Evening Star Newspaper, June 9, 1929, Page 29

Part 2—12 Pages EDITORIAL SECTION he Swundwy Star. Reviews of Books WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 9, 1929. SCOPE OF HOOVER’S LAW. COMMISSION IS DEFINED Group Can Recomn Amendment, but Action in This Generation 1 BY MARK SULLIVAN. 1 RESIDENT HOOVER'S commis- | sion to study law enforcement is at work. It will study, among ! other things, prohibition. Many | persons expect the commission, | when it completes its work, will recom- | mend something new about prohibition, and that thereafter the sale of liquor | in the United States will have a| changed status. | That the commission will study pro- hibitior is certain. That its report | will have something to say about pro- | hibition is certain The aim of the present article is to state, with an attempt at 1-2-3 sim- | plicity, just what is the present status | of prohibiiion, and just what are the limits to what can be done about it— t how far it is possible for this com- mission, or any com on, or anybody whatever. to €0 nt Is Basis. uch a d amendme: amendment is the charter of the commission so far as it deals with prohibition. It is their | charter i it is also its limitation. | 1 words of the cightecnth - * The mani facture ransportation of intoxi- | cating liquors within (and) the impor- tation thereof into the United | States * * * for beverage purposes, is hereby prohibited Those words are binding. They have been put to the test of the Supreme Court. and have been held valid and mandatory: 1920, soon after the amendment was adopted. some persons interested. including two States—New Jersey and Rhode Island—brought suits to test the constitutionality of the amendment. The counsel on the side attacking the amendment was as strong as could be secured; it included Elihu Root. Amendme: tion stone of an | | Validity Upheld. In the end the Supreme Court de- clared the amendment valid. The court said that the amendment “Is operative throughout the entire ritorial limits of the United States; finds the legislative bodies. courts, public officers and individuals within those limits, and of its own force, in- validates every legislative act, whether by Congress, State Legislature or by a territorial “Assembly, which authorizes | or sanctions” what the amendment pro- | hibits. That is the present status of pro- hibition—constitutionally, legally, judi- cialln. That is where we must start | from. So long as this status exists, | no “intoxicating liquor * * * for beverage | purposes” can be legally made or sold in the United States, nor transported, nor imported. This is the status which the reader should bear in mind. It is the status | which the commission will be obliged | to bear in mind, Can Anything Be Done? ‘The question is, can the commission | do anything about this status, and if | s0. what? | Conceivably the commission can rec- ommend that the prohibition amend- ment be repealed. The commission can do this conceivably, but decidedly not probably. For the commission merely to recommend the repeal of prohibi- bition ;\'nlilgi be, on its part, an eva- sion of e purpose it is supposed to fulfill. It would be an e\'asign be- cause, as will be explained in a moment, repeal of the prohibition amendment is, as a practical matter, impossible within the present generation. For_simplicity’s sake, however, Sup- pose the commission should recommend that the prohibition amendment be re- pealed. This brings us to the question, Can the amendment be repealed, and if | 80, by what process? Can Be Repealed. i ‘The prohibition amendment can be repealed. The process of repealing it | is simple—but the process is also long and difficult—so long and difficult as to be_impracticable in this generation. Suppose (what is hardly supposable) | the commission should merely recom- | mend that the prohibition amendment | be repealed. Suppose that a great many | people should accept that recommenda- tion. Suppose the process of repeal- ing the amendment should begin. Sup- pose all these things—and then con- er, first, the time consumed; and, | second, the possibility—or, more accu- rately, the impossibility—of its ever be- ing accomplished. First of all, two-thirds of Congress must vote to repeal. The present Con- gress is just about three-fourths dry in each of the two houses. But suppose this preponderance of dry sentiment in Congress should be reversed by the com- mission's recommendation, and should conclude to defer to it. (This as an ex- tremely strong “suppose” and a quite| improbable one.) Process Extremely Slow. Suppose that first step to be accom- plished. Thereafter would remain the next step, the extremely time-consum- ing step s step would consist of thirty-six States. acting State by State, voting to repeal the prohibition amend- ment. 1f—and this 15 a very large “if” ~thirty-six States were quite willing, the time consumed would run to sev- eral vears. But +thirty-six States would not be willing. Conceivably 10 States might be willing. Conceivably even 20 Statc. be willing. _Conceivably, at the de, 25 States might be willing. But ould require 36 States—each and one of 36 States. And no person living today having any serious judg- ment about the distribution of dry and thought throughout the United States will accept the possibility that 36 States would turn wet within the life- time of the present generation. The stubborn fact is that prohibition 45 now imbe€ded in the Constitution of the United States. The equally stub- born fact is that the framers of the Constitution wanted to make it difficult to alter that document, and did make it difficult. To change the Constitution Tequires not merely a majority senti- it requires, first of all. a two- sentiment as expressed in Con- Thereafter it requires a majority sentiment in three-fourths of the States n_each and all of three-fourths of the States Ratified by 46 States. It is most important that the reader, if he wants to be clear in his mind about_this question, should understand the difficulty—the impossibility as a practical matter—of taking the eight- eenth amendment out of the Constitu- tion. To understand this there is no better way than to reflect upon the following facts: To get prohibition into the Constitu- tion—that is, to pass the existing pro- hibition amendment—it was necessary for the drys to control three-fourths, or 36 out of the 48 States. (Actually the drys did control 46 out of the 48 States and 46 of the States ratified the amend ment.) But to keep prohibition in the Constitution—that is. to prevent a new chenge in the Constitution—the drys need to control only one more than cne- fourth, or 13 out of the 48 States. This.chgnge. in. the. strategic position | to suggest the widespread opposil | throw the whole Constitution into the lnat.hmg. then, that can be done about {not_invented by the drys. | brewer: 1end Repeal of l)r)" s Impossible. of the drys is most important. When | they were struggling to put prohibition | in the Constitution they had to have three-fourths, or 36 of the States. Buli now prohibition is part of the Cnnsn-‘ tution; now it is the wets who are pro-| osing to change the Constitution as it exists. Now, therefore, the wets must control 36 of the States. Fantastic Dream. That the time should come when the wets would control 36 of the States is a fantastic dream. Possibly the reader | may see this more convincingly if it be stated the other way round: That a time should come when the drys would fail to control only 13 or less of the 48| States seems incredible. In any event, Man Behind Our Exports Julius Klein Has Paved Way for American-Made Goods to Circle Globe—His Interesting Career BY FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE. INCE the beginnino of the World War the trade relations of the world have passed ihrough a great crisis. and revolution ever before. single man_in our country who h tributed more to this . Jul at a large personal one so able to present this Sudoment of plans for the future is so e orounded. ERBERT HOOVER. U.'S. 5. Maryland, These words, written during Herbert Hoover's good-will tour of Latin Amer- ica, tell their own story. They comprise the foreword to Dr. Julius KI book on international business. tiers of Trade,” and were when the then President-elect was if the time is ever to come it must be very distant. There is a_second method of repeal- | ing the eightcenth amendment. That is by calling a constitutional conven- | tion H If the present article were complete. | this second method should be consid- | ered at length. But there is not enough | space to be complete. Let it be suffi- | cient, therefore, to say that this method | hardly needs to be considered. In the Constitution is just as difficult as the method already described. It is just as | time consuming and just as unlikely to | succeed, for in the second method. as | in the first, the assent of three-fourths | of the States is required. Have Had No Conventions. We have never had a constitutional convention since the original one that wrote the Constitution. All the nine- teen amendments so far made have been made in the other manner. de- scribed above. If any one should un- | dertake to bring about a constitutional { convention for the purpose of repealing the eighteenth amendment, he would encounter such opposition as to make the project utterly hopeless. Not only would he encounter the opposition of the drys, he would encounter the op- position of hosts besides—including the opposition of many of his wet friends. Because a constitutional convention, if brought about at all, could not be held down to the consideration of prohibi- tion alone. It would engage in a gen- | eral overhauling of the Constitution. | Everything would be thrown on the table, pulled to pieces, and made over. | In the words of one writer, a constitu- | tional convention would result in “a general restatement of the Constitu- tion; many of its provisions are ar- chaic.” That phrase alone is enoagh n that would arise to a constitutional | convention, Very few persons—very few, indeed—would be willing, for thei purpose of repealing prohibition, 1 | | | pot_and have it all rewritten. i The net of all this is, the words quoted above. “intoxicating liquors * * * for beverage purposes (are) hereby prohibited,” are i the Constitution. They will remain in the Constitution so long as a minimum of 13 States want them to remain in. Will Last Generation. That is the same as saying those words will remain in the Constitution at least during the lifetime of the pres- ent generation. If prohibition is, as Mr. Hoover once said, a “noble experi- ment,” the experiment is going to last at least a generation. The work of Mr. Hoover’s commission will be to tell us how best to conduct that experiment, and how best to get along while the experiment is under way. The reader will now ask: “Is there prohibition? Can Mr. Hoover's com- mission do nothing about it? Is the present status of prohibition unalter- ablez " Can- there be 1o amelioration it? To these questions the answer is, something can be done. There is an area within which the present status of prohibition can be ameliorated, with- in which there is latitude for Mr. Hoover's commission to make recom- mendations that are practicable. Easily Changed. At this point we depart from the Con- stitution. ~ We depart from the thing that can only be changed by agree- ment of three-fourths of the States. We | pass now away from the Constitution | and into the field of mere statutes. We | pass to statutes which are simple acts | of Congress and which can be changed | by a simple majority of Congress. In this field quite a good deal can be done. For example, the Volstead act makes an extremely austere definition of what constitutes an “intoxicating liquor.” The Volstead act says that any liquor containing more than half of one per cent alcohol is intoxicating and s therefore forbidden. That is an arbi- trary definition. That definition, as it happens, was It was in- vented by the wets; that is, by the | 1d distillers, when they were on top in politics—and the drys merely adopted this definition when they got on top. In the old days the brewers and distillers wanted to have a mo- nopoly of the sale of alcoholic liquor. They wanted, so far as they could ac- complish it, to have a monopoly of all drinks. They were jealous of the makers jof what were called “soft drinks”—root | beer, ginger ale, sarsaparilla and the |like. And so the brewers and distillers, | being at that time dominant in politics, {brought 1t about that any drink con- | taining more than one-half of one per | cent of ‘alcohol should be regarded in law as alcoholic. The definition was made for the purposes of taxation. The brewers wanted to require the makers of soft drinks pay the same tax as themselves Can Discard Definition. Mr. Hoover's commission, if it should see fit, can recommend that this anti- |quated and arbitrary definition of what ‘rnn‘nlulrs an “intoxicating liquor” be | cast aside. It can recommend a defi- I nition that is closer to the fact, Just how high a percentage of alcohol might Ibe permitted would be a matter of | ludicial interpretation. A common judg- {ment is that, roughly. let us say. 4 or 5 per cent aleohol is the maximum. That would be as far as any commis- sion or any lawmaking body could go. Neither the commission nor any law- | making body can legalize the thing | which the prohibition amendment for- bids; namely, “intoxicating liquors.” | The courts would not let them. That |is. the courts would invalidate any statute permitting the sale of liquor having more than 4 or 5 per cent al- cohol. There are many other changes—in the enforcement acts, but not in the Con- | stitution—which the commission can | recommend and which Congress, if it | chooses, can enact. The Volstead act has no such sanctity as the prohibition amendment. The Jones act, has no such sanictity. | the Jones act and all other enforcement | acts—can be changed by a simple ma- jority of Congress, so long as they stop short of attempting to do what the vast | first place, this method of changing the | record of Julius Klein at Washington All these—the Volstead act, |, “rolling down to Rio." Mr. Hoover has since given vivid expression esteem of Julius Klein's merits by vating him to the Assistant Secretar <hip of the Department of Commerce. Few, if any, of the President’s admin istrative appointments have struck th country as more appropriate or more deserved, for the story of the rise of the Department of Commerce from small beginnings eight vears ago to its present eminence is, in large part, th Like Hoover. Klein entered the depart- ment when it was practically the Cin- derella of the executive branch. It was a going concern, but not going very fast. It had been performing the re- sponsible duties assigned to it faithfully enough for the previous 18 years, but with no distinguishing vigor. The American business world knew of the department’s existence, but was not re- lying upon its agencics to any appre- ciable degree as a mechanism for com- mercial expansion. Then came 1921, and Herbert Hoover The Californian knew the opportunities awaiting the development in the De- partment of Commerce and was con- scious of his capacity to take advan- tage of them, provided he had the right kind of co-operating material at his elbow. He sent out a confidential S O S to the business captains of the country. He said, in particular, that he was looking for a director of the Bu- reau of Foreign and Domestic Com- merce—the real spearhead of the de- partment. Half dozen young men of promise were brought to Secretary Hoover’s at- tention. One of them was a young instructor in Latin American history and economics at Harvard—himself Harvard, '13. His name was Julius Klein. He was 35 years old. Hoover | looked them all over, let it promptly be known that he liked the cut of the voung Harvard don's jib, and prevailed | upen him, without further ado, to enter the service of the Commerce De- | partment in command of its major activity. | Trade Promotion Agency. | The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic | Commerce, of which Dr. Klein was put in charge, is the trade promotion agency | ot the United States Government. The bureau has 56 foreign offices, scattered !all over the globe and situated for the most part in the world's chief commer- cial centers. fought to strengthen European | in other neighboring countries a sort | the old thrones. Robeért, is nothing less than an impas- So peculiar is the apparently logical cent défenses of the French King the a proof of his statesmanship. “Were through American contacts? unfortunate Louis, another and much Striking Parallel. without a constant reminder of Louis tinies of these two men, Few parallels | Two dynasties are included—and how and base selfishness, not even bad feel- dered useless their native common sense. A diary of Louis XVI was also pub- ture. Otherwise the morbid similarity ized and made more elastic. ‘What this article attempts is merely to These essential facts about prohibi- In the current discussion, oral and |elghteenth amendment forbids. The Volstead act contains upward of 3,000 words and some scores of umu pro- visions. All its provisions o be BY COUNT CARLO SFORZA, Former Italian Minister for Forelgn Affairs. S a strange result of a war| A democracy against the auto- cratic regimes, there has re- cently sprung up in France and of artificial intellectual fashion which | makes it smart to belittle the work of | the great revolutions which destroyed There has just appeared in France a | book which, " written by one of the| ablest living criminal lawyers, Henry | sioned defense of King Louis XVI, be- headed by his rebellious, subjects Janu- ary 17. 1793 force of this reactionary tide that| American readers probably would be | surprised to learn that in certain re-| recent discovery that he was opposed to the idea of giving help to the Amer- ican Revolution, had been included as they not,” he asked, “rebellious subjects of a legitimate King?" Was it wise to spread such bad seeds in France While books are published and his- | torical researches are pursued in France to manufacture a new fame for the more important work has been pub- lished—the Intimate Diary of Nicholas II, the last Russian Czar. For anybody who is seriously conver- sant with the history of the French Revolution, this book cannot be read XVI, so_terribly alike, even at the dis- | tance of more than a century, seem the lives, the limitations and the des-) have appeared more striking to me. Tt | is not only a blographical parallel: | much more than two men is involved. | those dynasties came to an end. | In Louis XVI, as in Nicholas II, there were_no criminal tendencies, no_cruel ings; only, in both, there was a sort of atrophy of the will, a sort of mental laziness and opaqueness, which ren- And there were even certain qualities which might have heen pleasant in some country squire lished in France, in 1873. Strange des- tiny of books, this one is little known, even among men of high historical cul- of the two collections of pages in which | the last of the Capets (for his two ana- drastic. Many of them could be liberal- There is not, however, space in this article for adequate consideration of what the commission can recommend. make clear the impossibility, as a prac- tical matter, of taking the eighteenth amendment out of the Constitution. ‘tion are not new. They are not pre- sented argumentatively, but merely as facts. printed, about Mr. Hoover's commis- sion, and about prohibition in general, fully nine-tenths is based on failure to know the facts here. DR. JULIUS KLEIN-DREAMER, When the Hoover-Klein organizing hand was applied to the Department of Commerce in 1921 the number of daily services rendered to American business averaged about 700. At present these have increased to 11,000 every working day. No other single branch of the far- flung Federal system approximates in expansion this fabulous growth in acf ity. It explains the necessity of con- structing the new 1,000-foot long $17.- 500,000 Department of Commerce Build- ing—the largest Government office in the United States—of which President Hoover will lay the corner stone to- morrow. Dr. Klein has been the official chiefly and directly concerned with the devel- Strange Analogy in Temperament and Destiny of Louis XVI and and, more than 120 years later, the last of the Romanoffs wrote, their most in- timate “reflections” could not hav failed to strike everybody. Where Two Were Similar. The two monarchs appear identical, not only in their inferiority to the tragic events by which they were sur- rounded. but also in the puerile medi- ocrity of their sensations, in the mod- esty of their inclinations, in the sim- plicity and honesty of their family feel- ings and, also, alas, in the insensibility not only to the history of their own country but to the very force of the sacred traditions which had created the strength of their families. For both Louts and Nicholas shoot- ' ing was the great business of a royal person. On August 12, 1906, when the first Duma was going to meet in Rus- sia and the whole country was in an atmosphere of potential revolution, the Czar Nicholas found this alone worth entering in his diary: “At 1:30 this morning I went by The “Just a Little Late” Club BY BRUCE BARTON. HEN | was a commuter s N ) | sometimes went to the station early to watch the other com- muters running for the trains. | came to know many of them by sight. There were ladies and old men, infrequent visitors to the city, who arrived long before train-time. There were the business men, who arrived one minute ahead And—just as the gate was about to slam—there would come piling across the station the members of the Just a Little Late Club. | used to sympathize with them at first, supposing them to be unfortunates who had missed a car or lost their watches. But after two years of watch- ing | knew different. The membership of the Just a Little Late Club does not change from day to day. Mem- bership is not a misfortune; it is a habit. And one of the most exasperating habits in the world. “Never be on time” said Mark Twain. “You waste too much time waiting for the other fellow.” He had in mind the enor- mous membership of the Just a Little Late Club. | was lunching with a tfriend the other day wehn a ‘“captain of industry” passed us. He began work 20 years ago as an and today heads one manufacturing con- cerns of his city. “A wonderful fellow,” said my friend. “Last year | had a long SCHOLAR AND BUSINE! removed from the drabness and dreari- ness popularly associated with such a calling as can be imagined. He is filled with a romantic idealism in connection with everything affecting commerce, and especially foreign commerce. He has a gift for discussing it in vivid electric with _infectious _enthusiasm. ) There is no phase of it upon which he .GETTER opment of the department’s daily serv- | ices. He is proud of what he calls “the significent feature of this great and cver-rising tide of Nation-wide inter- in oversea commerce’—namely, that the bulk of this endless shoal of queries originates with small American mer- chants and manufacturers to a degree undreamed of even a few years ago “It would seem.” Dr. Klein says, “that today, as never before in the Nation’ | history. our foreign economic relation: |are the direct concern of vast numbers | of our citizens, and not simply of a few leaders in_commerce, finance and pub- ! lic_affairs.’ Though an economist and educator by profession, Julius Klein is about as far | icholas | chronistic brothers do not really count) | train to the woods to shoot grouse. The | night was clear, only slightly frozen. | Got two grouse, but saw many more | flying close to the ground. They were | awtully agitated.” | "'The members of the Duma were even | more agitated, but there was not a word about them. At an historically analagous moment in August, 1789, when the revolution | was showing its force by its triumph over the feudal regime, the King of France was writing in his diary: “August 4—Stag hunting in the Marley Forest. Got one. Went on horseback. “August 5—Nothing.” “Nothing” Repeated Entry. This “nothing” comes as a constant ~frain in the royal diary almost every time that its author has no hunting or shooting or some formal ceremony to note. Now that there is in France a snob- bish form of admiration for the an- | clent regimes, do many of the new roy- | alists remember that on July 14, 1789, series of negotiations with him about the formation of a new company. It was necessary for us to meet practically every day for nearly three months. In all that time he was never late but twice, and then only for a few minutes. And each time he sent word to me from his office tell- ing me that he would be late.” J. P. Morgan figured that every hour of his time was worth $1,000, and he had no patience with men who were late for appointments, or who, when they came to see him, did not give him his money's worth in ex- change for the time they took. “It is not necessary for me to live,” said Pompey, “but it is necessary that | be at a certain point at a certain time.” And Lord Nelson said: “l owe all my success in life to having been a quarter of an hour before my time." | hold up the record of these famous men in the faint hope that it may do some good. And yet, the hope is very faint. The habit of unpromptness is very tenacious. If | am fortunate enough to be inside when the pearly gates are closed on the judgment day, | shall know what to expect. Five minutes later there will be a terrific battering on the gate. St. Peter may be surprised, but | shall not be. When the gates swing open again, there they will be—some of the most lovable and exas- perating people who ever lived— panting, apologetic, explanatory to the (Copyright, 1920.) cannot wax both eloquent and infor- mative. He can almost make trade statistics sing. He has them at his tongue’s tip—a veritable walking en- cyclopedia of world commerce. His tastes in this direction were culti- vated early in life. As a boy in Cal fornia he loved to go up to San Fran- cisco. The lure of the great bay and ihe ships that sailed it proved irresist- ible to him. He used to haunt the places that had been frequented by Robert Louis Stevenson, Bret Harte, Frank Norris and Jack London. He knew the toil front. He was fascinated, too, by the vistas that lay beyond these immediate »spects, the visions of Oriental port riches, mysterious peoples, products. So his mind, very carly in life, was turned to questions of cargoes, crews and commerce. All this remained with him when, in 1003, he entered the University of Cali- fornia at Berkeley. His bent was un- mistakable, and, whenever the opportu- nity arose in the progress of his studies, he gave those instinctive interests free and ample scope. Soldier and Cowboy. During his undergraduate days young Klein interested himself, too, in” mili- tary matters. He obtained a commis- sion in California’s citizen soldiery and had a chance to “do his bit" during the San Francisco fire in 1906, com- manding some of the troops that strove desperately to bring order out of chaos d to prosecute the vital work of vescue and relief. Klein, too, has been a cowboy. Dur- ing the Summer vacations he used to go up to ranches in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and punch cattle. This had 1 strong appeal for Klein. He liked the uresque _environment, the tonic activities out of doors, and he liked, too, the men he worked with—their humanity, their courage, their realistic view of life. Klein at college won signal honor: among them two essay prizes on hi: torical themes that fitted in admirably with his innate inclinations. The first of these was the James Bryce prize for a discussion of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo between the United States and Mexico, by which our country had acquired those vast stretches of territory in the South- west. The second was an essay having to do with Central America. Constantly recurring in Klein's career has been this dominating “motif” of Americas and Spain Experiences Shipwreck. In 1919 Klein had the experience of shipwreck. Having been appointed United States commercial attache at Buenos Aires, he was on his way down the west coast of South America. It was his plan to go by way of Chile and thence across the Cordillera by rail- (Continued on Fourth Page.) When Dynasties Crash 11, Last of Romanoffs when the Parisian mob destroyed the Bastille—the first of a fateful series of revolutionary acts—the King entered in | his diary on the evening of that day only this word, “Nothing” (rien)? The same entry appears on the fol- lowing day, when the events were only | apparently less striking. It was on that day, indeed, that the King went to the National Assembly and bowed to the new force, implicitly admitting that he had been vanquished. And this is all he wrote in his diary on that evening: “Sitting in the hall of the Etats Gen- eraux. No carriage when I came back.” | __The famous days of October 5 and 6, 1789, when the people of Paris went to Versailles to take the King and Queen and forced them to come and establish themselves at the Tuileries, in the cen- ter of the revolution, here is what one hears or feels of the tragic two days in Louis XVI's diary: “October 5—Left for Paris at 12:30. Went to the Hotel de Ville. | Supper at the Tuileries. Slept there.” Flight to Varennes. For the flight of Louis XVI to Var- ennes, for those dramatic days of June | 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25, 1791, when the King was captured by the populace and | brought back to Paris as a captive, the only facts related in the diary concern whether he slept in a bed or an arm- chair, what he ate, and so on. Ten months later, still a King, at Jeast in appearance, Loufs went, on April 20, 1792, to the Legislative Assem- | bly and there he solemnly read the dec- | laration of war upon Austria. It was | the beginning of the tragic chain of { wars out of which came a new Europe. { It was, to say the least, war on the | family and the country of his wife. “\nam did he write in the diary? Only t | “Went at 12:30 to the National As- 1 sembly. By coach.” | In his mental inexistence the French King is at least laconic. The Russian Emperor, in his diary, is ust as insignificant, but loquacious as a sentimental spinster. The weather is the principal topic of his diary, just as it is in the conversa- | tion of people who have nothing to say. | “Charming weather,” “beautiful, sunn; ! day,” “delightful, mild temperature”— | these are the recurring phrases, alter- ! nated with “it rains,” or—more daringly { —“white sheet of snow”; and that, and only that, in the long period when his throne was tottering to pieces. More Serious Remarks. | When more serious remarks come, at | rare intervals, from his pen. one can- 1 not_escape the sensation that what he |said was not his own original thought, |but that he was merely repeating phrases he had heard. Let us take, for example, | the entry he made on Maech 2, 1917, immediately after his abdication: “This morning Russki came and read me his long telephonic conversation with Rodzianko, in Petrograd. Rodziank | thinks that the situation there is such | that no cabinet might be formed by the | Duma, because the Social-Democratic | party would be against it, led, as it is | now, by the Soviet of the workmen. My | abdictation is necessary. Russki has al- ready communicated his conversation with Rodzianko to Alexeiew and to all commanders of armies. Their answers came at 2. It appears that this step is necessary to save Russia and save the armies from anarchy. I have con- terms, | nd turmoil of the water- | the Spanish | 1 BY FRANK H. SIMONDS. HE still recent municipal elections in France continue to supply a topic of general and biter com- ment. Almost on the tenth an- niversary of the signing of the | Treaty of Versailles, which restored to | France her lost provinces of Alsace and | Lorraine, the capitals of the two Alsatian departments, those of the Upper and Lower Rhine, have passed into hands which are anti-national. Alike in Colmar and in Strasbourg the city councils are now in enemy hands, and even the traditionally faithful Mul- house has seen the intrusion of the same element. When one remembers the frantic and most _hysterical enthusiasm ~ with hich French troops were welcomed Alsace_in 1918, after the armistice, and the fidelity of Alsatians to France ! during all the years of the German captivity after 1871, this transforma- | tion is ‘at once astonishing and tragic. Within 10 years, it would seem. France | has again® lost the “lost provinces” which she regained in the World War To be sure it must be noted that what | has happened in Alsace has not been | repeated in Lorraine. If Strasbourg jand Colmar have changed their minds, | Metz remains unshaken When one examines the details of the | Alsatian affair it becomes clear that it cannot be interpreted as in any sense la revelation of any pro-German senti- ment. What has actually occurred is a triumph for a fusion of three quite | distinct elements. the Communists, the Autonomists, both the clerical and anti- | clerical factions, and. only in the third | rank."the Germans. Strasbourg is a | great_industrial city and its working- | men belong to a surprising extent to | the Communist party. Theirs were the i more numerous votes in the coalition | and. measured in places, theirs were the | largest fruits in the victory. Radicals Want Freedom. The second element in the combina- tion, the Landespartei. is at once sep- aratist and anti-clerical. While it con- | tains a considerable number of mem- | bers who are actually pro-German, the { mass of the members seek separation from France as before 1918 they sought separation from Germany. Their war | ery is “Alsace for Alsations.” their am- bition to see the erection of the province into a free state independent alike of France and Germany. Unlike the Com- ‘jul | | | | from Moscow, they have no Bolshevist { tendencies, but like the radicals of France they are against the church. Parallel to this group is the smaller {Union Popular, which expresses the i views of the Catholics, who are anti- French. because France has disestab- ! lished the church, and who fear that | permanent union with the republic will, | despite official promises, lead to the | extension of French laws to Alsace. | This_party is, too. strongly supported by the younger clergy for the addi- tional reason that, having been trained {in Germany and speaking only Ger- { man, these priests see their influence |and their position compromised. if French again becomes the language of the masses. Finally, there are the Germans. In the years after the Franco-Prussian ‘War something more than 250,000 Ger- mans beyond the Rhine settled in Alsace, replacing an equal number of Alsatians who moved out. This solid block, which constituted perhaps a fifth jof the whole population of Alsace in | 1918, has been somewhat diminished by | emigration and expulsion. But, par- | ticularly in the cities, it has strength. And, sinee it naturally desires the re- turn of German rule, its tactics are expressed in the effort to join in any coalition which embarrasses French rule iand postpones the complete reintegra- | tion of the Rhineland. Germans Encourage Disorder. Obviously this combination is incon- gruous in the extreme. A fusion of Bolshevists, anti-Clericals, Clerigals and munists, who derive their inspiration | 'ALSACE TIRES OF FRENCH RULE AFTER TEN YEARS jPrO\incv Regained at Sacrifice of 1,500, 000 Men Now Demands Complete Independence. |mans had striven to establish a Ger- | man | But the Alsation of 1870, who had (never been German in the Prussian | sense. had been separated from the old Holy Roman Empire for two centuries. | While his language was German, he had shared in the French revolution and politically was far removed from the | Germany of Bismarck. In just the |same fashion, however, the Alsation of 1918 was separated by a wide gulf from the France of that moment. Deeply Catholic, he had seen with disapproval the campaign against the Roman Church in France and, under German rule, partly from necessity, he had, while accepting the German economic |system and methods developed & lo- | cal political life of his own. In resisiing German assimilation the Alsatians had developed something | pretty close to a sense of nationality. | They were profoundly anti-German, | they were eager to escape German rule |and they welcomed French troops as | liberators. But while they cheered the | French troops they quickly resented the French functionaries. They were glad to be free of the old master, but they had no desire to receive a new. French Officials Stupid. Moreover. the type of official the French sent was about as bad as the | German of the 1871 days. narrow, stu- pid and with not the smallest apprecia- tion of the fact that Alsace was not the Ile de France or Picardy. If the old German administration had been rigid and even heavy handed, the new French was at once inefficient and exasperating. Moreover, local feelings were roused | when the radicals captured the French [Chamber and began to take steps to ex- ‘u-nd the French ~system, ‘wmch was based upon a disestablished |church. This proved the last straw. From 1924 onward the Alsation situa- |tion has steadily worsened. If there {remains a considerable element still loval to the French tradition it has been, so far, a minority. | For the Prench this Alsatian affair {is a bitter disillusionment. They are feeling now what the Germans felt half a century ago. Then the Germans ex- pected to be welcomed as liberators of |a German people from a French yoke. |Now the French come, at the cost of 11,500,000 casualties, to undo the work |of 1870. But the Alsatian desires not | merely to be freed of German rule, but |of all rule, to be free in fact. His state of mind is purely Irish. his objective | today is that of the Irish through the {long centuries of union with England. ! Not Worth a War. What will be the end of this new | occasion for European discord? It is | hard to say, but one thing is clear: in the main, the German people are little interested in the Alsatian question. During the war the Alsatians were frankly disloyal and many thousands fled or deserted to the French armies. After the armistice they welcomed the French troops with wild enthusiasm. Thus the German is fairly well “fed up” with the Alsatian. He has no de- v war simply to re- object of Alsatian Economically, too, it is not Alsace but Lerraine which was the ex- pensive loss, for it is about Metz that the great iron fields lie. Two factors favor the French. Little by little the population is learning French, the boys serve in the army in French garrisons, and the schools are doing their work. In the second place, Alsace has been steadily prosperous through the period of French occu- pation and Strasbourg is becoming one of the great inland ports of the con- tinent. A separate existence for Alsace, smaller than Connecticut, is economi- cally almost out of the question. Union with Germany could only come again as a consequence of a bl war, fought largely on Alsatian soil. Fifty years of association with France will accomplish much. Time will run with the French. But for the moment Alsace is one of | Germans can only be held together by | the conspicuous examples of the mis- negative considerations. All, for calculations of pre-war times. Mr. different reasons, are against French | Wilson included in his fourteen points rule in Alsace, all desire to see Alsace |the demand that the wrong of 1870 freed from France. The Communists | should be righted. but righting it has desire to make it the base for a Bol- | left Alsace a continued scene of do- shevist campaign both in France and | mestic discord and the possible source | Germany. the Autonomists want to set up a free state in which they will have political control. The Germans want t0 keep up the disorder until such time as they hope Germany will be able, de- | spite_the Locarno pledge, to retake the | lost_land. All of these various forces would not perhaps have been able to make much real progress. however. had it not been for the blunders of the French themselves. Like the Germans after 1870, the French believed that in com- ing back to Alsace they were coming to a land inhabited by people who were in all things at one with them. Like the Germans the French brought a whole army of officials, who undertook to set up a French system, as the Ger- and that what he repeats are mere phrases detached from a much heavier chain of fears and facts? phrases, for some reason, stuck in his memory and he wrote them down. Even when, a few days later, he wrote: “Everything around me is treason, co ardice, knavery"—even this outburst, when studied in its context, seems to be the repetition of what some faithful servant probably sighed in his presence | a few minutes before. Nicholas Even Feebler. Poor, miserable, yet pitiful shadow! Nicholas was even feeblen than the French King. This one, at least, was in- existant as a king, as a ruler; he might have been a successful country gentle- with' a certain peasant-like cunning of his own. Much more refined than the other, Nicholas was one of the series of nihil- istic beings we have learned to know in certain immortal Russian pages. When somebody suggested that he take the initiative in arranging for the two con- ferences at The Hague to discover a way to peace and disarmanent, he certainly saw the beauty of the task. ‘gut he did | ’r:;n !hn\e the force to follow” the great | leal. man, heavy as he was, a great eater,! | of new international strifes. (Cepyright. 1929.) e |Roy Chapman Andrews 'To Continue Gobi Search Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews, world- famous leader of several expeditions |into the Gobi Desert of Central Asia |in search of remains of man's ances- | tors, is soon to resume his explorations for the American Museum of Natural History. While passing through Tokio for a brief visit to the Unite States he declared when asked as to his diate plans: “We are going back to the same re- gion in inner Mongolia where we made But the few your most recent discoveries. The {strata_which we found was for the most part too old to have contained man but we are continually looking for younger levels of geologic deposits. “A most interesting discovery which jurges us to return for further investi. tgation was that of the remains of a race of people in the stone age whom we named the dune dwellers. Accord- {ing to the evidence there were appar- | ently millions of them and the region was much more densely populated |than in historical times. This race, however, seems to have completely dis- appeared. All the evidence points to | Central Asia as man’s birthplace and 150 we are going to continue our work and prove this accurately.” | Autonomy Is_Sougllt By Formosa Residents A delegation representing prominent residents of Formosa has visited Tokio and submitted to the Diet a petition for political autonomy. The petition is Louis XVI would have been unable to understand—just as he was unable to | see the beauty and moral nobility of the American Revolution. Or is it, perhaps, only the proof that | more than a century had not passed in | vain, even for monarchs? One hesitates to invoke the general law of progress in explaining the initia- tives taken by Nicholas II. For it is im- possible to forget the German Kaiser was a_cotemporary of Nicholas II and that the Russian initiatives for peace were opposed and scoffed at and ridiculed by the diplomats and the gen- erals of the last of the Hohenzollerns. ‘The last of the Bourbons and the last of the Romanoffs at least spared the history of their families the comedian touch which, despite the fact that there was no royal execution, has made even sented.” Is it not evident that he has forgotten or overlopked some of its i R s By SIS 0Bl . more pathetic the end of the Prussian dynasty—a dynasty that gave eighteenth century Europe one of its most striking personalities—Trederick ths Great. signed by 1,932 persons in all walks of life in the island colony. “The people of Formosa have already attained a st of cultural development where they are qualified to participate in the administration of the island,” a spokes- man said. “It is true that the governor- genen]shlwx Formosa had to carry ::?t: ':)k .theh;;'f fioweru ‘vohen Japan and over 40 years ago. guepju?jh“t {;’leve | I o eeply tha Japanese le do not know more about !brmp:i? or the 4,000,000 Formosans. They are so en- grossed in their own affairs that they are not awake to the mistakes in colonial policy being made by the gov- ernment officials in Tokio. We are comprl:ulry u?u:fl!d with the island as a of the Japanese empire. but we believe that autonomy is bepll{ebflth for the island and for the empire.” Lack of freedom of publication was cited by the group as one of the most objection- atleGeausea 'of the rsent T,