THE MAGAZINES.

THE new Nineteenth Century has two articles on the German Emperor. The first, which deals with his foreign policy, is from the pen of Mr. J. Ellis Barker, and we find the same difficulty in reconciling premisses with conclusions as in former articles by the same writer. The main purport of three-fourths of this paper is to exhibit the greatness, efficiency, prosperity, and vigilance of Germany, and concurrently the stagnation, slack- ness, and inefficiency of England. Then comes the conclusion that "whatever the cost may be, the German challenge must be accepted." To judge from Mr. Ellis Barker's figures and arguments, England must be doomed to defeat in any case. But we are allowed some consolation in the admission that the inevitable Armageddon must be delayed until Germany's big ships and her canal are ready. As he puts it, "during the next five or six years Germany cannot afford to go to war with Great Britain, but when her Dreadnoughts and her canal are finished, matters will be different."—Dr. Louis Elkind, on the other hand, treats of the Kaiser's relations to social reform, and finds in this sphere of his varied activities the surest proof of his benevolence and patriotism. He also extols the tolerance of his utterances on religious matters, and adds : "Had his political speeches been equally temperate, and just to the point, as it were, there would have been far less controversy concerning his personality and alleged ambitions."—Mr. C. F. G. Masterman, M.P., under the

heading "Politics in Transition," discusses the achievements and prospects of the present Administration. After contrasting the hostility of the Press and of Society with the verdict of the by-elections and the attitude of the public at large, Mr.

Masterman turns aside to discuss the "headlong growth" of the Labour Party in spite of the absence of a programme, newspapers, or any great intellectual qualities in its leaders.

This he attributes to the fact that the Labour Party "does not stand for an intellectual system, but makes manifest an emotional upheaval." It represents" the cosmopolitan demand of the new race which is the creation of modern mechanical in- dustry," and he finds in the "impossibility of patience" now shown in Europe, England, and America the dominating influ-

ence in the political changes of the new century. For the rest, he pronounces the official Liberal Party rich in ability, but unnecessarily cautious, addicted to compromise, and lacking in courage and insight. The state of the Opposition he

considers desperate, from the absence of leaders or cohesion. But he admits, and the admission is significant, that Tariff Reform undoubtedly has a future as a practical weapon of social appeal. We give his conclusions in his own words :—

" The fact that it is utterly indefensible as an economic system —if it be utterly indefensible—is no kind of guarantee that it may not become a political reality. 'What's the use of talking to a hungry pauper about Heaven ?' was Kingsley's forlorn inquiry.

• What's the use of lecturing the unemployed about "the balance of trade " ' is the equally pertinent inquiry of the Tariff Reformer. The appeal of Protection has hitherto only been propagated on a rising and therefore an unfavourable market. What would be its effect on a falling one ? Only two forces are potent enough to disturb the great impact of this social upheaval. The one is the force of nationality. The other is the force of religion. Governments may be convinced that if the priests (of all churches) were removed, religious questions, in education and elsewhere, would no longer disturb them. But if they legislate upon the assumption that the priests have been removed, they are apt to suffer rude awakenings. Ireland, the home of a nation with a 'mind diseased,' stands outside all this bubbling and ferment of a new social interest. A Parliament with some eighty Irish members allied with a similar force of independent Labour, holding the balance between a Liberal majority and a Protectionist minority, would provide a political situation rich with unknown possibility of change. It is a political situation which demands no miracle for its production before the expiration of this first decade of the century."

—Mr. Kebbers forecast of the future, on the other hand, is favourable to the maintenance of the two-party system on a new basis of cleavage, the " Left-Centre " Liberals joining the Tories to form a Constitutional Party, while the other groups will gravitate towards and unite with the extremists.—Mr.

Ian Malcolm does excellent service in his detailed survey of the gradual surrender of the Government to the forces of dis- order in Ireland. Nothing is more remarkable in this recital than the extraordinary and contemptible utterances of Mr. Cherry, the Attorney-General for Ireland, which Mr. Malcolm does well to quote. As for Mr. Redmond's reference to the emptiness of the gaols in Ireland, Mr. Malcolm pertinently observes that Mr. Redmond "forgets that if the Magistrates and juries of a large part of Ireland sided with law instead of with crime many prisons would be inconveniently crowded.' Mr. Malcolm ends with a vigorous appeal to the Unionist Party to bestir itself on behalf of those Irishmen who are now being persecuted and ruined under the eyes of his Majesty's Government.

The editor of the National Review has secured a very interesting article on "Greater France" from the pen of M. Jacques Bardoux, in which that distinguished publicist traces the growth of French colonial expansion from the Revolution

onwards in a spirit of natural and justifiable optimism. The article, which is fully fortified with statistics, contains one argument in favour of colonisation which should appeal with especial force to all patriotic Frenchmen. After noting the decline of the birth-rate in France, he continues :—

" Our birth-rats is not due to racial decay, but to economic causes, such as the subdivision of real and personal property, in- adequate salaries and small profits, which create an atmosphere of moderate prosperity unfavourable to the joyful insouciance of bulky families. No sooner is the race transplanted to a fresh and less encumbered soil than it recommences as of old to cover its corner of the globe with young shoots. While the mean birth- rate of the French population at home is only 22 per thousand, among the Algerian French it is 34 per thousand, and among French Canadians it is 36 per thousand. It is therefore obvious that the best way of multiplying our race is by judicious emigra- tion—a task which should be facilitated by the increase of popu- lation revealed by the lest census. 11 hile the French nation had

only increased in 1896 by 174,000, and in 1891 by 124,000, in 1901 the increase had risen to 445,000."

—The strategic and commercial advantages of a Forth and Clyde Canal are set forth in a short paper by " R.N.," who

inclines, on the whole, to the high-level route between Grange- mouth and Yoker. The ideal route from every point of view is that traversing the same line of country on the sea-level, but the cost of excavation would be just double,—i.e., twenty instead of ten millions.—The experiences of "a lady-in- waiting to the wife of one of the first Hindu Princes in India," contributed by Miss Mildred Isemonger under the title of "As Others See Us," form extraordinarily interesting reading. Here are Miss Isemonger's final reflections ;—

"The effete races are our enemies, the strong ones our friends— so long as we show ourselves strong. And that is where the moral lies. We should do better often, for our own prosperity, if we let the laws of nature take their course, and sweep away the unfit, but for our honour we cannot. We have inherited our responsibility and must keep it. We cannot, if we would, re- instate those rulers who, through their own or their parents' sins, are incapable of holding the reins of power; we cannot create in the weak Bengali the spirit of uprightness by which alone a republic stands. Those whom we protect we must rule, and it is not to be believed that the disinterested toil, the brave self- sacrifice, the lives that have been given by many of the flower of our race to establish justice and peace in India, should have been spent in vain. And yet so much is lost by the vulgar arrogance of the few. Such incidents as occur too often when a crowd of pleasure-seeking tourists rushes out to India for some pageant, and treats the native Princes at best as `part of the show,' do untold harm. We live in a vulgar age, but let us not be more vulgar than we can help."

—The Bishop of Carlisle urges the revision of Canon Law as a peremptory need. There is not, he declares, a clergyman in the world who obeys the Canons of 1603 in their integrity.

And this "mischievous picking and choosing" will go on, to the great detriment of the Church of England, so long as the Canons remain unrevised. We note with satisfaction the Bishop's final plea that, whenever revision takes place, a

strong body of laymen should be amongst the revisers, "because most of the Church's troubles in the past have been

due to the absence of laymen in the counsels and administra- tion of the Church, and one of the greatest hopes for the Church in the future depends on their presence in its counsels and their power in its administration."—Sir Rowland Blennerhassett discusses "The Foreign Policy of Queen Victoria" in a critical spirit, attributing the deteriora- tion of our position on the Continent largely to the policy oi "graceful concessions" to Germany approved by the late Queen, the most fatal instance, in his opinion, being our acquiescence in the spoliation of Denmark in 1864. In con- clusion, while attributing the change for the better in our foreign relations in great part to the judgment and firmness of Sir Edward Grey, be adds that in ordinary fairness the merit of the Foreign Minister must be shared by the whole Government :—" It would have been impossible for him to have acted as he has done without the hearty support of his colleagues, especially the Prime Minister, and the Govern- ment as a whole must, therefore, have the credit for his

foreign policy, as they must all, Sir Edward Grey included, share the discredit of Mr. Birrell's Irish administration."

That is a perfectly sound conclusion.

The editor of the Contemporary Review has provided his readers with a sensation in the shape of Mr. Jack London's article on "Revolution." According to Mr. London, there are

now seven million men enrolled as revolutionists who, in accordance with the conditions of to-day, are fighting with all

their might for the conquest of the wealth of the world and for the complete overthrow of existing society. He con- templates this movement, not with alarm, but enthusiasm. This revolution is not sporadic, but at once organised, intellectual, passionate, and romantic. And Mr. London frankly avows that he belongs to this army. To quote his own words— "I am a revolutionist. Yet I am a fairly sane and normal individual. I speak, and I think, of those assassins in Russia as 'my comrades.' So do all the comrades in America, and all the 7,000,000 comrades in the world. Of what worth an organised international revolutionary movement, if our comrades are not backed up the world over. The worth is shown by the fact that we do back up the assassinations by our comrades in Russia. They are not disciples of Tolstoy. Nor are we. We are revolutionists."

For the rest, the article is a fierce indictment of the capitalist

class and the bourgeois mind. "The capitalist class offers nothing that is clean, noble, and alive. The revolutionists

offer everything that is clean, noble, and alive." Their gospel is "not a cold-blooded economic propaganda, but it is in its essence a religious propaganda with a fervour in it of Paul and Christ." If assertion were argument, all would be over but the shouting, in which Mr. London excels. We may perhaps be forgiven for suggesting that the article should have for its sub-title "The Call of the Wild Man."—Lord Welby

analyses the American panic, and assigns causes substantially the same as those given by Mr. Taft in his recent speech,—

viz., extravagance, the consumption of capital by recent wars, unduly hastened "development," and over-trading, often fraudulent in its methods. But he is not pessimistic as to the future. Apart from temporary drawbacks, the States were never so prosperous as now, and the mass of their business is sound. At the same time, if commercial finance is to be put on a sound footing, the currency system must be

reformed, and Lord Welby is strongly in favour of making gold the note reserve and establishing a central bank to ensure common action in emergency.—Mr. F. A. McKenzie formulates a serious and detailed indictment of the Japanese administration in Korea. While exempting Prince Ito from

censure, and crediting him with good and humane intentions, he asserts that his policy of conciliation has been largely neutralised by the harshness and cruelty of his assistants and the barbarity of the Japanese army under General Hasegawa,

whom he accuses of attempting to wipe out a countryside. , Mr. Benjamin Aitken, writing on "The Coming Famine in India," gives a painful picture of the callousness and indiffer- ence of the native superintendents and assistants of the relief

camps. On the general question of the relation of famines to British rule, the following passage is worth quoting :—

"Two of the most distinguished natives of India have un- blushingly made and repeated the statement that before the British occupation of this country famines were neither as frequent nor as disastrous as they have been since. Such a statement cannot be made without callousness which is distress- ing to think of ; and it is an evidence of the discernment and magnanimity of the heads of the people that only two respon- sible men have said this. Native and European eye-witnesses have described the famines of pre-British days with details of horror which would not be true of any famine that I have seen. And we may understand that the accounts are true from what we know about famines in Persia, China and similar countries at the present day. But there is another, wider respect in which the evil of famines has been much mitigated under British rule. Modern famines in India last one year, and next year things are as if the famine had not been. But mention is made in the Mababharat and in subsequent records as recent as the later Mughal period of famines which continued for five, seven, ten, and even twelve years. That was not because the rains failed year after year, but because the population was gone, and because neither cattle, implements, nor seed was available to start culti- vation again. In those days, that is, for untold centuries, a, severe famine meant wholesale devastation, and it took years for people to gather again and to find means to cultivate the ground. But such a catastrophe is no longer possible. No sooner does the rain fail after a drought than Government supplies the people with bullocks and seed and all else necessary to resume their occupation."

We may also note a short article on "Natal and the Zulus," by Mr. R. C. Hawkin, in which he quotes frem the Report of the Native Affairs Commission appointed by the Natal Govern-

ment last year passages admitting that the unrest amongst

the Zulus is largely due to the faulty and unsympathetic system of native administration. He notes that the Com-

mission took evidence from over five thousand natives, that its conclusions were intensely unpopular in Nata], and declares

that it speaks much for the fair-mindedness of the Com- missioners that they should have so roundly condemned the policy of their own Colony. Mr. Hawkin, it should be added, is no sentimental negrophil, does Pet minimise the serious dangers of native risings, and is clearly opposed to the maintenance of the system of hereditary chieftainship.

"Evolution and Character," by Dr. A. R. Wallace, in the Fortnightly, will be accorded the respectful attention due to

the writer's name. We can concern ourselves now only with the conclusions. "We are forced," we read, "to the con.clu.; sion that we are to-day, in all probability, mentally and

morally inferior to our semi-barbaric ancestors." This is not a little dispiriting ; but there is hope. Millenniums—how

many we cannot say—have not improved us, but "there is every reason to believe that we shall be so improved in the nob

distant future." But how P By "education and selection in marriage." "AR yet we bare no true and effective educa- tion"! All that Greece, all that Rome did, was nothing ; Colet, Erasmus, Locke, Pestalozzi, Arnold, were naught. "A greatly improved social system is to render all our women economically and socially free to choose " ! ! Let us hope that the future is not so very near.— After thie comes a lecture by Leo Tolstoy on "Love One Another " ; and after this again—somewhat, we must own, to our relief—"A Challenge to Socialism," by Dr. J. Beattie Crozier. This is the beginning of a controversy on which our readers will find something said elsewhere. This, we may say meanwhile, is not a bad beginning.—Mr. Archibald S. Hurd tells us that "the Navy was never so strong as to-day both actually and relatively to other fleets." We can but Mention Mr. Hurd's statement of the case pro.—We cannot follow Mr. J. H. Schooling through the figures by which he seeks to prove his favourite thesis,—that Free-trade spells ruin. Let us take one of his tables. "Imports of Manu- factured Goods" show "a large and continuous Rise." That is true enough. The seventy-nine millions of 1880-89 rose to a hundred and thirty in 1897-1906. Very good ; when we are rich we buy more things. "Exports of Manufactured Goods" show" a prolonged Fall with a Rise at the end." 1880-89, we find, give two hundred and two millions per year; but the "Fall" never got below the hundred and ninety-eight millions of 1886-95, while the "Rise at the end" was to two hundred and twenty. That does not seem so bad.

Blackwood opens with a striking paper about the French army in Morocco. Mr. E. Aslunead Bartlett, who writes it, has watched them closely in the field. It is, he says, "a most perfect military machine," but too much of a machine. The units lack initiative. It shows, in fact, something of the defects that discovered themselves in our own forces in South Africa, till experience in the field taught them to do better. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett is heterodox on the subject of cavalry. "I feel certain," he writes, "that it will be practical [? practicable] for cavalry to charge artillery, if they ever catch a battery in the open unprotected by infantry." They ought to be annihilated, but they are not.—There are some curious previsions of the war of the future in "The Trenches" and "The Sub-Lieutenant."—Mr. A. Lang writes an admirable article on "Homer and the Critics." He maintains that the Homeric picture of society is drawn from the life, and stands up, as one might expect, for "the crown of indivisible supremacy." It is a happy comment on Mr. Gilbert Murray's dictum, "the intensity of genius which makes the Iliad alive is not the imagination of any one man," that it is "a democratic view of genius." The notion of ten generations of Homers equally supreme is as if one supposed that Shakespeare's plays were written—the illustration has been used before—not by Lord Bacon, but by a succession of Lard Chancellors.—In "Britain and Russia in the Middle East" our recent diplomacy is absolutely condemned. Have nothing to do with " unfortunate " Powers, and Russia is unfortunate, a euphemism, it would seem, for faithless.— Mr. Whibley contributes a very clever essay on "The American Language." He admires in it its incomparable slang.— " Beyond the Dreams of Avarice" is a curious story of real life.—Bishop Burnet, we see, does not please the "Maser without Method." It was not to be expected. And, indeed, his offence of speaking some plain truths to Charles II. was quite unpardonable.—We have backed Lord Lansdowne against his adversaries, but is not "dishonest and infamous attack" a little too strong ? Might not Maga sometimes with advantage moderate the strenuousness of her tongue ?

Perhaps the most interesting article in the Albany is Pro- fessor Tyrrelrs appreciation of Sir Richard Jebb. Nothing could be better done. The man and his work have justice done to them, and the story is illustrated by some brilliant anecdotes. Here is the most elegant of compliments paid to the eminent musician, Sir Charles Stanford. Jebb had borrowed from him a key to the Fellows' garden, and had forgotten to return it. He excuses himself by expressing a Lear that the new Orpheus would take away the trees :—

" Ne domitum vates apferat ipse nemus."

Tbe writer of this notice adds a recollection of his own.

Mathematical experts used to prophesy with the nicest aceureoy the places of their pupils among the Wranglers ; the manned And co. [Si.] • classical were always cautions. But it was confidently pre- dicted of Jebb while he was still at school (the Charterhouse) that he would be Senior Classic,—and he was.—Mr. Arthur J. Penty makes an attack on "The Fallacies of Collectivism." But when he begins by conceding "a minimum wage law, old. age pensions, out-of-work pensions," as "reforms of urgent necessity," we are inclined to murmur : "Non tali auxilio." —A remarkable contribution to the Socialistic controversy is " Abbe's Theory of Industry." We are far from accepting it, but it was the work of an able and remarkably disinterested man. He earned eight hundred thalers as his share in the profits of an invention in the making of lenses, but he could not bring himself to think that they belonged to him. It was his life problem to find out whose they were. That Ile did find out we do not say. This, however, may be affirmed, that if all seekers for truth set out in this spirit, their searches would be more profitable.

The most interesting article in the January United Service Magazine—Captain H. P. Osborne's "Napoleon's Diplomacy Prior to the Spanish War "—tells with no little power the astonishing story of how Napoleon duped the feeble-minded King of Spain, the Queen, the Queen's lover Godoy, and Prince Ferdinand, severally and collectively. Napolean's diplomacy always tended to be false and tortuous, but in this particular case he surpassed his own normal diplomacy as much as that normal diplomacy surpassed that of the rest of the world in ingenuity and untruthfulness.—Another inter- esting article is Mr. Sheppard's "The Case of Grouchy." We must, however, protest against the conclusion that if Grouchy had not been a stupid man, and had been capable of carrying out the orders of his chief, the battle of Waterloo would have ended in disaster to the Allies. Possibly this is a conclusion which the paper strategist and tactician may feel obliged to come to, but it leaves out of account the hundred chances of war. Again, it is surely conceivable that even if Grouchy had done what he was expected to do, the Duke of Wellington might have found means of meeting a situation undoubtedly perilous for him which have not occurred to students of the battle.—An interesting paper is "The Misfortune at St. Cast, 1758," in which is recorded one of the raids on the French coast organised by the elder Pitt, which ended in disaster. George II., we are told, set no great store upon these raids. "We shall brag," he said, "of having burnt their ships, and they of having driven us away." Here is another example, not only of George IL's good sense, but of his power of expression. It is one of the conventions of history to represent George IL as a coarse, fat-headed fool, with no quality except that of pluck. As a matter of fact, he had a remarkable power of expression. It may be remem- bered that he called Chatham "that trumpet of sedition," and described the great Lord Chesterfield as "a little tea- table scoundrel" Coarse-fibred imbeciles do not possess the sense of style visible in such expressions as these.