Like an arrow from a rainbow
That the armored plants have lain low,
Stops to watch the dwarfs as they
dance out of sight.

Hair long and black as jet, is floating yet on amber air,

Honey-shaded by the shadow of Popacatapetl's cone;

Their fluttering rebozos

Like purple-petal'd roses

bring shoes of satin,'

Smaller they grow, fade to golde motes, then die.

Where is the pretty one,
Where is the ugly one,

Where is that tongue of flame, the litt
Cardinal?

[The Nation]

WITH WHAT STRONG SURGE O PASSION

BY SUSAN MILES

WITH What strong surge of passion a we moved

When noble hearts we've loved a nobler proved!

Nor to display,
You'd neither sought to hide,

The wound I chanced upon in you t day.

The hurt was healed, the hand th
hurt forgiven,
Anger in you had died,
Before I knew,

Before I even had begun to guess,
How blundering words had riven
Your valorousness.

What glowing love of you,
What pride, what shame,

of light.

The crooked dwarf now ripples the strings of a mandoline,

His floating voice has wings that brush us like a butterfly;

Music fills the mountains

With a riot of fountains

And I could only stand dumb and we eyed,

Helpless, with cheeks aflame
And wits adrift.

How overwhelming is love's passio ate surge

a waterfall.

urge!

A PESSIMISTIC FORECAST FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG refuses to believe in the sincerity of the armisticepeace concluded at Riga last autumn between the Bolsheviki and Poles. It remarks that the soviet government was interested only in saving its army and defeating Wrangel. It has succeeded brilliantly in both these efforts, and in addition has crushed Petljura in the Ukraine, and Balakovich in White Russia. Its forces have overrun Armenia and are threatening Georgia. Although conditions at home seem to be growing steadily worse, the Bolshevist leaders are apparently ready to press new foreign enterprises. While Poland was doubtless the aggressor in its offensive last summer, Russia seems now to have become the challenging party. According to Polish reports, the Bolsheviki have six hundred thousand men massed on the Polish front, while the Russian negotiators are delaying, by every device possible, converting the present armistice into a definite peace. Of course, the Russians have complaints against the Poles, who are charged with failure to comply with their engagements under the armistice agreement. On the whole, this

usually well informed journal does not look forward hopefully to a peaceful summer in Eastern Europe.

PRUSSIAN ELECTION

POSSIBILITIES

NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG predicts that the Prussian elections to be held on February 20 will be of the utmost significance for Germany's political future. Since the former kingdom's National Assembly was elected, almost on the morning of the revolution, to serve as an ad interim legislative body and constitutional convention, the other German states have adopted more permanent forms of government. But none of these looms so large in the constellation of German states Prussia, and none has so many special problems to settle. Most important of all is whether Prussia is to be a republic or monarchy, although that question has not hitherto been brought as prominently to public attention as the issue justifies. It is perhaps suggestive, that ex-Kaiser Wilhelm is being increasingly alluded to by German historians and journalists of monarchist sympathies as 'the King.'

as

the title of a book, by a former journalist intimate of the Kaiser's, from which we took the first article in our issue of February 5.

FRANCE COMBATS DEPOPULATION

SOME two years ago, caisses de compensation were organized in France to insure the payment to working families of extra wages proportioned to the number of children they included. This supplementary wage is known as the sursalaire familial. Although the movement is in its infancy, at the general meeting of the caisses recently held at Roubaix, most optimistic reports were presented as to the success realized in assisting families of wage earners to meet the high cost of living, and in counteracting the evils of depopulation. A weaver and his wife are able to earn 260 francs a week where there are no children in the family and both are regularly employed, while another weaver, with a wife and children requiring the presence of the mother at home, would have only 160 francs to support the larger number in his household. The purpose of the sursalaire familial is to compensate for this inequality. During the four months ending with the first of July, over 4,000,000 francs have been distributed among 40,000 workingmen's families for this purpose. The National Federation of Linen Manufacturers pays 240 francs a year supplementary wage to families having one child under thirteen, 600 francs to families having two children, and so on in increasing proportions, to a maximum of 4200 francs a year where there are seven children. Be

yond this limit, the increment is 35 francs a month for additional children.

BOOK OUTPUT STATISTICS

L'OPINION publishes statistics showing the decrease in the number of books published in various countries during and since the war. In a comparison of the five-year periods ending respectively with 1913 and with 1918, Germany leads the list by a large margin in both instances. The total number of books published in that country exceeded 165,000 in the earlier period and 104,000 in the later period. Before the war, France came next to Germany with 60,000 books a year, while the United States stood third with nearly 59,000. Following the war, the United States ranked next to Germany with 51,000, Great Britain followed with 47,000, Italy ranked fourth, and France fifth, its publications for the five years during the war period falling to less than 28,000 per annum. In all these countries, the greatest decrease was in text books and scientific publications. Works upon the war were very popular for two years, but since then have declined steadily in favor. Exclusive of war works, books upon history have also declined. The only two classes of books of which the publication has markedly increased, are works upon religion and collections of poems. This applies to both Catholic and Protestant works. The increased demand for poetry began to manifest itself in 1915 in Europe, and one year later in the United States. A larger number of medical books has been published of late in all the belligerent countries.

35

918

PASCAL says in a famous passage of his Pensées, that if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter the face of the world would have been different.

A paradox? Unhappily, no. The destinies of nations often hang on apparently insignificant facts. Who could have foreseen, two months ago, that the Greek people, after rising to the dizziest heights of success, thanks to the political genius of Venizelos, after realizing their age long dream of becoming a great power, should suddenly be faced by a historical convulsion compromising all their hopes for the future

on account of a monkey bite? Had there been no monkey, or had there been a competent physician present to recognize the necessity of immediate precautions after the wound, the history of the Greek people would have been different.

As things turned out, the death of the king made it necessary for the cabinet to appeal to the country, and the whole world was stunned with surprise to see a man who had rendered such unexampled service to his nation suddenly cast aside; and a banished king, who, by his perverse policy, had gravely compromised the future of his people, recalled to the throne.

These events, so surprising to strangers, and what is worse, so unanicipated by the short-sighted gov

ernments of other lands, are easily explained. What we have been told about these occurrences is absolutely wrong. To understand them we must in the first place know certain historical facts, and in the second place know the psychology of individuals and of crowds, and in particular, the psychology of the Greek nation. Peoples, in fact, like individuals, respond more readily to their impulses than to their reason.

This is why it is so much to be regretted that our statesmen, who are utterly ignorant of the psychology of crowds and the psychology of nations, constantly neglect to seek the advice of experts on these subjects. How many blunders both at home and abroad might be thus avoided! But to get back to the Greek people, we face the same problem that we do when an individual commits an incomprehensible act. In that case we call in a mental specialist mental specialista man who has studied thoroughly both normal and abnormal psychology; and we examine the patient scientifically, so as to unravel the motives for his actions, to discover how far he is responsible for them. Let us study in the same way the collective mentality of the Greek people, in order to ascertain the causes for their sudden change. These causes are of four kinds: mystical, political, material, and hereditary.

The mystical causes are five in are five in number:

1. First of all, every adult Greek has been rocked to sleep in his infancy, to patriotic lullabies prophesying that a great Constantine would appear after a lapse of centuries, to become the heir of Constantine XIII and reconquer Constantinople, lost by that heroic monarch in 1453, when he was killed, defending it against the Turks. 2. The Greek people are ignorant of the secrets of the General Staff, and of the blunders which Constantine committed when, as Crown Prince, he led their armies. The present king is in their eyes the hero who recovered for Greece, Macedonia, Epirus, Crete, and the Aegean Islands, during the war with Turkey; and eastern Macedonia, with Kavala, Seres, and Drama after the war in 1913 with the Bulgarians. Now, to cite but a single fact when Constantine was in command of the Greek army, in 1912, he obstinately persisted in continuing his advance against Monastir against explicit orders; and it took the intervention of his father, who was then king, and the threat of the cabinet to resign, to make him renounce that purpose and march to Saloniki. He entered the latter city in October 1912, only six hours ahead of the Bulgarians, who were then his allies. Had he not reached the city first, Saloniki would never have belonged to the Greeks. Similarly, Constantine neglected his opportunity to march on Sofia after the Bulgarian debacle. But the masses know nothing of this. He is in their eyes Great Constantine, the Conqueror.

3. When Princess Catherine was born, in 1913, the eminent statesman, who has just been overthrown, suggested to the king that he make the army her godfather, and the navy her godmother. Ten soldiers and ten

sailors symbolically represented these two arms of national defense at the baptismal ceremony. That rite created a close bond between the army and navy, and their sovereign, and left" an indelible imprint upon popular " sentiment.

4. At the suggestion of Venizelos again, King Constantine announced himself, from 1913 to 1916, the godfather of every seventh child born to any family in Greece, regardless of the family's rank or social standing. The i result was that during three years the king became a 'relative,' as they say in Greece, of more than sixty-five thousand Greek families! This royal action not only flattered highly a very large number of the king's subjects and we must not forget that they are an impulsive and enthusiastic southern race but acquired peculiar importance, on account of the seriousness the Greeks attach to this relationship. They regard a godfather as a real blood relative. This explains the cry so commonly heard during the election for the king's recall, Zito o Koumbaros! (Long live our godfather!) shouted by his enthusiastic followers.

5. The last element in the mystical hold which Constantine possesses over the Greek people is the fact that this sovereign, prophesied by the nation's poets, having the army as the godfather, and the navy as the godmother of his daughter, and himself bound by a tie almost as strong as that of blood to sixty-five thousand families among his subjects, was, furthermore, in the eyes of the people, a martyr.

Our own lack of psychological insight was responsible for surrounding the king with that aureole of sympathy and love so dangerous to ourselves. When his overt hostility to the Entente finally induced us to decide on his dethronement, it would have been wisest to have used the patriotic