A TOWERING FIGURE OF THE WAR

SEPTEMBER 24, 1919

by that of Désiré, Cardinal Mercier. More than any other man he is a symbol of the strength that has resisted Germany, a spiritual strength of unfaltering faith that good can come out of evil, of steady courage, of heroic endurance.

The Cardinal is sixty-eight years old. He was born in a little village close to the battlefield of Waterloo. Educated for the priesthood at Malines, he took up the equally noble profession of teaching, and for many years was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Louvain. His contact with his pupils was so intimate and influential as to create a group of eminent present-day philosophers, while no library of philosophy is complete without his volumes on that subject.

When, in 1906, he was made Cardinal, it was quickly evident that the academician was also a practical man of positive administrative genius. Again, in 1914, when the war broke out, it was even more quickly evident that the Cardinal was a very rock in his country's defense. Hear, for instance, his Christmas Pastoral of that year:

I hold it as part of my office to instruct you as to your duty in the face of the Power that has invaded our soil and now occupies the greater part of our country.

Occupied provinces are not conquered provinces. The authority of the invader is no lawful authority. Therefore, in soul and in conscience you owe it neither respect, nor attachment, nor obedience.

The sole lawful authority in Belgium is that of our King and of our Government of the elected representatives of the nation.

Fifteen thousand copies of this letter were seized and destroyed, the printer was arrested and fined, and everything possible was done to keep the Cardinal a prisoner in his palace. For more than four years German pressure vainly tried to stifle the indomitable prelate.

And now we find that he is a prophet as well. He cherishes no illusions as to the chances of another war. In an interview in the New York "Times" he declares:

Germany is already preparing for a war of revenge. Defeated, she talks of peace, but the spirit of the country is just the same. If an attack is made upon France it will again be also upon Belgium because we are in the way.

The motto of the Cardinal's coat of arms reads: "Apostolos Jesu Christi."

man, and prophet which we naturally think of under the title "apostle."

THE BULLITT REVELATIONS

The sensational testimony of Mr. William C. Bullitt before the Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations was an outcome of the vacillation of the Administration as to a Russian policy. Allowing for the personal pique that actuated it, and the fact that some of the most startling assertions were verbal accounts of conversations, it certainly throws light on lack of harmony of views between the President and the other members of our Peace Commission. It was already known that three of the other Peace Commissioners radically differed from Mr. Wilson as to Shantung. Now Mr. Bullitt says that Secretary of State Lansing told him that he "believed that if the Senate only understood what this Treaty means and the Americans would really understand it, it unquestionably would be defeated." Mr. Lansing has made no denial nor any statement about this, or the further assertions that he declared to Mr. Bullitt that the Treaty was in many parts thoroughly bad, the League of Nations" at present entirely useless," and that "the great Powers have simply gone ahead and arranged the world to suit themselves." On the other hand, Mr. Lloyd George has emphatically pronounced statements by Mr. Bullitt about the British attitude at the Conference to be without the slightest foundation. What the influence of the Bullitt testimony on the Senate's action as to Treaty and League will be remains to be seen.

It is well known that at one time Mr. Wilson leaned toward direct dealings with the Bolshevik Government and that American radical advisers had his ear and influenced his mind. Bullitt was a man of this type. Together with Lincoln Steffens he was sent to Russia to confer with Lenine and to get from him some kind of proposal which would bring about cessation of fighting on all the Russian fronts and a settlement of the Russian question acceptable to the Bolsheviki. Just what authority he had is in doubt. He secured from Lenine some sort of a one-sided offer, much to the Bolshevik advantage. But when he returned to Paris his mission was ignored; the wind had changed and the President had seen

the futility of this negotiation with the despots who misgoverned Russia.

Bullitt was one of the many experts who accompanied our Commission to Paris. He had previously been an expert on Central Europe for the State Department. At Paris he acted as chief of the current intelligence section of our Commission. He resigned after the failure of his Russian project to receive attention from the President. That he was trusted with important matters is shown by the fact that he was able to lay before the Senate the draft of the President's own original League plan and that of the British plan drawn up by Lord Robert Cecil.

THE VICTORY OF THE ACTORS

The actors' strike for better living conditions and for the recognition of their right to bargain collectively, a strike which The Outlook heartily supported and which has been described at length in these columns, has come to an end. Various conflicting reports of the outcome of the strike have been published in the daily press. Representatives of the managers, of the Actors' Fidelity League (which supported the managers), and the Actors' Equity Association, which conducted the strike, have all laid claim to victory. It seems evident to those who have studied the situation, however, that the only claims to victory which are justified are those put forward by the Actors' Equity Association.

A letter which we have received from Mr. Walter Hampden, one of the leaders of the Equity Association, gives, we believe, a fair summary of what the actors achieved. He writes: "There can be no doubt whatever that the Actors' Equity Association won a complete victory in that it gained the recognition previously denied it, as well as a form of contract for the actors even exceeding the conditions originally demanded. Reports in the newspapers that the Equity Association was either disappointed or disgruntled over the results are not based upon fact. There was a natural desire upon the part of a few explosive members to question the results in order to make assurance doubly sure; but, so far as I can learn, both they and the general membership are completely satisfied. A temperamental class, we enjoyed the fight and found it more exhilarating than the peaceful calm that suddenly ensued with a return to theatrical humdrum. This is only natural. But the

fact remains that all are agreed that our officers did a splendid piece of work and achieved a full victory.

"The contention of the managers in regard to the outcome is in vain. They claim a victory in that they rescued the theater (which means their theater) from the dreaded closed shop. The 'closed shop' was a man of straw, a blind to the press and the public, emphasized repeatedly despite the express statements of the Equity officials and labor leaders that it was not asked nor even contemplated. It worked pretty well, however, to save the face of defeat."

Mr. Hampden is vitally concerned not only with the economic side of the recent strike, but also with its bearing upon the artistic future of the stage. He admits that the actual ground of battle for the recent strike was economic, but he foresees this economic skirmish as the forerunner of a high artistic crusade. He declares that there exists among actors a real unrest due to constraint by the present theatrical system upon artistic aspiration, and voices the feeling that while this constraint was not made an issue during the recent strike it played a very real part as a source of the unrest and the dissatisfaction behind the strike.

He concludes his letter with the following prophecy and appeal: "Among the unrecognized results of the strike are also certain moral values of significance and latent power. The association with federated labor has developed a mass sense among actors which may lead, under proper direction, to important things for the theater as an art, and furthermore prove to be a democratic leavening making for new life in a grand old institution sensible of its service to the public and of its educational influence. We actors have gained much materially and spiritually from labor, and can repay it by remaining true to its inspiring ideals (not its frequent sordid expressions) and by transmitting its powerful energies into higher channels so that a new and vital theater may be born, embodying the ideas and ideals of a revitalized democracy founded upon justice and human brotherhood expressed in new forms intimately connected with and clearly revealing the life of all the people of this land. Time is needed for this finer realization, but the affiliation with federated labor may well prove to be the first step toward it."

It is devoutly to be wished that Mr. Hampden's ideals may be realized.

A PRINTERS' STRIKE

The strike fever, which is seriously affecting the industrial temperature and health of the entire country, has now reached the printing trade. Not long

after this issue reaches our readers The Outlook may be seriously hampered in manufacturing its editions. The local unions in New York City, which include both typesetters and both typesetters and pressmen, have made an official demand upon the employing printers, the chief features of which are an increase in wages which would amount to about sixty per cent, a forty-four-hour week in place of the forty-eight-hour week now prevailing in the trade, and a peremptory refusal to submit the controversy to arbitration. The Outlook maintains its own composing room, but it is printed by contract at one of the large printing establishments in this city which employs both a night and a day force. What the closing down of this and all other similar establishments in New York would mean to the publishers of all periodicals printed in this city can easily be imagined.

As is usual in such labor controversies, there are elements of both justice and injustice in the working printers' demands. There probably should be an increase in the wage scale to meet present conditions, but sixty per cent is absolutely prohibitive, for in some cases it would mean bankruptcy. This is especially true because during the past two years an increase in certain wage scales of sixtyseven per cent has already been granted by the employing printers. The employing printers, as a rule, recognize the propriety of the forty-four-hour week, and are willing to adopt it in eighteen months from this time, but say that it cannot be introduced now because of the competiintroduced now because of the competition of printing establishments in various parts of the country outside of the city of New York which still work upon a fortyeight-hour basis. The employers ask, therefore, for sufficient time to make the necessary adjustments. For these reasons they propose that the whole controversy should be arbitrated. The local unions, however, up to the present have bluntly refused arbitration. In this refusal lies the great injustice of the situation. For many years The Outlook has insisted that fair, open, and honorable arbitration, with loyal adherence both by employers and employees to agreements made under arbitration, is the very foundation of industrial democracy.

What the outcome of this struggle will be it is impossible now to say, but we think our readers are entitled to know what the situation is.

JOHN MITCHELL

The labor world has lost in the death of John Mitchell a wise as well as a forceful leader. A thorough believer in the labor union, an urgent advocate of collective bargaining for the workingman even at a time when that principle

was first beginning to be understood, and a firm administrator and organizer, Mr. Mitchell was remarkably free from the ranting and the violent rhetorical appeal which in the case of many labor leaders have injured their cause. A writer in The Outlook a few years after the settle ment by President Roosevelt's commission of the miners' strike of 1902, in referring to a conference held between the railway presidents and the miners' leaders at President Roosevelt's initiative, said: "In this interview every one lost his temper except Mitchell, who was the most bitterly assailed and the quietest and most dignified man in the room. After the conference President Roosevelt said: "There was only one man in the room who behaved like a gentleman, and that man was not I.'"

The story illustrates Mr. Mitchell's self-control and calmness. In making practically successful the agreement be tween the employers and the miners in the great anthracite strike, Mitchell was an influence for concession, compromise, and at the same time essential justice. It was largely due to him that the plan of agreements for a term of three years between the two elements has been carried out, not without difficulty and some industrial crises, but, on the whole, with effectiveness.

When the National Civic Federation came into existence with the purpose of furthering mutual understanding between capital and labor, John Mitchell was naturally selected as one of the representatives of labor because of his ability and fair-mindedness. The time came when it was necessary for him to choose between continuing in this work and devoting his whole time and effort to the United Mine Workers. The latter was really his life work, and he did not hesi tate to decide in its favor. It has been said truly of Mr. Mitchell that he was intolerant of lawlessness. Our impression is that he rarely favored sympathetic strikes, and it is certain that he had nothing to do with that extreme radicalism which has found its expression in the I. W. W. and the theories of Bolshevism.

In the best sense of the word, John Mitchell was a self-educated man. He began manual labor at an early age, but from the time he was ten years old he studied nights. He was only thirteen old when he became a years "door boy" in the coal mines. He read continuously, and made in particular a thorough study of political economy and industrial history. His first organization work was done in connection with the Knights of Labor, and for a time he was president of that organization in his district. When the United Mine Workers of America came into existence as a labor organization, Mitchell was one of the first in his

district to be enrolled. He was an officer for many years of the American Federation of Labor. He both lectured and wrote on labor topics. An honor unique in character was that which the miners spontaneously bestowed upon him after the settlement of the great strike, by celebrating every year the anniversary of the settlement under the title John Mitchell Day.

Emphatically, John Mitchell was an advocate of industrial democracy. He regarded industrial war as excusable only when every attempt at conciliation and arbitration had failed.

A TYPICAL BRITISH TAR

Seventy-three years old, one of the best-known British Navy men has "gone west." A typical tar-bluff, hale, hearty was Charles Beresford.

His life sparkled with caustic wit and humor, as befitted his Irish birth. Witness the despatch he once sent to Edward VII declining a royal invitation to dinner and adding: "Lie follows by post." Another dinner story concerned Queen Victoria and the Jubilee review of 1897. For the information of Lady Beresford on shore, her husband flew signals which read: "Can't be home to dinner." These being read to the Queen were interpreted by her as an affront. She immediately sent a message to Beresford that he "might go home to dinner immediately."

Like that of Lord Roberts, Admiral Beresford's life was devoted to the endeavor to increase British defense. Both

men

were often condemned by current opinion as alarmists. But that made no difference to either. Lord Charles's career as a critic began a generation ago when he resigned his post at the Admiralty because he could not persuade his superiors of the need for enlargement of the navy and especially for the replacement of antiquated vessels by more modern types. The later naval expansion abundantly justified his attitude.

Admiral Beresford's life covers the period of development from a wooden to a steel navy. When he entered the service Britain's sea walls were of wood, and his memoirs divulge his opinion of the first iron ship to which he was assigned "a slovenly, unhandy tin kettle." He distinguished himself in the Egyptian wars. He commanded the gunboat Condor at the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 and eventually silenced one of the forts. This brought the signal "Well done, Condor," from Admiral Seymour, a motto ever after bound up with Beresford's name. Later he was commander of the Naval Brigade with the army which tried to relieve Gordon at Khartum. His last command as Admiral was that of the Channel Fleet, and this was distinguished

by his quarrel with Lord Fisher, then by his quarrel with Lord Fisher, then First Lord of the Admiralty. There were not lacking those who declared that both Admirals should be retired forthwith.

Yet, all in all, English life has been much spicier because of the opinions of such typical tars.

ADMIRAL SIMS ON THE
NAVAL VICTORY

"When Germany was Winning the War" is the title that Admiral Sims gives to the first of his series of articles in "The World's Work." His picture of the danger in 1917 of the Allies losing the war through Germany's success in her submarine campaign is startling. In the next article he will, we assume, explain how that danger was averted. The part played in the victory at sea by the American destroyers and other war vessels was evidently of capital importance in view of the condition of things when America entered the war.

Admiral Sims went to England with the feeling that the sea power “rested practically unchallenged in the hands of the Allies." But the British Admiralty gave him facts and figures which had been kept secret. “These documents disclosed the astounding fact that Germany was winning the war, and winning it at a rate that meant the unconditional surrender of the British Empire in four or five months." Admiral Jellicoe told him that 603,000 tons of shipping, British and neutral, were sunk in March, and that the estimate for April was nearly 900,000 tons. Admiral Jellicoe in conclusion remarked, "It is impossible for us to go on with the war if losses like this continue." Members of the British Cabinet confirmed this view of the seriousness of the situation, and it was estimated that the limit of endurance would be reached by November 1, 1917. Admiral Sims quotes Mr. Balfour as saying to him later: "The submarines were constantly on my mind. I could think of nothing but the number of ships they were sinking. At that time it certainly looked as though we were going to lose the war." Only Lloyd George was continuously optimistic and cheerful about the submarine situation.

The danger point lay in the fact that Great Britain must obtain food and raw material from abroad, and to this the increasing destruction of shipping was a terrible threat; it is said that in April, 1917, England had food enough on hand for only six or eight weeks. The submarines were not being destroyed faster than they were built. The public ideas on this subject were entirely erroneous.

It was under these circumstances that Admiral Sims, in his despatches to Wash

ington, repeatedly sent such reports as the following: "The situation at pres ent is exceedingly grave. If sufficient United States naval forces can be thrown into the balance at the present critical time and place, there is little doubt that early success will be assured. Briefly stated, I consider that at the present moment we are losing the war." Ambassador Page and Mr. Balfour sent despatches of similar tenor; one of Mr. Page's urgent despatches is described by Admiral Sims as one of the great documents of the war. All these messages urged that the United States should instantly send all its destroyers and other light craft to Queenstown, "the vital spot in the submarine campaign.” Says Admiral Sims: "The fact is that no nation was ever placed in so tragical a position as Great Britain in the spring and early summer of 1917. And I think that history records few spectacles more heroic than that of the British navy, fighting this hideous and cowardly form of warfare in half a dozen places with pitifully inadequate forces, but with an undaunted spirit that remained firm even against the fearful odds which I have described. What an opportunity for America!"

THE SUBMARINE WARFARE

In the course of his article Admiral Sims corrects some general misapprehensions about the German submarine methods. It is surprising to know that instead of "submarines in shoals there were seldom more than eight or ten submarines operating in the very large field from the north of Ireland to Brest, never more than fifteen. The Germans could keep only ten or a dozen submarines out of each hundred they had actually at work in the open sea. Admiral Sims says that if instead of this they could have had fifty submarines stantly at work on the shipping routes in the winter and spring of 1917 nothing could have prevented Germany from sinking two or three million tons a month and winning the war. Thus Germany's boasted foresight and efficiency were at fault in not providing a really large number of submarines.

con

Another interesting statement is that the Germans unquestionably attacked hospital ships systematically for the purpose of forcing the Allies to convoy the hospital ships by destroyers, thus r ducing the number of destroyers hunting submarines. The British Admiralty, i appears, had wonderfully accurate information about the German submarines so far as knowing when they left the German ports and in what waters they were cruising. Of course this did not mean that it was easy to catch the

submarines, for their mobility was im

mense.

We are told that the belief that the U-boat had bases off the Irish and Spanish coasts was unfounded, and that the cruising period of a submarine did not depend, as most people suppose, upon its supplies of food and fuel, but on its supply of torpedoes.

It is evident from Admiral Sims's account that the one thing most needed to secure naval victory for the Allies was reinforcement in the matter of destroyers and submarine chasers. The British navy had a great many, but it was necessary all the while to use many of them with the Grand Fleet and to convoy hospital ships and trading vessels. It is a simple, definite fact that American aid in this direction was of such value as to turn the tide.

A FRIEND OF THE
AFRICAN NATIVE

Those who have read Hopkinson

Smith's "Armchair at the Inn" will recall the prominence of one "Herbert." In "Herbert." In real life he was Herbert Ward, who has just died at a comparatively early age.

Yet his life was fuller than are the lives of most men. He began his travels when he was fifteen years old, and had been three times around the world before he was twenty-one. His wanderings in New Zealand, Australia, and Borneo whetted his appetite for something more vivid and led him to Central Africa, where he passed the five most impressionable years of his life. While in the Congo he heard of Stanley's arrival, and, knowing that he needed men to carry loads, collected some four hundred men and joined him on his journey. More than Stanley, Ward entered into the lives of the natives; he once said of them:

My sympathy, which was with them at the commencement, ripened with time. They appealed strongly to me by reason of their simplicity and directness, their lack of scheming or plotting, and by the spontaneity of everything they did. Hence my efforts to learn their language in order that I might know them better. Herbert Ward not only wrote books like "A Voice from the Congo" about these natives, but he made crayon sketches of them and then began to express them in sculpture. No one but he, so far as we know, has put into bronze the soul of the African natives-a long persecuted race of another color and often incomprehensible to us. Who can see his heroic naked figures without realizing as in no other way the misery, shame, and despair of those natives?

At the beginning of the war Mr. Ward voluntarily gave his splendid property at Rolleboise on the Seine for hospital use, and later helped to direct an English am

bulance corps operating with the French. His health was completely wrecked by the injuries he received and the hardships he endured in the Vosges and elsewhere, and his death was the direct result.

Not only the world of art but the world of humanity is a great deal better because

Herbert Ward lived in it.

LAYING FOUNDATIONS
FOR DEMOCRACY

There are two Christian colleges in the Near East among others-one, Robert College, in Constantinople, established under Congregational auspices; the other, the Syrian Protestant College, in Beirut, Syria, established under Presbyterian auspices.

Neither of these colleges has been established or is maintained for the purpose of making proselytes. They are Christian colleges in the same sense in which Princeton and Yale are Christian

colleges. It is the spirit of Christ which has inspired their organization and inspires those who are carrying them on; but their purpose is simply to give to

THE BOSTON STRIKE

THE State of Massachusetts and the city of Boston have faced and met a situation of unprecedented menace, and they have met it with high courage and ciples without which government by the a firm grasp of those fundamental prinpeople must perish from the earth. The strike of the Boston police force is described by a staff correspondent of The Outlook on another page. It will be sufficient if we state here our conception of the issues involved.

We believe in industrial democracy.

We believe in the right of collective bargaining.

We believe in the right of every man and woman to a living wage and decent conditions of work.

But we emphatically believe that no citizen who has entered the service of the State as a guardian of public safety has any right, moral or legal, to turn over to thugs and criminals the community intrusted to him for protection, as a means of remedying the conditions of his em ployment. Policemen occupy the position

of sentries on the battle line between civilization and barbarism. If they depart from such a post of duty, they merit the reprobation meted out to those who desert from the military service in time of war.

Governor Coolidge of Massachusetts and Commissioner Curtis of Boston have declared that the striking policemen of Boston are to be treated as deserters and never to be permitted to re-enter the service of the city which they abandoned to disorder. For the sake not only of Boston but of the fundamental structure of our Government we hope that nothing will ever induce the public authorities of Massachusetts to recede from this position. The issues involved in the Boston strike, wherever they arise, "must be fought out on this line if it takes all summer."

students of all classes and all faiths the best possible education. One essential element in the Christian spirit is religious liberty, or the recognition of the right of every man to his own spiritual faith, and this spirit pervades these two colleges. It is this fact which enabled them to go on with their work throughout the world war in spite of the race and religious prejudices which that war at least temporarily intensified. We believe that there has been little or no falling off in the number of students in attendance; but there has been a falling off in funds and a difficulty in maintaining the necessary number of instructors. The spirit of the colleges is illustrated by one or two incidents in the graduation exercises of the Beirut college. In the graduation exercises of the school for nurses connected with the Beirut medical department the address was given by Dr. Shahbenda, a Moslem graduate of Damascus, a progressive man who was proscribed during the war, but managed to escape to Egypt though a large E price was put on his head by the Turks. In the graduation exercises of the atory department the address was given by Dr. Shahadi, a graduate of the college and an American citizen of Providence, Rhode Island. Moslem women attended these exercises, some of them unveiled, a practice which Moslem women in increasing numbers are adopting.

prepar

The two colleges have wisely combined in an appeal to the American people for the necessary means to continue their beneficent work. Further information respecting this plan can be obtained by addressing Executive Secretary, Room 505, 18 East Forty first Street, New York City.

IF HOGS, WHY NOT

CHILDREN?

E are convinced that the time has come when the National Government should extend to education the same help which it has already extended to agriculture and highway improvement. Certainly if it is important and necessary for the National Government, through a system of county agents, to lend its aid to the production of better hogs, it ought to do at least as much to improve its boys and girls.

One of the most important bills now before Congress is the Smith-Towner Bill to create a Secretary and Department of Education and to aid in equalizing educational opportunities throughout the United States. This bill has been in