torship by a minority and of all compulsion brought to bear upon democratic organs of government by trade organizations.'

WHAT OCCUPATION IS FOR CERMANY

A SPECIAL Correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, writing from Mainz in July, describes conditions in the Rhine territories occupied by the British and Americans as likely to shake a person's preconceptions of what a foreign military occupation means. In the first place, the British and Americans have confined themselves 'almost absolutely to simple military occupation.' In the second place, they have settled down among the population with 'nonchalance, even friendliness.' In addition the district is prosperous.

Crowded cafés and bierhalle, music everywhere, every one healthy looking and well dressed, the children robust, full of life, a delight to the eye, so clean (for the distinctive German characteristic, after all, is cleanliness) that, as Mark Twain remarked of them half a century ago, there is n't one that you could n't take into your lap these are unmistakable symptoms. . . Contented holiday-makers, all Germans save for a sprinkling of Americans, crowd the Rhine steamboats; along the roads beside the river, or in the woods, the 'wanderbirds' of a German summer are on the march -boys and girls together in troops, rucksack on the back, half-bare, scorched mahogany-brown in these dog-days, even singing as they tramp to the tinkle of the guitar.

While it would be too much to say that the British and Americans are popular, they are well received.

The British soldier and officer, and the Americans too, are exceedingly happy here. They do not want to leave. I have seen the American drafts leaving Coblenz. They do so with long faces and undisguised regret. Their life here is one of sheer idleness, unmitigated holiday in a holiday land. Yet, of course, it is sheer loafing for men and

officers alike, and therefore in itself a bad thing a waste of British and American labor-power, and of German too, for the Germans have to pay for it all.

This correspondent contrasts the manners of the English Tommy and the American soldier as follows:

Shyness and gentleness of voice and manner distinguish the English "Tommy' in Cologne, as they do the Englishman everywhere. He does not intrude unnecessarily, does n't push into the better-class cafés, though you do see him at concerts and the opera; and, on the whole, he keeps very much to himself. Yet he often gets into close and affectionate intimacy with the family upon whom he is billeted. Now, the American is neither shy, nor quiet-spoken, nor reticent in habit; always and everywhere he is a good mixer.' As compared with Cologne, Coblenz is but a small place, bright but rather 'uppish,' like Tunbridge Wells. The doughboys' pervade, overwhelm it. The average American's knack of 'mixing' with his fellow creatures is, no doubt, a superficial expression of the social instinct, and without any political or other significance; but it is one that goes a long way in a short time. Go into the older quarters of the town, or cross to Ehrenbreitstein, and you will see that instinct in full blast; the beer-houses full of rollicking youths from Kansas or Pennsylvania or the Pacific slope, 'mixing' with the peasants and workmen, chaffing the landlord's wife and daughter; every lane a 'lovers' lane' and every bench a 'lovers' seat'; almost every cheap photographer's display including a group portrait of an American soldier with his German bride, usually surrounded, as by a capturing squad, by a large German family looking excessively German in tall hats and frock-coats. One would like to have statistics of these marriages. Above all, the 'doughboy' has wealth at his command, his pocket-money far exceeding the total income of the most skilled workmen, and he spends it lavishly.

In the opinion of this observer, the French have not been so successful in conciliating the local population in the larger part of the Occupied Zone

three fourths is held by their troopsas have been the English and the Americans.

Between troops and people there is no intercourse, no contact of any redeeming kind. How could there be? One has only to pay a casual visit to Mainz or to Wiesbaden, to understand the popular feeling, even to sympathize with it. Whatever reasons, economic or other, dictated the use of African troops, they ought not to have been allowed to count against the certainty of the effect. It is true that they are not negro troops, but North Africans; not 'niggers' therefore, nor without a certain minimum of culture. Nor is it true, so far as I can discover, that they are billeted upon the people in their houses. Yet it makes little difference whether their color is ebon or café-au-lait, or whether their contact with the people is not carried to the extent of defiling their homes. Even were they harmless, and, despite inevitable exaggeration and a good deal of propaganda, there is abundant and incontestable evidence of the grossest animal-like misbehavior, · the mere sight of them in the streets and railway stations is an offense and humiliation, even to a visiting stranger. Since the beginning, too, the psychology of the French authorities has been wrong a psychology created, no doubt, by a bitter war propaganda, which leads to an excessive and always unsympathetic interference in purely administrative matters best left to the Germans themselves, and which finds, for example, significant expression in the use of the term 'Boche' even in official documents. The result is a bitterness of feeling that will not easily be effaced from the popular memory.

Another side of the story is given in a highly temperamental letter of protest by a German lady, apparently a resident of the American occupied area, in the Frankfurter Zeitung.

We are strangers in our own homes. We have families quartered upon us in our domestic privacy, who can conduct themselves as they please upon our premises. We have to supply them with clean household linen and all the other facilities of a

home... We haven't a single place which we can call our own; no security or privacy, no place to which to carry our family joys or our family sorrows. . . . I am not concerned with the manners and conduct of the foreigners who are thrust upon us. Some are cultivated, others coarse and uncultivated; some are cleanly, others slovenly and dirty; some are good, and others bad. It is numbered among our blessings in this period of trial if we chance to have quartered upon us considerate persons, who appreciate the embarrassment and inconvenience they necessarily cause, and try to make the situation as easy as possible. But those persons are rare. I did hear one lady of that kind remark, that American women would never endure what German women tolerate without protest. ... I could give you an endless list of the disagreeable incidents which are destroying the peace and happiness of our home-life and making nervous wrecks of German housewives the incessant quarrels between our own servants and those of our foreign guests, who are always wrangling over the use of the kitchen and other domestic conveniences. An American lady with her dollars can pay a servant much more liberally than can a German family.

That

creates constant jealousy. Our own servants are ever complaining that they have to clean up after the untidy but higher-paid servants of the families quartered upon us.

...

'My home is my world.' Yes, it used to be so. Formerly my greatest happiness was in the neatness and tidiness of my home. No dust. Everything in order. Every article in my house my own. Now that has all vanished.

MORE CONFERENCE COMMENT

THE New Statesman provides the inevitable exception to the practically unanimous optimism with which the British periodical press welcomes the Washington Conference. It apparently does not believe that this meeting can accomplish much in the way of reducing land armaments. France cannot materially lessen her forces so long as the inequitable provisions of the Treaty

of Versailles are in effect to foment new antagonisms. Great Britain needs all her present troops to fulfill the obligations imposed by her policy in Ireland, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India. This journal asks whether Washington is prepared to open all the questions which thus lie behind the disarmament of France and Great Britain alone.

Japan's large army and the small army of the United States are equally determined by factors which are hardly appropriate for discussion at such a conference. 'It appears, therefore, that any discussion of military disarmament at Washington will be only a waste of time, and for the sake of avoiding a fiasco had probably better not take place at all.'

Turning to the question of naval armaments, the situation is equally complex and unpromising. Japan's attitude

is that she has special and unique interests in the Far East, and particularly in relation to China, which must be recognized before she can consent to negotiate on the subject with other Powers. America, however, it seems, is not at present prepared to accept that condition. The prospects, therefore, of an agreement to limit naval armaments are only slightly less remote than those of an agreement on military armaments.

The purpose of these cautions is not to discourage the coming meeting, but to put the difficulties that stand in the way of its success clearly before the minds of those responsible for the programme of the Conference and its outcome.

Debating the forthcoming conference at Washington, Sir Joseph Cook, who is acting Prime Minister of Australia during the absence of Mr. Hughes, expressed the opinion in Parliament that Australia was more interested in the settlement of Pacific problems than in disarmament, and that, if the two questions were considered separately, Great

Britain might quite well represent the whole Empire on the latter question.

Mr. Hughes, Prime Minister, in addressing the American Luncheon Club at London, laid stress upon the need of settling the Pacific problem first and upon the importance of Australia and New Zealand being represented in the conference. The conference could succeed only if it recognized facts. He said:

There is no tribunal to whom we are prepared to submit the White Australia policy. There are some things upon which no nation can yield. There is no nation, I venture to say, which has not got its equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine or the White Australia policy.

He predicted that unless a satisfactory basis for disarmament was reached, Great Britain would be compelled to enter a new race for naval supremacy, with the Dominions behind her. He concluded as follows:

Australia wants to know how it will be with her. You may say you approve of the White Australia policy; but do not forget that, in order, to settle these Pacific problems, you must consider the Japanese view as well as your own. We cannot deny that you have interests there, and we cannot deny that they are, in proportion to our numbers, infinitely greater; but you cannot deny that Japan has special interests also in the Pacific. Well, is it not clear that unless we can effect a settlement satisfactory to Japan, America, and Britain, there can be no hope of a successful conference with regard to disarmament? The problems that arise in the Pacific must be solved if the Conference at Washington is not to bring forth the same Dead Sea fruit that the League of Nations

did.

Much interesting comment continues to appear in the Japanese press relative to the coming conference at Washington, and unless all signs fail, this will be the leading topic discussed by transpacific journals between now and December. Kokumin, after observing that

the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is now 'a corpse,' welcomes in principle the proposal for disarmament, but questions America's sincerity. It says that the United States was the most influential of the five powers in promoting the inclusion of the League of Nations Covenant in the Peace Treaty. Yet America opposes the League of Nations and has refused to ratify the Treaty. Consequently, even allowing for the fact that President Wilson was an idealist and President Harding is a practical-minded man, there is, in the opinion of this journal, the danger that considerations of domestic politics will cause America again to reverse her diplomatic course.

We are not opposed to an armament agreement between Japan, Great Britain, and America. We are opposed to Japan and the Powers being befooled by America. Before the proposed five-power conference is opened, the Powers have the right to ask the degree of America's sincerity and deter

mination.

Yamato returns to the important place that China will hold in the negotiations:

Pacific problems cover Japanese-American relations, and also include questions relating to Japanese-Australian relations. But the centre of the matter is China. Since the subjects for the proposed conference are little different from those covered by the question of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, we may take it that the suspension of the negotiations regarding the Alliance has given rise to the proposed Pacific conference.

ITALY'S NEW PREMIER

IVANOE BONOMI, the new Italian Premier, was born at Mantua in 1875. After a brilliant university career, in which he devoted himself especially to economics and finance, he became a teacher and journalist. In his younger days he was an ardent Socialist, and he soon became a follower of Labriola and

the reformist group of that party. His intimacy with Bissolati led to his becoming the editor-in-chief of Avanti, during the period that this Socialist organ was under the latter's management. Leaving the Socialist Party with his chief, when its members showed a disposition to adopt revolutionary policies, he was one of the founders of the Reformist Party, and a strong advocate of Italy's joining the Allies against the Central Powers. He became Minister of Public Works in 1916, and was again appointed to the same office three years later, in the second Orlando Cabinet. Between these two periods in the ministry, he fought at the front as an officer of the Alpine troops. He has been a contributor, not only to Aranti, but to Critica Sociale, and other radical journals. His service both in Parliament and in the Department of Public Works has been distinguished. Becoming Minister of War in the midst of demobilization, he is credited with having brought order out of the confusion which then prevailed. He was offered the premiership in 1920, when the second Nitti Cabinet failed, but refused it.

A MOSQUE AT PARIS

PARIS is to have a Mosque. It will be in the old quarter of the city near the Botanical Garden, and is due to the initiative of an endowed Mohammedan Society. However, the municipality has given the site and the French Parliament has voted an appropriation to assist the work. Marshal Lyautey, military commander in Morocco, is also actively interested in the enterprise. A single Mohammedan dignitary has given 125,000 francs to the building fund. Commenting upon this enterprise, Le Figaro says:

It is natural that there should be a mosque at Paris. One hundred thousand Mus

sulmans fell in the cause of France during the war. Twenty million followers of the Prophet live under our law or our protection. Every day the number of our African subjects who visit Paris for pleasure, study, or business is growing greater. More yet will come when they are assured that they will find here things they consider indispensable; basins for their ablutions; muezzins to call them to prayer and indicate the direction of Mecca, pulpits where their readers interpret the Koran; and that atmosphere of silence, of retirement, of religious gloom for which they feel the greater need in our vast, strange city, with its activity and life.

END OF THE BRITISH INDUSTRIAL

CONFERENCE

THE London Observer reports the passing of the Provisional Joint Industrial Committee, which resulted from the National Industrial Conference that met in London on February 27, 1919. In so doing, it records the failure of another widely heralded, and, it was hoped, promising attempt to better the relations between British capital and labor. The Joint Committee consisted of an equal number of employers and workers under a government chairman, and was commissioned to consider questions relating to hours, wages, and general conditions of employment; unemployment and its prevention; and coöperation between capital and labor. This Committee presented unanimous findings to a second National Conference held on April 4, 1919; but when these findings were incorporated in proposed legislation, differences of opinion arose between the government and various representatives of the Conference. The Committee recommended a statutory eight-hour day, a statutory minimum wage, measures for preventing unemployment, and the establishment of a permanent national industrial council. All these measures proved politically in

expedient in the eyes of the cabinet, or were embodied in acts so unsatisfactory to the representatives of labor and industry as to prove impossible of enact

ment.

MINOR NOTES

A CORRESPONDENT sends us the following footnote to Sir Geoffrey Butler's article upon 'Anglo-Saxon Relations,' which appeared in our issue of July 30, with the comment that it is a great pity that the names of famous architects should so often be unknown':

The architect referred to by Sir Geoffrey Butler was Bruce Price. The first building in which he 'chose to make his analogy a classic column' was that of the American Surety Company on the southern corner of Broadway and Pine Street, New York City. He was a genius and his name should not be forgotten.

On the fourth of July, a HungarianAmerican Society was organized in Budapest. The initial meeting was held in the hall of the Lower House of Parliament. Several members of the Cabinet, and other distinguished men, were present. Count Albert Apponyi was elected president. In the evening, this society and the Hungarian Foreign Society conducted exercises in front of the Washington monument in the City Forest. Several members of the government were present. The concluding address, by Count Apponyi, was delivered in English. He emphasized the community of ideals between the Hungarian and the American people. He said: 'Hungarian liberty may, perhaps, be but a little chapel compared with the mighty cathedral which the heroes of American freedom have erected; but it has taken more toil and labor to build this little chapel, than it has to defend successfully the liberties of England or America.'