Copyright by Violet Oakley: from a Copley Print copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Inc., Boston. The Dedication of the Living to the Preservation of the Union-Gettysburg, 1863. The subject of the paintings is "The Creation and Preservation of the Union, Penn's Principles of Government and His Prophecy of Peace." found, instead, some of the positive things they did, some of the truths concerning 'the light that was in them.' It will be when spiritual light again floods the hearts of men as dazzlingly that the great ones will appear who are to reconstruct this battered globe. Is not the time almost ripe another Holy Experiment, a trial of Unity?" Miss Oakley has expressed with a fine and dignified symbolism and distinguished artistic skill the spirituality of her own ideals and the ideals of the great the bleeding world almost ready-for founder of the Keystone State; those ideals that are to-day so deep in the thoughts and hopes of all of the allied nations of the world; the great thought of a world-wide democracy a real unity of nations for the preservation of a world-wide peace. With its realization-our country playing its own unselfish part, making its sacrifices for humanity-let us hope will come in fact the ideal commonwealth that Penn prophesied to be governed by the principles that governed his conduct and that expressed his ideas of government. Miss Oakley, in her reply to Governor Brumbaugh's address, said of her work: "A profound wonder overwhelmed me as I learned more and more of the great, positive constructive Principle informing the founder of Pennsylvania's first government. It can never be adequately described, much less understood, by any negative statements as to what these early Friends did not do. Such as: 'They did not believe in fighting,' 'did not carry weapons,' 'refused to kill under any and all circumstances,' 'were not worldly,' etc., etc. "We know that to-day no one could live and be thus wholly negative. It would have been just as impossible then. I Penn's effort to establish a pure democracy was not a failure, and his prophecy, in the words of Isaac Sharpless, promises to be fulfilled-after two hundred and twentyfour years: "The world will return to it when times are riper. There will be another trial of the principles of a pure democracy, with perfect civil and religious liberty, perfect justice to neighbors, never attacking, and without need or provision for armed defense, which will be permanently successful." The artist is now at work completing the four other decorations of the series. Miss Oakley was a pupil of the Art Student's League, of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, under Howard Pyle and Cecilia Beaux, and in Paris under Amand-Jean, Collin, and Lazar. She has won the gold medal of honor of the Pennsylvania Academy, the medal of honor of the Architectural League, and a medal of honor from the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Her other work includes important mural decorations both in public and private collections. J. B. C. Copyright by wiet Oakley; from a Copiey Print copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Inc., Boston. Detail from "Unity" Decoration. Supreme Manifestation of Enlightenment in International Unity "-Prophecy of William Penn. Vital Chapter Opened UNCERTAINTIES OF THE OUTLOOK BY ALEXANDER DANA NOYES THAT 'HAT the attention of the world at large, and with it the attitude of the financial markets, has in the past month been powerfully diverted from the course of the military campaign to the political, financial, and economic probA New and lems which suddenly arose, every one is aware. The submarine episode itself was a proof of this; for the activities of these German pirate ships had now a different and much graver significance, in the face of nearly exhausted food reserves at the end of a deficient harvest, from what they had in the days of abundant grain supplies during 1915. But this was only one of the novel aspects of the situation. The financial, political, and social events which succeeded one another in America, the extraordinary Russian situation, and the visible tension even in Germany's internal politics combined to convince the world that a new and deeply interesting chapter was opening in the history of the period-a chapter whose end nobody ventured confidently to predict and, indeed, whose actual character few undertook to describe. THE 'HE world's food situation had been foreshadowed months ago by the decrease of 400,000,000 bushels in last year's American wheat crop and of a thousand million bushels, or 24 per cent, in the wheat crop of the The Short- world. The exhaustion of age of Food reserves at the end of the harvest year-our new wheat crop and England's could not help out the situation until July-and a very bad start for the early sown American wheat would have brought matters to a head even without the submarines. The rise in wheat on the Chicago market to $3.50 per bushel on May 11 was the landmark of this movement; a price by far the highest in our agricultural history, whose maximum figure in the past, long regarded as a marvel, was the $2.85 of the paper-inflation days in 1867. In immediate sequel followed the practical suspension of wheat speculation on the grain. exchanges and the placing of food distribution in the hands of an American government commissioner. N a very different category of events, The Intensive Campaign for the Great Loan yet equally testifying to the new experiences of the America of war time, came the striking incidents which attended the floating of our government's $2,000,000,000 war loan. This episode was in many ways interesting. The United States was in actual fact the originator of what may be called the intensive campaign for popular subscription to a war loan. Jay Cooke, in 1862, undertaking on commission the floating of $400,000,000 United States bonds on which Wall Street had looked coldly at the Treasury's terms, started his 2,500 subordinates to canvassing all towns and villages of the country. By the visiting of every house like bookagents, the enlisting of local committees, the placarding of town-halls and postoffices and railway stations, the constructing of patriotic appeals through the newspapers, and the promotion of public meetings, he drew on reserves of capital previously unsuspected and actually elicited, in the time prescribed, $15,000,ooo more subscriptions than the authorized total of the loan before he could stop the wheels of his organization. IN short, the United States invented this method of floating war loans, as it invented such other appurtenances of war as the armored ship and the submarine, It is possible to say that between the decade following the Civil War and the present year, there had been no such thing as absorption of a United States loan for personal investment by American citizens. When, therefore, England and Germany in 1915 adopted the American plan of 1862 and assailed the small investor to insure his subscription to the war loans offering bonds in denominations as low as $20 and, in England's case, arranging five-shilling "vouchers," a collection of which might be funded into war bonds-the American public merely looked on with the interest of a detached outsider. Even when the British Government was urging its citizens to wear old clothes, old boots, old dresses, and to buy a war bond," when the Lord Mayor of London spoke on the loan to an audience of ten thousand in Trafalgar Square, when huge posters all over Germany proclaimed that "the new war loan stands under the sign of Hindenburg" and that "every mark held back strengthens the enemy," our people did not realize that all these European expedients were a leaf out of Jay Cooke's book. Still less did they realize that in May and June of 1917 they would themselves be applying and improving, for a war loan of their own, these very methods. The "whirlwind campaign of publicity" for the $2,000,000,000 United States Government loan was for this generation a new experience, and undoubtedly a wholesome one. It is certainly something when men or women with only fifty or a hundred dollars to spare can feel that they have invested such savings with their own government. What Hamilton meant by his much-misunderstood assertion that "a national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing, was that the ties of political loyalty between government and citizen would be drawn closer by the sense of a generous financial interest by each in the other. UT while our own people watched BUT Effect of the news from Russia this notable development of events in America itself, their eyes were repeatedly turned to events in a very different quarter of the world, yet bearing as intimately on the fortunes of the European war as the occurrences in this country. The sudden news in the early part of May from Russia, apparently indicating complete political disintegration, necessarily had profound effect on international opinion. There were moments when, in reaction from the premature jubilation over what had seemed to be a bloodless revolution— harmoniously concurred in by all factions of the people, and with a statesmanlike cabinet securely seated in control and about to prosecute war with greater vigor-the general public's mind rushed to the opposite pole of inference. The talk of the day began to concern itself with discussion whether Russia was not preparing immediately to conclude a voluntary separate peace with Germany, or whether, with discipline in the army utterly destroyed, Hindenburg would not easily advance on Petrograd and eliminate Russia from the conflict. News of the resignation of general after general at the front, including, finally, Brusiloff, winner of the sweeping series of victories over Austria in 1916, followed news of insubordination among the soldiers and of interference by the so-called "Workmen and Soldiers' Council"; an organization apparently most analogous to a labor federation in whose hands (Continued on page 52, following) |