made to assure a square deal. Second, to strengthen and broaden the Civil Service at every point wherever possible to the end that merit may govern. Third, with absolute fidelity to put the entire service upon a purely business basis so sound and so serviceable that no political party will ever again dare attempt to ignore or evade it ultimately.

Now this is how we are trying in a common-sense manner to build up the morale of the Postal Service.

We are going to deal the same way with those outside the Postal Service who have complaints against it. We are going to hear them all. They are going to get the same just consideration as every postal worker. Co-operation outside and inside the service is our slogan. Team-work all around is the magician's wand that alone can make our Governmental services what they should be and what they can be and what they will be if only that means is applied. You may regard me, if you please, as the wheel horse of the team, to do the hardest work and to bear the responsibility. That's what I'm in office for. But I ask for co-operation from all to whatever extent that may be practicable and for helpful criticism. We are all engaged in working out the same transcendent problem of making our Postal Service, as is our Government, the best in the world.

BY HARRY

LEE

HEY'RE a new stunt of your Uncle
Sam's,

The Public Service Hospitals,

Anybody that's workin' for him,

If he's sick,

Can come in

And be cared for.

Men hurt in the war

Fill most of 'em now,

Soldiers and marines and sailors, an'

that,

A lot of 'em kids

Just out o' their teens,

So it sure knocked us cold-
You know what I mean-
When last week they fetches
An old grandpa in
On a stretcher.

A postman they said he was.
Seems he'd skidded-like,
On a rainy step

Up in Harlem somewheres . . .
Got a leg broke.

'Course us guys goes in,
W'en the splint's on, an' all,
An' gee, he's a prince!

Hair, what he has of it, white,
White as a cigarette paper . . .
The face of him like an old sea-dog,

Used to all weathers, y' know.
His two eyes, blue,
Twinklin'. . .
Young-lookin'

Like he was twenty.

"Sure is tough luck for yez, dad," Tom Flynn says.

An' dad he smiles up at us,

Out of his bed

Funny old kind of a crooked smile-
And he 'lows:

"Well, boys, if 'twa'n't fer me wife,
I think I'd be mighty content,
Just waitin' on here, till it knits,
Hearin' you young fellers joshin',
An' pickin' your banjos,
An' singin'.

But it's her, the old lady, y' know,
It's her I keep frettin' about.
See, it's more'n fifty years
Since I missed a night home . .
As good as a clock, me wife says,
Never late,

'Cept when it snowed,

Or 'round holiday times,

When the mail's extra heavy, y' know.

If 'twa'n't for the wife...
First thing she says,
About this:

N Friday, April 9, his Most Gracious Majesty George V mobilized the army, navy, and air forces of the United Kingdom, and furthermore issued an appeal for volunteers for the national defense.

"We are faced," declaimed Lloyd George to the House of Commons, "with civil war." Or words to that effect.

And so it came to pass that quite a few American journalists in London did not leave their offices until the wee sma' hours of Saturday morning. Indeed, the Prime Minister's alarming words seemed justifiable. A million miners were striking; there were more than two million other workers unemployed or on short time; and a further million railway men and transport workers had threatened to add themselves to the workless army and to paralyze the Kingdom industrially.

Inasmuch as London's tubes and busses stop running shortly after midnight, I took a taxi home. It came from the usual line in the center of Aldwych, opposite the Waldorf Hotel, in response to my whistle; and its chauffeur said "Sir." as British taximen do. Nor was there any attempt to overcharge me for the four-mile journey, the price of which was the equivalent of 90 cents in American money. No evidences of civil commotion here.

I mentioned as much to the driver, and he snorted.

"Do you want to know when the blinkin' revolution'll come, guvnor?" he asked. Fishing out a newspaper, he held it close to his lamps, so that the reproduction of a marble statue entitled "Labour Awakening" was visible.

"When that blighter comes to life," he answered his own query.

And I am inclined to think that he was nearer the mark than the men at Westminster and Windsor.

There is no other country on earth where a week such as the one ending April 9 was would not have culminated in very grave disorders, if not in revo

lution and anarchy. Armies are not mobilized for trivial reasons. One leaves the reader to picture what would have happened in New York, in Paris, in Rome, the morning after the apparent crisis had been reached.

London was quite unconcerned. It saw several reasons why a social revolution was not going to take place as advertised. Among them were:

1. It had never happened before.

2. One couldn't revolt over the weckend. The masses wanted to play football and the classes to go to their country homes.

3. Keen recollections of a certain August day in 1914, when the army was mobilized, and of the four following years.

So long as one tries to understand England by rote one is lost. One must accept it for the gigantic paradox that it is, and appraise it by instinct, not by reason. The method is not infallible, but it is the only one that works at all. More than one foreigner in London had visions, that Friday night, of barricades

in the Strand and artillery in Piccadilly Circus. That was reason. Very few Londoners thought the matter more than a beastly nuisance. That was instinct. I do not mean to convey the impression that London was not at all alarmed. It was. There was an appreciable rise in the rental price of bicycles, due to the general belief that there certainly would be a railway strike and that one would bicycle or walk. There were brisk inquiries for rooms at downtown hotels. Employers of labor foresaw that they might lose quite a bit of money, and prepared to cancel contracts ruthlessly. But the man in the street, the chap who says, "The Government ought to do something about it," was three parts befuddled and one part annoyed. Beyond that, he wondered what things were coming to, and whether or not he would have to postpone his vacation. The possibility of revolution lay in a dimension without his comprehension; as unintelligible as Einstein's theory. British imperturbability, the phlegm

was

britannique that the French love to make fun of, is a queer thing. Superficially, the Briton is not at all the silent, reserved man he is often pictured to be. He is occasionally garrulous; he will cheer and otherwise give vent to his emotions as lustily as any American; he has been known to speak to perfect strangers, and to speak courteously and softly. In a word, he is just the ordinary human being as one finds him under conditions of twentiethcentury civilization (which remark is entirely without ironical intent).

It is just when the outsider decides that British stolidity is a myth that it is manifested. It is when the stage is set for revolution; when Frank Hodges, the miners' leader, declares, "If we go down, the nation will go with us!" and when a general death struggle between capital and labor is brewing, that that steadying instinct, the heritage of centuries of rights won by political action instead of fcrce, comes into play.

Very frequently it is late, as witness the case of Ireland to-day. But, as I said in a previous article in The Outlook, the reason that Ireland is a problem is because Britain isn't interested in it. The man in the street hasn't yet had Ireland presented to him in terms of a national menace, despite what the world may think about it.

The present industrial convulsion (for it is far from settled as I write) is something very definite and tangible. It was well epitomized by a writer in the "Daily Mail:"

"The trouble is that we are trying to lead a three-pound life on a thirtyshilling income."

Americans do not need to be told that a slump, in business started last fall. That slump hit England hard. The pound sterling was (and is) worth only about $4 in the land which is the great mine of raw materials; but it is worth from 25 shillings to £20 in the Continental countries to which England exports. Result: Manufacturing costs are unduly high, and buyers can't afford to pay in their depreciated currencies. The Sheffield steel manufacturer abandons the idea of getting that new RollsRoyce and the Birmingham puddler registers at his local Labor Exchange for the £1 a week unemployment pay.

What is the answer? Obviously, so long as the exchanges are unstable, to cut down on the next item of production costs-labor.

But Labor (spelled this time with a capital L) doesn't like the idea. Labor was underpaid in England before 1914; there is no getting away from that fact. The submerged tenth was very much of a reality. But Labor had always been underpaid, and the world went on, and there didn't seem very much chance to do anything about it.

Then came war, and the apotheosis of Labor. As the workingman had been underpaid prior to 1914, in the five years which followed he was grossly overpaid. And it went to his head, just as it did in America.

But do not lose sight of the fact that

Labor was having, for the first time in its life, a taste of how the other half lived and that it wanted more. It had waited long enough for it.

So much by way of generalization. Now, as 1921 begins, one finds the British employer determined to cut down wages. He is not entirely selfish about it; he realizes that commodity prices can never come down very far until labor prices do. But the laborer is suspicious that he will lose his bounty and his lower prices to boot. It is a case of both standing on the bank and urging, "You dive first!" but with Labor determined that it will never go back to its 1914 level, come what may.. Take, for instance, the case of the miner. Prior to 1914 he was underpaid,

JUSTICE SIR JOHN SANKEY "The Sankey Commission, a body... presided over by Justice Sankey,

recommended that the mines be operated as a unit"

and the Sankey award specifically allowed him a two shilling a day raise, half of which was given, not on account of higher wages, but to better his standard of living. Under Government control of coal the Continental buyer was charged an extortionate price, and the laborer benefited thereby. But the aforesaid Continental buyer became unable to buy, and the Government began to lose money to the tune of £5,000,000 a month on the miners' wages. On February 23, 1921, it was announced that coal decontrol, scheduled for August 1, would be advanced to March 31.

That meant that the industry would go back to the status of a private concern. It meant lower wages, and it meant the end of the national wage arrangement.

This latter is a pet scheme of the miners. Some of the British mines, or pits, as they are known here, are easy to work and pay big profits. Others are old and outworked, and really operate at a loss. The miners' contention is that these unprofitable mines are analogous to departments of a big concern-departments which show no return, but which are nevertheless part of the whole, and which should be maintained.

"Lump all the profits and all the losses, and the profits will be the bigger," he says; and this is what he means by nationalization of the mines. Without going into the technicalities of the case, there is this to be said for his contention: The Sankey Commission, a body composed of representatives of the miners, the mine-owners, and the public, and presided over by Justice Sankey, in an inquest held during the war recommended that the mines be operated as a unit. On the other hand, the average citizen is inclined to say that mines being operated at a loss had better be shut down.

The coal-owners, naturally, couldn't see things as the miners did. So they sent out notices to the miners that wages would be reduced, on decontrol of the industry, until each district showed a profit on its own standing.

The miners retorted with threats of a strike.

The owners intimated that the decision meant nothing in their lives.

The miners struck. Moreover, at midnight on March 31 they ordered all the "safety men"-the men who work the pumps that cope with the thousands of gallons of water which pour or seep into the mines every hour-also to quit their jobs. This was something which had never been done before.

At this stage reinforcements arrived for the miners in the shape of the Triple Alliance (which, incidentally, cracked under the strain of its first real test). The Triple Alliance is the super-labor organization of Great Britain, and.comprises the miners, the transport workers, and the railway men. It was formed in 1915, largely due to the efforts of Robert - Smillie, the erstwhile President of the Miners' Federation, who some months before the present strike retired to the seclusion of his native village of Larkhall, Scotland, and it has approximately 2,000,000 members.

After the usual series of conferences and counter-conferences which characterize every big British strike, and which usually are quite a waste of time, the Triple Alliance delivered its ultimatum:

"If the miners and the owners are not negotiating before midnight on Tuesday, April 12, we all strike."

The stumbling-block to negotiations was the Government's insistence that the safety men must return to work before parleys could be considered. The miners retorted that the safety men were their most powerful arguments.

The man in the street didn't understand the quibble. He knew that the miners were said to be demanding more than the industry could pay, and he had a strong suspicion that the deficit would come from his pocket.

As a matter of fact, the miners' old weekly wages and those offered them by the owners averaged about as follows: Minimum Maximum 9.25 15.50 .$16.00 $20.00

New wages Old wages

And yet one London despatch to an American newspaper said that the

miners were demanding an American scale of wages! One can live in England on the equivalent of $16 a week. Millions are doing it. One does not live well; one exists. One cannot live on $9.25.

Now try to put yourself in the place of the other members of the Triple Alliance. "Let the miners fight their own battles," is your first thought. But your second is: "Steady on! 'Arf a mo'! What about my own wages?"

So the Triple Alliance threatened to strike, and the country apparently veered toward the edge of civil war.

During the next week, when all union labor in England was talking of a general strike, there came the flood tide of Labor's power. But the Government's energetic preparations to "carry on" had undermined the morale of the intending strikers; the mine-owners made a new and more generous offer (to forego all profits for an indefinite period), which the miners refused, and by doing so alienated themselves from the rest of the Alliance; and the general strike collapsed.

The answer? That may be left to the conferences which the miners, their employers, and the Government still are holding. It is probable that some sort of a truce will be patched up. The complete solution is far in the future, and the man who knows what it is will be the man who won the peace.

My concern is with showing that for Britain that solution is not, and will not be, revolution.

On Saturday evening, April 9, the newspapers of London announced that "it was like 1914" again. But it wasn't. Everywhere there was plastered the "Appeal to Loyal Citizens-Male," which was the call for volunteers for the new national defense force-a sort of industrial militia. Beside it one found the proclamation calling up the army reserves-brief, black and white, official, with the royal arms and the "George R" at the top. And yes, there were queues of civilians at the recruiting offices.

Nevertheless it was not like 1914. There was no such spirit in the air. Most of the men in those queues were men who had already seen behind mobilization proclamations-men who remembered Ypres, Mons, the Somme, Cambrai, Anzac. Once before his Majesty had been graciously pleased to call them to. his service, and they knew what it meant.

There was no enthusiasm. Many responded from a sense of duty. Others

(it must be admitted) answered because two-and-fourpence a day and "all found" seemed better than sleeping on the Embankment, where it is decidedly chilly these April days.

Moreover, it wasn't Germans they were being called out against. It was Englishmen-the railway brakeman in the next block, the truck-driver in the flat downstairs.

"I tell you straight, they can mobilize me, but I'll never fire on an Englishman," spoke up a young reservist on a

tube train. There were dozens of other passengers, of all ages and callings, and not one found occasion to say anything more violent than "That's right!" or "I don't blame you!"

No bands played; there were no sweethearts to send their lovers off to the wars. One could not escape the idea that this was mobilization as it should be, stripped of the pageantry and the glamour and the trappings that usually lend it a romantic appeal. It certainly did not furnish half of the picture for the popularly accepted idea of the early days of the revolution.

And who are these men who were cast for the part of the leaders of the mob?

The three chief Labor figures were Frank Hodges, Secretary of the Miners' Federation; J. H. Thomas, President of the National Union of Railwaymen; and Robert Williams, Secretary of the Transport Workers' Federation. It will be noticed that in two cases the secretaries, not the presidents, of the unions are mentioned as being the most prominent. The pro tem. President of the Miners' Federation is Herbert Smith, but he has been entirely overshadowed by the young and fiery Hodges. Williams, likewise, big, raw-boned, selfconfident, is more in the public eye than his superior officer.

"Who's Who" does not mention Hodges. He is a man of a pleasing personality, a former mine worker, something of a fire-eater, but an able economist. He writes letters to the London "Times," and the "Times" prints them.

James Henry Thomas, M.P., according to "Who's Who," commenced work at nine years of age as an errand boy. Finally he got to be an engine cleaner, then a fireman, and later an engineer. He is distinctly moderate in tendency.

The personality of England's Labor leaders furnishes one basis for the assertion that revolution will not be fomented under their guidance. The majority of them could hold their own in debate with professors of economics. Some of

them are (as Robert Smillie interrupted a strike conference last fall to whisper to the writer of this article) frankly out for the abolition of the present social order. But they all have too much sense to advocate forcible overthrow of gov. ernment.

In the first place, they would be cutting away their own supports. The Labor Party numbers more than 3,000,000 voters in its ranks; it is by far the most formidable part of the Parliamentary Opposition. A Labor Government may or may not come in the near future. Lloyd George, who has swung clear around the circle from extreme Radicalism to extreme Toryism, says that if only four per cent of the electorate were to switch allegiance it would mean that Labor would sweep the country. And if Labor did, it would set about the nationalization of public utilities and about several other measures. It would not confiscate; see the text of the bill prepared by J. H. Thomas for nationalization of the railways, and providing for the full compensation of the present shareholders (rather more, by the way, than we did for the manufacturers of alcohol when we decided they had to get out of business).

Nor is Labor unused to governing. The mayors of numerous London boroughs are Labor men. There are hundreds of Labor mayors, Labor councilors, in other cities. Labor's record is not very brilliant; to take only one instance, the rates, or local taxes, have gone up as much, if not more, in the Labor boroughs than in the others. But the vision of a British Terror, of AngloSaxon Robespierres and Dantons, is merely fantastic.

The British press realizes this. Read the London "Times," the "Daily News," the "Westminster Gazette," the Manchester "Guardian," and one will find the workers' case allowed its full and fair share of claim to public recognition. It is the hopelessly prejudiced paper, like the Tory "Morning Post" or the "Daily Herald" (Labor's only daily in

London, remarkably poor as propaganda and worse as news), which sees only one side of the case.

Let it be repeated, the worker and his employer are far from lying down together like the lion and the lamb. As this is written, the miners are still idle; nor does it follow that if they go back to

T

HE Prussia of the Orient!" The phrase rings well, but, militaristic as Japan remains to a great extent, recent years have wrought changes which render characterization far more complex. To-day the navy, even though the army is far inore intelligent and in much closer touch with the trend of the times, has the support of the people and captures the lion's share of the appropriations, while, most important of all, big business exercises an influence over policy which is as potent as it is subtle, as powerful as it is unknown outside Japan, where its generalship is not even yet fully appreciated by the common people.

The ambitions of Japan have changed direction, as world opinion has changed since the war. The ideal of political dominance with the sword is, reluctantly probably, being replaced by the more insidious ambition of economic domination of the Far East, and the army and, particularly, the navy have become in the main the potent tools with which Japan seeks to fulfill what she believes to be her destiny as economic mistress of the east coast of Asia, from north to south. The great business houses of the Empire dream of control of raw materials, by means of which they expect to make

(c) Adachi

Japan the England of the Orient. As Japan, after the defeat of France in 1870, chose victorious Prussia as her model, so she is now, more or less unconsciously perhaps, following the lead of the British victor. As a matter of fact, this course is the more natural of the two because of the geographic position of the Empire and the fact that her tendency towards overpopulation makes necessary her change from an agricultural to a manufacturing nation if she is to support within Nippon and its surrounding territories her increasing millions, for which emigration is being rendered more and more impracticable by growing antipathy in America, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.

Japan became a military nation as a matter of course. In the days of feudalism the soldier was predominant, and even after the Restoration the best brains of the country devoted themselves to the army. Even to-day, although the formerly despised trader has now become a great power in the land and enrolls many of the most promising youths under his banner, the army still commands by far the best men in the Government service. Other departments have their share of competent men, but,

generally speaking, all are more or less strangled by labyrinthic tangles of bureaucratic red tape. While many of them furnish food for constant wonder that inefficiency and ignorance can be tolerated on the scale in which it exists, the War Department, with its quiet, constantly alert efficiency, furnishes a vivid contrast to the rest. This circumstance, coupled with the fact that Japan owes her position as one of the Great Powers almost entirely to her military prowess, renders it easy to understand that, in spite of all, the army retains a powerful position in the shaping of the destiny of the Empire.

On the other hand, the army has during the last few years become increasingly unpopular with the people at large. Gradually realization of the fact that militarism is looked upon with repugnance the world over has been brought home to Japan. One cannot help contrasting the time of the Russo-Japanese War, when Japan was the world's favorite, with to-day, when she in vain scans the horizon for a sincere friend. Increasing evidences of the growing distrust on the part of other nations of the nation as a military Empire has led to placing the blame therefor at the door of the War Department, and violent condemnation thereof in the press has become common.

Politicians,

university men, and others do not hesitate to criticise the anomalous condition whereby the Foreign Office may follow one policy and the General Staff another, leading to the apparent insincerities which have caused Japan's unpopularity. The War Minister still possesses the unique privilege of reporting direct to the Emperor, while other Ministers must bring their problems before the Cabinet, and, as a consequence, the War Department enjoys a power of initiative entirely its own, which occasionally leads to the army following its own desires without much care as to what may be the policy of the Foreign Office or the Cabinet in general. The militarists are inclined to deny that this is the case. A very high army officer, in the closest possible touch with the War Minister, gave me an explanation which seems illuminative. It was at the time of the discussion of withdrawal from the farther regions of Siberia, and he used this as his text.

"Suppose that the Cabinet decides that we must evacuate," he said. "The