of the old theories as to the supervision of commerce by the Government. To fix prices of coal and of wheat as we are now doing is emphatically a war measure. The old theory of noninterference with supply and demand in business had, before the war, been weakened by the necessity of Governmental action as to monopoly abuses and restriction of trade. Now we are going a great deal further. It will be a most interesting and important question after the war to determine how far the drastic action required for war purposes will influence National legislation in the direction of Governmental control.

THE NEW YORK MUNICIPAL SITUATION

In last week's issue The Outlook reported the result of the primary election in New York City. On the face of the returns it then appeared that the entire Fusion ticket had been nominated in the Republican primaries, although Mayor Mitchel's majority appeared dangerously small. Following the announcement of the result, Mr. Bennett, also a candidate for the Republican nomination, issued charges of fraud, to which Mayor Mitchel replied by an application for an inspection of the ballots. Observers of political conditions in New York City were almost unanimous in the belief that this inspection would demonstrate the fact that Mr. Bennett's charges were without foundation, and that the recount would show only such changes as might normally be expected from the ordinary clerical errors. This inspection, however, the result of which seems to have been accepted by both the Fusionists and their opponents, demonstrated conclusively that Mr. Bennett's charges were not loosely made, as The Outlook suspected, for in practically every district of the city Mr. Mitchel's majority dwindled as the ballots were recounted. It now appears that Mr. Bennett was nominated in the Republican primaries by a majority almost twice as large as that first awarded to Mayor Mitchel.

No responsible person has charged that Mayor Mitchel was cognizant of the situation. Indeed, his instant demand for an inspection of the ballots proves the cleanness of his hands and his anxiety to assure to the real winner his rights to the Republican nomination.

Regret over the loss of the Republican nomination by Mayor Mitchel, a loss which will increase the difficulties to be surmounted by the Fusion ticket, should not distract attention from the evil situation shown to exist within the Republican machine nor from the culpable negligence which permitted the Fusion forces to suffer so unnecessarily in the Republican primaries.

To believe that Mr. Bennett, despite the good record which he made in the Assembly and Senate of New York State, has in the present instance played into the hands of the corruptionists and seditionists of New York City by opposing the nomination of Mayor Mitchel in the Republican primaries, is not to condone the frauds which were unsuccessfully used to encompass his defeat. It is hoped that the present revelation of lethargy and cunning at the Republican primaries will so stir New York City as not only to ferret out the wrong-doers and administer punishment for any frauds committed, but also to make the re-election of Mayor Mitchel a certainty.

In fact, the result of the primary has already had its effect on the citizenship of New York. On October 1 a great mass-meeting of citizens gathered in City Hall Park for the purpose of expressing a demand that Mayor Mitchel continue in the fight. At this meeting Charles E. Hughes, Colonel Roosevelt, Henry L. Morganthau, Oscar Straus, and George B. McGuire, VicePresident of the State Federation of Labor, all urged the Mayor to make a campaign for re-election. Letters were also read from ex-President Taft and the Socialist Charles Edward Russell calling upon the Republicans and Socialists to support the Mayor.

In answer to this demonstration of loyalty, Mayor Mitchel pledged himself to carry on the campaign for good government. He defined the forces opposing him as a combination of "Hearst, Hylan, and the Hohenzollerns," a striking phrase which sums the fact that Mayor Mitchel has felt the greatest opposition from yellow journalism, Tammany politics, and the disloyal element in the population of New York which has lent aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.

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The New York municipal election will not be a five-cornered

fight. It will be a two-sided fight. On the one side will be arrayed the candidates of the National parties, a ProgressiveProhibitionist, a Socialist, a Republican, and a Democrat-all men who stand for injecting National political issues into local municipal elections. On the other side are arrayed the Fusion forces, believing that municipal elections should be settled without regard for National politics, but with every regard for National honor.

The difficulties which appear to confront the Fusion forces in New York City are the inevitable result of the events which have made the issue in this election clear cut.

A SPORTING PROPOSITION

The controversy in New York State over the appointment of a Food Commission by the Governor has had at least one unusual feature.

The Governor has been insistent upon the appointment of Mr. George W. Perkins as president of this Commission. To this appointment there arose active opposition in the Senate and among the farming organizations of the State. It would appear, on the face of things, no matter what his personal qualifications for the work, that a candidate for the office of president of the State Food Commission who was opposed by most of the farming organizations in the State would hardly be the best man to select. A State Food Commissioner disliked by the great majority of the organizations with which he might in the nature of things be expected to deal would hardly be in a position to develop his fullest usefulness. All of which is merely a parenthetical introduction to the report of an incident which we would like to think of as typically American.

Those opposing Mr. Perkins complained that because of his wealth he was in a position to reach the public with his side of the case in a manner impossible for the farming organizations. Promptly Mr. Perkins replied that he would pay, not only for the insertion in the newspapers of advertisements presenting his own views, but also for the insertion in the morning and evening papers of the State of the objections of his opponents. This offer by Mr. Perkins was promptly accepted by his opponents, and those who read the advertisements for which Mr. Perkins paid are unanimously of the opinion that those opposing his appointment were not in the least deterred in the openness of their criticism by the source of the funds used for their advertising. Mr. Perkins paid the piper, and we are rather under the impression that he was entitled to a better-played tune than that which greeted his ears.

Some of the objections of his opponents were neither just nor sound, and when a man pays for the presentation of his opponents' arguments, he is certainly entitled to have his opponent put his best foot forward.

The question of Mr. Perkins's appointment has now finally been removed from the realm of controversy by the appointment by Governor Whitman of a Food Commission composed of John Mitchell, now Chairman of the State Industrial Commission; Dr. J. G. Schurman, of Cornell; and Charles A. Wieting, a former State Commissioner of Agriculture.

BRINGING HOME THE FOOD-SAVING QUESTION

If one may judge by what appears in the newspapers, the public can have very slight conception of what has been undertaken for carrying out in the homes of the people the proper saving of food. Mr. Hoover, the head of the Food Administration, realizes perfectly well the difficulty that is to be encountered in persuading the American people, at a time when food is abundant, to the practice of any kind of food saving. Why should we save food when there is so much of it all around? Why should we save it if we see food wasted every day at the terminals in the freight cars and on the farms? Those are the questions that people are going to ask and are asking, and it is going to be very difficult indeed to show people why food must be saved nevertheless, and it is going to be doubly difficult after that to show them how to save it and save it wisely and effectively.

In order to reach the homes of the intelligent and patriotic. the Food Administration has appealed to a large number of

voluntary organizations of the country, business and commercial organizations, fraternal and patriotic orders, labor unions, farmers' associations, and the like. In particular, the Food Administration has called, to aid this work, upon the great church bodies of America.

The response has been remarkable. Through high officials of the Roman Catholic Church the Food Administration is reaching out to the great Catholic population of America. Through a representative of Jewish organizations, who has gone to Washington and established an office there, the Food Administration is reaching American Hebrews. Various Protestant denominations, among them the largest in the country, are cooperating by having their respective representatives in Washington actively and continually working with the Food Administration.

These representatives have been stationed at Washington in consequence of gatherings called by Mr. Hoover of men of the various churches and denominations. The first of these was an informal conference of the representatives of a number of different religious organizations-Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish-which met on July 10. Succeeding that there was a conference of representative Jewish organizations, the several branches of the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church, the Reformed Church of America, the Lutherans, the Church of the Disciples, the Baptists North and South, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Congregational Churches, and of Sunday-school associations. All these informal bodies of men recommended the active participation of the churches in this patriotic work of saving food, and with scarcely any exception recommended the use of what are known as the Food-Saving Weekly Report Cards, which have been prepared by the Food Administration under the direction of Mr. George A. Cullen, in charge of the Division of Cooperating Organizations.

When any of our readers encounter, at church or anywhere else, food-saving weekly report cards providing for the report of wheatless meals, meatless meals, and wasteless meals, they will know that these are helping the Food Administration to develop the practice of intelligent and effective saving in order to win the war. The enormous number of cards that are to be distributed, and the careful organization that will be needed to distribute and collect them and tabulate the results, are quite beyond the imagination of most people. Mr. Hoover, however, and the men who are working with him, have had experience in just this sort of work, and they know how much it will mean if they can secure from every one in every household reached by these cards co-operation to the extent of saving only a pound of wheat a week or an ounce of sugar a day.

Every church, as well as every fraternal organization, every grange, and every other body of people that can co-operate, ought to be seeking ways by which they can promote in this country selective saving. If we save our wheat and our pork, our beef, the meats of young animals like veal and lamb, our fats, and our milk, we are going to do a great deal toward winning the war, toward bringing victory nearer. There is probably nothing that the ordinary citizen can do so effectively and so loyally for his country as to carry out the plans which the men of the Food Administration have devised.

TIN AND CANNED GOODS

In some sections of the country vegetables and fruits have been superabundant and unprecedented in supply, and in all sections the pack of canned and dried products will be much larger than usual, despite the fact that it is being put up at a higher basis of cost. The industry has been hampered by the shortage of tin cans, due primarily to a lack of ships to import tin ore. As did the ancient Phoenicians, we get some of our supply from England; we also get much from Bolivia. The Malay States, the Dutch East Indies, and Australia are also producers. Tin has been discovered in small quantities in some of our own States, but the amount is hardly sufficient to warrant working. Tin is sometimes found native, or it occurs with platinum, gold, or copper.

Next to iron, tin is said to be the most important and useful metal of the mineral world; hence the present anxiety of the

British Government concerning our importations of pig tinit insists upon assurances from our Government that no tin ore imported into this country on British ships should be resold or smelted here for re-export in a speculative way. But British anxiety need not be too great, for here in America we use nearly half the world's production of tin.

As a distributer of food, the tin can stands by itself. One has only to visit any grocery store and see the immense array of canned vegetables, fruits, and fish to realize the truth of the often-repeated saying of the Maine farmer's daughter who was showing an Englishman her father's fields of corn, and, on being asked what was done with all the corn, replied: "We eat what we can, and what we can't we can."

The immense increase in the canning of vegetables and fruits for domestic consumption this year and the demand for army rations has also resulted in a shortage of cans-the demand for tin cans this year being about a third greater than in 1916, when the demand was normal. As a result, pressure has been brought to bear on tin-can manufacturers to take care of the packers of perishable foodstuffs, and upon tobacco and powder manufacturing concerns to put up their products, as far as possible, in paper containers; there has also been encouragement of a greater output of glass jars to help relieve the tin-can shortage.

There is thus little reason to fear that the shortage and consequent increase in price will mean any advance in the price of canned goods, upon which Americans will now more than ever depend.

A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

About a year ago The Outlook called attention to the utterances of an independent German thinker, Friedrich WilMunich, particularly to his contention that the centralization helm Förster, Professor of Pedagogy in the University of of power in the hands of Prussia is contrary to a true national spirit.

In this he was supported by two of the best-known LiberalRadical papers in Germany, the "Frankfürter Zeitung" and the "Berliner Tageblatt." Perhaps the "Münchner Post" may Förster, from which we quote the following phrases as we find now be added; at least, it publishes an article from Professor them translated from the Munich paper in the latest issue of the Paris "Mercure de France :”

Our adversaries are immovably resolved not to end the war before establishing an international organization which shall make a second world war impossible.

This organization will be established with Germany, or it will be established without Germany and against Germany. If we are going to isolate ourselves again, the Minister of War will have to elaborate.. an armament plan against the whole world, and make it plausible to the German people. But a continuation of armaments is impossible.

Every good reason should urge our fantastic annexationists to silence unless they want to force the German people into an isolation which would have, after the war, the most catastrophic consequences. For it is not as if the world market were going to reopen to our national industry, as if we were going to be able, after this war, to rise on our feet and pay off our gigantic debt.

On the other hand, each of the so-called guaranties which our annexationists are loudly and violently demanding can only instigate a corresponding boycott policy from our opponents What we need are guaranties against the Pan-Germans. The foreigners are refusing to make peace with us as long as the German people do not disavow this element more strenuously and more authoritatively than, under the censor, they have yet been able to do.

In proportion as Germany becomes democratic and opposes itself to the Prussian domination, the nearer will we be to peace. War or no war, Professor Förster does not believe in the domination of the rest by any particular part of Germany-and he speaks as a Bavarian. In previous utterances he has contended that modern Germany has much to unlearn-umlernen is the actual word he used-before it can take its proper place in the family of nations. The result of Professor Förster's intellectual and moral independence is that he has been banished from Germany and is now living in Switzerland.

JAPAN, AMERICA, AND THE EAST The visit to New York of Viscount Ishii and his fellow-mem

bers of the Japanese Mission will prove memorable. It has not only, as was expected, done much to strengthen friendly feeling between Japan and America and to make the alliance of the two countries against German domination a real thing, but it has brought out striking and unexpected utterances as regards Japan's relation to China and its Eastern policy. We have over and over again, and only as lately as last week, expressed the belief that Japan's leadership in the East was not a source of danger, either to the United States or to the world at large, provided that it was such a leadership as the United States exercised on this hemisphere through the Monroe Doctrine. Viscount Ishii, speaking himself as a special ambassador from Japan and in the presence of Ambassador Sato, stated positively and clearly that this is precisely Japan's policy.

In his address at the public banquet given in honor of the envoys by Mayor Mitchel, and again in speaking at a private dinner, Viscount Ishii emphasized the fact that what Japan wants in China is good government, peace, security, and development of opportunity. Japan, we understand from this, would stand by China against external aggression precisely as the United States would stand by Brazil against German domination. And, as the Monroe Doctrine by implication, although not by explicit pledge, makes it a matter of dishonor for the United States itself to dominate any country to the south for our own aggrandizement, so Japan would abstain from political or territorial aggression in China. Indeed, in the second address referred to Viscount Ishii distinctly stated that this was Japan's policy and purpose. In particular, the right of the United States to trade in China on a fair competitive basis and the maintenance of the Pacific as a common highway were pledged with clarity and cordiality. "The door is always open; it has always been open; it always must remain open," said the Viscount. It may be said further that Japan's "Monroe Doctrine regards the East is explicit where our policy in this hemisphere is implicit. As to this Viscount Ishii said:

There is this fundamental difference between the "Monroe Doctrine" of the United States as to Central and South America and the enunciation of Japan's attitude toward China. In the first there is on the part of the United States no engagement or promise, while in the other Japan voluntarily announces that Japan will herself engage not to violate the political or territorial integrity of her neighbor, and to observe the principle of the open door and equal opportunity, asking at the same time other nations to respect these principles.

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Another point which was brought out vividly during this visit was the malignancy and malevolence of Germany in the past in trying to foment hostility between Japan and America. The editors of The Outlook, long before the war, had their attention called to various indications that such an underground and tortuous, course was being pursued by Germany, and if any confirmation were needed it might be seen in the recent attempt of Germany to unite Japan and Mexico against the United States. It is valuable to have this confirmed on such eminent authority as that of Viscount Ishii. He said plainly that since the war began China has been a hotbed of German intrigue, and that the German interest in the Far East had long been in purpose and plot injurious to the relations between Japan and the United States.

The same belief in German attempts to destroy friendship between Japan and America was voiced by Mr. Elihu Root in his address at a private luncheon in honor of the Japanese Mission. Mr. Root is an experienced diplomat and is not reck

less in his discussion of international matters, but he did not hesitate to declare positively that the hand of Germany could be seen in agitation against Japan in this country and in agitation against America in Japan. As a plain matter of fact, Mr. Root declared that his own experience in National diplomatic relations showed that, at a time when attempts were fiercest in this country to start up enmity with Japan, the conduct of the Japanese Government and its diplomats was restrained and considerate. No man experienced in such affairs, said Mr. Root in effect, can fail to know whether the diplomats he is dealing with are working toward a quarrel or are earnestly desirous of composing difficulties in a friendly way. It was this latter attitude that he always found in dealing with Japan.

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No one can doubt that the discussion and assurances brought Thu out by the visit of the Japanese Mission to America have in the highest degree cleared the atmosphere and put the friendship of the two countries on a firmer basis than ever before. As Mayor Mitchel said in welcoming the Mission, "Japan and the United States to-day are more than friends." He added:

They are allies in the mightiest struggle the world has ever known-the death grapple of democracy with the forces of autocratic conquest. In that struggle we are federated by the bond of like ideals, by a common purpose, and by a democracy that lies deeper than the forms of government, and finds its essence in a devotion to liberty and justice, to equality, to fair dealing, to the principles of humanity, and which bows to the dictates of a national conscience guided by the great principles of right and wrong.

It may seem strange to some readers to find Japan thus classed as engaged in the common purpose of democracy, but that is one of the beneficial results of a common alliance against threatening autocracy. Mr. Root reached a similar conclusion when, in the address already referred to, after tracing the growth and advance of that world movement in which nations have advanced from the old condition when kings made war or peace at their pleasure to the time when the peoples, as in our present alliance, are pushing forward their ideals, he declared that Japan was now one of those countries which believe in the diplomacy of nations and not merely the diplomacy of rulers.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

AND THE WAR

It must be frankly admitted that the Pope's peace note has introduced a new question into the intellectual discussions of the war. What is to be the attitude of the Roman Catholic which is sure to follow the conclusion of the conflict? Church towards the rearrangement of international relations

To appreciate the complexity of this question the non-Catholic, as we have often said before, must realize that there are two great currents of opinion and feeling in the Roman Catholic Church, which correspond to the two great political currents that underlie the struggle of the belligerents the currents of liberalism and absolutism. It would be impossible within the limits of a newspaper article to attempt even to outline the origin, the growth, and the interplay of these two contradictory forces in the Catholic Church. They are as old and as mutually repellent as the doctrines of predestination and free will. The liberal and conservative groups of the Catholic Church are not distinctly organized, nor can they be clearly differentiated, as liberalism and conservatism can be differentiated, for example, in the political life of England. But it may be stated as a fairly accurate generalization that the liberals in the Roman Catholic Church emphasize freedom and persuasion as the great motive powers of the Church, while the absolutists emphasize authority and compulsion. Austria and Germany are absolutists in politics, and the Catholic Church in those countries is absolutist in theology and organization. In the United States the Roman Catholic Church is liberal, with the exception of a comparatively small group of powerful ecclesiastics who are absolutists. Until within recent years the French Church was absolutist, but its forcible separation from the state by the breaking of the Concordat gave a new and strong impetus to the liberal wing. In England the influence of the Catholic Church is small in comparison with its influence in the United

States and France, but because of the very atmosphere in which it lives its natural tendencies are liberal. In Italy the historical absolutism of the Vatican has lost its hold upon thinking Italians. But the love of freedom and the self-sacrificing patriotism which the Catholic priests have displayed in the war have given the Roman Catholic Church a revived influence over Italian men as they have over the men of France. The outstanding religious figure of the war is, of course, Cardinal Mercier, of Belgium. His passionate and noble pleas for human justice and human freedom have attracted to him the admiration and sympathy of all Protestants and Catholics who are not definitely pro-German.

Thus during the war the line of demarcation in the Roman Catholic Church has grown more and more distinct. The Catholics of the Central European Powers are absolutist; the Catholics of the Allied countries are liberal. It is this essential fact that has made the Papal peace note a failure so far as the Allied countries are concerned. In England the failure is openly recognized, or at the most is smoothed over and palliated by Catholic laymen and clergymen. We have already commented upon this aspect of the question in previous issues of The Outlook. In the course of this comment we said: 66 If the Holy See even by implication allies itself with the principle of absolutism to-day, it allies itself with what is inevitably the losing side.'

The Outlook's discussion of the Papal peace note has led an esteemed correspondent, an American Catholic clergyman, to write to us: "You will not mind my saying that there is a fairly general view that The Outlook is anti-Catholic." We are glad to take this opportunity of saying that The Outlook is neither anti-Catholic nor pro-Catholic. Its attitude towards the Catholic Church and all other churches may be summed up in the famous death-bed words of Cavour, "Libera chiesa in libero stato" -a free Church in a free State. It is profoundly opposed to the absolutism of the Protestant Lutheran theologians of Germany,

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as represented by Eucken and Harnack, and it is profoundly in sympathy with the noble courage and love of freedom of the Roman Catholic Cardinal Mercier. The Church, whether it be Protestant or Catholic, that fails to understand and to align itself with the spirit of freedom which is being newly reborn in the world will lose, and will deserve to lose, its hold upon the new generation.

SYMPATHY AND

CONGRATULATION

In extending their deep personal sympathy to their colleague, Dr. James Morris Whiton, for his bereavement by the death of his wife and companion for over threescore years the editors of The Outlook may properly call the attention of their readers to a rare instance of devotion and harmony in married life stretching over a most unusual extent of time. Cynical writers are wont to sneer at what they profess to consider the loosening in our day of the marriage tie; such instances as this help us all to remember the actual strength and influence of the family life as the basis of society.

James Morris Whiton and Mary Eliza Bartlett were married in 1854, the year after Dr. Whiton's graduation from Yale in the notable class of 1853, of which Dr. Andrew D. White and not a few other distinguished men were members. They therefore had sixty-three years of married life together. Mrs. Whiton was in her eighty-fourth year; Dr. Whiton himself is in his eighty-fifth. All his work as teacher, minister, writer, and scholar and he has been, and is, a man of unusual thoroughness, accuracy, and keenness of mental power-had its background and stimulus in the home life which his wife made for him.

We extend to Dr. Whiton our sympathy based on the friendship and fellow-work of over a score of years, and we congratulate him on having had a fine and wonderfully extended married life upon which to look back.

N the 25th of September James E. Ferguson, Governor of Texas, was formally impeached and removed from office. During the century and a quarter of our history as a Nation there have been but three previous impeachments of Governors. The rarity of these occurrences lends emphasis to their gravity, for it is a cardinal doctrine of our political faith that the guardians of executive responsibility shall suffer no outside interference. Hence it may be of interest briefly to trace the causes which led to the unhorsing of Mr. Ferguson, for his case offers a splendid illustration of the ability of a democracy to purge its ranks of leaders who have been guilty of offenses against the public weal. In a large sense this is a very necessary and healthful functioning. It is indicative of vitality in the organism of society, and furnishes evidence of the immutability of the fundamental principles on which democratic government rests. The case of Governor Ferguson forcefully illustrates the operation of these high laws.

In the summer of 1914 Texas was in the throes of a primary election. The office of Governor was being sought by four men ; two were pronounced prohibitionists, one was unknown, the fourth was both unknown and an anti-prohibitionist-James E. Ferguson.

The State had a short time before gone through a bitter fight over the question of prohibition, and prohibition had been defeated by a narrow margin. The struggle had indeed been so vindictive that many who had supported the prohibition programme rebelled against the continued agitation as obstructive to business, and deliberately went into the Ferguson camp. The writer was one of these. The reaction, together with the split in the ranks of the prohibitionists, favored Ferguson, the anti, who, with the assistance of the liquor interests, was returned the victor. But he had been chosen by a small plurality, and the campaign bitternesses which had been engendered would not down.

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In the general election which followed in November Ferguwas opposed by an Independent Democrat and by a Republican, and the vote cast for the Independent ticket was notice to Ferguson that he was unpopular in that thoroughly Democratic State. However, nothing daunted, he carried the war to his enemies, fancied and real. It was an offensive war on his part. He was not content with standing guard over the sacred interests of the breweries. So obsessed was he with the notion that he had been ordained to save the State for King Alcohol that he penetrated into the remotest precincts, there to interfere in local affairs, particularly in local option elections. And so ran events into the summer of 1916, when another primary election came on with its partisan disturbances.

Despite the well-grounded tradition in Texas that a Governor shall succeed himself, thus serving four years, Ferguson found an opponent in an utterly unknown man and had a hard race. He was nettled by this ever-present opposition, and flung about him in quixotic enterprises, thinking to quell it. Instead, one embroilment led to another, and presently he was at grips in a struggle over prohibition in Travis County, where both the State University and the capitol are located.

An incident growing out of this fight-the participation in it of one of the professors of the Law Faculty of the State University-was destined, like the invisible seed of right, to grow into a towering tree of justice, under whose shadow the Governor should expiate his deeds. Ferguson's hostility to the University was known, but thus far he had not ventured to lay hands on it beyond failing to reappoint to the Board of Regents certain men who for years had been the special guardians of that institution of learning. Now, however, he plucked up courage to assail, not one member of the Faculty, but a half-dozen or more who were marked for slaughter, including the recently appointed President, who was supposed to have come into authority under the ægis of the Governor. In his blind anger he charged that