THE "POLITICAL QUARTERLY"
The Political Quarterly for April deserves attention for an American view of " War Debts and Peace Credits " by Professor W. T. Elliott, of Harvard. He assumes that we can afford to pay our war debt to the United States and that we cannot repudiate it. " But the air must be cleared by an immediate and more extended moratorium ; we must get. more of the assets of our debtors put. upon the table before we settle." He expects us to give encouragement to American imports and to, pay partly in rare metals that America does not produce, and in return to get the debt reduced and to have the repudiated State debts set off against our obligations. Professor Elliott's article is practical, but even he fails to realize the meaning of the Lausanne agreement of last year. Lord Passfield contributes a long and ingenious article on " Soviet Russia as a Federal State," in the course of which he admits that the whole structure is absolutely controlled by a small minority of Communists and yet holds up the paper constitution as worthy of study. As if the British Empire had not several good examples of real federal States ! Yet Lord Passfield was once at the Colonial Office.
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