during the last ten years? The revolting tale of the Shipping Board, the perfidy of the Alien Property administration, the crime of the airplane enterprise, the shame of the oil deal, together with numerous bills and measures equally unjust, and unnecessarily adding millions directly to the taxpayers' burdens!

In 1913 our tax bill, state and federal, was $2,194,000,000. Eight years thereafter and four years after the close of the war, when many of the war expenses should have been eliminated, our tax bill was $7,061,000,000. In 1913 we were taking 6.4 per cent of our national income for taxes. In 1922 we were taking 12.1 per cent. In 1901 our appropriations were $705,666,298.83. Twenty-three years afterward our appropriations were $3,706,779,063.12. In 1894 our taxes were $12.50 per capita. In 1923 they were about $68 per capita. I haven't the slightest doubt-and I say this after a very careful investigation and after consulting people who were far more capable of investigating-but that at least five billion dollars of our national debt represents sheer waste, extravagance, and profiteering.

Turning to the States, the situation is even worse. The percentage of increase in taxes in the States ranged from 100 per cent to 350 per cent during the last ten years. The tax bill of the farmers in 1913 was $624,000,000; in 1922 it was $1,436,000,000. Measured by the ratio of income, the farmer in 1922 paid 16.6 per cent of his entire income for taxes. Professor Richard T. Ely makes the startling statement that "taxes on farm lands are steadily and rapidly approximating the annual value of farm lands." While we are investigating to find out what is the matter with agriculture, I beg leave to say that the great trouble is that we are taxing the farmer to death. No one is more affected by railroad rates than the producer, the farmer, and the live-stock man, and when we turn to the increase of taxes upon these industries we find that in 1902 railroad taxes per mile were $272; in 1922 they were $1,241 per mile.

The issue of economy was the issue which broke across party lines and

brought Mr. Coolidge more votes than all the other issues combined. He had convinced the people of his purpose relative to this important issue. Extravagance is the most subtle and dangerous disease with which a free government has to contend. It is now a national disease. The Republican party must cope with it. It will require skill and courage and great persistence to eliminate it from the body politic. Any one who is interested in the future of the party and, what is far more important, in the future of our country will stand true in this fight.

The second great obligation of the party imposed upon it by reason of this election is to give the people economy in government. The more we think upon it, the more we examine it, the more we will find what a stupendous task has been imposed upon us.

Law enforcement has become a great national problem. This government was founded upon the theory that the people would obey the laws which they helped to make. Upon no other theory can it be maintained. The basis upon which the whole structure rests is obedience to the law because it is the law. This principle is being sadly challenged by actual facts. I do not know of a more startling document than a report lately made by a special committee of the American Bar Association. According to this report, in 1920 there were 9,000 homicides in the United States; in 1921, 9,500. During the last ten years 85,000 people from poison, the pistol, the knife, or other unlawful means have suffered death. That seems inconceivable in a government less than one hundred and fifty years old founded upon the will and loyalty of the people and expressing through its institutions the highest exemplification of law and order. In 1922 there were 17 murders in the city of London, 260 in the city of New York, 137 in the city of Chicago. In 1921 there were 121 robberies in all of England and Wales combined, 1,445 in New York City, 2,417 in the city of Chicago. This presents a great national problem which can never be remedied except through the invincible power of public opinion, through bringing ourselves to understand again that respect

ernment requires that the Constitution be respected and enforced. No one can deny the right of a citizen, or a body of citizens, to urge a change of the Constitution to rewrite all or any part of it is a right which no one ought to challenge. But while it is the fundamental law, it is nothing less than a betrayal of the first principles of free government to disregard it, or any provision of it.

There should be a nation-wide movement for law enforcement, not alone an appeal to the officers to do their duty, but also to the people generally, that public opinion may be molded in support of the cause. The Republican party can perform no greater service to the cause of good government than by making law enforcement one of its primary obligations and duties. The people as a whole expect it and good morals and sound and secure government demand it.

I have sought to accentuate the importance of the foregoing because I regard them as the most immediate and important problems with which the party must deal. The discussion of these matters leaves neither time nor space to more than mention some of the other things of only little less importance.

The transportation problem, the coal problem, legislation touching the development of electric power, present a line of work which calls for a vast amount of careful preparation and the highest order of constructive talent. The responsibility has been placed upon the party for four years in the executive department and probably as long in the legislative department. We shall have to deal with these subjects within that time. They cannot wait, and we cannot take the risk of having them wait. The sooner we get at the task the better.

It would seem that we should take up the work at once and begin by appointing agencies for investigation and study, to be followed by legislation, somewhat as we are proposing to do with the agricultural problem. Delay is dangerous, principally for the reason that, too long postponed, a crisis will come and we shall have to enact ill-considered and hasty and harmful legislation. Under the whip and overnight, as is our wont, we will undertake

to solve some of the most difficult and delicate problems imaginable. If this winter should present the coal proposition as it was presented some two winters ago we would be at the mercy of two groups of men—the government would be in a distressing situation and practically helpless. If these were new problems, it would be different, but they have been waiting for consideration a long time.

In foreign affairs the most interesting questions of a century are begging for attention. I am just as much opposed to foreign political entanglements or engagements as one could well be. They seem to me not only unwise and dangerous but actually an embarrassment, a hindrance in the great leadership which may, if we choose, be ours in the cause of disarmament and peace. The fact that we want no foreign political obligations or entanglements does not in any sense relieve us from concern and consideration touching those great principles which lie at the base of not only our material but our spiritual progress and power.

We ought to lead out in re-establishing and bringing down to date a body of international law. A court without a body of laws under, and in accordance with, which it may function would be unworkable, and if workable most undesirable-a menace. We ought to seek to incorporate in that code provisions which would express the judgment of mankind that war is a crime and should no longer be accepted among enlightened nations as a legitimate institution for the settlement of international disputes; then the establishment of an international judicial tribunal divorced from and independent of all international politics or political institutions, with power and jurisdiction to hear and decide all questions arising under international law or treaties. We can render a singularly great service to the cause of peace and disarmament and to the advancement and happiness of the whole human family, and we can do so without sacrificing or even putting in pawn our freedom of action or our sovereignty and without departing from the traditional policies under which we have come into our present place of prestige and power.

ANY writers knew my dear friend, and will write of him better than I; but no other writer knew him quite so long, or knew him both as sailor and novelist.

It was in March, 1893, that I first met Conrad on board the English sailing ship Torrens in Adelaide Harbor. He was superintending the stowage of cargo. Very dark he looked in the burning sunlight-tanned, with a peaked brown beard, almost black hair, and dark brown eyes, over which the lids were deeply folded. He was thin, not tall, his arms very long, his shoulders broad, his head set rather forward. He spoke to me with a strong foreign accent. He seemed to me strange on an English ship. For fifty-six days I sailed in his company.

The chief mate bears the main burden of a sailing ship. All the first night he was fighting a fire in the hold. None of us seventeen passengers knew of it till long after. It was he who had most truck with the tail of that hurricane off the Leeuwin, and later with another storm. He was a good seaman, watchful of the weather; quick in handling the ship; considerate with the apprentices-we had a long, unhappy Belgian youth among them, who took unhandily to the sea and dreaded going aloft; Conrad compassionately spared him all he could. With the crew he was popular; they were individuals to him, not a mere gang; and long after he would talk of this or that among them, especially of old Andy the sailmaker: "I liked that old fellow, you

know." With the young second mate, a cheerful, capable young seaman, very English, he was friendly; and respectful, if faintly ironic, with his whiskered, stout old English captain. I was supposed to be studying navigation for the Admiralty Bar, and every day would work out the ship's position with the captain. On one side of the saloon table we would sit and check our observations on this important matter with those of Conrad, who would sit on the other side of the table and look at us a little quizzically. For Conrad had commanded ships, and his subordinate position on the Torrens was only due to the fact that he was then still convalescent from the Congo experience which had nearly killed him. Many evening watches in fine weather we spent on the poop. Ever the great teller of a tale, he had already nearly twenty years of tales to tell. Tales of ships and storms, of Polish revolution, of his youthful Carlist gun-running adventure, of the Malay seas, and the Congo; and of men and men; all to a listener who had the insatiability of a twenty-five year old.

When, seven or eight years later, Conrad, though then in his best period and long acclaimed a great writer by the few, was struggling, year in year out, to keep a roof over him amidst the apathy of the many who afterward fell over each other to read him in his worst period, I remember urging him to raise the wind by taletelling in public. He wouldn't, and he was right. Still, so incomparable a raconteur must have made a success, even though his audience might have missed many words owing to his strange yet fascinating foreign accent.