this situation bravely, but it alters my health, and my eyes which I need so badly are failing considerably."

It is truly remarkable that throughout this harrowing struggle he never loses confidence in himself or his genius. So intensely sincere is the pride which animates him that it can hardly excite laughter.

"I am an artist, and you are right, you are not crazy," he writes, "I am a great artist, and I know it. It's because I know it that I have suffered so much hardship in order to realize my end, if not, I should consider myself a brigand— that which I am anyway for many people. Finally, what matters it! What bothers me most is not this misery, but the constant setbacks to my work which I cannot do as I want and could without this misery tying my hands.

"You tell me I am wrong in remaining too far from the artistic centre. I have known for a long time what I am doing and why I am doing it. My artistic centre is in my head, and not outside, and I am strong because I have never been side-tracked by others and because I create what is in me. Beethoven was deaf, blind, and alone. His work breathes of an artist living in a planet of his own. Look at Pissarro: because he always wants to be in the front, in touch with everything, he has lost every semblance of personality, and his whole work lacks unity. It always follows the newest tendency, from Courbet and Millet to those young chemists 'qui accumulent les petits points.'

He went to Tahiti because he thought he would be able to work in quiet-his art demanded it. He stays on for the

same reason.

"No, I have one end, and I follow it always. I alone am logical, also I find very few who can follow me for a long time. Poor Schiffenecker reproaches me for being hardheaded in what I want! But if I did not act thus, could I support for just one year this bitter struggle which I have undertaken? My actions, my paintings are always criticized at the moment, then finally people tell me I am right. And one is always to begin all over again. I believe I am doing my duty, and, strong because of that, I do not ac

cept any advice, any reproach. The conditions under which I work are unfavourable and it is necessary to be a colossus to do what I have done under them. I stop on this subject, and I have never spoken as much about it because I know that at bottom you are interested in these questions.

"Do not regard badly my idea of remaining another year. I am in full swing; I know now the soil, its odour and the Tahitians, whom I make in my own peculiar way. It has taken me almost one year to come to understand it, and now that I am here, to go it's enraging!

"I am quite pleased with my last pictures, and I feel that I am beginning to understand the peculiar character of the South Seas. I can assure you that what I do has never been done by anyone and that it's unknown in France."

And this in another letter of about the same date:

"Because I have deprived myself of nourishment, I have ruined my stomach and I am thinning day by day. But it is necessary that I continue to fight always, always. The blame will fall on society. You have no confidence in the future, but I have. I have to have it-otherwise I would have blown my brains out long ago. To hope, it's almost to live. It is necessary that I live to carry out my task to the end, and I can do it only by keeping alive my illusions, by living in hope. When I eat here each day my dry bread with a glass of water, I come to believe it's a beefsteak."

He does not, however, expect to remain in Tahiti for long. In one of his letters, he entertains the hope of being appointed inspector of drawing. And he adds:

"That would be for us, dear Mette, the assurance of our old days reunited with our children and happy. That would be the end of all uncertainty."

In August of 1893 he succeeds in securing free transport to France and returns to Paris, a broken man. Two more years of disillusion. Paris disgusts him; its literary and artistic life seems sterile and empty. Tahiti-it seems his only refuge. He senses he can no longer remain in Europe.

There may be yet some happiness in store for him in the Pacific. He would take his wife and children and finish his last days among his gentle, hospitable Maoris. But she will not even hear of it. Alone, perhaps. But with five children, it would be criminal.

All illusions about his family and wife now shattered, bitter, Gauguin departs again for Papeiti in 1895-this time for good. He must tear wife and children out of his heart. The correspondence grows less frequent, as it grows more bitter. Gauguin avoids it:

"If you must write me in the future such letters as those since my arrival, I pray you to stop. My work is not yet finished, and I must live: think of that and stop these perpetual complaints which do you no good, and do me much harm."

A long silence ensues, only to be broken by the news of the death of Aline. The man is crushed.

"Her grave is over there, with the flowers," he writes, "it's only an illusion, her grave is here, near me and my tears are flowers, living flowers."

The bitterness the blow precipitates is too much for husband and wife to bear. Gauguin's last letter, which she has suppressed, was so hard and inhuman she never replied. This was in 1897. He died six years later.

Thus was closed, at least outwardly, an attachment which continued over twenty-two years and which undoubtedly did more to sustain him in his work than any other single factor. Perhaps without its incentive, the development and history of the most vivid, passionate and intensely sincere modern artist would have been different. Up till now it has been the vogue to detach, for romantic reasons, or otherwise, Gauguin the artist from Gauguin the father and husband. But the correspondence, of which necessarily. we could get here only a cursory glance, would have us know that it is just there that we must look for much that is significant in his genius and art.

THE WAR DEBT SETTLEMENTS

T

BY JOSEPH S. DAVIS

HE World War Foreign Debt Commission, charged with negotiating settlements with foreign governments indebted to our government, expired last February, its task practically completed. A record of its work, with voluminous and informing exhibits, is in print. All of the debt settlements it negotiated are in force save one: the Mellon-Bérenger agreement of April 29, 1926, has not been ratified by the American Senate or the French Parliament, but France is voluntarily making payments slightly in excess of those called for by the agreement. The matter is practically closed. Or is it? The earliest settlements have fifty-seven years to run. The payments in the early years, in several cases, are comparatively light. For other reasons the test of workability has yet to be applied. Moreover, our foreign debt policy has been under scattering fire for several years. Latterly, when this policy has been transmuted into operating settlements, it has been the subject of renewed though partly muffled criticism abroad and of increasing controversy at home. Is the policy sound? Are the settlements under it thoroughly just, expedient, even generous, and on the whole commendable? Are the critics cranks, sentimentalists, and false prophets? If so, it is well to have them shown up in their true light. Or are there serious and genuine reasons for reconsidering our policy, and perhaps even revising the so-called settlements? Today, when no emergency presents itself, when world affairs are assuming a more normal status, when international prejudices and suspicions are diminishing, the time is fully ripe for giving the subject the well-balanced, fair-minded con

sideration that it deserves at the hands of the American people, upon whom, fundamentally, the decision rests. Too much of the discussion has been highly partisan, serving not to increase mutual understanding but to heighten prejudices. There has been too much misrepresentation, too much petty controversy over minor points. There is a real need for a cool, sympathetic consideration of the subject from various angles, and an approach to a truer understanding of it by the public both in the United States and abroad.

I

To see the problem in perspective it is helpful to review the origin of the debts and the preliminaries to actual negotiations for settlements. The United States entered the war on April 6, 1917. Our European allies, long heavy buyers of American goods, needed to continue purchasing vast supplies of our foodstuffs, raw materials, munitions, and other supplies for their military forces and civilian use. Financially, as well as on the battle front, they were hard pressed. Our forces were not ready and could not quickly be made ready. But our farms, our factories, our financial machinery, were already in large measure attuned to war. Far from being impaired, our economic and financial strength was at a high pitch. Our immediate contribution to the ending of the war, perforce, consisted primarily in strengthening the experienced hands of the allies.

Congress therefore promptly authorized the Treasury to advance to the allied governments such funds as they required to finance their purchases here, beyond what they could meet with their other resources including proceeds of our purchases in their countries. Most of our wartime advances were spent before we were able to throw into the field our own military forces, at heavy cost to us because of our unpreparedness, our inexperience, and our distance from the battle-fields. The war was won before we had made direct effective use of all the armies, shipping, equip