international peace,' and to attribute to the Dominions plans 'threatening the tranquillity of the Orient.' Apropos of the new Manhood Suffrage Law, Yorodzu observed that during the Meiji era from the opening of the country to foreigners down to 1912Japan's civilization was Europeanized; during the Taisho era-between the latter date to the death of the Emperor last month-she became Americanized. At the same time, however, the editor accuses our country of preaching democracy and practising autocracy. Ours has always been, he declares, a popular government run more or less arbitrarily by great men like Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Wilson.

in general, will probably side with us, though not enthusiastically because of conscious race differences; but the young intellectuals, radicals, and reformers, who are the vocal element of the rising generation between the Rio Grande and the Magellan Straits, are pro-Calles, pro-Sacasa, anti-Díazand certainly anti-Uncle Sam. La Prensa of Buenos Aires said editorially that the note which President Díaz addressed to our Government, asking it to help him settle the domestic crisis in Nicaragua and forestall an invasion from Mexico, caused profound astonishment, because 'a president of an American republic who professes to be constitutionally elected cannot properly appeal to a foreign government for assistance in a domestic emergency or to chastise the alleged irregularities of a neighboring country.' For us to comply with such a request would, in its opinion, 'place the sovereignty of one nation under the protection of another,' and would be an assumption of jurisdiction for which we have no legal mandate beyond offering our friendly mediation to all parties concerned.

A PERSON here in Moscow realizes that the meeting which has just occurred between the Foreign Ministers of Russia and Turkey at Odessa is an event of first importance. It directly affects the interests of Europe, and proves once more that Russia must have a two-faced foreign policy, looking toward Europe and toward Asia.

This is no secret, to be sure. The Soviet Government has always smiled at Asia and scowled at Europe. Toward the latter continent Russia stands on the defensive, suspicious of attack and jealously asserting her independence. Toward Asia she is both conciliating and aggressive. Her policy in Europe governed by her ambitions in Asia, and her intrigues in Asia are designed to serve her in her fight against 'European imperialism.'

Odessa followed on the heels of Thoiry and Locarno. All three belong to the same diplomatic series, notwithstanding the fact that the Soviet press has done its best to show that the Odessa accord bears no analogy to the two preceding ones.

Moscow was as gratified by Thoiry as she was disturbed by Locarno. She hoped the former might help her breach the hostile rampart on the west, that it would be a first step toward forming a continental bloc against the English, or mayhap a Franco-German entente

1 From La Tribuna (Rome Pro-Fascist daily), November 25

against Italy. Let that happen, and the Soviet Union might find a place in the partnership, and give it a definitely anti-British character. Her cards in that game would be her long-standing relations with Berlin, and her markets and raw materials, so necessary to her western neighbors.

The Odessa agreement is important quite independently of its relation to any possible realignment in Western Europe. It represents a new phase in Russia's general political and diplomatic drive along her Asiatic front. Moscow has pushed ahead persistently along two main highways in her march toward the conquest of Asia — the Mussulman road and the Buddhist road. These two great routes, leading from the Mediterranean to the Pacific and to the Indian Ocean respectively, admit her to territories inhabited by more than nine hundred million human beings, and containing untouched natural resources of inestimable value. Russia has managed her advance most skillfully. By consistently supporting the independence agitation everywhere stirring Asiatic nations, she has been able rapidly to push forward her campaign against European imperialism and to gain an undisputed vantage ground for extending her influence over the entire continent. Her armies and weapons are more dangerous and insidious than those of the Occident. We need only read the reports that

So Mohammedan Turkey, on the border of Europe, like Buddhist China in the farthest Orient, is a powerful lever in Moscow's hands. For although Turkey's new Government has lost religious authority among the one hundred and seventy millions of Mohammedans in Asia, its political prestige has been immensely increased by its successful assertion of Turkey's independence and defiance of the Versailles settlement. Soon after signing its treaty at Paris with Angora, Moscow concluded similar treaties with Persia and Afghanistan. Subsequently Russia was godfather to a similar agreement between Turkey and Persia. Thus step by step Soviet diplomats are preparing the way for a Pan-Asiatic League under their own ægis.

But besides these general interests and long-range considerations, more concrete and immediate ties exist between Moscow and Angora, and help to account for what was done at Odessa. London, Geneva, and Rome are the three principal arguments in favor of a Turco-Soviet alliance. Great Britain

terests and to maintain its influence in Turkey, as a defense for its mandate over Irak to which Mosul has been added by the League- and its imperial interests in India. Moscow and Angora are in complete agreement, however, in distrusting London's overtures. Turkey, with her passionate nationalism, seeks to emancipate herself from all dependence on the West. Russia believes that she can strike at England through Turkey and through Asia in general. As to Geneva, some politicians at Angora have recently been playing with the idea that it might be well for Turkey to join the League of Nations in order to insure herself against British and Italian aggression. Moscow, which hates the League, has naturally done its best to prevent Turkey's joining that body or establishing closer relations with the West. The third tie between Moscow and Angora is the baseless fancy that Italy has designs upon Turkish territory in Asia Minor. That myth has been used to Italy's injury in Western Europe, and is much too tempting a poison dart to be overlooked by Moscow. A casual glance over the Turkish or the Soviet press abundantly proves this.

[THE author, a distinguished journalist and a member of the French Senate, was for some time Governor-General of Syria.]

AN Asiatic League of Nations was not born at Odessa. But it is incubating,

2 From L'Europe Nouvelle (Paris Liberal foreign-affairs weekly), November 20

and we may wake up some morning to find it an accomplished fact.

Visions of one or of several leagues of Asiatic nations unquestionably haunt the dreams of the East. Islam is without a Caliph. Of the two present candidates for that honor, the King of Egypt and the Sultan of Nejd, the first apparently has no chance. The report of

the Commission appointed by the Caliphate Congress at Cairo last May states that the four great Mohammedan sects are agreed that the Caliph must be 'a Moslem, adult, in full possession of his faculties, free and independent, a male, able to enforce penal sanctions, capable of compelling observance of the religious law, strong enough to protect Mussulman territory, clear of vision, prudent of word, and blessed with the judgment and foresight required to promote the general interests of the Mohammedan world.'

If we analyze these qualifications, we see at once how different Oriental psychology is from our own. Temporal power is made supreme over spiritual power. The day when the Caliph loses his authority as a political sovereign the Koran and the Shar fall from his hands and the faithful turn their backs on him. Now King Fuad is regarded as a prisoner of the English. Good Mohammedans do not believe that he is free and independent, or that he is strong enough to protect Mussulman territory. Consequently the followers of Zaghlul Pasha, who include the majority of the public men of Egypt herself, are more inclined to favor Ibn Saud, the Sultan of Nejd and the King of Hejaz, who has conquered his territories with the sword and the rifle and who has twenty years of unfailing victory behind him.

But the religious world and the famous Egyptian University of El Azhar consider the Wahabis and their chief, Ibn Saud, sacrilegious men who show no respect for sacred rites or places. The Indian delegation to the Mecca Congress last July, held two months after the one in Cairo, organized a series of meetings after their return to India to condemn the narrow bigotry of the Hejaz king.

Believing it impossible to restore the caliphate at present, the Islamic

nations naturally seek some other way to defend Mohammedan territory. One suggestion is an Islamic League of Nations to oppose the Geneva League, which they consider a specifically Christian agency. The Locarno treaties have strengthened the latter conviction in the East. Neither M. Briand, Mr. Chamberlain, Herr Stresemann, nor Signor Scialoja realized, when he signed these peace accords, how generally they would be regarded in Asia as an alliance of Europe against that continent. None the less, every important Mohammedan newspaper thus interprets them.

This unfortunate misconception, which we should have hastened to correct, was aggravated a few months later when the League Council decided against Turkey in the Mosul dispute. The most influential names in that decision were the same as those affixed to the Locarno accords. Therefore the Turks felt absolutely certain that the territorial despoliation of which they rightly or wrongly thought themselves the victims was a direct result of the Locarno 'alliance.' When the Kurd revolt raised on their Irak frontier, the concentration of the Italian fleet at Rhodes, and the threat of a military landing, forced them to submit to what they believed was an unjust judgment, this conviction was confirmed, not only in their own minds, but likewise in the minds of Egyptians, Arabs, Syrians, and Persians, all of whom believed that Europe had conspired at Locarno to partition Asia.

Turkey's rulers, on account of their anticlericalism, prefer an Islamic League of Nations, in which they would play a preponderant rôle, to the resurrection of the caliphate, which would weaken their influence. Mustapha Kemal Pasha aspires to make the Turks the Westerners of Asia. The humiliation which England has in

flicted upon him, so disastrous to his prestige at home, and Italy's threatening attitude, have turned him back toward the Moslem world. He sent his representatives to the Mecca Congress. He took part in the negotiations between Ibn Saud and Zaghlul Pasha for organizing a confederation of Arab countries. His representatives at Hejaz and at Cairo presided over those pourparlers. Did these lead to an actual treaty? We do not know, for diplomatic secrets are well guarded in the East. Meanwhile English influence in Persia, which has been preponderant until recently, seems on the decline. At Angora, Persians and Afghans met M. Alfred Sze, China's Minister at Washington, who is visiting the Turkish capital on official duties. Turkey's Ambassador to Persia, Shefket Memduh Bey, helped to draft the Treaty of friendship between China and the Soviet Union, which we have reason to believe was signed about the first of October by Sun Pao-chi, the Chinese Ambassador at Moscow.

Consequently Tevfik Rushti Bey's trip to Odessa is the last link in a complex chain of negotiations which have been conducted with great skill and

without noise, and which are binding Moscow, Cairo, the Nejd, India, Persia, Afghanistan, China, and Turkey into a sort of Oriental fascio a new Asia. What will be the practical outcome of this grandiose idea? Will these great countries be able to carry through so vast a political scheme? Will their financial weakness force them to apply to Europe for credit to Europe or the United States? Yes, and what part will America play? What will her financial experts, who are to-day allpowerful at Teheran, advise? Will her Y. M. C. A.'s continue to encourage the Bolsheviki in China? How did it happen to be the Chinese Minister to Washington who was sent on this particular mission to represent his country at Angora? Is the perennial struggle between the United States and Japan assuming a new guise? Is it for that reason that the Japanese Government took such umbrage at the PanAsiatic Conference at Nagasaki last August, where only one Japanese delegate was present, and where Chinese and Japanese antagonism broke out openly?

What a list of question marks! Something for M. Chicherin to answer when he comes to Paris.

EUROPE'S Foreign Offices have taken note of the following incidents. Last September the first Japanese squadron for twenty years or more visited Constantinople. It was commanded by an admiral, who was presented to Mustapha Kemal at Angora by the Jap

'From Frankfurter Zeitung (Liberal daily), November 13

anese Ambassador. Last October the Persian Minister, Timur Tash, after a long visit at Moscow, where Memduh Shevket, the Turkish Ambassador at Teheran, was likewise spending his vacation, visited Angora in company with the latter gentleman. Last November the Chinese Ambassador in Washington, Dr. Sze, also turned