garded as dead or even moribund. Yet its future does present certain difficulties, and developments since its recent disaster have not tended to make them any more simple.

That the party went to pieces, not in the first week in November, but in the last two weeks in June, is now the outstanding fact that should be properly taken to heart by the party leaders. The truth is that the "Democracy" was not destroyed by its opponents, but that it committed suicide at the Madison Square Garden Convention. Two irreconcilable elements, the McAdoo and the Alfred E. Smith factions, tore for two weeks at each other's vitals, and, as an incident to this personal struggle, drew the whole organization down to temporary ruin. Developments since the Republican triumph indicate that the nomination of Mr. Davis represented merely a truce, for both sides to the Madison Square Garden battle now seem to be preparing a renewal of Armageddon.

Governor Alfred E. Smith won an unprecedented victory, attaining the governorship by a majority of 115,702, at the same time that the Republican candidate for the Presidency swept the state by nearly 900,000 majority. Normally such a demonstration of popularity, in the state that casts 45 electoral votes, immemorially regarded as indispensable to the success of a Presidential nominee, could have only one result. Grover Cleveland became a Presidential candidate by virtue of a much less spectacular victory than this. Not unnaturally Governor Smith's supporters have interpreted his election, under these circumstances, as giving him something of a vested right to the nomination of 1928. They have, for all practical purposes, already entered him as a candidate.

But Mr. McAdoo's followers have similarly refused to take his defeat at the 1924 convention as marking the end of his political career. The fact that Woodrow Wilson became President in 1916 without the electoral vote of New York State, they regard as establishing a new political era. The Solid South and the

Western states can control the Presidency, and in a combination of this sort they have already started Mr. McAdoo's campaign for 1928.

A situation of this sort in the Democratic party bodes nothing but evil for that party, and, indeed, for the nation as a whole. Its most unfortunate aspect is that it introduces an entirely new note into American politics. Up to the present time religion has played a negligible part in our political differences. Unfortunately, the Smith-McAdoo feud has taken on a religious character which it will never lose. Its continuance will mean that the Protestant and Catholic elements will lock horns for another four years, with another convention that will merely duplicate the one of 1924, and with a party, at the end, even more demoralized than it is at the present time. There are few disinterested political observers who believe that either Governor Smith or Mr. McAdoo can ever receive the Democratic nomination, or that, in case either one does, he can ever be elected President. The disappearance of the candidacies of both men is therefore an essential preliminary to the reorganization of an historic party. It suffers from other ills, some of them exceedingly grievous ones, but this is the most discouraging and the one that calls for immediate treatment.

When American Life Had Dignity

T

HE Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, in opening a new wing devoted exclusively to American interiors and American furnishings and furniture, has made a graphic contribution to that work of Americanization which is one of the pressing needs of the time. A hastily judging world has chosen to regard American "taste" as representing everything that was tawdry and grotesque; it is apparent that the misconception arose from taking the manifestations of our crudest era as typical of national culture in the longer range. Nothing more absurd than the domestic arts of the latter half of the nineteenth

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century was probably ever known-the era of what-nots, hair cloth furniture, Rogers groups, and lambrequins in interior decoration; of brownstone fronts and cupolas and mansard roofs in architecture; and of moustache cups, "handpainted" cuspidors, and gold toothpicks in personal bric-a-brac. The great injustice is that these things have been too widely accepted as representing the height of American artistic achievement-as characteristic of our civilization as the Parthenon to Greek, Versailles to French, and the work of Christopher Wren to English. The great truth brought out by the new American Wing is that these grotesqueries represented merely a temporary slump, a phenomenon not peculiar to this country; the fact is that they were merely part and parcel of that Victorian commonplaceness and stupidity that was almost as marked in England as in the United States.

The one quality that was so constant in Americans of the Colonial and Revolutionary period and which is not so apparent in their descendants, was a kind of serene dignity. It appears in the wainscotting of a Virginia home, in the delicate doorway of a New England "mansion," in the quiet beauty of a Gilbert Stuart canvas, in the lovely productions of the New England and Middle State cabinet makers. It is the same trait that is uppermost in the lives and writings of the Revolutionary leaders-Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, and the Adamses.

A dip into the life of Jefferson-with his Greek and Latin authors (in the original tongues) at his side, his taste for French philosophers and statesmen, his never-failing diaries, duly recording the daily progress of his vegetables and plants, as well as the visits of European statesmen, writers, and generals, his horseback wanderings amid his neighboring mountains, and all the other innumerable details of a placid and thoughtful country existence is needed properly to supply the personal side of the architectural and artistic setting which this great museum has so splendidly provided.

Yet, even without this, Americans can there learn that their ancestors were a dignified people, and it is a lesson worth while in an age of automobiles, jazz, and radio.

Molière for American Theater Goers

J

AMES K. HACKETT, more than a year ago, presented "Macbeth" at the Odéon Theater in Paris: this was the first time that an American actor was invited to produce a play at this ancient institution. The Parisian company, and the audiences also, were so pleased with the work of Mr. Hackett that, when an invitation to play before American audiences was extended through our Department of State, the Odéon company gladly accepted.

Thus it came about that American theater-goers had an opportunity to decide as to the truth of the thesis maintained by Clayton Hamilton elsewhere in this issue. For once they did not have to go to Paris to see Molière at the Comédie Française: instead, Molière was brought from Paris for their special benefit. M. Firmin Gémier-one of the most versatile and original actors of the Continental stage-and his company of Odéon players presented, in their two and a half weeks' visit, plays both ancient and modern. The latter, such as "L'Homme Qui Assassina" and "Le Procureur Hallers," were not appreciated so much as were the plays of past centuries. Possibly as a compliment to his Englishspeaking audiences, M. Gémier included in his repertoire two of Shakespeare's plays-"The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Merchant of Venice"-which of course were presented in French.

In

But undoubtedly his greatest success, both from the standpoint of finished acting and from the satisfaction of his audiences, was M. Gémier's presentation of "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme." Molière's comedy there is so much action that it is doubtful if even a person with little knowledge of French would have much difficulty in following the play. And of course great credit must be given to M. Gémier and his company for their

truly wonderful acting, which came near to breaking down the barrier of the foreign language.

Americans interested in the drama and in acting knew previously of the great work of the French players; a larger number of playgoers were enabled, by the recent visit of the Odéon players, to judge of their art. Undoubtedly, with our veneration of everything French, from women's styles to rules of etiquette, a certain number of people thought that seeing the Odéon players was "the thing to do." But the large majority of the audience, even though their mastery of French may not have been perfect, attended because their active interest in the drama informed them that here were performances of a quality not usual on Broadway. And, now that Americans know of the great acting of the French players, we can perhaps hope for another visit, of longer duration, in the near fu

ture.

The American Judicial System Spreading All Over the World

S

ENATOR LA FOLLETTE and Mr. Gompers have performed a great service in directing popular attention to the Supreme Court, and, incidentally, to the constitutional as opposed to the parliamentary system of government. One of the unexpected features of the Presidential campaign was thus an educational course in the fundamental principles of the Constitution.

One error, however, constantly appeared in practically all the discussions. The statement was frequently made, by the defenders of the Supreme Court, that the United States was the only country in which the judiciary exercised the power of setting aside laws of the legislature. This, it was urged, was the great American contribution to the science of government. A recently published pamphlet by Mr. Henry H. Wilson, ex-president of the Nebraska State Bar Association, shows that, while this power of the court may be American in its

origin, it is a practice by no means exclusively American. In countries which have no written constitution framed by the people or their representatives and amendable only by them, there is obviously no reason for this extension of judicial power. The British Constitution, for example, is precisely what Parliament makes it, from day to day; Parliament, that is, is the supreme authority, and obviously there is no need of a court setting aside its laws as beyond its law making powers, for its powers are not limited, but all-embracing.

In the several Dominions of the British Empire, however, quite a different state of affairs exists. Practically all these nations live under the protection of written documents, like the United States; and in all of them the courts exercise that power, which has recently aroused so much controversy in the United States, of setting aside legislation. "The Supreme Court of Canada," writes Mr. Doutre, a Canadian authority, "and the Privy Council in England, have both recognized the right assumed by the provincial courts of original and appellate jurisdiction, to pass upon the constitutionality of the laws enacted by the provincial legislatures and the Parliament of Canada. This was anticipated by the framers of the Act, as appears in the debates in the House of Commons." The Act referred to is the British North America Act, of 1867, which is really the written constitution of Canada. Three years after the adoption of the Constitution of South Africa, in 1909, the highest court in the Union set aside a law of Parliament as unconstitutional. "Our courts," it said, "have every right to inquire whether any statute has transgressed the limits of the subject in regard to which the legislature is empowered to legislate." The courts of India and New Zealand similarly decide when the legislature has exceeded its constitutional powers. The Constitution of Australia, adopted in 1901, practically incorporates the American judicial system, including this right to set aside extra-constitutional laws.