THE MAGAZINES.
THZ most readable article in the Nineteenth Century is that by Sir Robert Anderson, the late Assistant-Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, on "Professional Criminals and their Treatment." As the result of long experience, Sir Robert is all in favour of the permanent detention of criminals of this sort—i.e.. those who make crime the serious business of their lives—as opposed to the present system of catching them from time to time and then letting them go on the expiry of their sentence. He does not, however, hold that moral reformation is impossible even in this class, and supports his antagonism to the type theory of Lombroso by an interesting anecdote :— " In discussing this matter with Dr. Max Nordau some years ago when he was kind enough to call upon me in London, I pressed two definitely ascertained facts upon his attention. The first was that some of our greatest criminals are men who were born of respectable and estimable people, and who are free from all hereditary taint of crime. The other was still more telling, namely, that the children of vicious and criminal parents, if removed in childhood from their evil surroundings, and brought under wholesome Christian influences, generally become good citizens. Of course there are failures, but the failures are so few that they may be properly described as exceptional. Here I rely on the experience of philanthropists like Dr. Bernardo, of whose work I have personal knowledge. Dr. Max Norden seemed un- convinced; and on the occasion of a further visit, I took up two trnti.craphs which chanced to be lying on the table, one of them that of a distinguished criminal, and the other that of an eminent member of the Episcopal Bench; and covering all save only the faces, I asked, Which of these is the type?' My visitor shirked the question. For, as a matter of fact, my honest critic would have admitted that the criminal's face was as 'strong' as the bishop's, and more benevolent. I trust that I need not add that my object in telling the story is to discredit the type theory and not the bishop."
Sir Robert Anderson, who deals faithfully by the humani-
tarians, does not confine himself to destructive criticism of existing methods, but formulates a pr4et de Zoi for the amend- ment of the criminal law. The essential feature of his scheme is that it should be decided by a judicial inquiry whether a convict is a "professional" criminal, the after consequences following by the mere automatic operation of law. The existence of such criminals, he contends—and his contention is supported by the testimony of Judges and the recent Report of the Prison Commissioners—is now practically ignored by the law, which is administered in such a way as to secure the punishment of crime, not the protection of Society, —Mr. Justice Hodges (of Melbourne) discusses the eatab. lishment of an Imperial Court of Appeal in a temperate spirit. The defects of the present system are, in his view, the conflicting jurisdiction of the two Tribunals:of final appeal, the inferior prestige of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and the fact that, being a Board and not a Court, it is not publicly known whether the members of it are or are not unanimous. Reorganisation he dismisses as a temporary expedient; the great thing is to demolish the dual system. If that object is secured, he does not think it to be of great importance whether the Court is the House of Lords, the Privy Council, or a new creation, so long as the area of selection is as wide as the jurisdiction of the Court.---Sir Frederick Pollock's long and weighty paper on the Monroe doctrine conclusively establishes the important fact that the warning given by Monroe's Message to the European "Holy Alliance" (designed to aid Spain to recover sovereignty over her American colonies) was due in the first instance to a suggestion of Canning, who proposed concerted action in a letter to the United States Minister in London in August, 1823. He further shows that President Roosevelt's recent utter- ances, while entirely in keeping with the traditions of the great school of American statesmen who flourished in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, fully realise the necessary modifica- tions brought about by the Imperi al responsibilities of the United States. "In other words—to put it bluntly—the Monroe doctrine is not so cheap as it looked." He also notices how Canning's action in 1823 was practically repeated by Great Britain in 1898. Sir Frederick's remarks on the nominal and real applications of the doctrine are also well worth attentive study; indeed, the whole article is animated by a sincere desire to promote that harmony between Great Britain and America which rests, not on formal Conventions or declarations, but on " a generally understood accord on the greater matters of policy."—Mr. Sidney Low's "Conservative Reform Pro- gramme" opens with some excellent remarks on the true function of the Conservative party : "The position of the sentry is a most valuable one; but it may lead to a certain stiffness and rigidity." There is certainly no rigidity in the reconstructive policy outlined by Mr. Low for the "new Elisha," for whom he believes Conservatism to be waiting. His nine-planked programme, including National Councils, Old-age Pensions, and Reform of the Licensing, Housing, and Local Government Acts, is a very pretty specimen of the art of dishing the Radicals.—To the educational symposium in the Nineteenth Century, as well as to the educational articles in the other reviews, we hope to return on a future occasion.
General Negrier's article on the lessons of the South African War in the September number of the Contemporary is taken as the text for the first paper in the October issue. The writer, "An English General-Officer," while in the main cordially endorsing General Negtier's conclusions, demurs to the accuracy of some of his data. His chief point is that our adherence to frontal attacks in the initial stages of the war was due to a. reaction from the attitude assumed by our experts in the " seventies,"—a reaction brought about by the experience of our small wars against savages. Aldershot, in short, made Fuzzy-Wuzzy a fetish, just as there is now a danger of our establishing a Procrustean table of rules based on the Boer War. The writer notes, a propos of our peace training, that "it was notorious that at cavalry ul
General French was habitually worsted by more than one opponent. He returns to Aldershot, it is to be hoped, to reverse the methods which condemned him."—" The American Industrial Peril," by Major C. C. Townsend, of the Indian Ordnance Department, contains some interesting information as to American methods, based on a recent visit to the States What especially struck Major Townsend was the "breadth of view" shown by the American captains of industry American supremacy in industrial science, he holds, is no: due to anything special in the genius of the American. but to the environment and general conditions of thought among which the American lives. "As a great captain of industry in Chicago (himself a Scotchman) said to me: 'I' is not the Yankee but the air of Yankeeland that leads to success." Major Townsend gives other notable examples of the prominent position occupied in industrial centres by Britishers, and continues:—"If British determination can win in the very stronghold of Yankee up-to-dateness, if it can equal the Yankee at his own game in his own country, it can apply the same methods—in so far as they are good—to its oWn industries in the home country."—With this article should be read the Hon. Carroll D. Wright's article on "Labour Organisations in the United States." He lays special stress on the increasing and salutary conservatism of these bodies.—We may also note a well-reasoned plea for the legislative control of hypnotism by Messrs. Edridge-Green and Bousfield, based on the spread of advertisements appear- ing in widely circulated magazines; a charming paper describing a visit to the Bird Rocks of Tillamook Light, on the Pacific seaboard, by Mr. Woods Hutchinson; and Fiona Macleod's "Sea Magic and Running Water," a prose poem on the folk-lore and legends of the Southern Hebrides.
The Fortnightly Review opens with a fluent but not par- ticularly brilliant or original article entitled "The Conditions of Success," by Max Nordau. The first section deals with ambition, which the writer thinks only comes into play in a comparatively advanced stage of human development, and the various forms of success. For our own part, we believe that ambition plays its part among Digger-Indians as vigorously, within Digger- Indian limitations, as it does among European statesmen. Dr. Nordau considers that "birth and extraction are no longer obstacles" to ambition, and that "energy and talent, but of course smartness and unscrupu- lousness also, are keys to every door." The obvious retort to this is that there are possibly doors of which unscrupulous people are incapable of having knowledge. The second section compares the value of the various forms of success,— success in attaining wealth or greatness in public life or fame. It appears that the most famous of us are unknown to some one. Napoleon III., Sainte-Beuve, and Renan were jointly shocked one day to find that there lived an old woman in Paris who had never heard of Napoleon I. It would be easy to give many more striking instances. The third and fourth sections deal with literary ambition, and the necessity for as complete a devotion to literature in the case of a literary man as to trade in the case of a tradesman. The whole essay is rather thin. — Mr. Dicey in "The Boer Generals at Downing Street" speaks strongly and firmly about the danger of weakness in our treatment of the Boers. He puts clearly the result which he holds would follow if the demand that "equal" rights should be accorded in South Africa to the English and Dutch languages were granted. The result would be very unequal. "The practical results of such a demand, if it were acceded to, would be that in any case to which a Boer was a party the presiding Judge, the lawyers on either side, and the jury by whom the case is tried, must be familiar with the Taal, or, in other words, must be a Boer. Under these circumstances the administration of justice throughout the Orange River Colony and in the rural districts of the Transvaal would be in the hands of the Dutch, an hypothesis which is a manifest absurdity." We may also quote Mr. Dicey's uncompro- mising statement with respect to English ideas about the Boors: "I can see no reason for complaint or for surprise on our part in the fact that the Boers entertain hopes of undoing the work of the war. What I do complain of and am surprised at is the credulity with which the British public accepts, or at any rate has hitherto accepted, the declarations of the Boer Generals that they bare abandoned all idea of securing the restoration of the Boer Republics, and are ready to become loyal and faithful subjects of the British crown. The whole tenor of their language in Holland shows that our confidence is mis- placed."—" The Revolt from Rome" articles are remarkably interesting reading, and have all the elements of a very pretty quarrel. Father Taunton's trenchant pen and vivid literary style will fill his readers with delight, while Mr. Galton's gloomy hints will recall the Fat Boy. He seems to say to the Roman Catholic old ladiea of England, I wants to make your flesh creep.' Father Taunton is indignant at such a sugges- tion, but we fancy that the Vatican will regard his article as a distinct revolt. He admits that the Index is not infallible; he refuses to defend the Curia or its ways ; he declares that many things are draining away the vitality of the Roman Church; he thinks that the laity who provide the money should have "a say in the expenditure "; be laughs at the idea of temporal power ; he wishes the Pope to be but a Privy Council in excelsis to decide on occasional matters of faith for an Empire composed of self-governing spiritual colonies. Surely Father Taunton is the new Luther : he is at any rate an admirable author.
The National Review, always strong in the department of Weltpolitik, contains a valuable and authoritative exposition of the Czech case by Dr. Knimarz, the leader of the "Young Bohemian" party in the Austrian Reichsrath. According to Dr. Sramarz, Germanisation and centralisation are the two deadly enemies of Austria, and to fight against them is the essence of the political programme of the Bolien, an people. "The Pan-Germans are right : the Czechs are an arrow in the side of Germany, and such they wish to, and must, and will remain. Their firm unchangeable hope is that they will suc- ceed in making of themselves and of Austria as a whole an impenetrable breakwater destined to restrain the flooding tide of German aggression." Consolidation, not Particularism, is the avowed aim of Dr. Kramarz's policy, and he holds that the Czechs by virtue of their position in the heart of Europe are inevitably destined to play a leading part in the struggle for the renovation of the Hapsburg Empire.—Sir Rowland Blennerhassetes interesting paper on the origin of the Franco-Prussian War saddles Bismarck with the immediate responsibility for the conflict of 1870. The moral of the article is contained in the last few sentences :—" Prussianised Germany is now being prepared for the struggle with Great Britain which Cavour foresaw. Should it come about it will be a war for supremacy on the ocean. She is adding to her fleet a class of ship specially suited for an attack on England. The same methods exactly are employed by her against the British Empire which she formerly used against France. The German mind is being trained to receive with enthusiasm the announcement of a war with England when the time comes. Videant consules. Though the sands are running low in the hour-glass, I believe that with courage and foresight on the part of our statesmen that conflict may still be avoided."— Mr. H. W. Wilson, under the heading "Do English Railways Earn their Dividends ?" endorses the sensational impeachment of our railway methods lately published in the Times. Reck- less finance, ultra-conservative methods of management, and senile directors,—these are the main counts in Mr. Wilson's indictment. Yet he is ready to admit that English management is capable of alertness and initiative in India and on the Canadian Grand Trunk, and believes that things may right themselves if shareholders will only choose good instru- ments, exercise patience, and consent for a while to still further reductions in dividends while appropriations are being made for betterment and reserve funds. "Let them remember," he adds, "that if their dividends are put down, they will have strong claims upon the community for the redress of the gross injustices of taxation which now exist. . . . . When we find that the rates and taxes on railways have increased in the past decade no less than 73 per cent., while the rates and taxes on the whole community have only been augmented 39 per cent., it is clear that the railways are regarded as fair objects for robbery under constitutional guise."— Per contra, it is amusing to read in Mr. Maurice Low's "American Affairs" of the tyrannical conduct of some of the railway corporations in the States: "I doubt if there is any railroad in the world so utterly indifferent to the rights of the travelling public as the New York Central, or which charges so much for such an execrable service." Mr. Low in his account of the resolute attitude of the President towards the Trusts lets fall the curious observation that the Americans are the greatest meat-eaters in the world. He also gives a lurid account of the gambling mania at Saratoga, the Monte Carlo of America; and quotes the comment of an English clergyman, who said, "Dollars and work. Work and dollars. Young Americans seem to talk of nothing else." This is a true bill, according to Mr. Low. The race for wealth is so fierce that no competitor has any mercy either on himself or a rival.
Blackwood's Magazine has several good articles. Mr. Goodrich in "Mere Children in Finance"—Mr. Cecil Rhodes's descrip- tion of the Fellows of Oxford and Cambridge—deals with the
business capacity of the Fellows who have the administration of College funds. If they were "mere children" in the .past, the 2500,000 a year—the aggregate income of the governing bodies—would have long ago melted away. Formerly, however, the Fellows were drawn from a practical country class, and were both business men and "first- rate farmers." The methods of administration were primitive and cumbrous, but they worked well in the long run. The introduction of, "theoretically, thoroughly sound finance" about 1850, followed by a University Com- mission, appointed at "the wrong nick of time," which de- liberately sacrificed finance to culture—other than farming— was the beginning of the financial depression of modern days. Gradually the old bucolic financiers died out and left "mere children" to face the financial crisis. They went to money- lenders of the most respectable type, and by 1883 the Oxford Colleges were half a million in debt. Nowadays "the managers of estates worth hundreds of thousands yearly" are selected from a class the members of which are men "dwelling in parks or avenues, appearing punctually at the porter's lodge at 9.30 a.m. with a little black bag, and emerging therefrom with [their] day's work done at 1.30 p.m., considering [their] pupils as paying clients, and the College buildings a comfort- able office." Up to (say) 1889 the agricultural estates were in the hands of bailiffs, "men of low origin and great experience, who exploited their position for all it was worth." The changes of recent years have made the Bursar "no longer a person elected for literary attainments, but a real hired servant of the College," thoroughly capable and guaranteed. Unfortu- nately he can still have "his hand held or forced by a com- mittee of the College he serves. It is here that the children in financial matters have their innings." We must, however, point out to Mr. Goodrick that the ideal Bursar is by no means universal. Gross incompetence from time to time is still shown in financial affairs, and we are not sure that the " men of low origin" have altogether disappeared.—Sir Theodore Martin's verse translation of a "Night Chant of a Nomad Asiatic Shepherd," by Giacomo Leopardi, will be read with much interest and pleasure. We quote the following fine lines :—
" Tell me, 0 Moon, of what avail can be
The shepherd's life to him, or how to thee Thine own can aught avail ?
Tell me whereto they tend, My sojourn here, that soon must have an end, And thy immortal course, that ne'er can fail?"
The Monthly Review is noteworthy for its clever reviews of cooks. The charming review of Mr. Birrell's charming Hazlitt ("As a letter reveals both him who writeth and him who readeth, so a Life discovers not only the character portrayed, but the character of him who portrays it") and the review of Mr. Haldane's "Education and Empire" are well worth reading. —General Brabant in "Lessons of the War" asks if "the present extravagance of living in the Army" can be sup- pressed. "I say most distinctly it can." It is only neces- sary to enforce a certain standard of messing, to forbid expensive wines, and to prevent young officers being forced to take part in expensive amusements. General Brabant thinks
it would be no "hardship to enforce" these things. We should think not. It is a disgrace to the Service that they are not enforced already, and, moreover, the present state of things deprives England of invaluable men. Fathers will not send sons into a profession in which during the piping
times of peace loafing is a virtue and professional talk is "bad form." It is very different among naval officers.—Sir George Arthur's article on his uncle, Sir Bartle Frere, is extremely valuable, and should be read with attention. "A survey of Sir Bartle Frere's long career of forty-five years' devoted service to his Sovereign and his country is of extreme and immediate interest, because it goes to show how entirely, both in India and in Africa, time has vindicated his policy and his prescience." He was a man "whom his countrymen, having come to their right mind at last in their judgment of him, will for ever hold in honour as one of the greatest statesmen and one of the most truly good men commemo- rated in their annals. His rightness of judgment was based on a life lived with God. It was said of him that the Peace of God was in his face." Lord Wolseley's letter to Sir George Arthur (dated July 18th, 1902) printed at the end of the article is noteworthy. After stating that Sir Bartle Frere and Lord Carnarvon were originally the only two men who "clearly foresaw the great future of South Africa, and who then realised what the Dutch in South Africa were then aiming at," he adds: "If ever the history of recent events be fully and honestly written, the names of your Uncle and of the present Colonial Secretary will be therein recorded as the founders of our South African Dominion."—The paper on "The Golden Age of Egypt" is valuable and interesting, and is remarkable for some extremely good illustrations.
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