INDIA AND ISLAM

TH

MARCH 22, 1922

-tion of Islam to the present disturb.

The

There are over 300,000,000 natives in India, of whom about 66,000,000 are Mohammedans. Ordinarily, Mohammedans do not agree or act in unison with men of other religions. But just now they are making common cause with other natives for different reasons. non-Mohammedans (Buddhists, Hindus, and others) are agitating for "home rule," or at least for a large measure of native self-government. Gandhi has preached against violence and has inflicted penance on himself when his followers committed violence; yet some of his utterances are alleged to have incited indirectly to open rebellion. The memory of the deplorable Amritzar massacre is said to have had a baleful influence.

The most active anti-British feeling now, however, is of Pan-Islam origin. In an editorial in The Outlook of December 21 last, based largely on an interview with Mr. Sastri, India's delegate to the Washington Conference, we said:

When the war with Germany was seen to be a desperate matter, the British Government called for troops from India. The Mohammedans hesitated to take up arms against the ally of the Sultan, the religious head of Mussulmans. It was then that the British Government assured their Mohammedan subjects that this would not be a war against Islam and that the protector of the sacred places of their religion would in no way lose his temporal authority. The British Government has not kept its pledge.

From the point of view of the Mohammedan of India, that is a wicked breach of faith. The Turkish Empire has been broken up. Because they trusted in their masters, these Mohammedans now find that they have been used to weaken the head of their religion. And the other people-of India who do not share the Mohammedan faith can, and many of them do, share these Mohammedans' indignation.

Mr. Morgenthau, formerly American Ambassador to Turkey, says of the rela

This is all part of a Pan-Islamic plot which includes Turkey, India, and Egypt. And the emissaries of Turkey have undoubtedly stirred up* the leaders in India to make use of an opportunity resulting from the failure of the Greek invasion, the evacuation of Anatolia by the French, and the desertion of the Armenians, who have been left to shift for themselves by the British. Under these circumstances, Turkey is again utilizing the disputes between the big Powers and the inability of the Russian Government to assert itself to regain some of its lost possessions, including Thrace and the Dardanelles.

Thus the relations of England to Turkey, Egypt, and other Islamic lands are involved. No wonder, then, that Lord Curzon, England's Foreign Secretary, and his chief, Lloyd George, were disturbed when Mr. Montagu, without authorization from the Ministry or the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary, made public a letter from the Viceroy of India which favored a change in policy which would lead to re-establishing in Turkey just that Islamic power which in the past has been pro-German and was responsible for the Armenian massacres. Aside from questions of technical proceeding or disputed excuses, the British Government found its hand forced and its dignity hustled.

A LITTLE WAR ON THE RAND

THE outbreak in the gold, coal, and

Tiron mine district known as the

Rand in South Africa was both sudden and fierce. The despatches, indeed, bristle with warlike activities, but are extremely scant as to the causes of the outbreak.

The insurgents were so strong as to be able at first to invest Johannesburg on three sides; in some places loyal forces were hemmed in for two or three days until airplanes brought them food and ammunition; many hundreds of casualties are reported; one account states that the Government troops took 2,200 prisoners; General Jan Smuts, the famous South African Premier, himself narrowly escaped being shot; the despatches of March 13 from Pretoria, however, declare that the situation is well in hand.

The trouble was partly industrial, partly political, and partly due to outand-out Bolshevik agitation. The white miners, although they are outnumbered several times over by the natives, formed the insurgent element; General

Smuts declares that the native workers and the farmers were loyal. The mine workers ask for representation in the management of the mines. Another statement from General Smuts asserts that "the present revolutionary movement is the work of extremists who are using the strike at the mines for the dissemination of syndicalist views." The assertion is also made in news despatches that the money back of the outbreak came from foreign sourcesjust what sources is not stated.

There has always been dislike, sometimes flaming into hostility, between the miners and the farmer Boers in this region. Such an industrial quarrel as has been going on for a month or more in the Rand brings out the old feud. There is also political dissension between the Nationalists, headed by General Herzog, who still want independence and hate British rule, and the Liberal party, headed by General Smuts, who believe that England has acted generously in giving South Africans selfgovernment. Add to this the political element of an active Labor party, and we have the possibilities of trouble at any time.

IRELAND SIMMERING DOWN

HERE is a touch of the humorous in

cable despatches about the three

miniature armies which lately flocked to Kilkenny for no very adequate reason or purpose. The commanders of the British, Free State, and Irish Republic forces were brought together at luncheon by the Mayor and (over the coffee, probably) "a friendly spirit sprang up" and amicable plans were agreed upon. If this happy conclusion had failed, should we have had a triangular war to be compared only with the immortal three-cornered duel stage-managed by Midshipman Easy?

There are patent absurdities in the present situation, but better have inconsistencies than bullets. The cure in the South should come with the election of delegates to the Free State Parliament. Once that critical event is over, we may hope for only political warfare, in which majorities and votes will take the place of raids and killings. As it is, we have the Dail Eireann still asserting the exist ence of a Republic and maintaining an army of its own, and the Irish Free State with a Sinn Fein Provisional Governor backed by a Provisional Cabinet and a small army, but with no Parliament behind it. The signs all indicate that the

transition will be safely made, even though De Valera continue to fulminate and make mischief.

In Ulster the cure will probably be the exercise of plain commercial and industrial common sense. Factional clashes occur and will occur, in Belfast and elsewhere, between hotheads and fanatics on both sides, but the two parts of Ireland need each other, and will learn to live amicably apart if they cannot live as one Dominion.

THE LADY AND THE LORDS

R

HONDDA is the name of two valleys in South Wales-the Great and Little Rhondda. In these valleys are located immense coal mines. They were operated by the late David Thomas, who, as Viscount Rhondda, became the efficient Food Commissioner for the British Government in the recent, war.

Lord Rhondda's daughter, Viscountess Rhondda, is a peeress in her own right. But she is something a good deal more. She is the foremost business woman in the British Isles. She has actually succeeded her father as the controller of the greater part of the output of the southern Welsh coal fields. She is chairman-why not chairwoman?-of Cambrian coal combine, and also of the British Fire Assurance Company.

the

Nor is this all. She is a director in no less than twenty-seven public enterprises. She is a stanch supporter of the equality of women in all walks of life. She has been an active suffrage worker.

It is, however, with Lady Rhondda's peerage that we have to do. She succeeded to her father's title and appealed for a writ of summons to the House of Lords on the ground that the act of 1919 provided against the disqualification through sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post.

After a long delay the Committee on Privileges of the House of Lords decided in favor of Lady Rhondda. Should this decision be confirmed by the vote of the House, it may also establish the claim of twenty-four women who are peeresses in their own rights-one duchess, four countesses, two viscountesses, and seventeen baronesses.

pose of enforcing upon the Germans the terms of their surrender. It was quite right to charge the cost of this to the Germans themselves. It would have been grotesque in the extreme if all military burdens had been taken off from the shoulders of the defeated culprit nation and had been left upon the shoulders of that nation's victims. The United States has presented the bill for its share in that expense. It amounts to two hundred and forty-one million dollars, or a billion gold marks.

Of course if Germany pays this amount to the United States it will leave just so much less out of which, for the time being, payments can be

THE ONLY DETAIL LACKING IS THE COW

made to the other nations in the way of reparation, as well as for the cost of military operation.

There have been intimations that the European creditors of Germany might object to this payment on the ground that the United States, by declining to ratify the Versailles Treaty, had renounced all participation in its benefits, and therefore had lost the right to collect its share in what was due the Allied and Associated Governments. It ought to be apparent to any one who is willing to reflect that this is fallacious. America's right to reimbursement does not rest upon any treaty, but upon the fact that America was one of the victors in the war and received with her allies and associates Germany's surrender. Indeed, it was at the solicitation of her partners in the war that America kept her troops on German soil after the armistice. America's rights have been confirmed by her treaty with Germany, ratified last year. There is no disposition on America's part to embarrass her partners by pressing this claim; but it is fair to other countries as well as the United States that this claim should be registered and not ignored.

AMERICA RESPECTFULLY DECLINES

M

UCH to the satisfaction of the great

majority of Americans, we believe, President Harding, through his Secretary of State, has declined to participate in the proposed economic conference at Genoa.

When the invitation was first sent early in January, the Administration seemed disposed to accept. We were holding a Conference ourselves which other nations had cordially attended, and it seemed somewhat ungracious to think of holding aloof from one which they asked us to attend. At the time, however, there were three obstacles ap parent which The Outlook pointed out. One was the disinclination of America to take part in the political affairs of Europe. Another was the disinclination of America to discuss her share in Europe's economic problems until the nations of Europe had made progress in straightening out their own affairs. And the third was the disinclination America to recognize the Soviet rule in Russia so long as that rule was devoted to disintegration of other governments. It is these obstacles which Secretary Hughes cites as reasons for the decision not to have an American representative at Genoa.

of

The American decision naturally disappoints those European political leaders who have hoped that America might save them some little trouble involved in the unpleasant task of keeping their governmental expenditures within their income or seeing that their governmental income is increased to meet their expenditures.

On another page we print special correspondence from Mr. Gregg which shows that the problem of Europe, in spite of its difficulty, is fundamentally simple.

THE BATTLE OF THE BONUS

HE House is still deadlocked over the problem of the soldiers' bonus. The battle of the bonus seems to have developed into an effort to pay the veterans with some form of token which will make no immediate drain upon the treasury, but which will at the same time satisfy the ex-soldiers, sailors, and marines who are laying siege to the doors of Congress. The bill now under discussion retains the provisions of the bill proposed by the American Legion, which provide for farm and home aid. land settlement aid, and Vocational training. It provides a new alternative to these in the form of what are called adjusted service certificates.

The function of these certificates is summarized in a statement from Secre

tary Mellon. He says that these certificates "amount, in effect, to paid-up endowment insurance policies issued by the Government, to mature at the end of twenty years, or earlier upon the death of the veteran. The maturity value of these policies is calculated on the basis of the so-called adjusted service credit (which corresponds roughly to the adjusted service pay that would have been allowed under the cash bonus plan), plus an increase of 25 per cent, with interest in combined figures at the rate of 42 per cent per annum, compounded annually for twenty years. The adjusted service certificates would be non-negotiable, and there is no provision for direct policy loans by the Government until after September 30, 1925, but in the meantime National and State banks and trust companies are authorized to make loans to holders of certificates up to fifty per cent of the adjusted service credit, plus interest thereon at the stated rate to the date of the loan. If veterans fail to repay such loans within six months after maturity or before September 30, 1925, the bill provides that the Government must redeem them in cash. After September 30, 1925, the bill provides for direct loans on these certificates from the Government; but, as the Secretary points out, "the bill makes no provision whatever for sinking fund, amortization, or other reserves against either the liability that would be thrown upon the Government in 1925 or against the liability on the certificates at the end of twenty years, nor does it make any provision for the payments which would accrue in ordinary course from year to year on account of the death of veterans."

It is almost impossible, the Secretary says, to estimate the cost to the Government of this plan, but the Government actuaries have figured tentatively that the total direct cost to the Government "in the fiscal year 1923 would be $289,954,000; in the fiscal year 1924, $216,440,000; in the fiscal year 1925, $128,013,000; and in the fiscal year 1926, for the most part by October 15, 1925, when the adjusted service certificates used as security for bank loans would have to be redeemed, $615,822,000. This would mean total payments within about three and a half years of over $1,200,000,000."

Secretary Mellon believes that this plan would create a mass of non-liquid, non-negotiable paper which would result in frozen bank loans and a renewed inflation of the currency. He believes that, since the loans would be floated at the banks on the credit of the United States, the plan involves a dangerous abuse of the Government's credit. If the bonus is to be financed by borrow

Paul Thompson

E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

ing, it would, in his opinion, be far better for the Government to borrow directly on its own securities.

ate offered by Bryn Mawr is its European fellowship; Dr. Park received this, and after a year of graduate study enjoyed a year of research at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. After her return to this country Miss Park held important chairs of teaching in several schools and colleges for women in this country and also took advanced degrees from Bryn Mawr and Johns Hopkins. She has been Acting Dean at Simmons College, and for the past year Dean of Radcliffe College. Thus she has had the advantages of executive experience, as well as of classical and academic training. As her middle name indicates, she comes of a family famous in New England history for its theological and educational leaders.

Every indication is that in the future, as in the past, Bryn Mawr will uphold the standards of education for women in scholarship without minimizing the value of social and personal accomplishments.

A WEAVER OF PLOTS

R. E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM has been

by Secretary Mellon against the principles of the proposed certificate plan are sound and convincing. We do not believe that Congress will earn the friendship of the ex-service man by any such attempt to provide for his present needs by future promises. The political juggling of the Bonus Bill will do more to convince the ex-service man that he has been unjustly treated than would any courageous, out-and-out refusal to grant a bonus. Most ex-service men have eyes, and even those who lost their sight from shell wounds and poison gas can see the insincerity and trickery to which they have been subjected by the Congress of the United States.

THE NEW HEAD OF BRYN MAWR

various clubs and receptions have been read with decided interest by his large following of readers. Mr. Oppenheim is a writer of astonishing fertility. Looking over our own indexes, we find that exactly thirty of his stories have been spoken of in our review columns. This seems a pretty large output, but an interviewer says that the full list includes sixty-nine novels. Mr. Oppenheim himself says in effect that he writes because he has to write. He produces the somewhat original theory that "story-writing is an original instinct;" just as a sporting dog sniffs about in every bush for a rabbit, "one writes stories because if one left them in the brain one would be subject to a sort of mental indigestion." Asked why this instinct led him to

has built and maintained a high standard and reputation for scholarship and culture. It has even been said that if a referendum as to the relative excellence of American women's colleges were taken among all graduates, in a majority of cases each graduate would vote for her own Alma Mater first and for Bryn Mawr second. However this may be, none would or could question the great value of Dr. Thomas's service, which has extended thirty-seven yearsthe full lifetime of Bryn Mawr.

The retirement of Dr. Thomas is followed by the appointment as her successor of Miss Marion Edwards Park, a graduate of Bryn Mawr, who has had a distinguished academic and educational

the desire to use it always exists."

Apparently Mr. Oppenheim dictates his novels, for he has been quoted as saying that he has his stenographer keep lists of synonyms, so that when he uses a particular word too frequently she may pick out a substitute. It ought fairly to be said that, however fast Mr. Oppenheim works, his English style is unusually good for a manufac turer of thrills and mysteries. Somie where he has said that there were only about a score of plot themes. This is a common saying, but it is true also that while there are ten digits, they may be placed in almost innumerable combina tions. Mr. Oppenheim, even more than Conan Doyle, shows dexterity and ingenuity in the invention of combina

tions. The World War was in some ways a blow to imaginative literature, but at least it supplied ample suggestions for new combinations of old plot ideas, and no one took greater advantage of this than Mr. Oppenheim.

Mr. Oppenheim has been writing stories, long and short, since he was fifteen years old, and now at fifty-five is hard at work on a new one. This will have a special interest, because he is expected to enlarge and explain in it the statement he has made in interviews here that there would be another world war within twenty years. The Teutonic menace, therefore, is to emerge from the maze of diplomatic conferences into the realms of fiction with a purpose. From long experience we will venture to predict that this story with a purpose will also be a story with a thrill.

AN ANCIENT INSTRUMENT FOR AN ANCIENT PROBLEM

M

UCH good white paper has been covered recently with accounts of the antics of an alleged Poltergeist in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. It seems that a farmer, his wife, and his daughter were driven from their home by the curious manifestations of this antic spirit. Strange fires appeared in most unexpected places in the farmhouse where they dwelt. They felt slaps from invisible beings-in short, all the manifestations traditionally attributed to Poltergeister were reported as having occurred. So circumstantial were the reports of these strange happenings that a member of the Society for Psychical Research promptly set forth to investigate. Attended by reporters with moving-picture cameras and other accessories with which ghosts may or may not be sympathetic, he took up his abode in the farmhouse whence all but him had fled. For a week he stayed there, and then packed up his apparatus and headed back for New York. The bashful Poltergeist had apparently given up his desire for poltergeisting.

We know nothing of the circumstances of the case save as they have been reported in the daily press. If we were to set out on such a search, however, and if we believed in the old adage which relates to the moral deterioration of children and the injunction not to leave rods in innocuous desuetude, we would most certainly take with us on such an expedition a small section of a birch tree, say some three feet long and perhaps half an inch at the butt, and thence tapering sinuously and flexibly to more or less of a point. History has afforded considerable evidence that such an instrument is the best ghost-detecting device which has yet been discovered.

453

I

TREATY

F some one could be appointed editor of the "Congressional Record," with power to exercise the editor's prerogative of cutting out the trivial, the irrelevant, the repetitious, and the inadvertent, and the results could be published as a "Congressional Digest" for public distribution through the post offices at a nominal price, the people of the country would have at once a truer measure of Congress than they now have, and would not only learn to value those members of the Senate and the House who are devoting great ability to the public service, but would also have a better basis than they now possess for holding both Representatives and Senators to account for their stewardship.

As it is, the debate in the Senate over the Four-Power Treaty has failed to educate the public as it might have done. Much of the serious and really thoughtful argument on both sides has been buried in a mass of trivialities and irrelevancies, and can only be labori.ously dug out from the "Congressional Record." In that debate there has been perhaps rather more than the usual proportion of ignorance, misrepresentation, vindictiveness, personalities, wearisome reiteration, and political sophistry. When, for instance, a Senator undertakes to discuss the Four-Power Treaty without knowing that it explicitly terminates the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, when Senators make statements concerning the phraseology of documents before them which can be directly controverted by reference to the documents themselves, when Senators base their arguments on newspaper gossip, when Senators openly use the occasion of a public debate upon foreign affairs to vent their dislike of colleagues or to appeal to party feeling, they are doing what is most likely to discredit open diplomacy. After wading through page after page of inanities like those which disfigure this debate, one is justified in doubting. whether the United States Senate is ready for the responsibilities incurred in departing from the old practice of discussing foreign affairs behind closed doors.

Aside from these serious blemishes, the debate in the Senate has been instructive. It has disclosed the existence of three distinct groups of Senators, distinguished by their attitude toward international relations.

One group obviously believes that the only basis for international peace is force or the threat of force administered by a tribunal with the attributes of a super-nation. Logically, those who take this view regard peace as an idle dream

zation. For want of a better term, we may say that they advocate a doctrine of International Imperialism.

A second group is at the other extreme. They believe that the only basis for peace is force or the threat of force administered by the individual nations. To them the thought of a super-nation is abhorrent-so abhorrent that they look with dread upon any grouping of nations for even the purposes of peace through understanding. The fact that some who belong to this group seem to be ready to disarm without understandings with other nations does not seem to affect their conclusion that each nation should stand aloof from every other nation. They appear to believe that isolation combined with feebleness will prevent conflict. These, for want of a better term, we may say, advocate a doctrine of International Anarchism.

Between these two groups is the third. They believe that there is another method of securing peace besides either the use of force or feeble isolation. They believe that nations are not all alike; that some are capable of understanding only the argument that is reinforced by weapons, while others are open to reason. They believe that suspicion breeds suspicion, and confidence breeds confidence. They regard it as folly to rely either on force or on isolation and at the same time to disarm. They consider it essential that if nations are to reduce their armaments they must substitute for them confidence and understanding. They consider it important that those nations which trust one another should associate themselves with one another. They believe that civilization has progressed far enough for certain peoples to practice among themselves what enlightened individuals practice in their mutual relations. They believe that there is such a thing as moral force. These, who constitute the third and by far the largest group, we may say, advocate a doctrine of International Association.

It is this third group which is supporting the Four-Power Treaty. They hold that the time has come for peace in the Pacific to be maintained, not by a military alliance, with its threat of force, such as the alliance between Great Britain and Japan, but by a mutual understanding between the four Powers whose interests are paramount in the Pacific and who for the purpose of maintaining their understanding agree that in case of a danger of misunderstanding they will come together and talk the matter over.

To the advocates of International Imperialism this proposal seems foolish, because there is no implication of the