were not altogether pleased with the emphasis which the Conference gave to the diplomatic autonomy of the Dominions. Pertinax predicted ruefully: 'Great Britain will be more averse than ever to entering into written engagements and alliances. . . . It is virtually impossible to pursue a sound foreign policy, where prompt decisions are imperative, when it is necessary to secure beforehand the unanimous consent of communities as remote as the antipodes.' On the other hand, however, the Nation and Athenæum makes the acute remark: 'Since the Government of Great Britain ceases in any real sense to be the Imperial Government except as regards the non-selfgoverning parts of the Empire, it should be able to assert with greater freedom and propriety the special interests of its own constituents.'

Since the British Government already operates the telegraphs and telephones, it logically controls broadcasting; but this function raises the question whether political propaganda so difficult to define shall be allowed to go on the air. The Government proposes to continue for the present the existing prohibition of Party speeches, although the nation is of two opinions regarding this. The Westminster Gazette, representing a Party out of power, applauds the decision. 'Listeners are already surfeited with broadcast speeches. There is no reason why, against their will, they should be dosed with politics like children with physics. Broadcasting has become a public amenity. Why should it be debased into a public nuisance?' But the Times objects that 'thousands of intelligent men and women in the country would feel all the better for hearing an argument on a live issue. Take away all discussion from talk and print, and the residue is apt to be insipid.' It is proposed likewise to bar from the air

opinions on religious and industrial topics. A writer in the Sunday Times protests against such a 'censorship of public taste,' and thus criticizes the broadcasting monopoly: 'Hitherto State education has been confined to the young, but here is a new power to enable the State to go on educating a man until he is ready for the grave.' He thinks it 'prudent to receive with a certain amount of skepticism' so grandiose a project. "The governors of the new trust that is, the licensed Broadcasting Company-have been given an exceedingly difficult task, for if what the Americans call "uplift" is too obvious the million may take fright, and if they go on the principle of giving the public what it is supposed to want, without any attempt to form taste, they lose the excuse for their own existence.' Controversy on the subject has not been confined to the newspapers, but has aroused a lively debate in the House of Commons.

The British Foreign Office has seen fit to address a letter to the SecretaryGeneral of the League of Nations politely protesting against the care with which the Permanent Mandates Commission is inquiring into the government of the colonies and countries entrusted to the administration of the Powers. The Commission's questionnaire is very exhaustive, 'comprising as it does over two hundred and thirty questions extending to every detail of government and administration.' The New Statesman deplores Mr. Chamberlain's action, because it makes the British Government appear as a leader in a fight against the Commission, ‘a body of unquestioned integrity and ability, whose authority must be maintained if the mandate system is to have the confidence of the world.' It argues that, if Great Britain is doing its duty fairly to the inhabitants of the countries placed in its care, there is nothing

to fear, and that as a trustee it cannot set up as sole judge ‘of what is necessary or unnecessary in respect of the rights of its cestui que trust. The mandated territories are not colonies.'

Krasin Passes

In the death of Leonid Borisovich Krasin, the Soviet Trade Commissioner at London, Moscow has lost its most influential foreign emissary. The Saturday Review characterized him as one of Moscow's few leaders 'who viewed the outside world through glasses which were more or less normal. His hostility to capitalism was based on economic rather than sentimental grounds.' The Conservative Outlook thought him 'the best of representatives of Soviet Russia that Moscow could have sent to London . . . a revolutionary without the impossible Bolshevist mentality'; and the Economic Review, after remarking that he was 'neither a wild ruffian nor a mad fanatic,' described him as 'too much of a business man to be trusted entirely by the Communists, and too much of a Communist to enjoy the confidence of business people.' Although he was bitterly attacked by some of his comrades in Russia, and was never admitted to the innermost circle of the Government, he received the usual Moscow eulogies upon his death. In an official obituary Lunacharskii called him 'our first Red trader' and 'a marshal of Lenin,' and declared that his personal charm made his every public appearance 'something like an artistic event.'

Church polemics embitter their controversies, and it is plausibly alleged that they have received guidance and financial aid from Italy. The line of international tension in Europe seems to have shifted from Paris-Berlin to Paris-Rome. It may relax, however, after the coming interview between Mussolini, Briand, and Austen Chamberlain. M. Bérenger's resignation as Minister to Washington is interpreted as an omen unfavorable to an immediate debt settlement with ourselves.

Germany is still afflicted with a plague of political conspirators — ugly survivals of the war and of Germany a military caste that seems and Her to have lost all, including Southern honor. Reichswehr officers Neighbors have been detected soliciting funds for secret military organizations, and court proceedings reveal the disgusting details of murder plots against public officials and Republican leaders conceived and executed by exofficers. Such evils, although subsiding, still irritate the nerves and retard the convalescence of the nation. The substitution of League control for Allied control over the occupied territories, and the progress of German disarmament, which is now promised for the end of January, will presumably deprive the reactionaries of much of their ammunition. Prussia and the Reich are reported to be negotiating new concordats with Rome, in addition to the one already concluded by Bavaria, but the terms of these agreements are far from settled. Recent elections in Polish Silesia, the first held since the plebiscite, have resulted in a victory for the Germans, who have swept the polls in the industrial districts and registered a majority in the province as a whole. Mr. Korfanty, the local National Polish leader, characterized the result as a heavy blow to his country's hopes. In Czechoslovakia, the Svehla Cabinet,

which for the first time includes two German members, seems well entrenched in office. It has a constructive programme which all the leading Parties endorse, though with varying enthusiasm; and while minor explosions centring around political personalities still jar the machine of State occasionally, a fair degree of political peace is promised pending the Presidential elections next spring. Masaryk needs three fifths of the combined vote of both Houses of Parliament to be returned to office. At present he seems assured of the support of every Party except the Communists and the German and Czech Nationalists the extremists at either end of the party Beneš, who remains Foreign Minister, is working with Austria to promote a Danubian Federation, which some describe as a revival of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire along democratic lines. Naturally, an economic, not a political, union is contemplated. Two years ago we described the spectacular downfall of Castiglioni, one of Austria's great inflation profiteers. Now an equally conspicuous disaster has befallen Siegemund Bosel, his rival in high finance. When the war broke out this young gentleman, then nine teen years old, was a petty clerk in a Vienna hat shop. Exempted from military service for physical defects, he took to speculating upon the fall of the currency, buying and selling articles over the telephone, often without ever having seen them. Gradually his transactions enlarged from a bag of flour or a case of canned goods to banks, factories, and great estates. As his millions multiplied, he spent them with a lavish hand, paying the debts of the University of Vienna, and at one time reclothing the city police force at his own expense. Eventually his relations with the authorities became so close that he was able to borrow many mil

lions of dollars from the Postal Savings Bank, which he is now unable to repay. Unsatisfied, like so many other Central Europeans, with the form of government under which Expansive they are now living, the Hungary Hungarians are planning a number of novelties. For one thing, they are drawing up a plan to replace the old House of Magnates with a new Upper House drawn from various classes of society. The old House, in abeyance since 1918, was hereditary; the new one, save for a member of the Hapsburg-Lorraine family, will be representative, though in part chosen by a small body of noblemen. The object is to ensure representation from every phase of public life: bankers, priests, professors, business men, writers, scientists, artists, agriculturists, and even two rabbis, will be on hand. Count Albert Apponyi so far forgot himself as to suggest that the two hundred and forty members include two trade-union representatives. But Hungary still has some standards left, whatever may have happened to the rest of us, and that preposterously bold proposal was turned down.

This, however, is not the only reform in view: the air is still ringing with rumors of a royal merger with Rumania. The latest gossip is that Princess Ileana will have to forget her beau at West Point and solace herself with the Hapsburg Archduke Albrecht, who has already been prominent in restoration plots. Carol will then be dropped for good, and Ileana will assume the Rumanian succession, while Albrecht will be elected King of Hungary. This plan would be likely to appeal to Italy, whose chief aim in Eastern Europe at the moment is to break up the Little Entente and thus cut off Yugoslavia. Since the Little Entente is essentially a defensive alliance against Hungary, the combination of that country with

a member of the Entente would be a powerful stroke. France, on the other hand, has coddled the Little Entente along, and could hardly be expected to stand by idly in the event of a Hungarian-Rumanian combination.

Hard-Pressed Rumania

The Italian-Rumanian Treaty is another indication of the rivalry between France and Italy for supremacy in the Balkans, with Rumania as usual playing the part of the pawn. Confronted with her dispute with Russia over Bessarabia in the north, allied to Italy, whose Black Sea trade depends on Russia's good-will, committed to Italy's enemy, Yugoslavia, and and France's protégé, Czechoslovakia, the country of King Ferdinand and his bobbed-haired queen is indeed 'pressed between great Powers,' as the Berliner Tageblatt says. Whether to turn toward Rome or Paris is a Chinaman's choice, for the diplomatists of either capital might find it expedient to neglect Rumania and attend to more pressing business elsewhere.

In the case of Italy this intrigue has already lifted its head in Albania, which has been in a state of comparatively harmless uproar. The Frankfurter Zeitung speaks very scornfully of the amount of actual bloodshed involved in a conventional Albanian revolution. The uprising in 1924 involved the loss of exactly three lives, and during the recent fighting around Scutari, in which twelve hundred or two thousand soldiers participated, there are said to have been only eighteen fatalities. The important feature of the Albanian situation, however, is the new treaty between that country and Italy, whose dubious terms are variously reported by Rome and by Belgrade, and threaten to produce something more than a diplomatic conflict between those two capitals. As matters stand at present, Italy is

backing the existing Government in Albania, and the suppression of the recent insurrection there probably spells a setback to Yugoslav influence among her distraught and tumultuous neighbors.

Fascism Casts

the Die

Now that the situation in Italy has clarified after the excitement following the last attempt to kill Mussolini, the press is taking stock of what has happened to the Fascist Party. We have previously alluded to the struggle within its ranks between violent extremists led by Farinacci and the moderate wing of which Federzoni is the head. If current conjecture is true, the recent outburst of passion resulted in the definite relegation of Federzoni and his moderates to a back seat in Party counsels and the complete ascendency of Farinacci and his strongarm extremists. Mussolini is no longer able to balance one against the other, whatever his real preference may be. Farinacci's followers organized the November street demonstrations against Federzoni, and were responsible for numerous acts of violence all over the country, of which the full details will never be known, although enough has leaked through the censorship to suggest many harrowing episodes behind the scenes. French papers report that Mussolini is courting Germany's good-will. He has expressed kindly feelings toward that country — as indeed he has toward France herself

in interviews given to representatives of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and Le Matin, respectively, and it has even been rumored that Herr Stresemann may be present at the conference of the British, French, and Italian Foreign Ministers which is announced to occur shortly under the arbors of Lago Maggiore. Il Impero, which speaks with Fascist authority, deplores the 'petty squabbles instigated

by the usual third parties' which have perturbed relations between Rome and Berlin, and predicts that a recementing of Italo-German friendship will give Europe a new lease of life. The London Outlook opines that Italy will withdraw her opposition to an Austro-German union, and that she and Germany will strike up a partnership inside the League in order to push their claims for colonial mandates.

Primo de Rivera remains in a conciliatory mood. He has tried to persuade the artillery officers who resigned at the time of the late military strike to resume their commissions, and many of them are said to have done so. Preparations for the new National Assembly are under way. General Macià's attempt to start an insurrection has brought the Catalonian question to the fore. Professor Masso Llorens, a Catalonian political refugee, thus describes in L'Europe Nouvelle the sentiment of his fellow nationals: 'An aristocracy without honor, dignity, or culture. . . which favors Spain in return for royal favors; a nationalist intelligentsia demanding separatism; a middle class unanimously in favor of complete autonomy; a working class formerly Socialist and internationalist, and therefore lukewarm toward purely political movements, which the tyranny of the Directory has driven into the arms of the insurgents; and a group of manufacturers who cling to Madrid because they want a protective tariff and the Spanish market.'

Germany's rapid return to her old place in the European concert is in

on a common platform. Madras, which has hitherto favored coöperation with the British in the Councils, has given a majority to the Swarajists, who will also be the largest Party in the Central Provinces, and are sure to sweep the Bengal.

Chinese

China promises to be the scene of the big fight next summer between the Cantonese and the Christian General's forces, and Prognostics the combined armies of Chang Tso-lin and the other militarists, presumably with the Western Powers behind them. The contest is not as uneven as it might seem, for the militarists will probably fight with halfhearted soldiers who sympathize with their opponents. The Mukden Tuchun does not have the united support of Japan, although, to quote the Japan Weekly Chronicle, Tokyo is much more likely to continue to favor the North than to give countenance to the Canton Government. 'Intensely as she dislikes Marshal Chang Tso-lin, who staves off Japanese penetration so skillfully, he is infinitely preferable in the Japanese eyes to a Southern governing clique who would be coquetting with Russia all the time and showing hostility to any symptoms of imperialism on the Japanese part.' Nevertheless, Japanese exporters are terrified lest the National Government gain a definite ascendency and exclude Japan's goods from China in retaliation for the favor Tokyo is showing its opponents. That same fear may strike into the hearts of the British a little later. The China Weekly Review, an

nomination of a German

India judge to the Egyptian

the Egyptian

Mixed Tribunals. In India the elections, contrary to early reports, have resulted in heavy gains for the Swarajists. The opposition Parties were handicapped by their failure to unite

the idea that Canton is Red, and pokes fun at Putnam Weale and General Frank A. Sutton, two British propagandists in the pay of Chang Tso-lin, for trying to represent the Southern movement as hopelessly Bolshevist. "There are, of course, the Soviet affilia