as the "vanguard of the German army," and noted that quantities of munitions were being landed for the White Guards from German submarines. Indeed, about the time of the German landing the White Guard leaders threw off the mask. On March 1 of this year the White Guard Prime Minister sent a long telegram to the German Chancellor (which was printed in the White Guard press) lauding the Kaiser and his "victorious troops," and thanking Germany "for all she has done for our Finnish chasseurs, who three years ago voluntarily entered the German army."

A typical expression of White Guard opinion is contained in an editorial that appeared on March 8, on the eve of the German landing, in "Valkonen Suomi" (White Finland), the official White Guard organ, published at Vasa. It reads:

HAIL, GERMANS! Friends, allies! Welcome to our shores! You, Germans, have been our teachers in the arts of peace and war. And when the terrible trial of strength with arms and all means began between the nations, our most enthusiastic young men hurried to you to learn, while battling in your ranks, the glorious art of victory. . . .

We come to your side as allies, friends. We have seen that in this battle of nations your, and only your, arms have opened ways to freedom for oppressed nations. Your steely strength has

smashed and will further smash the powers of the egotistic nations of rulers and oppressors.

The Red Guards, a volunteer force of Finns poorly armed and more poorly fed, put up a stubborn resistance, but proved no match for the well-equipped German war machine. Finland is another small nation fallen into the clutches of the German power. But, as the Finnish Junkers well know, only a German victory in the war and a German peace can make permanent the results of their unholy alliance with Germany. The producing classes of Finland, the great mass of the people, strongly organized in every town and village, highly literate, trained in twelve years of parliamentary achievement, will never rest until they have cast off the incubus of German-White Guard rule

and re-established, under the more favorable conditions of a world purged of Junkerdom, the ordered progress of that democratic evolution for which they have so valiantly striven. Though the Germans and their White Guard allies are utilizing the system of Sulla—the system of proscription lists and wholesale murder-to enthrone autocracy in Finland, they cannot kill off enough of the inhabitants to crush the desire of the Finnish people for a co-operative democracy in which neither social, economic, nor political exploitation has place.

NE of the finest moral actions in this war has been done by America. It is action on a gigantic scale, and yet of a directly personal character. Insufficient publicity, I think, has been given to this action.

Is it realized by the people of this country that America has already saved us from capitulating to the enemy? Either we should have been forced into this surrender (with our armies unbroken and our munitions of war unexhausted) or we should at this moment be struggling to live and work and fight on onethird of our present rations.

America is sending to these islands almost two-thirds of our food supplies. Sixty-five per cent of the essential foodstuffs eaten by the British citizen comes to him from the American continent. This in itself is something which calls for our lively gratitude. But there is a quality in the action of America which should intensify our gratitude. For these American supplies, essential to our health and safety, represent in very large measure the personal and voluntary self-sacrifice of the individual American citizen. They are not crumbs from the table of Dives. They are not the commandeered supplies of an autocratic government. They represent, rather, the kindly, difficult, and entirely willing self-sacrifice of a whole Nation, the vast majority of whom are working people.

There is only one altar for this act of sacrifice-it is the table of the American working classes. And the rite is performed by men, women, and children, at every meal of the day, day after day, week after week.

THE CHEERFUL GIVER

This act of self-sacrifice, let us remember, is made in the midst of plenty. Well might the American housewife ask why she should deprive her children of food, why she should institute wheatless and meatless days, when all about her there is a visible superabundance of these things. Questions such as these are natural enough on the other side of the Atlantic, and on the

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other side of the American continent, though five thousand miles away from the battlefields of France.

But the citizens of America do not ask such questions. With a cheerfulness and a courage which are as vigorous as their industry, and with a moral earnestness which is by far the greatest demonstration America has yet given to the world of American character, these people so far away from us on the other side of the Atlantic have willingly and with no coercion by the state denied themselves for the sake of the Entente. They are going short, they are going hungry, for our sakes. They are practicing an intimate self-sacrifice in order that we may hold our own till their sons come to fight at our side. All over America the individual American citizen is making this self-sacrifice, and making it without a murmur. He is feeding, by his personal self-sacrifice, not only these islands, but France, Italy, and many of the neutrals.

This great demonstration of character has had no other impetus than the simple declaration of the facts by Herbert Hoover, the man who fed Belgium. Hoover has told his countrymen how things stand. That is all. The winter of 1918, he declared to them, will prove to mankind whether or not the American Nation "is capable of individual self-sacrifice to save the world." His propaganda has never descended to unworthy levels. He has appealed always to the conscience of his countrymen. He has spoken of "a personal obligation upon every one of us towards some individual abroad who will suffer privation to the extent of our own individual negligence."

America has answered this appeal in a manner which marks her out as one of the greatest moral forces in the world. It should be known out there, in the farm-houses and cottages of the American continent, that the people of this country, tightening their belts and confronting the future with an inde structible confidence, are mindful of America's self-sacrifice, and are grateful to her men and women and children for their self-sacrifice-self-sacrifice which will save the world.

I

F there is one question which meets the man from Washington wherever he turns in this wide country, if there is one question for which everybody, from the Cabinet officer to the chance visitor who has spent twenty-four hours fighting for hotel accommodations in the District of Columbia, is supposed to have an illuminating answer ready, it is: "Well, how do things seem to be going at Washington?" People from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, want to know whether the heart of the Nation is sound. The public, to be sure, has heard the verdicts of innumerable heart specialists, but their diversity is confusing. Doctor Chamberlain laments that the patient has heart failure; Doctor Sherman reports heart disease brought on by the microbes of Socialism; Doctor Creel and others assure us that never in history was there such an active heart, and if it has skipped a beat here and there, why, any normal heart is subject to such syncopation. And a multitude of lesser specialists bring from Washington their conflicting diagnoses. If most of these judgments, based upon third or fourth hand information, are colored by the memory of a tiff with a bureau chief here or a contract satisfactorily placed there, and if the findings of the press reveal a general impression that it is the function of a Republican to pick faults and of a Democrat to condone them, then perhaps there is some reason for an observer who for many months has watched the Governmental machine from the inside to try to make an honest administrative audit.

I

We shall do well, first of all, to take note of a condition so apparent that we are likely to overlook its significance. The Administration is honest. Even its harshest critics admit with little question the unimpeachable character of the men about the President. So thoroughly do we take this fact for granted that it is only when we hear the rumbling of the Bolo Pasha storm that we remember to be thankful for things which have been as universal in Washington as loyalty and integrity. Profiteering there undoubtedly has been, and at the present writing the Borglum charges of graft in aircraft production, while generally discredited, are not yet disproved; but on the whole graft has been isolated and promptly punished. The cases against the advisory committees of the Council of National Defense, which made such a stir early in the winter, came to nothing. There have been charges of favoritism, or worse, as is inevitable when billions of dollars are being rapidly spent and opportunities for illegal profit are rife; but Congressional investigating committees have not yet, so far as the writer knows, discovered a single willful misappropriation of the public funds. Political profiteering, never so easy to detect with certainty, has been, on the whole, less prevalent than one might have had reason to fear. The President has been widely criticised for choosing his counselors almost exclusively from his own party and for neglecting to utilize the services of men like Colonel Roosevelt-a policy built squarely upon Mr. Wilson's theory of party government. Every one who believes that party politics divert time, effort, and enthusiasm from the winning of the war disapproves Mr. Wilson's entrance into the recent Wisconsin campaign and his sending Democratic leaders to stump the State on behalf of Mr. Davies. But, granted the difficulty of getting working results from a coalition Cabinet under a Constitution such as ours, partisanship has not, on the whole, gone far. Fairness compels one to take into account the absolute disregard of party lines in the awarding of commissions in the Army and Navy, and of positions in most of our special war-making departments. The real test of non-partisan Nationalism, however, has not yet arrived; it will come in the summer and autumn, when the elections are impending. One hopes that the Wisconsin mistake will not be repeated; that Mr. McAdoo will con

tinuously suit his action to the words with which he rebukes those who introduce him at Liberty Loan rallies as "Our next President;" and that Mr. Wilson will so stretch his theory of political responsibility as to avail himself of at least a few capable Republican executives. It is a Nation which is in arms now, not a party, and the Administration can satisfy the country only by meeting the issue in the largest spirit.

II

It is not, however, these aspects of the Administration that demand primary consideration. Here are the questions that cry most persistently for honest answers: Are the leaders at Washington making good? Is progress being delayed by red tape? Is there team-work and generalship? Is our strategy thoughtfully directed and effectively converted into action? Let us take up these questions in turn.

None is more difficult to answer with even an approximation of justice, and none is more frequently dismissed with glib and irresponsible answers, than the question of personnel. The best one can do in the space of a page or two is to convey general impressions based on pretty well established evidence.

The men to whom the President has delegated the most imposing war duties are the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Chairman of the Shipping Board, the Food Administrator, and the Secretary of the Treasury and DirectorGeneral of Railroads. To include Mr. Hurley, Mr. Hoover, and Mr. McAdoo in the group with Mr. Baker and Mr. Daniels is to acknowledge the fact that the number of men we can put in France depends chiefly on our production of ships; that the submarine is still the greatest single menace that confronts us; and that our peculiar geographical situation renders the problems of food, transportation, and finance of virtually equal importance with those of manning and munitioning our Army and Navy.

The Secretary of War, whose first great task (that of mobilization and construction) has now settled down to routine performance, and whose second great task (that of strategic direction and of adaptation of war machinery to the changing demands of strategy) has hardly begun, has been for many months a storm center. In many things Mr. Baker has learned slowly. His stubbornness in resisting the idea of a centralized control of purchasing, for example, has been exasperating; his conduct when under fire by Congress early in the winter was that of an agile, almost slippery, politician. But he has suffered a sea change since that first unfortunate appearance before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. To the praise long due him, especially for his far-sighted intelligence in industrial matters and for the wisdom which led to the creation of his Commission on Training Camp Activities, must now be added praise for his admirable attitude toward Congress and for several notable appointments, especially those of Assistant Secretary Stettinius, General Goethals, and General March. No better men could have been selected to solve his major problems, and the tonic influence of their energy has already made itself felt. Mr. Baker's critics are now made up chiefly of those who cannot forgive him his preference for peace and his unwillingness to favor universal military training. He is still on trial, and his Department has many mistakes to answer for; but he is perhaps the keenest and most thorough student of the war in the Cabinet, and he shows every day a stronger knowledge of his job.

Mr. Daniels is making good to an extent incredible to those who have for years made him the butt of the Administration. He has the most efficient department in Washington. To do business with the Navy Department is to find the right man readily and to receive prompt and thorough satisfaction.

Perhaps Mr. Franklin Roosevelt, his Assistant Secretary, is chiefly responsible; perhaps we may thank the great tradition of the Navy; yet, at any rate, despite a certain smallness of intellectual stature, despite a personality which lends itself to ridicule, Mr. Daniels has got results, and it would not be right to deny him credit for the fact that his Department has won little but praise from Congress and the country during more than a year of war. Because the Navy works so quietly we sometimes forget its prime importance. The undeniable fact is that the Navy is on the job and that Mr. Daniels is serving the Nation wisely and well.

Mr. Hurley, Chairman of the Shipping Board, has not the qualities of greatness. There has been some question whether he would prove competent to manage the most gigantic industrial undertaking of all time. The Shipping Board made a bad start. Mr. Hurley, when he was appointed last August, found himself handicapped at the outset by a badly organized department and confronted by a series of imposing obstacles. For all his shrewdness and hard sense, it has looked more than once as if he were not himself aware of the staggering size of the shipbuilding programme that is needed to win the war. Even now, although we are turning out ships with constantly increasing speed, Mr. Hurley is still on trial. But his appointment of Mr. Schwab to head the Emergency Fleet Corporation is a good augury, and he has recently been encouragingly free from that disingenuous optimism which is the curse of Government officials. If he breaks under the strain, it is only because the work of bridging the seas calls for a giant, and Mr. Hurley is merely an active and level-headed business man. He and Mr. Schwab need all the wisdom and energy of the country behind them.

Mr. Hoover has held for nearly a year a position that would seem a guarantee of unpopularity. The political life of food administrators has been short in most belligerent countries. All the more remarkable, therefore, is Mr. Hoover's continuing prestige. His fearlessness, his openness of mind, his unusual personal magnetism, and his astonishing imaginative grasp of his great problem impress every man who has the fortune to come into contact with him. It is perhaps a coincidence that the only man selected from outside the Democratic party for a primary administrative place is by general consent the greatest man at Washington (leaving Mr. Wilson out of consideration). Mr. Hoover has been criticised for not making compulsory many measures of conservation which up to this time have only been voluntary; but he has accomplished big things in a big spirit, and we may be thankful for him.

Mr. McAdoo is still something of a puzzle. He seems to have done good work in the Treasury, and he is undoubtedly a man of great astuteness; but his capacity as a railway chief is not yet proved, and altogether there is a tendency in Washington to feel that he has bitten off more than he can chew. His greatest weakness would seem to be a tendency to play a lone hand. It is said that his opposition has delayed the creation of a War Cabinet; he wishes neither to participate in it nor to be dominated by it. It is certain that the Treasury Department has had a tendency to resist plans for co-ordination which involve concessions on its own part.

The remaining leaders of the Administration fall into two groups-those in the old Cabinet and those who occupy new war positions.

Of the former group, Mr. Lansing's mediocrity happily does not matter, since for all practical purposes the President is his own very admirable Secretary of State; Mr. Lane, the most popular man in the Cabinet, has few war duties, having been apparently out of Presidential favor in recent months; the Postmaster-General, the Attorney-General, and the Secretary of Commerce have a relatively small share in the prosecution of the war. The critical points are apparently the portfolios of Labor and Agriculture.

Mr. W. B. Wilson is a man of rugged character and holds the confidence of Labor, but his department has been woefully weak in personnel; and his administrative incapacity is shown by his failure to build up anything in the nature of a War Labor Administration until precious long months had dragged by and the Council of National Defense had prepared a comprehensive programme and submitted it to him by way of the President. It is safe to say that this War Labor Administra

tion, if Congress ever gives it a chance to live, will not justify its existence unless Mr. Frankfurter, who has been appointed to the direction of it, is given a free hand to build up the machinery the absence of which until the spring of 1918 has been in itself a mark of Secretary Wilson's chief shortcoming. Mr. Frankfurter is known to be a brilliant and sympathetic student of labor conditions and knows his subject thoroughly; his executive capacity is still to be tested. One is curious to know whether he will be able to introduce efficiency into the Labor Department, where it has been so notoriously a stranger.

The failures of the Secretary of Agriculture, like those of the Secretary of Labor, have been the somewhat inconspicuous but very grave failures of omission rather than of commission. Mr. Houston shares with Mr. Hoover the duty of feeding the world. Mr. Hoover's province is distribution, conservation, and regulation; Mr. Houston's, production. The contrast has been distinct. One has faced the facts, spoken without evasion, and acted without hesitation. The other has steadily discounted the gravity of his task, has disposed of the imposing farm labor problem chiefly by saying that no labor shortage exists, and has generally let things drag. The farmers distrust Mr. Houston's optimism, and with reason. The voice with the smile may win over the telephone, but it will not help feed a hungry world. Mr. Houston is quietly proving himself one of the Administra tion's liabilities.

Of the second group, Mr. Baruch, although his qualifications for the chairmanship of the War Industries Board are not those of large administrative experience, has shown shrewdness and imagination, and it looks as if he would be capable of doing all that can be done to give the War Industries Board something at least of the character of a Munitions Department. Already it has gained vastly in importance, and Mr. Baruch is steadily accumulating prestige and power. Mr. Vance McCormick's War Trade Board has the weaknesses of a child who has grown too fast. In less than a year it has expanded from nothing at all to a truly portentous size; yet, under the circumstances, Mr. McCormick and his associates have acquitted themselves fairly well. Not so much can be said for the Fuel Administration and the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information. The writer does not feel himself competent to judge the economic wisdom of the famous fuel order of last winter; but, despite Dr. Garfield's admirable firmness of character and his ability as a harmonizer of men, there is a general impression that the responsibility for warming our houses and factories should be given next winter to some man with more experience in the very complex science of transportation, rather than kept in the hands of a man who has gained through his own actions the general reputation of a bungler. And Mr. Creel is clearly not up to his job. Courage, honesty, and a living faith in democracy are not alone sufficient qualifications for the direction of our National publicity when they are coupled with administrative inexperience, unconscious partisanship, lack of tact and discretion, and a hot-tempered impulsiveness bordering on petulance. Mr. Creel has by no means deserved all the abuse flung at him, and his problem is far more difficult than it appears on superficial examination. There are plenty of men, however, who could conduct the affairs of the Committee on Public Information more wisely than he.

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With the mention of Dr. Garfield and Mr. Creel the list of men at the top" comes to an end. Others there are, but they are either less important, or are responsible to some one of the administrators included in the list instead of directly to the President.

The list we have considered is conspicuous for its unevenness. It includes men who are indisputably doing well, like Mr. Hoover and Mr. Daniels; men whose ability is subject to dispute, but looks fairly well assured, like Mr. McAdoo, Mr. Hurley, and Mr. Baruch; at least one man who is slowly weathering a storm and may be expected to gain in strength and prestige Mr. Baker; and perhaps four men who are open to the charge of inadequacy-Dr. Garfield, Mr. Houston, Mr. W. B. Wilson, and Mr. Creel.

Mention should be made of several new subordinate executives of whom we may expect the best-Mr. Schwab, DirectorGeneral of the Emergency Fleet Corporation; QuartermasterGeneral Goethals; Assistant Secretary of War Stettinius; and

Mr. Ryan, Director of Aircraft Production. It is significant that these four men are in positions where there is a maximum requirement of constructive business ability and a minimum requirement of policy-making. The most difficult positions to fill are those which require both executive capacity and wisdom in the formulation of policies-two qualities which do not often go hand in hand, but are both essential to success in government administration. College presidents, labor leaders, and writers are likely to lack the one; big business men are likely to lack the other. Mr. Hoover happily combines them; Mr. Daniels seems to have acquired them both; Mr. Baker has one and is delegating the other to his new assistants; Messrs. Houston, Garfield, W. B. Wilson, and Creel do not seem to possess the combination. One should not forget in considering President Wilson's appointments the absolute necessity of filling the chief positions with men whose policies will be adjusted to those of the President and the Cabinet. One need not forget this condition, however, to wish that certain changes might be made without delay.

III

Any analysis of administrative efficiency must, to be thorough, deal not only with the men at the top, but reach down to a consideration of the fabric of the organization under them. We hear a lot about Governmental red tape, a term of general condemnation. What is the nature of its entanglements, and how are they to be swept away?

We may as well define" red tape" as the following of formal methods of Governmental procedure which are not adapted to the end in view. In time of war everybody ought to take the shortest cut possible toward his object. Why, then, do officials persist in following the old roundabout paths beaten by tradition?

One does not have to remain long in the Government service to discover the nature of the hedges which line these paths. Most of them are laws; good laws for peace time, perhaps, laws intended to prevent some abuse of power, but obstructive laws for war time.

The layman seldom realizes in what detail the procedure of Government departments is dictated by Congressional regulation. Such and such money may be spent only in such and such a way, and only by such and such a bureau and subject to such and such special provisions; to some executives it seems as if Congress didn't wish to give them room to turn round in, so closely has it fenced them in. Many a break in the fences has been made by the passage of the Overman Bill; but there are plenty of regulations left which restrict freedom of executive action.

Here is a single example: No executive department may have any printing done elsewhere than at the Government Printing Office. A sensible regulation for 1895, 1905, or 1915, no doubt; it kept a profitable field clear of the grafter and made Government printing a standardized enterprise. But in 1918, with the millions of Selective Service questionnaires, the millions of Liberty Loan and War Savings and War Trade Board blanks and leaflets and circulars, and millions of folders and pamphlets being turned out under pressure by a score of departments and sub-departments, the Printing Office, large and efficient as it is, has been swamped. There have been times when it has been necessary to wait days, or even weeks, because the presses were full of War Department material. "Red tape!" cries the new Government official when he hears that the Printing Office will take a week to print fifty thousand blanks; "take the order to Philadelphia to-night and find a private firm that will do it in two days!" The law will not allow it. The official knows how many months it would take for an appeal to Congress to bear fruit, and how ready an investigating committee would be to leap on him for breaking the law. He fumes-and waits for the G. P. O.

Such restrictions are everywhere. The writer knows of a Government bureau which could not get its windows washed for some time last summer because the necessary mops were not on the list of supplies which the department was authorized to buy on its appropriation. A carefully devised law prevents the Government from advancing money for traveling expenses, and there is at least one Government office from which agents go on trips of several thousand miles, funds for which have to be put up by wealthy members of the department, who are later reimbursed by the Treasury. The restrictions of the Civil

Service, valuable as they have proved in the past as a weapon against political patronage, are now the cause of more profanit in Washington than all the bunkers at the Chevy Chase link put together. Most departments may not engage clerks e stenographers except from the Civil Service list. It is illegal t transfer an employee from one department to another at a increase in salary. The Government is lavish with holiday even in war time, and the Civil Service employees leave every afternoon at 4:30; and while one may force them to stay ove? time, the law forbids one either to pay them extra for so doing to compensate them by excusing them from work during regul hours. In other words, if something must be done quickly, cannot either pick up a staff of clerks outside (unless one pa for them personally) or keep one's regular employees worki all night and excuse them the next day. Such laws protect worker in such an inelastic way that they do not allow gency jobs to be done in emergency fashion. The writer known of a National enrollment campaign being delayed i days after the appointed time, while the employees who wer packing and mailing the necessary cards put on their hats ar went home each afternoon at 4:30. The Civil Service tions were responsible.

en

regis

1

A second hedge which keeps the Government official fr taking a short cut is the department regulation intended to pr mote sound organization, or to fix responsibility, or to bring ab co-ordination. For instance, a department may buy sup only through its purchasing division-usually the chief cas office. A reasonable regulation; it prevents the scatterin orders and saves money. But to what abuses is it not subjec Suppose a chief clerk is overwhelmed by a rush of busines "All right, go out and buy it yourself," says the new executio to his assistant when he hears this, "and we will settle with the chief clerk later." But the Treasury does not honor charge made by unauthorized individuals; and so executives frequently have to pay out of their own pockets for filing cabinets desks or stationery which are needed in a hurry, or else have to wait perhaps for weeks. The number of official 0.K needed for an individual in the War Department to pick up typewriter or a package of pens for his office would make s business man turn white. The trouble, as is usually evident, not so much with the rules themselves as with the fact the like chains, their strength is that of their weakest link. If e man is in his place, a swift-footed clerk can get the O. K half an hour of fast traveling. If one is away and another week behind in his work, the process is not so rapid. A si stubborn officer, a single chief clerk brought up in the leisure tradition of Government service and jealous of his authority! single official with inadequate clerical help, can hold up a w measure for weeks. Couple this situation with the difficulty securing emergency employees under the Civil Service laws, az one gets a notion of the inflexibility of Government machinery

Again, the number of officials who have to approve a give bulletin or document is appalling to the newcomer in admin trative life. He wishes to send out an order. His superi... must O. K. it, and perhaps the head of the department, al usually it must also be approved by the heads of other depar ments which might conceivably be affected by it. "Red tape. cries the newcomer again. But he discovers that Government responsibility has to be more carefully guarded than that of private firm. His order is an order of the United States Ger ernment. It must conform to Federal policy. If it affects anothe department, that department must be consulted, or what kin of team-work would we have? Suppose the Shipping Bo issued an order concerning the employment of non-union ca penters without consulting the Labor Department; or supp Dr. Garfield authorized the policy of shipping coal to the p of New York without coming to an agreement with the Inte national Ship Control Committee, the Quartermaster-Genera the Director-General of Railroads, the War Industries Board and the Director of Operations of the Shipping Board, all whom are intimately concerned. Red tape? Rather is this a brave struggle toward co-ordination.

Yet such co-ordination takes time. If there are five men t consult, the plan cannot go into operation until the fifth has seen and approved it. If the five are to be brought together in a meeting, the meeting has to be timed to meet their