This picture of a Northern coast town, by a notable American modern, is full of drama, ably painted, and interesting in its arrangement of sharply defined black and white shapes Courtesy Daniel Gallery Volume 147 The Outlook December 21, 1927 Number 16 The Navy and the President VERSHADOWING for the time being what the President said in his Message about the Navy is the Navy officials' plan for the building of twenty-six new cruisers, three airplane carriers, five fleet submarines, and eighteen destroyer leaders, besides battleship replacements, over a period of five years. Of these items the largest is that for modern 10,000-ton cruisers. As thus stated the program seems very great. But viewed year by year it does not seem quite so extraordinary. It will certainly not supply us with enough cruisers to make our cruiser strength correspond to the battleship ratio of 5-5-3 established between ourselves, Great Britain, and Japan by the Washington J Treaty. In order to make our cruiser strength correspond to Great Britain's we should have to build twenty cruisers in three years. This will give us about fifteen. It therefore cannot be called a competitive program in any sense. This program complies thoroughly with what the President said in his Message: "This country has put away the Old World policy of competitive armaments. . . . We know now"-that is, after the Naval Conference at Geneva which failed of agreement "that no agreement can be reached which will be inconsistent with a considerable building program on our part. . . . The failure to agree should not cause us to build either more or less than we otherwise should." These words of the President should make clear what the purpose of any naval program is which he may approve. It is to supply a deficiency in our Navy which was caused by the policy of letting our natural naval development lapse while waiting to see what the result of a naval conference on cruisers would be. If the present program seems large, it is because there is need of making up for lost time. Of course Congress will scrutinize this program, as it ought to scrutinize it. In determining naval policy the civil arm should be supreme. But the needs of UST how far should the National Government regulate aviation? InterState commerce, trade promotion, the air mail, safety-all admittedly enter into the problem. It is natural, on the other hand, that builders, engineers, and companies carrying on commerce and transporting passengers by air should have the fear that Government may clog and hinder while trying to help. The conference lately held at Washington did much to bring about a common understanding. Thus Mr. Frank P. Bell, head of an air line which carries mail from the Pacific Northwest to Salt Lake City, said: "MacCracken has been a godsend to us fellows out in the mountains, and at this conference we had an interchange of ideas that was for me, at least, one of the biggest experiences of my fifteen years in aviation." Secretary MacCracken, thus praised, is the head of the Aeronautic Division of the United States Department of Commerce. In this conference he showed sympathy with the practical views of the delegates. For instance, Clarence Chamberlin and others protested against too close regulation of the flying schools, and gained their point for at least the coming year. The general feeling expressed by the delegates was satisfaction with what the Department has actually done, mingled with some fear as to what might happen if in the future the politicians got hold of the Bureau. Many important points were discussed, such as changes in classifying pilots' licenses, the insurance on air risks, the adoption, or not, of the "Handbook for Designers" prepared for the Department with the aid of army engineers, the meaning of the statistics. as to air accidents. As to the last, the most striking figures were those that showed that in 165 accidents 146 were to unlicensed planes and in 132 cases the pilots also were unlicensed. Doubtless this is only the first of many such conferences. Team-work is as much needed in air commerce as in football. Veteran Lovers of Peace T 'HE award of the Nobel Peace Prize is always of world interest. In the past the judges have often been able to find prize winners who have done something which at least aimed at the concrete and positive, something more than and different from argument or idealism. The list includes the names of Roosevelt, Wilson, Root, Dawes, Chamberlain, Briand; the very first award was to Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross; and later the Peace Prize went to the International Red Cross Committee. One definition of the foundation specifies as requisites that the recipient should be a person who had "worked most or best for the fraternization of nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, or the calling or propagating of Peace Congresses." But good work may be done by writers and speakers as well as statesmen. No one will challenge the justice of the award just made, which divides the prize for 1927 between Professor Ludwig Quidde, of Germany, and Professor Ferdinand Buisson, of France. Professor Buisson began to write on world peace sixty years ago; he is now eightyseven years old, and is still, we believe, President of the League for the Rights of Man; his earliest colleague in the search for liberty as a prerequisite for peace was Garibaldi. Professor Quidde, of the University of Munich, is also a veteran advocate for world peace and served a prison sentence for offending the Kaiser by too plain speech against militarism; he has been President of the German Peace Union for thirty-five years. One editorial writer, speaking of this Nobel award, cites as a peace act the memorial of 128,770 British citizens to the Prime Minister solemnly vowing never to perform any war service. It is just the reverse. A Noble Library I LLITERACY has its advantages. A man who cannot read is spared the nuisance of examining the mass of circulars that clutter the desk-and waste-basket -of every person whose name is in the telephone book; the man who cannot write is never asked to indorse a note for a friend. But for those who read and write the administration of public libraries is an extremely important function of government. This is what makes the report of Dr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of the Library of Congress, one of the most significant of those departmental reports which have just been presented at the opening of the Seventieth Congress of the United States. Congress has a good many sins to answer for, but its notable achievements do not always receive the popular credit which they deserve. One of these achievements is the construction and maintenance of the Library of Congress. The Library was founded in the year 1800 on an appropriation of $5,000. It is now housed in the largest building of its kind in the world, the construction of which was begun in 1886 and completed in 1897 at a cost of a little over $6,000,000. Its beauty speaks for itself to all those who visit the National capital. The Library of Congress contains. over 3,000,000 printed books and pamphlets, the third largest collection in the world, and an enormous number of letters, manuscripts, and maps which are of priceless value to the student of history and biography. Its decorations The Library and National Education TH HE peculiar and perhaps most interesting feature of the Library of Congress is that its Librarian, Dr. Putnam, conceives of it as a kind of National university. It co-operates with other libraries, both public and private, all over the country by supplying at cost information on cataloguing and bibliography. "Books are lent to other libraries for the use of investigators engaged in research expected to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge." In carrying out this educational conception the Librarian, with the cordial and hearty support of Congress, has devised a unique plan. In conjunction with the Library, a "Trust Fund Board" has been created by Act of Congress consisting of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Congressional Joint Committee on the Library, the Librarian, and two persons appointed by the President. This Trust Fund Board is empowered to receive gifts and bequests of money from private donors and to spend the principal or income, as the donor may designate, "for the benefit of, or in connection with, the Library, its collections, or its service." There are various ways in which this unique plan of privately endowing a Governmental institution may greatly extend the public usefulness of this National Library. Among them, Dr. Putnam has instituted privately endowed chairs, like those of a university, with expert incumbents who will aid students and research workers in using the resources of the Library in various branches of history, science, and the arts. Those who are interested will do well to obtain from the Librarian a brochure entitled "The Library of Congress and Its Activities." It may surprise some critics of democracy to find how efficiently Congress has acted in the administration of this institution. Intelligence is the surest safeguard of democracy, and the welladvised use of books is the surest way to cultivate intelligence. A Proposed Sentencing Commission both of painting and sculpture constitute G a veritable museum of the fine arts. As a physical achievement alone the Library of Congress is a credit to democracy. OVERNOR SMITH, of New York, has made a proposal for the treatment of criminals that is deserving of the most sympathetic consideration and study. At present when any one accused of crime is tried and convicted he is sen tenced by the trial judge. Under the law certain punishments are attached to certain crimes. One might almost say that the law has drawn up a price-list of crimes indicating how much each crime shall cost the perpetrator. Penalty is measured according to the nature of the crime committed. W. S. Gilbert's phrase about letting the "punishment fit the crime" fairly describes the present system. In comparatively modern times this system has been made more flexible. More consideration now is given to the proper treatment of the criminal and less to the exact measurement of the crime. But in general our systems of punishment are based on the old conception that the penalty exacted is in the nature of a payment. The modern and more enlightened view is that penalty is not retributive, but protective and curative. It should be for the purpose of safeguarding sohand, and, on the other hand, restoring ciety against the criminal, on the one the criminal, if possible, to a normal condition. To put it otherwise, our criminal laws should be designed, first, to make the criminal safe for society, and, in the second place, to make him safe for himself. What Governor Smith proposes is to confine the court to the single duty of determining in cases of felony whether the accused is guilty or not, and then to leave the decision as to what should be done with him to a sentencing board. The function of this board would be to determine the proper disposition to be made of the felon-whether, for example, he should be sent to a hospital or insane asylum, or be sent to prison, and if sent to prison, for what term and under what conditions of parole. Arguments against this proposal are easily contrived. The judge who tries a criminal may be presumed, it may be said, to know all the facts, and therefore to measure the felon's guilt. As a matter of fact, however, sentences are often unequal even when they are supposed to be determined by the guilt; and guilt ought not to be the determining factor, but the relation of the particular criminal to society. Such a sentencing board, it may be said, might tend to break down that sense of justice that rests upon the impersonality of the law. But impersonality of the law has not created a sense of justice so much as a sense of what it costs to commit crime. Governor Smith does not propose that this plan be put into operation by the Legislature at once. He suggests rather that it should be submitted for study to a commission to make a report after a public discussion. Governor Smith's proposal is an interesting step in the direction of making punishment fit, not the crime, but the criminal. Outside the Fold THE prop on which Governor Smith, of New York, has leaned to support his contention that New York State does not need and ought not to have a prohibition enforcement law has been knocked from under him by no less an authority than the United States Supreme Court. The Governor has contended that enforcement may be made by police and troopers acting for the State. The Supreme Court says not. No doubt local officers may stop a crime committed under their noses without asking whether the criminal is violating Federal or State law. But search, arrest, and seizure without warrant, on suspicion, cannot be so made, and State officers cannot serve Federal warrants. New York and Maryland, we understand, are the only States that have no State prohibition laws; and even Maryland has county and local ordinances. The case decided reverses a decision of a Federal circuit court. The men connected will now go free because State troopers without a warrant searched their car on mere suspicion and found some Canadian ale. Justice Brandeis, of the Supreme Court, said: "We are of the opinion that the admission in evidence of the liquor wrongfully seized violated rights of the defendants guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments." to what he said in August; but somehow he has seemed to convince doubters by these words which he addressed on December 6 to the members of the Republican National Committee: This is naturally the time to be planning for the future. The party Herbert C. Hoover will soon place in nomination its candidate to succeed me. To give time for mature deliberation I stated to the country on August 2 that I did not choose to run for President in 1928. My statement stands. No one should be led to suppose that I have modified it. My decision will be respected. After I had been eliminated the party began, and should vigorously continue, the serious task of selecting another candidate from among the numbers of distinguished men available. Candidates for the Republican nomination who have been waiting for their followers to become convinced that the President was not going to run in 1928 should now be able to assure their followers or be assured by their followers that the field is free. Foremost among those whose names are likely to be presented to the Republican Convention at Kansas City next June are, of course, Herbert Hoover, Frank O. Lowden, and Charles G. Dawes. Since both Dawes and Lowden come from the same State, they are not likely both to be formally presented to the Convention; but it seems most probable that each will receive votes. Mr. Merritt in his editorial correspondence from Washington in this issue comments on the political situation in the Republican Party as a conse quence of Mr. Coolidge's following up the word "choose" with the word "will." But politicians are slow to believe; even Mr. Hughes had to remind them that he had already said he "would neither seek nor accept the nomination." The State of the Country PRESIDENT COOLIDGE's Message to Congress was delivered too late for comment last week. It is a long Message, and one that cannot be adequately summarized in brief space. Among the subjects with which he dealt the most controversial include farm relief, flood control, Muscle Shoals, a Department of Education, and lynching. What he said about farm relief is far from satisfactory to those who want either some form of price fixing or a subsidy. What he said about flood control is far from satisfactory to those who wish the Federal Government to meet all the cost of protecting lands along the Mississippi. What he said about Muscle Shoals will not satisfy those who think the Government should make of it a model power plant for the production of fertilizer. What he said in recommending a Department of Education will be opposed by those who believe that the tendency to bureaucracy in the Federal Government needs to be not encouraged but withstood. And what he said about lynching will alienate those, especially in the South, who believe that such an evil should and can be dealt with by the States. On these and other subjects there will be occasion for comment as measures dealing with them come before Congress. As to the maintenance of prosperity, the President believes that it depends upon the maintenance of confidence. |