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BUILD THE NATION SECURELY WITH

NDIANA LIMESTONE

he NATION'S BUILDING STONE

WE discourage cleaning Indiana Limestone buildings, since the venerable antique effect produced by weathering is conceded to be one of the great charms of natural stone. However, anyone determined to clean a stone building may obtain complete information on methods that will not destroy the surface of the stone by writing to the Indiana Limestone Quarrymen's Association, Service Bureau, Bedford, Indiana.

Design No. 401. Bungalow of seven rooms and bath. Faced with a veneer of Indiana Limestone having rough rock finish. A folder showing floor plans will be sent upon request.

I

F YOU have always associated the idea of stone with large and pretentious mansions, and have considered it out of the question for the small bungalow or more modest home you are intending to build, you will be interested to know that this is no longer the case.

Rough-sawed Indiana Limestone can be used as a veneer four inches thick over stud frame con struction in such a way as to give the appearance of walls of solid stone, and at a much lower cost. This is, in fact, the most economical form of stone construction, and is especially adaptable for bungalows and small homes. The cost of a house whose exterior walls are constructed in this manner will be only five or six per cent more than that of one whose walls are faced with brick.

Our Portfolio of House Designs contains a more
detailed description of this form of stone con-
struction. Send 50c and obtain this interesting
collection of designs for moderate-sized homes.

Indiana Limestone Quarrymen's Association
Box 797, Bedford, Indiana
Service Bureaus in New York and Chicago

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THE LIVING AGE. Published weekly. Publication office, RUMFORD BUILDING, CONCORD, N. H. Editorial and General Offices, 8 Arlington Street, Boston 17, Mass. 15c a copy, $5.00 a year; foreign postage $1.50. Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Concord, N. H., under the Act of Congress, March 3, 1879.

Copyright 1926, by The Living Age Company, Boston, Mass.

THE LIVING ACE

VOL. 329-MAY 1, 1926 - NO. 4269

THE LIVING AGE

BRINGS THE WORLD TO AMERICA

AROUND THE WORLD IN APRIL

APRIL has so far witnessed an international lull between the unsuccessful League session last month and the prospective meeting of the Preparatory Disarmament Commission in May. We have already discussed the first reaction abroad to Mr. Houghton's interview on the state of Europe, and we plan to print a French and a German article on that subject next week. It remains to be seen how effective Washington's diplomatic shock tactics designed or undesigned may prove to be in the may prove to be in the event; but with Mexico at least they appear to have accelerated a settlement.

cause so ardently that he overshot the mark. Poland and the other border States will hardly agree to reduce their present military establishments or to halt the construction of their young navies at a conference from which Russia is absent. Mr. Chicherin, the Moscow Commissar of Foreign Affairs, to be sure, professes warm sympathy with all disarmament proposals. He declared in a recent article that his country had consistently taken the initiative in this direction, beginning with the Genoa Conference, and had not only preached disarmament but had practised it. She has reduced her land forces from more than one and a half million men five years ago to less than six hundred thousand men at the present time. Continental countries are averse to considering land and sea disarmament as separate questions; while Great Britain and Japan are ready to do so, and our own Government rather insists upon this procedure. So long as the Washington ratio is maintained, Japan would welcome a considerable further whose Hibernian name, by the way, reduction in naval strength and the is associated with old and prominent abolition of the submarine. She also French traditions, pressed Russia's professes readiness to abandon her con

Russia was blamed for the postponement of the Preparatory Disarmament Meeting, originally scheduled for last February, because she refused to send official representatives to Switzerland until she received an apology and compensation for the murder of her last delegate to an international gathering in that country three years ago. France undertook to smooth over this difficulty, but Mr. Hennessy, the Socialist diplomat who bore her message to Bern,

Copyright 1926, by the Living Age Co.

templated scheme of air-force expansion provided Russia participates in the Conference and gives similar guaranties. She has already reduced her military expenditures from about one half her budget in 1920 to a little over one quarter of her budget for the current year, and would be gratified if she could lower the percentage still further in order to relieve her overburdened taxpayers.

Since the storm subsided that broke over Mr. Chamberlain's head upon his return from Geneva, British politics have been devoid of sensational interest. A little group of Mr. Baldwin's followers which has criticized the Cabinet's liberal policies on previous occasions 'rose to protest' when the Government's Electricity Bill came up for approval, but did not carry opposition further. This scheme to reorganize, systematize, and centralize the business of manufacturing, transporting, and distributing electricity in the United Kingdom is planned to interfere as little as possible with private enterprise. Nevertheless, extreme socialphobists are alarmed, for experience shows that when a State Board, such as is provided in the present Act, acquires jurisdiction over any business field its functions expand and tend gradually to edge out the private undertaker. A more critical problem faces Mr. Baldwin's Government in connection with the Coal Commission's Report, which it has agreed to accept provided employers and employees follow suit. That does not remove the immediate subject of contention between the latter, which is over the question of wages. These are under negotiation as we write, and upon an agreement regarding them depends the maintenance of industrial peace. British Labor is gradually consolidating its organization into great alliances embracing workers in groups of industries essential for the

very existence of our complex social mechanism; but apparently without immediate aggressive intent. A prominent Labor politician who has just made a four months' study tour of the United States has returned to his country convinced that our industrial horizon is very gloomy. His opinion is absolutely the reverse of that of the British engineers, and of other inquirers, who have carried back to Great Britain most optimistic accounts of our country. He criticizes the spread of the system of installment buying among us, and thinks the bottom will drop out of our prosperity when the world stops borrowing money of us. That, he opines, will be sooner than we anticipate, for a large part of America's loans are being used to set up the machinery for mass production in various parts of the world, particularly in any country where labor is cheap. Ere long this will involve losing the trade of these countries and, by virtue of competition, of other countries also.' Nevertheless he thinks we have some lessons for his fellow workers. 'What American Big Business teaches us, as Socialists, is to be bold, to conceive big schemes, to trust and pursue our vision until it is embodied in reality.'

Ireland seems to be in an ebb of political apathy after the high tide of enthusiasm and idealism that accompanied the winning of self-government. Republican enthusiasm has waned, partly on account of internal dissensions. According to one Irish correspondent, 'the refusal of America as well as Ireland to provide further supplies did as much as anything else to create the crisis that has brought the anti-treatyite movement to a dead stop.' Indeed, Irishmen of all parties and creeds have apparently grown tired of furnishing money for political campaigns, and the Free-Staters are suffering as badly as their opponents. At a

recent by-election in County Dublin the Government was unable to finance its candidate, who had to rely on the liquor interest for his funds. A pleasant feature of the situation is the decline of violence and of sympathy with violence. The civilian police with their batons are better obeyed than the old Royal Constabulary ever were, and were able this year to enforce a dry St. Patrick's Day without difficulty, although under the old régime the most diligent and drastic efforts of the authorities used to prove utterly futile to prevent patriots from 'drowning the shamrock.'

France has nominally balanced her budget by raising taxes, and has thus escaped the threatened May inflation, which apparently was a bigger bugaboo to the deputies than the unpopularity of higher imposts. This was accomplished by the seventh Finance Minister to hold office within the past twelve months. It followed a sensational byelection in Paris in which two Communists carried the polls, evidently with the help of electors of other Parties. One of the Conservative candidates was under a cloud because while occupying a Government post he was alleged to have acted as the agent of an airplane company in securing contracts from the War Department. L'Ere Nouvelle, a pro-Herriot paper, declared reassuringly: 'Paris does not belong to Communism in any sense, but to the Republican Parties who have shut out the Fascisti. Paris voted against little Reynaud and young de Kerillis because those boys were the candidates of the Blue Shirts and the reactionaries.' It had been predicted by shrewd observers that the Communists would draw votes from the Socialists in France on account of the unpopularity the latter have incurred by their vacillating policy during the financial crisis. This election more than balanced the success of

André Tardieu last February in the Belfort district. That vigorous Clemenceauist entered his campaign with the declaration that he was not a member of either the National Bloc or the Cartel of the Left, and that he repudiated all the old Parties and their programmes. After his election he declared that he found the electors cold to religious questions, and that they enthusiastically applauded his advocacy of the 'American church system,' where the churches are free and equal under the law, without any privileges or special legislation. He attributed the revolt of the taxpayers against new impositions to the fact that taxes had been steadily increased since the end of the war without apparent result in balancing the budget or maintaining the value of the franc. The people were discouraged because they seemed to be throwing the money they paid the Treasury into a bottomless barrel. The continued decline of the franc suggests, however, that French finances are not yet on a sound basis, and many predict a serious economic and political crisis in that country before the year is over.

Belgium, like France, has recently had a new depreciation. Her franc was supposed to be stabilized, and the weakness it developed last March was a disappointing setback not only to financial reconstruction in that country but also to business confidence elsewhere. The inability of the Government to deal promptly and decisively with its urgent budgetary problems is held responsible for this misfortune. Industrialists discovered that stabilization placed them at a disadvantage in competing with their French rivals, who 'enjoy' a still more worthless circulating medium and could undersell them for that reason. Taxation had to be increased in order to balance the budget, and nobody liked that. International finance refused its aid until there was

a fair prospect that sufficient revenues would be raised to pay for the use of new loans. The Socialists clamored that the exercise of this precaution was 'Anglo-Saxon financial domination.' Consequently everybody seems to have been at variance with everybody else, and in the resulting confusion the Belgian franc took its natural course downward.

Germany seems to be sawing wood. Since discussion of the Geneva failure and the royal-property petition ceased to interest the public longer, politics has occupied relatively little space in her press. In fact, many evidences exist that Central and Southeastern Europe are settling down to a period of constructive coöperation. Perhaps comparative constructive coöperation relatively to the recent past would be a safer expression to use. Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany have been busy negotiating reciprocal trade arrangements, which were the occasion for the visit of Dr. Ramek, the Austrian Chancellor, to Berlin and Prague, in both of which capitals he was warmly welcomed. On March 23 the Hungarian National Assembly, by an overwhelming vote, approved the majority report of the committee appointed to investigate the franc forgeries, and gave Count Bethlen's Cabinet an ovation and a vote of confidence. Nevertheless, to quote Pester Lloyd, which supports the present Ministry, that body has undoubtedly lost prestige on account of this scandal. It observes that Count Bethlen would have received more support from the Entente States at Geneva, and might have secured more liberal concessions there, if it had not been for the odium of this affair. But the Premier acted very wisely, in the opinion of that journal, in going to Geneva and facing the situation there notwithstanding the prejudice against him.

Considerable importance is attached

to the retirement of Signor Contarini, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Rome, who has held that post since 1920. Although a holdover from the old régime, he has been the confidential adviser of the Fascist Government in all matters pertaining to his office, and to him is ascribed in a large measure the important changes that have occurred in Italy's relations with Central and Southeastern Europe during this period. After the Armistice Rome was chiefly concerned in preventing the formation of a Danube Union and any development likely to strengthen Yugoslavia. So intent was she upon this object that she even looked with tolerance upon Germany's desire to absorb Austria, as an event that would keep the Eastern Slav Powers from Czechoslovakia to the Balkans permanently in check. With Signor Contarini's appearance on the scene, however, this attitude was reversed. Germany became the enemy against whose possible aggression a barrier should be erected, and therefore good relations with Yugoslavia must be cultivated. This resulted in an ultimate smoothingover of the Fiume controversy and the eventual formation of a coalition cabinet in Yugoslavia in which the controlling element was friendly to Italy. Italy's ambition became to establish her moral hegemony over the Balkans and the Danube countries and to supplant France in that part of Europe. German Nationalists, who got entirely out of hand and defeated the shrewder and more farsighted policies of the Berlin Government, gave wonderful aid to Signor Contarini's plans by starting an agitation over Lower Tyrol in conjunction with a new campaign for union with Austria.

The tension thus created has relaxed somewhat, however, and the pendulum is said to be swinging in the other direction. Berlin has managed to allay in a

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