This assumption was confirmed when Russian troops crossed the frontier and occupied strategic points. Then followed an agreement by which Mongolia was to be free to make industrial and commercial treaties with any nation, but subject to Russian approval, the Mongolians pledging to Russia certain agricultural and trading privileges. Thus Russia obtained all the benefits of a "sphere of influence "-that is to say, predominating influence-without the evils of actual administration.

Mongolia is really a buffer state between Russia and China. In 1913 China recognized the autonomy of Outer Mongolia, an agreeable circumstance to Russia, since Outer Mongolia is next to her. Not so Inner Mongolia, and it would seem as if, so far as it is concerned, Russia had given way to Japan.

The Japanese contend that China has never really conquered Mongolia, and that the shrewdness of the Chinese traders in the province has furthered the discord. Perhaps Japanese traders, backed by Japanese police, will succeed better. We shall see.

LINCOLN MEMORIALS

Last week the attention of the country was drawn to two Lincoln memorials. One is two miles from Hodgenville, Kentucky, where the rude log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born has now been housed in an imposing granite building, a gift from the Lincoln Farm Association, together with a large endowment fund. Mr. Robert J. Collier, of New York City, is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Association.

The chief feature of the ceremony of turning over the deed to the property to the Nation was an address by President Wilson. In it we have Mr. Wilson at his best. We quote here and there:

This little hut was the cradle of one of the great sons of men, a man of singular, delightful, vital genius who presently emerged upon the great stage of the Nation's history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, but dominant and majestic, a natural ruler of men.

Whatever the vigor and vitality of the stock from which he sprang, its mere vigor and soundness do not explain where this man got his great heart that seemed to comprehend all mankind in its catholic and benignant sympa thy, the mind that sat enthroned behind those brooding, melancholy eyes, whose vision swept many a horizon which those about him dreamed not of-that mind that comprehended what it

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had never seen and understood the language of affairs with the ready ease of one to the manner born or that nature which seemed in its varied richness to be the familiar of men of every way of life. . . .

In the case of a man-I would rather say of a spirit-like Lincoln, the question where he was is of little significance, but it is always what he was that really arrests our thought and takes hold of our imagination. It is the spirit always that is sovereign. . . .

There is a very holy and very terrible isolation for the conscience of every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well as for individuals. That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist. This strange child of the cabin kept company with invisible things, was born into no intimacy but that of its own silently assembling and deploying thoughts....

The only stuff that can retain the life-giving heat is the stuff of living hearts. And the hopes of mankind cannot be kept alive by words merely, by constitutions and doctrines of right and codes of liberty. The object of democracy is to transmute these into the life and action of society, the self-denial and selfsacrifice of heroic men and women willing to make their lives an embodiment of right and service and enlightened purpose.

The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us. It will be great, and lift a great light for the guidance of the nations, only if we are great and carry that light high for the guidance of our own feet. We are not worthy to stand here unless we ourselves be in deed and in truth real democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give our very lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual exaltation of the great Nation which shelters and nurtures us.

The

The other Lincoln Memorial is the still more imposing temple, nearly two hundred feet long by a hundred wide, rising on the banks of the Potomac at Washington. marble blocks of the exterior are said to be the largest ever employed in any quantity on a public building. The steps extend four hundred feet from the edifice and the retaining wall is one hundred and eighty-seven by three hundred and twenty-seven feet-dimensions which may give some idea of the proportions of the monument. All of the exterior columns in the Doric colonnade have now been completed and half of those in the interior have been placed. The structure will be finished. it is now announced to our gratification, in June, 1917, a year ahead of time.

Both memorials will be National shrines. The interior of one speaks of Lincoln's origin. The interior of the other will speak of his life. It will contain the statue by Daniel Chester French; on the walls are to be engraved the Gettysburg Speech and the second Inaugural Address, and mural decorations are to typify some of Lincoln's inspired words.

REVISING THE

TEN COMMANDMENTS

A commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church will probably report at the coming General Convention a revision and shortening of the first five of the Ten Commandments for the use of the Church in its liturgy. It is possible that to some of our readers this may seem to be an unwarrantable change in the Bible; especially it may seem so to those who think that reverence for the Bible requires that its exact form, if not its exact phraseology, should always be used in quoting from it.

In fact, however, the change proposed by this commission carries us back approximately to what was in all probability the original form of the Ten Commandments. Of these Commandments there are two forms: one in Exodus xx. 2-17, the other. in Deuteronomy v. 6-21. The most important difference in these two versions is that, in the Exodus version, which is probably the older, the duty of Sabbath observance is based upon the statement that on the seventh day Jehovah rested, while in the Deuteronomy version it is made a memorial of the emancipation of Israel from Egypt. Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day." The statement that the Ten Commandments were engraved on two tables of stone which Moses was able to bring down in his hands, descending a somewhat steep mountain with no prepared path, furnishes one of the reasons for believing that the Ten Commandments in their original form were simple statutes unattended by reasons or arguments for their observance, and that these were added later by way of comment to the original commands by the sacred historians. The form of the Commandments which will be recommended by the commission will be, we presume, substantially that

THE NATIONAL TENNIS
CHAMPIONSHIP

One of the great events of the athletic year is the National Tennis Championship now played annually at Forest Hills, New York. This year's contest was of perhaps more than usual interest, for, added to the keen rivalry between the East and the West of the United States, there was introduced the possibility that the cup might even cross the Pacific to the land of Japan. Japan's representative in the tournament, Ichiya Kumagae, whose record in recent tournaments raised the thought that he might become a real contender for the championship cup, failed, however, to endure beyond the early rounds of the contest. He fell before the racquet of George M. Church in the second round.

In the fourth round of the tournament California's brilliant McLoughlin, twice winner of the National Championship, also fell before Mr. Church. But Maurice F. McLoughlin was avenged the next day when Church was defeated by Robert Lindley Murray, of McLoughlin's home State. The semi-final round found three representatives of the West, Clarence J. Griffin, William M. Johnston, and Robert Lindley Murray, still sur

viving the contest. The only Easterner left was Richard Norris Williams, of Philadelphia, National title-holder in 1914. Of these men, Williams and Johnston, the present title-holder, came through into the finals. California's hopes of again wresting the title from the East were destined, however, to be disappointed, for Williams won the final match by a score of 4-6, 6-4, 0-6, 6-2, 6-4. The match between Williams and Johnston was one of the most interesting in the history of the American game. In short, it was fully worthy of the splendid sport of which these

two men are masters.

THE RESCUE OF THE SHACKLETON PARTY

Welcome news came from Chile last week, of the success of Sir Ernest Shackleton in rescuing the twenty-two men of his party who have been isolated on Elephant Island, in the South Shetland group, since last April.

This was the fourth attempt made by their commander to save these men from starvation. Previous attempts failed because of the impossibility of finding a suitable ship; the first was actually made in an eighty-ton whaling vessel. Finally, the Chilean Government lent Shackleton a small Government steamer, the Yelcho, and he sailed in her on August 26 from Punta Arenas, on the Strait of Magellan, the southernmost town in the world. The sea and ice must have been favorable, for a week sufficed for the rescue and return voyage. Great fear had been felt for the lives of the men, who had only five weeks' rations when Sir Ernest left them on the island. The chief hope for sustaining life was that they might kill penguins; and that not very palatable bird, in fact, saved their lives.

The story of the early disasters which had befallen both sections of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic continent has already been told in The Outlook, as also of the terrible crushing in the ice of Sir Ernest's own ship, the Endurance, its abandonment, the distressing journey in small boats driven through raging seas and dragged over ice to the inhospitable little bit of land called Elephant Island, and the further journey of Shackleton and five men in a single boat from Elephant Island to the coast of South Georgia to seek for help. When the full story is narrated, it will assuredly form one of the most thrilling tales of hardship, courage, and adventure in all the annals of polar exploration.

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WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE

You ask me what I would have done if I had been President during the last four years. I cannot tell you what I would have done. For the President is not an autocrat. In deciding upon his policies he must be guided by the advice of his Cabinet, who are his chosen counselors; and in carrying them into effect his action must be determined by the support he can win from Congress. He is a leader, not a lawmaker. But I can tell you what the President could have attempted. and what, if I had been President, I hope I should have had the courage to attempt.

I would have secured for my advisers men who believed in the greatness of the American Nation and in the courage and patriotism of the American people, men all of whom put not safety first, but duty first. There were differences of opinion in Lincoln's Cabinet; but they all believed in maintaining the Union at any cost, and they all believed in "liberty National, slavery sectional." There were differences of opinion in Buchanan's Cabinet; some of them believed in preserving the Union, some desired its destruction. I would have sought to organize a Cabinet like that of Lincoln, not like that of Buchanan. I would have invited as my counselors only men who would advise me how to fulfill the Nation's obligations, never how to escape them. What of the specific policies outlined below I would have adopted would have depended partly on their counsels, partly on the question how far I could depend on the Congress and the people to support me in them. Some of the things I should like to have done are these:

I should like to have acquainted myself. with the coming events which cast their shadows before, to have been familiar with such books as Bernhardi's “Germany in the Next War" and Sarolea's "The Anglo-German Problem;" with the campaign in England of General Roberts for compulsory military service; with the anticipations of the more far-seeing European statesmen of an impending war. I should like to have secured for our representatives abroad, both in the diplomatic and the consular service, men of insight and foresight, of diplomatic temper and diplomatic experience, and I should have depended on them to keep me informed of conditions and prospects.

As soon as there was adequate reason to believe that Germany meant to violate Belgium's neutrality, I should like quietly and