must be able to touch the imagination of the controlling and directing intelligence of the country, and free from a narrow personal thesis to which he will bend all facts. The new Tocqueville may not be a person, but a group, and, in that event, the symposium or collaboration must be dominated by creative imagination, sustained passion for reality, and a sense of synthesis beyond anything shown in recent efforts in this field.

I looked with high hope to the publication of "Civilization in the United States," an inquiry by thirty Americans under the editorship of Mr. Harold E. Stearns. I thought it might prove the text-book of our adventure toward qualitative democracy. I do not want to appear to dismiss this volume as an unimportant bit of work. But, important and stimulating as it is, it falls far short of the creative and authoritative study we need at this moment. Despite the many elements of notability in this volume, it is in too many respects a product of the smartaleck school of contemporary American literature. I am not suggesting that we need a solemn, pontifical study. It may well be that the fresh critique of democracy we need should begin with a satirical study. But I do not feel that this volume meets even the challenge of good satire. All great satire has in it the feel of serious and sustained moral purpose. The great satirist does not moralize, but he is moved by a genuine moral passion. He is never guilty of the aloof superiority and conscious cuteness that characterize the attitude and writing of many of the younger critics of American civilization. The study of American democracy that we need just now will not be written by men

who sniff at America, and while writing their criticisms clutch at sailing schedules in an eager impatience to get away from "dear, crude America” to the haven of "civilized" Europe. The next great critique of American democracy will be written by a man who loves America, and when we read his book we will discover that love is not blind, but has an eagle eye for the faults of the loved. His book will deal with the deep-going causes. It will satirize the incidental follies of American life only by way of illuminating these deep-going causes. The author will write not simply as a pathologist analyzing the nature of the social, political, and industrial diseases of America, but as a physician whose diagnosis suggests methods of treatment. It is this element that I miss in "Civilization in the United States." Nevertheless, we should be grateful for this volume. I wish it might be read at least by every statesman, teacher, clergyman, and editor in the United States. The thirty men and women who have written this volume have performed the valuable function of a sort of corporate gadfly to the selfsatisfaction and short-sightedness of America. The chief significance of the book, however, is that it suggests the need of a fresh, fearless, and fundamental critique of American democracy. racy. By such criticism alone will we be able to turn democracy from a catchword into a way of life.

The second suggestion to which the earlier paragraphs of this paper give rise is that the six indictments of democracy which they contain are six arguments in favor of the proposal which I discussed last month in these columns, namely, Mr. Alleyne Ireland's proposal calling for an in

ternational society for the scientific study of comparative government— an international society functioning through a research institute that will study the operation of governments throughout the world in a clinical fashion, putting the results of its research and analysis at the disposal of all who care to use them. I am impressed by the fact that, however devoted to the theory of democracy a person may be, he is compelled to admit the soundness of all six of these indictments. To many minds an admission of the soundness of these indictments might suggest the unsoundness of democracy itself. I do not think that this necessarily follows. True as these indictments are, they prove not so much the unsoundness of democracy, as the unsoundness of our administration of democracy. Nearly every one of these indictments points back to one root cause of our difficulties, namely, that politics does not rest upon a fact basis. When we effect a union between politics and governmental research, we shall find, I think, more and more of our best men coming to the top, men who are now averse to taking part in the lawless scramble of prejudice and passion that consti

tutes our politics. When politics rests upon facts, the demagogue and the rhetorician will find it increasingly difficult to hold their own. When politics rests upon a fact basis, it will be more difficult to save the country with shibboleths and catchwords; our democracy will be less given to rash iconoclasm, less given to experiment with every untried theory that may be alluringly phrased, less given to that obstinate conservatism which operates easily when it is not obliged to answer the challenging logic of facts. When politics rests upon a fact basis democracy will be less likely to become a vexatious and inquisitive tyranny; the exceptional man will have more nearly a fighting chance; and the popular interference with legislatures and the executive will be more intelligent, if not less insistent.

In addition, an invasion of facts into our democracy will, I believe, lift the ethical standards of democracy. It will be more difficult to put generosity above justice, sympathy above truth, and pliant disposition above rigid honesty when the facts before us show to what the emotions of generosity, sympathy, and pliancy and honesty may lead.

chored under a small reef across which the breakers broke, until, tide rising, they submerged it. Never thought a sampan (an open crazy boat) could live through what ours did. A gale of wind, with driving snow-you can imagine how cold it was. But I'm glad I have Japanese sailors. They 're braver and cooler and more daring than the Koreans. Well, we waited till eleven A.M. It was 'twixt the devil and the deep seastay and be swamped, run for the little bay and run the chance of striking in the surf. We could n't possibly stay longer, so we showed a piece of sail and ran for it. Well, I was nearly blind with a headache which I had brought away with me from Kun San, and which had been increasing ever since; and I did not much care what happened; yet I remember, when we drove in across, that I took off my overcoat, and loosened my shoesand I did n't bother a bit about trying to save the

"Junks, crazy-I should say so. Rags, tatters, rotten -something always carrying away-how they navigate is a miracle. I wonder if Hearst thinks I'm lost."

His voyages are famous, and have been made familiar to the world in a group perhaps the most popular of all his books. Mrs. London tells how the idea of the voyage of the Snark began. He told or read aloud many stories to fellow campers, old and

"What do you say, Charmian?-suppose five years from now, after we 're married and have built our house somewhere, we start on a voyage around the world in a forty-five-foot yacht. It'll take a good while to build her, and we've got a lot of other things to do besides.'

"I'm with you, every foot of the way,' I coincided, 'but why wait five years? Why not begin construction in the spring and let the house wait? No use putting up a home and running right away and leaving it! I love a

boat, you love a boat; let's

call the boat our house until we get ready to stay a little while in one place. We 'll never be any younger, nor want to go any more keenly than right now.

"And this was the inception of the Snark voyage idea, most wonderful of all our glittering rosary of adventurings."

Mrs. London has not, however, confined her story to the adventures that were decorously encountered with his wife by the married Jack. The roaring days of his youth when he was gangster, pirate, hobo, and Able Seaman are richly and colorfully painted, as often as not in his words, as no other biographer could have done it. Here is a part of one mad night of "Jack ashore":

just as they were luxuriously settling on their native wooden headrests to enjoy the novelty of music made on samisens and taikos they had engaged, 'came a wild howl from the street... howling, dis

"Joshua Slocum's 'Voyage of the Spray' came in for its turn, and suddenly, one day, Jack laid down the book, and said to Uncle Roscoe Eames: 'If Slocum could do it alone in a thirty-five-foot sloop, with an old tin clock for chronometer, why could n't we do it in a ten-footlonger boat with better equipment and more company?' "Uncle Roscoe, devoted yachtsman all his life, and to all appearance as devoted as ever at nearly sixty, beamed with interest. The two fell with vim to comparing models of craft, their audience open-mouthed at the proposition. All at once Jack turned to me, and I am sure there was no misgiving in his heart:

ing muscular arms, Victor burst upon us through the fragile walls.' It developed later that Victor had dreamed that a pretty Japanese girl whom he had fancied earlier in the afternoon had been appropriated by Jack, and he forthwith ran amuck scandalously. The orchestra fled,' Jack recounts; 'so did we. We went through doorways, and we went through paper wallsanything to get away.' But they returned to pay for the demolished house.

""The main street was a madness. Because the chief of police with his small force was helpless, the Governor of the colony had issued orders to the captains to have all their men on board by sunset.' This was the signal for a 'general debauch for all hands.' The men 'went