8 OCTOBER 1904, Page 24

A Tramp's Note-Book. By Morley Roberts. (F. V. White and

Co. 6s.)—There is no want of variety in the contents of Mr. Morley Roberts's "note-book." There is variety of condition and variety of place. He has been an out-of-work at San Francisco— the occasion this of the most ambitious of his sketches—has inter- viewed President Kruger, gone round the world on the cheap (this cost him £99, which might have been £70 but for incidental stoppages), has worked in an orchard in California and "cursed the capable climate of the Pacific slope," climbed the Matterhorn, caught trout in British Columbia and California, and—possibly the most arduous experience of all—assisted at an International Socialist Congress. All the papers, though naturally differing much in every way, deserve being read, and—not always the same thing—are easy to read. The last-mentioned is, perhaps, the most important. "It is the triple combination of long hours, low wages, and militarism that makes the German violent and im- patient of the slow order of change recommended by the Parlia- mentarians, who, so far, have done nothing." This is a significant sentence. The Chamberlainites and the Conscriptionists between them would go a long way towards converting the conditions of English life into something resembling the German.