though not all, of course, must be given to the inspiration of our heroes of diamond, gridiron, river, and track. We are an athletic nation, but one reason we are so successful in international contests is that our boys start playing their games early.

Virtually every one of the stars of our game is an inspiration to our youth, and not only an inspiration but also a lesson in clean living. Take "Babe" Ruth as an example, and a good example because he plays in a branch of professional sport that has had innumerable scandals. In 1921 Ruth set a new record for professional baseball by knocking out 59 home runs in one season. The next year he slumped to 35, and the year after that he made a solemn promise to baseball that he would drop every habit that prevented him from reaching prime condition. As a result he won the trophy that year as the most valuable single player. This is a strong and well advertised lesson in clean living and self-discipline, and a lesson that will live after baseball's scandals are forgotten!

A GREAT TENNIS PLAYER

ND who will say that "Big Bill"

AND Tilden is not an inspiring example

in amateur sport and a great example of courage in face of difficulties? Everybody predicted that his days as a champion player were over when his racket hand became infected and several operations were necessary, but Tilden came back with great courage and is still the champion. Moreover, he is the champion in a sport that has not been sullied by any scandals. One may hardly call the disturbance over the player-writer rule any scandal, but merely a matter upon which there were two points of view.

Go on down the list of amateur sport from beginning to end, and you will find amazingly little evidence to substantiate the charge of the disgruntled that sport is not clean, and that merit does not count.

Even in the professional branches today, the idol of the game is the champion who is clean. Take racing: little Sande

was the idol not only of all jockeys but also of all who followed the sport, and he had the highest reputation for sportsmanship both on and off the track and he won his high place in public esteem by riding every race with the single thought of victory. Moreover, the quick action of the stewards of jockey clubs in all cases where there is a suspicion of crooked work has served to make racing a cleaner sport.

THE COMMERCIAL SIDE OF BOXING

I'M

'M sorry I cannot say so much for boxing. That sport does not seem to me to be as clean as the others, or as inspiring to the youth of the country. That sport has its good men, of course, but not even baseball thrusts its commercial aspects upon the public so much.

It seems to me also that the records tend to support a popular assumption that champions and near-champions fight a good deal harder in some contests than in others. With its huge purses and its deification of picturesque, showy, and not always worthy fighters, professional boxing is becoming more a business and less a sport, with the elements of business success lying more in the promotion and the publicity than in the actual boxing in the ring. Too often there is created an expectation of a good contest, which is not fulfilled.

The greatest value of any game, professional or amateur, is not in its spectacle at great contests, but in the amount of influence it exerts among people of all ages, and particularly among the younger generation, toward clean living and moderate, sensible exercise, which, in the end, means good health and long life. No sport that is not clean can be a powerful influence, and no sport that is not spectacular in some of its aspects can have any great influence. We must have our idols, our championsthat is human nature. Both they and the game they play must be clean, and I think most of them in this country are clean and sportsmanlike.

W

HEN the first British Labor Government took its coat off and rolled up its sleeves to govern the inconsiderable island anchored amid the fogs of the western coast of Europe, the whole earth bated its breath and watched; and millions trembled. The theatrical world of

When my butler had left the room my friend said to me: "Arnold, you aren't going to sit there and tell me you want to be governed by your butler!" To which of course the answer was that indeed I was not going to sit there and tell him precisely that.

THE HEART OF A REAL PROGRESSIVE

ND I admit that I felt some qualms

ties of observing, lost its head; half the stars announced their instant departure for New York; the other half steeled themselves to the prospect of calamity. The maître d'hôtel of one of the most fashionable restaurants drew me on one side and asked me in low tones what I thought was going to happen. I replied: "Nothing in particular." He shook his head, refusing to be comforted, and told me as a fact that no less than four of his richest clients had already made arrangements to move their capital out of the country.

The attitude generally was one of amazement, of total inability to comprehend, that Labor should dare to assume power. Everybody forgot that the Ramsay Macdonald Government was by no means the first Labor government to function within the British Empire, and that such Labor governments as had functioned had not yet by any means brought disaster to the capitalist system in the dominions which they had ruled.

Americans who were in London were plainly alarmed-not for Britain (they could bear with excellent fortitude the misfortunes of Britain), but about the possible sinister repercussion of Britain's misfortunes upon the United States. A dear American friend of mine would not, could not, listen to my reassurances.

Ministry, and that I should not have mourned if British Labor had been defeated at the election. I realize as well as the average that the vast movements of social evolution will not be arrested by any individual predilections, and part of my philosophy is that what must be must. But, being human like the rest, and being of a certain age, and being in a modest way a "Have" as distinguished from a "Have-not," I would just as soon that any approaching drastic changes in the structure of society should be postponed as long as possible, and if possible until after my regrettable death. I am in favor of social justice. I would not kill the great mundane movement if I could. My political conscience must be fairly clear, and I am willing, at a pinch, to pay a fairish price in personal economic inconvenience for my fairly clear conscience. But I am conscious of no white-hot desire for deprivation. I remember the prayer of St. Augustine when young: "Make me chaste, O Lord, but not immediately." It expresses my deplorable attitude in politics. I thus lay bare my heart out of honesty; but it is nevertheless the heart of a representative progressive.

Well, after a spell of Labor rule Britain still floats. Every apprehension of pessimists has so far failed of materialization.

And in particular the apprehension that Labor ministers, from lack of education or from lack of experience or from lack of manners or from a desire for general ruin, would fail to get on with their departments and would make a mess of the island. I cannot go into details, but I may assert that the Labor Ministry proved to be incomparably better educated than its predecessor, and that apparently previous experience is no more necessary to the successful conduct of a department than it is necessary to the successful conduct of love.

Mr. Stephen Walsh, for example, a real Simon Pure of Labor, was positively the beloved pet of the War Office; Mr. Snowden made a tremendous impression as Chancellor of the Exchequer. As for Mr. Ramsay Macdonald at the Foreign Office previously the sacred preserve of the brilliant and pompous Marquis Curzon-he had there a far greater triumph than any minister since Beaconsfield. The Curzons of the diplomatic caste smiled superiorly to see him start in and lo! he succeeded where the whole tribe of Curzons had failed!

Assuredly some ministers did fail. Mr. Wheatley, for example, a dangerous, forceful, able, and experienced partisan, rendered himself ridiculous in the matter of housing. And there were worse than Mr. Wheatley. The Ministry passed through hours of disgraceful humiliation. But in all Ministries there are worse than Mr. Wheatley. And all Ministries at times suffer humiliation through gross incompetence and insincerity. I imagine that all impartial Britons, of whatever political color, would agree that the agree that the Macdonald Ministry did less badly than was anticipated by its opponents, and quite as well as, if not better than, its predecessor. This is not to say much, but it is to say something.

And now the eyes of the world are once again centered upon the spectacle of Britain and once again the old fears about the Bolshevization of the island, and the consequent spread of the fearful virus to other and more favored parts of the earth's surface, are gathering force

though not the force which they had at the beginning of the last year. Why? Because, despite brave assertions to the contrary, large numbers of the opponents of Labor secretly share Labor's belief that Labor will return one day, sooner rather than later, to fuller power, which power will be used according to the dictates of the extremists. I agree that Labor will one day return to increased power. But I do not agree that the extremists will be in control.

THE FATE OF THE LABOR PARTY

GAIN and again the defunct Minis

try challenged the Opposition to throw it out on trivialities, and the Opposition did nothing so ill-mannered. When the Government resigned, the other parties certainly did not want it to resign, and it did so, deliberately, on a minor issue in order to avoid resignation on a major, anti-capitalistic issue; for the project of lending the money of British capitalists to a Bolshevik dictatorship was assuredly anti-capitalistic. These tactics show clearly that the late government was afraid of the larger issue, as well it might be. The moderate, and dominating, section of the Labor leaders realized that the response of the country to Labor must always largely depend on the nature of the question which Labor put to the country. Labor leaders well comprehended that they were not precisely on velvet in Britain.

To vary the metaphor, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald had not got the country in his pocket. If he sincerely believed that he had got the country in his pocket, why did he not wait for a month and resign on the big issue in order to return with a mandate strong enough to enable him to carry the full legislative platform? The answer is that Mr. Macdonald was throughout perfectly aware that he had not got the country in his pocket, and trusted that the election would be a lesson to his extremists.

He never will have the country in his pocket. Britain is deeply conservative; Britain is a very slow mover; and for political shrewdness its voters are second

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to none on the planet. Try to teach a coal-dusty Yorkshire miner, and it is ten to one that instead of teaching you will learn. Even if the entire working class voted solid for Labor, it still would not command a majority. But the entire working class will never vote solid for even moderate Labor views; political cleavages are not so clear-cut as that. Immense numbers of the working class hate and fear all changes-except a change for the better in wages.

As for the extremists-called "reds" by professional and amateur flesh-creepers -two things are to be said about them. First, in the districts where they flourish (such as the Clyde), the conditions of artisan life are quite awful enough to explain and excuse their existence. Second, they are a source of weakness, not of strength, to the Labor party. The The

Labor party is still gravely divided; it has not lived long enough to have learned from the Conservatives the great tactical lesson of cohesion at all costs; and so it is its own worst enemy. It can never effectively rule save on the condition that it does not outrage the general instinct of the country, which general instinct is to placate, to compromise, to conserve. Britain is preponderantly the land of goodwill. Characteristically it was the first great country to accept a Labor government, and I predict that characteristically it will be the last to permit the tragic circus performance of an anticapitalistic revolution. Those foreigners whom the result of the election has not somewhat reassured, and who are still anxiously looking for a sign of final upheaval in the not distant future, will do well to look nearer home.

W

E SAW, in the recent campaign and election, the second of two attempts within twelve years to found a new party. We speak of these efforts as third parties; but what La Follette, like all founders of new parties, hoped, was that it would be a second party, one of the two permanent main contenders in elections. It must be, under the requirement of American tradition and habit of thought, a second party or no party, at least no party to speak of. There has never been in our history a third party of any permanence or formidableness.

Apparently there is something in the American temperament that calls for a two-party system, that tends to look upon. elections as having to some degree the quality of a sporting event, and wishes to line up with one of the possible winners. It is a trait that makes the average American disinclined to "throw away his vote."

By the same trait of the American temperament, and by the custom of practical politics, a leader who joins a new party forfeits his standing with the one he abandons, and suffers the odium of apostasy. There are able men in America who have been kept out of political preferment until this day as a punishment for having abandoned the Republicans in 1912 in order to cast their fortunes with Roosevelt's Progressive party. La Follette understands this law of practical politics, as well as he understands most of the rules of that art; and although he has been a dissenter throughout nearly the whole of his political career, he always refrained, until the recent year, from the step that would take him definitely out from under the trademark of the Republican party. He rebelled, "insurged, threatened, refused to conform; but never until last year did he commit the overt act that would make him a party outlaw.

But La Follette, this time, knew he had

reached an age when his future within the Republican party was of less concern to him. In his seventieth year, he could not look forward to any Republican Presidential nomination for himself as likely. At the same time, his present term in the Senate does not end until 1929, so that until that year he is safe from reprisal. But La Follette knows that, however safe heresy may be for him, the law of exile holds for the younger political leaders upon whom he must rely for help. He knew, in short, that the first impression of his party must be formidable, if he was to avoid the limbo of a score of third parties in American politics.

Throughout all the recent campaign, La Follette knew that the die had been cast, both for himself and for the younger leaders who helped him. The younger leaders knew it too. They knew also this law of psychology about third parties. They knew they must make the impression of permanence; of permanence, not as a third party, but as a second one. They did not expect to win-at least none of them except a few of the most temperamentally optimistic ones. But they did expect to make a sufficient impression to justify the expectation of success four years from now. "We are looking," they used to say frequently during the campaign, "not to 1924 but to 1928." Sometimes they expressed it by saying that "1924 is to be the 1856 of the new party," by which optimistic analogy they meant that they expected to run as well in 1924 as the newly organized Republican party did in 1856; and then, in 1928, to achieve the permanence and success the Republican party won in 1860.

EFFORT TO OUST THE DEMOCRATS

to grasp it. When La Follette started his new party, the Democrats saw it as a division within the Republican ranks and had no thought that it meant for them anything except promise, and aid to success. They looked forward to La Follette's carrying several of the normally Republican states in the Northwest, and no Democratic states whatever. It was only toward the end of the campaign that the Democratic leaders realized that La Follette's enterprise was more dangerous to them than to the Republicans, both as respects Democratic success in the present campaign, and as respects their very existence.

The leaders of the new party themselves knew exactly what their purpose was. From their point of view that purpose was intelligent and far-seeing. They said there should be, and hoped there would be, in America, two parties: one, conservative; the other, liberal, progressive, radical -whatever you choose to call it, according to your feeling about it. They felt that the Republican party would be the conservative one. They knew that the trend of recent events had tended to emphasize the Republican as the conservative party, and knew that the recent leadership of the Republican party was quite willing to accept that position.

The La Follette leaders, looking forward to a division of the country between a conservative party and a liberal one, were eager, not for the destruction of the Republican party, but for its preservation. They wanted it kept as the abiding place of conservative thought in the country, so that it should be permanently dramatized in the public mind as the contrast to their own party. They hoped that their new party would be the abiding place of all

themselves, not a third party, but a second party, it followed that they had to have the intention of displacing one of the two old parties. It was the Democratic party against which this amiable intention of destruction was directed. This was not generally grasped. Most of all, the Democrats, and the Democratic leaders, failed

the purpose of eliminating the Democratic party, as having no place left for it in that division of American thought which they made for themselves between conservative and liberal. They hoped for the death of the Democratic party, and aimed toward that.

For a few weeks during the campaign