to permit the school to teach them nothing of civic value, would be gross stultification. Of the educational soundness of it there is no more room for question. The weakest and least satisfactory of all the work done in the average public school is its teaching or not teaching-of English. Until the schools turn out scholars far better instructed and trained in the use of the vernacular, they have no business to give an hour's instruction in any foreign tongue. Finally, on the moral ground the law is of impregnable propriety—indeed, of imperative desirability. The very fact that in any community or State there is a large proportion, even a majority, of residents of non-English speaking origin is one of the strongest possible reasons for teaching no language but English in the common schools. This consideration is reëmphasized by the notorious fact that most of the opposition to the Nebraska law comes from an alien element which has insolently proclaimed its purpose to remain permanently alien and to rear its offspring as aliens; and which demands that American citizens shall provide and maintain schools for that delectable purpose.

The Antigonish "ghost hunt", which attracted international and serious scientific attention, afforded an equally ridiculous and lamentable illustration of the extremes to which the itch for publicity will go. There had been a long series of extraordinary occurrences, some of a criminal character, quite inexplicable to all who had suffered from or observed them; apparently the deeds of a particularly shrewd miscreant, of an equally cunning lunatic, or of some supernatural agency. Assuming that the last theory was correct, an expert psychologist undertook an investigation. The most elementary common sense of course made it imperative that the investigation, like all detective work, should be conducted as quietly and unostentatiously as possible, in order that the criminal or lunatic might not be warned and refrain from operations which might lead to detection, or that there might be no disturbance of conditions favorable to supernatural agencies. Instead, however, the very opposite policy was adopted. Orders went forth to

Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim-

that investigators were coming, accompanied by press agents, "movie" camera men, and a whole retinue of sensation-makers. Thus the whole enterprise was made absurdly futile in advance. There has long been a proverbial injunction against "going fishing with a brass band". It may now be replaced with a stronger one against the flippant folly of going "ghost hunting" with a "movie" outfit.

Excepting on the part of those who have been comparing him with Jesus Christ, somewhat to the disadvantage of the latter, there will be little regret at the locking-up of Mr. M. K. Gandhi, who has long been something of an international nuisance, and whose tortuous and illogical career has never commended him to the esteem of thoughtful men. But there will be an even stronger feeling than regret at the sequel to it which is seen in the new scheme for settling affairs in the Near East. With the disposition of Constantinople, Adrianople, Gallipoli, Smyrna and other places and regions we need not concern ourselves. But the whole Christian world is deeply concerned in the proposal for the abolition of the Armenian State and the turning over of the remnant of that long-suffering people to torment and extinction at the hands of the Turks. The pretence of putting them under the protection of the League of Nations, and of going househunting for a "national home" for them-possibly on Wrangell Land or Kerguelen?-is one of the most acrid and cynical of jests. It is indeed impertinent to mention the League of Nations as sponsor for a performance which would make the veriest "scrap of paper" of that fundamental principle of the League, the right of national self-determination. Of all the varied peoples affected by the Great War there is certainly none more entitled to that right—to independence in their own ancient home land—than the Armenians. They were an independent nation, in that land, a thousand years before Mohammed was born; they were the first Christian nation in the world; they ranked for centuries among the most highly civilized nations of the world. Yet now their last hope of restoration is destroyed, and they are given as a sacrifice to their hereditary and merciless foes, as the price for which the latter are to acquiesce in the suppression of Gandhi's sedition.

At such a price will the Great Powers purchase so they fondly hope the loyalty of their Mohammedan subjects, who have accepted the leadership of Gandhi, though he is of course not of their faith. "The rest is silence!"

The coal strike, threatened at this writing to be the greatest and perhaps the most disastrous in history, emphasizes anew two things, with a force which would be immediately convincing to any less shiftless and happy-go-lucky people than ourselves. One is, the need-let us say, also, the impregnable equity-of some irresistible provision for the protection of the public from the effects of such disturbances. Because some thousands of men cannot agree upon the solution of a simple problem in economic arithmetic, a nation of a hundred millions must be menaced in the enjoyment of one of the prime necessities of life. Truly, the rôle of Tertium Quid is mightily becoming to the American people! The other obvious point is, the need of such development of our resources of "white coal" as shall at once conserve our rapidly waning supply of anthracite and bituminous and lessen its economic importance. The water-power available in the United States but now neglected is easily sufficient to take the place of fifty per cent of the coal now consumed-a power which never could be exhausted, which would greatly lessen the cost of manufactures and utilities, and which would be an immeasurable gain for cleanliness and comfort. Strange, that we need such a cataclysm and disaster as a universal strike to teach us these simple lessons; and then we do not learn them!

Belgium, France, Great Britain and some other enlightened and progressive countries some weeks ago put into effect a uniform system of what they felicitously call "summer time"; setting their clocks forward an hour, so as to utilize an hour more of sunlight each day, and dispense with an hour of artificial light every evening. This is done uniformly, by national enactment and decree, so that there is never nor anywhere the slightest embarrassment or confusion. The United States, which would sharply resent any implication that it was less enlightened and progressive than they, will a week or so hence plunge into a state of horological

chaos. Some States will run on one time and some on another. In the same State some cities will have "standard" and some "day-light saving" time. There will be a similar diversity among railroads. In Squedunk a man will take the eight o'clock train at nine o'clock, and at Podunk he will alight from the six o'clock train at five. A traveller will leave home at ten o'clock and after journeying an hour will find that it is still precisely ten o'clock; and five minutes later it will be five minutes after eleven. In France last year "summer time" resulted in a saving of 200,000 tons of coal, and there-as indeed here also-all authorities agree that "day-light saving" means an immense gain for health. Yet like Gallio we seem to care for none of these things. Year after year we fail to make up our minds as to the system of time we shall use, and year after year suffer the inconvenience and actual distress of a helter-skelter mingling of two systems. It is not a creditable showing for a nation which boasts of its practicality and efficiency.

After forty years British occupation of Egypt, which most of the time was tantamount to actual annexation, is ended, and for the first time since the death of Cleopatra the Land of the Pharaohs is an independent kingdom. Thus the promise which Gladstone made is at last fulfilled. We need not speculate upon the question whether, had it not been for the Great War, this would have been done sooner, or have been postponed to a later date. There is nothing perceptible in the results of the War that put any stronger constraint upon the British Government to do the thing; wherefore we may credit it directly to the good faith of that Government and to its fixed purpose to keep its word. The record of these forty years is illumined with the names of four of the greatest Britons of the age, whose impress upon the history not only of Egypt but indeed of the world is indelible and illustrious: Gordon, the knight-errant and martyr; Kitchener, the avenger and conqueror; Cromer, the administrator and constructor; Allenby, the restorer and the finisher of faith. In all the thousands of years of the history of that ancient land there are no passages more heroic or more worthy of immortal remembrance than these which we have witnessed in our own day and generation.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

THE OUTCAST. By Selma Lagerlöf. Translated by W. Worster, M. A. Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company.

It seems best to say of The Outcast, first of all, that it is, in every reason ́able and traditional sense, an amazingly good story, and then to add that it is a profound story. This order of emphasis is, indeed, the natural order. Every work of fiction ought to be first of all a good story, and afterwards a profound or significant story. It must reach its profundity or significance through life; it must synthesize rather than analyze. For it is precisely the office of fiction, when it has any office beyond that of mere entertainment, to give us, through a synthesis,—a binding-together of various elements of experience,— such an understanding of life or insight into it as we cannot get through the ordinary method of analysis.

The thought that overwhelms the critic in his effort to appraise The Outcast is this: What would the story have been if any other writer had attempted to treat the same fable? One shrinks from pursuing this inquiry. There are so many possibilities in the fable itself for all manner of faults-for sordidness, horror, an inhuman solemnity, false sentiment, shallow mysticism, religiosity, mere moralism. And the result of falling into any of these errors, or all of them, would have been to leave the whole story a meaningless hodge-podge, an offense to good sense and to good taste.

Yet all these elements, or their counterparts, are real factors in life-the objects of genuine experience. Without an understanding of misery and terror, without adequate seriousness and idealism, without some sort of faith in the unseen and some respect for the moral law, one cannot write truly about life. And this remains true, notwithstanding the fact that these experiences are constantly perceived by us in forms that suggest sordidness, horror, inhuman solemnity, superstition, dogmatism, or conventional morality.

Distrusting our profounder instincts, we cease the effort to synthesize, to humanize our experiences, and turn to the scientific, the analytical method. Misery we view from the standpoint of economics, terror from that of psychology, idealism and faith from that of logic. We abstract these things, analyze them, and try to put them away from us as not being really a part of us. It is our desire to be matter-of-fact, "healthy-minded"; and thus we deprive ourselves of what Unamuno calls "the tragic sense of life".

This is precisely what Miss Lagerlöf has not done. She has synthesized, and it has required a comprehensive mind and a potent spirit to make an intelligible and emotionally powerful whole out of the diverse materials of which The