COMMENT

A great factor of interference with the plan of the coaches is military exigence. A good many guards and tackles and "backs" are in camp or on the border with the militia. Should not a proper sense of values move even a stern and warlike Government to release them to the greater service? Because a college president becomes President of the United States, must he revise the order of the grades in the academic climax: For God-for country-and for the dear old college? Let the boys come home, to learn the greater strategy of line bucking, end running and bombardment with drop kick and punt. -New York Sun.

Something like a new test for labor comes into view when a trades union congress assembled at Birmingham, England, can pass a resolution declaring that 'members of the clerical profession," being "a large class of able-bodied men engaged in unproductive employment," should not be exempted from the operations of the military act.

The question thus raised goes deeper than any war situation and has a point in it which touches everybody who is not putting his energy into "things material."

The pronunciamento at Birmingham concerns also the artists and poets, the men of science and the men of thought. Who will suggest a fair set-off in lines of railroad laid down or in buildings put up for the "unsubstantial" creations of a Beethoven or a Mozart, a Verdi, a Gounod or a Wagner? How many feet of lumber cut, sawed and split-how many tons of coal raised from the mine and delivered-equal in value the influence on men of poems like the "Psalnt of Life," of songs like the "Marsellaise" and the "Star Spangled Banner"? Do I seem to exaggerate the significance of the thinker and his work?" said the late Professor Royce to his class one day. "He doubts, analyzes, pries into this and that, and men say, 'How dry, how repellent, how unpractical, how remote from life!' But after all he is prying into the secret places of the lighting of Jove, for these thoughts and passions upon which he reflects move the world."   -Boston Herald

In an address before the Business Men's League of St. Louis on Wednesday Secretary Baker testified that as a civilian he had believed that a standing army was a menace to free institutions and that the professional soldier desired war; therefore he made this "confession" (the word is his own):

"I have found as Secretary of War that the entire army of the United States, from the commanding general to the last enlisted private, does not desire war. I know of no body of men who have a more single devotion to duty than the army, and no body of men who would be more willing to lay down their lives for their country."   -New York Sun.