Chapter IX: Part 9

It is an immediate purpose of the Peace Movement to make war a last resort, not the first one, in times of international differences. To this and every agency which tends to postpone action and give the blood time to cool, must contribute.

In civil life, there has been through the ages, a steady movement from violence to law, from the ordeal of private combat to the arbitration of the courts. In like fashion, we would extend and strengthen the parallel tendency among nations. Already arbitration is everywhere welcomed as a means of composing differences. Conciliation goes before arbitration and is a factor of equal importance. The very existence of an Arbitral Tribunal before which differences may be brought, itself insures that most differences will be adjusted without its agency. If war is really the last resort, very few nations will ever come to it, and the War System will decline through neglect, as of obvious uselessness.

But so long as the War System is in full force, there is always danger of war. So great an agency can never be fully under control. Its existence insures the presence of a powerful group of men, anxious to test its powerful machinery and impatient of civil authority. The War System is designed for war, defensive of course, but it is a maxim of war, as of football, that the best defense is to be the first to score.

As to the Arbitration treaties and the hundreds of disputes which have been settled for all time by the tribunals at The Hague, no verdict thus obtained has yet been rejected or opposed, and none is likely to be. The public opinion of the world would be as wholly opposed to the repudiation of an adverse verdict as it would be to the repudiation of a national debt. The verdict and the debt involve the same sanction of national honor.

The discussion as to the need of an international police to enforce decisions made at The Hague, is therefore wide of the mark as there can be no occasion for the use of force in such a connection.

It is becoming more and more evident in Europe that the greatest single asset of the Peace Movement is the success of the republic of America.

America is opposed to the War System. There is a much larger percentage of pacifists in the United States than in any other of the larger nations. For one thing, it is relatively easy to be a peace man in a republic. No criticism or obloquy attaches to it. But in Europe, the direction of least resistance is to follow the wake of the War System.

In spite of the unhallowed sums we have carelessly spent to build up a War System, we have none. We shall never have any. Should we pass under its yoke we should cease to be America. Even our admirals and generals do not belong to the War System. They are civilians in spirit, sometimes in disguise, but permeated with ideas of law and justice, a condition far removed from that of the professional war maker of the continent of Europe.

The impression of America as a great factor in international conciliation receives impetus with the celebration of the hundred years of Anglo-Saxon peace, with its lesson of the unguarded and therefore perfectly defended 4,000 miles of Canadian frontier. This impression has been strongly emphasized by the admirable skill by which President Wilson has up to the time of this writing, honorably avoided war with Mexico, a war which was considered inevitable in most political circles in Europe. While on the one hand the United States cannot have the secret treaty, the cherished tool of the War System since the days of Machiavelli, and while Democracy is a form of government fitted for minding one's own business, and for nothing else, it is recognized that the United States must and should take the lead in conciliation and in arbitration, as she is now taking the lead in furnishing means for a world-wide survey of the War System, and for the resultant propaganda for its abrogation.

THE MACHINERY FOR PEACE

It is understandable that Germany and Great Britain should consider their armies, their battleships, dreadnoughts, super-dreadnoughts, and invincibles as constituting the chief machinery for peace. In celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession to the imperial throne the Kaiser was hailed as "the true and central factor of the past peaceful policy of Germany." These were Lord Blyth's words, in recognizing the avowed policy of the Emperor to preserve peace through the utmost practicable preparation for war; and ex-President Taft, who would refer to arbitrators even questions of national honor, spoke of this apologist of arming for conflict between nations as the "greatest single individual force in the practical maintenance of the peace of the world." The Kaiser's silver jubilee was the signal for unstinted acknowledgment by the leading men of the world that His Majesty's policy had preserved the peace of the German Empire for a generation. In its exterior relations Germany had looked too terrible to encounter, and the romantic, warlike spirit that distinguishes the Teuton had found vent in the service of preparation. The young Germans, both aristocratic and bourgeois, were encouraged by every means to train, to show, to be martial, but not to fight. And it will be recalled that Germany refused to discuss the limiting of armaments at The Hague only because the Conference was not empowered to deal finally with it.

In response to the Czar's call, delegations of twenty-six Powers attended in 1899 the First Hague Conference; forty-three Powers were represented at the Second Conference in 1909. These gatherings formulated the world's opinion against many of the evils of war. Their agreements expressly forbade international bloodshed except between the actual fighting forces. They made it unlawful to sack cities, to take or destroy private property on land, or to menace the peace and safety of non-combatants. Those who observe that the nations have not yet agreed to do away with war overlook the fact that the non-combatant millions within belligerent nations may not be molested in lives or property, save that they must bear the war's financial burdens. With respect to most of the civilized dwellers of earth the sword is forever sheathed. Among the fighters, too, wounds are quickly bound, and quarter is expected and given.

The machinery of peace governing this world society is not complete. It provides a way of peaceful settlement of disputes by arbitration. It lacks a court such as that whose decisions, backed by police and the more potent sentiment of the people, guard the king's peace in civilized communities. But arbitration has done much to keep the peace of nations. The experience of the United States is in point. Up to the time of the Second Hague Conference Mr. John Bassett Moore finds records of more than sixty arbitrations, the tribunals sitting with overlapping terms of years that aggregate a hundred and twenty-five--exceeding in number the years of this nation's life. The total cost of these tribunals was doubtless much more than would have been the expense of an actual court kept always in session.

Before The Hague Conferences, the American Government had already been participating in what was tantamount to a permanent tribunal of arbitration. The questions adjusted were of every class, not merely pecuniary claims, but questions affecting what are called "vital interests and national honor." The case of the Creole, for instance, brought the United States and Great Britain close to war, and later, in 1842, nearly caused a rupture of the conferences between Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton--a rupture which would almost inevitably have led to hostilities. The case came before a tribunal of arbitration in 1853, and was so quietly disposed of that the public paid no attention to the award. Then there was the negotiation of the Alabama Claims by Hamilton Fish. Lord John Russell answered our proposal to Great Britain, that it involved the honor of Her Majesty's Government, of which it alone was guardian, and the claims were not subject to arbitration. After being examined and critically formulated, they were eight years later submitted to the tribunal at Geneva, and settled. Mr. Roosevelt, opposing President Taft's treaties of arbitration with Great Britain and France, objected that they would embrace "questions of vital interest and honor." Perhaps he had not studied the cases of the Creole and the Alabama.

The values involved in American arbitral proceedings have been enormous. More than a thousand claims were adjusted in cases of the United States against Mexico in 1868, and a thousand more counterclaims of Mexico were disposed of under one commission, the total amount involved being well over half a billion dollars. And the arbitral awards of the tribunals in which America participated have in every case been final. Not one of the awards to which the United States has been a party but was carried into effect by both Governments concurrently. In rare cases new facts discovered have reopened the proceedings, but on such occasions the parties proceeded to end them in a spirit of justice and equity.

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It was to nations trained in self-restraint that the Russian Emperor addressed his rescript of August 24, 1898, recognizing the fact that the preservation of peace had been put forward as the object of international policy. More terrible engines of destruction were being wrought, and the intellectual and physical strength of the nations, with their labor and capital, were diverted from their natural uses and wasted. Economic crises threatened the world because of war preparations, the while sentiment against war's devastation found concrete embodiment in arbitrated disputes. A conference was proposed to limit armaments, to prevent armed conflicts, and to mitigate the atrocities of war. The twenty-six nations that met at The Hague on May 18, following, codified the international laws of war and peace already existing. Delegates of the forty-three nations that met in the Second Conference on June 15, 1907, amended and strengthened these codes, added to them, and appointed the meeting of the Third Conference, to be held in 1915.

In the first two Conferences the rights and duties of neutrals were defined, the employment of force for the recovery of contract debts was renounced, and it was laid down that the "right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited." The bombardment of undefended towns was prohibited, together with the discharge of projectiles from balloons, the use of bullets that expand or flatten in the human body, the poisoning of wells, pillage, violation of "family honor," confiscation of private property, the laying of automatic contact mines that do not become speedily harmless, the seizing of submarine cables, destruction of monuments and works of art, and interference with religious customs. The killing treacherously of individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army or of those who have surrendered was outlawed and it was forbidden to make improper use of a flag of truce, or of the national or military colors of the enemy, or of the Red Cross badges.

The progress in these agreements reached by the Second Conference is notable, in that it forbade that the rights and acts of a member of the hostile nation be abolished, suspended, or regarded as inadmissible in a court of law; that a belligerent compel a man to fight against his own country, even though he were in the belligerent's service before the war broke out, or to force the inhabitants of seized territory to give information about the army of the other belligerent, or about its means of defense. While all appliances for transmission of news and for transport, whether by land, sea, or air, may be seized, together with depots of arms and all munitions of war--even if belonging to private individuals--they must be restored when peace is made, with due award of damages. The inhabitants of a territory are to be regarded as belligerents only if they "carry arms openly," and that is to be the test of their belligerency. Besides all this, the rights of prisoners of war are sedulously guarded.

This code, relating to the laws and customs of war, received what many critics of the Conferences regard as an undue amount of attention; it was even charged that, in effect, it legitimatized war. It did quite the contrary. Francis Lieber drew up for President Lincoln in the second year of the American civil war rules, which Lincoln ratified and promulgated in the famous General Orders No. 100--the first code regulating the conduct of armies in the field. The international convention drawn by the Brussels Conference of 1874, had its origin, as acknowledged by its President, Baron Jomini, in these rules of Lieber and of President Lincoln. To the United States honor is due, not for legitimatizing war between nations, but for beginning to restrict its operations to the actual fighters and their works of attack and defense. At The Hague the work of the Brussels Conference became in turn a basis for reaffirming this principle, and for restricting more closely the field of combat.

Moreover, the principles of the Geneva Red Cross Convention were adapted to naval war. Machinery for rescue and treatment of the sick, wounded, and shipwrecked men of the world's navies was provided.

An International Prize Court was established, which, in the opinion of Elihu Root, should later develop into the court of justice for the nations. The only obstacle to ratifying the convention for this court was swept away by the code of laws of naval war embodied in the Declaration of London, and drawn in February, 1909, by delegates of the European Powers and the United States. The liability to capture of the merchant ships of belligerents throws their commerce largely into the hands of neutrals. Efforts to prevent neutrals from trading with the enemy follow. Then blockades, searches, and seizure of contraband goods stir up strife with other nations, and give occasion for general war. The American war of 1812 with Great Britain resulted from such causes, the effects of which, again, the two nations barely escaped during our Civil War; and the sinking of British merchantmen by Russia during its war with Japan provoked strong resentment. Excepting two questions, those respecting the conversion of merchant ships into warships on the high seas, and as to whether the nationality or the domicile of the owner shall be considered in determining "enemy property," the London declaration embodies clear and definite rules on which the International Court of Prize may render just decisions.

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The measures for restricting the field of actual war were accompanied at The Hague by the erection of machinery for the pacific settlement of international disputes. That was work of prevention, and it was in four parts.

In the first part the contracting Powers agree to "use their best efforts to insure the pacific settlement of international differences."

The second provides that proffers of good offices and mediation by a third State, never shall be regarded as unfriendly. Throughout the Turko-Italian and Turko-Balkan Wars, and during the Inter-Balkan conflict, the European Powers acted as mediators under this provision, and smoothed the way to peace.

The third part provided for international commissions of inquiry, such as were comprehended in President Taft's proposed treaties of arbitration with Great Britain and France, and Secretary Bryan's proposed treaties with the Central American republics and with the Powers of Europe and Asia. The intent of these commissions is to investigate the causes of complaint and publish them, trusting to international public opinion to accomplish a just settlement. This machinery worked to bring about the voluntary payment by Russia of $300,000 damages for the destruction of British fishing boats, fired on mistakenly by Admiral Rozhdestvensky in his ill-fated expedition against Japan. Again, the report of a commission on the French steamer Tavignano, seized by the Italian torpedo boat Fulmine during the Turko-Italian War, and concerning the attack on the Tunisian mahones Kamouna and Gaulois, was accepted July 23, 1912, and referred for the final solution of equities to The Hague Court of Arbitration.

This court--the fourth instrumentality--is composed of three distinct bodies; namely, the Permanent Administrative Council, the International Bureau, and the Court of Arbitration proper. The Permanent Council is made up of the diplomatic envoys of the signatory Powers accredited to the Netherlands, besides the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs, and was constituted after its ratification by nine of the Powers. The Council is permanent in the sense that its members are always at The Hague; it controls the International Bureau, appointing its staff and methods of administration, and reporting the proceedings of the court to the signatory Powers.

The International Bureau receives all the documents and stipulations in disputed cases, where arbitration is agreed upon and referred to The Hague, acting as a board of registry. It places its staff at the disposal of tribunals of arbitration, and occasionally of those not constituted at The Hague, and its expenses are paid by the Powers.

The Court of Arbitration proper is really an "eligible list" of individuals, "of recognized competence in questions of international law, enjoying the highest moral reputation," designated by the forty-four Powers signatory to the convention. Their terms are six years, renewable, not over four members appointed by a Power. Their jurisdiction extends over all cases submitted to them, but sometimes the parties agree to a special tribunal not selected from the list. Two names may be selected from the list of arbitrators by each of the Powers in dispute, and the amended convention of 1907 provides that only one of these can be its envoy or chosen from its nominees to the Court of Arbitration. The four arbitrators thus selected themselves choose a fifth as umpire, or, if the votes of the four are equally divided, the choice of umpire is intrusted to a third Power to be agreed upon. If there is failure to agree upon a third Power, each party to the controversy makes a separate choice of a Power, and the two thus selected will try to appoint the umpire. But if they, in turn, fail to agree, each shall within two months' time present two candidates from the general list, excluding those selected by the disputants or of their nations; by lot among these, the umpire is finally elected.

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The work of the Third Conference, besides adding to the statute law of war, will largely concern the regulations governing the Court of Arbitration. Since it was constituted in April, 1901, this court has passed judgment in fourteen important cases without having established needed rules of practice. It is not decided whether the cases and counter-cases shall be presented with argument, or merely with statements of the facts, the conclusions sought, and the proofs. The practice is both ways. The thirty-five articles relating to "arbitral procedure" fail to prescribe rules, leaving this task to the tribunal in each case. As a result the terms of procedure in the Casablanca dispute, for instance, which were decided hastily to avert a threatened war, were brief and vague, and they left the discretion of the tribunal uncontrolled. The order of oral debate is not determined chiefly because a disputant is touchy about being classed as plaintiff or defendant. Clear rulings on points of practice are not made when presented, although the agents and counsel are entitled by the rules to "present orally to the tribunal all the arguments they may consider expedient in defense of their case." Yet opportunity to argue a motion is sometimes not afforded when the motion is made, and an argument presented later would be out of place. It would aid procedure to have arguments presented and rulings made as the points come up. Finally, the informal discussions between court and counsel frequently hinder the straightforward presentation of a case.

But the chief defect of these arbitral tribunals, as in all others--for practice has not reached the perfection of choosing disinterested judges belonging to nations not concerned in the controversy--lies in their temptation to compromise. Gallatin, in the Northeastern Boundary case with Great Britain, remarked that the arbitrator "has always a bias to split the difference." The Casablanca case, the decision of which really did avert war, and more than any, so far, justifies the establishment of the world court, depended on law and fact, but was compromised. Dr. Heinrich Lammasch, a distinguished member of several Hague tribunals, speaks of the "preponderatingly diplomatic character" of this decision. Other decisions have been criticised for the same reason, notably those of the North Atlantic Fisheries and the Orinoco Steamship. Compromise, while of value, is the function of diplomacy or mediation, and the cases referred to The Hague are admittedly those which diplomacy cannot adjust. The remedy is by direct agreement to exclude from the tribunal judges who sit as diplomatic agents of their governments. A beginning in this direction is in Secretary Bryan's plan for commissions of inquiry, consisting of five members, three of whom should be chosen from other countries than those in dispute. But these would be merely committees. The defect of Mr. Bryan's plan, and the great lack of the Hague Court of Arbitration, is that the agreements to refer cases in dispute are purely voluntary; the one thing for friends of peace to work for, of course, is to make it as easy for differing nations as for differing men to hale each other into court, and as impossible to refer their differences to force.

The International Court of Prize has already come nearer to this ideal than the Court of Arbitration. It is a regular court of justice. Its judges are not arbitrators, they receive a fixed compensation, their jurisdiction in cases of appeal from the national prize courts relating to captured merchant ships and cargoes, is compulsory. In absence of treaty provisions between the states in dispute, the convention adopted by the Second Hague Conference reads, "the court shall apply the rules of international law; if no generally recognized rule exists, the court shall give judgment in accordance with the general principles of justice and equity." Before ratifying the convention, Great Britain in 1908 called a conference in London of the chief naval Powers, which codified the laws of naval war, covering blockades, contraband, service ill-becoming neutrals, destruction of neutral prizes, transfer to a neutral flag, hostile character, convoy, resistance to search, and compensation. Here a whole category of cases is at once removed from the judgment of biased minds.

The existing Court of Arbitration may be resorted to increasingly as a means of diplomatic conciliation; but by its side and above it should rise, in the opinion of all authorities on international law, a Supreme Court of Arbitral Justice, not diplomatic but judicial, that will render its decisions rigorously according to the declared law and the evidence. The Second Conference at The Hague approved a convention for the establishment of such a court. The United States has proposed to the Powers that the Prize Court be invested with the functions and jurisdiction of a Court of Arbitral Justice. The practical difficulty met at The Hague was in the appointing of permanent Judges. Forty-four, one for each state including The Netherlands, would be too many. A court of but fifteen Judges was recognized as desirable. Such a court could not be chosen from forty-four nations, and the delegates were in a quandary. The arguments were irrefragable, of course, that a small, independent body of magistrates selected in advance is needed to settle controversies between nations as they arise, and as a court of appeal from the decisions of temporary tribunals. Such a tribunal might well become a court of first as well as of last resort, because of the difficulties and delays usually experienced in making up the mixed arbitral commissions from the eligible list of the Court of Arbitration. The alternative recourse is especially needed when the imminence of war requires a speedy reference, as in the Casablanca case. For these reasons the convention was drawn and approved, leaving to the Third Conference the task of constituting the court. Ernest Nys, a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and Counselor of the Court of Appeals of Brussels, urging the necessity of such a tribunal, makes the point that its members should not be chosen to represent any countries, as such, but rather in a way to assure that the different systems of law and procedure, as well as the principal languages of the world, might be represented. By this means the world peace may be permanently established. Organized justice will succeed arbitration, guaranteeing to individuals and states the security of their rights and institutions, precisely as the "king's peace" had come to guarantee them within the limits of each sovereignty.

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In this review of the instruments making for peace by conciliation and law, the arguments for war have not been ignored. If at The Hague in 1915 the Powers should decide to nationalize the private industries that supply armaments and engines of war, the artificial stimulus given to those industries and the exploitation of new appliances for war would cease; manufacturers would no longer oppose the limitation of armaments, which every nation desires. Complete preparation for war did not prevent the Balkan States and Turkey, not yet emerged from the civilization of the Middle Ages, from coming to the death grip with each other. It was different with those nations whose Council of Ambassadors, sitting in London, and watching the kaleidoscopic changes in the Balkans, became by the statesmanlike influence of Earl Grey, a clearing house, through which the affairs of the six chief Powers were adjusted to a harmonious ending. It is noteworthy that in the more than forty years of Europe following the close of the Franco-Prussian war--perhaps as good as a cycle of Cathay--those six Powers, though armed for provocation, have by such careful negotiations remained at peace. But making the allowance due to this remarkable abstention from war, to which must be added the hundred years of peace between the United States and Great Britain, the inherent appeal of war to the imagination and emotions of mankind must still be recognized.

War's mutilations have never roused aught but horror, its waste of men and treasure are deplored. But the spirit of strife, of daring, and of heroism remains in human breasts. If war is outworn, if bloodshed and sacrifice of lives are to cease between civilized states, as they have long ceased within those states, it must be that better means have been found to satisfy the profound human need of expression and of conquest. The German Emperor, while keeping up the medieval pageantry of arms, has welded his nation into a militant power of industry and science. Their arts are not ignoble, their industries are not monotonous, but have taken on the aspect of imperial enterprise and daring. Their scientists are rescuing mankind from disease and freeing it from menial labors, while their merchants and traders are modernizing the orient, setting examples of method and discipline, incidentally, to their rivals in the civilized nations. It is by such means that civilization need no longer rear itself on human slavery; the very beasts of burden have been freed, and man has seized control of nature's forces. By them he is borne through cities, manners, climates, councils, governments, more swiftly than Ulysses went, and beyond the paths of all the western stars.

More distant horizons of science have been opened. The transmutation of the elements, but recently announced, is expected to realize more than the dreams of the alchemist. If we are to believe Professor Soddy, who with Sir William Ramsay obtained in 1903 the first direct proof that radioactive processes are veritable transmutations, this discovery in its consequences should "absolutely revolutionize the whole condition of existence." For of all processes, this alone accounts for the wealth of energy dissipated so prodigally throughout the universe over apparently endless periods of time. Once means are found to accelerate the transmuting rate of radioactive atoms, Professor Soddy believes the same means will suffice to break up the other elements now unchanging, releasing energy which man may harness a "million times greater than any at present utilized." In his masterly address in 1908 before the American Society of International Law, Elihu Root traced the development of the international spirit by the use of human inventions conquering space and time. Clans, communities, nationalities have lost their early function, and frontiers and territorial possessions are changing their political significance. Terrestrial pioneering is not ended, the continents are rediscovering each other in new relations.

Much has been done to open new channels for the play of men's energies away from war. War has had its uses to break up the old order, to let loose new and unknown forces in society, to set men free from tradition. That was the great work of the Crusades. Chivalry and knighthood are still needed, but of a new order. The martyrs for aerial navigation are the type. The machinery for peace that has been set up in the new palace at The Hague will not confine the adventurous spirit of mankind.

EN CASSEROLE

_Tobacco and Alcohol_

As to tobacco, since reading the article on it in this number, this Review has really thought more seriously than ever before about (not _of_) giving up smoking. But many doctors here and in Europe have told us to keep on, and but one has told us to stop. How is it with you? We wonder whether life with tobacco _can_ seem to those who know only life without it, as bad as life without it seems to those who have known life with it! Perhaps each class should experiment in the other's field.

As to the outlay for mere pleasure, and the destruction of life involved, we wonder how those caused by tobacco would compare with those caused by travel--short trips as well as long, by carriage, automobile, vessel--and aeroplane? Our contributor has seen these paragraphs, and he says, very much to our edification and entertainment:

"It is a relief to know that the tobacco article is not going to interfere with the pleasure which 'This Review' derives from smoking. But the writer confesses to a little surprise at the precocity of an infant which in its first year has acquired the nicotine habit to such an extent as to lead it to consult several physicians on the subject."

[It is many years since, but we remember that in at least two cases, the prescription was _volunteered_. Ed.]

"As for the expense caused by driving for pleasure, our statistics do not give us a conclusive answer, but they at least supply us with an outside figure, for Uncle Sam in counting his horses at the time of the last census distinguished between those on farms and those elsewhere. It is fair to assume that the great bulk of the horses used for pleasure are in the second class, and that they constitute a comparatively small fraction of that class. Now horses not on farms numbered 3,182,789 in 1910, and were valued at $422,204,393. In other words, a third of what smokers spend for tobacco would enable them to buy up all of the horses in a big class, only a fraction of which is used for pleasure, and an equal amount would probably suffice for their keep.

"In the case of automobiles, it is still more difficult to distinguish between those used for pleasure and those used for directly productive or public purposes. However, the object of the article was to call attention not so much to gross figures of expenditure, as to the indirect burden imposed by smokers upon the community at large. The automobilist who is willing to run down innocent wayfarers rather than curb his craze for speed is in the same class with the smoker who so smokes as to destroy property and life. Indeed the two are often identical, and it was no mere accident that led the Massachusetts Forestry Association to depict upon its poster designed to stop forest fires, a party of smoking automobilists bowling along and leaving a trail of fire behind them. If the 'Review' can devise some painless way of eliminating both the reckless smoker and the reckless joy-rider from the landscape, it will kill two undesirable birds with one stone."

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And as to alcohol. Well! There's Horace and Schiller and the feast of Cana, and the whiskey Lincoln wanted for his other generals, and lots of other people and facts.

But as to bar-maids, we are bound to say that since the graceful tribute to them on earlier pages was in type, there has been placed in our hands evidence of a crusade against their employment in England, and of its abolition by law in South Australia. See the Memoir of Margaret Ethel Macdonald. London, 1913.

For all we know, the preponderance of argument may be against the substitution of women for men as barkeepers; but we suspect that at least it would diminish the shooting at and by barkeepers, in New York.

And another thing we think we do know--that in these progressive days, it would be hard to find any pursuit in which women are engaged, where there is not agitation to improve it off the face of the earth. Their old-fashioned pursuits of wife and mother have lately been specially honored by such agitation.

_Answering Big Questions_

A contemporary that we have always very highly "esteemed" (we believe that is the correct term, but we are new in the profession) is now proceeding to fill us with awe. It announces that it is going to circulate privately among its friends, a series of brochures that "will answer big questions." We wish we could do that; but our cotemporary has already engaged the only editor we know of who can. For our poor part, we are apt to encounter in any country grocery some question too big for us to answer. But the answers our esteemed cotemporary is going to send out may occasionally help us in telling how a big question that we don't profess to be able to answer, looks to us. We have already had some help of this kind from the editor in question: on many subjects his glowing imagination has thrown such high lights that we have found places of shadow before unsuspected.

The matter reminds us of Horace Greeley's proposition to issue "for the people," a series of pamphlets for five cents each, to contain only "the pure truth." He did not say where he was going to get it.

_Decency and the Stage_

In the present agitation regarding decency on the stage, it is probably safe to assume that the proponents for license or liberty or freedom or whatever they call it, admit that there are _some_ necessary acts and places which should not be represented on the stage. Now would it not clarify discussion if the said proponents were to draw the line between such inadmissible matters and those that should be admitted? We have never happened to see such a line drawn.

_What Is the Matter with the American Colleges_

Everybody in every one of them seems to know that something is the matter, but nobody in any seems to know just what, much less, then, a remedy for whatever it is.

Some say it is the suppression of the individual, the glorification of the average. Others say it is college yelling and athletics. Yet others, that it is vocationalizing and the deadly practical. Still others call it the proletariat of the doctorate, the fad of the faculties for immature or imitation research.

Can it be that it is all these things and several more, particularly all those that exist in contrasted pairs, such as discipline and required work according to the standard of the mean, and at the same time, elective studies and the freedom of the city? Or simultaneous college yells and doctor's dissertations. And can it be that all these grow out of a single actual condition which is common to all American higher education, and which compels it to be "lower" at the same time that it is "higher"? For in the present organization of practically every American college and university that condition actually does exist.

It exists by virtue of the fact of the housing in the same dormitories and fraternity houses, and mixing in the same class rooms and laboratories, and providing with the same teachers and deans, and ruling by the same regulations and gum-shoe committees, of dependent preparatory students and independent advanced students.

Our high schools stop short of finishing the preparation of students for University work. Our universities assume part of the high school function along with their own. The German _Gymnasium_ and French _lycée_ include the equivalents of the American college Freshmen and part of the Sophomores. They finish up the drill and discipline stage of education. The Continental university begins and carries on the stage of intelligent and self-chosen and independent work. But in the American universities there must be discipline, college yells, drill in routine and elementary work, classes handled on the basis of averages, and teachers of the _Gymnasium_ and _lycée_ type, existing side by side with recognition and encouragement of the individual freedom of bent, disregard of credit hours and assigned tasks, and scholarly professors and investigators of real university type.

The outcome is that the drill teachers are made pseudo-investigators; the investigators made unwilling drill teachers. The students are invited to soar, and at the same time ordered to march in ranks. Preparatory school rules are made for the sake of the Freshmen, which the Seniors have to obey. Freedom of choice in study is offered because of the Seniors and graduates, to the utter demoralization of the Freshmen.

Because of this impossible juxtaposition of discipline and freedom, drill and inspiration, the American university feels sick. It knows very well that something is the matter with it. It has to be all things to all students, and is, in fact, too little of a real thing to any of them.

_Wanted: Proportionate News_

The most noteworthy difference between European and American Journalism, as regards news, is the prominence we give to what is technically called the news of the day. Let a great liner be sunk or saved and all the newspapers, even the most conservative, print page on page of repetitious story or comment, playing on the emotions from every point of view. No European paper would feature even the most affecting news on any such scale. Doubtless our American practice is a natural enough tribute from the editors to the mobility of our sympathies, not to say the flightiness of our minds. What the enthralled reader does not realize is that to provide him with the completely modulated thrill of the day scores of important items of routine news have been curtailed to meaningless epitome or wholly suppressed. For several days that duty of daily chronicle which a good newspaper ordinarily performs is intermitted. The most important debates of a congressional year will receive bare notice so long as a heroic Marconi operator is in the public eye. The greatest of foreign statesmen or authors might die in the glorious interim and receive the barest notice; a revolution in Persia would yield to a factory fire on the East Side.

Now something of this disproportion is necessary. No paper could live in America which scrupulously treated news according to its abstract importance regardless of the reader's cravings. Yet a journal that respects itself has a function of daily chronicle that should under no circumstances be suspended. A really good newspaper ought to be valuable material for the historian, and our best newspaper will several times in every twelvemonth leave him badly in the lurch. For a week he will find admirable reports of say the discussion of a very important measure like the currency bill, and then suddenly the _Volturno und kein Ende_. Just about the time when mail letters were beginning to tell a certain amount of truth about the Messina earthquake, the telegraphic reports of which were egregious inventions of distant improvisers, _The Republic_ was saved through the intrepidity of Jack Binns. A correspondent who had been on the ground at Messina and remained in close touch with the rescuers and refugees received the sufficient answer with regard to additional earthquake facts "Jack Binns has killed Messina." Here is obviously both a good and a bad reason. There was every reason for celebrating at length the pluck and loyalty of Jack Binns, and no reason for curtailing the record of one of the greatest disasters registered in history.

The first duty of a good newspaper is to the more important routine news. It is a duty that every American journal neglects at times quite scandalously. The old fashion of relegating striking news of the day to an extra had much to commend it. Abuse of the extra by the yellow press has pretty well killed the practice among the conservative papers. Possibly a discreet revival of the legitimate extra might help matters. But what is really needed is a juster sense of proportion and a clearer conception of duty among editors. With a little insight and much courage a managing editor might make himself the controller of the "news of the day," rather than its mere conduit. In the long run his paper would more than gain in steady prestige what it lost in occasional flurries of sensational success.

_Simplified Spelling_

Rather than bother our readers and distract their attention from what we have to say, we print in the orthographic forms we are all accustomed to. But we realize that many of these forms are inconsistent and irrational--more so in English than in any other civilized language--and that the difficulty of learning them wastes the time and tissue of our children, and obstructs among foreigners the spread of English to its natural position of a world language, with the blessings that its attaining that position would bring in peace and commerce.

Our orthography is, of course, an evolution. It began with picture symbols, and some of these were gradually changed into the letters of our alphabet. But the signs have always been later than the sounds, and we never had enough of the former to express the niceties of the latter. Therefore imperfections and inconsistencies in any new system proposed should not be fatal against it, if it is enough of an advance on the existing system, and a better advance than any other proposed. The orthography of the future will undoubtedly be eclectic from many proposals, and probably, like the present orthography, from many involuntary and unreasoned practices.

The English Simplified Spelling Society, which contains the leading British authorities, has gone on the principle that it is not worth while to recommend any changes short of a comprehensive scheme for the whole language, and has recommended an approximate one. Nothing more than approximation is possible.

The American Simplified Spelling Board, sustained by Mr. Carnegie, which corresponds in authority with the English society, has not attempted a comprehensive system, but for the worst extravagances and inconsistencies has simply recommended a number of remedies, especially such forms as _tho_, _thru_, and the following changes in final syllables--saving all silent _e's_, including the one in _ed_; the _me_ in _gramme_, and programme; the _ue_ in final _gue_; the _te_ in final _ette_; also the substitution of _t_ for _d_ final, when so pronounced.

As is well known, several of the remedial forms are already in considerable use, especially in advertising and other writing where no appreciable demands are made on the understanding or emotions.

* * * * *

From here until we giv notis on a later page, we wil uze som of those forms and a few more--all of which may be not too radical for present use in informal riting, as abuv mentioned, and may be regarded as transitional toward an ideal system. It woud undoutedly be easier to teach children a comprehensiv and consistent sistem than the existing caos minus varius uncorrected partial remedies, as illustrated in the present riting. The authoritys ar agreed that children woud lern a consistent sistem years qicker than the present lac of sistem, and having lernd the consistent sistem, woud pic up the forms they find in newspapers and existing bouks without conscius effort. Then of course a generation familiar with a goud sistem woud soon be suppleid with literature in it. But a rising generation cannot be taut such a sistem before the elders ar convinst of its utility.

We wish to promote such a conviction as far as we can, but no won without experience can begin to realize the difficultys, in fact the impossibility, of presenting new forms with absolute consistency. Words really sound differently in som connections than in others; and habit asserts itself in spite of reson. In half a dozen revisions of these paragrafs, inconsistencys hav bin found every time, and som undoutedly remain. But such inconsistencys ar not permanently inherent in the reform, and shoud not prejudis it. Habits of pronunciation disagree, and even if they did not, perfect discrimination coud not be attaind even with an alfabet twice as large as our present one; and if absolute discrimination wer attaind, it woud sune be nullified by an accent in som new popular song, or from som new popular orator. The only way to keep spelling abrest of language is for lexicografers to cut luse from precedent, and closely follo the actual pronunciation of their own times. William D. Whitney used to say that if they had always don that, filological sience woud be much farther advanst.

A special cause of inconsistency is the tendency to preserv what is not very bad, and to make changes as slight as reson wil permit, but when no slight change wil do the tric, to make the change as goud as possibl. But see what somtimes coms. The _w_ in _write_ is utterly useless. Take it off, and we have a fairly good word _rite_. But the _gh_ in _right_ is also useless--not pronounst, as is the _ch_ in the cognate German _recht_. If we get rid of it, however, we have _rit_, which rimes with _fit_. Now take it all in all, the best way to lengthen that _i_ is to dubl it, just as in silabls closed with a consonant we alreddy somtimes dubl the vowel--the _e_ in _seen_, the _o_ in _door_. _This is not necessary in open silabls._ The S. S. S. proposes we shal dubl the _a_ in _faather_, and the _u_ in _tuun_ (_tune_). Then if we dubl the _i_, we hav a uniform sistem with the long vowels. This givs us _riit_. But then the processes we hav just been thru land us with _rite_ and _riit_ for the same sound.

Of course to represent a sound in more than won way brings perplexity to spellers. Yet several ways are resonabl to let stand until a new generation can be educated to the best. This is a not unresonabl concession to habit, and is not nearly so bad as to let a simbol represent more than one sound, as in the two sounds for _tear_, and the vowel sounds in _door_ and _poor_.

But we must also take into account what Skeat rightly says--that the simbol for a sound should not be distributed in two places; and therefore _rite_ is not so good as _riit_. But the _e_ at the end of a closed silabl to lengthen the vowel, is so intrencht in the language that it woud be doutful policy to attack it yet in words fairly fit to stand, e. g., _fate_, _mate_, _bite_, _mote_, _lute_. So the transition policy we recommend is to let all fairly goud forms stand, but where a form is to bad to stand, change it into the best possibl, as _right_ into _riit_, even at the price of such an inconsistency as leaving _rite_ from _write_, because _rite_ is more workabl, tho _riit_ woud be theoretically better. Som such inconsistencys ar inevitabl, as we cannot start fresh, but must evolv from an existing inconsistent--very inconsistent--orthografy.

In spelling, as in matters perhaps more important (tho the importance of rational spelling is vastly grater than generally realized), it is wel to recognize the ideal, but to try to advocate at any time only what is workabl at that time.

* * * * *

Now we proceed tu a much clooser approximashon tu an ideal for owr children, so far az it appeerz practicabl with the prezzent alfabet. It wil at first seem a very funny ideal. All such approximashonz wil differ, and wil hav tu fiit it owt, and this wun wil seem at first tu be caos and oold niit, but allmoost enny wun ov them, tu a miind withowt an alien training--tu a chiild's miind, woud be moor orderly and luminus than owr prezzent sistem, or rathther lac ov sistem.

The rezonz for the niu formz which ar not obvius wil be explaind alfabetically after the text.

Moost ov the formz we giv ar recommended by the S. S. B. and the S. S. S. But thair ar itemz on which theze bodyz ar not yet agreed, even among themselvz; yet thair laborz hav reecht the point whair individualz shoud taak hoold and subject the formz thay beleev in tu the strugl for existens and the survival ov the fittest.

The grait difficultyz ar in indicating the vowelz with owr prezzent alfabet, which givz, for instans, oonly the wun simbol _a_ for at leest ait sowndz, and probably moor not generaly discriminated, and the wun simbol _e_ for at leest fiiv, _i_ for three, _o_ for foor, and dubld for foor moor, and _u_ for fiiv.

The short vowelz ar dispoozd ov with comparativ eez: for in a silabl cloozd with a consonant, the vowel iz uzualy short, e. g., _bad_, _bed_, _did_, _cod_, _cub_, but unfortunaitly not all short vowelz hav thair silablz cloozd. In Saxon dissilablz, owr ancestorz generaly did clooz the first silabl when it woz short, by repeeting the vowel beginning the folloing silabl, e. g., _gabble_, _filling_, _fizzle_. But the practis ov cloozing in this way woz generaly _restricted tu dissilabls_, az the pronunsiashon ov polisilabls iz apt tu indicait itself, and economy iz wurth considering. In wurdz directly from the Latin, az thair iz les differens ov axent between the silabls, the clozing ov the first silabl az abuv descriibd, iz not yuzual. It woud probably be wel tu introduus it, however. If, for instans, the first silabl wer cloozd in _viggor_, we shoud not hav such contradicshonz az _vigor_ and _vizor_ siid by siid.

Az tu the long sowndz, the oonly way tu reprezent them, _whair thay ar not determind by pozishon at the end ov an oopen silabl_, iz (az allreddy illustrated) by combining the letrz with different letrz, az we now combiin in _gain_, _real_, _mine_, _soar_, _rule_: evidently _gan_, _rel_, _min_, _sor_, _rul_, woud not anser the purpus. We hav tu maik theez combinashonz becawz the genius ov owr rais duz not seem tu favor adding letrz tu owr alfabet, inazmuch az we hav allreddy dropt tu valuabl wunz reprezenting respectivly _th_ and _dh_.

It certanly woud be best, az allreddy propoozd, tu dubl eech vowel for its long sownd, az we allreddy du in _deem_ and _door_. But we hav no exampl ov dubl _a_, _i_, or _u_ (except in tu or three forren wurdz liik _bazaar_, and ov coors, owr utterly exentric _w_), but the S. S. S. recommendz _uu_ insted ov the _oo_ in _coon_, and dubl _a_ in _faather_, which we accept. We do not need to dubl the _a_ befoor _r_ final in monosilabls becawz it haz the _ah_ sownd befoor _r_ exept when the _a_ follooz a _w_ sownd, iither in _w_ itself or in _cw_ exprest az _q_, e. g. in _war_ (_wawr_) or _quart_ (_qawrt_). The foorgoing givz dubl vowelz for all but _i_, and we propooz them thair. This iz a compleet sistem baasd on a principl.

Now for sum explanashonz.

abuv = above. The e final propperly maiks the _o_ long, and iz
entirely owt ov plais heer and in _love_, _shove_, _etc._ The
sownd ov the _o_ iz propperly a _u_ sownd, az in _but_, and iz
wun ov several cases whair we absurdly yuuz _o_ tu express _u_
sowndz.

allreddy = already. The silabl _al_ propperly riims with _gal_,
_Hal_, _pal_, _Sal_--rather a riotus set ov silabls, but thay ar
whot running down the alfabet givz. And the silabl _read_
propperly riims with _bead_, and shoud be spelt here _red_, but
_redy_ shoud riim with _needy_, so we proviid an addishonal
consonant, in the mood ov owr ancestorz, az allreddy explaind.
This iz at the sacrifis ov economy, but the reformd sistemz hav
uthther economyz, espeshally in the terminal _ed_, tu compensait.
See allso _prezzent_ and _confiuzd_.

allso = also. See _allreddy_.

allwaiz = always. The S. S. S. recommendz _ai_ for the long _a_
sownd az in _pair_. See _allreddy_.

bin = been, which propperly riimz with _seen_.

confiuuzd = confused. Withowt the _i_, propperly pronownst
_confoozd_. Moorover we wawnt tu get rid ov the apparent silabl
at the end ov such wurdz, not oonly tu economiiz the yuusles _e_,
but allso becawz forrenerz tend to pronowns the _ed_ az a silabl.