load in such work of the League as it can share without involving itself in its political activities.

Why Go to Geneva to Join the World Court?

THE

HE refusal of the United States to send delegates to Geneva to discuss the reasons for the reservations attached to American adherence to the World Court should not be taken as unfriendly. The belief of our Government in the value of the Court has been abundantly proved, and the resolutions passed by the Senate have stated clearly the conditions on which the United States is ready to join. It is an advantage to have those conditions specified and clearly understood in advance. Secretary Kellogg is entirely sound in taking the position that the United States can have no objection to the signatory members holding a conference regarding the American reservations, but sees no reason for assigning a delegate from Washington.

It is not surprising that the Administration holds this ground. Its whole policy of American co-operation with the Court might be endangered if it should become involved in a discussion under the auspices of the League of Nations and another partisan debate should start in the Senate. It is, rather, surprising that the officials of the League should have taken this occasion to attempt to induce the Department of State to send representatives to a gathering at Geneva. to explain what the Government has written in communicating its intention to adhere to the Court at The Hague.

Both for the United States and for the Court and the League, it has been made evident beyond question that American membership in the Court is not connected in any way with the League. To take part in a Geneva conference on a matter already definitely settled would only complicate and confuse the issue once more. Our offer of adherence follows the usual procedure in calling for an exchange of notes with the nations now members of the Court. If there are questions to be clarified, they can be dealt with in that way. Cuba and Greece, by notifying the Department of State of their acceptance of the American reservations, have shown the simple way in which the members of the Court can bring the United States into association. with them if they desire.

In view of their disagreements over the conditions for a plebiscite to settle the fate of the district, which an American. commission has been trying to arrange, the question was transferred to Washington for mediation. The Department of State has advanced two proposals, either one of which would obviate the difficulties of a plebiscite.

The first is that the Tacna-Arica region should be made a neutralized state, either independent or under the protection and guaranty of other South American nations.

The second is that the region, which includes valuable railroad and port facilities, might be acquired by another South American nation not a party to the dispute. It is generally understood that in such a case Bolivia might purchase the territory in exchange for other land and for a money payment. Bolivia has repeatedly sought such a settlement, which would afford a long-desired outlet

to the sea. But both Chile and Peru have opposed it.

They have, however, shown a willing

GEN

ness to consider the first proposal of a neutralized state, suggested by the neutralized United States, and there seems to be good reason for hope that an agreement may be reached on the basis of its terms. A Sure Way to Become President ENERAL THEODORE PANGALOS, of Greece, has given a demonstration of the advantages of conducting a presidential campaign as a dictator. When Admiral Condouriotis resigned recently as President, General Pangalos ordered new elections. He announced himself a candidate and directed that balloting be postponed in certain districts understood to be unfavorable to him. The only opposition candidate, M. Demerlis, modestly withdrew. So General Pangalos found himself running Greece as President as well as Premier. It is an honor which he shares with Ahmed Zogu Bey, the Dictator of Albania, neighbor of Greece on the north, and with the State Head of Estonia, who also acts as Premier, and might perhaps be said to share also with the President of the United States, whose authority as head of the Cabinet corresponds in many ways to that of a Prime Minister.

An attempted army revolt near Salonika against his power was quickly quelled by the Dictator-Premier-President. General Plastiras, former revolutionary chief of Greece, was said to be its organizer. Upon his expulsion from Greece by General Pangalos he went to Jugoslavia. There he was arrested as a political disturber, and later went to Albania. Lately he was reported to have gone to Salonika. His activities, however, do not appear to have caused much serious worry to the multiple military and civil executive of Greece, who apparently holds power in his own hands as firmly as before.

Dr. Grenfell Indorses Feng

young men and women from the United States have responded-an adventure that has resulted in physical, mental, and spiritual benefit to an isolated people. Dr. Grenfell writes about Miss Strong's recent article in The Outlook on Marshal Feng, and adds:

I feel myself that one of the greatest tragedies of history is being enacted by the endeavor of outside agencies to destroy Marshal Feng, who is the one stable influence in China.

I visited his home at Paotingfu; I saw all the people who had known him from his youth; I saw the ministers and others who had been instrumental in his baptism; I stayed three weeks at the Rockefeller Institute, looked up all the records of him and his soldiers in the cold light of medical records; I saw his personal friends from this country, some of whom are well known to me and are men of high ideals and fine judgment; I inquired about him. from every missionary that I knew from Bishop Roots, the well-known Chinese leader of the Episcopal Church, to the Commissioner of the Salvation Army, and their officer in charge at Kalgan. I went to Kalgan myself personally, and saw Marshal Feng, and I have been kept constantly in touch through the Chinese Labor Bureau in Boston direct from Peking of the opinions of men like C. T. Wang as to the confidence that the outside world can have in this great man. I can only say that the stutly has more than convinced me that a great injustice is being done to this man by the outside world who only accord him the title Christian when it is in brackets, and who murder him with their tongues, calling him Bolshevik and traitor. We felt that he was far the greatest man in China, and that his influence is far more likely to stabilize the country than that of any other man.

Airplanes, antiseptics, automobiles, canned food, chemicals, clocks, collar buttons, electrical machinery of many kinds, eye-glasses, fishermen's reels, flashlights, fountain pens, Kodaks, life insurance reports and statistics, model of

Museum Candidates

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Mauretania, monkey-wrenches, motionpicture machines, narcotics, oil paintings (copies), photographic materials, powdered milk, printing machinery, radio instruments, sewing materials, speedometers, steam trains, stereopticons, surgeons' instruments, telephones, watches.

Later on, if the returns continue as they have begun, we shall be able to present a summary of the replies showing the objects which our readers consider most representative of modern civilization. For the convenience of our read

order that those who have mislaid their last week's Outlook can take part in the poll.

If you did not fill out the blank last week, write, in the order of their importance, a list of the ten objects which appeal to you as most representative of current life and send it to the Editors of The Outlook, 120 East 16th Street.

TH

Owls

HAT portion of the executive grounds which stretches southward from the White House to the Ellipse is, in all essentials except distance, among the most remote spots in the East and the loneliest. No sound jars upon its silence. No movement ever is to be discerned in it save that of the branches of the old trees, wind-tossed. Once, in an Administration now becoming a part of the long ago, a few aimlessly browsing sheep might be seen to emerge from the clustered bushes, graze their way across an open space, and disappear again behind a bank. But in recent years it has known neither footprint nor mark of thing more alive than a lawn-mower with the man and mule, half animate, who propel it.

Still, in that wilderness devoid of any sign of life there are things that live and move. Out of it, deep in a recent night,

a form came silent and swift to a window of the White House, entered and, still silent as a shadow, circled and settled upon a post of the President's bed.

It was an owl.

An honor rarer than any he had previously won had come to Calvin Coolidge. Twenty-eight other men have been President of the United States, but, with biographers pawing among their papers and prying into the memories of their intimates, it has never been written of any other of them that the symbol of silent wisdom came and perched above him. Indeed, we cannot recall that a similar thing has occurred to any other great man in any station. An owl there has been on desk or mantelpiece of many a man, but it came by way of the taxidermist's shop. Only this one came of its own accord to sit by the side of a man as rarely vocal as itself, as oracular when moved to speech.

What sort of owl was it? Unfortunately, nobody knows. The White House staff has never acquired an ornithologist.

This owl may not have been habitually a silent owl, though the President says that it came quietly and went without noise. There are misconceptions concerning the silence of owls, as there are concerning the silence of Coolidge.

Was it a long-eared owl? There is not in this world a living thing whose vocal cords are used with greater effectiveness on those rare occasions when they are used at all. The fortunate ones among men who have lived for long periods deep in the woods may recall a startled awakening from a dream of dogs flying through the air, their barks rising to not unmusical crescendo-awakening to find a flock of long-eared owls circling about the shack.

The President's owl may have been a barred owl. If so, he was honored by a bird whose deep-toned, questioning voice is among the most impressive of bigwoods sounds. There is no more striking melody in nature than that which carries far through the woods when two males

nearness to the dwellings of men, frequenter of old apple orchards, the castanet-like snapping of whose bill has frightened many boys and men not a fewwhose tremulous and warbling whistle, weird and melancholy, has sent shivers down so many spines? Or a barn owl, that bird of the monkey face, so furtive even in abundance that it is rarely seen, whose only note is a strange, startled scream? Or a saw-whet owl, whose voice is the rasping of rusty saw-teeth?

If there is significance in the perching of an owl on the President's bedpost, the measure of the significance is in the kind of owl it was. But there is no means of knowing, and every man superstitiously inclined will attach to the incident the significance that would go with the kind of owl which, in his opinion, accords most nearly with the Coolidge character.

Any or all of the species might come out of the loneliness of the south grounds.

for Man

Time and again in naval history victory has deserted the heaviest artillery. With material power equal, victory has invariably gone to the fleet whose commanding officer exercised the highest degree of skill and manifested the greatest understanding of the purpose of naval combat. If this was true in the time of Nelson, it is a thousand times as true to-day. In Nelson's time the ship of the line was a comparatively simple engine of war. The truck guns which peered from the ports of the Victory were utterly simple in construction and control. Their range was short, their arc of fire limited, and their offensive power, as opposed to the defensive bulwarks confronting them, less than the power of modern artillery.

In the days of the Great Commanders the battleship generally moved towards its foe under shortened canvas at a rate of five or six miles an hour. To-day the situation. is changed. Battleships approach each other at a speed of twenty

Could it have been-the utter solitude of the south grounds suggests it-that tiger among birds, the great horned owl, whose deep, far-carrying Whoo-hoo-hoohoo surpasses in volume the voice of any other bird, whose rarely uttered, piercing scream is the most blood-curdling sound of the night and the depths of the woods?

Or was it a screech owl, little lover of

S

SOMETIMES we wonder whether,

in the discussion of naval armament, too much emphasis is not being laid upon guns and tonnage. The 5-5-3 ratio governing the battleship power of Great Britain, the United States, and Japan was arrived at by purely mechanical methods. 'What would the ratio show if the imponderables of character, training, seamanship, and understanding of strategy could be taken into account? No man knows!

must exercise command over huge floating fortresses of a complexity beyond the power of a layman to grasp. A single salvo from the guns of a modern battleship may put its opponent completely out of action while the opponent still lurks on the horizon. The ability to make instantaneous decisions and the ability to correlate the control of complex forces that is demanded of the modern naval commander makes the task of a Nelson, a Suffren, and a de Ruyter seem almost like child's play. Principles of naval combat remain the same; the

application of them demands a speed of thought and action which would have tried the nerves of even the greatest commanders of the past.

whether or not a personnel is being developed able to handle our vessels under war conditions. If we must pay for a fleet, let us give the commanders of that fleet the opportunity to develop their professional capacity to the uttermost.

Under modern conditions, Farraguts are quite as necessary as fifteen-inch

HE other day I picked up on the desk of a colleague a book' with what the modern novelist would call the "intriguing" title of "Common Sense." It is an English book recently republished in this country. Its author is a university man, lately Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and now, I believe, a chemist in the Anglo-Indian Civil Service. I take.it to be a book on psychology, since it has an introduction by a Fellow of the Royal Society who is an expert in industrial psychology. The book, however, is singularly free from the metaphysical involutions of many modern psychological treatises. It appears to be, as nearly as I can make out, a discussion of the comparative advantages for a man of affairs of intuition based on actual experience and abstract reasoning based on an elaborate text-book education. The author seems to vote for intuition, although his conclusions are not very definite.

Common sense, I suppose, is one of the most difficult faculties or processes of the human mind to define, although we all instantly recognize it when we see it in operation. Many philosophers have tried to define it, but not with unqualified success. The English biologist and Catholic philosopher, St. George Mivart, says that it is "the power of judging philosophically, but without philosophical consciousness." The American philosopher, Emerson, calls it the just average of the faculties of the mind based on wide experience. "What tedious training," he says, "day after day, year after year, never ending, to form the common sense; what continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas; what rejoicing over us of little

1 Common Sense and Its Cultivation. By Dr. Hanbury Hankin, M.A. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.

men; what disputing of prices, what reckonings of interest!"

The entertaining quality of Dr. Hankin's book lies not in its abstract reason

ing-for it has little of that psychological ingredient--but in the great array of anecdotes and incidents which he has collected to show the foolishness of a good deal of abstract reasoning even when it is based on the most advanced and comprehensive scheme of theoretical education.

For example, he tells an amusing story of Charles Babbage. Babbage was an English mathematician and philosopher of the last century who attained a good deal of distinction in his day in various branches of science. He was a graduate of Cambridge University, wrote books on higher mathematics, was a founder of the Astronomical Society of Great Britain, was honored by membership in many learned bodies, and wrote a brilliant book on industrial economics which was translated into many foreign languages. How much this great cultivation of the brain helped his common sense is illustrated by the story, which I quote as follows:

Tennyson once wrote a poem called "The Vision of Sin," in which occur the lines:

'Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born." When this poem was published it came. into the hands of the mathematician Babbage, the well-known inventor of a calculating machine of great scientific interest rather than of practical use. He thereupon wrote to the poet as follows:

"In your otherwise beautiful poem, there is a verse which reads

'Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born.' "It must be manifest that were this true, the population of the world. would be at a standstill. In truth the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death.

"I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it read: 'Every moment dies a man,

Every moment 1 1/16 is born.'

"Strictly speaking this is not correct. The actual figure is a decimal so long that I cannot get it in the line, but I believe 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry. I am, etc."

If there is any anecdote in literature which more delightfully illustrates the inconsequential and uncommonsensical operation of the ultra-mathematical mind, I have not run across it. It is on a par with the notion that Congress, even with the aid of scientific experts, can define the mathematical power of an intoxicant. But let us hastily pass that allusion by. I did not mean in this article to become involved in the discussion of the prohibition question.

It may be that Dr. Hankin's thesis is correct that abstract reasoning is not as efficient in practical life as intuition based on experience-but failures in common sense are not confined to scientists. Artists are sometimes bamboozled for the lack of it, as is indicated by the following anecdote from Dr. Hankin's

book:

[

Arthur Roberts, the comedian, once finished a cab drive, somewhere near Piccadilly Circus. As he got out he asked the cabman where he had better go to amuse himself. "Well, sir," said the cabby, "if you want a thoroughly good show and a real good time, you go and see Arthur Roberts at the Pav London Pavilion, a well-known vaudeville theater] just over the way there." Owing to this unexpected compliment, Arthur Roberts gave a far more liberal tip than he otherwise would have done. The cabman was profuse in his thanks but, when driving away, he looked back and called out, in an altered voice, "Good-night, Arthur!"

Abstract reasoning as to the sincerity of a compliment lost a tip, and commonsense judgment as to the power of delicate flattery gained a tip.

Two American stories occur to me in illustration of the fact that temporary aberration of common sense may sometimes occur in the most highly trained minds. The late Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar was one of the ablest judges that ever sat upon the bench of the United States Supreme Court. He was an accomplished lawyer, served with distinction in the Confederate Army, was a Professor of Ethics and Metaphysics in the University of Mississippi, represented

his State and his country well as a United States Senator for eighteen years, and was appointed by President Cleveland a member of his Cabinet and later a Justice of the Supreme Court, where he commanded universal respect. He had a peculiarly clear, ratiocinative, and yet sometimes absent mind. One day in Washington he got into a herdic, a sort of small omnibus, in which the passengers put their exact fare in a box in the front of the vehicle. A fellow-passenger observed that he dropped a quarter into the box. "Mr. Justice," said this passenger, thinking to do the statesman a courteous favor, "you dropped in a quarter; the fare, you know, is only ten cents." "Why, so it is," said Justice Lamar, and, fumbling around in his pocket, fished out a dime and put that in also.

T

A story of like character is told of Chief Justice Marshall. On one occasion he was driving on circuit in a twowheeled gig and, as was his not infrequent custom, was reading a book, allowing the horse to amble on at his own sweet will. The horse, reaching for something green, got too near the side of the road and the gig was brought to an abrupt stop by a sapling which was caught between the wheel and the body. of the gig. Marshall, much perplexed, called a Negro who was working in a field near by and asked if he had an ax. The Negro, coming to the scene of the difficulty, remarked with common sense: "Why, boss, you don't need no ax. All you has to do is to back the gig up a little and turn out into the middle of the road." Marshall saw the point and, after following the Negro's advice, went

on his way rejoicing. Ratiocination called for an ax; common sense suggested a much simpler method of relief.

Amusing as such anecdotes are, they do not seem to me to wholly justify Dr. Hankin's apparent conclusion that our modern educational systems are all wrong or that the training that a boy may get in the university of hard knocks is better than the training which may be given him at Oxford or Cambridge. Is not Emerson's analysis of education the right one? He intimates that its object is to promote utility, beauty, and wisdom; and that common sense is the servant of utility, taste the servant of beauty, and spiritual perception the servant of wisdom. Perhaps our schools and colleges do not lay enough emphasis upon common sense, but they certainly ought not to neglect taste and spiritual perception.

HIRTEEN months ago a strike took place in the mills of The American Thread Company at Willimantic, Connecticut. Twenty-five hundred men and women left their positions in protest against a ten per cent wage reduction. The strikers, the majority of whom have lived in Willimantic for several generations, form a considerable proportion of the population of that isolated and conservative old New England city. They still believe themselves to be on strike. They hold demonstrations every day. Encouraged by their union leaders-local and imported-they are firmly convinced that they will soon win out, for they do not believe that good thread can be manufactured in the mills without their assistance.

But the American Thread Company (English owned) has ended the strike so far as it is concerned by turning the strikers out of the mill-houses and by importing and settling an entirely new working force of French-Canadian families.

As far as I can ascertain, the old inhabitants are beaten, though they do not yet realize it. They have lost their positions. There are no other industries in town to employ them, and many of them are financially unable to move their families to other factory cities. Therefore the title, "The Lost Tribe of Connecticut."

Strikes are constantly recurring in its various branches. Although the Willimantic strike has had little publicity, it is of considerable importance because it is one of the longest strikes in our history and because the battle of union versus open shop in the textile field is being waged there. It will be worth while, therefore, to consider briefly the state of the textile industry as a whole and the story of this Willimantic trouble in particular.

In comparison with other lines of manufacture, textile wages have always been low. The United States Department of Commerce in 1923 stated that the average wage approximated seventeen dollars per week. Since that time there has been a cut of ten per cent. The maintenance of a family upon this income has become increasingly difficult, and it is not surprising that there is a feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction. among the workers.

Only about one hundred thousand of the one million textile workers in this country are unionized. Through the collective bargaining of unions, the workers. hope to raise their wages to the level of other trades, but the preponderance of foreigners and the consequent mixture of tongues makes organization a difficult task.

The mill-owners deplore the fact of low wages, but contend that, with the competition of cheap labor in Europe, the over-production in this country dur

ing the war, and the general depression of trade, there are only two alternatives -to operate the mills at a low wage or to close down altogether.

The workers can see no further than the size of their weekly pay envelopes. The mill-owners' interest is in the maintenance or resumption of dividends. Clashes, therefore, are inevitable.

The sensational story of the Passaic textile strike and its Communist leader, Weisbord, has already been told in these columns. The Willimantic strike, though less exciting is of far greater importance.

T

HE strike was called by the United Textile Workers of America, a branch of the American Federation of Labor-a union which repudiates the radical leaders of the Passaic strike. Communist agitators have been driven from Willimantic by the union itself.

The American Thread Company operates mills at Holyoke and Fall River, Massachusetts; Westerly, Rhode Island; Dalton, Georgia; and Willimantic, Connecticut. The Connecticut mill is said to be the largest thread mill in the world. In January, 1925, the American Thread Company, following the lead of the other New England textile manufacturers, instituted a ten per cent cut in wages. The union, having partially organized the Willimantic mill, utilized this mill to stop the downward wage trend.

Early in March, after negotiations