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similar to this in the other cases that may be brought against him will remove one of the greatest obstacles which the enemies of prison reform have attempted to put in its way. The sacrifice which Mr. Osborne has been required to make in holding to his convictions and in keeping his faith with men who have trusted him will, we hope, impress upon the people of the State the seriousness of the prison problem, the strength of the forces opposed to progress, and the vital importance of putting our whole prison system on a new, a wiser, and a more humane basis.

THE CLASS IN HISTORY

Should college students be able to name the Sultan of Turkey, the capital of Servia, and the location of Gallipoli? Should they distinguish the portfolio of Sir Edward Grey from that of Lloyd George, and should they be able to give the Kaiser's title correctly?

Since the first of the year these and similar doubts have disturbed the academic inertia of history students and teachers in many a college class-room. At New York University and Bowdoin College the professors of history have put to their students a series of test questions designed to reveal familiarity with current events. They wished to discover how well their classes read the daily news in its relation to the great war. The boys responded with an average grade of barely fifty-eight per cent. Later sixteen

of the members of the Civics Club at Radcliffe undertook the experiment, and flunked so seriously that a course in intensive study of current events has been considered for the college curriculum.

Aroused by these discoveries, Barnard College at Columbia awoke to its opportunity. Thirty-two young women who made up a class in general European history met the questionnaire in battle and came forth victorious with a gallant average of seventy-five per cent.

Even at that some of the answers were remarkable. One young woman described Gallipoli as being "on the peninsula where Turkey is;" two could not recall the name of the Prime Minister of England; another wrote down the President of France as "Point-caret;" few could correctly bound Servia; Alfonso was respectively the King of Italy and of Greece. At Radcliffe only two out of sixteen knew who Secretary Lansing was, and they were all at sea over Sir Ian Hamilton. The Kaiser's title was de

clared to be anything from the First to the Seventh Wilhelm, while the capital of Servia was given as Budapest as often as Belgrade.

Lack of interest in current events is a sad commentary on the mental processes of students of history, but it may well be that the blame lies not so much with them as with their teachers. So long as history is taught as a sort of monkish tale, stripped of all relation to modern life, it remains an exotic growth, a cultural ornament to all but the collector of culture. That is why the technical and industrial colleges cut it to a minimum in their curricula. They would scoff at the term "laboratory method" of teaching history which is now coming to the front in our largest universities. This "laboratory method" can best be explained by some concrete example such as the Irish Home Rule Bill. Students are asked to describe the bill as it was reported in the current news, then by individual research and reading to show the causes and economic conditions which led to its introduction, its many defeats, and its final victory.

The test to which students of the different universities were put was hardly fair. It was drawn on mistaken lines, with a view to ensnare rather than inform. Granted that many of the answers showed lamentable ignorance of current events, they evidenced neither for nor against acquaintance with the causes which led to the present conflict. No one cares and few can tell who is the present Sultan of Turkey, but to answer such a question as why the Allies' diplomacy failed at Constantinople would reveal familiarity with such antecedent history as the Crimean War. It would require a knowledge of economic and industrial conditions to explain the main causes, apart from the immediate incident, of the friction between Servia and Hungary. These two countries have always been economic antagonists. But such a point would probably never occur to the average student of history unless he were encouraged to discover the relation of modern life to past events.

WAR AND THE LABOR MARKET

Has your household servant suddenly given notice that she prefers packing cartridges to wiping dishes because it is more profitable and the hours are shorter? This has been the experience of some American housewives. The war has upset the American labor market.

The shortage of labor of certain kinds is

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almost unprecedented. The services of machinists who can perform the refined type of operations called for in connection with certain details in shell-making are bid for as if they were shares in a gushing oil well or a newly discovered Eldorado. Many manufacturers of non-military articles have lost many of their best men to the manufacturers of war munitions who can afford to pay a very high price for labor. One prominent manufacturer told a representative of The Outlook that he had discovered that some of his machinists were under contract to a war munitions company to go to work as soon as the plant was ready. They were receiving the difference between the wages they were being paid and five dollars a day, the amount they were to receive from the munitions company when the work began.

Mr. C. L. Green, Chief Inspector of the Federal Bureau of Information, which regulates the distribution of certain kinds of labor, said to The Outlook's representative, "Any man who has had sufficient training as a machinist to read a blue print and use a micrometer can get fifty cents an hour even if under normal conditions he is worth only twenty-five cents."

The unskilled labor required in subway construction and other types of rough, heavy work is also at a premium. Some contractors are hesitating to bid on new work owing to the uncertainty of the labor supply. At the office of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, for instance, a representative of The Outlook learned that wages for this type of labor had risen in the course of the last few months from $1.60 to $2 a day.

After the war will labor be fully employed? If not, will it be satisfied with lower wages, longer hours? Immigration is an important factor that must not be overlooked. With the possible exception of one year, immigration has not been so low within three-quarters of a century as during 1915. There is a possibility that the demand for labor to reconstruct war-damaged Europe will put wages so high that there will be an exodus of workers from this country. But there seems to be an even more likely possibility that the peoples of Europe who have most suffered from the war, like the Serbs and the Russian Jews, will stampede to America. can prophesy with any certainty what will happen. But now, while we have little im. migration, is a good time to get ready for all eventualities.

No one

MEXICO-OUR DUTY

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For three years we have been drifting into more and more serious trouble in Mexico. What has occurred and what is occurring to-day is what any one with his eyes open to the facts could have foreseen, what many did foresee. Nothing is a surer invitation to disaster than the shirking of respor sibility. Nothing brings trouble more certainly than an attempt at all costs to avoid it. American forces, for the second time during the term of this Administration, are in Mexico. It is of the utmost importance that our people should try to think clearly about the situation, and to define for themselves the Nation's ultimate purpose.

In order to further this end, we here state what it seems to us the Nation's purpose ought to be.

Our operations in Mexico should not be in the nature of war upon the Mexican nation or the Mexican people. We have no quarrel with Mexico as a nation. Our quarrel is with the spirit of anarchy and misrule which has been dominant there, and with which we, as a people, can never be at peace. Lincoln's

statement that a nation cannot survive half slave and half free states a principle that is applicable here. Democracy cannot survive in territory which is half orderly and half anarchic. Anarchy is a contagious disease from which we must protect our people as well as those of other nationalities for whom we are responsible.

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Our operations in Mexico ought not to be what they have been called-a mere punitive expedition." It was a futile and wrong thing for the United States to engage in war against the man Huerta. It would be equally futile and wrong for us as a Nation to engage in war against another man- -Villa. The death of Huerta did not end the Mexican problem. The capture of Villa would not end it.

Our operations ought to be carried on with a view to ultimate police occupation in behalf of order. They ought not to deal with symptoms, but with causes. We have put our hand to this task; and we ought now to see that it is a task worthy of the Nation that undertakes it. It is a task like that which called us into Cuba and into the Philippines. It is a task for laying the foundations on which something like civilization and selfgovernment can be built.

This task is one for the professional soldier,

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not for the volunteer. For the repelling of invasion or for general military operations volunteers, when trained, have proved and can prove useful; but police work requires businesslike attention to detail, and for this we should depend upon the regular soldier, who approaches his task in a matter-offact way, as the policeman and the fireman attend to their duties.

For such a task the process must necessarily be slow. If the task is undertaken wisely and deliberately, as well as firmly, a small force can be efficient. The method to be adopted in that case will have to be a gradual, firm occupation of strategic points, with the determination to win the approval and the welcome of the people at those points. At present a large proportion of Mexicans are willing to give to such a man as Villa aid and comfort, partly because they have no protection against him if they deny him his demands, and partly because they regard him as a sort of Robin Hood. The mere capture of Villa will not prevent another bandit from taking his place, and will, if not supplemented by other action, be likely rather to enhance Villa's reputation as a Robin Hood. What the people of Mexico need, first of all, is protection against brigandage, and, second, such beneficent protection by orderly processes as to enable them to see, through their own experience, that the real friend of the peon and the poor is not a brigand hero like Villa, but an orderly government.

To this end it is essential that this policing be done as far as possible by Mexicans themselves, and that the army of the United States should be used for direct policing only as may be unavoidable-chiefly for the training and direction of a Mexican constabulary.

This is the task that lies before our country. If the present Administration has finally determined not to undertake this task now, it will simply have on its records another Vera Cruz expedition, and some other Administration will have to undertake the task which this one would avoid.

THE LUSITANIA

On May 7, which is a Sunday this year, will occur the anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania. That day ought not to go by without a Nation-wide observance: to serve, first, as a memorial to those whose lives were sacrificed; and, second, as a reminder of our National duty.

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It has been observed that the ancients had at least one advantage which we moderns do not possess. Their gods were generally human and companionable souls. It is quite otherwise with us, for we even deny the qualities of human kind to our own fleshand-blood divinities. We turn them either into angels or devils-stupid angels or mechanical devils. It may be that "single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;" but plaster is at least a very important element in whatever measure of fame we accord to the saints of history and literature.

Probably Washington has furnished the best illustration of the art of petrifaction in American history. And Shakespeare has furnished a no less striking example in the world of literature. Between the deadly comments on Washington by the Rev. Mr. Weems and the equally deadly comments of the average Herr Doktor upon the works of Shakespeare there is not much to choose.

It is no fault of Shakespeare that he has become a "classic" and a perilously forbidding tradition. If there was ever another poet who wrote more like a human being and less like the stuff of which pedantic theses are made, he has successfully concealed himself in that choir of mute inglorious Miltons which slumbers so soundly in the graveyards of the world.

Too often the average child is led to Shakespeare with the injunction that he is being brought into the presence of the inner shrine of Art, and the text of Shakespeare's plays is laid before him as the ritual of a new and mysterious religion. As a special concession to human frailty, with bated breath he may be told of that deer-stealing episode in the park of Sir Thomas Lucy, or the fact that Shakespeare once held horses for his betters outside a London theater. He is lucky indeed if this information is not coupled with moral precepts concerning the iniquity of theft and . pious advice about admirable young men who are not too proud to begin at the bottom and work their way up in their chosen professions.

When our average child has grown a little older, if he persists in his education, he may make the acquaintance of a host of commentators on Shakespeare, from whom he learns a long list of carefully credited discoveries concerning the sources, disputed and otherwise, of Shakespeare's plays. He is told at length of readings over which the

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HOW NOT TO READ SHAKESPEARE

greatest authorities have quarreled; he troubles his brain over the epoch-making question as to whether it was a pole-axe or Polacks that Hamlet's father, "in an angry parle," smote upon the ice; and if he reads German he may be led into a lengthy controversy as to whether or not Duncan's horses in "Macbeth" are refused entrance upon the stage because such an appearance would be unbecoming to a place dedicated to the "high drama of mankind." When he leaves college, he will doubtless send leather-bound editions of Shakespeare as wedding presents to his friends. If he marries, he will doubtless receive other leather-bound editions of Shakespeare in return. They will remain on the shelves, unread symbols of his respectability and of his fellowship in the society of those who would be shocked if one professed not to "like Shakespeare."

It is all very well to prepare bibliographies of Shakespeare's sources, it is all very well for scholars to search out each nook and cranny of his reputation, write tomes upon his punctuation or lack of it, and treatises upon his spelling. What they find of interest we will take, and thank them for it. But when they ask us to substitute their annotated text for Shakespeare himself, we respectfully decline. Shakespeare is not a dead book, like Merlin's book of magic as Tennyson describes it :

"Every page having an ample marge, And every marge enclosing in the midst A square of text that looks a little blot, The text no larger than the limbs of fleas." If any scholar chooses to tell us further that "none can read the text, not even I; and none can read the comment but myself," he is frankly welcome to his mystery.

The true vitality of Shakespeare cannot be more convincingly stated than has been recently done by Hermann Hagedorn in his masque "The House of Magic," given in the Century Theater, New York City, as a memorial benefit for the veteran dramatic critic and lover of Shakespeare, William Winter. In Mr. Hagedorn's masque the Spirit of the Modern City questions the reality of those great romantic figures, born of Shakespeare's genius, that have played so large a part in the development of the last three centuries. The City cries to those who have sought refuge in Shakespeare's "cobwebbed house of dreams :"

"You have a noble house. But it is old.

Its tapestries are rags. The winter wind

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These faint lips,

Faint eyes, faint hands, these ghosts of ages
past
In toga, cope, and crown,
these gray
dead men,
These gray dead women-what are they to
you?

How can you waste a moment of dear life
With pallid specters, while without the world
Heaves in enormous conflict, and men die
As locusts die, in traps, by myriads,
And everywhere are white hands reaching up,
And hearts desirous and adventurous feet,
And noble men and base men and fierce wars?
Awake to life! Have done, have done with
dreams!"

Then out of the darkness come the voices of the spirits of Shakespeare-the drunken porter of Macbeth, standing guardian at the gate of hell, Coriolanus, breathing passion, the golden melody of Ariel, the revelry and laughter of Falstaff, and the love music of Romeo and Juliet. It is their magic speech that makes the City ask: "Voices Young voices! Lovers! Who are they

Who come, scattering the magic of first love In drops of liquid fire on the night air ?" Follow then Viola and Malvolio, and Benedick from "Much Ado About Nothing," to be swallowed up at last in the darkness. There come, too, Portia, Shylock, Antonio, and the voice of Enobarbus, painting with gilded words the barge of Cleopatra. Orlando and Rosalind play their parts, and then in fiercer contrast bursts forth the stormy love of Katherine and Petruchio. When these depart the Spirit of the City finds it in her heart to say: "These are not dreams. These are more real Than flesh and blood and houses and high towers.

Those live, and in an unkind wind they die. These cannot die. They have no mortal part A chill east wind can blow into thin dust. They are above the blight of wind or sun, Intimate and immortal among men."

In the martial tones of Henry V, the wrangling of Brutus and Cassius, the tragedy of Wolsey, the perturbation of Hamlet, the comic doubt of Launcelot Gobbo, and in the dread fate of Lear, the Spirit of the Modern City learns to find more than an echo of her own realities. It is the outcast Lear that moves her to say:

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While you go crying through the stormy dark,
Shelterless and forsaken, a mad king,
Too kind, too little cautious, for hard hearts
Like mine to comprehend? Under what
names,

Here in my city, do you brave the storm? Speak, speak. Under what names, under what names?

Gone! On what corner will I shuffle by A shivering, ragged king, and know him not." If, like the City of Mr. Hagedorn's masque, we can find the courage, the vision, and the humility to go to Shakespeare for the knowledge and the understanding of our own times, for the searching of our own hearts, and the reflection of our own passions and ambitions, we shall never find occasion to view the celebration of the tercentenary of his death with any feeling of dread or alarm.

Shakespeare is not dead, either "for an age or all time," despite the best efforts of those who have endeavored to immortalize his fame.

OUR NATION AND OUR ARMY

Since 1911 we have been threatened by revolution and invasion on our southern border.

It was in that year that President Taft ordered the mobilization of a division of troops, a division which should have numbered 19,000 men, but which twenty-five days after the orders for concentration were

issued reached only 11,000. Eighty-five days after the order for mobilization was given it reached its maximum strength of a little under 13,000 men!

To-day on this Mexican border there is concentrated two-thirds of the mobile army of the United States-a Nation of one hundred million souls. Yet before these troops were able to advance into Mexico on a punitive expedition against a bandit chief it was found necessary to send for reinforcements from California, Georgia, Kansas, and Virginia; and before any expeditionary force could venture upon a foreign soil it found it necessary to advertise for fifty-four motor trucks for the transport of its supplies.

Disregarding the ever-threatening possibility of such an expedition into Mexican territory as we have now undertaken, we have been setting our army an impossible task even in protecting our own soil. We have asked twenty thousand men, divided into organizations too depleted for efficiency, to guard a line four times as long as that which divides the armies of France and Germany.

PRESIDENT WILSON, MR. ROOSEVELT, AND BELGIUM

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A REPLY TO EX-GOVERNOR GLYNN

T the Republican State Convention held in New York City a few weeks ago ex-Senator Root made a severe and apparently unanswerable criticism of President Wilson for the latter's failure to utter an official protest against the criminal invasion and destruction of Belgium by Germany. I say apparently unanswerable because at the Democratic State Conference or Convention held at Syracuse a few days later an attempt was made to answer it. Ex-Governor Glynn, a gifted, capable, and highly intelligent Democrat, was selected as the David of the Administration party to destroy the

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