British propaganda; (b) to obtain a recognition by the Russian Government of pre-war private debts; (c) to get as much money as possible for the British nationals, to whom such debts are due; (d) to increase trade between Britain and Russia for the sake of the British unemployed.'

To be sure, the Commission discovered some unpleasant things in Russia. The administration of justice 'has hitherto been farcical,' and 'the whole system of justice continues to be based purely on politics.' Furthermore, the G. P. U., or secret police, better known in old days as the Cheka, continues to employ 'abominable methods of terrorism,' including 'wholesale ar rests, imprisonments, deportations, and even shootings, for purely political offenses.' This is the more inexcusable because Moscow is 'a model city as far as order is concerned.'

The Commission describes the economic system envisaged by the Soviet Government as 'a peasantry based on individualism, exchanging products with an industrial population or proletariat based on Socialism.' And notwithstanding their own political Conservatism, they believe that 'with certain further modifications, this system may not be unsuited to a country of such vast dimensions, such potential productive capacity, and with a population so backward, as Russia, where a high degree of centralization is absolutely necessary.'

Apparently the members viewed with lively approval the Workers and Peasants Government's way of dealing with strikes. For example, when the mechanics in a big railway shop employing some thousands of workers decided upon a strike not long since, 'it did not materialize, owing to the fact that four hundred of the men involved were removed from their homes a couple of nights later by

the police and have not since reappeared.'

These die-hard tactics were so reassuring to the British investigators that they expressed the opinion that Russia now affords a desirable opening for the judicious investment of British capital. 'Long-term credits granted in a careful manner by the trade concerned for the purchase of agricultural machinery, textiles, hosiery, and so on, would have an immediate and enormous effect on British trade and on the employment in Great Britain, and a great responsibility rests on all of us who have any say in the matter to see to it that further due consideration is given to this complex question at an early date.'

GENERAL GAJDA

Is Czechoslovakia to have a Pilsudski? This is a question that Prague politicians are anxiously asking themselves since the Warsaw coup d'état. For some time an anti-Parliament, anti-Masaryk, anti-Socialist, and antiagrarian reform Fascist movement has been afoot in the land of John Huss. It is said to receive financial support from Big Business and moral suppor from the Slovak Clericals, and to have picked out for its leader General Gajda, Chief of the General Staff.

That officer is still in the early thirties, but he has a picturesque career behind him. Of humble origin, he emigrated in his youth to Russia, where he was working in a drug store at Kief when the war broke out. Later he took an active part in organizing the Czech Legion, and was one of the commanders of that body during its famous anabasis through Siberia after the Communist revolution. At this time he distinguished himself as a violent enemy of the Bolsheviki and

supported General Kolchak at Omsk. Later he returned home with his fellow Legionaries, joined the regular army, and was rapidly promoted. He is described as a taciturn, retiring man, whose real opinions and projects are not generally known. He is much talked about but seldom seen, and is a disciplined soldier who has hitherto confined himself strictly to his military duties.

It is rather difficult, therefore, for an outsider to discover why he should be picked out as the probable leader of a military coup. But there is no doubt of the enthusiasm he has aroused among his volunteer, hot-headed admirers, who have been immensely heartened by the success of Pilsudski's adventure in the neighboring capital. A decided sensation was created last month when Mr. Bechyne, former Minister of Railways and the actual leader of the Social Democrats, published in Pravo Lido, the principal organ of that Party, a plain-spoken article asking General Gajda to lay his cards on the table, and declaring that any attempt to set up a Fascist dictatorship would be promptly crushed. This challenge was the more impressive because Bechyne had visited President Masaryk the day before, in company with Klosatsch, the leader of the Democratic wing of the Nationalist Socialist Party, who represents the Legionaries who are opposed to unconstitutional political action. It was naturally assumed, therefore, that the article was inspired by Masaryk himself; and it contained this pertinent statement: 'Misled by the phantom of Italy's example, the Black Shirts are attacking the Hradschin (the presidential palace); for the moment, to be sure, only by agitatory speeches, but these are the more reprehensible for being tolerated by the Government police. Masaryk disapproves Czech

Fascism. He will liberate the nation from its liberators.'

Nevertheless, most serious-minded people in Czechoslovakia scout the idea of a Fascist outbreak. If attempted it would probably be confined to Prague. No one wants trouble in that city just before the great Sokol gathering scheduled for the end of this month, since political unrest would frighten away tourists. Notwithstanding the prevailing hard times, both the national and the city Government have spent money lavishly upon preparations for this event more than one and a quarter million dollars for a great athletic field, and half that sum for temporary buildings and municipal improvements to accommodate the visitors. The Sokol stadium will seat one hundred and thirty thousand spectators, and will be large enough to allow more than fourteen thousand athletes to drill inside.

HUNGARIAN COUNTERFEITERS JAILED

AFTER one of the most picturesque criminal trials that Europe has witnessed for a generation, Prince Windisch-Grätz and ex-Chief-of-Police Nadossy have been sentenced at Budapest to four years' imprisonment for counterfeiting French bank notes, and several of their accomplices will be compelled to serve shorter terms. So much for the strictly criminal aspect of a case whose political aspects threaten to disturb public life in Hungary much longer than the term of these sentences. For the trial did not prove indubitably whether Count Bethlen, the Premier, and the rest of the Government were privy to the forgers or not; and their taint will cling to innocent and guilty alike for many years to come. Even ecclesiastical witnesses contradicted each other on the stand. Bishop Mives

swore that Bishop Zadravecz, one of the accused, had told him that there was no risk - 'Our friend Stefan (Bethlen) knows everything.' Bishop Zadravecz denied on oath that he had made such a statement, and when the two high ecclesiastics were confronted with each other in court each hotly accused the other of perjury.

The Conservative and Centrist press of Germany and Austria greeted the sentences as substantially just, and indeed made considerable ado over their Draconic severity; but the Socialist papers of those countries, and the French press in general, denounced the inadequacy of the punishments inflicted, and stigmatized the trial as a whitewashing procedure. Vorwärts predicted that the high-born prisoners would be amnestied within a year. Jules Sauerwein, who has featured the scandal from the first in Le Matin, cited a long bill of specifications to show that the trial was a farce, and that the acquittal of several of those alleged to be incriminated was absurd.

CHINA'S 'CONSTITUTIONAL' CRISIS THE military situation has clarified considerably in China. The Christian General has temporarily vanished from the scene, though he is now reported to be on his way back from Moscow, and his lieutenants have retired with their legions to the northwestern provinces. Such fighting as continues is in the west and south and of a local character. Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tsolin nominally control the 'Republic' from Harbin and the Yalu River to the neighborhood of Canton.

But if inter arma silent leges, it is hardly possible to assert that the reverse is true in China, and that the voice of the law is heard there as soon as the clash of arms is stilled. In the first place,

the utmost uncertainty prevails as to what is the law; and here the two victorious generals are not precisely of a mind. Their difference of opinion goes back to the summer of 1924, and indeed was the nominal reason why they fought each other that year. China adopted a constitution at Nanking in 1912, under the eye of Sun Yatsen. In 1923-1924 this constitution was amended so radically as to make it virtually a new instrument, under auspices that Chang Tso-lin refused to countenance as legal. The Mukden leader therefore insists that the old constitution is still valid and that the last Parliament and the last President elected under the new constitution possessed no legitimate authority. Wu Pei-fu and his Party, on the other hand; are defenders of the second constitution, and somewhat reluctant champions of the President and Parliament elected under it—although the latter were subservient to General Feng and his Kuominchun army when the latter were in possession of Peking.

At present writing this difference of opinion has not been smoothed over. A Cabinet under Dr. W. W. Yen, a graduate of the University of Virginia, and containing Dr. Alfred Sze and Wellington Koo, both of whom have been Ministers to the United States, in fact, the former still holds that office, - has been appointed, nominally as a stop-gap, but it is said without the approval of Chang Tso-lin.

An absurd situation has resulted from the fact that this political confusion has come to a head just at the time when two important international bodies, the Tariff Conference and the Extraterritoriality Conference, were dealing with matters affecting China's relations with foreign Powers. That country's official representatives at both Conferences are now scattered far and wide. Indeed, several of the

most vigorous champions of the abolition of extraterritoriality were among the first to profit by the existence of that institution, during the recent political uncertainties and disorders; for they promptly took refuge in the foreign concessions at Peking, Tientsin, and Shanghai in order to escape their political enemies.

At Canton, General Chang Kai-shek is reported to have overthrown the Canton Communists, to have expelled their Bolshevist military advisers, and to have set up as a conventional tuchun of the Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tso-lin type. Almost simultaneously Marshal Sun Chuan-fang, who is governing the five great provinces tributary to Shanghai, and who is said to be an able and strong-handed administrator, has shown a disposition to assert his virtual independence of the Wu Pei-fuChang Tso-lin combination. Meanwhile the Kuominchun army, which is now in command of a new Christian General, Chang Chi-kiang, who has succeeded Feng Yu-hsiang but is as strict in his religious practices as his predecessor, has by no means been eliminated from the scene. Late in

May it counterattacked the Manchurian army south of Nankow Pass and sent it reeling back to a point within twelve miles of Peking. Colonel Malone, a British army officer who has recently visited both armies, reports: "There is no doubt that the Kuominchun is the better clothed and better disciplined.' All of which promises to make the momentary clarification of the military situation merely temporary.

IN 1913 Germany imported from France one third of the iron ore she used. She now derives less than two per cent from that source. On the other hand, her imports from Sweden have risen from thirty-two per cent in 1913 to more than eighty per cent. German ironmasters originally preferred Lorraine ore on account of the lower freight charges upon it, but have come to realize that Swedish ore is preferable on account of its greater iron content and the smaller amount of coke required to smelt it.

DOLCAR

BEFORE the war the people of Poland were of two opinions as to how to recover their national independence and unity. One party believed in revolutionary, the other in opportunist, tactics.

The revolutionaries, whose chief was Joseph Pilsudski, staked Poland's cause upon a social revolution which would overthrow the Russian Empire. The opportunists were divided into two groups: in Russian Poland the National Democrats wanted an entente with Russia against Germany; in Austrian Poland the Krakow Conservatives agitated at Vienna against Russia. The World War brought Pilsudski and the Austrian Poles closer together, and the Russian Revolution narrowed the divergencies between all three factions.

Nevertheless the old dissensions, and the personal ambitions associated with them, remained. Pilsudski, when he became Chief of the Polish State, regarded himself as its veritable savior. That offended bitterly the Moderates, whose activities in France and England during the war had been of inestimable service to Poland. Pilsudski's humble origin and Socialist sympathies still further complicated the situation. As a result, the first years of Poland's restored independence were troubled by quarrels between Pilsudski and the Right. The latter denied the Marshal the possession of any good qualities whatsoever, either political or military, and in this they did him an injustice, for it was he who drove back the Red

1 From Journal des Débats (Paris Conservative daily), May 23, 24, 25

Armies from Warsaw. The old Austrian or Krakow Conservatives, who have given Poland Alexander Skrzynski and General Sikorski, remained neutral. They sympathized at heart with the Marshal, but considered it politic not to offend his adversaries.

The general elections of November 1922 returned a majority for the Parties of the Centre and the Right. Marshal Pilsudski quit Belvedere Palace and became Chief of the Army General Staff. In May 1922 the Right acquired a definite majority through the adhesion of the Peasant Party, whose chief was the shrewd farmermayor of a little Galician village, Vincent Witos. The latter became Premier and at once opened an offensive against Pilsudski. He made General Szeptycki, an eminent ex-officer of the Austrian army whom the Marshal detests, Minister of War. Pilsudski promptly slammed the door and resigned from the army, declaring: 'I serve under those scoundrels? Never!'

The ex-protector of Poland thereupon installed himself at Sulejowek, in the neighborhood of Warsaw, where he lived the life of an, ordinary country squire. On every St. Joseph's Day the nineteenth of March March-delegations from practically every regiment in the army, and also from the Sharpshooters Association, appeared at his residence to pay him their respects; for he retained his immense popularity among the soldiers.

In December 1923 dissensions in the Peasant Party caused the overthrow of