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an exceedingly important matter. If it is large enough to hold the balance of power when helped out by other members of radical or Socialistic views, then both Liberal and Conservative antiGeorge members may regret the breakup of their coalition. For this reason the falling off in the Labor vote at many municipal elections two weeks before the general election has excited lively discussion. The setback has been attributed to indifference, but more probably it is due to a feeling that the Labor leaders have gone too far in urging the nationalization of industries and a levy on capital to reduce municipal taxes. Other party leaders are urging their candidates not to make the mistake of underestimating the Labor vote on November 15. In the municipal elections Labor candidates lost in over half the contests; in London its membership in the councils or districts fell from 574 to 215. On the face of it the result seems to favor the Conservatives, and therefore there has been talk of possible union be tween the Asquithian and Lloyd Georgian Liberals.

The most notable event of the campaign up to a week before the election has been the address by the new Prime Minister before a woman's association in London. Mr. Bonar Law was urbane, quiet, and reasonable. He could not agree with those who looked upon the break-up of the Coalition as the death of a beautiful thing, and illustrated his view by a story so applied to the Coalition as to indicate that, however beautiful it may have been, it was now decidedly dead He retorted on Lloyd George's question as to why the Conservatives thought he was all right to save England in wartime but not good enough to serve it in peace by the story of the wounded drummer in a hospital who thought it would do him good to beat his drum once more; they let him, and he got well, but the other patients died.

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THIS WILL BE THE AMERICAN-OWNED UNITED STATES EMBASSY AFTER THE BRAZIL EXPOSITION ENDS

Frank L. Packard, Architect; Dwight P. Robinson & Co., Inc., Constructors

worked out the theme that England requires rest, recuperation, and political harmony rather than sensationalism and dissension. Under Lloyd George's administration, he said, all felt, "We don't know where we are to-day and cannot tell where we shall be to-morrow." Stability and what Americans now call "normalcy" are his ambition.

Mr. Law's speech was notable for his expressions of friendship for England's allies in the war, and America as well as France was warmly greeted. Reversing the recent utterance attributed to Mr. Kipling, the Prime Minister said he considered that by entering the conflict the United States had gained her soul and lost her money.

AMERICAN HOMES FOR
AMERICAN AMBASSADORS

F

ORTUNATELY, the time is passing when the oft-repeated bit of fun about Joseph H. Choate when he was American Ambassador to England is applicable everywhere. The story relates that Mr. Choate was accosted by a London policeman on a wet, windy night. "I say," demanded the Bobby, "what are you doing out this beastly night? Better go home." "I have no home," said Choate. "I am the American Ambassador."

American embassies, "as itinerant as a house-boat," to use the characterization of General Horace Porter, former Ambassador to France, are gradually being displaced by "little White Houses" in the capitals of the world. The change from the old haphazard policy of turning new envoys loose in strange cities, subject to the rapacity of landlords and real estate agents, is added evidence of the discovery of a "new diplomacy." Incidentally, it indicates relief from the peculiar condition of a democracy necessarily choosing its representatives from the wealthy.

The latest and most impressive addi

tion to the American diplomatic ménage is the Embassy building recently completed in Rio de Janeiro. It is now serving as the United States Government Building at the Brazilian Centennial Exposition, and is used for the reception of visitors and the showing of educational exhibits. With the close of the Exposition it will become the official headquarters of the United States in Brazil and the home of the American Ambassador.

This is the third building operation of the kind the Government has attempted. The Legation in Peking was completed in 1906, at a total cost of $180,000 for grounds, building, and equipment. The cost of the building and improvement of grounds at San Salvador, to be completed this year, will be $60,000. The Brazilian building cost $300,000.

The United States first invested in real estate in a foreign capital in 1884, when a legation building was purchased in Siam. In 1920 these premises were exchanged with the Government of Siam for other quarters in a more desirable section of Bangkok. In 1891 an official residence was purchased in Morocco; in Japan, 1896; in Turkey, 1907; and in Cuba and Panama, 1916. An Embassy building was recently purchased in Chile, and on May 22, 1922, the deeds transferring the home in London donated by J. P. Morgan to the Department of State for Embassy uses were formally executed.

The Government, therefore, at this time owns quarters in ten capitals out of forty-seven in which diplomatic representatives are normally maintained. An embassy is owned in only one European capital, London. Economy can hardly be pleaded as justification, for the embassy grounds of other governments in London, Paris, Berlin, Washington, and other centers of government have increased enormously in value,

putting them in the class of profitable investments.

The new Embassy building at Rio de Janeiro is located on Guanabara Bay directly opposite the harbor entrance with its towering promontories, one of which rises out of the water to a height of 1,200 feet, and this has the most commanding, as well as convenient, location imaginable. Stately, harmonious, adapted to the climate and conditions prevailing in the warmer American countries, it will fittingly house the headquarters of the great North American Republic in the largest Republic in South America.

The building is designed in the Portuguese colonial style, adapted to the Brazilian mode. It is constructed of granite and reinforced concrete, with finishings of tile and Portuguese marble, and roofed with mottled colored tile. The walls inclose a patio with a fountain and tropical garden, surrounded on three sides by large arched openings and on the fourth by the main staircase. All the rooms open on the cloisters surrounding the patio.

IN MEMORY

OF LYMAN ABBOTT

J

UST a week after his death Lyman Abbott's neighbors in Cornwall-onHudson, where he had made his home for over fifty years, gathered in the church nearest his home in the village to express their affection for him. The memorial service was conducted by ministers of various denominations. The Rev. H. R. Fraser, of Monticello, New York, formerly pastor of the church and Dr. Abbott's nearest neighbor, drew in simple words a picture of the friendliness of Lyman Abbott which his hearers will not soon forget. After the service Dr. Abbott's fellow-townspeople lingered in and about the church, greeting one another as they would at any other neighborly occasion. It was just such a community gathering as he himself had often taken part in. The service might well have been the celebration of his birthday in his absence. No greater tribute could be paid to Dr. Abbott's serene faith than the understanding spirit shown by the people among whom he had lived.

Memorial services were held in many other places. Only a few of these can be mentioned. That in Terre Haute, Indiana, should be recorded because it was there that Lyman Abbott went to take up for the first time his duties as a minister, and it was there that he lived during the Civil War in a community which was divided in its sympathies between North and South. the church which he then served the Rev. J. W. Herring, the present minis

In

ter, recalled the service that Lyman Abbott had rendered in those critical days when "he sacrificed himself and taught others to sacrifice popularity where the choice had to be made between popularity and conscience." Mr. Herring said in conclusion: "May we, as a church, never shrink from the level of his courage; may our eyes never waver from the clarity of his vision; may our spirits never lose the sincere generosity of his spirit, a spirit that could fight without hating and love without compromising."

Plymouth Church, in Brooklyn, where Dr. Abbott preached for eleven and onehalf years, was of course the scene of notable memorials. Not only his former parishioners but also a great number of ministers gathered in that historic building to testify by their presence to their affection and respect for Dr. Abbott's memory.

Such memorial meetings as those at Cornell, Terre Haute, and Brooklyn were in true accord with Dr. Abbott's wishes and spirit. It was not only in consequence of the spontaneous wish of those closest to him, but in accord with his own expressed desire, that there was no public funeral. The immediate public commemoration of his passing took the form of a service held at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, of which Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin is pastor. This church was near Dr. Abbott's New York home, and in the last years of his life he had frequently spoken from its pulpit. This service at Dr. Coffin's church on Tuesday evening, October 31, was attended by the friends and coworkers of Dr. Abbott. David Mannes, an intimate friend, played three violin solos. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, of Plymouth Church, Dr. Karl Reiland, rector of St. George's Episcopal Church, and Dr. Coffin were the speakers.

"Lyman Abbott," said Dr. Hillis, "was the man that changed the thinking of the younger preachers of the country by reconciling the old view with the new and teaching us the immanence of God, his daily presence."

Dr. Reiland said: "We have and have had and will continue to have particular churchmen, but, except Dr. Abbott, I cannot think of any one who might justly be called a general churchman, for I believe that most of all he belonged to the church of God in Jesus Christ."

Dr. Coffin spoke of Dr. Abbott as follows: "Estimated by the number of persons whom he reached by voice and pen annually for more than half a century, and by the effect of his words in holding their thought and life, Dr. Abbott was unquestionably the greatest teacher of religion in this country, in this generation. . . . I have looked through a num

ber of Dr. Abbott's volumes, and this comes to me as a constant impression: that he looked upon the living God as a companion. It is a phrase which recurs again and again and again. To that Companion he prayed; of that Companion he spoke as one whom he knew from intimate experience; to that Companion's comradeship he gave himself; and to that Companion's enduring companionship he looked expectantly forth. . . . 'And when even was come, Jesus said, Let us now go over unto the other side.'"

I

THE BIBLE IN
CALIFORNIA

F a newspaper despatch printed as special to the New York "Times" and also to the "World" is to be believed, a California Court has rendered a decision excluding the King James Version of the Bible from the public schools of the State on the ground that it is a book of sectarian character.

We do not know whether this decision is final. If it is, it practically deprives the great mass of the children of California from learning to appreciate, not only one of the great world literatures, but also one of the classics of the English tongue. If a court should raise a barrier against all study or reading of the literature of the Romans or the Greeks in our public schools, it would be regarded by educators as a calamity. It is no less a calamity for a court virtually to bar from the public schools all study or reading of the equally great literature of the Hebrews. And that is what the Court does, for to the pupils in our public schools the literature of the Hebrews is available only in English, and the opinion of the Court is clearly such as to bar any translation of the Bible. "Controversies," says the Court, according to the newspaper report, "have been waged for centuries over the authenticity of the various translations of the Bible, each sect insisting that its version is the only inspired book." It is this opposition on the part of literalists to translations not receiving their own sanction which, in the opinion of the Court, renders the King James Version objectionable, and must render equally objectionable of course every other ver

sion.

If the arguments of those who assert that the literature of the Hebrews was infallibly dictated to infallible amanuenses and was infallibly preserved and finally was infallibly translated are accepted in law at their face value, and yet those who argue thus cannot agree among themselves which portions of that literature were infallibly preserved

and which translations were infallibly made, it is manifestly impossible for any court to sanction the use of a translation without becoming the partisan of the sect whose translation is sanctioned. If the assumptions of the literalists are true, either there must be a union of Church and State in its subtlest formthrough the courts of justice-or the Bible must be excluded from the public school, or the public school must be abandoned in favor of schools supported by the several denominations. Of these alternatives the Court has chosen the exclusion of the Bible. Thus some of the most ardent advocates of the reading of the Bible have defeated their own ends.

It was, however, not necessary for the Court to accept these arguments at their face value. In rendering the decision the judges were not concerned with a question of law, but with an interpreta

Version were destroyed as a separate

body of writing, it would nevertheless continue to live as a part of the living organism of English literature. To it men of all faiths and of no faith have resorted as a model of style, as a vast and inexhaustible treasury of language, as a refreshing and pure fountain of thought. Acquaintance with this classic of their speech is not only a privilege from which Americans should not be excluded; it is a right on which they should insist for themselves and their children.

We deplore this decision of the California Court, not only because it denies this right to thousands of California children, but because it shows what other decisions of other courts have shown that in too many instances American judges do not know life.

ume of Dante's poems down from the shelf for unconscientious and spontaneous refreshment and beauty, as one takes down Calverley's "Theocritus," or Keats or Browning, or Montaigne, or James Howell's Letters, or three or four of the sonnets of Shakespeare, or three or four of the Psalms ascribed to David, or even the intricate but somewhat mysteriously appealing verses of Emily Dickinson-he simply cannot do it.

This is a terribly ignoble confession, no doubt-its ignobility being emphasized perhaps by the profane venturesomeness of coupling the name of the Yankee spinster and recluse, Emily Dickinson, with that of the great and immortal Italian philosopher and poet. But it certainly is not any more ignoble than for a university professor like Mr. Phelps to expose himself publicly as enjoying any one of a hundred Indiana church steeples as much as the Plain

tion of fact. In the opinion it is cate- THE IGNOBLE PRIZE Tower of Chartres. gorically asserted:

The sole question for determination was whether the King James Version of the Bible was a sectarian or denominational book.

From the responsibility for deciding that question the judges cannot escape by pleading that they were bound by the law. As they have stated it themselves the question is not one of law. It is a question as to their own knowledge of literature and life.

What are the facts?

The Bible is, in the first place, an ancient literature incomparable in the majesty of its survey of life from primitive days to the beginning of the present era, in its insight into the heart of man, in the elevation of its imaginative flights into spiritual realms, in the conciseness of its words of wisdom, in the simplicity of its greatest narratives. In the variety of its literary forms it is not surpassed by any literature, ancient or modern. In nice perfection of form nothing in the literature of the Greeks exceeds the Song of Songs or the idyll of Ruth. In literary structure not one of the tragedies of the Greek dramatists or the works of Shakespeare overtops the Book of Job. To describe a literature like that in any approximately adequate translation as a "sectarian book" is to reveal a view of life as well as of literature totally inadequate for the decision of great questions such as confront the American people.

In the second place, the King James Version of the Bible is not merely a translation of this great ancient literature; it is itself one of the masterpieces of literature in the English language. Its very phrases have become imbedded in the writings of English-using authors for generations. If the King James

N the current issue of "Scribner's Magazine" William Lyon Phelps, of Yale, makes a delightfully whimsical suggestion:

In addition to founding the Fano Club, I have established what I call the Ignoble Prize; for which any one is at liberty to suggest the names of candidates. In order to be eligible for the Ignoble Prize, the thing-whether book or musical composition or building or painting-must have a high reputation, be commonly regarded as a masterpiece, and yet to the individual who submits it be lacking both in interest and appeal. Not for a moment would the works of a popular author with no true fame be accepted; the prime condition is that the object suggested must be both famous and respectable, so that the person suggesting it is in danger of damnation, which gives the game a particular little thrill of its own. Having more audacity than fear, I suggest the Plain Tower of Chartres Cathedral, Raphael's "Transfiguration," Meyerbeer's "Huguenots," Thackeray's "Newcomes," and Dickens's "Little Dorrit" and "Tale of Two Cities." I admit that such a list is enough to take one's breath away; but for some reason, not one of these masterpieces has ever impressed me as the critics say it should. Does any one else dare speak his mind? The interior of Chartres is to me the most sublime interior in the world. But I have looked at that plain tower from every angle, trying conscientiously to see why the critics fall down and worship it. To me it is just a church steeple, matched a hundred times in Ohio or Indiana.

The undersigned dares make application for membership. He has never been able to read Dante. There are lines and metaphors and similes and detached ideas to which Dante has given expression that are, of course, beautiful and appealing. But as for taking a vol

After all, I suspect that under the form of whimsy Mr. Phelps is trying to startle us all into thinking of the truth that there is no universal, mathematical standard of beauty. This truth has been expressed for generations and generations by homely proverbs such as, "What is one man's meat is another man's poison," "Chacun a son gout," "De gustibus non disputandum." If one can take beauty in one form, he is not to be condemned because some other form of beauty does not appeal to him.

There is, really, only one general universal concept of beauty, and to that concept the poet Keats has given expression in his unforgetable "Beauty is truth; truth, beauty-that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

The great beauty of Mr. Phelps's Ignoble Prize is that it is designed to develop truthfulness. Let us hope that aspirants for this prize will not mistake cleverness for truth. This mistake has brought a good many current writers to grief-Margot Asquith, for example. L. F. A.

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as those of these two brilliant examples, were valuable and substantial.

But in fact Mr. Page was more interested in public affairs and in history than many of the readers of his delightful stories knew. In proof of this may be cited his biography of Robert E. Lee, his books called "The Negro-the Southerner's Problem" and the "Old Dominion," his excellent article on "Jamestown and Civil Liberty" (published in this journal at the time of the Jamestown Centenary), and many special articles and essays. One valuable outcome of his Ambassadorship was the publication last year of his book on "Italy and the World War," of which Mr. Gino Speranza in an elaborate review in The Outlook said: "It is a book wherein restraint, a high sense of loyalty, and a passion for fairness are evident in every chapter."

Only Mr. Page's intimates know how strenuously and faithfully he carried on the heavy and responsible war work at his post, to the detriment of his own health and to a physical reaction that led to his official retirement and perhaps to his recent death, at the age of sixtynine, at his ancestral Virginian home.

The natural bent of the genius of Thomas Nelson Page was toward the short story. We recall two full-fledged novels, "Gordon Keith" and "Red Rock," but, while these are true yet romantic pictures of Virginia social life perhaps twenty years after the Civil War, they do not have the appeal of his short stories of the old régime, and of these the titles that recur to mind at once are "Marse Chan," "Unc' Edinburg," and "Meh Lady." One minor but yet essential trait of Page's stories of Southern life was that he knew how to write Negro dialect. Together with Joe Chandler Harris and H. S. Edwards, Page revolutionized the stiff, absurd, un musical dialect attributed to the colored people by earlier story-tellers and play/ wrights and reproduced the real talk of the Negroes with its softness, richness, and simple humor.

Mr. Page's enduring reputation as a writer will rest on the short stories named above. They belong to American literature. Of them, and of him, we may repeat what we said fifteen years ago: A Virginian of the Virginians, he has been the secretary and recorder of a form of social life which had the charm of lavish hospitality, of gracious manners, of a generous habit of life, and of a keen sense of personal dignity. Of that old order there are no more charming reports than "Meh Lady" and "Mars Chan," nor are these unaffected and deeply human interpretations of a vanished social order likely to be surpassed in the future. They give one that sense

International

THOMAS NELSON PAGE

of finality which comes only from those things which are so adequately done that the imagination rests content in them.

S

FASCISTI
TRIUMPHANT

UPPOSE the young Americans who served overseas returned home to find America in chaos. Suppose they saw the men who stayed at home engaged in overturning the safeguards of American liberty. Suppose they saw the factories and the other means of production paralyzed by a combination of theorists and robbers. Suppose they saw that men who had escaped service in the trenches and on sea-washed decks were engaged in an attempt to line their own pockets at the cost of the country. Suppose they found rich profiteers escapTing taxation while the mass of the people were paying in taxes at least onequarter of their income. Suppose they found their country facing the appalling calamity of a general strike. Suppose they saw the Government at the worst cowardly and at the best powerless in the face of the situation. Suppose they found politicians taking advantage of the disorder to build up a mighty force of office-holders to whom they could give jobs in return for political support to their own ambitions. Suppose they found the railways and the other public utilities under the burden of this bureaucratic body of office-holders breaking down. Suppose they found that thus the Government, instead of being a safe

They do, bo- mist

guard and a protection, had become a means for exploiting the Nation. Suppose they found that the strong men in power were bargaining for their own advantage and the men of good intention were either weak by nature or weakened by circumstance. Suppose they saw their country engaged in foreign adventures which at their best the country, thus weakened, was ill prepared for and which in no case was the Government willing to follow to their conclusion. And then suppose that these veterans, organized as the American Legion is organized, but devoted, not to their own advancement, not for any bonus for themselves, not for the glorification of their own past deeds, but for the salvation of the country from disaster, had proceeded to take matters in their own hands; had organized vigilance committees; had rejected with contempt the idea of acting in secrecy, or under cover of darkness, or in disguise, but had, on the contrary, adopted for themselves a public symbol of orderly government derived from the traditions of the race. such as the speaker's mace in the House of Commons, and had adopted some distinctive mark of dress by which they 'could be recognized as legionaries everywhere. Suppose they had devised for themselves signals by which any number of them in a neighborhood could be summoned in an instant like the MinuteMen of Massachusetts. Suppose they had gone systematically to work to fight openly the disruptive elements in society. Suppose that when the general strike came they rushed to the public service, manned the abandoned trains, peopled the deserted factories with workers, and kept circulating the Nation's life-blood. Suppose these legionaries, having scattered the organized groups of chaosmakers, and having renewed the courage of the people to turn to productive industry without fear of intimidation, turned themselves to the renewal of the Government. Suppose in State after State they got political control and finally secured a majority in Congress and placed their leader in the White House.

That is something that could never happen precisely in that way in the United States, because the vastness of the country, the temper of the people, and the nature of American institutions are sufficient to prevent, not only the application of such remedies for social and political ills, but even such a situation from arising. Nevertheless it is by imagining such an event happening in America that Americans perhaps may understand what has happened in Italy.

Most of the Fascisti are young; and those that are not young in years have the spirit of youth. Sometimes it is thought that youth is radical; but here

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