Armistice, is important. But the anonymous writer of As They Are gives one a sense of flashing glances here and there rather than of comprehensive vision. In all the types he portrays he sees "the eternal politician."

Herriot he calls "fundamentally soft and doubting." Of Painlevé he says: "If ever the Left comes back to power, may they have him again for their leader! No man could more surely wreck their party!" And of Caillaux: "If a period of public unrest were to open in France, Joseph Caillaux, with his rancours, would become once more a dangerous man."

TAX EXEMPT INCOME FACTS

Taxation and Tax Exempt Income. Report of Federal Trade Commission. (Senate Document No. 148, 68th Congress, 1st session). Washington, Government Printing Office, 1924. (114 pp.)

This Senate Document, which is also available in the series of reports published by the Commission itself, is the first report under the Norris Resolution of February 28, 1923, directing an investigation of the facts about national wealth and income, their distribution among the different classes of the population, public debt, taxation, and the amount of income exempt from Federal taxation. The part of the inquiry concerning wealth and income and their distribution, which is not yet completed, will be most valuable. It will be the first comprehensive official study of the distribution of wealth and income. Thus far we have had to rely on estimates by private agencies.

The distinctive feature of the present partial report lies in the facts it develops on the subject of tax exempt income: how much it amounts to, and the classes and groups who receive it. Facts on this much propaganda-ized theme_are as refreshing as they are useful. This report will be an excellent reference work when the propagandists again attack Congress seeking a constitutional prohibition against the issuance of tax exempt securities.

FAITH BEFORE THE CHRIST

Homer and the Prophets; or Homer and Now. By Cornelia Steketee Hulst, M. A., M. Pd. The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago, 1925. (89 pp.)

These deeply beautiful essays on religious and moral aspects of Homer aim to bring the great poet back to us as the religious leader of his people. Not for Homer as a classical writer studied for literary beauty, which with the passing of Grecian mythology Homer naturally came to be, but as a poet of the living fervor and faith of his times, does Mrs. Hulst ask our consideration. Hence her chapters on "False Gods' in the Bible and in Homer" and on "The Righteous Gods, 'Gods of the Fathers.'

"To one who looks for it," she says, "the line of growth is as clear in Grecian thought as in Israelitish between the Prophets and their fulfillment in Jesusboth show what is called, in Christian terminology, the working of the Holy Spirit; in scientific, an evolution." Thus she assigns Homer a place very near the Prophets, as if a pagan herald of Christianity.

The book is marked by the author's warmth and purity of feeling as well as

by the insight which turns "learning" into "wisdom."

FAITH AFTER THE WAR The Modern Use of the Bible. By Harry Emerson Fosdick. Macmillan Company, New York, 1924. (291 pp.)

Mr. Fosdick in this series of Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale gives the basis for his belief that the Bible can do something real and vital for the people of America today. He would remove many difficulties of belief by the modern knowledge that every idea in the Bible started from primitive and childlike origins, from which it grew in scope and height, with many setbacks and delays, toward culmination in Christ's Gospel. The Bible is, therefore, the record of an amazing spiritual development.

Without denial of evolution, the fight between the Neo-Darwinianism which makes nature brutal and war-like and Christianity which makes it spiritual is clearly drawn. Christianity lets us dare think that spiritual life in man is the revelation of creative reality, is God coming into our humanity; so that Christ's ideals are not visionary but are now dawning as the bases of the real world.

BEVERIDGE'S PRESENT VIEWS

The State of the Nation. By Albert J. Beveridge. The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Indianapolis, 1924. (277 pp.)

In this latter-day statement of his political and economic views, ex-Senator Beveridge leaves no doubt as to his positions. He discusses our foreign relations; the Constitution; the railroads; bureaucracy as a dour and largely useless regulator of business; the office of President and its relation to party machinery and to the legislative branch; and finally the Supreme Court.

He suggests that the Supreme Court might voluntarily agree not to invalidate an Act of Congress unless six of the nine believe it unconstitutional.

NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL ETHICS

Ethics and Some Modern World Problems. By William McDougall. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1924. (256 pp.)

Neither affirming nor denying the criticism that he is "an American Nietzschean reactionary," Professor McDougall, of Harvard, asserts that he is in principle and sympathy a democrat, one, however, who does not regard democratic government as an end in itself nor the only possible form of good government. He nevertheless regards it as the only form under which the nations can go forward to higher levels of civilization, bringing reasonable dignity and happiness within the reach of the great majority of mankind. His thesis is that any system of ethics is inadequate which ignores the fundamental question of the possibility of improving humanity itself as a basis for improving the relations of states and peoples to one another.

World civilization has developed two conflicting ethical systems-the National, which unchecked leads to disasters like the World War; the Universal, which unmodified leads to universal stagnation and decay.

In an effort to synthesize this conflict, Professor McDougall prescribes a true internationalism, a society of strong na

tions each acting as a sensitive and sympathetic moral organism; each with a wholesomely democratic political organization in accordance with the dictates of Universal Ethics, yet giving due recognition to the aristocratic principle required by National Ethics.

The book is an ethical supplement to the same author's psychological study of The Group Mind, a Putnam book of 1920.

CONCERNING MUSCLE SHOALS

Muscle Shoals. Hearings Before Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. 68th Congress, 1st session, Washington, Government Printing Office. 1924. (1562 pp.)

Muscle Shoals. Debate and Votes in "Congressional Record." 68th Congress, 2nd session. 1924-1925; 69th Congress, special session of Senate, 1925.

As the newspapers from time to time will be carrying news of the President's Muscle Shoals Commission and the War Department's activities regarding the Shoals, students will need the background of information contained in the references above cited. They will repay close study by any one interested in a sound settlement of the Shoals question.

The hearings before Senator Norris' committee are comprehensive. They give the text of the proposals (or bills embodying them) for leasing or operation of the Shoals, except the later Underwood proposal; and the testimony of the proponents of the various plans, together with a vast amount of fact data presented by experts. Among the many important witnesses were: Major J. H. Burns, United States Army, Washington, D. C.; Morris L. Cooke, consulting engineer, Philadelphia, Pa.; Dr. F. G. Cottrell, director Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.; Judson King, director National Popular Government League, Washington, D. C.; E. G. Liebold, secretary to Mr. Ford, Detroit, Mich.; Benjamin C. Marsh, Farmers' National Council, Washington, D. C.; F. H. Newell, American Association of Engineers, Washington, D. C.; Gifford Pinchot, Governor of Pennsylvania; Theodore Swann, Birmingham, Ala., president of Federal Phosphorus Co. and the Federal Chemical Co.; Brig. Gen. Harry Taylor, United States Army, in charge of construction at Muscle Shoals; J. W. Turrentine, in charge of potash investigations, Bureau of Soils, Department of Agriculture; John W. Weeks, Secretary of War; James Gilbert White, president, J. G. White & Co. (Inc.); Dr. Milton Whitney, Chief, Bureau of Soils, Department of Agriculture; and E. A. Yates, representing the Associated Power Companies.

The most significant portions of the great Muscle Shoals and power trust debate and the important votes are contained in the Congressional Record of the Senate for the following days, which also give the text of many pertinent documents:

December 2nd to 5th, 8th to 13th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 29th; January 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 19th, 20th, 22nd, 28th, 29th; February 3rd, 7th, 9th, 13th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 23rd, 26th; March 2nd (House Record); and in the Special Senate Session, March 18th.

Vice President Dawes has made and is making a vicious assault upon the rules of the Senate.

The objective of the Dawes attack is a more arbitrary exercise of cloture.

Cloture means the power to stop discussion.

It means not only the power to stop discussion, but also the power to prevent amendments.

Such powers always gravitate into the hands of a dominant group, usually a very small number of members.

It

Strict cloture, such as the House has, invariably and inevitably operates to set up a boss system. has no other purpose, and can have no other result. Cloture would establish an absolute boss control of the Senate, nullifying deliberation as completely as that is possible.

In this respect the Senate would become like the House, with both branches sinking far below the present level of either.

A machine cannot exist without cloture, or “gag rules." Given a drastic control over debate and amendments, a few "leaders" attain dominance. Their program, whatever it is, can easily be carried out, and any other as readily be defeated.

Instead of stating this crucial truth about the real objects of cloture, Dawes has advanced two excuses for his advocacy of a “gag rule” system, both fallacious, and camouflaged to attract the unthinking.

He professes to seek cloture as a cure for the filibuster. The present Rule XXII provides adequately against filibusters, so far as that practice can be or should be eliminated without recourse to fundamental remedies, such as abolishing the short session and removing the causes of congestion.

He raises the issue of minority strength under freedom of debate, whereas cloture would at once place czaristic power in an even smaller number of machine "leaders," with none of the safeguards of discussion. If the Dawes contention were carried to its logical conclusion, a dominant minority of party bosses would be supreme, and all independence, all real deliberation, would disappear.

The demand for cloture always comes (as in this case), not from within the Senate, but is sponsored by executive influences, because

Cloture for the Senate would establish an administration machine and invest it with boss power to determine every issue. It would mean executive domination of the legislative branch of the Government.

That is the nub of the whole matter.

TH

HROUGHOUT the world today there is a rapidly moving tendency to discredit and diminish the powers of parliaments. The intent and results of this are obvious. Every successful assault upon the law-making branch of government is attended by a shifting of prestige and privilege, both political and economic, to those on the executive side.

Regardless of the form or occasion of these attacks upon parliamentary bodies, whether the immediate objective be bolshevism, fascism, bureaucracy or boss ascendency, the sequel is inevitably a dangerous development toward a personal dictation of public affairs. It is a harking back to the dark days of kingcraft. It means, in America at least, the most menacing of all perversions-that politicians shall be given every opportunity to become despotic, with no functioning agency of checks and balances.

Here the movement has progressed to a point where but a single obstacle stands out against the absolutism of ruling class power. Administration predominance is already established in all fields save one the national legislature. There executive domination is hindered solely by the fact that its traditional freedom of debate renders the Senate uncontrollable.

Cloture would change all that. It would remove the last obstruction to bossism throughout the public affairs of the Republic.

The "Dawes proposal," therefore, brings us face to face with the final test of whether or not our representative system is to endure. The issue cannot be camouflaged to hide the hideous truth. Cloture for the Senate would mean abject, boss-controlled subserviency on the part of the law-making branch. Instead of a government "deriving its powers from the consent of the governed," it would completely be malformed into a perpetual condition whereby "the consent of the governors" would prevail.

The legislative branch of the Government has fallen far below the level of safety for American institutions. The remedy is not further to degrade it, by destroying its last vestige of independence, but to lift it above the bossism that already exists, to make it less, rather than more, amenable to dictation from other sources.

The American people are jealous of their liberties. They are sound and sensible. There is little likelihood of a popular stampede on an utterly false issue, particularly when the proposal is ultra-radical and revolutionary.

Moreover, the present Senate seems certain to stand like adamant against any abandonment of its most fundamental safeguard.

Opposing Dawes, a formidable force of thoughtful, conscientious Senators is already in action.