reasonableness of its decisions. If the World Court succeeds, it will be by the same process of winning the support of those whose controversies it decides. There is nothing in the statute that created the Court that provides for sanctions. If there is any doubt upon this subject, the Senate should remove it by a reservation. We do not think that

a reservation is necessary except to allay the fear that has been raised by some of the less wise among the Court's advocates. Since this fear can be removed, it should not be allowed to form an obstacle to American membership.

About Ancient Debts

N°

OT very long ago in the House of Commons in the question hour, when members of the Opposition delight to heckle the Government, an honorable member asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Chamberlain, whether he were aware that certain American States had defaulted in the payment of their debts, and whether his Majesty's Government had made any representations to the Government of the United States at Washington with a view to obtaining repayment of the money thus lost by British citizens.

This sounds as if it related to something that happened last month or last year. In point of fact, these lamentable. offenses against English and American creditors took place at various dates, but none, we believe, less than fifty-five years ago.

Of course this attempt to hurt America's feelings is only a repetition of what takes place whenever some foreign press or government feels a little disagreeable toward America and Americans. A notable instance was the excited and vociferous clamor of certain Paris newspapers on this same point a few months ago when France and the United States were amicably trying to settle the question of the French debt-an honorable financial discussion which was about a million miles away from having any relation to the ancient repudiation of State debts.

It seems impossible to get it permanently into the heads of our foreign neighbors that the United States has no more power or right to interfere in matters of State indebtedness than it has in the matter of town indebtedness or than the English Government has in the finances of the London County Council. Many of us remember when English papers clamored for payment from the United States Treasury of war bonds issued by the Confederate States, thus insisting that the United States should pay for the arms and ammunition which were used in a vain effort to tear it to pieces. Imagine Great Britain paying off Fenian bonds! As a matter of fact,

many optimistic Englishmen purchased Confederate bonds in the hope of ultimately making their fortunes!

Further than this-if we are to be put upon our defense as to the distant pastthere are certain circumstances which might well be remembered. Repudiation is wrongful, injurious, reprehensible, and not to be excused. Yet it is a historic fact that the word "repudiation" as related to public debts came into use about 1840, when the then Governor of Mississippi suggested to the Legislature the plan of "repudiating the sale of the State bonds on account of fraud and illegality." His State and other Southern States had plunged into what we call now boom finance and had supported bond loans made by banks, which found a ready sale abroad without any apparent intelligent choice as between good loans and bad loans and without any apparent knowledge that when you loan money to a State you must look into the nature of the transaction exactly as you would in lending money to a corporation. The boom burst; Mississippi refused to follow its Governor's advice; but more than ten years later the people of the State, at a referendum vote, refused to furnish money to meet principal or interest. Other Southern States followed this example. Again, after the Civil War the so-called period of Reconstruction loaded some of the Southern States with debts which, as they held, were not incurred by the people of the States, but by Legislatures controlled by carpetbaggers and Negroes. The States, apart from this, were terribly poor and could not pay running expenses. Again the financial

A

The Outlook for

obligations were either annulled or scaled. We do not know of any other such action taken by States, although one Northern State, Minnesota, scaled the payment of certain railroad bonds on the ground that the railways had not carried out their contract. There are also cases of municipalities which during or after panic seasons have gone into bankruptcy or something that was equivalent to bankruptcy.

Mr. Chamberlain, in reply to his heckler's question, said, "The Govern

ment of the United States have no control over these States." He modestly added that Americans were as much interested as anybody in the matter and that if the American Government cannot secure redress, "I am afraid no representations from me would be of any avail." It is not surprising that people on the Continent should not know much about America's form of Government, but most educated Englishmen are supposed to have read James Bryce's "The American Commonwealth," and should remember that our dual form of Government entails some disadvantages as regards that which in a nation like Great Britain is indivisible, namely, the functions of sovereignty. In some matters the Federal Government is sovereign; in others the States retain sovereignty.

Repudiation is not an American habit; the cases that exist are now historic rather than modern; yet the lender of money, whether to town, State, or nation, and whether the borrower is American or European, should be businesslike enough to learn where the responsibility lies.

New England and Old England

By LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT
Contributing Editor of The Outlook

T the one hundred and twentieth annual dinner of the New England Society in the city of New York, held on Forefathers' Day, December 22, General James G. Harbord, responding to the toast of "New England and Old England,” said that, in his judgment, a friendly understanding and co-operation between the Englishspeaking peoples whom he specifically named as Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States

constituted a surer guaranty of world peace than a League of Nations, or even

than a World Court. This was a notable utterance, for General Harbord is very far from being an Anglomaniac. Having been born in what may be called the heart of modern America, the Mississippi Valley, he received first a thorough civilian education, taking the degree of Bachelor of Science and later a Master's degree at the Kansas State Agricultural College; then, choosing a career in the Army, he sought and obtained a thorough military training, and has become one of the most distinguished army officers of his time. He has filled all grades