2. That both the old and new parliament should be abolished at one and the same time.

3. That Tang Shaoyi should be appointed Inspecting Commissioner for the three provinces of Szechuan, Yunnan, and Kueichow, while Ku Hanmin should be appointed Inspecting Commissioner for Kwantung.

Now that disputes between North and South have raged so long, it may be safe to imagine that both northerners and southerners, leaders and the masses alike, are yearning after peace, realizing as they do how foolish it is to keep on quarreling for quarrels' sake.

In this connection, however, it must be noted that sections of the militarists are more disposed again to war than to dilatory discussion. Tuan Chijui and followers are said to be requesting the President to promulgate a mandate for dispatching an expeditionary force against the South. Again, relations between Yunnan and Kwangsi as well as those between Szechuan and Yunnan may be seen in this light.

In other words, discussion is likely to be replaced by force again. However, should war break out again, there would be no hope for early settlement of the discord between North and South. This is fully known to the militarists themselves, and is the main reason why the local people can still enjoy peace in spite of the ominous war clouds gathering in Szechuan and Hunan.

As for the Tuchuns, their exclusive concern is to safeguard their position. They have no regard for the interests of the state, another powerful obstacle to the return of peace.

What is worse, the peace delegates of North and South have no great influence in the political situation. Wang Itang is the representative of the Tuan faction and the Anfu Club, but not of the entire North, while Tang Shaoyi is the representative of the old Kuomintung party, but not of the entire South.

The opposition of the Chihli faction to the Tuan clique has led to the withdrawal of General Wu Peifu from Hunan. The ascendancy of the Chihli faction would mean a corresponding decrease in the influence of the Tuan clique and the Anfu Club. In consequence, the disaffection between the Chihli and the Tuan Factions cannot fail to affect the mission of Wang Itang seriously. On the other hand Tang Shaoyi, the southern peace delegate, has begun to quarrel with the Canton Provisional Government, the latter relieving him of his post and appointing Weh Tsunyao as his successor. Such being the case, it is not too much to say that the present peace negotiations are being conducted by the Tuan faction in the North and by the old Kuomintung party in the South.

It is true that there are clashes between the Tuan and the

Chihli factions from time to time in the North, but on the whole the northern political situation is maintaining a semblance of solidarity. But now there is no central influence in the South. General Tang Chichao is in a quarrel with General Lu Yingting, while the old Kuomintung clique is defined by another faction.

Sun Yatsen, Tang Shaoyi, and two leaders of the South oppose the authority of the Canton Provisional Government in the recent manifesto, but the Canton Provisional Government asserts its authority and declares their manifesto null and void.

In short, there is now no central influence in the South, a fact which bespeaks no success for the present peace negotiations. therefore, The Osaka Mainichi expresses misgivings in conclusion that not only may the peace negotiations fail but the political situation in China, which is in a deadlock, may be further aggravated, pointing to a reported coming of Marshal Tuan Chijui as a signal of another upheaval in China.

POLAND AND HER RULER

From the September Review of Reviews

The article by "Liber" in the Correspondant (Paris) is a biographical and psychological study, but to an American reader will be quite as helpful for its curt but illuminating allusions to the recent history of Poland, which is just now in the very center of the limelight; far more so, indeed, than the writer could have foreseen.

The "Partition of Poland," finally completed in 1796, is regarded by present-day French writers as most of all a conspiracy to destroy the chief eastward outpost of political liberalism, while the all but simultaneous downfall of the three absolutist houses, Romanoff, Hohenzollern, and Hapsburg, in the final throes of our World War, is the Nemesis of that crime. Russia had been the chief culprit and had profited most. While Galicia has been fairly contented under the milder Austrian rule, and the spirit of the Prussianized Poles seemed effectively subdued, Russian Poland has been always the chief center of radical conspiracy against Petrograd-as we now call it.

Born of noble Lithuanian stock in 1868, bred on a great hereditary estate of more than thirty square miles, near Vilna, Josef Pilsudski, while a youth at the university, saw this inheritance lost to his family through the systematic injustice of a Russian governor. His elder brother, Stanislas, for a trifling offense was sent to spend fifteen years in lonely exile on the Pacific island of Saghalien, just seized by the Japanese. So young Josef, with all his aristocratic pride and capacity for fearless leadership, was forced into the life of an extreme revolutionary socialist, a dizzy round of "secret gatherings, plots, risings, arrests, cross-questionings, Siberian exile, escapes," and again the same desperate round. Often he sat in the dim light where "ten were present, nine at least enthusiastic and devoted as apostles-and

perchance one spy of the police, though no one save himself knows which." It was a life infinitely more fascinating than any safer career for him whose audacious courage, secretiveness, absolute self-dependence were tempered in such a furnace.

Without any military training, against the ridicule, even, of his comrades, and with certain death impending in case of discovery, Pilsudski, through a series of years, succeeded in organizing and drilling a secret Polish army of several hundred officers and ten thousand men, ready to take the field as quickly as the Lexington and Concord minutemen. These became the nucleus of a Polish national army that, from its first squad of fourteen men drilled by him personally to the present moment, has never known or listened to any other "Commandant." This all but single-handed feat shows the same prophetic faith as when the poet Krasinski, in 1850, wrote: "We shall have our Day: if not thanks to the righteous ones, (i. e., England and France) then thanks to the devils themselves."

In the summer of 1914 Josef, at least, had no moment of hesitation or doubt. It was Russia that held three-fourths of his distracted fatherland that had done her worst to destroy the intellect, the conscience, the very speech of Poland. No doubt this instant alignment of himself with Prussia, and so against the "righteous ones," proves him far more patriot and soldier than unerring politician. But he was quickly and rudely disillusioned.

When the mockery of an "independent Poland" became evident to all, when the Central Powers attempted to absorb the whole military manhood of Poland into their own armies, Pilsudski protested, argued, then defiantly and stubbornly refused-and promptly found himself a prisoner in the fortress of Magdeburg, where he remained until after the war was over and all the Emperors dethroned.

Then, led by his veterans, the mobs of Warsaw and elsewhere disarmed and drove out the German garrisons. But there was no political organization to govern the long-prostrate land. The "Regency" of three, a Prince, an Archbishop, and a make weight, had been figureheads only, under Prussian dictation. They called a National Convention, which was chosen on so democratic a basis that it had an unworkable majority of illiterate peasants and artisans. It was to sit just long enough to adopt a constitution and order elections for a real parliament. It is sitting, still, though in a year and a half it has not had intelligent energy enough to pass a single law for the relief even of the disheartened tillers of the soil. It ordained itself "all-powerful," by an act of pure usurpation, and ordered the Regency to install "responsible ministers." The Prince, outlasting his two junior colleagues in power, himself obtained, from the no less provisional socialist government in Berlin, the release of Pilsudski, and, on the

*Commandant's" arrival in Warsaw on Nov. 10, 1918, the Prince promptly handed over to him his precarious semi-royal position, "and thereupon with perfect dignity effaced himself."

And this, according to the well-informed “Liber," is all the government Poland has today. The Commandant, an unconstitutional king in reality, has conquered, as commander-in-chief in the field, nearly as much new territory as the Allies assigned to Poland proper, calls and dismisses ministers, and may at any time, with or without the empty form of a plebiscite, imitate the coup d'etat of Napoleon the Less, or Cromwell's expulsion of the Rump Parliament, and create such machinery as he thinks workable. It was as prime minister under this popular idol, and autocratic uncrowned monarch, that Paderewski made his brief excursion into statesmanship. A close friendship between the two great patriots appears to have survived that experience. Today this "man on horseback" is naturally the most interesting and problematic of figures in the grim kaleidoscope of European politics.

"Liber's" favorite name for him is "The Sphinx." "A figure above middle height, somewhat bowed earthward already at fifty-two, but appearing erect and even taller on the rostrum or in the saddle, his hair still black, thick, and wiry, eyes deep-set, piercing, unfathomable under shaggy brows." He makes instant and devoted friends of whoever approach him, "chats freely of his general desires, hopes, fears, his resources, and the obstacles in his way-but no man hears what he intends to do next." His generals are peasants or princes, socialists or conservatives, all alike devoted to the Commandant; and the whole manhood of Poland, from striplings to greybeards, hungry, shivering, often ill-armed, are in the field and at his command today."

The essayist has made at least intelligible the quotation placed approvingly on his first page in which a veteran diplomatist, after characterizing, from intimate personal knowledge, three unnamed figures that resemble Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Mr. Wilson, declares that the leader of the Poles combines and betters the qualities of them all. The entire paper deserves careful, even if independent and discriminating, perusal.

Editor, New Constitutional Governments, Chicago:

I have read Liber's article on "Poland and Its Ruler," reprinted in the "Review of Reviews" and I feel it might be proper, both in the interest of the much misused renown of Poland and to the interest of anyone looking for authentic information on the "making of the nations," to challenge some of the facts as quoted by the French writer, who-no wonder-is affected by the French way of viewing the Polish developments.