NEWS OF THE WEEK.

KING GEORGE of Greece has fired a shot, possibly a shell, into the European magazine. His people had been greatly exasperated by the accounts of their kinsfolk who recently fled from Turkish murders in Canea, and either from fear of a revolutionary movement or genuine feeling for Greeks under oppression, the King resolved upon decided action. On the 7th inst. the Greek Fleet was sent to Crete; on the 9th inst. it was followed by a torpedo squadron under Prince George, the Prince who saved the life of the present Czar when in Japan; and on the 13th inst. the King's Aide-de-Camp, Colonel Vassos, started for Crete with two thousand troops. The troops were landed about eight miles from Canea without opposition from the squadrons round Crete, and Colonel Vassos being instantly joined by some ten thousand armed insurgents, took possession of the island in his master's name. He has since captured the fort of Aghia, and now from the plateau behind Canea governs the interior of Crete, receiving reinforcements from Greece without opposi- tion, though the vessels which carry them are "under observation."

The "Powers" either were, or affected to be, thunderstruck by the audacity of King George. Strong remonstrances were addressed to him by the European Concert upon the " advised" character of his proceedings ; he was warned not to declare war on Turkey; and his son at Canea was assured that if he fired upon Turkish vessels the fleets of the Powers would use force to arrest his action. At the same time, the Turkish -Government was " advised " not to send reinforcements to Crete, and after some mutterings which came to nothing, accepted the advice. The Powers next landed a mixed force of Marines from their ships, and hoisted all their flags in Canea and the other towns on the coast of the island, delegating supreme powers to the Italian Admiral, Carnevaro. The Mussulmans in the capital submitted without a struggle, and there seems to be no doubt that in the other towns they will follow this good example. Colonel Vassos also, while absolutely refusing to accept orders except from his own Sovereign, appears willing to work in the interior in con- junction with the occupying Powers, whose agent, Major Bor, holds down Canea with a gendarmerie of which the core is Montenegrin. The Mussulman garrison lolla about in the squares, but has left off killing, and will doubtless be sent to Asia, under salutes, with every mark of respect.

The Daily News has sent a special correspondent, apparently an officer, to accompany Colonel Vassos, and this gentleman, having time on his hands, thought he would inspect Canea. He was allowed to see anything he pleased, and was shown, among other things, a large bakery in which,

on the first day of the massacre, the Turkish soldiers locked up nine Christians and baked them alive. The Christians, who were quite powerless in Canea, had probably done nothing except be Christians, but were thus treated as a gentle reminder that Turks are always tolerant to their subjects' faith. And then it is considered strange that Cretans, who have been liable to this kind of thing for the last three hundred years, should, when they rise, be blood- thirsty, and regard Turks as enemies of humanity hardly entitled to live. Londoners under the same circumstanots would be so forgiving.

Crete may be considered safe, for whether it is annexed to Greece or declared an autonomous principality under inter- national protection, it will not be betrayed to Turkey ; but the explosion which has saved the islanders may have wide and disastrous effects. The Sultan, besides issuing preposterous orders to his ironclad fleet, which cannot move a mile, has issued serious orders for the collection of a large army on the Thessalian frontier. The Reserves of Browns, and of Salonica have been called out, the fierce Albanians have received permission to move, and Greece will shortly be threatened by seventy thousand men, who, if they made good their entry, would extirpate the population of whole districts. The King has accordingly ordered all his forces to Thessaly, is accepting aid from the revolutionists of Macedonia, and, according to the latest reports, will himself take command of the troops on the frontier. Under these circumstances, it will be impossible to keep either the Bulgarians or the Mace- donians quiet, and if Russia and Austria cannot agree, it may be most difficult to avoid the great war breaking out. If they do agree, it is possible, but in that event there must be and will be a partition of European Turkey. The situation is so complicated, and the secret ideas of the Great Powers so doubtful, that it is vain to prophesy, but it looks very much as if the King of Greece had set all the forces in Europe in motion, at the risk of beginning the great war, so long expected and postponed.

It is useless for the moment, amid the bewildering conflicts of Continental opinion, to attempt to forecast the probable or even possible drift of events. We wish our readers, however, to note carefully that Germany and Austria stand out for the status quo, that France drifts towards England and friendli- ness to Greek aspirations, and that Russia is still uncertain in which way she may best attain her object, which is now, and always, Constantinople.

The South African Committee met on Tuesday. After Mr. Rhodes had been sworn, he made a formal statement of great importance,—a very bold course, for should he subsequently make admissions which materially contradict this statement he will be in a most difficult position. The statement begins by a reference to the Outlanders' grievances and the corrupt administration of the Boers, and then states that Mr. Rhodes shared the Outlanders' grievances "as one largely interested in the Transvaal," and also felt that the unfriendly attitude of the Boer Government was the great obstacle to common action among the various States of South Africa. " Under these circumstances I assisted the movement in Johannesburg with my purse and influence." Further, "acting within my rights," in the autumn of 1895 he placed a body of troops under Dr. Jameson, prepared to act in the Transvaal in certain eventualities. "With reference to the Jameson Raid, I may state that Dr. Jameson went in without my authority." Mr. Rhodes ended by declaring that in all his actions he was greatly influenced by his belief that the policy of the Boer Government was "to introduce the influence of another foreign Power into the already complicated system. ofSouth Africa."

After Sir William Harcourt—who conducted the examina- tion with great fairness—had dealt with certain financial details, Mr. Rhodes was asked as to the way in which arms were smuggled into the Transvaal through the agency of the De Beers Company, and as to his connection therewith :—" Then you never gave any authority to any one in the De Beers Company to carry out instructions to smuggle arms into the Transvaal P—I decline to answer that. I knew these grins were being sent in." Pressed as to who authorised a certain Captain Holden to go into the De Beers' premises and carry out transactions connected with the smuggling of arms, Mr. Rhodes replied : "That is a question I prefer not to answer." Finally, Mr. Rhodes declared that he did not authorise Captain Holden, and that the guns were "sent through the De Beers Company, but not by any authority of the Company," but by an officer of the Company who had been punished. We will only point out here that the fact that Mr. Rhodes is Life-Governor of the De Beers Company makes it essential that he shall be re- examined on this point. While examined as to his statement that he had a right to put men on the border of the Trans- vaal, Mr. Rhodes was asked why he had not informed Sir Hercules Robinson that he was so doing. "You want an answer ? Well, I should think you would get that answer from the High Commissioner,"—a reply which, according to the Times' report, was greeted with "cries of No, no,' from members of the Committee and excited murmurs among the audience." On it being pointed out that the High Commissioner had stated that Mr. Rhodes had told him that the concentration of troops was to protect the railway, Mr. Rhodes declared that he did not like to say anything unfair to the High Commissioner. He made the statement, and Mr. Rhodes accepted it. It did not affect the question. Clearly the Committee will not be able to accept this enigmatical declaration.

Mr. Rhodes was closely pressed in regard to the women and children letter of invitation to Dr. Jameson written in Johannesburg on November 20th, and telegraphed from the Cape to the Times on the day after the Raid with the date altered to December 28th, which made it look as if the Raid were a direct response to the invitation. Generally, his assertion was that the letter was not cabled home to the Times to give the idea that that was the reason why Dr. Jameson went in. "It was rather to show that he had had communication with those people and that he had been asked to help." In contrast with this state- ment Sir William Harcourt drew Mr. Rhodes's attention to his reply to a telegram sent by the Chartered Com- pany Directors directly they knew of the Raid, which reply pointed out that "Dr. Jameson had strongly. worded letter from leading inhabitants of Johannesburg asking for assistance," and stating "that large numbers of women and children would be unprotected." Mr. Rhodes, however, did not seem to consider that he had represented the letter as the reason for Dr. Jameson's action. When it was also pointed out to Mr. Rhodes that he knew when the invitation was cabled home to England that the writers had withdrawn it, he repeated that it was only cabled to show that there had been communications, and "that at a certain time Jameson would have gone in if necessary." The question that followed inevitably was : "Would it not have been more fair to have stated that that was in the month of November, and not December, when the Johannes- burg people were deprecating going in ? " To this Mr. Rhodes replied : "It did not strike me at the time." The incident closed with a question asking Mr. Rhodes if he was aware that Dr. Jameson used the letter of invitation as his excuse when he replied to the High Commissioner's message ordering him to stop. The question was not answered.

Another incident of Tuesday's examination arose when Mr. Rhodes was asked who was "the Chairman" referred to in Colonel Rhodes's telegram to Mr. Rhodes sent on Decem- ber 21st, stating that assurances had been given that Mr. Rhodes and " Chairman " would leave directly the revolution took place. At first no answer was given, but when Sir William directly asked whether it was Sir Hercules Robinson who was referred to, Mr. Rhodes replied that he would prefer to think over the matter, and give his answer another day. Mr. Rhodes added that he "did not even know that the tele- gram was here." He had not read the Cape Blue-book closely through. "Sir William Harcourt might think that I wished, to evade the answer, but really I did not." Before the Com- mittee rose Mr. Rhodes was asked, a propos of a telegram sent from the Cape to Dr. Jameson saying that the revolution would take place on Saturday, and adding, "they are very anxious you must not start before 8 o'clock, and secure telegraph's silence," whether that was not an order to Dr. Jameson to start on Saturday at 8 o'clock. Mr. Rhodes emphatically denied this inference, pointed out that Dr. Harris, not he, sent the telegram, and stated that the general effect of the telegrams during the last week was to stop Dr. Jameson. Asked what was the meaning of securing the silence of the telegraph-office, Mr. Rhodes replied, "I do not know what it means. It seems absurd, does it not ? " Sir William Harcourt : "It is not absurd because it was the thing that was done. The reason you were not able to communicate on December 29th with Dr. Jameson was that the silence of the telegraph. office had been secured."

Mr. Chamberlain has appointed Sir Alfred Milner Governor of the Cape and High Commissioner. We have given else- where our reasons for congratulating Mr. Chamberlain on his choice. Sir Alfred Alilner's excellent record in Egypt is remembered by every one. No less successful has been his tenure of the great post which he now resigns,—the Chairmanship of the Board of Inland Revenue. If Sir Alfred Milner can only stand oat against the pressure which will be put upon him to take a side in South Africa, he may do the thing which almost no statesman before him has succeeded in doing,—return from South Africa with an im- proved reputation.

On Monday Mr. Channing resumed the debate on the second reading of the Education Bill with a fierce attack on the proposal to let the denominational Associations of Schools advise the Education Department as to the distribution of the aid-grant to voluntary schools. It was a Bill, he said, intended to hand over the whole control of three-fifths of the voluntary schools of the country to "religious and secret organisations." That the voluntary schools have always been avowedly religious every one knows. Where the secrecy comes in in voluntary schools any more than in Board- schools, Mr. Channing failed to explain. The Solicitor- General (Sir R. B. Finlay) delivered a very able speech in defence of the Bill, chiefly in reply to Mr. Morley, showing particularly how much less jealous the Opposition seem to be of the Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Scotch Church denomina- tions than they are of the English Church ; and then the debate became very languid till Sir Frank Lockwood delivered a lively attack on the Government for not allowing the Vice-President of the Council, who is really the Education Minister in the House of Commons, to speak his mind on the Bill, and laughed at it for putting up a Scotch Law Officer to defend the Bill. "It would never have done to put up an English Minister to defend the Bill." "But his hon. and learned friend could go down to the Inverness Burghs without the slightest apprehension." "He could discuss the mussel- beds of the Moray Firth, or some other animating subject of that kind," and nobody would feel the slightest interest in this Bill. No doubt, for the very good reason that the Scotch people have a purely denominational education of their own, which nobody proposes to touch.

Sir F. Lockwood's attack brought up Sir John Gorst, who assumed a mournful and strictly official air, as the representative of the Privy Council of Education, and as not feeling quite sure that he had a right to speak "for my right honourable friend the First Lord of the Treasury," from which we suppose that Sir John Gorst poses as rather more Liberal and democratic and relatively favourable to Board-schools than Mr. Balfour. Bat no doubt his air of melancholy subordination to higher opinion had a touch of farce in it, for he probably holds sincerely that the Bill will increase the salaries, and therefore increase the general efficiency of the voluntary schools. After a short speech from Mr. Lough the debate was adjourned.

On Tuesday Mr. Balfour moved that the discussion of the second reading of the Education Bill, if not concluded before midnight, should not be interrupted under the Standing Order, and carried his motion by a majority of 122 <250 to 128), whereupon the debate was resumed and carried on rather languidly till after midnight. Perhaps the best speech was that of Mr. Jebb (M.P. for Cambridge University), who brought out with great clearness how impossible it would have been to combine the help of necessitous Board-schools with the help of necessitous voluntary schools in one and the same measure, without introducing a very great complexity, and perhaps confusion, into the measure. Sir H. Campbell- Bannerman concluded the Front Bench opposition to the Bill in a short speech of singularly feeble argument. He renewed the attack on the Duke of Devonshire, whom he described as sitting "apart on Olympus, controlling, with no direct re- sponsibility to the country, at once the education of its children and the defence of the Empire," for first talking of the "statutory equality" between voluntary schools and Board-schools, and then explaining away his own language,— to which Mr. Balfour replied that the Government were not going to give equal aid even to all the voluntary schools, but much more aid to the most needy than to the less needy, and none at all to those that were not needy; and that as for "statutory equality" as between Board-schools and volun- tary schools, they had never thought of such a thing, though they did propose to relieve both classes of schools of any- thing like overwhelming pressure. Not a voter in the country, said Mr. Balfour, would be bold enough to say, "You must give as much to the rich as to the poor." When the House -divided, the second reading of the Bill was carried by 355 votes against 150, majority 205. Of course Mr. George Dixon voted with the Gladetonians. Otherwise there was no cross-voting.

The election in the Bridgeton division of Glasgow, for a representative to succeed Sir George Trevelyan, resulted on Monday in the return of Sir Charles Cameron by a narrow majority of 125 over his Unionist opponent,—for Sir Charles Cameron (Gladstonian), 4,506; for Mr. Charles Scott Dickson (Unionist), 4,381. The poll was very heavy,—more than 80 per cent. of the total number of electors on the register,—and the gain of the Unionists very great. In 1895 the Gladstonians were divided by the candidature of a Labour candidate (Mr. J. R. Watson), who carried off 609 votes, and yet Sir George Trevelyan won by a majority of 442, so that the Gladstonian majority, if no Labour candidate had stood, would probably have been near .1,000. This majority has now been reduced to 125. As Sir Charles Cameron, for a long time a Glasgow Member, is a determined advocate for the disestablishment of the Scotch Church, it would seem that the Disestablish- ment party are losing popularity in Glasgow.

The news from India as to the Famine is in one way a little better. There is every probability that the autumn crops will be sown and reaped, and a possibility, therefore, that the distress in its severity will be confined to the present year. The number on the relief works has, however, risen to two and three-quarter millions, and though it may sink again, the pinch will be sharpest in the hot weather. The arrange- ments for the paupers seem excellent, but all observers report that large numbers, more especially of women, refuse to go to the relief camps, preferring death to a risk of caste and breach of traditionary modesties. These classes can hardly be saved, and we fear the death-list when it is made up will shock the compassionate. The Plague is no better, and the fear that it will enter Calcutta is most acute. If it does, all fabrics exported from India will be distrusted in Europe, and com- merce in Calcutta may be disorganised as it has been in Bombay and Kurrachee. The Government still hesitates to pro- hibit pilgrimage, though it is believed that the leading Mussul- mans would not object, and though the decree would greatly relieve the fear now entertained that if the Plague is con- veyed to Mecca it might be diffused over the whole East, and especially in Constantinople. Could not the Government induce the great Mahommedan doctors of law to declare this year and the next bad years for pilgrimages, and to petition for prohibition for astrological reasons ? We do not utilise the native leaders of opinion as mach as we might.

London was startled on Friday week by an unusual murder. On the arrival of the suburban train at Waterloo Station on Thursday evening at 8.15, the body of a young woman of thirty-three was found in a second-class carriage quite dead. Her head had been battered in by some heavy instrument, and the body rudely stowed away under the seat. The corpse was recognised as that of Elizabeth Annie Camp, manager of the 'Good Intent' public-house in East Street, Walworth, who had that day been visiting a sieter at Hounslow, and had returned to London by appointment to meet a tradesman named Berry, to whom she was immediately to have been married. He was waiting for her on Waterloo Station, and was the first to recognise the body. Her watch and purse had been taken away. A chemist's pestle with hair sticking to it like that of the murdered woman was found next day on the embank- ment between Putney and Wandsworth, and subsequent inquiry convinced the police that the victim had been murdered between those two stations—that is, during a short five minutes' run—by some man who gave up his ticket at Wandsworth, and then disappeared. Miss Camp bore an excellent character, was of unusual personal vigour, weighing 13 stone, and though well-to-do, had nothing about her to tempt a murder for plunder alone. So far as is known, she had no enemies, and her death would benefit no one, while from her personal strength and the short time elapsing between the stations she passed, it is most unlikely that she had been the victim of any outrage. We publish a theory of the incident elsewhere, and may remark here that as yet the police seem to have found no clue.

A controversy has been going on about the phrase "Diamond Jubilee," which it is proposed to apply to the sixtieth anniversary of the Queen's reign. Lord Hobhouse is shocked at it, and wants to keep the word "Jubilee" strictly for the fiftieth anniversary of any event. He objects to let the next step beyond the fiftieth anniversary be described by a new rang in the ladder of precious stones, and would like " Diamond " to be reserved for a seventy-fifth anniversary,- i.e., a third recurrence of the period of twenty-five years. But this is trying to make popular speech too accurate. He proposes "Sexa.gesima," but " Sexagesima " should have warned him how loose is popular speech. As the Rev. H. C. Calverley points out in the Times of Tuesday, nothing can be less accurate than the words "Sexagesima " and " Septuagesima " as applied to the fifty-seventh and sixty- fourth days before Easter Sunday. Quinquagesima Sunday is really the fiftieth day before Easter Day, but the next step of seven days does not bring us to the sixtieth day, and still less the next step but one to the seventieth. And besides this objection to such a word as " Sexageeima" applied accurately, when its much better known use is hopelessly in- accurate, these words have an outlandish flavour which is essen- tially unpopular. "Silver," "Golden," and " Diamond," on the contrary were in popular use long ago for the twenty-fifth, fiftieth, and sixtieth anniversaries, and it would be useless to try to improve upon them. The popular context really explains their use, rather than their mere etymological signification.

The Rev. Canon Owen, Principal of St. David's College, Lampeter, has been made Bishop of St. David's. He was formerly Welsh Professor at Lampeter, so his will probably be a popular appointment amongst Welsh Churchmen, who seem to care almost as much for their language as they do for their religion. He will also have comparative youth on his side, as he went up to Oxford as a scholar of Jesus College in 1872 or 1873. Canon Owen took an active part in defend- ing the Established Church in Wales, for which his complete command of the Welsh language admirably fitted him.

The Bill of the London County Council granting them permission to raise a million and a half for the erection of a grand Town Hall in Trafalgar Square was rejected by the Commons on Thursday, the vote being 227 to 146. The Bill was supported by the Chairman of Committees, Mr. J. W. Lowther, almost with passion, and more moderately by Sir W. Harcourt; but it is essentially a bad Bill, a. huge job intended to make the Council popular by providing a mass of work. If the Council absorbs the City, as we hope it will, no building will be required, and if it is to be a mere Federal Council connecting ten municipalities, its proper habitat is Stepney, in the centre of industrial London.

Bank Rate, 3 per cent.

New Consols (g) were on Friday, 111f.