OUR FOREIGN OBSERVERS

Just as the goal of every Moslem's heart is Mecca, so the goal of every senator's heart seems to be the continent of Europe. The latter goal is widespread, but all the more room for observation and criticism--a vast area for picking up moral gems in favor of isolation. At the present time, Senator Hirarn Johnson is on his pilgrimage through this tempestuous land of strains and stressed and is last approaching the Ruhr, determined to seek out the rights and wrongs of matters there.

The participants in the Ruhr wrestling match evidently regard the Senator as Justice blindfolded with the scales in his hand, for they are preparing in hot haste their opposing cases. The French, although having little in the way of productive results to display, will show what a peaceful atmosphere hovers over the disputed territory. The Germans will try to prove how much more ruined they are now than when they declared themselves completely ruined. Imaginations on both sides will fly high and far, but judging from current reports the German imagination will fly much the higher and farther. The Ruhr German apparently has the more pronounced characteristics of Daudet's Monsieur Tartarin who elongated and enlarged his stories to such a point that he believed them himself. For instance an official at Barmen told a newspaper correspondent that the French ran the same train of coke across the frontier by day into Alsace and back again by night, a proceeding reminiscent of long parades on the stage in which a handful of men create a delusion by running around back of the scenery. A little observation proved this an untruth "gross as a mountain", although the official believed it implicitly.

It is on this rock of observation that the barque of German contentions is likely to founder. There will be difficulty in concealing the five enormous banks and public offices now under construction in Dusseldorf, the new plants and houses which have sprung up and are springing up throughout the Ruhr, the workmen who are drawing daily pay for knitting on their jobs. What Senator Johnson will think of all this it is impossible to guess. Senators always go abroad with their bags well packed with preconceived conclusions and Mr. Johnson's are made of sturdy material. But the country will not have long to wait. The pilgrim will soon be home and the sparks will fly.