TERMS: Issued monthly, 35 cents a number. $4.00 a year in advance in the United States. Porto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines. Elsewhere $5.00. Entered at New York Post Office as second-class matter. Entered as second-class matter at the Post-Office Department, Ottawa, Canada. Subscribers may remit to us by post-office or express money orders, or by bank checks, drafts, or registered letters. Money in letters is sent at sender's risk. Renew as early as possible in order to avoid a break in the receipt of the numbers. Bookdealers, Postmasters and Newsdealers receive subscriptions. May-1 THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO., 30 Irving Place, New York 449 THE LATE THEODORE N. VAIL, OF TELEPHONE FAME Mr. Vail, who died on April 16, would have been seventy-five if he had lived until July; but the advancing years had not, until near the end, given warning that his great mental and physical powers were diminishing. He was born in Ohio in 1845, and educated in New Jersey, studying medicine for a time, but becoming a telegraph operator and then a railway mail official. With the advent of the telephone, he saw the great possibilities of that marvelous invention, and it fell to his lot to do more than any other man to build up the telephone business as an adjunct to the daily life of almost every family in the country. It was he who brought the telegraph service into coöperative relations with the local and long distance telephones; and he became the chief adviser of the Post-office Department when it assumed control of the wires as a war measure. He was a man of humane sympathies-a captain of industry, whose business genius contributed to the well-being of countless millions. VOL. LXI THE AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS NEW YORK, MAY, 1920 THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD The Deadlock at Washington There are times when the formal movements of our government mechanism-with its fixed terms and the stately periodicity of a planetary system-are envied by foreign politicians and regarded with gratified complacency by our own people. The Constitution has served our needs for 132 years, and neither its friends nor its enemies could, at the present time, be trusted to change it in fundamental respects. Perhaps, however, at some future time it can safely be made a little more elastic, in order that the working government may respond more promptly to the forces of public opinion. The deadlock at Washington of March, 1920, must await the incoming of a new administration in March, 1921. The average duration in power of a Premier and Cabinet during the half-century of the present French Republic has been perhaps six months. Some French administrations have lasted several years and others only a few days. The average length of a British Ministry has been much greater; but the British system, like the French, responds to changes of sentiment, so that in times of stress or emergency the guidance of the ship of state may be quickly turned over from one master to another. Thus Asquith was superseded by Lloyd George, just as in France Clemenceau was substituted for Painlevé, while more recently Millerand has taken the helm, with Clemenceau retired to private life. Chances Involved in Fixed Terms No. 5 create a special kind of war government, in imitation of foreign countries, for the war period upon which we were destined so soon to enter. But all parties and factions rose to the support of Mr. Wilson, who became a war President beyond cavil. Let us suppose that Mr. Buchanan had won a second term in the election of 1860, so that upon him, instead of Mr. Lincoln, should have devolved the immense responsibilities of the presidency in a period of war. Mr. Buchanan was a sincere lover of his country and a man of great public experience. Very probably he would in the end have defended the Union stalwartly. He might, however, have failed as a war President. Nevertheless, if death or serious illness had not intervened, he would have held his place as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States until March 4, 1865. The country would have had to bear the consequences of its own exercise of judgment if it had accorded to Mr. Buchanan a second term. English and In December, 1918, taking advantage of the popular mood that had been produced by the armistice of the previous month, Mr. Lloyd George found pretexts upon which to call a general election. This, under the political conditions then existing, was quite certain to result in a great Coalition majority in support of a further lease of power for himself and his ministerial group. But now, after the lapse of less than a year and a half, the pendulum is moving decidedly in the opposite direction and it is not unlikely that within the coming year there may be another election and a change in party control and governing personnel. In the United States we have opportunity to register changes of party sentiment in our Congressional elections every two years; but our system, which Copyright, 1920, by THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY If war had been expected by the American people in the summer and fall of 1916, it is quite possible that Mr. Roosevelt would have been made President. But when Mr. Wilson had been reëlected, as the exponent of a peace policy and as head of an administration that did not much believe in military preparedness, we were without any constitutional arrangement by means of which we could 451 |