The Guide Post W ITH their third number in the new format, the editors of THE LIVING AGE have reached a point where it is possible to pause for a moment and take stock of what they have accomplished. It is gratifying to find the new LIVING AGE hailed with favorable comment by subscribers, the press, and the magazine's oldest friends. 'It looks both diverting and illuminating, writes Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, editor of the Atlantic Monthly and former President of THE LIVING AGE Company. 'A hasty glance at the new LIVING AGE fills me with admiration for its contents and particularly for the way it is gotten out,' writes Mr. Robert Littell, contributing editor of the New Republic, dramatic critic of the New York Evening Post, and a great-grandson of E. Littell, who founded the magazine in 1844. 'I think you are getting out an extremely interesting and well put together magazine,' says Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the Nation. A brilliant piece of work,' says Bruce Bliven, managing editor of the New Republic. The old magazine was always a pleasure to have,' writes a subscriber of long standing, 'but this new one simply could not be on the table and stay unopened. The larger size, the distinct print, is a comfort to a subscriber of many years,' writes a reader in Winnipeg. 'Not least is the inclusion of articles by American writers, as well as the illustrations." Not all of our subscribers, it is true, have been equally pleased with the change. One indignant reader, explaining that his family have subscribed since 1844, asked why he had not been consulted before any alteration was made. Another described the new magazine as 'this flapping monster. One elderly reader felt that in its new form THE LIVING AGE was too large to read in bed, and another subscriber complained that it could no longer be conveniently balanced upon the faucets of the bathtub, to be read in that position by the bather. Editorial opinion has been uniformly favorable. One of the most encouraging aspects of our contemporaries' comments is the readiness with which they recognize the fact that the changes we have made represent no lowering of THE LIVING AGE'S Ssomewhat exalted eightyfour-year-old standards. 'Good luck to the rejuvenated octogenarian!' exclaims the New York Times, in an editorial headed ‘A Boston Institution Moves.' Boston newspapers are gracious enough to lament the removal of the editorial offices to New York. 'We regret the removal to New York,' says the Boston Herald, 'while we look forward to an intimate acquaintance with a periodical which we trust has as many years of useful service ahead as it has enjoyed in the past.' 'As a symposium of foreign thought and opinion,' says the Christian Science Monitor, 'THE LIVING AGE has for many years past been preeminent. While its new form and style are distinctly more popular, they will best contribute to its betterment if the old substance be steadily maintained.' Similar comments come to us from every part of the country. World Travel A Ninety-Day Forecast of Picturesque and Distinctive Events Abroad AUSTRIA VIENNA. November 17th through 20th, Schubert Centenary Memorial Services (Official), masses, concerts, addresses. BELGIUM BRUSSELS. December 8th through 19th, International Automobile and Motorcycle Exhibition. CZECHOSLOVAKIA Practically all the changes in editorial content had been made before the format of the magazine changed. THE Living AGE adheres now, as before, to its policy LIEGE. November 3rd, St. Hubert's Day. of giving its readers, month by month, a survey of world opinion as expressed in the press of the entire globe. It does this in a unique manner, attempted by no other periodical - reproduction and translation of complete articles, not mere excerpts, from every magazine and newspaper of importance in every foreign country. Only one entirely new department was introduced in the September number, the series of excerpts from the world's press known as 'World Records.' With this issue we introduce to our readers one more new department in our 'Paragraphic World Tour,' which is designed to give the busy reader a swift view of some of the important and diverting things that escape the average newspaper or magazine. THE LIVING AGE is also instituting for all its readers an information and advisory service of unique usefulness. Answers to inquiries concerning current foreign developments, political, economic, or social, which do not involve prolonged research, will be cheerfully given. Travel data will be furnished for short trips or longer tours. Information concerning books will be promptly supplied. Readers of THE LIVING AGE who arrive in New York City by steamship, railway carriage, automobile, or æroplane may communicate with the Service Department of THE LIVING AGE, 280 Broadway, New York City (Worth 4967), for information concerning New York hotels, shops, banks, doctors, lawyers, clubs, amusements, public officials, even matters of custom and usage. Whatever affects the enlightenment, peace of mind, or pocketbooks of its readers is of concern to THE LIVING Age, NATIONAL CELEBRATION. October 28th, Independence Day Celebration. PRAGUE. November, entire month, Exhibition of 'Manes,' the Society of Czechoslovak Painters and Sculptors; entire month, Exhibition of the Kyasoumna Jednota,' the Society of Arts. DENMARK COPENHAGEN. November 26th, Inter-Scandinavian Tennis Tournament. EGYPT CAIRO. December 15th through 22nd (probably), International Medical Congress. FRANCE NATIONAL CELEBRATIONS. November 1st, All Saints' Day; 2nd, All Souls' Day; 3rd, opening of the hunting season, blessing of the dogs; 24th, St. Catherine's Eve (celebrated by unmarried girls); 25th, St. Catherine's Day (celebrated by unmarried girls). December 5th, St. Nicholas' Eve; 26th, Straw Day. AVIGNON. November 30th, Fête of the Separation of the Waters. NORMANDY. December 1st, St. Eloy's Day (observed in Boulogne, St. Valéry, and other seacoast towns). PARIS. November, entire month, International Nautical Show; 3rd through 6th, PanEuropean Congress; 25th, St. Catherine's Day (procession of unmarried girls). GERMANY BERLIN. November 8th through 18th, International Automobile and Motorcycle Exhibition; 22nd through 24th, Congress of the Technical Society for Shipbuilding. December 4th (probably), German Machine Engineers' Society. BREMEN. November 6th, Great Festival and Holiday. DÜSSELDORF. December 1st through 2nd, Association of German Iron Foundry Engi neers. GREAT BRITAIN NATIONAL CELEBRATIONS. November 5th, Guy Fawkes Day (parades and bonfires); 11th, Armistice Day. (Continued on page 239) Ꭱ Rin The World Over THE LEAGUE LOOKS THE WORLD OVER USHING from their hand-shaking in Paris over the Kellogg Treaty to the more mundane affairs of everyday diplomacy at Geneva, European statesmen have seemed to find the Council and Assembly tasks strangely difficult this fall. True, the 'old crowd' has not been there in full force. Chamberlain and Stresemann are still recuperating from illnesses more real than the conventional indispositions of most officials facing unpleasant tasks. But the general political situation itself has been far from favorable to League action. Europe's masters of political legerdemain have had to face some unusually disconcerting divergences between theory and practice. Item: given France and Germany, each with an electorate that has not forgotten the late great unpleasantness; reconcile the spirit of Locarno with the facts of the Rhineland occupation. Item: given Russia and the United States engaged in watchful waiting; make the Anglo-French naval 'accord' conform with plans for disarmament. Item: given the United States supreme in the New World; reply to Costa Rica's query on the status of the Monroe Doctrine under the Covenant in a way acceptable to Latin America and inoffensive to Washington. The League makes it possible for the statesmen of most of the world to deal personally with problems of diplomacy that were handled before the War in the frigidly impersonal atmosphere of foreign offices and in written communications. The Ninth Assembly enabled five premiers and twenty foreign ministers to get together easily without arousing the people back home; this would have been impossible if formally arranged conferences had taken place. Discussions were begun on two Council problems matic encumbrances heaped by the Powers upon the disarmament problem, the Ninth Assembly dealt with less spectacular matters in a satisfactory way. The election of an American jurist to the vacant judgeship on the Permanent Court of International Justice was a foregone conclusion; Charles Evans Hughes was named. The League budget, administrative questions, and reports from the many League bodies likewise were routine items on the agenda. There was a surprise, however, in the outcome of the contest for the three Council seats. Spain's return to League activity implied the granting of a seat, and she received one; but the defeat of China for reëlection to the Council was unexpected, and the Chinese Nationalists were disappointed when Persia was given China's place. The deadlocking during the past year of efforts to reach agreement on a world conference made the arms question dominate the Assembly session. This furnished the background for the Rhineland issue. The Allied occupation of Europe's battleground of the centuries, in turn, opened up the discussion From Simplicissimus, Munich of reparations, which centred "THE KISS OF PEACE' about the Dawes Plan and Germany's total payments. The Allied debts to the United TH. TH. HEINE, dean of German caricaturists, makes clear the con- coupled with reparations; and the larger aspects of disarmament. Both gave opportunities for the launching of ballons d'essai with which to test the reaction of the United States to these world moves. Admittedly hampered by the diplo scene. This disconcerted the European statesmen in their efforts to strike a bargain for the peace of the Old World, just as the sphinx-like attitude of Washington toward the Anglo-French naval manoeuvring baffled them in disarmament plans. Panegyrics in the Assembly, lauding the moral effect of the renunciation of aggressive war achieved in the Kellogg Pact, let loose big guns. The Socialist Premier of Germany, Hermann Müller, delivered his semi-ultimatum on disarmament delays; France's Foreign Minister laid down a counter-barrage. If the German spokesman jolted the Assembly with his warning against governments attempting to follow two roads at once under the impression they could both lead to disarmament, the French reply given by the heretofore peace-pursuing Briand startled all with its direct denial of Germany's military impotence and its scathing denunciation of Russia's military power. This brought into the open the Anglo-French naval agreement, which the British have been bending every effort to explain as a general step taken solely to facilitate the much-desired progress of League disarmament plans. From this, it was but a step to the tense sessions of the Assembly Commission on Disarmament, where the Germans and the British collided headon over the next meeting of the League's Preparatory Commission for the Dis between the European Naval Powers and the United States were reconciled. For practical reasons, Geneva's final efforts to advance disarmament hinged upon Washington's action. Neither Britain nor France wanted to move until the United States made clear its position on the naval proposition the two Old World nations have laid before the Coolidge Administration. Europe apparently has not forgotten the disastrous results of the failure to reconcile the results of the failure to reconcile the conflicting naval interests of the United States and Europe in 1927. These States and Europe in 1927. These conflicting interests stand in the path of all disarmament progress, and consequently in the path of European stabilization. Considered in its broader aspect, the Ninth Assembly really marks the turning of the Old World toward the United States for aid in the solution of momentous difficulties. These begin with the triangle of sea-power, lead into the general limitation of armaments, and end in a labyrinth composed of the problems of security, reparations, and war debts. aspect, the AFGHANISTAN REPORTS PROGRESS armament Conference. Von Bernstorff FRO strove for a meeting before the year's end; Cushendun struggled for a postponement until the crucial differences ROM its Central Asian fastness, Afghanistan reports progress - if that be measured in terms of trousers on, beards off, new flag in, old coat-of arms out, and other royally inspired transformations in the daily lives of this mountain folk who lie athwart the road to India from the north. Just returned to Kabul from his regal adventure among European capitals, King Amanullah has made his kingdom gasp. Headmen attending the triennial parliament found frock coats and felt hats, fashioned in the Kabul Bazaar out of native goods, but from European models, replacing tribal robes and the Koran-ordained turban. The Ameer, not quite prepared to go the lengths of Peter the Great in his campaign for more éclat in St. Petersburg two hundred years ago, nevertheless urged upon these elders recourse to the royal barbers who were instructed to shave off beards wherever possible. Guests at the royal garden party did not squat, as heretofore, on the grassy terrace. Instead, the fierce men of the Himalayan hills sat decorously on benches and became one with all the masculine world. The conventional masculine travail with teacups, saucers, and spoons completed their subjection to the ways of the West. Amanullah added to tribal discomfiture when he appeared in morning coat and top hat to greet them with a hand-shake carefully learned in Europe, instead of permission to kiss the royal hand. Beneath the opéra bouffe, however, the Ameer has effected fundamental changes. The Dzhirga, or Convention of the People, has approved manhood suffrage and the creation of an elective legislative assembly. The law of succession provides for inheritance of the throne by the eldest son of Amanullah and his thoroughly progressive Queen, Suraya. Titles go by the board, as do decorations, domestic and foreign, except medals bestowed in recognition of military service. Afghanistan will henceforth enforce the rule that those entering government employ must have their property listed and keep accounts which cover income and expenditure, not forgetting the limitation placed upon the number of wives and domestics of such officials. Monogamy becomes the rule in matrimony; moderate entourages, the test of households. But Afghan patience has its limits, and the All-Afghan National Convention balked at raising the marriageable age for girls to eighteen and that for boys to twenty. One result of the grand European tour of the King and Queen provides a somewhat cynical, though silent, Afghan comment on the realities of 'civilized' international relations. One of the first things to which His Afghan Majesty turned his attention on his return to Kabul was the modernization of an army which was already far from weak and the fighting qualities of which have never been doubted. The seven hundred delegates to the Conference levied an assessment of a month's salary upon every government employee and asked contributions from every citizen. The funds thus raised will be used to pay for the 103,000 rifles and 50,000,000 cartridges recently ordered from French munition-makers. The orders suggest that, although Afghanistan has been invited to sign the Kellogg Treaty, its ruler has no very lively faith in the results of that much discussed document. Berlin business men, ruefully regarding the orders for French munitions, comfort themselves with the announcement that Germany has an option on future Afghan orders for railway materials, which will help complete the Westernization of the country. CHINESE NATIONALISTS Now THE WORLD OVER under arms of one kind or another in China's twenty-one provinces than anywhere else on the globe; but Nanking, in spite of the State Department's favor, cannot exert the international influence of a Balkan country. Under the Manchus, she seemed the most magManchus, she seemed the most magnificent of autocratic empires, while Peking's mandate in reality rested upon the acquiescence of ten times ten thousand little village communities whose ken did not extend thirty li beyond their own rice fields. Under republicanism, China's insignificant 'popular' government has been an empty shell of state, while real power has rested with state, while real power has rested with the military dictatorships and the embattled politicians. China is too big for one man to control - even beyond the cunning of a Yuan Shih-k'ai in his bid for the Dragon Throne - too big also for any group of leaders that has yet appeared. Now, for the first time in a decade, China's internecine warfare has halted. Is the country like a run-down clock, and are the Nationalists at Nanking seizing the crucial moment to establish a new unity in a war-weary country? Or in the silence are vainglorious schemers winding once again the tired springs in preparation for a new clash of ambitions? For the moment, the game is the Nationalists against the field. The Nationalists are the lineal descendants of the Southern liberals, who broke with the Northern militarists in 1917 and were driven from Peking to Canton. They represent both Sun Yatsen's liberalism and Bolshevist radicalism, tempered with moderate orthodox republicanism. The field they are playing republicanism. The field they are playing against includes every general whose militaristic rule is jeopardized, every disgruntled politician important enough to rate as a chip in the poker game whose stake is China's future. General Wu Peifu, once backed by Americans as the savior of China, is said to be rising phoenix-like in the far-western province of Szechuan to bid once again for the glory that was Peking's. His Northern support comes, we are told, from those who were his bitterest opponents in Manchuria. The main backers of his conspiracy are the leaders of the ChihliShantung clique, together with the notorious Anfu Club of war days, who tricked Wu at the height of his success. His other supporters are Southerners, alienated from Nanking by every sort of circumstance, who are working with dangerous effectiveness from within the Nationalist lines. The forces arrayed against the Nationalists are discordant, and hold together only because they hate Nanking 165 more than they hate each other. Thus the 'outs' make common cause. Their activities began with the premature outbreak of a Manchurian conspiracy and the uprising of Chinese Mohammedans in the rear of Feng Yu-hsiang, whose support is vital to the Nationalists. The Nationalists, in the face of these dangers, have succeeded in destroying the last armed resistance to their sway in North China. In the political reorganization that they have just effected, they have profited by experience. They intend that China shall be governed by the Kuomintang until they have educated the people for democracy. They will govern through the five-board system, which is a step away from the Soviet-inspired committees hitherto constituting the Nanking Government, which existed to keep the administration in the hands of a central council. There remains the saving possibility of pressure from China's neighbors. Soviet Russia is boring persistently into Mongolia; Japan continues her duel with Nanking over treaty revision, and openly states her determination to dominate the Manchurian situation in order to enforce peace in this granary of the East. There are rumors of an understanding by which the Soviets and Japan will concede each other freedom of action in their respective spheres; but the Nationalists still have a trump card. There is just a possibility that there are enough leaders and factions in China who still hate foreigners more than they love their own rice bowls to maintain the Nationalist supremacy. Tragic though China's lot has been, her four hundred millions have an uncanny way of clinging to the essentials of existence under empire, republic, or modern feudalism based on warring leaders. Perhaps the Nationalist reconstitution of China is a flash in the pan; but China, revolution's hardy perennial, promises to muddle through to-morrow as yesterday, despite the fact that famine is stalking in the north and adding its ravages to those of civil war. MAKING MEXICO SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY FTER several months of indecision, A Mexico has embarked resolutely upon a solution of the problems created by the assassination of President-elect Alvaro Obregón on the seventeenth of last July. President Calles will retire when his term ends on November 30th, and has announced unequivocally that he will never again occupy the presidential chair in Chapultepec Palace. Emilio Portes Gil, the thirty-sevenyear-old lawyer and civil servant, elected Provisional President by the Mexican Congress, possesses a picturesque and colorful personality. As Governor of Tamaulipas, and more recently as Minister of the Interior (Gobernación) in Calles's cabinet, he has demonstrated executive skill. He will be inducted into office December 1. A presidential election will be held the second Sunday of November, 1929, to elect a new president, who will take office in February, 1930. The election of Gil does not mean, of course, that Calles is no longer a political power in Mexico. On the contrary, now that Obregón is dead and the Labor leader, Morones, out of popular favor, Calles overshadows every other leader in the land. His career and character are sketched elsewhere in this number. Gil served under Calles when the retiring President was Governor of Sonora. He helped to launch Calles as a candidate for the presidency in 1924. He says to-day, 'My task will be to continue the policies developed by President Calles in all branches of public administration.' Like Calles, he means to carry on the republic's struggle to apply the provision of the Mexican Constitution affecting the status of the Catholic Church. Like Calles, he favors the coming of foreign capital only when this does not involve the exploitation of Mexican resources and Mexican labor. Like Calles again, his sympathies are with the industrial worker and the farmer. The press has been pointing out that Gil That he will face his problems resolutely and assume personal responsibility for his decisions is not doubted by those who his decisions is not doubted by those who know him personally or who have attentively marked his career. In 1919 Gil was an active worker for the candidacy of General Obregón, and served a twomonths' prison sentence for his revolutionary activities. As Governor of Tamaulipas he made war upon gambling and suppressed many saloons in the rural districts, where public sentiment favored such a course. Incidentally, he is said to be a baseball 'fan,' having learned the game on the Texas border. As an ardent devotee of outdoor sports, with a desire to encourage public interest in such diversions, some of his admirers liken him to the late Theodore Roosevelt, of the United States. As a Prohibitionist of somewhat puritanical tastes and personal habits, and a Cabinet member seeking higher office, others find a parallel between Gil's career and that of the more famous American, Herbert Hoover. While Emilio Portes Gil was not a 'caudillo' (an outstanding personage) at the time of his selection to be Provisional President, he enters upon the duties of this office as the unanimous choice of the Congress, a protégé of Galles, and with the avowed support of the most influential military leaders of the Republic. ential military leaders of the Republic. STRESS AND STRAIN IN THE BALKANS differs from Calles in that the retiring WITHOUT producing any very President is a military leader supported by the army, while Gil has never seen active service. But it should be noted that Gil was consulting lawyer to the War Department under Obregón in 1916, and that before his election as Provisional President was allowed to take place, Calles was careful to assure him the support of the military leaders assembled in conference in Mexico City. If Calles' policies are thus to be carried out by a Calles man, it may be argued that the Mexican situation is not much changed. But it should be noted that for the first time Mexico's generals, Mexico's politicians, and Mexico's President are united in a new experiment-that of placing at the head of the Mexican government a man who has been less in the public eye than several of the other aspirants for the office, in an effort to prove to Mexicans and to the outside world that the country is governed not by a man, but by its laws and constitution. It need not be supposed, however, that a weak man, or one content to serve only under the mandate of Calles, will measure fully up to the responsibilities to which Gil must succeed in December. violent disturbances, the Balkans have fully succeeded in the last few weeks in living up to their uncomfortable reputation as trouble makers. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia have been in the throes of parliamentary crises. The coronation of Ahmet Zogu as King of the Albanians added to the dissatisfaction of the Yugoslavs and was greeted even in Albania with rather forced enthusiasm. Hungary's perpetual dispute with Roumania drags on its course, leaving bitterness behind it. Greece alone, under the steadying hand of Eleutherios Venizelos, has since the recent election improved relations with her neighbors and given signs of at least temporary quiescence. Bulgaria's trouble arises primarily out of the vexed question of Macedonia, where the population is partly Greek, partly Bulgarian, partly Yugoslav and therefore, according to the best Balkan tradition, is claimed by all three. There has been endless drawing and redrawing of international boundaries in this troubled region during the last fifteen years, each new settlement proving unsatisfactory to one country or another. The present friction is due to the perennial activity on the frontier of comitadjis - patriotic outlaws intent on mending matters by a little judicious assassination. Some of these Balkan Robin Hoods favor one country, some another; but the most important group is struggling for the establishment of an additional state in the Balkan Peninsula, which already has too many for its own good. This is the so-called 'Imro,' or 'Interior Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.' It demands the establishment of an autonomous Macedonia. The Yugoslavs, annoyed by the constant disorder, some time ago demanded that the Bulgarians suppress all comitadji activity on the Bulgarian side of the frontier. To this Bulgaria replied that the comitadjis never stayed on either side of the frontier long enough to be caught, but were constantly on the move through wild mountain country where popular sympathy and the character of the terrain made them practically secure. When, however, the governments of France and Great Britain joined in demanding the suppression of the 'Imro,' as the only means of improving the relations of Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia, they precipitated a crisis in the Bulgarian Cabinet. Bulgaria has been trying to float an international loan of a hundred million dollars. The Foreign Minister, anxious for the success of the loan, favored granting the Franco-British demands. The War Minister objected, and between the two, the Cabinet fell. Premier AHMET ZOGU, BY THE GRACE OF GOD, Liaptchev has after several attempts succeeded in reconstituting his ministry From Izvestia, Moscow KING OF THE ALBANIANS |