chief. This did not bring down on the hapless lad's head immediate paternal vengeance. The old war lord, who is really only fifty-two years old, had his eye on the front. He must stay in Mukden, away from his uncertain troops and close to the political centre of his province. Meanwhile one of his division commanders, Chung, forthwith decapitated all of his fellow officers who were suspected of leaning toward Kuo. As a reward that gentleman was promptly placed in charge of the defense.

Early one Sunday morning - it was the sixth of November - some twenty trucks hastily transferred Chang's hoard of several million silver dollars to the Japanese concession. Half Mukden followed them. Everyone who had aught to save tried to get it to a point of safety. About twenty million dollars was deposited in the Japanese banks within twenty-four hours on longterm certificates of deposit, in order to avoid a subsequent run. Every house and shed and shelter in the concession was rented by these refugees at an enormous price. Foreign quarters in China are like the temples of ancient Greece and Rome - sanctuaries where any pursued person, be he a criminal or an innocent refugee, is for the time being safe.

At the front several of Chang's divisions went over to Kuo at the first shot, apparently by prior agreement. Although railway bridges were destroyed and rails torn up, the insurgent general might have reached Mukden in two or three days. For an instant Chang contemplated flight. But Kuo did not press his advantage. Two loyal divisions were sent forward to retard Kuo's advance. Mukden breathed freer. Foreigners did so as well; for Chang stands in debt to German and English firms for about four million dollars, and to Japanese firms for

twenty million dollars. Chang has iron nerves. He finally decided to retire behind Mukden if necessary, and to fight it out to the last ditch.

Who was Kuo? What did he want? He is an old student at the Military Academy in Peking. The officers educated there are bitterly hostile to officers trained in Japan, as Yang Huting was. He is a skillful commander; but he was refused a fat government job, which was given to Yang. The argument that Kuo used to persuade his troops to follow him was, 'Down with Militarism!' That was not remarkable, for all the tuchuns and war lords say that. But Kuo demanded also a new government that would improve the condition of the 'peasants and workers.' Manchuria is prosperous, but its surplus wealth has gone into Chang Tso-lin's arsenal. So Kuo announced that a new civil government, which would spend its revenues for the benefit of all the people, must be set up at Mukden.

Unquestionably Kuo's partisans were men of new ideas. Irrespective of whether he was sincere, his appeal is important. Chang Tso-lin is a professed reactionary. Kuo's programme bore a strong resemblance to that of his friend Feng Yu-hsiang. Of course, we do not know what these gentlemen may have said to each other, but we do know what they said to the public. And Karakhan's sarcastic smile has grown broader since he hastily returned from Moscow to Peking.

Chang Tso-lin has always been a focus of international intrigue. Mukden is now become more of a plot centre than ever. Feng Yu-hsiang, the Christian General, who possesses the art of making events, instead of his soldiers, fight for him, has captured Tientsin. Meanwhile the Japanese have discreetly put Chang Tso-lin under considerable obligation to them. They

[PROFESSOR BONN needs no introduction to American readers. The following New Year's article, certain paragraphs of which have been summarized in the translation, deals with problems discussed at greater length in his recent book, Die Krisis der europäischen Demokratie, the English version of which is noted under Books Mentioned.]

ALL Europe is again echoing with denunciations of our parliaments as unable to deal with the urgent questions of the day. We must admit that democratic institutions, at least in Europe, cannot give the people at present the happiness and prosperity they so ardently desire. But that does not touch the heart of the question. The real point is that the idea of the divine right of kings, which perpetuated the ghost of absolutism in Europe long after its physical life was ended, still survives in the popular consciousness, although it has now been transferred to democratic government. I do not refer to the strong monarchical sentiment that still exists and that justifies itself by appealing to the divine-right dogma. Our dethroned kings and kaisers must have been dethroned by God's will, for we can hardly assume that a few 'workers' and soldiers' councils' were powerful enough to defy the will of God. I refer to something much more pertinent and actual.

We Europeans assume in the bottom

1 From Neue Freie Presse (Vienna NationalistLiberal daily), January 3

of our hearts that it is the function of government to make us prosperous and happy, and that it can do so if it will. Consequently, when modern cabinets and parliaments do not give us what we feel entitled to expect from a power set up by an express fiat of the Deity, we think it has betrayed its trust. We might manage our political life much better were we to get down to the more modest and rational point of view that a government may indeed inflict immeasurable suffering upon a nation, but that, no matter how it is constituted, it has extremely limited power to make a nation happy. Our superstition that governments can work impossible miracles really lies at the bottom of most current criticism of representative institutions.

We feel only too keenly that the policies of the statesmen and rulers who controlled the affairs of Europe during the World War have brought untold disaster upon her people. The full economic consequences of these blunders are only now being fully realized. Misguided rulers started a huge conflagration whose flames are not even yet entirely extinguished. And because our fire department failed to put out the fire, we jump at the conclusion that it is utterly worthless. People imagine that if we had had a Napoleon ora Cæsar the conflagration might, in some mysterious way, have been avoided. But there is only one dictator who can handle crises like these. He is Father Chronos-all-healing Time.

From this background, however, two

great problems of parliamentary democracy stand out clearly and distinctly. They are the inseparably connected problems of protecting the minority from the oppression of the majority, and protecting the majority from being throttled by a militant minority. Theoretically the first problem is far the more difficult. Our national minorities in many sections in Central and Southern Europe can tell us all about this. Moreover, in nearly every advanced country social minorities suffer from majority oppression. Their protests explain the agitation for mechanical checks and balances in the government, for proportional representation, for an upper chamber of the legislature, and for parliaments elected by vocational, economic, and cultural groups instead of by a direct vote of the people.

Hand in hand with the rise of political democracy and the development of modern industry, a profound conflict has arisen between political and economic power. While political authority has drifted into the hands of the masses, economic authority has become the possession of a few individuals. Meanwhile labor, organized under the protection of its political power, can exercise industrial control only by purely negative measures, such as strikes.

We observe these two tendencies most clearly in countries with an old parliamentary system. Formerly their landowners monopolized both the land and the vote. To-day the common people have the vote while the landowners keep the land. For one hundred and fifty years the latter have struggled to defend their privileges, by an upper chamber, by restricted suffrage, by gerrymandering, and by other devices. Several of these limitations still survive, but the illogical division of power is becoming more and more obvious to

everybody. A few people have the money and a great many people have the ballot.

In order to camouflage that situation, new proposals for economic parliaments are mooted with the idea of organizing the masses into professional and trade groups that will appeal so strongly to their sentiment that they will overlook the primary fact of the unequal distribution of wealth. Such devices appeal seriously, however, only to romanticists disillusioned with the modern world, who imagine that they can heal the ills of a present that they do not understand with the remedies of the past. Such men condemn our modern parliaments as mere talkingplaces where people debate but do not

act.

In reality, these critics are unconsciously profound believers in parliaments. What they want is a parliament whose decisions are not based on discussion but upon private deals. But such deals, when they involve the vital interests of the public, can no longer be made in privacy as they were in the good old days. The experience of the last few years proves that.

These critics also overlook the fact that what chiefly distinguishes the parliaments of to-day from the parliaments of yesterday, and makes our present legislatures seem so pettifogging, is precisely the prominent place that economic questions and purely material interests occupy in their deliberations. You can expound with eloquence and majesty great general principles of political government, of freedom, and of popular liberty, but you cannot stir the hearts of mankind with an elucidation of the right duty to levy upon a fabric of a given weight and a given number of picks per square inch. Anyone who studies conscientiously the proceedings of our present parliaments, and particularly the re

ports of their committees, will be impressed with the vast amount of precise and detailed information that is laid before them and that is exhibited by their members; though this is not surprising, since so many of the latter really represent particular industrial interests.

The practical problem of modern parliamentary government is not so much to protect minorities as to ensure a working majority capable of carrying on the government. In Central Europe, particularly in Germany, moreover, the respective functions of the bureaucracy and of the legislature have not yet been clearly delimited. Our civil servants have not yet learned that their function is purely administrative; that they exist to execute laws, not to make them. They still dream of the good old Imperial days when we did not, to tell the truth, have an irresponsible Kaiser, but we did have an irresponsible bureaucracy. They resent the fact that their members are no longer eligible for the highest offices of the realm. They cannot understand why civil servants cannot be elected to Parliament. They are blind to the fact that no man can be expected to take an active part in making a law and at the same time become its impartial administrator.

On the other hand, our Members of Parliament have still to learn that it is not their task to run the executive departments. They should control the Government, determine its policies, and provide it with means to carry on; but it is not necessary that they should know every detail of the administration. The directors of a great financial corporation would never dream of trying to do the work of their managers and bookkeepers, because they know quite well that these gentlemen can perform such tasks far better than they can themselves. But we often find cabinet ministers and committee chair

men who think it highly commendable to know every petty detail of some executive department and who pride themselves upon constantly interfering with its routine work.

Political parties are still divided from each other by social, religious, and philosophical diversities of sympathy and conviction. But new and strictly economic lines of demarcation now cut directly across the old party boundaries. These are determined by whether the member is an employee or an employer, or by some other group or class interest. Indeed, these economic, trade, and professional ties are rapidly becoming stronger than the older party ties.

Last of all, we have the division between Socialism and various capitalistic conceptions of society. It is comparatively easy to get employers and employees to agree on some practical question, providing both sides are reasonable and their passions have not been aroused. Wages and prices are measurable things concerning which one can bargain. We do not fight as a rule over what we can divide between us. Had Helen of Troy been merely a dividend, the Trojan War would never have happened. But when you come to fundamental social theories, compromise is impossible; and such theories determine our attitude toward general economic questions like tariff and currency policies.

As a result of these conditions, and of the unstable majorities that result from them, both our legislative and our administrative machinery work in a halting way. One can readily understand, therefore, how farsighted men with vision enough to rise above the interests of petty groups and to comprehend the needs of society as a whole become impatient with this machinery, which is constantly breaking down and turns out such defective wares. So