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ministration both England and France were tending to follow it through the force of circumstances, England's effort to find a basis of trade relations with Bolshevist Russian being as futile as France's support of anti-Bolshevist revolutionary movements.

The Republicans and their Irish supporters in the 1920 campaign revived the old demand for the exemption of American shipping from the Panama Canal tolls, but this and various other differences with England which arose toward the end of Mr. Wilson's Administration were left over for settlement by the new President. More urgent, however, was another ancient issue now revived the California land question. In 1917, when America was just entering the war and could not afford any dangerous entanglements on the Pacific, the Lansing-Ishii agreement was negotiated with Japan. By this the United States recognized Japan's "special interests" in China, particularly in "the parts to which her territory is contiguous," while both powers professed agreement on the principles of Chinese independence and territorial integrity, and the open door. However necessary this concession in order to protect an exposed flank in time of war, it was regarded with much alarm by friends of China, whose wrath was later aroused by the action of the President at the Peace Conference in agreeing to the cession of Shantung to Japan. There was a renewed antagonism between American and Japanese interests in certain quarters, and the American Army in Siberia, if it did nothing else, at least kept the Japanese from seizing Vladivostok until the Americans had left.

With this background, the situation created by the revival of anti-Japanese agitation in California seemed more or less disquieting, but when a more stringent land law was enacted by the Californians in November negotiations between the two Governments began at once and are still going on at the close of the Administration with good prospect of agreement.

The President's unpopularity had been so violently expressed by the election of November 2 that it was bound to be mitigated soon after, and this natural reaction was aided by the failure of the Republican Congress to accomplish anything in the short session and by President-elect Harding's slowness in deciding among candidates offered for the Cabinet and policies put forward for his attention. As President Wilson prepared to turn over the executive duties to his successor there was already evidence that the American public was returning to a greater appreciation of his services. As a token of the estimation in which he was still held by the more intelligent circles abroad, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to him in December, 1920; and European statesmen who had opposed him at the Peace Conference were already expressing surprise at learning that Mr. Harding believed that the League of Nations was dead.

Copyright New York Times.

Published through the courtesy of the New York Times.

In Flanders Fields

By Lieut. Col. John McCrea

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch. Be yours to lift it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, tho poppies blow
In Flanders fields.

America's Answer

By A. W. Lillard

Rest ye in peace, ye Flanders dead! The fight that ye so bravely led We've taken up! And we will keep True faith with you who lie asleep, With each a cross to mark his bed, And poppies blowing overhead Where once his own life blood ran red! So let your rest be sweet and deep In Flanders fields!

Fear not that ye have died for naught,
The torch ye threw to us we caught!
Ten million hands will hold it high,
And Freedom's light shall never die!
We've learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders fields!

Recessional

By Richard Linthicum

I

The tide is at the ebb, as if to mark

Our turning backward from the guiding light; Grotesque, uncertain shapes infest the dark

And wings of bats are heard in aimless flight;
Discordant voices cry and serpents hiss,

No friendly star, no beacon's beckoning ray;
We follow, all forsworn, with steps amiss,
Envy and Malice on an unknown way.
But he who bore the light in night of war,
Swiftly and surely and without surcease,
Where other light was not, save one red star,
Treads now, as then, the certain path to peace;
Wounded, denied, but radiant of soul,

Steadfast in honor, marches toward the goal.

II

The spirit that was Peace seems but a wraith,
The glory that was ours seems but a name,
And like a rotten reed our broken faith,

Our boasted virtue turned to scarlet shame
By the low, envious lust of party power;
While he upon the heights whence he had led,
Deserted and betrayed in victory's hour,

Still wears a victor's wreath on unbowed head.
The Nation gropes-his rule is at an end,
Immortal man of the transcendent mind,
Light-bearer of the world, the loving friend
Of little peoples, servant of mankind!

O land of mine! how long till you atone?
How long to stand dishonored and alone?

To Woodrow Wilson, March 4, 1921.

THE FOUNDERS OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

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BALDRIDGE IN Stars and Stripes

Make firm, O God, the peace our dead have won,
For folly shakes the tinsel on her head

And points us back to darkness and to hell,
Cackling, "Beware of Visions," while our dead
Still cry, "It was for visions that we fell."

-Alfred Noyes

Workmen's Compensation

WE must hearten and quicken the

WE

spirit and efficiency of labor throughout our whole industrial sys tem by everywhere and in all occupations doing justice to the laborer, not only by paying a living wage but also by making all the conditions that surround labor what they ought to be. And we must do more than justice. We must safeguard life and promote health and safety in every occupation in which they are threatened or imperiled. That is more than justice, and better, because it is humanity and economy. From President Wilson's Speech of Acceptance at Shadow Lawn, September 2, 1916.

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