don't believe in absentee landlordism. Government operation has to be managed at a distance, presumably from Washington, by men who do not come in direct contact with the people and the problems they affect. Besides, it was tried and failed."

For the moment we dropped the subject there, but later we came back to it, and then it appeared that the opinions of the new Senator, on this subject at least, might be open to change. It was after he had told me of the many failures of the city of Detroit, over a period of twenty-five years, to secure municipal ownership, including the failure of several of his own early plans, that I referred to the alleged failure of Government operation of the railways during the war, and asked him if he did not see some new way in which to overcome the objections to Government ownership to be read by practical men in the lesson of experience.

"I think Government ownership is quite likely to become a fact," Couzens continued, "and I don't know that I'll oppose it; but there will have to be some change from the late war-time

ration to remove it from the danger reaucracy. Perhaps regional opera

tion may be this solution. Cut the country up into zones, and make each rule itself with local men, local methods. Then you might avoid absentee control, absentee ownership. The evils of either will kill any enterprise."

"Pursuing this line of thought," said I, "we come naturally to the question of ship subsidy. Ships are but an extension of land transportation. What about 'Government aid' there, to use the words of President Harding?"

Senatorial whistle, but quite confident that he can build a locomotive under and to fit it.

Aside from the journalistic interest inhering in Couzens just now, due to his succession to the dethroned Newberry, and the collateral question (already tentatively answered) of how far he may try to carry his theories of public ownership of public utilities, another National development or trend of development is imperatively suggested. I refer to the entrance of the big business man into the realm of practical politics, not indirectly, but as an actual executive. Mr. Couzens is a conspicuous exception to the rule that our captains of industry avoid political office. Therefore I asked him what it is that prevents business men, as a rule, from seeking or accepting political office.

"Very few of them are fitted for it at all," he replied, without the slightest hesitation, "and there is one fundamental reason which is very clear. Of course I mean men at the top, men who have made good in commerce and industry on their own, men who have had the responsibility of directing large enterprises. Men like this have become accustomed to dealing with things as things. A dollar means just a hundred cents, no more, no less. Machines mean just so much, no more, no less. Inevitably and automatically they reduce the value of men, and without ever meaning to be inhumane or inconsiderate, to one common denominator. What is worse for them if they ever get into politics, as business men, if successful in a large way-nobody ever talks back to them. They give orders, and the orders are obeyed. That is all there is to it.

"In politics you reverse this process. You take orders, and you take orders from the people, and it is pretty hard for a man who has all his life given orders and who has been taught by every one with whom he came in contact that his orders are just, and that even if unjust they have to be executed without delay or criticism; it is pretty hard for that type of man to begin all over again. He has to, or he can't succeed in politics.

"You'll have to vote on it."

life was concerned exclusively with business. For a long time before that Henry

Which recalled a remark Kitchener made to me in his Calcutta office many years ago in describing why he preferred American engineers to all others. "European engineers," said K., "may be more carefully trained and more certain of procedure, but I found in the Sudan that when other engineers refused to go ahead because they saw no way of operation the American was willing to start in with a whistle and then build a locomotive up to that."

Senator Couzens is starting in, as I came to the conclusion, with only a

bility of the Ford Motor Company. He had charge of manufacture; I had charge of finance, purchase, and sales. My sway in my department was the same as his in his. If he wanted to put five wheels on the Ford car, I was not consulted. If I wanted to buy ten million tires or open a branch in South Africa, I did not consult him. When he built his new factory, his office was placed in the end near the power house, mine in the end near the bank. In my department I was the Ford Company, and I never had occasion to brook interference or criticism. This went on

without one single word of inharmony between us, until one day during the war he took occasion to countermand one of my orders concerning material going into the paper he published. A quarrel resulted that lasted no more than thirty seconds, and that is the only time I ever had the slightest misunderstanding with Henry Ford. I resigned instantly, and sold out to him shortly after.

"What was I to do? Still young, barely fifty, in perfect health, with more money than I knew what to do with. my taste for business suddenly seemed satisfied. I might have founded another motor company, but that didn't appeal to me. While in this frame of mind I was appointed Police Commissioner without the slightest idea of what it might mean. Then for three years I fought thugs, prostitutes, and the press. At least I began by fighting the press. I kept that up until I learned that the thing to do is to ignore it.

"A public man is a fool if he tries to control the newspapers, and he is a bigger fool if he is controlled by them. Those first years I was very deeply hurt by things printed about me. I knew they were unjust. I was giving my time and the best of my ability to the city of Detroit, and so far as I could see was receiving only public misrepresentation. But I thought it over, and came to the conclusion that, while the experience was new for me and hurt, still nearly all public men who did their duty had to endure about the same sort of stuff. A man can't set himself up as a target if he don't want to be hit.

"I was kidded into standing for Mayor. Some of my friends said I was so unpopular I couldn't be elected dogcatcher. Indeed, it did look that way. But I was elected Mayor, and then came the practical proposition: Was I to float through that job, or was I to set myself at it the same way I had set myself at being Henry Ford's partner?

"Nobody could answer that except myself, the same as nobody could ask it except myself. Now, I have been called all sorts of things. I have been called a Socialist and I have been called crazy. But I am certainly not a Socialist and I leave you to judge as to whether or not I am crazy. I had no theories at all about municipal ownership when I first went into office. In fact, I had never given the subject any thought.

"But Detroit needed new railways and she needed to have the old ones better run. It was the biggest problem we faced. I said to myself: 'I am Mayor of all the people, so I am going to try to find out what they really want, and then I consider it is my job to discover the most economical way to give it to them.' Same mental operation I would have used at the Ford factory in contracting for a year's supply of rubber or steel. The only difference was that, instead of dealing with a single man who never questioned my judgment, I was dealing with a million people whose

ideas on the subject were open to prejudice by innumerable journalistic and other attacks.

"However, it was clear to me that the people of Detroit wanted municipal ownership. They had been trying ineffectually and half-heartedly to get it for twenty-five years. It was simply a question of having some one point the way. Somebody had to make it a practical business proposition. That seemed to be my job. The logic was so plain that I couldn't possibly have escaped it. If I remained Mayor, I had to do that or stultify my conscience.

"Yet, don't think it was easy. The people turned down proposition after proposition I put up to them. That didn't discourage me. It only made me conclude that I hadn't found the right way. Finally I got the railways to agree to a court appraisal of the existing property. This came to thirty-one and a half millions. I thought it was three or four millions too much, but, as a business man, I had learned that it is sometimes well to pay a little more than a thing is worth if you have to have it. So I recommended the purchase at the appraised figure.. Again the people turned me down. Then I said to them: 'You have been crying for municipal ownership all these years, and yet you turn down every practical proposition I put up to you. Now it's time for you to put up or shut up. Give me fifteen millions, and I'll build some lines of our own.' They did, and then the fun commenced. By the time I was building a mile a day the privately owned lines capitulated and were ready to sell at any price. Finally the city bought them in for nineteen and a half millions.

"Perhaps that experience did me good. The people weren't so far wrong, after all. As a business man I'd have paid twelve millions more for those lines than we were obliged to pay for them, although I must say that the twelve millions was not clear gain, for we wasted some money building our own lines.

"The seven years has taught me that in politics it is give and take. You don't get the quick results you do in business, but in the long run they are just as, or even more, satisfactory. Moreover, a man cannot hold political office without expecting to have his every act subject to criticism and repeal. I don't mind saying it's a hard lesson for a successful man to learn."

The writer had heard two rumors concerning the motive prompting Governor Groesbeck in the appointment of Couzens to the Michigan Senatorship. One was that he had been selected as the best man to block the political aspirations of Henry Ford. Another was that the amalgamated traction interests of the country had engineered the appointment so as to remove Couzens from his (to them) dangerously successful sphere of influence in the operation of the municipally owned street railways of Detroit. The new Senator was frank in

discussing both, neither of which he credited.

"I don't see how I can block Henry Ford's political aspirations," he said. "I can never be a candidate for the Presidency, for I was born in Canada. Besides, I am confident that, if the Democratic party does not nominate Mr. Ford, he will run independently in the next campaign. He cannot see that a man must have a career in politics, just as in business. A man cannot start at the top in one any more than in the other. Mr. Ford would be the last one in the world to expect that any one should begin his business career at the. head of a company, say, like his own. Yet he thinks he can begin in politics as President of the United States. If I had been appointed Senator straight from the Ford office, it would have been a foolish political blunder. I doubt if I would have been considered at all if I had not been first Police Commissioner and then Mayor of Detroit."

"Do you think the Governor was influenced, even unconsciously, by the traction interests who want you out of the Mayoralty?"

"No; but, even if so, it does not make much difference. The justness of the principle of municipal ownership is not dependent on the retention in office of any one man, or any two, or any three men. And my leaving the Mayoralty will not affect the operation of the street railways of Detroit. Municipal ownership is established there for all time to

come.

"It will spread to other cities, too. I am satisfied that the people of all large cities want to own their own street railways. It is simply a question of finding out how to do it. I also believe in the municipal ownership of other public utilities, but only where that ownership can exercise an immediate supervision.

"Some people confuse this idea with that of Socialism, with which it has little in common. At lunch to-day a high official of one of the New York gas companies, who was ridiculing my ideas, said to me, 'How would you like it if some one proposed that the Government should take over the operation of the Ferd company?'

"What shallow thinking!' I replied; 'the Ford company has no monopoly unless it be one self-created by superior skill and energy and organization in a field naturally open to all. I am for the widest possible freedom of opportunity in any such class of enterprise.

"But when you come to street railways or gas or electric or telephone companies, there is no field for competition. There is an inherent monopoly in the nature of the business itself, and the people not only have a right to own and operate it, but it is a duty they owe themselves, and one which is absolutely certain to be observed universally sooner or later.'

"My gas company friend then asked me if I didn't think private companies

secured more 'efficiency' than public ones. 'Suppose I please you by saying, "Yes" (which isn't always justified), what difference does that make?' I said. 'I'll answer the question with another: Is your home always run in the highest degree of efficiency? I'll venture to

say no.

Moreover, you wouldn't allow any outsider to come and install an "efficiency" system in your home. It's your home, and it's run to please you and that's enough. The city's streets and the public utilities of a city are its "home," and the people want to run it

themselves; they want to say how it shall be run and what it costs to run it; and if there is any profit they want the benefit of it, just the same as they ought to be willing to stand for any expense that is necessary to get satisfactory service.'"

(1) The culpable negligence of the Entente Powers.

(2) The quick-wittedness of the Bolsheviki.

(3) The new direction given to the Young Turk movement by Mustapha Kemal and his associates and, in particular, by their recent victory over the Greeks and expulsion of them from Asia Minor.

In 1919, the year after the World War, had the Powers spent less time in framing a League of Nations and more time in quickly concluding peace treaties with Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, we should not have had to wait until the summer of 1920 before the particular treaty with Turkey was signed. That time lost was precious time gained for the Kemalists and Bolsheviki. It gave to the Kemalists a chance to grow strong enough to resist ratification by the Turkish Parliament in Constantinople and to denounce the whole treaty by means of the new Parliament set up at Angora. It gave to the Bolsheviki just the opportunity desired of spreading their propaganda ERE at Lausanne, in 1912, Turkey throughout the Orient by the use of signed a peace treaty.

(C) Keystone

ISMET PASHA, TURKISH REPRESENTATIVE

H

AT LAUSANNE

Here at Lausanne, in 1922, Turkey now proposes to sign another peace treaty.

What a difference the decade has made! What a totally different and startling difference! Then the Turk, vanquished in the Tripolitan War with Italy, gave up to her the Turkish North African possessions, and humbly too. But quickly, later, the Turk was to be

come

yet humbler, for the Balkan League, formed by the genius of Venizelos, expelled him from all his European possessions save the Constantinople district.

The Turk was to become still humbler because the World War stripped him of that district and of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. The Turk had been called a Sick Man before. He was indeed a Sick Man now.

Nevertheless here he is back again in Lausanne, not sick at all but very well, very brash-in fact, better and more of a going concern than he has been for at least two hundred years.

His resurrection has been due to three ngs:

Kemalist Turkey as a propagandist. They took successful advantage of this opportunity. Had the Entente Powers used ordinary prevision and had they been united, they might have prevented some of the mischief which arose between the close of the war and the present day.

Two years ago a Turco-Bolshevist treaty was signed by which Russian resources were placed at Turkey's disposal. From that time on millions of dollars' worth of rubles have come to Turkey from Russia. Arms and ammunition have come too; the Turkish troops today, it is said, are to a large extent armed with British and French rifles, originally sent to Denikin and Wrangel and captured from them by the Bolsheviki. Greece has been defeated by Turkey in war, therefore, not only by the undoubted military skill and bravery of the Ottoman troops, but also because of Bolshevist Russia's material support.

This support would have been serious enough were the Turk still a Sick Man. But a leader had arisen in Islam. He knew how to build a real civil and military government. Perhaps no single

(C) Underwood

AMBASSADOR CHILD, AMERICA'S REPRESENTATIVE AT LAUSANNE

individual is to-day more significant of the mighty change which has occurred in Turkey than is Mustapha Kemal.

To make a long story short, the result is that the Turk comes to Lausanne not only a well man but, what is far more menacing, with the Bolshevik behind him.

Together they appear here ostensibly for peace, and many naïve negotiators of peace, meeting them, have seemed, during this first week of the Lausanne Conference, to have taken them at their face value, not at their real value.

What the Turks and the Bolsheviki are after is, not peace, but war. Under all these supposed arrangements for peace they would like to do something to involve the Powers in conflict, no matter what solemn promises may be signed.

We have but to note the history of the past two or three weeks to be sure of this. The Turk, for instance, entirely disregarding the recently signed Mudania agreement, has demanded immediate possession of Constantinople and immediate abolition of the Capitulations (the long-recognized rights of foreigners to enjoy the independence of their own

courts). And the Bolshevik, by the mouth of Vorowsky here, the other day demanded Turkish control of the Straits and added: "We oppose turning them over to the League of Nations, because it is an organization of bourgeois states from which we cannot get a fair deal." Doubtless Vorowsky was thinking of the special treaty between Angora and Moscow of January 5, 1922, by which the fifth article bound the two Powers to decide only after mutual agreement their policy as regards the Straits. Thus Bolshevism can prevent Kemalism from accepting terms at Lausanne which it does not approve.

Both Turk and Bolshevik, be assured, look beyond the Straits. They are thinking of the Balkans as well. Do you suppose that the Turk is satisfied with merely getting back into Europe and enjoying his old boundaries? Not he. Flushed with recent victory, he dreams of a still farther advance.

Turk, also dreams of a Bolshevist foothold in the Balkans.

Will this meet with opposition from the western Powers? Yes. Opposition talk, surely, and here at Lausanne a-plenty. But how about deeds instead of words? How about force, war? There, too, the Turk and the Bolshevik are ready for you. They see a possible western armed opposition-but they also see an eastern front made up of Turks, Russians, and Germans. They are not forgetful of Germany's longing for revenge. We would then see just how many soldiers and how much ammunition Germany has been secretly training and preparing during these recent years.

The Lausanne Conference has completed its first week. Thus far it has considered matters like a plebiscite for Western Thrace, or like giving Bulgaria a neutralized avenue to the Egean Sea (our Government's announcement on a well-selected day of an open-door policy

and has thus far but touched the fringe of the first of the four real matters in hand-the boundaries of Turkey-inEurope, the freedom of the Straits, the Capitulations, and the protection of the Christian minorities in the Turkish Empire. From what I can ascertain here, these matters are to be presented by a diplomatic and really quite united Entente front.

Suppose they are. And suppose the Turk actually signs a fairly reasonable treaty of peace. Would it be worth the paper it is written on? Will the Turk, especially with the Bolshevik behind him, hesitate to break his promise as immediately and as cynically as he did the Mudania agreement?

The Lausanne Conference will be worth while, not because of the Lausanne treaty, but because of the impression it makes upon the Turk and the Bolshevik that under the velvet glove of peace lies the iron hand of force. Lausanne, Switzerland, Nov. 27, 1922.

A

TRIP to Europe in these days is no longer an unmixed pleasure. Not so much on account of physioal discomforts, for traveling arrangements have been much improved lately. One does not lose trunks or miss sleeping-cars as easily as two or three years ago. Even visas, those curses of war time, are obtainable without much difficulty, though invariably with endless delays. It is the moral side of the picture that is so depressing for travelers from America; the prevailing suffering, the social and economic disorder reigning everywhere in Europe, the moral degradation, the hopeless absence of improvements, the dejection of so many people in so many countries-it is such things which create the striking contrast with the quiet and well-being in the United States. The discouraging aspect of this situation is the overwhelming evidence that there is worse still to come, that all Europe is far from being freed of her troubles and perhaps will be for a very long while.

Conditions in England I found were much worse than I had expected. Eng land is living through a very severe crisis, both economically and socially. There is ample evidence that an economic storm is hanging over the country. The burden of taxation has reached a point which is fairly crushing some of the middle classes; although the Government has somewhat reduced the per cent (from 30 it has gone down to 25), the taxes are still exceptionally heavy.

Unemployment is the most conspicuous feature of the situation. Young men, single and in groups, walk the streets of provincial towns and patiently wait to

pick up a penny here and there. Begging was always conspicuous in London; now it is increased tenfold. Men, sometimes in military uniform, cripples and war veterans, sing and beg on all corners of the London streets, or play cheap instruments, standing or crouching on the sidewalks.

Socially there has developed in England a dangerous crisis, too. It is the necessary consequence of the war. Some time must pass before the nation can adapt itself to new conditions. Some of the former middle classes are bound to disappear, having been crushed and ground down by modern conditions. New ones are growing up, crystallizing rapidly, replacing the old ones. This naturally causes pain to the nation and accounts for much of England's presentday trouble. Only her sound finance can save England from an economic breakdown. The banking system (the City) is still healthy, helping to pull through this crisis.

In France, by the way, just the opposite has happened. While the country is sound economically and is steadily building itself up and growing in strength, the finances are in a disastrous condition and at the mercy of most unscrupulous elements, creating that unsympathetic impression abroad, and in particular in America, that French conditions are not satisfactory. France is not out of danger yet, but if one compares the situation with that of England, one can easily see the advantages France has over England. Perhaps just here we have the main reason of the disastrous opposition existing between these two countries.

Whatever one thinks of their respec

tive grievances, when one travels in Europe at the present day one can easily see and feel everywhere that just this unfortunate opposition of France and England is at the root of all Europe's modern troubles. There will not be, and there cannot be, any peace in Europe while this lasts. This applies to every European question; to the Near East and Turkey, to the German reparations and monarchical threats, to Russia and the Balkans, and finally even to the League of Nations. The latter will cer tainly remain impotent and without significance or authority as long as these two great Powers are at odds. Without exaggeration, one can say that this strange antagonism is a dangerous threat to the peace of the world.

Both sides are impatient of each other in a like degree. The French papers are full of vilifying attacks on English statesmen. Last summer Lloyd George was their special target. The English heartily reciprocate and flirt with the Germans to spite the French. To an outsider there seems very little to choose between the two. And, naturally. many evil elements make capital out of this fatal quarrel; the Turk is saved by it, the Bolshevik is strengthened, the German monarchists become hopeful of vengeance and of escaping the reparations.

On the other hand, Germany seems much better off than could be expected At least the countryside lives quite contentedly, producing the minimum necessàry for each family. The Government, however well intentioned, is exceedingly weak and has no ways of pressing out of the population the surplus that it needs for reparations. Outwardly there