training in a bank, and at the end of three years was thrown into the army of the unemployed, penniless and economically crippled, just at the time when as a young man I was most anxious to marry and begin my career." So much is military service detested that at one time young men in such numbers began to incapacitate themselves for the service by cutting off the index or trigger-finger, that the government put a summary stop to the practice by making of these unfortunates a special regiment and sending them to the most unhealthy post, to do the severest and most menial work. Later it was discovered that, in order to evade military service, men actually were being inoculated by doctors with tuberculosis. This also was stopped by severe punishment and imprisonment. On our walking-trips it was always interesting to watch the faces of the people who passed us in diligences, carriages and automobiles. Some of them looked at us in surprise, others with plutocratic scorn, but those who realized the situation must have sighed with envy as we strode along inhaling great drafts of pure Alpine ozone at every step, stopping to rest or read wherever and whenever we wished, making little side excursions now and then to see a mysterious grotto or world-famed vista, and always carrying with us the exultant sense of personal, physical triumph over this proud old Alpine world. After a week's climbing about Andermatt, we left early one morning to cross the Furka Pass into the Rhone valley. In the course of the summer we walked over a number of other passes: The Abula, Brunig, Oberalp, Gemmi, Meiden and Augstburg, each with its own special variety of indescribable Alpine scenery, but none of these opened to view a panorama which could at all compare, in grandeur of form and mass, and mystical beauty of color and shade, with that which stretched out before us as we reached the summit of the Furka and looked westward over miles of glaciers, intertwined with green valleys and surrounded on all sides by chain after chain of snowcovered, cloud-capped mountains, bathed for the moment in an ocean of sunset glory. ing at four o'clock, with clammy clothes and chattering teeth, to continue our trip over five glaciers and through eighteen inches of new-fallen snow to the summit. There is nothing more dangerous on such trips than this new-fallen snow, which conceals the crevasses yawning in the glaciers beneath. We were all roped together one guide going first, I next, then my wife, and the other guide bringing up in the rear. As the guide sounded the snow with his ice-axe every step of the way, our progress was necessarily slow and monotonous. But when suddenly we found ourselves on the brink of a snow-covered crevasse, which was a veritable death-trap, we realized that his precautions were neither perfunctory nor excessive. A few minutes later an avalanche carrying tons of snow, ice and boulders came tearing down about five yards to our right, but so stimulated were we by the altitude and the novelty and wonder of it all, that we felt no emotion save a sort of intoxication of ecstacy and awe. Every hour we ate a sandwich, drank a glass of tea and red-wine mixed and rested five minutes standing. Then on and on we pushed doggedly. As the last half hour included a very interesting bit of "rock work" on all fours, my wife's short skirt proved not only a great nuisance to her but a source of considerable danger to us all. When at last, however, we reached the summit, though miserably cold and almost exhausted, the dangers and fatigues of the way were completely forgotten in the indescribable sublimity of the view. In every direction as far as the eye could reach was a region of endless winter. It is not likely we shall pass that way again. If not, we can never be too thankful that this once it was our privilege to tread these corridors of flowing ice, to hear the thunders of the avalanche, to gaze face to face upon the Jungfrau, the Queen of the Bernese Alps and her court of snowy giants, to enter, as it were, the very holy of holies of this mighty temple of Nature, to which pilgrims flock from The last days of summer were now gone and according to our original plan, a walk over the Grimsel Pass to Meiringen would bring our pedestrian tour to an end. But on that September morning the air was so exhilarating and the Alps so alluring, that we could not make up our minds to get into a stuffy train at Meiringen and return to the smoke and bustle of civilization. Moreover it seemed such a sacrilege to leave Switzerland without having "done" at least one real snow-peak that, on the spur of the moment, we engaged two guides and set off for the Ewigsneehorn-a mountain only 11,000 feet high, but which commands one of the finest panoramas in the High Alps, and in fine weather, according to Baedeker, "presents little Then presents little difficulty to adepts." Unfortunately, however, by starting from a point only 2,000 feet above sea-level, we gave ourselves a climb of 9,000 feet, which is over 2,000 feet more than from the Eggishorn hotel to the top of the Jungfrau and only 400 feet less than from Zermatt to the top of the Matterhorn. As a last touch, about an hour after leaving Meiringen, it began to rain in the valleys and snow on the mountains, thus doubling the difficulties and dangers of our trip and transforming a comparatively simple climb into a formidable "first-class ascension." We slept that night on straw between huge woolen blankets in an Alpine hut, built by the Swiss Alpine Club for the free use of all who pass way. It had rained all day and we were drenched, but as there was barely enough wood on hand to make tea and heat our canned soup, we were forced next morn that all the ends of the earth,-a temple not built with hands, whiter than marble, as enduring as the world itself and reaching to the very heavens. During a short stay in Geneva, I was surprised to learn that the chair of Political Economy in the University there is held by a prominent Socialist, M. Edgard Milhaud, with whose name I had long been familiar through his contributions to the French reviews. Having won high honors as a student at the University of Paris, Professor Milhaud, after taking his Bachelor's and Master's degrees, was sent to Germany on a traveling fellowship. On his return to France he spent a year and a half working with M. Millerand, Socialist Minister of Commerce and Industries, in the WaldeckRousseau Ministry, leaving that position to become foreign editor of La Petite République, the oldest socialist daily paper in Paris. He is the author of La Tactique socialiste, Le Rachat des Chemins de fer, La Démocratie socialiste Allemande, and while still a young man is probably the greatest living authority on European socialism. In spite of his heavy duties and responsibilities as a teacher and writer, however, he still finds time to participate actively in practical politics as speaker and organizer and as Secretary of the Socialist Federation of the Department of Savoy, France. It is not surprising that the advent of such a man at the quiet old University of Geneva was regarded with little less than horror by the faculty and the "better elements" in the city. The conservative press, not only in Switzerland but all over Europe, made a great outcry, while the wealthy and aristocratic students in his classes organized a tremendous demonstration against him, at his first lecture yelling and hooting so that he was hardly able to speak a dozen connected sentences. However, as he was in a State University, and his friends had a comfortable radical socialist majority behind them, of necessity, this sort of nonsense soon came to an end and his opponents, having no alternative, submitted to the inevitable as gracefully as possible. Moreover, as his classes have been increasing in numbers every year, students even coming from foreign countries especially to take his lectures, and as it has been pretty generally ascertained that he has neither horns nor a cloven hoof, a considerable revolution has come about in the general attitude toward him even the aristocrats being forced at last to recognize that if he is a "socialist militant" he is at the same time a gentleman and an economic authority of international repute. Nevertheless I believe it is still problematical what would be the result if a conservative majority should come into power. 66 On one's first trip abroad it is usually customary to travel first-class as a matter of course. The next time by going second" one manifests to the traveling public that the novitiate period is over and one has flowered into a full-fledged globe-trotter of the second degree. On later trips many of us learn that it is wiser to discriminate; to travel firstclass when, on long journeys, fast trains and ample room are a consideration; to travel second-class when in the mood for bourgeoise comforts, bourgeoise company and bourgeoise prices, but otherwise to travel third for the charm of the company to be met in third-class compartments only. Here one comes into close contact with the natives of the different countries, the real people with their new and naïve ways, their fresh, truthful views of life, with much of the local color and some of the local odors. of their native villages still clinging to them. Time passes quickly watching them-they are as unconventional and refreshing as savages or animals and far more interesting. As one of our ambassadors wisely said, on being asked why he traveled third-class: "I travel thirdclass because there is no fourth." At Brieg, I once bought for seven dollars and a half, a third-class ticket, good for two weeks' travel on the lake steamboats and great railway lines in all parts of Switzerland. During this period I had occasion to travel almost constantly, looking up some sociological data, but on the whole found nothing which interested me more than the little ticket on which I was traveling. When first introduced it was generally feared that its almost nominal price, while entirely satisfactory from the standpoint of the traveling public, would prove a losing venture to the railroad department, but the resulting increase in travel soon proved what railroad managers seem so loath to learn, that within certain reasonable limits, cheaper rates are always a paying venture. In spite of the "doctored statistics," to which such wide publicity has been given by subsidized journalists and well-salaried "authorities," to the effect that government railroads in Switzerland are a failure, the many improvements, such as the one just mentioned, which have been introduced in railroad management since the government purchase in 1901, tell a strikingly different story. To be sure, the reorganization of a system of railroads in accordance with democratic ideals is a herculean task, which can be carried to a successful issue only by proceeding slowly with the work of reform and adhering at all times to the soundest of sound business principles. During the first four years of government ownership the progress made has been very creditable and satisfactory to all except the most impatient reformers and interested capitalists. But it is apparent that very much more remains to be done during the fifty-six years that must elapse before the roads are paid for, than could possibly have been done during the four short years of government management that are past. In the first place a very appreciable reduction in both passenger and freight rates has been made a reduction of from twelve per cent. to twenty per cent. on round-trip passenger tickets and from five per cent. to fifteen per cent. on most of the freight rates. The hours of labor have been reduced from twelve hours a day to eleven, and at the same time wages have been raised. At a very considerable cost, much needed improvements in the roadbeds, rolling-stock and stations have been carried out while faster and more frequent trains have been introduced. In addition to this, and after paying all expenses, including the interest on the capital invested, each year a definite proportion of the government bonds which were issued in payment for the roads are bought back out of the net profits, so that at the end of sixty years from the date of purchase the last bonds will be retired and the road will be the property of the people free and unencumbered. This triumph of democratic or socialistic "high finance" compares not unfavorably, both as to methods and results, with our individualistic or plutocratic "high finance," from the inside history of which the whole world turns away with mingled horror and disgust. CARL S. VROOMAN. Geneva, Switzerland. RACE-SUICIDE. BY WILLIAM FRENCH. SA TOPIC for agitation, childlabor has recently attracted un'usual attention and new laws have been suggested and enacted for which there was grave necessity; yet children do not love to labor, and the parent is inconceivable who could rejoice in the abstract fact that his child was at physically ruinous and unremunerative work for others. Compulsory education is our boast, for it has proved a wise act and has worked out well for the nation. Yet, in spite of the facilities afforded and special officers to protect it, its provisions are none too properly observed: though even instinct leans naturally toward education. Race-suicide is a term forced upon us by conditions that are alarmingly on the increase alarming enough already when we realize that there are five additions to our population by immigration or foreign parentage to every birth of a true-blood American. Why is it? Mother-love is not obsolete, nor are paternal instincts dead. The answer to each of these propositions is the same. It is the almost unbearable burden of children. Let us be frank. Old-time farms, where sentiment can count and the cost of them is nominal, are very few. Tenements, cottages and city flats, where salaries are small and each little cost counts heavily, are constantly increasing. The young and the old are burdens which no amount of sentiment can offset. Middle-life must bear them or evade them. We have all kinds of ultimate refuges for the aged and infirm, for we are philanthropic as well as dogmatic. In an awkward, objectionable way, they partially relieve without attempting to obviate, only the lesser part of the burden in desperate cases; but youth remains helplessly hanging on middle-life and often, by sheer force of inexorable Must, middlelife is driven to shirk the burden. To properly feed and clothe and entertain the normal allotment of children would overtax the utmost earning capacity of the average family, to-day, demanding almost brutal economy, sacrifice and abnegation for the first twenty years of marriage-the vital twenty years of life. Celibacy is not indictable. Race-suicide cannot easily be made a statute crime. The five who are wise take refuge in one or the other, to the degradation, detriment and partial obliteration of the nation. The five who are foolish-the lower element, among whom Nature is less obstructed by forethought-finding themselves sinking below sustenance under the weight of the contents of increasing cots, unable to make more sacrifices to send the children properly to school, are finally forced to put them to earning, however little, to help make the dire ends meet. Philanthropy stands ready, again, in cases of acute distress to be disagreeably helpful; but at its best philanthropy is rather like physic. If you do not see why only wait for the hour of necessity and take a dose. Child-labor laws to prevent these little ones from being put to the brutal tasks of bread-winners deserve all of the commendation they receive. Compulsory education is not so much to save the child as the nation, by making intelligently valuable instead of dangerously ignorant citizens. If we could add to them a law enforcing marriage and preventing race-suicide, the combination would result in "a nation to be proud of," so far as numbers and intelligence are |