THEN a favorable plurality of 500,000 votes is turned into an adverse plurality of over 200,000 in the short space of two years, something must have happened. We refuse to believe that this reversal which Governor Pinchot has encountered indicates the people's condemnation of the policy of enforcing the Prohibition Law,

of which Governor Pinchot is a conspicuous advocate, or is due to the sudden growth of the power of a political machine. Very possibly something of both a revolt against prohibition enforcement and an adverse verdict on the part of the machine have entered into the result. But either alone or both together cannot account for the change.

May 7, 1924

Mr. Pinchot's own followers in support of the National Administration.

We welcome Mr. Pinchot's announcement that he will continue to fight for prohibition enforcement, and we believe that in that purpose he will have the backing of his followers.

1824, 1924, 2024, and Henry Ford

ONE of the most important issues be

fore Congress is the decision to dispose of or retain the Muscle Shoals power development.

Four plans have been laid before Congress, two of which have died in committee. The proposals which remain and may possibly be enacted into law at this session are: (1) The offer of Henry Ford, and (2) the plan of Senator Norris to operate Muscle Shoals as a Government project. So far as the Ford offer is concerned, the layman has little right to attempt to discuss the financial consid

Number I

fifty years-a period of time accepted as established by the Water Power Act.

If the principle of a fifty-year lease is maintained, then the discussion of the terms of that lease should be left to an expert and non-partisan commission. There is too much politics in Congress to lead the people to think that its decision in this matter would not be colored by political motives. Perhaps the appointment of such a commission as we suggest might provide a profitable answer for the current question, "What shall we do with General Dawes?" The report of a commission which studied the Muscle Shoals development as General Dawes and his Commission studied the finances of Europe would be accepted by the public at its face value. It would speed the day when the great Muscle Shoals development could be put at work for the Nation.

The Harding Doctrine

It must be remembered that the vote two years ago was for Mr. Pinchot as Governor of the State, while the vote this year was against him as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. We believe that the Republican voters of Pennsylvania did not necessarily indicate any lack of confidence in Mr. Pinchot as an executive because they showed that under the circumstances they were not ready to have him represent them in the party councils.

a

Evidently in Pennsylvania, as elsewhere throughout the country, the Republican voters have great confidence in President Coolidge. Since Mr. Pinchot had involved himself in a controversy, not only with President Coolidge, but with the Secretary of the Treasury, vote for Mr. Pinchot as a delegate to the Convention in which the President will be the almost unopposed candidate could have been interpreted as an approval, not only of Mr. Pinchot's attacks upon the President, but of hostility to the Administration in general.

The wet element alone could not have done anything effective against Mr. Pinchot. The Philadelphia machine has been backing up the strictest enforcement programme in the country. It was not a combination between liquor and gang politics that overcame Mr. Pinchot, but a revulsion of feeling on the part of

of the hearings and the terms of the offer itself do not constitute evidence upon which a final judgment can be based by minds untrained in the technicalities of hydraulic engineering and of the utilization of water power.

There is one provision, however, in the Ford offer, and in the bill to accept it, upon which laymen are entitled to a positive opinion. This is the provision that the right to utilize the power at Muscle Shoals shall be granted for a term of one hundred years.

Let us see what this provision means. It is easier for us to look backward than it is for us to look forward; but it is quite possible that the America of 2024, the date of the expiration of this proposed lease, may be as different from the America of to-day as the America of today is different from that of 1824. It is beyond our power to hazard a guess as to the possible value of the great Muscle Shoals water power one hundred years from to-day. Since we cannot hazard such a guess with any certainty of being correct, it seems axiomatic that the Government should not release its rights in Muscle Shoals for more than

NE statement that the President made in his address to the Associated Press at New York City on April 22 has brought responses from other nations and has elicited much comment in the press. It was his announcement that with the settlement of German reparations he would be in favor of calling a conference for further limitation of armaments and the codification of international law if the suggestion of such a conference were sympathetically received.

This statement of the President's has been received as if it were a new proposal. As a matter of fact, it is really a suggestion for carrying out what might be called the Harding Doctrine. In contrast to the idea that the world can successfully be organized under a kind of permanent rigid constitution, the Harding Doctrine holds to a plan for mobilizing international forces in varying groups now here and now there as need arises. This more fluid view was embodied in the Washington Conference. Here was a group of nations, mutually friendly, with certain common interests and common problems, who were called together for certain limited purposes. Such a conference is as distinctive in

what it is not as in what it is. It was not a conference of Powers directed against a common enemy. It was not in any sense a conference for the formulation of an alliance. It was a conference to develop a plan of common action and future conferences for the settlement of disputes, not after hostilities, but in advance and as a preventive of them.

President Coolidge's suggestion is precisely in line with what was begun at the Washington Conference.

In view of that fact, the following statements need emphasis in the President's speech. Certain definite things for the promotion of peace he said he believed can be done and ought to be tried. "I believe that among these," President Coolidge specified, "are frequent international conferences suited to particular needs." In suggesting the possibility of a further conference on armament, he made clear that "the main hope of success lies in first securing a composed state of the public mind in Europe." He made clear also that he was under no illusion as to the affectionate regard with which other nations hold America, but he recognized that they hold us in respect and that "our position is such that we are trusted and our business institutions and Government considered to be worthy of confidence."

There is no indication in what the President said that the United States is proposing any other basis for a conference than that which served for the Conference at Washington.

Mixing Taxes and Politics

W

HEN the Tax Bill came up for consideration on the floor of the Senate, Senator Smoot had announced that he would make a "last ditch" fight for lower surtax rates and higher normal rates than the Democratic-Insurgent coalition is demanding. The Senate committee bill carries practically the rates of the Mellon plan. The Democratic Senate programme calls for higher surtax rates than those of the Longworth compromise bill which passed the House. Senator Smoot said that if the committee recommendations are ignored he will, in battlefield phrase, fall back step by step, offering surtax amendments beginning at 30 per cent and going up by one or two per cent at a time until a rate is reached that enough coalitionists will accept to give a majority.

The enemies of the Mellon plan took *his statement as a confession that no bill

Question Box

I

What were the sources of power of Charles Francis Murphy ?

II

Muscle Shoals General Dawes—well, why not?

III

Read the Platforms of the People. How closely do your views coincide with those of the majority of your party?

with rates approaching those proposed by Secretary Mellon can be passed. Senator Smoot may or may not have meant to convey that impression. There is another impression to be had from his statement, however, and that impression he undoubtedly did intend to makethat the Republican organization will not take the responsibility for failure of tax reduction, that it will offer a scientific bill, that if this is defeated it will yield inch by inch till some sort of tax reduction bill can be passed.

Senate Democrats are asking for surtax rates running to 40 per cent. In the Senate committee bill the maximum is 25 per cent. In the Longworth compromise bill, which was accepted by the Democratic-Insurgent coalition in the House, the maximum is 371⁄2 per cent. If Senator Smoot finds it necessary to make the stubborn retreat that he has indicated, the Senate coalition will probably accept a rate around 35 per cent.

If The Outlook's poll is the indication of intelligent public opinion that we think it is, the effort of politicians to turn a scientific tax measure into a political document will meet with resentment when election comes round.

of the failure of the law to take advantage of modern scientific knowledge. The occasion which drew forth his remark was the recent trial in Philadelphia to determine the sanity of Harry K. Thaw.

What does the law do in such a case? It permits those who wish to keep such a man as Thaw in confinement to summon a group of well-paid experts whose testimony (it is determined in advance) will be favorable to the retention of the person examined. It permits those who wish to have such a man as Thaw released to summon a group of well-paid experts whose testimony (it is determined in advance) will be favorable to the release of the person examined. Then it leaves the decision as to which group of experts is telling the truth to a group of twelve laymen who know nothing of the various kinds of insanity, their causes or their results.

Such a procedure, it seems to us, might have been proper to a time when insanity was regarded as the work of evil spirits and devilish possession. It does not seem to have a place in the legal procedure of the twentieth century.

Of course every protection should be given the individual against the horrible danger of confinement for insanity, where such confinement is unnecessary for the public welfare or for the benefit of the individual concerned; but the conflicting testimony of interested experts passed upon by a jury of ignorant laymen provides the necessary protection for neither the State nor the individual.

There ought to be an expert commission for the study of such cases—a commission paid by the State and owing allegiance to no one individual. If the reports of such a commission were reviewed by judges familiar with the legal aspects of insanity, there might be more hope than at present of securing just and impartial decisions in such matters.

The World-Circling Race
W

E Americans cannot take a very great deal of pride in the series of mishaps, seemingly due to technical defects, that have almost succeeded in making the around-the-world flight of the American planes a subject for a joke.

While the Americans made the 2,410 miles from Seattle to Dutch Harbor, and then rested while another engine was brought to a disabled plane, Flight Commander MacLauren, the British airman, arrived at Bombay, a total of 4,890 miles. On top of this comes the report

that a French flier going eastward covered over 2,000 miles in two days. Perhaps MacLauren may reach Alaska while the Americans are still tinkering with their engines; and no one knows where the Frenchman will be in a day or two if he decides to go on right around the world.

It is a pity that we Americans gave such an amount of publicity to our own performance, especially when our planes seem to have a hard time standing up to the strain put upon them. Luck may be with us yet. Perhaps MacLauren may lose his oil through a crack in his enginecasing and have to drop into some halfdeserted and inhospitable bay in Kamchatka! Who knows? Eventually our own planes may make the circuit before him yet!

The "Engineering News-Record"
Completes a Half-Century
THE

There

HE "Engineering News-Record" may well take pride in fifty years of invaluable service to the engineering progress of the United States. The story of these years is one of an amazing American engineering and scientific triumph. Fifty years ago, for instance, the electric dynamo was almost unknown. There were very few water turbines, all less than 100 horse-power. There were no steam turbines, no internal combustion engines, electric lights, automobiles, or trolley cars! Structural steel was used for the first time just fifty years ago. Journals like the "Engineering NewsRecord" have done much to make this progress possible. They have consistently and carefully brought to the whole engineering and to the allied professions a practical knowledge of engineering progress, so that all might take advantage of it. They have spread abroad the findings of important researches. In

brief, they have been of invaluable aid in building up that mass of practical and theoretical knowledge upon which modern engineering practice is based and to which a phenomenal progress has been due.

The anniversary number of the "News-Record" will prove interesting and stimulating reading for engineers and laymen alike, for, with the aid of a number of outstanding engineers, it tells the story of a half-century of engineering achievement. We congratulate the "News-Record" on its fine service of fifty years and on its valuable anniversary number.

list of contestants sounds like a census of American educational institutions.

The appeal of the Carnival reached out into Canada, and now this year we find a team from Cambridge University coming all the way from England to enter the two-mile relay, which, incidentally, was won by Boston College, which broke the world's record with the time of 7 minutes 47 3/5 seconds.

The Carnival has become not unlike the original Olympic performance because of its appeal to athletes of all ages, from experienced college stars to stripling schoolboys. The University of Pennsylvania deserves great credit, not only for developing so worthy and notable an annual event, but also for the miraculous and clocklike regularity with which the innumerable events are managed.

Athletics Still for the Favored Few

H

ERE is an excellent example of what not to do. A small city not far from New York decided to engage an expert physical trainer for the public schools. What they actually got was a college athletic star who charged a high price and who knew exceedingly little about the physical training of children. Naturally enough, the high school first teams got his attention. The mass of teams got his attention. The mass of children in the grammar and primary grades got nothing except such mild and innocuous exercises as their hard-working teachers could find time to give them. And yet the younger children should receive by far the greater amount of attention.

It is amazing in how many schools of all kinds the efforts of coaches and physical directors go principally to the few who make up the first elevens or nines. If the majority gets anything at all, it is likely to be routine callisthenics or "gym" work. Now "gym" work and callisthenics have their uses, but the finest kind of physical training can come through intelligently directed outdoor sports and games. No school has the least excuse for neglecting even one

clumsy boy for the benefit of a natural athlete.

All this has to be said every year. And now is a good time to say it once more, with baseball coming into its welldeserved annual kingdom. Give every boy a chance at it, and a good chance. Here is one of our very best games, possessing little risk, and developing to a high degree quick thinking and quick co-ordination. It demands no excessive exertion. Differences in age and size mean much less than in other sports. It should be the ambition of all phyiscal directors to turn out as many ballplayers as they have boys. This done, then the able, first-team boys can be given such attention as is proper and possible.

Settling an Election by Bombs
IN

N Honduras the counting of votes af

ter the recent election has been only a prosaic prelude to the heroic fighting, drinking, and bombing out of which one of the three candidates may presently emerge as President. This method entails one difficulty; if the strife between armed mobs of the de facto party in the capital (Tegucigalpa) and the two revolutionary mobs outside includes firing on the American Legation and Consulate and bombs are dropped on our Marines, Uncle Sam is likely to threaten interference with the national sport of revolution and counter-revolution.

It was reported on April 24 that American sailors had been killed in air attacks of a very undiscriminating sort, but the report has not so far been confirmed.

Instead of hastily seizing the opportunity furnished by the rioting, reckless street fighting, shooting of women and children, and looting of stores to intervene by force in the interests of order and trade, our Government has taken the peaceful and moderate course of sending to Honduras the American Commissioner to the Dominican Republic, Mr. Sumner Wells, with instructions to try to bring the rival leaders to consent to arbitration and agree upon stable form of government. A conference is to be held at Amapala on our warship, the cruiser Milwaukee. Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala have been asked to join in the conference; and the combatants, it is expected, will observe an armistice while the sessions continue. But on April 28 fighting was renewed in the streets of the capital and the fall of