take them as sincere and genuine tributes. The first was from a writer who signed himself "A Crusty Old Bachelor." He described an experience which he had just had. We print the story in full:

While passing through the shopping district on the Sixth Avenue "L" shortly after one P.M. to-day, a lady, accompanied by a little boy of three or four years, took seats opposite to me. The youngster had a piece of chocolate in his hand, and after being seated he proceeded to remove its wrappings. For one reason or another I fully expected to see him drop the pieces of paper on the floor of the car, one by one, as his little fingers tore them apart. But he placed each one in the waiting hand of his mother, and the latter, after she had received all of them, rolled them into a diminutive wad and placed them in her reticule.

The entire proceeding took place so simply, with such an air of perfect naturalness, I confess I was most profoundly impressed with the trifling exhibition of neatness and orderliness. Lucky youngster to have such a mother, and fortunate husband to have such a wife! What an example for all of us to imitate in these days of acts of thoughtlessness and lack of respect for and deference due to others!

Even the crusty old bachelor cannot refrain in his final word from referring to "these days of acts of thoughtlessness and lack of respect for and deference due to others." It seems to be a kind of liturgical formula which commentators on modern civilization feel compelled to indulge in.

The other letter is not more delightful in the incident it depicts, but it is certainly more cheerful in the moral it draws. Vera R. Wolfe-she must, we think, be a very pleasant kind of ladytells this story:

I

The subway train was crowded. luckily secured a seat through the courtesy of a workingman. He stood in front of me, continuing to read his paper. He did not look any more tired than the usual run of toilers of the soil. Two gentlemen stood alongside him. The seat in front of the second man was vacated at Seventysecond Street. Both these men at the same time beckoned to the workingman to take the unoccupied seat, which he did without hesitancy and with a grateful "Thank you."

Strange occurrence, wasn't it? It is mighty good to think that in the subway there travel men with feeling for their fellow-creatures, and I have always thought that it was an unknown quantity. Wrong again!

We think she must be a very pleasant kind of lady because, unlike the crusty old bachelor, she does not feel the necessity of condemning the mistakes of modern civilization. She is contented to condemn herself. "Wrong again!" she

says. We wonder if some of us who are obsessed with the feeling that modern civilization is greedy, pushing, noisy, irreverent, and frivolous are not also wrong again.

EVOLUTION—“ GOD'S WAY OF DOING

L

THINGS"

AST week I received from Kentucky a telegram saying that a bill had been introduced in the Kentucky Legislature making it a penal offense for any teacher in any school supported by the State to teach evolution, and asking my opinion concerning such legislation. In this letter I give to a larger constituency a fuller reply than could be given in a telegram.

The sponsor for that bill will probably read with astonishment, and perhaps with indignation, if he reads this letter at all, my statement that, so far as I know, Jesus Christ is the first character in history to describe with approval evolution, which he does in the following parable:

And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed upon the earth; and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how. The earth beareth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the fruit is ripe, straightway he putteth forth the sickle, because the harvest is come.

"Evolution," says John Fiske, "is God's way of doing things." Christ makes it very clear that it is God's way of bringing about his kingdom on the earth. Evolution is defined by Professor Le Conte as "continuous progressive change according to certain laws and by means of resident forces." Christ says that the kingdom of God will grow up, as plants grow from seed, and will grow from spiritual forces in man as the plant grows up from natural forces in the earth.

A casual glance at the Christianity in the world to-day compared with the Christianity of the New Testament proves the truth of Christ's prophecy.

From the simple evangelical creed, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," have grown up the elaborate creeds of the churches, such as the Roman Catholic Creed of Pius IV, the Westminster Confession of Faith of the Presbyterians, the Savoy Confession of the Congregationalists, the Thirty-nine Articles of the Episcopalians. From the simple meetings of prayer and praise held in private homes, as described in the Book of Acts, have

grown up the innumerable houses of worship from the plain meeting-houses of the Friends to the magnificent cathedrals of the Episcopalians and the Roman Catholics. From the simple memorial supper described in the Gospels have grown the various liturgical services which constitute, with very few exceptions, the most solemn and sacred of all the acts of worship of Christ's disciples. From the acts of charity which characterized the early churches wherever they were founded have grown the organized charity which finds its largest illustration in the work of the Red Cross contributed to in time of need by Jews and agnostics as well as by professed disciples and testifying to its origin by the ever-present symbol of the cross. From the synagogue schools, in one of which Jesus received all of his school education, have grown schools, colleges, and universities, which at first were founded and carried on only by the Christian Church, but which are now a distinctive feature of every land calling itself a Christian country. From Paul and Silas setting out alone upon a missionary journey have grown the innumerable teachers and preachers carrying the Good News into every land and telling it in their own language to people of every tongue.

some

A few weeks ago I was the guest of a family on whose dinner table was delicious looking fruit-apples. pears, grapes. It was not passed, and I wondered why. I was tempted to ask if I might take a bunch of the grapes or an apple to my room at night, but, fortunately, I did not; for the next day it came out that the center-piece of the dinner table was artificial fruit. Artificial? What does that mean? It means man-made. Man's way of making fruit is to take some material-I know not what-and skillfully so combine it as to produce what would look like an apple. But it would not be an apple, for it would not possess life; life the artist could not give to it. God's way

of making an apple is to impart life to the seed and life to the soil. A gardener or a bird drops the seed into the soil, and out of the seed and the soil grows the tree, and on the tree apples, and in the apples seeds which have the life that may produce other trees and other seeds. The gardener can plow the ground and fertilize it, and can guard the growing tree and spray and prune it; but he cannot give life to either seed or soil. Growth from seed and soil is God's way of making an apple-continuous, progressive growth by a force residing in the seed and in the soil. Sow diamonds in the soil and nothing happens; for the diamonds have not life.

Sow seed in dead soil and nothing happens; for the soil has not life.

I went into a sculptor's studio a few months ago. Among the products of her skill was a "dancing girl;" the lightness of step, the breeze-blown gown, the seriously smiling face of the street girl dancing to the music of a hand organ, had been wonderfully caught and wonderfully reproduced in bronze. But the dancing girl could not dance. She had everything the original possessed except life. Many a dancing girl has come from God's hands. But the process was different. He gave to a mother a life which was not her own, a life which for a little time she carried next her heart. Then the babe lay in the cradle; it could not dance, could not even walk. But it was a living creature; and out of the living creature God and the mother working in partnership made a child, a growing girl, and by and by another mother from whom would come another life. Evolution, so the evolutionists have told us over and over again, is simply the history of a process-the

process of a continuous, progressive growth, an account of God's way of doing things.

That this has been God's way of doing things from the earliest ages of which history gives us any account is unquestionable, and is unquestioned except by such teachers as Voliva and Jasper. That it has been his way of doing things in prehistoric times is a highly probable opinion and is confirmed by such investigations as scientists have made into the processes of life. It is certain that true religion has nothing to fear from free investigation of those processes. That evolution removes God from the universe is not true; on the contrary, it shows him now and always in the universe; it gives new significance to Christ's saying, "My Father worketh even until now;" it justifies the sacred poet's declaration, "God is never so far as even to be near;" it shows us nature and history full of the presence of God.

I am not sure what the gentleman who has introduced the Kentucky bill

means by it. If it really forbids the schools to teach evolution it forbids them to teach God's way of doing things. It forbids them to teach Christ's parable of "The Seed Growing Secretly;" it forbids them to teach their pupils how the seeds they sow in spring grow to fruitful harvests in the fall; how the group of pioneers who landed on these shores four hundred years ago-Puritans in New England, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Roman Catholics in Delaware, Episcopalians in Virginia, Huguenots in the Carolinas-have grown into this great free commonwealth; how out of the pictured letters on Egyptian tombs have grown the great libraries of Rome. Paris, London, and Washington; how out of the first teaching of little children at their mother's knee have grown the great universities and the great public school systems of Christendom; how the life of justice, mercy, and reverent fellowship with God which we call Christianity has grown from the manger at Bethlehem and the empty tomb at Jerusalem. LYMAN ABBOTT.

I

FROM THE

N front of Memorial Continental Hall Elihu Root, formerly Secretary of State and United States Senator, and now American delegate to the Conference on the Limitation of Armament, was crossing the sidewalk and stepping across the curb with a worried look on his face. A moment later Lord Lee of Fareham rushed along the sidewalk with his walking-stick uplifted, like an orchestral conductor, and shouted excitedly. During these twelve weeks of labor and study and planning at the Armament Conference I have never seen such evident anxiety on the face of any delegate as that which was written plainly on Mr. Root's countenance, nor such evidence of concern mingled with agitated energy as that in Lord Lee's conduct. It was at the close of the plenary session at which the great achievements of the Conference were recorded and received assent. The end of the Shantung menace had been announced, the principal agreements concerning the future safety and well-being of China had been codified, and the extraordinary naval treaty, which scrapped huge battleships by the scores, had been formally adopted. It seemed as if by this time the occasion for anxiety and excitement had passed.

Everybody, however, who had sat through that session understood. The

snow was piled high in the streets of Washington. It was blockading the motor cars which were trying to reach the entrance set apart for the officials of the Conference. Luncheon hour was long past. The men who had been establishing a basis for peace among nine nations, and in the process had been waiting patiently for weeks while experts settled technical questions or Orientals bargained over the transfer of a railway property, were not ready to stand on ceremony when it came to the question of going to luncheon at quarter to three.

For the delegates the fifth plenary session was merely a formal ceremonial. All that was done there had in substance and in fact been done before. The speeches they made there might have been read by others. The votes they cast might have been cast just as well by deputies. Nevertheless in the history of nations it is not unlikely that one of the great days to be remembered will be the day of that session, February 1, 1922.

On that day, it will be remembered, Japan and China recorded publicly for the first time their agreement concerning the final settlement of the question of Shantung.

On that day the resolutions by which eight great nations not only promised

but initiated a new and freer, if not a happier, era for China and removed causes of misunderstanding and conflict were publicly acknowledged.

And on that day was accepted by the five chief naval Powers of the world the treaty which put to an end the ruinous naval race.

On each of these subjects I have written in the course of my correspondence in turn. At this time I shall not undertake to discuss them in detail. There are certain facts, however, which should be emphasized in any record of this day's achievement.

In the first place, there is no record in this day's proceedings or in the Conference of which this day is the culmination of any undertaking to reorganize the world, or to establish a new world order, or to abolish any of the rights or any of the freedom of sovereign nations, or to make out of documents the machinery for producing a golden age. This negative result has a positive quality. It enables those who believe that patriotism is one of the best and soundest forms of loyalty to believe also that it is practical to secure a closer association of nations.

In the second place, there is in this day's proceedings evidence of the necessary relation between the armament of a nation and its policies. Before the

naval treaty limiting the tonnage and fighting power of capital ships was adopted, there was an agreement between the nations assembled concerning their policy towards China. In particular, the settlement of the difficulty created by the Japanese occupation of strategic positions in China's ancient and sacred province of Shantung was necessary before there could be any chance of the success of America's plan for the limitation of naval armament.

In the third place, there is proof in this day's proceedings of a disposition on the part of the nations represented at Washington to renounce for the general good claims and rights to which they made it clear that they felt themselves entitled. The very fact that for several weeks Japan hesitated over accepting the ratio which was suggested in the American plan and the very fact that France came totally unprepared to sacrifice as great a part of her naval pro

gramme as she finally agreed to sacrifice, so far from detracting from the significance of this Conference, give to this Conference a character of national renunciation unlike that of any in history.

I shall leave to a colleague the description of the closing plenary sessions, and to a later issue of The Outlook a general estimate of the work of the Conference as a whole.

Washington, D. C., February 1, 1922.

I am sure the people of the United States are supremely gratified, and yet there is scant appreciation how marvelously you have wrought. Majorities could not decide without impinging national rights. There were no victors to command, no vanquished to yield. All had voluntarily to agree in translating the conscience of our civilization and give concrete expression to world opinion. . . .

It has been the fortune of this Conference to sit in a day far enough removed from war's bitterness, yet near enough to war's horrors, to gain the benefit of both the hatred of war and. the yearning for peace.

...

It little matters what we appraise as the outstanding accomplishments. Any one of them alone would have justified the Conference. But the whole achievement has so cleared the atmosphere that it will seem like breathing the refreshing air of a new morn of promise. . . .

I once believed in armed preparedness. I advocated it. But I have come now to believe there is a better preparedness in a public mind and a world opinion made ready to grant justice precisely as it exacts it. And justice is better served in conferences of peace than in conflicts at arms. ... How simple it all has been. When you met here twelve weeks ago there was not a commitment, not an obligation except that which each delegation owes to the government commissioning it. But human service was calling, world conscience was impelling, and world opinion directing.

From President Harding's address made at the concluding session of the Arms Conference. RESIDENT HARDING spoke with compelling simplicity and sincerity. He elicited frequent, spontaneous, and hearty applause.

P

I

liked to see the Chinese experts, right in line with my seat as I looked across the hall, clapping their hands not so much with Oriental perfunctory politeness as with an Occidental vigor. As to the text, three features met with a special hearty reception. One was the President's comparison of the Hague

Conferences with those at Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. Another was his phrase, "A world opinion made ready to grant justice precisely as it exacts it." And the third was his expression of fervent belief that the naval holiday would not expire with the treaty. Towards the end, in naming the Powers alphabetically, the President slid from Belgium to France-quite naturally following the familiar association of ideas. He reached the end of the list, Portugal, when some one must have reminded him of his omission, for he added: "Oh, and China-pardon me." It was a little thing, but every one smiled, and somehow the rest of the speech lost a little of the dignity and impact which had distinguished it heretofore.

Judging by what I have seen and heard during these days, I should say that Arthur Balfour was easily the bestliked delegate. Some say he has been the most influential. Half an hour after the close of to-day's session, and when nearly every one had gone, he was still shaking hands and signing autograph albums. He is stockier and ruddier than when I last saw him. He still stands in speaking as, I suppose, a dialectician should stand-with legs a bit twisted about each other, as if walking the tight rope. He is the prime "hesitant." He is like other Englishmen in stopping and hemming and hawing a bit as he speaks; but, whereas the others tire or exasperate you, he does not. He goes into the recesses of his big mental storehouse to find just the word, and while he is seeking for it, lo! other riches come before him and he brings them to you too. Anyway, he is more impressive than in the days when they called him "Fanny" and I used to go to the House of Commons to hear him. Now he has ripe age; now he is a sage.

When each delegation began to march around to the signing-place in the middle of the U-shaped green table, everyone applauded and redoubled the applause when the delegates had actually signed. The French delegates (M. Sarraut, Minister for the French colonies, and M. Jusserand, French Ambassador at Washington) awakened the most emphatic applause of all. This indicated some reaction from certain judgments concerning the position France had

taken in the Conference, as well as an expression of historic friendship.

As to-day Secretary Hughes with powerful stride led the American delegates around the green table and into the inclosure where they were to sign the treaties I could not help thinking what a stalwart dominie this Baptist would have made. Irreverently I imagined him immersing little Masanao Hanihara, for instance, whether or no. with gusto. Mr. Hughes seems a type of the frank, practical, self-sufficient. aggressive Yankee with high ideals, perfectly sure that ours is the best civilization worth having and that, anyway, we are now so powerful as to make any other nation feel the need of asking us for anything it wants. And yet, as I looked at the delegates' faces, I felt that only one Power really understood and liked the Hughes vigor and positiveness -the British Empire. An Englishman hardly respects you until you knock him on the head. But how about the sensitive Continentals and Orientals?

I wonder if it is customary for Mr. Hughes to sit perfectly still while he is absorbed in some straightforward statement, but when he hears something that gives rise to questioning to hitch about impatiently. At least he did so during Baron Shidehara's speech Saturday after all the remaining treaties, resolutions. and declarations had been approved. However humiliated the Secretary may have felt when told that "no one stands in the way of China working out her own great national destiny," he was visibly nettled at being checked in Siberia.

Others besides myself wonder whether the Japanese here had the silent support of the British. Hughes's tone was distinctly minatory and his voice staccato-sharp as, turning to the Japanese delegates, he read the closing words of the American declaration concerning Siberia.

However, as the President said, in this Conference majorities could not de cide: "there were no victors to command, no vanquished to yield." If all the seeds of future conflict have not been wholly eradicated, at least during these twelve weeks, whose labors were concluded on Saturday and confirmed by signature to-day, "no seed of conflict has been sown."

Washington, D. C., February 6, 1922.

T

HE Arms Conference at Washington, which was concluded last week, was called by our Government to consider armament limitation and the solution of Far Eastern problems. As the Colorado Springs "Gazette" (Rep.) remarks: "There can be no hope for peace or stability until the tax burden resulting from heavy armaments has been reduced," and "such a reduction is possible only if troublesome international problems are solved by common consent."

The Conference lasted twelve weeks. Its delegates came from the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, China, Belgium, Holland, and Portugal. "Never did mortal men," asserts the Houston, Texas, “Chronicle" (Ind.) "gather to confer on the interests of nations upon whom rested greater or more solemn responsibilities."

The admirable facilities given to the press in reporting the deliberations caused many critics to say with the Sacramento, California, "Union" (Ind.) that such publicity must be given "to all future international negotiations."

The main accomplishments of the Conference were:

(1) Checking naval competition by limiting capital ships, auxiliaries, and aircraft. The way to measure the importance of this, affirms the New York "World" (Dem.), is to think of what would have happened had there been no Washington Conference:

We should have gone ahead with a programme for the greatest navy in the world. Japan would have gone ahead with her programme to prevent us from building too far ahead of her. Great Britain would have had to increase her naval programme to prevent Japan and America from outdistancing her. Then about 1924 or so we should have had to make a new programme to keep Japan and Great Britain from catching up to us. And they would have had to have more programmes in order to catch up with us. . . . In order to make people pay the taxes, people in each country would have had to be kept in a state of palpitating excitement about the sinister plots, the hidden spies, and the tremendous ambitions of the other two nations. . . . The end of all that distrust and all that taxation would have been war and bankruptcy and unspeakable devastation.

The Baltimore "News" (Ind.) finds in the list of battleships to be destroyed or never to be built "a material saving of importance, as a sign of an immaterial saving of incalculable value." And the St. Louis "Globe-Democrat" (Rep.) concludes: "We think it safe to say that the American Government has astonished the world." To the objections raised by certain critics, that "we cannot afford to throw millions out of the window merely to strut as altruists, the

Providence "Journal" (Ind.) replied: "The sacrifice will be more apparent than real. The relative naval strength of the Powers is to remain practically as it is."

(2) Making possible a ten-year naval "holiday." This proposal was closely bound to the foregoing and, like it, elicited preponderant approval, the Grafton, West Virginia, "Sentinel" (Rep.). for example, declaring: "The American proposal for a naval holiday . . . burst like a bomb-shell and reverberated around the world. The drama of surprise was complete. Yet why so much surprise? The way to limit armament is to limit armament. The way to do it is to do, not merely to talk."

(3) Affirming rules of submarine warfare. This brought forth protests that the affirmations were but "pious ejaculations which in any war would fail of effectiveness." On the other hand. papers like the Washington "Star" (Ind.) appealed to the increasing might of public opinion, quoting Elihu Root as declaring the massed opinion of humanity to be a power that can punish, that can, indeed, ruin a nation:

Mr. Root maintained that the agreement is based upon the fundamental ideas of humanity and right conduct upon which the public opinion of the world has reached decisive judgment, and this constitutes, he held, the greatest power known to human history. This power, he asserted, dominated the outcome of the World War, determined the conflict. Those cynics who have held that the submarine rules will fail in the stress of conflict Mr. Root characterized as near-sighted, with these decisive facts beyond their vision.

(4) Prohibiting the use of poison gas. Here, opines the New York "Globe," the Conference was "on debatable ground, since poison gas is not more cruel than many other instruments of warfare which are not condemned. It is not more cruel, for example, than shrapnel. It is not more cruel, though it is more effective, than the bayonet. But no one would wish the resolution withdrawn."

(5) Calling another conference to rewrite international law on the conduct of war. This seemed to meet with universal approval.

(6) Terminating the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and providing for a "roundtable" settlement of any possible Pacific questions by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and France. However desirable the first, Mr. Simonds, the well-known writer, whose articles appear in a number of papers, says of the second: "Had the agreement covering the region of the Pacific been open to all parties having Pacific interests . . . the situation would have been far different. But, under the Four-Power Treaty, we are entering into special relations with one party to a war. . . . The

(7) Renouncing the right to fortify certain Pacific islands. Mr. Simonds deems this "humiliating." But most critics think that the renunciation has been distributed equitably among the Pacific Powers.

(8) Obtaining publicity for all commitments concerning China. The Washington "Times" (Ind.) bluntly reflects the general opinion in saying that "Japan has been forced to disgorge some of the things she has grabbed in the Far East . . . and has pledged herself ... to play fair' and grab no more."

(9) Guaranteeing equal opportunity in and for China. The general opinion seems cynical. As reflected by the New York "Journal of Commerce" (Ind.) it is that "what has been done in China by foreign nations, however wrong and unfair, . . . is not likely to be removed merely through some treaty or agreement."

(10) Obtaining Japan's surrender of the Chinese province of Shantung. Until almost the close of the Conference, when the Powers brought about the surrender, the prevailing opinion seemed to be that Japan would maintain some sort of proprietary right in Shantung. Josephus Daniels, writing in the Washington "Times" (Ind.), queried: "Is it any better for Washington to let Shantung be exploited now than for Mr. Wilson to yield to his associates, paying the price for Japan's approval of the League of Nations?" But Washington has not let Shantung be exploited and its return is one of the outstanding accomplishments of the Conference. Arms are all very well. But here was the man, Hughes.

(11) Obtaining the return by Great Britain to China of Weihaiwei, a part of Shantung.

(12) Creating a Board of Reference in China for the settlement of disputes.

(13) Revising the Chinese tariff so as practically to double the present maritime customs revenue.

(14) Withdrawing foreign post offices from China and considering the withdrawal of some foreign troops, but requesting China to reduce the number of her own.

(15) Establishing a commission to consider extraterritoriality in China. (16) Regulating Chinese radio facili ties.

(17) Unifying and reforming the Chinese railway systems. However favor