The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While

Lady Ward Discusses Female Suffrage in New Zealand—C. F. Birdseye Shows That the Scope of College Fraternities is Widening—Professor Borgerhoff Points Out Merits of Esperanto—Mormon Elder Says It Costs $1,500 to Save a Soul—President Faunce Believes Public Schools Will Supply Antidote for War—Dr. Louis Elkino Writes of German Methods in Fight for Commercial Supremacy—Bernard Shaw Says Americans Are Children in Business—Queen Margherita on Race Suicide—Charles F. Pidgin Finds Boston a Big Debtor—Lord Roberts Wants Rifle-Shooting Made a National Sport.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

HOW FEMALE SUFFRAGE WORKS IN NEW ZEALAND.

Even Maori Women Vote, But Only Men Hold Office—Lack of Servants Keeps Fair Sex Home.

What about woman in New Zealand? We are arguing for and against woman suffrage in the United States with almost as much theory and as little practical knowledge of the proposed conditions as was the case thirty years ago. Some of us are positive in the conviction that the right to vote would unsex the sex—would harden motherhood and sisterhood into a sedulous mannishness.

Others believe that womanly intuitions would soften the sheer practicality of politics and induce gentleness where roughness has ruled. And for a dozen years we need only have looked to the Antipodes to learn how woman suffrage might work out in practise.

Lady Ward, wife of the premier of New Zealand, during a recent visit to the United States, said to a representative of the New York Tribune that the women of New Zealand, despite their participation in colonial politics, are very feminine. She added:

Sometimes women do speak at political meetings, but it generally turns out afterward that they are visiting Americans, or perhaps English women. No, we don’t sit on juries, and we don’t run for Parliament. The law would have to be changed before we could do so, but I don’t believe we want to. Perhaps some time in the future it will come to that, but I think it will be a long time.

We did have a mayoress once in a town in the northern part of the colony, but no one seems inclined to repeat the experiment. In fact, we are very busy with our domestic affairs, and are quite content for the present to leave the management of public affairs to the men.

The women of New Zealand place their homes before every other consideration, and their domestic problems are just as serious as those of any other country. Our young women would rather be stenographers than domestic servants, and we have not found any way of getting on without servants.

But don’t imagine that we are not interested in politics and that we don’t vote. There isn’t a woman in New Zealand who doesn’t know every member of Parliament either by sight or by reputation, and there isn’t one who can’t talk intelligently about political questions. Out on the farms and in the villages it is just the same as in the cities, and it makes life very much more interesting.

No matter whom you meet, you will always find one subject of common interest. People here don’t seem to be much interested in politics, and even your men don’t vote, I am told. Isn’t it strange? Perhaps it is because our country is smaller that we take so much more interest in its affairs.

Our elections are most interesting events, and the women do a great deal of electioneering, just as they do in England. But they don’t do much speechmaking, except among themselves. Political afternoon teas are a favorite method of winning over doubtful women voters.

What becomes of the babies when the mothers are out electioneering? Why, I really don’t know. I suppose there is always some kind-hearted woman to take care of them. Perhaps the women take care of one another’s babies. I never heard of any difficulties of that kind.

Do the native women vote? Yes, certainly. Every woman over twenty-one votes. The only qualification is a residence of twelve months in the colony and three months in the electorate where the vote is cast. The native women take just as much interest in politics as the white women, and are thoroughly well posted in everything concerning native affairs. We have an aboriginal population of forty thousand, and they have their own representatives in Parliament.

Women in New Zealand have the more time for politics because they do not carry the burden of charitable work. The charities there are subsidized by the State.

WIDENING SCOPE OF COLLEGE FRATERNITIES.

C. F. Birdseye Believes They Bring Undergraduates More Under Influence of Alumni.

The American college fraternity has become a farce, educational and social, intellectual and moral, so great that even but few fraternity leaders appreciate it. At more than one college, chapter-houses have done away with the need of dormitories. As colleges have grown larger and more unwieldy, and the members of the faculties have been less frequently in personal touch with their students, the fraternities have in no slight degree taken the place of the old small-college units, alumni now influencing the undergraduates through their fraternities, much as the professors used to.

Writing in the Outlook, Clarence F. Birdseye points out that our college fraternities are to-day great educational influences:

The pick of our alumni in wealth and influence are fraternity men. If a tithe of this power can be turned back into the lives of the undergraduates to supplement the efforts of the faculties, we can do much to restore individualism.

Neither college nor fraternity conditions are at present ideal. They are often bad, and there is real foundation for all complaints. Unless promptly checked, the evils will grow far worse and more difficult to root out. This question must be studied by its friends, and the reform must come from the fraternity alumni; for the fraternities can be awakened and developed, but not driven, nor driven out.

Like every other historical, educational, or social question, this must be studied carefully and with open minds by many alumni and from different standpoints, so as to cover widely divergent conditions in institutions that may be universities or colleges, rich or poor, large or small, old and conservative or recent and radical, public or private, at the North, South, East, or West, and therefore governed by widely different religious, social, educational, and political influences.

Wide Distribution of Chapters.

The wide distribution of its various chapters adds greatly to the perspective and corrective power of every fraternity, and makes it an ideal instrument for wisely investigating and righting undergraduate conditions at the same time in widely scattered institutions.

The true fraternity alumnus can mold the lives and motives of his younger brothers. In most colleges the fraternities are so strong that if we can change the atmosphere of the fraternity houses, which for four years are the undergraduates’ homes, we can change the whole undergraduate situation.

The fraternity alumni have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars for housing and otherwise helping the undergraduates. Every fraternity has many loyal and devoted graduates who willingly give time or money or both to the true interests of their younger brothers, and whose word is law to them.

The character of the influence of each chapter depends largely on the local alumni, strengthened, guided, and impelled by a strong central organization. Why not apply modern business principles and systematic organization to this all-important problem?

Atmosphere of Chapter-House.

We have one thousand seven hundred fraternity chapters in three hundred and sixty-three of our institutions of higher learning as foci from which the good influences might constantly and powerfully radiate. There has been too much tendency to make the fraternity the end and not the means.

The alumni have not realized that the atmosphere of the chapter-house determines the character of the chapter’s influence on its individual members, and that the ultimate responsibility for this atmosphere is on the alumni. If we would make this atmosphere permanently good, we must appreciate that the alumni are the permanent and the undergraduates the transient body—completely changing every three years; and the seniors, the governing body, every year.

We, as the permanent body, have no right to furnish our undergraduates with fine and exclusive homes, and then shirk responsibility for the future conduct and influence of those homes.

The proper government of a chapter is a strict one, with the power in the hands of the upper classmen, especially the seniors, who are in turn held strictly accountable to alumni who are in constant touch with the situation and personally acquainted with every undergraduate and his work and needs.

Where such conditions are continuous, the chapter’s success is assured, and the effect on the undergraduates is highly beneficial. The fraternities, through strong central organizations, must make these conditions prevalent and continuous in every chapter. This has long been the theory, but the practise has been poor.

Correction of Waste.

The fraternities, with their numerous chapters in different institutions, have the best possible opportunities for the investigation and correction of the wastes and for the enforcement of economies in college life.

No one can measure the waste and lack of economy, to the college, the fraternity, the community, the family, or the individual, of a failure in college life, from whatever cause it comes.

It is criminal that we have not studied these wastes in our colleges as we have in our factories, railroads, and other great industries, and that we have allowed the pendulum to swing so far to the other side, and have not long ago returned it to its mean, and found educational influences to replace the small units of the earlier colleges.

Mr. Birdseye maintains, in conclusion, that it is for the fraternities to devote their wealth and influence to improve undergraduate conditions, incite their men to the best work, and prevent the wastes which result from a failure in college lives.

THE LATEST IDEA OF A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

Professor Borgerhoff Points Out Some of the Merits of the Latest Invention, Esperanto.

In the preface to his famous dictionary Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote: “Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.” If that be true, it is not strange that man should so constantly seek to improve the instrument. We have the selective process by which worn-out words and idioms are dropped into the limbo of archaism and new coinages come into use. Then we have the attempts to supply new languages, ready-made. There was Volapük; and now comes Esperanto.

Professor J. L. Borgerhoff, of the Western Reserve University, sets forth in the Atlanta Constitution the claims of Esperanto as a world-language. After brief reference to former candidate languages, he says:

The latest attempt, and the one which bids fair to be final, is Esperanto, so called by its author, Dr. Zamenhof, a Russian physician, who under this pseudonym published scientific articles before he became famous as the inventor of an artificial language.

Zamenhof, like his predecessors in the same field, was struck by the useless wealth of idioms that divide the inhabitants of the earth and make international relations so difficult, while at the same time they are a prolific source of misunderstanding and enmity among the nations.

He was also convinced that the reason why the existing universal languages had failed in their purpose was that they were too difficult—almost as difficult as the natural ones. The cause of their difficulty lay in the grammar, which was too intricate, and in the vocabulary, which was far too varied. He forthwith composed a grammar which was simplicity itself; this he did by setting aside all rules not strictly needed for the construction of a logical sentence and by eliminating all exceptions. The few remaining grammatical principles may be learned in half an hour.

His next concern was the vocabulary. What makes the acquisition of a foreign vocabulary so hard to students is the variety of roots, the great number of different words. To take an instance from English, to express the various ideas suggested by the one conception of death, we have: dead, to die, deadly, and deathly, mortal, to kill, to murder, to assassinate, to suicide, to commit homicide, etc. What a cumbersome luxury of roots, and how discouraging to the foreigner who wishes to learn this language!

Number of Roots Reduced.

And yet English is one of the easiest of all European tongues. How to reduce this number of roots was the great problem before Zamenhof. He therefore took one out of a number, and by means of a system of suffixes and prefixes he made this one root do duty for all the others.

In this manner the Esperanto dictionary contains only about two thousand roots, yet they are sufficient to form, by means of derivation, a vocabulary large enough for all purposes.

But what makes matters simpler still, he chose his two thousand roots in such a manner that they appear familiar to all educated persons of European civilization, by selecting first those terms which are already in universal usage, like sport, toilet, train; then by taking words common to two or three leading languages, and finally by adding to these a small number of roots not international, but picked out judiciously from various idioms, so that any one, be he Slav, Teuton, or Latin, finds that Esperanto has a familiar appearance.

The suffixes number about thirty and the prefixes half a dozen; they have well defined meanings, and once they are known any person provided with a list of the simple roots can compose his own vocabulary almost ad libitum, so that the finest shades of meaning may be expressed to a nicety.

I should say that the most remarkable feature about Esperanto, and one which no natural idiom possesses to such a degree, is this power of forming new words once the key-word is given, and it should be remembered that in the majority of instances this key-word is already known.

Simplicity a Striking Feature.

The second striking feature is the simplicity and regularity of the whole grammatical scheme; thus are placed within easy reach two essential parts of a language—the vocabulary, and the very simple device whereby this vocabulary may be made to express all ideas clearly.

To take again the word “death” as an example: the key-word is “mort” (which we have in the English mortal). Remembering that in Esperanto all nouns end in “o,” all adjectives in “a,” adverbs in “e,” infinitives in “i”; that contraries are formed by prefixing “mal”; that the prefix “sen” means without; that the suffix “ant” marks the agent (corresponding to the English “ing”), and that the suffix “ig” means to cause, we get from the above root: morto, death; morta, mortal; morti, to die; morte, mortally; mortano, the dying man; mortanta, dying; mortigi, to cause death, or kill; mortigo, murder; mortiganto, murderer; mortiga, death-dealing; malmorta, living; senmorta, Immortal; senmorto, immortality, etc.

The conjugation of verbs, which is the great stumbling-block in the study of all natural languages, presents no difficulty whatever in Esperanto. In the first place, there are no irregular verbs; secondly, there is only one ending for each tense; thirdly, the number of tenses is reduced to a strict minimum, mainly past, present, future, and conditionally.

The infinitive of all verbs ends in “t”; the present always in “as”; the past always in “is”; the conditional always in “us”; these endings are the same in the singular and the plural.

To sum up, Esperanto is the easiest of all languages; all that is needed to read and write it is a familiarity with the few grammatical principles, most of which have been explained above, a knowledge of the thirty-odd suffixes and the half-dozen prefixes alluded to, and a dictionary giving the two thousand roots, many of which most of us know already.

Any one with the merest smattering of Latin and German and a knowledge of English can write a letter in Esperanto practically from the start; in fact, a person with a knack for languages can do so without this previous knowledge if provided with a dictionary.

As for speaking it, that is, of course, a matter of practise. It is easy enough, yet practise for a couple of months is indispensable to become fluent. Those interested should form a club and meet for the purpose of conversing. The pronunciation is as easy as the rest of the language.

Is this artificial language to come into real use? Professor Borgerhoff shows us that it is at least spreading rapidly. In June, 1905, there was only a handful of Esperantists in America. One year later there were fifty clubs, mostly in colleges. Paris offers about twenty free public courses. All over Europe the language has hundreds of thousands of adherents. Three thousand Esperantists, representing fifteen different countries, attended the congress at Boulogne-sur-Mer, in August, 1905.

THE CASH COST OF CONVERTING A SOUL.

Mormons Figure That It Amounts to $1,500, While Volunteers of America Find That $5 Will Do.

The Mormons appear to spend more money to secure a single convert than any other sect. Elder Ellsworth, of the Chicago Mormon Mission, told the Chicago Inter-Ocean that his church expended probably fifteen hundred dollars for each convert. The statement came out in connection with the Inter-Ocean’s inquiry into the cash cost of saving souls in Chicago. The Mormon figures were highest; the figures of the Volunteers of America—five dollars a convert—were lowest. It is patent that the average cost of conversion is much higher to-day than it used to be.

The Rev. George Soltau, a well-known evangelist, at work in Chicago, said to the Inter-Ocean’s representative:

Twenty-two years ago the cost of soul-saving was infinitesimal. A picture of heaven, a few passages from the Scripture, a prayer, and a request were sufficient—a few cents, in fact, and our task was accomplished. To-day people have no leisure. They have no time to listen to what preachers have to say. They read cheap literature, which, as a rule, is antagonistic to evangelization.

Present Facts in a Commercial Way.

Religious phraseology doesn’t work. We have to present our facts in a commercial way. We don’t relish it, but we have to move with the times. We content ourselves with the fact that, after all, true religion is transacting business with God and with heaven.

General education has made it much more difficult to convert the people and to conduct a campaign of evangelization. The people are provided with so many methods of occupying their time and thought that there is no longer any possibility of getting individuals to come to a church to fill in a spare hour as they used to do so readily.

This fact has been demonstrated to me again and again, and forced home when I find myself in places where I used to hold meetings with five or six hundred people in attendance and where now I find difficulty in getting together an audience of twenty or thirty people.

A minister of to-day is also familiar with the fact that the Bible no longer occupies the place of authority in the minds of the people that it used to. And when a preacher has to prove the truth of his only authority it is a bad tendency on the part of the people.

It is the same as if a lawyer, when he appeared in court to plead his case, were obliged to prove the truth of the Constitution, which is the fundamental law. On the other hand, the evangelist himself hasn’t the slightest doubt of the authority of his message, while he knows his hearers have.

Education and Evangelism.

Asked whether, in his opinion, the education which had proved detrimental to evangelism was a bad thing for the people themselves, Mr. Soltau replied:

It is both good and bad. It is good in that it develops the minds and gives the people something to think about, and it is bad in that it diminishes their fear and reverence for the Scriptures.

Culture has undermined faith largely. It has destroyed the foundations on which faith used to rest; not that the foundations are one whit injured, but the building of character has been shifted to other foundations, namely, those of human opinion, research, discovery, and creed untested by what was supposed to be divine revelation.

Modern thought has infected universally the people with doubt upon all that was supposed to be established fact. And it has given nothing in its place except speculation and private opinion, so that every man is practically his own God to do and think as he chooses.

The production of literature—scientific, historical, and fictional—is so enormous as to demand the spare time of every one to read it. The pulpit and the pew, the magazine reader and the newspaper reader, have been infected with the German rationalism and philosophy, which has dared to assert itself as of higher authority than the Scriptures.

Authority has been destroyed, there is no court of appeal above human reason. That being so, there is nothing to correct human reason and bring it back to its old bearings. We have to evangelize people who have little or no substratum of Bible knowledge, and have no cultivated faith in any one but themselves.

The enormous wealth and rapid development of the material resources of the country have opened up innumerable outlets for the energies of mind and body, and the possibilities of getting rich have absorbed every one almost, so that the dollar has first and last place in the people’s minds. It is almost impossible to dislodge it. The altered conditions of civilization have destroyed simplicity of living and of thinking, hence there is no room or time for spiritual things.

The Average Churchgoer.

The low level of spirituality attained by the average church member disgusts the man of the world, who sees no distinct advantage in religion beyond possibly a social one. The average Christian thinks only of his personal safety and has no concern for his neighbor. His is mainly a selfish religion, and such poor samples are abroad of what God is supposed to do that the successful business man, who knows how he feels about results, discounts such enormously, and looks upon the whole thing as beneath his notice.

Democracy has produced lawlessness enormously. It begins in the family, where parental control is at a big discount. The grown boy gets his way at any cost to others’ business.

He has learned to ignore law and authority from the beginning. The laws of the community are evaded, then the laws of the State, then of the Federal government. He believes he is a law unto himself. There is no law of God to need his attention. There is no God to trouble about. The book of God is never read. The day of God is utterly ignored. The future life does not concern him, so he needs no Gospel, no mission, no Saviour, no prayer, and the whole thing is gone.

The dollar values everything. How much happiness, how much pleasure, how much for himself.

Mr. Soltau, however, does not think that the Bible has lost its power. None of the modern intellectual and worldly developments satisfy the secret cravings of the soul.

EDUCATION PRESCRIBED AS ANTIDOTE FOR WAR.

President Faunce Believes the Spirit of Perpetual Peace Is Lurking in Public Schools.

Since the majority of evils spring from ignorance, education is the surest safeguard of virtue. It is a strong perversity that continues against a real understanding of the truth.

If war is an evil—moral, economic—as both economists and moralists generally admit, the hope of universal peace rests upon education. For that reason the suggestions made by President H. P. Faunce, of Brown University, in a speech at New Haven, carry the greater weight. He said:

No great movement is permanent until placed on an educational basis. Whatever enters the public mind through the schools enters as sunshine and rain into the fiber of the oak. A world-wide movement is now in progress, having as its object not the reformation of human nature, not the disbanding of all armies and navies, but simply the establishment of a better means than war for the settling of the disputes that must occur as long as the nations endure.

Already great results have been accomplished. Arbitration has been substituted for war in the majority of the cases. War is now the exception, not the rule, in case of international quarrel. It is not true that “in time of peace we must prepare for war,” but rather that in time of peace, we must prepare to make war impossible.

There is a growing appreciation throughout the world of the irrationality and futility of war. We have come to realize that the simultaneous discharge of pistols at fifty paces is no more likely to establish justice than the tossing of pennies or the throwing of the dice.

When the duelist became absurd, dueling was dead. The time is surely coming when the international duel will seem, in the face of international opinion, an utterly stupid way of settling differences.

What can we do in the public schools? We can inculcate the broad principle that rational men, when they differ, should appeal to reason and not to force. Already our schoolboys do this in athletics. They are accustomed to accept the decisions of umpires and referees without whining or complaint. The athletic field is a direct training for arbitration on a large scale.

We can teach in our schools that peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. We are learning to exalt a new type of heroism—the heroism of the social settlement of the city missionary, of the men and women who are devoting their lives to the uplifting of social conditions in the heart of our great cities. This newer heroism must be taught in our public schools.

We can inculcate the brotherhood of man in every class in our schools, and in every study that is taught. We can show that racial antagonisms are baseless and brutal. Each of the various races makes its own contribution to modern civilization. The last address of John Hay was an appeal for this point of view; for earnest endeavor on the part of all men and women in responsible positions to inculcate the method of arbitration as a substitute for the utilities of war.

GERMANY’S FIGHT FOR COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY.

Study of Other Nations’ Needs and Mastery of Their Languages Give Her Advantages.

If the rise of the United States to a position of first importance has been the great phenomenon of the last decade, the tremendous strides made by Germany in commerce and industry should be placed only second in importance. The reasons in the one case cannot be the reasons in the second; whence the value of a descriptive analysis of the German advance, such as the article by Dr. Louis Elkino, which appeared in a recent number of the Fortnightly Review. He writes:

If I were asked to say what has contributed most to Germany’s progress, I should unhesitatingly mention the development of patriotism in its best sense in the individual, and, though this historic fact cannot be proved by the usual methods of the statisticians, we know beyond doubt that the nation has come to work together as a firm and united organization.

His conclusions on the importance of education were:

There can no longer be any doubt that Germany’s industrial advance is mainly due to the extent and thoroughness with which technical education is being conducted. Briefly stated, the secret of the pronounced success of the technical colleges in the Fatherland lies in the fact that they have kept pace with the ever-increasing scope of all branches of science in general, and, to the same extent, with the ever-increasing demands of the present-day industrial enterprises upon scientific investigation and research.

And, in addition, the number of subjects and sciences taught is constantly being added to, while, on the other hand, the harmonious blending of the practical with the theoretical has greatly furthered the development of the scientific spirit in all its essential details.

Another important cause is the great pains taken to master foreign languages.

German firms are competing strongly with British firms in markets which, at one time, were almost entirely in the hands of British merchants, and this is not surprising, for the British representative, as a rule, has little or no knowledge of the language of the country in which he travels for orders, while the German is able to speak it fluently. It is extraordinary that British firms should continue to send abroad representatives who can speak no other language but their own.

Efficiency of method is not the least of the main contributory factors.

It is thoroughness which, perhaps more than anything else, Germans have to thank for their present happy state of abounding prosperity. It has enabled Germany to overcome one crisis after another in commerce and finance, inasmuch as it helps to the discovery of where the weakness lies. Economists teach that small concerns cannot exist side by side with large ones when they are in competition, but this is disproved in the world of German enterprise. The small firms flourish almost equally with the large ones; like the great trusts, they are able, when they wish, to sell cheaply in foreign markets. Both employ the same methods. This partly explains how it is that, though there has been a concentration of wealth and of enterprise into the hands of a limited number of people, a vast amount of money has been distributed more or less evenly into the hands of the population of the country as a whole.

“AMERICANS PERFECT CHILDREN IN BUSINESS.”

Bernard Shaw Says Our Stratum of Romanticism Prevents Us from Knowing the Real Thing.

George Bernard Shaw is never afraid to express an opinion on any subject, and apparently he is never at a loss for the opinion. The other day he expressed his views on business, saying:

The most striking peculiarity about business men is that I have never met one who understands the slightest thing about business.

Business men have certain set, conventional methods. Propose to them a way of doing business that departs from their usual method, and although the new way may mean more profit, they will not accept it unless forced to, and even then they believe they are being swindled.

My own way of doing business is perhaps novel, but it is neither harsh nor unfair. But it is novel, and therefore the men I deal with object to it, although they themselves are the gainers by doing things my way and not the way in which they are used. Yet they regard me with suspicion. It is very much as if you offered a man five dollars for doing something for which he had previously been in the habit of receiving a dollar, and having him denounce you as a swindler.

Not content with generalities, Mr. Shaw went on to discuss Englishmen and Americans as business men.

In making an agreement with an Englishman, you may be sure of one thing: if it is not entirely to his advantage he will not keep it.

An Englishman, when he wants a house, or money, or anything else, knows that in order to get what he wants he has to sign something. He does not care what he signs as long as he gets what he wants. After he obtains the money or the house, or whatever else he stood in need of, if he finds the agreement he signed disagreeable, he will denounce the man who holds it as a knave or a scoundrel and as one who is trying to take unfair advantage of him.

In my own experience with Englishmen, the terms of my agreements, satisfactory at the time of signing, have afterward proved irksome. They would then come to me and say: “Surely, Mr. Shaw, you cannot expect to hold us to such outrageous terms”; and when I would point to the agreements bearing their signature, they would retort: “Surely, Mr. Shaw, you are a gentleman!”

After all, the Jew is the only man who knows what he is signing, and will keep absolutely to his agreement.

Americans are perfect children In business. They have a stratum of romanticism that prevents them from knowing what business really is. This childish, romantic spirit impels them to be doing things, to cut somebody out, to do something that nobody else has done, or to do a greater thing than anybody else has ever done. Accidents, of course, will happen, and sometimes they make money. But the percentage of failures in America is something terrible. We never hear of these. Every attention is centered on the conspicuous few who have made success.

Shall we apply to Mr. Shaw the words of Horace,

Aliena negotia curo

Excussus propriis,

which, being interpreted, is: “I attend to the business of other people, having lost my own?” It were fairer, perhaps, to say that, in his rôle of witty playwright, everybody’s business is Mr. Shaw’s.

QUEEN MARGHERITA ON THE SPHERE OF WOMAN.

She Abhors “Race Suicide,” and Condemns the So-Called “Emancipation” of Her Sex.

The Dowager Queen Margherita of Italy has been expressing her disapproval of “race suicide” with no less frankness than President Roosevelt. Not often is a queen interviewed; less often is a royal interview more than a collection of perfunctory phrases, polite, but insignificant. Yet Queen Margherita has been saying:

A childless family is incomplete. There is a poetry and a pathos about childhood which appeal to every right-hearted woman. Most women, though they may not be able to put this idea into words, feel it. They have the maternal instinct. Hence the remoteness of race suicide.

Women show their intellectuality by rearing healthy and great children, just as much as they do by writing books or painting pictures. The wife who deliberately refuses to bring children into the world must have something wrong with her moral make-up.

I am very pleased to know that there is a movement in the United States in favor of large families, and that President Roosevelt has put himself upon record as favoring them. European women have begun to look for light to their sisters of the United States.

On the subject of woman’s “emancipation” Queen Margherita is equally outspoken:

I am absolutely opposed to any extravagant theories of what is called the emancipation of women. In whatever condition of life a woman may be placed, her first duty is the negative one of not giving up the qualities that distinguish her sex. Above all, she should guard against developing the trait of men. A blending of ancient reserve with modern independence would give us the ideal woman.

BIG BURDEN OF DEBT CARRIED BY BOSTONIANS.

Statistics Show That Ten Per Cent of Them Owe for Food, Rent, Clothing, and Funeral Expenses.

Charles F. Pidgin, chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, has been inquiring into the question of debt. Statistics issued by the Bureau show that at least ten per cent of the residents of Boston are in debt for their food, rent, clothing, furniture, and for funeral and other expenses. These people are thus partly supported by others. Mr. Pidgin says:

Debt has gained such a hold upon the people of to-day that the only sure way to decrease the number of people who owe money, not only for extravagances but for sustenance, seems to be to begin with the children, and devise some scheme by which thrift may be taught in the public schools. The generation which is growing up should be taught to have a horror of indebtedness, and how to earn money, how to save it, and how to spend it wisely.

The effect of intemperance is taught in the public schools. Why should there not be some sort of course of study that will show the effect of indebtedness on a person’s life and character?

The children nowadays do not, as a rule, know the value of money. When they want spending money they go to their parents and ask for it. When it is gone they ask for more. Neither the parents nor the children in most cases know how much money goes in this way, and the youngsters are not called upon to exercise judgment in spending the money.

The little newsboys on the street work hard for their money. They know the value of every cent, and that they must save for a rainy day.

If other children were taught to earn a little, instead of having it always given to them, they would make better citizens and would know how far a dollar should go.

If parents who give their children money when they ask for it would, instead, give them a stated sum each week or month for spending money, and make it an object for them to save it, it would go a long way toward prejudicing them against debt.

I believe in allowances for children, and for wives, too, for that matter. It makes them responsible for a certain sum, and nearly always they will take a certain pride in making it go as far as possible.

Chief Watts, of the Boston police, does not think that debt is a cause of crime. He says:

I never heard of any one stealing to pay their debts, and although being in debt may have an influence on a certain class of criminals—such as shoplifters and embezzlers—I do not think that it has any influence on the general run of crime.

So far as suicide and murders are concerned, I can’t recall a case of suicide where the person had been worrying about debt, neither can I recall a murder that debt had anything to do with.

It’s girls, not debt, that cause murders and suicides—not that I blame the women; I should not want to be understood that way—but love-affairs are generally the cause of police records along those lines. Men seldom get desperate from debt. I believe that the general tendency of every one is to pay his debts if he has half a chance.

It was a Massachusetts sage—Emerson—who wrote:

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?

Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill!

WANTS RIFLE-SHOOTING MADE NATIONAL SPORT.

Lord Roberts Believes Patriotism Should Cause It to Take Its Place With Golf and Cricket.

Lord Roberts has been pleading for the instruction of all able-bodied citizens of England in rifle-shooting. He says, in the London Express:

The rifle is our national weapon of to-day, but unhappily neither law nor custom enjoins that the manhood of our country should learn its use. Cricket and football are our national pastimes; why should we not make rifle-shooting another?

Rifle-shooting is a sport—a game attractive enough in itself; and every marksman should bear in mind that in learning how to shoot he is fitting himself as a member of a great empire to take up arms for the defense of his country. Rifle-shooting should be at once a national pastime and a patriotic duty.

The reasons for this suggestion are not few. “Bobs” proceeds to make the most of his case, for he goes on to say:

The American authorities, in the recently published rules for the “promotion of rifle practise,” gave it as their opinion that, “in estimating the military efficiency of a soldier, if we consider ten points as a standard of perfection, at least eight of these points are skill in rifle shooting,” and with that opinion I quite agree.

If, then, the scheme which I have been strenuously advocating for some time past is carried to a successful conclusion, we shall be a nation whose manhood will be for practical purposes all efficient soldiers—an efficiency, moreover, that can be obtained without the least interference with industrial or professional pursuits.

But for the whole scheme to be successful, it is desirable that boys, youths, and men should be given a certain amount of military training and instruction in the use of the rifle.

It is, I am aware, urged against my proposals that they are little short of conscription. I have frequently asserted before that I am altogether opposed to conscription as being totally inapplicable to an army the greater part of which must always be serving abroad.

Surely there is all the difference in the world between a nation, every man of which is obliged to serve in the ranks of the regular army and perform while in those ranks all the onerous duties of a regular soldier during times of peace and for small wars, as is the case on the Continent, and a nation which, while maintaining a regular army for foreign service, asks every man to undergo such a training as will fit him to take a useful part in a great national emergency when every true Briton would be, in point of fact, certain to volunteer, and only the shirkers, the unpatriotic, and the disloyal would be content to remain passive.

The people of this country should identify themselves with the army and take an intelligent interest in what the army has to do, and not regard it as something quite outside the national life; and this they would certainly do if military training became universal and rifle shooting a national pursuit.

We need not be afraid that such training and a generally acquired efficiency with the rifle would result in a spirit of militarism that would make us anxious for war. I believe, and would I could persuade haters of militarism to believe, that there is no surer guarantee of peace than to be prepared for war; and if every able-bodied man is prepared to play the part of the strong man armed, his own and his country’s goods will remain at peace.

Those who cry out for greater military efficiency and those who argue that less attention should be given to the things of war are seeking by opposite means the same result—the abolishment for all time of “that mad game the world so loves to play.”