will suggest to some of my readers the suspicion that I am becoming reactionary in my old age, and am about to join hands with the Carlists. Let these people be reassured. My suggestion is inspired by the political realities already confronting us. I believe that all this boiling up of revolution everywhere in Europe is the prelude to a profound social renovation. It would be premature to predict the features of that renovation. Will it assume the form of a definite victory of Bolshevist communism, which no one except a -few visionaries anticipates? If that is

to be the eventual result we need not trouble ourselves about it just yet; for Communism is still a long way off. Are our trade unions to determine the route of the new reforms? While this is not absolutely impossible, it does not seem probable. Yet we should hope for a change; for in my opinion it is a Enecessity of nature that civilized nations should renovate periodically their political institutions, approaching each time a step nearer to an ideal social organization.

A Swiss author fears that parliamentarism will be the first political structure to go. He suggests that, just when the old backward autocratic countries are adopting parliamentary government, the more advanced democratic nations are discovering its inefficiency and failure. It would be childish to deny that parliamentary government had lost its former credit in the very countries where it has previously possessed the most authority and influence. Its futility and precarious status in Spain are sufficiently indicated by the single fact that any kind of a Cabinet can obtain a majority; or in other words, that the alleged representatives of the people are either liberal or conservative, according to the man who chances to be in the saddle.

Turning to France, Briand himself has just compared the atrophied Parliamentary institutions of that country to a pool of stagnant water. What else do these words of the great orator mean, if not a deep disgust with the system of government to which he owes his own most brilliant triumph? It is an open question whether a mere patching up of the present system by such devices as proportional representation will be adequate. In view of the insistent demand for a new era complete sweeping away of the old which the war has produced, it will not be surprising if the very principle of parliamentary government is sacrificed to the reform demands of the people.

a

The necessity of completely remodeling the present system of representative government is felt in practically every western nation. It does not arise, as some assert, from an inevitable drift toward a dictatorship of the proletariat. It rests upon the recognition of a deeper need for creating new moral ties within society as a whole. Men of great authority in Belgium and France are preaching the urgency of political changes which will foster the spiritual unity of the nation, and prevent the present violent party conflicts. In Spain there is less talk of reform, because the inertia of our governing classes makes them hostile to any change in our parliamentary system. They know no other way, and they are willing to learn no other way, of governing except by venality and favoritism.

In France, likewise, a parliamentary mandarinism exists, which is fighting for its ancient privileges with tooth and nail. It has managed to intrench itself in public authority. Accustomed to having its private personal interests promoted and defended under a political banner, it will not easily relinquish

this advantage. Any effort to reform Parliament will be opposed by these gentlemen as a reactionary effort. But will selfish interest be strong enough to prevent reform? A French soldier has just published an interesting pamphlet entitled, 'Representative Government Since the Peace,' in which he sketches a form of government which he believes might advantageously take the place of the present one. He asserts that the existing parliamentary system does not satisfy the actual needs of society. It is an outgrowth of the French Revolution, which intentionally abolished all intermediate bodies between the individual and the highest political power. According to the older revolutionary theory the nation was a homogeneous group, properly represented by a single and all-powerful Parliament elected by the citizens as a whole. But contrary to expectation we discover now that private associations - professional groups- which the idealists of 1793 abhorred, have risen again from their ashes.

The rapid growth of this principle of association is undermining the bases of the old system. Political and parliamentary centralization presuppose a social centralization which has ceased to be a reality. It is urgent to substitute a new organization, which shall officially represent in the government the interests promoted by these groups. Unitary Parliaments, which have had their day and are incapable of performing the tasks of the new era, should, in the opinion of this writer, yield their places to new organs of government really representing national interests.

There should be in every country a chamber of agriculture, a chamber of finance, a chamber of industry, and a chamber of labor, which should have ultimate jurisdiction in all matters in which the general public is not equally as concerned as their constituent mem

bers, while the jurisdiction of the political Parliament should be limited to matters which concern solely or primarily the whole nation.

Futile and sterile partisan rivalries and conflicts, which have nothing whatever to do with the public welfare, should be made impossible. The different chambers mentioned would be organs of administration rather than legislative bodies, and their first function would be to promote the material prosperity of the nation under the general direction of the central government.

I have heard similar proposals advocated in Spain. They are likely to prove very attractive to the Spanish public, which is profoundly disillusioned and disgusted by the profitless debates and intrigues of Parliament. Yet are there serious grounds for expecting such a reform? I doubt it. All our political parties would oppose such a change, because the moment that our Parliamentary system was put on a business basis, the wordy windbags who now fancy they govern us would be out of a job. I doubt whether that species of our political fauna will ever become extinct. If the day should dawn when Spain were governed by chambers of specialists, who stood fort real things instead of artificial images of things, what would become of our orators?

[Berliner Tageblatt (Pro-English Radical Liberal Daily), July 13]

ON THE NORTH POLISH FRONT:

BY HANS VORST

WHEN I left early in June, it was impossible to find out anything defi nite in Warsaw regarding facilities for reaching the Baltic lands. I was told that I might get a steamer in Danzig for Riga, but might have to wait for a week or more before one arrived. I

decided to try the direct route from Vilna to Dunaburg, although I was informed that the journey was a hard one. Trains were irregular, and no one knew in Warsaw when I would reach Vilna, which was still in Polish hands. There was not the slightest knowledge in that city of traveling conditions beyond the latter point. Talking with Savinkoff, a distinguished refugee from Moscow, the latter remarked with a significant smile: 'Yes, traveling was an easy matter when we still had a Russia.' He was quite right. In the old days a trip from Warsaw to Riga was but a comfortable night's journey. Even if the traveler did not have a sleeper, he rested very comfortably on roomy, well-upholstered compartment sofas of the Russian trains.

the

Since I was to pass through a zone of military operations I had to get three Polish visés in addition to that of the Lett authorities one from the police, another from the foreign office, and a third from the general staff. The general staff officer, in reply to my question, stated emphatically that I would not have the slightest difficulty on the route I had selected, meaning to indicate that no unfavorable change in the military situation there was to be anticipated. Looking back after the experience, let me remark in passing that to make this trip a person must have plenty of time, an abundance of money, and a surfeit of good luck. Otherwise he will never get through. My good luck was remarkable. I was detained at Warsaw longer than I intended. When I arrived in Vilna, after an all night's journey, I learned that for the past five weeks no passenger train had gone beyond that point, presumably for military reasons. The first train left the day before. If I had arrived a week earlier I should have had to wait in uncertainty or have returned to Warsaw. As it

was a train would leave the next day.

I employed the time at my disposal at Vilna to get an impression of local conditions and sentiment. I conversed with Poles, Lithuanians, White Russians, and Jews. I found the best language to use was Russian. It was the common tongue everywhere. The Poles are endeavoring to crowd it out, and with that in view have established schools where teaching is conducted in the mother tongue of the pupils. For instance, at Vilna there is a White Russian and a Lithuanian gymnasium. This is merely for outward show, however, because teachers and textbooks can not be found for conducting higher schools in those languages. As a matter of fact, Russian is still in use except in a few primary schools where Lithuanian is employed.

Public sentiment seemed very pessimistic. Prices are high, though somewhat lower than in Warsaw. On the other hand there are fewer opportunities for earning money. The city has suffered fearfully from the war, having been at various times in the possession of the Russians, Germans, Bolsheviki, and Poles. Those with whom I conversed were skeptical of the stability of the present condition. The old watchman, who permitted me late in the afternoon to climb the ruinous, ancient tower of the castle, in order to view the sunset and to get a glimpse of the picturesque city below, was a White Russian. He complained bitterly that the old times had gone, never to return. There was no hope left, and the Bolsheviki or the Lithuanians would soon be back bringing new misery. His ardent wish was to have old Russia restored.

There are not many Great Russians left in Vilna. Neither are the Lithuanians numerous in the city itself. As soon as I reached the country, however, the peasants in one direction all spoke

Lithuanian, and in the other, White Russian. The upper classes and the educated people are mostly Polish. Half the population of the city consists of Jews, whose greatest fear is Polish persecution and who therefore are fanatical Pro-Russians, and cling to the Russian language and the Russian schools. If there should ever be a popular vote in this country, the Jews would be in favor of any other sovereignty in preference to that of Poland.

The following morning, after spending a night in the best hotel with an unanticipated freedom from insects, I left for Kalkunen, the last city occupied by the Poles. Second class tickets were sold, but the cars both here and in the Lettish territory are distinguished from those of the third class merely by signs on the outside. We constantly passed evidences of the great war. Long lines of trenches and dugouts bordered the railroad; fine old forests had been cut down or shot to pieces. The train crept cautiously and shakily over emergency bridges of wood, across deep ravines with little rivers at the bottom where, on either bank, you still saw.remnants of the old solid iron bridges which had been destroyed and were rusting away in ruins. At the same time we were conscious of being again in a sphere of military operations. At intervals along the way were prisoners working under armed guard. Naturally they were Bolsheviki; that is, young, harmless, peasant boys who had followed the Red banner even less willingly than they formerly followed that of the Tsar. At one station a camouflaged army train was waiting under full steam. At another we passed a hospital train receiving freshly bandaged wounded men just brought in from the front. Soldiers were everywhere. The Polish troops whom I have seen make a good impression, although their equipment is rather shabby and

worn. Discipline is naturally not what it was in the European army. For example, the Polish sentries along the Dvina River were amusing themselves using up their cartridges shooting at fish. Furthermore, the Polish army is not numerically strong enough for the work before it. Reports as to the number of troops vary. They hardly exceed 500,000 or 600,000 men, and the Red army is certainly the superior in this respect. We must remember, too, that not more than 400,000 of these troops are available for use against the Bolsheviki.

We arrived at Kalkunen late in the afternoon and had to continue the trip for a few miles on foot and in carriages, crossing a pontoon bridge over the Dvina River. The magnificent steel railway bridge, which had survived the Russian retreat and the German evacuation without harm, was finally blown up by the Bolsheviki when they withdrew from Dvinsk before the Poles.

After I had successfully survived four baggage and passport inspections, I found myself in Lettgallia, to whose governor I had a letter of introduction. The population of this district is very mixed; some 254,000 being Letts, 77,000 Great Russians, 66,000 White Russians, 64,000 Jews, 31,000 Poles, and 5000 Germans. Moreover the Letts here are distinguished from their fellows in Lettland proper by being so largely of mixed nationality and by being Catholics, while pure Letts are Lutherans. They are also much inferior to their fellow Letts in education and economic progress. Dvinsk itself is predominatingly Jewish, Polish, and Russian. Before the war it was a city of 120,000 inhabitants, but now it does not number more than 36,000. Its factories were ruined in the course of the war, having been first 'evacuated' by the Russians, then by the Germans, and last of all by the Bolsheviki.

Numerous dwellings even of the better class are empty; their tenants have fled, and they have been stripped of everything, including the doors and windows. Wooden buildings were torn down in many instances by the Bolsheviki, and later by the Poles, to be used for fuel. This destruction went on without any control. A man who wanted wood merely went out and took it from

After the distressing sights which this demoralized city offered me, and a sleepless night, for which there was abundant reason, in a Dvinsk hotel, I gladly turned my back upon its wreckage and ruin, and finally after three days and a half of uncomfortable and tiresome but otherwise uninterrupted travel, my eyes were at last greeted by the slender towers of the fine old Hansa town of Riga.

[Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Swiss Liberal Republican Daily), July 11 and 12]

I. First International

WE all recall 1848 as a year of revolution. It was also the birth year of the Communist Manifesto, that declaration of war against capitalist society, with which the followers of the First International seized control of the revolutionary movement. Rather curiously the theory of the Communist Manifesto, which represented social changes as the result of changes in the methods of production, was first conceived by a man who was anything but a revolutionist; by a typical Prussian official, the archivist, G. W. von Raumer. His exposition of this view, which the authors of the Communist Manifesto apparently used, was published as early as 1837. However, the exaggerated and one-sided emphasis of the tendency toward capitalist concentration, and the deduction from this that class struggles have dominated human history, are to be ascribed to the authors of the Communist Manifesto alone. Another new

idea in that document was the dogma that the time was approaching when the long succession of class struggles would terminate through a final and successful revolt of the proletariat, who would thus venture a leap from the 'realm of compulsion' to the 'realm of freedom.'

However, the next few years brought the leaders of the new movement so many disillusions that they were induced to limit their revolutionary activities 'for the time being' to developing its theoretical basis. Lasalles' agitation in Germany in the early '60's, the movement to found productive coöperative societies of workers which Bismarck viewed so benignantly, and the vigorous growth of the British Trade Unions, revived the hopes of the authors of the Communist Manifesto, who anticipated speedily a new revolutionary era. On September 28, 1864, the International Labor Association was organized at St. Martin's Hall, London, as an instrument for carrying on the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

The inaugural address of the First