THE MAGAZINES.
IN the Nineteenth Century Dr. E. J. Dillon ranges himself decisively and uncompromisingly on the side of the pessimists in his reading of the omens in China. Differing at every point from Dr. Morrison, he sees in the revolution no national upheaval but a number of disastrous changes brought about by a body of theorists and fortune-hunters, while the people remained passive. He admits Yuan Shih-kai to be a man of vast resourcefulness, but regards him as a cold-blooded oppor- tunist, who has done violence to his better judgment at the prompting of personal ambition. Thus Dr. Dillon accuses him of having "summarily done to death forty thousand of his own countrymen for striving after ideals, many of which he himself is professedly pursuing, and by methods which do not differ essentially from his own," and ridicules the notion Conveyed by Dr. Morrison that he has erred on the side of leniency. Quoting freely from Russian sources, Dr. Dillon gives a lurid picture of the anarchy, corruption, and carnage which characterize the present regime. The deposition of the dynasty involves the secession of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet, with, as its ultimate corollary, their absorption by Russia, Japan, and Great Britain ; and Dr. Dillon quotes passages from the Novoe Vremya urging the Tsar's Ministers to avail themselves of the opportunity to divide Manchuria with Japan, on the ground that by the letter of the law it was not Manchuria that belonged to China, but China-which belonged to Manchuria. The deposition of the dynasty has created a new set of legal conditions in the Far East, and at present " Manchuria is res nullius which belongs to the first occupier. But, as it happens, there are already occupants in possession —Japan and Russia." The first step in the direction of dis- memberment has, he holds, been taken by us in our demands in regard to Tibet, and he ends by prophesying that in six months the partition of China outside the Wall will be complete. For thoroughgoing pessimism and bold and specific prediction there is no publicist to touch Dr. Dillon.— • The History of the Royal Family of England. By Frederic G. Bsgsha•1e, vole. London : Bands aad Qs. (21s. not.] Mr. Stephen de Vere's paper on " Social Aspects of Home Rule" should be compared with that of Mr. Ashton Hilliers in the Contemporary. They are both agreed as to the lack of enthusiasm for Home Rule, the shortcomings of the landlords in the past, their apathy and powerlessness at the moment. But Mr. de Vere, unlike Mr. Ashton Hilliers, finds the source of Irish ills not in alien misgovernment, but in the Celtic character—its lawlessness, lack of self-respect, incapacity for friendship, suspiciousness, dishonesty. "The Irishman individually and collectively is his own worst enemy." Mr. de Vere cannot for a moment admit that the Irish people have any grievance for which Home Rule would be an effectual remedy : he believes that if the landed gentry made use of even the limited opportunities still left them they could revive the old class feeling, the respect paid to the "old stock," and lead the Irish people on the path of regeneration; for "to the upper classes, if anywhere, we must look for the regeneration of the country."—Mr. William Cadbury and Mr. E. D. Morel contribute a joint paper on " Britain's Duty towards Angola and San Thome." They review the situation as revealed in the White Book, showing that the system remains untouched, and after examining the national responsibilities of this country, strongly support the view expressed in these columns, i.e., that it is intolerable for Great Britain to continue to guarantee a condition of slavery in Portuguese Africa. But if public agitation is to be successful a definite and practicable policy must be put forward. "Until Angola is completely reorganized, governed by an efficient administration, and the slave traffic which supports its industries stamped out, and until the terrors conjured up by San Thome have disappeared, the contracting of labourers for the islands cannot by any possibility be free." Repatriation is mockery until the mainland is purged.—Mrs. Hall reprints in full the very interesting notes made by Captain Hall, R.N. (the son of Sir James Hall, the fellow-student of Napoleon at Brienne, and "the first Englishman Napoleon ever saw ") of the interview be had with the Emperor at St. Helena in 1817 ; and Mrs. Edward Lyttelton has a delightful paper on the Humours of Irish Servants, mainly extracted from the immortal Edgiance of her brother, Mr. H. H. West, but supplemented by some excellent stories of her own—e.g.: A lodge-keeper's wife who was asked whether So-and-so was unpopular in the neighbour- hood, replied, " Well, Sir, it's just this way : if Mr. — was to get on fire there isn't a man or woman in the connthry that 'ud waste a spittle to put him out." Excellent, too, is the Irish servant's description of his master's first attempt at driving a motor : " He ran full tilt into the face o' the wall, an' the shoffer's face got as yalla' as a duck's leg, an' the stepney wheel was huntin' the school childher down the hill."
The National Review continues its campaign against the ratification of the Marconi Agreement with a long article by Mr. W. R. Lawson, the author of the series of articles in the Outlook which first drew attention to the subject in the Press. Mr. Lawson, who observes at the outset that the finance of wireless telegraphy is even more romantic than wireless telegraphy itself, reviews the career of the inventor and the company which bears his name, including the actions in the Court of Chancery against rival systems, traces the sympathetic movements of the share market and the Imperial wireless negotiations during the past twelve months, and in view of the Treasury minute of July 19th, 1912 emphasizes the necessity of calling the Chancellor of the Exchequer before the proposed Committee of Inquiry. Without committing ourselves to an endorsement of all Mr. Lawson's inferences, we can at least say that his paper greatly strengthens the case for searching official investigation. That this is not a party question is shown by the critical attitude of Liberal members and the significant editorial silence of the Liberal press.—" Mr. Borden's Opportunity" is the title of a paper which reviews the balance of naval power, and urges on the Dominion Government the adoption of the formula : " Without a supplementary British programme, no Canadian programme." Such a programme, laid down by law as in the Naval Defence Act of 1889, " should provide at least two Dread- noughts a year supplementary to the programme of battle- ships to which Mr. Churchill has already pledged himself," and, with Canada's help, " would enable us at an early date to send six or eight Dreadnoughts to the Mediterranean without courting disaster in the North Sea."—Mr. W. J. Conrthope sends an interesting paper on Bagehot's famous description
of England in 1865 as "the type of deferential countries," in which "public opinion is the opinion of the baldheaded man at the back of the omnibus," i.e., of the ordinary mass of educated, but still commonplace mankind. This view, Mr. Courthope contends, was admirably true at the moment but it is out of date now; the middle classes are no longer "the despotic power in England." The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1885 have shorn them of most of their political power : the character of the electorate has changed : the two historic parties, out of whose natural opposition the party system originally grew, have been replaced by four distinct parties ; party government can no longer be made permanent by making it mild ; and lastly, England can no longer be regarded as the type of "deferential countries," for which alone, according to Bagehot, Cabinet government is suited "If 'the mass of the people' can be said yield obedience to the select few,' those few are not aristocratic leaders, butan elected oligarchy of a democratic Caucus." Mr. Conrthope's conclusion is that, if the Constitution is to be adapted to the actual necessities of the Empire, the doctrine of "Ministerial Responsibility " must receive a new and rational interpreta- tion. Though no longer the despotic power, the middle classes still exercise a predominant influence in forming public opinion, and "if they decide that the supplementary machinery required by the Constitution can be provided within the lines of Imperial Federation, there is no doubt that all external conditions favour their political evolution. . . . All that is needed is a loyal recognition by every Prime Minister that, in his Imperial capacity, he is not the chief of a victorious party, but the servant of his Sovereign and his country."—Mrs. Frederic Harrison in a thoughtful article discusses the points of contact between moderate Suffragist and non-Suffragist women. Her own point of view is well expressed in the saying that "woman, as mother of the race, with the further inherited duty of the nurture of the race, finds her public functions to be educational rather than political, consultative rather than executive. She belongs thereby to what are called the spiritual forces of the world." She accordingly suggests the formation of a Standing Com- mittee, a non-sectarian, non-political, purely honorary body of a consultative character on questions concerning women and children, on which women known for their efficiency as inspectors, examiners, &c., should sit with some dozen women chosen from outside.—Dr. Lovell Drage, in a paper on the treatment of cancer by a method with which he has himself experimented, deprecates the official disparagement of non- operative treatment.—Mr. Austin Dobson adds to his already long list of eighteenth-century studies a charming paper on Falconer's " Shipwreck."
The Contemporary opens with a survey of "The Political Prospect," by Sir Edward T. Cook. He deals with the over- loading of the Government programme ; the lessons of the by-elections ; Home Rule and the problem of Ulster; and the campaign of the land taxers. The article, like all that Sir Edward Cook writes, is dispassionate and judicial in tone. He does not minimize the difficulties and dangers which beset his party. As for the Parliamentary congestion, he points out how it is "the result of the large powers of obstruction still left by the Parliament Act to an unreformed House of Lords." The strategy of doing one thing at a time is over- ruled by that Act. "One field cannot be garnered at a time." Sir Edward Cook's discussion of the lessons and moral effect of the by-elections is equally judicial. He accepts neither Mr. Lloyd George's nor Professor Dicey's reading of the Midlothian election, but admits that for the time and at the place centrifugal forces are stronger than centripetaL He admits also that the Coalition has lost some of its driving power by the dispersion of political interest over so wide a field, and, as a convinced Home Ruler, deplores Mr. Churchill's recent excursion into the domain of Federal Home Rule as an unfortunate example of the practice of thinking aloud on a public platform. The new land-tax crusade causes him even greater misgiving, and he observes that, in view of the statements "made by those who purport to speak with some knowledge not vouchsafed to the rest of us, the sooner the official announcement is made the better." We have discussed Sir E. Cook's article in detail elsewhere.—Mr. Ashton Hilliers writes on "Ireland on the Eve of Home Rule." He has visited the country many times in the course of the last forty years, he is a strong Home Ruler, and he regards the Englishry of the Pale with something like con- tempt as " the relics of a dominant aristocracy, decrepit now, bankrupt in statesmanship and brains, ruined by its bigotry and want of foresight." His visit last month revealed to him a new Ireland, of which the Congested Districts Board
is the good genius, freed, over a large part of the West, from the domination of impracticable landlords, and "with comparatively unimportant exceptions practically free from crimes of violence outside Belfast and the Protestant districts adjacent." The italics are Mr. .Ashton Hilliers'. Yet he admits that he found little or no enthusiasm for Home Rule. An open-air meeting which he attended struck him as perfunctory. He explains this apathy as possibly due to the staleness of the topic to the population, who have listened to little else besides Home Rule oratory for forty years. "The politics which really touch it are locaL Will he be selling to the Board at last P' All the same, if the cup now so close to Ireland's lips were rudely withdrawn, I would not answer for the consequences. They are quiet because they believe they have won. What good will it do them P What good does self-government do us ? " It is clear that Mr. Ashton Hailers sees the remedy for Irish discontent in economic rather than political regeneration.—Mr. Godfrey Collins, the Liberal M.P. for Greenock, writes on the Trading Departments of the State, with special reference to the Telegraph and Telephone Services. The results do not inspire him with enthusiasm. He foresees in Government ownership of Telephones pre- cisely what has happened in regard to the Telegraph, viz., that pressure will be exercised through the House of Commons to lower rates below a remunerative level, and he concludes with the discreet prediction that future develop- ments of State ownership of monopolies will be largely influenced by the present actual results of State management. —Mr. J. A. Hobson discusses the causes of the rise of prices. He finds the answer in the co-operation of two tendencies— the acceleration in the supply of money and the retardation in the supply of goods. "At present it appears as if the world were passing through a period in which an unusually large proportion of its productive energy was being applied to the developmental processes and a correspondingly smaller pro- portion to the processes turning out final commodities for consumption."—Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, in "A Leaf from a Corsican Note-book," gives a truly engrossing account of his visit to the places in the valley of the Gravona connected with the early history of Napoleon, and his escape from Bocognano. These vivid pages help us to understand why the Corsican cannot choose but to be a Bonapartist.
In the Fortnightly Mr. Edward Legge writes of the character and personality of King Edward VII. Mr. Legge's chief object is to refute the view taken by Sir Sidney Lee in his biography of the late King. It is probable that the truth lies between the two extremes in this as in most other cases. The extremity of the view of the writer of the article before us may be gauged by his quoting from a Times article the words, " He was a great King, one of the greatest in history," and saying of this statement " Upon that point we are all agreed ; I say all' because the exceptions scarcely count, although we must not ignore them."—Mr. E. V. Lucas gives us a. very interesting account of the diary kept by the late Henry Silver, who joined the staff of Punch in 1858, and kept a record of the weekly dinners for many years. Mr. Lucas has extracted from this document Thackeray's "Punch-table-talk." The impression we get is of a restless, discontented soul. On one occasion when he was not present at the dinner the con- versation turned on him. " Taylor thought him the most miserable of men, mentally as well as from almost constant pain. Leigh likens him to Swift, despises Vanity Fair (the place, not the book), and despises himself for taking pleasure in it." Though sensitive to slight, Thackeray was generous in his praise of others, as when Mark Lemon said that Thackeray's name made the Cornhill, and the latter replied that the success was owing to Trollope's Framley Parsonage; and he spoke of Tennyson as "the greatest man of the age." In speaking of Thackeray's broken nose Mr. Lucas tells us what is not generally known, "that that is why he gave Titmarsh the Christian names of Michael Angelo, who also had this disfiguration." Little did Torreggiano think of the remote consequences of his youthful act of jealousy and violence in the Medici gardens.—Mr. Percival Landon, in writing of Tibet, sees in the present state of things hope that our weakness in the past is about to be remedied. We are told that Sir Francis Younghusband, after one of the encounters with the Tibetans along the road, said with simple gravity, " If after a day like this the Government at home throws away the chance we now have of strengthening Tibet as an autonomous buffer State, why, they will be guilty of retrospective murder." For fear of complications with China the late Government relaxed its hold, and it appeared as if all the results of the expedition were to be thrown away. Mr. Landon thinks the present Government is now taking advantage of the new situation created by the Chinese revolution, which among other things drew Yuan Shih-kai away from the frontier when he was exercising military pressure in the direction of Tibet. We are told, too, that the expedition against the Abors has been used for surveying the frontier between Tibet and Burma, which hitherto has been quite unexplored. It is to be hoped that the ultimatum declaring that the status quo in Tibet must be maintained will he insisted on, though it may be troublesome for the Chinese Republic io dispense with the ten seats allotted to Tibet in the National Assembly. —Mr. Maeterlinck does not limit his sympathy with insect life to bees, but gives us fascinating glimpses into a strange world, which he has gathered from the pages of J. H. Fabre, the French man of science who for fifty years has studied insect life, and "who is one of the most profound and inventive scholars and also one of the purest writers, and, I was going to add, one of the finest poets of the century that is just past." How strange are these insect lives may be gathered from the accounts of the praying mantis, who devours her lovers in swift succession, of the beetles who excavate catacombs where the male for three months prepares food for the future family without himself taking any nourishment. When his task is accomplished he is worn out and retires to die, but not in a place where his corpse will be in the way. Not less strange is the meal of the scarabuas, which lasts without break for weeks. It is for the wonderful descriptions of these little lives that M. Maeterlinck has called Fabre the insects' Homer.
The chief characteristic of Blackwood, and the one which makes the magazine always delightful, is the chronicle which comes from the uttermost parts of the Empire. It matters not whether it is an actual experience or a story founded on intimate knowledge ; both are illuminating to those who stay at home, but who wish to know and understand. This month Mr. Lyle gives us an excellent description of a plot that failed among Egyptian officials in the farthest Sudan. The political officer manages to countermine, pretending all the while to his superiors at a distance that there is no plot because the disloyal officers have taken a copy of the secret cipher, making confidences with headquarters impossible. The way in which the details of the conspiracy and their discovery are worked out is very good. At the end the plotters withdraw, knowing they are watched, and the finish is ingeniously managed when officially—for the time at least—it is recognized that there was no plot, although those immediately concerned each knew that the other knew of its existence.—Mrs. Andrew Lang gives a striking picture of Benedict Arnold, who was the trusted friend of Washington and Major Andre's accomplice. Arnold escaped to England, where, although he was patronized by the King and Queen, he was never popular on account of his treachery. His wife seems to have been a woman of unusual charm and strength of character, and the account of her girlhood at Philadelphia gives a charm- ing picture of colonial life. A paper, the subject of which is Magdalen College, contains many curious and amusing things and records of the manners of past times. Among these is the account of the behaviour of certain scholars in the reign of Elizabeth, who had a quarrel with Lord Norris concerning deer poaching. The peer was in Oxford and affrays took place between his retainers and the scholars, the culminating event being the retirement of the academic combatants to the top of Magdalen tower with their pockets full of stones. From this point of vantage they discharged their missiles upon Lord Norris and his retinue as he quitted the town.
In the United Bernice Magazine for October there is an interesting article on " Soldiers and Sleep " by " Yan-um." Some of the examples of what the author calls "sleeping sickness" are exceedingly amusing :— " During brigade training last year a water-cart was driven over a corporal's leg. When roused an hour later to continue a march, this drowsy gentleman merely remarked that he had cramp, ` must 'a done 'is puttee up a bit tight !' Quite recently, in the orderly room of a famous line battalion, an orderly arrived with a very pressing memorandum for the adjutant. As this happened to take place on a Sunday, there was but a solitary clerk on duty. The latter was just signing a receipt for the memo. when he was called away for eight minutes to the telephone. In four minutes the orderly was asleep, and in six the memo. had been eaten by the sergeant-major's pup ! One more instance will suffice. During the recent railway strike duty, and not a hundred miles from Liverpool, a private soldier was found asleep lying across the main line points at — Junction! He was taking out food to a signal cabin and had squatted on the rails for a few moments' rest!
The causes and remedies, we are bound to say, seem to us to have common sense on their side. Reveille, we are told, is too early, and the following improvements in barrack routine are suggested "In winter months : reveille at 7.15 a.m. ; breakfast, 7.45 a.m.; first parade, 9.15 a.m. ; parades finish at 12.30 p.m. In summer months : reveille, 6.45 a.m. ; breakfast, 7.15 a.m. • first parade, 9 a.m. • parades finish 1 p.m. at latest. Wet canteen to be open for half an hour before midday meal. For the whole year round : (1) a big breakfast; (2) a light midday meal; (3) a big tea ; (4) no afternoon parades except for defaulters ; (5) beds not to be made down on any account except sickness before 7 p.m."
The article ends with the following sentence:— "In a nutshell, let us have a sharp day's work, organized recreation, and a good night's rest, for Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' "
Previous page
