ments, and more reinforcements, were demanded. Finally there was open rebellion and bloodshed.

So, while the attention of the world was centered upon the battlefields of France and Belgium, while even Italy turned its eyes toward the Carso and Mount Grappa, an unnoticed but extremely ferocious little war was waged across the wastes of the Libyan Desert, and was being carried right up to the walls and outpost forts of the seaboard cities. Misurata, on the Mediterranean, fell; and Zavia, less than fifty kilometers from Tripoli City, was taken and occupied by the Arabs under the command of Fuad Pasha, nephew of the Turkish Sultan.

In May, 1919, as has been said, an armistice was patched up. That armistice exists on paper to-day. But what the true situation is remains dubious; for news reports from Libya, having their only possible origin in the Italian Censor's office, cannot be depended upon.

The difficulties, then, that menace the maintenance of Italian dominion in Libya are three:

First, the comparatively recent conquest of the country, a matter of only eleven years past. The writer spent some days with a famous sheik of the desert, one Mohammed Shulabi, who is reputed to have been himself the leader of a terrible attack on Italian bersaglieri from which scarcely a man escaped. What Mohammed Shulabi thinks now no one may say, for the Arab is not communicative to comparative strangers. But what other chief men of the race feel is very evident in the very manner in which they eye their Italian overlords and in their muttered curses of hatred as the Italian soldiers, always-and prudently-fully armed, pass down the suk of the city.

Second, the failure of the Italian Government adequately to colonize the country with loyal Italians. Where here in

New York (an American city, despite all that some of its detractors may maintain) we have huge colonies of Italians living almost precisely as they would in Caserta or Reggio or Bari or Trapanitalking the same tongue, eating the same food, prey to the same superstitions, flaunting the same flag-in the towns of Libya, from Buchamesh on the west to Tobruch on the Egypt line, is heard no syllable of the soft Latin tongue. Here the Koran is in every tent and Dante is unknown; here fez replaces borsalino. and the sandal takes the place of the boot. What few civilians, clustered about iron café tables, do speak the Latin tongue turn out to be, upon closer and disappointing investigation, mongrel Maltese from Valetta or Levantine Jews. And, in the third place, there are the almost insuperable obstacles to a purely military control. In Algiers and Tunis, not to speak of Morocco, the Atlas Mountains supply great tracts of arable and fertile country, welling with water. In Egypt is the incalculably precious Nile, along which-in addition to its fertilizing properties-troops may be moved with speed and security for hundreds of miles. But, in Tripolitania, in the interior of Cyrenaica even, twenty miles from the littoral, are none of these tactical advantages. Forever and forever the sands of the desert stretch southward, hill upon hill. Across the glaring emptiness of this awful desolation, tortured by the unbelievable heat of the summer sun or frozen by the gale of winter blasts from the bitter Adriatic, any defending forces must move painfully in pursuit of the will-o'-the-wisp enemy. In full possession of the vast herds of camels and of thousands of beautiful Arab horses, the Bedouins can strike, and run and strike again with miraculous speed.

And, untrammeled by any Hague conventions, the Arab knows war only in its most primitive aspects. To kill the

enemy is his ideal. How? Well, that doesn't matter very much. The night attack is his favorite pastime; the slitting of hostile throats while his victim sleeps is a peculiarly pleasant sort of play; the maiming or horrible cicatrization of "Christian dogs" is all a part of the game.

It is that sort of thing that Italy has to face in Libya. And if the Turkish uprising in Asia Minor spreads its spirit unchecked, it is that sort of thing that is almost certain to happen.

The loss of Libya would seem a small thing as measured in the great balance of world affairs. To Italy, indeed, the bereavement might not be unbearable: for the arid land is unprofitable enough as it stands, and constitutes a constant and annoying drain upon the royal treas

ury.

But with the Turk actually triumphant in his own ancient provinces of Asia, daily threatening a return to lost lands of Thrace, a single victorious campaign in the territory of a strong Allied nation would lend him a confidence that might well prove enormously difficult to subdue.

A thousand years ago the Christian nations were at bay in their own lands. And while there is no danger of another such situation in our living generation, the advance of the champions of the Crescent is worth more than superficial attention.

The Turk, winning Syria, wins back a land long Moslem. The Turk, winning Tripoli-all Libya-wins back a land where Christian influence has for a little time at least been omnipotent.

And there is, it may be added, a sinister significance in the circumstance that those strangers from "the parts of Libya about Cyrene" (Acts ii.10)-who on the first Day of Pentecost spoke the Apos tles' own language-should be now wholly converted to the tongue of the Prophet.

I

BY P. W. WILSON

tion of her ruined provinces on a large scale; debiting the cost, not to taxation, but to German reparations, which are in a large measure withheld. The case of Italy, too, is plain. Her expenditure is greater than her revenue, and what she needs is a much smaller army, many fewer officials, and severe rectitude in her administration.

N considering the finances of Europe, and the question whether and to what extent the United States should press for payment of the debts due to her, it is easy to understand the situation of France and Great Britain. These countries are hard hit by the war, but both of them are obviously solvent. Britain has balanced her budget, repaid more than one billion dollars of external and internal liabilities, reduced the amount of her paper money, and brought her exchange sterling within ten per cent of par gold; while France is declared by the Bankers' Trust, after an elaborate investigation, to be as wealthy as she was before the war (this being the reward of her thrift), and if her budget does not yet balance, the reason 's that she has undertaken the restora

FINANCE

dozen budgets introduced into the British House of Commons. There is not a budget so introduced by Mr. Lloyd George that I did not hear discussed in advance and during its passage. The judgment that I have brought to bear upon the German problem is the judgment which I would apply to the finances Hoove of my own country, a judgment based on cold arithmetic, which, after all, is one of those few sciences that, even in a mad world, cannot err.

But when we come to Germany, we find that even experts differ. This is doubtless because some of them, like scientific witnesses, are swearing their testimony to a brief. They want Germany to pay her fines to France and they say, therefore, that she is well able to do so, or they want the United States to cancel her loans and therefore they say that Europe is perishing. I hold no brief for any policy. I b e heard a

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The collapse of currency in Russia was of course deliberate. During the war it was actually promoted by Germany, where billions of forged rubles were distributed for the purpose along the Russian front. The Bolshevists may now wish to regain a monetary standard, but in the first flush of their Communist

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The immediate reason for the fall in the mark is easy enough to state. Paper money is a symbol for gold. On a dollar bill are printed the words:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York will pay to the bearer on demand one dollar.

The bill is issued on the security of the United States, dischargeable in gold. In Germany, one year ago, the gold reserve was $250,000,000. The outstanding paper was $17,500,000,000. The proportion of paper to gold was thus 70 to 1. And to-day the position is worse. German currency merely represents credit, not assets. In a single week as many as 10,000,000,000 paper marks, equivalent to more than 2,000,000,000 paper dollars, have been issued, not to pay reparations, but with obvious intent to depreciate.

On this phenomenon there can be no higher authority than Dr. Bruhn, the chairman of Krupps' directors. Recently he has said:

Inflation is the lesser evil. The greatest evil would be if we were to stop working.

In other words, the inflation is deliberate. The industrial magnates have ordained it. George Bernhard, editor of the "Vossische Zeitung," has expressed the view that Stinnes is playing for a collapse. The objective is Germany busy but Germany bankrupt. She is to recover her trade, but she is to shed her debts.

Take first her industries, and secondly her finance. In May, 1921, Mr. Schwab, supported by Mr. Hoover, declared that Germany had gone back to work and was "winning the peace." In Mr. Hoover's words, she hoped "to coin desperate labor into good solid money." On August 12 the London "Economist," the highest financial authority in the British Empire, reported of Germany:

The trade boom is growing; and an increasing number of manufacturers refuse to deliver before the end of the year, and in all cases provide for alteration of their contract prices in case wages or other costing factors increase. Employment continues to improve, and the unsatisfed demand

for labor materially exceeds the small number of unemployed. The number of publicly supported unemployed has fallen from 314,475 a year ago to 19,864 on July 1. Crops will not be as bad as was feared some weeks ago, but will not be as good as in 1921.

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The unemployed in Germany 20,000 in numbers, and in Britain, with sterling rising to par, the unemployed number nearly 2,000,000, this on a smaller population.

Inflation of currency is thus a tonic while it lasts. In Germany's home market it has resulted in constantly rising prices. Goods are ordered to-day because they can be sold to-morrow at an assured profit. Companies have raised an immense volume of new capital, employees becoming mark millionaires in a month. As prices have risen, so on the whole have wages, and one estimate is that, as a result of the war, the standard of living in Germany has fallen only six per cent. As an eight-hour day has been substituted for a nine-hour day-with a temporary but considerable diminution of output due to the fragrance of Bolshevism-this is certainly an interesting result. The workers are considered to be well fed and well clothed. A mercantile marine is in process of construction. The tonnage of shipping cleared at Hamburg is rapidly returning to normal, and the number of passenger automobiles. which in 1914 was 60,676, had risen by 1921 to 60,966, while in some cities skyscrapers of American plan are being projected. Into a period of peace Germany has thus continued the feverish activities of war.

But, having developed great industrial cities and a crowded population, the Germans cannot live by taking in one another's washing. They must have foreign trade, and this foreign trade, like the home trade, has been stimulated by inflation. Take Krupps. It is true that seventy-five per cent of the ore used by Krupps is now imported and paid for in gold. But, on the other hand, Krupps receive gold for every manufactured product that they export. The difference between these imports and those exports is a gold difference in favor of Krupps, and put into marks that gold is multiplied hundreds of times in paper value. Now the rise in German wages has always been lower than the rise in the value of gold. If Krupps get 300 marks for their one mark gold, they have only to pay 150 marks or less on increased wages, salaries, and overhead expenses. On the transaction they have thus an enormous margin of profit-sufficient to enable them to sell steel in England at $20 less per ton than England can make that steel.

It is true that Germany has lost many investments abroad by confiscation. But after peace was signed her financiers met this difficulty by exporting foreign investments held in Germany. The object was twofold. First, it meant that these foreign investments could not be seized in Germany for reparations or taxes imposed for the purpose of repara

tions. And, secondly, it provided Germany with assets in foreign banks against which she could get credit for the purchase of raw material that she badly needed owing to the depletion of her stocks. Her own banks were, doubtless, weakened by the loss of these exported securities and had to lend to their own people without such security and thus contribute to inflation, but this result, as we have seen, German financiers did not mind. Inflation has been their game throughout.

We thus see that, in peace as well as in war, the German mind is comprehensive, thoroughly logical, and organized to the last detail, like a machine. The depreciation of the mark has of course led to many valuable German assets passing at low prices into foreign hands, but on balance Germany has gained enormously. Her assets of every kindmines, forests, factories, farms, etc.are worth about $70,000,000,000 gold, none of which assets, as valued in gold, are affected by the fall in the mark. When, however, we come to Germany's liabilities, we find a very different story. The whole of her domestic war debt, much swollen since the armistice, is in paper, and last year it had reached about 250,000,000,000 of such marks, or $60,000,000,000. But see what happens when the mark falls to one-three-hundredth of its face value. The German debt shrinks to only $200,000,000, or less than onehundredth of the Federal debt of the United States. One can easily understand why Germany would like to raise an international loan, even of moderate dimensions. For every cent she receives by such loan she can redeem 300 cents of scrip face value, issued-all of itin the first instance at or about par.

The German argument is thus subtle and ingenious. She sees Britain, with her sterling exchange almost back to normal, heavily taxed and painfully repaying to her creditors, at home and abroad, 20 shillings in the pound. How much easier to postpone taxation, to retain innumerable officials, to run the post office and railways at a loss, and so depreciate not only the currency, but the debts of every kind dependent on it! When Germany had to find a billion dollars in gold last year for reparations, she let the mark slump, and it is estimated that her foreign creditors lost much more by the fall than the Allies gained by the billion dollars. With their assets safely planted abroad, German capitalists would rather like the country to go bankrupt and get rid of its liabilities, and especially of reparations. Then, with the capital thus exported, they would start business again unhampered by actual and political liabilities.

That this has been and is the German strategy, I take to be demonstrable beyond possibility of challenge. Whether she can "put it over" is another question. After all, when the mark fell to 2 cents, many people outside Germany bought the currency in the belief that Germany would play the game and seel

a recovery of her credit. On their part, it was doubtless a speculation, but it will be a long time before German marks are again trusted abroad. Also, inflation is like running a bicycle down hill. What exactly will happen when the brake is applied? May it not then be up-hill work, as in the United States during deflation?

What Dr. Hermes, the German Finance Minister, says is that reparations are "the cause of the entire financial distress of the Empire." He is right. Whether the reparations be reasonable or excessive, Germany does not want to pay one gold mark more than she has to or before she is made to pay. Inflation is her weapon not only for promoting commerce but for postponing installments when they fall due. As long as the amount of reparations continues indeterminate, for so long will Germany drive down her apparent credit at home, building up by a feverish trade new credits abroad, which the Allies cannot touch.

In saying that the Germans are not philanthropists, but are thinking mainly of their own interests, the French also

are right. The Germans are in that respect like every other nation that walks this earth. Whether the inflation is an honest device, one may argue one way and the other way. The Germans consider that it is their economic defense against claims for reparations of an impossible amount. The practical question, however, is not one of ethics. It is plain that Germany will pay nothing except as she is compelled, and what we have to decide is how far she can be compelled. The profits on her state mines and forests, when reduced to gold, are negligible-perhaps intentionally negligible and there is little hope that those profits would increase if German workers were to be placed under the alien control of French officers. Military measures against Germany, in which France would have to act alone, whether justified by the facts or not, would fail to raise money. Interrupt German industry, and the last hope of reparations seems likely to vanish.

Germany is to-day recovering. By her treaty with the Soviets she has obtained access to the vast resources of Russia which she is now organizing. In one

year her population rose by 750,000. while the population of France fell by 200,000. The balance of population was changed to the disadvantage of France by one million in twelve months-this without any annexation of Austria or other extension of German territory. The very measures which disarm Germany on the military side strengthen her armament as a commercial Power. One billion dollars' worth of gun plant has been scrapped at Krupps under General Bingham, of the British army. And Krupps is making locomotives with other steel products, which are seized by customers before they are cold. The German budget shows an item of 3,600,000,000 marks for defense and 8,100,000,000 marks for pensions, or 11,700,000,000 marks in all for the army and navy. In gold this works out at less than $8,000,000! The naval and military budget of France is 5,000,000,000 francs. In gold that works out at $400,000,000. Germany is thus spending in gold onefiftieth of the sums spent by France upon armaments, pensions included. That, in plain terms, is the situation that we are up against.

T

HE report of the Cleveland Crime Survey has been published, various Bar Associations have spoken, and the consensus of opinion appears to be that the courts are congested, that legal procedure in many cases is antiquated, and that the law's delay which is the consequence of the congestion and the antiquated methods is a direct encouragement to the criminal and an incentive to crime.

The jury seems to have escaped criticism, yet my experience as a juror in the criminal court compels the verdict that the jury, as it is selected to-day, must bear a large share of the responsibility for the contempt of law which is the primary cause of the crime wave. Nominally, every citizen on the assessors' lists is liable to jury service; actually, nearly half of those called find some way of escape. Precedent and political influence are invoked to exempt those best fitted to pass upon the guilt or innocence of their fellow-citizens at the bar, and that solemn responsibility is left to the ignorant and inexperienced. The "twelve men tried and true" have ceased to be tried, and though they may be true according to their lights, those lights are often but a feeble glimmer.

In my own State the written law exempts from jury service any man who has been a member of the National Guard for nine years or who after nine months in the United States Army has been honorably discharged. Precedent rules that physicians and nurses shall he automatically excused. Lawyers are

ed officers of the court and are ex

BY IMOGEN B. OAKLEY

cused. The judge may at his discretion excuse any one who claims that his business will suffer without his actual presence, and teachers and clergymen appeal successfully, as a rule, to that discretion. Those who cater to the necessary needs of the community-the butcher, the baker, the electric-light maker-find small difficulty in persuading the court that they are of more value as public providers than as jurors. A watchmaker summoned to my jury was permitted to return to his work because he said he was the only expert workman in his shop. Political influence can be trusted to relieve from service all those with a pull, and foresighted citizens who contribute handsomely to the expenses of the party in power need not fear the tedium of the court-room.

By these various processes of elimination, the eighty talesmen assigned to my court were reduced to forty-two before the court opened. Only four of the fortytwo gave evidence of anything more than a primary education. Chauffeurs, waiters, plumbers' assistants, clerks from small shops, men "temporarily out of a job" predominated. The women did not raise the level of intelligence. In addition to my wholly inexperienced self, my sex was represented by a colored woman, elderly and somnolent, and two flappers whom their masculine fellow-jurors openly admired, and with whom the younger of them openly flirted. We were an ignorant and inefficient group. Several of us had never before been in a court-room. More than one could have sympathized with the

juror who, after the trial was over and the judge had made his charge, was asked whether he would vote for the plaintiff or the defendant, and replied helplessly, "But which is the plaintiff and which the defendant?" We did not know how to weigh evidence nor sift the conflicting and contradictory testimony of the witnesses. Our "native common sense" did not save us from unjust verdicts. We punished the innocent and bade the guilty go free.

Happily, though it was the criminal court, the cases were for the most part trivial. In the first one submitted to us, a colored truck-driver was accused of selling a barrel of apples from the truck and putting the money into his own pocket. The witnesses were his fellowemployees, ignorant colored men like himself, and under the heckling of the lawyers they grew more and more confused in their testimony. They contradicted themselves and one another and left us in a maze of doubt and bewilderment. The judge's charge failed to extricate us. We could not agree and were sent to the jury room for consultation.

The jury room was small, dark, and badly ventilated. It contained a table, twelve chairs, and an enormous spittoon. around which we gathered. The men eagerly lighted their pipes, and it at once occurred to me that ignorant jurors, only half-conscious of their responsibilities, might easily agree to disagree in order to escape for a while from the severe decorum of the court and lounge and smoke in the jury room. I