universities still held with Wilson, still believed in the League. Even after Harding had substituted normality for ideas, Harvard was forming a strong pro-League club under the leadership of a son of Thomas W. Lamont. When Lord Cecil spoke at Princeton, his references to Wilson drew thunderous cheers from the undergraduates, while the robed and hooded faculty applauded perfunctorily from the platform.

For a time the young men had been given something to which they could cling. They had proof that not all the world's business was directed in back rooms for selfish ends. The boys who had seen the war end just before they were of age to enlist could turn all their enthusiasm into fighting for a new kind of peace. Dollar diplomacy was doomed. The individual again counted for something in the world. It was such a movement as England experienced with Newmanism. The nation was rich enough already; the time had come for something else.

But the time had n't come, and the young men went out from their universities in great confusion of mind. Instead of becoming more spiritual, it appeared that America had become infinitely more material than before the war. Internationalism was part and parcel of the Bolshevist menace. The nation had turned its attention to its own safety, its own prosperity, its own comfort. A ring of politicians again dominated government, bringing with them a rule of corruption of which we are only beginning to know the full details.

There was no place for the young men in all this. They had denied the pursuit of wealth as the sole goal of life, and there was no other goal in sight. A few went hesitantly into the diplomatic service; a few made an abortive attempt to fight Tammany in New

York. One group of brilliant young lawyers offered their help to Emory Buckner in the United States Attorney's office. Many wanted time to think and went abroad, to Oxford, to the Sorbonne, to the Far East. Others sought out agencies of social service, the Rockefeller foundations, the international Y.M.C.A. It was a period of haphazard effort. An editor of a Princeton magazine, leaving for Oxford, wrote bitterly of the 'faithless generation' faithless because there was nothing in which to put faith. One of the ablest of the young Harvard men declared the best thing that could be said of national politics was summed up by a line of Matthew Arnold's: 'Because thou must not dream, thou needst not then despair!' A speaker rose at the banquet of the American club in Oxford to assert that the Rhodes plan had failed and internationalism was only a long word. One young American went to Geneva, observed the League hopefully, and returned to study the psychology of the Southern negro. The young men were scattered, faithless, aimless, leaderless. And then, Smith.

What had Smith been doing in these years? Nothing particularly stirring. He had been building hospitals and laying out roads, planning an imperial group of buildings to house the government of the Empire State. He had become interested in tenements; he had broken with Hearst; he had become the real leader of Tammany Hall. He had defended the right of the Socialist assemblymen to their seats in the legislature; he had fought for better hours and living conditions for labor. It was all part of the governor's job and he had done it well. But there was nothing in his record which challenged the imagination, nothing which stood out as a significant achievement to inspire the young men.

For Smith is not a deep thinker. He

is given credit for a far more compre hensive vision than he really has. And certainly Smith is not an idealist. His every act is the result of practical, common-sense reasoning. His sympathies were enlisted early in the effort to care for the state's wards, the feebleminded, the infirm, the incurables. Instantly he set about improving the state hospitals. He demanded and got money to erect new buildings, to employ better physicians, to modernize the whole charitable system of the state. It was a creditable desire on his part, and a creditable achievement. But a more profound mind, a Wilson, would have sought first to find the root of the trouble and correct the social maladjustment which was responsible for it. Where Wilson would have gone to the final cause, Smith went to the nearest difficulty.

But, by the same token, where Wilson might have failed altogether, Smith was sure of a certain measure of success. The same distinction can be found in the relations of the two men to their political machines. Wilson found the politicians difficult. When they worked with him, as in the New Jersey elections, he thought they were admirable and necessary. When they opposed his plans, he wanted to throw the whole lot of them overboard.

Smith is far less arbitrary in his dealings with Tammany. If the Organization is especially interested in an appointment for a Tammany man, Smith grants it if he can, and if it does not involve running counter to the system of government he has built up. He telephones the Civil Service Commission: 'Do this if you can.' He does not expect an exception to be made in his favor.

It is always the immediate end which Smith seeks and achieves. Beyond that he has little interest. He has no real conception of what internationalism

means, although he insisted that the state platform should include an endorsement of the World Court. The reduction of armaments appeals to him as an economic measure, but he does not look forward to a new order of things in international relationships. Even in the field of his greatest success, in the business of governing the state, Smith has not made any notable contribution to political thought or theory. His financial policies and his efforts to gain control of the state's water-power resources have not been well thought out, have not met with the enthusiastic approval of impartial critics. Much has been said and written of Smith's work at the constitutional convention when Elihu Root commented upon his grasp of the state's affairs, but a careful reading of all that he said reveals a thoroughly sound understanding of how the government operates, nothing

more.

Smith has made one or two efforts to identify himself with a political creed slightly more significant than the creed of good housekeeping. His letter to the Democrats at the Jackson Day dinner paid tribute to the principles of Thomas Jefferson, but it is doubtful if he could explain those principles except in large generalities. Nor is it surprising that he could n't. Between Wilson and Smith there lies an enormous gap, a gap of education, of opportunity, of natural inclination. Wilson in the professor's chair at Princeton had ample time to reflect upon constitutional democracies. Smith in the sheriff's office at New York was concerned with problems more immediately important.

The mantle of Elijah has fallen upon a curious Elisha. What can this man Smith offer to youth? Not ideals, not culture, not scholarship, not even an extraordinary mentality! As he sits in his office, exploding his harsh voice into a hundred humdrum topics of

conversation, Alfred E. Smith is neither crusader nor prophet, but a very ordinary man.

Except for one habit. He gets things done.

He saw the state government topheavy with departments and bureaus, choked with officials and wrapped in red tape. Driving his political enemies in front of him, taking their chiefs into his camp, he stripped the government of its useless, wasteful parts and left it free to function efficiently. Reorganization, long an issue in political councils, to Smith was a matter of course. The situation was desperate; he found an almost instant remedy.

The appalling death toll of the grade crossings distressed and angered him. He decided the state should pay its share in eliminating the crossings, campaigned for a bond issue to supply the funds, and started the work on its way. Last winter he found it was progressing too slowly. A word to George B. Graves, his secretary-assistant, and the railroad executives were summoned to Albany. Why was n't the programme moving faster? Smith wanted action.

He found the hospitals and institutions of the state in poor condition. The buildings were antiquated and their equipment was inadequate. Smith determined at once that new buildings must be put up and new equipment installed. The Republicans demurred at the cost. Smith countered with the proposal of a bond issue, and when there were signs of opposition he went direct to the people: 'We need this money. Will you give it to us?' Of course they would.

It is not a very inspiring cult, perhaps, this cult of direct action, but it gets results. The business of the state has speeded up. Men work harder and faster at the Capitol than they did in the old days. There is very little theory about it, but there is a deal of

accomplishment. A simple, direct mind is at the helm; the ship's course is not devious.

Smith meets every attack with a counterattack so open, so vigorous, that the subtler methods of his opponents are made laughable. His letter to Marshall, his answer to the appeal of the Jamaica klansmen, were masterpieces of strategy, because they were so devoid of strategic manoeuvring. Smith had something to say. He made no attempt to ornament it or to disguise it. He said it.

Many men dislike what Smith says and does; most men respect the directness and vigor of his thought. Albany is a hotbed of lobbyists. During the session of the legislature, every third person in the city has some axe to grind on Capitol Hill. If it is a question of taxation, there are the realty men who complain bitterly of the unjust burden put on real estate; there are the representatives of the auto clubs who have decided opinions about the gasoline tax; there are the grange and farmbureau lobbyists who are in daily terror lest the rural districts suffer at the hands of the urban legislators. There are lobbyists for and against every known form of taxation, each with a sheaf of arguments in support of his or her particular cause. The state's welfare is of no consequence. Who cares whether a sound system of taxation is adopted, so long as the lobbyists are satisfied?

Smith cares. That is his job, and he likes it. He has adopted the state, the orphan child at Albany, and he sees to it that the foundling has proper attention.

A man could n't gain a great reputation at Albany in a year or two years by such unspectacular tactics. Governor Miller had many of the ideas of value to the public, but he didn't stay long enough to get credit for them.

Smith has been governor for nearly eight years now, and his methods have been almost uniformly successful. In the end, they have made an impression.

The young men have not come to Smith with a holy fire in their eyes. They are still uncomfortable over the tongue in which the prophet speaks,

and they wish his vision pierced further into the future. But he holds out a promise. He has something to offer. It is not the glittering promise which Wilson gave to youth, but it is enough to hoist the flag of action. The young men want to march, and Smith can set the pace. It will be time enough later to find out where they are going.

I

Is Fascism a tyranny holding an unwilling people in thrall by brutal force, as its opponents allege, a tyranny whose only moral watchword and justification is the cry of 'Might is right'? Are the foundations of its régime already cracking under the pressure of economic and moral laws, which it has presumptuously challenged? Or is it a national embodiment of all the virtues, material and spiritual, as its propagandists tell us and its press tells it? Has Fascism produced a system that has solved, as some claim, the age-old problems of human relationship and government? Further, if this régime be indeed good for Italy, is the atmosphere of this changed land one in which the foreign visitor can breathe freely and rest tranquilly? These were the questions which revolved in my mind before and during the course of a visit to Italy, just concluded.

As a preparation I took a strong dose of reading in the voluminous literature critical of or hostile to the Fascist

experiment. On the other side there is no need to search for a corrective, for the Italian Government supplies a series of pamphlets on the many facets of its régime, translated into this and other languages. Of many of these pamphlets it can only be said that their English might be improved, and their seasoning to English taste still more. Fortunately the observer finds that Fascism shines more in its deeds than in its words. Its phrases are often unfair to itself. For its habit seems to be to announce new measures with intimidating language which jars on the Anglo-Saxon, sensitive to the rights of citizenship, and with an exuberant self-confidence which breeds distrust in his 'matter-of-fact' mind. And only when he is in the country does he discover that behind this verbal smoke cloud the measures are often carried out with a quiet effectiveness and a surprising courtesy which lead him to make favorable comparisons with the methods of his own bureaucracy.

The harm of such language is that it not only engenders a sense of insecurity among other nations, but tends

to hinder their people from seeing the new Italy with their own eyes. I have met many English and Americans who hesitate to visit Italy because of a sense of personal insecurity, a belief that the country lies in the grip of an eavesdropping officialdom, and that unless they walk and talk with extreme and painful circumspection trouble may befall them. I confess that before I crossed the frontier some qualms of this nature disturbed me. But with every succeeding day in the country this bogey evaporated more and more, until, in retrospect, it was difficult to conjure up my original apprehension. Within a short time I came to feel a sense of being at home, with all the ease of spirit that phrase implies, such as I have rarely felt in any foreign country.

Aware of the newborn efficiency of public services, I expected, and was prepared to make reasonable allowance for, an accompanying increase in officiousness. My surprise, after I entered the country, was how small was the allowance that I had to make, and how well the Italians had assimilated efficiency without disturbance of their traditional courtesy. I had special reason to appreciate this, for I had chosen to travel through the country by car as a means to a closer acquaintance with the people and the life of the ordinary countryside than is possible with the ordinary traveler who passes in an express train from one Cosmopolitan city hotel to another.

are none in my experience where that power is exercised, save politically, with such consideration and restraint. This seemed to me true also of the authority behind authority, the members of the Fascist Militia, who are both the buttress and the guaranty of the State, who are to be seen everywhere, and who might understandably display an aggressive consciousness of their position and power; whereas in fact I saw none, but, instead, several instances of courteous helpfulness to humble compatriots. What is the explanation? For it would be natural for the heady wine of power to be all the more intoxicating in a land where six years ago powerlessness was the badge of all persons in authority. Partly, no doubt, the inbred courtesy of a race to whom from generation to generation a matchless legacy of civilization has been handed down. But also, I think, because nowhere is authority itself more strictly controlled by a higher authority. In Italy to-day the greater the power assigned, the more easily it may be forfeited. Whereas in 'democratic countries bureaucracy is conscious of its security, conscious that it can only be brought to book by means and processes tardy and difficult in application, bureaucracy under Signor Mussolini holds power at the will of an individual chief, and is subject to a discipline more severe than that which

In a land of narrow streets and complex traffic regulations, many times must I have tried the patience of authority, and that where its representpower to levy fines on the erywhere I met an aston

atives have

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re few countries where au

as there every grade is entrusted

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With such power as in Italy, so there

to say whether Fascismo is popular with the mass, although I believe that it is at least, on balance, acceptable