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the chief city of the Department. I applied to the Prefet, who, in the French Departments, plays very much the same rôle as the Governor in the American States. I inquired as to whether he had to complain about the conduct of the thousands and thousands of new citizens who were under his control.

"Not in the least," was the answer. "And the proof is that we have not a single constable more than before the war, and that there are fewer delinquencies submitted to the tribunal than before the war. All our Polish immigrants are gentle, laborious and peaceful."

I called also on the chief engineer who supervises the work in the mining districts.

"There is not," he declared emphatically, "the least doubt whatsoever that, if at the end of 1925, all our mines are once more in working order, it will be thanks to the Polish laborers. The Polish workman is strong, disciplined and conscientious. Thanks to him, we are two years in advance on our programme of reconstruction. In fifteen months nothing more will remain of the ruins caused by Germany. If our mines are restored, one might justly put up this inscription: 'Polish labor did it'."

Such are the facts of the case. I said that they were wonderful. Bruay-les-Mines is not an isolated example. There are five or six mining centres which are all closely copied on this model. There are, I repeat it, more than 600,000 Poles, who, having left Germany have come to settle down in France forever, and who are working to raise new French cities on the ruins of the war.

Even in Paris, even in the large towns of the North and the East, like Lille and Nancy, foreign immigration pursues its pacific and slow invasion. In Paris there are a dozen Polish registry offices: they procure servants, chauffeurs, cooks, shop employees, and street laborers. None of these foreigners are taking the place of French people, because, alas! French people are lacking. The war has laid 1,400,000 Frenchmen low and the depopulation has not replaced them with thousands of others. Not only are there no out-of-work people in France, but in the country as well as in the towns they are clamoring loudly for workers, for more, and still more.

What will be the result of this powerful immigration in the long run? Will it be able to continue? Will it not constitute a danger?

Formerly, before the war, France would have considered this invasion of another kind with distrust and anguish. France is an old country where the sentiment of tradition dominates all other sentiments. France, before the war, did not entertain a friendly feeling towards the foreign workman who came to settle down at her hearth. She considered that France should belong to only the French appertaining to the old French stock. But the war has changed many ideas and many prejudices. It has, if I may venture to say so, widened the horizon of French thought. It has caused every citizen to reflect upon problems which never crossed his mind in former days. At the same time, it has inspired more confidence in foreign friendship and loyalty.

Above all, the example of the United States has opened the eyes of a great many Frenchmen. They have seen that a country in which all the races of the world are mingled, where there are a considerable number of foreign-born citizens, is, however, in no way inferior to any of the others in the world as regards moral unity and fine patriotism. This was like a revelation to France and also an indication. France looked around her, and she found in the very centre of Europe a nation which has enjoyed the most marvelous civilization, which has suffered like herself from invasion, and which has even been wiped off the map. She held out her hand to it, to-day she helps it to assure its independence; and she opens wide the doors of her house to it, in order that she may recuperate part of the blood which she so liberally shed in the common cause of the universe.

Thus the same causes do not always produce the same effects: France, who almost died from the German invasion, is thinking of assuring her existence, thanks to another invasion, the Polish invasion.

STÉPHANE LAUZANNE.

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THAT the world is still in very grave trouble is so obvious that one may not profitably dwell upon it. And it is equally obvious that every decent and thoughtful man would do his utmost, even to the point of large personal sacrifice, to help get the world out of its very grave trouble. Many have tried their hand at the problem; many more are now trying; doubtless still more will try. And it may honestly be said that in a large way things are certainly improving, but as regards many of these efforts one is almost tempted to add that the improvement is in spite of the efforts, rather than because of them. Through ignorance, many are pulling in the wrong direction, and are only adding to the trouble. Others, through evil intention, are deliberately prolonging the trouble in the hope of personal power and advantage. A goodly number of well-meaning but futile persons so far fail to recognize the nature of the trouble that they are merely beating the air, and are fulfilling their customary rôle of getting in the way. In view of these many failures to make any valid and substantial contribution toward the solution of the world problem, it may seem more than rash for a quiet country gentleman to add his voice to the outcry, but it may be permissible if he is sufficiently brief and not too insistent. If the application would not seem too obvious, it might further be remarked that in the country one has time to think.

The first step in any cure is a correct diagnosis. Unless you know what is the matter with the patient, you can hardly hope to get him on his feet. In scrutinizing the multitude of social reclamation projects which now flood the world, it seems to us that the fundamental defect in most of them-in fact, in nearly all of them-is just this failure to inquire at the outset how so intelligent a world as ours happened to get into its present disaster. Without this preliminary knowledge, it is quite hope

less to try to pull the world out. Nor would it be quite worth while if the old causes were allowed to continue to operate; and, if given half a chance, to precipitate fresh and larger disaster. We propose, then, to inquire, with somewhat brutal frankness, and all the persistence of a man much in earnest, just how the trouble all started. That it belongs in the category of preventable evils is made quite clear and convincing by the simple fact that the last dozen years have been notably free from natural catastrophe. The record shows no untoward events-no collision with wandering comets; no marked earthquakes, prior to the recent deplorable disaster in Japan; no unusual flood or drought, famine or pestilence; no tidal wave or volcanic eruption. There have been minor disturbances, of course, but on the whole Nature has been complacent and benevolent. Seed time and harvest have followed in their appointed season, and Mother Earth has been as steady going as any conservative could wish. She has been a good neighbor. In the country we count it neighborly to mind your own business and to lend a hand, when it is asked for. Mother Earth, for some quite unknown reason, sends weeds and boll weevil and some other pests, requiring the police power of suppression, but she never plays the sorry trick of sending you crops that you have not asked for and do not want. She is not in the least paternalistic, and not only allows but requires that you shall choose your own crops.

These homely facts are not at all novel, but they seem quite worth reciting because they bear such eloquent and unimpeachable testimony to the fact that whatever else it may be, the present world trouble is fundamentally man-made, and as such is both curable and preventable. If, then, we can discover the way into the trouble, we shall surely be able to find the way out.

The way in, to our own quiet mode of thinking, has not even the dignity of a riddle. It is so simple that he who runs may read. It is so very simple that it has been entirely overlooked by all save an extraordinarily small group of persons. Stated without circumlocution and as baldly as possible, the whole cause of the present world trouble is the growing tendency to substitute mass action, directed from without, for wholesome individual

action, necessarily directed from within. The way out of the trouble is the rehabilitation of individual effort, and the minimizing of mass action. That, it seems to me, is the whole matter in a nutshell.

The world is full of problems, but most of them are man-made, and essentially unimportant. They do not belong to the eternal verities; many of them are petty side issues and not even en route to the great achievement. There is only one major problem in the whole world, and that is the salvation of the individual soul. We do not mean salvation in any narrow, theological sense; we mean salvation in the largest and broadest human sense. Our own personal problem is quite the same as that of every other sane, red-blooded, earnest man or woman in the whole wide world. It is to make ourselves as big and fine and useful and human as we possibly can; and were we so fortunate as to have well born sons and daughters, to help them to be bigger and finer and more useful and more human than we are. It is a much less spectacular job than the artificial problems of government, dynasty, empire, ecclesiasticism, trades unionism, Socialism, Communism, commercial supremacy, dictatorship, and all the other aggressive mass movements, but it is the one real and important problem, whose solution will bring peace and tranquillity and worth to a world now very much distraught.

Even here in the country, where we have the leisure to know better, I am surrounded by a multitude of men and women pathetically eager to save the world, but strangely unwilling to submit to the austere self-discipline of saving themselves. They forget that a fountain cannot rise above its source.

As soon as you begin to organize men into masses, and to treat them as masses, with motive and compulsion applied from the outside, you are letting yourself in for any amount of very grave trouble. The social machinery looms larger than the purpose for which it was created. The one supreme purpose, individual human advancement, is quite ignored, and man loses his quality and distinction. Many years ago, Emerson remarked that "men are so prone to mistake the means for the end that even natural history has its pedants who mistake classification for knowledge". That, in our opinion, is precisely what has happened to the

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