30 MARCH 1901, Page 21

CURRENT LITERATURE.

THE ANGLO-SAXON REVIEW.

The new number of the Angto-Sazon is quite up to the high level of its predecessors. Its editor (Mrs. Cornwallis-West) con- trives to give the stamp of individuality to her magazine. It has a character of its own, and is not merely a fortuitous concourse of fugitive literary atoms. The secret of her success is probably a simple one. She prints articles which interest her, and not what she fancies will interest an imaginary and ideal public. In truth, this is the only way to make a periodical interesting. The editor who tries to please not himself but a man of straw probably pleases no one. The editor who uses his own judgment as the touchstone has at least one well-satisfied reader. And how often "please one and please all" is true in a sense not intended by Malvolio. In the Piesent number there are four or five excel- lent papers. Canon MacColl shows how idiotic has been our anti-Russian policy in the past, and quotes various passages to show bow much wiser the Queen and the Prince Consort were than their Ministers at the time of the Crimean War. Mr. Mallock handles with great skill the diary of , a squire's daughter in the time of George I., and shows (as is proved also by plenty of other family papers of that date) how absurd it is to suppose that all the country gentlemen of that date were edrunken boors. Excellent, too, is Mr. Winston Churchill's defence of the cavalry. His is an admirable paper, except that he assames the cavalry has been universally abused in the Press. Our conscience is quite clear on the matter. We have never made a dead-set at the cavalry officer. On the contrary, we have always held that he was likely to be more efficient than his infantry brother, because he got responsibility earlier. As to the future, if we take the wrong turning now, the fault will lie with the War Office, not with the cavalry officer. He may grumble or swear, but he will do as he is ordered. Lot us give him the right orders and not the wrong out of a mixture of cowardice and lethargy.