time they served as instructors in submarine work to the young midshipmen at the Naval Academy."

"Never mind how big a rascal he may be,
Every fellow is another entity!

There's a good man and a bad,
Both a sane man and a mad,

In 'most every human being that we see. I will leave my readers to decide whether it was "a good man or "a bad," "a sane man or "a mad," who wrote the book from which I have taken these extracts.

Because these cheap books do not develop criminals or lead boys, except very occasionally, to seek the Wild West, parents who buy such books think they do their boys no harm. The fact is, however, that the harm done is simply incalculable. I wish I could label each one of these books: " Explosives! Guaranteed to Blow Your Boy's Brains Out."

One of the most valuable assets a boy has is his imagination. In proportion as this is nurtured a boy develops initiative and resourcefulness. The greatest possible service that education can render is to train the boy to grasp and master new situations as they constantly present themselves to him; and what helps more to make such adjustment than a lively imagination? Story books of the right sort stimulate and conserve this noble faculty, while those of the viler and cheaper sort, by overstimulation, debauch and vitiate, as brain and body are debauched and destroyed by strong drink.

If you take gasoline and feed it to an automobile a drop at a time, you get splendid results, because you have confined and directed it with intelligent care and caution. Take the same quantity of gasoline and just pour it out and you either don't get anywhere or you get somewhere you don't care to go. Here is an apt illustration of the proper use of the elements that must enter in to make good books for boys. For, let it be understood, the good book for the average boy must be one that, as the "Century Magazine" says, is" wholesomely perilous." And what is meant is this: the red-blooded boy, the boy in his early teens, must have his thrill; he craves excitement, has a passion for action, "something must be doing "all the time; and in nothing is this more true than in his reading.

The difference between a "Treasure Island" and a modern "thriller" in its many editions is not a difference in the elements so much as the use each author makes

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of them. A Stevenson works with combustibles, but, as in the case of using the gasoline, he confines them, directs them with care and caution, always thinking of how he may use them in a way that will be of advantage to the boy. In the case of the modern "thriller" the author works with the same materials, but with no moral purpose, with no real intelligence. No effort is made to confine or direct or control these highly explosive elements. The result is that, as some boys read such books, their imaginations are literally "blown out," and they go into life as terribly crippled as though by some material explosion they had lost a hand or foot. For not only will the boy be greatly handicapped in business, but the whole world of art in its every form almost is closed to him. Why are there so few men readers of the really good books, or even of the passing novels, sometimes of real worth? Largely, I think, because the imagination of so many men as boys received such brutal treatment at the hands of those authors and publishers who give no concern as to what they write or publish so long as it returns constantly the expected financial gain.

The natural thing would be for me to tell you the titles of these books. Space will not permit. It would take pages to give the titles even of those that have been published in the last three months, which, with scores of others, will make up the annual supply for the holiday season, when these books are sold by the million. And the very fact that so many are used for Christmas gifts makes all our children liable to this pernicious influence. Indeed, at that time tens of thousands of them will be distributed through Sundayschools at the annual children's Christmas festival, and it is very possible that you will yourself purchase them for your own children, since they are on sale everywhere, even many of the denominational publishing houses listing them in their catalogues.

How shall we find a way out? It cannot be said too emphatically that, if supervision be given, it is comparatively easy to win children from any form of these sensational books. Boys read these books because they have in them just those elements that appeal so much to boys. But that is not to say that boys will not read better and the best books.

I discovered a striking instance of this as told by a bookseller in South Carolina. I found in his store a table of nickel novels.

He said that the sale of these had in the last few months fallen off ninety-five per cent, and he also told me, with considerable pleasure, the cause. The sale of the modern " penny dreadful" had been made among the mill boys of his town, but recently the mill-owner had engaged a Young Men's Christian Association secretary to work among his boy employees. This welfare worker, recognizing the worth of boys' reading, has promoted a system of traveling libraries through the several mills, with the result that the nickel novel has become a thing of the past. And it is always so. A multitude of as successful experiences might be cited.

In a

What about the bookseller, then? I would answer with confidence that the average bookseller is not disposed to promote the sale of pernicious or wicked books. number of instances booksellers have told me that they would remove from their stock any book I thought objectionable. Not long ago the manager of the book section of a department store in a New England town read an article condemning cheap and poor children's books. He realized that it was exactly the kind of books that he was selling mostly. Through a friend he sent some of these books to the local children's librarian, whose report, of course, confirmed his fear that they were not wholesome. Since then he has not pushed so hard the sales of such books, and has paid more attention to the better books for children.

So we must look further, but not far-only to the other side of the counter. The chief reason why so many of these trashy books are circulated through the retail trade is be

cause they are so cheap. The "weakness" is not with the boy's taste, but with the parent's pocketbook; the fault lies not so much behind the counter as in front of it. But help is near to meet this weakness and correct this fault. Many of the reputable publishers are placing in competition with the trashy books reprint editions of some of their very best juveniles, all of them written by those modern authors whose books are so popular with all boys. These retail for fifty cents. Printed from the original plates, they are in every way practically equal to the editions which sold on first publication at prices ranging from one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents. So widely have these reprint books been distributed through the retail trade that they may be found wherever books are sold.

Just as I am closing this article there comes to my desk a letter from a scoutmaster in Lansing, Michigan. To the letter a postal card is attached signed by the sheriff stating that "information is wanted relative to the whereabouts of Guy Arthur Phinisey, who left his home in Lansing, Michigan, on September 2, 1914," etc. In the letter of the scoutmaster I find these significant words: "From the information I have received there seems to be no reason for his leaving home of his own accord. He has a good home, and his parents seem quiet but thrifty. The only possible clue I can find is 'cheap reading.'

Of course not every boy who indulges himself in "cheap reading" will be so affected, but who of us is wise enough to know which one it is that will be so influenced?

T

HE Junior Municipality idea devised by William R. George and described in The Outlook about a year ago has now accomplished definite results. The idea, in brief, consists in having a Junior government, elected by the boys and girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, in duplication of the regular or senior government—that is, every adult official in the government has a boy or girl understudy. These Junior understudies have as many

duties and as much authority as their principals choose to confer upon them. The plan has now been in operation for a year in the two small cities of Ithaca and Cortland, New York. In Ithaca Mr. George himself has supervised it, while in Cortland it has had no regular supervision. In Ithaca not long ago the Junior Chief of Police asked the senior Chief what he could do to help him. More in jest than earnest, the Chief replied that he could capture a forger that the department

1914

had been after for six months. This was at three o'clock in the afternoon. By ten o'clock that night the boy police had located the forger, and the next day he was captured. One of the Junior officers was a special delivery mail carrier in the post-office. This boy made up a dummy special delivery letter addressed to the forger. This letter he took to the house in which the boys suspected the man was hiding. A woman living on the ground floor stated that a man and a woman were living upstairs. The woman upstairs denied that any man lived with her, but confirmed the boys' suspicions by trying to get them to leave the letter with her. They immediately reported the circumstances to the Chief of Police; he sent officers to search the house, and the man was found. A little later a Junior police officer caught a prowler in the early morning stealing milk bottles which had just been left by the milkman. This strapping youth, instead of calling for a policeman, took the culprit personally to the police station. At another time the Junior Mayor came across an insane woman who was about to throw herself off a cliff. He called a policeman, and with him took the woman to the police station, and thence to the City Hospital, and finally to a State asylum. At times, when there have been large crowds to handle, the Chief of Police has on his own initiative sworn in boy officials to help in preserving order.

Some boys from well-to-do families in Ithaca stayed away from school at frequent intervals and submitted excuses which, on investigation, were found to have been forged by other boys. Finally the father of one of the boys went to the Superintendent of Schools and asked that his boy and the other offenders be turned over to the Junior Court for correction. As the Superintendent was at his wits' end, he most gladly agreed to try the experiment. Accordingly, the boys were indicted by a Grand Jury of boys and tried before the boy Judge. They waived their right of trial by jury. As it was in each case the first offense, the boy Judge merely required them to report every other day for two weeks to the Junior probation officer, with the understanding that their probation period would be indefinitely extended if their conduct reports were not satisfactory. whole group, both those who had forged the excuses and those who had used them, reported regularly and satisfactorily for the required two weeks, and were then dis

The

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charged by the Court, with a warning as to the greater severity of the treatment which would be meted out to them if they offended again. There has been no further trouble with these boys.

A number of boys between the ages of eight and fifteen were arraigned before City Judge Judge Crowey as chronic truants. He promptly turned them over to his understudy, the Junior City Judge, to handle as he saw fit. The young Judge made some reliable. boy who attended the same school responsible for the attendance of each truant. These boy guardians were of sufficient size and strength to carry their point by physical persuasion in case of necessity, but they were never obliged to resort to force. The Junior truant officers came one day upon a truant camp where the chronic evaders of the privileges of public education met in fraternal gatherings. The young officers caught two of the delinquents after a chase of almost a mile, and marched them to their home. Here their mother tearfully explained that they could not go to school because they had no shoes and stockings. That put a very different face on the matter, and the boy officers did not press the case until the truants had been furnished with shoes and stockings, gladly furnished by more fortunate youths. After that official compulsion was superfluous. More and more of the truant work is now being turned over to the Junior Court.

City Clerk Kerr has given some of the older Junior officers, some of whom are students in the high school and others in Cornell, actual problems to work out connected with the levying and collecting of the city's taxes. Several Junior citizens have been called upon by city officials to inspect and report to them on public works which they lacked the time to look into personally. At a dinner given last spring by the Junior officers to the senior officers many such plans for co-operation were informally discussed. Mayor Tree has at all times welcomed the co-operation of his understudy, the Junior Mayor, and the whole Junior gov

ernment.

At the conference of the mayors of the State held last spring at Auburn, New York, M-yor Angell, of Cortland, allowed the Junior Mayor to take his place on the programme at one of the conferences and describe the workings of the Cortland Junior Municipality. At the same conference the Junior Mayor read a paper prepared by Mayor

Angell. After the meeting many of the mayors congratulated the young man, and requested fuller information, so that they might lay the matter before their respective Councils. On his return home the young Mayor repeated his address before the adult City Council at their request.

A little later a Child Welfare Exhibit was given in Cortland, about which a local paper made the following matter-of-fact statement: "In the absence of Mayor W. H. Angell, Henry Van Brocklin, Cortland's Junior Municipality Mayor, presided. The speakers were Dr. Thomas, of the State Department of Health, and Rev. W. W. Way, rector of Grace Episcopal Church." The boy made the opening remarks and greeted the delegates, who came from various parts of the State.

The officers of the Cortland Junior Municipality, on their own initiative, worked up a cleaner-city campaign, which consummated last spring in a successful City Clean-Up Day, which the Junior citizens conducted under the guidance and with the official backing of the regular city officials.

The Junior Common Council meets twice

a month in the regular Common Council rooms and discusses the affairs of the city in the same manner as do their seniors; also a considerable number of the Junior Councilmen attend as guests the meetings of the regular Common Council.

In short, that the Junior Municipality works, and works to the common advantage of the adult government, the boys and girls, and the whole community, has now been demonstrated in practice. The difficulties in applying the idea to larger and more complex communities would obviously be much greater. Mr. George believes the plan might be worked out by district units for great cities. The writer believes, and Mr. George agrees, that adult supervision will be an essential to the permanent success of the idea. Junior Municipality, or, in the case of those of small adjacent towns, each group of Junior Municipalities, should be under the general oversight of a paid supervisor. The pay of the supervisor ought to be many times offset by the saving to the city effected by turning so many of its boys from law-breaking to law-enforcement.

Each

Political Shame of Mexico (The). By Edward I. Bell. McBride, Nast & Co., New York. $2. This is an interesting account of the history of Mexico for the past four years-from the last days of Diaz to the Mediation Conference at Niagara Falls. The author, as the publisher and editor of two newspapers in Mexico, had the privilege of frequently going behind the scenes, and thus, while his whole narrative is readable, parts of it are of permanent value because of the clear light thrown upon some events of international importance heretofore commonly shrouded in semi-darkness. Particularly informing is the recital of how the decisive battle of the Madero revolution was fought in the Plaza Hotel, New York City, between Francisco Madero, Senior, and his son Gustavo Madero, on one side, and José Yves Limantourthe genius of the Diaz financial programme-on the other, and the recital of the part, conscious or unconscious, that President Taft played in the overthrow of President Madero.

With many American observers, Mr. Bell believes that the United States will sooner or later be compelled to take control of Mexico, and with a somewhat smaller number of them he believes that it will be feasible for us later to relinquish this control. His diagnosis of the

crying need of the Mexicans is for "a good board of directors to manage the corporation of which they are the stockholders, and a reformed policeman strictly under the orders of the board."

Mexican People (The): Their Struggle for Freedom. By Gutierrez de Lara and Edgcumb Pinchon. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. $1.50. The authors of this book tell us that it is "the voice of the Mexican people," and certainly it more nearly gives an accurate interpretation of the view-point, hopes, and aspirations of the masses of Mexico, the peons fighting and toiling for freedom under the conflicting leadership of Villa, Zapata, Carranza, and other chiefs, than anything that has come to our notice for many a day. At the same time" the voice," as it is heard in this volume, is more clear-cut and more highly polished than it is in fact, and the message that we here get from Mexico is more direct, more forceful, and more appealing through the fact that the bearers of it-the authors of this volume-are avowed Socialists of the "intellectual " class, who can interpret the desires of the Mexican people more speciously than the people themselves. However, if there is any bias in the book, the authors make no loud pretensions of impartiality, and a

book partial to the cause of the Mexican proletariat would in any event be rather refreshing after the deluge of literary sycophancy that has come to the United States from paid press agents of the Diaz and Huerta régimes or from misled outsiders whose observations of Mexico have been made from the parlor cars of these dictators.

The

Messrs. de Lara and Pinchon begin at the beginning, with the Spanish conquest, and their narration of the struggle of the common people against the oppression of the master class at home and the tyranny of sovereign princes abroad is instructive and absorbing. chapters dealing with the war of Texan independence, the war of 1846 between Mexico and the United States, and the downfall of the Mexican Empire of Maximilian are particularly interesting because of the light they throw upon the history of our own country at these periods. The authors of this volume declare, and cite evidence to prove, that the Texan colonists were heartily opposed to secession from Mexico, and that the war between Texas and Mexico was as much due to the desire of the clerical party in Mexico to divert the people's attention from the propaganda of revolution as from the wish of the Southern planters of the United States to add slave territory to the Union. Essentially the same causes are ascribed to the war of 1846. Upon the opinion, commonly accepted in the United States, that during the intervention of England, Spain, and France in Mexico in 1861 the United States was the firm friend of Mexico, the authors of this book freely throw cold water, and they are equally emphatic in asserting the falsity of the belief that the departure of the French in 1865 was due in any considerable degree to the influence of the United States.

The book is profusely illustrated with photographs of modern Mexico and Mexicans. It is a painstaking effort to present the view-point of the intellectual Mexican revolutionary, and it is incidentally a compilation of historical data of no little interest.

Man of Genius (The). By Hermann Türck, Ph.D. The Macmillan Company, New York. $4. This is the first English edition of a work that has reached its seventh edition in Germany, where it has been highly praised as a work of critical and literary genius quite adequate to its subject. The titles of its introductory chapters indicate the wide range of the author's thought-" Artistic Enjoyment and Productivity," "Philosophical Aspiration," "Conduct in Practical Life." He goes on to show the man of genius as delineated in Shakespeare's "Hamlet," in Goethe's "Faust," and in Byron's "Manfred." These chapters are fine specimens of aesthetic criticism. The genius is termed a "superman," showing humanity at its highest power. A "temporal

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superhumanity" is seen in great conquerorsAlexander, Cæsar, Napoleon. The essential attributes of the man of genius are named-disinterestedness, objectivity, and complete devotion of the heart to a noble idea. These appear conspicuously in Jesus and in Buddha. A notable chapter exhibits the essential elements in their teachings and their mutual agreement. A thorough idealist, Dr. Türck insists on a healthy realism as leading to true idealism. For this he wages a vigorous polemic against Stirner, Nietzsche, and Ibsen as egoists and "antisophers." A striking feature of these essays are the frequent parallels he draws between his idealism and Christ's. A keen and subtle and mentally stimulating thinker is he, at times paradoxical. Hamlet is pronounced "morally great," though showing an unscrupulousness without which great actions are impossible." Is not this the very taint that is grossly apparent in the present apologists for Germany's treatment of Belgium?

Memories of the Kaiser's Court. By Anne Topham. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $3.

The resident English teacher of the only daughter of the German Kaiser, Princess Victoria Luise, now the Duchess of Brunswick, writes of her experiences in the Prussian Court from 1902 until the marriage of the Princess in 1913. She gives a view of the royal family life intimate yet discreet, candid yet entirely free from sensationalism-a view which, in the face of present events, must go far to balance in the public mind some natural misapprehensions of German character. The well-written, simply told narrative of every-day royal life is especially timely and should be widely read. The dominant, joking, energetic, and adored " Papa," the ever-thoughtful, kind-hearted, submissive, yet efficient" Mamma,” with the two younger children at home, always zanking (bickering), yet warm-hearted and childlike, make a most attractive domestic picture. It may be noted that Miss Topham was the only woman about the court, not excepting the Empress, who knew the least bit about cooking, in spite of the three Ks-Kinder, Kirche, und Küche-upon which the Emperor insists, and to which he has recently added a fourth-Kultur!

Men Around the Kaiser. By Frederick William Wile. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. $1.25.

Some of the makers of modern Germany, including the most eminent of them, are here sketched by an American who has served for several years as the Berlin correspondent of the London "Daily Mail." An earlier edition has already been noticed in The Outlook. This edition, just published, contains an Introduction by the author written since the war, and interpreting the spirit of modern Germany which these men have helped to form. The book is informative. The author leaves no doubt in the mind of the reader that he is not in sympa