426

LIFE

White
Sixteen valve 4'

THE SIXTEEN-VALVE FOUR has the unique distinction of being the most far-reaching improvement in engine design in recent years and still the most conservative. There has been no departure from the basic simplicity of the four-cylinder motor.

High power and utmost flexibility have been attained by the most direct means—increasing valve capacity without the roundabout method of multiplying cylinders to secure the same end.

By having two sets of intake and exhaust valves in each of the four cylinders a full flow of explosive gas is secured at any engine speed, thus maintaining full power at high engine speed and a degree of flexibility at low speed unobtainable in any other type of motor.

THE WHITE COMPANY

CLEVELAND

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LIFE

To Confirmed Fault-Finders

YOU, little folk, who weep at little things,
And freight the air with moaning and complaint—
Who treat the slightest pangs as deadly stings
And 'neath a feather's weight appear to faint—
Think you of those brave millions who endure
The bitter curse of War without a cry;
Think you of that you epicure,
Who rage when brought a cocktail over-dry,
And you, who, being jostled by a crowd,
Give vent to growls of petulence and hate,
And you whose words are violent and loud
When, for a moment, someone makes you wait;
Think, if you have the power or the will—
Think, little folk, and let your tongues be still!

K. L. R.

Frank Sanborn

YOUNG people who die are most acutely mourned, but old people who have lived active lives leave vacancies that are more felt. Franklin B. Sanborn, who died late in February at eighty-five, had been active and incessant in deed and discourse in our world for nearly seventy years. He began in his teens as an abolitionist and friend of John Brown, and he never ceased finding things to do and doing them, and finding things to say and saying them.

He has been best known the last thirty or forty years as the Boston correspondent of the Springfield *Republican*, to which journal he contributed two pieces a week; one about books, the other about current events, state charities, John Brown and his family, and the departed writers of Concord, all of whom he knew.

His memory was remarkable; his erudition extraordinary. There was nobody like him. A handsome old man, tall, thin and active much beyond the wont of fourscore years, nobody knows as much out of books as he knew, and hardly anyone remembers as much out of life as he did that is worth remembering.

Peace to his venerable pen! Put the lid on his inkstand!

Our Spy Department

WE offer our complete spy department to the largest bidder. We guarantee results. If, for example, it should be discovered that secret measures are being (even now) undertaken by our government to prepare us against any enemy, we will ferret these out and expose them.
There shall be no compromise.

If anybody is going to do anything to help us defend ourselves, then it ought to be known. Our motto is: "United we fall, divided we stand."

Great Moments in American History

(Now Pending)

CEREMONY of Presenting the Iron Cross to W. J. Bryan by the Imperial German Government.

Signing by President and Members of Cabinet of Articles of Subservience to the Labor Unions of United States.

BLESSED are the pure in pocketbook, for they shall be able to discuss questions of war and peace with a high degree of dispassionateness.

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LIFE

## Organization

THE German contribution to humanity is organization. Germans did not invent it, but they developed it beyond anything ever known before, and have forced it on the rest of the world.

Non-Germans are not over-pleased with it, but you would never think so to see the way they all take to it. In us Americans, for example, the old Adam prompts individual initiative; every man preferably for himself, his own way, his own plan. But how far we have come from this detail of the democratic ideal! Since the war began, thousands of solicitous citizens have distrusted the wisdom or the powers of their government; believed that it was too pacific or was neglecting to make necessary preparations; feared that war would catch it napping.

What have they done?

They have organized in every way they could,—started Plattsburg camps, American Rights Leagues, Security Leagues, Naval Leagues, Red Cross auxiliaries and all such things, besides many excellent relief societies. There has been nothing quite like the private organization for public ends of the last two years since carpet-bag government in the South led to the development of the Ku-Klux Klan. The difference is that much of this recent war-scare organization aims to strengthen government by forging tools for it, whereas the aim of Ku-Klux, besides mischief, was to foil local government by carpet-baggers using negro votes.

GERMAN organization has been chiefly governmental; from the top down. Ours is largely volunteer. Everyone who feels a call organizes such folks as he, or she, can reach, for any work or any purpose that seems fit, and sends out appeals for money. The graduates of the schools and the colleges are organized to boost the college or the school; members of religious sects are organized and listed for the purposes of their societies; labor organizes; employers organize;

charity organizes; in the World almanac is a list of sixty fraternal organizations from Free Masons to Sons of Temperance, with memberships that sum up to nearly eight millions. And every organization has a treasurer and a system of collecting dues, for the chief end of all organization seems to be to get money to work with, and to get power.

There is matter for thought in all this.

Is organization the chief end of man or is man the chief end of organization?

Organization is an invaluable instrument, but it is also a formidable peril. Maybe it is Jacob's ladder; maybe it is Frankenstein's monster. To dispassionate observers it is perplexing, and to moss-backs it is ominous.

ORGANIZE art and it ceases to be art. Organize religion and it has just a fighting chance to continue to be religion. Organize charity and it loses its flavor. The Roman Catholic Church is a combination of the religion of Christ and the organization of the Roman Empire. They have never got on together without friction, and never will. Methodism is organization applied to Protestants.

Ants and bees organize for industrial purposes; wolves for war; Germans for both. Cattle herd and sheep flock for security and society. There is an instinct for organization in animals, insects, birds and fishes; but lions and eagles go it in pairs or alone.

The Greeks never organized Greece as Bismarck would have done it. They were short in organization but long in art, and the best and most liberal thinkers the world has seen. "Nothing too much" was the motto at Delphi. It applies to organization, a thing indispensable, apparently, to collective life, but in excess, destructive to everything that makes life worth living; useful to get money and power for the organizers, destructive to the liberty and individuality of the organized, though not always to their comfort. Organization always aims to make the mass obey

a leader. And it intends to name the leader.

WHAT effect will it have on the family, the old-fashioned organization on which society relied? Can the family stand so intense a competition? Already organization draws heavily on the family's time and strength.

Is it a habit like rum, and do folks become intoxicated with it and lose their power to resist it; or is it the bread of civilized life, that nobody can spare and that no one consumes to excess?

Really it is worth thinking about, it is going so strong. The telephone, the typewriter, the rise of the stenographer and the office girl, and city life and cheap postage, and now German aggression, have all contributed to a hot-bed growth of it.

It is crowding a good deal, particularly in the detail of its use for raising funds. Somebody will start an insurrection against it soon, in defense of individual life, and we shall see a rapturous organization in defiance of organization and to give force to refusal to be organized by anyone for anything.

Then shall many typewriters cease to click, and telephones be hung up, and postal revenues fall off, and office ladies sit listless, and lists of givers accumulate dust, and pitchers go no more to the well, and it will seem like a chapter out of Ecclesiastes. And what will become of the periodical and advertising business, heaven knows! But it will be some time yet before all that happens,—not till after the war, at any rate.

Perhaps if superorganized Germany is beaten, the world will feel safe again and the organizers will take a little rest.

E. S. M.

## A Low Down Trick

HARDUPPE: What is your opinion of Flubdub's honesty?

BORROWELL: Mighty poor. He actually came around to my house and stole an umbrella I had borrowed from him.