lay down terms and dates of payment which would admit of the debtor’s recovery from any temporary difficulty. [Sidenote: Permanent Credit Bureau.] But to defeat the more unscrupulous methods of the international usurer, this idea requires some amplification. It may be necessary for a debtor State, some grades below the level of Portugal and Greece in civilization, to mortgage some part of its revenues, and to accept, at least over part of them, some degree of foreign control. That means, if the creditor country has also political ambitions, the almost certain loss of its independence. There are also States like Turkey which stand in need of expert advice for the reorganization of their finances, but dread the consequences of admitting any foreigner, who may perhaps think more of the interests of European finance and of his own motherland, than of those of the country which employs him. To draw the full advantage from the international machinery at The Hague, there ought to be evolved a permanent Credit Bureau to which weak and timid States might apply. It might conduct enquiries into their solvency, lend them experts to reorganize their finances, help them to negotiate loans in neutral markets on fair terms, and in case of need provide the commissioners who would control their mortgaged revenues. It would act as a trustee or as a Court of Chancery towards its wards. It could have no political ambitions to further, and the country which applied to it need not tremble for its independence. Persia or Egypt, had this Bureau existed, might have turned to The Hague for help. If, in the end, owing to civil war, or the hopeless incapacity of native statesmen, forcible intervention became inevitable, it would lie not with any interested Power, but with The Hague itself, to take the initiative of summoning a European Conference to prescribe the nature and limits of the interference. It is even possible that the Bureau might be used as an arbitrator at the request of a State like China, hard pressed by the rivalry of Empires competing for concessions, to decide between them in its name, and to appoint a neutral adviser or board of advisers, who would stand between it and the greedy Powers in the allotment of its financial patronage. [Sidenote: Export of capital must be made servant of humane diplomacy.]