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tooling us? What can we believe? This is the tenor of the protest, the outery.

And the people are not directing their questioning to any bordinate: they are looking to their chief servant-the President. They have spoken of him almost as of a king. They have made of him the emblem of the country. They have even resented criticism of him as of one who by virtue of his office can do no wrong. The honor that. the American people are willing to pay-are desirous of paying to their President is the outward sign of the vastness of his trusteeship. There is nothing like it in the world. The man who occupies the Presidency must live up to the dignity of his office, but he must not, at his peril, venture too far in imposing upon the people's desire that he play a great rôle. The American people treat their President like a king, but they never forget that he is a servant. And if be forgets it they are likely to remind him of it sharply. And therefore at a time like this they are inclined to look beyond the Fuel Administrator, beyond the Secretary of War. They are likely to look to the President and to ask him some questions. They will ask him why the steps that were taken last summer to avert the calamity that we are now enduring were repudiated; why the provision made by Secretary Lane for securing an ample supply of good coal with the patriotic co-operation of the al operators was allowed to be overthrown by Secretaries Daniels and Baker. They will acknowledge the President's inclination to stand by his appointees; but they will ask why he did not stand by the intelligent and far-seeing appointee, Secretary Lane, but allowed his labor to go for nothing. They will ask the President where and who the incompetents are who were further responsible for the conditions that made a calamity the only way of escape from catastrophe. They will ask him what special competence the President of a college has as Fuel Administrator. They will ask him if other great errors and failures have been likewise kept from them. They will ask him whether he is sure that all his chief subordinates and colleagues are and have been making ready our arms and armies with all possible speed and effectiveness. They will ask him whether the men at the front their men, their sons and brothers are going to be given the chance for their lives that soldiers in these days should have. They will ask him about arms, about artillery, about airplanes. It is the President they are going to hold responsible. They have discovered that here in the tenth month of the war the country has not yet struck a blow; but instead has received from its own Administration a blow that to thousands is staggering. They are proud of their President's skill in the absorbingly interesting struggle of international politics, but they want him to turn his mind from Lloyd George and the Bolsheviki long enough to decide what shall be done to straighten out the tangle at home and to give authority to some one to manage and direct the immediate business at hand.

They have read the reports of the Senate investigation into the conduct of the War Department. They have been disturbed by what was disclosed there of the lack of munitions and cloth ing, and they have been disturbed still more by the self-complacency with which the Secretary of War has contemplated his successes and his failures indiscriminately.

They note the attempt to bring order out of chaos by the introduction of bills creating a department of munitions with a secretary at its head to sit in the Cabinet, and creating a War Cabinet to do what the President declines to do or cannot do-direct and co-ordinate for war purposes the multitudinous tasks of all departments, bureaus, and commissions of the Government. They have noted the President's rejection of these two proposals, and they are going to ask him what he proposes in place of these bills, how he plans to cut red tape-not what he plans to say, but what he proposes to do.

The American people at times can be very blunt. Their first war enthusiasm is over. It will not return. În its place they are going to substitute determination. It is a soberer quality, but it has its merits. And the more determined the American people are, the less patient are they with officials who are dilatory and incompetent. What does it matter to them if among these incompetent and dilatory officials there are some friends of the President? What does matter to them is that their sons and brothers who have gone or are going overseas be armed and qpped to defend themselves and their country.

RUSSIA'S NEW DESPOTISM

The leaders of the Bolsheviki have at one stroke outraged the rights of both the majority and the minority of the Russian people.

The Constituent Assembly was a representative body. It stood for the self-government of Russia. If it had any imperialist element, it was so small as to be negligible. Its members were almost all democrats or Socialists. Every type of each of these two political doctrines was represented, from the constitutional monarchist to the Socialist whose dogmas were as fierce as the Anarchists' if different in philosophy. Yet no sooner had preliminary votes shown that a large majority of the Constituent Assembly was anti-Bolshevik than threats of force compelled it to dissolve and disperse. Naturally, the Bolshevik leaders disclaim responsibility for the atrocious and cold-blooded murder of two of the former members of Kerensky's Cabinet, both delegates to the Constituent Assembly; but it was the armed ruffians they had allowed to intimidate the Assembly who sought out Professor Kokoshkine and Mr. Shingaroff in the hospital where they were lying ill and killed them in their beds. This deed of the Red Guards is morally the deed of the Lenine Government, and history will so regard it. It was more horrible but not more despotic than the attempt to arrest Mr. Tchernoff, Chairman of the Constituent Assembly, and not more despotic than the decreedeclaring that the Constituent Assembly would not be allowed to meet anywhere and that a Congress of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates would be recognized as having national power. The defense of the Bolshevik leaders in thus overthrowing the Constituent Assembly is that some of its members were chosen before the fall of Kerensky, but there is no evidence whatever that the Assembly did not fairly represent actual Russian sentiment. If it be said, as Lenine has said, that soldiers, workmen, and peasants make up nine-tenths of Russia's population, the answer is obvious. It is that these were just the people who did elect and must have elected the delegates. That Lenine and Trotsky deny any rights whatever to the minority-the so-called bourgeoisie, the professional classes, and the hated "capitalistic" classes-is not mere report. We have Lenine's own statement that only the "class-conscious" proletariat should hold power, that they should have "sole authority," that all the land should be seized at once, that the capitalists should be excluded from any share in affairs. This is contained in an extremely interesting and illuminating catechism in which Lenine answered categorically questions as to the status, division, and views of all Russian parties. The questionnaire was submitted to him by the editors of "Class Struggle," and reprinted in the New York "Evening Post."

The antagonism of the Bolsheviki to all others than handworkers, thus stated by Lenine, and their refusal of any rights or consideration to merchants, bankers, railway managers, manufacturers, or the intellectual workers, is confirmed by an extremely well informed report from Russia, made privately. which we have been privileged to see. That report shows that the formula of Lenine, Trotsky, and their associates involves a victorious proletariat, a fundamental social revolution with all the land for the peasant, all the control of industry to be in the workingman, and all the powers of government in the democratic societs..

Thus it is fully apparent that Russia is not to be allowed to govern itself by a Constituent Assembly representing a majority of its people, nor is the minority of non-hand-workers to have lot or part in administration. There is left simply a despotic committee claiming to represent the proletariat only, but having no other evidence of that mandate than the bayonets of the Red Guard. The early days of the French Revolution showed no more truly a Reign of Terror.

As to the international policy of Trotsky, nothing could more clearly show its folly than the statement of newspapers supporting him, as quoted in despatches of January 23 from Petrograd. that the negotiations with Germany were intended to unmask the real imperialistic nature of Germany's demands! No other nation has ever supposed that the demands would be anything but imperialistic, so that Trotsky's object seems to have been to convince himself of what every one else knew. And it is to diplomacy like this that Russia intrusts her fate!

HE military establishment of America has fallen down.

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There is no use to be optimistic about a thing that does not exist. It has almost stopped functioning, my friends. Why? Because of inefficiency in every bureau and in every department of the Government of the United States. We are trying to work it out. I speak not as a Democrat, but as an American citizen."

Senator Chamberlain, of Oregon, was speaking at a luncheon held in honor of him and of Mr. Julius Kahn of California, respectively Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs and ranking Republican member of the corresponding House committee, by the National Security League. At this point one of his hearers interrupted him by saying, “You are telling the truth, Senator.”

"We are trying, my friends," continued Senator Chamberlain, and I have burned the midnight oil in an effort to do it -we have tried to centralize the power of supplying the Army in one man who can say No, and has the nerve to say 'No' when the time comes to say it. We have reported a bill, following the experience of Great Britain and France, creating a Director of Munitions for this purpose. We have gone one step further, and we have provided a bill for the creation of a Cabinet of War, whose duty it shall be to lay out-we never have had, and haven't now-a programme to carry on this war to a successful conclusion. My friends, this is not an Administration measure; it is an American measure, and comes from Republieans and Democrats both.”

THE WAR CABINET BILL

According to the measure which Mr. Chamberlain refers to, there would be created a War Cabinet "to be composed of three distinguished citizens of demonstrated ability to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." This small body would be the medium through which the President would exercise certain of his executive powers. It would have authority to formulate policies for the prosecution of the war; to co-ordinate and direct the activities of all executive departments and officials so far as, in its judgment, it might be necessary to do so for the prosecution of the war; to determine, on its own motion, subject to review by the President, differences between departments concerning the prosecution of the war; to require information from and to utilize the services of any of the departments or officers of the Government or of the States necessary for the prosecution of the war; to issue orders and make rules to carry out these purposes. The Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy would be by this measure required to assign to duty with the War Cabinet such commissioned officers as it might. require; and the War Cabinet itself would be authorized to provide for such other employees as it needed. The salary of its members would be $12,000 each. The War Cabinet would cease to exist at the end of six months after the termination of the war.

There is no provision in the Constitution for a President's Cabinet; there is simply the provision giving to Congress power to establish officers of the United States by law and to make all laws necessary for carrying out its specified powers. It is under these general provisions that such officers as the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy have themselves been created, and it is under such general provisions that Congress would have the right to supersede these and any other Cabinet officers by new officers.

WHAT THE PRESIDENT THINKS

Whether the President would make good use of any such new War Cabinet as this measure would provide is another and an entirely different question. In view of what President Wilson himself has said about Senator Chamberlain and his bill, it is doubtful. This is the President's statement published on Tuesday, January 22:

Senator Chamberlain's statement as to the present inaction and ineffectiveness of the Government is an astonishing and absolutely unjustifiable distortion of the truth. As a matter of fact, the War Department has performed a task of unparalleled magnitude and difficulty with extraordinary promptness and efficiency.

There have been delays and disappointments and partial miscarriages of plan, all of which have been drawn into the foreground and exaggerated by the investigations which have been in progress since the Congress assembled-investigations which drew indispensable officials from their commands and contributed a great deal to such delay and confusion as had inevitably arisen. But by comparison with what has been accomplished these things, much as they were to be regretted, were insignificant, and no mistake has been made which has been repeated.

Nothing helpful or likely to speed or facilitate the war tasks of the Government has come out of such criticism and investigation. I understand that reorganizations by legislation are to be proposed I have not been consulted about them and have learned of them only at second hand-but their proposal came after effective measures of reorganization had been thoughtfully and maturely perfected, and inasmuch as these measures have been the result of experience they are much more likely than any other to be effective if the Congress will but remove the few statutory obstacles of rigid departmental organization which stand in their way.

The legislative proposals I have heard of would involve long additional delays and turn our experience into mere lost motion. My association and constant conference with the Secretary of War have taught me to regard him as one of the ablest public officials I have ever known. The country will soon learn whether he or his critics understand the business in hand.

To add, as Senator Chamberlain did, that there is inefficiency in every department and bureau of the Government is to show such ignorance of actual conditions as to make it impossible to attach ary importance to his statement. I am bound to infer that that statement sprang out of opposition to the Administration's whole policy rather than out of any serious intention to reform its practice.

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THE REPLY TO THE PRESIDENT

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In rejoinder, Senator Chamberlain said that he "did not intend to make general criticism of the policy of the Govern ment," but that he "spoke of our not having any cohesive military policy," and had said that we ought to have one. Il admitted that there had been an improvement in the Wat Department, but said that Secretary Baker could not expect to accomplish all that ought to be done because the system is at fault. Its inherent weakness," said Senator Chamberlain, "in the last analysis, is that there is no authority between the Presi dent and the various agencies to carry out details of the work. What is needed is an agency that has authority to act, coming under the President and above the Council of National Defense and the War Industries Board. It must be a clearing-house, with authority to decide things. . . . Even though I have not the support of the President, I intend to urge upon Congress the passage of these bills. I hope the people will be back of me in this effort. I think every one who heard the evidence before the Military Affairs Committee as to the inefficiency of our War De partment methods will support the bill now before the Senate."

Another Democratic Senator, Mr. Hitchcock, of Nebraska. who is also a member of the Committee on Military Affairs, is reported to have made the following statement, which was printed in the New York "Times :"

It is not for me to defend Senator Chamberlain for his speech. He can do that for himself. So far as the Committee's investigation is concerned, the truth was all taken down and reduced to writing. It shows the facts, both sides having been heard faithfully and fully. There is no room for controversy on certain points, among them:

1. That there was a disastrous delay in supplying men with clothing and overcoats.

2. A very unfortunate delay in supplying the soldiers with rifles.

3. That they have not yet been supplied with machine guns. 4. That men were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in cantonments where they were exposed to disease and sickness as the result of lack of shelter and clothing, and put in hospitals, in many cases without plumbing, or heat, or adequate nurses.

The Committee believes that these conditions and experiences were entirely unnecessary. There was ample time from the time of the declaration of war in April until the men were put in cantonments and camps in September to have furnished proper supplies if steps had been taken promptly. The country had

abundant facilities, if they had been properly used, to have overcome the conditions outlined.

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Such statements as have been made by Senator Hitchcock and Senator Chamberlain and by the New York "Times,' which declared that the defects of the Administration "must be cured" if the President "would escape a sterner calling to account later on," cannot be ascribed to partisanship, since they come from Democratic sources which have been stanch in their support of Mr. Wilson and his Administration.

WHAT THE PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO EXPECT OF THE
PRESIDENT

The bill for a War Cabinet may not pass Congress, and can scarcely come to enactment if it continues. to meet with the opposition of the President.

Some such reorganization of our Government, however, for the effective prosecution of the war is absolutely necessary. Half a dozen or a dozen departments working at cross-purposes cannot direct a war like this. The President cannot give the

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time and thought necessary to compel team-work. Such complicated machinery as that of our Government will be made not more but less complicated by the addition of a new part if that part is what is called in mechanics a "governor." A War Cabinet such as the Chamberlain Bill proposes is one way of providing that absolutely necessary reconstruction of our Governmental machinery.

Whether that suggestion be accepted or not, whether that bill be passed or not, is a question of expediency. There is no moral principle involved. The sole question is what measure, under the present circumstances, will actually best speed up the

war.

If the President does not find this proposal acceptable, is it not clearly his duty to propose a better plan for accomplishing the same end, or, at least, a plan that will end the confusion and one that he will be willing to use? This, we think, is the purport of the country-wide anxiety described by Dr. Odell on another page and the turmoil at Washington pictured by a staff correspondent in the article that follows.

THE TURMOIL IN WASHINGTON

STAFF CORRESPONDENCE

HOSE who heard Senator Chamberlain the other day at the luncheon of the National Security League in New York City, when he declared that the "military establishment of America has fallen down," would perhaps hardly realize that in conversation his tones could be as serene and almost velvety as they were this afternoon. He even discussed the "distortion of the truth" in the President's charge against him in such an admirably judicial manner as to make his listener wish that he too might meet possibly similar charges in similar manner.

Senator Chamberlain is a small, compactly built man, but he has such dignity of bearing that one never thinks of his small stature. He impressed me with a certain Napoleonic quality, too-and Napoleon was a small man. Certainly it will need a Napoleon to lead the fight against the President. Whether he wished it or not, Mr. Chamberlain is the recognized leader in that contest. I believe that he will show himself a worthy leader. Oregon has already cause to feel proud of George E. Chamberlain as one of her two Senatorial representatives in Congress. But the country has reason to feel proud of him because to him more than to any other man has fallen the task of pushing through such military measures as the Selective Draft Bill, now law, the Universal Military Training Bill, and the Director of Munitions Bill. Mr. Chamberlain authorized me to make the following statement on his behalf in my interview with him : "From Washington's letters to the Continental Congress throughout our whole history, as revealed by Upton and others, from Bunker Hill to the present day, we have had neither a military organization nor a military policy. The need of the present day is specially evident. I have been a member of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs for the past seven years, and keenly realize, I am sure, as much as any one realizes, our own deficiencies in what military establishment we have. As to buildng up a military organization, I approve the efforts of Mr. Baker, Secretary of War. Their good effect is apparent. But they do not go far enough because they do not centralize authority. Hence I introduced a bill creating a Director of Munitions, who, with definite legal powers, would have charge of the production and distribution of war supplies. To aid the President in carrying out his war policy I also introduced a bill yesterday creating a War Cabinet of three members, to be appointed by the President with the Senate's advice and consent. Acting under the President, these men would be legally empowered to devise policy, and, to this end, to co-ordinate the activities of the various Government departments. My critisms of the Government have been directed to the military side, and I and my colleague on the Committee introduced a War Cabinet Bill, in no way to diminish, but to strengthen the President's powers by affording him a new arm of power. In the same way the Director of Munitions Bill would help the Secretary of War. I advocate the Universal Training, Muni

and direct a war

tions Director, and War Cabinet Bills to aid the Government; that is my whole motive. There is only one thing for an American to do, namely, to help win the war. I am actuated by that impulse only."

Mr. Chamberlain spoke as a patriot, for his patriotism can be no more questioned than that of the President. The Chamberlain bills, however, should appeal to a Democratic Administration with possibly greater force because Mr. Chamberlain is a Democrat, and because he heads a committee the majority of whose members are Democrats.

One of our most distinguished publicists, who does not wish his name to be quoted, said to me:

Senator Chamberlain has said: "We need to empower a small body of men who shall sit continually and do nothing else but make plans and carry them out, so as to speed up the war and bring it to a successful conclusion." England and France long ago saw the necessity of centralizing war control. In England, especially, the three-member War Cabinet, reduced from the fivemember body first proposed, affected and solidified the nation as nothing else has done. Suppose we followed suit. Suppose we had one man from the Cabinet to represent the Administration [the Chamberlain bill would debar Cabinet members, however]. Of course that man would be Lane, the only Cabinet member who represents Presidential timber, by the way, and what a pity that he never can be President; he was unfortunate enough to have been born in Prince Edward Island, you know. But if the Chamberlain bill should go through and you took a man outside of the Cabinet, then I would like to see Garrison.

Second, let's have a man who may be regarded as an Administration man, too, for he helped to get it elected, and has worked with it and for it. I mean Samuel Gompers. England found it wise to put a representative of labor, Henderson, into her War Cabinet. We should be equally politic. We hardly realize what we owe to the labor element at this time of crisis, and who has kept that element in line?-Gompers.

Third, there is the rub. You hear that men like Farrell, of the Steel Corporation, or Schwab, of the Bethlehem Corporation, should be chosen, because they understand how to deal in a great way with great affairs. Then you hear that men like our exPresidents should be chosen, because they have had their chance in dealing with affairs. Personally, I would name Elihu Root. He is one of the men of finest caliber in our public life. And, fortunately, he is a Republican. Any bill establishing a War Cabinet should not pass Congress without providing that the members should not all belong to the same political party. In my opinion, Root combines as does no one else two of the necessary qualities which must be represented in the War Cabinet; he is an authority both in international law and in the art of war. The turmoil in Washington occasioned by the President's severe denunciation of Senator Chamberlain is well illustrated by the conflicting opinions on the Garfield coal order. One of the largest manufacturers and employers of labor spoke to me this morning as follows:

"Our company has been working on many special Govern

ment orders for vital supplies. According to the Garfield decree, we must stop that work for the Government. Thus the Government orders us to work for it and then suddenly orders us to stop. We did not see why we should stop when we knew that the Government needed the goods. We knew that two departments of the Government had unconsciously pitted themselves against each other. We put it up to the Government and got exempted from the order.

"But why throw us and our employees into such astonishment and turmoil? Is this a Government, or is it not? Manufacturers and business men are well-nigh crazed with alarm. If the Government can spring such an order on the country overnight, what will it not do next? For both capital and labor the 'overnight' was worse than the decree itself. Of course there are plenty of people who saw long ago that some such order had got to come. They saw it last August when Congress directed the President to proceed with power and when he appointed Garfield. If either the President or Garfield had understood the country's real situation, we would have had a drastic order then, when the milder weather would have enabled us to stand the strain. But now, and in zero weather! And the man has had the cheek to offer the zero weather as an excuse for the order! If he knew anything about the coal situation, he knew last summer that the country needed repose. He also knew that winter weather was coming. Why did he not act like a man of common sense and order the repose when the country could best have taken it-in the summer, instead of waiting for winter?

"The decree operates severely as to labor. The Outlook Company will doubtless keep up the salaries of its personnel, and the personnel will pay for value received by working extra hours on regular work days. But how about the companies who cannot do this or bring it about? How about the Steel Corporation? Must its vast army of employees be thrown into the street? You can almost hear the cries of the hungry children of those employees! If the corporation cannot pay its employees full wages, then, I say, the United States Government should-that is, if it expects to justify its decree.

jumped on the agreement entered into by Mr. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, Judge Fort, of the Federal Trade Commission, and Francis S. Peabody, of Chicago, a large coal operator appointed by the Council of National Defense as the Chairman of its Committee on Coal Production. They had fixed a price of $3 a ton at the mines-a fair agreement all around. Mr. Baker insisted on $2-an unworkable price. If any Adminis tration official is ultimately responsible for the present situation. it is not Garfield.

"But the decrce will do good in one way. It will jar our people into the knowledge that we are at war. I have always thought that it would take an actual armed invasion by the Boches to make us realize that. Now, however, we have had a Boche invasion from the inside. It is not easy to face either. We are alarmed. Our National industrial heart's blood is threatened--and unneces sarily threatened. Suddenly we see, as never before, our greatest enemy, namely, our own inefficiency and empty-headedness. "It is all very well to say, 'We shall muddle through.' But there would be no reason why we should have to muddle through had Wilson and Baker and Garfield acted in time.”

On the other hand, a high Administration authority, and one thoroughly conversant with the coal situation, said, when I asked him his opinion of the wide public protest against the order: "Must Garfield go? What a question! Why go? Just because of last week's coal order? But who was really responsible for that? Baker. He upset the apple-cart last June when he

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"With the power granted by Congress, Mr. Wilson had to name a Fuel Administrator, and, as you know, he named the President of Williams College. You hear that no college president has had the necessary practical experience for the task. Perhaps that is so. But Garfield had the essentially fair-minded, irenic way of approaching any problem, and as to expert advice has had as his right-hand man Rembrandt Peale, the coal expert, chosen for this position by the coal operators themselves and recommended by the Federal Trade Commission. Peale has been right on the job all along. To say, then, that the recent order is out of harmony with the coal trade is to say what is

not so.

"There is only one trouble with that order. It ought to have been issued last. summer instead of this January. Except as affected by weather, conditions were worse then than now. But here is the point, and it is not generally appreciated: Garfield's supervision has made conditions better, not worse. Despite that, the weather of the past few weeks has brought about a situation that demands the surgeon.

"You hear that Garfield kept saying last autumn that there was no shortage of coal. There was none apparently, for we were producing fifty million tons more than the year before. I do not believe the papers quoted all Garfield said. Doubtless he said that there was no shortage of coal if you can get it delivered. Perhaps Mr. Garfield did not realize that the immense new demands of our industries and transportation upon coal and the demands of our allies in the war would more than use up the extra amount produced. But what I am sure he did realize was that the coal would have to be delivered in order to be of use to any one. To get railway tracks clear was the real object, I believe, of the Garfield order. It was really not a Garfield but a McAdoo order. If people want to find fault, let them find fault first with Baker, second with McAdoo and only third with Garfield.

"Again, you hear that a patriotic people do not find so much to blame in the order itself as in its suddenness. Well, what would you do? Here is an Administration trying to do its best but clogged by Congress. Just let Congress into this and you would have had unending debate. Time is of the essence of this matter. Garfield did the patriotic thing. He got the best advice he could, he made up his mind, he took his courage in both hands and acted. Even suppose his plan faulty in some detail, would you have him rescind it as a whole? No; and the proof of its general applicability is that criticisms against it are becoming fewer every day. I say. Stand up for Garfield." ELBERT F. BALDWIN.

Washington, D. C., January 22, 1918.

WE WANT THE FACTS ABOUT THE WAR

BY JOSEPH H. ODELL

altogether right or altogether wrong-superman or Cali Democracy rests upon the postulate that the majority of citizens possess discrimination.

Dr. Odell was commissioned by The Outlook last autumn to visit personally many of the training camps of the country, and to talk with. enlisted men, officers, and Administration officials. The result was the series of articles which have appeared in The Outlook's pages under the general title of "The New Spirit of the New Army." The series was completed last week. In this work Dr. Odell came naturally into possession of information which gives the following paper special authority. THE EDITORS. 'N the smoking compartment of a Pullman car a half-dozen men were recently discussing the conduct of the war by the United States Government. One was bitter and contended that we had made every possible and conceivable mistake; another asserted that we were sui generis among the belligerent nations and were entirely free from trace of blunder, misdirection, or spiritual misapprehension; four admitted that we had done some things exceedingly well, but that we had fallen far short of perfection in several notable instances. The four were indubitably right and represented the true temper of a discriminating democracy. Not even a democracy can be

During the latter part of 1917 I went from camp to camp and from cantonment to cantonment investigating the mor and the morale of our New Army. In the pages of The Outl I have given almost unstinted praise to the achievements of the Commission on Training Camp Activities-a part of our Department. The work being done by Mr. Raymond E. Fosdick and his associates stands unparalleled in the history nations and armies. More than 3 million of our citizen sold

War

are benefiting by a physical and moral environment such as no civilian community could provide; they are learning priceless habits in which disciplinary, educational, and ethical elements blend in a degree which tends toward the creation of a most vigorous and self-respecting manhood. As a Nation, we may freely congratulate ourselves upon the manner in which we have met our highest obligations toward the men we forced into a position of moral peril by compelling them to adapt themselves to a strange and inexorable social environment. Whether anything else has failed or not, the Fosdick Commission of the War Department has been a brilliant success.

Altogether we have about one million five hundred thousand men under arms. That itself is a remarkable achievement. Congress passed the enabling acts with hardly a splutter. The drafted men accepted their guerdon scarcely less enthusiastically than the volunteers. Industry closed its ranks and almost instantly increased its volume of production. Democracy assumed the semblance of autocracy, but instinctively every one acknowledged that it was a temporary necessity with ethical justification. With one consent and cheerfully a people proud of their freedom surrendered their most precious liberties for the time being. If the war teaches no other lesson, it has impressed upon the world once for all the lesson that the freest democracy and the firmest discipline can exist at one and the same time.

Dollar diplomacy was long considered a curse, but dollar democracy is a glory. The United States is financing half the world. We have not stinted one of our allies in cash or credit. When our Government began to speak in terms of billions, even our daily wage-earners nodded approval. If the first and second Liberty Loans had each been twice the amount specified, each would have been oversubscribed. Men and women looked upon the call as a sacrament. Peter the Hermit, Francis of Assisi, John Wesley, or Dwight Moody never saw a nobler exaltation of spirit than I saw when the Liberty Loan, the Red Cross, and the Young Men's Christian Association campaigns were carried into the factories, mills, and homes of the country. A speaker had only to say that America needs your dollars to back your sons, and the money was outpoured with uncalculating devotion. Something splendidly chivalrous was transforming, or had already transformed, the soul of America. And up to the close of 1917 the people lived in the glow of that new expe rience-a transfigured race. Even as late as December 31 it would have been physically risky to speak with disapproval or doubt of the manner in which the Government has conducted

the war.

And now, within a month, all has changed. Everywherein Congress, in the press, among the men who slaved for patriotic loans or philanthropic gifts, amid the rank and file of the citizen body-there are doubt, anxiety, fear, and foreboding. It is like a cloud which comes suddenly over a mountain and casts the plain into shadow. The America of January, 1918, is a land of purgatorial gloom compared with the America of December, 1917. Every one is talking about it; in every hotel, on every train, around every hearth, about the stove of every country store, men are asking what it means. Can it be that in the critical hour America has failed? America, the heir of all the ages, the exemplar of democracy, the product and the protagonist of liberty--can it be that America has failed? The Amerea of Washington, the America of Lincoln? A sense of fearful dread is freezing the souls of the people. The multitudes, the commonalty, the proletariat," the folks at home," as Lincoln loved to call them, refuse to believe it. And yet there are doubt, anxiety, fear, and foreboding on their brows.

It is more than nine months since President Wilson declared that a state of war existed between the United States and the Imperial Government of Germany. More than nine months, and the official voices of Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Serbia are still calling to us piteously for help. During the thirty-two months preceding April, 1917, the war cloud was moving obviously westward, threatening to involve us in the conflict. Forty-one months, nearly one hundred and seventy weeks, almost fifteen hundred days, since the boundaries of Belgium were violated and autocracy challenged democracy to a fight without quarter-and yet America is scarcely in the lists! The mind and soul of America have sensed the perspec

tive, but they are growing infuriated or melancholy about some of the details. On the whole, among the generality of men and women, it is a combination of incredulity and shame which is felt and expressed. I wonder whether Washington realizes this-official Washington, superior Washington, professional Washington, salaried Washington, expatriated Washington! Does Washington know?

The generality of men and women, the multitudes, the commonalty, the proletariat, "the folks at home," may not express themselves in academic terms, but they are asking very blunt and pertinent questions. There are certain things which they want to know and which they have a right to know, because they are footing the bills, giving their sons, and hazarding their most cherished liberties.

The thing about which they are most anxious is the absolute sincerity and the ethical earnestness of every one in a position of administrative responsibility. Americans cannot forget the subtle influences which disabled Russia. They want to know why Dr. Harry A. Garfield should be the dictator of the one vital and dynamic factor of industry. When a paper like the Troy "Record," published within thirty miles of Williams College, the president and editor of which are Williams College alumni, makes an editorial statement as follows, the matter becomes one of public discussion: "It is just the sort of an order [the coal administrator's fiat suspending industry for five days] that would be issued if Germany had control of our machinery. It will give more comfort to Prussia than to America. And the fact that Mr. Garfield was formerly strongly pro-German and later practically a pacifist will aid in ending public confidence in him in many quarters." (The Troy Record," Friday morning, January 18, 1918.)

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The American people want to be reassured that they have. an all and altogether American Administration, eager and able to put one hundred per cent of America's energy and resources into the war at the earliest possible moment. There is reason for this anxiety when they remember that even France, fighting for her life, can produce a Caillaux, and England, with her back to the wall for the first time in history, has had its Haldane episode. Viscount Haldane has been entirely cleared of the charge of unpatriotic pro-Germanism. But the point is that his quite open admiration for certain features of German civilization before the war broke out in 1914 so gravely affected English public opinion in war that he could not successfully hold office. Still, let this be recorded quite clearly and emphatically: Americans make no charges; they are simply disturbed, anxious, and profoundly solicitous. For democracy to break down just at the moment when it is dedicated to making the world safe for democracy would be diabolical irony on a cosmic scale. And if a democracy cannot be trusted with a knowledge of the facts as they are, then democracy is unworthy of a safe place in the world. To withhold the facts, encouraging or discouraging, from the people is to act upon a fictitious need of secrecy; it is pretty safe to assume that Germany knows all that it wishes to know of American preparations with quite approximate accuracy. Therefore what I am pleading for is such a frankness and candor on the part of the Administration as will re-establish public confidence. When Senator Chamberlain, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, makes the terrific statement that "the military establishment of America has broken down" for the reason that there was "inefficiency in every bureau and every department of the United States Government," it ought to be met with something more than an official stigmatization of exaggeration and an apologetic based on the unparalleled magnitude of the task.

But the people of the democracy which is dedicated to make the world safe for democracy want to know many more things. and very specific things. Caspar Whitney has come back from France with an appalling story of deficiencies in our Army at the front. In the New York "Tribune" of January 13, 1918, he says that our troops have only "five days' advance rations," that there is a "shortage of shirts and ponchos," that there are "no reserves of heavy shoes,' no rubber boots," " no machine guns or reserves of rifles,' no artillery save that got from the French," "no labor with which to complete cantonments," insufficient truck and transportation facilities-in brief, a scan

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