THE MAGAZINES.

OF the two articles connected directly or indirectly with the war in the Far East which appear in the new Nineteenth Century, that of Mr. Pownall on "Russia, Japan, and Our- selves" is especially worthy of study at the present juncture. Two points in particular in this paper claim attention. The first is the writer's insistence on the falsity of the view, based on the impressions of globe-trotting tourists, that the Japanese are a light-hearted, superficial race, easy of access, and ready to take the Western man at his own valuation. Nothing, in Mr. Pownall's view, can be further from the truth :—

"A very able man, a missionary who had lived twenty years among them, and thoroughly knew their language, a very difficult one, and Bo a great impediment to interchange of thought, when he was asked what he thought of the Japanese character, replied : 'Between our minds and those of the Japanese there is always a curtain, which they take care is never lifted.: They are an intensely secretive, astute, and self-contained race, very difficult to understand, because of the ineradicable racial difference between them and ourselves."

Mr. Pownall's other point is that in the present contest we are not the stake-holders but the stake-finders ; and whichever of the combatants wins, we lose. In conclusion, he appeals to his countrymen to avoid undue jubilation at the first tricks in the game being scored by the player with whom, in con- sequence of the provocation received, we have naturally the greater sympathy.—Writing on "The War Office Revolu- tion," Mr. Sidney Low, while cordially endorsing the general approval which has greeted the publication of the new scheme, does well to remind his readers that machinery alone "ill not make an Army, and that the pending reconstruction of the War Office, though more searching, symmetrical, and scientific than its predecessors, cannot put everything right as if by magic. It will not, that is, automatically endow Ministers with foresight, or create a tradition that it is "good form "for an officer to work hard at his profession, or raise the standard of physical fitness of the recruit. Mr. Low con- cludes by drawing some useful morals from the early stages of the war in the Far East and the present state of the political horizon in Europe :—

" With the lesson of Port Arthur staring us in the face, and the knowledge that a couple of dare-devil torpedo lieutenants, favoured by luck and dirty weather, may alter the balance of maritime power in a night, even the enthusiasts of the Naval School should admit that a great reserve force for home defence by land is not exactly a superfluous luxury. Nor is it possible to survey the political horizon and to feel confident that we may not again find ourselves involved in warlike operations in Europe or Asia, under conditions in which we could not rely upon sea- power alone. In one way or other we are driven back remorse- lessly to the unwelcome conclusion that we are not going to be relieved of our present perilous ineffectiveness, in regard to our land defences, without a sustained and serious effort."

Lord Tbring, writing on "The Unity of the Empire," is fully justified in emphasising the fact that men, not cattle or barren wildernesses, are the chief factors in government, and that size is no more the characteristic of grandeur in nations than in individuals. He endorses the view already so ably

expressed by Professor A. V. Dicey, that pmferentialisin would prove a solvent rather than a cement of Empire. But he is perhaps too ready to dismiss as impracticable any and every scheme for the realisation of the idea that the Empire can possibly become a unity under any form of representa- tive government.—Mrs. Beaumont (Lady Pomeroy-Colley) contributes a spirited vindication of her gallant husband's policy and strategy in South Africa, in which she differs strongly from the views set forth by Mr. Morley in his " Majuba " chapter in the Life of Mr. Gladstone.

The gist of the argument is to be found in these two sentences :—" Mr. Morley may say again and again that Sir George Colley's defeat and death—the death of a British General and High Commissioner fighting against

insurgents on British territory—was no reason for inter- rupting negotiations that had been begun. But who will believe that the course of those negotiations would have been the same if Majuba had been a victory and the Boers had dis- persed P "—Mr. H. A. Jones, at the close of a protracted article on "The Recognition of the Drama by the State," announces that after much consideration he is in favour of a national theatre. The public, he tells us, have knowledge and faith in the drama as "a source and agent of civilisation and good manners ; a harmoniser ; a humaniser ; an enlightener ; in the best sense an educator;" and the author of Joseph Entangled states that if such a theatre were established, he would gladly

write a new comedy for it without any fees.

The retention of the seat by Lord Morpeth in South Birmingham came too late to enable the editor of the National Review to point the fiscal moral, and his support of the Chinese Labour Ordinance has rendered it impossible for him to apply the term "Mandarin" with the same freedom as formerly to his political antagonists. The editorial comments are, in consequence, slightly lacking in that irresponsible pun- gency which renders them so entertaining even to those who differ most widely from the principles which they endeavour to enforce. Apart from home politics, however, the new number is full of valuable matter.—M. Francis Kossuth, who apparently has the same command of the English language as his illustrious father, contributes a most interesting paper on "The Political Situation in Austria and Hungary." His analysis of the recent compromise engineered by Count Tisza emphasises the important concessions made to Hungary in regard to the Army, military education, and electoral reforms, and is noteworthy for the unsparing condemnation of the small party of independent irreconcilables. "These ten or twelve men," writes M. Kossuth, "abuse the liberal spirit of the rules of the House, and take advantage of the fact that the Party of Independence cannot allow these rules to be altered, for the reason that they may serve in future, as they did in the past, as a parliamentary bulwark to defend the laws and liberty of the State when attacked by a preponderating foreign influence." Of the Emperor he speaks with the utmost respect as one who since 1867 "has proved himself to be a perfectly constitutional and righteous Sovereign."

Professor Laughton's review of Sir George Trevelyan's history of The American Revolution is chiefly remark- able for the skill with which he has utilised the admis- sions of the latest American historian of the Revolution, Mr. Sydney George Fisher, to neutralise and correct certain of Sir George Trevelyan's views.—Mr. Maurice Low, while maintaining an attitude of reserve about Presi- dent Roosevelt's statesmanship, admits that "only the most extraordinary combination of circumstances or folly on the part of the President or his party" can prevent his nomination, while unless the Democrats speedily "display more sense than they have manifested up to date, Mr. Roosevelt's election is equally assured." This, be it remarked, was written before Mr. Hanna's death, which has undoubtedly strengthened the President's chances. Other matters dealt with in Mr. Low's interesting chronicle are the amazing history of the Pension-roll, and a curious instance of class- prejudice which has recently come to light in connection with an exhibition of Whistler's paintings in Boston :-

"The largest individual private owner of Whistlers in this country is Richard Canfield, of New York, more generally known to the world, his world, as 'Dick.' Mr. 'Dick' Canfield is a profes- sional gambler. His business, or rather it rises to the dignity of a profession with him, is to 'run' a gambling house where rich men may amuse themselves with various games of chance. Mr. Canfield does not play himself, he is quite content to permit his wealthy patrons to indulge in that amusement. By profession he is a gambler, by inclination he is a patron of all the arts, a man who delights in art for art's sake, and who is never happier than when he can add a new painting or a new piece of pottery to his already wonderful collection. Dick Canfield was invited by the committee, comprising men and women with some of the bluest blood of Boston in their veins, to send his pictures to the exhibi- tion, and Mr. Canfield generously consented, his contribution numbering fifteen works of the master. Fourteen the committee accepted with profuse thanks, but the fifteenth they rejected. And the fifteenth? It was simply a portrait of Mr. Dick Canfield painted by Whistler, but the blue-blooded dames of Boston could not stand the contamination of having the portrait of Dick Canfield, gambler, painted by Whistler, hanging on the same line with portraits of themselves painted by the same hand. Could that happen in any other country than America ? "

—Of the remaining contributions, we may especially com- mend some illuminating early recollections of Mr. Lecky by an old College friend. In particular, we may note the interesting speculation as to what Lecky's career might have been if his early ambition—to become a great political leader —had been realised.—Another very readable paper is that of Miss Jane Findlater on certain aspects of the modern novel, in which she has bracketed, with most instructive and occasionally ludicrous results, passages dealing with the tender passion from Miss Yonge's novels and those of the modern school. With Miss Findlater's plain-spoken com- ments we find ourselves, after a pretty exhaustive experience of this literature, in complete accord

"If Miss Yonge and her generation avoided the realities of life, our authors of to-day emphasise them in a quite unnecessary manner, and the one picture is fully more untrue than the other. It is not possible to take a charitable view of this development in heroines : the masterful hero may be regarded as only another manifestation of the ideal; but by no stretch of charity can the courtesan-heroine be viewed in this favourable light. The 'oldest profession in the world' certainly furnishes the novelist with many an effective subject ; but it seems a pity for the idea to get abroad that every woman is at heart a rake or worse. This, without mincing matters, is just what is being taught us on all sides at present. The return to nature, to reality,' is being overdone: in this attempt to analyse the primitive instincts of women, many of her most inborn characteristics are entirely ignored—for bad as the world is, it would be even worse if faith- fulness, purity, and modesty were not unchangeable instincts with the larger proportion of women. We need then, indeed, a return to nature—to the whole of human nature instead of one side of it—a return, in fact, to some of those simple, undeniable goodnesses which form such a large part of life, and are as truly real as half the primordial instincts we hear so much about just now."

Dr. Dillon's knowledge of Russia is ao extensive that his article on Japan and Russia in the current Contemporary claims special attention. The object of his paper is to fix the responsibility for the war. Dismissing the Russian people and the professional diplomats, he comes to the conclusion that the appointment of Admiral Alexeieff as Viceroy of the Far East was a huge blunder, and that the supersession of wiser and more cautious statesmen by a zealous but inexperienced

sailor precipitated the crisis. Admiral Alexeieff, according to Dr. Dillon, misinterpreted the attitude of Japan from the outset to the very end, being convinced that she would not. fight, and cheerfully taking a hand in what he mistakenly imagined to be a game of bluff. Admiral Alexeieff, whose career is carefully traced by Dr. Dillon, is of plebeian origin, the son of 'an Armenian father and a Russian mother, who owed his rise in the Navy to his own abilities, and his present. appointment to the friendship of M. Bezobrazoff, who recom- mended him to the Czar. If Dr. Dillon's account be correct,. it only confirms the impression derived from other incidents that the Czar is no judge of men when a real emergency arises. He may have had no intention of crossing a stream. when he decided to "swap horses," but the new horse imme- diately carried him across it. As regards the future, Dr. Dillon is inclined to think that a surer analogy is to be found in "as at Sebastopol" than "as at Moscow." In other words,. if the Japanese cut off Port Arthur by sea and land, and push on to Kharbin, though Russia might not lack men and money to can y on the struggle, she would no longer possess a sufficiently powerful stimulus to prolong it further.— " British Colonist," writing as a detached onlooker with eleven years' experience of South Africa, gives a disquieting view of British rule in the Transvaal It is not that he anticipates that we shall lose the Transvaal again, but events,. he thinks, are steadily tending in a direction which justifies the view of "the man in the street,"—viz., that one of the main objects of the capitalist group is to control the Government of the Transvaal, and through it all British South Africa. He scouts as absurd the statement that white labour has had a fair trial in the mines, and is reluctantly driven to the general conclusion, while giving full credit to Lord Milner- for absolote honesty of purpose, that public opinion—omitting all those whose bread-and-butter directly depends on the favour of capitalists—is thoroughly dissatisfied and discon- tented with the present regime.—" Scrutator " deals with the War Office reconstitution scheme in a spirit of guarded appreciation. The points on which he concentrates his adverse criticism are the organisation of the new perm anent Department,. and the postof Permanent Secretary to the Defence Committee. He holds that "the real advisers of the Prime Minister and his colleagues will not be the elan-of-campaign-making-part, the Admiralty or the War Office, but the new Department, which will be manned by junior officers and beaded by a. sacretary, whose function it will be to consider all the ques- tions connected with the defence of the Empire, to advise the Committee, and to anticipate the needs of the Prime Minister and his colleagues ! It does not require a Solomon to see who will be the real head of the Navy and Army." "Scrutator also complains that the replacing of Sir William Nicholson by Sir Neville Lyttelton, in accordance with the principle that the former would be embarrassed by his association with the old system, is disingenuous, since be had only been two years and seven months in the War Office, while Sir Neville Lyttelton has passed six years and eleven months there. With these and some other deductions, the writer congratu- lates the Committee on their vigorous attempt to deal with a gigantic evil.

The first article in the Fortnightly is an unsigned one, which tries to draw a picture of the character of the Czar. From. the fact that there is nothing sensationally new in the portrait,. we are inclined to think that there is probably a good deal in it which is true. Most of the traits have been suggested. before. It is the accumulation of facts already known. rather than unexpected new ones that makes the account seem likely to possess a certain resemblance to the original The writer of the article begins by tracing the Czar's ancestry as regards character, and piles together evidences of ances- tral superstition, madness, and crime. He points out that such antecedents are very likely to produce the melancholy whick is attributed to the present Emperor. Indifferent to outdoor life, sport, and militarism, and believed to be unlucky, the Czar- does not command the enthusiasm of his subjects. We are told that the peasantry regard the absence of a son as due to the Khodinsky disaster, when at the Coronation three thousand people were crushed to death. The peasantry acquit the Czar- of responsibility, and fasten it upon the Grand Duke Serge, whom they call Prince Khodinsky. The writer remarks. incidentally that this allusion to the Grand Duke will exclude the present number of the magazine from Russia. It is said that the Greek Prince who was present when the mad Japanese policeman attacked the Czar, then Ozarevitoh, in describing the event, used the phrase, "Then Nickie ran." This, unfortunately, became known, and made people believe that the Czar was not brave, though there is no proof of this whatever. In an atmosphere of gloom and suspicion, where none are trusted, the one bright spot is the devotion of the Czar to his wife and children. Endless work seems to be his lot, for the great officials keep him drowned in detail, so that he may never be free to control the really vital issues. It is a melancholy picture, and in it one of the few brighter touches is the delightful snub Nicholas administered to the German Emperor. The two had met in their yachts in the Baltic, and after they had parted the Emperor William signalled the bombastic nonsense about the Admiral of the Atlantic saluting the Admiral of the Pacific. The laconic answer of " Farewell !" met the situation perfectly.—" Celebes" sums up the results of the war strategically, and points out what he believes to have been Russia's best course when she found herself attacked and un- prepared. She ought then, in the opinion of the writer of the article, to have adopted her traditional policy of defensive re- treat, and have retired inland, abandoning Port Arthur, while she prepared vast forces slowly to push out the Japanese from their temporary lodgment in Korea and Manchuria. " Celebes " thinks that the Russian failure to understand the importance of sea-power has made superhuman difficulties for her. She should only have risked loss of sea control if she was absolutely prepared on land,—that is to say, if she had the men and stores actually on the spot. —Major Arthur Griffiths discusses "The New War Office" in a tone of general criticism, not only as to the plan, but also as to the men who are to carry it out. He seems to imply that the administration of the Navy is by no means perfect, and doubts the wisdom of copying it in the Army. The question he does not discuss is whether the naval administration is as imperfect as that of the old War Office.—Mr. H. H. O'Farrell writes a very interesting letter, printed at the end of the magazine, showing that Mr. Schooling's statistics regarding occupation as a test of prosperity are not valid. Mr. O'Farrell points out that no account was taken of labour-saving machinery, which of late years has so greatly increased, enabling us to produce a larger amount of manufactured goods with less labour, and thus setting labour free for other industries—the building trade for one—which cannot employ so much machinery.

Those who had a difficulty in following the unravelling of Whitaker Wright finance in the reports of the trial will find an interesting and not too technical article on the subject in Blackwood. The fact which emerges clearly from the whole business is that from the time of the South Sea Bubble downwards, the speculative investor has been and remains unteachable. No bait seems too obvious. Another point the writer insists on is that by the refusal of Parliament to do more than patch the laws relating to joint-stock companies, illegitimate company-promoting is made possible. What is wanted is a real reorganising of the law from the foundation, but this is opposed by the company directors in Parliament The argument freely used is that if a much greater stringency existed, no respectable person would become a director for fear of unknowingly committing illegal acts. That there is a certain risk of injuring legitimate enterprise through too drastic legislation we do not deny, but we cannot help thinking that this argument has been overdone.—"A Lad of Promise" is a quite delightful moral fable in the garb of a folk-tale. The Highland lad has it in him to be a poet or a musician ; but as he wanders in the mountains or by the sea voices seem to whisper to him that there is plenty of time. So when he meets the girl who sings his own song and whom he falls in love with, he cannot seize the opportunity, but waits. "As he went away it seemed that voices whispered to him, 'Why will you be troubling your mind, Ruari, with songs and other things P Is it not enough for you that you can be thinking of her ? " This frame of mind ruins Ruari's life and wrecks the "lad of promise." The tale is told with great simplicity and charm, and has the fascination of the old world of Grimm or Hans Andersen, while at the same time the peculiar Celtic flavour is pre- served.—" Fort Droughty" is a picturesque account of the Indian frontier. The fort stands in the plain facing the mountains, and keeps order in a land of perpetual vendetta and raiding. The Afridis who form part of the garrison while on duty seem to be all that is desirable in the way of soldiers and guardians of the peace. During periods of leave, when they go home to their towers, native customs. are renewed. Sometimes a villager's presence is required on business at the fort, but he may find it difficult to attend. It is not at all unlikely that the individual in. question may be standing a siege in his tower. The method adopted is to send a soldier with a safe conduct, the siege is. then raised, and the man goes about his business to the fort, returns home in safety, and the siege begins again. Some- times a siege may last for two years. On such occasions the besieged's relations do the sowing and reaping for the owner. Sometimes, again, the process becomes wearisome to both sides, and then they repair to the fort, where a treaty of peace is concluded. There are numbers of interesting things in the paper, which describes a curious people. The writer considers that they are like children who have grown too old for toys, and carry on their games of murders, sieges, and battles with real guns and knives.

The Independent Review contains an article on the "French Socialists and the Church" by M. Jaurbs. Accord- ing to him, the fight has only begun, and the education policy of the Government is but the beginning of a line of action which will end in the destruction of the Con- cordat. We, of course, hear a good deal of the logical out- come of the rights of man and other ideas of the kind springing from the Revolution. When telling us what the French Ministry intend to do, the writer warns us that it is quite possible that before his article has crossed the Channel the Ministry may have ceased to exist Not that. they are specially threatened, but because Ministerial stability is not a French habit. It is not possible to doubt that the Church is hostile to the Radicals of the Republic any more than it is to doubt that these Radicals regard the Church in the abstract with hatred.—It. would be difficult to find two more contradictory articles. than those which describe the artisans of Lancashire. Mr. J. Garrett Leigh portrays a condition of materialism and sordidness, in which the men spend an enormous proportion of their earnings on betting on horse-races. These men, we are told, have no family life, for they are never at home except to eat and sleep. They do not care to go beyond. thestreets into the country, never read anything but the newspapers, and are practically pagans. The gloomy picture seems to be based on careful inquiry and statistics. The other side is shown by Miss Alice Law. In her account the artisans of the small towns of Lancashire are learned, resource- ful, and artistic. They become expert in many branches of natural history ; they perform oratorios and act Shakespeare, doing all these things with energy and success. Is it not possible that both accounts are true, each investigator having studied but one phase of the life around him ?