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trol of the "Spectator" to another understanding friend of America, the originating and active spirit of the EnglishSpeaking Union, Evelyn Wrench.

In English politics Mr. Strachey belonged by nature and circumstance in the middle of the road. When the Irish question became acute, he naturally found himself among the Liberal Unionists. Although the issues of the '80's and '90's had passed, he remained to the end liberally conservative or conservatively liberal, temperamentally averse to extremes. He could not be either a "die-hard" or a "Red." He foresaw the war, or at least the danger that Germany was bringing on; and during the war he was a valiant defender of the cause of the Allies. His career is a fine example of what high journalistic standards are when embodied in an active, intelligent, and informed personality.

Germany's Flag Controversy
THE

HE flag controversy which New York's debonair young Mayor inadvertently brought to a head upon his visit to Berlin has long been one of the most vexatious questions in German political life. Strong as republican Germany may be, the Government has never

felt able to enforce unqualified allegiance to the republican colors, and the flag of Imperial Germany remains the symbol of the Fatherland to the monarchist elements in German national life. In 1926 even the Government challenged the republican flag and in an amazing decree the Luther Cabinet instructed the foreign representatives of Germany abroad to place the old Imperial colors alongside the new. This aroused a storm of opposition among the liberal elements of the Reichstag. The Luther Government was defeated, and was replaced by a Cabinet formed from the same groups which had supported Luther, but headed by Chancellor Marx. It was then decided that the regulation of the former Government would be carried out until a commission could find a compromise flag.

Since then the Nationalists, with their monarchist sympathies, have continued to fly the old flag, the republicans and Socialists stand by the new. present instance the Berlin hotel at which Mayor Walker was to be entertained refused to fly the republican colors out of respect for its Nationalist clientele, and fell under the boycott of the city Council and of the state of Prus

sia. The Federal Government, however, satisfied its scruples with an ineffectual protest, and its representative attended. a dinner where the American flag and the flag of Imperial Germany were the chief decorations.

The flag has become a symbol of the continuing struggle between republicans and monarchists; it is an issue on which clash the old order and the new in the life of modern Germany.

A Challenge to Ireland

D

RAMA on a national scale is being staged in Ireland. President Cosgrave, of the Irish Free State, has put the future of his Government in the hands of the Irish people. After defeating his antagonists of the radical republican faction, both in the lower chamber of the national Parliament and in two critical by-elections in Dublin, he has dissolved the Parliament and called for new general elections. The move is not mere shrewd politics, as some of his critics have said, but statesmanship informed by practical political sense of a high order.

Warnings of the present conflict ap

September 7, 1927

peared last year when Eamonn De Valera, once chief of the Sinn Fein irreconcilables, quit that party and formed a new faction under the name of Fianna Fail. In contrast with his earlier refusal to take any part in the affairs of the Free State, he began to advocate entry of Irish republicans into the Parliament if and when the oath of allegiance to the King should be abolished. That oath he continued to regard as treason to the cause of Ireland. Then, this spring, the success of his faction in winning over forty seats in the Dail Eireann, the lower chamber, put the temptation of power more definitely in his way. In combination with the Labor Party and the National League, both opposed to the Government, he saw a chance to control a narrow majority in the chamber and overthrow the Government. So he agreed to take the oath as a formality not binding upon the members of his faction, and the Fianna Fail delegates took their seats. Only by virtue of the abstention of one National League member from voting, it will be recalled, did the radicals fail to turn the Government out.

President Cosgrave, having faced his foes in the Parliament and barely escaped disaster, adjourned the session to await the outcome of two doubtful byelections in the capital city of Dublin. If the Government should win them, observers predicted, he would carry on in office with his Ministry and count on a demonstration of constructive economic policy to strengthen his position gradually. But Dublin-with the memory of the killing of Kevin O'Higgins, the Foreign Minister, still keen-spoke for the Government candidates by smashing majorities. Cosgrave at once did the unexpected and challenging thing. Instead of accepting a temporarily safe position, he threw the issue to the country.

In effect he has said to the Irish people: "You have seen the crisis and the threat. You have seen the attempt to upset the Government responsible for the treaty of peace with England that has put you in charge of your own affairs for the first time in seven centuries. You have seen O'Higgins wantonly murdered by assassins. Now do you want the old strife and turmoil back, and English soldiers again in Ireland, or do you want the present order continued? Dublin has spoken in no uncertain terms. But the voice of the capital is not enough. It is for you to say."

Thus confronted by a responsible executive and an irresponsible agitator, it is inconceivable that the people of Ire

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land will fail to choose the reality of the Free State.

forces. The standards of 1805 are still useful even in 1927.

From Calm to Hurricane Foreign Misunderstand

G

REAT liners recently entered the Port of New York, and their passengers recounted tales of victory over unprecedented seas. The captain of the Martha Washington told of winds of Force 12, and newspaper accounts of the storm repeated this awesome figure without any very clear indication that the writers of the headlines knew what Force 12 meant. It sounded bad enough, in all conscience, but it was used by the ship news reporters in the manner of an incomprehensible nautical term beyond the understanding of landlubbers.

Force 12 and the eleven numbers which are applied to winds have a history of nearly a century and a quarter. It dates back, then, well into sailing-ship times, and owes its invention to the ingenuity of that famous British hydrographer, Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort. In 1805 he was in command of the store-ship Woolwich, and wished to find a method of rendering his ship's log both concise and comprehensive. He developed a table of wind strengths, based on the effect of the wind upon sailing ships, which ran from zero to twelve. When the wind was of Force 0 a full-rigged ship with all sails set would be without steerage way. With the wind at Force 12 it would be scudding under bare poles. At Force 5 this same ship could carry its royals while sailing on the wind. Α coasting smack at Force 5 would have to begin to shorten sail.

The winds as Beaufort described them, translated into terms of velocities, are as follows:

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ing of America

Na world in which dictatorship (whether of the Soviet or the Fascist variety) is trying to grapple with democracy (whether in politics or in industry or in any other sphere of life) America, working out the experiment of democracy, is bound to be misrepresented and misunderstood. In America, under a developing democracy where not only are the people in control of their Government but wage-earners and consumers are coming more and more into ownership and control of industry by democratic methods, there is a wider diffusion of well-being than has existed anywhere else at any time on such a scale. Naturally, therefore, in such a country as Russia and among such parties as the European Communists anything which can be used to discredit American democracy is seized upon. Mr. Hillquit, an American representative of the opponents of the democratic experiment, uses the language of the Communists in denouncing the Sacco-Vanzetti case as "one of the most striking instances of capitalistic vindictiveness in dealing with working-class captives in the class war." Quotations of this sort from statements made in Russia, Germany, France, and Italy might be made indefinitely.

But misrepresentation based on real misunderstanding is to be found elsewhere abroad. It seems to be hard for Europeans to understand us. This has been revealed anew by remarks upon the Sacco-Vanzetti case.

This is partly due to the fact that Europe cannot understand a country in which there are no permanent barriers between classes. Europe, it seems, cannot realize that many men in this country are both capitalists and laborers, both bourgeoisie and proletariat-to use terms that in the United States really have no meaning or have meaning only in relation to those groups that are bits of Europé transplanted. Only those in America use the term class war who live in a foreign atmosphere and think in foreign terms.

There is another reason why Europe does not understand the United States. The American legal system is entirely different from the European. One instance may suffice. In France, for example, a case on appeal may be tried wholly anew, as Professor Eugene Wambaugh, of Harvard, pointed out at Williamstown the other day, while here

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an appeal is argued only on those points on which there has been a claim of error in the lower court. There is reason for thinking that our way is better; but, at any rate, it is different. This is probably not generally understood in France or in the countries of the Continent.

There is still another reason why Europe misunderstands us. There is nothing there like our Federal system. Massachusetts' courts are as independent of New York's as if they were of another country. There is no ground here for Federal interference except as the Constitution is involved. Not understanding this, Europe expected the United States Government to interfere in the SaccoVanzetti case by exercising some kind of authority.

We ought to be better understood in England, which has a legal system like

ours.

But even there misunderstanding seems unavoidable. The London "Spectator," which, as we point out elsewhere in this issue, has been especially understanding in its treatment of America, treats the Sacco-Vanzetti case as if it were a political one, apparently utterly unaware of the fact that the prisoners' political views were introduced into the trial as a defense. The New York

"Sun" recently quoted from several English journals passages that showed that they were quite ignorant of some of the elementary facts in the case.

Similar instances could be quoted of the misunderstanding of America's point of view at the Geneva Naval Conference. Intelligent Europeans have gone so far as to attribute Mr. Coolidge's withdrawal as a candidate to the failure of the Naval Conference. Europe, to which such a conference is of tremendous political importance, does not understand how little part that Conference at Geneva took in the minds of Americans or the thoughts of American politicians.

Understanding of America will come only with slow growth. To such an understanding a notable contribution is an article in the London "Outlook" (which has no connection with this journal) by Allen Raymond, the London correspondent of the New York "Times." His clear account of the salient facts in the Sacco-Vanzetti trial may counterbalance somewhat what he justly calls "attacks of cheap unfairness by distant public men unacquainted with the facts. of the court-room except as portrayed by propagandists." Sympathetic with the defendants, opposed to capital punishment, Mr. Raymond nevertheless expresses the belief, after attending the court-room at Dedham at the time of sentence, that Sacco and Vanzetti had had "all the fair consideration" it was

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By LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT
Contributing Editor of The Outlook

ANY preachers, teachers, and editors appear to be agreed that the times are out of joint, that the rising generation is in a parlous state, and that civilization as a whole is, metaphorically speaking, gyrating in a nose-dive or a tail-spin, or whatever stunt most vividly forewarns the spectators of a perilous smash. This is the gloomy view especially of the parlor intelligentsia whose philosophy of life is derived from the "American Mercury." The "Mercury" is their Koran and Mencken is their Prophet.

Nor is this frame of mind confined to the Menckenites. The September number of "Harper's Magazine," on the whole a very readable and stimulating periodical, is full of this kind of despondency. Take education, for instance. A Harvard graduate who is now a professor in a Western university has this to say of it in "Harper's: "

Democracy has swamped the colleges and, under its impetus, college men tend more and more to reverse evolution and to develop from heterogeneity to homogeneity. They tend to become a type, and, our civilization providing the mold, the type is that of the salesman. The attributes that distinguish it are shrewdness, craftiness, alertness, high-pressure affability, and, above all, efficiency. . . . But, at least, there is one force that moves counter to this one. The co-eds, in general, develop into individuals; and, in general, they oppose and dissent from the trend of college education.

. . If, hereafter, our colleges are to preserve any of the spirit that was lovely and admirable in their past, I am disposed to believe that the co-eds, those irresponsible and over-dressed young nit-wits, will save it unassisted. A world saved for high-power salesmen by irresponsible nit-wits! A lovely prospect, indeed!

Another contributor to this issue of "Harper's," an experienced newspaper man, is extremely despondent about American journalism. After reviewing

its present-day characteristics, he concludes that "Thus does the American press exemplify day by day the grandiose, the brobdingnagian art of ballyhoo."

Still another contributor, an eminent "behaviorist," puts the situation with striking lucidity thus:

To-day we are pre-eminently a verbally-reacting animal. This means that the laryngeal segment is the repository of most of our social and ethical training. Now if the stimulus does not activate this segment, "precepts," "shalls," and "shall nots" can never arouse socially acceptable substitutive reactions. It seems to me that almost the whole of ethics hinges upon the extent to which the child can be verbally organized.

It seems to me that, highly modern as this prescription is, it is not much of an advance over Socrates and Epictetus, and that even the unfashionable Micah, who said that the whole of ethics hinges on the cultivation of justice, mercy, and reverence, is easier to follow.

Still a fourth "Harper" contributor thinks that the trouble with American civilization is its mediocrity, its "collectivism." We are all suffering from the "intolerable tedium" of uniformity:

Everyone is aware that the failure of our civilization is precisely this failure in interest, for which nothing can make up. Our collective life is not "lived from a great depth of being," but from the surface; and the mark of the collective life is on the individual.

The trouble with most of these despondent gentlemen appears to me to be that of the poet quoted by the late Barrett Wendell in one of his letters:

God made the only world he could
And when the work was done
He said that it was very good-
I disagree, for one.

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September 7, 1927

"All men are liars;" and the pessimistic author of Ecclesiastes thought that the dead were more to be congratulated than the living and that the happiest lot of all was never to have been born.

Far be it from me to deny that modern civilization is full of puzzling and even disquieting defects; or to laugh at those amateur epistemologists who are honestly trying to get at the root of the matter. But if I might make my little contribution to the discussion I should venture to say that the trouble with the present-day American intelligentsia is that they are indulging in too much parlor thinking and too little kitchen doing. If this seems grossly materialistic, let me put it in the terms of G. Lowes Dickinson, the English philosopher, who was, at times, as delightfully despondent as George Santayana:

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In India the emphasis is on the Eternal, in the West on Time. . . Now, as between these two altitudes, I find myself quite clearly and definitely on the side of the West. I have said in the preceding pages hard things about Western civilization. I hate many of its manifestations. I am out of sympathy with many of its purposes. . . . But . . . the West is adventurous; and what is more it is adventurous on a quest. For, behind and beyond all its fatuities, confusions, crimes, lies, as the justification of it all, that deep determination to secure a society more just and more humane which inspires all men and all movements that are worth considering at all. . . . And that development consists in a constant expansion of interest away from and beyond one's own immediate interests and into the activities of the world at large.

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In other and simpler words, the best antidote for Weltschmerz is to saw wood.

At this point some reader may reasonably ask: "Why not take your own medicine? Why devote your time to writing weekly articles of a more or less abstract nature instead of doing something of concrete usefulness?" A point well taken. As it is a damp and rainy day and as guests are expected, I will go down and build a fire in the living-room. I cannot saw the wood; my faithful and useful man-of-all-work, who behaves well without ever thinking of behaviorism or psychoanalysis, has already done that; but I can carry the logs from the wood-closet, lay the kindling, sweep the hearth, apply the lighted match, and thus prepare some warmth and cheer for my arriving friends. That, at least, is something concrete.

A Groping Grand Old Party

Staff Correspondence from a Chain of States By DIXON MERRITT

UT of a wilderness almost twice as large as the State of Massachusetts, a wilderness in which is no human habitation, hardly a mark of human hands save some charred chunks of old camp-fires-the great wilderness of rock and water between Minnesota and Ontario-out of that wilderness, where I had sought and found solitude, I came, on a day not long ago, and, hunting for the Republican Party, plunged forthwith into a wilderness much more deep and dense.

One would hardly believe that a single short sentence of terse Anglo-Saxon words "I do not choose to run for President in 1928"-could so plunge a great and dominant political party into the midst of chaos. But in chaos the Republican Party is, alone and lost.

This is a restricted view-I have had a glass of small field-but it shows a sort of cross-section. The Republican Party along the Atlantic seaboard may, for all I know, see the way out. So may the Republicans of the Pacific coast, of the South. But those of the great midregion, of the States which compose the old Middle West, certainly do not.

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ment.

There is no such disappointThere has not been in that region in recent days, if there ever was, any deep devotion to Coolidge. There has been a sort of devotion to certain Coolidge policies. There has been a strictly orthodox adherence to the Administration as a party asset. But nobody, apparently, has loved Coolidge because he is Coolidge.

Coolidge's renunciation has caused no heart pang and sense of personal loss, as Roosevelt's renunciation did sixteen years ago. There are none who would count it a privilege to follow Coolidge into oblivion for a lost cause, as there were many who would have loved to follow Wilson thus.

One branch of the Republican Party in the Middle West positively did not want Coolidge as the nominee in 1928. Another branch did want him, but without enthusiasm, because he was, as they believed, the party's best asset. But those who did not want him apparently had no glimmer of hope that they might be rid of him, and those who did want him had no shadow of fear that they might lose him.

This, to me, is exceedingly strange, because, though I am not even the greatgrandson of a prophet, and though no seventh son has appeared in the direct line of my ancestry in all time, I have believed for more than eighteen months that Calvin Coolidge could not again be

President of the United States. It was on January 13, 1926, that I said in a signed article in The Outlook, "I do not suppose that Calvin Coolidge will ever again have the solid support that he once had from the West and the Middle West. I suppose that whatever hope there was of another term for Coolidge went glimmering in the last week of the old year [1925]."

Why Republicans never saw the possibility that Mr. Coolidge himself would see this situation, why they made no provision against the contingency of his seeing it, I cannot tell. But they did not. There were Republicans, both radical and regular, who, prior to the renunciation, were prepared to oppose Mr. Coolidge for the nomination. Many were prepared to make his nomination certain. But nowhere was anybody prepared to do anything independently of a Coolidge candidacy. His renunciation, therefore, left all of them, his foes as well as his friends, completely flabbergasted.

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than enough, if they materialize, to make a general scramble. Hoover and Hughes; Lowden and Dawes. I bracket them in this way because there is a feeling, somewhat general, that Lowden and Dawes must certainly run as stable mates and that Hoover and Hughes must probably do the same. Then there is a host of favorite sons. A number of States have one each. Ohio has triplets-Longworth and Willis and Fess. Indiana may enter Watson. Nebraska probably will let Norris start. Borah is spoken of, but few are willing to pin their colors to him because of the feeling that he would probably balk at the post--or quit in the stretch, if he should ever get there. All of these, with one exception, would be trading candidacies in any final showdown-not more than that, except on the off chance that one of them might win if the leaders, assuming that there will be leaders, should kill each other off. Borah, everybody knows, may quit, but cannot be pulled.

That for the minor candidacies. But of the major candidacies, only one means in the public mind in the region where I made my observations anything very definite and vital. That one is Lowden, and he means just one thing-farm relief. Those who favor his candidacy are not thinking of anything else. They ap

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parently care nothing about any other
issue or policy or purpose. There are,
it is true, Republicans willing to accept
Lowden who care nothing about farm
relief. They would accept him as they
would accept any other candidate who
might prove to be acceptable to the ma-
jority. One organization Republican-
and he lives as far east as Rochester,
New York-said to me: "Hoover or
Hughes or Lowden or Dawes our peo-
ple would be inclined to say that any
one of them is all right." So, if the wilder-
ness is dense, the Moseses are many.

Those who talk most of Hoover as the
nominee and they are fewer in the ter-
ritory through which I came than those
who talk of Lowden-do not appear to
be thinking of the great policies that
Hoover might stand for. What they see

The Outlook fo

must be such Republicans, but they a not among the so-called practical crow In Indiana a man said to me, "Wheth the public recognizes it or not, an whether it is a good thing or not, th fact is that there are some of us who ru the affairs of the Republican Party Those "some of us" in the States throug which I came are not thinking now finding the path to progress.

There is just one point of contest no in the region referred to-Lowden, wit farm relief as his sole issue, agains everybody else with no issue at al There may be other issues in the mind of possible candidates-there must be But there are no issues in the minds o Republican politicians of the commo kind.

in Hoover is, mainly, a man who might I GOT outers without a guide, because

inherit the Administration strength.
Others a few-talk of Hughes in the
same way, despite the fact that he has
indicated long since his unwillingness to
be a candidate.

There may be Republicans-doubtless
there are who are thinking of the ser-
vice that their party is to render the
country through the years ahead, of new
responsibilities to be accepted and dis-
charged, of new needs and new policies
to be formulated out of them. There

GOT out of the wilderness of the bor der waters

had a pocket compass and a map, of a kind. I do not see how, without a guide the Republican Party is to come out of its watery wilderness unless it sets up a compass and goes below decks and breaks out a chart.

But it has been, at this writing, hardly a month since President Coolidge confounded his friends and his foes alike by his laconic renunciation. His party has time to recover from its daze.

Catholicism and American Politics

HEN we printed Judge Crabités's article entitled "Is It Time for a Catholic President?" the author's position as a member of the Mixed Tribunal at Cairo was explained in our Contributors' Gallery.

There is no reason on earth why the Governor of New York State and the Mayor of New York should not welcome the personal envoy of the Pope. The Outlook devoted no little space to a description and appreciation of the Eucharistic Congress. Since Judge Crabités's article dealt with Governor

Motives Under Fire

TH

HE letter, or article, of Judge Crabités's which you published in the issue of August 17, urging Governor Smith to withdraw from the Presidential race out of regard for the welfare of the Catholic Church, is most unconvincing to me, and I fancy will be unconvincing to his fellow-Catholics generally. I am myself a Catholic, not by birth, but by mature conviction. And I happen to belong to the category of Americans from which Judge Pierre Crabités is anxious that the first Catholic President shall be chosen-those whose ancestors have been Americans for so many generations as to make it unnecessary to compute them. My first English ancestor to settle on the soil of Massa

Smith as a Catholic, it seemed proper to illustrate it with a picture of Governor Smith in association with Catholic dignitaries. The article was submitted to The Outlook without solicitation,

We might remind the writers of these letters that The Outlook has editorially pointed out that so far as Governor Smith is concerned, there can be no grounds for raising a religious issue. With this comment we submit to our readers the following letters.-THE EDITORS.

chusetts arrived in 1634. He is buried
in King's Chapel churchyard, and his
son is one of the five Fellows named in
the charter of Harvard College. I do
not doubt that Judge Crabités is single-
minded in his purpose in writing his arti-
cle, but you must pardon me if I am not
quite so sure of the simplicity of your
motive in publishing it. One can at least
be fairly certain that it is not, like his,
solicitude for the Catholic Church.

I do not read The Outlook regularly.
My attention was naturally attracted by
the prominence given to Judge Crabités's
article, featured at length and alone on
the cover. Opening to the article, my
eye fell at once on a half-page picture of
Governor Smith and Mayor Walker “as
they welcomed Cardinal Bonzano, the
Pope's personal envoy to the Eucharistic

Congress." Judge Crabités did not refer in his article to Cardinal Bonzano or to the Eucharistic Congress. The half-page is not devoted to illustration of anything he said, or of anything germane unless its introduction (showing "the Pope's personal envoy" so dangerously intermingled in American life) illustrates the parochial spirit which he fears still exists in such strength in some country districts as to make statesmanship count for little against it.

To speak plainly, I think I detect your motive, which I shall state.

You yourself do not desire the election of a Catholic President of the United States now or at any time. But you do not choose to say so. You feel that for you to assert the inadvisability of the candidacy of any Catholic or of a partic

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