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exercise of superior authority. This is the attitude of Senator Glass.

To the advocates of International Anarchism this proposal seems perilous, because the very grouping of nations suggests the possibility of the use of force and of the creation of other groups to meet force with force. This is the attitude of Senator Borah.

It is interesting to note that in this, as in so many other instances, the extremists on both sides are co-operating to defeat those who believe in a course between the two extremes.

The decision of the Senate on the Four-Power Treaty may conceivably be virtually recorded by the time this issue of The Outlook reaches its readers. One more than a third of the Senators present and voting can defeat the FourPower Treaty.. If that treaty is defeated, the whole result of the Armament Conference will be jeopardized. Secretary Hughes made that clear in a letter which he wrote in response to an inquiry from the Senate as to the authorship of the treaty. Stating that he himself, as Chairman of the American delegation, after consultation with the other Powers, made the draft of the treaty which was presented to the Conference, he reiterated a statement of the President by saying that the Treaty was "an essential part of the plan to create conditions in the Far East at once favorable to the maintenance of the policies we have long advocated and to an enduring peace." And he added, "In view of this, and in view of the relation of the Treaty to the results of the Conference, its failure would be nothing short of a National calamity."

The reason for this is not obscure. Three groups of treaties issued from the Conference. One group, consisting of the Four-Power Treaty and its supplements, provides for the termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and for conferences between the four nationsAmerica, Britain, France, and Japanwhen occasion requires. The second group abolishes spheres of influence in China and other causes of conflict there and provides for measures to secure the independence and integrity of China itself. The third group, by scrapping battleships and limiting the use of certain weapons of warfare, such as the submarine and poison gas, reduces the power of each of the five signatory nationsAmerica, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan-not only to attack but also to defend their own policies. If the Senate, by its vote, expresses such distrust of its neighbors that it is unwilling even to provide for the means of conferring with them, the question will at once arise whether the United States has any business, in view of that distrust, to put any limit upon its own armament.

If we are not going to associate with other nations, reason seems to dictate that we shall have to depend upon aloofness or force, or both aloofness and force.

IN THE WORKSHOP OF GOD

SOME RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION

A

NUMBER of correspondents have written me respecting evolutionsome in commendation, some in criticism, some with inquiries. I must ask them to accept this article in reply, though it will not answer all their criticism nor all their inquiries.

The issue raised by the hypothesis of evolution has been well expressed in a single sentence: "Creation is a process, not a product." The evolutionist believes that he is living in the days of creation. The rocks tell him something concerning this process of creation in the past; life tells him what it is in the present. He does not have to go back six thousand years to find God at work in his world. He is at work now, and in the same spirit and upon the same principles. I do not recall any simpler and clearer statement of the omnipresence of the Great Spirit than that of Herbert Spencer: "Amidst all the mysteries by which we are surrounded nothing is more certain than that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed." The faith of my childhood in a Great First Cause which made and wound up the universe a long while ago and set it going and interferes with it occasionally as a clockmaker might with his clock has disappeared; in its place is faith in an Ever-Present Cause, the source of all energy, the fountain of all life.

To see in creation an intelligence, a purpose, a plan, the evolutionist has not to go back and examine what God has made. He is admitted into God's workshop and sees God at work. He formerly thought that creation was a finished house, and he examined it for signs of the Builder's work. Now he sees the Builder at work upon the house. The building is a perpetual process, and was not more evident in what we used to call the dawn of creation than it is to-day. This vision of creation as a continuing process is well illustrated by the following well-known passage in the writings of Huxley:

Examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, such as a salamander or a newt. It is a minute spheroid in which the best microscope will reveal nothing but a structureless sac, inclosing a glairy fluid, holding granules in suspension. But strange

possibilities lie dormant in that semifluid globule. Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid, and yet so steady and purpose-like in their succession that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And then it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and molded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due salamandrine proportions in so artistic a way that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic would show the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skillful manipulation to perfect his work.

This is an instance of continuous creation going on as it is revealed by the microscope, but unobserved by most of us; the telescope reveals it as going on in distant stars. Evolution does not banish God from the universe. On the contrary, it enables us to see him at work by our side, whereas before we only thought we detected indications that he had been at work in ages long remote.

The evolutionist not only sees intel ligence at work in the material universe and in the rocks traces the processes of God's work in past ages, so that Hugh Miller saw in the "Testimony of the Rocks" the "footprints of the Creator," but he sees the universe pervaded by a spirit of service and sacrifice which was unrecognized by the older philosophy. Love, service, and sacrifice are written in the processes of a continuous creation, and he who has discovered that creation is a process, not a product, discovers in that process a spiritual meaning he never saw before. A great deal has been said concerning the phrase, “Struggle for existence, survival of the fittest." has been treated as though it were a scientific equivalent for "Might makes right." The apologists of Germany have endeavored to find in Darwin's law a meaning it never bore and an interpretation of nature and life which he never gave to them. He recognized that struggle for others existed, but it was left for Henry Drummond to bring out the part it plays in world development I quote here a few sentences from his "Ascent of Man:"

The Creation is a drama, and no drama was ever put upon the stage with only one actor. The Struggle for Life is the "Villain" of the piece no more; and, like the "Villain" in the play, its chief function is to react

It

upon ends. There is, in point of fact, a second factor which we might venture to call the Struggle for the Life of Others which plays an equally prominent part.

the other players for higher

With a wealth of scientific detail, which there is no room here even to indicate, Drummond points out how the process of creation going on all about us all the time would be impossible were it not for the law of self-sacrifice prophesied even in the fruits and flowers, illustrated by the life of the cattle in the fields and the birds in the trees, and sums up his conclusion in the following scientifically accurate and æsthetically beautiful paragraph:

Re

To interpret the course of Evolution without this [law of sacrifice] would be to leave the richest side even of material nature without an explanation. Retrace the ground even thus hastily traveled over, and see how full creation is of meaning, of anticipation, of good for man, how far back begins the undertone of love. member that nearly all the beauty of the world is Love-Beauty-the corolla of the flower and the plume of the grass, the lamp of the firefly, the plumage of the bird, the horn of the stag, the face of woman; a that nearly all the music of the natural world is Love-music--the song of the nightingale, the call of the mammal, the chorus of the insect, the serenade of the lover; that nearly all the foods of the world are Love-foods-the date and the raisin, the banana and the breadfruit, the locust and the honey, the eggs, the grains, the seeds, the cereals, and the legumes; that all the drinks of the world are Love-drinks-the juice of the sprouting grain and the withered hop, the milk from the udder of the cow, the wine from the Love-cup of the vine. Remember that the Family, the crown of all higher life, is the creation of Love; that Co-operation, which means power, which means wealth, which means leisure, which therefore means art and culture, recreation and creation, is the gift of Love. Remember not only these things, but the diffusions of feeling which accompany them, the elevations, the ideals, the happiness, the goodness, and the faith in more goodness, and ask if it is not a world of Love in which we live.

Mr. Bryan has intimated that he might be willing to admit that material nature is in a process of evolution, but I could never admit that this is true of man. In fact, this continuous process of creation is nowhere seen more clearly than in the creation of man. That the race of man was developed out of a lower animal race is not a guess, it is a deduction from carefully observed phenomena written in historic and prehistoric records. But that every individual man has been physically developed out of previous animal forms is neither guess, hypothesis, nor deduction. It is a fact taking place every day and ob

servable and observed by students of life. It is absolutely certain that every reader of this article physically passed through some animal forms in the mother's womb before birth. The creation of the body was in every one of us a process of evolution. George John Romanes in "Darwin and After Darwin" makes this perfectly clear:

characterize

Like that of all other organisms, unicellular or multicellular, his [man's] development starts from the nucleus of a single cell. . . . When his animality becomes established, ho exhibits the fundamental anatomical qualities which such lowly animals as polypus and jellyfish, and even when he is marked off as the vertebrate it cannot be said whether he is to be a fish, a reptile, a bird, or a beast. Later on it becomes evident that he is to be a mammal; but not till later still can it be said to which order of mammals he belongs.

Romanes enforces this statement by printing illustrations of the various forms which it is known man passes through before birth. Printed side by side, they show embryos of a fish, a salamander, a tortoise, a bird, a hog, a calf, a rabbit, and a man in three successive stages of development, and in them, as Romanes truly says, "there is very little difference between the eight animals at the earliest of the three stages represented, all having fishlike tails, gill-slits, and so on."

When the babe is laid in his mother's arms, his body, in being developed from a seed, has already passed through the physical forms of inferior animals. Mysteriously endowed with a spiritual nature, the development of that spiritual nature is now about to begin. As a babe he is neither the cherub his mother fondly calls him, nor a child of the devil, which some schools of theology, I believe, still call him. He is simply a seed bed with almost infinite possibilities of both good and evil. He may become a Benedict Arnold or a George Washington. Which he will become will depend partly on his inheritance, partly on the process of spiritual development, in the guidance of which the father and mother are to have so large a share. Physically he is the product of a development in which he has passed through prior animal forms; spiritually he will become the product of a battle between good and evil, a struggle which constitutes the last stage in the evolution of man as far as it is carried on in this earthly stage of existence.

It is true that no evolutionist can consistently believe in the theological doctrine of our childhood primer:

In Adam's fall We sinned all.

But then for that doctrine there is no

foundation in the Bible. The story of Adam's sin and expulsion from Eden is told, but it is not accompanied by any philosophical deduction that the sin of his descendants is a result of Adam's sin. That may be a legitimate deduction, but the Bible does not make it. Never again, directly or indirectly, is the fall of man mentioned in the Old Testament, by poet, priest, or prophet. It is never mentioned by Christ. It is never mentioned by any of the Apostles except Paul, and by him only incidentally and, as it were, parenthetically. The one passage in which he explains dramatically the origin and nature of sin is the Seventh Chapter of Romans, and there it is portrayed as a result of the conflict between the flesh and the spirit-that is, between the appetites and passions derived from man's animal nature and the divine spirit imparted to him by God, making him spiritually the offspring of God. The Seventh Chapter of Romans is the only chapter in the Bible which makes any attempt to offer a philosophical explanation of the origin and nature of sinand it is essentially an evolutionary explanation.

This editorial already exceeds the limits which I always mean to set myself, and here I must leave the subject, only adding that the conclusions here summarized I reached more than a quarter of a century ago. I then embodied them in a volume entitled "The Theology of an Evolutionist," and to that volume I must refer correspondents who desire some further and fuller answers to their questions. LYMAN ABBOTT.

I

SHIP SUBSIDIES

N his Message to Congress, which we reported last week, advocating ship subsidies, President Harding says that "the terms 'subsidy' and 'subvention' have been made more or less hateful to the American public."

This repulsion is due to the fact that in the past subsidies and subventions have been so administered as to be of unfair advantage, if not of corrupt advantage, to the few at the expense of the many. The President's frank recognition of this faet at the outset of his Message goes far to disarm the antagonism of those who are suspicious of all legislation which attempts to foster the interests of a particular group. Indeed, one of the most effective parts of the President's proposal for ship subsidies is that in which he advocates that the Government shall have complete super vision of the books and financial operations of the shipping lines receiving a subsidy and shall cease paying the subsidy when the profits of the enterprise

456

exceed ten per cent, and, further, shall require the subsidized shipping lines making over ten per cent to pay back annually into the treasury fifty per cent of such excess profits until all the moneys received in the form of a subThis sidy shall have been returned. seems to us to touch the very crux of the matter.

The Outlook has always been afraid of Government subsidies to private enterprises. They do not always lead to corruption, but they always involve that danger. There are members of The Outlook's staff who lived through the second Administration of President Grant. The corruption of that epoch was largely due to the railway subsidies which gave rise to the Crédit Mobilier scandal and tainted the reputation of men as eminent in public life as Schuyler Colfax and James G. Blaine. On the other hand, the transcontinental railways could not have been built at that time without subsidies, and it cannot be doubted that the benefits to the American pcople from the Pacific railways more than compensated for all they cost in subsidies. It can hardly be doubted that under a policy of ship subsidy the ship-owners

T

would use their influence to get as much from the Government as they could. This would not necessarily lead to corruption, but it would involve a danger which ought to be foreseen and, if possible, guarded against.

But the World War has so changed industrial and economic conditions that we do not see how it is possible to revive American commerce on the sea without some form of Government aid. Unaided private enterprise in America cannot compete with governmentally aided enterprise in England and Japan. And the President is right in pointing out that if we have no American shipping our foreign trade is dependent on the pleasure of our neighbors.

If America is to render to the world the service which her size, her wealth, and her ability combine to demand of her, she must furnish her goods to the world.

There are only two ways in which she can do this. We can open our ports to the world and allow all races to come here and share our opportunities with us, in which case our home market would continue to grow in the future as in the past and we might thus perhaps ignore international trade. Or

THE CRUCIFIERS

BY LYMAN ABBOTT

we must establish an international commerce under our own control and be able to carry our goods into every port of the world. We cannot have both restricted immigration and restricted international commerce without being false to our trust as a member of the brotherhood of nations and without impoverishing our National life as a consequence.

But

There is danger in both policies. under present conditions prevailing in the world it seems to us that a restricted immigration and an enlarged international commerce is safer and better than a restricted international commerce and an unrestricted immigration. We think the President is right in his statement that we cannot have an unrestricted commerce with the world if we allow other nations to carry it on for us under their own control.

But in supporting any bill providing ship subsidies emphasis ought to be laid, as it is laid by the President in his Message and by Major Putnam in his article on another page, upon such provisions as, to use the President's own language, "will make impossible the enrichment of any special interest at public expense."

IV THE COWARDLY POLITICIAN

HE kingdom of Herod, dependent on the power of the Roman Government, had fallen to pieces with the death of Herod, and the southern province had passed under the rule of Pilate, a Roman appointed by the Roman Emperor. The Temple at Jerusalem was built upon a broad platform of rock overlooking the deep ravine upon the east, and was separated by another deep ravine from the palace, once of Solomon, now of Herod, upon the west. Adjoining this Temple there had been built by Pilate what was at once Roman garrison and a Roman GovIts broad halls were ernor's palace. almost as wide as the Jewish streets, and its abundant rooms furnished a resting-place for five hundred soldiers, besides the rooms for the Roman Governor.

a

At about six o'clock in the morning of April 7, A.D. 34, Pilate, resting in his palace in this Tower of Antonia, was aroused by turbulent sounds in the street below. He was used to the turbulence of the Jewish people. Twice he had entered into conflict with the priesthood, stirring up the people, and had been compelled, by fear of violence, to withdraw humiliated and defeated from the controversy. He hastened down, stepped out onto the broad space that led directly into the Temple courts, and

there saw a great multitude, growing into a mob. Before him stood a few of the priesthood, whom he hated, and in their midst a single figure, pale, wearied with the night's watching, with some of the signs of the ignominy and shame that had already been heaped upon him, his hands bound behind his back. But something in the soul that looked through his eyes made itself felt even in the heart of the unemotional Roman. He asked the priesthood what they wanted. "We ask," they said, "ratification of our sentence. We have found this fellow guilty,.have condemned him to death, and we ask authority to execute the death sentence. If he were not guilty, we would not have condemned him." "I'm not so sure of that," said Pilate. "What has he done?"

The priests had prepared themselves for this possible exigency, and proceeded with their new accusation. "We have found this fellow," they said, "perverting the people. He has claimed to be a king and has set himself up against Cæsar."

Pilate rightly assumed jurisdiction of the case, summoned Jesus within the fortress for a quieter examination, and asked him for an explanation of these charges. Jesus would not defend himself before a dishonest tribunal. But the Roman Governor, ignorant alike of the

'character and mission of Jesus, was really perplexed. It was his duty to prevent and punish sedition. And Jesus readily vouchsafed him the explanation he requested in a few brief but significant words, whose meaning a paraphrase may help to make clear.

He was a king, but he was no preacher of sedition. Who had brought this accusation against him? The Jews. When was it ever known that the Jewish priesthood complained to their Gentile Government of one who sought the political emancipation of the nation? None knew better than Pilate how restive were the people under the Roman yoke. The voices of the mob before the judgment seat crying out for Jesus' blood were unwitting witnesses of his innocence. He was a king, but his kingdom was not of this world. If it had been, then surely from among the hundreds who only four days before had accompanied him to Jerusalem, hailing him as their monarch, some would have been found ready to defend his person with their lives. Not to found a new dynasty nor to frame a new political organization had Christ come into the world, but to bear witness to the truth.

Pilate, half pityingly, half contemptuously, replied with his famous question, "What is truth?" To this Roman realist, knowing only kingdoms that are built by

the sword and cemented by blood, this conception of an invisible kingdom of truth seemed but the baseless vision of a religious enthusiast. But, though he lacked moral, he did not lack political, penetration. It was clear that this Galilean rabbi was no rival to the Cæsars. The suspicions which he had from the first entertained of the motives of his old-time enemies were confirmed, and from this brief interview he returned to the accusers of Jesus to announce his judgment of acquittal. Then commenced the battle which waged for certainly an hour or more.

Consider the three figures in this battle. First, the priesthood: resolute, earnest, determined, clamorous, inciting the gathering mob, in order that they might wrest from the unwilling judge the condemnation which they could not expect from his conscience or his reason. Second, the prisoner; no pen can venture to picture him-calm, unmoved, silent, interposing to the false accusations nothing but a solemn and witnessing silence. Third, Pilate: a Roman; who believed neither in God nor in immortality; whose moral sense had in it no religious inspiration; whose only support in an hour of trial was that sense of honor so much vaunted and so feeble; who would have resented with wrathful indignation the charge of cowardice, and yet who proved himself a coward in an hour that tried his courage. He endeavors by various devices to appeal to the sympathies of a mob that have no sympathies. One thing he does not do. He does not say to that gathering mob: "Though the heavens fall, justice shall be done. Though he that

stands before me is but a weak enthusi-
ast, without friends, though his execu-
tion can do no harm and his deliverance
may do much injury, still I will do jus-
tice, come what may." And when, at
last, the priests cry out in feigned in-
dignation, "If thou let this man go thou
art not Cæsar's friend," and he foresees
his own office taken from him by the
most jealous of the Cæsars, he yields
to the mob and Christ is led away to be
crucified.

"To do a great right do a little wrong." If there ever were a case in which this principle might be invoked to justify an act of injustice, Pilate might have invoked it. In order to save the life of one whom he regarded as a harmless enthusiast he would have had to hazard the lives of a score or more of Roman soldiers, imperil the peace and order of the entire community, and perhaps sacrifice his own office. Was it worth so great a cost to do justice to a single man? Safety for himself, for the soldiers under his command, for the community which he was appointed to protect, all seemed to call for Pilate's judgment: "I do not condemn him; but take him and execute your own sentence upon him."

Are there no Pilates in America? no men who have no other standards of right and wrong than the consequences which they can foresee from a proposed course of action? no men who have been turned from the straight path by public clamor? no danger that we shall bow to the will of the crowd despite the protests of our conscience? no tendency to write across the sky, as though it were

a divine law, Vox Populi; Vox Dei? Whoever in political life consents to be a partner in putting into effect the passions and prejudices of the crowd, or by public act justifies their action which in his own conscience he condemns, or puts his own safety or the safety of others or the preservation of peace above doing justly, repeats the sin of Pilate. Nor is it only in political life that Pilate is seen. The broader lesson of this partner in the crime of the crucifixion my father has stated with characteristic plainness of speech:

"Very few men ever think of comparing themselves with Pontius Pilate, or with the soldiers who executed his orders, when perhaps there are not anywhere in the Bible delineations of character which might be more universally appropriated than these. Neither of them had any special hatred for the Saviour. Pilate would have done his duty if he could have done it by any common sacrifice; but, like multitudes, probably, who will read this examination of his character, he was not willing to make the sacrifice that was necessary in taking the right side. The reader fluctuates, perhaps, just as he did, between conscience and temptation, yielding more and more to sin, and finding the struggle more hopeless the longer it is continued. A religious book, an afflictive or a warning providence, or an hour of solitude, quickens conscience and renews combat; but the world comes in with its clamors, and, after a feeble resistance, he gives way againPilate exactly, in everything but the mere form in which the qeustion of duty comes before him."

N

ORDER AT STAKE IN INDIA

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE BY P. W. WILSON

TOT since the Mutiny has India been confronted by a crisis so serious and uncertain as "the show down" which is challenged to-day. In the ordinary course of nature, coalitions, even when led by Lloyd George, come to an end, but few were so pessimistic as to anticipate that dissensions in Downing Street would extend from Ireland and the reform of the House of Lords to the illimitable battle-ground of an aroused Asia. There could not have been a worse moment or a more perilous topic for Ministerial differences in London, and if politics be now played, it will be playing with fire.

First, we have the dismissal of E. S. Montagu, Secretary of State for India in London. One factor in his situation is that, like his cousin, Sir Herbert Samuel, in Palestine, and the Viceroy of India himself, he is a Jew, and it has never pleased the Tory Die Hards of the "Morning Post" that Imperial responsibilities so vast should be so intrusted. After all, Disraeli won his place, not as

a Jew, not even as a convert to Chris

pressed by Lord Reading, there are two

tianity, but as a Jingo who made Queen. views even among Montagu's Liberal
Victoria an Empress in Asia. Montagu,
on the other hand, is a Liberal, trained
as Asquith's private secretary, and at
the first blunder he fell at a blow. His
departure weakens Liberalism in the
Cabinet. But it is doubtful whether he
has helped himself or hurt the Prime
Minister by his embittered apologia. It
may be true that, under Lloyd George,
many graver improprieties have OC-
curred than the publication of Lord
Reading's opinion of Turkey without
the consent of the Cabinet. But, on the
other hand, if Lloyd George unmade
Montagu, it was Lloyd George who first
made him a figure in history. And, in
any event, the issues involved far tran-
scend the wounded feelings of a politi-
cian somewhat roughly displaced. The
very emergency will tend to rally the
nation to the man at the helm. If there
is really to be rebellion in India, Britain
will be one unit.

comrades. Disciples of Gladstone, who wanted Turkey to be driven bag and baggage out of Europe and delivered his last oration on Armenia, will find it difficult to believe, especially after Bryce's report on the Near Eastern massacres, that Lord Curzon, of all men, who as Viceroy in Calcutta so carefully cultivated the Moslems even at the expense of the Hindus, is now, as Foreign Secretary, indifferent to Moslem sentiment, merely because he does not outbid France in her bargain with Kemal. Imagine what might be Lloyd George's rejoinder. Do not the Mohammedans in India, so he might ask, enjoy full liberty of worship, and even of marriage-a liberty more complete in domestic matters than the laws obeyed in the United States by the Mormons? When the Sultan of Turkey ruled over Christians, why did he not grant the same religious equality? With the Moplas in Malabar On the claims of Islam, so vigorously making Moslems by massacre and muti

at

lation, are the Greeks in Thrace, are the Armenians, are the pilgrims who throng the birthplace of Christ Bethlehem, are the Arabians, to be handed back once more to Ottoman misrule? This is not Indian Nationalism; it is Pan-Islam. In Tripoli and Morocco there are the echoes even to-day of conquest by the sword. And Europe cannot surrender her statesmanship to the Prophet.

If Montagu had based his challenge on the arrest of Gandhi, he might have found himself on stronger ground among Liberals. For the law to touch one who has been compared with the Christ is an ominous act that requires justification. Has not Gandhi opposed caste? Has he not restrained the violent? Has he not done penance for disorders? Is he not poor and of a blameless life? Will he not fast in prison, like Terence MacSwiney, and die a martyr? The answer of the British Government would be that Gandhi's influence has been welcomed as long as he preached social reform and

a common citizenship in India. But when he is compared with the Christ, it must be remembered that even under the Roman Empire the Christ never insisted upon non-co-operation, but, on the contrary, set himself to feed the people and to heal them, which are the very tasks undertaken by Westerners in India when they deal with plague and famine and disease. In declaring that the established Government is wholly an evil thing, even as carried on by Indians themselves, Gandhi cannot escape responsibility for the effects of his own language. He denounces; others strike. And his name has been openly used as a plea for attacks on Europeans, women as well as men, and even on missionaries. No native prince would permit Gandhi to reside within his territory. Such men as he quickly disappear.

The arrest of Zaiglull in Egypt came as a relief to the community. It is by no means certain that the reaction on Gandhi will be otherwise. India has now her Parliamentary system. Her

ablest citizens are seeking patiently to solve her problems. Yet their efforts are stultified by a constant succession of strikes, boycotts, and attacks on life and property. The official demand of the extremists in the United States is that this country shall supply arms for a revolution in India and call upon the British navy to allow their importation. Even Gandhi admits that his movement means "seas of blood." The opinion of Sir Pertab Singh, himself a Moslem, is that if Britain withdraws from India there will not be a virgin or a gold piece between Calcutta and Peshawur. Disarm the Government and arm the crowds, and this must happen. Sir Henry Rawlinson, the Commander-in-Chief, has therefore insisted on the importance of the army. But the use of force is not enough, and it is to be hoped that Lord Derby, or whoever succeeds Mr. Montagu, will resolutely persist also in the development of representative institutions and in broadening the work of education.

E

FINISHING BEFORE IT BEGINS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE FROM EUROPE BY WILLIAM C. GREGG

UROPE looks bad. A manager of a large American banking company said to-day, "Things are getting worse.

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The franc and pound are advancing in value-probably as the result of Germany buying exchange to make a few payments of about seven million dollars each, ten days apart.

In the last two weeks the dollar has dropped ten per cent in purchasing power. Prices have not changed. The American tourist is not happy about it. The fog over Genoa has lifted a little. We now see an indefinite Conference delay and trouble about admitting Russia.1

Lenine and Trotsky are leading members of the Executive Committee of the Third Internationale. This Committee recently sent out appeals to radicals to foment revolution in the armies and navies of all countries. It is hard to see how these countries can work up much enthusiasm about sitting around the same table with the Bolshevik.

Many speeches and interviews are coming from the Russian radicals now. They have much to say about the strength of their army of two million men. They warn others to be on their good behavior at Genoa. They have no word of thanks for food and transportation from outside to save the starving from the sins of the Soviets. At the first gesture of world willingness to help them at Genoa they sneer and brag.

1 This was written some time before the American Government declined the invitation to Genoa. Later events have confirmed Mr. Gregg's words.-The Editors.

.

The proposed economic conference with its thirty-odd nations, including Germany and Russia, will probably be the antithesis of the Washington Conference in every way, beginning the contrast by probably never happening.

It has all the elements to make up a rough-and-tumble fight. It has none of the elements of cohesion to a conclusion.

At Washington we found a small board of directors called together to vote themselves dividends. The programme of the chairman went through with cheers. Mr. Balfour said, in substance, "Now that the German fleet is destroyed, disarmament is delightful."

At Genoa the first thing heard from the chairman will be, "Every nation must balance its budget." What a merry "Ha! ha!" that will create. Then from thirty-odd throats will come, "How?" With this splendid start, they will never get down to the answering details. There will be committees appointed and many reports made. Will any be unanimous? We can hardly imagine it.

If the Conference formulates a programme, it will only be reported to each respective country for its consideration. Each country has already been considering the only conclusions that can be reached: (1) Expenses must be reduced to income. (2) No loans will avail between bankrupts. (3) No securities can be pledged internationally which cannot be reached for national taxes; that is, if Germany cannot tax the wealth of her business men, there is no use pledging

her wealth as a basis for foreign loans. (4) Incomes from national industries (tobacco monopolies, railway revenues, etc.) which are now used for national revenues, cannot be pledged for international loans; that is, Austria cannot pledge the revenues of her street railways for foreign loans (although she may be doing it), because she must keep such revenues to live on.

To follow this line of thought suggests that the Conference is finished before it is begun. But we are overlooking one possible feature of the meeting at Genoa of considerable importance-its political possibilities. If Mr. Poincaré remains Premier of France, I do not think it will be possible for the old political hacks to keep the Conference alive only for their possible personal prestige. Lloyd George is charged by his English opponents with planning the Genoa Conference to carry the British elections this fall. I do not know about that; but we must remember the recognition he gave Russia a year ago. England made a trade agreement with the Bolshevik Krassin, who spent several weeks in London. The trade agreement was demanded by the labor element in England. Perhaps it did no harm. Little came of it, be cause the Russians had no money or goods for a trade. There was no reason why as intelligent a man as Lloyd George should go into it except for some such reason as politics.

Europe, willingly or unwillingly, is running behind. Every country has a deficit. No one has worked a miracle by which deficits can be stopped. You

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