Island of Tierra del Fuego, half of which is Chilean territory. Exports of wool to the United States last year amounted to $11,850,000.

Chile is about to add to her navy, as a result of negotiations with Great Britain, the dreadnought Canada, three torpedo boat destroyers and a transport. The Canada is one of two battleships built for Chile in England, both of which were requisitioned by the British at the beginning of the war. Chile has accepted the destroyers and transport in place of the other dreadnought.

The Presidential election will take place on June 25. Electors will be chosen who will name the President the following month; their functions, as in the United States, being merely nominal. The President's term is five years and he is not re-eligible. The Allied Liberal parties, composed of democrats and radicals, on April 25 nominated Arturo Alessandri, formerly Minister of the Interior, on a platform favoring administrative decentralization and compulsory arbitration of labor disputes. The Unionist Convention which met on May 4 nominated Ruis Barros Borgono, President of the National Mortgage Bank, as its candidate.

Chile has come out best in another kind of contest-the fourth South American Olympic tournament-which closed at Santiago on April 25. For the third time the Chilean athletes were victors, scoring sixty-one points against fortythree for Uruguay and twenty for Argentina.

URUGUAY

Dr. Baltazar Brum, President of Uruguay, in a remarkable address to the students of the University of Montevideo on April 21, urged the formation

of an American League of Nations for common action against aggression threatening any of them from outside and for the arbitration of purely American disputes. There should be absolute equality among all the participating States and all should make a declaration similar to the Monroe Doctrine, placing them on the same footin; as the United States for joint action against European aggression and to secure the solidarity of the American Continent. The American League should be formed without prejudice to the League of Nations and should any member have a controversy with the League of Nations that member should ask for the co-operation of the American League in settling the controversy. Following this address a delegation of residents from the United States congratulated President Brum, and the Peruvian Chamber of Deputies telegraphed a message congratulating the Uruguayan people and Parliament upon the doctrine of American solidarity formulated by Dr. Brum, saying it "has the approval of the honorable nations of America."

There were some critics at home, however, and the Pais, one of the principal Montevideo newspapers, severely attacked the President for his speech. Dr. Brum challenged Dr. Rodriguez Larreta, director of the Pais, to fight a duel. The latter replied that he would fight only if the duel took place in a foreign country, as, if he injured or killed the President, the police might make trouble. Thereupon the duel was called off. Dr. Larreta was codirector of the Pais with Washington Beltran, who was killed in a duel by the former President, José Batlle y Ordonez, as noted last month by CURRENT HISTORY.

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THE

ENGLAND

HE British Government's chief problems during the month under review were connected with the new budget, labor unrest, the acute housing situation, and the strengthening of the territorial army.

The new Budget bill brought in and presented to the House of Commons on April 19 aroused great interest and widespread discussion. In introducing this bill Mr. Chamberlain, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, spoke for two hours in serious mood. As a rule it is the income tax and super-tax passages in a budget speech that create the greatest interest. Mr. Chamberlain touched on these but lightly. There was evident relief when he announced that there would be no change in the standard rate of 6d. to the pound, and the labor members were all attention when he stated that he reserved judgment on the proposal to levy income tax on the profits of co-operative societies. The recommendations of the Income Tax Commission, he said, were to be accepted in their entirety. The general scheme of income tax reform was to be embodied in a later bill. Certain income tax increases, however, were enumerated in detail; many large increases were announced, representing a total of from 40 to 60 per cent., from Jan. 1 of the present year.

Of the general financial situation Mr. Chamberlain spoke hopefully. The huge floating debt, he said, was the worst feature, but he hoped to be able at the close of the financial year to apply £234,000,000 to reduction of the whole debt and £70,000,000 to reduction of the floating debt, which on April 1 stood at £1,312,000,000. The burden of meeting an estimated expense of £1,184,102,000 on the budget proposed, which asked only for £1,418,300,000, he said, would be terrific; yet it would be a heroic accomplishment, which no other country in Europe could contemplate. Twenty such

budgets, he stated, would wipe out the entire national debt.

The housing problem continued to give solicitude. A White Paper issued in April recommended that raises in rent should be limited to 40 per cent., and that a time limit be fixed for the making of repairs. The construction policy of the Ministry of Health was the object of frequent attack as extravagant and unwise. Mr. A. A. Hudson, K. C., former President of the Tribunal of Appeal under the London Building acts, estimated toward the end of April that there would be an average loss of £50 per annum on each house which the Ministry, vested with unlimited powers, was constructing. This loss must fall on the taxpayer. The causes of the excessive cost were two: the obsession of the ideal of the Garden City had led to unnecessary size of construction, and detachment, or semi-detachment, instead of grouping in rows; and no attempt had been made by the Ministry to keep down the expenses either in the case of the local authorities, the labor contractors, or the laborers themselves, who asked virtually whatever salary they pleased.

A negative side to the Ministry's policy was set forth by John W. Simpson, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who declared that this policy was likely to cause widespread unemployment in the building trades and to affect its steadiest and most highly skilled artisans. The Ministry, he pointed out, had prohibited every kind of building but its own.

Dr. Addison, the Minister of Health, in laying the first slab of a block of concrete houses on April 24, defended the Ministry's policy, asserted that every effort was being made to achieve economy, and denied that the Ministry was causing or would cause unemployment.

The miners' strike was settled by the miners' acceptance of the Government offer on April 15.

Although the Government had made headway in the formation of joint industrial councils, only the transport workers had welcomed this medium of arbitration, the organized trades standing aloof and regarding the Government councils with clearly shown suspicion.

British foreign policy continued to be the object of attack by leaders of the Labor Party. At a conference of delegates representing 169 trade union, cooperative and labor organizations, held on April 24, Ramsay Macdonald, leader of the Labor Party, attacked the results reached by the San Remo Conference, which he denounced as temporary patchwork and futile, and declared that if labor wished to govern it must create and follow a foreign policy of its own. This policy must be based upon world need alone, upon world independ

ence.

A significant countermovement was reported from the Midland counties on April 26, when a large conference of Unionist workingmen, held at Leamington, launched a formal revolt against the attempts of the Laborites and Socialists to capture the trades unions and co-operative societies, and against nationalism, socialism, syndicalism, and all the things which meant the destruction of the old order on which the foundations of British society and democracy reposed. Similar meetings were being held in other parts of the country at the same time.

The Labor delegation charged to conduct a mission of investigation in Soviet Russia, after some delay, succeeded in obtaining passports from the Foreign Office on the authorization of the Government and with the consent of the Supreme Council at San Remo, on April 22, and its departure for Moscow was expected soon. This delegation was composed of representatives of the trades unions, the Labor Party and the Independent Labor Party. The object was to find out whether the Bolsheviki had abandoned the Red Terror, and whether they had the support, direct or tacit, of the bulk of the population; to determine whether Russia was in a position to export goods, and to what extent; and to ascertain the condition of Russian Soviet

industries, and whether they can be run successfully under the Soviet régime. A similar labor mission to Hungary to inquire into the massacres in that country, the internment camps and the condition of the working classes was projected as soon as the necessary passports could be obtained.

The inauguration ceremony of the British memorial erected in the cemetery at Zeebrugge in honor of the officers and men of the Salvage Corps who died attempting to block up this port on the night of April 23, 1918, took place in Brussels on April 25. Representatives of the British and Belgian Navies were present and stirring addresses were delivered. A somewhat similar ceremony occurred at Antwerp on the following day, when the steamship Brussels, formerly commanded by Captain Fryatt, one of the martyrs of the German U-boat campaign, was solemnly handed over to the British authorities at midday.

IRELAND

The Irish disorders continued to be a grave problem to the British Government, the situation becoming rather worse than better. The fact that England was facing actual revolution in Ireland was evidenced at the time the Irish declared a general strike, when a whole city-Waterford-was captured by a detachment of Irish cyclists, the telegraph wires cut, the Government buildings occupied and all municipal functions taken over. In the latter part of April the murder of Irish loyalists went on unabated. Attacks on person and property were carried on with virtual impunity, owing to the effectiveness of the Sinn Fein organization. The policy of besieging and burning police barracks scattered in isolated parts of Ireland was pursued systematically through May, and was invariably attended with success.

The British Government, on its part, gave no sign of weakening and manifested its determination to fight fire with fire. Repeated Government raids on the homes and haunts of Sinn Feiners were carried out in Ireland, netting considerable numbers of prisoners, who were placed in the prisons of Dublin (Mount

joy Prison), Belfast and London (Wormwood Scrubbs Prison). Wherever confined the Irish nationalists adopted the tactics of the hunger strike, which they carried to such extremes that for the Government it became a question either of liberation or of permitting deaths to occur. Many hungar strikers gained freedom through this device.

The most sensational of these strikes was that of some 150 political prisoners in Wormwood Scrubbs Prison, London. Demonstrations by vast throngs, estimated at from 5,000 to 10,000 people of both sexes, occurred on April 26. They were attended by scenes of great emotional stress, owing to the report that several of the Irish prisoners were in a dying condition from lack of food. The surging throng, singing Irish songs and waving Sinn Fein flags, was kept in check by police and military. Newspaper flares were lighted, and communication was established with the prisoners, crowded in the prison windows, by means of megaphones. A priest recited the Rosary " in Celtic, while the crowd knelt on the wet grass. Demonstrations and counterdemonstrations occurred on the following days. Serious develop