Evening Star Newspaper, November 23, 1930, Page 35

ROCKY ROAD ¥ AHEAD FOR “WET” PROGRAMS Constitutional Repeal or Modification of Volstead Act Cannot Be Effected BY REX COLLIER. ULLIFICATION, modification, repeal o enforcement? ow that the question of prohibition has taken dence over the weather as the foremost topic of the man in the street, it might not be inappropriate to plumb the depths of the average gentleman's | knowledge of his country’s most press- ing_problem. ! ‘The man in the street or at the club | or on the golf links has no hesitancy whatever in discussing the broad sub- Ject of the weather, although he has detalls of no conception of fundamenta the science of meteorology. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t want | to tax his brain with a consideration of the technical phases of meteorology. All that concerns him is the physical manifestations of ~he weather—whether it is going to rain or shine for his| round of golf or motor drive of the morrow. Down ir his heart he would rather not be restricted in his eternally springing hopes by the inflexible and inexorable facts of science. So it is with the popular topic that has succeeded to the conventional throne long held by the weather. ‘The actual - and indisputable facts underlying the posibilities of nullifica- tion, modification, repeal or enforce- ment of prohibition seldom enter into the discussions, goearranged or im- promptu, between faverage citizens.” ‘What Citizen Wants to Know. All the citizen sems to care about is whether it is going to be wet or damp or dry——and when. In the hysteria of the moment, He pauses not to delve into the legal aspects cf the problem. As with the weather, he probably would fer not to know too much about hnicalities—particularly if he hap- pens to be a wet, although the indiffer- ence is found to exist also among the A knowledge of the basic facts re- the fate of prohibition might prove embarrassing to many wets who entertain an abiding hope of early re- peal or modification of the eighteenth amendment or repeal or modification of the Volstead enforcement act. By the same reatoning, such educa- tion might prove a revelation to those drys who grow hysterical at the bare mention of repeal in any of its forms; who fear they will ewaken some morn- ing and find the eighteenth amendment relegated to the realm of the dodo Dispassionately, without touching upon the merits of arguments for or against prohibition, what are the tech- nical chances of repealing or modifying the prohibition amendment or the na- tlo;lsl,enlorctmem act adopted there- under? Discouraged Tampering. Few persons take time to realize the formidable character of the buttresses which our forefathers have thrown around th‘; O%nnmmon, ’n ‘was their purpose iscourage inconsiderate tampering with that sacred document. They were broadminded enough to know that time might reveal necessi- ties for some changss in the Constitu- Efiflel'ctl and :zx;mm-nded a means for ng s throu, carefull; dex:enwd ;:efndmenu. . a amendment, either adding some- thing to or taking sonmfething away from the Constitution, can be legally proposed in but two ways: Congress, voluntarily, may mske the by & two-thirds vote of its members; Con- gress has no alternative but to call a constitutional convention to consider amending the Constitution if re?umd to do so by the Legislatures of two- With an amendrent thus pi either by or by a constitu- tional convention, it may not become @ part of the Constitution until it has been ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States or by con- ventions in three-fourths of the States. ‘What Are Possibilities? What are the possibilities, then, of repealing the eighteenth amendment? Constitutional lswyers seem agreed that the processes of repeal are identi- cal with those of enacting an amend- ment, namely, the proposal and ratifi- catfon of an amendment of annullment. To propose an amendment repealing the eighteenth amendment, therefore, | drasti would require, under the plan of con- gressional initiative, a two-thirds vote of each House of Congress, or, under the State initiative convention plan, & memorial supported by 32 of the State es. A two-thirds vote in Congress cannot be measured in advance by numbers. It means & vote by two-thirds of the members of each body “present and voting” at the time of consideration of the proposal. The present Congress is dry and the Congress which will begin functioning & year from now also is dry, although not quite so dry as that now in existence. Even the most optimistic of the wets do not hope that a convulsion over the prohibition problem can arise in either of the Congresses as constituted such as to provide the two-thirds vote in each House prerequisite to a congressional proposal for repeal of the dry amend- ment. Other Plan's Drawbacks. The alternative convention plan has serious drawbacks. even though there ‘were probability of 32 States lining up behind a repeal propasal. Authorities on the Constitution doubt that a con- stitutional convention could be limited in its scope to consideration of the rohibition amendment. In view of this there has been little mention of the convention plan by proponents of repeal, since they themselves reccgnize the dangers involved in throwing the dogr open to general proposals for alter- ing the Constitution. Coming to yatification probabilities, the Legislatures of 36 States would have to ratify the proposed amendment before it could become part of the Constitution. That means that 13 of the States could thwart repeal of the eighteenth amendment. no matter how insistent the otber 35 might be for annullment or modification of that amendment. ‘The recent elections disclosed a wide- spread trend toward wetness, even in heretofore dry strongholds. The trend $ not yet indicative of a Natlon-wide %peb revolution of the type that must eccur before it can be sald that two- thirds of the States are wet enough to petition Congress for repeal or modi- Qoation conventicn proposals, or that three-fourths of them are sufficiently wet to ratify such a proposal. Prof. Hanna's Conclusions. Prof. John Harna of Columbia Uni- wversity, weighing the possibilities of re- pealing the eighteenth amendment, recently declared: “Evan looking st the matter optimis- tically from the viewpoint of the anti- prohibitionists, it is difficult to see how & constituticnai amendment can be proposed to the States until 1936.” He added that “the proposal of a constitutional amendment from any source is out of he question, at least until 1933.” He that ‘“no action State Legislatures looking toward repeal of the prohibition amend- ment can cecur before 1935.” ‘were definitely behind the removing the prahibition amendment,” Prof. Hanna said, “it might be possible for ratification of the repeal to occur at Once. become so widespread and so unified by 1933 or 1935 or 1937 as to provide the voting strength in State Legislatures and in Congress necessary to amend the Constitution. This strength, the drys point out and the wets concede, does nct exist today and may not exist for years to come, it ever. ‘The wet cause as yet has failed to attain the unanimity of purpose that is the asset cf dry adherents. Leaders of Different Minds. Leaders of the wets have widely divergent opinions as to how the pro- hibition problem should be tackled. Senator-elect Dwight W. Morrow, who has come to the fore as one of the Nation's outstanding wets, wants the eighteenth amendment repealed in favor of a substitute amendment offer- ing Federal ald only to States desiring prohibition and permitting the other States to_handle the liquor problem as they see fit. He doesn’t believe modifi- cation of the Volstead law will do. Pending repeal, he believes in enforce- ment of existing law, Gov. Roosevelt of New York favors & new constitutional amendment to permit State sale of intoxicants with Federal protection for dry States desir- ing to prevent influx of liquor from ‘wet neighbors. Former Gov. Al Smith has proposed modification of the prohibition Imend-l ment to permit State sale of liquor | and modification of the Volstead law to permit the States to fix their own standards of alcoholic content, subject to & maximum set by Congress. Gov. Ritchie of Maryland is for out- right repeal of the eighteenth amend- ment, with no substitutes, so that local option might prevail. President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University advocates destruc. tion of the eighteenth amendment and substitution of the Quebec system of government control of the liquor traffic, Congressmen Farther Apart. ‘These leaders agree on repeal of the eighteenth amendment, but differ as to substitute methods of control. The views of congressional wets are even farther apart. They range from pro- posals for complete repeal of the dry amendment and all laws connected with it to raising the alcoholic content of beer from '; of 1 per cent to 23, per cent and higher, and lifting of the ban on light wines for hcme use. Prof. Howard Lee McBain, dean of | Columbia University, after surveying the long list of wet suggestions, announced his conclusion that the wisest wluttl%n e prohibition laws of the various States as the national prohibition law, retain- ing the Volstead law only in such States as refused to adopt prohibition as a State policy. ‘What about the chances of repealing or modifying the Volstead act? Outright repeal of the enforcement act, without substitute legislation, un- doubtedly would meet with as many obstacles as outright repeal of the eighteenth amendment. As to the Voistead Law. It would take more than a bare majority of both houses of Congress to destroy the Volstead law during the present administration. Overriding of & presidential veto by a two-thirds vote would be necessary, for President Hoo- yer has put hlmnel}lho':e{;eord ;n it of the el nth amend- vigorous and laws enacted thereunder.” Since repeal of the Volstead act would nullify the eighteenth amendment, it is presumed that Mr. Hoover would veto any bill for nullification. How the President might recelve a legislative for modification of the act is a mnc;'t); k'ee; mlmu::‘. especially in view fast-flylng rum to the effect that his National Com- mission on Law Observance and En- forcement may recommend a modifica- tion of the law. President’s Possible Stand. 1t is the consensus of most observers that Mr. Hoover will abide by the de- cision of his commission, providing the decision is not too drastic—and none familiar with the situation in the com- mission believes the report will be that c. ‘Well authenticated reports have come from the commission that repeal of the eighteenth amendment has been dis- carded definitely in consideration of proposed reforms, and that such sug- gestions as permitting 4 per cent or calling a national referendum to determine the people’s sentiment also have been tabooed. At the same time it has been in- timated in official quarters there will be “no " by the commis- sion in formulating its final recom- mendations to the President. Of course, the President of the United States has no part in the amending of the Constitution. If Congress should vote to propose an amendment, he could not veto the pi , mor could he prevent the calling of a constitu- tional convention by in the event sufficient States joined in the petition. He could, however, submit to Con- gress, with or without his indorsement, the recommendations agreed upon by the .Wickersham Commission. Thg chances of early modification of the Volgtead law of a certainty would be muCh greater if the commission and the President joined in the recom- ‘mendation. If the President did not veto a modi- fication measure, a vote of a majority “present and voting” in each body of Congress would be sufficient to effect the change in the law. His veto of the measure would n<cessitate the marshal- ing of a two-thirds vote in favor of it. ‘The wet forces have begun to realize the handicap imposed by lack of una- nimity among their leaders, and, backed by ample funds from men of wealth, are waging country-wide cam- paigns to unite all elements in a con- certed drive toward some specific wet objective. The extent and necessity of this cam- paign have begun to give concern to dry organizations, who fear that the twlldny o':” their &wn d‘lorm may be dis- urbed “misleading propaganda” from the other side. . o But until thed wet forces can find a common ground upon which to wage their battle, modification of the dry law must travel a rocky and devious legislative path. Japanese Inaugurate Drama School in Tokio Japan’s first school of Kabuki acting has been opened in Tokio, backed by the leading members of the profession. Kabuki is the popular form of the Jap- anese drama, which for years was looked upon as being inartistic, but which now is by far the most widely attended form of entertainment in this country. The course lasts seven years and the student is taught history, music and many other sub which seem wholly detached from the duties to be performed on the stage. Provision of the proper back- ground for intelligent acting is the chief aim of the new school, and for this reason the first few years of instruction are given over to fundamental subjects. Heretofore Japan's actors have been trained by the time-honored apprentice during 1935, but i would be much more likely not to taks place until 1937 or 938.” g Prof. Hanna made it in he was v ing these forucasts w) on the me‘nflmtm system: that is, lads of promise were taken into the homes of actors and lit- erally brought up on the stage. The tombination of modern school of acting and the family instruct 1s ex- pected to prove a great sincere enforcement of the | ¢ THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D: 0 NOVEMBER 23, 1930—PART TWO. Britain’s Fearless Dean Evils of World . He’s Called Gloomy, but Dr. Williara Ralph Inge, Defying Critics, Cites BY C. PATRICK THOMPSON. HE recent conference of the princes of England's Established Church at Lambeth, the arch- bishop's palace in London, hav- ing failed to say anything any one can take hold of about birth con- trol, divorce, suicide, capital punishment and sundry other burning questions of the age, the dean has taken the now empty fleld and stated a few opinions. No need to say which dean. There is only one in Christendom where tremen- dous controversies are concerned, and he is our old friend Willlam Ralph Inge, D. D, dean of St. Paul's Cathedral (the metropolitan steeple house of the Brit- ish Empire), the greatest scholar in the church and its enfant terrible. ‘Wherever the prelates feared to tread the dean has since rushed in, recording, by way of an address at Oxford and a book (he had both bombs in his study drawer while the conference sat, and awaited only a strategic moment to heave them), just what he thought about everything the church assembly had evaded, shrunk from, skated over or compromised upon for safety’s sake. Speaks Out on Birth Control. Birth control? A qualified approval. Self-killing? A man dying in agony may shorten his sufferings and a con- demned_criminal should be allowed to | choose his own method of passing out and execute himself. Modern looseness and laxity of morals? Mainly due to revolt against Mrs. Grundy and reaction from excessive repression of the Victo- rian age, which may have been chaste, but certainly was hypocritical. Mankind, proclaimed the dean, will never be willing entirely to give up this world for the next nor the next world for this. And he went on to suggest an entirely new basis for marriage, assert- ing, with all his great authority as & scholar and theologian, that those Angli- cans who maintain that by Christian law marriage is indissoluble are making a claim that is historically untenable and which practice of the Christian churches in all ages has proved un- workable. England agreed that the official church assembly had announced nothing to say of any particular moment, but that the dean had said a mouthful—indeed, sev- eral mouthfuls. He always does. This is his specialty and the root cause of his great fame. He is a sensationalist, but in the Lu- therian and Voltairean and not in the cheap clap-trap sense. You may ridi- cule him, curse him, attack him, but you can neither dismiss him nor ignore him, for he is the greatest scholar in the English Church and also her great- est controversialist. her most effective champlon in the struggle against Rome, her most impressive prose writer, her most brilliant ironist and her most formidable political polemist. Bernard Shaw, who admires his learn- ing and intellectual honesty, has praised his “gentle and noble character” and his mind “so splendidly efficient,” and pronounced him at once England’s great- | est churchman and her greatest free thinker. St.John Ervine has announced | with reverence that he reads “everything | that man writes.” Rebecca West Criticizes. On the other hand, Rebecca West has popularizing malignity, of chattering malevolently, of inj s stream of poison into public opinion, of picking up any straws and rag of non- nse t help man to think con- temptuously of his brothers and of being as morbid as anybody could be and re- main sane. And she suggested that if he were psycho-analyzed it would prob- ably be found that his outlook on life was conditioned by a severe chastise- ment he had experienced early in life at the hand of some member of the strange, working class, “with whom,” concluded dean, at once ultra-modern and medie- BY HENRY W. BUNN. following is a brief summary of the most important news of the world for the seven days ended November 22: * x % % SPAIN.—I told last week of a serious clash in Madrid on the 14th between police and civil guards on the one part and a procession of workers on the other, which resulted in four deaths and injuries, in some instances serious, to scores. Forthwith a general strike was declared and throughout the next day clashes were incessant, the casualties being numerous, though curiously no deaths were reported. The cabinet was in nervous session and martial law seemed imminent. The rioters included a large representation of university stu- dents. Similar situations in Barcelona, Oviedo and Valencia were reported. The Madrid strike continued through the next day, but was called off on the night of the 16th. The clashes on the last day seem to have been less nu- merous and violent than previously—a score or so of broken heads. Perhaps the fact that, though the government refrained from declaring martial law, troops numerously patrolled the city may account for the subsidence of vio- lence. To what extent the disaffection re- flects genuine republican sentiment is an interesting question. Ah, but the end is not yet. On the 17th a general strike was declared in Barcelona with result of many clashes, numerous casualties, one death, arson, etc. Strikes were also reported from ‘Valladolid, Oviedo, Alicante and Valencia. The vigorous revival in Barcelona of the Sindicato Unico is of sinister significance. ‘The strike continued over the 18th in Barcelona with increased violence; five killed, many injured. But apparent- ly, after a day of lessening disorder, the strik= was called off on the evening of the 19th. On the 19th fresh disorders in Cor- doba, Seville, Salamanca and Vich. The general situation showed some ap- parent improvement on the 20th, but the government seemed to evince in- creased nervousness. Watch Spain. o GERMANY.— Last week I recorded how on November 14 the German flying boat DO-X hopping from Calshot for Bordeaux, was compelled by engine trouble to descend off Vendee, about 150 miles north of Bordeaux, and how, having taxied on for a bit, she decided to spend the night on the calm water between the Isle De Re and La Rochelle. ‘The next day she flew on to Bordeaux. On the 20th she hopped off for Coruna, but was compelled by strong headwinds and the threat of bad weather aheed to drop down on the harbor of Santander, where she anchored. ‘There seems to be much doubt whether she will complete her pro- jected supra-Atlantic trip. As she was lying at Bordeaux.on the 16t:, Dr. Claude Dornler, hcr aesigner and builder, ruefully observed: “Our motors must undergo a complete oy:rhauling, and that will take some t¥me.” AN time is precious. It is desired to fly in dlyllcrw only. Lisbon to Horta (the Azores) is a 10-hour stretch and Horta to the Bermudas is a 15 or 16 hour stretch, and for the latter certainly there would be an insufficiency of light. The DO-X was designed to and Mistakes of Church.’ Drawn for The Sunday Star by 8. J. Woolf. DEAN WILLIAM RALPH INGE—HE SAYS WHAT HE THINKS. Rebecca, “even at this lapse of time it is impossible to feel warm sympathy.” From which it will be gathered that opinions about the dean differ. A , very English man, the 125 miles an hour, but apparently so far she has not negotiated better than 100. The Hitlerites seem to be triumphing in local elections throughout the Reich. val and a bundle of paradoxes. He de- nounces belief in hell. All the same, tall, unt, tortured looking, with writhing ips and pallid skin, he might pose without makeup for a figure in a fresco of the inferno as described by Dante. A glorious discovery has been made in Germany. A Neolithic village, fantastically well preserved, has been unearthed. Stone hand mills, flint knives and arrow heads, pottery that When to Go Away BY BRUCE BARTON \ % - N e /-'(. = RaON el HERE is a man, now old in years but still very vigorous, who built up the largest company of its kind in this country. One of his younger assoclates was recently giving me some side- lights on his character and methods. “Whenever we had some especially big problem on hand the same thing invari- ably happened,” he said. “It might be a building program involving the investment of millions, or the launching of a new product, or a plan for extending our operations into a foreign country. “Always, in the midst of our discussions, the Old Man would bring his fist down on the desk with a bang. “‘We will stop right here,’ he would say. ‘We will not de- cide a single thing. I am go- ing away to the country for two weeks to rest and fish. When I come back I will tell you how to run this com- pany.’” My informant said that the Old Man invariably returned with a better perspective, clearer vision and fresh cour- age. The most important for- ward steps in the company’s history followed these pre- cipitate vacations. Years ago I read s hiog- raphy & enjamin Disraeli who began life, as you will re- call, as a writer with publish- ing ambitions. He conceived the idea of a magazine, and was bold enough to hope that he might persuade Sir Walter Scott to be its editor. He took the train to the city where Scott lived and arrived of making his call at once, he registered at the hotel, or- dered a comfortable room and went to bed. In recording the experience he said that he had made up his mimd, even in those early days, never to attempt a dif- ficult interview when ke was tired. Two men of my acquaint- ance were thrown out of em- ployment by a merger. They were men of ability for whom opportunities were sure to open sooner of later. The first man proceeded to worry himself into a state of nervous inefficiency. He hur- ried around among his friends; he let fear show in his eyes and face. The other man went away. When I met him last he was sun-browned and rested; he had purchased - some new clothes, and was starting out serenely to conquer the world. Most of us have to take our vacations at stated intervals, which are fixed by the routine of business rather than by our personal desires. But it is pos- sible for even the humblest of us to avoid the mistake of making impotrant decisions when our minds are weary or worried. Lots of times the best thin, we can do is to say: “I shal now turn my back on this desk and leave the office, and I will not think about this thing again tonight. “Tomorrow will be a new day and, if I am rested, a day full of much more courage and wisdom. So my decision will be sounder and braver than it can possibly be today." (Copyright, 1030). | On the assumption that he does carry a private little inferno about with him behind the dull, sunk eye in his nar- row, tall skull, England has named him “the gloomy dean.” Prophesies Death and Disaster. He is always prophesying death, doom and disaster, doubtless being moved thereto mainly because he shares the conviction of the German historian Seeck that civilization sifts out the best, helps them to rise in the social scale and then sterilizes them, and that this is the secret of the rise and fall of earlier civilizations and that our ex- isting civilization is following the same road to ruin and extinction. Under civilized conditions, he asserts, sub-men are being bred and artificially nurtured and preserved in overwhelm- ing hordes. Like the dogger, that criminal of the plant world which fas- tens upon superior plants and thrives on their sap, so that they wilt and pres- ently perish, the sub-men are stran- gling the middle class, the backbone class of every civilization (the dean's class). All his ideas revolve round this fun- damental outlook and conviction, driv- ing him to mysticism in religion, to a violent and virulent class partisanship in politics and into the gloom which | has become his legend. He is & Yorkshireman. His grand- father was an old-fashioned scholar and divine (the phrase is his own); his father was a scholarly clergyman who became provost of one of Oxford's col- leges, but was (his son notes disapprov- ingly) so lacking in self-confidence that he refused the offer of a bishopric by return post and without consulting his wife; his mother was an archdeacon’s daughter, his wife the daughter of an archdeacon and granddaughter of a bishop. Space forbids further enumera- tion of churchly antecedents, traditions, connections and influences. Was a Timid Boy. He was a timed boy who, with his brothers and sisters, got more education at home before he went to school at Eton than most boys get in their entire school career. Once he got such a shock from seeing the distorted image of his face at the bottom of a sink that for years after he could not bear to look at himself in the glass. He is still 50 inherently nervous that his face often goes through contortions as he speaks; his hands, clasped behind his back, writhe like the tentacles of an octopus in peril, On one occasion when I was sitting immediately behind him at a banquet at which he was speaking, I observed that after standing on his own toes he had, in the excitement of getting off a Greek epigram (wasted on that crowd, anyway, but he disdained to translate it) kicked one of his eccleslastical buckled shoes clean off, and for the next five minutes, while pearls of intel- lect fell from his thin lips, his stock- inged foot groped for the lost shoe under the table and, having located it, wriggled frantically until, with a sigh of relief that was almost audible, it got into its dark home again, He went up to Cambridge and car- ried off a long list of prizes, medals and scholarships, and then took a job as master of his old school; then became a tutor at Oxford and a preacher at both Oxford and Cambridge, and then broke away from the professional aca- demic world to become chaplain to a bishop and presently, & vicar in London. He was professor of divinity at Cam- bridge in 1911, when that massive statesman-scholar, the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, then premier, being desir- ours of reviving the old traditions of the deanery as the most literary posi- tion in the church (and not being awgrse to putting in a fellow Yorkshireman), made him dean of St. Paul's. That (Continued on Fourth Page.) antedates the potter's wheel in abun- dance. * ok ok K VATICAN CITY.—On November 19 Pope Pius inaugurated the new tele- phone system of Vatican City, the gift of the International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation of New York. He visited the exchange in his motor and bestowed his blessing: “I want,” said his holiness “to be like the blessed Don Bosco, the noted educator, who was beatified last year. I want to be in the advance guard of progress.” Vatican City now has the highest ratio of telephones to inhabitants of any state in the world; namely 800 telephones to about 500 inhabitants. About 300 miles of wire have been laid. The system is automatic. The mounting of the apparatus in the Pope’s workroom is of solid gold, with papal coat of arms, the four evangelists, etc., in enamel. * K X K AUSTRIA. —Here is a pleasant de- velopment. The “Parliamentary Club” of the Christian Social party of Austria (I E. I take it, all the pgrliamentary representatives belonging to that party) met the other day and resolved as fol- lows: “All the members of the club are bound by the Christian Social pro- gram to adhere to the constitution, de- clining to countenance any attempts to alter it by violent methods of any sort. The members of the clubs are free of obligations to any group outside the party.” That is, they disavow any association with the Heimwehr. Now what will those fire-eating sons of Mars and enemies of parliaments, the Prince von Strahemberg and Maj. Pabst, do? * kK K POLAND.—In the Polish parlia- mentary elections of November 16 Marshal Pilsudski’'s bloc won a major- ity in the Sejm, that is, 248 of a total of 444 seats. But for his purposes the marshal requires a three-fourths ma- jority—that is, 333 seats. In the old Sejm, which he caused to be dissolved because, he alleged, it “hamstrung” the government, his bloc had 118 seats. The world will watch with amused curi- osity the marshal's next move. The elections did not go off in perfect calm. There were 52 casualties in Warsaw, 30 in Lodz, etc, but apparently no deaths. ‘The campaign was sufficiently fantas- tic, even for Poland. Throughout it Pilsudski kept some 60 of his leading opponents, including two former pre- miers, in jall. Moreover, he caused sundry opposition tickets to be disquali- fied on what he was pleased to call “legal” grounds. Yet cool critics are by no means sure that, on the whole, the old marshal, truly the father of new Poland, is not justified of his works. He has to deal with fantiscali- ties, and he does so fantastically. He knows his Poland. On the economic side. kowecer, “fantastic” is not the word. The new Poland has grappled its economic problems with resolution and intelligence. Such is the impres- sion conveyed in the report submitted by Charles 8. Dewey, our countryman, on his retirement after three years as financial adviser to the Polish govern- ment. Poland shares in the planetary slump, but her condition is by no means as bad as that of several of the “the lave,” far better #han might be ex- pected in view of the desperate economic chaos in which she found herself upon her reconstitution as an independent state. * ok ok K IRAQ —The Parllament (Senate (CofZ.nued on Fifth Page.) FORMER SWITCHMAN HELPS THOUSANDS TO LIVE RIGHT Teaches Character Building in Prisons and Schools by Guiding Thoughts Into Proper Channels. BY DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM. GREAT conference of America’s leading educators was held in New York City in June for the sole purpose of discussing this one question: “How can we build human character?” Speakers were there from the church, the Sunday school, the Boy Scouts, Camp Fire Girls and Knighthood of Youth; there were welfare workers, prison workers, experts from the labora- tories on delinquency and crime and from many other organizations devoted to character building. Preachers, teach- ers, sociologists, psychologists and philos- ophers were on the program—able, de- voted, highly trained men and women equipped wiith all the knowledge we ss of modern psychology and prob- lems of behavior. However, with all this array of splen- did men and women, the almost univer- sal burden of all the addresses was that although parents, teachers, lawyers, doc- tors and preachers have been working at this problem of character building ever since Adam and Eve reared Cain and Abel and made a moral success of one boy and a moral failure of the other, yet nobody knows very much about how to build human character. Of course, many plans and methods of great hope and promise were presented, yet with all that, not & single person was bold or dogmatic-enough to claim that he had any sure-fire, guaranteed method of building character in our youth or of turning wrong doers from their ways. Personally, I do not believe there is any such system or ever will be until the science of the mind becomes as exact as the sclences of physics and chemistry. I do not belleve anybody has any cock- sure, foolproof system for making bad rople good. Nevertheless, I do believe hat there is one man who has devel- oped & method of character education that has been so remarkably successful that 1t should be tried at once in every home and school and prison in the land. And it is the story of this man and his methods of training children and adults s0 that they prefer to do right rather 4han wrong that I wish to tell. ‘What Letters D. C. S. Mean. ‘This man’s very name is suggestive, [ because his name is Wright—J. Frank- lin Wright, D. C. S, of Detroit, Mich. ‘You may ask at once, “What do the let- ters D. C. S stand for?” That is his doctor’s degree. It means Doctor of Common Sense. It was not conferred by any university, although every uni- versity ought to have such a degree, to be conferred only on extraordinary post- duates. The degree of D. C. 8. was formally conferred by the prisoners in the penitentiary at Walla Walla, in the State of Washington, because of the great good Wright had done them, as well as men and women in other prisons. Many of these men and women, be- | cause of Wright's philosophy of life, are now outside either as successful citizens and business men or else as teachers of his gospel of common sense in building human character. You wiil find this de- gree attached to Wright's name in “Who's Who in America.” Not a single one of the 25,000 distinguished Ameri- cans in that volume deserve this degree more than “Dad” Wright, as he is affec- tionately called and known to the thou- sands upon thousands of children that have come under his teachings and to numerous men and women—some of them formerly in the very bottom of the gutter—whom he has put back on the road to a happy and successful life. ‘Twenty years ago Frank Wright was a switch engineer. He had come up from engine Mgel' to yardmaster of the switch yards. Necessity, not preference, selected his first position in the C., M. & St. Paul Railway roundhouse at Dav- enport, Iowa. Born in Iowa of a Quaker mother, and reared in a Quaker settle- ment until he was 10 years old, he was forced to leave school in the ninth grade to help his mother support a family of eight. Wright says that rallway men in the West at that time were—in the lan- guage of the street—distinguished by their willingness to fight at the drop of the hat, their ability to swear by note and a reputation of having never refused a drink of liquor. Smoked 22 Cigars a Day. Notwithstanding his Quaker training, he was soon known as a man who could reach the highest notes in the scale of profanity, and he smoked an average of 22 cigars each day. The doctors told him he would die if he did not quit smoking and would likely die if he quit suddenly. The preachers told him he would go to hell if he did not quit swearing. So he decided to quit both. He tried for years to quit grad- ually, but he couldn't do it. Nobody can. You never quite reach the jumping-off place. If you want to start a new habit the only way is to start it. If you want to resume r{am living, you simply have to resume. Finally, one day, Wright got the idea that forming habits—living a life in which he was master of himself—was very much like the locomotive engines he had worked with so long and under- stood so well. He said to himself, “The engine is my will power, the steam is my desire and the engineer is my reason. I can’t pull my life along the right track unless the three are working in har- mony, just as the engine will not pull its train of cars unless the steam and engi- neer are working in harmony with the machinery of the engine.” So Wright went to bed that night thinking hard on the reasons for living without this hampering habit—reasons of health, money, sound nerves, peace of mind, decency and all the dignity it gives a man to feel he is absolute master of himself. These thoughts so filled his mind through the night that the next morning, to his own astcnishment, his desire for tobacco had simply vanished. It is a literal fact that when your mind is filled with the right course of action the thoughts of the wrong course simply get no chance for even a look in. In other words, Wright suddenly woke up to the fact—the sonundest fact in all psychology—that habits are masters of thinking. We do the thing we think about. Our actions follow our minds as our bodies follow our noses. He dis- covered that the will, which most people imagine is some mysterious power by which we can reach up and lift our- selves by our psychological bootstraps, is nothing but a set of habits, and he dis- covered that habits are just the things we think about and that we can control our thinking. If you once see this clear- 1y you can control your life. 8o, how to control your life, make it big and rich and kindly, just by con- trolling your thoughts—this was the eat lesson that came to this big- earted, big-brained rallroad man from studying his life as he studied his pro- fession—that is, with his reason. In fact, Wright did not know it, and doesn’t know it yet, but he had gone clear back to Aristotle, the old Greek, who taught recisely the same thing—that the “good ife” caf be achieved by just filling our minds with it, living the good life in our minds, and that is the whole sum of the matter of righteousness and happi- ness. Method Tried on Friends. ‘Well, Wright at once tried this meth- od on some of his friends, and it proved Just as successful with them. Later he tried teaching it to men in prison, and some of the results were truly startling. As time went on he developed a series of lessons which he calls “Human Engi- neering,” or “Reading the Price Tags of Life.” In each prison he formed what he terms an inside *“eguncil” for the study dlhumln engin t! Pathfinders of America,” numbers far more than 5,000 After seven years of work am citizens — engineers, skilled workman, teachers, preachers and successful busi- ness men—somebody said to him, “Dad, if this works so well on convicted men and women in prison, why would it not work on children in school? Instead of reforming criminals, why not prevent crime at meltlo%C:?ht the privil As a result, Wright got ivilege of talking to chfl‘dl’!n in the school rooms of Detroit, and one day a little uventh‘fir-de boy got up and asked if they could not form a Junior Council in their school and have him come reg- ularly and teach them the price tags of life. So then and there the Pathfinders of America began its great work in the public schools, and during the nine years since then it has reached more than 175,000 school children, besides elunfl.l.:a its work all the time among men ‘women convicted of crime. ‘Wright now has an office staff in the Lincoln Building in Detroit, and also & corps of trained teachers. He receives 5,000 letters a week from school children and men in jails, reformatories and pris- ons. His work has been extended to 4 more than 60 public schools in Detroi$ alone. Tt is to the great honor of Supt. Frank Cody of the Detroit public schools that he has fostered and encouraged the work, end also to Dr. Edwin L. Miller, assistant superintendent, who said recently, “Wright has made virtue more attractive than vice.” In fact, for 16 years Wright and his teachers have been searching for some place or some type of people where his philosophy would not work, They have tried it in public schools, private schools, parochial schools, @etention houses, so- cial settlements, reformatories, jails and penitentiaries. It works just as well among the learned as the unlearned, the rich as well as the poor, the old as well as the young. One noted holfl said just the other day, “Wp'{lc& I had seen what your iessons children with my own eyes I would not believe it.” When W Infit?ld to teach his ;:]Iihflnder which are now cares graded from the fourth to the t'elng grade, in the parochial schools, John Haynes Holmes, the liberal preacher of New York City, sald, “Wright, this is the greatest achievement of the Christian era.” Interested in Realities. anid Conduct Know o creeds treeiagion conduct know no eologies, races or classes. Wright is not 1%‘0‘:1’- ested in the riddles of theology but in the realities of life. He does not teach & doctrinal religion, but a doctrine of conduct. His ves first Pathfinder Council consisted of 12 nationalities, 3 colors and 19 religious denominations. It is plain, therefore, that he cannot teach any particular set of doctrines about the Bible or its interpretation. This first council was in the State Re- formatory at Ionia, Mich., with 600 in- mates, where the Sunday school had succeeded in enlisting 18 pupils and the C:lrzl;thl_;‘hmdzz;})lr . d & membership of 25, e Pathfinder philosophy lald such immediate hold on the prisoners that their council started with 127 char- ter members and in 90 days had 460! And right there is truly proof of what a purely logical study o the laws that govern conduct will do for people. During the first year 320 of these prisoners were released on r.roh Now, had the best recora that reforma- tory had ever made in reforming people prevailed, 74 of those paroled young men Wwould have come back as parole viola- tors. Had the average prevailed 112 would have come back! Onlyl'al‘d come back. The remainder became 3 respecting citizens. Then you eagerly ask, “What does ‘Wright do to these people? What has he got that is different? We have preached and lectured and warned our cglld{!en. but with no such astounding Yes, you have lectured and preached to the child, but did you ever council with the child? Mind you, the Path- finder philosophy is a system of counsel- ing, of reasoning, of -g‘paun( to com- mon sense, of teaching human engineer- ing applied to life as well as to machin- ery. It is a council about life—his own life, in which the child takes part. You have no idea of the exciting ef- fect this has on children—this sitting in on a discussion of their own lives. I have often seen the children rise and cheer when the Pathfinder teacher came into the school room. They don't do that when the geography or arithmetic teacher comes in! Why? I will tell you why. It is because this teacher first is going to give them a chance to talk about the most interesting thing in the world—their own lives, and, second, this teacher is free from all authori First they are going to have a good Just among themselves, about Courage, Heroism, Courtesy, Co-operation, Cheer~ fulness, Ambition, Helpfulness, m- sibility, Achievement, Duty, Love, - ship, Home-Building, How to Treat Brother and Sister and Parents, How to Be Good Citizens, etc. (These are merely subjects of some of the Path- finder lessons.) No Examinations to Pass. But the big second thing is this—the child does not have to pass an examina- tion on it, there is no authority about it, it is not a part of the school system, no- body is going to criticize or scold or give marks and grades. The child is free— free to be himself, and when you free men or women or children to be them- selves they throw their whole souls into whatever they are doing. Nobody has any ax to grind. That is why %l:nn chaplains are almost universally hated by prisoners—they are part of the gys- tem, a part of authority. Parents are handicapped the same way—authority; they are the big guns and the child the little one. It is “Big I and little you,” and the child inwardly rebels. And - ent; |r:xd tl:‘nlahen are often too close, and the cl sees their shortcomin even in the best of them. As DI:: preacher’s boy of 12 said to Mr. Wright, “My dad tells me all those things, but I know him too well; I'm on to him.” But the Pathfinder philosophy still deeper, because it teaches the c) how to form his own character on the one hand, how to engineer his life as an engineer plans a bridge or building, and, on the other, it teaches him how to read the price tags of life. And in teaching the child how to form his own habits and not rely on father or mother or anybody but himself, Wright has got hold of one of the biggest things in all psychology—namely, that every thought we think does its very best to carry it- self into action. Indeed, Wright still farther and gives uu"‘em of high-powered T N T {ren rou? houghts, all ready made and fitted into his very nervous system, ready to leap to his aid when he is in a tight and about to yield to temptation. high-powered ready-made thoughts are all zllvenl inbitzhe l::“r’.m"f” lummm are simply big and handy psyc handles to grab hold of 'fin you are in a corner and about to go wrong. He calls them “Guide Posts to Ch: Jre ‘They are big, white posts scati all along by which you can reach out steady yourself on the roughest road. Let us see how these guide a fellow and how easy they hold of. For example, you have downtown today and two ts tried to sell you lutomol:lfion—cm Cardinal and the other a Belmont. P! oners, during which time Wrigh§ made many of the most hardened inals into upright, self-respecting,