NEWS OF THE WEEK • T HE latest news from Spain

all points in the direction of war. As we write the Spanish Government is considering some form of ultimate proposals, if not an ultimatum, sent them from Washington. What these proposals are is not exactly known, but probably they ask for an immediate armistice, the right of America to send help to the Cuban population, the gradual but rapid withdrawal of the Spanish troops, and the real autonomy of Cuba. We have argued in another column that Spain cannot and will not yield, but of course there is always in politics the possi- bility of the unforeseen happening. Apart from this, we do not see how war can be avoided. Meantime, Con- gress is overwhelmingly in favour of war, and is kept quiet with the greatest difficulty. And here we must say a word in regard to Mr. McKinley's aation. He may or may not be a weak man, but at any rate he and the American nation—the newspapers are not the nation—have behaved with really wonderful dignity. There has been no blustering or bullying by the Executive, and as the gravity of the situation has increased, so has the gravity and highminded- nese of the Administration. The Anglo-Saxon race may be proud of its bigger half.

On Monday the Report on the 'Maine' disaster was sub- mitted to Congress, together with a covering Message from the President. The findings of the Commission are in sub- stance that the discipline on board the 'Maine' was excellent, and that the temperature of the magazines was normal ; that there were two explosions with a very short interval between them, the ship being lifted by the first ; that "the technical details" of the investigation show that a mine exploded on the port side ; that this external explosion exploded the magazines ; and finally, that "the Court cannot find evidence to fix the responsibility." In plain English, this means that the 'Maine' was blown up by a submarine mine, but that there is no means of saying who put it there, or who fired it. It should be added that the • Maine' had been in Havana three weeks before the explosion, that apparently there was no ill. feeling caused by her presence, and that the position which the ship first occupied when she entered the harbour was not altered.

The military situation in Egypt for the moment remains .stale-mate. Mahmond is lying entrenched in the bush, and though the Sirdar watches him closely, he wisely does not attack, for time is all on the side of those who have, as we have, plenty of provisions, and against those who have none. At the same time, the Sirdar has made a move on Mahmoud's communications, which may prove of the greatest possible importance. On Saturday last the gunboats carrying the 1,5th Battalion moved to Shendy, Mahmoud's base on the Nile, and attacked his "reserve depot." The attack was

completely successful, one hundred and sixty Baggara and Jehadia being killed, six hundred and forty-five men, mostly slaves, being captured, besides many horses, mules, and donkeys. There were also fourteen boxes of ammunition and a quantity of grain and cattle. Our casualties were nil. Unfor- tunately the Dervish leader at Shendy was warned by an Arab scout of the approach of the gunboats, and so the family of Mahmoud and of some of his Emirs had time to escape. Shendy was burnt and the forts destroyed. Mahmoud's retreat to the Nile is therefore cut off, and he can only either (1) attack us, (2) wait to be attacked, which means the rapid dissolution of his force from hunger and demoralisation, or (3) retreat towards Kassala. In all probability what will happen will be a repetition of Toski. Mahmoud's force, when more than half-ruined by his hesitation, will be hurled at our force, and will thus beat itself to death. It remains to be said that on Wednesday General Hunter made a reconnaissance in force, and got near enough to get a partial view of Mahmoud's encampment. The Dervishes were lying sometimes three-deep in the trenches they have made, but though the artillery sent in a few shots, they made no reply. They probably are short of ammunition, and also wanted to tempt us to attack. The stream of deserters from Mahmoud's camp is a good sign.

The Russian Government, in the Official Messenger of March 29th, informed the world that it had two days previously signed an agreement with the Government of China, under which the latter have ceded to Russia "the usufruct" of Port Arthur and Talienwan, "with the territories adjacent thereto," for twenty-five years, with right of ex- tending the lease "by mutual consent." China, moreover, allows Russia to connect these ports by railway with the Trans-Siberian main line. The Messenger describes this transaction as one "connecting the extreme points of the two Continents of the Old World," and "having, therefore, a high historical value for Russia," and points out that "the arrangement injures the interests of no foreign State." On the contrary, Talienwan will be opened to "the merchant ships of all foreign nations, and become a new and very wide market for oommerce and industry in the Far East,"—evidence of which, we may add, was immediately given by an order for 36,000 tons of steel rails to be landed by foreign contractors in Talienwan. The right of fortifying Port Arthur is included in the lease, the Russian flag is already flying in both ports, and both have been garrisoned with Russian troops and Russian artillery. The cession in perpetuity is, in fact, complete, and we need not point out that it carries with it a certainty of Russian sovereignty over Manchuria, including the peninsula of Lian-tung. The grand coup has been carried out most dramatically in silence, and the Russian Press is in the highest exultation, which it shows in part by sneering comments upon British inability to resist.

We see no particular reason for resistance, but our trading classes and our Jingoes are much excited, and apparently desire war with Russia. We do not believe that either the country or the Government share their feelings, but orders have been sent to mobilise the fleet in the Far East, and it seems clear that the Cabinet have decided upon some change of policy which will greatly modify our position in China. What this change is will be explained to the public oi Tuesday, when Mr. Balfour, without submitting papers, is tt, make a great explanatory speech. The rumour is that we are to occupy Chefoo, as a base from which we can put pressure on Pekin equal to that of our rivals, and that a cession is also to be demanded from which we can protect free trade upon the Yangtse Kiang. The former step seems to us obviously unwise, as placing us in a position of hostile watchfulness at once to Russia, Germany, and Japan; bat

the latter would be a great stroke of policy, subject only to the drawback that we may hereafter be compelled to preserve order in the Bengal of China. Nothing, however, is as yet certain, or will be until Tuesday, but we note signs that both Berlin and Paris are aware that some great step is about to be taken by Great Britain.

Lord Selborne, better known as Lord Wolmer, who is Under-Secretary for the Colonies, made on Tuesday rather an important speech to the Liberal Union Club. He was entirely opposed to war with Russia, because of what she had done in the Far East. We had had enough of Humpty- Dumpties. We had spent fifty millions and fifty thousand lives in the Crimean War in the vain effort to set one up, and ought to have had enough of resisting the inevitable. He would make a casus belli of the "open door," but not of the possession of Port Arthur. "Was that the only spot from which Pekin could be controlled ?" Germany and France, he reminded his audience, could approach China only by sea. He referred also to the " doctrine " of compensation, and declared that "the degree of compensation" was a matter for this country to settle. He could not see that there was more humiliation for England in abandoning Talienwan than for Russia in abandoning Corea. Lord Selborne pro- fessed that he spoke only for himself, but he can hardly be ignorant of the policy of the Government, and is not likely, while he represents a Department in Parliament, to oppose the policy of the Cabinet. If his words are to be taken as official, they mean that we shall not fight Russia over Liam-tang, but shall exact a " satisfactory " compensa- tion. It is noteworthy that no one seems to understand precisely the position of Japan. We have scarcely any doubt ourselves that she has been satisfied by Russia, pro- bably by a grant of a free hand in the peninsular portion of Corea.

The Indian Government has sent home its proposals for the rehabilitation of the Indian currency, but they are not to be either accepted or rejected at once. In a speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday, after a debate raised by Mr. Vicary Gibbs, the Secretary for India announced that the proposals would be submitted to a Departmental Com- mittee of officials and experts, who would report upon them and the whole monetary system of India. The speech was marked, as all similar speeches have been, by a quite singular note of hesitation, Lord George Hamilton declaring that he had been a bimetallist for twenty-five years, but felt that bimetallism without an international agreement was im- possible, and that international agreement could not be at- tained. He seemed scarcely more hopeful of a gold standard, and was, in fact, certain only of one thing,—that to open the Indian Mints, and allow the value of the rupee to drop in- definitely, would be "an act of lunacy." The President of the new Committee, which will have the rank and powers of a Royal Commission, is to be Sir Henry Fowler, and the situation in India is so vexatious owing to the high rate of discount now reigning, and the withdrawal of capital from commerce, that the Report is expected at an early date. The course taken is a disappointing one, but as we have shown elsewhere, there was, in the fierce conflict of opinions, and the absence of any competent determining authority, no alternative.

The French Chamber must have presented a curious scene on Wednesday. M. Viviani, a Socialist, presented the Report of the Panama Commission, which regrets the impunity accorded to delinquents, censures "the police mancenvres concocted at the Ministry of the Interior" and the " negotia- tions " with Arton, and blames the participation of public men in pecuniary transactions with public authorities. In an ordinary case the Chamber would have accepted the Report and passed on to other business, but the peasants of France have lost the greater part of the seventy millions sunk in the Panama Canal, and the elections are coming on. The Depu- ties therefore at once ordered the Report to be placarded in every Commune, and with it M. Viviani's speech, and on the following day " unanimously " adopted the conclusions of the Report. Some of them, at least, must have felt like criminals ordered to praise a Judge's charge against them, but no one had the courage to resist. It is by no means certain that the little shareholders, who are now certain that they will get nothing out of Panama, have forgiven the tolerance of the Republic, and " Panama " may swell the vote both for the Right and for the Socialists. Those, being in the minority, are the two unsmirched parties.

It is held in Paris to be probable that the Court of Cassation will quash the Zola trial. The Judge commis- sioned to examine the proceedings has decided that the Judge of Assize had no right to allow General Boisdeffre to give evidence and refuse permission to cross-examine him, that the oath administered to Madame de Boulancy, a material witness, was not the legal one, and that no right of prosecution rested with the Government. It should have been instituted by the calumniated Court-Martial. The full Court has still to give its decision, but the last objection, though technical, is, we fancy, final, and the proceedings will almost certainly be annulled. A new trial can be instituted, but the Government has had enough of the affair, and in view of the elections it will probably remain inactive. The Court-Martial can hardly move of itself, and a proceeding which, though justified by M. Zola's unreasoning violence, reflected much discredit on French justice, will pass into the great limbo of forgotten but influential scandals.

In the midst of the hubbub created by the condition of foreign affairs, the British Treasury continues marvellously rich. The receipts of the year amount to the "record" total of £106,614,000, or £3,570,000 above the estimate. The increase, too, is distributed over every item, the Death-duties, with Sir William Harcourt's reforms, having actually brought £11,100,000. It is calculated that next year the total yield of all imposts will be even greater, though owing to the immense expenditure the surplus will be far less. The return is, of course, satisfactory in a way, for money is one source of power, but we confess we view the figures with a certain sense of dis may. The nation is so rich that it regards economy with annoyance and extravagance without disgust, and when the, lean years come, as come they will, the people will find them- selves saddled with obligations, which no doubt they will dis- charge, but with a bitter sense that their representatives have been carried off their feet. The country needs a larger. minded Joseph Hume.

On Monday Mr. Dillon resumed the debate on the Prisons Bill in a rather commonplace speech. He was followed by Mr. Davitt, who spoke with great feeling, and on the whole, with moderation. After declaring that if they could translate into rules the feelings and wishes of the Home Secretary, he was sure that the prisons would be managed in a humane spirit, Mr. Davitt, among other things, objected to the prisoners who committed disciplinary offences being tried by the directors and governors. He also wished that a list of punishments for bad conduct, and rewards for good conduct, should be hung in every cell. On the whole, he pleaded for making prisons "asylums for the cure and prevention of crime as a species of moral insanity rather than mere punitive and deterrent institutions." He pleaded, not for luxuries, but a more merciful and humane discipline. We are, as must be all thinking men, for combining reformation with the work of deterring and punishing, but we cannot admit that punishment, if properly used, has not a reforming effect. It must not be forgotten also that the prisoner often springs from so low and degraded and poor a class, that the only punishment he can feel, and so the only' deterrent on his class, is a very severe discipline. If all prisoners were men sprung from the educated and luxuriously. living class, the task would be much easier, for loss of liberty and a severe regime are to them strong punishments. Can we be sure that plentiful food and plenty of society would not almost attract certain members of the criminal class ?

We congratulate the Duke of Fife most heartily on the manly and sensible speech made by him at the annual dinner of the Royal Colonial Institution. It takes courage as well as wisdom to admit that one has been intimately connected with an institution or other corporate body which has failed, for this is what the Duke of Fife in effect admitted. 168 speech was a condemnation of the Chartered Company system by one who has been a director. A board of gentlemen sitting in London, however able and honest they might be,

could not, he declared, exercise the same control as the Imperial authority, with all its prestige and military power, and "therefore he for one warmly welcomed the wise and admirable scheme which he observed had lately been formed by the present Colonial Secretary for the future government of the Chartered Company's terri- Ory." The Duke of Fife went on to allude "to a certain deplorable incident—the invasion of a neigh- !) )aring country's territory by the forces of the Company of which he had been a director—an invasion delibe- v itely planned and carried out by the Company's agents without their knowledge and without their possible consent, as he could show if he were to go into matters which he would prefer to forget. It was preposterous to suppose that such grave violation of duty could have been perpetrated by any individuals who felt themselves under the direct control of the British Government." That is absolutely true. Mr. Rhodes and Dr. Jameson could not have got the men they influenced to move had they been working as Im- perial officers in an Imperial territory. As proof of this, mote the anxiety displayed by Mr. Rhodes to get "the jumping-off place" pat under the Company.

In the Commons on Friday, March 25th, Mr. Powell Williams made a very satisfactory statement as to the Army doctors. In future there is to be a special and separate Army Medical Corps—like the Corps of Engi- aeers or the Army Service Corps—within which the doctors are to have real and not sham military rank. That is, they are to be Colonels, Majors, and Captains after the manner of the Army Service officers. This reform ought to have been made years ago, but it is to be hoped that it is not too late, and that a really good stamp of man will henceforth be attracted into the Corps, which ought to become one of the most respected, as well as one of the most important, in the Army. Having won so great a victory the doctors wanted more, and asked for the restore- ion of the medical officers to the regiments. Mr. Brodrick was sympathetic, but declared that in order to carry out the proposal they would have to add sixty officers to the Medical Department. We regret the decision. If the Army doctors could spend their first five years of service with a regiment they would get into touch with regimental life, and learn far more of the ordinary Army conditions than they will under the new plan.

In the House of Commons on Monday an interesting liscussion took place on the new Public Buildings proposals of the Government. Mr. Dillon, who opened the debate, thought rery characteristically that the least thing the Government should do was to give Ireland £200,000. Instead of wasting money on public buildings, spend it on the starving peasants of Ireland. Mr. Herbert Gladstone made an appeal to the Government which we note, with the liveliest possible regret, was rejected. Mr. Gladstone asked that the new street which is to supersede Parliament Street and continue Whitehall should not merely be as broad as is Whitehall, but should—by means of slightly recessing the new public offices—as it were, widen and spread out as it enters Parliament Square. The result of this very sound proposal would be to give the maximum, and not the minimum, view of the splendid group of buildings formed by the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. Unhappily the Government have decided to keep to the present width of Whitehall, the Practical effect of which will be to protrude a rigid corner of stone into the line of vision of those who are coming down Whitehall and expecting the view of Westminster Abbey. To give the faller view of Westminster Abbey would cost a tittle more money no doubt, but it would be money well spent. During the debate nothing was said about the new South 1Censington buildings. Is it too late, we wonder, to appeal for the carrying out of the old plan, a model of which is, or ‘ras till lately, to be seen at the Museum P In the House of Lords on Thursday Lord Stanmore called attention to the condition of affairs in Uganda, and took up the position which has been repeatedly urged in these columns, .—namely, that there was a grievous want of discretion shown In the handling of the Sondanese troops by Major Macdonald and the authorities of the Protectorate. Lord Stanmore also dwelt strongly upon what we have always held to be the essential point. The evil was to some extent due to Uganda being under the Foreign Office. Able as are the officials of that Department, they are not fitted to rule "a savage or semi-civilised country." You cannot, in fact, manage all the many and absorbing international affairs of this nation, and in odd hours do a large share of the work of the Colonial Office. An accountant's office could not run a great estate OR Saturday afternoons. The Duke of Devonshire made the suitable official reply to Lord Stanmore, and stated that Mr. Berkeley, who had now returned to Uganda, would inquire and report on all the circumstances. We do not wish to press hardly on Major Macdonald, who is a brave officer, and doubtless tried to do his best, but in Uganda we cannot help thinking he was the wrong man in the wrong place.

We desire to draw the attention of those who are interested in the sugar bounties question to the extremely able state- ment of the case against countervailing duties made in the Pall Mall Gazette of Thursday by Mr. Hudson Kearley. We cannot summarise the whole interview, but we note his state- ment that "it is possible to sell in the English market at a. handsome profit cane-sugar, even at the prevailing excep- tionally low prices." He points out that even a duty of only £1 per ton on sugar would, owing to the unavoidable custom- house friction, be a very heavy burden on the confectionery and allied trades. He calculates that some hundred thousand men are employed in the confectionery business alone,—and the confectionery business is the child of very cheap sugar. Again, the confectionery trade brings a great deal of work, indirectly as well as directly,—for the machinery required by it is most elaborate and complicated. We cannot enter into a controversy upon the facts or figures stated by Mr. Kearley, but we recommend his statement to all who wish to under. stand the sugar question.

A rather absurd libel action has this week interested the public. Mr. W. S. Gilbert, the writer of comic operas, is not only a dramatist, but a poet and a man of genius. It is an exaggeration but not an absurdity to call him, as was recently done, the "English Aristophanes." Like many, perhaps most, men of his powers, he is sensitive and a severe critic, and recently passed some sharp comments upon eminent actors. The Era, defending the profession, laughed at Mr. Gilbert as a sort of Grand Llama or elephant, and made other strictures, rather vulgar, but hardly outside the limits of old-fashioned hostile criticism. Mr. Gilbert, instead of smiling, or writing about "irresponsible indolent re- viewers," was unwise enough to bring an action ; and as the jurymen, who never read the " Dunciad," could not agree, he had to pay his own costs. He will next time, we hope, admire the lofty serenity of Sir William Har- court, who is caricatured as an elephant at least once a week, and does not even trumpet indignation. In his charge to the jury Mr. Justice Day uttered one note- worthy °biter dictum. A charge of conceit, he said, could not bring a man into odium and contempt, for it "more often brought him respect, and obliged people to make room for him." That is original ; and we rather think it is true. We never knew a man fail from conceit, though we could point to many who have failed for want of it. The true question is only whether the conceit is justified; and in Mr. Gilbert's case it could, we think, receive even from his enemies only one just answer.

The polling in the by-election at Maidstone took place on Saturday, and was declared the same night, Mr. Cornwallis, the Unionist, carrying the seat by a majority of 178. Mr. Cornwallis polled 2,214 votes, and his opponent, Mr. J. Barker, 2,036. In 1895 the Unionist candidate was returned unopposed. In 1892 Mr. Cornwallis won the seat by 816 votes. Wednesday was the polling-day in the Wokingham division of Berkshire. The result was the return of Captain Young, the Unionist candidate, by a majority of 1,036. Captain Young polled 4,726 votes, and his opponent, Mr. Palmer, 3,690. In 1895 the Unionist majority was 2,248. There has been the usual amount of newspaper talk and excitement about these elections and the falling off in the Unionist majorities, but we cannot confess to any very strong feeling in the matter of by-elections, especially when seats are not lost.

Bank Rate, 3 per cent.

New Consols (2:) were on Friday, 1111.