It

To read this book is to get clear-cut pictures of Gandhi and his India, of present-day Japan, of Korea and the Philippines, of Australia, and incidentally of certain phases of our own behavior in Haiti and Mexico. The author is a reporter of a high order. His work here is the work of a reporter. But it is more than that. It is the voice of millions in far-away lands, a voice that is increasing. is more than that. It is the revelation of a man who has thought deeply upon the woes of the world, a man who has concluded that "the white man's domination of the billion men of the East by force must cease." He has come to believe that the West must "shift its course now, while there is still time." We can no longer speak of an unchanging East, for we are confronted with a changing East. Thus Mr. Hunt's book does more than illuminate dark corners of the world; it throws light into the darkness of our minds. His work is simple, but arrestingly vivid. It is a human thing. To read it is to sense anew "all the precious things of real freedom." The author has made it easier for his readers to understand better the massacres, the social upheavals; but, more important, we are made to sense the duty facing Western civilization.

BEHIND THE MIRRORS. By the author of The Mirrors of Washington. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. Pp. I-IX, 1-236. Portraits by Cesare.

The gentlemen who followed the English example and used a duster on American notables of politics a year ago has applied himself again to the task for the delectation of the multitude. And he has done a better job. "The Mirrors of Washington" had much in it that was brilliant and much that was true, but it was marred in spots by an obvious straining for effect, by a fear that unless the dish were highly spiced it would not be palatable to those from whom royalties were to be had.

Examples were the appraisal of Mr. Wilson, erected largely on the foolish hypothesis that he was afraid of rough-and-tumble combat, and the excessively bitter estimate of Mr. Lodge, which somehow left the impression that the author felt that having damned Mr. Wilson he must prove his impartiality by damning the man who had led the opposition in the great fight over the League. One has little of such suspicion of the author after reading his new book.

It bears the marks of genuineness. The author has been concerned not merely with drawing pictures of the great and near great in Washington, although there is some swift, skillful work along that line. He has put his book into the form of a running discussion of events and political phenomena in the past few decades. And that discussion, with its filling of analysis and appraisal of leading characters, quite evidently represents the fruit of long and careful observation and meditation.

One interesting argument of the author is that the Presidency is destined to sink in importance. That will come into conflict with the prevailing opinion. Much of the criticism now heard of Mr. Harding is that he has not been sufficiently vigorous in the exercise of his power, express and implied. That argues a public opinion which craves positive and definite leadership of Congress from the White House, as in the Wilson administration and to a large extent in the Roosevelt administration. And most people think that what public opinion wants it usually gets in this country. But the gentleman with the duster maintains with marked plausibility that when the Senate defeated Mr. Wilson in the treaty fight, it established itself permanently as the real reservoir of power in this government. It demonstrated its possession of that power anew, he thinks, when the treaties from the Washington Conference were presented. The writer paints President Harding as bowing lower to the Senate, in seeking its favor and the two-thirds votes necessary to ratification of the treaties, than any other President had done. And, since foreign affairs and treaty relations promise to occupy an increasing large space in the governmental arena,

the author concludes that this stern and masterful attitude of the Senate and this placating attitude of the President. will continue. From that fact, he reasons on to the time when the Presidency will be reduced to something like the mere formalism of the Crown of Great Britain.

True, the gentleman who dusts the mirrors is in a sad mood, extraordinarily sad mood. There was nobody of real caliber in the White House between Lincoln and Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a bluffing, play-acting figure of enormous vitality and force. Taft was weak and unsure of himself, using a "past" foot and a "future" foot and standing alternately on them. Wilson was a man of great will, an autocrat, with small hatreds. Harding is feebler than Taft. A sad picture indeed.

And a worse one is portrayed when Mr. Harding's Cabinet, so widely praised, is presented to the eye. Hughes and Hoover are the big men. Hughes has a legalistic mind and Hoover a scientific mind, and both are short and abortive in other respects. Daugherty is next in power, and his life philosophy has been merely to "stand close" to power. Weeks is half politician, half business man, and without great qualities. Denby has more heart than head. Wallace is a good technical adviser. Fall is of the breed that turns to lynch law. Melion is a scared multi-millionaire, who depends upon young Mr. Gilbert, the Under-Secretary of the Treasury. Davis is painted as little less than ridiculous.

One becomes suspicious of the judgment of the author. In a world so completely gone to the devil, one suspects that the author's judgment may have gone to the devil along with everything else. And there are occasional and sarprising inaccuracies in incidental statements of fact that make one wonder whether the author is as careful as one of his great, self-assumed responsibilities should be. But the man knows how to write, he has thoughts worth another's, and he has combined the two excellently and produced an arresting and stimulating book.

THE INDUSTRIAL CODE. By W. Jett Lauck and Claude S. Watts. Funk and Wagnalls Co., New York. Pp. 1-264; appendices, pp. 267-571. $4.00.

Mr. Lauck will be remembered as the consulting economist of several of the powerful labor unions and a source of extreme annoyance to numerous powerful heads of railroads and other great industries. Mr. Watts is his associate. They have here written a book that reviews the industrial developments of the war and the varied expressions of industrial unrest and conflict the period between the war and the present. Packed into the book is a really valu able mass of exact information about the theories, claims, and experiments that have come from labor, capital, and publie in the recent period of grappling with the labor question. The authors are well grounded in their subjects, and they put meat and information into their treatment of them. The reader will have a better understanding than may be got from almost any other sources, when he has read what Mr. Lauck and Mr. Watts have to say about the Kansas Industrial Court, the problem of collective bargaining, the living wage, and so on; also, he will have been given an authoritative explanation of the industrial code Mr. Lauck champions, which has been given serious attention by the more far-sighted men in Congress. The appendices, which fill about half the book, contain a large number of documents that will be valuable for reference.

YEAR BOOK OF THE CHURCHES, for 1921-1922. Edited by E. O. Watson. Published by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Hayworth Publishing Co., Washington. Pp. 1-426. In paper, $1; in cloth, $1.50.

This is an invaluable compilation of the data of religious organizations. It contains a highly informative directory of religious bodies that includes much valuable historical matter. There also is a mass of statistics that are needed not merely in the religious circles, but by all classes that have to do with intellectual effort and the guidance of public opinion. Every editor and statesmen, as well as every minister, should have a copy of this book on his table for reference.

I. To institute Conferences of Nations, to meet at stated intervals, in continuation of the first two conferences of The Hague; and

To facilitate the labors of such conferences; to invite accredited institutions devoted to the study of international law, to prepare projects for the consideration of governments, in advance of submission to the conferences; in order

To restate and amend, reconcile and clarify, extend and advance, the rules of international law, which are indispensable to the permanent establishment and the successful administration of justice between and among nations.

II. To convoke, as soon as practicable, a conference for the advancement of international law; to provide for its organization outside of the domination of any one nation or any limited group of nations; to which conference every nation recognizing, accepting, and applying international law in its relations with other nations shall be invited and in which all shall participate upon a footing of equality.

III. To establish an Administrative Council, to be composed of the diplomatic representatives accredited to the government of the State in which the conference for the advancement of international law convenes; which representatives shall, in addition to their ordinary functions as diplomatic agents, represent the common interests of the nations during the interval between successive conferences; and to provide that

The president of the Administrative Council shall, according to diplomatic usage, be the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the country in which the conference convenes; An advisory committee shall be appointed by the Administrative Council from among its members, which shall meet at short, regular, and stated periods;

The chairman of the advisory committee shall be elected by its members;

The advisory committee shall report the result of its labors to the Administrative Council;

The members of the Administrative Council, having considered the report of the advisory committee, shall transmit their findings or recommendations to their respective governments, together with their collective or individual opinions, and that they shall act thereafter upon such findings and recommendations only in accordance with instructions from the governments which they represent.

IV. To authorize the Administrative Council to appoint, outside its own members, an executive committee or secretary's office to perform such duties as the conference for the advancement of international law, or the nations shall from time to time prescribe; and to provide that

The executive committee or secretary's office shall be under the supervision of the Administrative Council:

The executive committee or secretary's office shall report to the Administrative Council at stated periods.

V. To empower the Administrative Council to appoint other committees for the performance of such duties as the nations in their wisdom or discretion shall find it desirable to impose.

VI. To furnish technical advisers to assist the Adminis trative Council, the advisory committee, or other committees appointed by the council, in the performance of their respective duties, whenever the appointment of such technical advisers may be necessary or desirable, with the understanding that the request for the appointment of such experts may be made by the conference for the advancement of international law or by the Administrative Council.

VII. To employ good offices, mediation, and friendly composition wherever feasible and practicable, in their own disputes, and to urge their employment wherever feasible and practicable, in disputes between other nations.

VIII. To organize a Commission of Inquiry of limited membership, which may be enlarged by the nations in dispute, to which commission they may refer, for investigation and report, their differences of an international character, unless they are otherwise bound to submit them to arbitration or to other form of peaceful settlement; and To pledge their good faith to abstain from any act of force against one another pending the investigation of the commission and the receipt of its report; and

To reserve the right to act on the report as their respective interests may seem to them to demand; and

To provide that the Commission of Inquiry shall submit its report to the nations in controversy for their action, and to the Administrative Council for its information.

IX. To create a Council of Conciliation of limited membership, with power on behalf of the nations in dispute to add to its members, to consider and to report upon such questions of a non-justiciable character, the settlement whereof is not otherwise prescribed, which shall from time to time be submitted to the Council of Conciliation, either by the powers in dispute or by the Administrative Council; and to provide that

The Council of Conciliation shall transmit its proposals to the nations in dispute, for such action as they may deem advisable, and to the Council of Administration for its information.

X. To arbitrate differences of an international character not otherwise provided for, and in the absence of an agree ment to the contrary, to submit them to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, in order that they may be adjusted upon a basis of respect for law, with the understanding that disputes of a justiciable nature may likewise be referred to the Permanent Court of Arbitration when the parties in controversy prefer to have their differences settled by judges of their own choice, appointed for the occasion.

XI. To set up an international court of justice with obligatory jurisdiction, to which, upon the failure of diplomacy to adjust their disputes of a justiciable nature, all States shall have direct access-a court whose decisions shall bind the litigating States, and, eventually, all parties to its creation, and to which the States in controversy may submit, by special agreement, disputes beyond the scope of obligatory jurisdiction.

XII. To enlarge from time to time the obligatory jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice by framing rules of law in the conferences for the advancement of international law, to be applied by the court for the decision of questions which fall either beyond its present obligatory jurisdiction or which nations have not hitherto submitted to judicial decision.

XIII. To apply inwardly international law as a rule of law for the decision of all questions involving its principles, and outwardly to apply international law to all questions arising between and among all nations, so far as they involve the Law of Nations.

XIV. To furnish their citizens or subjects adequate instruction in their international obligations and duties, as well as in their rights and prerogatives:

To take all necessary steps to render such instruction effective and thus

To create that "international mind" and enlightened public opinion which shall persuade in the future, where force has failed to compel in the past, the observance of those standards of honor, morality, and justice which obtain between and among individuals, bringing in their train law and order, through which, and through which alone, peace between nations may become practicable, attainable, and desirable.

VOL. 84

ADVOCATE OF PEACE

Edited by ARTHUR DEERIN CALL

Published since 1834 by

No. 8

DEBTS, REPARATIONS, AND THE

AVERAGE MAN

T IS as well, perhaps, to stop at this time and consider

I the responsibility of the average man, the average

citizen, in these matters of international debts and of reparations that are convulsing the world, apparently without beneficial results. It is not sufficient to condemn Mr. Lloyd-George as inconsistent or even as insincere; or to condemn M. Poincaré as a blind militarist. Without undertaking to champion or defend either of these statesmen, or any other of the officials directly concerned with the attempts at the solution of the economic problems besetting the civilized world, it is only fair to point out that the man on the street has a responsibility, and that the manner in which he has acted in the discharge of his responsibility very materially contributes to the complexity and perplexity of the problem, if, indeed, he is not more accountable than any other for the failure to make progress.

Consider the American man on the street. He has done much to tie the hands of the Harding Administration in these international matters of economic concern. Obviously, the debts, amounting to some eleven billion dollars, due this country by Great Britain, France, Italy, and other European nations associated with us in the war are a part of the whole economic problem. It has been said that if the United States canceled the debts, that act would lead to general cancellation of war debts; in fact, Great Britain, the principal other creditor nation in war debts, has offered to cancel the debts due her if the United States will cancel the British obligation. And general cancellation, in addition to wiping the books of confusing accounts and clarifying the atmosphere of world trade, would go far toward setting the stage for such revision of the reparations due under the Treaty of Versailles as might be fairly made. But the Harding Administration cannot even consider cancellation of the

debts.

We do not say that it should favor cancellation of the debts. We think that under any circumstances there should be compensation for these debts; if not in money or goods, then in such courses and policies by Europe as will justify the American Government in believing that cancellation of the debts would be a lift for peoples sincerely and earnestly trying to recover a sound and wholesome progress.

But the point is that even if the international situation were perfectly fitting for such generous action by

the Harding Administration, even if it were transparently clear that cancellation would be an enormous contribution to the world's welfare, and, because we are so much a part of the world, to our own welfare, the Administration cannot consider it.

The average man on the street in the United States thinks that we loaned the money in good faith, as we did, and that it should be paid. He will not hear anything else. He will not even think about the arguments that boil down to the old saying that one cannot get blood out of a turnip. In some measure his attitude is due to speeches in Congress at the time the Administration measure providing for the creation of the Debt Refunding Commission was under discussion. But it is more likely that the extreme speeches made at that time were due to the understanding of the Senators and Representatives of the popular temper.

Similarly, Mr. Lloyd-George finds himself under pressure of the British man on the street. Conceivably, in the passionate desire of British leaders of thought for a restoration of healthful trade and commerce leading to economic stability, and in their apparently firm conviction that the desired conditions cannot be realized until Germany is given some relief, Great Britain might be willing to make large sacrifices. She might be willing to do things that on a pure basis of justice no one could fairly ask. She might be willing to say to the United States with respect to her debt that if given time she would pay it, and at the same time she might say to France that she would forgive the French debt to her as a means of relieving the French pressure on Germany. She might figure, and with reason, that in the long run such a policy would pay her. She might be able to say that her profits, as the leading commercial and industrial nation of Europe, would be so great from a speedily restored Europe that she could afford to stand the loss. But Mr. Lloyd-George dare not do so. Public sentiment in Great Britain is not prepared to tolerate that. The British are taxed enormously. The average man of the United Kingdom, bearing his personal load of taxes, is not willing to forgive debts unless his debts are forgiven; and so the Earl of Balfour conditions the British offer of cancellation on the cancellation of the British debt to the United States.

Take France. The world is full of people who say that the French policy of insisting upon full payment of Germany's reparation obligations is halting the world's recovery. They denounce Premier Poincaré and point out in a very wise way that even while he insists upon payments they are not being made, and that therefore he insists upon a futility, while the world suffers by reason of his insistence. But Poincaré, like Lloyd-George and Harding, must consider that man on the street.

The average Frenchman is burdened with taxes as is the average Englishman-burdened in a measure that the average American cannot visualize, much as he groans under the taxes he pays. And, thus burdened, the average Frenchman recalls that part of his burden arises directly from the war, which he believes was forced upon him, and part arises from the French Government's expenditures for the restoration of the seven devastated provinces, and he asks, Why should not Germany pay? Especially does he ask that when he is told and believes that Germany, not suffering from devastation of great areas of her territory, not suffering from destruction of vast amounts of her industrial equipment, has no greater internal debt than France and has greater natural resources. Is it easy, under such circumstances, for Poincaré to adopt the milder, more generous policy urged on him so constantly in this country and in Great Britain?

Bearing in mind the attitude of the average man in this country and his influence upon the American Government, it is not hard to understand the attitude of the average man in Great Britain and his influence upon Lloyd-George, or the attitude of the average man in France and his influence upon Poincaré. We may say as we do, and pridefully, that we got less out of the war than any other nation; that we sought and that we obtained no territory, no indemnity, no special advantage of any sort whatsoever. And we may conclude that we are justified, our tax burdens being what they are, in saying that we will make no further financial contribution, and that we should not be expected to make further financial contribution. But, standing as we do upon what seems to us to be simple justice, how can we fail to understand the Frenchman, his mind concentrated on his own problems, standing on what seems to him to be. justice; or the Briton, with his mind likewise concentrated on his own problems, likewise standing on what seems to him to be justice? And so long as each stands upon what he believes to be justice and what, in truth, he can demonstrate in a very large measure to be justice, there will be no wise solution of these economic problems.

The condition of the world calls for mutual sacrifice. The world has suffered an incalculable loss in money as in men. The people of the world, irrespective of the boundary lines of nations, have suffered incalculable injustice. The burden of that must be borne. It can be borne only by division. It is a bitter fact, but it is a fact; and the sooner it is realized throughout the length and breadth of the civilized world, the sooner the burden will have been borne the allotted time and will have been discharged, the sooner will the world be on the road to order and prosperity. It is not a time to think only of rights. It is a time to think of co-operation and the duties and sacrifices of co-operation.