returns again to this broken home and finds the son confronted with the ghost of his mother, searching for her lost child. Her troubled wraith finds only a shadow of comfort in his presence and at last disappears in answer to the call of the strange voices from that island which has played so tragic a part in her life on earth.

no other His audi

As in all of Barrie's dramas of lands that never were, he imparts a reality to fantasy which modern writer has achieved. ences are always ready to believe in fairies, ghosts, or phantom islands at his command. This illusion of reality is not absent from his present play, for Barrie has a truly creative imagination, an imagination which not only has the power of seeing with more than mortal eyes, but also the power of giving this sight to others. Somehow, we hope, however, that the next time Barrie calls his spirits from the vasty deep he will bring them from a land which has less of shadow and more of that sunlight of other years.

The title part of "Mary Rose" is played by Miss Ruth Chatterton. She is supported by an admirable company and she herself is a capable actress. Whisper it not among boarding-schools, but a Barrie play at the Empire must have evoked in many minds a longing for somebody long associated with that playhouse and that playwright. Except on one of Barrie's mystic islands, however, time passes and familiar faces one by one depart. They tell us that Maude Adams will never again be seen behind the familiar proscenium arch of the Empire, that the dauntless spirit of "Peter Pan" is to be for us all henceforth only a triumphant memory. What is to be, is to be, but perhaps Miss Chatterton will forgive us if at times we saw her with the unforgiving eyes of those who witness a strange figure seated in a chair filled with an eternal spirit of the past, and longed for other days.

ON DEAD CENTER

A

STEAM-ENGINE when it can neither go ahead nor back is said to be "on dead center." Governments as well as steam-engines occasionally get "on dead center," and our own is no exception to this rule.

In fact, our Federal Constitution as it is now applied makes such a condition at least a quadrennial certainty; and in the last four years we have also learned that the limitations upon the physical strength of Presidents are likely to involve the country in such a state of Governmental stagnation at any moment.

The Constitution provides that the

President, together with the Vice-President, "shall hold office during the term of four years." Owing to the difficulties of travel at the time of the election of Washington, it was not until more than six months after the choosing of the electors by popular vote that he was inaugurated President of the United States. As a matter of fact, he did not assume office until April 30, 1789. As his second inauguration took place on March 4, 1793, his first term did not strictly conform to the Constitutional provision which we have quoted. Every President since his time, however, has had, save in cases of death, the full four years allotted by the Constitution, and therefore we have continued to inaugurate our Presidents nearly four months after they had been designated by popular vote.

In prac

tically every instance this period between the popular designation of a new President and his inauguration has been a time in which the Government has rested "on dead center." The disadvantage of this enforced term of idleness has been especially marked in the present year.

Possibly some astute lawyer might be able to work out a plan under which the retiring President could resign in December and his successor be inaugurated on the first of January following his popular designation. But undoubtedly the change could be effected by a Constitutional Amendment which would shorten some specific Presidential term by two months. Such a change would undoubtedly help towards making our Government a more responsible democracy.

There is another clause in the Constitution which requires no amendment to remove the difficulty which it involves. It is the clause which reads: "In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice-President, declaring what officer shall then act as Preside it, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected."

The Congress has definitely provided for successors to the President and Vice-President in cases of removal, death, or resignation, but it has never provided a method for determining what constitutes the inability of a President to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

President Wilson's serious illness during the last year undoubtedly made him unable to perform the duties of his

office. Congress at the present session should see to it that such a contingency does not arise again. Various methods have been suggested for the determi nation of such inability, among which may be mentioned the plan to have a medical board appointed by the Supreme Court at the instance of the National Legislature. This seems a feasible plan, though perhaps a better one may be dis covered. In any case, a provision of similar effect would insure the Govern ment against the danger of one "dead center" from which it has suffered injury in the past.

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THE INCOME TAX AND AND LIBERTY BONDS N unpleasant, inconvenient, and in some cases disastrous fact of the present financial situation in this country is the depreciated value of Liberty Bonds. At this writing every issue of these bonds save the two Victory Loans is below ninety.

This means that every man who has a i hundred-dollar Liberty Bond and is compelled to get cash for it will lose all the way from ten to fifteen dollars when he sells it, except in the case of the Victory Bonds. The Victories, since they are payable within a year, or two. are nearer par. A corporation which has a hundred thousand dollars' worth of any of the first four issues and has to sell them to get cash for its business or to pay its taxes may lose from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. The small holders who can put their bonds in safe-keeping and retain them until the day when they are payable by the Government will lose nothing. But there are comparatively few people who can do that.

Various plans have been suggested to remedy this situation-a situation which is unsound and unjust. Most of these proposals are based on a plan of refunding all Liberty Loans at a higher rate of interest. A New York financier has recently advocated that the entire issue of Liberty Bonds be refunded-that is to say, redeemed by a new issue of Government bonds to run for fifty years and to pay 51⁄2 per cent for the first five years, 5 per cent for the second five years, 41⁄2 per cent for the third five years, and for the remaining thirty-five years 4 per cent. He believes that such bonds will sell at par or over. This of course means that the Government would have to raise by taxation a much larger sum for interest than it is now paying on the present Liberty Bonds. The result would make it more difficult to reduce the war increases of the income tax. Thus the problem is how to

I

bring Liberty Bonds to par in an open market without increasing taxation. venture to suggest the following outline of a plan to be considered in solving this problem.

Let the Government announce that all Liberty Bonds will be received at their par value in payment of the income taxes.

The first objection to this plan is that the Government needs the proceeds of income taxes in current money to pay its obligations; that Liberty Bonds are not current; and that the Government would have to sell these bonds in the open market for cash, which would at once depreciate their value and we should be in the same state as before.

My reply to this objection is that the Government might borrow currency from the Federal Reserve Bank to the full par value of the bonds. If this could be done, the advantage to the Government would be that it would substitute its non-interest-bearing notes for

its interest-bearing notes, a transaction which every business man would like to perform if he could.

There appear to be two objections to this substitution of Federal Reserve notes for the bonds which the Government will receive in payment of income taxes.

First, there is no provision in our present financial laws for such a substitute. This objection could be met by proper legislation in Congress. If desirable, Congress in twenty-four hours could pass an act permitting the Secretary of the Treasury to receive Liberty Bonds at their par value for income taxes and issue in their place noninterest-bearing currency.

The second objection is more vital. It might lead to an inflation of the currency, and many students of finance feel that we are now suffering from currency inflation. To this objection I have no reply to make, except that possible inflation might be mitigated by

receiving Liberty Bonds at par for only a specified portion of the income tax, such as the surtax or excess profits tax. It may possibly be a choice of evils which the financial experts of the country will have to consider and decide upon.

I briefly restate the problem. A vast amount of money, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, is tied up in Liberty Bonds which are now below par. Το use these bonds in industry or taxpaying the business men of the country must lose from ten to fifteen per cent. Shall this unjust and unhealthy condition be remedied by increasing the rate of interest on the bonds, thus necessarily increasing taxation, or by the Government's receiving a large portion of them at par from year to year before they fall due for income taxes and issuing in their place non-interest-bearing currency by means of appropriate legislation?

LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT.

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KNOLL PAPERS

BY LYMAN ABBOTT

MOTHER reads "Pilgrim's Prog ress" to her child. To him it is an interesting narrative of marvelous adventure. To her it carries a profounder meaning of spiritual experience. Much of life possesses thus a double meaning. It is a pantomime, often a tragic pantomime, the meaning of which we are left to discover for ourselves. The Creation stories and the Christmas stories are thus parables; their deeper meanings scholarship, absorbed in critical and historical study, has often missed. The object of this article is to point out the spiritual meaning in the Gospel story of the Wise Men.

In the East the pagan theologians were the counselors of kings and often directed their policies. The people believed in a great variety of gods-good, bad, and indifferent; but the theologians in one God, of whom the popular deities were manifestations or representatives. All these Wise Men pretended to seek-some really did seek -to ascertain the will of their God. They differed from the Hebrew prophets in one important respect; the Hebrew prophets sought for the voice of God in their souls; "the word of God came to me" was their common formula. The Magi, or Wise Men, sought for indications of the divine will in various material phenomena; those of Persia in the stars. This belief that the stars have for man a divine message prevailed even in Christendom until the science of astronomy destroyed it.

In the first century of the Christian era there was a widespread expectation throughout the Eastern world that a Deliverer from the woes under which mankind was groaning would erelong appear. Confucius in China had prophesied such a Deliverer, and it is said that a deputation of his followers going forth in search of him were the means of introducing Buddhism into China. Zoroaster in Persia had foretold to his followers the coming of such a worldSaviour. It would be quite natural for the Wise Men of his land to look for the fulfillment of his prophecy and to inquire of the stars when and where the promised Deliverer would be found. I wonder what they thought when they found a babe born of peasant parents, unheralded and unwelcomed in his native land. The narrator of the story does not tell us. He only tells us that they offered to the uncrowned and unentitled prince the gifts they had brought with them and then departed into their own country.

What was their message to their countrymen we do not know. What has been their message to the world ever since, what it is to us, seems to me clear.

They knew nothing of those truths the knowledge of which has to the Church often seemed essential. They knew nothing about the nature of Jesus, nothing about his spiritual mission, nothing about the Church or the sacraments or the creeds that were to be, nothing about the Old Testament, nothing about Jehovah, or the Fall, or the

Law and the prophets, or the Temple and the priesthood. They were simply seeking after God and the Deliverer whom they had a vague hope the unknown God would send into the world. Their faith was not a knowledge, it was only a hope. But, inspired by that hope, they had the courage to undertake a long, wearisome, and perhaps perilous journey of four or five months' duration. Their adventurous faith has been the theme of song and story ever since; and for nineteen centuries they have been known as the Three Wise Men, though they had no knowledge of the simplest elements of Christian theology. Why Wise Men?

They were Wise Men because they were seekers after God, because they believed that to find Him was to find "the life that really is," the life eternal. And the story of their adventure illustrates the saying of Christ that every one that seeketh findeth, and the saying of Paul that God gives eternal life to all those who by steadfastness in welldoing seek for glory and honor and incorruption. For nineteen centuries the various churches have been preaching various conditions of salvation. Some have said, you must accept the Church; and some, its sacraments; and some, its creeds; and some, its Bible; and every Christmas or Eplphany they have all agreed to celebrate the adventure of the Three Wise Men who found their way to the Deliverer without Church or sacrament or creed or Bible, simply because they possessed sincerity of desire and steadfastness in pursuit,

There was a time in the early days of the war when a reference to "the American consul at Milwaukee" was a "sure fire" joke on the vaudeville circuits. There may have been a grain of truth behind this bit of fun but it certainly was not the whole truth. The real attitude of Milwaukee is more nearly represented by this picture of a Milwaukee delegation which presented memorial to Strasbourg. With prominent French officials, they are seen on the balcony of the Strasbourg City Hall watching a parade of Alsatian societies

a

THE STREETS OF MOSCOW DURING A

SOVIET
DEMONSTRATION

This is a photograph of a great rally in support of the Red troops as they left

to fight the Poles

IT

(C) Underwood

T is now a great deal more difficult to get into the United States than it is to get into England-and it is also a great deal more expensive. The American Consul-General in London demands, and gets, £2 16s. 8d. for marking your passport with an indiarubber stamp inscribed with the word "Seen." The English Consul-General in New York is content to visé the said document for the modest charge of fifty

cents.

Then there is also a little matter of £2 10s. which the visitor to America must pay as head tax. This may or may not be refunded, providing the visitor does not remain more than two months.

Thirty-three years ago, when I acquired the transatlantic habit, these restrictions did not exist. Since 1887 I have visited the States more times than I care to remember, but, although I have been in that country at all seasons of the year, until this autumn I had never witnessed a Presidential election.

I had expected that the election of a President would be a somewhat exciting experience. I had anticipated some

ing of the sort of thing Mr. J. C. uire has so admirably put into verse:

A night there was, a crowd, a narrow street,

Torches that reddened faces drunk with dreams;

An orator exultant in defeat;

Banners, fierce songs, rough cheering, women's screams!

But there was nothing of the sort. We only saw one political parade, and that was in favor of the Republican party. Certainly it was at night, and there were a crowd, a narrow street, torches that reddened faces, but the faces were certainly not drunk with dreams or, in this year of our Lord, with anything else. There were banners and songs and cheering, but one didn't hear any women's screams, though the voices of some of them were shrill.

Nobody seemed to know very much about the candidates. We had heard in England that both came from Ohio, that both owned newspapers, and that both were married. If these were among the qualifications for the White House, it seems to us, so far away, that Mr. Cox's claims were slightly superior to those of Mr. Harding, for we had heard that the former owned two

YEAR

newspapers and had been twice married; but in truth we know little about the whole matter. Our ignorance was recorded by a popular but baffled poet in the following verses:

I wish I knew some facts regarding

The private life of Mr. Harding;

I wish that I had simply stocks

Of anecdotes of Mr. Cox. . . .

In England, where they do not dwell, No one appears to knew them well.

On landing in New York, it is true, we met with some signs of political activity. On the dock stood a number of ladies carrying large cardboard placards, but when we got near enough to read them we found they bore nothing more germane to the election than "AngloAmerican Friendship-Bah!" and "The English Employed Indians to Kill Your Ancestors." It wasn't quite clear what it all meant, but the ladies seemed very good-natured about it, and turned hither and thither so that we should have no difficulty in reading their placards. They seemed a more friendly race than those that used to pervade Westminster before the war, clamoring for women's suffrage.

One had expected to find, as one would have found in Great Britain, buildings in the towns, palings in the country, plastered with placards and portraits of the contending candidates, but, except an occasional photograph in a shop window, we had no opportunity of really learning what they looked like, and I have come away from the United States with the vague impression that both are handsome and finelooking men of what we sometimes call the American type, but I am quite sure that if one of them came on board the ship I am writing on I should never recognize him. On the other hand, the orated with the portraits of the candicountry districts were sometimes decdates for some of the minor posts, but these were on a small scale and almost negligible.

It struck a Britisher as odd that

neither party seemed to have any colors. No flower of a blameless life attached to either side. The red and white rose of the Lancaster and Yorks are unknown in the United States, and the small party badge, worn in the buttonhole and no bigger than a fivecent piece, attracts little attention.

Then again there was little attempt to sum up the parties' position in the single phrase. No such saying as "Peace with honor" seemed to dominate political situations, and, though there may have been political songs, I never hap pened to hear any. Music-hall songs, such as "We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do!" which used to