NEWS OF THE WEEK.

BEFORE our next issue appears the Jubilee festivities will be over, to the relief of London mankind. So far as we are able to discern, the arrangements, especially those for the safety of the public, have been well thought oat, and if any accident occurs it will have been unavoidable. We would, however, most earnestly advise those of our contem- poraries whom the workmen trust, to publish on Monday, in their largest type, an appeal to them to prevent their wives taking children into the crowd, especially after nightfall. The children will not only get lost by shoals, but they are specially liable to be trampled down in any rush, and trampling kills them. All classes, too, must remember that the streets which the procession will thread are usually rather narrow, that there is only standing room on the pavements for half -the crowd expected, that the man who smokes in such a scene is a public enemy, and that the detention may exceed by many hours the calculated time.

The papers yesterday were full of telegrams suggesting that the Sultan had given way all along the line, that Thessaly would be evacuated, that the Capitulations would remain untouched, and that the indemnity to be paid by Greece would be reduced by the amount of the damage inflicted upon Thessaly. We heartily hope that these reports are true, but we are unable to believe that such a volte face has occurred in Constantinople, or that the Turkish Government is still accumulating troops both in Macedonia and Armenia without a motive. We incline rather to believe that the situation will be clearer after the Jubilee, which, owing to her Majesty's endless relationships, interests all the Courts of Europe, and that when the smoke of the salutes clears away it will not be found to be so perfectly satisfactory. The Powers are beating time with smiling faces. If it is not so, some wholly unexpected pressure must have been applied to the Sultan.

It is believed in Berlin that Dr. Miguel, the ablest of Prussian Ministers, and a favourite with the Emperor, will be appointed Vice-President of the Council in Prussia, and will represent the Government both in the Prussian and the German Parliaments. The Emperor hopes, according to the Berlin correspondent of the Times, that he will so reorganise the finances as to make it easy to expand the German Fleet, will increase the ascendency of the Monarchy, and will "familiarise the nation and the authoritative factors of the Government in Prussia and the Empire with the necessity for stopping at no measures, even should they involve funda- mental constitutional changes, which may be desirable for the purpose of checking or neutralising the spread of social democracy." The words we have quoted are very serious indeed. They read as if they were official, and no special correspondent would send them over the wires unless he had a deep conviction of their truth.

India was visited on Saturday at 5 p.m with what appears to have been a most extended and disastrous earthquake. Owing, however, partly to the absence of the Times' correspondent, and partly to the destruction of telegraphs, information about it is singularly meagre. According to the accounts furnished by Renter's agent and the Viceroy, it would seem—we are of course using non-scientific language—as if the earthquake began as usual in the Bay of Bengal, struck Chittagong, where the post-office was "swallowed up," flowed north- wards to Calcutta, and then up the valleys of the Ganges and the great valley of the Brahmaputra. In Calcutta part of the spire of the cathedral fell, and "other church towers," the Town Hall and High Court were badly damaged, and many houses either fell or were rendered unsafe. Scarcely a building escaped without a crack. Damage is reported from Hooghly, Burdwan, Moor- shedabad, Dacca, Patna, Raneegunge, Rungpore (which is wholly destroyed), Bankipore, Mozufferpore, Monghyr, and Darjeeling, at which last place many houses were thrown down. The heaviest consequences of the visitation were, however, felt in Assam, where Cherrapoonjee and Sylhet were "levelled to the ground," Shillong was desolated, Gowalpara was drowned, and "whole villages have subsided." The railway has been broken and the roads are full of fissures. No account is given of deaths, but it is stated that hundreds of Europeans and Eurasians are home- less, and so deep is the impression made that Government is seriously adjured not to fire the Jubilee salute lest it should bring more houses down.

We take it that the earthquake extended over the whole of Arraxan, Bengal, Assam, the Eastern Himalayas, and part of the North-West, the damage caused by the oscillations, which lasted for five minutes, varying with every locality. The movement must have been very severe, for Calcutta rests on a mattress of mud 74 ft. thick, and shocks of earthquake are usually perceived there only because they stop the clocks. We fear the telegrams underrate the damage done, especially to house property and tea "gardens," and that we shall hear further and much worse accounts. India is in one way a specially bad place for earthquakes, the European houses falling to ruins on the slightest provocations. Native buildings, if old, are solid; but Europeans do not intend to remain, and the jerry-builder has it all his own way, erecting as a rule rubbishy villas, which will not keep out the heat, which let in the rain, and which tumble if anybody sneezes. We are the worst architects in the world for the tropics, and practically rebuild everything every twenty years. Escape is comparatively easy, as the houses are isolated, and even natives do not perish, numerous as they are, unless a wave from the river is driven over them, when the deaths pass calculation.

The American Executive has decided to annex Hawaii, the group of islands in the Pacific, two thousand miles off, which we used to call the Sandwich Islands. The measure is entirely opposed to the policy of the Union, which is to avoid foreign possessions, and to common-sense, which shows that in annexing islands the United States compel themselves to keep up an otherwise useless Navy. The high tariff men, however, need the support in Congress of the Sugar Trust, and the Sugar Trust finds that the American sugar- growers who rule Hawaii under ;the iform of a Republic are dangerous competitors. They put pressure, therefore, upon the high tariff President, and Mr. McKinley on Wednesday addressed a Message to the Senate announcing that he had made a. Treaty with the "Government of Hawaii," the American sugar-growers aforesaid, annexing the islands to the United States. It is believed that the Senate, which loves sugar, will confirm the Treaty.

The Duke of Devonshire presided last Saturday over a brilliant assembly in the small concert-room of St. George's Hall, Liverpool, where he expounded the principles of the British Empire League, a body that has succeeded to the now defunct Imperial Federation League, which appeared on the scene a little before its time, though not too soon to indicate clearly the direction in which the desires both of the Mother- country and of the Colonies of the United Kingdom were tending, certainly much too soon to express any clear con- viction as to the mode in which those desires shall best take shape. Neither the Mother-country nor her Colonies are at all confident that any distinct political confederation is at present possible ; but all perceive how strong, and even irresistible, a force there is "in the air," as the Duke said, tending towards a closer union. The Imperial Federation League asked for more than either Mother-country or Colonies had discerned any clear mode of putting into execu- tion. The British Empire League is much vaguer, and there- fore in the circumstances more really practical. The Duke of Devonshire explained how thirty-two years ago a Com- mittee of the House of Commons (of which he was a member, though he had given so little attention to it that he had for- gotten his membership), had reported against any attempt to organise our Colonial power in West Africa, and had deliberately advised a policy opposed to that which he, at least, would now approve. We, he said, have no Monroe doctrine "to protect us. If we had, it would be a doctrine that would extend over the whole world." He heartily approved, however, of the progressive Colonial policy, and hoped we might present to the world the spectacle of "a nation imperial but at the same time free."

Afterwards the Premier of Victoria, Sir George Turner, and Mr. Seddon, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, supported the Duke's attitude in relation to the self-governing Colonies, and proposed that branches of the British Empire League should be established in all the Colonies. And in the banquet of the evening at the Philharmonic Hall, Mr. Laurier, the Prime Minister of Canada, made a very able speech, which was received with all the more enthusiasm that he repre- sented the French of Lower Canada, who had at one time opposed Great Britain both in arms and in political conflict, and yet are now candidly loyal to the Queen, and heartily glad to claim recognition as a free Colony and a free nation. Mr. Laurier accepted Rudyard Kipling's description of the free Colony, "Daughter I am in my mother's house, but mistress in my own," and was determined to regard past struggles as past for ever. He paid great honour to Lord Durham, who first discovered how badly England had formerly treated Canada, and then to Lord Elgin, who began the era of constitutional statesmanship there.

Two fresh attempts at Anarchist explosions are reported Irom Paris. One occurred on Sunday in the Bois de Boulogne when the President, M. Faure, and his wife were passing in a carriage on their way to some races. No one was hurt, but the police found some lead piping in which gunpowder had been exploded. There was no evidence of any bullets. On Wednesday a bomb was exploded lnear the Strasburg statue in the Place de la Concorde, the base of the statue was injured, and fragments of some projectile were found even in the Tuileries gardens. As no one was killed Paris laughs, and declares that both attempts were either practical jokes or were got up by the police with a view to in- crease the President's popularity. That is not the view of the authorities, and seems to rest on the assumption that there are no half-lunatic Anarchists of the impish type. There are plenty, and their tricks constitute the most formidable danger to persons on the Continent. Even here the precautions sometimes taken to protect the Queen are directed almost entirely against them, and are of the kind which would be directed against mischievous schoolboys. The late Sir H. Ponsonby told the writer that but for semi. lunatics the Queen would be as safe anywhere in her dominions as any lady in her own drawing-room, but that it was not wise altogether to disregard the threats of the " shanny " people.

Yesterday week Professor Crookes delivered a very in lecture at the Royal Institution on the diamond. He said that the greatest addition to our knowledge of the diamond had been made by the discovery of the mode of artificially manufacturing diamonds, though diamonds of a very minute, indeed a microscopically minute, magnitude. This was discovered by Professor Moissan. Half a pound of pure iron was packed in a crucible made of pare carbon from sugar. This was put into an electric furnace, and a powerful electric arc formed above it between carbon poles. The iron rapidly melted, saturating itself with carbon. After a few minutes' heating to a temperature above 4,0000 centi- grade, the current was stopped and the crucible plunged into cold water till it cooled to below red-heat. As iron increases in bulk when passing from the liquid to the solid state, the solidifying iron exerts an extraordinary pressure on the carbon, and leaves the carbon in a transparent crystalline form, in fact as diamonds, though diamonds of the most minute kind. This shows the chemist how the diamond pipes in the mine come into existence. After they were pierced from below, at an immense depth under an extreme pressure, the diamonds were thrown out with a mud volcano. The much larger dimensions of these natural diamonds is due to the far greater heat and the far greater pressure developed in their production. Great as are the forces of science, they do not as yet equal those of which the laboratory of Nature can dispose.

The City was greatly shocked on Tuesday by news of the suicide of Mr. Barnato, the great Jewish speculator in South African undertakings. He was only forty-five years old, but his immense energy in business had exhausted his brain. and on his way home from the Cape, though carefully watched, he succeeded in jumping overboard and was drowned. He had latterly sustained great losses, but ii is believed that much of his wealth, which though all in " paper " was at one time enormous, will be pre- served to his family. There are the usual stories about Mr. Barnato, who was essentially a "promoter," and had small pity on the public; but it is probable that he was. singled out for opprobrium on account of his want of birth and manners, and it is certain that among his own community he was a kindly and even generous man. His career is one more evidence of the great truth that modern life, which offers such brilliant chances to the adventurer, if only he has sufficient audacity and capacity for figures, avenges itself upon them by wearing out their nerve power. The number of successful men who have committed suicide, or gone into asylums, or fallen into deadly melancholia is astonishing.

A shocking railway accident occurred at Welshampton, in Wales, at 10 o'clock at night on Friday week. A train loaded with Sunday-school teachers and children was returning from an excursion to Barmouth, when thirteen of the coaches sud- den]y quitted the line, and " telescoped " into one another. Eleven of the passengers were killed, and twenty-five injured, most of them with shocking wounds, the broken woodwork crushing or tearing their limbs. Rough aid was rendered at once by the country-folk, but it was two hours before an ambulance train could be obtained, and the sufferers carried away for scientific treatment. During the time of waiting some of them exhibited a perfectly marvellous fortitude ani resignation, upon which we have dwelt elsewhere, and which is thoroughly creditable to the Welsh character,—s. character sometimes distrusted in England because, like other Celts, the Welsh often say more than they mean, and being fond ui dwelling on grievances, seem specially vindictive. It is well to see and recognise their good side when it is shown, as on this occasion, in marvellous unselfishness and resignation.

As we supposed, the Waziri outbreak of last week was not of political importance, but it will make a small expedition 'necessary, and, therefore, cause expense. The Waziris are people very like our own Highlanders two centuries ago, with an abiding appetite for plunder because they have little to -eat. Recently it was necessary to fine some villages under the influence of a fanatical Moollah, and he laid a trap for the Tarty ordered to collect the fine. The Maliks or headmen of 'some villages played submission and offered food, while the hillmen collected with their long rifles. Colonel Bunny, -though an experienced officer, was taken in, and while the troops, some three hundred of them, were resting or eating in a valley, nine hundred Waziris poured in a fire on them 'from the rocks. The officers and Sikhs sprung to arms, but 'were wisely ordered by the Colonel to fight their way back, which they did, reaching Datta Khel without further loss. It is impossible to overlook such an outrage; but the Punjab -Government has plenty of troops, and the advice that the army should be increased is futile. There is a party in India with which the increase of the army on the frontier is a positive mania. They would send troops against a tiger and build for- tresses against the tsetse-fly. If more force is wanted, the troops must be made more mobile, not more numerous.

It is quite an event in the social as well as the academical -world that the first Board-school boy has climbed to the very top of the educational ladder and won the Cambridge Senior Wranglership. This is Mr. W. H. Austin, born June 3rd, 1875, so that he has gained his Senior Wranglership at the age of twenty-two. He was educated first at the Jenkins -Street Board-school in Birmingham, then at the Camp Hill 'Grammar-school, then at Mason College, Birmingham, and dually at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained his scholarship in November, 1893, and came into residence in 'October, 1894, so that within considerably less than three years of commencing his College life he has attained its 'highest prize. It has been proposed that he should have a place in the Jubilee Procession as representing the great work -of the Board-schools ; but we hope that that very unfortunate :suggestion will not be adopted. We do not want to begin to foster vanity the very moment there is a good excuse for it. What an excellent thing it would be if we could only find a 'race of men whose best excuse for vanity was that they were aot vain. But unfortunately that is a kind of justification for vanity not so common as might be desired.

Mr. John Redmond inaugurated in Cork this day week the Cork branch of the Independent League, which is to repre- sent the Parnellite party in the South of Ireland. Mr. Red- mond declared, in reference to the rumours of an attempt to 'reunite the Irish party by Mr. Dillon, that he had received no offer of any kind from Mr. Dillon or any one with authority to speak in Mr. Dillon's name. He spoke with cordiality, or 'something as much like cordiality as an Irish Nationalist will venture upon towards any English statesman, of Mr. Balfour's scheme for the democratic local government of Ireland, though he pointed out the danger that any local government scheme undergoes of net attracting sufficient public attention, and not getting scanned with all the scrutiny that would certainly be devoted to any Parliamentary recast of Irish institutions. He 'said, however, that a good Local Government Bill would probably be followed by a good Parliamentary Government Bill, and one much more likely to be proposed by the Tories than by the Gladstonians. That is a mere dream. Mr. Balfour's whole political career has committed him to resist Parlia- mentary disintegration, and indeed Mr. Redmond's dream is rather dreamt as an excuse for accepting cordially what Mr. Balfour has promised to give, than as a reason for expecting more.

An attempt to improve upon the balloon by attaching to it a. steering machine worked by benzine, and furnished with wings by the motion of which the balloon is driven in the direction required for the purposes of any given voyage, was publicly tried in Berlin last Saturday, with fatal con- sequences both to the inventor, Dr. Wolffert, and to the mechanic named Knabe who accompanied him. Apparently, however, the failure was not due to any fault in the construc- tion of the unwieldy flying machine itself, but to the blunder of the inventor, who opened the gas-valve of the great balloon m order to begin the descent, before he had extinguished the are in the driving-machine by whieh he directed its course. The result was a shot of flame upwards from the motor-car to the escaping hydrogen, a loud report, and the conversion of the balloon and car into furnaces. The car was at once de- tached, and fell with frightful velocity into a timber yard, where the bodies of the inventor and his machinist were found terribly mutilated. The balloon had, however, ascended from between 2,500 ft. to 3,000 ft., advancing steadily for some time against a north-west wind, before the inventor made the fatal blunder of attempting to descend before extinguishing the flame in the motor-car. It was indeed a most clumsy air-carriage, for the balloon was 240 ft. long, and 90 ft. in diameter ; but the explosion was not the fault of the construc- tion but only of the constructor.

Yesterday week the eleventh annual dinner of Her Majesty's Civil Service took place at the Hotel Cecil, with between two hundred and seventy and two hundred and eighty members of the Civil Service present, and Lord Dufferin in the chair. Lord Dufferin in his impressive speech described the "supreme sense of duty" which animates and holds together the whole Service, in lands however distant from this country—a sense of duty without which the Service and the work it does could not endure for an hour. It is this sense of duty, he said, which enables each member of the Service to under- stand and interpret rightly the rules laid down for it by predecessors. Indeed without it the great complexity of the artificial body of which our Civil Service is composed, would render its habits of thought and action hardly intelligible to new members coining into it from outside. It is the average sense of the Service which enables their more distinguished members to perform their more arduous duties adequately, rather than the more distinguished members who teach the average members what to do. And it is the wonder- ful esprit de corps of the Service which enables one de- partment to catch the meaning and purpose of other departments, and one Parliamentary party to understand the purpose and drift of another Parliamentary party, without the slightest disturbance to the sensitive nerve of the whole administrative system. Lord Dufferin also told the public how hard the young gentlemen often work of whose labours the public sometimes makes so light, remarking that for days and sometimes weeks together the Chancelleries of our Constantinople Legation were never closed once in the twenty- four hours. Moreover, the great merit of the English Civil Service is he modesty and silence. It hardly ever talks. In a foreign city he had often thought that the long lines of the marble effigies of deceased statesmen would, if they could, exclaim to the Parliamentary critics of their country, "How little did all this sound and fury mean ? How much ,has come of it ? " But silence, like all habitual self-restraint, strengthens and elevates the character.

A luncheon was given yesterday week by the United Empire Trade League to the Premiers of the self-governing Colonies and to the officers commanding the Colonial and Indian forces in London. Mr. James Lowther, M.P., who is the chairman of the League in question, presided, and explained that the object of the United Empire Trade League is "the furtherance of mutually advantageous trading relations on a preferential basis between all who share allegiance to her Majesty the Queen." Does not this look like a rather curious mixing up of profitable pur- suits with loyal sentiments ? The speakers took up that line with a certain fervour, the Lord Chancellor, who made a very amusing speech, boasting that he had been a rank Protec- tionist all his life, and likening their luncheon to a wedding. breakfast, or rather, he said, looking to the age of the company, a silver-wedding breakfast. There were indeed no ladies there, he remarked, but the presence of the blushing bride had to be supplied by the Colonial Prime Minieters. Sir George Turner (Premier of Victoria), who spoke after the Lord Chancellor, took up the same tone of sweet anticipation of coming profitable alliances, and thought that England ought to make the first advance towards the Colonies, which the Colonies, he said, would be most ready to meet in a cordial spirit; and the same view was taken by almost all the "blushing brides," as the Lord Chancellor hea christened the Colonial Premiers.

Bank Rate, 2 per cent.

New Consols (21) were on Friday, 113. 0