THE MAGAZINES.

TEE three papers on "The Liberal Collapse" which occupy the front pages of the Nineteenth Century do not strike us as very nutritive. Dr. J. Guinness Rogers says nothing rather agreeably ; Mr. Sidney Low recommends, of course from the Conservative point of view, a coalition, which by gutting the Radical party of its ablest men would make party government impossible for many years ; and Messrs. J. Keir Hardie and J. R. Macdonald are only truly interesting when they announce that at the next election the Independent Labour party will contest twenty-five seats, thereby, we venture to predict, adding just that number of members to the Tory phalanx. The entire absence of practical suggestive- ness among Liberals indicates accurately enough the position of the party, but while it lasts it makes all discussion from the Liberal side a little dull.—Mr. P. T. McGrath evidently thinks that the French vexatious but legal interference with the Newfoundland fisheries can best be fought by granting bounties at the expense of the Imperial Government to Newfoundland fishermen. That he thinks would crush the French fisheries in four or five years, wbich may be true if the French did not raise their bounties, but as they would raise them, and as Parliament will not enter into a contest of that kind, the suggestion is not very useful. The alternative proposed, the more rigid enforcement of Treaty rights on the "Treaty Coast," would only deepen existing irrita- tion without inducing France to withdraw her claims, which, it must not be forgotten, troublesome as they are, rest upon old prescription as well as written agreements. The matter, we quite admit, requires settlement, and we hope will be settled this year, by the concession to France of

fair, but not excessive, compensation.—It is possible that

France may be reasonable, for many of her ablest men are waking up to the weakness which a colonial policy pro- duces in her Continental position. This weakness is most ably and temperately described in a paper by Colonel Adye on "The Colonial Weakness of France," who shows that the colonies drain France of good officers and a great number of men, besides offering numerous points of attack in any war, yet yield her neither revenue nor trade. The French colonies are, in fact, burdens, as we suspect the German colonies also will prove to be. No country has, in truth, yet succeeded as a colonising Power except Spain and Britain ; and the former was at least as much exhausted as benefited by her efforts. The effect on Spain of the rush of her most adventurous sons to the other side of the Atlantic, continued as it was for quite a century, has never been sufficiently in- vestigated.—There is a most interesting paper in the Nineteenth Century on "The Open-air Cure of Consump- tion" by Mr. J. A. Gibson. He relates the history of his own cure, and maintains that in 90 per cent. of all cases life in the open air, with exercise and hearty feeding, will remove tuberculosis. He had probably more latent recuperative power than many victims of the disease, but his essay is exceedingly persuasive. Many readers will note in this connection that the doctors who have recently been in contact with the plague in India are inclined to believe that it is least dangerous to those who live in the open air.—Professor Percy Gardner tells us that the Universities in America are rapidly improving, chiefly owing to the fact that the tendency of the day is to raise the level of instruc- tion :—" Within the last twenty years the gradual spread of what is known in America as graduate study has completely changed the character of the Universities." This ie largely due to the influence of the Johns Hopkins University, of

the word "warble" to the spoken utterance of a man,—a Baltimore, which is now so deeply felt that the habit of resorting to Berlin for the completion of education is rapidly declining :—" According to recent statements, there are at Yale 1.783 undergraduates, and 729 graduates and pro- fessional students; at Harvard the number of graduate

students in the faculty of arts and sciences alone is 287." Mr. Gardner hopes that Oxford and Cambridge will soon follow the American example, and draw to themselves the hundreds of young men in the Colonies who are now willing to sacrifice three years of active life for the sake of the highest kind of education.—M. Yves Gnyot, ex-Minister of Public Works, sends a lucid account of the Dreyfus affair, but it contains nothing new.

The very clever person who under the signature of " A New Radical" discusses in the Contemporary Review the prospects of the Liberal party has evidently a definite object before him.

He wants the party to elect Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman as the next leader in the House. He thinks the only objection to him is a laziness of which he will get rid, and fancies, we imagine, though he does not say so, that he, and he only, would be able to survive the "nastiness" which he expects from Sir William Harcourt. He rejects Mr. Asquith as "a fish "—a man, that is, with no warm blood in him—and declares Sir E. Grey incompetent for internal politics. In fact, to judge from the following murderous paragraph about last Session, he does not believe in anybody except Sir Henry, with the possible exception of Lord Rosebery, who, he hints, might in the Commons prove himself a great man :- " Everything is at sixes and sevens. It is obvious, even from what Harcourt and Morley and Asquith have let out, apart from T. P and other common gossips, that your Front Bench have lived a cat-and-dog life for some time. Harcourt didn t lead him- self—in fact, he was hardly ever there—and he would not let anybody else lead for him. Morley was not much there either, and when he was, he was always dissatisfied with the universe in general. Asquith was attending to his practice at the Bar. Fowler was thinking of telephones and water companies. Campbell-Bannerman was lazy, and Bryce is incurably academic; so there was really nobody lett to run the show except Haldane and Lloyd George, and they did the best they could. As for

Grey, it is something comic to hear the papers talk as if he was a possible leader. He knows foreign poiittcs, and he can play

Fives, and he is an awfully distinguished person ; bat he does not even profess to have an opinion on domestic affairs—and that, at least, should be recorded to his credit."

New Radicals and Old Whigs clearly do not love one another. We only wonder that the essayist did not declare Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman much too rich for the place.—Mr. William Clarke writes what is really a temperate though eloquent argument that Europe, at all events, has not bene- fited by Prince Bismarck's existence. He thinks that although the great German did not commence the "arming of the nations," he so used that universal arming as to produce the reign of the soldier and the financier now visible throughout Europe, and even, the essayist thinks, in America. He thinks he was devoted to his country, but a foe to liberty, a man with a powerful brain and a courageous spirit, but an essentially narrow and harsh nature. What one wants to know is whether the "great fabric" of militarism is really strong or weak. Judged by France, we should say it is weak ; but judged by Germany, it is strong. The cause of weakness in France seems to be moral corrup- tion; while in Germany it is a slow deterioration of ideals under the endless search for more cash.--Vie article which has excited most attention in the Contemporary Review is,

however, Mr. E. N. Bennett's, who charges Lord Kitchener and his army with horrible ornelty,—not only the slaughter

of the wounded, but of the wretched fugitives escaping from Omdurman. Substantially, and allowing for the intense dislike of Lord Kitchener felt by newspaper correspondents, to whom, no doubt, he is as harsh and unsympathetic as most Generals wish to be, the charge is that the General allowed a massacre of the wounded which he could have stopped, and that the Soudanese were practically let loose in Omdurman, with the usual results. That the excited Egyptians, afraid of being attacked from behind, killed the wounded Dervishes mercilessly is probably true, but the deliberate shelling of unarmed inhabitants needs confirma. tion. It is, we believe, certain that many officers intervened to save the wounded, in one instance, at least, shooting an offender who disobeyed; but we dare say many of the indi-

vidnal instances of reckless killing given by Mr. Bennett are too true. Some men, Europeans as well as natives, seem in action to contract a sort of blood thirst, and would kill any- body. That Lord Kitchener sanctioned such killings we do not believe, though, like most Generals, he may have thought it wiser to pass over outrages than to institute a series of Courts-Martial among troops but just inflamed by victory. If we are not wholly at fault in our recollection of the Indian Mutiny, Sir Hugh Rose had to issue a regular appeal to his men not to kill camp-followers on their own side. Such practices should be stopped with a strong hand, and so, we may add, should looting, which speedily demoralises any troops.—Mr. Sully sends a most amusing and thought- ful paper upon "Dollatry," in which, however, we think that he, doubtless for artistic purposes, rather exaggerates the belief of little girls in their dolls. Much of the belief, like the rest of the comedy, is make-believe. It can, how- ever, be carried very far, if the paragraph on the feeding of dolls is true.—There is a singularly impressive paper by " Tricolor on "The Coming Social Revolution in France," but he does not seem certain whether it will come or not. He only thinks that it ought to come, and certainly the picture that he draws of France as she is is appalling enough. It is, of course, the history of the Dreyfus case and its related evidence to which he appeals for his evidence.

Undoubtedly the most entertaining paper in a very read- able number of the National Review is that on "The Leaderless Opposition," by a "Radical M.P." There is no reason to doubt the bona-fides of the writer,. who is by turns humorous and serious, and sets forth the difficulties of an "anxious rank-and-filer," both before and after the publica- tion of what he calls the "collusive correspondence" of Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Morley, forcibly and clearly. His resentment with Sir William on the score of the latter's attitude on the South African Report, of his irrelevant Bishop-baiting exploits and his reticence over the Soudanese advance and other pressing topics, does not prevent his sympathising with the outgoing leader in his final decision. The " Radical M.P." holds that a great split is impending in the party over the question of Imperialism, and gives the following reasons for his inflexible opposition to that prin- ciple :- " Imperialism, as I, in common with many other much better men, believe, strikes at the very root of democracy, because it attacks the liberty of peoples, erects despotisms based on mili- tary force, arrests the growth of free institutions and self- government all over the world, and, by strengthening the aristocratic spirit at home, makes it easier to divert to expansionist adventures abroad those funds and services which are demanded for the genuine, that is, mainly, the educational, elevation of the masses at home."

These arguments at least command respect, if they do not carry conviction, which is more than can be said for the

somewhat crude and ill-considered plea for " The Policy of Jingoism" put forward by Mr. H. W. Wilson in the same

number. Mr. Wilson makes some good points, but he will find it hard to rehabilitate a term far less distinguished and quite ae discredited as " Chauvinism." We demur entirely, again, to his statement that Dickens and Thackeray " have no apparent feeling for England and her greatness." Towards the close

of his article Mr. Wilson advocates an alliance between England, Japan, and the United States.—Mr. Henry M.

Grey, discussing the future of Morocco, a land flowing with milk and honey, but made rotten by corruption and strife, deplores the decay of English prestige at the Sultan's Court, and urges on the Government the necessity of intimating plainly to France that " we shall regard any extension of her Algerian boundaries westward as ' an unfriendly act,' being calculated to seriously injure our interests in Morocco."

Mr. Maurice Low in his instructive letter on "The Month in America" tells a delightful story of Mr. Reed, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and one of the strongest opponents of annexation. " In a railway carriage a stranger to Mr. Reed was airing his views on expansion, and dilating on the duty of the United States of diffusing the blessings of liberty. The Speaker stood it as long as he could, and then, turning to his travelling companion, said ' There are

people in this country who seem to think we can furnish canned freedom to the heathen.'" Still, while admitting the strength of the opposition, Mr. Low adds that, if the Press is a safe guide, the sentiment of the country is largely

in favour of the new policy. Mr. Low notes at the end of his letter how unpopular military service is in the States. The difficulty in filling the ranks is becoming serious, and the men accepted are inferior to those enlisted before war was declared.—Mr. F. St. John Morrow contributes what we believe to be an unduly alarmist article on " The New Irish Revolutionary Movement," —i.e., the United Irish League, founded by Mr. William O'Brien, which has for its motto, " The Land for the People," and has attempted to revive boycotting. Mr. Timothy Healy has described it as "the effort of a single individual to rescue himself from oblivion," but all the fac- tions have rallied to the support of the new movement, which Mr. Morrow, holding it to be identical in its aims with those of the Land League, appeals to the Executive to proclaim as an illegal conspiracy.—Admiral Maxse, draw- ing freely on his interesting Crimean reminiscences, writes a charming paper on the memoir of Admiral Lord Lyons, whose Flag-Lieutenant he was. Incidentally he mentions that Captain William Peel, son of the Prime Minister, had a passion for danger. " I have seen Peel looking over the parapet of his battery, quite exposed, amid a storm of shot and shell, with the calmest indifference, and then alongside a suddenly wounded seaman with the tenderness of a mother." Admiral Maxse adds that Sir Evelyn Wood, then a midship- man in the same battery, matched Peel in courage.—Lady Vane's article on "Boarding Out under Ladies' Committees," which she holds on economic as well as moral grounds to be superior to the original system of boarding out within the Union by the Guardians, is enlivened by a touching anecdote: —" All children are not quickly responsive to the change in their condition, especially when they are older than infancy. One such, who remained dull and silent for so long as to cause anxiety, was coaxed at last to say what she wanted to make her feel happier. Her little touching request was for a birthday, and by the kind help of the clerk to the Guardians of her Union we were allowed to provide her with one, and a little present on the day chosen, and since kept as its anni- versary, has enabled her to hold up her head among the village children who had teased her by questions as to her exact age." — The editor's brilliant article on " International Aspects of the Dreyfus Scandal " fairly establishes his point that foreigners, whether Russians, Italians, Germans, or Englishmen, ought to feel a patriotic, quite apart from a humanitarian, interest in the success of the Revisionist campaign. Mr. Maxse deserves the very highest credit for the courage and skill with which he has placed and kept the true nature of the Dreyfus case before the British public. It is not too much to say that but for him the majority of Englishmen would have missed the chief points of the case. The articles in the National Review have also had a very consider- able effect in France.—The editorial " Episodes of the Month " are as pungently written as usual, and contain extracts from a very interesting letter from an officer at Omdurman describing the Khalifa, his capital, and the manner in which it was built.

Blackwood's opens the New Year with a strong number, spite of some jarring notes. The tone of the article on "The Rebel King "—i.e., Mr. Parnell—is needlessly truculent; and the current instalment of the "Autobiography of a Child" is, as usual, disfigured by a good deal of gratuitous, and even disgusting, realism, such as the description of the flogging of the child-heroine by a lay sister in a convent school, and her "abject fit of nausea" at her first confessional, to say nothing of touches like the following: "I suffered con- tinually from abscesses and ear-ache." The extraordinary bitterness and vanity of the recital, however, furnish strong presumption in favour of its being genuine.—It is pleasant to turn from this unpleasant excrescence on " Maga " the charming song of the Devonshire exile by Mr. E. A. Irving, or the masterly anonymous exposure of "The Carlists : their Case, their Cause, and their Chiefs," which simply demolishes the plea put forward in a recent number of the Fortnightly. The writer will not even allow that the Oarlike have a legitimist case, and proceeds to show, by chapter and verse, that their contention—that the descent of the Crown in Spain was to heirs male only—is in direct contradiction both to the written law and the uniform practice of all the States of the Peninsula. He traces the genesis of Carlism—" the reseticst at the old bottles against the invasion of the new wine"—back to the " Agraviadoe," or extreme Churchmen who revolted in Catalonia in 1827, indicates its local strength, sketches various types of insurrectionary chiefs, and insists on the increasing weakness of the successive Carlist risings. This Is due to the altered attitude of the Church, the hostility of the Pope, the steadying effect of the development of com- merce, and, above all, the lack of character and grit in the leaders themselves. One piece of information, often for- gotten, in the article is the statement that Don Carlos, in spite of the renunciation of Philip V. and the Treaty of Utrecht, is King of France (if everybody had his rights), and is so considered by the stern and unbending Legitimists known as the "Blanca d'Espagne." The article, which is a masterpiece of condensation and destructive criticism, is pre- faced by an illuminative anecdote of a Catalonian priest who, when asked whether a revival of Carlism was probable, answered: "No, indeed; all that is ancient history, we suffered too much from the last war, and will not go out again. We are too tired of everything."—A farther article on "The Romance of the Fur Trade " is devoted to the " mountain men," the wild trappers who crossed the Rockies sixty years ago, and fought the Indians with their own weapons. The best historic account of these strange desperadoes is that of Pakman, who himself went on "the Oregon trail" in 1846. —A practical suggestion for the preservation of African elephants is offered by Mr. Alfred Sharpe, who recommends all the Powers and States holding territory in Africa to pro- hibit strictly the export of tusks under 14 lb. As very few cow tusks exceed 12 lb. in weight, the faithful carrying out of such an agreement would put an end to the present indis- criminate slaughter of small elephants and cows.—Mr. W. Sichel's essay on "Men who have Kept a Diary" is extremely clever but fatiguingly vivacious, witness his elaborate com- parison of the chapters of Mr. G. W. E. Russell's " Recollec- tions" to the courses in a modern menu, or the metaphor employed in his remarks on Boswell : " With what squirrel- alacrity does he climb the tangled tree of preferment crunching the nut of office with elfish self-complacency, and exulting in the growing bushiness of his fur." Mr. Sichel is perhaps over-enthusiastic about Boswell, but he does well to insist on the point that "if we except Spence, Boswell was the first who substituted the oratio recta for the oratio oblique,— who made a drama of a diary."—Mr. John Buchan's story of the Oxford Professor of to-day, who was captured by some survivors of the Picts in the wildest fastnesses of the High. lands, is a successful invasion of a domain monopolised hitherto by Mr. H. G. Wells.—We note that "The Looker- on" supports Mr. Tollemache's version of the disputed anecdote of Browning, Disraeli, and Gladstone on the strength of having himself heard Browning tell it a la Tollemaohe.

The leadership question is, to judge merely from the title of the first article, accorded the place of honour in the Fortnightly. But the author of "Recreant Leaders" really deals more with measures than with men. He admits the depression and lack of unanimity of the party, but is more concerned with their lack of policy, and urges, as a means of consolidating their forces and revivifying their fervour, the adoption of a land ccheme,—a curious parallel to the new move- ment in Ireland discussed in the National Review. " The competent man "—Lord Rosebery and Sir William Harcourt are ex hypothesi both ruled out—" who shall take his stand on that in a downright earnest and resolute spirit will be the leader and inspirer of the Liberal party." There will be a considerable shedding of Whigs, bat, on the other hand, " whole masses of people who have never before been aroused to any interest in politics " will be brought into the ranks, and an unparalleled outburst of enthusiasm will be evoked. The writer's treatment of the economic difficulties of this gigantic scheme is conveniently vague. The abolition of entail and cheap transfer of land he scouts as petty tinkering : " the whole land for the whole people " is for him the only sound system of tenure.—Very much more interesting, if not altogether convincing, is the anonymous paper on " The Disraeli of Liberalism." The writer eulogises Lord Rosebery as the initiator of a now epoch in foreign policy in virtue of his insistence on the neutralisation of the Foreign Office, while admitting his instability as a man of action. The writer goes on, however, to assert that Lord Rosebery has never had his chance, nor has he yet given his full measure " He was not the head of his Government. He was the figure- head of their Government He was less a Premier supported by a Cabinet than a Premier in custody of a Cabinet."—M. Lionel Decle, in an extravagantly optimistic article on the Tanganyika Railway and the prospects of Northern Rhodesia, expresses the opinion that the cession of Zanzibar to Germany, in exchange for material advantages elsewhere, will in no way affect British interests, provided the Tanganyika Railway is built without delay.—Mr. Hely Hutchinson Almond's article on "Competitive Examinations for Woolwich and Sandhurst" deserves careful reading. It resolves itself mainly into an impeachment of the "Army class" as a necessary evil, but none the less an educational evil of the first magnitude. As a counsel of perfection he would entrust the whole business of the selection of officers to a small, sworn, and competent Commission, on the basis of a modified scheme of paper-work examination plus physical tests. That being) impossible, he suggests various modifica- tions in the present marking system, and the institution of real physical tests. He also suggests that it would be wise always to assign so many vacancies to University men as to ensure that, practically, they shall not be subject to the stress of competition. He would also grant special facilities to the sons of officers.—Mr. Joseph Pennell's article on "Cycles and Cycling" is decidedly pessimistic, being in the main a recital of his mishaps and his disappointments at the hands of British makers and British workmen. He pronounces dead against free wheels, back-pedalling, brakes, and chainless cycles, and sums up by declaring 1898 to have been a profitless year in practical cycle construction.