masses together. For if the urban proletariat longed to expropriate the wealth of the urban capitalist and bourgeois, the rural masses hungered for the estates possessed by the landed aristocracy and gentry. Hence proletarian-peasant alliances were formed.

Such alliances, however, were never of long duration. More and more the latent conflicts of interest between town and country drove working-man and peasant asunder. The peasant had one simple, tangible objective the land. Once possessed of the land, he desired to settle down and enjoy it for his own individual profit. He realized the value of his produce, and he expected the townsman-capitalist, bourgeois, or proletarian-to pay him his price. But the townsman in many cases could not pay in those real values which the peasant demanded. He might offer paper money, which bitter experience had taught the peasant to be worthless; he could not offer those manufactured articles which the peasant alone desired.

Furthermore, the urban workingman was developing a new philosophy of power-the "dictatorship of the proletariat." All instruments of production were, under this theory, to be "socialized," land as well as factory machines. But this did not in the least appeal to the peasant. Why should he socialize his land? As matters stood, he had either taken the proprietor's land by violence, as in Russia; was obtaining it by legislation splitting up the great estates into small peasant holdings, as in central Europe; or was purchasing it from his rich war profits, as in western Europe, especially in France. Now came the hungry town proletarian, proposing that this land should be

socialized for the proletarian's benefit. What was this but a new form of urban predominance a predominance no less hateful to the peasant because exercised by factory-workers instead of by aristocrats and bourgeois, as in former days?

Accordingly, throughout Europe, we find the peasantry lining up instinctively against red revolution. Even where the revolutionists obtained control of the central government, as in the short-lived Hungarian Communist Republic and Bolshevik Russia, the peasants refused to be converted to communism. In Hungary an attempt of the Revolutionary Government to socialize the land and divide it into great communal estates roused the peasantry to furious resistance, which swept the Communist Republic into swift oblivion. In Russia similar attempts to socialize the land have utterly failed, and the Soviet Government has been obliged to acquiesce in peasant ownership of the land.

Where proletarian revolutions were unsuccessfully attempted, the peasantry always took a prominent part in their suppression. Finland is the earliest clear-cut example of this. In Finland the town proletariat, with the assistance of Soviet Russia, put through a Bolshevik revolution. Instantly the peasantry coalesced with the persecuted upper and middle classes, and the resulting White Army overthrew the momentary dictatorship of the proletariat. In Germany the peasants everywhere fought communism. The red revolution in Bavaria was literally encysted in Munich and a few other industrial towns by the "food blockades" spontaneously established by the surrounding rural

population, who quickly starved out the Munich reds and made easy their suppression by the government troops. In Hungary, as already stated, the Bolshevik régime of Bela Kun alarmed and infuriated the country-side, which furnished the backbone of the counter-revolutionary forces of Admiral Horthy.

Typical of what went on in Europe during the revolutionary post-war period is the case of Switzerland. Small though Switzerland is, it presents sharp contrasts of urban and rural life, some cantons being almost townless and inhabited by a sturdy peasantry, while other cantons, like Zurich and Basel, contain large industrial centers inhabited by a working class of radical tendencies. The close of the war found Switzerland afflicted with labor unrest of a distinctly revolutionary trend. Revolution was, however, soon nipped in the bud by the decisive attitude of the peasant soldiers mobilized to keep order.

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Thus inspirited, the peasant was in no mood to tolerate either the local domination of landowning nobles and squires or the more distant, but perhaps even more irksome, domination of the town. Accordingly, the peasant proposed to settle accounts with both. We have already seen how the peasant fought the efforts at a new form of urban domination attempted by the revolutionary town proletariat. But the peasant has not allowed his hatred of the city reds to side-track his determination to get possession of the land. In many parts of eastern Europe the most desirable land was in the hands of an aristocracy of nobles and gentry, upon whose broad estates

the bulk of the peasantry worked as landless agricultural laborers or as tenants of small parcels.

The post-war years have witnessed a momentous change in this situation. Almost everywhere in eastern Europe the great estates are being broken up into small holdings, the former tenants or agricultural laborers acquiring ownership and settling down as independent farmers. The way in which this reorganization is being effected differs greatly in different regions. Where relations between peasants and landed upper classes were very bad, as in Russia, the peasants have violently dispossessed and driven away their former overlords, and do not intend to let them return. This is the reason why, much as they dislike the Bolsheviks, the Russian peasants supported the Soviet Government in repelling White attempts to restore the old order, from Kolchak to Wrangel.

Russia is the outstanding example of revolutionary violence in the settlement of land problems. In other east European countries, like Czechoslovakia and Rumania, the break-up of the great estates has been accomplished in orderly fashion by legislation, the big landowners being compensated by systems of long-term payments financed or guaranteed by the state. In still other countries, like Hungary and Germany, where relations between peasants and landed upper classes have been traditionally close and on the whole friendly, relatively slight changes have taken place.

For it is the townsman rather than the country squire to whom the peasant feels most instinctively opposed. We have already observed the peas

ant's hostility toward the town proletarians and their revolutionary theories. But this aversion extends in greater or less degree to all classes of townfolk. In fact, the city itself has always excited the peasant's suspicion and dislike. To his mind the city has ever appeared something strange, alien, almost monstrous, the abode of pride, oppression, vice, and all abominations. Even the relatively lightened peasantry of western Europe have this anti-urban bias; among the backward, ignorant peasantry of eastern Europe it frequently rises to a sort of religious fanaticism. During Vienna's worst collapse after the war the Austrian peasants appeared to take a malicious delight in the sufferings of the starving Viennese, refused aid except for hard cash, and preferred to feed their surplus milk to the pigs rather than send it to nourish townsmen's children. In Croatia a most fanatical anti-urban movement has arisen among the country-folk. Its spokesmen not only preach rural domination over the towns, but inveigh against the whole type of industrial urban civilization. In Russia the peasants harbor similar feelings.

Highly instructive, in the light of these peasant tendencies, is the record of the so-called Peasant Government which ruled Bulgaria for nearly four years after the close of the Great War. Bulgaria is preeminently a land of peasants. The bulk of the population consists of small landowning farmers, with no rural gentry and with only a few towns. Even Sofia, the capital, is a miniature city containing a scant hundred thousand inhabitants.

Before the war the Bulgarian peasantry was politically apathetic, leaving political matters to the townfolk.

The disasters suffered in the Balkan and European wars, however, discredited the governing class and filled the peasants with discontent. Capitalizing their resentment and their awakening group-consciousness, an able leader, Stambuliski, proclaimed himself the peasant savior of Bulgaria, and in 1919 was elected prime minister by an overwhelming popular vote.

Despite great energy and a certain rough ability, however, Stambuliski failed to rise to his opportunities. Intoxicated by power, he soon became a brutal tyrant, surrounding himself with unscrupulous henchmen who oppressed the peasants as they did every one else. This gradually cooled the enthusiasm of his peasant supporters, and after nearly four years of dictatorship, Stambuliski was overthrown and killed.

What kept Stambuliski in power so long was, more than anything else, his reckless appeals to peasant prejudices, by which he long blinded the country-folk to the real nature of his rule. It is this which gives the Stambuliski régime its most lasting significance. Some of Stambuliski's speeches make truly extraordinary reading. For example, at a Peasants' Congress held at Sofia shortly after his accession to power, he proclaimed that it was not the town, but the village, which should henceforth rule Bulgaria; that the village was predestined to break up urban culture and call forth a fresh rural culture, bringing peace and prosperity to the people and freeing them from the chauvinist ambitions of the bourgeois, who looked only for material profits.

Of course the excesses of the Stambuliski régime should not be charged to the wishes of his peasant supporters,

such excesses being rather the acts of an ambitious tyrant determined to crush his political opponents and buttress his personal power. Nevertheless, the Stambuliski government did pass a good deal of legislation directly favoring the peasants at the expense of the urban elements. This was notably true of taxation, the business and professional classes, especially, being burdened far more heavily than the rest of the population.

In Bulgaria's case the peasants' relative freedom from taxation was offset by the arbitrary exactions extorted from them by Stambuliski's local agents. In other parts of Europe, however, the peasants have gained marked legal advantages without suffering any corresponding detriment. All over Europe the agrarian forces, as they become more selfconscious and politically powerful, are getting upon the statute-books legislation favorable to their special interests. In France, for example, the rural elements are notoriously under-taxed, and do not contribute anything like their proportionate quota to the national revenues. Again, in many European nations, tariff barriers against imported food-stuffs are being steadily raised, despite the fact that the city population needs cheap food as never before.

Thus far we have considered the peasant movement mainly in its local, or at most its national, aspects. But it has already transcended national frontiers and become truly international in character. This is in line with a general trend observable in Europe to-day-the tendency of similar social groups in different countries to get in touch with one another for the furtherance of common interests.

The town workers have of course long shown such class solidarity and have formed various international organizations, trades-unionist or socialist. The present communist "Third International," centering at Moscow, is merely the most aggressive and revlutionary expression of urban working-class solidarity. Similarly, though in a less formal way, the upper and middle classes have arrived at international understandings, aimed chiefly against the threat of communism.

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Now, beside the Red International of the working classes and the White International of the upper-middle classes, appears a third grouping-the Green International of the peasants, its symbol being the four-leaved clover.

We Americans seldom hear of the Green International, but in eastern Europe, where it arose, it is very much a power to be reckoned with. Although less than five years old, the Green International numbers several million members, has displayed a spirit of close solidarity, and has shown its political strength in no uncertain fashion. Already it has given one prime minister to Czechoslovakia and another to Poland, while in nearly every eastern European country its influence is increasing by leaps and bounds.

Yet, despite its rapid rise, there has been little either of the dramatic or the spectacular in the story of the Green movement. It arose almost unconsciously out of the general welter that followed the war. With eastern Europe a maze of shattered empires and new frontiers, it was only