JANUARY 24, 1923

A TOWN ON TRIAL

TH

HE open hearing that has been going on in the court-house at Bastrop, Louisiana, near the scene of the Mer Rouge murders, is neither a trial of individuals charged with murder nor a Grand Jury hearing to find indictments. It is a judicial investigation, presided over by a judge, having power to compel witnesses to attend, and conducted under the direction of the Louisiana State's Attorney.

Such a legal proceeding is quite unusual. Whether it is directly authorized by a State law, or whether it is an extension of the general right of the State officers to inquire into crime, or whether it is based on the Napoleonic Code, which underlies Louisiana law, we do not know. At all events, it resembles the French criminal procedure, under which a juge d'instruction publicly examines the accused, questions him keenly and subtly, and develops the case so that the ends of justice may be forwarded when a jury trial is had. There is a strong argument for such a form of inquiry as opposed to our half-recognized and half-disowned "third degree" system of police and detectives.

This searching investigation of Mer Rouge has opened the way to what is really the pitiable spectacle of a town torn by Ku Klux and anti-Ku Klux activities, a demonstration of "invisible government" in practice. One comment describes Mer Rouge as "the Ku Klux ideal of an American village." The attempt to regulate morals (and no doubt there were bad men and women in Mer Rouge) drifted into lawless violence, into arbitrary exiling of those disapproved, then to reprisals, then to retaliation that ended in hideous murder and (if medical witnesses are right) to deliberate torture and mutilation. Before this investigation began no one knew where to look for protection; a Klan meeting was held in the very court-room in which this inquiry is conducted; men did not know whether they dared to stay in town until they asked the Grand Cyclops. One witness testified: "Until the Vigilance Committee began to send letters around there was no quieter or more peaceful community than Mer Rouge. Soon a man was pointed out as a member or not one. Suspicions arose. You did not know who your friends were."

Law and order are not always per

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called the President's Fact-Finding Commission, it is notable that not alone facts, but causes and possible suggestions for improvement, are treated.

The report is signed by six members. The seventh member, Judge Alschuler, was prevented by his judicial duties from active service on the Commission, but he approves the report. We repeat here the names of the members of the Commission to recall the fact that it is composed of practical industrial leaders, experts, or fair representatives of the public at large: John Hays Hammond, Chairman; Dr. George Otis Smith, former Director of the Geological Survey; Clark Howell, editor of the Atlanta "Constitution;" former Vice-President Marshall; Charles P. Neill; and Dr. Edward T. Devine.

One most welcome utterance of the Commission is the statement that it "has reason to believe that an agreement will be reached in the near future that will avert any widespread cessation of mine operations in union fields on April 1." Reports to the contrary have been rife. The whole country will rejoice if

the prophecy of the Commission comes true.

This report deals chiefly with the bituminous situation, except as to those things which apply with equal force to both branches of the coal industry. The Commission asks why this country, "rich beyond all other nations in its wealth of coal resources," finds its "National coal-bins too often depleted" and the prices "higher than seem warranted." One answer given is that "there has been profiteering in the industry in the sense that grossly exorbitant profits have been taken at times by many operators, brokers, and retailers; profits that have been disproportionate to the cost of the coal." This comment applies, as we understand it, particularly to the anthracite industry.

As to the bituminous industry, great stress is put upon the fact, recognized by all experts in this subject, that there has been over-development both of the mines and in the number of men employed. We produce in some years many million more tons of soft coal than are needed, and in that production perhaps two hundred thousand more miners are employed than can possibly have steady, regular work and pay month by month and year by year. Ordinarily, under the economic law of demand and supply, this excessive amount of labor would drift into other employments, but the conditions of the soft-coal fields are such that they are run on a basis of "feast and

famine;" plenty of work and money at one time and little work, poor pay, and ialeness or strikes at another.

The Commission rightly declares that there can be no lasting peace as between workers and operators unless steadier employment can be provided, and points out that so long as the railways are subjected to sudden peak loads of coal traffic at the season when the demands of agriculture and industry are at their height the transportation is insoluble. Meanwhile, it speaks with emphasis as to such strikes as that we had last year and declares that their indefinite repetition would be intolerable.

As to the increasing discussion of the possibility of nationalization of the coal industry the Commission naturally speaks only with reserve and indirectly. It does, however, recognize that the interest of the public at large in the coal industry and its dependence on coal for homes and factories raise fundamental questions of the relation of this industry to the Nation, and of "the degree to which private rights must yield to public welfare."

The

Old men in the South and West, too old to do anything else much now, go to the post office in the springtime, asking if they have any mail. postmaster says, "No." They say, "Well, about this time of year I usually get a package of seed from the Government. I am getting too old to do anything else much now, so I make a little garden, and I enjoy the garden, and my grandchildren all enjoy the vegetables produced from those seeds. Hasn't my package of seeds come yet?" "No; they have not come, Uncle Johnny." He comes back again the next day, and again. This is happening in the South and the West. Finally, the postmaster says, "Uncle Johnny, you will not get any seed this year. The Republican-" Here appears the advantage an editor has over a Senator. He can interrupt as he pleases, and no one can call him to crder. The editor interrupts to call attention to the cat in the bag. Now the Democratic Senator can proceed:

"The Republican Congress has stricken out the item which carried a

small appropriation for this purpose, and you will get no more seed from the Government." Then Uncle Johnny will shake his head and say: "Well, that is about all I have been getting for the last two or three years from the Government, while the Republicans were in power, just a little package of seed, and now they have taken that away. Why have they done that, Mr. Postmaster?"

And then the Senator continues with his two-hour speech, which he can send without cost of postage to his constituents and from which he can hope to reap as good a harvest of political gratitude as from the little packets of seeds. It is the new Budget Law that has changed the manner of sowing political crops. The Bureau of the Budget refused to include the item for seeds in the recommendations for the Agricultural Appropriation Bill, and the committees of the Senate having the matter in hand refused to report such an item; and by the rules of the Senate an amendment to an appropriation measure which embodies new legislation is out of order, so the item could not be inserted into the bill from the Senate floor. And so ancient privilege crumbles and decays.

The omission of this item seems insignificant, for the sum involved is not large; but it is really significant, for it measures the power of the budget system over at least one form of what Plunkett, of Tammany Hall, used to call "honest graft."

THE FRENCH IN THE VALLEY
OF THE RUHR

RECISELY according to their declared

possession of Germany's richest industrial district with no intention of annexation, with no intention of military subjugation, with no intention of political control, but solely as a sheriff seizes property to secure the payment of damages.

So far as any international action for applying force can be, this act of France is civilian. It is true that, to insure protection for their representatives and to see that order is preserved, France and Belgium, acting jointly, have sent into the Ruhr Valley some forty thousand troops; but there is nothing more warlike in this operation than there is in sending militia into a town to prevent rioting. According to all reports, the action has been peaceful; the ordinary life of the communities in the region continued much as usual; the whole operation has proceeded with order and system. So free from disturbance has this seizure of property been that when stones were thrown at some marching

French soldiers without damage the episode was so extraordinary as to be considered news worth cabling.

A thought expressed by Senator Pepper, of Pennsylvania, must have passed through the minds of many other Americans during the first shock of surprise that the expected had happened, after all, and that the French had done what they had been saying they would do. He is reported to have declared in a speech in New York that, while Europe must not count on American guns in the readjustment of its problems, "the air will be cleared by the French occupation of the Ruhr," and that under the same circumstances it is at least thinkable that, whether wisely or unwisely, "it would not have been untrue to American type if we had done the same thing." The fact is that under a pacifist Administration we sent soldiers into Mexico under ridiculously less provocation and with ridiculously less chance of success.

In the case of France and the Ruhr, the real procedure is intrusted, not to soldiers, but to civilians. In fact, it is not accurate to say that the Ruhr has been seized by the French. What has happened is that, under the police protection of Belgium and France, coal mines and industrial plants have been taken over by civilian engineers and other experts of France, Belgium, and Italy.

It is said that you cannot squeeze blood from a turnip, that you cannot dig coal with bayonets. If there are people in France who have been expecting quick monetary returns from the Ruhr, they will probably be disappointed; but Premier Poincaré has made it clear in a public speech in the French Parliament that quick returns are not to be looked for. Certainly the Germans have done all they could to make the seizure fruitless. The Government has protested that the action of France is a breach of the Treaty of Versailles (though it does not specify how it violates it) and has ordered the suspension of the transportation of coal on the reparations account. All the papers in the headquarters of the Krupp works had been removed and all the books and office force of the German coal syndicate had been transferred to Hamburg before the French engineers reached Essen. As this district produces about sixty per cent of all the coal mined in Germany and the syndicate is the organization that distributed it, the French and Belgians will have to provide a substitute organization if possible, and that will take time. The Germans have been puzzled by the offer of the French to pay

for coal delivered to them. They do not understand that sort of treatment. What the Germans did to the rich coal district of France around Lens and to Lens itself is quickly told: Mines rendered unworkable (some irremediably, others for ten years) and Lens reduced to a vast heap of rubbish. That is the language which the Germans used when they talked of coal to the French. They do not understand receiving an offer of money for coal, and believe there is something behind it. There probably is. Frederic William Wile, before the war a press correspondent in Germany and now in Washington, has recently stated some facts about German industrial prosperity. For example, "in pig-iron alone Germany's production has outstripped pre-war figures by forty per cent, while that of France has declined to fifty-five per cent." And he calls attention to the Dresdner Bank's tabulation of German national wealth entitled "Germany's Economic Strength," designed to show that the Germans were the wealthiest people in Europe. And, since most of the wealth cited was immobile wealth unaffected by war's ravages, it is possible, Mr. Wile suggests, that "the French generalissimo, now become bill-collector-in-chief for France, Belgium, and Italy, will have a copy of 'Deutschlands Wirtschaftsliche-Krafte' in the inside pocket of his horizon-blue tunic."

Every American who cares about the issues of the war in which his country took part, whether he thinks the occupation of the Ruhr is wise or not, will wish France and Belgium good luck.

The French entered Essen in the morning of January 11. The news of the recall of the American troops was published during the afternoon of January 10.

It had been generally understood that the Administration had decided it would not be wise to recall the troops at this time. The reason, it was supposed, was that the order for the recall would be considered a rebuke to France, and that the Administration wished to avoid. Mr. Boyden, the American observer with the Reparations Commission, expressed his opinion that Germany was in default, but that too much had been asked of her. By implication, therefore, the Administration was regarded as having expressed its dissent from France's decision; but, even if that opinion did repre

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sent the Administration's view, it was very different from a rebuke to France. Nevertheless the troops have been withdrawn. The reasons for the withdrawal are stated in editorial correspondence elsewhere in this issue.

In a letter to the New York "Times" for January 13 Miss Katherine Mayo, whose stories of the Pennsylvania State Police are familiar to Outlook readers, writes of those soldiers of ours on the Rhine. She reports them as being a real and effective force for peace, a sympathetic support of the best that is in France, and a restraint upon the natural emotions of the peoples among whom they have been stationed. She represents their spokesman as giving her this message for the people in America:

Go back home and tell the people these things-our own people, that scarcely seem to know that we existthat scarcely seem to know that they put us here to serve them-to guard their interests to the best of our possible power-and so to serve the world.

Tell them that their own prosperity is deeply dependent on the presence of our troops on the Rhine. . . .

...

But there is a reason for our presence higher than that. When we came into the great war we assumed an obligation toward humanity. That obligation is yet but half fulfilled. . . .

A few thousand of us here on the Rhine can maintain what it will take a few million of the best young American lives to re-establish once it is broken-peace.

After that message was given the few thousand were first reduced to less than twelve hundred, and now the flag is to be hauled down.

F

REDERIC HARRISON, who has just died in England at the age of ninety-one, was a "character." He will be remembered, not because of the permanency of his contributions to literature, or even to thought, but because of the tang and flavor of his personality.

Few contemporary Englishmen have either absorbed or radiated a greater university atmosphere. He was educated at King's College, London, and at Oxford, and received honorary degrees in both law and literature from Oxford, Cambridge, and Aberdeen. He was a barrister; a Professor of Jurisprudence; a historian; and a student and critic of religion and philosophy. In the realm of religion he was best known as a Posi

:

Underwood

FREDERIC HARRISON

tivist; that is to say, he was a highly ethical agnostic. None of his writings is likely to remain permanently in the mind of the general reader, although they will always have a respectable, if not an honored, place in university libraries. His real interest was in life, and not in literature, and his real function was that of a critic of current manrers and morals.. In his long career he knew intimately, not only social and political movements, but the leaders of those movements, and he wrote and talked about them with a zest, a liveliness, and sometimes with a sting that arrested the attention. He was a stimulator of others, rather than a creator himself. In this respect he was a real figure in the Victorian period which produced his friends Herbert Spencer, Ruskin, Tennyson, Carlyle, and Anthony Trollope.

In addition to his singularly active intellect, he was notable on the physical side. Any man who lives to the ad vanced age of ninety-one in possession of his faculties is a man of mark. Frederic Harrison was a mountain climber, a walker, and is said to have read the Greek dramatists in the original up to within a short time of his death without the aid of glasses and to have played tennis after he had reached the age of fourscore.

The death of such a man ought not to pass unnoticed. His contemporaries owed him much as a man of the highest intellectual and moral standards. He was constantly urging on his fellows to do their best. We think, however, that his contribution was almost wholly to contemporary life, and that posterity,

excepting so far as it rummages in the records and libraries of universities, will not get much from it. His life was certainly not a failure, but it was pathetic because he ardently desired to make some creative additions to the literature of civilization and failed. In the life of the intellect he was Jack-of-all-trades, and a first-class master of none. But he added a lively interest to the passing show, and for this his countrymen ought to be, and doubtless are, grateful.

THE NEW SUPREME COURT JUSTICE

P

IERCE BUTLER has taken the oath of Justice of the Supreme Court and is sitting on the bench of that greatest of all tribunals.

Seldom in the history of our country has an appointment to the Supreme bench encountered opposition so bitter. In Minnesota, the State of his residence, popular feeling against Mr. Butler has been widespread and intense. There is no question of his ability as a lawyer, or, if there is, it is not well founded; even severe critics of the appointment of him to the Supreme bench acknowledge that in legal ability he probably ranks with the average Justice. It is, however, declared that he was never the strongest member of the Minnesota bar and that cutside a small district in St. Paul he could not be elected to any office of the State. Minnesota has long been progressive in temperament. It cast its electoral vote for Roosevelt and wavered between Hughes and Wilson. It has sent to the Senate a man regarded as almost a radical, not because of any personal distrust of Senator Kellogg, but because it wished to protest against what it considered a reactionary tendency in the Republican party. It is because great numbers of people in Minnesota believe that Mr. Butler, now Mr. Justice Butler, represented that reactionary tendency that they opposed him as a nominee for the bench.

A good deal of criticism has been directed against him because he is a Roman Catholic. The injection of this religious feeling into public questions should be roundly condemned. In this respect people in Minnesota are in danger of injuring greatly the progressive cause in which they profess to believe. Those who supported Mr. Roosevelt as President are denying one of his great doctrines if they attempt to make re ligion a factor in government.

Probably this anti-Catholic feeling in Minnesota, so far as it affects Mr. Butler, is simply a part of the general feeling against him as a reputed reactionary. It may, however, in part be due to the