voters. Assuming that a like proportion of the females were unnaturalized aliens, the eligible women voters would be 717,942 minus 168,000, or 549,942. On the basis of these figures, 73 per cent of the men and only 44 per cent of the women who were eligible voted in the election. It would seem quite certain, therefore, that less than half of the potential women voters availed themselves of their right to participate in the election. What changes future developments in the line of organization and canvassing may bring are matters mainly of conjecture. At present there is hardly a doubt that the women responding to the suffrage call are a minority of those in the community.

In view of the much controverted position held in regard to woman's stand on social questions, we may briefly consider this aspect of the Chicago election. In this election, social questions and welfare or service programs were conspicuously absent. Both of the candidates were utterly lacking in any conception of the broader preventive or developmental functions of government in regard to health, recreation, and social amelioration generally. In the Republican primaries, however, Judge Olsen, representing to some degree the more advanced and progressive thinker on these questions, was strongly favored by the women as against Thompson, who distinctly stood for the commercial and business development of the city.

In the little ballot which provided the only means for a direct expression of opinion on specific questions, the returns indicate relatively less interest by the women than by the men. Of those voting in the election, 67 per cent of the men on the average marked each question on the ballot; of the women, only 51 per cent filled in the little ballot. In regard to the actual opinions registered, no marked difference of attitude or viewpoint is to be found between the sexes. Almost exactly similar proportions prevail in both male and female vote "for" and "against" each of the twelve propositions. But as the questions involved were mainly financial ones, over-emphasis should not be placed on these findings. The construction of new fire houses and police stations, purchase of equipment and additions for the garbage-reduction plant, completion of the Contagious Disease Hospital, new dormitories and a new build

ing for the House of Correction and John Worthy School, improvement of bathing beaches, sites for which had been laid out or already purchased, and the annexation of several small outlying villages could hardly be said to involve special problems of social policy. The little ballot was only roughly indicative of woman's interest in local civic matters. As such, it revealed her in an unfavorable light as contrasted with the attention given to the same affairs by the men. Whether this is due to some inherent difference between the sexes or to the comparatively brief period of political education which has been afforded the women through active participation in practical politics cannot of course be determined from the returns of a single election. In so far as generalizations are permissible from observations of such limited extent, we may sum up our conclusions under the following heads:

1. That women on the whole register the same political convictions as the men, but are not necessarily on that account lacking in independent views and opinions.

2. That woman suffrage promotes greater interest in and discussion of political issues, thus resulting in a more intelligent expression of judgment by the electorate than issued under limited manhood suffrage.

3. That woman's interest in politics and the degree of her activity varies, as a general fact, directly with her social and economic standing in the community.

4. That woman's entrance into politics has tended to readjust the relative power of different social groups, leading in the main to a strengthening of the control of the upper middle class where general elections are concerned, but giving the poorer element a relatively greater degree of control where election by districts is practiced and the districts containing the upper middle-class voters do not have representation in proportion to their numbers.

5. That the voting woman displays a less active interest in matters of public policy than does the man who votes.

6. That only a minority of the eligible women avail themselves of their right to vote.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.

FRED W. ECKERT.

COMMON SENSE IN FOREIGN POLICY1

EUTRALITY is an official matter, a policy that governments alone can assume. If an individual has any power of

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thought or any feeling of sympathy, he cannot be neutral. What he claims as "neutrality" is really indifference or ignorance or something worse. When he declares that such is his attitude, consciously or unconsciously he is stating an untruth, thereby trying either to deceive himself or to mislead others.

In bringing the judicious mind to bear on the problems which led up to the present war, on those it has engendered and those it will produce, what is needed is not vague assertions of "neutrality," not the wild credulousness of partisanship and not the singular irrationality of emotionalism. Instead, the essential qualities called for are plain common sense, united with an ordinary spirit of fairness and tolerance to those with whom one may differ.

Apart from divergence of views about the respective belligerents, and about what ought to be done to or for them, the war has brought to the people of the United States as never before an idea of the tremendous contrast between war and peace as conditions of human existence. How to avoid the one and maintain the other engross thought as nothing else can do. Those who seek to give expression. to their convictions on the matter may be divided into three classes. To the first belong the non-resistants who have conscientious scruples against a resort to arms. In the second category are numbered the advocates of preparedness," who believe in an accumulation of means of defense against a possible foe, just as the prudent householder insures his house against a fire that may never come. Third in order are those who seek to remove the causes of war, or at least to reduce its possible causes to a minimum.

While it is conceivable that a "pacifist," so-called, might belong to any one of these three classes, his proper place is with the last; for he is not one who would either submit or oppose, but one who would prevent. Just as in the realm of medical research the great aim is to forestall a physical evil, instead of striving to cure it after it has appeared, so in dealing with the diseases of nations and peoples the great object of the "pacifist," rightly understood, is to provide against

1 See note 2, p. 124.

This is not a case of "discretion

the coming of the malady of war. surrendering to superior odds; nor is it one of "precaution" amassing armaments liable to make the potential, if unknown, antagonist pile up still larger ones, and to make little states imitate the action of their big neighbors in the vain hope of contending successfully against such "defensive" measures when, perchance, they become "offensive." The seekers after "preparedness," indeed, too often fail to understand that the vision of the insider is not the viewpoint of the outsider. What seems a means of defense to the one may well appear an act of offense to the other. The line between the measures is apt to be as close as laughter is to tears. Neither discretion " nor "precaution" of the sort mentioned avails in reason against the prophylaxis of a common sense, the sole effect of which would be to keep a danger from arising.

The spectacle, moreover, of entire peoples fighting for selfish objects that each attributes to the other, or for noble purposes that each denies to the other, has about it an abnormality which, were it not so tragic, might be ridiculous. Under such conditions neither in logic nor in ethics is it possible precisely to determine which is right and which is wrong. If to this state of absurdity be added the circumstance that the soldiers doing the actual fighting are personally unacquainted with their antagonists, and hence can have no personal grudge to settle, and the further fact that the individuals chiefly responsible for provoking the struggle, and for whetting the hatred that makes it continue, are civilians who use tongue and pen but never sword or gun, the irrationality of the whole procedure is all too clear. Common sense condemns it, and demands that means be sought to prevent the recurrence of exhibitions so degrading to the intelligence of the human race.

Looking at the question from still another angle, if war as an agency for the supposed adjustment of international disputes is ever to be abolished, the patent, practical truth demonstrated by the present war is that the attainment of so desirable an end cannot be reached until the causes of it are understood and removed at their inception. Here the risk of easy judgments comes to the fore. Difficult as the historian finds it even approximately to show what provoked the relatively petty wars of the past, the fact does not deter many a wiseacre today from proving incontestably-to his own satisfaction-just who and what were responsible for a struggle that involves the world and all mankind. "Everyman his own historian, and forsooth his own international lawyer," is apparently the situation that has arisen; and the merit of his conclusions, be it said, stands in a sort of inverse proportion to the

magnitude of the conflict itself. The simpler the cause adduced, the readier the panacea proposed, seems to be the corollary that follows. To the larger aspects of the matter, to the depth and spread of its multifarious ramifications, few give proper heed; but when they speak, theirs is the voice of common sense.

That the vast issues underlying the present war had been apprehended and the perils certain to arise, unless these issues were adjusted by peaceful means, had been pointed out, is a fact amply proven by the number of books and articles, speeches and journalistic utterances which preceded the cataclysm. But they cried aloud in vain. Men would not hear them. Europe at large had been at peace for a century. In that time what is called " civilization" presumably had advanced too far to admit of the possibility that war on the scale of a world conflict could ever arise again. A large army or a large navy was simply a police force to keep the peoples of Europe civil to one another, or was useful in gaining power over other folk elsewhere. Those who talked of the possibility of war, therefore, were so many modern Cassandras, or less politely, "jingoes," and those who dwelt upon the possibility of removing the causes of war were "chimerachasers" who should be treated with indifference, if not with derision or contempt. In the spirit of the fatuous belief that a huge ocean-liner was unsinkable, so a world war, simply, was unthinkable.

Some of the writers and speakers on the theme undoubtedly were persons of just the types in question. Others, not delighting in sensationalism or in mere ideology, were mindful of the lessons of history, mindful of the truth that, despite the advance in "civilization," human nature has not been greatly altered, mindful also of the evidence that "civilization" itself often has been promoted by war. They pleaded that, in the interest of peace, the facts be squarely faced and that measures be honestly taken to prevent their logical consequences from coming into operation. Eminent among these advocates was the famous English publicist Sir Harry Johnston,' whose little treatise, Common Sense in Foreign Policy, deserves a foremost place in the literature of a subject that as yet has but a small bibliography.

1 Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, G. C. M. G., K. C. B., D. Sc., probably the greatest living English authority on Africa, has held many offices in the British colonial service, and is the author of numerous works on geography, history, politics, ec nomics, biology and sociology. Few are so well equipped by knowledge and training as he to discuss the topic under consideration.

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2 Common Sense in Foreign Policy. By Sir Harry Johnston. New York, E. P. Dutton and Company, 1913; x, 119 p.