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Proposed route for the All-American Canal. Beginning at Oswego, on Lake Ontario, the waterway would run to the Hudson River, and include the State Barge Canal

forcing the State plant quarantine against the alfalfa weevil. The railroad sued, the Washington courts sustained the right of the State to act as it did. The case came to the United States Supreme Court on appeal.

The construction of the law entails consequences not sought by anybody, least of all by the United States Department of Agriculture, which is charged with enforcement of the Federal Plant Quarantine Law. It sometimes happens that zeal outdoes itself. A burden much greater than the Department cares to assume is placed upon it. The Federal Government, if the country is to be protected against plant scourges, must declare and enforce the hundreds of quarantines heretofore enforced by the States. The necessity for many of them is local, and localized machinery is better suited to their enforcement, to say nothing of the fact that a State ought to have the right to control its own local affairs.

Confronted with the necessity either of restoring the status of the State quarantines or of expanding its own machinery beyond all bounds ever contemplated, the Federal Horticultural Board promptly drafted, with the assistance of the office of the Solicitor of the Department of Agriculture, the amendment to the Federal law. It will provide, if passed, that until the Federal Government actually does assert quarantine power with regard to particular commodities in a particular State the right of the State to control those commodities shall remain unimpaired.

If the amendment passes, the situation will be restored to substantially what it

was before the decision was rendered. And there is little doubt that it will be passed-only, in fact, the doubt that always exists as to the ability of Congress to clear up necessary legislation before it adjourns. Nobody, so far as can be ascertained, opposes its passage, and the Chairman of the Federal Horticultural Board, Dr. C. L. Marlatt, is perhaps its most active advocate. We should think he would be.

The Wearing of the Green

A

PPREHENSIONS

and misapprehen

sions appear to be in process of dissipation with regard to the Federal Plant Quarantine Law, not merely at home, but at important points abroad. Holland still may be not quite happy over the bulb ban, but the news comes from Dublin that Ireland is elated to find that in the United States there is no "bloody law agin' the wearing of the green."

For years the opinion has prevailed in Ireland that the sending of shamrocks to the United States was barred by the Plant Quarantine Law, and as a consequence Irishmen in America have been constrained to content themselves on St. Patrick's Day with imitation shamrocks of green silk. It now appears, however, that only those shamrocks with dirt adhering to the roots are barred. In other words, it is the body and not the spirit of the "ould sod" that is barred. Shamrocks with the roots washed or shamrock leaves cut and placed in moss or other preservative may be sent to that "country that lies far beyant the say." At least, such is the assurance given from the American Consulate-General in Dublin.

Consequently, shamrocks are on the sea, and woe betide the inspector of the Federal Horticultural Board who may try to stop them at a port of entry!

An All-American Canal

G

OVERNOR SMITH of New York and State Engineer Greene have put forward an interesting proposition for an all-American ship canal by enlarging the present New York State barge waterway, connecting it with the Great Lakes via Oswego, which now has a connection with the main line of transport. They would turn the State Barge Canal over to the National Government and let it finance the larger project.

This idea is put forth to offset the more extensive plan of an international improvement in the navigation of the St. Lawrence, which would, by a combination of canal and river, make the West accessible from the sea.

From the standpoint of direct benefit to New York State and City, it is possible that the plan holds much merit. On the other hand, the St. Lawrence project will probably hold its advocates. For this there will be several excellent reasons. The St. Lawrence possesses a vast potentiality in water power that can be used all the year round for the benefit of industry and home comfort. The State canal can only be of use for navigation seven months in the year. The summer route by Montreal to Europe is shorter than that by way of New York.

To the people of the United States there is an appeal in a waterway that can be kept under National control. On the other hand, the international aspect

of the St. Lawrence waterway has its appeal, for Canada is one of our best customers and an agreeable neighbor.

The advantages and the disadvantages of the St. Lawrence scheme are well known. The advantages and disadvantages of the all-American ship canal project are not yet sufficiently well known or discussed to warrant the acceptance of it by public opinion. Tacna-Arica Plebiscite Postponed PATIE

PATIENCE seems to be a prerequisite for the holding of plebiscites. That applies at least to the effort in that direction by which Chile and Peru, with the President of the United States as arbiter, are attempting to determine the ultimate nationality of the provinces of Tacna and Arica. Delay after delay has arisen in the preparations for this popular election.

The latest is a postponement of twelve days, to March 27, as the date for the beginning of the registration period. This postponement was granted by the Plebiscitary Commission following objection by Peru and threats to withdraw entirely from the plebiscite unless the request were complied with. The claim of Peru was that Chile had not carried out the guaranties for protection of Peruvian voters, both those resident in the provinces and those who might be brought in for the occasion. Peru, it was asserted, must see that the lives of her citizens were protected; otherwise she could not participate in the proposed election. She asked for an indefinite postponement of the registration period. When it came to a vote, however, she sided with the neutral President of the Plebiscitary Commission, Major-General William Lassiter, recently appointed by President Coolidge as successor to General Pershing, who was obliged to return to the United States on account of his health. The Chilean member of the Commission voted against the postponement.

While delays are dangerous, especially when each of the two South American nations is sitting on a virtual powder mill, and while every hitch in the proceedings makes the ultimate outcome more doubtful, it is accepted as a somewhat hopeful sign that Peru was willing to accept a "definite" rather than an "indefinite" date for the start of registration. Whether Chile's objection to the action of the majority in the Commission means that she plans to make any fur

ther opposition has not yet been ascèr- to prevent completely, within five years, tained.

The prestige of the United States in Latin America would seem to demand Latin America would seem to demand that plans for holding the plebiscite be proceeded with, no matter how many delays and difficulties are encountered, or what amount of patience is required in this delicate and difficult task of removing the chief international danger of South America.

Shades of Kilkenny and
Donnybrook!

the smuggling of opium from constituting a serious obstacle to the effective suppression of the use of prepared opium." He declared the intention of the Indian Government "to reduce progressively the exports of opium from India, so as to extinguish them altogether within a definite period, except as regards the export of opium for strictly medical purposes."

The period to be fixed has not been determined, pending consultation of the administration of the united Indian provinces regarding the effects that the reTHE cable despatches report the dele- duction of export would have in cutting gates of the Irish Free State at down the area cultivated with opium. Geneva as much put out over "the ex- The Government proposes to introduce a isting contentious atmosphere, as bad for resolution in the Indian Legislature emthe welfare and usefulness of the League bodying its new policy. of Nations," and expressing themselves as favoring "fulfilling the program for which the Assembly had been convoked, namely, the election of Germany, and putting off the question of the reorganization of the Council for later study."

Can it be that the Irish Free State has become one of meekness and conciliation?

India and the Opium Traffic

IN

NDIA has been the chief obstacle in the struggle to do away with the illicit trade in opium. The American delegates to the Opium Conference in Geneva a year ago felt that satisfactory progress was blocked by Great Britain, because of its Imperial interest in India and of the reluctance of the Indian Government to cut down the production of opium and stop its export. The Americans withdrew from the Conference, leaving a memorandum reiterating the contention of the United States that the production of the United States that the production and distribution of opium should be limited to amounts required for medical and scientific purposes. The representatives of the Indian Government rejected this formula, and proposed instead. to restrict formula, and proposed instead. to restrict the sale of opium to other countries to amounts for "legitimate" purposes. Obviously, "legitimate" is a word which leaves wide latitude for opinion.

It is a pleasant surprise, consequently,

India, with the British Empire, has been one of the first countries to ratify the Geneva opium agreements, and has now gone beyond the obligations they impose with the aim of getting rid of the illicit trade. Low morphia content makes most Indian opium unsuitable for medical or scientific use. But it has been exported extensively to the Far Eastern colonies for smoking. Since 1923 no exports have been allowed except on certificates of the importing country, and in 1925 even certificated exports to Persia and Macao were prohibited because of evidence that supplies to them were finding their way into illicit trade. The end of all exportation, as now proposed, would cut off a considerable revenue from the Indian Government, which has a monopoly of opium production.

The new policy would not abolish domestic use of opium within India, which is regarded as a concern of India alone. But it is a long step toward making the American program effective so far as the world at large is concerned, since India would no longer be supplying opium to non-producing countries. If it is made effective, it means a victory in a struggle fought with the weapon of public opinion alone.

China Provokes Japan

that Lord Reading, the Viceroy of India, CH

has recently announced a significant new policy more in line with the American principle. In a speech at Delhi, opening the Council of State, he spoke of the new obligations undertaken under Article I of the Protocol to the Convention of the second Opium Conference at Geneva "to take such measures as may be required

CHINA

HINA is again facing serious difficulties with Japan. Chinese troops of the Kuomirchun armies, supporting the Peking Government, have provoked the trouble by firing on two Japanese destroyers from the forts at Taku, the entrance to the Pei River. The Japanese vessels were attempting to enter the river on their way to the international

port at Tientsin. A Japanese officer and nine members of the crews, including the Japanese pilot, were wounded more or less seriously. The officer has since died. The Japanese Government has protested to Peking, and it is reported that Japan may act independently of the other Powers, demanding punishment of the soldiers who did the firing, compensation for the family of the dead officer and for the wounded men, and guaranties that there will be no recurrence of firing on Japanese ships. The incident might easily develop into a diplomatic issue of the first importance, since it may be considered to involve the honor of Japan.

Freedom for Prisoners of Darkness

SOL

OLITARY Confinement is the cruelest of The man who is punishments. blinded has been sentenced to solitary confinement-but not necessarily for life. No one can give him back his eyes; but there are those who know how to guide him back to freedom.

Mrs. Winifred Holt Mather, who founded the "Light House" in New York (the New York Association for the Blind), heard in the winter of 1914-15 the call for light and liberty on behalf of eighty-four soldiers blinded in the war. These men, the message told her, were "sitting in their horizon-blue uniforms beside their beds immobile, helpless, with nothing being done to alleviate their helplessness, no attempt at work for their hands or distraction of any kind." The cruelest of punishments was their only recompense for their sacrifice in a cause that was as truly then, as later,

ours.

Mrs. Mather answered the call, and started the French Light House, or Le Phare de France. There men, as it has been expressed, "learned to be blind." A blinded surgeon learned surgical massage, and now has his practice. A blinded law student mastered Braille and typewriting, and became a judge on a high court. In that Light House blind have acquired skill in various callings.

The end of the war did not bring the blind the end of the blindness. For every American blinded in war there were forty-five Frenchmen. Naturally, therefore, there has been a waiting list of men who want to be trained as others have been, to be provided with the chance of self-support, to be liberated from their solitary confinement.

There are, unfortunately, Americans who let their indifference or their vexation over politicians and their doings restrain their natural expression of sympathy. But other Americans must not let this Light House in France suffer for want of funds. This Phare de France is known as Lighthouse No. 3. It is under the auspices of an international committee known as the Committee for Men Blinded in Battle, of whom the patrons in America are the President of the United States, the Belgian Ambassador, and the French Ambassador, and in France the President of the French Republic and the United States Ambassador to France. The Honorary President is Elihu Root and the Acting President is John H. Finley. The address of the committee is Room 1014, 17 East 42d Street, New York City, to which inquiries may be sent by all who want to help.

Harvard Football Turns
Westward

N football Harvard has been conserva

tive. Any change in the established methods of teaching the sport at Harvard is therefore of country-wide interest. While Arnold Horween, who has been chosen to succeed Robert Fisher as

.

A blind artist decorating a vase he made at Light House No. 3. He is guided by a

stencil.

the football coach at Cambridge, is himself a Harvard product, his recent environment has been Western. It is not necessarily true that because of his Chicago surroundings he has remodeled his ideas somewhat along the lines of Alonzo Stagg at the University of Chicago. Great as has been Stagg's influence, the influence of Robert C. Zuppke and his coaching school at the University of Illinois has perhaps been even greater. Horween has been a volunteer aid to professional football in Chicago. Now professional football in that section owes a great deal to Zuppke. The Crimson attack, admittedly in recent years the weakest point, may very possibly be fitted into something approaching the Zuppke mold by Horween.

Believers in the Haughton tradition. need not be alarmed; for, while Percy Haughton never let go of certain fundamental principles in his system of coaching, he was thoroughly conversant with all the accepted Western methods. Horween, coached under Robert Fisher at Harvard, had the opportunity of meeting a typical Western system when the Crimson met and defeated by a single point a powerful and versatile Oregon eleven.

In the meantime there is much in the

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Harvard football system, especially on defense, that undoubtedly will be, and should be, preserved. The young man who comes out of the West to modernize the Harvard system will also have at hand the wisdom of the football ancients carefully kept and guarded. Sound Harvard football, once supreme in the land, did not begin or end with the Haughton régime.

A New-Old Policy for
Johns Hopkins

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OHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY will in the future confine itself exclusively to graduate work. We rejoice at seeing this pioneer American institution of research come once more into its own.

Our National ideal of bigness has developed several universities numbering over ten thousand students and many with enrollments exceeding five thousand students. Almost any one who obtains a sufficient number of tutors can pass the entrance examinations of some of these mammoth institutions. Degrees may be obtained in some of the colleges for the study of such varied subjects as biology, motion-picture writing, and Oriental rugs.

Our colleges have, indeed, become democratic. This is to be commended in many ways, but at the same time it tends toward the substitution of quantity for quality and the bringing of mediocrity into the intellectual world. Therefore President Goodnow, of Johns Hopkins, is doing a service to American education in announcing a reversion to the original policy of the graduate university founded fifty years ago by Dr. Daniel Coit Gilman. Woodrow Wilson, Henry Carter Adams, Walter Page, Elgin Gould, Albert Shaw, and J. Franklin Jameson are a few of the illustrious products of the original Johns Hopkins policy.

A few years ago a metamorphosis took place. An undergraduate school was developed with all the accompanying paraphernalia of a football team, a stadium, a college paper, and college spirit. There are now one thousand contestants for bachelor degrees and more than 3,000 special students, many of whom are taking only one or two courses each. This undergraduate body dominates the University, for there are only about seven hundred and fifty in the graduate

courses.

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of supporting a purely graduate school, it is a courageous move of President Goodnow's in announcing the following plan of action:

(1) The discontinuance at once, or as soon as possible, of the courses ordinarily given in the first two years of the American colleges. (2) No baccalaureate degrees to be granted. (3) The admission to the University of only those who may possess the necessary mental endowment and equipment for research. (4) More intensive training to the comparatively few who are admitted, un

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In the face of the financial difficulties those students who wore collegiate sweat

ers at the lunch table. A few voices were raised against "this high school treatment of college men," but the stern ultimatum of the President soon silenced them. The future church leaders were being taught respect for authority, but one wondered as to their spirit and courage.

This spring sixty per cent of the undergraduates, in rebellion at what they called "the high-handed disciplinary tactics and tyranny" of President Bell, refused to attend classes until they were given equal representation with the Faculty on a disciplinary committee. This time they stood their ground in spite of suspensions and reported threats by Dr. Bell that they could not enter any other educational institution while under discipline at his College. Unawed and unafraid, these young men were willing to give up their careers rather than to give in to what they considered unjust treatment. A college must have a student body in order to continue. President Bell was forced to capitulate.

Right or wrong, at least these future ministers demonstrated that important qualification of their calling-the courage of their convictions. We have higher hopes for the progressive leadership of the Episcopal Church.

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A

Motor Fodder

SOLDIER who dies in battle for his country is at least a sacrifice to a cause. But the victim of an automobile accident dies to no purpose. To the forty-eight thousand Americans killed in the World War a

grateful country has erected public monuments to record their service; but to the twenty-four thousand dead of automobile accidents last year there are no public memorials, but only those gravestones that testify to personal grief and loss. An armistice brought the war to an end; but there is no end to the killings on our highways and in the onslaught of the machine upon human life there is no armistice.

Against the turning of men into cannon fodder, though soldiers in a great cause are more than that, the protest is continual and excited; but there has been only an intermittent and mild protest against turning human beings into fodder for motors. This week there is meeting in Washington, at the call of Secretary Hoover, the second annual National Conference on Street and High

way Safety. It should be National not only in name and personnel, but also in public interest and concern.

Pedestrians furnish most of the human fodder for the automobile. The proportion of automobile accidents in which pedestrians are involved was underestimated by the Committee on Enforcement of the National Conference on Street and Highway Safety, on the report of which we made some comment last week. Since then the report of the Committee on Causes of Accidents has been released. This Committee, whose purpose is to get at the root of the automobile accident situation, has spent a year gathering the data for its report. It reached its own conclusions, supplemented by those of other agencies, and it has revealed a situation with regard to pedestrian injury much worse than had been generally suspected.

The Committee on Causes of Accidents says that three-fourths of all automobile accidents involving personal injury are accidents in which automobiles strike pedestrians. In certain classes of accidents and in certain areas the proportion runs much higher. Even of fatal automobile accidents in the State of New York 66.5 per cent result from collision with pedestrians and only 16.1 per cent from collisions between automobiles. Further, the Committee says that "fatal collisions of automobiles with pedestrians seem to be increasing more rapidly than the total number of fatal automobile accidents." These facts indicate, in the opinion of the Committee, that drivers have been making progress in learning how to keep out of collisions, but that no such improvement has been made in meeting the dangers when drivers and pedestrians confront one another.

No special effort is made in this report to fix the relative share of the blame between drivers and pedestrians, but the Committee suggests that the education and regulation of pedestrians as well as of drivers should receive greater attention.

Getting squarely down to the causes. of acts on the part of drivers which result in accidents, the Committee places a large part of the blame on alcoholic liquors, and not on drunkenness more than on moderate drinking. Condemnation of the intoxicated driver it finds to be fully warranted, but it also finds that small quantities of alcohol, quite insufficient to intoxicate, "tend to decrease the higher forms of skill and perhaps also to lessen the sense of responsibility." It

expresses the belief that moderate drinking has been the real cause of numerous accidents ascribed to inattention, confusion, recklessness, loose steering gear, and other causes.

The Committee expresses the opinion that the great majority of those who operate automobiles are safe and competent drivers and that most accidents are due to a comparatively small number of motorists. It looks with extreme suspicion upon those who have been repeatedly involved in accidents and suggests edly involved in accidents and suggests that they should be given special examinations.

It is on this point that Mr. Towle's article, printed elsewhere in this issue of The Outlook, is especially pertinent.

The admission is made that no adequate method of examination has been devised for detecting many forms of incompetence, and the establishment of a research center to work out this and other problems is suggested.

Lack of uniformity in the mechanism of automobiles is said to be a prolific cause of accidents. The Committee finds that when a driver has been accustomed to one type of mechanism and then shifts to another the conflict between the old and the new habit is likely to lead to an accident.

The Committee pleads, too, for uniformity in many other things—in laws and regulations, in systems of reporting accidents, signs and signals, and in systems of traffic regulation.

In China life is cheap. It is time for Americans to resolve that their country in this respect be not Chinafied.

If mutual helpfulness

Great Powers. were to take the place of the adjustment of rival interests, then the last might just as well as not be first and the least be counted as the greatest. But at once it was shown that in international affairs power still counted. So the Council was organized in such a fashion that the only permanent places would be occupied by nations that were great in numbers, interests, and might. Since its establishment, therefore, the Council of the League of Nations, which is the League's executive committee, has really determined all the chief political questions of the League; and in its consultation has been governed by the fact that every Great Power represented in it has been able to exercise a veto.

When, therefore, Germany applied for admission, the old question of the balance of power in Europe at once reappeared. Shall Germany, so recently the menace to the independence of her neighbors and even to the safety of distant nations, be allowed, not only to participate in the counsels of the nations of Europe, but to exercise permanently a veto over the decisions of the other Great Powers? It was not a question of Germany's contribution to mutual benefit, but a question of Germany's power to affect the interests of those who still have reason to fear her.

And it is very plain, as Mr. Baldwin points out in his correspondence from Europe this week, that of all the nations Poland had most to fear and least power of self-protection. Germany has made it as plain as possible that she is unreconciled to the arrangement that has made Poland what she is to-day. If there is to

Germany on Trial Again be another European war, all indications

IT

F it is the concert of Europe which is now in performance on the stage of the League of Nations, the music is of that modern variety that consists chiefly of dissonance.

When the League of Nations was founded, it was with the hope on the part of its supporters that it would replace the old diplomacy with a new diplomacy, the old order with a new order, the old conflict of national interests with a new spirit of co-operation for a common end. The plan was to make sure of this "new order" by providing it with an organization, to breathe the new spirit into a new body.

If this plan had been possible, it would not have been necessary to make any distinction between small nations and

point to its origin in the controversy over the German-Poland frontier.

At present the balance of power is against any attempt to change the present situation by force of arms. However far apart France and England may be on certain questions of policy, on that they are agreed. Will that balance of power be disturbed if Germany secures at this stage a veto power on every proposal for common action? If she secures that veto now, she will be able to prevent Poland from becoming a member of the Council. If she has designs on Poland which she is not willing to discuss with Poland in common with the other Great Powers about the table with her, a natural procedure would be for her to prevent Poland from becoming a member of

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