strikes, with their accompanying loss of wages and general misery, for the purpose of fostering a spirit of revolt against all established authority.

I want to say here that employers ought to take great pains to prove to their workingmen that they are not the enemies they are constantly represented to be in our revolutionary meetings. Let me say, also, that employers, unfortunately, omit doing many things that would take the wind out of the sails of the agitators-things they could do very easily and without much sacrifice to themselves. These faults of omission are a heritage from the old days. I realize that my views may not get a favorable reception in a bourgeois paper. But I think the

situation is serious enough to make it worth while to take precautions against worse things than are now occurring. Employers should not invariably assume an automatically antagonistic attitude, when their working people petition for better wages, especially when they are aware that under present currency conditions wages cannot remain stationary without causing great distress among the workers, when newspapers are publishing announcements of dividends of 20 per cent and over, and when directors' salaries are known to reach 100,000 marks. The usual tactics are to reject offhand every demand for an increase of wages. It is an exceedingly rare thing for an employer voluntarily to adjust his wages to the rising cost of living. Under such conditions, it is natural that the working people should distrust the fairness of the employing class.

I could mention many things that disturb the good relations between employer and employee, but I will confine myself to the situation in a specific great industry in a single city. In those works the employee is merely

a number. He is looked upon simply as a tool that must always be found in a certain place. Now the workingmen in this establishment would certainly take more interest in their tasks and in the prosperity of the business if they were made to feel that they were human beings and fellow associates of the employer in productive service. A workingman who does presume to show such interest is apt to be called down by his boss, if not by the employer himself. It is not capitalism as a system so much as the way it is administered that embitters the working people..

Our country is now in such distress that good relations between masters and men are more necessary than ever before. For this reason I venture to urge employers and factory managers to scan very carefully the qualifications of the persons to whom they give authority over other men. It is not the fellow who wins favor with his superiors by servility who makes the best boss. It is more apt to be the outspoken, independent chap whose manhood wins the respect of his associates. Such men may not always be so pleasant to converse with, but the advantage of their character and influence compensates a hundred times for this. Furthermore, the big men in a great industrial undertaking should not be so solicitous to avoid contact with the common laborers they employ. An ordinary workingman is not a dangerous person when you come to talk with him. And if you talk with him frankly, as man to man, you will find that each learns something.

The individual workingman is not always to blame for the falling off of output. For example, the materials which a lathe man or machinist is given to work with to-day are very inferior to those supplied him in 1914.

The tools assigned him are equally below the old standard. These conditions alone go far to account for the fact that it takes nearly twice the time now to perform a piece of work that it took five years ago.

I think that I have written enough for today, although I have many things in my heart that I would like to tell your readers. It lies within the power of employers to do much more to win the confidence and to inspire the industry of their employees than they probably are aware of. Such comparatively minor things as a small bonus to the workingmen on holidays will sometimes change the whole sentiment of a body of working people and render them immune to the germs of discord which agitators would sow among them. The German working people are sound and reasonable at heart, and the transient radicalism that has seized them is due really to misdirected idealism. Why should it be difficult to get them back on the right path? It will not even take much sacrifice, but merely wise management. Nothing could be more perverse than for employers to assume a harsh and arbitrary attitude just at this moment, when the working people are obviously growing weary of incessant controversies. There are too many employers left who think it their duty to impress upon their working people that the latter are entirely dependent on them. They say, 'Were it not for me, you would go hungry.' That may be true in a sense, but it does not make the employees willing workers to have it dinned in their ears. Employers should seize this very crisis to show the best and most generous side of their nature to their working people, and to seek mutual understanding with them. That would speedily inspire reciprocal good will, and would work miracles with the present situation.

[The Times]

LLOYD GEORGE ON IRELAND

MR. LLOYD GEORGE spoke in circumstances that might well have daunted anyone less sanguine than himself. Those who sat behind him, normally his warmest supporters, were cold if not hostile; not a single Irishman in Parliament was known to be friendly, and the Irish Nationalists, who might have been expected to be there to listen to a scheme that sought to revive constitutionalism in Ireland, were conspicuously absent; the Liberals, though friendly to reform, knew that they were assisting at the obsequies of Gladstonian Home Rule and could hardly be expected to be enthusiastic. Labor had no acquaintance with the enormous practical difficulties of Irish legislation.

It was a silent and somewhat introspective House that gave the Prime Minister none of the assistance that indulges his genius. Yet he made undoubtedly one of the greatest if also one of the least characteristic speeches of his life. The first half-hour gave a perfect example of wise general principles perfectly expounded. The gift of just and balanced generalization is not typically Lloyd-Georgian; and the greater the praise due to him for the triumph that he won. The House was too absorbed to cheer. Later, perhaps misinterpreting the absence of applause, he seemed to falter, and the financial passages in his speech were a little ragged and spiritless. But he rallied finely at the end in a brief and sincere peroration. It was a speech of great if not equally sustained power throughout, but above all one was impressed by the balance and the sincerity of the thinking.

He began naturally by some sentences on the outburst of crime in Ireland. The object of these murder

Alas,

societies was to make reconciliation impossible. And then, with one of his characteristic flashes, he went on at once to refuse to play their game. Crime made the task of statesmanship more difficult, its test more real. He then spoke of the Act of 1914. It was unworkable without alterations, and no one in Ireland wanted it. Ireland now wanted nothing that we could offer her. No act of legislation could convert her, but only her own working out of the chances that our legislation could give her. What were the conditions of such legislation? He now left the Bill of 1914 and its predecessors, and embarked on what, so far as Parliament was concerned, was a new and uncharted voyage.

He began by laying down three basic facts, as he called them. The first was that three fourths of the Irish population were bitterly hostile and rebels at heart. Ireland was the one country in Europe besides Russia where the classes ordinarily on the side of law and order were completely out of sympathy with the government. Mr. Lloyd George at his best is a bitter realist, and he insisted on our facing the facts about the Irish situation to-day in all their brutality and ugliness. He went on to speak of Northeast Ulster, alien in race, sympathy, religion, and tradition to the rest of Ireland. It would be an outrage for us to place this part of Ulster under the rule of the remainder of Ireland. If we did that, the whole black chapter of Irish history would be rewritten backward, with Belfast in the position of Dublin and with Dublin politically where London is.

His third basic fact was that severance from the United Kingdom would be fatal to the interests of Ireland and Great Britain alike. He illustrated this principle from the history of the

war, and declared with passion that any attempt at secession would be fought as the United States 'fought her own war of union.

On these foundations the design of the structure was revealed in a few rapid touches. There are to be two self-governing Parliaments in Ireland, one at Dublin, the other at Belfast, to include six counties and also, it would appear, bits from three other counties where these can be united without destroying the homogeneity of the Ulster Province. Between these two Parliaments there was to be a Federal Council for All Ireland, consisting of forty members elected in equal parts by the two Provincial Legislatures. The two Legislatures were to have full legislative powers over all subjects not expressly reserved to the Imperial, or, as Mr. Lloyd George significantly called it, the Federal Parliament at Westminster. In that Imperial Parliament there were to be forty-two Irish representatives. No attempt was to be made by us to unite the two Irish Legislatures. That must be by their own act and deed. Begin by separating, and he thought they would unite; begin by uniting, and they would quarrel and separate. Of the finance of the measure, explained in considerable detail, it is sufficient here to say that it is considerably more liberal to Ireland than the Act of 1914.

[L'Opinion, December 20, 1919] IN BESIEGED PETROGRAD

BY ANDRE PIERRE

We had not seen a Petrograd newspaper for six months, consequently we have read, and are reading, with interest a few copies of Isvestia and the Petrograd Pravda which have reached Paris by what is almost a miracle. They give us interesting accounts of

life in the former Russian capital during October.

These Petrograd journals are expensive. People in Paris are outraged at the thought of paying 15 centimes for their morning daily. At Petrograd the papers of the Soviets cost one and a half rubles, or four francs. They are cheaper at Moscow. The Isvestia, of the Central Executive Committee, which is the official journal of the Republic, costs only two francs. However, one should not reproach the Soviet Government prematurely, for at Odessa, which is not under the rule of the Bolsheviki, one must pay six rubles for the Odesski Listok, a little sheet of miserable yellow paper.

These Petrograd newspapers describe the anxiety of the population when the forces of Youdenitch drew near the suburbs. Zinovief and the Soviet took radical measures to defend the northern capital. A state of siege was proclaimed: the theatres, cafés, and cabarets were closed; the working people were mobilized; and close watch was kept on domestic enemies, 'who wish to use the critical situation to stab us in the back.' Committees of public safety were organized, consisting of three tried and trusted revolutionaries in each precinct.

However, the people are described as calm and confident. Youdenitch cannot count upon an insurrection in Petrograd. The Red army soon takes the offensive and checks the White advance.

The population is suffering frightfully from want. The food situation is hopeless. Speculation is rife. Thousands of packmen are constantly passing to and fro between the country and the city. They sell flour for 250 rubles a pound, potatoes for 80 rubles. The government rations would not satisfy the most modest appetite. Members of the first category get only 100 grammes

of bread a day, the others receive 50 grammes. Lack of fuel forces several factories to close down, including the Nobel, Westinghouse, and the FrancoRussian works. The transportation crisis grows worse. Youdenitch has seized the territories that supply forage to the city, and from 25 to 30 horses are dying daily.

Nevertheless, the city preserves a normal aspect. The trams are running, particularly for carrying freight. Passengers pay three rubles, but anyone who claims to be a member of the Red Guard can ride for one ruble.

Artistic and literary life goes on in spite of physical privation and moral suffering. Before the offensive of Youdenitch, all the theatres were open. Chaliapine, who is not dead as reported, reappeared at the Marinsky Theatre on October 20 in a new opera entitled The Power of the Enemy. A revival of Tannhäuser is advertised.

The workers' and peasants' university, Zinovief, began its third semester on October 15 in the Ouritsky Palace. The programme includes courses on the labor movement, the French Revolution, and the Communist party.

Great doings are reported at the People's Palaces. According to the Krasnaya Gazeta of October 7, the number of persons visiting one of these Palaces during September was 15,863. People came to attend the opera, the moving picture shows, and concerts. During this month there were seven children's courses, attended by 5060 young people. There is no opposition press, and these official papers do not tell us what the mass of the people think of the Soviet régime. They are hungry, cold, and suffering, but they bear it all with that astonishing resignation that one finds only in Russia. Do they wish the Bolsheviki to be overthrown? We do not know.

THE desire for procuring old furniture and bric-a-brac has increased so inordinately during the last ten years that the collector whose initiation took place at an earlier period now begins to ask how much of the prevalent enthusiasm is genuine. To-day we sit, if we are lucky, in ancient oaken chairs, and watch the firelight flickering on the chimney-piece, and see how the misproportioned bosoms of Jacobean caryatids between the panels shine for their three centuries of hard polishing. We want something and ring the bell, thinking as we do so that though it is very delightful to live among old things, electric appliances do outrage the fair dimensions of their setting, but that at the same time it is too uncomfortable to be a purist of the last degree.

Collectors are self-conscious about their furniture. People who for long years have lived in old houses take their possessions as a matter of course

unless, which happens infrequently, they are at the same time conscious antiquaries. Those for whom old and beautiful things have no special message may be left out of the question: a chair to them is a chair, desirable only if it is comfortable. Those, however, who really find pleasure in old furniture on account of its beauty or its history, together with commercial people, who nowadays pride themselves on being able to pour a ha'porth of tea from a hundred pounds' worth of china, can never grow completely used to their movable surroundings. Furniture to them is so much more than it is to people who look to its direct purposes and these alone. Even

if they do not seek on its behalf the admiration of their friends (which they nearly always do), they can never let their eyes rest for an idle moment on this card-table or that looking-glass without reflecting on its extrinsic qualities.

The question remains, then, at what period in history did the English begin to regard household decoration, especially furniture, from any other angle save that of comely utility? When did they begin to 'collect'? From the beginning of furniture, as we understand it, there was some conscious effort toward decoration. Throughout the Middle Ages those who could afford it were doubtless pleased enough if their chairs and tables were adorned with carving; but their feeling could scarcely have differed in essence from that to-day which gives satisfaction to those who look at the new coat of paint upon their motor cars.

The wealthy Elizabethans multiplied and elaborated the carving, and then, not for the first time, Fashion stepped in and told them what was right. The squire of the sixteenth century would twist his beard and look at the new bedstead, and be not altogether sure about it. Certainly old Harry swears by the Fleming carvers, and it's true that they are skilled in their work and can teach our craftsmen things worth knowing; but would one not lie easier without ugly faces of oak grinning down upon one? Still, the squire must do the correct thing. Later the fashion was confirmed, and carving, simple or intricate, became still for a privileged minority — usual.