International

non-resisting, peaceful remonstrance rather than for violence or active disobedience of the Government.

An excellent statement about the Indian situation was made lately by Dr. Shastri, of the University of Calcutta. In a lecture at Princeton, he said:

I favor a continuation of association with England. India must learn the art of government and administration. To separate suddenly from the Empire would be suicide. India needs an evolution of national character. Before I went to Canada I did not understand what was meant by a dominion within the Empire. Why, Canada has the highest kind of selfgovernment. She is a free country in every sense of the word. Such a free country would I see India.

I have a strong faith in British statesmanship. In my opinion, India cannot entirely exercise self-government under present conditions, as there would be mob rule.

TURMOIL IN IRELAND

THE

HE present state of things in Ireland might make even an optimist believe what one pessimist has said: that the Irish, Protestant and Catholic, those who favor a republic and those who believe in the Irish Free State, all are too prone to use their passions rather than their brains. As we write Great Britain is retarding the withdrawal of troops from Southern Ireland and is strengthening her forces in Ulster to protect the border from forays by her unneighborly neighbors to the south; forces of the Irish Free State are drawn up on their side of the division line; men of Ulster have been captured and carried south over the border.

All this turmoil and danger is said to have begun with what should have been a trifle-the arrest of some ardent

Sinn Feiners who attended a football game in Belfast with revolvers in their pockets. They were arrested for carrying concealed weapons, and their excited fellow-patriots in the south demanded their immediate release and, without waiting to see what would happen, began sporadic guerrilla warfare. The incident is nothing; the real cause of this trouble is that sectional hatred which seems stronger now than even before. The prospect for a harmonious, united, single Ireland is not promising.

Add to the other troubles of Ireland the strong support that De Valera seems to be gaining in his reasonless agitation for a republic and nothing but a republic, and the situation seems to have portentous indications of possible civil war in the south, as well as sectional war in the northeast. It has been pointed out that De Valera's own substi tute treaty (the one that he tried to get his own southern Parliament to demand in place of the agreement at London) did not contain even the word republic, nor anything that meant republic. His followers are emotionalists and lovers of strife rather than of concord and prosperity.

We have in this country just now a veteran in the struggle for true selfgovernment in Ireland, Sir Horace Plunkett. We are extremely glad to see remarks in a recent address of his in New York which represented the view, not of an unreasoning optimist, but of a quiet and sensible lover of Ireland. Sir Horace said:

There is nothing in any of these happenings to make us fear for the future of Ireland or to lead us to believe they will mar the course which the treaty has laid down. They are just the inevitable result of what Ire

land has gone through in the past fifty years, during which time the fiercest political passions have been aroused in the Irish minds.

That Sir Horace is not pro-British in his view was indicated by two or three of his replies to questions on this occasion. One auditor asked him to tell "the difference between Casement and Car

son." He instantly replied, "One they hanged and one they made a judge." He also declared that Carson represented a policy antagonistic to fourfifths of the Irish people. His belief in the ultimate unity of Ireland was vividly put in the sentence: "God made one Ireland, and Lloyd George proposed to make it two. We cannot have peace, progress, and prosperity in Ireland without unity."

THE ITALIAN CABINET AND THE ROMAN CHURCH

A

T the moment of the Pope's election the Italian Cabinet falls. During recent months the tendency of Church and State in Italy to come together has increased. Thus the King decorated Cardinal Maffi with a high order-and he is the only prelate ever so honored. Certain mutual privileges have been recognized by the Vatican and the Italian Government. When Sigor Bonomi succeeded to power, he stated that the relations between Church and State were more promising. Although the Giolitti Cabinet contained three members from the Catholic (or Popular) party, the three of that party who entered the Bonomi Cabinet were more eminent and they occupied the important positions of Ministers of Justice, Agriculture, and Public Works.

The official visit of condolence of one of these Ministers, Signor Mauri, to the Vatican the day after Benedict XV's death aroused strong feeling among nonCatholics and anti-Catholics, which was strengthened by the announcement that in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate eulogies of the late Pope would be delivered by the Presidents of those bodies. The Opposition caused hesitation concerning the eulogies, and the Catholic party remonstrated as to any delay. The Cabinet was thus beset behind and before.

After reviewing the situation, Signor Bonomi decided to act as M. Briand had done in a similar exigency, and, without waiting for an adverse vote in the Chamber, resigned. The King has had much difficulty in inducing some one to take his place.

The fall of the Bonomi Cabinet may have been hastened also by the fear that the new Pope (who, like Cardinal Maffi, is accounted as very favorable to a rapprochement between Church and

State) might over-emphasize the influence of the Church.

Before the Papal election the Italian Government announced that it would bring no influence to bear upon it. As to possible outside interference, Cardinals are forbidden, under pain of excommunication, to express a veto of any civil power (or even preference) either directly or indirectly, before or during the Conclave. This prohibition was one of Pius X's reforms. Before that a veto might under certain conditions be exercised by Austria, France, or Spain. This state of affairs had become an anachronism, just as is any insistence on the Pope's temporal power.

naval sanction lurks anywhere in the background or under cover of their plain and distinct clauses.

If any are inclined to regard such an agreement as futile because no provision is made for its enforcement by an international force corresponding to the constables, sheriffs, and police maintained by all civil governments to enforce obedience to national law, they do not, we think, sufficiently consider the fact that there are in the modern state agreements which the law will not enforce, probably a great many more than those which it will enforce.

All promises by parents to children, most promises by wives to husbands and husbands to wives, nearly all social engagements of every description, all com

I

F the

agreements negotiated at Washington between the great world Powers are confirmed by the Governments concerned, they will make a fundamental change in international relations. No provision whatever is made for the enforcement of these agreements by military arms. On the contrary, simultaneously with these agreements is a pledge to reduce the navies on which nations have been wont to rely for the protection of their overseas possessions.

A recent issue of the "National Geographic Magazine" contains a map of the Pacific Ocean. It is dotted with islands as the heavens with stars. The whole ocean might be called an archipelago. These islands are owned by different Powers and inhabited by different races. The boundary-lines separating them run through the intervening ocean and are, of course, invisible. The representatives of the different Governments are not all wise, cautious, or considerate statesmen. The opportunities for controversies are numerous. The four Powers, America, Great Britain, Japan, and France, have agreed to respect one another's rights in this entire region, and if any controversies should arise between them or if their rights should be threatened by any other Power they will "communicate with one another fully and openly in order to arrive at an unto the most efficient derstanding as means to be taken, either jointly or separately, to meet the exigencies of the particular situation." That this was not thought by any of the representatives at Washington to imply any use of force, jointly or separately, is perfectly clear from the following statement made by Senator Lodge to the Conference and accepted without objection:

There is no provision for the use of force to carry out any of the terms of the agreement, and no military or

property on the payment of money unless reduced to writing or accompanied by some transfer of money 'or goods, called in law a "consideration," are of this description. Probably public subscriptions to public charity could be collected by law, but they never are; possibly a public speaker who had promised to speak at a dinner or public meeting and failed to fulfill his promise could be sued for damages; but such suits are never heard of, though such failures are not uncommon. Amiel in a pregnant paragraph has made it very clear that modern society depends very largely on unenforceable promises:

In every union there is a mysterya certain invisible bond which must not be disturbed. This vital bond in the filial relation is respect; in friendship, esteem; in marriage, confidence; in the collective life, patriotism; in the religious life, faith.

we

The bonds which unite society are invisible. We are not galley slaves tied together by chains; are freemen, united by moral bonds, by forces within, by regard for one another's interests and respect for one another's opinions. Can we trust to similar moral forces for the establishment and maintenance of international relations? The Washington Conference thinks the experiment well worth trying. We think the Washington Conference is right. We hope that the Senate will be of the same opinion.

It is true that the action of the Washington Conference in trusting to the national honor for the enforcement of international obligations is not unprecedented. At the close of the Civil War the United States demanded damages of Great Britain for her disregard of international law. The question was by mutual consent referred to arbitration. The Arbitral Court awarded damages. No international police force existed to collect them. None was necessary. Great Britain fulfilled her promise and

paid the bill. It is true that if she had refused to do so the United States might have declared war against her; but it is also true that she would never have been guilty of so great an act of folly. Trusting to national honor to enforce international law is not wholly new; but the Washington Conference has carried that trust so much further than it has ever been carried before that it may fairly be said to have made a fundamental change in international relations and to have provided the basis of an unarmed peace.

Are we sure that civilization has made such progress that it is safe to trust national honor to enforce international law? No. We are not sure. Germany threw away her national honor for the doubtful tactical advantage of invading Belgium in order to attack France. Soviet Russia has openly avowed that faith is not to be kept with capitalistic nations. Turkey's history gives us no ground for faith in her promises. We ought not to trust Powers which have proved themselves untrustworthy. We ought to be cautious in trusting those Powers which have not proved themselves worthy of trust. But the past history of the Powers which have joined in the Washington Conference justifies a policy of mutual confidence. Certainly such a policy affords a far safer basis for international fellowship than the creation or any plan for the possible creation of an international military and naval force, whether permanent or temporary. Such a force large enough to compel one of the nations to submit to the will of the others would itself be provocative of suspicion and jealousy, whereas it is evident that the expression of international trust furnished by the action of the Conference has already done much to promote international peace and good will.

T

AN ATHLETIC TRAGEDY

re

WO misguided communities cently entered into a contest for supremacy at professional football which has had a far-reaching and disastrous consequence. In their endeavors to win a game upon which a great number of bets had been placed the two communities bought the respective, and no longer respected, services of a majority of the football players upon the teams of the University of Illinois and of Notre Dame.

One or two players on a university team can sell their services without indicating that there is anything fundamentally wrong with the athletic spirit

of the institution with which they have been affiliated. But when a group of players "go over to the enemy" in a body, surely those who have the good name of their institution at heart should go to the bottom of the matter at any cost. The guilty players have in the present instance been debarred from the honor of representing the universities they have disgraced, but until it has been made clear that the conditions which made their defection possible have been eradicated the names of the University of Illinois and of Notre Dame will not have been cleared.

Some of those who have attacked players of the type under discussion have made the mistake of inferring that there is something disgraceful in being a professional athlete. Of course such an inference is absurd. It is just as honorable to earn a living by one's physical prowess as it is to earn it in a broker's office or by one's pen. Nor is there anything inherently virtuous in the status of the amateur. It is character that counts and not the label when the question of honor is involved.

The element of dishonor enters the field when a player who is a professional masquerades as an amateur, an act which cannot be accomplished without lying, deception, and trickery. That this fact should not be recognized and understood by the athletic representatives of two such universities as Notre Dame and Illinois constitutes a tragic comment upon the effectiveness of our system of education. If ideals and morals are to be found anywhere, they ought to be found in our universities.

Let us hope that the conditions disclosed at Illinois and Notre Dame represent isolated outbreaks rather than any general lowering of college morale.

imbibes the impression that the Bible is an infallible authority upon all subjects. His religious teaching in the Church and the Sunday school is fragmentary; no attempt is made to give him any systematic religious instruction. He therefore systematizes it for himself. The result is something like this:

Six thousand years ago God made the world. He made it in six days and launched it on its voyage. Since that time he has done nothing more to it except occasionally to interfere with its natural operation, as in the Deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the crossing of the Red Sea. But that sort of thing he does not do any more. He made man perfect, as he made everything else perfect. But the first man disobeyed God, and all the disease and sin and misery in the world has resulted from that disobedience.

This child goes to school carrying some such idea as this with him. And before he gets through the high school he finds all secular teaching set on a different key. Life is progressive. Creation is continuous. As the tree grows by a progressive process from a seed, so the world has grown by a progressive process from chaos. As the man grows by a progressive process from the babe, so the race has grown by a progressive process from a prehistoric cradle. The child's religious impression has been that life is static, with occasional divine interventions. His entire system of school education is founded on the assumption that life is a continuous progress. There is no one to tell him that "evolution is God's way of doing things." And it will not be strange if he rejects the Bible which has never been interpreted to him, the Church which has never interpreted itself to him, and re

OF THE BIBLE

T almost the same time that I received a request for my opinion on the bill introduced into the Kentucky Legislature forbidding the teaching of evolution in schools supported by the State, treated in last week's Outlook, I received two letters, apparently from parents, dealing with the same subject, one of which reads as follows:

Could Dr. Abbott give an article explaining how the theory of evolution can be reconciled to the Biblical account of creation in teaching young children? E. J. F.

I answer, By teaching them the nature and uses of the Bible.

A child grows up in the home and

a bar, not an inspiration, to progress.

Paul says, "The law is good, if a man use it lawfully." By the law he means the Old Testament law. The Bible is good if it is used for the purpose for which it was given. But it was not given to teach geology or zoölogy or anthropology or any other of the modern sciences. What is its legitimate use is very clearly defined in the Bible itself. It "is profitable . . . for reproof, for correction, for instruction in right

eousness."

For reproof: Its stories furnish standards by which we can judge ourselves and see wherein we are wrong.

For correction: Its counsels furnish directions by which we can guide our selves into right paths.

For instruction in righteousness: Its maxims are nuggets of spiritual wisdom; its biographies are dramatic illustrations of vices to be avoided and virtues to be emulated.

You can find better information as to the scientific processes of creation in Lyell's "Geology" or Darwin's "Descent of Man" than in the first chapter of Genesis; but nowhere a more illuminating illustration of the tragedy to which the spirit of lawless disobedience always leads than in the Garden of Eden story. Nowhere more concise and comprehensive interpretation of social morality than in the Ten Commandments, or more inspiring instruction in the nature and sources of personal righteousness than in the Sermon on the Mount. Probably nowhere in so short a compass the sorrowful end of the disappointed life of the profiteer in all ages as in the life of Jacob; certainly nowhere the story of a life so worthy of our reverent imitation as that of Jesus Christ, the model and the inspiration of Christendom for nineteen centuries.

The mother can render an invaluable service to her child if she can make herself acquainted with the spirit of modern education and can pursue the studies of her children with them as their intellectual companion. This is a far greater service to the world than any she can render by taking part in political reform or popular philanthropies. But if she cannot find or make the time, or has not the training, or cannot procure the books, she can at least study the Bible with her children and make it clear to them that it is not a book of science but a book of religious experience. If she is studying with them the first chapter of Genesis, when they have read together the eleventh verse, "And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind," they can go out and see in their garden God repeating this creative process. When they come to the second chapter and read that "God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul," she can explain to her children that this makes the difference between man and the cattle. The cattle are God's creatures, we are his offspring; and she can impart to them her own ambition to live as becomes the offspring of God.

If we use the Bible as a scientific authority, we misuse the Bible. We use

it aright when we use its stories of spiritual disaster and spiritual achievement as warning, instruction, and inspiration for our own lives.

LYMAN ABBOTT.

F

AR back in the minds of the men who have led American labor to its present complex and effective form of organization for many years there has been this thought:

"Some day we shall unite the mine workers and the railway workers of the country into a great offensive and defensive alliance."

In England the workers formed not a dual, but a triple, alliance. The transport workers and the railway men's union joined fortunes with the miners. They pledged themselves to stand or fall together. The mightiest coalition of labor the world has ever seen resulted from this binding alliance; but it snapped when the test came. The three-way strike which was to have paralyzed industrial Britain and brought Lloyd George and his Cabinet to their knees broke on the rocks of dissension at the very hour it was to have become effective. The strike became a oneunion strike of coal miners. So fe'l, twenty months ago, the triple alliance in England, and in falling shattered hopes of a dual alliance in America.

But now these shattered hopes of labor are being rebuilt. On February 1 John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers, officially addressed identical letters to the presidents of the sixteen major unions of railway employees asking them to meet with him for the purpose of forming such an alliance. His reasons for issuing the call are thus set forth in a telegram which he sent, several days afterward, to the writer of this article:

The invitation issued by the mine workers to the officers of the sixteen major railroad organizations is intended solely for the purpose of organizing the ranks of labor to offset the gigantic attempt to reduce their earning capacity and, in consequence, lower their standard of living.

The interests now combined in an assault on labor are not guided by the rule of fairness and give no consideration to the principles of equity and fair dealing to the workers. If they are determined, as they seem to be, to go on with their programme, then it is idle to bandy words. These interests are arbitrarily applying the elements of coercion and force, and the workers cannot permit themselves to be submissively slaughtered.

There is no intent on the part of the sponsors of the economic alliance to dislocate industry or disturb the public tranquillity, but self-preservation is the first law of nature. The

1 Since this article was written a meeting of delegates of the United Mine Workers and of delegates from the railway brotherhoods has been called to assemble at Chicago on February 21. It is announced that the aim is to secure some sort of an understanding or alliance be tween the coal and railway workers. Delegates from the miners' unions will also take part in the conference between railway delegates and delegates from farmers' and Socialists' bodies also going on at that time in Chicago. -THE EDITORS.

men employed in the mining and rail-
road industries should recognize their
mutuality of interest.

Regardless of intent, an offensive and defensive alliance of these workers, if achieved, would hold the power to still within less days than there are fingers on one hand the wheels of every railway train, mill, and factory in the United States.

Lewis's call for a meeting to construct the super-union brings vividly to mind the contrast between conditions of thirty months ago, when the first actual step was taken toward coalition, and the present. One pictures the setting of that first move toward coalition:

It is a day in early September. The country is reeking with prosperity. Men talk superlatives, think in billions. Labor is in the saddle. The dollar is debased to half its normal worth. Any laborer can get his price, and his price is high.

The United Mine Workers of America are met in biennial convention in the city of Cleveland, home of the aristocracy of unionism, the railway brotherhoods. Packed in the big stone armory are more than two thousand delegates, hailing from every union coal field in the country.

The first of these comes forward, formally to welcome the delegates. In the impressive graying-haired figure the Convention recognizes the "Grand Old Man of the Brotherhoods," Warren L. Stone, Grand Chief of the Locomotive Engineers. They rise and cheer. He waves them to silence and the meeting is on.

He speaks for the brotherhoods. "We want," he says, "to be closer to you. We want to work in closer harmony with you than ever before, The time has come when, in solving these great economic questions, there is no class in labor. There is only one interest, and that is the man who toils for his bread." Applause that mounts swiftly to tumult tells the temper of his audience.

So were conditions then. But nowThe country is faltering back from the slough of depression. Men thank God for their jobs-those who have them and work to keep them. Labor with shriveled price-mark drugs the market. The dollar is a precious thing again. The unions are reeling from blows hammered with cruel frequency and effectiveness upon their inflated wage scales.

The miners of America are in desperate straits. Two hundred thousand are entirely out of work. As many more are working half-time or less. A wage contract is about to expire and slashing cuts confront them. Already the outer edges of the union have crumbled, now in Kentucky, now in West Virginia, now in the Southwest, under the pressure of

the economic law that is working its downward way of revision in the pay envelope.

A call for a conference with mineowners to work out a new wage scale has been answered with peremptory refusal to meet. The owners are posting their own wage scales, marking up on their bulletin boards the wages they will pay for this and that kind of work, without even so much as a hint of consultation with union leaders. There are two men for every job.

Will spring see a militant super-union at work to close the country's industries in the name of labor? Or a singlehanded fight by the coal miners, itself terrible in its effect upon reviving industry? Or a clenched fist instead of the open hand? Or a half-hearted, withering strike of union miners, petering out in collapse of their magnificent organization?

One of these situations almost in certainty will come to pass. Which one? Hardly the coalition, we think; but the answer lies in the laps of the gods.

When Warren Stone spoke for harmony and close communion between the two great classes of workers, he proposed no new thing; but his proposal found quick response. Three days afterward, or September 12, 1919, the United Mine Workers adopted the following resolution:

"Resolved, That this Convention instructs the resident officers and the International Executive Board to bring about such a conference with the railway workers' organizations for the purpose of formulating an alliance whereby the organized workers in these two great basic industries may act jointly on all matters of mutual interest . . . and on all matters where the interests of the workers in these industries may be advanced by joint action."

Meetings were held almost at once, as directed, but no effective plan of coalition was ever worked out. The idea lay dormant till the other day, when Lewis revived it.

Meantime the miners have been through a great strike to success, have tasted the bitter of a subsequent industrial depression, and have come to what looms as a fight for their existence as an organization; and the rail workers have gone from victory to victory down to wage cut after wage cut, with more cuts still in prospect. Both classes of workers have had almost parallel experience.

The time to the strike is short, however, and as this is written an effective coalition seems unlikely. Lewis prob

ably spoke too late. Had he spoken two months ago, before the Government brought the railway labor leaders and the railway executives together to thresh out their differences, the pros

That is the way it looks now, but scenes shift swiftly in industrial Amer,ica, and to-day's prospect is often

B

Lewis proposes would outrank anything else of its kind in size and power throughout the world.

The membership of such a union

would approach the two and one-half million mark.

A super-union such as that would have power to put even the American Government to the supreme test.

ETWEEN the first and last sessions of the Armament Conference the man whose invitation brought it to Washington, and whose spirit and purpose it was designed to embody, remained in the background. Not once did President Harding appear at its deliberations; not once did he attempt to direct its proceedings. As it opened he expressed in two speeches the hope of the Nation for what it might serve to accomplish; but he specified no task for it, he made no effort to control it, he did not even undertake to expound before it his own will. As it closed, he came before it, as he said, "to make acknowledgment" for what it had done, to outline its achievements, and to express gratitude to the participants; but neither expressly nor by inference did he take any credit to himself.

Now he has brought the treaties which the Conference has framed to the Senate. He has appraised their value, he has indicated the effect that they will have if adopted, he has described the spirit which they will promote among nations, he has set forth the ill consequences that would follow the failure to put that spirit into practice; but here again he has left himself out as even a factor in originating the plan or the idea of which the treaties are the product. On the contrary, ignoring himself, he stated as the distinction of this Conference that "the Senate-indeed, the Congress has already advised in favor of one-and inferentially of two-of the treaties" and that "the naval pact negotiated and signed" is in accordance with the "expressed wish" of the Senate.

From not one word, from not a single act, of President Harding's is there any hint of the indisputable fact that the Conference stands apart from other Conferences because the philosophy which it has undertaken to apply to international affairs is what may properly be called the Harding philosophy-the philosophy which Warren Harding has put into practice through all his life. Some men seek for achievement by dominating others. They believe in putting things through. They believe in concentrating power and responsibility, and they are willing to accept the responsibility if they can have the power. There are other men, and they are rarer, who seek for achievement by securing the cooperation of others. They believe in getting things done; that things which are "put through" often really never

"get done." They want others to work with them, share their power, and feel a corresponding responsibility. And when their common task is finished they are ready to acknowledge the common share in the common credit. As editor of a newspaper, as Senator, and as President Mr. Harding has never sought to dominate his associates. He has made his way by renunciation.

This, it seems, is not merely with him a matter of temperament. It has been his philosophy of life. It is the theory on which he has deliberately and consciously acted. He has shared the ownership of his newspaper with his associates, and with the ownership its responsibility and its authority. Similarly, as a politician he has made a practice, not of giving orders, but of taking counsel. And now as President he has followed his theory not only in the conduct of his Administration as it affects domestic policy but also in foreign affairs.

It is the Harding philosophy, the Harding attitude toward all problems of conduct, that has led to the attempt to solve the vexatious and controversial international problems of this post bellum period by means, not of organizing power, but of summoning nations to conference. It is this philosophy that explains the President's willingness to leave the interests of the Nation at this Conference in the hands of the appointed delegates, and to reposê such confidence in his Secretary of State as virtually to make him, and not the President, the chief figure of the Conference as well as its guiding officer. And it is this philosophy that has made of the Conference itself an unprecedented example of renunciation of power by the nations themselves.

This is not the imaginative interpretation of an American, naturally partial to the influence of his own country. It is the interpretation of the Nation's guests from other lands. In particular, it is the interpretation given by the authorized spokesman of the country which has, most unjustly, been widely accused of lacking in appreciation of the spirit of the Conference. "Gentlemen, when the list is drawn up," said M. Sarraut, the head of the French delegation, as he addressed the sixth plenary session, "when the inventory is being taken of what we have done here, I am sure that no sordid thought will enter the mind of any of us to estimate what he may

have gained on the one side or what he may have lost on the other. No one of us will want to measure his advantages by those that may have been gained by his neighbor, and the same may be said of the sacrifices which have been made

by us all." And possibly the tersest and most discerning expression of this common interpretation of the Conference was made at the same session by Count d'Alte, of Portugal, when he said: "Gentlemen, we owe to America much besides the generous hospitality that she has extended to our Conference. We owe to her the inspiration that has made it what it is. The Conference has been to a far greater extent than any other that I can recall a conference of renunciation. We have here seen great nations abandon long-established and deeply cherished national policies and renounce advantages once thought essential to the welfare of their people, and this not for value received, but simply out of a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

To ascribe motives for these acts of renunciation is as easy and as idle as to ascribe motives for any act. Those who believe that the motives were purely selfish and sordid cannot be persuaded by any argument or refuted by any facts. There never was any act, however good or useful, for which an evil motive might not be found. On the other hand, a good motive never made an unwise act wise, or a harmful act beneficent. Whatever the motives may have been, the fact remains that at this Conference the nations did renounce claims, advantages, ambitions, which they might have chosen to retain and did not.

America had the opportunity, and used it, to set the example. At the outset she renounced her power to win the race in naval armaments. Great Britain renounced her mastery of the sea. France renounced her right and her natural desire to remain a first-class naval Power. Italy renounced all possibility of attaining the place as a naval Power to which her maritime skill might well entitle her. Japan renounced a naval position in the Pacific corresponding to the importance of her merchant marine. America and Japa renounced the right to fortify certain portions of their own territory. The four chief naval Powers of the Pacific renounced all right to make, without consultation with all the others, an at