with British sea power in view, the Germans had developed in Norway the process of taking nitrogen from the air. When the war broke out, they transferred the process to five new German factories, which are now supplying all needs both of the military and of agriculture. There is no end of air, and so no limit to nitrates and explosives.

Until our sea power is invincible -that is, for the next ten years at least-our defense must look to the methods of that nation which was itself confronted by superior sea power. And so the Naval Consulting Board and the navy turn to the example of Germany in guarding its home supply of nitrates.-March 20, 1916.

THE POWER OF ORGANIZA

TION

In an earnest plea for preparedness, Thomas A. Edison makes the following discouraging statement:

The trouble with us is that we are not good organizers, and I don't know that we ever will be. Our government is composed of all kinds of representatives, and it is very difficult to make the majority agree upon anything.

The second sentence in this statement furnishes a complete answer to the first.

History offers no parallel to the wonderful organization which has been built up in less than a lifetime by that characteristically American enterprise, the Standard Oil Company. Extending its field of operations from a local to a national scope, the Standard Oil has reached out beyond the seas and overspread the world. In China, the American corporation has been for years one of the strongest factors in the

peaceful development of the country. In Roumania, in Russia, in the Near East and Asia Minor the Standard Oil can is one of the familiar objects of domestic economy. Unlike the Hudson Bay Company and the East India Company, which represent the nearest approach to the commercial activities of the American corporation, Standard Oil has not commanded the services of armies, nor has it carried fire and sword into the dark places. It has built up its vast business on a commercial basis by entrusting its affairs to experts and by the continuance of a definite policy directed at the accomplishment of definite ends.

The conduct of our national affairs offers a sharp contrast to this model of efficiency: As Mr. Edison points out, our government is composed of "all kinds of representatives." Very few, if any, of these are experts. Very few, if any, hold office long enough to make themselves thoroughly familiar with the duties which the nation-or rather the party in power-has entrusted to them. With the advent of every party to power comes a more or less complete change in policy and in personnel. That which has been builded in one administration is destroyed by its successor.

It is also true, as Mr. Edison points out, that "it is very difficult to make the majority agree on anything." The progress of the army bill through Congress plainly illustrates that truth. But it does not appear to be difficult to obtain unity. of action in the Standard Oil directorate. That is because the Standard Oil directorate is a continuing body of experts-a groupmind, So to speak-which if

changed at all by the stockholders is only partly changed at any time. The great majority of that group of a score of men remain always in command of the activities of the corporation. And the result of this permanence of personnel is a permanence in policy and in achievements.

In our national life a widely different state of affairs is presented. The national board of directors-if the term may be used for the sake of convenience is made up, not of a score of men but of a hundred score. Such a body is incapable of united or prompt action. Every member of Congress, to mention only a part of this unwieldy national directory, has to have his say, either for constructive purposes or for the benefit of the home constituency. In the multiplicity of counsels is discord, and error, and delay and incapacity for continuous action.

The American people have proved, in the course of their brilliant industrial and commercial development, that they possess the highest power of organization in the world. In their political life they have betrayed the lowest power of organization in the world."

Why this appalling difference? Because America has not applied to its national life the lessons which it has so thoroughly learned. in its business life.-March 22, 1916.

THE MISSING BALANCE

WHEEL

For some days shippers, railroads. and Interstate Commerce Commission have been sitting together in Washington trying to devise a way

out of the congestion of freight upon our railroads and especially at the seaports. The transportation machine has broken down under the load imposed upon it.

This is partly due to the insufficiency of railroad facilities. Double tracking, terminals, yards and equipment have hardly been increased since the panic of 1907, for since those days the roads have been through a financial famine. To-day they are in the midst of a feast, but the equipment and construction companies cannot extend the railroads fast enough to meet the situation that has been on the way to overwhelm them all through the last nine years.

So it is always with business in this country. It is a feast or a famine. A year ago a New York citizens' committee was planning how to meet the unemployment problem. To-day business men are figuring how they will meet foreign competition in international markets after the war with American industries carrying the unexampled wages forced by the frantic bids of prosperous business.

Nor is it a war-time phenomenon. The balance wheel in the industrial machine is lacking. In 1907 we had a feast and starved through years of reaction.

There is no provilege in modern social life that does not carry with it a corresponding duty. Do the leaders in American industrial life see that the privilege and power to direct industry, the power of concentrated finance, carries with it a responsibility?

The American industrial system is complex and far-reaching. Its development requires vision and foresight. It cannot be left to the

chances of a hand-to-mouth policy. -March 30, 1916.

VERDUN AND VILLA

An American business man who has just returned from Europe after visiting his branch factories in Belgium, France and Germany, sums up the struggle for Verdun as follows:

It is not a battle; it is not a matter of brave charges undertaken by courageous men. It is an engineering feat. The greatest engineering feat that ever has been attempted in history is in progress. A mountain of forts is being assaulted. Shells filled with explosives, shrapnel shells, huge howitzer shells, are but details of the undertaking. The assault is not being made with men. It is a vast engineering enterprise carried on with machinery, just as a modern factory turns out its product, not by hand labor but by machinery. The quantities of ammunition have been calculated in units of 100,000 tons. The totals will reach a million tons. To transport this vast ́material railroads have been built and macadam roads laid in parallel courses over each strip of territory to be traversed, over each square mile of new land conquered. A whole nation has set itself to the completion of an engineering feat with the aid of modern science, modern machinery and vast forces of men organized by the aid of the telephone and telegraph into the most perfect working mechanism of men and machines that can be created.

What is true of the German operations is equally true of the French. Like the Germans, the French are carrying on a vast engineering campaign, with machinery, railroad construction and artillery of enormous range and power as the main implements of warfare, operated by many thousands of brave men.

We too have a war-though a "little war"-on our hands. Conpared with the scale of fighting at Verdun our operations against Villa

are insignificant. The Germans report that 36,000 French prisoners have been taken at Verdun to date

-a number almost equal to our entire mobile army. The losses on both sides run far beyond 100,000 men, or more men than America has under arms for all purposes.

But the equipment and material efficiency of both the German and the French armies at Verdun furnish an interesting basis for comparison with the equipment and material effectiveness of our own expedition "somewhere in Mexico."

More than 300 aeroplanes are in use on either side at Verdun, and the observations of the aviators have played an important part in the defense as well as the offense. We had six aeroplanes at the border when the trouble broke out, and two of them have been wrecked, while the remaining four are not working satisfactorily enough for long flights, such as are necessary in the pursuit far into the interior of Mexico.

At Verdun the artillery on both sides has done all that was required of it, without a hitch or a breakdown. In Columbus, when Villa made his murderous raid, the losses to our soldiers were swelled by the fact that one of the machine guns failed to work. This weapon had been condemned as far back as the Cuban campaign-and was included in the equipment of a part of the American army which had been sent south on the assumption that its services might be needed at any time.

At Verdun the problem of food and supplies has been solved by the creation and maintenance of a commissariat on wheels such as the world never saw before. "Some

where in Mexico" our soldiers are compelled to subsist on parched corn and to resort to the native hide sandals to replace worn-out shoes because their supplies cannot be transported in time to keep up with the moving columns.

At Verdun every shortage of any sort is quickly made good by the operation of a vast network of railway feeders. In Mexico the movement of our cavalry is badly hampered by the lack of remounts, which cannot be forwarded to the "front" in time because Carranza declines to gives us the full use of the Mexican railways.

And while all these things are going on Washington is trying to decide, not how these serious defects in our war organization can be most quickly remedied, but whether Congress, the War department or the commanding officers are responsible for a situation disheartening in the extreme and ominous of future disaster when this country shall have a real, and not a "little," war on its hands.-April 14, 1916.

AMERICA

From England comes the statement on official authority that "Charlie" Chaplin is no less a patriot than the man in the trenches. Mr. Chaplin gets vast sums for doing ridiculous things that make people laugh, and as a loyal Britisher he is investing his immense earnings in British bonds, thereby helping to maintain sterling exchange.

No doubt Italy considers Enrico Caruso no less a patriot than Eng

land deems Mr. Chaplin. Signior Caruso sings for Americans and gets and takes back to Italy enough money to pay for possibly a quarter or a half million bushels of wheat.

America needs some patriots. It needs patriots who will plan to put back into the soil that of which the earth was robbed when the quarter or half million bushels of wheat that represent Caruso's high notes were grown. It wants patriots who will restore the farm lands of America to a state of fertility that will mean forty bushels of wheat to the acre as were produced when the land was rich, instead of from thirteen to fifteen bushels to the acre as is the average now that the land has been made comparatively poor.

We cannot impoverish our greatest heritage, the soil, without disastrous consequence. We must put back into the land food, nourishment in place of what we take from it. When this is done the reward is great. But it takes time, money and intelligence.

America needs some patriots in its banks, its manufactories, its corporations-men who think and act for their nation in the spirit of Caruso and Chaplin. It needs men who think first of the nation and who are free from corporation strings or petty ambitions. It needs big men to think for and serve it, to organize and energize its work even to that of safeguarding the farm. Abuse of the soil is folly. The waste, the loss resultant from this one act of national omission is immense. It cries out for correction, yet it goes without correction. Sept. 13, 1916.

OUR OWN ESSENS

"The Bethlehem plant could turn out for this country 50 per cent. more arms and ammunition than the Krupp works in Germany."-Charles M. Schwab.

"If we could reach Essen," has been the sigh of the allies, "it would end the war."

the war.

It is very likely that it would end The smashing of the Krupp works would be a blow too smashing for Germany to withstand. But aside from one or two futile aeroplane raids that have been reported, Esscn has not been reached. Fifty miles from the nearest frontiers-and these are the frontiers of neutral Holland and captured Belgium-Essen seems in no immediate danger.

But how about our American Essens? Have they been as carefully placed as Essen, with the possibility of an invasion of this country in mind? The Krupp works are not government owned, because in Germany the state does not take up work that can be done better by a corporation, but the government has kept as closely in touch with the manufacture of ammunition as if it owned the plants.

The great ammunition plants of the United States are not government owned. Most of them are owned by corporations which are more efficient than the government itself. But the munitions plants, old and new, appear to have been

placed for the immediate convenience and profit of the owners, and with little thought of the possible needs of the nation in the event of

war.

There are so many opinions as to what an invader could accomplish in America that a discussion of the

subject is more interesting than useful. Your student of strategy will tell you that an invader would first strike at the north shore of Long Island Sound, with a view to cutting off New England. We have three or four towns that are described as "American Essens," and, curiously enough, two of them are on the north shore of the sound.

With no desire of frightening the folks of Bridgeport and New Haven, we wonder what plans our army experts have made about them. The munitions plants in these cities are great resources to America. Since the war they have been almost doubled in size, not by putting up flimsy buildings, but by adding modern structures filled with modern equipment. These Connecticut manufacturers evidently believe that the stocking-up process of Europe after the war will keep their shops busy for years; nor is it likely that they left the arming of America out of their considerations.

If New England cannot be invaded, if Long Island Sound is impregnable, well and good. But if our defense experts are not certain