MARCH 1928 Episodes of the Month The Mexican Murder Gang Lists By CAPT. FRANCIS MCCULLAGH, M.C. By H. W. WILSON "The War Guilt" The Gospel of Play BY THE HON. MRS. LYTTELTON GELL Mutual Trade A Yorkshireman in France By H. A. WALTON Some Recent Activities of the L.T.A. By MRS. L. A. GODFREE By T. A. CowARD The Mind of the Bird By LIEUT.-COL. NEWMAN CRAIG, D.S.O. The Transport Problem in Australia By SIR GEORGE C. BUCHANAN, K.C.I.E. Correspondence Section The Southern Irish Loyalists. By the Duke of MAY 1928 Episodes of the Month The British Army in Egypt By LIEUT.GENERAL SIR GEORGE MACMUNN, K.C.B. What Does "the Real India" Want? By A PATRIOTIC INDIAN The Amended Prayer Book Measure: The Real Issue By The ARCHDEACON of CHESTER Printemps et Politique à Paris By LIEUT. COL. NEWMAN CRAIG, D.S.O. The Depreciation of De Quincey By HENRY S. SALT "The Gospel of Play"-A Reply By GUY BOAS Empire Cotton Growing By JOHN SUMMERSCALES The Story of a Highland Castle By THE REV. ALEXANDER MACRAE Birds of a Cape Homestead By MRS. CONYERS ALSTON Literal Translation BY PROF. L. W. LYDE A French Family's Via Dolorosa By H. A. WALTON Developments of E.R.A. By N. BOSANQUET Australia: the Great Loan Continent By J. EDMOND (late Editor Sydney Bulletin) Correspondence Section Southern Irish Loyalists. By the Duke of "National Review "Office, 8 John Street, Adelphi, London, W.C.2 THE NATIONAL REVIEW No. 544. JUNE 1928 European EPISODES OF THE MONTH EUROPE has no ambition to become a pawn in the game of American party politics. That in a word explains the attitude on this side of the Atlantic towards the sensational project of the Washington Government for the Renunciation of War. We have had such painful experience within recent memory of the peculiar workings of the American Constitution and the idiosyncrasies of American politicians, that outside the ranks of Responsible Statesmen-who are constrained by their positions to take each other seriously-and the usual Mugwumps and Highbrows, Mr. Kellogg's Notes, Draft Treaties, and speeches have aroused comparatively little interest. In a familiar Transatlantic phrase, "they cut no ice" with the general public. There have, it is true, been perfunctory debates in both Houses of Parliament in which the Front Benches have vied with each other in expressing amiable sentiments that have been frequently heard before. There has also been a plethora of conventional leading articles in the same sense which are "taken as read" by their more intelligent readers. But the country at large has remained unmoved, being somewhat sceptical as to whether anything will come of this latest effort to abolish war, not through any love of war as an institution, but simply and solely because they are suspicious of Washington Politicians. Having been once bitten, we are twice shy. We went through a similar pantomime eight years ago under the auspices of a former American President, who broke all precedent and came hotfoot to Europe for the express purpose of "making the world safe for demo VOL. XCI 31 cracy through the instrumentality of the League of Nations, which its author conceived as a Super State (to wit, the United States of the World"), with complete control of international relations, and therefore in a position to make international wars impossible. This Project was presented to the Allied Powers as the condition of American participation in the post-war settlement, and in the belief that President Wilson had a mandate to that effect from his own people. He made the acceptance of the Covenant a condition of signing the Peace Treaty, and actually induced the Allied Statesmen to incorporate it in that document, though the wiser among them were dubious, their misgivings only being overcome when Mr. Wilson fortified the Covenant by a positive Pact pledging the United States to support France in the event of further Teutonic aggression. OUR readers remember the sequel. Whereas Europe had been officially informed that the American People were so enthusiastic for the League of Nations that Once Bitten, without it they would withdraw into their etc. shell and wash their hands of our wicked old world, the exact contrary proved to be the case. The moment they caught sight of the League, they shied at "the entanglements" it involved, and instead of supporting the President's plan to obviate future wars and to place peace on a basis of joint responsibility, of which the United States would shoulder her share, the American people from New York to San Francisco rose in revolt under the leadership of the Senate and ratified that body's repudiation of President Wilson and all his works by a record majority. American hostility to the Paris Peace Conference admittedly originated in Republican prejudice against Democrats in general and in particular Mr. Wilson, whose handling of political opponents was anything but felicitous. But it developed apace, and ultimately the Administration was "snowed under" by an avalanche of popular indignation, mainly aroused by the bogey of the League of Nations, which, having been forced on Europe as a cherished American ideal, was caricatured to the American electors as a |