THE MAGAZINES.
PROFESSOR A. V. D/CET, writing in the Nineteenth Century under the heading "The Appeal to the Nation," effectually combats and demolishes the Ministerial objections to a Referendum or an immediate Dissolution followed at once by a General Election. In the course of his article he main. tains the view that the circumstances justify the unusual, though Constitutional, intervention of the Crown. He admits as indisputable the maxim that the exercise of the Royal- prerogative must be sanctioned by some Minister, lint disputes the inference that the King hat no authority to dissolve Parliament contrary to the advice of the Prime Minister. Professor Dicey construes the maxim, "in common with Pitt, Wellington, and Peel, as meaning that the King who dissolves Parliament must exercise Lis prerogative on the advice of some Minister who will take the responsibility -for the King's Adt."—The indefatigable Professor J. H. Morgan contributes a paper on "The Army and the Civil Power," fortified with a tremendous parade of precedents, but weakened by a number of disputable assumptions and insinuations—e.g., that the officers " went astray " because their minds had been "industriously confused .by :Unionist casuistry and Unionist rhetoric." Again, "the Crown cannot use force except to meet force, and the apprehensions. of the officers that they would be employed in wantonly and oppres- sively repressing a purely political agitation were quite unfounded, and must have proceeded on a complete ignorance of the law." He is careful to state that he does not mean " to condemn the conduct of any particular officers," but be observes that "in earlier times it is extremely probable that, in so far as there has-been a concerted motement to throw up their commissions, they would have been liable to be indicted for criminal conspiracy." As for the. Covenanters, he has little doubt that they are and have been guilty of treason- felony, and " in less tender times" would have been "sentenced to death and penal servitude for life for much less." But Professor Morgan does not, like the more ferocious' of the humanitarian Radicals, openly clamour for the gore of officers and Covenanters; he contents himself with the cautious remark that, " whether- or not it is, or will be, expedient to take such criminal proceedings, and how far the omission to take them is a mistake of policy, I am not concerned to inquire."—In curious contrast with .Professor Morgan's shrewish moderation is the plain speaking of Major-General Knox on "The Army and the Politicians." The Army, which saved the situation and rescued us from civil war, has received an undeserved and possibly irreparable blow. "The Army never has and never will refuse to obey an order from its chiefs. The ideas of optional obedience,' of ' disappearing from duty,' are utterly subversive of discipline." General Knox anticipates that recent incidents in Parliament must seriously affect the supply of officers and the recruiting of men. He concludes, however, on a note of hopefulness: " With the difficulties that confront us, has not the time arrived to preach the doctrine that citizen rights can only be claimed in exchange for personal duty to the State ? Fortunately, we have not at this epoch to lei* far for such example. The teaching of our leading Universities on this matter may be the salvation of our Empire."--In this con- text we may note the article by Messrs. T. F. C. Iluddleaton and F. H. Colson on "Physical and Military Training for Cadets and Undergraduates," linking up the proposals set out in the March number with scheme for compnlsory Cadet training for all, to be embodied in. legisla- tion with the concurrence of both political parties.. "If; the Universities affirm the principle—accepted more than two and .oenturiee ago by Milton—that military training-is am essential dement in education, they will, we believe; give a lead to, public opinion which will make it difficult for ra Government of any complexion to refuse to take up the question." —Mr.. Alfred Curphey, an English resident /a Mexico, sees the best solution for her present difficulties in the formation of a Government by the white. Mexicans ..and foreigners, who form fifteen per cent, of the population. - His great point is that the sixty-five per cent. of the population who are of Indian blood are led by the !nixed Indian and white element who form the remaining twenty per cent and repre- tent the politicians, agitators, and revolutionists. To sum up, the Mexicana cannot govern themselves, and if the whites and foreigners do not come forward the 'United States will be forced to take up the task of " cleaning house." We may note that Mr. Carphey dismisses the notion that Mexico could put up an effective resistance to invasion without money and die- eiplined troops.----Mr. Ellis Barker, while criticizing the policy of President Wilson, urges that Great Britain, in her own interests, cannot afford to see the United States defeated or humiliated, and regards the present moment as eminently favourable, not only for offering the United States our uncon- ditional support in ease of need, but for approaching her with a view to the conclusion of a carefully limited defensive alliance.—M. Andre Gerrard tells the story, financial and political, of the Baghdad Railway, and condemns England, France, and Russia for their lack of courage, initiative, and foresight in allowing Germany to obtain control over an enterprise which in the long ran must mean the acquisition of a new German Empire.--Mr. Lionel Cresswell, writing as "a mere private student of biological, bin-chemical, and vital phenomena," contributes a very long article, in which he maintains not only "that oxygen can be arraigned as accessory before and after the fact, but that a strong indict- ment can be framed against it as the principal malefactor or stimulus in the causation of cancer." The facts on which he bases this hypothesis are set forth in great detail, but he is careful to make it clear that he trespasses on no medical ground and offers no cure; indeed, he observes that " the one therapeutic agent capable at the same time of preventing and curing cancer in old and young alike would be the veritable elixir of life, and that has yet to he found."
In the National Review Lord Percy puts the case for the impeachment of Ministers in his account of " The ' Pogrom ' Plot" with great farce and ability. Before proceeding to describe the Government's preparations, Lord Percy has an interesting passage on what may be called the progressive haematomania of our pacifists. The compact with the Nationalists inevitably committed the party of peace, re- trenchment, and reform to a course which, if persisted in, must lead to bloodshed in Ireland -The very men who raised a bowl of indignation when Lord Roberts solemnly warned his countrymen that Germany strikes when her hour has come, one of whose spokesmen rebuked him sententiously for using such language, the very men who grew most eloquent over the wickedness of war and treated every warning as a criminal incitement to aggression, were being forced in the supposed interests of democracy to adopt an attitude towards Ulster which had it been adopted by a Turkish Govern- ment towards Armenians, or a Russian Government towards Finns or Poles, would have caused the Liberal Party to hold indignation 'meetings all over the country. The Labour Party, some of whom deny that the working man has anything to lose by a foreign invasion, that National Defence is no concern of his, that troops drafted into a strike area to protect life and property are infring- ing popular liberties, had at last found some use for soldiers. The future of democracy depended on the use of the Army they had flouted and insulted, not to defend this country from a foreign foe, but to shoot down their fellow Trade Unionists in the factories and Shipyards of Belfast."
As for the precautionary measures, Lord Percy observes that the enterprise was the largest combined naval and military expedition the country has undertaken since the Crimea.—Mr. J. 0. P. Bland has an illuminating review of Yuan Shih-kai's administration of the Presi- dency. Mr. Bland recognizes in him a convinced upholder of the monarchy, and an unswerving believer in despotic government: a past-master in the arts of mandarin intrigue, a very Ulysses in stratagem, and as ruthless and cold. blooded in removing dangerous opponents as the Dowager Empress at the height of her power. His last and most dramatic coup—the decision to perform the Winter Solstice ceremony at the Temple of Heaven--".carries his original pro- fession of faith to its logical conclusion, because it means the restoration of the social structure, the re-assertion of things which the Mona:lasts of Young China threatened utterly to destroy." in fine, the road to the re-establishment of the monarchy is now clear, and though Mr, Bland does not minimize the dangers attaching to snob .a course, be is iiiclinedto believe that Yuan Shih-kai will prefer Manushu restoration and a Regency in his own hands to the hazardous experiment of founding a new Chinese dynasty.----Writing' on "American Affairs," Mr. Maurice Low, while giving Mr. Wilson credit for great courage and high ideals, is inclined to think that he did not anticipate that his advocacy of the repeal of the free tolls clause in the Panama Canal Act would arouse so much passion. The merits Of the con- troversy have been lost sight of, national sentiment is in favour of exemption, ,and, judging by the temper of the Press and the speech of Mr. Clark, Mr. Low anticipates that the bogy of English domination will again be the chief factor in an American political campaign. The article closes with an interesting account of two American multi-millionaires, recently deceased, who contrived to avoid publicity. Mr. Altman was so little known that when he died no paper was able to publish his portrait, and Mr. Weltimouser the Lumber King, reputed to be the richest man in the States after Mr. Rockefeller, died without ever being inter- viewed. The only quotable remark attributed to him was quite in keeping with his secretive and taciturn character: I have two eyes and two ears, but only one mouth, and that is to sat with."—Mr. Austin Dobson writes a delightful appreciation of Aaron Hill, the friend of Pope and Richardson, famous as a projector, who survives in letters by one gnomic quatrain, and " deserves to be remembered as the introducer of Handel to the English operatic stage." Mr. Austin Dobson's summary of hie achievements and limitations ends with a phrase which we cannot resist quoting. t' He also merits mention as the adapter of the tragedies of Voltaire, who, being a past- master in lucidity, should have taught him that the adjective is the enemy of the noun,"—Miss Marion Black-Hawkins has a curiously interesting paper on spiders. The expenditure of time and patience necessary in taming them is shown by her mentioning that on one occasion she sat motionless for nearly three hours holding a fly within tempting reach of a house spider I Mr. Arthur Ponsonby, M.P., discusses "The Army Crisis and Home Rule" in the Contemporary with his habitual naiveté. With regard to the former, he frankly admits that "the carelessness, the indiscretions, the contradic- tions and equivocations" which attended the Curragh inci- dent "made the worst possible impression and plunged the whole party into the depth of gloom and despondency," from which, however, they were triumphantly extricated by the Prime Minister's bold move in taking over the War Office. At the same time, he does not hesitate to assert that "an insidious propaganda has been surreptitiously under- taken with a view to preventing effectively the Army 'being used for the quelling of disorder and resistance in Ulster." And, again, " the fact which we all know has now been openly declared—namely that the Army is an aristocratic body impregnated with the strongest Tory opinions and with the bitterest hatred of the Government and all it stands for." But from all this Mr. Ponsonby draws consoling deductions. After observing that the doctrine of optional obedience involves the crumbling away of the whole basic principle of the Army as an arm of the civil power for keeping order; repressing disorder, or even for national defence, he con- tinues in this remarkable and monumentally inept passage :— "But it is the greatest mistake to suppose that we can meet this danger, if it is approaching, by what is called democratising the Army. You cannot democratise the Army any more than you ran make a nigger into a white man by painting him. Astanding Army is an essentially anti-democratic institution, and it is only too probable that rapid democratic advance will produce conflict between civil and military authority. The existence of ttie Army and Navy, too, is the price we have to pay for the still remaining relics of barbarism which exist in the relations of one state to another. The more uneducated and aloof from general enlighten- ment you can keep them, the better disciplined and the more effective will they be. It has been said that blackguards coin. mended by gentlemen make the best soldiers—gentlemen here meaning men who have been to a public school, and therefore had very little education. But once they begin examining there consciences, making a choice of the cause for which they wfli fight, disastrous as the effect may be when such incidents Occur, probable as it is that their choice' and preferegco will at first be on the side of aristocracy, money, Toryism, and reaction, it means the first dawn of the era when a standing Army will become .0. anachronism."
The remainder of the paper is devoted to pressing on the public the need for a settlement of the Home Rule question on Federal lines, in accordance with the spirit of conciliatien recently shown by back.benchere on both sides.—Mr. J. M.
Robertson, M.P., writing on "The Taxation of Land Values," dismisses the schemes of thoroughgoing Single Taxers as impracticable :—
No important party will propose the total confiscation of land values any more than the total confiscation of railways and their plant. If railways are to be nationalised they will have to be bought, at a price fixed by the State on generally accepted principles of equity, and land will have to be nationalised, if at all, on the same plan—unless a generation arises which has the courage for the ideal scheme of declaring that all land shall revert to the State after a hundred years.... The trouble would be that a reactionary majority might at any time repeal the edict ; and this possibility will, I fancy, suffice to keep the scheme outside of practical polities in our time."
Mr. Robertson accordingly limits the problem to the two aims of rectifying our injurious rating system and further- ing the productive use of land, and advocates the rating of site values, balanced by rating on income on the existing Income Tax assessment —!—Mr. A. G. C. Harvey, M.P., de- plores the growth of the Navy Estimates, and the inflammatory rhetoric of Mr. Churchill's utterances in the House of Commons and the country.—In an interesting paper on "The Politi- cal Aspect of the Religions Problem in Italy," Signor Romolo Mnrri finds ground for hopefulness in the emergence of the new and enlightened form of anti-clericalism, which aims at a revival of faith, moral training, a new sense of liberty, and the life of the conscience, and holds that Modernism has con- tributed to this salutary transformation.—In this context we may also note the Rev. W. Blackshaw's paper on " Ecclesiastical Politics in Germany." In some States lie is inspired with hopefulness by the pacific solutions of theo- logical and ecclesiastical controversies, but he is moved to mis- giving by the claim now being made for a parity of repre- sentation of the two theological tendencies on the teaching staffs of the Theological Faculties, not only of Prussian but of non- Prussian German Universities. The result can only be to sharpen opposing tendencies and impair the independence of Theological Professors.—We may also notice Mr. John Macdonald's lively study of Royal visits to Paris, the Count de Soiasons' fervid appreciation of the genius of Mistral, and Miss Frances Pitt's delightful essay on the badger.
The article in the Fortnightly by "Auditor Tantum" on the " Personalities of the Session," with its records of the vanities, ambitions, and intrigues of the politicians, makes the plain man feel how hopeless is the situation. When at the top management, fencing, and wirepulling are not only the means, but apparently also the ends, how can we expect anything else than the present imbroglio ? If action is taken, not because it is necessary, expedient, and right, but from some tortuous and indirect motive, bow is a straight course ever to be steered ? After the contemplation of this seeth- ing caldron the clear-cut, simple, and direct action of Ulster comes as a relief.—Colonel Pollock writes of the Government and the Army, laying stress on the illegality of the demand that soldiers should act against the men of Ulster. He says: "Thanks to Sir Arthur Paget having posed to his subordinates a hypothetical situation, the feeling of the Army has been tested, regrettably indeed, yet not so disastrously for discipline as if an actual order had been dis- obeyed or even questioned." The situation is compared with that which arose when Edward I. exclaimed, "'By God, Sir Earl, thou shalt either go or hang !' to the Earl of Norfolk, whom he had ordered to Gascony. ' By the same oath, Sir King,' replied Norfolk, 'I will neither go nor hang.'" The King could com- mand his Earl Marshal to go with him anywhere, but had no right to send him by himself. Edward saw this and accepted the situation. Will the Government be equally wise P—M. Jean d'Auvergne tells us much concerning the Art Theatre at Moscow, that home of enlightened experiment in acting, and wonders why its actors have not been seen in London, when Berlin has acknowledged their capacity. After giving a list of European dramatists whose plays have been performed, he . says that no Frenchman except Moliere is included in it. "But the Moscow school is diametrically opposed to all the French ideas of dramatic art. Simulation is the foundation-stone on which the French actor hopes to build success. The Russian strives only to be natural and true to life, and the Art Theatre has rendered a great service in breaking with the artificially constructed play which has for so long dominated the European stage."—Mr. J. Budge Harding writes delightfully of his observations of birds. Especially fascinating is his account of the little oak wood, not eight miles from Hyde Park Corner, where be heard the singing duel of two nightingales, and watched the conqueror drive away his rival Presently the mate came, the nest was made, and the young reared. Then followed the tragedy. On going to observe one day the writer found the wood in a commotion and the two nightingales uttering cries of rage and fear. The retreating form of a weasel was also seen. Mr. Harding pursued it through the undergrowth, followed closely by the two birds, who lost their fear of him and seemed to know that he was on their side. The weasel escaped, but on a return to the nest it appeared that the marauder had made a clean sweep of the young. A sad description is given of the evident grief of the bewildered parents, waiting by the empty nest with a supply of food for the young mouths that were not, there. We are consoled at hearing that, after an hour or more of waiting, forgetfulness came with healing hand and the song burst out again.
Mr. Newbolt begins a story—or perhaps it ought to be called a romance—in Blackwood. It is mediaeval and symbolic, and written in language which might be classed as "modified Malcay." For instance, one chapter heading runs thus : " Of 'Twain's journey by night, and bow be was brought by a lady to the place of his vision and so left her." It is the kind of romance in which a hermit, a forest, a mysterious child, and a visionary knight are the natural ingredients.— Mr. Mentz Wilkinson gives a fascinating account of his journey into the far West of Canada to be present at the choosing of a new great chief by the four thousand Cree Indians. Ile witnessed the ceremony by a special invitation, having bad friendly relations with the son of the old chief, who was about to be chosen to succeed his father. The ceremony was an impressive one, and purely native, although by one omission it allowed the influence of the Paw Britannica. When the ceremonial recitation of the virtues of the late chief was being chanted no mention was made of successful raids on other tribes, or of scalps taken ; instead, only the prowess and glories of the hunter were recalled.—A. abort story by Mr. Ian Hay is all we should expect from his genial and optimistic pen. A heroic curate, a dog of great character, a Cabinet Minister, a director, and a railway accident are all combined in the end ; the good are rewarded, and a happy marriage takes place, to the satisfaction of everyone, including the reader. —Mrs. Pantcheva finishes her reminiscences of her work among the wounded Bulgarians. A grim episode is furnished by the account of three Turkish patients who, although they had not been shot by their captors, all expected that they would be poisoned when they reached the hospital, and asked that the process might be got over as soon as possible. It is pleasant to read of one of these Turks, a youthful tinker from Constantinople, who became so much attached to a kindly fellow-patient, a Bulgarian schoolmaster, that he announced that he was not going back to Turkey, and in the future his King was to be Ferdinand.
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