'N Presidential campaigns there are enlisted on each side two forces. One is the force of reason, the other the force of prejudice. Reason makes battle through public discussion. Prejudice assassinates in whispers.

The first choice which the American people have to make in the campaign this year is not between candidates but between campaigning methods. Will they make this a campaign of whispers or of open discussion? Which will they trust to guide them to their decision-prejudice or reason?

If the two major parties had selected two unknowns as their respective champions, there would have been little play room for prejudice. But they have chosen men whose renown has been won in active public service and in sometimes bitter controversy. Precisely because they are the strongest candidates that could have been chosen they are most open to the shafts that prejudice can let fly from its covert. Not for many campaigns has prejudice had such a chance.

On the one side, prejudice will try to print on the mind of the voter the picture of Al Smith with a cardinal's hat and a -tiger's tail. On the other side, prejudice will try to keep sounding in the ears of the voter the cry of "'Ello, 'Erbert "Oover!"

There is one way-and only one way-to rout the force of prejudice, and that is by bringing every question which it may ask into the open and submitting it to the scrutiny of plain Common sense. Refusal to discuss these questions will not prevent them from being asked; it will simply relegate them to the obscurity in which prejudice flourishes. If there is reason to believe that Governor Smith's loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church and to Tammany Hall or that Secretary Hoover's long sojourning in foreign countries is a disqualification for the Presidency, out with it. The relation between Church and State and between a local political organization and the National Government is a legitimate subject for public discussion. So is the effect of foreign experience upon the mind and policies of a possible President. If there lurk in the minds of any considerable number of voters any questions about these or other matters, let them be blurted out.

And if they are blurted out there will be no whispering.

The Feud and the Duello

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GANG leader in an American city leads a precarious existence. There was Frankie Yale, for instance, who was killed a few days ago. As he was driving through a street of Brooklyn, New York, in his Lincoln car, a machine gun opened fire on him, and ended his career. But for the risks he ran he received much money and adulation. He collected some of his money from small places of business that relied on the protection of his "mob," and some of it, it is said, in fees for supplying industrial alcohol to bootleggers; and by being good to the poor he made sure of the adulation. He got jobs for the out-of-work and coal and what-not for the penniless. And he had a fine funeral. At mass said for his soul the multitude overflowed the church and packed the street for four blocks. His body was buried in a silver coffin that

cost fifteen thousand dollars.

In free America we have abolished the code duello. But in the crowded cities of Chicago and New York we still maintain the feud. And when a gang leader dies, politicians

Republican in Chicago, Democratic in New York-honor his memory. It is said that Dion O'Banion had more judges and Senators at his funeral in Chicago; but Frankie Yale had a bigger crowd of people. In the mountains of Kentucky the feudist gets no such send-off to another and perhaps better world as does the feudist in the centers of our urban civilization.

The code duello was hedged about with rules and custom, and accorded the principals in a quarrel at least a sporting chance. If it could be substituted for the feud, there would be some improvement; but it is permanently outlawed, and, besides, would not appeal to the feudist's taste for ambush. The feud, too, is outlawed; but what is outlawry to a feudist? It is the very spice of life. What matters it, whether outlawed or not, so long as it leads to silver coffins and a funeral with sixty cars of flowers and two hundred cars of mourners?

Wars between nations have been likened to duels between individuals. Let us outlaw the war code, it is urged, as we have outlawed the code duello, and we shall get rid of war. Shall we? Or shall we simply substitute the ambush of the feud? If multilateral treaties ever get rid of war, it will be not by abolishing a code, but by developing a public sentiment of the world that will put something better-not worse-in its place.

T

"Pack Reporting"

WO great New York newspapers have issued fiats against "pack reporting." This is the system under which the members of a group covering a story exchange information, or even parcel out the work. It is one of the evils of big-city journalism.

The New York "Times" posted a notice on its editorial bulletin board announcing that reporters had repeatedly offered the defense, when demand was made for correction of statements in stories they had written, that they had received the information from other men. "The folly of such a system is obvious," said the notice. "Times' reporters are not salaried to collect news from other reporters or to contribute their news to other newspapers. Hereafter, every man turning in news, from whatever source he obtains it, will be held personally responsible for such matter."

The executive editor of the "World" promptly followed suit, reiterating, so he asserted, "what has been said countless times."

The multiplication of error, in the manner described, is in truth but one of the evils of herd reporting. Its effect is to level the whole group; the best reporter is no better than the poorest. The custom is a part of a general trend to newspaper standardization. Deprived by the system of any premium on initiative, reporters tend to become indolent and stereotyped. In those places where they are provided with rooms, as at municipal halls and police headquarters and courts and custom-houses, it is the practice even to pass around carbons of stories written by the men assigned to that post.

The practice brought nothing but bad results; that it has been tolerated so long is surprising. The stand that has been taken against it, however, by two of the foremost journals in the United States, gives promise that it will be broken up or abated. If that promise is fulfilled, we shall have a better daily press.

I

T is several years now since my mind was suddenly turned entirely around on this subject. We seldom realize how blandly we ignore observations which do not advance some preconceived notion which we instinctively support. The most brilliant of our dramatic critics, Mr. Nathan, told us once that the difference between the American and the Russian playwright was that if they were both to visit a cemetery the Russian would see only the tombstones and the American only the flowers. For a long period I held the classic view of the relation of alcohol to human health. The wax models of the anti-alcohol society worked their expected horrors on my youthful mind. Then one day an older practitioner began to point out a number of people we both knew who had, in spite of rather excessive indulgence in alcohol, remained in perfect health and acquired advanced years. He also recited the case histories of certain people notably abstemious during their whole lives who died comparatively young of degenerative diseases often ascribed to excess. Since that conversation I have been a converted and changed man.

When, therefore, not long ago I was inveigled into writing a short account of human anatomy and physiology, my evil genius suggested to me that it would. be well to refer to the harmlessness of a moderate use of alcoholic beverages upon the tissues of the human body and to the entirely neutral influence of their consumption upon the span of human life. For allowing myself to be enticed into this, to me, quite innocent set of statements I have been most roundly abused, not only in print, but also by letter and in private conversation. My very integrity has been impugned. Men have said to me: "Of course that was startling, and made people discuss you; but you don't really believe such stuff-we know that."

I confess I have been somewhat surprised at all of this for a number of reasons. In the first place, I find myself in the position of an old friend who read a paper at a medical society and was afterwards complimented by some one for the soundness of the doctrines therein expressed. "They should be sound," he replied, "I stole them from the very best authorities." I too stole my ideas from

By LOGAN CLENDENING

The author has been finding out what happens to the truth seeker when he puts out an observation that contradicts emotional preconceptions. Dr. Clendening has written a book, "The Human Body," that manages to be as amusing as it is sound. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

the very best authority: in this case Dr. Raymond Pearl, Director of the Institute for Biological Research of the Johns Hopkins University. I even performed the customary honor among thieves in the literary world of mentioning his name and referring to the book and page where his researches might be examined in detail. It really seems to be a little bit unfair; Dr. Pearl continues to be loaded with honors and emoluments, while I am heaped with epithets and vituperation. It is as if Dr. Pearl were the manager of a side-show and made all the profits, while I am the tinctured gentleman who sticks his head through the hole in the canvas and gets hit with the billiard balls.

But I was surprised also because I had prepared the statements to which objecprepared the statements to which objection has been made with an unusual amount of care. My theme was confined to the effect of the moderate ingestion of alcohol upon the human body. I said nothing about its effects upon the soul. I particularly went out of my way to announce that, in my opinion, it totally unfitted a man or woman for good work in whatever field that work was undertaken. I suggested a scoff at the idea, widely current, that Poe and Verlaine did their best work while saturated with brandy and absinthe. And not a few admirers of Poe and brandy and Verlaine and absinthe have rated me roundly for such breach of faith. This even was not the full extent of my circumspection: I acknowledged that alcohol had an undesirable effect upon certain otherwise lovable and industrious characters, causing them to pull out the hair of their wives by the roots, hit their little girls over the heads with gin bottles, and renounce entirely their routine daily attendance at the lumber yards; and I felt called upon to admonish such individuals called upon to admonish such individuals

to abstain, in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress, from indulgence in the use of alcoholic bever ages in any form and to any extent whatsoever.

Furthermore, I distinctly said "moderate." I freely admitted that an im moderate and continuous use of alcoh had seemed to result, according to my experience, in cirrhosis of the liver, poly neuritis, ventricular extrasystoles, and delirium tremens. Having gone so far. it did appear to me that I might be a lowed peacefully and quietly to discuss the biologic problem I outlined above without being called a liar, a blasphemer, a poseur, and an enemy of the Republic.

F

OR, you see, what I am proposing is a purely scientific problem. And in order to make the solution of a scientific problem at all likely it is advisable to eliminate as many variables as possible The significance of this plainly obvious fact is far more widespread than may be at first apparent. A disregard of its principles enters into the attempt to ar rive at a conclusion to all the social problems which I ever hear discussed. For instance, at a little luncheon gather ing where I am frequently present, one of the members is by profession a psychia trist. He not infrequently returns to our midst fresh from the pursuit of his dreadful duties, which are to explain to a jury that, in his opinion, a man who has cleft a business associate over the head with a meat ax is mentally somewhat unbalanced. His reappearance immediately provokes an extremely heated argumen on the ancient subject of capital punishment, and invariably it may be observed that no two entrants to the debate are talking about the same thing. Of this they are absolutely unaware, and it is for that reason that I venture to mention it. My psychiatrist friend is interested only in the scientific problem presented: be aims to classify his specimen and study the causes of his malady; to hang him would interrupt a beautiful natural experiment. A novelist member appears to agree with the alienist, but he does not agree at all, because he is opposed to hanging the man for the sentimental reason that the soul torture involved revolts all his sensibilities. And a sociologist is moved to discuss the matter upon a totally different basis, which is the effect

1

on society and other potential murderers of either hanging or not hanging the victim. But they all think they are discussing the same question. Now the problem of capital punishment and the problem of alcoholic ingestion are both human me problems, and their solution, if such a thing is possible-perhaps adjustment would be a better term is bound, for that reason, to be extremely complex. But it is one of my deepest convictions that the biologic problem involved is one of the items to be considered in the final adjustment. Far profounder is my certainty that the biologic problem cannot be solved if anything else is allowed to cloud the issue.

and

Lara

In this particular case, for instance, if it can be proved that alcohol has no deleterious effect upon human tissues, we are certainly privileged to turn to the prohibition societies and say to them: "This being true, just exactly why do you object to the human consumption of alcoholic beverages?" Equally certainly we can say: "This being true, you are not privileged to provoke the police power of the State to prevent the consumption of alcoholic beverages on the same ground that we invoke the police power of the State to enforce universal vaccination against smallpox."

So logical must such ideas appear-so plainly fair and ethical-that it is something like a shock to learn that in many States statutory law compels the authors of text-books on physiology and hygiene used in schools to include a chapter on the deleterious effect of alcohol on human life and health. I know of nothing in the American scene today more downright immoral! Here is, at best, a highly debatable subject, one to be settled only by the methods of science. And by law an interpretation is imposed upon the result of those investigations before they are made. Science by legislation. Truth by legislation, when the object of legislation is justice. The people who support these grossly wicked practices are the

ones who consider themselves the most moral individuals in the community. Last year, in discussing some public remarks which I made jointly with the Professor of Biology at the University of Kansas, a clergyman said that "scientists must make their discoveries harmonize with the beliefs of the American people." And neither then nor at any later time did he appear to realize the enormity of what he had uttered-how blasphemous it was, how immoral. Because, translated into his own phraseology and philosophy, what he said was that if a man discovered one of God's truths and that

truth was not what the American people believed he must announce that the truth of God which he had discovered was a lie. Yet this minister's statement was a revelation of the real and unconscious attitude of his soul.

Our ideas of hygiene have largely been built up in this way-they are Puritan and ethical rather than scientific. A person thinks alcohol increases crime and economic distress, so it is natural to assume that it injures the body. It is almost impossible not to wish that a person who is obviously having an uproariously good time on a succession of sprees will shortly fill a drunkard's grave. It is distinctly disappointing to observe such people going on for years in the enjoyment of nearly perfect health. So such cases tend to be forgotten; the ones remembered are the ones who "drank themselves to death."

TH

HESE general principles being laid down, let us approach the different problems involved. We must separate them into constituent parts, and we will take as the first one the effect of the ingestion of alcoholic beverages upon the ingestion of alcoholic beverages upon the length of human life. Now, notice that this is all we are discussing the length of human life. We are not discussing whether alcoholic indulgence makes a person feel well or ill in the morning, nor whether it causes congestion and the formation of mucus on the inner coat of the stomach, or whether it may result in multiple neuritis, or whether earthworms exposed to its influence are undermined in their ability to produce vigorous progeny. We are discussing the effect of alcoholic ingestion upon the length of hu

man life. None of these other matters has anything to do with the subject, for people with headaches, and tremors, and gastritis, and alcoholic neuritis, may live a long time, and the only animal which concerns us just at present is man, not earthworms; various animals may react

entirely differently to the same chemical. (For instance, dogs do not get typhoid fever and humans do not get distemper.) Obviously, the way to solve this question is to compare the longevity of a group of individuals who drink alcohol regularly with another group who never drink it. This Dr. Pearl has done, using several entirely different avenues of approach, and he has found that the difference in the span of life of the two groups is negligible. To be exact, he found that heavy and continuous drinkers live a somewhat shorter life than total abstainers, and that total abstainers live a somewhat shorter life than moderate

drinkers, but in general the differences are hardly worth considering.

Leaving that question, then, and taking up another, it is fair to ask whether the ingestion of alcohol causes any human diseases. The one most prominently mentioned is cirrhosis of the liver. There are many others which have been ascribed to alcohol, such as hardening of the arteries, Bright's disease, and high blood-pressure, but this is one of the two or three in which, by the general suffrage of students, the probabilities are so strongly in favor of this relationship that men with wide experience can argue with some face of credibility that no example of the disease ever occurs in a total abstainer.

Even at this point, however, there is not general agreement. It is only fair to warn any ministers of the Gospel or Christian statesmen who undertake to treat of the matter that the technical problems involved are so considerable as to make it unlikely that they can be resolved by the somewhat cavalier dialectic which characterizes these gentlemen in their disposition of biologic problems. Not long ago a patient of mine succumbed to this disorder; an autopsy was performed, and parts of the liver were placed under the microscope; and even yet two pathologists of my acquaintance are locked in debate as to whether this was an example of cirrhosis of the liver. Now when so much difficulty occurs in actually recognizing a disease when the very tissues involved can be examined under the microscope, how much do difficulties increase when the unified cause of all the cases all over the world is to be determined. The entire force of one department of the Mayo Foundation for Medical Research has for the last five years been concentrated on liver disease, and in one of their latest publications Dr. Rowntree, the head of that department, has invoked the spirit of Richard Bright in the hope that some order could be brought out of "the chaos of the cirrhoses of the liver."

When such a state of affairs exists in one of the foremost laboratories of medical research in the world, it does seem a little unlikely that the equipment in the Senate chamber or in the study of the First Baptist Church of Ottumwa, Iowa, will be adequate to the task. Of course, this confusion in anatomical classification applies only to the less characteristic forms of liver disease. If it is of aid or comfort to any one, I may say that my experience indicates unqualifiedly that a certain kind of liver

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ECEMBER 6, 1918. Barry, Wales. In looking forward to my first day as an officer on a cargo vessel, I have always taken it for granted that I would come aboard in an orderly fashion: I would meet the captain, the various other officers, and then be given a day or so to "find myself"to unpack, to acquaint myself with the ship-before my actual duties began.

Instead, when I reported aboard the Caroline this morning, I was met at the gangway by the second mate, who informed me that the captain was ashore and that I was to go on watch in ten minutes. Throwing my bags in a tiny stateroom, I hastily stumbled out on deck again and found the second mate up for'ard. Without looking up, he muttered: "Loading 'ospital supplies. Bum stevedores. Got to watch dem everyt'ing makes tight." With which enlightening message he turned on his heel and, relieved of the watch, stalked ashore.

Intent on getting a better idea of the nature and stowage of the cargo, I scrambled down into No. 1 hold and turned what I hoped would be taken as a fiercely discerning eye on the stevedores. I had not been down there three minutes before I heard a deep, raw voice booming down at me from the hatch combing: "Mr. Mate! Mr. Mate!" Looking up, I saw a very red face, and, as the face was surmounted by rather an official-looking cap, I lost no time in climbing up to it. The gentleman to whom the face belonged proved to be the Harbor Master, and the ship, he declared, must be moved immediately to dock No. 17 if we were to coal. thanked him, and hastened away to give his message to the mate. To be sure I had not yet seen the mate, nor did I know where his quarters were, but I soon found a mess-boy who could help me out. With a leer which I understood a minute later, he pointed to a door. I knocked.

I

I had been on board this ship just twenty minutes, I had not even been on the bridge, I scarcely knew her bow from her stern as yet, and here I was being told to move her a matter of threequarters of a mile and tie her up at a coal dock! Oh, well, I knew how. I simply had never given the orders before. I jumped on the bridge, whistled down to the engine-room, grabbed a megaphone and shouted down to the stevedore boss that we were moving, had a boy find the bo'sun and tell him to get a couple of men up on the fo'c'sle head,

Chips and two more men on

the poop. I think I realized the meaning of the word "responsibility" for the first time in my life. Seventy-five hundred tons of steel, forty souls; a fairish twist to the tide; and the ship as yet a complete stranger to me. I was in a fine perspiration by the time we got to Dock 17 -but get there we did.

About three o'clock this afternoon, a short, powerful man, his face purple with rage, came over the gangway, faced me, and bellowed, "Who in the hell moved this ship?" It was my introduction to the captain.

"The Harbor Master came aboard at 8:10 this morning and said we had to move to this dock, sir," I replied. "Who in the hell moved this ship?" he repeated. "The mate was aboard, sir," I hazarded desperately. "Humph!" growled the captain, and left me. Evidently I had said the right thing.

At dinner tonight the mate appeared, sober, steady, and looking altogether like a particularly bland prelate. Not a word was said about moving the ship, but once when the captain was talking with the second mate he favored me with an elaborate wink. It was alike a comment and an acknowledgment.

D

ECEMBER 7, 1918. My watch ran through until eight o'clock this morning, and now I have had a few hours to stow my things and look about

me.

The Caroline appears to be a stanch, commodious ship, bluff bowed, deep bellied; built for a leisurely pace. great carrying capacity, and economical lamps in the mess-room and the mates' operation. She is not new-we have oil rooms, although the captain has had his roomy quarters and chart-room wired and electric lights installed. The chartroom is directly above the little cubbyhole I withdraw to, and I can hear the captain walking to and fro as I write. He seems to have the relentless energy