Evening Star Newspaper, March 2, 1930, Page 29

. Special Articles Part 2—12 Pages SENATE DECLARED BLOCK TO CONFERENCE SUCCESS " French Crisis Caused by Fear of Anglo- American Pact to Rule BY FRANK H. SIMONDS. ONDON. — To understand the French crisis which, with dra- matic suddenness, brought the Naval Conference to an abrupt halt, it is necessary to go back many months and note the sequence of political events. Last year the British Tory government entered a naval agreement with France which was designed to end the quarrel over submarines which had endured since the days of the Washington Conference in 1921-22. Treaty Stupidly Handled. ‘This treaty, wholly harmless in itself, was so stupidly handled as to give the impression of an Anglo-French maneu- ver aimed against the United States, # purpose which was not in the minds of those who made it. But it prc- voked an outburst of criticism in the United States, rising to an official declaration. By this strength was sup- plied to the supporters of a 15-cruiser bill and fresh fuel to American resent- ment over the Geneva fiasco. In Britain the outburst of denuncia- tion was even more instant and far reaching, &nd at once doomed any agreement. In addition, it supplied Labor and Liberal opposition with an effective weapon to be used against the ‘Tory cabinet. Chamberlain was pub- licly denounced as having become the tool of the French. Finally, because it at once aroused American bitterness and British disgust, the French treaty episode became one of the issues of the campaign in which the Tories were badly defeated. Labor, when it came in, not with a clear majority, but with the assurance of Liberal aug;.x:rt. Was expected to change the character of the Anglo- French relations and quite as well to bring about Anglo-American adjust- ment in outstanding naval issues. Mac- donald was to discharge the ench mortgage and abolish the Anglo-Ameri- can_grudge. The first signal was supplied when Snowden went to The Hague and in- sulted the French finance minister, issued an ultimation to the continental powers, g with France, and spared no pains to make clear that the Anglo-French entente was off. Hague episode was the Briand and the arrival of ‘Tardieu, obviously chosen to meet the new British situation. Old Entente Broken. Immediately after The Hague, Mac- donald posted off to America and be- gan his series of intimate conversations with Hoover, at the Rapi- dan. While Americans generally were little concerned with anything but the Anglo-American aspects of this inci- dent, all Europe, beginning with France, interpreted it as definite proof that Britain had broken off with France; that the Anglo-French entente, which had existed since 1904 and had been ible for winning the war, was at an end. In its place all saw the rising combination of the Englishespeaking countries. For France, in the narrower question of armaments, the meeting in Virginia appeared a deliberate plot to combine Anglo-American wealth and power to compel France to limit her armaments, beginning with her navy, to suit British interests. France saw herself threat- ened in the role of a second-class power. ‘The question here raised was not, how- ever, one of prestige alone. British labor has been notoriously an, both before and since the war, while Lloyd George developed into a veritable Franco-phobe. The French saw in the new situation the purpose of the Labor party to back Germany against France in Europe. Thus France would be iso- lated in the world, placed between a hostile Italy, a resentful Germany and an unfriendly Britain, supported by the vast wealth and resources of the United States. That was the situation out of which arose the French note in December. In the background was the naval fact. France before 1914 had been a strong t] e var nd T fmaneh somscmns an uences, she had been obliged to abandon all her naval construction, and by 1928 her fleet had sunk to utter insignificance. At the Washington Conference her poverty and fear of the policy of her creditors forced her to accept & battle- ship ratio which beside the British and American ratios was insignificant. Only in the matter of submarines had she But now, financially restored, she was able to rebuild her fieet. More- over, with a colonial empire second only to that of the British and with an African army necessary for home de- fense, it was essential to protect her transport communications. Finally, {:‘nl’zne':l: r:‘s:ng Md. 'gow!rful Medi- state, rea chall French position. 3 s Enlarging Navy Planned. ‘Thus, as early as 1923, Prance had adopted & naval law which provided the systematic construction of a French fleet over a period of years ending in 1942. Discarding battleships as obso- lxif'o!rhfin French centered on the build- g cruisers, large destroye & huge ficet of submarines. . 0 On_the British side of the Channel this French program aroused bitter re- sentment and genuine apprehension. At Washington the submarine issue h.ld; been bitterly contested. Memories of the World War had remained fresh in Brit- ish minds, and here was rising a new naval challenge. France, with her coast facing the Atlantic from Dunkirk to Spain, was possessed of an infinite number of bases from which her sub- marines could issue, and it was realized that with an equal advantage and sub- marine strength Germany might have won the war in 1917. That France Would now be starting the naval game, While already possessing the greatest and the largest air fleet in the . roused British fears. Moreover, that France, whom the British regarded 85 having been saved in the war by English aid, and forgiven vast debts afterward, as well as guaranteed under the Locarno pact, should take such a line roused an anger quite as power- ful as the actual apprehension stirred by the naval program itself. But the British were placed in an ex- ceedingly awkward situation. The United States not only demanded parity in all branches, which now every sane Englishman was ready to concede, but asked cheap parity, parity arrived at by reduction of British figures instead of enormous American building. British Cut Conditioned. But here even Macdonald was help- less. The country, which was clearly behind him in meeting every reason- able American demand, and ready to overthrow the admiralty if it opposed seitlement with the United States, was just as clearly unwilling to permit Brit- ish security to fall below the level of the established French program. Re- luctantly the admiralty did agree with the Rapidan proposal for Britain, 50 cruisers and 339,000 tons, but only con- ditionally upon the reduction of French Tes. France, however, was prepared to re- L2 ‘The | bef Sea. EDITORIAL SECTION he Sundiy Star. WASHINGTO! B, O, ) duce her figures only provided she | should receive some new assurance | | against German and Italian dangers, | which she saw largely magnified by the | | obvious anti-French trend of the Brit- | | ish Labor-Liberal policy. Producing her | program for 725,000 tons, she quite con- | | sclously threw into the conference an | obstacle which seemd at once insur- | mountable, | Tardieu was ready for lower figures, provided he got a political treaty. Such a treaty Britain was willing to give if | only the United States would join. Thus, in the early days, while discus- sions were proceeding, there was gen- eral god temper and optimism, because in the back of all minds was the belief that a solution would be found in a| political treaty. | Such a treaty, satisfactory to France, would carry out the Kellogg pact to the | extent of providing that, in case of threatened violation in ‘the Atlantic area, the five powers present at the negotiations would agree to meet, For Britain and Prance alike this meant that in case of peril of war the | United States would sit down with the other Atlantic powers, and would in consequence be legally, if not morally, bound, if war followed through the vio- lent action of any power, to waive its neutral rights and abandon any effort | to feed, munition or finance the ag- gressor. Gone then would be the Brit- ish fear lest, if the British fleet were | used in conformity with the covenant | of the League to coerce an aggressor, | it would encounter America. France | was freed from the nightmare of Anglo- | American support of Germany. In return for such a pact, Tardieu was ready to reduce the naval program to proportions which would permit the Anglo-American agreement to stand, and a five-power treaty could be drawn eomgruocl:mtx:‘emr th 7 t fl“ s n-}n.l e next five years for all hands. i U. S. Pact Entrance Necessary. But obviously the test must be the willingness of the United States to enter such a pact in the face of traditional opposition to any entanglement, how- ever slight. That the Hoover delega- tion was favorable was well known even lore the conference began. Accord- ingly, when the French figures had at last been presented, there emerged from patently inspired English quarters an invitation to America to save the con- ference, which meant that the moment had arrived to propose a pact. Con- comitantly, the British foreign office announced that unless the French fig- ures were reduced, the Anglo-American agreement was off, and the British would have to build a large amount of new cruiser tonnage. In a word, if the United States wanted parity at the Rapidan figure, she must pay by a pact carrying out the Kellogg treaty. - Then out of the blue Tardieu fell &m power and hard upon this came States Senate against any form of litical treaty whatever. This spelled in- stant disaster, because on the one hand the French figures were now established to heights beyond British acceptance and with the disappearance of Tardieu, reducing them would be difficult, while on the other hand the hoped-for com- wns:tlon now seemed beyond attain- ment. In this situation great danger lay in the possibility on both sides of the Channel that underlying, always immi- nent, causes for misunderstanding—sus- picion and dislike—would be stimulat- ed, that the British would begin an at- tack on the French navgl program as a threat to British se , and France would see in Anglo-American policy an effort to coerce France into reducing her fleet without obtaining any new guarantee of security. Senate Blocks Action. ‘This was the origin and development and remains at present the status of the French crisis. And it must be per- ceived that what has made it difficult has been not the unwillingness of any nation to talk and act reasonably, but he total impossibility of reconciling the points of view of the reasonable men of three countries, for Britain and France are equally entitled to look out for their own security, and the right of the United States to isolation cannot be ainsaid. If Stimson could, as he niad obviously planned, step between quar- reling neighbors and offer a solution equaily welcome to each, success would be easy. But at this moment any such action seems almost completely blocked by the Senate. (Copyright, 190.) | Man Remains in Prison Not Knowing War’s End Another strange tragedy of the World War has just come to light with the return to Pavia, in Northern Italy, of Louis Rossi, who worked for more than a decade in a Russian mine under the impression that he was still a prisoner of war and that the war itself was still going on. Rossi, now 43, was captured by Austrian troops on the Alpine front in September, 1916, accord- ing to_his story, and was shipped with other Italian prisoners to an out-of-the- way mining camp in Southern Russid, where he was forced to work. Only rising storm of protest in the United Tall taj BY BEN JAMES. ELIGION is opium for the people.” This stark phrase of Lenin’s, chiseled on the side of the House of the Moscow Soviet in a niche from which a sacred image has been stripped, looks down upon Iberian Gate and the throngs that surge through the portals into Red Square. Between the two arches of the famous entry the shrine of the Iberian Virgin, a mushroom of masonry, is fas- tened to the wall. The golden stars in the blue dome of the tiny chapel blink up at the cryptic inscription and the stony words glare back at the anclent and holy sanctuary. Inside the shrine, day and night, bearded priests in brocaded robes chant ritual and prayers and open and close golden gates on the jeweled altar. Can- dles sputter in orange and fl'cen cups. pers cast a flickering light on the ikon of the Iberian Virgin as she gazes from the cavernous depths of her €< BY DONALD A. LOWRIE. EXT Friday Thomas G. Masaryk, President of the Czechoslovak Republic, celebrates his eightieth birthday. Better, the nation which owes its very being to Masaryk will ask the world to join in praise and congratulation for one of the most significant personalities in Europe. In Czechoslovakia every village will have its celebration, but the main ob- servance, of course, will be held in Prague, where hundreds of thousands of citizens, gathered from every part of the republic, will join in a gigantic tribute. There will be processions; gifts in embarrassing profusion from peasants and professors, from great corporations and village schools. There will be tele- grams and letters, assemblies and dinners. Perhaps the President will give an- other special reception to the youth of the nation, as he did on the tenth anniversary of the republic, in 1928. In that case 50,000 youths, gay with the colorful costumes of a hundred villages, will march up to fill every corner of the grand old castle courtyard, get a glimpse of the father of their country and hear a message especially prepared for them. It will be one of the greatest days in all the 11 years’ life of the Czechoslovak Republic. In New York and other parts of the world there will be other celebrations in tribute to the grand old man of Czechoslovakia. ‘Most. Americans have a vague memory of Masaryk as the elderly Czech pro- fessor who visited the United States during the war, made a speech or two about the rights of minority peoples and was reported as having interviewed recently, when a friendly Russian en- gineer informed him that the war was over and loaned him a map, did he succeed in making his way to the coast and identifying himself at the Italian consulate, which financed his journey homeward. The worst tragedy of all for the unfortunate fellow came when he triumphantly stalked into his home in Pavia, only to discover that his wife had been married to another man, by { whom she had borne three children. | Now Signor Rossi is trying to find con- ! solation in the fact that his name.is inscribed on the local war memorial among the heroes who fell in action. Irish Censor Unable To Pass on Talkie: | 'There is a rigid censorship of motion | pictures in the Irish Free State, and it |15 & criminal offense to show any film without approval of the censor. An appeal lies from the censor’s decisions to a board, and occasionally movie ex- hibitors have laid their case before it. Only in rare instances has the censor’s ! decision been overruled. He is a whole- | time officer, charged with watching the |screen, At present he is faced with a | new difficulty. Some talking films have been submitted to him, and the official jlawyers advise him that he has no power {to rule out or vary any of the talk—if {the pictures are all right, the talk may | be all wrong. Despite the powers given |in the new legislation to censor books jand newspapers, those powers are con- fined to the printed word. It will need fresh legislation to give power over | talkie films, and the Minister for Jus- tice is considering action. For the mo- ment Mr. Montgomery, the flims censor, he is indorsing certificates with the words, “Sound not censored.” Woodrow Wilson. They may even re- member the news of a bloodiess revolu- tion in Bohemia, an election and the sudden metamorphosis of the visiting professor into the head of & new and sovereign European state. Stranger Than Romance. Most Americans, however, have never heard the story, stranger than any romance, of the clever planning, the stubborn battles and the lifelong effort which lay behind what seemed such sudden achievement. is worth the reading and therefore worth the telling here. ‘We must glance into history to realize the changes this one man’s lifetime has witnessed. Serfdom had not quite dis- appeared from Austria when Masaryk was born. Peasants were born to re- main servants all their lives. The gentry rejoiced in the divine right of property and position. The Austro- Hungarian Empire was a conglomerate of discontented minority peoples— Czechs and . Slovaks, Serbs and Croa- tians—struggling hopelessly against complete submergence in the prevailing German culture. A glance at the map of Europe as it was in 1914 and as it is today tells one part of the story of Masaryk’s achieve- ‘ment. Within the great block of terri- tory which was Austria-Hungary there are three new and self-governing states — Czechoslovakia, Poland and Jugoslavia. Czechoslovakia leads Europe in progressive social legislation, in in- ternal democracy and in genuine good will as a foreign policy. Great estates have been broken up and instead of cringing serfs a new generation of sturdy farmers own their own farms and can look the whole world in the face. Masaryk was $alking of these changes SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 2, aureate headdress, blessing the faithful |red flag of Soviet Russia whips in the worshipers shrouded in the incense haze below her. The odor of damp sheep- skin coats, tired bodies and holy fires filters through the dim light. Mothers wearing red kerchiefs, a badge of their new freedom, lift their babies aloft to have them kiss the smeared glass cov- ering an ikon of a venerated saint. ‘Workmen, horheward bound, stop and mumbte a prayer. Old women kneel and bow their heads to the muddy | marble floor time and again. Kopecks tinkle on the table of a priest by the door. Beggars whine on the portico and the faithful come and go, oblivious to the stern warning on the opposite wall. Easter Sacrileges Planned. 8o the religious -life of Russia today is woven into a strange tapestry of piety | and blasphemy. There is the devout bée- | liever worshiping an ikon fashioned by | the hand of the Lord in Heaven and the| bristle-haired young Communist scoffing wind, a crimson flame above the Krem- lin wall, where the godless men who rule the land carry on with renewed vigor their bitter, skillful war against what they term the superstitions of the people. And below the ancient ramparts of their unholy fortress holy Moscow's “forty-times-forty” churches etch a fan- tastic calligraphy of crosses and circles, green and silver and blue and gold, against the dull Russian sky—monu- ments to the faith of a religious nation. There are men and women on the crowded streets making the sign of the cross as they pass a shrine, and there is a gaping hole on ths river's bank where | Soviet dynamite blasted a . monastery from its ancient stronghold. And: there are, too, the thousands -of great” bells and myriad chimes of Moscow that have rung out in a wild, barbaric symphony since Russia came to Christendom now silent by order of the workers’ council, at all creeds and brazenly planning sac- rileges for Easter morning. The blood- THOMAS G. in a recent conversation. He had gone out to Lany. the Summer palace, for luncheon. He came striding toward us as erect as if he were 49 instead of 79. At close range I thought he looked older than when I had last seen him a year before—perhaps a bit more weary. The impression vanished, however, the moment he began to talk. Once he is immersed in a question which interests him he is as young as the group with which he converses. “How life has changed! Why, look at the village where I was born. Sev- enty years ago, I remember, there were just two important places in town—the beer house and the church. In both people met. In the saloon a dozen or more men came together and discussed things. The church. was' always crowded. It filled a certain need. It was the only building in the town with a sense of space and cleanliness, the only place with some hint of adornment. “Now look at that village. They have gramophones and radios. They have {ilustrated magazines and papers. They know about things in the whole world. that the new laborer my sleep without distraction through the dawn and do & MASARYK. are clean, read in. “By the way, that is a characteristic of our people—they are great readers. I often notice people in the fields. An old woman, with a goat on a rope, read- ing a paper, or a workman riding along atop a cart with a book in his hand. We are a nation of readers.” How well his own career illustrates his remarks! Born in Eastern Moravia, the son of a teamster who was practically a serf on an imperial estate, one of Masaryk’s earliest recollections is of his father on his knees before the lord of the manor. He was begging permission for his son to attend the pitiful two years in the village school, which was all the education his boy could hope to get. Most peasants’ sons did not try to rise above their normal level and could read and write as little as the elder Masaryk. He, sturdy Slovak farmer, left alone, might never have dreamed of school for Tom. But the boy's mother had served as kitchen maid in a great house in Vienna. She had seen how “the quality” lived and she had There is enough room to ‘Their houses are infinitely better, They made up her mind that her own boy | schooling. 1930. War for Soul of Russia Legions of Piety Throughout World Marshal Forces for Newer and Fiercer Battle. A RELIGIOUS PROCESSION—THE CHURCH RITUALS ECHOED THE MYSTIC NATURE OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE. fuller day's work in atheists’ factories. This month finds the legions of plety and the cohorts of blasphemy marshal- ling all their strength to fight & new and flercer battle in the 11-year-old war for the soul of Russia. Pope Plus set aside March 19, St. Joseph's day, as a time for masses and prayers to save the Rus- sian people from the onrush of the forces of theism, urged on to greater fury by the Soviet state. The Arch- bishop of Canterbury has asked for the observance of servise with a similar purpose in the Angelican Church. In the United States Bishop Manning has chosen Sunday, March 16, for a non- sectarian meeting in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to protest against the sacrilegious iniquities of Communist anti-religious societies in Russia and to execrate the Soviet regime for the harsh restrictions it has placed upon the faiths of the le. Rabbi Simon Glaser of the Central Council of Orthodox Rabbis and Dr. Stephen Wise of the Free Syna- (Continued on Fourth Page.) Built and Stabilized Nation Thomas G. Masaryk Took Wreckage From World War and Has Made a Great Nation. should have all the education she could ive 5 % ‘Thomas never forgot either of these experiences—his father's distaste at having to humble himself before the master he secretly desp! or his mother's desire that he should have a These two factors played the chief roles in all his life afterward— a firm desire to learn, to make the most of himself and his talents, and a deep- seated hatred for injustice wherever he encountered it. Workmen Hated Serfdom. How his father and the other work- men hated their serfdom! Thomas watched them cringe before the gaze of the master of the estate, whose word could end the employment on which not only they but their families depended. He shared his mother’'s distress and his fathers' anger when a troop of fox hunters from the castle rode gayly across his 'garden, leaving deep holes in the vegetable beds, still soft after the late rains. Thomas knew how his par- ents hated the frequent moving; all their little belongings packed for a mi- gration off to some other part of the wide estate, bag and baggage and chil- dren, because a teamster was needed there. From his earliest youth he hated the inequality this servitude implied and, like his father, longed for a day of liberation. One incident of his boyhood illus- trates this. Passing near a forester's lodge one Autumn day, Thomas heard shouts and laughter, id stopped to see what the commotion was about. A group of the gentry, gathered after a successful morning’s hunting, were hav- ing their noonday meal. Much wine was flowing, much food on the table. Masaryk’s gaze. At the back door stood one member of the hunting party, toss- ing out. left-overs from the plates the huntsmen had been using. the bits of food to a scrambling, strug- gling mass of peasants from the village, fighting almost like dogs to get a taste of the unusual goodies. With tears of rage in his eyes, the boy turned and ran from the scene. But the incident had fixed in his mind the same sense of revolt at such degra- dation of human personality as Lincoln felt when first he saw slaves being sold at the dook. That basic quality was born in the Slovak boy, and one day was to help him ' overthrow the whole system represented by those carousing huntsmen. It showed up again in his daily con- tact with his fellows, this hatred of injustice. ‘The village boys were in eternal feud, half in jest and half in earnest, with the boys of Podvorov, a mile or’ two away. Podvorov was the poorer village; they had not even a to ring the town church bells. And often young Thomas Masaryk aston- ished his fellows by taking the side of the Podvorov boys against his own town. He could not consent to the uneven struggle or to domination based merely upon differences in size. Education Progresses. The boy's education was progressing all this time, too, though not without difficulties. With his mother’s inter- est and hard labor to back him Thomas had finished the village school, and even took two more years in a neigh- g academy. That was enough edu- cation to enable him to teach. fBut a boy of 14 was too young and his (Continued on Fourth Page. But something else captured the young | He tossed | Others in Winn BY MARK SULLIVAN. [ NNIVERSARIES are given more | weight by writers and editors than are the forces that really | make a good deal of our more | fundamental history. ‘Those | A | | forces, indeed, take no account what- | | ever of dates, nor of the calendar. | They work below the surface, and so | | the “current newspapers sometimes do | not recognize them. Only after years, | after the forces and their consequences | | have emerged to the surface and | | worked their invisible will, does the his- | | torian_take up his careful, leisurely pen. Then, and as a rule only then, | | can we learn with confidence what was | | really important and what was trivial | and transient. For example: On December 17, 1903, | Theodore Roosevelt was President. He | | had come into the office (because of the | assassination of President McKinley) a little over two years before, and, after | | & period of conservative caution, was { just getting into the stride of his own | personality and ideas. Ten days before, on December 7, 1903, Roosevelt had de- | livered his message to a new Congress, the first elected during his presidency. ‘The message had been awaited with | unusual curiosity, to see what striking | | policies would be laid down; altogether, | the newspapers and periodicals that month were much excited with the dis- | cussion of Roosevelt and politics. Wrights' Achievement Overlook: Being thus engaged, and for other reasons, the newspapers and such pe- | riodicals as the Literary Digest and the Review of Reviews failed to notice an event that took place not. far from the little town of Manteo, N. C.—an event in which only two men participated: | two brothers, bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, named Wright, who, on December 17, 1903, rose into the air on a self-propelled, heavier-than-air machine, the first such flight ever| made by anybody. That event was not recorded by the newspapers, excepting a very few, probably not over 8 or 10 in the entire country, most of which treated the news slightingly, with an air of doubting it—which, in fact, they did, as well as everybody else except the Wrights themselves and the tiny group of fisher folk who actually saw | them fly. Neither that first flight nor | any of the subsequent flights for some years was recorded by the newspapers generally; it was not until about May, 1908, that the newspapers became fully aware that human flight had been ac- complished and roared the information to_the public in huge headlines. 3 Meantime, at the end of Roosevelt's first year and at each succeeding anni- versary, and at the end of his ‘first term, the newspapers and periodicals wrote solemn and discursively detailed judgments about the state of the coun- try during the Roosevelt presidency. Yet there can be little doubt that when some future epitomist, as economical with words as Mr. , sets down for preservation in stone upon & mounm;n“ nl\'; elchz.! or m':r:n 0‘:“}:‘- elght m portant even - jean history he will name as.the most important thing that happened in the Rosevelt administration the achieve- ment of human flight, with which Roosevelt had nothing to do. Hoover May Be More Fortunate. President Hoover may have better fortune than Roosevelt; Mr. Hoover's name may be more closely associated in future chronicles with the really fundamental developments of his time, for an outstanding aspect of Mr. Hoover and his presidency is that he, more than any other American President—and quite possibly more than any other statesman in any country—understan and has kinship with the forces that really make history in the larger sense. To know, to have the facts, is a pri- mary instinct of Mr. Hoover’s mind; to recognize, from the facts, the forces of which the facts are either cause or ef- fect is his habitual intellectual process. If there is to be any such thing as a Hoover era, the beginning of it can be marked by one definite and easily recog- nized pillar: There came into office a year ago (March 4, 1929) the first and only President who by education and life work was an engineer (a partial exception is Washington, who was a surveyor), the only President whose career had been more largely in science, economics, business and organized be- nevolenge than in politics, law, oratory or military achievement. The latter four have been the types of experience from which most of our Presidents have come. Because Mr. Hoover's training in- cluded a larger proportion of contact | with the tangitle factors of civilization, | 1t follows that he is more likely than the older type of President and states- man to think in terms of natural forces. When a statesman of the older type, or a politician of any type, says “destiny of nations,” his aim, as a rule, goes no further than to excite in his hearers an | agreeable glow of patriotism or gran-| diose emotion of one sort or another. When a statesman of the Hoover type says “destiny of nations,” he usually envisages in his own mind some con- crete status which will be the outcome of forces now under way. To recognize such forces as they work and to esti- mate the outcome of the aggregate of them is as natural to a mind trained largely in sclence as to weigh the forces in an engineering situation and esti- | mate their resultant. Span of Life Increased. One aspect of the destiny of our own Nation will be the resultant of certain social and scientific trends now under way. For example, one group of such forces already has, during the last 30 years, increased the average American’s normal expectation of life by about six years. The forces that have contributed to this beneficent result include ad- vances in sclence, such as the discovery of specific cures or preventives of some diseases; advances in sanitation, such as watchfulness over water supply and inspection of milk; advances in the pre- vention of accident, shortening of hours of labor and better conditions of labor, especially for women and children; bet- ter housing. President Hoover, by his habit of mind and preoccupation with the hu- manitarian side of national life, thinks the beneficence of such forces, already ] chapel and must come to the larger | great, can be made greater yet; that| dentally, it town for church services. There was | these and other wholesome forces can, Manent sources of personal pleasure to often a battle when Podvorov boys tried | be stimulated and co-ordinated, and|give a man the that forces working in the contrary direction can be minimized. Hence his Commission on Social ‘Trends. About this one of Mr. Hoover's com~ missions, not much is heard as yet. It is the sort of enterprise, quite unparal- leled in the past, that takes time to come to fruit. When it does it may have results such as may cause this to Seem, a quarter century from now, the most important aspect of American his- tory that coincided with the Hoover ad- ministration, or that was initiated by Mr. Hoover, ‘That war is usually a consequence of a pressure of forces is now ized even by statesmen of the older type. But the older type of statesman con- PRESIDENT APPRECIATES HISTORY-MAKING FORCES | Hoover May Be More Fortunate Than ing Recognition Now for Accomplishments, tinues to think that peace is a thing created by a stroke of a pen, or by some other sort of flat. . Hoover, on the contrary, seems to regard peace, no less than war, as the resultant of forces—forces making for peace pre- vailing over forces making for war. “Peace is not a static thing,” he sald in his Armistice day speech. Has Innate Benevolence. To this mental habit of tI about war and peace in terms Mhl?un'm we may add some of Mr. Hoover's per- sonal qualities and experiences: An innate benevolence which causes helpfulness to be the greatest of his quiet pleasures; a Quaker tradition and training which make responsibility to others a duty; a talent for organiza- tion and a familiarity with it which have caused him to have had a greater experience in organized benevolence than any other living man (in the form of his commission for relief in Belgium, his post-war American relief admini- stration and children’s relief in Europe, together with other similar commis- sions), and finally, a greater familiarity than any other person has ever had with the worst of war's horrors—its effects upon women and children. ‘The sum of these qualities, added to the mental habit of thinking in terms of forces, accounts for that one of Mr. Hoover's activities during the last year which, if it comes to fruit happily, may be the outstanding achievement of his first year in office. (While I use phrases like this, I ask the reader to ir in mind always that no person, writing within any year, can possibly guess what will seem most important 25 years later.) The aim of the Conference for the Limitation of Armament, now in session at London, is to check one of the forces that make for war—i ' competition in naval construction, and to foster and promote one of the forces that makes for peace—namely, accord and co-operation among nations. The London Conference is, to use an en- gineering simile, in the crucible. The outcome we cannot know. A of Mr. Hoover's first year is he devoted more time and thought to this enterprise than to any other one, Shrinks From Comparisons. I shrink from comparisons implying relative importance. As to another event of the first year, I merely assert with confidence that no one either now or in the future will ever realize fully as to this development, how much Presi- dent Hoover accomplished. I am speak- ing of his minimizing and largely fore- stalling the business consequences of last November’s Stock Exchange panie. The averters and preventers in his- tory never by any chance get the credit due them. The statesmen who kept their peoples at peace are forgotten; it is the Napoleons who drag their peo- ples through war that history celebrates. Had there been in Europe in 1914 a statesman who prevented hardly any American today would know his name. No one of some seventeen million mothers score of Fochs and Haigs; the a of that war would have made no one famous. o And so Mr, Hoover is most unlike] get the credit for what he averted November—the distress we are not ex- was the South Sea bubble in the eight~ eenth century. To know what logically should have followed last November's anic, turn to old newspapers and fol- low the sequels of slighter panics in the past. The 1907 panic, far less drastic than the recent one, came about the same time of the year, in the Fall. Turn to old newspaper files of December, 1907, and January and February, 1908, and read of the soup houses—does the younger generation even know what & soup house is? They might have known right now, readily. Or turn to the sequels of the panic of 1893 and read of | the soup houses then, and the succession | of failures of business houses, ‘like & series of falling cards. Hoover Is Given Credit. ‘That Mr. Hoover was largely respon- | sible for saving us from that I have heard no one doubt. After the disaster is averted it is universal human nature to fail to grasp fully what the disaster | Would have meant; and it is occasional human nature to say that maybe it would not have happened, anyhow. Some—who become optimists after the danger has passed—a familiar trait of human nature—some say the existence of the Federal Reserve System averted the logical sequels of the panic; that since the Federal Reserve system came into existence we cannot have business ldepreumns like those that followed the | panics of 1907 and 1893. But the per- sons who say this are the same persons who said, preceding November, that the existence of the Federal Reserve Sys- tem made Stock Exchange panics forever impossible. The Federal Reserve Sys. tem was in existence in 1921—but it did not prevent us from having serious busi- ness trouble and acute unemplo; 5 as a sequel to the comparatively mil¢ debacle of that year. President Hoover averted a tragically uncomfortable Winter. He did it easil: in the sense that it is the sort of thin; he does most easily. - Throughout the week or 10 days in which he was puts ting the machinery of rescue at wnrguhl had a manner of seriousness and con- centration, and yet there was absence :fh ;u;;ln—l: wu(m.: spectacle of a man master of the task in does it smoothly. sz It was easfer, of course, for him than it could be for any other man. Not only did he have perfect understanding of the economic forces involved; his eight vears as Secretary of Commerce had given him a familiarity with the keymen of every line of American ine dustry in every section of the country—= a familiarity with the important buste ness personnel of the Nation as come plete as the head of a single business house has with his branch managers. Not only did Mr. Hoover know who the keymen are, it is part of his genius for organization to know almost intuitively what each man can do best, what each man is hnp{:en in doing. (And, inci~ one of Mr. Hoover's per- recise function tha nature equipped him for, and at wh"lléh? therefore, the man is happy.) To pick the right men, to summon them to ‘Washington, and to initiate their co- operation—that was the sort of thing Mr. Hoover does almost without con- sclous effort. It is an example of his formula for accomplishment commissions, an to his simi his relief work in Beiglum, Guring the Europe g war and in dur the post-war threat of starva- tion, and to his Mississippi Flood Com- I e a1 administration e Hoover is im- portant, if future historians identity i as outstanding, probably such judgment Wwill be accompanied by realization that (Continued on Fourth Page.)