T

HE man at the breakfast table looked up over his paper at his wife.

"What," he asked, "has got into the women?"

"What do you mean?" the wife asked in turn. She was really puzzled.

"I mean these women who are swimming and flying and what not. Here in one week are three women who have swum the English Channel-or said they have swum it. Here is another, in an airplane with a man not her husbandshe has left her husband behind in Florida or somewhere-and has 'landed,' as she says, in the ocean several hundred miles from land. Another, started on another transatlantic flight, has got nowhere in particular besides Old Orchard Beach. Last summer two other women sailed off in the air and disappeared. What are they doing it for? What has got into them?"

"What has got into the men?" his wife replied? "They were all doing these things long before the women did. They started it. Why, it was years ago that somebody-what was his name?—swam the Channel. And before him Leander and Byron swam the Hellespont. And as for flying-a number of men have sailed off before any women, and just disappeared. I don't see that anything special has got into the women."

"That's just it. What has got into the women that they want to do all over again just what the men have done, and done more successfully? Are they after publicity? No originality. The only novelty about it is that it is women that are doing it. It's like that dog up at Columbia University that does things that any normal eight-year-old child can do. The wonderful thing about it is that it is a dog that is doing it."

"They are not the only people," said his wife, "that are willing to do anything for publicity or money or a thrill-even at the risk of life. Men do it just as much as women. These women are conspicuous because they are few."

"Well," said the man, "most women

may not be doing just these things; but they are restless and❞—

"Restless? Why shouldn't they be?" answered his wife. "You don't expect them to sit home and fold their hands." "That's just it again." And the husband pounced on the phrase. "Fold their hands.' Why do they have to fold their hands when they are at home? I was reading the other day about Jonathan Edwards's wife. She didn't fold her hands. She spun, and wove, and sewed; she prepared the food for the family, making the butter and the cheese; she managed the household. And, besides, she brought up a whole brood of children. She was doing something that no man could do. She wasn't trying to imitate her husband, Jonathan. She had too much self-respect."

"You can't expect women to go back to spinning, and weaving, and making cheese, can you?" The wife's voice had a tone of indignation in it. "You don't even expect them to have broods of children. Most of the mothers of Jonathan Edwards's days died early and yet were old when they died."

We shall leave this conversation where it is. The woman, as is right, has the last word. Before these questions mere man is nonplussed.

Dogma or Truth ?

B

ECAUSE he has questioned certain dogmas a bishop of the Church of England has been denounced in public. It is not because he is indifferent to the truth; has shown any disloyalty to the spirit of the Master he has served; but because he has questioned whether people can accept as facts some of the things that they once believed and has asserted that the Church must put itself abreast of the advancement in knowledge. He has said what people outside of the Church everywhere admit.

It was in a sermon in Westminster Abbey that the Rt. Rev. Ernest William Barnes placed himself alongside of those who realize that the history of man is one of struggle up out of animal nature. Incidentally, he had said that a chemical examination will not show any change in the bread and wine of the sacrament. For such statements Canon BullockWebster denounced Bishop Barnes as he was about to preach in St. Paul's Cathedral.

English commentators have remarked upon the backwardness of intelligence in

this country as shown by the so-called "monkey trial" at Dayton, Tennessee. This incident at St. Paul's indicates that the power of dogma over the human mind may be exhibited even in such a civilized center as London. What the Bishop was trying to do, it is clear, was not to overthrow anybody's belief in dogma, but to show that the acceptance of dogma was not essential to the Christian faith. Those who are attempting to refute the position that the Bishop has taken are doing their best to insist that no one should be a recognized follower of Jesus of Nazareth unless he repudiates his intelligence. Of what service can that be to the Church?

As long as the churches insist upon maintaining theories and views of the universe that are inconsistent with what is accepted as true by those who command the best means for establishing facts, so long will the churches, not only repel the most highly trained minds, but will divert themselves from their real task of spiritual guidance.

What are the questions that are really troubling the world today? They are not questions whether the text of the Bible or any other text is to be accepted as literal statements of fact, whether a minister should be ordained by the laying on of a bishop's hands, whether some explanation of the nature of God devised centuries ago is better than some other explanation, whether one ceremony for admission of a candidate to the Church is better than another ceremony. The real questions are questions concerning the very heart of every-day life. Are we human beings mere machines, without any more moral responsibility than a tree or a dynamo? Is the life of the family to be preserved as a precious thing, or shall it be discarded together with old styles in clothes? Is life to be measured by the things we possess? Is the final answer to life, to daily duties, to the obligations as a citizen, to the relations between husband and wife and between parents and children, to the problems of business, the answer of the cynic? Does goodness or loyalty or reverence mean anything? Has man no better object than to get the most out of life as it comes along? Is there a place in modern life for the influence of the life and character of Him whom the Church recognizes as its Lord?

People are searching for answers to these questions. They will go to psychology or anywhere else if they cannot find the answers in the Church.

ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT.

B

EYOND the practicalities of a pleasant smile, Alfred E. Smith knows nothing of statesmanship. He has good teeth, apparently a good digestion, a hearty hand-shake, a radiant personality, a certain knack of administering matters of which he has intimate empirical knowledge; but he is utterly lacking in that breadth and depth and sweep of things that make the statesman. He has neither the National view nor the National view-point. He is not Nationally minded. It is utterly impossible that he should be. He is provincial; without any reference-for the moment to matters religious, he is, indeed, parochial. He is a New Yorker, not in the broad but in the narrow sense of that term; a Manhattanite; of that kith and kin and caste which, complacent in its egoistic self-sufficiency, regards Ninth Avenue as the Far West and the Jersey meadows as beyond the frontier.

That is what my home counties-Wilson in Tennessee and Daviess in Kentucky-think of Governor Alfred E. Smith when they think of him as a potential Democratic nominee for the Presidency.

They think other things of him, too. They think that he is wet, and they are very sure that they are dry-in which particular they believe that they are in accord with the country. They pile recent political history upon you to prove that they are how, in Ohio, Donahey, the dry Democrat, won for Governor, while Pomerene, the wet Democrat, lost for the Senate; how even in New York State Wadsworth, the wet Republican, lost to the second-rater, Wagner, who had no other claim to dryness than that he kept his mouth shut about it. And so on to the end of the chapter. They do not so much as concede Governor Smith's availability as a candidate.

They know that Governor Smith is a Catholic, and some of them who have no antipathy to Catholics personally are convinced that a Catholic President would not be good for the country. More of that kind are in Wilson, in which not one Catholic lives, than in Daviess, where nearly half of the population and more than half of the Democrats are Catholics.

By DIXON MERRITT

CHURCHILL ETTINGER

Wetness and Catholicism are issues, but few capable of expressing a clear opinion believe that, with regard to Al Smith, either of them is the paramount issue. They believe that Smith could hardly make a poorer job of enforcing prohibition than Coolidge has made, and they are practically sure that any man whom he might appoint as Secretary of the Treasury would put less in the way of prohibition enforcement than they believe that Mellon has put. But Mellon, while he may be their concern, is not their responsibility, and they will look to the conduct of their own household in this matter. Those few who frankly

object to Smith on the ground of his ligion regard that fact, quite of cou as very important, but even they sub dinate it to the supposed fact that has no real understanding of the Uni States, its traditions, its aspirations, its destiny.

And there you are. What Wilson Tennessee, roughly and more broadly What Daviess is, Kentucky in s slightly different degree must be; part is as the whole, though the w is less Catholic than the part. And fact in that connection ought to be down before this article grows a min older: While practically all of the C

olic Democrats in Daviess would vote for Smith if he were nominated, by no means all of them will support him for the nomination. The older stock of American Catholics are hardly less thoroughly convinced than their Protestant neighbors that Governor Smith has not and cannot have the understanding of the United States which a President ought to have.

Let me introduce now Wilson County, where I have lived for five generations, with the exception of the years I spent in Daviess.

Wilson is one of the good blue-grass counties of the Middle Basin of Tennessee. Settled shortly after the Revolution mainly by a stock as Puritan as Salem itself, it had none of the aristocrats and none of those stirrup-holders whose descendants were to become known to fame as "po' white trash." It has maintained that character of citizenship unto this day. Perhaps ninety-five per cent of its population could trace clear back en both sides to colonial Americans.

Wilson is an agricultural county, with leanings to live stock; a horse county when horses counted in the economy of the country; now a sheep and dairy cow county inferior to few in America. Lebanon, its seat, is a county town and a university town. For three generations it has been a center of that sort of culture which gathers about the small university. For three generations its culture has radiated throughout the South, the Southwest, into States such as Indiana, Missouri, and Illinois.

Wilson is a Democratic county, thoroughly. Once-just once-it elected an independent; was surprised and somewhat ashamed of itself. It had merely meant to rebuke a sheriff too big for his breeches, and had rebuked a bit harder than it meant. It, with its neighbor Sumner, furnishes the Democratic majority to overcome the normal Republican majority in the other eleven counties of the Fourth Congressional District -the Democratic majority which keeps Cordell Hull in the Congress of the United States.

Well, I think I know these Wilson Countians well enough to tell what they are thinking politically. In justification of that bit of egotism, I recall the fact that I told them when they did not believe it themselves that they were going to elect that independent to the office of high sheriff.

I went the other day to Lebanon and stood about the various corners of the court-house square, being talked to, as a

native back home from the big cities will be, by all and sundry. One man came who would like to see Al Smith nominated for the Presidency. One other came who would prefer Reed, of Missouri, but finds no objection to Smith.

OW does the Solid South

How

really feel toward Al Smith? The papers are filled with politicians' answers to this question.

In the interests of our readers, we sent Mr. Merritt, himself a Southerner, down to see what questions the South is asking about Mr. Smith, what opinions and prejudices it actually holds concerning him. Mr. Merritt is not interviewing bigwigs, politicians, or newspaper editors. He is talking with the plain farmers and small merchants. We think our readers-and Mr. Smith -will be interested in the result. -THE EDITORS.

All of the others who came, and they were scores, were either themselves opposed to the nomination of Smith or knew that their neighbors were so opposed as to make his nomination disastrous from the standpoint of party solidarity.

But that was an off day in town, a day when country people did not come in any numbers. And the town, however small, never quite agrees with its surrounding country. So the next day I cranked the car and went to see the country people at their crossroads and in their fields.

First, Holloway, my home hamlet, where my neighbors sell their cream and buy their sugar and coffee, where, for a wonder, a country doctor and a country blacksmith still live and thrive. Then to Greenwood, on Spring Creek, where the poultry club centers, where my sister takes our eggs for shipment to the hatchery. Then to Shop Springs, on the highway; thence over ways high enough but none too good to Doak's Crossroads

and on to Norene in the hills, and so down with the meanderings of Fall Creek by Simmons's Bluff to the highway headed south, at Vine, where the handle factory sits in the woods, and so on back to Baird's Mills, my other home village.

Yes, the county town had misrepresented the county. Some men in town had been mealy-mouthed about expressing their opposition to Governor Smith, but the country people expressed it, fullvoiced, round and rolling. Their reasons varied only as to emphasis. Some placed the mark over "wet," some over lack of statesmanlike qualities, some over failure to comprehend the spirit of the United States; only one over Catholicism, and he not on religious grounds as such, but on the belief that Protestants would not have an even break in distribution of patronage.

There was not utter lack of good words for Governor Smith. There was general recognition of him as a clean man of fine personality. Into the back room of a country bank a man came who said that he had seen sentiment change in less time than separates the present from the Convention, and on the bank of Hurricane Creek a man husking

A typical scene in the Kentucky mountains

corn from the shock inquired to know who in the deuce the Democrats are going to nominate if they do not nominate Smith.

Governor Smith could not carry Wilson County, Democratic as it is to its very core. The politicians say that the Democratic voters would simply stay at home, but I say that they would not. They have gone clear beyond mere opposition to Governor Smith and already have salved their Democratic conscience for marking a Republican ballot. There is real sentiment for Herbert Hoover among the Democrats of Wilson. They like what he has done both recently and remotely, and they find it easy to accept him because they believe that he is not much of a Republican, anyhow.

Herbert Hoover could carry my native county against Alfred E. Smith.

There is real sentiment, too, for Frank O. Lowden. My Democratic neighbors know that Lowden is Republican without mitigating circumstances, but they believe that he is the farmer's friend, and they are ready to place comforts for the kiddies above party regularity.

Frank O. Lowden could carry my native county over Alfred E. Smith.

T

HE next day Redwing, which is my old automobile, rolled north toward my other home county-north through Gallatin and Scottsville and Bowling Green and Elizabethtown and Brandenburg and Hardinsburg and Cloverport and Hawesville, with intervening comm and hay and tobacco fields, to Daviess County and Owensboro at the center of it, my other home. It was here that I came in my callow youth to begin my life and my life-work, here that I was married, here that two of my three chil dren were born, here that I spent those years of zealous youth when a man is best fitted for the making of lasting friendships.

These, no less than those among whom I was born, are my people. They received me just as of old, told me just as frankly as when I gathered news for the local paper what they believe and what they hope and what they fear.

Let me make you acquainted with Daviess County.

It lies, level, among the bottom-lands of the Ohio, among the finest of agricul tural counties in the world. Owensboro, its county seat, has 25,000 population. many manufacturing plants, a loose-leaf (Continued on page 246)

W

HEN America entered the war in April, 1917, and the American relief workers in Belgium were no longer on a neutral basis, they had to be withdrawn in favor of Spanish and Dutch workers. But the Commission for Relief under Hoover's direction continued all of its difficult outside work, including mobilization of American and world charity, arrangements for governmental loans, purchase of foodstuffs in the markets of the world in competition with the buyers of many hungry nations, shipment of these food supplies overseas to Rotterdam at a time when shipping was growing steadily scarcer and in greater demand, and, finally, transshipment of the supplies at Rotterdam into the canal boats bound for Belgium and North France. Although America was no longer neutral, the "C. R. B."-with Hoover always at its head-was able with the moral backing of the world to continue its beneficent work to the end of the war. And one of its results which especially pleased Hoover is revealed in the statement of the fact that 2,500,000 children came out of the war in better health than normal.

With America at war, our own food situation demanded attention. There was, of course, no threat of starvation for us in it, but the imperative needs of the nations with which the United States was associated in war could only be met by conservation of American food supplies and increase of production. Moreover, the pressure upon our food resources started an era of unparalleled hoarding and speculating in food, which in itself threatened to defeat all efforts at economic stability at home. Constructive plans and action were immediately necessary.

The Nation turned to Hoover, as the first Food Administrator of the war. His pioneering work in Belgium had been followed; Germany, France, and England had used the results of his experience as the world's belt gradually tightened. President Wilson called him home from Europe. He came at once, and under the terms of the Lever Act, promptly passed by Congress, was made Food Administrator. He found himself in an office of large responsibilities with but limited authority and limited funds,

and with the people looking to him for results.

Hoover called for volunteers to man his office, and appealed to people at large to support him in his efforts to wipe out waste, repress unnecessary consumption, stimulate production, control profiteering, and send over increasing numbers of ship-loads of food to the Allies and our armies. If "food will win the war" was a slogan too broad for literal acceptance, it was at least certain that lack of food might lose the war. The Food Controllers of England, France, and Italy made this plain to the Food Administrator of America. They urged that America be forcibly rationed, as were their people.

But Hoover insisted that the American people would respond to voluntary effort without the legal restraints, the high cost, and the waste of man power of the rationing systems of Europe.

The demand of the European food controllers was ever for more. Hoover redoubled his appeals to the people to follow him in his meatless and wheatless days, his campaign for the clean plate and empty garbage-can. He could not. give orders-only ask for co-operation. He urged the essential increase of production. He built up advisory committees of farmers, millers, and bakers, of stock growers and meat packers, of hotel and restaurant men, and of directors of the railways and shipping lines. He enlisted women and children. He created a huge business organization to control speculation and to buy and ship food to the American Army and the Allies.

He established, with the support of Congress, a great United States Grain

Corporation, as a Governmental organization to control the purchasing of grain by foreign countries, thus protecting the American consumer from profiteering and at the same time protecting the American farmer from foreign control of prices at unfair levels; for the Allies were in position to control the prices of the United States because they were the sole buyers of the surplus. So that justice should be done the farmer, Hoover arranged that the prices to the farmers were to be determined by commissions representing the farmers' organizations appointed by the President. In all, these Food Administration agencies had a turnover of nearly nine billion dollars.

Hoover did not rely on business organization alone. He made irresistible appeals to the patriotism of the whole people-food producers, food handlers, and food consumers. He lifted food from the level of the commonplace, and pointed the way for every man, woman, and child to share in America's war efforts. The people responded as he had faith they would.

American food did its needed share in winning the war. And the American Food Administrator could lay down his title when the Armistice came with the consciousness of having done a large and difficult thing well.

THEN he discovered that the world's

food problem was not ended with the end of the war. Behind its dark curtain great suffering for lack of food. had gone on almost all over Europe. The lifting of this curtain revealed a pathetic and dangerous situation. Especially was this true in eastern Europe, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, the whole group of so-called "Succession States" which had become independent by the disruption of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Balkan countries, together with Germany and Austria, all needed food, and some of them needed it immediately and very seriously.

Not only the death of masses of people but of nations was threatened. The struggling countries, impoverished and many of them inexperienced, with their lands war-torn, their transportation and communications broken down, and a host of new national frontiers still only