desirability of a one hundred per cent Allied mili-curity, which will undermine the psychological tary victory as a moral pervert and a traitor to causes of the existing mob violence and intolerance civilization. of dissenting opinion. Other conditions peculiar to this country have contributed to the violence of this reaction. Our English friends should remember that there were domiciled in America thousands of aliens who were friendly to Germany, who were only too willing to contribute to American defeat. They should remember that the American Socialist organization was practically controlled by Germans, that American participation in the war was condemned as a crime by the American Socialist party, in spite of the international purposes for which America was fighting, and that a large amount of propaganda which was defeatist and pro-German in its effect was being circulated as Socialist party literature. No such conditions as these existed in any European country. The clear connection all during the summer of 1917 between much socialist propaganda and at least an indifference to Allied or American victory had much to do with the rigor of the official censorship and the intolerance of American public opinion. Without palliating for one moment the excesses of this censorship and of the intolerance associated with it, these alien socialists presented, it must be admitted, an obstacle to American political victory in the war which had to be suppressed by some measure of force. It was their own behavior which compelled the government to associate with respect for American national purposes a wholesome fear of American national power. In so far as the foregoing account of the way in which the existing American war psychology originated is true, we may feel sure that its peculiar violence will gradually abate. Our fellow-countrymen suddenly became fearful that American national unity would not survive the disintegrating process which their revolutionary participation in a European war had started on its career; and in case we had entered this war for any purposes less democratic and disinterested than those laid down by the President, the fear might have been justified. As the result of the fear they yielded to panic and have gone further than was necessary in suspecting and in trying to stamp out dissenting views. At the present time the very violence of American opinion and policy has become itself an obstacle rather than an aid to our national moral unity. But the violence will not last. The essential unity of this country has been magnificently vindicated. America is more of a nation today than she has ever been in the past and her nationality is more firmly attached than ever to democratic domestic and foreign policy. It is this fact which will restore to Americans a feeling of national moral se A Reprieve for the Children TH HE War Labor Policies Board has granted a reprieve to the children who, in the language of Justice Holmes's dissenting opinion, were condemned to ruined lives when by a five to four vote the Supreme Court on June 3rd declared the Federal Child Labor Law unconstitutional. On July 19th, the Board adopted a resolution making the Secretary of Labor responsible "for the enforcement of the contract clause with reference to the employment of children by which all government contracts are to contain a clause providing that the contractor shall not directly or indirectly employ any child under the age of fourteen years, or permit any child between the ages of fourteen and sixteen to work more than eight hours in any one day, more than six days in any one week, or before 6 A. M. or after 7 P. M." The language is not identical with that of the demolished law, but its intent is identical. The Board has granted the children a stay of execution for the period of the war. The immediate effect of the Board's resolution is a thing for which all modern minded people will be grateful. Directly after the Supreme Court handed down its decree, the Federal Children's Bureau began to call in the field agents who had been entrusted with the enforcement of the Child Labor Law. These agents reported that even before they were able to get their trunks packed, children between the ages of twelve and sixteen were being hustled to the mines and mills. Already they have been sent back to their old districts to pluck the industrious infants from all machines operating on government contract. Whether they will be able to salvage as many children under the new arrangement as they did under the Child Labor Law is an open question. But government business today is very pervasive business. It is quite possible that for the period of the war more children will be protected from the evil of premature and excessive labor than ever before. But from the point of view of orderly government, this is not the most important question raised by the action of the War Labor Policies Board. Under stress of the war emergency, our government is rapidly being divided against itself. In case after case, the executive branch has felt itself compelled in the public interest and especially in the field of labor to over-rule solemn decisions of the Supreme Court. A little more than a year ago, the Supreme Court by a five to four vote held un constitutional a law of the State of Washington which made it unlawful for private employment agencies to charge fees to workmen seeking employment. The design of the law was to abolish private employment agencies, whose business, in the dissenting opinion of four Justices of the Court, was subject to the grossest frauds and dishonesties. Five members of the Court condemned the law as "arbitrary and oppressive," and unduly restrictive of the "liberty" guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. In the face of this decision, the President has issued a proclamation the design of which is to abolish private employment agencies throughout the nation and to give the Federal Employment Service a monopoly of the business of recruiting and distributing labor. The President justified this direct contravention of the essence of the Supreme Court's decree on the ground that the chaos attending the activities of private employment agencies was threatening the existence of the nation. On January 25th, 1915, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a law of the State of Kansas which sought to make it unlawful for an employer to require an agreement, either written or verbal, from employees or prospective employees not to join or to continue to be members of a labor organization. Violations were declared to be misdemeanors, punishable by fine or imprisonment. On July 1st, 1911, T. B. Coppage, a superintendent employed by the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway Company at Fort Scott, Kansas, requested one Hedges, a switchman who was a member of a labor organization, to sign an agreement to withdraw from the union. Hedges refused and was discharged. From a conviction in the trial court, Coppage appealed, claiming the statute in question was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court of Kansas upheld the statute and affirmed the conviction. But the United defendants in the Hitchman case were the United Mine Workers of America. Pursuant to the principle announced by the President, the Federal Fuel Administration has now erected a bureau of labor, headed jointly by the former president of the Mine Workers, Mr. John P. White, and Mr. Rembrandt Peale, a coal operator, which will enforce a policy of no strikes, use of existing machinery of arbitration and the right of the workers to organize without interference or intimidation. The decisions of the Supreme Court in the Coppage and Hitchman cases are thus effectively nullified. The resolution of the War Labor Policies Board restoring the essential provisions of the Child Labor Law on the heels of the Supreme Court's decision declaring the law unconstitutional is only the last of a lengthening series of cases in which the executive branch of the government, responsive to prevailing public opinion and the critical needs of the nation, has found itself compelled to contravene the spirit of the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court. As to the wisdom or unwisdom of this course it is not here necessary to express an opinion. The patent fact is that in matters of fundamental public policy, we are rapidly becoming a nation divided against ourselves at the fountain heads of authority. Each executive act, however essential to the defense of the nation, that circumvents a solemn decree of the Supreme Court tends to bring not only the Supreme Court but the entire judiciary into contempt among the great masses of the people. It would seem obvious that unless there is a redefinition of authority by which the conduct of the Supreme Court is brought into harmony with the spirit of the times, the end of the war will find us facing domestic anarchy. States Supreme Court by a divided vote declared Dealing Gently the statute unconstitutional. More recently, in December, 1917, in the case of Hitchman Coal and Coke Co. v. Mitchell et al., the Supreme Court reenforced the position taken in the Coppage case by declaring it unlawful for agents of a union to attempt to recruit members among employees under such agreements as the Kansas statute sought to outlaw. Soon after this decision, on March 29th, 1918, the National War Labor Conference Board, commonly known as the Taft-Walsh Board, recommended, and the President approved and affirmed as principles to govern the relations between employers and employees, that the right to organize in trade unions should not be denied, abridged or interfered with by employers in any manner whatsoever and that "employers should not discharge workers for membership in trade unions." The T Gently With the HE Ways and Means Committee has made up its mind on the excess profits tax. It intends to avoid extremes. It places itself, so the press reports run, "in accord with the known views of the Senate Finance Committee as to excess profits." And this committee holds "that the entire business structure must not be undermined by an excessive profits tax. Very good. None of us wants the business structure undermined by excessive taxation or by any other device of the shortsighted. We need the golden eggs; we must at all costs keep this bird alive. The pertinent question is, whether the rates agreed upon by the Ways and Means Committee are nicely calculated to keep the business structure intact while appropriating to the Treasury the maximum share of the returns in ex cess of reasonable compensation. Everybody is making sacrifices for the war, but business is business, and perhaps it ought to be permitted to thrive little better than in times of peace. It ought not to demand the privilege of gorging itself to bursting. Any considerable excess profit belongs to the war that created it. What can we deduce from the rates it is proposed to fix? Not much. These rates are to range from 30 per cent upon the net incomes above 10 per cent and under 20 per cent to 80 per cent on net incomes in excess of 25 per cent. Besides, all corporate incomes are to be subject to a normal tax of 10 per cent, and perhaps there is to be an additional punitive 5 per cent on undistributed profits. In the aggregate these three taxes are expected to yield near two and three-quarters billions. It is a tidy sum. If nothing at all were known about the actual volume of corporation war profits most of us would guess that the Ways and Means Committee was cutting deep enough. But as it happens, a good deal is known about the volume of corporation war profits. The net incomes of all our corporations are regularly reported to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. For the three pre-war years of 1911, 1912, 1913, the average net income amounted to $3,795,136,000. War prosperity raised the level of corporation net income to $8,776,000,000 in 1916. The figures for 1917 have not yet been fully compiled, but according to extremely careful estimates, they will approximate $10,500,000,000. That is, our corporations enjoyed in 1917 an income of about $6,700,000,000 in excess of their pre-war income. But the corporations have greatly increased their capital investments, it will be urged, and this fact accounts for a part of the apparent war excess of earnings. To be sure, the most exhaustive inquiries into the amount of new investment in corporations subject to taxation indicate that it can not at most exceed $15,000,000,000. Most of this originated in undistributed profits, but we may disregard this fact if we like and assume that on the whole of it the corporations are entitled to ten per cent before we talk about war profits at all. We will deduct from our $6,700,000,000 of apparent war profits a billion and a half for interest on new capital. The remainder, $5,200,000,000 is war profits, as defined by common sense and British practice. The British government would have taken over $4,000,000,000 in taxes; and we used to consider the British government very tenderly disposed toward property interests. Under the law effective for 1917 we took something less than $2,000,000,000 in corporation taxes, normal and excess profits combined. If the Ways and Means Committee has its way we shall take about $2,750,000,000 out of the war profits of 1918, which we are safest in estimating at somewhat less than those of 1917, although present indications do not actually justify us in assuming any considerable falling off in war profits. We will be arbitrarily generous and place the true war profits for 1918 at $4,750,000,000. This leaves to the corporations, in addition to ten per cent on all their conceivable capital-a rate sufficient even for the Beef Trust-two billions above all the taxes they will pay. No: the business structure is not to be undermined by taking from its top this $2,000,000,000 of superfluous war profits. As everyone knows, we shall need a lot of revenue, perhaps two billions, beyond the yield of our present sources. We can get some millions by a tax on gasolene. It is said that there is altogether too much pleasure driving, among a people at war. We agree: there ought to be less. We ought not to be seeking pleasure but opportunity for sacrifice. There are millions to be had from coffee and tea and sugar. Why should the breakfast table appear flourishing when the best of our citizens are offering the supreme sacrifice of service in line of battle? There are other millions to be had from amusements. This is no time to be amused. when the Ways and Means Committee has canvassed all these sources and found how hard it is to get even a billion out of them, it may perhaps be expected to reflect again upon the point whether business does not consist of a group of respectable enterprises, owned and controlled by honorable and patriotic men, who will not care to be recorded in history as insisting, not merely upon profits as usual, but upon a premium of a cool two billions to assure their full cooperation in the common cause. But W The Coming British Elections ITHIN three, or at most four months from the time this article appears, the United Kingdom will, almost certainly, be plunged into a General Election; when something approaching twenty millions of electors, voting in approximately equal electoral districts, will decide the policy, and virtually elect the Prime Minister of the British Empire. It will be an inconvenient occasion for such a momentous consultation of the electorate. Nearly half the adult manhood is under arms, most of it overseas. More than half the industrial workers are engaged in the production of munitions and other war 'supplies, directly or indirectly in government pay. There will be almost a famine in paper and envelopes; and most of the election speakers and writers, and many of the election campaign staffs, are serving with the colors. The newly compiled registers, with special provision for the soldiers, and for some other absentee voters, will include the names of a larger percentage of the census population-in different districts, between 40 and 45 out of every 100-than has ever before been enfranchized in any great nation. All the women and probably half of the men-possibly three-fourths of the entire electorate-will vote for the first time in their lives. And they will, we must assume, cast their votes amid the tense excitement of an unparalleled national struggle, in which the very existence of the British Empire is at stake. It but would also give the Prime Minister—who has never yet received a popular mandate for that office such a personal endorsement as would make him less dependent than he is at present on this or that group in Parliament. We may therefore be sure that Mr. Lloyd George, who has told us that he is not unskilled in political strategy, will not postpone the General Election for any other reason than the happening of some grave national disaster, or some moment of supreme anxiety. And although we may assume that our political strategist will choose the happiest moment, and keep his decision a secret up to the last, we shall probably not be far out if we predict that-barring accidents-the polling day for the 20 millions of British electors will be a Tuesday or a Thursday about the middle of November. It is this imminence of a General Election, and not the intrinsic importance of the incidents, that gave to the Party Conference of the British Labor Party in the last week of June its prominence in the newspapers, and riveted upon its proceedings the attention of every politically minded person in the United Kingdom. The newspapers were, indeed, hopelessly at sea about the Conference and its meaning; and inexcusably badly informed and prejudiced in their preliminary comments. The Conference was the ordinary Party Conference, summoned according to routine, for the election of the Executive Committee, the reception of its annual report, and the formal adoption, clause by clause, of the Party's Reconstruction Programme, which had been under consideration for six months in the form of the pamphlet "Labor and the New Social Order" (republished by the New Republic). This adoption, by the way, took place in the course of three long sessions of discussion, with only the slightest amendments of phraseology or of detail, in an assembly of nearly a thousand delegates, with a surprisingly close approach to unanimity. All the previous members of the Executive Committee who sought re-election were again chosen, with Mr. J. E. Clynes, M. P., one of Mr. Lloyd George's most successful Ministers, at the head of the poll. There was no vote on international affairs-which were not, and never had been, part of the agenda for this Conference-and the report by the Executive Committee of its various international proceed There is, as is well known, no constitutionally fixed date for British elections. The dissolution of Parliament is determined, in effect, by the Prime Minister, acting within an undefined responsibility to his Cabinet and his Party, to public opinion and to the sovereign. The General Election follows immediately, and is now required by statute to take place (with some unimportant exceptions) simultaneously on a single day. The present Parliament was elected for a term of seven years in December 1910; and by its own statute in 1911 it further limited its duration to a maximum of five years. It has therefore doubly exceeded its mandate, and has only been kept alive by temporary statutes. One more such statute will have to be passed during this present month of July to keep the House legally alive until the beginning of 1919. But the new electoral rolls will be ready by October; and though many things about the results are so uncertain as to be beyond all prophecy, Mr. Lloyd George him-ings was endorsed without dissent. Never was less self is confident (and with some warrant) that he will secure a triumphant majority. Such a majority would not only strengthen the hands of the administration in a resolute maintenance of the war, opening for the journalistic sensation-monger, or for the promotion of "secession" scandals. The press was reduced to making a fuss about the invitation, as "fraternal delegate," (in addition to the customary French and Belgian working class leaders) of Mr. Troelstra, the leader of the Dutch Labor Party, as the companion of Mr. Branting, the leader of the Swedish Labor Party. When the invitation to these two leaders of neutral Europe was announced (the concurrence of the War Cabinet having first been obtained) a great, and a discreditable clamor arose in the "patriotic " press. It was quite right to invite the leader of the Swedish Labor Party, as one neutral, because he was declared to be a partisan of our own cause; but the invitation of the leader of the Dutch Labor Party as another neutral was scandalous and intolerable, because he was declared to be a partisan of our enemy! The fact is that they are both simply neutral. Unfortunately, the War Cabinet, against the recommendation of the Foreign Office, yielded to the popular clamor; and (after having concurred in the invitation to Mr. Troelstra) abruptly forbade him to land on British territory. Now, Mr. Troelstra would have brought with him, it is believed, the extremely sympathetic and important official reply of the Austrian (and possibly also that of the German) Socialist Party, to the "Memorandum on War Aims " of the Inter-Allied Conference of February last. The War Cabinet probably did not realize, when it refused Mr. Troelstra a passport, what a valuable "moral offensive" for the Entente cause it was obstructing and postponing. The other Conference incident that the press elevated to scandal was the decision to terminate what was called "the Party Truce." This was an agreement, entered into by the party officials at the very beginning of the war, that, when a vacancy occurred in the House of Commons, no Party would seek, by a contested bye-election, to wrest the seat from the Party to which it "belonged." This truce," applicable only to bye-elections, became difficult to maintain when the whole Party was working up to a fiercely contested General Election within a few months, at which as many constituencies as possible will be fought. It was therefore decided to give notice that it would no longer be binding on the Labor Party. The eight Labor Ministers chose to take this as a summons to quit the Government; and were only with some difficulty persuaded that, whatever might be the case when the General Election came, the Conference had no intention of calling on them prematurely to make a choice between the Coalition Government and the Labor Party. One of them, as already stated, was actually placed by the Conference at the head of the poll for the Executive Committee. But the sensation of the Conference was, of course, the entirely unexpected appearance on the platform of Mr. Kerenski, who very significantly made his first appeal, on escaping from Russia, not to any government, but to the British Labor Party, and subsequently to the French Socialist Party. A very few petulant dissentients notwithstanding, the Conference gave Mr. Kerenski a great ovation— meaning, of course, nothing more than the heartfelt sympathy of the British Labor Movement with the Russian Revolution which has deposed Tsardom, without too nicely discriminating between one representative of the Revolution and another, be"Social Revolutionaries" and "Bolshevists," or between one method of helping the Russian people and another. tween What was important in the Conference was the demonstration of the growth in numbers, power and status of the Labor Party itself. Mr. Henderson was able to announce that 304 candidates were either definitely fixed to constituencies, or in process of being so fixed (this is just half the total constituencies of Great Britain), whilst about a hundred more were already in contemplation. Many Liberals, and some Conservatives, who have formerly stood or been invited to stand for these Parties, are this time asking to be allowed to stand as Labor Candidates-a process of conversion which is paralleled by very significant "" turnovers among electors of the professional and even of the capitalist classes, who declare their intention of voting "Labor." To those who know the conditions of English politics, it will be no less significant to record the beginning of the conversion of the barristers, several of whom will be contesting seats for the Labor Party, possibly even a King's Counsel or two who have joined the Party. In several places, the Liberal Party organization has gone over en bloc to the rising Party. An interesting announcement was that the Labor Party would have one or more candidates for each of the six constituencies into which the 100,000 graduates of the British Universities are now to be grouped for separate representation by their additional votes in respect of their degrees. Labor candidates for Oxford, Cambridge and London Universities are already actively in the field; and receiving a most encouraging amount of support from the graduates in all the faculties. Now there is beginning the anticipated campaign of abuse and misrepresentation, prejudice and malice, with which the great popular press (skilfully engineered in Mr. Lloyd George's interest), endeavors to check the progress of the Labor Party among the electorate. Attempts are being made to set up a rival "Trade Union Labor Party," in order to hamstring the Labor candidates. A previous attempt of the same kind (the British Workers League) has been pretty well scotched, but continues its efforts. The Labor Party (which, |