swore that Bishop Zadravecz, one of the accused, had told him that there was no risk 'Our friend Stefan (Bethlen) knows everything.' Bishop Zadravecz denied on oath that he had made such a statement, and when the two high ecclesiastics were confronted with each other in court each hotly accused the other of perjury.

The Conservative and Centrist press of Germany and Austria greeted the sentences as substantially just, and indeed made considerable ado over their Draconic severity; but the Socialist papers of those countries, and the French press in general, denounced the inadequacy of the punishments inflicted, and stigmatized the trial as a whitewashing procedure. Vorwärts predicted that the high-born prisoners would be amnestied within a year. Jules Sauerwein, who has featured the scandal from the first in Le Matin, cited a long bill of specifications to show that the trial was a farce, and that the acquittal of several of those alleged to be incriminated was absurd.

CHINA'S 'CONSTITUTIONAL' CRISIS THE military situation has clarified considerably in China. The Christian General has temporarily vanished from the scene, though he is now reported to be on his way back from Moscow, and his lieutenants have retired with their legions to the northwestern the northwestern provinces. Such fighting as continues is in the west and south and of a local character. Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tsolin nominally control the 'Republic' from Harbin and the Yalu River to the neighborhood of Canton.

But if inter arma silent leges, it is hardly possible to assert that the reverse is true in China, and that the voice of the law is heard there as soon as the clash of arms is stilled. In the first place,

the utmost uncertainty prevails as to what is the law; and here the two victorious generals are not precisely of i a mind. Their difference of opinion goes back to the summer of 1924, and indeed was the nominal reason why they fought each other that year. China adopted a constitution at Nanking in 1912, under the eye of Sun Yatsen. In 1923-1924 this constitution was amended so radically as to make it virtually a new instrument, under auspices that Chang Tso-lin refused to countenance as legal. The Mukden leader therefore insists that the old constitution is still valid and that the last Parliament and the last President elected under the new constitution possessed no legitimate authority. Wu Pei-fu and his Party, on the other hand, are defenders of the second constitution, and somewhat reluctant champions of the President and Parliament elected under it—although the latter were subservient to General Feng and his Kuominchun army when the latter were in possession of Peking.

At present writing this difference of opinion has not been smoothed over. A Cabinet under Dr. W. W. Yen, a graduate of the University of Virginia, and containing Dr. Alfred Sze and Wellington Koo, both of whom have been Ministers to the United States, in fact, the former still holds that office, has been appointed, nominally as a stop-gap, but it is said without the approval of Chang Tso-lin.

An absurd situation has resulted from the fact that this political confusion has come to a head just at the time when two important international bodies, the Tariff Conference and the Extraterritoriality Conference, were dealing with matters affecting China's relations with foreign Powers. That country's official representatives at both Conferences are now scattered far and wide. Indeed, several of the

most vigorous champions of the abolition of extraterritoriality were among the first to profit by the existence of that institution, during the recent political uncertainties and disorders; for they promptly took refuge in the foreign concessions at Peking, Tientsin, and Shanghai in order to escape their political enemies.

At Canton, General Chang Kai-shek is reported to have overthrown the Canton Communists, to have expelled their Bolshevist military advisers, and to have set up as a conventional tuchun of the Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tso-lin type. Almost simultaneously Marshal Sun Chuan-fang, who is governing the five great provinces tributary to Shanghai, and who is said to be an able and strong-handed administrator, has shown a disposition to assert his virtual independence of the Wu Pei-fuChang Tso-lin combination. Meanwhile the Kuominchun army, which is now in command of a new Christian General, Chang Chi-kiang, who has succeeded Feng Yu-hsiang but is as strict in his religious practices as his predecessor, has by no means been eliminated from the scene. Late in

May it counterattacked the Manchurian army south of Nankow Pass and sent it reeling back to a point within twelve miles of Peking. Colonel Malone, a British army officer who has recently visited both armies, reports: "There is no doubt that the Kuominchun is the better clothed and better disciplined.' All of which promises to make the momentary clarification of the military situation merely temporary.

MINOR NOTES

IN 1913 Germany imported from France one third of the iron ore she used. She now derives less than two per cent from that source. On the other hand, her imports from Sweden have risen from thirty-two per cent in 1913 to more than eighty per cent. German ironmasters originally preferred Lorraine ore on account of the lower freight charges upon it, but have come to realize that Swedish ore is preferable on account of its greater iron content and the smaller amount of coke required to smelt it.

BEFORE the war the people of Poland were of two opinions as to how to recover their national independence and unity. One party believed in revolutionary, the other in opportunist, tactics.

The revolutionaries, whose chief was Joseph Pilsudski, staked Poland's cause upon a social revolution which would overthrow the Russian Empire. The opportunists were divided into two groups: in Russian Poland the National Democrats wanted an entente with Russia against Germany; in Austrian Poland the Krakow Conservatives agitated at Vienna against Russia. The World War brought Pilsudski and the Austrian Poles closer together, and the Russian Revolution narrowed the divergencies between all three factions.

Nevertheless the old dissensions, and the personal ambitions associated with them, remained. Pilsudski, when he became Chief of the Polish State, regarded himself as its veritable savior. That offended bitterly the Moderates, whose activities in France and England during the war had been of inestimable service to Poland. Pilsudski's humble origin and Socialist sympathies still further complicated the situation. As a result, the first years of Poland's restored independence were troubled by quarrels between Pilsudski and the Right. The latter denied the Marshal the possession of any good qualities whatsoever, either political or military, and in this they did him an injustice, for it was he who drove back the Red

1 From Journal des Débats (Paris Conservative daily), May 23, 24, 25

Armies from Warsaw. The old Austrian or Krakow Conservatives, who have given Poland Alexander Skrzynski and General Sikorski, remained neutral. They sympathized at heart with the Marshal, but considered it politic not to offend his adversaries.

The general elections of November 1922 returned a majority for the Parties of the Centre and the Right. Marshal Pilsudski quit Belvedere Palace and became Chief of the Army General Staff. In May 1922 the Right acquired a definite majority through the adhesion of the Peasant Party, whose chief was the shrewd farmermayor of a little Galician village, Vincent Witos. The latter became Premier and at once opened an offensive against Pilsudski. He made General Szeptycki, an eminent ex-officer of the Austrian army whom the Marshal detests, Minister of War. Pilsudski promptly slammed the door and resigned from the army, declaring: 'I serve under those scoundrels? Never!'

The ex-protector of Poland thereupon installed himself at Sulejowek, in the neighborhood of Warsaw, where he lived the life of an ordinary country squire. On every St. Joseph's Day the nineteenth of March - delegations from practically every regiment in the army, and also from the Sharpshooters Association, appeared at his residence to pay him their respects; for he retained his immense popularity among the soldiers.

In December 1923 dissensions in the Peasant Party caused the overthrow of

the Witos Cabinet, which was succeeded by that of Wladislaw Grabski. The army portfolio was at once given to General Sosnkowski, a personal friend of the Marshal. This was the Cabinet that introduced the zloty and gave the country a stable currency for a time measures that called for the utmost domestic tranquillity. But in 1924 Grabski put General Sikorski in charge of the Army Office. That officer's military career began in the Pilsudski Legion during the war, and the two men had trouble at that time. Nevertheless General Sikorski was very anxious to get Marshal Pilsudski back into the service, and created the post of Inspector-General for him. But at the same time he methodically set about breaking up the Pilsudski army cliques by shifting assignments and promotions. The Marshal refused the post of Inspector-General and began a bitter campaign against General Sikorski. At the same time he busied himself strengthening his Sharpshooters Association. He had organized this body in 1921, and it includes to-day eleven hundred companies and one hundred and twenty thousand members, of whom about half are peasants and one quarter workingmen. Evidently it is a sort of Fascisti Corps of the Left.

Last November, when the Grabski Cabinet fell, the Marshal made a formal call on President Wojciechowski at Belvedere Palace and bluntly told him that he was opposed to leaving the Army Office in the hands of General Sikorski. He won. Mr. Skrzynski, the Chief of the new Coalition Cabinet, appointed General Zeligowski, who is devoted to the Marshal, Minister of War. Thereupon there was a new shifting of appointments and promotions throughout the service, and any officer who was considered lukewarm toward Pilsudski was posted off to some remote

station as far as possible from the capital.

Thus it happened that when the last Cabinet crisis occurred, on the fifth of May, Pilsudski again had the army under his thumb. Both President Wojciechowski and Witos, who had again become Premier, apparently overlooked that fact. When the Marshal organized a military demonstration against Witos, he clearly had no thought of causing bloodshed, but imagined that the President could be frightened into turning that gentleman and his Cabinet out of office.

Pilsudski's action has both a legal and a moral aspect. Legally it was clearly mutiny. Morally it was the revolt of an honest political idealist against cynical and dishonest politicians. The letter of the Constitution has been violated, but a country cannot live in a strait-jacket.

Situations sometimes arise when a man or a party believes it is serving its country by taking the law into its own hands. We may condemn their method, but we must respect their intentions.

When the Witos Cabinet took office, on the tenth of May, it had the support of 238 votes out of the 441 in the Chamber. It was, therefore, legally constituted. General Malczewski was appointed Minister of War, and the Marshal had every reason to suppose that army assignments would again be shifted around so as to deprive his followers of all influence in the service. That was the immediate reason for his revolt.

On May 11, the Kurjer Poranny, a Radical newspaper that has been the Marshal's mouthpiece, published an interview with him, in which he accused the Cabinet of corruption and immorality. The Government promptly confiscated that issue of the paper and announced through one of its own organs that the slanderer would be

brought to justice. The same evening a party of Pilsudski's Sharpshooters paraded through the capital shouting: "The country shall not be robbed. The army shall not be made a Party machine.' They forced their way into the cafés and compelled everyone to rise and shout with uncovered head, 'Long live Pilsudski!' Revolt was in the air. About two o'clock in the afternoon on the twelfth of May I was in the office of the Nowy Kurjer Polski, a Liberal newspaper at Warsaw, talking with the editor, when the telephone rang. Someone had sent in a message reporting that Pilsudski was at Rembertow, a military post six miles east of Warsaw, at the head of the First Regiment of Light Horse, the Seventh Uhlans, and the Thirty-Sixth Regiment of the Line. I hurried to Parliament House. The streets were quiet. It was a magnificent day, and the cafés were crowded. No one suspected a coup d'état. Only a few deputies and reporters were around the Sejm, but they knew what had happened and were serious and silent. We learned that the President was hurrying to the city from his summer residence, and that the Cabinet was already in session. A little later the telephone announced that the Marshal had occupied Praga and the heads of the two highway bridges. The railway bridge was still in the hands of the Government.

At 4 P.M. we went to Poniatowski Bridge, where it was reported the President would see Pilsudski. A few minutes later the presidential automobile drew up and its occupant, pale but resolute, got out. The lieutenant of the First Light Horse saluted. The President gazed at him steadfastly for a moment and asked: 'Do you obey the President, your Commander-in-Chief under the Constitution?'

The officer lowered his eyes without replying. The President then added: 'Summon your chief.'

The officer departed. Fifteen minutes later the Colonel of the Seventh Uhlans appeared. The President asked him the same question, but the Colonel replied evasively, saying that he could only transmit the latter's wishes to the Marshal. M. Wojciechowski thereupon handed him a letter to Pilsudski, requesting the latter to come to the bridge at once. The Colonel departed and the President waited.

Several of us journalists were standing on the bridge. One of our party, a bitter opponent of the Marshal, was moved by curiosity to walk toward the further end, where the Pilsudski officers promptly arrested him.

Another quarter of an hour passed, when a limousine stopped on the other side of the river, some little distance from the bridge. Marshal Pilsudski, in full uniform and accompanied by four officers, got out and came toward us. As he passed his journalistic enemy, he glanced at him for an instant, without any expression of dislike, but rather with surprise, and without saying a word passed on. When he reached the President he halted and smiled like a man who is playing a practical joke on a friend. Wojciechowski and Pilsudski have been intimately acquainted for years, and ordinarily address each other by their first names. But the President was serious. Without extending his hand to the Marshal, he said in a formal voice: 'Marshal, you are taking a terrible responsibility upon yourself. The Government of the Republic will defend the Constitution. It will not tolerate your rebellion. I bid you order your troops to retire.'

The Marshal answered, in a bantering voice: 'My dear Mr. President, that is the simplest thing in the world. Dismiss the Witos Cabinet, and I'll get out.'

'Impossible!' exclaimed the President. 'It is the lawful Cabinet.'