drawn by Madison and those who were in the Constitutional Convention as to vest unfair power in the hands of the minority, and that this principle shows from one end of it to the other; that, among other things, to his deep regret, he had been unable to discover in that worn and antiquated document any provision for the recall of the Supreme Court of the United States. Against these criticisms of the Constitution by this American Senator I would put the strong words of the great English commoner, 1 who described it as the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."

1

Against all such wild and visionary demands for the popular recall of the judges I would print in letters of living light the strong words of Chief Justice Marshall:

The judicial department comes home, in its effects, to every man's fireside; it passes on his property, his reputation, his life, his all. Is it not to the last degree important that he should be rendered perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to influence or control him but God and his conscience?

In the main and in the long run changes which come by the gradual and orderly processes of evolution are better and far more enduring than those brought about by the spasmodic methods of revolution. Experience is a safer guide than prediction. The tree is known by its fruits rather than by its blossoms, for sometimes the fairest blooms, like the fairest promises, produce no fruit at all. The rules of government that have been tried, that have been rounded into shape by years of practical use, that have stood the strain and pressure from every direction, are not to be lightly cast aside in order that we may put high-sounding experiment in their place. The strength and the glory of the common law, which is but the crystallized common sense of the clear-thinking English race expressed in definite form, is that it has been gradually developed by hundreds of slow years of application to the 1 Gladstone.

diverse and changing needs of society, until it has become fitted and molded and adjusted to all the conditions of life. And so with the great principles of our Government. Like the common law, they are a growth, not an invention. Year by year they have developed in enduring strength, striking their roots deeper and deeper into the intimate life of the people. They have withstood the specious opposition of the doctrinaire and the theorist, as well as the open shock of armed conflict. The preservation, the renewal, the strengthening of the old faith in their efficiency and virtue I regard as essential to our continued development along sane and symmetrical lines.

If the visionary and the dreamer, the agitator and the demagogue, could succeed in tearing them from the stately edifice of constitutional government, which, builded by the wise and loving hands of the fathers and cemented by the blood of the Civil War, has proven the sure refuge and shelter of all our people throughout the years in time of stress and trial, no man can foresee what miserable and inadequate makeshifts might be set in their place. I look with grave apprehension upon the present-day tendency to overturn, uproot, and destroy these vital and fundamental principles of representative government under which we have made and are making the most wonderful moral, social, and material advancement mankind has ever beheld.

But, sir, I preach no gospel of despair. My sure confidence rests in the saving grace of the sober second thought of the American people, for, in the last analysis, we are a practical and a conservative people, sometimes, it is true, dreaming with our heads in the clouds, but always waking to the realizing sense that we must walk with our feet upon the earth. Sometimes the haunting spell of the darkness is upon us, but in the end the night goes, "the dawn comes, the cock crows, the ghost vanishes"; we open our eyes and all the uneasy and terrifying visions disappear in the light which fills the east with the glowing promise of another morning.

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE BETWEEN ITALY
AND AMERICA

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

[The Italian war commissioners were welcomed by New York, at the City Hall, June 21, 1917. Mayor Mitchel presided and made the formal address of welcome. President Butler of Columbia University spoke for what he called the "unofficial citizenship." A part of his address is given below. The chief representative of the Italian commission was the Prince of Udine, a cousin of King Victor Emmanuel. Another member of the group was Marconi, the inventor, who is a member of the Italian senate.]

You have seen in the crowded streets through which you have passed, you have heard from the voices of the school children and their elders the acclaim which is in every. American heart as you put foot in our great cosmopolitan capital. The Mayor has said that this is a peculiar city. New York is a great city, too great for envy; New York is a powerful city, too powerful for boasting; New York is a generous city, too generous to feel the need to extol the art of giving; New York is a patriotic city, too patriotic to be satisfied with service of the lips.

For nearly three years the population of this great metropolis has watched with tense expectancy the movement of opinion beyond the seas, and when the time came that Italy saw its duty and prepared to do it, the finger pointed to a quick coming of the day when the experience of the United States would be the same. This is no ordinary war. This is no war prosecuted by allied peoples and by allied armies with hymns of hate upon their lips. This is no war of conquest. This is no war of destruction. This is a war of which Italy knows so well a war to unify and to free men. May one suppose that the great, peace-loving, industrious population of Italy and the great, peace-loving, industrious population

of the United States could be turned from their occupations to take up arms at this day in the history of the world on any but an issue which stirs men's souls, which appeals to men's consciences, and which holds men's intelligence in the tight grip of everlasting principle?

Nothing less could have brought Italy, nothing less could have brought the United States, into this contest, which is to be prosecuted, be the day soon or far, until the aims for which it has been undertaken are secure beyond human peradventure. The world has no intention of repeating this experience. It proposes, by the aid of Italian arms, by the aid of Italian patriotism, by the aid of Italian ideals, and Italian devotion, to mark an era on the recorded book of the world's history where no page can ever again be turned back.

You are welcomed with heartiness and welcomed with acclaim by this great population. The 800,000 among us who revere the name, the tongue, the traditions of Italy, even in whose veins runs Italian blood, are of the very stock and stuff of our best citizenship.

They are gathered here to a great and representative number. They have lined the streets through which we have come, and they will line the streets through which we are yet to go, and they represent a bond a bond which is human and therefore immortal - between the sun-kissed land from which they came and this bounteous land across the sea to which they have come. Not that they love Italy less, but that they found here an opportunity to go forward in those paths which most warmly appeal to them, and which they can do with no breach of tradition, no break of affections, no sundering of ancient and beloved ties.

And that is why this great element of our metropolitan population is so sternly and so strongly American, and why it is so fond of the name and the fame of Italy; and that is why it represents a bond, a bridge, an invisible bridge across this great ocean over which ideals and accomplishments come

and go, pass and repass, as the great human tide flows on to make itself felt in the accomplishment of liberty. That is the keynote that we strike at the opening of these memorable days. These are days that we do not forget, because they stir our souls. These are days that we cannot forget, for they make us into new men.

WHY WE ARE FIGHTING GERMANY

FRANKLIN K. LANE

[From a speech before the Home Club of the Interior Department, June 4, 1917, at Washington.]

WHY are we fighting Germany? The brief answer is that ours is a war of self-defense. We did not wish to fight Germany. She made the attack upon us; not on our shores, but on our ships, our lives, our rights, our future.

We are fighting Germany because in this war feudalism is making its last stand against on-coming democracy. We see it now. This is a war against an old spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feudalism — the right of the castle on the hill to rule the village below. It is a war for democracy the right of all to be their own masters. Let Germany be feudal if she will. But she must not spread her system over a world that has outgrown it.

America speaks for the world in fighting Germany. Mark on a map those countries which are Germany's allies, and you will mark but four, running from the Baltic through Austria and Bulgaria to Turkey. All the other nations, the whole globe around, are in arms against her or are unable to move. There is a deep meaning in this.

We fight with the world for an honest world, in which nations keep their word, for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat, for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the