ended, German war-vessels were back in their base behind their defenses and British war-vessels retained their privilege of moving at will through the high seas. If we were to believe not only the Germans but also some other narrators of that event, we would accept this battle as a great German victory. Admiral von Scheer made a report concerning it which has only recently been pub lished. As this report was made to the Kaiser, it naturally does not understate the facts that seem favorable to Germany.

Even if we grant as verified all the claims that the Germans make in their own favor, even if it is conceded that the British losses were much greater than the German losses (Admiral von Scheer's report puts his own losses at 60,000 tons and the British losses at 169,000 tons), even if all the criticism that has been made of the British strategy in the battle were to be accepted as justified, the facts remain that Great Britain retained control of the sea and that Germany failed to weaken that control in any particular.

If there is any consolation for the supporters of a football team which is beaten by a decisive score to count up the yards gained in rushing and in punting and to discover thereby that the team with the smaller score gained a greater number of yards, if there is any consolation to be found by the supporters of a defeated Presidential candidate in the moral victory secured by those who cast their ballot for their convictions though the ballots on the other side outnumbered them, there may be consolation for the Germans in the facts concerning the battle of Jutland. But those who count victory on the football field by the score of the game and who count victories in elections by the majority of the votes will continue to believe that moral victories in war such as the Germans won at the battle of Jutland are not the kind of victories which armies and navies are designed to win.

Corporation Counsel while Mr. Whitney was at the head of New York City's legal department. When Mr. Stetson left the Corporation Counsel's office, his ability had attracted the attention of another lawyer, Francis M. Bangs, doubtless the leading man in his profession in the metropolis until the rise of James C. Carter and Joseph H. Choate. The firm of Bangs and Stetson, succeeded by that of Stetson, Jennings, and Russell, became one of the most generally known among lawyers throughout the country because of the acumen and skill brought to corporation work. Much important railway litigation and industrial organization in America has been managed in the office of the Stetson firm. Mr. Stetson himself was organizer of the United States Steel Corporation, and from its inception was its general counsel. He was also general counsel for the Northern Pacific, the Erie, and the Southern Railway Companies, the International Mercantile Marine Company, and other large organizations.

In the famous Tilden-Hayes controversy Mr. Stetson served as counsel for Mr. Tilden-he had been Governor Tilden's secretary at Albany. During the interval between his terms as President Grover Cleveland became Mr. Stetson's law partner. Perhaps more than any other man Mr. Stetson was the power behind the throne in the Cleve land Administrations, especially the second. When it was a-question whether the Government could maintain gold payments, he upheld the President in remaining true to the Tilden traditions of anti-inflation and hard money.

Mr. Stetson's was a lifelong devotion to the Tilden-Whitney-Cleveland Democracy; he exhibited the rugged independence which distinguished it. For instance, in the attempt to elect Mr. Sheehan to the Senate in 1911 Mr. Stetson declared:

Though I may be one of those Democrats who have. . . occasionally voted the Republican ticket, I am also one of those who have voted the Democratic ticket whenever permitted and allowed by the organization to do so with self-respect. . . . I repudiate absolutely the suggestion that a Democrat, convinced that his party or his country will be injured by the adoption of a certain course, is in honor bound to vote for the adoption of that course because of caucus and convention control. The strength and hope of the party is in the adoption of principles and candidates who will represent and command the willing spirit of the entire party and not in the coerced statement of any of its members.

Those who have attended a Commencement at Williams College or a

convention of the Episcopal Church, at both of which Mr. Stetson was invariably to be seen, were conscious of his power in other directions. He was graduated from Williams with the class of 1867, along with Hamilton Wright Mabie, Henry Loomis Nelson, Governor Dole, of IIawaii, and Stanley Hall, late of Clark University. Williams College has had no more real benefactor than Mr. Stetson, who gave to it unostentatiously not only great sums of money but, what was far more precious, his time and counsel as trustee. In the Episcopal Conventions Mr. Stetson's influence was equally evident; he it was who framed the canon on marriage and divorce; for many years he had been senior warden of the Church of the Incarnation of New York City. A director in many educational and philanthropical societies, his power was made doubly effective because of the modesty of manner with which it was exercised.

THE GREEKS AGAIN BEARING GIFTS

J

UST recently a harmless-looking paragraph from Washington has been going the rounds of the press of the country. Various organizations, including the American Constitutional League and the Maryland League for State Defense, and incidentally the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage and the National Association Opposed to Prohibition, are joined in a drive for a Federal amendment to restore the rights of the people" by taking away from legislatures the power hereafter to ratify Federal amendments. Hereafter, they contend, a State should be recorded for a Federal amendment only after there is a favorable popular vote in the form of a referendum.

66

What could be more plausible, democratic, and alluring? Already certain liberal organs of opinion seem to be attracted by it. Witness the editorial view of the New York “ Tribune.” This is the substance of it: There is a steady drift towards more direct democratic action. If the people are to rule, why should their rule filter through a legislature?

If there is one thing in which the wisdom of the fathers in the Constitution really shines, it is in the method which they laid down for the adoption of amendments. The Federal Constitution virtually provides for a referendum already by assembly and senatorial districts in every State. Except in those

cases in which a legislature acts upon a Federal amendment without an intervening election of the legislators, the battle is fought on every vital issue before the amendment comes to passage in the legislature at all. Thus the recent Suffrage and Prohibition Amendments were determined in public opinion in many hundreds of assembly and senatorial districts in every State in the Union before these questions were finally determined in the legislatures of the commonwealths.

And this method of piecemeal referendum, here a little and there a little, until in a majority of these small and neighborly units a decision is reached, is a far safer and more sanely democratic method of obtaining the popular will upon vital issues than the proposed plan of a single State-wide referendum before the legislature acts.

Nobody is afraid of the will of the people in America, provided it is the deliberate will, arrived at after reflec tion and accurate information. The method of referendum by assembly and senatorial districts which the fathers of the Constitution laid down has the great merit of giving time for the popular mind to adjust itself to true information and sound principle. It gives time for the sifting out of mere propagandism for or against an issue. It gives time for deliberate decision.

Every thoughtful person is afraid of the will of the people when it is an impulsive and unreflective will. The proposed method of a single State-wide referendum on Federal amendments has exactly this peril at the heart of it. It gives no-opportunity for the sifting ont of propaganda in small units like the assembly and senatorial districts, and for the give and take of neighborly arguments extending over a considerable period of time. It gives only opportunity for prejudice and impulse and misinformation and sentimentality and all the baser factors which operate upon public opinion to do their damaging work.

It is probable that some of these organizations which are backing this innovation against the wisdom of the fathers of the Constitution are hoping for an easy way back out of the suf frage and prohibition impasse in which they find themselves. But the practice is far more to be feared as a means of the general employment of the impulsive mass mind in America at a period in the history of the world when, above all others, caution and reflection and adequate information are sheet anchors of democracy.

Those who have long contended that

the free use of the referendum would some day become the urgent demand of the apostles of reaction in this country can find justification for their fears in the present movement. The referendum has its uses, but it should be employed sparingly. It may be employed to good sparingly. It may be employed to good advantage as a club behind the door, advantage as a club behind the door, when in critical times representative government fails the electorate. But as a regular method of action upon statutory measures or Constitutional amendments, in advance of action by the legislature, it at first stirs the mind of the electorate to function impulsively, and if the process is continued too often the popular mind registers negatively on nearly everything, because it becomes wearied and does not understand. This is the story of the referendum in its flower, for example, in the State of Oregon. Either result, the impulsive or the negative, satisfies reaction better than the calm, deliberate form of referendum now in the Federal Constitution. Beware of the Greeks bearing gifts of freedom to the electorate!

UNAMERICAN AMERI

O

CANS

N December 4, Mrs. MacSwiney, widow of Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, who died from suicide by starvation in an English prison, arrived in the port of New York. She came on a British liner, and received during the voyage all the courtesy and consideration which the officers of a steamship would naturally extend to any passenger suffering from a personal grief which was at the same time a matter of international moment. She was met in the harbor by a police boat owned by New York City, carrying a large welcoming committee and flying the flags of America and of the so-called Irish Republic.

It is with no lack of sympathy for the personal tragedy in Mrs. MacSwiney's life that The Outlook points out the gross impropriety involved in so employing a public vessel of an American municipality.

The impropriety consists in the fact that those who hoisted the Sinn Fein flag did so not as Americans but as Irishmen. It was no mere generous sympathy with a foreign and down-trodden people which prompted the act. It was the deed of men who placed the advantage of a foreign faction above those National interests confided to them for protection and preservation. It was an act of dissentious partisanship and a dis

grace to the Americanism of those responsible for it.

America has had many similar violations of its fundamental principles at the hands of Irish sympathizers within the last few years. The official welcome which De Valera, the so-called President of the Irish Republic, has received at the hands of many American mayors affords perhaps the most striking and offensive example of a hyphenated Americanism as repugnant to American traditions as anything which pro-Germans promoted in the days before we entered the war. De Valera, claiming that he is waging war upon Great Britain, has been using America as a base for his attacks upon a Power friendly to the United States. While his misguided adherents have been dying on Irish soil, De Valera has violated the hospitality of our shores by uttering, at a safe distance of three thousand miles from the scene of disorder he is endeavoring to create, flamboyant pronunciamentos of a highly objectionable character.

We hope that the next Federal Administration will have the courage to prevent Irish sympathizers from betraying the good name and faith of America.

T

FEAR

THE actor was speaking. "I had a great fear the other night. I went on the stage and began thinking of my line beyond the immediate line, and for the life of me I could not remember it. I thought softening of the brain must be my approaching doom. I had been working hard; it was a long run we were having, and my rôle was one of the most exacting of my career. I am not so young as I was, and I saw, as in a terrible vision, my family forced to earn their own living through my sudden incompetence. No stage fright ever equaled my terror. Such a fear had never come over me before. Why should it seize me now?"

The Young-Old Philosopher was interested. "Your experience is a universal one, my dear sir," he said. "We all, at one time or another, know these moments of anguish in whatever art we strive to express our poor selves. The writer who wonders if he will ever be able to think of a plot beyond the story he is just finishing is in a similar case with you. The painter who sees only blank canvases staring him in the face in all the future years-how poign ant, how: sharp, is his anguish! The minister often lies awake nights won

dering if his thoughts for sermons will last him his allotted span. We all suffer through these foolish, these needless fears.

"But the reason is very simple. You did not learn your part by committing to memory the lines four speeches ahead-or even only one speech ahead. You put it in your mind one speech at a time. You played blocks with the manuscript. Then, in some moment when you are nervously tired, your active brain (because you are an artist) races ahead, for all its weariness, and tries to leap hurdles it was never meant to encounter until it came to them. You suddenly wish to know something that doesn't concern you in the least

years. Heaven knows it was long enough, and had we been informed in the beginning of its duration perhaps few of us could have stood the strain. But mercifully such facts are withheld from us, and the old wonder and beauty are coming back to life. The moon goes her serene way though the guns of conflict roar, and peace, twenty hurdles beyond, waits for weary mankind.

"My ideas day after to-morrow will not be those of this morning, so why waste my energy in a sad appraisal of a self that will be changed perhaps within the space of twenty-four hours?

"One thing at a time-and happiness. Glimpses ahead-terror! Take your choice."

"THE MUEZZINS STILL CALL THE FAITHFUL TO PRAYER"

UTWARDLY

Ο

Constantinople

seems much the same as before the war. The Sultan still goes to the Mosque on Fridays with the same display of troops, followed by the awed gaze of the Mussulman and the curious glances of the favored foreigners allowed to attend; the howling dervishes and the whirling dervishes still work themselves into frenzy of hypnotic trances to bring themselves into accord with Allah; the muezzins still call the faithful to prayer seven times daily from the multiple beautiful minarets; Parliament still is held and laws are enacted and the Government has just completed appointments for diplomatic posts after the resumption of relations with Entente countries; throngs from

BY ELEANOR MARKELL

all parts of the Empire-Greek, Armenian, Anatolian, Syrian-still swarm over Galata Bridge. But all this is outward.

In reality it would be difficult to find a capital of Europe where the war has wrought so complete a change as in that of the Ottoman Empire.

A HORRIBLE MISTAKE DESPITE PROVOCATION

It is the shadow of authority which remains to the Turk in his old capital; the real power rests in the Inter-Allied Commission, whose control is very real and is felt everywhere. When you enter Galata from the old Galata Bridge, it is a British Tommy who is directing the traffic; if you sail up the Bosphorus, it is under French, Italian, and British guns. The real Turkish capital is Angora, where at last a national spirit has developed. Mustapha Kemal Pasha and his party have accomplished what the Young Turks tried and failed to do twelve years ago, namely, to weld together the Turkish nation. Mustapha Kemal Pasha is not a brigand, as he was pictured when the movement was new, but, on the contrary, a patriot who is attempting to save his country from utter disruption.

The effort came into being as a protest against the Greek occupation of Smyrna and its peaceful countryside, with crops just ready to harvest, whose through rail communication with Bagthrough rail communication with Bagdad offered an opportunity for the shipment of its products to the East, as its water facilities did to the West. Whatever we may believe regarding the destiny of the Greeks or the Turks as the guardians of the eastern Mediterranean, there can be no doubt that the method of Greek occupation of Smyrna was a horrible mistake. Eight

"THE HOWLING DERVISHES STILL WORK
THEMSELVES INTO FRENZY "

hundred Turks were killed outright, many wounded were taken to the waterside and dropped into the water alive, and other atrocities perpetrated. That the troops were given provocation cannot be questioned. Many of them had themselves been expelled from their homes in Smyrna and the surrounding country by these Turks, their places laid waste, and their mothers and wives ravished; and, moreover, the shooting was started not by the Greeks, but by the Turks, who, concealed on the housetops, sniped the officers as the troops marched through the city with their guns unslung.

But the punishment was so horrible and the results so disastrous, with the crops trodden down and ruined, with the Bagdad Railway, their sole link with the East, .so destroyed that months would be required to re-establish through communication, besides the shocking loss of life, that the Kemal

party had little difficulty in getting followers to resist the breakup of their Empire. Many former Cabinet Ministers fled from Constantinople to Angora and joined the movement, and even the recognized Turkish Government in Constantinople favored conciliatory measures toward the Angora Government; and it was rumored that the Turks would refuse to sign the death warrant of their Empire-the Peace Treaty.

It was then that the International Commission stepped in, pressure was brought to bear, a new Ministry favorable to the Entente came into power, Kemal was repudiated, and Tewfik Riza Pasha was sent to Paris at the head of a commission to sign the Treaty.

KEMAL, THE TURKS' ONLY HOPE But the question remains: Does the Constantinople Government or that at Angora represent the Turkish nation to-day? In Constantinople I found judgment on that question among foreigners about evenly divided, and there were not lacking Turks, old leaders now out of office, who, while taking no active part in the movement, were privately willing to admit to me that the only hope for their nation lay. in the Kemalist party. That party has already lost, so far as

the cause which brought them into being is concerned. The dismemberment of their Empire is in process. The western coast of Anatolia, including Smyrna, the third most important port of their empire, and Thrace, with its rich tobacco fields, estimated to be capable, under improved methods of agriculture, of raising sufficient revenue to support the Government at Athens, have gone to Greece. Syria, with Cilicia, is already occupied by the French, and Mesopotamia, with its rich oil fields, by the British. Azerbaijan and Georgia, in the Caucasus, have become independ

A FIELD OF INTRIGUE

The ideal solution as one sees it here in the East would have been for America to accept a mandate for the entire Ottoman Empire, administer justice to all of the many races impartially, introduce educational facilities as she has in the Philippines, and when the people had become sufficiently enlightened to decide their own fate, then, and not until then, to allow them so to do by plebiscites.

But America refuses to view this as the ideal solution, and the region about the Mediterranean remains, as it has been through the centuries, the field of intrigue for the Western Powers. No fair-minded outsider can wonder that the chief interest of France is the protection of the Ottoman debt, of Italy the acquiring of commercial advantages, of Britain the securing of the rich oil fields for driving her ships and the protection of the route to India.

Russia, that great potential power in this region, has yet to be reckoned with. It is not to be doubted that some time she will make another try for Constantinople, and when she does will she find in possession of this controlling position the Turk, the Greek, or one of the Western Powers at present exercising international control there?