seven measures was right, would not of itself be suffi to eliminate that candidate from popular approval. No leader of preparedness than Julius Kahn voted for the emore resolution, but he voted right on every other measure. general, however, the frail ones have been very frail indeed. , for instance, George Huddleston, of Alabama, a Demo• Representative. He voted wrong on everything except leclaration of war. On August 9 President Wilson telehed concerning him:

I do not feel at liberty to make any discrimination between didates equally loyal, but I think I am justified in saying that r. Huddleston's record proved him in every way an opponent the Administration.

r take James L. Slayden, of Texas, a Democratic Repreative for twenty-two years, and Chairman of the American up of the Interparliamentary Union. Though he voted for declaration of war, he also voted wrong on every other of seven issues. President Wilson has written of this case: As between candidates equally loyal the Administration never kes part. But, in the light of Mr. Slayden's record, no one can aim that he has given support to the Administration.

To the word "Administration" the President might have ed" and to American rights." Speaker Clark, so the papers , had indorsed Mr. Slayden's candidacy for re-election and o that of Benjamin C. Hilliard, one of the Democratic Repretatives from Colorado. Despite the Speaker's supposed verful influence, however, the Democratic County Committee Mr. Hilliard's district has officially denounced his record. We ask our readers to look at the lists above and see if names of their Congressmen are in them. If not, let the ders think whether they should not get another Congress in, whether he belongs to the particular reader's party or not. The chance of getting the right man is the more assured from e fact that in 164 Congressional districts the vote for memrs of the House was close at the last election.

Moreover, the work should be done before the primaries are ld. Primaries, it is true, have already been held in some ates. But it is not too late to influence the selection of candites in those States whose primaries are not held until the tter part of August or September.

A survey of the candidates already chosen does not indicate at the people have risen to their responsibilities at this time. imilar indifference and neglect elsewhere may make it imposble to secure a Congress truly representative of the country's atriotic and fighting spirit.

HE PRICES OF WHEAT AND COTTON

President Wilson recently vetoed the Gore Bill, which would ave fixed a minimum price of $2.40 a bushel on wheat. Among he letters received by The Outlook on the subject we quote rom two-one for, the other against, the bill. The first says: Is there any surer way to induce the farmer . . . to leave his farm than to offer him double the wage in the shop that he can get on the farm? Many are leaving the farms here. Can blame them?...

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If we have wheat, we are told that we must sell it and pay more for corn and other feed than we get for the wheat. Many farmers fed their wheat last fall because it was almost impossible for them to get other feed for their poultry except by paying considerably more. Can you blame them?

We cannot get the acknowledged cost of production of milk, butter, and cheese. We are told that there is a surplus of these things. Can you blame us if we sell our cows for beef and our dairy calves for veal?

The Government tells us to produce, . . . and to take less than the cost of production.

We get along largely on the unpaid labor of women and children. The wife and mother takes care of the poultry, milks cows, hauls milk and feed, loads hay-in short, she will average at least five hours per day in productive labor for the greater part of the

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I expect to stick to the farm and do my best, even though my friends go into the factory and have money to spend while I keep grubbing away.

The second letter says, in part:

A wealthy farmer in Platte County, Missouri, held about six thousand bushels of wheat; the market price was $2.65 per

bushel. He was advised to sell at once, and was told that the Government intended to fix the price of wheat, and that the new price would probably be near $2 per bushel. He claimed to be too busy to haul the wheat five miles to the elevator, and declined to sell. In due time the price was fixed, and the price at the elevator fell from $2.65 to $2.15. Well-meaning friends remonstrated:

"Uncle Frank, do you know that the Government has fixed the price of wheat at $2.15?"

"That so? Well, I guess it's all right."

"But why didn't you sell before the price was fixed?" "I never stop my plowing for anything. Time to plow is when plowing is good, and I couldn't leave that to haul wheat." "But you've lost right near $3,000 by holding on." "Can't help it; never risk your coming crop when the time is right for getting the ground ready. Anyway, two dollars is all it's worth."

Within the past week the record of two wheat crops near Kansas City has appeared in the Kansas City "Star." The F. F. Marty farm, near Bucyrus, Kansas, yielded an average of nearly 35 bushels to the acre. The crop was sold at a gross return of over $76 per acre. The Scott farm, near Merwin, Missouri, reports a yield of an average of nearly 53 bushels per acre, which, at the present rate, would show a gross return of over $116 per acre. The first of these farms is operated directly by the owner, who, in addition to wheat, raises, successfully, corn, hay, and live stock. A just distribution of expense would probably show that the cost of his wheat did not exceed $10 per acre, leaving a profit such as cannot be attained in any other line of business outside of the exceptional and protected classes.

As proposed in the Senate by Mr. Gore, of Oklahoma, the bill, because of the greater cost of producing the present wheat crop, would have guaranteed the farmers a minimum price of $2.50 for wheat. Last year and this year the Government made the price $2.20. Congress finally inserted a price of $2.40 in the bill. The President vetoed it, because, as he said, "I believe that such unelastic legislative price provisions are unsusceptible of being administered in a way that will be advantageous either to the producer or to the consumer, establishing, as they do, arbitrary levels which are quite independent of the normal market conditions. . . . A fixed minimum price of $2.40 per bushel would, it is estimated, raise the present price of flour from $10.50 to $12.50 at the mill.... The Allied Governments would, of course, be compelled to make all of the purchases at the increased figure."

have told him that it was the essence of justice and fairness "Courtier farmers, swinging incense before the President, that the farmer should receive eighty cents less a bushel for his wheat than he could get in the open market," commented the Oklahoma Senator, who proceeded again to show that the cost of producing wheat is different in different States, that the farmers are getting about a fifth less on an average for their wheat than before the Government assumed control of prices, that the Southern Senators would never vote to reduce the high price of cotton, and yet, in fairness, they should apply the same treatment to themselves that the Administration applies to the wheat farmers. Senator Reed, of Missouri, pointed out that wheat has increased a little more than one hundred per cent over the 1915 price, while cotton has increased more than four hundred per cent.

Not a few ask for an extension of Government price-fixing in cotton under terms equivalent to those now applied to wheat and sugar. This agitation comes not only from Northern farmers, but from some men connected with the cotton industry, who want increased warehousing facilities and the purchase of surplus cotton at a fixed price by a bankers' syndicate backed by the Government. Another group of men ask for Government action to stabilize the cotton market, preferably through a cotton corporation, Governmentally financed, as is the Wheat Corporation. These plans, however, are offset by the farmers' organizations in such States as Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, which are opposed to the fixing of prices for cotton at all.

COASTAL CANALS

The Federal Government has now taken over the Cape Cod Canal. The danger to ships off Cape Cod from submarine

operations calls attention to the desirability of protecting the coal supply going into New England from Southern ports.

The Cape Cod Canal connects Buzzards Bay with Barnstable Bay. It is only eight miles long, but it saves vessels in going from New York to Boston a seventy-mile journey in circling Cape Cod. The canal has immensely aided in the movement of vessels between New York and Boston.

Recently the Federal Government's transportation system took over the Delaware and Raritan Canal, and expects to take over the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Thus it would "line up" and join two waterways. From Boston, in Massachusetts, to Beaufort, in North Carolina, there stretch a series of waterways which should be connected as far as possible; moreover, there should be a sea-level canal across New Jersey; only thirty miles of actual cutting would be needed for it.

Such a system of waterways would be valuable both in peace and in war time. Boats have always had difficulty in rounding Nantucket shoals and beating up the Massachusetts coast. They certainly have had difficulty in traversing the waters off Cape Hatteras. The region between the capes of the Delaware and Cape Lookout is famous for its storms and dangers. With regard to this latter stretch, from the Virginia line to Beaufort (off which on August 6 a German submarine torpedoed and sank the American steamer Merak), there are inland sounds through which the lighter craft may now pass safely. These waterways should be deepened so as to be navigable by ordinary passing steamers.

This at any time. But in war time the submarine menace all along the Atlantic has now shown the added necessity for protecting coastwise commerce.

THE CHILD AND ART

"This is a place that children really like. It is not merely a place that grown-ups think that children ought to like and prod them to go to." So writes a Boston correspondent of The Outlook, referring to the new Children's Center there. In November, 1915, The Outlook described the plan of Mr. Fitzroy Carrington, Curator of Prints in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, for a children's museum of art. It is a satisfaction now to record the establishment of a children's art center, in its own building, all due to Mr. Carrington's initiative.

The structure is of the most modest sort. It is of brick, and only one story high; but its architecture is charming. It stands at the rear of a garden, at 36 Rutland Street, Boston, next to the South End Music School. This music school settlement (not to be confounded with the Conservatory of Music), located a few blocks from the well-known South End House Settlement in a crowded Boston district, is a neighborhood music school, and the Children's Center is a neighborhood art museum. As it is thus no competitor in size or equipment of the great Boston Museum of Fine Arts, its very smallness of size and its untiresome littleness of exhibit have already proved their appeal to the child.

In three niches of the exterior wall are cherub heads. The child enters a side-lighted structure with arched windows. Symmetrical with the round heads of the windows are five lunettes on the opposite wall, and two larger lunettes are at the end of the long barrel vault. These lunettes are to be filled with appropriate mural decoration.

The exhibition consists of pictures, sculptures, and other objects, mostly lent; but the nucleus of a permanent collection has already been formed. The pictures are hung low. They have been selected, of course, with an eye single to the interest of the child. There are Maxfield Parrish's original drawings for the illustration of the "Golden Age," for instance. There are originals by the inimitable Peter Newell. There is an original drawing of a baby by Mary Cassatt. There is even a Whistler etching of a young girl. Among the other works are reproductions in color of Japanese prints, of Indian and Persian miniatures, of Edmond Dulac's " Arabian Nights" illustrations, and of prints in color of many celebrated masterpieces. The collection of sculptures is no less significant. There is a group of Frederick Roth's amusing animal studies executed in glazed pottery or porcelain. There is also a figure by Tolles Chamberlain. There is Bessie Potter Vonnoh's "Daphne" and Paul Manship's "Adonis." The small groups are placed on low tables. Exhibi

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tions will succeed each other at stated intervals, it is an so that, on returning to the gallery, the children the stimulus of finding things there which they had not seen. Nor is it a crime for a child to touch things or to nose against the glass or to speak out loud or to skip a step the The Children's Center is open every week day, als evening a week; later it is expected to have it open eve of ning. Of course it is not to be closed during the Th months. Indeed, the present season has its special sig inbecause of the flower and vegetable garden in front, cu ti by pupils of the music school, and used, as we shall see. Children's Center little folk. Concerning it another correspondent, a lady, writes as follows:

There were from fifteen to twenty children [the class numbers over fifty], of all ages and colors, sitting te the growing plants, with drawing-paper, pencils, etc. were taking their first lesson in drawing stems; others doing more advanced work. All seemed free and h and not at all afraid to approach their instructors for The thought behind the work-of bringing art and a means nearer to the homes of the children, where they feel free to go and come as they cannot at the Museum-is worth while. . . . The freedom of the children and their parent happiness in the work seemed to me to show that had come of their own free will and because they enjoyed it were fond of their teachers.

The weekly attendance has been about four hundred. children drop in, stay ten minutes in the building, then g and play for about an hour, and return for another ten mi Why is not this the real way to look at pictures and thing

A WELCOME for AMERICANS IN ROME

The Outlook is requested to call the attention of all workers in Italy, as well as representatives of the Y. M.C.A Knights of Columbus, to the fact that a Bureau of Welcom Information has been established in Rome at the Hotel E the auspices of the American Embassy, is purely patrioti Via XX Settembre. The scope of this Bureau, which is is to assist, free of charge, with information of every descrip and thus save time, money, and mistakes. Rooms can be se before arrival at all hotels. Assistance is given in shop which, in view of the custom of bargaining prevalent in will prove of great value. Interpreters and guides are furnis Addresses of surgeons, doctors, dentists, equipment dealers, are found.

There is also, in connection with this Bureau, which is aged by American women resident in Rome, a committe social entertainment.

THE VANISHING IMMIGRANT

The entrance of the United States into the war has reda immigration almost to the vanishing point. Following the t ful August day in 1914 when war broke out, the stream greatly curtailed, but immigrants continued to come from E land, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Sa dinavia, Scotland, Spain, and Mexico-in some cases in lar numbers than before the war. The total of those admitted fr these countries in the year before the United States bea involved was 215,677. Between July 1 last year and M this year the number was only 52,564. This marked redne in the supply of alien labor has caused the Department Labor, of which the Bureau of Immigration is a branch, to tas a radical step toward the encouragement of immigration. amounts to a temporary change of policy. In the past the effor of those most actively interested in the subject lay in the dire tion of restriction, the means crystallizing in the Contract La Law, the literacy test, and the head tax. In order to obtain ad tional agricultural workers and laborers for maintenance of th way of railways and the operation of coal mines from Cans and Mexico, the enforcement of these three forms of restricti has been greatly modified.

On June 12 the Secretary of Labor issued regulations wh temporarily nullify the operation of the literacy and contr labor sections of the Immigration Law so far as they relate to t

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of labor mentioned. Under the new regulations, in the f agricultural labor, those who arrange for the importation -h labor, the employers, must meet the laborers at the , either in person or by representative, complete the ement of employment, and enter into an agreement with migration authorities that the labor will be employed in Itural occupations alone, and will be returned to the port t at the end of the period for which admission is granted. mployer must also inform the immigration officials regarde wages to be paid, the housing conditions, and the dura f the period of employment, and undertake to observe all of the State in which the labor is to be used respecting the ng and sanitation. The wages must be those currently paid. means of enforcing the requirement respecting the nature e employment, the employer must withhold from the alien's wenty-five cents a day, and deposit the money in a postal gs bank. The money thus withheld is to be paid over at the of exit to the alien when he returns to his native country. he case of Mexicans, otherwise admissible, those acceptmployment on the railways or in the coal mines will not be ed to meet the requirements of the contract labor or literclauses of the law. Neither will they be required to pay a tax. The period of employment is not to be longer than the of the war. A part of the pay is to be withheld, as in the of agricultural workers.

is to be hoped that this change in the immigration policy be successful in securing the labor which is needed. Under sure of circumstances, the Government has recognized that igration is no longer a political, but an economic question. hough it has been an economic question for more than a score ears, many persons have persisted in viewing it as an effort issatisfied foreigners to find a dwelling-place in "the land he free and the home of the brave." The adoption by aliens he United States as a home for many years has been incital to the ambition to better economic conditions.

BRITAIN'S BIT

we are to do our part in this war intelligently and effectively, we must understand the peoples with whom we are associated. There are five great peoples with whom we must corate, and whom, therefore, we must learn to know as friends. e French are our closest associates on the field of battle, and cumstances have brought them into intimate relations with which are making acquaintance easy. The Russians have en misled and victimized, not only by the Germans, but by n of their own country, they are nevertheless natural friends America and want to go our way. The Japanese are about be more closely associated with us than they have been in past, and the way to friendship with them has been made sy for us by traditions beginning with Perry. The Italians bound to us by ties formed by thousands upon thousands of alian immigrants, and we ought not to find it hard to learn understand their point of view. But the British, to whom we e related not so much by blood as by speech and by social and litical institutions, ought to be, it would seem, more intiately understood by us than any of these other peoples.

Some of the people of the British Empire we perhaps do iderstand better than any one else the Canadians, the Austraans, and the New Zealanders. Like us, these people of the >minions are children of the frontiersmen and the pioneers; re us, they have conquered and developed a new country and rried the ancestral torch of liberty to light the Western World. et the people of the British Isles, and particularly of England, do not understand as we ought. It is our business, our duty, this war to understand them. What is more, it is our busiess to make it easy for them to understand us. This is the ore important because with no people, not even the French, re we going to be called upon to co-operate more closely than 'e are with the British.

In order to understand the British we must understand some f the reasons why we have not fully understood them.

One of these reasons is to be found in our history. We think f George III, against whom we revolted, as an English King, hereas in fact he was a German. We think of our Revolu

tion as a struggle with the English people, whereas it was a struggle of the English people against an un-English Government. We remember Cornwallis, and forget, as a reader of The Outlook reminds us, that Lord Howe, Commander-in-Chief of the British armies during our Revolution, made it clear that he had no heart for the distasteful task of subjugating his countrymen, and that the Duke of Wellington flatly refused to command an army against America in 1814, stating his belief that it would be impossible to induce Englishmen to inflict a military defeat upon the United States of America. One reason, therefore, why we have misunderstood the English is that we have misread our own history.

Another reason is to be found in the skillful, determined, sentimental, and conscienceless propaganda of the Germans. We are beginning now to see how deliberate and well planned this propaganda has been; how it has extended from our school text-books up to the Germanic Museum at Harvard, how it has been disguised under the form of academic exchanges and educational hospitality. More than one plain American citizen has been made pro-German and anti-British by receiving some gracious favor at the hands of the Kaiser, who bestows his favor with an understanding of what its effect will be. And what has happened to individuals as the result of the Kaiser's personal favor has happened to Americans generally as a result of this very German policy of propaganda. Americans who are antiBritish are to a great degree the dupes of the Germans.

Still another reason, perhaps the strongest reason of all, why we have not understood the British as well as some other peoples is that the British themselves have not been given to exploiting their own virtues. This reason for not understanding the British is, paradoxical as it may sound, a reason for admiring them. We shall understand them better when we understand their fine reticence. This quality of theirs is embedded in their vernacular. A war phrase which we have borrowed from them is the phrase, "To do one's bit." To many Americans this phrase has almost seemed to set up the slacker as a standard. As Mr. Cromie, in his article in last week's Outlook, says, with somewhat of reproach, "Not your bit, but your best." That is good counsel for Americans; but to an Englishman it is quite meaningless, for he understands that his bit is his best. To put it otherwise, an Englishman may be slaving himself to death-he may be fighting steadily for two or three days without sleep, he may be working uncomplainingly fifteen or twenty hours a day in a recruiting office rather than at the front because he has been gassed and has only one-half of a lung left-and he'll call it doing his bit. We Americans, following the Scriptural injunc tion, put our light on a candlestick. We should understand the British better if we realized that they often keep their light under a bushel. There are no service flags displayed in English shops or English homes; but it is doubtful whether there is any pride surpassing British pride in the service rendered by Britain's sons.

British statesmen and British publicists are not practiced in the art of letting the world know what their country is doing. The other day Lloyd George told his own country, through Parliament, something of what his and their Government had done in the war. We are reporting something of what he said on another page. We believe it is worth while for Americans to read of what Lloyd George said on that occasion.

In reading that speech, or even our summary of it, Americans would do well to remember that he was addressing, not them, but the British. It would be well for them to remember that during hundreds of years Great Britain has been living a life close to, but separate from, the rest of Europe. For these centuries England has had to endure no such tyranny, not even under the Stuarts, as France suffered under the Bourbons and Germany has suffered under the Hohenzollerns. England has prized her isolation because she knows that it enabled her hundreds of years ago to begin and carry out generation after generation that struggle for liberty which has made Englishmen freemen, and that without that isolation France came to her liberty late, and Germany does not even yet know what it means for men to be free. No wonder Englishmen are loth to let that isolation go. No wonder that Lloyd George, in speaking of unity of command, finds it necessary to explain to his fellowcountrymen that there is no cause for them to fear the loss of

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what they prize so greatly. And it is well, in reading what Lloyd George has to say, for Americans to remember that this war in which England is engaged is no new war, but the continuation and the culmination of that great struggle for liberty which is England's history.

It ought to make America both a humble and an emulous friend of Britain's to learn how Britain has done her bit.

THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH TO THE WORLD

What has impelled the people of the United States into this war? What moral and spiritual forces have been at work in the Nation developing in it a moral sense which has responded with indignation to the wrongs perpetrated by the Predatory Potsdam Gang and with eager offerings of aid to the needs of suffering European peoples?

Once a week something like half the people of the Nation have gathered in their churches to worship God and to listen to the teachings based upon the Bible. The forms of the worship and the interpretations of the Bible have differed in the different churches; but in them all there has been the recognition of an Unseen Ruler, Companion, Friend. In them all there has been presented to the hearers the religion of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, and in them all the life of Jesus of Nazareth has been portrayed as an ideal to be revered and to be followed. A great deal else has been taught; but in all these churches-Roman Catholic and Protestant, Calvinistic and Methodist, Conservative and Liberal-this sense of the Invisible Presence has been cultivated, moral lessons have been inculcated, and an ideal of life and character has been furnished. The moral lessons have included such elemental truths as man's obligation to respect the fundamental rights of his fellow-man to his life, his property, his family, and his reputation; the ideals have included such elemental qualities of character as purity, mercy, generosity, service, self-sacrifice; and in varying forms but with practical unanimity these ideals have been preached as characteristic of the Invisible Presence, the Ruler, the Companion, the Friend; he has been presented to the congregations as a God of purity, mercy, generosity, and self-sacrifice, and because he has these qualities we have been called on to revere him and to seek his companionship.

These simple elemental truths have not only been presented as themes in the pulpit, they have also been embodied in action outside the church walls. Societies without number have been organized, most of them inspired by the ministers of the Church, to carry out these principles and this spirit in the activities of the community. When our income tax blanks were sent to us last January, we were told to put down upon them a list of the philanthropic societies to which we had contributed during the previous year, and there were left two lines which were intended to contain this list. I wondered where the clerk had lived who prepared that blank. My list included thirty-nine such societies, and there were at least three times that number to which I would gladly have been a subscriber had I possessed the means. And I am quite sure that there was nothing unusual in my experience.

Moreover, these moral principles embodied in the Bible and inculcated by the Church have come up for public discussion and practical application in our National life. Our National questions for the last hundred years have not been, what is it wise, but what is it right for the Nation to do. The slavery question, the temperance question, the educational question, the immigration question, the labor question, the silver question, the tariff question, are all moral questions; they all involve the public consideration of such fundamental questions as: What are the rights of persons, of property, of the family, of reputation? what is it to live justly and love mercy? and to many of us, what would Jesus Christ do if he were living in our day and were a member of our community? It is hardly too much to say that the fundamental principles inculcated by the Bible have been as much discussed by the newspapers and magazines and on the platform as in the pulpits. Though in the newspapers

and on the platforms the Bible has not often been quoted the Church almost never, it is nevertheless true that the principles inculcated in the Bible and by the Church ar principles by which the people have tested the policies subi to them for discussion and decision.

To this universal education, carried on ever since the for tion of our Union in 1787, we owe the fact that we have Germany apparently lacks-a national conscience. That science may not recognize the authority of either the Be the Church; but from the Bible and the Church it has rese education and derived its faith in the moral principles and moral ideals which are embedded in the Nation's character have done so much to determine the National life.

Thus when the elemental rights of man-the right to life property, to the family, and to reputation-were openly, grantly, defiantly violated by Germany, a morally instr people were hot with indignation; and when the brave almost despairing resistance of plundered peoples cried to from across the sea for help, the sentiments of mercy, serv and self-sacrifice inspired in the Nation by the life and acter of Jesus Christ, and by the lives of many of his follo were ready to listen to the call and respond to the summon It is true that the Church has not always understood function to supply these deeper springs of our National life the power with which it is endowed to fulfill this function is true that it has often been diverted from this noble ser by fruitless debates about ecclesiastical formularies and p sophical theories, that it has sometimes lacked the vision to and the courage to apply the principles of the divine life to: needs of the time, that it has been sometimes deterred by fears and sometimes corrupted by its prosperity; but nevert less the debt which the Nation owes to the Church for: message which it has given is far too little recognized. I very greatness of the service often unconsciously rendered prevented the appreciation of its value by the Nation. LYMAN ABBOTT,

WAR-TIME HOSPITALITY

Hospitality is to-day acquiring a subtlety and a signifier that would have been incomprehensible to our forebears. Ti was once a period when a home was run like a hostelry—de | open, table spread, for who might come, food and servants plenty and in perfection at any one's need. When host.. hostess suffered no personal inconvenience in dispensing and board, and guests suffered no compunctions in accept both, invitations were as prolific as they were promisee This happy historic day endured longer in some spots than others. In England it lasted until the war, in Russia unt Revolution. Of English country houses one has an impress of guests who gather and disperse in various pursuits small reference to the pursuits of their host. Of the Rus household one's mental picture is of a hospitality even abandoned-a glittering concourse streaming through gra salons, attended in their every need by obsequious domes It must have been a wise host who knew his own guest in feudal days of Russia.

The war has changed all this, testing the sincerity and tr motives of hospitality as of other practices. As servants dis pear and food diminishes, how much is left in us of spec neous welcome? Nowadays we look before we leap into invitation, whether we are about to entertain or about to entertained. Cooks are intermittent or non-existent, and the competence is often commensurate with their aversion to gue they are exacting a tardy revenge on bygone ladies with the formula of "no followers," it is now the maid who enj upon the mistress "no company." When light and heat service are in every home precarious privileges, it requires temerity to ask a friend to share potential privations, as in manner it requires some pondering on the friend's part he becomes responsible for potential inconveniences. But while the social upheaval through which we are liv sometimes stops the wheels of our domestic machinery. still oftener tosses to the surface treasures hitherto deeply buried in custom to be appreciated. If hospitality

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lining in quantity, it is to-day far finer in quality. Less and is the true compliment of an invitation impaired by mere lessness or mere convention. To-day nobody asks you to his se, and still more emphatically nobody asks you to her se, who does not want you. The meaning and the motive of pitality are revealed as being the avowal of a desired intiey. I want to know you better, I want to know you nearer, n if I do have to cook my own meals or feed my own fure-that is the significance of an invitation to-day. This very frankness may have results as fraught with peril with pleasure. The exigencies of visiting to-day require a re unremitting practice of company manners, a much-despised in for one of the most serviceable conventions of human soci. An invitation to visit is an audacious challenge to come in 1 discover and be discovered. By the protective courtesy of npany manners two friends pretend to see in each other, untarily exposed as each is to the other's scrutiny, only what h wishes to be seen. The gods of friendship, knowing that Iat one and the same time desire intimacy and dread it, whisr to us to put our best foot foremost when first we lead or are I into the secret and sacred precincts of a home. The length of a visit is a subject which, alike in peace time in war time, all students of hospitality should regard. The journ even of one's closest friend should be neither too long r too short; it should avoid the breathless and exhausting mpression of that pitiful invention of modern efficiency, the eek-end stay, and equally eschew the Austenite duration beging to days of forgotten leisure or forgotten emptiness. We ve no time nowadays to go visiting too much or too often, but ill less have we time to lose the finest-flavored fruits of life, lest hurried passage we should miss altogether the aroma of friendip and of hospitality. Strange that both friendship and hospility become valueless as soon as we make a business of them, it so long as they remain a side issue and a half-stolen indulence they are the most valuable by-products of existence.

It is by no means because their visits are so rare a privilege at our busiest friends are the ones we most desire as visitors,

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but because people who are almost-but never altogether-too busy to be friends make the best friends in the world. A visit should be long enough for that intercourse of souls which is eternal, but it should never be long enough for boredom, nor yet for that uneasiness we all feel when we are too long away from our normal occupation-that occupation which, however much it separates us from our friends, still is exactly what makes us desirable. That occupation, by our choice and practice of it, whether it be home-making or dress-making or essay-making, determines in us just those idiosyncrasies that other people may wish to pounce upon and enjoy. Because the war has made us all busier people than ever it has made hospitality more holy, it has made us more discriminating in selecting time and place and person, so that a visit may yield its one authentic result, closer comradeship. In the careless days gone by a desired intimacy was none too often the motive of hospitality; to-day it has become almost the only motive. Mutual revelation is a practice as perilous as precious, so that it is well that we safeguard our steps into intimacy with that protection, homely in word as in wisdom, known as company manners.

All this is to take visiting too seriously, too subtly? A bouncing externality, rubber in quality and in resilience, is an easier form of contact? But the people who take the sacred rite of hospitality thus heedlessly are not worth visiting, nor worthy of being invited. They incur no perils of abrasion, possessing no delicate reserves to be abraded. They do not conceive homes as holy places, not to be lightly opened nor lightly entered, shrines made more sacred to-day by the menace of tragedy. They do not appreciate the exquisite revelations of a home with all its beauty spread wide and warm. They do not understand the light in comrade eyes, which above all disclosures, tragic, pathetic, comic, meet with the imperishable twinkle of perfect understanding, fearless forever of all intimacy. For the best thing about company manners is the knowledge that one may drop them. They are the film of formality that enhances the romance of reserve only that when withdrawn it may enhance the romance of exploration.

UR readers may recall the article entitled "Music for the Soldiers" (in the issue of The Outlook for July 24), in which is described in some detail the work of Mr. and Ars. Orlando Rouland in collecting musical instruments for the oys in the service. Readers of The Outlook, it is pleasant to eport, have generously responded to this article in a way that as greatly cheered Mr. and Mrs. Rouland in their work. Owing to the absence in this plan of the red tape which o often hampers a highly organized association, Mr. and Mrs. Rouland are able to give to their work a distinctly uman quality. Their direct contact with the boys makes this possible, as requests for instruments are usually made in person it the studio, and the men are therefore not only supplied with he banjo or mandolin that they want, but they are made aware of the really personal interest that is taken in them and in their welfare.

What is felt by the donors of the various instruments may perhaps be best illustrated by quotations from some of the letters which have come to Mr. and Mrs. Rouland, many of them from readers of The Outlook. These letters bear the postmarks of cities and towns all over the country, and they show the joy that is found in giving, and in trying to brighten in some degree the spare moments which the boys have. They speak most eloquently for themselves.

One donor of a banjo writes, "To the Soldier or Sailor who Receives this Banjo:"

I am glad to have you get this banjo, and hope that you will enjoy it as much as did brother, to whom it belonged. He my was a civil engineer, and died in the West ten years ago. I'm sure he would desire no better use to be made of it than that you should have it. . . . I hope its music will give you some pleasure, and its spirit of the fine boy who owned it will be a safeguard. Another letter asks," Can you use in your work of collecting musical instruments for men in the service a good, though old,

clarinet? My husband, who died last month, used it in college, Harvard, '71, as a member of the Pierian Sodality." An old guitar is offered to Mrs. Rouland with the statement that "it was the property of a happy girl, now too old to do much for our dear boys, but whose heart is still young. I pray that the spirit of the happy times I have played on that instrument may still hover around and inspire the boy to knock off' happy tunes." A fife is sent by a man who failed to find one among the instruments shown in the photograph published in connection with the article above referred to.

Then there is the guitar which "isn't just an ordinary guitar-to use as merely an accompaniment-but quite a wonderful instrument, made to order years ago and given to me during a year I once spent on crutches.'

From a resident of a New England State comes the offer of two flutes. He says:

One of these is a Meyer, which in its day was considered one of the best made. My nephew, who died in 1882 at the age of twenty-one, bought it of the flutist of the American Band, Providence, Rhode Island. This nephew was one of the finest players on the flute for an amateur that I ever heard. . . . So, you see, there are hallowed memories connected with this flute.

The boy, however, who gets the banjo donated by the writer of the letter quoted below should be able to play such jigs as would set all his hearers' heels a-kicking:

I am sending my "li'l' ole " banjo. I wish it were a finer one; but perhaps it may be fairly good when it is put in shape.

I can only hope that it will carry with it just an echo of the good times it has had a share in.

Nor are letters of appreciation from the recipients of these instruments lacking. The commanding officer of one of the hospital ships which was supplied with musical instruments writes to Mrs. Rouland as follows: "You are engaged in a