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Of the two the former is imminent. Billions of francs must be obtained promptly to avert the crash of bankruptcy of a nation whose people paradoxically were never before so rich and prosperous. Who will furnish them? Abroad there appears no sign of support. For the time being France has forfeited her credit. Other countries cannot be expected to help one whose own citizens, though fully able to do so, refuse to help themselves. Thus far M. Briand's appeals to the patriotism of his countrymen have fallen upon deafened ears. Nothing short of fright apparently can unlock the vaults and untie the stockings, and M. Briand naturally hesitates to use a weapon which tends rather to intensify than to mitigate cupidity.

Reluctantly and regretfully, moreover, he must have come to realize that he is powerless to regain credit by proffering terms of settlement of external obligations that would not be acceptable to England and America and least of all to France. So perforce at this writing we must leave him striving persistently but, it would seem, hopelessly, to make bricks without straw.

M. Briand's foreign problems are less pressing, but it is a mistake to assume that the Locarno conference produced actual settlements of tangible value. It merely opened the way to further discussion, from bases of equality, of means of a practical and enduring nature. Already Germany is demanding payment for condescending to join the League of Nations as an essential factor in ensuring peace. Not only does she insist upon "accepting" her share of mandates, notably over her forfeited Colonies, but again she raises "the question of war guilt", ostensibly as a sop to her amour propre, but really to wipe off the slate all obligations assumed by her under the Treaty of Versailles, which stupidly based her promise to pay reparations, not as a consequence of the right of the victors to exact them, but because she instigated the war. Obviously recognition of her blamelessness, as a gracious concession to her national sensitiveness or for any reason whatsoever, would reduce the entire Treaty to the familiar "scrap of paper" and relieve her of all liabilities assumed under the Dawes and all other plans.

True, the German statesmen do not go so far as to require unquestioning acquiescence in their proposal, but they do or will

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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

the Blue Nile, which rise in Abyssinia, and the White Nile which has its source in Uganda. The White and Blue Niles unite at Khartoum to form the main river, into which the Atbara falls some 200 miles further north. From the point where the White Nile enters the Sudan to the Egyptian frontier is over 2,000 miles. The "Black Country" is therefore twice as big as Germany and France together. It is practically as large as the cotton belt of the United States.

When the British in June, 1882, occupied Egypt, the nominal authority of the Khedive extended over this vast area. But the worst forms of misgovernment there obtained. The rich soil on the banks of the Nile which had once been highly cultivated was abandoned. To quote the graphic language of Lord Cromer, "there was not a dog to howl for a lost master. Industry had vanished; oppression had driven the inhabitants from the soil. The entire country was leased out to piratical slave-hunters under the name of traders, by the Khartoum Government".

Shortly before the English landed their troops at Alexandria a revolt broke out in the Sudan, led by Muhammed Ahmed, the son of a Dongola carpenter. He proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi or Messiah of his people. The masses flocked to his standard. The Egyptian troops were unable to resist him. The Mahdi pressed forward and menaced Khartoum. The Khedive sent General Gordon to bring help to the beleaguered garrison. But the tragic end of that heroic soldier in 1885 closed a sad chapter in the history of the Sudan. Egypt was forced to withdraw from that country and to fix her southern boundary at Wadi Halfa.

For ten years Dervish hordes led by the Khalifa Abdullah, who had succeeded the Mahdi, ravaged the land which had surrendered to the forces of anarchy. But during this time British statesmanship was not idle. On the contrary it recognized the fact that the most efficient way to reconquer the Sudan was to reorganize the finances of Egypt. It therefore allowed the "Black Country" to stew in its own juice until Lord Cromer got the Egyptian treasury into a condition of impregnable security. In the meantime British military experts took the army of the Khedive in hand and made of it an efficient fighting force. By 1896 it was felt that all preliminaries were ready and it was

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