guay, and Canada, cannot stand idle when such an attempt is being made to wreck the world market for their most important article of export. Furthermore, European countries that import wheat are also to a greater or lesser extent wheat producers, and they will have a word to say.' In another issue it refers to such attempts to form a government-fixed market' as encouraging an agrarian programme like that advocated by the English Labor Party, which would logically eventuate in a European wheat consumers' pool to combat such a 'producers' pool' as the United States contemplated. The London Outlook is amazed that the measure was not more resented than it was, and observes: If the British Government were to allocate fifty million pounds sterling in order to allow raw materials produced within the Empire to be held off the market until scarcity had made prices higher, we may be sure that the transatlantic press would be buzzing with indignation.'

Swiss farmers have been more successful than our own in getting official assistance for maintaining prices. After a violent debate, their Government has unanimously decided to retain the wheat monopoly now in existence until at least the end of June 1928. This monopoly, which is virtually a price-fixing arrangement designed to decrease the dependence of Switzerland upon outside grain supplies, guarantees cultivators a certain price for their crops, and places control of imports entirely in the hands of the Government.

Soviet Russia's chronic financial stringency shows no sign of relaxing. Fantastic reports are Russia

current as to the amount that the impoverished country is spending on foreign propaganda. Some money is thus used, but the amount is probably far less than commonly imagined. Everything points to the conclusion that Moscow cannot afford to be extravagant. The Commissariat of Finance has just decided to call upon the more prosperous peasants for a loan of twenty-five million rubles

not a large sum, distributed over a land of such extent and a population of between one hundred and two hundred millions. In order to draw these rubles from the pockets of the multitude, this loan has a lottery addendum. Two drawings will occur annually, at each of which subscribers may win sums ranging from five thousand rubles downward. Whether the holders of the lucky numbers will be stigmatized as bourgeois and profiteers is not stated in the loan prospectus. The denominations of the Government securities are very low, some being issued for five rubles, or two and one-half dollars. During the last quarter of 1926 Russia had a favorable trade balance of nearly forty million dollars,

due to both a decline of imports and an increase of exports the latter natural immediately after the harvest. American engineers are busy putting labor-saving machinery in the Donets coal mines. A representative of the Soviet Government has been canvassing Lancashire for textile machinery. He is willing to buy factory equipment to the value of seventy million dollars in our own currency, provided the sellers will let him have it on long credits very long credits indeed, if we are to believe some accounts. In justice to the AllRussian Textile Syndicate, which handles this business in the motherland of Communism, it should be said that it has promptly honored all its bills so far upon their date of maturity. Thirty per cent of Britain's exports of textile machinery are now going to Russia, and seven million spindles are said to be working in that country.

The United States imported nearly three million pounds less tea from Japan last year than it did in 1925. This was a shrinkage Japan of more than ten per cent, and was ascribed to the rise of the yen. Among the Japanese industries that have expanded consistently since the earthquake is the manufacture of cement, which is now approaching two million dollars monthly. There is a considerable export of this commodity. During 1926 Japan imported foodstuffs to the value of more than a hundred million dollars above her exports. The country's aggregate exports, including those of Korea and Formosa, exceeded two billion, three hundred and forty million dollars. The total excess of imports was about two hundred and twenty-two million dollars. Both exports and imports were less in 1926 than in 1925, but the unfavorable balance of trade was somewhat larger than the year before. A bill has been introduced in the Diet providing for the retirement of the present bank notes, which will cease to be legal tender at the end of ten years. New notes are to be issued in their place, however, through the Bank of Japan. Although the protracted business depression shows few immediate signs of alleviation, a more hopeful spirit prevails.

Although the people of South Africa, like the other self-governing Dominions, are strangers to the poverty that afflicts large numSouth bers in the mother country and in Africa Europe, the Union has a poor white and Auspopulation officially estimated at one tralasia hundred and fifty thousand, or nearly one tenth of all the Europeans in the country. These, like the poor whites of our own South, refuse to engage in common labor because they regard it as the black man's job. Roughly, more than two thirds of South Africa's annual

exports consist of diamonds, gold, and other metals, all of which are subject to exhaustion. It is doubtful if agriculture in conjunction with such manufactures as the resources of the country at present known encourage can be increased to compensate for the export deficit should an abrupt decline in the mining output occur. Cotton has a very doubtful future, although it bids fair to become an important crop in Rhodesia, which likewise promises to become one of the most important tobacco-raising regions in the world. Supplementing our earlier reference to the proposal of the South African Government to subsidize the manufacture of iron and steel in the Union, we now learn that a bill has been introduced to organize a company with a capital exceeding fifteen million dollars for this purpose. Five of the nine directors are to be government nominees. The shares are to have a par value of one pound sterling. Five hundred thousand of these will be taken by the Government, and the remainder will be offered for public subscription. Among other provisions of the bill is that the South African railways shall purchase their iron and steel from this company at a price not more than ten per cent above the cost of the imported article. More characteristic of South Africa, however, is the renewed interest in what might be called non-union diamond mining due to the discovery of valuable deposits of these gems in country hitherto unprospected. A Johannesburg correspondent of the Manchester Guardian estimates that no less than eighty thousand people-presumably whites are trying to make a living picking up these gems; and the diamond syndicates are reported to be seriously alarmed by this new development.

Business conditions in Australia and New Zealand continue reasonably prosperous, but lavish public expenditures, largely out of loans, are causing some uneasiness to conservative business men in these young commonwealths. During the fiscal year 1925-26 the aggregate revenues of the six Australian states and the Commonwealth Government were in round numbers eight hundred million dollars, or about twenty-five million dollars less than ordinary expenditures. During the same year, however, well over two hundred million dollars additional was expended from loans. The net total debt of the Commonwealth and the six states is rapidly approaching five billion dollars. More than one fourth of the revenue of New South Wales is already devoted to interest pay

ments, and her accumulated deficits last year approached twenty-five million dollars. In Victoria, the best managed of the states financially, revenues ran behind expenditures during 1926 by about one and one-half million dollars, and the accumulated deficit approaches five million dollars. Similar reports come from the other states, with the exception of Western Australia, which has a small surplus. In New Zealand the last fiscal year saw a reversal of a favorable trade balance of more than thirty million dollars the previous season to an unfavorable balance of nearly that sum. Yet as long as the primary industries flourish - that is, while high export prices for wool, wheat, butter, and provisions prevail - no serious setback to the present prosperity is anticipated. The present Australian wool clip is expected to be about the same size as that of last year, but there has been a considerable loss of sheep, estimated at about six million, in Queensland, which foreshadows a decrease next season, accompanied by firmer prices.

Since 1924 the number of head of cattle handled annually by freezing establishments in Argentina has fallen off by more than Argentina three quarters of a million. As a result, many ranchers are overstocked, and pressure to sell has depressed prices. Great Britain, in spite of her unemployment and industrial depression, consumes about as much meat as ever, but the Continent's demand has decreased appreciably. Argentina levies a Federal export tax on packing-house products when their price rises above a certain minimum, but of late little revenue has been received from this source because quotations have ranged below the basic rate. Local taxes have risen rapidly since the war in both Argentina and Uruguay. Specific instances are quoted where cattle properties in these countries now pay more than five times as much to the Government as they did in 1924. Bolivia, whose area and undeveloped resources rank it among the first Latin American countries in opportunities for development, has just sold to a British syndicate two hundred thousand acres of land suitable for the cultivation of cotton. British engineering firms have recently concluded contracts totaling more than four million dollars in that country, and a British corporation has acquired concessions up to thirty million acres of oil and mineral lands, with the privilege of extending the grant on favorable terms to fifty million acres.

Possibly Socialists and pacifists believe that such an Act, by impressing the terrible and universal character of modern war upon the popular mind, will prevent a precipitate recourse to arms. Among incidental oddities of this legislation is one characterized by the Westminster Gazette as 'especially ironical.' Women are made absolutely equal to men in respect to their duties under the Act, 'but whereas the male conscript may hope to have some influence upon the Government which commits him to war, the women have none. The Electoral Reform Bill, which will soon make its appearance, may find the Frenchwoman now as much a conscript as her brothers, sons, and husband — alive to the importance of the vote.'

The last League Council session, presided over by the Foreign Minister

League Gossip

of Germany in his native tongue, was a milestone in

the slow progress of European reconciliation. Figaro testily headed its report of the proceedings 'Le coup d'état de Genève.' Herr Stresemann's eagerness to prevent an AngloSoviet rupture was ascribed to Berlin's Rapallo and post-Rapallo engagements to Moscow, which keep her from joining England in political or economic measures against Russia. A fine Italian hand,' to quote a Daily Telegraph correspondent, seized the opportunity to make Machiavellian capital out of this situation. 'Germany's embarrassment, judging by the sensation which, I understand, was caused at Geneva by Signor Mussolini's Signor Mussolini's sudden and unexpected ratification of the Bessarabian Treaty, has been Italy's opportunity, and Roman diplomacy has made the most of it. Relations between France and Italy are delicate; those between Italy and Germany, though good, are not all that the Palazzo Chigi would wish them

to be, or, at any rate, had hoped that they would become, until Herr Stresemann's departure from San Remo, after a three weeks' stay on Italian soil, without even a courtesy meeting with the Duce. Therefore, when France, a few weeks back, hesitated to support strong British action at Shanghai, Signor Mussolini ordered the Italian naval commander to coöperate forthwith and whole-heartedly with the British commander. Similarly when, last week, Germany showed so manifest a reluctance to court Soviet disfavor on behalf of Anglo-German and Western solidarity, Rome stepped in and defied Moscow. Signor Mussolini acted thus, not only in order to cement Italo-Rumanian amity, but also to emphasize the point that, where France or Germany might falter in fidelity to a common cause with Great Britain, the latter might find a dauntless associate in Italy, her coguarantor in the Locarno Pact.'

William Martin, editor of the Journal de Genève, argues that this Council session marks a new phase in the relations of America and the League. The first phase, immediately following the war, was characterized by our refusal to have anything to do with that organization. Our State Department would not even reply to its communications. The League lacked confidence in itself, and Europe se faisait toute petite. Geneva therefore confined itself to technical and humanitarian tasks, and evaded assuming responsibility for political actions of importance. Then came a second phase, when our distrust of the League was less accentuated. Our Government began to reply to its communications and to participate occasionally in the work of its commissions. Simultaneously Europe was recovering self-confidence, and felt less dependent upon America. This new spirit was natu

rally reflected in the League itself. Now that Germany has become an active and influential member, a third phase has begun. The United States is participating officially and semiofficially in most of Geneva's technical labors, and even in some that have supreme political connotations, like the Disarmament Conference. On the other hand, Europe has recovered its old-time independence, and has definitely negatived America's demands in respect to two vital matters the statutes of the Permanent Court of International Justice, and naval limitation. 'In the degree that Europe surmounts her economic crisis she is recovering her poise, and a moral equilibrium is being reëstablished between the two continents.' Elsewhere the same writer argues that the League should endorse Panama's refusal to ratify her pending treaty with the United States and should veto Latvia's treaty with Soviet Russia, on the ground that both instruments are incompatible with the commitments of their governments to Geneva.

'All quiet along the Thames' describes the present political situation in England. The Outlook Political likens the Speaker of the Doldrums House to a rector's wife presiding over a mothers' meeting. Dr. Hadden Guest's resignation from the Labor Party, following the expulsion of Mr. Spencer, the conservative miners' leader, counterbalances its notable accessions from the Liberals, like Commander Kenworthy and Captain Wedgwood Benn. Lord Rosebery has reiterated his demand for an official inquiry into the source of Lloyd George's political campaign fund. The noble lord is said to have objected to the sale of peerages when his Party was in power because he disliked thus to dilute his own order, but he apparently had no qualms as to raising money for

electioneering purposes by the sale of baronetcies and knighthoods. Only the Labor Party finances itself by methods which are not open to the same criticism that is leveled against Lloyd George, and the Conservatives would like to deprive it of power to do so. The Outlook professes to find the Lloyd George money a greater puzzle the more it is discussed, even venturing the conjecture: 'For all we know, the mystery fund may yet vanish as completely as the Cheshire cat, and leave only the smell behind.' In a debate upon Britain's Note to Moscow Mr. Chamberlain declared with emphasis that the Government was not seeking to encircle Russia or to cut her off from the rest of Europe - thus formally refuting the stock charge of the Moscow diplomats against his policy.

Ireland is preparing for a general election, in which the Government's supporters are expected to lose ground, if only through the natural swing of the political pendulum. The Labor Party is organizing its campaign quietly and efficiently, but will concentrate its efforts principally on urban areas. A Farmers' Party has entered the field, but it has little present prospect of returning a large delegation to the Dail, since the wide variations of economic status among the peasantry are reflected in their political opinions, and make it practically impossible for them to agree on general national policies. Bills reforming the licensing law and for extending the present duties 'to safeguard industries' promise to be the debating issues of the campaign.

On the Continent, the common people seem as weary of politics as they are across the Channel. Some importance was attached in France last month to a by-election in the department of La Sarthe, which resulted in the election of three Nationalist deputies to replace two Socialists and one Radical