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The American business world asks scornfully, 'What has the war done for us with its Peace Treaty and the international chaos which has resulted? How has it bettered the economic and political standing of the United States in the world, or bettered business for us at home? Has

it brought us new markets or new trade opportunities? Will this League of Nations idea favor our industrial expansion? Is n't it rather a device to guarantee England possession of German colonies?'

In response to the inquiry as to what suggestion the election gives Germany regarding its future foreign policy, he says that his country is not faced by the alternative of seeking French or English friendship, but rather of seeking American or English friendship, concluding:

Copyright, 1921, by

To be sure, an American-German coalition, of which we have a possible forecast in the recent contract between the Hamburg-American Company and American shipping enterprises, is possible only on a capitalist basis. Any relations we have with the United States will profit principally American capital. But we are faced by the immediate necessity of finding a way out of our present economic misery, by increasing our production and recovering our lost commercial connections.

In other words, Germany's recovery form, but through capitalist alliances. is not to come through socialistic reform, but through capitalist alliances. Apparently, the conservative Socialists of Germany are coming to very much the same conclusion in this respect as the Bolsheviki of Russia.

'LA VOIX NATIONALE,' a Paris republican daily, is jubilant over Mr. Harding's election, observing les fumées Wilsoniennes n'ont jamais été américaines; M. Harding n'est pas l'homme des fumées.'

The United States wish to retain liberty of action toward other nations, and they are right.

French patriots can only endorse that kind of a foreign policy. There never has been, and there never will be an American imperialism. England can spend millions upon our newspapers in order to convince us of the contrary, but we shall know it is not true. . . . The Republican Party of the

United States, I repeat, is the Right, is Reaction in that country. It is essentially conservative The Living Age Co,

and patriotic. It does not wish war, and ardently desires that no occasion for war may arise. Since Germany's defeat, it has observed with attention, and sometimes with disquiet, the course of France. It saw Clemenceau serving as England's valet, and feared for the future of its own relations with this country. American patriots are perfectly aware that England is the worst enemy of the United States and that the Anglo-Japanese alliance has a perfectly clear purpose to hold America in check. Washington is asking itself which France is destined to be its future ally or England's accomplice under duress in the conflict of to-morrow.

Indeed, the interpretations of the Republican victory in the European press are most diverse, and many of them would be extremely novel to our own people.

BERLIN CHILDREN

OCCASIONAL allusions in German newspapers to the conduct and sentiment of children help to illuminate social conditions in that country. The Berlin school authorities reprehend the growing disorderliness of street children, who dance and gesticulate in front of approaching automobiles, so as to endanger their own lives and those of passengers and drivers. Serious accidents have also been caused by children stoning passing automobiles. A person familiar with the strict training of German children before the war will appreciate what this change suggests.

A

Another side to the picture is disclosed by school compositions. teacher who asked his children to write upon, 'How I would spend ten marks,' received among other papers the two following:

Ten marks is very much money. Then I would not need to be hungry and my sister would not either. My mother also would not cry any more. Then people would not scold me because I would not beg of them. When I am big I shall take ten marks from my wages every time and hunt up a poor mother and children who have no father any longer and give it to them, so no one may know how I did it. Then they will not need to be hungry any more, for hunger is the worst thing in the world.

I have no father any more just because of the war. He was always so good and kind and yet they shot him dead. I wish my father would come back and stroke my hair again. There ought to be a big money-box somewhere where every one would put in ten marks. I would ask some kind people to give me ten marks so I could put it in, too. Then when a war was coming again they must use that money to get peace, so that no more children would lose their dear father. With money you can do anything.

The German Red Cross, after inquiries into the underfeeding of children, reports little general distress among country children, whose parents usually produce the food they consume. However, exceptional rural districts are named where nearly half the very young children and school children are underfed, and child mortality is above normal. Of course conditions are much worse in the cities. A tragic fact is that the children often have only a fraction of the clothing they need, which increases their susceptibility to diseases already favored by undernourishment.

THE VANDERLIP CONCESSION

THE English and Continental press have devoted much more space to the Vanderlip concession than the newspapers of our own country. According to the London Times, Mr. Vanderlip refused the request of the British Home Office to see his personal papers and contracts, commenting: 'Why should I try to enlighten your people on conditions in Russia?' Vanderlip described some of his early adventures in Siberia and his discovery of oil there. Among the goods which Russia would receive from the United States under the concession, the most significant item is 30,000,000 schoolbooks, to be printed in America in the Russian language. Among other items are a billion cans of tinned milk and meats, 50,000 typewriters, 2,000,000 tons of rails, 5000 locomotives, 50,000 elec

tric generators and motors, 7,000,000 assorted tools, 100 ocean going steamers, and vast quantities of other itemized supplies. In return, the United States would receive from Russia coal, manganese, timber, grain, oil, and other products to be carried in American ships. Vanderlip said that he had not heard a shot fired during his 60 days' stay in Russia. He highly commended the Moscow theatres and confirmed the report that school children receive better food than adults.

Prefacing its statement that 'no one could hate Bolshevism more strongly than we do,' the Tory London Spectator declares:

It seems to us, from every point of view, desirable that trade with her (Russia) should begin at the first possible moment. . . . It may be objected that this will be tantamount to recommending the blood-stained government of Moscow. In a world which could be run on logical principles, that might be a valid objection, but in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we cannot regard it as such. . . . To sum up, the right attitude toward Russia is to realize that, if Russia does not save herself, she can not be saved. And for the rest, if we can help her at all on the way back to sanity, we can help her by trade.

NEW ZEALAND AND ITS EX-SOLDIERS NEW ZEALAND has succeeded remarkably well, according to a correspondent of the London Times, in 'reabsorbing' its returning soldiers. At the end of September, only 186 were registered as desiring employment, none had been out of work for more than a week, and not a penny was being paid in unemployment subsistence. The entire unemployment benefits expended to date are less than $25,000. This is attributed partly to the success of settling soldiers on the land. No soldier is placed on a farm unless he is fitted for that work by previous experience, or has completed a course in one of the five agricultural training centres. Most of the soldier

settlers are prosperous, the proportion of failures being estimated at only five per cent. The total number settled is nearly 8000 men upon approximately 400,000 acres.

WRANGEL'S EXIT

defeat,

DISCUSSING Wrangel's Philippe Millet, writing in L'Europe Nouvelle, says that public opinion in France favored his recognition in the belief that he was a sincere democrat, who would not repeat the blunders of Denikin and Kolchak, and would win the support of the peasants and common people of Russia. In this respect, he says, the French people were deceived, and the Wrangel campaign was 'an organized lie'-mensonge organisé. The effect of French policy has been to impair the harmony of the Allies and to strengthen the soviet government, or precisely the opposite of what was sought. He concludes: "The only lesson we can draw is that the best policy toward Russia to-day is to do nothing.'

The same journal prints the following anecdote:

When the revolution broke out in Berlin on November 9, 1919, one of Clemenceau's advisers informed him that the Russian Bolsheviki had published the secret documents of the Russian Foreign Office and that the German Bolsheviki would probably do the same with the secret documents of Wilhelmstrasse, and added: 'You've got Briand.'

'How?'

'You've got Briand fast, by the papers relating to the proposed negotiations of Briand, Evans Coppeé, Mérode, and Lanken, between July and September, 1918.'

The suggestion did not fall on a deaf ear. The documents were bought for a good price: One hundred and fifty thousand marks. But, unhappily, experts discovered that the government had been duped. A Bolshevist forger had played a trick on our representatives.

Briand had the matter out with Clemenceau: 'You tried to disgrace me. In order to do it, you have squandered public funds. You will never be president of the Republic.'

And Clemenceau is not president.

BERNHARDI'S NEW BOOK GENERAL VON BERNHARDI, whose book upon the future war brought him into prominence during the late hostilities, has appeared again before the public, with a journal of his trip around the world in 1911 and 1912. We reprint the following quotations and comments from a review in the London Times:

Anyone who is well disposed toward the Free State of North America must wish it a mighty struggle for existence with adversaries of equal rank, so that this people may come to perceive that the greatness of a state cannot be founded merely on material and economic achievements, but that it needs much more: in the first instance those spiritual and moral forces which are altogether wanting in America to-day. In the face of danger the population would come together in national unity; there would be a ripening of moral powers which at present exist only in germ; there would be a development and a hardening of military strength, which, at present, is simply not to be taken seriously; the sense of duty to one's country would become a living reality; out of the stress of action the pursuit of nobler and purer ends would follow than that of mere money-making; love of adventure and personal prowess would be busy, for the well-being of the whole, as it has been hitherto for private interests; finally, in the face of danger there might emerge a high sense of national honor which to-day is present only as national vanity, and from the soil of a great historical tradition there would spring ideals which might shine forth as a beacon to a great and powerful future. What the American Free State needs is a big war.

The Americans are allowed the virtue of hospitality; but there can be no speaking of them as a Kulturvolk. Nor is theirs a Parliamentary republic, for reasons which are explained at length. All the same, it must be understood that

The German Empire can never be a political

danger for the United States. By its geographical position Germany can never attempt to aspire to a world dominion, as England is to-day in fact, and so become a menace to the Union. Should Germany desire to embark on warlike operations against it, she would have not only England but the other Powers of the Triple Entente against her and would be almost instantly barred

from attacking America. . . An aggressive policy for Germany against the Union seems, after all, to be ruled out.

IRISH NOTES

MR. C. F. G. MASTERTON, who was a financial secretary in the Asquith Cabinet at the outbreak of the war, was recently asked at a public meeting he was addressing in Macclesfield, why the government did not prosecute Sir Edward Carson in 1914 when he made the first appeal for a violent settlement of the Irish question 'by preaching rebellion in Ulster and importing German rifles to resist the forces of the Crown.' Mr. Masterton said:

The Cabinet was ready to do so, but Mr. John Redmond and Mr. John Dillon, acting through Mr. Lloyd George, persuaded the Cabinet not to take the step. They argued that in three months' time the Home Rule Bill would become law and that they would then be responsible for the government of Ireland. They asked that they should be allowed to undertake the government of Ireland without being hampered by any feeling created beforehand by the prosecution of Sir Edward Carson. They thought they could overcome what they regarded as the blague of the Ulster movement. They may have been right or they may have been wrong, but the war broke out before the test came.

BERAUD

contributes an

HENRI article entitled 'Irish Vespers — Les Vèpres Irlandaises Vèpres Irlandaises to the mid-November issue of Mercure de France. Referring to the statement of Mr. Greenwood, Secretary of State for Ireland, before the House of Commons on October 20, to the effect that no reprisals were being undertaken against Irish patriots; and that he could condemn reprisals but could not condemn off-hand the policemen who momentarily lost their heads, this writer says:

Any witness of what is actually occurring in Ireland will read this statement of Mr. Greenwood's with profound astonishment. I appeal to Mr. Kessel of the Journal des Débats and to Mr. Baeza, a Spanish author, who were my traveling companions. These statements convey an utterly wrong impression,