college course, dimmed as it is by the passage of more than forty years, I wonder, not that so many undergraduates go wrong, but that any at all are saved from complete wreck. At the very period of his life when an adolescent boy needs constant guidance, if not control, he is thrown on his own responsibility, having to account practically to nobody for the expenditure of his time and money. His income, often a very generous one, is provided for him by fond parents, and he goes and comes almost as he pleases. If he is dropped from one institution for failures in studies or conduct, he is promptly sent to another. About the only effective check upon his undergraduate career is the public opinion of his fellow-undergraduates. This same public opinion prevails at West Point, but is enforced by the army code under the supervision of the Superintendent and his colleagues. It is not insignificant that the phrase "the honor of an officer and a gentleman" is proverbial at West Point.

Let no one suppose that the cadets at West Point are a lot of pedants or ramrods. They are, or at least they appear to be to one who has seen them at work and at play on many occasions for forty years, as joyous and high-spirited as any set of collegians in the country.

IT

I have never been in a West Point classroom-whether or not a civilian ever is admitted to that sanctum sanctorum I do not know-but I have seen the corps of cadets on parade, at church, in the riding academy, on the dancing floor, in camp, on hikes and surveying parties, on the baseball diamond, on the tennis courts, on the golf course, and in the football stadium, and I can testify that they enter into all these phases of life with a zest and a courtesy that is refreshing.

Less than two weeks ago I was a spectator at one of the autumn football games in company with two ladies from the South. They exclaimed at the beautiful setting of the new concrete stadium, at the picturesque group of cadets massed in the center seats, and at the colors of the autumn foliage on the hillside which the stadium faced. But what struck them most was the orderliness of the whole proceeding, the quick obedience of the players to the decisions of the linesmen and the referee, and the quiet courtesy of the military police who handled the highly congested automobile traffic. I suppose it was a question of topography that led the West Point authorities to place the beautiful chapel, designed by the late Bertram Goodhue, and the picturesque modern stadium on

the crest of the same hill within gunshot of each other. But it was a happy coincidence that made these two fine edifices such near neighbors. On Saturday in the stadium one may see the joyousness of West Point life; on Sunday in the chapel its earnestness.

This year the annual Army-Navy football game is to be played in Chicago. I am told that some of the officials of the two Academies regret this arrangement, because it means a serious interruption of the regular programs of Annapolis and West Point to transport the midshipmen and the cadets in a body to the scene of the contest. As a citizen, however, I am glad that the people of Chicago and the Central West are to have this opportunity of seeing a picturesque phase of the Army and Navy at close range. I think that the Chicagoans will share my satisfaction that some of our Federal taxes are expended for the maintenance of two admirable educational institutions which constitute convincing evidence that democracy is not always a failure. Perhaps this statement will be pooh-poohed by some of our smart set of literary critics as foolish optimism. But a little American optimism cannot seriously hurt the readers of the "American Mercury" and the "New Republic;" they are immune.

T is perhaps not very logical for the country to be so wrought up over the liquor issue that it thinks

of very little else. There are a number of exceedingly important issues which ought now to be under public discussion,

tricts generally had argued about it a long time and had slowly been making up their minds in a multitude of localoption campaigns which took place throughout the land.

as a red herring across the trail of these very important matters; but there is no doubt that the people are interested in the liquor question, and the people really make the issues of a campaign, after all. There is a great deal of loose thinking and loose talking about this question. Although prohibition slowly developed as a sentiment in this country over a long period of years, the final consummation of it came quickly, particularly because of the war feeling, and it came before there had been much formation of public opinion about it in the larger cities of the East, although the rural dis

prohibition finally came has been to offend the honest views of a great many persons and to make enforcement difficult in many parts of the country. Side by side with these facts there is much evidence of the very wholesome effect of the new National policy over large areas and with large numbers of people. The old saloon conditions and the evils of poverty and misery and crime and bad politics that grew out of them are looked back to by millions as if it had been the passing of a pestilence.

Recently the demand has been made in various parts of the country for some

means of getting at perhaps the revised will of the people through referendum upon this vexed question. Certain circumstances have lent force to this suggestion. In the first place, the political parties themselves, the Democratic and the Republican, are split wide open on the issue and are impotent to do much. Because the Republican Party is in trouble over this issue in New York State, let no man think that the Democratic Party is not in trouble too. In Washington-that is, Nationally-the Democratic Party is split much more widely than the Republican. It may conceivably turn out that both of them are impotent to effect any revision of the will of the people, if such revision is contemplated by the people.

Now the people have a perfect right to a revision of their will if they wish to make it. And in a democracy, if the

I

T is possible, a month after the hurricane of September 18, to sketch a fairly accurate picture of surviving Miami. That is, it is possible to fit together the outward manifestations and to draw from them a general appraisal. To carry deduction too far might mean, as it always has meant, that one would harvest the warm approval of those who agreed with him and the cordial disapproval of those who did not. If Miami were unique in no other particular, it still would be in this, that perhaps no other city that has been vividly in the world's eye has been discussed more from the basis of the discussers' sentiments and less from the basis of the facts.

The first reports of the disaster were, as was expectantly hoped, wildly exaggerated. Miami was neither destroyed nor seriously disabled. Loss of life and loss of property-both in Miami and throughout the lower East Coastdwindled appreciably in the later and saner reports. The damage to structures in the city on Biscayne Bay was not very different from what an engineer might have estimated had he been bidden to tot up the effect of a hypothetical 125-mile wind which drove before it sea water and rain. Steel and stone construction stood fast with one important exception, and in the case of this skyscraper that was twisted grave structural faults are alleged. Hollow concrete tile, such as had been widely used in the building of apartment-houses and homes, stood the test satisfactorily. Demolition was confined, in the main, to flimsy frame or composition-board houses in the outlying districts, such as went up by the hundreds within a year or two when a suddenly augmented population

By RUFUS STEELE

accepted cheerfully any quarters that could keep off the rain. The terror of the great wind is written everywhere, and with peculiar impressiveness, in overturned tropical trees and in stripped trunks that may or may not send out new fronds. Even boats beached higher than by any previously known tide are not so awesomely reminiscent as the tortured trees.

The immediate test was of the courage and resilience of this city of 200,000 people. Red Cross officials say that when they arrived and took over the relief work the succoring of the injured and the sheltering and feeding of the homeless bespoke absence of panic and an admirable use of all the city's uncrippled resources. In the presence of tragedy and pain service knew no fatigue and the examples of self-sacrifice would have appeared sublime except that they were so common. The Acting Mayor discussed the city's losses calmly, but was moved to emotion when he spoke of the spirit that was manifested as the stricken people flowed together to carry aid to points where there was the most need.

"This disaster," he said, "has stripped Miami of the last vestige of artificiality. We were improving, but it took the hurricane to bring us down to the hard bed-rock of things. Hereafter you will find the Miami people unwilling to practice any illusion upon each other or upon anybody else."

Insurance money in considerable sums, available under policies of certain kinds, provided early funds to take care of damage and to start reconstruction. But insurance was lacking in places where the need was most urgent. The poor were left practically without re

sources to get a roof back over their heads, and the problem thus created was as stubborn in Hollywood as in Miami and most stubborn of all in Fort Lauderdale. Official Miami called eminent engineers and builders into consultation and, not content with the fact that no such hurricane had ever visited the region before or might ever do so again, prepared to lift building restrictions to a theoretical high point of safety. It is interesting that the engineers found that even in a wind of such unheard-ofvelocity there need not necessarily be loss of life and injury through the yielding of material structures.

M

IAMI announced emphatically, almost as soon as the dead had been buried, the injured cared for, the streets cleared, and the public utilities were beginning to come back to normal, that everything would be restored and in order when the customary tourist tide begins to flow southward with December. There were hotels and stores to be repaired and redecorated, furniture to be mended, and-vast undertaking-tropical foliage to be brought back to leaf and flower or to be replaced. The item of tourists who regularly spend $2,000,000 a day during the winter season was a considerable incentive. That alone might account-although it probably did not for an immediate outburst of rehabilitation activity that carried one who had been in the San Francisco earthquake and fire back to the activity following that great disaster. Miami's thoroughfares were cleared of débris and wrecked automobiles, poles were lifted, and boats stranded in public parks went back to water with whatever tools were handy, but mostly, as it seemed, through

A

TRANSFORMATION has come to the so-called Magic City. The hurricane appears to have completed, but it did not initiate the change. To one who has kept watch on this always interesting metropolis for a year it seems not too much to say that during the past summer it has gone through, not one storm only, but two. When called on to weather the tropical hurricane, it had about reached the point where it could claim to have weathered the less spectacular, but hardly less violent backlash of its boom. The changed Miami is the result of processes which, however they may have been swept to their climaxing by the hurricane, were in motion from the day that earlier storm got under way.

When last winter's visitors departed, the glamour that had colored the land and to an extent the life of the lower

East Coast and which had been fading for some time, vanished completely. That long, narrow strip between Miami and Palm Beach which derives its great natural loveliness from its closeness to the Gulf Stream, and which had been the scene of the major land excitement, experienced a harsh reversal. Not only was real estate no longer in demand at the old high prices, but it was no longer in demand at all. The thousands of persons who dealt in fifty-foot lots tried old devices and new devices to stimulate business and then faced the fact. Land interest; for the time at least, was at an end. All eyes turned to Miami, barometer and commercial capital of the lower East Coast. In that city the pendulum of the boom had swung the farthest, and if there was to be a backward sweep the city would have to bear the greatest rigor of consequences. Was the greatest rigor of consequences. Was the East Coast development, which Governor Cox had once declared grew out of the most significant human movement since the Crusades, to justify itself by going through a period of stabilization not without pain, but without panic? Or would the prediction of less friendly critics come true and witness the collapse of the Magic City capital along with what they had denominated an unjustifiable, unwholesome, land-gambling dream? What was going to happen in Miami?

At this writing it is possible to record with some clarity what did happen in Miami. With the dropping off of the land sales, about every other business except that of the filling stations slowed down. Men had been as confidently investing huge sums in what they could feel as in what they could see, and the plans for big undertakings based upon future population were canceled. financing of any project of a speculative nature through private enterprise-it had regularly been private enterprise,

The

and not the banks, which did such financing-became impossible. In some quarters confusion bred consternation. Occasionally a stampeded owner would throw a piece of business property on the market at a cut price. A real bargain found a prompt taker, and the transaction flew around the streets as good news. The town lost its lavish gayety. Men who had chattered conspicuously on the street corners began to crowd the outgoing trains. The gamblers, the sharpers, the weaklings, and the professional boom-followers, of whom there were legion, let go and disappeared.

The sound men recognized the gravity of the situation and took hold of their town. Some of the leaders did not hide their fear; others-those who had disliked and opposed the boom-expressed relief. Public steps in adjustment were quietly taken which reflected endless private conferences that were not so quiet. It is possible that astuteness and co-operation achieved larger victories with the town declining than in the days of its buoyant mounting up.

To hold this account to material man

ifestations of what was going on, it may be stated that after the slump had come the city voted by a three-to-one majority $12,500,000 worth of bonds to deepen the harbor, build new schoolhouses, and provide additional parks. Work went forward on Biscayne Boulevard, a superb one hundred-foot driveway cutting through some of the town's most expensive real estate, with the lopping off or pulling down of expensive apartment-houses and homes. The impressive sky-line continued to bring in an occasional new peak more than twenty stories high. New auto roads to traverse the lower East Coast and the Everglades went ahead, usually with money previously provided by bond

issues. Three railroads, spending as much money to improve their Florida service as was being spent for rail construction in the remainder of the country, still centered their efforts on widening their avenues down to Biscayne Bay. These symbols of continuing progress were heartening, but they could hardly furnish a complete light of cheer. Through the summer Miami citizens wrestled in a storm of adjustment that taxed their true intentions, their re

sources, and their faith. But their town held. Then the hurricane, which was somewhat like a final trial by fire.

There are those who have had the vague feeling kindled perhaps by unfilled real estate hopes, by jealousy, and by resentment bred of over-publicity that somehow Miami ought to be punished. A single glance down one of the avenues of twisted and uprooted palms would cause any such persons to experience whatever of satisfaction their sense

of retributive justice might afford. The city has suffered-suffered down to its soul. But the Acting Mayor says it has been stripped of artificiality and any lingering fondness for illusion, and that

with Miami, as with any other cityis a considerable sign. The citizens have lost millions upon millions in money; but there is the possibility, suggested by the zest with which they have leaped into rehabilitation, that they have found themselves.

T

HE band is playing "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-Night." What other tune, indeed, would any band be playing that knew its job as an echo of those scattered and forgotten bands of that unforgotten spring of 'ninety-eight? The bandmaster is short and chubby and wears a square brown beard. Old-timers remark how much he resembles Professor Carl Beck, whose enthusiasm for the Rough Riders periodically uttered itself in drums and brass from the day he greeted the first contingent at the old Southern Pacific station until that tragic night at the beer-garden when he tried to prove supremely worthy of the occa

sion-and something happened. A word of his at the "depot" as the train pulled in is still remembered:

"Play 'em 'Dixie'!" exclaimed an enthusiastic veteran in gray.

"Nix mit "Tixie'!" retorted the Professor. "First 'Yankee Tootle,' den "Tixie'!"

As for the beer-garden, Icarus never came down so hard as the fat little Professor that night. The town was giving the Rough Riders a farewell party; Riverside Park was crowded; everybody was out in buggies and surreys, on horseback, and on bicycles; young and old; mothers with babies, girls with fluttering hearts; and about five hundred

Rough Riders. The Professor had arranged a special piece for the occasion"The Cavalry Charge"-patently appropriate. And at the climax, when the brasses were at full blare and the big bass drum was quivering, the man behind the drum was to fire a shot.

The Professor dreamed without considering his audience. As the shot rang out a Rough Rider pulled his own gun. "Help 'em out, boys!" he shouted. What happened then is still remembered in San Antonio. Five hundred sixshooters went popping through the foliage of the great pecan trees overhead. There was such a scattering as not even that ancient cattle town had ever seen. Tables and benches were overturned in the stampede; women and children-and men too-took refuge behind trees and under wagons; the lights went out; the band and its leader fled; and still the guns went popping and flashing through the darkness. It was all very wicked of the Rough Riders, but the scramble to escape the "wild men" was a sight not to be forgotten. One episode lingers most vividly--the big bass drummer stuck in a window of the band-stand,, the drum on one side, the drummer on the other, and a Teutonic sense of duty holding the drummer to his drum.

All that is 1898. But the movies, which, we are told, are changing styles, morals, and social orders from Kangaroo Corners to Kamchatka, are also undermining the validity of our most popular maxims.

In San Antonio history is repeating itself. Professor Beck is back from the grave at the head of his band, marching across the little bridge. Behind him comes an aggregation bearing a huge banner-"We are from Arizona." They are cowboys (afoot), miners, prospectors, hunters, sheep-herders, professional gamblers, sheriffs, and fugitives from