League was organized, thus gradually acquiring a sort of easement to her seat.

But there are serious objections to enlarging the Council, quite apart from the obvious inadvisability of raising the question in connection with Germany's admission. Even the moderate increase in membership already authorized has, we are told, made it more difficult to transact the Council's business in the prompt and harmonious way its functions demand. The Spectator protests: 'If once we depart from the principle that the permanent members should be executives of the Great Powers, we shall lend ourselves, we fear, to unceasing heartburning and intrigue. There would be a danger a danger which is already indicatedof the formation of rival groups representing Slavs, Latins, Teutons, Roman Catholics and Protestants.' And Sisley Huddleston believes a reorganization of the Council on a broader plan would create excessive opportunities for 'diplomatic blackmail' — that is, for a small and unimportant Power to sell its support to a powerful protector in return for political, and perhaps financial, favors. Of course this is not ideal, but ‘an ideal League would collapse in a week.' If the Great Powers, with their world-wide and predominant interests, 'were asked to agree to a supergovernment of Bolivia, Haiti, Liberia, Peru, Portugal, Salvador, and so forth, how many of them would fail to follow the example of the United States?

Lesser Powers must, of course, be given due weight. Their opinions must count. By their mere numbers in the Assembly they can create a world sentiment which the Great Powers cannot ignore. The lesser States are also given a large place in the Council as temporary members. They have done excellent work. They are entitled to the fullest representation. Their voices are just as impor

tant as the voices of the Great Powers. They have nothing to complain of. They are not swamped. They are not in a minority. Further, any member of the League not represented on the Council will be invited to sit as a member whenever its interests are specially affected. Thus the exigencies of democratic ideology are completely met, as, in this way, they should be.' Therefore the League is simply passing through a constitutional crisis, which does not affect its fundamental principles or imply its repudiation.

A threatened strike in the engineering trades and the Report of the Coal Commission have occupied the front pages of the British press. Labor readjustments continue to be England's outstanding problem. Happily the danger of an engineers' strike seems to have passed, and the railway employees, who were also restless, have reconciled themselves to their present conditions of employment. The main features of the Coal Commission's Report were already anticipated. Probably its recommendations that the industry be reorganized on a more rational basis would do most to ensure recovery if it could be promptly and effectively applied. Suggestions contemplating wagereductions or otherwise changing conditions to the disadvantage of the miners will, presumably, be rejected. A revised subsidy to be limited to coal exported is said to be under consideration, though with misgivings lest, if the British Government embark on such a policy, Germany, Belgium, and France may follow suit.

No progress has been made at the moment toward a solution of the financial crisis in France, which has now extended to include Belgium. Senator Coty, the wealthy perfumer and proprietor of Figaro, has made a dramatic offer of one hundred million francs to the Government for the pur

pose of starting a sinking-fund, to take care of the country's maturing obligations, which he proposes shall be managed by an independent committee. This is conditional, of course, upon the Government's adopting a sane financial policy. In making his offer Senator Coty declares that the country is in imminent peril of national bankruptcy and civil war, that the only remedy is to tax all the people and to collect those taxes. For the moment the whole problem is to secure from our direct and indirect imposts fifty billions instead of thirty-five billions, and not increasing our public expenditures.' In arguing for immediate action, he cites these eloquent statistics: of over one and onehalf million business men in France, nearly one third pay taxes upon incomes equivalent to less than twentyfive dollars a year, and another third upon incomes of less than two hundred dollars a year. 'Imagine,' he says, 'a million of our business men working all their lives in order to gain from two to fifteen francs-from six to thirty or forty cents a day!'

Naturally the financial crisis and the resulting instability of the Cabinet keep political feeling at fever heat. This accounts for sensational pressreports like the recent dispatch published in America, to the effect that just before the general election two years ago a group of bankers sold francs by the hundreds of millions abroad, in order to depress exchange and frighten the people into voting for a 'strong government.' An even more exciting article was published in Les Informations Politiques et Financières, insinuating that high-placed Paris politicians were directly involved in the Hungarian franc-forgeries. These, it says, date from 'before the first of May, 1924,' as Count Bethlen has likewise intimated before the Hungarian Assembly, that is, before the last

general French elections, and were part of a conspiracy of prominent Frenchmen and prominent Hungarians to restore a monarchy in the Danube country. This gossip is very unlovely and unworthy of a great nation; but we must remember that there is a far nobler and more praiseworthy aspect of French political life French political life-an aspect that found a voice in Briand's great speech in the Chamber pleading for the ratification of the Locarno Pact, which won that measure the endorsement of the deputies by a majority of four hundred and thirteen to seventy-one.

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In Germany, the struggle to decide whether her ex-Emperor, ex-Kings, and ex-Princes are to be compensated for the former royal property has become the outstanding domestic issue, and the procedure taken to settle affords an interesting illustration of the way the Weimar Constitution works. Early this year, the requisite conditions having been fulfilled, the Reichstag authorized a popular petition, known as the Volksbegehrung, the Nation's Wish, - to decide whether the people desire a bill which had been prepared by the Parties of the Left to be introduced into that body. The bill provides for the confiscation of the entire property of the ex-rulers and their families, the proceeds to be applied to the support of unemployed and disabled ex-service men, of families of men who lost their lives in the war, and of indigent victims of inflation. If one tenth of the registered voters favor the Volksbegehrung, the bill in question must be introduced into the Reichstag. If it is passed, the matter ends there. If it is rejected, a second referendum, called the Volksentscheid, entscheid, the Nation's Decision,will have to be taken upon it.

Russia and France have begun negotiations at Paris with a view to reaching a settlement of Russia's pre-war debts to the latter country and concluding a

commercial treaty. These negotiations are not expected to have a speedy termination, although the Moscow Government wishes to expedite them in the hope of obtaining a foreign loan. That Government has a bait to offer France, whose air fleet and navy have no independent supply of fuel, in the shape of important oil-concessions; and gossip has it that American interests stand behind those of France in this phase of the negotiations. Once the question of settling foreign claims against Russia is raised, these claims tend to multiply marvelously, for revolutions cause countless unrecorded losses to the subjects of other countries. Therefore we may expect to see the negotiations at Paris drag on for a long period, and indeed be suspended entirely at times while Gordian knots are

cut.

Little of world-wide interest seems to have happened in Russia since the falling-out of the two Communist factions at their last Party convention. Rumor has it that the Government faces growing financial difficulties in spite of last year's excellent harvest, and that these are forcing it to inflate the currency. So far, however, the chervonets has held its value, and a large trading-credit has been obtained from Germany.

Some irritation was caused in certain British quarters by the conclusion of the recent agreement between France and Turkey, largely because of its possible effect upon the Mosul situation. The previous convention between the two countries, adopted nearly five years ago, provided for a sort of condominium over the short Syrian section of the Bagdad Railway, which made the transportation of troops and munitions of war by that line subject to the reciprocal consent of the two Powers. The new treaty seeks to avoid the manifold embarrassments this arrangement pro

duced. It gratifies Turkey by shifting the frontier slightly to her advantage, and amends the system of railwaycontrol in a way that would count in Turkey's favor were the Mosul controversy to produce a conflict. But the very fact that this treaty was concluded is evidence that the latter contingency is regarded as exceedingly remote. What France chiefly sought was to remove all controversies with Turkey that might interfere with the pacification of Syria.

Spain's passive attitude toward the Directory is changing to pronounced hostility since the announcement of the new tax law to meet the continuing deficit. The law's opponents protest that the country needs administrative economies, and especially relief from the cost of the Morocco expedition, rather than a new call upon the taxpayers. Faced with this opposition, which is naturally strongest among the propertied classes, Primo de Rivera is said to be courting favor with the workers, who are less directly affected by fiscal reforms in Spain than they would be in France or Northern Europe. The objectional law proclaimed by Señor Calvo Sotelo, the young Minister of Finance, consists of three decrees. The first requires real-estate owners to report the gross revenue from their property, whether or not they personally cultivate or manage it, under penalty of having their taxes increased threefold or fourfold if they make false returns in fact, for gross falsification their property will be confiscated. The second decree directs all merchants and manufacturers to keep a special set of books in which every transaction of more than ten pesetas shall be entered and which shall be open at all times to inspection by agents of the Government. Those who fail to comply shall have no recourse in court against their debtors,

and bills against their customers automatically become uncollectible. The third decree requires all leases of property to be recorded, and no landlord is to have a legal claim to more rent than is specified in the Government register. These three provisions naturally delight the Socialists- except, of course, parlor Socialists, who own country estates, tenement houses, factories, and shops. The Directory seems to be somewhat intimidated by the storm of opposition that this measure has encountered, for the date when it is to go into effect has been postponed from April 1 to May 1-Labor Day!

Italy's belligerent outburst against Germany was a gathering of the stormclouds in one direction that cleared the sky in several others. Mussolini is clearly courting better relations with France, and has adopted a remarkably amiable attitude toward Yugoslavia and the other Balkan countries. M. Nincic, the Foreign Minister of the Serb-Croat-Slovene kingdom, has visited both Rome and Paris with a number of items on his shopping-list. In the first place, all the succession States fear that Germany's entry into the League may be followed by a renewed effort to incorporate Austria into the Reich, against which he wants insurance. The South Slav statesman is also reported to have pressed Poland's claim to a seat in the League Council. La Tribuna, which speaks with Fascist authority, said in commenting upon the visit: Germany has shown clearly and indeed tactlessly, as is her habitthat she designs to use her position in the League to make herself the champion of national minorities. Italy has called a prompt halt on this manœuvre so far as her interests are concerned; but Germany's attitude remains a serious menace to all other countries having such minorities, especially the

smaller States, like Yugoslavia.' Czechoslovakia, where, despite a new Cabinet crisis, Mr. Beneš remains Foreign Minister, is the steadying influence in this restless part of Europe. That country has recently concluded an arbitration treaty with Austria, covering both political and economic issues, which is an almost exact copy of the treaties signed at Locarno between Belgium and Germany and France and Germany. This is the third treaty of the kind that Czechoslovakia has recently entered into with her neighbors, Hungary being the only adjoining Power still left out of the list.

A special meeting of the Little Entente at Temesvár in Rumania last month, supposed to have been called primarily to consider the Hungarian forgeries, is said to have discussed a Balkan pact which, it is rumored, will include Greece. General Rouphos, the Greek Foreign Minister, who has also been at Rome on a good-will mission, reports his country's relations with Yugoslavia increasingly friendly, and that even those with Turkey, despite some recent frontier friction, are growing better. General Pangalos, the Greek Dictator, according to the Athens correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, is making serious efforts to reach agreements with all his neighbors, including Italy, with a view to the eventual conclusion of a general Balkan guaranty pact which, among other desirable results, will enable his Government to place its finances on a better basis.

Local elections have been held in both Bulgaria and Rumania. Those in the former country were reassuring to the Government because they recorded the almost complete obliteration of the Communists and Agrarians. According to local reports, these two Parties in coalition received in the whole country only about as many votes as they have