clearly and definitely that though his sympathies were with us, his mind was open to dangerous reservations with regard to Yugoslavia.'

We have remarked that di Cellere asserts that he urged the cabinet to take up this question with Wilson immediately, on the occasion of his visit to Italy. Instead of that Wilson was allowed to go his own way, because, as the editor of the Memoirs asserts, Orlando and Sonnino were not sure that they themselves were in complete agreement. This blunder was aggravated at the Paris Conference, from the moment our delegates were nominated.

"The other great powers were already prepared, and had gathered at Paris with a numerous staff of experts. We allowed this time to pass without any preparation of our own. In addition, we selected our delegates from consideration of Parliament expediency. They were Salandra, Barzilai, and Salvago Raggi. No doubt the first two, who had rendered such distinguished service during the war, were naturally entitled to share in the peace negotiations. It is equally certain that there were few men, in Italy or outside of Italy, who had contributed more toward our knowledge of colonial affairs than Marquis Salvago Raggi. But neither these three gentlemen, nor our Cabinet officers, had agreed beforehand upon a definite plan of procedure.'

and returned to Italy. Marquis Salvago, seeing that his views received no attention and that he was not even asked his opinion, took refuge in the reserve which is characteristic of him. Barzilai made every effort to secure sympathy and support, and was finally selected to draw up the memorandum upon our claims, which was the most effective thing that the Italian delegates did. During both the latter and the earlier part of the Conference, Sonnino was absent. Since the debates were held in English, Orlando could not understand all that was going on, or argue effectively in our behalf. For a few days he had the able services of Prince Lanza di Trabia. That gentleman's assistance would have been of inestimable value if he had not been replaced by a French captain, who soon proved incompetent to perform his duties. So our Prime Minister was isolated among the other three, whose discussions he could not follow and who were not friendly toward him.'

[L'Ecole Émancipée (Organ of the French Public School-Teachers' Assn.), November 1, 1920]

AN INCIDENT IN HISTORY

ONE day in November 1849, several illustrious gentlemen, whose names still live in history, assembled in the study of the eminent cabinet officer, Falloux, whose school law was to regulate the system of public instruction in France for many years thereafter. These gentlemen who had come together at the minister's home were his associates in drafting that famous statute; Veuillot, the forceful editor of L'Univers, Montalembert, already an overcelebrated man, Monsignor Parisis, the Bishop of Langres, and a vivacious, restless, eloquent little man with great spectacles whom destiny had decreed should play a most important rôle in

the history of his country, Adolf Thiers.

Veuillot and Bishop Parisis considered the Falloux law too liberal, or not sufficiently reactionary. Thiers defended it vigorously, but yielding somewhat to his distinguished opponents admitted that education was not for everyone, but should be given only to those who possess a certain standing in society. He discoursed on this subject for a considerable period with his usual eloquence. When he concluded all the others seemed to be in agreement with him. However, one of the gentlemen present, who had hitherto said nothing and sat apart, suddenly spoke. It was a Jesuit Father who, requesting permission to express his views, observed as follows:

'It seems to me that all that has been said so far is based upon an initial error. You are all afraid of public education. You fancy that when the people are educated, it will be impossible to govern them, and that as their knowledge increases, they will be more prone to revolution. I do not agree with this. We need have no fear of educating the people. In my opinion, education is the best way to get possession of the minds of the masses, and to make the commons completely subservient to the will of their masters.' Falloux greeted these words with a gesture of dissent, Thiers with a sarcastic smile, Montalembert with an angry ejaculation, while the Bishop, out of respect for the Jesuit, contented himself with making the sign of the cross. However, the speaker continued.

'Listen to me and you will admit I am right! Before 1789, the common people the workingmen and peas

gradually turned against the old government was not formed by reading. In 1789, the sans-culottes were densely ignorant of the Encyclopedia. Republican ideas had been disseminated among them, not by books, not by newspapers, but by word of mouthby bourgeois agitators, Voltarians, and by educated house servants who acted as intermediaries for malcontents. Men of sober thought and conservative opinions unhappily had neglected their duty of keeping in touch with the common people, of mingling among them and molding their opinions; so consequently the Revolutionists had things their own way. Noblemen, men of letters, and clergymen do not congregate in the haunts of the mob, do not frequent inns and markets. So they have only one way to tame the plebeian lion which is not really a lion, but a dog subject to occasional fits of madness. How then are they to domesticate and instruct him? It is necessary that the common people should know how to read and should enjoy reading. Have no fear. If you are shrewd, they will never read anything except what you wish.'

There were renewed signs of dissent from the gentlemen present, but the Jesuit continued unperturbed:

'Listen! Books cost money. The people cannot buy them. Publish cheap editions at a trifling price, of books of your own choice, or write books especially for the poorer classes. The common people, or rather the more intelligent among them, will buy these books and will buy only these. So far as the flower of the lower classes is concerned I mean people of the lower classes who possess superior intelligence and independence and enterprise-you can buy them outright. You can buy anything. It is merely a question of price.

'But the most marvelous instru

ment of social conservation,' continued the Jesuit, 'you already have in your possession. You hold it in your hands. I mean the newspapers. Found papers of all shades of opinions, even the most subversive, so that you may pass for Liberals; but be sure to make them cheap and interesting, and to flatter the mob. Make your newspapers the daily brain food of the populace. Make them indispensable for a working class which has been judiciously educated. In this way you can destroy all individual opinion in that class. The brains of the people will be conscious of no other doctrines than those which

you inculcate. Your readers will think en masse what you want them to think, and they will follow you the more docilely because they fancy they are acting independently. But in order to do all these things, the people must be educated. People may be educated without acquiring independence of mind. Only the highest education can give the latter, and it will be a long time before the rank and file reach that highest standard.

"The lower classes will never be able to control the journals you will found, because that requires large sums of money. If our rich middle class citizens will take care to establish enough popular newspapers, rival publications started by the lower classes will be sure to fail. You will be the exclusive manufacturers of public opinion.

'What our country needs,' concluded the Jesuit while the others were silent with surprise, 'is free, obligatory, public instruction; and I may add, lay instruction. If France adopts that system which seems to you now a mad one, I prophesy, without the slightest fear of being in error, that the common people will fall so completely under your influence as to rejoice in their condition, and will readily ally themselves with the middle classes against

any revolutionary factions which may arise. If in days to come the government of any nation is overthrown, it will be a government whose subjects are largely illiterate. For complete education makes a man free; but half education merely makes him overconfident, and an easy prey to the persuasion of men who would rule him.'

Thiers made no reply when the Father ceased, but remained plunged in silent meditation. Twenty years later, when fate raised him to the presidency of the Third Republic, he had not forgotten the arguments of the Jesuit so many years before. His school policy and his use of the press were tokens of homage to that advice.

[La Stampa (Turin Giolitti Daily),
November 27, 1920]

THREE MONTHS IN BOLSHE-
VIST RUSSIA. I

BY E. COLOMBINO

[The following is from the report of the delegate of the Italian Metal Workers' Union, a Socialist, who was sent to Russia last May to make an exhaustive investigation of industrial conditions in that country for the information of the Labor Union to which he belongs.]

WE are at Yamburg, the first town in the soviet Republic. The fact is impressed on our attention by hearing "The International' played and sung. The railway station is decorated with red festoons and banners. Lenin's picture forms the centre of countless allegorical Bolshevist propaganda posters. A phonograph is repeating to a group of soldiers and peasants, speeches by Lenin, Trotzky, and other orators. This is our first example of the way propaganda is conducted here.

Before reaching Russia's former capital, our train stops for two hours at the station of Gachina. A good sized crowd is clustered behind a

detachment of Red soldiers ranged on a little platform. To the rhythmic waving of Red flags, they chant the solemn air of "The International,' with almost religious fervor. When this hymn is played, soldiers stand at attention, and the citizens uncover. It is a picturesque and moving spectacle. Many of us, even though we may be somewhat skeptical, wipe away a furtive tear.

Short addresses of welcome are delivered, and we resume our journey to Petrograd. When we arrive, Comrade Zinovieff, Mrs. Balabanoff, and others meet us at the station. There are salutes, and embraces, and tears, mingled with cheering and military music. As we leave the station, a guard of women soldiers drawn up along the way presents arms. They are handsome, young women, erect in their dark and almost elegant uniforms. We pass in an automobile between long ranks of soldiers, and finally reach the mansion designated for the use of the Italian mission.

So at last we are here, in the city which gave birth to the revolution and saw it through its precarious infancy. Our sojourn of eight days in what was formerly a beautiful, modern metropolis with flourishing industries, is ample to show us why the correspondents of bourgeois papers have sent us such pessimistic and gloomy descriptions of its present condition.

Any man of the middle class, whether a journalist by profession or drafted into that service after his return from Russia, who is ignorant of Russia's history, who cannot and could not be expected to comprehend the causes underlying the revolution through which that country has passed, is perfectly logical and honest in describing things here as horrible, and in blaming the Bolsheviki for the country's moribund condition. Only

an eye of Socialist faith and training can perceive in Russia anything else than its present material ruin.

We are literally treading on the ruins of a world crushed to atoms by a war and two revolutions. A new world has not yet arisen, and cannot be brought into existence by the mere waving of a magician's wand. It was a short matter to destroy the old rotten system. But it will take a long, long time to build a new one, especially when its architects refuse to preserve a single line of the former structure.

Petrograd looks to-day like a city in mourning. Of its two and one half million people, only some six hundred thousand remain. Most of the others have removed to the country, where it is easier to procure food; part are fighting at the front, and the remainder have died by battle, by revolution, by violent epidemics, and in some instances by starvation and cold. It is a horrible thing, a spectacle that wrings your heart, and brings an oath to your lipsa malediction not against those who started the revolution, nor yet against the Bolsheviki, who themselves are the helpless children of circumstance.

Business houses are closed. Private trading is prohibited. Show windows are broken. The shutters still lying in fragments along the street add their peculiar note to the picture of desolation. Here and there remnants of old advertisements have been left, as if in bitter mockery. Street cars only run at long intervals, during a few hours of the day, and on the principal lines. There are certainly not over fifty in the whole city. Along the Neva, great barges have been sunk and lie abandoned. The former wooden block pavements have practically disappeared. They have been torn up by the citizens for fuel during the intense cold of the arctic winters. Last win

ter, 36,000 wooden sheds and small houses were torn down for the same purpose. Stop and consider, for a moment, that this great city has no public water supply, because the frost has burst all the piping. That was the reason for the last explosive epidemic of typhoid, which carried off thousands of victims and still leaves visible traces in the population. A mere glance at the clothing and footwear of the inhabitants shocks you into a realization of the utter misery which bows down this heroic, stoical nation. Food conditions are anything but promising. They are quite in harmony with other conditions in Russia. For rationing purposes, the people are divided into four categories. The staff of life is a kind of bread made of a mixture of rye, straw, and 45 per cent of water- a very thin gruel of millet and bean flour, and on rare occasions a trifle of putrid meat or spoiled fish. Workers enlisted for special industrial service have a slightly more liberal ration. Here is the official quota for the four categories.

First category All persons over 16 years of age, whether they work or not: 160 grammes of bread a day; 420 grammes of sugar a month; 420 grammes of salt a month. Permission to buy at high official prices 100 cigarettes a month. A daily plate of soup or gruel.

Second category – - Heavy workers, specialists, and so forth, 315 grammes of bread a day; 420 grammes of sugar a month; 420 grammes of salt a month. Permission to buy at high official prices 100 to 200 cigarettes a month; gruel and a free meal daily, consisting of soup and meat or fish if they are to be had.

Third category Employees working six hours: 210 grammes of bread a day; 315 grammes of sugar a month; 315 grammes of salt a month. Permission to buy at high official prices 75 cigarettes a month. One meal gratis as described above.

Fourth category Employees who work less than six hours: 105 grammes of bread a day; 220 grammes of sugar a month; 220 grammes of salt a month. Permission to buy at high official prices 75 cigarettes a month. One free meal as above.

Women employed in household duties and bringing up at least two children under fourteen years of age, also are entitled to the supplement of provisions in the Fourth Category. This food is furnished by the government, but not in quantities sufficient to support life. People buy what additional provisions they must have from secret traders, with such money as they can raise from any little possessions they may have retained- often their last furniture or clothing. The prices demanded by speculators and illegal dealers are exorbitant. I have obtained a few figures: fire wood 15,000 rubles a pood; butter 3500 rubles a pound; milk 300 rubles for a small bottle; meat 1000 rubles a pound; cloth 10,000 rubles a yard: black bread 300 rubles a pound; old potatoes 200 rubles a pound.

Private traders are prohibited but tolerated. Every now and then the police raid them, but they start again the next day. Long lines of these peddlers, most of whom are women, are found at certain points in the city. One will have three little pieces of sugar, another a piece of meat or fish or butter. They carry these things around all day in their dirty, chapped hands. Others have household utensils, garments, women's dilapidated and ill-repaired shoes. It is an interesting but depressing spectacle. These people are the remnants of the old system, still struggling to survive and trying to hide themselves from the new era, like an ostrich which buries its head in the sand.

Many women are moving about the broad and formerly beautiful boulevards to make purchases. Any old thing will sell. Some of these women are shod and others are barefoot. One wears a man's coat, another what, in its day, was a fashionable wrap. I have even seen women abroad in