formance the scenery was one of the most impressive elements of the play. The beauty of the setting (which combined that element of realism which modern audiences expect with the severe architectural lines which in Greek theaters furnished the background for all plays) was, with its lighting effects, a distinct triumph of common sense, a sense of what is appropriate, and a sense of beauty.

The acting deserved the high commendation which it received from most of the critics. Margaret Anglin's Electra was a figure of great dignity and emotional power. Not once did she yield to the temptation to gain a mere factitious effect; not once did she deviate from her purpose of being the Electra of Euripides. That she succeeded in making the character of Electra credible and sympathetic was demonstrated by the attitude of the audience from the beginning to the end, and such an achievement as that is notable among contemporary stage productions. Her company furnished competent support. In particular, special mention should be made of the work of the chorus, which plays a rôle in Greek tragedy for which there is no modern counterpart and which calls for the exercise of special imagination on the part of those who wish to make it credible to the modern audience.

The chief defect of the performance was in the enunciation of the actors. There must have been many-there certainly was one in the audience who had difficulty in understanding a great deal of what was said. There is a practical as well as a dramatic value in an actor's learning to speak in what might be called the grand style. A big performance requires big action and big enunciation.

Not the least effective element in the performance was the music, composed for the play by Walter Damrosch and performed by the New York Symphony Orchestra under Mr. Damrosch's conductorship. It served its purpose of being to the play what inflections are to the individual voice. It tonally lit up the high spots. We doubt whether it would be very interesting performed, even in part, separately for concert purposes. This is not meant as derogatory, but rather as approbative. The music was not meant to obtrude itself, but rather to make the dramatic situations more effectively dramatic. Without the music this performance of the play, without any music any performance of the play, would become comparatively flat.

This music was not an imitation of what is supposed to be ancient Greek music. If it had been, it would have been an attempt to imitate the unknown, in the first place; and, in the second place, it would probably have sounded very absurd to modern ears. What it did do was to serve modern ears in the same way that the music of antiquity served ancient ears. The total effect was a good deal like modern music drama or opera with most of the nonsensical and ridiculously artificial that accompanies modern opera eliminated. If Electra had come to the front of the stage and indulged in an aria, or even in a recitativo secco, or in Wagnerian melos, the audience would have been indignant at the sacrilege to art; and yet that is what audiences not only endure but applaud night after night.

A few years ago we remarked that "opera is practically as old as the spoken drama." We expected to get a rise, and got it. If we remember aright, " Musical America rose to the bait and told us what it thought about the origin of opera. We now repeat our former remark with a new emphasis, and add that music drama is the oldest form of drama. Music drama or opera is merely drama in which music is as essential as the scenery or the acting of the players.

It antedates even the Greek drama, and may be found preserved in ancient Hebrew literature. Electra" is essentially opera. So is the "Song of Songs." Opera is simply a modern name given to what in substance has existed, off and on, for as many years as we have literary record.

OUR CONTRIBUTORS THIS WEEK

Mr. Frederick L. Allen, who writes "Building the Bridge to France," is a graduate of Harvard, was formerly on the staff of the "Atlantic Monthly," later was editorially connected with the "Century Magazine," and is now serving the Government in Washington. His Government work gives him an oppor

tunity to deal with facts in the shipping situation, and the statements in his article may be relied upon as authoritative.

Dr. Odell, who contributes a striking special letter from Washington on the President and his powers, is well known to our readers as the author of the notable series of articles in The Outlook on American camp life entitled "The New Spirit of the New Army." He was formerly a clergyman in Scranton. Pennsylvania, was later a member of the editorial staff of the Philadelphia "Ledger," and is now the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Troy, New York. He has had special army associations and has been a student of politics and sociology. His work is not always in the political field, as readers of his delightful paper in this journal, "A Trout Stream and the Cracking Universe," will remember.

Miss Monks, the author of "London Etchings," is a Bostonian now engaged in personal social work among the women munition workers of London. She sends us with these etchings a letter, from which we give our readers the following extract, for it is a key to the spirit and purpose of the etchings themselves:

When I went to England a year ago to do war work, every one told me that I ought to keep a diary. I took a book with me for this purpose, but I soon found myself immersed in work so strenuous that a daily diary was out of the question. My work was of the most practical kind, and I found that what writing I did was for relaxation and had no connection with the work, although nothing in these days is wholly unconnected with the war. My work took me to a very prosaic suburb of London. I lived there during the week and went to Chelsea for occasional week-ends. All my writing was done in Chelsea, and the pieces entitled "Battersea Nights" were written in a house on Cheyne Walk near the house where Turner lived. The contrast of the beauty of Chelsea to the dingy suburb in which I lived never failed to inspire in me the longing for expression that all artists feel who live in Chelsea and love Battersea Bridge and Four Chimneys.

The spiritual awakening in England is very noticeable in all classes. Not only are the educated and intellectual people thinking it of the foremost importance, but the reward of sacrifice and self-control is bursting out in the hearts of the laboring people.

A social worker in this country asked me the other day if the English workingwoman were not losing her health through the long hours her patriotism enables her to keep. I answered: "The long hours may strain and fatigue her body, but she is finding her soul. Her hours are no longer than the hours of those of us who are working to make things easier for her. Government officials voluntarily work as many hours as she does. Her hours are shorter and the hardships few compared to the duties of the men in the trenches or the sailors patrolling the North Sea, and we are all of us conscious together that serving an ideal instead of our personal advantage is giving us a spiritual strength which is beyond the reach of even the worst German frightfulness."

Mr. Driggs, who brings the adventures of Arnold Adair to a conclusion in this issue, is an ordnance and airplane expert of New York, and has done much studying and writing in connection with airplane problems. His lively and vivid stories of Arnold Adair and his colleagues are about to be brought out in book form by Little, Brown & Co., of Boston.

Dr. Richmond, whom many of our readers will remember as the author of the taking "Brother Jonathan" poems, contributed to The Outlook in the early years of the European war in the spirit and manner of the "Biglow Papers," is President of Union College, at Schenectady, New York. In a letter accompanying his poem "For the Sailors at Sea" he says: "I have a nineteen-year-old boy who has been at sea for three months serving as an ordinary seaman in the Regular Navy. I wonder if there are other fathers to whom the inclosed might appeal?"

Mr. Herbert Vaughan Abbott, whose paper on Keats affords a welcome relief from the strain of war, is Adjunct Professor of English at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

The pleasant and smiling picture of camp life (to which we are compelled by the modesty of the author merely to append the pen-name of " An American Woman") is sketched from the other side of the footlights by a writer whose war poetry has received wide attention throughout the country. It records some of her experiences as an entertainer at the camps of our new Army.

W

NOT IN VAIN

THATEVER military success Germany may have gained by the sinking of the Tuscania will cost her dear. Unlike the sinking of the Lusitania and the air raids over London, this latest great exploit of German war by stealth can be defended under the laws of warfare; for a transport conveying combatant troops is not a peaceful merchantman nor is it a community of civilians, but is legitimate prey. But, like the air raids and the sinking of merchantmen, this deed has put new fighting spirit into Germany's foes. It has proved again how far astray Germany goes in her calculations. It has revealed anew the self-control of the American fighting man, his readiness for emergency, and his inflexible determination for victory. And it has stimulated recruiting in this country. For every man that lost his life in that disaster more than one man has offered himself for service against Germany.

Those who sorrow for the loss of their men who went down with the Tuscania have no cause to feel that their loved ones died in vain. They gave their lives heroically and to a great end. They have been the means of gaining new strength for the arms of their country. They have made all Americans their debtors. To them, as well as to those who die at the front, will belong the victory which they have helped to purchase with their lives.

THE BUILDERS OF OUR SHIPS

As this issue of The Outlook appears, a Nation-wide campaign is being carried on by the Government for the purpose of informing the American public that if we are going to win the war we must build ships. The facts, which are of grave importance, are given in an article on another page by Mr. Frederick Lewis Allen, who is in the Government service at Washington, who has access to authoritative information, and whose statement of the problem and its only possible solution may be relied upon.

The American people have now gone into the war wholeheartedly. They are giving their money and their men without stint or complaint, but billions of money and millions of men will not win the war unless the men and the commodities bought for the money can be transported to the European fronts. The ship-building mechanics of the United States are therefore today the men on whom we must depend.

It is the hope of our Government, as stated by the Secretary of War, to have one million five hundred thousand American soldiers on European soil during the year 1918. The estimate of English experts is that it requires five tons of shipping to transport and supply each soldier on foreign soil, and this amount of shipping increases directly with the distance of the home country from the seat of war. Thus, on the most conservative basis, the United States will need from eight to ten million tons of shipping to transport, equip, feed, and supply with powder and guns its army of a million and a half, if it should have such an army this year.

There are to-day afloat ships which can be used for this purpose amounting to certainly not more than three or four million tons. Thus by a very simple process of elementary subtraction it will be seen that we must construct this year at least six million tons if we are to carry out our hopeful programme of placing an army of a million and a half men in the field. We must do this or rely on British or Allied shipping, and the submarines are constantly depleting British and Allied shipping. To get this six million tons of shipping, without which we cannot strike the blow we ought to strike against Prussian barbarism, the Shipping Board, whose Chairman is Mr. Edward N. Hurley, is bending every end to the completion of the vast programme of building from six to eight million tons of shipping. Under conditions as they exist to-day, with shipyards as they are now being operated and with the number of men now employed in ship-building, it is believed that if we construct three million tons of shipping we should be doing well. We must therefore augment in some way or other our shipyard capacity, the number of men who are already at work in those yards, and the per capita efficiency of those men. It is towards this augmentation of American ship-building power that the campaign inaugurated by the Government is directed. The movement is officially called a movement to create

a body of "United States Shipyard Volunteers." The men who sign the pledge as volunteers under this campaign may not be summoned to work to-morrow or the next day, but the Government wants to know what body of expert mechanics it may have in reserve to call on as yards, ship ways, and houses are constructed for this ship-building army.

The question may arise in the mind of the reader what he has to do with this movement if he is not an expert ship mechanic. His first duty is to take such part as he can in arousing public opinion to the necessity of ship-building. Second, he must help his community to make it plain to every mechanic who is fitted by skill and experience to work at shipbuilding that it is his patriotic duty to volunteer. The shipbuilder's work is equal in its honor and responsibility to the duty of the man who has enlisted or been conscripted in the Army or Navy. Our Army and Navy recruits are giving their whole time and thought to the fighting problem. Every man who can lay a keel or drive a rivet must give his entire thought to that question.

If you who read this know a mechanic who is working in a shipyard or who has volunteered to work at some future time in a shipyard, take him by the hand and tell him that you look upon him with the same grateful respect that you look upon the men who are fighting at the western front, and that his country expects him to do his duty just as it expects the soldier or the sailor to do his. Every rivet driven into the plates of a new American transport is a bullet driven into the ranks of the barbarous militarism of Prussia.

THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT

The President's request for absolute and unconditional powers to make whatever changes he thinks best in the administrative departments of the Government has definitely established two important facts: (1) That a radical reorganization in those departments is necessary to secure co-ordination and co-operation and power of immediate action; (2) that this power is not granted to the President by the Constitution, and cannot by him be exercised unless granted by legislation.

The United States Constitution gives to Congress power

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers [that is, all the enumerated powers of Congress], and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

These departmental powers have been conferred and defined by a great number of laws which the President has no authority to repeal, disregard, or override. The reorganization of the War Department by Secretary Baker, of which we give a summary on page 275, probably goes as far as the President can go without further legislation. It marks a great step in advance. It provides a carefully devised plan both for giving to bureau chiefs authority to act and for co-ordinating their action under one responsible head. It practically abolishes, as far as executive order can do so, the antiquated and ineffective war machine, and puts another in its place. So far as one can judge from reading the description of a new machine in print, it is admirably adapted to its purpose.

But its purpose is limited to a single department of the Gov

ernment.

It does nothing, and could not do anything, to expedite our ship-building. It does nothing, and could not do anything, to meet the possible perils involved in our complicated labor problem. In England the Government has brought about a reorganization of the laboring force of the whole country, shifting labor from factory to factory and from department to department in factories, so that its productive force has been enormously increased. The British Government has done this by promoting highly skilled labor to the highest places, and promoting the less skilled labor to take their places, thus using the skill of every workman to the greatest advantage, and by bringing women into munition work to such an extent that it has been authoritatively said that the women of England by their shell-making won the Battle of the Somme.

The order of Secretary Baker gives the War Department powers to deal with the transportation of military supplies, but

it does nothing, and could not do anything, to provide for such an adjustment of military and civil transportation as will prevent another coal famine in 1919.

We do not criticise the order of the War Department. We simply point out its necessary limitations. That order still leaves it the duty of Congress to provide, by appropriate legislation, for a co-ordination of the separate departments of the Government as the Secretary of War has provided for the co-ordination of the separate bureaus in his Department.

The alternative proposed by the Overman Bill- giving the President power to make whatever changes he deems best in the Government machinery-we do not believe Congress or the country will favorably consider. The only argument we have anywhere seen for it is that of the Washington correspondent of the New York" Evening Post:"

What Mr. Wilson would have if the above provisions were enacted into the law is an elastic Government, one which he could change quickly as the exigencies of the day or moment required. Bureau chiefs would not have to work in constant fear of overstepping some ancient statute or provision of law. Decisions could be made rapidly, and if the President wanted to create two or three new Cabinet officers or department heads he would not have to wait until a measure is introduced, discussed by a committee, and debated and voted on after long delays. He could create bureaus instantly by executive order.

Hitherto the United States has been a country governed by laws. These laws could be changed only by elected representatives of the people after a public discussion of the reasons for the change. Are the advantages of a flexible form of government so great that we should substitute for a government by laws a government dependent upon the judgment or caprice of a single individual who may change them at his pleasure? We do not think so. We do not believe that the country will think so. It will hail the order of Secretary Baker. And it will hope that Congress will develop a plan conceived in the same spirit for the larger reorganization which the Overman Bill makes it clear the President thinks it necessary to win the war.

CRITICISM OF THE ADMINISTRATION Several readers of The Outlook have stated with varying degrees of vigor their objections to what The Outlook has had to say in criticism of certain aspects of the Administration's prosecution of the war. Some of these letters express very strong feeling. A fair example of the letters we have received from such readers is one which appears on page 271 in this issue of The Outlook.

We recognize that there is room for wide difference in understanding of the facts. The reader who says, for instance, that there are half a million of our men now in France has a different understanding of the facts from that which we have. There is also room for difference of opinion concerning the significance of certain facts. It is not, however, within the range of fairness, and hardly within the range of intelligence, to ascribe all criticism of the Administration's prosecution of the war to motives of partisanship or personal animosity. Indeed, partisan criticism has been during the past ten months conspicuous by its absence; and to-day the severest criticism upon the Administra tion has come from members of its own party.

By far the greatest part of the criticism directed to the President's prosecution of the war has been not at all personal. The whole country, without regard to party, has cordially recognized President Wilson's great and splendid ability in setting forth in his state papers the principles which should guide America in its war upon Germany and the objects which it is determined to attain. This policy and these objects are most clearly set forth in his now justly famous "fourteen points" address to Congress. Such criticism as has arisen has come from those who believe that President Wilson has not been equally successful as an administrator of the details of America's war activities.

Nor could he be.

No man can devote himself, as President Wilson must, to the philosophical problems of this war and at the same time devote himself to the executive details of putting those philosophical principles into action. It is as though the editor-in-chief of a

newspaper should endeavor to frame its large and fundamental policies and at the same time busy himself with the details of bookkeeping or paper-buying or to the employing and direction of each clerical worker.

In past crises American Presidents have not undertaken to gather into their own hands such authority or to dispense with the official assistance of political opponents. Washington had Thomas Jefferson, a personal and party opponent, in his Cabinet; Lincoln had Stanton, a political and personal opponent, in his Cabinet; but there are sometimes indications that President Wilson regards all differences as to policies and principles as the result of personal enmity, and is unwilling to have about him in his official family men who do not accept his own views as the supreme law.

Those who believe that such an attitude on the part of any President must be obstructive to the winning of such a war as we are engaged in, and destructive of the very fabric of our democratic institutions, have not only the right to protest, but are bound by their loyalty to their country to make their protests heard if they can, and to point out what seems to them to be the right course to pursue.

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To the February "Atlantic" Dr. Joseph H. Odell contributes an article entitled " Peter Sat by the Fire Warming Himself," in which he scores, none too severely, the Peters in the modern church; but he forgets that Other Disciple, who went into the court of Caiaphas with his Master and remained with him, his companion, during all the tragic hours which followed. In this article Dr. Odell puts this question: Thoughtful men and women are asking what became of the spiritual leaders of America during those thirty-two months when Europe and parts of Asia were passing through Gehenna. What prelate or bishop or ecclesiastical dignitary essayed the work of spiritual interpretation?" Because silence might seem to indicate that there is no answer, we reply: Archbishop Ireland and Bishop O'Gorman, two of the foremost Roman Catholic ecclesiasties in the United States, who both sent to a mass-meeting in New York, December 15, 1916, telegrams of vigorous protest against the enslavement of the Belgians; Dr. Manning, the rector of the richest and most conservative Episcopal church in the United States; Dr. Gordon, the most influential Congregational minister in New England; Drs. Hillis and Cadman, than whom there are no more representative Congregational ministers out of New England; Dr. Fosdick and Bishop Luther Wilson, distinguished representatives respectively of the Baptist and Methodist denominations; and Dr. Henry van Dyke, a representative Presbyterian, are some of the ecclesiastical dignitaries who "essayed the work of spiritual interpretation." To these names we might add those of not less than a score of ministers of different denominations in all parts of the United States whose printed sermons have reached us sermons directed by the same purpose and animated by the same spirit as Dr. Odell's article, though not possessing the passionate power which only a genius like that of Dr. Odell could have imparted to them. How many printed sermons have never reached us and how many delivered but never printed we have no means of estimating.

Many, we think most, of these representatives of the churches spoke long before Mr. H. G. Wells, whom Dr. Odell hails as a leader, had published "Mr. Britling Sees It Through." Dr. van Dyke sent to the Administration from Holland his interpretation of Germany's purpose when Germany began the war, and as soon as he could obtain the right to speak gave that interpretation in articles since published in book form, entitled "Fighting for Peace."

Not less significant than these ministerial utterances as an indication of the spirit of the Church is the fact that from many of our church buildings float Service Flags bearing starry witnesses to the spiritual enthusiasm which has carried their members into this war for humanity-an enthusiasm which we may well believe was enkindled by the ministry of the churches from which they have gone that many of our theological students have left their studies to interpret their faith in the

gospel of justice and liberty by offering their lives for their fellow-men across the sea, and that the Young Men's Christian Association, long before the Nation had awakened to its duties, had engaged in a work the spiritual greatness of which Dr. Odell fully recognizes. It is true that the Young Men's Chris tian Association is a "lay organization," but it is also true that it is a child of the Church, born of her loins and nurtured at her breast.

We hope that Dr. Odell's sweeping indictment of the Church will appeal to the sense of shame, even if it fails to awaken the conscience, of the Peters who during the last three years have sat warming themselves in the comfortable assurance that this war does not concern America. There have been many such both within and without the churches. During the thirty-two months which elapsed between the declaration of war by Germany and the formal entry into the war by America, there were not a few leaders, both in the pulpit and out of the pulpit, who spoke explicit and earnest words for righteousness to the Church and for the Church. Nevertheless the Church was not the leader it ought to have been. The truth is that the Church has from the very earliest ages shown itself a very human institution. Its ministers have been men very like other men. Even in the Master's time his chosen disciples included a

FOR THE

Peter who denied him, a Judas who betrayed him, and a James and John who sought office from him. There were apparently more false prophets than true in the days of Micaiah; more Jewish Christians who were afraid to venture out into the light and liberty of a Christian faith than were ready to follow Paul, the great Apostle and also the great heretic of his age. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, the subject of Dr. Odell's eulogy, is a historic figure because he was an exceptional character. History has not furnished many such heroes in either Church or State. The Church has always learned the truth by painful processes of life. It has always been true that the life is the light of men. Clergy and laity, churchmen and churchless, saints and sinners. we are all pupils together. We who call ourselves followers of the Christ have often misunderstood him, and we have not always really desired to understand him. But, as we may believe that the German people would never have entered upon this crusade of cruelty if they had not been first obsessed by reverence for Odin, the god of force and fear, so neither would there be to-day millions in America with "a Gethsemane in their souls seeking to make the world's redemption a historic fact if the Church of Christ had not awakened in them the hope of a world redemption and inspired in them faith in a divine Gethsemane.

Rude wind;

Blow softly.

Be kind,

Cruel sea!

Softly!

HO is the United States? Do not pause to cavil about the peculiar structure of the sentence; I am compelled to cast it into that form in order to bring out forcefully the biggest fact in the world of to-day. If I were to ask, What is the United States? I might get numerous answers: a continent in the Western Hemisphere; a Republic of commonwealths; a democracy; a land inhabited by a hundred million people; and so on. But when I ask, Who is the United States? there is one and only one answer: Woodrow Wilson! The answer is final, complete, and admits of no debate. That is what my visit to Washington has taught me beyond a perad venture. I go to the Senate and find from baffled Senators that they are not the United States; Woodrow Wilson is. I go to the House of Representatives and discover quite easily that that docile crowd of Congressmen are not the United States; Woodrow Wilson is. I wander from department to depart ment, from bureau to bureau, from commission to commission,

and everywhere it is the same: they are not the United States; Woodrow Wilson is. I meet distracted and confused men from every part of the Union, in khaki and in mufti, each one anxious to do something, to correct something, to suggest something, to accelerate something. "Good! Why don't you do it?" "I am not the United States," each replies; " Woodrow Wilson is!" I sit with groups of newspaper men, representing in the aggregate millions of front pages and editorial columns per day, and I ask, “Why don't you fellows do something?" The answer is the same: "Our papers, with their pages of facts and columns of opinion, are not the United States: Woodrow Wilson is.

Political life in Washington is like a "choppy sea in dirty weather," as the old salts would say. On the surface it is at: turmoil-irregular waves and breaking combers, foam, spray noise. Navigation seems to be uncertain because the upper air makes solar observation difficult. Some of those on the lookont ! swear they see or hear breakers ahead. The ship of state seems i

to be laboring heavily. The course is evidently being laid by dead reckoning. If we were on an open and oft-traveled route, with the sun high overhead, there would be no anxiety and hardly any need for a lookout. Critics are superfluous when things cannot go wrong. Down below the stokers are sweating "as it were, great drops of blood," to keep the steam gauges at the necessary level. A few of the first-cabin passengers are gambling for high stakes and singing Browning's lyric,

"God's in his heaven,

All's right with the world."

A large number of others are in their staterooms praying mightily against a possible disaster. The majority are on deck, straining eyes and ears, trying to show a calm demeanor, but looking anxiously from time to time up to the bridge, to see whether the Captain is there and what his face reveals-anxiety, indifference, or confidence. It may be that we are on an uncharted lee shore, with wind and tide against us. There are rumors to that effect. In laying a course by dead reckoning, the silent set of the tide and the currents are the least calculable but the most decisive factors. Tides are universal but of variable velocity; currents are local but sometimes stronger than the tides. Together, they are the emotions, the convictions, the ideals, the hopes, the fears, and the prejudices of human nature. Does the Captain know their set, their intensity, their part in determining the destination of his ship, with its priceless cargo? For the vessel is entirely, completely, absolutely, in the hands of the Captain. Its owners have put him in supreme command; and, for a long time to come, no power under heaven can annul or suspend those orders. That is the picture the city of Washington imprinted on my mind-Woodrow Wilson is Master of the Ship of State.

One can hear anything one wants to hear in Washington; that is why I have likened the community to a choppy sea. There are optimism and pessimism, fear and confidence, suspicion and serenity, insurgency and loyalty. About the hotel corridors and lounge-rooms one gains the impression that everything is going wrong; the hotel population is made up largely of people with a mission of correction, and missionaries are necessarily vocal. One can pick up a dozen marrow-freezing tales a day of vacillation, dilatoriness, stupidity, utter blindness, or gross incompetency in this or that direction, or department, or bureau, or commission. And it always ends: "If I could only get to the President! He is the master here-the source, the controller, the arbiter !"

In any one of the innumerable bureaus each man seems absorbingly engrossed with his own job, and is complacently certain that, whatever else may be rumored to be wrong in this weltering war community, at least his own particular section of the vast machine is functioning admirably and is beyond critieism and above suspicion. And he feels strongly that criticism should cease; it is unethical; it unintentionally gives “aid and romfort to the enemy;" it is a subtle species of disloyalty. "Love me, love my dog," is oft quoted, and in a manner which says, "You cannot stand back of the President and at the same time kick any one of the departments or bureaus or commissions which is carrying out the will of the President!" They feel that they are miniature replicas of the supreme mind, and that allegiance to that mind must cover them also. At any rate, the only thoroughly happy, contented, and satisfied people in Washington are the bureaucrats, big and little; and their self-satisfaction seems only to vary in accordance with their proximity to the President. Of course there may be an occasional exception, but he is very discreet.

The newspaper men-known at home as "Our Special Washington Correspondent "-are so engrossed with the story of each day and so eager to get their current news feature into the next issue that they have little time for review or preview. They are day laborers and "laborers worthy of their hire," for without their careful chronicle the prophet, the philosopher, or the practical man of affairs would be minus the data for his grand deductions. And they are conscious that they do not get the real news; in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, in the corridors of the departments, and in the anterooms of the bureaus they are simply skirting about the fringes of authority, they are only in the precincts of power. The soul, the

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center, the seat of all that is vital and determinative, is in the White House. 66 What do you think of the chances of this particular bill?" I ask a reporter from the Senate. "Tell me what the President thinks and, that will be my answer,' he says. "How will the House act on this measure?" I ask a reporter from the House of Representatives. Whichever way the President wishes," he replies. Congress exists in Washington to-day to put into legal form whatsoever powers the President believes he needs. Congress has denied him nothing. Never before in the history of this Nation have the legislative and the executive branches of the Government fused so perfectly. As we have asked, "Who is the United States ?" we might further ask, "Who is the Senate? Who is the House of Representatives?" And the answer in each case must be the same: Woodrow Wilson, he is the Senate, he is the House of Representatives; his mind, his policies, his wishes, his will, are supreme. The Chamberlain episode was just the kind of an exception to prove the rule.

Does any one doubt the statements so far made? Well, let us be specific.

When President Wilson asked for certain sums of money with which to carry on a war to "make the world safe for democracy," the amounts requested were voted without hesitation.

When President Wilson asked for specified powers to conscript the available manhood of the Nation for military purposes, those powers were granted with amazing promptness.

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When President Wilson asked for the legal instrumentalities by which he could control or regulate or take over the food, the fuel, and the transportation of the country, those instrumentalities were placed unreservedly in his hands. He has selected Mr. Hoover to act for him as Food Controller, Dr. Garfield as Fuel Controller, and Mr. McAdoo as Director of Transportation.

When President Wilson has wanted the consent of Congress for any other powers which he needs as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Nation or for flexibility in methods of administration, that consent has been given or implied in almost instantaneous and unanimous legislation. His appointments have been promptly ratified. In a dozen ways Congress has given him what would be equivalent to votes of confidence under foreign parliamentary rules.

Thus the President has had a free hand in creating a Council of National Defense, a War Industries Board, a Shipping Board, and various and sundry other advisory or administrative organizations. His appointments to these councils and boards have been entirely his own, made without dictation or pressure or even suggestion from the legislative branch of the Government. Never in a single instance has the will of the President been thwarted or even hampered. Not one of the rulers or presidents or premiers of our allies has anything like the unrestricted, unsupervised, unshared power which now belongs, constitutionally or by specific legislation, to President Woodrow Wilson.

Further still it can be shown that President Wilson is the United States. Our foreign relations are carried on through the Department of State. No one for a moment imagines that Mr. Lansing initiates policies, or even modifies them to any considerable degree. Many of the most important aspects of our foreign policy are first made known to the world in a speech delivered to Congress by the President himself, and are therefore out of the class of ordinary state papers. The Secretary of War is not only appointed by the President, but he is retained in office by the President when under criticism. The President frankly accepts the responsibility, thereby accepting the responsibility for the conduct of the Department of War. Cabinet officers are not responsible to the people or to Congress but to the President, and the President is obviously satisfied with the arrangement. When the Senate Committee on Military Affairs prepares bills, not to embarrass or weaken the President, but to help him, according to their belief, in co-ordinating the functions of the Administration, the President announces his opposition to the measures and begs members of the Senate not even to discuss them on the floor of the chamber.

But, because there has been some friction or misunderstanding between some members of the Senate Committee on Military