THE DELAY IN THE APPEARANCE OF THE LIVING AGE IS DUE TO A GENERAL STRIKE OF THE PRINTING TRADES IN BOSTON. AFTER MAY FIRST, WE HOPE TO RESUME PUBLICATION UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS -IN ACCORDANCE WITH ARRANGEMENTS MADE LONG BEFORE AND INDEPENDENT OF THE STRIKE.

EUROPE APPRAISES OUR PRESIDENTS.

AT the close of the March fourth session of the Hungarian Parliament, there was a great ovation to President Harding. On the motion of Representative Karl Hussar, the National Assembly directed its speaker to send a message of greeting in the name of the Assembly, of all Hungarian parties, and of the Hungarian nation, 'to the President of the great American republic.' In his speech supporting the motion, the delegate referred to the United States as the first country to come to the help of the Hungarian people after the overthrow of the Bolshevist government in Budapest. The welfare work of the Americans was a splendid example of human solidarity. The members rose from their seats as a token of respect when the resolution was read.

THE Journal de Geneve, one of the most prominent exponents of neutral

opinions in Europe, expresses itself as disillusioned with President Harding's inaugural speech. It says, that 'like his predecessor, Mr. Harding seems to delight in abstract generalities and moral themes; but we do not discover in his words the nobility of accent and the note of profound idealism which, in spite of everything, gave such an air of distinction to Mr. Wilson's public utterances.'

A Paris correspondent of the same paper, summarizes the judgment which the French press passed upon Mr. Wilson, at the time of his retirement, as follows:

'Most of them credit the President with noble sentiments, ill-supported by practical knowledge of European problems. .. Perhaps the greatest wrong done him was in placing him upon too lofty a pedestal. . . so that disappointment was inevitable. . . . It was in passing from the realm of idealism to the realm of facts that Mr. Wilson proved wanting. He believed himself in posession of a revelation,an all-powerful master of destiny. He left out of account the constitution of his own country, refusing the cooperation of the Senate, without which no

THE UNITED STATES VS. LIBERTY.

THE Spanish press is reviewing, without unqualified approval, a little documentary work of some three hundred pages, by Isidro Fabela, a talented young Mexican writer and diplomat, reviewing the relations of the United States with Cuba, the Philip=pines, Panama, Nicaragua, and Santo Domingo. The title of the work is: Los Estados Unidos contra la libertad. Its thesis seems to be two dicta enounced by international jurists: 'No foreign power has the right to set itself up as a judge of the conduct of the head of another country, or to force the head of another country to change its policy in any respect, and: It follows necessarily from this principle that governments are free and independent, that each possesses the right to govern itself as it may judge expedient, and that no other government possesses the slightest right to interfere in the operations of another government.' Spanish reviewers are brought to a pause by the fact that incidents have occurred in some Spanish American countries which at least afford a pretext for Yankee intervention in their domestic affairs.'

JEANNE D'ARC ON LONG ISLAND.

FROM Paris, by way of a German channel, comes the following comment regarding a statue of Jeanne d'Arc said to have been recently placed in a church at Elmhurst, Long Island. Introducing the anecdote with the observation that no such statue has been set up in England, and that the incident has been featured as an indication of Franco-American friendship, the narrator says: "The statue has a his

tory. The details are not even yet fully known. One of the boulevard dailies has merely hinted at the story. Soldiers of the Sixtieth regiment of the United States Infantry took the statue back to America with them. They did not collect public subscriptions and commission a sculptor to make it. Neither are such statues of more than life size commonly found in antiquary shops. So our Paris newspaper remarks that it is surmised that some French commune is mourning the loss of one of its works of art. Of course, this paper says, no one would accuse the soldiers of stealing such a monument. (The German comment is that this is a charge reserved for the Hun.) "The Americans carried off the statue in an excess of enthusiasm, as a memorial of the sacred cause of the Allies.'

RUSSIAN RUMORS.

EVIDENCE is accumulating that the discord between Lenin and Trotzky so often reported during the past two years at times in a very sensational way - actually way - actually exists. A current newspaper debate between the two men-is conducted by Lenin in the Petrograd Pravda, which is edited by his supporters, while Trotzky employs as his press organ the Moscow Pravda, which is edited by one of Lenin's opponents, Boukharin. In an article in the Petrograd Pravda of January 30, Lenin refers to a long debate in the Central Committee of the Communist Party, occupying two sessions in November and December, 'when Trotzky was left standing alone among its nineteen members.' Lenin accuses Trotzky of 'stabbing the party in the back' and then continues: 'Is there a

single serious man in his right mind who considers such attacks, by so prominent a leader as Trotzky, as right and honorable?' The particular matter at issue in this controversy is the part the Trade Unions are to be allowed to take in the political and economic administration of the country. Lenin apparently favors enlarging the powers of the unions, and liberalizing somewhat their constitution, while Trotzky inclines toward an increasingly military organization of labor.

ACCORDING to statistics published in the Krasnaya Gazeta last January, there are 24 trade unions in Russia with 6,970,000 members enrolled. However, a majority of the latter 'have heen ascribed to the union mechanically.' Not more than half a million of these are communists. These unions are industrial rather than craft organizations; that is, they are groups of employees of particular industries rather than the employees in particular trades.

Isvestia mentions in its issue of January 12 the organization of a Communist Party in China.

Ekonomitcheskaya Zhizn reports that the government succeeded in collecting just under 100,000,000 poods of grain from the peasants last autumn. This is less than half the amount laid down in the government

programme.

Thieving is very common among the employees of the textile factories in Russia, if we are to believe Krasnaya Gazeta's report of the congress of textile workers held in Petrograd last winter. Operatives stealing trifles 'such as a half pound of cotton' are not infrequently reprimanded, but

'those guilty of large thefts are not discovered.'

Because of the paper shortage in Russia, the authorities recently decided to use old archives, and old editions of presumably 'bourgeois' works for paper stock. A writer in the Krasnaya Gazeta of January 12 describes how valuable historical documents, costly editions of the classics, and even soviet publications-apparently through inadvertence-are thus being destroyed. This writer says that some 2000 pounds of an official pamphlet printed only last year were sent to the paper mills to be ground into pulp, while a second edition of the same pamphlet was being published.

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The following quotation from Isvestia relating to the Vanderlip concession in Kamschatka illustrates rather aptly some aspects of Bolshevist statesmanship and the assumptions upon which its foreign policies are based: 'In granting it-its concession defending Kamschatka against military seizure by Japan on the one hand, while Japanese expansionists will keep a sharp eye out to prevent the Americans from placing troops in the territory. The Americans will be allowed to import only machinery. This will enable soviet Russia to retain control of Kamschatka. With the development of the proletarian revolution in America and in Europe, and this will occur within a few years, if not within the next few months, the capitalist order will be destroyed, and we shall inherit a very considerable amount of American ma

chinery and goods from its late bourgeois society."

WHILE Paris and Berlin have their dadaists, and Milan its futurists, Moscow has its 'imaginists,' according to

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a Russian newspaper published in Prague. Imaginism is the last fashion I of a group of young poets who are still running an art store in Moscow, one of the rare private shops which has not yet been nationalized. What these young Bolsheviki in poetry and painting are up to is rather obscure. One of them tries to explain the movement by saying that 'the word is in reality an image. We are not interested in the content of the word or in its sound. Under those aspects, the word belongs either to philosophy or to music. . . . We are seeking to poetize poetry by eliminating philosophy and music from it.' Just what this means, we leave our readers to 'imagine.' The only further ray of light we can throw upon the subject is the following remark by a Russian critic, Lvov-Rogatchevsky, at an imaginists' reunion, held in their favorite cafe in Mascow: 'Imaginists? What does the word mean in good simple Russian, without going into philosophical technicalities? It means "hot air" artists. And the Bolsheviki? Are they not past masters of imaginism-of the "hot air" art?'

LAST autumn, the Russian government placed with firms in Sweden, Germany, Austria, and Czecho-Slovakia, orders for 2000 freight locomotives and $15,000,000 worth of spare parts for locomotives, as well as for several pumping plants. Orders for 1000 of these engines were placed in Sweden, 100 to be delivered this coming summer, and the whole order to be completed by 1925. Orders for the remainder were placed in the three other countries mentioned. Most of the parts are being made in Germany. All the locomotives are of a single type, and the makers in the four coun

tries guarantee that all parts, wherever made, shall be interchangeable. A contract has been placed with an English firm for the repair of 1500 locomotives, and negotiations are under way for the repair of between 2000 and 3000 locomotives in Germany, Norway, and Denmark.

RACE PROPAGANDA.

ELBRIDGE COLBY, discussing the coming clash of races in East and West, a Calcutta review, mentions the following suggestive incident:

'Down in the tropics in Panama City, there is published a negro weekly called The Workman. Up to a short time ago, this was devoted almost exclusively to news of the West Indian homes of the colored workers on the Canal. It was a sort of consolidated "home town paper," bringing back local gossip to those who had left their native localities. When the labor problem, complicated with the race question, became acute on the Canal Zone, this sheet was gradually transformed. Slow infiltration of propaganda became evident. Finally, the alteration was complete, and The Workman today is almost pure agitation, a Central American replica of The Negro World. It assails white labor, white foremen, white administration, white justice, even white ministers of the gospel. The only thing about it not colored black is the paper on which it is printed.

It proclaims a negro democracy, and urges former soldiers in the British West India regiment to retain their skill at arms for a future war for black liberty and black democracy. To it, the color line shall no longer be a frontier of freedom. Its work has been