formally persecuted, but you have bamboozled the people into setting into motion forces whose impetus is terrible, and you have been careful not to intimate that it may have been somewhat too sure of itself. That would never do.

In this way and by such means a movement professedly aimed at preserving the holiness of Deity becomes one with results that are as follows: In the first place, religion in general is harmed because its dignity is lessened. You may not agree with another and yet admit that his right to hold his opinions is a matter somewhat above a horse case; in the second place, you have put the things that are God's in the ballot-box, you have put spiritual things into the coarse hands of carnality, though you shall have changed no inner convictions; next, you have stultified and contradicted what has been proclaimed to be an essential of American public and private life; and lastly, you have demonstrated that the United States was not yet accustomed to the practice of those principles of liberty which it had asserted to be none too great for its political stature. Why not be candid about it and admit at once for the country's soul's good that the sooner this sinister fooling is stopped, the better? I reckon that in the United States we are come once more to one of the great testing places that have periodically marked our advancement towards political maturity; we cannot afford to surrender what has been slowly and painfully won, for to do that would be to accept a political senility such as Spain's. At this writing, no one can tell what the courts, State or Federal, will have done, but I believe that much more important than anything the courts may do, immeasurably more important, is for us all with a wise humility to admit that events have proved and are proving how great are still the gaps in that structure of justice and liberty of which we have talked so much and about which we really know so little. Lest I be misunderstood, in the use of the word "ecclesiasticism, ,"let it be made precise that by it I do not mean exclusively the practice and mental habit of a minister or priest alone. Were this to be taken as the meaning, the discussion would become too personal to a class and run the gravest risk of injustice. There are too many good men of all creeds who wear black coats to permit of such a thing. But there is such a spectacle as that

of large bodies of laymen impressing on minorities their convictions, whether in matters of religion or otherwise, in such a manner that their dogmatic political action becomes virtually the same as that of those professional divines who in the past have instigated what is commonly known as religious persecution. When the ministers and priests do it, it is called persecution, by those who suffer; but when laymen in impressive numbers do it, they always transfer the classification to the sociological or political nomenclature. What has happened in the present case is that impulse has been given to large bodies of laymen acting together to control opinion and to punish the dissident. Boil it down and you have persecution of the rottenest, most insensate kind, more so in a sense than that of clerics, for at least they have technical chapter and verse for the performance, but the laymen have none. It can be more dangerous in a country of democratic forms, because it swaggers in the fallacious majesty of numbers, attaches itself to the national economy like a barnacle, and assumes the hues of constitutionality. It is idle to say that this is exaggeration, because what is before our eyes needs no exaggeration to be marked as a danger and a disappointment.

Is it a throw-back or is it a fermentation in the vast recesses of popular thinking that must take place before the body politic throws off once and forever those poisonous humours, which remaining, that body can never quite win wholesomeness? Must there be enacted in a country overlaid with blessings a political tragi-comedy of proportions to make one gasp; must there be a prostitution of freedom such as was never seen before; must America be shamed before the world? Call these questions criticism run to rhetoric if you choose, but there is nothing rhetorical about facts, and those facts spread themselves out today for all to see in the shape of the attempted creation of popular opinion in some quarters that, unless it be educated or change of itself, may prove uncontrollable. Persecution has a body, but no brains. It is the Robot among men's lusts, proved so a thousand times in the catalogue of the nations and thrown aside by the scarred hands of experience. Americans, so far as I can see, are now given a choice, to accept or reject it,

their choice being made the more momentous and aided the less because of the intelligence they have most plausibly claimed in great constituent matters of political justice. They have here ready to their hands the chance to write down in the people's book a decree, not of tribunals, but of their own generous intelligence, that religious liberty and the liberty of thinking are more than the phrases of fair weather pronouncements, are safe, assured and indestructible, and are made so because on this point the United States is sure of itself with the sureness of a nation come to man's estate. If it be confessed that such a point has not been reached, confessed, that is, by the development of regulation and restriction, then the United States will have embarked upon the task of re-writing every textbook in the schools and colleges; it will have undertaken the work of recasting, not the natural sciences, but the processes of the intellect; and under the guise of a spiritual objective will have championed a materialism so crass and childish that the Dark Ages will preen themselves at a return of favor. It will have made a god of ignorance and given it prejudices for archangels, the printer's trade will be proscribed, and the Struldbrugs will have come into their own. It must be confessed that even the possibility of such a prospect is a high price to pay for political complacency.

JOHN HUNTER SEDGWICK.

THE ECONOMICS OF DIPLOMACY'

BY ALFRED L. P. DENNIS

DIPLOMACY is today so closely related to business that it is really surprising that few have as yet attempted to speak or write on the Economics of Diplomacy. Here is a subject which confronts every man who is interested in the opportunities offered by foreign loans. The problem of concessions in distant or backward countries is on the desks of men who are professionally concerned in the supply of raw materials such as oil or rubber or nitrates. The banker rejoices at the reëstablishment of the gold standard in Great Britain; the manufacturer watches eagerly the development of a tariff policy; the shipper is affected by the terms of a commercial treaty; and the farmer is grateful for the endeavors of our Consular Service to find new markets for the sale of his produce. Each of these is interested in the relation of finance and commerce to international policies. In short, the Economics of Diplomacy stares at us from the headlines of every metropolitan newspaper.

If we choose at random from the calendar of business which has recently confronted the Department of State, we find in quick succession the extension of the Open Door for equal commercial opportunity in Northwestern Africa and the Near East, as well as in the Far East. Questions relating to loans which have been made to some of our neighbors to the south of the United States, and plans for the financial rehabilitation of backward or distressed countries, crowd the docket. Intricate problems regarding most-favored-nation treatment and shipping and railway rates are involved in the discussion about our recent commercial treaty with Germany. The establishment of the Dawes Commission and the difficult items of reparations and foreign debts all belong to this subject of the Economics of Diplomacy. Indeed, to every taxpayer the adjustment of the international debts owed to us by our recent associates in the World War is a matter not only of dollars and cents, but of far-reaching national policy. 1 This paper was the Commencement Address at Clark University, June, 1925.

Thus the successful diplomatist today must be a student of affairs. He must feel the pulse of business and bend his energies to understand the maladies which affect nations that are wracked and torn by the ravages of war or which lie nakedly exposed to the greed of the exploiter and the selfish concession hunter.

Fundamentally such matters of international finance and business policy contain the germs of disputes which may grow in angry fashion to excite furious jealousies and even to provoke war. Today the United States has a peculiar and special responsibility. It is the wealthiest country and potentially the most powerful. It behooves us, therefore, to walk with care along the narrow path of national rectitude lest by a misstep we slip into the abyss of commercial imperialism which is no whit less destructive than that of military imperialism. We are fortunate that "dollar diplomacy" is no longer fashionable at Washington. But a lively and informed public opinion on the Economics of Diplomacy is our best security against both the honest mistakes and the treacherous temptations to which those who guide our affairs are constantly exposed. Our United States battleships are to preserve peace and order rather than to protect dubious concessions or to enforce unfair terms of financial exploitation.

We can well cherish the American doctrine on such matters as we recall the statement of Daniel Webster when he was Secretary of State in 1851: "No man can carry the ægis of his national American liberty into a foreign country, and expect to hold it up for his exemption from the dominion and authority of the laws and the sovereign power of that country, unless he be authorized to do so by virtue of treaty stipulations." Elsewhere I have pointed out the contrast presented by the words of Lord Palmerston when he was British Foreign Secretary at about the same time. It is the classic statement in support of an aggressive imperialism and lays down the extreme doctrine of protection for the interests of British nationals in foreign parts. Lord Palmerston said that British citizens were not "to have that protection only which the law and the tribunals of the land in which they happen to be may give them;" and he continued with his comparison of the citizen of the Roman Empire and the citizen of the British Em