portunity will force them back into military service. And the largest group of all is made up of those who, under the abnormal industrial conditions which until recently, obtained, have had no difficulty in securing employment, and have therefore declined or postponed training. The motives for refusing the Government's offer have been ascertained in practically every case, and whenever any one changes his mind -as hundreds are doing every week-he can take up training without delay.

Of the 72,000 eligible under Section 3 of the Vocational Rehabilitation Law, only about 7,500 have thus far entered training. This low percentage was to be expected, since Section 3 does not permit maintenance pay; and the Board is urging Congress to eliminate the distinction between Sections 2 and 3, so that large numbers not able to maintain themselves except through Government subsidy may secure the benefits of the law.

About ten thousand men who had begun training have discontinued. Of this number, probably half have done so only temporarily, either because of ill health or because of immediate opportunities to secure high wages. Of the remainder, at least several thousand have entered permanent employment and should be added to the group of graduates. Comparatively few have been dropped, and the number, other than those well employed, who have permanently given up training represents a much smaller percentage than is met in ordinary schools. Since the courses of training average usually about two years, and since the great majority did not begin until the fall of 1919, it follows that the number thus far graduated is only about two thousand. This in itself is striking testimony to the genuineness of the training and the earnestness of the trainees.

The early decision of the Board to utilize existing schools, colleges, industrial plants, etc., rather than to create new institutions, not only has saved to the Government hundreds of millions of dollars, but has been a leading factor in restoring the disabled quickly to normal social and economic life. To have segregated them in Federal training institutions would have been most harmful to them and would have placed the Federal Government in the anomalous position of competing with State education. Moreover, it would have thrown away the excellent opportunity which the Federal Board plan is giving to strengthen many institutions on the vocational side, to show a number of schools and colleges new opportunities for educational service, to stimulate training "on the job," and to induce close co-operative relations between industry and schools. No compensation other than the regular fees is paid to any institutions except in those few cases where it is clearly shown that the work for the disabled involves a substantial increase in comparative cost. Industrial and commercial plants ask,

Another group of trainees at the West Side Y. M. C. A., under the Federal Board

as a rule, no fee for training, yet in only a very few instances has there been any attempt to evade teaching responsibility.

To build up in so short a time a staff competent to handle the complex problems of advisement, supervision, and follow-up with tens of thousands of men scattered all over the country has been very difficult, especially since Federal practice does not permit of salaries comparable with what States, cities, and especially private enterprises, are offering for similar efficiency. It has involved a dishearteningly large turnover and has necessitated much trying out. of unknown material. It is gratifying to record, therefore, that a large proportion of the staff have risen to the opportunities presented by this new and difficult work of human conservation, and that many have made marked financial sacrifice in order to help the soldier. The country owes a debt to hundreds of men and women who have labored day and night on meager pay and without thought of any other reward than the consciousness of having been of genuine service.

From the very beginning the spirit of the Board and of its employees, from the Director to the humblest clerk, has been that of doing the utmost that the law permits for the disabled man and to do it with the least "red tape," in the heartiest spirit of sympathy, and at the smallest cost consistent with good work to the taxpayer. Many orders stressing the need of the "big brother" spirit have gone out from the Central Office; every conference of workers puts this essential attitude in the foreground, and, as already stated, the response from practically the whole force has been remarkable. Promotions have been earned; demotions, when necessary, have been accepted in the right spirit; and transfers from one office to another, when shown to be for the good of the

service, have been cheerfully acquiesced in. Few, if any, Government organizations have been so decentralized as has the Federal Board, and probably with none other has co-operation with related Federal and with State and private agencies been carried so far. In this way the Board has brought itself right to the disabled man's home, has multiplied its services many times, and has carried them into needed fields which it could not itself enter.

Were space available, case after case could be cited where the work of soldier rehabilitation is building new men, is carrying opportunity and hope to thousands who had before dreamed in vain of education, and is making real Americans out of great groups of illiterate foreign-born. Many stories could be told of the discovery of talents-of draymen, for example, turned into artists; of special services to the blind, the deaf, and those with multiple wounds. There should be included also an account of the widely extended work, in co-operation with the United States Public Health Service, for the thousands of men afflicted with tuberculosis, with various nerve disorders, and with other chronic or recurrent ailmentswork that will have wide-reaching influence upon the National health.

Far-sighted, however, as was the action of Congress in providing vocational rehabilitation for the war-disabled when considered solely from the economic standpoint, that is but a minor aspect. The greatest effect will eventually be seen in the transforming of a large and influential body of men who, had they been neglected, would have become Bolsheviki, because of what they would have rightly regarded as National ingratitude, into a coherent group, enthusiastic for American ideals, grateful to Uncle Sam, and evidencing by their own competence the effectiveness of sound training in conserving men.

WRESTLING WITH MEN AND

MUD

CUBA REPLACES THE WOODEN

WHEELED OX CART WITH THE "TANK" TYPE "In my travels over the island of Cuba," says the sender of this photograph, "I came across a new idea in the hauling of cane which is no doubt a result of the World War-a continuous type belt wheel that is being adopted in place of the old hand-made seven-foot wheel in use for the past centuries. These wheels have made it an easy matter to get the sugar-cane from the fields where there are no roads; and in wet weather, of which they have a great deal, the hauling is accomplished without any trouble serious delay"

or

From P. Simneus, Havana, Cuba

A SUMO BOUT

IN TOKYO

If an athletic event in America occurs in ten successive years, it becomes in the parlance of the sporting page "a classic." Japan has been holding national wrestling championships steadily since the year 1624 and the first recorded match took place in 23 B.C. In 858 the throne of Japan was wrestled for by the two sons of the Emperor Buntoku. Japanese wrestlers belong to a closely organized guild, the highest order of which, in feudal times, ranked next to the Samurai. The two wrestlers crouching in the ring are in the position for the beginning of a bout. After the bout has started the first wrestler who touches the ground with any part of his body except his feet is the loser

I

T would be difficult to name any family in American history which has occupied as prominent a position and exerted as great an influence for as long a time as the Adams family. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Lincoln, have successively appeared as great leaders, but have had no family successors. But John Adams, the second President of the United States, was followed by his son, John Quincy Adams, the sixth President, and eminent before his Presidency as a successful diplomat and after his Presidency as a courageous and uncompromising pioneer in the anti-slavery campaign brought to a successful issue by Abraham Lincoln. And John Quincy Adams was in turn followed by his son, Charles Francis Adams, who was our Minister to England during the Civil War, and who accomplished successfully a task as difficult as was ever given in our history to any American diplomat. Thus from 1775, when John Adams as member of the Continental Congress seconded the nomination of Washington as Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, to 1872, when Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Adams, brought his public service to a close by his action as a member of the Alabama Arbitration Tribunal-that is, for nearly a century-the Adams family occupied position and exerted an influence in American affairs which is without a parallel in our history. The "Cycle of Adams Letters" is a collection of letters exchanged between three of that family-Charles Francis Adams and his two sons, Henry and Charles Francis, Jr. during our Civil War, 1861-1865. Henry was in England, companion and unofficial private secretary of his father; Charles Francis, Jr., was in the United States, during most of the time an officer in the Federal army. The editor of these letters would have enhanced the value of the collection for the general reader if at certain points (not many) he had added a brief note indicating the event out of which the letter grew or to which it referred.

a

These letters make clear the fluctuating emotions and the conflicting opinions which characterized that epoch.

The curiously contradictory character of the British people is brought out in what, as here narrated, assumes some amusing aspects, but at the time must have been anything but amusing to our representative who had to deal with them. Fortunately, he had vision, courage, and a sense of humor, and all three were needed. Aristocratic England still

1 A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861-1865. Edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford. With Illustrations. 2 vols. Houghton Mifflin Company,

Boston.

had control of the machinery of government. But the French Revolution and the Chartist Movement had alarmed these rulers. The "Reform Bill," extending the suffrage and abolishing the old corrupt boroughs, had been enacted, and the will of the common people, inspired by the political principles of the Puritans and by the religious enthusiasms of the Methodists, could not be ignored. To keep the democratic tide from ebbing without appearing to appeal to the people against their constitutional rulers was the difficult task set the diplomat. And this task was made the more difficult because in the early years of the war our own people had not perceived, and our own Government had not officially acknowledged, that the existence of slavery was even endangered, SO that the claim of Southern agents that the South was fighting for self-government against a centralized despotism was difficult to combat.

From the very first Charles Francis Adams, though no abolitionist and not in sympathy with the Garrison principles or methods, saw this clearly. He writes to his son in February, 1862: "To me at this distance it looks very much as if the slave tenure must be irreparably damaged by the social convulsion through which the country is passing...." Six weeks later the course of events has become clearer, and he writes: "Never did people pay such a penalty for their madness. And the worst is yet to come. For emancipation is on its way with slow but certain pace. Well for them if it do not take them unaware." This is in April, 1862. In June, 1864, the emancipation proclamation has been issued, has made the issue, which was before obscure, clear to the English people, has been welcomed with characteristic calmness by the father and with characteristic enthusiasm by his son, and the father, foreseeing the problem which emancipation will involve, is ready to face it:

We are yet passing through the painful trial consequent upon the effort to remove a great cause of weakness. How much it may yet cost us, it is quite impossible to calculate. But the time should not pass without effecting the object, even if it be at the expense of the deportation of the whole body of existing slave-owners. It may take us fifty years to recover from this effort. That is as a mere moment in comparison with the blessing it will give to our latest posterity to be free from the recurrence of such a calamity from the same cause.

He sees in the war a fulfillment of the warning uttered by Thomas Jeffer

son in the words, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” "How long," he writes to his soldier son on the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill, "this chastisement is to be continued, it is idle to attempt to predict. Only one thing is clear to me, and that is the paramount duty to future generations of not neglecting again to remove the source of that evil." He sees in the war "the penalty which all of us are equally to pay for our offense before God," and equally clearly does he see what is the only hope of salvation: "If the great trial have the effect of purifying and exalting us in the future, we as a nation may yet be saved." It is interesting and instructive to note that this letter was written about eight months before Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.""

Living in England, studying and taking an important part in European affairs, Charles Francis Adams sees very clearly that a civil war involves more than the existence of American slavery; it involves the existence of autocracy in the Old World. In April, 1864, apropos of Maximilian's ill-starred expedition to Mexico, he writes: "The existence of the United States as a prosperous republic has been the example against which all reasoning contrary to the popular feeling has been steadily losing strength. It was the outbreak of the war that in an instant gave such revived hopes to all the privileged classes in Europe. For three years they have been making every possible use of the advantage. But it is now manifestly on the wane once more. Napoleon's Mexican empire, as a bridle upon the movement of American republicanism, is the only practical result of that crisis." And in June following he foretells the result in European life of a Federal victory in the Civil War: "The time is coming when all these frivolities will pass away, and the great national problem of privilege only to the select few will come up and demand a stern solution." No one could then have imagined how stern the solution would be.

To one who loves the mother country and, despite her sometimes egregious faults, admires her part in the history of civilization, and of that number I am one, the reading of these letters is not altogether pleasant. Such a reader has to remember that England had her Cromwell and her Hampden as well

her James I and Charles I, her Burke and Chatham as well as her George III and Lord North, her common people as well as the political leaders who wished to control them. Mr. Adams puts the two classes in sharp contrast:

As to us, I fancy you can understand the pleasantness of the position we are occupying in the meantime. The leading newspapers roll out as much fiery lava as Vesuvius is doing, daily. The clubs and the army and the navy and the people in the streets generally are raving for war. On the other side are the religious people and a large number of stock jobbers and traders, together with the radical following of Messrs. Cobden and Bright. The impression is general that Mr. Seward is resolved to insult England until she makes a war. He is the bête noir, that frightens them out of all their proprieties.

This was written in December, 1861, at the time when Commander Wilkes had taken from an English vessel Messrs. Mason and Slidell, commissioners to England from the Confederate States, and English pride and American pride were both aflame. Both in England and in America was coming the belief that Seward meant war. Mr. Adams did not lose his head nor share the "delusion of my countrymen." "They may regard Messrs. Mason and Slidell as more precious than all their worldly possessions. May be so. For my part, I would part with them at a cent apiece."

The delusions throughout the Civil War encouraged by the Government and seriously reported by the press, by even so eminent a journal as the London "Times," furnish an amusing illustration of how easy it is to deceive a people who wish to be deceived. Happily for both countries, the common people of England did not wish to be deceived; it was only the politicians and the editors who deceived themselves. For example:

London, October 17, 1862. General McClellan's work during the week ending the 18th has done ood deal to restore our drooping

credit here. Most of the knowing ones had already discounted the capture of Washington and the capitulation of the Free States. Some had gone so far as to presume the establishment of Jefferson Davis as the President instead of Lincoln. The last number of the "Edinburgh Review" has a wise prediction that this is to be effected by the joint labors of the "mob" and of "the merchants" of the city of New York. This is the guide of English intelligence of the nature of our struggle.

London, June 19, 1863. Our good friends in this country are always provided with a little later than the last news from America, which is equally sure to be very bad for us. We have just survived a complete capitulation of the whole army of General Grant. . . . Washington has been taken several times. I am not sure whether Boston has been considered in great peril or not. So little are the majority acquainted with our geography that such a story is as likely to be believed as any of the rest. The only effect all this has upon us is to furnish just so many instances of the intense earnestness of the benevolence prevailing in these parts.

The self-portraiture of the two sons is scarcely less interesting than that of the father. All three have the New England temperament, but are of very different types.

Charles Francis, Jr., is a typical New England soldier. If he has not much enthusiasm, he has what is much better, unfailing courage which neither in competence in his superiors nor disasters in the field can daunt. He illustrates a not very frequent virtue in the too-volatile American character, that of steadfastness. He is a vigorous disciplinarian, but not a martinet, is devoted to the care and comfort not only of his men and of his prisoners, but of his horses and his mules. He declines a promotion which would greatly enhance his comfort and his chances for reputation because it would decrease his opportunity for self-sacrificing service. His descriptive letters of his campaign ing, especially some to his mother, are

admirable specimens of graphic war literature. He criticises but never complains. The following cheerful picture is characteristic of his spirit:

(Charles Francis Adams, Jr.,
to his Father)

Warrenton, Va.

Christmas evening, 1863.

. . This evening finds me in reality in winter quarters. To-night for the first time this year I feel comfortable in my new house. . . . It cost me twelve dollars in money. I bought half of a roof of a building from which the soldiers had stripped the sides. This was divided at the ridge-pole and the two sides constitute the two sides of my house, six feet high by fourteen long, the front and rear logged up, with an open fireplace in the rear, the whole covered with an old hospital tent fly, and with a floor of boards-warm, roomy, and convenient, two beds, three chairs and a table, and everything snug. Don't talk to me of comfort! Bah!! Everything is relative. I have more real, positive, healthy comfort here than ever I did in my cushioned and carpeted room at home! So much for my room, and now for my letter.

The reader gets from these letters a much pleasanter portrait of Henry than from his autobiography. There is almost nothing of that self-depreciating egotism which characterizes "The Education of Henry Adams." But we do not find any indications of that religious faith which throughout that perplexing time kept the father so unruffled that Henry called him his "placid chief."

I venture to sum up in two sentences the impression left on one reader of these letters:

As literature they present a very vivid picture, full of color, of a critical period of American history.

As unconsciously self-painted portraits, they introduce to us a, father and two sons, of strikingly different temperaments but united by a spirit of unfailing loyalty-loyalty to their country, to their principles, and to each other; the latest, we hope not the last, representatives in our National political life of an untitled American family.