After a year and a half of war the English have come to conscription. Whenever we get into serious difficulty we recognize that compulsory service is the best military policy. Washington argued for it. The war of 1812 convinced Jefferson of its necessity. Lincoln resorted to it.

And the principle of universal service, of itself, whether all young men be called to training or not, is the only thoroughly democratic system of national defense, for it is not democratic to hire defenders nor to depend on the more patriotic to volunteer to defend the "slackers." Nor is there necessarily any militarism connected with universal service. Militarism arises in a state where there is a military class with special privileges which controls the policy of the government. In the autocracies of Russia and Germany, where there is universal service, there is a privileged military group and there is militarism. In the democracies of France, Switzerland, and Australia, where there is universal service, there is no privileged military group and no militarism.

But in the correspondence between the President and Mr. Garrison the President goes on record against universal service. Aside from this he explained that his mind was open to any plan but committed to none. It was evident at that time that unless the Continental Army plan had active Administration support it would fail. Taken together these things seemed to mean that any increase in the Army would be gained on the principle of the Federal control of the militia advocated by Representative Hay. It was entirely logical, therefore, for a Secretary who felt that the adoption of such a principle would be a national calamity to resign, especially as a similar drift of affairs seemed about to make him a silent partner in the abandonment of the Philippines.

The President's policy, that it would be unwise for the Executive to interfere with Congress, depends for justification on its results. When all is said and done the American people look to the Executive for leadership and results, not to Congress.

The danger at present seems to be that not only will the principle of universal service be lost sight of, but also the principle of

having a unified service, for no compromise can make a unified and efficient force out of the militia, for the Constitution reserves "to the States, respectively, the appointment of the officers and the training of the militia, according to the di cipline prescribed by Congress." And it seems foolish to try to work on such militia when the Constitution gives Congress the right without restrictions "to raise and support armies," as well as "to provide for the common defense."

INDEPENDENCE AND RUIN FOR THE FILIPINO

TH

HE Clarke amendment to the Philippines bill provides for the independence of the Islands at the end of four years' time. However, if conditions seem not to warrant our withdrawal the President is empowered to delay the process until another Congress can consider the matter.

This bill means to end our administration of the Islands after about twenty years of tutelage. In the main we have administered the Philippines generously and well. We have, of course, used the Filipinos as a protected market for our manufactures, but that is not surprising as we do that to our own citizens also. We have kept order, increased transportation facilities, introduced sanitation, and made a good beginning in education.

We shall stop these activities when we leave the Islands but we shall be responsible for sponsible for their defense-but not responsible for any actions of theirs which might require defense. We are to leave the actions of the Filipinos entirely under their own control, but we are to be responsible to outsiders. We are to keep aggressors off the Islands but the defenses are to be left in Filipino hands. We are to extend the Monroe Doctrine across the Pacific to a people who never had enough courage or character to gain their independence-in the face of our recent Mexican experiences with a people who have had independence for a hundred years.

The best precedent for immediate Fili

pino independence is, of course, the independence of Cuba. Cuba has conducted Cuba has conducted her affairs moderately well (though a second intervention was necessary) yet not so brilliantly as to encourage the experiment with a people less homogeneous and more backward than the Cubans, a people, moreover, living on many different islands, speaking many different tongues, with different and conflicting religions.

There are two logical things to do with the Philippines: (1) to get rid of them and all responsibility for them; (2) to accept them and responsibility for them.

If we traded the Islands for the British West Indies we might get rid of responsibility for them, for it would descend on England; but unless we pass the responsibility on to some other nation it will remain with us. The Filipinos cannot take it.

ANOTHER TARIFF BOARD

Μ'

R. TAFT, when he was President, appointed a non-partisan scientific tariff commission to study the difference in cost of production in this country and abroad so that a Republican Congress could have the facts on which to make an accurately protective tariff. The Democratic House of Representatives very naturally abolished this board because it did not want information on how to make a protective tariff.

Now President Wilson is advocating a non-partisan scientific tariff board to study the tariff from the Democratic point of view the tariff-for-revenue-only point of view, and to give Congress information on the new economic and commercial situations developed by the war.

Such a body might be very useful to Democratic Congresses. But when the first Republican House of Representatives comes along it may in its turn demand that the tariff board change its activities or cease to exist.

A board or commission to study the tariff can give Congress many facts which Congress cannot get for itself. It can act as a statistical department acts for a business house. But in the final analysis Congress must decide what kind of a tariff we shall have. The talk of taking the

tariff out of politics is the same as asking for taxation without representation.

But it is wise for the Committee of Ways and Means, which frames the tariff, to hire the best economic and accounting help it can get. It does not make much difference what this help is called. Similarly, the other committees of Congress should have a great deal more assistance than they have. There is as much need of a scientific non-partisan expenditures board to help the committee on appropriations as there is of a tariff board.

Most of the committees of Congress should employ more expert assistance just. as other men of large affairs do. And it does no particular harm to attach to these men the high-sounding adjectives "scientific" and "non-partisan."

LOOKING BACKWARD-AND FORWARD

P

RESIDENT WILSON, in his address in New York City before the Railway Business Association on January 27th, and Mr. James A. Farrell, president of the United States Steel Corporation, in his address in New Orleans before the National Foreign Trade Council on the same day both called attention to the changed economic position of the United States and to the necessity for an adjustment of the public mind to realize this change and to meet the new problems of the future with fresh vision.

President Wilson's words were these:

"Think of the position into which America has been drawn, almost in spite of herself, by the circumstances of the present day. She alone is free to help find things wherever they show themselves in the world. And she is forced, also, whether she will or not, in the decades immediately ahead of us, to furnish the world with its chief economic guidance and assistance."

Mr. Farrell said:

"We can no longer talk of foreign trade merely as an adjunct of domestic prosperity. The fact has to be recognized that there can be no stable prosperity at home unless we are able to make liberal sales of American manufactures abroad."

Mr. Wilson's point, that the rest of the world henceforth must look more largely to America for capital, has got pretty well into the consciousness of the American people. Mr. Farrell's point (which is the complement of Mr. Wilson's), that America has a big job ahead of it to get this capital, has not soaked in. We are proud of our new importance as "the new financial centre of the world." Mr. Farrell would have us humble at the thought of the work we shall have to do to maintain that difficult position.

Just now war profits have flooded us with cash to lend to borrowing nations. But when Europe's armies return to their industrial activities, the war profits will

Then we shall have to compete again against the other manufacturing nations, and the surplus profits for foreign investment that we shall be able to make in the face of that competition will be made only by the most careful management.

Over half of our enormous exports, as Mr. Farrell has pointed out, have been foodstuffs and raw materials. These raw materials are carried to Europe and are there converted into highly finished articles in the manufacture of which European laborers get the wages and European capitalists get the manufacturing profits, and these articles are then sold to India and China and South America as part of Europe's profitable foreign trade. Mr. Farrell would have America manufacture these raw materials in America, pay these wages to American laborers, keep these profits for American capitalists, and add these sales to America's foreign trade.

But before this advantageous process can be worked out, America must go into foreign trade and find the markets in which these manufactures can be sold. Furope has controlled most of these markets. America must capture them or develop new ones. Mr. Farrell advises us to develop them as Furope developed them, by lending to backward countries the money with which to buy from us the materials with which to develop their resources, on the theory (which works, by the way) that they will use the wealth their developed resources bring in to buy from

us other things which they will need as they progress.

All intelligent Americans understand this situation when it is explained to them But relatively few of them understand tha: they, personally, can do anything about it. The big capitalists and the big manufacturers do see a definite personal opportunity, as the existence of the Nationa Foreign Trade Council and the organization of the new American Internationa Corporation prove. But the small investors, the small manufacturers, and the farmers do not realize that they too can help.

The truth is, they can help very definitely. The small investors can help by buying the securities of American-financed foreign developments, after the same cautious and intelligent investigation that they apply to the purchase of native securities. securities. The small manufacturers car help by organizing, with allied concerns associations to push the sale of their wares abroad. And investors, manufacturers and farmers alike can help by considerin the vital relation of the tariff to this question and by their so instructing their Congressmen that future tariff legislation will help and not hinder this essential change in America's economic growth.

What kind of tariff legislation, then, will help America to meet this necessity to become a world trader? Mr. Jacob H Schiff, a life-long Republican, speaking ir the Republican Club in New York City late in January, answered the question:

"We are prosperous, and we will continue prosperous. Nothing can stop that great prosperity except tariff agitation I feel this, and, standing here on this holy Republican ground, I say that if you renew the tariff agitation in the next campaign and threaten the country again with a high protective tariff the people will have none of it."

The reason why the people should have none of it is chiefly that our tariff wall has not only kept foreign manufactures out of the United States but it has, by that very act, kept American manufacturers from foreign markets, for a nation that does not buy cannot sell. The two must

go together. But an added reason why they should have none of it—why manufacturers themselves should have none of it is that this tariff wall, protecting them almost absolutely against foreign competition, has weakened their courage and weakened their initiative. Now the necessity for initiative is being forced upon them by the necessity of selling their goods abroad, and they must meet the change like men. President Wilson has recently sounded this challenge to their manhood:

"America has been reluctant to match her wits with the rest of the world. When I face a body of men like this [the Railway Business Association] it is almost incredible to remember that only yesterday they were afraid to put their wits into free competition with the world. The best brains in the world afraid to match brains with the rest of the world! We have preferred to be provincial. We have preferred to stand behind protecting devices. And now we are thrust out to do, on a scale never dreamed of in recent generations, the business of the world. We can no longer be a provincial nation."

TWO BIG LABOR CONTROVERSIES

N

EARLY 400,000 men on all the railroads of the country are demanding a change in the hours-a-day basis on which wages are calculated, and about the same number of men in the anthracite and soft coal regions are asking for at least 10 per cent. increase in pay. These simultaneous demands of nearly one million men have already made 1916 one of the big years in the history of labor agitation.

The railroad men affected are only the crews of freight trains. They are now paid so much a mile for a run of 100 miles or so much an hour for a day of ten hours whichever figures out the most money for a particular run. What they demand is to be paid so much a mile for a run of 100 miles or so much an hour for a day of only eight hours. In other words, they want to reduce by two hours the length of the working day and thereby increase by two hours the possibilities or earning "overtime" at a much higher rate. It is not

so much the "eight-hour day" they want as it is the "eight-hour-a-day wage base." The anthracite mine workers are asking for the eight-hour day instead of the present nine-hour day. They are asking also for a 20 per cent. increase in wages, recognition of the union, and the adjustment of some matters in dispute relating to the basis of wages and to working conditions. The soft coal miners' demands are similar. Mine laborers are of two classes: (1) the miners, who are practically small contractors, as they are paid by weight of coal blasted and are free to knock off work whenever they feel they have earned all they want for the day; and (2) the mine workers, who comprise the men who shovel the blasted coal, the mule drivers, engineers, and miscellaneous workers, who all work by the time clock and at a fixed rate a day. The dissatisfaction with present conditions is largely among the second of these classes.

The chief hope of a peaceful settlement of these wage controversies has lain in the record for moderation of Mr. John P. White, president of the United Mine Workers of America, and of Mr. Warren S. Stone, chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. Both have opposed general strikes and have favored arbitration. Mr. Stone is the head of only one of the four railroad brotherhoods that are involved, but he is the best known and probably the most influential leader of all the railroad men.

OPENING WATER-POWER AND MINERAL LANDS

HE House passed two bills in January which will provide for the use of practically all our remaining national resources. When the Senate passes these bills, we shall have practically nothing left of our national domain except the national forests and the national parks. These bills are designed to settle the problem of "conservation" once for all.

Quietly, industriously, painstakingly, Secretary Lane has been solving this great national and political problem. Our Alaskan coal fields, our water-power sites, and our mineral lands wrecked the Taft Ad

ministration in its early days, but Secretary Lane's proposals, so absorbed is the Nation in other matters, have hardly aroused passing interest. Yet men like exSecretary Walter L. Fisher and ex-Forester Gifford Pinchot have publicly endorsed his recommendations. With them the great problem of conservation, "How can we obtain the greatest national use of these resources without speculation and exploitation?" has apparently found its solution. So long as these laws are honestly administered conservation, as an active political issue, virtually disappears.

The first law opens to general use the Nation's water-power sites. Experts figure that, of the 40,000,000 or 50,000,000 horsepower of energy lying in our rivers and streams, we are using only about 6,000,000 horse-power. This is national waste on a tremendous scale. The larger part of these water courses lie in the Western states, and may very likely become the fundamental fact in their economic life. We are now using about 280,000,000 tons of coal a year for work which these water courses could perform just as well. This coal has to be hauled long distances to be put to use. It is limited in supply; once burned, it cannot be used again; enormous as may be the quantities concealed in the earth, the time may conceivably come when it will all be gone. But this water-power has existed for millions of years and it will exist for millions of years to come. It is a perpetual supply that can be used over and over again. Properly chained, this water will turn huge turbines, which will generate an endless supply of electricity. This electricity will perform any number of services in the Western states. It will light their streets and houses, run their trolley cars and elevators, operate their churns, furnish power to sewing machines and vacuum cleaners, and may even supply fuel for kitchen ranges. It will also make available vast new farming lands in the West, for these parched farms possess enormous stretches of water besides the rivers that flow upon their surface. There is another water system flowing underground, as

regular in its courses and as dependabl as the visible surface streams. One use of hydro-electric power will be to pump this subterranean water to the surface for irrigation purposes.

It is not surprising that our wealth in water has aroused the cupidity of speculative business interests. The Government. fearful that it would become a means of extortion, has hugged these water courses to itself withdrawn them from publ entry. entry. Secretary Lane has had litte difficulty in outlining a plan that will make them available. He proposes to lease them for a fifty-year period, the rentals paid to go to the reclamation fund-the money that is used to irrigate arid lands The Government has the right of extending or ending these leases at the expiration of this fifty-year period. If it decides not to do so, it agrees to purchase the works at market valuation and any addtional land the lessee may have acquired at cost. The only purpose of this arrangement is to give the Government control. so it can terminate on fair terms the lease of any corporation which has abused its privileges. The only interests that oppose this arrangement are certain legislators from the Western states, who wish the central Government to hand over its resources to the states themselves. The Government would make a great mise take if it did this, and fortunately there is little likelihood that this local view will prevail.

III

The second bill proposes a similar pro gramme for the utilization of our mineral lands. lands. We have unexampled wealth in oil, gas, coal, phosphate, potassium, sdium, and other minerals. At present the orange growers of California and the apple orchardists of Oregon send to Florida, several thousand miles away, for phosphate rock, used as fertilizer. Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, states that are right at their doors, have 3,000,000 acres of land underlaid with this precious substance. At present these lands, like our water-power sites, are withdrawnfor fear that, if opened to general use somebody will steal them. We have bil

Yet