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CCURATE measurement of the national worth of the home garden movement changes with conditions. In the early spring of 1917 the need for home garden production was the need of a country in which war was merely an oversea reflection and transatlantic echo. It was based on the necessity for supplementing a national food supply depleted by the insistent requirements of European nations in which production had been checked by the ravages of war. Having no war of its own, America was in the position of a big brother charged with helping those less fortunate.

With its sudden shift into a nation at war, America found itself confronted with a food problem no less definite and vital than that of the battle torn countries of Europe. Overnight the home garden became a war garden. Famine and starvation were no longer a question of international sympathy but had become threateningly local to every section of the United States. With the rapid development of war's activities and war's necessities within its borders, America found itself compelled to organize against the forces of hunger. The expansion of the military establishment and the draft on labor by the munition factories and kindred causes resulted in decreasing the pro

duction of foodstuffs in the normal channels and emphasized the importance of the garden in the back yard or on a vacant lot.

Through the processes of war this importance is vastly magnified for the season of 1918. Not only has the growing need of Europe increased that continent's demands upon our food reservoir, but our own farm production is threatened with serious shrinkage. Government figures indicate that not less than six hundred thousand men trained and experienced in farm work have been taken from the farms of America since the beginning of this country's participation in the war. These figures are startling. With six hundred thousand farm workers suddenly shifted into the class of non-producers it requires no imagination to foresee a more grievous shortage of farm labor in 1918 than that of 1917, and everyone knows how severe was that shortage last season. No one can fail to realize what this will inevitably mean in the matter of farm production.

With this definite handicap in sight for the farm crops of the nation the backyard and vacant lot garden becomes more than ever a war garden and more than ever a national necessity. The one factor most vital to military success is an

abundant supply of food. Food is the one thing for which there is no substitute. When Germany was cut off from the nitrate fields of Chile, her chemists and engineers commandeered the nitrogen of the air for the creation of the nitric acid essential to the manufacture of explosives. Wood pulp has been substituted for cotton fibre in the making of gun cotton and in divers other ways science has overcome shortage by devising substitutes. No scientist has yet discovered a substitute for food. The one solution of the food problem is an increased production and to make this possible the home gardeners of America face 1918 with a responsibility far greater than that with which they set about their work last

season.

Volume is not the sole requirement of food production in this time of emergency.

Conservation of transportation is equally important. Insofar as may be possible all food should be grown in the immediate neighborhood of its place of ultimate use. It is imperative to the national welfare that no avoidable strain be placed on the transportation facilities of the country. Shipments of foodstuffs take freight cars that are urgently needed for shipments of munitions, fuel and other supplies vital to the needs of a nation at war. Unnecessary shipments must therefore be eliminated. To do this means the producing of foods where they are to be used. This involves the cultivation of the home garden and the creation of growing areas on

every inch of vacant land in the neighborhood of the cities, towns and villages of the United States. Last year the National War Garden Commission reported the existence of one million, one hundred and fifty thousand gardens in the backyards and vacant lots of America, an increase of 222 per cent. This year there should be five million. This added increase of more than 400 per cent. will be none too great to meet the increased needs of a situation immeasurably more serious than that of 1917.

By their energy, industry and application in 1917 the home gardeners of the United States showed that

they were alive to the call of patriotism. The garden slacker received no more cordial consideration than did the military slacker. Home gardening has come to be looked on as the gift of a patriotic people to a nation in need. It is also an enterprise of benefit. Through garden activities Americans in hundreds of thousands of households have learned new lessons of the joy of living. Last year's excursion into home gardening was a voyage of discovery as to the delights of the table when supplied with vegetables freshly gathered from the home garden. It was also a journey of exploration through a land of new healthfulness and strength revealed through the medium of outdoor exercise and wholesome vegetable diet.

The coming season should see the recultivation of every garden cultivated in 1917 and the addition of all the other garden planting area

available. During three and a half years of terrible warfare the allied nations have drained their agricultural resources to a point where productive possibilities are now at a minimum. Shipping facilities are so inadequate that the European food supply must necessarily come from America as the land from which shipments can be made with the least tax on the ships left available by submarine warfare. The time requirements for shipments from Australia and other remote countries are such as to be prohibitive. America is the one place upon which the Allies may depend for the feeding of their armies and their domestic population. To make it possible for America to do its share the home gardeners of the land must recognize that they are War Gardeners and therefore vital to the success of the armies of the allied nations. They must produce foodstuffs on a tremendous scale, with the central thought that eternal industry on the part of their gardens is the price of world-wide freedom.

As in 1917 the need is for food production F. O. B. the Kitchen Door. This means that it will be

none too much if four War Gardens are made to grow where one grew before, creating a vast aggregate yield at the points of consumption. By the same logic there must be universal application of the simple principles of Home Canning, Home Drying, Home Pickling and Home Storage of vegetables and fruits. Last year the households of America created a winter supply of canned goods amounting to more than half a billion jars. This year they should make it more than a billion. Το Food Production F. O. B. the Kitchen Door they will thus add a Food Supply F. O. B. the Pantry Shelf. By making themselves both Soldiers of the Soil and Cohorts of Conservation they will form a vast army of aggression, fearless, defiant and invincible. With forces thus organized to support the military establishment, America can conquer the alien foe and make the world safe for Democracy. Without these forces she is helpless. Neutrality on the food question is as impossible as neutrality in the war itself. In the great conflict we will win or lose according to our solution of the food problem.

TUDENTS of our constitutional

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law are well aware of the vast service of our Supreme Court in rescuing our federal system from death by centralization in 1868 after the army had just saved it from death through disintegration by the sword in 1865. For our union would cease when the states disappear: the American polity depends upon those corporate entities called commonwealths. Hence the prime importance of the cases "Texas vs. White" the "Slaughter-house Cases" and the "Civil Rights" cases. For in them the court developed the epochmaking dictum that this is "an indissoluble union composed of indestructible states." It is also well to remember that in all probability we will be compelled in future to deal with things called nations. In our discussions about internationalism and the rather futile assaults that cynical critics make on patriotism, Cleveland's wise phrase is timely, "It is a condition and not a theory that confronts us." For the world conception within which useful controversy can go on, I venture to paraphrase the court's final description of America "This world must be an indissoluble union composed of indestructible nations."

Nations are merely an inevitable result of the progress of the race. The unavoidable surplus of social energy occurring at all stages of

culture led everywhere to some phase of expansion. At times this has been a rapid increase of population without any change in capital. This of necessity meant immigrations to new areas of food supply; fields at times contested, again entirely free. With no change in the productive processes increasing populations flowed freely during long ages over unoccupied areas. Tribe at times would clash with tribe and the resultant integration led to more advanced forms of political life. Attendant organization followed that took varying forms according to circumstances. Where landed interests and small capital were present a feudal scheme developed; the Mir or the mark or the village community or the more centralized, more highly organized manorial system mark this growth of organization. Under other conditions, when more capital appeared or when groups formed themselves near navigable waters or on inviting harbors more closely corporate groups called cities made their appearance. So long periods of rather obscure history reveal dimly outlined tribal life, patriarchal systems, feudal relations and uncounted smaller areas organized as city-states. Sporadic attempts at wider organization lend variety to this monotonous reign of localism. Magna Grecia, the transient authority of the Macedonian conqueror or a world brought for a

brief moment to Alexander's feet and then going "to the strongest" illustrate the incoherent expressions of imperial design. The Roman Empire came to display world unity compelled by external force when inherently diverse elements were held together by equally as diverse legions swayed by the magic of the name of Rome. Throughout the Middle Ages when after the human deluge seedlings of law and art and letters and finally imperial suggestions worked their way from far off culture beds, there were no nations. When the power of the legions vanished Roman unity also disappeared and Europe fell into countless divisions. France alone was composed of 70,000 estates. In the midst of this confusion and disorder unity again became the ideal of church and state. Fear and fanaticism, zeal and devotion gave a certain inherent spiritual unity to Europe under the sway of the Catholic Church. Once more imperial pretensions in Charles the Great, Otto the Great and the redoubtable Barbarossa, produced gigantic failures as artificial empires tumbled to dust when the cohesive power of force lost its grip.

Thus for thousands of years there was no steady, persistent, inherent force working toward unity. From tribalism to nationalism stretches a long, dreary vista of disunion and disintegration. Tribalism rested upon the cohesion of actual kinship and this was inherent and compelling and permanent. No new unity came until symbolic kinship in nationalism appeared in the sixteenth century.

This sentiment, this compelling uniting power with its myraid definitions, came into existence when modern life began as a new force with which history must reckon. It has become a powerful cohesive influence. and by it vast communities are cemented into indissoluble unities. Previous unities depended upon shifting external circumstances; these aggregates called nations exist in virtue of unchanging inherent sympathies and bespeak a fixed and permanent order.

The transition from this state of anarchy, which essentially though not formally describes a world ruled by force, is made through the influence of dynasties. It has been the grip of dynastic power that has held unlike elements in juxtaposition until affinities have developed. These dynasties continue the actual kinship under the hereditary principle and in all states with absolute governments subsisting in dynasties such "State" is still based upon actual kinship. It is thus the Austrian Empire was created out of widely differing peoples held in union by members of the famous Hapsburgs. It was thus Germany was created, the continuity of the kingdom of Prussia resting in the Hohenzollern family. The Holy Roman Empire under the Hapsburg House came near drawing Europe into a new unity of force-another imperial structure in German hands; probably thwarted solely by Papal opposition against Henry IV, Otto and Barbarossa; Napoleon also menaced Europe with a dynastic union through his numerous connec