The Anglo-French Review for April is larger and even more
interesting than usual. Lord Charnwood leads off with a temperate and sensible article on " The Government of Ireland Bill," which must, he thinks, ultimately appeal to any reasonable Irishmen. He points out the fallacy of the alleged " over- taxation " of Ireland; as no Irishman is taxed more than any Englishman, in proportion to his means, but is in fact excused several taxes which Englishmen pay, Ireland cannot be " over- taxed." Lord Charnwood suggests that the Irish advocates of " Dominion Home Rule " think to escape from paying their share of the war debt. M. Rene Puaux in an instructive article on " Turkey and the Entente " says very plainly that the tradi- tional French policy in the Near East is out of date. It was essentially a Roman Catholic policy, embodied in the French protectorate of Roman Catholic missions. Few of the present missionaries are Frenchmen, and the partition of Turkey would not really affect their standing. M. Puaux goes on to say that Italy, out of dislike for Greece, is the sole Turoophile among the Allies, and that France has recently developed an interest in the Sultan's welfare in order to compete with Italy. There is, we fear, much truth in this, but the mistaken and short- sighted policy of the Italian Foreign Office ought not to be accepted blindly by France, and still less by Great Britain. M. Puaux declares that the French public errs in looking merely to the financial aspects of the Turkish problem, and he quotes with admiring approval some of the utterances of our leading Churchmen who want right to be done to the Christians in Turkey, despite Mr. Montagu or the Indian agitators or the international financiers. M. Daniel Halevy's article on " The Foreign Policy of Thiers " is also noteworthy. He prints a letter of 1873 in which Strossmayer, the famous Southern Slav prelate, predicted the Franco-Russian Alliance and the German attempt to dominate the world.
Previous page
