Evening Star Newspaper, January 6, 1929, Page 29

‘Editorial Page Reyiews of Books EDITORIAL SECTION he Sunday Star. JANUARY ~—— Supreme Court’s New Home Classified Advertisipg WASHINGTON, D. €, SUNDAY MORNING, 6; 1929 Part 2—18 Pages e e = SOLUTION OF WAR DEBT PROBLEM IS SUGGESTED 'PROBLEM OF BAD BOYS | CLOSELY STUDIED IN D. C. Question of Agreement by U. S. to Float Unmanageable Youngsters Are Made to d | | i Huge German Loan in America ' | Is Raised. BY FRANK H. SIMONDS. HE assent of President Coolidge to the proposal of certain pean nations that Ameri representatives should serve on the commission to complete the task begun in the Dawes plan and fix the sum of German reparations raises once more the most difficult and m important of all the post-war probler its essence the problem is ple. for it comes down to the singie question as to whether the United is prepared to exchange th> debt ents which it has made with the os for a single blanket German mort- In a word. are we willing to ke a mortgage of $6.000.000.000 upon C n industry and business in re- turn for our present debt claims upon the governments of France, Belgium, Italy and Great Britain? Such a change does not involve any | real reduction of the sum to which we are entitled by the debt settlements. While nominaliy these amount to some $12.000,000,000, their present actual value—that is, the amount which would discharge them—reckoning at a 5 per cent raie of interest, would fall slight- Iy below the $6,000.000,000 mark. France Meeting Payments. On the other hand, the sccurity for the proposed German transfer would be another question. As it stands today we arc possessed of the obligations of four allied governmenis, which | bind them to pay us around $12.000.- 000 to meet their wartime borrow . France, to be sure, has not rati- 1 ‘hrr":iebl sntl‘lnmonL but she is meeting the annual payments as if sh had ratified. B P If the program that lies behind the present proposal should go through, the steps would be something like this: First the allies and Germany would fix | the sum of reparations. | Since Great Britain demands that | she shall get as much from Germany | on account of reparations and from | France and Italy on account of debts | as she is paying the United States: since in addition France demands a | sum sufficient to enable her to pay her debts to the United States and Great | Britain and meet the costs of recon- structing her devastated area: since | Italy demands enough to pay her Brit ish and American debts, it is easily as- certainable that the smallest amount which would fulfil these requirements ! would be $8.000.000,000, represented by | an annual payment of some $450,000,000 for 62 years. ! Preparation of Bonds Next. Assuming that this sum were fixed, the next step would be the preparation of some $8,000,000,000 of German bonds. | ‘These would be based upon German in- | dustry, German railways and possibly | in part upon a direct charge upon the | German budget. Of this $8,000,000,000, |Rhineland and the Sarre promptly, | United States Treasury of the actual | funds collected by the sale. If this | process were possible, then the Ameri- | can contention would prove no real bar- | rier to adjustment. | But in practice it is not possible to sell, save over a long period of time, any such colossal bond issue as that amounting to § in the present s ket, nowhere save in the United States | would 1t be possible to sell any large part of the securities. | Thus one is thrown back upon the final situation. What is now foreshad- owed is that Germany should issuc $8.000.000,000 bonds. that $6,000.000.000 should be floated upon the American market, that the proceeds of such a sale should be turned into the United States Treasury and the allied debts thus liquidated. When the thing was fin- ished, the Treasury would be relieved of | its debt problem, the American national | debt would be reduced from $18,000.000,- | 000 to $12,000,000,000, and the Ameri- can people would hold & mortgage upon German industry, represented by their newly purchased ' securities, amounting to $6,000,000,000. Host of Questions Raised. Patently a whole host of questions is raised. In the first place there is the | question as to whether the American | people would buy this vast amount of German securities at any price suffi- cient to warrant the experiment. Back | Few pieces of legislation in many of this lies the question gs to whether | years have met with so universal ap- the Government would approve of such | proval as that providing a home of its | a vast transaction. Today in the gov-|own for the United States Supreme ernmental debts the official credit of | Court fitting its dignity as one of the Britain, France, Italy and Belgium is|three great branches of Government. involved for the respective parts of the | This new Temple of Justice will face total represented by their obligation. | the Capitol from the east and be a | But under the proposed plan only Ger- | companion building for the Library of | man commercial credit volved. There are other phases to be con- sidered. Eight billion dollars is just about twice the sum most Germans re- gard as commensurate with German | capacity. Under the Dawes plan Ger-/of the three great branches of our many is now protected by a clause | Government and who has served the which prohibits all payments when they | Nation in a wider range of important threaten the stability of German cur- | positions than any other man—as so- rency, and under the treaty of Ver-|licitor general of the United States, sailles 30 vears is the maximum time | ynited States Circult Court judge, during which reparations payments can | president, of the United States Philip- endure. Germeny thus has certain | pine Commission, first civil governor cards to use in the coming game. | of the Philippine Islands, Secretary of On the other hand, Germany, in re- | war, in charge of construction of the turn for an agreement to evacuate the | panama Canal; sent to Cuba by Presi- e | dent Roosevelt to adjust insurrection might consent to undertake the pay-| there, provisional governor of Cuba. ment of an $8,000,000,000 reparations | {yenty.seventh Presidens of the United total, if, in addition, the financial super- | giates co-chairman of National War vision of her economic life came to an | [apor Board, president of the American would be in- Congress, with which it will harmonize structurally. 1t is designed to be a memorial to William Howard Taft, the only man in American history to have the distinc- jon of having been at the head of two Whole Dream Deflated. | We are seeing the first act in a new | end interesting drama built upon the | old theme of reparations and debts. | After 10 years the whole reparations | dream has been deflated to the point | Structure to House Tribunal’s Activities Will Be Memorial to Chief Justice William Howard Taft Capitol was burned by the British in BY THOMAS R. HENRY. HE problem of the bad boy is as old as creation. | | The adolescent male human is a hard animal to tame—and | | the taming process. unless it is| carefully considered, is likely to do| more hurt than good. An experiment has been in progress | in the District of Columbia schools for | the past three years, some of the re-| sults of which have just come to light.| |1t is not concerned with ordinary bad boys, but with the pathologically bad— | | the obviously incipient criminals who | |are found in the school system of the | National Capital. Some of these chil-| dren are so abnormal as to be mate- | rial for the psychiatrist. They all dre| | misfits in the schoolrooms—boys who | will not or cannot learn and who seem {to have an inborn drive toward crim- | inal careers. | If anything is to be done with them, | they must be handled as individuals | and not as members of a class. They| | are anti-soclal and apparently can't| be made to conform to the require-| | ments of any group. So long as one| lof them is a member of a class he{ | makes the orderly conduct of that class | | impossible. } 0ld Idems Out of Style. Reform schools are filled with such | | children. They graduate from the re-| form schools to the jails, from the jails | 1814. Although in size it is the smallest | to the penitentiaries and from the peni- | of the three co-ordinate branches of | tentiaries to the electric chair. They| the Government, it has the distinction |used to be considered congenital crim- of being a creation unique among gov- | inals, a concept which now has gone ernmental activities. It occupies what was formerly the Senate chamber, where the Nation’s greatest statesmen— Webster, Clay, Calhoun and others— made some of their most famous speeches. The quarters assigned to the la library are not adequate, nor are the other rooms assigned to the clerical force sufficient for the services required. It has long been intended that the Sunreme Court should eventually have a building of its own, and the site now being purchased at a cost of $768,000 has for many years been set aside for such use in the plan for the future of the Federal City. A portion of this site, at First and A streets northeast, is now occupied by the “Brick Capitol.” so called because Congress met there during 1815. It was there that President Monroe de- livered his inaugural address in 1817. C. Calhoun died there in 1850, e CHIEF JUSTICE TAFT. —Harris h_ Ewing Photo. | | National Red Cross, chancellor of the hopes to live to sce the edifice erected | Smithsonian Institution and Chief Jus- | and occupied. The work Is being expe- | tice of the Suprema Court. | dited to fulfill this wish. | Chiet Justice Taft fs radiantly happy | The United States Supreme Court these days, because of the prompt action | has boen located in _the Capitol ever |of Congress in response to his appeal |since the building's erection, even go-| —— —— ——— — |for a Supreme Court Building and!ing with the legislative body when the (Continued on Fifth Page.) {out of style. They arise from all sorts | | of homes, social conditions and an- | cestry. Different schools of pedagogy ad- | vocate different methods for dealing | | with bad boys. | seem to apply to these children, as a | class. They who are strict disciplinarians. | punishment, of course, is prohibited by law in the District schools, but an | almost military strictness is possible. | Teachers of this class demand abso- |lute obedience, good manners and | punctuality, and work with an adequate | machinery 'of rewards and punish- | ments. These children don't respond to disci- pline. Instead of inciting them to | make good, it results only in hatred of a teacher—usually a sullen, vin- dictive hatred. Boys of this type don't hesitate to strike a woman. Advisers in Contempt. Then there is the gentle, motherly soul—the sentimentalist, who pats the boys on the back, cries over them, tries to inspire them to be great and good men. This system doesn't work, either. It only nurtures contempt. What's the use of appealing to the better na- tures of boys who, it seems, have no better natures to appeal to? The may be tried under teachers None of the methods | Corporal | 24 per cent would belong to Great |at which the measure of allied expec- | Wailing Wall An Issue Britain, 54.5 per cent to France, 10 per | tations is the size of the American | cent to Italy and 4.5 per cent to Bel- | debts. Save for a French reconstruc- gium. The balance woultt go to small- | tion fund, that is all Europe now ex- er States and can be ignored in the | pects reparations to amount to. present calculation. On the basis of | But it can't amount to that unless the various debt settiements Great | we are willing to advance the money | Britain would receive in addition to her to Germany to pay her conquerors, who | own share a considerable portion of the | will in turn transfer that money to| French and Italian shares. |us to pay debts. We have lent the | The next step in the proceeding would | money to our wartime allies to aid in be the transfer by Britain, France, Bel- | the defeat of Germany. We are now | gium and Italy of German bonds to|going to lend the money to Germany | the United States to mecet their debt | to pay the costs of defeat to her Euro- ders to “settle amicably” to the obligations. When the whole process | pean conquerors. They, in turn, are | satisfaction of Moslems and was completed the United States would | going to hand this money back to us. | Jews alike, the troublesome lssues sur- hold about $6,000,000.000 of Germax | Surely nothing could be more droll. | rounding the “Wailing Wall.” bonds, Ttaly and Belgium would be| As to whether Germany can finally | In its confidential report the manc about square, France would have about | liquidate a mortgage, amounting as to | dates commission declares that “it is $1,750,000,000 to meet her devastated | our share to $6,000,000,000, that Xs(not sufficient that the Palestine gov- area costs and the balance would be | another question. If it cannot, one scattered among lesser states, a minor | must see that in the process of time) pert coming to us directly. the mortgage we may hold upon Ger- | But since the United States has stead- | many will mount materially each year. | fostly insisted that debts and repara- | On the other hand, if Germany can| tions are distinct and that it does not ! pay, the vast burden will in due course | CO! have any interest in the settlement of | of iime be abolished. In any event, |agreement. < Teparations, one may fairly assume that |t the proposed plan of commercializing | parlance, the Teport fis like the famous our Government will not consent 10 |the reparations goes through, we shall | ~Message to Garcia.” It refrains from any simple process by which the allied | pacoms. an _enormous stockholder in | telling “the British Palestine adminis- debtors liquidate their obligations to | Germany, deeply interested in German | iration how to carry out its suggestion, us by turning over German bonds. As | pocnlris ““In” fact, a business and | but specifics clearly what is to be done. a consequence, an intermediate step iS | Anancial if not & political, alliance | The controversies over the “Wailing HBOCNLY- | betwi © | wall” have reached the League on at Intermediate Step. | between the United States and the Ger- |\, 1o occasions of late. A year ago | man republic would be almost inevita- ¢ This intermediate step would consist | ble, and might have Yery \mportant | the Jewlsh population appealed, to be in the actpal issue of these $6.000,000.000 i consequences in European history in bonds, their sale upon the markets of the next half century. the world and the transfer to the (Copyright. 1929.) | Sank down exhausted from thelr wail: Friends Expect Swedish Explorer To Return With Valuable Discoveries i N penvad 1 Moslems State Their Case. of this desert, that when travelers are | .o noclems, whose Mosque of Omar | the move by night, and one of them | S . . y tne [ E0 M IO I e A o acicep or |is located on the ground bounded by fegendary city which has lain_buried | {ne Jike when he tries to gain his com- |the ancient wall of Jerusalem, pleaded T e e | pAny IR BT Lo sp;{it;|'alki;fl |their case well. They pointed out that D by o, | AL B A e "Wl call |1t ws ot thie eniches thy objected o) despite countless attempts, Is expected | i by name, and thus shall a traveler | but the establishing of precedents. The 10 give up its secrets to the party led | oftsimes be led asiray so that h2 never | Jjews, they said, would first raise the by Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer | 6ngs his party. And in this way many | enc! ihen they would demand the :'mr ;r:\hoo]oms some time in the | have perished. Even in the daytime right to place a wall around the benches. ear future. According to tradition, the Takla- | fimes you shall hear the sound of aroof over the wall, after which it would Makan desert, in the center of which yariety of musical instruments, 8nd | require bloodshed to restore the previous the ancient city is reputed to lie iS|gtill more commonly the sound of status The Mandates Commission de- one of the most treacherous in the | grums.” : | liberated long and seriously. One mem- world for travelers because of the great |~ Hedin is interested neither in lumps |ber even suggested that the Jewish variations in temperature and terrific| of goid nor the voices of spirits, and | wailers provide themselves with portable sandstorms which have trapped nu- | pis'sole object is to find traces of the chairs or stools which, like the milk merous caravans, and the Hedin party | race which once inhabited the district. | stools of the iz prepared to meet with many obsia- | ge is particularly anxious to secure |be strapped to its owner. The Moslems cles in its journey. A large mUmber | works of art, and possibly inscriptions foffered no objection to such an inno- of camels, several motor cars and & ang parchments, to furnish clues to the | vation, but the Jewish worshipers did BY ALBIN E. JOHNSON. HE British administration in Palestine has been given what is tantamount to summary or- mediaries.” that: “It would seem expedient and indeed imperative that the government take active steps to induce the two nflicting parties to reach a voluntary Clothed in diplomatic | benches for the worshipers. In in- | clement weather, according to the pe- titioners, the aged and infirm, many of whom had traveled many miles to we |at the most sacred shrine of Israel, BY WILLIAM H. STONEMAN. ®TOCKHOLM. — Takla-Makan, ernment be prepared to act as inter-| The commission declares | lems to permitting the erection of | L Pars spirits talking, and some- |Then would come a request to place a | e stafl of scientists and experienced leaders are being taken on the and the explorers may take sev- eral months if the city is actually found to exist. The last attempt hy Hedin to reach the fabled city was undertaken in 1895 d ended in disaster. Starting from Merket on the southern edge of the desert, with four men and eight camel he headed for the River Khoten-daria which was reported to bs four day: travel north across the desert. Six n days later he crawled on his hands and knees, dying from thirst, down into the bed of the river, which was found to be dry, and he was only saved {rom death by a pool of brackish water which had been left from the rainy season. | Two of his men and all eight camels aled of thirst, and he saved the liv of the others by walking back across the desert in bare feet with his boots filled with wate: In his book “My Life as an Ex- lorer” Hedin describes the journey ross Takla-Makan as the most diffi- it in 40 years of Asiatic travel, and present trip is regarded with anxiety ¢ his family and associates in Sweden. One of the strange legands surround- ing the buried city is to the effect that gold ingots and lumps of silver lay ex- posed among the ruins, protected against marauders and explorers by a mysterious power. If a caravan loads its camels with gold, the story goes. it %k lose its way in the sands of the cesert and can be saved only by throw- ing away its precious burden. Mareo Polo, who traveled in the wicinity of Takla-Makan in 1275, wrote “There is a marvelous thing relgted French possession. Chinese officials | not take kindly to the idea. This year’s protest resulted from forc- ible removal of a partition erected by the Jews to separate the men and | women wailers. The Moslems, it seems, had only protested, leaving it to the | British authorities to bring_about the destruction of the barrier. The wailers | resisted and some of them were badly | handled—in “fact. so badly, according to the petition. that the entire Jewish | world was shocked at the outrage. | Although the Mandates Commission has not recommended the action offi- | cial it is understood that there is a movement on foot to seek property rights in the historic wall for the Jews. |Since the Moslems regard the ground in the vicinity as sacred, it would be |rather difficult for the administrative | authorities to expropriate it. The Jews nature of the people. have been reluctant to permit the ex- | pedition, and there is a stipulation to | the cffect that nothing excavated may be teken out of the country unless & duplicate be found and given to the Chinese government. Plans to explore the country by airplane were also pre- vented from being carried out by action of the Chinese military authorities. (Copyright, 1928.) . | New Electric Train Service in Morocco Moroceo's economic growth, as well as the country's increasing attractive- ness for tourists, is emphasized by the | .t purchase it, but the Moslems I newly instituted electric train service|refuse to sell—at any price. | between the port of Casablanca and | Report Confidential. | Marrakech. The question, to a certain extent, s This modernization, which first be-| mjiar to the Iraki-Bahai controversy came available to travelers with its in-| gver the property of Abdul Bahal, | auguration recently by Sultan Moulal 4 lYusSPf T Theodore Steeg, .French | founder of the Bahai movement. sident general, represents the third ep in Mo(riocco's %m;gmca‘:lonl pm,w:l;te Bahai group who sought to ragain | One hundred an; y miles long, the | possession of the confiscated shrine [roflway links the Mediterrancan with, The Tatter have appealed wd the Een;:: the foot of the Atlas Mountains, con-fof Jusiice on the grounds that the nects the biggest Moroccan port with| principle of religious tolerance in a the gates of the Sahara Desert. About | mandated territory is involved. The 120 miles, comprising two separate | Mandate Commission's report, which lines, had already been electrified, thus | will not be submitted to the League | making a total of 270 in the gradual ex- | Council until next March, at the mo- !tension of electrically operated railways |ment is regarded as confidential. The | | Irak mixed tribunal ryled against the | | | THE WAILING WALL, JERUSALEM. Text of Report. . | The Mandates Commission's report, | which was adopted, and which is being {held for final action by the League Council reads: Geneva, November 9, 1928. Permanent Mandates Commission: | Petition, dated October 12, 1928, re- | lating to the incidents which occurred | at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, Sep- {:mher 24, 1928, from Zionist organiza- on: “The petition Mandates Commission have taken cognizance of the petition | dated October 12, 1928, relating to the incidents which occurred at the Wail- ing Wall at Jerusalem on September 24, | 1928, from the Zionist organization, as well \as of the comments of his ma- jesty’s government on the memorial | from the Zionist organization dated October 12, 1928 (and other annexes). “The commission have carefully con- sidered the various points of fact and of law raised in these documents. They have been gratified to note that there have been no essential discrepancies between the statements placed before:! them by the petitioners on the one hand and the authorities responsible for the administration of Palestine on the other. Although differently pre- sented and variously stressed, the in- |cidents . . . are in these documents ‘re!nted in’a manner so clear and so depends upon developments in the in-| Swiss mountaineers, could | terim. | complete that no uncertainty is lefc jin the mind of the careful reader as | to what actually took place. There s what would seem to be a_ full agree-| ment also between the petitioners anc the authorities as to the only possible who feel offended and mortified in their most sacred sentiments as it 1s | trying and unsatisfactory for those who | are responsible for the maintenance of | order and for the observance of strict | and impartial justice between the con- flicting claims of rival religious and racial communities in Palestine. This remedy, as already recognized by the Zionist organization in a similar though not so critical, circumstance in 1926, as again implied in the concluding para- graph of the present petition, and as repeatedly emphasized by the repre- sentative of the mandatory power, can be found only by common agreement between the Jewish and Moslem com- munities. “Anything that may facilitate and hasten the conclusion of such an agree- ment. will be warmly welcomed by the Mandates Commission, who, on the other hand, unanimously deprecate anything that might prevent or re- tard it. “For this reason the commission, while profoundly deploring not only the most regrettable incidents above refer- red to, but also the circumstances, both distant and immediate, which led to and surround them, and the serious repercussions to which they have given rise, deliberately refrain from passing censure on any of those whose acts or omissions may have contributed to pro- voke or embitter them. Such incidents cannot but imperil the peace and pros- | perity of Palestine as a whole and to aggrieve all those the world over to whom Palestine is dear and sacred. “The Mandates Commission therefore confidently hopes that no effort will be spared for the promotion of a fair and friendly agreement, which alone can prevent the recurrence of such inci- dents. “For that purpose it is not sufficient contemplated for the whole of the Whether the Council will approve it method of remedying the present sit-'that the Palestine government allow it Y and order it forwarded to governments uation—a situation as painful for those to be known that they are ‘prepared’ if England Gets Summary Orders to Rectify Conditions in Palestine’s “Holy of Holies.” approached by both parties to act as | intermediaries, as they did on a pre- vious occasion. . .. It would seem ex- pedient, and deed imperative, that they take active steps to induce the two conflicting parties to reach a vol- untary agreement, and that both Jews jand Moslems respond with a sincere |desire for a settlement based upon a | full and equal regard for the moral and | material interest of all concerned. . . . i The commissiodi earnestly hopes that neither party: will, through unreason- lable demands or intolerant refusals, assume the responsibility of rendering impossible the achievement of a just settlement.” ! In summing up its report the Man- | | dates Commission warns that should it be impossible at the moment to bring about a settlement it considers it im- perative that temporary adjustments be promptly made and that “no disturb- ances be attempted or tolerated.” e Finns Would Make Language Official Sweden is keeping an attentive eye | fixed on the growing pro-Finnish stu- dent movement whose object is to make Finnish the one official language of Finland and to eliminate completely the use of Swedish, which now has an equal footing. A strong effort is being made to de- | clare Finnish official at Helsingfors uni- versity, an_ institution founded by the Swedes and in which nothing but Swed- !ish was taught and spoken until t| | middle of the last century. This na- | tionalist or “patriot” movement was | begun in 1850 when Finland was under Rucsian domination and since the little | country was granted its independence |in 1917 It has gained new force. Al- though the Swedes actually lost con- | trol of Finland at the time of the Na- poleonic wars, the upper class has | always remained largely Swedish. | In their own language, said to be one [ of the most difficult to master, the Finns see a means of eliminating foreigners from power and if it is made official the Swedes will almost auto- matically disappear from the active par- ticipation in government administration | or educational institutions. The Fin- | nish army_ regulations now require officers of Swedish birth to speak Fin- nish in the presence of their troops and | all commands, formerly given in Swed- ish, must now be given in Finnish, Very recently all names of railroad st | tions in the country were painted over and changed to Finnish. | Seattle-to-Tokio Flight Is Planned Preparations for a non-stop trans- | pacific flight from Seattle to Tokio have | been completed by Bert Hall, famous | American fiyer and former member of the Lafayette Escadrille, who has been in Tokio consulting with Japanese gov- ernment officials on the establishment of flying schools. He expected to make the flight last Summer, but was pre- vented by mechanical delays. The flight will be attempted as soon weather conditions warrant next 1June. “Every possible scientific prepa- | ration has been made,” said Mr. Hall “and every emergency that can possibly | be foreseen has been provided for. The i distance from Seattle to Tokio is 4,300 | miles and could be covered easily by a very fast plane in about 35 hours. X will make the trip alone. There will be no need for a mechanic, and I have had enough experience in navigation to follow the course without assistance. { There is no object in carrying a radio, either. As long as everything is well there is no use for one; when falling there is no time to use it, and after hit- ting the water there is small chance of its being usable. The plane will have an earth inductor compass as well as an ordinary compass.” 4 as motherly counsel goes one ear and out the other. The children may prom- ise to be d, but promises mean nothing in their young lives. They'll be promising the kindly judge the same thing later on—and picking his pocket when he leaves the courtroom if he doesn’t watch out. Another method is to put them in atypical schools, where they are segre- | gated from other children until they seem fit to be returned to regular classes. Only indifferent success at- | tends this method. It may be the worst possible procedure with children of this type, as is shown. by efforts to analyze their personalities. They can't be trusted, they are a bad influence on other children, and some of them are dangerous. The way to deal with them is to pu’ them in reform schools. ‘This sim- | ply gets them out of the way. It doesn’t | mean, sullen, dull, un: b | with criminal tendencies—was giving | Supt. of Schools Ballou and Assistant | Supt. Kramer some bad hours three | years ago. There scemed to have been ' |an increase of them with the social nervousness which followed the war. Experiment Is Started. | At this time a young graduate stu-| dent at George Washington Univer- sity applied to Mr. Kramer for a job in the District schools. Harold D. Fife wanted a teaching appointment in one of the high schools, but he. was tired of waiting for a vacancy. Mr. Kramer told him of this bad boy | problem. Something must be done and the school officials didn’'t know ex- actly what to do or how to do it. Fife didn't know either, but he jumped at the opportunity to find out. It was an experiment from the first— and an experiment it remains. He was given a vacant room in the Gales school, First and G streets, and | put on his own responsibility for the redemption of the possibly criminal element among D. C. school children. | Supervisor of special schools, W. B. | Patterson is in general charge of the special school. Fife took the job to heart and in the past three years he has brought about some remarkable transformations of character. He has not worked with any definite psychological system, but has applied varjous systems, in accordance with his judgment of ~the individual case. Everything is individual. There is no set of rules which can be applied to any two bad. boys with any reason- able expectation of success. One Principle in Mind. The one principle he has kept in mind he expresses: ““There is no such thing as an in- herently bad boy. The bad boy is a misunderstood boy. The essential thing is understanding of the forces ri'lspnnslble for the individual person- ality.” Some of the cases, he finds, have a physical basis, some organic inferior- ity which has escaped attention be- fore. This is not an important ele-: ment, however, among children sent to the Gales special school, for usually they have been examined rather care- fully by school physicians. Mere often he finds a psychic in-! feriority begotten of social conditions, which results in what might be called a “dual personality,” the term being divested of any mystical significance. It turns out that the anti-social behavior of the child is only a mask to cover LIF something else and that strict dis- cipline or mothering were equally in- effective, because they treated only the surface symptoms without uncovering the thing the child was trying sub- consciously to hide. Cases of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” in real life are quite common, he finds, among children. But, as in Steven- son’s story, the tendency almost always is toward the increasing dominance of the Mr. Hyde personality unless the case is taken in hand in time. When the individual has become a confirmed adult criminal, there is little to be done about it. These inferiority complexes seem to be about the most fruitful causes of | adolescent “dual personalities.” The ichild seeks to “get even” with some- body—playmate, teacher, parent ar | i ™ ey cure them. | The problem of the bad boy—the | unscrupulous boy | | there has been a mista Turn to Better Ways in Experiment in Schools of City. neighbor. Then the process works in two ways. In some cases it proves impossible to “get even.” The intended victim is too secure- to_be injured. In that case a process of subconscious transference is set up. Consciously the child may for- get his hate for the individual, but transfer it to other individuals or to a soclety as a_whole. Supposing the chile 1s unjustly pun- ished by a teacher. He determines to get even with that teacher. He can't. He transfers his hate to other teachers. ‘Teachers represent authority. His hate broadens to include all in authority. His life becomes a continual striving to “get even” with the world. After the first forgetting he can't tell, as a rule, what the world has done to him for which he seeks revenge. Thrill in “Getting Even.” Another child may succeed in “get- ting even.” The success gives him such an exhilarating sensation of self-satis- faction—a thrill—that he desires to re- peat it. He repeats it over and over again, gradually forgetting the original cause and remembering only the satis- faction that results. In either case, the outcome may be the confirmed criminal or the mur- derer. On the other hand—this is a highly disputable point which was stressed by Dr. Adler of Vienna, the father of this school of psychology, who lectured in Washington last Winter—under cer- tain circumstances the outcome may be genius—a Napoleon or a Shake- speare. The only reason for mention- ing Adler's debatable theory is that Fife's work seems to have brought out some remarkable confirmations of it. Fife. however, holds no particular brief for the inferiority complex school of psychoanalysis. His classroom varies in some essential aspects from | the school clinics which Adler set up all over Germany. The facts remain | that most of his cases seem to have originated in an inferiority complex. Seeks Something Wholesome. His actual method of treating these | cases of dual personality is purely a pragmatic one, combining Adlerism with behaviorism in a way which has brought results. He seeks, by obser- vation and by conversation, to discover something wholesome in which the boy is interested. Usually this discovery | comes simultaneously with the discovery of the complex that dominates the child’s personality. Sometimes, how- ever, it results purely from an off-hand | observation and has no direct refer- lence to the underlying causes. He has found, for instance, that the great majority of these ‘“dual per- | sonality” children are idol worshipers —that is, they have set up some figure in history as an ideal and are intensely interested in everything pertaining to that figure. It might, for example, be | Napoleon. | " Upon this Napoleon complex he tries | to graft other interests. Take arith- metic. Almost every boy sent to the Gales Special School hates arithmetic and has failed in this subject. A great deal of arithmetic can be grouped around the career of Napoleon. He had to know arithmetic to be an artillery officer, the foundation of his career. Once the interest in arithmetic has been aroused, Fife tries to give the child instruction in the fundamentals | of the subject with some hopes of suc- | cess. | | | Also Dislikes Grammar. Another subject which almost every boy in the school hates and has failed in is English grammar. It always is perplexing to devise some way to arouse a child's interest in grammar. This is particularly the case, Fife says, with children from foreign-speaking homes where English is not spoken. Again the child may be “hand- minded.” The interest around which everything can be grouped then is the opportunity for making things and the use of tools. Once the interest or the complex has been uncovered Fife's work is purely a process of conditioning according to | the behavioristic philosophy. This problem of genius and complexes | is a_touchy one. The District school system has a pragmatic system for testing intelli- gence and classifying children accord- to their mental age. The theory iny 'beglnd this practice is somewhat ob- scure, but the fact remains that it works very well in practice with the great majority of children. What Is Intelligence? Nobody is agreed on a definition of intelligence. It may be one thing or another, or it may be nothing at all. There does, however, appear to be a factor in most persons which determines their ability to cope with a new situation —that is, learn—and which remains fairly constant throughout life. This is what is tested. School officials don't claim infailibility for the method. Now one school of psychology, into | whose findings Fife's results seem to fit. would say that “intelligence” is a myth —that there is no such thing. It would do away with the problem of feeble- mindedness by the statement. with cer- tain reservations for congenital atrophy of brain cells, that there is no such thing as feeble-mindedness—or rather that the difference between the moron and the genius is not intelligence, but something else. It holds that ability is a matter of complexes, just as thinking is admittedly a matter of complexes. It would hold that children who do well with intelli- gence tests do so simply because the tests happen to fit into their complexes. There is a_small percentage of chil- dren in the District schools with I. Qs of 150 or above. For the most part they are fairly well behaved children with healthy bodies. They do extremely well in their classes. They are classified as. geniuses. Ob- viously the word is used here in a spe- cial sense. It merely means high-class all-round ability. It hardly can be held to mean ability in any special sense. Such_children ‘can be expected to do well in the world if the luck isn’t all against them and stand well in bustness and the professiors. At the other extreme ace the children with 1. Q's below 100—not defectives, but barely up to the average. Gets Intelligence Ratings. When boys come to Pife, he is fur- nished with their intelligence ratings, but he finds that in many instances special conditions obtain which tmrow grave doubts on the valldity of these ratings. The children simplv have not fitted into the rating system, yet some of them appear to be geniuses in the popularly accepted meaning of the term. When a 15-year-old boy with an I. Q. which would indicate that he was a high-grade moron draws a pen-and-ink sketch of Lindbergh which an art critie at first sight mistakes for a photograph and which is exhibited as a special evi- dence of child genius in the art gallery of a large American city, it is clear that ke of some kind. ‘There is something about the lad which tests have failed touch. Once Fife tried an intelligence test (Continued on Fifth Page.)