people, and, save in defense, will draw my sword on none." Even when Blair made the tentative offer of command at the instance of Lincoln, Lee was still in doubt. He could not see his way clear to fight against his own people, and at the same time he had no desire to fight against the North. Virginia had not yet adopted the ordinance of secession, and the opposition to such an ordinance was still strong. The Richmond Whig said, "An ordinance of secession in February would have met a prompt rejection at the polls." In the convention in April, 55 of the 143 delegates voted against secession, and even as late as the night previous to the adoption of the ordinance John Tyler, who ardently supported it, 'doubted whether it could have passed. In May when it was submitted to the people for ratification the popular vote was only 96,750 to 32,134 showing the strength of the Union sentiment that still existed in spite of popular passion worked up by political manipulators.

It was not until three days after the ordinance of secession had been adopted by the convention that Lee resigned from the United States Army. He was then urged by the Governor to take command of the Virginia forces, and accepted reluctantly as a duty which he owed the people of his State.

Had a strong and tactful President sat in Buchanan's chair during the critical period preceding Lincoln's inauguration, it is more than probable that he could have fostered a union sentiment which would have kept Virginia from seceding, even if the State had undertaken to maintain the pretense of a Kentucky neutrality. In that event Lee would either have accepted the command of the Federal Army or he would have retired to his estate. He was already fifty-four when the war began and had earned the right to retire in favor of his juniors. In either case he would not have become Commander-inChief of the Confederate Army; the war would not have

been prolonged for four years by his brilliant strategy while the North was educating successful generals, and historians would have a vastly different story to write of a lost cause and the subsequent blunders of reconstruction.

Lincoln and Lee are the two great figures of the civil conflict concerning whom today there is the least difference. of opinion North or South. But if the North is now generous in paying tribute to Lee's character and genius, it must be said that it has never been ungenerous. Grant testifies in his memoirs that "it was not an uncommon thing for my staff officers to hear from Eastern officers, 'Well, Grant has never met Bobby Lee yet,'" and he remarks, with perhaps some little feeling of resentment, that Lee's "praise was sounded throughout the entire North after every action in which he was engaged." If there has been any change of Northern sentiment in the last forty years toward Robert E. Lee, it is to regard him less and less as the defeated Commander-in-Chief of a rebel army and more and more as one of the great military figures-perhaps the greatest military figure-of American history.

ED HOWE

[January 2, 1911]

His full name is Edgar Watson Howe, but he is more commonly known as Ed Howe, and sometimes they call him Old Ed Howe, although he is only fifty-six. For thirty-three years he has edited the Daily Globe out in Atchison, Kan., and now he is rich enough to quit work and loaf with his soul.

According to New York standards, Atchison is not much of a town. Broadway would be bored to death there in fifteen minutes; but Ed Howe put Atchison on

the map and has kept it there year in and year out. He is the spoiled child of Kansas, for the people there have allowed him to remain sane, presumably in the belief that this eccentricity of genius advertised the State. To show the extent to which this coddling has been carried, they even permitted him to discuss the Ossawatomie speech. rationally and intelligently.

Out in Kansas they are mighty fond of Ed Howe, in spite of his incorrigible mental maturity, and the readers of every American newspaper with a competent exchange editor know about the Atchison Globe. The World reprints some of the Globe paragraphs on its editorial page almost every day. But Ed Howe has literary claims too, entirely apart from the hard day-labor of newspapermaking. He wrote a story once entitled "The Story of a Country Town," and if the rewards of literature bore any relation to merit, a million copies of it would have been sold.

We are glad Ed Howe is rich enough to quit work, but we hope he makes enough bad investments so that he will have to turn out an editorial or a paragraph from time to time, for we shall miss him dreadfully.

R. I. P.

[March 23, 1911]

THE sport of kings in New York is dead by its own hand, killed by its own arrogance. Had the men in control kept to the traditions of the noble game, racing their thoroughbreds to see which was the better horse, backing their judgment if they willed but keeping the professional betting-ring a sordid incident to gallant sport, none but fanatics would have attacked them. But when they allowed their splendid thoroughbreds to become mere

markers to be pawed by gamblers, when they became. business partners of the bookmaker, when they deliberately built the whole structure of their support upon his profits and their rake-off, when they took sides in the greedy quarrels between bookmakers and pool-rooms, they were ringing the knell of a sport which they had degraded into a dissipation.

Even when their decadence had brought hostile legislation upon them, horse-racing in the State might still have been saved. But then their stupid law arrogance stepped in. They tried to ridicule the law with golf-ball suits. Some of them at least we believe to have set out to debauch the legislation of the State with corruption funds. And the consequence is that they have drawn down upon themselves the present law, so drastic that it makes them criminally responsible for any bet made within the confines of their race-courses and drives racing from the State.

The fault is theirs, the penalty is the public's. The owner merely ships his stable to Europe or runs his string in other States. The gambler merely substitutes the poolroom for the betting-ring or the stock-ticker for both. But for the thousands of genuine lovers of the race-horse there is no substitute. They can only feel that they would never have been deprived of their legitimate pleasure if there had been less talk about improving the breed of the American race-horses and more attention to improving the breed of American horse-racers.

THE ANNEXATION BOGY

[August 4, 1911]

AT the outset of the Canadian campaign the foes of Reciprocity in the Dominion are busily restuffing with straw the bogy of annexation.

They rely upon the attempts of the Northwestern granger papers to frighten Canadian voters and defeat Reciprocity; upon sensational quotations from other papers which have used annexation as a text for buncombe about "manifest destiny"; and upon one exuberant, illconsidered oratorical outburst of Speaker Champ Clark.

No American statesman of commanding rank has countenanced this folly. President Taft deplores and 'disowns it. Mr. Underwood, the Democratic House leader, and Senator Martin, the Democratic leader in the upper house, have lent themselves to no such spreadeagleism. The press in general has treated the issue with candor and common sense.

So long as slavery lasted, annexation was an issue in American politics. Desiring more slave territory, Southern politicians planned raids on Cuba; they viewed with sympathy Walker's attempt to force slavery upon Nicaragua; they backed that abomination to Northern freesoilers, the war with Mexico. But to forestall the freeState men from casting longing eyes upon Canada in reprisal, the Southerners supported Canadian Reciprocity in 1854.

They reasoned-and keener politicians were never schooled-that the best way to spike the guns of Canadian annexationists was to ease the fret of the boundary upon trade. That is as true today as it was fifty-seven years ago. To take the boundary out of politics, lower or tear down the tariff walls and let trade be no longer reminded of it by senseless daily exactions.

Never since our Civil War has Canadian annexation been more than an academic question. Complete the Reciprocity arrangement and buncombe oratory and protected trusts will give up the futile attempt to make of it an issue.