WHY MILLERAND IS OUT

If we are to believe the French correspondent of The Nation and the Athenæum, M. Millerand owes his rather unceremonious ejection from the Presidency in no small measure to nis effort to make that largely decorative honor an office of real political authority. He therefore infringed, at least in spirit, the Constitution to which he appealed when he refused the suggestion that he resign.

Not being responsible to Parliament, he has endeavored to instruct it. He tried to exercise pressure on the mass of the electors. He even went so far as to publish haughty threats. He has mixed in the struggle of the parties. He joined completely in the game, staking everything, knowing well that he was doing so, for he let it be understood that if the majority of voters did not rally to his point of view he would address a message to the country!

The Paris correspondent of Neue Zürcher Zeitung cites two important violations of the precedents of his office by President Millerand: his intervention in the Conference at Cannes, and his speech at Evreux,

where he outlined a politica gramme identical with that National Bloc, and advocated the Constitution so as to enla authority of his office. In bot he championed his personal against those of the Premie disagreed with Briand over the foreign policy at Cannes, an Poincaré over that Premier's d policy. Millerand himself 1 campaign that forced the resi of President Casimir-Perier thir ago, and wrote at that time: 'In as the Élysée champions its ow and seeks to carry out its own is perfectly logical for the Fren torate to call a halt upon that

Most French comment up crisis assumes such an ampl ground of local political info as to lose point for the foreign The London Spectator elucida episode in an understanding a follows:

To us M. Poincaré has repres completely the France of the la years that we are inclined to forge was not he, but his less-known c M. Alexandre Millerand, who for

famous Bloc National which alone made M. Poincaré and his policy possible. But if we in England were apt to forget this, the French electorate was never permitted to do so. In a series of speeches, culminating in his notorious address at Évreux, their President reminded them that it was he who was the architect of the great electoral trust which ruled them, and urgently demanded of them that they should continue to support it and him. The gravity of such action is not obvious in this country, where we are used to hearing of the actions and speeches of the President of the United States. But the position of the French President is a perfectly different one, analogous to that of the British Sovereign,

and not to that of the American President, in that he calls on a party chief to form an administration, and never, like an American President, forms one himself. We have only to think for a moment of the situation that would have been created if the King had taken an active part in the late election, to get an almost exaggerated idea of what has happened in France.

Edouard Herriot, the new Premier of France, like several of his predecessors in that high office, was at one time a school-teacher, and he is still a lover of classical literature. The French correspondent who contributes a brief biography and character-sketch of him to the London Saturday Review says:

He has not foresworn his allegiance to the humanities. He still carries an Ovid in his pocket, is frequently seen at the lecturer's desk, and when so inclined can write a satirical article in excellent hexameters.

FASCIST ECONOMIES QUESTIONED

CREDIT for Italy's recent economic recovery has been a strong talking-point for the Fascist Government both at home and abroad. But Giacomo Matteotti, the Socialist Deputy whose kidnapping and presumable assassination by the Fascisti have seriously upset political tranquillity in Italy, disputed this claim in a letter published in the

June 7 issue of the London Statist. He asserted that the recovery began before Mussolini seized power, and its progress was not accelerated by that event.

It is perfectly true that 'all the usual statistical indices of the conditions of the country indicate a constant progress in Italy'; but that has nothing whatever to do with Fascism, for it is merely the result of a development which began several years before the Fascist régime.

The true expenditures of the Government have not diminished, though there has been an apparent decrease owing to certain peculiarities of accounting the carrying-over into subsequent years of items connected with the liquidation of the war. The number of ministries, this informant tells us, has been reduced, but not their cost to the people. While there are about five thousand fewer civil servants than when the Fascisti took power, the actual cost of supporting them is more than 100 million lire greater than it used to be. There has been a reduction in the railway department, but the chief aim of this reduction was to get rid of employees who were not Fascisti.' The deficit in the operation of the Government railways still exceeds 900 million lire. This is a cut of more than 400 million in the deficit before the Fascisti assumed control, but that improvement is more than accounted for by one item the lower cost of coal. The real improvement in the situation of the Italian treasury, according to Signor Matteotti, is due entirely to increased receipts from taxes, which were levied by the preceding Government. "The cost of living is still rising, while wages are diminished by about fifteen to twenty per cent.'

SPENGLER AND THE SOCIALISTS

OSWALD SPENGLER's latest work, which we note under Books Mentioned and I

from which we publish an extract elsewhere in this issue, is naturally resented by the Socialists. Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung accuses the author of 'preaching from the pulpit like a conventional priest of Mammon' and asks:

What does Herr Professor Spengler promise the workingman if he surrenders Socialism and places himself completely in

the hands of talented, creative industrial leaders,' not a few of whom spend most of their time on the Riviera without the slightest visible detriment to the enterprises they own? The possibility of advancement by increased efficiency and personal service - that is, by piece work. . . . The workingman is to sacrifice his great ideal of world emancipation, his lofty aspiration for human brotherhood, all his conceptions of justice and humanity in order to make his fingers a little nimbler and earn perhaps thirty-five per cent more wages, assuming that his employer does not improve the opportunity to lower the piece-work rate. Turning to another theme in Spengler's new book, we find deductions there that have a very practical bearing upon the present public policies of Germany:

World economics owe their form and organs to a long process of evolution, and Germany must accommodate herself to these or cease to exist. Russia made the experiment of ignoring them at the cost of 30,000,000 human lives, and now finds herself forced painfully to retrace her steps in order to escape a relapse into savagery. But Russia is a self-supporting country. Were Germany, whose people live on imports, exports, and credit, to make the slightest move toward destroying existing forms of credit and defying existing financial forces, she would invoke a similar catastrophe within a few weeks. In economics though even experts often overlook thissound theories and progressive methods often count for less than the accepted usages of the great masters of industry and finance. The keener vision of theorists plays a minor rôle; and equally in questions of statesmanship it is not so much brain

capacity as the acquired brain content that counts.

COMMUNIST INTERPRETATION OF

HISTORY

OUR London Communist contemporary, the Labour Monthly, refuses to see in the subsidence of economic and

political uneasiness abroad anything more than the transient torpor of the satiated capitalist anaconda:

The new era did not really begin with an uprising of the peoples, with changed hearts, to smash Baldwin and Poincaré at the ballot boxes. It began a long time ago, when the negotiators of the Standard Oil and Shell combines came to an agreement to share the Persian oil fields. Next came agreement, in principle, at Lausanne, as to the oil of Asia Minor. With the defeat of de la Huerta the question of the oil of Mexico was settled. Then came agreement as to the ultimate disposal of the Caucasian wells. The American debt is also

settled as far as Britain is concerned. The experiment of direct control by the finanAustria and is being extended to include ciers of Europe has proved a success in Hungary. Italy received her soporific slice of African desert in the agreement as to Jubaland. These preliminary difficulties have been cleared out of the way, and all the spade work done for the 'settlement' of the biggest question of all that of the control and exploitation of the railways, coal, and ores of Continental Europe. For the 'settlement of that question' American capital is needed, since the diplomatic settlement is not actually as important as the work of getting the Syndicate going on modern commercial lines. And for American capital to come in there is need for an international court of arbitration, on which American finances can be represented, to settle the disputes as to interpretation of phrases and to enforce the contracts agreed upon between the constituent national interests. That is why the Senate of the United States is at this moment discussing four distinct plans of action with regard to American participation in the World Court of The Hague,

Though the Communists have generally resorted to fiat-money when they have been in control of a country, they are not necessarily inflationists in theory. A contributor to the journal just quoted defines inflation as a device that produces 'a nation of millionaires who work twelve hours a day and are hungry.'

A BOLSHEVIST ABROAD

IVAN KUTUZOV, a Moscow delegate to the Anglo-Soviet conference at London, writes to his friends in Russia of his experiences in the British metropolis in a vein that suggests a chapter in that Australian classic, The Waybacks in the Hearts of Their Countrymen. One of these letters, published in the Soviet official daily, Izvestia, of May 9, records vividly the writer's first impressions of the city on the Thames.

Finally there is the station. Lights, lights, without number. A wonderful sight! Cleanliness, order! You get out of the car and see a crowd of people, automobiles, baggage carts, line after line and all this within the station!

Cleanliness and order seem to be the high lights of his mental picture. At the hotel'English cleanliness, but not a particle of heat. If you want to feel warm, drop a shilling in a slot, because they have no Russian stoves, just automatic electrical ones. Sheer boredom. Just like an old folks' home.'

But alas for the roast beef of old England! In Russian eyes John Bull's country, famous for its hearty abundance and Pickwickian feasts, is a land of Lenten spareness:

English food is, to a Russian, not food but a torturing mirage. You sit and look on: no end of forks and spoons, but as to food - you feel like getting up and looking around the room for it. When I was leaving Moscow, comrades shouted: "Take care, Kutuzov, don't you get a fat stomach.' I

The psychology of the well-trained English servant stirs the wrath of this revolutionary visitor:

The servants look like lords, but know their duties. They must walk on tiptoe. If they only knew Russian I am sure we should soon teach them to behave differently. We should start discord and stir up disobedience to their masters. As it is, it's hopeless. You can't even gesture at them. We sit down; they stand before us. What they say about us, good or bad, we don't know. Besides, if we tried to convert them to our Russian ideas we might get a quick invitation to leave the country from their King. They're meek fellows here. So long as they're fed they're satisfied.

London traffic is another new experience.

I must say if we had such a crush on our Moscow streets we should have to put seven militiamen on every corner, and even then there would be confusion. Trams two stories high, bottom and top all windows. They don't allow people to stand in them but then, who would want to stand if an autobus goes by every two minutes and a tramcar every four? And trains, elevated and underground, every three minutes! And they speed as if they were moving in a desert, while there are so many people in the street you're afraid to step on somebody's heels every moment.

A big city. Some forty versts or more from one end to the other. Judge for yourself: eight and a half million people, while Moscow prides herself on claiming two million.

All in all, I must say London is a city and Moscow a village. Forgive me. Though I am a patriot of our workingmen's country,

Here in Central Africa, in the most northeasterly district of the Belgian Congo, three epoch-making balks of timber have just been swung into position in the last span over a rising tropical stream. A rumbling, darkened sky, threatening one of those furious tornadoes which herald the breaking of the great rains, has hastened the workers' hands. The timber falls neatly into its resting-place with a deep contented boom. The last river has been bridged.

A Fiat car starts into a sudden purr from the depths of the forest patch behind and emerges along the high embankment into

the light. It moves slowly across the finished bridge, the first vehicle to cross. The date is April 13.

Henceforward, by rail, river, and this Congo road, the enterprising or curious passenger may travel in reasonable comfort to the Cape of Good Hope from Peking, Berlin, or Vladivostok with only one twenty-minute passage on salt water, without violence to his normal habits, and with only the exertion needed to walk from one to another waiting vehicle. Cælum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.

MINOR NOTES

Het Laatste Nieuws, a Brussels Liberal daily, deplores the tendency of political parties in Belgium to shape their tactics by the results of the elections in France. While acknowledging that the latter will determine Belgium's foreign policy, there is no reason, in the opinion of this journal, why they should influence purely domestic questions. Yet they are commonly regarded as doing so. 'Immediately after the French voters rendered their decision, some political leaders in Belgium, who until that event had been highly pleased with the idea of a Clerical-Liberal entente, made an immediate about-face, and began to champion an alliance between the Liberals and the Socialists. After shouting: "Long live the Catholic-Liberal Coalition! Down with the Socialists!" they now shout: "Long live the SocialistsLiberal Coalition! Down with the Catholics!"'

THE famous phrase, 'a scrap of paper,' supposed to have been used by the German Chancellor in referring to the treaty protecting Belgium's neutrality at the outbreak of the war, is now disputed. Mr. Valentine Williams, in a recent letter to the Times, says that he personally talked with the late Sir Edward Goschen, the British Ambassador, on this very subject, and that Sir