T Editorial Correspondence from the Naval Conference at Geneva By ELBERT FRANCIS BALDWIN HE Tri-Power Naval Conference here has had a poor press. The ultimate causes may have been armament purveyors, dismayed at a possible fall in the market, or other opponents of arms limitation-I do not know. But each day of late any manifestation of national "spunk" has been exaggerated into mountain size. We have been informed that the Conference was struggling in an atmosphere of insufferable intolerance and was actually being smothered to death. Few critics have seemed disposed to credit the three nations involved with what, knowing their representatives here, I believe to be their sincere desire, namely, to place naval expenditure on a decreasing and fairly discriminating basis. The Conference has had its very seri The Outlook's Editor in Europe tonnage ratio, fixed by the Washington Cruisers form the chief item in that Mr. Gibson propounded the view that the fairest limitation was that of the total tonnage of each of these classes. Within such total, he declared, each country would be free to choose the type and numbers of vessels it considered best for its special needs, arising from geographical position, overseas commitments, national security, etc. The proposition had the advantage of great clearness and cogency. ous difficulties, all the same. Should they B prove, for the moment, insurmountable, no one of the three Powers would dream of falling into panic. All would be animated by a spirit of "try, try again." N American Conditions AVAL expenditure is applied to bases. on shore and vessels at sea. Among the latter are battleships, destroyers, submarines, and, particularly, cruisers. Surprising as it may seem to many, perhaps to most, to protect our commerce it would appear, according to an article in a recent Outlook, that America needs more cruisers than does any other Power, and this whether viewed from a standpoint of trade, fueling stations, National wealth, protection of colonies, or merchant marine. Moreover, as we have relatively few fueling stations, we need relatively larger-sized ships. Thus American conditions were more than ever of moment when the President of the United States summoned a new Naval Conference. At it England, America, and Japan were represented by full-powered delegates; France and Italy, by observers only. What Mr. Gibson Said WHEN, early in June, the Confer ence met, the Hon. Hugh Gibson, American Ambassador to Belgium, our first delegate, was made presiding officer. He offered our Government's suggestion of continuing the battleship What Mr. Bridgeman Said overwhelming superiority of force for you. For what kind of a show would our 400,000 tons make? Why, we need a six-inch-gun cruiser, proper for commerce protection, for every 2,500 miles of our immensely long lines of communication. Now, after supplying ourselves with the necessarily very large number of little cruisers, how much tonnage would there be left to spend on big cruisers, those eight-inchgun affairs, with their superiority of 21⁄2-1, over the six-inch-gun cruisers. Yet we ought to have fifteen of them, anyway. Besides, we should need a few aircraft carriers and mine-layers; they should also be included in the cruiser class. Thus we really ought to have a cruiser total of some 600,000 tons. What the Japanese Think ur Britain objected that a total-As the present British cruiser strength tonnage basis would settle nothing. Mr. Bridgeman, First Lord of the Admiralty and first British delegate, said: Total tonnage is like a pie. It may be a good thing, but it all depends on what is inside it. The mere fixation of total tonnage is perfectly useless unless accompanied by individual limits. There is no other way of preventing competition in building except by agreement on the maximum size of each type. This, indeed, as well as the maximum gun caliber (for, of course, the whole question of the displacement and permissible caliber of guns is involved) had been supposed to be not unsympathetic to some Americans, as distinguished from the French, at the April meeting of the Preparatory Commission here under the auspices of the League of Nations to prepare for a General Arms Limitation Conference (the League is not responsible for the present Conference). But the American position, with its emphasis on total tonnage first and types and numbers afterwards, is now perfectly clear to every one. Again, another Englishman remarked: Suppose we should agree for ourselves and for you on 400,000 tons of cruisers, each, as a proper total, and you carry your point of not divulging just how you are going to split it up, and we find that you have given a large majority proportion to eight-gun vessels of 10,000 tons, proper for work with fleets. That means, of course, an is reported to be about 387,000 tons, a 600,000 estimate is regarded by some long-distance critics as a mere basis for bargaining. It should settle down to something really reasonable to which the British would like to add a definite building program. Or, on the other hand, as Viscounts Saito and Ishii cleverly propose, cruisers and destroyers may ultimately be lumped together, thus providing all auxiliaries in two classes only, surface and submarine, and into a total tonnage within whose limits there would be greater liberty of emphasis, whether of type or numbers; there would be more chance of reaching the object of the Conference-limitation, reduction, economy. This comes with special impact from Japan, which, of the three Powers, is the least able to afford the luxury of a much-cruisered navy, and hence is the keenest on saving the taxpayer's pocketbook. "But why competition?" the Japanese inquire. "War between America and England is unthinkable.' This we hear daily. Now, if America builds more of one cruiser type than does England, why must England needs do the same, and vice versa? There is, we believe, no cause for misgiving on the part of either when the other disposes of a restricted total tonnage according to special requirements. The simple question at issue is: Does each Power trust in the other's good intentions?" Geneva, July 18, 1927. MOR I-The Forest Service Has Lost Its Vision of Its Real Job ORE than two years ago Mr. William C. Gregg questioned in an article in The Outlook whether the Forest Service had not "gone daffy over providing recreational facilities in the National Forests instead of tending to the business for which the Forest Service was created. In the present article, which is the first of a series by Mr. Arthur Baum, an even more severe indictment is drawn up in which the Forest Service is accused of failing in its primary task, that of protecting the National Forests from the annual fires which are burning up merchantable timber faster than it can be replaced. Mr. Baum served in the Forest Service for fourteen years as guard, ranger, and supervisor T HE costly failure of the Forest Service in the Northwest in 1926, whereby several hundred thousand acres of merchantable timber were destroyed by fire, was not as great a disaster as that region thinks. It often takes just such a catastrophe to bring to an accounting a Government service which has been in the saddle as long as the Forest Service. That such an accounting was required in this case is the opinion of the Northwest and is the thesis of these articles. The season of 1926 was one of the three most damaging years in the history of the Forest Service, with huge losses in northern Idaho, western Montana, and to a lesser degree on the coast. But this devastating blow to one of the richest timber areas on the continent and the eleventh-hour extravagance which marked the efforts of the Forest Service to fight the fires are none too heavy a price to pay if the result may be the exposure and the permanent correction of the conditions which made such losses possible. The simple fact is that the timber belonging to the Nation is burning up twenty-five per cent more rapidly than it is growing. Last year was a mistake, or rather a series of mistakes, by the very agency intrusted for the past twenty years with the stewardship of our Nationally owned Forests. It was a striking example of the failure of the leading exponent of Conservation, the United States Forest Service, to carry out the fundamental of forestry; that is, See editorial comment. in one of the worst fire districts in the country. He resigned to engage in other work, but maintains the same interest in Conservation as during his years of active field work, and feels that he can render no better service to the cause than by acquainting the public with the facts in the case, ascertained by him while in a responsible position in the Forest Service itself. The series constitutes a long-stifled protest of the field force, living and working amid the trees of the National Forests, against the bureaucratic office force, which Mr. Baum holds responsible for the failure of the Forest Service to cope successfully with the fire menace. to protect the Forests from fire. I admit that in all save fire protection the Service has done wonders, but of what avail are the best silvicultural methods, the wisest utilization of the land, the most successful work in adapting grazing regulations to the present economic needs of the stock industry-of what avail are these accomplishments if timber is destroyed faster than it is replaced? A FTER fourteen years in the Forest Service, most of them on duty in the worst fire region in this country, and after giving all natural difficulties and political difficulties due consideration, I am convinced that the Service has itself chiefly to blame for lack of progress in checking fire losses. Despite improvements in methods and greater resources, it has failed to keep pace with the increasing risk our Forests run as they become more and more subject to the carelessness of mankind. This is due to faults inherent in the organization. I wish to make it clear that I have no concern with individuals, but that I accuse the Forest Service of very grave errors of commission and omission, for which in a subsequent article I shall endeavor to point out definite and practical remedies. Grouped logically these errors are: First, the Forest Service has consistently failed to appreciate its task in suppressing fire in its true proportions, and has failed to report to Congress and the public such knowledge of real conditions as it did have. Second, the Forest Service has made no sincere, intelligent effort to secure funds necessary for its needs, but so far denied by Congress, and has signally failed to make maximum use of the money with which it was provided. It has devoted funds intended to strengthen field man-power and equipment to increasing salaries of high officials and building up an unnecessary bureaucratic overhead out of all proportion to the productive field force. Third, the Forest Service has ignored radical changes necessary in its basic organization which would make possible a proper utilization of its funds. It assigns poorly equipped and often incompetent men to the most important positions in its fire organization, instead of selecting those of demonstrated ability in the arduous apprenticeship requisite to fit a man for success in one of the most savage "wars of peace"-fighting forest fires. Fourth, the Forest Service, in losing sight of the primary conception of its job what Secretary Wilson eloquently outlined twenty-odd years ago as the conservation and administration of the National Forests-has dissipated its energies through ex officio leadership in private, municipal, and State forestry. Attendance at meetings more or less allied with Conservation and publicity matter of various degrees of literary merit have largely superseded actual supervision of Government property. THE principle of Conservation has been sold to the public on its economic and æsthetic merits, but the repute of the Forest Service as the bul A view of the destruction being wrought by a forest fire near Siuslaw National Forest in Oregon wark of the cause rests too much upon the excellent standing of the Forest ranger. He is the pivot of Conservation, and in this article, confessedly critical of the Forest Service, it is inevitable and only fair that I pay him tribute. The successful ranger possesses in the maximum degree physical and moral courage, self-reliance, wilderness craft, tact, vision, and the ability to lead men. He is a public servant whom the United States places in the same category as Canada does its Northwest Mounted Police builders and sentinels of empire. But the Forest ranger is not the Forest Service. We shall later see how he is overwhelmed by the legions of bureaucracy. Our concern is with the Service as a whole and its responsibility for the Nation's loss of its merchantable timber. It has failed to realize its responsibility, and through complacent reports enhancing success and veiling failures has not adequately informed either the public or Congress of the situation it faces. Congress holds the purse-strings, and so far has been niggardly-and the Bureau of the Budget worse but their skeptical attitude is not incomprehensible if the true situation is being withheld from them, as it is, because of the unjustifiable fear that it would react to the disadvantage of the Service or from other political considerations. My personal belief is that if the needs of the National Forests were exhaustively presented the Bureau of the Budget would recognize them. But why should increases be granted to the Forest Service if its own reports intimate that it is satisfied with the progress which is being made? A CCORDING to the system now in vogue, the insufficient appropriations allowed the Forest Service force it to follow some such procedure as this: Severe fires occur in various regions of the West, and the unprepared and illequipped field force has to meet the emergency upon a day's notice. It is forced to spend money like a drunken Indian a fact more and more frequently commented upon in Western communities and draws upon the Fire Fund, virtually a check signed in blank by Congress, which authorizes a deficit for the suppression of fires and the placing of additional guards when the situation becomes acute. Of course, deficiency appropriations are one of the favorite means of Congress to soothe the clamorous taxpayer-they do not show up in the Budget for that year-but it is hard for the heavily taxed Western stump rancher and grocer to understand why the Forest Service should neglect to take ordinary precautions against something bound to happen every year, instead of spending money without any regard for economy at the eleventh hour. A good example of this short-sighted way of fighting fires and of the inability of the non-field force to evaluate past experience and to prevision possibilities --indeed, probabilities may be seen in my own district in 1926. For several years it has faced in different regions fire seasons which verged on the disastrous. Each of them demonstrated the inadequacy of the first-line defenses; that is, there were too few rangers, guards, and improvised crews; there was insufficient equipment; and trained men from other forests to help out in the overburdened forests were not available. Yet late in the spring of 1926, when I complained of the damage done on my forest in 1925, I was informed that at last the district was equipped to meet any emergency. In three weeks the losses were worse than in any except two of the past twenty years, equipment was gone, and the whole district overhead demoralized. The official answer to such a situation would be that money was not available for adequate protection; but there is ample reason to believe that the unsatisfactory aspects of this method of fighting fire have never been comprehensively explained to Congress. The man in the field knows the facts, but he is muzzled. Instead of being urged to present appropriation estimates truly reflecting their best judgment of conditions, the supervisors are repressed, told to make their estimates "about the same as last year, since there is no likelihood of increase." Is it not culpably unsound reasoning which forecasts the amount of equipment needed on the average fire season? What would you think of an ambulance doctor who reasoned in this fashion: "The kind of accidents I am usually summoned to require, on the average, so many yards of bandage, therefore that's as much as I'll carry, though I admit a human life may be lost because I have not enough bandage with me"? The improvidence of the Service as regards equipment is all the more inexcusable in that through centralized purchase and recourse to unused army stores it has been able to acquire materials at far less than market price, and yet has failed to acquire enough. That is the stock defense of the Service-it has made some advance. Why not enough? Though taxed to the limit for not unusual fire seasons, the Service failed to realize the demands plainly foreseeable for the unusual year. Last season was such a year, and as a result the Service was short of cheaply bought material and had to buy in the open retail market. Is this economy? When will the Service grasp the fact that the worst possibly imaginable fire season is the minimum it must prepare for? The Forest Service problem in bad seasons has been compared to the problem confronting our Regular Army when the World War broke out. But there is an essential difference. A World War does not break out every year, but the Forest Service knows that every year it must face fire. Yet it stubbornly persists in false economy in preparation, and then indulges in wild extravagance when fires break out. Between 1905 and 1919 inclusive, disastrous as was the last-mentioned year, the Forest Service made more real progress in protection work than from 1920 to the present. This will meet with flat and vehement denial, but take into consideration the conditions existing in 1905. The Service had no personnel, much less trained personnel; its organization was purely experimental; the Forests were real wildernesses; roads and trails were conspicuous by their absence; telephone lines, one of the main essentials for effective fire fighting, were practically unknown; its equipment was a joke; and, most important of all, it had neither the understanding nor the support of the public. By 1920 it had gone a long way toward remedying these defects, and for the past seven years the resources of the Service, although still inadequate, have been incomparably greater than those of the preceding pioneer stage. Yet its rate of letting the Forests burn up is not much bettered. A s I have said, the Forest ranger and his immediate superiors on the field know this at first hand, but any bureaucracy stifles the subordinate. With some differences in opinion as to the intensiveness which must be extended to fire-protection personnel and improvements, all save the newcomers and veteran time-servers-who exist in any industry-agree that the necessary increases run into hundreds of per cent. It is the failure of the Forest Service that the practical experience of these men is not drawn upon by the men higher up, who must present to Congress the requirements of the Service. My own experience has been that there is an appalling apathy towards the whole fire situation on the part of the officers at Washington and in the district offices. These men deal with fire losses from an academic view-point. They take a bad fire season every so often as a matter of course, deplore it perfunc torily, and proceed about their other business business which will not continue to exist very long unless fire losses are prevented. It does not take long for this attitude of resignation toward the supposedly inevitable to poison the rest of the organization. S OMETHING must be done immediately. A permanent investment in protection personnel and improvements in fire-fighting equipment are absolutely necessary if forestry in the regions growing merchantable timber, which it must be noted are concentrated in a small percentage of our gross forest area, is to be more than merely interesting reading about experimental plots. It is these really productive forests, as distinct from grazing, barren, and watershed protection acreage, which are burning up faster than timber can be produced upon them. Remember that the life of a tree is analogous to that of man. On my district, considering all species of timber, one hundred and fifty years would be a very conservative estimate to place on the rotation-or life of a tree. But during the past twenty years the rotation would have had to be much less than one hundred years if supply were to keep pace with loss. The successful conduct of a business vital to the Nation's prosperity demands adequate provision for protection against this alarming annual fire loss. But so far neither Congress nor the public has been aware of true conditions. (In his next article Mr. Baum goes into the cause of the failure of the Forest Service to stop our National Forests from burning up. The cause is not personal. Mr. Baum attacks no one individual. H The cause is in the organization. It is topheavy.) When the Japanese Marry IBIYA DAIMYOJIN is a modest shrine in the very heart of Tokyo. It stands within hailing distance of the old castle moat surrounding the great palace and within a few hundred steps of the central park called Hibiya and of the Imperial Hotel. But it is only modest in its building--as simplicity is the dominant note of all Shinto structures. And then, too, it was built in the trying days following the great earthquake of 1923. But its intimate relation to the great national shrine at Ise gives it unsurpassed dignity and prestige in the eyes of the pious of Tokyo City. And this Hibiya Daimyojin has turned into a Nippon edition of the Little Church Around the Corner. By ADACHI KINNOSUKE It's a tremendous piece of news. It has just reached us here in a batch of Tokyo newspapers. News like that is quite as important as the story of the smashing up of the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Strait of Tsushima-to the real life of our Nippon race. Perhaps a bit more so. The Battle of the Japan Sea -Togo's admirable work there, however heroic does not touch the every-day life of our people as this does. Certainly, the sum of all the brave deeds in the Russian War does not begin to touch the every-day emotions of our people and keep on touching them as the revolution in the basic relation between man and woman contained in the above little news item. The up-and-alert Tokyo rep Here is the trousseau for a Japanese bride displayed in the window of a Tokyo department store. According to nese ear is largely in the historic background of the thing. Marriage with us had been a social contract, pure and simple. Religion had nothing to do with it; it had nothing whatever to say about it. "What, therefore, God hath joined together let no man put asunder" had no place in the matrimonial credo of Nippon. That is, for many centuries past. To be sure, in the purer days in the dawn of history marriage was wont to be solemnized with Shinto rites. And the Imperial family weddings are now, as they have always been, performed before the palace shrine and with Shinto ceremony. But among the mass of our people there was not a touch of religious ceremony connected with marriage. And there precisely is where the brief news from Tokyo takes on color and meaning. At the height of this spring season more than twenty-five couples of young people rushed into this one shrine of Hibiya Daimyojin every day, Sunday not excluded. "We begin at nine o'clock in the morning," the secretary of the popular shrine declared to a reporter of a Tokyo daily, "and keep busy until nine o'clock an hour and costs as low as 15 yen, or about $7.50 in American money. More ornate and complicated ones last over an hour, with a lot of trimmings in the way of floral and fruit offerings and amount of sacred music accompanying the ceremony. For these charges go up as high as 70 yen, or $35. This Hibiya Daimyojin has become by far the most popular shrine for wedding ceremonies, and is almost exclusively patronized by the middle and higher classes of Tokyo people. Many things worked to bring about the change. For more than half a century now Occidental ideas and customs have been imported into the country with enthusiasm, if not altogether with edifying profit. The spread of Christianity had a decided effect upon it. Native Christians have always insisted on church weddings in addition to the purely social ceremonies according to the old-time usages of the land. But by far the most powerful cause of them all is the nation-wide awakening of Japanese women to their own rights and power and the coming into their own. at night." In other words, the shrine BA has been busier than most of the big business in Tokyo this year in the happy but strenuous work of tying the knot. The charges at the shrine for ceremonies vary according to the degree of display and the time consumed in performing them. The simpler one takes about half ARELY half a dozen years ago the Non-Marriage Alliance, captained by such dauntless spirits as Mme. Akiko Hiratsuka, Mme. Umeo Oku, and Miss Fusae Ichikawa, unfurled their standard of revolt in the astounded eyes of Tokyo. "Emancipation from the bondage of matrimony," was their battle-cry. They did not smash up expensive plateglass windows. They did not go on hunger strikes. They were not militant. They were tame and gentle in their methods, compared with some of the activities of their American and British sisters. They marched on the Imperial Diet, then in session, and presented a petition demanding a law forbidding the marriage of males suffering from certain diseases and certain character and mental defects. The ladies of the Alliance spoke a good deal and all over the city of Tokyo, where women public orators were rarer than ladies wearing their own complexions in an Easter parade on Fifth Avenue. And they wrote often and widely. One and all, they spoke and wrote with something of the accents of a crusader. And what they said was both vivid and emphatic. More than that, it was true. And, what was still more important, they knew it was truestating facts in their natural colors. And what was yet more vital even than that, their hearers and readers and of the male gender-knew that the young women of the Non-Marriage Alliance were telling the world simple but very solemn facts-common, every-day, ever-present facts. Facts which cried aloud to heaven some of them. Marriage for Japanese women had been slavery. There was no gentler word for it. And when the ladies wrote or spoke, in many cases, they were speaking out of the personal experiences of their own or |