its ruler. He has even promised sulky allegiance to Nanking, and has not denied Chiang Kai-shek's claims to be generalissimo of all the Nationalist armies.

Can this harmony last? It is alleged that for one important railway post five different generals have appointed their own candidates. The struggle between these five nominees for the key of the office safe might easily have far-reaching results. But the Nationalist Government has put forward a programme which must make a strong appeal to a war-weary people. Until the 1911 revolution the soldier in China was held in contempt, because fighting was looked upon as an unreasonable method of argument. The rapacity of the war-lords who have overrun the country since the revolution should have encouraged the desire for tranquillity in the breasts of the Chinese, who are probably the most peace-loving people in the world. The treatment of various European officials in Chinese Government services and the reluctance to make amends for the anti-foreign riots at Nanking in March 1927, show that negotiations with the Nationalists will be difficult; but at last we have somebody with whom to negotiate, and the very sensible Chinese business conference in Shanghai has made optimists of many people by its insistence that all money will be withheld in the future unless the armies are disbanded. In other words, the struggle becomes one between the generals and the financiers.

There are, it would seem, three dangers to reconstruction and development in China. In the first place, the Nationalist generals may tire of peace and attack each other, despite this shortage of cash. Secondly, they may decide to conquer Manchuria, and there come into conflict with the Japanese, nearly half of whose total trade with China is with this territory north of the Great Wall. Fortunately Chang Hsueh-liang, who has succeeded his father, Chang Tso-lin, as Tuchun of the most important Manchurian province, has been educated in the United States, and has, in consequence, so much sympathy with the Western ideas of the Nationalists that he is more likely to collaborate with them than to fight them. Thirdly, the foreign Powers, in their anxiety to come to unduly favourable terms with the Nationalists, may not trouble to reach agreement among themselves. This is a real danger, for half the troubles of recent years in China might have been avoided had the 'foreign devils' been unanimous in their devilry. The Western Powers at any rate have much the same problems to face in dealing with the growing sense of nationality among the Chinese, and logic would demand a considerable degree of co-operation. After all, each one of them must have a proverb to remind them that 'l'union fait la force.'

But, when all is said and done, the most important of the

constructive measures that need attract our attention this month is the least logical. The Kellogg proposal for the outlawry of war is so vague that each party sees it differently, like the characters in a Pirandello play. It is, on the face of it, as unreasonable a document as ever took up the time of Foreign Ministers and their legal advisers; and yet it is one of the most important. Governments have taken it both too seriously and not seriously enough. They have searched through its brief clauses for legal traps that were not there, and they have failed to realise that its only value lies in its simplicity, its avoidance of those tortuous diplomatic phrases which sometimes make a treaty watertight, but which always make it unintelligible to the ordinary man upon whom the issues of war and peace ultimately depend.

There was a time when the French were sure that the Kellogg treaty was designed to prevent its signatories from carrying out their obligations under the League of Nations Covenant. They saw danger even in the fact that in his revised draft, submitted to the other Powers towards the end of June, it was only in the preamble, and not in the treaty itself, that the Secretary of State reasserted his opinion that, if one country were to break its pledge under this new treaty by resorting to war, the other signatories would be free to carry out any sanctions against that country which they felt were called for by the Covenant of the League. There ensued quite a discussion as to the juridical value of the word 'preamble.' And yet Mr. Kellogg, in addressing the American Society of International Law as far back as April 28, declared there was nothing in the American draft which restricted or impaired the right of self-defence, since it was well understood that every country was free at all times, regardless of treaty provisions, to defend its territory from attacks and invasions. Since he has also made it clear that under his treaty it is for the countries themselves to decide when war is an instrument of national policy' and when it is merely a measure of self-defence, Mr. Kellogg would seem to come nearer to the conception of international law which Bethmann-Hollweg used to defend his invasion of Belgium than to the new League conception, which transfers the definition of self-defence from the individual States to the community of nations acting through the Council. In other words, the more one studies the Kellogg treaty, the speeches he has made to interpret it and the covering note which was sent with the revised version of it to the Great Powers, the other signatories of the Locarno Treaty, and the Dominions, the more convinced one becomes that, as far as members of the League are concerned, no alteration in international law is proposed.

But it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the three brief and rather vague articles of the American treaty for

the renunciation of war. It is easy enough to believe that when M. Briand first proposed a Franco-American treaty to Mr. Kellogg a little over a year ago his main motive was the hope of obtaining from the United States that guarantee of the European status quo which had been promised at the Peace Treaty and had been withdrawn so shortly after President Wilson's return home. It is equally easy to believe that when Mr. Kellogg answered M. Briand by suggesting a multi-lateral treaty he was thinking more of the domestic than of the international effects of his proposal. But public opinion has taken these two statesmen literally, so that, to their own surprise, they have gone on negotiating until a general treaty became inevitable. The Kellogg pact may be too simple for the jurists, but the League Covenant has always been too complicated for the 'man in the street.' But the man in the street' is the potential soldier in another war, and if he cannot get on without the jurist, the jurist cannot get on without him. The Covenant and the Kellogg pact would therefore seem to be, not contradictory, but complementary ; this is one point in the pact's favour.

In the second place, there is only one country in the world which might be able to stand alone, to keep clear of future conflicts, and that country is the United States, with its stupendous wealth, its geographical position, and its immense natural resources. When a nation in so fortunate a situation comes to the other nations and proposes a treaty to rule out war as an instrument of national policy' it would surely have been foolish beyond words to reject the offer and thereby to make naval and cutthroat economic competition between Europe and North America inevitable.

Lastly, there is the effect of this American co-operation on the League itself. The League is based on the idea that if one country runs amok other countries must combine to restrain it. The military sanction would be a difficult and a dangerous one to use, but there is, apart from the United States, no country in the world which would risk a war in which it would be absolutely isolated. As long as there is a chance that the United States would not accept the Council's definition of an aggressor and would continue to trade with a Government which all the other Governments had sent to Coventry, war in Europe cannot be said to be ruled out, and our own danger of coming into conflict with the United States while trying to carry out a blockade on behalf of the League remains. Nous allons changer tout cela. It is conceivable that the United States would merely ignore a nation which had broken its pledges under the Kellogg pact: it is inconceivable that this nation would receive active help from the United States in resisting police measures instituted by the

League as the result of the unanimous vote given by the Great Powers and the other countries represented on the Council.

The fact that the United States were not our allies, but our associates, during the war did not make their assistance any the less valuable. They may be quite as useful as our associates in trying to make the world fit for future generations to live in as if they became members of the League. Already the overcrowding of the Assembly Hall in Geneva is due in great part to the number of American spectators, and day by day in September the International Club is filled with earnest visitors from the United States, who, not fatigued by listening to speeches all the morning and speeches all the afternoon, like to hear the drone of a statesman's voice during the sleepy half-hour which follows luncheon.

Just fifty years ago the Congress of Berlin came to an end, and presumably many of the people who had attended it went home convinced that peace was assured for all time. It is, of course, easy enough to be sceptical about the prospects of peace to-day, but the guns of Plevna were not 'Big Berthas,' and phosgene gas was unknown. The fact that the folly of war becomes increasingly obvious does not, of course, mean that it is automatically ruled out. It may be that the attempts to construct and consolidate which have been dealt with here are merely equivalent to the sponging and massaging of a boxer between two rounds. The franc may be ' pegged' only to relapse at the next crisis; the relative calm in China may only be a prelude to fresh years of civil war; Mr. Kellogg's treaty may only be an attempt to lull people into that false feeling of security about which we hear so much. These things may be so, but equally they may be indications of something bigger and more lasting. Is it not possible that even now man may be on his way to prove that he can be guided by reason? And, after all, why not? In a world in which the voice of a man in London can be heard in Australia anything might happen.

VERNON BARTLETT.

LANCASHIRE'S TROUBLES

AN apprehension of facts and causes assists success in the application of remedies. Lancashire employers and employees have issued reports, abounding in statistics and suggesting that both are aware of the precarious nature of their position. Unfortunately, the non-textile public, busy with its own fiscal and commercial afflictions, has little time for the perusal of these reports, and as the textile workers are patient and non-revolutionary, neither evading their own responsibilities for existence nor threatening the Government, little general notice is taken of their reports, and the world comforts itself by assuming that the industry and the county will muddle through.

Possibly this unconcernedness on the part of public and Government is fostered by the Lancashire view that no one outside the county and the trade can understand either the manipulative operations, the principles upon which the industry is conducted, or the methods by which it can be regenerated. There is perhaps a measure of justification for the contention that the complexities both of manufacturing and commercial processes, and the international extent of its buying and selling and competition, place the trade beyond the control of the non-expert. Where, however, Lancashire is often held to be at fault is in assuming and she sometimes does at least appear to assumethat fundamental business principles do not apply in her case as they apply elsewhere and in other trades.

Outside the Palatinate there are critics of this attitude, and men not infrequently declare that it is better to leave Lancashire to fight her troubles and enjoy her successes alone, as she will resent anything in the shape of outside advice or guidance. If this were generally and always true, then the plight of Lancashire would be hopeless. Misfortune would be bad enough, but misfortune plus unrelieved conceit would be fatal. Fortunately, the conceit is not unrelieved; there are people in Lancashire, thousands of them, who know as well as the other fellow that while egotism in an individual or in an industry may be tolerated, and even excused, so long as it induces purposive and successful effort, it ceases to be either tolerable or excusable if it results