according to rule, of course turned down his nomination, but the incident is a plain indication of the changed attitude of the average miner. Still more significant is the recently declared result of the ballot for the election of the officials of the Lanarkshire Miners' County Union. Allan the Communist has defeated the previous occupant of the post of secretary, William Small; the president, Andrew McAnulty, a pioneer of the Tom Mann school, has retained his position; while nominees of the Minority Movement have won several seats on the executive. In Fifeshire the elections following on the amalgamation of the two unions have also gone favourably for the Communist candidates.

To what must these results be attributed? In the first place, to the great activity displayed by the Minority Movement in the tremendous struggle waged in the coalfields last year. The Communists took the lead everywhere. It was they who organised and ran the soup kitchens in the areas where parish relief had been stopped; they who arranged the concerts and meetings that kept the masses in tune. In every conflict with the law regarding picketing there were sure to be some Minority Movement members among the arrested. Then, again, the Minority Movement is associated with Russia, and the Russian contributions to the strike fund of the British miners came to over 1,000,000l. Moreover, there is Cook-A. J. Cook, the most popular leader the miners' trade union movement has ever known at any time in its history; he himself is a member of the Minority Movement. Certainly the extremists may bulk more largely in the union's affairs at the moment, because the membership is down to bedrock. Conservative and Liberal working men might incline to leave the union after a defeat; the creed of the Socialist or Communist forbids him this. But it is not really open to any doubt that the progressive decline in the standard of living of the miners since 1921, the series of titanic struggles waged over the coal problem, the apparent hopelessness of any improvement along ordinary lines, has disturbed if not totally changed the political convictions of the average collier. It is not more than a single generation since the great mass of the miners in Lanarkshire and Fifeshire were Liberals; to-day there is not a single Liberal sits for a Scottish mining seat, and there are already several constituencies where the sitting Labour member could be ousted by a concentrated Communist attack.

It is true that more than the political ideas prevailing in the coalfields have been changed. A silent revolution in manners and customs has been effected which seems to pass almost unnoticed. The younger generation of miners is much soberer than the old. The bonnets and mufflers that used to be a respectable week-day attire have been discarded for hats and

collars. Where their fathers used to slumber contentedly in the traditional mist of Calvinist or Catholic dogma, the new race of colliers, having been bitten with the worm of scepticism, are wide awake intellectually. They have a genuine thirst for knowledge. The extreme parochialism of the backwoodsmen' in the isolated mining villages and hamlets has vanished, retreating hastily before the conquering hoot of the motor ominbus, the herald of picture-houses, fried-fish shops, and sporting papers. The semi-rural character of the remote miners' rows is gone. Their truly primitive backwardness in regard to sanitary arrangements has received a severe shock. We have not sent so many Labour heavy-weights to the county councils wholly in vain. No longer is the sight to be seen of tumble-down dry closets and open middens scattering dirt and disease over the ghastly square of which they are the principal ornament. If the horrible old

rows have still to be lived in, at least their inhabitants have now the benefit of w.c.'s and an inside water supply. The aspect of the Scottish coalfield has been completely altered during the past few years by the erection on the outskirts of each town and village of the neat, rough-cast two-storeyed houses which form the county council schemes. There is still a vast deal of demolition and additional building remaining to be done, but at least a beginning has been made on the right lines. An end has been put to the smug indifference regarding these matters that prevailed before the war. Part of the social transformation we are referring to has to be ascribed to the influence of the Miners' Welfare Institutes. In many a dull mining village existence during the dark winter months has been made actually endurable by the establishment of a bright, well-lit place of recreation and instruction. Baths, libraries, bowls, billiards, lectures, concertsthese are only some of the multifarious activities of the welfare committees.

If the miner's position as to wages, chances, of hours, and employment is anything but rosy, and is inclining him, it may be temporarily, to lend an ear to the voice of the Communist charmer, he will, at any rate in his candid moments, be quite willing to admit that his outward environment is, in some respects, a very paradise compared to what it was twenty years ago.

J. D. MACDOUGALL.

THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE: A
DREAM OR A POSSIBILITY?

OPTIMISM is perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the human race, and, if anything, it is more prominent in the public than in the private life of mankind. The spectacle of Plato and Aristotle devising an ideal constitution for a city State when that form of polity was already in its death agony, or of Sir Thomas More writing his Utopia during the reign of a monarch who ultimately sent him to the scaffold, reminds us that even in the darkest moments the incurable optimism of humanity looks past the evils of the present to a golden age which is yet to come. It was this same spirit which underlay the classic phrases making the world safe for democracy' and 'a land fit for heroes to live in,' and now, at a time when national rivalries seem to be leading mankind to fresh disasters, voices are heard declaring that the only hope of peace lies in the formation of a United States of Europe. Is such advice but the counsel of despair, or is the scheme really within the bounds of possibility?

The answer to this question naturally concerns first of all those nations which are situated upon the mainland of Europe, and before any conclusion can be reached a balance must be struck between the centripetal and the centrifugal forces at present operating upon the Continent; but such an inquiry also raises the very important problem to what extent Great Britain is a European Power. Until, therefore, these various aspects of the question have been taken into consideration it is impossible to decide whether those who talk of a United States of Europe are mere visionaries or farsighted statesmen.

There are three centripetal forces which from the dawn of history have exerted a profound influence over mankind-sentiment, economics, and fear; and it may confidently be stated that unless one of these is present in some degree no union of States or peoples is likely to be of more than a very temporary nature. In these circumstances it is of the utmost importance to estimate the strength of these factors in Europe to-day.

The tie of sentiment may be based either upon religion or upon a common nationality or allegiance to a common monarch.

Whatever unity, for example, Europe possessed in the Middle Ages was provided by the religious uniformity which then existed, and of which the outward symbols were the emperor and the pope, while a common nationality is at the present time the chief link that holds the British Empire together, just as it was the House of Hapsburg which for many generations kept in check the powerful centrifugal influences at work in the Austrian dominions. He would, however, be a bold critic who maintained that he could discern any such centripetal forces in modern Europe. The frontier between Catholicism and Protestantism, in spite of incessant propaganda by either side, has not shifted for 300 years, while both are seriously threatened by the growth of free thought, so that unity upon the basis of a common religion is out of the question. The fate of every aspirant to universal dominion from Philip II. to the ex-Kaiser definitely rules out the prospect of a Continent united beneath the sceptre of any one dynasty, for where the Holy Roman Empire failed no other institution is likely to succeed, and democracy has sustained too many reverses of late years to encourage the hope that the democratic ideal will ever bring the nations together: indeed, the war which was to have made the world safe for democracy seems to have performed that service for its rivals. In these circumstances it would appear that at the present time there is no common sentiment which can be reckoned among the forces making for European unity.

What religion was in the past economics are to-day, and industrial developments are bringing nations together to an extent which would have been deemed impossible only a few years ago. The utilisation of water power for electrical purposes is very largely responsible for this result, and it has already put an end to several age-long rivalries. Sweden and Denmark, whose wars disturbed Northern Europe for generations, are hardly likely again to settle their differences by arms when the Swedish rivers provide the power by which Copenhagen carries on its daily life; Spain and Portugal, too, are forgetting old enmities in the advantages to be derived from the Douro for electrical purposes, and in Central Europe the same tendency is at work. On the other hand, this factor is likely to be of merely local importance, since the water power is concentrated not in one spot but in several, and it is thus not in a position to exercise a unifying influence over the Continent as a whole. Then, again, in spite of a few international cartels, the other economic factors are definitely centrifugal in their action, and tariff walls show a tendency to grow higher rather than to diminish. Regrettable as this is from the point of view of those who believe in the possibility of European unity, it is difficult to see how it can be

avoided, especially as more than one great nation finds its best customers outside the boundaries of Europe altogether. Economics, then, may be said to have the effect of tending to bring the nations together in small groups, but further than that it is not likely at present to go. Europe may or may not be capable of being made an economic unit; the question is purely academic, but no leading statesman has yet treated the issue as a practical proposition.

Common fear has in the past proved a more potent factor than either sentiment or economics in bringing both Governments and peoples together, and many an apparently indissoluble union has come to an end as soon as the danger from without has disappeared. On more than one occasion, too, this feeling has even given Europe a momentary appearance of unity in the face of some external threat, as the Crusades and the wars against the Ottoman Turks bear witness. If, then, it can be proved that there is any common peril threatening the nations of Europe at the present time, a centripetal force of incalculable importance may be said to be already in existence.

Nearly thirty years ago the German Emperor called upon the European nations to unite against the 'yellow peril,' and yet a short time after this appeal was made Great Britain concluded an alliance with Japan. Rightly or wrongly, the 'yellow peril' is now generally regarded as a bogey and nothing more, and the chaos in China combined with the weakness of Japan of late years certainly go far to support those who refuse to treat it as a serious menace. For a large number of people Bolshevism has taken the place of the yellow peril,' and there can be no doubt that it was a real menace to civilisation in the disorder which existed everywhere immediately after the war. As a serious danger it seems, outside France, to be at an end, for in every country where Communism has been firmly met it has succumbed, as it would have done in Russia itself had any of the pre-Bolshevist Governments given evidence of the least capacity. The one danger zone, therefore, at the present moment is France, where the Communists are undoubtedly making very considerable headway. Should she go 'Red,' the other nations of Europe would at once draw together in self-defence, as they did at the time of the French Revolution; but if France can find a man or a régime strong enough to grapple successfully with Communism, the latter will probably gradually sink to the position occupied for so many years by Anarchism, and become a nuisance rather than a menace. In this case the only result of Bolshevism will have been to drive Russia out of Europe-whether temporarily or permanently remains to be seen.

There is also the possibility that the attitude adopted of recent