Within five years of the Treaty of Versailles, the notion that henceforth there would be a Britannic foreign policy, framed and supported by the Empire as a whole, has been dealt a heavy and perhaps fatal blow. What the actual situation now is nobody knows. Technically Canada remains at war with Turkey. . . . Logically Canadians should not enjoy the benefits of the Treaty. But, if that really matters to them, they will perhaps observe that the United States has found a way of securing all the benefits without the liabilities. .

The present drift toward dissolution of the Empire via foreign affairs is not to be arrested by any tightening of the mechanism of consultation - which is impracticable anyhow until the real trouble is dealt with but only by Britain adopting a national policy based on the Washington rather than the Geneva theory of peace, and therefore lending itself to coöperation with the Dominions and also the United States, Canada being the natural intermediary. . . .

Geography, in this writer's opinion, is weightier than political kinship in moulding the foreign policies of Britain's far-flung Dominions:

Canadian Liberals instinctively shun a foreign policy of European entanglement, especially when it would definitely entail a military liability. In this they are faithful not only to the memory of Laurier, with his ingrained horror of 'European militarism,' but also to that vaguer, new-world instinct of which the United States is the leading exponent. The American notion, which Wilson challenged to his cost, and Colonel Harvey expounded in London last autumn, at the very moment when General Smuts was publicly advocating more active opposition to France, is that the way to world peace is not by everybody minding everybody's else business, as the League of Nations would have it, but by a friendly reciprocity of Monroe Doctrines. Canada, being in and of America, cannot transfer herself from the American to the European atmosphere. Left alone she would readily join the United States in a policy of steadfast aloofness from European

disputes, except when invited to intervene for some specific and temporary purpose by the leading European Powers in concert. Such also is the natural impulse of Australasia and South Africa, although blurred in the one case by loyalty to Britain and in the other by Smuts's personal liking for world politics.

TROTSKII CRITICIZES THE COMMUNISTS

Vorwärts publishes with evident satisfaction a confidential memorandum submitted to the Moscow Communist leaders by Trotskii, in which he criticizes unsparingly certain conditions in the Communist Party and in Russia. Among other things he says:

The appalling demoralization of the Party is due to two causes: (a) the radically mistaken and unhealthy Party régime, and (b) the discontent of the workingmen and the peasants on account of their bitter economic hardships, which are due not only to objective difficulties but also to obvious fundamental errors in our economic policy.

Trotskii then proceeds to describe how a system of land taxes, exorbitantly high in comparison with the prices of agricultural produce, has created bitter resentment among the peasants and this resentment has communicated itself to city workers. Their discontent is the ultimate cause of the dissensions that are rending the Party, where insurgent groups have appeared that are rapidly gaining strength.

Trotskii next describes an aspect of the Communist Party's relations with the rank and file of the peasantry that has a striking- almost amusingparallel with the relations between the Old Guard and the Farm Bloc insurgents in the Republican Party of the United States. He then continues: 'During the last year and a half we have witnessed the development of a peculiar secretariat-psychology, based

on the conviction that the Party managers are qualified to decide offhand every question without direct knowledge of the actual conditions from which it arises.'

The dominant factor in Russia's present crisis is the great gap between prices of manufactures and prices of agricultural produce. 'It is perfectly clear that a mechanical reduction of merchandise prices by Government decree will in most cases enrich only the middlemen, and will have little effect upon the welfare of the peasant consumer.'

At the Congress of the Russian Communist Party held in Moscow early in June, the 'Old Guard' retained its hold upon the executive officers, excluding such prominent Communists as Trotskii, Radek, and Dzerzhinskii, the former head of the Cheka. The last-mentioned gentleman has emerged from the recent turmoil an ally of Trotskii and a champion of the more moderate what men of 'bourgeois' prepossessions would call the saner school of Soviet economics. The Trotskii opposition group, which is very powerful despite its defeat in the Convention, is said to be strengthening its hold upon the rank and file of the people, and may reverse the present situation at any time.

The extent to which inadequate transportation and underconsumption are responsible for Russia's economic ills is illustrated by the difficulties the Soviet authorities are experiencing in disposing of their stock of coal. The mines of the Donetz Basin are now producing nearly 10,000,000 tons a year; and there is a surplus of 1,600,000 tons, for which it is impossible to find a market, although only 170 shafts are in operation as compared with 1800 before the war. It is proposed to reduce export prices and to

encourage the sugar mills in the Ukraine to return to the use of coal as fuel.

PROFITEERING IN ENGLAND

MR. BALDWIN's recently expressed opinion that profiteering in Great Britain should have the searchlight of a public inquiry turned upon it moves a Political Correspondent of the Spectator to ask:

Why is it that a frock costing 25s. is sold for £4 48.? I take this as an example of what appears to be going on in the clothing industry, and others could be cited. Knitted goods sold wholesale at 8s. 11d. are retailed at 40s.; velours hats sold wholesale at a guinea are retailed at 50s. each, and Fair Isle jumpers which can be bought in Shetland for 50s. sell in London for £5 apiece, and sometimes more..

...

In case of food, we are told the disparity between producers' prices and consumers' prices is even greater, and it is aggravated by the practice of giving short weight:

owing to short weight given or the incluIt is by no means inconceivable that sion of wrappers in the weight of foods, or a combination of the two, the weekly shortage in a family of four persons consuming per week, say, 2 pounds of fats, 4 pounds of sugar, and 12 pints of milk, would be: fats,

ounce; sugar, 1 ounce, 6 drams; milk, 12 fluid ounces. These figures appear to be very small, but for a town of 32,000 families of the same average size, they represent a weekly illicit profit of something like £380.

Argentine meat sold on the ranch for seven cents a pound, United States currency, dressed weight, and costing to deliver in Smithfield Market less than ten cents a pound, is sold to the butcher for 5d. - or, say, eleven cents. Yet the cheapest cuts are quoted at retail in Great Britain at 8d. - sixteen cents a pound, while rump

steaks command 1s. 10d., or nearly forty-five cents a pound.

The Correspondent conjectures that by eliminating profiteering and unnecessary middlemen's profits the cost of living in Great Britain might be reduced by twenty-five points.

This article brought a letter to the editor of the Spectator, signed 'Managing Director,' protesting that retail traders are forced by competition and by the intelligence of their customers to do business on a moderate scale of profits.

No business of any magnitude requiring careful organization and a strictly honorable system could exist in these competitive times on such unscrupulous methods as described. In these days of increased expenses in every direction, the draper who makes five per cent on his returns over and above his expenses has done well. The net profit is not made by extortionate gross profits, but on a quick turnover on small profits..

It is a general rule when a new buyer is engaged to state the rate of profit he is to show on his returns. If he attempts to exceed this he would immediately be outbid by his competitors and probably forfeit his situation.

NO K. K. K. IN IRELAND

A PROTESTANT farmer writes from County Galway to the Spectator, protesting against the rumors that Protestants are ill-treated in Western Ireland. As a matter of fact, he says, the disorders in Western Ireland have borne more heavily on Roman Catholic than on Protestant families.

It is not a question of religion at all, but if a man is suspected of having money in his house and the fairs are watched by these robbers - he is likely to be visited by these miscreants. I know of a Roman Catholic gentleman-farmer living not far from this who was raided seven times, and his motor-car taken, and a lady, an enthu

siastic Catholic Sinn Feiner, who was raided at least twice.

After giving further details of the same kind this correspondent says:

Religious animosity is absolutely unknown in the West of Ireland, and from all accounts there is very little of it in the South. .. I am a Northerner, but have lived in the West for thirty-five years, and, although a Protestant, have during that time experienced more kindness from my Roman Catholic neighbors than I have from my coreligionists.

A BRITISH POPULATION FORECAST

A FORECAST of the probable movement of population in Great Britain during the next thirty years, published in a recent number of the Economic Journal by a prominent statistician, Professor A. L. Bowley, is receiving considerable attention in that country. Leaving out of account emigration and immigration, which are unpredictable, the Professor estimates that Great Britain will attain its maximum population between 1940 and 1950, after which the figures will remain stationary or there may be some retrogression. The prolongation of life by modern sanitation and the advance of medical science is increasing the proportion of older people among the population, while the declining birth-rate is lowering the proportion of children. Unless the population is to fall off, there must be an average of 2.6 births per woman in her lifetime. At a lower rate, the population will soon begin to decline.

'With the present rates of births, deaths, and emigration, Great Britain will have forty-five or forty-six million inhabitants about 1941, after which the number will diminish.'

These forecasts have a practical application - for instance in such long-term housing programmes as the

British Government has just inaugurated, in anticipating future conditions of employment and unemployment, and indeed in relation to all policies involving what we might term economic hygiene.

SUDAN AGAIN

SUDAN is a big country with varied climate and topography. Its great irrigation works, described in a late issue of the Living Age, serve a region very different in most climatic features from other vast territories within the Anglo-Egyptian jurisdiction. A correspondent of the London Times, writing from El-Obeid, describes a single province, Kordofan, -with an area larger than the States of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey combined, and a population of less than half a million, as a forested land of many scenic attractions. The country, as seen on a 150-mile motorcar tour, 'resembles some wooded park at home.'

The spaced gum-trees, the woodcutters' clearances, the black patches where undergrowth has been burned — all combine to give this impression, and the red sand of the road heightens the resemblance to such an extent that at every turn one quite expects to see the manse or countryseat in the distance.

What one also notices in a drive of this

nature is the amount of animal and bird

life that exists in what is, after all, at this time of year a waterless region. The air is full of birds, some of them most charming, such as the golden-crested crane, which supplies the officers of the Camel Corps with their hackle; the lesser hornbill, with its curious colored wings and mournful cry; the bustard, the stone pheasant, the crested ground-lark, the bulbul, and the glossy starling, with its glorious sheen feathers, which change from blue to green and mauve to purple as the sun falls on them. Wherever one goes there are guinea fowl and rabbits; gazelles run

gracefully about among the bushes or flit daintily across one's path; here and there a fox is disturbed in his morning hunt; while one of the prettiest sights is the jerboas, who from time to time are attracted to the roadside by the noise of the car and, evidently fascinated at what they see, instead of drawing back make a mad rush across almost under the wheels and disappear, with their bushy tails spread out behind them as a counterpoise as they bound into the foliage.

MINOR NOTES

THE Catholic Church, which has at present 2,208,000 converts in China and an ordained native clergy numbering 1701, deemed it advisable to raise a selected few of these Chinese clergymen to the dignity of prelates. Those chosen have been trained for about fifteen years in their native literature, in mathematical and physical science, in general history, in Latin, philosophy, and theology, in Scripture, apologetics, and canon law. The highest dignity to which natives have been appointed up to the present is that of prefects apostolic. They are not bishops; they have the rank of prelates and may wear the mitre and ring, but are not allowed the use of the crosier or of the throne. These appointments, of which two have been made already, are incidentally a concession to the growing demand that exists throughout Asia for ecclesiastical as well as political autonomy.

WITHIN the past year the Labor Party has won several victories in Australia, with the result that four of the six States of the CommonwealthQueensland, Tasmania, South Australia

now have Labor Cabinets, and there is a probability that Labor will return to power in the Commonwealth Parliament after the next election. If so, this means a Capital Levy

to provide for the war debt, and presumably heavier taxation all along the line. As in the United States, the farmers are dissatisfied with the present administration, and attribute their hardships largely to the burdens of Protection and a policy that they conceive is favoring city at the expense of country interests.

An important link in the future railway net of Africa has just been completed in British Sudan. It extends from the present line joining Khartum and the Red Sea to the borders of the Italian province of Eritrea, tapping the fertile Gash Delta, where 15,000 acres of irrigated land are already being planted with cotton, and 100,000 acres are expected eventually to be developed. Among the heavy freight awaiting transport when the railhead reached Kassala were one thousand tons of cotton seed. The line will eventually be extended to join the railway south

of Sudan at a point on the Blue Nile, thus completing a loop through fairly fertile country. fertile country. The portion just finished is 216 miles in length. It was built with British materials and financed under the Trades Facilities Act.

ACCORDING to a recent announcement by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, the British Government proposes to begin at once a programme of airship construction. The first vessel, which will probably not be in service until 1926, is planned to have accommodation for about 200 passengers, ten or twelve tons of mail, and other freight. It will have a range of some 2500 miles, with a cruising speed of 80 miles an hour. This will enable the Government to maintain a direct air-service to India on a sixty-hour schedule, with one halt in Egypt, where a mooring-mast and other facilities are to be provided.