should be proposed on the naked issue, "Shall the laws be enforced? Answer by a cross under Yes or No." Of course such a question never should enter the political arena. The law is the shield of the poor and weak from exploitation and injustice and guards the security of all with few or many possessions, and its suspension in the ordering of our affairs should be unthinkable. To be a violator of it even secretly should be a burden of shame to be undertaken by no respecta ble person; and yet all of us are well aware of the pride which many otherwise excellent citizens take in breaking the Volstead Act.

as

F course in a mayoralty campaign the question is never stated baldly as to whether the gamblers, prostitutes, and pimps shall be given free rein or have their activities restricted greatly as possible. A mayor must take an oath of office to support the laws, and there are none who want an open town who would care to declare frankly for an open season for the purveyors of vice.

There is generally some issue back of which the "open town" forces can gather. They particularly prize some catch phrase, such as "personal liberty," or some slogan which has a quality appealing to those who honestly regard themselves as liberals, or are for some reason dissatisfied, and want to register a protest. In this way the support is gained of many who would not deliberately abet lawlessness if they realized what they were doing.

It is surprising how strong are the forces anxious for an "open town." In addition to the active participants there are, first of all, the owners of real estate, for which there is then a far greater demand. Residential districts in that transition stage which precedes the advent of business are adapted to the activities of an "open town," and when so used pay larger rentals than could be secured for any legitimate purpose. Then there are the shopkeepers who sell to the underworld, the proprietors of restaurants, theaters, dance halls, and all kinds of places of amusement. Lastly, there is the great body of people whose patronage keeps business humming in that part of the town which is open.

TH

HESE elements are powerful factors in any election. They know what they want and from whom they can most likely get it. Owing to the habitual indifference of the electorate, it requires , only twenty-one per cent, or a trifle more, of the qualified voters to carry a municipal election. If any reader questions this statement, let him take the total population of his own town, subtract two-fifths of it from the total to allow for children and aliens, and then compare the difference with the total votes cast at a municipal election, and he will see that it is substantially correct. It is because of the indifference of the voters that the question "Shall the town be open?" is so often answered in

the affirmative. Then the police force, instead of doing its duty vigorously to the full of its ability, is committed to a policy of hands off to as great an extent as the sense of public decency will permit, but it cannot keep its hands off some kinds of crime without lessening its efficiency in all lines. With certain crime this consequence is easier to trace than in others.

Take, for example, the picking of pockets. There is good reason to believe that it is a well-organized industry. In fact, those who engage in it call their work a profession. Articles taken by experienced operators are not sold locally. They are shipped out of town and turned into cash at some far-distant point. When a high-class operator falls into the toils of the law, he is furnished with bail. Often this is wired from New York, and a skillful criminal lawyer appears to defend him and utilizes every possible technicality to protect his client. Some years ago a Buffalo police officer was in New York on his vacation. While talking to a New York patrolman a pickpocket joined the group and was introduced to the man from Buffalo. "What is your friend doing here?" he asked. "Oh, he has just come to get wised up," said the New York officer. "Well, then, stranger, if that is all," said the pickpocket, "come to my flat this evening on Blank Street and I will introduce you to some prominent members of the profession." So the Buffalonian accepted the invitation, thinking that a personal acquaintance with really leading members of the profession might prove of value later on. Now this Buffalo police officer had a reputation in the underworld as a man who was honest and fair, one who used every legal means to enforce the law, but who did not take any treacherous advantage. After some years he became Chief of the Buffalo Police and set out to give the city as clean an administration as possible. He had been in office only a few months when he received a message that there were three prisoners in the jail who were very anxious to see him. So he went over, and there were three of the professional pickpockets whom he had met some years before in New York. They said: "We want to apologize to you. We have made a mistake.. We did not know you were Chief. We thought the town was open and that it was all right for us to operate. If we had known you were Chief, we would not have come here. Now please do not be hard on us. If you will not press the charges against us, we promise that we will get out of town at once, and, what is more, wherever we go we will peddle it through the profession that there is nothing doing in Buffalo." The Chief decided to take them at their word, and in eighteen months the picking of pockets declined from an annual rate of over six hundred to less than one hundred. Of course it is impossible to determine what amount of this reduction was due to these three pickpockets, how much to the general reputation of the administration

which must have spread abroad among the people of the underworld, and how much to better police work. What is significant is the relation between an open town and crime. It is the evident assumption on the part of the professional criminals that in an cpen town they can operate with comparative impunity, and that when a city has a police administration vigorously trying to enforce the law it is advisable to keep away.

I

Na large cosmopolitan city the various foreign elements are a prolific source of lawlessness, not because they are naturally criminal, but because they have been uprooted from their own soil. At the best, only a few police officers can speak the most common foreign tongues, and with some languages it is necessary to depend upon interpreters. This is always an obstacle in the pursuit of criminals. The children of immigrants pick up English and frequently their parents do not, with the result that the youngsters feel their superiority. This helps to break down the discipline of the home and is reflected in time in the criminal records. The various nationalities present a great obstacle to the uniform enforcement of the laws. This is especially the case when the strictly American element is in the minority. Some races have customs of Sabbath observance utterly at variance with that of others. Some believe in Sunday baseball. Some do not. Some want dancing at public gatherings on Sunday or theatricals or bowling, others do not. And so it goes.

Since this is so and we have in our midst large masses of population with social ideas and customs foreign to our own, rather than try to force them through our mold by legal processes it would be better for the respect for law either to legalize or license what is not inherently wrong and trust to time, education, and social influence to weld us into a homogeneous whole with common ideals and customs. Mr. Taft pointed out a step vital to the reduction of lawlessness when he declared in 1908: "The administration of criminal law in this country is a disgrace to our civilization. The prevalence of crime and fraud, which here are greatly in excess of that in European countries, is due largely to the failure of the law and its adminis tration to bring criminals to justice." He added: "Felonies are bound to increase unless the criminal laws are enforced with more certainty, more uniformity, and more severity than they are now." Mr. Taft proved himself a prophet, for in the fourteen years since he uttered those words major crimes have increased by leaps and bounds.

The real cure for our lawlessness rests with the hearts and consciences of the American people. When they are convinced that disrespect for law has become such a disease in the body politic that it must be cured, the battle will be won, but until that day dawns we are doomed to present to the world a worse and worse spectacle of lawlessness.

PREHISTORIC RUINS OF STONEHENGE

AS SEEN

FROM AN
AIRPLANE

Widely differing conjectures have been made as to the purpose and origin of these huge monoliths. Nennius in the ninth century asserted that Stonehenge was erected to commemorate the slaughter of four hundred nobles by Hengist. The Welsh bards tell us that it was erected by the incantations of Merlin, who brought the stones from Ireland. The best of modern opinion agrees that it is a sun temple of the bronze age. The time of its erection has been calculated as about 1680 B.C., from the fact that on this approximate date the midsummer sun would have risen on a direct line with the axis of the temple

Wide World Photos

(C) Harris & Ewing

POSTMASTER

GENERAL

HUBERT WORK

INSPECTING

A NEW RADIO OUTFIT FOR AIRCRAFT

Dr. Work (right foreground) is seen at Bolling Field Air Station, at Washington, and before him is a radio outfit which is to be installed on a mail-carrying airplane. This is the first time, it is announced, that the Post Office Department has utilized radio in connection with the air mail service. The two pictures on this page suggest the thought that perhaps a mere matter of thirty centuries is all that has saved PostmasterGeneral Work from becoming a sun god. Nothing less could have resulted from dropping down on Stonehenge in the time of its heyday with the radio ap paratus which he is here shown inspecting

FIFTY YEARS AGO

INDIRECT DAMAGES"

F anything could surpass the extravagance of Soviet Russia's claim

billion rubles in gold as indemnity for the direct and indirect damages which that country is alleged to have suffered during and since the World War as results of their action, it would be her ineptitude in basing that claim, as she is said to do, upon the precedent set by the United States in its settlement of accounts with Great Britain after the Civil War. This will be obvious when we recall a chapter of history of fifty years ago, too much forgotten but pertinent to the present time; and it will also be obvious that Mr. Lloyd George acted in logical accord with the precedent of that former episode when he somewhat bluntly declared that if Russia persisted in making that claim there

would be no object in her continuing in the Genoa Conference.

It is quite true that there was a proposal by some Americans to demand an enormous sum of "indirect damages" from Great Britain. It is equally true that if it had actually been made and insisted upon Great Britain would have withdrawn from-if, indeed, she ever would have entered--the Geneva Arbitration; that the best sentiment in America was opposed to the suggestion; and that the only result of its making was a few years' delay in the settlement of the legitimate issues between the two countries.

As early as October, 1863, more than a year after the "escape" of the Alabama from Liverpool and the stopping of the Confederate ironclads from a similar "escape" by the stern warning, "This

means war," Charles Francis Adams, the American Minister to England, intimated to the British Government that this country would prefer claims against it for breaches of neutrality, and would be willing to submit them to any equitable form of arbitration. No reply was then made, but two years later, at the end of the war, the British Government specifically refused to submit the question of its liability for the Alabama's ravages to arbitration, because it held that its own law officers were the supreme interpreters of the British neutrality laws, though it was willing to join in the creation of a commission to which should be submitted such claims as it (the British Government) saw fit thus to receive for consideration. In this attitude Great Britain doubly erred, some of her own statesmen have

as

frankly confessed: First, in ignoring

the international law against which she had sinned as well as against her own neutrality laws; and, second, in declining to go into court unless she herself could determine what charges should and what should not be made. The result was that negotiations were for a time suspended.

A year later, however, the British Government reversed that unfortunate and indeed untenable attitude, and indicated its readiness to arbitrate the Alabama claims. Some delay was occasioned by Mr. Adams's retirement, but his successor, Reverdy Johnson, took up the matter where he had laid it down, and early in 1869 negotiated with Lord Clarendon a convention for the settlement of the Alabama claims and all other matters at issue.

It was when this treaty was laid before the Senate for ratification that the demand for "indirect damages" arose. The chief spokesman of that demand was Charles Sumner, who was then , Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. He took the ground that the British Government should be held responsible pecuniarily for all the indirect as well as direct losses which the United States had sustained in the war because of its conduct. If the Alabama had not been permitted to sail in the summer of 1862, he said, and if Great Britain had not permitted a Confederate loan to be subscribed, the war would have ended in 1863 instead of 1865. Therefore he held Great Britain responsible for the second half of the war, and insisted that she should be required to pay the entire costs of those two years, in round figures about two billion dollars. He made a strongly worded speech to that effect, and, although it was made in an executive or secret session of the Senate, he took pains to have it made public and as widely circulated as possible. Then, utilizing the intense partisan feeling against Andrew Johnson, who was then -after the futile attempt to impeach him-nearing the end of his term, Sumner rallied the Senate against the treaty, chiefly for the reason that it did not specifically provide for the arbitration of the "indirect damages." The result was that on April 13, 1869, the treaty was rejected by the overwhelming vote of 44 against it to only one cast in its favor.

Meantime Reverdy Johnson, warned by Seward that his treaty would be rejected, proposed to Lord Clarendon a modification of it so as to permit any claims whatever-even for "indirect damages" to be laid before the Arbitral Commission, and then resigned his place as Minister, without waiting for a reply. There is little doubt that Clarendon would have refused the proposal. Certainly, as soon as Sumner's speech was read in London and the grounds on which the treaty was rejected were understood over there, an overwhelming ' official and popular sentiment arose

against any arbitration or other attempt at settlement; because, it was argued, America would demand the two billions of "indirect damages," and of course Great Britain would refuse to consider the claim, and so the conference would fail, and there was no use in entering a conference that was in advance doomed to failure. The case was made still worse when that fine historian but poor diplomat John Lothrop Motley was sent as Minister to Great Britain, for he shared Sumner's views, and intimated that unless the "indirect damages" were considered favorably there was little hope of improving relations between the two countries.

Fortunately, Motley was soon withdrawn. But even then it was necessary to wait for some time, until the passions aroused on both sides of the ocean by Sumner's fulminations had in a measure subsided. At last, early in 1871, a Canadian statesman, Sir John Rose, undertook what proved to be successful mediation. His efforts were, indeed, at first menaced by Sumner, who, when asked by the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, what treaty terms would be acceptable to the Senate, again insisted upon "indirect damages," and in a written memorandum prescribed as a sine qua non of settlement Great Britain's withdrawal from Canada and all other possessions in the Western Hemisphere! The sequel to that amazing demand, and in some degree its result, was a revolt in the Senate which removed Sumner from the Chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee and assured a more reasonable policy in that body. A little later Sumner voted for ratification of the Treaty of Washington, although it made no more provision for "indirect damages" than had the Johnson-Clarendon convention, against which he had thundered and which had been rejected by an all but unanimous vote.

Once more the bogy of "indirect damages" was conjured up. Soon after the first meeting of the Geneva Tribunal, in December, 1871, some malicious marplot, whose identity is matter of conjecture, gave currency in England to a report that Sumner's claims for two billion dollars and the withdrawal of the British flag from the Western Hemisphere were to be approved by the United States Government and would be insisted upon by it at Geneva as essential to a settlement. For this there was not of course the slightest foundation in fact. But the report created much excitement, disquiet, and indignation in England; both parties demanded that any such action be resisted, and the Cabinet seriously considered the propriety of asking the American Government for assurances that no such claims would be preferred at Geneva as a necessary condition to continuance of the conference. The British Foreign Minister told General Schenck, the American Minister, that his Government could not admit that it was within the province of the Geneva Tribunal to consider claims

for "indirect losses," and that statement was a few days later made in the Queen's Speech at the opening of Parliament. In the ensuing debate members of both parties insisted that no such claims should be admitted, though they spoke in a moderate and conciliatory tone, with the exception of William E. Gladstone, who fulminated furiously against the country for which at that time he had an intense animosity.

Sir Stafford Northcote brought matters to a head by saying publicly that he understood the American Commissioners to have promised that the indirect claims would not be made. This was repeated in Parliament and reported at Washington, and all the American Commissioners denied that any such promise had been made. Indeed, one of them, E. Rockwood Hoar, said that he had always understood that such claims were to be presented. A little later it was made clear that this apparent contradiction arose from a sheer misunderstanding. The American Commissioners realized the futility and worse of such claims, and wanted to drop them, but did not see how they could legally do so, seeing that they had been included in the presentation of the American case to the Tribunal. In order to give time for them to find a way out of the difficulty, the next meeting of the Tribunal was postponed from June 17 to June 19, 1872.

On the latter date the question was finally settled. Charles Francis Adams drafted a statement, which was unanimously adopted by the Tribunal, to the effect that, without expressing any opinion as to the difference over interpretation of the Treaty of Washington, the members of the Tribunal of Arbitration were individually and collectively convinced that claims for indirect damages did not, under international law, constitute a valid foundation for an award of compensation, and that therefore they must be wholly excluded from consideration by the Tribunal. That was the end of them. Nothing more was ever heard of indirect damages. And the Tribunal's award of $15,500,000 was hailed with satisfaction and enthusiasm throughout the United States as a wholly adequate indemnity.

Such is the "precedent" upon which the Soviet triumvirs are reported to base their claim of fifty billion gold rubles. It will be perceived that it counts against, rather than for, their extravagant demand, while it does give sanction to Mr. Lloyd George's prompt condemnation of that claim as something that cannot be considered by the Genoa Conference. One of these days the world may decree as a heroic measure for the prevention of war that a nation responsible for starting a war shall be held accountable for all losses caused by that war, directly and indirectly. But that day is not yet; and even if it were. that principle would not give sanction and validity to this fantastic claim of Soviet Russia.