audibly in his mausoleum before the Kremlin in Moscow; Mustapha Kemal tucked away his seven-day address on Nationalist Turkey and hid his face in humiliation; and sixty-seven Congressmen tried to drown themselves. The Fascist dictator-the word is gaining a special oratorical significance -said all the usual modest things about the economic, political, and social achievements of Black Shirt rule, while Rome applauded. And an Italian squadron, visiting the North African part of Tangier, opposite Gibraltar, worried the French. France claims special rights free from interference in Morocco-including Tangier so far as Italy is concerned-by earlier treaties with Rome; and she is negotiating with Spain, which holds the surrounding territory, about its status, to the anxiety of Great Britain. Nobody else knows just what 'Mussolini and the Fascisti intend to do outside Italy. Does Mussolini? A Tariff Truce with France A MERICANS who do business in France are breathing easier. A temporary agreement on French customs duties on goods from the United States provides that the favorable rates they enjoyed before September 6 will be restored. So millions of dollars' worth of American products can again be sold on a competitive basis in the French market, and American firms no longer face the handicap of triple and quadruple import taxes while German trade is put in a favored position. This agreement, naturally, is in effect pending the negotiation of a thoroughgoing new commercial accord. But meanwhile everybody can be temporarily happy. The concession from France has apparently been won without promising anything tangible in return, but the French Government is anxious to know how soon the United States Tariff Commission will report on requests to reduce the tariffs on perfumes, silks, and textiles. Uncle Sam may get something from François once for nothing, but it is a hard trick to do twice. A One-Day Census TU 'URKEY has just had its first census. Mustapha Kemal ordered it, and what Mustapha Kemal says goes in Turkey. Perhaps he thought that the Turkish people deserved a rest after his Armistice Day, 1927 TH 'HOSE men who were waiting in the trenches, on the field, and in the air nine years ago for the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month to strike will remember their thoughts at the time. One of their number the next day wrote his thoughts down in verse. He returned to put his strength into the struggle on behalf of boys in big cities; to fight for free government; to maintain the National defense as a flight officer-and this last summer he fell in his airplane. This reminder by him of what Armistice Day once meant may freshen the memory of men who served as he served. GOALS OF DESIRE Second Lieutenant, 88th Aero Squadron A WINDING river in northern France Turns north by Dead Man's Hill, Where the locked lines held for four long years, And the guns were never still. By day wings beckoned us ever forth, A far-flung wood on the Belgian hills We may enter that Ardennes wood. We might follow the clear Moselle, A wide white road out of Bauzemont Nor the heavies at our command. We may follow the fair white road. There's a high-backed ridge in the distance dim Where the white hill villages shine And the valley mist that chills, recent six-day speech. Perhaps he thought that the census would be more satisfactory if the census-takers caught everybody at home. At all events, the Turkish "President," or dictator, as he really is, ordered the whole population to stay at home throughout the day of the census the count seems to have been made in one day. Despatches describe Constantinople as appearing like a city of the dead on that day. The people stayed quietly at home, reflecting sadly on the probable effect of this strange custom on next year's taxes. A New Yorker might wel! long for such an enumeration in New York City if only he could be one of the enumerators and walk up and down through a New York for once quiet as the grave. Seriously, such a method of taking the census, provided only it were possible except under a dictatorship, has its ad vantages. It is believed that when the facts are collated the Turkish Government will have a remarkably complete record of the number of occupied houses the names of the people living therein, and other vital statistics human and of a business nature. One comment which has been made is to the effect that this is the first time that the inefficient Turkish Government has started out to teach Western civilization how a census can be taken with neatness and despatch What New York wants to know is how many of the 50,000 Turkish enumerators actually worked and how many were just drawing pay. A Gorgeous Tomb-Perhaps HIS is the seventh centenary year since the death of Genghis Khanan appropriate time, therefore, for the "discovery" of the tomb of the grea Mongolian conqueror, who led his Tartar hordes through northern China, the Caucasus, Persia, and into Russia as far as the Volga and Dnieper Rivers. Genghis (or Jenghis, or Zingis, if you prefer) was not only a great soldier but a law-enforcer, a statesman, and a monotheist but a tolerator of all relig ions. His conquests and abilities make him worthy of honor in world history. We hope the tale told by a Londo newspaper and cabled by the Associated Press to America is true, but it is so weird and colorful that it will stand a bit of confirmation. An explorer, Professor Kozloff, of Russia, it is stated, has been hunting for the conqueror's tom for twenty years. At last he has dis overed it near the dead city of KharaKhoto, in the Gobi Desert-or, rather, e has seen it; for the priests have nown all about it for these seven hunred years, and through these centuries very seven hours seven lamas strike even times on a huge jade bell. The description of what met the Rusian's eyes is too thrilling and gorgeous omit: "He found the great Khan's Just in a silver coffin resting upon the rowns of seventy-eight princes and hans whom he conquered. Jeweltudded weapons of Genghis Khan and is own story of his reign, a life-size on, tiger, and horse in pink jade and a opy of the Bible written by an English onk also were in the tomb." A Bible and an autobiography is eally too much to expect from a Monol's tomb. One suggestion is that the ible was dropped there by Marco olo! Mr. Hoover sees in the Father of Waters one of the great arteries in a new waterway system that will spread from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, with branches from New York and Pittsburgh in the East and from Duluth, St. Paul, Sioux City, Little Rock, and Houston in the West; with branches up into Alabama from Mobile and down into Tennessee and Kentucky and West Virginia from the Allegheny and the Ohio. This system will include the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, and the Barge Canal from Buffalo and down the Hudson. The floods have awakened and reawakened the Nation. Perhaps such a vision as Mr. Hoover proposes will keep it awake. Instead of thinking of the Mississippi as a devastated region to be repaired, Mr. Hoover is thinking of it as a great resource to be employed. For thirty or forty million dollars a year, ten per cent of our present surplus, the channels of the Mississippi can be dredged, the St. Lawrence waterway completed, the Great Lakes stabilized, Crime and State Lines and the cost of Mississippi flood control A Α can be met. ROUND New York Harbor has grown up a great metropolitan district. It has numerous common interests; but it is divided by a line that runs between two States. The metropolitan district that extends into New Jersey has perhaps more in common with the rest of the metropolitan district, which is in New York State, than it has with the rest of the State in which it is actually situated. At least in certain particulars the common interests of these two parts of the metropolitan district are as strong as those which bind the people of any State together. This situation cannot be provided for, States of New York and New Jersey Transmuting a flood into a fortune is nowadays the trick, not of a magician, but of an engineer with imagination—not of a genie, but of a genius. A Hopeful Sign THE 'HE prosperity of the Philippines is of far more immediate importance to the Filipinos than the political autonomy of the islands; but it has been very hard to make them see it. It is encouraging to notice that Mr. Quezon, who is President of the Philippine Senate and is the most prominent leader in the movement for early independence, has hardly mentioned that subject in his utterances since he arrived in the United States quite recently. On the contrary, Mr. Quezon has repeatedly declared that he and his political friends were anxious to join with the United States Government in hastening the economic development of the islands. Of course he did not announce any intention of abandoning the campaign for independence, but his real interest now seems to be strong and genuine in the other matter. co-operate on a program of economic The significance of this declaration is For instance, Mr. Quezon said: "Concerning the report that we have come to induce the President to change his policy, and that therefore we are ready to Education, civic sense, self-government in step with unselfish patriotism-there lies the road in the Philippines for peace and prosperity. But over the activities of criminals, the two States yet exercise wholly separate sovereign powers. And yet the criminal has no more regard for State lines than he has for any other imag inary boundaries-except to take advantage of them. The business of criminals of a certain type has a distinc metropolitan aspect. This has roused the interest of a Democratic candidate for the Assembly of New York, William J. Rapp. Traffic in stolen goods, he says, "is an industry," and "is carried on mainly by water, rail, and automobile between New York and New Jersey." He adds, in particular, that "the activities of the receivers of stolen good are inter-State, and the remedy must be inter-State." Mr. Rapp gives an example: In one case in particular with which I am personally familiar the fence [which is the criminal's name for professional receiver of stolen goods informed six underworld characters that a certain shipment of raw silk would be received in New York on a certain night. The fence agreed to pay them $1,000 each for the delivery of this silk to a stated place in New Jersey. In conformity with this agreement the silk was stolen in New York and only delivered in New Jersey to the fence, who paid the thieves $6,000 exactly, as had been planned, and agreed on. Mr. Rapp proposes to introduce a bil to meet this inter-State business in crime by establishing a joint crime commission between the two States. His Republican opponent approves a "fence bill," it is reported, if it is drawn up properly. Se in this Assembly district the opposition to inter-State crime seems unanimous. Partnerships between States may thus be stimulated by partnerships between criminals. A Fighting Editor M AXIMILIAN HARDEN, who died in Switzerland on October 30, at th age of sixty-eight, for thirty-five year edited "Die Zukunft" (the Future) which has been described as the best known, the most admired, the mes feared, and the most detested paper in Germany. He was combative, incen sistent, but always daring. Compare with the sycophantic, politically con trolled German writers for the press, b stood for liberty of expression. Th service he did Germany was to keep alive the flickering flame of independen political thought. As long ago as Bismarck's fall Ha den attacked Wilhelm II, and h hostility to the Kaiser was unveiled contemptuous. In theory Harden wa Harden has been compared to Heine, largely because (in origin though not in faith) he was a Jew (his original name was Witkowski), but partly because his pen was so bitter and his respect for the great ones of the earth was non-existent. His boldness is illustrated by his attack Among free people Harden would have been impossible; among generals, Junkers, rich industrialists, and an egotistical monarch Harden was a valuable explosive. Ridicule was Harden's weapon, and he used it mercilessly. Over and over again "Die Zukunft" was suppressed, once for a whole year, but as often as it was revived it ridiculed imperialism and clamored for independence of German thought. Before the war Harden exposed the personal corruption in certain pur in a simple form, Secretary MelCourt circles, and when his exposure led to libel suits he fought the cases and left his enemies scathed by public opinion. UT lon's recommendation for the reduction of Federal taxes is, first, to keep the total reduction down to a moderate sum-$225,000,000 is the amount he recommends. More than half of this, he thinks, should be gained by reducing the corporation tax from 131⁄2 per cent to 12 per cent and by repealing the inheritance tax; nearly all the rest would come from two sources-$3,000,000 or Mr. Mellon's Proposals for Tax Reduction more could be gained if small corporations should file their returns as partnerships; $50,000,000 could be taken off by readjusting the rates on individual incomes ranging in amount from $16,000 to $90,000 a year. In answering questions put by members of the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, summoned to Washington to hear the recommendations of the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Mellon's Under-Secretary, Mr. Mills, showed that to reduce the corporation tax by two instead of one per cent, as some of the Committee desired, in order to keep the inheritance tax, would result in too much reduction ($50,000,000) and would be unwise and excessive. The most interesting point in the Secretary's recommendation was that substituting partnership returns for returns made by small corporations. Mr. Mellon holds that now small corporations endure a real hardship and that the stockholders pay twice-first, by reducing their dividends through the corporation tax; second, by paying individual taxes on the dividends they receive. Most of these small corporations (say those with net incomes of $55,000 or less) would pay less tax as partnerships than they do as corporations. It was not, however, the double taxation (which is a debatable point) that was the strongest ground for Mr. Mellon's recommendations concerning taxes on the smaller corporations. It was rather that in taxing corporate income special relief should be granted to the concerns that are like partnerships though they do business in corporate form. These constitute the vast majority (232,316 out of 252,334) of all corporations reporting net income. As to the taxpayer who pays only the normal income tax rate, it is considered that his burden has been lightened fairly well under the reductions already made. Mr. Mellon vigorously opposed reduction on automobile taxes or on theatre tickets, instancing the people who paid $40 a seat for tickets to the DempseyTunney fight as being well able to pay also $3.65 to the United States for their half-hour's amusement. For the fiscal year of 1928 Mr. Mellon estimates a surplus of $455,000,000; for 1929, $274,000,000. In times of prosperity pay off part of your debt is good doctrine for the Nation as well as for the individual. A Poet's Cry of Disillusionment E DNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY'S wrath is that of one who wants to believe in her fellow-men-and cannot. Her words recorded in these pages are quiet words. There is no hysteria in them, but only an ironic and burning sorrow. Beneath the words is the fixed conviction that the two men whom she does not name, Sacco and Vanzetti, were done to death because of their belief in Anarchism. If she is right, if the assumption underlying her article is correct, then we all who call ourselves Americans deserve some share of the reproach which she heaps upon her country and mankind. We cannot escape by pleading that we had no hand in the atrocity. It is because of our feebleness, our lack of will, our love of ease, that such things can be. But, incredible as it may seem to her, there are many people of fair and honest minds, and of intelligence too, who firmly believe that these men died for the crime of murder. Some believe they were guilty of the crime; others, not pretending to an independent judgment, believe that for that crime, and not for their belief, they were tried and convicted. Belief, opinion, has no place in the scales that weigh guilt in a court of justice. This is true whether opinion is made a part of the accusation or a part of the defense. If belief were allowed as an extenuation. of crime, then the inquisitors who hounded heretics to death might be excused on the ground of their professed belief in Christianity! Whether in this particular case men accused of crime suffered, not for the crime, but for their beliefs, it is true that for their beliefs men have been and still are intimidated, tortured, killed. It is against that evil spirit of persecution for opinion that Edna St. Vincent Millay has written her flaming tract. And that spirit, the spirit of fear in arms, still rules the hearts and minds of an uncounted number even here in free America. It is futile to fight ideas, even wrong ideas, with the knout, the gun, the guillotine, or the electric chair. It is worse than futile; for, whether in Bolshevist Russia, or Fascist Italy, or democratic America, it displaces justice and humanity and enthrones the devastating spirit of fear. Disciplining Magruder I N consequence of his article in the "Saturday Evening Post" pointing out defects in the Navy, Admiral Magruder has been relieved of his command of the United States Navy Yard at Philadelphia. It has not been charged that Admiral Magruder in publishing his article violated any regulations. On the other hand, it has not been officially stated rather, it has been semi-officially denied that the removal of Admiral Magruder is punitive. Nevertheless the whole effect of the action taken is to notify naval officers that they point out the defects in the Navy or the administration of the Navy at their peril. Is this what the American people want? Do they wish to be kept in ignorance of anything that is injuring their first line of defense? Do they want the best source of information concerning the Navy bottled up? Do they want those in authority over the Navy kept free from the wholesome corrective of public criticism? Do they believe that there is more danger to the country from public discussion of bad organi zation, inefficient administration, shortages in necessary ships and men-matters about which experts in foreign navies are better informed than the American people themselves-or from the complacency, the self-satisfaction, the inertness, that invariably results when public officials know they will not have to answer to the public for their stewardship? Admiral Magruder may himself have made some material errors in his statements concerning the condition of the Navy. That is not the point. He may have been unwise in some of his expressions in the article itself and in his later public statements. Neither is that the point. What he did do-and this is precisely the point was to give public expression in a way that attracted public attention to certain outstanding evils and perils that call for public discussion and vigilance. Such are the politically created and maintained navy yards, the starv ing out of private shipyards, wastefulness, and red tape. Some of these evils are like those in other departments of the Government; but in the Navy they are less subject to remedy, It is not impossible in a few months to improvise an army. It is absolutely impossible to improvise a navy. If the Forest Service is bureaucratic, a part of the country suffers, but the country can continue to thrive. But if in time of emergency the Navy is found to be lacking in certain essentials the future of the country itself is in jeopardy. But what is of still more significance is the method by which such a naval officer as Admiral Magruder is called to account. Such a method may be a part of the normal disciplinary methods of the Navy; but that is not an excuse-it is rather a revelation. It has been made plain to Admiral Magruder that the Navy Department would like to have from him plans for the reorganization of the Navy Department that would meet his criticisms. Of course, no one man-even were he the Secretary of the Navy, with all the machinery of the Department at hand-could draw up such a plan in short order. The tone in which Admiral Magruder is addressed explains in part why naval and military officers are so often regarded as overbearing. What they get from their superiors they hand down to their inferiors. They are trained in "passing the buck." It helps to explain why civilians whe have served their country in war say, "Never again!" No one except a naval expert has the knowledge by which to test the accuracy of either Admiral Magruder's allegations or Secretary Wilbur's replies; but one need not be a naval epert to see in this episode unwillingness in the Navy Depart ment to meet criticism with an open mind and a real desire to profit by it. We hope Congress will do its best to ascertain the facts but Congress itself is not free from blame. Politics has been a bane of the Navy. The real remedy lies in public opinion. which ultimately Congress, the Navy Department, and nava officers themselves will have to heed. |
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