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the hour arrives, in a coalition excluding Socialists. He also is not to be hurried; he also can wait. The time that M. Briand consecrates to farming, M. Barthou consecrates to books, literature, and history.

A NEW CONFLICT IMPENDING JF, UNDER the influence of the Socialists, the present majority of the Chamber persists in a more and more advanced policy, a conflict between the Senate and the lower house is probable. Already on one question, that of the amnesty, the Senate opposed a vote of the Chamber, which finally was obliged to yield. In regard to the suppression of the Embassy at the Vatican, fiscal measures, and reprisals against the large railroad companies, serious difficulties are foreseen between the two assemblies. A certain number of the Socialists and the more advanced radicals have already begun a rather violent campaign against the Senate. The Senate is not looking for trouble, neither will it avoid it. But these very experienced and clever politicians who compose it intend giving battle only from a strong position.

Much will depend, in this respect, on the result of the approaching municipal elections, which will take place in May. If these elections turn more or less against the existing government, the Senate's resistance will be increased. They will not hesitate then to put themselves in opposition to the Chamber. In case the Chamber should persist in its aggressive attitude, there will be no other alternative, theoretically at least, to end this conflict but a dissolution. The dissolution of the Chamber can be proposed by the President of the Republic and voted by the Senate. This has never been resorted to, but exceptional circumstances may render it imperative.

From the point of view of exterior policy, the government of M. Herriot has taken the stand of the most conciliatory and friendly intentions toward Germany. It has accepted the evacuation of the Ruhr, with the least possible delay, and without demanding anything in exchange, although it could have, and perhaps should have, done so. They hoped, as a result of this attitude, a change of opinion in Germany, reënforcing the parties of the Left to the detriment of the party of the Right.

It was exactly the contrary that happened. M. Herriot in effect drew a check on democratic Germany, which was returned to him uncashed. The government of M. Luther, the most reactionary, the most monarchical in Germany since the war, was a hard blow to French governmental policy.

M. Herriot, to whom German events have thus given the lie, is obliged, whether he wants to or not, to return more or less to the policy of M. Poincaré. He lately made a speech before the Deputies on the question of the disarmament of Germany and of security, which might have been one of M. Poincaré himself. Suddenly confronted with the armaments of Germany and the German peril, he feels himself obliged to sound the alarm.

The same reasons which weigh on him and which determined his reversal of policy toward Germany, will weigh, one may be sure, on his successors. France will be obliged, more and more, to insist on the problem of her security being settled, once and for all. The only efficacious solution of this problem for France is a close understanding with England, the obligation on Germany to disarm, and the effective demilitarization of the Rhineland!

T

HE most interesting problems in American politics to-day are: What is the opposition to the Republican party, when will it crystallize, under what leadership will it find expression, and what will be its issues?

The election last year added cumulative proof to what was already rather convincingly clear, namely, that the United States is a two-party country. The failure of the La Follette party, following the failure of the Progressive party twelve years before, and the two considered in connection with the fate of all other third parties in all other years, is accepted as meaning that the two-party mechanism is deeply imbedded in the American system of government and in the American habit of mind. To add that the election last year demonstrated that the present state of American social organization does not provide room or occasion for a radical third party, is merely to say that this is a two-party country.

The Democratic party has a duty of providing a form, a vehicle, for the opposition to the Republican party; and equally a duty of conforming, of accommodating itself to the needs of that function. That is the fact which needs to be recognized by the Democratic leaders. So long as they thresh about in a search of history, or a survey of sections, to find a definition of the Democratic party, they arrive at nothing except increasingly acrimonious differences among groups with varying

opinions of what the party should be. How true this latter assertion is, may be shown by an analysis of the Democratic party, in terms of sections, which was made last fall, as one of the echoes of the despair into which the Democratic party was thrown by the election. This analysis was made by a Southern Democrat whose ideas are mainly those of a Western Democrat, George F. Milton, editor of the Chattanooga News.

A HOUSE DIVIDED?

HESE sentences describing the geo

Traphical divisions of the Democrats

are from a full-page editorial, which was one of many variations from Democratic sources, of the question: "What are we going to do about it?" This article has been the subject of more discussion by Democratic leaders than any other analysis. I have seen studies of it and comments on it from Democratic National Committeemen and leaders in Maine, Kansas, Kentucky, Texas, Ohio, Colorado, and elsewhere.

Of the oldest and largest section of the party, Mr. Milton said:

In the "Solid South" the Democratic party is traditional, racial. . . . The South [is] riveted to the Democratic party by the Negro problem. . . In the South, the Democratic party has been deeply conservativeoften reactionary-as to economic advances. Child labor legislation encounters stern vetoes by Southern textile magnates; modern labor laws meet . . . de

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aspects of the party in the South which seem conservative are merely the fruit of the one thing by which so many aspects of the Democratic party in the South are determined, namely, the existence of the Negro question.

The Southern Democratic party, whenever there is a real trial of strength within itself, unaffected by the Negro problem, usually turns out to be progressive, and sometimes radical. Last year, when McAdoo was trying for the Democratic nomination, he won every Southern state in which he tried. On the other hand, Senator Underwood, who is a Southerner, but also a conservative, carried only his own state, and even that under circumstances which showed how little real hold conservatism has in the South. This result, as between McAdoo and Underwood, was ascribed partly to the Ku Klux Klan issue; but in reality that had less weight than was made to appear.

CONFLICTS BETWEEN WETS AND DRYS

CLEAVAGE exists between the

sions of the Democratic party, as seen by a man who happens to be at once an editor with a background of scholarship, and also an active politician. In justice to Mr. Milton, I should make it clear that these necessarily brief quotations do not adequately picture his whole thought. He thinks that the contrast between the Western and Southern sections of the party is more apparent than actual; that the commonly accepted picture of the South as conservative or reactionary was more true ten years ago than it is to-day; and that it is possible for the South to unite with the West.

In fact, this is the net of Mr. Milton's reflections-that the South and West should unite in some kind of Liberal Democratic League, make war on the present local Democratic organizations in the Eastern states, drive them out of power, and erect in the Eastern states a Democratic organization sympathetic to the South and West.

I think, fully as strongly as Mr. Milton does, that the Southern Democracy's conservatism is merely superficial. Those

the West, but it is not irreparable. At the same time, it is necessary to call attention to another cleavage, not mentioned by Mr. Milton. Part of the Democratic party is violently dry; part of it violently wet. The Southern stateswhere there is really only one party: the Democratic-were among the earliest to go dry. They did so largely because of the same condition that determines most things political in the South. The South exiled liquor because it was unwilling to endure its devastating effect on the Negro, and indirectly on itself.

In the West, also, the Democratic party is largely dry, because, in the West, nearly everybody is on the dry side. In a few Western states like Wisconsin and Minnesota, what is left of the old liquor activity in politics takes a rather furtive refuge locally in the Democratic party; but even in those states, in any local Democratic primary, with the issue clearly raised and a large vote out, the drys invariably win.

In the East, the Democratic party is

prevailingly wet. In some of the Eastern states such as New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania-the Democratic organization is very wet. It is also wet in Maryland. In some of these states the wet issue is the principal cause in which the local Democratic leaders are interested.

On other than geographical lines, of the two outstanding Democratic leaders in the sense of having organized followings, William G. McAdoo is very dry, while his rival, Governor Smith of New York, is wet.

The dry vs. wet cleavage is deeper than any other chasm in the Democratic party.

Surveyed geographically, therefore, the Democratic party is not an entity. It is at least a trinity, and possibly even more nearly hydraheaded.

If we now survey it from the point of view of leadership in the House and

sissippi, who delivered the keynote speech at the last Democratic National Convention, made a reply in which, after intimating pretty strongly that his Democratic colleague from Maryland is a "reactionary" and a "defender of trusts," said:

There is not room in the United States for two reactionary parties, and whenever the Democratic attires itself in the garb of reactionism it will cease to function.

To that, Senator Bruce felt called upon to talk back. Some of his references to his adversary included such words as "small-bore partisan"; but it is not necessary to quote any more to show the strong differences, even the hostility, between two Democratic Senators. Senator Bruce went on to say that in his judgment the ills of the Democratic party in the recent campaign arose from the fact that, in the preceding Congress, DemHarrison had allied

The representatives from the Solid South still call themselves Democrats but here you have gentlemen from the South—a section that for years was wedded to the idea of local self-government and state sovereignty -ready to vote to establish a great national commercial fertilizer factory at Muscle Shoals.

The Democratic party has recently been identifying itself to such an extent with departures of one sort or another from all the old, true American ideas and ideals that it has lost for the time being the confidence of the country. . I, for one, am not to be intimidated by these vague references to "trusts."

Whereupon Senator Harrison of Mis

ocratic leaders like themselves with La Follette.

It was not merely between Bruce and Harrison that these fundamental differences emerged. There was the same kind of difference between Bruce, on one side, and, on the other, so typical a Western Democratic Senator as Walsh of Montana, who was the chairman of the last national convention. On one occasion Walsh said, referring to Bruce:

It is, to say the least, a little remarkable that a Senator who signalized his appearance among us by voting for the Republican candidate for chairman of one of the important committees of the Senate, should have constituted himself the mentor of his associates upon this side of the Chamber and the censor of their acts and their motives.

Between other groups of Democratic

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Senators, there was the same kind of acrimonious exchange. One was between Senator Dial of South Carolina, and the Democratic leader, Robinson of Arkansas. On that occasion, Senator Dial spoke of what is the sorest ache in the Democratic consciousness: the feeling mentioned previously, that they were beaten because, in the Congress preceding, they had followed La Follette:

The Democratic party as it is, has suffered successive defeats and disasters in appeals to the people because it has ceased to be Democratic. . . Let us manfully realize the truth that we are beaten . . . because by our own weakness and cowardice and errors we have alienated public confidence. We have fallen into shifty opportunism, seizing every fad of the moment, yielding to every pressure from lobbies and galleries, veering to every wind that seemed to promise popularity, regardless of the direction from which it blew. Instead of calling to us the insurgent Republicans and offering them opportunity to be useful and effective with us by adopting and accepting our principles, we have abjectly trailed behind them, allowing them to lead us to combined uselessness and ineffectiveness not only mortifying but ludicrous. Trying to use them in ways disgraceful to both, we have allowed them to use us to the damnation of both.

Once we commend the Democrats to accept the condition that they can fulfill their function only by being the opposition to the Republican party, the next question is: Just what is the Republican party? Coolidge and the other persons now in control of the Republican party mean it to be, mainly, the party of conservatism-but not of so much conservatism as to affront everybody who is not of that school of thought.

It was essentially an act of conservatism to outlaw La Follette and his associates. That, alone, is enough to secure to the Republicans such advantages as go with the conservative brand. But there are curious exceptions to the Republican conservatism. President Coolidge, during the recent session of Congress, gave support to a bill regulating rents in the District of Columbia; a bill, which, in the form in which Coolidge supported it, was

described as "the most radical measure ever supported by any President in peacetime"; a more far-reaching attempt at government invasion of the rights of private property. Essentially, the bill proposed to apply the principles of the control of railroads by the Interstate Commerce Commission, to the control of houses and apartments for rent in the District of Columbia.

Also, Coolidge was elected, and Harding before him, on the theory that the Republican party is opposed to government in business; but Harding gave more attention to the government-owned mercantile marine than to any other domestic question, and Coolidge has never indicated any purpose inconsistent with the Government continuing in the shipping business.

The Republican party, in short, does what is commended to the Democratic party-it does not take its positions on any basis of logical or historical consistency; it merely presents the public with a group of positions on current questions.

If the Democratis think there is a large body of voters in America opposed to government regulation of rents, and government operation of ships, those two opportunities of contrast to the party in power are open for them to take. That is the sort of opportunity they will have to take if they are to marshal the opposition to the Republicans.

As

THE FARMER AND THE TARIFF

S RESPECTS the tariff, the Republicans apparently intend to be consistent with their historical position-apparently rather more, indeed, than merely consistent. During the closing days of the recent session, through President Coolidge's Agricultural Commission and through other Administration leaders, a tariff policy was proposed that goes beyond anything America has ever known. For the first time, the policy of a "tariff for protection" was not enough. A "tariff for stimulation" was proposed.

The Agricultural Commission made the rather startling proposal that the American farmer should cease to consider either