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AGA

Steinway Building, New York
City. Warren & Wetmore, Ar-
chitects. Winner of Gold Medal

GAIN Indiana Limestone has the distinction of being the material used in the buildings awarded the first and second prizes by the Fifth Avenue Association of New York for the best new structures erected during 1925 in the Fifth Avenue district. These are the Steinway Building and the MacMillan Building. In each instance, a beautiful material combined with excellent design has resulted in a building of outstanding dignity and distinction.

In similar contests held in widely scattered sections of the coun try for the past several years, the prize-winning buildings, almost without exception, have been constructed either wholly or in part of Indiana Limestone. This beautiful natural stone has the unqualified approval of the most prominent architects of America for their finest buildings.

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Indiana Limestone Quarrymen's Association

Box 797, Bedford, Indiana

Service Bureaus in New York and Chicago

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 AGE

VOL. 329-APRIL 4, 1926-NO. 4265

THE LIVING AGE

BRINGS THE WORLD TO AMERICA

AROUND THE WORLD IN MARCH

Too much importance should not be attached to the postponement of the League sessions until September, concerning which the press exhibits exaggerated pessimism, for that makes news. The conflict over the constitution of the League Council is an old one, dating from before the adoption of the Covenant. President Wilson's original plan did not contemplate any Council whatsoever. That body was General Smuts's suggestion, and at first Great Britain wished only the Great Powers to be represented on it. The arrangement actually adopted, which originally provided for five permanent Great-Power members and four nonpermanent small-Power members, was proposed by Italy.

From the outset Liberals in all countries, and most people in the smaller nations, have criticized this constitution as undemocratic. On the other hand, it is argued that the permanent members contemplated in a complete League represent a population of seven hundred million, and the nonpermanent members a population of only five hundred million; and it was understood from the first that Great Britain, France,

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Italy, and Japan- and Germany, Russia, and the United States, if they joined - would have permanent Council seats. The claim of the smaller Powers to such posts is based on the contention that they represent groups of nations. Thus Spain professes to be spokesman for the entire Spanishspeaking world, Brazil for Latin America, Czechoslovakia for the Slavic States, and Sweden for the Northern Powers. Persia claims a permanent seat as representing all Mohammedans, as Japan speaks for the Orient. Already the original constitution of the League has been amended in a democratic direction by enlarging the smallPower delegation to six nonpermanent members instead of the four originally provided, thus giving them a majority in the Council.

But League constitution reformers are not satisfied with this. Some would abolish all permanent members; some would give the smaller Powers membership in rotation, or make a country that has held a seat ineligible for immediate reëlection. Under the present arrangement, Spain has been a nonpermanent member ever since the Copyright 1926, by the Living Age Co.

League was organized, thus gradually acquiring a sort of easement to her seat.

But there are serious objections to enlarging the Council, quite apart from the obvious inadvisability of raising the question in connection with Germany's admission. Even the moderate increase in membership already authorized has, we are told, made it more difficult to transact the Council's business in the prompt and harmonious way its functions demand. The Spectator protests: 'If once we depart from the principle that the permanent members should be executives of the Great Powers, we shall lend ourselves, we fear, to unceasing heartburning and intrigue. There would be a danger a danger which is already indicated of the formation of rival groups representing Slavs, Latins, Teutons, Roman Catholics and Protestants.' And Sisley Huddleston believes a reorganization of the Council on a broader plan would create excessive opportunities for 'diplomatic blackmail' - that is, for a small and unimportant Power to sell its support to a powerful protector in return for political, and perhaps financial, favors. Of course this is not ideal, but an ideal League would collapse in a week.' If the Great Powers, with their world-wide and predominant interests, 'were asked to agree to a supergovernment of Bolivia, Haiti, Liberia, Peru, Portugal, Salvador, and so forth, how many of them would fail to follow the example of the United States? . . . Lesser Powers must, of course, be given due weight. Their opinions must count. By their mere numbers in the Assembly they can create a world sentiment which the Great Powers cannot ignore. The lesser States are also given a large place in the Council as temporary members. They have done excellent work. They are entitled to the fullest representation. Their voices are just as impor

tant as the voices of the Great Powers. They have nothing to complain of. They are not swamped. They are not in a minority. Further, any member of the League not represented on the Council will be invited to sit as a member whenever its interests are specially affected. Thus the exigencies of democratic ideology are completely met, as, in this way, they should be.' Therefore the League is simply passing through a constitutional crisis, which does not affect its fundamental principles or imply its repudiation.

A threatened strike in the engineering trades and the Report of the Coal Commission have occupied the front pages of the British press. Labor, readjustments continue to be England's outstanding problem. Happily the danger of an engineers' strike seems to have passed, and the railway employees, who were also restless, have reconciled themselves to their present conditions of employment. The main features of the Coal Commission's Report were already anticipated. Probably its recommendations that the industry be reorganized on a more rational basis would do most to ensure recovery if it could be promptly and effectively applied. Suggestions contemplating wagereductions or otherwise changing conditions to the disadvantage of the miners will, presumably, be rejected. A revised subsidy to be limited to coal exported is said to be under consideration, though with misgivings lest, if the British Government embark on such a policy, Germany, Belgium, and France may follow suit.

No progress has been made at the moment toward a solution of the financial crisis in France, which has now extended to include Belgium. Senator Coty, the wealthy perfumer and proprietor of Figaro, has made a dramatic offer of one hundred million francs to the Government for the pur

pose of starting a sinking-fund, to take care of the country's maturing obligations, which he proposes shall be managed by an independent committee. This is conditional, of course, upon the Government's adopting a sane financial policy. In making his offer Senator Coty declares that the country is in imminent peril of national bankruptcy and civil war, that the only remedy is to tax all the people and to collect those taxes. For the moment the whole problem is to secure from our direct and indirect imposts fifty billions instead of thirty-five billions, and not increasing our public expenditures.' In arguing for immediate action, he cites these eloquent statistics: of over one and onehalf million business men in France, nearly one third pay taxes upon incomes equivalent to less than twentyfive dollars a year, and another third upon incomes of less than two hundred dollars a year. 'Imagine,' he says, 'a million of our business men working all their lives in order to gain from two to fifteen francs-from six to thirty or forty cents a day!'

Naturally the financial crisis and the resulting instability of the Cabinet keep political feeling at fever heat. This accounts for sensational pressreports like the recent dispatch published in America, to the effect that just before the general election two years ago a group of bankers sold francs by the hundreds of millions abroad, in order to depress exchange and frighten the people into voting for a 'strong government.' An even more exciting article was published in Les Informations Politiques et Financières, insinuating that high-placed Paris politicians were directly involved in the Hungarian franc-forgeries. These, it says, date from 'before the first of May, 1924,' as Count Bethlen has likewise intimated before the Hungarian Assembly, that is, before the last

general French elections, and were part of a conspiracy of prominent Frenchmen and prominent Hungarians to restore a monarchy in the Danube country. This gossip is very unlovely and unworthy of a great nation; but we must remember that there is a far nobler and more praiseworthy aspect of French political life—an aspect that found a voice in Briand's great speech in the Chamber pleading for the ratification of the Locarno Pact, which won that measure the endorsement of the deputies by a majority of four hundred and thirteen to seventy-one.

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In Germany, the struggle to decide whether her ex-Emperor, ex-Kings, and ex-Princes are to be compensated for the former royal property has become the outstanding domestic issue, and the procedure taken to settle affords an interesting illustration of the way the Weimar Constitution works. Early this year, the requisite conditions having been fulfilled, the Reichstag authorized a popular petition, known as the Volksbegehrung, the Nation's Wish, -to decide whether the people desire a bill which had been prepared by the Parties of the Left to be introduced into that body. The bill provides for the confiscation of the entire property of the ex-rulers and their families, the proceeds to be applied to the support of unemployed and disabled ex-service men, of families of men who lost their lives in the war, and of indigent victims of inflation. If one tenth of the registered voters favor the Volksbegehrung, the bill in question must be introduced into the Reichstag. If it is passed, the matter ends there. If it is rejected, a second referendum, called the Volksentscheid, the Nation's Decision,will have to be taken upon it.

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Russia and France have begun negotiations at Paris with a view to reaching a settlement of Russia's pre-war debts to the latter country and concluding a

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