against him, and the pulpit and press should attack him without ceasing. He is a thief and a robber, who comes, not in the night, but in broad daylight, and filches away our rights and liberties, our national good name, and our reputation as a people capable of self-government. If we have not the courage and patriotism necessary to enable us to cope successfully with an enemy of this character, then our condition is sad indeed.

A Little Rift within the Lute.

EVERY patriotic American must deprecate the growing feeling of irritation which is perceptible between the East and the West. That it is anything more than a temporary difference of view in matters of taste and opinion we do not believe. It is very like a quarrel or tiff between brothers, which, instead of indicating a lack of affection, really furnishes evidence of it. If they loved each other less they would agree much more easily. The appearance of a common enemy would unite them in closer union than ever.

Whatever discord there may be is due to a natural rivalry in power and strength. The young, vigorous, indomitable West resents the assumption of superiority which the older East is somewhat in the habit of wearing quite as a matter of course. The East, while heartily admiring the tremendous energy of the West, is sincerely alarmed by its disposition to defy the results of human experience in matters of great moment, and to say that its own strength is so abounding and inexhaustible that it can settle all questions for itself without regard to the rules and limitations which weaker states and nations have found to be necessary. From this it has come about that the West accuses the East of underestimating both its material and its intellectual strength, while the East suspects the West of giving itself over more and more each year to financial delusions which, if allowed to dominate our national policy, will bring us as a people to bankruptcy and ruin. The West, joined by the South, charges the East with intellectual arrogance, and with the intolerance of vast hoarded wealth, seeking only to perpetuate and magnify its power. The East declares that the West refuses even to listen to reason, and is bent upon having its own way without regard to consequences; that it opposes many things simply because the East favors them, there being an increasing desire in the West to do something to punish and humiliate the arrogant East.

There is nothing in this situation which is irremediable, but there is in it much that may lead to serious consequences unless something be done to bring the two sections to a better understanding of each other. At bottom each thoroughly appreciates the other. What is most needed is a full comprehension of the fact that the highest good of one is always the highest good of the other; that neither can suffer or prosper alone, but each must share its fortune with the other. The West cannot injure the East without injuring itself in equal measure. The enormous development and power of the West are the common glory of the whole country, and contribute to the strength and prosperity of the East. We are convinced that the more thoughtful minds in both sections comprehend these facts perfectly, and reVOL. LII.-80.

gret the irritation which a less clear perception of them causes in other minds.

Probably nothing ever did more to bring the East and the West together in national sentiment than the Columbian Exposition at Chicago. The whole country was justly proud of that, and no section was more ungrudging in its praise of it than the East. It was conceded frankly and heartily that Chicago had done what would not have been possible in New York or any other Eastern city, making not merely a world's fair, but a world's wonder. Western energy and dauntless daring were combined with a loftiness and breadth of artistic purpose to produce results which would have been impossible in an older civilization. As an experienced English observer said, «Not only was it the most wonderfully beautiful thing of the kind the world had ever seen, but it was likely to be the most wonderfully beautiful that ever would be seen; for no other nation would ever have the audacious courage to do again what Chicago did.» Yet this fair was merely the sublime outcome of one of the chief elements, if not the chief element, of Western progress-the public spirit of the people. They believe in their country, are proud of its wonderful growth and unbounded resources, and are determined to do everything in their power to add to its fame. This spirit is particularly strong in Western cities, and appeals to it are never made in vain. It makes possible the establishment on a firm and enduring basis of educational and artistic enterprises which find little cordial support in Eastern cities, and which lead there only a struggling and precarious existence. They are supported in Western cities because they will be a credit to the communities and will add to their fame. It would be an unspeakable boon to Eastern cities if this public spirit could be aroused in them.

But while the East ought to be, and in many respects is, willing to follow the more impulsive and progressive leadership of the West, it cannot consent to acquiesce in the financial folly which, with the notable exception of certain localities, has overspread that section of the country. There can be no greater folly than to think that the East can be injured by changing the money standard and destroying the national credit, while the West will not only escape unharmed, but will be benefited. This is not a matter of opinion, but of demonstrated experience. If the Western advocates of the free coinage of silver are right in their view, and the gold-standard men of the East are wrong in theirs, then all human experience since the dawn of civilization is wrong also. It must all be set aside, and the world begin anew, so far as economic principles and practice are concerned. To say that America is so great a country, so rich, so powerful, so capable of existing separate and distinct from the rest of the world, that she can make the world all over again on her own plan, is surely a folly if ever there was one. However it may be in other matters, it is not arrogance in the East to say there is only one side to this question, and that the people in the West and the South who take the other side are unenlightened or misguided; it is merely the statement of an incontestable truth. In every Western and Southern community, as a rule, the men who have to do with business and financial affairs know that the Eastern position is the only one that is safe, and

they are using their influence unceasingly to spread light among the people. That the people are misguided is not strange. In the first place, the subject is a difficult one to understand for all except a few minds with special bent for it, and, in the second place, unscrupulous politicians, seeking only present power, go about constantly disseminating error and prejudice. In the end the honest common sense of the people will assert itself, and this element of discord between the East and the West will pass away.

We believe firmly that all others will also pass away, and leave in their place a union all the stronger and more enduring because of their former existence. The East and the West are immeasurably more powerful together than either could ever be separately. The great qualities of both united in a common growth and development will make a far grander nation than those of either expanded to their utmost limit could produce. We want the energy and vigor and boundless enthusiasm of the West, we want its public spirit and its unshakable faith in the national glory and destiny; but we want with these elements the stability and conservatism of the East, and its respect for and determination to abide by the experience of mankind as the safest guide in human conduct. These elements united, as they must and will be, in a common and harmonious nationality will make us, what Mr. Bryce predicts in his latest edition of «The American Commonwealth » that we are destined to be, not only a nation that is powerful, and the wealth of whose citizens is prodigious, but a nation that is one in government, in speech, in character, and in ideas.

The Workingman's Support of International Arbitration.

THE movement in behalf of peace between nations appears to spring from something that looks like economic war, for among those who most stoutly demand the arbitration of international disputes are the societies of << organized labor.» Is this attitude of workingmen new? Does organization merely afford an opportunity for expressing what they have always desired, or have their actual views and wishes undergone a change? If a real difference has been made in their attitude on the question of war and peace, has organization caused it?

The demand for arbitration has been made with most emphasis where the workingmen are most thoroughly united for other purposes. In England, where trades' unions are at their best, the peace movement among workingmen is strongest; and in our own Eastern States it is very strong. The strength of the demand itself grows in proportion as the contest over wages, for which trades' unions are primarily formed, becomes active. There is clearly a connection between these phenomena. There are other possible causes of the increase of the peace sentiment. Precedents for arbitration have multiplied in recent years. Our people are now more familiar than were their predecessors with the process that makes fighting unnecessary. Already there is available, in the dealings of nations with each other, the germ of a judicial system. It is about in the stage of advancement that tribunals for private cases had reached when in minor disputes between neighbors it

had become customary to call in friends to mediate. The graver issues had still to be fought out in the old way. In the proposals now pending for a permanent tribunal of arbitration between America and one or more other countries, the impression prevails that certain important questions may have to be reserved from the express and formal jurisdiction of the new court. If, for instance, America and England are to agree in advance to abide by the decisions of a tribunal, they can at first be expected to make over to it only minor questions of interest. While the right to fight for a claim of vital importance will probably not be definitely surrendered, the hope is that the court will soon come to decide questions both small and great. Without promising to abide by the decisions, the nations may, in practice, ask for decisions and abide by them. The reservation of a right to take up arms will merely signify a jealous assertion of sovereignty. It will not mean war, provided there shall exist a strong moral pressure in favor of peace. It is for the sources of such a pressure that we are now looking. Will trades' unions create it? Will they aid decisively in the establishment of the court, in the extension of its work, and in making its decisions effective?

The action of trades' unions on both sides of the Atlantic is more than a new expression of an old demand. It expresses what is largely a new demand. The interest of nearly all men engaged in industry has long been opposed to war. Capital is wasted at an appalling rate by the modern method of fighting, and this waste reduces the wage-paying capacity of employers. War, as it were, sterilizes the earth. The workingman finds himself in a less fruitful environment, because of the reduction in the outfit of working appliances that war occasions. You cannot beat the pruning hooks of the world into swords and still gather as much wheat as before. Wealth-creating power shrinks and wages fall by reason of such wastes. Debts that have to be paid by indirect taxation press disproportionately on workingmen. It is always laborers more than others who have to face muskets; they are the rank and file of armies. Even if they keep out of the field they suffer by inflated prices. Goods are dear in time of war; measured in commodities, wages in America were at their lowest in 1865.

These motives for peace are old. What is new is described by the word « solidarity.» It is, first, an alliance between workingmen in various occupations. Here and there an industry thrives during a war. Some one must build ships and engines and make cannon. There are contracts to be expected for clothing and feeding armies. The employer who gets a contract may make a profit. How far the chance of this may figure among the meaner motives for war it would be hard to say; but the men to whom such motives appeal are very few. What is of consequence is that the present solidarity of labor prevents workingmen from feeling the contagion of this desire for gain. To them, as they know, there is no share of it accruing. Their pay depends,not on the profits of the few men who have army contracts, but on the productivity of labor in the general industrial field. Wages are fixed in a universal market. There is a level toward which the pay of workingmen of a given grade is everywhere tending. Only when general or social labor is productive can the wages in a particular shop be high. The labor movement cuts across all lines that separate different

occupations. Its aim is high general wages. These are not secured by giving fat contracts to a few employers. A disastrous lowering of wages as a whole results from war. The new solidarity of labor makes it seek the good of workingmen in every employment.

There is a further, an international, solidarity that works even more powerfully in this direction. The modern market for many things is world-wide. Labor has its pay adjusted in no one country alone. It may get more in some countries than in others; but its pay anywhere is an influence in determining its pay everywhere. There is a growing affiliation among wage-earners of all lands, in their efforts to get higher pay from employers of all lands. There is a line that separates the industrial classes, and it pays small attention to political boundaries. The quasi-battle that is waging across this line is not national. It creates comradeship among the workers of all countries, and this means far more than

a feeling. It is an affiliation in a practical cause in which success is endangered by international breaks.

Socialism, also, is hostile to international warfare. Its aim also is international. It wants all states to become employers, and to make of the world, ultimately, a cooperative commonwealth. Scientific anarchism wants all governments abolished, and the world made into a commonwealth of little industrial communes. It would thus become a brotherhood of local brotherhoods, without the capacity for national war. Anarchism of the meaner sort has its own reasons for objecting to armies. Thus, out of the issue that chiefly disquiets the world, -the wage contest, there is growing an influence that makes powerfully for international peace. The motives back of it are mainly noble, though with some inferior admixture. Ultimately its power may be counted on at the polls. Certainly it gives to the present peace movement its most substantial basis.

Church Architecture in America.

LADING the disregard of historic traditions, and a

readiness to strike out into new paths under the impulsion of changing conditions or the pressure of practical considerations. In secular design, and specially at its opposite poles in the rural house and the lofty office building, these traits have led to results full of artistic interest and of promise for the future. In recent churchbuilding the prospect appears more doubtful. A vast amount of money has been expended in the United States during the last twenty years upon elaborate and costly ecclesiastical edifices, some of them sumptuous to the verge of extravagance in their appointments and decoration. Yet to how few of them can we point as monuments of really noble or impressive architecture! With all their richness of design, and the striking originality of conception which sometimes characterizes them, they rarely possess the monumental quality, the repose and dignity, which the history and traditions of architecture have taught us to associate with buildings designed for worship. They display great cleverness of arrangement, convenience of planning, luxury of appointment and decoration, and, externally, picturesqueness of mass. They serve well the purpose for which they appear to have been solely designedthat of housing luxuriously the congregation, choir, clergy, Sunday-school, and social activities of the parish. Seldom do they manifest the existence of any higher aim than this, or any adequate recognition of the value of simple dignity, sober decoration, and solid and durable construction, in place of singularity and picturesqueness of design. The division of the religious communities of the United States into so many

the important element of large dimensions and ample scale. Other things equal, a large church offers better opportunity for impressive effect than a small one. Half a dozen churches seating a few hundred each cannot equal in majesty and importance a single edifice of commanding and imposing size. This predominance of small churches is largely due to the modern Protestant conception of the church as chiefly a place for preaching. This demands congregational units no larger than can be easily gathered within the range of an ordinary voice. The main concern of the designer is, then, to produce a good audience-room. Loftiness, amplitude, grandeur of scale, under these conditions, are apt to appear unnecessary and extravagant. Unhappily, the want of these qualities is seldom atoned for by those artistic excellencies which make many of the parish churches of European countries appear stately and worshipful in spite of their smallness. Our national disregard of architectural traditions, the desire for originality and the picturesque, have operated to prevent the crystallization of specific types of church design which might limit the caprices of individual conception.

In this respect the Episcopal churches of the United States are very apt to be superior to those of the nonliturgical denominations. Their designers have generally kept within limits imposed by ecclesiological tradition, and have adhered more or less closely to well-defined historic types. A predilection for Gothic forms is a part of this tradition; but the comparative excellence of our Episcopal churches is something quite apart from their prevalent Gothic style, which is often only indifferently treated. Some of the finest among them

Trinity Church in Boston, for example-are not Gothic at all. But the adherence to established types has left the architect free to bestow upon the proportions and detail of his design an amount of study quite out of the question where one has to invent a new type with each design.

Reasoning a fortiori, one would expect to find the noblest and worthiest examples of our church architecture among those erected by the Roman Catholics. It was the Church of Rome which, in the middle ages, evolved the unrivaled splendors of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture. As compared with the Protestant denominations, the Catholics of the United States have in general the signal advantage of much larger parishes, requiring churches of correspondingly increased dimensions. In small towns as well as great the Catholic churches are almost without exception the largest in the place. It is a regrettable fact that their architectural quality should so seldom correspond with their dimensions. They are frequently pretentious and showy buildings, but deplorably deficient in architectural character. They are badly and ignorantly designed, and in their internal treatment tawdriness and sham, both of construction and decoration, are often offensively conspicuous. They have neither the sobriety and dignity of the Episcopal churches, nor the straightforward utilitarianism and picturesque originality of the non-liturgical churches. Apparently the evil influence of the depraved taste of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which, under the lead of the Italian Jesuits, perpetrated such atrocities in plaster and sham marble throughout Europe, is not yet exhausted among us. Here in New York the only Catholic church of really conspicuous architectural merit is St. Patrick's Cathedral. This cathedral, undeniably the finest Catholic church in the United States, was the work of a Protestant architect, the late James Renwick.1 All Saints', at 129th street and Madison Avenue, one of the most artistic of the more recently erected Catholic churches, was designed by his successors, the firm of Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell. Among the other Catholic churches in this city there is not one which one would care to visit a second time for the sake of its architectural beauty. The Paulist church at 59th street and Columbus Avenue is impressive by its size and the unusual severity and simplicity of its design, but this is a wholly negative merit, though a very unusual one.

It is not easy to determine how far this general inferiority of modern American Catholic churches is due to an actual dearth of architectural talent among the Romanists of the United States, how far to favoritism in the selection of architects, and how far to a general artistic insensibility. Whether the fault lies with the clergy or the people, I am not prepared to say. There is evidently somewhere a woful lack of artistic training. Yet the Catholic authorities seldom go outside of the ranks of their church for their architects, and men of very inferior training are intrusted with the designing of the most important and costly churches, which by their very size and costliness become the more objectionable as lasting monuments of wasted opportunity and artistic ignorance.

1 It is a somewhat significant fact that very few among our leading architects are Catholics.

A reform in the architectural practice of the ancient Church would be a welcome consummation, and should be desired and promoted alike by those within and without the pale.» A «campaign of education» in art, and especially in architecture, among the clergy and the more influential laity might in time rescue their church architecture from the banalité and unworthiness of its present condition. There are signs here and there of an artistic awakening in that Church. Will not its adherents rise to their opportunities and responsibilities toward the community in the matter?

COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

war.

A. D. F. Hamlin.

A Shock to General Sheridan.

SECRETARY STANTON always held a taut official rein over the military commanders in the field during the Any manifestation of mere militarism, so repugnant to the spirit of a pure democracy like ours, was peculiarly distasteful to him, and at times he appears to have taken a savage pleasure in curbing the self-assertion of his generals. Intoxicated with the power of command and the popularity of success, some of the generals at times put themselves very much in evidence, and easily fell into a domineering manner bordering on insolence toward their inferiors in rank, and specially toward civilians having to do with military affairs. Occasionally one so far forgot himself as to treat the lion of the War Office with a flippant levity akin to contempt, but he never repeated the indiscretion. Anything like this instantly occasioned a reproof which was not soon forgotten. Military success always won Mr. Stanton's unalloyed good-will and cordial official support; but woe to the officer, high or low, who presumed upon this to overstep certain lines of respect and subordination which the Secretary thought due in their official relations. There was no hesitation on his part in «calling down » the greatest of them when the dignity of his office was to be maintained. There is no doubt that his influence was a wholesome one in this regard, though it is probable that he too sometimes abused the arbitrary power of his great office.

An illustration of this fierce characteristic of the War Secretary is found in a short and pithy correspondence, which the public has never seen, between General Sheridan and him in the winter of 1864. Sheridan, by his series of brilliant victories over the Confederate General Early in the Shenandoah Valley at Winchester, Fisher's Hill, and Cedar Creek, had immediately become a great military figure, a necessity and a tower of strength to the Union cause. He was exceedingly popular throughout the country, and enjoyed the entire confidence as well as the personal admiration of both Lincoln and Stanton. That he somewhat presumed upon this state of affairs is probable; for though he did not lose his head in this sudden rise to greatness, there is certainly observable for a time in his correspondence an «I-ownthe-earth » air not found in it previously, nor, indeed, subsequent to the collision with Mr. Stanton of which I am about to give an account. But General Sheridan was young, and acutely appreciated the harvest of personal popularity and consequence that inevitably followed his well-earned military success. If, for the moment, as I suspect, he somewhat exaggerated his importance, he may well be forgiven under the circumstances.

From the time he entered upon the command in the valley, like his long line of predecessors, General Sheridan had been greatly annoyed and his plans sometimes disconcerted by senseless alarms of Confederate invasions in West Virginia, coupled with frantic appeals for instant aid. The official archives are fairly sandwiched with these alarmist telegrams addressed to the War Department from both the civil and the military authorities of that region. They came with such perennial regularity, and were so generally unfounded, that very little attention was paid to them by the Government, especially in the last year of the war, unless there was corroborative intelligence from other quarters.

On December 22, 1864, Governor A. I. Boreman telegraphed from Wheeling to Mr. Stanton that the Confederate General Rosser, with some 3000 cavalry, was supposed to be advancing upon Grafton and the western part of the State. This information was without the shadow of a foundation: in view of the military situation and the season, the suppositious movement of Rosser would have been absurd. But however inconsequential such a despatch appeared to be, Mr. Stanton followed his wise and invariable rule of promptly forwarding it to the commander of the department in the field, without suggestion or comment. In regular course Governor Boreman's telegram reached General Sheridan at Winchester.

This last West Virginia canard, closely following a number of preceding annoyances of a similar nature, exhausted the hot-headed Sheridan's small stock of Irish patience, and on its receipt in the dead hours of the night the general telegraphed to Mr. Stanton the following impromptu comments on the information:

WINCHESTER, VA., December 22, 1864. 11:30 P. M. HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

Governor Boreman's telegram received. If I were to make disposition of the troops of my command in accordance with the information received from the com

manders in the Department of Western Virginia, whom I have found, as a general thing, always alarming in their reports and stupid in their duties and actions, I certainly would have my hands full. I believe many of them to be more interested in coal-oil than in the public service. It was only yesterday that Rosser was at Crab Bottom, according to their reports; on which, at the suggestion of General Crook, Í sent a regiment to Beverly. It was only two or three days previous that Rosser was at Romney, etc. They have annoyed me until, with your sanction, I would take great pleasure in bringing some of them to grief.

P. H. SHERIDAN, Major-General.

Under whatever circumstances and to whomsoever addressed, such a despatch as the foregoing was unwarranted. In both substance and spirit it was not only in bad taste from a man of Sheridan's intelligence and altitude, but very indiscreet. Addressed to such another as Edwin M. Stanton, it was positively grotesque. Prior to Cedar Creek, Sheridan, bold and independent as he undoubtedly was, would have meekly borne a far greater infliction than Governor Boreman's telegram before being dragooned into penning such a despatch to the redoubtable head of the War Department.

The next morning, when this flippant epistle was placed in the Secretary's hand, he appears to have been deeply incensed, and immediately sent to General Sheridan the following stinging rejoinder:

WAR DEPARTMENT, December 23, 1864. MAJOR-GENERAL SHERIDAN, Winchester: No one, that I am aware of, has asked you to make disposition of your troops in accordance with the information received from the commanders in the Department of Western Virginia. Governor Boreman's dein accordance with general instructions to give military spatch was received in the night, and sent by theoperator commanders every report that comes here in respect to the movements of the enemy in their commands. They are expected to form their own judgment of its value. It has been supposed that such information might be useful, and desired by you, as it is by other commanders who are your seniors in the service, without provoking improper insinuations against the State authorities or disrespectful reply. With your subordinate commanders you will take such action as you please, but such reports as come to this department in relation to the movements of the enemy will be forwarded as heretofore, and will be expected to be received with the respect due the department of which you are a subordinate. EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.

I am told by one of the staff-officers that on the morning of December 23, 1864, the cold mountain air about military headquarters at Winchester was made blue by the sulphurous ebullitions of the major-general commanding. The annoyance caused by Governor Boreman's ridiculous news that Rosser was making a winter raid with cavalry into the mountains of West Virginia was slight compared to the bewildering shock experienced at that headquarters upon the receipt of Secretary Stanton's telegram. No doubt the successful little general raged and fumed for proper effect upon his admiring camp-followers at Winchester, but no evidence of his wrath was forthcoming at Washington. No reply to Stanton's telegram can be found in the War Department archives. General Sheridan at the moment was probably too full for utterance, and a little calm reflection afterward likely had the effect of cooling whatever resentment he felt.

I will venture the opinion that this decided check, delivered so coldly and suddenly, and coming so unexpectedly from a quarter in which he imagined himself safely intrenched, was of actual benefit to General Sheridan in toning down an element of devil-may-care recklessness in his character which made itself apparent only after his brilliant successes in the field. At all events, an immediate and significant change in the general tone of his official utterances is easily detected after this incident, particularly in his correspondence with the Washington authorities. But I do not perceive that it caused any change in the friendly relations of Stanton and Sheridan. It certainly cannot be gathered from the records that Sheridan bore any ill-will toward Mr. Stanton.

WAR RECORDS OFFICE, WASHINGTON.

Leslie J. Perry.

Mr. Jett and the Capture of Booth.

IN the article published in the April CENTURY giving a detailed account of the assassination of President Lincoln, the writer states that «Jett, for his connection with the affair, was jilted by his sweetheart, ostracized by his friends, and outlawed by his family.» Being a near relative of Mr. Jett, and our homes being only a mile apart at the time of these deplorable occurrences, I am able to say that while Mr. Jett did not marry the young lady designated by the writer as his sweet