advantage. Only, since she claims to be a highly civilized state, she ought to have sought to carry out her plan on humane and just lines that is, as vilified Turkey has suggested to her, on the basis of an exchange of populations, entering into one another's landed and other properties under the control of joint commissions.

My point has been to show that any persecutions from which the Greeks may have suffered in Thrace and Asia Minor, and any pressure that may have been exercised upon them to make them emigrate, are in the nature of reprisals pure and simple. I think I have offered superabundant evidence of this. In exerting herself to obtain credence for spotless purity of attitude on her part towards her new Turkish subjects and of foul blackness on the part of Turkey towards her Greek populations, Greece was simply trying to justify a declaration of war on Turkey before the arrival in the waters of the latter of the dreadnoughts in course of construction for her, so as to be in a position to win and force her into certain new concessions. The proposal of Turkey that the great Powers of Europe send delegates to investigate the Greek accusations against her and the Report of the Carnegie Commission have upset this immoral plan.

As a general conclusion, I will point out that if the Mussulman Turks have been convicted in the past of wicked deeds, the Christian Bulgarians, Servians, and Greeks, especially the latter, stand convicted of the same or worse crimes in what is the present. Indeed, the absolutely irreproachable attitude. of the Turkish troops in their triumphal campaign in 1897, only four years after a Bulgaro-Greek revolution in the Empire, when Greece lay prostrate at their feet, proves that Mussulman Turkey has developed within recent years a higher moral code in the conduct of warfare than that practiced by her Christian neighbors who took to the field in the name of the Cross, of civilization of humanity, and half a dozen other high ideals. True, the report of the Commission speaks of Turkish atrocities in the resumed Thracian campaign which ended in the recapture of Adrianople. But this is again

a case of reprisals-reprisals in war being almost a law practiced by the best-regulated armies, the American not excepted. Besides, Turkey, unlike Greece, does not claim to be in the van of civilization. Recognizing her shortcomings, she modestly takes a back

seat.

No, the Turks are not brutes simply because they are Mussulmans. The Greeks (I am dealing especially with them here) are not the model of every virtue simply because they are Christians. Every word uttered by a Turk is not a lie. Every word uttered by a Greek is not a truth. The American people have allowed themselves too long to be deceived by the declamations and posturings of the Greeks, by their insidious communications to the press, into the belief that Hellenism is synonymous of all the virtues, that Ottomanism spells vice in all its forms. I am inclined to think that the Carnegie Report will make the people of this country feel very angry with themselves for having so easily become the dupes of Greek rhetoric and, one must add, of their own sentimentality, the latter having ever made them partial to the Greeks because they happen to inhabit the country which was the scene of Hellenic culture. In all fairness, the Americans must adopt more discriminating methods than that which consists in taking for granted all that the Greeks say in their own favor and all that they say in depreciation of their rivals, if they wish to form an equitable opinion of the relative values of the races inhabiting the Near East. If they take greater care to sift the truth, they will realize that the Turks, at the same time as they are "the gentlemen of the East," as Bismarck called them, are no doubt afflicted with not a few defects, but are also possessed of many sterling qualities; that, on the whole, they are a lovable and estimable people, whose collective lapses into savagery for which there are parallels without the same excuses not only in Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia, as we have seen, but in Russia (pogroms), France (the Commune), and, if I may add, the United States (lynchings) are the result of direct or indirect provocation such as no nation can be exposed to without losing control over itself.

I

T is very earnestly to be hoped that the delegates elected to the Constitutional Convention to be held next year in New York State will contain a number of women. Those who make the Constitution are engaged in making the fundamental law of the land; law which should not be lightly changed, although I very strongly believe that it should be easier of change than is the case at the present time, and that when in any given case it is changed by the courts the people should have the right to say whether or not they approve of such change. This fundamental law of the State applies to women just as much as to men, and, as regards many of the matters most intimately concerning ordinary people, it really applies even more to women than to men. Surely in these matters women should be entitled to speak with the authority that comes only if action can follow speech. They are entitled to be heard as a right, not as a favor.

There are other matters which nowadays are increasingly often the subject for legislation in which the interest of women as women, although scarcely as great as the interest of men, is nevertheless very great. This is the case as regards the whole body of our wageworkers. Nearly one-third of the wageworkers of New York State are women. Of late years it has become increasingly evident that the State must concern itself with many matters affecting wage-workers under penalty of seeing the conditions of life and labor grow evil. Where this is the case it is surely wise that women who have first-class knowledge should be called upon for their judgment and aid in making the Constitution, just exactly as men of similar type should be called upon.

In the vital matter of the schools the interest of women is exactly as great as the interest of men. Our public school system is already good, but it must be made much better. It must be kept as a free, absolutely non-sectarian system of governmental schools for all the people, without regard to whether they are rich or poor, and without in any way favoring or discriminating against any

reputable creed; for there must be no con nection between Church and State in this country, and in particular no grant of public money to aid sectarian schools of any kind. But while this fundamental feature must be kept, we should greatly enlarge the work of the schools along the line of industrial training: the training that will make the average boy better able to be a home-keeper by being a better worker and earner, whether on the farm or in the shop; the training that will fit the average girl for the most essential part of the average- and best-woman's work, that of the housewife and mother, while also giving her the full chance to develop her faculties in other directions if she wishes.

What is most needed in our Constitutional Convention is not the orator, nor yet the conventional type of politician, but the intelligent man or woman keenly interested in the welfare of the people of New York; the man and woman who to theoretical and practical knowledge of the problems before our people add the two vitally important qualities of integrity and common sense. It is not of very much consequence what their nominal politics are compared to the question whether they do or do not have these particular virtues, so fundamentally necessary if the task they are to do is to be done well.

ould

It has been urged by the opponents of the course I advocate that women are not eligible to the Constitutional Convention. It seems to me that the decisions of the courts and the practice of the community have definitely established the reverse of this proposition. There is no prohibition in the law against their being members; such prohibition have to be read into the law by a process of reasoning which would also prohibit them from being holders of public office. The courts have again and again refused to question their right to hold such office. Women already occupy and for years have occupied public positions, both State and municipal. Other women who are not in public position have nevertheless been just as actively engaged in rendering public service as if they held office-precisely as is the case with so

many men. As instances of office-holders, past or present, take the following:

MISS JULIA CLIFFORD LATHROP, whose first official position was as a member of the Illinois State Board of Charities, 1893–1909; she was appointed by President Taft as Chief of the Children's Bureau, Federal Department of Labor.

MISS LILLIAN D. WALD; in 1909 she was appointed by Governor Hughes a member of the New York State Commission of Immigration; she had already been appointed a member of the Mayor's Push-Cart Commission in 1906 by Mayor McClellan.

MISS KATHARINE BEMENT DAVIS; she was appointed Superintendent of the New York State Reformatory for Women in 1901, and is now Commissioner of Correction in New York, having been appointed by Mayor Mitchel, 1914.

MISS FRANCES A. KELLOR; she was a member of the New York State Probation Commission, appointed by Governor Higgins, 1906; a member of the New York State Immigration Commission, 1908, appointed by Governor Hughes; she was appointed Chief Investigator of the New York State Bureau of Industries and Immigration by Governor Hughes in 1910 (being the first woman executive in charge of a New York State Bureau).

The gamut covered by the activities of these women is very wide, and they have touched the problems of work and living among our people at their most vital points. Miss Davis, for instance, is at this moment an appointee of the Democratic Mayor of New York, Mr. Mitchel. Miss Kellor was an appointee of the Republican Governor, Mr. Hughes, at present a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Nation. The appointment of both gave the heartiest satisfaction to the men whose interest was keenest and most intelligent concerning the matters with which these two women as public officials were to deal. Miss Kellor's efficient interest in the immigrant has been such as to qualify her to do work such as hardly any man could do. Miss Davis is one of the most trusted members of Mayor Mitchel's excellent cabinet, one of the officials whose presence in office is a source of pride and satisfaction to our people. Now, any construction of the Constitution that would exclude women from the Constitutional Convention would, if fairly applied, make illegal the action of Governor Hughes and Mayor Mitchel in having appointed these women to office. Moreover, if these women are fit to render and have rendered great service to the citizens of this State in the offices they have held, surely in the interest of all our people we have a right

to say that they shall not be excluded from making that fundamental law of the State in accordance with which all such offices will have to be administered in the future.

As a matter of fact, it would be quite impossible adequately to deal with many of the subjects to which these women have devoted so much of their time within and without

office unless by consulting them. If only men are elected to the Constitutional Convention, they will make a poor business of the Constitution unless on some of the most important matters they keep in close touch with women such as those I have named above. In other words, the Constitution will be badly made unless it is made after the makers have consulted with, and at least in part followed the judgment of, these women. The question is merely whether the consultation shall be held as a matter of favor and perhaps in secret in lobbies and anterooms, or whether it shall be held openly and as a matter of right on the floor of the Convention and in the committee rooms where the members meet. There is no question that these women, and women like them, will have to be consulted. Every rational man knows this to be the case. When such is the case, surely every argument against having them consulted as members by their fellow-members vanishes. It is a matter of simple straightforward decency and common sense to give them such place in the Convention that they can be consulted exactly as their fellowcitizens of equal character and knowledge who are men are consulted.

I very much wish that among the women delegates there could be, roughly, the same proportion of wives and mothers that there are fathers and husbands among the men delegates. The duty of the father to the home is his primary duty, precisely as is the case with his wife; and it is as foolish to assume that the performance of such duty bars the woman from the performance of public duty as to make the same assumption in the case of the man. As a matter of fact, women do more charitable, religious, and "neighborhood friendly" duty than men ; and in all probability the average good woman at present spends more time in the performance of her social duties towards her neighbors and towards her fellow-citizens who need her care than the average good man spends in his political duties; and the one form of activity is precisely as compatible as the other with the performance of home