For many years observers of total eclipses of our great luminary had noted the peculiar arrangement of the rays of the solar corona, the beautiful pearly halo surrounding the sun, which can be seen only during the fleeting moments of totality. These luminous rays are arranged in very much the same manner as the lines of iron filings in the well-known laboratory experiment showing the lines of force around a magnet. This appearance led to the surmise that the sun had magnetic properties. Surmise, however, is one thing and proof another. The recent work of Dr. Hale has now supplied the latter. The proof is long and technical. Suffice it to say that it depends upon certain peculiar properties in the vibrations of light, if the source of the light is under the influence of a magnet. These peculiarities are shown when the light is passed through an instrument called a spectrograph, which analyzes the light into its constituent colors in a manner analogous to the formation of a rainbow. This band of color is photographed, and the departure of the colors from their normal positions furnishes the evidence. In this instance the change in the colors of sunlight from their normal positions was exceedingly slight. It was necessary to measure distances only a small fraction of the thickness of a hair. The work was begun five years ago; but the bes appliances of that time were not sufficiently powerful to give consistent results. New apparatus was then designed and built. This included a vertical telescope 150 feet in height and a spectrograph 75 feet long, the latter being placed in an underground chamber of constant temperature. After the new equipment has been set up, the work was resumed. Every effort was made to guard. against error in securing the photographic observations, as it was recognized that the quantities to be determined were exceedingly small, and that the slightest error in instrumental adjustment might either mask them entirely or else give fictitious results. Finally, after hundreds of plates had been used and measured with infinite care, the end of the preliminary work was reached and the discovery announced this summer. But, just as every great piece of work requires time and care for its perfection, so this one will demand additional years of painstaking effort before the magnetic properties of the sun are fully known. However, even this preliminary work has shown more than the mere fact that the sun is a great spherical magnet. In the

course of the investigation it was found that the solar magnetic poles are near the poles of rotation, possibly much nearer than the corresponding poles of the earth, and that the north magnetic pole of the sun attracts the same end of the compass-needle as the earth's north magnetic pole. The full significance of this new discovery is difficult to estimate; but there is no question that it is one of the most important scientific achievements of recent years. It may, for example, lead to the explanation of the earth's magnetism-a problem which has been baffling the scientific world for centuries. Its greatest significance, however, appears to lie in the fact that it introduces a new element which must be taken into consideration in dealing with many cosmical problems.

PETER AND FUSION

Young Peter, his wife, and his three children have left the farm and moved to town. Also the Fusion campaign in New York City is on. There's a connection between these

two events.

Why is young Peter leaving the farm and taking his family to town?

Perhaps Peter himself would mention as the first reason the fine offer he received

from a manufacturing concern. His own talents, such as they are, incline him strongly to any kind of work with mechanisms. Alone on the farm he could tinker here and mend there, but in this offered position he believes he can accomplish something worth while, and make a living in the line of his temperamental preference.

Really as controlling is Peter's consideration for his wife. He feels that she has had too much drudgery and too little of other things in life. Peter wants to have her have the advantages of the town. She likes music, and so does Peter himself in a shamefaced way; but they have no chance to hear any on the farm except what they can make themselves or their phonograph can reproduce. They read books together; but they haven't many. There's a library in town. And then there's the theater. Peter, as well as his wife, enjoys a good play. In town they can see one now and then. The burdens that have weighed heavily on the shoulders of Peter's wife have been borne long enough, Peter thinks, and he is going to take her where she can have something else.

Then there are the children. On the farm

they have been well enough; in fact, very well for the most part; but Peter will never forget the anxiety of last summer when the youngest one was ill and the doctor seemed very far away. Peter hesitated a long while about taking his children from the open-air life they had been living; but after reading somewhere that the death rate in New York City was lower than in the rural districts of the State, he felt easier on that score. As to the children's education, there was nothing to hesitate about. The little district school a mile and a half from the farm was just better than no school at all; while in town even the slum children, with the public schools, and the settlements, and the boys' and girls' clubs, and what not, had a thousand times better chance than any child on that farm could have. At least so Peter thought. He may have underestimated the education that the farm itself could give, though he did not overlook it.

Finally, and this sums it all up, Peter was going where there were people, and where people, acting together and living together, could do more for themselves than any of them could do alone.

There are a great many Peters, and Peters' wives, and Peters' children. People are going to the city by scores and by thousands because they feel that there life is more expanding than in the countrymore civilized.

They go to the city because men can do together in the city work that they could not do alone, because they can defend themselves together against their enemies, whether they be human foes or the hostile forces of disease; can, by acting together, educate and train themselves and their children; can enjoy together a common social life in the city as they cannot in the country. People live together in the city on grounds, then, of common industry, common protection, common education, and common social life. · The prime purposes of the government of a great city should be the promotion of these objects on behalf of all the people of the city-the promotion of sound, just, and efficient industrial life, of an effective system of mutual protection, of a constantly. improving plan for the education and development of the children and the adults of the city, and of a wholesome, happy, and civilizing social life.

It is important that a city should have clean and well-paved streets, and a good

police department, and good methods of transportation. No city can be called really well governed which does not supply these and administer them efficiently and economically. After all, however, these things are incidental to the main purposes for which people go to live in cities. They do not go there to build streets, or to arrest one another, or merely to travel back and forth. They travel back and forth, they establish a police force, they build and keep streets in repair, for the purpose of furthering their real ends of work-self-protection, education, self-development, diversion, social life.

Sometimes such things as playgrounds and parks, recreation piers, museums and libraries, school lunches, municipal theaters, municipal markets, model tenements, social centers, have been discussed as if they were frills and furbelows. As a matter of fact, they come very close to the real objects for which cities exist.

Great are the advantages produced by cities. The great civilizations of the past have expressed themselves in cities: Babylon, Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, Venice-the very name of each of these cities is emblematic of some phase of human advancement. We do not think of their streets, or their police, or their means of transportation. We think rather of their literature, or their commercial triumphs, or their religious ideals, or their schools of learning, or their treasures of art. These are the things for which cities exist.

What has all this to do with the Fusion campaign in New York City in this year of grace?

No one knows what are the prizes of city life better than some of the enemies of the city. These are they who make these prizes a matter of privilege. The curse of Tammany Hall upon the city of New York is not merely that it has allowed the streets to be scandalously ill repaired and unclean, that it has allowed the police force to become corrupted at the top, and that it has encouraged graft in providing for means of transit: but that it has kept the benefits of city life in large measure from the mass of the people and turned them over as far as it dared to the privileged and favored few. By its misgovernment it has made, on the one hand, the slums, and, on the other hand, the rich grafters. It has craftily seized on the inheritance of the people, and by doling out alms and charities it has kept the appearance of

care for the popular welfare while it has divided the major part of the inheritance among its own followers and favorites. That is why Tammany is the enemy of the people of New York. That is why Tammany has opposed, in the name of conservative business, every movement to make the government of the city of New York a people's

This is what the municipal campaign in New York City this year signifies; this is what every municipal campaign should signify

not merely a campaign against corruption and inefficiency, but a campaign on behalf of a cityful of people.

POLICY

The Fusion fight in New York is a fight not primarily on behalf of the taxpayer that his taxes may not be exorbitant, though it is in part that, nor primarily a fight to secure efficient administrators of the business of the city as a corporation, though it is that in part also; it is chiefly a fight on behalf of just such people as Peter and his family; a fight on behalf of the people who, unlike Peter, were born and bred in the city, but stay there because of the same reasons that have brought Peter into it; a fight to see that the benefits of city life which Peter is seeking for his wife, his children, and himself go to them; that the city of New York is a place in which it will be good to work, good to get an education, good to find wholesome recreation, good to enjoy the treasures of literature and of the arts, good to meet and live with people-good not for a few but for all.

That is the fight that is on whenever a municipal election approaches in almost every city of the land; that is the fight that is on between the forces of Tammany and the forces of Fusion. This is what is meant by the Fusion campaign for economy in administration that the people's money be not so wasted that the people are denied the full benefits of its use. This is what is meant by efficiency in administration: that the servants of the people be not outclassed by the servants of special interests, that no group of powerful individuals within the city should have command of greater ability and expert service than the people as a whole. This is what is meant by the attack on graft and official collusion with the criminal and the vicious that the machinery of city government be not manipulated to the advantage of the worst elements in the city and to the profit of a few corruptionists, but that it be controlled in the interest of all the people.

The Mexican question is for the American people a double question: First, What is the duty of a strong and prosperous nation like the United States to a neighbor torn by civil dissensions and without a government which has either the moral right to govern or the power to fulfill the fundamental function of government, the protection of persons and property? Second, What is its duty to Americans and other non-Mexicans in that unhappy country, where persons and property are not protected? President Wilson deals with this question in his Message in an admirable spirit. And in the main his policy as there outlined seems to The Outlook to be wisely conceived, and we hope it will be carried out.

I. For knowledge of the facts in Mexico the people are dependent on three sources of information: letters from Americans resident in Mexico; the newspaper press; official information. The first are almost certain to be colored by personal and pecuniary considerations; the second are likely to be affected by political and commercial bias and by the desire for sensation. The official information is more trustworthy than either private letters or press correspond

ence.

When the President informs Congress, and through Congress the people of the United States and of the world, that affairs are growing worse, not better, in Mexico, and that war and disorder, devastation and confusion, seem to threaten to become the settled future of the distracted country," we must assume that this is the truth.

II. It would be immoral for the United States to recognize this government. There are two possible grounds for such recognition: A de facto government may demand and receive recognition, because it does in fact govern; does preserve law and order and maintain peace. On this ground the world powers had no choice but to recognize the Government of Napoleon III, although it was founded on a coup d'état.

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de jure government may ask recognition when it is clearly in the right, and recognition may be granted in order to aid it to acquire the stability necessary to protect persons and property and maintain peace. Of this an

illustration is afforded by our course in Panama. But the Huerta Government is neither de jure nor de facto. It is not de jure, for it was initiated by crime and is founded on crime. It is not de facto, for it has not the power to perform the most elemental functions of government..

III. Intervention for the purpose of per forming these elemental functions, that is, protecting persons and property in Mexico, ought not to be undertaken except under the most imperious necessity.

Because intervention by one nation in the domestic affairs of another nation is never to be attempted if it can be avoided.

Because intervention might arouse against the American people the bitter and implacable hostility of practically the entire Mexican people, and the suspicion if not the enmity of the Central American and the South American Republics.

Because it would entail upon the United States a problem the extent, duration, complexity, and expense of which it is impossible to forecast.

IV. There remains the policy outlined by President Wilson, well entitled the policy of "isolation." It may be described in a sentence thus: Refuse moral support to the immoral and incompetent government of Huerta; draw a cordon around Mexico for the purpose of preventing the shipment from the United States of munitions of war to any of the factions which are now keeping the country in anarchy; keep steadily before the people of Mexico the assurances of our friendship and the offer of our good offices; and wait.

Third, it avoids, as far as possible,] semblance of weakness by the warning that those who are responsible for the sufferings and losses of Americans unable to get away will be held to a strict accounting by the United States.

V. The advice to Americans to leave Mexico if they can has been questioned and may be questionable. But it can be defended on three grounds:

VI. In all dealings with foreign nations it is the duty of the American Nation to maintain a coherent and continuous policy. As long as the United States has been a Nation it has been its policy to defend its citizens from oppression and injustice in every part of the world. For this we fought with Great Britain the War of 1812. That policy must not be abandoned now. The Outlook has no reason to apprehend that President Wilson intends to abandon it. It is also the duty of the American people to maintain a united front toward other peoples, to disregard all partisan considerations, and as far as possible to subordinate to the National judgment individual opinions upon questions of detail. In doing so they must necessarily act through the Administration in power. For this reason we are glad to see the policy of the Administration receiving the warm support of Progressives and Republicans in Congress, and we hope that it will receive such a support from the country as will convince the Huerta Government that it has no defenders on this side of the border.

First, that, accompanied by provision for their transportation, it gives to possibly hundreds of our fellow-citizens opportunity of escape from an intolerable condition of suffering and peril.

Second, it emphasizes to the Mexican Government and to the world powers our conviction that Mexico is in a condition of anarchy, with no government able to perform the functions or worthy to assume the name.

THE PHILIPPINES IN

POLITICS?

By the appointment of Francis Burton Harrison to be Governor-General of the Philippines, and the consequent displacement of the present Governor-General, Cameron Forbes, President Wilson has raised in the minds of many who are jealous for the fine record which the United States has made in those islands no little grave concern.

Some of the arguments against the retention of the Philippines as a dependency by the United States have been quite ignored by the American people. These are the arguments which have appealed to purely selfish considerations. In the American people there runs a strain of idealism; and with regard to the Philippines this idealistic strain has shown itself most conspicuously in the attitude of the American people and their Government. To those who have argued that the Philippines would bring to this country no profit, but rather a loss, that the pacification of the islands would call for the sacrifice

of men and of property with no material reward, the people of the United States have paid practically no heed.

When, however, it was argued that the task of governing a dependency was one for which by training and tradition the American Republic was unfitted, that it called not only for experience in colonial government which the Americans lacked, but also for a separation of such government from considerations of party politics, the American people were more inclined to listen. Could the President of the United States and Congress forget party politics long enough to decide questions that concerned the Filipinos purely in the Filipinos' interests ?

From the beginning of the Philippine experiment The Outlook believed that they could. The history of the last fifteen years has been justifying that belief. First the Philippines were put into the charge of the army, and the army's freedom from party politics was never more clearly exhibited than in the work that the army did in the Philippine Archipelago. Under the administration of the first Civil Governor, Mr. Taft, this record of freedom from politics continued. When a successor to Mr. Taft was required because of Mr. Taft's appointment as Secretary of War, the Republican President chose a Democrat, and he chose him because this Democrat had had experience in the Philippines as a member of the Philip pine Commission. General Wright's successor was selected by the same Republican President from among the men who had had experience in the civil government of the Philippines. Mr. Ide had had even wider experience than in the Philippine Islands, for before being Vice-Governor of the Philippines, before being even a member of the Philippine Commission, he had been United States Commissioner to Samoa, and then, under the joint appointment of the Governments of England, Germany, and the United States, Chief Justice of Samoa. The fact that he was a Republican had no weight in his appointment, one way or another. Whether his successor, James F. Smith, was a Democrat or a Republican we do not believe that one out of a thousand of our readers could tell. We are under the impression that he was a Democrat; but what was of controlling consideration in his appointment was the fact that he had served in the Philippines first as an army officer, during which time he was in turn Deputy Provost-Marshal of Manila,

member of the Commission to confer with the Commission from Aguinaldo, Military Governor of the Island of Negros, and Collector of Customs for the Philippines, thus as an army officer having not only military but administrative experience in the islands; then later he served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, and afterwards as member of the Philippine Commission and Secretary of Public Instruction. His successor is the man who has now been supplanted, Cameron Forbes, who, before he became Governor, was in turn a member of the Philippine Commission and Secretary of Commerce and Police in the Government, and then Vice-Governor.

In this history of the Governorship of the Philippine Islands the United States has been following up what may be well regarded as perhaps the best in the traditions of the colonial government of Great Britain.

Under how many political changes of administration in the British Government at London the Earl of Cromer remained undisturbed at his post in Egypt, President Wilson, who is a student of history, could probably tell at once. During the period from 1883 until 1907 the political complexion of the House of Commons and the British Government seesawed back and forth between Conservative and Liberal. But, more than that, Lord Cromer was experienced in the problems of colonial government before he was appointed. He was in turn private secretary to the Governor-General of India, Commissioner on the Egyptian Public Debt, Comptroller-General of Egypt, Financial Member of the Council of the GovernorGeneral of India. In view of the very brief experience of the United States in the government of dependencies, the similarity of the previous records of the Governors-General of the Philippines and of the great British administrator in Egypt is remarkable.

The contrast which President Wilson has now offered to the country is one which to the friends of good government both in the United States and in the Philippines is painful.

What is the record of the man whom President Wilson has selected to succeed Cameron Forbes? In the first place, he has had not the slightest experience in the administration of dependencies, not the slightest experience with those delicate and difficult problems that arise in personal relations between a dependent people and their governing authorities. He has indeed had, so