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MENDING LOCOMOTIVES IN A SHIPYARD

A

DAPTABILITY is said to be an American virtue, and it extends to our industrial plants. When the Volstead Act closed the breweries, they opened again as manufactories of ice-cream and breakfast foods. When the armistice threatened to shut down the big shipbuilding plants, some of them started to take in other work. Herbert R. Simonds tells us in The Iron Trade Review (Cleveland), how the repair of locomotives has been one of the by-products of these concerns. A shipyard of 1830 certainly could not have mended a clock, much less a steam-engine, but a modern ship is a mass of steel machinery, not so very different in principle from the iron horses that draw our limited expresses.

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jobs in connection with overhauling and repairing locomotives fall directly in line with the customary work of a shipbuilding plant. Checking over the list of shipyard crafts and marking off those which are used for the repair of locomotives leaves few unmarked. Machinists are used in repairing the valve gears, truing up bearings, and in general work at nearly all points of the reconstruction. The ship boilermakers are transferred with little difficulty to the repair of locomotive boilers. Ship painters quickly learn to paint locomotives and tenders. The electrical department of a shipbuilding plant comes in handy in repairing locomotive generators and in taking care of the wiring which in modern construction is extensive. The pipe and copper shops of a shipyard are used for general locomotive piping. Tinsmith shops take care of the lagging. Joiners build cab-decks and other light wood construction. Ship carpenters build bumpers and tender decking, and ship-fitters woodwork on tenders. Ship

Tracks laid on the concrete floor transform a shipyard machine shop into a locomotive repair shop. This method of laying the track is said to have proved most satisfactory.

Mr. Simonds tells us that the shipbuilding plant can be used for rebuilding locomotives with a minimum of adjustment. We read:

"Disarmament pledges dealt a severe blow to large shipbuilding plants which have specialized in Navy work. Cancellation of government contracts and the loss of government new business were responsible. With a large modern plant and an excellent personnel, officials felt it highly desirable to keep the unit intact. To do this and to provide for the large overhead, more work had to be secured. What, then, was to be done? To a greater or less degree nearly all large shipyards have been faced with this problem. Two lines of work are immediately suggested-the repair and construction of locomotives and other railroad equipment, and the fabrication of steel for buildingconstruction. This latter field offers an excellent means of taking care of ship-riveters, and possibly some boilermakers, but these groups form a comparatively small proportion of the normal ship-plant personnel. The repair of locomotives, on the other hand, utilizes nearly all of the regular shipyard trades and requires comparatively little change in shop equipment. Moreover, there is something similar in the general product. Both ships and locomotives are used in transportation, and this furnishes a link of no mean importance between the industry of shipbuilding and that of locomotive construction. The country is in urgent need of locomotive repairs and of new transportation equipment generally. In fact, as one shipbuilder has pointed out, the demand for railroad equipment far more than offsets the reduction in demand for ocean vessel tonnage. Considering these points the repair of locomotives seems to be one of the big fields which must be turned to at the present time to save the country's large shipbuilding plants. The Fore River yard was one of the first plants to start this line of work, and at present it is probably engaged in more extensive locomotive repair work than any of the other yards.

"It is surprizing to find upon investigation how many of the

riveters repair steel-plate work on tenders. The blacksmith shop and the foundry furnish important service in the repair of tie rods, smokestacks, boiler supports, and many heavy pieces in connection with both the locomotive and the tender.

"A large machine-shop of a shipbuilding plant requires almost no change to enable it to take care of a moderate amount of locomotive repair work."

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Locomotive repairs, Mr. Simonds tells us, are given different classifications according to the amount of work to be done. When a locomotive is received it is first stript of all piping. This often is done in the yard. Next, the locomotives are taken to the main machine-shop, where the cab is removed and transferred to a cab-repair section which occupies a balcony at one end of the building. He goes on:

"Next in the repair sequence the complete body of the locomotive is taken off the wheels and placed on temporary trucks, which are used for transportation as the work progresses.

"Early in the process of overhauling all tubes are taken out of the locomotive boiler and the boiler is scaled and cleaned throughout. Usually

a new fire-box is necessary, and in any case some repair must be made.

"Electric welding occupies an important place in locomotive repairing, but this is a decidedly familiar operation in the construction of large steel vessels, and, there fore, no special adaptation is necessary.

"Work, of course, must conform to Interstate Commerce Commission requirements, and this governs many of the points in connection with repairs.

"Auxiliary pieces, such as air compressor, injector, generator, etc., usually are taken off and sent to specialized departments for repair. Practically every generator which comes into the shop must be overhauled, and this is done without difficulty by the ship's electrical department. The air compressor is a somewhat more specialized piece of apparatus, and wherever repairs are extensive the whole compressor is sent to the compressor department of the railroad shops. New tanks, however, are made up in the tinsmith shops; castings in the foundry; and braces, hand-rails and handles in the blacksmith shop. Painting is necessary on all work. This is done mostly by comprest air

spray.

"Many parts, such as grates, fire-box doors and bells, are either bought from the railroad or else supplied in accordance with the terms of the contract. This necessity of buying new parts which are stocked by a railroad and which, of course, are not carried by a shipbuilding plant causes some complication in the adjustment of contract price.

"At the time the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation decided to go into locomotive repair work, the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad was in urgent need of outside assistance, owing to the fact that its railroad repair-shops had been out on a strike for some months. The Fore River yard, being in a peculiarly advantageous position, secured a contract for the repair of fifty locomotives. Of this number over twenty-five have been delivered to date. The progress on the repairs to these locomotives has been unusually good, and the workmanship has been entirely satisfactory to the railroad. At the present time there are approximately 500 men employed on this work at the Fore River plant."

LITERATURE DRAMA MUSIC FINE-ARTS EDUCATION CULTURE

I

AMERICA AT CHAUMONT

T WAS FRANCE EXPECTANT that we saw typified in the monument being raised at Pointe de Grave, where the first American troops landed on European soil for the World War. Our issue for June 16 contains reproductions of this notable work. But it is not alone here that America is memorialized. Another

monument was dedicated on June 3 by the President of the French Republic"a marble figure of France holding a battered poilu to her bosom while with outstretched hand she welcomes an American soldier as her eyes seem to follow the Marne, twisting its way down the battle-fields of the World War drenched with the blood of many brave men." In this phrase Mr.

Edwin L. James reports to

the New York Times the character of the work that now stands at Chaumont, the site of the General Headquarters of the American Army. Then he reports the remarkable speech of Premier Poincaré, not omitting to refer to the still unfulfilled promise earlier made by President Wilson to secure the permanent safety of France, "that because the hands of the Allied statesmen" were clasped across the peace table, therefore they "would never loose their grasp." "They have loosed it," said the Premier, "but that is the choice America has the right to make." The Premier reviews the entry of America into the war; the coming of General Pershing with a handful of officers; his establishment at Chaumont. He said in part:

"Scarcely arrived, those young Americans, burning with enthusiasm, which re

he recalled how, the day after the German retreat, by the side of General Pershing, he had explored the ruins of his native village, Champigny. He painted a glorious picture of the American effort in the Argonne, which so largely contributed to Ludendorff's defeat. In

Copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood, New York

fact:

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"When the Americans saw France invaded and ravaged, her very existence threatened, they came to defend the country which had bent tenderly over their cradle. They felt that in the shell-torn fields France fought not for herself alone, and that if in the eighteenth century the cause of America was, as Franklin said, the cause of humanity, that our cause was the cause of all civilized nations."

Then he turns to that aspect of our relations to France, which impresses with puzzled amazement most thinking Frenchmen, that a nation spurred by

its idealism should sacrifice so much for an end and leave that purpose half completed:

"Despite the exaltation of our common victory, some of us had a presentiment that the peace was going to be harder to win than the war; that Germany, then stunned by our blows, would try to escape our hold; that the diversity of our national interests would soon embarrass the unity of our action, and that even tho united by the same sentiments, there would come a day when each of the Allied and Associated Powers would resume in association and in alliances its own conceptions and its particular initiatives. The fourteenth of December, 1918, the day President Wilson, acclaimed of all, reached Paris, I said to him: 'Like you, France to-day hopes for a peace of justice and security.' And I added, 'For the miseries and sadness of yesterday peace must give reparation; against the perils of to-morrow must give guaranties.'

RECEIVING THE DOUGHBOY

The monument at Chaumont, American Headquarters in France, typifying
"a spirit of everlasting fraternity beyond the power of the living to destroy."

called the days of the Crusades, hurled themselves into the fight with a defiance of danger which our soldiers, experienced in a pitiless war, tried vainly to urge them to avoid."

Summarized by Mr. James, he told how one day at Chaumont General Pershing had led him to a map and shown him how he would drive the Germans out of the St. Mihiel salient, and then

"The negotiations began among government chiefs, and on June 27, 1919, at the moment when the Treaty was about to be signed in the same city where in 1783 the sovereignty of the young America was acclaimed, I said to President Wilson: "The delegates of the victorious countries have not worked for long

months and have not called to Versailles the delegates of conquered Germany to have in their hands only a scrap of paper. Like you, we wish that peace be not a vain word, not a floating hope, not just a ray of light for a Europe covered with blood. We have already too many indications; the future calls for watchful control. Ships sunk by their crews; French flags burned by soldiers; the strange clashing of arms along the frontiers of Poland-they are not signs of repentance. Real peace can come only from continuing machinery.'

"I exprest the hope that this continuing creation would be the collective work of the Allied and Associated peoples, and I concluded: "That which is going to be signed will be worth little if not constantly vivified by the spirit of concord which dictated its framing,' and President Wilson answered me: 'We have finished the drafting of the peace, but we have only begun to plan the cooperation which I believe will be enlarged and consolidated in years to come, so that the hands which we shake now shall never part.'

"The hands have parted, and to our great regret the cooperation has not continued as we hoped. America, which was not bound by the compact of 1914, and which had the right to conclude a separate peace, did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles.

"She judged that after throwing her sword into the European balance and having swung it on the right side, she could not in an intimate manner mix any longer in the agitated politics of the Old World, whose uncertain movements she could not follow closely. And she went back home, but without taking back her old and faithful friendship. But in this voluntary isolation she is not indifferent to the efforts of France and her European allies, particularly those most directly threatened by the Germanic peril, to assure the peaceful realization of the Treaty of Versailles."

From this point he turns to the great question of the present, upon which not all our people see eye to eye with him. Thus:

"America has not allowed her sympathies to be turned by the bitter propaganda which Germany has resumed since the War, and those American delegates who attended the Pasteur celebration at Strassburg Thursday saw for themselves how absurd and audacious were the two principal German lies. To pretend, as agents of Germany in the United States do every day, that the question of Alsace-Lorraine remains open, that it has not been settled by the Treaty and by the elections which followed it; to pretend that its people are not attached to France with all their soul, that they are disturbed by some secret misery-these charges they have seen to be lies. And when the American doctors on Thursday heard the multitude singing the 'Marseillaise,' perhaps they noticed that among the soldiers were many black men who bore themselves well. If they had asked the Mayor of Strassburg he would have told them that these native soldiers were honest people, well trained, goodnatured and liked by the residents.

"But, anyhow, America herself has repulsed these poisonous lies, and when we entered the Ruhr she did not believe for one moment, in spite of German insistence, that we and our Belgian friends were stricken with the folly of conquest. With that admirable common sense which characterizes her, she said, on the contrary, that we were right to count, first of all, on ourselves for the execution of the Treaty, and that when a nation knew what it wanted and acted in accordance with that knowledge, it gave the best guaranty of success and the surest claim to the esteem of other peoples. If we had had any need of proof we should only have had to turn to the United States, which has always been bound to a strong love for humanity, to a very attentive consciousness of its national dignity, and which has never consulted anybody but itself about the defense of its essential interests. Surely, Americans would never think that France, not having obtained all the cooperation she had the right to expect, should hesitate to take within the limits of the Treaty the measures necessary to oblige Germany to keep her promises. Americans would not have understood if France left the population of the devastated regions in distress, without demanding of Germany, whose cities were all intact, the reparations she had promised.

"It was not to consecrate any such mockery of justice that 50.000 sons of America fell on our battle-fields and sleep to-day in the folds of the soil of France. Many of their mothers and wives have not had the sad consolation of coming to weep upon their tombs, but they know their loved ones rest here beside their French companions. Surely they do not wish that in the country which they so bravely defended the sleep of their loved ones shall be some day disturbed by new invasions."

The New York Tribune and The World are two representatives of diverse views on this question. First, The Tribune:

"France has gone into the Ruhr on a righteous missionto make collections from a defaulting debtor. The United States would do the same thing under similar conditions. We are strongly committed to an honest settlement of all the war debts. It is natural, therefore, that American sentiment should strongly sustain France and that our friendly interest in her undertaking in the Ruhr should be accentuated by the emotions stirred at the unveiling of France's tribute to the heroism and sacrifices of the A. E. F."

But The World thinks President Poincaré is "perverting the facts and misleading the French people":

"For the fact is that the American Government protested officially through its Secretary of State against the invasion of the Ruhr. The fact is that the President of the United States was opposed to the invasion of the Ruhr. The fact is that financial opinion, organized labor and most of American industrial leadership deem the Ruhr policy unwise and destructive. "Responsible opinion in this country differs as to the degree in which the Ruhr adventure should be condemned. There is much sympathy for France and a disposition to make allowThere is a disposition to apologize and explain and wish France well. But among people whose judgment is based on information, only a handful could be found to say that the French policy is wise, constructive, and effective.

ances.

"If M. Poincaré does not know this, his agents here are not keeping him correctly informed. They are telling him what he would like to hear, not what he needs to hear. They are reporting the kindly sentiments toward France, which almost everybody entertains, and neglecting the critical judgment which in matters of State policy counts most in the end."

N'a

FRANCE WORRIED OVER STAGE LAXITY UDITY ON THE FRENCH STAGE has reached such a point that Monsieur Andre Antoine, founder of the Theatre Libre, and recently director of the Odeon, raised his voice in protest. He was quickly followed by many of the leading Paris papers, and for a time it looked as tho Paris would be having something akin to our "clean book” campaign on its hands. "What more could be done than is done to-day,” says Pierre Brisson in the Temps, "such as showing under glaring lights, and multi-colored projectors, the unclad?" But, he complains, "the public itself is not yet sated and keeps demanding more audacity, and in order to satisfy this taste each producer keeps on bidding higher than his neighbor." In the Revue de France, the famous novelist and Academician, Marcel Prevost, discusses the question of regulation, and declares that between the extremes of all or nothing in the matter of exposure, governments and municipalities reach only uncertainty and confusion when they attempt to determine the amount of clothing to be worn on the stage. He cites in this connection the diametrically opposed opinions on this subject of Father de Ravignan and of Monsieur le Legat in Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris." Who is right, he asks, "Monsieur le Legat, who would not be terrified one bit at being entertained by three mermaids . . . or the young Xavier, who was upset because the bodice was slightly below the collarbone of the young lady who was wearing it?" Then he essays

an answer:

"For my part, I would see no objection to having these limits so strict as to appease the modesty even of a Ravignan.

"It was not the appearance of the mermaids that proved to be especially novel and attractive to me at some of the music-hall spectacles which I attended recently. A poor girl of 1923 can attempt nothing more difficult than to pose pleasantly as a mermaid: I can understand the resolution adopted by the charming 'Sentimental Vagabond' of t'Serstevens-tɔ seek mermaids exclusively in his dreams and in his imagination. . . . Moreover, the difference between reality and the imagination in the matter of mermaids is accentuated in the modern spectacles-by the sumptuousness, or let us say, the beauty of the decorations. Some of the mermaid revues (?) are really marvelously staged.

Seenery, costumes, the play of the lights, all enchant the gaze. Would they lose anything if the mermaids, clothed as if for the reception of Monsieur le Legat, were to plunge suddenly and definitively to the bottom?

"I am not so sure of it.

"It is perfectly natural that the human figure should play a part in decorative spectacles which might be described 'of living objects,' just as it is obtrusive in inanimate decoration. Only, it should not be tolerated in living spectacles unless it attains at least the plastic perfection of a respectable work of art. It also should not be tolerated if it is apparent that its participation has as its objective the transforming of a decorative scene into a boudoir exhibition. The first of these two conditions is very nearly to be seen in the superior type of music-halls. Little by little the success of this fashion is beginning to reassemble genuine troupes of select actresses (?) some of whom are commencing to rival the fame of the moving-picture stars. When accused of indecency the manager lays stress on the beauty of his employees and exclaims: 'Woman's beauty is never indecent.'

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AMERICAN DANCING IN RUSSIAN EYES

T

HE LATEST "CHIEL amang us takin' notes" has been Nikita Balieff the head of the "Chauve Souris." Over a year this Russian talked his pidgin English from the stage to delighted audiences to whom he introduced his mummers; and now he is gone, the New York Times has got him to tell what he thinks of us. It is unlikely, probably, that his remarks will be censured by Mr. Hirshfield, for Russia is not an American "menace" at present. We give Mr. Balieff's picture of American dancing both for the novelty of his diction and the quaintness of his observation. He admits he had not yet mastered the language and begs pardon for "grammatical mishaps." He writes this among other things:

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TURNING STEADILY AS GIMLETS

-Stengel in the New York Times.

just the same, and art does not prevent them from exercising a demoralizing effect.

"Theoretically, a living statue of a woman-possessing perfect beauty-does not offend morals, especially if her beauty is characterized (as it always is on the stage) by certain precautions which make it appear more like a real statue. A high court of artists would feel only admiration in front of it. But here is the point! It is not shown to a public composed of artists. It is shown to an average crowd accustomed to see drest women, who only take off their garments in private. Before awakening their sense of art this statue will violently startle them. The fact that it is nude will impress them far more than the fact that it is beautiful. And their surprize will cause ideas to shape themselves which naturally are associated with this fact-in a non-artistic brain. This is what stage-managers of great spectacles can not ignore.

"True, they will counter . . . 'I will admit the surprize and its consequences. But how quickly this surprize vanishes! To-day the public is as well trained as the artists. As in the times of Quasimodo and of Monsieur le Legat, the matter has become part of custom. Let us not yield to false modesty. Many are shocked by pictures and statues! Must one on this account begin by depleting the museums, commencing with the Vatican?""

This objection of the manager plays not with words, but with ideas, says Monsieur Prevost, and he rejoins:

"A greater difference exists between the nude in marble and a living nude than between a draped statue and a nude one. Life enters into it. There is the reciprocation of sentiments between a living being who knows that she is being gazed upon and living persons who gaze upon her for their pleasure."

"Terpsichore is the most favored goddess of America. The whole nation dances - dances in its own individualistic style, a truly American style. You look upon the dance just as you do upon your business undertakings. Not upon dances, but simply upon the dance. For nowhere is anything danced by anybody except the fox-trot.

"The Americans dance without temperamentality, without playfulness, without noise, without coquetry. Whirling and whirling around, a hundred couples keep steadily at it, just as if each couple were trying their utmost to bore a hole in a surface forty to fifty inches square. All this emulation of the carpenter proceeds to the wild sounds of a jazz band. This jazz band ceases not to play for a single moment, since if it did cease for a single. moment all the dancers would start to strike their hands against each other for all they were worth, no matter how much it hurt, until the sounds of the jazz band were heard again. It seems to me that in this continuous dance the hitherto unsolved problem of perpetual motion has now been mastered, and that this endless whirling, if applied by skill, could afford a boundless service to science. "At all hours of the day and night Americans dance-before meals, during meals, after meals. Many even dance before breakfast on an empty stomach. And I must not forget those who while dancing the fox-trot absolutely forget the pangs of hunger or multitude of hours.

"In America the dance has not one thing in the least to do with age or social standing. The dance is the possession of the wealthy. It is the possession of the poor. The dance isnational. The jazz band to which the fox-trot is danced was purposely invented for the resurrection of the dead. In olden times people supposed that the sound of the Archangel's trumpet would announce the Day of Judgment. Now, progress and civilization will replace the trumpet with the saxaphone.

"The music belonging to every nation on the globe is twisted into a jazz. The fox-trot can be danced equally well to Chopin's 'Funeral March, as also to Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March.' There are millions of dance tunes specially designated for the fox-trot.

"In an atmosphere thickened with tobacco smoke, intoxicated officially with White Rock and ginger ale and unofficially with whisky, these endless couples whirl and whirl around, everlastingly bumping into each other. It is a gruesome picture, full of weird fantasy, an illustration for the stories of Edgar Allan Poe."

HISTORY AND FICTION AS INTERNATIONAL

66

"P

TROUBLE-MAKERS

RO-BRITISH" AND "UN-AMERICAN," so far as these phrases represent the supposed predilections of history makers, probably contain equal ingredients of offense. Mr. David Hirshfield, Commissioner of Accounts in the City of New York, has recommended a ban on eight textbooks on American history now in use in the schools on the ground of their pro-British propaganda. Mr. Hirshfield has spent a year and a half examining these books after being ordered to do so by Mayor Hylan, who received complaints against them. These books are charged with carrying a post-war tone of friendliness toward Great Britain, and with suppressing the old "consecrated maxims" such as "taxation without representation is tyranny." "An American History," by David Muzzey of Barnard College, stirs Mr. Hirshfield deeply. Muzzey, who is known as of old New England stock, is charged with proBritish propaganda. Mr. Hirshfield's proofs are such as these which we select from the New York Times' abstract of the report:

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"This great event (the American Revolution) has too often been represented as the unanimous uprising of a downtrodden people to repel the deliberate unprovoked attack of a tyrant upon their liberties; but when thousands of people in the colonies could agree with a noted lawyer of Massachusetts that, the Revolution was a "causeless, wanton, wicked rebellion," and thousands of people in England could applaud Pitt's denunciation of the war against America as "barbarous, unjust and diabolical," it is evident that, at the time at least, there were no opinions as to colonial rights and British oppression.-Page 90.'

"When we review, after a century and a half, the chain of events which changed the loyal British-Americans of 1763 into

public schools is highly amusing." The Committee appointed by the Board of Education 'to examine histories thinks that the Commissioner got hold of old editions, which are already revised for present use, while the head of the department of history at Columbia, Prof. Carlton J. H. Hayes, is quoted in the Herald as saying:

"The whole matter would be screamingly funny if it did not have its serious side. I suppose the idiotic campaign, of which this is a sample, that has been sweeping the country to have history text-books rewritten will soon have for its object an

Copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood

GUARDING AMERICANISM Commissioner of Accounts, David Hirshfield, appointed by Mayor Hylan to censor school histories.

rebels in arms against their king in 1775, we see that the cause of the Revolution was a difference of opinion as to the nature of the British Empire.-Page 106.'

"A debatable question, namely, whether the abuses of the king's ministers justified armed resistance.-Page 115.'

"Hirshfield also condemns Muzzey's characterization of those who engaged in demonstrations against the Stamp Act as 'the mob' (Page 97). He criticizes the inclusion of the word 'patriots,' in quotation marks, in Muzzey's reference to Hancock, Warren, Otis and the Adamses on Page 102, and the omission, in connection with the Revolution, of the names of many American heroes. He also resents the 'inadequate and inaccurate' description of the Battle of Lexington, the lack of 'detail or spirit' in telling about the taking of Ticonderoga, the disposition of Bunker Hill in seventeen words, the reduction of Brandywine, Germantown and Valley Forge to two sentences, and the limitation of John Paul Jones's career to one sentence.

"In fact,' Mr. Hirshfield remarks, 'the entire account of the military and naval actions of the Revolution is comprest into less than ten pages, in a book of more than 500 pages.' On the other hand, he points out, Muzzey gives a full page and a half 'to a detailed military history of the "British victory" at Quebec in 1759.'

"Mr. Hirshfield quotes from Pages 118-9 of Muzzey to show that the nations which helped America in the Revolution are represented as being actuated by 'mean, selfish motives.""

Mr. Hirshfield's report is voluminous and detailed, but the reactions to it from other sources are not impressive in their respect for his critical powers. The Superintendent of Schools, Mr. William L. Ettinger, is reported by the New York Times as saying that "the very idea of the Commissioner of Accounts investigating such a subject as the teaching of history in the

above the rest.

amendment to the Constitution providing that no history shall have more than onehalf of one per cent. of truth in it."

The implication of the Hylan faction is that these histories contribute to a plot to remerge us with the British Empire, upon which point the New York World comments:

"Nobody would object to an investigation, providing it were an investigation of the historical facts in question. Once this is settled it will be time to take up the international plot. The only difficulty is the lack of time. Ever since the first graduate schools were established in the United States there have been historians at work on the records of this country from its earliest settlement down to the régime of Mr. Hylan. New evidence is unearthed continually. Some of it, unfortunately, tends to refute Mr. Hirshfield. Not much of it corroborates him. To find out with exactness whether Great Britain is unduly favored as a nation in the histories accused would require decades, if not centuries. The critical authorities, so far, are against the Hirshfield contention.

"And who, it might be asked again, is Mr. Hirshfield to dispute the decision of historical experts, even those who wrote these texts? Has he himself any standing as an expert, or does he present any evidence? In a sane world this latest aberration of Mayor Hylan's would set the city by the ears. But the Municipal Administration is all funny. No one jest stands out Even Mr. Hirshfield draws less laughter of

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late than he deserves."

Since the cry is up for revision and elimination of pro-British books every day seems to bring forth news sources of bewilderment. If we are to take Anti-Americanism as the same thing, then Theodore Roosevelt's "Naval War of 1812" sins all along the line. A correspondent signing himself "Equity," writing to the New York Times, points out passage after passage where the author deals harshly with his compatriots. Here is a part of the letter:

"On page 12 he says: "The war opened in midsummer of 1812. Hull's campaign was unfortunate from the beginning.' Page 13: 'Eleven hundred Americans got across (to Canada) and were almost all killed or captured by an equal number of British, Canadians and Indians; while on the opposite side a larger number of their countrymen looked on, and with abject cowardice refused to cross to their assistance. The command of the Army was then handed over to a ridiculous personage named Smythe, who issued proclamations so bombastic that they really must have come from an unsound mind.' On page 17 he relates: 'Later in the season the American General McClure wantonly burned the village of Newark (apparently in Ontario) and then retreated in panic flight across the Niagara.' 'In retaliation the British in turn crossed the river; 600 regulars surprized and captured in the night Fort Niagara, with its garrison of 400 men; 2,000 troopers attacked Black Rock... captured and burned both it and Buffalo.' 'Before these last events took place, another invasion of Canada had been attempted, this time under General Wilkinson, "an unprincipled imbecile," as Scott properly styled him.'

"On page 18 he says: 'And again a similar criticism should

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