there has arisen no protest against the utilization and conservation of any knowledge, capacity, or experience which can be used for the general welfare.

The change in public sentiment thus indicated justifies the most careful consideration. A fundamental principle of the American type of representative democracy is involved, since the complete utilization of natural leadership would eventually result in a new kind of legislative body. The original design of the constitution, the original sentiment of the people, was wise and sure. In our modern life it is difficult to distinguish clearly and surely between the despoiler and the leader. Among the masters there are always utterly negative and ruthless forces which do not appear in their true aspect. It is better to keep the original sentiment to keep all egocentric forces under pressure until something breaks, than to admit these negative forces, unregulated, to direct governmental power. We must evolve an acid test for the real creative, which the base creative cannot survive. There must be elaborated some new, essentially American, method of utilizing the constructive genius of such men as Mr. Hill, the late George Westinghouse, Mr. Daniel Willard, Colonel Goethals, Mr. Vail and others, in more direct and definite manner than through interviews, and yet of keeping completely out of direct executive or advisory place, more predatory and ruthless gentlemen who need not be named. We shall never desire, nor be willing, to copy a House of Lords to which admittance may be gained by contributions to party funds; but, nevertheless, if we are to conserve capacity as well as other "natural resources" there could be a Council of the Elders used to our very great advantage.

It is being slowly borne in upon the world that the man who is able and willing to spend a lifetime in securing a constituency by talking of his own merits, may possess very much less of the quality of the quarter deck than the

man who is moved by an irresistible urge to exercise the quality rather than to talk about it. There is much truth in the statement of Speaker Reed, that it is a fair inference that a man who can impress himself upon 200,000 people or upon the whole population of a great State, has something more than ordinary qualities and something more than ordinary force. But Mr. Bryan, from one angle, and Mr. Sulzer from another, show us that those powers may not be essentially the powers of statesmanship, while the qualities and force of our empire builders and railroad kings are certainly those of proved statesmanship, whatever undesirable concomitants may sometimes be associated with them.

In a long and disastrous war, we should probably find a method of admitting to greater participation in the affairs of state, men with ability proved by deeds and not by oratory. A little broader vision, a little greater energy might well replace in our upper house the eloquence with which we could easily dispense. Sooner or later we shall enmesh certain of our "masters" not in chains - but in the silken bonds of noblesse oblige, and shall elaborate a method of utilizing their abilities. Such a development can be progressive, and not the reactionary move it may seem. Should it ever come, the Naval Advisory Board will have played an important part in the evolution of American government.

I

THE INGENUITY OF PARENTS

SEE audacious boys and girls born to parents whose spirits are drab; I see the sullenest children born into homes where life is high-spirited; I see all sorts of incongruities, and yet a tolerable peace prevails. Whenever I stop to consider how arbitrary are the accidents of birth, I am always filled with wonder that so many families are passably congenial-that so few come to open warfare.

It may seem strange for anyone to wonder at there being peace within the home; it must seem little short of irreverent to those people who hold that the family is a God-assembled unit, and that the home is per se a little zone of peace, marked off by its very nature from the world outside. I cannot bring myself to agree with these people; I cannot think that in this matter of domestic peace such harmony is a pre-determined state; I cannot believe that some families are damned, some elect. And yet I probably go to the opposite extreme; for I see in every child newly come into a home, a little potential rebel smuggling in, under cover of his individuality, traits at real odds with that perfectness in which the "home circle" has so long indulged itself.

But I have great confidence in the ingenuity of parents. In fact it seems to me that of all people in the world parents are the most ingenious. Not, to be sure, in the sense of being out-and-out inventors: for that implies a choosing of material, which is not allowed them; but in their unequalled ability to reconcile material at hand. They might, in fact, be called "opportunists" in ingenuity. Certain it is: they make the best of things; they take the medley that the average family is, and they make of it a domestic unit; they bring order out of chaos, though the odds appear to lie all against them.

For this ordering of the home is not as easy as it once was, when children were to their places born. In the old days a child was frankly just a child, and not, as he is today, a "little citizen" of the world that composite creature who lays infant hands on all the rights and duties of adult individuality. It must have been the exception, in those days, for the home to be out of gear, because it must have taken nothing but good machinery to keep it running; it was just a matter of the giving and taking of cues, I should think. For everyone had his part — a stock part to be sure, but nevertheless his own. A father was a straight father, without having to be at the same time a companion to his boy, and the "outside world" to his little girl. A mother could be a mere mother; she did not need to fret herself with feverish anxiety to typify an all-round neuter attitude toward everything on land or sea. Children were only children taught to be children, obedient and submissive, regardless of the fact that at twenty-one they must have developed in them enough of originality, enough of courage, to vote for themselves.

But let me hasten to remark that I am not siding with the régime; I am as keen as any democrat against leftover tyrannies, though they be mild and kindly ones. All that I say for the old technique is that it was simple, as a caste system always is, with its members trained to give or take rule. But now that democracy is upon us, invading our very homes, all is changed; the old ways have been driven out of vogue. The birch rod has become bad taste. It is no longer good form for a parent to issue a command. What place could it have among equals? What place, in fact, have any of the old attitudes?

And yet, in spite of changes, human nature stays about the same with parents and their children; they fall heir to the same old frictions and complexities; the home still teems with its old confusion, to be calmed, the Lord knows how! Or, in more literal terms, as best the parent can! For it is literally up to them, now that the Lord has

ceased to be exclusively the God of Fathers and has extended his backing equally to all members of the household. Parents are left with only their unaided ingenuity to bank upon. Now that behavior claims the rank of conduct, the sure touch they had attained against child behavior has given way to trial-and-error faltering. To what shifts are they not driven! To what genius may their ingenuity not be spurred!

One of the commonest devices used by parents to unify the home is their insistence on the belief that each child in the family is bound to be like one or the other of his parents. "She takes after her mother," or "He takes after his father." These are stock phrases, and they are employed in the face of the most obvious misfits. "Oh yes, Jennie, she has an awful temper - stubborn as can be. Oh yes, her father was the same before her." It does not seem to matter that the father in the case of Jennie is as yielding and spiritless as a lamb! He must, in theory, take on new qualities or give up his own, that Jennie may stand in consequential relation to him. Sometimes it is the father-sometimes the mother-whose character is stretched to make the point. It is always the less selfdefensive of the two on whom are imposed all those traits that startle and annoy.

It need not be a parent or an immediate relative to whom these discordant elements are referred. A more remote ancestor is often called upon to serve, especially if those of contemporary kinship happen to have an eye for the congruity of their own make-ups. For no matter how sincere a home pacificist one may be, there is a limit to the odds and ends of character he will care to welcome unto himself. It is natural and easy to refer back to the dead. In a negative sense, at least, they are willing sources; they cannot rise up and organize their reputations, and by a sort of inverted atavism they can be forced to re-inherit according to the conveniences of their descendants.