Snowden is equally put out because the Government to which he belongs has concluded a treaty with Soviet Russia containing a conditional promise of a loan to that country.

Despite the vociferations of the ultra-Nationalists, the German press, for the most part, views the acceptance of the Report with an air of sober relief. The Junkers took the occasion of their recent meeting at Weimar to abuse the German negotiators in London as traitors and betrayers of their country; but it is likely that some of these very men voted later for the railway law the enactment of which constituted Germany's practical endorsement of the new agreement. In Belgium acquiescence with the new programme seems general. That country has, for a long period, been officially in favor of a commercial solution of post-war problems.

A SHEAF OF BALKAN RUMORS

DISTURBING reports from the Balkans are so normal as to. attract serious attention only when they rise to a crescendo. That has been the situation during the past few weeks. Numerous reports have appeared in the European press of Communist activities in Bulgaria, where a cargo of arms destined for the revolutionists was recently seized on the Black Sea coast. Ever since the overthrow of Stambuliskii many of the peasants have been ready to rise at the first favorable opportunity. The present Government, which does not exist by virtue of a popular vote taken without duress, distrusts the loyalty of its own troops. In addition to this, the Macedonians, both recent refugees and longer-established residents of Bulgaria, are said to be ready to support the Communists. They constitute a very important military factor, for they are armed and accustomed to the tactics that the Communists

would probably employ in case of an insurrection.

Prager Tagblatt reports that a Russian scientist who has just returned to Prague from an extensive tour of the Balkans was told by Fodor Alexandrov, the Macedonian leader, that his followers had decided to support the Communists 'because the existing Zankov Cabinet possesses no authority either at home or in the League of Nations. The efforts of the Macedonians to gain independence can only succeed by upsetting the present status quo in the Balkans, and the way to begin that is to give the Communists control of Bulgaria.'

This disaffected element has been reënforced by a large influx of refugees, said to number 20,000 or more, who have crossed the border into Bulgaria from Turkish Thrace within the last few weeks. The Turks insisted on treating these people as Greeks and repatriating them to Greece because they belong to the Greek Church. As the Bulgarians love the Greeks as little as they do the Turks, the deportees promptly took refuge in the land of their own tongue.

But the area of disturbance is not confined to Bulgaria, though it has its focus there. The Communists are intriguing actively in Bessarabia, where the peasantry is said to be dissatisfied with Rumanian rule, which has not made the country a paradise as promptly as they naïvely anticipated. At the other end of the line, the followers of Raditch, the peasant leader in Croatia, after wandering for some time in a political wilderness in their own country, have joined the Moscow Peasant International. Raditch himself is reported to have concluded negotiations for this during his recent visit to Moscow, after his rather cool reception in Vienna and several other European capitals.

The area of discontent extends still farther. Although the Polish press, probably under more or less moral censorship, minimizes certain disturbances along Poland's eastern frontier, a comparison of reports from that source with those in the Bolshevist papers suggests the existence of a zone of discontent having its focus probably in Galicia, but extending to the Baltic, where disorders have recently occurred and where future outbreaks are likely in sympathy with a possible uprising in the Balkans.

UNCLE SAM AND INSULINDE

La France Militaire sees in the re- ported rapprochement between the Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Companies a politico-economic fact of far-reaching significance. Twenty-five years ago the Netherlands authorities welcomed the appearance of America in the Philippines as likely to interpose a barrier to the southern expansion of Japan. Subsequently, however, this feeling was somewhat modified. The Telegraaf, the Radical Amsterdam newspaper that published Raemaeker's cartoons during the war, disturbed lest our presence prove more embarrassing than helpful, pointed out in the spring of 1922:

Our relations with the United States have always formed a delicate phase of our foreign policy. We have every reason in the world not to irritate the great democratic Republic, especially out of consideration. for our colonies. We often hear it said that we do not need a large fleet in the Netherlands Indies, because in case we are attacked we can count upon the assistance of a big brother.

This happy state of affairs was first troubled early in 1921, when our diplomatic representatives at The Hague presented a note to the Netherlands Government protesting against the ex

clusive favors it accorded to the Royal Dutch Oil Company, which was understood to be largely controlled by England. Holland's policy with regard to this company seemed to violate the principle of the open door, to which our Government attaches extreme importance in the Far East. The Algemeen Handelsblad declared that our intervention in the petroleum policy of the East Indies produced 'a disagreeable impression.' It asked:

Are we not masters in our own house, and is it America's business to concern herself with the companies with which our Government contracts for developing the petroleum wealth of our colonies? We sell our petroleum in the world market where every country can buy it. The fact that the United States has been the world's chief producer of petroleum for many years is no reason why she should assume rights over its production even within our territories.

But the Economische Statistische Berichten saw the situation in a more matter-of-fact light.

A real danger presents itself to us in case of a war between the United States and Japan. Our neutrality would require us to prohibit the exportation of petroleum in such a case. In view of the precedent that America set, however, when she requisitioned our ships during the last war, there is reason to fear that she would take matters in her own hands and go for petroleum wherever she thought she could get it. If we resisted we should be involved in the hostilities.

All of which leads La France Militaire to observe apropos of the alleged Standard Oil-Royal Dutch agree

ment:

There is reason to suppose that the situation has changed decidedly since the termination of the alliance between England and Japan. For now the Royal Dutch Company agrees in case of necessity to provide, with the probable assistance of England, petroleum from the East Indies.

for whoever will pay most for it that is to say, for the United States. That is still another reason why Viscount Kato may think it advisable to go slow.

SPAIN'S UNSTABLE DIRECTORY DESPITE the barrier of censorship in Spain, reports are multiplying to the effect that Primo de Rivera's Directory is likely to be overthrown. The new Government's undeniable success in purifying the political and economic system has not given it sufficient prestige to compensate for its failure to solve the Morocco problem and to reduce the cost of living. Though the condition of the national finances has been somewhat improved, there is no possibility of wiping out the deficit until the Morocco campaign is brought to a close. The cost of living continues to rise and is causing great discontent among the common people. Madrid at times has been entirely without potatoes, and the local papers are filled with protests against the inefficiency of certain municipal services. For instance, there is an acute shortage of

water.

Rumors are current of dissension between the King and Primo de Rivera. At the same time it is prophesied that the overthrow of the Directory - if it occurs, as seems probable, through a coup d'état - will mean the simultaneous overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic. This does not imply that the Directory has been a consistent opponent of Democracy. Indeed in their fight against caciquismo, or the municipal boss system, the present authorities seem to have made a sincere effort to liberalize the city governments. A law has been passed to reform the constitution of the municipalities, the outstanding feature of which is to give women a vote in municipal elections.

'A Spanish Observer,' writing in the Manchester Guardian, characterizes Primo de Rivera as ‘a man spoiled by fortune,' who 'lacks serenity and discretion.'

...

He has ever been the perfect type of Andalusian señorito. . . . Impulsive, willful, given to imposing his every whim, incapable of well-considered action and still more incapable of rectifying a false step, clinging to his mistakes from a misdirected sense of dignity, a passionate friend and a passionate enemy, the Dictator under whom we are suffering condenses all the objects of life in the one maxim, 'to do what he damned well pleases' — hacer en todo su soberana voluntad.

This writer summarizes the present political situation as follows:

The Dictator has been a fitful winter

sun.

His popularity, always limited to the bourgeois classes, has waned. Free from legal responsibility, the Parliament dissolved, the political parties dispersed, and the press muzzled, he has been

all-powerful and yet unable to achieve anything useful. Morocco, taxation, the question of responsibility in the Moroccan campaign, these were the three problems which his task was to solve. Morocco is worse than ever, with an army sick and tired of suffering. The Budget is a reproduction of earlier ones, constructed on the same vicious basis, according to which of three thousand million pesetas a thousand and three hundred are swallowed up in military expenses, pensions to the retired and widows, and the public debt.

brated responsibilities has, as was to be And the case for investigating the celefeared, accentuated the divisions among the officers.

MANCHU SOLDIER PUPILS

CHANG TSO-LIN, the Manchurian warlord, has decided that his soldiers must know how to read and write. Each of his officers and men must memorize the 'thousand' Chinese characters that make the minimum requirement of

literacy under the new standard of the Republic. The General Director of the National Popular Education Movement was summoned from Shanghai to take charge of this picturesque, if not entirely novel, campaign. Apparently he came well provided with the implements of his trade, for he brought with him 50,000 textbooks, 60 stereopticons, and 5000 colored slides.

The school course in the Manchu army is short but intense. It is the intention to have every man in it able to read and write by the end of November. The method is thus described by a correspondent of the Shanghai Times:

It was discovered that only twenty-five out of each battalion of one hundred and fifty could read and write. So the other one hundred and twenty-five in the battalion formed a convenient class unit for the mass method of education. Over each battalion-class an officer teacher was set, to take up the first half of the daily school period with instruction by means of a lantern and slides. During the other half of the period the class is in charge of assistants and 'guides.' These two groups are taken from the twenty-five literate men in each battalion. The assistant-teachers conduct a review of the previous day's work, and the guides pass around among the soldier pupils, answering any questions they have to put.

As soon as the 10,000 soldiers in the Mukden garrison and neighboring camps have been satisfactorily blessed with the light of learning the school will be extended to the army all through Manchuria, some 300,000 soldiers in all.

CIVILIZATION VERSUS BARBARISM

THE Japan Chronicle is a doughty defender of British interests in the Orient. It enjoys the prestige of age, authority, and a long tradition of able and influential editorship. All this adds weight to the protest we print below:

Four men of a British bombing squadron engaged in very risky work among the tribesmen of the North-West Frontier of India were killed when their planes crashed in a fog, and the crew of another

machine fell into the hands of the Waziris, The message published yesterday giving who may or may not take revenge on them. this news mentioned as quite incidental the fact that the planes were returning from a bombing raid when the unfortunate accident occurred. To most people the fact that British planes and airmen are engaged in dropping death-dealing explosives on the villages of helpless people whose fighting men are accounted hostile to the British is also news. The reports of such raids appear fairly frequently in the press in India. In the Anglo-Indian papers the emphasis is on the daring and devotion of the frontiersmen, which there is no gainsaying, but when the accidental death of four of these is news of world-wide interest, while the bombing of any number of villages, with casualties uncalculated, is a matter of no concern, it seems that there is a warp somewhere in the human mind.

When we remember how long it took to reconcile the British public mind to the idea of reprisals in air-raiding during the war, in spite of the large number who had experienced its horrors, and when we remember how unthinkable this kind of efficiency in dealing with hostile tribesmen would have been before the war, we begin to have some grasp of how far we have succumbed to the degrading effects of the war. We used to be indignant, and quite rightly, when the Germans, whose country was beleaguered, sought this murderous way of relieving the pressure. We now practise murder against people whose propensity for raiding is largely caused by economic pressure, and whom it is perfectly easy to keep at bay with an ordinary frontier post.

MINOR NOTES

A REMARKABLE collection of Nelson papers, extensive enough to fill fifteen folio volumes, has recently come to light. They contain material relating