the old-fashioned Tory method of sitting on the safety valve is particularly dangerous.

If England ever needed liberal leadership she needs it now. Will the Labor Party force the Conservatives to become Liberals in self-defense? Will Lloyd George convince the people that they must choose between the Conservative Party and the Empire? Is there any other leader in England that can command a following that Lloyd George can? Britain, as it has been remarked, is sound financially but rotten economically. To restore economic health to a country cursed with unemployment as England is will require something more than a die-hard conservative or a politician with a captivating personality.

Whatever the cause of the overturn in Britain, the effect on Britain's foreign policies has already begun to be seen. Lloyd George's instability has irritated and disconcerted the statesmen of other countries, but especially those of France. In particular, the unreliability of his course in applying the terms of the Peace Treaty with Germany has been one of the important factors in the European situation. Sir Edward Carson has been quoted by the Oxford students who have recently visited America to debate with American students as describing the peace established by the Treaty of Versailles as "the peace which passeth all understanding." Certainly as applied by Lloyd George no one could be expected to understand it. Perhaps it is because he modified its terms by his own interpretation that he was the longest to last of the "Big Four" who negotiated it. Perhaps he had to seem uncertain to his foreign neighbors in order to keep his power at home. Perhaps the friction that has accompanied his negotiations ever since the Peace Treaty was signed was the inevitable product of England's economic turmoil and political instability. Nevertheless it is impossible to relieve Mr. Lloyd George of the responsibility for much that has happened in the fostering of misunderstanding over the enforcement of the German reparations, as well as the negotiations concerning the Near East. It is impossible for the foreign observer to ignore the fact that in Europe, except with Germany and her allies, Lloyd George's retirement has been greeted mainly with expressions of relief.

Nothing that has occurred in connection with the change in the British Government indicates, as far as we can see, any reason for a change in the attitude of America toward Europe. We have every reason for continuing to give our aid to those who are helpless, though those very helpless ones may have

ALASKA

THE MISUNDERSTOOD

Dr

o you know that Alaska is the most misunderstood territory on earth to-day? The popular notion that Alaska is composed entirely of blizzards, icebergs, and Eskimos is a mistake. Nearly one thousand miles north of where Alaska begins there are enormous wheat-fields, vegetable gardens, and scorching summer days when the mercury climbs to 90°. An Eskimo on the streets of Fairbanks would be a seven-day wonder. If you think that Alaska is still the land of the "rough-neck," it will interest you to know that a dinner-jacket is as useful in Alaska as in New York, and that modish fashions in dress reach Alaska almost as soon as they reach Boston and Philadelphia.

Sherman Rogers has just returned from Alaska, and in a series of articles soon to appear in The Outlook he punctures hundreds of our illusions about the Land of the Midnight Sun. He describes in full exactly what Alaska is and what Alaska needs. He describes its neglect by Congress, and outlines the remedy.

Mr. Rogers's report on Alaska-is likely to excite much controversy.. It is the story of billions of dollars' worth of potential wealth and opportunities of social and political development which at present lie fettered beneath crushing masses of administrative red tape.

neighbors whose obligation to them is more direct than ours. We have every reason to look with sympathy upon every effort towards liberty and true self-government, even when we have no means of giving material aid. But for intervention or for interference in the

general political or economic situation there seems to us to be no present necessity. The time may come when a more active policy than we are now pursuing may be effective; but if it is to be effective then, we must be careful not to do what would be ineffective now.

THE THIRD DEGREE

I'

F published reports are to be credited, legal officials and detectives in the New Brunswick murder case have furnished another example of the futility as well as the un-American cruelty of "third degree" methods. One person thus treated, not under arrest, already questioned repeatedly, was called out' of his back door early in the evening by mysterious men, taken to a room. where lawyers and detectives were waiting, and subjected to a rapid fire of interrogation that lasted for many hours and well into the early morning. He had no counsel, no friend to guard his interests. Under these circumstances the "grilling" was peculiarly an outrage. The result was apparently negligible. Another man, whom events proved to be untrustworthy, was supposed to know something he had not told. He was bullied and cross-questioned and threatened until he broke down nervously and accused of the murder a friend of his who, events showed, was innocent and who was discharged soon after his arrest. In this instance the result was a good deal worse than nothing.

There is such a thing as moral and mental as well as physical torture. It

is repugnant to Anglo-Saxon ideas of personal liberty. There should be wide latitude offered to keen-witted investigation of crime, but the examination of accused or suspected persons should be conducted by a judicial officer under such circumstances that coercion and physical breaking down of the questioned person should be prevented. Scientists and lawyers agree that coerced confessions or." r. testimony are frequently false when admitted as evidence at all, they are regarded as the poorest kind of evidence.

Pride in the fine traditions of AngloSaxon law and judicial procedure should not lead us to ignore the merit in some other traditions. In respect to the examination of suspected persons or of reluctant witnesses, the French follow a method much superior to the "third degree" both in its efficiency and in its justice. Such examination is conducted openly by the judge who exercises great liberty in his questions but is restrained from excess not only by tradition and by the dignity of his office but by the very publicity of the procedure.

E

VERY political ostrich in the coun

try has his head in the sand, the while squeaking plaintively that the radical success in Wisconsin does not mean anything serious. It all depends on what one considers serious. The fact has to be faced that in the Wisconsin primary election of September 5 Socialism gained the greatest victory that it has ever won in American politics. That Robert M. La Follette received not merely a majority, but a smashing, an overwhelming majority, was due to the Milwaukee Socialist organization, incomparably the best disciplined and most efficient political machine in the United States.

It is, moreover, entirely possible that Congress will again be confronted with the necessity of deciding what to do with Victor Berger.

Last spring Berger went to the National Convention of his party and persuaded the delegates so to change the rules as to permit the Wisconsin branch to make no nomination for Senator, and thus leave the members free to vote for La Follette. Perhaps it was in his mind to show the country that the bulk of the La Follette followers were now willing to share the name as well as the principles of Socialism. The outcome has justified his opinion. The La Follette faction met the avowed Socialists more than half-way. If the November decision affirms the September verdict, the full strength developed by La Follette may be counted as Socialist strength.

The real, the true reason why Socialism has made such political gains in Wisconsin since 1917 is because the European War consolidated the spirit of revolt against the Yankee tradition. The same thing is true of the whole group of Mid-Western granger States that have been populated by Continental peasants. Probably there are not more people in Wisconsin than in some other States who feel that the United States is not a country, but there are more who openly say so and who will vote for a man whose words and acts mean substantially the same thing. The two groups that dominate an immense area and population-the German and the Scandinavian-have been brought into almost complete accord by the events of the war. Scandinavian Minnesota was as balky in war time as German Wisconsin. Half a dozen States need only the same quality of leadership that Wisconsin has to become articulate in the same way. The depeasantized peasants, as H. G. Wells calls them, have in their common hatred of Yankeedom a stronger bond of unity than ever existed before.

In Wisconsin, and particularly in Milwaukee, an absurd state of affairs has resulted from the attempt to ignore

the facts. There is no wholesome ventilation of the political premises and no exchange of views on the subject that is uppermost in everybody's mind but which nobody talks about. Nobody, that is to say, except Victor Berger, for the Socialist leader is almost alone in speaking plainly. It is perfectly well known that the so-called conservative Germanlanguage papers really wanted La Follette to win in the primary and want Berger to win in November; that business men who were publicly enrolled as contributors to anti-radical funds have privately given both their money and their votes to help the Socialists win; but that it is not considered polite to mention these facts.

Berger, always more open than La Follette or the German editors who support La Follette, occasionally speaks his mind. Two weeks before the primary election, in a remarkably shrewd analysis and forecast, he gave his reasons for expecting a Socialist victory, and of three causes contributing to the situa tion, political and economic and ethnic, he gave most consideration to the ethnic. Here is a part of the statement, published in his "Findings" on August 22:

Ethnical. The United States are not an ethnical unit. Our population is of mixed European descent.

Naturally, the inherited characteristics and instincts play a strong part in our lives, and even for that reason alone the American participation in the World War was a crime and a blunder. Our mission naturally should have been one of peace.

Wisconsin is overwhelmingly German and Scandinavian.

For some reason La Follette always has had a strong hold on the Scandinavian farmers-which surely was not lessened by the position he took against the war, because the Scandinavians, by a large majority, were not in favor of the war.

And undoubtedly La Follette has gained the sympathies of ninety-nine per cent of all the voters of German descent, who by instinct as much as by political and economic insight were opposed to our entrance into the World War.

Add to this that the Irish element during the war and since the war has also come to appreciate Robert M. La Follette as he had never been appreciated before. It will be a sorry Irishman, indeed, who would vote for the Rev. "Big Bill" Ganfield in preference to voting for Robert M. La Follette.

The reactionaries in their stupidity have made the war the issue in this election. They have boldly proclaimed that the nomination and election of Robert M. La Follette is to be considered a referendum on the war question.

They will get their "referendum."

Now, although the German Socialists may manifest a tender interest in the Irish before election, in their secret hearts they fear the Irish politician. To this day they do not know just how it came about that Dan Hoan, of true Hibernian breed, became the Socialist Mayor of this Teutonic town. Berger likes to avail himself of Irish political skill, but it is part of the Socialist programme to make an end of Irish and Anglo-American leadership. With scandalous disregard of this ambition, sundry Irishmen went out on September 5 and cleaned up the best county nominations in sight. Inasmuch as the Irish in Milwaukee are relatively about as numerous as Scotchmen in Hester Street, a sporting population would have been moved to admiration. Not so a community whose motto, under the direct primary, has become, "Everybody welch." The day after the primary, defeated candidates agitated the air with cries of rage and demands for an inde pendent ticket. Berger was moved to sympathy for the defeated Republican candidates and said in his disgust:

Shaughnessy, McManus, Cary, Phelps-here is a real, smashing defeat of the "Huns" in Milwaukee County-in spite of Bob La Follette's Hunnish triumph. Let Bob make progressive laws; they, the genuine paytriots, will "stand pat" on the pay check.

There were eight candidates for district attorney; Koenig, Bartelt, Graeb ner, Groelle, Juergens, et al.. and Shaughnessy beat the lot. Pat McManus beat "Heinie" Bulder for county treasurer, in spite of the fact that "Heinie” holds the office now and had, besides, presented the Milwaukee zoo with an elephant. This defeat exasperated the supporters of both the Kaiser and the zoo and caused Berger to remind his readers that the elephant is the source of commercial ivory. However, Berger is too subtle for his constituency.

Some Wisconsin editors have sent out word that the vote for La Follette should not be regarded as an indorsement of his war record-which is of course the Socialist war record also. The statement is absurd. In the primary campaign no issue was more fairly and squarely before the people than that very question.

However unpalatable the fact may be. a record of service in the war of 1917-18 is a liability and not an asset for a candidate in Wisconsin.

Almost every ex-service man who tried for a nomination in the primary was spurlos versunkt. Paulsen, with the record of a first-class fighting man, tried for Secretary of State, and in a more direct way than anybody else challenged

public opinion on the subject of La Follette's war record. He told in his campaign speeches of having rounded up German prisoners in France who informed him that Bob La Follette's protests against the war were circulated behind the German battle-lines. The German districts of Wisconsin with one accord buried Paulsen under an avalanche of votes, and his opponent, Zimmermann, was nominated by a huge majority.

One soldier, by reason of his personal popularity, did succeed in winning the nomination for sheriff of Milwaukee County. That was Colonel Westfahl, commander of an artillery regiment of the Thirty-second Division. He lives in Victor Berger's Congressional district. Berger is much annoyed by the soldier's success, and is already at work trying to turn the Colonel's military record to account against him. He invites workingmen to contemplate "that German drill master of Whitefish Bay" and sneers at Westfahl as "the victor of Veuve Cliquot and Château Lafitte." Colonel Westfahl has before him in November a battle of more doubtful issue than any he fought in France.

Mr. Puelicher, elected in October President of the American Bankers' 'Association, is one of the best-tempered but also one of the most persistent antagonists of revolutionary radicalism in Milwaukee. Yet analysis of the primary returns shows that the Socialists ob

tained upwards of 2,000 votes in the neighborhood that constitutes Milwaukee's "gold coast." Business and professional people rolled up Berger's big vote, cast as a defiance to Congress two years ago, and they will vote for him again this year. In that connection Berger reminded his constituents a little while ago that his case in the Federal court is not yet finally disposed of and that he is still under heavy bail.

The Socialists had the labor vote before the European War. The impressive gains made since the war represent mainly the spread of radicalism among people who are not factory workers. It is, to be sure, a radicalism that pictures Socialism as an anti-Yankee rather than anti-capitalist movement, but it swallows a moderate programme of collectivism along with the rest. At no other time during the campaign was La Follette greeted with quite such stormy applause as when he declared, for the first time, for the public ownership of railways.

What is said here is as true of the State as a whole as of Milwaukee. There is nothing to be gained by blinking at the facts, and the facts are that the people of Wisconsin indorsed La Follette's war record, approved his tacit alliance with the Socialist Tammany of Milwaukee, and, in the circumstances, virtually approved Victor Berger's record by the same unprecedented vote. There was in truth only one contest, and that was between Republicans and So

cialists. The Socialists won and have captured the Republican organization as completely as the Non-Partisan League did in North Dakota. How completely the Democratic party has been extinguished in Wisconsin is revealed by the returns. In two counties, Sauk and Shawano, the Democrats polled less than 100 votes-74 in Sauk and 19 in Shawano. In Washington, a strongly German county, they got 221 votes; in Outagamie, another German stronghold and formerly the home of many Democrats, 163; in Kenosha, a factory district, 672. The Democratic vote was small enough in 1920-the total for Governor then was 22,435-but in 1922 it has approached the vanishing point.

After the November election it will be disclosed in what manner the Socialists propose to utilize the new alignment in making their Milwaukee machine the nucleus of a strengthened National radical movement. Berger now stands accredited as the most successful politica! manipulator that Socialism has produced in America. If the new third party appears, it remains to be seen how a man of Berger's intense, passionate, and dominating personality will get along with La Follette, who is himself not without similar qualities and who as a political boss is celebrated for not permitting anybody else to decide what issues shall be discussed or how his organization shall be run.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Ο

KLAHOMA is always interesting. The State got born that way when, almost twenty years ago, it adopted its 30,000-word Constitution. The Convention which framed that remarkable document, with characteristic modesty, assured itself that it was more capable of enlightened lawmaking than any Legislature which the new State was likely to elect within a decade or two, and proceeded ceremoniously to incorporate in the Constitution practically all of the legislation which it conceived a forward-looking commonwealth would need for that period. It was liberal in the quantity thus produced, as attested by the record-breaking length of the instrument, and not less so in the substance, according to the best school of Bryanism which was then ascendant in the councils of the dominant Democratic party.

It is noteworthy that, whereas the present Constitution is the longest recorded, the next one bids fair to be among the shortest, for, so far as sentiment is now formed and vocal, the experiment of embodying complete legislation in a constitution has either been

1 The writer of this correspondence holds a position in the State which gives him a point of vantage for political observation which the ordinary citizen does not have and which at the same time precludes the publication of his name --The Editors.

acknowledged a failure or, conceded to have been advisable if not necessary under the circumstances a couple of decades ago, the conditions no longer prompt such restrictions upon natural political development. This is the attitude of several of those still living in the State who as members of the first Constitutional Convention helped to frame the document now in force. These pioneers not only incorporated extensive legislation in the Constitution, but they made amendment so nearly impossible that only two changes which affect the substance of the document are said to have succeeded when submitted to the electorate. The issue of a new Constitution must soon be forward, since the twenty-year period, within which the question of calling a Constitutional Convention must be submitted to the people, will soon be up.

But the political situation in the present campaign is one of the most startling on the map. Nowhere is the shattering of old and rigid partisan alignments more complete. The Democratic party has dominated every election in the history of the State. That two years ago is nearest an exception, when a Republican Senator was sent to Washington and a Republican majority was returned to the lower house of the Legislature. But

the Democratic Governor and his administration still held the control of affairs. Now the Democratic party machinery has been captured by the farmer-labor group. Their leaders do not scruple to declare that they are the North Dakot Non-Partisan League under a different name. Just as the League captured the Republican party machinery in North Dakota, so they have taken over the Democratic machinery in Oklahoma.

They have done thorough work. Their candidate, formally nominated at their antecedent Convention, was tacitly accepted by the Democratic Convention, and the primaries triumphantly confirmed the choice. In this candidate's campaign the farmer-labor platform is being so openly woven into the conservative Democratic platform that lifelong and hereditary Democrats are alarmed to the point of the desertion of their party standards in multitudes. One prominent citizen remarks that his old dad warned him in his youth that if he ever voted for a Republican his dog would bite him when he returned home from the polls; he feels himself forced to put the old gentleman's prophecy to the test this year, for he joins the deserting multitude and will vote for the Republican candidate.

But the Democratic candidate ch

lenges his supporters to win over two farmers or laboring men formerly affili ated with the Republicans to replace each one of these deserters. His success is amazing in that all over the State it is conceded that he will command the Negro vote. Mark that among your freaks of a freakish year: a Democratic candidate, in a State constantly boasting of its Southern political maternity, appealing openly to Negro voters with resounding promises of service to them as a political group, and manifestly winning their allegiance! Contrariwise, the Republican candidate almost as openly poses as a Lily-White, the candidate of the Lily-Whites, and the champion of "white supremacy."

In an Oklahoma accommodation train

the other day a citizen of unmistakable Southern antecedents was overheard to remark, "Whatever else comes out of this election, it means that the South is henceforth independent in politics." His neighbor across the aisle responded in as unmistakable a Southern accent with a devout "Thank God for that!"

The Democratic candidate, repudiated openly and bitterly by many heretofore incorrigible Democrats, storms the State as a Democrat and in command of the Democratic partisan machinery. The Republican candidate soft-pedals his party doctrines everywhere, mumbles or declines to attempt pronouncing his party shibboleths, and has adopted as his campaign slogan, "Vote for the man." The banners over their respective cam

paign headquarters in the capital city announce the one as the regular Demo cratic nominee, and studiously omit any reference to the party affiliation of the other. The Republican says nothing or tacitly repudiates the Federal Republi can Administration, while the Democrat holds up to bitter scorn the administration of the State, which has been continuously Democratic since the State came into being.

Oklahoma may not be pointing out a clear course to new party organization but she is running true to type and her history in smashing precedents and traditions. The names are all that have been preserved of the old party organi zations and principles in the present political campaign.

T

HE present Middle Western agitation is observable also in the States of Nebraska, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Nebraska, like the battered and splattered political pioneer that she is, is normally viewed with arched eyebrows by the East. But she has a great body of husky American citizens in her midst nevertheless. In her rather violent struggles in the last generation for a better commonwealth and a better country she has practically lost all sense of party. litical machines mean nothing in her experienced young life. Republican and Democratic labels are essentially worthless as vote-getters. Issues, discontents, drys, wets, conservatives, liberals-you hear about these, but not about Republican or Democratic platforms or standard bearers.

Po

The contest this year in Nebraska wages about the Governorship and the United States Senatorship. And unless all signs fail, she will pick Bryan for Governor and Howell for United States Senator. Bryan has the Democratic label, Howell the Republican. Bryan is a brother of the better known W. J. B., but he has a record of his own. He was long a City Commissioner of Lincoln, then Mayor, and is now City Commissioner again. He is committed to a municipal ownership and operation programme for cities, where necessary, just as Howell is. He is dry, as Howell is. He is backed by the more radical progressive faction and by the Non-Partisan Leaguers, just as Howell is. Randall, the Republican candidate for Governor, who is running against Bryan, is in natural surroundings and tendencies what they call in Nebraska a conservative. He is President of the State Bankers' Association, a man of high

character, known in kindly fashion as Uncle Charlie because he is always extending a friendly hand to somebody; prominent in the Methodist Church, which is the leading denomination in Nebraska, having sixty-five thousand members in the State and four or five hundred preachers. The Methodists were the boosters for his candidacy, and politically they usually don't go far wrong, at least on the character or the humanness of a public man. But Randall is a member of the State Senate, and has recently voted, in a brief period of conservative reaction which followed the war, for a drastic anti-picketing law; for a bill to take the party organization out of the direct primary regulations, leaving only the candidates for public office to be nominated there; for a banking statute which gives the State Banking Board power to refuse a charter wherever they like. These measures are up on referendum in the present campaign and seem not to be so popular as they looked when they passed the Legislature. So far as there is any odium attached to them, it falls on Randal! particularly as a candidate for Governor. Bryan is against them all.

Howell, the Republican candidate for United States Senator, is pitted against the sitting Senator, Hitchcock, who has been much before the country as a stanch supporter of the Wilson programme of the League of Nations, and who is an able and aggressive public

the League by his vigorous opposition to woman suffrage, and especially his stand against prohibition. For years the men and women of the German stock, who are strong in numbers and influence in Nebraska, followed Hitchcock with devo tion. When he voted for an embargo on the shipment of munitions to the Allies, the Germans in Nebraska roared approval. But he lost them by his later stand for the Wilson League and his vote against a separate peace with Ger many. What the Germans will do as a body this year, whether they will remember their former devotion to Hitchcock and support him, after all, in considerable numbers, is problematical. There is no doubt that the feelings of the Germans in the State for him have amounted to personal affection. Hitchcock was once a Heidelberg student, and he has spoken sometimes to his audiences in the German tongue.

Nebraska is dry, is no longer interested in the League of Nations, shares the economic unrest of the middle country, and seems to be headed away from Hitchcock towards Howell. Howell has had an able and progressive life record He has for years been the Republican National Committeeman of his State. a position fairly won by espousing Roose velt Republicanism consistently and openly from the beginning. He has been in a long twenty years' fight in Nebraska to break the grip of extortionate private monopoly upon municipal utilities. He lives in Omaha, and he is now the general manager of the municipal water plant, the municipal ice plant, and the municipal gas plant-industries which he has managed with astonishing suc

He

profiteering in Omaha, is indicated by a
conversation a little while ago between
him and a prominent banker of the
State. Howell was telling the banker
about the success of his ice plant.
spoke of the original investment of
$240,000 and of how in the first year he
had made some money. "But, do you
know," said he, earnestly, "this year we
are selling ice for thirty-three cents a
hundred pounds at jitney stations all
over the city, where people have come
for the ice with baby buggies and little
wagons and have taken it to their
homes, while the price at Sioux City has
been a dollar a hundred delivered; and,
in spite of this low price, we have laid
up," said Howell, "a surplus of $80,000."
And the banker looked at him and said:
"Howell, isn't it too bad you couldn't
have done that for yourself?" Howell
represents the unselfish idealism of Ne-
braska. The group who are against him
are particularly those who, like the
banker above, have not the imagination
to understand a man who glories in
serving his city or his State.

Howell is against the cancellation of Europe's debt; he favors the bonus because in the war he failed to draft labor and the profiteers to a genuine public service, but sternly compelled the soldiers to take their lives in their hands on the battlefields of France. This seems to be throughout the West a strong emotional argument for the bonus. When the subject of taxes to pay the bonus is broached, however, the emotional discussion wanes. It is at bottom an uncertain issue in the Middle Western breast, unless that section of American capital which profited most by the war bears the burden of the bonus. Howell also is a foe of the Esch-Cummins Law. He, too, like Brookhart of Iowa, would squeeze out seven billions of water, restore real competition between the railways, establish regional tribunals, and abolish the dictatorship of railway capitalists. He defends public ownership only as a last resort to prevent the continued plundering of the people; and if it becomes necessary in the case of the railways to go to public ownership, he would take over one great National system, not all the roads, and force the reign of justice by the competitive use of this single great line. He is opposed to the ship subsidy and promises to support the farm bloc. He seems to fit into the temper of the time in Nebraska, as Beveridge does in Indiana and Brookhart in Iowa.

The Non-Partisan League, with its programme of State Socialism, still troubles the political waters of the Middle Northwest. Townley, the quondam leader, who went to jail for his attitude towards the war, is out and managing again, I am informed, the Non-Partisan farmers' organization of North Dakota. His hand is not so apparent as it was in the political movements of the time in the Northwest, but his cause is still to be reckoned with in Minnesota, North Dakota, and other near-by States.

mand that the remedies be State elevators, State warehouses, and State banks. Only slowly, in Minnesota, is the bulwark of co-operative enterprise being employed to meet the advancing pressure of State Socialism. But the cooperative spirit is growing. The present Governor Preus was elected on that issue. He convinced the farmers that they should control their own remedia! institutions, and not put them into the hands of Socialist politicians of the State Government. Both in Minnesota and in Nebraska the propagandism of the NonPartisan League is being successfully met by the advance of private co-operation. Forty thousand members in Nebraska are in the Farmers' Co-operative Union, owning and operating a long line of elevators. And the number in Minnesota is growing.

La Follette in Wisconsin is coming to the peak of his power. He has finally merged in an overwhelming personal constituency the anti-corporation agrarians, the wets, the Germans, the probonus soldiers, the Socialists and the industrial workers of all shades. Here is another State where anybody is welcome to the rest of the electorate. Wisconsin is Wisconsin and La Follette has on his side the great bulk of the kind of voters who dwell in it. If he keeps his health and vigor, he would seem to be psychologically in preparation as never before for the leadership of the radical elements in the Republican party and in the country. So conservative a progressive as Beveridge recently paid La Follette high public compliment for his astonishing ability and determined integrity. In fact the whole Middle West, whether friendly or hostile to his ideas, rates his integrity high. It was with La Follette as with those other leaders who came through in their separate States; the people were in each instance groping for the men whom they regarded as of unselfish and uncompromising integrity. The voters seemed to be saying to themselves: "We are uncertain about policies, we don't know what we want; but we would choose these men whom we trust, and put the problems up to them."

And that is about as far as the Middle West has yet gone in its new onward surge of progress. It is on the warpath. It doesn't know where it's going, but it's on the way. Its movement is yet purposeless and lacks unity of method or motive. If unusual material prosperity intervenes, the temperature of its political blood-heat may be lowered by 1924. But the Middle West is already the matrix of a new National insurrection, if economic difficulty continues and the right sort of leadership arouses conscious purpose.

In any event, prospective candidates for the Presidency in 1924 would do well, I think, to bear in mind that bourbon and reactionary traits are no more beloved in the West than they were a decade ago, that a nominee for the Presidency without progressive horizon i