period has elapsed. And the indications are that it will not do so at all, but will ignore the census of 1920 and wait until another is taken in 1930. Meantime gross injustice prevails. Some States have more Representatives than they are proportionately entitled to, and some are deprived of Representatives to whom they are justly entitled. Moreover, it is obvious that if the House is permitted thus to ignore one census it may as well ignore two, or a dozen. If it can go from the census of 1910 to that of 1930 without reapportionment, it can go to that of 1940, or 1950, or the year 2000, making its present apportionment perpetual. It is a flagrant defiance of both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.

These things are, to our mind, immeasurably more serious and detrimental than all the filibustering, and pork barrel grabs, and enactment of foolish laws, and failure to enact needed laws, which have often brought reproach upon Congress. For all such doings are at worst merely non-feasance, or mis-feasance. But the things which we have described are deliberate mal-feasance, and are directed not against some temporary interest of the nation, but against its permanent fundamental law. It is, as we have said, a dangerous playing with fire, though more likely to scorch the players than to destroy the house. What the abatement will be, is a question yet to be answered. On its face the Constitution seems to provide no means of coercing Congress or one of its Houses to do its duty or to refrain from usurping powers. Yet such means must exist, or must be provided; else the Government would be unable to preserve its integrity. It would be most desirable for the two Houses to come to their senses and themselves mend their ways. If not, they must remember that they are after all nothing but the creatures of the American people.

"HISTORY AS SHE IS WROTE"

Senator Carter Glass is entitled to gratitude for his authentic refutation of Colonel Edward M. House's flatulent and egotistic twaddle about his mighty achievements during the Wilson Administration. The Texas Ranger apparently thought that after the

death of the President who made him-for a short time-famous, he could play the part of Coriolanus, and boast "Alone I did it!" But he forgot that there might still be somebody living who knew the facts and in whose showing of them the public would have confidence. Lord Randolph Churchill, at the zenith of his brilliant career, was thus forgetful, when he imagined that there could be no competent substitute for him in the Treasury Office; but was quickly driven to confess, "I forgot Goschen!" It was unlucky for Colonel House to forget Senator Glass.

The incident illustrates, however, some of the difficulties with which historical writers have to deal. If there are such contradictions among "original sources" in the very generation in which the events occurred, what will be the embarrassment of the writer a few generations hence who seeks to find the truth of history in a symposium of Tumulty, Page, House and Glass? The result may rival, though for a different reason, the present frenzy for calumniating George Washington. We note that Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, one of the too few serious and competent students and teachers of history, reports that in one current and muchtouted "biography" of Washington, by a person called Hughes, there are two hundred and ninety-seven "absolutely false" statements, and a hundred and eleven which are "extremely doubtful". It would be most edifying to have Senator Glass compile a corresponding tabulation of Colonel House's screed.

"MEDDLESOME MATTY” AGAIN

The progeny of Meddlesome Matty are numerous and active. A century and a quarter ago Dr. Logan was a good man, and meant well. Of that there was never any question. And indeed he was actually the means of doing some good, when he surrendered his meddlesomeness into authoritative hands. But even in those days of ultra-strenuous factionalism, there was general recognition of the potential mischief of such doings as his, and approval of the law forbidding under penalty their repetition. The Alien and Sedition acts were repealed, though renewed with intensified severity during the World War. But the Logan act has remained unchallenged to this day.

Its spirit, however, is grossly and widely disregarded, not infrequently to the misleading of other nations and to the detriment of our relations or negotiations with them. In a recent number of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW attention of a somewhat excoriatory nature was given to an American gentleman of genealogical as well as professional standing, who had assumed to speak "off his own" in the name of the American people in opposition to the policy of the American Government, on the subject of the debts due from European countries, and to do so directly to the peoples of those debtor nations. Since then others have been busy, in the same pernicious fashion. We have no objection to American citizens expressing themselves as freely as they please, merely as citizens, to each other and to their Government. But for men whom foreign peoples have reason to regard—though incorrectly—as authentic exponents of public opinion if not of official purpose, such as a former candidate for the Presidency, or who not, to go abroad and to tell those foreign peoples in their own capitals that the policy of the American Government toward them is not approved by the American nation and will never be executed or enforced, is an impropriety so flagrant as to be incapable of adequate characterization without the use of language more forcible than polite.

We must also regard it as unfortunate, to say the least, for self-constituted bodies of private citizens, however enlightened and benevolent, to affect investigation, counsel or what not in the foreign affairs of America, especially under names calculated to give the impression that they are invested with official authority. Here, with Who's Who at our elbows, we understand such things and know that they are merely "pretty Fanny's way". But they are not thus understood abroad; and when foreign peoples hear that "the American Commission for This" or "the United States Council for That" has reported so and so, and has recommended to the President such and such action, there is grave danger of their taking these things far more seriously than they deserve.

It is beyond doubt highly desirable for American citizens to acquaint themselves fully and accurately with foreign as well as domestic affairs, and it is well for them to make their opinions

and wishes known to their own representatives in their own Government. But it is not well for them to clamor for the conduct of diplomacy in town meeting, or to assume for themselves the pose and nomenclature of official agencies. It would have to be an immensely greater Commission or Council than any that has yet been formed, that could affect to speak for the people and Government of America, without incurring the fate of the Three Tailors of Tooley Street who called themselves "We, the People of England". We have already had too many Meddlesome Matties in "unofficial gossips" and "impudent commissions".

IF POOR RICHARD WERE HERE!

It is an appropriate and should be a profitable thing to commemorate the birthday anniversary of Benjamin Franklin every year with a Thrift Week, for the promotion of that homely virtue of which he was one of the world's chief apostles. Yet we cannot help reflecting, somewhat grimly, we are afraid, upon what would be his sentiments and his vigorous words, if he were permitted to revisit the glimpses of the moon and observe the appalling thriftlessness which has long prevailed in the republic which he so greatly helped to found. For the fact is that our wastefulness of three of our very greatest natural resources has for years been one of the most amazing and most discreditable phenomena in the economic history of the world.

COAL. Men still living and resentful at being called old remember reading in their school textbooks that the coal deposits in a single State of this Union were sufficient to supply all possible needs of the entire nation for centuries to come. Since then deposits have been opened up in a dozen other States. Yet today expert engineers are computing the measurable time that will elapse before our coal beds are practically exhausted, at least beyond the limits of profitable working. And men who know the business best declare that of all the coal taken from our mines, probably fifty per cent. has been wasted before reaching the place of consumption.

TIMBER. We used similarly to be told that the forest wealth

of America was practically inexhaustible; sufficient to supply the whole world for centuries to come. But today something resembling a lumber famine prevails. Prices have increased five hundred per cent., and more and more we are drawing our supplies from foreign lands. It is true, of course, that the manufacture of paper and other causes have enormously increased the consumption of timber. Yet it is a truism of the trade that fifty per cent. of the available forest growth that has now vanished was not used at all, but was simply wasted and destroyed, either carelessly or wantonly. And such a thing as scientific forestry, aiming to cultivate woodlands instead of merely cutting them off, and to replant forests as fast as they are cut, has scarcely been dreamed of on any considerable scale. Today we are dependent upon other countries for wood, and have so far denuded our land of trees that it would take fifty years of the most ample effort to restore us to a self-supplying basis.

WATER. There are few countries of the world so richly endowed with natural water supplies, for both potable and industrial purposes, as the chief industrial States of this Union; yet there are few that have so greatly neglected and abused the gift. We have allowed millions of horse power, for industrial uses, to flow to the sea unutilized, while we have gone on consuming millions of tons of coal and millions of barrels of oil for which the water would have provided a preferable substitute and which it would have enabled us to conserve for other uses. A large part of our supply of potable water has been lost to us by our practice of the stupid and filthy rule that the only way to dispose of sewage is to pour it into the nearest river or lake; until now our great cities are put to great expense and are driven far afield to find enough for their supposed needs. But even in such circumstances, profligacy prevails; for in the average large city from twenty-five to fifty per cent. of the water that flows through the mains is not used at all, but absolutely wasted.

Yes; it would be mightily interesting to have Ben Franklin come back and tell us what he thought of us. Indeed, though, it should not be necessary for our information or our admonition. To every man of vision and imagination there must be a spiritual radio broadcasting from the Elysian Fields!