speedy change in the situation would occur. So far these predictions have been verified. When we study the matter closely that is only what we might expect. Poland was engaged in a war of conquest for which it had no justification. Soviet Russia was fighting a war of defense which aroused all the national and traditional enthusiasm of the Russians and united the Russian people. It is no fairy tale that innumerable Russian officers, headed by General Brussilov, have enlisted under the banners of the Red government, fighting against Poland for Russia and not for Bolshevism. Lenin and Trotzky have gladly utilized the services of these officers, and from the military standpoint they have no reason to regret their action. The possible political consequences of such a policy are something to be considered in the future. They depend upon the relative strength at some future date of the military anti-Bolshevist parties and of the movement led by Lenin and Trotzky. We in Germany have no data from which to prognosticate what may occur. The complicated situation in Russia is rendered still more confused, because the normal evolution of affairs in that country is being constantly interfered with by Great Britain, France, Japan, and the United States. The effect of that interference will in turn depend largely upon the strength or weakness of the Soviet government.

Meantime the negotiations between Krassin and Lloyd George justify even more careful watching. The English press already states frankly that these negotiations are by no means confined to commercial and financial arrangements, but extend to the political field. The British have followed their usual policy of playing both ends against the centre and keeping many irons in the fire. On one hand they agreed with their allies in San Remo that

Poland and Japan should attack the Soviet government, or at least they refrain from preventing such action when they might easily have done so by a shake of the head. On the other hand, the British government has continued without interruption its negotiations with the Soviet authorities. These negotiations are now at a point where they are causing great concern in Paris, which is much depressed by Poland's defeat, and are producing even more distrust and fear in Poland proper. Meantime the statesmen in London trouble themselves not the least for what their allies may wish and plan, but continue calmly on their course. Great Britain knows it is powerful enough in Europe to pursue its own ends without regard for other nations; but outside of Europe the situation is less comforting. We need only consider the Bolshevist advance from the Caucasus into Persia and the fact that RussianAsiatic Bolshevism is tightening its bonds with Islam. That alliance of interests is no longer a mere plan but an actual political fact of great and apparently increasing importance. The best proof of this is what has recently happened in Persia.

Under these circumstances it requires no particular genius to see that Great Britain's policy in dealing with Soviet Russia is directed primarily toward improving the dangerous situation in Asia and the Orient. No price will seem too great for England to pay in order to save the situation there, providing it is so critical that it cannot be remedied without the friendship of Moscow. Indeed, we may question whether even Moscow's intervention will be effective. Quite possibly the Soviet leaders have started a conflagration in the Orient which they cannot check. Assuming their sincerity, they could, perhaps, accomplish most by keeping arms and munitions from that region.

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[La Publicidad (Barcelona Independent Commercial Daily), June 3] PETROLEUM AND POLITICS IN MEXICO

BY RAMIRO DE MAEZTU

'WITH Carranza dead, will Article 27 of the Constitution remain in force?' asks a Spanish periodical. Apparently the oil wells of the United States will shortly be exhausted. The wasteful exploitation of the trusts, more intent upon immediate profits than on conserving the sources of natural wealth, has drawn so largely upon the latter that they will cease to produce in twenty years. Already consumption in the United States exceeds domestic production, and the Americans are turning covetous eyes toward foreign supplies. As early as 1917 the petroleum output of Mexico alone equaled that of all the rest of the world. One month of the following year that country exported to the United States nearly three million five hundred thousand barrels. The latter country has twice as much money invested in Mexican petroleum as has England, and many times as much as any other nation.

Now we go back to Article 27. The Constitution of 1857 left the right to enact mining laws in the hands of the different states. An amendment in 1883 transferred this power to the Federal government. In the following year a mining law was passed making petroleum the property of the man who owned the land upon which it was found. A vote of the Mexican Congress in 1892 confirmed this principle, and 1 made mineral concessions perpetual, subject only to the condition that taxes be regularly paid. Another vote in 1909 declared that all minerals were national property, except petroleum.

However, in 1916, in the midst of the revolution, a new Constitution was adopted at Queretaro, which contains Article 27. This article declares that petroleum is the inalienable property of the nation, that no oil claim shall remain valid unless continuously worked, and that only Mexican citizens or corporations may own such claims. Where foreigners or foreign companies already own oil lands, they shall be considered Mexican companies in regard to the legal proceedings, which deprives them of their previous right to appeal to their Own government to protect their titles.

Various interpretations and regulations under the Constitution followed. Carranza insisted on enforcing the spirit of these laws, which he considered it his mission to make respected; the main point being that Mexican petroleum was Mexican property. As a result, an 'Association for Protecting American Rights' was formed in the United States and Mexico, and began one of those gigantic systematic campaigns of propaganda which were unknown until the beginning of the World War. Carranza was even stigmatized as antiChrist from the pulpits of many American churches.

Considering what has happened in Mexico, we hardly know whether it is more tragic if the Mexicans have revolted of their own accord, or have done so in the pay of Mr. Rockefeller. So far as the rest of the world is concerned, let us hope that there is no ground for the suspicion that great American corporations are responsible. It was a dastardly deed to kill Carranza like a dog; still much more so to kill him for money; and most so of all, to kill him in days like these.

VOL. 19-NO. 955

LONDON has just seen three new operas by Puccini, Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi. Though the London journals write of the opening performance as if it were the first presentation of the operas beyond Italian shores, the present writer is haunted by a notion that the trilogy has had its première in America. The three operas have almost nothing in common save the name of Puccini on the title page of the scores. Il Tabarro, (The Cloak), is a grisly little story of passion and revenge; Suor Angelica, like the Jongleur de Notre Dame, is an opera for women's voices; Gianni Schicchi is a first-rate farce. But of the operas more anon.

FROM Oxford comes the interesting note that Viscount Rothermere (Lord Northcliffe's brother) has offered to Oxford University through the chancellor, on certain specified conditions, a sum of £20,000 for the establishment and endowment of a professorship of the history of the United States of America, to be styled the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professorship of American History, in memory of his son, Captain the Honorable Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth, M.C., Irish Guards, formerly commoner of Christ Church, who was killed in the war. In convocation a decree was proposed gratefully accepting the offer, and de ́creeing the establishment of the professorship under the following conditions: The holder must at the time of his election be a citizen of the United States of America; he shall hold the

professorship for ten years, and shall be eligible for reappointment for one other period of ten years; the appointment shall be made by an electoral board consisting of the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James's at the time of the election, who shall have a casting vote, the chancellor of the University of Oxford, an elector nominated by the university, and Viscount Rothermere, and each successive holder of the viscountcy, or an elector nominated by him; but if the viscountcy shall become extinct or the holder be a minor or otherwise disqualified for acting as an elector at the time of the election, his place on the electoral board shall be taken by the Lord Chief Justice of England.

THE 'Madame Sand' affair, of which we told in another number, has quieted down, though a recent number of the London Times printed Mme. Juliette Adam's personal note to Lord Northcliffe protesting against the injustice done by the play to her famous friend. The Young Visiters, after a first burst of success, has been withdrawn, rather a pity, for it was praised by even the most jaundiced of the critics. The American play, East Is West, has been received with much favor.

FROM the Italian journals comes the quaint note that the 'Tomb of Virgil' is threatened with destruction by the building of a new railway tunnel. The tomb is probably a legendary one, nevertheless, it is the spot to which

Petrarch and all the generations of humanists have come on a pilgrimage. A monument so venerable should have been treated with more consideration.

THOSE interested in the lovely and venerable monuments of French art which were engulfed in the surge and fury of the war will find their pathetic e story told in M. Auguste Marquil

ler's new book, La Destruction des Monuments sur le Front Occidental (Réponse aux plaidoyers allemands). It is a volume that trembles with righteous anger and indignation. Readers will find it extraordinarily well documented. For instance, it gives an order, found in the archives of a German battery, commanding the shelling of the Cathedral of Rheims.

remember meeting in midsummer, 1915, a little French infantryman who had been in Rheims the night the cathedral was shelled and set on fire. His description of the ancient figures of the parapets standing stony and still, now lost, now half seen, in the great torment of smoke and flame, was enough to give one the spinal shiver, that supreme appreciation of a work of art. And I remember a little church by the Moselle lines, whose stained-glass windows had been shaken and broken to twisted leaden traceries to which stray fragments of brilliant glass clung, looking for all the world like autumn leaves. What a civilization the machine spirit has produced!

THERE is good news, however, for the artist. A certain Signor Augusto Giuseppe Caprani, mayor of the Commune of Sala Comacina, being an ade mirer of King Albert of Belgium, left him his island, the beautiful Isola Comacina, no less, so well known to all lovers of Lake Como. And King Albert, like the fine, gallant prince that he is, has returned the property

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to the Italian government with the stipulation that the island be used as a residence for artists. His action might be an example for American richissimes. An American millionaire might actually see that by doing so mad, daring, unheard-of, and revolutionary a thing as devoting a sum to the service of art, he might actually win more praise for himself than if he devoted it to the service of indoor plumbing or the cure of warts. In fact, so intense is the competition to help along science that the average millionaire has a hard time giving away his surplus. Institutes for the investigation and cure of everything from amnesia to zymotic disease lift their rival marble façades round every park in every city in the United States. Splendid, surely. Did you say that some attention ought to be given the cultivation of the immortal spirit? Out of court!

H. B. B.

ONE of the first things following the outbreak of the German revolution was the abolition of the censorship of films and plays. Art was to be freed from the bondage of bureaucratic supervision. The people were to decide for themselves the relative moral and artistic merits of a film or play, and, so it was asserted by the champions of 'free films,' would exercise a most efficient censorship by simply withholding their patronage from places where performances of a doubtful character were given. It is fair to add that the bulk of the theatres or picture houses did not take undue advantage of the newly-acquired liberty. at first, but, as time went on, a distinct tendency on the part of a group of film manufacturers became noticeable to produce films which not only left nothing to be desired as to vulgarity, but often bordered on obscenity.

There was a vigorous opposition by the decent elements, and the press joined in the fight for 'clean films,' though it would appear that the action of the latter often had the unexpected and undesired effect of advertising the film it condemned. Most of these passed under the flag of 'artistic' films, and they were bad enough, - but their obscenity was even surpassed by the so-called Aufklaehrungsfilme, that is, films intended to enlighten and instruct the audience on the consequences of prostitution and venereal diseases. Opposition to Schmutzfilms, catering to the lowest animal instincts in man, was growing fast, causing serious apprehension to film manufacturers, who vainly tried to persuade the black sheep in their ranks to take heed of the public sentiment. At last the government decided upon the reinstitution of censorship, and a federal law was passed to that effect on May 12.

Under the new law, any film to be shown at public performances or sold for such a purpose has to be submitted for examination by a board of censors, and it is interesting to note that this applies equally to films for export. So-called private performances will also come under the heading of public performances. The censorship does not cover films of a purely scientific or artistic character provided they are shown at a public educational institution or any other place recognized as such. No films must be prohibited solely on the ground of their treating on political, social, religious, ethical, or philosophical subjects, nor will a film be rejected for reasons which do not arise from its nature. Permission will, however, be refused if the film contains items liable to endanger public safety or order, offend religious sentiments, or tend to produce a demoralizing effect. Any film consid

ered likely to lower the prestige of the German nation or to upset the harmonious relations between Germany and any other nation will also be prohibited. In case of a film proving objectionable in part only, permission will be given provided the offensive parts are eliminated and sufficient securities furnished that the latter are not otherwise circulated. Provision has been made, however, that all films of a scientific or artistic value and not fit to be demonstrated at public performances to a promiscuously composed audience, may be shown to specially selected parties. All films to be shown at performances to which juveniles under eighteen years of age are admitted are subject to an especially severe examination, and no permission will be granted whenever such films are held to be likely to have a harmful effect on the moral, intellectual, or physical development of juveniles, or if they tend to cause excessive sensibility. Local authorities, children's protection societies, juvenile welfare committees, and school boards may apply to the district municipal authorities to render the existing law even more severe, should circumstances warrant such a step. Finally, it should be mentioned that children under six years of age are excluded from all performances.