the latter agree beforehand to submit to the nationalization provisions; but the Government cannot prevent any private person from disposing of his own property, and he can place its development in the hands of foreign companies if he so desires.

The balance sheets of the great foreign petroleum-companies show that their operations in Rumania have been very profitable. That is the reason foreign capital has been attracted to the country, and is also why so much domestic capital has been invested in this industry. But it would be unjust for Rumania to permit foreign capitalists to monopolize these rich sources of wealth and to prevent Rumanian capital from enjoying a fair share of the business. A majority of the stock of the largest and wealthiest companies is owned abroad. The shares of many of these companies are not even quoted on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. In a word, Rumanian investors are practically excluded from an industry that owes its prosperity entirely to the natural wealth of their own country.

Only one question remains: will Rumanian capitalists be able to take over the 55 per cent indicated of the capital stock of foreign companies, and in addition provide money to develop the still unexploited Government oil lands? In view of the acute money-crisis in Rumania, this may seem doubtful. Nevertheless, statistics show that between 1919 and 1923 the share of the country's petroleum output produced by Rumanian companies rose from 2 per cent to 44 per cent. This expansion occurred during the critical years immediately following the war, when money was very scarce indeed. Consequently it is reasonable to anticipate that Rumanian capital will be able to take care adequately of the future development of the oil industry in that country, although the rate of that development may at first slow down.

In general, the new law is designed to defend the interests of the country. Foreigners who condemn the Government for so doing overlook the fact that it is the business of every nation to consult primarily the interest of its own people.

The London Economist summarizes as follows the results of the general

economic policy that finds partial expression in this legislation:

While it is true that the financial policies of Mr. Vintila Bratianu have done much to bring about the almost complete stagnation which is at present paralyzing commercial activity throughout Rumania, his policies, nevertheless, in general are based upon sound economics. He has secured an almost complete documentation of external and internal liabilities, and arranged a large part of them so that they have become a definite charge on the country's productive capacity over a long period of years; the State Budget is expected to show a surplus this year of more than 2000 million lei; an 'active' trade balance has been definitely restored; and currency inflation ceased last December.

A DISILLUSIONED ZIONIST

THE assassination at Jerusalem of Professor Jacob de Haan, a Jewish scholar who has been prominent in Jewish controversies in Palestine, calls attention to the difficulties the restorers of Israel encounter in reconciling the Nationalist and the strictly religious aspects of their task. Professor de Haan was a disillusioned Zionist. He went to Palestine an ardent champion of all that the movement stands for, but eventually became one of the bitterest opponents of its political aims. Indeed his enemies charged him with being pro-Arab. The influences that brought about this change will probably never be fully known. Alexander Levy, the Jaffa correspondent of Vossische Zeitung, surmises that they sprang from political sympathy with the claim of the Arabs to majority rule in Palestine, and from the idea that Judaism is primarily a spiritual movement likely to be corrupted by the prominence Zionists give to political and economic objects.

In a letter to the Amsterdam Handelsblad, written just before his death,

Professor de Haan discussed Sabbath observance in Palestine, which conflicts with the Mohammedan practice of observing Friday and the Christian practice of observing Sunday. When a high official asked a prominent young Jew if he had any objection to working on Saturday, the reply was: 'I have no objection on religious grounds, but I do have on national grounds.' The Zionist Labor Unions use their Saturday holiday, as many Christians use Sunday, for excursions and picnics, although these are against the Sabbath laws of the Jews. Professor de Haan asserted that some of the Palestine schools teach that the Old Testament has no deeper significance for the Jews than the Justinian Code has for the Italians.

A Jewish contributor, writing to Handelsblad on the occasion of Professor de Haan's death, said that the members of the Aghundah Yisroel or Orthodox Jewish Party, to which the latter belonged, were subject to bitter persecution. 'One day when I was walking with de Haan through the streets of Jerusalem, I noticed that the Jews whom we met spat on the ground when they saw us coming. I said: "They do not do it out of respect for you?" "No," he replied, "they do it out of respect for you. When I am alone, they spit in my face.""

OLYMPIC DISCORDS

COMMENTING upon the unsportsmanlike spirit occasionally exhibited at the Olympic Games in Paris, which threatened to cause the withdrawal of Great Britain from future events of this

calm. The peace of the world is too precious to justify any risk - however wild the idea may seem of its being sacrificed on the altar of international sport. The right spirit of such sport was finely shown in the meeting at Stamford Bridge on Saturday between the athletes of the United States and the British Empire. In spite of the severity of their defeat the Empire competitors — and the British spectators - took their beating with perfect good-humor, and the Americans for their part were entirely free from the arrogance of success and were clearly on the most friendly, chivalrous, and sympathetic terms with the losers. But in the Olympic contests, it seems, this human camaraderie is not proof against the loss of self-control to which national partisanship may give rise.

The Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian is inclined to minimize the importance of occasional French demonstrations against foreign players, but thinks that the French passion for bureaucracy influenced the local promoters of the Games to appoint a superabundance of officials. Indeed Dr. Bellin du Coteau, writing in Echo des Sports, criticized his countrymen for bringing into the Olympic organization men utterly unqualified to have anything to do with sport:

They have wormed their way into commissions and committees for merely personal ends. Sport has appealed to them only in so far as it seemed capable of bringing them the Legion of Honor or some other less honorific decoration. As a consequence we have been faced with the spectacle of outsiders possessed of no qualification whatever, never having felt the need in their whole life of any physical exercise, now lording it over national and international manifestations of athleticism. And as the

Miscellaneous turbulence, shameful disorder, storms of abuse, free fights, and the drowning of the National Anthems of friendly nations by shouting and booing are not conducive to an atmosphere of Olympic

quickly as they would like, everyone has had to bear the brunt of their bad temper or their utter indifference, which have been a perpetual nuisance. Let us add that the mere fact of wanting the Legion of Honor does not unfortunately confer either intelli