votion and service of Rear-Admiral Sims.

THE NATIONAL NAVY CLUB

AST week The Outlook devoted a

structive work of the United States Navy in times of peace. The courage and self-sacrifice of American naval officers and bluejackets in times of war is spread upon the records of the great European Continent, notably in Admiral Sims's remarkable book. During their term of service the home of our bluejackets is on the sea, and when they touch at American ports they are to a certain extent strangers in a strange land. Everything possible should therefore be done by their grateful countrymen to minister to their comfort and welfare while in port. New York City is the port most frequented by ships of the Atlantic Squadron, and the Nationa' Navy Club of New York is performing a service which ought to enlist the interest, not only of New Yorkers, but of people all over the country, for our bluejackets come from all over the country. We know from personal inspection what this Club is doing, but in order that our commendation may not be tossed aside as the opinion of mere landlubbers, we quote from a letter which we have recently received from a lieutenant commander of the Navy:

It is not generally realized how important to the enlisted men of the Navy and Marine Corps is the work undertaken by the Navy Club. There is no other club of this kind to compete in this special field of activity, and, consequently, there is no duplication of effort. The Naval Y. M. C. A. in Brooklyn (so generously sponsored by Mrs. Finley J. Shepard) does a very fine work, but it is not located in the heart of New York City. I know from my observations and talks with men under my command that fully ninety per cent of them instinctively would choose association on shore with the same kind of girls and women as they left in their own home, but, unfortunately, it is very difficult for a bluejacket to make the

proper kind of friendships in New York or other large cities. This need is met at the Navy Club, where ladies of the highest standing in New York volunteer their services to help make the club a home for the men.

There is a reading-room, library, writing-room, pool-room, and a small café where simple meals are served at cost; there is also a limited dormitory space. The principal handicap that now confronts the club is the lack of dormitory equipment, where men on liberty or furlough can find a clean, pleasant place to spend the night at a minimum charge.

The drive which is to be inaugurated by Mrs. William H. Hamilton and others interested in the Navy Club deserves the support of friends of the Navy throughout the United States, for its benefits are given as freely to the boy from Kansas as to the one from New York-in fact, the Kansas boy, being further from home, really benefits more than his shipmate whose home may be near New York.

The American public may have an honest difference of opinion as to the size of the Navy, but there should be no difference as to the wish for having a Navy of the highest quality as regards officers and men. To attract and hold the clean-cut, manly high school boy and the ambitious young man who enlists to learn a trade it is necessary to have contentment in the service. The Navy of to-day is making a sincere and effective attempt to build up and insure contentment on board ship; but on account of the restrictions imposed by law, the Navy Department can do very little to insure its men against homesickness and discontent while ashore on furlough or on liberty ashore.

We urge those who are interested in the efficiency and welfare of the American Navy to write to the Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the National Navy Club of New York, 15 East 41st Street, New York City, for full information about the activities and work of the Club. Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the European War under the Administration of President Wilson, as his cousin, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, is now Assistant Secretary of the Navy under the Admin

istration of President Harding. In this very striking fashion the Roosevelt name is still intimately associated with American naval progress, and our readers may be assured that any welfare enterprise with which Franklin Roosevelt associates himself is worthy of the fullest confidence.

GREAT BRITAIN AND
THE NEAR EAST

HE political crisis in England largely,

recent situation in the Near East Lloyd George's address at Manchester before the Reform Club was both a call to his supporters to enter the political battle and a defense of his administration's conduct of affairs in the Near East.

A general election is, as we write, considered imminent; if it is averted, it will be because the meeting of Unionist leaders planned for October 19 will have indicated such a large support for the continuance of the coalition under Lloyd George's leadership that his resignation and appeal to the country will not be needed. He summed up his defense in two sentences: "I cast myself upon the people; the people will see fair play." and "We have not been war-mongers, but peacemakers."

Americans who do not follow English politics closely have often expressed surprise that the coalition of parties formed when the war broke out should continue four years after the end of the war. The chief reason is the potential power of the Labor Party. Austen Chamberlain laid great stress in his recent speech, which was only less important than that of Lloyd George, on the danger that an increase of strength in the Labor Party would mean its domination of the Coalition through its power to throw its solid vote one way or the other. It is a mistake to suppose that the Conservatives, or Unionists, are united against Lloyd George. He is supported whole-heartedly and aggressively in the present situation

of their leaders as Austen Chamberlain, the Earl of Balfour, Winston Churchill, Marquis Curzon, Viscount Birkenhead, Bonar Law, and many others. The real question is whether an Opposition made up of men and of parties who dislike Lloyd George and distrust his policies will so combine after the proposed general election as to form a working majority and to be intrusted with the Government. To an outsider this would seem somewhat like a Cave of Adullam party.

"WHAT BUSINESS IS IT OF BRITAIN'S?"

LOYD GEORGE'S speech varied from pas

Lsionate earnestness to free and easy

facetiousness; an instance of the latter was his sardonic remark in reply to the opinion that "What the country wants is less brilliancy and a change to something a little more dull and ordinary." He said: "There ought to be no difficulty in supplying from among my critics any number of suitable candidates that would fulfill that description." The personal and familiar note was struck again when he said: "I have been treated by some of the London press as if I were.an old actor whom fashionable circles in London have no use for. But, gentlemen, I can still go touring the provinces." There was no jocosity in Lloyd George's treatment of the Eastern situation. Astonishingly direct and open to attack was his remark:

Our critics say: "Why didn't you have an understanding with your allies?" We did. Only a few weeks ago we received a message from the French Government that if the Greeks or the Turks invaded the neutral zone they would have to be resisted by force by the Allies. We accepted that. We thought they meant it. How were we to believe it was only intended for one side? Nothing was more earnestly put in the whole address than Lloyd George's reply (after his statement that since 1914 the Turks had slaughtered 500,000 Armenians and 500,000 Greeks) to the supposed question, "What business is it of Britain's?" He said: "That was not the old Liberal policy. It was not the policy

certainly that I was brought up in. It was not what I was taught in my youth that Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Welshmen should every morning repeat reverently the litany of the cynic: 'Am I my brother's keeper?'-that Great Britain should face the world with the brand of Cain upon her brow." In line with this the Premier pointed out the vital importance of securing the Straits against what happened in 1914: "Vital to us, vital to humanity, we could not have those Straits barred without giving away the biggest important prize we had won by the victory over Turkey in the Great War, and which had cost us so much in life and treasure."

Mr. Chamberlain, who was no less outspoken in his defense of the British action in the Near East than was the Premier, declared that there were moments when danger of attack on the British forces at Chanak was imminent and that the criticism of opponents included language "the only effect of which could be to weaken the Government authority, encourage the Kemalists, and present the British Empire to France as a humble satellite in the orbit of French policy, bound to exercise no independent judgment or take independent action."

These two addresses and that of Mr. Bonar Law, who declared that withdrawal from the neutral zone would have been regarded throughout the whole Mussulman world as defeat for the British Empire, certainly show that the most prominent leaders of the Coalition are ready to enter a political contest with an undivided front. If the Opposition should win, Mr. Lloyd George will have the opportunity to criticise from the side-lines. He indicated some skepticism as to whether his opponents would find their job an easy one: "I've had a long spell and a pretty hard one," he declared, and added: "I'll watch, for instance, to learn how to forgive Germany her reparations and yet make France love us more than ever. I'll watch how we are to pay the United States, yet forgive every other country

everything they owe us. I'll watch how you work the educational system, giving more to the unemployed, yet lightening taxes."

THE HONOR OF JAPAN

N December 2 next the port of Tsing

December 2 nered over by Japan

to China. The announcement of the forthcoming transfer has been made by the Japanese Government. The prophets of evil, who have tried to discredit Japan's word, have only about six weeks. in which to hope for some accident to thwart this honorable act.

If this proceeding were the aftermath of a war between the two countries, it would signify a great victory for China. As it is, the withdrawal of Japan from this Chinese port signifies as well a great and notable victory for Japan. It virtually completes the settlement of oi.e of the most perplexing and irritating of recent international questions-the question of Shantung. Nothing in the Versailles Treaty aroused more irritation in America than the provision which, by recognizing Japan's succession to the German lease of territory on Kiaochau Bay and the control of the railway from Tsingtau to Tsinanfu, gave to Japan virtual economic control of the most sacred and one. of the richest of China's provinces. On the other hand, nothing which occurred at the Armament Conference at Washington was more of a diplomatic achievement than the agreement reached between China and Japan for the restoration to China of the rights which Japan held in Shantung by virtue of conquest over Germany and of international law.

It would be hard to find in all diplo matic history a problem more compli cated by a snarl of moral rights, lega' rights, national sensitiveness, economic considerations, and Oriental intrigue. That it has been settled without clash of arms, without even recourse to arbitration, but by mutual agreement, with the friendly counsel of other nations, is creditable alike to China and Japan, and is as favorable an omen of peace and

justice among nations as is to be found anywhere in the world to-day.

FOOTBALL

THE

HE football season has brought with it the usual amount of space-filling comment from the legion of sport writers. The oracle of Delphi could have learned much from many of these writers concerning the fine art of nonincriminating prophecy. To many of these writers should also be apportioned due share of the blame for the championship mania which has undermined our amateur standards.

It seems to us that the chief function of the football writer should be the effort to make the game as intelligible as possible to the public which has not had the benefit of playing the game. Real football experts could find ample material in this field to fill any number of newspaper columns. But probably it is much easier to fill their space with such statements as "undoubtedly the Hoozis Wildcats will be weaker than the Whatsat Bohemoths if the Whatsat Bohemoths are not stronger than the Hoozis Wildcats, but on the other hand..."

We need "quote" no further the formula can be repeated to infinity, like the pattern on a wall-paper.

THE ABUSE OF THE

T

CHILD

WO earnest attempts to abolish the abuses of child labor have failed because the Federal laws enacted for that purpose have been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. Therefore the only way of bringing the Federal power to bear is to amend the Constitution. This is the ground now taken by the friends of the movement against excessive child labor. The Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee some months ago announced his belief that it would now be folly to attempt to deal with the matter in any other way, and his position has been sustained by utterances from others all over the country, including some from the South, where State's rights feeling is so strong.

It is evident that if an Amendment to the United States Constitution is to be passed it should be permissive, not compulsory; that is, it should give Congress power to pass an enforcing law which should meet the requirements of the United States Constitution as amended, but it should not require that such a law should be passed.

There seems to be a tendency among those who have not looked into this question to suppose that agitation has

led to such regulative State legislation as to reduce the evil substantially. This is a mistake. There are only two ways of making child labor conditions what they should be. One is that already indicated-namely, by an Amendment to the Constitution; the other is by the growth of public sentiment in the States to such an extent that the Legislatures shall pass really satisfactory and uniform laws and that the people shall then insist upon their enforcement.

Recent reports as to actual conditions show that the laws are lax in no fewer than twenty-eight States; that, for instance, in Georgia children twelve years old may be worked ten hours a day and children fourteen and a half all night long, while none of the twenty-eight States referred to come up to the reasonable standards fixed by the two Federal laws which have been discarded. The United States Children's Bureau has quite recently issued a special report relating to excessive child labor in the anthracite mining districts. In one area of about half a mile square all the liv ing conditions were found to be such that they were injurious to the health of the children, while the schools were deficient and about 1,350 out of 3,000 of the boys and girls between thirteen and sixteen years of age had left school for work. Moreover, more than five hundred of the boys employed in connection with mining were, says the report, employed contrary to law because below the legal age, while a considerable number of them not yet sixteen years of age were employed underground.

These facts, and very many others that might be quoted, certainly show that the child is urgently in need of protection from the United States Government. The form of Amendment which has been suggested by the National Child Labor Committee is certainly moderate. It reads as follows:

Congress shall have power to regulate or forbid the labor of minors at an age, or under conditions, deemed injurious to their health or morals. Such power shall be concurrent and not exclusive and the exercise thereof by Congress shall not prevent any State from adopting other or further regulations, not inconsistent therewith.

Reports show that an enormous number of young children are now engaged in work unsuitable for them who would be in school to-day if the last Federal act had stood the test of the courts. The form of amendment which the Child Labor Committee proposes is too specifically confined to one aspect of protective welfare legislation, and is therefore not the best that can be devised; but there is need of doing something, and of doing it soon. As Mr. Lovejoy, of the National Committee, says: "A nation

that cannot protect its own children from industrial exploitation should be ashamed of itself. It should at least have the power to do so. There is no democracy in permitting backward localities to use up childhood. We might as well speak of a democracy of robbery, of murder."

WANTED: CONSISTENT

P

PACIFISTS

EOPLE who are inconsistent are always a disappointment. They are particularly disappointing when one happens to be looking for sincere opponents with whom to argue.

We know of one man who lost a valuable friendship because his "preachin' and practice" didn't "gee." And he lost his friend by doing something which that friend was willing to die for.

It happened during the early days of the war. The inconsistent gentleman was a pacifist. His consistent friend was a devout believer in the cause of the Allies we shall therefore adopt momentarily the pacifist nomenclature and call him, for the purpose of this editorial. Mr. Militarist. Before the United States had entered the war Mr. Militarist had served in France in the Ambulance Corps and had returned to America only in the hope of enlisting under his own flag. While moving heaven and earth to get into the service he roomed with Mr. Pacifist, who had for many months been preaching the avoidance of military duties. Mr. Militarist, believing in the sincerity of his friend, gave him counsel as to the proper occasion for registering his protest against the draftwhether the fight should be made at the time of registration or on the day he should be called to the colors. When the call came, however, Mr. Pacifist meekly donned the uniform and went off to camp. Mr. Militarist, we believe, hås never spoken to him since. He lost his friend, not because he differed from him in opinion, but because he found him lacking in the courage to be consistent. Similarly, we find that some of the pacifists who are still working for that very desirable end-the abolition of war -are appealing to convictions which they themselves shrink from following to the end.

On the back of a recent issue of the "Nation" we find a page advertisement appealing to American citizens in the following words:

You are conscious of the concerted effort of the schools, the press, the movies, the church, the government, to make us a slavish-minded peop! and to create as the pattern of loyal citizen the man who obey forms and never analyzes or ci

the existing order. Have you failed to revolt against this? ...

Those of us who know that war is always wrong will work together.

At the bottom of this appeal is a pledge which the reader is asked to sign, which reads as follows:

I affirm that it is my intention never to aid in or sanction war, offensive or defensive, international or civil, in any way, whether by rendering military service, making or handling munitions, subscribing to war loans, using my labor for the purpose of setting others free for war service, helping by money or work any relief organization which supports or condones war.

The inconsistency of this pacifist appeal is to be found, we think, in the pledge which we have just quoted. It covers much, but it does not Cover enough. If the philosophy of the preceding appeal is to be carried to its logical conclusion, it demands absolute nonresistance. A man or a woman who accepts this philosophy cannot say, or rather should not say: "I will resist some things and will refuse to resist others. I will not resist the attack of a nation, but I will resist the attack of a thug. I will not support soldiers, but I will support policemen." The pledge, it seems to us, should have an additional clause. This clause might read: "I will pay no taxes either directly or indirectly to any National, State, or municipal government which uses force for the purpose of maintaining law and order."

Only by extending the pledge to this limit can its demands be made logical and complete. A subscriber to such a pledge would at least not be inconsistent in declining to follow in the wicked footsteps of Florence Nightingale. Surely the breed of martyrs has deteriorated if our present variety is willing to ignore the logic of their principles for the sake of avoiding the inconvenience of refusing to pay taxes.

I

THE LEGACY OF

THEODORE
ROOSEVELT

T is right and proper for Americans this week, which includes the anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt's birth, October 27, to consider how and why his spirit has still a potent influence upon his countrymen. For that reason both in prose and verse special emphasis in this issue of The Outlook is laid upon his life and work.

The test of a democracy lies in the leaders that it produces. A nation which within little more than half a century produces a Lincoln and a Roosevelt need not fear the verdict of pos

terity. In literature, in music, in sculpture, in painting, in architecture, we have produced no men of equal eminence. We are a nation of action rather than of artistry. When Theodore Roosevelt published his volume, "The Strenuous Life," he prefixed to it a quotation from Tennyson's "Ulysses" containing these lines:

How dull it is to pause, to make an
end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in
use.

The English artist summed up the energy of an irresistible and permanently inspiring American statesman. No such driving force had emerged in our public life for many decades. Indeed, it begins to appear that Theodore Roosevelt was and is the greatest exponent of American spiritual energy. It is still less than four years since his death-and here one thinks of Browning's words, "Never say of me that I am dead"-yet his fame seems already secure and his birthday is sure to be more and more widely celebrated as the years go by. "They must needs be men of lofty stature," says Hazlitt, "whose shadows lengthen out to remote posterity." Roosevelt was one of those men.

No better proof of his unquenchable energy for righteousness could have been supplied than during the period, six years after he had retired from the Presidency, from May, 1915, to April, 1917. It is no exaggeration to say that during that bitter time he was the great awakener of his country's soul, the real leader of our spiritual forces. The moral indignation of his writings recalled a Carlyle or a Swift. His capacity for action went into his pen; its results were cumulative and sure. While men of lesser stature were counseling timidity and profits from munitions, he foresaw the part which America must perforce assume. And he did not die until the triumph was won. Figuratively but none the less actually he carried the flag and led the charge.

Like all great fighters, he loved a fight only for its results in righteousness. In these days of unsettled policies, of fierce industrial conflict, it is salutary to remember that Theodore Roosevelt was a statesman, not a politician. He never vulgarly asked, "What is there in it for me?" but, "How can I serve.my country and my time?" With mean struggles for financial advantage he was never in sympathy. He regarded "malefactors of great wealth" and of labor unions with equal abhorrence. He called American citizens to service for their country which in the end means true advantage for themselves. He looked beyond the hilltops, not into the slime. The man with a muckrake, the man who lights

the destructive torch or loosens railway ties, he considered a low type of human animal. The forces of unrighteousness had good reason to fear his tremendous energy and his searching intellect. The feeble poison of their attacks on him had small effect, however, upon the public mind—and still less upon his own mind. He knew that his country would remember his services, whether in the matter of settling a coal strike or acquiring a Panama Canal or putting America on record as participant in the greatest of historic struggles to overthrow a ruth less military tyranny. Such an example of leadership as his is not dimmed in death; it does not rust unburnished, it shines in use. For it is the sword of the Republic, which he kept bright and handed on.

The astonishing thing about Roosevelt, however, was that he was not only a great man of action but a mirror of the best in American culture. An indefatigable reader, observer, and talker, he absorbed information and inspiration in the same manner, one thinks, that Shakespeare absorbed them. At one moment he was lunching in the White House with a noble leader of the Negro race; at another he was encouraging a poet who since has risen to the foremost rank among us. Like Goethe, he looked once into a book and twice into human nature; like Arnold, he felt that it is conduct which makes up three-fourths of life; like Emerson, he believed in a kind of mystical common sense which can hitch a wagon not merely to a horse but to a star. There was no useful and noble side of American life that he did not touch. If he lacked the austere and Scriptural simplicity of Lincoln, he had the same magical understanding of the common people, the same enduring sympathy with them. He walked with kings or with plowmen with the same easy stride and the same born comradeship. No name since Lincoln's evokes such popular enthusiasm; and none is so worthy of it. We have no Westminster Abbey in which are buried the best of those that served their country and mankind; but in our American temple of silent admirations we have merely to mention the name of Theodore Roosevelt to awaken echoes of his greatness.

"The end of a man," said a remarkable writer, "is an action and not a thought, however noble." In these United States we have not yet retired to the library to compose masterpieces. Our greatest men are still in the open. under the sun or the stars. They build industrial empires, structures of steel or of statesmanship. They make ready a vast territory for later leisure and for perfection of culture. They serve a country still young and with the head