Bantamweight Retrenches

With lips that drooped as ruefully as his white whiskers, President Augusto B. Leguia last week formed the words: "All contracts for construction of roads in the Republic will be suspended from the first of December 1929, during 1930.

Reason: Treasury funds are running low. It has proved impossible to raise a foreign loan to complete the Leguia good roads program.

Told by the President last week that the Treasury simply must have some extra money, the Congress promptly voted a 10% tax on its own salaries and on those of all other public servants, including Peruvian diplomats abroad.

Though a bantamweight like the King of Italy. President Leguia of Peru is big in ideas, ripe in judgment. If he has temporarily overreached Peru's ability to build roads, he can be depended on to find a sound solution, can count as he did last week on the loyalty of Peruvians, who for 13 years have prospered under his benevolent Dictatorship.

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