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and their own career, is menaced by socialistic politicians, pacifists, and internationalists. But it is all talk, and "royalism" in France does not mean a return to monarchy, but a return to the Right, which is a very different thing.

The only real royalists are the old aristocracy who cling to old traditions which have but little reality in modern France. They live in rather draughty old châteaux with uncomfortable furniture, and the fleur-de-lys on their paneled walls. They intermarry with great solemnity, and no one is allowed to penetrate into their home-life except their numerous relatives, and American millionaires-well introduced-who may be useful to their daughters. They have no political power, but some social influence. The French people, like the English, still love a title and give a certain homage to Monsieur le Marquis or Monsieur le Comte. It is useful to young gentlemen in time of trouble, as happened this week, as I write, when a young man was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in charge of a motor-car. After some violence he was flung into a little white cell from which he would have been taken to the court next morning. Somewhat sobered, he hammered at the door. "Look here," he explained, "this is ridiculous! I am the Marquis de B. I can't be treated like an Apache in the Place Pigalle."

The police agreed with him. They apologized to the Marquis de B-and escorted him to his hotel. Even in democratic France equality before the law is not complete.

"THE MOST PACIFIST COUNTRY" T IS difficult to say how far the demo

likely to

remain radical after the swing of opinion which led to the downfall of Poincaré and the rise to power of Herriot and his moderate Socialists. I was in Paris when the remains of Jean Jaurés, the great Socialist leader, were transferred to the Panthéon.

At the beginning of the War on its first day―Jaurés was murdered by a political fanatic, and the general opinion of the nation, face to face with German in

vasion, was violently hostile to the spirit of the man who had preached international peace, general disarmament, and a democratic comradeship with the German workers. Now, when his remains were removed to the Hall of Heroes, a vast crowd surged into Paris from outlying districts with bands and banners and rosettes, to pay enthusiastic homage to the memory of the great pacifist. I studied the character of those crowds. They were not revolutionaries and fanatics but sober citizens of the working and bourgeois class, who in time of war had been the soldiers of France. It is from that class that Herriot received his strong support for a policy of conciliation with Germany, based upon an industrial compact, and for an anti-militarist régime, based on the security of the League of Nations in a world-wide pact of peace.

Contrary to foreign opinion-which will not understand and will not learnFrance is the most pacifist country in the world. I have talked with peasants in the fields, with professional men and intellectuals, with shop-keepers and politicians. The one idea that dominates their minds is the dread of another "inevitable" war. They are divided only, by hopeless disagreement, as to the policy by which that war may be averted. Is it best to maintain a strong army, make alliances with new powers in Europe, and keep a strangle-hold on Germany-a dangerous and perhaps futile effort-or to pave the way for conciliation and peace by industrial relations with the old enemy, and a policy of international disarmament-equally dangerous, and possibly ruinous?

Public opinion in France swings in a doubtful way between these two lines of thought, and has no sense of security. If only Great Britain would enter into a military alliance! But England-perfide Albion!—is playing the German game, as every Frenchman thinks, and, as he is told daily by his press, for selfish, material interests. If only the United States would throw its weight on the side of France and guarantee France and guarantee her frontiers against a German war of revenge! But

the Americans think only of their dollars. and their Monroe Doctrine. What do they care about Europe? What do they know? So France feels herself isolated and abandoned by former friends-with that dreadful menace ahead.

Meanwhile the life of France goes on with its superficial gaiety, which deceives the tourist for whom it is mostly produced, and with its hidden home life more reserved, more guarded against the outer world than in any other country of Western Europe. Very rarely does a casual visitor get invited to a French home. Hospitality is restricted to a public restaurant and not offered very freely.

In the little homes of France there is hard work, hard study, a life of small economies, frugal living, family devotion. The women of France are partners with their men in all business affairs, and their advice is dominant. They are devoted mothers to the single child to whom maman is the source of all comfort and perfect love. The shop-keepers, the merchants, the contractors, the hotel proprietors, the financial politicians, are making fortunes, but they refuse to be taxed for

the sake of balancing a budget and paying international debts. The professional classes, the civil service, the intellectuals, and the lower middle class are poorly paid and struggle against the rising cost of living. They are disillusioned with the results of victory, bitter against their politicians, and deeply anxious about the future of France.

Sitting in my room one night a very distinguished Frenchman discussed all these problems for five hours, until I yawned.

"Monsieur," he said, at the end of our argument, "the civilization of France is not very safe. Beneath an illusion of prosperity and strength we have many elements of weakness, and there are great dangers ahead. dangers ahead. But France has given so much to the world in art and intellect and spirit that we shall not be deserted when new ordeals test the courage of our people. That is the best hope we have, beyond our own strength and purpose."

It is a hope that is sometimes weakened by a national egotism which is careless of the needs and ideals of other people, and impatient of any point of view which seems hostile to French opinion.

T

HE Harvard University expedition to western China, in search of precious relics of the earliest Chinese art, was in Peking. The Pacific Ocean lay behind us, while ahead were problems and politics and months of walking over the face of China. To Horace Jayne and to me, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it had been simple enough to compute the possibilities of success and easy to persuade ourselves that the immemorial northwest road of China could be traversed without difficulty. It had seemed enough that Harvard College was willing to begin to take an interest in the problem which hitherto none but Europeans had attacked. now and here in the bedroom of the hotel in Peking, with maps and saddlebags and boots and typewriters stacked against the walls and on the chairs and beds, things looked less simple.

But

Bandits were reported in force on the

Honan border and further west; the central government had small control over the Mohammedans of Kansu. It was indeed a grave question if the hardbegged money of the university should be risked at a time when things looked so black. And yet to wait might well be to find them blacker, and Chinese lions in the path seem always to give way before a direct frontal attack.

France, England, Germany, Russia, and Japan had all sent scholars over this route where, seventeen centuries before, scholars no less adventurous and distinguished had brought the holy Buddhist books from India to the Middle Kingdom to be translated into Chinese. Three hundred years before that time an expedition had gone over this same track and men said that its intrepid leader had brought his men to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Along it had gone out silk from China across the central Asian

plateau in exchange for ponies and for jade, till by chance, and later by design, it had reached the Persian satrapies and the Arab traders. It had come to decadent Rome and to the colonies which had been Greek; there to be ravelled and its precious colored threads woven into the edges of the robes of the young fops of the day. Even before that time the road had been in use, but no man can say how long ago. Potsherds dug near its track make us pause, for if we read their evidence right men traded there with Western peoples when Jason fought the Minotaur in Crete. Holy men from India in mediæval times crossing the roof of the world and the terrible deserts, modern archæol

Thanks to a friend's introduction we were able to make an appointment with Field Marshal Wu Pei Fu, whose headquarters were four miles west of the Honanfu railway station. I was much interested to have the chance to meet perhaps the greatest of China's "super-Tuchuns," the man who had sent General Chang Tso Lin packing to Manchuria the year before, and who now ruled North China with an iron fist. Headquarters proved to be an enormous park approached by splendid roads, on which the soldiers were laboring as we came up. The General was busy but would soon receive us.

A GENERAL TALKS ARCHEOLOGY

T

THE WISDOM OF PEKING

HERE was an irritating month while we "took the best advice" about the western road as we had promised to do, and spent an occasional afternoon stumblingly finding out the prices of the very doubtful antiquities in the shops. On the whole the best advice in Peking, boiled down, amounted to that monosyllable pronounced by Mr. Punch to the young man about to marry-don't.

But all the while we realized that numbers of timorous Chinese were setting out every week over that very road, and that the few foreign missionaries whose duty led them along it, took it all as a matter of course. The chancelleries of Europe and America were busy with demands and protests over the Ling Cheng banditry, the papers had daily accounts of hold-ups on the Honan border just where we must cross, and we were most anxious to avoid both official recognition and official refusal for our trip. Passports were of course necessary, and it took three weeks to get permits to carry arms. While there was no need for secrecy and we were far from being ashamed of our mission, publicity would bring only disagreeable complications.

HEN the great man did come in, with hurried step, it was not the burly figure that I had expected. He was slight and bird-like, with an unwrinkled brow, grave but not troubled. Before him lay a pile of letters which, with an apology, he unrolled and scanned as he listened to our Wang and his own secretary, who told him that we were students desiring to pass to the West and anxious to know from him if the roads were safe. He promptly assured us that if they weren't they could be made so, and promised a guard, explaining that the bandits were the care of the provincial officials and that he never had attempted to rid the country of them. When we said that we had hoped to go on without a guard and did not wish to appear as rich official personages, he waved our objections aside and said that ten men' would be with us as far as the borders of Shensi Province. Still opening letters and occasionally signing a document or giving a short order over his shoulder to his orderly, he talked about archæology and about paintings, getting up to point out a picture in gray ink which hung on the wall. It showed a dead plum tree stump from which a few live switches in bud had sprung up. This he said he loved, because it was symbolical of new China. In half an hour he left us, giving orders that we should dine with him and his staff in another hour.

Seven round tables were set with six

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or eight places at each. We sat with the Field Marshal and his secretary. From the court yard just outside the window a very fair brass band thundered "Nita, Juanita, ask thy soul if we should part!" and other similarly. martial airs. Sometimes they broke into a chant in the midst of their playing, Russian fashion, and this was rather stirring. Nothing was said by any of us at the General's table for the first half hour. But our glasses of warm sherry-like wine were filled and refilled rapidly. Each time that Wu drank bottoms up he showed his empty glass around the circle and we had to do the same. Then at his signal we began to wipe our chopsticks on our sleeves and our breeches and to reach over to the center of the table for the six or seven different dishes, little lumps of mutton, bean curds, omelette, and dumplings.

Our host told us, through his secretary, about Chinese cookery, the soldiers' songs, and the making of wines and spirits, but never a word of politics or the things I wanted most to hear. The meal ended, Field Marshal Wu rose and the band blared a really military march as Jayne and I found ourselves marching from the room while all the other diners stood at attention. It was difficult not to strut.

Knowing that Wu was very much occupied we refused to sit and talk, but bundled ourselves out and into the staff motor car which was panting by the gateway. The guard was turned out, the band blared "Seeing Nelly Home," and we sailed off into the dark singing "Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party." When the car sped to the south gate of Honanfu the narrow way was so blocked by wheelbarrows and vendors of food and cakes and tea, that it seemed a teeming bazaar. It was nothing short of murder to charge that crowd! Donkeys and their entire loads took refuge in shops, naked children were snatched up from under our front tires, and elderly ladies scaled vertical fences. But so far as I know, there was not a single death.

Two days later we went westward for the few hours that remained of the

Good morning Sirs. One wagon for Sianfu charge $70.00, 3 mule carts to same charge $105.00 @ $35. each. It is their cheapest price. If you please, you will pay some earnest money $10.00 or $20.00 in advance. The half price must be prepaid when you start. And beg to inform you that it is sure to set out to-morrow morning. Further, have you your national flag? Each cart must be stick upon with one flag of yours. If not do so, the soldier will get those carts for arm articles. Yours truly,

CHOW HSING YUEH.

Four tailors were set feverishly to work on the flags that were to suggest to the bandits that the American Army and Navy were to appear in Western China to avenge any insult offered to Jayne or to me. But first we made careful scale drawings which represented, for the waiting tailors, our ideas of how our country's emblem appears. As regards the number of states, I got them hopelessly mixed with the Amendments to the Constitution. However, this was happily settled when the tailor sent his boy to say that, since the flags were so small, he had arbitrarily chosen to put six stars on each.

Our consciences were clear, we had got the best advice, and our precious persons were better safeguarded than those of the missionaries and the Chinese merchants who took the road. It remained only to engage carts and wait for the four little tailors to sew on six stars to each of our flags.