As the French honor paid to Lindbergh at Paris, so the Canadians' tribute to Johnson at Ottawa, is a token of growing amity and sympathy.

The New Federalism

M

R. SEITZ'S view of Federalism is not The Outlook's. That is one reason why The Outlook prints it. It is obviously not that which prevails in the United States or has prevailed for many years. That is a good reason why Americans should examine it. Long-accepted ideas are apt to become hazy and are reclarified only when challenged.

That sectional or other special interests have sometimes invoked and will hereafter sometimes invoke the power of the National Government to break down the restraining power of State authority may be true; but that does not account for the continued and irresistible increase of Federal power. Wherever it appears, whether in State or Nation, whether in executive, legislative, or judicial arms of the Government, political power is potent for harm as well as for benefit; it may be employed for selfish purposes as well as for the public good; but that does not account for the existence of political power or for its development. Political power of one kind and another has increased mainly because modern society needs adequate political power to deal with its problems. It is no more able to use the political instruments of the eighteenth century than it is to rely for its transportation upon the ox-cart and the sailboat.

This is true in all countries. It is particularly true in the United States. As industry has grown in complexity it has needed new resources of power to operate its machines. So as society has grown in complexity it has needed new resources of political power to carry out its functions. In America the change has been the greater because of the greater difference between the simple frontier life of colonial days and the modern life of this continental Nation composed of all the races of mankind.

It is a mistake to think that Federal power in the United States has been the only political power to increase. State power has also vastly increased, and so has the power of municipalities. In his book on "The New American Government and Its Work" Professor James T. Young goes so far as to say that "during the last thirty years"-he was writing twelve years ago, but his words are equally applicable now-"the duties and

increased fully as fast as those of the Federal Union." A mere survey of one field alone, that, for example, of public health, is sufficient to afford abundant illustration of this truth. The people of the twentieth century could not survive under such public health administration as was afforded when our Constitution was adopted.

If the growth of Federal power has been the most striking characteristic of our history, it is because the growth in wealth, in power, and in happiness of the American people as a whole has been the most striking fact in the history of the world for the past century and a half. Without the growth of Federal power the United States as it is to-day would have been impossible. What South Carolina tried to do in substituting the power of the State for the power of the Federal Government was to withstand the inevitable processes that were making the Nation. The right of the Nation to levy a National tariff and enforce its collection can no longer be questioned. Likewise as essential for the growth of the Nation was National control of inter-State commerce, and that meant, of course and inevitably, National control of inter-State reportation. As for such control leading to Governmental ownership of transportation lines, its proper exercise has been the one thing that has prevented Governmental ownership. Federal power did not create railway monopolies; it controlled them in the public interest. Monopoly is of the essence of railway transportation and without Federal control would itself control the life of the people.

From the beginning the Federal power has never been wholly removed from the control of the suffrage. Whatever extension there has been of the Federal power over the suffrage has raised questions not so much of Federalism as of suffrage. Whether, for example, the right to vote should have been extended to women or not would have remained precisely the same question if the right had been extended by the several States. Whether woman suffrage is wise or not has nothing to do with States' rights.

Similarly the wisdom or unwisdom of prohibition is not primarily a question of Federalism at all. That is a question of the best way to deal with a trade that has at all times been lawless. The Federal power was invoked by the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment, not primarily in the interest of temperance, but primarily in the interest of the rights of the States. It was because the several States had the right to control that lawless trade and yet, under the Constitu

tion as it was, lacked the power that the country came to see that the control of the liquor trade had become a National problem and had to be dealt with Nationally.

In somewhat similar fashion we may have to deal with child labor and other matters involving State control of industry. If States that have adequate laws against industrial abuses remain defenseless against the competition of States that have inadequate laws, the demand for some kind of Federal action will become resistless. In this, as in other matters, States' rights are dependent upon Federal power.

There is no conflict between the true interests of the States and real Federalism. To ask whether the Nation can exist half Federal and half State is like asking whether a household can stand half family and half parents and children. The States are essential to Federalism and Federalism is essential to the States.

We agree with Mr. Seitz in opposing the establishment of a Department of Education at Washington; but this is not opposition to Federalism. There is no question of a new power involved. The Federal Government already has the power to establish such a department if it wishes to do so. The question is what form that power shall assume and how it shall be exercised.

As Woodrow Wilson pointed out in his "Constitutional Government of the United States," the Constitution is not a "mere legal document," but a "vehicle of life," and is to be interpreted, "not by the original intention of those who drew the paper, but by the exigencies and the new aspects of life itself." As Lyman Abbott wrote once in an editorial in The Outlook, "The Constitution is not like the hoops of a barrel that hold the staves together. Hoops fitted for a barrel of thirteen staves would not serve for a barrel of forty-eight. It is like the bark of a tree that grows with the growth of the tree and expands with its expansion."

More and more, as life expands, as business grows more complex, as travel and communication develop, issues that once were considered local will become National. Highways for ox-carts might well be left to counties. Highways for automobiles have become matters of National concern. What of highways for airplanes? And now who even questions the need for National control of the radio? And yet where is the radio mentioned in the Federal Constitution? When we cease to have an expanding Constitution we shall cease to be an expanding Nation.

E

XCEPT for students in university extension courses, the summer is not a good time for abstract discussions in logic, psychology, ethics, and æsthetics. People are too much engaged in enjoying the beauty of nature or the pleasure of outdoor life to care to spend much time in discussions about the philosophical meanings of the words "beauty" and "pleasure."

Nevertheless I must ask my readers this week to bear with me while I venture upon the outskirts of such a discussion. It will not be very learned, for I am not a learned man. My ignorance of psychology is only equaled by my distaste for it. But in the present instance I am forced into a psychological or philosophical discussion as a matter of self-defense. Perhaps there may be some who will be entertained by the awkwardness with which I handle an unfamiliar weapon in meeting the attack of a superior adversary.

It all comes about because last week in these pages I was rash enough to criticise Sinclair Lewis. I said that his novels, like those of Balzac, are marred by the fundamental defect of making the reader uncomfortable. They may be useful and even powerful propaganda —in fact, it may be said in passing that Sinclair Lewis is a moralist, not an artist, an assertion which his impresario, H. L. Mencken, will dreadfully resentbut his novels are not art; for "novel writing," I argued, "is an art, not a branch of morals," and "the prime function of art is to give pleasure or produce a feeling of comfort."

To this definition of art a correspondent, much more highly trained in dialectics than I am, takes exception. "Your definition of art is questionable," he writes. "It is certainly too limited. Art comprises all the efforts of man to take the disorderly and unrelated elements of life and put them into orderly and related form, to turn what seems to be a chaos into a cosmos."

At this thrust I am compelled to cry, "Touché!" But I am not yet beaten. My opponent is using the word "art" in its most generic sense. In this sense I admit that all constructive industry is "art." To write a book on even so unpleasant and uncomfortable a subject as cancer is an "art" as my critic defines the term. But I used the word in the limited sense in which it is employed in the phrase "fine arts."

The fine arts comprise architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry.

Fiction or novel writing is based on the elements of all the five-structure, portraiture, harmony, and imagination. Now my contention is that the pleasuregiving and comfort-giving quality of beauty is an essential in any production in the field of the fine arts-that when the total or predominating effect of a novel is one of ugliness or discomfort then the novel is inartistic and must be classified in the category of pathology or morals or propaganda; that Sinclair Lewis may be an expert in social cancer, but he is not an artist.

Of course, I do not expect to conclusively prove my contention in a newspaper article. Philosophers have been fighting about it since the days of Aristotle, and are still at swords' points. But I believe I can marshal some important and credible witnesses in my defense, which I will now proceed to do briefly.

The consensus of human opinion is that beauty is the basis of the fine arts. The Italians call them the belle arti; the French, the beaux arts; the Germans, the schöne Künste.

Both Plato, the ancient, and Schiller, the modern, regarded the fine arts as forms of play-Plato in derogation, Schiller in commendation. Plato thought that what we call the utilitarian trades are superior to the fine arts because the trades are useful, while the fine arts excite only the emotion of pleasure or the sense of beauty. Schiller regarded play, or the activities of the emotions, as the expression of idealism. He asserted in his "Letters on Esthetic Education" ("Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen") that man is only truly himself when he plays, that "he ought to play with the beautiful and the beautiful only," and that "education in taste and beauty has for its object to train up in the utmost attainable harmony the whole sum of the powers both of sense and spirit." The vulnerable defect of Sinclair Lewis and the Mencken school of novelists is that they are deficient in taste and beauty and deal with only the half sum of the powers of man.

I apologize for introducing into this. discussion an element so mid-Victorian as metaphysics or a witness so midVictorian as Sidney Colvin, the eminent English critic, but, as I deem myself entitled to use any weapon in self-defense, no matter how archaic, I here take the liberty of quoting Colvin's definition of fine art, which he deduces from the philosophy of Schiller:

Fine art is everything which man does or makes in one way rather than another, freely and with premeditation, in order to express or arouse emotion, in obedience to laws of rhythmic movement or utterance or regulated design, and with results independent of direct utility and capable of affording to many permanent and disinterested delight.

This, I admit, is a little complicated; nevertheless it arouses the query, not as to how many have bought Sinclair Lewis's books a very large number, I know-but as to how many he has afforded "permanent and disinterested delight." He is obviously a "bestseller," but is he an artist?

Sidney Colvin, however, suffers as a witness from the well-known fact that he was not only a critic but a British moralist, the very worst kind from the Menckenian point of view. Nobody but a British moralist could lay the stress on "spirit and sweetness," "noble integrity," "true unselfishness," "the principle of beauty in all things," which Colvin does in his study of Keats in the "English Men of Letters" series. Well, then, let us try Whistler, whom not even Mencken can accuse of being a moralist. Whistler's definition of art was that it should "stand alone and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like." "And the like" being, I dare say, excoriation of Rotarians and Baptists.

Finally, let me turn from those who may be accused of sentimentalism to the most matter-of-fact writer on art that I, in my limited range, happen to know of -the spectacled, laborious, professional German, Wilhelm Lübke. In his massive and monumental history of art he says: "Only so much is certain, that in the first stirrings of an impulse to art, under all zones and at all times, a remarkable harmony may be observed." Not dissonance and ugliness, but harmony and beauty. In describing the great frieze of the Parthenon Lübke has this to say:

The artist has here expressed with the utmost beauty the importance of the temple, by depicting a festive procession, in which the assembled citizens of Athens are represented. . . In this procession all that was beautiful and excellent in Athens was united -the noble bloom of girlhood, the fresh strength of youths trained in gymnastic exercise, and the solemn dignity of magistrates chosen by the people. The manner in which Phidias apprehended and executed this task, ... the unity of aim which lay at the

foundation of all this rich life, are far removed from the dull realism with which the art of the present day would conceive such subjects.

Phidias was not concerned with the Elmer Gantrys of Athens and their "dull realism," for he was an artist, not a moral reformer full of righteous wrath

at the sordid qualities of his countrymen. It was apparently his belief that the prime function of art is, by portraying what is harmonious and beautiful, to give the highest form of pleasure.

I thus conclude where I began. It is at least arguable that a symphony, a painting, a poem, or a novel may be

judged as to its artistic qualities by simply asking the question, Is it ugly, drab, and dull, or is it beautiful, colorful, and pleasurable? The cubist novelists and the cubist painters are generally dull because they ignore the truth that the prime function of art is to give pleasure.

M

Y study window overlooks the Golden Gate, and back and forth, in the early morning, when the air at this time of the year is apt to be still before the trade wind has sprung up for the day, army airplanes from Crissy Field, just below me, are constantly maneuvering through the sky over the blue waters. They suddenly spring up from the ground "with a whir of wings."

This morning, however, from an unaccustomed quarter, over the shoulder of Telegraph Hill, round which the bay swings away to the south, came a giant, all set on a giant's purpose, the army Fokker airplane, with Lieutenants Maitland and Hegenberger "up," on its way to Hawaii.

All through the summer night thousands had camped on points of vantage. As early as 8 P.M. fully five thousand automobiles were parked around the air port at Oakland, from which the start was to be made. The early dawn showed waiting thousands on all the high points of the city. There was nothing about the great airplane that any one should have specially observed her as she came around the bend, but those accustomed to the ways of aircraft hereabouts quickly noticed that she was doing an unaccustomed thing; she not only headed out to sea, but she kept on going, and going, and going, until at last she vanished as a tiny speck on the horizon not far from where the Farallons forever hold their station at the meetingplace of sea and sky away to the west.

Thereafter, as the crowds made their way down from the hilltops to the city to breakfast and to business there was little else talked about. Why had not Smith and Carter, the civilian fliers, started. Would they start? Would there really be a race, or was it all just talk-newspaper talk for the most part? When would the first news come of Maitland and Hegenberger?

It was a great morning for the "evening" papers. They were all on the streets with extras before the morning papers had fairly got started on their

International

Lieutenants Albert Hegenberger and Lester J. Maitland

way. And every little while there was something doing, whether in the matter of rumor or report. Smith and Carter had actually started, but had been obliged to return within a few minutesa defective turret lid or something equally intelligible to the layman. They would try again. They would overtake the army men. There would be a race, after all. Meanwhile the hours went by, and there was nothing from the Fokker. Front-page headlines several inches deep assured us, with an insight worthy of all praise, that the fliers were "over the Pacific;" but it was not till nearly midday that the first definite word came through, a radio message from an unnamed ship reporting the olive-drab monster three hundred miles west of Fort Point and going strong.

Thereafter news came in slowly and uncertainly, as is the way of such events. Shortly after 2 P.M. a lone steamer, some eight hundred miles out in the Pacific, reported the plane as just passing over

head, "all well." After a long wait of six hours or more, suddenly on thousands of movie screens and through tens of thousands of radios was flashed the word that the steamer President Cleveland reported overhearing the army plane communicating with the steamer President Pierce by radio. The army plane was requesting bearings. The President Pierce was 1,140 miles west of San Francisco.

During the night only two more messages came through-one, dated 2:15, reporting the plane 400 miles east of Hawaii; another, dated 3:15, showing the Fokker 100 miles nearer its goal. The early morning papers proclaimed the fliers as "nearing land," and the early "evening" papers, thrust into the eager hands of thousands of business men and women as they reached their offices, announced their arrival. The same papers reported the opening stages of Commander Byrd's flight to Paris.

And so it goes.

San Francisco, California, June 28, 1927.

I

F we are ever unfortunate enough to become engaged in another war, the command of the sea will assure the safety of our continental and overseas possessions and the protection of our commerce. If, on the other hand, the enemy gains the command of the sea, our overseas possessions will be lost, our commerce destroyed, and our continental coasts laid open to attack. The command of the sea can be gained and held only by adequate sea power, and the three most important elements that comprise sea power are:

First, a Navy adequate in number and types of ships, and in number of officers and men, and efficient by means of thorough training.

Second, properly equipped and defended bases for the use of the fleet in areas where hostilities may be expected.

Third, a merchant marine adequate in number and types of ships, and in American personnel, to carry on the Nation's trade in time of peace and to supplement and to supply the fleet in time of war.

When the Washington Armament Conference met in November, 1921, the three leading maritime nations had under construction battleships and battlecruisers as follows:

1 Includes the Rodney and Nelson, 35,000 tons each, laid down and completed since the Washington Conference.

And an agreement also that no single cruiser would be built of a greater displacement than 10,000 tons or to carry guns of a greater caliber than 8′′. Capital ships were scrapped as follows (in tonnage):

United States 289,580 552,000 841,580 Britain 447,750 None 447,750 Japan .192,751 161,958 354,709

.....

(Largely on paper)

After the battleship, the naval unit next in importance is the cruiser.

Omitting all of the old slow cruisers of all navies and considering only the modern ships completed since 1917 having an individual tonnage of above 4,000, a speed of 29 knots or more, and armed with 5.5" guns or heavier, we find the cruiser strength of the three leading maritime Powers is as follows:

United States

Number Tonnage 10 75,000 21 20,000 60,000*

Built
Building
Appropriated for ..... 61

Built Building

27 2

11

Appropriated for

Tonnage 145,790 110,000 28,000 78,000'

8

23

16

To put us on an equality with Britain as to cruiser tonnage, we would have to lay down and complete inside of three years twenty 10,000-ton cruisers in addition to the eight we now have under construction.

The total naval tonnage which has been laid down and appropriated for since the Washington Conference ended is as follows:

In the light of these figures, we can consider as only grotesque the loud cries and pitiful contentions made last winter by our pacifists that if we appropriated the money to start the last three cruisers of our 1924 program we would start a new race in naval armaments.

The race in naval armaments seems to be in full swing, but we did not start it, and we would have to build very much faster than we are now building to even get into the race.

In making this comparison of naval strength I do not wish it understood that the Navy looks upon these other navies as enemies. I have discussed it merely to show what other maritime nations with interests similar to ours have considered necessary in maintaining and upbuilding their navies. One thing is certain: no thug, yegg, or robber will attack, beat, and rob a citizen if there is an armed and vigilant policeman in full sight; and it is equally certain that no predatory, jealous, or needy nation is going to attack the United States and attempt to rob us of our National and property interests as long as we have an adequate Navy ready to move at the command of the President and Congress.

I

NSTANCES of the forcible taking of money by organized bands of

men has marked the early history of every civilized country in the world. There has not been recorded in modern times, however, anything so unique as a rural community attempting to compel a city to buy its lands, and in addition to pay it large sums of money for reparations, under threat of forcibly destroying its water system and cutting off its water supply, the very life of its existence, if the coin was not promptly forthcoming. And yet this is exactly what is involved in the controversy between some of the residents of Owens Valley and the city of Los Angeles.

Back of it all is a story which contains all the elements of a wild West novel.

THE

HE way to the understanding of the affair does not seem to lie in unraveling a Machiavellian scheme on the part of the city of Los Angeles to undermine and destroy the communities of Owens Valley in order to obtain the water necessary for its growth; nor in tracing steps of forceful retaliation and self-defense on the part of the residents of that Valley. Rather it is to be found in the mental reactions of a pioneer community dwelling for two generations in an isolated mountain valley separated by nearly three hundred miles of desert from the nearest center of population. Such a free and open-hearted people, uninformed and unaccustomed to the ways of the outside world, do not easily understand the acts and motives of city representatives who are pressed by the necessities of the moment and bound by the legal requirements imposed upon public servants. "The City" is conceived of as a superhuman individual acting with perfect co-ordination in all its parts and with but one thought and purpose, just as the man on the street speaks of "the Government." Such a concept, however, is an imaginary ideal, as those who are familiar with the functioning of any large organization are well aware. The field is thus wide open for schemers and unscrupulous individuals to take advantage of the needs and inherent limitations of the municipality, and, by molding the suspicions and susceptibilities of the Valley people, to incite them to deeds of violence.

The outline of the Owens Valley controversy is soon sketched,

TTTTT

ጸና

Such spillways as these have been wantonly opened by the residents of Owens Valley to spite the city of Los Angeles

N July, 1904, the daily consumption
Jur in the city of Los Angeles

exceeded the supply, and if it had not been for a change in temperature many inhabitants of the city would have been without water. The seriousness of such a condition can be pictured only by those who have traveled across the deserts of the Southwest in the heat of summer. To prevent its recurrence the city authorities took immediate steps to secure a source of supply of sufficient magnitude to meet the growing needs of the city for at least the next generation. The Owens River was selected, and after the expenditure of $24,000,000 in acquiring lands and water rights and building an aqueduct 250 miles in length across the Mojave Desert, water was turned into the city mains in 1914.

The inhabitants of Owens Valley depend upon the water of Owens River and its tributaries for the irrigation of their lands and the raising of agricultural crops. For this purpose water is led from the streams in ditches and spread out upon the fields, which are planted to orchards, alfalfa, grain, and meadow grass. The point at which the city's aqueduct takes water from the Owens River, known as the intake, is eighteen miles down-stream and below the headgate of the lowest irrigation ditch. The only water which the city can take from Owens Valley is either that which is allowed by the farmers to pass their headgates, or that which returns to the river from irrigated lands. The city cannot deprive the farmers of their water, for its intake is below their