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O this day I have looked forward often, always with a feeling of sorrow, and sometimes with dread. It has stood in my mind as the boundary mark between the two stages of my life, and the happier one the one behind. It is my thirtieth birthday.

Thirty is, in itself, the most unsatisfactory of ages. At thirty one does not have the matured judgment of middle age nor the philosophic calm that is said to be the redeeming joy of senescence. At thirty one's opinions have to be proved and not merely stated; one may be listened to with interest or amazement, but not always with respect. And, worst of all, at thirty one is youthful but no longer young.

No startling metamorphosis has taken place since yesterday, when I was twenty-nine, for, after all, a birthday is only a date and not a reagent. Yet it is a far different world from the one I used to know five years ago, and quite another thing altogether from what I thought I saw at twenty-one. I like it better. I have discovered what might be called the "satisfactions of incompetency."

By "incompetency" I imply the alternative definition according to Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls-"lack of the special qualities required for a particular purpose." I can do many things fairly well; I have even been able to make a very decent living under more than commonly agreeable conditions. But none of all the dreams and hopes and aspirations that I had at twenty-one has been realized, or ever will be. I lack the special qualities to do any one thing thoroughly well.

I had dreams in my early twenties, rather fine dreams, of the things that I was going to do. Some of them come to me still-wistful waifs that sometimes hover about when I cannot sleep o' nights and look at me a bit reproachfully. But if in their vague shapes there is a little of sadness for what never was, there is also a deal of the beauty of what might have been. They are rather agreeable ghosts to have haunt one.

In

Perhaps I hoped for too much. the early twenties a mild form of egotism is almost a virtue, and, in any event, I was inoculated with it, for at that age I had just left college, where a goodly measure of success had been mine. I had entered, an unknown freshman afflicted with an offensive shyness. When I was graduated, I had become one of the "big" men of the university. By undergraduate standards I had achieved everything worth trying for save the 'Varsity letter in athletics. To cap the climax, in the spring of senior year, when so many other inconsequential "statistics" are compiled, I was voted "the brightest man in the class." I went out into the world with great curiosity and few doubts. Even now, when things go particularly badly I re

BY MEL CRANE

flect upon that vote and gain courage to believe that I may not be an altogether hopeless ass, after all.

When first the suspicion dawned on me that perhaps I might not "do things," I was worried. When suspicion changed to substantial certainty, I was profoundly depressed-depressed and melancholy and spiritless. The depression lasted for several years-years that I wasted in futile regret when I might have had so much fun out of life. My regret now is for the wasted years rather than for the vanished visions, though, after all, it is a bit sad to know that with only one life to live there is scant hope of making as much out of it as one would like.

Then came the war, and with it one high adventure, one short romance, and one great sorrow. The end of 1919 found me still more embittered, disillusioned, and nearly lost to hope. I read tremendously. I tried to write myself, and couldn't. I talked and worked and associated with radicals and reformers of all sorts. I became interested in politics and economics, subjects that I had detested in college. And in the end I arrived somewhere-just where I do not know. When one in his rambles comes upon an unexpectedly lovely spot, its name is unimportant.

It is somewhere in what I have heard described as "the twilight zone called liberalism" that I now am, and I find it very pleasant. Excepting other liberals, there are few who care what a liberal thinks, and still fewer why he thinks it. The reactionaries class him with the radicals, and the radicals class him with the dubs. My own friends think that I am a bit crazy. It leaves me free to form, and occasionally to express, my own opinions without the obligation of explaining them, a thing which I do very poorly indeed.

We who stand here in this twilight zone like to think that we see things from the proper angle. People who stand elsewhere also like to think the same thing, and we all have the privilege of thinking the other a fool. Yet for myself, I know that in other days I never experienced the keen pleasure of discrimination that I experience now. It makes even the daily newspapers interesting.

As random examples of what I mean, I have learned to appreciate, almost automatically, such things as the vital difference between Lloyd George and Jan Smuts, while not lost in complete and rapt admiration for either, or between Henry van Dyke and Edgar Lee Masters. It is, by the way, in literature especially that this new discrimination gives me its chiefest rewards. Some authors I now cannot read at all, but, on the other hand, I can these days enjoy the ancient works of Plato and Marcus Aurelius quite as much as a new book by Zona Gale or Rose Macaulay. And the books that I do enjoy I enjoy so

much more than ever before. They seem not only more interesting, but more useful. "There," I say, "is something I must remember. It's a good line to spring on So-and-So next time he starts to argue." I make a note of it, and when next I meet my friend So and So I find that I have completely forgotten it. If any argument starts, he, as usual, wins it by default. Nor am I at all chagrined; it rather amuses me to reflect that he is mentally classing me as a "crackbrained parlor Bolshevik." He uses "crack-brained" in preference to "longhaired" because, knowing what I look like, he knows that the latter is an obvious misstatement. But what he thinks, and in especial what he thinks of me, no longer matters.

Therein lies the advantage of liberalism; therein also are the satisfactions of incompetency. For when one is a liberal he believes in many unpopular movements, and adheres too passionately to none; if he did, he would cease to be just a liberal and would be a Socialist, or a Communist, or a Single-Taxer, or something else instead. And when one is an incompetent he too may be acutely interested in many things and actively involved in none. Only those whose help is valuable are called upon to spend their lives in helping; only those who have accomplished something does any one bother to slander.

The path of the incompetent, therefore, is easy. If he be an incompetent who once dreamed dreams, he may enjoy vicariously the fruits of another's success without the accompanying pains of travail. The spark of divine discontent that once smoldered within him has flickered and gone out, and there are left only a few gray ashes-gray ashes and a few pale ghosts of unborn desires. But they are pleasant ghosts withal, and if sometimes the ashes seem too gray he may warm his hands at the fire a more competent person has kindled. The genius has fame, but the incompetent has fun.

And so to-day, at this milestone, I feel that life has not used me so badly, and that the world is a rather decent place, after all. With a body that is still young, I have already secured some of the compensations supposedly reserved for old age. For, once my high ambitions had faded. I came to feel, not that nothing matters, but that nothing matters much.

Is this an immoral philosophy at which I have arrived? I do not think

So.

To know one's own limitations, so that one need no longer doubt; to have hopes that are strong but not consuming; to discover that one's weaknesses are measured only by another's strength-these are the satisfactions of incompetency.

To-day I am thirty, an admitted incompetent, and I am beginning to enjoy life again after ten years of futile discontent.

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REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC SECURED AND ARRANGED FOR THE OUTLOOK BY P. W. WILSON

T

EN years ago, the Fourth of July was celebrated only by Americans, as their own exclusive National anniversary. To-day, the Fourth of July is claimed by others. It belongs to the entire commonwealth of peoples who speak the English language. Over the Houses of Parliament in London we have seen waving on this day the Stars and Stripes, honored equally with the Union Jack. For years Sulgrave Manor, the home of George Washing ton's ancestors, has been as carefully tended as Mount Vernon, the home of Washington himself.

These amenities express a fact of profound importance-that for the whole world good relations between the United States of America and the British Commonwealth of Nations are essential to peace-essential, therefore, to the blessings which depend on peace. Hence it has seemed good to the editors of The Outlook to write me to collect for this Fourth of July a number of messages from eminent men expressive of the common sense of the common wealth invested in Anglo-American friendship.

A few days before he died Theodore Roosevelt was good enough to ask me to call upon him in hospital. I doubt whether he knew how near he was to the end, and, while I could see that he was unusually pale, I certainly did not realize that I was intrusted perhaps with his last message to a journalist on foreign policy. "I want you to understand," he said, "that, in my judgment, no cause of difference can ever arise anywhere or at any time which would justify war between your country and mine. I do not know that I should have been ready to say this five years ago or ten years ago, but I am now prepared to

support an unconditional treaty of arbitration, covering all subjects, between England and America. While there is in this country a widespread sentiment among many people in favor of some kind of a league of nations to prevent war, I am unable as yet to support unconditional arbitration between the United States and all countries. For instance, there is the immigration problem affecting Japan, and even Italy, on which I should not consent to arbitrate. But with Britain I am ready. I think, by the way, that you should clear up your Irish question as quickly as possible. It does you harm in the United States, and also, from what I learn, in Canada and Australia."

That opinion may well stand first on this Fourth of July. I shall never forget the little room, the two or three books on the table at Mr. Roosevelt's hand, and the vigorous, kindly, indomitable man lying there, without apparently one thought of his own circumstances. No war within the English-speaking nations that was among his last thoughts.

The visit of the Prince of Wales evoked a most cordial response from Americans of all parties and creeds. It is therefore gratifying to record that The Outlook has received from the personal secretary of the Prince a request that this Special Number be sent to his Royal Highness at St. James's Palace, where it is recognized that we are dealing "with the question which he [the Prince of Wales] has very closely at heart."

A personal note has also been received from former President Taft-the advocate of international arbitrationwho sends his "best wishes" for the Fourth of July Number of The Outlook.

It is with particular pleasure that there has been received from Viscount Bryce, O.M., whose Ambassadorship in the United States was so memorable, this message in his own hand:

One of the things that is most needed in our time is the creation of a public opinion of the civilized world which, being formed by the best minds of the leading nations and supported by the solid sense of the more educated part of the mass of the people everywhere could judge political and social questions with more fairness and deliver a weightier judgment upon them than any single nation can do. In the formation of such a "world opinion"-and there are already some few signs that it may be formed-the opinion of the English-speaking peoples will be the most powerful factor, for they are the most numerous and most widely spread over the whole earth. Possessed of the same traditions from their early history, and cherishing the same ideals, they can understand one another better than can any other peoples. It is for the interest of mankind as a whole, as well as for their own interest that they should bring an opinion as far as possible united to bear upon the solution of the great problems, perhaps more difficult than ever before, which mankind has to solve now that all its peoples are being drawn together more and more closely.

JAMES BRYCE,

Since leaving the United States, Viscount Bryce has entered the House of Lords. It is, however, significant that he still signs himself in plain American fashion-James Bryce-as he used to do as Ambassador at Washington.

For centuries no Lord High Chancellor of England had, until recently,

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left the shores of Great Britain during his official guardianship of the Great Seal, which is the badge of supreme authority under the British crown. The first Lord Chancellor to break this precedent was Viscount Haldane, O.M., and he crossed the ocean in order to visit the United States. Lord Haldane's message is as follows:

28, Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster.

To the Editor of The Outlook:

I think that in regions not yet fully known to the public in both countries, the relationship between the people of the United States and Great Britain, in modes of thought and action, is growing more and more intimate. In Philosophy, in Science, in Jurisprudence, in the Theory of the State, new knowledge is growing up for both nations. Each is influencing the other, and the mutual stimulation which is taking place is highly beneficial. It is also important as contributing to unison of spirit in other directions. HALDANE.

27 May, 1921.

The Common Law of Great Britain and of the United States is the same in origin and is similar in interpretation. No one has done more to elucidate that Common Law for both countries than Mr. Justice O. W. Holmes, of the Supreme Court at Washington, who says, in a letter to us, that this legal

Paul Thompson

CHARLES M. SCHWAB

affinity "opens large perspectives down which, I fear, I cannot pause to look." Every lawyer in the English-speaking countries of the world recognizes that the "large perspectives" of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence are a common heritage of our courts.

Sir Robert L. Borden, for many years Prime Minister of Canada, writes thus:

In the great democracies of the world the issue of peace or war is more and more controlled by the people. The course of the British Government in 1914 and that of the American Government in 1917 exemplify this truth. Thus the individual responsibility of each citizen for the peace of the world has become more strikingly manifest. Upon a solemn and abiding sense of that personal responsibility among the people and in the press peace must chiefly rest in the future.

The struggle for economic advantage or supremacy powerfully influences the attitude and policy of each nation. Surely we have learned that the inconceivable and farreaching destruction and waste resulting from war under modern conditions offsets a hundred times all advantage that war can bring even to the victor. And the destruction is not physical alone; it affects also the moral fabric of society.

In the methods of determining international disputes humanity has made little, if any, advance during

(C) Keystone

RABBI WISE

more than twenty centuries. Democracy as we realize it is a new thing in the world. Let it bring to humanity this great service of ensuring peace by substituting international arbitrament for international murder. If our two democracies kindred in race, language, institutions, and ideals cannot meet that supreme test, the future is clouded with darkness and even with despair. R. L. BORDEN. Ottawa, 14 June, 1921.

In the Senate of the United States today there is a personality that stands out boldly and is known throughout the world. Senator Borah, of Idaho, the champion of disarmament, writes for The Outlook in these terms:

There are very few Americans who do not realize the importance of friendly relations between the two great English-speaking peoples. Perhaps civilization itself, as we understand the word, depends upon that relationship. For illustration, the cause of disarmament must halt and die if the United States and Great Britain are to be at enmity. And if disarmament is to fail and the race of armaments is to go forward, economic chaos, bankruptcy, and war are not far removed.

I do not mean to say that these two Powers alone should disarm, but I do mean to say that, unless they are willing to do so, nothing can be accomplished, and if they are willing to do so, other Powers will be induced to accede to a like programme. While

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In the methods of determining international disputes humanity has made little, if any, advance during more than twenty centuries. Democracy as we realize

it is a new thing in the world. Let it bring to humanity this great service of ensuring peace by substituting international arbitrament for international murder.

If our two democracies kindred in race, language, institutions and ideale dannet meet that supreme test, the future is clouded with darkness and even with despair.

Ottawa 14 June, 1921.

RLBaden

FACSIMILE OF PART OF THE LETTER FROM SIR ROBERT BORDEN

insisting, as the people of this country always will, upon the most complete political independence and disentanglement, let us not undervalue to mankind the incalculable worth of friendly relations.

There

are two great problems which must be solved in order that the friendly relations between Great Britain and the United States may continue. The Irish question I will not discuss here. The other is the avoidance of a naval race. Either one left unsolved and unsettled must necessarily militate greatly against the friendship which, in the interest of world peace, should be maintained. It is sometimes said that war between the United States and Great Britain is unthinkable. That is all right for banquet and dress-parade occasions. But it is not unthinkable, and if we enter a naval race, at the end of ten years no one will think it improbable. Let us maintain friendly relations in order to disarm, and let us disarm in order to maintain friendly relations.

Owing to some misunderstanding, it was recently announced that Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, New York, would address the Imperial Conference of Prime Ministers, now assembling in London. Dr. Butler has proceeded to London, and perhaps will undoubtedly confer in more informal fashion with statesmen there gathered; and before sailing he was consulted by President Harding, who is, it is safe to assume, fully cognizant of Dr. Butler's large conception of American policy, based as it is upon a new view of Anglo-American cooperation in Asia. Dr. Butler was good enough to give me a special interview for The Outlook.

House of Commons when Gladstone's Government was defeated in 1886 over the first Home Rule Bill. It seemed to me even then to be a grave error in political psychology. That first rejection of Home Rule was surely a solemn blunder. Not that I can now give any solution either for your Irish or for our Negro problem."

Dr. Butler discounted the idea of a conflict between the United States and Japan. He thought that Japan would agree to shut off all further immigration into California provided that immigrants already admitted were received, like Hungarians or Poles, into full American citizenship. He is not, however, entirely at ease over the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. He would apply a solution of wider scope to the Asiatic situation. "From the Nile to the Ganges," said he, "there is a definite propaganda fomenting unrest, which is essentially the same in all Oriental countries. This agitation may be compared with the free silver campaign in the United States, which was promoted by means of little meetings here, there, and everywhere, with one invariable theme under discussion. England is being thus attacked in the East not because she is England, but because she is the chief representative of European civilization as a whole. The East is being aroused against the politics, the economics, and the religion of the West. It is a definite challenge which we should meet with a definite answer. The Five Great PowersFrance, the United States, Japan, Italy, and Britain-should act together. Britain and France should be supported by the rest of us in their large respon

"I was present," he said, "in the sibilities throughout the East. And

Japan, instead of being left to fight her battle alone, should be included in the comradeship of the Great Powers,

where her prestige would be acknowledged without effort on her part, military or otherwise."

It is our aim to show every side of this great problem. The Hon. George Foster Peabody is a close friend of former President Woodrow Wilson, a Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a firm believer in international idealism. To The Outlook he sends this message:

If the principle of the brotherhood of all men be made the basis of a closer relationship between the peoples and Governments of the British Empire and the United States, there will be the greatest hope from every approach to a clearer understanding of the spirit of the men and women whose religious practice and political faith have common basis in Magna Charta, from which our Declaration of Independence logically evolved.

Our so-called melting-pot experience adds the emphasis needed upon the equal qualities and capacities of peoples of all races and languages. Therefore any closer union to be effective must at every point recognize the equal rights of all peoples and nations and definitely avoid any alliance that would mean in effect an overlordship or super-leadership by the Anglo-Saxon peoples with or without other allies.

From this standpoint, Anglo-American co-operation should be founded upon a common service and sacrifice for others.

Another distinctive view is expressed in a letter received from Mr. Darwin P. Kingsley, the President of the New York Life Insurance Company, who has long

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advocated what Tennyson called "the parliament of man, the federation of the world" as the only means, in his opinion, of avoiding war. He writes:

The world is controlled politically by sovereignties.

Sovereignties are bound, by the very nature of their being, to encroach on each other; a struggle for existence has naturally followed, and the fit and powerful alone survive.

By the developments of science the world has so shrunk that the United States and the British Empire together are not as large, measured in terms of transportation and the transmission of information, as the thirteen colonies were in 1789.

This has intensified the struggle. Germany's determination to burst the "ring of iron" by which she claimed to be bound in 1914 was an acute phase of the conflict of sovereignties.

Leagues or courts in which the units are sovereignties are mere palliatives; they solve no problems.

The problems cannot be solved by any artificial structure; they will be solved only by a plan which assumes and provides for organic growth. The idea (if not the model) lies in the Federal Government of the United States. All the. Englishspeaking states of the world should federate under a constitution modeled on the Constitution of the United States.

Such a federation-quite apart from its preponderant power-would end war over more than half the earth.

As the Federal Government expanded from thirteen to forty-eight States, so might the federation of the English world expand until it finally included all civilized peoples.

This would be organic growth. This would not destroy nationality, but create a finer instrument to meet higher needs.

This would end war.

Between American and Canadian colleges there are now intimate associations. Sir Robert A. Falconer, President' of the University of Toronto, writes for The Outlook as follows:

The universities of Canada and the United States have very many points of similarity, though the national characteristics of the two peoples are marked upon these institutions. For a generation students have been going in large numbers from the Canadian universities to such universities as Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Yale for post-graduate work, and in more recent years to Columbia, Cornell, Chicago, and other institutions, which have become equipped for this purpose. These Canadians have been warmly welcomed and have taken their share of honors. In fact, this emigration has in too many instances become permanent, and it is safe to say that hundreds of the brightest Canadians are to-day holding high positions in the colleges and universities of the United States. This has been a serious drain on Canada. There has been, also, little in the nature of a return stream.

There is much academic intercourse between the two countries-in learned and scientific societies at their annual meetings and in a great

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variety of professional gatheringsso that the academic world on each side of the line understands its neighbor.

With gracious readiness, Mr. David Belasco, as representing the American drama, writes for The Outlook as follows:

Our theater grows daily more and more cosmopolitan. The American public has a place in its heart for all comers worthy of the great rewards it has to give. Our relations and interchange of players with the English stage have been particularly gratifying. The bond of language and sympathy has always been a strong one. While in London, on my recent trip abroad, I was struck by the ease, finish, and charm of many actors and actresses, and, generally speaking, by their admirable diction. They follow the lead of France in that vital point. And, I think, there is plenty of emotional power to call upon. Much of the talk of English lack of temperament is

nonsense.

But it is possible that English producers rather than the players are responsible for some want of snap, a tendency to overdo restraint.

Mr. George Arliss, whose interpretation of "The Green Goddess" has delighted New York, is "greatly interested" in this subject of the AngloAmerican stage. He says:

It is the duty of every Englishman, and especially of every English

woman, to help bring about a solid friendship between England and America. The English actor has more power for good or evil in this respect than the average private individual. There are several clubs and associations in America designed to promote friendship between the two countries, but the theatrical profession as a body can do so much more than all these manufactured associations put together.

Mr. Arliss tells the story of Blakeley (or some one else) who slipped on a banana skin in New York and cried out, in his undignified sitting posture, "I knew I shouldn't like the beastly country!" Not among actors only, but among all who cross the ocean, there is this tendency to judge of one country or of the other by superficial impressions. And, possibly, Americans hardly realize that nine-tenths of the movie films shown in the British Empire are American and furnish what is represented to be life in America. In India American films are shown which would be censured in most States of the Union.

A word may here be said dismissing as unfounded the occasional rumors of vast sums spent by the British on propaganda in the United States. It can be said emphatically that Britain does not want friendly Americans to be hyphenates even in her interest. TH..

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