be left to the Siberians. . . . If the Communists are dominant, uprisings will occur among the people, and eventually the situation will become stabilized. The withdrawal of Japanese troops may accelerate this stabilization of political conditions, but it will not interfere with it.'

Nichi Nichi, after discussing other outlets for Japanese emigrants and finding them all undesirable or impossible, concludes that the only suitable place for Japanese to go at present is South America, and especially Brazil. The government of the latter country pays a bonus of fifteen pounds sterling per head for immigrants. 'Not only are Japanese welcome, but those already in Brazil have made a good showing. The Japanese settlers in California, who have been going there since 1882, now number about 69,000, and own 12,000 cho of land; while the Japanese immigrants in Brazil, who began going there in 1908, and number but 33,000, already own 76,000 cho of land.

RUMORS FROM RUSSIA

Ekonomitcheskaya Zhizn reports that Russia's requirements for cotton goods are about a billion English yards per annum. Less than 40,000,000 yards are in stock. Several textile factories have recently been shut down, and the present output of cotton fabrics does not exceed 200,000,000 yards a year, and probably falls considerably below that figure.

During 1920 Turkestan supplied Central Russia with about 100,000,000 pounds of cotton and something over one tenth that quantity of wool. Its total exports of raw materials to Russia were valued at 50,000,000 rubles in gold. The returns were a small quantity some 650 car-loads of manufactured goods and timber, besides gold,

precious stones, and tobacco. The cotton area of Turkestan has declined two thirds since 1917, while the flocks of the Kirghiz nomadic tribes, who graze sheep throughout these provinces, have decreased in a most alarming way. When the war broke out, they numbered 15,000,000. Their present total, it is estimated, does not exceed 2,500,000.

Great Britain has just published an important White Paper embodying the final report of the 'committee appointed to collect information on Russia.' This is said to be the most 'exhaustive, cautious, dispassionate, and conspicuously impartial document which has yet appeared on this subject. It is based largely on Bolshevist sources, corrected by the evidences of foreign observers in Russia. To judge by the reviews, one of the principal services of the document is the historical review it gives of the progressive changes - mostly for the worse in economic conditions from the beginning of 1917 until the present time. Most accounts which we have received from Russia are attempts to depict a cross-section of economic conditions at a particular date.

According to Ekonomitcheskaya Zhizn, the Soviet government is now reconsidering its recent decree abolishing money as a measure of value and a means of payment. Money is necessary in case of concessions granted by the state. This journal recommends reestablishing savings banks and cooperative credit institutions, and the ultimate introduction of metallic currency. It even suggests paying interest to depositors a long step indeed toward rebuilding Russia's economic structure along very much the same lines as the system which the Bolsheviki themselves destroyed.

According to the London Nation, whose comments are confirmed by

reports from other sources, the new Moscow Ambassador in Persia, Theodore Rothstein, is rapidly ousting the British from the privileged position they obtained in that country immediately after the war. The so-called Lynch concessions have been annulled, and the remaining British officers in the employ of the Persian government have been dismissed. The Nation says: 'Russia is reaping in Persia the fruits of her own astute act of self-abnegation. She gave up everything, concessions, roads, telegraphs, banks, without asking a penny of compensation, and after this, it is hard for us to stick to our gains. The result is an unchallenged Russian ascendancy, which rests on a nation's good-will.' Russia has adopted the same policy, of annulling all ancient privileges and concessions granted to that country and its citizens in China, though with what immediate practical success remains as yet somewhat obscure.

In this connection, a communication by an Australian correspondent to the London Spectator is not without pertinence. Break your Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and what does it mean? I will tell you: an alliance in the near future German-Russo-Japanese. Let us not deceive ourselves that either Germany or Russia is dead. Look at your map and see what that means. We are doing our best at the present moment to force Germany toward Russia; and if we break our alliance with Japan, we shall force Japan, entirely against her will, into an alliance with Russia.' Our readers will recall the cogent arguments in favor of such a coalition as is here predicted, in the Durnovo Memorandum, which we published in our issues of June 11 and 18. Naturally such an arrangement must await some revision of Soviet policy; but that policy is proving very flexible, and military compacts are not

impossible where trade compacts already exist.

MINOR NOTES

THE Wool position continues to disturb Australia. An immense reserve, exceeding an entire annual clip, was accumulated during the war. The growers of this wool have been paid for it indeed, well paid- from public funds. At least this is true of Australasian growers. But this wool now hangs over the market, holding down prices for the new clip. The growers argue that the old wool should be withdrawn from the market, and some, adopting the reasoning of cotton-burners in the South, would have it sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Wool-consumers, however, urge that the general public should get a return for the money, which it advanced in the form of taxes, to buy the wool accumulated during the war, in the form of lower prices now for clothing and other woolen goods.

LAST year a Dutch expedition was sent to Spitzbergen, to survey the coal resources of that Arctic island. These fields belong to a Norwegian company, but most of the shares are held in Holland. Investigation showed workable deposits, with veins averaging more than six feet thick, containing 1,600,000,000 tons. It is estimated that when the mines are fully equipped, the output will reach four tons per day per man employed, and the cost of working will range from one dollar to one dollar and twenty cents a ton. Ocean freights will somewhat more than double this cost by the time the coal is laid down at North European ports. The company hopes to bring the production up to half a million tons the coming season. Operations will continue throughout the year.

The industrial crisis in Czechoslovakia is attributed largely to the high prices of coal and coke. In the Czechoslovak iron industry the bare cost of production is thirty per cent more than the selling price at German furnaces. As a result of the general higher price-level of domestic manufactures, the people of the country are curtailing their purchases to the utmost, and are buying largely in Vienna.

ACCORDING to the statistics recently published by the Italian government, more than 211,000 persons emigrated from Italy during 1920, of whom more than 169,000 came to the United States. The next largest contingent, 28,000, went to the Argentine Republic. Brazil received 8593, and Canada 3325. Had there been transportation, the emigration to America would have been much heavier, the number of departures being considerably less than two thirds the number of passports issued.

now

THE index number of German prices on May 7 was 1428, as compared with 100 in June 1914- an increase of more than fourteenfold. Prices are thirty per cent higher than they were in January, 1920, although they are twenty-six per cent lower than their maximum on May 1, 1920. Since the first of December, the decline in prices, though slow, has been uninterrupted. However, the fall between March 5 and May 7 was only one per cent.

A BLOODY Conflict recently occurred between the South African police and a fanatical sect known as the 'Kaffir Israelites,' in which 171 of the latter were killed and 126 wounded. The large proportion of killed to wounded, as the London Nation justly observes, 'excites the gravest suspicion.' This

native sect, which, in spite of its name, is referred to as Christian, is said to expect some magical intervention of heaven to destroy the whites, and to base this belief upon its own peculiar interpretation of the Old Testament.

THE London Outlook discusses at some length the rumors regarding the retirement of Lord Northcliffe from the control of the London Times. That paper has been 'an expensive toy,' and certain powerful industrial interests, disgruntled with Northcliffe's opposition to Lloyd George and to the Lloyd George policy in Ireland, are rumored to be willing to pay a tempting sum for its control. If that occurs, this will be a great personal success for the Prime Minister. The Times will 'not improbably swing toward the right, approximating its standards of belief and conduct to those of the Prime Minister and the Morning Post.'

AFTER the revolution, Germany abolished, among other privileges of the nobility, the right of certain families to be exempted from the provisions of the civil law and to be governed only by their so-called 'family law' Hausgesetzgebung. By this enactment, more than seventy-nine such special statutes were repealed.

This explains how Prince Eitel Friedrich, the second son of the former Kaiser, has been forced to plead before an ordinary tribunal in Moabit to the charge of illegally smuggling property out of the country. The amount was some 340,000 marks in industrial securities. They were secretly transmitted to Holland through a Berlin agent. According to the Socialists, the courts dealt very gently with this ex-royal offender.

THE power of a nation is measured by three M's: men, money, and materials. Now, of the four hundred million people who inhabited Europe in 1914, nearly forty million have been immobilized by death, wounds, or incurable war-disease. They were all in the flower of their youth and vigor. If we subtract the population below twenty and above fifty years of age, we discover that the Old World has lost nearly one third of its man-power, and that the survivors are burdened with the support of fifteen million war cripples, widows, and orphans.

A person might fancy that this loss of man-power would be seriously felt. Quite the contrary. Europe is suffering from an epidemic of strikes and unemployment. Discontent is universal; impaired morale lessens the output of labor.

Asia, on the other hand, goes on increasing its population. Its workers are becoming more numerous; they are obedient and cheap. Our cost of living has not changed materially.

Europe has also suffered a serious impairment of its material wealth. Northern France, Serbia, and Poland have been devastated. Losses due to underfeeding cannot be measured. Coal and iron are mined in diminished quantities. The decline and wastage of material wealth is commonly estimated at forty per cent of the pre-war total.

From the financial standpoint Europe's losses are crushing. Its total public indebtedness, excluding Russia, is tenfold what it was in 1914, and its issues of paper money are fourteen times the pre-war figures. In the madness of combat governments have spent without reckoning the cost. The paper money in circulation cannot be withdrawn except very slowly; for there is not enough gold to take its place. Meanwhile prices will remain unstable. China and India still retain their former metallic currency. . . .

The whole world is mobilizing its resources to repair the effects of this disaster. Even the nations of Asia, indignant for years at the aggression of western powers, and rendered conscious of their own possibilities by the example of Japan, are redoubling their efforts to equip themselves with the resources of modern civilization. They are reforming their system of education, of finance, of agriculture, of manufacturing, of commerce, and of government.

Methods of education vary according to national temperament. Frenchmen are naturally individualists; Germans love discipline. When either nation attains ascendancy, she seeks to impose her ideas upon her neighbor. When she is defeated, she tries to acquire the qualities of her conqueror. In my opinion, the French system is much the better; for it teaches independence of opin

ion at home, and discipline and unity abroad. In the United States, stress is laid upon practical instruction, in order that each citizen may attain material success; and this in turn benefits the nation as a whole.

We have learned many lessons from the war. Physical training is receiving more attention; technical and commercial schools have been multiplied. Germany, realizing that her defeat was partly due to the weakness of her diplomacy, is improving this branch of instruction. Chemistry has gained new importance, and her military secrets are more carefully guarded. Confucius says: 'Riches are riches. What have they to do with education?' But to-day one cannot acquire wealth without education, or perfect education without wealth.

In China we have constantly endeavored to perfect the dominant virtues of our race. A gardener hastens to plant chrysanthemums under his pear trees. Now, each nation has its special virtue. The Romans were great masters of organization; the Germans were mighty warriors. The Chinese are by instinct devoted to peace. However, European militarism, which is constantly invading Asia, is forcing us into a new path. After 1900, we sent our students to Europe and Japan. To-day the Flowery Kingdom possesses three universities on the European model; one hundred and thirty important technical schools; six important and one hundred and eighty smaller normal schools; four hundred and sixty secondary schools; more than one hundred and twenty thousand primary schools, and more than eight hundred girls' schools.

Western nations have resorted to different financial policies, with the uniform result of raising taxes to the point where they stifle production, paralyze commerce, multiply unemployment, and decrease revenue. Russia has re

pudiated her debt and has reverted to a system of barter. Apparently the Allies, still stunned by the great catastrophe, are unable to adopt a single command in finance, as they did in the army just in time to escape defeat.

Turning to manufactures, it is not enough to produce in greater quantities. Three conditions are needed to restore prosperity. If any one of them is lacking, the two others are useless. We must have raw materials, the conversion of these materials into goods, and a market for the finished products; and the three must be in harmony with each other. Europe's raw materials are produced on farms which have suffered seriously by the war, or are derived from mines which are crippled by repeated strikes. That continent therefore has become more dependent for these upon America and Asia, and here the problem of exchange presents itself. China possesses untold wealth of every raw material, as yet practically untouched. She produces to-day only two per cent of the world's coal, less than one tenth of one per cent of its iron, tin, tungsten, and other industrial metals; less than one thousandth of one per cent of its petroleum. Japan possesses practically no iron, but little cotton, and a very inadequate supply of coal. South of us, the mineral resources of IndoChina, Siam, Burma, and India except the oil-wells of Borneo and Java are equally undeveloped.

Naturally the conversion of raw materials into finished goods requires machinery and labor. Europe's laborsupply has been seriously lessened by the war, while that of Asia remains intact. On the other hand, war demands caused a rapid increase of machinery in both Europe and the United States, so that Western factories are in a position to produce more than the world can consume. Therefore, those countries cannot keep their machinery working.