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bare. There are a lumber yard or two, a machine shop, many cheap rooms up rickety stairs. A few cellars are filled with green bananas, put away in the dark to ripen. Some cellars have been filled, or partially so, with juices of fruits and grains, fermented or distilled. Bootlegger raids have been not infrequent in the triangle. Here and there are some business houses of good appearance.

Through this triangle all persons must pass who would go from the main part of the city-from the Capitol, the White House, all of the executive departments but one to the buildings in the Mall, including the Smithsonian Institution, the New National Museum, the old Museum, the Department of Agriculture, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial.

Washington, no matter how beautiful it may be in spots, can never be really a beautiful city until the triangle is cleared out. It would be economy of the real kind to buy the land and clear it now, even if no buildings ever were to be erected upon it.

To Make the Dream Come True

THE

HE Government already owns a considerable part of the land within the triangle. That occupied by the markets is so owned, and the markets are conducted under the supervision of the Department of Agriculture. A long block at the Fifteenth Street end of the wedge was recently acquired. The point of the wedge, resting against the Capitol grounds, has long been occupied by the Botanical Gardens. Some smaller plots

the Government owns.

The plan for an adequate building program in Washington calls for keeping the Mall clear of everything except museums and monumental structures and the Department of Agriculture. The last named is there and must stay. It first went there when the Mall was a waste, cut up with sloughs and swamps, infested with footpads and worse. The Department of Agriculture redeemed the Mall by converting it into a sort of experimental farm. That was nearly threequarters of a century ago. Magnificent experimental farms have since been acquired outside the city, but the offices of the Department of Agriculture have stayed on in the Mall, and now they are

housed, some of them, in the completed parts of one of the best-designed of all the Government-owned buildings. This building will be completed as the home of the Department of Agriculture.

Buildings for the other executive departments, it is planned, will be grouped at the broad end of the triangle, along Fifteenth Street facing the Ellipse, along B Street facing the Mall, possibly along a block of Pennsylvania Avenue near the Treasury. Public buildings other than those of the executive departments will, it is planned, face the grounds of the Capitol. A part of the triangle will be added to the Mall and some devoted to the making of smaller open spaces. The north side of Pennsylvania Avenue will be left in private hands, but the hope is held that, with better surroundings near the Capitol end, the souvenir shops and cheap hotels will give place to business buildings of good appearance.

If the plan goes through, even to the extent of the acquisition and clearing of the land, the Nation may begin to regard the National city as worthy of a great nation. If the plan goes through to the extent of erection of the buildings, the Government will save enough in rents in one generation, about, to meet

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that it would provide not only for perpetual ownership by the Government but perpetual operation by the Government.

As between the two propositions, that of Representative Zihlman is to be favored, but The Outlook, in common with many Americans, will cherish the hope that both Zihlman and Norris will be disappointed.

The time has not come for the development of the water power at Great Falls. These falls are barely outside of the District of Columbia, but in a wild, unproductive section of country. For wild and rugged beauty no waterfall in the eastern part of the United States, and perhaps none on the American continent, surpasses them. The water does not fall over a sheer precipice, as at Niagara, but tumbles in tumult over a series of steep rapids, with rough rocks jutting out among the myriad cataracts in a dark gorge. The Great Falls wilderness is the finest bit of unspoiled nature left anywhere so near a large city.

Washington, for the moment, is obsessed with the desire to become a manufacturing center. The fulfillment of its wish would be the worst thing that could happen to it. But, even if the National capital is to be thus marred, Great Falls need not be marred with it. Enough power for all prospective needs of the region could be developed at much less cost below Great Falls-at Little Falls and Stubblefield Falls.

A Correction

TTENTION has been called to two A statements, alleged to be inaccurate, in Dixon Merritt's article, "Klan and Anti-Klan in Indiana," published in The Outlook of December 8. One of these statements has to do with the registration and vote figures, the other with the crime of which D. C. Stephenson was convicted.

The statement with regard to the number of voters registered and the number who cast ballots in the November election is ambiguous, but it is not inaccurate. The figures given are accurate for Marion County, which was referred to throughout the article, but not in this particular paragraph, as illustrative of the State. Even so, more imagination was required on the part of the reader to apply those figures to the State, which has a million or more vot

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ers, than would have been required to make the proper application of them.

The other statement does contain an error. The young woman for whose murder Stephenson was convicted was not taken by Stephenson to his yacht. While the location of the crime has little bearing on what the article was intended to show, both The Outlook and Mr. Merritt sincerely regret this inadvertence.

English Usage Tw

wo weeks ago we cited Dr. Frank H. Vizetelly, editor of the Standard Dictionary, as authority for the practice of always using a plural verb with two or more subjects connected by "and," expressed or implied. At the same time we cited the King James Version of the Bible, the greatest of English classics, in defense of the practice of sometimes using under those circumstances a verb in the singular. We have been most unworthily rewarded in consequence with the following letter from Dr. Vizetelly:

If you will be kind enough to turn to Genesis xxii. 5, you will find there another rendering that may interest

you, "Abide ye here with the ass." I take this from the King James Version, and deduct therefrom that the translators knew how to use a verb in the plural with a plural pronoun.

Far be it from me to challenge your right to write as you please, and to cite the King James Version of the Bible to support your point of view. I trust, however, that you will be willing to concede that that splendid monument of Jacobean English is full of solecisms. To the one example of "abideth" as a verb in the singular with plural nominatives that you cite from I Corinthians, I can quote you fifteen or sixteen examples where the verb is used correctly with a nominative in the singular.

When I worked on The Outlook, years ago when Dr. Lyman Abbott, Hamilton Mabie, Townsend, and others were living, no one on its staff ever wrote "is" for "are" or "are" for "is;" nor did any one believe "I done it," "Him have went," "I seen it," or "It's me" good English. The Outlook is surely as great a power for good. to-day as it was in Lyman Abbott's time, or in the days when Theodore Roosevelt wrote for it. Therefore, I am quite certain that, notwithstanding your editorial, you aline with that which is best in English.

In response to Dr. Vizetelly, besides assuring him that Mr. Townsend is very much alive, all that we can do is to confess that we had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the English classics than to dwell in the tents of the grammarians.

The Yellowstone Grab

L

A Letter to Our Readers

ETTERS we have received clearly indicate that a great many of

you want to know what you can do to save the Yellowstone National Park from commercial invasion.

One of you, sister of General Chittenden, the engineer who planned and built most of the roads in Yellowstone Park, writes from Seattle, Washington: "If there is anything that I can do, command me."

Another writes from Independence, Iowa: "Please tell us how to go about trying to help in this matter."

Another has written from California: "Please let us know in what way we can help."

We quote at random from the letters

you have sent us that you may clearly understand why we are writing this letter to you.

If you do not realize that the National Parks are your property, if you are not interested in protecting your property against depredation, if you are content to see special interests encroach upon National interests, if you are indifferent to the preservation of natural beauty, then this letter is not meant for you. As Mr. Ulm makes clear in his article in this issue, those who wield a power greater than that of the ballot are those who are in earnest. And what this letter is written for is to tell you how you can wield that power for the sake of saving the Yellowstone National Park and averting a danger that threatens our whole National Park system.

Let us briefly review the events which have led up to the present danger.

In 1920 a bill to authorize the erection of an irrigation reservoir in the southwest corner of the Yellowstone National Park was introduced into Congress. That bill was defeated. Last winter the attempt to make a breach in the Park was renewed in another form. This was the proposal to take the area desired for that reservoir out of the Park and hand it over to commercial interests. This latest attempt was made as an amendment to a very desirable measure This measure, now before Congress. commonly known as the Co-ordination Bill, provides for the readjustment of the boundaries of the Yellowstone in the interest of both the National Forest Service and the National Park Service. By this measure, the boundaries of the Yellowstone would follow natural features, facilitating the protection of the Park, preserving its wild life more effectively, and materially increasing its area. this measure those who would loot the Park for commercial purposes saw their opportunity. They therefore proposed to disregard the judgment of the guardians of the Park and change the boundaries so as to exclude this proposed reservoir site. The purpose of the amendment is wholly at variance with the purpose of the bill. Unlike the bill itself, it is not designed to protect the Park, but to despoil it. Instead of making the wild life more secure, this amendment to seize the Bechler Meadows for commercial purposes would endanger wild life; instead of fulfilling the purpose of the National Park Service, it would frustrate it; instead of enhancing the value of the property of the Ameri

In

can people, it would injure it. Behind the Co-ordination Bill is the force of National interest as represented by the co-operation between two National services. Behind the amendment to seize the Bechler Meadows is the force only of commercial interests represented by people who want cheap irrigation.

You who want to stop this assault upon the Yellowstone Park can now help. We are writing this to you to tell you how you can help.

You can employ the right that every American citizen has of making known his views and wishes to those who represent him in Congress.

Now is the time to write.

Write to the Representative of your own district. Write to the two Senators from your own State. And write to the members of the two committees that have the bill in charge. These two committees are the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, the United States Senate, and the Committee on the Public Lands, House of Representatives. The members of these two committees are as follows:

SENATE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC LANDS AND SURVEYS (Address each of the following: Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C.)

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turn the Bechler Meadows in the southwest corner of Yellowstone Park over to commercial irrigation. The destruction of those meadows by flooding them with water would do irreparable injury. We have told you in former issues of The Outlook what harm it would do. It would not only injure the Yellowstone, but open the way to commercial invasion of every National Park. Americans, keep the looters out.

I

Treaty Cruisers

T is evident from the discussion in Congress and from interchange of correspondence between the President and the Committee on Naval Affairs that the Executive is still firm in his belief that the appropriation and expenditure of money for treaty cruisers is at present inadvisable. What Congress is interested in is the actual construction of vessels of this type. The President appears to be willing to compromise his original position to the extent of permitting Congress to go on record as intending some time in the future to begin this construction.

If we may say so without disrespect, the President's position appears to be that of the celebrated mother who gave a somewhat doubtful permission to her daughter to engage in dry-land swimming. The difficulty in the present instance lies in the fact that a swimmer can enter the water on a moment's notice; but a cruiser of the type of the Omaha, illustrated in in Rear-Admiral Knight's article published elsewhere in this issue, requires over three years in the building. For the need of such cruisers on our Navy list we refer the reader to this article by Rear-Admiral Knight. There are factors in the situation, however, which involve other things than a technical knowledge of the requirements of our Navy.

It goes without saying, we believe, that the President's position is not due to any lack of interest in securing for the United States a position to which it is entitled under the Five-Power Treaty. It is apparently the President's hope that money can be saved by refusing to build the cruisers and this economy can be justified by persuading the other nations involved to reduce their navies to a comparable standard with that of the United States,

That was not the method by which the original treaty ratios were secured. The United States at the time of the

passage of the treaties was in a position to outbuild every nation in the world. Our program of building was already definitely under way. The United States in that situation was in a position to give something in return for what it received. In the matter of cruisers we are in the position of asking something without anything to offer in return.

Undoubtedly, ideals entered into the agreement between the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. Undoubtedly, Great Britain and Japan were as pleased as the United States to be relieved from excessive expenditure on armament. Good will, however, was not the deciding element which put their signatures on the treaties. The deciding element was the very practical realization that if they declined to accept the ratio offered by the United States they "would have to accept a very definite position of naval inferiority.

If The Outlook had a vote in Congress, it would cast it in favor of bringing our cruiser strength to a proper ratio with that of other Powers at the earliest possible moment. The time to talk of naval reduction would come when the riveters started work on the keels of the new cruisers.

The Professors and the

A

War Debts

DEBT between two peoples, unfortunately, is not like a debt between two individuals. One people cannot remit a debt directly to another people owing it. Such a debt can only be dealt with through the governments. Therein lies much of the difficulty in the discussion of the war debts between the Allies and the United States.

If there were some way of remitting these debts directly to the burdened peoples of Europe, struggling through their post-war reconstruction hardships, many Americans would be glad to do it. But there is not. The United States could only remit the debts to the European Governments. If their obligations were canceled, the European Governments would, of course, have the new credit; but whether they would use that credit for the best welfare of their peoples is a question in these same American minds.

Yet the debts continue to trouble many consciences. Among others, there is the faculty of Economics, Public Law, History, and Social Science of Columbia. University in New York. Forty-two

professors have issued, through President Nicholas Murray Butler, a statement in favor of reconsideration of the whole debt question.

They contend that the debt settlements are making us hated in Europe. But that is not a valid argument. We ought not to give up a just case because the other party does not like it. Indeed, good will can rarely be purchased.

They contend that the principle of "capacity to pay" sounds harsh and heartless. But that is a sentimental argument, and this is not a problem to be solved by sentimentality.

They contend that "capacity to pay" over a period of sixty-two years cannot be determined now. That argument any sensible person would admit. But the problem involved in it is one to be considered when there is reason to think that "capacity to pay" has been reached, or at least approached. Some revision later of the whole reparations and debts arrangement will, in all probability, have to be made. But we cannot begin to consider a new arrangement before the present one has been completed and made effective. An essential debt agreement-that with France-remains unratified. From this point of view, discussion of the debt question now is ill-timed. It will tend to make France feel that opinion here is veering toward cancellation, and so to delay French action. And to secure acceptance by our Senate of the debt agreement with France as it stands bids fair to be troublesome to say nothing of further modification of that and all the other already ratified agreements.

A great and influential section of the American people is not inclined to release these funds to be used in military adventures or in financing intrigues or building up new menacing alliances in Europe. For instance, Italy was freed Europe. For instance, Italy was freed from a large part of her obligations to the United States. She found it possible to borrow new funds in New York, and then made a questionable loan to Albania, and followed it up with a political agreement that is brewing trouble in the Balkans. That sort of policy does not encourage lenity in regard to war debts.

We have no right to dictate what another nation must do if we give up part of a debt. Specifically-to take an example from a favorite proposal of some American politicians we have no right to say that if we cut down the war debts the European nations must cut down their armies. The French contention

that this would be an intolerable invasion of the sphere of domestic policy is entirely correct. We should feel it so if another country tried to coerce the United States in a matter affecting security. But we have a right to say that so long as an order is maintained in Europe which does not command our confidence that its intentions are pacific and that it is tending toward a better state of things we will not release the war debts to help finance it.

The United States spent money lavishly to help win the World War. Money is not to be compared with men; but the American people offered their resources generously, and their best men as well. When the war was over, America did not enrich herself with colonial territories. The Allies did. That is a point rarely mentioned when the desirability of scaling down the war debts is being discussed. Now, at least until we are sure that we are not advancing money for more wars in Europe, we want to regain something of what the last war cost us. That is a matter which is in the hands of the people of Europe and their Governments. When they give a convincing sign, we believe that the American people and the Government of the United States will not be unreasonable or unwilling to respond.

Walter Damrosch Retires to Advance

W

HEN Walter Damrosch announced on December 14 that he was retiring as conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, many music lovers were rendered quite forlorn. There have been in America orchestral conductors who have won fame as drillmasters, molding their bands into a form closely approaching perfection; orchestral conductors who have excited popular favor by their dramatic methods and effects; orchestral conductors who have had the genius to discern the essentials in great works of musical art and bring them out in relief; but among them all there is no one who has established so personal a relationship between himself and his audiences as Mr. Damrosch. He has been primarily an educator in musical knowledge and musical taste.

Happily, Mr. Damrosch's career as a musical educator will continue. Indeed, it may enter upon a new and broader stage. Mr. Damrosch will continue to direct the Symphony Society's concerts

for young people and those for children. He will be honorary and guest conductor of the concerts of the Symphony Society, and thus direct occasional concerts in its regular series. More than that, he is, it is understood, planning to widen his influence by developing orchestral concerts for the invisible audience of the radio. He is one of those wise musicians who see in the development of scientific appliances, not an obstacle, but a new opportunity for art and a new means for spreading acquaintance with the best, which is the only basis for good taste.

If only he could be made programmaker for all orchestral concerts, he would find full scope for his special gift. He has the rare instinct for understanding what musical compositions can be combined into a concert that of itself is a work of art. In this field of musical architecture he is unsurpassed.

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The Fall-Doheny Case

TOT guilty!

NOT

That was the verdict returned by the District of Columbia

jury which tried Albert Bacon Fall and Edward L. Doheny on the charge of criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States Government in connection with the lease of the Elk Hills Naval Oil Reserve. The verdict is final. It is just. The crime of conspiracy to defraud was not proved.

But beyond that the verdict does not absolve the defendants or either of them of culpability. So far as this verdict is concerned, the defendants are not, technically at least, free from the charge of bribery, which still remains untried. Is the evidence of bribery sufficient to warrant the pressing of that charge? That depends upon the decision of the authorities. Of this the public has not adequate means of judging.

But the public can, and must, take cognizance of culpability that is entirely outside the province of a criminal court jury. In that sense, Albert B. Fall is culpable. When he accepted a personal loan from a man with whom, as Secretary of the Interior, he was transacting important public business involving the possibility of large profits, he placed himself in a reprehensible attitude toward bis public duties. Of this offense against the public he was appointed to serve no jury can convict him; from it no jury can absolve him; but of that offense the people of the United States must be aware unless they are to become as de

International

Walter Damrosch looks on approvingly while Mr. Henry H. Flager, President of the Symphony Society of New York, presents a diamond brooch to Madame Schumann. Heink in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of her appearance as a singer

void as he of the sense of public integtity. The financial bankruptcy which is said to have threatened Mr. Fall would have been accepted by a right-minded public official as a lesser evil than the moral bankruptcy which he incurred when he accepted the Doheny loan. And to the memory of the comradeship of the old prospecting days, which figured so prominently in the testimony, Mr. Doheny, when he made the loan, did no honor.

The trial of the criminal charge proved nothing as to the policy of leasing the naval oil lands or as to the validity of the particular lease made to the Doheny interests. In a civil action the lower courts have decided that this lease is invalid. The Supreme Court of the United States, which has still to pass upon the case, may or may not sustain that finding. If the finding of the lower courts is sustained, what will have been proved will be, not as to the wisdom or

unwisdom, the righteousness or unrighteousness, of the general policy of leasing naval oil lands, but only as to its legality.

If the public, or a large part of it, expected a verdict of guilty and is disappointed at the verdict of not guilty, it must blame neither the Court which tried Mr. Fall and Mr. Doheny nor the able men who conducted the case for the Government. It must blame the extravagance of statement which characterized the Senatorial investigation-an extravagance which created an expectation that could not be realized. Mr. Fall's lack of a proper sense of public duty did irreparable harm; but so did the intemperance of some of the Senators who took part in the investigation. The Nation may well be thankful if from this unsavory episode the lesson is learned that the Senate is no fit substitute for a grand jury and a criminal

court.

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