He is not an unbalanced enthusiast, hypnotized by such watchwords as national liberty and democracy, but a practical politician fully alive to the principle that what is won by effort, whether good or evil, must be maintained by effort. He cannot believe that the formula of victory is sufficient for the whole Allied group. He was not, however, formulating war aims for the Allies, but Republican party war aims for the United States. Our European Allies must maintain some kind of organization to defend what they win. But Senator Lodge is plainly not convinced that the same necessity rests upon America. After we have made our contribution

to European politics by breaking the power of Germany, can we not turn our backs and leave it to our friends to piece matters together as best they can? Of course if they should get into serious difficulty with a resurgent Germany, we might later go to their aid. Or if they had difficulties among themselves we might offer our friendly offices. But with due allowance for such contingencies, a return to our ancient condition of national isolation is possible.

That this is the real drift of Senator Lodge's doctrine and the future tendency of the party he represents is a view that is confirmed in a measure by the recent pronouncements of Senator Lewis. Old party programmes, according to Senator Lewis, have been rendered obsolete by the war. But one point on which the parties are, in his opinion, certain to divide, is precisely this, the question whether America should take part in a permanent world organization or remain free to form temporary alliances for the attainment of specific objects. It goes without saying that the Democratic party, under the leadership of President Wilson, has acquired title to the policy of permanent international organization. The opposition is therefore forced to accept as its own the policy of isolation, enlarged to admit of occasional international cooperation.

From this statement of the case it might appear that the Republican tendency toward the policy of isolation is being forced upon the party by Democratic preemption of the opposing policy. But this is to do injustice to Republican instincts. There is a perfectly valid politico-economic reason why the Republican party should cling to nationalistic isolation. In spite of war time shiftings in political alignments, the Republican party will still contain the great majority of those who were formerly protectionists and who are bound to be protectionists again as soon as peace makes possible a full development of the import trade. The most telling argument of the protectionists always must be the need of national self-sufficiency in a world of potentially hostile states. And an efficient or

ganization of the nations would greatly impair the force of this argument.

Nor is this all. A vigorous protectionist policy, whatever its intention, must in fact wreak serious injury upon the trade and industry of foreign states. We can not build up a great merchant marine by subsidies and privileges without impairing the economic interests of the British. We can not build up our manufacture of fine stuffs without impairing the interests of the French. If we wish to extend our manufactures to foreign fields we must compete vigorously with the new Belgian industry that will arise out of the desolation of war. But if Britain, France, Belgium and the rest of our Allies remain along with ourselves as parts of a system of mutual defense and mutual welfare, we shall have to give very serious consideration to the incidental injuries our economic policy may inflict upon them. We shall build ships to serve as the machinery of common carriage upon the oceans, not to serve as instruments of American trade expansion. We shall encourage manufacturing with view to the adequate supply of ourselves and the nations leagued with us, not narrowly with a view to American self-sufficiency. In our cultivation of foreign markets we shall seek to cooperate with the nations in the League, not to drive them out by our superior competitive practice.

a

All this means simply that in an economic age it is inconceivable that a political League of Nations should be devoid of economic implications. We can not successfully combine a policy of political internationalism with a policy of economic nationalism. The tradition and the character of the constituency of the Republican party make it the inevitable exponent of economic nationalism. As the party leaders come to realize that national isolation is the corollary of economic nationalism, we may expect them to exhibit first indifference to the idea of a League of Nations, as Senator Lodge does already, and later open hostility to it.

Like all men they desire a stable peace, but they shrink from a peace assured by international organization. What then? Germany was the disturber of the world's peace. A beaten, but potentially powerful Germany may disturb it again. Therefore Germany must be rendered powerless. So far Senator Lodge has already gone in his reasoning. But how render Germany powerless? By destroying her.

Economic nationalism; therefore no League of Nations; therefore not merely the decisive defeat but the destruction of Germany. Such is the ultimate logic of Senator Lodge's party politics and war aims. It is good logic; but by the grace of God, a better logic rules the actual course of American policy.

IT

What Japan Thinks

Tis a grave disadvantage in all our dealings with Japan that while the Japanese leaders understand our mind, as they also excellently understand our language and literature, we are in dense ignorance of the state of opinion in the Island Empire. For several months we have been discussing the question of intervention in Siberia and have been arguing on the basis of generalities concerning what we believed Japanese public opinion to be, but at no time have we sought really to learn what influences are at work and what thoughts are passing through the subtle Nipponese mind. We have assumed that Japan would take at face value the protestations both of our own disinterestedness and of our secure confidence in her good intentions.

In this easy attitude of ours we seem to have been completely wrong. Either Japan has not caught our meaning or we have not caught hers or our fundamental purposes have not been mutually adjusted. In any case powerful and influential groups in Japan, as a review of the Japanese press indicates, have been painfully sensitive concerning what they feel is an implied aspersion on our part on Japan's disinterestedness. They have been disappointed by, if not irritated at our latest opposition to an independent Japanese in

tervention in Siberia.

It is not, of course, to be imagined that the Japanese are unanimous upon these points. Because of our ignorance of the real thought of Japan, we do not usually realize how deep are the cleavages in the public opinion of that country. We clearly recognize that all Englishmen do not think alike, nor all Frenchmen or Russians, but on the part of the unknown Nipponese we assume a compacted intellectual solidarity, which in fact does not exist.

In the intervention question, for example, a sharp difference of opinion seems from the beginning to have manifested itself and to have led to animated controversies in the public press. All parties, journals and statesmen agreed in principle that Japan should take any action, however drastic, that was necessitated by her national interests, but what that action should be-whether Japan should intervene in Siberia now or later, independently or in conjunction with other Powers, with unrestricted latitude of action or bound by pledges-involved a series of questions which divided the nation into two camps.

tervene on its own account, doubted whether such intervention would be wise in the circumstances. The powerful political party, the Seiyukai, illustrated this confrontation of opposing tendencies. One group wished to intervene immediately with very large forces and to go as far as necessary into Siberia and even into Russia proper. It held that all questions of transportation facilities, munitions and war funds could easily be settled with Allied assistance. Other members of the party, on the other hand, believed that the Siberian situation did not demand immediate independent action, and held that to send a large army (a force of one million men was mentioned) into the depths of Siberia would be utterly impossible with transportation facilities what they are at present. Because of such divided counsels, none of the three great parties, the Seiyukai, the Kensekai or the Kokuminto "adopted any resolution regarding the intervention issue." All of these parties, finding within their ranks both advocates and opponents of independent action, were condemned to silence.

Upon the whole, however, the prevailing attitude of the Japanese press seemed from the first to have favored independent action by Japan, especially if such action met with the approval of the Allies. The Herald of Asia, which itself favors independent action, gives in its issue of July 27th a list of important Tokio dailies which stand for a strong and aggressive policy. These papers include the Jiji, the Kokumin, the Yomiuri, the Hochi, the Yorozu and the Chugai Shogyo, a conservative paper read by big business men and compared by the Herald with "that much-respected organ in New York, the Journal of Commerce." Even the journals opposed to immediate action at this time are not antagonistic in principle.

The argument usually advanced by Japanese journals in favor of independent action has been somewhat as follows: Japan has a special relation to Siberia because her national interests are menaced by a possible German influence over that region. Just as America would not permit Japanese cooperation in any intervention in Mexico, so Japan should not welcome the cooperation of America in any land in which Japan has a special interest. Moreover, the nature of the expedition is likely to be such that great forces will be necessary for its successful execution, and as these forces can be supplied only by Japan, it is both unwise, as well as unfair, for America to seek to control Japan's action.

As a consequence of their irritation at America's attitude toward intervention, certain Japanese newspapers are beginning to question America's own disinterestedness in the premises. The Yorozu, for example, asks why America dislikes either to take military action in Russia herself or to permit Japan to do so, and it finds an answer in the theory that America wishes to be on good terms with whatever influence is uppermost in Russia, is anxious to give sympathy to and to get sympathy from Russians, and consequently that America fears that a vigorous action by Japan in Siberia would result in the extension of Japanese influence, and in the handicapping of her own activity in that region full of rich natural resources. The Yomiuri goes even further. This paper thinks that America is officious and it comes to the conclusion, according to the Herald of Asia, that "if intervention in Siberia is necessary for our self-defense, we have no obligation to seek any power's consent to our action."

In short, one effect of the negotiations between Japan and America has been to leave a certain residue of irritation among the Japanese periodicals. They resent what they feel to be an assumed guardianship over Japan by America. They resent the suspicion that they will not be allowed to act, in matters which they believe concern themselves most intimately, until America

not concern Japanese so much in view of the fact that they will in no way interfere with our sovereign right of taking whatever steps we may deem necessary for the defense of our national interests and the interests of the Far East."

What seems clear is that public opinion in the two countries has as yet not frankly met, with the result that the probable character of the intervention is somewhat differently interpreted on the two sides of the Pacific. We still speak of a "small" expedition of limited scope whereas Japan envisages the action as a large military operation. Japan does not view the Czecho-Slovaks as a very potent force. Its journals speak of this group as

have been displeased by what perhaps has been a somewhat tactless attitude of condescension on the

part of members of the American Colony at Tokio. As a consequence there was manifest in the latter part of July a strong tendency on the part of the Japanese press, including the less sensational and more highly respected papers, to view the attitude of the American government on the subject of Siberian intervention "with suspicion and resent

ment."

The statements of the Yomiuri are illustrative of this mood. That paper claims that the Japanese suspect that it is America's own interests in Siberia that render her so uneasy about Japanese action. If Russia suspects Japan, which the Yomiuri does not believe, it is because this suspicion has been bred into the Russians by America's own attitude. America is concerned because of her own

important ambitions" in Siberia. The journal even goes so far as to enter into a discussion of the dire effects which may result from a controversy between the two countries, and it suggests the possibility of grave eventualities, which at this time it would be unwise for us to discuss. It is not to be supposed that other Japanese journals give way to similar loose imaginings, and the "plain talk" to America in which the Yomiuri indulges is gravely disavowed by other papers, such as the Herald of Asia. Nevertheless the Herald insists that Japan must look after her own interests in Siberia, and it suggests that the "alleged vexatious conditions concerning the Vladivostok expedition " need

WE

E are all familiar with the story of the thriftless Negro who could not mend his leaking roof so long as it rained and saw no need of mending it after the rain had ceased. We smile indulgently at this improvidence. Yet in our national attitude towards unemployment we adopt a similar attitude and run into the same lazy dilemma. We cannot solve the problem of unemployment during periods of actual depression, when hungry men tramp the streets in search of jobs; on the other hand, when, as today, the job is looking for the man, the whole problem of unemployment seems unreal. In summer we do not remember that we shall need coal next winter, nor in winter that we shall want ice in summer. The world would be revolutionized if men could think six months ahead.

Fortunately we need no longer argue that unemployment is no concern of the nation. Ten years, even two years ago, we should have had to meet the contention that employment and unemployment were the private affair of capitalist and wage-earner. In this land of unbounded opportunities any industrious man, it was claimed, could always find a job, and all were more likely to find jobs if the matter were left to private initiative.

Private initiative! How hollow the words now sound and how apologetic is the once confident dogmatism of the theory. The war has forever exploded the myth that all we have to do is to leave things alone. In America, as in England, France and Germany, the war has forced men to turn over to the state the chief means of production and to regulate monopolies, prices, wages and labor conditions. Laissez-faire has been adjourned for the duration of the war. We have entered upon the stage of state-capitalism in which all our main economic activities are subordinated to the public interest.

In the matter of the organization, control and protection of labor this intervention of the state has gone furthest. The government drafts millions of men; it exempts other millions on condition that they employ themselves in certain industries instead of in certain others; it takes over the railroads and the telegraph and express companies, and it launches into huge new businesses like that of shipbuilding, thus directly employing many millions of workers. The state regulates the wages, the hours of labor and the working conditions of men engaged in private industries ministering to war needs. It takes charge, it assumes responsibility.

For the time being this responsibility of the government does not extend to the finding of work for the unemployed, for that group has disappeared; the difficulty is rather to find men to do the work required. There is a severe labor shortage, and men once considered unemployable, and women who were formerly exempt from wage service, are now enlisted in the army of wage-earners. The government takes over the placing of unskilled workers, not to find jobs but to find men. In the long run, however, as has always happened in the past, these conditions will be reversed, and the nation will be faced with an enormous over-supply of labor, which the national business, if organized in the old way, will be unable to absorb. The government, having accepted responsibility for this huge recruiting of wage-earners, will face a pressing and threatening unemployment crisis.

This problem is practically unavoidable, since it is inherent in the situation. When the war ends some three to five million men, in productive ages, will be poured rapidly or slowly into the labor market. These men must find remunerative jobs. The demand for workers in the war industries will rapidly diminish. After the peace we shall not need to manufacture shells, cannon, rifles, aeroplanes, army uniforms, tents and poison gas at the same rate as today. Even in the manufacture of merchant ships there will be retrenchment or at least a preparation for retrenchment. The demand for food, coal, copper, cotton and other staples may be as great as ever, but in innumerable industries, including those which are today considered non-essential, recovery will be far from immediate. The soldiers and the men discharged from war industries will not find waiting jobs to which to Formerly unskilled workers and women

of all degrees of skill and strength have entered into new industrial occupations, and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to displace them, and even if they were displaced the burden of unemployment would be only shifted, not lifted. An iron-molder with ten years' experience before the war will have to compete for his former position with a handyman who has been promoted and trained, and the former street railway conductors, who have been drafted into the army, will find women on the rear platform. Even if heavy calls are made upon American industry to help restore a devastated Europe the problem of establishing a balance between an altered, and perhaps a shrunken demand for labor and a largely increased labor supply will be far from easy. It cannot be solved at all without changing the fundamental conditions of American industry, as they existed until the year 1917.

For we are faced not only with a new peace crisis of unemployment but also with the old, recurrent, chronic, cyclical unemployment. The conditions of acute unemployment, such as existed in 1908 and again in 1914 and 1915 are, unless foresight is exercised, likely to re-occur in 1920, 1921 or 1922. There are always men who wish to work and cannot, but while the number of our unemployed falls to as low as one million in good years it rises in bad years to as high as six millions. Moreover, there are seasons of unemployment (especially during the winter months) though these, since they can usually be tided over, are far less serious than is unemployment which comes in larger cycles. Periods of depression and unemployment invariably follow periods of keen demand for labor, and the more rapidly new workers have been drafted into industry the more wide-spread is the unemployment in the bad times that follow. Where a complete change in industry must be made, as after a great war, the unemployment is likely to be more widespread and devastating than in more normal times.

After the Civil War we met a somewhat similar difficulty, though on a much smaller scale, with great success. In 1866 a depression set in, following upon an expansion during the war, but by 1868, business had recovered and by 1870 things were booming. There were several favorable factors tending to prevent a widespread unemployment. The discharged soldiers were absorbed by a stupendously rapid growth in industrialism and by an equally rapid settlement of Western territories. Today, however, there remain no great tracts of free lands to absorb an extra labor supply, although there are still chances for additional employment upon American farms. The problem that we face is of course not one of a permanent inability to employ American labor. Our manufacturing, our railroad development, our vast commercial growth, will in the end make for the employment of many more millions than will be released from the army and the war industries. The problem is one of immediate adjustment. Within a year or less after peace has been declared, we shall have not only to go over from a war to a peace basis of production, but shall be compelled to discharge and reemploy six, eight, ten or even more millions of men, without causing an unemployment crisis. Clearly this is a task not for private initiative by business men, but for the government in behalf of the whole nation.

Hitherto little has been done to meet this forthcoming problem. We have assumed that all would be well, that the work which would have to be done after the war, and which we had hitherto been forced to neglect, would comfortably employ all our workers. In any case there was no hurry; after the war we could comfortably meet all after-the-war problems.

It will then be too late, for the essence of any solution is foresight and prevention. All successful or half-successful efforts to avert unemployment have required time for formulation and preparation. To some extent unemployment can be remedied by a "dove-tailing of seasonal industries"; to a large extent by a regularization of industries. These take time and can succeed only if prepared for in times of prosperity. The same is true of the only true preventive of unemployment, the coordination of the labor demand of the whole country by the only authority that can coordinate it; the national government.

Today that opportunity exists as it has never existed before. The government by becoming the direct employer of millions of railroad, ship-building and other workers can so regulate its own industry, can so initiate business, and so place orders that the entire labor force of the nation can be maintained at a fairly stationary level of employment. We can profitably expend billions of dollars upon the improvement of roadbed and rolling stock, upon double tracking, upon electrification, upon the building of highways and canals, upon the erection of houses for government employees and others, upon irrigation, afforestation, upon innumerable other public undertakings. This work will absorb millions of workers. If, as heretofore, we permit this work to be done whenever the happy idea strikes us (which is usually during periods of prosperity and confidence) unemployment in bad years will not be decreased and may actually be increased. If on the other hand we lay out plans for such work ten years in advance, if we proceed rapidly in periods of unemployment and more

slowly in periods of normal business, we may attain a reasonably regular labor supply and demand. When private business is overactive the public demand for labor may be relatively reduced; when private business languishes the excess supply of labor may be taken up by a vast acceleration of government activity. The desirable policy is that of a strategic reserve of labor demand, the demand being thrown into the battle at the moment when the line is the weakest.

The serious study of this problem by the government, the taking of steps by which unemployment is to be averted years hence should be undertaken today, when there is an actual labor shortage. A government bureau or commission might be appointed immediately to study in the most thorough possible manner the allied problems of unemployment and reconstruction. It could profit by the studies of the British and other commissions, could utilize the federal employment agencies and all other sources of information, and could formulate a policy that might be studied and adopted months, or even years, in advance of the threatened unemployment. It would not slow the progress of the war and might even hasten that progress. The tentative, sporadic efforts to work out an adequate policy should be coordinated and strengthened, so that the work may be finished in time. When it shall have begun to rain it will be too late to mend the roof.