of his most artistic photographic achievements of 1921 will be reproduced in color on our covers.

Damrosch, Barrymore, et al.

WALTER DAMROSCH, conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, has in the past written for us on musical subjects.

Ethel Barrymore and Eleanor Robson have written about the theater.

Walter Camp, Caspar Whitney, and Ruth Law have written for us on sports.

Authorities on subjects of the greatest public interest will again present their views to the readers of The Outlook during 1921.

Politics and Economics

FOR 'OR politics and economics The Outlook has in the past enlisted the contributions of such men as Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Franklin K. Lane, Frank A. Vanderlip, Otto II. Kahn, William G. McAdoo, Myron T. Herrick, Theodore Marburg, Frank Trumbull, William J. Bryan, Mary Heaton Vorse, and John Spargo. We shall continue to present important articles by important men.

CHANGE

The "New" Outlook

HANGES have been made in The Outlook which have brought delighted comments from many of our readers. The following letter from James Duane Taylor, of Chicago, is a typical example:

Although I have subscribed for The Outlook for the past eighteen years, read it regularly and enjoyed. it thoroughly. I cannot refrain from writing to tell you how delighted I am with the "New Outlook," which, it seemed to me, started with the issue of September first. Each subsequent issue has emphasized, in my own opinion, the tremendous improvement in your excellent publication. Covers and inside pages present an appeal to the eye that surely the "Old Outlook" never possessed. The illustrations are excellent and so well arranged. The feature

ming could hear the unmistakable clink of kitchen utensils. Without speaking, he stepped into the doorway, expecting to see an industrious housewife pottering over her Thanksgiving dinner.

Instead, there stood a tall, gaunt man of perhaps fifty-five, perhaps a little less. He wore corduroy trousers and a soft shirt, and his face had the weathered bronze of one who works constantly in the open air. Standing over a stove, he was all absorbed in the delicate task of cooking-not a turkey, but a piece of beefsteak. As the wayfarer's shadow fell athwart the floor the man turned and surveyed the stranger. It was a look neither surprised nor appraising, but of kindly interest.

"Every man his own cook," he remarked. And then he continued: "If you know how to fry onions, get busy, and we'll have dinner all the sooner as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a young man in a blueflannel shirt to appear from nowhere.

Flemming found the onions, already cut, in a frying-pan on the table. He took them to the stove and stood over them, dabbing at them with a fork as they sizzled.

So the two men worked on in silence, side by side, doing everything in the most roundabout manner, as is the way with men in the kitchen. But it was not many minutes before they sat down together. The steak and several steaming vegetables filled the table with a dinner as lavish as it was unorthodox.

Flemming spoke up again at a venture: "You seem to get along all right with your wife away.'

"Do, don't I?" said Webb. "Maybe the fact that I never had a wife has something to do with it."

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"And I get along with myself very well, too," went on Webb. That isspeakin' in general, To tell the truth, I didn't feel that I was up to doing a turkey to-day. 'Course I know steak ain't the dish for Thanksgiving Day, but corralled by a bunch o' young onions it's about the best thing I know how to knock together. So I have it when there's any excuse."

That Flemming approved was shown by the way he abandoned talk for action. The two men sat there eating

even their silence cordial-but occasionally dropping into random talk. During the meal they avoided the personalities that are almost certain to come sooner or later when two strangers get together. But after dinner Webb went down cellar and came back with a pitcher of foaming golden sweet cider which he had somehow pressed himself. With this in easy reach and their pipes drawing smoothly, the young man and the middle-aged settled down comfortably near the stove.

"You know, I'd like all-fired much to thank you for " began Flemming.

"Never mind that. It's been a pleasure to me to fix somebody up with a Thanksgiving dinner. And now what about yourself? You dropped off the down freight, of course?"

"Yes," said Flemming. "Where were you going?" "Dunno where I was going. I was just on my way.'

"Plain tramp, eh?"

kind of thing you say you like. But I couldn't stand it."

"And now?"

Now? Just what you say you can't stomach. A little rut of my own. A little acre and a half of land that I can live off of. And a little house of my own. The same garden truck to raise year after year. The same cow to milk morning after morning, night after night. The same quiet evenings, the same stars, the same chance to be alone with myself. That's what I call living." "That's beyond me. I'd go clean crazy with that sort of life." "And I'd go crazy if I bumped about from place to place as you do, said Webb, as he refilled his pipe.

So they talked on and on, these two strangers-friends of an afternoonsometimes about themselves, sometimes about the world outside, which the one was galled by and the other craved. The golden sunshine slanted farther and farther across the floor, and up

"What then?"

"I don't know as I can make myself clear exactly. Part of the time I work -in an office. And then, just when I think I'm nicely settled down to that, something sorter gets loose inside me, and I say to myself: You fool! Why do you stay here like this, plodding along like an old plug in a treadmilljust for the sake of a little cash? There's strange new places waiting to be seen. There's new people to be known. Come, wake up! Go find 'em!' And so I There's no staying. I ,go. have to go.

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Sounds to me like a pretty wretched sort of life."

"Wretched! I should say not. I'm never so happy as when I'm on the move."

"But where to?"

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Anywhere. There's always a new place waiting for you. And there's always new friends to be made-hundreds, thousands, millions of 'em. People-that's what I need. And so long as they're on earth I've something to be grateful for. That's what I call living." "A queer kind of happiness, I figger

it."

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Well, what's your idea of happi

ness?"

"Just what I've got," returned Webb. "Not money. Not people swarming round you and getting you all upset. Not new things that have to be seen. But just the same familiar things day after day. The same duties, the same pleasures, the same chance to be alone and have time to think."

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But what do you do?"

"I've got plenty to do. But not the kind of things you mean. I used to have those. You wouldn't believe it, but I used to be a traveling man, going on and on everlastingly from place to place, and everlastingly seeing folks. The very

shadows came, and then the twilight.

"This has been the best Thanksgiving Day I've spent for a good many years-thanks to you," declared Flemming. "I guess I was a bit lonely this morning. But you've fixed that. And now I must be off."

"Aren't you going to stay the night with me?" asked Webb, surprised.

"I guess not. But thanks, just the same. Is there another freight out of here to-night?"

"One due before this. She stops for water same as the one you left."

"Then that's mine," said Flemming. They went to the door together, and even as they shook hands the train down the valley whistled. Soon they could hear the puffing, and as the busy fireman fed a yawning fire-box the smoke cloud flared into a shaft of rosy glory against the purple dark.

veranda continued his remark: HE fat man on the club-house "a stray specimen or humanity who think it's possible to be happy without money. But, mark my words, anybody who feels that way is not good for much."

"Exactly," agreed the man with the mask-like face; mask-like face; "nobody's who's good for anything can be contented without money.

"Well, let's go see if the grill is open yet," said the porcine party. The twin rolls of red flesh at the back of his neck redoubled their bulge as he heaved himself laboriously out of his comfortable chair.

M

ARK TWAIN was an ideal Ambassador if Europe's opinion is worth anything. He was habitually worth millions to America. Though never accredited, he was much considered. Hundreds of men with less felicitous phrases than Samuel Clemens have spurned the President's request to serve abroad. Here is his answer, with a thread of extreme seriousness running through it all. It may be prophetic of some answers Mr. Harding will receive:

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"P. S. Vienna, January 10.-I see by this morning's telegraphic news that I am not to be the new Ambassador here, after all. This-well, I hardly know what to say. I-well, of course I do not care anything about it; but it is at least a surprise. I have for many months been using my influence at Washington to get this diplomatic see expanded into an ambassadorship, with the idea, of course, th- But never mind. Let it go. It is of no consequence. I say it calmly; for I am calm. But now, while I am calm, I would like to say this -that, so long as I shall continue to possess an American's proper pride in the honor and dignity of his country, I will not take any ambassadorship in the gift of the flag at a salary short of $75,000 a year. If I shall be charged with wanting to live beyond my country's means, I cannot help it. A country which cannot afford ambassador's wages should be ashamed to have ambassadors.

"Think of a seventeen-thousand-fivehundred-dollar ambassador! Particularly for America. Why, it is the most ludicrous spectacle, the most inconsistent and incongruous spectacle contrivable by even the most diseased imagination. It is a billionaire in a paper collar, a king in a breech-clout, an archangel in a tin halo." (Mark Twain in "The Forum," March, 1899.)

HE impression prevails abroad that America has never had a consistent foreign policy. It is said freely in all the embassies of Europe that we intrust our foreign affairs to men who are the creatures of political parties, and likely, therefore, to disappear from diplomatic life as quickly as they entered. The charge is frequently made that the President generally awards high appointments to men whose chief asset is the amount of money or influence they have contributed to the last political campaign. A high British official made this charge against the United States in my hearing the other day when I

"So long as I shall continue to possess an American's proper pride in the honor and dignity of his country," said Mark Twain, "I will not take any ambassadorship in the gift of the flag at a salary short of $75,000 a year"

asked him about the sale of peerages in England. "Oh, yes," said he; "that, too, is done, but a baron or earl, assuming that he secured his title through his check-book, has no real power in determining the destiny of England." That, probably, is the distinction. So far as I have been able to learn, no nation save ours has so openly rewarded gentlemen who may personally have great distinction but who have been chosen for political reasons and not for their distinction and talent.

Few people will criticise the men we have sent to the Court of St. James's. John W. Davis, the present incumbent, is considered the peer of any in the diplomatic world, but Mr. Davis is an exception and has had a long experience in public life. I met Ambassador Davis for weekly conference for a period of six months. He instituted the custom of meeting the London correspondents on Wednesdays at one o'clock for a half-hour. We could never quote him directly, but these conferences were mutually valuable. It was a friendly, confidential exchange of information. He lit his pipe and talked as one of us.

Through this association it was revealed what a lack of co-ordination there is in our foreign service. There is, for instance, in London a wholly independent bureau for the Shipping Board and the Treasury Department. Maritime and financial questions this year have been important in our relations

with England. But Mr. Davis, our highest diplomat in England, has been obliged to refer maritime questions to the under officials of the United States Shipping Board and financial problems concerning chiefly interallied loans to representatives of the United States Treasury Department in London. Recently there has been organized a regular period for conference between ambassadors and consuls in the surrounding cities. This work has made for better co-ordination throughout the service, for in a variety of matters, such as commercial treaties, the work of the embassies and the consulates merges. Most Americans abroad, as well as Europeans, believe that our Ambassador or Minister should control all relations with the foreign state to which he is accredited. It is freely charged abroad that Mr. Colby's note on Russia this fall was based on information furnished him by so-called experts in the State Department who did not recognize the change of the status in Russia since the Kerensky régime. I happen to know that Mr. Davis's information and judgments, based on the recognitions of the disruption of Russia into the border states, the Soviet state, and the Wrangel state in the south of Russia, would have suggested quite another policy, not because of different judgment, but because of facts concerning which there could be no dispute; facts in his possession and which evidently Washington did not know. In this connection it has been pointed out that our ministers, as are the ministers of other governments, should be called for a few weeks' service at home each year. The French Ambassador, M. Jusserand, did this very thing last summer, and was sent to Poland as head of the French mission there before returning to America. Congress does not seem to be very liberal with our diplomats in the matter of their cable tolls. I know that Mr. Davis would often ask us if we had cabled a certain speech in report of some important event in order to save the Government the cost of cabling.

Europeans never understood our use of the word plenipotentiary. It is accurately descriptive of the powers of the European diplomat, but not the American. We have no one man who can speak for the Government of the United States, and never can have under our divided system of handling foreign affairs. On the other hand, the British Ambassador at Washington speaks the voice of his Government so long as

he is on this end of the cable and Lloyd George is on the other end.

Our powerless ambassadors have been the subjects of many jests in the chancelleries abroad. Though the deadlock between the Senate and the President has been reflected in a prejudicial light towards the very workings of a republican form of government, I think the so-called Ambassador with a "listening brief" to attend the interallied conferences marks the beginning of a gloomy opinion of us. At the San Remo Conference, in the late spring, Robert Underwood Johnson was assigned by the State Department at Washington, at the request of the Allied Powers, to attend the Conference and

listen." He attended, and when asked by Lloyd George his view on a certain question, it is said, so literally construed his powers as neither to explain his status nor to answer the inquiry. The story has been repeated with great pathos as to Dr. Johnson's predicament, and caused many foreigners to have a real anxiety as to a republic's ability to "carry on in foreign affairs. After San Remo the "listening brief" was abandoned.

It is no exaggeration to say that the places to which we send our envoys are to-day as much interested in the new men who will be accredited to

Wide World Photos

"THE LEGATION IN PEKING

WAS NEVER BOUGHT BY THE UNITED STATES. IN THE BOXER REBELLION OF 1900 UNITED STATES MARINES OCCUPIED THAT PARTICULAR PIECE OF TERRITORY AND HAVE HELD IT EVER SINCE"

asking whether we are going to use the best hands to carry it on.

them as they are in the promised formulation of a new world relationship in which we can participate. In the bringing of our new world policy out of the best minds as promised by Mr. Harding, Europe is to-day pertinently is to-day pertinently rangement which makes it absolutely

R. TAFT'S indictment is discouragHe says: "We have an ar

MRing.