PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUE

THE recent passages at arms between the British Premier and Lord Northcliffe have afforded an occasion for discussing again the whole question of government coloring and control of news-services. In this connection the London Outlook says:

The whole art of effective news propaganda lies in omission. Examples furnished of the treatment by the Foreign Office in its wireless news of our domestic controversies proves that the service seeks to combat abroad mischief' and 'false impressions' caused, as its editors would say, by unfair attacks at home on governments, premiers, foreign secretaries, or foreign policies. Any impression which the Foreign Office desires to create abroad can be fostered by mere careful selection, in the wireless service, of genuine editorial or Parliamentary opinion; there need be no distortion, no falsification as in war days, but only omission. This service should be stopped at once, and the circulation of news abroad as at home left in the hands of professional journalists, who are servants of no politicians with personal or group interests to further.

'HANDS OFF OUR CONFERENCE' UNDER this title John L. Balderston refers to a rumor current abroad, that, after the United States had intimated that a preliminary conference prior to the formal conference to be held at Washington in November would be unwelcome, Lloyd George suggested that he take his vacation in the United States, sailing immediately after the

recent meeting of the Supreme Council at Paris. This informal visit might have served the purpose of a preliminary conference, which the British proposers had in mind. It was intimated, according to this report, that the Irish settlement might reach a stage which would prevent the Premier from visiting Washington in November. The suggestion is said to have been equally unwelcome in the United States, for the reason that it would place our country in the position of an unusually close partner of Great Britain at the time of the final conference, under suspicion of having prearranged with that government our attitude toward questions affecting China and Japan. Those two countries, and France as well, might justly resent such a situation.

GERMANY'S POLITICAL MURDERS

A PAMPHLET has recently been printed in Berlin entitled, Zwei Jahre Mord, or 'Two Years of Murder,' which analyzes the political murders in Germany during the first two years following the revolution. Of the total, 314 were committed by reactionaries and 15 were committed by Bolsheviki and other radicals. Of the 314 reactionary murders, in 73 cases the victims were shot arbitrarily; in 30 they were alleged to have been shot in flight; in eleven they were executed ostensibly under martial law; and in six they were lynched in jail. Of the fifteen Communist murders, ten were cases where persons were shot by way of reprisal, and four where they were shot without known cause. There was one Communist execution under the form of martial law.

THE WORLD'S SURPLUS SHIPPING

THE recent appearance of the new edition of Lloyd's Register has been the

occasion of much British comment upon the great increase of shipping which has resulted from the war. Archibald Hurd says, in the Daily Telegraph, that in spite of the loss of 15,000,000 tons during hostilities, there are now on the ocean more than 33,000 ships, with a tonnage of nearly 62,000,000. Although there are probably not half as many cargoes to be carried as there were immediately before the war, there are 13,000,000 more tons of shipping afloat than at that time. Great Britain and the United States own approximately sixty per cent of the world's tonnage. However, America owns forty per cent of the sailing vessels, which are likely to go almost entirely out of use in the near future. Twenty years ago, well toward a quarter of the merchant shipping of the world depended on canvas. This total has now fallen to five per cent.

Since the outbreak of the war, the tonnage propelled by internal-combustion engines has risen from 234,000 to 1,263,000. The percentage of the total merchant tonnage of the world using oil-fuel for generating steam has increased from 2.62 in 1914, to 20.65 in 1921, or tenfold in ratio and much more than tenfold in absolute measurement, on account of the increase of total tonnage during that period.

RECENT RUSSIAN DEVELOPMENTS

ONE must generalize about Russia with great caution. This much at least seems certain: the Communists are making no theoretical or political concessions to their opponents; and what appear to be so are to be interpreted as strategic detours in the revolutionary campaign. Their attitude toward what they consider social heresy resembles remarkably the attitude of governments-irrespective of creed-toward doctrinal heresy at the time of the

religious wars in the sixteenth century. For example, the Soviet authorities, discovering that scholars and scientists educated under a bourgeois régime do not accept whole-heartedly Communist doctrines, and refuse to subordinate their intellectual independence to imposed political creeds, are forming a 'Red professoriate.' Hereafter, those who aspire to enter such intellectual pursuits as teaching must first pass a satisfactory examination in the writings of Karl Marx, Karl Liebknecht, Lenin, and Bucharin.

A special commission has been organized to control the distribution of all foreign literature and foreign scientific works and periodicals which enter Soviet Russia. This new bureau for the defense of Communist orthodoxy is known as Comforlit, or Commission of Foreign Literature. The fifth section of the decree organizing it provides that all shipments of literature — including naturally the books and periodicals contributed by charitable scientists and scholars abroad - received in Russia, and all periodicals sent to Russian subscribers, must first pass through the hands of this bureau. Any person or institution buying or receiving literature from abroad, except via the Comforlit, 'will be held legally responsible.'

Trotsky, whose strong-arm proposals for suppressing discontent in Russia were rejected last spring in favor of Lenin's policy of conciliation and economic concessions, went into retreat for several months, and it was rumored that he was suffering from cancer. However, he reappeared at the Third Communist Congress, apparently reconciled to Lenin's programme, and explained his recent retirement by saying that he had devoted three months to an intensive study of the economic conditions of the world, with a view of forecasting scientifically the progress

Trotsky predicted with great confidence a war between the United States and Great Britain. That, apparently, is the keystone of the bridge over which the world is to pass to Communism. Though he evidently welcomed every blunder, disappointment, and failure of those responsible for restoring political quiet and material prosperity to the western nations, he cautioned Communists against assuming that revolution is the inevitable sequel of an economic crisis. "There is absolutely no close or necessary connection between revolutions and periods of economic decline.' He estimated the number of men under arms in Europe to-day, not counting Russia, as larger than the number before the war. 'European armies have increased approximately by thirty per cent as compared with pre-war times.' He attributed this to splitting Europe into small independent states, which is directly contrary to the international programme of the Socialists. It is in this condition that he sees the prospect of the coming war, which will hasten the downfall of the capitalist system, in the same way that the recent war made irreparable breaches in the strongholds of that system.

Radek condemned premature and hopeless resorts to violence, such as the March revolution in Germany, although he believed that every outbreak of this kind helped to promote a general revolution. His objection to such measures was that they were wasteful ways of making gains. Both he and Trotsky emphasized the neces

sity of keeping a proletariat army in being within Russia, both for defense and for possible aggressive employment in case international development should render Russian intervention elsewhere expedient.

Recent changes in methods of rationing in Russia have some direct interest for ourselves, inasmuch as they bear a relation to our relief measures. Instead of issuing food directly to individual workers, it is proposed to distribute quotas of food to groups of workers as, for instance, all the employees of a given factory. This quota will be determined by the monthly production of the labor group. It will be curtailed if the product falls below a certain amount, and increased if it rises above that amount. After the quota has been proportioned to the product of the group, it will remain unchanged, whether the group increases or diminishes in number, thus bringing pressure on the group to expel incompetent members and bring up the general average of efficiency. This system, however, makes it possible in times of famine to starve out non-Communist groups; and, indeed, some such measure for using food-distribution, to ensure the survival of Communists at the expense of non-Communists, is said to be advocated even by Lenin. The government has made the sale of salt a state monopoly.

One of the early fruits of the policy adopted this year, of leasing works and factories to private individuals and firms, is the concession granted to the Swedish ball-bearings factories, enabling them to keep their works in Russia open indefinitely. This concession runs for forty years. Proposals are also under consideration for giving the Swedish Match Trust a monopoly for manufacturing matches in Russia. An example of the frightful deterioration of fixed capital in Russia is af

forded by an account in a Bolshevist newspaper, Makhovik, of the condition of the dwelling-houses in certain wards of Petrograd, taken from the reports of the House Committees of these wards:

The Smolny region has 2200 dwellinghouses of stone and 104 modern houses, having 54,000 rooms altogether, of which 14,500 rooms are unfit for habitation; 40 per cent of the water-pipes are completely destroyed and 50 per cent need fundamental repairs; only 25 per cent of the roofs are in good condition, 15 per cent being entirely gone; 85 per cent of the drainage-pipes are full of refuse; 65 per cent of the stoves are in good condition, while 35 per cent need repairs; 200 to 300 pails of water per capita are supposed to be used every day, but not a single drop of it goes higher than the third, or even the second floor, by far the greater part of it flowing down to the basements and destroying the foundations to such an extent that the houses crumble to pieces.

The situation in the Narva-Peterhof region is about the same. It was intended in 1919 to pull down 400 houses out of the 1100 in that region. During the last two years, 250 houses have been taken down, and the remaining 150 will be taken down as soon as possible. About 800 houses are partially fit for habitation, although they need many repairs.

An English lady, who recently escaped to Warsaw from Soviet territory, reports that one of the Bolshevist commissars in the Ukraine is an Englishman, a deserter from the Murmansk expeditionary forces.

This lady reports that the harvest west of Kieff is moderately good. But the inhabitants expect to be swamped by an invasion of starving people from the famine districts farther east. She saw no signs of military preparations against Poland or Rumania;

TRADE between France and Germany is rapidly increasing. Including goods shipped on reparations account, Germany sent merchandise to the value of more than two and a half billions of francs to its neighbor last year, and imported goods to somewhat less than half that value from across the Rhine. While coal was the principal item, machinery and tools, glassware, dyes and chemicals, vehicles, and paper contributed materially to the total.

CRITICISM has been aroused in France on account of the large number of casualties in military aviation. In addition to the airmen killed or wounded in enemy countries, 35 French aviators were killed and 36 others seriously injured in airplane accidents during the first five months of 1921. Nineteen of these disasters are described as due to 'pilot's error.' A large number are also ascribed to defective engines. The criticisms in France are practically identical with those that we heard applied to our aviation service in America during the war.

IN 1829, Columbia College, New York City, took what was then a novel step for an educational institution in the young Republic. It established a chair of Italian literature. Another anomaly was that the holder of this chair was an octogenarian, who characterized himself as a professor sine exemplo: for he had neither students nor salary. This scholarly incumbent was Lorenzo Da Ponte, a native of the Vittorio Veneto. His physician, Jackson, describes him as a man of spotless honor, so trustful and innocent of the world, in spite of his long experience in it, that he was constantly victimized by unworthy recipients of his confidence. He was a tall, handsome, courtly gentleman, possessing among other attainments a perfect mastery of Latin, which he spoke fluently. He died at New York in 1888, and was buried in the Catholic church of that city.

Da Ponte had been appointed professor of belles lettres at the University of Padua almost immediately after completing his studies, but was not allowed to occupy the chair on account of the hostility aroused by his political opinions. Later, he was a tutor in a noble Venetian family. Already he had a presentiment of the coming social upheaval that was soon to express itself in the French Revolution. He was involved in a movement to restore the ancient laws and republican constitution of Venice, for which he was exiled in 1777

to Austria. His whole estate at this time consisted of a change of linen, a small text of Horace, a Dante, and a thumb-worn volume of Petrarch.

In Vienna Da Ponte devoted himself to dramatic composition. He became acquainted with Pietro Metastasio, at that time the most popular dramatist in the Austrian capital. After the latter's death, he was presented at court. Emperor Joseph II, learning that he had as yet written no opera libretto, complimented him upon ‘his virgin muse.' He attempted to liberate the Italian lyric drama from the affected heroic style so popular at that time, and to rejuvenate it with a new element of naturalness and humor. Among other things he wrote the librettos for Mozart's Figaro and Don Giovanni.

After various adventures, he founded an Italian publishing house in London, which he conducted prosperously until he was victimized by business associates. At this time, his wife and four sons were in America on a family visit. Learning that a vessel was about to leave for Philadelphia, Da Ponte himself embarked for that country,in March, 1805, with the remnant of his fortune, which consisted of a small box of violinstrings, a few volumes of Italian classics, and forty or fifty dollars in ready money: 'All I had been able to rescue from usurers, bailiffs, lawyers, and faithless friends in London, where for twelve years I had been an honest publisher,