uniformity; that it confers, to the detriment of its competitors, a quasimonopoly on the representative group by investing it with the exclusive support of its government; that since a joint tender for any international contract must be at a price which will suit the least efficient of the Consortium groups, the tendency is to restrict freedom of competition and to reduce the national revenue of the more efficient countries by raising the unit cost of production.

To these objections, which are perfectly valid, it may be urged that half a loaf is better than no bread. It is at least open to question whether the absolute supremacy of Great Britain in industry and finance can be maintained in face of the growing competition of countries with larger natural resources and more rapidly increasing numbers, such as the United States with more than twice her population, and Germany with half as much again. And if it be true that the effect of unbridled political competition in exploiting undeveloped countries is to demoralize both lender and borrower, then it may be to our interest to accept an equal share of the advantages on reasonable terms with other countries rather than to enter into a sort of Dutch auction to outbid our rivals in the hope of converting a present loss into a future gain by ultimately securing the share we consider proportionate to our merits.

As for the quasi-monopoly conferred on a particular group by the exclusive support of its government, you cannot in the nature of things expect to enjoy the benefits of an international association without some restriction on the free and independent action of the national units of which it is composed. The group must be a unit representative of the nation if the groups of the other nations are to coöperate with it on equal terms. There would be no

object in the Powers forming a partnership for the purpose of restricting competition among themselves, if it were left open to anyone of them to form a second national group untrammeled by the conditions imposed upon the collective action of the Consortium and free to compete with it. No group would be willing to undertake the expense of a preliminary investigation of any great industrial enterprise in the foreign field, the cost of surveys, the maintenance of a staff of experts, etc., if it were liable to be deprived at the last moment of the reward of its labors by the intervention of some competitor, foreign or native, who, by the very fact that he has contributed nothing to the initial expense, is in a position to secure the contract by offering more favorable terms than the original undertakers. Under a protection régime the Continental group is enabled to provide against internal competition by means of trusts and cartels, and against external competition by means of a tariff. In free trade England the difficulties are not so easily overcome. The group are exposed not only to the competition of foreigners but to the competition of their own countrymen, and, unless they can secure the exclusive support of the government, they are not in a position to join with other groups in a joint industrial undertaking. Some degree of national monopoly would appear to be inseparable from any form of international industrial or financial association. There is just this to be said by way of mitigation, that, as it is manifestly impossible to comprehend in one Consortium all the industrial nations of the world, the quasimonopoly, such as it is, is likely to be tempered by a good deal of international competition from those outside the pale.

There are other and more serious dangers to be feared from within, in

the graver issues involved in the combination of finance and politics of which a Consortium is compounded. The balance between the two may be so unevenly adjusted as to afford the groups an opportunity of bending the policy of the Powers to the prosecution of the selfish and noxious aims of a certain type of cosmopolitan finance. Or it may be that one of the Powers may be able to deflect the policy of the Consortium in favor of its own national interest by inducing it to grant a preference to its friends or to inflict a boycott on its enemies.

The reality o these dangers is undeniable. They can only be kept in check by a rigid insistence on the transactions of each group being exposed to the light of day and subjected to a persistent and searching public criticism in the country of its origin.

It passes the wit of a man to devise a scheme which shall be invulnerab'e to criticism at all points, but upon the whole, in spite of its admitted defects, we are disposed to believe that, within the domain of government-assisted finance, the substitution of international coöperation for international competition will be found as a policy the least open to objection. It is the

only means left to us for keeping the door open to trade in undeveloped countries, and, in view of the vital importance of that policy to a free trade country, the argument in the case of Great Britain would appear to be conclusive were the difficulties in the way of international coöperation ten times greater than they are. It is a policy in accord with the spirit of the times as embodied in the project of a League of Nations, a project which it is manifest can never be brought to a successful issue if it fails to take account of the urgent need of reducing to harmony the economic as well as the political discords of the democratic nations. Political peace! Industrial peace! It is the dream of a war-worn world. If it is not to remain a dream, if it is ever to be translated into reality, it can only be effected in international government finance through the medium of representative national groups working in concert for a common end under the supervision of their governments and, in the domain of international trade proper, through the complete freedom. of the individuals of different countries to exchange their commodities without let or hindrance on the part of the State

The International Review

THAT Joseph Conrad's prose can on occasion be perfectly companionable is shown in an account of what he calls his first and last flying experience, written by way of friendliness for the journal of a certain Flying Squadron, and not as yet discovered for quotation by the outside press. It is interesting, at the moment, to note that he flew in a seaplane: 'The machine on its carriage seemed as big as a cottage, and much more imposing. My young pilot went up like a bird. There was an idle, able-bodied ladder loafing against a shed within fifteen feet of

me,

but as nobody seemed to notice it, I recommended myself mentally to Heaven, and started climbing after the pilot. . . . As to my feelings in the air, those who read these lines will know their own, which are so much nearer the mind and heart than any writing of an unprofessional can be. At first all my faculties were absorbed and as if neutralized by the sheer novelty of the situation. The first to emerge was the sense of security, so much more perfect than in any small boat; the, as it were, material stillness and immobility (though it was a bumpy day). I very soon ceased to hear the roar of the wind and engines unless, indeed, some cylinders missed, when I became acutely aware of that. Within the rigid spread of the powerful planes, so strangely motionless, I had sometimes the illusion of sitting as by enchantment in a block of suspended marble. Even while looking over at her shadow running prettily over land and sea, I had the impression of extreme slowness. I imagine that had she suddenly nosedived out of control I would have gone to the final smash without a single additional heart-beat. I am sure I would not have known. It is doubtless otherwise with the man in control. But there was no dive, and I returned to earth (after ar hour and twenty minutes) without having felt 'bored' for a single minute. I descended thinking I would never go flying again. No, never any more-lest its mysterious fascination, whose invisible wing had brushed my heart

up there. should change to unavailing regret in a man too old for its glory.' Mr. Conrad's allusion to boredom refers to a warning from the Commander before he started on his flight a warning most beginners receive from experienced flyers.

PARIS must be well worth seeing, if the correspondent of the Telegraph speaks truly. He writes:

'It seemed as though, in order to provide Paris with a cosmopolitan population, the world was drained of its crowned and uncrowned rulers, of its prosperous and luckless financiers, of its high and low adventurers, of its tribe of fortune-seekers, and its pushing men and women of every description. And the result was an odd blend of classes and individuals, worthy, it may be, of the new democratic era, but unprecedented. In the stately Hotel Majestic, for example, where the dignified political cloudcompellers of the British Empire had their residence, exquisite diplomats actually danced with spry typewriters and smart amanuenses. Fallen Royalties, self-made statesmen, clever politicians, Premiers, and Ministers who had formerly swayed the fortunes of the world, resided in gorgeous palaces, and were favored by Kaisers, Emperors, and Kings, were now the unnoticed inmates of second-class hotels; Ambassadors, whose most trivial utterances had once been listened to with painful attention, but could not now obtain an audience of the greater plenipotentiaries, and were not permitted to travel in France without more than average discomfort and delay, met and crossèd each other in unexpected places. I once sat down to lunch with a brilliant company, and had for my neighbor a man who was understood to have made away with a well-known personage in order to rid the State of a bad administrator. Killing is no murder, many revolutionists hold. And ours is a revolutionary epoch.'

THE Scandal of the abuse of the British Museum by the authorities apparently continues. A protest has been made against their intolerable usurpation by Sir Arthur Evans, who prefaced his address to the Society of Antiquaries with the following winged words:

"Though it was found impossible in the face of the general condemnation of the proposal to make the British Museum the headquarters of a combatant department, other departments of a civilian character were installed within its walls, and whole galleries dismantled and broken up, to the undoing of the work of generations, for their reception. A promise was given to the Trustees that two months after the conclusion of the war these intrusive bodies should be removed. In many cases, both in the British Museum and in other public galleries, after six months' interval of peace, they are still in bureaucratic occupation.

Protests in Parliament insistently put forward by our recently elected fellow, Lord Harcourt, have elicited no satisfactory assurance of a time being set on this usurpation. As to the present condition of affairs I may relate an experience of my own only a few days since. Having urgent need for the purpose of Cretan researches to refer to certain objects in two different sections of the Museum, some in the early Greek and others in the Egyptian Department, I found them in an almost unrecognizable condition, their cases empty and concealed by shelves laden with piles of business documents, while on each side of the central gangway were rows of improvised shanties, run up with match-boarding and resembling nothing so much as a street of some mushroom settlement in the Wild West! The nhabitants as far as I could see were mainly of the half-fledged female species.'

That trembles as we pass.