The Guide Post

IN

NTERNATIONALLY minded' was the term used by Mr. Charles E. Hughes during the United States presidential campaign, recently brought to a close, to describe one of his reasons for preferring President-Elect Hoover to the Democratic candidate. This is a phrase which the editors of THE LIVING AGE consider especially descriptive of its readers and which has in recent months so frequently appeared in our advertising and correspondence as to give us a sort of proprietary interest in it. But we do not begrudge the use of the term to Mr. Hughes in his help to Mr. Hoover, especially as we understand both of these distinguished individuals to be members of our family of internationally minded

readers.

Because the readers of THE LIVING AGE are internationally minded, it is necessary that what may be termed editorial exploration shall be constantly under way. Day by day and night by night the search continues. From every corner of the globe daily newspapers, weeklies, fortnightlies, monthlies and quarterlies come pouring into our editorial rooms. Here they are opened, classified, and studied minutely. Important articles are translated. Significant foreign comment on the affairs of the United States is laid aside for the department As Others See Us,' or for other uses. Material for each different department is segregated from the rest. This search is always going on, to the end that in whatever language or wherever on the earth a strikingly new or original article may appear, it is discovered, read, and, if found sufficiently important, is presently laid before our readers.

This search through the current files of the world's press has been rewarded this month by several articles of especial interest and timeliness. A paper of farreaching significance, surely, is the study by Dr. Friedrich Bergius of the effect upon international relations of the advances now being made in synthetic chemistry. Dr. Bergius was the originator of the new process for making artificial gasoline described last month. Of equal authority and interest, though in a different field, is the article on Manchuria by Major General Isome, formerly of the Japanese General Staff. These two articles

are typical examples of the services which THE LIVING AGE alone among American periodicals performs for its readers. Both articles appear in journals which are practically unknown, in America. They were published on opposite sides of the earth one in Paris, the other in Tokio. But their significance and importance were instantly recognized in our editorial conference, and so the reader, sitting comfortably at home in his armchair, and planning, perhaps, a foreign journey next year, finds Paris and Tokio in convenient juxtaposition between the covers of THE

LIVING AGE.

The traditionally high standard of the magazine's content is thus maintained. One reason, perhaps, why this standard is so high, is that LIVING AGE translations and reprints have passed the critical reading of at least two groups of editors; whereas the contents of most magazines pass the scrutiny of but one. That is, these articles have first been found worthy of publication by the ablest and most fastidious editors of England, France, China, Germany, Japan, Italy-in short, of every civilized country of the world. They are then reselected by our own group of American editors who have before them as a basis for their choice practically everything of importance that has been printed anywhere in the world.

Readers who are already beginning to ponder the pleasant but sometimes puzzling problem of Christmas gifts will be glad to learn that a gift subscription card designed by the well-known artist, Dorothea Macomber, has been prepared especially for the convenience of LIVING AGE subscribers.

A special gift subscription rate is being offered for the holiday season - five oneyear gift subscriptions for ten dollars. Each will be announced by the new card supplied by THE LIVING AGE, to be sent direct by the donor. The cards are being printed from original blocks on specially imported handmade, hand-tinted paper. Subscribers will receive the new cards, complete with envelopes, in ample time for Christmas use. Further particulars of this interesting arrangement will be found elsewhere in this number.

World Travel
Calendar

A Ninety-Day Forecast of Picturesque and Distinctive Events Abroad

BELGIUM

NATIONAL HOLIDAY. December 26th, Boxing Day.

ANTWERP, COURTRAI, etc. February 10th through 12th, Mardi gras festivals. BRUGES, GRAMMONT, etc. February 17th, carnival.

BRUSSELS. December 8th through 19th,

International Automobile and Motorcycle
Exhibition; January 8th, Festival of St.
Gudule.

LIEGE. February 10th, musical festival com-
memorating birth of Grétry.
LOUVAIN. February 9th, Festival of St.
Apollonia.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA BOHEMIA. February 10th through 12th, Mardi gras festivals.

DENMARK

NATIONAL HOLIDAY. December 26th, Boxing Day.

DRAGÖR. February 12th, annual game of 'Killing the Cat in the Barrel,' attended by Royal Family.

EGYPT CAIRO. December 15th through 22nd (probably), International Medical Congress. FINLAND NATIONAL CELEBRATION. February 5th, Runeberg's Day festivals.

FRANCE NATIONAL CELEBRATIONS. December 5th, St. Nicholas's Eve; 26th, Straw Day; January 5th, Epiphany Eve, celebration of the 'Galette du Roi'; February 12th, Mardi gras. CANNES. February 8th through 12th, Mardi gras festivals.

LOURDES. February 11th, Day of Our Lady. NICE. February 8th through 12th, Mardi gras festivals.

NORMANDY. December 1st, St. Eloi's Day

(observed in Boulogne, Saint-Valery and other seacoast towns).

PARIS. January 1st, Fête of the Circumcision (parades and exchange of gifts); 3rd through 11th, Festival of St. Geneviève. SAINT-MALO (NORMANDY). February 27th, Great 'pardon' of Newfoundland fishermen.

26th, Boxing Day; February 3rd, bonfire celebration of Little Candlemas. BERLIN. December 4 (probably), German Machine Engineers' Society.

COLOGNE. February 10th through 12th, Mardi gras festivals.

DÜSSELDORF. December 1st through 2nd, Association of German Iron Foundry Engineers.

WIESBADEN. January 4th, Kurhaus Concert; 11th, Kurhaus Concert; February 22nd, Kurhaus Concert.

(Continued on page 318)

I'

T WOULD not be surprising if debate in the United States Senate over the Kellogg Treaty should become acrimonious very shortly after Congress reassembles in December. Two issues which are pretty certain to arise are the future status of the Monroe Doctrine and the whole question of disarmament. The recent assertion by President Machado, of Cuba, in his address to the visiting American veterans of the Spanish-American War, that Cuba has outgrown the American tutelage implied in the Platt Amendment, provides one reason for believing that the Monroe Doctrine badly needs defining. This American amendment to the Cuban Constitution, which was accepted by Cuba in 1901, limits Cuba's right to incur debts and gives the United States large powers of intervention. It was of course intended by the United

President Wilson was well aware that otherwise the Covenant, which lay so near his heart, would have one more handicap to overcome in the Senate. It was not feasible to include a similar provision in the Kellogg Treaty, which must run the same gauntlet to attain ratification.

tiations so strongly reminiscent of the year 1914, and why so little progress is made by the preparatory disarmament commission.

Meanwhile, it is pleasant to observe the clarification of one small but important question which has in the past added to the United States' difficulties in

States as a means of defending its rights under the Monroe Doctrine. One can hardly blame the Cubans, or any other Latin Americans, for wondering just what the doctrine means to-day.

After a century of more or less nebulous existence, the Monroe Doctrine still remains somewhat shadowy; and the most recent attempt to secure a definition - Costa Rica's request for a statement of the League of Nations' official view of the matter met with an evasive reply which was plainly due to the League's unwillingness to offend Washington. The Monroe Doctrine was specifically excepted from the provisions of the Covenant of the League because

There seems no doubt that the Senate will immediately inquire to what extent the new treaty will affect America's traditional claim to the right to prevent further interference by the Old with the New World. If this should lead to an official statement of what the United States now understands the Monroe Doctrine to mean, world relations would be greatly clarified - especially if the great 'A.B.C.' nations of South America could be persuaded to accede to it.

Recent publication of the FrancoBritish naval correspondence may also lead the Senate to ask the embarrassing question why, if the nations are ready to abjure war forever, they continue nego

dealing with Colombia and Nicaragua. This is the recent negotiation of treaties between Colombia and Nicaragua, followed by an exchange of notes between Colombia and the United States- all relating to islands off Mosquito Coast, as the western shore of Nicaragua is usually called. This apparently unimportant area affects the interests of the average American citizen much more vitally than is usually realized. For the innumerable islands along the coast are possible bases against the Panama Canal and directly threaten the Atlantic approach to the proposed Nicaraguan Canal, which the growing congestion at Panama may some day

force us to build.

Under the recent treaty, Nicaragua's sovereignty over the Mosquito Coast is recognized, as is also her sovereignty over the Great Corn and Little Corn Islands. Nicaragua and Colombia have disputed over them for a century. They now become definitely Nicaraguan and the leases which Nicaragua has previously granted to the United States are clearly valid. This is important because the islands control the approaches to the proposed new canal.

Colombia's rights in the Andres Archipelago, which lies about a hundred and fifty miles off the coast, are also formally recognized; and her long

standing dispute with the United States Government over Quita Sueño, Serrana, and Roncador Cayos, a little to the northwest, is settled by an agreement that the United States shall be allowed to maintain lighthouses and other aids to navigation, while Colombia shall enjoy full fishing privileges.

Unimportant in themselves, these agreements have a very real value. They end existing friction and they will prevent future disputes if, as seems likely, the strategic value of the islands increases. Implying clearly the eventual need of a Nicaraguan Canal, they suggest the likelihood that the Monroe Doctrine may become increasingly important in the foreign policy of the United States.

CHINA FOR THE CHINESE?

FOR

'OR a quarter of a century, China has been like a chronic invalid of considerable estate. The world at large, obliged by the very survival of the vast Oriental republic, grudgingly to concede that there is a chance for life, remains unwilling to admit the prospect that it may fully recover political health.

The victorious Nationalist Government, resolutely turning its back upon the political miasma of Peking which has proved fatal to so many other republican efforts, appears to be thriving in the atmosphere of the new capital, Nanking. This shift from the 'North Metropolis' to the South Metropolis' of Classical China, it must be admitted, is sound governmental psychology. Freudians might explain this transference of the seat of authority as the long-deferred sublimation of the Chinese inferiority complex. It is the routing of old fears by the forthright return of Chinese power to the very scene of the tragic last stand of the Ming emperors against the rude Manchu overlordship; the manful dispelling of new neuroses by truculently meeting the foreigner himself on the scene of old troubles and the threshold of

new.

On the very spot where the antiforeign 'Nanking Incident of 1927' occurred, these Nationalists have gained full recognition by the United States, Britain's acquiescence in the new order, Italy's more laggard agreement, France's belated acceptance, and even the prospect of Japan's consent to a settlement which meets the Orient's supreme test of saving 'face.' If the Nationalists are regretting the excesses of the past in the moment of crucial success, the Powers are acknowledging that they see the light of China's new day by pledging themselves to real and thoroughgoing treaty revision.

Though this recovery of China's international dignity promises to strike at the almost sacrosanct rights of the aliens who have crowded open the erstwhile Middle Kingdom's doors, the same Chinese leaders who would deny the foreigner extraterritorial privileges welcome alien aid in their task of reconstruction the greatest faced by any people in history. Pressing for the abandonment of the special national and international jurisdictions long a thorn in the side of all Chinese, whatever their political persuasions, Nanking likewise is rushing to completion tariff plans which the Harvard-trained Minister of Finance admits are basically protective, and is striving for recovery of control over communications, the wires of national destiny.

In these changes, of course, the foreigner is finding a welcome as a disinterested collaborator. The Nationalists, to Japan's discomfiture in view of the now dominant trade of the Mikado's Land in China, have retained the British experts in the Chinese Maritime Customs. Engineering and architectural assistance has been sought from Americans favorably known to Chinese leaders Ernest Goodrich and Henry Murphy. An imposing group of 'honorary economic advisers' has been selected which includes Henry Ford, Owen D. Young, Robert Harper, Edwin Seligman and that dean of experts on Chinese affairs, Jeremiah W. Jenks.

There are other signs that a new era has dawned. The successors of Sun Yat-sen, shrewdly weakening lingering 'Red' influences in the Nanking government by supplanting the Soviet-inspired committees of administration with the 'five-board' system, are striving for a new synthesis of East and West. To our familiar executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, there have been added the age-old but rejuvenated Chinese institutions of state those of examinations and censorship. This refurbishing of the native institutions may well become a milestone in China's political renaissance; the welding of modern alien and ancient native philosophies of state may give us a truly Chinese republic.

In the centre of this political scene, Chiang Kai-shek, generalissimo of the Nationalist Revolution, brings the hope of new unity. This truly national President of China, with his fifteen associates in the State Council, inaugurated on the seventeenth anniversary of the first republican assault on the Dragon Throne of the Manchus, are the inheritors of the republic, and make triple obeisance to the portrait of Sun Yat-sen as the patron saint of 'China for the Chinese.'

THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION OME time during the spring of 1929

SOME

there will be a general election in Great Britain to determine what party or parties shall form His Majesty's Government and what party His Majesty's Opposition. The Conservatives, under Stanley Baldwin, will have been in power the full five years which is, by law, the maximum length of time during which any British Government may be in power without a general election. Between September 28th and October 20th, the three major parties held their conferences preparatory to the election, and one can now say with some certainty what the issues will be. Of course any forecast may be upset by the appearance of some entirely unexpected parliamentary or ministerial crisis - that unknowable element element in the elastic British political system which has often in the past changed the whole complexion of affairs almost over night.

A citizen of the United States, who has just voted in a presidential election in which the issues have been, as usual, fairly clear-cut and the personalities of the candidates of great importance, will find it difficult to put himself in the place of a British voter. In England, issues are invariably presented in all their complexity, and personalities count for comparatively little. In fact it is impossible to make the probable issues of the coming general election readily comprehensible; if one would understand them, one will have to have a good deal of knowledge of economics and do some hard thinking.

If there is a poverty of brilliant leadership in England, there is, perhaps because of this lack, a wealth of issues. Since the Unionists have had power as long as the law allows without a general election, they are now obliged to stand on their record. In internal affairs they seem to have the best of it; in foreign policy, they are certainly open to grave criticism.

That a ministry which started so brilliantly with Locarno and the admission of Germany into the League should have come croppers over the Three Powers Naval Conference, which resulted in the unpleasant Cecil episode; over the chilly reception of the Kellogg overtures; and over the Franco-British Naval Compromise the latter three performances perhaps justifiable on the grounds of necessity, but certainly not on those of policy is very unfortunate both for the success of the Unionists in the coming election and for international good feeling. The Liberals and Laborites have here a just ground for criticism. The Liberal programme

calls for a return of confidence in the League and for amicable relations with Washington under all circumstances. The Laborites are a little distrustful of the League on some points, notably disarmament, and insist on the resumption of relations with Russia.

But foreign policy will play a relatively unimportant part in the general elections. The major issue must inevitably be concerned with what measures shall be taken to restore British industry to good health and reduce unemployment. Great Britain is, economically, in a peculiar position; some of its business enterprises are flourishing almost as much as they ever have; the national finances seem fairly sound; but the 'heavy' industries- coal, iron, steel, transport, etc. are barely existing, and it is here that unemployment is at its worst.

The American solution of such a situation would be a system of protective tariffs, but England has tried that solution and found it short-sighted in the extreme. Almost all Englishmen are agreed on this; a few Tories, notably Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Home Office), still yearn for protection, but their yearning is not even sufficiently serious to cause a rift in the Unionist ranks, and the official Unionist policy is anti-protectionist.

The Unionist economic policy is compounded of what is known as 'Safeguarding' and special tax allowances for unhealthy industries. These two elements combine to form one programme. Safeguarding is a mild form of protection, so mild that it cannot properly be called protection at all. It consists of a tariff granted to any industry that can prove to the Government that it is efficient, that it is injured by unfair foreign competition, and that the tariff will not harm other home industries.' The bias has been against granting tariffs. Out of about fifty industries which have applied for tariffs, nine have been granted them, namely: lace, leather gloves, fabric gloves, gas mantles, cutlery, wrapping paper, pottery, buttons, and enameled hollow-ware.

policy will restore to good health the suffering British industries and yet avoid the evils of protectionism.

If this policy is successful, the unemployment problem will be automatically taken care of; meanwhile those out of jobs are being assisted in finding work outside their accustomed trades and in the Dominions. They are also being set to work on the destruction of the slums and the building of proper dwelling districts in the large cities. Ten thousand unemployed were, through the Government, sent to Canada this fall for the wheat harvest; many of these will remain permanently.

In opposition to this programme, the Liberals and Laborites have little to offer. Both unite in condemning protectionism and look with suspicion on safeguarding as an opening wedge. Mr. Lloyd George is urging a return to the farms; Mr. MacDonald, the gradual socialization of industry and the public ownership of coal, transport, power, land, and life insurance. He would support the unemployed at the expense of the government. His programme consists of sixty-five 'steps,' and really outlines an evolutionary process which it would require many years to bring to its end. Which of his 'steps' should be immediately applied, Mr. MacDonald has not made very clear.

It is impossible to tell what the outcome will be, but there are apparently only two possibilities - a Conservative a Conservative victory with slightly increased Labor and Liberal strength, or a Labor-Liberal coalition. The former would probably be wiser for Britain's internal welfare, the latter for her relations with the rest of

245

From the Bystander, London

SHOTS IN THE BALKAN FOG

WH

7ITH apparently every Balkan country celebrating one anniversary or another, Eastern Europe continues its chronic state of alarms and incursions.

As one runs down the alphabet in this part of the Old World, all but Hungary seems to have found good reason for celebration. Austria, from Socialists to reactionary 'Heimwehr' groups, is rallying to 'Republic Day'; Bulgaria has commemorated the tenth anniversary of the accession of King Boris; Czechoslovakia has made a fête of its decade of independence. Early this coming year Roumania is planning to celebrate the defeat of Eastern European Communism, signalized by the entry of the Roumanian army into what was ten years ago 'Red' Budapest. Yugoslavia has just commemorated the crucial Allied victory on the Saloniki front in conjunction with the birthday of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.

Shots in the fog along these Balkan frontiers, however, have continued to disturb European chancellories. Comiladjis, or bands of nationalist irregulars dissatisfied with the post-war map of the Balkans, are further complicating the triangular involvement of Bulgaria, Greece, and Roumania in the Macedonian question. Frontier guards contribute to these complications; fresh trouble threatened for a moment between Greeks and Bulgars, for instance, because a random shot was exaggerated into a frontier 'incident.'

Hungary is gunning for the Treaty of Trianon, which left the Hapsburg state but the shadow of its former self, and the