Mexico is too much for the states

manship at Washington. So are Great Britain and Germany. Haiti and San Domingo are the two largest nations with whom our State department feels itself able to deal on equal terms. While it is likely that this particular administration would have held to a timid and dishonorable foreign policy under any circumstances, still that tendency was strengthened by a feeling of the terrible military weakness of our country. Germany, Great Britain • and Mexico would never have flouted us had we not been just as impotent as we talked.

Neither the railroad nor the New York traction strike situation would ever have arisen had we been a nation of trained citizen soldiers. Soldiers who have sacrificed a year of their lives to serve in common their country could not take up arms against each other in industrial disputes without any honest attempt to compose their difficulties and with no regard for the country or community they are supposed to serve.

If the men who are managers and those who are workers had served a democoratic year in the ranks together, they would understand each other for all time. It would make forever impossible such chicanery as Mr. Shonts and Mr. Hedley exhibited in their attempt to destroy the effectiveness of the union which they nominally recognized. In the army ranks would be developed a spirit of co-operation, of mutual regard, of working to a common end, not separate ends. Controversies as to the shares of labor and capital, respectively, would take on more of the aspect of discussions between business partners. All men would learn an ideal of joint service to a

public, a country, that is greater than auy of them, or any group. It would no longer be morally possible for four railroad brotherhoods to threaten the industrial and private life of the country with death and destruction.

The lesson of sacrifice is the lesson of individual life. The ability to sacrifice, to restrain self, is character, in the man, in the group, and in the nation. And, strange as it might seem, the course of sacrifice is the most profitable one. We get by giving. Unselfishness is the highest, noblest-and most profitable -form of selfishness.

Military service would transfuse men and managers, traction owners and traction workers, with the spirit of readiness to make in common the last great sacrifice, life itself, for something above and beyond their own petty aims, to protect their country. It would be the simplest matter for them to make the minor sacrifices of money and comfort necessary to give each other a square deal and together to work for the industrial welfare of the country they stand ready to preserve.-Sept. 16,

1916.

AN EXTRA SCHOOL YEAR

Without any doubt the most democratizing influence of our American life is the public school. A common fund of childhood experiences, of school-taught principles and ideals is what, more than all else, has bound us together.

So it was in the past. To-day we need something more than this. The ingredients of the melting pot are too bulky, too diverse to fuse into one homegeneous product in the brief years of compulsory education.

Moreover, the children of those classes who possess capital, and so an advantage in the race for industrial leadership-these children tend to avoid the public schools.

The youth of the country needs another year of compulsory schooling together, another year of common experiences and ideals. And the subject of this extra year will be one that requires a severe discipline, a stern subordination to a purpose above and beyond the individual's petty aims, which will bind American youths together in the bonds of united labor and sacrifice.

The subject of this new year of school will be the study of arms, the learning of the art of being soldiers in their country's cause.

Are we ready for this test of willingness to serve? In us lies the hope of democracy and so of the whole world. History looks down upon us in this crisis. Shall it write that another great republic, grown rich and fat and great, chose the primrose path of luxury, softness and ease? Shall it be written that America, too, could not lift its eyes above its money bags and its platitudes of universal peace, nor give one little year to prepare, to preserve what our fathers and a gracious Providence bequeathed to our care?-Sept. 18, 1916.

worth to the country is shown in war, but shown still more in peace. It is the path to the nationalization of America.

Therefore, when a man like Robert Bacon, points to this path to nationalization, it matters not what are his views on the merits of a war in which we are not involved. His is the way to give us success in any war in which we may become involved, quite against our will. True Americans will find that is more important than a man's opinions on a foreign issue.

To-day around Robert Bacon are rallying the forward-looking men who see in universal service and sacrifice the solution of the problems that darken the future. Our enemy is less war than luxury and soft ease. We need the regeneration that a century of military service gave Germany and which is proving the blessing of this war to England. We can have this regeneration now voluntarily, or later have it forced upon us amid the sufferings that chance or fate brings to those who refuse to insure or prepare against a worldold calamity.

Our voters find it unpleasant to lift themselves out of their selfish ease to render service to their nation. All honor and support to the statesman who has the vision and courage to stand for the truth of unpleasant facts.-Sept. 19, 1916.

UNIVERSAL SERVICE

There is no such democratic institution as universal military service by the manhood of the nation. It levels rich and poor, all classes together, and then raises them to the heights of common labor and common sacrifice for their country. Its

A DEFEAT THAT IS REALLY VICTORY

The only national issue involved in the Calder-Bacon rivalry for United States senator was the question of compulsory military service.

On all other questions the two candidates were of one opinion. On that issue, however, they stood at extremes. Mr. Bacon entered the contest with a most explicit and courageous avowal of his conviction that compulsory service was the only way to develop and democratize America. He believed it should be the policy of the Republican party. Mr. Calder promptly challenged the Bacon platform, declaring that not one Republican in ten believed in compulsory military service.

The vote at the primaries upholds Mr. Bacon's view. Republicans divided almost equally between the two candidates. Mr. Calder can no longer maintain that not one in ten Republicans approves compulsory service. Indeed, if he is frank about the matter, he will have to concede that his three years' canvass won out for him despite the weakness of his cause. His was a triumph of organization, not of principle.

The issue for which Mr. Bacon stood had a most remarkable and significant response from Republican voters, though he had only a brief two weeks in which to present it. The few thousand votes that deny him personally the full fruits of victory, while greatly to be regretted, are not the basis for analyzing and interpreting the result. The 140,000 votes that he received are the true test of the strength of his cause. They furnish the real guide to the minds of Republican voters, and substantiate in a most convincing way Mr. Bacon's claim that his platform accurately reflects the attitude of his party toward military service.

History is replete with defeats that are really victories. The Bacon defeat is of that kind.-Sept. 21, 1916.

UNIVERSAL MILITARY

SERVICE

China does not believe in universal military service. Maybe that's because there is no word in the Chinese language that means patriotism. China is getting a lesson in what lack of nationalism means. Japan is slowly but surely getting a strangle hold on the great unwieldy Chinese body and soon an island people of 55,000,000 will be masters over a mainland people of 400,000,000.

The Japanese have a word equivalent to patriotism. They have a love that is wonderful for the land of their nativity and a devotion almost fanatical to the spirit of nationalism.

China is crumbling. Japan is rising in power with tremendous strides.

Universal military service does not mean a militaristic nation. It means a nation trained, prepared and with the spirit of nationalism instilled into the heart of every citizen. It means better men physically. It means orderliness, cleanliness, system, a multitude of things that count for better manhood, better citizenship.

The world is not blood-mad, regardless of the spectacle Europe has presented for the last two years. Nations, like individuals, quarrel and learn respect for each other and a better control of their passions out of the blood they spill and the sufferings they endure owing to their clashes.

To-day Herbert Asquith, premier of Great Britain, and von Bethmann-Hollweg, chancellor of Germany, look with much more sober view upon the great questions that

brought on the appeal to arms. And how could it be otherwise, for they have made the great sacrifice.

It may warm the heart of the British premier if, when the name of his son is called, the response is like that made by all France for I a Tour d'Auvergne.

"Dead on the field of honor."

But it will not bring back his first born. Nor will anything bring back the two sons of the German chancellor who gave their lives in the cause of the Fatherland.

Eight princes of German royal

houses have been killed in battle. There scarcely is a family of the nobility of Germany or England which is not in mourning.

The tremendous tragedy must calm the brains and cool the blood of statesmen, rulers, people. It will be a better, a more tolerant and a less quarrelsome Europe.

But Europe will not have less of nationalism. It will not know less of patriotism. It will not become a group of Chinas.

And neither must America.-Sept. 21, 1916.

$100,000,000 EACH FOR BER

MUDA AND JAMAICA

The events of the last year have clearly demonstrated that America cannot dispense with a background of force on which to rest its influence in the world. No matter how noble our motives, no matter how just our appeal, it may not be heeded, as Mexico has demonstrated, unless we are able and ready to back it up with military force. The navy must be our first line of defense.

The naval strength of the nations depends partly upon geography as islands and strategic fortifications on frontiers, and partly upon its equipment of battleships, submarines and aeroplanes. Bermuda lies less than two days' steaming radius from New York city. From it as a starting point any Atlantic seaboard city can be reached. Used as a submarine base it would tie up our whole commerce with Europe and South America. If used by a hostile power and made the base for Zeppelin raids New York city could be reached as London is reached today from Lübeck on the continent. Its strategic value, if in our possession and properly fortified, would make it weigh as heavily as twelve battleships and a fleet of submarines in our favor. Two hundred and fifty million dollars invested in naval equipment involving tremendous upkeep charges would not give us so much added strength as Bermuda in our hands properly fortified.

In the days of sailing vessels Bermuda was so far off that it did not count in our coast defense. Theoretical distances have remained the same. Engine-driven ships, submarines, aircraft have annihilated distance. During the last generation, so far as its military importance is concerned, Bermuda has been moved so that to-day it stands at the very doors of our continent.

Jamaica lies in the highway between New York and Panama. American shipping must increase after the war. Our ocean-borne commerce must go in American bottoms under the American flag, and it will need our protection. Every ship starting from an Atlantic seaport for our western states, for South America, for the Orient, will need protection in passing through the Panama canal. Jamaica is strategically the most important point to accomplish this end. If it should be seized by a hostile power or used against us with only a dozen submarines, it would prevent all access to the Panama canal. Twenty battleships cannot give us the same ability for the protection of Panama that the possession and fortification of Jamaica alone would furnish.

This is a time of readjustment. There are many grounds why we Americans feel that we have nothing to fear from England, and that the spiritual kinship of this country and England will make us safe for the future. Likewise, England can depend upon the permanent good in