THE Governments of Rome and Belgrade are to-day working out the practical details of the agreements they have reached with regard to their former disputes, and determining the conditions of their relations in the future. Especial credit is due to Signor Mussolini, who insisted that his country should honor her signature on the Italo-Yugoslav Treaty of Rapallo, which was concluded November 12, 1920, and that in the common interests of both countries this Treaty should be put into force.

The settling of the Adriatic question has a special significance in maintaining peace in that part of Europe. We need but recall that since the famous secret Treaty of London - concluded between the Triple Entente and Italy in 1915 Italo-Serbian relations have more than once caused serious disturbance to the victorious Allies. These disturbances continued even after the Treaty of Rapallo had been signed, and went on until very lately, because Italy was rather in a hurry to put it in force. Nevertheless, the Treaty has been negotiated and signed without intermediaries between Italy and Yugoslavia, who, of their own volition, have agreed to the formula contained in its text: that the two Kingdoms, desiring to establish a régime of sincere friendship and cordial relations for the common good of the two peoples, have agreed,' and so forth. It has taken Italy more than two years to conform. This is not the place to inquire into the reasons for such a long hesitation. It is

enough to know that at present Signor Mussolini's Government is disposed to carry out the Treaty.

The Treaty of Rapallo is the basis of the arrangements which were made some time ago and those that have just been negotiated. It laid down in a definite and incontestable way the ItaloYugoslav frontiers and the question of the independent State of Fiume, as well as the fate of the city of Zara, which has become an Italian enclave in Yugoslav Dalmatia. As for the other questions at issue, this treaty contains merely solutions in principle and provides that the details are to be arranged in subsequent agreements. This unfortunate gap in the Treaty has enabled the Italians to pretend that up to the present Italy has had the right to maintain her occupation in those territories which, according to the Treaty of Rapallo, were to revert to Yugoslavia, in view of the fact that the proposed final arrangements had not yet been worked out.

What could the Belgrade Government do in the face of such an interpretation of the agreement? Yugoslav public opinion suggested that the Treaty should be registered with the League of Nations and that Italy might in this way be compelled to execute it. But the Government was of the opinion that a friendly arrangement is worth more than compulsion when it is a matter of establishing friendly relations between two peoples. Conversations were resumed between the Governments of Rome and Belgrade and resulted in the

agreement of Santa Margarita, which establishes the conditions for the execution of the Treaty of Rapallo.

This agreement, signed at Rome on October 23, 1922, provides that Italy must evacuate the territories assigned to Yugoslavia within the space of twelve days after the exchange of ratifications, and that a mixed commission of Italians and Yugoslavs is to meet at Abbazia to supervise this evacuation and to proceed to the regulation of all questions with regard to the organization and government of the free State of Fiume. Three conventions and a protocol, signed at the same time, are added to this agreement. The first provides for a tariff régime and frontier traffic between the Italian city of Zara and the adjacent territories of Yugoslavia in Dalmatia. The second relates to the suppression of smuggling and to the regulation of financial laws. The third includes conditions with regard to provincial personal-property and real-estate in Dalmatia — the systematizing of hereditary interests in the provinces, districts, and communes; a division of provincial property, as well as the archives, of Dalmatia; nationalization of companies and commercial houses, and so forth.

The protocol provides that communication between Zara and the adjacent territory, as well as certain clauses of the third convention, shall remain in force until the Italo-Yugoslav Treaty of Commerce, which the two states agree to conclude 'in the interests of the two peoples and to strengthen the bonds between them,' takes effect.

The agreements between Italy and Yugoslavia have been in process of execution for a month. The Italian troops have already evacuated the whole region belonging to Yugoslavia except the port of Baros and the Delta. The mixed commission is at work at Abbazia, and a conference has opened

at Rome to negotiate the commercial treaty. Such are the results so far achieved.

Unfortunately the mixed commission at Abbazia has run into serious difficulties in the interpretation and the application of the Treaty of Rapallo and the agreement of Santa Margarita. One of these difficulties arises from the Italian failure to evacuate the port of Baros and the Delta. Various explanations are given by the Italians for maintaining this occupation. For one thing, it is said that the Italian Government will evacuate as soon as an agreement has been reached regulating the independent State of Fiume and the use of its harbor. According to other versions, the Italian Government looks forward to the assignment of the port of Baros and the Delta to the State of Fiume and not to Yugoslavia.

But Article 4 of the Treaty of Rapallo is precise on this point, stipulating that the State of Fiume consists of a corpus separatum having the boundaries of the city and district of Fiume as they existed before the war and a part of what was Istria, a description of which is given. Neither the port of Baros nor the Delta is within these limits, for they form part of the neighboring district of Sushak. This question, however, had been determined at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, since the delegates of the Italian Government, in avoiding the introduction of a definite clause with regard to the port of Baros and the Delta, tacitly recognized the justice of the Yugoslav claim.

Count Sforza, who was the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, nevertheless consented in a special letter, in his own handwriting, to assigning the port of Baros and the Delta to Yugoslavia. He therefore agreed to it; and this letter is appended to the Treaty of Rapallo. Moreover, a map on the scale of one to

two hundred thousand is attached to the Treaty, and on this Count Sforza himself traced the frontier line between Yugoslavia and the State of Fiume, leaving outside the limits of this State the port of Baros and the Delta. On this point, then, there ought to be no dispute so far as Italy is concerned.

The Italian Delegation in the mixed commission at Abbazia have placed the question on another ground. They pretend that the port of Fiume, together with that of Baros and the Delta, constitutes an indivisible unit, and that in order to maintain this unit they must place it under the administration of a special organization, which they designate by the name of the 'Italo-Yugoslav Consortium.' This proposal is now being studied by the Belgrade Government.

The Yugoslav press shows no particular enthusiasm for such a combination, feeling that the arrangement would confirm Italy's dominance at Fiume, and believing that there is no reason for connecting the question of evacuating the port of Baros and the Delta with the organization of the free State of Fiume, and that since the Treaty is explicit on this point - Italy has no

right to act toward Yugoslavia like a conquering Power to exert pressure upon negotiations while they are in progress and to compel Yugoslavia to accept conditions.

Several other differences of opinion have developed in the mixed commission at Abbazia. The Italian Delegation proposes that the sovereignty of the State of Fiume shall be placed under a common Italo-Yugoslav administration, whereas the Government of Belgrade would prefer to maintain strictly the Treaty of Rapallo, leaving the State of Fiume to administer its own port. The exploitation of the railway and the organization of the tariff administration in the territory of the State of Fiume also raise difficulties.

Finally, the Italians make objections to the interpretation of Article 2 of the Santa Margarita agreement, and insist that it provides merely for arbitration by the President of the Swiss Republic in case of dispute over the delimitation of the frontier and not in all the problems that there are to solve.

Under these conditions it is scarcely probable that the negotiations now in progress can speedily result in a definite arrangement.

AROUND Lenin we see repeated the miserable comedy that is so common at the deathbeds of emperors and kings. From near and far medical eminences are summoned to conclude solemnly – pro primo, that death is inevitable, pro secundo, that it may occur at any time, and pro tertio, that it may be considerably postponed. One does not need to be even a medical student to repeat this commonplace about the uncertainty of human existence. Moreover, these medical authorities are naturally forbidden by their professional vows to give any detailed information concerning the nature of the disease. But we have the right to wonder whether this mystery in which Lenin's illness has been wrapped may not have a deeper cause.

Lenin is paralyzed on one side and finds it difficult to speak. This indicates an ordinary stroke. Then the question arises whether this stroke is due to a gradual hardening of the arteries, or whether it indicates some other chronic disease. When I try to summarize the various bits of information that have seeped out, I cannot escape the suspicion that rumor spoke true when a few years ago it said that Lenin suffered from general paralysis. I wish to emphasize that this is a personal conclusion which does not pretend to be scientific. The question, moreover, is so difficult to answer that not even the medical authorities at his bedside can be said to be unanimous.

But if it should be true that Lenin is in the last stages of a general paralysis,

then it is easy to understand that everything is done to conceal that fact; and if the suspicion should be officially denied, such a denial has not the slightest significance. Probably a postmortem will be forbidden and all possible measures will be taken to keep secret the cause of death, just as the development of the illness has been concealed. Perhaps scholars will dispute for decades and through lack of evidence never come to any definite conclusion. Why this secrecy?

The reason is simple.

Should it ever be definitely proved that Lenin died of a general paralysis, the human race would face a fact which it could not endure. The great Russian tragedy would thereby be converted, not into a tragi-comedy, but into a grotesque farce — or rather into a kind of drama that has never been known before and for which there consequently is no name. For it is self-evident that if Lenin is now in the last stages of a general paralysis, he must have been in some stage of its development when he appeared in the political arena. To state the situation in popular language, this would mean that it is a liberated lunatic who has acquired autocratic powers over one hundred and forty million people and who has plunged them into the worst purgatory of mass murder and hunger that any people ever had to pass through. No, as I said, such a fact the human race could not endure looking in the eye. Let therefore still more professors of medicine be summoned! And let them declare on

their word of honor that Lenin has never been insane and that the cause of death was an ordinary cerebral hemorrhage.

Perhaps we can console ourselves with the following line of reasoning: It is not so bad as it sounds. Formerly it was said that God had created man in his own image. Now every school child knows that man creates his God according to his own image. The people select as their leaders those who incarnate their own characteristics. If Lenin had not symbolized the Russian people as they were in November 1917, he would never have come to power. It is not as an individual that he has exercised his power, but in his symbolic quality. He has therefore only been the means, the instrument through which the people have led themselves into their misfortune.

There is a certain truth in this. But unfortunately no consolation.

During the period between Lenin's defeat in the summer and his victory in the fall of 1917, I went to Petrograd to study revolutionary psychology. Thanks to the kindness of Russian colleagues, I was able to observe in the hospitals certain cases that could be connected with the peculiar political circumstances. But I soon learned that it was not in the hospitals but out in the open life that one ought to study the pathological effects of the revolution. To cite one example, I saw all the trolley cars overflowing with soldiers: they sat on the roofs; they clung to the steps as though life depended on getting on board. I asked someone what it meant and was told: "These men do not want to go home. They think they are well off here. They eat and sleep and all day long they have nothing to do but ride in the cars. They pay no fare. They ride around all day long.' The effect they gave was that of a mass sinking down into a meaningless existence

- down into dullness, indifference, and automatism.

I discussed these matters fully with a member of the government that was overturned by Lenin. He said something that made a deep impression on me: 'After all, the Bolsheviki have in one respect accomplished something useful they have restored the authority of the State. We made our great mistake when, believing in the people, we destroyed this authority.'

When the grip of the State's power on the half-savage tribes began to relax, the whole mass began to glide toward dissolution. Then the embryos of humanity and civilization that had been formed in the people also began to slide toward dissolution, leaving not only the masses but also individuals in a state of chaos, deterioration, and dull indifference.

It was under such circumstances that the most absurd of illusions was able to gain credence and be greeted as a salvation from misery: namely, faith in a paradise, not through the direct interference in the world-order by God, but through something still more wonderful the elevation of the proletariat to God. The proletariat alone was entitled to live, and in its name society was to be cleansed of everything that culture had created in the form of institutions or personal worth. The proletariat- that is, the illiterate, earthbound, unproductive Russian mob

was to create a new world-order of righteousness, just as God once created heaven and earth. He alone could become leader of the people who with heart and soul accepted the new faith.

Much evil has been spoken of Lenin, but no one has ever accused him of not acting in good faith. He was a true believer. But must not large parts of mental life have become extinct before a person could arrive at an irrevocable