ᄆ ᄆ I Stood on Old Pont Neuf Sad old river of a thousand secrets- The sun stabs through the gloom- Old haunted Louvre-in the gloom Old quiet walls-'tis hard to dream Power is madness-kings are put away. That still like sores upon the State Make misery. Kings are no more loved; And people suffer. The bell from St. Germain l' Auxerrois tower, The bell that rang that awful night For St. Bartholomew's red hour Sends to me through the changing light Its soft, sweet tones. How many changes since that bloody night How time works out the will of God And yesterday's dread power breaks Today in echoes and I ask Why was this power once endured? -A. B. Leigh, 32° The New Age Magazine Published by the Supreme Council under the control of a committee composed of Ernest B. Hussey, of Seattle, Washington; John H. Cowles, Louisville, Kentucky; Trevanion W. Hugo, Duluth, Minnesota; William P. Filmer, San Francisco, California, and Marshall W. Wood, Boise, Idaho. Annual subscription: United States, $1.50; all other countries in the Postal Union, $2. Sent free to all Scottish Rite Masons of the 32°, under the Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States. Address all correspondence, communications, and make checks, etc., payable to JOHN H. COWLES, Secretary General, House of the Temple, 16th and S streets, N. W., Washington, D. C. Τ NOTES AND COMMENTS EDUCATION FIRST! HE Smith-Towner Bill before Congress has received the hearty endorsement of the great majority of the American people and is opposed by not more than one or two kinds of people. It is now before Congress and does not need to be re-introduced, which it will have to be if it is not passed at this session of Congress. A determined effort, the source of which is palpable, is now being made to defeat this bill, and more than one way is being used for that purpose. It is now proposed to create a Department of Public Welfare and include all matters of education under that department. This is putting the cart before the horse, for education is the prime factor in any welfare movement. Establish a Department of Education and let all welfare work come under that department. The object of the enemies of the Smith-Towner Bill and of the establishment of a Department of Education is to submerge the whole scheme of education so that it may be conveniently lost in the shuffle. It is most important that our legislators be not deceived and led astray by casuistic argument. Education is the prime need in this country today, and the SmithTowner Bill and the creation of a Department of Education are the most important items before Congress and the country at this time. The object of the opposition is, by any and all means, to bring about delay in this matter; to put the business off until a more convenient season. No time is so convenient as now! Now is the time to attend to so vital a matter. Delay will be the first step toward the defeat of this most necessary legislation. DO IT NOW! THE K. OF C. OFFER TO THE AMERICAN LEGION In our November issue was a short editorial rather commending the act of the Knights of Columbus in offering to donate five million dollars of the fund left from their war welfare work to the American Legion for the purpose of erecting a memorial to our soldiers and sailors. At the time the offer was made the magazine was just going to press and we had had no opportunity for investigating the matter fully; hence the editorial. Since then, however, our opinion has under gone a decided change and we approve the stand taken by Marvin G. Perry, National President of the Private Soldiers and Sailors' Legion, who, in an open letter, according to The Washington Post of November 10, says: "The money offered was contributed during the war for the aid and relief of our soldiers, and its use for the construction of a great marble palace at Washington would be an indefensible diversion from the purpose for which it was intended." The foregoing statement is unanswerable and we are pleased to announce that there has grown up such a general opposition to the acceptance of this money by the American Legion that though many organizations approved the offer when it was first made they are now beginning to see the error of their way and the individual members themselves are protesting to the officers of the American Legion against its acceptance. This protest has had the effect of at least causing a postponement of action thereon until next year, pending which it is probable that the American Legion, officers and members, will have a more complete understanding of the matter and will realize that this money was given for welfare purposes and not for monuments to the Knights of Columbus-and, incidentally. to the heroic dead; and since the government has dispensed with the services of the Y. M. C. A., Salvation Army, Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare and all other welfare organizations that rendered service during the war, and the welfare work taken over by the government itself, this money should be turned over to the government for the purpose for which it was intended. MORE PROPAGANDA? At a "movie" show on Ninth Street in Washington, D. C., about the middle of November, some war pictures were shown. First were shown the Knights of Columbus, in some good, charitable work. The pictures were vociferously applauded; the lights being extinguished, the individuals who were doing the applauding could not be distinguished and identified. Next came pictures of the Salvation Army, in equally good work-but there was no applause. Lastly came pictures of the Red Cross, in equally good work; the pictures were hissed and groaned at. All this still in the dark! One naturally asks why. We know that both the Red Cross and the Salvation Army are non-sectarian; we know that the Salvation Army was first in Flanders Field, and that they worked without fee or reward-almost without the hope of it. We know that the Red Cross, also non-sectarian, was next in the field, and we know the grand work they did, also without fee or reward. But the K. of C., distinctively sectarian, whose creed comes before country and even before succor, but who did works of charity, were the only ones applauded at that Ninth Street show! No one felt called upon to resent the affront-you see it was still dark and under the circumstances no one felt like offering himself a useless sacrifice in a case where it was evident that the persons offering the affront knew that they could not be identified, and could, therefore, stir up a rough-house with impunity. But there are other places of entertainment. At about the same time Miss Mabel Boardman, prominent in Red Cross work, and now one of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, addressed the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, at their regular meeting; and as she gave the history and some of the work of the Red Cross Society, she not only received an ovation, but a unanimous vote of thanks. You see, her audience, non-sectarian, were the descendants of Revolutionary sires. The next evening, at the National Geographic Society, the lecturer was a Romish priest-Leonard J. Vanderberg-who spoke (with an accent slightly Teutonic) of the Pygmies of Africa; at least that was the subject announced; but most of his talk was of the Maisi tribesmen, a war-like, brave tribe which has given much trouble to the white (British) settlers, and have been at war with them for years. His reverence made plain the purpose of his propaganda when he pleaded with the people of the United States, hoping, of course, for substantial aid for that tribe which he said had been decimated in the last two decades. As they are subjects of Britain, inhabitants of a British colony, we are no more at liberty to espouse their cause than we are to espouse the cause of the rebellious Irish. It would be as bad taste and as bad policy for us to interfere between the Maisi tribesmen and the government of Great Britain as it would be for that government to interfere between us and the Filipinos; and it should not be forgotten that there has been no argument or plea offered for the liberation of Ireland that would not equally apply to the Philippines. We have jurisdiction in that archipelago, but none in Ireland. It is always humane to extend a helping hand to a waning race or nation that deserves that help. This appeals to all of us. But why not turn our attention to the Hawaiian Islands, which, when discovered by the whites, were teeming with population, but whose Kanaka population is now nearly extinct? We have a responsibility there. And, finally, why not follow Washington's advice and attend to our own business? IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION The burning question of the day is the Americanization of the vast horde of aliens that dwell among us; instructing them in the ideals of democracy and the duties of citizenship. We vaingloriously call America "the Melting Pot of Nations." The phrase, coined by that clever Jewish author and playwright, Israel Zangwill, sounds well, and to a certain extent describes the situation in the United States, but it must be taken with certain limitations. The fusing of men is something like the fusing of metals-some will run together, others will not. Not so very long ago we were compelled to deport to their respective heath-darkest Russia-a shipload of immigrants who failed to fuse with their fellow citizens. The question is: Have we bitten off more than we can chew? Can the body politic digest the inchoate mass of aliens within its borders without importing vast numbers of others before the digestive process already begun is completed? Labor leaders in the United States cry out against the influx of immigrants. Already the unemployment question is becoming acute in many of our industrial centers. Will not immigration increase the labor troubles and drag down the standards of living of the American workmen? We quote as follows from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat: "The immigration situation is very grave. Apparently only a lack of transportation facilities prevents, or will next year prevent, such a flood of immigration as this country has never had. The number who would come here next year if they could get steamer accommodation is placed by Chairman Johnson, of the House Committee on Immigration, at 10,000,000. For the most part they are simply seeking to get away from the miseries and deprivations of their home lands and would in the main merely swell the ranks of unskilled labor and make more acute our unemployment problem, with all the evils that would attend it. Radicalism, now so much on the wane, would, under such conditions flare up again. Under conservative leadership such as has now gained the ascendant in the ranks of organized labor the problem of adjustment of the relations of capital and labor is possible of solution. To swell enormously the ranks of unemployment and radicalism through the wide-open doors of Ellis Island would make a solution far more difficult. The workers of the country, organized and unorganized, which means more than 90 per cent of the people, have seen the danger of radicalism and turned from it, as the recent election shows, and it is a hopeful sign that the heads of labor organiza tions are so clearly reading the signs of the times and are getting in accord with them." But We have always felt sympathy in this country for oppressed nations, for peoples who have suffered under the yoke of religious or political tyranny, and have extended them a warm welcome when they flocked to our shores. today the question of immigration is not so much a problem of spiritual and political persecution as it is one of hunger! Would it not be better to help the hungry horde of foreigners in their own countries, instead of importing them into our congested domains and feeding them here? We are in danger of being swamped if we permit unrestricted immigration. Thousands of undesirable aliens clamor for admission at our gates. As a prominent editorial writer says: "It is not the desire for liberty that drives so many aliens to our shores; it is the iron whip of hunger. They do not seek to become Americans; they seek to obtain American food. Some of them are good material for citizenship, and some of them are pollution." We run great risks in unlimited immigration. Our ability to assimilate the new flood of aliens is questioned by many publicists and sociologists. Says Lothrop Stoddard, in World's Work: "Up to a few years ago the assimilative power of America over the hosts of new arrivals to our shores was taken for granted abroad. But lately certain phenomena such as 'hyphenism' during the war, the political activity of foreign propagandas like Sinn Fein, the prevalence of imported revolutionary doctrines among certain alien groups. combine to make some foreign observers doubt the stability of our national type and institutions." We have now come to the parting of the ways, and must call a halt. Immigration must no longer be left to mere whim and sentimentality, but to scientific inquiry and observation. We don't want undesirable revolutionaries and fanatical doctrinaires to destroy our liberties. The fact is patent to any unprejudiced observer that most of the communistic and anarchistic agitation in the United States is the work of aliens, who cannot or will not understand the genius of institutions, inherited from the Fathers of the Republic, and tested in the crucible of experience. We are now undergoing a transition stage; the inflation of the war period is being dissolved. If we admit a colossal horde of immigrants amongst us in these parlous times, we invite disaster. Competition for jobs among those who work with their hands, already a problem looming large on the industrial horizon, will be made more acute by immigration. Let us then legislate against the over-stimulation of immigration, until we have assimilated the strangers in our midst. We don't want to see any soup lines in our cities, or men clamoring for work that is not to be had. Given a little time, the economic situation will adjust itself, if properly managed. METHODS OF AMERICANIZATION Man is essentially a tool-minded animal; he cannot accomplish very much without tools. By tools we do not necessarily confine our definition to implements of the working man-the mason, the farmer and the carpenter; but extend it also to the tools of the intelligentsia-the printed page and the instruments of the scientific laboratory. The great majority of the immigrants who come to our shores are more or less acquainted with the tools of the working man, but they have comparatively little acquaintance with the tools of the mind. They are not bookish people. However, large numbers of them are not illiterate in their own language, but they have no knowledge of the English tongue. They lack the tools whereby they can become acquainted with English. Of late years, however, a number of excellent textbooks have been published in this country for the instruction of immigrants. |