Regulation and control required only horse-sense and a little vision. Resolution and earnestness, accompanied by justice and fair-dealing, make a combination that few Indians can resist. The man who fails in the Southwest Indian country is the one who ignores his people’s conception of fair play, and who forgets to keep his word. There have been white men among the Hopi-Navajo who, unmindful of their own two thousand years of background, proposed to correct everything in an afternoon. Discovered in 1540, brought under supervision in the recent eighties, it was and is too big a job for an afternoon. And why not view with sympathetic consideration the problems of the Indian who, having little education and no vote, being practically as inarticulate as a deaf-mute, childish and incompetent, must trust someone, and is inclined to trust the only official he knows? Why not be a decent Indian Agent, out of respect for one’s self? There are relatively few people who know that the United States Indian Service has a history, a tradition as it were, to be honored and lived up to. Few men in the service have the lively curiosity and interest in their charges that is necessary for success among primitive peoples, few who rise above personal prejudice, who can resist feeble enmity. There have been the early-day McLaughlins, Sheltons, and Carrolls, each of whom built himself a Service name by one efficient means or another; but those men have been in the minority. Now the Army officer has a tradition, and the Naval officer has one. Why ought not other Government officials to view their commissions on as high a plane? Should a reader interpose to mention “scandals”—why, to be sure; there have been many; but they have not destroyed the Indian, and they have not ruined the Service. All Departments of the Government have had scandals of greater or less degree. There was a certain Arnold, an army officer of very high rank; but we need not go back so far. There was enough doing in the year of grace, nineteen hundred and twenty-four, and enough is sometimes too much. There have been timber scandals, and land scandals, and oil scandals, as the wealth of the Indian country has been exploited. And there is the scandal—or should be—of manipulation of individual Indian moneys. And the scandal of keeping inefficients in office. And some Indian Agents have gone to jail, and some should be there, accompanied by those who have protected them. All true, and granted. Nevertheless, the body of them have an honorable tradition as old as the United States itself. In 1786, in the Articles of Confederation, consideration was given to Indian affairs. Two superintendents were provided for, who had the “comprehension” of all nations of Indians south of the Ohio River and all west of the Hudson. Their exact “comprehension” was no doubt much smaller than their outlined territories.