'HAT an election! All along the line the most nowhere is there any indication of an affirma- tive vote, of a generous conviction. The people have tended to repudiate the national administra- tion, to return to Tammany in New York, to take back the ring in Philadelphia, to relapse into Repub- licanism in Massachusetts, and to condemn all con- stitutional amendments. The people don't know what they want to vote for, so they vote according to interest, habit, prejudice, or vague apprehension. to promote efficiency. Does their disapproval mean NTOLD strain and stress were involved in the campaign for woman suffrage in the East. That splendid expenditure of effort, however, is all to recover momentum, the antis point out that the campaign was renewed unsuccessfully in Michigan and Ohio. They choose to forget that in California and Oregon it was victoriously renewed. The elections prove that in the worst possible year for such a radical issue the electorate was extremely receptive. Another campaign will convert that receptivity into the healthiest kind of acceptance. A S an immediate issue woman suffrage is temporarily dismissed, but a closed election should not mean a closed mind. At the last minute in New York the anti-suffragists produced Mrs. Anna Steese Richardson of Colorado to argue against votes for women, but Mrs. Richardson made too valuable a point against her own side to be forgotten now. When she began voting, Mrs. Richardson confesses, she made serious mistakes. "We meant to purify politics, but we did not know how. Dishonest? Misuse of my voting privilege? Not at all as I looked at it then, in my inexperience and irresponsibility. To-day, yes, because I understand the power of the ballot for good and evil, because years develop the sense of responsibility. And thousands of women, given the ballot in New York now, will use it to no higher ends, until they have been educated either by the press or by bitter experience in political economy and in appreciation of the ballot's power." A more telling argument for the use of the ballot by women has never been put forward. We have Mrs. Richardson's word for it that suffrage taught her citizenship. And yet she worked to shut out New York women from the experience of which she boasts. HE one progressive spot in the East appears To be Schenectady. Woman suffrage carried to be Schenectady. Woman suffrage carried Schenectady county; Dr. George R. Lunn of the Socialist party was elected mayor; Dr. Charles Steinmetz, Socialist and electrical engineer, was chosen president of the common council. The Socialists have elected two aldermen and five supervisors. This vote is very significant. Dr. Lunn was elected mayor in 1911, and defeated for re-election in 1913. Now the people, after trying an old party administration for two years, have returned to him. The vote indicates that he is elected because the Republicans and Democrats could not maintain the fusion which defeated him two years ago. Dr. Lunn goes into office with the label Socialist, but with a point of view which in the West would be regarded simply as progressive. He and Dr. Steinmetz are unquestionably the two most enlightened men in the public life of Schenectady, and they have won because of what they are likely to do now rather than because of what their platform promises for the distant future. Theirs is a victory based on the divi sion of the old parties, on the strength of labor and Socialist sentiment in the town, but above all on the personal popularity of the candidates. Dr. Steinmetz is an engineer of national reputation, and in a city devoted to engineering work he is trusted and affectionately admired. Dr. Lunn is a gallant campaigner, and one of the shrewdest politicians in New York State politics. He is elected by the nonSocialist progressives who hold the balance of power in Schenectady. MASS ASSACHUSETTS has again become Republican, but by a narrow and precarious margin. It was on the whole a Republican state until the general unsettling of political conditions in 1910, helped by the personal following of Eugene Foss, made that erratic personality the successful Democratic Governor. The breach in the Republican wall was continued through the Progressive secession in 1912, finally culminating a year later in a reduction of the Republican ticket to third place in the state election. Then the tide of public opinion turned. In Massachusetts, as elsewhere, people lost interest in the propaganda of ideas. Business depression and the revival of a merely traditional opposition to a peculiarly partisan Democratic national administration gradually revived old Republican bonds. The reaction justified itself as opposition to alleged misrule by Governor Walsh. In truth Walsh is a capable, honest, industrious, Irish-Catholic official, progressive in purpose but weak of will, and unconsciously limited by his narrow traditions and environment, not the least of which is the pervasive influence of the very reactionary Cardinal O'Connell. This fear of an increasingly pernicious influence of the Catholic hierarchy on the public service and politics of the state constitutes an increasingly decisive element in the local situation in Massachusetts-very much more decisive than any newspaper or any politician dares admit in public. The Republican ticket took advantage of the opposition to Wilson and to Walsh and made a strong bid for the renewed allegiance of the Progressive seceders. They wrote a platform which sounded sufficiently progressive, and in this way secured a large proportion of the Progressive vote, although the Republican candidate, newly baptized in progressivism, had a consistent record for ultra-conservative action. They have won a victory, and have promoted McCall into a candidate for the Presidency. It remains to be seen how far they are really "reformed," and how progressive ideas will fare in the hands of their former enemies. opinion, and trying to find without the usual forms of advertising its right public, must be an experiment. Its circulation to-day, although not yet large enough to make it self-supporting, is larger than anyone thought it would be at the end of the first year. Readers who differ among themselves and the defeat of non-partisanship in California was due chiefly to the failure of the voters to hear and understand the excuses offered by the gentleman from New York for the conduct of Governor Whitman. One would like to do so; but one can't. ERTAIN advocates of preparedness are from us in opinion have been tolerant of the attempt showing an ugly disposition to cry down, as to apply ideas we believe in to political, social and economic problems. They have responded to the attempt to show the relations between these problems, to point out the national character of the problem which seems merely local at first sight, the international character of questions which have often been discussed as if the United States could live alone in the world. People whose conclusions are not ours have accepted our invitation to think things over together. What success we have had has been founded on the interest which leads an open-minded and inquiring reader to tell other people about THE New Republic, and this must be the basis of the greater success we hope for. WO in California have thrown into a pacifist dodge, every suggestion for the elimination of waste in the administration of the army and navy. This is precisely the way to prejudice the cause of preparedness. It would be difficult to find an intelligent civilian who does not know that a considerable proportion of the sums now appropriated for the priated for the army and navy produces no valuable result. A deep impression was created by Secretary Stimson's statement in 1911 that our fortynine army posts "have been located in their present situations for reasons that are now totally obsolete." We are still keeping up all but five or six of these anachronistic posts, although by concentration we could save over five millions annually and increase the effectiveness of our mobile army. Only Tsilhouette the absurdity of allowing national the peace-at-any-price party can view this condition political parties to determine state issues. The first of these was a speech made at the National Convention of Railway Commissioners in San Francisco, concerning Governor Whitman's failure to reappoint Mr. Milo R. Maltbie to the New York Public Service Commission. Mr. Maltbie's striking abilities and fine integrity are patent; the speaker readily acknowledged them. But the "defense" of the governor was based upon grave political exigencies. It seems that Mr. Maltbie was at the time of his appointment to the Commission, and even throughout his entire devoted and intelligent performance of his extremely technical duties, a Democrat. Governor Whitman was elected as a Republican. Consequently-the speaker was a little disappointed that people could be so obtuse-was it not obvious that when Mr. Maltbie's term expired, Governor Whitman should select a Republican in his stead? The gentleman could not understand how the question of merit had slipped into the discussion. Trivial and obscure as are such remarks, they obtain significance from the second of the two California incidents, for the second was a matter of newspaper headlines: the defeat of the Non-Partisan law by referendum. The California electorThe California electorate rejected a plan of responsible executive leadership and declared for the continuation of harumscarum party control. The result appears almost an aberration in a state dominated by progressive ideas. Many explanations are offered: a blunder of misunderstanding, possibly; a gesture of apprehension; or the people may have been jaded with propaganda. One would like to believe, however, that with equanimity. According to the extreme pacifist doctrine, appropriations that actually produce effective military and naval units are more perniciously wasted than appropriations that merely stimulate local business and sustain the price of local real estate. HETHER waste in military and naval bud WHE gets can be entirely prevented under our present system of financial control is extremely doubtful. With every Congressman fighting resolutely for his own district it is practically impossible to abolish an army post or a naval station, however ill adapted to modern conditions. Suppose that the military authorities are agreed that Fort Crook has outlived its usefulness as an army post. There is a certain Congressman who will lose his seat if the post is abolished; his vote, together with the votes of other Congressmen in a similar case, will overrule the best considered plans of the military department. Our fatal weakness lies in the diffusion of responsibility for the introduction of appropriation bills. If we had an intelligent budget system the obsolete military posts and naval stations could not survive a single Congress. No responsible finance minister in the world would dare to defend such leaks in his national treasury. Until recently our federal revenues have sufficed, even with unlimited waste in appropriations, But we appear to be approaching an era of more difficult financiering. Expenditures are certain to increase if we undertake to place our army and navy on a modern footing, and we can no longer assume that the neces sary increase in revenues can be had without difficulty. We shall be compelled to make the most of our existing resources. And this involves the devising of a workable budget system. Such a system is a necessary element in preparedness, for peace or war. IT T was a foregone conclusion that the Supreme Court would overturn the Arizona Anti-Alien law. The whole structure of our international relations would have been shaken if a state had been upheld in its attempt to deny aliens their treaty right to equality under the law. The requirement that every employer of more than five persons should not employ aliens beyond one-fifth of his personnel meant much more than a purely formal infringement upon aliens' rights. In many cases it meant a denial of the right of aliens, lawfully in the state, to earn a living. In condemning the Anti-Alien law, however, we should not overlook the fact that states like Arizona have a very serious problem in the mining or industrial camps financed by absentee capital, manned by alien labor, and governed despotically by a little group of higher employees. In such camps nothing like an American form of local government is possible. The anti-alien law attempted to substitute, for an exploited body of aliens, citizen laborers, by education and temperament fitted to check the arbitrary tendencies of mining camp capitalism. The purpose was good, though the method was bad. The Arizona democracy must devise some method of controlling the situation without resort to measures that are both unconstitutional and inequitable. Ο N November 29th the National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits will meet in Chicago. A comprehensive program, occupying four days of conferences, is in preparation. The whole array of questions concerning the standardization and marketing of products, the relation of landlord and tenant, the provision of credit for land purchase and improvement will be thoroughly discussed. While the list of speakers has not been completed, it is announced that David Lubin and Sir Horace Plunkett will present papers. We ought not to lose sight of the fact that in the production and marketing of farm products there remains a field for the employment of our capital safer and more lucrative than the foreign fields upon which we are casting eager eyes. Capital cannot, however, place itself at the command of agriculture until we create an organization adapted to our peculiar needs. The Chicago conference may be expected to advance us toward an understanding of the principles upon which such an organization must rest. Government According to Law IN N the illuminating study of "Administrative Mobilization" published in another part of this issue, Mr. Graham Wallas winds up a discussion of what the United States might do in peace in order to prepare specifically for war with a startling piece of advice. He suggests the United States would be much better prepared for war in case its Constitution were not so difficult to amend. He says: "I have myself sometimes thought that if I were an American citizen I should concentrate all my own political efforts on a proposal for a constitutional amendment having the single purpose of making more easy the carrying within a reasonable time of other constitutional amendments desired by a majority of the people." The suggestion deserves more consideration than it will receive. The average member of Congress would be irritated or amused at the idea of preparing for the possibility of war by the amendment of the amending clause of the Constitution. The average lawyer would wax indignant at the notion of making preparedness for war the pretext for laying profane hands upon the article in the Constitution which safeguards against violation all its other salutary provisions. If an administration which was responsible to Congress, instead of being independent of congressional control, proposed the amendment of Article V as part of a general plan of preparation, it would be unceremoniously dismissed from office. Yet the need is obvious. Can any lawyer affirm that the United States could fight a war such as the one in which Great Britain is now engaged without a more or less systematic violation of the Constitution? It would inevitably result in an aggrandizement of executive, congressional and national power, similar to that which took place during the Civil War, but to a much greater extent. A government which was obliged to suspend the payment of debts, take over the railroads and subordinate the industry of the country to military purposes could not, even with the connivance of the Supreme Court, preserve the appearance of legal conformity. The successful conduct of a serious modern war involves the consequence against which the Constitution was particularly designed to protect American states and citizens an all-powerful government, which, if fortified by popular consent, could dispose according to its own judgment of the economic and human resources of the nation. The majority of Americans still shrink from removing the legal obstacles to the organization of an all-powerful national government, because they have no confidence in the ability of popular opinion to employ discreetly or to control sufficiently such a formidable engine of political authority. They pre fer to have the government directed and subjugated by a somewhat inaccessible body of law rather than by an all too accessible body of public opinion. The preference is supposed to be a logical consequence of the radically constitutional nature of the American democracy. We may accept the description. Our democracy must be essentially constitutional, but its quality of being constitutional carries with it no such consequence. A nation without sufficient self-confidence to organize and operate a government capable of being flexibly adapted to the serious practical emergencies of its own career, is trying to dispense with the spiritual foundation of all thoroughgoing democracy. It is basing itself on suspicion and misgivings rather than on loyalty and courage. And as a consequence of proving false to the spirit of democracy it will eventually lose hold on its precious constitutionalism, for its legal machinery will break down unless it is moulded and informed by the democratic principle of ultimate popular control of all the machinery and instruments of government. Conservative American political opinion is justified in attaching a huge importance to constitutionalism. Respect for legal procedure is an indispensable safeguard of the integrity of a democratic commonwealth. A system of government according to law furnishes the citizens of a democratic state with a rough but sufficient method of distinguishing between fair and unfair play. In the absence of constitutionalism the government is, as it were, authorized to cheat-that is, to suit its own convenience in ignoring or accepting uniform rules of action. But a government which is authorized to cheat inevitably breeds suspicion and disloyalty among its citizens. Their only effective remedy for serious grievances is revolution, because orderly agitation is futile as a weapon against a disorderly government. Government according to law is consequently a condition of orderly agitation for the redress of grievances. Without it the mutual good faith among the citizens of a democratic nation which has been called the spiritual foundation of democracy could not exist. It is because we attach so much importance to government according to law that we advocate so emphatically the amendment of the amending clause of the Constitution. A body of law which can be changed only slowly and with enormous difficulty invites and provokes lawlessness, because in such a body of law no sufficient provision can be made for grave and unexpected crises. The law can be adapted to ordinary social and economic changes by an organ of benevolent interpretation such as the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court can modify the law only in minor ways and by imperceptible de grees. If it connived at frank and clear violations of the Constitution, even in a crisis, it would undermine its own authority. Yet its failure to acquiesce and conform in the case of a serious national emergency would not prevent the violation from taking place. As long as unexpected crises and revolutionary convulsions are bound to occur in the life of every nation, a system of government according to law should be contrived to deal with them legally. If they cannot be handled legally, the impulse of self-preservation will force the nation to adopt illegal remedies. The chief obstacle to the amendment of the amending clause of the Constitution is not a strong conviction of the value of government according to law. It is that very different thing, a conviction of the value of government by law. The friends of government by law insist that the Constitution must be left extremely difficult of amendment because it enshrines a body of authoritative political dogma which governments should not be allowed to repudiate under any conditions. The contention raises much matter for controversy. We do not believe any such body of achieved political dogmas can reasonably be held to exist; and if they do exist we feel certain they are not embodied in the Constitution. But assuming that they do exist and are embodied in the Constitution, a government consecrated to their recognition and service could not be accurately described as a constitutional democracy. It really is a system of autocratic legalism-a monarchy of constitutional principle. It would be autocratically legalistic, because the salvation of the state would be made to depend upon conformity to a supreme set of rules rather than upon popular good faith and increasing popular political ability and experience. The law would be raised on high like a monarch, inaccessible, privileged and inviolate. The first duty of every good citizen would be not merely to obey the law as law, but to believe in it as the living and saving political truth. That this autocracy of the American constitutional system has had its benefits in the past can scarcely be denied. The Constitution has performed for the American people a service similar to that which their kings have performed for the European nations. It has bound us together during a period of political adolescence. In the beginning a nation needs a fixed landmark, which it must accept without question, from which it must not be allowed to stray very far, and on which its loyalty must be fastened. But such a landmark is needed, not as the advocates of government by law would have us believe, to prevent the nation from subsequently adventuring a journey of its own, but to prevent it from going astray until it is old enough and educated enough to profit from traveling. The American people know all they need to know about |