"Who Rules the World?"

INTERNATIONAL

"Who Rules the World?"

Opens, most auspiciously, the political New Year 1928. Not since the World War has a twelvemonth commenced with all nations so substantially at peace, with all major governments so markedly stable. While this unusual global calm prevails, it becomes possible and prudent to scan certain key nations and their great men, asking and answering a crisp, significant question: "Who rules the World?"

British Empire. The strong trend of the Dominions is toward increasingly autonomous minor-nationhood, but the Empire continues to be wielded from London by the British Parliament and the Cabinet of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. He, moderate by nature, Conservative by party, is constantly swayed toward reactionary measures by the overwhelming Conservative majority in the House of Commons, and by three dynamic reactionaries in his Cabinet: 1) Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill; 2) Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks; 3) Secretary of State for India the Earl of Birkenhead. The foreign policy of the Empire is at bottom tough and rational; but a great swath is cut among League idealists by British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain, a weak antidote to Churchill and Birkenhead.

Soviet Union. The nominal parliamentary and executive bodies of the Soviet Union are actually controlled by the Communist party--the only one permitted to exist--and this is directed by a "political boss," Josef Vissarionovitch Stalin, who abstains from exercising public office but is the all-powerful Dictator of Russia. The Soviet Union is technically "a federation of constituent republics," and its far flung administrative network is exceeded in scope only by that of the British Empire. At present Dictator Stalin is pursuing a moderate and conciliatory foreign policy.

French Republic. The fluid, radical republicanisms of the French Parliament are now harmonized and harnessed by the "Sacred Union Cabinet" of Premier Raymond Poincare. Because he averted a national panic in 1926 by rescuing the franc from what seemed a bottomless decline, the Chamber now allows him the authority of an absolute dictator over French finance. His reactionary ideas of foreign policy are not, however, stomached by the Chamber, which gives loose rein to that great, constructive pacifist, Foreign Minister Aristide Eriand. The Senate is always ready to follow M. Poincare's conservative financial policies and ever suspicious of M. Briand's peace innovations.

Italy & Spain. Both these "constitutional monarchies" have relinquished the once democratic form of their parliaments and reduced to a mockery the prerogatives of their kings. Signer Benito Mussolini, as Dictator of Italy, and General Don Miguel Primo de Rivera, his prototype in Spain, have now so claw-hooked their authority into the texture of law and politics that the only combative weapons left to their enemies are assassination and revolution. Both statesmen have successfully spurred their countrymen to strides and leaps in material progress. They are the fashion plates aped by all modern personal autocrats. Examples: President Mustafa Kemal Pasha of Turkey; Dictator Marshal Josef Pilsudski of Poland; Dictator General Carlos Ibanez of Chile. . . .

German Republic. The Centre-Right Cabinet of Chancellor Wilhelm Marx is founded upon a perhaps not unshakable rock ballast of coalition support, but the German Republic has long gone forward, irrespective of cabinet changes, under four perennial leaders: 1) Revered, monolithic President Paul von Hindenburg contributes to the State stability and prestige; 2) "The German Lloyd George," Dr. Gustav Stresemann, continues as Foreign Minister in cabinet after cabinet and negotiates ceaselessly among the former enemy powers from whom he has filched many a concession; 3) stern, able Defense Minister Otto Gessler is even more a fixture at his post than is Dr. Stresemann in his; he works tirelessly, commands imperiously and never gives interviews; 4) finally President Dr. Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank is a granite wall against which some finance ministers lean for support and others butt in vain. Vigorous scathing Dr. Schacht never deviates from his wise, constructive councils of economy.

Eastern Lands. The New Year peace of Europe extended, last week, very generally across Asia except in China. Even there, however, the incessant civil wars have smouldered down to a truce of exhaustion. The great hinterlands of Mongolia and Tibet continue slumbrous under the rule of local chieftains and priestly cults whose sovereignty is ill defined. Even the pugnacious Shah of Persia, Reza Khan Pahlevi, is at peace. So calm is neighboring Afghanistan that the Amir, Amanullah Khan, has left his realm to shortly begin a pleasure tour through Europe. Finally, crossing over from Asia to Africa, the various tribesmen there subject to Britain, France, Italy and Spain are quiet; and the ancient Ethiopian realm of Abyssinia abides prosperously under Empress Waizeru Zauditu and her great "Mayor of the Palace" Ras Taffari.