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the Nationalist influence in German politics. Say, if you please, that the 'spirit of Locarno' was but a momentary gleam, an illusion-at the least the Rhine Pact safeguards France and Belgium; for the British sense of honor is the least illusory thing in the world.

Little comment is required on the year's developments in German domestic politics. The December 1924 elections were in one sense reassuring, in another unsatisfactory. The Reichstag representation of the parties unequivocally loyal to the Weimar Constitution is considerably greater than it was in the old Reichstag and greater than the representation of the parties leaning back toward monarchy (I assume, though a little dubitatively, the People's Party to be of that grouping); on the other hand, that representation was not quite a majority, so that it had to be either a Bürgerbloc Government, to include the Nationalists, or new elections, and after much manoeuvring the former was the choice. It may be said that on a flat show-down of Republic versus Monarchy the Communists would hold the balance; but probably the Republic is safe. The election of Hindenburg was not really a Nationalist victory, but rather a remarkable tribute to that splendid warrior; and, as it has turned out, a deserved one. The popular instinct discovered in him a man to be trusted; and not only Germany, but the whole world, is much beholden to his great good sense and massive integrity.

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indeed! And then what, as to peninsular Spain?

Primo de Rivera has organized a political party y-clept the 'Patriotic Union' to which in due time is to be entrusted the task of carrying forward under 'a restored régime of constitutional normality' the programme of the Military Directory. Some months ago the Marqués took the people into his confidence and with charming ingenuousness admitted that the progress made to date was far from correspondent to his first hopes. But I incline to think that he understated his achievement. Despite the increased expense of the Moroccan War, he has reduced the budget deficit by 40 per cent, and with the end of the Moroccan business the budget should be balanced; the syndicalists and their brethren of like appeal have ceased from troubling; there is little unemployment. The great achievement of the Directory, to my mind, is the Municipal Statute, which restores those Communal Councils anciently so rich in promise. This is to be followed by a Provincial Statute of analogous intention that is, decentralization according to a programme indicated by geography, history, and the manifest genius of the Spanish people. At the best, Catalonia will furnish a difficult problem for many years to come, but it is a problem certainly solvable by enlightened and patient statesmanship. The caciques have been

run to cover.

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But still the programme is far, far from realization. Primo de Rivera is entirely vague as to the date of transfer of his task to the Patriotic Union. "The road of purification stretches far ahead.' There's the rub. Sure provision must be made against return of the caciques. Now what does Primo de Rivera mean by a 'restored régime of constitutional normality'? Does he mean restoration of the old parliamentary system, or

anything like it? That system, a preposterous travesty of English parliamentarism, has been discredited, as a like travesty has been discredited in Italy. With restoration of that absurd system, the Augean stables which the Dictator has been at such pains to clean would soon be in a hideous mess again. Does he contemplate for his Patriotic Union a function like that of the Fascist Party in Italy? He has in the Somaten (a revival and nation-wide extension of a provincial organization) an instrument not so unlike the Fascist militia.

We shall watch developments in Spain with eager interest. The reported activity of the Communal Councils may be earnest of a Spanish renaissance, or it may be that the Spanish people are too sunk in torpor to thrill even to a Cid.

VI

An ancient Chinese poem begins thus in translation: 'At this low ebb, at this low ebb.' That would have been consonant to the mood of Fascismo a year ago; and joyous, lilting 'Giovinezza' must then have rasped. The Matteotti murder had given an opening to the Opposition which they were quick to seize. They gave loud publicity, with suitable garnishment, to sundry acts of Fascist zeal untempered by decency, and the Fascists were reduced to the humiliating necessity of explanations, of admissions, of promises to purge out or effectively discipline intransigent elements which discredited the holy cause. Fascismo was in the doleful dumps, and the Duce himself fell desperately ill.

But the Opposition went too far. The personal charges against Mussolini could not be made good. People reminded themselves of the Red Terror to which Fascismo had been the answer. The Fascists recovered confidence. Certain acts they wisely forbore to defend,

instead repudiating the perpetrators; others they assigned to the category of 'sacred violence.' For it seems that when a Fascist knocks a Communist o' the pate, the violence may be 'sacred'; but not so t' other way around. On March 22 the sixth anniversary of Fascismo was celebrated with incredible enthusiasm throughout Italy. Addressing a vast concourse in Rome, Mussolini, recovered of his illness, shouted: "This meeting marks for me and for you resumption of Fascist action against all our enemies.' (Pause, that 'spak sic things.') 'Will you follow me?'

Well, rather. And ever since Fascismo has been going it strong. In October, Fascismo definitely arrived at its 'constructive phase.' The great Fascist Council passed certain resolutions which are to be presented to Parliament for enactment, and of course it may not be doubted that Parliament will enact them. They contemplate the political and economic reorganization of Italy very largely on an occupational basis an adaptation of Guild Socialism. Not less important, they provide for immense enhancement of the power of the Premier, who is to be vested with effective control of the new system of corporations and syndicates. A happy balance will be maintained between the power of the workers and the power of the employers, all disputes incapable of simple adjustment to be referred to Labor courts. It is of first significance that magistrates to preside over these courts are to be appointed by the Central Government and to be backed by the necessary force. The constitution of the Camera is not to be changed, but the Senate, much enlarged, is to be reorganized, four fifths of its members to be elected on an occupational basis, one fifth to be appointees of the King; the rôle of the Camera to become insignificant. Considering Mussolini's

declared contempt for shams, one may expect the Camera to be relegated to Lethe's wharf in the near future.

The proposals as drafted are rather foggy, but no doubt they will be given clarity and precision in the process of enactment. If a really genuine experiment in Guild Socialism adapted to modern conditions should be forthcoming, the world would be immensely indebted to Mussolini therefor; but the magnitude of the powers proposed for the Premier provokes a certain dubiety. It is proper, however, to suspend judg

ment.

On the whole, Fascismo has been justified of its works, and on the whole Mussolini's Dictatorship has been beneficent. He has balanced the budget, improved trade, greatly reduced unemployment, immensely enhanced efficiency in all the services, and raised the international prestige of his country; and now apparently he proposes to scrap the constitution. The Italian parliamentary system, like that of Spain, was a preposterous travesty of British parliamentarism, and it behooved to scrap it. It remains to see whether Mussolini will, by providing a satisfactory substitute, approve himself a constructive statesman of the first order.

Mussolini has told us repeatedly of late that Julius Cæsar is his model. He could choose no better one. May one be bold to suggest that an even closer imitation of that model would not be amiss? There is for Dictators a great deal of importance in style, and the style of Mussolini increasingly mislikes me. Cæsar did never threaten, nor boast, nor exult. He never posed. He had a proper sense of limitations; he halted at the Rhine and the Thames. His most distinctive quality was a humorous equanimity. If one may If one may presume to advise: Study your model, good Benito, and keep cool.

VII

Ghazi Mustapha Kemal continues his salutary task of abolishment of shams and of consolidation of the New Turkey on a Nationalist basis. But I am not so sure that he is so well advised in his 'habilatory endeavors'; 't is, methinks, a work of supererogation. I suspect the Ghazi has been reading Sartor Resartus in a Turkish translation, and has missed something. The fez, to be sure, is preposterous; but is it any more so than the sundry models proposed to us by Messieurs Dunlap and Knox? And look you, Sir, do not the Turkish breeches afford more ample accommodation than do our unmentionables, for the Purse? If you would assimilate Turkey to the West, remember, remember: The Purse is the Thing. In divorcing his wife, no doubt the Father of New Turkey had in mind to pay us the flattery of imitation and so win our Senate to ratification of the Turkish Treaty; and to encourage in Turkey a practice which has contributed so much of wholesome and picturesque to our social life.

The inevitable reaction in Turkey was nipped i' the bud with the suppression of the Kurdish insurrection and the 'pendulous illaqueation' of its leaders.

VIII

It is quite out of the question to explain in a paragraph or two the developments of the past year in China. One should not forget that China (the 18 Provinces and Manchuria) is of about the same area and the same population as Europe exclusive of Russia; that she is now undergoing a transformation, social, economic, and political, the most stupendous and profound yet seen in the world; that our sources of information are meagre, and the more important processes are obscured.

The growth of Chinese Nationalism is one of the most important phenomena of recent times. It arose out of resentment of the utterly selfish and damnable encroachments by the Powers. It developed a determination to recover all that had been lost by those encroachments. After its first blind and ferocious expression, in the Boxer uprising, it was until recently chargeable with very little antiforeign violence.

The major credit for that astonishing increase of Nationalism belongs to 'Young China' that is, the considerable and ever-growing body of Chinese who have received some tincture of education along Western lines. The majority, including the best, of the leaders of Young China have not countenanced antiforeign violence. They have hoped to recover Chinese rights by the Confucian methods of reason and persuasion, supplemented, if necessary, by the boycott, that Chinese invention. But always there was the danger that the extremist leaders, the intransigents of the Left wing of the Kuo Min-tang or Radical Party, would seize some opportunity to provoke a violent and vicious explosion of antiforeign feeling. Those gentry found an opportunity in the industrial disputes of the midyear in the foreignowned mills. Observe, however, that gradually, except for Canton, which is differentiated from the rest of China much as Barcelona is differentiated from the rest of Spain, the more sensible and Confucian-minded leaders regained the ascendant.

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But the wave of Nationalist feeling is still at height. 'Unhand me,' says China; and the Powers, however reluctantly and ungraciously, are proceeding to comply. It were, perhaps, better for China, as well as for the Powers, that the process of restoration of the sovereign rights filched from her should be gradual; but, if developments have made it necessary to speed up the process, the Powers have no ground of complaint. China's resentment for the wrongs and humiliations inflicted on her, resentment so just and so deep, may not be trifled with.

The politico-military situation of China is of the usual fantasticality. There are three grand groups of Tuchuns: the group which backs the Provisional Peking Government, whereof Chang Tso-lin, that hard-shelled old Tory and ex-bandit, is chief; the group headed by Feng Yu-hsiang, the 'Christian General' and traitor; and the group of Yangtse Tuchuns headed by Wu Pei-fu, who has 'come back' strong. Feng is playing around with Moscow, while Chang is regarded by Japan with benevolent eye. I think Japan is sincerely desirous to keep out of Chinese complications, but she will not allow her position in Manchuria to be compromised and surely would not permit open intervention by Russia in China. As for Wu Pei-fu, I consider him China's best hope, quite probably a genuine disinterested patriot. Almost anything of weird or fantastic might develop out of that triangle. I am an optimist concerning China, but only on a long view.

THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB

MY SECRET SIN

If I were to venture to say, in casual conversation with my colleagues in business, what I here state in cold print, it might endanger such reputation as I may have gained in my particular commercial field. I may speak in print, however, because the business man accepts with flaccid acquiescence anything in type which does not conflict with his chronic hero-worship of the business man. I write what I dare not say.

And so I state defiantly, for I have bottled it up too long, - so I proclaim that I love trees and flowers and growing grass; that there is a beauty in the November frost, hung upon the tracery of the fading goldenrod; that wild columbine, to me, has a distinctly feminine flavor, as of a rarely tinted virgin too fragile even for romance; that even a bourgeois sunflower on a city dump is worthy of a glance.

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There is much more. It has piled up with the years, clamoring for an audience. Bear with me. I need a safety valve for the steam which has long been gaining head behind the boiler plate of Business, where men sweat, tonguetied, lest they be suspected of a tender susceptibility.

Once my mother took me into the yard and showed me blue starry flowers upon spikes of grass. I pick them still. From them I sometimes catch, even to-day, a reflection of the radiance and simplicity of childhood.

In June the tips of the whitewood

trees are fringed with tulips-orange, green, and white, painted in a pattern apparently artificial, like that of an Oriental rug or a bit of bizarre upholstery. Whitewood trees are hard to climb. I climb them still, when no one is looking. I value my liberty, and the judge would not understand.

And what, indeed, would a judge, or my neighbor the coal man, or the steelfile man in the next office, say if he knew that there is such a thing as climbing a tree for the sheer joy of it? I state authoritatively, from twentyfive years' practice, that poplar boughs snap easily, that hickory crotches catch the ankles, that wild-apple branches tear the very clothes from one's back, and that birches will bend to the ground without breaking. There is an odd sense of power and of freedom which comes with the attainment of a tree top. I know of no surer way of cleansing one's mind, for the moment, from the irksomeness of earning a living.

Possibly five botany authorities, three fellow eccentrics, and myself know where arbutus may be found in our neighborhood. I once brought some to my office. I shall not do so again. I bring arbutus into our household discreetly concealed in newspapers, so that the neighbors will think it is spinach or something.

Now that the lid is off, may I confess that it has even been a diversion of mine to accord to each kind of tree its own personality. Poplars are so greedy-oaks so conservative. The pepperidge, old maid of the forest, turns scarlet a week before the first frost a chronic croaker, gnarled,

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