official disclaimers were issued by the Mexican and Japanese authorities; the statement of the Under Secretary was ascribed to political intrigue, and the matter was allowed to rest after the official denials. The excitement in Washington and along the Pacific Coast had demonstrated that alert watchfulness was being maintained respecting the inviolability of the Monroe Doctrine.

* * *

SOCIALIST LABOR LEADER CONVICTED

EUGENE DEBS, who had been the

Socialist candidate for President of the United States in two national elections, failed in an application before the United States Supreme Court for a rehearing of his appeal from conviction and sentence to ten years' imprisonment for violating the Espionage act. In filing his motion for a rehearing, Debs held that the court's opinion amounted to the trial of a person for an undisclosed "state of mind," that the privilege of showing his motive in making the speech for which he was convicted was denied him, and that the court had failed to decide all the questions presented to it for review.

The prosecution resulted from statements made by Debs in a speech in Canton, Ohio, last June. The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on March 10. The Attorney General refused to join in a petition for Executive clemency. A petition for his pardon was sent to President Wilson, but he had not acted up to April 18. The imprisonment term commenced April 13.

***

A SPECIMEN OF BOLSHEVIST TERRORIS M

ΑΝ

N Englishman, who was for eight years in business in Petrograd, related his experiences to British officials as follows:

I was arrested just because I was an Englishman. As a matter of fact, I went voluntarily to the Chief Commissary in obedience to a decree to register as a manager of a business, and to do compulsory labor, which I found involved the collection and burial of typhus and cholera corpses and cleaning the streets. As soon as he heard that I was an Englishman the Commissary-an ignorant peasant, possessing the power of life and death-ordered my arrest. I was at once

marched through the streets to prison under an armed escort. For three months I inhabited a cell which contained 150 victims. At first they were all better-class people, but gradually soldiers, workmen, and peasants drifted in, showing that people of this class were also being terrorized. In another part of the prison 500 officers were detained as hostages, to be shot in the event of any attack on a Bolshevist leader. About eight inmates of my own cell were shot on the charge of having relations with the British. The nervous strain was tremendous, for daily an official entered and called out a number of names. Whether the people concerned were to be executed, released, or transferred to another prison no one knew. At night the scenes were awful, the poor, distraught prisoners screaming and shrieking in their periods of semiconsciousness.

After three months of this sort of thing I supposed that I had been forgotten, and, as I had not been accused of any crime, entered an official protest. Once more I was hauled before the same ignorant savage who ordered my arrest for reexamination. He was livid with rage, and his eyes almost started from his head as he accused me of one ridiculous thing after the other. Seeing that with these charges he hadn't a leg to stand on, he fell back on his original statement that I was an English spy, and that I was to be removed and shot. I thought that this really was the end, and I was in daily expectation of death. Once more I was marched through the streets to prison, but at the end of a week my name, together with those of three others, was called out one morning. To my astonishment and relief I was released, and, needless to say, wasted no time in asking the reason, but got out of Russia at the earliest possible moment.

* * *

IRELAND'S UNREST

DISORDERS in Ireland became so

serious late in April that martial law was proclaimed in Limerick, Cork, and Tipperary. Serious strikes occurred in Limerick in industries and among railroad men. Sir James Ian McPherson, in his maiden address as Chief Secretary for Ireland on April 3, after indicating that measures were projected to improve educational facilities and housing, said:

The political unrest in Ireland is unabated and outrages of the most cruel and unforgivable kind are occurring. That is why it is necessary to have military forces there to maintain order. Ireland is one of the most prosperous countries in the world, but she must be freed from

the shackles of terrorism. The menace of Sinn Feinism, with its cruel and wanton oppression, is an enemy of constitutionalism and progress. There can be no self-determination on constitutional lines under Sinn Fein rule.

Bonar Law announced in Parliament, April 16, that home rule could not at present be applied to Ireland.

The three American delegates appointed to present to the Peace Conference the resolutions asking for Ireland's independence, which were adopted by the All-Irish Convention at Philadelphia, arrived in Paris April 11, and on the 17th President Wilson received them in an extended conference.

SEE

* * *

DISTURBANCES IN INDIA

ERIOUS disturbances covering a wide area occurred in India in April. Replying to an inquiry in Parliament on the night of April 14 the Government acknowledged their seriousness and stated that they were the outcome of what was described as the "passive resistance" movement against the recent Indian legislation known as the Rowlatt act, intended to combat seditious conspiracy.

The movement originated with the home-rule element in Bombay and took shape in attacks on officials and Europeans and on property.

The India Office issued a statement April 14 describing the general situation. It was shown that there had been disturbances at Lahore and a few casualties at Amritsar, thirty-three miles eastward, where three bank managers were burned to death in the Town Hall, two banks destroyed, the telegraph office wrecked, and three Europeans killed. At Ahmedabad a mob attacked and burned the telegraph office and two Government buildings. Here, also, there were a few casualties.

There had been disorders in which some persons were wounded at Bombay, but, the statement added, "in most of these places military forces are now maintaining order."

Disturbances occurred at Calcutta April 11 and 12; the military was called out; six persons were killed and twelve wounded. The Government buildings at Ahmedabad were burned.

RAVAGES OF INFLUENZA IN INDIA

THE

HE Sanitary Commissioner of India, Major Norman White, announced officially in March that, from information available, it would appear that no country suffered as severely from influenza as India during the last quarter of 1918. Without fear of exaggeration he stated that influenza was responsible for 6,000,000 deaths, equivalent to more than half the mortality attributable to plague in the twenty-two years during which plague has been epidemic in this country. Five million deaths occurred in British India, and 1,000,000 in the native States.

Major White affirmed that there was no evidence that the disease originated in malnutrition. Its incidence was very high among the well-fed British troops, higher, indeed, than among the Indian troops.

*

JAURES'S ASSASSIN GOES FREE

THE trial of Raoul Villain for the

murder of Jean Jaurès, the Socialist leader, at the outbreak of the war, began at Paris in a civil court on March 24. After a trial taking several days, he was acquitted. The decision of the court aroused an angry protest among the radical Socialists and there were threatening manifestations and fears of a general strike, but the authorities were able to maintain order.

The doctors decided that Villain was not mad, but that his sensibility and will were unbalanced, and that he suffered from intellectual debility. For a whole year he was haunted by the thought of killing Jaurès. At Rheims he was heard to declare: "There are politicians deserving death, for they are playing the Germans' game." For a whole week before the crime he hesitated, wandering about, now exasperated, now calm, now repeating to himself that he must kill Jaurès, and anon recognizing that he lacked sufficient will power. For the last two days he prowled round the office of L'Humanité, (the newspaper edited by Jaurès,) but Jaurès was then in Brussels. On July 31 he strolled in the Luxembourg Gardens, listening to the band, and he bought an afternoon newspaper, which gave news of the Ger

man preparations for war. This excited him very much, and later, after he had dined near the Opéra Comique, he once more prowled round the Humanité office in the Rue Montmartre, but learned from the concierge that Jaurès was not there. He then went away, and suddenly espied his victim seated inside the Café du Croissaut. Jaurès had just returned from Brussels, had had a conference at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs on the situation, and had just finished dinner with a couple of his Socialist colleagues. It was a sultry evening, and the windows were open, so that only a flimsy curtain separated Juarès from the street. Villain drew aside the curtain and fired two shots almost pointblank at Jaurès, who sank to the floor dead, shot through the head.

DEMOBILIZING FRENCH WAR DOGS

THE

HE queerest demobilization in France in April was the distribution of the war dogs. Of the 15,000 war dogs which were mobilized in the service of their country a quarter of them were killed or died at the front and 10 per cent. are missing. Many were loaned by their private owners, who received them back. Some hundreds came from the wilds of Alaska and Labrador to act as sledge dogs in the Alsatian and Vosges heights. The famous 11th Cuirassiers à pied in the fighting in Champagne last Autumn were kept rationed in the front line entirely by dog carriers. About a hundred of the little carriages, drawn by 300 dogs, have been requisitioned by the Lille Corporation, and proved a godsend to the returned refugees in need of a means of transport for their household goods.

transportation interests. Among the more important recommendations which the conference asked the Government to pledge themselves to carry out and which were assented to were the following:

1. The setting up of a permanent National Industrial Council of 400 representatives of employers and unions to advise the Government on industrial questions.

2. Enactment of a forty-eight hour week, with certain necessary exceptions.

3. The establishment of national minimum wage rates.

4. Special payment for all overtime, where overtime is necessary.

5. Recognition of trade unions and employers' associations in industrial negotiations.

6. Unemployment pay should be more adequate, and should be extended to cover underemployment. Old-age pensions and sickness benefits should be more gener

A

BELGIUM

CCORDING to information placed before the Supreme Economic Council at Brussels fully onequarter of the working population of Belgium cannot be employed for many months to come. All have been robbed of their tools or machinery, or the latter has been destroyed by the Germans during their occupation. It is pointed out the great majority of the industrials belong to the agricultural class and will be able to secure their implements earlier than the others-possibly in time for the present year's harvest. There is a vast area ready for the plow, over 6,500,000 acres. Other industries in the probable order of their restitution and the number of workmen they employed before the

war are:

Quarries, 40,000; coal mines, 150,000; iron mines, 50,000; sugar manufactories, refineries, and distilleries, 60,000; textile manufactories, 100,000; metal manufactories, 200,000.

In the last three groups, besides the machinery, raw material will be needed from abroad, particularly for the last industry, as for ten years before the war, while the output of ore showed slight increase, the manufactured articles more than doubled.

The German figures for the metal industry are now available and may be compared with those of the last full Belgian year before the enemy's occupation. During the balance of 1914 and for the two years following there was not a great falling off in production. Then, in 1917, thousands of Belgians declined to work for the Germans and were deported, together with the machinery, according to the German explanation. According to the Belgian explanation, the Germans, knowing that they would probably have to surrender Belgium, began to take the machinery into Germany. This depriving the men of their work, deportations

Although the terms of the armistice require the return to Belgium, as well as to France, of every kind of industrial equipment that was carried off, it was fully four and a half months after the capitulation that returns began to come in showing the location of some of the equipment, and it was only on April 5 that the allied commanders at Cologne, Coblenz, and Mayence gave orders to the German civil authorities within their jurisdiction to secure such returns. The Allies do not allow Belgian manufacturers to requisition machines similar to their missing equipment from German factories indiscriminately in the occupied territory. They can only claim the return of the actual machines that have been taken, but not a provision for substitutes.

And such machines as have so far been available are, in many cases, waiting for the raw material. The Germans took away tons of material which they are not required to return. To secure new raw material the Belgian Government had to open financial credits abroad. This was early anticipated by the United Kingdom and Canada in favor of $60,000,000; the United States $50,000,000, and France $46,000,000.

It was not, however, until March 20 that the official Moniteur announced the ratification by the King of the bill em