industry. These associations force the members to fix their profits at from 50 per cent to 100 per cent, even against the wishes of many manufacturers. They also force their members to impose very hard conditions on buyers; for example they levy heavy fines upon any manufacturer who grants his customers special favors in deliveries or discounts. In practically all instances, retailers are not only forced to buy exclusively from members of the associations, but are required to pay prices quoted at the time of delivery instead of at the time of placing their orders. Germany, like France, has tried to regulate prices through government controllers, but this device has proved just as ineffective there as it has with us. Indeed, abuses have become so acute in Germany that a consumers' strike has been suggested by the retail merchants themselves.

As yet the situation in France is not so bad as that. We are receiving more coal than at any previous time since the armistice. As a result, iron and steel products are falling even faster than the price of coke. Our steel manufacturers have reduced the base price for half finished products by 200 francs, and for rails and rods by 250 francs, or about 20 per cent below the rates hitherto prevailing. Our weavers have lowered prices. The lower cost of coal and metals will make its effect felt in the course of time upon other branches of manufacturing. Unless conditions change, we may regard the future with hope, bearing in mind always that betterment will be very gradual. It will take years to get back to pre-war conditions. Our business interests are so knit up with those of our neighbors, that our recovery can only keep step with that of the other countries which have suffered from the war. What folly it is to suppose, for example, that we can dispense with

Russia, which used to be one of the greatest reservoirs of raw material on the globe. The Americans have kept dinning the fact into our ears and they are right— that business recovery on our side of the ocean is a continental question and not a national question. But they must go further even than that. It is an international question.

[London Times (Northcliffe Press), November 30]

IF ONLY ENGLAND KNEW!

BY A CORRESPONDENT

If only the people in England knew. . . . Everywhere in Ireland to-day you hear that cry.

Men and women of every shade of political opinion and religious faith Catholics, Protestants, Unionists, Nationalists, even large numbers of Sinn Feiners - are united in that inarticulate appeal. They are not in the mood to put any trust in governments and statesmen. But they feel that if the people in the sister isle knew what is happening in their country they would inevitably take steps to put an end to the intolerable suffering, the nightmare of terror, by which they are now cowed and tortured. Day after day and night after night- especially night after night- murder and violence and terrorism are knocking at their doors. In the disturbed areas and at any moment any district may be added to the list- no house, no hotel, no church, no train, no tramcar, no road, no place that is not guarded by armed forces superior to the possible attackers is safe from the rule of the revolver.

There is no laughter to-day in Ireland. It has fled the land, banished first of all by the terrorism of Sinn Fein, grim, cold-blooded, and cruel, and now by the added fear of reprisals. Be

tween the nether and upper millstones the law-abiding population—that is, the great majority of the people of Irelandare ground to powder. They live a life of panic. They have become a nation of whispers. No man can trust his neighbor unless he is an intimate friend. They dare not discuss in public even the reports of horrors with which the newspapers are daily filled. Some enemy might hear.

Some of the acts of violence can be definitely put down to definite motives and agencies. But there are others. No one outside the gang of the actual murderers knows for certain who were the slayers of McCurtain or Father Griffin. No one can go to bed at night without the feeling that armed men. may walk into his bedroom in the hours of darkness. At any moment the dreadful hammering at the door may come, and then no power on earth can keep the door closed. In the streets, even before the curfew hour, peaceable citizens may find themselves held up on their way, and unable, sometimes for hours, to go about their business or return to their homes.

Hardly an evening passes without, in one district or another, the sound of rifle or revolver shots. Grim letters of personal warning, notices of forthcoming vengeance on whole towns, and similar alarming threats are almost commonplaces of life. It is easy to find people who have been cruelly knocked about, or thrown into rivers, or who have had their houses burned about their ears. Every night thousands of people sleep in the fields, under hedges, or haystacks, because they dare not sleep at home. Every night, if they stay in their houses, many thousands go to bed in fear and trembling, in a Christian land, in the twentieth century, in a time of peace.

Why do these things happen? Why are servants of the Crown charged with

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pillage and arson and what amounts to lynch law, and even with drunkenness and murder? How can the reign of terror be stopped? Many men have tried to answer that last question; many men in Ireland and England think of hardly anything else but the possible steps that might bring about a settlement. The mass of the people of Ireland are beginning, in the last resort, to believe that it is only the people of England who can do it.

But how? Sinn Feiners declare that there were no shootings of policemen until the government, by a long campaign of arrests, imprisonment without trial, and other repressive measures, had exasperated the people beyond bearing. The forces of the Crown contend that the reprisals, which they admit, only came into force after the coldblooded murder of scores of policemen, who for years had been unable to leave their barracks except in strong force, and equally cruel murders of soldiers and officers had made their comrades and fellow-servants of the Crown see red and break bounds. Every one, except the extreme Sinn Feiners, knows, though many are afraid to admit it, that before the Irish people were terrorized, as they now are, by the excesses sometimes committed by members of the Crown forces, as a rule not in uniform, they were terrorized by the tyranny of Sinn Fein, by night raids in search of arms, by compulsion of the younger men, enforced by threats of death, from which there was only one way of escape, to join the ranks of the Irish Republican army.

To-day, whatever degree of truth there may be in these statements and counter-statements, there is no question about the present state of affairs. Where there was one tyranny and one terrorism there are now two. It has been pointed out over and over again that to put down the first tyranny, that

of the extreme revolutionary body, is the plain duty of the government and the forces under their command. It has to be remembered as the hideous crimes of last Sunday week showed with such terrible clearness-that, in that, in the execution of that duty, these men, soldiers, police, and auxiliaries, carry their lives in their hands, and undergo daily an ordeal even more trying than that to which most of them were exposed in the war, when the enemy was an open enemy, and they themselves carried weapons for self-defense as well as offense. Because of that difference, because of the cruelty and brutality and treachery of their assailants, some of them have themselves committed acts of terrorism and violence of which no disciplined force should be guilty, or, indeed, can be guilty, without very grave and regrettable effects on their morale.

Meanwhile, the innocent section of the people of Ireland - all, that is to say, but a comparatively small number suffer for the excesses of both sides. They may be, they are, to blame, in that they have not evolved a public opinion, however they may privately detest Sinn Fein crimes, strong enough to make these murders impossible. But they are, not unnaturally, so abjectly cowed by the rule of the revolver, and the assassins in their midst, that any other attitude than their present one of enforced submission is hardly to be expected of them.

It is in this condition of mind that they instinctively feel that only the people of England can save them. They are sick to death of the violence of Sinn Fein, the action of which has not only terrorized them but has stopped the greater part of their trains, so that they cannot market their produce, has enormously increased their rates, and, as a result of the refusal to submit county and district council accounts to gov

ernment audit, has dammed the source of government loans to the extent of many hundred thousands of pounds, and consequently put an end to housing and building operations. On the other hand, it has given them nothing, and it is significant that some of the county councils are beginning to dissociate themselves from the policy laid down by the Sinn Fein leaders. So far this tendency is only partial, and is due to economic and not to moral reasons. But it may be the beginning of a much larger revolt.

It is strongly held by men of moderate opinion in Ireland that, although in the 1918 election the twenty-six counties voted for Republicanism or the institution of Dail Eireann (on a register which was grossly tampered with, and under Sinn Fein intimidation), the majority of the people, in spite of their convinced Nationalist feelings, are sufficiently alive to their own interests to fear the results of complete separation from the Empire. It is believed that if the government were to propose in the House of Commons a measure of Home Rule embodying four principal conditions, and were to submit it to a referendum by secret ballot on a register of voters jointly revised by the King's Lieutenants and a Sinn Fein representative in each county, it would command the support of at least a seventy-five per cent majority. The four conditions laid down are:

(1) The strategic unity of the Empire.

(2) Ulster-Decentralization of the six counties interunifying council.

(3) Assumption by Ireland of its proper share of national debt.

(4) Full control of finance, customs, excise, and income tax.

When Irishmen say: 'If people in England only knew,' what they practically mean is that if they knew what is happening in Ireland they would be so

shocked and horrified that they would press upon the government the offer of some such proposal which they would be prepared willingly to accept. That seems to be what they have at the back of their heads, though at the present moment what they most ardently long for is not political offers of any kind, but the cessation of raids and reprisals.

With regard to reprisals, every man of sanity and humane and just impulses must be with them. The case of raids, decently conducted and with as much. consideration for the innocent and as little terror as possible, is different. At present, the government's first duty is to stop the murder campaign, and for that purpose raids seem to be a necessary instrument and the most effective that lies to their hand, always assuming that reprisals are to be vigorously suppressed instead of weakly tolerated and ignored. They are, under whatever provocation they may have been committed, vile and suicidally dangerous.

It is felt, however, by those who can look beyond the calamities and horrors

of the present moment, that a political proposal on the lines suggested above would have such an effect on the Irish as a whole that Sinn Fein crime would find itself in an environment much less favorable to its activity than that now existing. It is only fair to say, also, that there are Sinn Feiners and Sinn Feiners, and that some of those in authority, whose hands are not actually stained with murder, declare that Dail Eireann, if it were allowed to meet and function publicly, could effectively and quickly put an end to the murder campaign. The more moderate party, those who would welcome, as Home Rulers and not as Republicans, the political offer outlined above, believe in the same way that a Home Rule Parliament would, with a reconstituted and unarmed police, backed, if necessary, by British troops, itself be able to break up and suppress the murder gang. In both cases, the point is that many Irishmen believe that, as Irishmen, they can put an end to these murders if they themselves are left to deal with them.

FOR a long time now, public opinion in the three Scandinavian countries has been endeavoring to impress upon the mind of the world the ideal of universal peace. It was not a mere chance that a Swede endowed the Nobel prize

for eminent service in the cause of peace, and entrusted to the Norwegian Parliament the granting of that prize. In no other land are the common people more vividly conscious of the barbarity of war, of its unworthiness to survive

in the midst of real civilization. Possibly no other countries have been so energetic as ours in condemning the idea that war is an inevitable means of reaching international adjustments. Old Moltke's saying, that eternal peace is a dream and not even a pleasant dream, betrays an attitude toward life absolutely alien to the soul of the North Germanic nations.

It was the World War, which, by the example of the evil and suffering it caused, aroused the intelligence of mankind to consciousness of the vital need for a League of Nations, whose main purpose should be to prevent armed conflicts. What had previously been the Utopia of a few pioneers, and a topic for the empty resolutions of Socialist conferences exercising as yet no influence upon public opinion, was transformed, thanks to Wilson's Fourteen Points, into a political programme supported by a powerful government. One can readily understand that the Scandinavian countries were already converted to this project and gave it their enthusiastic support. But the war was so long; it embraced so many nations; it involved such stern application of the rule that the more merciless one is, the speedier the victory, that when the militarists were finally defeated the elements for a conciliatory peace no longer existed. The idea of a League of Nations was not utterly abandoned. It was used in spite of its detractors to form a sort of portico to the Treaty of Versailles. It served to convey the idea that the Treaty represented a real advance and embodied some promise for the future, beyond the long list of penalties, imposed by the victor upon the vanquished, which make up such documents. It is true that the League of Nations created by the Covenant of June 28, 1919, was at the outset only a group of allied and associated governments. Provision was

made for admission later of the states which had remained neutral during the war, but they were not allowed to share except in a minor way in drafting the Covenant; and the admission of the enemy powers was postponed to an uncertain future date.

Nevertheless, the first important step had been taken. Only men who expected an erring world, so tardy, alas, in its progress, to create in the very depths of its misery a perfect agency for the prevention of war were justified in refusing to join an organization so obviously incomplete that it was distrustfully called a 'League of Conquerors.' The obligations which members assumed were not of a character to exclude governments which had tried to remain neutral and had succeeded in their effort.

The three northern countries, which had managed to keep out of the World War, were not unanimous in their attitude toward the League of Nations. Denmark was unreservedly favorable to joining. In Norway, the Socialists, in contrast with their colleagues in the two other Scandinavian countries, opposed joining. In Sweden, the Socialist Party in alliance with the Liberals, made a vigorous campaign for adhesion to the League, while the Conservatives opposed joining because they feared this might impair our sovereignty. It goes without saying that the little Bolshevist group, following the cue of Russia, tried to create suspicion of the League by denouncing it as an instrument of Entente imperialism.

I should add here, that as soon as Parliament made its decision and approved joining by two thirds majority, the opponents immediately laid down their arms and loyally joined the majority in an effort to improve the Covenant. As a result the Swedish Parliament proposed these five amendments: