Fresh,glistening green plants. Rainbow Plants SILVER PLANT (Dracaena sanderiana) The clear green leaves are outlined with PARADISE PALM (Kentia forsteriana) The exquisite palm symbolizes ease of living, (Podocarpus elongatus) This is perhaps the only outdoor tree ever Average height 8 to 10 inches in green (Ficus elasticus) One of the most valuable of trees for indoor All the trees and INEXPENSIVE AND UNUSUAL Living Christmas Trees 3 Sizes! 1. Greeting Tree: A unique alternative to Christmas Cards. It expresses the spirit of Christmas exactly. A charming miniature (6 to 8 inches when delivered) that will grow into a large tree. Complete in artcraft pot. SIX TREES $5.75; ONE DOZEN $10.50. ONE HUNDRED $75. (Please add 10 cents per tree for delivery charges.) 2. Table Tree: A shapely spruce (illustrated above), standing 12 to 15 inches in a pretty artcraft pot; can be decorated in any number of ways. ONE TREE $2.00. SIX TREES $11.00. DOZEN $20.00. (Please add 20 cents per tree for delivery charges.) 3. Living Christmas Tree: Stands 26 to 36 inches including depth of red lacquered container. Handsome and valuable. ONE TREE $3.95; A PAIR OF TREES $7.50; TEN TREES $36.00. (If you prefer a fully prepaid shipment add 50 cents per tree for delivery charges east of Mississippi, $1 west of Mississippi.) GUILD LIFE INSURANCE and any one will be replaced without cost within six months if it does not flourish. Articles: TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE LIVING AGE FOR DECEMBER, 1928 Personal Reminiscences of Francis Joseph AN EMPEROR'S ODDITIES. The Progress of Chemistry in the Art of Destruction Japan in China. A Summary of Japan's Attitude toward the New Republic . L. M. 250 Albert Lapoule 254 David John Marshall 257 . Major General R. Isome 260 Lady Heath 263 The International Implications of Artificial Gasoline. An Inventor Discusses the Effects of His Work THE NOBEL PRIZES AND THEIR FOUNDER. A Dynamite Millionaire' and His Legacy Departments: World Travel Calendar. A Ninety-day Forecast of Picturesque and Distinctive Events Abroad The World Over. News and Interpretations with a Map A Paragraphic World Tour. Around the World in Thirty Days Naboth Hedin 294 242 243 248 272 A New Biography of Bach - Persons and Personages. Gordon Craig - Sir Henry Thornton - Ignatius Seipel - Minoru Saito Metropolitana. Table Manners in Paris - Singapore Laughs at Social Ritual — Making Berlin Night Life Safe for the Version of History American Policies, Politics, and People in the Searchlight of Foreign Criticism 298 'Our Heritage'-'Civilization' - 'Ma Mère' · - A Complete Bibliography of the Month's Travel Publications 308 THE LIVING AGE. Published monthly. Publication office, 10 FERRY STREET, CONCORD, N. H. Editorial and General Offices, 280 Broadway, New York City. 35c a copy. $4.00 a year. Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Concord, N. H., under the Act of Congress, March 3, 1879. Copyright 1928, by The Living Age Company, New York, New York. THE LIVING AGE was established by E. Littell, in Boston, Massachusetts, May, 1844. It was first known as LITTELL'S LIVING AGE, succeeding Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, which had been previously published in Philadelphia for more than twenty years. In a prepublication announcement of LITTELL'S LIVING AGE in 1844, Mr. Littell said: The steamship has brought Europe, Asia, and Africa into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections as Merchants, Travelers, and Politicians with all parts of the world: so that much more than ever, u now becomes every intelligent American to be informed of the condüion and changes of foreign countries." 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. World Travel 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 LIÈGE. February 10th, musical festival com- CZECHOSLOVAKIA BOHEMIA. February 10th through 12th, Mardi gras festivals. DENMARK NATIONAL HOLIDAY. December 26th, Boxing Day. DRAGÖŘ. 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. GERMANY NATIONAL CELEBRATIONS. December DÜSSELDORF. December 1st through 2nd, (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 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. 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 From Vorwarts, Berlin NICARAGUA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE UNCLE SAM: 'No interference from Europe! America alone will guard American freedom!' 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? OR a quarter of a century, China has a of a ce valid of con siderable 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 construction 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 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 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 |
