management of affairs into their own hands. For over a decade Dr. Sun
Yat-sen and other Chinese of courage and ability, mostly those with a
Western education, have been busily engaged in secretly preaching
revolutionary doctrines among their fellow countrymen and preparing for
a general outbreak. They collected numerous followers and a large sum
of money. The revolutionary propaganda was being spread country-wide,
among the gentry and soldiers, and even among enlightened government
officials, in spite of governmental persecution and strict vigilance.
Revolutionary literature was being widely circulated, notwithstanding
the rigid official censorship.

Added to all this are the ever important economic causes. Famines and
floods in recent years have greatly intensified the already strong
feeling of discontent and unrest, and served to pile up more fuel for
the general conflagration.

In short, the whole nation was like a forest of dry leaves which needed
but a single fire spark to make it blaze. Hence, when the revolution
broke out on the memorable 10th of October, 1911, at Wu-Chang, it
spread like a forest fire. Within the short period of two weeks
fourteen of the eighteen provinces of China proper joined in the
movement one after another with amazing rapidity. Everywhere people
welcomed the advent of the revolutionary army as the drought-stricken
would rejoice at the coming rain, or the hungry at the sight of food.
The great wave of democratic sentiment which had swept over Europe,
America, and the islands of Japan at last reached the Chinese shore,
and is now rolling along resistlessly over the immense empire toward
its final goal--a world-wide democracy.




A STEP TOWARD WORLD PEACE

THE UNITED STATES ARBITRATION TREATIES A.D. 1912

HON. WILLIAM H. TAFT

Later generations will doubtless note, as one of the main
manifestations of our present age, its progress in international
arbitration, in the substitution of justice for force as the means of
deciding disputes between nations. On March 7, 1912, the United States
Senate, after months of argument, finally agreed to ratify two
arbitration treaties which President Taft had arranged with England and
France. True, the Senate, before thus establishing the treaties, struck
out their most far-reaching article, an agreement that every
disagreement whatsoever should be referred to a Joint High Commission.
Without this clause the treaties still leave a bare possibility of
warfare over questions of "national honor" or "national policy"; but
practically they put an end to war forever as between the United States
and its two great historic rivals.

These two treaties were the last and most important of 154 such
arbitration treaties arranged since the recent inauguration of the
great World Peace movement. They are here described by President Taft
himself in an article reprinted with his approval from the _Woman's
Home Companion._ His work as a leader in the cause of peace is likely
to be remembered as the most important of his administration. In 1913
his purpose was carried forward by William J. Bryan as the United
States Secretary of State. Mr. Bryan evolved a general "Plan of
Arbitration," which during the first year of its suggestion was adopted
by thirty-one of the smaller nations to govern their dealings with the
United States. Thus the strong promises international justice to the
weak.

The development of the doctrine of international arbitration,
considered from the standpoint of its ultimate benefits to the human
race, is the most vital movement of modern times. In its relation to
the well-being of the men and women of this and ensuing generations, it
exceeds in importance the proper solution of various economic problems
which are constant themes of legislative discussion or enactment. It is
engaging the attention of many of the most enlightened minds of the
civilized world. It derives impetus from the influence of churches,
regardless of denominational differences. Societies of noble-minded
women, organizations of worthy men, are giving their moral and material
support to governmental agencies in their effort to eliminate, as
causes of war, disputes which frequently have led to armed conflicts
between nations.

The progress already made is a distinct step in the direction of a
higher civilization. It gives hope in the distant future of the end of
militarism, with its stupendous, crushing burdens upon the working
population of the leading countries of the Old World, and foreshadows a
decisive check to the tendency toward tremendous expenditures for
military purposes in the western hemisphere. It presages at least
partial disarmament by governments that have been, and still are,
piling up enormous debts for posterity to liquidate, and insures to
multitudes of men now involuntarily doing service in armies and navies
employment in peaceful, productive pursuits.

Perhaps some wars have contributed to the uplift of organized society;
more often the benefits were utterly eclipsed by the ruthless waste and
slaughter and suffering that followed. The principle of justice to the
weak as well as to the strong is prevailing to an extent heretofore
unknown to history. Rules of conduct which govern men in their
relations to one another are being applied in an ever-increasing degree
to nations. The battle-field as a place of settlement of disputes is
gradually yielding to arbitral courts of justice. The interests of the
great masses are not being sacrificed, as in former times, to the
selfishness, ambitions, and aggrandizement of sovereigns, or to the
intrigues of statesmen unwilling to surrender their scepter of power.
Religious wars happily are specters of a medieval or ancient past, and
the Christian Church is laboring valiantly to fulfil its destiny of
"Peace on earth."

If the United States has a mission, besides developing the principles
of the brotherhood of man into a living, palpable force, it seems to me
that it is to blaze the way to universal arbitration among the nations,
and bring them into more complete amity than ever before existed. It is
known to the world that we do not covet the territory of our neighbors,
or seek the acquisition of lands on other continents. We are free of
such foreign entanglements as frequently conduce to embarrassing
complications, and the efforts we make in behalf of international peace
can not be regarded with a suspicion of ulterior motives. The spirit of
justice governs our relations with other countries, and therefore we
are specially qualified to set a pace for the rest of the world.

The principle and scope of international arbitration, as exemplified in
the treaties recently negotiated by the United States with Great
Britain and France, should commend itself to the American people. These
treaties go a step beyond any similar instruments which have received
the sanction of the United States, or the two foreign Powers specified.
They enlarge the field of arbitrable subjects embraced in the treaties
ratified by the three governments in 1908. They lift into the realm of
discussion and hearing, before some kind of a tribunal, many of the
causes of war which have made history such a sickening chronicle of
ravage and cruelty, bloodshed and desolation.

After years of patient endeavor by men of various nations, and despite
many obstacles and discouragements, there has been established at The
Hague a Permanent Court of Arbitration, to which contending governments
may submit certain classes of controversies for adjudication. This
court has already justified its creation and existence by the
settlement of contentions which in other days led to disastrous wars,
and even in this enlightened age might have precipitated serious
ruptures. The United States Government, as represented by the National
Administration, is ready to utilize this method of settling
international disputes to a greater extent than ever before. That is,
we are willing to refer to this tribunal, or a similar one, questions
which heretofore have been left entirely to diplomatic negotiation.

The treaties go further by providing for the creation of a Joint High
Commission, to which shall be referred, for impartial and conscientious
investigation, any controversy between this Government, on one hand,
and Great Britain or France, on the other hand, before such a
controversy has been submitted to an arbitral body from which there is
no appeal.

And, assuming that governments, like individuals, do not always
display, while a dispute is in progress, that calmness of judgment and
equipoise which are so consistent with righteous deportment, provision
is made for the passion to subside and the blood to cool, by deferring
the reference of such controversy to the Joint High Commission for one
year. This affords an opportunity for diplomatic adjustment without an
appeal to the commission.

The plan of submission to a joint high commission, composed of three
citizens or subjects of one party and the same number of another, is a
concession to the fear of being too tightly bound to an adverse
decision made manifest in the objections of the Senate committee,
because it may well be supposed that two out of three citizens or
subjects of one party would not decide that an issue was arbitrable
under the treaty against the contention of their own country unless it
were reasonably clear that the issue was justiciable under the first
clause of the treaty.

Ultimately, I hope, we shall come to submit our quarrels to an
international arbitral court that will have power finally to decide
upon the limits of its own jurisdiction, and in which the form of
procedure by the complaining country shall be fixed, and the
obligations of the country complained of, to answer in a form
prescribed, shall be recognized and definite, and the judgment shall be
either acquiesced in, or enforced. These treaties are a substantial
step, but a step only, in that direction, and the feature of the
binding character of the decision of the Joint High Commission as to
the arbitral character of the question is the most distinctive advance
in the right direction. Do not let us give up this feature without
using every legitimate effort to retain it.

An understanding of the term _justiciable_ may be essential to a full
comprehension of the significance and scope of these treaties.
Questions involving boundary lines, the rights of fishermen in waters
bordering upon countries with contiguous territory, the use of
water-power, the erection of structures on frontiers, outrages upon
aliens, are examples of justiciable subjects, and these are made
susceptible of adjudication and decision under these treaties. It is
now proposed to establish a permanent method of disposing of such
questions without preliminary quarrels and menaces whose result may
never be foreseen.

Certain questions of governmental or traditional policy are by their
very nature excluded from the consideration of the Joint High
Commission, or even the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
Such specific exemptions it is not necessary to set forth in the
treaties. Objection has been made that under the first section of the
pending pacts it might be claimed that we would be called upon to
submit to arbitration of the Monroe Doctrine, or our right to exclude
foreign peoples from our shores, or the question of the validity of
southern bonds issued in reconstruction days.

The Monroe Doctrine is not a justiciable question, but one of purely
governmental policy which we have followed for nearly a century, and in
which the countries of Europe have generally acquiesced. With respect
to the exclusion of immigrants, it is a principle of international law
that every country may admit only those whom it chooses. This is a
subject of domestic policy in which no foreign country can interfere
unless it is covered by a treaty, and then it may become properly a
matter of treaty construction.

With reference to the right to involve the United States in a
controversy over the obligation of certain Southern States to pay bonds
issued during reconstruction, which have been repudiated, it is
sufficient to say that the pending treaties affect only cases hereafter
arising, and the cases of the Southern bonds all arose years ago.

After a time, if our treaties stand the test of experience and prove
useful, it is probable that all the greatest Powers on earth will come
under obligation to arbitrate their differences with other nations.
Naturally, the smaller nations will do likewise, and then universal
arbitration will be more of an actuality than an altruistic dream.

The evil of war, and what follows in its train, I need not dwell upon.
We could not have a higher object than the adoption of any proper and
honorable means which would lessen the chance of armed conflicts. Men
endure great physical hardships in camp and on the battle-field. In our
Civil War the death-roll in the Union Army alone reached the appalling
aggregate of 359,000. But the suffering and perils of the men in the
field, distressing as they are to contemplate, are slight in comparison
with the woes and anguish of the women who are left behind. The hope
that husband, brother, father, son may be spared the tragic end which
all soldiers risk, when they respond to their country's call, buoys
them up in their privations and heart-breaking loneliness. But theirs
is the deepest pain, for the most poignant suffering is mental rather
than physical. No pension compensates for the loss of husband, son, or
father. The glory of death in battle does not feed the orphaned
children, nor does the pomp and circumstance of war clothe them. The
voice of the women of America should speak for peace.




TRAGEDY OF THE "TITANIC"

THE SPEED CRAZE AND ITS OUTCOME A.D. 1912

WILLIAM INGLIS

No other disaster at sea has ever resulted in such loss of human life
as did the sinking of the _Titanic_ on the night of April 15, 1912.
Moreover, no other disaster has ever included among its victims so many
people of high position and repute and real value to the world. The
_Titanic_ was on her first voyage, and this voyage had served to draw
together many notables. She was advertised as the largest steamer in
the world and as the safest; she was called "unsinkable." The ocean
thus struck its blow at no mean victim, but at the ship supposedly the
queen of all ships.

Through the might of the great tragedy, man was taught two lessons. One
was against boastfulness. He has not yet conquered nature; his
"unsinkable" masterpiece was torn apart like cardboard and plunged to
the bottom. The other and more solemn teaching was against the speed
mania, which seems more and more to have possessed mankind. His autos,
his railroads, even his fragile flying-machines, have been keyed up for
record speed. The _Titanic_ was racing for a record when she perished.

Her loss has created almost a revolution in ocean traffic. "Let us go
more slowly!" was the cry. Safety became the chief advertisement of the
big ship lines; and speed, Speed the adored, shriveled into the
dishonored god of a moment's madness.

The wreck of the steamship _Titanic_, of the White Star Line, the
newest and biggest and presumably the safest ship in the world, is the
greatest marine disaster known in the history of ocean traffic. She ran
into an iceberg off the Banks of Newfoundland at 11.40 Sunday night,
April 14th, and at twenty minutes past two sank in two miles of ocean
depth. More than fifteen hundred lives were lost and a few more than
seven hundred saved.

The _Titanic_ was a marvel of size and luxury. Her length was 882-1/2
feet--far exceeding the height of the tallest buildings in the
world--her breadth of beam was 92 feet, and her depth from topmost deck
to keel was 94 feet. She was of 45,000 tons register and 66,000 tons
displacement. Her structure was the last word in size, speed, and
luxury at sea. Her interior was like that of some huge hotel, with wide
stairways and heavy balustrades, with elevators running up and down the
height of nine decks out of her twelve; with swimming-pools, Turkish
baths, saloons, and music-rooms, and a little golf-course on the
highest deck. Her master was Capt. E. J. Smith, a veteran of more than
thirty years' able and faithful service in the company's ships, whose
only mishap had occurred when the giant _Olympic_, under his command,
collided with the British cruiser _Hawke_ in the Solent last September.
He was exonerated because the great suction exerted by the _Olympic_ in
a narrow channel inevitably drew the two vessels together.

There were over 2,200 people aboard the _Titanic_ when she left
Southampton on Wednesday for her maiden voyage--325 first-cabin
passengers, 285 second-cabin, 710 steerage, and a crew of 899. Among
that ship's company were many men and women of prominence in the arts,
the professions, and in business. Colonel John Jacob Astor and his
bride, who was Miss Madeleine Force, were among them; also Major
Archibald Butt, military aide to President Taft; Charles M. Hays,
president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, with his family; William
T. Stead, of the London _Review of Reviews_; Benjamin Guggenheim, of
the celebrated mining family; G. D. Widener, of Philadelphia; F. D.
Millet, the noted artist; Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus; J. Thayer,
vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad; J. Bruce Ismay, chairman
of the White Star Line's board of directors; Henry B. Harris,
theatrical manager; Colonel Washington Roebling, the engineer; Jacques
Futrelle, the novelist; and Henry Sleeper Harper, a grandson of Joseph
Wesley Harper, one of the founders of the house of Harper & Brothers.

As the _Titanic_ was leaving her pier at Southampton there came a sound
like the booming of artillery. The passengers thronging to the rail saw
the steamship _New York_ slowly drawing near. The movement of the
_Titanic's_ gigantic body had sucked the water away from the quay so
violently that the seven stout hawsers mooring the _New York_ to her
pier snapped like rotten twine, and she bore down on the giant ship
stern first and helpless. The _Titanic_ reversed her engines, and tugs
plucked the _New York_ away barely in time to avoid a bad smash. If any
old sailors regarded this accident as an evil omen, there is little
reason to think the thing affected the spirits of the passengers on the
great floating hotel. As the ship passed the time of day by wireless
with her distant neighbors out of sight beyond the horizon of the ocean
lanes, she reported good weather, machinery working smoothly, all going
well.

For some reason the great fleet of icebergs which drifts south of Cape
Race every summer moved down unusually early this year. The _Carmania_,
three days in advance of the _Titanic_, ran into the ice-field on
Thursday. The ship at reduced speed dodged about, avoiding enormous
bergs along her course, while far away on every hand glinted the
shining high white sides of many more of the menacing ice mountains.
Passengers photographed the brilliant monsters. The steamship
_Niagara_, many leagues astern, reported a slight collision, with no
great harm done. That was enough. Captain Dow retraced his course to
the northeast and, after an hour's steaming, laid a new course for Fire
Island buoy. The presence of the great bergs and accompanying masses of
field-ice so very early in the season was most unusual.

Into this desolate waste of sea came the _Titanic_ on Sunday evening.
She encountered fog, for the region is almost continuously swathed in
the mists raised by the contact of the Arctic current with the warm
waters of the Gulf Stream. Scattered far and wide in every direction
were many icebergs, shrouded in gray, invisible to the eyes of the
sharpest lookouts, lying in wait for their prey.

Not only were the bergs invisible to the keenest eyes, but the sudden
drop in the temperature of the ocean which ordinarily is the warning of
the nearness of a berg was now of no avail; for there were so many of
the bergs and so widely scattered that the temperature of the sea was
uniformly cold. Moreover, the submarine bell, which gives warning to
navigators of the neighborhood of shoal water, does not signify the
approach of icebergs. The newest ocean giant was in deadly peril,
though probably few of her passengers guessed it, so reassuring are the
huge bulk, the skilful construction, the watertight compartments, the
able captain and crew, to the mind of the landsman. Dinner was long
past, and many of the passengers doubtless turned to thoughts of supper
after hours of talk or music or cards; for there were not many
promenading the cold, foggy decks of the onrushing steamship.

The _Titanic_ was about eight hundred miles to the southeastward of
Halifax, three hundred and fifty miles southeast of treacherous Cape
Race, when her great body dashed, glancing, against an enormous berg.
The discipline and good order for which British captains and British
sailors have long been noted prevailed in this crisis; for it is proven
by the fact that the rescued were nearly all women and children.

From that rich, rushing, gay, floating world, with its saloons and
baths and music-rooms and elevators, now suddenly shattered into
darkness, only one utterance came. Phillips, the wireless operator,
seized his key and telegraphed in every direction the call "S O S!"
Gossiping among telegraphers hundreds of miles apart, messages of
business import, all the scores of things that fill the ocean air with
tremulous whisperings of etheric waves, began to give over their
chattering. Again and again Phillips repeated the letters which spell
disaster until the air for a thousand miles around was electrically
silent. Then he sent his message:

"Have struck an iceberg; badly damaged; rush aid; steamship _Titanic_;
41.46 N., 50.14 W."

There was no other ship in sight. Far as the eye could reach no spot of
light broke the gray darkness; yet other ships could hear and read the
cry for help, and, wheeling in their courses, they drove full speed
ahead for the wreck. The _Baltic_, two hundred miles to the eastward,
bound for Europe, turned back to the rescue; the _Olympic_, still
farther away, hastened to the aid of her sister ship; the _Cincinnati,
Prince Adelbert, Amerika,_ the _Prinz Friederich Wilhelm_, and many
others, abandoned all else to fly to help those in danger. Nearest of
all was the _Carpathia_, bound from New York for Mediterranean ports,
only sixty miles away. And as they all, with forced draft and every
possible device for adding to speed, dashed through the misty night on
their errand of mercy, Phillips, of the _Titanic_, kept wafting from
his key the story of disaster. The thing he repeated oftenest was:
"Badly damaged. Rush aid." Now and then he gave the ship's position in
latitude and longitude as nearly as it could be estimated by her
officers as she was carried southward by the current that runs swiftly
in this northern sea, so that the rescuers could keep their prows
accurately pointed toward the wreck. Soon he began to announce, "We are
down by the head and sinking rapidly." About one o'clock in the morning
the last words from Phillips rippled through the heavy air, "We are
almost gone."

The crew were summoned to their stations; the lifeboats and liferafts
were swiftly provisioned and furnished with water as well as could be
done. Yet this provision could hardly have been very extensive, since
it has long been an accepted axiom of the sea that the modern giant
ships are indestructible, or at least unsinkable.

"Women and children first," the order long enforced among all decent
men who use the sea, was the word passed from man to man as the boats
were filled, the boatfalls rattled, and the frail little cockleshells
were lowered into the calm sea. What farewells there were on those dark
and reeking decks between husbands and wives and all other men and
women of the same family one can hardly dare think about. Steadily the
work of filling the boats and lowering away went on until the last
frail craft had been dropped upon the ocean from the sides of the liner
and the whole little fleet rose and fell on the sea beside the great
black hulk. And when the last crowded boat had come down and there was
no possibility of removing one more human being from the wreck, there
were still more than fifteen hundred men on her decks. So far had
belief in the invulnerability of the modern ship curtailed sane and
proper provision for taking care of her people in time of calamity.

One can imagine with what frantic but impotent hope, as the sinking
decks and menacing plash of waters within told of the imminent last
plunge, those thousands of eyes strained at the misty wall of grayish
black that enclosed them on every hand. Not one gleam of light in any
quarter. The last horrible gurglings within the waterlogged shell of
steel that a little while before had been the proudest ship of all the
seas told unmistakably that the end was at hand. Down by the head went
the giant _Titanic_ at twenty minutes past two o'clock on Monday
morning, April 15th. And she took fifteen hundred people with her.

Four hours passed before the shivering people in the small boats heard
the siren whistle that announced the approach of a steamship from the
south. There was a heavy fog and they could not see one hundred fathoms
off over the clashing and grinding ice that floated in fields on every
side. Soon after seven o'clock in the morning the ship came in sight
and presently hove to among the fleet of boats and liferafts--the
steamship _Carpathia_, out of New York on April 11th for Mediterranean
ports. She began at once to take aboard the survivors, and in a few
hours had every boat hoisted aboard. The _Olympic_ and _Baltic_,
learning by wireless that the rescues had all been effected, proceeded
on their way.

The _Virginian_ and the _Parisian_, which arrived at the scene of the
disaster a few hours later, could find no sign of any living person
afloat, though they cruised for a long time among the wreckage before
standing away on their courses. The _Carpathia_ at first was headed for
Halifax, but upon learning by wireless that that harbor was ice-bound,
Mr. J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the Board of Directors of the White
Star Line, suggested that the ship head for New York. This was done.
The _Carpathia_, with nine hundred passengers of her own and the seven
hundred survivors, reached New York in safety.

The sad international tragedy of the sinking of the _Titanic_ touched
men's souls more deeply than any other disaster in many years. To
English-speaking races in particular the horror of the occasion pressed
close home; for here was the best of British ships bearing many of the
most prominent of America's people. To these seasoned voyagers,
crossing the Atlantic had become a mere pleasant trifle, seeming no
more dangerous than an afternoon's shopping in town. Then suddenly
there was thrust upon all of them that ancient, awful knowledge that
"in the midst of life we are in death."

Both American passengers and English crew lived up to the best
traditions of their race. There was no panic, no fighting for places in
the boats on the doomed ship. On the contrary, people refused to
believe in the imminence of danger. The idea that the ship was
unsinkable had been so borne in on them that even when summoned upon
deck and ordered to put on life-belts, many of them refused. In the
first boats gotten away from the ship, there were not many people. Some
refused to climb down through the deep blackness into the tiny craft.
They thought the tumult all an empty scare that would soon pass.

When the steady, ominous settling of the huge ship's bulk broke through
this shallow confidence, there was a solemn change. Grand and tender
scenes there were on those sinking decks; of husbands and wives parting
with the utterance of a hope, turned suddenly to terror, that they
would soon meet again; of other wives who refused to leave their
husbands and deliberately stayed to share their fate. Few of the more
noted passengers were among those saved. Bruce Ismay, director of the
steamship line, was one. The captain went down with his ship, as did
most of his officers, though some of the latter saved themselves by
clinging to the wreckage which rose after the vessel's plunge. While
she was sinking her band still played "Nearer, my God, to thee," and
other earnest hymns. Death did not find the old Saxon stock cringing
from him with hysteria and frenzy. Sudden as was his coming, wholly
unexpected as was his hideous visage, he was met with the calm courage
which is the best tradition of the race.

And what have been the consequences of this overwhelming tragedy? An
investigation was immediately begun in America by the United States
Government. Another, slower, dignified and ponderous, was afterward
undertaken by the British Government. Both of them in the end
attributed the disaster to practically the same cause, the speed mania
which has overtaken the nations, the heedlessness of man's
over-confidence which takes risks so many times successfully that it
grows to forget that risks exist.

The _Titanic's_ captain wanted to make a record on her maiden voyage.
His directors wanted him to make a record. That would mean increased
advertisement and increased traffic for their line. So in the face of
danger, knowing there were icebergs all around him, the captain rushed
his ship blindly ahead. The chance of his actually hitting an iceberg
was scarce one in a hundred. So he took the chance. The probability
that if he did strike an iceberg it could do irreparable damage to his
stout ship, was scarce one in a hundred. So he took that chance also.
He gambled with Death, as a thousand speed-driven captains had gambled
before. This time it was Death's turn to win.

A gamble even more reprehensible was that of the steamship companies,
who had grown so sure their ships would not sink that they no longer
provided sufficient means of escape from them. Why load a vessel down
with useless life-boats, which only hung the year in and year out,
blocking up space? Every foot of that space was valuable. It might make
room for an extra passenger, or provide an extra amusement to draw
traffic. What voyager ever counted life-boats, or worked out the awful
calculation, so obvious now, that there was only rescue space provided
for one-third of the number of souls aboard? Was not the ship
"unsinkable" after all?

The _Titanic_ is gone. Our sorrow for her is becoming but a memory. Our
ships carry lifeboats sufficient now; they are compelled to by law. And
our sea captains run on safer lines; that, too, the law has made
compulsory. But it will be long before man's overweening
self-confidence rises from the shock which has been given to his belief
in his mechanical ability. Nature is not conquered yet. Ocean has still
a strength beyond ours. Ships are not unsinkable; and Death will still
take his toll of bold men's lives in the future as he has done in the
past. We know that cowardice costs more than courage, but it is not so
tragically costly as blind foolhardiness.




OUR PROGRESSING KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE SURGERY PERPETUATES THE BODY'S ORGANS

A.D. 1912

GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT Prof. R. LEGENDRE

Several years ago a wealthy Swedish manufacturer of dynamite left, by
his will, a fund for the providing of a large prize to be conferred
each year upon the person who has accomplished most for the peaceful
progress of mankind. This annual sum of forty thousand dollars, which
is called from its donor the "Nobel prize," was, in October, 1912,
conferred upon a surgeon, Dr. Alexis Carrel, for his remarkable work in
the study of the life of the tissues and organs which exist in the
human body.

Even before this public recognition of his work, Dr. Carrel had in the
summer of 1912 created a furor among the savants of Paris by the
announcement of what he had accomplished. Carrel, though a native-born
Frenchman, is an American by education and citizenship, and the French
were at first inclined to challenge the value of his work. We therefore
present here a "popular" scientific account of what he had achieved,
reprinted by permission from the _Scientific American_. Then comes the
grudging approval of Professor Legendre, the noted "Preparator of
Zoology," head of that section in the National Museum of Paris.

Briefly stated, the impressive step which science has here taken, is
the preservation of life in the heart and other organs so that these
may be taken out of the body and yet kept alive for months. With
smaller animals Carrel has even accomplished the actual transferrence
of organs from one individual to another. As for the simpler bodily
tissues, it now seems possible to preserve these indefinitely outside
the body, not only alive but in excellent health and ready to reassume
their functions in another body.


GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT


THE "IMMORTALITY" OF TISSUES

A very evident disadvantage under which medical science has labored has
been the impossibility of watching the chemical process set in motion
by substances introduced into the body. For this reason various
experimenters, from time to time, have attempted to "grow tissues"
artificially, in such manner that their development, functions, and
decay--under both healthy and diseased conditions--might be studied
under the microscope. The only way in which this could be done would be
to take a piece of living tissue from the body, and cause its cells to
multiply; tissue being made up of an aggregation of cells.

Science has failed to produce a single living cell, that is, a cell
which will undergo the process of nuclear division (growth) which is
the prime condition of its being; and it seemed equally impossible to
cause a cell already living to undergo the same process if deprived of
the circulation of the blood. Therefore, when in 1910 it was announced
that Dr. Alexis Carrel with his assistant, Dr. M. T. Burrows, had
succeeded, scientific credulity was taxed. A well-known French savant
expressed the opinion before the Society of Biology in Paris, that as
others experimenting along these lines, had witnessed only degeneration
and survival of cells, this phenomenon was all Carrel's discovery
amounted to. In view of past experience, indeed, the chances were in
favor of a mistake. In 1897, Leo Loeb said that he had produced this
artificial growth both within and without the body. Obviously, such
development within the organism where the process of utilizing the
body-fluids, etc., follows the same course as in nature, takes on the
character of grafting rather than of cultivating in a culture medium.
As to causing the external growth, it was ten years later before it
seems first to have succeeded. In 1907 Harrison, from Johns Hopkins
University, furnished details of his research in such form as to be
convincing. But his work had reference to the growth of tissues only of
coldblooded animals, he having cultivated artificially, nerve fibers
from the central nervous system of the frog.

Carrel's work consisted in extending Harrison's method to apply to
warm-blooded animals, including, of course, mammals; he having
primarily in view at this time a more precise knowledge of the laws
governing the restoration of tissues, for example, after serious
surgical wounds. He and his assistant worked steadily to this end, and
succeeded. The tissues of the higher animals, including man, can now be
developed in a culture, and such development can be made to correspond
to a rigidly precise technique. The feat is accomplished by putting
minute pieces of living tissue into a plasmatic (blood) medium which
will coagulate. So complicated is this apparently simple matter in its
application that only the most exquisite surgical skill is proof
against incalculable modifications in results.

Having obtained evidence that tissue can be cultivated in accordance
with a formula that may be relied upon to give definite results, the
effort was made to grow artificially the various malignant (cancerous)
tissues, in turn, of chicken, rat, dog, and human being. Cancerous
tissue invariably developed cancer, and so rapidly and extensively that
the growth could be observed with the naked eye.

It now became evident that, under the right circumstances, the
artificial growth of tissues could be utilized in the study of many
problems; such as malignant growth of tissue; certain problems in
immunity, as, for example, the production of antitoxins of certain
organisms; the regulation of the growth of the organism, or of
different parts of the organism; rejuvenation and senility; and the
character of the internal secretions of the glands, such as the thyroid
which plays a role most important in physical and mental development.
The difficulty lay in the fact that the artificial growth was so very
short-lived. It was found that by passing the growth into a new medium,
and repeating the process, the tissues would begin to grow again; but
their life even under these circumstances was limited at the most to
twenty days. This was manifestly too short a time in which to study the
fundamental questions to which the researchers had addressed
themselves. Thereupon, study was taken up to determine the question as
to _what made these tissues die_. It was found that, apparently as
incidental to growth, there was the process of decay, due to an
_inability of the tissues to eliminate waste products._

On January 17, 1912, experiments were commenced to determine whether
these effects could be overcome. The observations were on the heart and
blood-vessels, artificially grown, of the chicken fetus. These growths
were put into a salt solution for a few minutes at different periods of
their growth, and then placed in a new plasmatic medium. It was found
that by following this method, the tissues could be made to live
indefinitely. When an animal is in the early stages of its development,
the growth of its tissues is necessarily greater as it matures, there
being steady diminution after a certain age until the growth altogether
ceases, and the size of the animal is determined. But it was found by
subjecting these artificial growths to washings in salt solution that
the mass was _fifteen times greater at the end of than at the
commencement of the third month, showing that they do not grow old at
all!_ In the artificial growth the problem of senility and death is
solved.

It was the announcement of this "permanent life of tissues" that caused
such a furor in Paris last summer, and several eminent scientists to
demand ocular demonstration, because "the discovery, if true,
constituted the greatest scientific advance of a generation."

The following summary of this interesting and vitally important and
epoch-making work of Carrel is translated from an article published in
Paris recently by Professor Pozzi, who witnessed the experiments:

"Carrel found that the pulsations of a fragment of heart, which had
diminished in number and intensity _or ceased_, could be revived to the
normal state by a washing and a passage. In a secondary culture, two
fragments of heart, separated by a free space, beat as strongly and
regularly. The larger fragment contracted 92 times a minute and the
smaller 120 times. For three days, the number and intensity of the
pulsations varied slightly. On the fourth day, the pulsations
diminished considerably in intensity. The large fragment beat 40 times
a minute and the little fragment 90 times. The culture was washed and
placed in a new medium. An hour and a half after, the pulsations had
become very strong. The large fragment contracted 120 times a minute
and the small fragment 160 times. At the same time the fragments grew
rapidly. At the end of eight hours they were united and formed a mass
of which all the parts beat synchronically."

Experiments to date seem to establish that the connective tissue, at
any rate, is "immortal."

From this research, it is possible to arrive at certain logical
conclusions, which, however, it remains for the future to confirm. One,
and the most important, is that the normal circulation of the blood
does not succeed in freeing all the waste products of the tissues, and
that this is the cause of senility and death. Were science to find some
way to wash the tissues in the living organism as they have been washed
in these cultures, man's life might be indefinitely prolonged.


R. LEGENDRE

The Nobel prize in medicine for 1912 has just been awarded to Dr.
Alexis Carrel, a Frenchman, of Lyon, now employed at the Rockefeller
Institute of New York, for his entire work relating to the suture of
vessels and the transplantation of organs.

The remarkable results obtained in these fields by various
experimenters, of whom Carrel is most widely known, and also the
wonderful applications made of them by certain surgeons have already
been widely published.

The journals have frequently spoken lately of "cultures" of tissues