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forward, honest minded, humorless statesman from the Pittsburgh of England, at a single session, succeeded where the adroit Welsh politician and the imperious aristocrat had failed lamentably in similar attempts at rapprochement, following unceasingly one after another through a period of years. And yet, as Sir Austen himself would be the first to admit, his efforts, too, would have proved utterly futile but for the invincible resolution and extraordinary suppleness of the more adept and appealing fisher of men, no less than of trout, from the meadows of Normandy. Well might Mr. Sisley Huddleston, the keenest observer at Locarno, exclaim: "Has there ever been a more striking example of the influence of a single man for good? I must not be misunderstood as minimizing the highly important rôle of the German Chancellor and Foreign Minister, or the magnificent coöperation of the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs. But when all the tributes are paid, it remains the indisputable truth that the leading figure in the negotiations for the Peace Pact, and the leading figure in the pacification of the Balkans, was the Frenchman, Briand."

When, at a critical stage of the negotiations, the conference seemed doomed to failure the resourceful "Frenchman, Briand," in unconscious emulation of the sagacious American, Lincoln, told an amusing and wholly irrelevant story, relaxing the tension and permitting an adjournment which saved the situation and afforded him an opportunity to take Dr. Luther for a drive along the shore of the lake to an unfrequented café, where for an hour or more the two sat upon wooden benches, draining many steins of beer and chatting amiably. What was said upon this historic occasion nobody knows, but a shrewd surmise may be adventured from the remark of M. Briand while the agreements were being signed in London, when he turned directly to the German delegates and said ingratiatingly, in terms deftly combining selfrespect and gratifying compliment:

"I am a good Frenchman, you are good Germans. Without renouncing our patriotism, we may both be good Europeans." Four years ago M. Briand would have been execrated by his countrymen for thus tacitly placing the Huns on a plane with themselves, but when, after having bided his time with a patience

unsurpassed by Job's and hardly equalled by Mr. John D. Rockefeller's, he courageously swept away the animosities that barred the path to peace and returned to Paris, he was greeted by a huge delegation of blind, legless and armless soldiers grouped under a resplendent banner bearing this inscription:

"Welcome to the Man Who Has Insured Our Children
Against the Misfortunes Which Have Befallen Us."

Deeply touched by this surprising tribute, the happy recipient hailed it as heralding "The Spirit of Locarno", and thereby coined a phrase whose influence upon future conferences cannot be measured, but was felt and revealed immediately by the German people as interpreted by the caricaturists of their Press, who forthwith became "as gentle with M. Briand and as unsparing with Herren Luther and Stresemann as the cartoonists of any other nationality."

"Without overemphasizing it," declared the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, "this kindly treatment of Briand is an obvious indication of a pleasanter popular mood toward France in Germany, dating from the time when men like Herriot, Painlevé, and Briand rose to power. Popular sentiment reveals itself more frankly and unaffectedly in caricature than in political editorials. The opinion it crystallizes in respect to Briand is, to put it baldly: a shrewd, sly old weazel, but no wolf. This is a radical change from the familiar German caricature of Poincaré, which represents him with a bitter, nutcracker face.

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To be depicted as cunning and carnivorous and accustomed to prey upon others incapable of defending themselves would not ordinarily be considered a pretty compliment, but it so far surpasses in considerateness anything that has emanated from Germany since the armistice that relatively it must be reckoned a distinct advance from contumacy toward courtesy. In any case there can be no doubt that the German people feel far more kindly disposed to the present Premier than to any of his predecessors, and there is fair reason to believe that today he would receive a cordial welcome if circumstances should make advisable a visit to Berlin.

His position in England, too, as well as throughout the Con

soon call for discussion before a neutral tribunal and thus win admission at least of a doubt and possibly a modification designed to serve equally, or at the worst partially, their artful purpose.

Despite the active participation of the United States in constructing the Treaty, it is unlikely that this country would be drawn into distasteful discussion of this "moral issue" of war guilt in the League Assembly, of which happily she is not yet a member, but the question of her responsibility if it should be passed on to the World Court seems not to have been considered in the recent Senate debate.

The proposal itself is not new. It was advanced tentatively years ago, only to be disdainfully rejected without argument by M. Poincaré, and it would not now be worthy of mention but for the widespread propaganda accompanying it and the plain indication it affords of continuing obduracy on the part of Germany. Other prospective "suggestions" of even more disturbing nature have already been hinted as likely to emanate from the same source but without sufficient explicitness as yet to call for enumeration.

Is Aristide Briand equal to the stupendous task of reconciling a continent? Can he translate into actual achievement the "spirit of Locarno"? Is it within the range of his possibilities to play successfully the rôle of Peacemaker which others more ambitious and in many respects more able than he have essayed in vain? Will his intuition prove more effective than the erudition of Wilson or the dexterity of Lloyd George? Is his human instinct divinely inspirational?

Upon the answers which he alone can give to these searching questions depends the immediate future, not merely of one country, even his own, but of all countries comprising the civilized world.

"In the twentieth century," wrote Victor Hugo many years ago, "there will be an extraordinary nation. That nation will be great and it will be free. She will be illustrious, rich, intelligent, pacific, cordial to the rest of humanity. She will have the sweet gravity of an elder sister. She will be astonished at the glory of conic projectiles and she will find it difficult to see any difference between an army General and a butcher. The purple

of the one will not appear unlike the red of the other. A battle between Italians and Germans, between British and Russians, between Prussians and French, will be as absurd as a battle between the Picards and the Burgundians. She will find stupid the oscillation of victory which invariably leads to another upset of the equilibrium; Waterloo always following Austerlitz.

"This country," he continues, "will not be called France; it will be called Europe in the twentieth century, and later, still more transfigured, it will be called Humanity."

Was this vision truly prophetic? Did it foreshadow an apostle? Who can say?

One fact is positive. Far and away beyond all others in authority, Aristide Briand personifies Humanity, and the supreme goal of his hope, in the interest of peace, is a United States of Europe, not jealously political but mutually helpful, to act as a counterbalance to, and a coöperator with, the United States of America in stabilizing conditions of amity and concord throughout the world. So far from resenting or deprecating such an aspiration, as Europe seems to imagine they might, the American people will hail it as noble and will bid Godspeed to the man who would supplant both force and chicanery with the loving-kindness of an Abraham Lincoln.

OUR AFRICAN COTTON RIVALS

BY PIERRE CRABITES

Judge of the Mixed Tribunal of Cairo, Egypt

BORN and reared on the banks of the Mississippi and called by my official duties to live in the valley of the Nile, I think in terms of cotton. As soon as I heard that Lord Allenby, then British High Commissioner at Cairo, had issued orders that the Sudan Government was authorized to draw from the Nile as much water as it might require for irrigation purposes, my thoughts turned towards the fleecy staple. I visualized the possibility of at least a million more bales being thrown upon the market. I knew what this would do to the price of the raw product. I saw the reaction which this would have upon the economic wealth of the South.

In order that I may make my meaning clear I must wander a little into history and take a side step into geography. Our great American continent lies so very far away from Africa and we have so many problems of our own that I cannot expect my fellow countrymen to follow me unless I lay my predicate, as the college professor expresses it. It is hard for us to believe that anything can menace our hegemony. We have accomplished so much that we are inclined to look upon the sky as our limit. But as this cotton question touches directly every man, woman and child in Dixieland, and indirectly the entire 110,000,000 inhabitants of the United States, it may not be amiss to delve for a few moments both into the past and into Darkest Africa.

I

The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, or literally the Black Country, is that territory bounded by Egypt on the north, Uganda on the south, the Red Sea, Eritrea and Abyssinia on the east, and the French Sahara and the Belgian Congo on the west. Through it flow the three principal tributaries of the Nile: the Atbara and

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