great many people in this country as a most serious misfortune. Justly or not, it will have the effect of producing upon the minds of many who are concerned for the protection of the unprivileged the impression that our laws and our Constitution and our courts are somehow hampered by system or a habit of thought or something else that prevents or impedes justice. It seems to be out of accord with the recent tendencies of the decisions of this great Court. In our judgment, this decision will rank with that rendered in the Knight case and in the case of the New York bakeshops as an example of the need for judges who know life. An illustration of this is the phrase in Mr. Justice Day's opinion that this is "a purely local matter." In their effect, at least, the conditions of manufacture caused by child labor are far from local. The State that limits itself by restricting child labor finds itself underbid by a State that does not so limit itself. Therefore the State that exploits its children is benefiting at the expense of the States that do not. The very purpose of the Inter-State Commerce clause in the Constitution was to make it possible for local matters to be readjusted in the National interest.

In this decision, whether they agree with it or not, Americans will, of course, at once acquiesce. It is the law, and to it the Nation must adjust itself. Let us remember, however, that the Supreme Court has reversed itself on more than one occasion, and it is perfectly conceivable that the time may come when another Child Labor Law, framed in somewhat different terms, but putting, like this Child Labor Law, all States on an equality, will receive the sanction of the Supreme Court.

One thing is certain-that no single decision of the Supreme Court will prevent the movement for industrial freedom which has been one of the distinctive characteristics of the past two decades in this country.

"THE AMERICAN RAILROAD EXPRESS COMPANY"

The title above is the name which the "Annalist" (the financial weekly published by the New York "Times") has created for the new Government express company. As everybody knows, the transportation of packages and merchandise for which the ordinary railway freight was too slow has been conducted for years by private express companies. The four great companies doing this business, which in Europe has been largely done by parcel post, and directly by the railways, are the American, the Wells-Fargo, the Southern, and the Adams Express Companies. The Government has announced that on and after July 1 these companies will cease to do business as private corporations. The Government has consolidated them and will operate them as a branch of the Government railways. Offices, wagons, and other equipment will be used in common by all the lines, and the present President of the American Express Company, Mr. George C. Taylor, will be the operating President of the new Federal organization.

The general system of conducting the express business under the new Government merger will be similar to that of the railways. Mr. Taylor will be Director-General McAdoo's first executive officer, and under him will be regional operating officers. The stockholders of the old companies will still retain their holdings, and it is believed that they will obtain a reasonable return on their investments. If under the new system profits should increase, there is an arrangement for a division of the profits between the Government and the stockholders. It is not yet announced what will be the new relation, if any, of the American Railroad Express Company to the parcel post system.

The "Annalist" recalls that Mr. John Wanamaker, when Postmaster-General of the United States, put in epigrammatic form the conflict between the private express system and the parcel post system. "There are four reasons," said Mr. Wanamaker, "why we cannot have a parcel post service in this country. They are the Adams, the American, the United States, and the Wells-Fargo Express Companies." When the parcel post system was put into effect in 1913, it took away what the "Annalist" calls the "unbridled power and amazing prosperity" of the express companies. The present solution of amalgamating all these companies under Government control is unmistakably welcome to the shippers of the country, and is

apparently welcome to the investors whose capital has built up the private express companies from very small beginnings into a huge and necessary transportation system.

MEDALS AND PRIZES IN JOURNALISM
AND LETTERS

On June 3 the awards of the medals and prizes for preeminence in American journalism and letters during 1917 were announced. These medals and prizes were established by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the New York "World” and founder of the Columbia School of Journalism, of which Dr. Talcott Williams is Director.

The gold medal for the most disinterested and meritorious public service rendered by any American newspaper during 1917 was awarded to the New York "Times" because it had published intact the official reports, documents, and speeches of various European statesmen in critical times when it was necessary to interpret to America the war aims and the spirit of our allies and our enemies.

A similar medal for the best editorial article written during the year, the test of excellence being moral purpose, sound reasoning, clearness of style, and power to influence public opinion in the right direction, was awarded to the Louisville "CourierJournal" for its editorials "Væ Victis" and "War Has Its Compensations." Our readers will not be surprised to learn that these articles were written by the veteran editor of that paper, Henry Watterson.

The prize of $1,000 for the best review of the public service of the American press in 1917 was divided between two members of the outgoing class in the School of Journalism, Miss Minna Lewinson and Henry Beetle Hough.

For the best example of reporter's work during the year, the test being accuracy, terseness, and the accomplishment of some public good, the prize of $1,000 went to Harold A. Littledale, of the New York "Evening Post," for the series of articles published in that paper exposing the abuses in, and leading to the reform of, the New Jersey State Prison system. We learn that Mr. Littledale is now fighting in Flanders. He recently distinguished himself by sticking to his tank until the Germans were within forty yards, and then blowing it up.

For the best history of the United States published during the year, the prize of $2,000 was awarded to James Ford Rhodes for his "History of the Civil War."

For the biography which best sets forth patriotic and unselfish service published during 1917 the prize of $1,000 went to William Cabell Bruce, the author of "Benjamin Franklin SelfRevealed.”

For the American novel published during the year which best depicts the atmosphere of American life the prize of $1,000 went to Ernest Poole for the novel "His Family."

Similarly, the prize of $1,000 for an original American play performed during 1917 in New York City which best represents the educational value and power of the stage in raising the standard of good morals, good taste, and good manners went to Jesse Lynch Williams, the author of "Why Marry?"

A PERSONAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Mr. Theodore H. Price, who for several years has been a valued and regular contributor to The Outlook on financial and economic matters, has been appointed Actuary of the Federal Railroad Administration under Secretary McAdoo, DirectorGeneral of Railroads. As our readers know, Mr. Price is the founder, editor, and publisher of "Commerce and Finance," a financial and economic weekly of New York City. He has resigned the editorship and turned the paper over to be conducted by his associate, Mr. Richard Spillane, who has also been a contributor to The Outlook. At this writing we are not sure whether Mr. Price's Government activities will prevent his continuing his special work for The Outlook, but we hope that we shall get at least some first-hand comment on railway and affiliated subjects. The term "actuary of a railroad" is somewhat new. It is defined by Director-General McAdoo as follows:

His [the Actuary's] duties will be to compile and analyze statistics and make reports concerning the various economic

problems connected with the functions of the railroad administration.

Mr. Price's appointment is an indication of the thorough going manner in which the Government is proposing to reorganize and conduct our railways and transportation during the war emergency.

A PATRIOTIC USE FOR GUIDE-BOOKS

A reader of The Outlook, who in years past has done much traveling in Europe and accumulated a large number of guide-books, those made famous by Baedeker as well as others, informs us that it occurred to him that these guide-books might be useful to our armies on the western front in France. He therefore sent them to the War Department, and received the following letter from an officer of the General Staff:

Permit me to thank you for the trouble you have taken for the War Department in sending to us guide-books containing maps of territory now occupied by the German forces. These maps will be used to the best possible advantage, and your generous action is highly appreciated.

If you should know of the existence of material of a similar nature, I would be glad if you would notify the possessors of our desire to obtain such data, or if you advise me as to such persons we will write to them direct.

There must be many readers of The Outlook who have such guide-books, with maps, describing Belgian, German, and French territory. We suggest that they send such guide-books to Colonel A. B. Coxe, the Office of the Chief of Staff, 1156 Fifteenth Street N. W., Washington, D. C.

THE WHEAT AND FLOUR SITUATION

In rejoinder to recent press despatches, widely circulated throughout the country, which have given the impression that there is no longer need for rigorous saving of wheat and flour, the Food Administration promptly declares that every aspect of the situation intensifies the need for limitation in consumption. If present restriction should be relaxed in the slightest degree, it asserts, serious want for the people of Europe would result before the new crop can reach the market.

On June 1, according to the Food Administration's estimate, the total available supply was about 56,000,000 bushels. Of this amount, if we are to maintain the absolutely necessary shipments to our Army and to our allies, no less than 30,000,000 bushels must be sent abroad before new wheat is available for export.

This would leave about 26,000,000 bushels for domestic consumption during June and July. As our normal consumption for a two months' period is about 80,000,000 bushels, it will be readily seen that our consumption should be about a third of the normal.

THE DETROIT CHILDREN'S MUSEUM

More than once The Outlook has called attention to the desirability of making museums of art and other museums more accessible to children-indeed, to the desirability of having separate children's museums.

One such was established last year in Detroit. As is well known, the Detroit Museum of Art is a foremost institution of its kind. Up to last December, however, pupils of the public schools had enjoyed little acquaintance with it. Since then, however, circumstances have changed. In its basement a Children's Museum was established and has had success enough to call for additional quarters.

Here are installed exhibits of especial appeal to childrenan Eskimo group, for example, similar to the one executed by Mr. Dwight Franklin at the Brooklyn Museum, to which The Outlook recently referred, showing in miniature the problems of transportation in the North, together with a view of costumes, customs, and native implements. Then there are the exhibits of the materials used in various manufactures, spinning and weaving, for instance; there are jennies for spinning cotton, wool, silk, showing the methods from those used by our grandmothers in making cloth to those of our own time. As a reminder of present necessity there are also the socks and

66

sweaters, wristlets and caps, used by our men over there." Then there are the seasonal exhibits. In a large case, for instance, are the winter birds and migrants found in the neighborhood of Detroit. At this case a child (or an adult, for this bird display has attracted as many adults as children) may be come familiar with the different species thereabouts. Another exhibit is that of fur-bearing animals indigenous to the Detroit latitude; this gives an opportunity for getting acquainted with specimens of which the usual city child knows practically nothing. Moreover, each month there are on exhibition models of the birds found around Detroit during that month. What seems to us the most marked feature of the Detroit Children's Museum, however, is its Loan Department. This is a result of an arrangement between the Superintendent of Schools and the Director of the Museum. Suppose the pupils of a certain room in a public school are studying about cotton. In order to show the various stages in transforming cotton bolls into cotton fabric the teacher asks for a display" from the Children's Museum. The various objects are packed, sent out to the school, and set up in the class-room. If the pupil actually handles a cotton boll and a bit of cloth, he understands the transformation wrought.

66

At the end of the period for which the exhibition has been requisitioned it is returned and is ready to continue its farther journeyings. In this manner bird and animal life, coal, copper, iron, and other minerals and other objects have been handled, and especially the customs, costumes, and characteristics of vari ous countries have been graphically illustrated.

This thoroughgoing venture in Detroit should be widely imitated.

W

REPRISALS

HEN a man attributes an evil motive to another, he reveals his own character. His accusation is virtually a confession. What he says amounts to this: I believe you have this unworthy motive because I should have it if I were in your place.

This explains the German atrocities. The Germans believe that by shooting unoffending civilians, by bombing hospitals, by bayoneting babies, by violating women, they can frighten into submission the people whom they are trying to conquer; and the reason they believe it is that they think others have the same traits that they themselves have. They know that they themselves could be terrorized into submission, and therefore they think others can be. A brute may fight bravely, but when pushed to extremity shows that at the bottom of his heart he is a coward.

We must keep this in mind in determining what to do about German atrocities. The Germans themselves have given us the key to their character. They have told us by their atrocities what measures would be effectual against them.

It is hard for us to believe this of anybody; but it has been hard for Americans to believe that anybody was capable of doing what the Germans have done. We are now beginning to believe the incredible. We know, indeed, that the Germans have perpetrated crimes so horrible that their description cannot be printed, and have perpetrated them openly, defiantly, deliberately, boastingly. That these crimes have failed to terrorize such people as the English and the French, that such crimes will fail to terrorize such people as the Americans, makes it hard for us to believe that there are people who could be frightened and intimidated; but by perpetrating these act's the Germans have told the world plainly that they themselves could be intimidated. And, hard as it is, we must again come to believe the incredible.

If the Germans cannot be made to stop their cruelty in any other way-and so far they have not been stopped-they must be frightened into stopping it. This is the justification for reprisals.

That we shrink naturally from undertaking acts of reprisal is no adequate reason for failing to undertake them. We shrank from going to war; but that was a very poor reason for our delay in going to war. Men shrink from exposing themselves to shrapnel and high explosives. Men shrink from the kind of life that the soldiers must lead in the trenches. The very fact, however, that men shrink from doing these things makes it all the

more honorable for them to do them, providing the acts themselves are justifiable.

Are reprisals justifiable?

The better word for the sort of act popularly called reprisal is retorsion. This is defined by Westlake' as follows: "Retorsion in war is the action of a belligerent against whom a law has been broken, and who. retorts by breaking the same or some other law in order to compensate himself for the damage which he has suffered, and to deter his enemy from continuing or repeating the offense." Professor Westlake points out that there is an analogy in national law in the principle that if one party to a contract violates it the other party is released.

The reason why retorsion in war is sometimes necessary is very simple. Germany, for example, has broken the laws of nations in bombing undefended English towns. How can she be stopped? England cannot stop her by making war on her, because England is already at war with her. She might try to stop her by persuading a neutral to intercede or to threaten Germany with war if she does not stop breaking international law. For two years and a half America, while a neutral, watched Germany breaking international law right and left, and, though we finally protested in cases where our own interests were involved, we failed to take any real measures to restrain Germany until we entered the war ourselves, avowedly for what Germany had done, not to England, but to us. Now if Germany drops bombs on the civilian population of New York we cannot expect Holland or Switzerland or Spain to do what we failed to do under similar circumstances. There is only one alternative left. The offended nation must take measures to make Germany realize that her violation of the law of nations will bring evil consequences to herself, and that means retorsion. Ünless checked by retorsion Germany can continue her atrocities with impunity.

It is generally unavoidable that in retorsion people are made to suffer who had no direct part in perpetrating the original offense. Professor Westlake, however, points out that the justification for this is that "for an individual to suffer by retorsion for the offense of his government implies that for the purposes of war he is held to be identified with his state." In the case of retorsion upon Germany this is doubly justified, because it is one of the cardinal doctrines of Germany that every German subject is merged in the Empire. Germany cannot hold this doctrine for her own benefit and escape having that doctrine applied to her for the purpose of holding her accountable. We shall not attempt to specify what acts of retorsion should be undertaken to check the atrocities of the Hun; but we venture to indicate certain principles that should govern any retorsion undertaken by America.

First, no act of retorsion should or will be sanctioned by America which would make the agent of it a personal criminal or would violate the absolute prohibitions which must be ob served at all costs. What the Germans in Belgium and France and Poland have done to women, for example, not out of passion, but as a measure of frightfulness, demands the sternest retorsion, but by measures which will leave such horrors as one of the Hun's distinctions.

Second, the sole reason why retorsion is ever justifiable is that it is effective. Retorsion for vengeance, for the satisfaction of one's own vindictiveness, as a vent for even just and noble hatred of foul deeds, is of no value. Indeed, it is a detriment to those who undertake it, because it diverts energy which ought to be directed to effectual ends. Retorsion should be confined to acts that will prevent or discourage the enemy from perpetrating his barbarity. The use of men and material for acts of retorsion when such men and material could be more effectually used for the prosecution of military measures is wasteful.

Third, whenever possible, retorsion should be brought home to the perpetrators of the outrages which have been committed, or to those who are in that class of service identified with the outrages in question. Prisoners of war, for example, are ordinarily entitled to their lives upon surrender; but the crews and commanders of submarines have almost uniformly played the part of pirates and have forfeited their right to be regarded when captured as honorable prisoners of war. A justifiable 1"The Collected Papers of John Westlake on Public International Law," edited by L. Oppenheim, Cambridge, England, at the University Press, 1914, p. 259.

measure of retorsion would be to make sure that no German submarine officer or seaman found and seized should ever be heard of again. The mystery of the disappearance of German submarines and their crews has been reported to cause among German sailors a dread of the submarine service.

Fourth, within such limitations as we have indicated, the particular measures of retorsion should be decided upon, not by public opinion, but by experts who can weigh their relative merits as effectual means of prevention.

PROFITS AND PROFITEERS

Profiteer is a derogatory term applied to one who successfully attempts to take advantage of his country's necessity to make money for himself. It is right and just that as thus understood it should be a term of reproach. The man who is a profiteer must be in these days either grossly ignorant or scoundrelly. By this time there can remain only a very small number of people who are ignorant of the acute necessity under which this country is laboring; and there are never many scoundrels. The profiteers, therefore, must constitute an extremely small, an almost negligible, minority of the people.

There is, however, a considerable and far from negligible number of people who are making profits as a consequence of the war. To call most of these people profiteers is a demoralizing misuse of language. They are making profits because they are producing things or rendering service of special value at this time, and they are receiving the monetary returns that are inevitable at a time when such goods and such service are in demand.

Let us suppose a case in point. A is the owner of a mine from which coal can be obtained at low cost. There is a great demand for coal. For the purposes of manufacturing munitions more coal is needed than the specially productive mines can supply. The price of coal in the market must be increased sufficiently to pay the cost of producing coal from mines where the cost of production is high. A price which will stimulate coal production from unproductive mines will give to A large profits. There is no doubt in the mind of every one who knows him that A is patriotic. He, in fact, offers his services to the Government at a dollar a year and works himself into a wreck for his country's sake; but his profits from his coal mine keep coming to him just the same. It is cruelly unfair to call A à profiteer.

Suppose, instead of a coal mine, it is a commercial or manufacturing business that A owns. It is highly productive, not because of natural advantages, but because of years of highly skilled management on A's part in the past. If there is a great demand for A's product, the price must be enough to make it possible for B and C and D, who are by no means skilled managers, to produce the goods. It is impossible under such circumstances for A not to profit. Yet it would be cruel and stupid to call A a profiteer.

Yet A ought to be taxed heavily, because it is unwholesome for individuals to reap large profits through conditions created by war, and, more particularly, because the simplest and the justest way by which revenue for the purposes of the war can be raised is by taking the surplus from the very industries which war stimulates.

In framing a war revenue bill the object should not be the punishment of profiteers; much less should it be the punishment of those who, without being profiteers, have by fortune or skill the goods or the service that commands high returns. The object of a war revenue bill should be to lay the burden of financing the war chiefly upon those industries which the war itself has enabled to bear those burdens. To put it tersely, it should be to make the war as far as possible pay for itself. War is productive as well as destructive. It drives men into efficiency. It should be required to pay for what it destroys out of what it makes. A war revenue bill drafted on this principle will not try to look into the motives of men, but will, whatever their motive, approximately equalize the returns from war business. A war revenue bill thus drafted will very largely obviate the necessity for fixing prices, for it will allow sufficiently high prices to enable industry to produce what is