NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE trench General Election last Sunday yielded a great triumph for M. Clemenceau and the Moderate Republican parties. The Socialists, who had associated themselves more or less closely with the defence of Bolshevism, and who had resorted to violent methods in their electoral campaign, were heavily defeated in almost all districts except the North. The Paris artisans rejected the Socialist leader, M. Longuet, who has unhappily tried to model himself on his grandfather, Karl Marx. The returns for 586 seats out of 620 showed that 322 Republicans of various shades had been returned, thus gaining 154 seats. The Socialist parties lost 129 seats and retained only 175, while the Radicals declined in number from 64 to 57. The Conservatives retained their 32 seats. The result may be summarized as a verdict for moderate and cautious reform as opposed to revolution. France is determined not to imperil the peace which she has won by immense sacrifices or to rush into the arms of the Germans and the Bolsheviks.

The Belgian General Election, also held last Sunday, was a defeat for the Clerical Party, which had had an absolute majority in the Chamber for thirty-five years. The new Chamber of 186 members is expected, according to the Times, to contain 71 Roman Catholics, 69 Socialists, 35 Liberals, and 11 representatives of minor parties. The Roman Catholics will thus have lost 28 seats and the Liberals 10, while the Socialists will gain 29. Fortunately the Belgian Socialists under the lead of M. Vandervelde are of a more moderate and patriotic type than the French Socialists, and they will doubtless continue to participate in the COalition Ministry which has guided Belgian policy during the war. Their success is partly due to the extension of the franchise and the abolition of the plural vote.

Italy too had a General Election last Sunday. The definite results are not known at the time of writing, as the new method of list voting combined with proportional representation was unfamiliar to the electoral officials, and occasioned difficulties. It is clear, however, that the Socialists, who were well organized, gained numerous seats in the North, while the Moderate parties, divided amongst themselves, did badly. Signor Giolitti, who so long controlled the Chamber, contrived to retain his seat, but his party was defeated in his Piedmontese stronghold. Signor Nitti, the Premier, and his chief supporters were re-elected, and it is thought that he will command a fairly good majority in the new

Chamber. But the success of the Socialists in the industrial North points, we fear, to the existence of grave discontent. Italy has suffered severely from the scarcity and dearness of foodstuffs and coal, and the delay in the settlement of the Adriatic frontier has promoted domestic dissension. The new Chamber will not have an easy task.

Signor d'Annunzio, whose informal annexation of Fiume has caused so much concern to the Allies and to his own Government, went to Zara last week and annexed Dalmatia. It is reported that the crews of the Italian warships blockading Fiume decline3 to stop the destroyer in which the adventurous poet voyaged to the south. Signor d'Annunzio's personal popularity with the Italian Navy and Army is indeed the secret of his successful defiance of orders from Rome. The Government fear lest by taking severe measures against him they should seem to be renouncing an Italian city in favour of the Croats—an act for which Italian patriots would never forgive Signor Nitti. The situation at Fiume is difficult and delicate, and it does not improve by delay. We do not understand why the Allies still hesitate to admit Italy's just claim to this thoroughly Italian port.

Marshal Hindenburg's visit to Berlin this week, to give evidence before the Committee of Inquiry concerning the German collapse, has been used by the Monarchists as an excuse for demonstrations. There is no doubt that though the Marshal's wooden statue has been demolished, he still remains a popular idol, and that if he chose to head a Monarchist revolt he would attract many followers. The present Coalition Government with a Socialist chief has an uneasy life between the Monarchists on one side and the Communists on the other. The negligence of the Allies in allowing a large German army to remain in the Baltic Provinces has unquestionably helped the Monarchists by giving them a secure base of operations. The delay in drafting and ratifying the peace has also told against the Berlin Government. It is only fair to recognize their difficulties.

The American Senate adjourned on Wednesday without coming to a decision on the Peace Treaty. The President had let it be known that he would support the Democratic Senators if they voted against the ratification of the Treaty with reservations made by the Republicans. The Democrats had votes enough to defeat the Treaty, though they had not the two-thirds majority required to ensure its passage without reservations. The Republicans, on the other hand, professed a determination to adhere to some reservations. On Wednesday the Democrats with some Republicans rejected Senator Lodge's motion for ratification with all the reservations, which in effect nullified the Covenant. A motion to ratify the Treaty as it stood was also rejected. The next Session begins on Monday week. We comment on this singular situation elsewhere.

Mr. Davis, the American Ambassador, speaking at the Armistice Dinner of the English-Speaking Union last Saturday, told the world a number of new facts about the American soldiers who had " tramped across England's soil by thousands." A million Americans landed at British ports, and with greater or less delay were transported across the Channel to France, and, in due time, " there returned across that strip of water a tide of wounded." In all that movement, he told us, " not one American officer or man was lost. That would be a remarkable achievement at any time, but it was done while Britain was carrying a constant stream of her own military forces, while a large part of her rolling-stock was labouring in France, and while every square foot of the ports was needed for incoming supplies." But, Mr. Davis pointed out, the Americans were not merely afforded mechanical facilities. "From the moment when there was handed to each soldier on landing a. gracious message of welcome under the sign-manual of His Majesty the King, to the time of their departure, they were never beyond the reach of British kindness." A special Bureau had to be set up to dispose of the letters which poured into the American Expeditionary Force Headquarters, while the convalescent men were overwhelmed with offers of hospitality. Tho most sceptical, said Mr. Davis, should surely be convinced of the " shot-proof " character of English and American friendship.

The final Report of the Dardanelles Commission was published on Tuesday. It deals in detail with the history of the campaign after March, 1915, and briefly summarizes Lord Cromer's interim Report, which dealt with the origins and early actions of the expedition and which was published in February, 1917. The Commission finds that the Government did not sufficiently consider the measures which were necessary to the success of such an expedition, especially in the matter of naval co-operation, and that they greatly underestimated the difficulties of the enterprise ; that having decided to undertake the expedition, the Government found that an adequate concentration of troops and material would involve a limitation of our efforts on the Western Front ; that after the first failure there was undue delay in deciding upon future action ; that the plan of attack from Anzac and Silvia was open to criticism, and that the Suvla attack should have been more vigorously pressed. The Commissioners commend Sir Ian Hamilton's gallantry, but they consider that he ought to have shown a "more critical spirit" after the first landing. The arrangements made by certain Divisional Commanders are critioized. The Commission says that the partial failure of the water-supply and of the medical services was due to the breakdown of the military plan. The final decision to evacuate was a right one.

The Report makes melancholy reading. The whole campaign was ill-conceived, and its details appear not to have been thought out beforehand by any Department. Worst of all, the expedition had no real objective. The taking of the fleet up to Constantinople by itself led nowhere, and all who took part in the campaign knew it. There seems no doubt that executive officers were responsible for minor failures. But it is to the vacillations of the Ministers, who, as we learned from Lord Cromer's Report, almost drifted into this immense undertaking, that even their failures were ultimately due. A horse whose rider is in two minds about going over will never take a fence properly. The purposelessness of the general military scheme spread a miasma of failure over the expedition which penetrated every Department. The heroism of the troops engaged serves, alas ! only to darken the picture. It proved a fruitless valour.

The British and Allied policy in Russia was debated in the House of Commons on Monday. Lord Robert Cecil in a wise and lucid speech said that we must have no dealings with the Bolsheviks, but that armed intervention was impossible and undesirable. Russia needed peace above all. He urged the Allies to vacillate no longer, but to adopt a policy and adhere to it. He questioned the wisdom of the blockade. Colonel Ward, the Labour Member who as a British soldier has spent more than a year in Siberia with Admiral Koltchak and knows the situation better than any other member of the House, urged that we must not desert our Russian allies. Colonel Ward sharply rebuked Mr. Henderson for calling Admiral Koltchak a " reactionary," inasmuch as the Admiral was trying to restore liberty and a Constitutional Government.

The Prime Minister, intervening in the debate, denounced the Bolsheviks as tyrants. " The chariot of Bolshevism is drawn by plunder and terror." He denied once more the statements of Mr. Bullitt, " who himself says be is a betrayer of confidences." Mr. Lloyd George expressed his belief that Bolshevism would not be suppressed by arms alone. We at any rate had honourably fulfilled our obligations to the patriots, and we could not finance civil war in Russia indefinitely. The anti-Bolshevik forces were unfortunately disunited, because, while Admiral Koltchak and General Denikin wanted to reconstitute the Russian power as it was in 1914, the border States desired independence. Mr. Lloyd George reminded the House that our intervention was demanded not only in Russia but also in Armenia, and in the Baltic States against the Germans—who must be cleared out to secure the peace of Europe. It was no time for us to undertake the terrible responsibility of restoring order in Russia. Mr. Balfour pertinently remarked that the Russian problem concerned the Allies, not Great Britain alone.

The true nature of Bolshevism as a homicidal mania was well explained in a letter from a British officer in South Russia, printed in the Times of Friday week. He described from photographs and documents the horrible outrages that Bolshevik officials had perpetrated at Odessa and Ekaterinodar. Murder, rape, torture, mutilation, as well as plunder and starvation, are the Bolshevik methods of reducing Russia to submission to a " proletarian dictatorship." We fear that the traditional reluctance of the British Press to print repulsive details has misled many honest people into thinking that the Bolsheviks are detested merely because of their political theories. We have long had in our possession some gruesome photographs of Bolshevik horrors in Siberia, sent to us by a British officer of high standing. Some of them show piles of corpses of unhappy peasants, men, women, and children, slaughtered by the Bolsheviks. Another shows the corpse of a doctor, well known through Siberia for his charitable work, who had been horribly tortured and mutilated before he was killed. It is unpleasant to call attention to such facts. But it is better that the British public should be shocked than that it should be led, in ignorance of the truth, to look on Bolshevism merely as one political creed out of many. Bolshevism is rooted in the foulest crimes of which the human brute is capable.

The Russian civil war is still going badly for the patriot forces. Admiral Koltchak has transferred his capital to Irkutsk and has abandoned Omak to the Bolsheviks. General Yudenitch's defeated army is being pressed back upon Nerve, and will probably take refuge across the Esthonian border. In the south General Denikin is sustaining a violent Bolshevik offensive. His centre has been driven in at Kursk, which he has lost, but his flanks are at present holding firmly. The Baltic States, together with Poland and the Ukraine, have begun, rather late in the day, to discuss the possibility of a political and military alliance. Such an alliance, if it could be arranged, would constitute an important new factor in the Eastern situation, and the Allies should encourage it.

Mr. Balfour at the close of his speech on Monday made an admirably firm statement about Egypt. " Neither in Egypt, nor in the Sudan, nor in connexion with the Canal did England mean to give up her responsibilities. British supremacy existed, and was going to be maintained. Let no one make any mistake about that cardinal principle of the Government." It is well that this has been said. There is much political unrest in Egypt, where the Ministry of Mahomed Said Pasha has resigned by way of protest against the despatch of the Milner Commission to inquire into Egyptian affairs and devise a new Constitution. But the malcontents must understand, once for all, that the British Protectorate will be upheld. The time for full self-government, still less independence, has not come.

The Report of the Joint Committee of both Houses on the Government of India Bill was published on Thursday. We can only say now that, though the Committee has made a few beneficial amendments, it has accepted Mr. Montagu's unhappy scheme, including the preposterous "diarchy " proposals, which have been condemned by almost every experienced Indian official. We are glad to see that the large non-Brahmin population of Madras is not to be put under the control of the small Brahmin minority. The Committee admits that the position of the Indian Civil Service will be " difficult," but it has not tried to lessen the difficulties.

The House of Commons decided on Wednesday, by 217 votes to 123, to discontinue the unemployment dole for civilians. Sir Robert Home stated that 101,000.men and 34,000 women, apart from 344,000 demobilized sailors and soldiers, were still receiving this dole, which was originally intended to tide munition workers over the few months of transition from war to peace. The debate revealed great differences of opinion within the parties, and the Government were criticized, not unfairly, for having delayed their new scheme of unemployment insurance. Mr. Bonar Law seemed ready to continue the dole till March, but left the decision to the House. For our part, we have great sympathy with any persons who after a whole year have failed to obtain employment, though we cannot help suspecting that some of the recipients of the dole have not been unduly anxious to find work. But the dole is essentially wrong in principle. To pay people for doing nothing cannot be sound policy. Writing elsewhere on the housing problem, with special relation to Pisa de Terre, we have suggested that the genuine

unemployed should be set to work on building houses in this material, for which unskilled labour can be used.

The Standing Committee of the House of Commons, which is considering the Enabling Bill, decided on Wednesday to substitute for the proposed Ecclesiastical Committee of the Privy Council a Committee of both Houses. The Lord Chief Justice is to nominate fifteen Peers and the Speaker is to nominate fifteen Members at the beginning of each Parliament. Such a Committee would command public confidence. The change does not touch the fundamental objections to the BM itself.

A Scottish correspondent points out a curious result of the Enabling Bill should that measure come into force. Our readers will remember that the qualifications for the Church franchise are to be a declaration that the voter is not only a baptized person, but is also not a member of any Church not in communion with the Church of England. The application of this test, our correspondent points out, would exclude the King, for he is a member of the Church of Scotland as well as of the Church of England. When in Scotland he attends the services of that Church, and one of his first acts on his accession is to swear to support the Church of Scotland. " This is not an important point," our correspondent adds, " but a Bill that is so thoughtlessly drawn up as to exclude the King from membership and the franchise needs careful examination as to detail." Our correspondent is too modest, for his paradox brings into relief the present admirable and complete comprehensiveness of the Church of England, and shows into what absurdities we may be led if we pursue a policy of exclusion and of limitation and of " unchurching " half the English people.

Mr. J. H. Thomas at Bristol on Sunday last said that the Government had offered to give the railwaymen a substantial share in the management of the railways. Three nominees of the two Railway Unions are to join the Railway Executive Committee " with coequal powers to the general managers." This may mean that each Union nominee would have the same votingpower as a general manager, or that the three nominees between them would have the same voting-power as all the managers taken together. For each railway there Is to be a Joint Board of five general managers and five Union delegates to deal with " conditions of service." In case of dispute there will be an appeal to a mixed tribunal.

The proposal to issue Premium Bonds is now meeting with serious opposition. The Archbishop of Canterbury has informed Mr. Chamberlain that he would regard a decision of the House of Commons in favour of Premium Bonds as " a veritable misfortune." He would not describe investment in such Bonds as ethically wrong, but he fears the moral consequences of an Act " reversing previous policy by legalizing on an immense scale what is in its essence a lottery system." Again, Sir Robert Kindersley, who speaks with special authority on financial questions, says that the issue of Premium Bonds would be " a national disaster of the first magnitude." He thinks that not more than £100,000,000 of new money could be raised in this way, and that the small investor would be tempted to withdraw his Savings Bank deposits or to sell his War Savings Certificates. But he objects to the proposed Bonds mainly on the ground that they would discourage steady thrift and stimulate the fatal " desire to get rioh quickly without effort."

We are bound to say that, though the Archbishop seems to underrate the proposed Premium Bonds as an investment, his genuine fear lest they should form a new stimulus to gambling impresses us. Moreover, if Sir Robert Kindersley, to whose opinion we attach the greatest weight, is really convinced that Premium Bonds would ruin the national thrift movement, this financial experiment would be more risky than we had supposed. No reasonable man would prefer Premium Bonds to War Savings Certificates or Victory Bonds as a means of raising new money for a harassed Exchequer. The question is whether sufficient money can be found by existing methods. The case for Premium Bonds meta on the assumption that the orthodox schemes have ceased to be effective.

On Thursday week a debate was to have taken place at Essex Hall between Mr. " Pussyfoot " Johnson and a representative of that most powerful of organizations " The Trade." The meeting was raided by a body of medical students, and "The Trade" deprived of a possible dialectical viotory by the forcible abduction of Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson was roughly handled, and finally carried in triumphal procession through the streets: At last a body of fifty policemen charged the students and with great difficulty rescued Mr. Johnson. His back had been hurt and one of his eyes badly damaged. Mr. Johnson seems to have behaved with admirable good humour and patience, and the episode was one of which most Englishmen will feel greatly ashamed—an outrage committed on a defenceless man by men sworn to relieve not to inflict pain and injury.

It is a great pity that this dull-witted and ill-tempered " joke " should have been perpetrated, for till then the history of Mr. Johnson's campaign had been a humorous one. First, America's silver-voioed Prohibitionist is chartered by a combine of temperance workers on that side and this. He is to run a mammoth campaign. We, the patients, await his opening fusillade with languid speculations as to his methods. He will probably cover the hoardings and the outsides of our newspapers with " before and after taking " advertisements, or have huge processions or giant meetings with free " soft drinks." He is not spending our money, and we need neither read nor listen. But now comes the mystery. As soon as Mr. Johnson landed a wind shook the leaves of our newspapers, and everywhere appeared little paragraphs ranging in tone from the acid to the explosive. In a week or two the showers of "Pussyfoot" paragraphs had risen to a sort of tempest, and the revue comedians and the daily Press vied in abuse of "Pussyfoot." The thing was accomplished, and Mr. Johnson's name was, as he had intended, a household word. How was it done ? Did that old astute campaigner " The Trade" get frightened and play Mr. Johnson's game exactly, or is he himself the cleverest advertiser in five continents ?

One thing is certain, the anti-Johnson campaign had none of the marks of a spontaneous popular movement. The Spectator, as our readers know, has always been against Prohibition in time of peace, but neither we nor any other disinterested person have any grievance against Mr. Johnson. He is welcome to persuade the majority of Englishmen if be can. If he cannot persuade them, he can do nothing. As a nation the spectacle of a missionary from another country who left everything at home to teach this benighted country the Christian virtues has always rather amused us. The medical students acted a thoroughly silly part. Let them leave "The Trade" to fight its own battles. We are not in favour of Prohibition, and we trust that for his sake and ours no one will again tender a martyr's crown to Mr. Johnson, for we cannot deny that he wears one with a very good grace. We wish him a speedy recovery.

The Irish Unionist Alliance, in a letter whioh we should like to print in full if we had the space, has reminded the British public that " Home Rule is now a lost cause in Ireland." The issue lies not between the Union and Home Rule of some kind but between the Union and Irish Independence. At the last General Election the old Nationalist Party virtually disappeared, retaining only six seats, while the Sinn Feiners, who stand for an independent Irish Republic, won seventy-three seats. Further, Sinn Fein seeks to attain its end, not by Constitutional means, but by a reign of terror. Assassination, highway robbery, and burglary are its favourite methods. The Irish Unionist Alliance, which speaks for the million and a quarter Unionists in Ireland, points out that there can be no compromise with Slim Fein, since no sort of Home Rule " settlement " would satisfy it.

The appointment of the Royal Commission on the old Univer sities was announced on Monday. We are very glad to see that Mr. Asquith has accepted the chairmanship. The;delioate and responsible task could not be entrusted to better hands. The Commission will sit as three Committees, one for Oxford under Mr. Asquith }himself, one for Cambridge under Mr. G. W. Balfour, and one for estates management under Lord Ernie. The Oxford and Cambridge Committees include Miss Penrose, of Somerville, and Miss Clough, of Newnham. Mr. Ma,nabridge and Mr. Henderson have been added, we suppose, to represent " Labour." The Commission, appointed in reply to what we regard as an ill-considered application for State aid., is to inquire into the finances and internal administration of the Universities and the Colleges. Oxford and Cambridge have no reason to fear the inquiry. But there is a real danger lest, in return for State aid, they should be subjected to the Board of Education, and lose the liberty which has been for ages their proudest possession.