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Germany we have got the phosphates that we had already, and we have now paid for them; and by paying for them we have helped to develop the French Empire in Africa, and we are now ready to go into a partnership with Australia and New Zealand to develop Nauru and its phosphates."

It was something like that; it was at least as complicated as that. It is that sort of thing that gives the British enough things to think about to keep them from getting too excited about any one thing.

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Great Britain likes to call itself a

"weary Titan." A truer description of its state of health was implied in a head-line I noticed in the London "Daily Herald." The news under it was, "A declaration by Senator Knox will be put before the next American Congress repealing the declaration of war against Germany." The head-line was, "AMERICAN HUSTLE!"

The British are still able to handle a good many of their affairs in the same year in which they are up for handling, and when the London newspapers printed the births and deaths of England and Wales for the year 1920, I could see that there are going to be people to handle them.

In the year 1920 the births in England and Wales were over 950,000. It was the largest number of births ever recorded in England and Wales, and the proportion of births to population -the birth-rate was the highest since 1909. In that same year-1920

-the number of deaths was 466,000. It was the smallest number of deaths recorded in England and Wales since 1862, when the population was only about half what it is now.

It followed that in the year 1920 the "natural increase" of the population of England and Wales-the excess, that is, of births over deaths-was the largest ever recorded.

I noticed further that the rate of deaths of infants in London had dropped from the rate-figure 104 in the year 1917 to the rate-figure 75 in the year 1920.

I took all these figures from the newspapers, and I remembered a remark that I had heard from Captain Walter Elliot, M.P. He said:

We introduce sanitation and old-age pensions and a Health Ministry and special care for infants and one thing and another, and we increase the population, and then where are we? What is England? England to an Englishman is a place in which to drive piles for docks. It is a firm place that won't give when you tie the Aquitania to it. An Englishman's life is to earn his breakfast at sea, and come back to England to eat it. We have to import our breakfasts. We have to export things to pay for our breakfasts. In order to make those things, we have to have cheap power. We had it. We had cheap coal. By having cheap coal we made so many things and imported so many breakfasts that we overpopulated the island. Now by sani

tation and so on we are super-overpopulating the island. And now our coal has become expensive. Now we have costly power-extremely costly. Problem: how to support a population that is going up when our old advantage in cost of manufacture is going down? We are on an ice-raft in the Gulf Stream, and we have to find a new raft before we melt. That being the case, you will understand our childlike interest in the diplomacy of commerce.

I understand it, and I also think it is going to be successful. On the boat

coming back to America I met some Americans who had recently been in the Baltic States.

We Americans refused to recognize the Baltic States. We had a theory about the "territorial integrity" of the Russian Empire. The British did not have that theory. They recognized those States. And those States have many natural resources, and they also have banks. Now, the British are well into some of those natural resources and well into some of those banks. That is what they have. We have the theory of the "territorial integrity" of the Russian Empire, which was certainly a very bad empire.

Having built a trade causeway into Russia through the Baltic States, the British then recognized Russia's present Government. They recognized it They recognized it for trade. Mr. Lloyd George, in the House of Commons, made some remarks about the Bolsheviks of MosCOW.

"They are very able men," said he. "I had no doubt from the first moment I had dealings with them that I was dealing with men of great ability." He then went on to give his receipt for teaching the Bolsheviks the principles of sound business. It was, "a little trading," "a little exchange of commodities," "a little experience in sound business."

Great Britain has the nerve to start in giving that experience to the Bolsheviks, and I suppose that when the British are managing the Bolshevik oil-wells at Baku, we will write them a little note, saying that even if they did get there first, we are still an idealistic people and believe in the "open door." Meanwhile the British are doing the work of breaking the door open.

They are also, I must point out, doing the work and paying the cost of breaking the door open in Mesopotamia. That Mesopotamian mandate is far from being popular in Great Britain. Lord Northcliffe's "Daily Mail" said that it was costing Great Britain thirty-five million pounds a year to stay in Mesopotamia, and that thirty-five million pounds a year was too much to pay for the privilege of "forcing the blessings of civilization on the Mesopotamian Arabs." The favorable comments on the mandate in the London press were mild and weak; the unfavorable ones were numerous and violent. Sir W. Joynson-Hicks put his finger boldly and even baldly on the central point of the matter.

He said that it might be all right to stay in Mesopotamia "if we had maintained the right of conquest and could exploit Mesopotamia for Great Britain." Britain." But "if our position is to be purely altruistic, if we are to pay thirty-five million pounds a year to stand there and hold the door open for everybody, if everybody is to get the open-ness, and we British are to do the whole paying of the cost, well! Why?"

I really do think that if we Americans want the benefits of the open door in Mesopotamia, we ought to come across with part of the cost of shooting the Arabs who interrupt the opening of the door and of the oil-wells. There is nothing idealistic in refraining from shooting the Arabs, and then wanting to get in on the results of shooting them.

From Mesopotamia I proceed to India. The British are able to reason about India quite a lot. In India they have an extremely dangerous enemy named Gandhi. He is the head of a

movement that has separated an enormous number of people in India from all "coöperation" with the British Indian Government.

The British have four great leaders of "sedition" within the empire, De Valera in Ireland, Hertzog in South Africa, Zaghlul Pasha in Egypt, Gandhi in India.

Now, from the British newspapers in London I learn a thing about Gandhi that I know to be true about him. I learn that he is a "saint." He is. Neutral testimony about him is to the same effect. Gandhi is a man of the highest personal character.

I think the British are perhaps the only people in the world who, having been in India long and being now endangered by Gandhi, would be able to take the cool and just view of his personal character that I found printed often in the British press. I therefore, after having visited Ireland, often cursed out Henry II and Queen Elizabeth and Cromwell and William III for having got the British into a state of mind in which they seldom think of trying to take that same sort of cool and just view of the personal character of Mr. De Valera.

It happens that Mr. De Valera is personally a man not only of high character, but of a singularly sweet character. I know from personal observation that he is gentle, modest, kindly, pure of speech, and pure of thought, with a really quite astonishing touch of the quality that makes some people seem to be at the same time both very humanly near and very set apart. In London one sees Gandhi, who is Heaven knows how many thousands of miles away, much more closely and clearly and justly than one sees Mr. De Valera.

Also one sees the problem of Egypt much more penetratingly than one. sees the problem of the general Irish settlement. I read Lord Milner's report on Egypt. What does it say?

It says that in Egypt there is a "nationalism" which "cannot be extinguished." So there is in Ireland.

It says that the thing to do is to let there be a "Government of Egypt by the Egyptians" and to get a "treaty" between that Government and Great Britain on the subject of British interests. It says that there is no use balking at the word "independence." It says that the thing to do is to negotiate a "treaty" which will be the "definition" of the relations between Great Britain and Egypt, and then. let that "treaty" supersede all debates about "words and phrases."

Well, that is precisely what the elected representatives of the overwhelming majority of the Irish people in the Irish Parliament called the Dail Eireann have been asking the British to do in Ireland for now these several years past.

I claim that the British have been fighting the Irish so long that they have become the worst possible judges of what to do in Ireland. The report of the Milner Commission on Egypt is the work of political supermen. In Ireland the British are still bothering about words and phrases like "republic" and "British Crown." In Ireland, I would sum it up, the British are not themselves.

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they were even when I saw them dur- get really informed about it, I got the ing the war.

The first man I talked to when the miners first started striking was a man who happened to be very rich and also a peer and a conservative. He said:

"You know, I think these cuts in wages by the owners are too drastic. I asked my wife, 'Could you cut down your household expenses one third at one cut?' She said, 'Certainly not.' I said, 'Neither can a miner's wife.' You know, I rather like those miners for striking. It shows Great Britain is still Great Britain. The cuts are too much, and the miners won't take it lying down. There you are."

There was a considerable streak of sentiment of that sort in conservative quarters ever so much more of it than I ever saw in such quarters in similar circumstances among us in America.

Then the London "Times," certainly not a "labor paper," began printing column after column every day of letters from distinguished people, discussing the main contention of the miners the contention for a "national pool," for a fund to be supported by the whole mining industry, and to be paid out to reduce the enormous difference now existing between the wages paid to some miners in some mines and the wages paid to other miners doing the same quantity and quality of work in other mines.

These letters had not been running long before "The Times" was itself saying that some sort of "pool" was certainly an idea to be thoughtfully considered; and when I asked the secretary of one of the largest tradeunions in England what I ought to read about the coal strike in order to

answer, "Oh, read the statements in "The Times.'

Meanwhile the rest of "The Times" was just as usual, including the "agony" column. In the midst of the last days of Great Britain, the weary Titan, I find it always reassuring at breakfast to begin "The Times" with the column given up to various communicative parts of this weary Titan and to read:

Ju Ju. Kick off at ten. Don't be late. X. O. X.

Or,

Koki. What do I know of your affairs? Why should I be interested in your doings? I have no interest in you and no desire to hear of or see you. Whippet. Or,

Lady having left foot size 5, right foot size 6, is compelled to buy two sizes of all footwear. What offer for spare parts? Box T. 34. The Times E. C. 4.

I contend that no nation that can produce the "agony" column can be in its last agony.

Anyway, the coal strike in itselfI say it with certainty-did not rouse England to any mood of "rallying round the flag" and "crushing" the miners.

Then came the threat of the strike by the Triple Alliance in support of the miners. That Triple-Alliance strike seemed to non-labor England to be "going too far." Volunteers come forward in great numbers to offer to do whatever they might be able to do in substitution for striking railway workers and striking transport workers. The leaders of the Triple Alliance paused and looked and put a foot out and pulled it back and considered.

Then came the House of Commons. Two hundred members of the House of Commons, almost all of them nonlabor members, met and listened to the chief spokesman of the coal-mine owners. Having listened to him, many of them thought that his case was not so good as they had thought it was before he came, and they voted with Captain Elliot, who rose and moved to send for Mr. Hodges, the leader of the miners.

Mr. Hodges came and spoke. By the end of the week I was hearing political people even in Downing Street, in the heart of the Government, saying easily:

Coote, he had said that in certain circumstances the miners would be willing to negotiate a settlement of wages temporarily without a "national pool."

The executive committee of the miners' union had then, nevertheless, insisted on sticking out for a "national pool." Whereupon in the Triple Alliance there was a strong feeling. Why strike to get a "national pool" for the miners when Hodges himself is willing for the time being to settle without a "national pool"? The Triple Alliance refused to strike-refused definitely and finally.

Meanwhile Mr. Hodges offered his resignation to his executive committee.

"Now, when Mr. Hodges some day His executive committee refused to is prime minister-"

The verdict in favor of Mr. Hodges, in favor of Mr. Hodges as Mr. Hodges, was everywhere and it was emphatic.

Mr. Lloyd George, in the House of Commons, said that Mr. Hodges was "intelligent" and "able" and "sincere" and "honest," or the like. Members of Parliament said privately that Mr. Hodges had quite outspoken the spokesman of the coal-mine owners. Newspapers, "capitalistic" newspapers, said so, too, and printed his life.

He was still young, he was a college man, he was also genuinely a workingman. He had worked, so they said, in a mine. He had been sent to college, so they were told, by his union. He He had finished college. He had gone back to work at the face of the coal. He had been elected to be a small officer in his union. Now he was top of his union. Look at him!

Incidentally, he had helped "stop off" the Triple-Alliance strike. In the course of his remarks to that committee of the House of Commons, and in reply to a question by Captain Colin

accept it. Then the British public more than ever said, this Hodges is a strong man. By the end of the week the following things had happened:

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First, in certain highly influential quarters there had been enough calmness and fairness to want to get, and to get, a perfectly fair and full account of the case of the miners.

Second, in the Triple Alliance there had been enough calmness and fairness and caution to refuse to strike for the case of the miners when in the matter of the "national pool" that case was still unproved even to large numbers of workers.

Third, in an atmosphere thus sufficiently calm and sufficiently fair the British nation had looked at Frank Hodges and had judged his qualifications and qualities and had accepted him as a person who might turn out to be not only a leader of labor, but a leader of Great Britain.

I think I shall be lucky if I live to see ever again in any people such an

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