and because any special committee would be more or less liable to newspaper suspicion of being selected to thwart rather than to promote that policy. We repeat what we have heretofore said, that while there is a real difference between Mr. Pinchot and Mr. Ballinger, partly in method, partly temperamental, and while there is not that cordial co-operation between their Departments that there should be, we believe that the so-called Ballinger-Pinchot controversy is to a considerable extent the creation of journalistic imagination; and that both men are sincerely desirous of preserving the Nation's wealth for the Nation's benefit. It may be that this so-called controversy may prove beneficial rather than injurious; for the great peril to National conservation is public apathy, and the newspaper reports, while greatly exaggerating the matter, have concentrated public attention on the subject as nothing else, probably, could have done so effectively. The public will now have a right to demand that "Collier's Weekly" and Representative Hitchcock either make good their charges before the Senate committee when appointed, or withdraw them; and it will also have a right to expect that the committee will ascertain how much truth there is in the current reports that the Land Office and the Bureau of Forestry are not co-operating, and, if there is any truth, will either diplomatically bring about a better co-operation or fix the blame for the failure where it belongs.

COAL LANDS ON OUR PUBLIC DOMAIN

To the great satisfaction and relief of all friends of the conservation of our natural resources, a bill was introduced last week in the House of Representatives to conserve a vital resource-coal. The bill aims to separate surface rights from mineral deposits on our public lands. As was appropriate, it was introduced by Mr. Mondell, Chairman of the Public Lands Committee. When Secretary Ballinger, of the Department of the Interior, was Land Commissioner, he declared that

The object to be attained . . . is to conserve the coal deposits as a public utility and to prevent monopoly and extortion in their distribution. This may be accomplished either through a leasing system by

which the title would remain in the Governvision by the Secretary of the Interior, or ment under proper regulation and superthrough the sale of the deposits with restrictions on their mining and use which would control the minimum output and conserve the deposits as a public utility under similar regulations. As regards the future disposition of coal lands, I am impressed with the belief that the most advantageous method will be found in a measure authorizing the sale of the coal deposits in the lands, subject to forfeiture for failure to exercise the rights granted under such reasonable regulations as may be imposed.

Mr. Dennett, the present Land Commissioner, says that President Roosevelt's Message at the beginning of the first session of the Sixtieth Congress indorsed this. Mr. Dennett's quotation from that Message, however, indicates Mr. Roosevelt's willingness to adopt either of two plans, but a preference for the first and against the second, thus differing from Mr. Ballinger. Mr. Roosevelt's view was expressed as follows:

In my judgment, the Government should have the right to keep the fee of the coal, oil, and gas fields in its own possession and to lease the rights to develop them under proper regulations; or else, if the Congress will not adopt this method, the coal deposits should be sold under limitations to conserve them as public utilities, the right to mine coal being separated from the title to the soil.

The Outlook prefers the first of these alternatives. It believes, with Mr. Roosevelt and as against Mr. Ballinger, that a method of leasing is better than a method of sale. The latter should be adopted only if Congress will not adopt the first.

TWO VIEWS OF DUTY

In his annual report Mr. Dennett, Land Commissioner, indorses, as does Secretary Ballinger, the policy of the Roosevelt Administration regarding the conservation of our natural resources-lands, forests, waters, minerals. Its prosecution by the Taft Administration, however, according to Mr. Dennett, must be carried on, so far as the Executive branch of the Government is concerned, within the powers delegated to it by Congress. For instance, he says:

The Executive officer clothed with the administration of the public land law can act only pursuant to the laws enacted by Congress. . . . He cannot legislate nor can he substitute his judgment for that of Con

gress. To prevent fraud and in aid of proposed legislation... he may temporarily suspend from disposition portions of the public domain, but he cannot permanently declare reservations except where authorized by Congress.

In his address at Milwaukee the other day (his first important speech since leaving office) another view of the Executive's duty was expressed by the Hon. James R. Garfield, Secretary of the Interior in the Roosevelt Administration. He thus correctly outlined the principle which governed that Administration:

The Executive is a trustee of the property, rights, and interests of the public. The people properly consider the Executive as their particular advocate, their special representative. His stewardship carries with it grave responsibilities and affords splendid opportunities to serve the people well. President Roosevelt accepted both responsibilities and opportunities. The work for conservation was possible because he was constantly looking out for the public interest, and was willing to take action for the public welfare unless there was some prohibition under the Constitution or in law to prevent such action.

But, as Mr. Garfield concludes, the fight for conservation is now in the halls of Congress :

rec

The present Administration has ommended and outlined the legislation i deems necessary to carry out most effectively the work and policy. It now rests with our representatives in Senate and House to do their share in fulfilling the pledge given our people that our vital natural resources shall be conserved and used for the benefit of all the people of this and future generations. It is not an easy task to obtain legislation which is opposed by great vested interests. We may be sure that all the men and corporations who have in years gone acquired ownership or control of land, timber, coal, oil, phosphates, and water, free from regulation or condition and without just compensation to the public, will not voluntarily acquiesce in the proposed changes. There is no danger that the rights and demands of such interests will be neglected; the danger is that the public interest may be forgotten.

As Mr. Garfield was Commissioner of

Corporations, and later Secretary of the Interior, he is in a good position to judge when he says that the fight for regulation of the use of natural resources is of the same character as that for control of corporations, but that it is even more vital to the permanency of our Nation :

Both questions are ethical and social as well as industrial and political. . . . Both

widen individual opportunity and increase National as well as individual efficiency.. Each policy is founded upon the proposition that the public welfare is of higher importance than private interest, and that, in case of conflict, public welfare must control. This conclusion actuated the Roosevelt and doubtless actuates the Taft Administration. As to the Executive's exercise of his function, however, The Outlook believes with Mr. Garfield that a broad, not a narrow, construction of discretion is the one in harmony with the spirit of our time.

AMBASSADORIAL APPOINTMENTS

Last week President
Taft sent to the Senate

the names of three appointees as Ambassadors, eleven as Ministers, and a large number as Secretaries of Embassy or Legation. The appointees were promptly confirmed. First on the list was the name of the Hon. Robert Bacon, of New York, as Ambassador to France; an admirable appointment. At a time when the question of our tariff relations with France is pressing we are sending thither a representative who, as former member of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. and later as Assistant Secretary and Secretary of State, has had valuable experience in business and in diplomacy. Personally a singularly winsome man and with a character of rare fidelity and conscientiousness, Mr. Bacon may be depended on to repeat the successes of his immediate predecessors as Ambassador, General Horace Porter and Mr. Henry White. So admirable was the last named in this and other positions that the announcement of a change in our representation at Paris came as a surprise which was turned into a disappointment when it was disclosed that Mr. White was not to be promoted to London, but was to be retired from a service in which he had shown remarkable efficiency for a quarter of a century. Mr. White and Mr. Bacon represent thoroughly simplicity, straightforwardness, sincerity, breadth of vision, and grasp of detail. If Mr. Bacon's appointment is good, that of Mr. Richard C. Kerens, of Missouri, as Ambassador to Austria is doubtful. We have not been happy in some of our recent representations to the Court of Vienna, perhaps the most exclusive court in Europe.

Το

it we now send a man who is without diplomatic training or experience. Mr. Kerens was born in Ireland; served in the Union army throughout the Civil War; afterwards became a railway contractor and political boss of the Mark Hanna type. He has been the Missouri member of the Republican National Committee. He has been three times a candidate for the United States Senate. He is known for his great contributions to campaign funds. So far from barring appointments to office, this latter fact was too much in evidence as a reason for appointment. We have been flattering ourselves that we had outgrown the spoils system. Almost all of Mr. Taft's other selections seem to have been taken with an eye single to merit, but the appointment of Mr. Kerens looks very much like a reward for political services and as the easiest way out of a quarrel among Missouri politicians. If so, the friends of Civil Service Reform have cause for chagrin.

PROMOTION FOR MERIT

The third ambassadorial appointment is that of the Hon. Henry Lane Wilson, of the State of Washington, now Minister to Belgium, to be Ambassador to Mexico. Twelve years ago Mr. Wilson was made Minister to Chili, from which post he went to Belgium. His continued promotion is therefore in line with the policy of Secretaries Hay, Root, and Knox in advancing our diplomatic representatives whenever possible. The same may be said of the promotion of Mr. Charles Page Bryan from Portugal to Belgium, filling Mr. Wilson's place; of Mr. Henry P. Fletcher, of Pennsylvania, our efficient First Secretary at Peking, to be Minister to Chili; of Mr. Reynolds Hitt, Secretary at Berlin, to be Minister to Panama; and of Mr. Fenton McCreery, of Michigan, Minister to Santo Domingo, to be Minister to Honduras. The other ministerial changes call for individual comment. That of Mr. William James Calhoun, of Illinois, to be Minister (and presumably in a short time Ambassador) to China has already been chronicled in these columns. Mr. Edwin Vernon Morgan, Minister to Cuba, is made Minister to Paraguay-hardly a promotion, one would think, in view of the relative

amount of influence to be exercised. This is apparently confirmed by the transference of so important a diplomat as Mr. John B. Jackson, of New Jersey, to Cuba. Mr. Jackson entered the service as Second Secretary to our Legation at Berlin, and before it was raised to an Embassy was made First Secretary. In 1902 he was appointed Minister to Greece, his duties being later extended to include Rumania, Bulgaria, and Servia. Two years ago he became Minister to Persia. The post of Minister to Cuba is thus heightened in importance, as is fitting when one considers the Cuban situation. Other interesting appointments are those of ex-Governor Henry T. Gage, of California, a man without diplomatic experience, to be Minister to Portugal, and of Mr. Charles W. Russell, now Assistent Attorney-General, but with experience gained on several semi-diplomatic missions, to be Minister to Persia. Other men who have had diplomatic experience. are Mr. Laurits S. Swenson, of Minnesota, Minister to Denmark from 1897 tỏ 1905, to be Minister to Switzerland, and Mr. Horace C. Knowles, of Delaware, transferred from Nicaragua to Santo Domingo. Noteworthy secretarial promotions are those of Mr. Peter Augustus Jay, Secretary of the Tokyo Embassy, to be Agent and Consul-General at Cairo ; Mr. George Post Wheeler, Second Secretary of the Embassy, to be Secretary of the Embassy at St. Petersburg; and Mr. Lewis Einstein, the accomplished writer, formerly Secretary of the Constantinople Embassy, to the very important position of Secretary of the Peking Legation. These and the many other transfers of secretaries are emphatically in line with President Taft's admirable Executive order on which we commented editorially last week.

fact that this is so affects necessarily the market in both products. It is on the west coast of Africa that this price is paid. It is extorted by men who are willing to sacrifice human life for the sake of wealth. There are two European countries which are responsible for the conditions that enable these men to grow rich. Those two countries are Belgium and Portugal; for it is Belgium that has assumed responsibility for the so-called Congo Independent State, where great concessionaire companies are driving the natives out into the jungle to get rubber; and it is Portugal that owns Angola, where a comparatively few Portuguese traders have for years been securing slaves to cultivate cocoa in the plantations on the Portuguese islands of St. Thomé and Principe. The black people of West Africa who are suffering and dying and those who are living in the dread of pain and death in order that we may wear overshoes and drink chocolate Have the right to call on us for aid. That America can do something is shown by the effectiveness of what America has already done. Partly as a consequence of public opinion in this country already expressed, both Belgium and Portugal have begun to make at least a first step toward reform. Only last week The Outlook received from a Belgian Minister of State a manifesto asking it to warn its readers against misrepresentation of Belgium, and to inform them of the measures of reform in the Congo already taken or proposed. The case of the Congo is particularly flagrant. Leopold II, whose death The Outlook recorded last week, as sovereign of the Congo was responsible for the slavery, nominally abolished, which has been really the industrial system of the colony. Under the guise of appropriation of land and a labor tax, a whole people has been forced into involuntary servitude. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who knows not only how to tell a good story, but also how to stir public opinion in behalf of those whom he believes to be wronged, is the author of a book, recently published by Doubleday. Page & Co., in which he tells the story of the Congo. If the reader wants the pith of the matter, let him turn to

Now

Chapter VIII, on "King Leopold's Commission and Its Report." In other chapters are statements which apologists for the Congo have denied or explained away; but in this chapter are facts established by a body of men chosen by Leopold himself. Once Belgium could say truly that this state of affairs was not its concern, but merely the concern of its King. it can say that no longer. Belgium has accepted, though other countries have not recognized, the transfer of sovereignty over the Congo from the shoulders of the King to its own. The new King, who when Crown Prince visited the Congo, declared as he took the oath of accession last week that Belgium would govern the Congo humanely. The Belgian Minister of the Colonies has recently made a visit to the Congo, and as a consequence has issued a statement which is part defense and part promise of reform. The only report of this which we have seen is a translation of a résumé published in "L'Indépendance Belge." According to this, neither the defense nor the promise is definite enough to satisfy those who demand a thorough change in the system. The Outlook still believes that the only solution lies in an international conference.

WHAT COCOA COSTS THE SLAVES

No less urgent than the need for reform in the Congo, though somewhat different in character, is the need for the cure of outrageous wrongs in Portuguese West Africa. For over half a century slavery has been outlawed in that territory. The Portuguese laws on the subject are stringent. Nevertheless, slaves are bought in Angola, taken in shackles to the coast, and thence sent to the Portuguese islands of St. Thomé and Principe, where they work on the cocoa plantations in what is practically hopeless servitude. It is true that they are not called slaves; they are called serviçaes. It is true that the system is not known as slavery; it is nominally labor under contract. What difference do names, however, make to the natives who are seized, carried off by force, made to sign contracts they do not understand, and set to work in an alien country without hope of ever returning home? What difference do names make

to those blacks who, unequal to the hardships of the enforced journey, are left to die on the wayside? Of course this system, whatever it may be called, is slavery; and of course these blacks who are termed serviçaes are actual slaves. Up to 1902 the cruelties practiced were incredibly atrocious. By that time even the blacks, overawed as they were, could endure them no longer, and they rose in rebellion. Of course they were defeated; but they had put fear into the hearts of the Portuguese traders. Up to that time a trader who succeeded in bringing half of his gang of serviçaes alive to the trading center counted himself fortunate. Since then natives die on the journey, and their skeletons line the roads that the slave gangs travel, but the proportion of deaths is not so large. Four large cocoa concerns of Great Britain instructed Mr. Joseph Burtt to make an investigation of these conditions. After an absence of nearly two years, Mr. Burtt returned to England and reported his findings. As a consequence, these concerns, which virtually, if not literally, control the cocoa trade in England, have refused to buy cocoa from this territory. Mr. Burtt is now in the United States in order to inform public opinion on this matter. Several of the most important cocoa manufacturers of America, so he has ascertained, do not use St. Thomé or Principe cocoa. This fact is a proof that other considerations than money-making govern the commercial world, for there is no better cocoa than this which manufacturers are refusing to buy because it is slave-grown. Any reader of The Outlook who desires to know whether the concern whose cocoa or chocolate is customarily consumed in his household uses slave-grown cocoa or not can readily ascertain it by writing to the manufacturer direct, inclosing a selfdirected stamped envelope. The manufacturers who are not using it will, we believe, welcome the chance to let their customers know the fact. Cocoa can be grown profitably without recourse to slavery, as Mr. Burtt found elsewhere in Africa. Americans can exert a great deal of influence toward having it grown under conditions that do not disgrace civilization, and we feel sure that they will not be slow

to act.

THE ROOSEVELT EXPEDITION

Mr. Roosevelt and his

party have now entered upon the second stage of their African experience. The first period, just ended, has included a most interesting experience in British East Africa, with the railway terminal Nairobi as a central point from which have set forth their hunting expeditions, explorations of the country in a wide circle, and visits at the invitation of the owners of large estates. Many of these experiences have already been described in the four articles which have appeared in "Scribner's Magazine." It is evident that the success of the party in obtaining specimens of African animal life for the Smithsonian has been extraordinary. Our readers will, we think, be interested in Mr. Roosevelt's comment on the comparative accessibility of British East Africa, and we quote a passage from his article in the January "Scribner's :" While in the highlands of British East Africa it is utterly impossible for a stranger to realize that he is under the equator; the climate is delightful and healthy. It is a white man's country, a country which should be filled with white settlers, and no place could be more attractive for visitors. There is no more danger to health incident to an ordinary trip to East Africa than there is to an ordinary trip to the Riviera. Of course, if one goes on a hunting trip, there is always a certain amount of risk, including the risk of fever, just as there would be if a man camped out in some of the Italian marshes. But the ordinary visitor need have no more fear of his health than if he were traveling in Italy, and it is hard to imagine a trip better worth making than the trip from Mombassa to Nairobi and on to the Victoria Nyanza." How busy a single day may be even in Africa is shown by a press despatch from Kampala dated December 22: "Colonel Roosevelt, after an antelope hunt this morning, called upon Mother Paul, the American superior of the convent here, visited the Catholic mission, helped to dedicate a wing recently added to the Church Mission Society's hospital, and took luncheon with Bishop Hanlon. This afternoon he received the King of Uganda, and with him attended a dinner given by F. A. Knowles,