I

F I should begin this article by saying that I am one of the most important individuals in the United States, some reader might say I was conceited. So I will merely state that I had the chance and gave it up. When the war was over, there were two choices open to me. The first was to go back to the old farm in Kansas. I decided that digging furrows in the West was too much like digging trenches in France. I had heard of the other opening only the day before we were discharged. Up until that time I had thought little about the future. One of my fellow-sufferers" told me that he intended to go back to Washington and work for Uncle Sam.

66

"Good-night," I thought. "I have had enough of working for him!"

But after an hour's argument, I decided to take the chance. It seemed that the President had issued an executive order giving the preference in all Government positions to discharged soldiers and sailors. I took a special Civil Service examination, and inside of a week I was housed in one of the "bomb-proof" offices I had so lately condemned.

Certain individuals are staying up nights, trying to figure out why the farmer boy leaves home. Let me cite my own experiences in Washington as an answer to their question.

When not compelled by circumstances to be otherwise, man is one of the laziest of God's creatures. And Washington at 7 A.M. has all the liveliness of a country churchyard. Every one in the Government departments goes to work at nine

BY LAWRENCE MCCONNELL

o'clock. At 4:30 in the afternoon the wheels cease to grind. Congress attempted to install an eight-hour day during the war, but President Wilson vetoed the measure. It is idle to argue that seven hours' work is not enough for an able-bodied person. It is nevertheless

attractive to have seventeen hours of the day to do as one may please.

CALLS IT DISSIPATION

In my hours off duty there are many things that would have seemed strange and wonderful in my "little gray home in the West." It has been said that a cat may look at a king, and, though it is a question whether the cat appreciates the view, there is no doubt that human beings like to haunt the abodes of the great. Here in Washington there is unlimited opportunity to engage in this form of dissipation. One can visit the Senate or House of Representatives any day of the session and hear speeches by men whose names are household words throughout America. I have the chance to see in the making the events that form the bulk of the news which is wired from Hoboken to the Land of the Movies and all the way between.

I happened to be in the Senate gallery one morning about 2 A.M., when Senator Lodge walked in from the east entrance, paused near his desk, and called out, "Mr. President." And when he read the famous "round robin" of the Republican Senators protesting against the terms of the first Treaty of Peace I listened to words that were quoted around the

world. Could I have had the same privilege back in Kansas? There the annual speech of a Congressman is enough to draw the folks for miles around. In Washington it takes four Congressmen and three Senators to draw an audience of a hundred persons, and then they must be of the opposite party, so that there is some chance of an enlivening discussion. The old law of supply and demand still operates.

Then there are the famous private citizens, who are thicker than peas in a pod. During the last few months I have heard Mr. Taft discuss the Peace Treaty, Mr. Bryan argue for prohibition, and Billy Sunday deliver one of his old-time whirlwind speeches. I have heard Charles E. Hughes argue before the Supreme Court. I have listened to Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, Ballington Booth, Cardinal Gibbons, John Galsworthy, Philip Gibbs, Sothern and Marlowe, Helen Keller, and a host of others. It is just such a privilege as I had dreamed of in the days gone by. It is a privilege that was denied in the West. Wherefore I and thousands of others have been attracted as surely as moths are lured to a flame.

There is another reason for our wandering. Every normal human being has at some time a desire to do something that will survive when he is gone. The feeling is as natural and as universal as the fear of death. And we farmer boys have doubted whether there could be selfexpression in raising turnips. Some one will at once conjure up the name of Luther Burbank. But for every wizard

of California there are a thousand Hiram -I was about to say Johnsons, but let us say, Smiths. The turnips that Hiram Smith raises are doomed to cast their fragrance upon the desert air. Upon the statesmen, the poets, the philosophers, of the world are showered all the praises; but who can tell the name of a single farmer who lived in the half-century following the Revolution? They doubtless furnished potatoes on which Lincoln grew eloquent, Longfellow poetical, and Barbara Frietchie patriotic, but such a part in the world's history does not satisfy human ambition. Amid the bustle and hurry of the city there is a spirit calling a person to achieve. Every one is planning what he will be in ten years and working toward that goal.

It seems that all the clerks are studying stenography, all the stenographers studying accountancy, and all the accountants taking up law. The night schools are crowded to the doors. Once again, could I find the same atmosphere back in the West?

PEACE-TIME SLACKERS

But for all the vaunted pleasures of city life a price must be paid. I am already paying it; first of all, in dollars and cents, mostly dollars. I live on the third floor of a rooming establishment one block and a half from the White House. During the war the law did not allow Washington landladies to raise the rent, but when Mr. Wilson said, "The war thus comes to an end," so did most wartime restrictions on prices. By the way my landlady is boosting her prices she has forgotten there ever was a war. I asked her apologetically the other day the cause of her increases, and she had her reply ready:

"Do you know how much I have to pay for potatoes? And milk, and bread? If you farmers had stayed where God put you, you wouldn't have to pay what we are forced to ask."

The morning Washington "Herald," long a penny paper, has gone up to two cents a copy. Inside of a year street-car fares have been raised from five to eight cents, and the companies complain that there is no profit even at that price.

About a year ago an enterprising business man began furnishing box lunches to Government employees. He charged twenty cents per lunch. His sale totaled nearly $2,500 a day. On May 1 he raised the price to a quarter. Food prices are at least fifteen per cent higher than they were just after the war.

Who is to blame? The profiteers? They are. And I and thousands of others like me are forced to acknowledge that we are really these elusive and much-condemned individuals. We are peace-time slackers. We are unwilling to give up Washington and the other cities for the sake of helping to solve the bread-andbutter problem of America. A slacker in war time was simply one who did not answer his country's call. The " try" is calling to-day for thousands of former workers to come home and

coun

Some years our profits were greater than this. Sometimes a dry season threatened to take away everything we had. For years my mother planned a trip back to her old home in Pennsylvania. Father's ambition was to own something better than a Ford. It was many a weary season before either realized their dream. There was always responsibility, back-breaking labor, and small compensation.

When the war was over, my father put the proposition up to me straight:

"You know the kind of life we've had to live. If you don't want to stay, I can't blame you. I'm getting old. I guess we had better sell out and-mother and I will go into town."

(C) Underwood & Underwood

Mother was frankly glad. She had given the best years of her life to feeding harvest hands, marketing eggs, and making butter, and all the new-fangled cream separators and electric contrivances in the market could never make farm life a joy.

To-day the crows perch in peace on our fences and gaze stupidly at the land where once they saw acre after acre of waving grain.

CONSCRIPT FARM LABOR?

What is the solution of the problem? A writer in one of the most influential publications in America recently advocated conscripting labor for use on the farms. His article favored six months' compulsory service for all boys between eighteen and twenty. But it takes far more than six months to make a useful agricultural worker. It takes some city folks longer than that to learn to hitch up a team. Clearly, conscription of labor could furnish only a temporary and a doubtful relief.

Co-operative buying and selling of farm products will help. The farmer is beginning to demand a larger return for the product of his labor. He is looking for direct dealing between himself and the consumer. He fails to appreciate the policy of selling potatoes for a dollar or two a bushel, and then learn later that the small jobber is reselling them at a net profit of three hundred per cent.

But, more than anything else, there should be an intensive study into the conditions of farm life. The agricultural workers must be supplied with those natural human comforts which all human beings crave.

I said in the beginning of this article that I had the chance to be one of the most important individuals in America. If you doubt it, go to your grocer and say, How much are eggs?"

66

"Y

M. C. A? I never went inside one

in my life-don't really know anything about it. But, judging from instinct, I don't like the idea. No, I won't wear their uniform to France."

That, says Miss Mayo, was how she felt when she was asked to go to France to tell the American people how the Y was spending its money. Finally she consented to go on condition that she should pay her own expenses, go where she pleased, have access to all Y records and work, and finally that she should publish what she wrote, if she wrote anything at all, without its being censored by the Y in any way. Her terms were accepted, and, what is more, they were lived up to.

She stayed in France for eight months, going everywhere and seeing everything that was humanly possible in that time. She conceals no mistakes in her report, condones no failures. She simply sets the successes against them, and records some of the deeds of heroism and devotion of the Y workers.

66

In view of the bitter criticism of the Y since the war, the most important thing in Miss Mayo's book is this: she shows that the Post Exchange-the canteen-on which most of the criticism centered, was taken over with the full knowledge that it would be impossible so to conduct it as to satisfy the men. General Headquarters applied to Mr. Carter, the head Y man in France, to take over this work, "which would take officers and men away from their proper functions of training and fighting." Carter knew that the army had never been able to make a popular success of the Post Exchange; Unpopularity was its other name. He knew that it would be heartily cursed, and the Y with it. The head men on this side said that a force of five or six thousand trained men would have to be gathered, and a string of three or four thousand grocery stores-for that is what the Post Exchanges were established under conditions more difficult than any the world has ever seen. Ask Park & Tilford or Acker & Merrill how they would like such a job. Yet Carter did not hesitate. "We have come to France to serve the army in every possible way, and if undertaking this job relieved or aided the army in any way, we would be glad to consider it." Foreseeing trouble, he tried to protect the Y by making certain conditions as to transportation, competition, etc. These the army agreed to in principle, but it was unable to carry out any one of them. Still, the Y worked along, supplying something under fifty per cent of the doughboys, all it could get supplies for, and taking its medicine in the form of abuse from the rest. To undertake such a job deliberately, with their eyes open, making a sacrifice of their reputations individually and of the Y's as a whole, solely to help the doughboy, was pretty fine, don't you think? And with all its limitations and shortcomings, the Y canteen provided the American soldier with four or five times as much in the way of comfort, cheer, eats, and smokes as the French soldier received at the front from all the French organizations put together.

1 That Dnmin Y." By Katherine Mayo. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

66

As valuable as the canteens, if not more so, were the Leave Areas. These were a wholly original idea of Mr. Carter's. What was to be done with the men about to be released on leave? To any one who knew conditions it was certain that to turn them loose in Paris or other great centers was to subject them to temptations which would mean moral and physical ruin to a great number of boys and very young men utterly unaccustomed to facing such temptations. "Few who have not seen the voracity of the man hunt," says Miss Mayo," which harried our forces at easewhether in Nice, in Paris, in Nancy, Brest, where you like-can realize what the men had to endure in the way of ceaseless persecution, or what unthinkable, ghastly, smothering pressure was brought to bear

KATHERINE MAYO

upon them all." When Carter suggested to General Pershing the idea of taking over certain pleasure resorts, like Nice, Cannes, Aix-les-Bains, where there were great hotels standing empty, police them as strictly as possible, but, above all, fill them with all the nice Y girls who could be obtained, and see if decent American women could not compete more than successfully with French" wild women," the C.-in-C. replied, "You have lifted one of my heaviest burdens." G. H. Q. proceeded to request the Y to "marshal forces, funds, and facilities to install twenty-eight leave areas, average capacity 2,500 beds each, before October 1st."

And this on top of the canteen work, for which the Army could not give it tonnage enough to supply fifty per cent of the men. But the Y went at it. It provided amusements of all sorts, but, above all, dancing. "The boys came to the leave areas filled with a sort of passion for things not rough, harsh, hard," says Miss Mayo, "not of their soldier life. They needed to dance, to dance with women.

"If the Y women, their own American women, would dance with them, that made them perfectly happy and content. But if the Y women would not, others there were,

more than plenty, who would jump at the chance. And concerning such, beyond all manner of doubt, rather than loiter with them, it was safer and cleaner business to go over the top."

So day and night the Y watched over the boys, especially at night. Here is one story:

"John Martin, at Nice, dropped into his especial domain, the officers' club, late one night, to see if everything was all right. He found the club deserted, except for one young lieutenant who lay half crumpled up in a heap.

"What's the matter?'

"Met a woman in a café. Went to her room. About two hours. Just before I left she gave me a drink. Don't know any more, except I'm here now!'

"Martin, no novice at the game, went to work, got rid of the dope and put the boy to bed. Two days later he came in to give thanks he was only nineteen.

"You used me white,' he stammered. 'The doctors told me what you saved me from. I want you to know I'll try to be a man after this.'

"If Martin, on his way home, met one of the boys who had no place to sleep, he would take him with him and give him a blanket on his own sofa.

"This man here, Martin, took me in last night. My buddy got taken in by somebody else. We were both a little stewed, I guess. If it hadn't been for that Y man I'd have done what my buddy did. And as I see things this morning I'd rather be dead.' "Then he began to talk of a girl and a job waiting for him at home."

Athletics was one of the most important branches of the Y's work, not only in camp but at the front, where the men had to lie in reserve for hours with nothing to do but to watch the ambulances stream back with their loads of wounded, play craps, tell queer stories, and get into a blue funk.

"On a trip to the front a Y man (name Brown) came upon a big battery of French 75s manned by Americans. A sergeant seemed to be running the show. The Y man stopped. The sergeant came out. "Got any cigarettes?"

"No,' said Brown, placidly.

"Yah! What's the damn Y for, anyhow?'

"Got a baseball, though.' "Wa jew say?'

"Got some baseballs.'

"Baseball-base-ball. You mean you

got a baseball in there? You do? Well, for the love of God, just lend us a look at her.'"

The Y man passed along an indoor baseball. The sergeant snatched it back to his men. A minute later and half of them were playing one old cat.

A captain came out and looked on thoughtfully. Then he turned to the Y

man.

"This stunt of yours is a wonder. Bring us anything more you can wherever you can find us. You look after us up here. We need you. Let S. O. S. take care of itself."

Officially, Brown was connected with S. O. S., and his present job was in the nature of a "flyer."

Misfits they were, of course, but they were eliminated or reformed. Of the latter was a man who hated tobacco and never passed out cigarettes without a scowl and

BULLETIN BOARD PLACED BY THE UNITED STATES ARMY ON THE BRIDGE AT COBLENTZ

light from the Y man's, who lit with his first smoke hundreds of cigarettes that day.

Some of the mistakes which no doubt gave rise to legends about the Y were delightfully absurd. Billy Levere was one of the best beloved men in France, and his cuisine was famous. One night four camion drivers dropped into his hut. " We'll all have soup," said the first.

"Quatre soupes !" called out the French waiter.

"We don't want no cat soup!" exclaimed the spokesman, as all four shot out into the night. And the shout of laughter which followed them was less at their mistake than at the absurdity of doubting Billy's provender. Yet no doubt the legend spread far and wide that the Y fed cat soup to the doughboys.

When the Y took over the hotels in Coblentz it took over their staffs, which naturally continued to wear their accustomed costumes. An indignant colonel, returning to Paris, said, "See the extravagance of the damn Y, fitting out their waiters with dress suits! That's the way the people's money goes."

Miss Mayo explains how some of the most persistent charges against the Y arose. That of selling gift cigarettes came from the fact that an Army quartermaster sold by mistake to the Y some cigarettes which had been given to the Army to give to the men. Practically no gift cigarettes, containing cards from the givers, were sent through the Y. The charge of profiteering came from the establishing of Quartermaster's Sales Stores in places where there was a Y hut. The Y had to add to the original cost the price of transportation, etc., while the stores obliged, by act of Congress, to sell at the original cost price. Incidentally, the Y sold many articles to the boys at two-thirds of what they would have had to pay for them

were

by the Army will enable you to estimate that at a glance. It is more eloquent than any figures.

There is no room here even to enumerate the manifold ways in which the Y helped the A. E. F. For these you must go to Miss Mayo's book. But "That Damn Y" will certainly remove any doubts which may still be felt by anybody as to whether the money placed at the Y's disposal was well and honestly spent. It would be difficult to imagine a more complete vindication of the work as a whole than it affords. As to the book itself, it is brilliantly written, with a vivid style, and it is full of humor and pathos. Anybody who can read without choking the description of the Christmas which the dougliboys gave to the French children must have something the matter with him. Taken altogether, it is one of the very best war books that has appeared.

THE NEW BOOKS

FICTION

Book of Susan (The). By Lee Wilson Dodd. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.

Well worth reading. Susan is frankly a phenomenal child. After her stupid, bestial father murders the woman with whom he is living, Susan is adopted by a wealthy and cultured bachelor, and grows up to be a brilliant woman who holds her own in his circle of scholarly and fashionable friends. There is a "psychic" element, handled with startling effect. In character depiction, in the give and take of dialogue, and in the incidents, the novel is more arresting than the majority of the American novels of the season.

I've Married Marjorie. By Margaret Widdemer. Harcourt, Brace & Howe, New York. A lively and amusing tale of a war-bride separated from her officer husband at the church door. Before he returns from the

war to New York she discovers that she does not love him. Thereupon he abducts her and takes her to the wild forest country where he has an engineering job. A contest of wills and clash of temperaments ends in love and reconciliation. Not a big book nor a probable story, but agreeable "summer reading."

Eve of Pascua (The). By Richard Dehan. The George H. Doran Company, New York.

Some of these short tales deal with remote places in Spain, Africa, and other distant lands, and are tragic or melodramatic, with a bit too much of the horrible; others present lower middle-class life in England, and are sordid and rather dismally humorous.

Maid of Mirabelle (The). By Eliot H. Robinson. The Page Company, Boston.

A romantic tale of Lorraine in war time, somewhat too sentimental in execution, but simple and pretty.

Waters of Strife (The). By George Vane (Visconde de Sarmento). The John Lane Company, New York.

Young Hearts. By J. E. Buckrose. The George H. Doran Company, New York.

Mildly, almost tepidly humorous in its pictures of English country life, with as its leading character a self-important little man fond of taking the lead in petty local affairs and usually ludicrous in his attempts. The lady who writes under the name of J. E. Buckrose has given us better stories-notably "The Gossip Shop."

HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY Bolshevism: An International Danger. By Paul Miliukov, LL.D. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

The object of Dr. Miliukov is indicated by the title of the third and larger portion of his book: "Bolshevism out for a world revolution." The book is too detailed and assumes too much knowledge of details to be available for the general reader, but it is for this very reason the more valuable for students whose professional needs or whose world interests inspire them to study the strange phenomenon of Bolshevism, which is simply a new form of military despotism. If Bolshevism does not bring on another and possibly more terrible world war, it will not be for lack of desire on the part of the Bolshevist leaders but for lack of their power to fulfill those desires. Industrial History of England (The). By Abbott Payson Usher, Ph.D. Illustrated. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

This volume has been planned and written with a view to the needs of college classes beginning work in economic history. It is encyclopædic in its character and is much more full in dealing with the mechanical aspects and the mechanical development of industry than with the history of the men, women, and children who have been engaged in the industries of England, and the effect of those industries and the changes which have taken place in them upon the character and the development of the men, women, and children engaged in them. In this respect it is a disappointing book. At least it seems to us a great deal more important, both from an economic and an educational point of view, that students in our colleges should know what has been the effect of mechanical development on human development, what has been accomplished and what remains to be accomplished in order to secure industrial peace and industrial efficiency, than that they should know the mechanical development. Our Economic and Other Problems. By Otto H. Kahn. The George H. Doran Company, New York.

M

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Y attention has been directed to some editorial comment in your issue of July 7, under the heading " Another Hetch-Hetchy," mildly hostile to the project of conserving the water issuing from Yellowstone Lake in the flood season for use in the irrigation of lands in the valley beyond the Park boundaries. I am so confident that if you were more fully advised concerning the conditions and the character of the proposed work your attitude toward the project would undergo radical modification that I am prompted to address you on the subject.

Evidently you harbor some fears which are without any foundation. These are disclosed not only by the general tenor of the article, but by specific expressions therein. You deprecate, for instance," the encroachment on our National Parks (the property of a hundred million people) by any industrial or transportation corporation or monopoly," and, after referring to the worldfamed geysers of the Park, you inquire, "Would the raising of the level of the Yellowstone Lake interfere with the integrity of those geysers?"

Whatever may have been suggested while the project was in a more or less nebulous state, the matured plans do not contemplate raising the level of the lake at all. It is proposed only to hold that level at the high-water mark, the excess to be drawn off gradually when it is needed for irrigation, instead of permitting it to go off with a rush to the destruction of property in the valley below, mounting up into the millions, as occurs periodically when an unseasonable heated spell brings down too rapidly the accumulated snows of the mountains or an unusual rainfall in the basin draining into the lake swells the volume of water in the river beyond its capacity.

It is not proposed that any rights shall be enjoyed under the enterprise "by any industrial or transportation company or monopoly." The State of Montana will ask Congress for permission to construct the necessary dam, the conserved water to be used only by it or by irrigation district or other municipal corporations authorized by it, the project to be financed by the municipalities thus enjoying the advantages accruing. It will accordingly have in it no element of corporate profit, no element of monopoly. Irrigation districts will be created in each of at least eight counties of the Yellowstone Valley. Every acre of land within the district must share its proportion of the burden and every owner of land thus contributing will be entitled to a ratable share of the water.

As the lake will not be raised above the

high-water mark, it follows, of necessity, that the integrity of the geysers will be in no wise affected, and, moreover, that there will be no interference with any feature of the Park of interest either to the tourist or the scientist. It may still further quiet any apprehension to be advised that the nearest geyser basin visited by tourists is many miles distant from the lake, reached from it by the regular line of travel only by twice crossing the Continental Divide.

The dam will not even be suggestive of an unnecessary obtrusion artificial in character. At or near the place where it is proposed to erect it is now an unsightly

rickety old pile bridge, over which tourists are admitted by the Cody entrance across the river to reach the Lake Hotel. The dam, constructed upon modern lines, with due regard to beauty in the design, could be made easily to serve as a thoroughfare over the river.

The difference between the low-water and the high-water level of the lake is approximately six feet. The lake's area is about 80,000 acres. By holding back the water so as to preserve the high-water level, six times 80,000, or 480,000, acre feet would be conserved, adequate for the irrigation of 250,000 acres of land. Bear in mind, it is not proposed that any canals or diversion works of any kind shall be constructed within the Park; nothing but the dam to equalize the flow.

Not a few people of excellent intentions

EVERY AVIATOR A

LAWBREAKER?

It now appears that

every time an aviator takes the air he flaps his wings insolently at the law.

Wayne C. Williams, in his coming article "The Law of the Air," proves that flying is legally both a trespass and a nuisance.

Legal principles

principles as old as Alfred the Great frown upon the airman. Changing the law to fit the fliers is proposed by Mr. Williams.

but limited information feel impelled to act as guardians of the National Parks, lest the unappreciative people of the West, in which they are situated, should desecrate or destroy them. They were all set apart upon the initiative of the people living adjacent to them. The Yellowstone was first reliably made known to the world by the Washburn-Langford party, and the idea of making it a National Park originated with Judge Cornelius Hedges, a member of the party, a Montana pioneer, then and for forty years prior to his death a resident of my home city of Helena, Montana. The Montana Delegate in Congress introduced in the House the bill to establish the Park. The Representatives from that State and from Wyoming have charged themselves ever since with securing from Congress the necessary legislation to make it accessible and to provide for its government. They have not had much aid from those remote sections which now dread that the people of Montana are about to commit some act of sacrilege against the Park. On their behalf, I ask that judgment be suspended until it is learned by proper exposition before the Congressional committees just what it is

that they want and just how far, if at all, the purposes for which the Park was created will be interfered with, or its scenic attractions lessened, that they may the better do their part toward feeding the world.

Incidentally I may remark that I am on my way to Glacier Park, in which I have been accustomed to spend my vacations for more than ten years before it came under National control- -a circumstance I mention to indicate that I am not myself wholly insensible to the beauties nature has so lavishly provided in these sanctuaries.

I do not ask the publication of this letter, but you are at liberty to print all or any part of it. T. J. WALSH, R. N.

Great Falls, Montana.

[This persuasive letter by Senator Walsh, of Montana, does not mention the Montana hydro-electric trust, which, according to another correspondent of The Outlook, Mr. W. J. Hannah, of Big Timber, Montana, controls every developed power site in the State and is rapidly coming into possession of every undeveloped site. According to Mr. Hannah, the concern is now selling electric current to Montana citizens at twelve cents per kilowatt hour, and yet at the same time sells currents to "exploiting foreign corporations" at half a cent and even as low as a quarter cent per kilowatt hour. The trust, Mr. Hannah claims, is behind the project to erect a dam across the outlet of the Yellowstone Lake, though the ostensible purpose is stated to be the irrigation of all the lands on the lower reaches of the Yellowstone. A few miles below the site of the proposed dam are the Upper and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone-nearly five hundred feet of perpendicular descent-where the river empties into the famous gorge. This great cataract, affirms Mr. Hannah, together with a dam to conserve and equalize the flow of water from the Lake, offers the most desirable water-power site in the United States.

In and of itself alone, the proposal to dam the outlet of the Yellowstone Lake and thereby to conserve the waters of that great natural reservoir for the reclamation of a vast area of semi-arid land is, declares Mr. Hannah, "one of the most meritorious irrigation undertakings ever projected." Those who reside in the immediate vicinity of Yellowstone Park and visit it frequently, know, he says, that the artificial holding of the waters at highwater nark could not interfere with the Park's scenic grandeur, while it would both make possible the reclamation of hundreds of thousands of acres and would also help to avert flood damages. Mr. Hannah's contention is not, as is that of some critics, that the project is a selfish one in the interest of Montana farmers, but it is, he believes, a selfish one in the interest of a Montana hydro-electric trust, which, he predicts, will, on completion of the dam, apply for permission to use the falls.

There seems to us some force in Mr. Hannah's argument, which we may state briefly as follows: It is bad to have natural resources, which belong to the people, taken by private interests; it is worse to have these resources used for exploiting the people who really own them: it is unbearable to require the people to pay for building the plants to be used in the exploitation.-THE EDITORS.]