ownership in districts reserved for his occupation. A South African correspondent, criticizing the bill in the Manchester Guardian, says: 'It is perhaps too late in the day to carry out any policy of segregation; it is probable that the ultimate, and not very distant, destiny of the native is to be absorbed in the economic organization of Western civilization. But it does not follow that his position must be that of a wage laborer. In a country so vast in relation to its population as South Africa, land could be found on which he could develop independent agriculture if he were given sympathetic white supervision. The chief significance of the bill is, therefore, to be found in its discouragement of independent native agriculture at a time when other African governments are tending rather to encourage it. Even if it does not pass into law, it indicates the trend of dominant South African opinion.'

The

Communist-Nationalist disorders in Java, which are the subject of an article elsewhere in this issue, have extended to Sumatra, where they have their focus in a mining district in the province of Padang. More than one hundred persons have been killed there, and several hundred have been arrested. According to dispatches in the radical European and British press, the mine workers, who are mostly imported from Java under penal contract, are treated with great brutality, flogging being the usual punishment for breaches of discipline.

China's national uprising against the foreigner promises to be more widespread and serious than

China in the the Boxer revolt a genSpot light eration ago. Despite her internal dissensions, China is to-day stronger from a military standpoint, better organized for common action, and animated by more positive national ideals, than at the be

ginning of the century. A united China, especially with a sympathizer like Moscow behind her, is virtually impregnable to armed attack by the Western Powers. To capture and hold Peking would mean nothing decisive to-day. Twenty-five years ago it meant everything. Moreover, China has learned to use new weapons not only modern rifles, artillery, and airplanes, but the economic boycott, which is the most intimidating weapon of all to modern industrial nations. The Western Powers are not as well agreed regarding their policy toward China as they were at the earlier date, and the armed aid and military aggressiveness of the old German Empire no longer pushes them on. Last of all, ‘imperialism' is out of fashion.

This does not mean that we may not have hostilities between the white man and the yellow man on the shores of the Yellow Sea anything is possible in the present uncertainty. But Great Britain, after a long period of hesitation, has followed up her recent conciliatory diplomatic initiative with military preparations on an extensive scale. Our own Government appears to be proceeding less resolutely along the same line. In other words, the policy is to negotiate as long as possible, and to use force only as a last measure of defense. We assume that this means that the Treaty Ports upon the coast will be defended, if necessary, by ships of war and naval detachments. But effective armed intervention in the internal affairs of China such as occurred at the time of the Boxer outrage might require an army of half a million men, and no government or group of governments is likely to embark upon a campaign of these dimensions.

The fundamental difficulty in dealing with China is that she is not represented by a single government. At the moment she is divided into a Northern

and a Southern half, each acting independently of the other, with a problematical third government in her northwestern provinces. Rumor has it that General Feng Yu-hsiang, influenced by his recent visit to Moscow, and perhaps also by the favor the Western Powers have shown his opponent, Chang Tso-lin, has renounced Christianity and gone over soul as well as body to the Bolsheviki. We have only conjecture, however, to substantiate such reports. There are also rumors that Peking and Canton or Wuhan, the collective name for the neighboring cities of Wuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang on the Yangtze, which have been proclaimed the new Kuomintang capitalare secretly negotiating with a view to common action against the foreigner. Chang Tso-lin has been in Peking, apparently to reassert his authority there. He has hesitated to move his army southward, partly because that would be a difficult operation in the heart of winter, and partly, perhaps, because he distrusts the loyalty of his own troops when subjected to the propaganda of the Nationalists. The rioting at Hankow, which resulted in the withdrawal of foreigners from that city, and indirectly in the evacuation of the greater part of the Yangtze valley by European missionaries and business men, was the logical outcome of the successful Cantonese campaign, which depends as much upon posters and propaganda as it does upon rifles and artillery. But there is some evidence that the more responsible men among the Nationalists are averse to pushing the agitation against the foreigner too far. That might bring about a cessation of trade with Europe, which would deprive China of important sources of revenue, of Western goods which have gradually become a necessity for her people and her armies, and of the expert aid of

Western engineers, physicians, and teachers. Yet it is by no means certain that the leaders can control their followers. At Changsha the students in the Christian colleges and missions, whom we should suppose to be more enlightened than Hankow coolies, are said to have taken equally abusive measures to get control of the institutions which are educating them. These institutions represent in the city of Changsha an investment of between six and seven million dollars, all contributed by Americans. The Yale-inChina Mission and Hospital alone accounts for one half that sum.

On the other hand, the Canton Gazette, which is the English-language organ of the Kuomintang, argues that foreigners as well as Chinese will benefit by the Nationalist revolution. General Tang Yen-tat, the political director of the Nationalist army, protests: 'It has been asserted that we are antiforeign. This is an untrue statement, and circulated chiefly by those interested in the continuance of the present feudal system. The Kuomintang and the Nationalist army have not at any time shown an attitude of antiforeignism, but there has been a certain foreign hostility toward us, and this has brought about a natural resentment.' It must be admitted that some justification for this resentment exists. For example, a few weeks ago twenty-seven members of the Kuomintang Party who were living in the British concession at Tientsin, which is traditionally recognized as a sanctuary for political refugees of all complexions, were arrested by the British authorities there and turned over to Chang Tsolin, presumably to be shot.

Japanese sentiment toward China in the present crisis is somewhat ambiguous. Press opinion shows many shades, and the Government has been

noncommittal on the British memorandum. Tokyo is not inclined to recognize the Cantonese, directly or indirectly, out of consideration for Chang Tso-lin, its Manchurian coadjutor, and because the Cantonese are receiving aid from Moscow. Jacob Borodin, the chief Russian adviser of the Kuomintang Government, who was born in Latvia and whose real name is Michael Grusenberg, has been a Communist propagandist in Spain, Mexico, and the United States. Later he figured in the same rôle in Great Britain, where in August 1922 he was sentenced at Glasgow, under the name of George Brown, to six months' imprisonment. Nowadays a Bolshevist emissary's career is as cosmopolitan, and much more vicissitudinous and exciting, than that of the most peripatetic diplomat.

NicaraguaMexico

Uncle Sam seems doomed to figure as the villain in the international portrait gallery. After being stigmatized as Shylock ever since the war, he is now berated as a bully on account of his attitude toward Nicaragua. Some foreign papers draw a deadly parallel between Mr. Hughes and Mr. Kellogg, who, they profess to believe, has undone much of the former's good work in Latin America. For a time every cable that reached Europe was expected to announce war between this country and Mexico. Naturally our foreign competitors for South American trade are jubilant, and do nothing to minimize these reports. The Irish Statesman accuses Washington of following in Nicaragua the Chinese military maxim, 'If you are strong enough you can disregard the rights of neutrals.' More temperately, the Saturday Review says: "The revolt of Latin America against American dollar diplomacy has not yet been quelled, and mainly because the best

elements in the United States are strongly opposed to a policy which turns the Monroe Doctrine into the doctrine that might and money are right.' The Outlook imagines that American imperialists have been going a little too fast for general opinion in the United States,' but since it is convinced that 'the thrust forward of American imperialism is sure and steady,' it predicts that the republics to the southward are predestined to follow the course of Louisiana and Texas. 'Moralists may deplore this, but an impartial observer can only interpret facts as they are.' Consequently Europe is 'witnessing the prologue to an historical drama of first importance in the Western Hemisphere.' While the Continental press waxes sarcastic over our alleged gratuitous aggression upon weaker neighbors, in view of what it characterizes as our holier-than-thou attitude toward Europe, Spanish papers hesitate to condemn our action in Mexico, because Spanish Catholics resent that country's church laws and because numerous Spanish landowners in Mexico have suffered from the Government's revolutionary expropriations. Some German papers, notably Vossische Zeitung, extenuate our action in Nicaragua, and attribute the indignation it has aroused abroad to our State Department's blundering information service, which its correspondent characterizes as 'a rare mixture of nervousness and timidity with ill-timed bluster. It arouses at least a suspicion of hypocrisy.' La Tribuna, a Rome Fascist organ, publishes a leading article quoting by section and paragraph the provisions of the League Convenant which, it claims, obligate Geneva to defend Nicaragua. A Berlin publicist writing in Prager Tagblatt says: 'It is regrettable that the League, of which Nicaragua is a member, is in this

films' which American producers ship all over the world, representing the 'greaser' as a brigand and generally as a coward or a scoundrel. Although a gentleman of Buenos Aires or Rio would resent being identified with a 'greaser,' he nevertheless is conscious of cousinship with all Latin Americans. Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poetess, whose voice carries far south of the Rio Grande, is up in arms against these gratuitous insults to her race. Meanwhile Europeans profit by our tactlessness. For instance, French producers and distributors are said to have agreed that no films offending in this respect shall issue from their studios.

YESTERDAY I went to wish M. Aristide Briand a happy New Year. I found him in his office at Quai d'Orsay, where I have often talked with him during and since the war. It was a good opportunity to ask him what he thought of the past year and of the new year just beginning. I did not expect to find him 'in the dumps,' for I had often observed his sang-froid and serenity, in that same room, when he was governing France during the most tragic days of her history. In fact, he answered my questions with great good humor, and — making a rare exception of the occasion-consented to let me print the substance of our conversation.

'YES, at the risk of being considered an impenitent, I believe it has been a good year. Taking it all in all, and making due allowance for the disquieting as well as the hopeful factors in the situation, I cannot condemn a year that saw the Locarno accords go into effect, our eastern frontier consolidated, and England guarantee our security-in other words, a year that has given us the essential things we sought in the Treaty of Versailles. From the point of view of peace, that is not a bad achievement. I know, of course, that gloomy souls exist who are not happy except when they are prophesying evil, who see the world colored by their own dark pessi

1 From Le Matin (Paris boulevard daily), January 3

mism, and try to make it look equally black to others. They resemble those fish that spurt out a cloud of ink in the water when alarmed. At the risk of exposing myself to their sarcastic thrusts, with which I have been assailed many times before this, I say confidently that the year 1926 has so strengthened the peace spirit in Europe that, although troublesome causes of friction may arise here and there, the risk of war has been greatly diminished.

"Germany is now a member of the League of Nations. She has publicly and voluntarily recognized her frontiers as delimited by the treaties. She has promised never to modify them by force. A system of judicial procedure based upon treaties of conciliation and arbitration has been substituted for the old system of alliances aimed at particular nations, which inevitably resulted sooner or later in violence. This is the principal reason why I am full of hope. One of the most valuable features of the accords which we have signed is that we have made them in full agreement with our allies and friends the Poles, the Czechoslovaks, the Rumanians, and the Yugoslavs. Consequently, these agreements, instead of weakening the ties that bind those nations to us, have strengthened them. Their people are grateful to us for having consulted with their Governments throughout these negotiations and for having kept con