War and Peace

An Emigré

(Continued from page 12)

'As many diamonds as you wish. 'And the ruby necklace? And the pearls?'

'I will. Take some more dressing, my dear X. A perfect dressing. And the proper documents to go with the stones, of course?'

'Don't let that worry you, my dear Nikolai Nikolaevich. These jewels haven't had any personal associations for a long time. Any hides and furs?' 'Why, yes; to round up the deal. It would be easier for you, too.'

'Certainly. Much simpler to deal with one buyer. Are you interested in wheat? flax?'

'Never mind prejudices, Nikolai Nikolaevich. We are practical men and understand life. Ostend oysters are a real thing. And trout. And Bordeaux. And a poularde with truffles. But ideas

you cannot eat them, can you?' 'You are right, my dear X. A goodlooking woman is a thing I also appreciate.'

For the British Government, war with the United States is unthinkable, and the prospect of war with the United States or preparation for war with the United States never has been and never will be the basis of our policy in anything. Sir Austen Chamberlain before the House of Commons, ‘amid the cheers of the entire House.'

If seventy million Germans wept for a thousand years, they could not make disappear the human misery they caused in Belgium and Northern France. From a war poster (1918) attributed to Herbert Hoover and quoted by the 'Nation Belge' (Brussels) in connection with the Louvain Library inscription dispute.

I suggest you obtain immediate settlement present controversy [the Louvain Library inscription dispute] along lines which will eliminate war bitterness. Cable to Louvain University (1928) by Herbert Hoover as Chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium.

To the intelligent young Englishman, even a superficial study of the map of Europe to-day is enough to make him throw up his hands in despair at the futility of ever hoping to avert another catastrophe. Every inch of the Continent, from Constantinople to Athens, from Athens to Belgrade, from Belgrade to Moscow and Vienna, and Rome and Berlin and Madrid and Parisevery single inch is thickly sown with the germs of war. - Beverly Nichols, young English author of Twenty-Five' and' Are They the Same at Home?'

cars of the best makes, and as many as you care to.'

'Certainly. But then, let's have a paper and pencil and make just a little calculation -'

The following day a modest residence in Passy was leased for Suzette, a FoliesBergère actress, and the lease mailed to her. For himself, Nikolai Nikolaevich 'Bravo, friend! Come on to Moscow. the Parisian bought, secondhand, a I'll show you real marvels.'

'I might come. By the way, do you know that I am a French citizen since day before yesterday?'

'Really! What a wonderful idea. Let's christen your new status. Garçon, a bottle of Irroi, 1911. Don't forget, Nikolai Nikolaevich, to ship us motor

small racing-stable. His wife was presented that evening with a new-the third necklace of perfectly graded, wonderful pearls about the size of cherry stones.

Nikolai Nikolaevich de Chizhoff had now graduated as an accomplished gentleman.

CATS. The feline population of Angora was found to have reached the lowest point on record on the occasion of the recent visit of Queen Suraya, consort of the King of Afghanistan. Desiring to present the royal visitor with an Angora cat as an appropriate memento of her trip, the local authorities found, to their overwhelming embarrassment, that there was no single representative of this famous species to be had for purposes of presentation. The cat marts were bare, and the very few of such animals roaming at will in alleys and back yards were either deemed unsuited to the ceremonies and conventions of court life or nimbly evaded capture.

SILENCE. It has recently come to the favorable attention of THe Living AGE that during the Preparatory Disarmament Conference at Geneva, at which declaimed the Russian, Litvinov, Lord Cushenden, British delegate, for the first time on record, sat through the proceedings without uttering a word.

NEWSPAPERS. The world's record to date for printing the longest serial story is allowed the New Era, a weekly newspaper of the village of Parker, South Dakota, U. S. A. It

World Business

(Continued from page 75)

in dealing with the foreign financial obligations of China. Nanking, now supreme, has declared for the recognition of all legitimate governmental debts; but her leaders leave no doubt as to their intention vis-à-vis the unequal treaties' upon which much of the foreign business advantages depend. These issues are coming close to the United States. Though accepting the rôle of 'the traditional friend' of China, the State Department is by no means friendly to the 'rights recovery movement' if Washington be judged by her attitude toward Nationalist plans. Here the United States holds the decisive political

WORLD RECORDS

took this enterprising journal just twenty-two years and eight months to print, complete, the Holy Bible.

¶ SALVAGE. The longest sea voyage for salvage purposes in maritime history was successfully completed when the 4600 miles between San Pedro, Cal., and Nukulailai Island in the South Seas were recently traversed at top speed by the salvage ship Peacock of the MerrittChapman & Scott fleet, to save the steamship Steel Maker, of the Isthmian Line, driven upon a coral reef during a tropical storm.

AIR SPEED. Major Mario de Bernardi recently flew at the record rate of 318 miles in an hour, or 466 feet in one second, near Venice. This is almost half as fast as sound travels in air (1080 feet per second), but only a small fraction of the velocity of sound in solid substances (sometimes 17,000 per second).

GERMS. Discovered, in London, the oldest living disease germ, with an established longevity of twenty-six years. Average life of such organisms formerly believed to be at most one year; but bacilli sealed in a test-tube in 1902 by Sir William Simpson, tropical disease authority, were found to be still alive and kicking when the tube was opened in 1928.

DEEP DIGGING. A depth of 7,360 feet

said to be the greatest depth to which man has ever penetrated the earth has been reached in drilling operations in the Village Deep Mine in the Rand gold fields, South

Africa. The rock temperature was found to be ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit.

influence in the situation a power many believe to have been indifferently exercised since the Washington Arms Conference.

10. BREAD-POWER

Bread is sovereign power, we were told by Germany's food dictator from his experience when the Reich was turning from empire to republic. Wheat is the dictator of the Soviet dictatorship, the Don peasants are telling Moscow to-day.

The all-important tillers of the soil have been offering a passive resistance to the Soviet grain policy for some time. Both crop area and the harvest have promised to be smaller-enough smaller to cause Moscow to appoint in midsummer a crop dictator and scour the world's markets for alien wheat to beat

79

MATRIMONY. The award for the
strangest reason ever suggested for
a legal separation between a husband
and wife is allowed Mrs. Marie
Westlake, of Chicago, who claimed
that her husband was about to
undertake a non-stop flight from
Chicago to Paris, that he might
have uninterrupted opportunity for
flirtation with
a young woman
companion of the trip.

LOOP-THE-LOOPS. 1,432 consecutive
loop-the-loops were made by Charles
Holman, Chief Pilot of the National
Airways Company, flying over Min-
neapolis, Minn. He was in the air 5
hours, used 97 gallons of gas, beat-
ing by 321 loops the old record of
1,111 held by the Frenchman
Fronval.

¶ CHILDREN. A new world record is claimed for a nine months old girl named 'Happy' Boulestridge, of Nuneaton, Warwicks, England. She is said never to have cried and is therefore well named. Otherwise the infant is normal.

Near Lexington, Ky., U. S. A., has been discovered a boy of seven years with a ten-pound appetite. His name is Charlie Belt. This time it is the surname which is appropriate. His supper at a restaurant recently consisted of: one and onefourth pounds of canned salmon, two and one-half-pounds of pork and beans, one and one-fourth pound of onions, one-half a jelly roll, one-fourth pound of candy, one-half pound of oranges, one-half pound of crackers, three bottles of 'pop,' and three glasses of water. It is insisted that he suffered no ill effects, passing painlessly through the ensuing night.

the peasant sabotage. Hamburg, Amsterdam, and other European ports have buzzed with rumors of heavy foreign purchases by Russia that have filtered to the Argentine and Canada.

Now the weather has turned traitor. Unfavorable conditions have given way to an ideal harvest. Moscow is cajoling the peasants with higher prices for the staff of life and the rod of Russian authority. The 'extraordinary measures' for the forcible collection of grain, put in effect this year, are being tempered with promises of more goods to the villages, far beyond the reach of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its city-dwellers. Restrictions on trade between villages, applied heretofore to drive agricultural Russia into dependence upon Soviet industrial channels, are being lifted.

Paul Claudel

(Continued from page 50)

Claudel is destined to be as great a success in Washington as he was in Tokio. His Embassy has been one of the most popular in the capital — his daughters the most charming. His speeches, his poetry, his personality have endeared him to everyone.

BUT

OUT sometimes when I have seen him facing a battery of cameras during a ceremony of treaty-signing or watched him surrounded by the artificial gaiety of a fancy dress ball, I have wondered if he did not long for his houseboat at Foochow and the pale pearl of the tropic sea where the palm tree bent over the sand and offered its heart to the moon.

So once during the course of an intimate conversation, I asked Claudel if he did not sometimes become bored with the prosaic commercial aspect of the United States and wish that he were back in the Orient. I cannot reproduce the animation in his reply. I can only give his words:

'Oh, the Orient is more picturesque, of course, but not more fascinating. What is more fascinating than standing on the twenty-ninth floor of a skyscraper and watching a snow storm blanket New York? What is more fascinating than looking down upon the traffic lights of New York, watching the automobiles, the trucks and the busses all stop as if moved by a giant machine? New York is superb and mighty and I enjoy it.

'America is like the boom-boom-boom of the battle charge. It is the sustained note. It is necessary in music. They say it came from the negro. I do not know

but America has it. The boom-boomboom, never varying, never letting down.

'You say America is a prosaic commercial world. There is no such word as prosaic in commerce. Commerce is fascinating. I was never so happy as when I was Minister to Brazil during the war, buying supplies for our armies. I was handling beans and lard and pigs. What is prosaic about a bean? It is fascinating.

'I am glad to begin my work in America and to end it here. I am sixty years old. I have been every place. I have seen the world. I have five children. It will some day be time for me to return to my native France. After America I shall do so. I have bought a place in the Alps, where I shall sit and write and he fumbled for the word. 'What is the verb for the word "rotten"?"

'To vegetate,' I suggested.

'No,' replied Claudel, the realist, ""to rot." And I shall go and sit and write and rot.'

Primo De Rivera

(Continued from page 38)

'In an exceptional situation,' they say, an exceptional régime is necessary. In a normal situation we demand a normal régime. Spain, by wisdom and by labor, has made up for her mistakes of the past. We should have confidence in her and should leave her the mistress of her own destiny.' They say also: 'First establish a customs service to stop smuggling. When smuggling has been stopped, get rid of the customs service, or else the customs officials themselves will turn smugglers.'

Such statements are made not alone by former politicians seeking new positions, nor by radicals influenced by republicanism or by the federalism of publicanism or by the federalism of Valencia, of Barcelona, or of Bilbao, but also by good royalists to whom the Constitution still means something big. The people of Leon, proud of their capital with its large number of schools and not a single bull ring, are an example of this latter feeling. The Dictator has visited Leon several times. As order has been more and more completely established in the peninsula, Primo de Rivera's retention of power has seemed less and less necessary, and the welcome which he has received in Leon has hence been less and less warm.

This state of mind is not sufficiently general to create a movement of public opinion. It is obvious that a city which is proud of its schools and refuses to construct a bull ring does not represent the general attitude of Spain. Nevertheless, the country is changing, and little by little life penetrates to the provinces, where lanes which once seemed poetic to Théophile Gautier have become roads crowded with automobiles. But ideas progress less rapidly than means of transportation. Perched upon his mule, dressed in rags, the peasant, noble and

Ν

proud, still greets the passer-by with a 'Dios guarda!' that is not in the least servile. The almost equally wretched student who rides by on his emaciated horse seems just as foreign to modernism; so also the future toreador who flings out his cape before an approaching automobile with a provocative gesture and then dodges the murderous mudguard with a disdainful twist of his hips.

These people, upright but behind the times, cannot yet understand modern ideas. Finding their strength in faith and in tradition, they are kept in a state of torpor by the censorship and by lack of education. Some day, perhaps, the sheep may go mad. But at present they let themselves be shorn quietly; and the public, which is neither enlightened nor organized, shows little interest in, and has no very clear idea of, public affairs.

In Spain, indeed, revolutions are only revolts. The will of the people plays but a small rôle in them. It is the government that controls elections, and not elections that control the government. Incidentally, during past centuries, changes of government were often only the triumph of one general over another. History repeats itself, and the future of the dictatorship depends almost entirely on the will of the King and of the army. The situation of this dictatorship, however, differs from that of the governments which preceded it. General Primo de Rivera has retained complete authority for himself. He can will a thing and can order it done. Often he has said that he did not care about power and that he felt more at his ease at a card table or beside a pretty woman. 'Love for God, for country, and for women' is his favorite theme. But he has also declared that he would not relinquish his power before the appointed time without a struggle.