delivered at Washington on April 28 as his annual address as President of the American Society of International Law. He devoted that speech to a discussion of the limitation of armaments and of methods of warfare. There are some who, quite rightly wishing to avoid illusions, think that war is necessarily brutal and, being of the nature of a last resort, might as well be allowed to become as brutal as possible. There are others who, because of their very idealism, think that the best way to abolish war is to make it too horrible for human beings to endure. Mr. Hughes accepts neither the view of the cynics nor the view of those whom he calls "moonmen."

Taking counsel neither of despair nor of unrestrained fancy, but of common sense, Mr. Hughes believes in making gains wherever chances for gains in limiting warfare appear. In his speech he discusses specific measures of advance. Better, however, than his speech is his record. It was because he aimed at what was practicable, within reach, and sufficiently limited in scope to be within the focus of public opinion that he succeeded in securing the notable results of the Armament Conference at Washington. By his achievement then even more than by his words Mr. Hughes has pointed the way to progress toward the reduction and ultimate abolition of the evils of war.

Why Break China ?

U

NCLE SAM is having to stand a good deal of harsh criticism not only from other countries, but from his own people in China-for refusing to intervene in the Chinese civil war. Other Powers, Great Britain in particular, would like to see punitive measures applied to the radical Nationalist administration at Hankow as a consequence of the recent attacks on foreigners at Nanking. The Powers have not been satisfied with the reply from Hankow to their demands for apologies and guaranties of safety for foreign residents; and there has been talk of an ultimatum and a blockade of the Yangtze River in order to cut South China off from North China.

Not only members of the American Chamber of Commerce at Shanghai, but some missionaries, and finally even the American Minister, John Van Antwerp MacMurray, at Peking, have joined in advocating punitive measures. But so far the Department of State-while denying reports that Mr. MacMurray would be recalled-has consistently refused to accede to any plan of united action against the Nationalists or to interfere in Chinese affairs. "Indecisive"

-"ignorant"-"stupid"-"indifferent to the rights of its own citizens"—"traitor to the interests of the white race”—these are some of the epithets being hurled at the United States in consequence.

Temper is rarely a proof of being right. The best of the argument still seems to rest with Washington. What has happened and is happening in China is far from clear. Even the incidents at Nanking have not been made entirely certain. It appears, for instance, that the shooting of Dr. Williams, the VicePresident of Nanking College, may have been accidental and not intentional. That remains to be proved. But, while requiring armed protection for our citizens in China, the situation would still more need to be proved to call for intervention.

General Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the moderate wing of the Nationalists, is pursuing a campaign against the radicals in the endeavor to eliminate them. If he can succeed, it is far better to reach a solution of the Chinese crisis gradually by Chinese means than to smash into it from the outside.

To break China up into two or more parts, as has been suggested, would mean immediately assuming some obligation to keep order and establish government in them. Where that would lead no one can tell. The Administration at Washington has chosen the better part of wisdom in keeping cool, doing whatever is essential to protect Americans and their just interests, and avoiding new responsibilities and entanglements in the Far East.

short; and this is not the first time that some of them have had to be sent out by the Speaker in disgrace. Their feelings on this occasion are explained by the provisions of the bill.

Briefly, the bill as proposed would not only prohibit general strikes, but would debar also all sympathetic strikes. In addition, it would attack the present system of collecting union dues from the wages of union members by requiring the specific written agreement of the individual member in each case. These two measures alone would be enough to rouse organized labor in Great Britain to a pitch of excitement. But there is the further fact that the Government makes no suggestion of a ban on sympathetic lockouts of workers by employers. The London "Spectator" has offered the explanation that lockouts are hard to define legally. Apologists for the Cabinet have also stated that the omission is because such concerted action by employers is something that does not occur. But this statement has not surprisingly -failed to carry conviction to the Labor benches in Parliament and to the union organizations, and has even been treated as a lame excuse by some of the Conservatives.

The outcome of the quarrel cannot yet be foreseen, for the bill may be modified. But it may provide a new occasion for joint action by the Labor Party and the depleted ranks of the Liberals led by Lloyd George.

Conciliation in Mexico and Nicaragua

R

ELATIONS with our Latin-American neighbors immediately to the south seem to be entering upon a better phase. Disputes with the Mexican Government over the application of the new land and petroleum laws to the interests of citizens of the United States and the despatch of war-ships and marines to Nicaragua to protect foreign residents and property in the civil war there have made the past few months stormy and troubled. The assignment of Henry L. Stimson, formerly Secretary of War, as the President's representative in Nicaragua and President Coolidge's recent speech on foreign policy have considerably cleared the air.

President Calles, of Mexico, has welcomed President Coolidge's pronouncements regarding the controversy between the two Governments. His message to Washington and the reply to it have indicated that there is a new prospect of adjustment of the outstanding differences by direct negotiation. This is unquestionably the best method, if it is practicable. In case it does not work,

President Coolidge's speech has left the way open for arbitration. Should the interchanges between the Governments lead to no result, the United States might now properly invite Mexico to formulate the points at issue in terms of a question which she would be willing to submit to the judgment of the Court of Arbitration or to the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague.

The principle of direct negotiation holds out hopes of working successfully in Nicaragua also. Mr. Stimson has been reported in touch with Dr. Sacasa, the leader of the Liberal rebellion against the Conservative administration of President Diaz. While supporting Diaz, whom the United States has recognized, the Administration at Washington is consequently trying to arrange terms of peace with his antagonists. The mission of Mr. Stimson may lead to a truce, and to new elections supervised by the United States, as in 1925. If so, it should prove a long step both toward the preservation of order in Central America and toward the recovery in all South America of confidence in the intentions of the United States.

Friendship and Sugar

A

s between friends, nations as well as individuals, good will is expected to manifest itself in beneficial acts. Some such thought, doubtless, is in the mind of President Machado, of Cuba. He came to the United States to tell us how highly Cubans think of Americans, but he will shortly ask that the United States manifest its friendship for Cuba in a few definite ways.

Indeed, he and his predecessors have been asking for several years past that one of these things be done. It is the repeal of that clause of an act of 1866 which prohibits the importation of cigars and cigarettes in quantities less than 3,000. That practically precluded the sending of cigars and cigarettes by mail from Cuba to the United States. Repeal has been promised, it is said, many times, but Congress always has failed to act. A determined effort was made to get the bill through at the last session, but it was strangled to death at the end.

Cuba has an easy means of retaliation, which, if used, would, as The Outlook pointed out some time ago, seriously affect American exports to Cuba. All of our parcels post shipments to Cuba, and they are large, are permitted under a mail treaty-made in 1903 -in which, it is claimed, we agreed to the repeal of the act of 1866. That treaty has expired, but Cuba has continued it under a temporary convention since 1926. If Cuba cancels that con

vention, any parcels that go to Cuba must pay postage at letter rates.

The one other commodity sent from Cuba to the United States in large quantities is sugar. Under our present tariff law, Cuban sugar has a differential of twenty per cent. Cuba wants this dif

Underwood & Underwood

President Machado, of Cuba

ferential raised to forty per cent. The twenty per cent differential is guaranteed by the treaty of 1903; there is no treaty provision for a higher one.

Here, too, Cuba has a retaliatory weapon. Cuba is bound by the treaty to give to the United States preferential tariff rates ranging from ten to thirty per cent, but she can set her rates as high as she pleases. A new tariff law already has been formulated, but not promulgated. It is held in abeyance, for use if necessary. The new schedules are, to use one of our own favorite terms, highly "protective."

Cuba's demand for a more favorable differential on sugar is certain to meet even stronger resistance than has the demand for repeal of the cigar and cigarette item of the act of 1866. If American cigar manufacturers are opposed to any action that would let in more Cuban cigars, American sugar producers, both the cane producers of Louisiana and the beet growers of the West, are much more strongly opposed to any action that would give Cuban sugar a larger preferential. They have even sought means, for several years, of getting rid of the twenty per cent arrangement.

America's Hwangho

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HAT has happened along the Mississippi this spring is not an isolated disaster. It has

happened in varying degrees before. It will happen, perhaps on a larger scale, in the future. Again and again the waters of the Mississippi have flooded farm lands, inundated towns and cities, swept away houses, ruined crops, and left behind the crests of their floods hunger, disease, poverty. If, as has been surmised, they will have done this year more damage than ever before, it is because they are becoming a greater menace year by year, decade by decade, century by century. What, then, of the future?

Is there a crystal into which we Americans of the twentieth century can gaze and see what the Mississippi is threatening to do for us in coming years, and for our sons and daughters, and for their children and their children's children? If there is, would it not be well to look into it and see what we have to guard against? Would it not be well for us to-day, if we can be admonished by any form of television revealing the future, to begin now to take those precautions that will minimize the peril, or even turn disaster into benefit?

There is such a crystal. Its name is China. Looking into it,. we can foresee the distant future of the Mississippi in the wriggling, lashing fury of the Yellow River, China's Sorrow, the Hwangho..

For at least three thousand years, perhaps for many hundred years more, the Chinese have been doing along the Hwangho what we Americans have started to do along the Mississippi. They have cut down the forests along this upper region. For uncounted centuries they have left the mountains among which the tributaries of the Hwangho take their rise denuded of trees. They have become accustomed to the inevitable consequence of this deforestation. When the rains come, the Chinese accept as a work of nature the washing away of the soil. There are no trees or shrubs to hold with their roots the soil in place. Every downpour turns rills into gullies. The bare faces of the mountain are wrinkled and seamed and creased. And the rains carry the soil down suspended in the water. There is nothing to hold back the waters in their rush. The deforestation of these hills has thus a double effect: it increases the flood of water and increases the erosion of the soil.

So long as the run-off of the waters is swift, so long the particles of soil are kept in suspension. Stirred up by the

swirling, eddying streams, they are carried along. But when the river reaches. the alluvial plain, the flow of the river is retarded and the particles of soil begin to settle. Little by little the muddied river deposits the silt on its bed. Even if the hills had not been denuded of trees, the river would have carried some of the soil down to the plains, as it did in prehistoric ages; but deforestation has greatly hastened the process of building up the river's bed. Gradually year by year the river becomes shallower and broader until it finds a new channel. It is possible to trace courses of the Yellow River which have existed at one time or another with outlets as far north as Tientsin and as far south as at or near Shanghai.

To stop the river from meandering, to overcome the consequences of their reckless destruction of their forests the Chinese have from time immemorial been building dikes. As the river bed. has risen they have built their dikes higher. They did not foresee, or if they foresaw they did not care, what would happen. As human life is measured, the process of confining the river has been a slow one. John R. Freeman, the famous American hydraulic engineer, has estimated the rate of elevation of the beds of the Yellow River as "hardly more than one foot in a hundred years." But as hundreds of years have run into thousands, the bed of the Yellow River is now in some places as much as twenty feet above the level of the surrounding country. The river, instead of running in a channel, thus runs on a ridge.

What happens when the Yellow River bursts through its dikes appals the imagination. No man can conceive the terror, the suffering, the desolation. In his book "China: Land of Famine," published by the American Geographical Society, New York, 1926, Walter H. Mallory, who at the time of writing the book was Secretary of the China Inter

ional Famine Relief Commission, gives some account, sober, unadorned by rhetoric, but clear, explicit, authentic, of the floods in China as a contributing cause of famine. To that book we refer our readers. In it they will find much more about China than its floods. They will get from it a background for what is happening in China to-day. But they will also get, what is of more concern to them, a foresight of what may happen

in America in the future.

of the future that the Chinese have shown in building their dikes along the Hwangho.

We have let the floods come, and then we have futilely tried to control them. Is there no better way?

Now is the time for America to take counsel of her wisest and most farseeing.

Relieve the distress now. Repair the damage as soon as possible. Set up whatever bulwarks are necessary against the perils of the near future. But that will not be enough if Americans do not wish their Mississippi to become another Yellow River, their country to become another China, and their children's children to become as fatalistic and as helpless as the Chinese.

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Rhubarb Pie

HUBARB pie is the true harbinger of spring. It is the first product of the soil to come into being. It refreshes the palate and tones up the blood. In the New England dietary it rivals the pumpkin in popularity and is a tonic equaled by few and excelled by none.

Rhubarb sauce is a good second. The acid of the pie-plant, as old folks call it, is pleasant to the taste and fruity in flavor. Rhubarb itself is a plant that winters well and expands its broad leaves in defiance of frost. It comes along in its own way and time, regardless of weather conditions. Unsung by poets, it should rank with the trailing arbutus, the snowdrop, and the jonquil in its insistence on coming to life on the edge of snow-banks.

We salute the sturdy plant and call for a second portion of pie, cut at right. angles and roofed with a lattice of crust instead of a lid!

Smoking out the
President

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O concerted effort to force the President to commit himself on the third-term issue has been undertaken by the men regarded as the President's chief rivals for the Republican nomination.

That The Outlook can state on the best of authority.

On April 19 the "Courier-Journal" of Louisville, Kentucky, printed a despatch from its Washington bureau in which appeared the following sentences:

A considerable group within the Republican party is contemplating with some delectation the scheme of quizzing Mr. Coolidge on the thirdterm question.

In this group are followers of VicePresident Dawes, former Governor Lowden, Senator Borah, Senator

Moses of New Hampshire, and Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University.

No such scheme as described in this despatch to the "Courier-Journal" could be undertaken on behalf of these distinguished men without their knowledge. Of course, ordinary politicians have recourse to the third-term tradition whenever circumstances permit it to be used as a diversion from real issues; but these men are not ordinary politicians. If, therefore, they had any such plan in view, it was certain that any letter presented to the President on their behalf would be of great importance. The Outlook offered its columns to them in a telegram addressed by the Editor-inChief to each of them except the VicePresident. The Outlook's telegram was as follows:

The Louisville "Courier-Journal" states that some of your supporters combined with supporters of [here were specified the names of the three others to whom the telegram was addressed] are planning to address an open letter to the President asking him to state his position on accepting a third term. If such a letter is written, we suggest the appropriateness of publishing it in The Outlook, where all conditions as to release dates can be carefully guarded. The Outlook's National distribution and its reputation for forthright discussion of National affairs will furnish the best possible background for such a letter. Our columns are open for such a letter at any time upon two weeks' notice. Will appreciate a reply telling us how we can co-operate with your supporters.

ERNEST H. ABBOTT.

The following replies establish beyond dispute the fact that if any such scheme. has been contemplated it is not to be taken seriously, as it is without the knowledge of those chiefly concerned. In order that there may be no misunderstanding, it should be said that the Louisville "Courier-Journal's" despatch appeared some days before any announcement was made of the open letter on the subject which is about to be published in the "Forum" and which has obviously no connection with the plan described in that despatch. The letter in the "Forum" is written by a newspaper man, and, however interesting of itself, did not purport to come from men whose prospects for the nomination depended on the President's decision. It is one thing for the President to ignore an unauthorized query as he physically must ignore most of the multitude of letters that are addressed to him; it would be quite another thing for him to ignore the joint letter of Vice-President

Editor-in-Chief, The Outlook,

120 East 16th Street,

New York City.
My dear Mr. Abbott:

I received your telegram a day or two since relative to the news item appearing in the Louisville "CourierJournal" about the open letter to the President on the third term.

I do not know from what source this news item was gathered, but I know nothing of any such plan. I have no such plan in view, so it was a mistake as to myself at least. I would agree with you, however, if such a letter was going to be printed that no better journal could be had than your own in which to print it.

Very sincerely,

(Signed) WM. E. BORAH.

No reply has come from Senator Moses. That fact is clearly without significance. No man can write a joint letter all by himself. Senator Moses's reply may come in due time.

T

ELL me what kind of books a man reads," it has been said, "and I will tell you what kind of man he is." With equal truth one might say, "Tell me the kind of books a

Underwood & Underwood

Albert J. Beveridge, ex-Senator of the United States and biographer of Chief Justice Marshall

1862-1927

man writes, and I will give you a fair judgment of his character." Literature is the best measure of the tendency of an age, the genius of a people, or the tastes and personality of an individual. "Elmer Gantry" for instance, is a more shocking exposure of Sinclair Lewis than of the Baptist Church. "The art of writing," Emerson asserted, "is the highest of those permitted to man as drawing directly from the soul, and the means or material it uses are also of the soul;" it is "the necessity by which each. writer, an infirm, capricious, fragmentary soul, is made to utter his part in the chorus of humanity."

The universal recognition of this critical standard, which has been insisted upon by philosophers from the days of Plato and Aristotle to the days of William James, appears in a striking fashion in the comments on the career and achievements of the late Senator Beveridge. I do not recall any man of our

time who has been so instinctively judged by the literary test or who has so dramatically obtained a literary immortality.

Every man either openly or secretly desires to be remembered after death. In this sense every man is a believer in a kind of immortality. He may seek it through military glory, or athletic prowess, or political power, or the distinction of public office, or great riches, or social leadership, or even startling crime-but he seeks it. There is a readable passage in Boswell's "Johnson" in which this prevailing idea of immortality is alluded to:

Johnson. "The belief of immortality is impressed upon all men, and all men act under an impression of it, however they may talk, and though, perhaps, they may be scarcely sensible of it." I said, it appeared to me that some people had not the least notion of immortality; and I mentioned a distinguished gentleman of our acquaintance.

Johnson. "Sir, if it were not for the notion of immortality, he would cut a throat to fill his pockets." When I quoted this to Beauclerk, who knew much more of the gentleman than we did, he said in his acid manner, "He would cut a throat to fill his pockets, if it were not for the fear of being hanged."

However skeptical he may be about celestial immortality, every man believes in terrestrial immortality, or, in other words, the persistence of reputation after death. But it is singular how few men recognize the fact that the surest avenue to life on earth after death is literature, and the still more somber truth that his memory may be enshrined in a literary paradise or a literary Hades.

There is yet another law of literary immortality to be borne in mind; there is a kind of saving grace about it; it cannot be obtained by professionalism or cant or hypocrisy; for it is as true in literature as in theology that "he who loseth his life shall find it." These truths are curiously illustrated in the case of Senator Beveridge.

Albert Jeremiah Beveridge was born on a farm in Ohio in 1862. He says of himself that in his boyhood he "led a life of privations; was a plowboy at twelve; a railroad laborer at fourteen; and a logger and teamster at fifteen." But, somehow or other, he succeeded in

getting through high school and college, and, after working as managing clerk in a law office, was admitted to the bar. Politically ambitious and possessing oratorical gifts of a somewhat over-rhetorical type, he was elected to the United States Senate from Indiana at the early age of thirty-seven, and served two terms in that body of six years each. Here, in spite of antagonisms created by his youthful and too assertive self-confidence, he made his mark. He contributed two literary phrases to the struggle against special privilege, which was one of the outstanding features of the Presidential career of Theodore Roosevelt, with whom Beveridge was in political sympathy. These two phrases are "pass prosperity around" and "the invisible government." He followed Roosevelt into the Progressive Party. This ended his political career not ingloriously; but it also put an end to his doubtless deepseated political ambitions. It must have been a bitter disappointment, for he had undoubtedly chosen statesmanship as his path to glory, and there are those who believe that at one time he regarded his star of destiny as the star of Abraham Lincoln. If he had died in the Senate or in any other public office, he would in time have been forgotten; but as the author of a noble work of historical biography he is assured of an

D

imperishable monument. Thus he lost his life to save it.

One fine thing can be said of Beveridge. He did not brood, he did not sulk, he did not resent. Defeated in politics, he turned to literature as the medium of making his contribution to the civic progress of his country. His "Life of John Marshall" is the resultmonumental in its labor and scope, although vital and sparkling in its style and human interest. At his death he was engaged in a similar study of Lincoln. It is an irreparable loss that he could not have completed it, for he said, not long before his death, to a friend of mine, that he thought he had discovered some new light, in spite of all the research of others, on the traits and qualities and sources of power in the Great Emancipator.

The last time I saw Senator Beveridge was at a dinner in New York, about a year ago, which inaugurated the drive for a million-dollar endowment fund for the American Historical Association. He made a fervent and effective speech in support of his contention—a sound one, I believe that there can be no judicious, efficacious, or permanently successful statesmanship which is not based on a true and broad knowledge of history. This requires research, and research requires money. A knowledge of

history, he urged, ameliorates bigoted and dangerous partisanship which often makes the legislator his own worst enemy. Historical perspective disarms fanaticism, which is the mother of war. After the dinner I had a little chat with him in which I expressed my appreciation of his "Marshall"-as I had on several other occasions-but added that subsequent reading, and especially a visit to the University of Virginia, had modified my opinion of Jefferson, and that I regarded the author of the Declaration of Independence as a greater statesman and patriot than my previous prejudices had permitted me to think him or than he appears to be in the "Life of Marshall."

"I, too, have modified my views," he replied, "and if I were rewriting the 'Life of Marshall' to-day I should not be quite so positive in my criticisms of Jefferson."

Does not that frank admission finely indicate the power which the spirit of literature has over the spirit of prejudice? For Beveridge was naturally a man of intensity of feeling and in his early days a partisan of the strictest sect. He had discovered, what all thinking men sooner or later discover, that one may be loyal to his convictions and yet tolerant in his judgment of his opponents.

Haytoka, Virginia, March 3, 1927.

EAR SANDY: You have worked my feeble brain overtime. Jane says my mind has not known what my hands were doing since your letter came-meaning, no doubt, that I have upset everything I've touched.

I'll confess that I've carried your problem to bed with me, slept on it, waked with it, even taken it to the fields hunting with me and blamed it for my coming home without game. When I sought advice from the neighbors and told them what you were hoping to find, they shook their heads and said, "That Yankee friend of yours must be looking for heaven."

It warmed my heart to hear from you after all the years, and I cannot tell you how much I want you and your family

'On page 61 is a group of letters on farm questions which is of special interest in connection with this article.-THE EDITORS.

in the South and near us. Badly as I want you for a neighbor, however, I shall avoid the besetting Southern sin of preaching a eulogy on our section, which might in the end prove your funeral, so I will "kindly omit flowers."

You write that you must get away from New York on account of your nerves "and the dread of increasingly high blood pressure." Why, man, since Florida fainted and fell on the land boom of western North Carolina, since cotton dropped to twelve cents a pound and dark tobacco to seven cents, since all of Virginia has become as gay as Christmas with red apples that are too plentiful to give away, I'll wager that the blood pressure of this old South has jumped up fifty points to the man in the very country that you ask about as your prospective home.

long to answer, for I was riding high then, in the hope that we had managed to catch step with that old law of supply and demand that you and I took in such heavy doses in our freshman economics.

The main trouble, Sandy, with this farming game down here is not production, but marketing and disposing of the big crops which those to whom we farmers sell are always pleased to call "overproduction." That's the name by which they buy it cheap and sell it high.

Two years ago we thought we had solved it by co-operative marketing after a bad break in prices drove the farmers to pool their crops and attempt to feed the supply-large or small—so as to meet the world demand. It worked while the farmers stuck together. But scarcely had he lifted the pressure of hard times from his shoulders than the average farmer began backsliding. He could not bear to see his neighbor out