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EACH year, at a place called "Magnetic Hill," visitors to Canada by the thousands park their cars at the bottom, place the gearshift in neutral, and sit in delighted astonish ment as they glide gradually but inexorably up the hill. The whole exercise is an optical illusion, of course. The cars only seem to be coasting uphill ; they are actually going down. The tourists know this, but they come anyway. It's not the feat that is the attraction; it's the illusion. The hue and cry that arose within Canada following the in troduction in 1969 of the government's White Paper on Foreign Policy bears some resemblance to the events at Magnetic Hill. The criticism was directed less at the paper's views of what Canada could and should do in the world than at the illusion

account without documents being to hand. We still await Berch told's apologia, but the Tisza and Conrad papers have appeared. Grey has given us his full views, as has Asquith; so have several German personages. We are now beginning to sift out the truth from the endless smaller studies. One general survey in German is Ludwig's " Juli 1914." This is better than most historians will ad mit, for its emotional thesis that all peoples were innocent and all governments guilty has a certain merit. But a close inquiry into Ludwig will show that he puts the most guilt on the government of Austria-Hungary, a good deal on that of Russia, and is rather kind to Germany. Similarly Renouvin, who exhibits a scientific detachment amazing in a Frenchman, on the whole endorses, though very moderately, the French standpoint. Seton-Watson has surveyed one aspect brilliantly in "Sarajevo," but no British writer has given us a complete study. Fortunately there are a number of American writings which have at least the opportunity of showing impartiality. Fay's "The Origins of the World War"1 and Schmitt's "The Coming of the War" lift us to an atmosphere of relative serenity. But even these two distinguished writers have their personal views. Schmitt on the whole is kind to the Entente, Fay on the whole is kind to the Central Powers. Impartiality is nearer, but it is by no means attained.

By Harold Nicolson THE Conference of Paris dissolved on October 15. "La Conf?rence de Paris" rasped M. Bidault, "est close" For 79 days had the representatives of 21 nations been dis cussing the terms of peace to be imposed upon their five minor enemies ? Italy, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland. It is the way of every conference to begin like a tortoise and to end like a greyhound. But no conference that I have ever attended showed a greater disparity of progress between the commence ment and the finish. During the first six weeks the Conference dragged itself along painfully at the rate of an inch an hour; during the last four weeks there was a breathless scramble to conclude. In frantic haste the delegates rattled off their final speeches, the concluding votes were registered in an indecent rush, and so anxious were the statesmen not to miss the Queen Elizabeth that there was no time at the end for the customary courtesies and farewells. After all those days and nights of ten sion and clamor a sudden silence descended upon the Palace of the Luxembourg: the microphones and the loud-speakers were dismantled; the hundreds of small gilt chairs were returned to the basement; and in the courtyard of the palace, which had been the scene of so many arrivals and departures, five army lorries were loaded with the tons of paper which remained unconsumed. The inhabitants of the Luxembourg quarter, who night after night had been kept awake by the loud-speakers calling the delegation cars from their parking places, resumed their ac customed somnolence. The police were withdrawn; the flags were taken down; and the galleries and saloons of the palace, which for ten weeks had echoed to the sound of many languages, heard only the voices of children playing in the gardens below. In the last days of the Conference, an unofficial poll was taken among the journalists of 27 countries who had followed the proceedings. They were asked three questions. Did they regard the Conference as having been, (a) a success; (b) a failure; or (c) a farce? Of these journalists, 31 replied that it had been a success, 56 that it had been a failure, and 23 that it had been a farce. The proportion of criticism as against approval was therefore more

A FEW months ago I was reading a Chicago Tribune on the f-\ train. With some surprise I found recorded on the finan JL jL cial page the listed prices of 128 different issues of foreign bonds. I have a great respect for the judgment of the newspapers. They print the news that they think people are interested in. When I noticed that this great newspaper which serves the Middle West was recording daily the market transactions in 128 different issues of foreign bonds, it seemed to me a fact of some significance. I found myself speculating as to the number of issues of foreign bonds which had been quoted by the Chicago Tribune in the edition published exactly ten years before the date of the paper which I was reading. I subsequently learned from the Editor that the number was six. The comparison between the number of foreign issues quoted then and now is an interesting commen tary on what has happened in the field of foreign bond invest ment in the past ten years. Examining that long list of 128 foreign bonds in the Tribune, I discovered that governments, municipalities or corporations of some 30 different countries were represented?countries scattered all over the world. The list included the countries of our own

THE Human Rights organs of the United Nations have been ?to use a typically American term?great on production but poor in distribution. Since the adoption of the Charter in 1945, making the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms a purpose of the organization, the members have pro duced a cornucopia of papers proclaiming principles and goals which almost no state dares contradict publicly, but which few observe conscientiously, and which fewer still embrace to the point of allowing their practices to be inspected. Twenty years after its adoption, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains a declaration universally praised but seldom taken by nations as an across-the-board program for domestic practice. Nations applaud the recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Ren? Cassin?a drafter of the Declaration and

THERE cannot be a war without losses. For five years the world discontinued productive effort and concentrated upon destruction. The resulting losses are measured by debt. The debt assumes varying forms?internal, reparation, inter-Allied, etc.?and is generally represented by bonds or notes. For the four years succeeding the armistice the nations of the world have been desperately concentrated upon manipulating and shifting these symbols of loss. Each nation has sought to place them so as to relieve itself from, and impose on another, the task of making good its own war losses. But have the stakes of this game been as high as they seemed ? Will they ever be more than paper counters, due to practical limitations on the possibility of one nation making good material losses suffered in another nation ?

EVERY day some ten million copies of the nine London morning newspapers leave the presses, so that London f alone supplies one newspaper for every fourth man, woman and child in the country. The aggregate circulation of the three afternoon papers is about 1,750,000; but their coverage is pretty well confined to the actual metropolitan area. There are about a dozen provincial newspapers which are leaders in their respective fields; but when these have duly been taken into consideration, the fact remains that for our present purpose London is not only England, but to a very large extent Scotland and Wales as well. To say this is in no way to deprecate the high standard of journalism to be found in British provincial cities; it is merely to recognize the centralization of the interests of a comparatively small and densely populated country about an urban agglomeration which contains one-fourth of its entire population, and which is at the same time its political, social, intellectual, financial and industrial capital. The geography of the country serves further to confirm Lon don's supremacy. Three-fourths of England's population live within five hours' train journey from the metropolis. Eight hours takes one to Glasgow or Edinburgh. Even those newspapers which are printed only in London, therefore, can be laid on the breakfast tables of the greater part of England upon the morning of their publication; while those which print duplicate editions in Manchester or Glasgow can virtually blanket the British Isles. The assumption would be pardonable that such concentration would tend to confer upon the London press a position of unique authority. The equation, however, is not so simple as that. In the last resort the authority of any influence upon public opin ion must depend upon the factors by which the public has been conditioned to react to such influences. In Great Britain these factors are both complex and subtle, so that while the press is in no sense a subservient one, its power over the public mind is subject to modifications and limitations which do not directly correspond to anything in our journalistic experience. We in the United States have had newspapers ever since we became a nation ? indeed, for an even longer time. The freedom