THE BRITISH POLITICAL CRISIS

H

OW suddenly the political kaleido

scope may turn in Great Britain is illustrated by the fact that a cable despatch from London printed in New York on October 19 bore the heading "Lloyd George Sure of Caucus Victory," while in the same paper of October 20 we find the title "Lloyd George Steps Out."

The end of the Coalition formed in 1914 was certain from the hour when Mr. Bonar Law at the Carlton Club threw in his lot with that wing of the Conservative Party which is tired of political union with the Liberals and the leadership of Lloyd George, and wants to fight on the old party lines again. Mr. Bonar Law has faithfully worked with Lloyd George to carry on sound government, and only a week or so before the action at the Carlton Club approved Lloyd George's action in making a firm stand on the Asian side of the Straits.

This is one of many indications that the death of the Coalition is directly due, not to Near East questions, but to those of British internal politics, and largely that of the balance between the old parties and the Labor Party.

Peel; Secretary for War, the Earl of
Derby.

The King will dissolve Parliament, warrants for new elections will be issued, the campaign will be fought quickly and hotly, and presumably this great appeal to the country will be heard, decided, and all over in a month,

International

A political campaign moves quickly in England. Mr. Lloyd George, after the Conservatives at the Carlton Club had voted by 186 to 87 adversely as to the maintenance of the Coalition, went at once to the King and, as is the custom, put his resignation in the King's hands -"kissed hands" is the traditional phrase. The King summoned Andrew Bonar Law and asked him to form a new Cabinet. Then Bonar Law was formally chosen party leader of the Conservatives. On October 24 Bonar Law Lloyd George is an old campaigner. announced his Ministry; its most impor- With his usual promptitude, he began

tant members are:

Lord President of the Council, Marquis of Salisbury: Lord High Chancellor, Viscount Cave; Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stanley Baldwin; Secretary for Home Affairs, William C. Bridgeman; Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Marquis Curzon; Secretary for the Colonies, the Duke of Devonshire; Secretary for India, Viscount

360

BONAR LAW, GREAT BRITAIN'S NEW PREMIER

whereas our election campaign has been going on all summer and most of the fall.

his fight before the formal preliminaries had been concluded. The day after he resigned he declared to a great crowd: "I am a free man. The burden is off

my shoulders. But the sword is in my hand!" And in what we would call a car tail-end speech he said at Bedford: "I am glad to find no end of great hearts. It is with these hearts that I

am going into battle to win. I come be fore you as one of the great unemployed."

Arrived at Leeds, he made a long and vigorous speech, the keynote of which was, "I stand for the people," based on his declaration that "the banner of party strife has been raised in the Carlton Club," and that the question is one between the will of the people and the success of party. He defended the work of his Government in war and peace, and put the case colloquially when he said: "They say I was a very good war Premier, but the war is over now. I was like a doctor who was good in life-anddeath cases, but couldn't cure a headache. I haven't got the proper bedside manner. When one cuts expenses it brings in no votes, yet as the result of cur financial policy the sovereign is beginning to look the dollar in the face."

The political situation is made complex by the fact that some influential Conservative leaders, such as Lord Balfour, Lord Birkenhead, Austen Chamberlain, and Sir Robert Horne, are still supposed to desire the continuance of the Coalition, while, on the other hand, many Liberals of the Asquith stripe are opposed to it. A London correspondent of the New York "Herald" puts it this

way:

Mr. Lloyd George, who during the war split the Liberal party into two sections, has now done the same thing by the Unionist party. Thus, instead of the two original parties, there now are four, with the Labor party making the fifth. There no longer will be an Irish party, which for so many years during the great Home Rule agitation was able to dominate the Westminster Parliament by throwing its seventy members to whichever side it chose.

THE TURK IN EUROPE

HE formal re-entry of the Turk into

International

DR. W. W. YEN, PREMIER OF CHINA LAST JUNE

when Refet made his triumphal entry on October 19 was extraordinary. The Turks of the great city gave him a foretaste of the reception they are planning for Kemal.

Refet rode through wildly cheering masses across the famous bridge from Galata to Stamboul. He was accompanied by the man who is to be Governor of Adrianople, the Turks' sacred city, ravished from them in the Balkan War, and now to be humbly returned. With him were gorgeously clad officials and a detachment of the Nationalist army. There were green arches in honor of Kemal's victories, red flags with the Star and Crescent and the green war flag of the Prophet waved, while Turkish bands played their independence march, sheep were slaughtered as a sacrifice along the line in Oriental style, and Greeks, Armenians, and Jews hid away or wore the Moslem fez. Meanwhile, from Adrianople and Eastern Thrace a vast mass of fleeing Christians and Jews (350,000 is one estimate) has fled westward rather than accept Turkish rule.

All this took place under the supervision of Allied forces still in possession; but when Kemal comes, as he will soon, there will be no Allied forces in Constantinople, and if the Christian and Jewish quarters are spared it will be by Kemal's orders. It should be remembered that the humiliation which the Western or Christian world is undergoing in seeing Turkey now dominant in Constantinople and dominant in Eastern Thrace, and alone of Germany's allies better off in its European possessions than it was before the war broke out in 1914-this humiliation, we say, was not, as many people suppose, a consequence

of Kemal's great victory, for the great Allies had agreed to these very things months before Kemal swept the Greeks through Asia Minor like chaff before the storm. Perhaps the settlement is the best that the general condition of the Near East and its complicated problems makes possible, but it certainly is not an inspiring or enjoyable situation.

peace.

It depends rather upon order and justice. And when there is corruption combined with governmental feebleness it is impossible to secure order and justice without a disturbance of the peace. If China is to take her place by the side of other Powers whose authority is recognized and whose rights are acknowledged, she must find some way of establishing a really sovereign government. At present China has no government which other governments can hold responsible, and as long as her provinces are subject to the control of their military governors, known as tuchuns, there can be no China worthy of the name of nation. Some of the most enlightened leaders in China recognize this fact, and the disturbances in China during the past few months have been in part the result of attempts to establish a central authority and secure Chinese unification.

Yet more and more it becomes evident that the reconstruction of China must await the utter bankruptcy of militarism. The story of the fight for republican stability since the Chinese crisis of 1917 dividing the twenty-one provinces into a "North" and a "South" has been that of an ever-narrowing circle of military leaders contending for the control of Peking for financial reasons. The manipulation of the Central Government paid dividends to the winner, while the unsuccessful contenders for place have been steadily eliminated.

By last spring the power north of the Yangtze River had gravitated into the hands of three outstanding figuresTsao Kun with his then lieutenant, Wu Pei-fu, opposing Chang Tso-lin in his descent upon China's capital from Manchuria. To-day Tsao remains as tuchun in his bailiwick of Chihli Province overshadowed by Wu and stripped of his primary military and thus political importance. Wu Pei-fu's only rival, Chang Tso-lin, retreating after his defeat to his Manchurian kingdom, has completely reorganized his forces. The consensus of opinion in China is that Chang to-day constitutes a greater menace than ever before to his opponents in Central China.

With China in the critical position she

DR. WANG CHUNG-HUI, PREMIER OF CHINA SINCE JULY

cccupies at this time, the position of the Southern leaders ousted from Canton in refusing to accept office in the reorganization of Peking's Government, under the acting presidency of Li Yuan-hung, at first sight seems playing selfish politics. Why does not Sun Yat-sen, the driving force in China's growing democratic nationalism, co-operate without hesitancy?

Far from being eliminated as a political factor in China's politics, Sun remains in Shanghai from the deep conviction that until the outcome of the conflict brewing in North China no man can do anything to help Peking out of the hole it is in with any lasting results for China's sorely tried republicanism. So long as Peking remains in the grip of contending armies, the possibility of taking hold of China's actual bankruptcy is dubious. The position of Sun Yat-sen's party is that the millstone of military politics remains around the neck of any government now taking office. Until events take that millstone off, the chances of responsible government succeeding in the task of republican reconstruction are held to be slim.

As Chang Tso-lin continues to reestablish his power in Manchuria, the position of the other super-tuchun of China, Wu Pei-fu, becomes more and more threatened. Only the lack of funds prevents Wu from attacking his rival to-day. In the meantime Sun, though driven from his capital, retains the loyalty of his main army. His forces have now turned on the neighboring province of Fukhien, and have taken the capital. A reconstitution of the Southern Government in Foochow is in the

offing, with a general realignment of interests. Wu is likely to be crushed by a new attack from Manchuria combined with the defection of some of his allies. The result will probably be to leave supreme in North China a single military leader against whom no liberal civil leadership would avail. But after a period of inevitable reaction, the grind of destiny will bring into power those men, both North and South, who are determined to build in China an enduring government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The next few months are likely to try the souls of those who believe in a republican China. But until the nightmare of militarism has worn itself out there is little real place for democratic government in Peking, a financial house-cleaning, and the necessary material support from the Powers.

CHINESE CHRISTIANS IN POLITICS

I'

T is perhaps something more than a coincidence that the most effective political leadership at Peking and the most effective military leadership in Wu Peifu's army have both been in the hands of Chinese Christians.

In the enormous mass of the Chinese population Christians constitute a very small proportion, but their place in Chinese leadership has been of very great importance.

In June, upon the triumph of Wu Pei-fu, there came into office China's first Christian Premier, Dr. W. W. Yen. Like many other Chinese who have represented China in her foreign relations, Dr. Yen had a foreign training. He was graduated at St. John's University (Episcopalian) in Shanghai and studied in the United States at the University of Virginia, where he attained the scholarly distinction of membership in the Phi Beta Kappa. He returned to China to take a professorship in St. John's University. The famous Chinese diplomat Wu Ting-fang was the first to induce him to go into politics. At the outbreak of the war Dr. Yen was Minister to both Germany and Denmark, and he stayed in Berlin until China entered the war, when he withdrew to Copenhagen. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs in China for two or three years, until he became Premier.

Having accepted the Premiership only temporarily, Dr. Yen was succeeded by another Christian Chinese in the Premiership, Dr. C. H. Wang. Like Dr. Yen, Dr. Wang received a foreign training. He is a graduate of Yale and has specialized in law. He has been China's Chief Justice, and while Chief Justice was a delegate of China to the Arma

GENERAL FENG

ment Conference at Washington. In manner Dr. Wang is mild and gentle, but he made upon those who met him in Washington during that Conference an impression that could only be made by a firm and strong personality. No one meeting Dr. Wang and knowing his record can doubt his patriotism, or his public spirit, or his disinterested purpose to serve his people. In spite of his helplessness in the face of the military situation, to have such a man as that in public office in China, and particularly in office as Prime Minister, is of real promise for China's future.

CHINESE CHRISTIANS IN WAR

W

HILE these men of Christian faith and high character have been in political office, the most effective military leadership in China has undoubtedly been that of another Christian, General Feng Yu-hsiang. He has not only been the most effective general in war, but he has also been and is the Governor of Honan Province. He has been likened more than once to Oliver Cromwell, and his men to Cromwell's Ironsides.

General Feng's methods of fighting may revolutionize military operations in China-and revolutionize them for the better. A people of industry and thrift, who have long had reason to be disgusted with political corruption and

with militarism, the Chinese generally seem not to have much stomach for fighting. As we have had occasion to say before now, and as many of our readers need not to be told, until recently in so-called battles in China there has not been much bloodshed nor much determination for victory. The so-called battles have been largely maneuvers When one force has maneuvered another force into a bad position, the general on the losing side has followed the example of the chess player and has usually yielded the game. "You win," says the defeated general; "we will drop this, and start a new campaign." At this point the victorious soldiers then begin their real operations. Unopposed and unhindered, they run amuck with fire and sword. They loot, destroy, kill, and torture. Their victims are the unarmed and pacifist population. This is the natural and practically inevitable fruit of pacifism. The result is a loss of life and an amount of suffering greatly exceeding even the worst involved in modern warfare. In the Chinese variety of battle the soldiers are safe; it is the defenseless civilian population, especially the women and children, who are the victims.

Feng has changed that. Feng's army does not slaughter the defenseless. It fights those who would slaughter the defenseless. General Feng himself is a Methodist convert, and about eighty per cent of his soldiers are said to be Christians, and of the officers all are Christians. According to information we have received, Feng regularly employs two evangelists to work among his troops at all times, and occasionally some of the leading missionary evangelists go for two or three weeks among the soldiers. When Feng's troops encamp, all evil women in the vicinity are immediately driven out. The officers meet regularly for Bible study in a sort of normal class; then in turn they hold Bible study classes with the soldiers. The spirit of Cromwell's Ironsides has seemed to reappear in Feng's camp. Like Cromwell's men, Feng's soldiers are relentless in battle. Without unduly idealizing the men of Feng's army, it is possible to regard them as a vast improvement over the Chinese soldiers who count cowardice a virtue and adorn it with atrocity.

If the Chinese can get the spirit of Yen and Wang into public office and the spirit of Feng into the army, they may make of their country a really great nation. They may create a force which will be equally unselfish in service and inexorable against exploitation. There is no greater libel that has ever been uttered against Christianity than that it is a religion of feebleness. On the con

trary, it is a religion that, for the protection of the weak and the service of all, first creates and then harnesses power. It does not seem to us by chance that Christian influence seems to have introduced power into the public life of China.

THAT GOOD OLD GULF STREAM!

R

UMORS seem to have been circulated

all over the world that some evildisposed corporations have laid hands upon the Gulf Stream, have been utilizing it to their own advantage, and have thereby put the world in a parlous condition. Happily, the fact seems to be that the good old Gulf Stream is still carrying on and is benefiting commerce and climate in the most benignant manner. The whole thing is an amusing illustration of the way in which a scientific hypothesis may be twisted into a note of alarm and terror. An eminent French scientist, Professor Berget, who is the Director of the Bureau of Oceanography in Paris, seems to have discussed the possible results that might come if the Gulf Stream were turned from its course, say, by completing "the railway that goes to sea" all the way from Florida to Cuba-than which nothing is less likely. Thereupon the newspaper sensationalists and headliners represented Professor Berget as declaring that terrible evils were about to befall the world because of what already had been done in Florida; Scotland, we believe, was to become a country of Polar ice; England was to have its temperature drop to forty degrees below zero. and it was to become impossible to grow crops in western Europe.

Our American scientists, and especially the officials of the United States Weather Bureau, immediately came to the defense of the Gulf Stream, and Europe is now safe. They declared that nothing had been done or was likely to be done which would shift the Gulf Stream, and that even if it were thrown out of its present channel it was more than doubtful whether the effect on Europe's weather would be what had been predicted. All sorts of other scientists and practical men came to the rescue also to show that nothing whatever had been done to call for alarm or sensation.

Finally, an amusing aspect of the discussion cropped up when it was asserted that the whole excitement had arisen from the efforts of various Florida boomers to show that their particular towns had the very best conceivable climate in the world because the Gulf Stream had very kindly moved over in their direction. Thereupon the whole discussion resolved itself into an inter

esting but highly academic inquiry as to what might happen perhaps a few hundred centuries from now if the Gulf Stream should suddenly and unexpectedly move westward. In that case, say the learned men, it might be that a large part of Europe would become another "Siberian anticyclonic zone." Professor Berget sensibly remarks as to this, "Why be frightened by possibilities that are never likely to be transformed into probabilities?" But this of course was not headlined by the sensationalists.

FOR BETTER RACE RELATIONS

A

N extensive report has been made by the Commission on Race Relations appointed by former Governor Lowden, of Illinois, to study the history and meaning of the race riot which took place in Chicago in 1919. As a result a formidable volume of 650 pages has been printed for the Commission by the University of Chicago Press.

If this volume dealt solely with the Chicago riots it might be of limited value, but it contains a large amount of matter bearing on the race question the country over. It should prove of high importance as material for study of the question anywhere in America. The recommendations made, former Governor Lowden declares, will, if acted upon, make a repetition of the tragedy of 1919 impossible. He particularly calls attention to the recommendation that permanent local commissions on race relations be created. As a proof of the value of this, he can well point to the work of the Chicago Commission. Its appointment was the Governor's first act after the riots and while the danger of recurrence was imminent. From the date of the appointment, confidence was restored and conditions rapidly improved. The Commission was composed of carefully selected representatives of both races; they worked without friction and agreed substantially on facts and on recommendations.

One interesting fact was that the minimum of friction between the races existed in Chicago in just that part of the city in which colored people have lived longest and in the largest numbers. It was the floating population of Negroes seeking work and the less intelligent white workers who thought that they might be driven out by a flood of Negro labor that were behind the ill feeling. Thus, when regrettable and causeless incidents occurred, the hatred behind the incidents led to the outbreak of savagery.

The sequence of events in this Chicago riot is typical of the way in which such bloodthirsty affairs spring up suddenly and as suddenly run wild. A white saloon-keeper died of heart trouble, but

some reckless reporter wrote that he had been killed by a Negro; that night white toughs fired on a group of Negroes; similar incidents followed, until not long before the riot two colored men were shot down absolutely without cause or reason except race hatred, and, so the Commission reports, policemen who saw the murders refused to make arrests. So hate and violence increased until one Sunday at a lake-front beach a young Negro, who had swum pushing a log before him over into the section of water supposed by an invisible line to be reserved for whites only, was stoned, let go his log, and was drowned. This was the event that started the reign of terror, and within a few days there were 38 deaths (15 of whites and 23 of Negroes) and 537 people were injured. In time order was restored, but too late to save lives of innocent people or homes from destruction.

It was perfectly evident to everybody that the work was, as the Governor said, the work of the worst element of both races. So the Governor's Commission set to work to study the question thoroughly and impartially. No fewer than fifty-nine recommendations are made, ranging from large questions, such as the causes of all race antagonism and racial intolerance, down to the suggestions that the word Negro should be spelled with a capital "N" and the word "nigger" should be avoided as a needless provocative. The recommendations are notable for their specific form and are addressed specifically in 'groups to all the municipal boards, to municipal and State officials, to the courts, and to the public at large. We commend this study of a troublesome and serious question to all who wish to see the relations of the white and colored races improved.

THE COMING
ELECTION

T will be somewhat difficult to disentangle from the results of the coming election on November 7 the settlement of any National issue. Most of the elections of Senators, Representatives in Congress, and Governors will be determined to a large extent by local and personal conditions. There are, however, two important National questions upon which the vote will throw at least some light-the question of prohibition, and the question as to whether the country is on the whole satisfied with the general course of the present Administration in Washington.

It may be set down as an almost invariable political law that mid-Administration elections are usually unfa

ble. All Presidents are api to fall short of what is expected of them during their first year and a half of office. Every time the party of opposition returns to power its adherents expect its Presidential nominee to bring about a political millennium. This was so when Mr. Wilson was elected; it will prove to be so in the case of Mr. Harding, and especially because he was elected by such an overwhelming and unprecedented majority. We may therefore fully expect to find partisan Democratic papers on November 8 pointing out that Mr. Harding and all his ways and works have been repudiated; and equally we may find partisan Republican papers proving how astonishing it is that so many Democrats who voted for him in 1920 have stayed by him. We do not think that mid-Administration elections are very significant thermometers regarding the political temperature produced by Presidential policies. The real test in this respect will come two years from

now.

More decisive conclusions may be drawn from the vote on the prohibition question. In Ohio there will be a popular referendum on the modification of the State liquor law by raising the legal alcoholic content of beverages. The "Wets" thus propose to relieve State officers from any responsibility in the enforcement of the Volstead Act. If the proposal is carried, it can have no other effect than registering the sentiment of the majority of the people of Ohio upon the Prohibition Amendment and the Volstead Law; for Federal officers will still possess the same authority that they possessed before. As a means, however, of registering public opinion the proposal has been shrewdly drawn by those who wish to modify or weaken the Prohibition Amendment, and the result will be significant. In New Jersey the issue is very clear cut. Senator Frelinghuysen is running for re-election as an avowed supporter of the Prohibition Amendment and the Volstead Enforcement Act; Governor Edwards is running against him for the Senatorship in avowed opposition to prohibition in all its phases. If Senator Frelinghuysen should win, it would be reasonable to make the deduction that the sentiment on the Atlantic seaboard is favorable to prohibition. In California Mr. Richardson is running for the Governorship as a "Dry" candidate, and while his campaign turns to some extent upon questions of taxation and economy, if he should be elected it would be a distinct triumph for prohibition sentiment. In Nebraska Senator Hitchcock, the Democratic nominee to succeed himself in the United States Senate, has come out

openly as favoring prohibition, although he has heretofore been counted among the "Wets." It is said that Mr. Bryan is now supporting him, while in the past he has opposed him because of their differences on the liquor question. We look upon these various tests of prohibition sentiment with some concern. Now that the Amendment is a part of the Constitution it should be given a fair trial, and it cannot be given a fair tria! with some of the country half-heartedly wet and some of the country half-heartedly dry.

In New York State the chief and perhaps the only contest of National interest is that between Governor Miller, the Republican nominee, and ex-Governor "Al" Smith, the Democratic nominee. Governor Miller has never made a special feature of his views on prohibition, but ex-Governor Smith is avowedly for "light wines and beer." The contest is, however, really between an extraordinarily magnetic personality, on the one hand, and a candidate who makes his appeal not through personal popularity, but through the highest standards of efficiency in political administration. If Governor Miller wins, it will be because the voters of New York have resisted the temptation to vote for the candidate whom they thoroughly like, in spite of his association with Tammany Hall, in order to place again in the Governor's chair a man who has shown as scrupulous honesty and as high standards of efficiency as perhaps have ever been displayed at Albany.

The Middle West, as Mr. Davenport's articles and some of the political correspondence elsewhere in this issue have pointed out, is seething with dissatisfaction about more economic and social conditions than can be catalogued and tabulated. In Wisconsin Senator La Follette and his organization are appealing to all those who for one reason or another dislike certain American traditions. Unfortunately, pro-Germanism in the worst sense of that word still flour ishes in this country. In Iowa the candidacy of Colonel Brookhart for the Senatorship is the result of dissatisfaction of the farmers of the Middle West, who feel that everybody but themselves has had political consideration in the economic readjustment following the

war.

LLOYD GEORGE IN

A

ours.

ECLIPSE

S no man can live wholly unto himself, so no nation can change its government, or even its policies foreign or domestic, without affect ing other nations. In one sense, whether Great Britain chooses to displace Lloyd George from the head of the British Government is no concern of Certainly Americans have no right to ask the British people to con sider their wishes in the matter. And yet decisions affecting the interests of America as well as of France, Russia, Italy, and Germany, the peoples of the Balkans, the Near East, and even pos sibly nations on the other side of the globe, will be affected by the fact that the man who came into power in Britain when Britain was fighting with but a fraction of her strength, turned the resources of the Empire over to the cause of victory, guided the nation not only through a military triumph but through a diplomatic triumph even more notable. virtually banished the Irish question as a plague of English politics and as an American bugbear, and diverted into normal channels of protest revolutionary sentiment that was making the labor problem an international one, has now been dismissed. In another sense, therefore, the change in the British Government is very much our concern We are not responsible for it. We can do nothing about it. But we shall be undoubtedly affected by it.

Though the cause of Lloyd George's retirement as Prime Minister was chiefly, if not wholly, one of domestic politics, its effect will nowhere be felt more definitely than in Britain's foreign affairs.

On the wisdom of the change from the British point of view American com ment is not likely to be helpful. In the first place, it is not likely to be ade quately informed; an ignorant comment is likely to be irritating even to those whom it favors. Even English comment is not altogether clarifying. It is not by any means certain that the English people themselves understand what has been done or why it has been done Some of the old-time distinctions be tween Liberals and Conservatives have been obliterated by the effects of the war and by the subsequent, if not wholly consequent, social and economic changes in England. Now that the Coalition has broken up, the old Libera! party seems still feeble, while a Government conducted, as Bonar Law's Government seems to be, by those who used to be recognized as the governing class seems somewhat incongruous at a time when