NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE week has been marked byone incident on the Continent of gives iniportance. The arrogance of the Sultan, be- gotten of hiseat4 victory over Greece, has tired out one of the Great Powers; and he has been reduced to reasonableness by an ultimatum; backed by an armed squadron. The Government of Austria has for months been pleading with his Majesty that a debt owing on account of the Oriental Railway should be paid, and has been met by nothing but evasions. More- over, one of its subjects, Herr Brazzafaolli, agent for the Austrian Lloyds at the port of Mersina in Cilicia, has been outraged under circumstances which made the affair a diplo- matic insult. He has consular protection, and he had been seized and threatened with death by drowning for having given cheap passages in his steamers to some Armenian refugees. Count Goluchowski therefore sent three armed vessels to Mersina, and instructed Baron Calice to demand immediate reparation, and apology within forty- 'eight hours, under threat of the bombardment of the port. The Sultan ascertained that the threat would be carried out, and, a:her a momentary hesitation, yielded at discretion. The Governor of 'Adana, though he acted under direct orders from the Mace, was dismissed, together with the Governor of the

port, the flag was formally saluted, and the money owing, 225000, was ordered to be paid. The incident will have great effect upon all negotiations with Constantinople, as the Sultan had began to believe himself beyond coercion; but its greatest result, as we have argued elsevihere, is to show that the great resources of the Austrian Empire are at the control of a Minister possessed of nerve and will.

The news from the Indian Frontier is satisfactory, in spite of some further disasters in skirmishes with the moun- taineers. The Government has abandoned all intention of pushing British dominion up to Afghanistan. The Orokzais havemiked for terms, and Sir William Lockhart has informed them in fall Durbar that if they will pay a fine of Rs. 35,000, send ,in :five , hundred breech-loading rifles, and make a " general submission," they will be pardoned. The Orokzais are ..delighte&with the terms, which are, no doubt, most moderate, and so, we venture to predict, will be the Afridis and the remainder of the clansmen, who now that the wave of fanaticism has exhausted itself, are anxious to resume their old position, which is precisely that of our own Highlanders before Culloden. ' There is hope, therefore, that the greater part of the army may be speedily withdrawn, and Sir James Westland relieved of his fear of being unable to meet expenses without assistance from Great Britain. The Government will now devote itself, it may be expected, to making its forces more mobile by the construction of light railways and roads, by sinking artesian wells, which will be a benefit to the people as well as the troops, by multiplying light artillery, and by reorganising its arrangements for the supply of transport animals, which in an emergency always break down.

Unfortunately we have again been beaten in some wretched skirmishes. On the 16th inst. General Kempeter's brigade, while returning from the Waran Pass, was attacked by the Zakka Khels in great force, and, after severe fighting, only regained the camp with a loss of four officers killed and thirty men, besides a number of wounded. The detachments seem to have moved too late in the day, the principal losses occurring after dusk, when a number of the Dorsetshire Regiment lost their way altogether, and some of their com- rades only found it by clinging to the Sikhs, who more or less understand hill-fighting. The incident in itself is an ordinary one in hill warfare, but it helps to keep up the mountaineers' impression that, whenever not opposed by artillery, they are a match for the British troops. We must remark with some pain that the way in which our colleagues of the daily Press report these wretched skirmishes is thoroughly discreditable. They are exaggerated by thick head-lines and big words into im- portant engagements, in which the British arms have suffered severely. It will be necessary, it this goes on, for Sir William Lockhart to pursue Sir H. Kitchener's plan, and absolutely prohibit messages from the front till operations are over. May we suggest also that, able as war cor- respondents may be, their daily practice of magnifying and depreciating officers commanding in subordinate movements must be fatal to discipline ? They practically distribute Victoria Crosses and black marks as if they were Field Marshals.

Sir William Lockhart on November 17th, the day after the Waran disaster, made a speech to the Northamptonshire and Dorsetshire Regiments, in which he used some interesting words. " We must remember that we are opposed to perhaps the best skirmishers and best natural rifle-shots in the world, and the country they inhabit is the most difficult on the face of the globe. Their strength lies principally in intimate knowledge of the ground, which enables them to watch our movements unperceived and to take advantage of every height and every ravine. Our strength lies in our discipline, controlled fire, and mutual support, and our weakness in our ignorance of the ground and the consequent tendency of small parties to straggle and get detached. I hope that before long we may obtain an opportunity to meet the enemy on such terms as will enable us to wipe out all old scores, and I am confident that when the time comes you will all conduct yourselves with steady courage, worthy of our best traditions. In the meantime there is no occasion for depression because some of us have been surprised, out- numbered, and overwhelmed on bad ground." That is a most soldierly speech, but it will deepen the impression that the wretched conditions of this war depress our men.

Two German missionaries have been murdered in Shantung, and it is believed that the German Government will avail itself of the incident to retain the harbour of Kiao-chow as a permanent guarantee that the Pekin Government will protect Germans, and also as a naval station. The harbour seem. , . indeed, to have been already seized. The fact is not officially admitted, but the detailed account of the occupation can hardly have been invented. According to this story, the German Admiral on Monday morning landed six hundred

men from his squadron, consisting of one man-of-war and three cruisers, and ordered the Chinese General in command to evacuate his forts. He did so, requesting at the same time the Admiral's protection, and the Germans took possession of the forts. The story is, to our mind, proved by that touch about the Chinese General, who would otherwise have been executed as soon as his report reached Pekin; but it may be a clever canard let loose to see whether Europe would mind. We do not quite see why it should ; but the Chinese may rely on it that the French and English will, if Kiao-chon is sur- rendered, demand stations too. Our post should be in the south-east, for if ever China is divided into "spheres of influence," our share will be the provinces south of the Nan- ling range, the great eastern spur of the Himalaya.

The Dreyfus affair is believed to be becoming dangerous, as the Army and the populace are both discussing it with acrimony, the central idea being that if Captain Dreyfus is innocent, secret Courts-Martial cannot be trusted, a suspicion which affects every family in France. The friends of the accused now accuse Count Esterhazy, a retired French officer, as the real culprit, and the Count, who admits that he was at the time heavily in debt, retorts that he is the victim of a Jew conspiracy. He is to be tried ; but it is quite evident that there is some secret which the Government is most anxious to conceal, probably because the whole truth would implicate one of the great Embassies. It would probably be wiser for the Government to make a clean breast of it, telling the whole truth, and relying on public sense ; but the horror of free discussion upon Army questions cows all French politicians. They are afraid lest conscripts should have a good case against officers.

The elections for the London School Board will be over before our next issue appears, and we hope, without much confidence, that the moderate Moderates will carry the day. They all, in spite of the deep divisions among them, wish for religious education. So also do many Progressives—though many more are at heart secularists—but then they mostly wish the religion to be taught out of school, and that means for scores of thousands that it will never be taught at all. The proportion who learn nothing at home is, we fear, terribly large. On the other pivot of discussion, expenditure, our only opinion is that neither side can be trusted to reduce the rates by one penny. They are too zealous ; and will do their best to improve teaching, which is an excellent form of emulation, but not a cheap one. Indeed, their talk of economy is almost per- functory, for both know perfectly well that their sanitary work is not complete, and both desire almost unanimously that another year should be allowed for compulsory instruction, which would raise the expenditure by 20 per cent. In this respect, as in so many others, the strong ass must stoop to his burden and go on.

Our greatest dread in respect to education is such a conflict of opinion that the State would practically have to support two sets of schools, each with a different ideal, and both grow- ing more extreme as time went on. If the extreme Pro- gressives have their way the danger will be real, for the common English have no idea of letting their children grow up clever heathen. To prevent it they would insist on large grants to voluntary schools, and we should thus have in the end two State-supported systems in fierce rivalry with each other, one wandering towards a system almost of the seminary, and the other towards a system almost, or wholly, Pagan. Fortunately the English are never logical; but in the Catholic countries of the Continent the cleavage between the two systems is quite as bitter as that. That is one strong reason why we hold it necessary to adhere to the Compromise of 1870, which, whether satisfactory or not, does help to keep the horses from pulling opposite ways.

On Wednesday Lord Wolseley made a speech at the United Service Institute, which, considering that he is Com- mander-in-Chief of the Army, must be regarded as of the most serious import. The subject of the discussion was the relative advantages of conscription and voluntary enlistment. Lord Wolseley admitted that of the thirty-five thousand recruits we shall have enlisted this year, 29 per cent. will be " specials,"—that is the official name for boys of sixteen, or weaklings who may be expected to grow into strong men. As we have pointed out elsewhere, this means that we are going to reckon as efficient soldiers some ten thousand boys, and that, as we did much the same last year and the year before that, the Army, if we count only the men who ought to count—i.e., the grown-rip soldiers—is probably nearly thirty thousand below its nominal strength. Lord Wolseley went on to say that he was opposed to having a separate Indian Army. So should we be, but the grave objections to a separate Indian Army must not prejudice the totally different proposal of having some men enlisted in regiments for home service and others in regiments for service abroad. The home regiments would be exactly what the Guards were till last spring. They would go abroad in case of war, but in. peace-time would remain at home.

Lord Wolseley further declared that we might as well ga back to crossbows as long service, because we could not get the men. We might as well advertise for men in armour as for men to engage for twenty-one years. Obviously this is to some extent an exaggeration, for the Marines are long- service men, and yet we have no difficulty in recruiting them, With the end of Lord Wolseley's speech we are entirely in accord. "He believed the voluntary system which had served us so long would serve us still if we adopted the common- sense idea that if one wanted a good article one must pay for it. The necessary inducements must be held out, and they might be either in the shape of money or in the shape of an assurance given to the recruit that when he left the Army with a good character something should be done for him." This is reason. We hold, however, that we ought to try whether long service with adequate pay and the promise of a good pension does not form one of, and possibly the most attractive of, the inducements referred to by Lord Wolseley. Every one is agreed that extra inducements to enlist are required. Do not let us exclude from these the opportunity of making a career of the Army.

A Conservative Conference, consisting of two thousand delegates, has been sitting most of the week at the St. James's Hall. The gathering was an interesting one, as there was apparently little or no attempt to " cook " the resolutions, and the speeches were very plain-spoken. The " machine," that is to say, is far less in evidence than at similar Home- rule gatherings. On Tuesday, the opening day, Mr. James Lowther made a demand for anti-Radical administration and non-Radical legislation, which was intended for the Liberal Unionists, but probably hit the democratic Tories a good deal harder. It is the democratic Tories, not the Liberal Unionists, who press for a forward Unionist policy. The first motion carried by the Conference, and carried unanimously, was one in favour of a Royal residence in Ireland. Then a resolution was passed, also unanimously, calling attention to the state of the Army. Next, after dis- cussion, Mr. Whitmore carried a resolution in favour of " enhancing the dignity and increasing the powers of the local authorities throughout the Metropolis,"—i.e., Mayors for all the parishes. Lastly, a resolution was carried condemning the sugar-bounties as "a great economic injury to this country and its Colonies." We have dealt with this question elsewhere, and will only say here that the plan favoured was the imposition of a countervailing duty, which " would mean the addition of one-sixth of a penny to the present price of sugar per pound. A revenue of over a million and a half per annum would be raised by this countervailing duty, which would be applied to the reduction of the tea-duty by 2d. OD the pound." What compensation was to be given to the men who make sweets, biscuits, jam, and aerated waters for the heavy new tax on their trades was not explained.

On Wednesday the Conference, after unanimously carrying a resolution in favour of registration reform, discussed the question of female suffrage. After an animated debate a. show of hands was demanded, with the result that the pro- posal was negatived by a substantial majority. There is, we believe, little chance of women ever getting the Parliamentary suffrage, but we are glad to see that the Conservative dele- gates had the strength of mind to refuse any coquetting with a proposal which no doubt has attractions for them from a-purely party standpoint. Later, a resolution was moved in regard to that curious anomaly, the Land-tax—an anomaly which is in many parts of the South of England a very serious

grievance—but its discussion was stopped by the moving of the previous question. The Conference ended its deliberations by adopting a resolution in favour of putting a stop to alien immigration. They would have been far better advised to have dealt with the real grievances presented by the incidence of the Land-tax.

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach spoke at the Dolphin dinner at Bristol on Colston's Day,—i.e., on Saturday last. After rightly defending Mr. Walter Long from the attacks made upon him in regard to the muzzling order, Sir Michael Hicks- Beach dealt with the engineering dispute. He feared that some of the leaders of the men were given over to the " new Soc ialism." They believe a millennium can come, when ideal wages will be paid out of an imaginary fund, and they are anxious for the nationalisation of land, railways, and minerals and, indeed, of all industries. " The result would be that everybody now engaged in these industries would be ruined, and the taxpayer, at whose cost these operations would have to be continued for the benefit of the working classes on such terms as their representatives might agree, would be ruined as well." That, said Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, is what, "to my mind, the new Socialism means." That is, perhaps, a rather rough-and-ready sketch of Collectivism, but it is sub- stantially true. Socialism in its essentials is wanted by no one, and would do no one any good. The Socialism men desire is a mirage, absolutely different from the dreary level of desert which is the one reality behind it.

Only one paragraph in Lord Salisbury's long speech on Tuesday to the Conservative Associations calls for any special remark. He intimated that the London County Council was a failure, because London is so big, and because the Councillors discuss abstract questions instead of munici- pal improvements. It is intended, therefore, next Session to bring in a Bill for transferring most of the powers of the Council to ten or more vestries with a more dignified name. We shall have more confidence in that announcement when we have seen the Bill. When Mr. Chamberlain comes to draw it he will find that London is more of a unit than he thinks, and that so much power must be left to the Federal municipality that it may as well retain all it has, and be made Conservative by throwing the City into it. The Council sometimes talks nonsense, and is always inclined to create an army for itself by paying special wages to its employes, and it is much too courageous in its ideas of improvements, which all mean expenditure and borrowing ; but those mistakes could be corrected without abolishing Mr. Ritchie's fabric, which on the whole is very useful. The fact that New York is badly governed is, pace Lord Salisbury, no proof that London is.

The Unionists, somewhat to their surprise, for the battle was fought rather on London than on Imperial lines, carried the seat at Deptford. The result of the poll, which was declared on Monday evening, was—Mr. A. H. A. Morton ;Unionist), 5,317; Mr. J. W. Benn (Radical), 4,993; Unionist majority, 324. In 1895 Mr. Darling won the seat by a majority of 1,229, but it is noticeable that he only polled some 340 votes more than did Mr. Morton. Mr. Bean's un- tiring efforts enabled him to add nearly 600 votes to the Home-role poll. In 1892 the Unionist majority was 565, and in 1888 only 275. The figures, as a whole, certainly do not point to any serious Unionist defection.

Though the conference which is to end the engineering dispute has not yet met, the preliminaries have at last been arranged, and the first meeting is to take place at the West- minster Palace Hotel at 11 o'clock on Wednesday next. Each side is to have fourteen representatives—far too many—and each side its own chairman,—spokesman would be a better title. The terms of the armistice pending negotiations are, on behalf of the employers, that any lock-out notices not yet carried into effect are to be suspended, and no new notices issued; and on behalf of the men, that there is to be no inter- ference with those who are now at work. The struggle has been a very costly and a very bitter one on both sides ; but if it results in a clear understanding that the Unions are to further, not to impede, the use of machinery, it will have been worth while. It must be remembered, also, that on the

whole the behaviour of the men has been very good. There has been little or no violence.

The Report just issued by the Commons Preservation Society shows how widely beneficial has been the work of that body. It is indeed hardly too much to say that the public owes more to the men who conduct that Society—and especially to Sir Robert Hunter—than to any other organisation intended to preserve the rights of the people and to protect the scenery of the country from injnryand abuse. In former days it was the enclosing Lord of the Manor with whom the Society oftenest did battle. Now, though vigilance here is still sometimes needful, the chief danger is from railway and water companies, whose greed in the matter of common-lands is insatiable. Every year the Society examines all private Bills affecting open spaces, and during the last four years no fewer than ninety-five were examined; and no measure seriously injuring an open space was allowed to pass unchallenged. The most signal victory gained by the Society, says the Report, was the rejection, by a majority of more than two to one, of a Bill introduced in 1896, " which would have sanctioned, without securing any adequate equiva- lent, the enclosure of some three hundred acres of Ham Fields, besides a long strip of valuable river-bank and the closing of a network of footpaths." The Society also keeps its eye upon our coast-line, and cliffs and shores are sedulously guarded. The Society does not hold that all man wants at the seaside is a pier and a marine parade. Most certainly the Society should receive the heartiest possible support, not least because its ways are reasonable and non-aggressive. While it guards public rights, it makes no foolish or unfair attacks on private owners. It has never encouraged the monstrous notion that landlords are to be looked on as the enemies of the human race. Some of its warmest friends are landlords.

Last Saturday's papers contain an interesting account of an interview held by Renter's Agency with Major Ternan, who has just returned from Uganda. After describing how the infant son of Mwanga had been proclaimed King under a Regency, Major Ternan mentioned the very important fact that during the recent fighting Dr. Macpherson had discovered an antidote for the poison in which the native arrows were dipped. The antidote consisted in injecting a solution of strychnine. Hitherto people wounded with these arrows had always died, but Dr. Macpherson succeeded in bringing the wounded men round in about two hours. If this antidote should also prove effective in the case of the arrows used on the West Coast, the discovery is a most valuable one. We should like to know whether the Uganda arrows were dipped in a vegetable poison or smeared with putrid human flesh.

Mr. Long on Thursday made an important speech at Bournemouth upon the muzzling order, which, strange to say, has risen into a political question. The owners of dogs, especially the female owners, so detest the annoyance given to their pets that they are ready to turn out the Government in the fallacious hope that the Liberal Minister would be tolerant of rabies. The substance of the speech is contained in the two following quotations :—" In justification for the adoption of this policy they had this awful fact staring them in the face—as regularly as the circle widened which repre- sented rabies, so assuredly did the circle widen which repre- sented hydrophobia, which was the same disease in the human being. So surely as a case of rabies occurred, their figures showed with the same regularity the occur- rence of a case of hydrophobia in the human being." "In June of this year he took the matter into his own hands. In the counties of Lancashire and the West Riding of York- shire in 1895 there were 446 outbreaks up to November 15th, and in 1897, under the muzzling regulations, there had been 37 outbreaks in the same period of time, and of: these 37, 24 were in the early part of the year." That being the case, why does not Mr. Long make the muzzling order universal for six months, and so extinguish hydrophobia altogether F It is the absurdity of leaving distinctions between counties which so irritates opinion. We know one place where dogs are seized on one side of the road, but permitted to bite comfortably on the other.

Bank Rate, 3 per cent.

New Consols (21) were on Friday, 1131. s