perhaps more accurately by lack of nutrition as regards certain important elements of a properly balanced diet. Thus, the United States medical authorities point out, if loss of health and widespreading death is to be avoided, it must be by prevention rather than by cure, as the disease is peculiarly difficult to deal with when it is under full headway.

When, a dozen years ago or so, the news from Italy showed terrible records of death from pellagra, it was thought that the cause was some poisonous element in the corn consumed in such quantities by the Italian peasants. Later it was determined that pellagra was due to a diet composed almost solely of cereals. Now, what has happened in our Southern States is that the diet, especially among the poorer families, has not contained much, if any, milk and fresh vegetables. The case is quoted of one town of five thousand people in which the daily milk consumption is less than five hundred quarts. There has been an attempt to introduce pasteurized milk and the use of fresh vegetables among the poorer classes. This ought to be increased and encouraged by local authorities, but the difficulties in the rural districts and small towns in some Southern States are great. It is known, so the Federal Board of Health states, that the lack of protein and the chemical elements from fresh fruits and vegetables and the corresponding excess of starches and fat in the diet deprive the persons thus limited of one of the vitamines-for there are more than one-with the most unhappy results.

It may be that the statements given out after the recent conference between the Public Health Service and representatives of the Red Cross were a little injudicious in the forecast that one hundred thousand persons in the Southern cotton belt would have pellagra this summer and that ten per cent of the number would die. It is always rash to predict calamities from inductive reasoning. But there can be no doubt that wrong eating (no matter how great a quantity of the wrong thing may be eaten) may be not unfairly described in the words, "a particular kind of semistarvation," used by the report of the Public Health Service and followed by the assertion that it may be five months before the evil result manifests itself in

appealing to sympathy than that which befell Dr. Stone, President of Purdue University, and his wife in a far-distant part of Alberta in Canada. Not even the Matterhorn tragedy, in which Sir Frederick Douglas and his companions were lost through the breaking of a ropea story told with all its thrilling and dramatic incidents by Mr. Whymper, in what is almost a classic among mountain-climbing narratives-appealed so poignantly to the feelings and sympathies of all readers.

Dr. Stone and his wife were experienced climbers, but they unwisely at

tempted without others the ascent of Mount Eanon as a sort of preparation and training for a larger mountaineering expedition planned to set out from the Alpine Camp meet a week later. The first reports of the tragedy indicated that Dr. Stone had perished in an attempt to rescue his wife. In fact, the fatal accident was more moving than even that would have been. It was Mrs. Stone who nearly perished in a fruitless attempt to save her husband-an attempt so desperate and hopeless that it all the more gives evidence of her devotion and heroism.

Dr. Stone, some distance in advance of his wife, fell suddenly and from an unknown cause. The fall was down a steep precipice to a great depth, and as we write attempts to recover the body have not been successful.

But the agonized wife made an astonishing effort to find and help her husband. She fought her way down the

ing to one account, she lowered herself by a rope to reach the point where she thought he was, found the rope too short, and was forced to drop down, her fall fortunately broken by a ledge; while another report states that she had reached a point three thousand feet be

low the place where her husband fell and had fallen exhausted on the ledge of rock. At all events, on that ledge she remained for eight days without food and with only a little water from melted snow. But from time to time she called for help and waved her handkerchief, and thus, she was finally found by searchers.

It is safe to say that nothing in the world's news of the week so riveted attention among readers as this pitiful and tragic incident. It has been said that the fatalities from mountain climbing are enormously in excess of those from all other athletic sports or recreations put together. One lesson from such an accident as this is that feats clearly dangerous should not be attempted by one or two persons without assistance of guides. Sometimes the accident is unpreventable; but even so a single survivor is placed in a situation of terror, danger, and helplessness that should never be possible.

THE UNKNOWN SAHARA

W

E no longer see on our maps "The Great American Desert;" nowadays automobile tourists drive safely where a generation or two ago pioneers toiling painfully through the sand often dropped exhausted by the way. But the great Sahara Desert remains a picturesque and still a dangerous feature of the map of Africa. In point of fact, it never has been even completely explored. There is a great stretch in particular in northwestern Africa that has been practically unknown until quite recently. A French expedition under Major Lauzanne lately, however, made the journey from Algiers, on the northern coast, to Dakar, but it took them 159 days, and during the journey they lost a patrol of a number of men unwise enough to pursue bandits of the sand ocean who attacked them. They undoubtedly perished in the great wastes of the desert.

The object of this exploration was to map out the desert, and the results are no doubt satisfactory to geographers, although nothing was found except oceans of sand devoid of civilization and even life. Another French expedition met the first in a small oasis hundreds of miles from any coast, yet found that this oasis was a resort and central meeting-place of roaming bodies of Sahara bandits. The oasis, it is said, has never before been visited by white men.

Both expeditions suffered terribly from lack of water, and it was reported that some of the camels marched without water for four hundred miles.

These recent explorations of the Sahara were part of a system that the French Government has been carrying

out the last two years. These have had the double motive of traversing country heretofore unknown and of establishing stations for possible aircraft use in an experimental air route of nearly two thousand miles that the French Government proposes to establish. Incidentally, an interesting feature of some of these desert expeditions has been the use of lorries or motor trucks, such as were used in the war, with wide tires, which save the vehicles from becoming embedded in the sand.

THE MENACE OF A SUPER-TARIFF

W

HEN travelers, sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar, round

the southernmost point of Europe they see the little town of Tarifa. Its people used to force passing merchant vessels to pay tribute. The name of the town, becoming the French tarif and the English tariff, is now applied, as it was by the Spaniards and Arabs, to the tributes or rates or customis duties to be collected on merchandise.

Such duties are now collected in various countries (1) to help support the government and (2) also to encourage home industries.

Of these two the encouragement of home industries is the chief aim in this country; for how are our workmen, getting some dollars for a day of eight hours, going to compete with the labor of the Japanese, getting some cents for a day of twelve hours; or how are our metal goods men going to survive when here and now merchants are offering German cutlery and small tools at less than the cost of production in this country? If we want to compete with Japan and Germany, we must have something to equalize the difference in the cost of production here and abroad. And so we have thus been preserving and stimulating the growth of industries, which under unhindered competition would have languished. The protectionists believe it pays to increase the employment of millions of men and preserve their standard of living even if the price level of products to the consumer is incidentally somewhat raised.

Sometimes protection enables an infant industry to grow strong enough to compete with foreign producers and thus to bring down prices. An example of this is the coal-tar products industry. Before the war it was negligible here. As a consequence medicines derived from coal tar were costly. German aspirin then cost some ten dollars a pound. Now American aspirin brings a dollar a pound. Phenacetin was then sold to retail druggists at $16 a pound; it now sells for $1.65.

So it was with other coal-tar products. When the Payne Tariff was passed, some years ago, we were absolutely dependent on Germany for dyes. The war came, and we had to be self-dependent. We built up industries now capable of sup plying nine-tenths of our needs. Germany is again free and can harm this industry unless we protect it.

The war developed a third use of coal-tar products. Not a man from the German dye plants was drafted during the war. The reason was evident when it became known that poison gases and high explosives could be made from the picric acid of the dye factories. Under these circumstances, are we going to encourage the German dye industry? England is not, France is not, and the same is true of Belgium, Italy, and Japan. They have all put up the bars against German dyestuffs.

The Fordney Tariff Bill has passed the House of Representatives. It is designed to protect us from German and other invasions of our cutlery, dyes, and other industries. But would it over-protect? The prevailing opin ion that it would was responsible for the modification of the proposed embargo on dyes and for proposals concerning lumber, hides, cotton, oil, and asphalt, with the inevitable "compensatory" taxes.

Hence the first outstanding and significant feature of the passage of the Fordney Bill through the House of Representatives was the defeat pretty much all along the line of the extreme protectionists.

The second outstanding feature of the bill's passage was the introduction of a change in the basis of valuing imports. As every one knows who has bought goods abroad and sent them home, the foreign producer, wishing to curry favor with his customer, will himself propose to put down in the invoice a figure on which the tariff is to be collected, less than the real value of the goods bought. This fraud the Fordney Bill would correct by levying duties on the appraised value in this country and not in the country of origin. The reason for this change is also to deliver us from uncertain dependence on the rates of exchange for the money of the different countries-rates constantly changing and ranging from ninety down to five per cent of the former value of their respective currencies. While the change is doubtless desirable for these reasons, it can be, we believe, opposed for other reasons. Certainly, importers claim that any fraud in foreign appraisal would be matched by equal fraud in American appraisal; that the present system of valuing a purchase abroad is quickly known, and can be discounted at the bank in ad

vance of delivery, thus releasing funds for use in other transactions; that with American valuation, however, importers could not determine the cost of merchandise before its appearance at the customhouse; again, that the great extension in this bill of ad valorem duties, no matter how low they may be, might carry an enormous increase because of unexpectedly high American valuation; and, finally, that an American valuation system would threaten or violate the "most favored nation" provision of Our treaties.

The third outstanding feature of the Fordney Bill is found in its bargaining provisions. These empower the President to negotiate with foreign governments for the alteration of tariff rates. This, too, may be a two-edged sword, we think. True, the pendulum has been apparently swinging again towards reciprocity-the securing of reciprocal trade on the basis of reducing duties imposed on specified commodities. The bill provides for this. But it also provides for retaliation-retaliatory duties to meet discriminations of foreign countries against our products when found to impose conditions reciprocally unequal. For instance, the bill authorizes the President to put a duty on Canadian lumber equal to the Canadian duty on ours. Suppose he does. We are cutting our limited supply of timber four times as fast as the timber grows, and so we are taking all we can get from Canada to save our own. Canada's duty on our lumber means little, but to impose an equal duty on Canadian lumber would, it is argued, add $250 to $300 to the cost of the building material in the average workingman's dwelling. And this at a time when we need a million new homes and at least as many new farm buildings.

The fourth outstanding feature of the bill is its provision for increased protec tion to agriculture. Most of our tariffs have benefited manufacturers. But the Fordney Bill, the author of which is a Western man, has been primarily concerned with the farmer. At every stage of the debate in the House it was evident that there was no ambition to favor the industrialist at the expense of the agriculturist.

The Fordney Bill is thus an extraor dinarily interesting document. Its author upholds it as a "Magna Charta." The Democratic House leader condemns it as a "monstrosity." It is, we think, neither. It does in considerable degree adhere to the following principles of protection:

1. It tends to equalize the cost of industry here and abroad, and thus to preserve the home market to agriculture and industry.

2. It tends to maintain steady was

and an American standard of living, and thus to preserve the home market to labor.

3. It may be expected to provide a proper Government revenue.

But then the question comes: Does it do all these things and not interfere with the cost of living or with our foreign trade? There's the rub. There is where the bad features of the bill are evident-features which tend to restrict business both domestic and foreign and no to expand it. Such restriction will rake us poorer by unduly augmenting prices and by decreasing our ability to pay taxes. And as we are, so is the Government. Before long the Government will find itself in need of collecting the interest on the ten-billion-dollar debt our allies owe us; and trade restriction will prevent, or at least hinder, them from paying that interest.

A trade restriction bill was certainly not demanded by the people at large.

Before the war we were a debtor nation. As such we gave small consideration to what our exports might suffer from a high tariff. Since the war we have become a creditor nation-and the leading creditor nation. If, under our former condition, there was some de mand for as large a freedom as possible, that demand is now immensely intensi. fied, for we want our debtors to pay their debts to us.

If we do not buy, we cannot sell, Let us protect our products wherever possible; as foreigners, however, cannot pay gold for our goods but can pay only other goods, we must permit the en. trance of those goods up to the very point at which they would destroy our own varied production. Our people want a protective tariff, but not a supertariff.

FAITH IN WEALTH

I

N our day we should call him a cowboy, but in the book which preserves his rather radical and inflammatory speeches he is called a herdman. His name was Amos. If any preacher talked nowadays the way Amos did, he would be very unpopular in certain influential quarters.

"Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring and let us drink. The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks." That is very strong language to address to influential and wealthy people; but Amos was not afraid to utter his woe upon those "that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch them

selves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall; that chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of music, like David; that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph."

From the time of Amos, over twenty five hundred years ago, until to-day very strong language has been used concerning the indifference of those who trust in the power of their wealth to the privations of the poor and to the need for social reconstruction. The men who have used this strong language have often been misunderstood. In almost every case they have been called revotionaries, as if the doctor who diagnosed a disease were the cause of it. Again and again men who are now honored as prophets were persecuted because they warned the powerful that if they did not mend their ways they would bring evil upon themselves. We have before our very eyes a sample of this thing. Repeatedly the Czar in Russia and his gang were told of what would happen to them and to the whole nation if they persisted in their ways. The Czar was very religious, and he and his family were scrupulous in observing the requirements of the Orthodox Church; but they did not listen to the prophets. And now that which was predicted has come to pass, but worse than any one had imagined. Those who sought to rouse the conscience of the powerful in the old régime were not Bolshevists. They were doing the only thing which, if it had succeeded, could have prevented Bolshevism; and they came very near doing it.

It is this sublime faith in the power of wealth, which is not the faith of a great number of conscientious and serviceable men of wealth to-day, that Jesus had in mind when he said that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

It is because of this faith in the power of wealth that men try to use wealth for the purpose of preventing change. Their faith is exactly the same as that of the Socialists. They hold to the economic theory of history. They differ from the Socialists in applying their philosophy to a different end. Most of them are entirely unconscious of any attempt to use their power unfairly; they simply conceive of wealth as power which can be used to stop people from thinking for themselves, or from making the changes in the social order that the people wish but the owners of wealth dislike. Their point of view seems very reasonable. We reported the other day, for example, a gift to the

Baptist Home Mission Board to which

was attached a creed which had to be accepted as a condition by the recipi ents. This gift has been defended by the chief organ of the denomination on the ground that it is only imposed upon those workers who are supported by the income from the gift. That seems very reasonable. The rich man seems to have a right to say: "If you want my money, you must believe, or say you believe, what I tell you to believe." The same argument was used a while ago by a group of men in Pittsburgh. These men, constituting an employers' association of that city, did not like the social programme of the Young Women's Christian Association. When the local Young Women's Christian Association attempted to raise some money, this association told the women that it would make no contribution unless the local Christian Association repudiated the action of their National body. In like manner, this same employers' association denounced the Federal Council of Churches as under the control of radical and Bolshevik elements in the churches, and it said that many members of the employers' association "are expressing themselves as determined to discontinue financial support of their respective churches unless they withdraw all moral and financial support from the Federal Council."

It is this attitude of mind which is satirized in the story in this issue entitled "The Daniel Jazz and the Rabbi." It makes itself felt in many churches. We have testimony to that effect in letters which have come to us in the course of our Third Prize Contest from members of ministers' families. The sense of the subordination of the minister's mind and the minister's household to those who through their wealth or social position have the power, which they use, consciously or unconsciously, to impose their will has found expression time and time again in such letters as these, in articles, in short stories, and in novels.

On another page we print three letters elicited by the question raised in The Outlook four weeks ago, "Is the Church Losing the People?" Each of those letters gives a different reason for the failure of the Church to accomplish what it ought to be accomplishing. One writer says that it is the inability of many ministers to give their congregations food for thought. Another says that it is the failure of theological seminaries to adapt their training of men to the facts of the modern world. And the third says that it is the fact that church leaders as a rule put denominational interest above religion. It is still another cause that is described in the satirical story in the form of a letter

from "Molly Amos" (whose last name may have been chosen as a reminder of the prophet who warned the kine of Bashan).

To say that this faith in the power of wealth, this attitude of mind satirized In the story of the rabbi's wife, is negligible to-day would be an error; but it would be as great an error to say that it controls either the synagogues or the churches. It is to be encountered everywhere; but since the days of Amos and Isaiah and the great unknown prophet of the Captivity, since the day when the Man of Nazareth drove the traders from the temple, since the day of the Apostle James, whose advice, "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you," was probably not heeded and very certainly not welcomed, this faith in the power of money to direct the minds of men and to preserve them from evil has distinctly diminished. It is true that we still find it in the churches, but no more than in the universities, and not by any means dominant there. There is much evidence that the American people desire in their preachers both courage of conviction and freedom of speech. Sometimes the preacher may ascribe to the narrow-mindedness or the materialism of his congregation an antagonism which is really rooted in his own raw ness or discourtesy. Many preachers can testify that they have spoken with the utmost liberty their opinions on disputed questions and have found that their opinions have been respected, provided that they have treated the contrary opinions with respect. In Amer ica men like Charles G. Finney, Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Parker, Dwight L. Moody, and Phillips Brooks, to mention only men who are no longer living, have expressed theological opinions and ideals of life and social conceptions which have been most contentious; but it is safe to say that they could not have expressed these opinions with the freedom they did had it not been for the Church behind them. The opposition they encountered was as much outside as within the Church, and the liberty they exercised was as great as that of any leader in any other calling. There is no evidence that any institution-political, commercial, or educational-surpasses the Church and the organizations which it has created either in unselfish devotion to the public welfare or in the liberty in which that service is rendered. There is no freer platform in America than the pulpit. There are pulpits that are not free, and there are ministers not capable of exercising freedom; but they are exceptions. There are few pulpits which the right man could not render free; and there are few ministers who cannot be trusted

to exercise their freedom with more dis cretion than is expected of an Assemblyman or Congressman. The surest passport to the respect of any congregation is the minister's respect for Himself and his message:

RED RUSSIA REAPS

an army, but a starving mob. News like this is coming every day; with all allowance for exaggeration and excitement, there is ample evidence of a condition horrible, almost unexampled, and of serious danger to Europe at large.

It must be a bitter humiliation for Lenine and Trotsky to be told roundly that the Soviets can be dealt with only under restrictions showing that America

H

ERBERT HOOVER in die sentence of a statement of the restrictions under which America will help starving Russia declares unemotionally but convincingly the cause of the famine: He says: "The present conditions in Russia are the result of progressive im poverishment of the Russian people uh: der Soviet control:"

Bolshevism is an absolutism of the in: dustrial proletariat backed by the bay8 nets of paid soldiers who have 18 other means of support. The Bolshevik Gov: ernment at its beginning ignored and oppressed the peasants upon whose la bor the food of Russia depended. Lately it has shown some evidence of coming to its senses. But its concessions to ag riculture were too late: Famine and disease are sweeping over vast areas of Russia on the Volga and even in Siberia. America and Europe are called upon for Felief.

The actual state of things existing in Russia to-day may be indicated by a condensed paraphrase of a few of the facts as reported in special correspond ence and cable despatches in the New York Times" on the day The Outlook goes to press: From Riga à correspond ent cables that from twenty to forty mil lion people seem doomed to death in Russia; sufferers from famine and dis ease are streaming in little groups toward towns; in one province, Samara, sixty thousand deserted children have to be cared for: transportation has broken down. From Berlin a cabled letter says that the Russian masses are near the point of revolt; the Soviets, it is said, hope to hold on t8 power; not by feeding the people, But by feeding the Red army and the workers in a few big factories, and to put down counter-revolution with machine guns; the Mensheviki (moderate Socialists) in Petrograd issue circulars which say: "We demand more bread. It is high time to return to common sense and overthrow the Soviet

régime." From the Volga region come stories of the most horrible suffering from cholera infection; the peasants are mad with superstition and resist medical and sanitary aid; "at every station crowds of lean, sick, and dying human ity outstretch their hands to travelers and utter hideous appeals for food." One correspondent asserts that six mil lion people are moving on Moscow-not

Not only must American prisoners be released, but they must be outside Soviet territory before relief begins. Notice is given that no recognition of Soviet rule is implied. Precautions are to be taken to see that supplies do not fall into the hands of the Red army. The American Relief Association is to be assured of non-interference by the Russian Government. It is to have a free hand in organization and administration of relief. All these things have Been demanded by Mr. Hoover as head of the Relief Association or by Secretary Hughes. Reluctantly and surlily the Conditions have been accepted. The work of mercy and humanity will begin.

Trotsky is said to have denied a detailed cable report that in a speech be. fore the Soviet's Central Committee he bitterly assailed Lenine's policy of compromise and conciliation with Western capitalism and openly urged a military mass advance of Russian legions into Poland as the first move in a programme of assault against western Europe. Whether the report or the denial is true we do not know. The mere fact that it was widely accepted as a natural consequence of the breakdown of the theories of Bolshevism is significant.

The Soviets never had a majority of the Russian people behind them. They have kept their power through three things: brute force, the fear of foreign invasion among many non-Bolshevik Russians, the belief of others that revolution was impossible but that moderate ideas could be gradually infused into the Soviets and their original and wild theories transformed into those of Socialism or democracy. The Lenine régime rests on bayonets; if the soldiers join the revolting populace, as now seems more than possible, the end is near at hand.

What the outcome will be no man may say. Economic folly, political theory madly at odds with history and human nature, cruelty and oppression, are not replaced in a day or a year by prosperity and sane government. But the world is ready and anxious to help Russia if once her steps are turned in the right direction. Already men like Milyukov are being consulted by Russians who hate alike imperialism and anarchy and stand for self-government of Russia by the Russian people.