THE MAGAZINES.
THE interest awakened in the Imperial responsibilities of the United States is strikingly indicated in the new number of the Nineteenth Century. Mr. Archibald S. Hurd in "America's Bid for Naval Supremacy" traces in an interesting retrospect the growth, not merely of the American Navy, but of the pride of the country in its marine force. The American war fleet as an engine of offence is an entirely new creation. It was not until 1886 that Congress, by stipulating for the home manu- facture of two new battleships, "led capitalists to turn in- creased attention to the development of the resources of the country," and lent impetus to the great industrial activity and inventiveness of which perhaps the most striking manifesta- tions are to be found in the Harvey Steel Company and the Holland boat. Mr. Hurd has a good deal that is very instructive to say on the characteristic and enlightened enter- prise of the American shipbuilders, and their readiness to give a fair trial to every new invention and improvement. fte also strongly approves of the " territorial " system, which has made the Navy a matter of absorbing concern to he people who pay for it. The great difficulty, however, lathe manning question, which has already reached a crisis. Officers and men are both sadly wanted, and unless powerful inducements are forthcoming to compete with the attractions of civil employ- ment and commerce, the Government will be driven to revise their programme and postpone the construction of new fighting- ships.—Another interesting paper on American affairs is that by Mr. Weston on "The Weak Spot in the American Republic." This is, briefly, that the increase of population in the States is solely due to the fecundity of the alien. Originally exception- ally prolific, the old colonial stock has since 1850 lost its fecundity to such an extent that in the heart of New England The foreign birth-rate has gained on the American birth-rate until it is four to one, and what is trne of New England is, to a lesser but still marked degree, true of the Republic its a whole. But this is not all; the character of the immigrants has totally changed, and Mr. Weston illustrates the nature of this racial change by a table of emigration statistics showing that in the last twenty years, while Italian, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian emigrants have together increased nearly tenfold, British, German, and Scandi- navian have declined by more than two-thirds. Another dis- quieting factor in the population problem is the emigration of Western American farmers to the North-West, suggesting the rise of Canada as a grain-producing rival of the United States. This, according to Mr. Weston, is not a political invasion; it is simply due to the attraction exerted by more favourable con- ditions of climate, soil, and administration.—That able publicist, Mr. Sidney Low, has a good paper on "The Tangle of London Locomotion." He offers a well-grounded plea for a thorough, practical, and above all comprehensive inquiry into the whole subject. For the rest, the article is notable for its decided advocacy of shallow or subsurface railways as ■ opposed to deep-level tubes. Here Mr. Low would have us follow the lead, not of Messrs. Yerkes and Morgan, but of Boston and Berlin. The financial difficulties of the deep-level system are in particular insisted on; and in conclusion Mr. Low puts forward an attractive scheme of new radiating causeways, in each of which separate provision should be made for the various forms of traffic.—Sir Oliver Lodge, writing on Mr. A. C. Benson's recent book, The School- master, devotes himself chiefly to extracting admissions damaging to the existing public-school regime.—We may note, on the other hand, that Mr. Boyd Winchester, the late United States Minister to New Zealand, in his paper on The Ignoble Use of the Classics" protests against "the marked tendency in modern educational systems to hold as paramount utilitarian or scientific ideals."
By far the most striking, as well as the longest, paper in the Contemporary is that signed " Voces Catholicae " and entitled "Catholicism v. Ifltramentanism." The point of view is that of the enlightened Roman Catholic layman, and the main count of the indictment is that "Ultramontanism is busily brewing politics out of religion, and asking us Catholics to accept the result as the genuine outcome of our relations to God, and of our attitude towards His revealed wilL" This "secularisation of religion," which has brought about a "vast revolution in matters relating to faith, morals, and ecclesiastical government," is, in the opinion of the writers, answerable for the "profound, reasonable, and bootlegs dis- content felt by many English Catholics in common with their brethren beyond the seas." What is more, they contend that this restlessness and dissatisfaction, "culminating, as it now so often does, in open revolt, is well-grounded, natural, and healthy." And again, "the things which surprise and pain the educated Catholic of to-day are the divorce between religion and science and the scandalous liaison between politics and theology in the upper classes, and the intimate union between superstition and piety among the lower orders." These general statements are illustrated and substantiated by a mass of circumstantial evidence bearing on the persecution of enlightened theologians by the "Vatican Caucus," the suppres- sion of scientific research, the excesses of the Assumptionists- " the mamelnkes of the Vatican "—the encouragement of mediaeval superstitions, leading up to the declaration that to these exorbitant demands, to a return to the Middle Age, its demonology and theocratic principles, intelligent Catholics will not, cannot consent."— Mr. J. A. SPender reviews the campaign over the Education Bill from the point of view of a hostile, but not wholly
irreconcilable, critic. His chief cause of complaint is that the Government have shifted their ground; his chief argu- ment is the incompatibility of "religious atmosphere" with public control. He deprecates, however, a vendetta which would seek to balance a triumph over Nonconformists by a triumph over the Church, and points to a practical solution in a concession of the demand for "denominational teaching in regulated hours," coupled with a reversion of the proportion of managers and a removal of the denominational test from the teacher.—Dr. E. J. Dillon, discussing our relations with Germany and Russia, draws some sensible deductions from the welter of conflicting opinions. The first is that there is no immediate need of alliances or treaties with any Continental Power,—least of all with Germany. Furthermore, he em- phasises the admitted fact that how dangerous soever Russia may be to England, years, possibly generations, must elapse before any of the dangers with which she threatens us become imminent. "To ward them off as long as possible, and to hold ourselves in readiness to thwart them wholly when the favourable hour has struck, is a safe course to pursue. But the Anglo-German Alliance would have precisely the oppo- site effect, and bring things to a crisis much sooner than otherwise."
The article in the Fortnightly by Mr. Robert A. Johnson on "The New Army Training and the Auxiliary Forces" is a powerful argument against the new plan of trying to manufac- ture imitation Regulars. It is a very reasonable demand that before altering the system of the past the question should be asked and answered,—Did the Volunteer Forces in South Africa show inferiority to the Regulars, and, if they did, was the inferiority the result of their not having been trained like Regulars ? Mr. Johnson points out that in the new Infantry Training Lord Roberts lays stress on the fact that in modern war the men with initiative and resource are the good soldiers, and not the drill-perfect machines. But if this is so, will more drill and more manceuvres make the Volunteer a better soldier ? To the officer manceuvres are of the greatest im- portance. He must learn to move the pieces on the chess- board. The pieces probably learn little by the process. It would seem unwise to strain the Volunteer Forces to breaking-point to provide pawns for the officers to manceuvre if the men themselves gain little military training by the process. A wiser plan would seem to be to let Volunteer. officers share in the manceuvrea of the professional soldiers. The professional pawn is always there ready. The author points out that when England is called upon to put any great number of men into the field—anything, that is, beyond the hundred and fifty thousand men available at any time from the Regular Army—the country must rely on Volunteers. If Mr. Johnson's estimate of the use of the Volunteer is correct—and he knows what he writes about at first hand —the question of the new Regulations is most serious. —Mr. H. G. Wells's third instalment of "Mankind in the Making" deals with the bringing up of the children of the people from their earliest years. The author begins by showing the fallacy of the " leave-it-to-Nature " doctrine, which is either a remnant of the apostle of Nature in a wig—Rousseau--or of those who seek refuge from thought or care. According to Mr. Wells, men, and especially babies, are highly artificial products, and be would agree entirely with the seventeenth - century philosopher that the life of the savage or natural man was "nasty, brutish, and short." Mr. Wells seeks to show that the early years of childhood affect the rest of life physically, and that to ensure health and strength to the bulk of the nation we must reform the conditions of the childhood of the poor. The physical no less than the moral qualities of the nation in the future depend upon the sur- roundings of the children at the present. The importance of this platitude is forcibly illustrated by two diagrams in the article. They are based on Dr. Clement Duke's researches, which included the weighing and measuring of over fifteen thousand boys and young men. The comparison is made between youths of the town artisan class and public-school boys and University students and the like. The diagrams show that the poorer class are uniformly smaller and lighter between the ages of ten and twenty-five.
The " efficiency " article in the new National Review takes the form of a vigorous plea, largely based on an attentive study of Von der Goltz's Seemacht und Landkrieg, for the creation of a strong British North Sea Fleet as a necessary precaution in face of Germany's aggressive naval policy. The article deserves the attention of officials as well as of arm-chair critics, but we cannot endorse the description of Mr. Balfour as one who "appears to look forward to a new golden age, and walks with his head in the clouds, out of touch with the stern realities of life, where the law of progress is also the law of conflict and competition."— Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, writing on "The Formation of the German Empire," makes an interesting contribution to the inner history of the war of 1870. The special point with which he is concerned is the attitude of Bavaria. Bavaria's neutrality, he declares, could have been maintained, but on one condition only,—that of securing the armed assistance, if need be, of Austria, whose sympathies in June, 1870, were undoubtedly with France. Sir Rowland then describes a dinner which he attended in Munich a few days after the out- break of the war, at which the Austrian Minister told the company of an attempt that he was concerned in to form a Ministry in Bavaria which, supported by Austria, would have boldly declared for neutrality, and would have been able to secure a vote of confidence from the representatives of the people. But Austria was not prepared to " square " King Louis II., whereas Prussia was and did.—Mr. Harcourt Kitchin in an examination of the financial aspects of the London water question comes to the conclusion that though• the proposed Water Board might possibly save £40,000 a year on administration, the interest to be met out of revenue on Water Stock and Sinking Fund would result in its starting with a deficit of 280,000, which would have to be met by means of increased Water-rates.—Mr. Maurice Low in "American Affairs" has some instructive remarks on the prospects of Pan-Germanism in America. He points out that the Germans in America are of all races the least clannish and the soonest to be fused in the great Republican crucible. "If the German Emperor counts upon keeping alive German sentiment, and believes that he is able to create a State within a State, he is probably building on sand."—Mr. Stopford Brooke's recent volume prompts Sir Leslie Stephen to contribute a singularly luminous study of " Browning's Casuistry," and literature is also represented by Mr. Churton Collins's paper on "Shakespearean Paradoxes."
An anonymous but very well-informed writer in .Blackwood describes the progress of a relief column occupied in repatriation work. He has a power of describing the effects of great spaces and mountain solitudes. The dismal sight of the ruin of war seems not to have been universal, for tracts of country are described as smiling and untouched. The writer points out that to many Boers the return to their farms means a turning upside down of the accustomed order of things. The returned farmer has to do what he has not been used to do, work with his hands instead of overseeing black labour. In many cases the returned Boer finds his former "boys" living in comfort and ease, while he has to rebuild and remake his farm. We are told that there exists a class of Boers— those who came in at the last surrender—who believe that if they come to the officials their farms will be confiscated. They therefore starve in hiding, hoping for the help their leaders went to Europe to collect. All that can be is done for these unfortunate people, police troopers and land inspectors being the means of helping those who will not seek help.—We sincerely hope that the Staff Officer who writes on "Cam- paigning with Kitchener" will write another article, and show us his hero in South Africa. The present paper in many ways gives the impression of getting nearer to the personality of the subject of the portrait than anything we have read before. The writer shows the extraordinary success of Lord Kitchener's method in Egypt,—the method that slowly and surely thought out and precisely organised every detaiL What we want to know is,—how did this policy succeed relatively in Egypt and South Africa? The writer of the present paper rejects as absurd Lord Rosebery's suggestion of making Lord Kitchener Secretary for War. What he says is that "there is one post to which Kitchener is suited, and which is suited to him—namely, that of Chief of the Staff, carrying with it, call it by what name you will, the sole, solitary, and ezclusive duty of preparaticrn for war." All through the writer insists that it is the capacity for preparation for war which distinguishes Lord Kitchener's genius.---The siege and capture of Fort William at Calcutta is the subject of an interesting article. As so often has happened before, it is necessary to correct a false impression created by Macaulay. In the present instance the inaccuracy consists in the statement that "the fort was taken after a feeble resist- ance," the Governor and Commandant having fled. It is true that those whose duty it was to stay and command fled to the ships down the river as soon as danger became imminent. There remained, however, a few brave men who did all they could to hold out against the overwhelming forces of Surajair Dowlah. As is usual when war overtakes Englishmen, the- authorities at Fort William were quite unprepared.
In the lefimth2y Review Sir E. Fry discusses the question of "The Age of the Inhabited World." The biologists and geologists demand enormous spaces of time either for the work of evolution or for the laying down of stratified, rocks. Indeed, the demands of the geologists seem moderate- compared with those of Professor Poulton on behalf of evolu- tion. His estimate of the time required is two thousand seven hundred million years. Here comes the difficulty. According to Lord Kelvin, the earth at such a distant period could not have been cool and solid enough to have supported, the life that the evolutionists trace back to this early time. If the age of the earth is pushed back indefinitely, the- retarding influence of tides is encountered, and the question raised why it is not now at a standstill. Again, Lord Kelvin, from recent investigations into the melting-point of rocks, finds a note of time in the rapidity with which heat is. now conducted out of the earth. This great authority con- siders that the time passed since the consolidation of the earth "was more than twenty and less than forty million years ago, and probably much nearer twenty than forty?' The reason for the evolutionists' demand for such enormous drafts on the bank of time is to be found in their acceptance of the theory that Nature crawls but does notjump.—Mr. Arthur Symons contributes a study of the music of Richard Strauss. The verdict of the critic is that this composer possesses an enormous power over the mechanical means of his art, amounting to a genius for technique. But here his apprecia- tion ends, because beneath the brilliant gift we are told there lies no real musical inspiration. "He thinks with all his might, and he sets his thoughts to music. But does he think in music ? " Programme music is difficult to reconcile with. the belief that music deals with emotion beyond the range of words. The programme music that lives is that which is interesting without the programme.—Mr. Maurice Gerothwohrs interesting paper on the relations of Church and State in France demands special notice, which we hope in give it on a future occasion.
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