a newspaper man, though his work has been that of the statesman for the past thirteen years. Prior to that time he was successively editor of "La Raison," "L'Action," and "Le Siècle."

M. Bérenger entered Parliament in 1912 as Senator from Guadeloupe. He was Permanent Reporting Secretary of the Army Committee from 1914 to 1917. In the latter year Clemenceau appointed him Commissioner-General for Gasoline and Fuel, and he served in that capacity until the end of the war. Since 1921 he has been General Reporting Secretary of the Senate Finance Committee. In the Senate he was classed with the Democratic-Radical-Socialist Left.

Washington's acquaintance with M. Bérenger does not extend back of last September, when he was a member of the Parliamentary Committee charged with advising the Minister of Finance, Caillaux, in the abortive negotiations for settlement of the French debt. The impression he made, despite disappointment over the outcome of the negotiations, was favorable.

In diplomatic circles, and therefore in the life of a capital, the wife of an ambassador is almost, if not quite, as important a personage as her husband. Mme. Bérenger, daughter of the famous bibliophile Alidor Delzant, is herself a lover and collector of books. She has long maintained one of the well-known literary and political salons of Paris. Social Washington looks forward to her coming with something more than the ordinary pleasurable expectations. The Tacna-Arica Deadlock

PRESIDENT COOLIDGE has apparently

RESIDENT COOLIDGE has apparently

not given up hope of reaching a final settlement of the historic and heated dispute over the provinces of Tacna and Arica. As arbiter of the dispute between Chile and Peru he is exercising utmost patience. So important is the right solution of this issue to the maintenance of peace and amity among the republics of this hemisphere that it is well worth while for him to exhaust every known device of statecraft to attain the desired ends.

When General Pershing went to South America some months ago, it was hoped that by this time the plebiscite (to be supervised by the Commission of which he is chairman) would be under way or completed and the question as to the nationality of the two provinces would be

settled. As yet, however, no definite settled. As yet, however, no definite date has been fixed for the plebiscite, and General Pershing is returning to the United States. According to official announcement, the trip is necessitated by the state of his health. In the meantime the Chileans, who have had some sharp differences of opinion with General Pershing, have appealed to President Coolidge. The extent of Chilean authority in the provinces during the voting period has been in question. This will be the

International

General John J. Pershing subject of briefs to be filed by the two sides with the President.

Chile and Peru having solemnly agreed to settle their controversy through the arbitral assistance of the President of the United States, it is still believed that the United States, it is still believed that the two nations will hold the plebiscite according to the President's award of last March. Though Chile has appealed to the President from the Commission, she has not shown any intention of declining to abide by the President's decision. She has appealed against measures to be adopted in carrying out the plebiscite, adopted in carrying out the plebiscite, but not against the plebiscite itself. The very fact that she has appealed to the arbiter shows that she is willing to observe the arbitral convention which she signed, reserving her right thereunder to object, as she has done in this

case.

There is still hope, therefore, that a method will be discovered for reaching a satisfactory end to the ancient TacnaArica dispute.

The Shanghai Riots

A COMMISSION Consisting of three

men-American, British, and Japanese has held an inquiry over the events in Shanghai of May 30 last, a day which a correspondent from China reported in The Outlook as having been called by a Chinese orator the "Lexington of Chinese history." Ten Chinese were killed by volleys fired upon the mob by order of a British inspector or sergeant of police after vain efforts to disperse the "demonstrators" who were crying "Kill the foreigners!"

The inquiry by the three men (each a judge of some court) was made at the request of the foreign diplomatic representatives, and the majority and minority reports were sent to the Dutch Minister in Peking, M. Oudendijk. The American, Mr. Justice E. Finley Johnson, who presided over this board, differed from his colleagues as to the conduct and responsibility of the police officers of the Shanghai international settlement, holding that a larger force of police should have been on duty and that firing on the mob might then have been unnecessary. Judge Johnson said that the Shanghai police officials failed to see the gravity of the situation and to take proper precautions. Specifically, he blamed the inspector on the ground and the Police Commissioner, who left the city in the crisis for three hours, although he was informed of the menace.

The British and Japanese members of the board of inquiry exonerated the police officials from blame and declared that they could not have acted otherwise than as they did.

It is quite easy to see that different views may honestly be held of the confused and excited events of a riot. The American judge was less affected by any close concern of his own country than were his colleagues, and his view is therefore likely to be accepted as just by Americans generally.

A Queen of the House of Savoy

Paul Whiteman, the jazz band leader,
who, with good reason, aspires to
symphonic effects

that wisdom and good sense that has characterized the royal house of which she was a scion. It was Italy's good fortune to find in that royal family the agency that was needed to make Italian unification certain. Against the follies of monarchs that have brought monarchical rule into disrepute and ruin in so many places during the past century the sanity and human adaptability of the house of Savoy may be placed as a considerable offset. Queen Margherita was first cousin of her husband, and therefore seemed to have inherited those qualities of mind that made King Humbert's father, Victor Emmanuel, a successful monarch at a critical period and have descended to the present King, son of Humbert and Margherita.

The house of Savoy has been sometimes called democratic. That is a com-. pliment which self-governing people like to pay to their rulers. Queen Margherita was in that sense democratic, but she stood for the niceties of the etiquette of the Court. The mourning in Italy which followed her death was genuine, for the people of Italy thought of her during her lifetime as one of themselves and a royal friend.

The Live Art of Music

G EORGE GERSHWIN's one-act Negro

jazz opera, "135th Street," is not likely to add to his reputation. That is not so much a reflection on his clever work as it is an indication of the extent of his reputation as established by his

George Gershwin, composer, who has lifted the humbly born dance of the jazz band to the level of the symphonic concert platform

"Rhapsody in Blue" and his "Concerto in F." Originally produced as a number in a vaudeville show, it was performed rather more seriously during the holidays rather more seriously during the holidays by Paul Whiteman and his amplified jazz orchestra. Whether intended to be or not, it is in effect a skit, satirizing the sort of tragic melodrama made familiar by "Pagliacci." It goes to the extent of introducing the story by a vocal prologue, after the fashion of Leoncavallo.

In workmanship this bit of music drama betokens the amateur's ambition. It is interesting as marking perhaps the

Walter Damrosch, symphonic orchestra
leader, who regards benevolently the
aspirations of jazz

first step of Gershwin in his progress from the field of dance music and musical comedy to that of serious music in classical forms. Paul Whiteman, under whose auspices the Negro opera was produced, represents the field of dance music. It is indicative of the leanings of jazz that it was also under Paul Whiteman's auspices that Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" was first performed. Indeed, Whiteman's enlarged orchestra approaches symphonic proportions, if not in size, at least in volume and variety of tonal affects.

It is also indicative of the broadening of the serious art of music in these days that such a welcome was given to Gershwin's efforts by Walter Damrosch, the conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, who is as truly a musical educator as a conductor. Gershwin's music is unmistakably American. That is not merely because it employs the rhythms and intervals distinctive of American dance music, but because it has the characteristics of the American temperament, and really interprets in musical form American characteristics. It is not without interest that within a few days of the repetition of Gershwin's "Concerto in F" Ottorino Respighi performed in New York City, for the first time anywhere, his "Piano Concerto in the Mixolydian Mode." And that was as Italian as Gershwin's was American It is based on one of the church modes and in its first movement introduces a theme from a Gregorian chant. Those

who have heard Respighi's popular symphonic poem "Fontane di Roma" will hardly be prepared for a work of such severity and noble character as this concerto. It is a relief to hear such music after so much that one hears which is clever or skillful or daring but essentially commonplace. At times one wonders whether this is not a period of merely musical exploration; but these two concertos, unlike as they are, indicate that there are composers who are building with a view to permanence.

A

Ecce Homo

BOVE all else in human history stands the figure of a man. However you may explain him, Whenever in the civilized world a date is written, he is implicitly recognized. Wherever standards of human conduct are raised they invite comparison with his. Around him have swirled the conflicts of ages. Men either welcome his guidance or shrink from his judgment. The record of but few months of his life has come down to us, but that record has been the subject of more study than any other human life. Even when men have undertaken to explain him as a myth they have not escaped the impress of his dominant and unmatched personality.

you cannot escape him.

Among all the tributes to the power of Jesus of Nazareth in the world there are few so impressive as the attitude of the people from whom he sprang. For centuries his name was not mentioned in the writings of Jewish teachers. This was not because of indifference to him, but because of resistance to what his name in their minds stood for, and to what was done in his name.

It is not strange, then, that when a Jewish rabbi, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, of New York, preached a sermon about Jesus on the Sunday before Christmas a controversy was stirred that promises to continue for some time. What effect that sermon had upon the Orthodox Jew, and how the very discussion of Jesus from a Jewish point of view affects the Orthodox Jewish mind, is described in an article on another page. We shall not here discuss what Rabbi Wise said. In fact, what precisely he did say we do not know. So far his sermon has not been printed, and no authentic copy of the sermon is, we learn, yet available. It will suffice to say here that Rabbi Wise, accepting the find

ings of Dr. Joseph Klausner's book, "Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching" (a translation of which has recently been published), recognized Jesus as a historical character and as a distinctively great Jewish teacher. Instead of quoting Dr. Wise, we may quote as even perhaps more pertinent these sentences from the conclusion of Dr. Klausner's book. After explaining that Jesus cannot be to the Jewish nation either Son of God or Messiah, or even prophet or lawgiver, Dr. Klausner writes (the italics are his):

But Jesus is, for the Jewish nation, a great teacher of morality and an artist in parable. He is the moralist for whom, in the religious life, morality counts as everything. Indeed, as a consequence of this extremist standpoint his ethical code has become simply an ideal for the isolated few.

But in his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness, and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code; neither is there any parallel to the remarkable art of his parables.

Like most controversies about him, this controversy engendered by Dr.

Klausner's book and Rabbi Wise's sermon is really one concerning not Jesus himself but explanations of Jesus. To those who think of religion as a body of doctrines to be believed on authority or a code of laws to be obeyed on authority such a controversy seems vital. That is why the attacks upon Rabbi Wise have been voiced by the more Orthodox among the Jews and by certain of the Fundamentalists among the Christians.

To a growing number of people, however, such controversies are becoming

typified in Jesus of Nazareth and those who do not want it, between those who want access to the power that produces that kind of life and those who do not want it. It is the same conflict that occurs within every human being. In a little book entitled "The Religion of Undergraduates," by Cyril Harris, recently published, this conflict is described in a letter by an unnamed college student. He writes:

I seem to be at war with myself. Two forces fight for possession of me. Sometimes I take sides with one, sometimes with the other. More often I merely look on. Of all things I want peace within, in which to go ahead with my work. But all this struggle takes too much energy. How can I prolong the intervals of peace?

It is this same struggle that Nietzsche describes in his "Thus Spake Zarathustra," and he chooses the side of selfishness and what he calls the superman. There have always been and there will continue to be those who look upon Jesus Christ as the opponent of all that they want and will fight for. But there are those, and their number seems to be increasing, who without regard to doctrines about him revere him, want what he stands for, and would like the power to achieve it. Those who are in earnest in wanting this are discovering that passionate controversies over doctrines and theories about the methods of Christ interfere with their effectiveness in the real struggle that inevitably divides the world into those who are for the Man of Nazareth and those who are against him. ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT.

cern. Old codes of law, incrusted by time with explanations that do not explain, become obsolete. Old theologies, incrusted with interpretations that do not interpret, become antiquated and inconsistent with modern thought. But religion survives, because religion is neither law nor doctrine, but life. It was not some new laws that Jesus said it was his mission to impose or some new doctrines to inculcate and prescribe; it was rather a new access to life and to the source of life.

Controversies, therefore, over theories about Jesus are superficial. The fundamental difference between men has nothing to do with either law or doctrine. It is the difference between those who want the kind of life that is embodied and

T

Wisconsin Idea

HOSE who talk of "tainted money" are governed more by

the heart than by the head. The very phrase "tainted money" is an appeal, not to the understanding, but to the emotions. It bears no relation to the real problem involved in the acceptance or rejection of gifts and bequests.

Money as such can have no moral taint. If it could, then not only should universities scrutinize the moral qualifications of their benefactors, but the Government should also examine carefully the moral qualifications of its taxpayers. We should have to ask our butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker to reject all money paid them by those who do not

measure up to the highest social standards.

The trustees of the University of Wisconsin rejected a gift from the Rockefeller Foundation. We have not heard any protest from them against the collection of taxes from the Rockefellers. Moral taint pertains only to persons; and the only taint involved in accepting donations is the taint of being under an immoral obligation. The quality of the obligation depends not upon the giver, but upon the receiver. If a university cannot accept money without being under obligation to the giver which overrides its obligation to those whom it pretends to serve, then it has no right to any endowment at all. If it receives such money without obligation, the university is untainted.

We have heard much talk of the danger to education from the tyranny of private benefactors. We have heard very little of the danger to education from the tyranny of politics. In an ideal state. political legislators would have no more

to say about education than they would have about the Church. A democracy can and ought to provide funds for education. It ought not to seek to control It ought not to seek to control

those funds by a political agency for a political purpose.

Democracy in religion means the right of the people to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience and to control their own institutions of religion. It does not mean the control of those institutions by legislatures or county supervisors or any other political institutions.

Democracy in education means opportunity for the untrammeled development of the science and practice of teaching. We should be as jealous of keeping politics out of education as we should of keeping it out of religion.

The danger to education from such control as has been exercised by the Legislature of Wisconsin is very much more real and very much more imminent than any conceivable danger from any one benefactor or group of benefactors to