"The new competition is on a handsome scale. The prize is $5,000. . . . All nations may compete, the life may be of anyone in recorded history, the length must be 'reasonably full-sized'; and in addition to the winner it is hoped that several other biographies will be accepted by the Press.

This is something like a competition; it is doing things on what we used to call a royal scale, but what may now be known as an American scale." - A. N. M. in the MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.

"The fields of Biblical, European and American biography have been extensively cultivated but the oriental field has not been intensively tilled. There are a number of eminent Chinese, Hindus, Japanese, Mongols, Persians, and Turks whose careers are capable of yielding the most interesting biography of any description, kind or sort. In Latin-America also (including FrenchCanada before 1763, Spain in California and the West Indies) there have been many historic characters whose lives possess picturesque interest and profoundly significant personality." -CHICAGO JOURNAL.

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The GUIDE POST

HE quality that sets THE LIVING AGE apart from any other magazine is the variety of its writers' viewpoints. THE LIVING AGE is unique because it alone reprints and translates from the press of the whole world full length articles by foreign writers, not mere excerpts or press cuttings. It is thus able to capture for its readers that indefinable but very real thing known as the 'national point of view' — not of any one country but of all the widely different countries of the globe. That alone makes it stand out among publications.

Take, for example, the contents of this October number. Writers representing six nations contribute an Argentine, a German, a Spaniard, a Frenchman, several Englishmen, together with three Americans to keep the balance true. Such an assemblage provides a variety of viewpoints, attitudes, and prepossessions out of which our readers will construct for themselves an outlook on the swiftly moving modern world more cosmopolitan and better ballasted with fact than any but a LIVING AGE audience can hope to possess.

The sources of our reprinted and translated articles are often quite as important as their authors. Wholly to understand the fierceness of Alexander Macrae's attack upon the leaders of the American Revolution, in his article 'The Birth of a Nation,' one should remember that the National Review, from which it is taken, is an uncompromisingly nationalistic British monthly of small circulation which is not usually inclined to look with favor on anything American. Again, the disfavor with which 'A German Correspondent' regards Ahmet Zogu is partly accounted for by the liberal traditions of the Vossische Zeitung (Berlin) in which he writes, which has no liking for kings or dictators. To understand fully the position that M. Ludovic Naudeau, who writes this month on the proposed union of Austria and Germany, occupies in French journalism, it is well to ponder the traditions of Le Temps of which he is Rome Correspondent. One of the oldest French newspapers it was founded in 1820 - Le Temps is generally regarded as semi-official. What a member of the Temps staff says, therefore, is likely to be pretty close to the official view of the French government, which in this case is inevitably distrustful of Germany and eager to encourage Austria to maintain cultural and political independence.

Among other important contributors of the month are Señor Gaziel, a Spanish journalist; D. M. Thornton, a young English writer; Sisley Huddleston, former Paris correspondent of the London Times, whose article on Senator Coty's new newspaper will be followed next month by an article on the Senator himself; Jesse Isidor Straus, an Overseer of Harvard University and prominent New York merchant, who has recently returned from a European tour on which he had ample opportunity to familiarize himself with foreign views of Governor Smith's candidacy; and two distinguished novelists, G. B. Stern (in private life, Mrs. Geoffrey Lisle Holdsworth), writing expressly for THE LIVING AGE, and the versatile Stacy Aumonier.

Ernest E. Williams, who in The Carlisle Experiment' describes a British adventure in liquor regulation - not prohibition is a Barrister of the Inner Temple and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. H. Lucius Cook is a member of the faculty of New York University. Ernest Dawson, who contributes an unrivaled pen picture of Joseph Conrad, writes as an intimate acquaintance of the great novelist. Alberto M. C. Fournier is an Argentine journalist who has for several years concerned himself with the moving pictures' not wholly favorable effect on international relations.

To agree with what all these various writers have to say is quite impossible. One would have to be a kind of intellectual chameleon, so various are their opinions. But complete agreement with every author is no part of THE LIVING AGE'S programme. Rather, our magazine may be said to reverse the action of a prism. The prism breaks up white light into lights of many colors. THE LIVING AGE concentrates lights of many colors and combines them into the white light of truth.

The ADVISORY COUNCIL

Paris, France.

18.

VENIZELOS AT THE HELM AGAIN

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HE assumption of power in Greece by Eleutherios Venizelos, whose career is sketched elsewhere in this issue, is an event which promises well for the immediate future in the Eastern Mediterranean. It offers the best possible ground for hope that Greece is at last ready to settle down, abandon the perpetual political turmoil from which she has suffered more, longer, and with less profit than any other Balkan state; and go to work in earnest on her problems of post-war reconstruction, which are far more difficult than those faced by her neighbors.

To understand the difficulties that M. Venizelos faces, one must remember that (except for the Turks) the Greeks have been under arms longer than any other modern power. Greece mobilized with the other Balkan states when she went to war with Turkey in 1912. The two Balkan wars employed all her strength until late in 1913, and before demobilization had been completed, the World War was upon her. Although the Greek Army did not at once take an active part in that struggle, no state least of all a small one can send its soldiers home when the rest of the world is ablaze. The army remained on approximately a war footing until eventually, after the Venizelists had broken the power of King Constantine, Greece entered the War on the side of the Allies. In 1919, when the rest of the world was demobilizing, the Greek army occupied Smyrna; and presently, urged on by the military ambitions of King Constantine after his return to power and the fall of Venizelos, engaged in its grandiose attempt to wrest from the Turks even more of Asia Minor than the Allies had awarded Greece. How this ended, all the world knows. The overwhelming Turkish victory, the capture and burning of

Smyrna in 1922 marked the end of Greek ambitions in Asia Minor.

Greece had been under arms for ten years. Such of her young manhood as survived had lost the best ten years of their lives, had lost the opportunity to gain footholds in civil life, had lost the early training in business, trades, and professions whereby they might have learned to serve their country in the arts of peace. Then came the so-called 'exchange of populations' with Turkey. The Turkish nationalists who, under Mustapha Kemal Pasha, had made good the gravest of Turkey's war losses, were determined to end once for all Greek ambitions to possess the lands in Asia Minor which had large Greek populations. They compelled an agreement under which Greeks in Asia Minor were to be exchanged' for Turks living in Greece. Theoretically, the property of each group of refugees was to be used to recompense the other for what it had left behind. Practically, such a plan was unworkable. Greece, exhausted by the financial difficulties due to ten years of war and by her internal broils, found herself suddenly presented with a million destitute citizens, for whom there was no place, but who, nevertheless, had to be taken care of. Even with the aid of the League of Nations, the task was almost insuperable.

It was made more difficult by the perpetual political intrigues, which the volatile Greek temperament encouraged. The Smyrna disaster cost King Constantine his throne for the second time. His son Alexander, who succeeded him, died from the bite of a pet monkey. King George, Alexander's brother, was driven from power, and a republic was established. The republic became a dictatorship and then again a republic. Royalist plotted against republican, republican plotted against republican, republican against royalist, and the republican factions plotted against each other.

Lately there have been serious strikes among the tobacco workers around Salonica, driven to desperation by the low wages due to the masses of unemployed refugees who have glutted the labor market. Troops, called out to suppress the strikers, are said to have refused to fire. As usual, Moscow's hidden hand is suspected. The election which brought Venizelos back to power was held amid such intense suspicion that it was seriously proposed to mark each voter's fingers with a chemical after he had cast his ballot, to prevent 'repeating'

an attempt abandoned only because the election officials could find no harmless chemical the traces of which could not be removed the same day.

Such is the situation that M. Venizelos inherits. Admittedly the equal in talent of any living statesman, he becomes Premier under conditions which, in spite of their distressing aspects, are in certain respects more favorable than those under which he held office before. Except immediately after the Smyrna disaster, the country has never been in worse condition; but it has apparently learned its lesson - at least for the time being. M. Venizelos has forsworn any intention of further military efforts in Asia Minor. The Greek lands there, he admits, are lost for good. That means no more military adventures, and no more war drains on the treasury.

The election returns show that he has a united Greece behind him. Royalist plots seem, for the time being, in abeyance. The Great Powers with whom he has long dealt and with whom he must now deal, know him, admire him, even trust him so far as one statesman ever trusts another. If Greece will only trust him too, and support him long enough, he will probably succeed in putting the country on its feet. But there is always a disquieting reflection: in this wicked world a really great statesman