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the new-world order ought to be shaken by the events in Silesia. For all we have there is mean and sordid, a struggle for a new balance of power and for coal. Signor Giolitti is right in saying that in Silesia the men directing French foreign policy are seeking the domination of Europe. Great Britain and Italy oppose this ambition.

But a more dangerous and significant struggle is going on at Constantinople. On the Bosporus the men directing British foreign policy are seeking the domination of the world. France and Italy oppose this ambition. A rupture between the Allies in Silesia is impossible, for they are compelled to compose their differences and to maintain a semblance of solidarity in a part of the world that borders on Russia and Germany. Poland is still too much in the embryonic stage to be counted upon as a barrier between defeated Germany and outlawed Russia. The situation is different in Constantinople; the mistress of the seas is able to impose her will upon France and Italy. But there are indirect ways of thwarting Great Britain. These ways are being used.

What hope is there for an international council of nations, for an agreement to disarm, when three of the "Principal Allied and Associated Powers" are at one anothers' throats, or rather at one anothers' backs? Italians made possible the Turkish offensive against the French in Cilicia. French and Italians have made possible the Nationalist resistance to the Greeks in western Asia Minor. An Italian is porte parole for Kemal Pasha at Sofia. Through various channels Bulgarians and Rumanians and Serbians are sounding one another out, moved by a common alarm over the rapid progress

of Panhellenism. They fear there would be no holding of the Greeks if once Constantine were crowned Emperor of the East in St. Sophia. There

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is also uneasiness over the presence of the remnant of General Wrangel's army at Gallipoli and of thousands of Russians at Constantinople. rents and counter-currents! knows how his neighbor stands. Without a common policy of interests, much less of ideals, on the part of the victors whose armies occupy Constantinople, how could it be otherwise? It is terrifying to think of the possibilities of evil arising from the struggle for Constantinople. They reach out over the whole world, these possibilities of evil, embracing as they do the new drive of Russia against Great Britain in western and central Asia, the extension of Bolshevism to the Balkans and Africa, the revival of Panislamism, the disruption of the Entente Alliance, the speedy release of Germany from a thraldom which for her own soul's sake should last for some years longer, a new bleeding of Christendom in the Near East, and the very rapid strengthening of Japan in relation to the white race.

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If old-fashioned diplomacy continues to direct the relations between nations in the Near East, the League of Nations and disarmament conferences will not prevent the world from drifting soon again into war. Without any knowledge of contemporary events, one could still figure out that there would have to be a removal of causes before other results than those we have had in the past from international diplomacy were to be expected. But with this concrete illustration of the

struggle for Constantinople before us, how can we say that the time is ripe for the lamb to lie down with the lion? In the international atmosphere of today nations, fresh from the experiences of the war, may feel with Sir Walter Raleigh,

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall. Aspirations and misgivings are mingled. But in the end, although we have dreamed of great things and have lived in our high hopes, we find that all the world has been like the man Queen Mab visited, who "swears a prayer or two, and sleeps again."

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Englishmen and Scotchmen are as innocent of any deep-laid plot to control the world as you and I are. They are proud of their country's prestige and honor, and profit by her power, but they rarely give a thought to how the prestige and honor are involved, to how the power was gained and is being maintained and extended. Constantinople means no more to them than a sky-line of minarets. Frenchmen have an imperfect knowledge of the Silesian question, and do not know what lies between Beirut and Aleppo. But they have to accept the responsibilities as well as the privileges of power, and these responsibilities are contracted in their name by a small group of men over whose actions they exercise slight, if any, control. When the moment for throwing them against one another like wild beasts arrives, their statesmen make use of the science of mob psychology. Twenty years ago Great Britain and France would have fought over the possession of the head-waters of the Nile, which not one in a million had ever seen or cared about, had the French thought they

could get away with it. What would have happened between the United States and Great Britain within our own memory had the British not backed down on the question of a quarrel in a country the name of which Americans had to look in the dictionary to know how to spell?

A world longing for peace has a hard task ahead of it. A League of Nations and disarmament are noble ideals, but they are attainable only if we realize what we have to do to attain them. We must come to them intelligently, or we shall not come to them at all. If we think they are within our grasp now, we shall lose them-for our lifetime, at least.

Education and discussion of international problems are the crying need of to-day. Do we know the history of our own times? When we read of contemporary events, have we the background to interpret them satisfactorily to ourselves? Do we study the business of government, earnestly and assiduously, as we study our own private business? Are we in a position to pass judgment upon the policies set forth by our representatives and the leaders of other nations who ask for our support and coöperation? Do we realize that the ultimate control of foreign policy is in our assent, and that how the affairs of the nation are managed affects to-day more than ever before in history our pocket-books, our lives, our honor?

Let us begin with the struggle for Constantinople. It is poisoning the world. What do you think about it? How would you settle the future of Constantinople? This and other international conflicts are the problems of to-day. We must live to-day before to-morrow dawns.

Mr. Pottle and the South-Sea

M

Cannibals

By RICHARD CONNELL
Drawings by JOHN HELD, JR.

R. POTTLE was a barber, but also a man of imagination, and as his hands went through their accustomed motions, his mind was far away, recalling what he had read the night before.

Bright Marquesas sunlight glinted from the cutlass of the intrepid explorer as with a sweep of his arm he brought the blade down on the tatooed throat of the man-eating savage.

Mr. Pottle's errant mind was jerked back sharply from the South Seas to Granville, Ohio, by a protesting voice.

"Hey, Pottle, what 's bitin' you? You took a slice out o' my Adam's apple that time."

Mr. Pottle, with apologetic murmurs, rubbed the wound with an alum stick; then he dusted his victim with talcum powder, and gave the patented chair a little kick, so that its occupant was shot bolt upright.

"Bay rum?" asked Mr. Pottle, professionally.

"Nope."

"Dandruff-Death?"

"Nope."

"Sweet Lilac Tonic?"

"Nope."

"Plain water?"

"Yep."

Naked savages danced and howled round the great pot in which the trussed

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bal chief, firebrand in hand, made ready to ignite the fagots under the pot. It began to look bad for the explorer.

Again a shrill voice of protest punctured Mr. Pottle's day-dream.

"Hey, Pottle, come to life! You've went and put Sweet Lilac Tonic on me 'stead of plain water. I ain't going to no coon ball. You 've gone and smelled me up like a screamin' geranium."

"Why, so I have, so I have," said Mr. Pottle, in accents of surprise and contrition. "Sorry, Luke. It'll wear off in a day or two. Guess I must be gettin' absent-minded."

"That 's what you said last Saddy when you clipped a piece out o' Virgil Overholt's ear," observed Luke, with some indignation. "What 's bitin' you, anyhow, Pottle? You used to be the best barber in the country before you took to readin' them books." "What books?"

"All about cannibals and explorers and the South-Sea Islands," answered Luke.

"They 're good books," said Mr. Pottle, warmly. His eyes brightened. "I just got a new one," he said. "It's called 'Green Isles, Brown ManEaters, and a White Man.' I sat up till two readin' it. It's about the Marquesas Islands, and it's a darn'

excitin' book, Luke."

"It excited you so much you sliced my Adam's apple,” grumbled Luke, clamping on his rubber collar. "You had better cut out this fool readin'." "Don't you ever read, Luke?"

"Sure I do. "The Mornin' News-Press' for week-days, "The P'lice Gazette' when I come here to get

shaved Saddy nights, and the Bible for Sundays. That 's readin' enough for any man."

"Did you ever read 'Robinson Crusoe'?"

"Nope, but I heard him."

"Heard him? Heard who?"

When Luke reached the door, he turned. "Say, Pottle," he said, "if you 're so nutty about these here South Sea Islands,

why don't you go there?"

Mr. Pottle ceased his stropping. "I am going," he said.

Luke gave a dubious hoot and vanished. He did not realize that he had heard Mr. Pottle make the big decision of his life.

§ 2

That night Mr. Pottle finished the book, and dreamed, as he had dreamed on many a night since the lure of the

"Crusoe," said Luke, snapping his South Seas first cast a spell on him, ready-tied tie into place.

that in a distant, sun-loved isle, bright

"Heard him? You could n't have with greens and purples, he reclined heard him."

"I could n't, hey? Well, I did." "Where?" demanded Mr. Pottle. "Singin' on a phonograph," said Luke. Mr. Pottle said nothing; Luke was a regular customer, and in successful modern business the customer is always right. However, Mr. Pottle seized a strop and with vigorous stroppings expressed his disgust at a man who had n't heard of 'Robinson Crusoe,' for Robinson was one of Mr. Pottle's deities.

beneath the mana-mana-hine (or umbrella fern) on his own paepae (or platform), a scarlet pareu (or breech-clout)

THHPS

"It began to look bad for the explorer"

actly as advertised; but when the first week or two of enchantment had worn off, Mr. Pottle owned to a certain feeling of disappointment.

about his middle, a yellow hibiscus flower in his hair, while the kukus (or small green turtle-doves) cooed in the branches of the pevatvii (or bananatree), and Bunnidori (that is, she, with the Lips of Love), a tawny maid of wondrous beauty, played softly to him on the ukulele. The tantalizing fragrance of a bowl of popoi (or pudding) mingled in his nostrils with the more delicate perfume of the golden blossoms of the puu-epu (or mulberrytree). A sound in the jungle, a deep boom! boom! boom! roused him from this reverie. "What is it, O Bunnidori?" he for a drink from his bottle of Sweet asked.

"'T is a feast, O my Pottle, Lord of the Menikes (that is, white men)," lisped his companion.

"Upon what do the men in the jungle feast, O plump and pleasing daughter of delight?" inquired Mr. Pottle, who was up on Polynesian etiquette.

She lowered her already low voice still lower.

He tasted popoi and found it rather nasty; the hotel in which he stayed— the only one-was deficient in plumbing, but not in fauna. The nativeshe had expected great things of the natives-were remarkably like underdone Pullman porters wrapped in bandana handkerchiefs. They were not exciting, they exhibited no inclination to eat Mr. Pottle or one another, they coveted his pink shirt, and begged

Lilac Tonic.

He mentioned his disappointment at these evidences of civilization to Tiki Tiu, the astute native who kept the general store.

Mr. Pottle's mode of conversation was his own invention. From the books he had read he improvised a language. It was simple. He gave English words a barbaric sound, usu

"Upon the long pig that speaks," ally by suffixing "um" or she whispered.

A delicious shudder ran down the spine of the sleeping Mr. Pottle, for from his reading he knew that "the long pig that speaks" means-man!

For Mr. Pottle had one big ambition, one great suppressed desire. It was the dearest wish of his thirty-six years of life to meet a cannibal, a real cannibal, face to face, eye to eye.

Next day he sold his barber's shop. Two months and seventeen days later he was unpacking his trunk in the tiny settlement of Vait-hua, in the Marquesas Islands, in the heart of the South Seas.

The air was balmy, the sea deep purple, the nodding palms and giant ferns of the greenest green were ex

"ee,"

shouted them at the top of his voice into the ear of the person with whom he was conversing, and repeated them in various permutations. He addressed Tiki Tiu with brisk and confident familiarity.

see.

"Helloee, Tiki Tiu. Me wantum see can-balls. Can-balls me wantum Me see can-balls wantum." The venerable native, who spoke seventeen island dialects and tongues, and dabbled in English, Spanish, and French, appeared to apprehend his meaning; indeed, one might almost have thought he had heard this question before, for he answered promptly: "No more can-balls here. All Baptists."

"Where are can-balls? Can-balls

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