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THE SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL
ATLAMTA. GA., 5 MOBTH FOBSYTH ST. 'A
Entered at the Atlanta Postoffice as Mail Matter o
the Second Claas.
JAMES R. GRAY,
President and Editor.
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THE SEMI-WEEKLY JOt H.XAL, Atlanta. Ga.
• The Country Applauds
The President's Course*
The President’s order that American' merchant
ships be armed for defense and thus enabled to re
sume transatlantic voyages relieves a situation
which has been both humiliating and injurious.
For more than a month the greater part of our
merchant fleet has been blockaded, by L -boat ter
rorism. The avowed purpose of Germany’s unre
stricted submarine warfare was to close and lock
English ports, but its actual result has been to
rloee and lock American ports. A great deal
of British tonnage has been destroyed but English
vessels, duly armed and protected, have gone on
sailing, carrying cargoes and mail to and from
their home ports. During the same time only
one or two American vessels have ventured across
the Atlantic. Mail service between the United
States and Europe has been disrupted and virtually
broken down. The United States Government has
had to entrust to vessels of foreign flags its diplo
matic correspondence to European points. Our
‘ships have been barred from transatlantic com
merce as effectually as though a fleet of German
war vessels rode in triumph just outside our
harbors.
It was unthinkable that this condition of affairs
should be suffered to continue. The damage to
the country’s material interests was great and was
growing more and more distressing. Eastern piers
‘ were congested with merchandise awaiting outlet,
and the interior from whose factories and farms
that merchandise came was suffering consequent
hardship and peril. The cutting off of mail com
munications alone was enough to disturb American
C. business seriously and. if prolonged, to cause heavy
losses.
But infinitely more deplorable than the material
damage was the injury to the nation’s rights and
honor. In disregard of our Government’s neutral
ity and the plainest principles of international
equity. Germany threatened to destroy American
ships and American lives if they dared to exercise
their simple rights on the high seas. Not only did
she threaten but, in the case of the Laconia, car
ried out her threat by sending three Americans, two
of whom were women, to death. Unless the
United States were ready to surrender all claims to
sovereignty and to abandon all pretense of prbtect
ihg its citizens, it could not endure such injuries
and insults; It could not allow the U-boat blockade
of its ports to continue.
The only remedy short of war was what the
President described as “armed neutrality.” That
policy involved a number of defensive measures,
but most important among them for immediate
needs was the arming of merchant ships, followed if
necessary hy naval convoys. Our merchant ships
have clung to their harbors, not because of craven
scruples but because their owners were quite natur
ally unwilling to send them forth to incalculable
dangers without any means or instruments of de
fense. The captains and crews have been ready
and eager to go; and now that arms are to be fur
nished by the Government —the only agency cap
able of furnishing them in present circumstances,
the ships will sail.
The country approves and applauds the Presi
dent's action. He has ample authority as well as
extreme provocation for the course he has taken.
He had sufficient authority before he appealed to
Congress, authority Implied beyond question in his
Constitutional duties. He went to Congress mainly
for moral support, and he received its moral sup
port in unstinted measure, despite the filibuster of
a little group of little men in the Senate. How
stanchly the country indorsed his policy was evi
denced by the nation-wide denunciation which over
whelmed the Senate obstructionists of the Armed-
Neutrality bill.
Good Work for Georgia.
Whatever locations may be selected for the
Government armor plant and nitrate plant, Geor
gia’s efforts to secure those industries will prove
abundantly worth while. The resources of Rome
and its surrounding territory have been brought to
the entire nation's notice through that city’s vig
orous and thoughtful campaign in the armor plant
contest. , In the same way the resources of the
Chattahoochee river both for water power and
navigation have been studied more closely and
heralded more widely than ever before, through
the co-operative work of Atlanta and West Point
and other cities in behalf of the Chattahoochee
region as a location for the nitrate plant. Sim
ilar results, it is a pleasure to note, have been
accomplished by Augusta in presenting the claims
of the Savannah river. There is good reason to
hope that one or both of these great Government
Industries will be established in Georgia: but how
ever that may be. it is certain that the Georgia
communities will profit richly by the self-knowl
edge and the valuable publicity they have gained.
The attention of keen-eyed capital as well as that
of the Government has been drawn to their re
sources, and their development by one means or
another is assured.
THE ATLANTA SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL, ATLANTA, GA., TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 1917.
i tic t uture ui uur luercuuiit i net
■ui »»icusiulluliig iuv .eUirtiivautc aciivii.* *•*
American shipbuilding, the number of vessels now
being constructed or acquired for our foreign
trade appears altogether inadequate to serve and
safeguard our interests in the commercial struggle
w hich is certain to follow the war. Mr. Charles M.
bchwab recently said that the Betnleheiu Steel
Corporation, of which he is chairman, is completing
every week one ten ihousanu-ton merchant snip,
fully equipped, besides smaller craft and war ves
sels. This record, multiplied by that of our other
shipbuilders all of whom are taxed to the limit of
tueir energy and resources, is truly .remarkable.
But it shoul i be noted, as Mr. Schwab points out,
that more than half the ships building in the United
oiates tuuay are for foreign owners. That is a tact
to take the w ind out of our proud enthusiasm.
At the beginning of the European war more
.nan ninety per cent of our exports was carried in
foreign bottoms. Since tneu lue American mer
> chant marine has increased by something less than
a million gross tons, partly inrough Hie construc
tion of ships but chiefly through the transfer of
ships from foreign to American registry. Os the
tonnage built during that period for American use,
a large portion is intended for the Great Lakes and
for coastwise commerce, so that tor the maintenance
and development of our foreign trade —the great
arena of the years ahead —we are not very much
better off than at the outbreak of the war. Ger
many, according to trustworthy reports from that
country, has outbuilt us in tonnage of merchant
vessels during the last two years, despite the tre
mendous war strain on her industries. England
undoubtedly has outbuilt us. Japan has been, and
still is, building with wonderful vigor and efficiency.
Thus the United States faces the prospect of enter
ing the maritime struggle which is certain to follow
the war, with a third-rate —or as some observers
lear — a fourth-rate merchant marine.
This is a matter of material concern to every
section and every industry in the United States —
the interior as well as the coast, the farmer and
small merchant as well as the manufacturer and
large exporter —because our future prosperity de
pends to a great extent upon the strength and the
expansion of our foreign trade. As our population
increases and our manufactures grow in number
and productiveness, we shall have a more and more
pressink need of profitable outlets for our products.
Our export business is incomparably greater now
than ever before in American history; and the
country as a whole enjoys unexampled prosperity.
The high prices the South receives for its cotton are
due largely to the foreign demand for cotton and
cotton goods; and so with hundreds of other com
modities and industries.
There is no hope, however, of the United States
advancing or holding its own in the markets of the
world if it depends, as heretofore, on its competi
tors for the ships in which to carry its goods. It
must have an adequate merchant marine of its own,
if it is to stand a chance in the most stressful and
far-flung trade contest the world has ever witness
ed. The fact shipbuilding has reached such great
proportions and such efficiency in this country is
heartening, for it shows that our resources and en
ergies in that field of enterprise ‘are being organ
ized for great results. It is painfully evident, how
ever, that not enough ships are being built for our
owb foreign trade. All that the Government can do
rightfully to encourage and aid‘private enterprise in
this matter ought to be done. But if private enter
prise proves unequal to the task, the Government
well may go further than it has gone in the estab
lishment of the Shipping Board and a ship-purchase
fund: the Government well may undertake the con
struction. ownership and operation of an American
merchant marine.
An Extra Session of Congress.
It was a foregone conclusion that the President
would call a special session of Congress to deal
with the issues of great moment now pending and
likely to arise. The purely legal and administrative
problems of armed neutrality could be handled
easily enough by the Executive Department. There
is no debatable question concerning the President’s
authority to provide merchant ships with arms for
defense and, if need be, to give them naval convoy
through the U-boat danger zone. But these and othar
measures of protection for American interests re
quire special funds which only Congress can pro
vide. Furthermore, it is not improbable that Ger
man piracy and ruthlessness, in their aggressions
upon American rights, may commit some outrage
so unbearable as to demand instant and conclusive
action from Congress.
Besides matters of pressing import in problems
of immediate defense, there is a mass of sorely
needed legislation which failed of passage in the
stormy eleventh hours of the preceding Congress.
Vitally important appropriations for the Army and
Navy remain to be passed; for the time being the
preparedness program is held in abeyance, or at
least is threatened with delay. Vitally important
bills to extend the powers of the federal Shipping
Board and to provide additional facilities for the
national banking system remain to be passed. The
Webb bill, designed to protect and promote our
foreign commerce, in the stressful years that will
follow the war as well as now. was lost in the last
hours of the preceding Congress.
These and divers other measures in which the
country’s well-being is involved demand legislative
attention; together with the critical foreign situa
tion, they made an extra session of Congress un
avoidable. The only question in the country’s
mind was the date for which the session would be
called. The President had convincing and conclu
sive reasons, no doubt, in deciding upon April
the sixteenth. The new House of Representatives
presents problems of keen political anxiety,
but the President acted true to himself in subordi
nating politics to public interest.
Editorial Echoes.
William J. Stone of Missouri is disqualified for
the chairmanship of the senate committee on for
eign relations by his own admission. When he was
instructed by that body to report favorably the bill
empowering the President to arm merchantmen,
he performed a certain lip-service, but announcing
that he could not urge the passage of the measure,
he intrusted its legislative fortunes to the guidance
of Senator Hitchcock. This was the moment when
Mr. Stone in honor and decency should have re
signed his chairmanship. He was not in sympathy
with the United States. He was in sympathy wflth
a nation denying the rights of the United States.
Under disguises as transparent as any assumed by
the innumerable agents of the Kaiser’s propaganda
in this country, he has been revealed time and again
as one who, in the presence of Germany, would
equivocate, abate and even sacrifice American
rights.—New York World.
THE SECRET OF INFLUENCE
♦
By H. Addington Bruce
THE secret of influence is not money, as many
of us imagine. Money, to lie sure, does con
fer some influence on its possessor. But as
an influence producer it ii weak compared with
personality.
Get this truth firmly fixed in your mind.
You are young and ambitious. You rightly de
sire to become a man of real consequence, to win
success and happiness, and to be of influence in
your generation.
To this end you mistakenly think that the
one essential is to make money, lots of money.
The more money you can get, you argue, the more
influential you are sure to be.
But reflect for a moment.
Recall the lessons in history you learned when
a boy in school. Summon back in memory the
names of the men recorded in your history books
as having been most influential in their time and
country. Few of them, you will find, were men of
great wealth.
Look about you in the world of your own day.
Again you will find few millionaires among the
recognized leaders and shapers of public thought
and action.
This certainly is a fact worth pondering. Cer
tainly it indicates that the possession of great
wealth is no guarantee of great influence.
That must come from something else. What
it does come from is personality.
In his just published “Religion for Today,”
John Haynes Holmes defines personality as “that,
peculiar spiritual power which leaps like flame
from soul to soul, and makes a man a leader of
his kind.” He further enumerates as the dis
tinctive marks of personality, thought, feeling, and
unity.
This means that personality is'something which
can be cultivated. For. obviously, though unity
admits of no division into more or less, thought
and feeling do. A man can think much or think
little, feel much or feel little.
And in proportion as he thinks and feels he
is a man of strong or weak personality.
It follows that to cultivate personality a man
must make himself an active, vigorous thinker. He
must also make himself an enthusiast.
Whatever task he undertakes, he must throw
himself into it °nthusiastically. He must likewise
be sincerely ardent in his dealings with other men.
Wherefore lie needs to develop a high degree of
human sympathy.
Thinking only of himself, feeling only for him
self, he may wfln wealth but he cannot grow in per
sonality.
He will merely be a self-centered, cojd, spiritual
ly deficient individual repelling instead of attracting
other people, hence quite incapable of truly in
fluencing and leading other people.
And, I would add incidentally, he likewise is
certain to be an unhappy individual. For he can
not escape the consciousness that he stands really
alone in life, friendless and uninfluential because
he has developed no capacity for sympathy with
his fellows.
your main endeavor, accordingly, be effort
to enlarge your personality, not effort to amass
gold. If you-happen to amass gold, well and good.
But don’t make material wealth your goal in life.
Aim rather at gain of mental and spiritual riches.
(Copyright. 1917, by the Associated Newspapers.)
PRIZES
By Dr. Frank Crane
\ -
UPON the subject of prizes 1 am a foaming
radical.
No good work was ever done for a prize,
especially no good creative work.
A prize may have its place when offered to the
contestant who can run fastest, the drinker who
can hold the most beer, or the pupil who can spell
down the class; but the poem, picture, statue, play,
or book that is created for a prize contest is in
variably poor.
The reason is inherent in the nature of the case.
Competition is one of the world s dearest delu
sions. It seems to bring out the best work. As a
matter of fact, it fosters mediocrity.
The great, constructive works of human prog
ress, as David Starr Jordan has so conclusively
demonstrated, are due to the co-operation of men,
not to their competitions.
• War, for instance, never did any good that
could not have been better attained some other
way.
War is necessary only because of the ignorance,
stupidity, egotism, and blind passions of men. With
a little patience, with co-operation an intelligence
every earthly conflict might have been settled at
infinitely less pains and expense than by war. If
two parties in our Revolution or Civil war or
in our Spanish war could have calmly and decently
met together they could have achieved the same
results without the terrific cost.
Frank, courteous, sensible discussion and de
bate might have saved Europe her present destruc
tion.
To revert to our subject, no man can do his
best work when he is trying to outdo another.
1 will, therefore, enter no contest. I will not
compete with any other workman. Ido not want
to beat anybody at anything.
I want to do my work well. And my joy and
reward lie in the perfection of it. If any one
can do it better let him go to it.
The law of the struggle to survive which exists
among the lower orders of creation properly ceases
when we come to man. The principle of evolution
takes a new turn. Animals produce the best by
contention. Man produces the best by co-working.
The desire for pre-eminence, to excel, to sur
pass, is low. It is natural, of course, as anger,
lust, and selshness are natural; it is a part of our
inheritance from the beast.
But man’s glory is not in conquest nor dom
inance. It is in service. It is in doing well his
work, and in helping, not hurting, others.
Civilization means getting together. Competi
tion is the lingering spirit of barbarism.
“Let dogs delight to bark and bite, for ’tis their
nature to,” runs the old rhyme. And let all dog
natured people, all fevered, welt-macht Oder nieder ;
gang people, claw, and scratch and kill and destroy.
It is simply a reversion to type, a lapse into the
animal plane, and is a mighty expensive and mad
experiment.
Let us pursue excellence “some other way.”
For we gain nothing by competition that we
could not gain much more effectively if we had
sense enough to co-operate.
(Copyright, 1917. by Frank Crane.)
Georgia's Food Crops.
“It is safe to say that no South Georgia
farm will be complete in 1917 without a sweet
potato patch; and it is, perhaps, just-as safe
to say that on very few farms in this section
will the potato patch be missing.”— ; The Al
bany Herald.
This is another pleasing reminder of the en
thusiasm and thoroughness with which Georgia has
turned to the production of foodstuffs. On most of
the farms in this State the last two years have
witnessed an increasing diversity of crops. Hun
dred of planters who once staked everything on cot
ton have liberalized their interests until now they
raise at home all the corn and meat and many of
the vegetables they need- Commonplace though it
appears, this change is working a beneficent revo
lution in Georgia’s economic affairs. It is develop
ing a system of agriculture that is scientific in its
principles, businesslike in its methods, self-sustain
ing in its results and independent in its character.
| ENGLAND AT WAR. Vll.—The Daily Life—By Frederic J. Haskin
LONDON, Feb. 4. Life in war time in London and
throughout England is serious, but not altogether
somber. The reflected fire of the heroism of the
trenches lightens even sorrow and gives a sort of
shining spirit to the people at home.
* • *
More than this, the men and the women of England
agreed at the outset of the conflict that the outward
evidences of the tragedies which were certain to come
should be minimized so far as possible. London and
England never have gone to the extreme of the outward
manifestations evident in Paris, and in France gener
ally. of the dread realization of the horrors attendant
on the conflict, and of the fear of a remotely possible
national defeat.
• • •
It is not meant to say that the French people have
shown evidences of depression of spirit or of doubt
concerning the final outcome of the struggle in which
they are engaged. It is true, however, and England
knows it, that in France, by common consent, the
women all dress in somber colors and largely have fore
gone attendance even at such little social gatherings
as are known in England and America as afternoon
teas. England has kept up some of its social activities,
although, like France, she has closed down largely on
elaborate affairs of whatever kind.
• • •
At the outset of hostilities England, because she ’s
girt by four seas, felt an aloofness from the war which
prevented its actualities from striking home as deeply
as they struck into the heart of invaded France. For a
while on this island things went on much as usual.
Then there ,caine a pause and then almost a full stop.
England was exultant In heart at the conduct of her
troops at Mons, wheije meager battalions for hours held
at bay five times their number of assailants. The
tragedies came home, and Mons marked the beginning
of the serious heart-searching time in England.
• • •
The spirit of the English people, like the spirit of
the French, is high. The eye speaks confidence and
determination when the voices are hushed.
• • •
London is not as lively a city in a traffic sense ae
once it was. Many of the buses are doing service, or
have done service and met their fate, on the roads back
of the lines from the Belgian border to the trenches in
front of Peronne. The shops are open and for the most
part are seemingly doing a lively business. The
streets are in no wise deserted, and if a foreigner who
never before visited the city should come here ne
probably would think it as bustling a metropolis as
there exists on earth. Only the Londoner who was
here before the war is sharply conscious of the differ
ence in the swelling tide of city life.
i ‘ •
In the homes and hotels of London, where the
women, the children and the men who can’t go to war
are gathered, there is a sadness of a strong kind. There
is a bearing up, however, under all the elements which
make for depression of body and spirit. The dead,
wounded and missing lists are read in the closet.
Emotion is expressed there. In the open the people are
brave.
• • •
Englishmen as a rule, and Londoners in particular,
are not emotional. A few men and women in this town,
quicker pulsed by nature than the majority of their
neighbors, have been writing to the newspapers ever
since this war began asking why it is that so few
cheers are given for the passing regiments. At the
outbreak of the war, when every soldier was a volun
teer, there seldom were cheers for the recruits as they
passed along the streets on the way to the rendezvous
in the rear of the horse guards. Englishmen blamed
their fellow countrymen for a lack of appreciation of
the response to the call of duty.
The chances are, and a study of conditions seems to
prove, that the stolid Britishers who stand on the
London corners and see the soldiers go by are just as
full of cheers as any emotional American or French
man, but they are kept from giving vent to them by
that something in their nature which some have called
conservatism and others coldness. Qne Londoner,
when he heard his people rebuked because they did not
cheer the soldiers as the people of the other natTßns
would cheer them, replied with a touch of resentment
that "the shallows murmur while the deeps are dumb.”
• • •
The feeling of sympathy and sorrow must be re
served in the main by London people for expression in
[senate SMASHES HOARY OLD PRECEDENT— By Ralph Smith |
t ■■—_■ ll.——l I I ■■■■■ ■
WASHINGTON, D. C., March 12.—A hoary old
precedent was smashed when the senate agred to modi
fied cloture. For more than a century there has been
no limitation on debate in the American “House of
Lords.” Free speech and unrestricted debate have been
among the dearest prerogatives of the senate.
But in recent years there have been accumulating
evidences that sooner or later the senate would be
compelled to adopt some form of cloture. The filibuster
against the president’s armed neutrality bill was the
straw that broke the camel’s back. It helped to expa
dite the reform of the senate rules.
There is reason to believe, however, that had not
the dishonorable filibuster precipitated the issue, an ef
fort would have been made very soon to adopt a modi
fied cloture for the senate. It/is a fact, established
by the Congressional Record, that the senior senator
from Georgia—Hoke Smith —months ago began the agi
tation for the amendment of the senate rules whereby
debate might be limited, it is worthy of more than
passing comment that the modified cloture finally
adopted by the senate substantially was in the form
and language of an amendment proposed by Mr. Smith
months ago.
The Hoke Smith proposed amendment to the senate
rules was referred to the rules committee, and there
agreed upon as furnishing a solution of the vexatious
problems presented annually by the absence of cloture
in the senate. The rules committee did not press the
Smith amendment during the short session of congress,
because of apprehension that it would precipitate a
prolonged debate that would interfere with the regular
legislative work of the senate. The plan was to defer
consideration of the amendment until the regular, long
session.
Between the modified cloture finally adopted by the
senate and the amendment proposed by Senator Smith
several months ago there is only one minor and incon
sequential difference. The rule adopted provides that
on motion of sixteen senators to limit debate, the ques
tion shall be submitted without discussion and if two
thirds of those present vote in the affirmative, debate
shall be limited. The Smith amendment provided that
the motion should be submitted at the instance of
thirty-two senators, instead of sixteen—one-third in
stead of one-sixth of the senate.
It is understood that President Wilson, in conference
with the senate committee, concerning amendment of
the rules, favored the adoption of a majority cloture.
Members of the committee would not hear to this, how
ever, and finally convinced the president that a two
thirds cloture rule was 1 all that possibly could be ob
tained.
The rule means simply that when two-thirds of the
senate feel that the exigencies of the occasion require
it. debate shall be limited and the matter before the
senate moved through the regular parliamentary stages
to final disposition. Had the rule been in effect during
the last congress, the armed neutrality bill would have
passed the senate. Two-thirds of the senators would
have voted to limit debate, and the twelve "wilful”
men would have been powerless to have prevented a
vote.
• • •
Since two-thirds of either house of congress have
the power under the constitution to override a pres ! -
dential veto, it seems only fair that two-thirds of the
senate should have the power to limit debate —to gag
a recalcitrant senator.
To persons not in the senate it seems that any sen
ator should be able to say his say about any piece of
legislation in one hour. and. viewed in this light, the
new senate regulation is not a gag rule, since after
two-thirds vote to limit debate every senator shall be
the seclusion of the home. A wounded man is seen
in a bus. His left arm is in a sling, and there is some
kind of a surgical strap about his shoulder. A cherry
cheeked young woman guards his arm from jostling.
There are other passengers in .the bus. They look,
at the wounded man sympathetically f when he enters
and they avert their eyes. The Englishman is loath to
speak his sympathy in public. He feels it and he will
give generous expression to it at what he considers to
be the proper time, and in the proper way. He is
perhaps fearful that he may be considered imperti
nently curious if he asks questions in a public place
even of a man who undoubtedly was wounded in the
cause of his country and who might not be averse to
letting the fact be known.
• « •
London and England have given over in these
serious times of war the sports which they love. The
war has crippled racing, has abolished the Oxford and
Cambridge boat races, the Eton-Harrow cricket match
at Lord’s, and other of the great national amateur and
professional sporting events of all kinds. ‘
• • •
The London streets at night in war time have a
charm of tfieir own. Half lights have a charm which
glare never has. London is less than half lighted, but
there is enough light to enable the night traffic to go
on and to keep the feet of tqp street passers from
stumbling. London’s skyline Is more beautiful than
ever.
• • •
When one looks at the roof of Buckingham palace
and sees a huge steel net covering its entire length
and breadth, he knows that authority has Its anxious
moments, its anxious months and its anxious years.
The common people, like royalty, also have their
anxious time, yet It is to be doubted from the general
demeanor of all classes whether anxiety ever has or
ever will become nervous apprehension. The darkness
of London streets and the precautionary measures
taken against attack from the air seemingly have done
nothing in the way of depressing the spirits of the
Londoner or of the metropolis-visiting Englishman.
• • •
The theaters of London are open. The people
attend them. They do not do it In a spirit of desire for
amusement for amusement’s sake. The Londoner has
a well-fixed feeling that the semblance of things of
normal times should be maintained in order that
neither he nor his fellows may become overpowered by
the fact that these are not normal times. The people
of London in away are acting a part. They want their
tragedy flecked with comedy as an aid to upholding
the heart and soul.
• • •
The people go to church more in these war days
than they did in times of peace. Men who have studied
I this matter say that London simply is doing what all
cities have done in the past when the nations of which,
they were a part were at war. The war has pene
trated the churches. There is no religious service
which has not its suggestion of the tragedy on the
continent and of the sorrow in the Island home.
• • •
The prayers for the men at sea, and for the men in
the field, never are omitted from any service, whether
of the Church of England or of the dissenting organiza
tions. No sermon anywhere tn any church but has its
words of courage for the nation and of comfort for
the mourners.
* « s
London knows how to laugh even at war thne. The
Albert Memorial never has been a favorite with any
Londoner who has the smallest sense of the artistic.
Not long after the war broke out this Albert Memorial
was enclosed by an army of working men in a great
pine board scaffolding. No one seemed to know why
the memorial’s magnificent ugliness thus was protected.
Finally one man conjectured that the encompassing
lumber had been put about the structure to protect it
from bombs. The instant reply was that any man
who would destroy the monstrosity would be consid
ered a stanch friend of the English people.
?•• • ,
The Londoners are. going about their business
They are not light hearted, but they are high hearted.
They take their darkened streets, the restrictions on
their personal liberties, the enforced rules and regula
tions of this kind and that kind, and everything else
which comes, with true British stolidity, and if they
would speak the word of truth they would say “we are
proud of it.”
allowed one hour to address himself to the pending
legislation and all amendments.
• • •
It is estimated that the average senator. In debate,
talks at the rate of about 150 words per minute. Some
may talk a trifle faster, some a bit slower, but 150
per minute is a fair average. That means, under the 1
new rule, each senator will be allowed time In which,
to deliver a 9,000-word speech on the pending question.
Since the rule allows one hour to each senator caring
to avail himself of It, and there are ninety-six sen
ators, It would be easily possible to exAaust 854.000
words in a senate debate even after the cloture rule
had been invoked. Os course, it Is hardly probable
that every member of the senate will accept the oppor
tunity, since application of the rule would mean that
at least two-thirds, or senators, were anxious
to shut off debate, so that discussion would be reduced
to a minimum, of which the maximum would be 288,000,
words, assuming that the "gagged" minority , repre
sented one-third of the senate, and each of them used
his hour.
• • •
The possibilities of debate under the modified clo
ture'rule. when reduced to hours and compared to the
average daily sessions of the senate, abundantly refute
the suggestion that it is in fact a "gag” rule. If the
rule is invoked against a third of the senate opposed
to a given piece of legislation, it is possible for each
of this third —thirty-two senators —to speak for one
hour. The average daily sesion of the senate continues
not over five hours, so that the minority by exercising
its rights under the rule might delay legislation for
nearly seven days, unless the majority held their feet
to the fire in one continuous session.
f QUIPS AND QUIDDITIES
> '■—'
Mark Hambourg has had many compliments paid to
him over his brilliant Coliseum performances, but none
nicer than that handed to him by one of the stage
hands, who went to him the day after the first night,
and said: "Mr. Hambourg. my wife has always been
considered to be a fine pianist; but she was in the house
here last night, and—well, we have decided to sell the
piano and buy a gramophone.”
•• • •
The managers of a certain mission hall in a mining
district where * great many soldiers are now quartered
are very kind to the Tommies and get up all sorts of
entertainments for their benefit. The other week-end
the following notice was posted upon the door of the
hall:
"On Saturday evening a potato pie supper will be
given to the soldiers In the district. Subject for Sunday
evening, ‘A Night of Agony.’ ”
• • •
judge You weren't satisfied to eat a dinner at the
complainant’* restaurant without paying for it, but you
went off with hla forks and spoons besides
Prisonerl know, yer honor. But 1 took them from
honest motives. I wanted to pawn them to raise money
to pay him for the dinner.
Benjamin Birdie, the famous jockey, was take.n
suddenly ill. and the trainer advised him to visit a doc
tor in the town.
"HeTl put you right in a jiffy." he said.
The same evening he found Benjamin lying curled
up in the stables, kicking his lees about in agony.
"Hallo, Benny! Haven't you been to the doctor?”
"Yes.”
“Well, didn't he do. you any good?”
“T didn't go in. When I got to his house there was
a brass plate on his door —‘Dr. Kurem. Ten to one’—
and T wasn’t going to monkey with a long shot liko
that!”