ready referred to would, as a court of last appeal, overrule. Some of his many imitators, however, go out of their way to supply their readers with inaccurate information. There is no reason, to cite one example, why a porcupine that shoots its quills should be more acceptable to the youthful mind than a porcupine who spanks intruders with his prickly tail. When it is easy to be accurate, why take the trouble to impart misinformation? All of which may be boiled down into a plea for the abolition of useless sentimentality. There is a certain American statesman of whom it has been said that "a fact makes his head ache." If we want to raise future generations to which this phrase is not applicable, let us help children to see certain obvious realities as they are. Let them have their fill of Uncle Remus and the legends and fairy tales that belong to all time and are a part of the heritage of every nation. But when we attempt to sugarcoat natural history, let us take care that we coat something that actually exists. THE AUTOMATIC THIEF CATCHER HR ORSES, automobiles, and airplanes are about the only stealable objects which are in themselves an aid to the thief to escape. Perhaps we should include cash in this list. They branded horses in the old days to establish ownership, and if a man was found riding an animal whose possession could not readily be explained he was not infrequently "strung up" to the nearest telegraph pole. The practice made the stealing of horses an unpopular amusement-one not to be entered in lightly and without due consideration. So far there have been few men whose abilities in the field of abstraction have been applied to airplanes. But there are evidently hundreds, if not thousands, who would just as leave elope with some one else's Ford as not. Efforts to brand automobiles with manufacturers' numbers and license plates have so far done little to discourage such thefts. When you change the brand on an automobile, it leaves no fresh sore to indicate the recentness of the operation. There is one method by which the operations of our modern horse thieves might be at least made more difficult, a method which would not require elaborate mechanical apparatus. A ship is not allowed to enter a port, discharge its cargo, and sail away again without having its clearance papers properly viséd by the port authorities. Why not make it illegal to sell an automobile without the transfer and visé of papers issued to the original purchaser by his State license bureau? Autos are stolen, not to ride in, but to sell. If an auto were offered for sale without the proper papers, it would be prima facie evidence that the sale was not a legitimate one. It would be easy to prepare a form of clearance paper (to RICHARD WATSON GILDER Richard Watson Gilder REMINISCENCES OF A Next week in The Outlook Mrs. Schuyler van Rensselaer, who knew Mr. Gilder intimately-indeed, he died in her house will present anecdotes and memories of the famous poet and editor. borrow the nautical term) which it would be practically impossible to counterfeit. It might not even be necessary to wait for the enactment of laws to institute such a system. If the automobile insurance companies could unite on a plan and enforce it by gradations in premium charges, it might be made effective without legal aid. Manufacturers, for instance, might agree with insurance com panies to provide purchasers with proper sales blanks. If a car made by one of these manufacturers were offered for sale without the proper credentials, the purchaser would be warned to look out for a stolen car. The system which we suggest is of course merely a tentative outline for consideration. But automobile thefts have been so frequent that any plan which offers a hope of handicapping the robbers should at least be considered. REFORMERS WHO HINDER REFORM A SAVAGE onslaught on all theaters and all actors and actresses cannot be justified, but it may be palliated, if not excused, on the ground of the accuser's ignorance. It practically never comes from any one who has a living acquaintance with the members of the theatrical profession or has any familiarity with their work upon the stage. Those who have that familiarity and have the good moral sense to seek the best which the theater has to offer will generally agree with the sentiment attributed by Sidney Colvin to Robert Browning after seeing Salvini's impersonation of King Lear: "It makes me wonder which is the greater, the poet or the actor." Great actors have in their autobiog raphies and their letters graphically described the perils of the stage. They might well be inclined, when not in a defensive mood, to acknowledge that theirs is an extra-hazardous profession. There is no doubt that there is great need of reform. The responsibility for the evil conditions which exist must be divided, though unequally, between three classes. It partly rests upon certain theatrical managers who have neither moral nor art standards, to whom the theater is merely a money-making profession, and who measure success wholly by the receipts at the box-office. Such managers are to be classed with shysters in the law, quacks in medicine, purveyors of vicious art and degenerate literature. The responsibility partly rests upon theater-goers whose morbid curiosity is great, whose consciences are dumb, and who are attracted by vicious plays the more vicious, the more attractive. But the responsibility is partly shared by those who ought by their influence to inspire a discriminating judgment between the good and the evil, but who, instead, by their indiscriminating condemnation of all theaters and all actors encourage an equally indiscriminating approval of all. What shall we say of the theater? We say that it does not exist. There are theaters and theaters, as there are novels and novels. To judge of the virtue of the stage from the gossip about it in the daily press is no better than to judge of the virtue of a village from the gossip of the sewing society. We hope that the day is not far distant when the preachers will regard the drama as they now regard fiction, and will use what influence they possess to inspire their young people to exercise a discriminating judgment upon both forms of intellectual and emotional life. HE soldier is an uneconomic force," asserts the Chicago "Tribune" (Ind. Rep.), “except when he is needed to preserve the balance and the working power of economic force. . . . When he is needed for this economic purpose he is invaluable, because, without him, all values would go to pot." The "Tribune" proceeds: If the German soldier had been able to carry through the plans of the German military leaders, the German mark would not be a beggar on the doorstep of financial insolvency, and if he had been able to do the superhuman, which was required of him, Uncle Andrew Mellon's fortune might be barely equal to a square meal. The difference between the value of the dollar and the value of the mark is the sacrifice made by the American soldier. He created that value. If he had not done so, it would have no value. . . . Buddy, join the Legion, as your father joined the G. A. R., and impress, as a political fact, upon the elder generation that it is in luck, and much in luck. Another "Tribune" (Rep.), this time from New York City, thus describes the situation: Bone of our bone and flesh of our So The "It would destroy the safety of the Republic," says another metropolitan paper, the "American" (Ind.), “if the principle were to be established that men, needed to do its fighting, could be drafted and sent into danger at an arbitrary rate of payment, and then discharged into penury and neglect, while those for whom they fought were left free to profiteer." Yet Frederick Palmer, the well-known war correspondent, declares in the New York "Times" (Ind. Dem.) that the soldier who accepts a bonus is selling his "halo." To this the "American" rejoins: Perhaps some of them would sell anything they've got, these desperate days. Halos are cold comfort to the 75,000 war veterans now jobless in New York. But would the veteran be selling his halo? Washington and his soldiers, after the Indian wars, took a very substantial bonus. Washington took another after the Revolution. Lafayette had the "dollar sign" put on him. . . . In fact, he had 200,000 of them plastered all over him, in addition to 20,000 acres of land in Florida.. We advise the soldiers to A POLL OF THE PRESS accept the bonus. . . . It won't remove their halos. It will make life a little more comfortable while wearing them. If Mr. Palmer upbraids you, tell him that people forgave Washington. And they ought to forgive you. All the more because Washington didn't need it. And you do. "Seven out of ten of the plain people of the United States are in favor of the Soldier's Bonus," adds the "American," "as shown by all the popular referendums taken in many States from the Atlantic to the Pacific." Aside from the American Legion, one of the most important bodies of men, the American Federation of Labor, "is one hundred per cent in favor of a bonus," according to Samuel Gompers, its President. This, together with the strength of the American Legion, makes for a mighty influence. Writing in the New York "Journal of Commerce" (Ind.), Professor Parker Willis thus describes the power of the Legion: It is supposed that in practically every Congressional district throughout the country there is a body of veterans, ranging from 5,000 to 10,000, who will be able, by reasonably united action, to turn the election whichever way they choose. That they will act together in this way is said to be assured by the fact that their organization is being perfected steadily and their leaders, who maintain a strong lobby in Washington, threaten condign punishment to any Congressman who dares take off the collar and refuses to pull with his fellows. The burden is very galling, even to old stagers, whose necks have been accustomed to many political yokes. But they see no way out of it. They describe themselves as merely having to choose between giving up their places in Congress to some successor who will carry out the orders of the veterans and consenting to do the same thing at once. by What is the proposal indorsed the American Legion? It is that each veteran shall have the right to avail himself of any one, but only one, of the following plans: 1. Adjusted compensation to the veterans for $1 a day for each day's service in the United States and $1.25 for each day's service overseas. There is a maximum of $500 for a man without overseas service and of $625 for a man with overseas service. 2. Adjusted service certificate insurance, giving the veteran the option to take insurance payable at the end of twenty years-that is to say, a paid-up twenty-year endowment policy. If he chooses this plan, he will receive as the basis of his adjusted pay a sum forty per cent greater than the cash plan. 3. Vocational training aid of $1.25 a day. This aid would entitle the yeteran to receive vocational training to an amount equal to the adjusted service pay plus forty per cent. This allows 4. Farm or home aid. the veteran to receive from the Government the adjusted service pay, plus an additional forty per cent to be applied towards the purchase price of approved farm property or suburbhan or city home. 5. Land settlement. It gives the veteran preference right to take land on the opening of public or Indian lands to entry and on all reclamation projects now in existence or hereafter to be established. THE CASH BONUS The hardest of these five proposals to "put over" is the cash bonus. Can it be "put over"? Yes, say the Hearst papers, though the sum must be raised by taxes, because "our tax burden, compared with the other leading nations of the world, is light. While no unjustified tax should be added, the financial condition of the country is such that the people can have a soldiers' bonus if they want one." How soon should the bonus be paid? The following is the forecast of the Memphis "Commercial Appeal" (Dem.), as well as that of many other observers: Some of the Congressmen hope to advance the time of the payment of the bonus so as to get two quarters paid by the November election. This, they feel, will be a mighty help at the polls. Other members of Congress do not favor beginning payment until next year. In order to pay, additional taxes must be laid and payments of the taxes must be made. This added burden to the taxpayers may cause them to be a little resentful in November. The problem, then, is whether they [the Congressmen] could win more votes by paying the bonus early than they would lose by making the taxpayer put up more money. re What were the taxes proposed to yield the $400,000,000 to $500,000,000 a year necessary for the bonus? The proposals were many. Among them were the following: An increase of the tobacco tax, a bank-check tax, a stamp check on ceipts and similar documents, $5 per $1,000 on real estate transfers, 25 cents per horse-power on automobiles, an increase of the letter stamp to three cents, a doubling of the present 10 per cent tax on theater tickets, a tax on tea, coffee, and sugar, a tax of 1 cent a gallon on gasoline, a tax of 1/10 of 1 per cent on stock and bond transfers, a doubling of the present inheritance tax, a tax on light wines and beers not exceeding 2.75 per cent of alcohol, and, finally, a sales tax. "Judging by the vociferation already caused by the suggested taxes," says the Springfield, Massachusetts, "Republican" (Ind.), "the howling over the new taxes will be unprecedented before the bonus clinic is ended. This will not make the service men happy; they can not enjoy being called robbers. Nobody in the end will be happy-not even the Republican party, which must shoulder full responsibility." Of the above suggestions, the proposed taxes on light wines and beers and on sales have called forth some acid comment. As to the first, "If there is to be a bonus, there is only one feasible way to provide the cash, and it lies through a revision of Federal enforcement-an amendment to the Volstead Act to permit the sale of light beer and wine," asserts the New York "World" (Ind. Dem.). On this proposal the Louisville "Courier-Journal" (Dem.), quite in the manner of its late editor, Henry Watterson, comments: Congress will pay no attention to this because it is ordered by Wayne B. Wheeler, generalissimo of the Anti-Saloon League, to pay no attention to it, and the cowards of Congress are even more afraid of the Anti-Saloon League than they are of the former soldiers. ... Because of fear of the former service men, Congress has determined to pass a bonus bill. Because of fear of the AntiSaloon League it will refuse to consider raising the money by a beer tax. If it has any fear of betrayed and enraged taxpayers whom it will gouge, that fear is subordinate to its other fears, perhaps on the theory that the taxpayers, because they are unorganized, are less formidable than are the organized bonus hunters and the organized prohibitionists. The sales tax was rejected by the Republicans (the majority) of the House of Representatives last year in a caucus when the Revenue Bill was being considered. As a bonus proposition, however, it is viewed by many in an entirely different light, and many of its former opponents may now be counted as its supporters. On the other hand, some of those who have long espoused the principle of a sales tax declare that "it is worth the price of the bonus to get the sales tax on the statute-books." The particular form of tax in the minds of most is similar to the Canadian sales tax which went into force in May, 1920. This was a 1 per cent tax on sales by manufacturers and 1 per cent on sales by wholesale jobbers. The range in articles taxed was very limited at first, yet the tax brought in $50,000,000, or oneseventh of the total Canadian revenue. The Hearst papers prophesy that this tax, "which raised $50,000,000 in smaller and poorer Canada, would, in proportion to our superior wealth, bring in $600,000,000." While President Harding still recommends postponement of bonus legislation, he declares that with regard to provision for raising the needed revenue he finds himself "unable to suggest any commendable plan other than that of a general sales tax. Such a tax will distribute the cost of rewarding the ex-service men in such a manner that it will be borne by all the people whom they served." President Harding's advice to postpone legislation is, in the estimation of very many, like the New York "World" (Ind. Dem.), "wholly good," but his recommendation of a sales tax is "wholly bad." The "World" explains: There is a great deal to be said in favor of a moderate sales tax when it is substituted for other taxes, but in this case it is to be added to taxes that are already breaking the economic back of the country. . . . To provide money through a sales tax is to extort this campaign fund from poverty and impose the burden on the politically defenseless. What tax, then, can there be? Since the expressions of dissatisfaction with all the above suggestions there has been a demand in some quarters for the reenactment of the specially onerous excess profit taxes and surtaxes, which have been shown to be injurious to industry and business. Concerning this proposal the Pittsburgh "Gazette-Times" (Rep.) affirms: that fancy The fatuous-minded through this means the rich would be compelled to pay and others would Unfortunately, the escape payment. result would be quite different. There would be less employment, so there would be fewer on whom to levy. But the absence of general prosperity would be a greater burden to the majority than the necessity of their paying directly to discharge the Government's commitments. Again: "Why not make the ex-soldier a straight ten or twenty year loan and call all other fool ideas off? By so doing we would all get a square deal and no burden would be placed on the working class. I hope we never get a bonus if the kinds of taxes proposed are the only source of revenue for the payment of it. I did not fight for this country to make the working classes suffer under the burden of outrageous taxes. That class has paid enough already; so has the ex-soldier. It is high time for Congress to put a burden on the war profiteers and relieve the working class." So writes Mr. John N. Hiller in the Colorado Springs "Gazette" (Rep.), and the editor replies thus: This ex-soldier is in favor of a bonus, provided it can be paid without taxing the working people. It cannot. The Government, which will pay the bonus, is made up of Brown and his neighbor Jones, and his neighbor Smith, and all the rest of us. It is not an individual or a group of individuals or anybody separate and apart, but all of us taken together. Consequently, what the Government does in a broad sense we ourselves do. What the Government spends, we spend. The Government has no money of its own and no means for getting any save what it gets from us. Nor can it take from any one, or any group of us; it must take from all. . . . Therefore if a bonus is paid to ex-service men the ex-service men will have to bear their share of the expense. It is a false theory that taxes for the support of the Government's policy can be assessed against a few. The cry to If no tax at all, why should not the bonus be paid out of the proceeds of the interest on the Allied war debt owing this country? An insuperable obstacle, as Secretary of the Treasury Mellon at once showed, is the fact that the original Liberty Loan Acts provided for the immediate application of any payments made on the principal of the money we lent foreign governments to the payment of Liberty Loan Bonds and the interest thereon. If no tax or no foreign interest payment may be invoked, what then? Secretary Hoover, of the Department of Commerce, comes to the rescue with an attractive proposal to substitute for cash bonuses a system of insurance, intended nominally to relieve the United States Treasury from the immediate and terrific burden of bonus payments. But his plan has a far wider range, for it would offer to service men Government protection against many contingenciesunemployment, illness, accident, suffering on the part of dependents. Certainly the proposal is more logical than handing out a dole of cash to the ex-service men, for, "as every one recognizes, these cash payments are not likely to be good for the rank and file of those who get them. Much of the money will be wasted." So the New York "Journal of Commerce" (Ind.). It adds: Actuarial computations, of course, are reassuring. They are said to indicate the cash outlay for the first year of $100,000,000, with an . . . ultimate liability of about $3,000,000,000. As between this plan and the cash system, the distinction seems to be that, in the latter case, the Nation receives a tremendous dose of drastic medicine at the outset, while, under the former, or insurance plan, it takes the dose gradually and has more time to accustom itself to the medicine. . . . To many minds it would seem wiser, if a bonus must be given, simply to pay it in cash and have done with it. The result would be a riotous wasting of the National wealth for a short time, with a long period of slow recovery after it. But this may be much better than a slow pauperization of the community, in which large classes of the population get into the habit of leaning on the Government and asking it to insure them against all possible contingencies. The present result is the following. according to the New York "Herald" (Ind.): Counting on a patient, supine pub lic, Congress went ahead and committed itself to the bonus propaganda without knowing where or how it could get the money to pay the bonus. And the bonus propagandists committed themselves to vote right in the fall elections. Now Congress finds itself in a tight place, with an aroused public, on the one hand, ranged against the Bonus Bill, and the bonus propagandists, on the other hand, demanding that Congress keep its word. If Congress doesn't deliver the goods to the bonus propagandists, it sees itself losing the bonus vote in the elections this fall. If it does deliver the goods to the bonus propagandists, it sees itself buried by a public avalanche. THE BONUS MERELY A WEDGE But the bonus in itself is not the whole story. As Mr. Albert Hale, writing in the Boston "Transcript" (Ind. Rep.) says: While even the proposed bonus in many cases would not compensate for the sacrifices endured, yet the principle involved is one of the most insidiously dangerous features of the communistic style of government. Grant, for a moment, that such a bill be passed. What assurance is there that it would be satisfactory to those who might take the ground, and properly enough, that $1.25 or $2 per day is inadequate compensation for their great sacrifices? Virtually all the arguments in favor of the original Bonus Bill would still hold good for an increase, and then they could subsequently be used over again for another increase. Hence, to quote again from the New York "Tribune" (Rep.): If there is bonus legislation, it should be a part of the contract that further payments be not made. Otherwise we are certain to have a pension lobby at Washington for half a century, constantly muddying together with many another organ of public opinion: The Nation is not unmindful, and will not be, of its obligation to the men who wore its uniform in the war. It stands ready to meet with no stinting hand its obligation to the dependents of those who fell in battle or who perished from disease. It is giving freely and magnanimously for the care of the disabled ex-service men and their dependents-a total already of nearly $500,000,000 a year. But the country is protesting, and justly, against a broadcast bonus. The proposal is neither fair nor intelligent, and would be defeated overwhelmingly if the American Legion would drop the political pistol it is now aiming at the breasts of Senators and Representatives and allow the Bonus Bill to stand on its own feet. If the Government had done its duty in the first place to the disabled men. it would have removed some of the force now exercised for the Bonus Bill. That bill, as it stands, is, in the opinion of some influential members of Congress, unjust to disabled service men, unfair to many service men who are not disabled, and unwise because it wastes public money. THE CRUCIFIERS BY LYMAN ABBOTT I. THE INSTITUTIONS OF IRRELIGION BOUT the year of my birth my father, Jacob Abbott, wrote in "The Corner Stone" a description of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, from which I extract the following paragraph: We must look at the characters of the actors, rather than their deeds; for in character we may be similar to them, though from the entirely different circumstances in which we are placed we have not and we never can have the opportunity to commit the crimes they perpetrated. I shall endeavor, therefore, as I go on to the examination of the story, to bring to view, as clearly as possible, the characters of those concerned in it; with particular reference, too, to the aspects which similar characters would assume at the present day. If I am not very greatly deceived, Pontius Pilate and Judas Iscariot, and even the Roman soldiers, have far more imitators and followers than is generally supposed, and that, too, within the very pale of the Christian Church. In the spirit of this paragraph, I propose in successive issues of The Outlook to publish sketches of five typical characters engaged in the crucifixion: The Worldly Minded Church Member. But if we are to understand these characters we must understand those elements in the community of hostility to Jesus which by their action they represented and which gave them their power. The history of Israel begins with the Exodus; what precedes in the Bible is the record of prehistoric traditions. The foundation, political and religious, of Israel is found in the Ten Commandments. That religion was very simple: reverence for God, respect for parents, preservation of a certain time from drudgery for the cultivation of the spirit, and regard for the four fundamental rights of man-to his person, his property, his family, and his reputation. Nothing was said of temple or priesthood or sacrifice, or ceremonial obligations of any description. These were all additions of a later date. These additions respecting temple, priesthood, and sacrifice Jesus disregarded. He returned to the simple religion of the Ten Commandments. He attended the Temple because its outer court was a convenient forum where he could teach the people. He attended the synagogue because in his earlier ministry its pulpits were open to him. But he never offered a sacrifice and never recommended sacrifices to his disciples; he openly proclaimed the forgiveness of God on no other condition than repentance and the resolve to enter on a new life; he specifically taught that God could be worshiped as well without the Temple as within, and foretold the destruction of the Temple at no distant day. He did not attack the priesthood. But the priest is officially a mediator between God and man, and Christ's teaching left no place for such a mediator. He taught that God is a Father to whom his children may come freely at any time and in any place-the pagans as well as the Jews, sinners as well as saints. Whoever seeks finds; whoever knocks, to him the door is opened. It is opened to the humble and penitent publican; it is closed to the self-satisfied Pharisee. Christ never referred to public worship in either Temple or synagogue. But he laid great emphasis, both by precept and example, on the privilege and the duty of private prayer. And he paid no attention to the code of ceremonial obligation which Jewish puritanism had added to the five simple ethical laws of the Ten Commandments. Neither he nor his disciples observed the fasts appointed by the elders. The elaborate code which prescribed what the people might and what they might not do on the Sabbath he disregarded. The complex system of washings which the elders had established he cast aside as without legal authority or moral value. Nor did Christ merely reject the traditions of his time; he set aside the traditional habits. He fermented men; stirred them to think for themselves; stimulated independent thinking. He spake with authority, not by substituting a new tradition for a rival one, but by so presenting truth that the minds and hearts of his hearers recognized it on his bare presentation of it. Often by a question he revealed to men a truth which they possessed and did not know that they possessed it. "Why do you call me good?" "Who do you say is neighbor?" "What do you think is the chief commandment?" "What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?" "Whom do ye say that I am?" He did not think for his congregation. I do not recall that he ever told them what they must think. But he habitually invited them to share his thinking with him. If a heretic is, what the dictionary tells us he is, a man who gives forth his own opinions when they are in conflict with the received opinions of his age, there never was such a heretic as Jesus Christ. He was a social heretic as well. He set himself against the established order; was in the true sense of the term a revolutionary preacher. The established order was one of aristocracy in the State as well as of hierarchy in the Church. There were few rich and many poor; few wise and many ignorant. Christ paid no deference to wealth; very little to wisdom. For himself and his immediate followers he did not desire wealth, and he scorned it in others unless they were using it in public service. The man who could see no use for his abundant harvest but to hoard it he called a fool; and honest scorn is the hardest kind of rebuke to bear. He assailed scholars unless they were using their scholarship to enlighten others less wise than themselves. He was a great leveler--a leveler up, not down. He did not merely teach that rich men should contribute to the poor and wise men furnish instruction to the ignorant. He taught that the function of the rich is to serve the poor, of the strong to serve the weak, of the wise to serve the ignorant, until classes are abolished and society becomes one great brotherhood of man. And the established order was aroused against him. His popularity added to his offense. First the leaders of his time despised him; then they feared him; and they ended by hating him. This hate was intensified by race prejudice. And to prejudice, whether of class, religion, or race, Jesus showed no quarter. The Jewish religionists believed that they believed in a kingdom of God. But they did not. They believed in a kingdom of Israel. Of course they knew that a rebellion against Rome by the little province of Palestine would be hopeless unless they had powerful allies. They believed they had such an ally; they believed that "God was on their side." Doubtless there were teachers in Christ's time who gave a spiritual interpretation to the Old Testament prophecies. But the current opinion was that Jehovah had made a covenant with Israel and in fulfillment of that covenant would give her the rulership of the world and the heathen nations would serve under her yoke. That notion, curiously revived in our time, Jesus repudiated. He told Nicodemus, honored master in the Church, that he needed to be born again as much as if he had been a pagan; and he told the people that Zaccheus, the hated tax gatherer, who had repented of his oppressions and declared his purpose to do all that he could to repair his injustice, was a child of Abraham. He told the Jews that he had never seen so much faith in all Israel as he saw in a Roman centurion, and he told a crowd of scornful scribes and Pharisees that drunkards and harlots would go into the kingdom of heaven before them. At the beginning of his ministry he told the congregation at Nazareth that the Jews were not God's favorites, and at the close of his ministry he told the Jewish leaders in the Temple at Jerusalem that God would take from them the kingdom and give it to another people who would bring forth its fruits. An angry mob drove him from the synagogue at the beginning of his ministry; an angry mob wrested from reluctant Pilate the death sentence at the end. The elements which thus gave power to the leaders in the tragedy of the crucifixion still exist in human society, and wherever they exist still interpose to his cause the same bitter hostility. Whenever scrupulous obedience to ceremonial regulations supplants the spirit of self-sacrifice in daily life, whenever ambition for acquisition supplants ambition for service, whenever fear of the crowd paralyzes the courage needed to control the crowd, there will be found a Caiaphas, a Judas, or a Pilate, or perhaps all three in unconscious cooperation. As my father said, the opportunity to commit the crime they committed will never occur again; but the sins which incited to that crimeambition, greed, and cowardice-still exist and are ever the same. T "HABEMUS PONTIFICEM!” HE Roman Church, like every great international institution with a message and a mission for humanity, has a corporeal nature and a spiritual nature. Throughout the long, long history of the Church both natures have played a part in varying intensity, men and circumstances at different times making or allowing one nature to predominate over the other to the greater or lesser good of mankind. As a faith and a religion organized into a living institution the Roman Church has always had to consider its natural and temporal side; for the Church must have peace in order to expand. It must be in constant touch with the affairs of men and in good relations with temporal states, and it must have the material means with which to maintain its beneficences and its missions, the traditional magnificence of its Papal Court and of the Leonine City, and for the upkeep of its countless BY GINO C. SPERANZA houses of worship and the support of its priesthood and its hierarchy. These, as well as great spiritual questions, the leaders of the Catholic Church must face with the election of a new Pontiff. In every Conclave the persistent question presents itself: "What does the world need at this time and how can the Church best help?" The wisdom and capacity of Papal Conclaves to answer that question, their insight into and their ability to gauge the needs of humanity and the real mission of the Church spiritual, have made in a large measure the history of Roman Catholicism as an important and sometimes a dominating factor in the civilization of Christendom. But the election of a new Pope is not only a test of the Church's power to plumb the spiritual needs of men, but it can be studied as an index of what its leaders gauge as the trend of thought, political and social, and of the desires of large groups of men and of governments. And the specific and practical consideration of a Conclave is to choose that man who, in the best judgment of the assembled Cardinalate, will synthesize the Church's interpretations and views of the world at such a moment of history and appear best adapted to carry out its plans and policies, spiritual and temporal. All this was peculiarly true of the Conclave just closed because it was the first gathering of the Princes of the Church for such a purpose in what is distinctly a new Europe if not a new world. What such new Europe wants, or at least what it seems to need-perhaps what it aspires to-must presumably have been present in the minds of the Cardinals no less than the temporal and spiritual needs of the Church itself in the present time of uncertainty. In the personality and precedents of the new Pontiff so chosen we must therefore endeavor to read what the |