referred to as such, and, except by the few who really know how they are made up, are generally considered to be the actual estimates of these two departments. And even on the floors of the House and Senate the statement is often made that such and such an amount is what the War or Navy Department has asked for in its estimate.

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The change in the organization of the House committees, made by that body as the result of the Budget Law, has brought into practice a procedure completely at variance with the former method of determining the army and navy appropriations. Before this reorganization, the Appropriation Committee handled only such bills as the legislative, executive, judicial, District of Columbia budget, and sundry civil supply bills. With the reorganization, it took over the appropriating powers of all other committees. Its membership was increased from twenty-one to thirtyfive. In a majority of cases, the ranking members of the other committees, seeing how powerful the Appropriation Committee was to be, had themselves transferred to it.

The Appropriation Committee was then divided into sub-appropriation committees, there being one such subcommittee for each of the subjects formerly handled by the various major committees of the House. Thus there came into existence the Sub-Appropriation Committee for Military Affairs and the Sub-Appropriation Committee for Naval Affairs. These subcommittees conduct the hearings on the appropriation bills of these departments.

Instead of limiting themselves to

the consideration and determination of the amount of money that should be spent on the prosecution of policies already decided on, these subcommittees gradually have come, by eliminating necessary appropriations, virtually to control and establish the policies of the departments.

The result has been that the subcommittees of the Appropriation Committee have usurped the powers of the major committees of the House. That this was never the intention of the House in effecting the reorganization, was recently brought out by a member, who said, on the floor: "Legislative committees, that is the major committees of Congress, now shorn of their appropriation powers, still do have, if energetically asserted and maintained, important functions to perform in the matter of appropriations for the departments over which they have jurisdiction. Every appropriation presupposes a prior legislative act, and no appropriation can properly be made without legislative authorization in one way or another, and such prior legislation can, under the law and rules, originate only in the legislative committees."

The first year of the budget, when the Appropriations Committee reported the Navy Bill to the House, there were a number of sentences and paragraphs which were properly "legislation." Mr. Britten of the Naval Affairs Committee demanded that these be stricken out on points of order. He was sustained by the chair. Since then the Appropriation

Committee has been more careful in navy affairs. It is only this year, however, that the Military Affairs Committee has fully exercised its prerogatives in this respect.

From the establishment of the budget until this year, Mr. Madden of Illinois ruled the Appropriation Committee as a whole, as well as its subcommittees, with an iron hand. His record shows that, like the director of the budget, he intended to keep expenditures within a certain amount, regardless of the policies laid down by law.

The hearings conducted by the subcommittees, instead of being public, were behind closed doors. The printed copies of the hearings were not put in the hands of Congressmen in time to enable them to have any clear understanding of the appropriation bill when it appeared on the floor of the House. It was a physical impossibility for the average man to have any accurate conception of the appropriation bills as a whole, much less of their constituent parts. It is difficult enough to get even a general understanding of a bill carrying several hundred millions of dollars, and dealing with such technical departments as the army and navy, though ample time be allowed.

Both Congressmen and newspaper men who keep track of Congressional affairs complained of this star-chamber procedure, but all to no purpose. The new practice, which keeps the secrets of the subcommittee rooms inviolate until the last moment before the appropriation bills appear on the floor of the House, remains intact. Mr. Britten, also of Illinois, whose long experience in the House qualifies him to speak with authority, says, "This practice is carried out for the purpose of keeping the country ignorant of facts, to keep members of Congress in the same ignorance of facts, and thus prevent attacks on the

bills when they appear on the floor of the House."

The Senate, unlike the House, arranged to handle the budget without usurpation of power on the part of its appropriation committee, which is called the Finance Committee. But the army and navy officers appearing before the Senate committees were under the same orders as when appearing before the House committees, to limit themselves to a defense of the items in the prepared budget. Thus, in general, they have been effectively silenced as to the real needs of their services.

The members of the Senate committees, usually more experienced in military matters than the members of the committees of the House, have known how to dig out some of the essential facts by skilfully questioning the officers appearing before them. These have had an unhappy time, torn between their duty to obey the order to support the budget prepared by General Lord and their knowledge that in doing so they were helping to perpetuate the pernicious policy which has been wrecking the defense of their country as established by the National Defense Act.

The Senate each year has added to the amounts provided in the budget for the War and Navy departments. In the discussions, however, between the Senate and the House conferees, which determine the final amounts to be appropriated, the Senate has not been strong enough to offset the czar-like rule of Mr. Madden, backed by the power of the administration.

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The idea persistently fostered by the professional pacifists and, unfortunately, provided with aid and

comfort by those in the administration who are interested in covering up their neglect of the army and navy-the idea that we spend an undue proportion of our national income on these services-is far from borne out by the facts.

The habitual practice of those interested in deceiving the public into this belief is to add together the costs of the war debt, the pension and veteran bureaus, and the War and Navy departments, calling this the amount spent for defense, for war purposes. They then determine what proportion this is of the federal income and triumphantly quote the result.

The supreme effrontery of this is in charging to national defense the huge sums resulting from past wars, when as a matter of fact these huge sums are largely the result of our failure to provide adequate defense in peace. This has inevitably led to the woeful waste in all our wars, and therefore to their cost, which has been all out of proportion to the results secured.

If an uninsured house burns down and the owner builds a new one, he has been subjected to loss and expense. But after paying the premium on the fire insurance policy, which his bitter experience has taught him to take out, he does not add together the old loss and the present expense and call the total the cost of his fire insurance. To

do so would be quite as fair and accurate as the method used by the professional pacifists to arrive at the cost of our national defense.

The pacifists are equally unfair in determining the proportion of our income spent on national defense. The highly centralized European and Asiatic national governments collect taxes which our national government leaves to our States and cities. Despite this fact, the pacifists omit these State and city taxes, and use only the amount collected by our federal government, thus running our proportional expenditure far beyond the actual facts. Instead of the fantastic pacifist figures, generally well above 60 per cent, the actual figure is 6 per cent, of which 2.5 per cent goes to the army. France spends approximately $22.33, Italy $9.50, Britain $6.40, Japan $2.60, and the United States $2.20 per capita for military purposes.

In other words there is nothing to indicate that our expenditures are so extravagant as to warrant the overthrow of policies laid down by law, in order to save money.

Even if the reverse were true, before national defense is sacrificed to economy, Congress should thoroughly understand the situation. The people certainly should know it. Our form of government, our principles, are utterly opposed to any policy which hides or even tends to camouflage the truth.

PRAISE OF CITIES:-The season is coming when we begin to plan for a vacation in the country. We shall say a great deal about our joy in getting out of the dreadful city. After all, it is hardly fair to the city, which has done very well by us during the winter. I have praised the country myself in my time, but a certain belated honesty prompts me now to say a word for the town.

It has its own romance, the most beautiful of all adventures, the meeting with our fellow-man. Whatever inspiration the soil gives us, nature marching in her lovely ways from shower to clearing, from blossom to fruit, from sun to starlight, yet the real quest of the human heart is for its fellows. The love of life, when you come right down to it, is a yearning for men and women. To To understand them, of course. To get at the secret of their souls, if possible. But at least to be near them and to feel them near, in the thousand ways in which mind, spirit, and body make up a complex communication. People are in the cities. There is civilization, as the name implies; there the energetic and passionate of the human race try to be.

The cause of cities, some of us will always insist, is not chiefly economic. Such an interpretation of our ways

strikes a false note. We move to the country for economic reasons, to avoid the city rents, but in another mood we face the same rents gladly for the sake of spiritual benefits found only in the towns. The country road has its detached beautieswild iris along the edges in spring, or laurel, perhaps, and later goldenrod, but the chief companionship by the way is with a dog, a horse, or a cow; and admirable though those creatures are in their degree, they have social limitations. In the city, especially if it is fortunate enough to be crowded, we push our way through the human tides and feel kindled by many purposes, inspired by many glimpses of bright faces, earnest eyes, graceful bodies. The city pavement is the floor for the most magnificent of dances, life itself, in which we are spectator and performer both. It almost seems that we have spoken to our partners in the dance, or if we haven't spoken, there has been some exchange of message, not with lips or hand or eye, but by the subtle ministers of meaning which in cities and crowds the spirit is aware of.

The streets are dramatic in winter, in the holiday time, when the traffic congestion, of which those complain who think of transportation and nothing else, gives us climaxes and

groupings we should like to paint, if we were only that kind of artist, and which we never forget the gleaming windows, beautiful beyond any need of commercial advertisement; the men and women who dress themselves for looks, to increase the total beauty of the world, not merely to wrap up the muddy vesture of decay; the traffic lights with their amiable colors, and the picturesque traffic men with their wide assortment of gestures, all meaning, it seems, much the same thing. But the streets have a charm in summer also, when the heat is too great for children to stay indoors, and they make their playground under our feet. Of course they shouldn't do it, and if they are the children of the poor, we gladly contribute to send them off to fields and forests where they will have, as we say, air and room. It is for our own benefit, however, that we send them. It is we, perhaps, whose tired nerves demand more room in the city and hope for more silence. The children themselves know that the city street is just the place, if we would only abandon it to them. They too are aware of humanity passing. The carts and cars, which interrupt their play, add the exciting excellence of danger. A ball game in A ball game in a wide field would be only a ball game, but in the middle of the city block it is an exotic embroidery upon a day already rich in incident.

The noise of the city is an illusion through which a really strong mind can penetrate. It is the true vesture, or the reverse, as it were, of a solitude peculiarly fruitful which only the city can provide. You feel it if you go to the theater or the concert alone, and watch the play or

listen to the music with the sense that others are watching and listening too. Your pleasure is partly from the entertainment, but more from that half-felt companionship. You gather from the others around you reliable information on whether they like the performance or don't, and why they don't or do. How the information comes, we needn't ask here, but it comes only in cities. In the country you get nothing from your fellows by intuition, the path of news leaves a scar and can always be traced, and between neighbors within hailing-distance the habit of newssharing develops a special quality of voice. But in the city, spirit maneuvers silently to reach spirit, and the clamor of the streets is an aid rather than a hindrance; it is like the chatter of the magician, distracting your attention so that the wonder may be revealed. Humanity sets up that noise to give the soul its necessary privacy. Moreover, the value of solitude lies in what we think of when we are alone, and the city offers to us more subjects for reflectionpleasant subjects-than our short days can attend to.

We call the town ugly, yet the phrase must be a careless one, an insincere pose. Who with good eyesight ever saw a really ugly town? An ugly village, yes, if there are not enough people. The small cluster of houses may have lost all country charm without gaining a single advantage of the city. But where there are people enough, there will be beauty of the most fascinating kind. The rain on the pavements, the street lights in the evening, the procession of motor-cars, the chivalrous fire-engine dashing to a rescue, the