driven wells and stored the petroleum. But it does mean that they have prospected and obtained exclusive concessions, and when we have sought equal rights for ourselves and others in new foreign fields, they have resisted and resented our insistence on the policy of the "open door".

In 1921 Secretary Hoover summed up the problem as follows:

As a result of a survey of our own and the world situation, it is evident that our domestic sources of oil will last only a generation at the present rate of exhaustion. Meanwhile foreign nations are rapidly preempting the available foreign oil-bearing territory. Unless our nationals reënforce and increase their holdings abroad, we shall be dependent upon other nations for the supply of this vital commodity within a measurable number of years. The truth of the matter is that other countries have conserved their oil at the expense of our We must go into the foreign fields in a big way. Though individual initiative will count for much in the location of deposits, the larger American end will be served by concerted action in production.

own.

There is now greater coöperation in oil expansion. The Department of State has repeatedly championed the rights of Americans abroad. But even so, the American producers are handicapped by the lack of a consistent foreign policy such as Great Britain has put behind her oil producers overseas.

It is hard for the American-especially in a time of falling gasoline prices-to realize the connection between his flivver and Mr. Hughes's fight for the open door in Mesopotamia. And yet the war of oil has had and will continue to have a direct bearing on the ease and speed with which Americans rush about. As our reserves run down, the price of gas will run up-unless we are able economically to replenish our stores from foreign fields. This is part of the romance of petroleum which Mr. Marcosson has so interestingly described. To read his book is to have a new sense of the power of economic imperialism. Incidentally, it helps to disassociate the word "oil" from the evil connotations which it has recently acquired in the realm of politics and world affairs. NICHOLAS ROOSEVELT.

SIR:

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

OUR COLLEGE DEBT TO SCOTLAND

Comment on my Mass Education in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW has included two letters from the University of Aberdeen. Mr. P. J. Anderson, the University Librarian, sent Mr. J. M. Bulloch's pamphlet, Class Records in Aberdeen and in America (Aberdeen University Press, 1916). His own bibliography, which occupies more than a third of the pamphlet, shows class records of Marischal College as early as 1787-91. A no less kind letter followed from Mr. Bulloch himself. Though I might still defend my statement (page 384), “No British university has ever had such college classes," by underlining such and referring to the context, I had rather publish the correction that college classes have long been maintained in Aberdeen.

For the matter has an importance quite beyond my article. American “college" education owes so much to Scotland, and especially to Aberdeen, that my interest in Mr. Bulloch's pamphlet must be shared by not a few readers of the REVIEW. The term "Arts" class, for instance, was still in use during my undergraduate days at Columbia; my text-book of composition was by Alexander Bain; and my own title, Professor of Rhetoric, is now better understood, perhaps, in Scotland than in the United States. The historical significance of the Aberdeen tradition of composition as a university study I hope some day to explore. Meantime I am glad of the occasion to make known Mr. Bulloch's contribution to our educational ancestry.

Columbia University, New York.

SIR:

CHARLES SEARS BALDWIN.

THE PROHIBITION TANGLE

I have read with considerable interest the articles of Professor Erskine and Mr. Levitt on The Prohibition Tangle. I think that Professor Erskine has by far the better of the argument. The real case against National Prohibition, which even our best citizens privately despise, is, as Mr. Fabian Franklin says, that it “is a crime against the Constitution." That is to say, it runs counter to what precedes it in the Constitution.

National Prohibition cannot even be ethically justified. It could only be ethically justified as a permanent policy were it clearly necessary for the wellbeing of our country which otherwise would be ruined and brought to destruction by indulgence in alcohol. In a country, however, where the vast majority of citizens can and do indulge without excess, the Eighteenth Amendment and

the Volstead Law, foisted on the people without their full assent, are grave infringements of the kind of liberty that should obtain in a democracy. According to the text of the Amendment, "The manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors . . . for beverage purposes, is hereby prohibited." With Mr. Levitt, I say that this seems a very specific amendment. And yet, as we know, it is amenable to all kinds of strange interpretations and is an open door to all kinds of infringements upon civil and even religious liberty. By what right, for instance, the thoughtful person will ask, do Congress and State Legislatures impose any restrictions, even the slightest, upon the manufacture and sale of a liquor that is not intended for "beverage purposes"? And yet, as we know, they have imposed upon the clergy and the members of the medical profession absurd and tyrannical restrictions, and they have foolishly and seriously interfered with the manufacture and use of alcohol, in no way intended for beverage purposes, but for essential processes in industry, science and art. The Eighteenth Amendment has no more connection with "intoxicating liquors" prescribed by a physician or with alcohol manufactured for scientific and commercial purposes, than it has with the manufacture of snow shovels. Hence, all the State and Federal fulminations in these matters are an outrageous usurpation of power not granted by the Amendment in question.

Were Mr. Levitt to leave the confines of his musty office and go out among the young people, he would soon see the truth of Professor Erskine's assertion that the young people find nothing in Prohibition but an illustration "of the asininity of the elder generation". A few years ago very few young people even thought of carrying flasks on their hips to dances or on their journeys. Now no dance and no journey seems possible without liquor.

In conclusion, it is a ghastly joke to say that Prohibition has brought about economic improvement in the country and a decrease in crime. Concerning the latter I am in a position to say that National Prohibition has proved to be but the occasion for a disgraceful increase in crime and for an appalling increase in the illicit use of narcotics.

Loyola College, Baltimore, Md.

JOSEPH J. AYD.

SIR:

PHILOSOPHERS AND DARNED FOOLS

I was mildly shocked to note the article The Problem of the Darned Fool. On looking through the article I was not mildly but quite distressingly shocked to read a most outrageously unfair allusion to one of the very greatest minds and loftiest characters that this country has produced, the benign and sweet-souled Emerson! The author of these allusions suggests that Emerson's immortal Essays are "profound commonplaces" suited "to very ordinary intelligences", and to prove this he goes on to make the rather surprising statement that

"high school boys read him gladly". (I only hope that this is true!) To finish off this sketch of a writer "quite scorned by professional philosophers", Emerson is labelled and placed on the same shelf and at the same level with Longfellow! At this point I concluded that the writer of this article was violently prejudiced, and of course a moment's thought suggested the probable reason, which became almost self-evident on reading that the author was an orthodox clergyman and not a philosopher, but a professional theologian.

It is not the way of philosophers to go about the world denouncing those not equally gifted with themselves, or those who disagree with themselves, as "darned fools".

Oakland, California.

SIR:

B. J. S. CAHILL.

FOR CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTIONS

Submit the so-called Child Labor Amendment to the people.

If the "wets" in Congress submit a new grant of the police power to legislatures they will show that they are only devoted to constitutional principles and to popular rule when "booze" is at stake. Those Senators who in the recent debate over the Wadsworth-Garrett Amendment insisted that all federal amendments should be submitted to direct vote of the people, and supported the Walsh substitute so providing, will be guilty of grave inconsistency if they now submit the Child Labor Amendment to legislatures.

Due to special sessions, stampeded legislatures, war hysteria and what not, there is grave doubt whether the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments were sanctioned by the will of the American people. No candid citizen, who has examined the legislative ratifications, will reasonably dispute that statement or can in conscience do so.

That whole question, all that doubt and uncertainty, could have been easily avoided by submitting those two amendments to the people acting directly in their State Conventions instead of to legislatures.

If on top of these the so-called Child Labor Amendment is to be rushed through legislatures in the same way without adequate debate as to the wisdom of granting such new federal powers, and of destroying the States by consolidating one governmental power after another into a mass National Government with all the new bureaucracy and expense that will entail (with our minds obsessed by each particular reform), the days of our liberty as a self-governing people are numbered.

Because previous amendments were proposed to legislatures is no reason why conventions, a perfectly practical and reasonable method of consulting the people, should not now be used for this radical grant of new federal power, as they were upon the adoption of the original Constitution.

Brooklyn, N. Y.

DAVID HOLMES MORTON.

SIR:

In a recent number of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW I find An Igorrote Lullaby, by Caroline S. Shunk. I read it, trying to get some sense from it, but I cannot get much out of it. I have been in the Philippines over twenty years and have been in the Igorrote country, but cannot understand the allusions made in the poem. Since you have accepted such a poem, and knowing your standard of requirements, I am surprised to find it in your magazine. With reference to the "head basket" in the second line, this is very farfetched, just as the "fishermen's light" and the "sea" which is so far away from their country that it would not be familiar to them. As I am interested in all literature on the Philippines, I shall be glad to have an explanation. VERNE E. MILLER.

Manila, P. I.

SIR:

In regard to Mr. Miller's criticism of my poem, An Igorrote Lullaby, published in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, I wish to state the following facts. The United States Army began its service in the Philippine Islands twenty-six years ago 1898-and opened up the Igorrote country in 1901. My husband, an officer in the Army, went over in 1899. He has had three full tours of duty in these Islands. I have written for newspapers, and magazines, for twentyone years, and have never before had my prose articles, book or poems challenged as to facts. The Igorrotes were familiar with the China Sea, as portions of their country are within twenty miles of its shore. Commerce was maintained between the coast and over the Nangillian Trail—and into the Igorrote country for many years. My husband's duties took him into the Igorrote country and over the Nangillian Trail to the coast and ports of the China Sea. There were Igorrotes employed on this work; and their wives and children came freely into camp, where I took photographs and could talk, through the interpreter, with the women. It happens that The Lullaby (for which I have received many letters of commendation from well known literary people) was written in one of the camps, as careful an interpretation as could be, in simple English words, of the song of a mother, who carried her baby in her head-band basket and hung the basket with the sleeping baby to the ridge pole of her grass house.

Washington, D. C.

CAROLINE S. SHUNK.