_NEWS OF THE WEEK.

MCLEMENCEAU arrived in London on Thursday.

• Of course he will discuss with the Prime Minister the extraordinarily difficult situation which has been created by the refusal of the United States to ratify the Treaty. Already the American representatives have left Paris, and the Supreme Council as we have known it no longer exists. Mr. Wallace, the American Ambassador in Paris, is left to represent America on the Council, but obviously he attends only to watch and to consult. He is not a plenipotentiary. It is an unfortunate moment for any doubt to exist about the character or powers of the Supreme Council. So long as uncertainty continues there can be no settlement with Turkey, and upon a Turkish settlement depends practically everything in the Near East. The absence of a Turkish Peace Treaty is the worst gap among the many gaps in the world settlement.

As regards Hungary, the prospect is much brighter. The conciliatory and skilful management of Hungarian affairs by Sir George Clerk cannot be too highly praised. His work was a triumph for diplomacy on the traditional lines, which in recent years has been most ridiculously assailed. Now that, thanks to Sir George Clerk, a new Hungarian Government has been formed, Hungarian delegates will be sent to Paris, and there is no reason why the peace with Hungary should not be signed fairly soon.

The bogy army of Germany has become a good deal dimmer in the newspaper reports of the last few days. The letter which we published last week from an observer in Germany substantially told the truth. There are, of course, numerous bodies throughout Germany which are doing the work of local gendarmerie, and any one who cares to do so can call these men soldiers and say that they compose a formidable army. By the counting of heads no doubt they do. We must trust the British Military Mission, however, to see that existing German munitions are dissipated and that no new munitions are manufactured. Without equipment Germany could not again seriously take the field.

All this, however, does not dispose of the unpleasant fact that Germany keeps succumbing to the fatal temptation to fish in troubled waters. So long as America stands out of the settlement the waters are bound to be troubled. Even if Herr Noske himself did not wish to make trouble, his position is so insecure that the clamour of the reactionaries may compel him to cast a fly where he does not wish to do so. Although his motives may be better than they seem, the results may be not the less deplorable. Germany must be most carefully watched, but she must also be helped and encouraged in every way to stabilize herself, in our own interests just as much as in hers.

Meanwhile, if we were asked to say what is the right line of policy for ourselves amid all these difficulties, we should answer in the simple phrase which never failed soldier or civilian during the war : " Carry on." We mean that we are now in a position where the League of Nations is the accepted rock to which we must cling. There is no other. We must by no means abandon it. We must carry on just as though America were with us. We have no doubt whatever that if we do this America will be found by our side in the long run. And this may happen much sooner than a good many people suppose.

The Supreme Council of the Allies on Monday sent a stern Note to Germany, brushing aside her irrelevant arguments and requiring her forthwith to sign the additional Protocol and to ratify the Peace Treaty. The Allies reminded her "for the last time " that the denunciation of the Armistice would leave them free to take military measures. As soon as the Treaty comes into force, the German prisoners in France will be liberated, but not a moment sooner. The Allies declared that the scuttling of the German warships at Scapa Flow, by order of the German Government, was a deliberate violation of the Armistice and must be paid for. They were ready to consider whether Germany's vital interests would be injured by the surrender of all the floating docks, tugs, and dredgers demanded by way of compensation for the sunken warships. But they insisted that Germany should first of all agree to make this compensation in kind, before she could be allowed to ratify the Treaty. As Mr. Boner Law said on Monday, there need be little doubt as to Germany's acceptance of the new terms.

The twenty-four Deputies from Alsace-Lorraine attended the first sitting of the new French Chamber on Monday, and expressed their thankfulness at being reunited to the mother-oountry. By a happy coincidence the oldest Deputy, who presides at the opening of a new Chamber, was on this historic occasion M. Siegfried, a native of Mulhouse. Like M. Clemenceau, he could recall the fine protest which the Deputies from Alsace-Lorraine made when they left the National Assembly in 1871 to become German subjects against their will. For forty-seven yearsi the lost provinces never ceased to protest that they were French, and all that Prussia could do failed to Germanize them. If the peace has not done all that men hoped it would, at least it has righted this grievous wrong.

The Rumanian delegates signed the Austrian and Bulgarian Peace Treaties in Paris on Wednesday, and also accepted the Treaty protecting the racial minorities in Greater Rumania. The hesitation of Rumania in regard to the Treaties has been due in part to domestic controversies, and in part also to the somewhat tactless way in which Rumania has been treated by the Allies. It may be hoped that our relations with her will now improve, for a friendly and prosperous Rumania is essential to the maintenance of peace in South-Eastern Europe.

General Denikin in Southern Russia continues to hold his own against the large forces which the Bolsheviks have concentrated on his front. In the Baltic Provinces the Esthonians are resisting a violent Bolshevik offensive around Narva. The Moscow Terrorists are evidently anxious to open peace negotiations, in which they might pose as the representatives of Russia, and thus discourage the civilized Russian parties which are fighting

them. The small Baltic States are discussing peace terms with the Bolsheviks at Dorpat, on the basis of a recognition of the independence of Esthonia as well as of Latvia. If the Russian patriots would recognize the independence of the non-Russian border States, the task of the Allies in Russia would be simplified.

The American coal-miners' strike ended on Wednesday. The miners, who had demanded an increase of 60 per cent. in their wages, accepted the President's offer of 14 per cent., to wh:sh the mine-owners have assented. A Federal Commission is to consider whether the miners' wages ought to be increased still further, in. view of the higher cost of living. The sudden termination of the strike is a good thing for America, but it must have a very serious effect upon our Coal Controller's policy—if, indeed, his zigzag course of action conceals a policy. For the reduction of ten shillings a ton in the price of household coal was based on the assumption that the American miners would remain on strike. When they resume work, the price of coal in the world's markets will fall, and the large profits on our exported coal will diminish rapidly. Sir Auckland Geddes's anticipated surplus of £17,000,000 for the current year will not be realized. Yet he is giving it away in advance to the private consumer.

A Special Trade Union Congress met in London on Tuesday. We have dealt with the proceedings on that day in one of our leading articles. Let us here say something about what happened on Wednesday. Mr. J. H. Thomas, who presided, announced that the Government will introduce their promised Bill setting up a national system of insurance against unemployment before Christmas. Is it not an astonishing thing that such an announcement should be made in the first instance to a Labour Congress, and not to Parliament by the Prime Minister or some responsible member of the Government ? Here is another illustration of the fact that the representatives of Labour are daily pressing their claims upon the Government and ignoring the interests of all other classes in the country. Mr. Thomas can say any day what is in the mind of the Prime Minister because he has just been told. The greatest traders, the greatest manufacturers, .he leaders of the professions, could tell you nothing at all. The answer of Labour to our complaint of course would be : " Well, we have done this by organization. You had better organize yourselves too." The hint is certainly well worth acting upon.

Wednesday's Congress accepted the proposal to establish a General Staff for Labour in place of the Parliamentary Committee, and called upon the Government to make peace with Soviet Russia. Some extremists opposed the creation of a General Staff on the ground that it would reduce the chance of war ; that is to say, of strikes. We take the truth to be that, though a General Staff, representing no doubt all shades of Labour, might be slow to act, it would be able to bring about; a paralysis of the country such as has never yet been experienced. This gloomy prospect, however, is tempered by the fact that under the new arrangement made between the Government and Labour for the management of the railways the railwaymen undertake not to strike without a month's notice. We wonder what would happen if the Triple Alliance of Miners, Transport Workers, and Railwaymen were in favour of a strike and the promise to give a month's notice got in the way ? The month's notice would certainly be a safeguard if, as we firmly believe, Mr. Thomas intends that the pledge shall be honoured. But Mr. Thomas, as we know only too well, cannot by any means count on having his own way.

The discussion on Wednesday was disfigured by the disgraceful treatment of Colonel John Ward, who for Knee time was howled down when he tried to speak about Russia. Colonel Ward may be wrong or right, but he served his country gallantly in Russia, and by virtue of personal experience was the one member of the Congress who above all others had the right to be heard. It is a sign of how demoralizing has been the recent policy of Labour in demanding privileges for a few, and a monopoly of power for a minority, that many Labour men seem now to be losing all respect for what working men once prized above riches—liberty of speeoh.

Mr. Lloyd George made .a long speech at the Manchester Reform Club last Saturday in which he appealed to Liberals for their support on the ground that there was no conceivable alternative to the Coalition. He declared that the long list of " Liberal " reforms standing to the credit of the present Government were the best justification of political unity. These reforms could not conceivably have been carried out by Liberals alone, and as a matter of fact in past times no Liberal Government was able to make such forward strides. The speech was a characteristio performance, extremely skilful on its cra ft lines, but we should imagine that most of Mr. Lloyd George's Liberal hearers must have reflected afterwards that he had never " come to the horses."

Mr. P. Heifer in a letter to the Westminster Gazette on Tuesday pointed out the astonishing contradiction between the account which Mr. Lloyd George gave in the House of Commons on December 20th, 1917, of the overthrow of Mr. Asquith and the account which he gave in Manchester last Saturday. In December, 1917, the Prime Minister said that at the beginning of that year the Russian Army was " better equipped than it had ever been during the whole period of the war. For the first time Russian gunners had plenty of ammunition. . . . With a well-equipped British and French Army pressing on the West, we should have been able to bring such pressure to bear on the Prussian Army as to effect a decisive defeat upon it. The events of the year have proved that if Russia had carried out our nature/ expectations our plan would in all human probability have completely succeeded." But at Manchester last Saturday Mr. Lloyd George, having begged his hearers " to cast their minds back on the situation," said that at the time of Mr. Asquith's overthrow—an overthrow which of course he was trying to justify—" Russia had practically collapsed and France was exhausted. He had acted as he did because he felt deep in his heart that unless he imparted a new spirit to the struggle the cause of the Allies might have been lost." There is no possibility of reconciling these two statements. The Prime Minister may " feel deep in his heart," but unfortunately he never has the facts deep in his head.

The Liberal Members, whether supporters of the Coalition or not, were summoned on Monday to discuss the situation in the Spen Valley by-election. The local Liberal Association, by a majority, adopted as their candidate Sir John Simon, who is a vigorous opponent of the Coalition. The Government therefore put forward a Coalition Liberal against him, as the late Member, Sir T. P. Whittaker, had supported the Government. This seems a natural and proper course to pursue, as the majority of the Spen Valley electors last December voted for the Government, and ought to have the chance of doing so again. Nevertheless several Coalition Liberals objected to the Government's action, on the ground that Sir John Simon had promised to support " every Liberal proposal " made by the Government. In the end the Conference decided to postpone the matter. It would be well if the Coalition Liberals were to realize that they must either support the Government or oppose them, and that, if they support the Government, they must subordinate their affection for the old party to the necessity of keeping the new Coalition in power.

The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords which inquired into the case of Miss Douglas-Pennant was published on Tuesday. The Committee found that all the personal charges made by Miss Douglas-Pennant were untrue or unsupported by evidence. But the Committee expressed the opinion, in which most people will concur, that Miss DouglasPennant's abrupt dismissal was " an unfortunate error on the part of Lord Weir," who was " practically compelled " to act who did by Sir Auckland Geddes. The Report confirms the general belief that the Air Ministry last year was very badly organized, and that the heterogeneous multitude of officers and of civilians of both sexes employed by the Ministry lacked a sense of discipline. Miss Douglas-Pennant, accustomed to the ordered calm of an ordinary civil Department, may well have been exasperated by the confusion and waste of energy, but that was no excuse for her reckless charges.

The Government of India Bill was read .a third time in the House of Commons on Friday week. Mr. Montagu said very truly that it " portended the end of the old regime." We can only express a hope that India may be half as happy and contented under the new regime as she has been under the system which Mr. Montagu, for reasons of his own, has worked so hard to uproot and destroy. He referred to the.' almost complete unanimity " of the House in accepting the BM. If he had

said " apathy and indifference," he would have been nearer the truth. One or two Labour Members, whose profound ignorance of India would be laughable if it were not tragic, spoke of " the Indian people " as if they were a single homogeneous community like Scotland, and regretted the failure to enfranchise the " industrial workers." The Labour Party misconceives the object of the Bill, which is to substitute for an impartial British rule the rule of a narrow Brahmin oligarchy. The last thing that a Brahmin would think of doing would bo to give a vote to an " industrial worker," who by immemorial tradition is his inferior.

The Aliens Bill was debated in Committee of the House of Lords on Tuesday. Lord Buckmaster, Lord Salisbury, Lord Newton, and Lord Crewe all criticised with indignation those provisions in the Bill which would sot with a rigidity amounting to cruelty against individuals. Clause IX., which was the main object of attack, was inserted in the Bill under the miserable bargain between the Government and the insurgents in the House of Commons who had defeated the Pilots Clause. Our national honour in preserving the rights of French pilots was saved at the price of putting in an instrument of harshness— even of brutality—which had not been contemplated in the original Bill.

We feel as strongly as any one could possibly feel against giving openings to enemies of this country to live here merely in order to undermine our strength and worm out our secrets. But it is just as important that as a nation we should not make ourselves ridiculous by yielding to panic. It never has been, and we hope it never will be, our way to persecute foreign governesses or foreign waiters on the ground that they may be assumed guilty because they are foreign. The Lord Chancellor professed an indignation against Germany even stronger than the indignation of the critics against the clause, but he showed a just discretion in accepting their amendment without a division. The Bill will thus return to the Commons in a more reasonable form.

We cannot help reflecting upon the strange irony which, in spite of all the past denunciations of Liberals, placed the House of Lords in this attitude of dignity and reasonableness. At the time of the Parliament Act crisis we were told by faithful Liberals that the House of Lords was filled with hopeless obseurantists and reactionaries. Now we find the Lords, guided by such Unionists as Lord Salisbury and Lord Newton, teaching the elected representatives of the nation a lesson which they very much needed. Lord Salisbury and Lord Newton were not afraid to take a line which they thought right merely because it might be unpopular. One has to search for some time to find such men in the House of Commons. And yet, when reform of the House of Lords is proposed, we are informed that a reformed House must be predominantly an elected body. This plan would inevitably set up a rival to the House of Commons, which the House of Commons would be jealous of and would dislike. An elected Upper House therefore means a weak Upper House. The debate of Tuesday was surely one more proof that the House of Lords, more or less in its present shape, is simply invaluable. The only reform we would make is to demand from Peers certificates of public service. That would keep out the nonentities.

Captain Ross Smith, an Australian airman, is the first man to fly from England to Australia. He left Hounslow on November 12th in a Vickers-Vimy machine, and landed at Port Darwin, Northern Australia, on Wednesday. He thus gained the Commonwealth Government's prize of £10,000 for the first Australian, flying a British aeroplane, who should complete the journey of twelve thousand miles within thirty days. The airman and the machine have passed a most arduous teat of endurance. Any small defect in the engine or any accident in landing on an improvised aerodrome might have delayed Captain Ross Smith beyond the stipulated month. In the near future, when aeroplane engines have been perfected and good landinggrounds have been established everywhere, a flight to Australia will become easy and commonplace. But the first man to accomplish the great feat under present conditions deserves high praise.

Mr. Fisher, the President of the Board of Education, took the chair on Friday week at the complimentary dinner given to Dr. Maria Montessori, a dinner which afforded striking proof of the interest that is now taken in primary education. The best speech of the evening was made by Sir James Crichton-Browne, whose great experience as a mental specialist and whose almost Johnsonian periods gave a pleasing weight to his comments upon the work which Mme. Montessori had accomplished. He described the enthusiastic welcome that Mme. Montessori had received in England, due in his opinion to the fact that we all " believe that the message she brings may help us in the great work of readjustment that lies before us." We had entered upon a period of growth, and he considered that the best definition of education was " the guidance of growth." " It is the seedlings that Dr. Montessori tends, and shelters, and inclines aright, but the impulse she imparts should sustain and protect in all the later states of existence, and her influence will, it is to be hoped, diffuse itself through higher levels of education than that which she has made peculiarly her own."

Mme. Montessori, continued the speaker, had succeeded in raising mothercraft to a higher power and in extending its range :

" She has promoted the natural development of the child while avoiding pernic ions precocity. By training the several senses to nice discrimination she has facilitated the acquisition of the ordinary rudiments of knowledge. Her procedure is calculated to eliminate pain and strain from primary education. True education is incompatible with misery and repression. There is enough inevitable suffering in the world without any artificial manufacture of it."

In discussing the sources of her method, Sir James CrichtonBrowne described how Seguin had been the precursor and inspirer of Dr. Montessori. The original design of the " stately pleasure-dome " which she had raised might be found in Plato, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Lancaster, Froebel, Herbert Spencer. He would put in a claim for a body of men whose services to educational progress had been too much ignored—the phrenologist& " The phrenologists were wrong, but they were the first to insist a hundred years ago on localization of function in the brain, and on the serial exercise in the young of the separate sensory motor and mental powers." Mme. Montessori had deftly woven together the thoughts of her forerunners and had created " a new and original scheme of juvenile polity. Her high intellectual gifts, her ardent devotion to her mission, her personal charm, have secured for her reforms widespread acceptance—in a shortness of time that is unexampled in such matters."

Mr. Fisher in his speech also paid tribute to Mme. Montessori. He threw a certain amount of light upon the attitude of the Board of Education towards the adoption of Montessori methods in Council schools. It was to be encouraged, as was every other " intelligent system of experimentation." But, as was brought out clearly by a little address delivered by a student on behalf of those who have just completed Dr. Montessori's course of lectures and have sat for her diploma, such encouragement does not carry matters very far. As this speaker pointed out, special materials are needed and buildings must be modified to suit the method, and this background for the work cannot obviously be provided by individual teachers. The students, many of them elementary-school teachers, are enthusiastically anxious to put into practice what they have learned, and they feel the impossibility of returning to the old methods and of perpetuating the old mistakes.

The Montessori students' plea is a somewhat pathetic one, for there should be no possibility at the moment of spending fresh public money. There are already in existence in England about a hundred schools in which Dr. Montessori's methods have been introduced, but it is surely probable that these may ultimately have to suffer certain adaptations when they are applied to English children. It will be remembered, for example, that the Swedish drill curriculum for children had to be considerably changed before it was found workable in English schools, our children imitating on a much larger element of play and imagination in them than did the Swedish scholars. But in order to adapt we must try the system on a large scale. Every one acknowledges that our present methods are wrong. Surely a better philanthropic work could hardly be undertaken than that of enabling Council school teachers who were anxious to take up Montessori work to carry out the " intelligent experimentation " for which Mr. Fisher has given his express permission.