NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE accounts from the Indian frontier are encouraging both in general and in detail. The general result is that with the new big guns, the fire of shrapnel and the Maxims, and the new use of cavalry in pursuit, the British are much better armed for mountain warfare than they ever were before. The clansmen suffer heavily in all attacks on our troops, and their sangars, or stone stockades, are no longer tenable, so that we waste ammunition instead of lives in carrying them. This great change of itself is fatal to the mountaineers, who obviously after each brush lose heart, and offer terms, often inadequate, but still terms. On Septem- ber 22nd General Westmacott's brigade carried the Bedmanai Pass, as General Elles telegraphed, "beautifully," storming the hills, upon which the enemy, as they retreated, were shattered by the fire of the Maxims. The two most prominent Moollahs, the Mad Moollah and the White Moollah, were present, and fled, like their followers, in dismay, and it is believed that the total result will be the submission of the Northern tribes. Fragments of them are coming in, but they resist the order to disarm, and the Government so distrusts them that the victorious brigade which was to have gone south to join Sir William Lockhart has been ordered to remain. The Afridis in their hills south-east of Peshawur have still to be subdued, but Sir William Lockhart, with a more than adequate force, will commence his attack on October 3rd. The Afridis must fight or be dishonoured, but the new artillery will be too much for them, and we expect before the end of October a general, though sullen, submission. They must, of course, accept the building of forts to command their valleys, and must aid actively in the making of roads.

The improved artillery is our strong point, but some weak points come out in the over-detailed telegrams. The clans- men are better armed than they were, and whenever they have an advantage, follow it up very boldly. The orders from Simla change every day with unusual indecision, as if the central authority were badly informed or yielded now to this opinion and then to that, and the number of men employed is everywhere large beyond precedent. That may be wise, but it points to a hesitation unusual in Indian history, and will, of course, greatly increase the cost of the campaign. With Sir William Lockhart in the field, however, hesitation will disappear, and he will probably not only defeat, but subjugate, the Afridis, who are already dis- heartened, and have applied for aid to the Ameer, which was curtly refused. .A.bdurrah man Khan sees how things are going, and is while we triumph heartily on our side. It must not be forgotten that the daily telegrams with the lists of killed and wounded greatly increase the apparent importance of very small engagements. Formerly officers and men were expended like shells, and only results were recorded, but to- day London is looking as through a spy-glass at each opera- tion. That change increases carefulness, but it also decreases the old audacity. The Generals will risk anything except London comments on a reverse.

It is a great pity that the Greek dynasty is not more efficient. If the King were a statesman he might demand an Act suspending the Constitution for two years, raise his loan, pay out the Turks, reorganise everything, and then lay down his powers with his authority much increased. Chambers cannot meet grand crises. As it is, the Greek Parliament, though it will sullenly accept the peace, has avenged itself by turning out M. Ralli and his Ministry before it knows whether another Government is ready to take its place. There is talk of a Ministry of Affairs, and there will be, we suppose, some sort of Government got together ; but of resolute or definite policy in Athens we see no trace. That is no reason for allowing Greece to be ravaged by an Asiatic tribe, but it immensely increases the difficulties of the Powers unfriendly to Turkey, and the contempt for Greeks by which the Powers unfriendly to Athens are mainly influ- enced. It is said to be doubtful whether Greece can pay the indemnity, but we distrust all the financial statements. Half of them are only intended to induce the Powers to guarantee a loan of six millions, no small portion of which would go to a banking syndicate. Finance at present entirely deserves Carlyle's savage description of it as "that cesspool of agio." Germany has actually made the downfall of Greece an excuse for putting in a bailiff to extort her arrears of rent. One expects little builders to do that, not great States.

The Sultan is evidently convinced that he can retain Crete, or give so much trouble that it will be necessary to buy him out. Moreover, the exaltation of the Moslem consequent on the Greek war makes any cession of territory difficult. He has consequently declared that he will not withdraw his garrison or appoint a Christian Governor, and he has made an attempt, frustrated by the Admirals, to introduce seven small shiploads of Ottoman soldiers into Crete. There is reason to believe that he is supported by the German Emperor, and that the Concert will prove as weak upon the question of Crete as upon that of Greece. The Powers will not bear the expense of a sufficient force of gendarmes, nor will they threaten the Sultan; and as for pledges, they will be said to have been made for other circumetances. In fact, in the diplomacy of to-day " oughts " are cyphers. The total result probably will be the appointment of a " civilised " Mussulman as Governor, the creation of a Mussulman gendarmerie filled with men from Tripoli, a rising of the rural Mussulmans of Crete, now gathered in the towns and no doubt much oppressed, and a massacre of Christians, not as extensive as that of Scio, because they will fight, but very horrible. Then there will be more " protocolling," and then silence for the time.

The relations between the United States and Spain are becoming of international importance. It was reported that General Woodford, the new Minister sent from Washington to Madrid, had presented an ultimatum, and though this is rightly denied, he evidently left on the Duke of Tetuan a most serious impression. He did not say, it is true. that Spain must finish the rebellion in October, or the Union would be compelled to interfere, but be did say that if the rebellion were not over by November, when Congress met, the strong sentiment of the country might compel the President against his will to take serious steps. The Conservative Ministry n Spain, already weakened by the death of Seiler Canovas and by a quarrel between the Finance Minister and the Episcopate, which has led to the excommunication of the former, felt itself unequal to this new complication, and on Wednesday resigned. The Queen-Regent accordingly sent for Senor Sagasta, the Liberal leader, who is pledged to grant autonomy to Cuba, and according to the latest accounts he will accept office. It is, however, for reasons stated elsewhere, exceedingly doubtful if he can grant autonomy, and Spain is diligently seeking for allies. The Emperor of Austria is provoked at the danger to the Queen-Regent, who is an Archduchess, and the German Emperor intends to protest against the application of pressure to compel a legitimate Power to give way to colonial rebels. Whether the intervention of the German Powers will go beyond words is uncertain, but the American Government will evidently be exposed to strong diplomatic remonstrances, if not to diplomatic threats. Its fleet is far from equal to that of the three Powers, and without a clear sea it cannot land any strong force in Cuba.

Two sensational stories have been published this week. According to the first, which is published by M. Marcel Hutin, England and France nearly went to war in August, 1893, over Siam. The German Emperor was, however, at Cowes, he heard the news, and, " flinging his napkin on the table," went to the Queen to declare that he would permit no such war. The war was certainly very near, but was, we believe, averted by means with which the German Emperor had nothing to do. According to the second story, when the Czar recently visited Warsaw some German Anarchists, with four officers among them, tunnelled the principal street. Fearing a subsidence, they called in some masons, who propped up the roadway but informed the police, who made more than a hundred arrests. The story does not look true, as German Anarchists have no object in killing the Czar, and no means of tunnelling a great street in Warsaw. There probably was a plot discovered of some kind, which broke down because it required masons, who were suspicious of the work required of them, and the Poles, who were anxious to conciliate the Czar, who is willing to leave them their religion if not their liberty, attributed it to Germans. In England any plot would be almost instinctively attributed to "foreigners." The moral of the story probably is that the Czar is not yet so completely out of personal danger from assassins as it was hoped he would be.

As far as we can understand the Behring Sea dispute, about which far too much fuss is made, the right to the seals was settled, and settled fairly enough, between England and the Union. Some American speculators, however, considered that their chance of a grand "deal" in sealskins was diminished, and persuaded the authorities at Washington to try to reopen the question by pleading that more information was wanted, and that Russia and Japan, of all Powers, ought to take part in the inquiry. The British Government refuses to take part in any such scheme, but of course cannot prevent all the world from inquiring as much as it likes. If that statement, though brief, is not an accurate summary of the long telegrams in the Times, we do not know what they mean. Some day or other the American people will pay a heavy price for the reluctance of their party chiefs to bid rich speculators defiance. The Government at Washington is jnst like a big solicitor who, honest enough himself, does not like to snub the graspingness of a profitable client.

Mr. Morley on Tuesday delivered a long speech at Arbroath, mainly upon the Foreign and Colonial policy of the Govern- ment. Upon the former subject he was even bitter. He thought the policy of Lord Salisbury had landed us in a national humiliation. No doubt the circumstances were difficult, but the business of a strong Foreign Minister was to overcome difficulties. Why did not Lord Salisbury take Prince Bismarck's chair P He had not the Prince's Army, but be had under his control " the supreme naval power of the world," and had he used it to compel the Turks to suit Crete the war would have been prevented. But now Armenia is surrendered, Greece lies crushed and ruined, and advantage is taken of her overthrow to screw out of her a fresh security for her bonds. He would not disguise his conviction that Greece had been in the right or his sympathy for her calamities. " You never know the moral cowardice of which men may be guilty until you have lost a battle." It was a. fine diatribe, uttered from genuine conviction, but impaired, as we have pointed out elsewhere, by party feeling against Lord Salisbury, and a failure to place the blame on the right shoulders, those of the English people, which chose to support the Concert.

The latter half of Mr. Morley's speech was devoted to South Africa. Referring to the South African Committee, he de- clared that even if we supposed the worst about the suppressed telegrams, they did not greatly matter, because the Colonial Secretary and Under-Secretary had denied that the Colonial Office ever knew anything about the Raid, and no one would believe a " gang of plotters " rather than the Colonial Office. He agreed with the Committee in thinking that it was more to the public interest to come to an imme- diate conclusion than to get the suppressed telegrams at the cost of another great delay. The Committee were bound not to keep the matter hanging over for another Session. He voted against the Motion censuring the Committee's Report as inconclusive because he did not think it inconclusive. Turning to Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Morley declared that he did not want to impute motives, and that he did not say of Mr. Rhodes himself that his Imperialism was "a mere veil for stock operations and company operations," but he would say that "he was surrounded with men with whom Imperialism is, and cannot be, anything else but a name for operations of that ignoble kind." On Sir Richard Martin's Report, and Lord Grey's answer, Mr. Morley expressed a very strong opinion. Lord Grey was a man of " perfect probity," but he had fallen into questionable company. Practically, Lord Grey's reply left Sir Richard Martin's allegations exactly where they were. Mr. Morley ended his speech by the assertion that Mr. Rhodes ought to have been removed from the Privy Council,—a view with which we most heartily agree.

Mr. Morley's second speech to his constituents was delivered at Bervie on Wednesday night. We have dealt elsewhere with the general principles of Liberalism as expounded at Bervie, but must notice here the fierce note of Particularism which has grown up in Mr. Morley since he became a Scottish Member. Mr. Morley waxed extremely indignant over the fact that a clause in a Scotch Bill was defeated by English votes. Thirty-one Scotch Members voted for it and fifteen against it,—two to one, "and yet the one was thought more important than the two." Mr. Morley then proceeded to ask with no little rhetorical vehemence whether Scotland was content with that state of things, " with having its own opinion and wishes as declared by its own chosen representa- tives overridden in that sort of way, giving a minority upon purely Scotch questions the power which in other matters belongs to the majority." We will only answer this astonishing piece of Particularist special pleading by asking Mr. Morley whether Scotch and Welsh votes are, or are not, to apply if and when the question of Disestablishment in England comes before the House of Commons. If Scotch, Welsh, and Irish Members are not to vote on English questions, there is little chance of Radical legislation ever again applying to England.

On Thursday Mr. Asquith addressed a meeting of his con stituents in the Masonic Hall, Ladybank. Mr. Asquith began in a very pessimistic strain by enumerating the many difficul- ties with which the country is at present confronted, but he nobly refused to "attribute this aggregation of evils to the existence of a Tory party." It was "only fair to recognise that some of them are wholly, and all of them, or if not all at any rate most of them, are partly due to natural and economic causes." Mr. Asquith declared that "the Liberal party is, as it always has been, a trustee of great causes." But surely trustees when called upon by the beneficiaries always give a fall schedule of the subject matter of the Trust. But this is jest what Mr. Asquith and his co-trustees do not do. They are always assuring us that they have a splendid lot of securities in the bank, but they never get beyond a very vague statement of their "great causes." Mr. Asquith said that people must not suppose that his party was going to apostatise from " the emancipation of the Imperial Parlia- ment for Imperial duties by the granting of what is called Home-rule, the equal treatment by law and by the State of every form of faith, the completion of the political enfran- chisement of the people, the abrogation of the irresponsible veto of an unrepresentative Chamber," but nearer than this he would not go. Surely all this vagueness is a great mistake in tactics. What the party wants is a touch of enthusiasm, but no one will ever get enthusiastic about such foggy phantoms as " the abrogation of the irresponsible veto of an unrepresentative Chamber." Definiteness might lose a few votes, no doubt, but it would in the end gain more than it lost.

The Home-rulers retain the seat in East Denbigh vacated by the death of Sir George Osborne Morgan, and by a greatly increased majority. The election was on Tuesday and the result of the poll was declared on Wednesday. The figures are: Mr. Samuel Moss, 5,175; Hon. George T. Kenyon, 2,848; majority, 2,327. At the General Election in 1895 Sir George Osborne Morgan beat Mr. H. St. J. Raikes by a majority of 1,784. In 1892 his majority was 765. Mr. Kenyon, there- fore, has had a very thorough beating. In spite of that it must be acknowledged that he fought a difficult battle with great spirit and determination. Wales, however, will never be Unionist until England takes up the cry of Home-rule.

In Tuesday's Daily Chronicle a correspondent draws attention to the treatment of the Bechuana rebels by the Cape Government. The natives are to be hired out to farmers as apprentices or indentured labourers at so much a day. Inspection is, no doubt, to be provided, but this merely mitigates, but does not alter, the sentence of slavery which is to be carried out on these men. It is all very well to make excuses for this arrangement, and to say that the natives like it, or to argue that their only alternative is starvation, but it remains slavery, and so a deep disgrace to all connected with it. Dr. Moffat, writing also on the subject to the Daily Chronicle of Tuesday, speaks very plainly as to the nature of the new departure, under which a whole tribe, men, women, and children, is deported, and compulsorily apprenticed to Cape farmers for five years. "A few of us—a very few—are," he says, "protesting against this—a mere veiled slavery—but the Cape Ministry pays next to no attention to our repre- sentations, for they have at their backs a mass of Dutch, who are keeping them in office, and these cannot be brought to took upon the black man as a creature who has human rights."

The Church Congress was opened on Tuesday by the usual Presidential address—this year from the Bishop of Sonthwell, Dr. Ridding—the most interesting passage in it being that dealing with the Lambeth Conference. At the working men's meeting in the evening the Archbishop of Canter- bury made a speech which was extremely well received. The first few sentences of the speech at once put the Archbishop in sympathy with his audience. From early childhood he had, he declared, felt most sympathy with men who worked with their bodies, rather than with their brains. His father was a working man,—a soldier, who at his death was Governor of a Colony ; but his father died when he was thirteen, and he had had to make his living since he was seventeen. " He had known what it was to do without a fire because he could not afford it, and to wear patched clothes and boots. He learnt to plough as straight a furrow as any man in the parish, and he could thresh as well as any man." If, said the Archbishop at the end of his speech, the working man would practise self-restraint, would never waste his wages in drink, but find happiness in the love of home and family, he would feel little of the burdens of life or of the inequality which was inevitable. He bad, he said, had wide experience, but few, indeed, had been the cases in which men were in great poverty and trouble who had been genuine self-denying Christians. That will be said by hostile critics to be making Christianity and smug British respectability synonymous, but the Archbishop's speech contained also a more spiritual note of appeal, and as a statement of fact his peroration can hardly be denied.

On Wednesday the most interesting discussions were those which arose over various forms of the problem 119v, to unite Churchmen and Nonconformists. Canon Hammond's paper was in parts exceedingly amusing, though we cannot commend its general tone, which was likely to give great offence to many Nonconformists. He declared that the notion that dissent was a necessity and a blessing was a fallacy and a blunder comparable to that of the Irishman who maintained that the moon was worth two of the sun because it gave light when light was wanted, whereas the sun only shone by day. The ideas of do .trine entertained by Nonconformists were often most original. The mother of a girl who had gone to service in a Sisterhood was much alarmed when told that the ladies were Catholics. The girl, however, was able to reassure her. She knew " they were good Protestants, because they had bacon for breakfast." That is an excellent story, but Canon Hammond must remember that ignorant Church people often make equally astonishing blunders about the doctrines of the Nonconformist sects. When the curate in Punch asked the young lady if she was a "Toxophilite," she replied, if we remember rightly, "Oh, dear, no ; strict Church of England." The paper read by the Rev. W. Hay Aitken was far more thoughtful, and far less likely to produce soreness or ill-feeling. He may have been inclined to minimise differences too much—never a safe proceeding in controversy—but he clearly understands the true attitude of the abler Nonconformists, and does not create an ideal and totally artificial person and label him "Dis- senter." On the whole, however, the most sensitive Nonconformist should have no cause to complain of the discussion.

The outbreak of typhoid at Maidstone is assuming the proportions of a plague,—though, fortunately, of a plague which does not spread beyond the town. Though only one quarter of the town is affected—that supplied by the con- taminated water which is the source of the disease—and though the town has only some thirty thousand inhabitants, the number of cases notified is now eleven hundred, and is daily rising. The deaths as yet have not been very numerous, but as the disease only really took hold of the town a fortnight ago, and as it does not kill quickly, we fear that this fact is not so encouraging as it looks. The system of water-supply is going to be thoroughly investigated by a Government expert, and therefore we must suspend final judgment, but the evidence seems to point to the fact that certain springs from which a portion of the town supply is drawn became contaminated by hop-pickers encamped in the field in which the springs rise.

The Revenue Returns for the quarter just concluded show a net increase of £688,566, and for the first half of the financial year of £2,093,345. There were considerable increases in the Revenue from Customs, Excise, and Estate Duties during the past quarter, but a decrease of £80,000 in the receipts from stamps. The net increase for the second is thus less good than that for the first quarter, but nevertheless it is most satisfactory. It is, of course, far too early as yet to make any definite Budget prophecies, but it is, we think, safe to say that there will be a surplus, and that it will not be less than £2,000,000.

The extreme Radicals in France, leagued for the nonce with the Freemasons, who have always in France been more or less political, are extremely angry with the present Government. They think it has lasted too long, they see that it has been strengthened by the alliance with Russia, and they are afraid that if it controls the next elections it will be more powerful than eve,-. They are, therefore, trying to unite all Radical sections by raising the cry of clericalism. The Government is not a good one, and is quite unreasonable on the question of Protection; but there seems no reason to suspect it of clericalism, which indeed is rarely the temptation of French public men. There are classes in France, however, on which the word acts like a charm, compelling them to make mad rushes, and it is by no means certain that with Free-traders, Radicals, Socialists, Freethinkers, and Trade-Unionists all opposed to it, the Government is safe. Its chief protection is the Russian alliance, the idea of the French elector being that the Czar, though most friendly to France, is distrustful of the in- stability of Governments there,—which is probably true.

Bank Rate, 24 per cent.

New Consols (24) were on Friday, 1114.