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the freshman feels towards his team. We like to cultivate the habit of being partisan, and the habit attunes itself to any notions. We fail to say: "Go insane about Yale, but not about American concessions in Mexico. Go insane about DeWitt Clinton High School, but discriminate about Germany."

It is perhaps a rule of spiritual hygiene that a man who doesn't go insane about something is likely to go insane about everything. And Yale is as good an object to go insane about as almost anything we can think of at the moment. But the trouble with insanity as an ideal of education is that it doesn't exactly prepare for the sort of world we live in. That world requires the faculty of doubting, of making distinctions, of caring enormously without sinking into credulity. Just what colleges are doing to cultivate these faculties it is sometimes a little hard to see. There are professors awake to the problem who would like to abolish football, because in the competition for attention it wins so easily. That is the stupid easy remedy. After all, football puts the professor on his mettle by showing him how far he is from enlisting human passion in the cause of science; and the grim joke which gives football coaches a bigger salary than teachers is a fairly good indication of what education has still to accomplish. There have been teachers whose memory was brighter than the brightest victory.

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Constitution-Making

N extraordinary discrepancy exists between the legitimate purposes of constitution-making and the means by which we actually make our state constitutions. With popular sovereignty the first postulate of our political system, the primary purpose of our constitution-makers ought to be to construct effective machinery for the execution of the popular will. Yet throughout our history we have packed our conventions with men who distrust the people, and whom the people distrust. Our constitution-makers ought further to provide us with a system of legal principles of wider acceptability and superior validity than ordinary legislation requires. They should therefore display a more scrupulous regard for the opinions of minorities than do the regular organs of legislation. But nowhere do we make any adequate provision for minority representation in constitutional conventions. The political parties, which may have an appropriate place in carrying on the government under the constitution, arrogate to themselves the very function of constitution-making. It has even come to seem natural that a constitutional convention is controlled by Republicans or by Democrats. Hence we are not shocked when a mass of partisan

projects is thrust into the body of what ought to be our fundamental law, acceptable to everyone. The struggle of classes, it will be agreed, ought to be conducted under the constitution, not in it. But in practice the several classes strive to dominate the convention and write the fundamental law in their own interest. Not without certain concessions to patriotism, to be sure. The late New York State convention was perhaps as good as an example as we have ever had of a partisan body representing primarily the interests of a single class the property owners of the state-yet it produced a constitutional project which was freer from partisan and class vices than most American state constitutions. Perhaps the labor forces will control the next convention, and we shall have an opportunity of learning how far the working class is capable of subordinating its own interests to the general good.

Our art of constitution-making is based on false principles. It should not be the aim of any party or class to control the process of making a fundamental law for all. Effort should be made instead to get every definite, self-conscious interest to participate in constitution-making. It is natural for the country to oppose the city, but this opposition ought to work itself out in the legislature, where the illconsidered action of one session may be revoked in the next. The constitution ought to contain only provisions under which both city and country are content to live. Capital and labor have many opposing interests, and struggle between them is inevitable. But the constitutional convention is no proper arena for this struggle. An honest fundamental law would leave open for legislative determination such matters as are in dispute between the economic classes.

The people of New York State are not satisfied with their existing constitution. It is antiquated and obstructionist, a source of legislative ineffectiveness, of social waste. The substitute provided by the late convention was an improvement on the old constitution, but not enough of an improvement to command strong support from any quarter. And there is not the slightest reason for supposing that the next convention will be more successful. We shall continue to live under a constitution adapted, possibly, to the needs of half a century ago, while growing social forces, finding themselves thwarted in their natural development by rigid constitutional barriers, will assume an increasingly revolutionary character. Thus political ineffectiveness and social disorder are part of the price for our failure to work out a rational method of constitution-making.

Yet the task is by no means insuperable. We have no official means of giving minorities adequate representation in conventions, no official means of securing representation of fundamental interests in place of political parties; very well, let us fall back upon extra-official initiative. We may recall that the most successful written constitution in the world, that of the United States, originated in an extraofficial initiative. There is surely enough public spirit in New York to make possible the organization of an unofficial convention to which every important interest would be eager to send qualified representatives. Such a convention would be at pains to secure delegates from labor unions, manufacturers' associations, chambers of commerce, farmers' organizations in short, from every interest in the state that has attained to self-consciousness and some form of organization. With such a personnel working systematically toward the ideal of a constitution that would command the assent of all constitutents, there would be a fair chance of outlining a constitution really worthy of the name of fundamental law, which might later be submitted for elaboration and ratification to a convention officially constituted.

In this unofficial convention there would be no place for partisan tactics and steam-roller methods. Decisions would be reached through discussion and compromise, and subjects upon which compromise is impossible would be excluded from the final project of the convention. It follows that the projected constitution would be a document of brevity and simplicity, like the original Federal Constitution. It would not attempt to take contentious subjects out of the hands of the legislature, nor would it waste space upon petty measures-such, for example, as the proper disposal of dead wood from the Adirondack forests. What the delegates would insist upon would be a document that could be successfully defended before their constitutents. A constitution so long and involved that only legal experts could catch its drifts would not answer this purpose. Our Federal Constitution can be discussed intelligently by the farmer and the factory hand; it would never have been adopted if its provisions had been so numerous and so murky as those making up the constitution defeated in New York State. The place of the state in our political system has gained in importance in recent decades. Economic progress has thrown forward a vast array of legislative problems which under our system must be left to the disposal of the states themselves. It is of the utmost importance that state governments be transformed into legislative and administrative organs of the greatest efficiency. This transformation is impracticable under our cumbersome state constitutions. And constitutional reform is possible only if we succeed in breaking away from our archaic methods of constitution-making, and in devising methods which shall give due weight to contemporary social and political realities.

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A Leader of Humanity

HE death of Booker T. Washington closes

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a career in many respects the most remarkable in his generation. No man in our time has attained a greatness under heavier handicaps. He was the son of a slave mother and of a white father of whom nothing is known beyond what can be inferred from his unacknowledged parenthood. Politically emancipated as a child, he still had resting upon him the colossal burdens of a race despised and oppressed, of an illiterate tradition, of extreme poverty. Yet by his fortieth year he had attained national distinction, and at the time of his death he was respected and admired not only throughout his own country, but wherever men are sincerely attempting to elevate the common man and correct the wrongs of the ages. We used to describe Booker T. Washington, somewhat patronizingly, as a leader of the negro race. So he was indeed, and one of the best racial leaders in history. He displayed a nearly unique capacity for exciting in his people a healthy pride of race without employing the means of invidious disparagement of other races. He elevated the American negroes in their own eyes and in the eyes of the whites-a vastly significant achievement. But what is still more significant, he strengthened the bonds of affection subsisting between the two races.

Booker T. Washington's work as an educator has scarcely a parallel even in this country of extraordinary educational organizers. Thirty-five years ago all there was of Tuskegee was a shanty housing some thirty raw negro pupils and a single teacher with potentialities recognized only by himself. It was a bad time for negro education. The old abolitionist doctrine of racial equality had about run its course. The North was beginning to yield to the Southerner's doubts as to the expediency of trying to educate the colored race. There was apparently no satisfactory place in the scheme of the world for the educated negro. Since it was to be the destiny of the race to remain servile and dependent, why awaken aspirations that could never be realized, that could only lead to unrest and disorder? What the negro really needed, so it was asserted, was a docile and contented existence under the benevolent control of the whites. It was the formidable obstacle of this attitude that Booker T. Washington's little school at Tuskegee had to over

come.

And it has been overcome entirely. Negro education as organized in Tuskegee has few detractors. The thousands of graduates of the Institute have no difficulty in finding their place in the world. To-day they are scattered throughout the South, and they are pushing themselves forward in farming, handicrafts and business, or are engaged in teaching others of their race how to advance. The reports of the Negro Business Men's League -an association founded by Booker T. Washington-indicate an astonishing progress of the race toward economic independence.

There are, it is true, representatives of the older school of negro leadership who have viewed askance the tendencies implicit in Booker T. Washington's work. It is natural that a negro of intelligence and refinement should chafe under the political and social disabilities that have been imposed upon his race, and should regard their removal as the one thing in life worth fighting for. Booker T. Washington's counsel to hold the political and social claims of the negro in abeyance and concentrate effort upon his economic advancement, has appeared to negro leaders of the old school as an abject surrender to the racial arrogance of the whites. And the universal approval, on the part of the whites, of Booker T. Washington's methods and aims has enhanced the suspicion and bitterness of the intransigeants. Why did the whites approve of the industrial education of the negro? Because a negro trained industrially makes a better hand. Why did they approve of the efforts to cultivate thrift in the negroes and the ambition for landownership? Because the thrifty, land-hungry negro raises the price of land and makes a good customer for the white business man. Booker T. Washington was approved by the whites, it has often been insinuated, because he played into the hands of the whites. Not merely that he made the negro more useful to the whites; what was more ominous, he diverted the energies of the negroes and of their white friends from the struggle for political and social equality.

Such a view of Booker T. Washington and his work has merely a subjective validity. It can be explained; it arises naturally out of the conditions in which its exponents find themselves. But no one who has studied the history of oppressed races can question the correctness of Booker T. Washington's tactics or the soundness of his philosophy. For he had a philosophy, coherent enough even if its exposition is scattered through his hastily composed and voluminous writings. In this philosophy there is no postulate of the racial inferiority of the negro. In America the negro is "the man farthest down," in a position strictly analogous to that of the Slovenes in Hungary or the Ukrainians in Galicia or South Russia. All the degrading characteristics imputed to the negro by the ruling whites are imputed to the Slovenes and Ukrainians by the ruling Magyars, Poles and Russians. As in our own South the whites own most of the land, monopolize the civil service and the professions, so in those parts of Europe where an oppressed race is held

under by its historical conquerors, land ownership, the civil service and the professions are the domain of the ruling race. For hundreds of years the oppressed races of Europe have struggled to raise themselves through political agitation and social striving-in vain. These are not solvents sufficiently powerful to relax the cohesion of the ruling caste. But where the Slovene or Ukrainian has succeeded in gaining economic power the weight of oppression begins to lift. If the goal of an oppressed race is political equality, economic progress is usually the only feasible road to its attainment.

The conflict between races established on the same soil is an insuperable barrier to the progress of democracy. A ruling race will never relax its grip upon the political power in response to the moral and intellectual striving of a subject race. But a ruling race will countenance attempts on the part of the oppressed to increase their economic efficiency, partly because the members of the ruling race hope to profit thereby and partly because a ruling race affects to despise the purely economic field and whatever goes on in it. The subject race can elevate itself, through industry and thrift, without encountering any serious opposition. To develop these qualities by education, precept, organized propaganda, is the first duty of the leader of a race which finds itself in a condition of political subjection. Booker T. Washington saw more clearly than any other American the fundamental conditions upon which the progress of his race must depend, and he created an effective technique accordingly. Thereby he made himself not only the foremost leader of his own race, but also gave a fruitful example to other oppressed races of whatever color; and since the problem of the oppressed races and classes is universal, Booker T. Washington is entitled to rank as a leader of humanity.

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America's Part Among Nations

HE present war has plainly demonstrated that self-regarding nationalism is destructive of

the civilization of a world that has been made as it were a unit by the mechanical inventions of the past hundred years. Though all states are more or less infected with this controlling egotism, it is not necessarily an inherent attribute of nationalism. It is even now to a limited extent, and in the future it probably will be in an increasing measure, modified by ideals of mutual service for the benefit of mankind as a whole. At one pole in the world of to-day is the German super-state which, goaded on by the aggressive tenets of neo-mercantilism and neoodinism and imbued with the idea of a mission to reorganize a decadent world, shows almost no consideration for the rights of others. At the opposite pole is England, whose nationalism is not only controlled by powerful moral inhibitions, but has been tempered by two generations of free trade and by centuries of intimate contact with different races in all corners of the globe. But in spite of the fact that England consistently for years strove to avert the impending world-war, she cannot escape some degree of negative responsibility for it, primarily because she refused to assume the burden of adequate military preparedness and thus indirectly encouraged Germany's plan to dominate Europe. The responsibility is radically different in kind and degree from that of Germany and must be shared by other nations, some belligerent and some still neutral, all of whom have over-emphasized their national rights and have either minimized or ignored the complementary obligations to the still unorganized worldcommunity of states.

It follows inevitably from this that we of the United States are, in the same sense as England and possibly even to a greater degree, responsible for the existing chaos. By our policy of selfcentred aloofness from the affairs of Europe, we have deliberately ignored the obligations that every state owes to mankind. Such a policy was probably expedient in the days of our weakness, but the United States steadfastly adhered to it even after it had become one of the great Powers and thus forfeited the influence it could and should have exerted upon the course of world history. In that the United States deliberately refused to become involved in any European matters, we must bear some measure of responsibility for the existing world-war.

This will be conclusively apparent if we examine the course of recent international history and the fundamental aim of German world politics. The broad purpose is to oust the English-speaking peo

ples from the prominent position they are occupying in all the continents, thanks to the activities of their adventurous ancestors throughout the past three centuries. According to Rohrbach, Germany must become "co-mistress of the culture of the world, or it will not exist at all." The enemy is not only the British Empire, but the United States as well, for the cultural unity of all English-speaking peoples is fully recognized. What English-speaking pioneers have accomplished bit by bit since the days of Elizabeth, the German state with its military prowess planned to duplicate in a few years.

These aims first manifested themselves in overt action during the South African difficulties and during the Spanish-American War. The reaction of the English-speaking peoples was important. In the British Empire set in an ever-swelling movement for greater cohesion which has not yet reached its term. From this time also dates a marked increase of friendship between England and the United States, which is largely traceable to the same source. At considerable intervals, isolated voices were raised here and there in America urging diplomatic cooperation, an alliance, and even a loose form of political union with the British Empire. But these met with no broad popular response, primarily because the people were engrossed in their own diverse affairs and had only the most superficial knowledge of international politics. In England, naturally, there was a keener realization of the imminence of the German peril; and many Englishmen turned to what might have been, and began to regard the political schism in the English-speaking race effected by the American Revolution as the great tragedy of modern history, in that it weakened the forces that stood preeminently for political freedom. But with their usual common-sense, they recognized that public opinion in America was not ripe for such a reversal of policy as an Anglo-American alliance implied. Had the United States, however, contracted such ties with the British Empire, Germany's ambitious plans would probably never have emerged from the academic phase, for the land of Realpolitik would have realized their futility in the face of the united opposition of the English-speaking peoples. Not only would the present European agony have been prevented, but the entire course of world history during the past decade would have been far more conformable to our ideals and interests.

Since the opening of the century British foreign policy has been completely dominated by the German menace. Every effort, even to the extent of sacrificing important British interests and jettisoning tra

ditional policies, was made to avert a European war. This is the keynote to recent international history and explains many seemingly unrelated events in Africa, China, Persia, Morocco, Turkey, and the Balkan states. During these vicissitudes not a few things were done which were repugnant to the American conscience. But our government, pursuing its traditional course, was silent, except in regard to China; and the vehement complaints of a few individual Americans totally overlooked the fact that their country might have had some duty in the premises. In addition, definite American interests were prejudiced. In the precariously unstable international situation the policy of the open door in China could not be maintained by England alone, and the knowledge that we would under no circumstances use more than moral suasion rendered our advocacy of it ineffective.

At present Europe is in the throes of an internecine war in which the future of civilization is at stake. Upon the outcome depend not only the liberties of Europe and of the world, but also the future of democracy. For in a world so unorganized politically that its peace is at the mercy of one Power, the crucial test of any form of political organization cannot be the more or less satisfactory nature of its inner life, but must perforce be its ability to defend itself and to survive in a struggle imposed by others. Were European democracy to fail in this crisis, its fate would be sealed, and America would become the last bulwark of popular government. For this fundamental reason there is an almost literal truth in the statement that the Allies are fighting America's battles.

The American people have not failed to perceive -somewhat vaguely, it is true that the gravest issues are at stake, but they have only a faint realization of the extent to which their future is dependent upon the defeat of German ambitions. Hence, while predominantly pro-Ally in sentiment, the United States does not recognize that it has any obligations to intervene, and the neutrality maintained by Washington is an accurate expression of the will of the people. About this neutrality there are current curious misconceptions. Neutrality is essentially passive and in itself has no moral value. It is merely a right sanctioned by international usage, but it is in no sense a moral duty. Obviously a great Power which, in a world-war that is determining the future course of civilization and consequently its own destiny as well, deliberately remains passive and abstains from aiding what it considers to be the cause of civilization is by this very fact placed upon the moral defensive. Its neutrality, instead of being a priori meritorious, requires justification if it is to escape condemnation.

altered, nor can a nation trained for generations to look within change its self-centred attitude in a day. But the past and present may serve as warnings for the future. The war has set Americans furiously to thinking about problems that formerly seemed academically remote. A daily increasing number have reached the conclusion that we must in the future assume our share of the burden of maintaining the public right of the world. While it is generally assumed that we are destined, whether we like it or not, to be drawn more and more into the international field, there has been but little discussion of the part we are to play.

Whatever the exact outcome of the war may be, it seems certain that the present alignment of the nations will be continued for some time after its close; and that, if America is to have an effective voice and her interests are to be adequately protected, she must join one or the other diplomatic group. Isolated she would be defenseless, for it would be sheer folly to overlook the fact that the part played by a neutral in an internecine struggle cannot arouse friendly feeling among the belligerents. According to a poem of the last world - war, "the Devil alone is neutral." If the United States should remain isolated after the war, the consequences would certainly be serious and possibly disastrous. German ambitions in South America have been dormant only because the British fleet was an insuperable barrier. If that were forced or voluntarily raised, the Monroe Doctrine's efficacy would be put to the real test. Similar dangers threaten our economic interests in the Far East unless we emerge from our isolation and join hands with other nations. But more than mere moral cooperation is necessary if in the future war is to be avoided.

It is obvious that the only Powers with whom our political traditions and our material interests would permit active coöperation are the present Allies of the Quadruple Entente, and among these England would naturally be the one to whom our common civilization would draw us most closely. An alliance of the United States with the British Empire in unequivocal terms, made in the open light of day, would effectively secure the future peace of the world and its development along democratic lines. In both branches of the politically separated but culturally united English-speaking race, an unfettered public opinion, basing its judgments upon the dictates of personal morality, as a rule obliges the government in its conduct of foreign affairs to conform to standards that are not generally recognized elsewhere. Of all the great Powers, these two are the only ones not infected with dreams of military glory or with ambitions of territorial aggrandizeWhat has been neglected in the past cannot be ment. With them alone is peace the genuine goal

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