of people through New England, has failed to declare a dividend. This is the natural and inevitable consequence of the recent history of that road. It is something that could easily be foreseen; nevertheless, even foreseen calamities bring hardship. This has been a real calamity to many people. And it does not relieve their present distress to know that the causes of that calamity are declared to be in the process of removal. On the other hand, it will not relieve that distress for any one to cry out against what is past, or to hamper those who are honestly and bravely trying to improve conditions.

It was for the purpose of rehabilitating the road that Mr. Howard Elliott was called, first to its presidency and then to the chairmanship of the Board of Directors. We have had occasion recently to refer to the new spirit of the New Haven road as exemplified in its dealings with its employees. We believe that even those who have suffered the most from former bad management will freely acknowledge that it is only fair to assume, until proof to the contrary appears, that the new spirit will be exhibited in the relation of the management of the road to its stockholders and to the public. The time for destructive criticism seems to us to be past. Whatever criticism is now offered should be offered in the spirit of reconstruction; and such criticism will be, we believe, welcome. What is needed even more than that is co-operation on the part of the public. It must not be forgotten that such a road as the New Haven is, in fact if not in terms, a National possession, and as it goes down or up public interests go down or up with it.

Mr. Elliott's recent statement that there are railway men who are as high-minded and patriotic and as great believers in the United States and its future as any class of men in this country is beyond question. If such men are to be in control of the management of our American railways, they must be given a fair chance to prove their patriotism and high-mindedness.

on Monday of this week in Santo Domingo has not only evoked a protest from the Dominican Government, but has also occasioned concern in the minds of those Americans who know what benefits have resulted from the part that the United States has taken in rehabilitating that country and are anxious that those benefits should be conserved.

It was first reported that the President intended to send a commission to supervise the Dominican elections. This report was not altogether ill founded, for the United States Minister to Santo Domingo made a statement to that effect. This report has been denied, or rather modified, by the Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan. In a statement issued last week Mr. Bryan says that these Americans who have been sent to visit the principal polling-places in Santo Domingo do not constitute a commission for which the United States Government asks any official sanction, but go simply as "individuals to lend moral support to the President of the Dominican Republic in his efforts toward securing free elections, "in order that, if any questions should arise as to the good faith of any one concerned, undeniably im

partial witnesses may be available to bear testimony to exactly what happened."

To understand the importance of this action it is necessary to recall that in 1907 the United States entered into an arrangement by which the customs duties of Santo Domingo were to be collected by representatives of the United States. Under this arrangement, out of the receipts from customs the obligations of the Dominican Government, which threatened to bring about serious international complications, have been fully met, the remainder that has gone into the Dominican treasury has exceeded the former total revenue, and the cause of frequent revolution has been in process of removal.

Unfortunately, political considerations in the United States have interfered with the efficient administration of this arrangement by the removal from the island of those who were acquainted with the facts and conditions, and by the countenancing of debts of a revolutionary government based on assassination. The present United States Minister went to Santo Domingo without any previous knowledge of conditions or of his duties, and now the Administration has put into operation a plan which is arousing resentment among the Dominicans. The intention behind this act is undoubtedly of the highest character. It springs from the desire of the Administration at Washington to further the cause of constitutional government in Latin America; but the method by which this intention is designed to be carried out does not seem to be adapted to a Latin-American country with national habits and laws as widely differing from those of the United States as are those of Santo Domingo.

What the United States is called upon to do with reference to Santo Domingo is not to attempt interference in its elections, but to carry out with efficiency and tactfulness the arrangement that has proved its own value. Only thus can the United States save from wreck its most promising Latin-American

by is shipped. Tuxpam, further south on the coast, in a less degree, has the same kind of importance, and its fall is likely to follow that of Tampico. The insurgents greatly need a seaport. Their advance so far southward is a serious danger to Huerta's hold on Vera Cruz and even on the capital. The attack upon Tampico was pushed vigorously last week, and on Friday reports were current that the Federal garrison had surrendered. Half a dozen or more war-ships of foreign Powers clustered about the harbor, ready to assist refugees from the city. Merchant ships were chartered by the naval commanders on which to place refugees. Admiral Fletcher, on the Rhode Island, commanded three American vessels, and his arrangements were effective and extensive. The combatants seem to have realized that a large landing force could be employed if necessary, and foreign property and persons were respected so far as war conditions allowed. It is said that Admiral Fletcher warned the Mexican Federal gunboats in the harbor against firing in such a way as to endanger non-combatants.

Ojinaga, a Mexican border town, is the place where the hundreds of refugees from Chihuahua arrived last week. With them came a Federal army of three or four thousand men under command of General Mercado. These troops arrived, say the despatches, without food, with little ammunition, and worn by a hundred miles' march. The condition of the civilian refugees, many of whom walked the entire distance, may be imagined. Most of them were allowed to pass the Texan line into Presidio. The Federal troops at once set to work to fortify Ojinaga in imminent fear of an attack by the army of General Villa, the largest part of which he sent in hot pursuit of the Federals before he occupied Chihuahua.

From Mexico City the news of last week included that of the long-delayed declaration by Congress that its own election was valid, that the Presidential election was null because returns were not received from the number of districts required by law, and that a new election should be held next July-in short, the Huerta programme. A detailed but extremely improbable report was that Huerta was about to join forces with Zapata, the semi-brigand, semi-rebel chief, and establish a new Mexican capital at Iguala, far to the south and beyond a mountain range. The rumor followed news that Zapata had

been attacking Federal forces within fifteen miles of the capital.

Nowhere have the Federal arms been victorious of late. As one reads of the insurgents' forward movements and bold campaigns, their ultimate success seems— -or would seem in any place but Mexico-all but certain.

OLD WOMAN

Catherine Breshkovsky, sent to Siberia three years ago as a revolutionist, recently made a courageous attempt to escape, A BRAVE and one which was all but successful. The accounts cabled from Russia state that she changed clothing with a man political prisoner, who for three days deceived the police by impersonating her. She had a false passport and some money, and was on her way to Irkutsk in a peasant's cart when arrested. Fellow-conspirators had cut the telegraph wires, but communication was restored too soon to allow the plan to succeed. Probably the intention was to reach the railway and proceed to Mukden and Korea. The despatches add: "The valiant old woman had stood five days and nights of exposure in the bleakest frozen waste of the world without heaviness of heart or damage to her health.' She will probably now be sent into some even more remote place of exile.

Madame Breshkovsky, who is often called "Babuska," or "Grandmother," by her friends and allies in Russia and America, believed in revolution in Russia because there was no other way of obtaining free speech or free political action. She was tried in 1910 (not her first trial, conviction, or exile) at about the same time with Mr. Tchaikovsky. Our readers will remember the earnest and successful effort by public men in this country to have these trials open rather than secret.

Mr. Tchaikovsky was fully acquitted, but the indomitable woman fighter for liberty was convicted and sent to the Kara mines for a year at hard labor, and thence to the East Siberian town of Kirensk, on the Lena River, whence the attempt to escape was made.

Mr. George Kennan saw Madame Breshkovsky in her exile in the Transbaikal in 1885, and, writing after her conviction in 1910, he said: "Her future is darker now because she is twenty-five years older, and her health has been broken by hardships, anxieties, and long imprisonment. All who know her, however, feel confident that neither

age, nor sickness, nor imprisonment, nor exile can break her courageous spirit "—a prediction which has been fully confirmed by her life-history since.

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST FINLAND

gan fourteen years

Although the Czar has been recently prosecuting with all possible vigor his campaign against the Jews, he is not neglecting the campaign which he beago against the Finns. In his coronation oath he swore that he would "maintain the Constitution which was granted to the Grand Duchy of Finland by his Majesty the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, of glorious memory," but he violated that oath, as he afterward violated the solemn promise that he made to the Russian people in the Freedom Manifesto. Ever since 1899 he has been trying to destroy the Finnish Constitution, which he swore to maintain, and to punish Finnish officials who do not share his view as to the nature of an oath. The judges of the Finnish courts are sworn to obey the Finnish Constitution, and when the Czar calls upon them to enforce a law which has never been sanctioned by the Finnish Diet, and which is therefore absolutely unconstitutional, they firmly decline to break their oaths merely because the Czar has broken his. They are then arrested, taken to St. Petersburg, and tried in a Russian court for refusing to give force to an unconstitutional law.

Last September sixteen Finnish judges condemned by the St. Petersburg Circuit Court for refusal to recognize the validity of the socalled "Equality Law " of 1912 were arrested at their homes in Finland and taken under guard to a Russian prison, where they are to be confined for a period of sixteen months. On the following day the same Court sentenced Judges Sandbeck and Lukander, of the Viborg Court of Appeals, to four months' imprisonment for the same offense. Twentyone Finnish judges and officials are now undergoing punishment for refusal to violate their oaths, and the Czar not very long ago began criminal proceedings against the members of the City Council of Helsingfors.

Just at present it is Finnish judges and officials who are suffering; but the Russian campaign of aggression will soon affect the masses of the people. To adopt the vivid metaphor of the Russian Liberal press, the

THE RIGHT OF PUBLIC ASSEMBLY

Shortly before the prorogation of the Russian Duma for the summer recess the Czar caused to be introduced a bill to extend to Finland the Russian laws concerning political crime. If this bill is enacted, its effect will be to abrogate the right of public assembly, which the Finns have enjoyed for centuries; to subject the Finnish press to the restraint of "compulsory orders," which are to be enforced, as in Russia, by fine and imprisonment; and to brand as a "criminal organization" the Social-Democratic party, which is the strongest force in the Finnish Diet. If the bill becomes a law, the famous omnibus section, No. 129, of the Russian penal code will restrain or prevent almost everything that the Finns have been accustomed to do, except to breathe.

The fate of the bill will depend largely upon the Octobrists, who hold the balance of power in the Russian Duma. If they vote with the Nationalists in open session, as they did in the committee to which the bill was referred, Finland may be reduced politically to the level of a Russian province, where the governor makes laws ("compulsory orders ") at his own discretion and enforces them by his own power. It is not certain, however, that the Octobrists will hold together on the question of completely subjugating Finland. When the bill was favorably reported from committee by a vote of 20 to 4, Baron Meyendorf, the ablest and most respected of the Octobrist leaders, gave notice of his intention to abandon his party, for the reason that he was not in sympathy with the Nationalistic tendencies, and did not favor the extension of Russian political laws to Finland. I prefer," he said, " to run wild or do nothing. I am too much of an 'alien' myself to take part in a game which has for its object the creation of a Nationalistic majority in the Duma."

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The "ritual murder case and the Finland case will undoubtedly be made the subjects of fierce debate in the Duma. Meanwhile the Finns will continue to offer passive resistance to the Czar's Russianizing policy, and the work of subjugation will become increasingly difficult as larger and larger classes of the population begin to feel the iron grip of the monarch's hand. It may

be possible to imprison a few hundred recalcitrant judges and officials, but will it be possible to overcome the passive resistance of a whole nation?

THE DOUMERGUE CABINET

Last week Senator Gaston Doumergue succeeded in forming a Ministry to succeed the Barthou Cabinet, overthrown the preceding week by the French Chamber of Deputies. The crisis which led to that overthrow was peculiarly interesting and complicated; 'it involved not only political and military conditions, it was also vital from financial and economic points of view.

The particular incident which ended the Barthou Ministry was the question of taxing Government bonds. The retiring Premier favored no taxation; the incoming Premier is said to favor such taxation. He is also believed to have approved the essential points in the income tax bill as passed by the Chamber. With regard to army measures, he would, so the papers say, apply the new three-year military service law, but only as a temporary necessity, hoping to reduce the service as soon as the international situation appears to justify such action. As to electoral reform in the direction of proportional representation, the Premier is believed to be a middle-of-the-roader," expecting to compromise the differences between the Chamber and the Senate in this matter. As to education, he is known to be a determined supporter of non-sectarian public schools.

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