dence of this tendency. Following his discussions with Foreign Minister Briand, of France, that proposal has gone to Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Their agreement in principle is to be expected, although there are certain to be many reservations and adjustments of points of view to be discussed. But beyond this most sweeping program, it is a period when conciliation treaties are the diplomatic fashion. Mussolini has just ordered the signature of a new general arbitration agreement between Italy and the United States, to replace the expiring Root treaty. In southeastern Europe, Greece has recently concluded a treaty of amity with Rumania, the first between any two Balkan countries since the World War. And she is attempting to reach a similar understanding with Bulgaria-a more difficult enterprise in view of their border rivalries. At the same time, Turkey is said to be seeking to make compacts against aggression with both Greece and Italy. So the contemporary spirit is making itself felt in what has been the most disturbed area of the Old World. Perhaps another reason than economic concerns is to be found in the study of the World War just published by the League of Nations, showing that it cost -including combatants and civilianssixteen million lives. IN 'N AMERICA we have never taken "the movies" very seriously, despite the size and scope of the motion-picture industry. But in Europe American films are in for a fight. The producers of European films take our films very seriously. And they are set to storm the Hollywood line. As a first step, one of the most important French producers has just signed an agreement with British and German film interests for close co-operation, including exchange of pictures and other arrangements of mutual advantage, to "break the stranglehold of Hollywood." The present limited production facilities in Europe make the immediate threat not very disturbing, but the combination holds considerable possibilities for the future. We may be at the beginning of a struggle to a fade-out between flickering cohorts headed by Emil Jannings and Douglas Fairbanks. Will Hays, representing the motionpicture producers of the United States, has been in Paris attempting to come to an understanding for modification of the new French restrictions against American films. The French Film Commission has postponed application of the quota scheme which the Government has authorized to limit American picture importations. But it has adopted a program providing that for each French film purchased for the United States four American films may be admitted to France. The intention, clearly, is to force an American market for French pictures by limiting the French market for American pictures. That is a prospect that American producers do not like to contemplate-and that American audiences might like still less. So the big American companies are refusing to distribute or sell any films in France, on the ground that they will not be coerced into buying French films for the privilege of doing business. When the French theatres begin to run short of American pictures, the test of strength will begin. Incidentally, Mr. Hays has said in a solemn interview that not a single film should leave the United States which might wound the feelings of another people abroad. But that will be far from soothing to European producers. The less irritating American pictures are to foreign spectators, the less the foreign producers like it. The real cause of the trouble now is exactly the popularity of American pictures. The problem of European producers is to make Americans flock to their pic under a contract signed last year, involving $40,000,000 credit for six years. Apparently, the hitch was due to unwillingness of the Deutsche Bank of Berlin, through which the financing of the scheme was to be arranged, to provide the guaranties required by the New York bankers who were to supply the funds. CON OMMUNISM-or agitation for Communism is worrying Japan. The alarm appears to be a little exaggerated, for out of more than a thousand men arrested in a recent round-up of suspected radicals, only twenty-six have been held for trial. The Government's investigations have resulted in an order to dissolve the Ronoto Party, the League of Proletarian Youth, and the Japan Labor Council as Communistic organizations. The Ronoto Party, which won two Parliamentary seats in the recent general elections, has retorted in a manifesto repudiating Communism and charging the Government with attacking the labor movement under cover of forestalling revolution. The anxiety of Japanese officialdom appears to have had its rise in the activity of the Ronoto Party, the "leftwing" group of the labor movement, in the election campaign. In the field there were forty Ronoto candidates-as many as all the other labor groups had-although the party was known to be poor. Then contributions were traced to Communist agencies in Berlin and Moscow. The international activities of the Communist movement heading up in the Soviet capital are sufficiently well known. So the policy of the Tokyo Government has a certain realistic basis, even if the danger does not seem very menacing. No one would strike quicker than the Soviet Commissars at a political organization financed from abroad. HANGHAI has been admittedly an in tures as Europeans crowd to see the Snational "white men's port" in the loathed productions of Hollywood. A forced admission of European films would not compel American audiences to pay admission to see them. The picture's the thing. Far East. Significant of the new influence of Chinese Nationalism is the election of three Chinese to the Shanghai Municipal Council and of six other Chinese to its advisory committees. For the first time, the Council becomes a mixed body-the other members being five Britons, two Japanese, and two Americans. As a step forward in relations between Chinese and foreigners, this development of co-operative association in the Shanghai city government is of importance for the future. It points the way out of many of the difficulties over rights that China has granted in the past to aliens within her borders. T the Chicago Laughs and Big Bill Loses HOSE who have come to think of Chicago as the last frontier of something or other-the British Empire, the Sicilian Mafia, or even honest-to-goodness Americanism-must have been slightly disappointed in the primaries of that turbulent city, ballyhooed for months in advance as authentically Homeric. It was not so much that violence simmered down to a single murder; Chicago's real flop as a pro ducer of passional political melodrama lies, I suspect, in the fact that she did not go on being the defiantly wayward sister of American municipal extravaganza. To be as hard-boiled as she is supposed to be, Chicago should, after openly throwing herself into the arms of Thompson-Crowe-Small machine once more, have announced with a string of blistering criminal slang and epithets that, if the rest of the United States didn't like it, the inhabitants could go sell themselves back to King George. Now in turning on political wassail and corruption just at the moment when she was supposed, in popular legend, to have taken them on for life Chicago behaved very much like the flapper who after a few swigs from the hip flask and a few Rabelaisian wisecracks suddenly insists that it is time for her to get home to bed so as to be abroad bright and early next morning for her Sunday-school class. This may be very admirable of her, and show she has a clean, wholesome character beneath this veneer of conventional modern devilishness. But to those accustomed to look for their best emotional shocks to wild young women and big cities it is neither so breath-taking nor so interesting as it might be. Especially if one happened to be a spectator in the city on the great day of blood and promised mayhem, one may be inclined to think that Chicago owed him a little. more hell for his money. To be sure, Chicago's lone primary murder was done in the local grand manner-automatics and machine guns blazing out from a speeding motor's' running-board at a luckless Negro exservice man serving as a Deneen worker in a strong Thompson precinct. But one murder in a city of three million and several hundred square miles of territory can hardly be considered a public spectacle for the visitor earnestly expecting to see a revival of Renaissance assassina By DUNCAN AIKMAN tions. And beyond it nothing much happened. An anti-Thompson work was shot in the arm, more or less tenderly, and half a dozen men threatened one polling-booth with sawed-off shot guns-only to be dispersed by a little diplomatic parleying. There were a few sincere but chivalrously conducted slugsincere but chivalrously conducted slugging matches, four or five dreadful outcries that certain precincts had not given a single vote for the anti-Thompson, slate, and a few thousand complaints that anti-Thompson poll-watchers were being hampered in their work by dirty looks and cross words from Thompson election officials. On the whole, though, on a bigger numerical scale, it was very much the same sort of an election that I remember in the small Indiana city of my boyhood. It was no more corrupt, contentious, and murderous than elections in certain backwoods New Mexico counties today, when the boss is subtly in doubt as to which State ticket he can double cross most profitably. The disappointed stroller about Chicago on April 10 saw, in fact, not so much gun butts and armored male lingerie as poll workers chatting with pretty girls just as they do when they are electing a Democratic Congressman in Virginia. IT T would be unfair, however, to suggest that this mildness came to the fore because Chicago's political gangsters are more like Charles Lamb than they have been represented. The real factors, I suspect, which produced a primary no more sanguinary than a Hollywood party were the technical position of the gangsters in the voting and the temper. of the majority which beat them. That position was quite evidently hopeless almost from the first hour of the voting, and the temper of the victors-perhaps a sign of returning sanity in American emotional life-was not cantankerously crusading, but cheerful and amused. Concerning the Thompson-Crowe professionals, for instance, Mr. George Olvany and his lieutenants would doubtless be justified in informing them condescendingly that they had a good deal to learn about politics. They did not know enough on Tuesday morning to realize that, in the present state of "Big Bill the Builder's" disfavor, his candi-▸ dates had little more than the certain organization strength to rely on, and that if the vote promised to go much above 550,000, out of a registration of approximately twice that much, the Crowe-Thompson slate was licked. From Y the first rush in the morning it was evident that the vote would go close to 700,000, with possibilities of its touching some fabulous high-water mark even above 800,000. It was obvious then that public sentiment was dealing a cold deck to the "America first" statesmen, and equally. obvious that nothing could be done about it. For, while the ThompsonCrowe machine has resources which it has demonstrated, not all of its members, naturally, are accomplished thugs and ballot thieves. The organization, for all its famed morale and recklessness, simply was not up to the task of falsify, ing, terrorizing, or even assassinating a majority of from 150,000 to 300,000 votes. It may have been organized to take care of a little private vengeance every day or so, but it was not ready for war on the scale of the campaign about Verdun. The only thing, then, for the machine strong-arm workers to do was to lie down gracefully and let the steamroller pass over them, meanwhile remembering that a low average of homicide and homicidal assaults for the day might be a personal convenience when the new State's Attorney took office. Hence they lay down instead of shooting, and Chicago's reputation as the Calamity Jane of American cities is sullied. If the contest had been nip and tuck, Chicago might have done more to live up to her dark and bloody ward/fame. In fact, the precincts where violence was most nearly up to standard were those where the fight seemed to be uncertain longest or where, due to the immense emotional loyalties inspired by the Thompson-Crowe ballyhoo, the early evidences of the Deneen successes were received with the vague and bloodshot eyes of uncomprehending hero worshipers. But mostly it seems, from the gangster's point of view, to have been a case of no chance, no bullets. Moreover, from the very first the lifesaving apathy of this "What's the use?" (Please turn to continuation, page 680) T Democracy and the Demagogue HERE are limits beyond which a demagogue cannot go except to his own undoing. Fortunately for democracy, the more complete the demagogue, the more likely he is to overstep those limits. In this fact democracy finds some measure of safety. William Hale Thompson, Mayor of Chicago, has thus acted the part of the almost perfect demagogue. Like the pathogenic germ which stimulates the blood stream to create antibodies, he went to such lengths that he aroused in the citizenry of the city a public sentiment that has at least arrested the progress of the demagogic, ailment. It is thus that democracy may hope to acquire immunity. It is this process of self-immunization which English observers of American democracy from Lecky and Bryce to Claud Mullins in the current "Atlantic Monthly" seem to take too little account of. They have diagnosed the disease of demagogy well. The same disease they find wherever democracy has developed-not only in America, but also in England. It assumes several forms. Lecky saw it using the power of the unpropertied masses to suck its sustenance from the propertied few. And Mullins notes that that is what it does in England, where receivers of the dole have sufficient political power to insure the continuance of the dole. Politicians of the demagogic type make use of this power to keep themselves in office. In Chicago demagogy has taken another form. It has played upon prejudices. It has put ignorance into power that it might not be hampered by intelligence. But just because the demagogue is less limited in Chicago than he is in England by tradition and the sense of public obligation that is an inheritance from the landed aristocracy, "Big Bill" could go to extremes. His cultivation of the lawless elements naturally led to bombs and machine guns. And his erection of a stuffed image of King George as a political opponent led to ridicule. Chicago became both a reproach and a laughingstock, and then the people rose and smote the demagogue. Dictatorship may bring a Mussolini and democracy may bring a Big Bill Thompson. But if there is oppression under Mussolini, dictatorship has in itself no cure. If, on the other hand, there is disorder and clownishness under Big Bill, the cure is in democracy itself. But the cure is not necessarily permanent. Big Bill was once voted down and out, and he came back. What the voters of Chicago have got in Big Bill's place is not yet clear. Indeed, Big Bill himself remains in office. The immunity will wear off. Anti-bodies are of no service in a corpse. If citizenship is to save democracy, it must stay alive. T Why the United States Is Not in the World Court HE World Court was recently the subject of debate in the United States Senate. The occasion for this was a stream of letters urging Senators to support the Gillett resolution suggesting to the President further negotiations concerning our adhesion to the World Court. These letters were prompted by the American Foundation (Inc.) Maintaining the American Peace Award, Many, perhaps most, Americans have doubtless forgotten that the United States has already agreed to join the World Court-on conditions. To but one of these conditions have any other countries objected; but to that one twenty-three nations have sent unfavorable responses. This condition is known as Reservation No. 5, which reads: That the Court shall not render any advisory opinion except publicly after due notice to all states adhering to the Court and to all interested states and after public hearing or opportunity for hearing given to any state concerned; nor shall it, without the consent of the United States, entertain any request for an advisory opinion touching any dispute or question in which the United States has or claims an interest. It is the word "claims" in that reservation that is the stumbling-block. The reason why it is there is this: Advisory opinions do not settle specific cases. They are purely for the guidance of the League of Nations. As the League is a political body to which the United States does not belong, the United States does not wish to give its sanction to an opinion on a matter in which it claims an interest without its own consent. The objecting nations feel, however, that by accepting this reservation they would assent to the putting of the United States in a position of special privilege. That is one obstacle to our entrance into the Court. But there is another one which has been largely forgotten because it does not seem to be an obstacle at all. This is the resolution adopted by the Senate as follows: Resolved further, As a part of this act of ratification that the United States approve the Protocol and statute hereinabove mentioned, with the understanding that recourse to the Permanent Court of International Justice for the settlement of differences between the United States and any other state or states can be had only by agreement thereto through general or special treaties concluded between the parties in dispute. At present the United States can submit or respond to a suit before the World Court by a simple action of the President. The United States does not need to be a member of the Court to do that. But if we entered the Court on the conditions stated in this resolution we could not submit a case to the Court or become a party to a case submitted by another nation without first getting a two-thirds vote in the Senate. That would put us further away from the practical use of the Court than we are at present. There is a third obstacle, however, which is more serious than either the reservation or the resolution. It is the indifference of the American people. If the United States were weak and in danger of oppression from the strong, the Ameri can people would be glad to avail themselves of this great instrument of justice. But the United States is strong; and we do not think we need to apply to the Court to secure justice, and we think that we are not in danger of doing injustice to others. It is this psychological obstacle, created by our own sense of strength, that is what is really keeping us out of the World Court and is likely to keep us from using it. Until we realize that courts are for the strong as well as for the weak and that peace can be established firmly only when all nations, both the weak and the strong, recognize the supremacy of the law even over sovereign states, we shall find it easy to avoid action that will commit us to the duty of submitting justiciable disputes to impartial judges. But when we once get rid of that psychological obstacle we shall not find it hard to do away with such obstacles as now appear in the conditions imposed by the Senate. F Prohibition by Sections OR the first time we have been able to analyze the returns from our prohibition questionnaire according to the sections of the country from which they come. For this purpose we have divided the States into six groups. Three test questions from the poll were analyzed for all these groups. These questions were: "Were you in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment at the time of its passage?" "Are you in favor of it today?" and "What is the attitude of your community towards bootlegging?" The returns from every one of the groups show a swing away from the support of the Eighteenth Amendment. Although in some cases the change is not great, there is no instance in which the change is favorable to the Amendment. Outlook readers are still heavily in favor of the Amendment, but perhaps the change in their feeling can best be shown by showing the shift in the percentage of those who were originally opposed to the Amendment and those who are now opposed to the Amendment. T “Dawn" HE debate in England over "Dawn," the motion picture which presents the life, trial, and execution of Edith Cavell, has been renewed in America. In both countries such powers of censorship as exist have agreed to the presentation, but with excisions of incidents the historic authenticity of which is denied and which are therefore thought likely to engender controversy and ill feeling. The discussion inevitably brings up basic questions as to both the moral and æsthetic value of censorship of art and literature. So far, governmental censors have not appeared who have the fine critical sense needed for the task. There are courts and laws to which appeal may be made by those who claim that public decency is affronted or public morals corrupted. Freedom in artistic expression should not casually be denied by an official censordom which is almost sure to be clumsy and inept. After all, public taste and the general approval of what is sound and rejection of what is injurious are in the long run the best censorship. "Dawn" was held back in England, not by an official censor, but by Sir Austen Chamberlain, the British Foreign Secretary, and after remonstrances from German authorities. Sir Austen declared that the scene which showed a German soldier refusing to take part in the shooting of Nurse Cavell, her fainting when she saw the soldier shot, and her death by a revolver shot from the officer of the firing party was "an outrage on a noble woman's memory." Others think this comment pointless, but assert that the incident is purely apocryphal. Generally, Sir Austen objected to this scene because it could only "provoke controversy over the grave of a woman who has become one of the world's heroines." In a letter to a London newspaper Lord Birkenhead, a member of the Ministry, declared that the question was not one of censorship but whether it is "in the interests of peace and international good will that we should perpetuate by public exhibition those incidents of the war which most embitter its memories." He resented eloquently the suggestion that "the existence in London of a statue to the heroic and incomparable woman whom it commemorates forever is inconsistent with these views." He quoted Edith Cavell's words: "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for any one." It is stated in the press that protests against the showing of "Dawn" in this country have been made to the United States Department of State. The New York State Department of Education, which has rather indefinite supervision of films shown in the State, has approved the production with slight changes. This is not the first time that war film dramas have hurt sensitive feelings. To Americans the French protest against "The Big Parade" seemed simply absurd-never was there a case where more clearly no offense was intended. Let "Dawn" be shown! If it is venomous, false, or injurious, reprobation will stamp it as that. If it is an honest drama that does justice to a noble woman who died for her country, it will be received with honor. In a self-governing country, the people must, in the last analysis, be their own censors. A What Do You Think It Is? FRIENDLY critic asked me recently if the storm of criticism, confusion, and misunderstanding concerning the Companionate Marriage which has raged about my head for the last year had caused any modification in my own conception of the Companionate Marriage. My first impulse was to say, "None whatever." Then I thought it over; and my answer, subject to qualifications which I shall make presently, was, "Yes." By which I mean that criticism and the evident confusion of thought which has grown up around this Companionate program have led me, for clarity's sake, to a fresh formulation of the idea. It has not been a change in my Companionate program, but it has been a shift of emphasis which, I think, presents the whole program in better perspective to minds untrained in sociological thought. In other words, the necessities of the situation have forced me to delve deeper and deeper for the truth and substance of the matter; and, while it has not been altogether pleasant to face opposition which was too often. biased and unreasonable, yet the vine becomes more fruitful from rigorous pruning. I am far better able today to win the support of reasonable people to the Companionate program than I was when this matter first came to the attention of the public. It is unfortunate that one cannot approach the formulation of a new idea, or of an old idea from a new angle, with a clear-cut, prophetic knowledge of just how the mind of the ordinary human pillar of conservatism will work. If one could anticipate the workings of the average mind to that extent, it would be By BEN B. LINDSEY Whatever the effect of Companionate Marriage on the present institution, the expression has become a part of our language and seems likely to have a place in new editions of a well-known dictionary. In the meantime Judge Lindsey is busy trying to show that it is not "trial marriage" nor "free love" nor any of the many things his critics have called it; in fact, his lecture experiences have about convinced him that his own definition of his own program is the only one that is not widely known. famous. On the other hand, perhaps nothing I could have said would have overcome the suggestion of original sin which that word "Companionate" carries to the inveterately puritanical American mind. It so clearly suggests the notion of people enjoying marriage that not even the marriage ceremony seems capable of making it respectable. In a country whose popular premise in sociology, as in religion, is that sex is sin, and that it is capable of becoming something else only by virtue of a miraculously cleansing rite, I doubt if that word "Companionate" could have been smuggled past the clerical guards unchallenged by any means whatever. It would inevitably be as a red rag to all who believe, with St. Paul, that it is better to marry than to burn, and that we would all be a lot fitter for heaven if we didn't marry at all-marriage being, by this code, a concession to our sinful lusts. HE word "Companionate" makes a possible, perhaps, to contrive an orien- peculiarly illuminating and vivid tation so crafty and so canny that one could finally slip the central idea home as skillfully as some philanthropic pickpocket might make you a present by inscrting it into your pocket undetected. I suppose I should have been able to do that; and indeed, if I could start over again, knowing what I now know, I think I could. But that creates the second horn of a dilemma; for if one turned the trick that way, the Companionate idea wouldn't attract the slightest attention, so conservative is it and so free from the rumored wickedness which has made it appeal to the imagination. I only wish it might illuminate the understanding as easily. One thing that convinces me that it was the appeal of this word that really stirred up most of the fuss, by creating in the minds of conservative people a violent fear for the safety of society and the "foundations of the home," is that in "The Revolt of Modern Youth" we suggested the very same program under the name "Non-Procreative Marriage," and that under that name it was never attacked nor even commented on by people who most bit terly disapproved of the book. There is nothing in that term "non-procreative" that concretely suggests a good time. It is coldly negative, scientific, and impersonal. But change it to "Companionate," and you have a conception that makes the sinful heart of the average man or woman leap in sympathy. No wonder the newspapers gleefully translated it into "Trial Marriage" and "Free Love," and read into it implications of license and unrestraint based on the idea that here was a way of accepting the privileges of marriage while rejecting and avoiding its responsibilities. So I have learned, at the cost of headon collision with an immense body of ill-informed public opinion, how painful is the task of any one who, in response to the urge of an idea, dares finally to bring it forth in order that it may grow and develop in contact with the outside world-its crudities, its imperfections, its flounderings, its strivings toward an equilibrium, all displayed to the view of people who, generally speaking, do not like to think, and have no sympathy or tolerance for this painful business of creation. One explanation of the furor created by the Companionate Marriage idea is to be found in the fact that the book itself was a growth, an attempt to answer attacks which began while the early chapters of the book were being published serially in the "Red Book" magazine. The early chapters were devoted to setting forth certain conditions in marriage; and it was my confident expectation that those chapters would draw the most violent denunciation from conservative sources. To my surprise, the evidences of disapproval were very slight. The storm did not break until after publication of the fifth installment, where I advocated some provision by which, through legalized birth control, marriage might be made practicable for thousands of young people who are delaying marriage for economic reasons produced by this industrial age. Perhaps I should not have cited the case of a delinquent girl to show the need for some change in the way we regulate and order marriage. The inference seemed plain to a good many unsophisticated minds, and especially to newspapers bent on sensationalizing the idea, that here was a program that would enable |