PAUL THOMPSON THREE BEARS, CHIEF OF THE BLACKFEET INDIANS Three Bears, who died a few days ago, was one of the oldest Indians in the country. He is supposed to have been born about 1820, as he remembered John Quincy Adams as the Great White Father. He thus lived through a century in which the white man completed his winning of the country from the race of which this chief was a typical representative WESTERN NEWSPAPER UNION GENERAL FREDERICK W. SIBLEY, INDIAN FIGHTER General Sibley took part in expeditions against the Indians in campaigns as far apart as that against the Sioux in 1876 and that against the Utes in 1907. He won a first lieutenancy for bravery in his first campaign. He was born in Texas in 1852 and died in Rockford, Illinois, February 18. At one time he was Commandant at the West Point Military Academy TWO NOTABLE FIGURES IN AN ERA OF OUR HISTORY-THAT OF THE "WINNING OF THE WEST"-WHICH IS NOW CLOSFI of the nations. Likewise, also, they are profoundly convinced that any peace made with Germany on terms less than the defeat and overthrow of Germany's militaristic masters would be a German victory, to be followed by the age-long evils that such a victory must bring. A negotiated peace, with the Teutonic autocrats undefeated, means the vindication of violated treaties, ruthless brute force justified, vile assassination condoned, and the end of international righteousness and honor. Nothing has changed the moral elements of the situation since June, 1917, and the words the President uttered then are the unalterable convictions of the people now. Peace with Germany in the near future, while the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, Hindenburg, and Tirpitz are still supreme, spells a German victory, and, as Rudyard Kipling said recently, this implies that "the Hun ideal, the Hun root-conceptions of life, will take the place of the democratic ideal throughout the world." That is, in the future even America will have to adopt the Hun ideal and the Hun standards and the Hun attitude to protect ourselves from the Hun, whose continued existence we sanctioned by treaty. This alternative to winning the war now by force of arms the American people fully realize. And they turn, and must continue to turn, their face resolutely away from it. In his address to Congress, December 4, 1917, calling for a declaration of war on Austria-Hungary, President Wilson said: We are the spokesmen of the American people, and they have a right to know whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we propose. They are impatient with those who desire peace by any sort of compromise-deeply and indignantly impatient-but they will be equally impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our objects are and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest of peace by arms. No one could have expressed the mind and soul of the people with more finality than President Wilson did in the words italicized above. Those words express the mind and soul of the people with finality to-day. Mr. Wilson continued: I believe I speak for them when I say two things: First, that this intolerable Thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force, which we now see so clearly as the German power, a Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed, and, if it be not brought utterly to an end, at least shut out from the friendly intercourse of the nations; and, second, that when this Thing and its power are indeed defeated and the time comes that we can discuss peacewhen the German people have spokesmen whose word we can believe, and when those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to accept the common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world-we shall be willing and glad to pay the full price for peace and pay it ungrudgingly. We know what that price will be. It will be full, impartial justice-justice done at every point and to every nation that the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends. With a great shout of joy the American people accepted the President's pronouncement. They accepted it as final; they would have been happy indeed if he had never said anything since except to repeat and reiterate those brave and noble words. They believed then that the masters of Germany represented "a Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for cove nanted peace." They believe it now, and even more firmly. They believe that the sword must be smitten from the hand of the Kaiser before America or her allies can talk of "full, impartial justice" to Belgium, to Serbia, to Rumania, to AlsaceLorraine, to Armenia, or to the servile souls and the warped minds of the German people. There cannot be another Congress of Vienna-that would be to crown a crime with a fool's cap and bid Liberty laugh while she dies. Or, to put it in Mr. Wilson's words, uttered in the same speech, concerning the Central Powers: Our safety would be at an end, our honor forever sullied and brought into contempt, were we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very existence of democracy and liberty. This the people of America firmly believe to-day. From April 2, 1917, to the closing word of his lofty utter ance of December 4, 1917, Mr. Wilson articulated the ideals. the conclusions, and the convictions of the American people. It was as if the mind and soul of a hundred million people found expression in a single voice. With the President's address to Congress on January 8, 1918, there came about something extremely difficult to describe. It was not a divergence of views, and certainly not an opposition of aims; it seemed rather as if the people were still moving along on the same lofty and austere plane of dedication while the President had paused and even descended to a lower and more mundane level, as if he had left the highway of inflexible resolution to open a stall in the market-place. Perhaps the description is inexact. But I am interpreting the people to the President, and not the President to the people. In the speech of January 8 Mr. Wilson was defining the objects for which we are fighting, and it is generally known as "The Speech of the Fourteen Terms." Whatever its merits, the address failed to arouse the enthusiasm of the Nation; people read it once, twice, thrice, as if searching for something they expected to see but could not find. The clarion note of a passionate devotion to righteousness seems to be lacking. There is nothing in it of indignant rebuke for the continued and unabated criminality of the German autocrats, nothing calling the combined powers of liberty to hasten the overthrow of despotism. Once, twice, thrice, the people read the address to see whether we were still dedicated to the task of crushing the " Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace." Then they came . to the tabulations of the Fourteen Terms. They had no quarrel with those terms, but they did not like the arrangement, the market-place manner, of the display. In particular No. VIII caused them anxiety: 66 All French territory should be freed and the invaded territory restored and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. Alsace-Lorraine! "The wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 . . . should be righted." How? Why not say, frankly and finally? To the American people, simple, straightforward, and blunt in their honesty, there is only one way in which that horrible wrong can be righted-to give Alsace-Lorraine back to France. Any other solution, whether it be called "autonomy" or “self-determination," would seem like treason to the soul of France by the mass of American citizens. To fail France in that, her one all-consuming desire, after sending our troops to the shrine of Lafayette, would be an unpardonable failure of spiritual partnership. "The wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 ... should be righted." And a wrong is not righted until it is made right. If an armed kidnapper steals two of my children, justice is done neither to me nor to the children by taking the children away from the thug and putting them in an orphanage. But when the American people read the President's address to Congress of February 11, 1918, they candidly admitted every where that they were confused. As a body, they do not believe themselves to be any more far-sighted than Premier Lloyd George and Lord Curzon, and, like the two British leaders, they could see no real difference between the attitude of Count Czer nin and Chancellor von Hertling. Indeed, the American people as a whole are ingenuous and unsophisticated, and they could see no evidence on February 11, 1918, that Austria had ceased to be what she was on June 14, 1917-in Mr. Wilson's words of that date: Austria is at their mercy [the military masters of Germany]. It has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon choice of its own people, but at Berlin's dictation, ever since the war began. That is, Americans still believe that Austria is the volitionless vassal of Germany, and that if Austria seems to be more compliant to-day it is because Germany has some shrewd gain to make by the apparent compliance. Even granted that there is a possibility of driving a wedge between Germany and Austria, Americans are not enamored of the game. They are undisguisedly afraid that in the attempt another wedge may be driven between America and the Alliessomething for which Germany has plotted and worked these many months. On the whole, the American people are living and praying and sacrificing for one thing, and one only-to crush the accursed and blood-reeking Thing that is "without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace," the soulless Thing that taught the Caliban Turk how thoroughly to wallow in lust and gore. So Americans were left practically untouched by the President's speech of February 11. They read his four principles with lusterless eyes and emotionless hearts. "A general peace erected upon such foundation can be discussed." "Maybe," they said, "but it's too deep for us now. We could understand licking the Hun into decency, and we can do it, by Jingo! but we don't know the rules of this new game." Then they read the four principles again : First, that each part of the final settlement must be based upon the essential justice of that particular case, and upon such adjustments as are most likely to bring a peace that will be per manent; Second, that people and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that Third, every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims among rival states; and Fourth, that all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to break the peace of Europe, and consequently of the world. On February 12, the morning after the speech was delivered, I was in the smoking compartment of a Pullman, reading and pondering some interpretations of the President's attitude by Lincoln Colcord, the unusually well informed Washington cor L respondent of the Philadelphia "Public Ledger." "What does this mean," asked Mr. Colcord, "if it does not mean that specific war aims cannot be absolutely defined until the actual negotiations are undertaken? What does it mean if it does not mean that the Alsace-Lorraine and similar territorial questions are subject for negotiation rather than for military decision?" I was trying to answer Mr. Colcord's questions when three or four men broke into conversation about the President's address. With unerring instinct, they fixed upon the four principles and tried to interpret them to one another. "Too much for me," one of them said, "too post-graduate." Another closed the discussion by saying, emphatically, "Oh, h- let's can the Kaiser, and then there won't be anything left to argue about." And I believe that to be the mind of America to-day. For that purpose Americans will give their sons by millions and their dollars by billions. That is all they ask of their President and Commander-in-Chief-to end the war, not by diplomacy, or by negotiation, or by political penetration, but by smashing "the ugly face" of the "Thing" once for all. While he is doing it the soul and the wealth of the whole American people will be his to command. Americans do not want a negotiated peace. They believe that no such peace can be made as will save our National honor; that no such peace can be made as will be just to our allies; that no such peace can be made that will not leave Germany the victor. Americans do not believe that their President should take the initiative looking toward such a peace. Americans everywhere are terribly afraid that any such peace will put this country in the light of having deserted our allies on the eve of victory after their years of glorious sacrifice for us. Americans are not afraid of the embattled strength of the German monstrosity, but they are afraid of seeming to quit before they have grappled with it. THE Y. M. C. A. IN JAPAN STAFF CORRESPONDENCE FROM GREGORY MASON IKE many other Western institutions, the Young Men's Christian Association has caught hold in Japan. From its humble beginning in the Oriental Empire in 1887 the Y. M. C. A. has come to include Associations in eighty-five Japanese cities and towns, with a combined membership of ten thousand five hundred. But figures do not adequately indicate the good that the Y. M. C. A. is doing in Japan or the true reach of its influence there. One of the most significant phenomena in the social life of Japan is the growing importance of her young men. Japan has always been a nation governed by old men, but youth is now beginning to come into its own. The influences which surround the young men of Japan are not nearly as healthy as they might be. The cities are filled with licensed vice, and it is in the cities where live the most important class of Japanese young men, the students. Tokyo alone has a student population of thirty thousand college students and seventy thousand high-school boys. Neither Buddhism nor Shintoism, the two prevalent religions of Japan, has proved capable of providing any adequate safeguards for Japanese youth. But the Y. M. C. A. is filling the breach. It is promoting a healthy interest in athletics. Physical instruction courses are attracting thousands of Japanese young men who might otherwise be spending their recreation hours over sake cups in the company of geishas. The Y. M. C. A. at Seoul, Korea, for instance, has 1,400 members weekly in its gymnasium classes. The Tokyo Association recently organized the first "Oriental Olympic Games," which were a great success. The Japanese are a practical people, and the Y. M. C. A. appeals to them because it is practical. The work it is doing in education and in industry, for example, is noteworthy. The Osaka Y. M. C. A. now has nearly three thousand men in its educational classes, while eight of the city Associations combined have an enrollment of nearly seven thousand in their courses for students. Before it had been in existence more than ten months the Popular Education Bureau of the Y. M. C. A. had had an attendance of 87,000 at its lectures and at its instructive moving-picture shows given in public schools and factories. The Tokyo Y. M. C. A. alone last year placed 815 jobless men and boys in good positions, and the Yokohama Y. M. C. A. is conducting a most valuable free information service for immigrants going through that port, most of them on their way to America from Russia. This sort of service is appreciated by the intelligent Japanese. Dr. Inazo Nitobe, a member of the Faculty of the Tokyo Imperial University, and the well-known author of "Bushido," says: "I have a strong conviction that the Young Men's Christian Association is the most efficient instrument of doing His will in the East. I have seen its work, and my conviction is confirmed as my observation extends." "As a Baron Shibusawa, a sort of Japanese Carnegie, says: business man, I believe it is better policy to make buildings fireproof from the start than to put up frame structures and pay high insurance, and even then lose the whole structure. It is on that principle that I believe in the Young Men's Christian Association. It is a powerful preventive agency. It keeps young men from going wrong instead of waiting until they are corrupted and then trying to reform them. It provides moral fireproofing. and in Japan that is the greatest need of our young men.' One more testimonial should be reported, it is so significant. For many years the Tokyo post-office heads had relied on Buddhist priests to give moral instruction to the twenty-seven hundred postal clerks. Coming to the conclusion that the Buddhists were not "making good," they offered the Y. M. C. A. a chance. The Y. M. C. A. has now held this honor for two years and apparently has it permanently, for every one is delighted with what the Association is doing. In the directing personnel of the Y. M. C. A. in Japan there are some foreigners, but their number, in proportion to the number of the Japanese leaders, is steadily decreasing. And the strength and quality of the Japanese leadership is remarkable and is constantly increasing. Tokyo, Japan. THE IDEALS OF A NEWSPAPER A dedication of the declared functions of a newspaper and its high purposes is chiseled in stone upon the lofty walls of the new building of The Detroit News. Quoting the President of the News, "These inscriptions are not hidden in the foundation to be forgotten. but placed where they are ever before the eye of all, a reminder of service rendered and those ideals we are all pledged to attain." Mirror of the public mind; interpreter of the public intent; troubler of the public conscience. Reflector of every human interest; friend of every righteous cause; encourager of every generous act. Bearer of intelligence; dispeller of ignorance and prejudice; a light shining into all dark places. Promoter of civic welfare and civic pride; bond of civic unity; protector of civic rights. Scourge of evil doers; exposer of secret iniquities; unrelenting foe of privilege and corruption. Voice of the lowly and oppressed; advocate of the friendless; righter of public and private wrongs. Chronicler of acts; sifter of rumors and opinions; minister of the truth that makes men free. Reporter of the new; remembrancer of the old and tried; herald of what is to come. Defender of civic liberty; strengthener of loyalty; pillar and stay of democratic government. Upbuilder of home; nourisher of the community spirit; art, letters and science of the common people. SOLVING THE HOUSING PROBLEM OF A GREAT A NEWSPAPER PRACTICALITY NO BAR TO BEAUTY IN CONSTRUCTING WORLD'S NEWSPAPER is a semi-public institution, holding a tacit franchise from the people. Its obligation is to serve the public with a truthful account of things transpiring and, from time to time, to interpret these happenings in the light of experience and observation. It is because this obligation is so intimately associated with the welfare of the indi- Because foreign fields seem fairest, since NEW PLANT OF THE DETROIT NEWS viewed from afar, there is a tendency to expect the expression of this ideal to be found not in the United States but, say, in the home of La Prensa in Buenos Aires, Le Temps in Paris, or the London Times. Yet of all the publications of the world, that which is now most imposingly and appropriately housed is not even in our The most perfectly equipped and one of the largest and most attractive newspaper buildings in the world The Outlook Advertising Section own American metropolis, New York,but in "dynamic Detroit." The Detroit News. Considering the history of the publication, this is not strange. It has been acutely conscious of the social, economic and political tendencies of its time, and eager always to give voice to the newer aspirations. Its very foundation in 1873 was a loud protest against the bigotry, the half-conscious corruption and the reactionary trend of those "blanket sheets' which marked the end of the period of personal as contrasted with institutional journalism. And the amazing thing was that the publisher of The Detroit News achieved instantaneous success financially through the simple expedient of making his paper small, nonpartisan and interesting. When James Edmund Scripps founded The Detroit News, on a capital of $5,000. he was content to dream of a four-page newspaper, with a circulation of 10,000. But repeatedly he was forced to extend the limits of size and circulation, and to-day The News has the largest daily circulation in America outside of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Kansas City-over 220,000. The confidence that was inspired from its inception in 1873 has persisted throughout the community, which alone can account for the fact that the copies of the paper sold each day in Detroit exceed the number of English-speaking homes. When it seemed that the paper never would go beyond four pages, the founder "farmed out" the advertising as a concession; yet in 1916 The Detroit News was first among all the newspapers of America in the volume of advertising carried, and in 1917 it reached the extraordinary total of 19,658,770 lines of paid advertising in the daily and Sunday issues. Its dominance is measured by the patronage of local advertisers, over half of whose appropriations for advertising in Detroit week-day newspapers went to The News, the balance being divided among three other publications. These, however, are the material signs of progress. They have the flavor of the countingroom rather more than of the editorial department, which always has been and always must be the chief concern of the public and the publisher. No newspaper in the country is more adequately served by news-gathering agencies. There are only three operating broadly and successfully in the United States whose field is both American and foreign: The Associated Press, the United Press and the International News Service. Many newspapers operate with a limited service from one; most with the full service of one only; a few with the advantages of two at their command. The Detroit News receives all of the news that all of these great associations can gather; and in addition it has, with the Chicago Daily News, a relationship which provides it with the most complete foreign news report ever developed by a newspaper. In other words, the world is the "beat" of The Detroit News, and it is as painstakingly "covered " any restricted section of the municipality which sustains the paper. as is with all the facts and only the facts upon which opinions are based. Insistence upon this policy has characterized the paper from its beginning. The Detroit News has dared in its new home to chisel large in stone on its parapet the declared functions of the paper and the high ideals to which it is dedicated, well knowing that their complete realization was a task of the future, but determined that they should be held constantly high before the eyes of the staff and the world instead of being hidden in a corner-stone to be forgotten. The birthplace of The News was a twostory frame, house with a one-story brick addition for the presses. Later it was sheltered by a two-story building 60 x 30 of new fields of civic architecture also made not only possible but natural the installation of hitherto undeveloped facilities and devices for the effective handling of the great and growing circulation of The News. It was not entirely a coincidence that placed hand-wrought steel grilles and vestibules of medieval virtue in craftsmanship in the lobby, and the most modern and ingenious of mechanical devices in the adjacent press room. It was merely an expression of the rule that persisted: "First, utility; second, beauty and propriety; third, cost." As the human side may never be neglected by the editorial department, so it was constantly in the mind of the builders; VIEW OF DETROIT NEWS PRESS ROOM The multi-unit system is used, permitting a combination of all or any parts of 24 press units. The total production capacity is 216,000 copies per hour of a 32-page paper. This vast printing machine constituted the largest single order for printing presses ever placed, the manufacturers state The reading public of Detroit and Michigan has not been slow to appreciate the unusual endeavors of The Detroit News. The readers have discovered that the zeal which has resulted in the maintenance of one of the largest local staffs in the country results also in a comprehensive attention to all the productive news areas of the world. They have learned, too, that most respect is due to that editorial page which speaks to readers who have been furnished feet, which was considered quite ideal. To-day it is issued from a stone structure that fills half a large city block, and presents, with its rich simplicity and massiveness, the character of a public institution whose purpose and intent are so plain that no name need be displayed for identification. Its five floors, 280 x 150 feet except the mezzanine, yield for exclusive newspaper purposes 149,400 square feet, and a cubical content of 2,673,000 feet. In spaciousness as in efficiency it knows no equal; yet that same prophet-defying progress, which made necessary the casting away of three sets of plans, has already resulted in the utilization of every last inch of space and may at any moment make additions inevitable. The spirit which permitted the opening The Outlook Advertising Section and throughout the building not only have labor saving devices everywhere been installed, but the closest attention paid to the contentedness and physical well-being of the staff. To detail the equipment, from the president's suite to the rest room, from the press room to the hospital and the café, from the 8,000-volume library to the art department with its native murals, would be to list all those conveniences, requisitės and things of beauty which might find a place in the finest newspaper plant yet constructed. And now the publishers are peering anxiously into the future, wondering what next great step is necessary in order that The Detroit News may to-morrow, as yesterday and to-day, be beckoning to an oncoming generation of builders of democracy. |