SPECTATOR SUMMARY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 112, 13 May 1911, Page 12

SPECTATOR SUMMARY.

For the Week Ending 25th March, 1911. RUSSIAN MINISTERIAL CRISIS. M. Stolypin, the Russian Prime Minister, has tendered his resignation, though it is still thought possible that he may remain in office. He has no doubt come to the conclusion that his opponents in the Upper House are too strong for him, and that his usefulness ended with the rejection of his Bill for establishing Zemstvos in the south-wes-tern provinces. He has held office for five years. He dissolved the Duma twice, and controlled the elections so as to secure the return of a Chamber which he thought suitable to the condition of the country. It is very easy to criticise his methods in dealing with the Finns and Poles, or to deplore, with Tolßtoy, the judgments of the courtsmartial by which the revolution was suppressed. But the fact remains that under M. Stolypin Russia has emerged successfully from its reign, of anarchy and chaos; and we are among those who believe that it was he who saved Constitutional government. The tenacity and courage with which he stayed at his post while his life was in hourly danger are beyond praise. ' SCENE IN FRENCH CHAMBER. On Tuesday in tbe French Chamber there was a scene of exceptional disorder. The Chamber was debating the proposed creation of an Under-Secretary-ship of State in the Ministry of Justice and the transference to that Ministry of the Prisons Department, which now belongs to the Ministry of the Interior. M. Jules Roche, who opposed the creation of the Under-Secretaryship, admitted that it would be legal, and M. Monk later, in making use of this admission, said, according to The Times, ! that the Government had had the good fortune to encounter an honest man. The Right and Centre rather unnecessarily took this compliment to mean that the other opponents of the measure were not honest. For half an hour M. Monis tried vainly to make his voice heard, and t|ie Socialists and some Radicals stormed the benches of the Right and tried to shout their neighbours down. The Government ultimately gained ite point, but it seems destined for a stormy career, and we suspect it will not be a long one. AMERICA'S NEGRO PROBLEM. A curious new phase is appearing in the negro problem in various northern cities of the United States. The more prosperous negroes have gradually; acquired dwellings in the better residential quarters of the towns, and the whites resent this, as they say that in consequence these quarters degenerate. A crisis has been reached at Baltimore, where the City Council is said to be about to pass a measure segregating the coloured people in certain parts of the town. In New York residents and property owners have combined privately to exclude coloured people from at least one district. The correspondent doubte whether the measure proposed at Baltimore would be constitutional. Apart from that it is felt that the establishment of the Ghetto system would greatly complicate the race problem and hinder the salvation of the coloured people. In the South this phase is almost unknown, paradoxically as it seems, because tne negroes ane so numerous. They effectually segregate themselves through force of circumstances. Even in Washington the tendency is for the coloured people to group themselves together spontaneously and flee the neighbourhood of the great houses of rich whites. THE ENGLISH REGULAR AEMY. The report stage of the vote for the men of the Regular Army was considered in the House of Commons on Wednesday. The principal criticisms were made by Mr. Wyndhani and Mr. Lee, who complained^ first, that the strength of the expeditionary force had been reduced by 13,367 men since 1906 ; secondly, that the number of batteries in the Regular Artillery had been diminished in order to create ammunition columns; and, thirdly, that the pay of officers was insufficient. Mr. Haldane replied that, although the number of men ;wjth the colours had been reduced, they had been organised and brought into proper proportion. So far as numbers were concerned, only something like two and a-half divisions could be mobilised in 1906 as compared with six divisions today! With regard to the Artillery, he explained that the effect of what he had done was that seventy or eighty batteries could .now be mobilised for the expeditionary force, as against forty-two, the former number. As to the pay ot officers, Mr. Haldane said the problem was a" very complicated and difficult one, and would have to be dealt with sooner or later. But there were a considerably larger number of staff appointments available for officers of a certain rank now than there were formerly. THE BAGHDAD RAILWAY. In the House of Lords on Wednesday Lord Curzon asked for information on the policy of the Government in the Middle East. Lord Mdrley said that the Government had no designs on Persia whatever, and that the pressure exerted in connection with the state of the southern roads was only intended to be a stimulus. The Tesulta had been good. As to tbe Baghdad Railway, the Government wisneu. to dispel the mists of suspicion and mistrust. The Turkish Government had regained its liberty of action, with certain limitations, in regard to the Gulf section of the line, and the British Government, while treating of this matter with Turkey, bore in mind that whatever arrangement was made must be one to which Germany could be a consenting party. The Berlin correspondent ot The Times gave, in Thursday's paper, further information as to the manner in which Turkey may be said to have regained her liberty of action as to the Gulf section. Quoting from the semi-official North German Gazette, he says that three arrangements have been signed at Constantinople. The first of these provides for the financing of the railway to Baghdad, and the second and third give the German company concessions for the line to Alexattdretta and for the construction of the port there. HOME RULE FOR SCOTLAND. Mr. Asquith received a deputation on Wednesday, from Scottish Liberal members in favour of "Scottish control over purely Scottish affairs." The deputation urged that under present conditions at Westminster it was hopeless for the claims of Scotland to receive adequate attention. A complete scheme of devolution was essential to the efficiency of the Imperial Parliament. Mr. Asquith is understood to have expressed his sympathy with tho demands of the Scottish members, and to have stated that he had always presented the case for Irish Home Rule as part of a fuller scheme. He was fully alive to tho force of the arguments addressed to him, an 3 would convey them to his colleagues, who would, he doubted not, receive them sympathetically. The deputation gathered from this statement, though no definite promise seems to have been made, that the Irish Home Rule Bill would be followed up by Bills establishing local Parliaments ia Scotland, Eng.laud, and Walga.