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FOOTPATH AND HIGHWAY

By THE PEDESTRIAN

THE PEDESTRIAN MIND

EOPLE generally walk because they cannot afford to ride.
For my part, I have long cherished the notion that few

of us can really afford to ride; and like most cherished notions, it has grown into a conviction with me. Of course a

great deal may be said for walking, in a purely physical sense it is not a mere accident of some passing civilization, like chariots and sedan-chairs, but is one of the few things, like loving and eating, which has been common to all generations of men.

But I am thinking rather of the advantages of mental pedes trianism. It is with some alarm, I confess, that I observe the increase in vehicular traffic of this mental sort. The pedestria mind doesn't get very far in one day, to be sure, but it has ampl opportunity to see where it is going. It proceeds slowly enoug to observe and record. It can stop altogether when it gets tired -a great virtue truly, for it is not likely to mistake motion an sound for progress.

it

Then, too, your mind afoot is not confined to the highroa may follow by-paths; it may even explore unbroken wilds;it is not bound to the automotive "wheel of things." I dor make much of the fact that it can climb a tree, for Fords, th say, can do that too, though I do say for it that it still looks li a mind after its arboreal excursion.

But the great advantage of the pedestrian mind, to my thir ing, is that, while it makes retirement possible, it is not "retir leisure." It has to work to get on; it moves often with the gre procession of mankind. It knows, on the one hand, the sta solitude, the high mountain where one may pray, and, on other, the crowded highroad where the race is to be run without dust and heat."

ARE YOU A BOTH-ANDER?

"Which side are you going to take, Liberal or Conservative?', said a friend to me not long ago, as we approached a house of

controversy.

"Why should I take either side?" I answered,-"especially when I am not sure what either means."

"That's No Man's Land," he said; "you'll get shot if you don't take sides."

Like most of us, my friend was an either-or person, brought up on the foolish proverb that you can't have your cake and eat it too. Why not a both and state of mind for a change? It might be diverting to be both liberal and conservative; and in point of intelligibility, it would be emphatically lucid compared to the either or position of most people who call themselves one or the other. For the great alternatives, opposites though they may once have been, seem to be fairly interchangeable nowadays. Liberty, for instance, would seem to get on about as well when it assumes the engaging rôle of Tyranny as it did when it paraded with Equality and Fraternity or when it "inhered," among our forefathers, "in some sensible object." What a slogan, Liberty and Tyranny, one and inseparable! Perish the thought! Very well, let the thought perish, but, Mr. Voter, meet the fact.

All a man has to do, it would seem, is to pronounce his notions good and loud, and we follow like sheep or attack like wolves. A senator comes out with the astonishing discovery that the next political issue will be between progressives and reactionaries. Some papers, it is refreshing to note, are serious enough to treat this pronunciamento with the persiflage it deserves, but a great many editors, and their readers with them, are foolish enough to imagine that he has said something and so get themselves into a hopelessly either or state of passion over it. Incidentally, even his hostile critics give him the sort of free advertising that Barnum loved. Men and women evidently must be forever taking sides and biting their thumbs across the street at one another, sometimes when there is no issue at all, at other times when the issue is "highly unimportant to Gods and men.'

There's Mr. Bryan now, with his notions about Fundamentalism. I should have supposed that anything fundamental in

religion had primarily to do with truth and its rock-bottom basis, but very likely that's just an odd fancy of mine; at all events, Mr. Bryan and his adherents, unquestionably audible, have revealed that the fundamental thing is to decide whether your wife is descended from a monkey or from one of Adam's ribs. Most of the American people find it easy to take sides on this question. I don't. I'll admit it's disquieting to reflect that your wife's ancestry may be Simian,-it's rather disillusioning when you thought you had married a goddess; awkward, too, to break it to the children; but I confess to as much discomfiture when I reflect that I may be wedded to a spare rib. Also there's an unpleasant suggestion of the charnel house; to this favor we knew we should come at the last, but to think of happy living men everywhere wedded to bones-pah! "mine ache to think on't!" But that's a digression. The point is that Mr. Bryan his sheep, and his wolves, are either-or people. How they bite their thumbs!

Now of course there's no objection to taking sides when you know what you mean and the cause is worth fighting for. Pro fessor Root's article on "The Virtue of Intolerance" a few year ago was a fine rebuke to those vacillating creatures who fancie that because their brains were shallow they must be broad They are still at large among us, but they are not both-an people just because they fail to be either-or people. In fac they are really either-ors thinly disguised: they are so con mitted to the process of selecting alternatives that, after pe suading themselves that they are not either—or bigots, they lea to the conclusion that they must be both—and prophets. Bett to be frankly either—or than that, even if it does commit you Simian frolic or to the conjugal felicity of a sarcophagus.

Then, of course, there's such a thing, now that we're speaki of marriage, as too wide a range of sympathies; but even marriage we reveal our predisposition to alternatives,—we ta our wives or husbands tandem instead of in teams. It's qu possible, too, that a both-and attitude, even in the closed sh of marriage, might enable us to endure the worse as well as t better, the sickness as well as the health.

In many matters, when you stop to think about it, a both-a attitude is salutary. For instance, why not believe in Capi

and Labor? Why not believe in Science and the Classics? Why not revive the spirit as well as the letter of that fine old phrase, Business and Pleasure? Why not, even, believe in the Bible and Evolution? There's a good deal to be said for walking down the middle of the street. Flying vehicles look dangerous, but they really have a tender regard for pedestrians; they are not half so dangerous as the snares of the sidewalk. Clear calls may come, when one or the other side is the only place; but, till then, let us not rush to the wall merely for the sake of being on a sidewalk. Perhaps we may take counsel from the perennial boy, who replies, when asked whether he will have pie or ice cream, "I'll take both, please." That boy sees life steadily and sees it whole.

The Pedestrian is preparing a series of essays which will appear as
regular contributions under the general title "Footpath and Highway"

Now come only the remembrances of love

(Youth's pulse is stilled and the questing's ended)
Though sometimes heaven sends the miracle,

And the old song, in the old joy blended,

Leaps to the heart once more, exultant and heedless,

As though it were summer again with the whole world roaming
And all else needless

But now come only the remembrances of love

(Youth's gold is gone and the rest is loaming)

While Age stands watch by the shore, silent and dreamless,
Mid the seas foaming

Mr. Levinson Replies

In connection with the monthly debates in THE FORUM, the editors offer to the leader of the debate an opportunity of rebuttal. Mr. Levinson has availed himself of this privilege in the following letter:

Editor of THE FORUM:

It is unfortunate that advocates of peace should be debating one against the other. Rather should the forces of peace be unified under a new Foch, and struggle together against the common enemy. Professor Reeves' article easily divides itself into three parts:

1. Outlawing war, he charges, is a solecism, a grammatical error, a slip in syntax. The learned Professor insists that things can not be outlawed, only persons. Of course, this is the veriest quibble and but for the strong hold it has on my adversary, I should have ignored it. On June 1, 1922, I received a letter from Professor Reeves' associate, Professor Crane, making identically the same point. In answering I called his attention to the great authority of Professor William James who in his essay on the Moral Equivalent of War, says: "I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples.' I also referred to the Resolution of Mr. Root offered at the Washington Arms Conference, providing for outlawing poison gas and submarines. Now, war and poison gas and submarines are things, not persons. And, of course, the

distinction Professor Reeves seeks to m between outlawing war and making i crime, is for all practical purposes a tinction without a difference. Technic ties and quibbles have no place in greatest of all reforms. Our program only brands war as a crime, but it vides for the creation of an internati code of peace and a real judicial substi for war.

2. Professor Reeves contends that plan does not propose to outlaw all w that we look with legal favor on rev tionary wars, defensive wars, etc. Le state once and for all: Our program to outlaw all wars. Revolutionary are already outlawed and should re so. We do not recognize a "defer war" in our plan. But we do say that humanly impossible to prevent a man nation from defending himself or against actual attack. And in the n words of Senator Borah: "Revoluti the people's right of self-defense." revolutions, as history knows them domestic, are intra-national in char and are always directed against ex government and law, and therefor illegal and criminal. Why should a liberation be criminal and a war of quest be lawful? Washington ra gauntlet of felony, but Napoleon an Kaiser violated no known law. Th answers Professor Reeves' commer our Civil War. That was a dispu between states, but between the U States and a state menacing the int of the Union. It was purely dome character and the rebellion was un