MEXICAN RELATIONS

It is impossible to avoid now and then contrasting conditions upon the only two foreign land frontiers of the United States. Along that at the North, from the Atlantic to the Pacific elsewhere in this issue referred to as "the most beautiful boundary on earth”, no fortifications exist, no troops are massed, no wars are waged nor rumors of wars arise, but peace and profound mutual confidence have prevailed unbroken for much more than a hundred years. Along that at the Southwest, about half as long, also from sea to sea, during most of the time for four-fifths of a century, suspicion, unrest, antagonism and frequent disturbances have prevailed, with several acts of outright war, and an incessant watchfulness of armed forces. The difference between the two could scarcely be greater or more significant than it is.

We may charge it in part to the radical differences of race and of civilization. But we must also recognize the fact that the regrettable conditions along our Mexican border have largely been also the fault of the two countries. The instability of government which for much of its history has been unhappily characteristic of Mexico, and the easily explicable preference of revolutionists for the American border as a field for operations, must be reckoned to have been a prolific source of trouble; not infrequently aggravated by filibustering or other operations from our side of the line. Nor do we absolve ourselves from blame. war of eighty years ago has been condemned by foremost Americans as severely as by the Mexicans themselves. Nevertheless 1867 may fairly be regarded as atonement for 1847. If at the earlier date we spoliated Mexico, at the later one we saved her from extinction; of which the death of "Poor Carlotta!" this present year has been a pathetic and tragic reminder.

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If therefore we may scarcely hope to duplicate along the Rio Grande the fortunate conditions which exist on the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, there could be and there should be a marked amelioration of those which have prevailed there during most of the time since the abdication of Porfirio Diaz. It should be remembered that twenty-five years ago the two countries set an inspiring example to the world, by submitting an important and long-standing controversy to the Tribunal of Arbitration at The

Hague the first ever brought before it-and by loyally accepting and fulfilling its verdict. Certainly neither of the two should be averse or reluctant to follow their own example.

THE FLICKERING OF "FLAMING YOUTH"

The painfully obvious and indisputable "wave of crime which has for some time been widely prevalent, and the apparently authentic statistics of a marked increase in juvenile and adolescent delinquency, have set sociologists, educators and others to discussing the subject of moral and religious training for the young, with some significant results. The statements have been made, on what seems good authority, that more than eighty per cent. of all crimes from murder down to petty misdemeanors are committed by persons less than twenty-two years old; that the average age of burglars has decreased in ten years from twenty-nine to only twenty-one years; that fifty-one per cent. of automobile thefts-which involve values of tens of millions of dollars a year-are committed by persons under eighteen; and, most pitiful and shameful of all, that forty-two per cent. of the unmarried mothers are schoolgirls averaging sixteen years of age.

That secular education should be an efficient agency for combatting such conditions is often insisted upon. Yet that theory is confronted with such facts as this: That in the State of New York in three years more than six hundred million dollars have been spent on public school education, and in those same years more than fifty thousand of the pupils in those schools were sent to prison as convicted criminals. That religious instruction, in church Sunday schools, should be effective, might perhaps reasonably be expected, if it existed to any general extent. But we are told that it reaches scarcely thirty per cent. of the children; so that seventy per cent. of the children of America are growing up without moral or religious instruction of any kind in the schools.

There remains the home, or what is left of it. The original American principle was that children should receive moral instruction, discipline and guidance from their parents. Statistics

of the practice of that theory are, manifestly, unavailable; and the opinions and estimates of shrewd observers would have too cynical a tone to be repeated. But the failure of the home thus to function is proclaimed unmistakably in the appeals that are made for the teachers in the schools to undertake such work. At a recent convention of educators in Oregon a large part of the discussions urged the "obligation" of teachers to develop moral character in their students. One leading speaker called upon his fellow teachers to help to "give children internal control now that they have renounced external control"; though he does not seem to have told by what right of common sense or reason children are permitted to "renounce external control". Lowell wrote that "The Ten Commandments will not budge." Are we to understand, however, that the Fourth has been abrogated? Another speaker insisted that teachers must "help in the reorganization of homes which have gone askew". A pious work, truly! But is the young normal school graduate to undertake the instruction of the fathers and mothers as well as of the children of the community? And still another speaker, representing the parents of the community, pleaded with high school deans that "they train girls in right standards and ideals"; as though girls were to wait until they reached high school before being thus trained!

It was refreshing, after such futile babblings, to hear words of truth and reason from so eminent an authority as Dr. Henry Suzzallo, who recently retired from the Presidency of the University of Washington; words to be commended to every teacher, still more to every church, most of all to every parent in the land. "The school," he said, "is an institution preëminently devised to deal with intellectual things. The average critic of our schools expects them to do things they were never designed to do. He expects them to develop triple-A high moral character, which is primarily the function of the home and the church. I love my job as schoolmaster, but I am not going to take responsibility for the development of those things in youth which are left undeveloped by the breakdown of other institutions."

"Flaming youth" may be admirable, if the flame be constant, luminous and serene. But if it is to be kept from flickering and

flaring and consuming itself in ruin, the hand that steadies it should be the hand that lighted it. President Coolidge was everlastingly right in saying that the hope and strength of America are in the homes and at the hearthstones of the people. Pedagogics, sociology, penology and all the rest of the social sciences can never contrive nor discover a substitute for parental authority and domestic influence.

IF WE HAD NO NAVY!

A biting irony was seen in the Chinese cataclysm. Among the Americans who cried for rescue from impending slaughter, and who were taken aboard the naval vessels of this nation and conveyed to safety, were not a few who had formerly been clamorous for abolition of our Navy, or who were associated with such pacifist propaganda. Many here at home, too, who had been demanding that every vessel in the Navy be sent to the scrapyard, were mightily glad to have their friends thus rescued, and would have raged in fury at the iniquity of the Government, if it had left them to their fate.

Disarmament is a noble ideal, no doubt. But the process must begin with the human mind and heart. When every nation practices justice and desires peace, and has assurance that every other does the same, we may dispense with armies and navies. Meanwhile we may profitably remember that lack of arms never did and never will keep men from fighting when they have occasion to fight; nor will its own defencelessness ever protect a country from aggression. If there is anybody who supposes that Americans in China would be more secure from mob or revolutionary violence if it were made known that their own Government had no ships to send and no troops to land for their protection, he is of course entitled to his opinion, by virtue of a right which Hosea Biglow long ago declared to be "safe from all devices human".

KEEPING THE PEACE

BY REV. CHARLES E. JEFFERSON, D.D.

OUGHT it to be kept? Can it be kept? And if so, by whom, and how? The first question is the most easily answered. The peace ought to be kept, and must be kept if we are not to perish. The World War made that clear. War has become a new thing. We can no longer think of it in terms used in the past. We keep the old word but science has presented us a new thing. Men waged what they called war in the eighteenth century, but George Washington did not know war, nor did Wellington, nor Nelson, nor the great Napoleon, as we know it, and because of our knowledge, it behooves us to keep the peace. In the old days men often spoke nonchalantly of war. They said it was a good thing, a tonic. "A little bloodletting will tone us up." Some went so far as to call war a "school of virtue." No one has ventured to speak thus since the end of the World War. We now know that war is a school of vice; and that even if it were a school of virtue, what is the use of cultivating virtue if civilization goes down in the process?

In former times men formulated laws of war. It was a game and they laid down the rules for the players. It was a duel and they regulated the weapons and procedure by agreements and conventions. Those days are gone. War can no longer be regulated. It defies all restraint. It laughs at repression. Those who still talk of regulation live in the past. They think in terms of a world which has vanished. It was proved in the World War that all rules of war are scraps of paper. This is because military defeat now means ruin. No government will refuse to make use of any efficient weapon within reach to escape destruction. Regulations for submarines and poison gas and tanks and bombing-airplanes are withes which will blaze like flax in the conflagration of every future war. A government is only a group of men in charge for the time being of the conduct of public affairs. The group changes again and again, and in war