the poor from marrying without the permission of the commune. Such laws were formerly in force in Norway, the Canton of Berne in Switzerland, and in Saxony, Württemberg, and Mecklenburg, but have fallen into disuse. Indeed it may have occurred to the legislators in these cities that it would be easier to support poor children in families than in foundling asylums, but this, if it occurred, would be merely the result of enforcing the law in a lame and inconclusive manner.

With this it would be consistent to join a law such as existed in Sparta, fining men who married women of insufficient size. Such a fine was imposed on King Archidamus. Whereas in our own insufficiently regulated country the little women in utter defiance of all civic virtue get married without even waiting for the supply of larger specimens to be exhausted.

Speaking of uplift in general, we may say that while it is unfortunately true that we cannot elevate ourselves by tugging at our own bootstraps, it is fortunately equally true that we can elevate others by tugging at their bootstraps. Herein lies the salvation of Democracy. The spirit of the time admonishes us to abandon the attempt to improve our own lives an irksome task carrying no salary and to give ourselves whole-heartedly to the improvement of others, being conscious that our outlook is broader and nobler than theirs. Our country is being mobilized into innumerable groups in which each member is fully at grips with his neighbor. Let us, then, tug away valiantly, with Old Glory floating above us, and the prayer 'Save America!' upon our lips, knowing that no matter who is successful the national level must be raised - unless indeed the bootstraps should break, in which case there would be a lamentable loss of energy.

V

A fifth principle of the New Liberty is uniformity in public and private life. This can be best accomplished by standardization in various departments. The standardization of spelling and language, as well as of the tone, taste, and character of our literature, might be relegated to some central authority, some 'sovereign organ of opinion' as Sainte-Beuve called it, of which the French Academy may serve as an example. The benefits of the French Academy have so clearly been laid before the English-speaking people by Matthew Arnold that the advantage of a similar institution need not be here enlarged on.

The licence system opens an inviting way to standardization. It is sufficiently established to ensure its ultimate universality. We now require licences for most of the activities of our national life; inter alia, Lawyers and Dogs; Surgeons and Butchers; Bankers and Jackasses; Taverns and Detectives; Plumbers and Midwives; Carters and Accountants; Gunners and Nurses; Automobile-drivers and Undertakers; Intelligence-offices, Menageries; Dentists and Amusements in general; Omnibuses and Operas; Pawnbrokers and Clam-sellers; Dealers in Renovated Butter, and Fertilizers, which no doubt might have been appropriately included in the same act. In fact, practically the only portions of our population allowed to roam at large without licence are clergymen and cats. Yet the anarchy that prevails in religion is notorious. Hegel, nearly a century ago, pointed out the anomalous and ridiculous position of America in this respect. 'Everyone, he said, 'may have a religion peculiar to himself. Thence the splitting-up into so many sects which reach the acme of absurdity. . . . The various

congregations choose ministers and dismiss them according to their pleasure. . . .' Yet no reform has been attempted since this was written (1830).

The Licence Acts cited above represent an unconscious movement toward more universal regulation, and have been merely instinctive, gradual, sporadic. In the modern systems for zoning cities, now spreading over the country so rapidly as to give evident proof of the trend of the civic mind, we find a method for developing the principle into a complete and articulated system. Under this a permit may be required for the occupancy or use of any property, and by this means a complete method of centralized and scientific control of every business can be exercised by a wise and competent City Bureau; which will also, after the system has become permanent, lend itself to a complete control and elimination of methods detrimental to the civic interest.

VI

There are many departments of legislation on which I have not even touched, for 'a man may dive deep and long before he finds a bottom when there is none.'

I might speak of the ingenious invention of transferring the tariff-regulating power from the Legislative to the Executive, a power recently exercised to prevent the importation of Canadian wheat. The method is so very similar to the sliding scale of the English Corn Laws that it may reach a similar degree of popularity.

As the result of this action may be to put the price of flour up, the complementary step should now be taken, viz., a price-fixing regulation, to keep the price of flour down. This regulation might be extended to all commodities. In imitation of the famous

decree of Diocletian (A.D. 303) issued in a similar period of high taxation and rising prices, we might set up a tariff inscribed in stone in every market in the Union, limiting the price of every commodity from schoolmasters' salaries to salt. You see that by engraving the prices in stone all possibility of fluctuation is eliminated.

This transfer of the Legislative power to the Executive need not be confined to the tariff, for in principle it is equally applicable to internal taxes. It would furnish an obvious method to balance the budget. The rate on different articles could be left uncertain until Congress had adjourned and then raised or lowered by the President, according as Congress has spent more or less. Indeed it is not easy for members of Congress to know exactly how much has been appropriated until after adjournment.

I might mention compulsory voting, which is now advanced by many with great force. Voting in a republic is a duty, complementary to paying taxes, and it is evident that either voting should be made compulsory or taxpaying should be made voluntary.

I might mention compulsory Americanization. This would involve a special department, which, having first determined what Americanism is, would set about making over all immigrants into virile, red-blooded, two-fisted, English-speaking, one-hundred-per-cent American He-Men.

Whatever stands in the way of this ideal must go down. The Constitution was at best a compromise and is in its nature temporary. Let us press on, remembering the words of that accurate constitutionalist, H. G. Wells: 'A time may come when the people will regard the contrivances and machinery of the American Constitution as the political equivalents of the implements and contrivances of neolithic man.'

VII

I shall close by mentioning a necessary reform fundamental to health and morality. This is the reintroduction of the curfew. By a mistaken policy, the curfew was abolished in the reign of Henry the First, but it is mentioned long after his time, so hard was it to do away with such an excellent custom. If it should be thought at first impracticable to adopt the ancient limit of eight o'clock, the law might at first be made for half-past eight, and the wholesome rule gradually drawn more tightly. How sweet it would be again to hear the curfew toll the knell of parting day. But as such a law might be supposed to infringe Constitutional Rights in some backward States, it could most effectively be introduced as an amendment to the Federal Constitution. In order to ensure its passage it would probably be necessary that the franchise be extended to babies. In spite of opposition in a small minority, whose alleged rights should not stand in the way of a great reform, I assume that the majority of American babies would vote for such an amendment; the theory of the curfew is quite in line with our laws for daylight-saving, and should appeal to all intelligent and patriotic infants. Its effect on the moral and physical health of the people would be prodigious. Under such an influence I see a transformation of America — ‘A noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man after' a long and well-regulated 'sleep, and shaking her invincible locks.' The very idea conjures up the picture of a vigorous race, standing in the forefront of progress, a lesson to the backward peoples of the earth, realizing the picture which Pericles drew of the Athenian polity in its most glorious period:

We live under a constitution such as no way to envy the laws of our neighbors, ourselves an example to them rather than mere imitators. It is called a Democracy, since its permanent aim tends toward the Many and not toward the Few. . . . Moreover our social march is free. . . . We are not angry with our neighbor for what he may do to please himself, nor do we ever put on those sour looks which, though they do no positive damage, are not the less sure to offend. . . . We have provided numerous recreations from toil.

But enough of Pericles. Our American statesmanship far outsoars the petty policy of Athens. Here no civic jealousy impedes the progress of the National Idea. Here slavery, the 'Nemesis of Nations,' has been eradicated and our colored brethren (more recently our colored sisters) have been rendered legally competent to sit in the highest councils of the land. We are in no danger of stagnation from homogeneity; with 340,000 Indians, 1,300,000 Porto Ricans, 10,000,000 Filipinos, and 10,000,000 Negroes, our population is sufficiently diversified. Our electorate is educated and able to express an opinion on every question. Bands of quick-witted men and noble-hearted women accomplish continuous reforms with a fine 'apotheosis of instinct' which renders the slow and laborious methods of experience and study quite unnecessary. I behold the vision of a political structure too vast to be called a nation, too democratic to be called an empirepatriotic because paternal; permanent because progressive, which devises its legislation with a noble imagination, and enforces it in serene majesty.

This future it is ours to form and to re-form. Let us address ourselves to the task, taking for our motto the apothegm of Voltaire, 'No Government ever perished except by suicide.'

IN the World War man power was one year ahead of matériel. Men can be trained for war much faster than they can be equipped for war. Dwight F. Davis, Assistant-Secretary of War, recently said, in an address to the General Service Schools at Fort Leavenworth: 'You can draft an additional million men in a well organized and disciplined nation within ten days, but to supply these men with rifles is a task that takes many months of careful preparation, because every step in the manufacture must be planned in advance. . . . We went into the World War without any definite plan of mobilization.'

This was true even though, for months prior to April 1917, the American government had recognized the certainty of conflict, and the American people, in the main, had accepted eventual participation as inevitable. We were prepared for war psychologically but not materially. In Great Britain, where hostilities broke more suddenly, the gap between man power and supplies was even greater.

In his World Crisis Winston Churchill says of this: 'There were no rifles, there were no guns, and the modest supplies of shells and ammunitions began immediately to flash away with what seemed appalling rapidity. . . . We had nothing but staves to put in the eager hands of the men who thronged the recruiting stations.'

Time is the essence of preparedness. It is little short of murder for a nation to put into the field ill-supplied troops.

Thousands of lives and billions of money were tossed into the abyss that stretched between ready men and tardy munitions. If the industrialpreparedness plan of the Army and Navy functions as well as it appears on paper, never again will the United States be guilty of this appalling waste.

I

as

The National Defense Act, amended June 4, 1924, changed fundamentally the business organization of the War Department, making the Assistant-Secretary of War responsible for the procurement of all military supplies and for the mobilization of matériel and industrial organizations. The incumbent of this office, interpreting this amendment broadly, accepts under it responsibility for preventing profiteering in war supplies. Both Mr. Davis and his predecessor, J. Mayhew Wainwright, now a member of Congress from New York, have taken the view that special training is required for a task so vast and complex. As a result of this belief there came into existence the Army Industrial College, established by General Orders No. 7 (February 25, 1924), 'for the purpose of training Army officers in the useful knowledge pertaining to the supervision of procurement of all military supplies in time of war and to the assurance of the adequate provision for the mobilization of matériel and industrial organization essential to war-time needs.'

In the Munitions Building at the

national capital, the student officers of this unique college con production charts with the same zeal that their brother officers at the War College study campaign maps. Their instruction is based mainly on the work of the former War Industries Board; their training is to fit them to direct the marshaling of the nation's economic resources in accordance with the general plan of mobilization in which both Army and Navy departments coöperate.

The foundation of this plan consists of approximately ten thousand allocations to manufacturers for the production of essential supplies. Over six thousand plants have been allocated so far. It is hoped and expected that a contract form will be distributed to these manufacturers so that at the outbreak of a major emergency it would. merely be necessary to sign 'on the dotted line' and after this, unless there is a breakdown, the United States will be well prepared industrially, except, as will be shown later, in airplanes.

The new preparedness programme is an attempt to organize production so that sufficient troops for a major military movement can be supplied promptly and continuously with all the materials for effective action. That is primary. But, secondarily, the plan provides for doing this with a minimum of interference with the steady, normal production of socially necessary goods. The recognition that production is a social process, that 'the home front' must be mobilized efficiently and yet without disturbance, is a novel element in the Army's present point of view.

The basis of action is, of course, the modern paraphrase of the Napoleonic maxim: Heaven fights on the side of the most complete supply train. But a second maxim is hardly less important: Heaven fights on the side of the less distressed populace. Not again, if the

Army can help it, will war needs send prices soaring in open markets or force manufacturers to drastic changes in plant-equipment. Another conflict will find the production facilities of the United States neatly card-indexed. Available reserve stocks are tabulated. From the very outset of war, supplies will be kept moving in orderly progression from shelves, factories, and loading-docks, from forest, field, and mine, to military depots.

Disturbing though this solution of the economic problems of war may seem to many minds, let it be balanced against its alternative. The alternative is a situation approaching chaos, in which profiteers thrive, numbers die to no purpose, public funds vanish in a sea of waste, and a public partly overworked and overpaid and partly underworked and underpaid thrills to the lurid promises of social revolutionaries. In such emergencies the choice is not often between war and peace; but between a long war and a short war, between much distress and little; possibly between defeat and victory. At any rate, it is as clearly the duty of soldiers to make war as it is of statesmen to keep peace; the military begins to function fully only when statesmen have failed. The Army, therefore, enters upon this preparedness programme, not with any delusion of grandeur, but rather as a stern and difficult duty, a duty forced upon it by the lessons of experience.

The duty is rendered the more difficult by reason of the very size and intricacy of the problem. Both manufacturing and raw-material resources have been surveyed, roughly to be sure, but none the less comprehensively. Industrial mobilization will be administered, as far as the War Department is concerned, by a staff of from sixty to one hundred officers who will be commissioned from the leaders of