New High Commissioner

The sovereignty of France has been upheld in her Syrian League Mandate during the past year by two diametrically antithetical High Commissioners: the ruthless martinet, General Maurice Serrail, who was recalled after he bombarded Damascus (TIME, Nov. 9, 1925); and the genial editor of Le Matin, Henry de Jouvenel (TIME, Nov. 30, 1925), who returned to Paris recently and reported Syria still far from pacified.

Last week a third High Commissioner M. Auguste Henri Ponsot was despatched to Syria. M. Ponsot is favorably known as the able director of the African and Near East sections of the French Foreign Office. Where a general and an editor have failed to cover themselves with glory an expert accustomed to deal at long range with the people to whom he goes may perhaps succeed.

French-censored cables from Syria direct continued the many-months-old fiction that "Syria is nearly pacified." Syrian rebel despatches via Cairo kept up the equally long standing imposture that the French are seriously hard pressed by the rebellious Druses and Arabian tribes. The status quo continues to lie betwixt these untruths. The French are policing and mopping up Syria but at a cost in gold and blood which France can ill afford.