as American subjects of the British Crown and one hundred and fifty years as American citizens" and thereby imposed upon their living descendant a double-barrelled obligation to voice their joint or several convictions. Along about the first of June unmistakable rumblings began to indicate a disturbance below and, after listening intently every night for nearly a month, Mr. Peabody became convinced that those of his ancestors who comprised the English section were turning in their graves. Due meditation having pointed clearly to dissatisfaction with the international debt settlements as the cause of the movement, Mr. Peabody promptly, as in duty bound, exercised his "firmly established right to petition the Government for the redress of a grievance" and addressed a communication to the President of the United States defining "the redress I ask, nay, demand" as "cancellation of every dollar and cent" advanced to the Allies. The letter was one of many that reached the Executive Offices one morning and was passed on, in regular course, to the Treasury. The President or the Secretary may or may not have read it; probably not, as the former was playing hookey in the Adirondacks and the latter was packing his grip for the steamer. The surmise that neither ever saw it is strengthened by internal evidence. The document comprised an eloquent appeal reflecting great credit upon the sincerity of the writer's emotions, but unhappily Mr. Peabody did not succeed in his avowed purpose "to maintain an attitude of courtesy as becomes a citizen in addressing his President."

"What mandate," he truculently, and quite absurdly for a lawyer familiar with the Constitution, the Acts of Congress and the pronouncements of both National conventions, demanded, "has your Administration received from the people of the United States to do the things you have done? Upon what authority has your Government assumed so to act for them? What better right have you to assume that the Government has truly represented them in the matter, than I have to assume that the Government has misrepresented them shamefully?"

Queries such as these might be pardonable as evidencing nothing worse than a state of ignorance, but what can be said of the following hurled at a President by "an American in every

fibre and bone and drop of blood" for seven generations backward

The difference between your assumption and mine is this: yours takes it for granted that money is America's god; that we are a nation of money-grabbers, without conscience, gratitude, loyalty, magnanimity, justice or honor: while mine is based upon the ineradicable, the burning conviction that Americans are just and generous and loyal and of one mind in the belief that it profiteth a nation nothing to gain the whole world and lose its own soul.

That insolence such as this, surpassing in offensiveness anything of like nature that we can recall, required even an acknowledgment, to say nothing of an answer, ought, we think, to be plain to the most ordinary intelligence. But no such view achieved penetration. Nor in point of fact did the legitimate part of the communication find understanding. The question raised by Mr. Peabody was one of National policy, not of accountancy or of differentiation between guns and food as war supplies," and could and should have been answered conclusively, if at all, by a mere reference to President Coolidge's plain declaration to Congress, to wit:

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I am opposed to the cancellation of these debts and believe it for the best welfare of the world that they should be liquidated and paid as fast as possible. I do not favor oppressive measures, but unless money that is borrowed is repaid credit cannot be secured in time of necessity, and there exists besides a moral obligation which our country cannot ignore and no other country can evade. Terms and conditions may have to conform to differences in the financial abilities of the countries concerned, but the principle that each country should meet its obligation admits of no differences and is of universal application.

But the Treasury, having discovered in an insulting communication an opportunity to exploit its argumentative ability, hastened to reopen the largest debt settlement, incidentally the key to all the settlements, made with great difficulty three full years ago, and thus far peaceably maintained despite the extraordinary delicacy of the situation which has arisen from the relative diminution of England's capacity to pay. Whether the real purpose was to renew the closed negotiations, in the joyous hope of getting better terms, has not been revealed; this, however, being the only logical outcome of the shrewd endeavor, we should guess not.

Mr. Mellon chivalrously took upon himself the full responsibility of the note bearing his signature, and with his accustomed courtesy and candor made an effective offset to Mr. Churchill's testiness.

"The whole thing," he said frankly, "was most unfortunate, especially as there was no call for it at all. My reply to Mr. Peabody was not intended for publication, but even then I thought I was stating nothing but positive facts. However, it was most regrettable that it should have been published, and more regrettable still that it should have given rise to any controversy with Mr. Churchill."

Being blessed with an exceptionally acute sense of humor, Mr. Mellon no doubt will derive much amusement from the information awaiting him that it was the Treasury, not Mr. Peabody, who in this instance ran true to thoroughbred form, that gushed into print with its reply before Mr. Peabody had even received it.

The merits of the subsequent bickering of the two Treasury Departments hardly call for consideration, since analysis would resolve chiefly into a matching of erroneous and deceptive assertions.

In fairness, however, to our own Treasury, whose admirable functioning within its prescribed province has never been excelled, the fact should be noted that matters pertaining to foreign policy find their statutory lodgment in the State Department except in rare instances such as this, involving a personal attack upon the President, when direct and authoritative treatment by the Executive Secretary sometimes proves to be most salutary.

It was the tone rather than the substance of the Chancellor's quick response that puzzled Americans. His challenge of the accuracy of our Treasury's statements was natural enough and, even though ineffectually supported by equally erroneous assertions of his own accountants, was in some respects warranted; but when he solemnly declared that "no complaint has been made by Great Britain against the adverse discrimination to which she has been subjected," and added sarcastically that none would be raised but for “reasons assigned which clearly arise from a misconception of facts," the hostile note was unmistakable. There was, moreover, neither logic nor candor in the assertion itself for

the simple reason that “discrimination" was obviously impossible when the first settlement, that with England, was made.

Mr. Churchill, along with a large majority of the Cabinet, was strongly opposed at the time to acceptance of the terms negotiated by Mr. Baldwin, but he acquiesced nevertheless and, when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer two years ago, he clearly indicated full reconcilement in these words spoken in the House of Commons:

Opinions have differed about that settlement. It is a settlement which commanded the support of the leading financial authorities in the City of London. It is a settlement which was advocated by the experts at the Treasury. It is a settlement which has been ratified by Parliament and accepted by the country. There have been different views about it. I have been myself quoted as having expressed different views. My right hon. friend the Prime Minister is the last man in the world to resent a sincere divergence of opinion between persons perfectly free at the time upon a matter admittedly highly complicated and in regard to which there have been the broadest differences of opinion between experts of unquestionable and unimpeachable authority.

But, whatever views may have been taken about the settlement or expressed about it, there can be no dispute in regard to two facts. First of all, the settlement has been made; it is done and it must be made good. It forms the starting point for all future discussions in the field of inter-Allied debts. That is the first point.

The second point is this: It has placed us in an extraordinarily strong position. We take our seats at the council board of Allied and Associated Powers under financial obligations to no one. We have no need to seek indulgence in any quarter. (Cheers.) Having met all our liabilities as prescribed, having rigorously discharged every contract into which we have entered, we are entitled to rest ourselves with confidence upon a position of freedom and independence which we have regained. We have regained it, not without great sacrifice; but it is ours, and it is ours forever. (Cheers.) We can look every one in the face.

This debt settlement was unquestionably the indispensable forerunner of that consolidation and increasing establishment of our credit throughout the world, on which our world-wide trade depends, and it is an essential foundation in all that improvement in the exchange between this country and the United States and the maintenance of that exchange, which is a vital factor in the whole of our national and international finance.

To his credit be it said that this is not the first time Mr. Churchill has noted "misconceptions of facts" in connection with the Anglo-American debt settlement. When the illustrious Earl

Balfour had the effrontery to declare in his famous Note of August, 1922, that the United States would make no loans to the other Allies unless they were endorsed by Great Britain, the American Ambassador, feeling constrained to make flat denial of that misstatement, expressed the hope that the time would come when the British Government would publicly and officially disavow it.

At the expiration of two years this modest hope was realized and the man who made the correction unreservedly and most handsomely was no other than the Rt. Hon. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

His latest apparent faceabout is accounted for in various ways. Some think that he still considers it necessary to take a dig at Uncle Shylock once in a while in order to convince the provincials that his being half American by birth does not impair his onehundred-per-cent British spirit, but we frankly doubt that he now recognizes such manifestation as a political requirement. Nor do we believe for a moment that his inferential slap at Mr. Baldwin, to whom he owes his present high position, was designed to arouse resentment that would enable himself to force the retirement of his sponsor from the Prime Ministry in furtherance of his own ambition. It is far more likely that his purpose was merely to test the real feeling of the British public toward America and then perhaps to consider the advisability of shaping his course to accord with the popular inclination.

If so, the outcome is all that could reasonably be desired by the citizens of both countries who feel that the best interests of England and the United States, no less than of civilization itself, can be served most effectually through good feeling and mutual helpfulness. The only public journals that seized upon Mr. Churchill's characteristically impulsive outburst were those hitherto supposed to be directed by Viscount Rothermere, né Harmsworth.

These widely circulated sheets, it must be confessed, in the words of Artemus Ward spoken of Napoleon, "tried to do too much and did it" so thoroughly that, after perceiving the impossibility of capitalizing prejudice and passion, the noble Lord was compelled by his own subscribers, advertisers and shareholders to