tration. I deem it just to you, to myself, to all, that I should see everything, that I should hear everything, that I should have every light that can be brought within my reach, in order that, when I do so speak, I shall have enjoyed every opportunity to take correct and true ground. . . . But when the time comes, I shall speak, as well as I am able, for the good of the present and future of this country -for the good both of the North and of the South.

To the New Jersey Legislature he said:

I shall do all that may be in my power to promote a peaceful settlement of all our difficulties. The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am, none who would do more to preserve it, but it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly.

I trust that I may have your

W

assistance in piloting the ship of state through this voyage, surrounded by peril as it is; for if it should suffer wreck now there will be no pilot ever needed for another voyage.

When Lincoln arrived in Washington, there was sitting a non-official Peace Conference called by the Governor of Virginia. The members of that Conference, both Secessionists and Unionists, called upon Lincoln at his hotel. Lincoln's replies to their questions as recorded by L. E. Chittenden-who later became Register of the Treasury in Lincoln's Administration are full of wisdom. "He spoke," says Chittenden, "apparently without premeditation, with a singular ease of manner and facility of expression."

As to Lincoln's legal acumen, the rec

ords show that he was one of the leaders of the Illinois bar and that he had been retained and had appeared in a number of important corporation cases which required a knowledge of business principles and finance. When he was twentynine years of age, he made a speech on a banking bill in the Illinois Legislature which shows that he had made some careful study of financial questions.

Lincoln was ungainly, awkward, and unpolished, but so was Socrates. The mystery of Lincoln's genius can never be explained, for all creative genius is inexplicable. But to say that the crown of genius was placed on his head only when as an "oafish country lawyer" he entered the White House, is the least reasonable explanation that can be devised.

E have been watching a strange sight in these Brussels streets a procession of motor cars filled with Chinese who, as they went along, were distributing handbills warning citizens of a rupture of relations if the Belgo-Chinese Treaty were not modified.

There is "open diplomacy" for you with a vengeance! The Chinese are giving us a vivid lesson in it. We have always deemed Occidentals more aggressive than Orientals; here, however, Orientals are showing themselves very wide-awake, not to say fierce, propagandists.

HIS does not mean that China has

The Outlook's Editor in Europe

In this Belgian nation, jealous of its own independence and sovereignty, there is much sympathy for China in her efforts towards the same ends and a disposition to aid her desires where possible. But there is equal concern for the large Belgian interests at stake in that country-namely, in the Belgian capital invested in Chinese export commerce and in numerous railway, tramway, bridge-building, coal, lighting, and glass enterprises. Of course, the Brussels Government has these sensitive points of Belgian economic penetration into China in mind, as it examines the situation to be suddenly made by the treaty denunciation.

M. Vandervelde, Belgian Foreign Minister, with whom I have been talking, in a desire to go as

far as possible, proposed to the Chinese

Minister here the conclusion of a modus vivendi, to remain in force until a new treaty should be signed and the old "inequality" clause expunged. The Minister accepted and, in turn, proposed his own modus vivendi project. If it gave satisfaction as to extra-territoriality, it refused any concession as to consular jurisdiction; that is to say, Belgians in China would henceforth be subject to Chinese tribunals.

Now, rightly or wrongly, one hears

venal, and the Chinese claim in the modus vivendi is the more inadmissible since the Extra-territoriality Conference at Peking, recently adjourned, decided, so it is reported, unanimously (of course including the Chinese delegate's vote) that the only possible present modification in the actual régime should be limited to certain slight consular jurisdiction amendments. So M. Vandervelde had to decline the Chinese offer.

Should the Chinese at home take the law into their own hands and proceed to acts-if, for example, after October 27, China should refuse to grant the right of consular jurisdiction to Belgians-the Brussels Government, one understands, is ready to carry the dispute to the Hague Court.

E

XTREMES meet-little Belgium and big China, David and Goliath. Is it, however, entirely a case of quality vs. quantity? Who knows? The Hague Court perhaps.

In any event, our present day is marked by the impressive movement of Asiatic countries, like Turkey and China, to throw off the bonds of extraterritoriality, capitulations, and consular jurisdiction, characterizing their hitherto inferior civilizations, and to emphasize the principle of sovereignty.

As

Hard Liquor

s with you in America, so here in Belgium, there is hardly any intoxication not caused by hard liquor. Recognizing this, the Belgian lawmakers did not enact any repressive legislation with respect to beer and wine (save that wine shall not contain more than 18 per cent alcohol), but they did with respect to more alcoholic beverages. At any cabaret or café, restaurant or hotel, one can without hindrance procure a glass of beer or wine; not so a glass of brandy. To get its higher percentage of alcohol one has to go to a grocer or a wine-andspirits merchant. The law forbids him to sell anything by the glass. Nor is he allowed to sell less than two liters (about two quarts) of alcohol or more than six.

Nor is the buyer permitted to consume spirituous liquor on the premises. He must take it home. You might think that this would lead to an increase of domestic drunkenness, but such does not

appear to have been the case.

The Law

T HE present law came into force in 1919. During the war, on my initiative, the Belgian Government had adopted a more radical system that is to say, first the complete suppression of the sale of distilled liquor, and then the interdiction of more than 5 per cent of alcohol in beer and more than 15 per cent in wine.

But the Belgian Parliament, on its return to the homeland, would not go so far. Instead it passed the present law, suppressing the retail sale of hard liquor. Yet even with my greatly modified proposal the percentage of consumption of alcohol, compared with that before the

law came into force, is now less than half as great!

CASE

Crime

ASES of fraud are comparatively rare. The procureurs généraux have been very severe in their prosecutions, although the attitude of certain magistrates has not revealed a too great sympathy with prohibition.

Crimes and immoral acts have greatly diminished, although perhaps hardly in proportion to drunkenness.

As elsewhere, drunkenness seems to have been a chief factor in criminality. Before the war there was a disquieting progression of immoral delinquency having alcoholic origin. For instance, in 1900, of 130 cases of homicide in Belgium, the criminals were drunkards in 101 of them. This proportion has declined, but even now alcohol, it is reported, is the cause of perhaps half the

cases.

The proportion between persons of alcoholic heritage and others is not known; it is hard to estimate it exactly. Formerly, however, about half of the criminal drunkards had alcoholic parents, but now, in Belgium, as in America, one is glad to say, the unborn babe

has a chance.

THE law has thus worked encouragingly well as far as it goes. But, in the opinion of very many, it does not go far enough. Instead of a minimum of two liters of alcohol and a maximum of six, the minimum and the maximum might well be the same, or at least four, and with moral advantage. As it is now, if some boon companions would "celebrate" at little cost, they have but to contribute small sums, totaling enough to buy two liters, and then send one of their number down the block for the "stuff." In not a few cases this reminds one of the old days of the corner saloon. The Belgian cercles privés, which appeal to less than one per cent of our population, correspond, in general, to the

American "dives."

While the law's severity may possibly be increased, there is no chance at present in Belgium for a jump, like that you made in America, to total prohibition. At least two decades of anti-alcoholic popular education will be needed to make most Belgians at all favorably consider the suppression of fermented drink.

The defeat of prohibition in Norway, an agricultural country, will hardly influence Belgium, an intensely industrial country. The good results of our law are too evident not to appeal to a majority of our voters.

Brussels, October 22, 1926.

O

N the map Florida appears like a generous whisker on the chin of the United States and Miami like a bur in the straggling tip of the beard. The implication, on the map and in the simile, is that Miami is remote, unsurrounded, a mere outpost on the far edge of things. But the function of maps, Miami might reply, is to steer one toward his destination, and not to venture a rattle-headed opinion on what he'll find when he gets there. The truth is, Miami regards herself as a center, with a developing circle of influence which presently may prove of importance, not to Florida only, but to as much of the country as is interested in travel and trade.

HE hurricane which swept the capi

THE

tal of the lower East Coast back into public consciousness swept away a good deal of the mist that had made it hard to understand. The town emerges from the disaster with its motives, like its tree roots, exposed. It is fairly plain now that the rushing up of buildings that would be tall even in New York, the raising of millions to deepen the harbor, and similar undertakings such as a metropolis may engage in had a firmer foundation than the boom. Miami has earned the right to have accepted her frequently repeated statement that she regarded the boom as merely an incident, since she has sweat and bled, in the months since the boom disappeared, to show that she could thrive without it. The big things were fashioned as the tools, not of a jumping-off place, but of a logical center with outlooks and outlets that were numerous. Miami has viewed

By RUFUS STEELE

Miami's idea of what her future importance will prove to be may not have been a home-grown notion at all. It was wrapped up in the theories voiced by eminent outsiders who came to study the Florida excitement and explain what it was all about. One of these was Governor Ralph O. Brewster, the alert and studious chief executive of Maine. Florida itself, in the opinion of Governor Brewster, had very little to do with its being suddenly invaded by vast throngs of people. The United States, rich beyond measure and ripe for a new experience, was simply taking a natural if somewhat spectacular step in its expansion.

Suddenly everybody was bitten with the bug of going South to explore. They wanted new opportunities; they wanted new trade. Another motive that Governor Brewster detected pleased him most of all. Florida was a vast playground; the people were waking up to the necessity and joy of learning how to

play. The very apogee of play was for one to go where he could do it in winter-in knickerbockers and silk shirt —while the home town was covered up with snow. Governor James M. Cox was another analyst who beheld the people sweeping South through an impulse new in themselves. He, as well as various prominent business leaders, foresaw the modern argonauts occupying Florida, stepping across into the West Indies and Cuba, and thence on to become engrossed in the unmeasured trade and development opportunities in South America.

mid-stream of a current that rises in the

It told why the newcomers flowed to the most attractive spots-why, for instance, the lower East Coast, with a climate and a flora that were gifts of the contiguous Gulf Stream, knew no limit of popularity-and also it gave to natural beauty a thrifty importance. The enterprising ones who came only to play, looking up between golf strokes or tarpon strikes, might be depended on to observe the possibilities for agriculture in the Everglades and the possibilities for manufacturing, even if only to supply the State's own multiplying population with the things that could as well be turned out on the spot.

It is apparent that Miami, in her planning and building, had an eye on the day when the territory on three sides of her would be thickly settled by those who played and those who worked, when there would be extensive industry, and when tourists and cargo would go out of her harbor and down the highway bound for the American dependencies, for islands under foreign flags, and for republics of the southern continent.

THIS does not mean, to be sure, that

Miami has been alone among South Florida towns to take a foresighted look ahead. During the summer Fort Lau derdale and Hollywood have voted $6,000,000 in bonds for the purpose of converting Lake Mabel, a sound lying between them, into a harbor thirty-five feet deep-deep enough for almost anything except the Leviathan. Key West also is active, with its mind on a definite goal. Under the honorary leadership of Governor Martin and the active leader

ship of Captain Clark D. Stearns, lately retired commandant of its Navy Yard,

this southernmost town has pushed to within sight of completion its portion of the Oversea Highway which spans the keys and which, as the local people pleasantly put it, will reach from the Hoboken ferry in New York City to the Havana ferry in Key West.

Miami, with steamers already on the short run between her own harbor and Nassau, in the Bahama Islands, regards the Oversea Highway as a very practical step in the bringing to pass of her vision

dering the heavy expense, hope that the highway may be open for traffic by the end of next summer. If pop-eyed motorists do drive into Key West as soon as that, it will mean that they have ferried across a nine-mile gap and a twelvemile gap in the road. The bridging of these two principal breaches may require several years. A builder stands ready to undertake the expensive job as a private enterprise. His return will come from tolls to be charged-the only tolls to be

the stout piles supporting them the emerald water will race back and forth with the tides between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The motorist will find himself alternately hemmed in by the cocoanut trees and mangrove thickets of the keys and skimming along over the open sea, with tarpon and porpoise rolling lazily as though to impress him with the fact that he is on the most unique highway in existence.

into a greater playground that will inIclude a wide area of island-dotted sea. The mainland ends at Florida City, about twenty-five miles south of Miami. From there the keys of all shapes and sizes stretch away in a curving line to Key West, 120 miles distant. That Flagler was able to string these lowlying tropical reefs together with a pair of steel rails gave the auto highway builders their courage as well as their in. spiration. At present forty miles of roadway has been completed southward from Florida City and an equal mileage

such land fills as the Federal Government may permit him to make. The plans for these two gaps call for concrete bridges thirty-eight feet wide, equipped and ornamented even to the inclusion of White Way lamps. The cost of the pair is estimated at $13,500,000. Until the bridges are ready it is planned to keep large ferry-boats in service, unless, as the railroad people say is feasible, arrangements are made for autos to cross on specially built flat cars on the Florida East Coast's tracks.

INETY bridges, from a hundred yards to a mile and a half in length, will take care of the lesser gaps. Through

own colorful joys upon the visitor, will serve him as ferry station extraordinary. Out of its harbor will eventually move auto-carrying steamers bound for a score of ports of the island countries set in the great bowl of the ocean formed by the coast-lines of the three Americas. Between the Bahamas, the most northerly of which lies farther north than Miami, and the Barbadoes, the most southerly of which lies not very far north of Venezuela, stretch the isles of romance. Old and wonderful and little disturbed are the West Indies. Their tropical beauty, starry skies, strange fruits, and strange peoples will delight and satisfy even the seasoned American tourist when he

studies them from the cushioned seat of his own automobile. It will be an invasion of pleasure cars primarily, but there is no good reason for supposing that trade opportunities blossoming among mamays and sapodillas will be over

$300,000,000 through a period of years for road-building, as well as for the further beautification of Havana. Contracts have been let for the first units of a highway which is to extend through the interesting primitive country of five

may be bringing in fleets of trucks.

tiago, a distance of 600 miles. In places the highway will pass under great cieva trees planted three hundred years ago in order that the horseman who took his tedious way along the stony trail might have shade.

T

HE auto tourist who rolls down this highway in the days when it stands completed to Cuba's southern shore will find that he may go on to Jamaica, Haiti, Santo Domingo, or Porto Rico by resorting to shorter ferry ride than was required to fetch him to Havana. Farther away, but not so far that their call may not be heard by the more adventurous, will await the Canal Zone and the inviting republics of Central and South America. Or, if the traveler decides to go no farther south than the Cuban mainland, it may be possible for him to prolong the novelty of his trip by

taking a new route home. A steamer can pick up a motor car on the western extreme of Cuba and set it down, several hours later, on the Yucatan peninsula in the eastern extreme of Mexico.

How rapidly and how plentifully the

United States may develop seagoing automobilists is a pleasant matter of speculation, but Miami, a metropolis in the path of the human movement in the direction of the equator, has written the future's possibilities definitely into her plans. Miami, according to some of her leading citizens, anticipates the uninterrupted development of Florida, boom or no boom, and she expects, in an important degree, to inspire and equip the grand adventure that will make conquest of the West Indies and then roll on nobody knows how far. Experience, according to the same resident authorities, has prepared Miami for vast things. It has given her a superior understanding of the merchantable qualities of a benign climate and the dollars and cents to be won from the beauties of nature when expressed in a tropical and overwhelming mood.

T

HERE is no doubt but that the

boy who plays football takes a foremost place among his college fellows. When he makes the team, his place in college life is thereby established. No other game makes half the appeal to the undergraduate body, or as great a one to the world at large. To me no game can offer a thrill to compare with a cleanly caught punt run back past charging ends or a smashing offense held on the very goal line.

Perhaps it may seem strange, then, that I do not want my own boys to play college football. I grant its dramatic appeal. I grant its place as a developer of courage, self-control, and team-work. I am not particularly perturbed by the whispers of commercialism and professionalism. Neither am I aghast at the physical dangers of the game, although a somewhat treacherous knee often reminds me of them. These common arguments for and against football are, so far as I am concerned, beside the mark. And for these reasons:

should give a boy certain things which he can get less surely elsewhere. The most important of these things is the capacity to enjoy life, intellectually, socially, and physically, to the full. It is, of course, of the physical enjoyment of life that I am writing here. Just as his intellectual education should fit him to appreciate books and pictures and music, so his physical training should fit him to get the most out of his games and outdoor recreation. In so far as college athletics do this they accomplish their purpose, and hold a rightful and important place in education. When they do not, they become a side-show; attractive, to be sure, but, after all, not the main issue. From this standpoint, athletics are a vital part of the training a boy is to receive at college. They are not merely fun for the moment, any more than are economics or biology. They are to be chosen and followed with a view to the use that is to be made of them in later years.

November of senior year, your last game. And when the whistle blows, at the end of a weary fourth quarter, you're through! You never play again. You have left memories. Nothing to give life more zest at thirty or forty or fifty. Leaving out of consideration the sporadic attempts to establish football as a profession, it is not played after leaving college. Judged on this basis, it does not live up to its splendor of college days.

What are the sports, then, which do make life fuller after graduation? The list will vary with different localities and with personal preference, but there are certain fundamentals which are the same pretty much the world over. To swim, to ride a horse, to box, to skate, and to shoot; these are the rudiments which every boy should know. Of the less elemental sports, tennis and golf rank first. Rowing, hockey, and lacrosse hold a few after graduation.

But football is a game quite apart. It has less in common with the sports of later life than any other form of college