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No Yugoslav would have taken the responsibility of sending troops to Asia Minor to aid the Greeks, to whom we were bound by no treaty, and who, as our allies, unscrupulously abandoned us in 1915, without regard for their formal obligations. I know the great majority of the Greeks will reply: 'We did not abandon you. It was our King.' But then, what are we to think of a people who recall this perjured King to the throne and do it by a fair majority?

Whence comes this Little Entente? What is its purpose? What does it represent? In the reconstruction of the countries along the Danube after the Great War, we have seen two clashing policies - French and English. The English theory was to rebuild this part of Europe around a Hungary ruled by a Hapsburg, with the thinly disguised purpose of reviving the all but defunct Austria. The French proposals, on the other hand, approximated the wishes of the Slovenes, but the British were about to prevail. Before this direct menace, Dr. Bénès, the Czechoslovak Minister of Foreign Affairs, hurried to Belgrade and concluded with Dr. Vesnitch a pact of mutual guaranty based on the support of the Treaty of the Trianon. There is the beginning of what to-day is called the Little Entente. Rumania adheres Rumania adheres to this pact on the same conditions, except for a single difference. Her Her treaty with Yugoslavia looks not only to the complete execution of the Treaty of the Trianon, but of the Treaty of Neuilly as well.

The English manœuvre was now blocked by the two Slavic diplomats, but the Franco-Slav victory was not yet complete. By the internationalization of the Danube, the English contrived to assure their supremacy on the water, but the first solid knot of the elements of order had been tied in Central Europe.

To-day the Little Entente can replace Tsarist Russia advantageously in the eventual political combination with France. Surely the new Slavic democracies offer a stabler guaranty for the French people in time of trial than the old absolute régime in Russia. As for its weight in the balance of international forces, the Genoa Conference shows us that it need only lean to one side or another to put Europe into equilibrium, or to throw it off balance. If M. Barthou was stronger at Genoa than M. Poincaré at London, it is because the states of the Little Entente grouped themselves behind him. His forces found themselves completely harmonized by the fact that the military power of Yugoslavia and the industrial power of Czechoslovakia were complete.

The young Slav world that rises to-day as a genuine force in Eastern and Central Europe enjoys complete freedom. The natural richness of the realm of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes enables it to feed great armies, while the Slav Creusot, Skoda, will make the necessary arms, if another tempest comes to overwhelm us since we must look out for that eventuality.

In all probability we shall be between the hammer and the anvil, as we have always been-between Europe and Asia. Asia. Our geographical situation gives us such political importance that we must enter international affairs, whether we will or no. All the roads leading from East to West cross our soil. Such a position involves certain privileges. The Yugoslavs will derive great economic advantages from it. But it is also full of political danger, rousing as it does the greed of the Great Powers and hence the imperious necessity of a strong central state. Six of the most important commercial lines of Europe and the East cross our country — the

Berlin-Bagdad Railway and those between Paris and Constantinople, Vienna and Saloniki, Paris and Bucharest, the Danube and the Adriatic, and the railway recently proposed along the forty-fifth parallel from Bordeaux to Odessa.

We are able to get a clear view of the preparation of the new catastrophe with which humanity is threatened. The duel between the elephant and the whale Russia and Great Britain is beginning anew, bitter as ever; and the last offensive of the Kemalists is merely a prelude to a formidable struggle between two continents and two civilizations. The character of this struggle will be not political and social only, but religious and national as well. Against the Entente Cordiale of the West, a political alliance far too inclusive in its scope has been formally established. We may already begin to call it the Entente Orientale, under the directing ægis of the Soviets.

The treaty of the month of November, 1920, between Angora and Moscow, assures the latter free passage to the Persian Gulf. In 1921 there was a series of treaties - Turkey and Persia, Turkey and Afghanistan, Turkey and Bokhara, Persia and Afghanistan, and Persia and Bokhara - which together established the Entente Orientale. Each was concluded at Moscow, and each includes a military convention. In February 1921, after the Bolshevist conquest of Azerbaijan, or Rumania and Georgia, the English protectorate over Persia, which had been almost formally imposed by the treaty of August 1919, was abolished by virtue of another agreement between the Soviet and Persia, and was replaced with a Russian protectorate. The land route to India by way of Batum and Baku was now blocked to Great Britain by Russia. To be sure, the material means of action are not per

fected like those of Europe; but this Eastern Entente has the advantage of being spiritually one, of having a definite goal in the destruction of Western civilization, and of possessing political chiefs who know definitely what they

want.

What is the situation of Europe before this Asiatic-Bolshevist-German preparation? Deplorable! Torn by social struggles within and by political disagreement without, the states of the old Continent present a truly pitiable aspect. While the Great Powers are squabbling over oil, capitulations, the protection of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and so forth-as we have seen them at the Lausanne Conferenceit is left to Dr. Nintchitch, the Yugoslav Minister of Foreign Affairs, to stop at the Maritsa the victorious march of the hordes hurrying from the depths of Asia in the Kemalist ranks.

In spite of their treachery toward us Serbs in 1915, we are far from rejoicing in the downfall of the Greeks. We held out our hands to them at the Lausanne Conference. It is clear enough that our assistance then was not merely indirect. It consisted chiefly in Dr. Nintchitch's blunt rejection of any plebiscite in Eastern Thrace. Dr. Nintchitch formally declared that our kingdom would not tolerate the passage of the Turks beyond the Maritsa under any pretext whatever. This made a deep impression upon Ismet Pasha, and rendered him at once less intractable. Thus encouraged, MM. Venizelos of Greece, Duca of Rumania, and Stambouliskii of Bulgaria immediately grouped themselves behind our country to oppose the 'Balkan Bloc' to Kemalist Turkey. Our military and economic power will permit us to play an increasingly important rôle in international diplomacy.

The purpose of the Little Entente was at first wholly defensive, and it

constituted merely a passive element in the political life of Central Europe. To-day it has a more and more active te part. From the rôle of an observer it has become an actor. The Little Entente emerged as a political power at Genoa, when it achieved positive results. Since then its programme has sensibly enlarged. The alliance was recently prolonged for a period of five years by MM. Patchitch of Serbia and Bénès of Yugoslavia, who met at Marienbad on August 31, 1922. Industrial Czechoslovakia and agriculttural Yugoslavia form a harmonious and indivisible whole, which increases the value of that political armament - which is bit by bit being worked out.

Of what use to the Little Entente is a Greece that has collapsed, thanks to her political megalomania? Why should we seek to save a dynasty in distress and a country which abandoned us in 1915 with purposes by no means doubtful? It is Bulgaria that must be admitted into the Little Entente, and that as soon as possible, in order to consolidate that edifice by introducing into it new Slavic elements

and to complete Slavic Mitteleuropa, made up of nations of the same race ranging from the Baltic to the Ægean Sea, the Black Sea, and the Adriatic.

In the minds of those neo-Slavists, Bénès and Vesnitch, the Little Entente is to be a political instrument that is essentially Slavic. It is still that, and it must remain so, while it waits for its transformation into a definite political, military, and economic organization. To introduce foreign blood into the Little Entente would merely result in complete poisoning of its body, or at least would render it anæmic, and would weaken into passivity the will to action that has already manifested itself admirably.

We are firmly convinced that France has nothing to lose by linking its destiny with ours. It is true that one Slav country still sails to-day on a sea where a sinister red tide flows, but on the bloody horizon we perceive already the dawn of freedom of a new Slavic democracy that will complete our national union and will bring security to France and stability to the world.

VOL. 817- NO. 4109

CRITICS of French policy have pointed out over and over again, during the past few weeks, that the object of France in so far as M. Poincaré's Government represents France — in occupying the Ruhr is not to enforce the payment of Reparations, but to secure the military predominance of France in Europe, and at the same time, if possible, to bring about the complete economic ruin of Germany.

That this is a just and accurate description of French aims would be obvious to every intelligent observer of the course of recent events, even if it had not been confirmed by the public utterances of many leading French journalists and politicians. A good many people in this country, however, are still inclined to regard it as a libel dictated by anti-French prejudice, and thus to misapprehend the whole meaning of the present crisis. It is not a question upon which there need be or should be any doubt, but in the absence of definite documentary evidence doubt remains possible for those who wish to doubt. And, indeed, who would not wish to doubt that such aims can be seriously entertained in the twentieth century by a sane and civilized nation with which for many years Great Britain has been in alliance.?

Documentary evidence, however, is no longer lacking. It is amply supplied in an American book, which has just been published in England under the title of Woodrow Wilson and World

Settlement, and which contains the most complete record that has yet appeared of the secret proceedings of the Peace Conference of 1919.

Mr. Baker, who was the official director of the American Press Bureau in Paris throughout the Conference, and who has been engaged for the past two years in writing this book, could hardly have chosen a more opportune moment for its publication. The greater part of it is a commentary on and explanation of what France is now doing in the Ruhr and Rhineland. We are, in fact, watching to-day M. Poincaré and Marshal Foch take what four years ago President Wilson just managed not to give them. The main lines of the tremendous struggle between Clemenceau and Wilson at the Paris Conference have been known to all students of that crowning catastrophe; but when the obvious truth was denied by the partisans of this or that nation or statesman, it was not possible to support it by documentary proof. Much of what we knew depended upon hearsay, upon the evidence of officials or journalists, who, like everyone in the poisoned atmosphere of Paris, were embittered partisans; or, when it was not thus tainted by Conference pathology, it depended upon inference.

The great importance of Mr. Baker's book lies in the fact that its statements are supported by uncontrovertible evidence. He does not altogether escape the taint of partisanship; he

writes not only as a historian, but as an advocate, and his book is a brief — it is President Wilson's apologia. But in order to give him the material for his brief, the President put at his disposal the whole of his confidential papers; and these papers included the complete Minutes of the secret meetings of the Council of Four, the complete Minutes of the Council of Ten, all the President's private notes, memoranda, and correspondence, all the reports, British, French, and American, that came into the President's hands, and a vast mass of other confidential documents.

A great many of the more important of these documents are printed verbatim in the third volume; but the Minutes of the Councils of Four and Ten, though they are eventually to be published, proved, unfortunately, too voluminous for reproduction in this form. Mr. Baker quotes copiously from them to support his narrative of events, but in questions of such intricacy and historical importance a quotation can never take the place of the full text.

The central feature of the book relates to the French demands for military 'security,' and the terrific struggle over them which took place between Clemenceau and Wilson from March 15 to April 16, 1919— with Mr. Lloyd George as tertius gaudens, sharing the President's views but giving him no practical support. Some time ago M. Poincaré stated publicly that there had never been a Minister, Senator, or Deputy in France who had ever supported a policy of annexing German territory, and that the 'sanctions' which it was proposed to apply in the Ruhr and Rhineland were intended solely as an instrument for inducing the German Government to carry out its financial obligations. It is clear from this book that M. Poincaré and those who belong to his school of policy

must attach a very peculiar meaning to the word 'annex.'

The French programme for which M. Clemenceau- driven by M. Poincaré and his friends-fought in Paris, with all the tenacity of an octogenarian, included the Rhine as the permanent military and economic frontier of France, and even at one moment 'absolute control by military occupation of... Essen and the principal Krupp establishments, the greater part of the Rhenish-Westphalian coal-field and the metallic industries which depend upon these.' The French Report from which these words are quoted went on to point out that 'the prevention of exportation to the unoccupied German territories of the general products of this area would have the most serious consequences from an economic point of view.'

When the President called for the George Washington, having determined to break the Conference rather than yield the full French programme, the fatal compromise of the Versailles Treaty was patched up with its loophole in the impossible Reparations clauses through which France could lay, and is laying, her hand upon the Rhineland and the Ruhr. The significant fact is that M. Poincaré, as the columns of Le Temps will show, never ceased to attack the Treaty-makers for having agreed to a time limit for the occupation, and that now that he is Premier he is taking steps to make the occupation permanent and to rewrite the Treaty of Versailles in accordance with the original French programme.

Never, indeed, has there been a more signal instance of French tenacity than is provided by a comparison of French policy in February 1919 with French policy in February 1923. They correspond point for point. M. Poincaré has learned nothing and surrendered nothing. He still desires to hold