outsider could judge, and the players do not always see the game to the best advantage, Mr. Baldwin had the better argument. He spoke with great simplicity and directness, but I believe, had he consulted his own personal wishes, he would have prayed to be let out of the difficulty of governing England during these troublesome times. Mr. Lloyd George on the other hand gave his hearers an hour's free entertainment; he joshed his audience and jazzed the subject until all, except the judicious, were convulsed with laughter.

Since Labor came in not a word has been heard of the most important plank in its platform, the 'capital levy'; that is to say, Labor sought or was said to seek the confiscation by Government of an immense amount of the wealth of the nation. Asked how many times they intended to put this plan in operation, they said 'once only' - which was clever; for having once done so what wealth was left would have flown away. Listen to Mr. Lloyd George's rhetoric on this subject: 'At the mere possibility of a Labor Government, the western skies become black with the flight of capital seeking safety beyond the Atlantic. The fright is real: there has been nothing like it since horror filled the streets of Rome at the approval of Attila.' What actually happened was that the '5% War Loan,' the premier security of England, went off about three points at the possibility of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's election, and promptly recovered them upon his coming into office.

During the war, Mr. MacDonald was a 'passivist,' a 'conscientious objector,' and an 'internationalist.' He made what trouble for the Government he could: a passport was denied him when he sought to visit his friends in Russia. Now, by a turn of the political

wheel, he is Prime Minister of England; yet at a 'Victory Meeting,' held at the Albert Hall after his election, the proceeding commenced with the singing of the Marseillaise and concluded with 'The Red Rag.' This was not a good beginning, but there is nothing so sobering as responsibility, and the burden which rests upon Mr. MacDonald is almost crushing.

I believe that one thing that contributed to Mr. Baldwin's defeat was the unwise and improvident agreement he reached with Mr. Mellon, our Secretary of the Treasury, relative to the English war debts. Mr. Baldwin came to this country with the Governor of the Bank of England, and was hailed as an astute financier. There was, naturally, a contest between the group representing England and the group representing the United States. By a miracle it so happened that we were represented by a distinguished financier and not a politician: the result was that Mr. Mellon, holding all the cards, was able to freeze into concrete form our claims against England for the sums that we advanced her during the war, and also the money that through her we loaned to France and Italy. These obligations were given a due date and at a fixed rate of interest: look at the result: due to the fall in exchange, after paying us some hundreds of millions, England now finds herself owing us a greater sum than she owed before she paid us a penny. It is heartbreaking for her to contemplate, but heroically she makes no complaint. She is the only country that will make any real effort to pay us, and she may break her back in an effort to do so which would be almost as unfortunate for us as for her. The debts of France and Italy occasion these countries just as much concern as you would feel, dear reader, if Mr. Rockefeller had an outlawed claim against you for a hun

dred million dollars. Politicians cannot say these things, but there is no good reason why a book-collector should not. Mr. MacDonald, Socialist, Laborite, call him what you will, is to-day the most conservative man in England; and here I shall venture to make a prophecy. Due to world conditions with which we are all familiar, England will, within ten years, have a protective tariff: she may, she probably will, call it something else; no doubt she will be told it is something else, and the man likely to do the telling is that verbal acrobat Mr. Lloyd George.

Lloyd George! What a man he is! An actor rather than a statesman. If he had chanced to adopt the stage as a profession - but hold! he has: all the world's a stage, and he has been performing on a large one.

IV

In no city in the world does poverty so impinge upon wealth as in London. The rewards for eminence in any business or profession in England are immense, but mediocrity has a hard time of it, and failure is punished severely. One is constantly impressed with the magnificence of the fashionable districts and the misery of the slums, and they exist almost side by side. "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate' — with a vengeance.

One cold, raw Saturday night in December, I put on a cap and a heavy coat and tramped from my little flat near Piccadilly to the Elephant and Castle, 'in the south suburbs,' where, says Shakespeare, 'is best to lodge.' Three or four centuries ago elephants were always represented with pagodas or castles on their backs, and such a tavern sign must once have hung before a tiny tavern at a place where a number of roads met leading to important towns in Kent and Surrey. But no

longer is the Elephant in the suburbs: it is now a great public house in one of the most densely populated districts in south London, a centre as crowded as Piccadilly Circus, but very different in character.

Walking through the magnificence of Whitehall, stopping to look at the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament as they rose out of the mist, over Westminster Bridge, skirting, almost, Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, I passed from splendor to scenes of poverty and misery almost beyond belief.

The streets of London are probably safer than the streets of any other large city in the world: the police are not 'in politics,' as with us, and although many were drinking and a few were drunk, there was no disorder. My thoughts led me to Albert Chevalier, that great music-hall artist who died not long ago, and of his cycle of songs: "The Future Mrs. 'Awkins," "The Cradle Song,' "The Little Nipper,' a masterpiece, -'Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road,' - which everyone sings, and the really pathetic song of 'My Old Dutch,' sung by Chevalier as an infirm old man to his wife of forty years. For Chevalier's sake, from The Elephant I hoofed it through the New Kent to the Old Kent Road, 'knockin' 'em' as I went (and not badly either, for I learned my songs in a good school). Listen to this bit from "The Little Nipper':

(Spoken) 'Only last night me an' the missus took 'im out for a walk - I should say 'e took us out. As we was a comin' 'ome I says to the old gal, "Let's pop into the Helephant and 'ave a drop o' beer." She did n't raise no objection, so in we goes followed by 'is nibs-I'd forgotten all about 'im.

'I goes to the bar and calls for two pots of four 'alf. Suddenly I feels 'im a-tuggin' at my coat.

""Wot's up?" sez I. "Wot did yer call for?" sez 'e. "Two pots of four 'alf," sez I. ""Oh," sez 'e, "ain't mother goin' to 'ave none?"

(Sung) 'Well 'e 's a little champion

Do me proud well 'e 's a knock out, "Drink up," sez 'e. "Three pots, miss, it's my call."

I sez, "Now Jacky, Jacky,"

'E sez, "and a screw of baccy," And 'e only stands about so 'igh, that's all!'

The hero of this song is supposed to have reached the ripe age of seven.

Returning home I took the Tower Bridge Road, past that historic pile with its thousand years of history; through Billingsgate Market to St. Paul's, the Strand, Piccadilly again, 'and so to bed,' almost in a bee line. My meditation was upon prohibition. We at least have made an effort to deal with the question of drink, which some people consider the curse of England, where the liquor interest seems more strongly intrenched than the Crown.

Democracy just naturally makes for hypocrisy; no man holding office can speak his honest opinion; our politicians are a wretched crew! They wrote into the Constitution what should have been a police or, at best, a state regulation. Am I to be deprived of the pleasure of a

proper dinner with a bottle of burgundy of just the right temperature, or 'a large cold bottle and a small hot bird' after the theatre, because some farmer in South or West conceives that a beefsteak smothered in onions, with hashed brown potatoes, washed down with iced water, is a feast for Lucullus? I am - without a doubt. What profiteth it me if my gardener can no longer get a drink of decent whiskey for fifteen cents, if my daughter can go to a party with a young man in a Ford coupe (not coupé, mind you), chaperoned by a bottle of raw spirits?

On the other hand: I spent a week in Liverpool, on a Gilbert and Sullivan pilgrimage, staying at the best hotel in England, the Adelphia, built for the American trade just before the war came and diverted all the traffic to Southampton, where they rob you and give you nothing. The poverty, the squalor, the misery, the wretchedness, the vice of Liverpool- largely due to drink - is something beyond words.

'But it is a seaport,' they tell you; 'seaports are always like that.' Two weeks later I spent a few days in Marseilles - also a seaport: everyone sober, busy, happy, seemingly contented.

We are just where we set out, dear Reader. 'They order this matter better in France.'

JUDGE GAYNOR, speaking in Tammany Hall immediately after his election as mayor of New York City in 1909, delighted his audience with his opening sentence, 'So this is Tammany Hall!' Thus he recorded a fresh impression with ironic humor. It was his first view of the interior of the famous Wigwam on Fourteenth Street. All his adult life Tammany had been a power in his environment and it had just pushed him to the peak of his career. Nevertheless, as a busy New Yorker and a resident of home-keeping Brooklyn, he knew not the sacred precincts and inner workings of the organization that, more than any other force, had been dominating the metropolis throughout his lifetime.

Tammany is a power known by name to all Americans; but to most of them it is merely a name of sinister connotation. For that matter few of those who support Tammany consistently know its background; just as few of its thousands of district workers know what is going on in Tammany's inner circle. Moreover, the inner circle often is not taken entirely into the confidence of the 'big boss,' so completely does Tammany accept authority. Consequently it is no wonder that Tammany must be thoroughly explained in order to be comprehended as a vital and apparently enduring element in the American political system.

Since the days of Nast the cartoonists' symbol for Tammany Hall has been the tiger. If the possession of at

least nine lives is characteristic of the larger members of the feline family, the symbol fits. No other political organization in America has been killed so often, yet none enjoys better health to-day.

The Society of Saint Tammany was founded on May 12, 1789, two weeks after the establishment of the United States Government. Within the one hundred and thirty-five years of its uninterrupted existence it has received both the adulation and the contempt of the populace. It has shared in some of the purest aspirations and yet has violated nearly every canon of decency. At times it has attracted public servants of unselfish patriotism and at other times its agents have acted with sordid disregard of right. But, good and bad, Tammany lives on. Again and again in its long history, it has been forsaken by the people, only to be returned to power within an incredibly brief space. In truth the alternation of Tammany and reform governments in New York City has had almost an astronomical quality. A mathematician, by charting Tammany's orbit, might predict its appearances and its periods of eclipse with the assurance that as the earth moves about the sun, or as the moon waxes and wanes, so, after a season of exile and hunger, Tammany will once more be joyfully enthroned in the hearts of the people.

Nor is this a reflection on the intelligence or morals of those who live on

Manhattan Island. New York City has a large undigested alien population, as, incidentally, have many of the larger American cities; but it is still to be proved that the strangers within our gates have taught any guile to the hard-headed Yankees they found upon the scene. New Yorkers are neither better nor worse than their fellow countrymen. New York is merely the largest and the richest community in the New World and in consequence its politics, like its business, have been conducted in the grand manner. Tammany is conspicuous by the enormity of its sins and the magnitude and continuance of its successes; but what has happened on Manhattan Island has in varying degrees been repeated in most American communities. From a purely political standpoint, Tammany is essentially like the dominant political organizations of other American cities. William Marcy Tweed, the 'Boss' Tweed of an evil chapter in municipal history, admitted that Philadelphia taught New York the fine art of 'repeating' - fraudulent voting. The Tammany purposes and methods have been typical of the political development of the United States; for good and for evil its leaders have been characteristically American, whatever their place or origin.

An open and unprejudiced mind, however, is needed if Tammany is to be seen in perspective. Nothing is gained by denying its faults or ignoring its virtues. Grant it a blanket indulgence; its opponents, including all the great metropolitan dailies, offset this with a blanket indictment. Both methods lead nowhere. Tammany is neither all pure gold nor all sinful black, but striped with both colors, like the tiger it has chosen for a symbol.

The most important book on the subject is Gustavus Myers's History of Tammany Hall. Mr. Myers's scholarly

researches are valuable indeed. He has digested and made available vast numbers of public reports. Everyone who would understand the development of Tammany is his debtor. His history, however, is essentially a compilation of sins. But as the poor are not always the miserable, despite the imaginings of the pathetic school of novelists, so Tammany's history is by no means all bribery and corruption. It is historically untrue to portray Tammany as the complete villain in the metropolitan melodrama.

This brief incursion into the territory of the famous 'Braves' of New York's Wigwam is to ascertain why, despite the sins which have been so adequately chronicled, the decent people of New York City tolerate Tammany. The question can be the more easily answered if this political tiger is approached as a biologist would pursue a problem in natural history eyed and without confusing preconceptions.

II

open

The explanation of Tammany's persistent strength is simple. Tammany Hall has never been radical, but espouses popular causes. Moreover, since the early decades of the nineteenth century it has been the professed friend of aliens in a city constantly being resettled by immigrants. It has had singularly attractive social and charitable features and its leaders, from one generation to another, have understood the average man. The 'human equation' has had few mysteries for them. Most important of all, Tammany has made a business of politics. The men who have advanced in the organization have worked systematically and intelligently. They have taken their politics as seriously as other men take their profession or business. Tammany's record as a pioneer of move