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THE LITERARY DIGEST is published weekly by the Funk & Wagnalls Company, 354-360 Fourth Avenue, New York, and Salisbury Square, London, E. C. Entered as second-class matter, March 24, 1890, at the Post-office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Entered as second-class matter at the Post-office Department, Ottawa, Canada. A Summer Vacation Camp including technical course, $350. Military discipline and fundamental Eight weeks. Opens July 1. Closes August 28. Maintenance and Training instruction preparatory to vocational careers in the reconstruction work of post-war times will be a leading feature of the camp. INFANTRY CAVALRY Aviation Motor Mechanics Motion Pictures showing the training activities of more than 800 enrolled in the two 1918 camps will be exhibited daily at 9 E. 45th Street, New York City. Complete line of standard text books on military science and vocational training, For details address MILITARY AIDE, 9 E. 45th Street, New York City The Digest School Directory Index E print below the names and addresses of the schools and colleges whose announcements appear in The Digest during December. The December 7th issue contains a descriptive announcement of each school. We suggest that you write for catalogs and special information to any of the institutions listed below, or we will gladly answer your direct inquiry. Latest data procured by one who visits the schools is always on hand. Price, locality, size of school, age of child, are all factors to be considered. Make your inquiry as definite as is possible and receive time-saving information by writing to the schools or direct to the SCHOOL DEPARTMENT of The Literary Digest GIRLS' SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES D. C.....Nat'l Park Seminary.... Washington ILL....... .Illinois Woman's Coll....Jacksonville Mo... Lindenwood College.. PA... TENN.. VA... WIS...... .St. Charles Bishopthorpe Manor. Bethlehem Ward-Belmont.. Mary Baldwin Seminary...Staunton Hollins College.. .Milwaukee-Downer Seminary BOYS' SCHOOLS ALA......Marion Institute N. J... Peddie Institute.. N.C......Pinehurst School. .Nashville Hollins Milwaukee .Marion Hightstown Pinehurst VA. Fishburne Mil. School.. Waynesboro W18......St. John's Mil. Academy....Delafield IND. SPECIAL SCHOOLS ..Bogue Institute for Stammerers Indianapolis N. J......Bancroft Training Sch... Haddonfield N. Y.....Rye Beach School for Backward PA. Children.. Rye Beach Acerwood Tutoring School....Devon School for Exceptional Children Roslyn WIS......North-Western School for PUBLIC OPINION (New York) combined with THE LITERARY DIGEST Published by Funk & Wagnalla Company (Adam W. Wagnalls, Pres.; Wilfred J. Funk, Vice-Pres.; Robert J. Cuddihy, Treas.; William Neisel, Sec'y), 354-360 Fourth Ave., New York Whole Number 1496 T BRITAIN'S PEACE TERMS It HE ALLIED TRIUMPH would be a fantom victory, and Germany's surrender not wholly a defeat, the London Times reminds us, if by any means discord could be sown between the United States and the British Empire. is this fact that gives peculiar importance to the reactions of public opinion in America to the various frank statements concerning British peace aims that have recently been drawn from British statesmen by an approaching election. German sympathizers and propagandists, we are told by Judson C. Welliver, a Washington correspondent of the New York Globe, are blowing assiduously upon every spark of anti-British feeling that is still alive in this country, and are magnifying every suggestion of divergence between President Wilson and the British Government. Especially do those propagandists try to arouse on this side of the Atlantic fear and distrust of Britain's naval supremacy, while in England they circulate rumors that the United States, emerging from the war stronger than her exhausted allies and with a great new merchant marine, aims to dominate the world commercially and to "suck the marrow out of the whole of Europe." But in spite of these sinister suggestions we find the American press discussing in an entirely dispassionate vein the outspoken words of Winston Churchill and Lloyd George concerning Britain's naval policy, while the English papers are calmly confident that nothing can check the growing understanding between the two great English-speaking peoples. For, as the New York World remarks, the unifying purpose behind President Wilson's fourteen points is to make this war the end of war, and the same purpose inspires the attitude of Britain's spokesmen. Foremost among the points counted upon by the mischiefmakers to cause dissension between the United States and Great Britain was the freedom of the seas. Here we have the 66 frank statement of Winston Churchill, head of the British Admiralty when the war began, and now Minister of Munitions, that Britain enters the Peace Conference 'with the absolute determination that no limitation shall be imposed on our right to maintain our naval defense." And this was followed by a similar utterance from Mr. Churchill's chief, Premier Lloyd George, who declares that "wherever the request comes from we are not going to give up the protection of the Navy so far as Great Britain is concerned." For, he adds, "our Navy is a defensive weapon and not an offensive one, and that is why we do not intend to give it up." The British Prime Minister also calls for the ending of conscription in Europe, and for the payment by Germany of the cost of the war "to the utmost limit of her capacity." This war-bill of the Allies against Germany he places at $120,000,000,000. Mr. Churchill elaborates his defense of British naval supremacy in an article in the Glasgow Post, from which we quote the following paragraphs: "Our safety from invasion, our daily bread, every means whereby we maintain our existence as an independent people; our unity as an empire or federation of commonwealths and dependencies all these float from hour to hour upon our naval defense. If that defense is neglected, weakened, or fettered, we all shall be in continual danger of subjugation or starvation. We should be forced to live in continued anxiety. If that naval defense were overpowered or outmatched by any other navy, or probably by a combination of navies, we should hold not merely our possessions, but our lives and liberties only on sufferance.... "We are also entitled to point out that this naval strength that we require and which we are determined to preserve has never been used in modern history in a selfish and aggressive manner, and that it has on four separate occasions in four separate centuries, against Philip II. of Spain, Louis XIV., Napoleon, and the Kaiser, successfully defended civilization from military 6 The Literary Digest for December 21, 1918 tyranny, and particularly preserved the independence of the Low Countries. . "In this greatest of all wars the British Navy shielded mighty America from all menace of serious danger, and when she re Englands "A SHIP FOR A SHIP." Such boastings as the Germans use will be turned against them when they are made to replace, in ships or money, the tonnage destroyed by their U-boats. The specks on this German poster are supposed to show the ships sunk in one year's submarine warfare in British waters. solved to act it was the British Navy that transported and escorted the greater proportion of her armies to the rescue and deliverance of France. Our record in a hundred years of unquestioned naval sway since Trafalgar proves the sobriety of our policy and the righteousness of our intentions. Almost the only ports in the world opened freely to the commerce of all nations were those of our islands. Its possessions and our coaling stations were used freely and fully by the ships of all nations. . "We are sincere advocates of a league of nations. Every influence Britain can bring to bear will be used to make such a league a powerful reality. This fine conception of President Wilson has been warmly welcomed by British democracies all over the world. We shall strive faithfully and loyally to carry it into being and keep it in active benefit and existence. But we must state quite frankly that a league of nations can not be for us a substitute for the British Navy in any period that we can foresee." There is no cause for surprize or apprehension in Mr. Churchill's words, remarks the New York Evening Sun, and the New York Tribune considers it a simple fact that the British Navy has been the most formidable weapon on the side of right; that without it we should have lost the world to the Hun, and that English superiority at sea is not an aspiration but a condition." The Chicago Tribune concedes the soundness of Britain's attitude toward her Navy, but thinks her rash in her determination to discard her other defensive weapon, the conscript army. The Baltimore Evening Sun, on the other hand, thinks the question of British navalism "the most momentous that faces ITS the American people and the world to-dEagle does not see how we can demand th ments on land without also demanding it at s klyn arma e Eagle: gainst conelped to es "If the British delegates are to carry their scription they will do so only because they ha. tablish the international league which Mr. Wilson has urged. Such a league would reduce the liability of war and make great standing armies and the conscription principle unnecessary and obsolete. But if the league reduces the size of armies and knocks out conscription it must also reduce the size of navies. If there is to be disarmament at all there must be disarmament all around, otherwise the league would become a mere fantasy of international politics, an illusion to be laughed away so soon as its incongruity and impotence become manifest." London correspondents hint that "when President Wilson's proposals on the subject of the freedom of the seas are definitely laid before the Allied peace delegates it will be found that they are in no way so antagonistic to British interests as has been generally supposed." In the London Daily Express we read: "Informal conversations have been in progress some time, with the result that the British Government is in possession of concrete suggestions which are more understandable than the rather hazy wording of the famous Clause 2 of the Fourteen Points. Wilson, on the other hand, is in possession of information showing him definitely that Britain can not give up the right of search at sea, the law of contraband, and the enforcement of blockade. We understand Wilson's proposals do not include abandonment of any of those rights. "The whole position, of course, is dependent on the success of the President's basic proposition for a league of nations. If that proposal does not succeed, the whole suggestion for any international control of naval and military power falls to the ground. It is only in the event of the league being formed, with definite agreed principles to govern its actions in all conceivable emergencies, that questions on the exercise of sea-power will arise for settlement. "The President's proposal in that event amounts to a suggestion from the second strongest naval power, which the United States now is, to the strongest, to fix definite rates of naval construction, to which all will loyally adhere; and, further, that in the event of it being necessary to bring naval pressure to bear on any recalcitrant nation, the task should jointly be undertaken by the two leading naval powers. "Bringing pressure to bear by sea-power can only mean the share with us what the Germans termed the odium of being the world's 'naval bully."" Perhaps The Express would find confirmation of this view in the statement of John Sharp Williams on the floor of the Senate, that President Wilson is going to Europe to bring into existence a league of nations to be dominated by the United States and Great Britain. As Senator Williams puts it: "If the two English-speaking nations go into it, we can by our sea-power, by our control over raw materials, by our control over natural resources, force the other nations of the world to do the league's bidding. We can agree that any civilized nation that makes war upon another without first submitting the questions in controversy to an arbitration tribunal shall be outside of the pale of civilization and that the freedom to operate upon the high seas shall be denied to her, that access to the raw materials and markets which the two nations in the league shall control shall be denied to her, and in that way we can keep peace in the world for one hundred years, if we only have the courage to do it." This feeling on the part of leading Americans that the two great English-speaking nations have a common duty to the world leads them to accept without jealousy the fact of Great Britain's naval supremacy. Ex-President Taft sees "nothing in England's position as to her fleet that should discourage the friends of the league of nations to enforce peace." Similarly Colonel Roosevelt concedes Britain's imperative need of "the greatest navy in the world." "Our own need for a great navy comes next," he says, "and we should have the second navy in the world." In a "Britain day" statement the Colonel has declared that "under no circumstances shall there ever be a resort to war" between the two countries, and that "no question can ever arise between them that can not be settled in judicial fashion." Britain's peace terms, besides demanding the punishment of the German nation by the exaction of indemnities and the loss of her colonies, call for the trial and punishment of those individuals responsible for the war. "Men guilty of unspeakable atrocities upon our prisoners and upon the civilian inhabitants of the invaded lands must stand trial, and if they are condemned must suffer death," declares Sir Auckland Geddes, Minister of National Service. And the Prime Minister says that the Government's legal advisers "have unanimously come to the conclusion that the Kaiser and his accomplices in the making CLEANING (?) UP. -Sykes in the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. of this war ought to be tried by an international court," and he declares that "the British Government will use its whole influence at the Peace Conference to see that justice is executed." Of the war-bill to be collected from Germany he says: "All the European Allies have accepted the principle that the Central Powers must pay the cost of the war up to the limit of their capacity. The Allies propose to appoint a committee of experts to examine the best method of exacting the indemnity." And in a later statement he thus summarizes the Allied position: "First-As far as justice is concerned, we have an absolute right to demand the whole cost of the war from Germany. "Secondly-We propose to demand the whole cost of the war from Germany. "Thirdly-When you come to the exacting of it we must exact in such a way that it does not do more harm to the country that receives it than the country that is paying it. "Fourthly-The committee appointed by the British Cabinet believes that that can be done. "Fifthly-The Allies are in exactly the same boat. We shall put in our demands all together, and whatever they are they must come in front of the German war-debt." "Germany will have no colonies when the Allies are done with this business," declares Sir Auckland Geddes. The most emphatic demands that Germany's colonies in Africa and the Pacific islands shall not be returned to her come from the Union of South Africa and from Australia and New Zealand. As Frank H. Simonds reminds us in the New York Tribune: "Britain has won this war in no small measure because of the support of her colonies. She can not by sheer force compel a restoration of German colonies to Germany in the face of the opposition of her own colonies without the gravest consequences. In point of fact, the Pacific islands of Germany were taken by Australian and New Zealand troops, who occupy them, and the conquest of German Southwest Africa was mainly a SouthAfrican enterprise. "And to understand the attitude of the British colonies, it is useful for Americans to go back in American history to the time of the victory of Britain, with the very great aid of the American colonies, over France, which culminated in the capture of Quebec. At that time the suggestion of a return of Canada to France would have precipitated a revolution in the Thirteen Colonies, and for the simple reason that it would have meant a perpetuation of the condition of warfare in America." WAR-TAXES FOR PEACE YEARS NR O PEACE FOR THE TAXPAYER was provided by the armistice which ended the war; indeed, the horrors of war from the view-point of the man who pays the bills would seem to be if anything increasing rather than diminishing. In our very first peace year the financial authorities at Washington call for the raising of the largest tax ever levied by any nation, overtopping the existing "war-tax" by nearly two billion dollars. Four billion dollars was sufficient for the first complete fiscal year after we went into the war; if the war had not ended when it did, we would have doubled that sum for the year 1918-1919; with peace insured, we are asked to furnish six billions for this year and four billions for the next. Before he left the Treasury, Secretary McAdoo warned us that for some years to come the Government's needs will run above $4,000,000,000 yearly as compared with ordinary prewar expenses of about $1,000,000,000. The end of the world-war was, naturally enough perhaps, the signal for the revival of partizan warfare over tax-making, so that Washington correspondents predict a deadlock over taxation legislation which will defeat the pending Revenue Bill and compel the Internal Revenue Collector very soon to proceed to collect under the existing complicated taxrates, with perhaps an emergency warprofits tax added. And the New York World observes that if Congress "does not at once sanction the collection of more taxmoney on the business of this calendar year," the Government "must put out a new Liberty loan very soon." This Democratic daily sees in the general demobilization of our war-machinery "no excuse whatever for such a state of demoralization in current war-finance as has been reached in Congress." It reminds us that the Revenue Bill which was passed by the House of Representatives on September 20, and reported to the Senate by the Finance Committee on December 6, has actually been under consideration by Congress almost nine months. The taxpayer, declares The World, "has a right to know what his taxes are." He is, we are told, "more interested in this than in knowing what he has got to pay a year from now." Yet the provision for raising revenue for two years instead of one, according to the Washington correspondents, is the single thing which is holding up the passage of the bill. A political neutral, suggests one correspondent, might easily conclude "that the whole deadlock is little more than a rivalry as to which yard the game of laying taxes is to be played in." That such an issue should give rise to a partizan struggle seems strange enough to the ordinary citizen who pays the taxes, the Chicago Daily News (Ind.) remarks, and it proceeds: carefully inquire what is best for the country, for industry, trade, and commerce, for capital and labor? Why should a business question be exploited by either party for political purposes? This is not the time to play politics at the expense of business stability and prosperity." Yet it is for the sake of business stability that Chairman Simmons of the Senate Finance Committee, Mr. McAdoo, and President Wilson advocate the immediate determination of the taxes to be levied for the next two years. The President, it will be remembered, insisted on this point in his address to Congress at the opening of the present session. As he said: "As much of the burden of taxation must be lifted from business as sound methods of financing the Government will permit, and those who conduct the great essential industries of the country must be told as exactly as possible what obligations to the Government they will be expected to meet in the years immediately ahead of them; it will be of serious consequence to the country to delay removing all uncertainties in this matter a single day longer than the right processes of debate justify. It is idle to talk of successful and confident business reconstruction before those uncertainties are resolved. "I entirely concur with the Secretary of the Treasury in recommending that . . provisions be made now, not subsequently, that the taxes to be paid in 1920 should be reduced from six to four billions. Any arrangements less definite than these would add elements of doubt and confusion to the critical period of industrial readjustment through which the country must now immediately pass, and which no true friend of the nation's essential business interests can afford to be responsible for creating or prolonging." The Democratic plan for announcing at this time the reduction of taxation by a third for the fiscal year of 1920 is approved by the independent Washington Post, as "certain to prove encouraging to industry," and as a stimulant to business activities. By the passage of such a tax law, business men, we are told, will be furnished with a guide most "helpful in the formulation of their plans." The Post admits that the Treasury Department may not be able definitely to estimate at this time the requirements for 1920, but it thinks that amendments can easily be made at any time, "and if the Republicans see fit, with control of both branches in their hands, they can remodel the entire act." CARTER GLASS, "Why should the Democrats unitedly desire to enact at this time what are practically two revenue bills, one for 1919 and another for 1920, and why should the Republicans in a body object to this idea? Is it true, as some charge, that the Democrats merely seek to prevent a special session of the new Congress? Or is it the fact, as the Democrats affirm, that legitimate business and sound finance would be greatly aided and encouraged during the coming difficult period of readjustment if the revenue program for 1920 were determined without further delay? "To the ordinary citizen there suggests itself a simple way of settling this curious controversy. Why should not the Senate leaders ascertain the sentiment of enlightened and competent bankers, manufacturers, merchants, and exporters? Why not But Republican editors do not agree that the two-year plan was designed to aid business. The Minneapolis Journal (Ind. Rep.) sums up the Democratic plan as one "to fix taxation on the lines of the Kitchin-Simmons bill for the next two years-and to do it while the fixing is good." Once this law were enacted, the Minnesota editor thinks that a Presidential veto would balk any attempt at amendment or repeal. Then the Republican Congress might "be obliged to impose heavy taxation for 1921" with resulting handicap in the coming Presidential campaign. The New York Evening Sun (Ind. Rep.) denounces as "mere false pretense" the plea that the Democratic plan is intended to help business. Business, it says, "knows that all unnecessary burdens will be removed just as soon as the new Congress can convene." One Democratic newspaper, the Brooklyn Eagle, is inclined to agree with some of its Republican contemporaries that the taxpayers are not now troubling themselves about any taxes other than those for next year and sees "as much warrant for looking forward to national necessities for several years as there is for anticipating those of one." Moreover, "there is literally no warrant for the 'usurpations' by one Congress of the functions |