parliament shall enact a law for making the bankers supreme in regard to legal tender and currency matters for all future time !

I know of no demand more significant of the ultimate aims or of the political power achieved by the leaders of finance in this country. It means that our bankers are to be both superior and independent of the Government itself! The creature is to be placed above and made superior to its creator! If Mr. Baldwin's Government-or in fact any other political party-accedes to so insolent a demand, it should arouse the opposition of the entire British public and prevent its members from ever holding political office in the future.

Rather than this demand should be fulfilled, far better would it be for the Labour Party to carry out its threat of nationalizing these banking institutions. Indeed, it is to the arrogance and selfishness of our financiers who have pursued their policy of currency deflation for purely selfish ends, regardless of its disastrous effects upon the well-being of the producing classes, and particularly in forcing down wages and creating unemployment, that we owe the enormous growth of Socialism.

Thousands of people, especially the younger men, are flocking to join the Labour Party, most of whom are being driven there as the result of the apparent indifference of the Conservative Party to our present industrial plight, which is entirely the result of the financial policy now being pursued. The average citizen is being driven to desperation by the dear, scarce money system on one side, and ruinous taxation on the other!

Should Socialism obtain the political control of this country at the next election, it will be due mainly to our leading financiers, and our Conservative Party leaders. Mr. Lloyd George and the Liberal leaders provided us with the first Socialistic Administration. It now looks as though Mr. Winston Churchill will be allowed to let us in for the next.

ARTHUR KITSON

THROUGH the great arched doorway a long streak of yellow sunlight slanted across the floor of beaten earth, filled with swirling, dancing motes and sparkling particles of dust kicked up by all the shuffling feet. The great hall of the council chamber towered up to a groined roof supported on four mighty pillars plastered smooth like the walls with dark red earth, and was lost to sight up there in the dim shadows.

Save for the great entrance door and a few narrow slits of windows high up in the wall, no other light save that golden bar helped to chase away the darkness, and the hall itself lay in soft twilight at all hours of the day. Facing the giant door, linked up to it as it were by the sun path, a low mud platform was built against the farther wall, and on it sat a half score grave and serious men-the Emir and his counsellors in judgment. Below them on the floor the murderer crouched, surrounded by the Emir's guards, huge negroes in gown of red and yellow, wide turbans of red twill, all armed with sword and knife, and swinging hide whips from their wrists. The slayer's right hand was triced up to his neck with fibre cord, his left picked restlessly at his dirty, tattered gown, and every now and then he glanced up from under lowered brows at the faces of those great ones above him.

The hall was filled with a mixed crowd whose duties brought them to the justice court. Police and gaolers, messengers and scribes, witnesses and hangers-on of all sorts, who moved and rustled about the hall or sat along the walls writing laborious screeds, not as the Arabs write, from right to left across the paper, but from top to bottom, beginning in the left-hand corner, so that to be read the paper must be turned half round. These earnest ones worked heedless of the moving crowd or of the drama going on upon the dais. A low hum of conversation was sounding in the chamber, with the shuffle of naked feet about the floor, the rustle of long embroidered gowns and the scratching of the reed pens on coarse paper-all signs of relaxation from the tension of a few moments before. The trial was over; a long case begun upon the previous day and heard with many witnesses who, piece by piece, had fitted in the jig-saw puzzle of the crime, and with every detail sworn to had brought the cowering wretch's head lower and lower to the ground.

Now, on the dais, the greybeards, deep in consultation, bent their heads together. Upon the sheepskins covering the platform lay the books of Moslem law, Rissalah, the Tufatu'l Hukami, with other works of reference into which from time to time some learned one would delve awhile, and with slim, dark finger on the page read out an extract to his listeners, followed by grave nods and murmurs of agreement.

In the midst of them the Emir sat at gaze over the hall, stroking a black beard streaked with grey, his face impassive and calm. Now and again his eye fell on the little group below him: on the guards standing motionless and stolid-faced, on the abject one who crouched in their midst, now drawing aimless signs and figures in the dust with trembling finger, then passed over them to the crowd beyond. The greybeards droned on, discussing now the form of punishment, whether it must be death or some imprisonment with blood money-diya-paid to the relatives of the slain, while still the patient figure sat serene and dignified, awaiting the end of all the talk. Presently the chief judge leaned forward, his fingers between the pages of a volume, and in an undertone read a few sentences to the Emir. The latter nodded as the words were ended, glanced at the others with interrogation, got their confirmation, then turned and addressed the murderer. Swiftly the man looked up, furtively seeking to read in that face of stone a hint of what was coming. He learnt nothing. Through the hall a tremor of movement ran. Heads lifted from work or the inactivity of waiting, faces turned towards the judgment seat, and the calm one speaking. All movement died; the crowd was deadly still. The quiet, incisive voice reached to the farthest listener, the words fell measuredly.

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Hassan, son of Adama, you have taken life, not by misadventure, but with intent. Thus you are guilty, and since you have killed, so the law kills you, the book kills you. With the iron you slew, by the iron shall you be slain. It is finished.'

At his lifted hand the condemned one was plucked up from the ground by the guards, pushed and hustled to the door, and with his vanishing the hum of talk broke out once more. The Emir rose, slipping his slender feet into the yellow leather shoes. From one he took his long black staff, another drew about his shoulders the white alkibba, a third arranged his flowing robes.

His followers raised the shouts of praise and salutation

King

without which no reigning chief can move in public. of the world," "Bull-elephant," "Long be thy life," "Go forth with health and happiness," "Greatest of all, walk carefully.

Down from the dais he stepped, moving with pride and dignity in every line of him towards the exit. The golden pathway of the sunlight, retrenched now nearer to the opening, received his haughty feet just as it had a moment before the feet of him who was to die-one stepping firmly in all ease and power, the other stumbling on to death and darkness. He reached the door, and so passed out into the open day, followed by his crowd of satellites and the great throng which had filled the building.

The old justice hall, which had seen so many generations of judged and judges through the long years since its walls had first risen, built by the slaves of a long-dead Emir, was closed and left to darkness and the silent hours. Away up in the shadows of the roof the bats swung and twisted at their clawhold, or flittered round the pillars in their endless circle. Across the floor a big blue lizard with orange head and tail chased his rival to a corner.

The sun had climbed to its full height and for an hour had dawdled in the zenith as if unwilling to begin the downward crawl of afternoon. The city market, in full swing, was teeming, swarming with a concourse which only Friday, the big day, brought from a hundred villages round the country-side.

Since early morning the roads into the town had been full of the bringers of produce, stock, and merchandise, all streaming to the place of barter: single traders with their headload of skins and hides, family parties, and caravans of camels, donkeys, and pack oxen. Scattered over a wide

open space devoid of trees or grass were set the market booths, mere mats of straw laid across rough sticks and upright poles and placed, some in rough ordered lines, others haphazard in the different quarters of the ground. Each sort of commodity had its own rough section to which the sellers made their way and spread out their wares. On one side were the enclosures of thorn fencing for cattle, sheep, and goats; on another horses, camels, and the small grey donkeys were tethered awaiting purchasers. Here were the bags of potash and Bilma salt from the northern desert lands; there the place for firewood; there again for gourds and calabashes of all shapes and sizes, or earthen

pots, grass-woven mats and ropes of hide and fibre for horse shackles.

The booths had each their special line of goods: rolls of cotton cloth from Europe, strips of native woven, with thread and cotton in the raw. Others showed an array of small oddments set out upon mats-kola-nuts, ginger-root, pepper, and spices; others had small trinkets, imported or made locally, together with antimony for the eyes, matches, cigarettes, brass and copper bangles, and a score of trivial things, and lastly were the shops for foodstuffs, vegetable products for soups, the foura balls of pounded grain, and sweetmeats of all kinds.

Up and down the line of booths, round every group of sellers, in and out of all the sections swarmed and moved or stood gesticulating wildly a dense mass of warm humanity, through which, as best they could, the brokers wormed and edged their way, holding aloft the native gowns or piece goods, crying the last price offered. Some upon the outskirts of the crowd showed off the paces of the horses to be sold, or moved about with goats or camels, selling on commission for the best price they could get.

Over the whole market hung a thick pall of dust, kicked up by myriad feet, so dense and fog-like that in some parts the moving figures passed to and fro as though behind a veil, and out of it would now and then bucket a hard-ridden pony, his rider yelling to clear the way, and disappear once more into the midst. Somewhere inside a drum was beating, and from all sides came a long, deep hum of chattering broken by the cries of hawkers or the shrill voices of women in an angry bargaining. Laughing, talking, haggling, cursing, the crowd swayed in and out of the vast dust cloud which filled their eyes and mouths and streaked their sweating faces with its grimy mask; but careless of dirt or heat they moved in an unending round, for this was the great mart of Friday, the gathering day of all.

Then and quite quietly over all this movement and uproar there seemed to come a subtle change. Slowly the fog clouds began to thin and settle down, as though there was less activity going on, as if something was drawing general attention to one spot. The noise and chattering died down appreciably, and heads were turned while men tiptoed to see what was the matter. Through the now clearing air they saw far off a little cavalcade approaching, men mounted and overtopping the crowd which swirled and eddied round them, closing up behind and pressing after. In front two mounted police in their great crimson