"Shall we admit into our Church some opeless drunkard who has not been divorced, and refuse admittance to some pure woman who divorced a similarly brutal drunkard for cruelty?" he asked. Dr. George Elliott, church editor, replied for the bitter-enders.

"We would let down the bars and make our laws as weak as the worst State laws now are," he declared. "What

a person does suffer in marriage by cruelty or brutality? Christians have learned they must suffer. Marriage is not a civil contract, and it is not for us to provide an easy escape."

There followed what the reporters call "spirited debate," but the liberalizers prevailed over Dr. Elliott's views by about two to one. The Conference also decided to recognize divorces granted by the State, to receive divorced persons in the Church, to trust the decision of their ministers on the eligibility of divorced persons to remarry; and, finally, ordered courses on marriage to be prepared for use in church schools.

Lobbyism and the Ladies

LOBBYISM, fore and aft, seems to have earnestly exercised the San Antonio Convention of the General Federation of Women's Clubs. Charges were intimated that the ladies had been doing too much lobbying for various legislative programs at Washington; and charges were definitely pressed that Federation officials had exposed themselves to the wiles, if not the corrupting influences, of certain manufacturers interested in the recommendations of the Federation's home survey. Both charges were discussed with zeal and occasional flashes of indignation, so it is reasonable to assume that both rankled some.

The first charge has been politely insinuated in magazine articles these past two or three years. It was insinuated in Convention when Kentucky delegates requested the Federation to abandon its social and legislative activities and get back to its original specialty of cultural uplift. The Federation treated the request respectfully, but met the issue by agreeing to withdraw from a joint woman's lobby in Washington.

This does not mean that the Federation will cease to put pressure on Congress; but the lobbyists will at least be more strictly representative of the Federation, and can be held more strictly accountable for their behavior.

The charge that the Federation was even more lobbied against than lobbying brought forth more in the way of verbal defenses. These made it reasonably

Darling in the New York Herald Tribune Copyright, 1928, New York Tribune Inc. Long past his bedtime

prompt sensible women to decline such favors.

As proof of their faith in their integrity, the ladies agreed to ask a Congressional investigation of all their activities, preliminary to granting them an enlarged charter.

From Washington

A Weary Congress Quits

CONGRESS has resolved itself into individual men, gone home to cut some slash atop their fences to stop the gaps until after the Conventions. They were weary men as they packed their bags and prepared to depart. Since December they had introduced 19,770 bills, had reported 1,323 of them out of Committee and had got 923 of them past the President as completed laws. But they had worked hardest, perhaps, on thirteen. which the President disapproved. In addition, they had investigated many things, some deeply, some less so. And, finally, they had, as usual, been worn out by filibustering at the end of the session.

On two successive nights, until the dawn painted the east, the Senate satenough of it to make an auditor or so for the man who had the floor, the rest reclining in the cloak-rooms-while California tried to cram Boulder Dam down the throat of Nevada. Neither won. Nevada held out to the last against swallowing. But the morsel is in its mouth-unfinished business to be

jammed down at the beginning of the next session in December.

This was the second filibuster. The first was different, and similar. Tennessee tried unsuccessfully to keep from swallowing Muscle Shoals, which, with Cove Creek added, Alabama jammed down her throat.

But the President had a button-hook ready, in the form of a pocket veto. Tennessee will not choke on Cove Creek -at least not until the next session. The Wilderness and Kansas City So, with Muscle Shoals in his pocket, President Coolidge prepared for his summer vacation in a birch-pole lodge on an island in the Brule River which, though it belongs to Wisconsin, empties into Duluth's neck of Superior.

It is a great, rugged, sparse country into which he goes. Lakes are numberless and hogback ridges between them twice so. Canoeing is strenuous and portaging desperate. He who carries an Oldtown and an eighty-pound duffle-bag over the inevitable eleven portages and six beaver-dam lifts a day will harden. his muscles. But the President may not

find such exercise necessary. He has chosen to be at that stage of life from which one looks back, and meditates, and fishes-from shore.

But a man, even a President, may not always have his choice. There are those who say that the Kansas City Convention will nominate Mr. Coolidge for President. His schedule is so arranged that on the day when that Convention nominates him, if it does, he will be either on the train or lost among the beaver ponds and rock ridges. It will be most unfortunate for his choice if he should be nominated and cannot decline the nomination because he cannot be reached.

On the other hand, the Convention may deadlock and seek Mr. Coolidge to break the hasp. Then will it be, indeed, fortunate for his retrospective fishing if

he is so inaccessible that he cannot be forced to take sides with this contender or that.

Whatever is in Mr. Coolidge's mind in that regard is in Mr. Coolidge's mind and not elsewhere.

Investigators Go on Forever

ALL have gone, then, except the weary investigators. They through the sweltering summer, out of the political scramble but exerting pressure upon it, will stay in Washington and dig. Almost a dozen investigations will thus go forward between sessions.

The Committee investigating campaign funds and related subjects, though probably not the most important, is likely to be the most interesting, because its work is most closely related to the Presidential campaign.

This Committee, at about the time of the adjournment of Congress, was engaged upon the terrifying task of examining Senator J. Thomas Heflin, of Alabama. Its efforts revealed the fact that concerning the financing of Governor Smith's pre-convention campaign Senator Heflin knows nothing but believes a great deal. Seeing the situation through a mottled maze of red hats and white caps, Senator Heflin fumed and raged and added nothing to the Committee's store of information. One thing he was sure of that he received pay from the Ku Klux Klan for talking about the Pope and Al Smith. He thought, how ever, that what he said was lecturing, not speaking.

Later on the Committee will concern itself with even more explosive things. Among them is the report, which has persisted for ten years, that during the World War Mr. Hoover, as Food Ad

As to the report filed with the Senate, however, there was no disagreement. All members of the Committee approved it. The profits of the Continental Trading Company deal were characterized as "ill-gotten gains of a contemptible private steal, the peculations of trusted officials of great industrial houses pilfering from their own companies, robbing their own stockholders, the share of the boodle coming to one of the freebooters serving in part as the price of the perfidy of a member of the President's Cabinet."

The rest of the report is hardly less hot.

No Sanctuary in Retirement

THOSE who have been Government officials but now have retired to pleasanter if not more profitable pastures-even they are not safe from the investigators. Before the Campaign Funds Committee came Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Assistant Attorney-General in charge of prohibition enforcement, and testified concerning the activities as a prohibition agent of Frank J. Hale, now owner of the periodical "Politics"-a sheet whose object in life appears to be the defeat of Hoover for President. It loses $500 a week, which Hale testified he meets out of his own pocket.

Mrs. Willebrandt testified that Hale

and his associates grew affluent while he was a prohibition agent. She identified J. N. Chamberlain, of Atlantic City, as a pal of both Hale and General Lincoln C. Andrews, then Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of prohibition. This Chamberlain, she said, increased his bank deposits from $300 a month to $5,000 a month and in less than a year had deposited $90,000 in one bank and

.

$65,000 in another. She said that Chamberlain, after one all-night visit with Hale, exhibited twenty $1,000 bills.

Mrs. Willebrandt said that she t worked up cases against Hale, but that each time, when they had reached the point "when the truth probably wel would come out," they were halted. Finally, despairing of getting results from G eral Andrews, whom she described as Hale's close personal friend, she went Secretary of the Treasury Mellon. Mr Mellon ordered an inquiry, out of w came the information that Hale had ac cepted $5 a case from rum-runners for permitting the landing of liquor. the statute of limitations had run and he

could not be prosecuted.

It is Investigator James A. Reed who claims to have brought about the re moval of General Andrews as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of prohibition. As soon as Dr. Doran go his hand on the helm Hale lost his job as prohibition agent, and shortly there after became a publisher.

Utilities Omnipresent

FROM the low gray building on B Stree where the Federal Trade Commission sits investigating "utilities" strange sto ries continue to come and to get wide publicity than at first. Reversing Jac deathbed scene, the voice is the voice o the F. T. C. but the hand is Walsh] hand. The Montanan, defeated in th effort to conduct the investigation him self, is still the star investigator.

Testimony shows that throughou New York State public and pr schools were saturated with public utili ties texts, while at the same time utiliti were spending $25,000,000 a year in as vertising with the newspapers. He may be, is partial explanation of th reluctance of some newspapers to prin the news of the investigation. school texts were designed largely to d feat Governor Smith's water-power de velopment plans. In Rochester, p utilities interests paid $15,000 to un write "The Story of Public Utilities," book introduced to the public scho

under

University courses favorable to t utilities were substantially backed, a cording to testimony recently add in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colora Wyoming, and New Mexico. In som cases the professors who prepared courses were not paid for that work, b were paid for making public spel favorable to the utilities. Some receive pay for acting as members of Fabi Utilities Information Committees.

Western committee activities were,

"PUR

URE ACCIDENT," was the conclusion of the German Government in its investigation into the cause of the leakage of phosgene gas at Hamburg that cost eleven lives and chronically injured over twenty of the 200-odd people harmed. The gas was found to be of war-time origin, and the question whether or not the Interallied Military Control Commission allowed it to be retained for industrial purposes remained unsettled. The supply of some 15,000 gallons in storage at the plant where one of the containers burst is to be transferred to old torpedoes and sunk at sea. So ends another sequel to the story of the World War.

No intimation has been heard of any serious inquiry by the former Allies. Perhaps one reason is to be found in the changed relations between France and Germany reflected in an interview given in Paris by the High Commander of the German Fleet during the war, Admiral von Tirpitz. He said that there was a sincere German desire for friendship with France, and that, while he questioned the warmth of French desires for an accord with Germany, such an understanding is the principal condition on which the peace of Europe depends. What has become of the traditional enmity? Happily, so far as Germany is concerned, according to the author of the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, spurlos versenkt-sunk without a trace.

L

ITHUANIA has got the League of Nations again on her trail. The League Council is to take up at its present session the settlement of the boundary dispute between Lithuania and Poland. In particular, it is to consider the situation. created by the new Constitution just voted by Lithuania, declaring the capital to be the city of Vilna. That city and the territory around it, which Lithuania claimed on historic grounds, the Polish General Zeligowski seized seven years ago. And the League, after an inquiry, formally awarded it to Poland. Consequently, in the opinion of the delegates of France, the ally of Poland, Lithuania's action is an affront and defiance to

TH

HINGS HAVE BEEN HAPPENING in the Near East that presage a new period there of closer relations between the Oriental nations and perhaps of new problems for the Western Powers.

In the first place, the Turkish Nationalists have rejected the idea of a triple accord between Italy, Greece, and Turkey which Italy is said to have advanced. Mussolini has signed a separate treaty of arbitration and conciliation with Turkey. It includes promises by each nation not to enter into political combinations likely to menace the other and of neutrality in case of war with another nation. But the broader scheme for an extension of the influence of Fascist diplomacy in the eastern Mediterranean fell through.

At the same time Amir Amanullah of Afghanistan, on his way home from his tour of Europe, stopped in Angora to exchange courtesies and pledges of friendship with the Turkish dictator, Mustapha Kemal. At a banquet Kemal declared:

"Our nations are sisters in suffering for liberty's sake. We two will never forget the creators of those sufferings.

du

"Afghanistan, too, stands ready to accomplish all brotherly duties tow toward Turkey."

His movement to modernize Afghanis tan is traced to the influence of Mustapha Kemal.

tapha Kemal. Even while the Turks

were driving the Greeks out of Asia Minor, the Turkish President responded a request from the Amir to send a Tur kish military mission to his capital reorganize the Afghan army.

Before the Amir left Angora he sig a new treaty of alliance with Turkey.

Meanwhile Persia, under her dictator. Shah Riza Pahlavi, has made a new step forward toward independence. G Britain has signed a series of con tions recognizing Persian tariff autonomy and looking toward a treaty commerce which would include provi sions for the British airways that wishes to extend to India. France has already accepted in principle the ab aboli tion of the Persian capitulations gran special privileges to citizens of the Wis

P

ARTY delegates, whether at Kansas City or Houston, have been summoned to consult the interests of the entire country. Most of them, perhaps, have been selected by bosses. Some of them are bosses. They like to play the game of party politics, or they would not be there. Their fellow-countrymen, who will listen to their shoutings over the radio, have no illusions on that score. Nevertheless these delegates are their countrymen's agents. They represent their interests.

What are these interests? Certainly not religious prejudice. It is often the tool of the scheming politician; but it is one of the most devastating forces in the world, and it has been used by schemers and honest bigots alike in attacks on Governor Smith as a Roman Catholic.

It is the business of the delegates, as they love their country, to bar religious prejudice out. If they regard their party duty as a public trust, they will apply that issue to Protestant as well as Catholic, and will regard as an enemy of America any one who would make political capital out of bias for or against any faith. Bigoted Americans alone make religious differences dangerous. America has no more to fear from the red hat of the Cardinal than from the pillow slip of the Imperial Kludd.

Another devastating force is provincial prejudice, of the kind that has been directed against Mr. Hoover because of his service abroad as engineer for alien interests. This is almost 100 absurd to notice; but it has made its appearance in certain parts of the country, and it may make its appearance at the Convention.

In selecting a candidate for the Presidency party delegates are supposed to seek the man with the highest qualiications for the office. Their greatest failures in the past have resulted from their failure to do so. This year we have had a preliminary campaign based on anything and everything except the obvious question of the candidates' qualifications to be our Chief Executive. Now, as in the past, delegates can find no safe refuge in ignoring the candidate's qualifications by hiding behind his "political availability." They cannot afford to let their judgment be clouded by a smoke-filled room. The Conventions that did so in 1920 stand today disgraced. Teapot Dome with all that it symbolizes was possible because neither party selected a man supremely qualified.

From each Convention the country looks for the selection of a man who can not only make his own platform, but be his own platform. He needs the courage and the ability to say what he stands for and what he proposes to do; and he needs the character and executive ability to do what he proposes. Neither of the two leading candidates of their respective parties has so far divulged a program. Each has a record which has drawn to him a following; but a record is not enough. It will not answer the questions of the future. And there are questions waiting to be answered-questions of corruption (local, State, National), of lawlessness, of bureaucracy, of prohibition, of agriculture, of super-power and public utilities, of our waterways, of National defense, of international arrangements for peace, of relations with Latin

America, of trade rivalry with Europe, of obligations in the Far East, perhaps questions of unemployment, and of the relation between our political democracy and the growing giant of industrial democracy-a veritable chaos of questions. The country wants each Convention to choose some one who has a coherent answer to give, and can make it heard beyond his shirt-front.

Delegates represent, however, not merely the interests of their country, but also the organization of their party. When they ask votes for their candidate, they ask also votes for their party.

What kind of party? That will depend chiefly on the men they put in control. The voters have seen the management of each party in turn go on the rocks of dissension, folly, incompetence, and corruption. They have seen party managers as peddlers of political funds and traffickers in political offices. They have heard the story of Will Hays. They have learned how to unbuckle their party harness. The success of each Convention will largely depend on the thoroughness with which the delegates reorganize their party's manage

ment.

That in turn will depend upon what they make their parties stand for. So far the campaign has been against Hoover, against Smith, against prohibition, against nullification of prohibition, against a big navy, against the water-power trust, against Government ownership, against the McNary-Haugen Bill, against Coolidge because he has been against the McNary-Haugen Bill. What party is "for" something? In 1896 Bryan shook the Democratic Party out of its lethargy with a proposal of the free coinage of silver at 16 to 1; and he drove the Republican Party into the specific advocacy of the gold standard. There followed a campaign of education that was unparalleled since the Civil War. Roosevelt formulated the policy that renewed the Republican Party and made it lead in that progressivism which is the surest conservator of the best. Wilson established his leadership in and through the Democratic Party by a positive political philosophy and program. So far this year no policy-shaper has appeared. On the delegates of each Convention rests the responsibility of deciding in what direction their party shall move-or of deciding that it shall not move at all.

A vast and growing body of voters who do not wear party labels will await the delegates' deliberations and decisions. As the delegates shirk their duty these independent voters will surely call them to account. As these delegates make good use of their power these same voters will voice approval. The Outlook, an independent journal, owing no party allegiance, is of the same mind with these voters, and, like them, will voice approval or disapproval as in its judgment the Conventions succeed or fail. It will reserve its judgment as to the choices made until it can make a fair comparison between them. The decision rendered at the polls next November will be made by those whose judgment is now held in reserve. These voters of independent mind, not the party bosses, will judge the work of the Convention, and they will render the verdict of success or failure.