June 8,19271

The Nation

of thispower.In
a number of theStateslawslikethis
have already been passed, and it cannot be denied that they
have been in response to a growing demand for something
of this kind. But, if the proceeding is not profoundly safeguarded,terriblewrongs
t o individualsmayensue.
It is
reportedthatInCaliforniaalone
635 insane people have
beensterillzed.Butwhocaneverbecertainthatsanity
may not be restored? Remarkable cures
do take place and
personsrecoverthelrwltslongaftertheircasesseemed
hopeless. Obviously every
possible
protection
must
be
thrown about this procedure lest it become not an advance,
but a weapon of mischief, cruelty, and perhaps even revenge.

URING THlS PERIOD when the public

is so justly
critical of the legal profession and court procedure, it
will do no harm to add one trifling bit
of evidence. A t a
meeting of the American Bar Association, held i n Milwaukee in 1912, the following resolution was adopted:
Resolved, That as I t has never been contemplated t h a t
members of the colored race should become members of this
association, the several local councils a r e directed that, if a t
of them should recommend aperson of the
any time any
colored raceformembershlp,theyshallaccompanythe
recommendation wlth a statement of the fact that he 1s of
such race.

The American Bar Association is a lawyers guild or trade

union. It hasnosocialaspects.Thepersonalcontacts
of
its members consist solely of meetings called for consideration of professionalproblems.
Of course,theconstitution
of theassociationdoesnotbarNegroes.Infact,
a few
colored men were admitted about the time this resolution
waspassed.Manywhitelawyersdeclineelection
tothe
association as long as this restriction is on the books. Why
notapologize f o r its enactment,expunge it from the records, and abolish a discrimination ordinarily
condemned by
the leaders of the bar when practiced
by labor unions, as
well as other groups, against colored citizens?

HESTATEOFCRIMINALJURISPRUDENCEand
communal
enlightenment
in
Amherst,
seat
of the
Alma Mater of John W. Burgess, Frank M. Goodnow, MunroeSmith,Harlan
F. Stone,Dwight W. Morrow,Calvin
Coolidge, and other eminent barristers and Jurists, has Just
been revealed by two news notes in the Amherst
for
May 18, 1927, which read as follows:
Judge Webster Thayer of Worcester recently called on his
daughter, Mrs. Warren S. Gault, In Amherst. As a representative of the dignity and Integrity of the judlcial system
of Massachusetts Judge Thayer commands respect and admiratlon In Amherst.
The Smlth College sovlet, ahas the Hampshlre County
Progressive Club, held a meeting in John M. Greene Hall in
NorthamptonThursday
evening. Thehallwas
crowded
The speaker was Clarence
S. Darrow, who has devoLed the
greater part of hls life to saving assassins from paying the
penalty of then- crimes. H e 1s best known as the man who
saved the llves of Leopold and Loeb, Chlcago youths, who
committed one of themost
fiendish crlmes everknown
Them parentswereverywealthy.AtNorthampton
Mr.
Darrowsthemewaseducation
a s a preventive of crime.
His audience, thoughnot
on trial for their llves, was
aroused to a frenzy of enthusiasm. When Jesse Pomeroy is
freed he may be able t o accept lecture engagements. Then
the Smith College sovlet could listen t o the other side.

625

Charles Lindbergh
HE happlest feature of the countrys acclaim of Captain
Lindbergh 1s t h a t f o r once, everybody, of every shade
of opinion,canagree.Thereis
no room fordissent.A
marvelous achlevement was accomplished in a faultless manner by a young American who embodles within himself the
finestAmericancharacterlstlcs.The
only discordantnote
comes from certain militarists in Washington, who dolefully
warn us that Americas isolation is at an end, that the sea
is no longer a rampart of defense.Everybodyelsehas
reJoiced,notmerelybecause
I t was
anAmericanwho
achieved the impossible, but also because there was an international aspect to the feat. Ambassador Herrick may exaggerate when he declares that Captain Lindbergh has wiped
out all the Ill-will which has exlsted in France agalnst
us,
but there can be no questlon that he has rendered an enormousservicetobothnations.Thefearsthat
a success
would hurt French feelings have been proved baseless.
No
welcome could have been freer from envyorhurtpride,
none could havebeenmorecordial,morespontaneous,
or
more overwhelming than that given by the French Government and people to the young man who stepped out
of his
airplane and said simply: I am Charles Lindbergh.
Equally gratifying has been the bearing of the hero. A
skilled diplomat could nothave done better.Histurning
overtotheorphansandwidows
of Frenchaviatorsthe
150,000 francs given for a gold cup; his call on Mme Nungesser; his toast to France as the land of the greatest number of greataviators;hisacclaim
of theveteranLouis
BlCrlot as his master; his tactful speech to the Chamber of
Deputies-all these reveal an old head upon young shoulders
over a warm and sympathetic heart. Moreover, his refusal
to consider the offers made to him for public appearances,
whlch would makehim a mill~onaire overnlght, is in the
best tradition. When he declared that he had never thought
of money in connection with his exploit, he taught the youth
of his country a finer lesson than he did by the courage and
fortitude of hisflighttowardthesun.Inanhourwhen
public emphasis is so largely upon things purely material, it
IS glorious to find a youth who can remaln a modest gentleman seeking no undue reward and can keep his head in the
face of the greatest applause and fame ever given atosingle
individual.
That he will remain unspoiled is our devout wish-one
has only torecallhowthehero
of Santiago,Captain
Hobson, lost his head in
1898, t o realize what might have
happened. The Government and the rest
of us shouldhelp
him to maintain hls balance and his modesty
by not overdoing the honors everyone wishes to bestow
upon him. We
are sure he had rather come home by steamer than be convoyed by a flotilla of destroyers. The ordeal of official receptions can hold no charms for him who stole away in
Paris
toput on overallsandoverhaulhlsplanehimself.Let
us
not ask the impossible of Charles Lindbergh, and let us, as
we are sure he would wish, remember that he was not the
first to cross the Atlantic. We must not forget the extraordinary skill and gallantry
of John Alcock and Arthur W.
Brown, two British gentlemen and soldiers, whofirst crossed
fromNewfoundlandtoIreland
by air, in 1919. America
can best show her pride and gratltude by refusing to spoil
onewho, we sincerely hope,will always remain one of her
finest assets.

626

The Nation

[Vol. 124, No. 3231

~-

Governments, Spying, and Propaganda

ITHgovernments as toooftenwithlndlvldualsthe
deadly sin lies inbeingfoundout.That
is what
causedsuchexcitementinWashingtonsomeweeksago
when it appeared that important and revealing documents
of ourembassyand
its militaryattach6hadfoundtheir
way into thehandsoftheMexicanGovernment.
So, in
London, a Cabinet which was lookmg for an excuse to break
offrelationswiththeSovletshasmadeskliiul
use of the
famrllar fact that the Russlans, in violation
of their trade
agreement, were engaged in propaganda in Great Britain.
Mr.Baldwinchargesthattheyboughtstolendocuments,
governments do it-but
thesensawhich 1s probable-all
tional raid o n Arcos House did not produce any stolen documents,andtheinformationaboutrevolutionaryactlvltles
w a s apathetic fizzle. One Russianhad a two-year-oldlist
of addresses of Communlst oEces in Canada and the United
States-which
might have been obtained from a telephone
book--and of well-known Communist sympathizers ; another
Russian official who was not supposed to engage in propaganda asked Moscow for more data on British atrocities in
China.Anotherseizeddocumentestablishedthefalsity
of
Russian statements-nlch
nobody ever believed-that
Borodin was not a Soviet agent.
All this proves that the Soviet Government
1s no pure,
white-winged angel. Like other governments,
its agents he,
suborntheft,andviolatesolemnagreements.
As propagandists foi- anewandtheoreticallybetterworldorder
their actions have stood in their own way. Their business
wastomakeasuccess
of Communism a t home-il
they
could-and leaveotherstotheirway
of life.Insteadthe
Russians have aided revolution where they could, notabiy in
1s thattheyare
looked upon with
GelmanyTheresult
susplcloneverywhereandhave
now losttheirtradeand
politicalarrangementswlihEngiand.Whateverelsethis
IS, it IS not statesmanship.
all governments
When all 1s saldanddone,however,
spyuponeachotherandstealeachothersdocuments,as
Lloyd George frankly stated in the debate In t h e Commons
on May 25. They do not, of course,oftenseektooverthrow
another
government,
as
Mr.
Wilson
set
out
to
overthrow Huerta and as he tore down the governments of
Halt1andSantoDomlngo.Thefact
1s t h a t while the
United States Government swears friendship to Great Eritam, its army and navy staffs are forever working
on plans
for war with our former ally, and we maintain in London,
Paris, and every other capltal military and naval attach&
who arenothingbutrecognizedspies,sentthereforthe
purpose of discovering,byfairmeansorfoul,everythlng
they can about the military and naval secrets
of the countrytowhichtheyareassigned.ThestolenBritishWar
Office document 1s notanisolatedincident.
On May 24 it
was announced in Vienna that two
employees of the Austrian Foreign Office had sold important documents to Russia
It appears that a systematic traffic 111
and other countries.
the secret papers of the Foreign Office had been going on
for a long time; exact copies being offered to every legation
in Vlenna. The Soviet attach6 when arrested possessed the
complete correspondence of Austria with England, France,
Bolshevik
and Italy concerning their joint defense against
propaganda. It is also stated that the purchase by French

officials of certain Austrian documents was revealed by PremierPoincarkhimself.

On thesamedayaLithuanian
general, Kleszlnskl, was arrested in the act
of selling a secret military document to a Russian.
FewAmericans
will,we
suppose,rememberthatan
officer of the United States army, Captain Henry D. Borup,
was hastily recalled from Paris in 1892 because in his capacity as American milltary attach6 he was publicly charged
not only with buying French military secrets but reselling
themtotheGermanandItaliangovernmentsfora
consussideration.Thelatterchargewasapparentlynot
tamed; for the other, Captain Borups defense was that all
hehad done wasabsolutelywithinmylegitimateduties
a s a military attache of the United States Legation toward
a friendly Power. In this he was defended
by the London
w h x h 1s now so outraged by the Soviets doing the
sameihing.
It wrote:CaptainBorupwasentitled,
eve1z
bound, to obtain docurnents for the benefit of his own count r y and government. . . . A case similar to that of Captain
Borup 1s spoken of ashavingoccurred
at St. Petersburg.
I n t h a t case the attach6 was recalled by his government, but
a higher post. Captain
hewasafterwardappointedto
Borup remained on the army rolls until he died. Why not?
A dispatch to the New York
defending him declared
in these words that this was a universal American practice,
officially sanctioned :
The Unlted States officers who are sent out under what
as t h e D m s l o n of Military Informatlon are
allowed somethmg hke $50 a month t o buy documents and
plana which m a y be offered for sale This
sum wlll not go
veryfartowardsecurmgvaluablematerlalanywhere,at
homeorabroad
. . . H eh a d a t his disposal on hlspersonal accountsomefundswhich,
I t IS thought,hemust
have used
1s now known

Plainly Captain Borups only offense was that he got caught.

S o did the English official who, Premier Baldwin declares,
so apwasfoundto
be sellingsecretstoRussiansand
parentlydidtheBritishlieutenantcommanderwho
now
languishesinprisonawaitingtrialforsellingsubmarine
as yetunnamedforeignPower
plansandsecretstoan
It 1s a nasty, despicable business, unworthy and reprehensible, but every government indulges in it, and it will
continue as long as the war system, with Its lying, deceit, and
chicanery, 1s retained.
AsfortheRussianpropaganda,
we shouldlike once
moretostateourposltionabout
it. It is physicallyimpossible for any country to exclude such things as the ComIt 1s impossibleto
munistmatteroriginatinginRussia.
buildwallsagalnstideas.Ideascanbefought
only with
ideas and false assumptions or theories combated with correctones.TheUnitedStates,inwhichtheCommunist
movement 1s negligible, has nothing to fear from revolutionary doctrines as long
as the government is honest,
devoted
t o the people, andJust.Ifthebulk
of our peoplebelieve
the United States IS living up to its ideals, nothing on earth
canendangeritsinstitutions.Thedangerousenemiesare
within.TheyarethosewhopervertAmericanliberties,
who would enthrone special privilege and class government
in favor of the rich and powerful, who sneer at democracy
and openly cry for dictator.

June 8,19271

The Nation

For Recreation Read the Best

HEfourmonthsfrom
May 16 toSeptember
15 are
commonly dismissed as dead months so far as the buslpubness of books 1s concerned. Authors groan when their
lishers tell them that the biography or the novel which was
scheduledforAprilhas
been put off untilJune.Thereviewers wlll be out of town, they say; readers of all classes
will beon vacation from the routine
of literature as well
as from the routine of life, hence their handwork
will be
still-born.Andinlargemeasuretheir
Pears areJustified.
The publlshing world has thus far devised
no w a y of preventing that summer slump which 1s the curse of so many
trades. Or at any rate
it has accepted the notion that the
slump 1s necessary,andceaseslate
In thespringto
put
forth energetic efforts at supplying the public with important new titles. Ey the beglnnlng
of June, the assumption
13, the best of the current offerings will have been selected
by crltlcsandreaders;andthe
hope is, no doubt, that a
portion of the public will resolve to get that selection read
before fall if time and weatlxr ~ ~ V G Y The11
.
w i l come the
autumn flood.
The whole question IS one that might be gone into wllh
somethinglikethethoroughness
of theexammation now
NatlorL atld Atherlaeum by John
being made in the London
111. Keynes,MlchaelSadleir,StanleyUnwln,BasilElackwell andothers, of theBritishsituationwithrespectto
books Somethlng IS wrong,theyallmoreor
less agree,
with the Gritlsh public which buys books;
I t does not buy
enough of them, or it buys the wrong ones,
o r i t depends
too much on circulating libraries, o r it 1s too seldom made
the SubJeCt of diligent study by those having t o do with the
circulation of literature-publishers,
agents,
booksellers,
critics,
and
perhaps
authors
themsdves.
The
storm
of
argument aroused here In the United States by the Llterary
1s evidence that we
Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club
have our problems too. And it is plain that we are very far
from having saturated our pubilc wlth
good reading matter Thesalcs of occasional volumes areamazinglylarge,
and there must be those
who feel that we have decidedly
too many books as it I S ; but the fact 1s that the majority
of Americansneverhear
of thebest
books at all save
throughaccldent,andindeedarenotprompted,from
one
IS R
yearsendtoanother,torememberthatliterature
thing which constantly is i n process of being created.
What, then, to do about the summer? The first thing
is to realize that summer 1s an excellent season for reading,
and to recogn~ze that great many persons do avall themselves of it. We should like to see figures on the numbers
and kinds of books consumed in the Unlted States betweeil
May andSeptember. We think they would be surprlsingl;
large; and we suspect that they would show an overwhelming preference not for new books at all, or at any rate for
lightones,butforclassicstowhlchthebusywinterhas
given no decentopportunity,ortolongandserious
books
We
of thepassingyearwhich
need leisureforperusal.
suggesttopubllshersthatsummer
is theseasonforreprints of famous books, however old-books
thatcitizens
are ashamed of never having read. And we recommend that
they by no means cease in June to push important titles.
You
Here even is a slogan: For recreation read the best.
cant forgetyourselfwitha
poor book Forgetyourself
wlth one that is worth the price.

vv

627

Looking Toward Peace

HEN Arlstide Briand, the French Foreign Minister,

said last spring that France would be glad to agree
wlth the United States to settle mutual disputes by arbltrat o war,surprisinglylittle
tlonandtorenouncerecourse
attentionwaspaidtothesuggestionatfirst,but
it has
recentlycrystallizedintwodefiniteproposals.TheAmeriW. Bok, has given
can Foundation, established by Edward
to the press the draft of a general treaty for the settlement
of all internationaldisputesthroughconciliation,through
arbltratlon by the Permanent Court
of Arbitration at the
Hague, or otherwise, or through Judicial settlement by the
PermanentCourt of InternationalJustice(WorldCourt),
T. Shotwell of the Carnegle
Almostslmultaneously,James
Endowmenthasmadepublicthedraftofanarbitration
treaty that could be entered into between the United States
was assisted
and France or any other nation. Mr. Shotwell
J. P. Chamberlain of
~n drafting this treaty by Professor
Columbia University. The proposal has the indorsement
of
Nicholas Murray Butler, president
of Columbia University.
While drawn in response to Premier Briands suggestion, the Shotwell treaty is not limited to France.
It 1s hoped
t h a t it may serve also for agreements with Great Britain,
Japan, Germany, Italy, and other countries. Its appearance
at this hour IS especially timely because the Bryan arbltrationtreaties-withFrance,GreatBritain,and
Japan-all
e s p ~ r e n e x t y e a r a n d new agreements are desirable
if the
movementtowardinternational
peace is t o continue.The
draft treaty of Messrs. Shotwell and Chamberlain 1s f o r t h e
most part a combination of the principles and machinery of
theBryantreatiesand
of thosenegotiated a t Locarnoin
19% between representatives of France, Germany, Belgium,
Great Britain, Italy, Poland, and Czecho-Slovakia.
The first article of the proposed treaty renounces war
3s a means of settling dlsputes although wlth some qualifica2, in the
tions. The stipulation shall not apply, says Article
case of the exercise of the rlght of legitimate defense, that
is to say, resistance to a violation
of the undertaking contamedinthepreviousarticle,providedthattheattacked
party shall at once offer to submit the dispute to peaceful
settlementorto
comply withanarbitralorjudicial
declslon. The Monroe Doctrine
1s also preserved by excepting
from the operationof Article 1 action by the United States
of America in pursuance of its traditional policy with reference to the American continents, provided that the United
States will use its best endeavors to secure the
submission
to arbitration or conciliationof a dispute between an Americanandanon-AmericanPower.
The proposal of the Amerlcan Foundation is the more
comprehensive, as it 1s a general treaty and includes international disputes of all sorts, even those which are supposed
to involve national honor. It 1s suggested that the House
andSenate,byJointresolution,requestthePresidentto
call aninternationalconferenceforadoptingthetreaty.
But the very comprehensiveness of the plan probably militatesagainstitsearlysuccess.Moreover,theadvocates
of
the plan feel that the entrance
of the United States to the
its adoption. The Shotwell
World Court is a prerequisite to
treatyislessambitiousbutmoreimmediatelyrealizable.
It could beused as the basis of an agreement between the
United States and any one other country without reference
to our membership in the World Court.