Since then the Supreme Court has handed down another decision denying a new trial and supporting the legality of Judge Thayer's decisions; defense has requested the intervention of Governor Fuller, of Massachusetts; the Governor has investigated the case with the aid of President Lowell of Harvard University, President Stratton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and former Probate

Judge Robert Grant; the Governor and his advisers have reported their conclusions separately, and unanimously have agreed in pronouncing Sacco and Vanzetti guilty; Sacco and Vanzetti have been twice reprieved; application has been made to Justice Holmes of the United States Courts, noted for his liberal views of the law, to bring the case before the Federal Courts and has been refused; the trial judge has again heard arguments and denied motions for a retrial; and the Massachusetts Supreme Court has again taken up the case for consideration on appeal.

In contrast with this case is the procedure in Russia.

Twenty men, a few weeks ago, were seized under Soviet authority and, without trial, summarily shot.

Has there been any world-wide protest against the injustice of the execution. of these twenty men in Russia? Have the so-called Liberals who are stirred up over the Sacco-Vanzetti case made any protest to Russia loud enough to be heard? Does injustice consist in allowing the accused to have their day in court?

It is significant that the loudest protests against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, duly tried under conditions allowing repeated opportunities of rehearing of their case, come from Soviet Russia and its apologists.

American democracy will never seek escape from criticism of its ways of justice by adopting Russia's method of summary execution. But American democracy would do well to read the lesson that the Sacco-Vanzetti case has taught against the injustice of the law's delays. We need not seek an example of Russia; we can find it in England. There a murderer who committed his crime on May 10 was, as the New York "Sun" has pointed out, arrested, tried, found guilty, and hanged in thirteen weeks. Justice thus administered may make mistakes; but they are not as disastrous in consequences as the mistakes of indolence, delay, and excessive circumspection and technicality.

Massachusetts just now is suffering an ill repute she does not deserve because she, like other States of the Union, tolerates a system that, in guise of protect

His achievement in leadership toward an industrial democracy is too close to us to be seen in its true perspective; but it has been so conspicuous that even the dull of vision should be able to see its outlines.

How much of his opportunity for leadership he owed to Theodore Roosevelt cannot even be surmised; but it is certain that if any other man but Theodore Roosevelt had been President during the early years of the United States ing the early years of the United States Steel Corporation, Judge Gary would have had to search for some other opportunity than that which he had and would have had a very different career. If to-day this country enjoys widely distributed prosperity such as no other country on earth enjoys, if it is indeed literally a commonwealth, it is largely because of the juxtaposition of these two men, Roosevelt and Gary, at a critical time in its history.

It is hard for men now in their thirties to imagine the apprehension which seized the minds of a large proportion of the business men of this country, especially the men of big business, when

Roosevelt succeeded to the Presidency. They feared him as an irresponsible demagogue all the more because he came from their own stratum of society. They did not understand how any man could sincerely believe what he said about the application of righteous principles to politics. For the most part they had no qualms about engaging in transactions which from the point of view of the Golden Rule could not be defended. They were accustomed to considering politicians as pliant tools; and they did not fancy having in the White House a man who told them what he was going to do with them if they did not conform to law and decency. They thought any such man positively dangerous to the welfare of the country.

Judge Gary first showed his genius as a statesman of industry by welcoming the standards for business and politics alike which the young President of the United States was setting up and the vigor with which he summoned both business men and politicians to conform to them. It seems as if Judge Gary throughout his early life had been preparing himself to meet just such an emergency. He came of pioneering stock. He was in turn lawyer, judge, and business man. Throughout his career he had himself observed strict standards of conduct in both business and the law. Though not violent in manner, but rather suave, he had that fighting spirit that enabled him to maintain his standards against opposition. In this respect he found in Theodore Roosevelt a kindred spirit. He recognized in Roosevelt a man who was not merely willing to talk about a better country, but eager to set about doing things to make it a better country for the mass of people. Before railway rebates were ruled out by the Government Gary was opposed to them. While business was regarded as a form of war Gary was thinking of it in terms of co-operation. In her life of Gary Miss Ida M. Tarbell, who examined Theodore Roosevelt's correspondence in 1907, writes: "I have been through the manuscript correspondence and have been amazed to find that the only man of importance in the business world who at that time wrote him even one friendly letter-at least which has been preserved-was Judge Gary." Judge Gary acknowledged to those of his associates who were most violently antagonistic to Roosevelt that Roosevelt had helped him.

This attitude on the part of a man who had been chosen to head the newly organized United States Steel Corporation, the greatest industrial combination that had ever been orga

then unprecedented capitalization of over a billion dollars, was little less than revolutionary. To tell the story of what it meant to business then and what it has meant to business since, indeed what it has meant to the common every-day life of the hundred million people of America, would take a volume. Some idea of the effect of Judge Gary's attitude at that time, twenty years ago, may be gained from reading the biography by Miss Tarbell; but there are larger implications in the course that Judge Gary pursued than are mentioned in that biography. Until the beginning of this century American democracy had been working itself out in political form; but it had not found its way into industry. With the beginning of the century democracy found in industry a new world to conquer. Even to-day there are large stretches of industry under autocratic or feudalistic control. But those fields are growing smaller. More and more both the products of industry and power in the control of industry are becoming dis

tributed. It was Gary more than any other man who led in opening the business of great corporations to the public. It was Gary who led in the movement to distribute the ownership of great corporations throughout the mass of those who work in them or who use their products. It was Gary who, perhaps not always wisely but nevertheless steadily, promoted the organization of the workers within the industry, so that workers and managers would be allied against their competitors instead of workers of all industries being allied against the managers of all industries. If in this Gary ran up against powerful trade unions, it was not because he was against the trade union as such-for he was not-but because he had the right view of the way in which democracy ought to work and will work ultimately in industry in a country like this. It was Gary who more than any one else broke down the seven-day week and the twelve-hour day against the opposition, not only of other managers, but also of a great number of the employees themselves. It was Gary who saw that industry as an organization must take up burdens which in a simpler era might justly rest upon the individual, and therefore he promoted forms of insurance and provision for recreation and for proper living conditions as a part of the business of making and marketing steel.

To the end of his eighty years of life he was impressing upon, not only the steel industry, but American industry in general, certain principles of conduct which he regarded as more important than any methods of manufacture or any

practices in the technique of marketing. He was primarily a moral leader, a cultivator of a new code of ethics, an alchemist that transmuted ideals into practice. He was of course, like other men, often mistaken. He had, like other men, his limitations. He knew this; but he never allowed his mistakes to hold him back from going on in a path which he was sure was, on the whole, right.

Perhaps the fact that in his early days he was a county judge helped him to see other people's points of view that were hidden from his colleagues. Perhaps the religious faith which he inherited from his Methodist ancestors helped him to look at some of the problems with which he dealt with a view to their bearing upon the long future. Whatever the influences that made up his character were, they produced a man who has left his impress upon his country and has directed the course of those forces that affect the common life of men.

Before our Government calls another conference let it count a little more carefully first its possible cost. Can we afford to talk peace at the risk of arousing sleeping suspicion? May not a gesture of peace be misunderstood as a movement of the hand to the hilt?

The surest way in which to assure our friends abroad that our intentions were good is to go on with our naval plans as if nothing had happened. We need new cruisers to balance our navy. Let us build what we need. We do not need any such great amount of cruisers as we should have to build in order to place ourselves on a parity in tonnage with what Great Britain demanded at the Conference for herself. If Britain wants to burden herself with such naval expense, let her do so. It is her taxpayers

already groaning over the cost of government-who will have to pay the bills. We saved them a good deal of money in battleships five years ago. They will not thank us for that; and we have no idea

Μ'

over

R. KAWAKAMI has evidently become somewhat alarmed by the bitter feeling that he thinks has been engendered between the United States and Great Britain. His correspondence on another page reveals a state of mind which we trust is not shared by many of his countrymen. He even thinks that a war between the two great English-speaking Powers maritime supremacy is not inconceivable. He is obviously thinking of something that has been repeatedly said to be unthinkable. Nothing, we Nothing, we are sure, is further from the thoughts of either the American or the English people. Yet if the Naval Conference at Geneva has put this idea into the head of an experienced press correspondent who has special means of knowing what Japan is thinking of, what may it not have suggested to observers in Europe?

Our editorial correspondent, Dr. Baldwin, has, we think, given a truer picture of the relation established by the Conference between the United States and Great Britain. Plain talk that is startling to other peoples is often refreshing and revealing to those whose native language is English. Perhaps we may understand the British better now; we hope they understand us better. If this Conference concerned only Englishspeaking countries, it might indeed have resulted mainly in good. But it concerns all the countries of the earth-especially those that have the real burdens of armament. What effect has such a Conference had upon them?

us to save them money in cruisers, that is, after all, their concern. Ours is to build just the cruisers that we need to make our navy fit, and no more.

Perhaps it might be a good idea for Great Britain to call the next naval conference and make an offer to save her own money.

Irish Politics at Home

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HE Irish have their first chance in seven hundred years, under the Irish Free State Treaty, to play politics at home. Before that they had to practice in the British Parliament in London and Tammany Hall in New York. But practice has made many of them if not perfect-at least expert. Now we are seeing what they can do with their opportunity in their own native land, where their only recourse used to be rebellion against an alien rule.

Interest centers at present in the entry of a large faction of Irish republicans into the lower chamber of the national Parliament, the Dail Eireann. Formerly all the republican extremists, who refused to recognize the peace treaty with England and were united in the party known as Sinn Fein, declined to sit in the Dail if they were called upon to take the oath of allegiance to the Irish Free State Constitution and the King. Last year Eamonn De Valera, once leader of Sinn Fein, split off from that party a large faction of so-called "moderates" and formed a new party known as Fianna Fail. Contrary to Sinn Fein, this party advocated co-operation with parliamentary government, but still re

fused the oath to the King. This year, having won forty-five seats in the Dail, the De Valera faction has decided to take the oath required for entry into the chamber. The decision came partly as a result of a bill introduced by the Government requiring candidates in future to bind themselves in advance to carry out their responsibilities if elected. But there is more than that behind their apparent surrender.

The Government Party, representing the citizens whose leaders negotiated the Free State Treaty, is a minority in the Dail. The Fianna Fail delegates, in combination with the Labor Party, could turn it out of office, and threaten to do so. At the same time a republican announcement has declared that the taking of the oath of allegiance is a mere compulsory formality, not really binding upon any delegate.

What this means is still uncertain. But if De Valera intends to use the influence of his followers in the Dail to work against the terms of the treaty with England and split Ireland off entirely from the British Empire, he will surely make a new era of trouble in Ireland. It is hardly conceivable that England would permit the treaty to be violated in that way, and if she should step into control

T

in Ireland again it would be a long time before she would step out again.

Two years ago, George W. Russell ("AE"), the editor of the "Irish Statesman" and one of the wisest students of Irish affairs, remarked in conversation with a member of The Outlook's staff that the present Free State Government was a guaranty of good order in Ireland. As he pointed out, it is made up of men every one of whom risked his life time and time again in the political struggle against England. That is a test that sifts out the cowards and place-seekers; and every one of the chiefs of the Government has passed it in order to be where he is. But sooner or later, as Russell foresaw, this Government would have to give place to another; and then, in his opinion, would come the test whether the new system in Ireland could hold.

Apparently the time to which he pointed has come. The balance of power has shifted. Soon it will be known whether Irish radicals are bent upon

plunging their country into a new period plunging their country into a new period of disorder and strife, or whether they have developed the political sense to work with the means they command for a final restoration of confidence and an economic peace which may unite all Ireland, North and South.

Some Biographical Notes

By LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT
Contributing Editor of The Outlook

HERE is a distinct revival of interest in the writing and reading of biography. Biographical and autobiographical writing is not a modern art. It is one of the most ancient of the fine arts. The Iliad and the Odyssey are really biographies and the Hebrew Scriptures are full of biographical portraits. If we could rid ourselves of ecclesiastical and philosophical partisanship, of ethical and sociological preconceptions and prejudices, we should think of the story of David in the Old Testament and of Jesus in the New as two of the finest and most absorbing pieces of biographical portraiture in the history of literary art.

To write good biography requires a fine type of mind, a mind free from preconceived notions and the lust for propaganda. Too many biographies, especially of the early American school, are mere apologia or vehicles for defending political or theological doctrines. Dr. Johnson, as he so often did, hit the nail on the head when he said to Boswell, "Clear your mind of cant." It is its freedom from cant, its genuine although sympathetic and kind-hearted objec

tivity, that makes Boswell's "Johnson" the greatest biography in English literature-perhaps in any literature. A revulsion of feeling against moral affectation or cant has led a small group of American literary rebels to fly to the other extreme and attempt to "debunk" biography. To my mind, however, “debunking" is quite as vulgar as whitewashing and rather more unpleasant. Biographers might well bear in mind the humorously cynical remark of Judge Rockwood Hoar, less known but more brilliant than his younger brother, Senator George Frisbie Hoar. As he was going to court one morning to argue a case a young associate in his office asked if he could be of any help in the presentation of the argument. "Well," said Judge Hoar, "you can at least sit by me and hate the other side!"

I began these notes with the intention of saying a word or two about a new biography of Carlyle, but I will let that ponderous book rest a moment while I add a word or two about Judge Rockwood Hoar. Somebody with a lively pen might write a readable essay on

"Unknown Brothers." There are two striking instances in the New England of the last century. Judge Hoar is one. His younger brother, Senator Hoar, had, and his name still retains, a National reputation. Judge Hoar's name is now hardly known outside of Massachusetts. Yet he sat on the Supreme Bench of that State, was chosen by President Grant as his first Attorney-General, and, after the refusal of the Senate-because of his two honest rebuffs of Senatorial intrigues -to confirm his nomination as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, he became the acknowledged leader of the Massachusetts bar. His wit was perhaps a little too caustic for political preferment. He was one of the perpetrators of what is doubtless the most remarkable pun on record-a triple pun extemporized by two partners. This feat of wit was performed in a conversation between the Judge and his cousin, Senator William M. Evarts. The inci dent is related by Miss Ellen Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter, and quoted by Judge Hoar's biographers:

Judge Hoar told me that he and Mr. Evarts were talking together one day about a lawyer, bright, but of doubtful practices, who had lately come to some distinction. Mr. Evarts said, "Yet he seems to have been getting on lately." The Judge responded, "Yes, more than that, he's been getting honor;" and Mr. Evarts instantly added, "And perhaps now he'll begin to get honest."

The other New England instance of an undeservedly unknown brother is found in the case of John Holmes, the younger brother of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. A graduate of Harvard and a lawyer by education, he lived the retiring life of a rather shy bachelor in Cambridge for eighty-seven years. Perhaps his retirement was due to a chronic lameness, perhaps to the tragedy of his fiancée's death from tuberculosis when he was still a very young man. His few intimate friends, among whom were James Russell Lowell and John Bartlett, compiler of "Bartlett's Quotations," had a high estimation of his cultivation, intelligence, and odd humor. He doubtless felt overshadowed by his brother Wendell's fame, but that he took this overshadowing in good part is shown by the inscription he made in the album of a French autograph hunter who was anxiously seeking the names of celebrated Americans. He wrote, "John Holmes, frère de mon frère." Emerson once said that Wendell Holmes represented wit while John Holmes represented humor. It was a humor

delightful whimsicality. Thomas Wentworth Higginson says of it:

His humor was singularly spontaneous, and took oftenest the form of a droll picture culminating in a little dramatic scene in which he enacted all the parts. A grave discussion, for instance, as to the fact, often noticed, that men are apt to shorten in size as they grow older, suggested to him the probable working of this process in some vast period of time like the longevity of the Old Testament patriarchs. His busy fancy at once conjured up a picture of Methuselah in his literally declining years, when he had shrunk to be less than knee-high compared with an ordinary man. The patriarch is running about the room, his eyes streaming with tears. "What's the matter, Thuse?" says a benevolent stranger. "Why are you crying?" "I ain't crying," responds the aged patriarch, brushing away the drops. "It's these plaguey shoestrings that keep getting into my eyes." Again, in answer to an inquiry about a child, I made some commonplace remark on the tormenting rapidity with which one's friends' children grow up, and he said eagerly: "That's it! That's

it! It is always the way! You meet an old friend and say to her in a friendly manner, 'By the way, how is that little girl of yours?' and she answers, 'Very well, I thank you. She is out in Kansas visiting her granddaughter.'"

the works of Carlyle, just as few people now read the works of Dr. Johnson. If Johnson's style, as Goldsmith said it was, is whale-ish, Carlyle's is taurine. But, like Johnson, Carlyle is still a great and interesting figure in the history of English culture. He has to his credit this, that he introduced into England, and so into the United States, a knowledge of German letters and philosophy. So far as I am concerned, I feel no special sense of gratitude to him on this account, since I have never derived any great solace from German poetry or metaphysics. The German language affects me much as it did Voltaire. When that erratic but gifted Frenchman was living at the Court of Frederick the Great, he "avoided the state dinners," says Dr. Will Durant in his brilliant "Story of Philosophy;" "he could not bear to be surrounded with bristling generals; he reserved himself for the private suppers to which Frederick, later in the evening, would invite a small inner circle of literary friends; for this greatest prince of his age yearned to be a poet and a philosopher. The conversation at these suppers was always in French; Voltaire tried to learn German, but gave it up after nearly choking; and wished that the Germans had more wit and fewer consonants."

As Carlyle was always choking with impatience or downright anger, a few extra consonants were no obstacle to his

And yet they say the New England pleasure. He was less interested in lit

Puritan has no sense of humor!

But to return to Carlyle, whose latest biography really started me on these discursive notes. Few people now read

erature as an art than as a vehicle for the conveyance of moral ideas and reforms. This assertion is justified even in the light thrown upon him by his latest and most sympathetic biographer, David

A. Wilson, whose "Carlyle at His Zenith" has just come from the press of Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Co., being the fourth volume of a work which is to be completed in six. Six volumes seems rather a disproportionate amount to devote to an author whose really readable work could be easily compressed into the same compass. Carlyle had little or none of the clubability of Johnson. Darwin in his autobiographical notes gives a telling snap-shot of him: "I remember a funny dinner at my brother's where, amongst a few others, were Babbage [the mathematician] and Lyell [the geologist), both of whom liked to talk. Carlyle, however, silenced every one by haranguing during the whole dinner on the advantages of silence. After dinner Babbage, in his grimmest manner, thanked Carlyle for his very interesting lecture on silence."

We shall perhaps be less shocked at Carlyle's contemptuous estimate of Keats as "a dead dog" and his boast that he never went to galleries or exhibitions of pictures when we recall that John Adams-graduate of Harvard, second President of the United States, trained in the law, familiar with the culture of his time, himself no mean author -boasted to a French correspondent towards the end of his long life, “I would not give sixpence for a picture of Raphael or a statue of Phidias."

But if Carlyle was not a great artist he was a great thinker, and to associate with him on any terms is stimulating. His life is a demonstration of the soundness of his defense of biography: "Great men, taken up in any way, are profitable company."

B

EFORE this correspondence can appear in print the air race to Hawaii, which has developed from a prize of $35,000 offered by James D. Dole, "the pineapple king," to the first two aviators who should fly from the North American mainland to Honolulu, any time within one year after noon August 12, 1927, Pacific coast time, will have been either abandoned or decided. While the newspapers, here, are filled with little else, and confidence is ostensibly everywhere, there are a very considerable number of people, and they are among those best qualified to speak, who view the whole enterprise with undisguised misgiving.

I cannot lay claim to any special knowledge of aviation and its stupendous difficulties beyond that which any moderately interested and observant layman may acquire. But it is impossible to live in San Francisco, so rapidly becoming one of the great aerial termini of the world, without realizing something of the great problems which still confront the aviator, and the urgent demand which at all times exists for tried experience, meticulous care, and unhurried preparation if success is to be achieved and disaster avoided.

These prerequisites to success seem to be strangely absent in the case of the Dole air race. After two aviators had been killed in attempting to fly from

Los Angeles to the starting-place of the race at the Oakland Air Port and a third had plunged his plane into the waters of the bay, the statement by Captain C. W Saunders, Governor of the California National Aeronautical Association, to the effect that the take-off scheduled for the 12th would be "nothing short of suicide" was widely held as fully justified. "With the little navigating ability displayed by the navigators in this race," Captain Saunders declared, "it would be suicide to allow them to fly to Honolulu. A three-degree error in the flight would mean disaster."

The supreme art of aerial navigation is not something that can be acquired overnight. If the standard of efficiency