THE MAGAZINES.

PROFESSOR VATERKRY'S article on " Pan-Islamism " in the Nineteenth Century will be read with special interest at the

present juncture in view of the writer's intimate knowledge of, and friendly feeling towards, the Mohammedan world. His conclusions may be thus briefly stated. Pan-Islamism in the sense of the concerted action of all Mohammedans throughout the world he dismisses as "impossible," for much the same reasons as those already advanced in our columns. But he apprehends serious danger to the stability of the British Empire from "local outbursts of political efforts, under the disguise of religious fanaticism." To combat this danger Professor Vambery holds that exceptional measures—notably a rigorous Press censorship—are not only permissible, but imperatively necessary. He does not mince his words in denouncing the suicidal ingratitude of the discontented Egyptians, and makes no secret of his conviction that this discontent has been encouraged by the attitude of the Kaiser and the policy of Germany. We cannot attribute as much importance as he does to the Pro-Islamite vapourings of the notorious Dr. Carl Peters, but they serve as a straw to show which way the wind blows, and there is sound sense as well as knowledge of the Turk in the remarkable passage in which he condemns the Kaiser's attitude in lending support to the absolutism of Yildiz.—Mr. Atherley-Jones, K.C., M.P.,

discusses the growth of the Labour Group in Parliament in an interesting paper. He cordially admits the ability and

sincerity of the Labour Members, but detects the germ of disruption in the caucus system. This, in the long run, he holds, must be "subversive of the responsibility of members to their constituents, and therefore of the influence of constituents upon their members" :—

"The Labour members outside the Labour party enjoy a practical independence even greater than that of the ordinary party man—they owe allegiance to none but their constituents ; but members of the Labour party are by their constitution subject to the control of a cabal or caucus that must in every- party so constituted invariably be the dominant force. However reasonable and judicious that control may be, it is irksome to the man of independent mind, while there is always the probability that control of this kind may degenerate into despotism, the sure forerunner of disruption."

Mr. Atherley-Jones also anticipates unsatisfactory results from the dangerous experiment of admitting men to the Labour Party, journalists or others, who do not belong to the working classes. Mr. Atherley-Jones's criticism derives an added sig- nificance from the proceedings of the Railwaymen's Congress at Cardiff in connexion with the case of Mr. Bell, M.P.—The

paper of Mr. Clement Edwards, M.P., on the Government Trade Disputes Bill should be read along with Professor Dicey's paper in the National Review, noticed in another column. Mr. Clement Edwards is dissatisfied with Clause IV. as it stands, and would see it further amended by the omission of the proviso enacting that nothing in this section should affect the liability of the trustees of Unions to be sued in the events

provided for by the Trade-Union Act 1871, section 9. The article concludes with a menacing passage in which the writer points the moral of the situation as it is likely to affect the Liberal Party. After endorsing the view of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb that the rout of the Liberals in 1874 was due to the active hostility of Trade-Unionists owing to the failure of the Liberals to redeem fully their pledges in regard to the amendment of the criminal law of strikes, be continues :—

" The Conservatives repealed the clause in 1875. Do I need to point the moral ? To-day there is a great Labour party in the House. They believe that Taff Vale and the attitude of the late Government towards that decision are chiefly responsible for their being there in such force. Most of them are Radicals and supremely desire a water-tight Act preserving the Unions from further destructive litigation. A few there be who hate Liberalism and care but little for trade unionism. They would rather see the Liberals pass a measure which the courts shall show hereafter still leaves unions open to attack. It would serve to increase their party at the next election with the war-cry 'The Liberals

have betrayed the Unions !' I hope the Attorney-General appreciates the political significance of the alternatives."

—Mrs. C. S. Roundell contributes extracts from a diary kept while she was a guest at Dublin Castle during the trial of the Phoenix Park murderers early in 1883. The account of the proceedings in Court on Saturday, February 3rd, written by the writer's husband, gives a most vivid picture of the prisoners, and fully justifies his remark : "I never witnessed a scene of greater dramatic interest, or of more intense feeling than this trial, and I trust that I may never see the like again."

We deal in another column with Professor Dicey's spirited and eloquent "Protest against Privilege," as embodied in the provisions of the Trade Disputes Bill.—Of the other notable articles in the October National Review, special attention is claimed by " Scrutator's " indictment of King Leopold and the Congo Free State. What renders the article so damaging is that it relies exclusively on information supplied from Belgian sources,—the Report of the Commission of Inquiry ; the debates in the Belgian Chamber ; and the writings of Belgian publicists such as MM. Cattier and Vermeersch.

The reassuring feature of the situation, on which " Scrutator " rightly insists, is the awakening of public opinion in Belgium to the fact that the honour as well as the interests of Belgium are being compromised by the practical complicity of Belgian Ministers in the Congo scandals. Adverse criticism is no longer confined to Socialist Members. Liberals and Conserva- tives—even of the Roman Catholic wing—freely admit that it is impossible any longer to dismiss the charges levelled at the Congo State as British calumnies. The writer concludes by pointing out that King Leopold's powers of resistance must not be underrated. He controls great financial interests directly or indirectly interested in the maintenance of the present regime in the Congo. His Ministers are deeply committed to his defence, and party discipline may make it difficult for the majority to resist Governmental pressure. Lastly, the simplest solution of the problem—the annexation of the Congo Free State by Belgium—is a burdensome responsibility which Belgium may well hesitate to undertake.—Mr. H. W. Wilson condemns the Government proposals for diminishing British armaments as singularly inopportune, in view of the European situation.

He compares our increased outlay on the Navy with (1) the advance in our national income and other items of national expenditure, and (2) with the naval expenditure of the Great Powers, and in both cases finds it has advanced less rapidly. Passing over other arguments, we may note that he makes a good point by contrasting the clamour for disarmament amongst British Socialists with the frank admission of their German brethren that "it is of the first importance to the German working man that Germany should be armed to the teeth and should possess a strong fieet."—Mr. Maurice Low discusses the sudden " slump " in Mr. Bryan's chances as a Presidential candidate, due to his unfortunate advocacy of State ownership of railways. Up to that point he bade fair to unite all wings of the democracy. Now he has alienated the Conservatives by abandoning real issues and preaching what they consider a policy of confiscation. Mr. Low sums up the situation very concisely as follows :—

" Mr. Bryan has waved the magician's wand. He has done for Mr. Roosevelt and for Mr. Hearst what neither could have done for himself. Mr. Roosevelt need have no fears., No Conservative Republican or Democrat would hesitate one moment if required to choose between the President and Mr. Bryan, and by corn parison Mr. Roosevelt is Conservatism personified. On the other hand, if Mr. Bryan hopes to appeal to the extreme Socialists he is simply playing second fiddle to Mr. Hearst, who has preached more forcibly the dogma that Mr. Bryan now accepts. If the Democratic Party, or any considerable section of it, intends to make Socialism its battle-cry, Hearst is a stronger, certainly a more logical, candidate than Bryan."

—We have not space to enter into the very serious educational problems mooted by Dr. W. H. D. Rouse, the Head-Master of the Perse School, Cambridge, in his attack on the open.

scholarship system. We are afraid, however, that there is only too good ground for his assertion that open scholarships at public schools are generally won by boys trained at expensive preparatory schools, the fees at which are so considerable that

the parents who send their boys there must be well off, and are therefore ex hypothesi not in need of financial relief. Another very serious question which he raises is that of the disparity between the expenditure upon scholarships and upon

assistant-masters' salaries. Dr. Rouse asserts—and here, again, we fear, not without reason—that "it is largely the miserable wage which keeps the most capable men out of the teaching profession, and which yearly drives out men who can ill be spared."—We must also note Colonel Ivor Marse's interesting paper on "Marksmanship in Schools." As the result of his own experience with the sub-target rifle—to which he mainly attributes the great improvement in marksmanship in his battalion—Colonel Maxse strongly recommends its adoption in schools as a cheap, safe, and effective substitute for miniature ranges.

Mr. J. Ellis Barker's paper on "Education and Mis-Educa- tion in Germany" in the Contemporary is interesting and informative without being convincing. The great strength of the German system, in his opinion, does not reside in the knowledge it disseminates, but in the spirit of discipline and obedience which it enforces, and therefore in the creation of a docile population of willing workers. Germany has grown great through "national co-operation, the co-ordination of all the national forces, which has proved stronger than individualism, which squanders the national forces in con- stant internecine warfare." Co-ordination, he continues, is impossible without subordination, and that is impossible under a democracy such as ours. On the other hand, the German schools only turn out a "mob of semi-educated mediocrities "; and the general intelligence and culture of the nation are far below ours. But Mr. Barker has no belief in systematic education :— "Most great men have either lacked school training or have

been amateurs Art, industry and science flourished most in this country when education was at its lowest ebb. Education will give 11/3 neither political nor industrial leaders, for these must educate themselves. At the same time it should not be forgotten that leaders without followers are almost useless, and the utility of the German schools lies in this, that they turn out a huge rank and file of educated mediocrities. The hosts of mediocre German chemists have established the most flourishing industry in the world by making use of the inventions of the great chemical geniuses of England and France who, lacking an adequate rank and file, were unable to utilise their inventions in their own country."

The article bristles with disputable propositions, but it is

worth reading all the same.—Mr. Harold Spender, writing on "England, Egypt, and Turkey," comes to pretty much the same conclusions as Professor Vambery in the article mentioned above, though he holds that strong or exceptional measures should be directed not so much against the fellabeen as against the Turkish agitators or Egyptians in the pay of the Turks. Coming from the pen of so strong a Radical as Mr. Spender, his testimony to the wisdom, the enduring patience, and the justice of Lord Cromer's rule is very remarkable. As Mr. Spender wells puts it-

" We have achieved their [the Egyptian peasantry's] happi- ness; we must work patiently for their loyalty. We have no reason to be ashamed of our record. We have respected the Moslem religion, observed the Moslem Friday, taught tho Koran in our schools, and given to Moslems a preference both on the bench and in the Civil Service. We must not be turned aside from this straight course. We must wean the Egyptians from the Turk, not wrench them. The world has enough cages for black men. A sullen and cowed population would be a heavy price to pay for our continued occupation—a sad ending to a great and glorious page in our history. It would be a real triumph for the Sultan. For what we really have to defend from him is not our power, which ho cannot touch, but our British justice, sanity and mercy."

—Another interesting article is that of Mr. Sydney Olivier on "Long Views and Short on White and Black." We are glad to see that Mr. Olivier fully endorses the view held by Professor Josiah Royce, of Harvard, in his admirable article on "Race Questions and Colour Prejudices" (International Journal of Ethics, April, 1906), that the problem which endangers domestic security in the Southern States, and is said to make lynching a necessity, is not a race, but an adminis- trative problem, and might be solved by the organisation of an efficient county constabulary. Speaking from his own experience in the West Indies, Mr. Olivier does not hesitate to say that in some essentials-

" We stand there a long way ahead of the Southern States, and; a long way ahead of South Africa, and that we do so stand because we have worked on the theory that the African is a human being and have dealt with him (however distasteful it may have been to some of the whites) on principles of civic equality. We have. had no lynchings, no terrorisms, no special laws, no extra-legal discriminations against the coloured. We have not given the..

negro adult suffrage under responsible democratic government, but in whatever form of democratic organisation the white man shares the negro shares equally. Being a practical people, we did not make the political mistake of the emancipators of the American negro. But being, at that time, a God-fearing people, we placed the same tests and disabilities on the white as we did on the black."

There is much that can be urged against our system of two parties in politics, and Mr. Ian Malcolm in the Fortnightly shows how party discipline causes men to vote against their expressed convictions. Mr. Malcolm's plea for groups is based on the argument that with them we should get greater political honesty. He tells us that we need not expect the same disastrous results from groups as in Continental Parlia- ments, because we have a genius for Parliamentary govern- ment possessed by no other European people. We do not propose, however, to discuss Mr. Malcolm's arguments further, as we deal with the whole question elsewhere.—The Rev. E. L. Taunton, after showing the falsity of many Roman Catholic legends and relics, such as the Virgin's house at Loreto and the Scala Santa, goes on to justify the Roman Church in allowing uneducated people to believe in them. It is difficult to understand the reasoning which lays down that such things are not matters of faith because the Church has not pronounced them to be so. The Church encourages people to regard them as genuine by maintaining the custody of such places. Can we wonder at the violent reaction against the Church, as people become enlightened in Italy and elsewhere, of which Roman Catholics complain, when such apologies as the following are used P- " The Church is not for the learned only, but for the poor as well. She has to consider the little ones as well as the great ;

and she has to take them as they are to-day So in these matters the Church is wisely slow to act, lest in rooting up superstitions which, at least, do not do any positive harm, she destroy the faith of those who, by ignorance, cannot tell the essential difference between the two."

—" The Inner History of Tristan wad Isolde,' " by Mr. H. A. Clay, shows the least attractive side of a great genius. Wagner was like a volcano or some other marvellous but devastating force of Nature. The episode of Fran Wesendonk, of which this paper gives an account, shows the curious spectacle of the composer working out his dramatic music and his own life on parallel lines. Considering the deep obligations, financial and others, that Wagner was under to Herr Wesendonk, the whole story is one which can only arouse disgust.—Mrs. Silver writes on the duty of mothers so to prepare their sons that they may take their places as citizens, even to the upholding of liberty and right by force of arms. The duty of the mother is to teach temperance and hygiene, so that her son may be able to endure hardships in his country's cause. Mrs. Silver is anxious that women of the leisured classes should use their efforts to persuade working- class mothers to encourage their boys to join Cadet corps with a view to securing the advantages of physical training and discipline.

Major MacMunn writes in Blackwood "Concerning a General Staff." Those who are rather hazy as to the difference to the Army the possession of a General Staff would make are advised to read this well-written paper.

Perhaps the most fundamental change brought about will be that commands will be given to men who have brains, and not to those who have interest or who have arrived at promotion through seniority. The members of the Staff will be chosen from the mass of officers, and finally selected after a probationary period. Thus there will be an en- couragement for men with brains to enter the .A.rmk and to use them there. Promotion by luck or interest is no inducement either to a clever man to enter the Army, or to a clever man in it—and there are of course numbers— to make the most of his powers :—" The inauguration of a General Staff means that ability and energy will secure advancement to those who are ambitious, and may mean that the schools may cease to warn their brainy men against an Army career." Major Ma,cMunn disposes of the argument against a General Staff that it takes the best men away from the regiments. He says : "History teems with instances of good Generals and Staff working wonders with indifferent troops," and the converse of this is also true.—" Constanti- nople : a Reminiscence," is a picturesque article, the anonymous writer calling up many scenes and experiences. He describes, too, some of the Oriental practices which are so foreign to our ideas,--e.g., the elaborate measures which the Sultan takes to influence opinion by false rumours. The army of spies are said to be more useful for the news they spread than for that which they collect. According to the writer, "the Armenian massacres were foreseen long before they took place, but their methodical preparation only pre- ceded the perpetration of the slaughter by some eight hours." The Sultan uses his spies to disseminate false accounts of undesirable events. The occupation of Mytilene by the Powers was described by them as a friendly act to save the Sultan the trouble of quelling a local disturbance. No Mussulman, we are told, dare hold social intercourse with a foreigner, and the possibility of dangerous ideas passing from one person to another in writing is minimised by not allowing a Turkish Post Office to exist. —Mr. Edmund Candler writes a striking story of India called "Gunge Water," in which is related the • pilgrimage of an old man, who carries away the sacred water in a soda-water bottle which he finds by accident, and believes to have been miraculously sent him. We are quite relieved to find that, although his bottle is broken, he discovers what was its original use.

In the Independent _Review Prince Lieven describes the civilisation which has apparently been swept away by the recent rising in the Baltic Provinces. The German settlers who formed the landlord class maintained their language and culture in a way unknown in any other country in which Germans have settled. Prince Lieven tells us that as early as 1817 the Baltic gentry liberated the serfs, doing this of their own accord, though with the support of the Czar Alexander I. This liberation was forty-four years before the general emancipation in Russia. The great agrarian reform, we are told, was carried out in the Baltic Provinces with German thoroughness and deliberation. By gradual steps the lot of the peasant was bettered, and in 1830 elementary education was started, and a seminary opened for village-school teachers in Courland. Finally, in 1864 the communal Tribunals were made independent of the landlords, and vested with great self-governing powers. Thus without revolution the agrarian question was being gradually solved. But the Russian Government determined to reduce the pro. vinces to the low level of the rest of Russia, and deliberately undid the good work. The schools were taken over, and the teachers turned into agitators, who stirred up the peasants against the landlords, with the dire results of the last year. Prince Lieven does not explain why the Lett population should so easily have fallen a prey to the machinations of the bureaucracy, and why they should have shown no loyalty to the German aristocracy.—Mr. J. Marshall Sturge gives an awful account of West Indian slavery, and his quotations from a book published in 1839 show the terrible state of things prevalent. We are also given some documents relating to the- slave trade. A Liverpool bill-of- lading, which is a disgusting mixture of sanctimonious expres- sions and details of the "ebony" trade, contains the following :— " Captain David Morton: [of the ship] now riding at Anchor at the Barr of Sengal, and by God's grace bound for G-eorgey, in South Carolina, to say, twenty four prime slaves, six prime women slaves ; being marked and numbered as in the margin, are to be delivered, in the like good order and well conditioned,

at the aforesaid Port of Georgia And so God send the good ship to her desired port in safety, Amen."—Mrs. Hayllar writes upon the subject of the teaching of Christianity to children. Her point is that children under the age of fourteen should be taught the barest outline, little more, in fact, than the Apostles' Creed. Of course virtue and courage and justice are to be taught early, but the writer maintains that the constant learning of things little understood has a deadening effect, and believes that a boy or girl of fourteen would be very much more affected by the teaching and life of Christ if he or she had not been unintelligently familiar with them from early years.