relatively peaceful development of many peoples, among whom some have made priceless contributions to civilization. There are no inaccessible nations now. Political integration has continually widened the areas within which domestic peace prevails, and the work is so far done that no important lands or peoples remain to be appropriated. Further integration will be redistributive only. There remains the balance of power, as the one important objective condition upon which the maintenance of peace will largely depend.

I am using the term in a general or descriptive, not a technical or diplomatic, sense. I mean by it political forces in approximate equilibrium throughout the world. In this sense the balance of power is a sociological phenomenon of peculiar interest, for two reasons.

First, it is interesting because of its nature or composition. It is a distribution of forces roughly in accordance with what the mathematician calls "chance occurrence." If as many as a thousand shots are fired at a target, those that miss the bull'seye are distributed about it with curious regularity. Of those that miss it by three inches, about as many will hit above as below, about as many to the left as to the right. Of those that miss it by six inches, about as many will hit right as left, about as many below as above. In like manner a balance of power is a symmetrical distribution of forces about a central point. An international balance of power exists when, with reference to any interest or question upon which states may differ, as many strong powers range themselves on one side as on the other, and the weak ones are symmetrically distributed with reference to the strong ones.

Does this bit of exposition seem too elementary or too academic to bring into a discussion of world-peace? Let me then ask if a corollary from the principle stated may be taken for granted? The probability of a symmetrical distribution of shots or of forces about a central point increases with their number. Fifty shots about a bull's-eye would not be so regularly distributed as a thousand. A million shots would make a nearly circular pattern. If, then, an International Court of Arbitral

Justice should be established at The Hague, or elsewhere, would the chances that the political forces represented there would remain in approximate balance be increased, if, meanwhile, a number of the now independent small states of Europe and the East should be absorbed in one or more of the great imperial systems? Or need we fear that the chances of equilibrium would be diminished if one or two of the more heterogeneous imperial systems should some day be resolved into independent states, each relatively homogeneous and individual?

The balance of power is of interest, secondly, because it is correlated with government by discussion. Bagehot's chapter on this subject deals chiefly with the nature of such government and its consequences. Like compound evolution, government by discussion is a slow, irregular, and unbusiness-like procedure: and therein lies its value. It inhibits ill-considered action. It gives passion time to cool, it makes for moderation and for poise. Bagehot does, however, ask how government by discussion arises. His answer is, on the whole, the least satisfactory part of his book, but it is essentially correct. Government by discussion arose, he says, in those nations that had a polity, that is to say, a constitution. Greeks and Germans had what Aristotle calls the mixed government. King, aristocracy, and freemen participated in it. Here, then, were distinct political forces in balance, and because they were in balance they had to talk before they could act.

Our modern account of reason and its relations to instinct enables us to generalize Mr. Bagehot's guess and to verify it. Government by discussion depends upon a balance of power and necessarily proceeds from it. It is a social expansion of the reasoning processes of the individual mind.

Reasoning begins when instinct fails or is inhibited. So long as we can confidently act, we do not argue, but when we face conditions abounding in uncertainty or when we are confronted by alternative possibilities, we first hesitate, then feel our way, then guess, and at length venture to reason. Reasoning, accordingly, is that action of the mind to which we resort when the possibilities before us and about us are distributed sub

stantially according to the law of chance occurrence, or, as the mathematician would say, in accordance with "the normal curve" of random frequency. The moment the curve is obviously skewed, we decide. If it is obviously skewed from the beginning, by bias, or interest, by prejudice, authority, or coercion, our reasoning is futile or imperfect. So, in the state, if any interest or coalition of interests is dominant and can act promptly, it rules by absolutist methods. Whether it is benevolent or cruel, it wastes neither time nor resources upon government by discussion. But if interests are innumerable, and so distributed as to offset one another, and if no great bias or overweighting anywhere appears, government by discussion inevitably arises. The interests can get together only if they talk. So, too, in international relations. If in coming years these shall be adjusted by reason instead of by force, by arbitration instead of by war, it will be because a true balance of power has been attained. If any one power or coalition of powers shall be able to dictate, it will also rule, and the appeal to reason will be vain.

By what policies can an equilibrium of international power be established? I shall only name those that the foregoing considerations suggest, and not attempt to describe or to analyze them. They must of course be policies that will tend both to differentiate interests and to disintegrate coalitions of power that create an overwhelming preponderance of strength. The great superiorities that now preclude effective government by discussion throughout the world are, (1) technical proficiency based on scientific knowledge, and (2) concentrated economic power. If we sincerely wish for peace, we must be willing to see a vast equalizing of industrial efficiency between the East and the West. We must also welcome every change that tends to bring about a fairer apportionment of natural resources among nations and within them, and a more equal distribution of wealth. If these conditions can be met, there will be a Parliament of Man. If they cannot be met, a nominal government by discussion will be but a tournament of words.

SOCIOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN INNER CHINA

EDWARD A. ROSS
University of Wisconsin

China is the European Middle Ages made visible. All the cities are walled and the walls are kept in a condition for use. The streets are narrow, crooked, poorly paved, filthy, and malodorous. There is no public lighting, and until recent years there was no force to maintain public order. The people use raw river water brought to them in buckets by regular water carriers. System of public sewage there is none; but the cultivators are so eager for fertilizer that in the early morning they penetrate to every street and lane and by nine o'clock they have removed from every house that which the wasteful West casts into its sewers. Most of the houses are low and mean and the windows are few, small, and unglazed. Until American kerosene began to penetrate the Empire the common source of light was a bit of cotton wick hanging over the edge of an iron cup containing rape seed oil. Pasture there is none and little fruit is grown; for the production of the staples of human food has the first claim on the soil. Lumber is too dear to be used freely in building. Coal is largely neglected and charcoal is the chief fuel.

The handicraft stage prevails, machinery is unknown, and I have never seen in China a windmill. Waterpowers are used, but only for grinding. The exchange of bulky commodities is slight and the people of one province may be starving while in the neighboring province there is food a-plenty. On the road to Shansi I met on the way to distant markets cartloads of salt, paper, wool, hides, cotton, tobacco, licorice, oil, and flour. Coal, charcoal, locust wood, wheat, and millet were bound for nearer markets. A few miles from the pit's mouth I found good lump coal selling at $0.80 a ton; while a hundred miles away the same coal was selling for $5.60. The cost of carting was $0.04% a

ton.

There is little provision for the unfortunate, and the cripple or the leper begs his bread by the roadside. After the sheaves have been gathered in, poor widows and children spread over the stubble fields and glean the heads of wheat the rakes have missed. There are professional beggars, united in strong guilds, who blackmail the reluctant shopkeeper into giving by keeping up such a din in front of his shop that no customer will enter. Until the new system started six years ago, there were no free common schools. Not over one man in ten can read, and less than one woman in a hundred. The masses believe in witchcraft and evil eye, and, while normally very peaceable, may, when goaded by superstitious fear, form fanatical and cruel mobs as did our forefathers in the Middle Ages. Until recently newspapers were wanting, there was no real public opinion and no participation whatsoever of the people in government. In order to impose a check upon the rulers in the interests of the people, the ancient sages taught that, while the ruler governs by the will of heaven, the rising of his people is a sure sign that Heaven's mandate has been withdrawn. Insurrection, therefore, was taught as a sacred right of the people—a doctrine more productive of disorder and woe than all the errors democracies have ever committed.

The analogy with the Middle Ages should not, however, be pressed too far. To our Middle Ages were unknown such features of China as a purely secular learning, competitive civil service examinations, ancestor worship, the patriarchal family, parental control of matrimony, the system of mutual responsibility, and direct imperial administration. On the other hand, contemporary China knows nothing of such mediaevalisms as feudalism, the manor, hereditary caste, ecclesiasticism, the religious orders, chivalry, and the passion for the chase.

THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

To the sociologic eye, the most outstanding thing in the Far East is the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence. Evidences of it are seen in an intensive farming carried on by hand implements rather than the plow, in the measures taken to recover the fertile elements washed from the soil, in the eager