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not understand us; we have not understood ourselves.

Our first duty is to understand ourselves, to know the facts, and to fulfill without faltering and without passion the duty laid upon us by those facts. Mr. Lansing's note would be admirable if it were addressed to a responsible government. Addressed to an irresponsible mob, its only use is to put before the American people officially and authoritatively facts which the press for the last three years has been, with only moderate success, endeavoring to put before the American people, and which our Government, without any success at all, has been endeavoring to hide from them. We are not dealing with a Mexican government; we are dealing with Mexican mobs. Our first duty is to recognize that fact and adopt our policy accordingly. That policy should be to protect from these mobs, first, American citizens; and, secondly, Mexican citizens.

Our punitive expedition has accomplished all that it can accomplish. It has hunted one of the bandits to his lair. Whether he is in his grave or whether he is in hiding in the mountain fastnesses is not known and is not material. The long, thin line of American troops reaching far into the interior of Mexico can do nothing except exasperate peaceable Mexicans. Why should they not believe, what they are told, that this is a body of American banditti added to the Mexican bands which have already plundered, robbed, and murdered? The first step in a peaceful policy would be to withdraw this line, and gather our soldiers along the border, so placed as to protect it from future raids. Where these troops should be placed, how far on the Mexican side, how far on the American side of the border, is a purely military question, to be determined by the military authorities on the ground.

Military authorities say that it will take from two weeks to two months to gather a force adequate to the fulfillment of our next duty. Unless the unexpected should happen and Carranza should do what he has never succeeded yet in doing-establish a competent government and maintain order-that next duty would be to occupy gradually strategic centers in Mexico and make them centers of protection, healing, and life-giving. A Mexican constabulary can be and should be organized in connection with any such

To this constabulary, acting under American direction and paid by American

gold, should be intrusted the preservation of order in the surrounding district. From these centers should be sent out such expeditions as may be necessary to arrest and punish armed bands of marauders. These military posts should also be Red Cross centers. The impoverished Mexicans are dying like flies-men, women, and children-of disease and of starvation. From these centers should be sent out food and medicines. They should become educational centers. It will take a little time to convince the Mexican people that we are their friends, and the enemies only of their enemiesthe mob. This can be done only by deeds of friendship. Notes and proclamations are useless in dealing with a people eighty per cent of whom cannot read. As these centers are occupied by friendly troops, as the well-paid and well-organized and welldirected Mexican constabulary acquire police efficiency and extend their police jurisdiction, as the starving are fed, the sick are cared for, justice is administered, industry is protected, crops are sown and gathered, prejudices will disappear, friendship will ripen. The process will be slow, yet more rapid, perhaps, than we think. In less than a week after our occupation of Vera Cruz sniping ceased, and presently anti-American prejudice had begun to disappear and American protection and American purses to be welcomed by the population.

Such a campaign of friendship would have been attended with little danger and no great difficulty three years ago. It will be attended with greater difficulties and greater danger now. A battle with one or more organized forces may be a necessary incident. Guerrilla warfare will continue for a time. AntiAmerican prejudice will yield only gradually. The more ignorant and unreasonable a preju dice, the more difficult it is to overcome. But it can be overcome by a campaign of healing to the sick, food to the starving, protection to the plundered, and prosperity to the devastated.

Americans desire no conquest of Mexico. But Mexico surely needs a protectorate from America. She needs done for her what, by different methods but in substantially the same spirit, we are doing for Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. She needs the maintenance of a stable and just government while her people are acquiring the ability for self-government. She needs no conqueror; but she needs a Big Brother,

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who will help her to substitute the government of law for the rule of the mob.

This is the campaign we ought to have undertaken three years ago. It is never too late to mend.

DEMOCRACY IN DREAMLAND

In its four years' journey from Baltimore in 1912 to St. Louis in 1916 the Democratic party has been transformed. The Convention at Baltimore was a subtle game played by men acquainted with the sordid side of politics. The Convention at St. Louis was a revival meeting, swayed by genuine human feeling. At Baltimore the atmosphere was of the earth, earthy. At St. Louis the atmosphere was the rarefied air of the mountaintop.

Idealism dominated the St. Louis platform. The record of the Democratic Administration was idealized, and as the delegates surveyed the list of promised measures of social justice they regarded it not merely as a pledge of future performance, but as an ideal for present enjoyment.

As great as the revolution has been in the Republican party, it is matched by the revolution in the Democratic party. Though such party managers as Mr. Taggart, of Indiana, Mr. Sullivan, of Illinois, and Mr. Murphy, of New York, are more powerful in their own bailiwicks than ever, more secure than before in their hold upon the loyalty of their organizations, they have adapted themselves to the new order. They, too, have, in a measure, yielded to the spirit of progress that has affected their followers.

These delegates, however, were too hardheaded to allow their idealism to lift them off the earth as long as they discussed domestic affairs with which they were acquainted; but when they approached foreign affairs, which were outside their world of experience, they were swept into a veritable land of dreains. And it was here that their enthusiasm was raised to the highest pitch. They saw visions of a beautiful, isolated America, unstained by the grime of international conflicts. And there was nothing to mar the enjoyment of this vision. There was no contest within the Convention to engage their thought. Like the assembling of a clan on the eve of battle, the Convention therefore turned itself into a ceremonial meeting to prepare itself for the Presidential contest yet to come. The tribal

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chiefs roused each other and their warriors to high spirits by rehearsing the action of the coming contest and by picturing graphically the issue of the campaign. They painted in words, on a banner of oratory, their vision of America aloof, labeled it “neutrality," and held it up as their party's standard.

In the background of that vision was a world mad with bloodshed; in the foreground a land sane, peaceful, and plenteous. Europe had sent her sons into an unreasoning, murderous contest, while America had kept her sons free for productive labor and for the enjoyment of hearth and home. Mexico was torn and bleeding, while America was whole and serene. Even history was evoked to testify that the impulses which stir the hearts of men to struggle elsewhere in the world have no place in the hearts of the people of America. War as pictured here was only the sport of blood-bespattered monarchs. With men in a life-and-death struggle the America of this dream had nothing to do. From the point of view of those who dwelt in this dreamland at St. Louis the European war was as unmoral as a dog fight the only way to restore peace was to wait till the contestants were exhausted, and then somehow to separate them and bid them come to their senses; the only service America could perform was to give to a mad world an example of the rewards of neutrality.

So orator after orator added his touch to this verbal picture: On the east an inferno, to the south an inferno, and separated from both infernos by a gulf of Democratic neutrality a landscape of quiet pastures and pleasant hillsides and fertile valleys dotted with school-houses from which troop happy children, factories welcoming prosperous workingmen, and the many homes of a contented people.

In that dreamland of the Democratic Convention there was no place for the bodies of American women and children drowned by the deliberate act of a German submarine; no place for those American women outraged by bandits in Mexico and left defenseless by their country; no place for the American homes on the border which have been menaced by armed raiders; no place for National duty to defend the rights of American citizens on land and sea; no place for the obligation of a great Nation to resist with all its strength those who would destroy the fabric of the public law of nations on which civilization rests; no place for those who are ready to

die that liberty and democracy may survive; no place for the liberty-loving French, who are not afraid to enter the inferno in order to beat back the flaming tide of military autocracy; no place for the brave Belgians fighting hopelessly for their homes against overwhelming odds; no place even for memories of liberty-loving Americans in the past who, for the sake of defending their freedom, had braved the perils of war and by their bodies had withstood the force of tyranny and oppression.

In that dreamland at St. Louis there was no evil but war, no good but peace. It was a dreamland in which men rejoiced that men had been saved even from the threat of hostilities, without regard to the fact that the price had been paid in the blood of women and children. It was a dreamland devoid of the conscious knowledge of right and wrong.

It is impossible to believe that the American people are living in this land of dreams, this world of unreality. It is impossible to believe that the American people will accept this vision of mere comfort, plenty, and tranquil self-content as the supreme National good. It is impossible to believe that the American people will hold that the only alternative to war is the evasion of National duty, the avoidance of those burdens which only strong peoples can bear.

In the dreamland of the Democratic Convention there was no way to escape war except by ignoring the moral issues in the present world crisis, by ignoring the wrongs suffered by Americans in Mexico and on the high seas, by ignoring the claims of other neutral nations upon the strength of the richest and strongest neutral Nation, by ignoring alike the perils of the future, the demands of the present, and the most highly prized traditions of the past. In the world of reality, to ignore these things is the surest invitation to ultimate war and possible dis

aster.

America wants peace, but she wants justice more. America does not want war-least of all, war upon a half-starved, bandit-ridden people like the Mexicans. But the issue now is not between peace and war. It is an issue between ease and self-respect.

The Democratic party offers to the country the vision of a self-satisfied, selfish Nation in a world of dreams. What the country wants is a vision of the Nation strong and sternly determined to bear its burdens and do its duty in a world of realty.

A TRUE AMBASSADOR

While Europe is setting before the world a group of fighting men, the figure of a great maker of peace comes to us from Japan. Bishop Harris has not been talking peace among the Orientals for forty-five years, he has been breathing and living it; he is a contemporary illustration of the power of love. Many people understand love as a sentiment; few people have ever worked it out as a principle with more striking results than this Methodist missionary bishop who has now retired after a lifetime of unselfish service. When he went to Japan forty-five years ago, the Island Empire was just emerging from the isolation of its long feudal period. Shortly after his arrival a young Samurai, after ceremonial purification and meditation, killed a foreigner as a sacrificial offering in defense of his country. The other day when Bishop Harris left Japan a large company of the most distinguished Japanese of to-day united in a testimonial dinner to him!

When he went to Japan, a friend of the young missionary sent him a revolver in view of the disquietude then prevailing in the section where he was staying, but the preacher threw it into the sea; he had no need of that kind of protection. He went to the American Consul, reported that he had taken up his residence, and said that he and Mrs. Harris had come to devote themselves to the teaching of Christianity. After some conversation the Consul said, ha humorously and half seriously: "I suppose. Mr. Harris, you will soon be calling for a gunboat!" to which the young missionary replied that he should under no circumstances ask for that kind of protection; that he had come to serve the Japanese, and that he and his wife would accept whatever that service involved.

To the Japanese on the Pacific coast of America, in Hawaii, in Korea, in all parts of the Japanese Empire, his name is a synonym for peace and good will. The traveler in the East who goes with a desire to understand the people whom he visits, and not simply to confirm the impressions he has already formed of them, speedily finds that from no class of men and women can he get such trustworthy information of the character of the different races as from the missionaries, and if he keeps his mind open he eventually makes the great discovery that they alone understand a people who work with and for them. The

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men who go among a foreign people for profit often secure an intimate knowledge of the ways of the country and the habits of its people; but no man ever yet learned the soul of a people who lived among them chiefly for his own profit. It is a significant fact that the missionaries as a rule are zealous believers in the superiority of the races among whom they work. The missionaries in Japan, Korea, China, and India, for instance, believe devotedly in the superior capacity of the races among whom they live. They know them from within; instead of "working" them, they work for and with them.

Dr. Harris is an elderly man. It will not harm. him, therefore, to say of him that there is a luminous quality about him; as he moved in and out among the Japanese and the Koreans he has lighted the path to a higher and happier life. He has also lighted the path to peace. If such a man as he could interpret the different countries to one another, the very roots out of which hatred and distrust grow would perish.

At the Methodist General Conference at Saratoga, recently reported by The Outlook, Dr. Harris made the last report of his stewardship, but no report which he could make, save by its reflection of the great advance of Christianity in Japan and Korea, could in any way suggest the extraordinary service he has rendered by simply being a Christian in those countries. At a farewell dinner given him in Tokyo by a group of the most distinguished Japanese, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Viscount Kaneko, the President of the lower house of the Japanese Diet, many spoke with the utmost gratitude of the service which Dr. Harris had rendered to the Japanese people. The Minister of Foreign Affairs said, "If all Americans dealt with us as open-heartedly as Dr. Harris does, and if we revered the Americans as we revere Dr. Harris, friendship between Japan and America would remain unchanged forever." And on the eve of his departure from Tokyo the Emperor decorated him for the third time.

Such a man is in the truest sense a national ambassador. America has been fortunate in sending to the Far East many high minded interpreters of the American spirit. Commodore Perry, who opened the country to Western influence, and Townsend Harris, who drew the first treaty made by Japan with this country, are known to every

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school-boy in the Empire because they represented the spirit which Dr. Harris has expressed in all his relations with the Japanese. Charles Cuthbert Hall's two visits to India are historic because, foremost among the men of the West who have endeavored to explain the West to the East, he approached the Indian mind so sympathetically and with such a desire to understand and to find common ground between the Occident and the Orient that he secured a hospitality of hearing and an earnestness and depth of attention which were a revelation to many who supposed that they were perfectly familiar with the temper of the Indian mind.

The time will come when such careers as that of Dr. Harris will cease to be prophetic; they will become the practical rule of living.

THE CHURCH AND DANCING

What ought to be the attitude of parents and guardians toward dancing?

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has issued a decree, with the approval of the Pope, forbidding all dancing in church entertainments.

The Methodist Church has gone further. Its discipline forbids all dancing, theatergoing, and card-playing; and the late Quadrennial Conference rejected an amendment abolishing this prohibition.

The tendency in most Protestant churches is in the other direction. Protestants in increasing number are directly providing for as well as encouraging dancing in connection with social settlement work under wise guidance and direction, in the belief that when so guided and directed it is an exercise mentally, socially, and physically beneficial. In at least some cases encouragement is directly given to dancing under supervision by the church in parish houses or other buildings belonging to the church. For while it must be remembered that dancing in our time is quite different from dancing in the time of Jesus, it must also not be forgotten that Jesus never forbade dancing, and his occasional references to it imply approval. There is certainly nothing in the teaching of Jesus inconsistent with such approval by a Christian church as has just been described.

Thus three methods are suggested, not only to the churches, but to teachers, parents, and guardians: they may prohibit dancing altogether; they may banish it from

church gatherings and dissociate it from the church, so that the church will no longer be in any sense sponsor for it; or they may recognize it, identify themselves with it, to that extent encourage it, and by their presence and encouragement supervise and regulate it. We have no hesitation in saying that, in our judgment, the last of these methods is the best method.

We recognize the very serious evils in certain forms of modern dancing. These evils are probably seen at their worst in public balls and dance-halls. On the other

hand, little children take to dancing as naturally as a duck takes to water. There is nothing essentially evil in rhythmic motion to the accompaniment of music. To banish dancing from assemblies under the control of Christian people is dangerous. To prohibit dancing altogether is to run counter to nature, and is generally futile. To regulate dancing under proper guidance is both safer and more practicable.

Regulation of dancing is better than prohibition, and it is more in accordance with the liberty which belongs to the disciples of Jesus.

T

WHY CONGRESS IS SLOW

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE

HAT public questions of vital importance do not receive prompt and intelligent despatch in the Congress of the United States needs hardly to be stated. That the men elected to represent us at Washington are intentionally neglectful of the public duties they have assumed cannot properly be asserted. That questions of relative import affecting a great private corporation-with its directors and its officers to control it, just as Congress controls the much larger public corporation of the Federal Government-are settled promptly and capably is well known.

Why are our public servants, the elected directors of the corporation of the United States, so painfully slow in accomplishment? Why has the most of a long session of Congress passed without the provision of adequate plans for public defense? Why is it so common an occurrence as to be almost axiomatic that when our National legislators are making little progress on greater special questions before them it is almost impossible to get through Congress simple and needed enactments to which there is no definite opposition? Why do self-sacrificing public officials, working for the people at merely incidental salaries as compared with their earning power in business life, become discouraged and apathetic because of the delays and difficulties incident to awaiting the laggard action of Congress?

Perhaps some suggestions and personal experiences may aid in partly explaining the lamentable slowness of legislative progress.

At the outset, it should be noted that Congress. though organized to do the busi

ness planning and to provide and disburse the income of the Nation, is not made up of efficient business men. A glance at the Congressional Directory will confirm this statement. Lawyers predominate, and delay is a tradition of the legal profession. There are many so-called politicians, but few of these are trained men of affairs. Their training is mostly in "glad hand" work and in satisfying constituents with jobs and documents and seeds and letters. The few men in Congress who have successfully conducted large business are, in a sense, out of practice, and they, as well as their associates, breathe and are subject to the Congressional atmosphere of dilly-dallying, of trading and compromise, which is characteristic of Washington.

It must also be recognized, despite the high character of most Congressmen, that the next election is always close, and that simple, unified, and concrete attention to the public business is hard to give without overlooking the home fences which need constantly to be kept in repair.

The method of legislation is not conducive to speed or efficiency under our system of checks and safeguards. In the United States Steel Corporation, for example, much that is in Congress legislated about is handled by executive action, and the directors decide only broad questions of policy, leaving details to able officials. But in Congress a proposition to do anything must be offered as a bill, printed, referred to a committee for discussion, be reported from the committee, voted upon three times, messaged to the other body for similar detailed action, and then finally

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