the great demand of the masses for a return to democratic rule." Says the Madrid Heraldo:

"The composition of the new Ministry fails to satisfy the public anxiety, since it differs but little from the Military Directorate. It is nevertheless a note of hope in the darkness in which we have been kept since 1923. The president of the Cabinet insists, however, on keeping all constitutional guaranties suspended indefinitely. The country will then ask: why any change? The substitution of civilians

for the military is not a proof that the conditions warranting the use of force have passed. Let

us hope that coming events will convince this Cabinet of the necessity of allowing more freedom to the opinion of the people."

The present Cabinet can be only a transitory government, in the opinion of the liberal Madrid Sol, which declares that its political value is quite nil, and it goes on to say:

"Were we to name it by a color, we would say it is gray. There is not a single element entitling us to put any hope in this Cabinet. Instead of hope, the president's curious selections for the Cabinet have aroused only amused curiosity."

ANOTHER REFORM IN SOVIET RUSSIA

F

ROM RIGID COMMUNISM Russia passed in 1921 to the famous "new economic policy," but as Russian editors point out, the Soviet Government still retained three institutions, which they considered corner-stones of communist philosophy. These institutions, we are told, are the dictatorship of the proletariat, the nationalization of the main

branches of industry, and thirdly, the monopoly of foreign trade by the Government. Private capital in Russia could do no harm, it was held, as long as these three bulwarks were maintained. But about the middle of November last, it appears, a new reform was decreed, which modifies, if it does not actually abolish, the monopoly of foreign trade. As recorded in the Russian press, the Commissariat of Foreign Trade has been taken from its chief and stanch supporter, Comrade Krassin, and has been fused with the Commissariat of Domestic Trade under the direction of Comrade Tzuriupo, a more liberal Communist. Henceforth licenses to export and to import will be granted more facility, we are told, and what is more, the Soviet Government will encourage the formation of "mixed companies," composed of foreign capitalists and representatives of the Soviet Government for the purpose of promoting foreign

The return of the Army to its natural field and functions is the only point for congratulation, says the Madrid Diario Universal, which declares that "the danger of seeing our armed forces taking part in political struggles was ever present to our eyes," and therefore "the present move is generally welcome." But there are newspapers which are much more cordial and enthusiastic about the new régime, as, for instance, La Correspondencia Militar, which expresses itself thus:

"We must warmly congratulate Gen. Primo de Rivera, who so well embodies our noblest traditions. We have full confidence in his ability to steer us to safety. The apparent obscurity of the new Ministers is unimportant. What Spain needs to-day is a group of men conscious of the real needs of the country and presenting an honest program of government-men irrevocably resolved to carry out their purposes, and in honor bound not to fall into the excesses prevalent in the régime so justly overthrown by Primo de Rivera in September 1923."

Another admirer of General de Rivera is the Madrid Debate, which would have preferred that he had established an even stronger dictatorship, and observes:

"We shall support the Government simply because it is the Government. The task of forming a government is not an easy one. The press tell us daily of the difficulties facing democratic governments, which rise and fall as by magic. We must always remember that the only two strong governments of Europe Russia and Italy-are frank dictatorships. In view of the grave existing situation, support of the Government, whatever its program, is the natural outgrowth of the law of selfpreservation of all civilized societies. ..

"The present moment is full of dangers. We need a government as strong as the Directorate. The problem is not to limit authority, but to strengthen it. All countries are to-day following that line of conduct, obeying Italy's example. The new Government must be granted still larger powers than the Directorate. It is not advisable to give the people participation in the Government, but they should be represented in an advisory capacity before the governing organs. Above all, the executive post must be exalted, and granted uncontrolled and full power to exert its authority to the limit."

-The Bulletin (Sydney, N. S. W.).

commerce.

Also, it is pointed out, individual Soviet trusts and cartels will have the right to purchase materials directly in foreign markets. While it is true, say some Russian newspapers, that the Commissariat of Trade will still control all individuals and organizations engaged in business, they assure us that this control will not be nearly so oppressive as it has been heretofore. In the Moscow Vozrozhdenie, the monopoly of foreign trade is declared by A. Yoblonovsky to have been one of the main obstacles to Russia's dealings with the outside world, and he goes on to describe it as follows:

"Suppose a dressmaker in Moscow required a dozen buttons for a dress she was making. In former days she would simply send one of her girls to the store to buy the buttons. But now very few things are to be had in the stores. The Moscow dressmaker would have to buy the buttons abroad, and this would involve the necessity of having ten permits, of visiting ten Soviet bureaus, and of waiting six months. Moreover, when the buttons were received through the Commissariat for Foreign Trade, they would be found to be red instead of green, as ordered, to be round instead of oblong, as required, and finally, they would be out of fashion."

In the Moscow Economicheskaya Zhizn, there is a statement taken from one of Kameneff's speeches in which he said that "no longer could we endure the condition under which only our Trade Delegations had the power to buy pins, soap, machinery, clothing, nail-files, and what not. Such a state of things is dying a natural death." In this paper, also, we read that the foreign trade monopoly built up an enormous and clumsy machine of Trade Delegations, that were slow and inefficient, and it is related that in Berlin alone the Soviet Trade Delegation

turn inward upon themselves?" Ever since they revolted against England, we read further, which " once was their mother country, but no longer is the mother country of their cosmopolitans," the Americans have been growing in "arrogance and wealth." Many years ago, their own historian, Francis Parkman, gave them a warning which Blackwood's reproduces as follows:

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"Those who in the weakness of their dissensions needed help from England against the savage on their borders have become a nation that might defy every foe but that most dangerous of all foes herself, destined to a majestic future if she will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her great, prate less about the enemies of the past, and strive more against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the demagog as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her power from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity to make firm the foundations on which that prosperity rests, and turn some fair proportion of her vast mental forces to other objects than material progress and the game of party politics.'

BRITISH SYMPATHY

The Lender's Lot.

"We would rather have a dinner of herbs with contentment and a little wine than all the dry banquets which the enslaved riches of the United States can provide. We know well enough that, as a result of the war, we are faced with many difficulties. We know also that if we do not trust too fondly to the Government, if we recognize that all benefits come not from legislation but from a change of heart in the people, we shall overcome our difficulties. Meanwhile we do not ask the good opinion nor the help of the United States. So long as we pay our annual tribute, they can have nothing to say to us. A report, lately issued by the British Federation of Industries, tells us what the United States think of us. Even in the most friendly quarters,' we are told, 'the general impression seems to be that England is down and out. All our difficulties are exaggerated, and the progress

But the United States did not heed Parkman's warning, according to this contributor to Blackwood's, and they went on their way toward wealth gaily, and without knowing what they meant or what they did. Tho they have attained the highest standard of living ever seen, he declares, they have guided their lives by other standards equally dangerous, and he goes on to say: "Their vanity persuades them to believe that, if they be present when any deed is done, they did it. It is this strange hallucination which causes them to boast aloud that they won the war. That they did nothing of the sort is proved by the number of the killed and wounded in each of the Allied armies, by the plain record of events. They achieved less than the smallest of the British Dominions. It may not be their fault. They came late into the war, untrained and uninstructed, and however willing the rank and file may have been, they were led by officers who did not understand their business. But nothing will serve them but to go about and to tell all and sundry that they were the authors of victory. They believe one another, tho nobody else believes them and they will end by making themselves supremely ridiculous. That they should give a comic interpretation of the letters A. E. F., and repeat that it means 'After England Fails,' can not distress us. We know too well what our sufferings were and what were our achievements to care a jot what the Americans say. But what of them? Who shall respect those who respect themselves so little as to babble such things as these? But they have 'the highest standard of living in the country's history, and therefore the highest in all history.' We are not likely to forget this eloquent statement. We can but ask whether it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul."

All the gold stored in the Treasury of New York would not tempt this castigator of Americans to surrender British tradi

we have made toward reconstruction ignored. We are painted as being at the mercy of Communists. One hears that our plants are out-of-date, our methods antiquated, we can not compete, our spirit of initiative has deserted us; the British workman neither can nor will work.' It is a pleasant picture, painted in the colors of amiability. But if the Americans count upon our being down and out, they will have a rude awakening."

This writer goes on to say that of course the English suffered more than the Americans did from the war, for the Americans "had not much to do with the war, except to make money out of it." Now Britain, we are told, risked all her money, and all her men of military age, and has not yet had time to rebuild the fabric of her life and trade. Presently, it is predicted, she will recover completely, tho she has traveled far on the road to recovery even now. But until complete recovery comes, the deeds of her people must speak for her, and we read:

"The British Federation of Industries suggests that 'one or two Englishmen of the highest standing should visit the United States, and in a series of speeches in different parts of the country correct the harm done to British interests.' For our part we have no faith in propaganda of this sort."

FRANCE'S NEED OF A STRONG MAN-If there were just one man in France great enough to establish a dictatorship, it might be the best thing that could happen to the country, according to some foreign observers there. But there is none, we are told, and all France has are "average politicians." Her best men are said to be too old to appear as rescuers, while the young ones are described as the product of the war and lacking stability and experience. Meanwhile we read in a Paris dispatch to the New York Times, that the Echo du Nord of Lille publishes an open letter to Clemenceau, asking him to come to the help of his country, in these words:

"Shut your books for a moment, leave your pen and forget your heartburns. Look toward the soil-this soil of France which your ardor and tenacity liberated from the foreigner. See what your successors have done with your victory, old and respected poilu, and grit your teeth and close your fists with

anger.

"We turn to you. Your juniors have quit and the young have lost their ideals. In the darkest hour the ancients are those who give the fullest meaning to events and dictate their duty to citizens who are still filled with love of the public weal.

"Speak to us. The enemy is no longer at Noyon-he is within each of us-he besieges our hearts and they give way a little more from hour to hour. Our governors watch, powerlessly, the ebbing tide which they started. Replace them.

"You have been silent long enough. Tell us our watchword."

T

HE BASIN FOR A NEW GREAT LAKE, more than twice as large as Ontario, lies almost ready-made in the wild regions north of Lake Superior. A few dams, the diversion of a river or two that now flow into Hudson Bay, the cutting of a short southward canal, and the trick is turned. Chicago may use twice her present drainage, the lowered lakelevels will be restored, there will be hydro-electric power to spare and all for half the cost of the Panama Canal! This plausible and far-reaching scheme, fresh from the brain of a young Canadian engineer and explorer, is described at some length in The Dearborn Independent, by Wallace J. Laut. He writes:

"Diversion of lake water through the Chicago Drainage Canal may be offset by another diversion of a large volume of water that now flows uselessly and purposelessly to the Arctic Ocean from the wilds of the Canadian North.

"A Canadian engineer who has traversed this littleknown Northern area by canoe and trail may hold the key to the restoration of Great Lakes levels with consequences that may be totaled up only in terms of millions, whether people, dollars, pounds of lake freight or electrical horsepower are considered.

CAMERON

This water may be diverted into the Great Lakes, according to Mr. Campbell, by cutting through the lower height of land for less than a mile, and sending the water from the new Great Lake through the Nipigon River into Lake Superior. The basin for the new lake, he says, already exists. There will be some embankments to be built up along certain stretches, but Mr.

LAKE

OSWEGO

"Lorne Campbell, of Toronto, has just returned from the latest of his five-year explorations of the Patricia area, and with his conviction doubly strengthened that a sixth Great Lake may be added to the present chain, and a volume of water added to the Great Lakes sufficient to restore normal levels and at the same time provide the city of Chicago with an ample supply of water for drainage purposes. If this project be feasible, and many declare that nature has worked with man to make it entirely possible, the resultant benefits, even on a superficial survey, would be staggering in the bearing they have on many important phases of existence to the 40,000,000 dwellers in the area contiguous to and affected by the Great Lakes chain.

"The writer has had the privilege for some months of discussing with Mr. Campbell his plan for the saving of the Great Lakes. It was along the Albany River and its many tributaries that this summer's route was scheduled. The Albany has been called 'the St. Lawrence of the North.' Flowing northeast into James Bay, it carries an enormous volume of water through Hudson Straits and out to the North Atlantic.

"The Albany basin lies between two heights of land running east and west. These natural divides converge at the eastern and the western ends, and the Albany is the neck of the bottle through which the waters make egress.

"Stop the flow of the Albany River at the most strategic location by means of a great dam. Build another dam across the Ogoki, a principal tributary of the Albany, and you have created an enormous basin or artificial lake twice the size of Lake Ontario. The flow of the Albany to the Arctic is checked and the water is stored for the use of mankind."

Campbell is certain that there is little low land, and that dragline operations will provide for any "fills" that may be required. Mr. Laut goes on:

"Disadvantages will be overbalanced by the immeasurable benefits that would accrue to the Great Lakes section, and more particularly to Ontario. To-day the city of Chicago is diverting through its drainage canal the equivalent of a river one-third the size of the Mississippi. The Chicago diversion is now affecting transportation clear to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, and the stranding of two ocean liners on their way to Montreal bears witness.

"Lake navigation to-day is only 75 per cent efficient, because of the fact that vessels loaded to full capacity scrape bottom in almost every lake harbor and channel. Plans for the expenditure of millions are now being forced upon various communities and an enormous amount is being spent to keep the avenues of these great inland seas open for safe navigation.

"The Campbell plan for the restoration of lake levels contemplates the bringing into the lakes of a volume of water sufficient to make unnecessary further harbor expenditure, and the canceling of large annual grants now devoted by the Federal Governments to keeping open the way for navigation.

"The developments of hydro-electric power at Niagara Falls and other present and projected sites each would receive from the 'Sixth Great Lake' at least 500,000 horse-power, and this benefit in itself, it is contended, would well reward the province of Ontario for the area required for flooding.

"Perhaps the project is too big to be grasped without