Germany that was invaded, after all, but France. It was French factories which were destroyed. It was French land that was devastated. It was French mines that were deliberately and maliciously flooded.

It has already been decided that France is not morally required to pay for what Germany did to her. It has been decided that Germany owes all that she can pay to undo the damage she did. For the payment of this debt France received the offer of a guaranty, by a treaty of alliance with Great Britain and America, but never received the guaranty itself. She expected some kind of guaranty from the League of Nations, but has been disappointed there. The only guaranty that is left to her is to take a mortgage on some of the German real estate-for example, in the industrial region of the Ruhr. But Great Britain and America are very sure that such a mortgage would not be for their interests. There is nothing punitive or vengeful about bankers wanting a guaranty for a loan; there is nothing punitive or vengeful about American farmers wanting payment for wheat even from hungry people in Germany; but somehow the impression has got abroad that in desiring a guaranty for the payment that is justly due her France is proving herself to be in a vengeful and punitive mood.

Bonar Law, the British Prime Minister, has not been in sympathy with the French desire to take possession of the industrial resources of the Ruhr; but he has seemed to understand the French point of view better than his predecessor. He has stated it to Parliament as follows:

I think it is right that we should try to look at these questions from the point of view of France. What is their view? Germany undertook to pay a very large amount. Almost nothing has been paid.

Since then we have had conference after conference, and what has been the result? The result has been in every case, in one form or another, that at the end of the period of moratorium we have found ourselves in a worse position for getting money out of Germany than we were before the discussions.

That is the view of France. She may also very fairly say that this result is largely due to the deliberate action of Germany.

Now, what was that action? There is not the smallest doubt that the German Government did allow this tremendous depreciation to take place, and it is a fact that this depreciation does make it impossible for Germany to meet these reparations payments.

The French go further-they say it has been deliberately done by Germany. Well, honestly, I cannot myself take that view. I cannot do it, for this reason: by the method of passive resistance they could forever avoid paying the indemnity.

But there is this to be said for the French view-the inflation has enabled the great industrial groups who exercise great power in Germany to make enormous fortunes, although it was part of the arrangement with the German Government that this should not take place and that the money should be made available for reparations.

There is no doubt whatever that, if there had been a strong enough Government in Germany to face the real position, it was their clear duty, and not only in their own interest, that they should try to put their finances on a sound basis. They have never tried. Maybe this was not their policy, maybe they had not the power, but that is the result.

AMERICA NOT A NEUTRAL

Though the American Government has not at this writing made any official announcement, it is clear that the Administration is considering the possibility of some action to aid in rescuing Europe from economic chaos. Ambassador Harvey has been summoned from England. Unofficial statements have appeared in the press indicating very clearly that the President has a plan or plans under consideration.

Among the rumors regarded as important enough to be cabled as news abroad was the suggestion of a loan of $1,500,000,000 to Germany. There is no intimation that this would be a Government loan; but it is strongly intimated that American bankers would not be willing to float such a loan unless it was backed by the guaranty of the American Government.

Objections from both Britain and France have at once been raised to such a loan as this. The objection that is at once obvious is that such a loan, if prac ticable at all, would take precedence over Germany's debts to other countries. Another objection is that no bonds of such a loan could be sold unless France undertook not to get any guaranty herself by seizing German property. Still further objection is that such a loan would be utterly inadequate to stabilize the mark, and even if it were used for that purpose would, according to certain economists, bring about an utter collapse of German industry.

In this situation the "Journal of Commerce," which has a very practical knowledge of finance, sees "hopeful symptoms." It is significant that it bases its opinion as to the chance of improvement, not upon any specific financial programme, but upon the sign that Germany is more willing to do her part than she has seemed to be heretofore, that France is showing a better spirit, that Great Britain under Bonar Law is substituting common sense for selfish policies, and that the "entente between Great Britain, France, and Italy

is on a firmer ground than at any time since the war."

It is certain that the chief question is not one of pounds or francs or marks; it is a question of mind and heart and will. There is little chance that America can do much merely with her dollars. There is chance that America can contribute to a clearer understanding, a better disposition, and a firmer purpose in all the nations involved.

We hope, however, that, whatever America does, she will not assume the rôle of arbitrator. The fact is we are not in the position of an arbitrator. We are not and cannot be, in either justice to other nations or justice to ourselves, a neutral. We cannot assume a lofty attitude, as if we had never taken part in the conflict. We did take part on the side of justice and liberty. Upon us as well as upon other nations rests the duty of seeing that those who were aggressors in that conflict shall not shift their burdens to their victims.

JOHN WANAMAKER,

I

MERCHANT

T takes more than success to make a career memorable and significant. A. T. Stewart made a great commercial success because he was the first to ' put into effect certain sound business ideas, such as one fixed price, and because he was shrewd in buying and an indefatigable worker. But his success did not have deep roots; after his death the business fell off deplorably. Then came John Wanamaker, with the background of the Philadelphia enterprise that he built up year by year after a modest start with a few thousand dollars, until it came to have a turn-over of $25,000,000 a year. He took over the Stewart stores in New York. For a time success and failure seemed to hang even in the balance.

What won was John Wanamaker's personality; he put himself into the organization; he made each department a store in itself, each buyer for a department a minor merchant. People went to his stores, not so much in search of bargains (for there were cheaper department stores), but because merchandising was there carried on with skill and knowledge and by the gathering of goods from world-wide commerce, and because taste and variety were aimed at constantly. The customers liked also the art and musical treats furnished them without charge, a distinctive feature of Mr. Wanamaker's invention.

In all ways the great merchant thought of the human and æsthetic elements as well as those of cost, price, and profit.

He regarded the business of

great store as having professional and idealistic sides, and he sought for the good will and kindly feeling of those who worked for him as well as of those who bought from him.

As in his business, so in his relations to his fellow-citizens, Mr. Wanamaker was easily and naturally friendly. He was a philanthropist, not from pressure or to be praised, but because he truly cared for others. He started a profit system in the Philadelphia store many years ago; he founded libraries, pension and benefit clubs for employees, and a cadet corps for the boys; he became a large factor in the National building up of the Young Men's Christian Association; he was a noted figure in Sundayschool work, and said that it was his best way of resting; as PostmasterGeneral under President Harrison he used his business astuteness for the general good.

Always, as a friend writes of him, John Wanamaker ennobled service; he dignified labor; he made business a profession equal to any other. He wrote his own epitaph when he said: "Thinking, trying, toiling, and trusting in God is all of my biography."

A

TINKERING

MENDING the Constitution promises to become an annual pastime. Like football, for example. Even President Harding has joined in the sport, and has advocated not one, but two Constitutional amendments.

The latest attempt at amendment is one made by the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, and is for the purpose of changing the terms of the President, Vice-President, Senators, and Representatives and the machinery of the Presidential election.

What agriculture or forestry has to do with the subject of the proposed amendment passes the mind of any one but a Senator to understand. The explanation-it cannot be called a reasonfor this strange procedure is Senator Caraway's desire to have a resolution of his, for which this proposed amendment was substituted, scrutinized by the friendly eyes of the committee of which Senator Norris is chairman.

International

JOHN WANAMAKER

ment would accomplish is a prompter response to the people's will as shown by their votes. At present the people in November of one year vote for a Congress which normally does not meet until the December of the following year. At present the people elect a President in November, and yet the President who is supplanted remains in office until the following March. This delay between the command of the people and its execution was well enough, and indeed quite necessary, in the day of the post-chaise in a sparsely settled land of pioneers. It is altogether unnecessary and unjustified in the days of the railway and the telegraph in a land of a people long trained in self-government. The amendment now proposed would summon Congress into session on the first Monday of the January following the November election, and two weeks after the assembling of Congress would place in office the newly elected President.

For this desirable change it seems to us somewhat doubtful whether an amendment to the Constitution is necessary.

There is nothing in the Constitution which prevents Congress from providing by law that the Representatives elected in November shall take office on the first of January following. Since that is so. the new Congress can assemble on the first of January without a Constitutional amendment. It is true that according to the Constitution Senators are elected for six years, and if that be construed as preventing Senators from having their terms shortened by two months by law, nothing prevents the old Senate meeting The chief object which this amend with the new House. As the Senate is

The purpose of the amendment is good. The intentions of those who favor it are of the best. The effect of the amendment, if put into operation, would be partly harmful, but mainly beneficent. We doubt very much, however, whether all the good that it is proposed to do by this amendment could not be equally as well done by law.

a slowly changing body, anyway, this is not serious.

As for the changing of the inauguration of the President from the Fourth of March to the third Monday in Januarya very desirable change-there is nothing in the Constitution itself preventing it except the provision that the President shall be elected for four years. The first President of the United States, however, was elected for four years, and yet his first term was only from April 30, 1789, to the Fourth of March of the fourth year later-that is, nearly two months short of four years. Since the Constitution provides that the Congress shall "assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December unless they shall by law appoint a different day;" and since the shortening of Washington's first term is a good precedent; we see no reason why Congress (perhaps leaving the newly elected Senators to take their seats later) should not by law summon the newly elected Congress into assembly on the first Monday, and place in office the newly elected President on the third Monday, in the January following their election.

If a Constitutional amendment be necessary for this purpose, it need be only a very simple one.

Mr. Norris's amendment, on the other hand, is cumbersome, clumsy in phraseology, and in a great part unnecessary. Not only would it change the date of the inauguration, but it would also abolish the Electoral College without changing in any appreciable degree the very sound principle of voting by States. If Mr. Norris's amendment were to make the election of the President a matter of mere majority vote of the total of all the voters in any Presidential election, the abolition of the Electoral College would be significant, though at the same time it would be contrary to the best interests of the country. Mr. Norris's amendment, however, simply substitutes the impersonal votes of the respective States for the votes cast by persons called electors.

It is claimed that this change, if made, will make possible the election of a candidate for President from one party and a candidate for Vice-President from another. This would be not progress. but reaction. It would be reversion to the original provision of the Constitution, which was a blemish that was removed from it only seventeen years and eight days after its adoption.

It is claimed that this change, if made, will make it possible to elect to the Presidency a candidate who has no regular party support. Is this desirable? We do not think so. At least the burden of proof rests upon those who advocate this means of destroying-or making

cluded the makers of opinion from fashionables to labor union chiefs, so that the Tiger's personality, as well as his words, had a chance to reach all classes.

Personally, he has made upon the public a distinctly favorable impression. His onion soup, his pawky humor, his quaint gestures, his eyebrows, his nightcap, and his willfulness appeal to us and create a "character" with appropriate stage properties. Closer up, one sees a cynical attitude towards poor old mankind which makes one feel naked and curious to know what is going on in his head. The one passion, among the many which he interprets, which strikes one as genuine is love of his France. He is so French that it is a handicap to his comprehension of Western American psychology. In some passages of his speech he has evidently tried to correct this defect with the peculiar brand of clumsiness for which Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House were once famous. While protesting that he and France asked nothing, he made it plain that he wanted America to replace England in

a partnership wherein England was not sufficiently anti-German, and then he proved up to the hilt that it would be a bad bargain for us and a good one for France. His pictures of French sufferings, losses, crushing taxation, Asiatic entanglements, and impending bankruptcy, of French suspicion and fear of Germany-even his devotion and patriotism frightened us as we thought what even a beau geste might let us in for. The sentimental appeal, which might have taken the mind off the conse quences of an approach to France, and the demonstration of identity of aims and interests were entirely wanting.

The introduction by General Dawes was most effective. For half an hour the audience listened breathlessly to Clemenceau, but his clipped English and his obstinate avoidance of the amplifier, without which only a few could hear him at all, soon began to count against him.

He would sidle off to the right wing, and attempts by Colonel Bonsal, General Dawes, and the audience, to persuade him to stand where he could be heard were first refused and then ac

ceded to with bad grace. In a few moments he was off again to the extreme right, to be recalled by the audience. The device had been explained to him, but he insisted that his voice could carry without mechanical aid.*

To summarize the views of those with whom I have spoken: Chicago gave Clemenceau the great reception to which his place in history entitles him; his personality made a distinct impression; his speech might have done much to create a sympathy and sentiment for France full of possibilities; but Clemenceau failed to seize his opportunity; he frightened his hearers, displayed a touch of French selfishness and French hatred of Germany and a list of French liabilities enough to scare off any thought or suggestion of partnership. We may be fond of the picturesque Tiger, sorry for the sufferings of France, but we are not going to ruin ourselves by touching the European mess until it is demonstrated that we have got to in the interests of America. The touch or two of Wilsonian idealism interjected in the great Frenchman's speech clinched opposition.

S

OLDIER, sailor, explorer, scribbler, and romantic ne'er-do-well, my friend Spaulding chanced one day to find himself as hard up for thrills as for cash, so decided, "A colporteur I'll be, and roam the earth, at other people's expense, handing out Bibles."

However, the American Bible Society thought differently, though there have been worse triflers than Spaulding-for example, the young novelist who heard of free rooms, free tuition, aid money, and abundant leisure for writing at the General Theological Seminary, and forthwith demanded admission. the dean, "Are you an Episcopalian?" Said the applicant, “No, I'm an atheist." To which the dean replied, "I don't see that that need stand in the way; this institution will soon cure you."

Said

True it is that the young novelist was not admitted to the Seminary; true, also, that his subsequent frivolities have amply justified the rejection. But Spaulding-behold him to-day! He has "ranged himself," as the French say. Father of a family, pillar in the church, author of at least a dozen admirable books, and General Secretary of a great National organization every whit as disinterested, in its way, as the American Bible Society, he feels that vindication is his-and laughs. Whereas the Society, after all these years and the changes they have brought, still glories in having scorned him. Indeed, it appears to feel that he was guilty, at the time, of something remarkably like impudence.

But is not impudence-or, at all

events, the consecrated impudence of the devout humorist—a prime requisite for colporteuring? Accidentally walking into a camp of five hundred Tibetan brigands, the delightful Huston Edgar was a bit "nonplused and uneasy," he admits, though his cheek never deserted him. To the outlaws' bewilderment, he not only sold them Bibles, hand over fist, but "insisted on getting the money." In Siam a colporteur coolly "visited fifty-six temples;" only one refused Bibles. In Mexico, during Holy Week, a colporteur came to a lonely ranch where the peons were assembled for mass. No priest had arrived. With a fine sense of impropriety, the Protestant read aloud from the "Protestant" Bible and "sold several books." A solemn-looking affair is the old-fogy red-brick Bible House on New York's lower East Side, yet sometimes I sus pect it of suppressing a grin. Out from that building go New Testaments in Yiddish, to say nothing of Bibles in Russian for Soviet Russia itself. Leon Brauenstein, the Russian Jew known as Trotsky, used often to stroll past the Bible House-with a sneer. To-day it outwits him. It has outwitted others many a time. Mr. A. B. Howell writes as follows:

"My father, a merchant and receiving agent, had removed to Port Isabel, on the Gulf of Mexico. One day, as a ship was unloading a cargo from New York the captain said: 'I have a box on board consigned to nobody, and I was told that wherever I unloaded I was to put it ashore. The freight is all paid, and there are no charges connected with it.'

"The box was brought into my father's store, and I remember, then a lad of ten or twelve, how curiously I desired to see what it contained. When the lid was pried open, we found it full of Bibles and Testaments in Spanish.

"His commercial instinct told my father that he ought not to waste this material, so we put the books on the counter, took the covers off, and used the paper for wrapping up cigars, matches, spools of thread, etc., little realizing that by that very act we became distributing agents of the Bible Society and put pages of Scripture in every home. It was not strange that in after years, when I went back to Port Isabel, I found a Protestant congregation there."

Then, too, recall how Goble first printed the Scripture in Japan fifty years ago, when the thing was danger ous. Says he: "I tried in Yokohama to get the blocks cut for printing, but al! seemed afraid to undertake it. I was only able to get it done in Tokyo— by a man who did not know the nature of the book on which he was working!"

In the light of all this, does it not seem a little strange that a Society gifted with such a charming sense of humor should have frowned so inhospitably upon young Spaulding? If he lacked a certain deference toward his elders and betters, he lacked also a deference toward peril. He has been three times shipwrecked. The sensation. he declares, is always the same-a sensation, namely, "of disgust." What a

colporteur he would have made-in so far as intrepidity counts!

By all I hear, it is indispensable. Not long ago a colporteur in Mexico fell among bandits, who stole his mule, kicked away his Bibles, tumbled him down a cliff, and left him for dead. The first colporteurs in the Philippines were poisoned. In Bulgaria a colporteur was arrested so often that it became almost a habit. In China, just before the Boxer Rising, three colporteurs were hung up by their thumbs and bastinadoed. During the Rising eighteen went into the disturbed district. Four returned.

Are we to conclude, then, that the Bible Society's attitude toward Spaulding indicates a degree of-what shall I say?-Narrowness? It is a contention difficult to sustain. Narrowness, if it existed, would betray itself in sectarianism. Whereas, you will find that all the Protestant denominations are represented together in the Society's management, and that all the Protestant denominations unite to support it, and that it. ranks as the first-and the one magnificently enduring-interchurch world movement of North America. Since the beginning, in 1816, it has distributed the Bible "without note or comment" or any sectarian coloration whatever.

But there is another type of narrowness-the academic-and the Bible Society stands dangerously high among learned societies, having mastered nearly eight hundred languages and dialects. Do you happen to read Benga? Or Bulu? Or Mortlock? Or Luragoli? Or Chamorro? Or Dikele? If not, then doff your hat to the Bible Society. Time and again it has had to begin by "picking out the words from between the teeth of the heathen." Just now it is preparing a Bible for the Quecha Indians, and other Bibles in Moro, Moro Lanas, and Samarens, and a Bible for China in Chu Yen Tzu Mu, the new phonetic system, in which a Mandarin version of Mark has already been completed.

A great advance this new phonetic system represents. In the old Chinese system a single character may consist of as many as sixty-two strokes, and translation involved heroic patience. Bishop Schereschewsky, a converted Jew, spent forty years in turning the Bible into Chinese. As both hands were partly paralyzed, he wrote the entire text of his Wenli Bible with the middle finger of each hand.

And there are languages within languages. Japan requires four different Bibles-one to suit classical scholars enamored of the Chinese style, another for less cultured Japanese, still another to attract lovers of plain Japanese writing, and finally a version for Japanese newly learning to read.

Very curious technical niceties now and then attend such labors as these. When translating Chinese, where it is a puzzle to find a word for God, you must choose between "Shen" and "Shangti"

and meet difficulties either way. After two generations the question remains unsettled. In Arabic-speaking countries, meanwhile, the paramount problem is typographical, as everything depends on the curves and slopes of letters, and books in Arabic printed from type made in Europe disgust the Orient.

What wonder, then, that a Society engaged in these more than schoolmasterly pursuits should run some risk of acquir ing the academic temper and losing its grip on broadly human considerations? But, the more you look at it, the more clearly you will perceive that underneath the Society's amazing scholarliness throbs a warm and very tender humanitarianism.

Note its work for the blind. Eighty years now it has been supplying them with Braille Bibles-a seven-foot bookshelf, nineteen volumes to each Bible at less than cost. Of late nothing has interested the Society more than Helen Keller's reply to Mr. W. L. Stidger's question, "What is your favorite book?" "Zee Bi-bule," she said. Nothing, that is, unless perhaps it was hearing from Kenneth Bullard, who is blind and crippled and whose fingers have lost the sense of touch, yet who reads the Bible with his upper lip.

Or note the work among lepers, among prisoners, among seamen, among circus people, among Indians, among the Southern mountaineers, and among Negroes. During the first year after the War of Secession 500,000 Negroes learned to read. Then began a campaign that has progressed steadily ever since. And again, note how the Society treats the immigrant. Seeing aliens arriving in unheard-of numbers, the vast majority of them untrained to read the Scriptures, it tempted them with diglot

Bibles-that is to say, Bibles in each of which the English text appears side by side with the text in some foreign language. Aliens anxious to "learn American" found here the most convenient of short cuts. There are now thirty-three different diglots circulated by the Society. Perhaps no other single influence has been of greater service in popularizing our common tongue-and our common ideals also.

Does this seem to bespeak the academic temper the sort of thing that narrows men, instead of broadening them, and tends to dry men up? If that notion-or the faintest ghost of itlurks in your mind, consider these fellows' attitude toward their triumphs. They have issued nearly a hundred and fifty million volumes. Far from glorying in that unparalleled achievement, they observe with sorrow that the need greatly exceeds the supply, not only abroad, but in this so-called Christian land! Colporteurs hear over and over again such stories as, "We lent our Bible, and it never came back," "We had one once, but there was a fire," and, "We lost ours when we moved." A colporteur in the West writes of "counties as large as some of the smaller Eastern States without a store where Bibles are carried in stock." He reports "towns of 40,000 with only a single drug-store handling Bibles, and the cheapest one $7.50." Another writes from Utah, "I have called on many Mormons who do not seem to know what a New Testament is." Still another complains, "Of the 400,000 people in New Orleans, eighty-five per cent are without Bibles." At the Bible House this cuts. And another thing cuts-namely, the increased cost of manufacturing Bibles. For it will soon abandon their manufacture