beauty; something which makes them all ends to be sought for in themselves, something which is the one ultimate end which we should put before ourselves as the only real end to be sought for by us all in all our varied lives. I think there is. And, while it may be difficult, perhaps impossible, to define that something accurately, I will venture to express it by the one word harmony.

Let me illustrate my meaning, which will probably seem a platitude to some of my readers and a dangerous error to others.

Truth is harmony of expression with reality. When we tell the truth, we make, or at least endeavor to make, our words convey to the hearer exactly the idea which is in our own minds or the feeling which is in our own hearts. If we wished to speak the absolute and entire truth, we should wish, if we could, to throw open the windows of our soul and let our neighbor look in and see for himself exactly what ideas and ideals were nesting there-something which few of us would be willing to do at any time, and none of us all the time.

But truth is more than the endeavor to express to others with accuracy the reality; it is also the endeavor to express that reality with accuracy to ourselves. It is the supreme desire that our conception shall be in exact harmony with the reality. A student once came to me, saying, "I have lost my faith. I do not know whether there is a soul in my body or a God in the heavens." I replied: I replied: "I shall be glad to talk these questions over with you. But let us understand at the outset that if there is no soul in our body and no God in the heavens we want to know the fact. It would be a terrible truth; but any truth, however terrible, is better than any lie, however pleasant." The love of truth in volves the desire to have our conception of life in harmony with the actualities of life, and therefore a supreme desire to be rid of all ignorances, prejudices, and prepossessions which prevent our seeing clearly these actualities. If, then, we are truthful—that is, full of truth-we shall not wish to believe in immortality because it will make death less terrible or life more inspiring. If we are mortal, we shall wish to know that we are mortal; if we are immortal, we shall wish to know that we are immortal; and if we cannot know whether we are mortal or immortal, we shall wish to know that the truth as to the future is concealed from us. We shall wish our beliefs to be in exact harmony with the reality, whatever that reality is. A little girl

in one of our Sunday-schools defined a lie as "an abomination to the Lord and a very present help in time of trouble." A false expression to others, or a false belief nested in one's own soul, is not only an abomination to the Lord, it is equally an abomination to the truthful person, as is an unresolved discord to a musician or a discordant color to an artist; and because it is in itself abhorrent to him he has no inclination to resort to it as a help in time of trouble. The inharmony is to him the greatest of troubles.

As truth is the harmony of our thoughts and our utterances with the reality, so morality is the harmony of conduct, and of the motives from which that conduct springs, with the laws of life. Four of the Ten Com mandments define concretely the four great laws of social morality: Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. These laws guard the four great rights of man-his right to his property, to his family, to his person, and to his reputation. If these rights are scrupulously respected, if the property, the family. the person, and the reputation of every member of the community are never disturbed and never endangered, the community is harmonious and peaceful. If the individual is always liable to have his property taken, his family invaded, himself assaulted, his good name slandered, the community lives in perpetual inharmony and turmoil. Social morality is social harmony.

No less is it true that individual morality is individual harmony. The various motive powers of the truly moral man are working harmoniously together. The motive powers of the immoral man are inharmonious. In the truly moral man, the man moral not only in his outward conduct but in his inward desires, all his motive powers have found their proper place and work in due subordi nation-therefore in harmony. His appetites and passions, his approbativeness and self-esteem, his acquisitiveness and combativeness, work in obedience to and therefore in harmony with his conscience, his reverence, his ideality. The moral man is not without appetites and passions; the one is necessary to his own preservation, the other to the perpetuation of the race. He is not without regard for the good opinion of others; without such regard friendship would be impossible; nor without respect for himself, which

is indispensable if he would have the respect of others. He is not without the desire to acquire and possess; this is the foundation of the virtues of industry and thrift; nor without the power of a just anger and a capacity to fight, without which injustice would go unchecked and unpunished. But these motive powers, indispensable to his own well-being and the well-being of society, are guided by his reason, controlled by his conscience, and directed to noble ends by his reverence and his ideality. It is this inward harmony of his powers which makes him a moral man; and it is because in few, if any, of us is this harmony perfect that few, if any, of us are perfectly moral.

As truth is harmony in the mind and its expression, and goodness is harmony in the conduct and its motives, so beauty is harmony in material things. We call architecture, painting, sculpture, and music creative arts, because the architect, the painter, the sculptor, and the musician are engaged in producing harmony out of discords, and this -not making something out of nothing—is creation. The architect out of a pile of timber and brick and stones and mortar constructs an edifice, and we call it a beautiful building. But if it is inharmonious, no amount of money expended upon it, no amount of ornament put upon it, makes it beautiful. I rode, the other day, by what had probably been a simple and beautiful New England home of the colonial type. Its modern owner was not satisfied with it; and he had covered it over with a perfect network of pinnacles and beads and scrollwork in order to beautify it. As a result, he had made it a marvel of monstrously inharmonious ornamentation. painter out of the chaos of color on his palette makes a beautiful painting; beautiful because both in composition and in color it is a harmony. An artistic friend of mine sometimes criticises a garish picture or an illarranged bouquet by saying that the colors swear at each other. Harmony is the essence of beauty. The reader will instantly and instinctively apply this principle to music, which is nothing else than the creation of harmony out of separated or discordant notes:

The

"Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;

It is everywhere in the world-loud, soft, and all is said;

949

Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought,

And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!"

If these reflections on life seem just to the reader, he will perhaps agree with me that the ultimate belief is belief in harmony. Exact definitions in such a matter are im

possible, but some definiteness may be given

It

to this undefined and undefinable faith. involves the belief that the universe was not conceived in the womb of chance and was not brought forward for a life of haphazard. Faith will mean a conviction that when the present process of creation is completed it will be apparent that the Great Architect had from the beginning a harmonious creation in his thought; hope will mean an expectation that all the discords will at last be resolved in a finished symphony, the chaotic colors on the palette will be harmonized in a finished picture; and love will mean a dominating desire to work with the Great Artist in producing out of chaos an ordered creation, out of a disordered an ordered world—a truthful world in which conception and expression will always conform to reality, a righteous world in which conduct will always make for a social harmony because the motives out of which conduct springs will be harmonious in each individual, and a beautiful world in which all the processes of life will be and will be seen to be beautiful because directed to a perfected harmony in material things and material forces.

And the reader will perhaps further agree with me that the fatal skepticism is not disbelief in any theological dogma. It is disbelief in the reality of truth, goodness, and beauty; it is the belief of the materialist that in the world there is no real beauty, that is beautiful and only that which produces sensuous pleasure; the belief of the cynic that in man there is no truth, "all men are liars," no honesty, "every man has his price;" the belief of the pessimist that there is no harmonious purpose in the process of creation and no promise of a harmonious result in its completion, and therefore there is no value in the efforts of men to bring about in a world now full of conflicts and contradictions a world perfectly attuned to beauty, goodness, and truth.

The Knoll, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

39

"Τ'

HE straight way is the best way." As I heard these words I turned the corner and came upon the stalwart youth to whom they were addressed. He was raking the sandy soil around the back of the camp. He was not enjoying his task. He was in khaki. The only sign that distinguished him from a soldier of the regular army was the red, white, and blue cord around the crown of his hat. The speaker was an older man-well bronzed, well set up.

The cord on his hat showed that he was a "regular." Perhaps he was overseeing the job. I judged so from what he had just said. The boy didn't answer, and the speaker went on, turning to me:

"I'll leave it to you, sir, if the straight way isn't the best way."

"I don't quite understand," I answered. "Do you mean the straight way of holding the rake?"

"No," he replied. "I mean the straight way is the best way in everything."

It was not till afterwards, when I had followed the routine of the camp for two days, that I realized how aptly those words summed up the lesson that that boy and about twelve hundred others, varying from fifteen to eighteen years of age, were learning. These boys (or perhaps they had rather be called young men, for some of them were over six feet tall, and they were a manlylooking lot in the American fatigue uniform) had come to this island from over a score of States; and they were living there and drilling and studying under the control and direction of the United States Army.

It is a hard lesson that they were learning ; for the straight way is not only the best way, but is also always a hard way. The easiest way is the way of least resistance, and is therefore crooked or sinuous. The straight way, on the other hand, is one that encounters

It

obstacles-inconvenience, discomfort, bad weather. If it is in parade, it takes no account of tired muscles; if it is in skirmishing, it takes no account of bushes, or rocks, or casual water. It means self-control. means telling the truth when it hurts. means administering discipline as sternly to a friend as to a stranger. It means cooperation; because the company's line can

It

An account of the origin of the Fort Terry Training Camp was given in The Outlook for May 3 (page 3), and an account of its opening was given in The Outlook for July 26 (pages 685 and 686).

be kept straight, the company's record can be kept straight, only when each one in the company is acting jointly with all his comrades. It means being clean in body and mind. It means obedience and loyalty, because it is often only those in command who know which way is the straight way. It means bravery, for the straight way leads sometimes to danger. It means efficiency, for it avoids the wasteful ways around. It means democracy, for you cannot go the straight way if you play favorites.

This, I am sure, is a part of what the straight way means to the boys who spent five weeks this summer in camp at Plum Island under military discipline.

All of Plum Island is a Government reservation; it is one of the Nation's coast defenses. The fortification there is known as Fort Terry. It helps to guard the entrance to Long Island Sound from the east. As you land there from the boat, which will stop on signal, you see that the dock is guarded by a sentry with a rifle on his shoulder. Visitors come and go only with the knowledge and consent of the military. Plum Island is about four miles from end to end, and varies greatly in width, from a few score yards (at the neck, which connects the easterly and smaller portion with the other and much larger) to a mile or so. Scattered about where they will do the most good, some on the hilly portions, others along the shore, are the big guns of various sizes. The only dwellers on the island are the officers and men (and their families), whose business is that of the coast artillery. When

the twelve hundred boys landed there on July 6, they were completely removed from the distractions of town, and in as safe and wholesome a place as it is possible to imagine.

Here I found them after they had been there a day or two more than a week; and already they showed the physical benefit of the life they had been leading; but what was still more impressive was the democracy of the camp. The uniform was the symbol of it. Millionaires' sons were there, but you could not distinguish them by their clothes; and, when you found that out, you found that you could not distinguish them at all.

And the first work those boys had been put to enforced the lesson of democracy. They were set to work making the camp ready for occupancy. Their tents had been

pitched and big, comfortable tents they were, with wooden floors and even electric lights; their mess halls built-weather-proof shacks with deal benches and clean deal tables; their bath houses constructed-shacks fitted with shower-baths and faucets where they could keep themselves and their clothes clean; but their camp was not ready-they had to make it ready themselves. Some of them, for instance, were set to digging incinerators -ditches or holes in which the garbage was to be burned. There was the wiping of dishes to be done after the first meal, and boys were detailed to do that. Then the camp was to be cleaned up. This meant working with shovels and picks and rakes; for the company street (the space between the two rows of tents occupied by each company of a hundred and fifty boys) had to be cleared of grass and weeds and stones, and had to be graded as well.

Within nine days, as I can testify, the camp that those twelve hundred boys, from all sorts of places, rich and poor, city boys and farmers' sons, had made and kept in order themselves was a model of sanitation and cleanliness. I doubt whether any one of them had ever lived under such hygienic and orderly conditions. I doubt whether the house of any of my civilian readers could survive the inspection that that camp had to undergo.

Some of these boys, I learned, had had a little military drill; but all that was expected of them at the beginning was to understand the three orders: "Right face," "Left face," and "Forward, march!" Even these simple orders were too much for some of them. In a week's time those twelve hundred boys had learned the manual of arms and had been put through the ceremony of parade.

It took these boys five days to "spring to arms." They arrived on the 6th of July, and, though their rifles were there all ready for them, they were not issued to them till the 11th. Even then these boys were not given straps (or "slings," as they are called) for their guns; nor were they after five weeks considered sufficiently trained to be allowed to have bayonets.

Four days after receiving their arms these boys had been taught what a clean gun meant. One of them wrote home: "Every screw head must be absolutely clean. The insides must be as clean as the outside "-a lesson good for other things than guns. Then they received the slings for the "pieces."

At first military discipline was lenient.

That does not mean that order was not maintained. On the contrary, order was the camp's first law. It meant simply that the officers were wisely initiating their charges into the observance of military standards a step at a time. For the first two weeks punishments consisted in assignments to duty in camp or kitchen police, which involved work in cleaning up the camp or helping about the mess hall. Now it became customary to see one or more cadets of the camp walking up and down the company street with cartridge belt around the waist and rifle on shoulder. A "punishment tour" meant an hour of this-"no joke," as several cadets could bear witness. Though by this time discipline had "tightened up quite a lot," as one boy put it, the significant thing was the feeling expressed by that same boy when he added, "I think that the discipline could tighten up still further." These boys were beginning to realize that the enforcement of discipline was to their common interest. To talk after taps was to shorten the none too long hours of sleep. Raising a hand in the ranks, or failure to have one's tent in order, or to have the buttons on one's blouse properly fastened at inspection, or to be on time when the bugle sounded "assembly," or to respond with a snap and with vigor to orders, was to throw the company out of gear and to lessen its standing in comparison with the other companies-and, worse still, was to bring reproach upon the company's officers. One cadet's remark that all the officers of his company were "good skates" expressed very colloquially the spirit of loyalty that was getting behind and pushing along the willing and even eager acceptance of strict military discipline. Pride in one's officers and pride in one's company were becoming ingredients in a new sort of self-respect.

And, with that self-respect as a basis, the boys were ready for their lesson in courage. Perhaps this lesson can best be described by quotation from a letter I have been permitted to see. It was written by one of the cadets after his first experience in guard duty. To understand it, it is perhaps necessary to know that these boy sentries were sternly tested by their officers. The West Point men who had sacrificed their vacation (or furlough, as the soldier calls it) to volunteer their services in helping to train these boys were especially ingenious in testing the boys' nerves. They would try to grapple with a sentry and seize his gun. The boy who en