that it was written for a conservative Catholic paper, published in Barcelona, the stronghold of Spanish Bolshevism. Alderman Ben Turner continues his account of his impressions in Russia with a report of the campaign to protect the public health in that country. He seems to have discovered a number of praiseworthy institutions, better equipped and managed than popular accounts of Russian conditions would lead us to expect. Speaking of one of the public sanatoria he says: "The rooms are very fine, large and airy, and richly furnished, and great care is being taken of them.' There were seven hundred thousand cases of influenza in round numbers during the Russian epidemic. Up to July, 1919, nearly one million three hundred thousand typhus cases were registered, of which eight per cent died. The birth rate is lower than before the war, but higher than during the war itself. Describing one sanatorium for tubercular children, Mr. Turner says:

At another place we went to, miles away again among pine forests, and by a river, the house was used for children predisposed to tuberculosis. They live in the open air in the summer months, and it was strange what questions some of the youngsters put to me as I sat underneath the shade of the trees, with about thirty of them around me, naked as they were born, except for what may be termed bathing drawers. They were very bright. One lad of ten said he had been in London, and could talk in English some little, and he wanted to know why we English folks were helping the Poles. Another asked when we were going to overthrow the capitalists. I asked them how they formed their opinions, and where they got their information from, and they said they read the newspapers. I asked the youngsters to put up their hands who read the newspapers, and over a dozen of them did so.

He concludes his observations as follows:

I have nothing but praise for their health work. They are teaching cleanliness and the virtues of fresh air. They are handicapped by illiteracy, prejudice, tradition, food shortage, transport difficulties, and lack of medicines.

They will overcome these things with education and peace.

Mrs. Snowden, who was a member of this English delegation, in an interview published in the London Times

says:

I return home with the absolute conviction that we have nothing to learn or gain from Bolshevism. England is a very conservative country, but Socialism has a better chance here than ever in Russia through Bolshevism.

What keeps the Bolsheviki going is the war and the hatred of the Pole and of foreign intervention. This is rallying to it all the country, and if you spoke even to the firmest adherent of the old régime you found him moved by a feeling of genuine patriotism. If peace were proclaimed to-morrow there might be a general reaction against Bolshevism, and the Soviet would either have to go or to round off many of its corners. There is even now a latent, secret longing for the appearance of a military dictator, a Russian Napoleon, who would take matters in hand.

THE 'MARRIAGE CRISIS' IN FRANCE

HENRY BORDEAUX, of the French Academy, discusses in L'Echo de Paris some of the effects of the war upon marriage. He says that during the first months of the war the marriage tie was strengthened, and tenderness and respect for woman was heightened with religious sentiment.

There was scarcely a soldier who did not wear over his heart the photograph of his wife and children. I recall my comrades at the headquarters who were entrusted with the oversight of the postal service for the army. Their mission was a delicate one which they fulfilled conscientiously and tactfully. These men frequently mentioned how most of the letters passing between husband and wife at that time strengthened their faith in the future of their country.

Women were conducting businesses abandoned by their husbands or working additional hours in shops and factories or laboring in the fields, even taking their place between the shafts of carts. Those of the well-to-do classes were solicitously supervising the education of their children. Everywhere those left behind were trying to take the place and perform the duties of the absent, and to preserve a place for them when they returned.

But, he continues, the war lasted too long. Many people accustomed themselves to separation and adjusted themselves to the freedoms and privileges of single life.

Women performing the tasks and assuming the responsibilities of men acquired a taste for masculine independence. Many lost interest for one reason or another in their homes. They re turned to them as seldom as possible. They became nurses and munitions workers or petty merchants. They sought employment in cities. Even if they remained in their native villages they acquired the habit of frequently visiting the city. Meantime their husbands acquired a new attitude toward life. When wounded they were attended by women of greater refinement than they had known before. In the army they received letters from godmothers of education and culture. They read more than previously; they thought more than in their former life; they acquired new tastes, new aspirations, new melancholies, new and obscure ambitions. Their furloughs were not always a source of pleasure. They reached home full of illusions, which a few days dissipated, because these illusions had never been based on reality. So long as they were absent they felt the old tenderness; as soon as they returned they discovered their alienation. It followed that many families were united only when they were parted.

All this was ended by the armistice. All, except the many who were never to return, came back to their firesides. Thereupon it was no longer possible to overlook the divergencies of mind which had previously been suspected but not fully appreciated. Truly, indeed, the joy of homecoming had been great in many, many instances. Family life was resumed with a delight in domesticity, unknown before the war. But in many cases also, the fact of a change was recognized. The husband having served through a frightful campaign, and endured untold hardships, relieved of all obligations to be patient and forbearing, made excessive demands upon those with whom he lived. Wives no longer felt obligated to obedience nor even to returning to the domestic fireside. They did what they pleased and resented any attempt to check their will. The result is that separations and divorces have multiplied.

POLAND'S ANTI-BOLSHEVIST PROPAGANDA

A correspondent of the Journal de Genève, who accompanied the Polish army during its recent advance through

the Ukraine, thus describes the policy adopted by the temporarily victorious forces in dealing with their Bolshevist prisoners:

The Poles have captured fifty thousand Bolsheviki. The expense and difficulty of interning and feeding these men make such a measure impossible. Moreover, Russia has so many soldiers that it is not seriously inconvenienced by the loss of relatively so small a number. So it has been decided to release all these prisoners, allowing them to go home each one with a small sack of salt, a package of matches, and tobacco: things which it is impossible to obtain in Bolshevist Russia. They will also be given provisions for a few days. It is anticipated that when these fifty thousand men get back to the Communists and explain how well they have been treated, their comrades will be persuaded likewise to surrender and bring their rifles over to Poland and to exchange them for salt, which, in the present scarcity, is incomparably more valuable than gold or silver. At present though, the Bolshevist prisoners are detained in large camps where they are well cared for and fed. Lecturers are detailed to instruct them in the errors of communist theories and to prove to them how useless it is to fight in defense of a doctrine which has ruined their country.

AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF

VETERÁNS

The

AMONG the numerous efforts to promote the spirit of internationalism is the recent Congress of Ex-Soldiers held at Geneva, at which soldier organizations from Great Britain, Italy, Germany, France, Alsace-Lorraine, and Switzerland were represented. Swiss delegates were volunteers who had fought either on the French or German side. For various reasons, delegates from Austria, Belgium, Russia, and Yugoslavia were not able to be present, although their ex-soldier organizations are federated with the international society. The spirit of the convention was very radical, although there was evidence of some conservative opposition to committing the congress to extreme social theories. Its permanent bureau will maintain intimate relations with the executive

Third National at Moscow, and this network of soldier organizations is probably to be regarded as ancillary to international Bolshevist propaganda.

GERMAN DISARMAMENT

In a recent issue we published a German account of the progress made in converting the great Prussian Arsenal at Spandau into an establishment for making peace goods. Le Petit Parisien summarizes the report of the French Minister of War upon Germany's compliance up to date with the disarmament requirements of the treaty. After citing several clauses which had already been complied with, or are in process of satisfactory settlement, the minister says that lack of transportation had delayed the delivery of German war materials beyond the date of March 11 originally fixed. Up to the 5th of January, 1920, 17,500 cannon, 21,000 machine guns, and 108,000 portable guns had been Idelivered. The Germans claim to have destroyed in addition over 4000 cannon, 4000 machine guns, and 66,000 portable guns. The account says that without

doubt considerable material has been concealed. The quantity of arms and ammunition captured by the Germans from the Allies and redelivered to them is less than estimated, probably because the Germans broke them up for their raw materials. War factories and arsenals have not been dismantled to the extent called for. The Allies estimate that 15,000 works were engaged more or less in producing arms and munitions, but the Germans have reported only 2000. Of the latter number, 888 have been inspected by the Allies and 577 entirely closed. Great importance is attached to the fact that 25,000 gauges have been destroyed. At the Krupp works, in Essen, the control commission dis

covered 80 cannon, of 77 centimetre gauge, in process of fabrication. The number of troops has been reduced to 200,000, but there has been no decrease in the number of formations. All the aviation material has not been reported. The Germans have sometimes exhibited insolence and even violence toward the Allied agents supervising this disarmament.

Among the clauses which have not been complied with in the slightest, is the one requiring the army law to be repealed or amended. The French War Office believes that Germany is trying to preserve the skeleton of a great military establishment, by retaining the outlines of its old formations with its reduced forces.

cently been falling, while the cost of constructing new vessels has been mounting. The result is that not only are no orders coming into the yards, but orders already given are being canceled. An ordinary tramp steamer which could be bought for less than $250,000 before the war, now costs well toward $1,500,000. The situation has reached a crisis on account of a recent demand by the workers for increases in pay equivalent to a dollar a day, and a reduction of hours from 48 to 44 a week. Employers claim Employers claim that the present output of their men is only seventy per cent of what it was in 1913. Japanese competition, and to some extent American competition, is affecting the status of the industry in Great Britain.

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL

THE recent encyclical of the Pope, urging the reconciliation of the Christian nations and the restoration of the spirit of Christian brotherhood throughout the world, has been discussed by European journals principally in connection with the new political situation created by its implied formal recognition of Rome as the capital of Italy. Taken in conjunction with the permission recently given to members of the Church in Italy to participate in politics as a distinct party, this constitutes a long step toward the acceptance of the existing political status by the Vatican. While the encyclical is said to have been printed in full in the Osservatore Romano, the official organ of the Vatican, only brief extracts were published in the newspapers which have as yet reached our desk.

BOYCOTTING HUNGARY AND THE PEASANT MOVEMENT

AMONG the ever novel phases of the present European revolution is the recent general boycott, started by international labor organizations against the 'White Terror' in Hungary. This movement is said to have resulted in the overthrow of the cabinet at Budapest. A counter-agitation has been started among the peasantry, for the purpose of organizing the small landholders throughout Europe into a 'Green International,' to oppose political strikes started by transportation and industrial workers by ceasing to ship provisions to industrial centres, and by preventing provisions being sent by others. Meantime the arming of the peasantry throughout Southern Germany and former Austria-Hungary goes on apace. This is rumored to be in preparation for a clerical and monarchist revolt against the present Socialist, or semi-Socialist, governments in those countries.

In the last German elections the two conservative parties showed the greatest strength in Pomerania and Mecklenburg and the other agricultural districts east of the Elbe, while Southern Germany stood truer to the new democracy. The democrats lost many votes. in the clerical states, however, because they were suspected by the peasantry of being under Jewish control. It appears to have been the swing of the small farmer's and small business-man's vote to the conservative party that strengthened the rep-resentation of the latter in the present parliament. That part of Schleswig which remains German cast its vote for the conservative Socialists.