GREECE AND CRIMEA

FRENCH journals continue to occupy themselves with the almost simultaneous defeat of Venizelos and Wrangel. Dumont-Wilden, who writes regularly for the Revue Bleue upon foreign affairs, and especially upon eastern European policies, says of the Greek elections:

The accident of November 20 shows that, in a country where national consciousness is still in a rudimentary stage of development, domestic questions will invariably take precedence of foreign questions; immediate local interests eclipse remoter national interests. It is always dangerous for a statesman to get too far ahead of his age and his country, and in this day of universal suffrage it is impossible for even the greatest political genius to make a small nation a great nation in spite of itself.

Wrangel's defeat is interpreted by the same writer as a still more disquieting incident, although not so great a shock to French opinion as the setback in Greece.

Even those who had faith in General Wrangel distrusted his entourage. The Russian emigrants in Paris and London were far from unanimous in supporting him. Many of those who backed his cause did so with much hesitation and reserve. Some suspected him of being a reactionary; others charged him with showing too much consideration to the Socialists and to national minorities. Military experts, while recognizing Wrangel's personal ability, were frankly disCopyright, 1921, by

trustful of an army, the strength of which fluctuated enormously from day to day with the waxing or waning prospects of success, and which was inadequately equipped. Nevertheless, public opinion, especially in France, attaches such importance to the reconstruction of Russia that the disappointment and discouragement caused by this crushing defeat have been profound.

Similar pessimism characterizes a review in L'Opinion of Jacques Bainville's recent book, Les Conséquences Politiques de la Paix, in which that brilliant writer summarizes the political condition of Europe after the treaty in the following significant sentence:

Face to face with this mélange of petty nationalities, religions, and races, stands Germany, the only solid, homogeneous, still highly organized nation, whose weight suspended over the vacuum of eastern Europe threatens to precipitate the whole swaying continental system from its base.

He concludes that 'thirty-six independent governments,' most of which have no logical frontiers, geographical unity, economic independence, political traditions, or European experience, cannot possibly compensate for the demoralization of Russia and the disappearance of Turkey. He considers the situation in Asia Minor as equally precarious and threatening. "There is a curious resemblance (in the two situations); for Armenia occupies the same The Living Age Co.

position as Poland, isolated between two enemies who have only to agree in order to crush it'-a prediction apparently realized since these words were written.

CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE GREEK ELECTION

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CONSTANTINOPLE, as every knows, has a large Greek population, which evidently was not in sympathy with the voters of Greece proper in the last election. A correspondent writing from that city to L'Independance Belge says that when the returns began to come in:

After the first stunning shock the people gave way to indignation and wrath without restraint. Every Greek flag was immediately lowered. Crowds gathered in the streets discussing the news as it arrived from Athens. When Venizelos' defeat was confirmed beyond doubt, a wave of grief and mourning passed through the city. Cafés and other places where the people gathered were deserted. Theatres suspended their performances. The crowd gathered in front of newspaper offices hoping for some news and refusing to believe the unwelcome tidings. The newspapers here, whether printed in Greek, French, or Armenian, discuss the results of the election with expressions of unbounded hatred and contempt for their fellow comrades of ancient Hellas, even recommending that the local Greeks support the Bulgars or the Turkish Nationalists. So a gulf is opened between the Greek Irridentists and the people of ancient Greece. It will continue to widen because the former consider themselves superior to Greeks of the old kingdom, and certainly this is true. The Greeks of Macedonia, Epirus, Thrace, Asia Minor, and the islands, are industrious, educated, and immeasurably more advanced in civilization than the peasantry of Peloponnesus and Thessaly.

Berthe Georges Gaulis writing on the Greek crisis in L'Opinion says that too many Europeans fail to realize the extent to which Greater Greece is Asiatic. The Greek soldiers on the Anatolian front have learned a great deal during the past few months. Some have been captured, and war prisoners are treated better by the Turks than

by any other nationality. They return cherishing very friendly feelings toward their former enemies.

Most Greek soldiers returning from Asia Minor come back thoroughly sympathetic with Turkish nationalism. Their hatred for the European governments set up in Asia Minor is vigorous and outspoken. It is a common occurrence to hear the Greek residents of Asia extenuate Turkish nationalism and join the Turks in condemning corrupt, predatory, and selfish Europe.' The very best Turkish propagandists to-day are Greeks.

He observes further that European Greece hates France more than ever.

THE RAPALLO TREATY

COMMENTING upon the treaty of Rapallo, the Liberal Clerical Corriere della Sera says:

Yugoslavia has renounced its claims not only to the left bank of the Isonzo, but also to all Istria, Trieste, Pola, Goritz, and Volosca. Fiume has been made independent and Italy has obtained its natural frontiers. By, in turn, renouncing all claim to Dalmatia, Italy enables Yugoslavia to acquire likewise natural geographical frontiers threatened by none of its neighbors. Italy surrenders Italian minorities, who will be forced to dwell in peace and friendly intercourse with the Slavs. At Budapest, and in the entourage of the former Emperor Charles, the news that peace has been concluded between the Italians and the Slavs will come as a painful blow. For it signifies that all hope of a revolution is now vain.

The signing of the treaty will, it is believed, stabilize not only conditions on the Adriatic, but also farther East, where Hungary looked forward to a possible conflict between Yugoslavia and Italy as an opportunity to recover some of its lost territory.

COMMUNIST MUNICIPALITIES

IN ITALY

ALTHOUGH the recent Italian elections resulted favorably for the Liberal bloc in several of the larger cities — as mentioned in one of our recent issues -some two thousand municipalities have become Communist, and the wave of Bolshevist enthusiasm is ap

parently rising higher. Italian papers are much preoccupied with the bomb outrage at Bologna where some ten persons were killed and eighty injured during the disorders attending the raising of the Red flag over the Town Hall by the new Socialist majority. 'Dr. Filipetti, the new Socialist mayor of Milan, made an extremist speech on his election in which he proclaimed the intention of the City Council to fight the state as bourgeois on all occasions and by all means, legal or illegal, and paid special tribute to Soviet Russia.'

AN ENGLISH IMPRESSION OF

PROHIBITION

HAROLD SPENDER, a correspondent of the London Telegraph, is the latest observer to enlighten his fellowcountrymen upon a Briton's impression of the United States. After observing that 'prohibition is the greatest fact about the United States to-day,' he thus describes his first experience in New York, where 'a whole nation of one hundred and ten million would seem, if you judged by public appearances only, to have gone teetotal in a few months.'

'Amid all those great throngs you could not perceive a single manor woman in any degree affected by alcohol. I do not say "drunken," for, after all, there are few drunken men or women to be seen now in the open streets of London or Paris. The new fact is the entire absence of that spirit of exhilaration, exaltation, excitement

- call it what you will, think of it as you will, good or bad, I pass no judgment which you witness among the crowds emerging from our restaurants and public houses. This new sobriety of great crowds of human beings is a strange, new social fact. We felt it not merely in the streets those wellordered streets of over-crowded New York - but also at that vast Capitol

GERMANS UNDER SLAV RULE

AN anonymous but 'well-informed' writer in Europáische Staats-und Wirtschafts-Zeitung reports that the Germans in Poland are treated very differently in different parts of that country. In Posen and the districts detached from West Prussia traces of the former German rule and civilization seems destined speedily to disappear. In Russian Poland and some parts of Galicia, where the Germans have always been in a minority, the government is now less friendly than before, but financial ruin is felt more than political change. The Poles are said to be using every effort to induce German settlers and landowners to sell out and leave the country. German boys are called into military service in spite of the fact that under the Versailles Treaty they are given two years to decide their allegiance. The success of the policy of driving out the Germans is illustrated by this writer with the following figures: At the outbreak of the war the city of Posen had some one hundred and sixty thousand population, of whom one half were German. To-day not over fifteen thousand of the latter remain.

Relations between the Czechs and Germans in Czecho-Slovakia are steadily growing worse. Two issues, the separate school question and compulsory military service, are serving as points of controversy, although other