THE OUTLOOK, August 1, 1928. Volume 149, Number 14. Published weekly by The Outlook Company at 120 East 16th Street, New York, N. Y. Subscription price $5.00 a year. Single copies 15 cents each. Foreign subscriptions to countries. the postal Union, $6.56. Entered as second-class matter, July 21, 1893, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., and December 1, 1926, at the Post Office at Dunellen, N. J., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1928, by The Outlook Company.

WE print in this issue an article which

we found worth more to us in the sudden lassitude of the "Dog Days" than all the political arguments with which the air has been rent these many months. We don't mean Mr. Stefansson's able paper on the Arctic disaster-although the combination of experience and common sense in his piece (added to pictures of real ice and lots of it) seemed excellent to us. We mean Mr. Wainwright Evans's article on his hobby: keeping bees.

So far as personal happiness is concerned, we are willing to wager, after reading it, that one real hobby like this is of more value to a man than all the legislation proposed in the last ten years. Here is life, wonder, excitement, the pride of achievement, and an added interest in existence. How many of us are able to scoff at such valuable things?

A MAN we know recently took up piano-playing as a hobby, although he is far past the age when professional achievement can be expected. Another spends his off days and some of his nights—observing and photographing insect and reptile life in Connecticut; while still another friend, a woman this time, has recently gone in for amateur painting, and is off to Spain during her vacation for a short summer of study and work.

NOT all of us can go to Spain, of course. Neither can many of us collect pictures, or buy Wayside Inns or scour the countryside for fine old furniture to sandpaper and finish on the back porch. We lack the money or the time. But there are literally hundreds of hobbies which are inexpensive and yet satisfy our imaginations and provide new and wonderful windows opening on landscapes never before suspected.

SEVERAL writers have recently told us about their pet amateur diversions, and in the near future we expect to print a number of articles describing them. Meanwhile, can the readers of The Outlook add to the sum total of gayety by telling us about theirs? We don't mean golf. We mean making chairs or constructing amateur telescopes—yes, we have a piece about that—or, well, what is yours?

Francis Profus Bellamy

In Mexico

August 1, 1928

ALVARO OBREGON was the uncontested candidate in the campaign just ended in Mexico for election as President. One man with a gun defeated him.

While the President-elect was sitting at a luncheon in his honor at a fashionable restaurant in San Angel, on July 17, an unknown cartoonist at one of the tables was amusing the guests around him with caricatures of the prominent men there. Later, hat and sketch-book in hand, he approached the head table. Explaining himself to Aaron Saenz, Governor of Nueva Leon, seated with Obregon, he asked leave to show his drawings to the guest of honor and to draw his portrait. Obregon turned to the artist— and with a gun hidden in the hat by the sketch-book the man shot him. Before any one could interfere, Obregon collapsed, face forward, on the table with five bullets in his breast. He died shortly afterward, in the famous gray automobile in which last November he escaped a bomb attempt on his life.

His death threw political affairs in Mexico into the utmost confusion. President Calles is ineligible, according to the Constitution, to election for another consecutive term. Saenz, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs and a follower of Obregon, is also debarred as Governor of a State. Many expedients to meet the emergency have been discussed. Among them, the one most likely of adoption has appeared to be that the new Congress, meeting either in special session in August or in regular session in September, would appoint Calles-if he agrees as Provisional President for two years more. There is no Vice-President to take office; and Mexican jurists have contended that the rule in the Constitution against two successive terms does

not prohibit the appointment of a Chief Executive as Provisional President to carry on affairs in such a crisis.

Motives and Suspects

OBREGON's assassin, who gave the false name of "Juan Escapulario," was found to be José de Leon Toral. He was reported to have been a close friend of a priest who was one of four men executed by the police in connection with the bomb attempt of last November on Obregon's life. Further, he was said to have admitted a religious motive in his act; and the Government and police authorities claimed to have further evidence implicating the clerical party in the crime. They announced that the murderer would be placed on public trial.

At the same time, prominent adherents of Obregon laid the blame at the door of Luis Morones, Secretary of Commerce and Labor and chief of the radical Mexican Labor Party.

Obregon had been guaranteed a great reinforcement of his powers as Chief Executive. In addition to a constitutional amendment putting the appointment of judges in his hands, the States had ratified two other important changes in the basic law. One of them cut down the number of Deputies in Congress from 300 to 150-obviously an easier number to manage.

The other established Federal commissions, to be named by the President, in place of elected mayors and boards of aldermen in Mexico City and other municipalities in the Federal District around the capital. This was a blow at the power of Morones, whose party was able to control these administrations. He has since resigned the post of Minister of Industry in the Calles Cabinet. Morones had

been almost an autonomous authority by reason of his own influence, and his policies had been responsible for much of the trouble between the Mexican Government and foreign interests in Mexico.

Campaign Ammunition

MODESTY is not going to be a characteristic of political money-raisers this summer and next fall. No limit has been placed by either of the two great parties on the size of its campaign fund or the amount of any one individual subscription. It looks very much as if this Presidential campaign were going to cost more than any in the past. Consequently, talk about limiting the amount any contributor can give to either party fund and about keeping down the size of the party funds themselves has subsided. With the appointment of Mr. Raskob, of General Motors, as Democratic money-raiser, the Democratic treasury promises to be well supplied, and the Republican treasury will surely not be under the management of laggards.

Instead of talk about campaign economy, statements now appear explaining why this campaign is to be comparatively expensive. More States this year than usual are fighting-ground. Radio has come in as a new source of expense for campaigners. There seems to be more need than ever to reach the voters by the printed word. The electorate has been enlarged by woman suffrage, and with it the cost of sending circulars, forming organizations, and so on. For thirty years or more Republican funds have been larger than Democratic; now it appears possible that the Democratic fund may approach, if not exceed, the Republican fund. For the Presidential campaign alone it is estimated that at

least $8,000,000 will be expended. Compared with the population, this is not large. It means less than seven cents per person.

This figure does not take into account the money that will be spent by the Anti-Saloon League, the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, and allied organizations. A conservative estimate places the total at $10,000,000.

The safeguard against corrupt contributions and expenditures is not to be any limitation on size, but rather publicity. Both parties will make reports during the campaign, and there will be two committees of Congress one of the Senate, the other of the House-on watch.

Mr. Hoover's Trip West

AN obviously tired man when he left Washington, Herbert Hoover was much refreshed by his visit at the "Summer White House" at Brule, Wisconsin, with President Coolidge. He had been busy finishing what remained to be done before he left the Department of Commerce, which he had transformed by his seven years as Secretary. The severance of personal ties there was not easy for him. With the President he fished a stream he had fished years before, though not in that exclusive part of it. He received, it is said, the President's approval of the draft of his speech of acceptance, to be delivered on August 11. Then he went on to his home in California.

With him was Mrs. Hoover. The death of her father, Charles D. Henry, before their arrival changed the plans for an official welcome. Instead there were services in the chapel of Stanford University, when the body of Mr. Henry was laid to rest.

On the way to California Mr. Hoover was met by various politicians of the States through which he passed and, of course, received assurances of successat least such were the reports for publication. At the same time a farmers' meeting was passing resolutions favoring the Democratic platform as the better promise for agriculture. Most of the more prominent Republican leaders of the so-called "Farm Revolt," however, appear to be content with what they expect from Mr. Hoover. Among those on the Hoover band-wagon is the "Progressive Republican" Senator of Iowa, Brookhart.

Meantime, to succeed Dr. Work (now Mr. Hoover's campaign manager) as Secretary of the Interior President Coolidge has appointed Roy O. West, of

THERE is an obscure plank in the Democratic platform which promises shortly to be neither obscure nor unimportant. It is the plank committing the party to reorganization of Government departments and to elimination of duplication, waste, and overlapping.

This pledge, it is said, was inserted at Governor Smith's request. Now word comes out of Albany that it will figure prominently in his speech of acceptance and, in fact, throughout his campaign. The promise is supported by the nature of Smith's recent conferences, notably with Representative Joseph W. Burns, ranking Democratic member of the House Committee on Appropriations.

What the candidate proposes to do, it seems apparent, is to apply to National administration the simplified practice which he has been instrumental in putting into effect in his State; that is, he will simply be carrying on his old campaign for consolidation of bureaus, elimination of divided authority and overlapping functions.

It will be a bold move to suggest that Coolidge economy might be more economical; but no bolder than the declaration for modification of the Volstead

Act, no more audacious than the selection of a wet, a Catholic, and a big

business man as Democratic National Chairman.

A Bishop's "Politics "

THE editor of "The Journal," Atlanta, Georgia, newspaper, published a letter which newspapers in other sections were glad to print as news. It was a communication from Bishop Warren A. Candler, senior bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. With citations of precedent, he defined his attitude, and what he believed should be the attitude of his denomination, to National politics.

"I see no reason," he wrote, "to dissent from the position of my Church on the subject of personal and party poli

tics, as that position has been proclaimed authoritatively by its leaders from the beginning of its history as a Christian body."

He quoted from a pastoral address of Southern bishops in the troubled days o 1865:

"Know your high calling. Preach Christ and him crucified. Do not preach politics. You have no commission to preach politics. The divinity of the Church is never more strikingly dis played than when it holds on its ever straightforward way in the midst of worldly commotions." "

He quoted Bishop Enoch M. Marvin duty and the destiny of the Church: who said in an article dealing with the

"She will excite the suspicion and hatred of none by allying herself with an adverse party upon issues that arouse the passions of the hour, but lie outside of her proper sphere. . . . She will ab jure both the riches and the power which might reward a lewd and bewitching coquetry with some successful party in the State. She will be known, and loved, and hated as the chaste spouse of Christ. . . . This is the destiny of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, a destiny that she cannot alienate." "

He cited the pastoral message of the bishops at the General Conference in

"It is not amiss to repeat what has often been declared that our Church is strictly a religious and in no wise a po litical body. Our sole business is to preach and serve the kingdom of God.

""There are many questions, economi cal, social, and in part ethical, of burn ing interest in this day, which our pulpit and churches may be tempted to substi tute for the simple Gospel. Men claim ing to be advanced thinkers and wide awake philanthropists may sneer at us as unpractical dreamers and devotees of shadows and abstractions, because we give ourselves wholly to things spiritual and eternal. But Christ is the rock, and only those who build on him build safely.'

"From this established and Scriptural position of my Church," said Bishop Candler, "I feel no disposition to dissent or depart. . . . Offering no criticism of others, I propose to abide unfaltering by this principle, discharging conscien tiously my duties as a citizen and fulfill ing with fidelity my commission as minister of Jesus Christ. On that!

stand. I cannot do otherwise."

This was published on the eve of the anti-Smith gathering at Asheville, North Carolina, fostered by Bishop James Can