EDITORIALS 



The Presidency Since the organization of the Sierra Club in eighteen 

 OF THE Club hundred and ninety-two there has been but one Presi- 



dent — John Muir. A year ago his death left vacant 

 the office which he filled so long and so ably. Professor J. N. Le Conte 

 has been chosen by the Board of Directors to serve as his successor. 

 There is fitness in this choice. The files of the Sierra Club Bulletin 

 bear distinguished testimony to his work as a mountaineer and explorer 

 of the Sierra Nevada. Of the present Board of Directors he is the one 

 who has seen the longest term of service. He was one of the charter 

 members of the Sierra Club, together with his father, Joseph Le Conte. 

 who was in his day the most distinguished geologist of the Pacific Coast. 

 In the office of treasurer, to which Mr. Le Conte was elected in eighteen 

 hundred and ninety-nine, he is now succeeded by Mrs. Marion Randall 

 Parsons. W. F. B. 



John Muir and Members of the Sierra Club will read with pride and 

 James Bryce pleasure the fine tribute paid to our late President, 

 John Muir, by the distinguished author, diplomat and 

 fellow mountaineer. Sir James Bryce. In his letter to the Editor, Dr. 

 Bryce refers to his meeting with Mr. Muir on the occasion of a dinner 

 given by the Directors of the Club in the autumn of 1912. "It was a very 

 great pleasure to me," he writes, "to have had that talk with him and 

 the rest of your party on that evening in San Francisco when I was re- 

 turning from Australia. . . . How often since have I thought of it and 

 wished that your city was not seven thousand miles from here! It is a 

 pleasure to think that our friend's name and services to the world will 

 be commemorated by those superb woods on the slope of Tamalpais 

 which are called after him." Dr. Bryce was President of the British Al- 

 pine Club from 1899 to 1901. W. F, B. 



Mountaineering From the wide-spread ruin wrought by the great 

 AND THE War European war, mountaineering clubs, also, have not 

 been exempt. Although the famous Swiss Alpine Club 

 had an accession of over a thousand members during the past year, its 

 treasury has become so depleted that very little could be done to estab- 

 lish new alpine cabins or to repair old ones. There was found to be a 

 deficit at the end of the year, and for the first time in nearly fifty years no 

 "Year Book" is to be published. 



The Alpine Clubs of Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Aus- 

 tria are prostrated by the scourge of war, and their memberships will be 



