"It Wears Well"

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WHY THIS DELAY IN THE SOLDIERS' MAIL?

A well-known observer of affairs, returning from France the other day, reported that the mail service from the United States to its soldiers in France has broken down and that our soldiers are deprived of the encouragement which comes with letters from home.

Another observer, a man connected with our National defenses, returning from France reported that just before he left he received letters which should have reached him two or three weeks before, and that letters were now coming back to him which arrived in France several weeks before he left.

Still another observer returning from France permits us to print his personal first-hand notes:

1. In an artillery camp of 12,000 men there was only one trained postal clerk.

2. Lieutenant M. landed in France in the last days of October and received no letters for twelve weeks, although his mother, for one, was writing him frequently. Part of this time he was lying ill in a hospital.

3. Private McC. received a letter from his mother early in the winter saying his father was very ill. The next letter he received said: "As I have already written you about your father, I will say no more about it." Since then (three months) McC. has had no letter and does not know whether his father is dead or what has happened to his mother.

4. Private J. on April 1 had had only one letter since he left home in December.

5. Private W. never heard from his people about his mother's death. He learned of it only through a reference to it in a letter received from an outsider.

6. Private Z. said that after a long period of receiving no letters he received fifty in one delivery.

No wonder that under these circumstances some soldiers get discouraged. We have just received a letter dated April 23 from a soldier's mother. She says that she has not heard from her son since early last November, and asks: "Why didn't I receive any letters from him? I have written him a great many times. Is he discouraged because he does not receive my letters?"

An eye-witness of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 reports that when the Japanese were going into battle he saw postmen running hither and yon among the soldiers in the endeavor to get each letter delivered though at the last instant, so that every man possible might be cheered up by the definite knowl edge of just how things were going at home.

If there is one thing that our soldiers want, it is the prompt delivery of the mail. There is no reason why they should not have it.

Yet there is and has been a great and, as we believe, unnecessary delay. Letters sent by the ordinary French post arrive on an average of two or three weeks earlier than letters sent through the military postal channel. Complaints are increasing as the number of soldiers in France grows larger.

THE POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT'S EXPLANATION

Replying to The Outlook's request for information as to why persons receiving their letters through the French Postal Administration should receive them more or less promptly, while letters sent through the service established for our Expeditionary Forces have been delayed, the Second Assistant Postmaster-General writes as follows: "All letters for our soldiers abroad are handled and despatched without any avoidable delay. In no case and under no circumstances is less careful or prompt

attention given to letters for our soldiers than to any other mail, domestic or foreign.

"Letters for our soldiers abroad are made up in packages or sacks to the various military units, just as letters for the French Postal Administration are made up in packages or sacks, in conformity with the distribution scheme furnished by the French Postal Administration. Upon receipt on the other side, mail for our soldiers is handed over at the places designated by the military authorities just as mails for the French Postal Administration are delivered at the places designated by said Administration.

"However, while mail for persons residing in France is delivered by the French Postal Administration under the routine of an old-established postal system and in permanent communities, at permanent addresses, mail for our Expeditionary Forces is delivered to the individual soldiers by the military authorities under an improvised system established by them for the delivery of mail coming into their custody to persons that are frequently changing location and address.

"In some cases, of course, there has been delay in the transit of mail for our Expeditionary Forces, owing to present conditions of traffic. Any further delay is no doubt due to circumstances attending the delivery of such mail after it has been turned over to the military authorities and passed out of the jurisdiction of this Department."

To some this may seem like "passing the buck." But whether so or not, it is high time for the War Department to "get busy."

CRITICISM IN WAR TIME

As an authority on the criticism of public officials no one is in a position to speak out of fuller experience than Secretary Daniels. For years he was active as the editor and proprietor of a Democratic paper under Republican Administrations; and for the past five years he has been Secretary of the Navy in a Democratic Administration, and has been the subject himself of a considerable amount of attention from the newspapers of the country. He has both bestowed criticism on others and received it himself. “For twenty-five years," he said in addressing the American Newspaper Publishers' Association at its annual dinner in New York recently, "I gave as much to public men as any man in the country, and for some time I have received a good deal of my own medicine. But there was never a time when I did not realize that it was the very life of our Republic that public men should be adequately criticised."

Likening the press to a department of the Government, ranking with the executive, legislative, and the judicial, Secretary Daniels impressed upon his hearers the responsibility of their calling. It was to the press that fell the duty of so recording the history of this war that when Germany, presuming upon America's love of peace, undertook to dictate to this country its course of conduct, American public opinion was ready to back up the President and Congress in declaring war. So, explained Secretary Daniels, it remains the duty of the press to continue telling its readers of the meaning and purpose of every blow that is struck. "One of the most serious menaces to the successful conduct of war by a democracy," said Secretary Daniels, "would be lethargy and lack of imagination in newspaper offices." The supreme duty of the press, he added, was "to print the truth, to give constructive criticism, to grasp and properly interpret intellectually the tremendous import of movements in

thought as well as in action." He paid a tribute to the splendid spirit of the press of America, summing it up in saying, "News has been secondary to service." From the hour in which war was declared," whether it was in support of the selective draft, the recruiting campaign, propaganda for the Liberty Loan, food and fuel conservation, the drives for the Red Cross and the Y. M. C. A., or leading in community honors paid to youths going to war-whatever the call," declared Secretary Daniels, "the press has responded with a cheerful Aye, aye, sir,' and has led in the enthusiastic support of every measure for National unity and National victory.”

6

On the same occasion former Justice Hughes, the Republican candidate in the last Presidential election, likewise upheld the right of public criticism. The line of his thought may be indicated by the following sentences from his address: "The defense and preservation of the Nation is a fundamental principle of the Constitution. . . There is no Constitutional privilege for disloyalty or for efforts to obstruct the enforcement of the law, or to interfere with the war plans adopted by authority. But, with due recognition of the difficulty of exact definition and close distinction, it is quite obvious that there is a field for honest criticism which cannot be surrendered without imperiling the essentials of liberty and the preservation of the Nation itself. Our officers of government are not a privileged class. . . . When we are in the throes of war, .. there is no place for partisanship with respect to the conduct of the war. Of course it is just as easy to be a partisan in assailing criticism as in criticism itself. The man who defends everything that is done by his party or his party leaders is just as partisan as the man who assails everything that the opposing party does or plans. . . . It is a commonplace that a public officer learns more from his critics than he does from his admirers. . . Plainly, there are matters which for military reasons must be concealed so as not to aid the enemy. But any one who conceals facts even in war time has a heavy burden of proof as to the necessity for such concealment. Furnishing material for criticism is by no means the same thing as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Let the truth be known. Publish the facts and disarm the critics. Or publish the facts and make amends, if there are amends to be made."

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PERIODICALS AND THE POSTAL RATES

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The Outlook is proud to be associated with such a group as the periodical publishers of the country. A few months ago there was passed a law changing the whole method of charging postage on the transmission of newspapers and periodicals through the mails. In their comment on this law many newspapers have treated it as a matter merely affecting their special interest, and the Newspaper Publishers' Association has unfortunately also assumed the attitude of a special interest under attack. As a consequence, the newspapers have requested that the law be changed as it is applied to newspapers, and have failed to deal with it from the point of view of its effect on the Nation. On the other hand, the periodical publishers have uniformly in all their joint statements on the subject considered the law from one point of view-its effect on the Nation as a whole. This fact lends special weight to the following resolution adopted by the Periodical Publishers' Association on April 27:

Whereas, The increased second-class postage rates, as provided in Section 3 of the Act of Congress approved October 3, 1917, which becomes effective July 1, 1918, will be most unfair and oppressive to the periodicals of the country and the reading public; now, therefore, be it

Resolved, By the Periodical Publishers' Association of America, that Congress be urgently requested to suspend the provisions of said law in so far as they apply to increased second-class postage rates until one year after the close of the present war. This resolution requests the suspension of the law, not only as relating to periodicals, but also as relating to newspapers. The reason why the periodical publishers include the newspapers in their request is that they take their action from principle. The new law divides the country into zones or sections. Periodicals and newspapers mailed from one section to another will have to pay higher rates of postage than those mailed to

addresses within any one section. This amounts to levying a tariff on the circulation of periodicals and newspapers between different sections of the Nation. Perhaps the chief provision in the Constitution to insure the unity of the United States has been that which puts all the States on a level of equality in trade. It was in the spirit of that provision that Congress years ago applied a uniform rate of postage to letters throughout the country, and later extended that principle of uniform postage to regular communication by printed matter in the form of periodicals and newspapers. This uniform postage has been a powerful contribution to the development of National unity.

Now, just at the time of this great crisis, when National unity is valued as it has never been before, it seems ironical that Congress should have adopted a postal law that tends to seetionalism.

In doing this Congress has, moreover, put a burden upon periodicals which some can bear but many cannot. And at the same time the Government is calling upon the publications of this country for their assistance in giving the widest publicity to Government propaganda that is of the most vital importance. Through the press the people are urged to buy Liberty Bonds. to buy War Savings Stamps and Thrift Stamps, to contribute to the Red Cross, to conserve the Nation's supply of food and fuel; and the publishers are devoting a very large amount of valuable space for this purpose, with no reward or compensation other than the consciousness of doing their best patriotically to serve the Nation. And at this time, when the Post Office has a profit, when the needs of the country call for the utilization of every channel of public information, Congress chooses to do extensive and lasting injury to those channels of information, to the detriment of the Government's own objects and to the unity of the Nation.

From every standpoint, the public welfare demands that the taking effect of this law shall at least be postponed until the war has been won by the United States and its allies, and that even then its sectionalizing provisions should be permanently eliminated.

THE THIRD SERVICE IN OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE

President Wilson has, we are glad to say, appointed John D. Ryan as Director of Aircraft Production for the Army. Mr. Ryan is fifty-six years old. He was born in the mining region of Michigan. He is President of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, of the United Metals Selling Company, and of the Montana Power Company, the last named being a concern to utilize the waterfalls of Montana to supply electric power to many mining companies and to the four hundred and fifty miles of electrified road of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway system, of which Mr. Ryan is a director.

The appointment has been received with favor throughout the country. It should be. It adds one more to the recent appointments of business men to control the business side of the war-of Charles M. Schwab, President of the Bethle hem Steel Company, now at the head of our ship-building; of Edward R. Stettinius, of J. P. Morgan & Co., now Assistant Secretary of War; of Guy E. Tripp, Chairman of the Board of the Westinghouse Electric Company, as Chief of the Production Division of the Ordnance Department; of Samuel McRoberts. Vice-President of the National City Bank, also in the War Department; of William C. Potter, Vice-President of the Guaranty Trust Company, and of H. B. Thayer, President of the Western Electric Company, who are now in the Air Production Board; finally, of J. L. Replogle, President of the Cambria Steel Company, now in charge of all Government steel orders. Nor is this an entire list.

The question arises, however, as to whether Mr. Ryan is going to have full authority or a half-way authority. He is placed at the head of a division of the War Department whose business it will be to supervise the production of aircraft and aircraft material (aircraft operation being otherwise provided for), and by virtue of this position he will be subordinate to the Assistant Secretaries of War and to the Secretary of War himself.

What the country wants in this position is a strong, independent, single-headed executive. It will be remembered that, after a very exhaustive investigation of the aircraft situation, the